So, to get to do more of an expulsion, it's um, yeah, squirmals. Yes, we're running the hand cards,
basically, um, we have three people out the vote for, yeah, somebody else pointed out something
on it. There's nothing on that kind of thing. And that was so honest.
I will hereby call to order the regular meeting of the Baraboo Common Council for Tuesday, February 14, 2023.
We will begin with a roll call and pledge of allegiance led by Council President Petty we can call here hazard here can't here Petty
here Ellington here Sloan Sloan here here Kyrzik
thorough I
pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation
under God in the middle of the world with liberty and justice for all
All right. Minutes were included on the website and email to you. I will entertain a motion to approve the minutes from January 24th.
I'll show a proof. Second. All right. Is there any comment or correction to anything in the minutes?
All right. All in favor of approving the minutes. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Minutes are approved.
Approval of tonight's agenda that has not been modified. I will entertain a motion to approve tonight's agenda.
All right, we have motion and second all in favor of proving tonight's agenda please say aye.
Aye.
We have an agenda for this evening.
Madam Clerk, are we in compliance with the open meetings law?
Yes.
All right, thank you.
Item six, we have a couple of presentations tonight, so we will start things off with our utility superintendent, Wade Peterson.
So, Wade, you have the floor.
For ever, we've always monitored what our side of the water service is, but now under the EPA guidelines, we now have to identify all the private side led services, which is quite a task.
We've got like 4,000 services to identify, so I want to come tonight to show you a little bit of what we're working on in two to hopefully get our community that are watching this to help us complete this task.
We have tell October of 2024 to try to identify as many of these services as we
have.
So so
we track here as you can see we track our in the process of
tracking services and if they're copper lead galvanized unknown so all these
these different colors. Red and yellow are not good. That's either lead or galvanized.
Blue is good, white or vacant. So we have a lot of work ahead of us.
We just kind of started putting this together. Spend a lot of time on it so far.
But as we get every individual home to do their survey,
it'll turn to a hopefully a blue blue where it's non-led service. So over here
we'll kind of verify what the utility side is and then we'll go down and
verify what the property owner's side of the services. And you can do this one
of two ways. One, we have a on our web city website. You can go to right here. We're
to take a survey so you can do this right from home. We'll just kind of go through one
real quick. So you just click on here.
You can just kind of fill in your name, your address.
If you have your account number and we kind of show you where the account number is on there
You kind of identify what type of service you have if you're single family your residential commercial
Then down here you'll get into a couple parts where we help you try to identify your service
Here is a magnet where a magnet will stick to galvanize, but it won't stick to lead
so there's kind of one pointer. Here's kind of a picture of a meter and how
the service comes into the house and goes through the meter. Here is different
types. If it's lead you can scratch it, it'll turn shiny like that. Copper will
be like that. It can be tarnished, but if you scratch it it'll turn to a
copper galvanize. You can scratch it ain't nothing going to happen, but a magnet will
stick to that. So we kind of give a little bit of help to our customers, helping us try
to identify. And then all you do is you click what you believe your service is, size-wise.
And if you want, you can take a photo which kind of comes in handy. If you have a tough
time identifying the service yourself, you can click a photo and add it to here.
And then
able to assist with that. For example, here's one of our surveys. With the light it
makes it kind of a little bit different, it's difficult to see. Well, older house, not much there.
Here's where your service comes up out of the ground and ties into the meter. As you can tell,
there's not a lot of space in there, but I can tell you that that's half inch galvanized pipe.
The individual tried scratching it and it didn't turn shiny and she did put a magnet to it.
So she was able to identify what that is.
So it's not too difficult, but for those that don't want to go through that route,
you can simply just call us at the office at 3552740.
Mrs. Thurall, she was, we sent this to all you folks.
She decided to just make the phone call and have us come visit, and were we there five minutes?
I don't think so.
Nope, it doesn't take long.
It just doesn't really take long for us to come and identify what kind of service.
So we're just asking for the public's help to try to get as much as this identified as possible.
So here's my lovely tracker.
So we have roughly 4,430 services in the city.
Of that, we have still 2,980 that we need to identify the homeowner side of the service.
So we're over a thousand done. We're making good progress but we have a way to
ways to go. I can tell you since we started the lead service replacement
program in 2017 we've replaced the 136 lead services homeowner side lead
services. So we kind of track that into the percentage and then down here in this
lower part this is the city our side. I can tell you roughly we're going to be
We had about 830 LED services on our side.
And then over on the homeowner side, what we have identified so far, we're looking
at roughly about 230 galvanized services that we'd like to get replaced.
But the LED ones right here is 319.
Not all of them have been completely verified yet, but for what we know the most, that those
are the ones we want to try to go after and get out of the system.
So you're just kind of a pie chart.
One of the things with the EPA's mandate is in October of 24 we have to make this available
to the public.
So where you see this like right here, you'll be able to click on the city's website and
you'll actually be able to get in and look at something very similar to this.
You won't be able to tell by who service it is or click on one, but you'll be able to
use this identifier off to the side, and if you wanted to check your resident and see
what kind of service you have, or if you just wanted a general idea of what we look like,
this is kind of what you'll see, but this is one of the things that we have to make public,
so it'll be attached to our website.
so again I'm just asking hopefully we can get some of our customers residents to
help us out with this and if you see folks please let them know that either go
to the website and do the little survey there or just give us a jingle and we'll
come and visit you real quick. Any questions?
Any questions for Wade?
Thank you very
MSA doing a presentation on the Conceptual Study and Design for the Oak Street Overlook
and ADA Path Project.
My name is Marcus Ruehl with MSA.
We were asked to take a look at the Oak Street Overlook and assess situations with the
existing structure and then also look at alternatives to turn it into a park.
Start with kind of an overview on the park.
One of the things we noticed with the existing structures, the east wall is shifting.
There's a fair amount of cracking through the blocks.
There's been multiple repairs over time,
and then there's some site drainage and voids
that are occurring behind the structure itself.
These are kind of evident in the pictures.
You can kind of see that tip in the upper corner there,
and you can see the iterative repairs that have happened
over the years there with pieces getting parsed together,
I guess, is the best word.
And then there's some drainage issues that are occurring on site with the existing sidewalk
is getting washed out, voids behind the wall, the cracks in the actual structure.
And it's a general safety concern.
Some of the other things we notice with the site is there's a large elevation change between
the sides.
It's about 30 feet from the top of the site at first street down to water street, so that's
going to present some ADA compliance issues.
There's general aesthetic issues with the existing walls
that are on there, the railings, everything's kind
of settling and shifting around.
So we performed some preliminary borings on the site.
And boring one, one in three indicated,
one was native fill or native material.
A boring three indicated, about 10 feet of fill
in that area, because there's a former raceway that used to run through there from a mill or
something that ran under the road and then back. Boring 2, we hit obstructions, and when we dug into
that a little more, there's an old bridge that used to actually cross over that raceway. That's
probably the abutment for that. We've shifted over to Boring 4, which also indicated more fill about
about 10, 15 feet total on that. So once again, as I said, there's almost 30 feet of elevation change
between that first-av ADA ramp and then the one down on Water Street that supplies access
to the parks.
So with the dug into it a bit, we got some of the concept together here and we're looking
at a lot of 5% to 8% slopes for an ADA compliance so there'll be a lot of railing.
That railing we're proposing to all be like a lighted railing to kind of provide an accent
along the route. We'll also put that around the actual overlook itself. Due to the structural
concerns on the overlook, we're suggesting to actually take it down and shift it over slightly
and rebuild it with like a post-emphial wall, which can be modified to have a facade that looks more
like a natural stone, whether it be like the bearaboo, the bearaboo quartz site in the area here or
where we could even make it look like the existing structure itself and stain that concrete.
And then supply some additional parking down there and provide that access from downtown
to that Kiwana Park there and future developments that are happening across the river.
So give you a guess some ideas on what we're looking at for railing here.
The lighted railing is kind of those top two photos there.
We're like a steel railing with an accent light underneath the hand rail.
Those stones that you see there are actually stained concrete that can be put on the front
of the post-empanel wall and help it blend in with the area.
We're proposing since we're taking, recommend taking down the structure itself that we could
even save those stones and restack them as planters or retaining walls on site, provide
historical signage, something along those lines to indicate the history that actually
was there.
The structure has been here for 150 years. And then with the slopes that are on the
sides, they're proposing like a native planting with stone, need like boulders,
the restax stone from the existing abutment, and then some native plantings to help
with erosion and help with the water control through the area.
This is kind of a
sketchup of what we're proposing. We'll have the plantings in the front there, and
nice little parkway down or a walkway down that upper portion by first street
there we're closing like a in our park that you could kind of walk through as you
go down and that would be provided all the art would be provided by the local
artists.
Then the big thing is the budget. Due to the retaining walls the post
some pile, the ED ramp that has to come down, there's a large cost in the retaining walls
for those, the lighted railing, we'll have a bit of a cost that's kind of one of the
things driving factors here, and then there's some contingencies in there because of the
market variability. So in total, it's looking like it's about 3.5, 3.6 million.
That seems
It seems like a big number and there's funding available for all of this that's we can access.
There's the TAP program, which is like an 80-20 split with the DOT federal funds.
I know that there's been some earmarked funds already set aside about a half million, I believe.
And then we've got stewardship funding grants that are available all over.
So that's one of the things we can help you through.
So I guess with that or questions, any questions?
Have we started to go after those grants?
Yes, we've already received 500,000 in a congressional earmark.
So that's allocated.
And then across the street as a part of kind of this project,
we also are looking at that park installation down there.
we have 153,000 that we receive for stewardship funding.
So ultimately, this would be a multi-phase plan
of going after grants and then doing the work
that the grants would fund.
