By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – For the second year in a row, Jean Bender was unanimously voted in as chairperson of the Minnehaha County Commission at their annual re-organization meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 7.
But more notable, also for the second year in a row, the commission named four legal newspapers for the county.
This is significant because South Dakota state law requires that a county commission has to publish public notices in all newspapers within a county, but it gives counties a permissible cap limitation of three.
Minnehaha County has the most-dense newspaper population in the state as there are seven newspapers. Most counties statewide have only one or two. Minnehaha County is the only county with more than four.
Representatives of three current legal papers, Garrick Moritz, publisher of the Garretson Gazette, Jill Meier, publisher of the Brandon-Valley Journal, and Lisa Miller, general manager of New Century Press, which prints the Minnehaha Messenger, all spoke to thank the county for its past business and looked forward to keeping people informed about future business in the county.
New Century Press also publishes the Dell Rapids City Journal and agreed to publish county pubic notices there at no extra charge, bringing the total number of papers printing legal notices in Minnehaha County to five.
While the Sioux Falls Argus Leader is the other legal newspaper for the county, no one from that paper or parent company Gannett Media was present to ask the county for its business.
Two other newspapers, the Brandon-Valley Challenger and the Dell Rapids Tribune, also owned by Gannett, were not selected as legal newspapers.
When he made the motion to again select four official newspapers, Commissioner Jeff Barth cited the importance of getting information out to the public.
Barth’s motion was seconded by Commissioner Gerald Beninga and unanimously approved.
The meeting itself lasted over an hour and 45 minutes and saw a variety of other “housekeeping” business taken care of, including: naming Dean Karsky as the commission vice-chair, and re-appointing the non-elected department heads, including county coroner Dr. Kenneth Snell.
Plus, commissioners voted themselves a pay raise going from $28,100 in 2019 to $29,181 in 2020.
While this is approximately a 3.85-percent raise over last year, according to county administrator Carol Muller, it represents an annual increase of 1.75-percent a year since 2014.
Despite the fact the main business was only those annual “housekeeping” measures, the meeting room was surprisingly full of people.
It turned out that most of those people were present for an item about a proposed bike trail around Wall Lake.
Tessa Schwans with the Friends of Wall Lake Trail was again back in front of the commission to get county approval to be their government entity associated with the project, to be able to apply for grants.
However, a number of people used this opportunity to speak against the project.
The main person to speak against the trail was Peggy Bevier of 46271 Wall Lake Place, Hartford.
Bevier had prepared a packet for commissioners dealing with information she had compiled, which stated that 47 of the people she contacted were totally against the project.
She said this was based on door to door visits and post cards returned to her that she “placed in mailboxes,” even though putting anything in a person’s mailbox that hasn’t gone through the mail system may be illegal, as explained at https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Restrictions-for-attaching-flyers-posters-etc-to-a-mailbox.
She also said she had 10 responses of people in favor of the project “with certain conditions,” such as, availability of parking, arrangements for sanitation, etc.
Bevier added that she had no responses from anyone who was unconditionally in favor of the project.
Two other area residents, Bill Huffman and John Merrill, also spoke with misgivings they had about the project.
Schwans responded to them saying, “I know they have a lot of concerns, which is why we wanted to start the process of having communication.”
She did go on to say that prior to a public meeting held last October, her group did mail out 214 letters to all residents within an area of one-mile of Wall Lake encouraging them to attend the meeting.
Fifty-two interested people attended that meeting on Oct. 28, 2019, and at that time, some concerns were expressed, but no one said they were completely against the proposal.
Both during and after the recent meeting, county commissioners said they were taken aback by the opposition, because prior to this, no one had expressed any opposition or concerns about the project to them.
But Karsky said that this move was, indeed, to start a conversation, and their request before the county was not to approve anything or start construction.
In fact, the motion made by Commissioner Cindy Heiberger, herself a rural Hartford resident, was to accept a resolution that specifically said the county would have no “obligation for funding the project,” but that the relationship with the county was needed to seek funding and grant opportunities.
That resolution passed 5-0.
Refugees on the way?
Towards the end of the meeting, Betty Oldenkamp and Rebecca Kiesow-Knudsen of Lutheran Social Services gave a briefing to the commission on their program to relocate refugees, and informed commissioners that due to an executive order by President Donald Trump last year, commissioners would have to sign a letter of consent to continue to accept refugees into the community.
Kiesow-Knudsen explained the process for obtaining refugee status and how people seeking refugee status are vetted before going to the various countries that accept them.
“While all refugees are immigrants, not all immigrants are refugees.”
She said that the international definition of a “refugee” is a person unable to return to his or her home country for “a well-founded fear of being persecuted for race, religion, nationality or membership in a particular social or political group.”
She went on to say that people fleeing their home countries – refugees – are first located in a United Nations camp where they begin the security screening process.
And Kiesow-Knudsen said this can take from 18 months to two years and involves biometric background checks against the FBI, DHS and Dept. of State databases.
After that, they are sent to different countries for permanent relocation, and the United States is one of 30 countries that accepts refugees.
All refugees who settle in the United States have legal status (not citizenship) and are eligible to work as soon as they arrive.
Refugee resettlement is a federal program, and the money for that comes from the federal government.
For 2020, the Trump administration has capped the number of refugees the country will accept at 18,000.
Also, last September, the president signed an executive order requiring any states and local governments where refugees would be accepted to sign an agreement.
For the state of South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem has already signed such an agreement, but since it is expected 60 to 100 refugees would come to Minnehaha County and Sioux Falls, both the county commission and the city council needed to sign similar agreements.
Kiesow-Knudsen said that since Aberdeen and Huron also regularly accept refugees, those cities, and their respective counties would also have to sign off on accepting them.
In the chart Kiesow-Knudsen showed, it listed 2012 as the high year when South Dakota accepted 649 refugees.
The low year in her figures was the 130 accepted last year.
Karsky thanked Kiesow-Knudsen for her presentation, and said, “Hopefully, people will take the time to understand this, because I think it would clear up a lot of misconceptions.”
Beninga added that he had talked with many employers who said that with refugees, they were some of the best entry-level employees their businesses ever had.
“Frankly, if that process was in effect when we were talking about Norwegians and Germans, probably none of us would be here today,” Beninga quipped.
Barth said that when people hear 400,000 people being murdered and raped, it is just a big number, but when they see a koala bear on fire on TV, “that really is rough!
“If we shut the door on these people, they are going to be on fire, they are going to be murdered, and I don’t want that on my conscience.”
While there was no agreement to be signed at the Jan. 7 meeting, this item was expected to be on the agenda on Tuesday, Jan. 14.
The Minnehaha Commission has its regular meetings each Tuesday at 9 a.m. on the second floor of the county administration building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
These meetings are open to all, and public comment is always encouraged.
