Every Friday, we sit down with Mayor Jason Salamun to discuss the latest events and stories shaping Rapid City. Tune in and stay informed
This week we are joined by special guest Darrell Shoemaker who is the director of communications for Rapid City. Read along as we discuss key local issues impacting the city.
Meeting With the Mayor transcript from 3/21/25:
Murdoc: And happy Friday. Good afternoon and welcome back into your weekly Meeting with the Mayor every week here on The Cowboy or in your favorite podcast player. We do a show. It’s called Meeting with the Mayor here and my name is Murdoch. I’m your host. We have a special guest as where is Mr. Mayor this week, by the way? He told me I forget
Shoemaker: . Today he’s doing the Board of Equalization hearings. They have a…
Murdoc: Oh, that’s right. They’re doing a… We talked about this last week.
Shoemaker: Local hearings, that’s the first level of appeal for citizens and so we’ve had a week-long number of hearings and the mayor’s participating in the final session today.
Murdoc: The voice you’re hearing is Mr. Darrell Shoemaker back on the show. He’s the director of communications for the city of Rapid City. You might recognize him. He’s the longtime voice in this community and in West River. He was Senator Johnson’s West River head for a long time and so there isn’t a lot of… There’s almost no one that knows more about the history of Rapid City and the goings on and so whenever the mayor’s out, Darrell’s my first person I try to get in. Vicki’s also good. He’s got good stories. Well, let’s get into it. You’ve got a whole… You came in more prepped than the mayor and I usually come. Where do you want to start?
Shoemaker: Well, I think the first thing to talk about is next Tuesday we have a looming deadline for the election to file petitions to run for city council. During the year we hear a lot of people complaining and with concerns and every time there’s a boiler plate issue that’s affecting the city, a lot of people who aren’t happy with the city say it’s time to run for office and so this is…
Murdoc: I’ll show you. ..
Shoemaker: The opportunity to do it. So then promoting that from March 1st until next Tuesday at 5 o’clock people can pick up an election packet from City Hall and get their petitions turned in by next Tuesday at 5 o’clock. I will say, checking off with finance, we… Despite that, ever often, let’s boot them out, let’s run for office. We really haven’t had a whole lot of interest. There’s been about 10 packets picked up and generally speaking, not all those packets are returned and of course you can pull those petitions down from online as well but we’ve only had about five turn in their petitions so if that holds we may have uncontested races.
Murdoc: Some slight advice if you will all allow me, don’t wait until the 11th hour, get more than you think you need, give yourself time if you’ve never done it before because there’s something on your form you have to redo, I just almost always…
Shoemaker: We’ve had plenty of people who… They say they see the number 50 that they need to have so they’ll bring in 50. We’ve had people who come in at… We tell them 5 o’clock and they’ll be coming in at 5 o’clock, the door shutter at 5 o’clock and so we tell people to… Usually we tell them to bring stuff in a week ahead of time because if finance goes through and finds out there’s some people that aren’t registered at all or aren’t registered in your ward, you need 50 signatures in your ward. We have one seat open and each of the five wards, that election will be on June 3rd and so if they turn them in ahead of time, then finance can say, hey, you need a few more signatures and you’ve got a few days to get out there and get it done.
Murdoc: What if I’m listening to this as a citizen of Rapid City and maybe I’m not going to run, but maybe I could sign somebody’s petition or I don’t even know where my ward is, where do I go?
Shoemaker: They can actually go online and go to the GIS division and there’s a ward map on there where they can see what ward they’re in. They can also call the Pennington County Auditor’s Office to find out what A, if they’re registered to vote, B, what ward they’re in and also as we get closer to the election where they vote and then if they hear or somebody knocks on the door looking for a petition to be signed, that’s their opportunity to visit with that candidate, to learn more about them and determine whether they want to sign the petition.
But it’s a great way, it’s engaging them in the process. We also tell people that we have 50, or excuse me, about 30 boards and committees and commissions with the city that if they want to participate in local government, that’s a great way to get involved is joining one of our committees and commissions and getting involved with city government.
Murdoc: So there’s been, speaking of city government, there’s been staffing changes. There’s a new chief of staff. Is that the title for Leah?
Shoemaker: It is a new chief of staff. The mayor made a recent appointment and that will be effective the week of April 6th. Leah is actually Leah Braun, who has been with the city since January of 2021. She’s been working in our human relations department since our human resources department. For a couple of years, she actually served as interim human resources director for about a year. And so the mayor’s tabbed Leah to be the new chief of staff. It’s a new new position.