Thank you.
So is that three and a half million?
Does that include the removal of the existing?
Because there's an $80,000 unclassified excavation
that is kind of vague.
Yeah, it is a little vague.
There is some removal in there, there's a fair amount of fill that would have to come in on site for the ADA ramp to come down because that's a retaining wall structure, so along those residents is along the backside with the shifting of the structure and all the fill that goes in behind that, that's what encompasses that.
But that's what the 80,000 is for.
Yeah, so the 3.5 does or does not include the removal,
because I'm assuming this will be done in phase
as we discussed in finance tonight.
There's removal portion of it based off of public safety
with the existing structure.
So is that part of the 3.5 million or 3.5 million
just the new ramp?
We had included in this estimate.
estimate and so it's an overall the removal yeah okay thank you any other questions
will you be
staying until we get to those items on the agenda in case any questions come up in the discussion
and we anticipate some more okay some points so all right great thank you thank you very much all right
all right brings us to okay losing okay I'm gonna wait till you're got it
we're trying we're trying
to get Alderman Sloan back with us via phone.
That brings us to item 8.
Public invited to speak.
Any citizen has a right to speak on any item
of business that is on the agenda for council action tonight.
We do have quite a few people that are registered to speak tonight.
And before we get into this, I did just want to tell folks
that I imagine there's some things on the agenda
that may evoke some strong feelings.
And I do ask that all speakers and viewpoints be treated
with respect tonight.
I have no doubt that everyone at the day
and everyone in the audience tonight is working towards the best interest of
bearable. We sometimes have a difference of opinion on what that looks like or
how to get there and the job of the democracies to work through those
differences. So again, please treat each other with respect and treat all those
viewpoints with respect. I will also mention that this is not a Q&A. Sometimes people
think it's a question and answer. It's not an opportunity for counsel to answer
your questions. It's an opportunity for you to present us with your opinion on the topic.
And there is a three minute limit on each speaker tonight and in the interest of moving things along don't feel like you have to use those whole three minutes if you can get your point across more succinctly we encourage you to do that.
And please don't make me get the going out and hook you off the stage.
And with that, we will get started with I believe Jerome Mercer is the first person who wishes to speak tonight.
My
name is Jerome Mercer, I live at 833-year-core circle in the city of Berber.
I am here tonight to speak in favor of Mary Nelson's veto and against the spirit-like
development.
I want to compliment Mary Nelson on his veto memorandum.
It is with clarity and detail, I do not disagree with any aspect of that memo, including
his thanking you for your service on the City Council for the City of Bearaboo.
We all appreciate it.
The concern that I have with the development is that it basically opens up urban sprawl
for the city of Barabook.
The day may come when that development is appropriate for the city of Barabook.
in my opinion that day has not come. I hope that I do not live long enough for
that day to come. Thank you.
Thank you. Next we have Michael Plott's.
My name
is Michael Plott's 16th Effinger Road on City Council for 12 years and I think I
and we've had a little or no development.
For me, now is the time to take advantage
of the building expansion to expand our tax base
and pay for increased costs for police and fire.
It is time to welcome people to bear a boo,
not drive them away.
If I was a mayor, I wouldn't have vetoed this building project.
The idea that it's an isolated place to build,
I drove it, it's five minutes from downtown,
takes five minutes to get out to Devil's Lake,
the people come to downtown
Baraboo from Devils Lake.
I'm sure the people out there in the new building area will come down and
support the people downtown, the businesses.
Just like that new began furniture will help with people being right there to
these building projects are going to bring people to Baraboo
and when I was on council many business owners said they're on razor thin margins.
People don't shop down there mainly because
it wasn't a grocery store, we'll now, again, furniture project, there'd be a grocery store.
So I think this is a good thing for Baraboo to maintain the downtown businesses and
be prosperous.
There's an idea that this will endanger Pewitt's nest to stay protected area.
I don't believe that at all, because then the proposed development near Devils Lake would
endanger Devils Lake.
I think that's just an excuse to stop increased tax revenue for the City of Baraboo, which
we badly need. I wasn't made aware of this when I was on
City Council, but we are short in there in 20,000 this year,
because money was improperly taken out of a tiff district to pay
for operating expense, it's like robbing Peter to pay Paul. But the
costs are increasing for police, fire, snow removal, street
repairs, and these building projects are going to bring in
needed tax revenue in order to take care of the increased cost.
If you don't want the wheel tax to jump from 20 to 40 per vehicle, because we were looking
for ways to fund all our increased costs, and this is the way to do it through new building
projects.
But if you don't want the wheel tax to jump up to 40, well then let's go ahead and approve
these developments.
For me, the compulsive plan for 2005 covers that area, it wouldn't change much with an
an updated plan. I think merely it's an attempt to stop or delay new building projects
for our city from people who want to keep arable small. If we stay small and we don't
have the revenue for income coming in to pay for increased cost, we'll end up dying
out. We'll have you start wrapping things up,
right? I will do that, sir.
I guess lastly, I'll just say the
Bible says there is wisdom in the council of many. I trust you guys on city council. I
I worked with you for 12 years.
I know you do your research, you do your homework,
and I would urge you to override the mayor's veto
and then pass this for that spirit lake development.
Thank you.
Thanks, Mayor.
Next up we have Bill Dagnon.
Very much.
I just really want to state that I back the mayor's veto
for the reasons he stated.
I read that article on the paper twice
and I think it's very well thought out.
I'm very concerned that the new highway 12 will turn out like the old one where you build up and build up and build up until you don't even know there is a country around here.
And it's going to take a lot of thought and planning to see what should be west of the highway 12.
I know there was a special ruling just to get the substation there for the electrical.
And a lot of thought went into that.
So I appreciate your work on that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
And next up is Marianne Cotter.
Hello, I'm Marianne Cotter.
I live at 907 Second Street.
I'm here to encourage you as council members
to sustain Mayor Nelson's veto of the approval
of the development agreement with Spirit Lake LLC.
And it's really for two reasons.
Primarily, one is the rural.
I think it would seriously erode the rural character of Barabu and would also promote urban
sprawl.
In his memorandum, Mayor Nelson said, preserving the rural character and view scapes west
of the highway enhances the allure of our community and provides a valuable balance to the commercial
corridors on the east side of the highway.
And I completely agree with him.
Building 254 apartments west of Highway 12 plus additional commercial development would
significantly alter the perception of Baraboo to people traveling on Highway 12 and I
don't think that would be in a positive way.
My husband and I chose to buy a home and retire in Baraboo partly because we appreciate
that rural feeling of this small town which has so much natural beauty surrounding it.
The conservation vibe of Baraboo was a big draw for me as it is for many others who
choose to make this their home.
This proposed development would seriously erode, I think, that special quality of Baraboo
as a community that values its natural resources.
Secondly, urban sprawl.
Residents of this proposed apartments could neither walk nor bike safely into town.
They'd have to get in their cars to do just about anything.
Why is that important?
Because many, because, along with many others in Barabu, I believe that it's vitally important we do everything to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Reducing emissions from gas-powered cars is part of this picture.
If this development goes through, there would, I believe, be pressured to build even more amenities to support the people now living out there making further urban sprawl.
even more likely, and that would mean people driving even more.
As much as possible, let's make bearable a place where people can walk and bike to get
groceries, go to school, work, enjoy cultural activities, and eat out.
Clearly, there is a need for more housing in bearable, but let's approve new housing
and other development in a climate smart way.
You have a chance to make this more likely tonight by taking a step back and thinking about
the bigger picture.
So I urge you to sustain Mayor Nelson's veto of this proposed Spirit Lake development.
Finally, it's crucial that there be open and meaningful community engagement in what kind
of development happens in Baraboo going forward.
Thank you for all you are doing to make this city, make sure this city staff puts creating
a new comprehensive plan on the top of their to-do list.
Thank you.
Thank you. A Bruce Stewart is next.
Thank you. My name is Bruce Stewart. I live at 1618 Algonquin Drive in Baraboo. I've lived here since 1998. And my wife and I oppose development at this time on lands to the west of Highway 12 and at the entrance to Devils Lake State Park for four reasons. Number one, the process has not employed meaningful public discussion. The city of Baraboo comprehensive plan points to a separate,
detailed planning process for these, quote, urban reserve areas, unquote.
That employs public participation and creates a preliminary concept plan.
The city should then require compliance with this detailed plan as a condition of annexation.
These steps are detailed on page 88 of the comprehensive plan.
Our second concern is the loss of prime agricultural land.
The soils on the land west of Highway 12 are classified as prime farmland.
The comprehensive plan states on page 40 quote, the poorer soils are preferred development
areas for the city where the land is able to adequately be served by public infrastructure.
Our prime agricultural farmland is best used to grow food.
Our third concern is the proximity of the area west of Highway 12 to skill at creek, pew
next state natural area and ultimately the bearable river.
The comprehensive plan states as a goal on page 48, quote,
prevent future problems associated with developing land too close
to natural areas, drainageways and flood plains, unquote.
Development here will produce volumes of run-off from roofs and
impervious surfaces that could have potential impacts on
sensitive ecological areas.
Our fourth concern is the risk of urban sprawl.
One characteristic of urban sprawl is automobile dependency.
Transportation from residential areas west of Highway 12 will be difficult via any means other than car.
We should be encouraging walking and biking like the extremely popular river walk.
A second characteristic of urban sprawl is strip development.
Do we want to see a ribbon of residential and commercial properties along the west side
of Highway 12 as we're beginning to see along the east side?
Driving along Highway 12, you would be in a tunnel of development, like the entrances
to so many communities across our country.
Bearaboo is unique, being surrounded by rolling agricultural land and the bearaboo range.
