Rapid City, S.D. – On Tuesday, June 30 at 12:30 p.m., the Rapid City Public Works Committee will hear what the agenda describes as a routine appeal.

The item is listed as Exception 26EX042 — a request to not dedicate right-of-way or construct a Collector Street for the Deadwood Avenue Commercial Subdivision and Farrar Business Park.

Routine. Clinical. Easy to scroll past.
It isn’t.

Who’s At This Table?

The exception was submitted on May 26, 2026 by Buren Properties, LLC. The contact email on the application is e.*****@****sd.biz.

That domain belongs to Complete Concrete, Inc., doing business as Complete Contracting Solutions — a Rapid City-based heavy highway and concrete contractor operating out of 7201 Mt. Rushmore Road.

According to the company’s own website, Complete Concrete was founded in 2006 and grew from $150,000 in annual revenue to $50 million by 2021. Their project portfolio includes the Meade County I-90 reconstruction, the LaCrosse Street and I-90 interchange, Hot Springs Urban Reconstruction, and the Hill City Streetscape.

In other words: municipal streets and public concrete infrastructure are heir business model.

The signatory on the exception application is Elroy Buren, Vice President of Complete Contracting Solutions, who the company describes as overseeing all project management and superintendence with over 20 years of construction experience.

Elroy Buren’s company builds roads for public money. Buren Properties, LLC — his property holding entity — is now asking the city to excuse him from building one on his own commercial subdivision.

The City Got It Right. Mostly.

To its credit, the City of Rapid City’s engineering staff reviewed the application and got the technical call correct.

City Engineer Ray Wall denied Exception 26EX042 on June 9, 2026. The denial was straightforward: as part of the preliminary subdivision plat for the Deadwood Avenue Commercial Subdivision and Farrar Business Park, the applicant is required under the city’s Infrastructure Design Criteria Manual — IDCM Figure 2.1 — to dedicate right-of-way and construct a Collector Street as identified on the Major Street Plan.

The exception request asked to skip all of it — the road, the water, the sewer, the curb, gutter, asphalt, and streetlight conduit.

Staff didn’t just say no. They offered a legitimate path forward: plat Lot 1 as a restricted lot, allowing the property transfer to proceed while preserving the infrastructure requirement for the future. It was a reasonable, professionally sound compromise.

The applicant’s justification — no active utilities, a water body crossing, a street segment that temporarily connects to nothing — describes conditions that are standard in phased commercial development. They are not exceptional circumstances. They are the reason the Major Street Plan exists in the first place.

Engineering did its job. The denial letter went to Longbranch Civil Engineering, Inc., the Rapid City firm representing Buren Properties that prepared the plat and filed the appeal on the applicant’s behalf. Principal Engineer Kale McNaboe, P.E. filed the appeal the same day the denial went out.

That appeal is what lands before the Public Works Committee Tuesday.

What’s Wrong With This Picture

Here is where the story gets more complicated.

Exception 26EX042 lists two tax IDs: 60618 and 60617. Both parcels are part of the Farrar Business Park and Deadwood Avenue Commercial Subdivision project. Both are subject to the Collector Street requirement. Both are included in the exception request.

According to Pennington County property records, Tax ID 60618 is owned by Buren Properties LLC. That checks out — it’s the entity that signed the application.

Tax ID 60617 is owned by a different entity entirely: BGC Business Park, LLC.

BGC Business Park, LLC was formed on August 21, 2018 — the same day the parcel at 4825 Hickock Trail transferred by warranty deed. Its registered agent is Jonathon Silva, also of 4825 Hickock Trail, Rapid City.

The 2025 annual report filed with the South Dakota Secretary of State lists the beneficial owner of BGC Business Park, LLC as the Culmer Living Trust, also at that address.

BGC Business Park, LLC is a legally separate entity from Buren Properties, LLC. Jonathon Silva is not Elroy Buren. The Culmer Living Trust is not Complete Concrete, Inc.

And yet BGC Business Park, LLC does not appear anywhere in Exception 26EX042. Not on the application. Not in the appeal email. Not in the denial letter. Not in the agenda packet published on the city’s website ahead of Tuesday’s meeting.

The denial letter from the city went to Longbranch Engineering. Not to BGC Business Park, LLC. Not to Jonathon Silva. Not to the Culmer Living Trust.

One LLC filed a municipal exception covering land it does not own. The owner of the second parcel is absent from the entire public record of this proceeding.

Whether BGC Business Park, LLC consented to being included in this application — and whether that consent was documented anywhere — is a question the public packet does not answer.

The Denial of an Exception

The city engineer denied this exception. That matters and it deserves to be said plainly: the technical system worked.

But the denial addressed what was in front of it. What appears to have gone unexamined is whether the application itself was complete — whether an exception covering two separately owned parcels can proceed with only one owner’s signature on record.

If the Public Works Committee approves this appeal Tuesday, that question follows the item to City Council on July 6. If the committee denies it, the question remains: what happens to Tax ID 60617 and the infrastructure obligations attached to it, when its owner was never formally part of this process?

Before the Gavel Falls

Before the committee votes, these questions remain on the table:

1. If a $50 million heavy highway contractor whose entire business model is built on constructing public concrete infrastructure claims that building a standard municipal collector street is an unreasonable burden — why should any smaller developer ever be held to the city’s own manual?

2. When city engineering staff deny an exception and offer a documented legal workaround, whose interests are elected officials serving if they choose to override their own technical experts for a well-resourced applicant?

3. If this exception is granted and the collector street is deferred, how long before taxpayers see a request for public infrastructure funding to build the exact road that was dodged today?

4. And perhaps most immediately: did the owner of Tax ID 60617 know their parcel was included in someone else’s exception request?

The post The Exception That Has An Exception: The Public Works Agenda Anomaly appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Paul E. Evans didn’t mince words.
On June 18, one week before the Rapid City Planning Commission was scheduled to consider five simultaneous rezoning requests covering 127.95 acres of undeveloped land north of Mall Drive, Evans — president of McMahon Investment Inc. — filed a formal written protest with the City’s Department of Community Development.

It read, in part, in all capitals:
“McMahon Investment Inc. DOES NOT WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH THIS AT ALL OR ELEVATE RAPID CITY. IF ANY OF MY PROPERTY IS INVOLVED IN THIS, PLEASE REMOVE MY PROPERTY FROM THIS IMMEDIATELY.”

The Planning Commission heard the rezoning requests anyway. All five passed.

Five Re-zones. One Morning.

Wednesday’s Planning Commission meeting opened at 8:00 a.m. On the agenda was five simultaneous rezoning requests filed by Avid4 Engineering, Inc. on behalf of Elevate Rapid City.

The five files — 26RZ014 through 26RZ018 — covered parcels in Section 24, T2N, R7E: north of Mall Drive, east of Haines Avenue, west of the future extension of Maple Avenue.

All 127.95 acres currently undeveloped. The developer’s pitch was simple: Rapid City has a “critical gap” in pad-ready light industrial land, and this massive reclassification is the only way to keep the city competitive.

Two of the five files involved residential land. File 26RZ016 (Medium Density Residential to Light Industrial, 77.72 acres) When Elevate Rapid City asked the Planning Commission to rezone 127.95 acres north of Mall Drive, one landowner said no — in all capitals. The commission moved forward anyway. A Sentinel investigation traces the land, the LLC, and the TIF that was approved ten days before anyone voted.nd File 26RZ018 (Medium Density Residential to Office Commercial) together account for the full residential conversion within the package. Combined, 77.72 acres of land designated for housing will no longer be zoned for housing.

In their own reports, planning staff cited the city’s 2025 Comprehensive Plan goal to “Increase Housing Affordability, Accessibility, and Availability.”

The commission then voted to erase nearly 80 acres of residential zoning — sitting adjacent to a future school — to build industrial lots.

