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Yahoo
26-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Honoring fallen heroes with Memorial Day Program
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — While for some people Memorial Day just means a three day weekend, for others it's a time to remember those who died while serving our country. Donald Metcalf spent his Monday morning at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. 'There's a long weekend for camping and barbecuing, but the primary reason is to remember our fallen heroes,' attendee Donald Metcalf said. TikTok bidder: South Dakota 'certainly the front-runner' It was something he thought was important to do. 'I am just here to support our fallen heroes. I mean, that's kind of the biggest thing. It's what the country is founded on. So pretty, pretty excited to just remember them in that way,' Metcalf said. Metcalf was one of many that gathered for the Memorial Day Program. 'We've got the brass quartet playing right now this morning. We'll have the singing Legionnaires here. Doug Starr, who's a World War Two veteran, will be the keynote speaker. Laying of the wreath ceremony honoring the prisoners of war to the missing in action people. There's several different speakers and tributes that'll be happening here,' Executive Director SD Military Heritage Alliance, Brian Phelps said. LIST: Memorial Day events in South Dakota The service acts as a reminder of those who died while fighting for our country. 'A lot of people are losing track of Memorial Day. You know, back obviously coming out of World War one, World War two, Korea, Vietnam, where we lost a lot of soldiers in those conflicts. You know, those were you know, 60, 70, 80 years ago wars that we were in. Nowadays people are losing track of all those that lost,' Phelps said. 'It takes all of us to make this nation go around. But, a lot of them gave it all. Every every bit of it. And I think it's important to remember that,' Metcalf said. Following the Memorial Day Service, the VA hosted a ceremony at the South Dakota State Veterans Cemetery. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Report: Tough-on-crime policies could push prison construction costs as high as $2.1 billion
The Project Prison Reset group meets on April 3, 2025, at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight) South Dakota will need a third more prison space than it has now by 2036, and lawmakers' choice to pass a so-called truth in sentencing bill in 2023 is a major reason why. That's among the takeaways from a new report on the state's prison infrastructure that says the state would need to spend between $1.9 billion and $2.1 billion on new prisons to deal with an inmate population that's projected to swell in spite of the state's decreasing crime rate. The state needs a 1,700-bed men's prison immediately, the report from Arrington Watkins says. Even then, it says, another 1,500 beds for men will be necessary in a little more than 10 years, when it projects a prison population of more than 5,000 people. South Dakota corrections work group formally backs need for new prison The state signed a $729,000 contract with the Phoenix-based firm as part of 'Project Prison Reset,' a work group formed by gubernatorial fiat in the face of state lawmakers' refusal to back an $850 million, 1,500-bed men's prison in Lincoln County in February. Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, chairman of the work group, said the report supports the group's first official vote last month, which was to conclude that the state does need at least one new prison. Venhuizen was quick to point out that the $2 billion price tag would only apply if the state followed the consultant's guidance to the letter and built two large prisons, but said the population projections lay bare the stakes of South Dakota's current approach to criminal justice. The work group's job is not to address the drivers of prison population growth, he said. But he also said he's glad the report took note of those driving forces. The truth in sentencing bill, SB 146, requires people convicted of violent offenses to serve between 85% and 100% of their sentences, depending on the category of their crime. As a legislator in 2023, Venhuizen voted against SB 146, and its potential to impact prison populations 'was part of the reason why.' 'Those decisions are not free. You have to strike a balance there,' Venhuizen said. 'If you're sending people to prison for longer, there is a cost to that.' The bill's author and prime sponsor, Republican former Sen. Brent Hoffman, has a different take on the legislation's impact on South Dakota's correctional needs. 'The real issue isn't SB 146, which protects the public by requiring violent criminals to serve their sentences,' said Hoffman, a supporter of term limits who served one term and opted against running for a second in 2024. 