Category Archives: News

By Dan Bechtold, Editor

Bids were opened for a proposed highway shop at the March 13 meeting of the Tripp County Commissioners.

Four bids were received and representatives from the companies attended the bid opening.

The base bids include: Summit Construction, Platte, $1,856,000; Puetz Inc., Mitchell, $1,799,000; Sharpe Inc., Ft. Pierre, $1,858,000 and First Dakota Enterprises, Ft. Pierre, $2,070,000.

Each company bid several add ons such as shop cooling, infloor tubing and compressors.

The commissioners tabled all the bids.

Also attending the meeting was Loren Schaeffer of Brosz Engineer.

Janiece Weber, the new director of equalization, told the commissioners she will be sending out improvement forms so persons can list additions to farms or new additions to buildings in town.

Weber received permission to attend a conference in Rapid City May 22-25.

Laura Kahler, 4-H advisor, told the board persons have been selected for the summer assistant.

Brooke Schroeder was hired at 480 hours for the summer and Sydney Peters for 80 hours. Commissioner Chip Schroeder abstained from voting as Brooke Schroeder is his daughter.

Permission was given to purchase a new gator for the Tripp County ambulance service. Paul Schueth of the ambulance service said TransCanada has given a $5,000 grant toward the purchase of a new gator.

Kathie Cole, co-ambulance director, said the new ambulance has arrived and it was on display outside the courthouse.

The next meeting of the commissioners will be March 27 at 10 a.m.

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By Dan Bechtold, Editor

Winner City Council met Monday night and heard reports from city administrators.

Police chief Paul Schueth reported there were 89 inmates in jail on Monday.

Brent Gill, public works director, reported on cleanup efforts after the last ice and snow storm. He said there were a lot of tree branches down from ice on tree limbs.

Karla Brozik, executive director of the Winner Area Chamber of Commerce, presented her quarterly report.

She said the Taste of Winner was held on March 20 with 11 entries.

Plans are in the works to continue the Winner Summer Nights which was a success last year. She said dates selected will include June 14, July 12, Aug. 9 and Aug. 30. She asked permission to have one block of Main Street blocked off those evenings for this event.

Brozik added the barbeque pit row will be held on Aug. 4 and also requested a part of Main Street be blocked off.

A public hearing was held on the application to transfer the on sale liquor license from Wings and More to St. Mary’s Hall for a wedding reception on April 28. The council approved the application.

The city will advertise for hay land bid for the landfill for this summer only.

The city will advertise for 2018 asphalt bids.

Kaylea Littau was advanced two steps for completion of state of South Dakota training requirements for a communications officer/911 dispatcher. Her salary was set at $17.58 per hour.

Employment was offered to Hanna Peterson as a summer intern for a control desk operator in the jail and her salary was set at $14.75 per hour with no benefits.

The council accepted the resignation of full time dispatcher Cami Woodward and moved her to part-time effective April 2.

The city will advertise for a full time dispatch worker.

The council approved the cancellation of Patrick Falencik’s hangar lease agreement and approved the transfer of the lease to Howard Aviation.

Put on first reading was Ord. 899 which deals with vacant structures.

Second reading was given to Ord. 898 which is a supplement to the appropriations ordinance. This is for funds that were donated to the cemetery to purchase software for tracking purposes.

The council voted to purchase twin 48 inch culverts for drainage ditches along Pine and Plum Street in the amount of $16,000. The city received a grant of $10,000 for this project.

Approval was given for purchase of 36-inch culvert to extend the drainage from the bass pond. The cost is $13,300. The city will obtain an easement from the landowner.

A discussion was held on a water line for the airport. Gill explained this will be an extension to a 6-inch line and will include a lift pump.

The Britton addition for housing was discussed.

Approval was given to rent an excavator for four weeks to clean out some ditches.

Final closeout approval was given for the airport apron expansion phase I at the Winner airport.

Forty Winner FFA members participated in the District 4 Career Development Event in Platte on March 13.

The biotechnology team took first with Andrew Taylor, 1^st; Sam Marts, 2^nd; Casey Stickland, 3^rd; Ryan Sell, 5^th.

Also placing were: floriculture—Madyson Morehart, 1^st; livestock fourth place as a team, Luke Hennebold, 4^th; meats—Colton Schroeder, 6^th; ag mechanics—Alex Schaeffer, 11^th ; farm business management—Brandon Volmer, 6^th; vet science team first place, Savannah Vogel, 1^st; Kayla Bachmann, 2^nd; Katy Lantz, 3^rd; Daesha Klein, 4^th; Heather Rowe, 5^th; Abigail Pajl, 6^th; natural resources—Aaron Gilchrist, 9^th.

Twenty South Dakota anglers competed in the 2018 Academy Sports & Outdoors BASS Nation Central Regional Tournament held March 7, 8 and 9 on Toledo Bend Reservior in Many, Louisiana.

Local anglers competing were Shane Stiehl, Eric Storms and Bryce Hauf all from the local Borderline Bassmasters club. The other anglers representing South Dakota were from other BASS clubs in the state.

The Central Region consists of 19 states who each had a twenty member team and all anglers competed on March 7th and 8th. The two days of competition was a field of 380 anglers that were paired together as boater and non boater, but competed against other boaters and non boaters. The top 62 boaters and non-boaters moved on to fish on Friday March 9. Each man who survived the cut had two goals – to represent his state proudly and to lock up a spot in the B.A.S.S. Nation Championship which will be held on an undisclosed date and fishery later this year.

Shane Stiehl placed 20th overall on the boater side and Bryce Hauf placed 48th on the non boater side and they will be representing South Dakota at the Championship later this year.

Winter just does not want to let go of its grip on the area.

Friday freezing rain and snow fell in the Winner area. The ice on the trees caused many branches to break. There were reports of lots of tree branches down all over Winner.

Due to ice on electrical lines here was some power blinks but there was never a total power outage in Winner.

In rural areas, some people lost power. Rosebud Electric Cooperative reported 75 percent of the power that was off was south of Colome and in the Clearfield area. They said at 10:15 a.m. on Friday the first outage was reported and as the day went on about 100 customers were without power. The REC got people back up and running on Friday but on Saturday when the heavy ice started dropping off the electrical lines, more people, including some of the same ones from Friday were without power. REC reported by 6 p.m. Saturday everyone had power. A full crew was working to restore power to their customers.

During the storm, only one pole was broken and that was in Colome. REC estimates there were a dozen wires broken.

With the poor weather on Monday, there were some sporadic outages reported by REC.

Monday there was light snow in Winner ranging from one to three inches. Fog early Monday morning reduced visibility.

The snow on Monday was wet and heavy meaning there was a lot of good precipitation.

From March 13 to March 19, Winner received 8.5 inches of snow. The greatest amount was recorded on March 17 when 3 inches was reported from the snow and icy storm on Friday. The precipitation from that three inches of snow was .25.

Due to Friday’s snow and ice there was no school in Winner. Colome school was on spring break. Due to the bad weather, the Tripp County Courthouse offices closed early on Friday afternoon.

Sid Bice, Denver, Colo., formerly of Winner, will be fighting for the LFA flyweight world championship in his home state of South Dakota.

The fight will be April 20 in Sioux Falls at the Sanford Pentagon.