The Holding Cell

Fisher offered something useful during her presentation at timestamp 1:25:36.

Explaining why portions of the parcels carried General Agricultural zoning designations, she said: General Ag acts as a holding cell. Minimum of 40 acres, they zone it general ag — it helps with taxation.

A holding cell. Fisher’s words.
General Agricultural zoning — the lowest-intensity designation in Title 17 — is being used, by the city’s own description, as a tax management tool for large undeveloped parcels. It is not agriculture. It is a placeholder, useful to the landowner, convertible on demand.

The Pennington County Equalization Office confirms the mechanism in practice. Tax ID 39296 — 77.72 acres, owner MDD LLC — carries a 2026 assessed value of $20,600, classified entirely as pasture. Tax ID 69248 — 50.23 acres, also MDD LLC — assessed at $6,200, also classified as pasture. Neither parcel has a property address. Neither has a building. Total improvements on both: $0.

Ten Days Prior to this Vote

The rezoning requests were heard June 25.

Ten days earlier — June 15 — the City Council approved Resolution Case 26TI006: Amendment #1 to the Project Plan for the Rapid City Catalyst District Tax Increment Financing District #101, incorporating the proposed business park project that would result from this rezoning.

The financial groundwork was already laid before the Planning Commission voted on what the land would be.

The staff report for File 26RZ016 confirms the sequence explicitly, under Rezoning Criteria 1: “On June 15, 2026 the City Council approved an Amendment to the Catalyst District Tax Increment Financing District’s Project Plan to incorporate the proposed project that would result from this Rezoning. This represents a changing condition of the city generally.”

Public money, committed before the land use designations were settled. Infrastructure subsidies locked in before the public process concluded.
The Funding Source and Fiscal Impact table in the same staff report — the section where public cost is supposed to be disclosed — was left blank.

Who Owns The Land?

The official record lists the property owner on the largest residential parcel as MDD LLC. Elevate Rapid City is the applicant. The distinction matters: a private LLC owns the land. The nonprofit is driving the rezoning. The city approved it.

Pennington County Equalization Office records show that the 2026 property tax bills for both parcels — Tax ID 39296 and Tax ID 69248 — are mailed directly to 24020 Hardesty Rd, Rapid City, SD 57702.

A Google search of that address returns Hills Construction — a Rapid City contractor — listed at 24020 Hardesty Rd. A South Dakota Secretary of State filing, Document B0071-3682, dated August 28, 2018, also lists 24020 Hardesty Road as the registered address.

The mechanism used to move the land into the holding company is documented in Pennington County’s own sales records.

The sales information for Tax ID 39296 — the 77.72-acre parcel — shows it was transferred via Warranty Deed on March 23, 2018. The sale amount was $0. The county’s validity classification: “Related individuals or corporations.”

MDD LLC was formally organized on March 9, 2018, according to its Certificate of Organization filed with the South Dakota Secretary of State, signed by Secretary of State Shantel Krebs. Business ID# DL145107.
Two weeks after MDD LLC was organized, 77.72 acres of land changed hands for nothing between related parties.

There is also a name buried in the legal description of Tax ID 69248 that warrants attention.

The parcel is described as: “W1/2SE1/4 LESS McMahon Industrial Park #2, LESS EAST HAINES SUBD, LESS LOT A, B, & C OF SW1/4SE1/4, LESS ROW.”
McMahon Industrial Park. The same surname as Paul E. Evans, president of McMahon Investment Inc., who one week before the vote filed a formal written protest demanding his property be removed from this rezoning immediately.

The McMahon Protest

Deep in the public files for the rezoning requests sat a formal notice of protest dated June 18, 2026.

Paul E. Evans, President of McMahon Investment Inc., had submitted a blunt, unequivocal demand to the City’s Department of Community Development regarding Files 26RZ016, 26RZ017, and 26RZ018 — three of the five rezoning requests on Wednesday’s agenda.

By proceeding with the vote, the Planning Commission effectively bundled contested private property into a developer-led master plan without the owner’s consent — keeping the Catalyst TIF acreage intact while forcing a property owner into a corner he explicitly said he did not want to be in.

The commission did not pause. They did not send the items back for review. They moved forward.

Conditional Uses of Land

At timestamp 1:28:40, Commissioner Eirik Heikes asked Fisher for the breakdown — the delineation — between light industrial and industrial zoning. “Can you give us some examples?”

Fisher had already walked through what Light Industrial allows: bank, retail, offices, contractors yard, manufacturing, processing — all within an enclosed building.

Then came the conditional uses.
At timestamp 1:29:58, Fisher listed the uses that require additional approval under Light Industrial zoning: brewery, childcare center, church.
And correctional facility.

Rapid City has had an ongoing and unresolved conversation about where to site a new correctional facility. Multiple locations have been floated. No final decision has been made.

The mention of correction facility as a compatible conditional use on 127.95 acres of land in the Black Hills Business Park corridor — offered without elaboration, alongside brewery and church — was not followed up by commissioners.

These Are Not SmokeStacks

At timestamp 1:30:30, Garth Wadsworth of Elevate Rapid City addressed the commission.
He said: “These are not smokestacks. No commissioner had asked about smokestacks. No agenda item referenced smokestacks. The word smokestacks does not appear in any of the five rezoning files.

The Rapid City Sentinel has spent months covering GCC Dacotah — a foreign-owned cement operation sitting on 563 acres in a 25-year zoning void, seeking formal designation under a newly created Mining and Earth Resources Extraction district. The air quality implications of that operation, and the city’s handling of them, have been a thread throughout that coverage.

What Happens Next

All five rezoning requests passed Wednesday morning. City Council First Reading is July 6, 2026. Second Reading July 20, 2026.

As the 127.95-acre sweep advances to City Council, the public is left with a troubling precedent.

If a massive, TIF-funded economic development project can proceed by overriding the explicit written objection of a property owner, the process is no longer collaborative. It is compulsory.

Paul Evans filed his protest on June 18. He asked, in writing, in all capitals, that his property be removed from this immediately.

The commission still moved forward.

Rapid City Planning Commission 6/25/2026

The planning commission starts at 1:02:00

The post A Developer, A TIF, and A Landowner – A Rapid City Zoning Tale appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

​

The Collateral Damage of Small Town USA

Growing up, the shadow of the Millstone Nuclear Power Plant was a constant, quiet hum in the background of my childhood.

You learn early on what it feels like to live next to an environmental wild card—a facility where the true cost of “production” isn’t always something you can see until the alarms are already ringing. It instills a specific kind of dread: the fear of the invisible threat.

​History is littered with towns that found out too late that the invisible threat was already at their doorstep.

In the 1970s, the residents of Times Beach, Missouri, thought they were just getting their dirt roads sprayed to keep the summer dust down. It took over a decade for the EPA to admit that the “waste oil” coating their town was actually laced with deadly dioxin, turning the municipality into a toxic ghost town that eventually had to be bulldozed and buried.

​When corporate cost-cutting meets regulatory silence, communities become collateral damage.

​Which brings us to Rapid City, and the 563-acre industrial footprint of GCC Dacotah. For 25 years, this massive cement and mining operation has existed in a municipal zoning void—a quarter-century regulatory blackout in our own backyard. And while our roads aren’t being sprayed with waste oil, we need to ask ourselves: what exactly is being burned in those kilns?

​A 25-year administrative blackout doesn’t just mean misplaced paperwork; it means a critical lack of community oversight.

While residents are left in the dark, industrial giants quietly optimize their bottom lines. In the case of GCC Dacotah, that optimization looks a lot like what we traditionally call a tire fire — and the federal government already signed off on it.

What’s Already Been Approved, Quietly

​For years, the corporate playbook has leaned heavily on “alternative fuels” to cut coal costs.