'The underlying, systemic problems are recidivism rates, wasteful spending, misguided priorities and incompetence, and those problems won't be solved by any consultant's report or politician's rhetoric.' Every correctional facility in South Dakota is beyond its capacity now. The South Dakota State Penitentiary was built in 1881 to house one inmate per cell, but holds twice as many. The proposed 1,500-bed facility in Lincoln County, mired in controversy over cost and necessity and still tied up in litigation over its location, was meant to replace the penitentiary. There are two other housing units on the penitentiary campus in Sioux Falls, however, and each of those faces its own issues with overcrowding. The maximum-security Jameson Annex, for example, is overbooked because it houses not only maximum security inmates, but those in disciplinary segregation and those with serious mental health needs. It's also the sorting zone for every new male inmate in the state system, where inmates stay as they're assessed for longer-term placement. With $50 million spent already, state hires new consultant to restart prison planning The Sioux Falls Minimum Center, meanwhile, holds 245 men in a building designed for 96. Even with a large but temporary drop during the COVID-19 pandemic, new admissions to Department of Corrections custody grew an average of 3.2% a year between 2015 and 2024, the report says. That's in spite of a crime rate in South Dakota that's lower than the national average and on the decline. The state's total population has gone the other direction, increasing by 0.9% a year since 2010. Much of the long-term factors built into the new report were present for its predecessor, a report from Omaha's DLR group that pointed to a 1,500-bed men's facility as one of several necessary projects for the DOC. Senate Bill 146 is a wrinkle that didn't exist for the DLR group, some portions of which were used by Arrington Watkins in its expedited, two-month repeat assessment. SB 146 ropes in fewer than 10% of the state's inmates, the report notes – drug offenses are the most common charge for which South Dakotans are imprisoned – but the inability of those convicted of violent offenses to be released before serving at least 85% of their sentence will have a long-term impact on prison population growth. 'Roughly half' of the 1,246 more inmates the report anticipates South Dakota will have by 2036 is attributable to SB 146. Parole violations are another driver of population growth, the report notes. About 45% of new admissions to the DOC came by way of parole violations in 2024, the report says, and 84% of those violations 'were technical in nature rather than new criminal charges.' Minnehaha County State's Attorney Daniel Haggar cautioned that technical parole violations often involve serious misbehavior, however. Technical violations include drug use, he said, as well as absconding – losing touch with a parole officer altogether. 'When those offenders are violent offenders or sex offenders this is a threat to public safety,' he said in an email to South Dakota Searchlight on Friday. The state has already spent more than $50 million on the Lincoln County site, although a share of that money could be clawed back by selling land or reusing aspects of the now-stalled prison's design. Governor relents, appoints task force to reset prison talks after legislative loss The new report's top recommendation is a 1,700-bed, Level V facility, built within 30 miles of the existing penitentiary to relieve crowding across the entirety of the men's prison system. It also recommends demolishing the 1881 penitentiary. 'Level V' is correctional nomenclature for maximum security. Former penitentiary warden Doug Weber wrote seven letters to lawmakers during the 2025 session urging them to say no to the 1,500-bed facility in Lincoln County, essentially a smaller version of what the new report says is necessary. The focus on the factors driving the state's prison population growth raises important questions, Weber told South Dakota Searchlight on Friday, but he disagrees strongly with its conclusions on how to remedy the situation. 'There's nobody in South Dakota, in my opinion, except a handful of people, maybe in Pierre, that would be comfortable spending $2.1 billion on buildings for the Department of Corrections,' said Weber. 'There are much better ways to spend money.' Weber called a Level V facility unnecessary and too expensive in a state where the number of maximum security inmates hovers around 200. He also bristles at the idea of knocking down the pen. Millions have been spent to maintain it in recent years, including for air conditioning less than five years ago, and Weber said it could easily serve as a minimum security facility by removing the cell doors and putting a single person in each cell. Republican Speaker of the House Jon Hansen, a work group member and candidate for governor in 2026, said 'there's absolutely no way that I will support spending that much money on prisons.' 'If we needed to be building new facilities, we should be looking at the current location in Sioux Falls for a lot less money,' Hansen said. Prison work group peppered with public testimony in first Sioux Falls meeting Madeline Voegeli, one of the neighbors to the Lincoln County site who sued the state over the issue, said in an email to Searchlight that the group has serious doubts about the veracity of the report's population projections. The DLR report, completed in 2022, suggested a 1,300-bed men's prison at a cost of around $608 million. Now, she wrote, 'we're being told to swallow a nearly quadrupled cost of up to $2.1 billion, largely driven by SB 146 and questionable population projections.' Voegeli accused the state of engaging in a 'pattern of inflating proposals to make a billion-dollar plan' – the original Lincoln County proposal – 'appear reasonable.' Venhuizen said arguments suggesting that the Lincoln County plan's supporters tried to tip the scale in the consultant's report are misplaced. 