Every Friday, we sit down with Mayor Jason Salamun to discuss the latest events and stories shaping Rapid City. Tune in and stay informed
Read along as we discuss key local issues impacting the city.
Meeting With the Mayor transcript from 04/18/25:
Murdoc: All right, Friday afternoon, we’re punched back in, gavel, gavel, gavel, we need a gavel noise. Will you gavel us? Will you get a gavel noise, Jakob?
Jakob: I Will
Murdoc: Okay, very good. It’s time once again for your Friday afternoon meeting with the mayor every Friday afternoon. Mayor Jason Solomon from Rapid City joins us for one full half hour of your thoughts, questions, things happening in Rapid City, and sometimes it’s wrestling, sometimes it’s music, and it’s all kinds of good stuff. Mayor Jason, thanks for coming back, sir.
Salamun: Well, my pleasure. Maybe you could do the gavel, but you could do the law and order. Dun dun. You know, just. Like that. Everybody gets everybody’s attention, takes no time at all.
Murdoc: Let’s start with TikTok. Okay. The Lieutenant Governor said I could be Secretary of TikTok. I have it in an email. Well. So if this happens, just come down the pipe. Yeah, let’s talk about it. You know. I’ve been nominated. Appointed.
Salamun: I made national news, me and others, here locally a couple of years ago in like the Wall Street Journal picked up a story about following the state’s lead to not allow TikTok on government devices. I introduced something at the city level, which was shot down by the way I lost, but it got national attention. Eventually all these other cities did do it, but. Now that you’re bitter. They didn’t want me to be the canary in the coal mine, I think.
Murdoc: That was nice of them.
Salamun: I’m not afraid to go first.
Murdoc: That was nice of them to be speaking of your well-being. You know, you don’t see that a lot.
Salamun: I’m okay to go first sometimes, but most people are built that way. I have to remind myself. So ironically enough, I got a call Monday. I could say this now because it’s all public. I got a call Monday saying the highest bidder that we know of, who’s from Wyoming for TikTok.
Was reaching out to, had already reached out to the governor. So this is the governor’s office of economic development reached out to me and said, they want to talk, they want to have a visit with you and our economic development folks about potentially this location, this area. I said, well, absolutely.
I didn’t know anything about, you know, the guy or anything. And they’re like, by the way, you cannot say anything. So this will be a conversation, just an introductory deal.
He’s talked to the governor. All right, this is Monday night. I’m literally driving home after a long Monday on the phone. Said I got it. Thank you. I’ll do a little research on the guy.
Murdoc: What’s that like when you hang up that call? You’re like, man, my life’s got weird.
Salamun: Yeah, I’m like TikTok coming here when I just, I had a chuckle and actually I told the man who called me, good guy. I said, this is kind of ironic for me, but if they sell to the US, you know, we certainly would be interested in having conversations about what that means with regards to headquarters, data centers, those sort of things.
Murdoc Gillette, home of TikTok and bar fights.
Salamun: Well, it could happen. So literally I’m like, okay, mom’s the word. And you know, sometimes I tell you, Murdoch, that there’s things I wish I could tell you about right now. We gotta just hold off on this one. And it’s just usually a timing thing. Because by the way, I get a lot of those kind of calls and they don’t always come to fruition. So I don’t like just to throw things out without it having.
Murdoc: This one, this one hit, buddy.
Salamun: Well, then Tuesday morning, I get a link sent to me. Say, did you see this? I’m like, not only did I see it, but I was supposed to keep it under wraps and they’re gonna talk to us. And everybody’s like, and I saw this from “Beijing to Black Hills”.
Murdoc: Great headline, by the way, from Beijing to Black Hills.
Salamun: Let’s go to Scout. Yeah, man, those guys were on it. That’s where I read it from. And they do pretty good with that. And I’ll say, like, I’m sure the governor feels this way.
