The gumbo effect

By Lorraine Collins

Anyone who grew up on the prairie or in the Badlands knows about gumbo. I don't mean the kind they eat in Louisiana. I mean the kind that sticks to your feet after a rain in South Dakota. In the old days before there were a lot of paved roads around here, driving on a dirt road and encountering a rain storm meant you were more likely than not to get stuck in the slick, muddy clay. We used to say that when you were walking in gumbo you'd take one step forward and slide back two. My father would laugh and claim that when he had to go somewhere, he'd turn around and walk backwards so he could get where he was going.

I've been thinking about the gumbo effect as a pretty good metaphor for what's been happening in South Dakota in recent years. That is, the more we strive to go forward, the farther back we seem to slide, at least in some important areas. For years and years we have claimed that we want to increase state aid to education but we haven't even managed to maintain the same level of support as in the past and this year schools have received even more cuts in funding.

Somehow, the idea seems to be that if we fire enough teachers and administrators, enlarge some class sizes and cut out various courses, we will improve education. And in terms of achieving an educated and competitive work force, the concept appears to be that we should raise tuition, making it more difficult for young people and their parents to afford a university education. If there's one thing we like to talk about in South Dakota it's the importance of education. We just don't want to pay for it.

 Of course, it's not only education that we don't want to pay for. We're kind of tough on roads and bridges, too. A recent report by the Road Information Program noted that only four states have a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges than we do, but it is kind of comforting to know there's at least something in which we didn't come in last. South Dakota's AAA says that the poor condition of our roads costs motorists an average of $319 a year in extra vehicle operating costs, although I have no idea how they figured that out. The condition of our roads and bridges affects our ability to spur economic growth, which we claim we want, although we just don't want to pay taxes to fix them.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released a report that places South Dakota dead last in tax collections in the nation. In fact, our per capita tax rate declined $40 from 2009 to 2010, so in terms of providing more money for government, we're going backwards. This is hardly a surprise because our idea of enticing business and industry to our state seems to be to brag about having the lowest taxes and the lowest paid work force in the country. The fact that wages are low may help account for the fact that twice as many workers in South Dakota hold two jobs as the national average.

We in South Dakota seem to prefer taxes to be paid by somebody else, which is why we like to tax tourists and why the federal government provides $730 million more for our general appropriations budget than we do. It's nice of the people in the other 49 states to help us with our budget. I just hope they don't start thinking of us as a bunch of freeloaders.

I do realize that speaking in favor of taxes is like speaking in favor of death, that other inevitable thing. It's just something we don't want to think about and generally feel it's something that happens to somebody else and not us. But if we don't do something about making our income take care of our needs, maybe we'll have to start walking backwards. We might get ahead. And anyway we can see where we've been, even if we have no idea where we're going.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Not worth a darn

By Lorraine Collins

Every now and then I hear an amazing factoid uttered by a television pundit but he then moves on to discuss something else and I have to scribble it down on whatever piece of paper is handy, lest I lose track of it. A recent one was that one third of all the socks in the world are made in one factory in China. Workers there earn $14 a day and send most of that home to their families in rural communities.

I think the point of mentioning this was that we Americans should not try to compete with China in making socks. We have to find other, more expensive and complicated things to make. That's probably true. But still---one third of all the socks in the world? Made in one factory? I wondered how big the factory is and where all the socks go. I decided that the destination for millions of pairs of socks had to be countries where people have enough money to buy socks as well as shoes. That would be in Europe, North America, the richer countries in South America, and elsewhere. Recently Sports Illustrated had photos of children in Bangladesh playing cricket on stony ground. They were barefoot like millions of other people in impoverished areas of the world. So just hearing one fact about socks got me to thinking about worldwide economies and populations.

This sort of fact can make me think of history, too, at least my personal history. By now there's been quite a lot of that. I remember that my mother had a "darning egg." It was made of wood and was egg-shaped with a handle to hang onto as one thrust it into the sole of a sock to mend a heel or toe. About the only place one would find such a thing these days, I imagine, is in an antique store.

I bet I'm safe in saying that nobody darns socks anymore, but if you do, let me know. I buy quite a lot of socks in a year but I'm always surprised to discover a hole in the heel of a sock, or a toe poking through after only a few weeks. I'm pretty sure that the quality of socks today is less than that of the 20th Century, and that socks today are not worth a darn. Like so much else in society, we don't try to repair them, but just throw them away.

