County moves ahead on highway budget adjustments, bridge change order and lowers speed limits on several county roads

LINCOLN COUNTY, S.D. — Lincoln County commissioners approved supplemental highway budget entries to reflect awarded grants, authorized a $11,408 change order for a bridge preservation project and voted to lower posted speeds on several county roads.

Highway Superintendent Terry Flite told the board that because project bids come in early in the year, the county switched to a four-year averaging method for the road-project budget and then holds a May supplement hearing to reconcile bids and funding. "If we had went with Terry's normal way of budgeting, we would have had $10,000,000 budgeted for road projects," Sherry Lund explained; the averaging approach reduced the immediate authority to a more accurate figure and required a supplement hearing once bids were known. County staff said the approximately $2.4 million increase to road-project authority will be offset by about $3.77 million in newly recorded state grant revenue and by unrecorded revenue that had not previously been entered.

On a preservation project, Flite said additional structural steel was required on the Beloit Bridge; the board approved a change order for $11,408 to cover that work.

Later in the meeting Flite presented recommended speed-limit reductions for multiple county road segments near Sioux Falls, Harrisburg and Tea. The recommendations included lowering sections of Cliff Avenue and County Road 111 and other stretches from 55 mph to 45 mph or similar adjustments. Commissioners and residents discussed trade-offs between travel time and neighborhood noise and safety; Flite said his recommendations are based on the 85th-percentile speed methodology commonly used for speed-setting and that the reductions aim to improve safety given increasing traffic and turning movements. A resident urged lower limits on gravel roads as well; Flite said county staff will take that request for further review.

The board approved the change order and the speed-limit reductions by roll call. Commissioner Arons, Commissioner Otten, Commissioner Schmidt, Commissioner Putnam and Commissioner Landy voted yes on the motions. Commissioners said the highway department will monitor outcomes and revisit the posted speeds if safety or traffic conditions warrant.