City council sets budget for $12.6M

The Custer City Council passed the first reading of an appropriation ordinance at its Sept. 3 meeting, setting the city budget at $12,658,432, down drastically from last year’s budget, which sat around $17 million. Now, the budget is nearly the same as it was for 2023, which was also about $12.6 million. The reason for last year’s budget hike was mostly due to the city’s project to upgrade the wastewater treatment system, which is now nearing completion.
A total of $1,192,560 is budgetted for general government with another $1,394,300 set aside for public safety. The total public works budget is $936,100, and $865,225 of that is for highways and streets.
The 2025 tax levy request has been set at $1,176,744, down from $1,219,000 last year. $69,000 of that is for an opt-out to help pay for the the city’s law enforcement contract with the Custer County Sherriff’s Office.
“With this there are some reserves being used to balance the budget, but that is typical from year to year,” said city administrator Laurie Woodward.
This iteration of the budget can be amended any time before the second reading of the appropriations ordinance, which is sheduled for the next city council meeting Monday Sept. 16.
Speaking of city funds, the council also passed a resolution regarding Initiated Measure 28, which will be on South Dakota ballots this November.
Initially, the resolution was titled to just say that it would have “negative impacts” but was then renamed to say “negative impacts on municipal funds” to acknowledge that the measure could have positive effects for consumers who will pay less taxes on “anything sold for human consumption.”
The negative effect on the municipal funds then would be from a loss of revenue in sales tax on those items if the measure is passed by voters in November.
In other news from the meeting, the coucil:
• Approved a request from Custer School District for the homecomig parade route, set for Thursday, Sept. 26, pending receipt of the route map.
• Approvced an addendum to the city’s waste-collection contract.
• Approved an additional funding request for WEAVE (Women Escaping A Violent Environment) in the amount of $5,000 after a burst sewer pipe flooded the basement of WEAVE’s facility with raw sewage. The basement was used for laundry and storage.
• Trent Bruce with DGR Engineeering gave an update on the wastewater treatment facilty, saying things are movng along as scheduled, set for completion in spring. The council also approved conducting a water-system study with DGR.
• The building permit was approved for Custer School District’s new Career and Technical Education Addition, which broke ground on Monday. The council approved waiving a majority of the cost.