This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
This summer, a five-person race took place in Rapid City to claim the mayoral office. Jason Salamun eked out a close victory.
He stops by SDPB’s studio to share his vision for his tenure. He walks listeners through his public safety and economic initiatives and discusses his goals for Rapid City.
Mayor Salamun wishes to create opportunities for everyone while building a great community to raise a family.
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Lori Walsh:
In early July, Jason Salamun formally stepped into his new role as mayor of Rapid City. Today, I'm excited to welcome him to In the Moment and introduce him to the rest of South Dakota as well.
We are seated here in SDPB's Black Hill Surgical Hospital Studio right in the heart of Rapid City.
Mayor Salamun, welcome. How's that sounding to you?
Jason Salamun:
It takes getting used to, yeah.
Lori Walsh:
I have to get used to saying it.
Jason Salamun:
I'm impressed that you said my last name correctly because most people say it wrong. It keeps me humble.
Lori Walsh:
I have producers who gave me a pronouncer, so I am selfishly supported by wonderful people, as you are too.
Tell me a little bit about the importance of having a team and what are you finding about the city offices, as you transition into this role, to say, "I'm the new guy here."
Jason Salamun:
Yeah. It helps that I was on the council for six years, so I at least built some relationships. But I will say there is no way a mayor or anybody could do this job alone, obviously. You're talking about leading an entire city operation, and so it takes talented people around you. I will say that the city is very blessed in Rapid City to have such talent available.
Whether it's the mayor's office or my department directors or people filling potholes to everything, it is amazing the sheer amount of people that serve the city. And it's very humbling to know that you're in charge of that and you want to steward that well as a leader.
Lori Walsh:
Outgoing mayor Steve Allender left you a couple pieces of advice and one of them was to get used to the fact that you are serving the people that you shop at Safeway with, or that you're getting your gas at the gas station with, that you're in church with on Sunday morning.
Have you already noticed that people are recognizing you and coming up and talking to you and telling you what they want you to know about Rapid City? Not just in general, but at this time, at this moment.
Jason Salamun:
Yeah. Not a day goes by that I'm not out in public and I get stopped and sometimes it's encouragement, which is always great. A lot of times it's a specific issue and I'm not the best person to fix your exact issue, but what I can do is take it to the people who can do something about it.
But no doubt about it, folks, this was a highly competitive race, so a lot of folks had eyeballs on it. It made the visibility strong and I kind of stand out like a sore thumb. I'm 6 feet, 4 inches tall with a beard and look like a linebacker, what I'm told. So I try not to act like one, but it's—
Lori Walsh:
You're easy to spot.
Jason Salamun:
I'm easy to spot.
Lori Walsh:
You don't need a hat that says mayor for them to find you.
Jason Salamun:
Oh, no, no, no. But my wife and I have been out to dinner many times because we're empty nesters and we do that. So when we're out, folks will stop and chat.
Lori Walsh:
All right. Some of your big initiatives. What did you run on and what are you seeing that you feel that you can get some traction on early? Not only because of the campaign but because of the situation that you're stepping into.
Jason Salamun:
Well, it's interesting. You're elected in the ninth inning of a budget process, so you're immediately trying to tweak that budget. You're not going to change everything in it, but you're tweaking it to align with the priorities that the people put you in for.
One of the biggest ones that I ran on was public safety, and that encompasses a lot. The real message is everybody's welcome in Rapid City, but crime is not. So that has been a big priority.
We are looking at initiatives to increase patrols downtown and throughout the city. We've been down, a year ago, 34 police officers. As the year went on, we were down 20 and we're making progress now. So we had to increase our pay and retention package for our police officers. We had neighboring communities that had starting pay better than we did for a sworn officer. So those are things that we've had to make adjustments on. We're going to continue that.
Also looking at other programs to help relieve pressure off our police department. One of those is a city park ranger program, which folks have started to ask about, but I'm putting that as my recommendation in the budget to the council and we'll see where it goes from there.
Lori Walsh:
Let's talk a little bit more about this because I think you've thought deeply about it from multiple sides.
Jason Salamun:
I have.
Lori Walsh:
We recently did a segment with the South Dakota Advisory Committee for US Commission on Civil Rights, looking at voting rights and what keeps people away from the polls. One of the things that they learned was for Native American populations, sending police officers to the polls on voting day could be seen as an obstacle versus we're trying to make you more safe. So they were suggesting that you really consider carefully what police presence means to different communities. Police presence is there to protect everyone.
Jason Salamun:
Correct.
