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 06/20/25:
Houston: Hello again and welcome back to meeting with the mayor. My name is Mark Houston and I’m sitting across from the mayor of Rapid City. Hello Jason Solomon.
Salamun: Well hello. Is Houston actually your last name?
Houston: No, no, Mark Houston is not my real name. It’s a very radio name I was gonna ask you about that. It was given to me so when Cat Country signed on back in 1993, I don’t know if
Salamun: you, I’m sure you were a huge listener. Actually I was because I was delivering newspapers listening to Cat, I’m a big country music fan.
Houston: Oh even better, okay. I love all types of music. But I definitely remember when Cat Country was brand new. Yes it was and I was the last original person that was on that radio station. I remember. And so when we were putting it all together, the guy that was the program director was like, okay everybody, here’s what your names are. And we’re like, well what do you mean? Well this is what you’re gonna be called on the air.
No negotiation. Kind of a western name. Sort of yeah I guess. Houston, Texas. And I’m like it’s okay whatever. Texas is not my favorite place to be. But sure if you wanna.
Salamun: You’re talking to someone who’s born. Oh that’s right. Texas lived there until I was 11, got a lot of family there now.
Houston: Okay. All right boy. It’s a great nation. Stepped in that one. No I love Austin and I love Houston.
Salamun: Don’t mess with Texas by the way. Okay all right that’s fair. Totally fair. So yes, no it’s not my real name. And someday I’ll maybe reveal it to you if you ever need to know. Well, it may be off air. You gotta go with the wrestling term is called kayfabe. We gotta keep kayfabe here.
Houston: Oh kayfabe. All right. I just was learning too Mr. Mayor before we got started how big a wrestling fan you were. And I think that one of these times that we come in here that’s all we’re gonna talk about.
Salamun: Well, I say things in real life like kayfabe or is that a work or shoot or stuff like that which are actually wrestling tournaments.
Houston: No kayfabe I’ve heard. Yeah for sure yeah. And there’s a whole story behind where kayfabe comes from. And it’s pretty interesting. It is. By the way the wrestling stuff comes from my Texas roots. My mom on my papa growing up watching wrestling on their TV they would tell me stories about wrestling matches they attended. So there’s a lot to that. That’ll be fun days someday. I wanna know just really quick. If you haven’t told anybody yet who is your all time favorite? Well I was born at Holcomania.
Salamun: So and I have met Holk Hogan. I’ve been able to have a good conversation with him and to get a picture with him and all of that. And that’s a cheesy way out. But when my coming of age had to do with his rise to Holcomania. Now he’s not the best technical wrestler. He’s most popular. He’s kind of the Babe Ruth of wrestling. But now we can get deeper into this because there’s work rate.
Houston: We better draw. Really the question they always ask is who’s on your Mount Rushmore of wrestling. Right exactly. And you know what we could talk about that another time. We’re going to. We’re going to do an entire.
Salamun: That’ll be an evergreen episode. Yes it will. And I want to be the one to host that. I don’t want. I want to be there instead of Murdoch. All right so as far as that is concerned. The big story this past week I think. That had everybody if you go to any social media comments I don’t know. I mean it’s become so silly anymore when stuff news gets posted and we allow just anybody to have a voice. I mean I get it. I understand everybody should have a voice.
But when it comes to stories like the rays that just happened or was proposed in your office for city council for the mayor. It’s the first one since 2011. Right so it’s been.
I mean that’s been around that time I believe. For everything. Wasn’t it for like everybody.
For the city council mayor. No that’s not it. That’s not right.
It’s kind of right. Okay. You know this is a deep topic.
Yeah. And so for the city council it’s most partially true. They haven’t read their actual salary hasn’t been increased since way back then. Now when I was on the council in lieu of a salary increase we did allow city council members to come on to the city health insurance plan. And that’s a lot of money out of the city coffers. And I think six people out of the council take advantage of that right now.
Okay. How many people are on the city council? There’s 10 members of the city council. And so the value of the health insurance plan for just an individual is just over the city will pay just over $7,000 a year. But if they have a family it’s over $21,000 a year. So that was in lieu of a raise. I voted for that. I didn’t take advantage of it as a council member because I already had health insurance but in lieu of a raise and this is several years ago now.