Let's maintain and enhance the quality of life that that landscape inspires and
contributes to by planning wisely, carefully, and with caution following the steps set out in the
comprehensive plan created by the leaders that came before us. To do otherwise, there's
too much at stake to do otherwise. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Samuel, are you poking it? Just next.
I'm Sam Poston. I live at 218 Seconds Street here in Bearbrook. I speak in support of the Mayor's
position. When I talk about people I know, bring your makeup a little bit so
big. Thank you. When I talk to people I know who don't live here when I tell
about Barbaro is what makes Barbaro special is it has a vibrant downtown. You
put that apartment complex west of the highway. To me that takes away from it.
You want to keep the downtown vibrant. You got to have development closer to
downtown so people go there mostly. That development west of the highway, people
people are going to go to the businesses that are close to that development.
We know what those businesses are.
That's not the downtown business.
The other aspect of it is bearable looks beautiful when you're driving to it.
You drive out of it going west, it's the most beautiful place, but in that development
there will kill it.
And once you lose the charm of bearable, that's it, it'll be difficult to get that back.
We do need development.
The world's going to change.
We can't change that.
But there's developments downtown and I think that's the way to go if you have to do it
It'll support the downtown. There's plenty of towns here in this state that do not have a vibrant downtown
We don't want to lose that. Thank you. Thank you
Next up we have Ryan Devine
Ryan Devine 701 Wallnut Street
I grew up my whole life in bearable. I watched a lot of things change. I personally spent a lot of time
on the very wherever, enjoying it, enjoying the beauty of this town.
I have a couple questions for the City Council that I will ask you to think about when it comes to the Oak Street development.
The $3.5 million. I know a lot of it comes from grants, but how much of it exactly does?
What is the exact purpose of the project aside from the safety? I understand that.
How much created parking would we get out of it as people move to this community and
become more and more popular, I think we all understand that parking is a situation
in Baraboo.
And how does this project benefit the citizens of Baraboo?
Is it something that we need or is it something that we think we want?
I just feel like if we can get grants for things in this city that maybe we can get grants
for things that might better benefit not only the citizens of Baraboo, but the tourists that come
into this town. Thank you. Thank you.
Next up we have Todd Pershi.
Hi, my name is Todd Pershi.
I live at South 6674 Freedom Road in the town of Freedom and I am the Director for the Baraboo
Range Preservation Association. We are a local land trust working throughout the bluffs as well as
in the city, our office is in the civic center and we have close to 350 members, the great majority
of them live pretty close to here. Our mission is and has always been to preserve and protect
the qualities and culture of the bearable range which you've heard expressed here at night.
I had a lot of other things I was going to say, interest of not repeating them, I will not mention
them, but I will mention that our group formed 30 years ago exactly because of this urban sprawl
issue. We don't want to look like everybody else. We have biological treasure in those hills.
We've done an awesome job. I would say on the township level, the county level,
and the city level, we've done a nice job of interfacing development with the wild places.
And I think up into this point, I've been pretty happy with it. I'm here tonight to support Mayor
Robb's recent veto of the planned subdivision, but I really have a bigger issue that I would
would like to address with you folks.
I don't recognize your process often for bringing these development proposals up anymore.
I don't recognize some of the stuff that happens in closed session.
In our 30 years of working of planning and zoning, you've pretty much had open processes.
You've involved the public, you've gone out of the way to involve the public, and I would
really love it if you could return to that.
Also, many members in our group that have talked about making bearable, livable, walkable,
greener community, it's in your resolutions.
You have that sitting somewhere in your charters.
I would love to see you return and think more about those situations.
Another thing some people have brought up is the urban sprawl we see now is a reminder of
the 1980s and 90s but with this caveat, we now know the climate change is a major problem.
I mean, what is today? Valentine's Day, my neighbor's sap is running in their maple trees.
The yard is green in my yard. That never used to happen. So building things that bring
more cars and more trips to the area, it just makes absolutely no sense to me. And we haven't
done it yet. We still have an opportunity to back off on that. The other thing that kind
of bothers me is technically a lot of the process that goes on. It is legal, but I have some
It just feels like ethical irresponsibility to not try more and more to reach out to the public.
It's great to see the newspaper here, but if Rob, if you had not vetoed this process,
I would have had no idea that this was even going on.
Well, have you started writing the paper?
Well, let's start to wrap it up here, okay?
Yeah, I'm just letting you know that that's my main thing.
So the last meeting we were at, we were talking about annexing something.
Brian Hazard had a great idea to just pause, put all these things kind of on the table and come up with your comprehensive plan to just take it easy and ask you to do that, sir.
Thanks, brother.
James O'Neil is next.
Next.
Thank you.
I'm James O'Neill.
I live at 9.23, Manchester Street, in bearable.
I agree with the mayor's veto.
I want you to uphold the veto.
And I won't repeat the many eloquent arguments that have been given to you.
But I just want you to know that I would like you to uphold that veto.
Thank you.
Next up is Wayne Muffet.
Good evening.
My name is Wayne Muffet.
Okay, I live at 215 Ninth Street.
I'm a partner in law firm that's been in variable for 130 years.
I've only been with the firm a small number of those years, not my partner.
Jerome's been there longer, but it's been my privilege over the years to
represent a number of municipalities and governmental entities, including towns.
I'm here to also support Mayor Nelson's veto of the bill, and for the reasons that were stated, however my main reason to be here tonight is to voice my objection to the process that was followed here because I disagree with my friend Todd Persi.
I don't think the city abided by the law when it passed this resolution last month.
And specifically, the Open Meeting Law.
In 1976, Wisconsin passed what were called Wisconsin Sunshine Laws, which included
the Open Meeting Law.
When it passed that law, it said the legislature, quote, it is declared to be the policy of
this state that the public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding
the affairs of government as is compatible with the conduct of governmental business.
Now with regard to meetings, the law says today at any meeting of a governmental body all
discussion shall be held and all action of any kind formal or informal shall be initiated
deliberated upon and acted upon only in open session except as provided in section
nineteen point eighty five okay now I looked at the agenda last month when
this was passed and item sixteen says closed session under nineteen point eighty
five per and one per and e to review the terms and conditions of a proposed
development agreement with respect to spirit lake. Now 19.85 per and one per
and e is an exemption to the rule that you have to discuss and deliberate
everything in open session. What that exemption says is that you may go into
closed session for deliberating or negotiating the purchasing of public
public properties, the investing of public funds, or conducting other specified public
business, whenever competitive or bargaining reasons required a closed session.
Well, have you start wrapping up here Wayne?
Okay.
The point is there was already a deal.
There was no negotiating to be done.
That was not an applicable exemption last month.
You can't have a deal done and then go in the closed session and discuss it.
All right, thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next up is Tom Kriego.
Thank you.
I'm here to support the veto of Mayor Nelson of the Spirit Lake proposal.
And I have to say that I agree with all the great points that the previous speakers supporting that veto have stated tonight.
I also like to acknowledge that Mayor Nelson made several excellent points.
Any single which one would be enough to reverse the vote of the City Council.
But I'd like to make a couple of other points that other speakers haven't made.
There was an argument made that this is needed for the tax space.
And I'm going to read some comments here to try to keep on time.
But it was shown a long time ago that a town city or village cannot grow itself out of property tax.
If that was possible, there should be no property tax in large cities such as Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York.
I have friends that own property in a couple of...
All of those cities, Madison and Milwaukee, and they think their property taxes are too high. And that's because every time you add growth, you add expenses that offset any income that is added. The other problem that you have is that a tax incremental finance district is a mechanism by which local governments can also engage in corporate welfare.
Every tax incremental finance district causes a wealth and income distribution from outside
of that TIF district to inside that TIF district.
So if you build a house in a township, not only do you expect to pay for the cost of your
well, your septic system, your driveway, and you will pay your property taxes to pay
for the expenses of your township, of your school district, of the county, the vocational
technical school, and you will have already paid for all of this infrastructure outside
of your property taxes. So you are paying for the infrastructure that's already there.
In too many tax incremental finance districts, most of your property taxes that you pay for 20, 25 years just goes to pay for the infrastructure that's sort of like the septic system, etc.
We'll have you step wrapping up here Tom, we're almost done with time.
Okay, so there's no good economic advantage for doing this development and especially doing it with a tax incremental finance district.
So again, I urge you to uphold the mayor's veto and take another look at this in a more open way.
Thank you.
Next up is Jennifer Stewart.
Hello,
I'm Jennifer Stewart.
I live at 1618 Elgonquin Drive in Baraboo.
My husband Bruce spoke previously.
And as he remarked, we both share the points
that he shared with you.
And so I registered to speak to also just provide
our personal endorsement of keeping development
in Baraboo condensed and focused on areas
There are already slated for development.
We came to this town because I fell in love with it in 1993,
and it convinced a packer fan to move from Green Bay.
We've left twice and keep coming back
because we love it so much,
and we'll likely stay for a long time.
We have raised a child here.
We're involved with community activities,
And so we do want to continue to stay here and that what's important to us is that rural
characters surrounding the town and a vibrant town.
And so appreciate your support of Mary Nelson's veto and not developing especially west
of Highway 12.
Thank you for your service.
I used to work for University Extension, especially supporting local municipalities and Steven's point, and I know how much time you invest in our community and I appreciate it.
Thank you.
And that brings up Patrick Liston.
Good evening. My name is Pat Liston. I live at 1013 Manchester Street in City of Bearaboo, and I'm not going to echo all of
Well, really good arguments I heard tonight about sustaining the mayor's veto, but I certainly hope you do that.
There's a number of concerns I have.
One, you haven't had an updated comprehensive plan since 2005.
I mean, and so you're building any available piece of land, you're just plugging down something, and you have no basis for doing it.