'It's not a strong position to assume that everyone who disagrees with you is being dishonest,' Venhuizen said. 'If you're doing that, you should probably examine the strength of your own arguments.' Rep. Karla Lems, a Canton Republican who's both a work group member and an avowed opponent of the Lincoln County proposal, said Friday that she's skeptical of the conclusions, as well. The work group is meant to deliver its recommendations to a special legislative session in July. The state, she said, needs to spend more time thinking about reducing repeat offenses before it decides what to build. Rep. Brian Mulder, R-Sioux Falls, is also a work group member. He said the state needs to think 'innovatively' on how to reduce prison populations, and that the report is a clear sign of how necessary that is. Mulder was one of the prime sponsors of a bill to change the penalty for first- and second-offense drug ingestion from a felony to a misdemeanor during the 2025 session. Too few prisoners are getting drug treatment, Mulder said, and he feels the state ought to consider partnering with nonprofits to extend treatment's reach both inside the prison and outside, for parolees. He also has questions about parole supervision practices. 'I would ask 'what's going on now with things like remote monitoring,'' Mulder said. 'It's a lot more effective for the state for someone so they can continue to be held accountable, but be held at home.' Mulder supported truth in sentencing and continues to, though. He said parole reforms make more sense. Reforms to truth in sentencing laws ought to be up for consideration, though, according to Zoë Towns, executive director of a bipartisan think tank called Her group pushes for changes to criminal justice and immigration policy. The knock-on effects of incarceration for families and communities are heavy, Towns said, and the returns for public safety diminish significantly when inmates don't have a chance to earn credit for good behavior – even when the people earning them committed violent offenses. 'What we should be asking is 'how long is incapacitation actually helpful?'' Towns said. 'What are the policies that are most likely to help people, when they come home, to contribute to their communities and local economies?' Addressing behavioral health needs and addiction early on are more effective ways to deal with crime than incarceration, she said, but other strategies are even further removed from criminal justice. Towns pointed to research from places like the Brookings Institute that suggest investments in youth education and public health offer long-term returns for public safety. 'It's literally after school and public school programs,' Towns said. 'That has a stronger homicide reduction rate than policing does. I'm not saying there's not a role for policing. I'm saying that actually, factually, in evidence, has a stronger return than sleeping in prison.' The next Project Prison Reset meeting is June 3 in Pierre. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
07-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sioux Falls business leaders say region, state will weather the storm of tariff-related uncertainty
From left, Sioux Falls Rotarian Ryan Martin, Tyler Tordsen of the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance, Bob Mundt of the Sioux Falls Development Foundation, Jodi Schwan of and Ron Nelson of Nelson Commercial Real Estate speak at a Rotary Club luncheon at the Military Heritage Alliance on May 5, 2025, in Sioux Falls. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight) SIOUX FALLS – The term of art is 'insolated, but not isolated.' That's how Bob Mundt of the Sioux Falls Development Foundation describes his metro area's position as it faces the unpredictable economic conditions driven by the tariffs imposed – and frequently un-imposed or adjusted from day to day – by President Donald Trump. Trump has downplayed the impact of tariffs as speed bumps on the way to a stronger manufacturing sector. While rejecting claims that tariffs will hurt the economy as a whole during an interview with NBC's 'Meet the Press' over the weekend, he did nod to economist consensus by saying that some goods, which he said Americans could go without, could cost more as a result. The Sioux Falls metro area, Mundt said, has weathered economic storms in the past thanks to South Dakota's 'conservative nature.' During a panel discussion at the Sioux Falls Rotary Club this week, Mundt said the market's twists and turns have spurred trepidation, but not panic. 'We tend to react very well to challenges, whether that's tariffs or pandemics or anything else like that,' Mundt told the Rotarians who'd gathered at the Military Heritage Alliance. About a quarter of South Dakota's residents live in the Sioux Falls metro area, located in the lower portion of the state's southeast quadrant, which is one of the most rapidly growing areas in the U.S. Tyler Tordsen, head of the Sioux Metro Growth Alliance, also sounded a hopeful note on the region's economic fortunes. He pointed to cities like Brandon, just east of Sioux Falls, as proof that expansion has not ceased in light of the topsy turvy economic signals. 'There's a lot of dirt that's moving' in that city, Tordsen said before rattling off a handful of building projects. 