Lori Walsh:
But it also signals something different to different communities who have had historic mistrust. As you move into this space and try to solve problems with being a deterrent, elevating the professionalism of a department, keeping them safe, but then also understanding that not everyone sees increased patrols the same way. Tell us your philosophy then.
Jason Salamun:
For me, it's certainly a deterrent effect on crime in general. It's about behavior. For example, we had vandalism in one of our parks. That's not necessarily Native American at all. It could be kids. We have found big knives and wood chips in our playgrounds. We've had people dealing drugs down by the creek. I'm sorry, but if you're dealing drugs by the creek, I don't care about your feelings, we're going to take care of that.
But we have 1,700 acres of parks and green space in Rapid City, that all of the community can enjoy. It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from, as long as you're lawful, you should enjoy it. So the idea is some of the greatest victims in our park space are also Native Americans. What about their rights? That's the thing, is that's where we see some victimization and they also have rights as well.
So this is not targeting any people. We have a bike path that runs through the city. I imagine we're going to pilot this program first to see if it even works in the first place. If it doesn't, we start small before we expand the program. So if it works, then we can go from there. But I think one of the things is that it is not only a sense of safety for everybody, but that it is making it safer because the police can't be everywhere.
The park rangers are not police officers. They're more like Game, Fish, and Park rangers. They have citation authority. If you have an off-leash dog in the park, you're likely to get caught. If you are spray painting things, you're likely to get caught. Yes, if you are violent or anything like that in the parks, then hopefully they will have a direct line to law enforcement, to make sure that those dangerous situations are dealt with.
Lori Walsh:
Talk about growth. Because also with police officers and recruitment for industry, for every business that you could possibly think of, but also in law enforcement, you need the people to sustain a growing city. Rapid City is growing. How do you want it to grow? What kind of community do you want to live in?
Jason Salamun:
Well, that's the right question, Lori. You should do this for a living.
I think the big idea is that we should make the most of the opportunities we have, but keep what makes us special. So you think about what makes a community special, our natural resources might be part of that.
We just talked about our park systems and the beauty that we have here. It also is that you have good-paying jobs, and it's a safe place to raise a family. Those kinds of things are important.
What we're seeing, the challenge of is we're growing, but our, gosh, our unemployment rate's 1.9% and a healthy amount is 3-5%. You kind of want to brag about it, I understand, but it's actually an impediment. I'm feeling that on my city budget, by the way, because that means workforce is more scarce. So you have to pay more for it, for the folks, and that's your best investment, but it also means you're going to have to pay for it.
That makes your expenses go up significantly. You could tell I'm in budget season, that's what I'm thinking about, but that's what you want. You want opportunities for everybody.
We chose to move back here after my military service because we wanted to raise our family here. For one, I felt like I didn't have a big paying job for a long time, but initially, I just wanted to be in a place where I could raise my family. It was safe, felt like that was a good fit for us. Two, we could afford to live here, which with housing and everything else, there's an affordability challenge. That I could get a good job if I worked hard and perhaps got the right education or experience. So for us, it was starting all over, but we had family here, we had my parents, and from there, we were able to build a life.
I want that for everybody. I want people to say, "I want to move here to raise our family because we agree with what this place is about, that it's beautiful and awesome and special."
So I have no interest in making us a generic mid-size city that just looks like everybody else. In fact, why do that? So I can learn from other communities, I learned a lot from Sioux Falls, have had good conversations with the mayor there, just in this transition. It's been really great. There are other communities we learn from as well, but at the end of the day, there's no place like Rapid City and I want us to lean into who we are. Not try to be, we're not Miami, we're not even Sioux Falls. We don't have those metro areas. We are a hub in a region of about 200, 250 miles. We are the hub and it's an incredible place. 3.8 million visitors visited here where we get to live. That's awesome.
Lori Walsh:
I've been out here all week and one of the things that I've been trying to do is learn more about Rapid City itself, because sometimes because of the nature of my work, I come out, I come from the hotel to the studio. I work long days, and then I kind of treat Rapid City as a bedroom community for the Black Hills. I'm out in the Hills as soon as I can. This time I've been like, okay, well what is Rapid City? What is the character of this city? It's been fascinating getting lost less often. I have a profound ability to get lost at any given moment, even though yes, it's not that hard. So yeah, I like what you said, but it's not Sioux Falls. You can't compare the two. It's not a generic mid-size city.
Jason Salamun:
We could learn from those places, but we have our own strengths and weaknesses.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Well, Mayor Salamun, I hope to talk to you a lot in the future. Thanks for stopping by.
Jason Salamun:
Thank you.
Lori Walsh:
We appreciate your time.
Jason Salamun:
Thank you for the invitation. Gosh, God bless all your listeners.