Murdoc: I was going to ask if that position has the mayor’s office ever had. What’s the history of a chief of staff?
Shoemaker: Not we’ve not had for many years, not had a chief of staff per se. I think it was something that former mayor Allender had talked about, thought about. Mayor Solomon, when he came on board, that was one of his goals was to develop a chief of staff position as well as some other top line positions, basically to bring, you know, oversight of operational efficiencies within city government.
Murdoc: Maybe some continuity between mayoral administration transitions.
Shoemaker: And really, you know, you’ve got mayors, large communities, small communities, they’ll all talk about, you know, it’s really a 24 seven position. And that sometimes just basically even from the ribbon cuttings and grand openings and sitting down and having coffee with different groups and individuals, people who come into the office, but then there’s just the overall management of the city. And sometimes you need that person that you can count on that’s, you know, can attend meetings, provide briefings and give context in other departments.
Murdoc: Is that the main purview of the gig? What’s the what’s the job entail?
Shoemaker: Yeah, that’s going to be basically supporting them, mayor, in executing his priorities, his initiatives, really push and drive, you know, operational excellence throughout the city. You know, if we’ve got some challenges and opportunities, Leah will be able to kind of coordinate and kind of huddle with the mayor on on those different issues. And basically, the mayor staff will basically be working with Leah on our day to day type performances and so forth. But and also just to kind of foster a collaborative, high performing culture throughout city government. The mayor’s been working really hard on that, you know, making sure we have that team, team performance, team atmosphere and Leah, that’s also in Leah’s wheelhouse and her camp as well.
Yep. And so when she, you know, she’s spent 22 years in the National Guard, she’s got a good pedigree, a good, good, good history. And so we’re excited about her coming on board in this new position.
Murdoc: Leah will be a good the next time the mayor’s out for one reason or the other, which will have her on, you know, the old meeting with the chief of staff.
Shoemaker: That wouldn’t be bad, you know. Yeah. Did I see Dusty Johnson stop by? He did stop by the mayor.
Murdoc: You’re doing the rounds. Everybody running for governors doing the rounds.
Shoemaker: Doing the rounds and they had a quick visit, about a 15, 20 minute visit and talking about just local issues, state, national issues. You know, both of them come together with a full plate and just see where they can collaborate on things, touch base on several different issues. And so, you know, gave them mayor an opportunity to brief the congressman about, you know, many important issues affecting the community are Northside Precinct, our Vision Fund, some of the goals that we have, and especially with the growth that we’re going through, you know, some of the needs of our community as we respond to the growth that we’re seeing in our community. And obviously with the B 21 arrival, you know,
Murdoc: some of the challenges. And I really, yeah, you know, you might be one of the few people in this in this part of the world that can have a real concrete answer to this. How what is the historical relationship between the Rapid City mayor and our senators and house reps? Like it does a change staff person to person or what’s what’s the. how’s that usually work?
Shoemaker: I think ? I think there’s always been a good relationship between the mayors of the while all, you know, the congressmen and the senators usually have a good tie in with the communities, especially through their staffs. The staffs are usually staying attentive on issues of importance.
And then whether it’s obviously Sioux Falls and Rapid City being the two largest cities and staying connected there because they have unique challenges and issues, you know, first and foremost, you know, our Rapid City regional airports and those airport issues are out there. But but also staying in touch with what’s going on in the real years. I remember when I was front and center on staffing on the congressional side, there were big meetings going on, whether it was in, you know, Kadoka or lemon or, you know, Sioux Falls or peer, you know, congressional staff or front and center, basically the eyes and ears for the senators and the Congress person and getting
Murdoc: that rubber chicken tripped a lemon’s a little tougher than you want it to be sometimes.
Shoemaker: It can be a lot of a lot of road time. And especially if we have the senator, the congressman in the car, I through the years, I remember a couple of occasions in which I had two thirds of the delegation in my car because and we were really close knit as far as staffs, even though, you know, at one time, we had two Democrats in the congressional delegation and one Republican. And there were times when we all went to meetings together, sat together at meetings, sometimes constituents didn’t understand that. I guess they expected we’d be, you know, gunfight at the OK Corral staff.
Murdoc: You think about that now, you know, we knew each other. We knew our families were close knit. And so a lot of times if I had Senator Thune and Senator Johnson in the car, getting to particular meetings or parades and stuff like that. And so you just did what you had to do. And it was a good time. I remember listening to Senator Pressler talk about how, you know, this didn’t used to be a swampy problem because all of the reps and senators, kids would play baseball together on the weekends and stuff.