Right. And the mayor salary has been adjusted since that time. And so what’s been proposed this time is for starters the elected officials including the mayor and the city council would have an annual increase based on the CPI just like our non-union employees which frankly I do support that aspect of it. I’m not getting a major raise. I’m getting this, they’re proposing a CPI increase which used to be part of the mayor’s, mayor would be a part of the non-union employees from what I’m told.
But the city council hadn’t been adjusted but they did get a pretty massive benefit in that health insurance. That’s worth, that’s a lot of money. Yeah, it is. So, but the council does do a lot of work. I do think it’s a discussion. I think it is reasonable to say that you set up whatever the salaries are and adjust them by the CPI every year which is what we try to do with our staff.
So that part is something that I can get on board with. Unfortunately, a couple, I guess a meeting or two ago we were supposed to have the non-union employees get their annual COLA or cost of living adjustment based on that consumer price index, the CPI. And it got delayed till August for some reason.
It was weird. And so my feeling is it should be tied with that. I don’t like the idea of elected officials getting their increases but we leave the employees in limbo. I’d rather it just be fair.
Everybody get the same percentage and there you go. So I think there’s some discussion, that still need to take place with regards to how we best move forward. I think there’s a lot of opinions about it for sure. And some council members work their tails off and others do the bare minimum. That’s always been the case with every council. So some of them, they’re putting out a lot of hours for the work they do. And I don’t think anybody really necessarily does it for the money. Certainly, I think a lot of us could go make more money doing something else.
There is a public service aspect to it. It deserves to be looked at. I do think it should, I think it’s reasonable that the CPI be placed on those wages each year and let it grow according to the economy.
Houston: Well, why is it, I don’t understand why it’s so controversial. Everybody in any job that they do expects to get a raise if you’re doing well and your company’s doing well. I mean, you can look at it, I guess, a little bit like a company, a business in some instances. But why is it so controversial? Why do people get so up in arms about… Well, it’s a big leap.
Salamun: I mean, 67% is a big leap. Yeah, I suppose that’s true. And it’s not taken into the health insurance thing. And frankly, a lot of the controversy is the fact that the city employees got their raise delayed when it was supposed to take effect July 1st and get it delayed.
And that decision delayed to even give it to them, which was already budgeted. I think that’s been part of the controversy. Unnecessary, I think, had that not happened.
It may have been frustration or whatever about it, but I think that would have felt at least more fair. So I think the fair thing to do is tie it in with the city employees. Don’t do it before you do the city employees, do it with the city employees so that if they get a 3% increase, then the mayor and city council get a 3% increase. If it’s an off year and we only get a 1% increase, so do we. I mean, I think that’s the way it should be.
I think that’s a lot more fair. So that’s been part of, that’s why it added fuel to what would have been a little bit of a fire, but the fuel to the fire is the fact that the cost of living increase for non-union employees got delayed by two months. And it’s not even sure if it’s gonna be effective. The vote to approve it got delayed, so we still have to get to the yes. So why did we delay it? There was no real good reason for it. It’s been done every year. And so that was, and then you go ahead and do this. So I think the timing is probably what is frustrating on this.
Houston: Well, why were people, why were also people commenting or I saw a lot of the stories that mentioned that it was raising some eyebrows because it kicked in as the new council members were taking office. Why did that play into any of this?
Salamun: Gosh, I could only speculate. There’s things I could say here that would really tee things off. I don’t know about people’s online comments, honestly, I haven’t read them all. I can imagine what they would say.
There’s probably a lot of, some of the thoughts I probably have had. I think there’s room for compromise in the middle here. I think there’s room for negotiation. My thing is I want us to be treated like the non-union employees. So if the non-union employees in August do not get their COLA, I don’t want to get a COLA either. I don’t deserve to get a COLA as mayor. If they do, then the 3% could apply to the mayor salary just as it does to a park’s worker or to a landfill operator or whatever.
