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 05/30/25:
Jakob: Ready? I’m gonna gavel you in.
Murdoc: Oh, look at you trying to add new jobs to yourself. So yeah, you wanna gavel us in? Let’s start the show. Oh, I forgot.
Salamun: The meeting is adjourned.
Murdoc: This new producer, that’s Jakob, everybody. He’s doing a good job here at Homeslice. Jakob Kjerstad. All right, well, that’s the noise. I guess we’re gonna do it. It’s Friday afternoon on The Cowboy and you are punched into our weekly meeting with the mayor. It’s been a while since we got to do this. Every week we get to hang out with Mayor Jason Salamun. He’s been on the road, I’m on the road. We’re punching back in. Good to see you, sir. Yes, good to be here. Well, let’s start with, I guess, you, okay, let’s catch up a little bit. You were at the Alabama War, how was that?
Salamun: Yeah, that’d be cool. I got invited to the National Security Forum down in Alabama at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, which is in Montgomery, Alabama.
Murdoc: Okay, that’s a nice town there in Montgomery. Yeah. Good downtown, I don’t know if you get to explore it.
Salamun: Not a ton, everything. Honestly, from morning till night, they had an itinerary. They did take us off to a couple of places for breakfast one day and a dinner one night. But there are basically leaders from around the United States. They do this annually. They bring in leaders and it’s the final week, actually, of the Air War College. And this particular part of the college prepares commanders. So basically, you have, everybody who’s coming from here is going to go lead a significant part of the Air Force. And so they brought in, you know, the secretary of the Air Force, we had the Joint Chiefs people, they had some really interesting names there.
Murdoc: Interesting national security experts learned about, you know, the threats facing the United States, why it impacts our local communities. So, you know, we know that China and Russia and those sort of issues are out there. But we also, you know, talked about things like nuclear.
You know, Ellsworth is going to be a nuclear base with the B-21 coming on board. It used to be once upon a time, by the way. But what that means… Learn your star treaties, kids. Yeah, so, you know, my invitation, part of the honorary commander program I’m in, that’s how I got selected for this. And I think having the mayor there with Ellsworth here, making sure, obviously, that is huge to our community, our national security, above all, and how we can better support the base and its mission and make sure that we’re keeping folks safe.
Because there are a lot of threats. It was pretty serious. I mean, it was not a top secret clearance meeting. So there are things, I don’t think anything we talked about would shock anybody. But we got a lot more in depth about what some of this means. Other mayors, when you say leaders.
Salamun: There are elected leaders. There are elected leaders, but civilian, but business leaders. And I think there are various people from various communities that are tied to bases. So basically, when you have a community that has a base, you have programs and networks with those bases. And so that’s part of what they call the honorary commander program. So with me being a part of that program, and there were others, by the way, in Rapid City that are in that program. Yeah, much was just talking to me about this.
Murdoc: Yeah, much, you Sarah. Once upon a time. I had to learn about it, yeah. He had attended before. So, and you know, it was very relevant to this time and space. I would tell you, you got to see some amazing aircraft. Saw the F-22 flying in action, kind of your personal air show. That was pretty sweet.
Pretty random. Playing Danger Zone in the background while you’re doing it. Basically the Top Gun soundtrack.
And you got to know that third grade Jason was, well, yeah, a little cheap trick, Mighty Wings. Very nice. Good pole. Some of that stuff. I mean, it was Mighty Wings. I know my stuff.
You too. That’s a really good pole. And I would tell you, I met great people, but what blew me away were the caliber of leadership within our military. We also had foreign military leaders there as part of the college. So, you know, you met people from the Israeli and Ukrainian military, Pakistan and India, which were in conflict. While we were there. Right, yeah. While we were there and how they deal with that is really interesting. So they don’t go to every briefing, everything that the American folks do, but there is some overlap.
But yeah, you have, it was quite an experience. People from a lot of different areas of the Air Force, and it wasn’t just the Air Force, turns out to be all branches of the military. I had people, we were kind of locked into these sessions, these groups, I had people from the Coast Guard, a lot of Air Force, of course, Army Marines and Navy.
And then a few from those other countries, because they kind of put us up into these groups. So you would have a big briefing, pretty in depth in a giant lecture hall. You’d go back and really have intense conversations about what that means, how that applies to communities. You hear their discussions amongst the military about what they heard and their impressions of that.
Salamun: It was really fascinating, very good. Obviously we’re big supporters of Elswert Air Force Base. Most people don’t realize, Elswert’s not only big to our community and our economy, but even Pactola and Deerfield are reservoirs. Folks, those reservoirs were not built for the city of Rapid City.