I haven’t talked to him yet about TikTok, but we’re always gonna listen to opportunities. But I do think it’s not any kind of guarantee at South Dakota, I believe, just looking at newspaper articles. He really wanted to bring it to Wyoming, his home state. But there could be a variety of reasons. Could be that both states end up with something. So we’re always gonna look at those kind of opportunities and see if it works out and what that means.
Murdoc: If that price gets yipped up a little bit, we might need a couple of you rich people to help out. Right now it’s at 45 billion. If we need to kick it up another billion or two.
Salamun: Yeah, I’m told there are four U.S. bidders. So there’s a lot of variables with this. And this is extremely preliminary because, first of all, will Byte Dance, the Chinese company who owns TikTok sell?
Will that actually happen? Two, there are four bidders. Is the highest price really going to be what they determine? Or are there other factors? I don’t know, I don’t know the answer to these questions. But regardless, whenever we’ve had companies like this, and by the way, we’ve had some other big ones who’ve had conversations with us, they move a lot slower. I think this would move a little bit quicker because there’s a sale and there’s a deadline for it. And it got extended already once.
Actually, it might have been twice. And so we’ll see where it goes. I think the governor is already on record on talking about having those conversations. And the Black Hills, obviously with the School of Mines here, I think our proximity probably to Wyoming. And we have a lot of great things going for us here, a quality of life too for the kind of folks who would have the jobs.
Murdoc: They ain’t gonna live in Gillette, all due respect. You might be able to make the energy there. You ain’t gonna live there.
Salamun: I recently met with the mayor of Gillette. They got a lot of good things going. I love meeting them.
Murdoc: I’m hard on Gillette. Mayors and I… You gotta be nicer to them than I do.
Salamun: Mayors have a unique thing that no matter where you’re mayor, it’s what I’ve noticed. It’s kind of like, oh, you too, you get it. So Gillette, they got some great things going on. But so shout out to my friends at Gillette, even though you can’t vote for me or anything. I’m just being nice.
Murdoc: Well, let’s do, there’s TikTok. Let’s do the North Side.
Let’s move to more tangible things that are actually gonna happen. Sorry, I’m not trying to sound like a hater. It’s just, you know. So there’s, tell me, remind me where we are on the North Side Police Department. Is it, we have land, is it… Yeah, we, what building and the whole thing, right?
Salamun: Well, here’s what, we announced last, or Monday, we actually announced our intention to purchase the Sewing Center building on Nowood Drive. This is after looking at a total of four properties.
So this is one of four. There was a retail space on Haynes. There was another facility nearby and then building up near East North Street. But this would, this made a lot of sense because it’s near our current substation. So we have a substation that we’ve had for a while to help us address some of the violence that was in the neighborhood there. If you remember the, we call the big three apartments, the ABCs.
We had a serious amount of issues and there are still occasionally challenges there, but we were able to really make great progress there due to work of great people. However, we announced the intention to purchase this building and it will go before the city council on Monday night. And basically it’s part of our decentralization strategy. We have a precinct in the Southwest Rapid City. Of course, we have our downtown public safety building. Now we’re moving to the North, which part of that is, there’s a lot more growth that’s going to happen to the North and to the East.
So this gives us better response times, ability to have a presence in key areas and it really thinks strategically. We can’t continue to build onto a public safety building. We’re gonna have to build out into other models. Precinct models very common for as communities grow.
Murdoc: So. This is well established.
Salamun: Yeah, and the great thing about this one is the price tag’s a little bit more than we would like. However, it didn’t take very much at all for remodeling costs. We can use it for training space as well. It’s got a lot of open.
Murdoc: Bunch of fabric lying around. You can redo the curtains with.
Salamun: You know, we’ll have to pay for a new sign. I mean, there’ll be a little bit of stuff we’ll have to get to spruce it up, make it look like a police precinct, but the other locations needed a ton of work would have been far more expensive in the end. So this is a great deal. We’ve proven that that location works because right next to it is our substation, which is kind of behind the Chuck E. Cheese’s area. It’s worked. So actually we have evidence that this has actually had a great deterrent effect. Now we can have a larger presence, have better response times to serve the growing needs in North Rapid.
