This is a call to order for the highway committee meeting. We'll start with the
Pledge of Allegiance. The flag is right back here.
Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.
Inclusionary public, which is sans, one nation,
under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Have an invocation here.
next week.
Thank you.
Dear Lord, we may we approach our work with wisdom, clarity, and a sincere desire to serve the safety
and well-being of those who travel,
grant us patience, cooperation, and steady guidance as we make decisions that shape our community's
roads.
Thank you for the safety during the tornado.
May our efforts lead to safe passage and strengthen connections
for the lasting good of everyone.
Thank you.
Madam
is public comments on the agenda items.
These are restricted to a limit of two minutes per person.
Do we have any comments from the public?
Well, I would like to say something.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
I'm Jackie Silva,
I'm from S88 County, Roe E. Ashkash, Wisconsin.
We were just wanna thank him for putting some tile in,
because it's really working it's really dry even like Helene's and you know all
the way to oh Helene's place it's dry but by us it's still wet and I was
wondering if we were going to get anything done in front of our home
And because on March 24th, 2025, we were told by the Highway Commissioner that our tile
was going to be put in.
He said, I promised you tile and I'm going to fix it.
And I don't know if that's that we were left out or because I said I have pictures
there that you can look at.
Still pretty wet by us.
and it hadn't rained from I'd say the middle of July until the tornado and it really was always wet.
And it would have been nice if we could have had the tile put in front of our house.
Is it because of cost? We were wondering how much it cost for
we're doing that little bit of tile.
Did they use the whole 400,000 that they allotted
for the tile or we have questions about that.
So, sure.
And I do have the ID number on the video if you need that.
So you can look it up.
You want the ID number or not?
It's an ID and a record.
Then there'd be record two, seven, six, two, three, three, two, four, two, one, six, two.
So thank you. Thank you. And then I know you said the address, but what could you repeat the
address where these pictures are from? Oh, that's right in front of Jackson Merrill's home, and
I don't know off and he's just west of us. Ours is four, six, eight, and there's the next
House. The next House over.
Any other comments? I don't see anyone on the team's meeting.
If there's no other public comments, I would close that section of the meeting and I'll
entertain an approval for the minutes from the July 27th meeting.
All in favor say aye.
Okay,
so the minutes from July 27th are approved and now we'll move on to committee member comments.
Do we have any comments from the Highway Committee members themselves?
And we'll close that section and move on to the Highway Commissioner comments.
So we installed a drain tile, roughly 850 feet of 8 inch.
We went on the north side of E, roughly about where storm equipment is,
where there's two twin pipes there.
The contractor started the installation.
The first half of the installation, the ground was real dry.
the second half of that was very very saturated soil in there.
Once we once the
contractor got to Fenzel, they were gonna end the fight there. They found the
The Sanitary District has a manhole there.
They dug in there, they found a riser,
a sun-pump riser, just pouring water out.
Contractor called the Sanitary District,
got approval to put that into the drain tile.
The manhole was pouring out water too.
So put that drain tile, put that riser in that pipe, immediate at the outlet, it's pumping.
It's been continuously pumping since we put it in.
So needless to say, that area, that riser in that manhole has been where all the water
has been coming from.
The contractor told me that area that is saturated, he said it could take well over
a year to dry that area.
So it did dry up in that area. I mean, all it's doing is just
taking that water from the ditch and put it in the drink tile. It's all it's doing, which
is diverting it.
That's about the only place we have fall in the field. Go out there
notice we had to sink barrel in the ground to get fall in that area. So the rest of that out there,
we can stick all kinds of drain tile in there, but where we're going to daylight,
it's someone's going to get water. So end of the story, whatever we find upstream from that,
whether it's going to be another span pipe or a riser, we need a place to go with the water.
So I think the only option is to put a lift station in. I don't know if you know what kind of
costs that's going to bring. Very expensive. I'll give costs that I'll put in a lift station in.
