Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

OK, let's stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, considered republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We have Five of the seven commissioners here tonight. And has the notice been properly posted?

It has.

All righty. Okay, public forum time. Members of the public are welcome to address the plan commission. Individuals wishing to speak on any agenda item must sign in prior to the start of the meeting and may speak during the public comment forum. The public comment forum allows any member of the public to make their comments prior to the plan commission discussion or action on an agenda related matter. Commentators must state name, address for the record. Individual comments are limited to no more than five minutes each. Once the public comment forum ends, there will be no additional discussion from the audience. The plan commission may suspend this rule if deemed necessary. Anybody like to get up and speak in front of the plan commission?

Doug West.

West 790 Highway ZZ and part of it brought on just some rezoning and all that, but I have the house that has a driveway over Norman Lasita's old creek and just wanted to mention through the years I've seen more and more flow from the water because of development. So I just don't know how much on the east side of town that's been taken into factors with stormwater runoff and stuff like that. Other than that, I am for development and I had to get a variance to get our houses in. So I'm for other people getting variances.

Okay.

Thank you.

Anybody else like to get up and speak in front of the planning commission? One more time. Anybody like to get up and speak in front of the planning commission? Seeing none, we will move. Members, have you looked at the minutes from last month's August 6th? Any changes, corrections?

I'll make a motion to approve the August 6th, 2026 plan commission minutes as presented.

I have a motion to accept the minutes from August 6th. Do you hear a second?

I second.

I have a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Okay, comprehensive plan update. A public participation recap and annexation discussion. Michael?

All right, representatives from East Central are here so I will let them have the floor and they've got a PowerPoint here so I'll be scrolling through as they give me the nod.

Yeah, my name is Carmen Ebert. I was East Central Regional Planning Commission working on the Town of Buchanan Comprehensive Plan update. I'm just going to go over some preliminary survey results and overall public participation so far. You can go ahead to the next slide. So just an overview for those that are not familiar with comprehensive plans. It is a local government's guide to the community's physical, social, and economic development. It's required by the Wisconsin Comprehensive Planning Law, and plans must be updated no less than every 10 years. And they are used to provide a basis for local land use decisions looking 20 years out. And community engagement is a really important part of the comprehensive plan update process. So an overview of the community engagement. So we held a traditional survey online. It was composed of 27 questions. And I'll get more into that in a moment. We also had an interactive social pinpoint map. And then we held a visioning session here at the town hall on July 14th. So survey results, we actually have 33 responses as of today. So another one trickled in. Overall response emphasizes focus on road improvements, trails, safe crossings, and housing availability. I'm gonna get a little bit deeper into the results. So demographics, A majority of people mentioned that they lived within the town and or owned property. Some smaller percentage, about 15%, mentioned that they work within the town. And then the age demographics, it's kind of hard to see on here because the writing is so small, but a large majority were over the, thank you for that, a large majority were over the age of 45, 50.

So that's out of the 32 respondents. Yes, correct. So it's not a very good response.