You don't look at the impact on schools.
I mean, there's all kinds of issues that you have not looked at.
The other thing I'm concerned about is a lack of transparency.
Since the last year and a half, you folks have done a lot of stuff in secret.
And I think that's wrong.
I don't know if it's legal or not.
I'll let the attorneys deal with that.
But if it's legal or not, it's definitely wrong.
You need to invite the public to further input.
I mean, you represent 13,000 other people, and they have the right to have their say so.
Thank you.
And I believe that's everyone who wanted to speak.
Is that correct?
Anybody else who wanted to address council?
Right.
Thank you all.
Moving on, Mayor's business, just a couple of election-related things tonight.
The spring primary is scheduled for Tuesday, February 21st.
All City of Berville residents vote at the Civic Center, and the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
If you want to vote early, in-person absentee voting is available at the clerk's office here in the Civic Center
during business hours up until Friday, February 17th.
Is that correct, Brenda?
Correct.
Okay, thank you.
And that takes us to consent.
Item 1 is approve the accounts payable to be paid in the amount of $6,795,907.
nine hundred seven dollars in 64 cents and item two is approved the temporary alcohol license
application for downtown bearbue rue ha ha March 10, 2023.
Oh sure, probably again. Second.
We have motion in a second to approve consent agenda. Would you please call the roll?
Sloan.
Here's it.
Aye.
Sir O.
Aye.
Wheat again.
Aye.
Cold.
Aye.
Hazard.
Aye.
Kent.
Aye.
Petty.
Aye.
Ellington.
Aye.
Consent passes unanimously.
Thank you.
Item 11.
Ordnance is on second reading.
11.1.
Consider approving the annexation of certain lands in the town of Barrow, which is the city of Barrow.
This was passed in the first reading at our last meeting.
Does anyone need a refresher on this item?
motion to approve, Petty.
Second.
All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the annexation of certain lands
into the city of Baraboo.
Any further discussion on the motion?
I'd like to make a statement.
Go ahead.
I expressed some concerns about the annexation in the first meeting.
And some of those I won't bother repeating some of that, but it was a preference for
infill projects, it was concerned about what impact this would have on Devil's
Lake State Park and some of the early ideas that were floated were somewhat
unappealing. I also mentioned the irregular boundaries between the city and
the township and I remember in the past that Mayor Liston at that time he was
trying to straighten out those boundaries so that we could do more infill projects
and stuff.
I think that the other side of that is that the positive points of annexation
is that the city had been in control of those properties and could provide extensive review
of any potential development out there. I like the idea of Salui's residential development,
but the rest seems kind of undefined.
Our outdated comprehensive plan, which we still rely on,
says that the city ultimately would like to see this area,
and that's the area around Devil's Lake State Park,
incorporated into the city proper.
I've had the opportunity to meet with two of the owners
out there who have stated that their intent
is to have a high quality development
that would appeal to bearable residents.
I believe that there's sincere in this, however.
Our outdated comprehensive plan does say
that premature development should not be promoted.
And I quote, it is a direction of this plan
that a separate detailed planning process
be followed that employs meaningful public participation.
And with that in mind, if the owners,
and by extension any potential developer that they hire would commit to engage the public in a transparent matter through open forums, involving city residents, business entities, civic groups on, civic groups on the record, I would be willing to change my no vote that I originally cast.
So, I guess I would ask Greg MacArthur, I mean you've been the spokesman of the group.
Greg MacArthur, I did have a chance to talk to some of you and very productive conversations
I learned a lot.
I mean I learned what we needed to do a better job with communication to the public communication
to you.
And I also learned today that speaking to Jason that there's committees.
Committees can have a play a big role here too.
So what I did tonight is I invited Bill Ryan from ADCI to give a just a brief overview.
Five years ago we started working with Bill, Bill came up with a plan that got us excited.
Something that we thought we could be very proud of as bearable residents to do the right thing with that property.
If you look at the property now, it's kind of a mess and it needs to get cleaned up.
So Bill, I'd like you to just come up and-
Before you do that, right, could I ask a question?
Sure.
Are you, as a group, committed both you and any developers
you hire to conduct a transparent review involving
city residents, business partners?
Absolutely.
And I think what's most important with that
is you have to be transparent.
Otherwise, you waste time.
If we bring something, if we spend a lot of money
a developer spends a lot of money to bring a plan to the table and it gets shot down because
you haven't seen it and we surprise you with it which by the way I apologize for that book
that I gave you because I think there was some assumptions that that's just what we're going
to do no that's just a vision plan so absolutely I mean I think that's most important you know in
business you you work with your people you work with your team I think this whole community's a team
needs to be so thank you
I'll keep this very brief because I know it's getting long tonight
I'm Bill Ryan with Architectural Design Consultants ADCI and we're the architect working with
Greg and his partnership.
And I'm not sure I can express more enthusiasm for the idea of annexation and being part
of the City of Bearwood in the Great Can, but I'll do my best.
Tonight we heard some comments about keep bearwood special.
That's exactly what Greg and his partnership team really want to do.
Devel's Lake is precious to the city of Barbarale, precious to Saucone.
And when we designed for Randy Scott, the tumbled rock restaurant brewery out there,
Randy Scott wanted that to be a very enhanced addition to the gateway of Devel's Lake.
And we want to do no less as we continue to clean up some of the property that Greg has out there,
as you know it could certainly use some improvement.
and that's what this whole development idea is about.
We're looking to not put as much density as we possibly can.
We work with developers that would put significant property on that land.
This is not what they're out to do.
They're not out to see how much they can fit on there.
They're out there to see what they can provide that's really nice for the entrance of devil's lake.
I look at it from my perspective when I listen to what they want to do.
So when my children and my grandchildren go to Devils Lake, they can't, they go get a tent, they sleep on the ground, that's not me, I'm not doing that anymore.
We might be able to create a housing development, a rental community or and a small boutique hotel or whatever we do out there to create somebody like myself coming out to that area and staying in that building.
and then going out and joining my grandkids and my son and daughter and so on,
out there as part of the devil's lake experience.
So I think by doing the right thing out there,
whatever that comprehensive plan submission will be later on,
we'll show you that what we're trying to do out there is the right thing.
And I'm here to answer any questions.
If you have any, I'm happy to answer.
But keep in mind this isn't such early stages.
We're really here about annexation.
and we're really not here to circumvent any open meetings.
Any questions from Mr. Ryan?
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
All right,
I think we have a motion and second on the floor, is that correct?
I do.
We do?
Is there any other discussion on the motion to approve the annexation?
All right, hearing none, please call the roll.
Curesick.
Hi.
Thurough.
Hi.
Weedekin.
Hi.
Cole.
Hi.
Aye.
Asard.
Aye.
Kent.
Aye.
Petty.
Aye.
Helington.
Aye.
Sloan.
Aye.
All right.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
On to new business.
12.1.
Development agreement with Spirit Lake.
Consideration of the mayor's veto of the Council of January 24th approval of the Spirit Lake
Development Agreement.
I believe everybody got a copy of the memo.
I issued a couple of weeks ago.
So, Mayor, did we skip 10.2?
There was not consent. Oh, okay. We just did 11.1 and now thank you. Now we're on 12.1.
So as I was saying, I believe everybody got a memo of the reasons that I issued the veto and I don't feel like I need to go over those again, unless somebody wants me to, but I don't think I do. I think everyone also should have gotten a letter from the developers, which I believe was yesterday, is that right?
with some of their additional information in that.
So I guess I will open it up for discussion if you can.
Travis come up and discuss his letter.
Would you like to say anything to council Travis?
Sure. Thank you.
Appreciate the time mayor and my name is Travis Zick.
I am apparently I'm the only one of spirit lake who doesn't have
good Valentine's plan so I get to be here tonight. No, I'm just kidding. I appreciate
the time and the opportunity to come in. I listened and I respect everyone's
opinions and every comment that's been made. I think it's part of what makes
bearable so great is that we do have a diverse, you know, diverse outlook, a
diverse group of people here. I've been a bearable resident my entire life with
the exception of college up until a year and a half ago when I became an empty
yesterday and moved to Merrimack to downsize, but I was raised in this community. I love
this community. It's been our intention. We bought this property in 2005 from Sheriff
Mike Spencer. It's been our intention all along to someday put together a high quality
gateway type development that the community will be proud of and that people will be attracted
to when they come into town as the entryway to bearable. We've been working on this project
for a year and a half.
We've been working very closely for the past year
to try to put together and answer some legitimate concerns
and legitimate questions that have come up along the way.
And I feel like we've put together a project
that is a tremendous and will be a tremendous asset
to bearable.
I think it hits on some areas that are desperately in need
in the community.
Obviously the big one being housing.
You all had a housing study done,
Sock County did a housing study a few years ago we paid for our own study to be done before we even started down this path
And they all say the same thing. There's a drastic shortage in in bearable, especially in rental units
You know, we've you've heard commentary about the tax base and the need to grow
Obviously, you know commercial is is is also an area where bearable needs some additional sites
Just to be honest, there's very little to nothing that's affordable for a commercial business look into come here.
And that's why we haven't seen much for a long, long time.
This site will offer some of those opportunities as well.
But I want to make clear, as Bill said, this is, we're early on in this process as well.
So as interest comes along for businesses or for commercial development out there,
So we want to work with the city to make sure that it's the right businesses, that it's the right type of buildings that are going up out there.
The type of thing that, again, is going to be attractive to people.
And the last thing I want to say is, again, I've lived here my whole life.
I love so much of what bearable brings.
And we have a tremendous amount of assets here.
The river is a tremendous asset, downtown bearable is a tremendous asset.
Devils Lake is a tremendous asset, and the bypass is a tremendous asset.