Houston: I mean- Well, how much influence do you get a have over this then? Well, I don’t get a vote unless it’s a tie. The only thing I can, I have to decide whether to sign it or not. Sure, okay. And that’s the decision I’m weighing right now and if there’s any room for compromise in that. So really my say is, do I sign what the council passed it? Frankly, I was out of all these discussions. This was beyond me. I don’t think it’s unfair to look at the salaries from time to time.
Salamun: They were making 12,000 a year. They want to bump up to 21,000. But we do offer the health insurance. That’s a significant benefit for those who take it. But not every council member takes it.
So they’re making considerably less, but they don’t necessarily do it for the money. So it’s, you know- That’s interesting. And I voted for that health insurance, but I didn’t take advantage of it. I do now as mayor, as a full-time employee of the city, I take advantage of it. And it is awesome insurance. I mean, working for the city and having the city insurance is probably one of the best perks that we have. Oh, absolutely. And I’ve worked in a lot of different places and I can just tell you that’s probably the best, you know, health policy I’ve had since the military.
So expensive, but you get good coverage. So anyways, that’s, I imagine that there’s a lot on the timing. I think it’s, a lot of it is timing. Had it been done after you improve the employees or with the employees, I think that would have knocked the heat down 50%. And then you would have had, okay, what’s it worth? And then you’d have to use data to come up with that, which I, you know, I think they tried to do. And the question is, do you try to retroactively go back and get what maybe should have been increased? Or do you just say from here on out, we just increase it by the CPI each year?
Those are, I think, valid questions for debate. And so the mayor’s salary was adjusted to 120, something thousand a couple, two, three years ago under Allender. So I knew what salary was coming in. So people try to compare me to other cities and stuff. But you know, my thing is I don’t want to be treated differently than the employees. So if they don’t get a raise in August, I don’t want to be treated differently. want one either.
And if they do, then I’ll take what they get. But we have, you know, we have three unions, non-union employees. It’s a very complex situation within governments.
And so that’s kind of the lay of the land there. So we’ll see. I think there’s still some time for negotiation and discussion with the council to make sure, I want to make sure the employees are taken care of. I guess that’s my bottom line. I know folks may have other opinions about other things on timing. And I could say things here, but there’s things that
Houston: I could have fuel to fire right now. I don’t really want to. I’m making it pretty clear. I’ve made it pretty clear to our council president where I stood on this that I thought it should be considered along with the city employees. That was my stance.
They chose not to go that direction. So here we are. Well, here’s what I will allow you to do coming up here, Mr. Mayor. You are now going to tell me something that I didn’t know. Because usually every time you and I sit down, you come in here blind and I just fire questions at you.
Salamun: People think like we got this rehearsed. Right, exactly. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Mark Kusil. So now he’s going to turn the tables on me coming up. And we’re back.
Houston: Meeting with the mayor. I’m Mark Houston with Mayor Jason Solomon of Rapid City. And we were just talking about the big raise increase that happened here or may happen yet. There’s still some more discussion to go on with that. And I think you explained it very well, Mr. Mayor. For anybody that’s wondering how all of this stuff plays out behind the scenes, that’s why I’m glad to get to sit down and talk with you about this. Because you can map it out. You can lay it out. Here’s what I can do. Here’s what I can’t do.
Salamun: Yeah, at least to the best of my ability without trying to speak for other people. So I encourage you to ask your council members what their thoughts are.
Houston: There we go. Perfect. Now, what I want to know is you came in here and you said you’ve got some really big exciting news to talk about that’s going to come out on Monday. Yeah. But you get to, how much do you get to tell us? Well, we’ll see. We’ll see.
Salamun: What do we get to know? You know, I get to talk in it here. And I’m going to give the gist of it. Okay. You know, I’ve talked to council members about this. I’ve been, we’ve been having city meetings and I’ve been talking about this.
So it’s probably out, kind of starting to get out there already. And by the time people really listen to this, it’ll be okay. So, you know, you know, a vision that you can accomplish alone isn’t much of a vision.
This is what I’ve discovered. And we have some big visionary things on the horizon. And so as mayor, one of the best parts of the job is to get to talk to various groups, people, entities that are looking to do big things.