Yeah, and I'll get into that a little bit more in what our next steps are. Household size, the most common response was two people. You can go to the next slide. The majority of people that responded lived west of State Highway 55, so we got more responses for people on the west side of town. In terms of people that own a business within the town, we only had one person that confirmed out of the 33 responses that they own a business within the town. I'm not going to get too deep into each individual responses, but we had questions about where new housing should be focused, kind of split responses on that and where in people for the most part did not expect their housing needs to change in the next 10 years. We also ask some questions related to growth. What matters most for future growth? Overall responses, a balanced approach is what people thought we needed to move forward with. And that growth should be guided. And most people believed that the town will grow within the next 20 years. We also asked some questions about overall housing, jobs, and what trade-offs are acceptable. A majority of people responded no trade-offs are acceptable to support housing and jobs. In terms of satisfaction with road transportation, kind of split responses there. And how satisfied with the bicycle and pedestrian trail network, we kind of had split responses there as well. We had some questions about farmland, real character, natural resources, water quality. People for the most part thought those were important things. And then we had some ranking questions as well in terms of what the town should prioritize over the next 20 years. So which industries, overall responses were small business and entrepreneurship. And then in terms of investments that would most improve quality of life, more parks and trails was the most common response for that. where the town's efforts should be focused in the next 20 years. So the user was asked to prioritize one through seven, one being highest priority, seven being lowest efforts. Overall response was that the town's efforts should be economic development in parks and quality of life amenities was sort of split for the number one priority. And then the most common response for lowest priority was agriculture. Now, moving on to the social pinpoint platform that we use, which is part of the public engagement that we have been promoting. We actually have not had any contribution so far. This platform allows the user to add a point wherever they'd like on the map and do a specific comment about something they like, something that needs work, you know, in the hopes is that people would, you know, say an intersection that needs, you safety improvements, et cetera. But again, no contributions to that so far. The in-person visioning session that we had held here, we had 14 attendees and we split into two groups. We had a lot of really great feedback during that event. General feedback that we received is that there are issues with drainage and flooding within the town that should be addressed. People are overall saying that focus should be on urbanizing the west side and preserving the east side of town and that the town could benefit from placemaking efforts such as in parks. And overall increasing the roadway and trail safety. So safer road crossings intersections and road maintenance overall. So we split into two groups. As I mentioned, one of the activities was a money allocation activity. So we asked the participants to, they had three coins essentially, and they could choose to allocate their coins towards different efforts that the town should prioritize, whether it's transportation or housing, etc., and so some responses we received from that housing people were saying there should be more senior housing availability we've got feedback about larger lot sizes someone mentioned maybe allowing for a tiny house neighborhoods and overall just the lack of housing availability in the fox cities in general but also the town. Parks and trails feedback. The town has nice parks, but not enough parks per resident. People gave feedback that the east side needs more parks, increasing trail connections. We got that feedback quite a bit as well. roads was a hot topic as well the need for proper drainage and ditch maintenance overall you know holes in the road needing to be fixed more timely road fixes and you know people had mentioned if the roads were maintained that it might bring more people into the town. In terms of business, commercial businesses, it seems like the participants at the visioning session thought that there is a need for more commercial businesses within the town. And some other feedback we got from this activity, the town's aging out, preserving the town's boundary, which we'll have a discussion on. Joe will be talking about annexation in a moment. Adding some conservation overlay zoning potentially, more feedback about focusing on urbanizing the west side of the town preserving the East. Someone mentioned adding yard waste pickup. and feedback that the town overall is a great place to raise kids. So that was our first activity. If you go to the next slide, we had another activity talking about town character, basically asking about landmarks that we are aware of in the town. And so people listed off some of the landmarks that the town is known for. They did mention it was somewhat difficult to identify landmarks that weren't in other communities nearby. In terms of culture, there was feedback about, you know, there's farming, agriculture, a small town feel. In terms of character, people wanted to embrace the rural roots, but not be shy of development and progress in the town. And someone mentioned in terms of like some history that development happened so quick in the town that, you know, it's causing issues today related to the roads and the damage, the drainage side of things. And areas of opportunity people had mentioned, you know, the trail connections, the placemaking, especially in parks, partnerships with other communities, preserving the rural family oriented character and get ahead of data centers. Next slide. So those are the survey results, just a summary of the survey results and public participation in general. So we have a couple options here. I would say 33 responses for the size of the town is not sufficient. We'd really like to see more responses, especially for a comprehensive plan update. So a couple options we have is number one, keep the public survey open for a few more weeks and continue promoting it through social media and websites. Another option would be sending out a postcard or a newsletter with a QR code of the survey to the residents within the town. We also could host another visioning session or even a pop-up event. Last option is ending the community engagement today. So we wanted to list these options to the plan commission and see how you wanted to move forward with public participation. And I don't know if you have anything to add, Michael.

Um, Carmen and I kind of had a conversation about this cause I know the board is having some conversations about communication and how we get information out to the public, et cetera. Um, I mean we did, you know, the typical things, you know, we had the online components, we had an in person component. Um, we've been having this information in our newsletter since we started this process early last year. We've been posting information on our website, our project page, as well as Facebook posts every couple weeks or so, since the beginning of June all the way through the end of August. I think one of the things that we talked about is people are just, there's a lot of information out there for everything, right? People are just kind of overloaded with information from all sorts of venues and different components of their lives that sometimes some things just get lost in the noise, unfortunately. looking for direction from you guys to see what your thoughts are, what we should do, if we should continue with some more outreach efforts, and what those might look like.

When's the next newsletter due?