Behind the clinical, regulatory language of federal correspondence lies a stark reality: in 2020, with almost no local notice, the EPA approved GCC Dacotah’s request to burn Auto Shredder Residue (ASR) — the plastic, foam, rubber belts, and scrap left over after junked cars are stripped of metal — as fuel in its Rapid City cement kiln.

Let’s strip away the corporate jargon. The EPA’s own documentation reveals that 20 to 50% of this material is a highly combustible cocktail of dashboard plastics, foam seating, rubber belts, and scrap tires.

​Here’s the part that should stop you cold: the entire approval rests on data GCC supplied about itself.

EPA’s letter spells it out plainly — the agency would consider ASR a non-waste fuel “provided specifications in your request are maintained,” and warns that “if these specifications are not maintained, the Agency may reach a different conclusion.”

In other words, the federal government’s blessing is conditional on an honor system, based on test results from 2015 and 2018, administered from an office in Washington, D.C., for a kiln that sits at the center of a 563-acre footprint bordering our neighborhoods.

​Five years later, in a city that still can’t get its own zoning map to reflect what’s actually operating on that 563 acres, who is checking whether GCC is still meeting the conditions it promised back in 2020?

Nobody — because almost nobody here even knows to ask. This is the same 25-year pattern of administrative drift that produced the zoning gap, showing up again in what’s legally allowed to go into the air we breathe.

A Familiar Pattern

​And when it comes to accountability, GCC’s parent company has a track record worth knowing.

Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua spent years fighting a $36 million arbitration judgment — first losing in Bolivia’s courts, then watching a U.S. federal court in Colorado confirm the award and order company assets seized to satisfy it, then losing again on appeal to the Tenth Circuit.

An international conglomerate that fights a confirmed legal judgment across two countries and multiple courts for nearly a decade tells you something about how it weighs the cost of accountability against the cost of compliance.

That is the corporate culture standing behind the entity whose self-reported data is the only thing standing between “non-waste fuel” and a kiln full of shredded car interiors.

The Rapid City GCC on site Fatality

We do not need to look at international courts to see the consequences of this corporate culture; the tragic results are already on the record right here in Rapid City.

On February 22, 2025, a contractor died at the GCC Dacotah facility when a bridge providing access into the kiln shifted, causing the equipment he was operating to fall backward into a chute.

The subsequent Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) investigation revealed that the mine operator bolted the bridge to a pedestal but failed to secure it to the floor as required by the manufacturer’s manual.

Furthermore, investigators found that the operator did not develop or provide the necessary installation training for the bridge assembly, directly contributing to the fatal accident.

​Whether it’s a bolt that was never secured to the floor or fuel specifications that were never re-verified, the pattern is the same: self-certification, minimal local oversight, and a community that finds out only after something goes wrong — or, in this case, only because someone finally asked.

Historical Environmental Disasters

​This isn’t an abstract corporate exercise. Look at Niagara Falls, New York, where for over a decade Hooker Chemical Company quietly buried 20,000 tons of toxic chemical waste in an old canal bed, then sold the land for a dollar with a buried liability disclaimer. Houses and a school went up on top of it.

By the late 1970s, the chemicals were leaching into basements, children were getting chemical burns on the playground, and the federal government had to evacuate hundreds of families and declare a state of emergency. Love Canal became the reason Congress created the Superfund program — because nobody had been watching what was buried beneath the neighborhood until it was too late.

​Look at West Virginia, too. The history of Appalachian coal mining is a tragic syllabus on what happens when communities surrender their backyards to industry.

It is the abandoned ghost towns like Hammond, where former industries extracted what they needed and eventually left only ruins behind. These tragedies all share the same DNA: corporations acting with impunity, regulatory agencies turning a blind eye, and communities left holding the bag.

Time to Take Our Backyards Back

​We build our backyards to be safe havens, not buffer zones for corporate fallout. But for 25 years, the residents surrounding the GCC Dacotah plant have been unknowingly living in a 563-acre regulatory blind spot — one where even the federal approvals that exist were granted on the company’s own word, five years ago, with no local mechanism to confirm they still hold true today.

​It is time to pull the plug on the 25-year blackout.

We need confirmation that GCC is still meeting the conditions of its 2020 ASR fuel approval.

We need our municipal leaders to finally draw a hard zoning line in the sand.

And we need to stop assuming that a federal letter from 2020 means anyone, anywhere, is still checking. Because the slow burn has gone on long enough, and it is time to take our backyards back.

The Health Risks of Burning Auto Shredder Residue & Tires

​It’s worth noting that EPA’s 2018 testing data — the data underlying the 2020 approval — showed most contaminants in GCC’s ASR fuel at levels comparable to or lower than coal, including zero measured sulfur.

That data is now several years old, self-reported by the company, and there is no public record of anyone re-verifying it since. The following is what the broader scientific literature says about what can be released when ASR and tires are burned — context for understanding what’s at stake if those 2018 conditions are no longer being met.

The Incineration of ASR and Health Dynamics

​The incineration of ASR (which inherently includes plastics, PVC, synthetic rubber, and tires) is a scientifically documented health hazard. When these materials are introduced to industrial kilns, they release specific, highly dangerous compounds into the surrounding air and ash:

• ​Dioxins and Furans: Created directly by the combustion of chlorinated materials like PVC plastics (found abundantly in vehicle interiors and ASR). The World Health Organization classifies dioxin as a known human carcinogen. Chronic exposure is linked to endocrine disruption, severe immune system suppression, liver toxicity, and reproductive health issues.
• ​Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs): The burning of automotive tires and rubber releases highly toxic compounds including benzene, styrene, and butadiene. Butadiene is a potent liver carcinogen. These airborne emissions are directly linked to central nervous system damage, leukemia, and various other cancers.
• ​Heavy Metals: The combustion process releases heavy metals like lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic into the air and the residual ash. These metals penetrate the cardiovascular, neurological, and reproductive systems, posing a severe risk to long-term community health.
• ​Fine Particulate Matter (PM2.5): The smoke generated contains microscopic particulate matter that bypasses the body’s natural defenses and penetrates deep into lung tissue. This is a primary driver of long-term respiratory diseases, including asthma and chronic bronchitis, with children and the elderly facing the highest risk of hospitalization.

Citation Index

• ​The Rapid City Sentinel — GCC Dacotah 563-acre zoning investigation, ongoing series
• ​EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery, letter to Jim Anderson, GCC Dacotah Inc., Nov. 12, 2020, Non-Waste Fuel Determination for Auto Shredder Residue (rcrapublic.epa.gov/files/14937.pdf)
• ​Compañía de Inversiones Mercantiles S.A. v. Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua S.A.B. de C.V., 58 F.4th 429 (10th Cir. 2023); U.S. District Court, District of Colorado, confirmation order, March 26, 2019 ($36.1M)
• ​Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) — Feb. 22, 2025 Fatality, Final Report, GCC Dacotah
• ​Love Canal history — SUNY Geneseo, Britannica, Center for Health Environment & Justice
• ​YouTube: The Missouri Ghost Town Poisoned By Toxic Waste (Times Beach)
• ​Rapid City Council Agenda, June 15, 2026; Rapid City Planning Commission, June 11, 2026 meeting (26RZ011 continuance to July 9, 2026)

​CIVIC ALERT: TOMORROW’S CITY COUNCIL MEETING

Tomorrow, June 15, 2026, 6:30 PM — Rapid City Council Chambers, 300 6th Street.

Three ordinances affecting the GCC Dacotah 563-acre footprint are up for first reading tomorrow: Ordinance 6718 (26RZ008), Ordinance 6719 (26RZ009), and Ordinance 6720 (26RZ010) — all part of the 25-year rezoning correction this paper has been documenting. A first reading introduces an ordinance but doesn’t enact it; final passage typically comes at a second reading roughly two weeks later, often with a public hearing where residents can speak.