'I am hearing hesitation, a little bit, but really nothing that's stopping any projects from moving forward,' Tordsen said. On the retail level, 'new entrepreneurs' are still looking for opportunities to expand, Tordsen said. He also said that pre-Trump challenges like workforce development, exacerbated by a dearth of child care options and affordable housing, remain. The unemployment rate in the metro area is 1.8%. The region's history has shown that those challenges aren't dealbreakers either, he said. 'I remember questions of 'there will be 1,000 jobs at Amazon, how are they ever going to fill those?' and they did,' Tordsen said, referencing a distribution center opened in 2022. An Amazon spokesperson told South Dakota Searchlight that it took around seven months to hire a full staff at the center. On workforce, Mundt pointed to former Gov. Kristi Noem's $9 million Freedom Works Here campaign as a net positive for the area, 'whether you loved it or hated it.' Mundt's organization reached out to about 10,000 of the 11,641 people who filled out a form expressing interest in relocating to South Dakota for work. Mundt said the foundation pointed potential workers to job openings, but didn't track what happened afterward due to privacy concerns. He can't say for certain how many people moved to Sioux Falls for work, but said spikes in attention can help address the area's skilled labor needs. 'Right now, it's becoming a situation where we need people with specific skill sets,' Mundt said. Dawn Dovre of the South Dakota Department of Labor told South Dakota Searchlight that 4,047 of the people who'd filled out those forms were later connected with job advisers who 'offered personalized support, helping with job opportunities, relocation resources, and housing information.' The state doesn't have a firm number of relocations, either. But listings on the SDWORKS jobs website have dropped from 25,000 at the start of the campaign to 18,000 today, Dovre said, 'reflecting increased workforce engagement and strong results from the campaign's reach.' Jodi Schwan is the owner of the marketing firm Align Content Studios and operator of the website She told the Rotary crowd the city needs to 'tell its story' as a place that can serve as a home base for industries like financial technology, biotech and agribusiness. 'Low-value manufacturing is not coming back to this country, no matter what is said out there,' Schwan said. 'High-value manufacturing is where the future is. We need to be a location of choice for that.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
First candidate for governor focuses on property rights, spending and halting ‘corporate welfare'
Reps. Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, and Karla Lems, R-Canton, will run alongside each other in the 2026 gubernatorial race. They kicked off their campaign in Sioux Falls on April 24, 2025, at the Military Heritage Alliance. Hansen will run for governor with Lems running for lieutenant governor. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight) Dissatisfaction with the 'status quo' is driving Jon Hansen and Karla Lems to run for South Dakota governor and lieutenant governor, they said. The pair officially announced their 2026 campaign to hundreds of supporters Thursday at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. The crowd included property rights advocates against eminent domain for carbon dioxide pipelines, 'election integrity' activists and over a dozen Republican lawmakers. Hansen, who currently serves as state House speaker, will seek the Republican Party's nomination for governor, with Lems, his second in command in the House, running to serve as his lieutenant governor. The two, along with speakers who introduced them, said elected officials too often put the 'people's interests' second to special interests. To resounding applause, they said that's caused a wave of opposition to establishment politicians, a referred state pipeline law that voters rejected in November, and ousted incumbent state lawmakers in last June's primary election. 'Grassroots patriots from all across the great state of South Dakota are standing up and we are saying in record numbers, 'No more corruption, no more waste and abuse, no more tax on our land and our liberties and our way of life,'' Hansen said to the crowd. 'Today renews the coming of the end for all of that.' If elected, Hansen pledged to 'clean up' the system by cutting state government and spending. He also promised to create 'education choice grants' for alternative and private school education, and sign an executive order to 'define man and woman, end the woke and restore common sense.' Hansen said he plans to stop offering 'corporate welfare' as well. Republican governors and lawmakers for decades have invested millions of tax dollars in bonds, loans and grants to entice businesses to build and expand in the state. That includes funding for farmers and value-added operations, as well as support for larger investments such as Tru Shrimp. Hansen cited the Tru Shrimp deal as an example of 'corporate welfare.' State and local officials committed $6.5 million in taxpayer money for a low-interest loan six years ago for Tru Shrimp to build a facility in Madison. The company has not built the facility, even though it was expected to break ground in 2024. The company, which has since changed its name to Iterro, announced it's 'more than halfway' to its fundraising goal to begin the Madison project earlier this year. 'I think it's just unnecessary government mingling, and it's risky business, and they're wasting our taxpayer dollars to do it,' Hansen said of the deal. 