It wasn’t for water skiing and the same mission. We get to enjoy it and have the water from it, it was actually built for Elswert. We helped manage that. And so we are great beneficiaries because of Elswert, so go all in and support of Elswert.
Murdoc: Pactola, not switching topics, but just as an aside, I saw this debate happening on Facebook this week. Because I’m a fan of the Roosters Facebook page.
Salamun: Oh, Roosters, great. It’s got a great Facebook page. Shout out to the Roosters. So there’s some debate on if there’s Kokonee salmon that have been released in Pactola, which is true, Game of Thrones did some. Did they, we were just talking about, Jake and I were just talking about some of the fish that might have been released recently in another lake.
Murdoc: And no one really knows how to catch them.
Salamun: Well, that’s unusual. It’s unusual. For us here. But according to what I’m seeing, and according to the Rooster, who I would take as gospel as far as fishing, lore and knowledge, there is some Kokonee. I’m gonna screw up the name or should do a little homework. Salmon in Pactola. Is the plural of that Kokonee?
Murdoc: I am not sure. I don’t even think I’m saying it right.
Salamun: Probably not, but by the way, not that I’m any better. But Pactola, I love Pactola, by the way, it’s fun to be on. But I always say, and what I told everybody there, of course, I had to really promote Rapid City in South Dakota, because a lot of folks didn’t even know where it was.
Murdoc: Everybody knows there’s a smaller cycle rally though. The military people did. And you’re correct. When I talked about South Dakota, it would be Sturges and Mount Rushmore. I said, well, we are right in the epicenter of all that. And I kind of joke, they like, so how do you get here? I’m like, well, I go to Oakman Jenkins Farm, hop on a crop plane, and then get over to… Then I joke, then I’m like, no, here’s what, let me tell you about our community. And I ended up promoting Rapid City like crazy. But it is kind of fun to share the story of our community. And one thing I told everybody was,
Salamun: I view Ellsworth, and the same could be true with our National Guard headquarters here too, but I view Ellsworth as like a sports franchise that we support. That we’re rallying, and now this B-21, we’re cheering for it. So they’re the Raiders, we’re excited for it. And if every community had that kind of buy-in, it would be awesome.
Murdoc: And we fit a, you look at Rapid City as far as our economic grid, it’s tourism, military, and agriculture. Those are the feeders into Rapid City. Not that there isn’t others, but you pick the main three. You look at Colorado Springs and other mountain west towns, those are the drivers of it. And when you support those things as infrastructure and development and all that comes with it, it really makes a difference to the community.
Salamun: Do you know almost, I mean, they’re gonna have almost $2 billion of construction at Ellsworth. Isn’t that crazy? So it is wild. So we champion them, like all the Black Hills communities, I know from Boxelder, Sturges, Hill City, Spearfish, all of us, I think, I don’t mean to leave all you other communities out.
Murdoc: The rest of you are non-homestreamings, Somerset, Blackhawk, all these communities, we all benefit from, first of all, I always say it is great for our local economy, but it is most importantly about our national security.
Ellsworth, I think to the leadership in DC, have really positioned themselves strongly for the future. Back in 2005, people forget, you know, Brack, and what newly elected Senator Thune was a big part of that. Remember when we all used to get along, get the same project done?
Salamun: Let’s get back some of that. Remember the rally down at the Civic Center, like the community shows up to
Murdoc: try to keep the base and brought it? Now there’ll be nine factions. Well, speaking of election, election, election is next week.
Salamun: Yeah, early voting’s underway right now, but election day is Tuesday, and this is for school board and city council races locally. You know, you wanna check your voter registration, see where you’re at, if you’re in the city limits of Rapid City, if you’re outside of it, I believe you have some county, other counties that have elections as well, I know Mead County for sure. Yeah, check them out, I encourage you to vote. I mean, historically, local elections are low voter town, it’s bummer, shouldn’t be a low voter turnout.
Murdoc: I just wanna beat Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls. It’s easy, it came at 3%. Just under three, just under three. Not even 3%.
Salamun: Now it’s for their school board race, now that, ours is in June, maybe that helps or hurts, who knows. We have a lot of folks that recreate in the summer, and so what’s,
Murdoc: what’s- You wanna put some, you wanna put a guess on the turnout percentage? Put a little, now I wanna put a little money down.
Salamun: We’ll definitely beat the Sioux Falls rate. I’ll go 9%.
Murdoc: Yeah, I, that’s my guess, nine flat.
Salamun: I think, I wanna be optimistic and say 10. Okay.