And they don't have to compete.
They all bring their own appeal, they all bring their own positives, and
they all attract people to the area.
The area in front of our property has the highest traffic count anywhere in the city of Beirutville.
That is appealing.
That brings the type of businesses, the type of people, the type of facilities that we want out there.
And again, I understand some of the concerns that have been raised.
and I appreciate everybody coming out tonight to share their thoughts, and I just hope that you all see,
and I hope you had a chance to read through the information I sent, the positives that come along
with this project, and that you'll again vote as you did last month to pass it on.
Thank you. Thank you. Jake, did you have something you wanted to say as well?
Not much. I just kind of want to reiterate what Travis said, and I want to thank the council and the
city for crafting what I think is a great development agreement.
I'm sorry, I'm Jake Buswell, one of the developers of the multi-family piece in the development agreement.
And I'll just, if I don't say we will build a nice property, aesthetically pleasing property.
It's kind of designed after one of our other properties off of a highway 53 and on Alaska, it'll look very similar.
It'll be an attractive building and buildings and yeah, just want to thank you for the opportunity to come up and speak today and I think the city has that demand and supply report on their website and that really outlines the the stark shortage of supply in this area and we sought first hand with our rapid river development that property we had all the deposits down five months before we had full occupancy on the building and I've
I've heard that the Greenfield states has similar demand.
I've seen similar demand over the last few years.
That's really all I have to add.
It will be a nice walkable property as well.
I drove by it on the way here.
There's a sidewalk that connects from this property
already to the town.
You can literally walk to Walmart within a couple of minutes.
And yeah, I guess that's really all I had.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you, Jake.
We appeared with the loss of Alderman Sloan again and trying to pick him back up back
with us. Okay. All right.
I like the common mayor. I'll go ahead and go ahead and first can down the road to get things started if other council members chooses to participate.
First of all, thank you all for being here. This is like the largest crowd I've seen in the gallery. Since we're looking about urban chickens.
It's a packed house. There's a hot topic. So yeah, we got we've got urban chickens.
I'm an extreme pragmatist, but I'm also a person that does a lot of research and a lot of homework, and I did read the mayors memo several times.
I also—
Hey Joel, could you just maybe speak up a little bit so we make sure that it's gotten—
How about I put this up closer to me?
That probably—
I did read the mayors memo several times.
I also am kind of dovetailed off power up their boo and they sent a little thing out encouraging people to come and speak and
Support the mayor's veto. I also read
Information from Spirit Lake and I'd read their development design and all that stuff
But they sent us some information too. I also read the
178 page smart growth comprehensive plan from 2005
I also reviewed the 2018 housing study by Saukone Economic Development Corporation.
And a couple of things in regards to the smart growth from 2005.
Reading that is a, it is a document of many, many paradoxes.
It is an antiquated document, it is an old document from 2005, July like people had said.
Also, the forecast and trends were used off the 2000 census and data, which means that
data is 23 years old.
The smart growth is 18 years old.
The projections are not accurate and I know people working from a crystal ball at that time.
The hopes and dreams of variable in 2005 were redeveloped the water street, riverfront
area, promote historic downtown square, enhance community entryways, tourism, and also
to encourage greater public involvement in community planning.
But it doesn't say what encourages it.
There's no definition in there about it.
So what does that encourage me to put something in the paper, whatever.
So I'm saying that document is full of paradoxes.
Another part of that is expanding recreational areas, development of the ICH trail,
nurture small businesses, preserve and enhance the surrounding natural environment.
It doesn't define what that is.
So when people are talking about these outlying areas and protecting this and that,
the comprehensive plan doesn't say what that is.
That's really everyone of us in this room.
That's our lens that we look through and we decide what that is based on our own personal preferences and
and
how we see the work
Housing it also said the city should explore new ways of ensuring a mix of housing types and affordable levels
Especially to meet the demands of first-time homeowners seniors
It mentions nothing about transitional housing or mobility housing short-term housing
There's no mention in the comprehensive plan about that
So where are those folks love? I got a story. I'm gonna tell you a little bit later
I'm going to I'm going to be I'm going to be concise.
What I also said in 2005 is the city of variable has a very good supply of housing available.
Does the city of variable have a very good housing supply available now?
Again, we got a bunch of paradoxes working here.
Consider the school board members be involved in plant commission.
Do we have any school board members on plant commission?
I don't know if we do. It was brought up earlier that when we talk about developments,
do we have the school involved? Well, we do. School members are involved. School board members
are involved in looking at developments and projecting out populations of potential school
children, okay?
Economic development. The city should not subsidize development. There's not a
development that I've been involved with that the city is not subsidized, okay? Moreover,
However, the business community would like to see greater consensus at the console level
regarding decision making.
It is believed that there is rarely a clear voice of the elected officials.
The previous vote for this was 8-0.
Visual preference survey.
In 2004, they used the slide projector to show different cities and stuff.
How many of you were currently using a slide projector?
You know, we just, you don't see those sorts of things.
Growth alternative to page 34 features growth opportunity that continues in recent development
trends and provides more land for employment, shopping and anticipating development stimulated
by the proposed bypass project.
Plan neighborhood areas, it should be noted that traditional neighborhood plans different
from types of land use such as single multi-family residences are not random but located in a
a logical, reasonable manner.
And that is not defined, folks, as to what that actually is.
I'm almost not.
The 2018 Saucone Economic Development Corporation Housing Study,
the number one challenge for hiring the workforce
in the city of Baraboo for major employers
is the inability for them to find housing in Baraboo.
Plan amendments, appropriate plan amendments
to the smart growth comprehensive plan is becoming,
if it becomes irrelevant or contradictory
to emergency policy or trends in the city,
should be evaluated every three years or sooner.
And we have not done that.
Shame on us, and some of our predecessors.
So, 39 years ago, I took a job
with the South County Social Services,
which is now Human Services.
I took a job as a Child Protective Services Social Worker doing abuse neglect, investigations
of children, and ongoing case management.
I came to Bearaboo, got off of the job, and came up for two weeks to look for a place
that I could stay in Bearaboo.
I could not find a place suitable 39 years ago for me to live in Bearaboo.
I got an apartment in low-income housing at Howard Woods in Portage and lived there for six
months until a co-worker of mine said, hey, we're kicking out some pot heads out of our
duplex.
Junior wife want to move in there?
I said, absolutely.
I can't find no other place to live.
And we lived there for two years until we bought our starter house at 3.29 second avenue
where we still live this day in our starter house.
So again, when we look at these things through our different lenses, in short, I'm not
support for the veto. As far as urban sprawl goes, I took a couple drives today just like
Mike Klotz. I drove up T, drove from Sullivan's to up to Line Road where that housing development is.
What's in front of it is enormous corn field. What's behind it is wooded area and then Line Road.
Please tell me what's different about that. It's the same distance I drove it today. I actually got out
of my car. I drove down the bypass twice, once down, once back to look at this land. Then
I drove to where that sub station has parked my car and got out and looked around. I bike
by there at least once a week during biking season. I think that it's a good fit. I think
it's going to provide housing that's desperately needed. And I think the city has the infrastructure
to maintain it. I do not feel it's detached from the city as a matter of fact. I feel it's
a segue, and future development is going to occur.
I do understand people's concerns.
I appreciate those concerns, but I'm also here to provide my perspective and my point
of view from the research and the homework that I've done, and also having a 35-year career
at human services know that.
In the winter times, we have some families that will stay three days in devil's lake, they
And then they go over to mirror like to stay three days.
Go back and forth because they can't find a place to live. So think about those things when you're thinking about the big picture, the city of bearable. It's a lot of people. It's a lot of things to consider, but I am going to oppose the mayor's veto based on that information that I've obtained. So thank you for your time. Thank you, Joe. Anybody else want to go ahead? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. A couple of things that I liked.
One is that Travis also doesn't have any valentines day.
In the other thing is I appreciate the effort that Casey has put in on this development.
The problem is that I had nine calls all today or in the last three or four days all opposing
this development. That's probably six more calls than I've had in the entire 14 years
I've been on City Council. To me, when I think of a neighborhood, I think of a place
where people can walk or bike easily to grocery stores, schools, libraries, churches, engage
in civic amenities. And I think this development will certainly have the green space and the
walking past and in easy access to the highway, but little else of what I consider a vital
neighborhood project.
We were talking about the comprehensive plan, 175 pages. I got to
about 90 pages of my eyes went blank, you know, I did it in three settings to be quite honest.
I did not do it in one. It's a bit of a dry read to be quite honest.
But it speaks to the vision of the participants in the quality of life issues, saying that the city
quotes should develop plans that encourage neighborhoods with parks, trees sidewalks, and
safe and adequate connections of these neighborhoods to the city amenities.
I don't see that in this project.
I don't see it connected to other neighborhoods quite frankly.
This project I feel encourages more of a commuter neighborhood where residents have little social or cultural connection to the city.
I'm not going to go through, you know, what Rob has already mentioned, page 38, of course talks about accelerated peripheral areas, such as this one.
and suggested that at some point we go west of Highway 12 bypass that the city engaged in meaningful participation,
which I think thanks to Mayor's veto, we finally have had that civic engagement.
The problem that I also have with this is that the designated school for the youngsters would be North Freedom School,
which is quite a hike from bearable.
The other part that bothers me somewhat is two of the projects that are two of the commercial entities that we've talked about have to do with what I would call heavy commercial rather than, you know, grocery stores and drive-ins and truck traffic and there's a single in this project. There's a single egress to county W.
And so when you have 240 apartments,
plus commercial development,
which includes some heavy truck traffic,
sharing an egress with other vehicles to a small county road,
it creates what seems to me a public safety issue.
So those are my thoughts.