But one thing too is that we didn't put a tracer wire in this drain tile.
We will register it with your salt line.
So every time there is a little cave, you have to pay for that.
So we already set precedence that we're putting drain tile anywhere there's water
on a county road.
The precedence has been set.
So how you want to move forward with this because there's places that have way
more water in it than here. So there's bigger issues we have to address and how
you want me to address those. You know, we can move forward with that. But
elevation-wise, I mean the contractor, same thing, we just put that where we
have elevation in there. We can clean up some of the ditches in there. We
still have them. We did backfill after the tile was put in. That rain has
settled down, so we'll go back out and we'll pull that material back in there
again, let that settle out. They don't want compaction, compacted soil around
those, so we'll have to naturally let that settle through. But definitely take
an opportunity to go out there and watch how much water is coming out of
that train tile that's stangered.
I don't know.
Where is that exactly?
Like where will I stop to look at that?
Right across from Storm Equipment,
probably roughly, I'm going to say maybe 600 feet west
of Clairville Road on the north side of the road.
So 600 feet west?
Yeah, roughly.
I mean, give or take.
There's two twin pipes that run under the road.
storm equipment is on one side, it's directly across the road from there.
Okay,
so like I said we did get the okay from the sanitary district to run that in there,
but the amount of water that was coming out of that structure was staggering and when we
The reason that sump riser was there is they put a pump in that, pump the water out so they
can get access into that structure.
So that's why it's there.
So the water is now going into the sanitation system and then going through wastewater treatment
or how, where does it go?
Put it in a drain tile.
In a drain tile to where though?
Where is it?
Open ditch.
Okay, so it's going into the ditch where it kind of gets into that.
And if I talked to Dan Ziegenhagen, there was actually no possibility of going through his property.
So he told me right to my face. I can get affidavits from people that were out there that witnessed him saying that.
I'm sure that's what you're going to want. You feel free to talk to Mr. Ziegenhagen with that.
but an easement through his property will limit him to anything he will do in
the future to his property, whether it's access that will greatly hamper anything
he would give to that property. Okay, so there is drain towel that's already in
there. I don't know how they're going to address it, you know, when and if that
time comes, but you know these are our options with there. I mean the
elevations. The only way we can do that is to sink those sumps. So if you go out there
and look at that sump, that drain tile is down in the ground and it's just bubbling
up through the sump. So like how deep is that? The drain tile? Yeah. That pump? Probably
three feet if that. There's not a lot of fall. It's very, essentially they ran that
flat from the outlet to the inlet. It's pretty much run flat. So right now the
only thing that's pumping that water is how much water is coming. It's pumping
through that, pushing it through. So like I said, all we did is we just took the
water from on the surface and it's in a drain tile. That's all we did. It's
just transferred that. That's where the water source is coming from. So you
you know, what's upstream, you know, there's hidden mists.
I mean, you know, down my horseshoe,
yeah, there's water down there.
You go past that, but roughly 125 feet is bone dry.
So it's very spotty out there.
I don't know, my hope is that the water
we're taking from that riser will drop that water table.
that would be my hole so yeah I mean that's where we're at with that. So then
the water is coming out of the ditch through the drain tile and it goes into
like what is that like honey creek or something like that that creek it runs
to like you tomorrow that's where it ultimately has to go. Well it starts at
and then runs down towards Clairville, roughly 600 feet away.
Where does it ultimately go?
It runs into the Ziegenhagen property through a ditch.
So right now, we took all that water, ran there,
it's running into that ditch, and then he's got drain tile in there.
So wherever it goes, remember it's his property.
Yeah I mean I don't okay so so yeah that's where it's going right now okay into
that property.