Murdoc: I wanna just take the over. I really want, I really want- We’re over under 9.5%. Murdock, here’s been my goal. You want everybody who can vote to vote. Right. Actually, I only want people who vote my way to vote, but you know, that’s a joke. But I definitely want double digits. I mean- Let’s get double digits, can we not get single digits? Let’s show out.
Barressing. If you love America, and this is a patriotic community, part of that is your duty to vote. It doesn’t take long, you probably have one or two items on the ballot at most. Same with jury duty, by the way, as long as we’re giving you the lecture.
Are we at an employee here? I won’t rat them out, but they’re like, I’m not going. I’m like, no, you go. The jury would be lucky to have you. You got, it’s part of the duty. You don’t get all this stuff for free.
You got punch in once in a while, do your part. It’s a- I know it’s a drag, but they give you 15 bucks and maybe you solve a murder. Think about it that way.
Salamun: It’s like a reality show. Yeah, I got jury duty, and then when it’s like found out who I
Murdoc: was, I’ll kick you right out of there. Kick you right out of that, isn’t it? But, and that’s sometimes the way it goes, but- But definitely voting is easy. We have- To do it. Just a minute before we go to break. Maybe we don’t have time for all of this. If we can’t wrap up, we’ll go to break and come back with it. But you met with some downtown folks about public safety.
Salamun: Yeah, obviously, we want to improve downtown public safety and we have upped our game in terms of patrols with our police officers.
Murdoc: Well, it’s been a topic in the community in the last couple months. It has. Just to frame it this way.
Salamun: So, we talked about what else we can do and maybe we can touch on that on the other side of the break because I think even in addition to the foot patrols, which are having great effect, we’re hearing nothing but positive from folks. There are some other things I think that we can still do and that’ll tie in a little bit even to the vision fund that’s coming up. So, with the camera systems and things like that.
Murdoc: We’ll plug some vision fund updates. We also have a quick update on the search for a Visit Rapid City CEO and then a restructure of the city. We’re gonna get into that and more when we gavel back in this week’s meeting with the mayor. mayor. On the back half of this week’s meeting with the mayor every week here in on the cowboy we sit down with mayor Jason Solomon of Rapid City is very generous with this time we sit down for half hour we talk about what’s going on sometimes we answer your questions you can go to cowboy radio dot com there’s a page on there called Focus Fridays where we have a whole afternoon a local programming from Dakota Town Hall meeting with the mayor Rapid City Business Journal.
We have a show with the school we have whiskey at work if you want to let your hair down again okay there’s a Vikings show we do there’s all kinds of stuff you can listen to. On the cowboy on Fridays well when we went to break Mr. Mayor we were talking about some downtown public safety yeah well you know we’ve been.
Salamun: Pretty concerned with what we’ve seen. You know this year in 2025 in the city limits we’ve had four homicides two of those involving our homeless population homeless on homeless and. One of those taking place downtown and you know that’s very concerning so we as we talked about we upped our foot patrols in fact it’s a permanent. Patrol by that by folks downtown and so you’ll see uniform police officers downtown and in our in the business owners and folks who work down there telling us that it’s having a great effect will continue to do that that’s a permanent move. It doesn’t always solve the problem but it does help like make the downtown area is shift some of those trouble spots to other areas that will have to continue to monitor that and. Work on those situations but other things with downtown that they brought up this week where they’d love to see cameras in. Keep places downtown in fact we have a vision fund request for a camera system in public spaces not facing not really invading anybody’s privacy but in public spaces busy intersections parks downtown those sort of places.
Murdoc: It’s funny how you kind of expected it in some instances now that’s how far that game has changed.
Salamun: It is extremely common in most other communities it is not common here by the way we’ve had a few that have been able to be mobile but we we also use them for things like traffic counts and things like that so we were looking at what can we do for some of the traffic stuff and then we then we got us going into what can we use for identifying crime. But also talked about lighting in particular had one business owner really who invested in lighting up their alley and using. Some graffiti preventative paint that really made a world of difference in their area wonders if that’s something that we can do throughout.
And I think those are good conversations to have basically we want to make sure that. All of Rapid City is safe but it’s going to start downtown we have to we have invested so much it’s such a gem so many great things are going on so we are really committed. To the safety of our downtown area and then continue to work strategically as those areas are pushed making sure folks get to the services they need but everybody else is safe.
Murdoc: You mentioned vision fund there must be an update on how that’s going with Mr. Kaiser.
Salamun: Yeah John Kaiser is the the chair of the vision
Murdoc: fund chair by the way just shout out to that he’d been on lost of work.