Murdoc: Is, I’d assume something like this is fairly universally popular. I haven’t. Is there a?
Salamun: Most ever. I’ve had a lot of feedback that it’s very positive. I think probably the only those who, only folks who won’t be happier, those who own the other buildings we didn’t select.
Murdoc: Well, sure. That’s, that’s, but that’s, you know, them’s the tricks
Salamun: that’s, but I think in terms of like. The actual people, the actual citizens of Rapid City, who I hear from and I talk to more people than most people do. This has been a very popular move. The council has been very engaged on this or were for council members.
Lance Lehmann and John Roberts have been involved. That’s their ward that they represent. And I don’t expect any issues among the council, but you never know. There, some people don’t. We do have some anti police people too. So I suppose they might not be happy, but I haven’t heard, heard that. We’ll see. You know, if there’s any kind of opposition, but regardless, it’s gonna happen. And I think it’s in the best interest of Rapid City, which is at the end of the day, what I care about.
Murdoc: Also, I’ll just on that note, everyone’s like, oh, the protestors. Well, I mean, everybody protests everything. That’s not, you know what I mean? Like we all used to do this high and holding a little bit. It didn’t used to be like, oh my God, we better make sure we talk about the thing. All right. Protesters every Friday for the courthouse. It’s the American sign holding on the corners. Is God given American right? Just be cool.
Salamun: Yeah, just don’t break the law when you do it. Just, you know, get your sign, stand on the corner, don’t stone obstruct traffic. That’s what I would say. But yeah, protesters, that’s a whole other topic. I suppose. But obviously, yeah, we respect people’s first amendment rights so long as they’re respecting the rights of others. Yeah.
Murodc: Old days. That’s what it was, right?
Murdoc: I mean, you know. Little bit of the old, Ralph and Sam or whatever the whole cartoon was. I’m sure. Not on everyone’s Christmas card list.
Salamun:They don’t all like me either But you know, what are you gonna do? So.
Murdoc: Did you say you were going to speak at a firefighter training?
Salamun: Oh, yeah, well, we have a recruit graduation. Recruit graduation, okay. Yeah, so we have a new crop of firefighters that have been in training and I love going to those graduations and I’ll attend.
Murdoc: How many new ones do we graduate a year? Oh, it’s, well, it. Is it an annual thing?
Salamun: No, it’s usually two or three a year, I think. Usually like seven to 10 per class, something like that. And so we’ll have a new group this year. I will give some remarks to them. You know, I’m very proud of the work that our firefighters do and we have excellent trainers, by the way. I think one of the things I love is you see some of the firefighters who are now into training. You can tell they have a passion for it.
Like I love to see that. They’re very proud. They’ve worked hard to get these folks ready. And when you meet these young people, dude, it is, and they’re young compared to me. I mean, most, sometimes they come in, they’re actually experienced from other places. They might have some years under their belt, but you’re very, they’re very sharp. You’re kind of, you’re very impressed by, it’s kind of like our producer here. Just very impressed with this generation that’s coming up.
Murdoc: Yeah, got some new, got some good ones coming up.
Salamun: I really, you know, as the kind of the Gen X folks that you and I probably represent, you’re going to consider yourself in the landing.
Murdoc: I do, yes, I do.
Salamun: You’re younger than you are.
Murdoc: I do.
Salamun: You know me so well. I’m surprised you don’t dye your hair. You know, at least you’ve done that. At least you haven’t gone that far. Respect.
Murdoc:Appreciate that. Used to, used to, for sure used to. But, you know, but it makes you very, very proud. And so there’s a lot of work. These are next generation of, you know, of firefighters and EMTs and paramedics. And so we’re very grateful for them.
