Lincoln County Commissioners extend public comment time to five minutes

The Lincoln County Board of Commissioners met Tuesday, January 13 in the Lincoln County Boardroom.

Chief Civil Deputy State’s Attorney, Drew DeGroot requested board discussion and possible action regarding the Lincoln County Board of Commissioner Public Comment Policies. 

“Pursuant to your rules and procedure that you adopted last year, there needs to be an annual review of the public comment policies. At this point, we haven’t heard any feedback from the commissioners and staff is not recommending any changes,” he said. 

“The two pieces of feedback that I would offer right now are number one, I’d like to see us move the three minutes to five minutes so people can speak longer. The second thing I don’t like is number six, it says there shall be no more than five speakers on the same topic. I watched three hours of a Sioux Falls City Commission meeting the other night and there were 64 people who all spoke on the same topic and it’s important for the public to be heard on an issue and sometimes it may get repetitive, but it’s important to listen to what people have to say too. It’s part of their first amendment right, to petition the government for redress,” Commissioner Joel Arends said. 

Chairwoman Tiffani Landeen asked for public comment on the matter, and Linda Montgomery stood to speak. 

“When I first started coming to commissioner meetings it was five minutes and when you look at Minnehaha, the largest county in the state, they have five minutes for public comment. A number of the other county commission meetings that I do listen to for various topics they also have five minutes. There’s very few in fact that have three minutes and I believe when these minutes first came out and were changed, I was very disappointed as I have been called many times on three minutes and it’s very degrading when I haven’t even finished a discussion on the topic,” she said.  

Six voices echoed Montgomery’s opinion asking the commission to extend the speaking time to five minutes and not limit the amount of speakers. 

“I’m fine with changing it to five minutes with the understanding that the chair, whoever it is, can still limit the overall public comment or the length of the public comment,” said Chairwoman Landeen. 

Motion to amend three minutes to five minutes for individual public comment and amend out the five person speaker limit by Arends, seconded by Doug Putnam, motion carried.

Jamie Gravett, Director of the Minnehaha County Juvenile Detention Center requested board discussion regarding the agreement for detention services between Minnehaha County, Lincoln County, and Lutheran Social Services, for the period of January 1 to December 31. 

“I felt it was important to come and discuss some information for you so you know what you’ve been paying for over the last year. For Lincoln County, it’s actually pretty good news. You reduced the number of bed days that you used in secured detention to 541 days. That’s down 230 days or roughly 30% compared to 2024. Your average daily population was 1.5 kids per day and you spent a total of $269,310 on detention services for youth at JDC,” he said. 

Gravett reported JDC has moved into phase one of their construction project which includes housing, education, and recreation and juveniles are reporting they feel safer in the new facility. Funding for phase two of the project belongs to Minnehaha County. Commissioner Jim Schmidt asked Gravett to give background on the education the students receive at JDC. 

“The Sioux Falls Public School provides our education for the youth. Most of the kids are working online, so we have plenty of Chromebooks and computers for them to stay caught up with their classmates wherever they come from. We are able to work with the schools to get them in with their peers and continue to work every day,” he said. 

Highway Superintendent, Terry Fluit asked the commission to consider a resolution to set the 2026 spring load limits. 

“The way we do this is I get the information out to the public by advertisement. Load limits won’t actually go on until we determine when the weather’s nice enough to have a lot of thawing and we put the signs up, and that’s when they go into effect,” he said. 

Fluit shared a map with the commissioners showing where the limits would be placed. Motion to set 2026 spring road limits by Betty Otten, seconded by Schmidt, motion carried.

Fluit asked the commission to consider a motion to award Rural Access Infrastructure Fund grants. 

“Norway Township was selected for structure #42-1396-2679 in the grant amount of $112,000. We are going to save the money and then hopefully by the end of the year other projects will be completed and we will have more funding available to apply for 2027 awards,” Fluit said. 

Motion to approve by Otten, seconded by Schmidt, motion carried.