Salamun: He’s been on the other side of that. He used to work at the Central States Fair
Murdoc: changing new jobs on the middle of it to do just change jobs baseball coach 80 teams.
Salamun: He has no conflict right now but he has experience and you know I really wanted a diverse group and you did a great job and that that group has been working very hard and diligently. It’s a tough request you know you’re getting 70 something million dollars a request for 12 million dollars of funds and you’re going to make a recommendation and they have.
I’m really impressed with the way they’ve gone about the work so next week we’re going to hold a press conference John and I where they’re going to talk about you know the end of the road for their part and what their recommendations are going to look like and they’re officially going to give those recommendations to the city council on Monday June 9th at 6 30pm over at the City Hall Council chambers and then from there it’s in the hands of the city council to decide if they take it if they tweak it whatever the case may be but you know it’s it’s been a lot of work I think I think they’ve learned a lot I think they’ve all will say they they got a. Good exercise on how this works there’s always more requests than funds that’s true of every budget that’s true of all the needs that you have. It’s part of learning how to operate in government as well as in business you always have to do the most with what you have and and I honestly believe almost all of these projects are outstanding projects so it’s not really about what’s worthwhile I think they’re worthwhile but it is a matter of how do you prioritize that. And how much you know and that’s that’s the big case some I’m very interested to see what they come up with I haven’t fully reviewed any. Are there final recommendations I’ve heard a few things but it will be very interesting so that’s coming up this next week pay attention to that the. A lot of folks are very interested I’m a big fan of course of youth sports and.
In the quality of life activities I’d like to see quite a few parks projects in this as well in this first go around but that’s you know that’s really my take in at the end of the day Murdoch. I don’t actually get a vote on this you know I had a hand in.
Murdoc: But it’s the mayor’s vision. I was like yeah I selected the committee. And I went to their first meeting just tell them expectations. I want to yell at the mayor. Well no that’s fine.
Okay because but I do have opinions. The council at the end of the day gets the vote though they they are the ones to hold the cards I’ve been on that council three different times for previous vision rounds funds I. It’s a it’s a tough job I appreciate what the council is going to have to do to they’re going to have to you know make some tough decisions as well but at the end of the day you got to focus on what did get funded and get excited about that because there’s some really great projects and store and. And a no now is not a no forever I always remind folks that that’s just the way it goes. Because you’re going to have some folks that will be disappointed in this round but you never know what the future holds.
You mentioned we were talking off air about Visit Rapid City and there’s a CEO search happening if you don’t know about that the wonderful Brooke Kauffman took a good gig in Corpus Christi which puts a hole into the market. How’s that coming.
Salamun: Well we are down to the finalists. I’m grateful to be part of the search committee. And I will say yesterday we interviewed all the finalists and had deliberations we hope to make an announcement on that in the near future. The reason this is important Visit Rapid City is a big driver to our economy. 3.9 million visitors come to this area every year. And when you have that it takes people doing great marketing not just really a Rapid City but visitors outside of Rapid City. So some of the best marketing that’s happening for Rapid City. Y’all will never hear or see
Murdoc: the commercial move to Kansas City or
Salamun: Milwaukee or one of those feeder states that Colorado is another big one. So you know we know where the interest is because there’s data online that tells you where clicks are coming from and where people are requesting information from. We know where the hotspots are. And then we try to make sure our flights align with that. But it’s very much as the visitor economy helps lighten the load of the taxpayers here. The more people we can come spend money here the better it is for us. But we have to have patience in doing so but we also have to have hospitality. We are South Dakotans. We should have hospitality understanding that these folks are here.
Murdoc: Help them pay the bills. Tourism is so just like the military we were talking last break has so influential into other every other aspect of our of our health care of our education. Right. So we do a lot of recruitment marketing. We and so we need to need a lot of nurses need a lot of diesel tax need a lot of lawyers. You just need some complicated hires in this market because we’re not enough people.
Right. And so conversion it gets somebody it takes somebody two or three years to move here in a normal. You know you got to talk about it and you got to look for houses you got to sell your houses. But if you have been here before on a tourism element and you understand the hills the conversion gets cut down to nine months.
Salamun: The net crazy. That is crazy. The phrase is it all starts with a visit. So whether you’re going to live here or visit here you’re going to come here and check it out first. It’s all about those first impressions.
So the Visit Rapid City plays an instrumental role in that. I agree. Brooke did a great job in her three years.
She left it better than she found it and hoping to have another dynamic leader to help join that awesome team to keep this thing rolling. But I will tell you our sales tax revenue is strong in the first quarter of 20 25. That’s a big deal because that’s usually our slowest quarter. So our first quarter is off to a good start. And last year our sales tax revenue it outperformed the state. We know that we help drive the economy of the state. Take that. We love Yankton. It’s nothing against Yankton Murdoch. Right. Yeah. They’re they’re a friend. I like Yankton.