​A fourth related rezoning, 26RZ011 — covering the LDR-1/Mining and Earth Resources Extraction overlap near Hidden Valley Road — was continued by the Planning Commission to July 9, 2026 for further legal clarity on land use designations. Mark your calendars for both dates if you want to be heard.

The post What is Burning Next to Rapid City’s Neighborhoods? Inside the GCC Zoning Void appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

For Immediate Release
Rapid City, SD –From the Desk of the Press Secretary, Office of Waterfowl Affairs, Memorial Park Division

“The Office of Waterfowl Affairs notes the historical precedent set by the 25-year oversight of the aforementioned 563-acre mining operation.

We applaud the city’s long-standing tradition of looking the other way when it comes to expansion of operations, zoning enforcement, and tax assessment.

We trust this exact same level of bureaucratic flexibility will be applied to our current assumption of jurisdiction over the local park facilities. We are prepared to offer zero property taxes and aggressive hissing in exchange for official recognition.”

The post The 25 Year Precedent: SATIRICAL EDITORIAL CARTOON appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

RAPID CITY, SD – On June 4, 2026, the Rapid City Planning Commission considered four simultaneous rezoning requests covering 562.68 acres of active mining and cement plant operations within Rapid City limits.

The petitioner on all four requests was listed as the City of Rapid City Community Development Department — acting on behalf of GCC Dacotah, Inc.

The properties have operated outside Rapid City’s local zoning framework since at least December 28, 2000. The state sold the cement plant to GCC Dacotah, Inc. in 2001. By the city’s own account in the project reports, no local zoning district was established on the property in the 25 years that followed.

Four Ordinances, One Company

The four rezoning requests, each originating at the June 4 Planning Commission meeting and each staffed by Current Planning Division Manager Jessica Olson, propose the following changes:

26RZ008 — 144.49 acres, north of W. Chicago Street west of Cement Plant Road. Proposed rezoning from SDCL 11-4-30 to Cement Plant District. Planning Commission recommendation: Approved unanimously

26RZ009 — 396.87 acres, between Sturgis Road and Railroad right-of-way, north of W. Chicago Street. Proposed rezoning from SDCL 11-4-30 to Mining and Earth Resources Extraction District. Planning Commission recommendation: Approved 8-1 with Revised Legal.

26RZ010 — 0.78 acres, northwest of the intersection of Industrial Avenue and Cement Plant Road. Proposed rezoning from Light Industrial District to Cement Plant District. Planning Commission recommendation: Approved unanimously

26RZ011 — 20.54 acres comprising two parcels at 4245 Hidden Valley Road and 2211 Deadwood Avenue. Proposed rezoning from Low Density Residential District 1 to Mining and Earth Resources Extraction District. Planning Commission recommendation: Continued to July 9, 2026.

The fiscal impact table on each application was left blank.

The Neighborhoods Effected by the RetroZone

Of the four rezoning requests, one stands apart.

Case 26RZ011 proposes changing the zoning of two parcels — addressed as 4245 Hidden Valley Road and 2211 Deadwood Avenue — from Low Density Residential District 1 to Mining and Earth Resources Extraction District.

Low Density Residential District 1 is exactly what it sounds like. It is the zoning designation for neighborhoods. Houses. Families. Streets with names like Hidden Valley Road, Saint Martins Drive, Jericho Way, Grace Way.

The city’s own project report for 26RZ011 describes 4245 Hidden Valley Road as currently undeveloped. It describes 2211 Deadwood Avenue as already being used as part of a larger mining operation.

That second description is worth pausing on. A parcel with a residential street address — 2211 Deadwood Avenue — carrying a residential zoning designation — is already being actively used for mining. Not proposed for mining. Not planned for mining. Currently used for mining. Under residential zoning.The project report does not explain how long that has been the case.

The adjacent property table in the 26RZ011 project report documents what surrounds these parcels:

To the north: Mining and SDCL 11-4-30. Existing use: vacant and mining.
To the south: General Agriculture District and SDCL 11-4-30. Existing use: vacant and mining.

To the east: Light Industrial and SDCL 11-4-30. Existing use: mining.

To the west: Low Density Residential District 1 and SDCL 11-4-30. Existing use: residential and mining.

In plain language: these two parcels sit inside an operational mining footprint, surrounded on all four sides by either active mining or residential development that itself borders mining operations.

The city’s staff finding under Rezoning Criteria #3 — which asks whether the rezoning will adversely affect any other part of the city — states the following: “A review of the criteria listed in Rapid City Municipal Code § 17.54.040.D has not identified any adverse impacts associated with the Rezoning request.”
No adverse impacts.

The Planning Commission did not approve 26RZ011 on June 4. It was continued to the July 9, 2026 Planning Commission meeting.

The three other rezoning requests — 26RZ008, 26RZ009, and 26RZ010 — were approved and are scheduled for City Council first reading on June 15, 2026.

The Committee That Didn’t See It – LFO

Under normal municipal procedure, ordinances with legal and financial implications are routed through Rapid City’s Legal and Finance Committee — known as LFO — before reaching the full City Council for a vote.

The June 10, 2026 LFO agenda included 21 items. Ordinances 6717 and 6727 appeared for second readings. Routine items including IT purchases, tax increment financing amendments, property transfers, and municipal code corrections all received committee review.

Ordinances 6719 and 6720 — the GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances — did not appear on the LFO agenda. They were not routed through the Legal and Finance Committee. The GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances were not discussed at the June 10, 2026 Legal and Finance Committee meeting.

They proceed directly to City Council first reading on June 15, 2026.

The GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances were not discussed at the June 10, 2026 Legal and Finance Committee meeting.

The Rapid City Municipal Code is current through Ordinance 6701, passed December 23, 2025. Ordinances 6719 and 6720 do not yet appear in the published municipal code.

Hidden in Plain Sight

The South Dakota State Cement Plant Commission sold the cement plant property to GCC Dacotah, Inc. in 2001. The United States was a different country that year. The September 11 attacks had not yet happened. The iPhone did not exist. Rapid City’s current mayor was not yet in office.

For the 25 years that followed, 562.68 acres of active mining and cement plant operations functioned inside Rapid City’s boundaries without a local zoning district. No local building permits were required. No local zoning regulations applied. The city had no regulatory mechanism to review new construction on the property.

The city’s own project reports, filed June 4, 2026, state this plainly: “Zoning does not affect state-owned properties because they are not required to obtain building permits from the local jurisdiction.”

The property was never state-owned during those 25 years. It was privately owned. By a foreign-owned corporation.

During that same period, in 2016, a major plant expansion was completed. The governor attended. The mayor attended. No zoning update followed. The Sentinel has previously reported that the property’s tax assessment was not updated to reflect the expansion.
The fiscal impact tables on all four rezoning applications filed in 2026 were left blank.

Now, a quarter century later, the city is not imposing new regulations on GCC Dacotah. It is not expanding oversight. It is not recovering lost tax revenue. It is retroactively rezoning the property to match what has already been happening there — formalizing 25 years of municipal level unregulated industrial and mining operations adjacent to Rapid City neighborhoods.

The city’s own language in each project report describes the purpose of the rezoning as being “consistent with the direction of SDCL § 11-4-30” — to match the zoning to the existing use.

In plain language: the city is changing the map to match the ground. Not the other way around.

Residents along Hidden Valley Road, Saint Martins Drive, Jericho Way, Grace Way, and Deadwood Avenue have lived adjacent to those operations for as long as GCC Dacotah has owned the property.

The City Council takes up the first reading of the GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances on June 15, 2026.

Your Voice, Your Government

On June 15, 2026, the Rapid City City Council will hold the first reading of the GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances.

First readings are public meetings. Citizens have the right to attend and to address the council during public comment.

A second reading is currently scheduled for July 6, 2026. The rezoning of the residential parcels at 4245 Hidden Valley Road and 2211 Deadwood Avenue — case 26RZ011 — remains pending before the Planning Commission, with a continuation date of July 9, 2026.

