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 06/06/25:
Houston: Hello again, everyone. It’s Mark Houston, filling in for Murdoch here on Meeting with the Mayor. Name says it all. That’s what I’m doing right now. Meeting with the Mayor of Rapid City. Mayor Jason Solomon, welcome back, man.
Salamun: Well, it is great to be here. Great to be with you, Mark.
Houston: Thanks. I appreciate it. What’s been exciting this past week for you in Rapid City? Anything?
Salamun: Well, this week has been an adventure to say the least. A lot of ups and downs, to be honest with you, but the elections were this week. That’s a pretty big deal.
The Vision Fund recommendations came out this week, and the Vision Fund Committee is presenting it Monday night to the City Council, but their list is public. That creates some reaction. A lot of folks happy, other folks aren’t. That’s the way to go.
Houston: Do you get a lot of people to chime in on that?
Salamun: Yeah, well, people are passionate. All of these projects represent groups that are very passionate about their projects. This committee worked very hard to narrow down a list. My thing is, of course, I have preferences as well, but I have to respect the work they put in. I think they tried to do their best to give as much as they could to as many projects as they could. They seem to be almost got 29 projects. They got 14 projects with some funding, which is pretty darn good.
For me, I’m a big proponent of the sports complex. I would have liked to see some funding allocated towards that as a way forward. We’ll continue to work on that. I will always promote that and continue to work on funding sources for that.
I also understand the position they were in. A lot of the recommendations were through two awesome things, quite frankly. A lot of parks and recreation projects.
One of my favorite ones is the Kenya Lake Ponwal Restoration. I know that doesn’t sound like a big deal if you’re not from here, but it is a big deal.
Houston: That’s a gem in our community. That is my favorite park. I grew up around that park. The whole special meaning. It needs to be taken care of and a lot of folks enjoy it. You have a lot of sports fields and projects like that that got funded. They are recommending some funding towards phase one of a camera system for the city at busy intersections and such. That’s something they brought forward. They really distributed the funds as best as they could. The challenge is, I think some of the ones that didn’t make the cut were because maybe their dollar amounts were too high and would take up too much.
They gravitated towards some of the ones that were a little more manageable. I think that’s the sports complex. John Kaiser, who’s the chair, we held a press conference this week. He even said that was one project he wished they could have put in there, but it would have taken up the bulk of it. They made the conscious decision as a group to actually just give it to as many groups as they could. The council ultimately has the final call.
They’ll look at it, but I think you have to respect the work they put in. It does carry weight. It always did with me when I was on the city council. Quite frankly, I don’t get a vote on this matter. I helped select this committee.
It was confirmed by the council. I gave them some expectations in an aggressive timeline. They met it. They worked very hard.
We appreciate their efforts. Even though I might be a little disappointed about the sports complex, that doesn’t mean it’s not happening by any means. I think we’ll look at other options moving forward.
Salamun: That’s been probably one of the big things. We’ve been working on this for a long time. They had $12 million to allocate over the next five years towards community projects. A lot of things were going to be in the realm of parks and recreation. Quite frankly, I think they met that goal.
Houston: Good. I’m a little disappointed though. I didn’t see this in the Vision Fund. What happened to the Bacon Park sign? Why is that thought in there anymore? Can you please do something about that?
Salamun: People think I have authority over this.
Houston: You know how that was a shock to see that come down.
Salamun: Iconic sign. I found out about it on social media. Then I drove by and I’m like, this is weird. It is weird, isn’t it? It is weird. They did such a good job with that restoration
Houston: of Bacon Park. It looks beautiful over there now.
Salamun: I give them a lot of credit for that. I thought maybe they’re just doing some maintenance, but I haven’t heard there’s rumors that maybe it’s not coming back up at all.
Houston: What I’ve heard is because of the way that it was set in that parking lot, it makes it a driving hazard a little bit because those four big or five big pillars the sign sat on. So maybe they can find a new spot for it that is more appropriate.