She's just about done with it to get it sent out, so I think she's, I think, the deadline to get stuff in, I think she has Thursday of this week. Are we able to put in one more QR code?

We do have information in the newsletter, um, about the, the project. So, um, we can just, we can tweak a little bit to just kind of emphasize, you know, the survey component, but every newsletter we plan to have some article in information in there about this planning process. So again, it's been in the last, at least the last two newsletters. Um,

but we as a link or a QR code, I don't recall.

It's been QR codes. A lot of times it's just easier for people to shoot those with their phones or even your computer. You can do it too.

I think we should at least try to do this one more newsletter thing and then really push maybe a reminders on our website. Um, You know, it's tough when you have 32 people responding and just do a final push here.

Yeah, but it's not gonna cost us anymore because we've already got the newsletter going out, so.

Right. Is it, and I don't, you know, and I don't make it a bigger, but is it, are we able to put it in a better spot so it's not buried?

I don't know where it is. I don't know either, because Tina's working on it. And Amber did a lot of it before she left, so Tina's just tweaking it. Okay.

I guess, if she's already got things laid out, I know how that goes.

Yeah, it's pretty much laid out. It's just doing the final tweaking.

Yeah. So we could keep it open for, you know, the, the newsletter will come out end of September, beginning of October. Um, you know, we can keep it open for another month to the end of October and then, um, kind of come back in November, I guess, and see where we're at. If that makes sense.

Yeah. When's our meeting in October? It'd be the second Tuesday. So six. Yeah. That doesn't leave enough time. Right. So in November. So I'm okay with that. What do you guys think?

Yeah. I mean, we really don't have much choices to get the word out and people don't want to respond.

Right. We'll give it one more go with the newsletter and then push it out on our social media.

So I guess the question is, is there a need for East Central to come back and provide more follow-up on the public participation components? Or is it just we close it at the end of October and then they start moving forward with, because they obviously are starting to work on some of the planning chapters of the document. The plan is to bring those to you in chunks. So we'll bring two to three chapters to you at a time to give you enough time to digest it, review it, provide some feedback, and kind of go back and forth like that as we move forward through the planning process.

Yeah, you would just email us the results of whatever you get from that or?

Of the survey, yeah, we can send a summary of the total responses.

We don't need a presentation. And then the same thing with that social pinpoint for comments, if we can put a blurb in the newsletter, say hey, this is new and you know,

Yeah. And the way that we've got it set up is we have them, I believe taking them to the social pinpoint website, which has the mapping component as well as a survey on it. So they're both sitting right there. Um, just a matter of, you know, encouraging people to see that and identify it and explain it maybe a little more detail on our website too. Sure.

Thank you.

Yeah. And I'm going to hand it over to Joe and he's going to have, he has a couple of slides about annexation.

All right.

Thank you.

