The Taking of Libbie, SD (Mac McKenzie #7)

Just barely, my inner voice said.

“The old man told me about it. He was in on it. See, there was a convention. On the train ride to the convention, the boys from Libbie offered liquor to delegates who promised to vote for Libbie—this was at the beginning of Prohibition, and booze was hard to come by. Anyway, delegates got whiskey if they promised to vote for Libbie. That’s how we got to be the county seat. Now the outlying towns are shrinking; their schools are closing, consolidating. Where do you think they are going to build the consolidated school? In the county seat. In ten years there are going to be only sixty-seven school districts in South Dakota. One for every county, plus an extra one for Sioux Falls. The same thing’s happening with health care, law enforcement, the courts, social services. Same with everything. A lot of people are unhappy about it. What are they going to do? One community gets consolidated; the other communities get smaller.”

Miller smiled. “I saw it coming,” he said. “Saw it coming years ago. The big grain and livestock operations requiring fewer and fewer folks to operate them, crowding out the family farms, the small towns disappearing because they no longer have a reason to exist. Yeah, I saw it coming. That’s why I wasn’t all that surprised when Rush said he wanted to build an outlet mall here. Where else was he going to build it?”

“Except there was no mall,” I said.

“We were taken, pure and simple.”

“You don’t seem too upset about it.”

Miller smiled some more. He leaned in and spoke quietly. “If I picked you up and threw you through the window, would that prove how angry I am?” I didn’t say if it would or wouldn’t. He leaned back. “I’m too old to waste time crying over spilled milk. If you’re asking if I hold a grudge, yeah, I hold a grudge. Anyone knows that, it should be you.”

“How did it happen?”

“You mean, how did he play us?”

“Yes.”

“The usual way. First he dazzled us with dollar signs, then he threatened to take them away. The rest is a little complicated.”

“Does it need to be?”

“The national range for what is rated a regional shopping center is three hundred thousand to nine hundred thousand square feet. The syndicate Rush represented was seeking approximately seven hundred and fifty thousand square feet with room to expand. Parking is generally figured at three times the estimated floor area of the facility, so we were talking about eighty acres, total. Randisi—he’s the one who owned the land.” Miller gestured out the window toward the farmland across the highway. “Randisi refused to sell, wouldn’t even consider it. Rush said he and his syndicate were prepared to go elsewhere. We insisted that we could acquire the land through eminent domain. He said he doubted his partners would be willing to wait while the case worked its way through the political system, maybe even the courts. Also, there was no guarantee that an arbitrator would fix the sales price at the amount he and his partners were willing to spend. And then there was the cost of infrastructure—sewers and the like—which was sure to escalate. To assure Rush and his partners that they would get the land at their price, we agreed to put funds matching the current cost per acre into an account in the Libbie bank and pay them the difference, if there was a difference.”

“How much?”

“The average value of nonirrigated cropland in South Dakota is thirteen hundred and seventy-five dollars an acre. Eighty acres—we put up one hundred and ten thousand dollars, plus an additional one hundred thousand for infrastructure.”

“That’s what he stole? I thought it would be more than that.”

“That’s what he stole from us. I have no idea what other people in town might have put in.”

“McKenzie,” Tracie said, “our yearly fiscal budget is set at five hundred and forty-two dollars per resident. With twelve hundred and twenty-one residents, that works out to six hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars.”

“You bet a third of your operating budget on a mall?”

“We weren’t betting anything,” Miller said. “We would have delivered the property at Rush’s price. We wouldn’t have lost a penny. Besides, do you have any idea how much income the mall would have generated for Libbie through property taxes? It would have funded most of our services. Hell, we would have been able to give folks free snowplowing.”

While he spoke, Saranne emerged from the kitchen and began wiping tables and checking ketchup bottles.

“I notice that the mall would have been built across from your own property,” I said.

“What of it?”

“Probably it would have increased traffic for your restaurant and service station and all the rest.”

“So?”

“Property tax aside, I was just wondering if you would have been as insistent about putting up the money if the mall had been built somewhere else.”