Salamun: That’s okay. I think it’s okay to relocate it. That’s probably true. It’s probably hurting. Maybe they could actually build something there and make some more money on it. But that sign is just iconic. It is.
It’s shocking to see it down. And for us, and who knows? I haven’t asked what the plan is.
So for all we know, there’s a bigger plan at play and it is their sign. It’s not like it was declared a historic item, but people, we love. Bacon Park, we apparently really love Bacon Park. No kidding. Where’s the old Piggly Wiggly sign?
Houston: Oh, don’t Steven get me down that path right now. We could go.
Salamun: That was before my time, but I’ve seen pictures.
Houston: Oh yeah. That was a big deal too for a while down here. Speaking of the elections again, voter turnout is always an issue. And I don’t understand why. What’s your thoughts on that? How do you, as the mayor, I mean, how do you get people excited to do these kind of elections? Or are we ever going to get people excited to come vote?
Salamun: Well, there are multiple things. For starters, we had this conversation last week where we predicted the voter turnout. And what was it? I said 10%. Doc said nine. And it was seven, wasn’t it? No, it was 10. It was 10. Oh, good job.
Here in our community, it was 10, which was still too low. Yeah. Okay. I was right. Right.
Because I was like, you’re proud of that. No, I was like, we have to get to double digits, but I still think it’s going to be a low turnout based on history. Local elections in particular, when you don’t have big campaigns, when you have big campaigns and people fighting it out and getting people passionate, and I think that’s tough. When you have other things on the ballot, obviously, such as when we have primary elections for president, governor, senator, house, then legislature, or you get volume.
So I think that’s a challenge. And not every ward of our city was contested on city council. We did have two that were uncontested. So depending on if they had a school board candidate, and by the way, people are so passionate about school board, I would think that would be the real… Exactly. That’s what’s so surprising.
Yeah. And that turnout was just abysmal. And you can break it out even by the parts of town. So Rapid City, we divide in these five wards, and you look at those, and I can just say, just in my campaign, we had, I think ours was 30-something percent turnout, maybe 40.
It was way better than this. That seems like a better number. But when we talk about 10% turnout to vote, this is a 10% of the city. This is 10% of the people who are registered voters in the city. So really, nine out of 10 who could vote just decided not to. Now, some go on vacation, but that’s why you have early voting.
It was really easy. Most of these were one candidate options. And I think some of it’s on the candidates to generate enthusiasm. For me, you try to build a base, and you try to get your message out and have people who align with you fire it up to vote for you.
I mean, there are some strategies on the candidates as well. Summertime here, as you know, we’re so noncommittal. Summertime, it’s kind of like why there’s not a ton of summer concerts. I’d love to see it, but it’s because of our recreational mindset in the summertime. We like a lot of coming and going. That’s the reason why a lot of us live here.
Houston: But why don’t we move it? Why does it have to be in June?
Salamun: Why can’t we move it to a time when it’s more… It’s a problem in November, so you’re going to have June and November are the elections. Because you have June primaries. Next June, we had a primary last year for president. Good turnout. It’s not the time of year. It’s really the interest in what we’re voting for.
Houston: Do you feel this would be… And this might lead us into the second half of what I want to talk about a little bit here for this. But do you feel that a national holiday should be made for like the Tuesday?
Salamun: I think for federal elections, yeah. And I also think employers should give flexibility for their staff to go and vote on voting day. And I also think the option of early voting is very convenient for people. It’s a big deal.
So people think Election Day this time, we know, was in June, but it started back in May, really. Right, absolutely. And so that’s a big deal, too. There’s no excuse not to vote. We had all the options. I am disappointed by the turnout. Sioux Falls for their school board election in April, they had less than 3%.
Houston: Oh my word. Are you kidding? 2.0 something. I think it’s just under 3. And I really did not want that for us. But 10 is not like anything I’m going to go throw a parade for. No, exactly. So thank you to everybody who did vote. By the way, the future is shaped by those who turn up. So if you actually voted, you helped shape the future.