I will note, if you want just an individual link for the social pinpoint map, you could maybe make a Facebook post with just that. That might be easier than combining the two. And then they click it right away. And I'll also note, if you guys have friends or family, please send it their way. Or even if you guys want to quick go do a social pinpoint drop, sometimes we see that if there's nothing on there, people are hesitant to put anything. So if they see someone else responded, it might, I don't know. We can, we'll work through a couple of things, but, but I think, yes, separating those would be helpful. Yeah. And we could do both too. I mean, we can get links to each individual survey, individual social pinpoint right now. It is just going to kind of your landing, the landing page we made, but so annexation, uh, So this is a common topic. I think we're doing comp plans for a lot of towns right now. Annexation, obviously, kind of, we'd like to see this in your guys' comp plan. I'm gonna go over a little bit about what annexation is and then maybe some strategies for kind of defending town borders. The idea would then to try to weave some of those goals and processes into your guys' comp plan. annexation what is it it's the process of a city or village incorporating part of a town so a incorporated area kind of taking land from an Typically, this process is homeowner driven. I say typically because there is a little bit of a caveat there. Cities and villages do have authority to, as you guys probably know, if someone says I want to annex into a city nearby, city of Kaukauna or something like that. the city has authorities to then try to take additional territory if they chose to. So again, it does have to initiate with the property owner, but cities and villages have ability to kind of expand that taking beyond just that property owner's land. Land again generally has to be contiguous. I say generally because these things go to the state. The state has often allowed non-contiguous land or very say questionable uh like tiny little corridors that kind of pop out and grab things uh again uh this is the process that the state kind of sets up uh you really are kind of behest of what the state is going to allow or not allow we've seen a lot of different uh ability to either annex certain parcels or not annex certain parcels over the past 100 years this thing has been around Again, town's ability to stop an annexation is really, really very limited at the state level. So, statutorily, the town doesn't have a lot of ability to say no when an individual says, I want to annex to a city, and a city goes through their process and tries to annex them. So, once you're kind of involved in that process, there's not a ton a town can do, but we can talk about some strategies that we can go through. A little bit to be a little preemptive. So obviously the thing that always comes to mind is incorporation. This is a little tricky with Buchanan because you guys are split down the center. You guys do have an east and west side. It makes it very difficult to incorporate. You probably have to choose one side or the other. So that I would say is probably not an option for you guys unless you wanted to have some very hard discussions on that end. Boundary agreements, we do always try to encourage boundary agreements between towns and villages. I will note that I don't know if a lot of towns know, sometimes the cities are just as scared of you as you are of them. And I feel like both sides think that maybe the other has the upper hand. I do think there are opportunities in this region for you guys to work with some of your cities and surrounding villages and things like that to really go through boundary agreements and say, hey, these are some of the areas that we're willing to let go, but then you're not gonna take other areas. And we're also not going to contest anything that would be annexed. Little caveat from the slide before, while I said there wasn't a ton of ability for you guys to stop annexations, you can contest things, you can sue, you can bring people to court. Obviously, we've seen a lot of those efforts. Really, they're more of a delay tactic than they are a solution to any of these problems. So boundary agreements are always a very good option, but this does come with kind of saying there are portions of your community that you would be willing to allow a neighboring community to kind of have. And it doesn't have to be immediately. A lot of boundary agreements are phased. You have... maybe like two-year, five-year, 10-year, 20-year increments of when things are going to go in. Again, those can be crafted however you and whatever neighboring municipality is, however you guys want to craft those. Boundary agreements is a tool you guys have. It is statutory. The other one is encourage strategic development. Typically, all of this I think comes with a little bit of an asterisk. So typically when you have an existing resident or an existing business, especially in a town, you guys have fairly low taxes compared to your surrounding cities. Typically when you already have a person that has built a business or built a residential property, they don't. usually annex into a neighbor. So if you can have your boundaries with certain communities that you are fearful of annexation, you can create kind of a development wall, right? You can try to develop those areas and try to make sure that those folks don't want to annex into the community next to you. And that comes with, again, things like trying to make sure your taxes are competitive, trying to make sure your services and things of that nature are competitive or better than your neighbors. Last one is really one that has actually become a little bit more popular in recent memory is strategic land acquisition. So if Cynthia can you make a note that Thank you Another one is strategic land acquisition. So this one has come become a lot more popular It costs money is the trade-off. It would be the town essentially acquiring property along those borders And when you are the owner of that property, now you're the one who has to agree to annex. And now you're the one who literally would get a vote during that annexation process. So if you create little boundaries, little walls of ownership, there would be no way for that municipality to kind of hop over you and to try to annex something behind you. They would have to try to annex you and then also continue forward. And obviously I would assume that you guys would say, no, you're not gonna annex the property you already own.

uh again trade off with that ask a question on that yep is there a law or precedent on how wide that property needs to be no that's an interesting thought

So just as a sidebar, we will have at the next town board meeting in September one of our attorneys coming to talk about annexation as well. So she might be able to answer some more of those legal questions.

But you're not sure?

So the two things you'd be running up against when you are going through, you would want to, it's interesting thought to have like a very narrow strip that kind of defends you. The only thing, again, so that would stop the contiguous clause. if you would be this little wall and make sure that people can't go beyond it. The only thing that you would worry about is if you have someone behind your wall that says, yeah, I want to annex and then the city says, okay, let's say it's ag land and the property owner has 10 acres and you have 300 feet. The city could go and do the land area method, So the city could say, we're gonna annex you guys and the 10 acres, and you guys kind of have a vote by how much land you have. So then the 10 acres, if they wanted to join the city, would have a larger vote than your very narrow 300 feet or whatever it's gonna be. So in that case, you would then likely, you would still contest it, but you would fail in not allowing it to annex because the person behind you would have a larger vote, if you will. So that would be the only, The only caveat around that. Sorry, downsides of this are obviously cost and I guess some of the things I just pointed to here. But it is a strategy that a lot are kind of looking at. I know Town of Clayton is maybe a little bit of the poster child of this right now. They've been buying up land kind of along there, some of their major corridors. So those are some of the options. I think that all of them are worth exploring. All of them are worth, I think, some strategy, some ability to put in this comp plan so that you guys can, I mean, staff has a little bit of a direction that they can follow and then the town has a mission in general.

