The Rapid City Council held a meeting on July 30, 2026, to receive budget presentations for the 2027 fiscal year from the City Attorney's Office, Finance Department, Community Development Department, Rapid City Regional Airport, and the Rapid City Public Library. The presentations covered operational highlights, proposed budgets, future plans, and staffing challenges. No formal votes were taken on the budgets, but council members provided feedback and direction.
There were three hundred and forty-four claims opened and managed by a risk management coordinator, both work comp and liability claims. We opened four hundred and fifty pro law matters in our office, and a pro law matter is when there's any item that's substantial ha involves substantial work. It's an agreement, bid, legal question. If it's um something that we spend more than you know, 30 minutes of time on, we'll open a a matter in order to keep it for the future. We reviewed 123 contracts that were for department director signature, which the council never even sees. Um there were five hundred and seventy-two criminal citations and complaints, which um caused us up to uh very little work to a six significant amount of work, and we staffed at least a hundred and forty meetings. Um our basics of our budget similar to other departments, our people make up ninety-four percent of our budget. We have five attorney positions, one risk management coordinator who is Stacy Wolf, who's been with us for a long time, and one admin assistant. Um and we leverage the remaining six percent of our budget in ways that hopefully provide maximum valuable value to our staff and to our clients. Here's the comparison of our budgets from this year and next year um taken from the mayor's budget booklet. As you can see, personnel is staying primarily the same. Uh that's the vast majority. Like I said, 94% of our budget is for our personnel salaries and benefits. Um and we divide out the remaining 71,000 um to pay for additional services and costs. This year we've kind of moved money from professional services and from training and education in order to have sufficient money for supplies and also other operating expenses. And the the um last column, other operating, which has gone up eighteen point four percent. The bulk of that and how we've kind of had to scramble a little bit to fit an additional cost into our budget is we are um at the end of last year, we upgraded our Westlaw package, and West Law is our legal research um package. And we we hadn't made any changes in a long time. And as you can imagine, the resources that are available related to AI and AI assisted legal research are valuable to our work, valuable to making sure that we're efficient. And they also are valuable to Westlaw, and so we're paying 12,000 more than we had been before. Ms. Cushman, uh Chair recognizes Counselor Strowman. Thank you, Chair. On the personnel budget for 2027, does that include the positions that you are going to fill the yet? You have yet to fill the two attorney positions. Yes, yes, that's for seven personnel. Currently we have two open positions, so hopefully we will bring somebody on shortly, bring a couple people on shortly. And that um that's for a full staff of seven. Okay, so you accounted for that, so we don't have to worry about an additional. Okay. Right. Correct. Thank you. Correct. Counselor Maher. Yeah, my question is to occasionally we use uh external law firms for cases. Is that not included in your budget? That's a good question. Um we do have some amount of money for professional services. Um generally when we have outside counsel, most of the time I would say insurance um is paying for that outside counsel. And if insurance doesn't pay for it and it's directly related to it, one department, that department will pay for those professional services. So we have, you know, currently one, you know, if if public works is being sued about something, then public works will pay. Well, that would be covered by insurance. If public works has brought a lawsuit, like I'm thinking about the one on behalf or concerning uh Catron Boulevard, the cost for the attorney's fees comes out of the public works budget. Okay, thank you. There are times when we have provided for legal services out of our budget. It just depends, it's just not a very big line item. So it kind of is more suitable for one-off situations where we have a small bill rather than a long-term contract with an attorney. And we'll move back to Councillor Strowman. Thank you, Chair.