As I recall, darned socks weren't always comfortable but we wore them because we couldn't afford new ones. We had patches in our jeans, too, but today I see expensive new jeans with rips in them for sale in department stores. It's a fashion, I guess, though I don't know why. But it's probably just as well, because we now can't tell whether the person in tattered jeans is rich enough to buy a popular fashion, or is too poor to afford new pants. That may be beneficial in terms of hiding how much poverty exists in America.

I've heard it said that people are falling out of the middle class in record numbers. Any number of  Internet websites can offer us statistics that demonstrate that the top 1% of the people have seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90% have seen their share shrink. Personal savings have plummeted and one source says that half of all Americans will experience poverty sometime before age 65. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider. Just about anybody who looks at economics is aware of this, but we don't seem to pay much attention to it when establishing tax rates or when we decide to cut programs that help the poor.

Surely we should be paying attention to the situation, not only for compassionate reasons, but in the interest of developing a stable and productive society. Any plan for economic recovery  that doesn't take these facts into consideration really isn't worth a darn. 

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

How to dig a hole

By Lorraine Collins

The Black Hills Pioneer is the only newspaper in western South Dakota that benefits from a fulltime, year around reporter in Pierre. This is Bob Mercer, who works for the Aberdeen American News and also provides reports to independent newspapers in Mitchell, Watertown, and Pierre in addition to the Pioneer. Mercer has been covering the Legislature since 1985 though he took a few years off when he was Gov. Janklow's press secretary. By now he must be the most knowledgeable journalist in the state when it comes to knowing what goes on in the capitol.

Mercer's report published in the April 18 Pioneer offered an insight as to one cause of our state's deep budget hole. It's not all that different from the federal government, actually. Just keep adding new programs without figuring out new revenue sources to pay for them. Folks in South Dakota keep complaining that Washington does this, but they could look a lot closer to home. Mercer pointed to four programs that have added millions to the budget in the last 15 years with no new funding sources named.

Two of the programs that Mercer says are now "politically untouchable" are subsidies for ethanol plants and financial paybacks to big business projects. He points out that Republican governors and legislators were big promoters of these programs which have both grown rapidly over the years, including more and more beneficiaries and spending more and more millions of dollars.

 The ethanol program started in 1995, providing $1 million annually per producer for up to 10 years. It was supposed to expire in 2005 but it's still with us. The amount budgeted has grown from $4 million in 2003 to $7 million currently, although this amount will drop down again in fiscal years 2012 to 2016 before bouncing up again. There is a new deal providing $3.5 million over five years for ethanol distribution and retail systems. All this is so complicated that it's hard for the average citizen to keep track of and there is considerable disagreement about whether the program was ever a good idea in the first place.

The same could be said of the construction tax refunds for big business. In 2006, refunds totaled $1.9 million but the amount grew rapidly and by 2009 was $18 million. The criteria was so broad that projects could qualify whether they needed incentives or not. The program is supposed to expire in January, 2013 but Mercer points out that Gov. Daugaard and the Legislature replaced it with a new program to start on that date that is expected to cost $15 million a year.

 These two budget items demonstrate how easy it is for a program to start out modestly, with limited duration, and then grow and grow. They exist because those supporting them said they would benefit our state's economy. But to pay for them we are cutting support to our schools and to social programs that provide care and services to the elderly, the sick, the impoverished. Everyone talks about the cost of social programs, but few mention the cost of economic programs which may be of dubious benefit to our citizens.

The other two programs on Mercer's list could be said to benefit at least some South Dakotans. The Opportunity scholarship program was promoted by the Board of Regents to encourage high achieving high school kids to go to our state universities. In the Rounds administration, the criteria was changed to allow students to go to private colleges in the state as well and now one-seventh of the state funds are spent in private schools. This would seem to defeat the original purpose of the fund.

In 2003 the South Dakota Retirement System raised the mandatory contribution of employees and employers from 5 percent to 6 percent. Mercer says that extra penny per salary dollar has added millions of dollars of costs to the state, and to the hundreds of counties, cities, and school districts that are members of the state retirement system.