Right. And so that’s how you really got a lot of things done. You could sit on that soccer field or whatever it may be and work out whatever deal that wasn’t in the middle of cable news at the time.
Shoemaker: Well, and what was interesting is even in DC, and I think that’s still the case today is a lot of the DC staff, they were coming from the home district. So invariably, they knew the staffers. There might be political differences, but they may have gone to the same high school.
Murdoc: Sure. Played basketball together or something.
Shoemaker: And so a lot of that played out. And there was that cohesiveness, I think, played a part whenever something needed to be done, just like with the chief of staff role. If there’s somebody who knew what was going on, it was good to talk to the staffer in that other office because you might need it. You needed the houseperson, needed the Senate staff to do something if they’re we need to get a measure through.
So pretty close knit. And I think that’s still the situation today.
Murdoc: Yeah, probably on the staffer level, especially if they’re from state to state. You see that I was just out in DC and you see that, you know, there’s some of those DC Yale law school kids that are just hopping to hop in from staffer to staffer and Thunes is a nice office right now.
So you see some of that. But the rest of the kids run around, you know, Mill Bank, Watertown. They’re all, you know, and you know, powers as kids running around
Shoemaker: when we when it’s kind of a reunion of sorts, although it was not under the best of circumstances, but when Senator Johnson passed away late last year and everybody joined in Sioux Falls. And so there was a lot of committee staffers and a lot of district staffers and everybody kind of coming together. It doesn’t take long, even if they’re outsiders.
Yeah. If you know, if they come on board and they’re not hopping from one job, the other, they ended up spending a lot of time with this and became a part of the family. And again, they were absorbed. I remember years and years ago when Tim was on the house side, we had a staffer from LA and you had much smaller staffs back then, but she had to handle farm and tribal issues.
Speaker 1: And Libby was no more a farm girl than whatever. But she was the farmers and ranchers adopted her and they’d have a writing tractors and gave her a good understanding of what farm and egg issues were like. And that’s pretty cool. Quite a confident. it on those particular issues.
Murdoc: We’re talking with Darrell Shoemaker. He’s the Director of Communications for the city of Rapid City, sitting in for Mayor Jason Solomon. We’re going to take a quick break. I guess I’m walking into this a little unprepared on the story, but there were some water main breaks that we’re going to get to next when we reconvene your meeting with the mayor.
BREAK
Murdoc: On the back half of this week’s meeting with the mayor, my name is Murdoch. Thanks for joining in. If you’re listening to this live on the Cowboy, we sure appreciate it. If you go to the Cowboys website or you find us at homesliceaudio.com, you got a question for the mayor or anybody who stands in for the mayor week to week. You can sure get in your questions. We’ve had good ones lately about the fire department funding at the airport and that whole conversation. It was pretty interesting last week. I had a couple come in this week about water line breaks. I guess I wasn’t, I was asleep at the switch here. I don’t really know what’s going on.
Shoemaker: Sure. A lot of people think that the city’s had inordinate a number of water line breaks in recent years. And in reality, we can have a couple of dozen water line breaks throughout the fall, winter, spring season. One of the things we have changed in recent years is basically promoting them or at least publicizing when we have those water line breaks talking about impacts.
Murdoc: You put it on the Facebook page. Now it looks like there’s more.
Shoemaker: Because if there’s traffic impacts, if there’s impacts to water service, so we get the word out a little bit more. The reason we had, and especially that real bitter cold streak that we had here a while back, we had a number of water line breaks. And the reasons for our water line breaks usually are three fold. It could be aging infrastructure.
It can be the Freeze thaw. Shifting soils. And that’s the main, is the freeze-thaw cycle.
What people don’t understand. And I’m no engineer or scientist at heart, but it was explained and makes perfect sense that when we have that good stretch of really arctic cold weather, that freeze goes deeper and deeper in the ground. And what does that do? It’s putting pressure, even though the water lines are mainly six, seven feet deep. It’s pushing the soils down. And so it can put pressure on that water line, and then it can burst. It can have a break. Conversely, and then we had like 60, 70 degree temperatures or whatever it was right after that. And so what happens is then it thaws and that pressure is relieved, and then that can cause a water line break.
Murdoc: While we’re all going, oh, thank God that’s over.
Shoemaker: Yeah. And so we had a fair number. I mean, half a dozen or so there in about a week or two week period of time. We’ve had a few here in the last week or two. Our crews usually get on top of that right away. We try to identify the number that are affected, the actual geographic, you know, what streets are affected and if there’s any traffic impacts and then try to give a timetable for when repairs will be completed and water service restored. So that’s the reason behind some of the water line breaks that folks have been hearing about.