Bob do we have a policy in the future when utilities are extended
in our easement that they bet them in clay or bentonite so we don't create this
situation somewhere else in the future? Bob I'm just going to tell you by 32
years we've never had an issue. Okay. Talking to the sanitary district they
have, they have other areas. This is not the only area. There's other targeted
and they know where they really are. Yeah. You know, it's one of those
things that, you know, whether do we hire an inspector for these projects, it's
going to come at a cost, but it'll prevent these from happening. Can we do
that as part of our permitting in our Colorado Bay, so that we don't get
stuck Kevin to try to deal with this afterward. Yeah, I mean definitely we
could look at that. I mean I think we need to look at at least yeah. I mean one
thing is the state statutes there's no state statutes that say you will have a
dry ditch. Right. There's nothing in there.
As long as it doesn't hamper the road base and they function, that's what the state statute says.
So, you know, if these ditches are no different than any other ditch that's on the county that may not be mowed, okay?
You know, but these are the areas that where we have these is where you come out of our rural area,
up urban setting into that rural, that transition area,
that's where you have these.
So, you know, and to be honest with you,
with Algo and Sanitary District,
with their water in there, you know,
the city of Oshkosh is gonna have no desire
to participate in extending a curb and gutter
out that far with solar sewer.
that's going to fall on whether the town of El Bulma and how much the county
wants to, you know,
are taking that. So there's not, I mean, there's not a lot of
options in the current being. This flat is, I mean, just like the previous
study said, it's about the elevation. There's just no elevation in there.
And like I said, the contractor, contractors that we had out there, they all said the same
thing.
There's no water.
Just like the engineering study said, there's no perfect solution for this.
And the contractor said the same thing, you know, I'm happy that we found that stand
that riser, because that's obviously that's where the water was coming from, you
know, to try to find, you know, where the source is coming from upstream. We could
search all the pipe that we did. We have a riser pipe in the ditch at Horseshoe,
and that water down in there is probably the other day it was down about
10 inches. So, you know, and it has been dry.
But he said, I mean, our whole business is that
maybe we draw that water table down far enough at that area that it will alleviate that water for
that end. So, you know, those are some of the things. But like I said, you could definitely
tell when the contractor was digging, you had dry soil and you went to an absolute saturated.
So these areas have been saturated for, I mean, years, 15 years, whatever it's bad.
So to dry those out, it's going to take time to do that.
So- Is
it possible to make a comment or not?
Okay.
So that's what I had with that, questions.
So can I ask a question that was related to public comments?
This review? Yeah. Really, it's this project, correct? So where are they in vicinity and what you're discussing?
Further west. They're at the further extreme to the west. Okay.
And so what I think, I heard you say is that it's really hard to tell what's the right thing
to do right now because it's so saturated and you don't necessarily have anywhere, a place
where you might want to go, but you don't have permission to go in those areas.
Well, I mean, the one idea would have been is to go through Ziegenhagen property, get
easement and you lower that height as low as you can get. So even if we kept it in
the ditch and went down to eat, that water rise in that creek could have back
that water up and made issues worse.
It's one of those like I mean you know
it's not always that that creek is that dry but once there's water in there
you know, it could back up into that drain tile, doing it like that. So right now, you know, we
sunk that sump pit, that's how we were able to get the elevation. But like I said, there's,
it's flat, it's laid flat in there from, from that butt outlet to the inlet's laid flat there.
So, but the only way we could get that was to sink that in little sump pits, but right
now the pressure, there's so much water coming out of that, that's what's, you know, forcing
that water over that.
Otherwise we'd have to pump that water out of that little sump, but right now there's
enough water being forced through there that it's just, it's pumping out of there.
Can I share a screen?
I guess I'm not in the meeting. I guess I couldn't do it.
Well, if you're not in it, you have it.
Yeah, I'll try to do it. I'll try it next time.
I just wanted to see on Google Maps where it is from here to here, whatever.
I can send you that tomorrow. You want to?
all for sure. Yeah, that would be good. Yeah, I see where Fensel is and I see what I think is
where the section where it would be. But yeah, I'm going to drive out there and take a look.
Is there an average cost for a lift station approximate?
Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I mean, that's been a very, it's a cheaper side when you talk at lift stations like in
the city.