'It's that sort of stuff that we want to say 'no more' to. Let's just get back to the free market, low tax and low regulation.' A Dell Rapids lawyer, Hansen has spent a decade in the South Dakota House of Representatives. The 39-year-old was elected House speaker for the most recent legislative session after serving as speaker pro tempore from 2021 to 2022. Lems, from Canton, owns a coffee shop and property management business. The 56-year-old entered the state political fray in 2022 and was elected as House speaker pro tempore during the most recent legislative session, the first woman to hold the position in state history. The two are riding the momentum of private property rights and anti-abortion successes in the last year. Both have been leading forces on property rights in the Legislature, culminating in an eminent domain ban for carbon capture pipelines signed into law this year. The legislation contributed to the Public Utilities Commission's recent denial of Summit Carbon Solutions' second permit application to build a portion of its $9 billion pipeline through the state. Hansen would sometimes be introduced as 'our governor' during rallies in opposition to Summit's pipeline. He told attendees at the event Thursday that under his leadership, the 'only thing that's going to get sequestered are leftist climate policies' — a reference to Summit's planned underground 'sequestration' of carbon dioxide in North Dakota. Meanwhile, Republican President Donald Trump championed carbon capture and storage this week, highlighting it as part of his agenda to improve American energy production. When asked about Trump's support of carbon sequestration, Hansen said 'when it comes to taking people's land and using it without their consent in order to build a risky pipeline across their property, that's a big no.' Hansen has also focused on anti-abortion legislation and tightening South Dakota's election laws in the Legislature. Now vice president of South Dakota Right to Life and co-chair of the Life Defense Fund, he organized a campaign last year that fended off a ballot initiative to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Hansen and Lems are the first to announce their candidacy for the governor's race, though other prominent South Dakota politicians have said they're considering their own bids, including Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden and Republican U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson. Other Republicans frequently mentioned as possible candidates include Attorney General Marty Jackley, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, and Aberdeen businessman Toby Doeden, who briefly considered a run against Johnson for U.S. House last year. Rhoden, who formerly served as lieutenant governor, changed the name of his campaign fundraising committee to 'Rhoden for Governor' in February. His lieutenant governor, Tony Venhuizen, created a new campaign fundraising committee the same month. The Legislature changed the process for choosing lieutenant governor nominees this year. The new law allows candidates for governor to choose their running mate, rather than relying on political party conventions to nominate them. If more than one person from each party seeks the nomination, party voters will choose their nominee for governor in the primary election on June 2, 2026. The winners will advance to the general election on Nov. 3, 2026. Rhoden is currently serving the remainder of the second term won by former Gov. Kristi Noem, who would've been term-limited at the end of 2026. She resigned earlier this year to accept the top job at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
With $50 million spent already, state hires new consultant to restart prison planning
From left, South Dakota Speaker of the House Jon Hansen, R-Dell Rapids, Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen, and Ryan Brunner, an adviser to Gov. Larry Rhoden, participate in a Project Prison Reset meeting on April 3, 2025, at the Military Heritage Alliance in Sioux Falls. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight) SIOUX FALLS — A $729,000 consultant contract will be added to the roughly $50 million South Dakota has already spent on a stalled prison construction effort. State officials signed a contract this week to pay a consultant to repeat and update a $323,000 prison facilities report that has framed three years of discussions on the state's correctional needs. The contract with Phoenix-based Arrington Watkins is just the latest deduction from a $62 million pool of money spent down to less than a fifth of its original size to prepare for a now-paused Lincoln County prison project. On Thursday, representatives with the Gov. Larry Rhoden administration acknowledged that taxpayers will be out most of that money unless lawmakers vote to revive the controversial project — or a scaled-down version of it — during a June special legislative session. Prison work group peppered with public testimony in first Sioux Falls meeting About $50 million of the money is already gone. It was spent to secure land, design a campus, and secure a stake in the electrical, water and sewer infrastructure that would've been necessary to house and care for 1,500 inmates. The state's under contract to spend millions more, but has paused that work. The state could 'claw back' some of that $50 million, but Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen said the administration knew there could be 'significant costs' to shifting course. 