So do you help facilitate boundary agreements or anything like that?

We haven't traditionally, but I never say never. I do just about anything.

Because we just have difficulty with one neighbor.

Yeah. And I will say, Carmen runs our SSA program. And during the sewer service area discussions, it very much is this conversation. It's where we're going to go, how we're going to allow it, what is annexation always gets brought up. So I will say that we would be if you guys feel that we are appropriate for the job It's nothing we would charge you for I don't think unless I got into a huge Contract style deal, but we would be more than willing to try to play as a mediator Have your thoughts changed from 20 years ago when

could kind of split us in half because you guys said that we couldn't service that area and that's where now we're in a big mess because of that. So I'm a little hesitant with you guys because you were the cause, one of the causes of us losing and being split in half.

And I don't know what policy was 20 years ago. Whenever we do, Carmen can probably talk about this more than I can, but sewer service area, we never say one community gets it or the other. We say this is where sewer is going to go, could go. Again, it's an asterisk that says if the wastewater treatment plant has capacity, it can go here. We're never saying that it's going to go in We're never saying it's going to go in Littleshoot or the town of Buchanan. So it's... Well, the sewage plant for this whole area, this area is in the valley. Yep.

And you know that.

Yeah, but it serves like a lot of communities. So you guys in particular, I think that holds true that when we're saying where a sewer, and we don't say where it goes, we work with the community to put up where sewage could possibly go because of development. It really is saying, again, any community could serve this. It's going, the heart of the valley serves dozens, maybe half a dozen communities in this area. So again, our stance right now is not, we're not saying which community serves that. We're just saying there can be sewer here. It's probably going to be hard at the valley. Whoever you can and you guys have sewered areas. Uh, so that would never be, especially with you guys having sewered areas, we would never say one community gets it or the other. So We usually want people to get along as far as our end goal with any sewer service thing is to have each municipality come to the table and say, I agree. That's usually where we try to get everybody is to get along. It's easier said than done sometimes though.

Connor doesn't play nice.

Sure. Yeah, if we're not the appropriate party, then that's fine too. I just, if you thought we could help, we certainly can, but don't need to be in that conversation as well.

Okay. Other questions, Joel? Well, I think if you have anything else you'd like to...

I don't think so. Well... Like I said, I'll follow up with Michael on a few of the public outreach things. We would like to see a handful more surveys than you guys have, and I think we have some options. But you guys did get very good. The vision session, I think, was very well attended. There are some times we have very few people with us, and 14 is a good amount. Thank you. Yep, thank you.

Okay, at this time... We're gonna have to go into a public hearing. Resolution 2026-12, rezoning portion of parcel 03-000-8700 from ag to general agriculture to rural residential. I have a motion to go into public hearing.

I move to open the public hearing.

I have a motion to open the public hearing. Do we hear a second? I'll second that. Keith seconds it. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Michael? All right.

No, you have to call for people in favor.

Oh yeah, sorry about that. like to have a motion or anybody like to speak in favor of the zoning change, get up and speak at the make and give your name and address please.

So, San Peter's address is 2347 Tigerwood Trail. I don't live in the community right now. Hi, how are you? Yeah, I want to speak in favor of the motion to move to rural residential. My wife and I have been local to the Fox Valley for many, many years. We intend on building our home there and being a member of the community. So, that's all I have. Any questions? Thank you.

Anybody else like to get up and speak in favor of the zoning change? One more time. Anybody like to get up and speak in favor of the zoning change? Seeing none. Anybody like to get up and speak against the zoning change? Anybody like to get up and speak against the zoning change? Last time, anybody like to get up and speak against the zoning change? Seeing none, motion to close the public hearing.

I move to close the public hearing.

I have a motion to close the public hearing. Do I hear a second?