Murdoc: I guess I haven’t noticed once. Have I been lucky enough to where the waters ran just fine.
Shoemaker: Well, a lot of times it’s water pressure. You might not be able to service it, but it could be lower pressure.
Murdoc: Okay. I don’t know. I have no complaints. Pressure is fine, water is fine. Sounds good. All right. Things you take for granted until they’re gone, I suppose. So what else is cooking in the mayor’s office this week?
Shoemaker: Well, our Vision Fund Citizens Committee has been seated. They were approved by the council here earlier this month and the committee is hard at work. We had the project application deadline earlier this month. That came and went, right? It came and went and we had about 29 project proposals.
There was a couple that got set aside because they didn’t meet particular criteria. So the committee is looking over 29 project proposals. I think the grand total is well over $70 million in vision funds that are being requested. The committee actually has $12 million to work with. So that’s something that we’ve seen in previous cycles where there’s obviously more that’s being requested than what the committee has to dish out. But we’ve had, these are public projects, a lot of parks and sports field renovations in the mix, a lot of expansions. I like the Bachi Ball Court expanding that complex, doing maybe some things with more cameras in our park system.
Those are just a couple of examples. So what’s going to happen is the committees wrote up their sleeves working on vetting those proposals. They will be a series of public presentations and that will be coming up in April. I think Easter is April 20th, the 22nd through the 25th of April in council chambers from 4 to 8pm.
Murdoc: And so the committee then will go through their findings and present, I mean this one’s always tough because as you’re saying, $58 million worth of all good projects all word.
Showmaker: $72 million.
Murdoc: $72 million submitted. But $58 million going to get picked.
Murdoc: There’s only budget at 12 or 60 or whatever it is. So they’ll have to weed through those in those meetings and then does the council then vote on their submission or findings or recommendation?
Shoemaker: So they’ll have the review process and we’ll have these public presentations and help everybody with their PowerPoints and slideshows. And then ultimately the goal is in middle to late May, early June. Committee will come forward with their recommendations to the council. The council will then review those recommendations from the citizens committee and then make decisions on which projects will get funded. They could get funded in total. They could get funded partially. Oh, I didn’t know that.
Yeah. And I think the goal would be to fund them in total. But a lot of times, I mean we have everything from, I think there’s from $70,000 all the way up to $10 million request.
Murdoc: One of the critiques of the reasoning behind the mayor’s changing of the vision fund of how it works is there would be a lot of products that would get partial funding and then maybe couldn’t generate their funding to finish the rest of them. And now we’ve got a lot of good intentioned paper products with money that’s just sitting there that can’t be used.
Shoemaker: Yeah, that’s part of that review process is making sure that, you know, are you able to, if you only got X number of dollars, will you still be able to bring this project to fruition or could the, you know, and some and number of these projects are like city parks projects or public works projects, you know, would the city be able to continue these projects if they only got partial funding? So that’ll be part of the review process. But the idea in mind is that when it’s all said and done, and which is what we’ve seen with many of the projects since 1995, since we started the citizen fund process, many of those projects are really for the betterment of the community. And, you know, you go down the whole laundry list, even of just the public projects, everything from Canyon Lake Dam restoration to the West and South community gyms, skyline drive trail project. There’s a lot of projects in our community that are funded by the vision fund over the years that really are quality of life projects for our community.
Murdoc: What’s new with Canyon Lake lately? We didn’t prep this at all. But like, what’s the, what’s the, they dredge it, they not dredge, where’s it just, I don’t mean to, I’m not, I don’t mean this as a gotcha. It just kind of, where’s that?
Shoemaker: So with, when you mentioned dredging, a lot of people have seen some activity over by Jackson or across from Jackson Park. And I, and I didn’t even know until that was, that those are actually called Jackson ponds, that little area.
Murdoc: Yeah. How you fish there with my kids, the Jackson ponds, there’s good trout in there.
Shoemaker: Jackson ponds. And so GameFishingParks wants to basically enhance that area with more fishing opportunities.
Murdoc: Oh, fun.
Shoemaker: But as we all know, it doesn’t take very long in the spring. All of a sudden, here comes the, it gets overgrown. And so they’re dredging all of that out, make it a little bit deeper. GameFishingParks is going to, you know, put more fish in there.
Murdoc: Oh, fun.
Shoemaker It’ll be an enhanced fishing opportunity. And then when you mentioned about Canyon Lake, one of the Vision Fund proposals, I understand will be to, they need to, those, the ponds have those rock walls, those stone, stone walls around them. And they’ve been there for decades and they’re in various levels of deterioration and really need to be, to be replaced. And so I think one of the projects that’s on the parks priority list is to get those stone ponds redone and modernize.
