May 31—EDITOR’S NOTE — This is the first of three sets of City Council candidate profiles that will be published in the Mitchell Republic prior to the city election.

MITCHELL — A longtime Ward 4 Mitchell City Council member is being challenged by a pair of candidates who have different views on Lake Mitchell, which is a key area included in the Ward 4 boundaries.

Jeff Smith has represented Ward 4 for 18 years. The incumbent has never been challenged for his seat since being elected in 2006.

Former detective Don Everson and business owner Montana Walcott are challenging Smith on June 4. The winner of the election will serve a three-year term.

As a former detective, Don Everson learned how to “do the right thing” and make tough decisions.

Over the past few years, Everson has been concerned with some major decisions the council has made. And he’s aiming for an opportunity to sit on the council and represent Ward 4 as a good decision-maker who has the whole community in mind.

Among the council decisions that concerned Everson were approving five water rate increases over a two-year period and designating over $4.6 million in reserves for the Lake Mitchell project. The council narrowly approved designating the reserves in a 4-3 vote.

“In February, the city council devoted $4.6 million in reserves to the lake project. If they would have devoted that same amount to the secondary water source project, we would still have rate increases but not as much,” Everson said.

While there has been a lot of discussion on Mitchell’s affordable housing challenges during this election cycle, Everson said affordable living is a bigger challenge that needs to be addressed.

If elected, Everson said he would aim to make Mitchell more affordable for residents by tackling the rising utility rates. The council has the power to set water, garbage and sewer rates.

“You hear a lot about affordable housing, but I think the biggest challenge right now in Mitchell is affordable living. I’ve been hearing from a lot of residents that having three water rate increases in less than a year is too much,” Everson said. “We want to grow our community, yet we saddle them with these high water and sewer rates.”

Everson is an advocate for growing a stagnant Mitchell and welcoming more commerce. As a resident living along the north side of Mitchell, Everson has watched the once bustling area lose some restaurants and businesses over the past decade. He said a collective focus on business recruitment should be in motion to help revive the north side of Mitchell and bring more restaurants.

“The north end of Mitchell is really hurting. We need more businesses in general, but especially on the north end. I hear it everywhere we go,” Everson said.

Everson, a University of South Dakota graduate, moved to Mitchell in 1993 to become a police officer. He quickly climbed the ranks and became a detective, a role he held when he retired from the Mitchell Police Department a few years ago.

He’s been faced with many difficult situations throughout his extensive law enforcement career, and he’s proud of how he managed to handle them.

“I had to make a lot of tough decisions in my line of work. I always had to keep protecting the public in mind, and I will do the same as a council member,” he said.

Stance on Lake Mitchell restoration efforts, Corn Palace

While Everson wants to see a clean Lake Mitchell, the proposed lake dredging project hasn’t gained Everson’s support. He called it an experimental “band-aid fix” that would financially paint the city in a corner for decades.

During the May 14 candidate forum, Everson addressed his concerns over the long-term price tag of the dredging project that could tilt around $50 million if the city were to apply $500,000 alum treatments on an annual basis for 30 years post-dredging.

“For $50 million, the average daily cost of this project is more than $4,560 per day for 30 years,” he said during the May 14 forum.

Everson supports the city’s 37-acre wetland project that will reduce runoff in the Firesteel watershed, and he said it’s one of many more projects that need to be done in the 350,000-acre watershed before dredging the lake.

“Some people think I’m against the lake, but I’m not. I want the lake clean, but until we get the phosphorus levels down coming into the lake from Firesteel I can’t see that happening,” he said. “I want to see what the wetland can do before we dredge. I do like the jetty project.”

Everson dubs the Corn Palace the “crown jewel” of Mitchell. But he said the crown jewel is in shambles and needs major improvements.

“We can’t even fix torn seats before graduations. We need millions of dollars in repairs to it. I don’t why we’re not working on the electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems that need to be replaced?” Everson said.

On the revenue front, Everson said the gift shop agreement with the Chamber of Commerce is minimizing the revenue that the Corn Palace could generate each year.

Since 2006, Jeff Smith has held the Ward 4 council seat with pride.

The longtime council member is proud of what the city accomplished in his 18 years of serving on the eight-person governing body, but he believes the next three years could produce some of the “biggest results” Mitchell has seen in the past two decades.

And he’s hoping to help steer the completion of some major city projects in another three-year term.

“We have positioned ourselves very well to grow with securing the secondary water source we desperately needed to meet the daily demands. Implementing that in the next few years is critical for our future,” Smith said. “We’re starting to see some developments in housing and new businesses as well, and we must keep our infrastructure up to date to aid these efforts.”

Smith has a laundry list of goals he’s mapped out. Expanding the city’s biking trails, improving the Corn Palace, upgrading the city’s aging infrastructure and guiding a Lake Mitchell dredging project, if voters approve a loan application on June 4, are among the major projects Smith said he would hone in on during another term.

“We need to take a look inside and address some of the issues inside the Corn Palace and improve the interior. We need to hook up the bike paths from Ohlman and 23rd Avenue,” Smith said. “Infrastructure has always been important to me and keeping our roads and the sewer system up to date. We have more work to do on infrastructure improvements.”

Depending on the outcome of the Lake Mitchell dredging loan vote on June 4, Smith said the city could have a long-awaited opportunity to begin a project that will aim to drastically improve the lake’s ailing water quality.