These are the moments in the public record where citizen voices become part of the official documentation of these decisions.

If you live near Sturgis Road, Hidden Valley Road, Deadwood Avenue, Saint Martins Drive, or anywhere in the neighborhoods adjacent to the GCC Dacotah operations, your presence at these meetings is your voice in your own governance.

City Council meetings are held at Rapid City Council Chambers, 300 Sixth Street. Meeting agendas are posted at rcgov.org.

Sources

Rapid City Planning Commission agenda item summaries 26RZ008, 26RZ009, 26RZ010, and 26RZ011, posted June 4, 2026; Rapid City Legal and Finance Committee agenda, June 10, 2026; Rapid City Municipal Code current through Ordinance 6701; South Dakota Codified Law § 11-4-30.

This report is part of an ongoing series on GCC Dacotah, Inc., a foreign-owned cement and mining operation, and its relationship with Rapid City municipal government spanning more than two decades.

The post RETRO-ZONED: Rapid City is Changing the Map to Match the Ground appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

The 2016 Groundbreaking

​On the morning of March 18, 2016, Governor Dennis Daugaard stood at 501 North Saint Onge Street in Rapid City and broke ground on a $90 million expansion of the GCC Dacotah cement plant.

Mayor Steve Allender was there. The Associated Press covered it. An international cement industry trade publication covered it. The Governor’s own office issued a press release.

​”Not only is GCC a good corporate citizen, it’s a forward thinking company that’s been in South Dakota for a number of years,” Governor Daugaard said that morning.

​Mayor Allender welcomed the news in terms that left no ambiguity about the city’s awareness. “Construction is a major industry in Rapid City and the region,” he told CemNet, an international industry publication. “It’s very good for Rapid City. We are a growing community; the business confidence is growing. I think that’s positive for all of us.”

​Five months later, Governor Daugaard cited the GCC expansion by name in an official state government column on rail infrastructure, listing it as evidence that South Dakota’s investment in the Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad was paying off.

​The state knew. The city knew. The international cement industry knew.

​The zoning map knew nothing.

What the City Did

The city of Rapid City was not a passive observer of the GCC Dacotah expansion. It was an active participant.

​Building permits flowed through the city’s Community Development Department throughout the life of the operation.

In September 2002, the city processed and approved Permit 21414 for an industrial storage building on a 37-acre tract — a structure the county would ultimately value at $844,200.

In February 2016, one month before the gubernatorial groundbreaking ceremony, the city signed off on Permit 160258, a $43,525 demolition of industrial silos and an operations tower.

​Then, between 2016 and 2017, a wave of capital upgrades moved through standard city approval channels — $1,172,797 in equipment overhauls, a $430,000 electrical substation, and the crown jewel: a $9,899,324 solid-state Kiln 6 upgrade. The city reviewed the engineering blueprints. The city collected the fees.

Alternative Fuel Addressed in 2016

​The alternative fuel question was not new in 2026 either.

​The Governor’s own March 18, 2016 press release explicitly described GCC’s plans to burn scrap tires and other waste materials as kiln fuel — framing it as an environmentally conscious innovation. “Subject to final permitting, GCC will review the wide range of available non-hazardous alternative fuels, such as biomass, scrap tires and other waste materials,” the release stated, with Governor Daugaard adding his endorsement of the approach.

​Ten years later, at the June 4, 2026 Planning Commission meeting, Commissioner Eirik Heikes raised tire burning at the facility as a concern — as if it were a discovery. He voted no on the largest parcel.

​The 2016 press release was a public document. It had been sitting on the state government’s own website for a decade.

CP Cement Plant Zoning District

​Vicki Fisher has served as Community Development Director since at least 2016. Her department issued every one of those permits.

In May 2026, she stood before the Legal and Finance Committee and described the new CP Cement Plant Zoning District as a proactive effort to get ahead of problems.

​”That’s clear as mud, isn’t it,” she said — a remark that drew laughter.

​The same department that described the new zoning framework as proactive had issued permits for the facility’s expansion a decade earlier — without updating the zoning map or triggering a reassessment.

What the City Did Not Do

At 26:37 of the June 4, 2026 Planning Commission meeting, Community Development Director Vicki Fisher explained the mechanism that had defined the GCC Dacotah situation for a quarter century.

​”When sold in 2001 the owner could continue on in legal non-conforming status,” Fisher told the commission. “When they wanted to do some improvements they needed a building permit. We could not pursue a building permit because we don’t have a zone.”

Non- Conforming Use

​Non-conforming use is a legal designation that allows a structure or operation predating current zoning rules to continue existing.

It is not, however, a blank check for expansion. Under standard municipal planning practice, a material improvement to a non-conforming use triggers review.

The question of whether that designation holds — or whether the operation has expanded beyond what it was when the clock stopped — is precisely the kind of question a building permit application is supposed to surface.

​The city processed at least four significant permit events between 2002 and 2017. It reviewed engineering blueprints for a $9.9 million kiln upgrade. It signed demolition orders. It collected fees.

​The zoning map was never updated. The Pennington County assessment never moved.

​Carla Cushman was sworn in as Rapid City’s permanent City Attorney on June 2, 2026. She has worked in the city attorney’s office since May 2012. Her office was present and operational through every permit event documented in this report.

The Cost of the Gap

Property taxes in Rapid City flow to multiple entities from the same assessment.

The city. Pennington County. The Rapid City Area School District. Every mill levy applied to an artificially deflated base means all three collected less than the public record suggests they should have.

​Public records show GCC Dacotah’s core industrial parcels have been assessed at $8,000 to $8,500 per acre — a frozen baseline that has not moved through 2024, 2025, or 2026, years in which residential property values across Rapid City were aggressively reassessed upward.

Comparable heavy industrial properties in the same Deadwood Avenue and Sturgis Road corridor — Pete Lien and Sons, Heavy Constructors Inc. — carry assessed values of $35,000 to $40,000 per acre.

​The gap is not subtle. It is not a rounding error. It is a structural feature of how this parcel has been carried on the public books for a quarter century, through multiple administrations, while a $105 million expansion was celebrated at the highest levels of state and city government.

​The residents living adjacent to 563 acres of active mining operations — next to a monastery, a school, senior housing — have absorbed that gap in their own tax bills every year it existed.

​On June 15, the Rapid City City Council takes up the GCC Dacotah rezoning ordinances on first reading — the first of two required votes — moving directly from Planning Commission approval to Council without a prior Legal and Finance Committee review.

​That vote is being presented as administrative housekeeping.

​The public record suggests it is something more than that.

A Mandate For Accountability

The questions that record leaves open are ones the Sentinel puts directly to the people of Rapid City — and to the institutions that serve them:

1. Who in city government knew about the 2016 expansion, and what obligation did that knowledge carry?

2. Why did a building permit application in 2026 accomplish what a $105 million gubernatorial groundbreaking in 2016 did not?

3. What does the correct assessment of this property look like — and who is responsible for the difference between that number and what has been collected?

4. And if the zoning vote on June 15 closes the map, who answers for the quarter century the map stayed open?

​This is an ongoing Sentinel investigation.

The post Permitted but Unzoned: How Rapid City’s 25- Year Zoning Gap Survived a $105 Million Expansion appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

When a city department leaves a massive industrial footprint unmapped for a quarter-century, it’s not a clerical oversight—it’s an unrecognized tax subsidy.

A deep dive into Pennington County property records reveals a glaring disparity between how local heavy infrastructure companies are taxed versus how a multi-national cement operation, GCC Dacotah, is assessed.

The Anatomy of a Loophole

​This structural discrepancy shows a clear, systemic pattern of how GCC’s land has been systematically protected under deflated appraisal tiers.

