Rapid City SD – The Public Works Committee meets at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 1, in Council Chambers at City Hall, 300 6th Street.
Nineteen items sit on the consent calendar alongside the 2027-2030 Transportation Improvement Program. Here’s what’s in the packet, in the order the committee will hit it.
Consent Calendar (Items 1-19)
Change orders, six of them (PW090126-01 through -06). The big one: Change Order 4 to PKG Contracting for the Water Reclamation Facility South Plant Improvements, Construction Package 2 — a $241,683 increase that pushes the contract to $173,259,916 (up from an original $172,328,694) and adds 49 days to the schedule, moving completion to Feb. 23, 2029.
The line-item detail is a mix of adds and credits — extra concrete piers, a fuel dispenser, a raw-water line extension — plus one line worth noting: a $8,726 deduct because the interior faces of some precast wall panels arrived in a color inconsistent with the rest, and city staff decided a price credit was simpler than replacing them.
The other five change orders are smaller and mostly routine: Canyon Lake Area Reconstruction (-$960.65), 2025 sanitary sewer televising (-$120,669.55), Lindbergh Avenue pavement rehab (+$22,983.88), Knollwood Drive pavement rehab (-$12,672.40), and Hoefer Ct/Maywood Drive (+$19,211.00).
PW090126-07 — Highpointe Ranch North street lights. The city and Watershed Development II LLC would formalize an agreement letting the developer pay the difference for semi-decorative aluminum poles instead of standard wood ones across several phases of the subdivision (Section 20, T1N, R7E).
Developer pays Black Hills Energy directly each month; city reimburses annually for what it would have paid for standard poles. Five-year term, auto-renews.
PW090126-08 — Sole-source pump purchase. $95,448 to Vessco, Inc. for the North Rapid Booster Station, Water Division.
Per the city’s own agenda summary, the booster station has a failed pump and Vessco is the sole provider of a compatible replacement.
PW090126-09 — BHP easement for the GCC tire-shredding facility. Authorizes Black Hills Power to build an electric line across a portion of the landfill property (NE ¼, Section 19, T1N, R8E) to power a tire-shredding facility for GCC at the Rapid City Landfill.
Per the city’s agenda summary, the facility will process whole scrap tires into Tire Derived Fuel for use as alternative fuel at GCC Dacotah’s cement plant — city staff frame it as preserving landfill airspace, extending the life of landfill cells, and reducing tire-related environmental impacts.
PW090126-10 — Dakota BioChar MOU. A non-binding memorandum of understanding with Dakota BioChar, LLC (CEO Justin McNeal) to explore diverting roughly 20,000 tons a year of waste wood from the landfill into a biochar reactor facility, with a secondary look at energy offset and biochar-infused compost production.
The MOU explicitly commits no funds and requires no Council action — any real project would need a separate agreement that does go to Council.
PW090126-11 through -14 — bids and RFPs. Two new ¾-ton pickups for Maintenance ($104,000); pavement rehab on Nicklaus Drive from Meadowbrook to Palmer ($500,000); 350 Ubicquia street-light monitoring devices, sole-sourced to match existing equipment ($48,898.50); and a request for engineering proposals on Timmons Boulevard sanitary sewer improvements.
PW090126-15, -16, -17 — three more sidewalk waivers. All staff-recommended for approval, all on consent (meaning they sail through unless a committee member pulls one):
- FMG Engineering for Ship RC, LLC — waiving sidewalk along E. Minnesota Street.
- FMG Engineering for Zion Lutheran Church — waiving sidewalk along Mount Rushmore Road and Zion Place.
- Davis Engineering for Mitch Morris — waiving sidewalk along Old Folsom Road, Dawkins Road, and Kelli Lane.
26TP025 — 2027-2030 Transportation Improvement Program (Community Development). The MPO’s four-year highway/transit/aviation funding plan, up for final approval.
Total programmed funding across all agencies: $562.3 million over four years ($323.6 million of it federal).
The headline items:
The three-phase reconstruction of US16 through the future US16/16B interchange (grade separation, new bridges, median work — tens of millions split across 2027 and 2029-30).
A $130.6 million buildout at Rapid City Regional Airport, including two phases each of terminal concourse construction and apron work;
Roughly $13.6 million in Rapid Transit System operating and capital funding
Also well over $100 million more spread across Rapid City, Pennington County, and Box Elder capital road projects, including a $40 million Highway 1416/Radar Hill Road project and a $21 million Cheyenne Boulevard build.
Non-Consent (Items 20-21)
Presentation: Water Reclamation Facility Project Update, by Alexander Cushman. Notable mostly because Cushman is also the project manager whose signature is on the WRF South Plant change order up above — so the person presenting the update is the same one who just signed off on a quarter-million-dollar cost increase and a 49-day schedule slip on the same project.
PW081126-10 — Murphy Ranch sidewalk variance, continued and now withdrawn. Advanced Design Engineering & Surveying, on behalf of Murphy Ranch LLC, first came to the committee Aug. 11 asking to waive the sidewalk requirement along Rigby Loop and Glock Street for Murphy Ranch Estates Phase 10D-1 and 10D-2 — arguing, as in prior phases, that homebuilders should install sidewalks later rather than the developer doing it upfront.
Pennington County Planning didn’t support the variance, and rather than face an unfavorable vote, Advanced Design asked for a continuance to Sept. 1.
Now staff’s recommendation on the continued item is simply: withdraw, at the applicant’s request. No vote, no denial on the record — the request just goes away, at least for now.
Open Questions
Why withdraw instead of pushing it to a vote and losing, which would at least create a public record on it?
Does Murphy Ranch refile for these same two phases later, or is the sidewalk going in as originally required?
And with three more sidewalk-waiver requests sitting on this week’s consent calendar, does anyone on the committee connect the pattern out loud?
Sourcing
City of Rapid City Public Works Committee agenda, Sept. 1, 2026 (rcgov.org); city Agenda Item Summary pages for PW090126-08 and PW090126-09; individual agenda-item backup documents PW090126-01, -07, -09, -10; 26TP025 2027-2030 Transportation Improvement Program Final Report and staff memo; PW081126-10 variance request letter (Advanced Design Engineering & Surveying, on behalf of Murphy Ranch LLC).
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