Second.

Linda seconds it. All in favor say aye. Aye. All right. Michael, do you want to?

All right, so this project here, a couple things. Two items for your consideration tonight. One is rezoning as well as approval of the CSM to create some additional lots. So the request is to do a CSM to carve up a larger agricultural lot into three buildable residential lots. Lots, two, three and four are proposed to be rezone to row residential to accommodate for the residential home building. And then lot one here would remain in agricultural zoning and continue to be farmed. Um, so that's the basic idea of this evening of what the request is. And with that I can answer any questions you might have.

Thank you. Joe, any questions?

I do not.

No, no. I looked at it and there's residential across the street.

Linda, that's your neighborhood.

Yeah, it is. Um, so the Creek runs through, I just, the diagonal, is there any reason for kind of the diagonal between the two properties?

Not that I'm aware of. Um, it's just how they laid it out.

Nope, no questions.

John?

Nope.

No, Kakana isn't close to it, is it?

Next, right, oh, but not right next to it. No, not adjacent. All right. They don't have, they're not contiguous to it. All right, sounds good.

Just asking, just to make it clarifying. Can't lose more land. Alrighty. Seeing none, a motion to accept or deny it.

I move to recommend approval of resolution 2026-12 to the town board.

A motion to accept the resolution 2026-12 to the town board. Do we hear a second? I have a second. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? The ayes have it.

I move to recommend approval of the CSM to the town board.

Second.

Can I at least say it? We have a first and we have a second motion to recommend the CSM to the town board. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. The ayes have it, all righty. All righty, unfinished business. E-devices.

Michael. All right. This was brought up a couple months ago. Planning Commission wanted to have the Sheriff's Department come and present. So we do have Captain Nathan Boardman here. We also have Jim Ostetter, Fire and EMS Chief, along with some of their personnel and staff to really kind of have a conversation with you and kind of tell you what they're seeing out there, at least from a law enforcement standpoint, as well as the Fire Department is here because they are also looking at creating a bike, rodeo, if you will, or some kind of safety course in the springtime, bringing that back. So again, what we talked about the last meeting was an emphasis on education. That's kind of the direction, excuse me, that many communities are going. I did meet with the superintendent of the Kimberly School District. They are, actively pushing education within the classroom to parents, students, through their newsletter, through their communications, which is a great thing because obviously they're an educational system and they're really trying to push this because I think they have a really great audience because many students that go to Kimberly live in the surrounding communities, which this is affecting us. So education is really kind of the focus of this, I think. But with that, I'll kind of turn it over to Captain Borman here to kind of have him give you a little bit about what they're seeing and kind of what their thoughts are on e-devices.

Good evening, everybody. I guess to start out, does anybody have any questions before we start that I could answer? how are you going to enforce if we do put ordinances in? We certainly don't oppose you having any ordinances. I don't think we need them. And let me tell you why. Today was a classic example. The biggest problem we're facing are what truly aren't e-bikes. They are typically much faster. They're considered out of class or e-motos. They realistically need to be registered as a motor vehicle. Not saying you can actually do it, but that would be the realistic thing. They're not legally allowed on the roadway. So, What we had today was effectively an electric motorcycle doing 50 miles an hour down Emmons Road and crashed out in the roundabout, if you haven't heard about this. Not our new roundabout. Your new roundabout had a crash today. All freshly designed. But to that point, what we have here, he's a revoked driver, he's drunk, there's a lot of problems going on here. So this isn't, it's the problem we're facing with all these new electric vehicles coming out, right? So it's a separate problem from e-bikes itself. Similar product, similar sourcing, but two separate issues. The e-bikes themselves we don't have a lot of problems with as long as people are being respectful. it's when they start utilizing roadways and appropriately we simply use the existing state statutes to enforce that and citing the operators as need be we're also having some issues with. Larger groups of teens that are organizing on social media. and then trying to invade an area and basically just act out on the roadway. Happened at Appleton. That's where you saw Appleton seized like 40 e-bikes. It was a very creative thing they did. I was impressed. That same group then tried to come into Kimberley about a week later. One of our guys who happens to live here in Buchanan was tracking it on social media And actually, we were there before they got there. And we chased them around Kimberly a few times. And effectively, we wrote some tickets. They crossed into Combined Locks a few times. We wrote some tickets, but effectively, we just harassed them out of the area. They didn't ever get to organize like they wanted. So we're utilizing the laws we have to go after the ones that are problematic. The e-bikes themselves that are being used respectfully and without issue, really won't become a big problem for us I don't believe so we're it's that battle of the the same relative product but some are legal and some are not and the ones that are not are typically the ones really acting out and causing us a problem so other questions can I answer just a

Will you be able to reach out to your school resource officers to also, when they do their presentations, especially to the lower levels, middle school kids, add a little section on the...