It's good to have subjects like this discussed outside of the feverish legislative session so I'm glad we have our man in Pierre.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Geography, politics and an adventure

By Lorraine Collins

As I observed the recent events in Wisconsin when lawmakers fled the state capitol and headed out of state to prevent a quorum and thus prevent a vote on a bill they opposed, I realized that this tactic would be more difficult to achieve in South Dakota. Our capitol, Pierre, is right in the middle of the state, unlike Wisconsin's capitol, Madison. Any fleeing Legislators would have to drive quite a long way to get to Minnesota or Nebraska or Wyoming or North Dakota, avoiding the Highway Patrol all the way.  

I don't suppose our founding fathers were thinking of this when they located the capitol in Pierre. They were probably just trying to find a central location, not realizing that many years later the Interstate Highway system would choose to go somewhat south of Pierre so the state capitol is not as conveniently located as one would like, and that the bigger population centers would be toward the edge of the state. The state capitol really isn't convenient for most of the people in the state to get to.

Back in the early 1970s I used to arise at dawn to drive to Pierre on Highway 34 so I could testify on behalf of legislation, or against legislation, that affected organizations I was involved with, such as school boards. So far as I know, we didn't have a lot of lobbyists in those days, so citizens themselves had to go to Pierre to talk to Legislators. One time a school board member and administrator from Newell joined a couple of us from the Belle Fourche school board to hire a small aircraft to fly us to Pierre. That turned out to be a real adventure.

When we got as far as Hayes, the pilot started to turn around to go home because there was a fog bank he couldn't fly through. We protested. We insisted. We said we absolutely had to get there. So this fellow, whose name I luckily can't remember, decided to set the aircraft down on Highway 34 which at that hour had no traffic whatsoever. We got out of the plane, pushed it off of the highway onto a road leading to a field, and the Newell guys hiked to a nearby ranch for help. The rancher took us into Hayes.

Soon, a pickup truck pulling a trailer with a piece of farm machinery of some sort came along, and we were able to convince the driver to take us into Pierre. The two men got in first and the other woman and I got in and sat on their laps. The accommodating good Samaritan drove us right to the capitol and we made it in time to testify before a committee. I believe that was the time we wanted to change the law requiring a 60% majority to pass a bond issue.

When I got up to testify, a Legislator said that usually nobody ever bothers to come to talk to their committee. So I told the story of what we'd gone through to get there, to illustrate how important this was to us.  Eventually, the pilot was able to get the plane to the Pierre airport so we flew home safely. But by then, our story had been picked up by the Associated Press who called me to ask about this adventure.

The problem was, it's generally illegal for a small plane to land on a highway unless it's an emergency, and a school board emergency probably wouldn't qualify.  I said I really didn't want the pilot to get into trouble. So the reporter said he would say that our pilot, "an experienced crop duster, looked around for a place to land." So the story went out: School Board Members Fly and Hitchhike to get to Pierre!

All that effort went for nothing. Our bill was killed in committee. Yet, I'm glad we tried. And I'm glad to know that many others go to Pierre these days to support causes they believe in, no matter how hard it is to get there and no matter how futile it seems.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.

The Gates Notes

Getting information these days is easy.  Getting good information is quite a bit tougher.

Watching Fox News and CNN, listening to the BBC and NPR, all offers a wide range of information and opinions, but much of it conflicts with other sources.  Who to believe?

This morning we read that Secretary of State Clinton has used Al Jazeera as an example of “real news.”   Not having been exposed to much of Al Jazeera, that’s hard to know.  Their image in this country has largely been that of purveying Muslim causes, much like Fox is viewed with by disdain by many liberals, and NPR is vilified by many conservatives.  Al Jazeera is making a big push to get into more cable television homes across the country.  It’ll be interesting to see how that turns out.

But you need not wander into the realm of international news to find a disconnect of facts.

We’ve been following events in Wisconsin, where a pointed conflict continues to evolve between unionized public workers and state government.  Folks I hear on Fox News talk about how public employees are compensated far better than their counterparts in the private sector.  Not true, claims the head of the AFL-CIO, who says public workers lag behind in salaries when compared to private sector workers – that they deserve a good benefits package to make up for that.