Thank you, Tom.
I agree with a lot of what Tom said.
I was one of the ones who voted yes to the last meeting and since then I got educated
not only with the mayor's menu, Mel and other things I looked into and heard about.
Like Tom I got many contacts from my constituents who were all against this development.
I believe we should wait until that comprehensive plan gets redone.
Once that thing is on our agenda, I know to do it in the next year, correct?
Yeah, once we have a new comprehensive plan, then maybe we could revisit this and decide
if this is a good idea or not.
But as of tonight, I'm not in favor of it.
I agree with your veto.
Thank you.
Please.
We don't.
Thank you.
I appreciate all the community involvement tonight.
This is a very hard decision because there's a bunch of different views on this.
Joel made some very good comments and so to dress.
housing is needed. I was on the fence when I voted the last time we voted on
this, and I'm still on the fence to be quite honest because I've gotten calls
as well. I agree with what you're saying, Bryant and Tom, it's not just about
the comprehensive plan. I think what Joel read from the comprehensive plan, I'm
glad he read it and I didn't have to redo it, is community involvement and
engagement. Mr. Muffet made a very good comment.
I have said this a number of times that
I think that things get fast tracked in the sake of money or they need to get done
right away. And what that does is that discourages community involvement. It lacks transparency
agency and it lacks community engagement and by not having that, we have this.
We have a lot of people who either don't have all the information or don't understand
why we're doing something.
To Joel's point, the comments were made about our schools involved.
So yes, I think they are.
I think that Casey does a good job involving the school district and communicating back
and forth.
But it's pretty obvious that the rest of the people in this room don't know what that
process is.
That's wrong.
And I sit here on a regular basis in this seat and question what I'm actually approving
or voting for.
And the reason for that is because we load up the agenda and we sit here and we have to
go through the agenda and then all of a sudden it's a vote.
It's a vote for what.
And afterwards I kind of found myself going, what am I voting for?
I got a lot of information coming at me every week and I think everybody here does too.
So with the information that we have, I think we're more informed tonight.
I think you possibly could see if people switch their vote.
But I do think we need to have comprehensive plan.
A comprehensive plan is developed with community involvement.
And that's my take on this whole situation.
So that's all I have to say.
Thank you, Jason.
Anyone else who would like to
weigh in or comment or questions?
Scott, are you still with us?
Did you have anything?
Just want to make sure you're getting an opportunity
if there's anything you wanted to say as well.
Sorry, could you say it?
Okay.
It doesn't have anything to add.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, I have.
We came the bearable in 1968.
and I as a vocal music teacher and my wife is a school nurse. We had one child in
another child on the way and we had to live out in the cabins out on what's
bare-boothed no longer there because there was absolutely no zero housing.
We
got a house and he was remodeling it and he said he'd rent it to us. So we put all our stuff in his
garage and went out to the and then came to get our stuff out of the garage and move in the
house and he had used our bed slats for some of his labors in the house. So anyway, there was in that,
But, you know, I, a back jaw with it.
It's been a year after year there, there's no housing.
And people come, where am I going to live?
So they're not going to come here to work.
It just seems to me, I understand my wife is concerned about pueness because that's one
of her favorite places to walk.
and she goes there at least once a month during the summer, not twice, and he was
concerned about people who are asking as I understand Travis's comments, that
should not be, I think we do have a pond there to help with that. So you know I look
at T, out at T, that's not connected to bearable. It's you can't walk from T to downtown
bearable. So we already have it. And I just don't understand the I understand I appreciate
everybody's comments very much. But I don't understand that we have what they're saying
that we don't need. We already have it and it just keeps going away from
bearable. This won't go away from bearable because it's it's pretty well
stopped in that area. So I appreciate everybody's comments but I haven't I'm
for overturning Mayor's video.
Thank you, John.
I think Phil wants to be in.
Yeah.
Thank you.
I'm kind of a laden duck here now, but I was here when we did that last comprehensive
plan.
I was part of it.
I look on Facebook and every day there's people in there trying to find a place to live
and bearable. Every day there's somebody that wants to move the bearable. They can't find a
place to live. We have employers at bearable that hire people and they can't find a place to live
there so they can't hire them. Back in 2005, we didn't have to worry about this advancement,
because there was nothing out there. Nobody wanted to build anything. And I
watched that. I watched it for 20 years. Nothing. Nobody built anything in
here. We were just dead. And we're on a point right now. We need housing in
but it aspires on concern.
I have a fear of overruling not there to be no thank you.
Thank you, Phil.
Casey, you wanted to weigh in?
Yeah, not weigh in as a couple of points of clarification.
This property, there's been a lot of comments that it's not in the comprehensive plan.
It's in a urban reserve area or I believe is what it's classified as.
This property, when the 2005 plan went through,
it was actually zoned A1 in 2015, I believe,
2014-2015 typebrain.
The landowners actually came into the city
and asked you guys to rezone this.
You rezoned it to I4,
so it went through the full rezoning process,
there was multiple public hearings that was a result of that
and that's how they've operated
and they've designed this particular property
is looking at, they have the ability to do this.
That's kind of what brought this plan forward.
What we're talking about here is just simply
a development agreement.
So it's a partnership between the city
and the developer in the development agreement.
Every single aspect of all of our vetting processes
is still in place.
So the next step for the landowner,
obviously, is creating a plat, getting that recorded,
which is multiple public hearings.
The next step after that, they're going to break out the parcel
that Jake will be developing as part of Pewitt's NAS or Pewitt's landing.
LLC, he's given a preliminary renderings of what he plans on doing,
but he's going to have to rezone that to a residential, like an R3,
so he gets more density down there, so that'll go through that public process.
And then as a part of that, he'll have to go for the building permit,
that which will go through the plan commission,
I'll have to review that.
There'll be public hearings there,
public hearings when it comes back.
I, you know, the, the concerns about protecting
to its nest and skill at creek,
that is a huge issue for everyone involved.
We all are stakeholders in that.
Obviously, storm water plan has to go through,
specifically through plan commission
and through public hearings
and that ultimately comes up to council
and same thing with the site, what rendering plan or landscape plan.
Part of that too. So every element of every project that's going to occur out there is going to have two, three, four, five public hearings that everybody will have the opportunity to weigh in on. What is being done and what the veto is pertaining to is specifically the development agreement. So that's the start of the project. And then going forward, each and every project that occurs out there is going to have numerous public processes. And if they fail to go through that process, if you read the development agreement,
then they're in violation of the development agreement.
So we require every project to go through as part of the development agreement the exact
same process that every other project does.
So the terms and conditions that were negotiated between the city and the developer does not
remove any of the other aspects of the public transparency process.
So just so it's cut out the same page.
This is the start of the project, the development agreement is the start of that and then you've
We've got the public process that takes place throughout.
So just want to clarify that for everyone.
All right, thank you.
Anyone else with any comments or discussion?
We didn't lose them again, did we?
Sorry, we lost all of them in Sloan again.
Apparently the phone service in South Korea is not up to snuff tonight.
Hey, Scott.
All right, is there any further discussion or comment from anyone?
There's no comment, I'll entertain a motion if someone would like to make that.
or I'll make a motion to veto the mayor's,
or override the mayor's veto.
I'll make that motion.
Second.
Okay.
Got that?
Yes.
All right, so we have a motion and a second
to override the mayor's veto
and approve the Spirit Lake LLC development agreement.
Is there any other further discussion on the motion?
All right,
hearing none, we will call the roll.
And just to clarify, a yes vote is to override the veto
and approve the development agreement,
and overriding the veto will require a two-thirds vote
or six votes.
I'll go ahead and please call the rule.
Thurough.
Aye.
Wheat again.
Aye.
Cold.
No.
Hazard.
No.
Kent.
No.
Petty.
Aye.
Ellington.
Aye.
Slow.
Aye.
Here's it.
Aye.
All right.
So I believe that was six votes in favor, correct?
All right.
So the veto is overturned, and we will proceed with the development agreement.
Thank you all for your consideration on that topic tonight.
It takes us to 12. Lots more exciting stuff. Don't run away everyone.
Yeah, we don't get a large gallery very often, normally it's a gold town area.
We're just getting warmed up tonight.
12.2, removal of the Oak Street Overlook. Consider approving the removal of the old bridge
about the abutment at Oak Street and Water Street.
Mr. Hart, you have a question.
Thank you.
I don't know if I should be offended if everyone's leaving now,
but I don't have Valentine's night plans either,
so I'm just, you're stuck with me.
So anyway, you heard from Marcus and MSA tonight
with the presentation, so I don't have to repeat that,
but if you have any questions, I'm sure.
Marcus can answer or I can try to answer as best as I can.
There are some questions as to why now.
So this, obviously, this abutment has been around
for over 100 years. And why now are we looking at doing something with it why haven't we before?
Well, I guess in the interest of some of the other discussions we've heard, we do a comprehensive
outdoor recreation plan every five years. I've done four of them since I've been here in the 14
years I've been here. When we get to year four, I tell Parks Commission that we need to start the
process again. We need to assemble a committee, a public committee so we can get a new comprehensive
of outdoor recreation plan passed because every five years we have to have one done to become
eligible for grants. On the last court plan that we did, we do a community survey in every
court plan. This last survey that we did which covers 2022, excuse me, 2022 to 2027, we're currently
in right now. 2021, we did a community survey, we had a 11% response rate from 11% of city
households, which is good anytime we can get over 10%, we're very happy. Of those, those
Households, Year 3, Households, the number one thing they wanted, which has been the number one thing every five years, has been a continued expansion and improvement of the Riverwalk, which is why we put that as a priority, the proximity and puts that as a priority see that our budgets every year.
The number two thing in 2021.
Can you open that door back up?
