So, would any of my conservative friends care to run an EPA critique against the Lake County Commission? If I were a local Kristi Noem or John Thune, I’d be bleating about the Lake County Commission’s delay of a commercial development on Lake Herman for what sound pretty much like environmental concerns.

At its Tuesday meeting, the Lake County Commission heard Terry and Bev Timmer’s request for a conditional use permit to turn the old Dirks Resort into a campground. The site, on Lake Herman’s secluded south bay, would make a lovely camping location. It’s within easy hiking and mountain-biking distance of the south end of the Lake Herman State Park recreation trail. Given how fast the state park campground fills up, it would likely have no trouble drawing customers. It would also have one notable advantage over its main camping competition, Prairie Village: campers at Dirks Resort would enjoy lake access.

Ah, but there’s a sticking point. Dirks Resort happens to sit in the only residential area on that part of the lake. Adjoining property owners worry that lake access for the campground will bring lots of traffic and noise to the area—more ruckus, apparently than the mere existence of up to 123 campsites back away from the water. Heck, I sometimes wonder if the folks down on that side of the lake are giving me a wary glance when I ride my bike over their fun dipsy-doodle access road (I try to pedal quietly); a horde of summertime swimmers and campers would really shake up the neighborhood.

If landowners object to the lake access, Timmers could close off the lake access, but it seems that action would torpedo the campground’s business prospects. If I hauled my gear to a lakeside campground, could see the water from my tent, but was told the shoreline was off limits, I’d be torqued. The Prairie Village campsites are much farther up from the water, but guests can stroll a quarter mile down to the west gate and enjoy the Ikes’ lake access right across the road. Having a Lake Herman campground without easy lake access doesn’t sound viable.

Commissioner Chris Giles said he is ”a little more concerned about the sewage, percolation tests, holding tank, the water permit.” As Lake Herman Sanitary District chief, I can say that Bev Timmer has contacted me about the regulations on such matters and is looking into the proper wastewater options for the property. Timmers haven’t submitted any system designs yet (that will come when/if the conditional use permit is approved), but given my knowledge of the area, I can say the low-lying land and tight space in the area do present valid concerns for the proper disposal of the excretions of a couple hundred campers a stone’s throw from water’s edge each weekend.

These concerns about aquatic and aural pollution led the Lake County Commission to vote 4–1 to delay action for four weeks. According to KJAM, Commissioner Bohl dissented: “Bohl said the Timmers had already been delayed quite a bit with the county’s Planning commission and they have made attempts to meet the commission’s requirements.”

Attempts? Come now, Dan, even you remember Yoda’s admonition in The Empire Strikes Back: ”Do or do not. There is no try.” I’d like to be assured that they’ve met the legal requirements, not just that they’ve tried.

There’s money to be made at Lake Herman… but my fair lake remains home to a lot of folks who prefer their peace and quiet to economic development. And the Lake County Commission, for now at least, is backing that sentiment, one that can’t help reminding us of the regulation-hating rhetoric our GOP leaders throw at the federal government.

As home to high-tech Dakota State University, you would think Madison and Lake County would be among the best places in South Dakota for broadband access. Data from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration show that’s not quite the case:

Source: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/broadband-speeds-availability.html

As of June 30, 2011, 83% of Lake County’s population could get 6Mbps download speeds or better. 65% had access to 25 Mbps download speed or better. That’s not bad. But check out those darker green counties. Along the James River corridor from Aberdeen to Yankton, the eastern 212 corridor through Watertown, and predictably in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties, folks not sitting within tin-can-telephone range of the premier computer school in the state have more access to broadband Internet.

Can you say spillover…not?

Now the numbers are complicated. Compare Lake County with purportedly broadbandier Sanborn County two squares to its west. Sanborn County has a fifth of Lake County’s population and 14% lower median income, but the penetration rate for 6Mbps+ is 98%. Jump to 25Mbps, however, and penetration plummets to 14%.