Housing has become another topic Smith said he’s aiming to help advance more progress on. As Smith put it: “Affordable housing is an issue every city our size needs to address.”

A smaller scale project Smith said the council should further explore is building a second fire station in an area of the city to improve response times.

“As we grow, the city is expanding with developments further from the downtown fire station. Most cities in the state our size have a second fire station, so we need to look into this more as well,” Smith said, noting establishing a future plan for a second fire station would be a good first step.

As the chief financial officer of Mitchell’s CorTrust Bank, Smith said his professional experience has helped him make fiscally responsible decisions with the city’s budget.

Reflecting on his nearly two decades on the council, Smith is proud of the projects the city has managed to complete while building the city’s general fund reserves.

“Some of the bigger projects I’m very proud of are the exterior renovations of the Corn Palace, the indoor pool, the library upgrades and second sheet of ice at the activities center. We put all of that package together in 2012 and bonded for that by reinvesting into the community. We are at the tail end of paying those bonds off,” Smith said. “We have an excess of over 60% in general fund reserves. We haven’t overspent and positioned ourselves to spend money on some big projects.”

Among other projects Smith is proud to have been a part of on the council are the construction of the dog park, the creation of the Corn Palace Plaza and expansion of the skate park.

Committed to Lake Mitchell, downtown

Of the trio of candidates in the Ward 4 race, Smith is the only one who supports the proposed Lake Mitchell dredging plan.

Smith said the dredging project was carefully developed by engineers over the course of several years, and he’s sold that it will produce the best results of all the options the city has explored over the past decade.

“We have spent $976,000 since 2017 to research, analyze and study to tell the council and mayor what the best solution is. I have confidence in the firms we have hired. I believe it is a great plan,” Smith said.

While Smith backs the proposed dredging project, he said he will respect the outcome of the lake loan vote on June 4. If the vote fails to pass, Smith said he won’t give up on pursuing a plan that reduces the algae plaguing the body of water.

Working to reduce runoff funneling into the lake from the Firesteel watershed would remain a top priority for Smith, if re-elected. He said working in the watershed is another key piece to the puzzle of reducing the algae presence in Lake Mitchell.

“We will always continue to work on the watershed. I asked to rejuvenate the watershed committee because we have to start working directly with the producers and ranchers upstream. We now have an active watershed committee in place that’s a conduit with the producers’ concerns,” Smith said.

Montana Walcott has been acclimating to Mitchell since moving from Michigan over a year ago, and he sees “a lot of opportunity” for future success.

The 30-year-old business owner and entrepreneur is throwing his hat in the ring for the Ward 4 council seat in hopes to leverage the opportunities he sees in Mitchell.

“We are right off the interstate and have two good colleges. Mitchell should be booming a lot more than it is. I think leadership is not providing enough incentives to grow,” Walcott said. “I have an outside perspective, which I think is valuable.”

The goals Walcott has mapped out to help Mitchell grow are providing more activities, revamping downtown and business recruitment.

With the amount of tourists the Corn Palace brings to Mitchell each year, Walcott said the city needs to revamp the landmark attraction and downtown.

“There are a ton of missed opportunities on Main Street because tourists don’t walk all the way down Main Street. We have to revamp Main Street to get more tourists and visitors shopping and dining throughout downtown, which ultimately helps sales tax,” he said.

Walcott said the city’s outdoor recreation facilities could be utilized more, and establishing a city recreation manager is one way he believes would offer more activities and facility use.

By providing more activities, Walcott said it will facilitate more growth. However, he said business recruitment efforts led by city leaders is the biggest key to bringing major growth to Mitchell.

“We have to be better at recruiting businesses and welcoming new activities. Doing the same thing over and over again has obviously not been working,” he said.

Outlook on Lake Mitchell, Corn Palace

While he views the lake as a big community asset, Walcott characterized the proposed $25 million Lake Mitchell dredging project as a “band aid” solution. He is among several of the council candidates opposed to the project.

The city has tabbed multiple engineering firms to develop the proposed Lake MItchell dredging project, which Walcott doesn’t support.

“This plan is not a sustainable solution. I think there are better alternative options. Engineers only have so many tools in their tool belt, and they are only going to offer those,” Walcott said.

Walcott believes lake restoration companies like EverBlue Lakes in his home state of Michigan offer the best path forward for improving an algae-stricken lake.

“The best path was developed by John Tucci from EverBlue Lakes. He’s restored thousands of lakes. EverBlue Lakes has different tools I believe are effective and sustainable,” Walcott said.

The condition of the Corn Palace is a major concern for Walcott, who said the facility is rundown and not producing as much revenue as it could be.

“The place has been rundown. The torn seats are obviously a big thing. The fact they are not running events during the summer and losing money every year is a massive problem for me,” Walcott said.

To generate more revenue, Walcott said he would support opening the Corn Palace floor during the summer for more events instead of allowing a seasonal gift shop to operate.

“It disappoints me that they put the gift shop in the Corn Palace and shut the floor down all summer long. That’s just not a good business model,” he said.

The city’s contract with a farmer who is responsible for growing and harvesting the corn used to decorate the Corn Palace each year is another area for improvement, Walcott said.

Pointing to the drought year in 2022 that forced the Corn Palace leaders to keep the mural theme the same for two years, Walcott said the agreement with the farmer should provide an alternative option of corn supply to ensure the murals can switch themes on an annual basis.