I mean, you're talking to millions of dollars.
So I mean, it just, it depends.
I mean, you were not talking, you know, how big of a structure you're going to put
into.
It's essentially, it's like you're some pump in your house and essentially that's
what it is.
and you gotta pump that water out to get that out of there.
So that's the situation we have.
We don't have enough elevation to get that water to go.
Winnebago County is very flat.
There's every single township out here
is having the same issues.
I mean, Brian, you can attest to that.
We've had plenty of issues out on F
and a lot of these roads, there's just,
you can take water and move it from one spot to another
but somebody's gonna get the water
and who you know so I mean if there was perfect place you could go with it I
mean I we've been doing this a long time it's not it's you know there's just
nowhere to go with it they're not always secure in the winter months either
trying to know I'm trying to find out of January we will find out just winter
during the spring what what happens so I'm just curious thank you
the tornado
cleanup obviously on Pauley Road A from Mutart up to a Della Beach that little
section in there when we went to Monashia that day we couldn't get up to
Nita because that tornado came through just that little section of Mutart
there and I don't want to say just that but that's where a majority of the trees
blew onto the road at A but obviously it affected the town of Nina that whole
area in there but a lot of those big trees on A were over the road in there
a lot of those have been cleaned up we moved up to AP and P we've been
through those numerous times. One day we were fighting on Cutter Road Pee, so I said we had
that construction project up there. Half of our project was completed, but half of it also got
destroyed. So when trees were down, people were driving on sidewalks through people's yards.
Once cleanup started, everything just got pushed out of the yards into the road on the sidewalks.
Utility companies cut down a majority of the brand of signs that were installed to get access to power.
So there's a fair amount of damage up there.
So we're going back and forth now, you know, whether, you know, on a project like this,
you know, how do we address the damage part of that? Restoration, the seeding. Fortunately,
a lot of the areas, the seeding came up really well, but it did blow a lot of the
ematting off of the road. So the emattings all rolled up. The grass is coming through.
we've removed a lot of brush and trees through that area. One thing too I'm
gonna throw out there is I'm getting a lot of bills from the other day I got a
bill for about $30,000 to the Woodbury County Highway Department for removing
trees on private property. I've talked to the companies on Illinois so
they told me they're in Indiana working on tornadoes in that area so I haven't
been able to get hold of the owner to find out but as of right now I mean we
got about $30,000 in charges that were charged to us so working on getting
those cleared up from what I gathered was the vendor the contractor was in
there may, I don't know if they had permission to come to trees on this property or not,
but they didn't have any building address or anything, so they just went on GIS and pulled
up the parcel description and then just assumed that the road was Winnebago County, so working
through that I have a feeling maybe we're probably going to see more of those.
I'll keep working on those to take care of those.
Obviously, I mean, we're not gonna pay them.
I'm hoping that we can address this
without going through Marianna Corporation Council
and making this a big thing.
I'm pretty confident that working with the contractor
should be able to figure that out.
I mean, it's private property, we didn't authorize it.
So I'll keep working on that.
The Monash shed, we did get all the debris cleaned out
of that lean-to area.
We did start taking salt deliveries today.
Salt got delivered today in Oshkosh,
but we needed to get salt into that shed up there.
So, I did talk to the original contractor that built the facility.
He will be in town Thursday to start working on an estimate for that.
So we have all the debris cleaned out of that.
We will get our chloride tanks moved out of there, so it will be wide open for the
contractor to get in there.
So are we talking about the salt shed?
Yeah, no, okay, yep.
So Thursday, he should start in that.
I did get, I project managed that,
we the county built it, built that for the state.
All the paperwork I had, I gave to the DOT,
I did get that back,
but the contractor does have all that.
So he has all the electrical sheets,
he has everything.
things. So should be able to get prices for that really quick. So I'm hoping by
the middle of next week or at the end of next week that we have some prices
coming in to get that. My hopes are that we can get the salt shed roof patch
back in, put the sheeting on the side that we can at least get salt inside
and then we'll be in two part we can work around that if we have to if it
drags into, you know, December, we can work around that.
