By Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
SIOUX FALLS – Towards the end of this week’s Minnehaha County Commission meeting, Treasurer Kris Swanson brought up the matter of insufficient funds (NSF) checks under “new business,” to elicit more discussion at a future meeting.
According to Swanson, the county is currently sitting on over $42,000 in bad checks, mostly for license plates and tags.
In her new position as county treasurer, Swanson wanted to change the status quo and adopt one of two other options.
One would be to acquire the means to accept “electronic funds transfers,” also known as EFTs or e-checks.
This is the system where checks are scanned and amounts are immediately debited from checking accounts, if those funds are available.
The used check is then returned to the customer.
The other option would be to do what most businesses have already done and not accept any personal checks.
The county already accepts credit/debit card payments, but as Swanson and commissioners pointed out, many people don’t like paying the fees for using that method.
However, the county and taxpayers eventually become accountable for much more than a 2.3% fee when people “bounce” checks for payments.
People who use the state kiosks are already charged either a 2.25% fee for credit/debit card payments, or a flat $1.50 fee for an “e-check.”
Swanson explained that part of the reason the amount of NSF checks is so high is that the county hasn’t tried legal means to collect a bad check since 2018, and people can take advantage of that.
Commission Chairman Dean Karsky said that he agreed with Swanson’s frustration, but added that because of the time involved, the State’s Attorney’s office no longer goes after NSF checks.
After Swanson explained her position, commissioners seemed to be in agreement that at a future meeting, they needed to address how best to implement one of the two options Swanson presented – going the EFT route or disallowing personal checks.
Should residents be upset with their options to avoid fees, they would still be able to get around them by paying cash.
Although, as was said at a previous meeting, when people consider what their time is worth when they have to go to the bank or ATM to get that cash and then wait in line at the Treasurer’s Office, they might be money ahead by paying the fees at a kiosk.
Surplus property sale
As reported a few weeks ago, the Auditor’s Office is planning a sale on Sept. 25 of property that has fallen four or more years behind in paying property taxes.
At that time, there were 11 properties that fit into that category, but as of Tuesday, Aug. 17, that number had fallen to eight.
Auditor Ben Kyte asked for and received commission approval to go ahead with the tax sale next month on the remaining properties.
He said that all property owners had been notified, and of those eight properties, all are in Sioux Falls, five are owner occupied, one is non-owner occupied, one is unoccupied, and one is an empty lot.
Owners of these properties can still arrange to get their taxes paid right up to the day of the sale, Kyte said.
New construction
The commission also heard briefings from representative of TEGRA and Henry Carlson Construction on remodeling expenses for the county administration and extension buildings, as well as the construction of new facilities for the highway department.
Dick Strassburg of TEGRA detailed the remodeling expenses of $6.1 million, while the representative from Henry Carlson reported on the $12.9 million cost of the highway building.
The projects are slated to begin next month.
Liquor fees
In addition to his other matters, Kyte brought up county liquor licenses and fees for commission approval.
They did approve 13 licenses for off-sale and 13 licenses for on-sale liquor.
They also set fees for special event licenses.
Off-sale fees were set at $1,200 for new licenses and $500 for renewals.
On-sale licenses were set at the same rate as the nearest municipality.
Commissioners also established fees for special events, and they made it clear they would be in favor of raising the cost on all of these license fees.
Commissioner Jeff Barth explained that these fees are the only way the county makes money on alcohol sales, but that the sale of alcohol leads to some of the Minnehaha County’s major expenses on medical and incarceration costs.
In the past, Barth has been very vocal about the state legislature allowing counties to tax the sale of alcohol, but nothing has been done towards that in Pierre.
There are taxes on alcohol now, but that money goes to the state, as well as municipalities.
To add to county coffers, commissioners discussed looking at increasing licensing fees in the near future, but, as Kyte explained, according to state law, a fee structure had to be in place before Sept. 1.
However, he also said that commissioners could change that fee structure any time they wanted.
The next meeting will be Tuesday, Aug. 24, at 9 a.m. on the second floor of the Minnehaha County Administration Building at 6th and Minnesota in Sioux Falls.
The public is encouraged to attend, and there is always time allotted for public comment.