The number two thing that the community wanted us to concentrate on in 2021 was this project
was the Oak Street Overlock connection between the businesses and the downtown businesses
in the Riverwalk.
So that's why we put this on our budget.
We went, we got on the way funding to get a study done.
We went out and did bidding and got MSA came in to do this project.
And again, that was on the way to funds that wasn't tax dollars.
The number three thing, of course, was bringing the Great
Sox State Trail to Baribu.
And of course, I've been on that Great Sox State Trail
Commission since 2018, so that's something that we're
working on as well.
But the community has asked for this.
This was their number two thing that they asked of us to do.
So that's why, number one, that's why we're doing it.
So when we went at this, we went looking at the original plan
that was done back in I think it was 97 or 2002 something like this and using the existing
abutment and doing an ADA ran to get up there and that sort of thing. So that's the original
route that that we took. Unfortunately as you heard tonight there are some concerns structurally
with that. We're not able to do that anymore. So the three things that that you require me to do,
my department to do is we look at safety, we look at accessibility, we look at being within budget.
But those are the three things that we need to do regardless of what the community wants.
Regardless of what grants we have available, we need to make sure it's safe.
Obviously, we want to take that liability away from the city, so there are no opportunities
for injury or anything like that.
We have to make it accessible so that the majority of our residents are able to access it regardless
of their physical ability.
And we need to be within budget, and that's why we've been pursuing these grants.
This is going to be a multi-phase project that we are going to be continuing to pursue grants
for Casey was instrumental in helping us get this start with this half million dollar appropriation
with Senator Baldwin and Representative Polkan helping out with that and there'll be future
grants coming. This is probably one of the best projects that's going to qualify for several
different grant funding opportunities as we go through it. So it's going to combine a lot of opportunities.
So number one, once we heard that this, this abutment was unsafe, we did snow fence it off to the public.
It does need to have considerably more barriers put up to make it less accessible to people.
We had our staff meeting, we determined that the best course of action due to the report from the structural engineers was to immediately take that down, or as soon as possible, take that down to eliminate any risk, especially knowing that.
It wasn't feasible to to keep so so the first thing that we're looking at is is permission for us to remove that hazard and
This did go to I should mention this did go to Park's Commission last night. It was actually the second
Last month. They had actually first looked at it and had a presentation from Marcus and then last night
They they had considered this it was the unanimous recommendation. However, it was
Discussed especially by three of those members quite a bit of discussion that went on a lot of people that
And I really hated to do it, but they knew that in the position that we were in, we did
have to do it.
So it was unanimous decision.
Did go to finance tonight as well, and they also recommended it for your consideration
tonight.
So if you have any questions, Marcus, or I would be happy to answer.
Marcus suggested that you could keep some of the original stone to put as planters, or maybe
maybe even a memorial, you know, you know, a bronze memorial that would depict the old
high bridge or something like that. And I think as long as some of those original stones
are saved, you know, I agree that, you know, in this litigious society, I think that
proposes a hazard the way it is.
Yeah, and like your report said, about 5% to 10% of those stones could not be used or what
if we're found out to be, the Parks Commission was told this as well.
That is our intent to do that on the project to save what we can and to work with the
Parks Commission and with yourselves to develop additional science and additional memorials
there.
You will have the opportunity and Parks Commission will have the opportunity if this does
continue to go forward to see future designs as we go on to the next phases.
So you'll be able to see what it's actually going to look like.
So we will have some options as as far as what finishes type of finishes we can make and what kind of a historical
Science that we can add as well. I make a motion that we approve this resolution to remove the ice cream
Second, all right, we have hazard made a motion remove the answer
You've been waiting
All right. We have a motion and a second. If I could just ask one quick question, Mike.
So when you say staff would immediately start removing that, what kind of timeline are
we looking at? Like, yeah, as soon as we want to get to, as soon as we can. And so if anyone
and wants a picture they better get out there tomorrow and I would say get a
Suzy Ken because it's going to depend on the snowstorm but we're going to have
people working out it immediately. It is a safety hazard. This sooner we get it
out this sooner we eliminate the risk. Right. Thank you. Right. Sorry for
interjecting. So we do have a motion and a second on the floor to approve the
removal of the old bridge abutment at Oak Street and Water Street. Is there any
further discussion? I guess I'm going to ask the question again I'm still a little
on clear what the cost of that is.
So just the cost of strictly just the removal
of the abutment.
Do we have any kind of a figure for that?
We don't know.
No, yeah, it'll be an in-house removal using staff
and equipment from in-house.
So we're not looking at contracting that part out.
So that's just by city staff, I mean in streets
or in public.
Streets department and parts department, primarily, yes.
You're welcome to come down
and bring your heart ahead if you want. We'll take volunteer. Just have to sign a volunteer for them.
I'm talking about liability. Sign a volunteer. We've got volunteer waivers for that, so yeah.
So if I'm understanding questions, it wouldn't really be a cost per se other than we're
potentially pulling people off from other other jobs. Yes, well it's snow storm coming in obviously
parks or road streets. Street guys are going to be tied up so once we can get crews freed up,
We're going to be dedicating them to getting this taken care of as soon as possible.
Okay.
What are you going to do to mitigate erosion once you tear that wall down, the effutment
down?
Um, we've, well, so until something gets built there anyhow.
Yeah.
So it'll be obviously self-hunt.
Everything that we do, that, you know, that we do with any street, any park development,
any landscaping type projects, still fencing, landscaping and then getting seated, of course, as soon as possible.
So, yeah, we'll be following those same protocols that we use in any other development.
Okay, thank you.
All right, any further discussion?
All right, hearing none, please call the rule.
All right
motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And on the 12-13 requests for proposals consider approving the city engineer to solicit requests for proposals for the design and construction administration of the obstreet overlook an ADA path project.
I'm sorry.
Oh, sorry.
Oh, numbers are appearing before my eyes.
12.3 requests for proposals.
Mike, please make me stop talking.
All right.
Thank you.
All right.
So this is.
This process, again, this was recommended to you by the Parks Commission after last night's meeting.
This allows us to go on with the next phase of planning or soliciting RFPs to get a final plan on the future ADA ramp and the overlook that will allow us to continue to pursue additional grant funding.
We are also looking as part of that RFP to provide an option to continue design for the, across the river into the new Riverfront Park.
work. What our goal is to ideally work with the same designer, the same firm so that we
have a consistent design in that area. This kind of goes to meet our, the Bairbon Riverfront
corridor improvement projects that we've been working on. So we're looking at continuing
I mean, the planning for the corridor and the parks.
There's, as I mentioned before, this area is ripe for a lot of grants.
And right now, there's a lot of, for instance, Cap funding out there, some stewardship funding.
And there's been more appropriations made for these types of projects and for trails and those type of projects.
So get in.
On this right away, getting some RFPs out there, right away, that will help us also to pursue additional grants and additional donations. And to continue this project going because one of the concerns that we did here is that we don't want a plan to happen. We don't want you to tear down the abutment and to set for another 20 years before anything happens. So we want to continue this process going, especially while the funding is out there and is available. This was also discussed by finance and recommended to you tonight.
Any questions for Mike on this one?
Okay, we have a motion and a second to allow the city engineer to request RFPs for the design and construction of the Oak Street overlook an ADA path. Any further discussion on the motion?
Hearing none, please call the roll.
Cool.
Aye.
Anzard.
Aye.
Ken.
Aye.
Penny.
Aye.
Ellington.
Aye.
Sloan, Sloan, Sloan, Sloan, Sloan, Sloan, Sloan, Sloan.
Okay.
Gearsick.
Aye.
Stero.
Weed again.
Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
12.4.
Consider approving a Class A combination liquor license for SSS Wisconsin BRW LLC doing business as squirrel,
service station number 707.
located at 516-Street.
I was dragging it out as long as I could.
I'll go ahead and start
on that one. That is just a standard class A combination license, which means that it is for
fermented malt beverages along with the liquor. This will be United Cooperative formally held the liquor
license at that location. They have surrendered it, and now with SSS Wisconsin Brew LLC,
has come in in place of them. So this would be at the corner of the
corner of the act. It was sold as ever. Correct. Correct.
It's been reviewed by city staff. Sorry, this would be the
senate station. It's at the corner of the corner.
Thank you. Formerly the senate station. Correct.
Thank you. It's been reviewed by city staff including the police department and it went
before the administrative committee with unanimous approval. If approved
If tonight this liquor license would be effective starting tomorrow, February 15th, until the end of June, when all liquor licenses expire.
Motion to approve, Sarah.
Petty, second.
All right, there's a motion and a second to approve the Class A complaint.
Motion and a second to approve the Class A combination liquor license for SSF Wisconsin BRW, any further discussion on the motion.
Hearing none, please call the rule.
Hazard.
Aye.
Kent.
Aye.
Petty.
Aye.
Ellington.
Aye.
Kierzig.
Aye.
Thurough.
Aye.
Weed again.
Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
12.5.
Consider authorizing chief send-in to purchase body cameras to be reimbursed from the tribal and local law enforcement agency initiative grant funds.
Chief, you have the floor.
Good evening, everyone.
Everyone.
One thing I've learned as a new chief of police is when the city clerk puts your name on an agenda item you show up at the podium.
four-th with reference to body cameras. All of you are undoubtedly aware of the grant
that I'm proposing to spend tonight. The City Council did vote at an earlier meeting
to accept grant funds in the amount of $32,178 in some sense. What the purpose of my presence
Since here tonight is to request to spend those funds.
I'm proposing to spend those funds on replacement body-borne cameras for each of our police officers.
The amount of $32,160 will be spent, and trust me, I promised the finance committee I would find a place to spend $18, and I will do that.