If you didn’t, you also helped shape the future because your void left an opening maybe for somebody you don’t even like to be elected. And so I always say vote. I vote for values and vision. And so I say, okay, what the values this person have and what’s the vision that they have. That’s what I’ll do with the governor race.
Exactly. By share values, what’s their vision? I always encourage people get to know those things and decide of who best aligns with you. Nobody’s perfect.
Nobody’s going to align with you perfectly, but there is somebody who’s better aligned with you than somebody else. We need better candidates running, more candidates running. We need better turnout, more enthusiasm, less apathy. Well, I couldn’t have said that better myself, Mr. Mayor. There’s a reason why I think you’re running a city, the second largest city in South Dakota. That’s very well said.
Salamun: Thank you. I’m just going to go for your job when I’m all done, Mark. You know what? Make the big bucks like you. Yeah, exactly.
Houston: This is where the money is, Mr. Mayor. All right. Coming up, I want to get your take on something that, unfortunately, everybody is talking about right now. And you said you had some thoughts, so I can’t wait.
All right. That’s what’s going to be coming up, meeting with the mayor. It’s Mayor Jason Sullivan. I’m Mark Houston. And we’re back, meeting with the mayor, Mayor Jason Solomon here of Rapid City. I am Mark Houston.
And I wanted to get your take on something, Jason. Nationally, it has been these past 48 hours. It’s been hard to imagine a stranger time.
We’ve had them in our country for sure. Trump’s political moves, Elon Musk’s social media shakeups, putting it mildly. From your perspective as a mayor here, how do these kind of high-profile divisive events, do they ripple down into the politics here in Rapid City?
Salamun: Well, that’s a good question. You know, I think it’s sad to see what’s going on. I think I’d love it. I like it when those two are working together. I think Trump is, it’s all started with that big, beautiful bill. And I think there are amazing things in that bill. There are a couple of things in that bill I don’t like either. Not a big fan of not being able to regulate AI locally.
Houston: It was like 10 years or something. Yeah, not a fan of that. Not a fan of the the carbon capture pipeline stuff that overrides the states. I think I still believe in federalism. And so those would be a couple of things I don’t like. I do think the tax cuts, making those permanent. It’s the death ceilings, the thing that Musk really got fired up about. You know, there those bills in order to get the votes, they have to throw a bunch of crap in there. And I hate that. I wish it was one thing at a time. But so I think that’s like what started that. And I think, you know, at the end of the day,
Salamun: Trump probably had things, his goals, he wants to accomplish. He has to live with some of those bad things, the turds in order to get the things he wants to do. And I think, you know, some of that is awesome stuff.
I actually really appreciate it. So that’s what kind of started it. And of course, you know, he’s been there working, you know, working his tail off with Doge and probably feeling a little bit undermined by his efforts, I’m going to assume. I don’t know how he feels. So my hope is they’ll reconcile. They don’t have to be BFFs or anything like that.
But I do think best friends forever, if you don’t know what that means. But I do think the the issues out there are so great, it’s better when we’re on the same page on the least the things that matter. But everybody has things they have shared goals on and things they’re going to differentiate on.
I do think it’s a it’s a picture of the world. I mean, I’ll just tell you just politically, I have people like, I should be well aligned with you politically. But for whatever reason, you have camps that just start to form. It’s it’s everything divides. It’s right.
It doesn’t take long. I mean, you see this, you know, I call it the Parmesan cheese effect. So I say, Mark, do you like food? Yes. Okay.
Do you like Italian food? Yes. Okay.
Me too. Right. Do you like spaghetti? Yes. Okay.
Me too. Do you like meatballs on your spaghetti? No. Okay.
Well, I don’t. And so you’re my mortal enemy. We didn’t even make it to Parmesan cheese, which I would just say if you said yes to the meatballs, I would say, okay, do you like Parmesan cheese?