And yeah, it’s awesome to be able to do that. Well, let’s take a quick break when we come back. I’ve been saving the real fun stuff to the second half where we’ll talk about what’s going to happen with the vision fund next week. Also, you had a chat with our attorney general, Mr. Marty Jackley, we’ll talk about that. And more when we come back is your meeting with the mayor.
Murdoc: Punched back in. It is your meeting with the mayor every week. We punch in with mayor Jason Salamun.
We talk about what’s happening in Rapid City, western South Dakota, the Black Hills and sometimes beyond. It’s vision fun week next week. Big, big, big week. Three days in a row public here. It’s like the city council protester Super Bowl next week.
Salamun: Well, yeah, it’s going to be good. The vision fun committee, they’ll be listening to all of the presentations from every project. Also an opportunity for the public to hear as well.
It will be really interesting. A lot of really worthwhile projects, as always, not enough funding. So, appreciate the dedication of this vision fund committee. I know they’re working hard. They have an aggressive timeline.
Murdoc: Patience at John Kaiser has never been more readily evident.
Salamun: Well, you know, I gave him a big task. You don’t have as much time to get proposals to the council. You got to go through it. Do your homework. They’ve done tours. They are working hard. The citizen committees never fail on that part. When people are that engaged, they love these opportunities and we appreciate them doing it.
Murdoc: So it’s three nights and everybody who’s made the, is it fair to say made the cut so far or is it everybody who’s presenting?
Salamun: How’s it work? I believe it’s every project proposal will be heard from what I understand. You know, many of them are city ones as well. They’ll just hear them all. It’ll be presentations. I believe they’re timed.
Murdoc: I want to say, I was just going to say, what’s the, what’s 10 or 20 minutes? Oh, wow. Really? you give everybody 20 minutes. That seems like a ton.
Salamun: I think it’s two hours every night. It’s like four to six on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I believe. And I might be wrong on the 20 minutes. That’s their rules. I don’t set those rules. They might have, they may have a 10 minute presentation and time for questions. I don’t know.
Murdoc: Just for reference, like I got a little thing on my, you know, them little like sand counter clock downs. I have a 90 second one on my desk. If you come in to my office and you won’t pitch a bit and you can’t get it in 90 seconds, you don’t have a bit. It’s a great rule.
Salamun: I like that. I’m going to steal that idea. I’m telling you.
Speaker 3: You can’t tell me what we’re looking for. 90 seconds.
Salamun: I got a 90 seconds to let it lay it off me. First of all, they have to find me in my office. I’m always in meetings.
Murdoc: That’s what they say, too. Well, bring your own 90 second clock then. So when does, they go through those hearings or presentations next week? And then what happens?
Salamun: Well, then they will, they probably have, I think they’ve developed some sort of a matrix scorecard that they will each probably individually score, then they’ll probably compare notes and start to work on a, on ranking. And then the rankings and looking at the funding that’s available and probably putting them in spots, you know, my recommendations, they take two or three of the big ones and fund them. And then you can go from there. I would urge them not to give everybody a little bit, but actually to try to as much as possible, fully fund. Pick a couple of projects.
Murdoc: Yeah. So what’s, I guess, let’s think of the time or I guess this is more for the listener is wondering how this shakes out. What’s the timeline from soup to nuts here? They have the hearings and then the council eventually votes on this, right?
Salamun: Yeah. Basically here they are listening to the public hearings this week. Then in May, they will work on their rankings and probably have follow up stuff. I’m sure, because they’re going to deliberate, you know, deliberations going to take some time with them. But my, my challenge to them was either at the end of May, beginning of June, I want to have a presentation to the city council before and reason was because we have an election in June. We have new, we potentially, I didn’t, I don’t know how it’s all going to shake out, but we potentially have a new council in July. It may not be up to speed as much as this council. So this, well, this council is the one who, you know, made the changes with the vision fund.
And I think it was fair that they would ultimately be the ones to make that final decision. So it’s an aggressive timeline. However, they don’t have as many projects to consider, but they do have a big dollar ampunt to consider.