Murdoc: I do too. It’s something wrong with the ink and it’s wonderful. But they have they have a different dynamic as you know. We have Charlie’s Pizza. It’s OK. We have we are the Mountain West as we talk about the five state region we primarily draw from. So as we talk about the future of like the Sports Commission is a huge part of that the sports complex things that I’m really passionate about seeing come to life. That is actually big.
Visit Rapid City is a huge part of that. So this CEO is going to be key to to the future. And if we get the right person in there I think we can only go up from here. Well OK. We’re we know we just never quite have enough time to get
Salamun: there because I go between you and I we just talk. So you would you you have a restructure of the city which we’ll have to get to the bulk of this next week.
Yeah. Well let’s see if it gets approved Monday night it’ll go to the council and I can restructure in some ways but I am asking to do some things via ordinances because basically we are looking at creating more efficiencies becoming more effective and having more accountability in our city government. We have we have great people in the city but we have suffered from a silo culture when I was elected mayor. I had a leader in the city tell me congratulations you’re the mayor of 12 cities
Murdoc: and everybody kind of did their own thing. And some of them did a good job with it. Others not so much but we are going to be one city one team and get rid of the silos so we’re centralizing services. So instead of one department having their own HR person we have an HR department and they’re going to service all the city. I.T. would be the same thing maintenance purchasing fleet management.
It goes on and on. But as part of that I’m expanding shifting up some of the current roles that are there using existing vacancies to pay for them. So I’m shifting the one to shift the public works director position into a chief operating officer that oversee engineering public utilities streets fleet and facilities parks and recreation community development and support services. And also I’m going to expand the finance director’s position to achieve financial officer still overseeing finance of course but community enrichment information technology.
Love Ainsley for this. Yeah the airport the monument and the library are all major enterprise funds with independent boards. They’ll go in there. So we’re looking for more financial oversight and innovation on that side of things we’re looking for more efficiency and better run operation sharing of resources in the operational side. So that is that is the bulk of what we’re doing. By the way it’s going to take a little bit to accomplish all this but this is the first step in getting that forward. So I look forward to talking more about that. And then let’s see anything else in this list. We don’t forget to vote. I know we talked about on the first break but holy buckets we got to talk about that.
Salamun: OK let’s end with this. Yeah I want to end with Sweep’s month and we’re not talking about TV sweeps here.
Murdoc: That’s how I said that and I’m like we’re going to talk about
Salamun: the Cosby show still the number one in prime time on Thursday nights. No Sweep’s month is basically in May our streets department swept every road in Rapid City which is pretty remarkable. And they collected 385 tons of material debris that sort of thing off the streets. So it’s kind of wild how much hundred and eighty five tons.
Murdoc: Of just and I thought I was this reading rhyme. You know I was looking at the press release that Daryl Shoemaker our communications expert put there. I was like 385 tons of materials off Rapid City streets in May. This is a big challenge for them. Jesse Reeb who oversees the streets department really put a challenge in May. Let’s get it all. Get those guys they crushed it.
Murdoc: They went to they went right by my house. Literally they went to town and got it done 385 tons. So our folks are doing great work. Shout out to our streets department. Well done. Obviously you’ll still have you know sweeping going on but this was a major. That’s pretty rad.
Good way to end that show. OK thank your local street department employee if you see one this weekend. Because it’s the reason everything looks a little brighter as we turn into June.
Salamun: They’re going after those potholes now too.
Murdoc: So is that next. Oh they’re always going after that call the hotline. If you know one that’s on a city street sometimes people go to a private residence thinking it’s ours.
But city street. Let us know about it. Our folks will go take care of it. He is Mayor Jason Solomon. He sits with us once a week when we’re both in town. I’ll be fishing next week at the river.
So we’ll have Houston probably come in and we’ll talk about the city restructure. Are you fishing in the dark. I am fishing in the dark. If I can get away with it. I’ll fish on that boat 20 hours a day. I never want to come off. I could it’s the one time I get to do it. It’s time with my dad and my brother. I’m so excited.
Salamun: I thought you were going to break into the nitty-gritty.
Murdoc: That’s what I was. Huge yet for that. Well I love fishing. Everybody needs to wet a line every now and then right. All right we’re going to end on that. Gavil us out. What do we do.
Jakob:Motion to adjourn.
Murdoc: Second.
Salamun: All right we’re adjourned.
