Rapid City SD – Requests to skip Rapid City’s sidewalk requirements have nearly doubled as a share of permits this year, and this week council members questioned what happens after those exceptions are granted, from who pays for sidewalks never built to whether the city ever orders them in later.
Both the Public Works and Legal & Finance committees heard the sidewalk review and the annual open meetings review. Legal & Finance also approved a resolution moving general public comment to the end of meetings. Everything approved goes to the full City Council on Monday, Nov. 2.
Sidewalk variance requests nearly double
City Engineer Roger Hall gave both committees a review of how the city evaluates requests to waive required sidewalks. His slides showed:
- 2025: 19 variance requests out of 247 sidewalk and right-of-way permits (7.7%)
- 2026, through Sept. 24: 22 requests out of 154 permits (14.3%)
The city’s slide notes 2026 already has more variance requests than all of 2025, despite fewer permits.
A staff team of the Design Group Manager, the Development Group Manager and the City Engineer reviews each request.
They weigh location, distance to existing sidewalks, pedestrian demand, bike and pedestrian plans, land use and safety.
Cost to the property owner is not a factor.
One of the presentation’s stated principles is that approval at one property doesn’t guarantee approval at another. The City Council keeps final authority.
“We make it sound easy”
At Public Works, Alderwoman Callie Meyer questioned a phrase that often comes up when variances are granted: that the city can always require a sidewalk later.
“I’d like to better understand the process of ordering in a sidewalk,” Meyer said. “I think it’s something that comes with these requests where it’s like, we can always order one in later. And I think we make it sound easy, but I’d like to understand if it’s a cumbersome process or what.”
Hall said ordering in a sidewalk requires a special assessment against the property and can only happen within city limits. He said no one could point to a time it had actually been done.
“I don’t think anybody in this room can recall when the city directed in sidewalk,” Hall said, adding that he couldn’t “recall one being assessed.”
The next day at Legal & Finance, Alderman John B. Roberts remembered an exception. He said the city called in sidewalks near Stevens High School “quite a few years ago” when speed bumps went in there, and that he remembers it “because of all the phone calls and all the people that were worried” the city would start doing it all over town.
He also recalled an attempt early in his council tenure, about 15 years ago, near Watertown Street. Because of the retaining walls and grading required, he said, “that sidewalk was going to cost more than the house was valued at. So thank God the city decided not to do it.”
“I think there’s places that maybe it would be appropriate at times, but as a city policy it could get very difficult,” Roberts said. He said it might be easier in commercial areas, where owners “could absorb the price and the cost more,” but in some residential areas “it can get very cost-ineffective.”
Meyer said she sees the need firsthand.
“Just recognizing a couple places in my neighborhood and places that I commute daily that could have sidewalks and need sidewalks, including Campbell Street along the fairgrounds, and there’s another location on Minnesota that I frequently see people walking along that does not have sidewalks, so I would be interested in knowing how we could move forward with directing a sidewalk to be placed,” she said.
Who’s responsible for broken sidewalks
Meyer also asked about the cracked and broken sidewalks in older neighborhoods, some with gaps of “half a foot,” and whether property owners are liable if someone falls.
“By ordinance in this city, the sidewalk is the responsibility of the landowner — the adjacent landowner,” Hall said. He said the city often replaces sidewalks during reconstruction projects, but otherwise repairs are driven by complaints: “We work on a complaint basis, that goes to code enforcement, then code enforcement directs them to fix their sidewalk.”
“Just so residents are aware, that is a homeowner requirement and liability,” Meyer said.
“Yes,” Hall replied.
What that means for you: If there’s a sidewalk in front of your home or business, keeping it in safe repair is your responsibility, not the city’s. If someone complains, code enforcement can order you to fix it.
“It gets political”
At Legal & Finance, Council President Stephen Tamang praised staff’s consistency but questioned what happens once requests reach the council.
“I honestly, looking at all this over the last year or so, think that your department does a great job, and it’s about as consistent as it can get when you got humans making these decisions,” Tamang said. “When it gets up here, my view, just my view, it gets political, and it doesn’t always get objective. And that is why I continue to lobby for a fee in lieu of.”
Under a fee-in-lieu system, someone granted a variance would still pay a set amount per foot into a dedicated sidewalk fund.
Tamang pointed to Minnesota, where he said the council sets the rate and the money is held in a sidewalk-only account, and to similar programs in Colorado, Alabama, Texas and Georgia that often direct the money to the area where it was collected.
“I think if you had something like that, you would cut down on the number of requests, which would reduce staff overhead,” he said. “And then I think it adds a level of fairness, because even if you are granted a variance because of an extraordinary reason, you still have to contribute to public pedestrian infrastructure.”
City Attorney Carla Cushman said her office is reviewing whether such a fee would be legal.
“When this originally came up, we were given a deadline of December, and I think we’ll use that deadline and we will report back what we hear or what we find out,” Cushman said.
Both committees voted only to acknowledge the presentation. No policy change has been proposed for a vote.
Annual open meetings review
Cushman gave both committees the yearly review of South Dakota’s open meetings laws required under SDCL 1-25-13. The city says the review isn’t prompted by any violation.
An official meeting happens whenever a quorum of the council discusses or decides public business, and that includes texts, emails and other electronic messages, not just gatherings in the chambers.
This year’s state guide also adds a requirement that agenda items be described in enough detail to reasonably inform the public, and spells out what a motion to enter executive session must include.
At Public Works, Alderman Bill Evans asked how quorum rules apply to social events, joking that council members wouldn’t want to talk city business at a holiday party: “We just want to have that fancy eggnog you serve.”