And so whether it’s somebody who wants to start up a business, they want to tell me about it or it could be a one person shop downtown or it could be, you know, bringing in hundreds of jobs, those sorts of things or, you know, popular chicken sandwiches and things like that.
Houston: That’s not today’s announcement. But everybody knows I’m working on that. But I will say the other thing is, you know, this last year, I’ve been sitting in meetings with kind of three different entities. And one of them I’m very passionate about, I’m all in on and that is the sports complex with the sports commission. So we’ve talked about that.
We’ve referenced that here on this show. I’m all in on that. I think it’s going to be an outstanding benefit to the community multi-purpose indoor facility that could be used year round to bring more sports tourism, tournaments, events to the community.
It’ll be really great. In addition, our residents get to enjoy it too. And so it improves our quality of life.
A lot of great things with it and the monuments for it because they run out of room. I mean, just this last weekend was pretty cool. We had, people don’t realize we had like the national tumbling and trampoline championship or qualifiers here. So young people from all around the country, I think young people compare to me. So kids on up were competing.
And so we had, you know, that place packed out with all these people coming from around the country just for gymnastics deal. And these are qualifiers. So these are actually pretty big deals.
If that clips have gone viral online, I saw one with a few million views just this week. That’s a whole other thing. So that, so, you know, having us be a destination for that is huge. So I’ve been in those conversations and we’ve all loved the concept and the idea.
We’ve had that. But then how do you pay for it? How do you actually make it happen? So it’s anybody can dream, but few can do.
So now we are working on how do we, how do we actually execute that? On the other hand, I’m talking to Black Hills Energy comes to talk to me about their, what they call their Lang 2 project, which is out on Deadwood Avenue, which is basically providing power to South Dakota and Eastern Wyoming. And it is a major generation station that they’re putting out behind Harley Davidson.
And, you know, it’s a really big deal. It, I think it has six times the capacity, a nearly 100 megawatts of power. It’s a pretty big facility. It’s a $280 million investment into our community. So take it as bare piece of land.
They’re putting that there. That’s a pretty cool project, completely separate. And I talked to another group that we’ve heard about before, Liberty Land and Peelina Sons, behind this big vision project that is not only bringing an outstanding theme park, think Wisconsin Dells or Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, some of those kinds of things. And a housing village as part of it, pretty, pretty significant housing development. We haven’t seen something with the vibe like this before.
Salamun: And so talking to them about, you know, what their plans are, and they’ve been working on this and providing support, support letters for them. So all of these things I’ve been able to be a part of.
And internally, I just started to go, you know, this is pretty cool. Then I’m thinking, where are we going to put the sports complex? And how are we going to pay for it?
And how do we help all these folks succeed? And then, internally, I kind of dubbed this project Catalyst, where I kind of started to say, well, can this thing connect to this thing to connect to this thing? How do we leverage this? And so it’s been a bit of a long and windy road. Basically, we’re going to announce Monday the location of their proposed sports complex. There’s still a lot of work.
They are all handshake agreements. So they’re, everybody’s pretty fired up about it. That’ll be related to Liberty Land. And it’ll be, it’ll be great. How are we going to pay for it? And we’re talking about creating a TIFT district that will take the valuation from that $280 million Black Hills Energy project to help bring in funding, not all the funding, but a good chunk of the funding, to help offset the cost to construct a sports facility. So we’re talking about a $50, $55 million project, most likely, although once we get into it, and there might be some synergies and savings that we can have. But we’re talking about how do we’re going to leverage creating a TIFT district around that Black Hills Energy plant, help use that to pay for some of the sports complex that we want to do. And on a location that’s going to have great synergy with what’s going to go on in that area. So we’ll have even more details next week. But that’s a big, I don’t know if people realize, like, so in this last year, I’ve been, I’ve been going, oh, so then I’m talking to this group and this group.
Hey, how would you feel about this? And what would that look like? And then I talked to, you know, Black Hills Energy and say, hey, what would you think about this? And by the way, there’s even more possibilities that are less concrete than what I’m going to announce on Monday. But we do leave some opportunity open down the road with how we’re drawing our TIFT district. So what that basically does, in case you don’t know how that works, is that ground that Black Hills Energy is building on is, is it worth much right now?