Murdoc: Those flow ones down kind of below the dam in the park park is what you’re talking about. Yeah. I have, we did a birthday party there for my twins once and I had a couple of kids fall into those things. I had to dredge them out of there.
Shoemaker: Yeah, I had, I, in fact, my, my son, son who’s now 26, when he was really, really young, he would always call it, you call it pickle fishing. He was fishing for pickles and so he basically ended up head first into
Murdoc: the, you know, it’s a little green in there. It’s a little green. It is. Well, okay. So there’s a new fire, or I’m sorry, not fire department. There’s a new police station coming to town.
Shoemaker: Well, it’s in. It’s in the works. It’s on the front and center as far as, as, as we know, we’ve got satellite substations in, in the mall at the old Chuck E. Cheese location. There’s the clubhouse.
Murdoc: you guys gets keep the outfits and the uniforms? know a couple of games.
Keep the, keep the, you know, the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit. Yeah. For you to never know when you need it.
Shoemaker: Head long first, you know, but we’ve got the, the clubhouse at, at Nowood townhouses. So the plan is, is that what the council did earlier this week is they approved $1.8 million set aside money in the pocket sort of thing. So as there’s been some discussions, some negotiations, uh, and, and this approval of this money allows then the city to really hit fast forward and really, you know, they look at the different locations, come up with a location in the north rapid area that will be a brick and mortar.
Kind of like what we got over in Sheridan Lake. Yep. Road for the, for the West side precinct via one size, you know, put all these other satellite offices into that one facility. You know, the presence has been increased up there in recent years. We’ve seen dramatic results, improvements, positive reactions, and we’re doing, working proactively with the, the citizens in the north rapid area, but it also not only does it respond to the need, but it’s also having that a precinct in the north rapid area will respond to the major growth that we’re seeing in that, that East and North East part of the community.
Murdoc: I think it gets, you know, a North side police operation on the headline of it sound, ooh, North side police operation, but that to your point of growth is really why this is a driver. It’s not really about a crime statistic one way or the other is, I see it. It’s, we’re just expanding so far East.
Shoemaker: It’s, it’s a little bit of both. I mean, you know, obviously the, the, when we had a number of issues up there, they working with the, the Noelwood and the apartment folks up there, we got a presence there. Now we’ve seen really dramatic improvements with the police working proactively with the citizens, working on particular issues, quicker response and so forth, and then having that engagement with the community and community outreach, like at the mall substation as well. So this will be an opportunity to not only address need, but then again, just knowing that this is going to be continued growth as we, as we look to the future, that there’s that boots on the ground, that 24 seven presence right now when you’ve got substations, basically they still have to come into town, start their day and end their day in town, rather than being right there at the precinct.
Murdoc: Well, that’s going to do it for the time. That was pretty informative, man. Goes real fast when Derrell comes in here.
Shoemaker: Easter egg, hunt on April 5th.
Murdoc: Mark your calendars for that. Also cleanup week is in late April, the week of the 21st of the year. Oh yeah, I’ve got it. Do you think I could make my producer come into my house and help me with that cleanup?
Shoemaker: You know, it’s a, it’s a time for everybody to just, you know, clean out their attics, their garage.To grow bonding opportunity. We always say it’s a great way for teams to come together and, and nothing, nothing, nothing spells camaraderie than putting plastic bags in everybody’s hands and getting out and cleaning the trash.
Murdoc:Get some leaves and get your washers out of the garage and all the other stuff.
Shoemaker: And they, they, they do, they pick up a lot of stuff. Just tons of material is, is dropped off at the landfill and put out curbside. It really cleans up our community.
Murdoc: He’s Derrell Shoemaker. He’s always a great guest and a dear friend. He’s the director of communications for the city of Rapid City. And we’re always really glad. Not that we want the mayor to ditch this meeting, but it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a different show and it’s real informative when you’re on. I appreciate you coming on. Appreciate the invite.
Thanks. That’s going to do it. It’s our meeting with the mayor. I’ll motion to adjourn.
Jakob: So moved.
Murdoc: No, you gotta have a second.
Shoemaker: I’ll second.
Murdoc: And then you can adjourn us. We’ve never done it right once. You’re fine.
Jakob: Wait, and then I say motion to adjourn.
Murdoc: Sure. No, I said motion to adjourn. Then he seconded.
Jakob: So, so moved is what I say. Right?
Murdoc: I guess we’ll find out next week.
Jakob:Okay.