Public comment moves to the end of meetings
Residents who come to speak on topics not on the agenda would wait until the end of the meeting under Resolution 2026-084, which the Legal & Finance Committee approved Wednesday.
The change would apply not only to City Council meetings but also to the Legal & Finance and Public Works committees.
General public comment would come after consent items, non-consent items and public hearings, followed only by executive session, the bill list and adjournment. Comment periods on specific agenda items stay where they are, before each vote.
The version in the agenda packet covered only council meetings. Alderman Kevin Maher amended it to include the two committees. The committee approved the amended resolution unanimously by voice vote, on a motion by Alderman Lance Lehmann, seconded by Roberts.
Mark Millar, a regular commenter at city meetings, was the only member of the public to speak on the change, during the comment period earlier in the meeting.
“I see that you’re changing rules on the council,” Millar said. “Seeing how I hound you so well, I think I should probably know what rules are getting changed. Hopefully I can get you to discuss that item a little bit so we know what’s changing.”
When the committee reached the item near the end of the meeting, Chair Greg Strommen walked through the proposed changes. Roberts was the first to speak in support, saying citizens have raised the issue with him since the COVID era.
“We’ve had that happen on a few specific items over the last two or three years where, you know, something didn’t pass that upset a group of people, and they would come in and they would come to general public comment for hours,” Roberts said. “And the people that are actually coming in to do city business — whether it be a sidewalk variance or whether it be, you know, zoning, whatever their issue is — will have to sit through hours of stuff because they can’t miss their item and they don’t know how long that general public comment is going to last.”
“I would have supported this 5 years ago,” he said. “I think that it’s the right thing to do for the general public that are coming to city hall to do business.”
State law (SDCL 1-25-1) requires a public comment period at every official meeting but doesn’t say where on the agenda it goes. The resolution also removes agenda slots for the Compass Committee and Sign Code Appeals, which the city says are no longer needed.
What it means for you: If the council approves it, anyone wanting to speak on a topic that isn’t on the agenda would wait through the entire meeting, at council and at both committees. Residents who want to weigh in on the change itself can do so Monday, since 2026-084 is an agenda item with its own comment period before the vote.
Background: Rapid City Legal & Finance Committee Agenda Rundown for Oct. 28
Public Works overview (Oct. 27)
- Pioneer Drive sidewalk waiver denied. The committee unanimously denied Evergreen Real Estate’s request to skip a sidewalk on Pioneer Drive, following city staff and Pennington County. Bobby Sundby, speaking for the applicant, told the committee the sidewalk would connect to nothing. “So this sidewalk would go into the neighbor’s 8-foot-high bush,” he said. The applicant also cited past approvals in the area, the same argument Hall’s review says doesn’t guarantee anything. The denial goes to council Monday, where the applicant can make its case again.
- Consent calendar passed without discussion. All 12 consent items passed in one voice vote, with no items pulled, no public comment and no questions. That included items the Sentinel’s preview flagged: the two Volvo wheel loaders, the Tru-Form change order whose posted document belonged to a different item, and the street plan amendment (26CA002) that now lists the city as applicant.
Preview: What’s on the Tuesday Oct. 27 Public Works Committee Agenda
Legal & Finance overview (Oct. 28)
- Consent calendar passed. All 10 consent items passed. Tamang pulled the Skyline Drive item, which accepts a $7.125 million National Scenic Byways grant to rebuild the 1935 ridgetop road, only to praise the staff behind it. “I just wanted to pull this item to acknowledge what an amazing outcome and result this was,” Tamang said. “It is extremely helpful to our city. It will add millions of dollars to our CIP for projects that were already intended.” He thanked Katie Pavel in grants, Sarah Hanzel, Sara Odden and Michelle Lashley, along with several department heads. The grant was approved unanimously. The consent items also included the start of the process to lease six city-owned downtown properties to OneHeart for a transitional housing campus, with a public hearing set for Nov. 16; a new employee discipline policy; and a 2027 ambulance contract with Box Elder.
- Sewer backup payments double. Resolution 2026-081 raises the city’s cleanup payment for sewer backups from $4 to $8 per square foot, the first change since 2019, and applies the new rate to this year’s four claims. Roberts amended it to add up to $500 toward installing a backflow preventer.
- Budget and code changes advance. The committee unanimously advanced the first reading of Ordinance 6758, which moves the Community Enrichment division to the Finance Department, and the second reading of Ordinance 6754, a $6.1 million supplemental appropriation.
- Railyard questions. Millar also used his time to question the railyard relocation project. He said he understood the work so far had been funded by the state, and asked how residents would know when city money started being spent on “a large pipe dream that came from that era a year or so ago when we thought we could afford everything under the blue sky.” He argued the project wouldn’t change how many trains run through town or stop trains from halting downtown to drop off cars for WL Plastics and the grain mill. He said it began when the city found the Highway 79 overpass couldn’t handle pedestrian traffic. “Boy, it wouldn’t take much of an engineer to figure out a way to get a small bridge across that area for pedestrian traffic rather than selling a $30 million project, which will be larger by that point,” Millar said.
What’s next
The City Council takes up everything from both committees Monday, Nov. 2, at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, 300 Sixth St.
Sources: City of Rapid City Public Works Committee meeting, Oct. 27, 2026, and Legal & Finance Committee meeting, Oct. 28, 2026 (city YouTube recordings); “Sidewalk Variances” presentation by City Engineer Roger Hall (dated Oct. 8, 2026); Resolution No. 2026-084 and agenda packet materials; South Dakota Attorney General’s 2026 open meetings guide.
Leave a Reply