Deadline missed for November fire district vote

There will be no November vote to enact the proposed Custer Fire Protection District after a deadline to get the issue onto the November general election ballot came and went without a required resolution to establish the district being approved by the city and county.
The state gave the two entities until noon Aug. 21 to pass the resolution so that it could be included on the November ballot. However, the Custer City Council had not voted on a resolution by the deadline, and although the Custer County Commission was set to vote on a resolution at its Aug. 21 meeting, the point was moot since the city had not approved a resolution.
Confusion reigned and tempers flared at the Aug. 21 commission meeting as commissioners, audience members and members of the Custer Volunteer Fire Department grappled with where the ball got dropped during the process.
“We had deadlines. Today is the deadline for the resolution to pass and to put it on the ballot,” county finance officer Dawn McLaughlin said. “We made it very clear multiple times that it needs to be done. I feel bad it’s not getting done today.”
The anger from the members of the fire department in the audience was palpable, with assistant chief Matt Spring saying members of the department felt it was “torpedoed on purpose” by members of the commission, though he did not mention any specific commission members.
“What didn’t get done for  you guys to be able to vote on the resolution today?” he asked.
Custer County state’s attorney Tracy Kelley said the commission could vote on the petition, but because the city had not passed a resolution, it cannot go to the state-printed ballot, which means a November election for the district would mean a special election, with separate ballots and the expenses and extra labor incurred with such an election.
Part of the confusion seemed to center around questions about the order in which the entities had to pass the resolution, with many at the meeting believing the county had to first pass the resolution before the city could do so, as well as the city not having a copy of the proposed resolution. However, SDCL 34-31A-3 does not specify an order in which any such resolution must be passed, but rather that the “governing body of the municipality establishes intent by passing a resolution so indicating.”
There also seemed to be a lack of communication regarding  whether Custer State Park is in or out of the proposed district boundaries, with several in the audience saying they assumed the park was in the proposed boundary, while it was apparently taken out after some members of the commission met with South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks representatives.
Commission chairman Jim Lintz said the discussion led to the belief GFP should contract with fire departments or the fire district.
“That’s why we decided not to put them within the district,” he said.
Kelley said her recommendation in June was the park should not be included in the boundary, and that she had “not heard a single discussion since June by anybody about the state park.”
“Dropping or leaving in the state park didn’t change the deadline today, so don’t blame that on us,” Spring said.
“I’m not. I just think that’s part of the lack of communication,” Kelley said.
Fire department secretary Selena Spring said those in the department working on the district got “thrown into this and told the way it’s going to be,” which she said was a concern for her from the beginning.
She said commissioners had to know when they walked into the meeting  Wednesday morning the resolution wasn’t going to pass, and questioned why the department was not informed of what was going on.
“We’re not stupid,” Matt Spring said.
Commissioner Craig Hindle said he just found out that morning about the issues with the resolution, while others also said they had only learned about the issues that morning or the previous evening.
“I did not know. Nobody torpedoed it,” Hindle said. “We’ve all been working really hard to get this done.”
Hindle said auditor’s office employees had worked during the day Saturday to ensure the deadline for the resolution could be met.
Firefighter Brandon Zapp chastised the commission for what he said was a failure to work with the city, and said stopgap funding is now needed to keep the fire department afloat.
“If you want fire protection, it’s going to take years to get this funding,” he said. “Now you’re kicking the can further and further down the road. We are at the breaking point from a volunteer and finance perspective. These are things that are important and should have been done in the past.”
That led to commissioner Mike Busskohl asking fire department members when the commission learned about the state park being removed from the district, which they just recently had.
“You guys shouldn’t be worried about it,” Matt Spring said. “It’s not really your concern.”
A member of the audience said it did matter as it relates to the election, with Selena Spring replying the department was only going off the county’s recommendation in regards to the park and could have put the park back into the proposed boundaries if it were communicated it was going to be an issue.
“There is a huge communication issue. You guys, Tracy included. We don’t know if we’re supposed to go to (commission legal counsel) Aaron (Davis), or if we’re supposed to go to Tracy. It’s been horrible,” she said. “This has been the worst process for a professional organization we have ever dealt with because of (lack of) communication. You guys have got to get it together.”
Busskohl said he didn’t realize the city didn’t have the resolution until Monday and immediately had a copy sent there, that he didn’t know the park was out of the boundaries until that Friday and said the auditor’s office indicated nobody had indicated to them the park was out of the proposed boundaries.
“You can watch the email exchange where nobody is on the same page,” he said.
The discussion turned to the next step to take following missing the deadline, and how soon the issue could get in front of the voters.
McLaughlin said the special election for the French Creek discharge issue cost the county $20,000, and that a special election for this issue would cost more as 5,000 ballots would need to be printed, as opposed to the 1,500 for the French Creek issue. There is also the extra work for the auditor’s office and election workers, including hand counting ballots since the issue wouldn’t be on the state-printed ballot. The next time state-printed ballots would be issued for a county election is two years.
“I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m not for a special election,” she said, saying her staff worked numerous hours already on the issue. “Our main goal was to get this on the (ballot) for the general (election), the presidential, because we have more voter turnout and now it’s not going to be done. I’m very discouraged.”
Lintz said he was also disappointed, saying one of the reasons the commission bypassed the petition effort was to speed up the process to make the deadline for the November ballot. Supporters of the proposed district could have gone the route of gathering around 1,300 signatures of residents of the proposed district to guarantee it was on the November ballot, just as Preserve French Creek members had done on that issue.
“Matt and Selena have done a tremendous job of getting stuff together. We all need to get behind it,” he said. “We know it’s the route to go. We have to get together and figure out how we get there. Every year we don’t get it done it pushes us closer to big problems. We’re going to have to probably eventually have a special election.”
Lintz said the commission “dropped the ball” by not getting things done earlier.
“I’ll take partial responsibility for that,” he said. “I didn’t find out until yesterday the city had not voted. I thought once we voted we could send it in and it was done.”
Matt Spring told the commission it failed in its responsiblities.
“When you volunteer and bust your ass for 34 years, I expect people to do their jobs,” he said. “You told us to bust our ass and get it ready for the ballot.
“This is simple. Form a fire district or don’t and give the people a chance to vote on it. Everything else is white noise. Pure failure.”