Murdoc: That’s interesting. And a good reminder, by the way, that we do have an election coming up in June, and you should vote in it and make your voice heard and find the candidate on the council that resonates with you the most. And that’s all set. And there’s a few that are uncontested and a few that are. And that’s all coming up
Salamun: in school board as well.
Murdoc:Oh, yeah, it is a school board vote too. And two of those boards are, I don’t know if they’re boards in the school board. They’re districts, areas, areas, areas. And then, you know, as long as we’re on the feel good kick here, don’t forget the Rapid City Community Cleanup is next week. It’s the 21st through the 25th. We actually do a, our team gets pretty excited about this.
Salamun: Yeah, it’s great. You see everybody out with their bags. You’re going to see those bags in every corner. That’s what’s going on. It’s a good time for everybody to do is a little spring cleaning.
Murdoc: It’s amazing what a difference it makes too you really do like everybody, a bunch of companies get involved, a bunch of organizations, a bunch of churches, a bunch of youth groups, everyone picks their little area, you just go around and takes two hours to grab all you can in a week, you can see an immediate difference in town.
Salamun: Yeah, a long rapid Greek along with the wind, blow, you know, we get that wind, everything. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Murdoc: And it’s not, it’s not like a, you know, people are littering and it’s gross. It’s wind, it’s muck, it’s winter, it’s snow. It’s, you know what I mean? It’s, it’s time to clean it up and look good for the tourists. Let’s see what else is happening here.
Salamun: Well, the flag and banner policy.
Murdoc: Oh, yes. Okay. I don’t, I don’t even know how to set this up. I don’t know what this is.
Salamun: Monday night, the council’s considering this and we’re bringing it forward to basically, the Supreme Court had a ruling recently that basically said your flags and banners, it can be government speech or you open it up for everybody to use. So we’re essentially, saying it’s going to be government speech, meaning it’s what that means.
That sounds funny. That’s their term. I don’t particularly care for the term, but basically the banners, we’re outlying what can be used for banners and for flags in our community. These are going to be all government related. So obviously the United States flags, state flag, any potential city flags will be flown and, you know, other associated reck, officially recognized flags.
But in addition, we carve out items for like the South Dakota School of Mines. And the big one, and this is the big one, I’m going to make sure it’s very clear. We specifically said in there that there’s, that we will allow banners honoring veterans in the military. And so we are basically making sure, the big thing is nonprofits really won’t be able to use the banners anymore. And the challenge is determining which ones get to use it and which ones don’t. So we can certainly have,
Murdoc: Do you mean the banners overhead downtown?
Salamun: Like, All of them, every banner, everything that’s a banner. So everything on the light poles. Have you ever seen the veteran banners?
Murdoc: Yes, of course. Absolutely.
Salamun: Yep. Well, other people want to use those too. Okay.
Murdoc: So it’s, this is a meeting about what should be like revenue for the city and what, okay.
Salamun: It has nothing to do with revenue. It has to do with what’s allowed. Fair enough. So we don’t want the culture wars playing out, I think, on flags and banners. We’d rather keep it neutral territory that are basically it’s city related items that will be on there with in government uses, which could include schools and universities also includes the military and veterans that fits into the scope of what we’re talking about. So we’re, the policies coming before the council to do that.
But one of the, I think some people will try to use it and say, Oh, they’re shutting down the veteran banners. Absolutely not. We will not do that. That is not at all. The goal, in fact, we have it explicitly laid out in there.
Murdoc: So is this a land mine? I don’t understand. It seems like a fairly, as far as government goes, it’s kind of boring.
Salamun: It is. Okay. It’s boring, but because we have veteran banners, I don’t want people to be, the reason I wanted to bring this up today, I don’t want people to think that the veteran banners are going away. They are not. They’re protected as part of this. As part of this policy. They do a fantastic job with that. But so that would be the probably the controversial thing of people thought we were trying to get rid of those. Absolutely not with this, but the policy cleans things up based on settled law, at least through the Supreme Court. So just wanted to make sure that that was clarified, because some people are going to go, what happens to the veteran banners?
