Rapid City SD – Monday’s council meeting has budget approvals, board appointments, and a stack of bills nobody outside City Hall usually looks at twice. Council convenes at 6:30 p.m. in Council Chambers.
Fall Prevention Awareness Week and Suicide Prevention Month proclamations open the meeting. Item 3’s presentation has been postponed to Oct. 5.
Consent Items (4–21)
Public Works Committee
Rapid City’s September 15th Public Works Agenda Cheat Sheet
- PW091526-01: Sub-recipient agreement with SD DANR for the Air Quality Program — $60,000 state grant, $25,714 city match.
- PW091526-02: $196,980 amendment to Avid4 Engineering’s design contract for the Highway 16 & 16B utility reconstruction.
- PW091526-03: Professional services agreement with The Tegra Group, capped at $240,000, for owner’s-rep work on the city’s new fleet maintenance facility.
- PW091526-04: Authorize bidding on sewer siphon structure coating replacement, estimated $850,000.
- PW091526-05: Authorize bidding on Well 5 motor replacement, estimated $140,000.
- PW091526-06: Authorize bidding on facility access roads/site improvements, estimated $450,000.
- PW091526-07: Sidewalk waiver for J Bickett Rentals LLC along Garden Lane.
- PW091526-09: Reappoint Lee Geiger to the Historic Sign Review Committee.
Legal & Finance Committee
Everything Is on Consent? The Eight Items on Rapid City’s Sept. 16 Legal & Finance Agenda
- LF091626-01: Reappoint Karen Bulman, Vince Vidal, and Eirik Heikes to the Planning Commission; reappoint Gary Sabers as Alternate #2.
- LF091626-04: Seat the inaugural Impact Endowment Fund board — Don Warne, Hani Shafai, Jim Scull, Kyle Wiese, Marnie Herrmann, Paulette Davidson, Daniel Ainslie, Briana Vande Pol, and Kristin Conzet.
- Nine Seats at the Table: Rapid City’s New Charitable Endowment Board Looks A Lot Like City Hall’s Rolodex
- LF091626-06: Authorize outside counsel to pursue collections on delinquent utility accounts.
- Rapid City Moves to Collect $643,000 from Tzadik – Linked LLC’s Already Headed to Auction
- Acknowledge Jim Warren as a Library volunteer for workers’ comp purposes.
- LF091626-02: Resolution 2026-074, updating petty cash and change funds.
- LF091626-03: Acknowledge the July 2026 sales tax report.
- LF091626-05: Approve the financial statements and independent auditor’s report — the draft FY2025 statements that disclose a repeat material weakness finding.
- Flagged Again: A Look at Rapid City’s FY2025 Audit and Its TIF Debt
- LF091626-07: Update the Drug and Alcohol Use section of the employee handbook, required by a Federal Transit Administration audit of Rapid Transit Services.
- LF091626-08: Council also authorized Mayor Salamun to sign the city’s FY26 Community Development Block Grant agreement with HUD, $478,609 in federal formula funding the city gets annually for low- and moderate-income community development work.
- The item was added to the Legal & Finance Committee’s Sept. 16 agenda by unanimous floor vote rather than appearing on the published agenda in advance, then moved through council’s consent calendar Sept. 21 without discussion.
- The grant agreement itself is worth a second look. Like CDBG agreements now going out to entitlement cities nationwide, this one carries new conditions from HUD:
- a ban on using funds to promote “gender ideology,”
- Hyde Amendment abortion restrictions,
- immigration-status verification requirements under the SAVE system,
- a cooperation clause with the federal Task Force to Eliminate Fraud.
- Rapid City didn’t negotiate these terms — they’re standard language HUD is now attaching to CDBG funding under the current administration.
- Notably, the agreement itself acknowledges that some of these conditions are currently blocked nationwide by a federal court injunction (Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Kennedy), meaning they’re written into the contract but not presently enforceable.
- None of this came up during the item’s brief committee or council votes.
Non-Consent Items (22–25)
Ordinances
- 26RZ030 / Ordinance 6745 (first reading): Rezoning near E. Anamosa Street from Light Industrial to Office Commercial, requested by Black Hills Area Community Foundation — the West Century Subdivision property, tied to TID #91, continued from the Aug 27 Planning Commission meeting to Sept 10 at the applicant’s request.
- Ordinance 6748 (second reading): FY2027 Appropriation Ordinance — final passage of next year’s city budget.
Public Works Committee Items
Rapid City’s September 15th Public Works Agenda Cheat Sheet
- PW091526-08: Reappoint Jenn Johnson, Emily Calhoun, and Pat Roseland to the Historic Preservation Committee. Passed committee 3–1, with Evans voting no.
Special Event Alcohol License
- Firehouse Brewing, Sept. 26 at O’Hare Stadium.
Public Hearing Items (26–27)
- Rapid City Fine Arts Council, off-sale package liquor license for an Oct. 3 event at the Dahl Arts Center.
- Elevate Rapid City, malt beverage retailer license for a Sept. 23 event.
Executive Session
Closed session to consult with legal counsel on proposed or pending litigation (SDCL 1-25-2(3)) — no further detail required or disclosed.
Bills
Two bill lists go up for approval, totaling $10,681,099.96. Most of it is routine — payroll, benefits, retirement contributions, utilities. The larger individual vendor payments include:
- Lidel Construction Co Inc — $505,030.13
- Simon Contractors of SD Inc — $402,658.60
- RCS Construction Inc. — $334,167.97
- HDR Engineering Inc — $283,798.34
- Woelber Excavating LLC — $276,315.17
- Pennington County — $237,483.66
- US Bank National Association — $208,749.13
- Muth Electric Inc. — $215,802.16
- Visit Rapid City — $173,623.24 (broken out separately as its own bill list, per state law)
Two smaller line items are worth a second look:
- Kroll Associates Inc — $40,995.00. Council authorized a Kroll cybersecurity assessment contract on July 29, 2026 “in an amount not to exceed $36,250.” This payment runs $4,745 over that cap — could be a separate invoice or a change order, but it’s a specific number against a specific vote already on the record.
- Elevate Rapid City — $83,333.34. That figure annualizes to exactly $1,000,000/year paid monthly.
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