The task of trying to gather good information – at least through the media – seems fruitless.  Most of us soon get burned out on this approach, trying to sort out one radical claim from another.

That’s why it’s rather refreshing to find what appears to be more objective information shared from a surprising source:  Bill Gates.

Yesterday, we heard Gates, who’s long been an ardent advocate for education and health care issues, weigh in on public employees, state pension plans, and how they impact the delivery of quality education.

We’ve been tracking public employee retirement funds in several states – mostly reviewing what they say about themselves.  Reading their newsletters would cause one to well up with confidence that, despite hard economic times, “their” retirement fund is in good shape.  Not to worry.

Nonetheless, public pension funds are – and should be – a big concern for the whole country.

Take a few moments to explore the The Gates Notes to learn a bit more about this issue and others.  It offers seemingly unfettered data, unaccompanied by the hostile rhetoric that seems in vogue over on the news channels.

I probably won’t give up splashing around the “main stream media” for information, but I suspect I’ll be spending increased time “on-line” trying to harvest more accurate information.  That may not be easy either, but I find The Gates Notes to be a breath of fresh air.

And I don’t think I’ll miss the shouting and name-calling that permeates commercial broadcasting. 

Lucky to be an American

Every so often, we happen across a news item or video that captures our attention.

Such was the case earlier today when good Nebraska friend Con Marshall sent us a video link by Baxter Black.

He may not be very well know in urban settings, but Baxter Black is something of a household word across rural America. He's been sharing his insight and down-home common sense for several decades now, and we first became acquainted with his work while living in Oklahoma and working for public radio. Baxter Black had earned a regular spot on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition," which was trying to find an audience, just as "All Things Considered" had done many years earlier.

A native of the southwest, Baxter is usually identified as a "cowboy, poet, philosopher, and former large animal veterinarian."

We like what he has to say in this produced video -- and it's vintage Baxter Black. Left or right. Conservative or liberal. Baxter's words should be an inspiration for all. Enjoy.

What are we going to do about it?

By LORRAINE COLLINS

After the latest tragedy in which a seriously mentally ill person murdered random citizens engaged in peaceful pursuit in Tucson, there is finally some attention being paid to the fact that there is little or no protection in this country for the mentally ill, or for those who may be fatally impacted by this lack of protection and help. Families like mine, who have encountered all the difficulties and impossibilities of trying to get help for the mentally ill, may finally have some hope for somebody else's future, even if it's too late for us.

There are several reasons why there is so little help for the mentally ill in this rich and powerful country. To go back in history a bit, in many countries it used to be possible for a person to be involuntarily committed to a mental institution with little or no due process. In the Soviet Union, political dissidents were sent to mental hospitals. Before women had many rights anywhere, a husband could declare his wife crazy and off she'd go. Anybody who didn't conform to social norms could be regarded as insane. To correct this situation, in the 1960's in the U.S. the rules were changed and suddenly mental hospitals were emptied in the name of Civil Rights.

That was good, except no provisions were made to give help and take care of those who were seriously mentally ill. Governmental units were pleased to get rid of the expense of caring for the mentally ill and closed mental hospitals. Unfortunately, this seems to have resulted in spending more money on building prisons. The statistics are astonishing, but it seems that 70% of juveniles in jails and prisons have at least one mental illness and at least 20% of inmates in adult prisons are mentally ill. 

Laws make it difficult for families to get help because many times these laws are based on the Tombstone Theory. That is, until the mentally ill person does something awful, such as bringing a gun to school and killing people, there's no way to involuntarily commit him to a hospital where he could get help. In many states a parent or caregiver has to go to court to declare their loved one a danger to himself or others in order to get him committed. This is a very difficult experience to go through.

And in the end, the stay in the mental hospital doesn't last long. The average stay at the Human Services center in Yankton, SD is 15 days. In my experience, that's typical. The person is stabilized, is back in his right mind, compliant, and the crisis is over. He can be referred to other outpatient services and everyone wishes him well. On C-Span's "Washington Journal" earlier this month, Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) said that most mentally ill people are taken care of at home, by parents, spouses, siblings because there is nowhere else for them to go. When they leave home, which they often do, they are homeless, wandering America. Fitzpatrick said we must have "public discourse and education" on the problems of mental illness in this country.

