I have just returned from a trip to the three-day annual conference for The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC is America’s largest nonpartisan, voluntary membership organization of state legislators from across the U.S. who are dedicated to the principles of limited government, free markets and federalism (local government).
It’s Gold Discovery Days time again here in Custer. Can you believe it? Where does the time go? It seems like we were just covering graduation, and now, here it is, the middle of July. From all of us here at the Custer County Chronicle, welcome to Gold Discovery Days! This is truly one of the most magical weekends of the year in Custer, if not the entire Black Hills.
In college, I fancied myself a traveler. I have since realized I am much too much of a homebody for that, and conveniently I married a man who “never left the farm,” as they say. But I was much younger then, and I fantasized about being a world explorer.
Greetings!
There is a property tax meeting this Thursday, July 17, at 9 a.m. at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology Beck ballroom. The intent is to come up with draft legislation to present before the entire legislative body when session starts in January 2026.
A recent Gallup poll indicates that American pride is at a record low, with only 58 percent of U.S. adults reporting they are “extremely” or “very” proud to be American. This is a decrease from previous years and a significant drop from earlier in the century. In fact, the 58 percent figure represents the lowest percentage of Americans expressing high levels of national pride in Gallup’s polling history.
I’m convinced that no one celebrates the Fourth of July quite like Custer does. Perhaps that’s because here, it isn’t just the fourth day in July. It’s Independence Day. It’s the day we commemorate the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress in 1776, declaring that the 13 colonies were no longer subject to the monarch of Britain.
What kind of headline is that? Crazy, isn’t it? Well, leave it to the state and federal governments to mess up our calendar. Our normal citizens’ calendars go from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. Our state year is from July 1 to June 30 and our federal government year is from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. It seems like a governmental bureaucratic shell game to me, but I didn’t get to decide. So, of course, the reason I’m saying Happy New Year is that our state’s new year just started July 1.
Americans have long enjoyed the practical and romantic aspects of the West. The West has provided us with minerals, timber, energy and space to roam freely for generations. We have a wonderful asset in the West—our public lands – which are owned by the people of the United States and held in trust for us by the federal government. Anybody can go out there and recreate, for free, any time and that is a good thing for all of us.
Stagnant.
That was the word used at the most recent meeting of the West Dam Committee, which meets every Thursday to discuss the ongoing rebuild at West Dam and fundraising efforts to that end.
The word wasn’t used in terms of the rebuild—that is going just fine. It was used, rather, to describe the fundraising being done to facilitate the construction.
When COVID hit in 2020 it caused an ongoing problem with many people fleeing from urban areas to rural states like South Dakota. This has ultimately resulted in astronomical increases in property demand resulting in increased valuations.
