The application for incorporation of a proposed municipality must be by a petition verified by the circulator and signed by not less than twenty-five percent of the qualified voters who are either residents and registered voters in the proposed municipality or landowners in the proposed municipality who are also registered voters of this state. The application shall identify the type of government to be formed, the number of trustees, commissioners, or wards in the proposed municipality, the boundaries and area according to the survey, and the legal resident population according to the census taken. The application must include the name of the proposed municipality. The name may not be the same as any incorporated municipality in the state. The application must be filed with the county auditor and heard at a regular or special meeting of the board of county commissioners within sixty days of being filed.
S.D. Codified Laws § 9-3-5
Voters' petition as application for incorporation--Number of signers--Petition contents--Name--Presentation to county commissioners
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case Lippold v. Meade Cty. Bd. of Comm'rs (2018)
Most recently applied in State v. Buffalo Chip (November 2020)
Source: SDC 1939, § 45.0304; SL 1987, ch 67, § 20; SL 1999, ch 37, § 2; SL 2016, ch 48, § 6; SL 2024, ch 28, § 23.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.