​The Bulk Discount Freeze (“Industrial Site – 8”)

• ​The Evidence: Multiple continuous main plant parcels spanning massive tracts are classified under the placeholder tag “Industrial Site – 8”.
• ​The Rate: The county defaults these huge manufacturing parcels to a flatline bulk rate of just $8,000 to $8,500 per acre.
• ​The Freeze: Ledger logs for Tax IDs like 65951 ($804,400 value on 100.55 acres) show total land assessments completely frozen, without fluctuating a single penny, through 2024, 2025, and 2026—a period where residential homeowner values were aggressively spiked.

​The Direct Regional Comparison (The Local Premium)

Setting GCC’s numbers against active industrial properties sitting in the exact same Deadwood Ave / Sturgis Road industrial corridor proves the value distortion.

• ​Pete Lien & Sons (Developed Base): Tax ID 63158 (4619 Sturgis Rd) carries a land assessment of $39,987 per acre because the county actively rates its operational infrastructure footprint.
• ​Heavy Constructors Inc: Parcel 20-21-200-006 averages an overall land assessment of $35,624 per acre for its heavy construction infrastructure yard.

​Why is a local highway contractor or regional operator evaluated at $35,000–$40,000 an acre for their physical dirt footprints, while continuous 100+ acre blocks of a global cement plant’s manufacturing core are parked at a frozen baseline discount of $8,000 an acre?

​The “Agricultural ” Tax Shelter

​The discovery of Tax IDs 64420 and 64419 exposes how hundreds of highly strategic industrial and quarry acres bordering city limits are shielded under “Crop” and “Pasture” designations.

The county logs trivial, token land valuations on these segments, drawing rock-bottom baseline yields. Multi-national extraction companies can utilize peripheral agricultural classifications to hold vast pockets of future industrial ground on the municipal books for pennies on the dollar, shifting the structural tax burden entirely onto local residential neighborhoods.

​The Regulatory Ghost Ship: Building on Blank Maps

​The ultimate contradiction in how this footprint was managed is the massive, multi-million dollar paper trail left behind by municipal administrative files.

For twenty-five years, official zoning maps left this massive industrial complex blank on the master plan. Yet, a deep dive into historical permit logs proves that the administrative system was actively processing the rapid growth of the facility.

​The receipts show a long-term, institutional pattern:

• ​The Structural Precedent (2002): The administrative system processed and approved Permit Number 21414 for a specialized industrial “Storage Building” on a 37-acre tract, anchoring an asset valued by the county at $844,200 while the underlying land remained locked in a raw dirt classification.
• ​The Demolition Trail (2016): The city signed off on Permit Number 160258, a $43,525 specialized operation to demolish industrial silos and an operations tower on Tax ID 50722.
• ​The $13.5 Million Kiln 6 Surge (2016–2017): In a staggering 13-month window, a massive wave of high-tech capital upgrades moved through the standard approval channels for Tax ID 68592. This included $1,172,797 for equipment overhauls, a $430,000 electrical substation addition, and the massive, crown-jewel $9,899,324 solid-state Kiln 6 short-ton-per-day capacity upgrade.

​This exposes a deep, systemic disconnect within the municipal apparatus.

The system was fully functional when it came to collecting fees, reviewing complex engineering blueprints, and authorizing world-class industrial fortifications. Yet, the overarching planning mechanism failed to execute the basic task of updating the master zoning map.

Because that map stayed blank, the automated mass-appraisal models used to calculate county taxes were never legally triggered to rate the core acreage at the developed infrastructure premium faced by everyday local businesses.

Instead, a global corporate heavyweight operated within a fully approved empire of steel and concrete while its underlying land sat comfortably in a raw dirt tax time capsule.

The Logistical Back Bone

​The sheer scale of this systemic appraisal gap becomes undeniable when examining the operational heart of the facility.

According to county records, Tax ID 68592—a 55-acre tract serving as the facility’s logistical hub—carries a staggering total assessment of over $19.3 million.

​This valuation is driven by over $18.6 million in heavy structural improvements and its explicit county designation as a “Railroad – 8” access site. A dedicated industrial rail spur cutting directly through the property elevates it to a world-class, heavy-freight manufacturing tier.

​However, the systemic breakdown reveals itself in the dirt beneath the tracks. Despite the county formally recognizing the massive structural value and the dedicated rail logistics, the automated appraisal system values the 55 acres of land itself at the exact same $8,500 per-acre baseline applied to unbuilt, raw holding dirt.

If this high-yield, transit-connected hub had been properly zoned on the municipal maps, standard commercial appraisal practices would have triggered a land valuation exponentially higher—closer to the $35,000 to $40,000 per-acre rates that local, developed industrial yards face just down the road.

​The Multi-Million Dollar Question for June 15th

​When municipal systems fail to accurately categorize and appraise massive corporate footprints, the missing revenue doesn’t simply disappear—it is absorbed.

For a quarter of a century, the local tax burden was redistributed. Every time property taxes increased to fund Rapid City’s schools, emergency services, and infrastructure, residential homeowners were quietly subsidizing the invisible gap left by a master zoning map that treated a multi-national heavy manufacturing plant like raw, unbuilt dirt.

​On Monday, June 15th, the Rapid City Council will hold a public hearing on Ordinances 6719 and 6720. The stated goal of these ordinances is to finally apply the correct “Cement Plant District” and “Mining and Earth Resources Extraction District” labels to these exact parcels.

​But this is not merely an administrative cleanup of an old map. It is the quiet closure of a systemic loophole that has defined the city’s tax landscape for over two decades.

The question for the City Council—and for the Rapid City taxpayers who made up the difference—is no longer what the zoning should be. The question is how a system allowed a multi-million-dollar blank space to exist for 25 years in plain sight.

The Sentinel is presenting this public data directly to the taxpayers of Rapid City. We will update this report with any official explanations once they become available.

Data Sourcing Note: All property valuations, historical building permits, zoning classifications, and parcel acreage statistics referenced in this investigation were sourced directly from public records via the official Pennington County Director of Equalization property search database (property.pennco.org).

​

The 25-Year Blind Spot: How a 563-Acre Mining Operation Escaped Rapid City’s Oversight

Rapid City Proactively Moves to Define It’s Cement Plant Future

The post How Rapid City Homeowners Unwittingly Subsidized a Global Cement Giant for 25 Years appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

At 7:10 on Thursday morning, most Rapid City residents were still asleep. The ones who showed up to the Planning Commission meeting came because the ground beneath their neighborhood had been shaking before dawn.

​What they learned—and what the city itself had only recently discovered—was that a foreign-owned cement company had been extracting minerals from 563 acres adjacent to their homes, a school, a Diocese retreat center, and senior housing for 25 years. Without a single city permit.

​The city found out the same way most uncomfortable truths surface: through paperwork.

GCC Dacotah, Inc. filed a routine building permit application. The city went to process it and discovered it had no legal mechanism to do so. There was no established zoning district on the property. There had never been one.

​”When sold in 2001 the owner could continue on in legal non-conforming status,” Community Development Director Vicki Fisher told the commission at 26:37. “When they wanted to do some improvements they needed a building permit. We could not pursue a building permit because we don’t have a zone.”

​Twenty-five years of industrial extraction. Exposed by a building permit application.

The Shell Game

​The five cases before the commission Thursday morning—26OA002, 26RZ008, 26RZ009, 26RZ010, and 26RZ011—covered 563 acres of active mining operations.

The city’s own project reports described the largest parcel, at 396.87 acres, as one that “currently contains mining operations.” A second parcel at 2211 Deadwood Avenue “is used as part of a larger mining operation.” A third, at 4245 Hidden Valley Road, sits adjacent to residential zoning.

​None of the five filings referenced a geotechnical assessment. None required one as a condition of approval.

​Planning Commissioner Kelly Arquello acknowledged at 34:05 that the operation had been running for 25 years under federal and state oversight—oversight the city had no part in.