'We're doing what we can to reduce that, but it could be a considerable amount, and that's something we have to consider as we move forward,' Venhuzen said after a meeting of the Project Prison Reset work group at the South Dakota Military Heritage Alliance. The state based its earlier decision to pursue an $825 million facility largely on the recommendations of a 2022 report from the Omaha-based DLR Group. Lawmakers rejected that idea in February. That report outlined the state's correctional system deficiencies and recommended a host of potential solutions. The lawmakers most skeptical of the Lincoln County prison proposal repeatedly cited that report's lower men's prison price estimate, as well as its smaller-scale alternative prison construction options. The forthcoming Arrington Watkins report will ask the same sorts of questions. Ryan Brunner, the Rhoden adviser who serves as his point person on prison issues, said Thursday that eight members of the work group reviewed the contract before the state signed it. The state is also preparing to release a request for information, Brunner said, seeking interest from any landowners who might be willing to sell their property to the state for prison projects. After the meeting, Venhuizen said the work group would use the Arrington Watkins report and any interest gleaned from the land-seeking notice to decide where to go next on prison construction. The DLR suggested a 1,300-bed men's prison, but affixed a far smaller price tag than the one lawmakers were presented with last November. Under the direction of the Department of Corrections, a 2022 summer study group endorsed a 1,500-bed facility. Initial 2023 design contracts for that facility, partially redacted versions of which were given to South Dakota Searchlight by the DOC last month, put the top price at $450 million — roughly in line with DLR Group's estimates. An amended contract soon pushed that figure higher. A contract amendment in April of 2024 put the 'not to exceed' price at $740 million. That figure was not offered during a legislative Appropriations Committee the following month, though. At that meeting, and another legislative meeting later that summer, lawmakers were told that the 'guaranteed maximum price' would come in November. By the time that $825 million number arrived, the state had already spent millions to design the facility, drill test bores for a possible geothermal energy system, and to scan for cultural artifacts and wetlands. The state continued to sign contracts for the Lincoln County prison project into early 2025. The $825 million guaranteed price expired in March. Lawmakers who'd hoped to move forward with the project warned their compatriots that the price would only grow through inaction. Michelle Jensen, one of the Lincoln County landowners who sued the state over the prison plan, offered a different perspective in her public testimony to the work group on Thursday. Jensen noted that a final decision from the state Supreme Court in that lawsuit could come after the June special session. The remedy for financial losses in Lincoln County, Jensen said, should have been for the state to 'stop spending money out there if you know it's a thing that might not happen.' Jensen also suggested that the state could sell the land. The DOC transferred about $8 million to the Office of School and Public Lands to obtain the title to the 320 Lincoln County acres upon which it had hoped to build its prison. The land had passed into the ownership of the state Office of School and Public Lands years ago when the owners died without heirs or a will. On a roadside viewing of the property Wednesday afternoon, Brunner told the work group that the state only needed half the property for the prison, and that the other half was reserved for possible future use. Brunner sounded a hopeful note Thursday on a $10.5 million contract with the city of Lennox for a sewer line. The line's not in the ground yet, even though Lennox has collected the money. Funding for all but $500,000 of that contract came from the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The ARPA dollars had to be obligated to a water or sewer infrastructure project by Dec. 31, 2024. Had the prison project gone forward, Lennox would've been in line for $50,000 monthly payments from the state. Those monthly payments would amount to less than $30 per person for each of the people — inmates and staff — who'd have used the prison's toilets, sinks and showers. 'It's not that much different than your household sewer bill,' Brunner reasoned on Thursday. 'And so we don't start paying that until we actually start running sewage.' If the work group picks a site within 10 miles of Lennox in any direction for any other prison project, Brunner said, the state will still get something from that investment. 'If you're within 10 miles of Lennox, it's possible we could run that line to it,' Brunner said. The state also entered into agreements with Southeastern Electric Cooperative and South Lincoln Rural Water to pay for portions of upgrades planned by the respective utility providers. The state has paid for some of its stake in those projects. Brunner said the state could still pull out of a substation project, since the station has yet to be placed and could move to another location. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
