By Dave Baumeister
County correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – Three new county commission candidates were all on-hand Tuesday, April 23, to see how commission meetings work.
While Commissioners Jean Bender and Dean Karsky both have their current terms ending at the end of this year, Bender has decided not to run again.
And three others are vying for her open seat.
Technically, they are running for two spots, but unlike Bender, Karsky is running for re-election.
He began serving in January 2017 and is now in his second commission term.
Karsky currently fills the role as the chairperson of the Minnehaha County Commission.
The other candidates in attendance were area business consultant Dan Kippley, local realtor Roger Russell, and insurance agent Cole Hiesey.
Minnehaha County Auditor Leah Anderson reported that no Democrats had filed to run as of the February deadline, and while people have until the end of April to file nominating petitions, no one has done so yet.
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If that stands, then the county commission race will be decided with the Republican primary election on June 2.
But this week the new candidates and current commissioners heard about a variety of county business at the April 23 meeting.
First up, Mike Gramlick of Sioux Falls Fire and Rescue and Metro Communications briefed commissioners on a statewide 9-1-1 outage on Wednesday, April 17.
He reported that when the system went down, like with an Amber Alert, all cell phone received notice of the problem, and the message showed an alternate 10-digit phone number people could call in case of an emergeny. It also informed people that they were still able to send a text message to 9-1-1.
People calling into the 10-digit number would be handled just like any emergency, and the only variation was that calls were rerouted differently.
According to news reports, the problem was apparently caused in four states, Texas, Nevada, Nebraska and South Dakota, and had something to do with a light pole being installed incorrectly.
Gramlick said he was going to learn more about what happened later in the afternoon last Tuesday.
Commissioner Joe Kippley, who is the commission liaison to the county fire chiefs’ board, said they were in a meeting discussing what could be done for possible training scenarios when he noticed people starting to “scramble” in the back of the room.
So instead of a training exercise, Kippley said, the emergency responders had a “real world” situation to deal with.
With this event, Commissioner Gerald Beninga said, “The bottom line is that the back-up systems worked.”
And Gramlick agreed.
New JDC contract
Commissioners voted unanimously to authorize a new contract slightly increasing the daily rates for people from other counties staying at the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center.
Minnehaha partners with 16 other eastern South Dakota counties, as well as Pipestone County in Minnesota, to house juvenile offenders.
The new per diem cost for offenders was raised to $458.48 for incarceration at the JDC.
Jamie Gravett, JDC Director, pointed out that the daily cost is quite a bit higher than the county jail because there are more regulations involved with the number of staff members needed.
He said there is a required ratio of one staff member for every eight offenders at the facility, and no such ratio exists for adult offenders at the county jail.
But still, these charges only help the county “break even” on the price of incarceration.
The next meeting of the commission will be at 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 7, in the third-floor meeting room of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
Because absentee voting for the primaries is also going on at that location, people are reminded not to bring or wear any campaign-related items into the building.