Comparing Madison to Woonsocket should be small comfort my my techie hometown, which once tagged itself as “In Touch with the World.” We might just as well compare Madison to Ipswich, Edmunds County, where 25Mbps+ reach is 88%.

Pump up that WiMAX, Sioux Valley! Lake County is getting beat!

Oh, and did I mention that Dan Lemme has a heck of a good idea? The Madison developer would like to turn the old gravel pit on the Lake County Poor Farm land into a campground. Put in 80 campsites, extend the Highway 19 bike trail to run through the property… hey! Where have I heard that idea before?

The Lake County Commission likes the idea of adding a campground to the southwest side of the lake. However, they are deeply concerned about keeping the beach public. They’ve already created a new public access area just to the east of the proposed campsite. If they can ensure that the campground Lemme plans will go into state ownership and remain public, Lake County could add another recreational jewel to draw more of the Sioux Falls recreational crowd who can’t afford a half-million-dollar McMansion on Lake Madison’s ugly privatized shores.

Hang in there, John Goeman: we might see that Bicentennial Park by 2026 yet!

Lake County finished 2011 with a jump in unemployment. According to the South Dakota Department of Labor, December 2011 unemployment in the county jumped from 4.0% to 4.4%. Following a relatively normal seasonal pattern at the local and state level, both the number of jobs and the number of people in the local workforce shrank.

Five years ago, the Lake Area Improvement Corporation promised it would use $2.3 million in handouts from taxpayers and donors to maintain a status-quo job creation rate of 400 new jobs over the coming five years. In 2006, the average number of jobs in Lake County was 6525. In 2011, the average number of jobs in Lake County was 6277.

In other words, Lake County had 248 fewer jobs when Forward Madison finished than it did when the program started.

Oh, but that darn recession must have thrown a monkey wrench in the Madison works, right? That’s the excuse LAIC cheerleaders Jeff Nelson and Dick Ericsson offer. We’ve had this conversation before, but let’s update my September calculations with the full workforce and employment figures for 2011:

Recall that the recession never actually happened in South Dakota. But whatever impacts from the national recession may have trickled into South Dakota, the statewide job tally still increased by 1.46% over the last five years. Lake County’s behemoth neighbor Minnehaha County was able to grow its job count 3.45%. Even our dusty neighbor Miner County managed, like the state, to increase both its number of jobs and the number of people on hand to fill them.

During a period of growth for the entire state, Lake County saw its workforce decline 2% and the number of jobs available drop 3.8%.

This isn’t spin; this is cold hard numbers. Forward Madison sent Madison backward.

Rep. Bob Deelstra (R-9/Hartford) has filed HB 1066, his proposal to allow counties to cremate deceased indigents. Since my original post on Rep. Deelstra’s proposal, I’ve not been able to think of any reason this bill is a bad idea. Plenty of Rep. Deelstra’s colleagues in Pierre have come to a similar conclusion: he has a bipartisan mix of 30 co-sponsors in the House, just five shy of the votes he needs to get it through his chamber.

If passed, the bill may not have much effect in Lake County: funeral home director Robert Ellsworth says that Lake County has buried very few indigents during his 33 years in Madison. Ellsworth also notes that the rate Lake County pays for those rare burials hasn’t increased in over thirty years.

Down the road, however, Minnehaha County is seeing dead people… and more of them! Minnehaha County Director of Human Services Carol Muller provides the following figures on her counties increasing indigent expenses:

The 2011 figure isn’t complete; a few outstanding bills will likely raise the total above $200K. The average costs vary, since family members contribute varying amounts.

But given that cremation may cost $500 to $1000 less than burial, Deelstra’s proposal could have saved Minnehaha County taxpayers something like five figures.

Note that Rep. Deelstra is not requiring counties to burn the poor; he’s just giving them the option under statute, if there are no family or friends to express wishes to the contrary.

So I’m wondering: can anyone think of a reason not to pass this bill?