​At 19:54, city planner Jessica Olson announced that GCC Dacotah had agreed to stop blasting as part of the rezoning process.

The concession was notable for what it confirmed: blasting had been occurring, residents had raised it as a concern, and the city had negotiated its cessation without requiring any study of what 25 years of extraction had done to the ground beneath the surrounding neighborhood.

​Earlier in the meeting, at 39:07, Commissioner Eirik Heikes had raised concerns about the burning of tires at the site. He voted no on the largest parcel—the 396.87-acre active mining operation.

The Precedent and the Liability Trap

​Planning Commissioner Vince Vidal made the larger stakes explicit at 1:17:55.

​”While I don’t want to conflict two ideas, but Blackhawk had sinkholes that destroyed some of those residences,” he said.

​Hideaway Hills

He was referring to Hideaway Hills. In April 2020, a sinkhole 85 feet deep and approximately 650 feet long opened beneath a subdivision near Black Hawk, South Dakota—built over ground that had been hollowed out by the same state-owned cement plant that previously operated the Rapid City site. Twelve homes were evacuated immediately.

​More than 200 plaintiffs sued the state for over $60 million. However, a circuit court judge recently dismissed the lawsuit, ruling the state is protected by sovereign immunity. The homeowners are now appealing to the South Dakota Supreme Court.

​If the high court upholds that ruling, the state will be legally shielded from damages caused by its past cement plant operations.

The Rapid City Planning Commission’s vote Thursday morning initiated the process of bringing the former state-owned Rapid City site under full municipal jurisdiction—effectively adopting the 563-acre footprint.

The Corporation Involved

​GCC Dacotah, Inc. was incorporated in South Dakota in June 2000—six months before the state legislature added the statutory provision that would allow its operations to proceed outside municipal jurisdiction.

The company is a subsidiary of Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, a Mexican cement producer headquartered in Chihuahua, Mexico. Its principal officers have listed addresses in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, Colorado. Its Rapid City plant, at 501 N. Saint Onge Street, has operated continuously since the 2001 acquisition.

​Federal air quality records show GCC Dacotah was engaging EPA Region 8 on emissions permits for Kiln No. 6 as early as November 2001—the same year as the property acquisition.

State regulators received the same filing simultaneously. The city received nothing.

​The state held federally issued air permits and state water discharge permits for the operation throughout this period. The city held nothing.

What Happens Next

​The Rapid City City Council is scheduled to take up the rezoning actions on first reading June 15.

​The full Planning Commission meeting of June 4, 2026, is available HERE

Quotes cited in this story appear at the timestamps indicated.

Rapid City Proactively Moves to Define It’s Cement Plant Future

How Rapid City Homeowners Unwittingly Subsidized a Global Cement Giant for 25 Years

This is an ongoing Sentinel Investigation.

The post The 25-Year Blind Spot: How a 563-Acre Mining Operation Escaped Rapid City’s Oversight appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

On June 2, Rapid City held elections in all five wards to determine who would represent residents on the Common Council — the body that sets zoning policy, approves franchise agreements, and controls the city budget. Fewer than one in four registered voters participated.

Citywide, council race turnout was 22.8% of registered voters. Statewide primary turnout was 34.55%, according to the South Dakota Secretary of State’s unofficial results. Rapid City didn’t come close.

The gap isn’t uniform across the city. Ward by ward, the numbers tell different stories.

Ward 2 is the outlier. At 14.5%, it posted the lowest council turnout in the city by a significant margin — nearly eight points below the next lowest ward, and less than half of Ward 3’s participation rate.

Lindsey Seachris won reelection in Ward 2 with 775 votes. There are 9,847 registered voters in the ward. She was returned to office by 7.9% of her constituents.

The Geography of Ward 2 Explains Part of It

Ward 2 is not a neighborhood. It is an administrative boundary that connects communities with little in common.

Precinct 2-1 covers the downtown core, centered on the Rapid City Public Library at 610 Quincy St. Precinct 2-2 is a sprawling low-density expanse on the east side, its polling place at Valley View School Gym, 4840 Homestead St — miles away in a different daily context entirely. Precinct 2-3 runs southeast toward the Fairgrounds. Precinct 2-4 covers a mid-south residential area along the Indiana Street corridor. Precinct 2-5 follows Mount Rushmore Road southeast toward the city’s edge.

A resident voting at the Public Library downtown and a resident voting at Valley View on the east side share a council representative. They do not share a neighborhood, a commercial corridor, or a community anchor. The ward boundary is a line on an administrative map. It is not an identity.

That fragmentation matters for civic engagement. Community organizing, voter outreach, and neighborhood communication all depend on some shared sense of place. Ward 2 doesn’t have one.

The Information Problem

Polling place locations for the June 2 primary were publicly available through the Pennington County Auditor’s office and the South Dakota Secretary of State. Technically public does not mean practically visible.

This reporter lives in precinct 2-4. My polling place was South Middle School Community Center at 2 Indiana St — blocks from my home. I did not know it existed until I was reporting this story. I am a journalist who covers city hall.

I did not vote in this race. Covering Ward 2 candidates created a conflict I chose to sit out. That was the right call. But the question it raised stayed with me: how many people in my building didn’t vote simply because they didn’t know where to go? How many didn’t know there was a school nearby, let alone that it was their polling place?

I don’t know how many people in my building knew there was an election happening at all.

Ward 2 didn’t have low turnout because its residents don’t care about their city. It had low turnout because the infrastructure of participation — knowing your ward, knowing your polling place, knowing who is running — is not visible, not promoted, and not easy to find.
That is a system problem, not a citizen problem.

South Dakota’s June 2 primary featured contested gubernatorial and legislative races that generated significant voter attention and media coverage. Those statewide contests drove residents to the polls. Local council races appeared on the same ballot, below the fold.

In Ward 3, where turnout reached 28.4%, the council race between Kevin Maher and Andrea Schaefer was competitive and drew 3,313 votes. In Ward 2, where the race between Lindsey Seachris and Christopher Vanderhoof was similarly contested, only 1,427 people cast council votes — from a larger registered voter base.

The people who decide Rapid City’s zoning approvals, franchise renewals, and budget allocations are chosen by a fraction of residents who knew they were even on the ballot.

That is not a criticism of the people who didn’t vote. It is an observation about what it takes to vote here — and what the city does, and doesn’t do, to make that easier.

Call To Action For Rapid City

For Rapid City Residents
If you live in Rapid City and you are not sure which ward you are in, which precinct you belong to, or where your polling place is, that is not your failure. The information exists. It is not easy to find.

Here is where to look:

1. The City of Rapid City’s GIS hub at rcgov.org can identify your ward and precinct by address.

2. The Pennington County Auditor’s office maintains current precinct maps and polling place locations. The January 2026 precinct map, updated 01/12/2026, lists every polling place by address.

3. The South Dakota Secretary of State’s My Voter portal at sdsos.gov allows you to look up your registration status, party affiliation, and polling place.

4. If you are not registered, South Dakota allows same-day registration at your polling place on election day.

The next Rapid City council election will be in June 2027. That is twelve months away. You have time.

For the Members of City Council
Ten people sit on the Rapid City Common Council. They were elected, collectively, by a fraction of the city’s registered voters.

Ward 2’s representative was returned to office by fewer than eight percent of her constituents. That is not a mandate. It is a signal.

If the council believes in representative government, closing the gap between eligible voters and actual participants is a legitimate policy question — and one with concrete options:

1. Direct the city’s communications office to publish ward and precinct information prominently on rcgov.org, with an address lookup tool that is easy to find and mobile-friendly.

2. Partner with the Pennington County Auditor to examine whether current voter notification practices — including any direct mail or digital outreach — are reaching residents in high-density and transient-population precincts effectively, and whether gaps exist that additional outreach could close.