Houston: Parmesan cheese.
Salamun: All right. So you’re good there. But but you get my point. And now because of that, and might very well be true, we don’t have nuance enough to say, okay, you’re now my enemy. Right.
Now that’s going to apply to everything else. And we can’t work together on things. And I think President Trump and Elon Musk, there were shared goals. And I think you got to things that they disagreed on, you know, maybe, you know, Trump says, you know, Elon Musk was upset about the EV mandates being removed, which I think is a good thing. I think, I think we should have all of the available for cars, if you want to drive an electric vehicle, knock yourself out.
It’s nothing to taxpayers who are subsidizing. But I think it was deeper than that for Elon. I think that’s not quite everything he was upset about. I think he really put his heart and soul into this effort. I think there was something to that on the doge side and trying to reduce the deficit. I think there’s something to that.
So my hope though, they popped off online. When you pop off online like that, and I think it gets a little childish and stuff. And I certainly have those thoughts too. I don’t always put every thought I have in a post on X, but sometimes every once in a while, I have just sits there, you’re like, what was I thinking at that time?
Houston: How do you resolve, because you have to work with people on the other side of the aisle, and on my own aisle.
Salamun: Yeah, exactly. So how do you, I mean, what strategies do you use to keep it to come to the table? I think I could be better too. I have to work with a city council and there’ll be issue we disagree on, but these other issues we agree on, it’s really hard. You have to try to compartmentalize.
Right, absolutely. A lot of forgiveness. Communication goes a long way. But you’re assuming everybody else is well intended, and not everybody is. The fact is, in politics, there are really great people and there are also snakes all over every level, national, state, local.
So you try to find out who’s real. I handle disagreement really well. I don’t like dishonesty.
That’s my big thing. And so you disagree with me, it stinks, but that’s the way it goes. Same thing, I’m lobbying, not that I’m a good lobbyist, but I’m talking to people at the legislature say, hey, support the cities on this or that. And they don’t always. But I appreciate how they voted on these handful of other things that they were great on.
But we are just so territorial. You’re seeing this in the governor’s race. It’s going to be interesting because in the Republican side, you’ll have a handful of candidates. There will be a lot of overlap. There’ll be some distinctions and styles and approaches and backgrounds. But in the same thing when I ran for mayor, so you’re trying to distinguish yourself, but also understand you’re trying to talk to multiple people like the Republican Party is not even a two sides of a Republican Party.
It’s multifaceted. You’re more of a libertarian wing, Christian conservatives. You have the Chamber of Commerce Republicans kind of mainstream folks. So you throw an issue like marijuana in there. You’ll watch a room divide. You’ll throw an issue like tax cuts.
You might watch them come together or two out of the three. It’s just fascinating how that works. So it depends on the issue. And I think you just have to have an understanding of that and understand that we need more bridge builders in order to get things done. But you major on the majors, you minor on the minors. There are things I hold in a closed hand that will not change my mind on, will not compromise on it.
It’s just the way it is. I’m you do have to say, okay, what can I give a little bit? You give a little bit to get that done without compromising your majors. But we don’t live in a world like that. So what you’re seeing right now play out is just absolutist. Who’s right or wrong?
I don’t know. I think it’d be best if cooler heads prevailed and folks got back on the same page. The problem is we have serious threats around the world. We have Russian Ukraine really popping off right now. They tried to kill Putin last week and now he’s going to retaliate. You have the Israel Gaza stuff.
The Chinese, we just found some nationals who tried to bring in some sort of fungus to infest our crops with this week to kill our food supply, America. Right. Like we, these are sideways energy. These are these are things that we can’t let distract us against real threats. And so, you know, I think it’s good to have robust dialogue. I think it’s okay to disagree. You should have people on your team.