When they build a $280 million facility, it’s worth a whole lot more. Can you go up a bit? A whole lot more. We’re able to take that valuation, that increment between what it’s worth today versus what it’s going to be worth, and apply that increment to public improvements or economic development. That’s what we’re looking at doing with the sports complex. So we’ll have, you know, more detailed information, but this is going to be a pretty huge transformational announcement. If it all happens, if people understand, it’s going to be hard to wrap your head around. People, for starters, they don’t fully understand Liberty Land yet, because they just understand that there’s a concept and they probably think it’s just, you know, a couple of bumper cars and a, right.
Houston: Well, I think you’re saying Wisconsin Dells and things like that, that kind of puts it into perspective a little bit more.
Salamun: People get that. Yeah, that’s what they’ve told me. They have Disney Imagineer people that have worked on this. People have created Lego Land. I mean, so there’s, there’s legitimate people. And the fact is, all of this is to drive more outside money into our community, really leverage the strengths of our community. And I think the sports complex really helps us be more than a summertime tourism place, but can look at more year round activities. And now we can become a serious competitor because these sports complexes are a big deal.
You need them in your community. Sioux Falls has the Pentagon. I joke that I want to call ours the Octagon. But, but Casper has one.
Fargo. All surrounding areas to be competitive as a community, you have to have that. And people love to come here for destinations.
Absolutely. So you’re talking about something that has soccer field soccer fields in it, indoor. You can also have a bunch of basketball courts so we can expand like things like the L and I, but they can also transform it to volleyball courts and other events and activities. And there’s, you know, there’s a lot of discussion about what that can look like. So all that said, it’s an exciting time. I’m really fired up about the sports complex. The so been working with the sports commission, Liberty Land, Black Hills Energy. We’ve been working on this behind the scenes for quite some time. And we’re going to announce what our intentions are. They’re still, it’s still the first steps in a long road ahead of us, but to really start to paint the picture of what this can look like and be a really great thing for Rapid City and the people who live here and the people who visit here.
And it all kind of started as a catalyst when Black Hills Energy said, Hey, we’re going to do a $280 million project in your backyard. Oh, do you support that? Yes.
Okay. And leveraging that to do more. And by the way, there’s even more partners that are going to come on board with this that’ll help with the funding and the planning and all of that that have experience and all this. So there’s even more stuff down the road that, but what we’re going to share next week, that’s, that’s a big teaser for what we’re going to be shared next week.
Houston: So it’ll be awesome. Well, here, hear me out, Mr. Mayor. I want to add my two cents to this now. Okay. That might even help you further down the road. So once, I think you build Liberty Land first, right? That has to be done first, because there’s going to be a log flume right in there. It’s going to be water-powered. We’re not building Liberty Land. When people, when they get that done, you take the power from the water that can make the electricity for Black Hills power. And then that electrical power from Black Hills power will in turn run the batting cages in the new sports complex. This is all coming together beautifully right now.
Salamun: Okay. I think a string on a couple of cans or two, but all right. You know what? I think, I do think, to your wild, your wild imagination there, there are things as we, as we, because we’re, you know, as we get into the planning and construction and engineering and all that, there are going to be things that we’re going to look at, say, can we share a parking lot between the sports complex and Liberty Land? Right. Exactly. And now that could decrease costs for both. There could be, there has to also be infrastructure improvements to make all this happen. Right. But there are going to be things like that.
Houston: Just, just don’t discount log rides. Log rides. They can create a lot of water energy or something. I don’t, I’m in radio. I don’t know.
Salamun: I don’t know how any of that stuff works. Lock jams. Is that what I heard? All right. Well, thanks again, Mayor Solomon for coming in. Yeah. This will be exciting next week. So we’re looking forward to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go. Okay. You’re in the know. If you listen to this show, you might be in the know.
Houston: You are in the know. You get the scoops. New tagline. Write that down. All right. Sometimes.