We’re not getting, everybody loves them. I have family members on them as well. I’m a veteran myself, of course, but I wanted to make that perfectly clear. I think I think I’ve done that here at least for all y’all listening in.
Murdoc: I guess, and so it like when I’m, the way I think of these is like those ones downtown that hang between the buildings and it’s like homecoming week and that kind of stuff. Is that part of this as well?
Salamun: Those too. Okay. Yeah. You have to, it all is encompassed. So your flags and banners, whether they’re hanging off a light pole or over buildings or on a flagpole, it’s all the same. So that is what we have.
Unless we have a, you know, a contract with you as well. So there’s some, for example, visit Rapid City, who is a tax taxing and they’ve received taxpayer funds to promote Rapid City. So they’ll be allowed there. It’s not going to be terribly different. It’s just that there’s a policy now. And it’s clear and it’s going to help everybody you know, I think understand that what can and can’t go on the flag poles and on our banners and our light poles and all of that.
Murdoc: You real quick, we just, I don’t want to run out of time here, but you had a good meeting with our attorney general.
Salamun: You said this week, yeah, we had a great meeting, talked a lot about public safety issues, things that, you know, I’ve observed. We talked, you know, about everything from, you know, he’s very committed to public safety. I appreciate that. He’s our chief law enforcement officer, after all, chief prosecutor.
Murdoc: I mean, it was most of his session bills involved around that kind of stuff.
Salamun: Well, that is what he does. That’s what he’s hired to do. So he did the job that he’s hired to do. And we’re on the same page on a lot of that talked about, you know, the need for more treatment, East River and West River, because a lot of our public safety issues are, can be attributed back to drug and alcohol abuse. So we’d like to see that.
And he has some ideas on that, which is pretty interesting, but it’s really good. You know, I love being able to visit with leaders around the state and get that opportunity frequently to talk, shop, share ideas, and try to get on the same page. It’s better when we’re working together, appreciate it, the attorney general making the time, coming and visiting me. He’s a great guy.
Murdoc: He is, he’s, you know, what’s interesting about Marty is he’s got, he’s real conservative and he’s real law, he’s a law and order dude, right? And sometimes that comes out a little rigid. You’ve never seen anybody talk with so much empathy like you do when Marty gets on that. He’s real good at that, man.
Salamun: He’s good. I think he’s outstanding. So, so anyways, that was good. Glad, glad to meet up with him. And as you know, I tried to tell you, you know, when I have some folks, I have a lot of cool people that come by my office and meet with me each week. Some people you don’t know, some people you do know, but it’s one of the fun parts of the job. Yeah, good hang your office.
Murdoc: The furniture setup’s got the good Feng Shui. Well you have somebody retiring?
Salamun: Yeah, a special shout out to Sharon at the city. Sharon has taken care of our facilities, cleaning it, making sure it’s, it’s tidy, but she has the best attitude and is very well known throughout our, our building.
And just want to say thank you, Sharon, for all your service and really just for being so wonderful. She, she, she made sure I had plants and she names them and she, I love that. She gives little trinkets and she wants me to have a great day and she, I don’t know, she just has, she’s just real down to earth and we’re going to miss her. You know, it’s, it’s one of those people you, you see every day and now you’re not going to see every day, but she’ll still be a citizen, of course, but special shout out to Sharon on your retirement. Thank you.
Murdoc: Rad, Sharon. This meeting isn’t an honor of Sharon. There you go. Appreciate all your efforts. Yeah. All right. That’s going to do it. It’s our half hour every week. We hang out with Mayor Jason Solomon. We talk about the things and another, another other time well spent, my friend.
Salamun: Real quick. Good Friday to everybody. Wish you well. I hope you have a wonderful Easter. He is risen.
Jakob: Motion to adjourn.
Murdoc: Second.
Salamun: All right. We’re adjourned.
Murdoc: Gavill noise. Dun dun.