But this allows for 29 body-borne cameras, but that also allows our community service office.
to where those, which is very important.
So my request is to expend the $32,160 for body cameras out of the grant funds.
If you recall, the city spends the money and then is reimbursed by the Department of Administration for those funds.
I have a question on the body cameras how they've been in the news lately, if you've probably seen that.
Now, are they both the, what's the, what's the rule with your officers about how the
cameras are on or when they're off, etc.?
We have specific policies required by law that dictate when those cameras go on, when
they go off, and those policies are quite extensive actually.
So as far as, you know, the individual specific circumstances when they're turned on and
when they're turned off, I will tell you that in my opinion,
and over the last 32 years of service,
the risk of not having body-worn cameras,
the liability to the city is much greater
without those cameras than it is with the cameras.
But there are rules and regulations on, on and off.
Yes, mandated by state law.
Okay, good, thank you.
Motion to approve.
Senator?
We have a motion and a second to authorize
the purchase of body cameras through the grant funds, any further discussion on the motion.
Hearing none, please call the rule.
Kent.
I'm Betty.
Hi.
Ellington.
Hi.
Here's a thorough, sweet again, cold, hazard.
Hi.
Emotion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
12.6.
Consider authorizing the mayor to execute and enter into a joint powers agreement with sought
county for the 9-1-1 emergency system.
This is also you, Craig.
Yes, I get to be a stand-in for Tom.
Right, you also have to come to the podium when you click on that.
That's right.
This is a rather simple agreement.
It is a joint powers agreement required by state statute.
Whenever a city or an entity is involved in a countywide emergency 911 system, they have to sign an agreement,
pursuant to state statute that says, when we are called outside of our boundaries, if we are not utilizing specific pieces of equipment,
that we will utilize those outside our boundaries if we're asked to do so.
And this agreement, which again is mandatory to be part of the 9-1-1 system, details that.
Motion to approve, hazard.
Code second.
All right, we have a motion and a second to authorize the execution of a joint powers agreement for 9-1-1 emergency system.
Any further discussion on the motion?
Hearing none, please call the roll.
Hello.
Petty.
Aye.
Ellington.
Aye.
Kyrzyk.
Aye.
Thurill.
Wheat again.
Aye.
Gold.
Aye.
Hazard.
Aye.
Kent.
Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
12.7.
Consider preliminary resolution declaring intent to levy special
assessments in accordance with the sidewalk policy for new sidewalks at 11th street between Elizabeth
and Jefferson that will be installed as part of the 2023 street improvements.
Mr. Pinion, take it away.
Thank you Mayor and good evening.
This is a resolution that should sound familiar.
We go through this pretty much every year.
It's part of a statutory process to assess brand new sidewalks
where none currently exist.
That's consistent with the city's sidewalk policy.
It's part of the budget preparation and review,
Public Safety Committee reviewed several areas within the city.
We have a map that shows the entire network of sidewalks
throughout the city.
and when we're doing street projects that already have sidewalk, the committee tends to target
those areas to provide better connectivity in some of those areas that don't have sidewalks
currently. So this year there's roughly $75,000 available and we looked at 10th street, 11th
street and 12th street between Elizabeth and Jefferson. So it's at 2 block stretch. 11th
street has the least amount of obstacles in the way. So we'll simplify that and keep the
cost reasonable and that will essentially exhaust the available funds for new sidewalks.
So public safety committee at their meeting last month decided that this would be a good
place to provide new sidewalks.
And this is the first step in that statutory process.
So it's the preliminary resolution that declares our intent to levies special assessments for
new sidewalks.
So that triggers the city engineer to have to prepare an assessment report, send out notices to the affected property owners, part of that process.
We try to hold a neighborhood meeting with the affected property owners, and then there's a mandatory public hearing that she'll see in the upcoming months.
I think I'm forecasting toward the end of April as part of this particular agenda under item eight.
I'm estimating it will be April 25th for that public hearing if we can get everything
done in the meantime.
So with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.
Any questions for Tom?
All right, we have a motion and a second to approve the Declaration of Intent to Level
to Levy Special Assetsments.
We have a motion and a second to approve the Declaration of Intent to Levy Special Assessments
for our sidewalks on 11th Street between Elizabeth and Jefferson.
Any additional discussion on the motion?
Hearing none, please call the roll.
Bellington.
Here's a thorough, weed again, cold, hazard, pen, penny.
All right, motion passes unanimously, thank you.
To new business, 13.1.
An amendment of ordinance 7.09 sub 20 to relate it to overnight parking
being prohibited on certain streets or parking lots, still you, Tom.
It is. Thank you again.
So this ordinance revision comes by way of the staff, primarily the Public Works Department
and Parks Department, those that are charged with clearing the streets and municipal parking
lots of snow. Right now, Downtown Bearbow has a prohibition of overnight parking between
the hours of 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. every single day that does not extend into the municipal parking lots.
We have many parking lots that are 24 hour parking. It doesn't give them indefinitely 24 hours
passes. They have to move at least 90 feet to comply with the ordinance. So what staff is suggesting
is there's a couple of lots that are used rather sparingly for overnight parking. Northside of 5th
Avenue, just east of Broadway, and the Lower Civic Center parking lot.
So since they're used sparingly, we'd like to concentrate the location of those vehicles,
so we can maximize the efficiency of removing snow from those.
So on the fifth avenue, parking lot, we'd like to create alternate side parking, if you will.
and it would be restricted from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. on the east side on odd days. West
half would be allowed during odd days, east half on even days. So we'd be able to
clear at least 50% of the parking lot completely and not put our operators or
equipment in Perl's way trying to sneak through scattered parking via park
vehicles. Similarly, Lord Civic Center lot. A lot of stalls there. In fact, there's
six different aisles of parking running east and west.
So the proposal from staff is that the central area be restricted from 2am to 6am so
we can complete four out of six of those are 66% of the lot cleared.
So the far north row of stalls, which is against the upper civic center parking lot.
And the southernmost row of stalls adjacent to first street would be 24 hour parking.
The balance, no parking, 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.
I know there's a question, what about special events?
Typically that's posted for special events, so that basically voids that 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. restriction.
So this was looked at the January 30th meeting in public safety.
I know it's the police department has chained in, and I know that the folks from the parks department
feel that this is a reasonable approach to improve the city's operational capabilities.
So that would be happy to address any questions or concerns that you might have.
This is going to be a huge learning curve for the people that park in those overnight lots.
How are you going to put this information out so that it's an understandable format for these folks?
I think we have ten different signs to identify exactly.
it'll be very well signed. It comes as close to being in self-explanatory as long as someone's
looking at the signs and not at their phones. So it will be well. We've already sent notified
our normal sign company. They've sent us drafts back. So if this gets approved at the next meeting,
we would have them ordered. We don't really expect to sign it. They're enforce it any more this season,
but certainly for the fall portion of winter.
Just get people used to it.
Yeah, that's it, thanks.
But it would be a year round change, though, correct?
Not just in the winter.
Yes, it would.
Yep, upon the erection of the science.
So, ordinance will be there and science,
and they're taking six to eight weeks
to get them delivered these days, so.
By then, hopefully, this season of winter is over.
Any other questions for Tom?
I just want to say that one of the biggest things I hear from people who live downtown is how restrictive the parking already is and is there any other way to accommodate parking downtown to also accommodate snow removal.
I don't know if there is, but I can assure you that more restrictive parking downtown,
even as sparingly as you say, it's being used, is going to cause more consternation
for people downtown.
I don't know if there's any other way to do snow removal that makes sense to do maintenance
up there.
I don't know.
I'm just saying that potentially, if there's any other creative way to do that and allow
people depart without all these restrictions, I think that would be a very open
That's all I have to say about that, because parking right now down there is something that I've heard about parking passes, about snow emergencies instead of hoping to set parking and being allowed to park on the street. And now we're not doing that or not even talking about that. We are going to restrict parking and lots that we're not restricted before. So I just want to bring that up as maybe there's other ways to do things.
So, I'd be happy to hear.
Well, it was a concern as well on public safety, but we had several aerial photos of that area.
And there really were just a smattering of cars parking overnight.
And there's adequate parking, you know, for the cars that are identified there's adequate
parking on the alternative parking spaces.
And in addition to that, the snowplough drivers were engaged in this and Tony, so Tony, the
street superintendent confirmed that there really isn't a lot.
The parking spaces that are going to be allotted will more than compensate for that one when
they're plowing.
Okay.
Any further discussion on the motion?
All right.
Please call the rule.
Curezik, aye.
Thurar, aye.
Whittigan, aye.
Cole, aye.
Hazard, aye.
Can't.
Aye.
Petty, aye.
Alington.
Aye.
Motion passes unanimously.
Thank you.
Thank you, Tom.
Minister, I don't have Council comments.
Casey, do you have anything?
Okay.
Any older persons?
Any comments to share to me?
I'd like to point out fees are in our building inspectors report is 10% of the
total fees collected 10% in January. The total fees collected in 22. So there's
something going on.
Thank you. Anyone else have any announcements to share?
All right. Thank you. That takes us to 15 reports, petitions and correspondence.
We're linked to the packet online, which takes us to item 16. I'll entertain a
a motion to go into closed session,
pursuant to statute 19.85 sub one,
sub C to consider employment,
promotion, compensation,
or performance evaluation of a public employee.
And this would be continuing
the annual performance evaluation
for the City Administrator.
Call some old.
What did you have a second?
All right, we have a motion in a second
to go into closed session.
Would you please call the roll?
Curesic, I, thorough, I,
Wittigan, call,
hazards, I, can, I,
All right, all right, we are going into closed session. Does anyone need a break?
Looks like they are already queuing up. Looks like they are queuing up the fear and all right.