In terms of being able to get someone help whether he wants it or not, Arizona seems to have more effective laws than many, but people don't know what the law is, don't have access to help, and of course the budget for mental health in Arizona has been very sharply cut in recent years. One report said it was cut 65%.

 Help for the mentally ill is generally in the hands of states and counties, so how much help families can get depends on where they live and how much state legislators and county commissioners are willing and able to spend. Fitzpatrick said that half of the mentally ill people in the U.S. get no help at all, and that untreated mental illness has a tremendous impact on the community. He called this a national tragedy. It's a tragedy for families, too.  So, what are we going to do about it?

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.

Expiration dates

By LORRAINE COLLINS

On New Year's Eve, I pulled a container of whipped topping from the freezer and saw that it said that if it was frozen, I should use it by December 21. I was ten days overdue! Should I use it, or not? A few days earlier, I'd found a can of sliced mushrooms that said it was "best" by October 3. Oops! Should I use them or not? If it wasn't "best" was it still edible? It came all the way from China, so I thought not.

I prefer dealing with fresh produce because it's pretty easy to tell if a head of lettuce or an apple is too old to be usable, or a carton of milk or cottage cheese. But canned, frozen and packaged goods are something else. I really hate to waste the product, but when I read the expiration date of something that's lingered too long in cupboard or freezer I worry whether, if I use the product, I'll be advancing my own expiration date.

How long is too long? That's the question, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professional football careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties and living in a hospital bed attached to tubes and a respirator. Serious questions demand sober and thoughtful answers. I can in good conscience reluctantly throw away outdated food, but getting rid of out dated ideas has proved much more difficult for me and for many different societies over time.

Meanwhile, on a less philosophical level, we do have the current South Dakota Legislative Session to think about, and it does have a definite expiration date. That date is March 28th. It has a shelf life of 38 days and it has many things to accomplish during that time. The United States Congress, which also recently began its countdown to expiration, has two years before it turns sour, or so we hope.

At this point, we really don't know what the situation will be by time these governmental expiration dates arrive and so far as I know, there's no guarantee of quality or purity of product. It would be kind of nice to have some agency like those protecting us from poisonous food or dangerous products to examine various bills and call for those that are frivolous, poorly conceived, or based on a personal agenda to be voluntarily recalled. The Legislature wastes a lot of time dealing with bills that should never have been filed in the first place.

We know that in our state government there are expiration dates called term limits and there has been some argument about whether these are good for our democracy or not. Theoretically, term limits encourage more people to run for office to be involved in our government, but in practice when somebody's term is up in the House he or she runs for the Senate, or vice versa. And we've recently seen that when one Constitutional Officer is term-limited, he can just get  appointed to another office, so government in Pierre becomes a game of musical chairs for those already in the game.

This year we saw again that elections serve as term limits in some cases and it can be said that this is the best kind of term limitation. Some years ago, South Dakota wanted to put term limits on our Congressional representatives but this was seen as unconstitutional. In fact, the ballot box has proved to be a pretty good substitute for any term limiting law.

On the whole, I think that if we need expiration dates on anything, it's political campaigns because shortening them would reduce the influence of money. If we can't get that, maybe we in the electorate should make it clear that our patience and tolerance for outrageous lies, accusations and distortions does have an expiration date. And that's today.   If we make that clear, it might improve the quality of the product. And it's certainly something we aren't going to import from China.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com          

Remembering our way to the future

By LORRAINE COLLINS

There was a very interesting segment on the CBS  program "Sixty Minutes" recently when viewers were introduced to a handful of people who could literally remember every day of their lives. If they were asked to remember a day like July 23rd 2006, for instance, they could tell you whether it was a Tuesday or a Friday, whether it rained that day, who they talked to, what they had for lunch and so forth. 

Of course this is hard to verify, so scientific investigators asked about things they remembered on dates that can be historically documented and in every case the people with this incredible and somewhat frightening ability could recall that day instantly and exactly.

When asked how they could do this, they said they didn't know. Just ask them about a day they'd lived through some years ago and suddenly they "saw" that day and re-experienced it. They didn't particularly want to, but they did. Some of the instantly remembered days made them feel whatever emotion they had felt that day--sadness or joy. Subsequent MRI examinations revealed that there were some differences in the brains of these people and the rest of us.