3. Request that the city’s neighborhood outreach programs include civic participation information as a standard component, particularly in high-density residential areas with transient populations.

4. Consider a formal resolution requesting that the South Dakota Legislature examine whether consolidated or ranked municipal elections improve local participation rates, a question several peer cities have begun studying.

None of these require a partisan position. They require a belief that more residents participating in local government produces better local government. That should not be a controversial proposition for people whose authority derives from public consent.

Data and Cite information

Turnout calculations are based on council votes cast per ward from the South Dakota Secretary of State’s unofficial June 2, 2026 primary results and precinct-level registered voter counts from the Pennington County voter turnout data for the same election. All precincts fully reported. Results are unofficial pending canvass. Ward and precinct boundary information sourced from the official Rapid City Ward and Precinct Boundaries map (February 2022) and the Rapid City Precincts map (January 12, 2026), both published by the City of Rapid City GIS division.

The post Who Decides Rapid City? A Ward-by-Ward Look at Primary Turnout appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

South Dakota law prohibits the distribution of AI-generated political video within ninety days of an election unless it carries a specific disclosure stating the content was digitally created or manipulated. With Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary two days away, at least one political action committee appears to have distributed exactly that kind of content — without the required language.

Senate Bill 164, passed by the 2025 South Dakota Legislature and introduced by Senator Larson, defines a deepfake as any image, audio, or video created or manipulated using artificial intelligence that is realistic enough that a reasonable person would believe it depicts the actual speech or conduct of a real individual.

Violating the law is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Injured candidates and the Attorney General may seek injunctive relief, damages, and attorney fees.

The law includes an exemption for satire and parody. It does not exempt content that names a candidate by name with the stated intent to influence how voters cast their ballots.

An AI Deepfakes Study

Concerned Citizens of South Dakota, a statewide political action committee based out of 2811 Vanocker Canyon Road in Sturgis, posted an AI-generated video to its Facebook page on May 18 — 15 days before Tuesday’s primary.

The video, which carries the disclaimer “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota,” depicts multiple AI-generated characters in a cinematic Old West setting. It does not include the disclosure required by SB 164.

The video is set to an original recorded song — a parody of the classic western theme “Rawhide” — in which the word “rawhide” has been replaced throughout with “rhino hide,” a reference to the RINO political epithet. The audio is labeled “Original audio” on the PAC’s Facebook page, indicating custom production rather than auto-generated or stock content.

Auto-generated captions captured during the video include the phrase “send donors back in. Johnson cracking guard back inside,” naming gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Representative Dusty Johnson explicitly. Facebook’s own label on the video reads “Captions auto-generated,” indicating the platform detected no human-provided caption track — consistent with AI-generated audio content.

One scene depicts an AI-generated figure in a frontier setting hammering a “Pipeline Coming Soon” sign into the ground. Another shows a figure seated by a fireplace in a pinstriped suit. A “Pierre City Limits — Rhino’s Only” sign appears in a separate scene, with the caption “Keep it rolling though the voters told them no.” The video ends with riders herding rhinoceroses across South Dakota prairie.

The accompanying Facebook post states: “Our political insiders tell us that D.C. Dusty is trying to control our whole state — and we’re not going to stand for it.” It directs voters to nonsensesd.org ahead of Tuesday’s election.

The website nonsensesd.org, which carries the footer “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota,” bills itself as a voter guide to candidates who “put South Dakotans last.” It lists dozens of Republican legislative candidates by name and photo across both chambers of the South Dakota Legislature, organized by district.

A Pattern Across the Race

Among those listed is District 31 Representative Mary Fitzgerald, an incumbent Republican who has been publicly active in South Dakota’s pipeline and property rights debates. On May 27, Fitzgerald posted a formal public statement to her Facebook page under the heading “For the Record.” It read: “I did not authorize, consent to, or approve the use of my likeness on any card, political mailer, campaign literature, advertisement, or other political communication.”

Fitzgerald is not alone. Dakota News Now reported that fifteen South Dakota legislative candidates issued cease-and-desist orders over campaign mailers sent by Dakota First Action, a separate PAC founded by gubernatorial candidate Toby Doeden, after mailers used their names, images, and likenesses without permission. Representative Spencer Gosch, an outspoken supporter of gubernatorial candidate Jon Hansen, told the outlet the mailers made it appear he was endorsing Doeden when he had not consented to appear on them at all.

The Concerned Citizens PAC Stacking

Campaign finance records filed with the South Dakota Secretary of State tell a story of their own.

Concerned Citizens of South Dakota lists Calvin Fickbohm of Newell as committee chair and Dylan Wieneke of Sturgis as treasurer. Its pre-primary report, filed May 18 — the same day the video was posted — shows total income of $4,875.

The single largest contribution came not from an individual donor but from another PAC: Concerned Citizens of Butte County, which contributed $2,000.

Concerned Citizens of Butte County is also a statewide political action committee. It lists Travis Ismay of Newell as committee chair — and Dylan Wieneke of Sturgis as treasurer. The two PACs share the same treasurer, the same committee address at 2811 Vanocker Canyon Road in Sturgis, and the same daytime phone number.

Ismay, the chair of the feeder PAC, is a Representative-elect to the South Dakota Legislature. He does not appear to be hiding his involvement. According to documentation reviewed by the Sentinel, Ismay himself appears on camera at the conclusion of the video, riding on horseback across the South Dakota prairie.

The pre-primary finance report for Concerned Citizens of South Dakota lists one expenditure: $2,000 for a radio advertisement. The AI-generated video — which by any reasonable measure required professional production, including original music recording and cinematic videography across multiple scenes — does not appear in the disclosed expenditures.

A Second Video

The western saloon video is not the only AI-generated content the PAC has produced.

A second video, posted to the Concerned Citizens of South Dakota Facebook page and promoted under the caption “Meet the Dusty Bots,” depicts AI-generated robotic figures in a suburban street scene with the on-screen text: “Find out which Dusty Bot model is right for you. Visit dustybots.org.” That domain redirects to nonsensesd.org — the same voter guide website carrying the PAC’s paid-for disclaimer.

One week before the primary, the PAC posted a teaser to its Facebook page reading: “Is anybody waiting for the next ad from CCOSD? Stay tuned.”

The PAC’s Facebook page describes its mission as keeping South Dakota “FREE and PROSPEROUS” and states that “the PEOPLE should be in charge of South Dakota’s future, not powerful interest groups.”

Neither video includes the disclosure required by South Dakota Senate Bill 164. The Sentinel reviewed frame-by-frame screenshots of both videos and found no superimposed text stating the content was digitally generated or manipulated. The only text identifying the content’s origin in either video is the campaign finance disclaimer: “Paid for by Concerned Citizens of South Dakota.”

Not About Scale

The videos are a small part of a much larger and more expensive air war surrounding Tuesday’s primary. Campaign finance reports connect Johnson to a political action committee that has spent more than $1.3 million on advertisements targeting his opponents in less than a month.

A Virginia-based Super PAC called Defend US has spent more than $600,000 on attack ads and mail opposing Johnson, including $500,000 on television. Concerned Citizens of South Dakota, by contrast, reported a total balance of $3,693.96 at the close of its pre-primary reporting period.

What distinguishes the CCOSD operation from the broader spending environment is not its scale. It is the technology it employed, the law that technology triggered, and the disclosures that technology required and did not receive.

South Dakota is not alone in grappling with AI-generated political content. Similar legislation has been enacted or introduced in dozens of states as campaigns increasingly deploy artificial intelligence to produce attack content at low cost and high volume. SB 164 was South Dakota’s answer to that problem. Tuesday’s primary may be an early test of whether it has teeth.

The Sentinel contacted Concerned Citizens of South Dakota for comment prior to publication. No response was received by 8:00 PM Sunday, May 31.

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