Update 2012.01.22 07:07 MST: According to Muller, in 2007, the average cost of cremation was $1,159, while the average cost of a traditional funeral with opening/closing was $2483. In 2010, these numbers were $1395 and $2563, respectively. When families are available to express their preference, more are choosing cremation, matching the general trend in funerals. Where the county has to make the call, allowing cremation as an option means saving almost $1200, or 45%. Muller also tells me that in 2011, 65% of those funerals were cremations.

Unemployment in Lake County has dropped to its lowest level since Barack Obama won the 2008 election. South Dakota Department of Labor data show the jobless rate around Madison dropped from 4.3% in October to 4.0% in November.

Alas, the drop in unemployment does not mean more people were working. Lake County saw 70 jobs disappear in November. At the same time, 95 people left the labor force, producing a net drop in the official jobless rate. This change reflects a statewide October–November change in which we lost jobs but lost more workers, producing a decrease in statewide unemployment from 4.0% to 3.9%.

On the bright side, Lake County has 395 more jobs than it did during the doldrums of last January. However, Lake County still has 265 fewer jobs than when the Forward Madison program started in 2006 and 665 fewer jobs than the Lake Area Improvement Corporation promised it would create with the $2.3 million it received from investors and taxpayers.

Lake County enjoyed another job surge in October. The latest data from the South Dakota Department of Labor show 105 more people raised their hands in October in Lake County and said, “We want to work!” Lake County managed to find new jobs for 90 of those new labor force entries. Alas, that left fifteen more people still looking, meaning Lake County’s unemployment rate bumped up from 4.1% to 4.3%.

On the bright side, Lake County has added 465 jobs since its five-year low of 6005 jobs last January. After launching a $2.3-million capital campaign to maintain status quo job growth and create 400 new jobs, the Lake Area Improvement Corporation is just 195 jobs shy of getting Madison back to the 6665 jobs it started with when Forward Madison launched in October 2006.

As usual, Lake County lags its neighbors in Brookings, where unemployment in October remained at 3.3%, a full point lower than Lake County’s rate. Of the six counties adjoining Lake, only Moody currently has a higher unemployment rate (5.2%, down from 5.5% in September).

Lake County’s October job growth underperformed historical seasonal trends. Since 1990, Lake County has seen average job growth of 2.6% from September to October. This year’s September–October harvest job spike was 1.4%. Interestingly, September–October job growth has lagged the historical average every year that the Forward Madison job-growth initiative has been in operation. The lowest September–October growth, 0.8%, came in 2007, the first year of Forward Madison, before the national recession started.

That seasonal trend is reversed in Brookings County. Their average September–October job growth is 1.6%. Job growth between those two months in Brookings has been 2.0% or better in every one of the last five years. This year, the September–October harvest job spike in Brookings was 2.6%.

Lake County enjoyed a nice September employment boomlet. According to South Dakota Department of Labor statistics, Lake County added 210 jobs from August to September, for a total of 6420. With 170 new workers joining the active labor force of 6695, the county’s unemployment rate dropped from 4.8% to 4.1%. That’s the lowest unemployment rate our county has seen since November 2008.

Wow! If Lake County could replicate that job creation figure for October, November, and December, it could beat the Lake Area Improvement Corporation’s five-year job-creation goal of 7065 jobs by the end of 2011.

But expect our local economic development leaders to continue to conspicuously ignore that goal (which was really just a continuation of status-quo trends). Madison appears to get a regular jobs bump in September, keep chugging through October, then send workers home after the harvest.

Compare our September bump to trends elsewhere in South Dakota. Lake County saw a September jump of 2.6% in workers and 3.4% in jobs. At the same time, our Brookings neighbors saw workers increase by 5.1% and jobs by 6.4%. Down in Vermillion, workers increased 10.1% and jobs 11.5%. Aberdeen job figures tend to stay flat from August to September.

Any college bump in Spearfish gets washed out by the loss of tourism jobs: this year, Spearfish saw its September workforce count slide 2.4% and jobs 2.1%. That September slide is reflected in Rapid City (down in September 4.1% in workers and 3.8% in jobs). Overall, while Madison and Brookings usually gain in September, South Dakota sees a regular decline of more than 1% in jobs as kids head back to college.