It’s okay to disagree. I let, you know, my team, I’m like, Hey, you can tell me that. Of course, when we walk out over here, I want to be on the same page, but when we’re in a room, we’re knocking out ideas.
It should be able to be debated. And that’s okay. I that’s my concern. So how it plays out locally is I just think people latch onto those.
It could be infectious and say, Oh, yeah, I don’t like this. I’m a team. I’m team Musk.
I’m team Trump. Right. You know, and I think that and that’s just that team. Then you have the other people who don’t like either of them.
They’re like cheering and not like, go for it. Knock yourselves out. You know, but last I heard, I thought Musk was running the country and he and he and troubles his puppet. So everybody who said or thought that you’re clearly a liar.
Houston: Clearly, because that’s not actually how things go. These egos, if you think all these people can have this grand thing where they’re working together like that, it’s hard enough to get people who think alike to actually work together. But some people, they stand on principle.
Some people stand on pragmatics and sometimes those things rub up against each other. And frankly, I don’t always do a great job either. I get mad. I get frustrated with, you know, leaders at all levels. And by the way, they probably also get frustrated with me. And so you try to talk it out with some and some are good people you can talk it out with. Others, it’s just a waste of time. You’re just, you’re like, okay, they actually just want to see you taken out.
They really don’t care about your idea. It’s about you. Right. That’s politics.
It can be really gross. You’re in, Elon’s not even a politician. That’s what’s interesting. So we’ll see what they do with this bill. I think this bill has been kind of
Salamun: the point of all this, but I think it probably surfaced issues that were already lingering. You know, but President Trump’s the president. At the end of the day, that’s who we chose to lead. And, you know, and we, and I think there’s an appreciation for what Elon Musk has done to help with, you know, the deficit and all of that.
I think they’re going to continue on those efforts. So there should be appreciation. I’m sure he feels unappreciated and taken for granted a little bit.
That probably happens. But, you know, I voted for President Trump, for President. That’s no shock. I appreciate Elon Musk’s help, but the president’s who I voted for. Right. But the president, you know, in a handful of years won’t be president anymore. And Elon Musk said, I’ll be around another 14 years. I know.
Houston: I don’t know. I don’t know how I felt about that statement.
Salamun: That’s a strong statement. Well, there were some, there were some other accusations that if true, I don’t know how much time we have, but I just think, okay, when you, when you make, when you throw out accusations about being on a list or whatever, if true and you knew it and you worked with it anyway, it says more about you. If it’s not true, it sure is.
That’s pretty cold. And I would think if it was true, knowing everything that’s come out the last 10 years, most of it not even true about President Trump, that would have been a thing. I’m going to guess there’s not, I’m going to, I’m, I’m working on the assumption. There’s no there, there. The guy ran in the social circles, but, and I think that dude’s trash, but not president Trump, but the
Houston: dude, the Epstein, but anyways, so that, that, I feel like you crossed a really big line there because either way it’s, it’s not good. And I want the truth to come out and justice to be served in all of that. So I think that’s the problem is it escalates. It starts with, oh, we disagree about this issue. Suddenly now we’re making these personal accusations that, that are defamatory. And we’ll see what happens from that.
I’m hoping for reconciliation, cooler heads prevail for the sake of our country. But it, it lingers here because you see it happening locally all the time. You can see it in South Dakota. If you go to a legislature in South Dakota, it’s not an R and D thing. It is. That’s a thing, but it’s not the only thing. It’s just, we just shut off social media.
Salamun: Let’s just shut it down. Quite frankly, I’ve decreased significantly in social media for a while. I’m busy, but for, you know, it’s summertime. Put your hand in dirt, experience the real world, love real people, eat real food, enjoy the real good times.
Houston: And let’s take that. That’s the takeaway. There we go. We’ll end it right there. Mayor Jason Solomon of Rapid City. I’m Mark Houston. Thanks, man, for coming in the hangout.
Salamun: Oh, thank you. Thanks for the great conversation.