So it's good that we're able to get hold of that contractor
with that and that should expedite the whole process here.
So I've been working with Andy Jennings
with risk management the whole process through this.
So I said I'm hoping that by the end of next week
that we're well on our way to get that taken care of up there but one thing is
though is these areas that we are cleaning it up in Monashia you know we
clean up and the weekend comes and it's filled back in so and this is it's
gonna it's this isn't gonna happen next week we're gonna be finished this is
gonna drag on you know some people just you know whether you know they
work out of town and didn't have the time to clean up but they're
starting to get to the cleanup process now. So, um, so that it'll be a, I would
imagine they're going to fall, you know, it's not going to be as widespread a
cleanup, but we still will get the occasional trees coming out. And so we'll
keep working on that as we, um, as we keep finish up on that.
Are you talking about like picking stuff up that's like out on the curb
or with stuff like that.
I mean, you started out with the brush,
but now you're getting tires, you're getting concrete,
you're getting full stumps.
Whole houses were pushed out on the,
so that's the type of debris you're looking at now.
So now you're getting like furniture and,
so it's different debris.
It's not like the brush and the trees,
we keep separate and that's a cheaper.
But when you start getting into the demolition part, then the price goes up with that. And so,
you know, we're, we're, we are working with the local, you know, city of Manascio, Village
of Fox Crossing up there. You know, the, we have jurisdiction on the roads, but those
people are in those local areas. But, you know, we, we just can't leave the materials
sit out there. I mean we have an obligation to keep the roads open and safe and that that's what we're
doing. So could you help me understand like how that works? Like I'm trying to envision like what
that means. Like a truck comes by and guys just kind of load this stuff into like a dump truck or
how are we cleaning up? Yeah, how are we? How's that? So we have our pay loaders,
our wheel loaders.
Oh, okay.
And they got Clam buckets.
Yeah.
And so we go out there, you take that bucket,
you load those up and then we load them into a triac
or a quad axle dump truck.
Oh, and then we haul them up to Audigini County
on the landfill.
Okay, cool.
So, yeah.
And that's something else we'll talk about too,
is we're borrowing two Clam buckets.
Highway Department doesn't have those.
so we were borrowing those from Solid Waste, we're looking at purchasing one of
their used ones right now. The one we were using, they sold the loader that went
with that loader, but it's somewhere to talk about later coming up that we're
probably gonna have to look at, you know, purchasing a grapple bucket like
that for situations like this. So it's a whole other thing we'll work on, but
But that's how the process works when we're cleaning up up there.
Last thing I had was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.
It's called the Drug and Alcohol Clearing House.
So back in 2020, the federal government came out with this clearing house and basically
what it is is for anybody that has a CDL that drives a commercial vehicle.
What it does is that
there is companies out there that say somebody does have a violation with their drug and alcohol
testing.
Before it even gets in the system, they're quitting employers and then moving on to the
one. And they're not catching up to these. They keep jumping. So we've never had a situation
like this. This is one of those that there's probably very few people out there that this
affects. But obviously, they implemented this program. So we've pushed it off as long as we
could. But now we have to comply. So I've been working with human resources. So we set a date
of September 1st to have all this information in. So what this is doing is each one of our
employees has to set up an account. They go online, they set up their own account and it's
their email, they're in charge of that. So if they would ever have a violation on their drug
drug and alcohol testing, they have to update that on their site and that is their account
that follows them. So, but one thing the county has to do is once a year we have to do a query
on all our employees. We have to go in there and make sure every one of our employees
is it doesn't have any violations. With that, like I said, we've never had an issue with
this in the past. I don't foresee this being anything different with that, but it's just
one of those that we have to abide by those. And so we will get in before the deadline
and meet everything in there.