Memory is a mysterious thing and losing it can be devastating both for individual people and for societies. I've been thinking of this, now that we are approaching the end of another year, because this is when the media attempts to sum up the year, decide what was most important, what good and bad things happened, to record it for posterity. I suppose that's inevitable and it does help fill pages in newspapers and magazines and many hours on television and radio. The trouble is, I'm not sure we are all remembering the same things in the same way.

For instance, some of us may remember that the last Legislature succeeded in balancing  the budget but others of us will remember that to do so they had to use federal stimulus funds and cut state aid to public schools. Some of us may remember all the fun and profit the annual Sturgis Rally brought to the Hills, while others of us remember the noise and inconvenience. While some people are remembering that we are assured the recession hasn't hit South Dakota as hard as other states and that we have a good economic climate here, others may remember that eight of the poorest ten counties in the United States are within our borders.

In other words, I tend to think we often remember what we want to remember and forget things we don't want to pay attention to. Maybe that's the only way we can function much of the time or we'd get bogged down in regret and uncertainty.

Yet, as we approach another New Year, I hope that those who hold political and economic power in South Dakota and the United States do not suffer loss of memory. I hope they pause to reflect on some of the mistakes that have been made in the last decade. We wouldn't be in an economic mess and fighting two wars (not counting excursions into Yemen and Pakistan) if some mistakes hadn't been made along the way. Our highways wouldn't be deteriorating, our schools struggling, our prisons overcrowded, if we hadn't made some pretty bad decisions over the years. Remembering and recognizing mistakes is the first step toward making better decisions in the future.

Even if we all could remember every day of our lives, I'm not sure that this would help us  achieve a more sane and benevolent society, because we would still be filtering reality through our own eyes, our own beliefs, fears, ambitions. People do remember things differently which is why there are conflicting reports from eye witnesses and arguments at family reunions.

Yet we should do our best to try to remember history and see it clearly. As the saying goes, those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.

Happy New Year. 

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.

Bryant: No emergency at Terry Cemetery

It appears that there is no imminent threat to the Terry Cemetery.

LCHS President Jerry Bryant spoke today (1/3/11) with Wharf Resources General Manager Bill Shand, who said he believes Wharf has no plans to do anything with the old cemetery for at least the next five years.

Wharf had filed documents with the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources on September 27th, indicating their intention to significantly expand their large scale gold mining operation near Terry Peak. (See our story of 12/25/10:  Terry cemetery area targeted.)  If approved, Wharf would expand its heap-leach gold mine operation by some 600 acres, including the old Golden Reward mining area.  The Terry Cemetery was included in their request for “Determination of Special, Exceptional, Critical or Unique Lands” submitted to DENR.

Shand told Bryant that, if and when Wharf decides to do anything with the cemetery – which “he doubts” – they will give “ample” notice to LCHS and other interested parties.

After talking with Shand and State Archaeologist Mike Fosha about the cemetery, Bryant said it would appear there is no emergency regarding possible disturbance of the cemetery. 

“But it never hurts to be prepared, and we’ll have our ducks in a row to combat it, whether it’s at Terry Cemetery or some other cemetery,” said Bryant. 

At least one individual plans to submit a nominating petition to include the cemetery on the preliminary list of “Special, Exceptional, Critical, or Unique Lands.  Jeannine Guern, who is active with both the Black Hills Pioneers and LCHS, plans to file her document with DENR before the January 11^th deadline.

Cemetery preservation and maintenance is on the agenda for the LCHS Board of Directors when they meet tomorrow afternoon (1/4/11) in Deadwood.  The 4 o’clock meeting will take place at the Deadwood City Library.

The Board is also expected to discuss and take action regarding a contract with the Adams Museum and House, establishing the “terms and conditions” for use of the designated “LCHS Room” in the new Homestake Adams Research and Cultural Center.  LCHS earlier approved spending $15,000 to gain space “in perpetuity” in the nearly-completed HARCC, which is located at 150 Sherman Street in Deadwood. 

Construction on the structure is all but complete, and efforts are underway to outfit the facility.  A grand opening celebration is slated for Thursday, June 16th, 2011.