So, like I said, this is the few bad apples
that are out there that are causing this,
but essentially when it comes right down to it,
like I said, is you will log in there,
we will do our query once a year that we're required.
If anything comes up on that,
we'll notify the employee,
they should be well aware of that.
But that's kind of what's going on, where we did, we met with all our employees, everybody
knows about it, we set the September 1st deadline.
As of today, we've got maybe three or four people.
So what they have to do is they have to log in to the site, set up their account, and
then there's two separate forms they have to sign, and all that is giving permission
for Winneville County to do a query to check that. So they set up their account once that account
is in there and then once we get those forms back everything's done. Like I said we only have three
or four people that still have to do it. Some of them have been on different jobs and so they're
back this week so we should have all this taken care of in plenty of time before that September
September 1st, our September 1st deadline,
that we wanted this all done.
So kind of interesting.
So is this one with a CDL or?
Yes, any with the CDL.
And how many, how many?
So I have a CDL.
So I filled mine out and like online takes about 10 minutes.
We kind of, we made up some, we cleared off,
We printed out directions for each employee and then gave them those forms to sign.
So we had options some which I didn't know that but we do have some employees that are in areas
that do not have internet access which puzzles me that we still have communities that don't have
that. But then we will provide time for them to log into our system and that. So, like I said,
we'll need a couple. So, yeah, our hope is by the end of this week that everything is in and done
and put that in the rearview mirror, so, um, and that.
So, you said that's an annual thing.
Correct.
How does an annual thing for them to do?
No, once it's a one-time registration, but it's an annual for Winnebago County to do the query on their employees.
So, if an employee leaves employment at the county, wherever he goes, he will take his account.
And then he has to talk to his owner and they have to put him in their system and
Get access to their their files. So
So, yeah, this sticks with that employee wherever they go. It's there's the manage and
Kind of things does that track that's outside of like that the DMV would not have on record
So basically you're drug and alcohol testing. Oh
I'm sure you heard some of those stories that somebody may have violated, tested positive,
but it's not until their court date that it's actually guilty, so that kind of drag can
drag on for a long time so you know I'm sure you know people can get clever how
they do that drag it out right before the court date seek other employment
somewhere and they don't know that so like I said I don't think we're ever
going to have to test these waters I think it's just one of there's a few
people that this around the country that this has happened and this is how
they're going to, you know, take care of that. So,
okay, I
think that wraps up the
commissioner comments. Then we have no business items on the agenda. Our next
meeting date, oh gee, I forgot to look what that was. September 28th. September 28th.
I looked it up. Oh, okay, thank you. September 28th.
Okay, I just, oh, I had
I'm sorry, I had a question for Bob.
Would it be possible for us to do like a highway shop tour,
like a tour for the committee here?
Absolutely.
Yeah, we'd like to get something together,
like an afternoon or something like that.
Yeah, OK.
Is that, like, how long would that be, you think?
I think when we did Coney Board, it was like,
I think we kind of had an hour.
and that was like pushing it but I think it would be great for you to go
through there and see these issues that we're having right now and why we're
looking at you know this adding on or you know help us because I think you
once you come through there and see our equipment and see what's going on you'll
give you a better grasp when you start looking at our options of what they're
to do all of their sold.
If you just let me know, say an hour of just pushing it, that means it's not enough or
that's too much time.
When you said an hour would be pushing it.
I think an hour might not be enough time, an hour and a half, an hour and a half, okay.
And then we can, at least we can touch everything on the growls.
Okay.
And you can see it.
I hate to, like, you know, not show you something and then when the budget time
comes around when we start talking about the building you know it's your committee that
hey you did see this and you can say hey I saw this myself the issues that that were out there so
okay we'll try to set something up and then we'll move that forward a little bit okay yeah
sounds good otherwise there's no other comments I'll entertain the motion to adjourn
So move to adjourn.
Second by Supervisor Gostasen.
All in favor say aye.
Aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.
I assume any two are involved in the meeting.
Okay, all right, so.