We're so we're actively discussing that. Um, I'm kind of curious to see how this goes with the fire department. I think this is a wonderful idea. Um, yeah. So kind of pairing up with them to see what happens with that and how that develops. I was actively talking about it today. Two of our people just came back from the traffic safety conference and the Dells and they attended a section just on this. Um, There wasn't a lot about the education piece presented there, but that's what we were talking about, was how do we roll this into an education piece? I'd say one of the things we want to focus on is educating parents, because parents are buying their kids these devices without an understanding of what they are, oftentimes. They're not understanding what an e-bike is and what an e-bike isn't. And they're ordering things, you know, I've seen $3,000 e-dirt bikes, effectively. It's not an e-bike at all. so um trying to get that education piece also out to the parents but we do agree educating the students you know going through the school districts now we um have our psls in kimberly so that's going to be part of it yeah i don't know exactly what that looks like yet but yes we are working on it right because way back when they used to do those bike rodeos in the schools and i think it's great that they're bringing that back and maybe there's a joint effort on a safety day type of thing yep you can't have too few of them And we actually, we have a trailer loaded with bikes that we can do a bike rodeo with. And that's been part of our discussion is how do we apply that? How do we apply that to e-bikes? Right.

So way back when we also had our own bike patrol.

Yes, we did. But, um, are you able to, with your state statutes, cite parents or where does that come in?

it's going to be a challenge. And realistically, as long as parents are cooperative, the last thing we want to do is go after them. But, um, but if you're getting to the second and the third, it's becoming a root. Generally I would say no, unless we can prove somehow the parent is causing the issue or, or actively encouraging the issue versus him. But that's going to be a challenge. Yeah.

And then what are the consequences for those kids when you do cite them?

I mean, we're talking state traffic citations. So minimum amount is $175 and it goes towards their driving record. So these are big violations. I mean, this is, you're operating a motor vehicle of sorts on a roadway. So just like the gentleman today, he got an OWI. He's getting an operating after revoke citation. I mean, those are both criminal acts that he's going to be facing.

Do you find 15, 14, 13, 12-year-olds on these bikes, though? Yes. So how do you do the traffic violation?

Well, that is where it becomes a challenge. Generally, we're not seeing as big a problem. With the 12, 13, 14-year-olds, it's more of an education piece. It's talking to the parents. It's explaining how dangerous this is. So the education piece is usually sufficient. we did during the Kimberly incident, I believe we had one 12 year old run from us repeatedly. I mean, it was a child and that's a behavior pattern that if they're doing that at 12, we're gonna know that kid pretty quick.

So, yeah. Yeah, I got a question. As far as riding a bicycle or an e-bike on the sidewalk, is that a state statute or can that be?

So that's very much determined by the locality. An e-bike can be operated anywhere a bicycle can be. So if a bicycle is allowed on the sidewalk here, which right now it would be, then the e-bike can be on the sidewalk. Same with the trails. Now again, I want to stress, we're not seeing a big problem on the trail. We're not hearing complaints of e-bikes on trails causing issues. Now, not saying that won't change, or hasn't ever happened, I'm sure it has, but generally it's been just fine.

And I believe by- Motorcycles.

so I see the e-motorcycles more as a problem on the roadway we haven't had a lot of reports of them on the trails certainly I trust it has happened see them yes yeah repeatedly that is something we would take enforcement action on they can't be on there

And I believe by state statute, bicycles are prohibited on sidewalks already. So I know that the statutes give local municipalities the authority to allow them if they so choose. But by statute, they're currently illegal to be on sidewalks.

Yeah, that's correct. So I mean, an e-motorcycle of sorts on a trail would be no different than you driving your car on the trail. That's how we would approach that.

And then advisement for our community when they want to report this non-emergency line or generally the select line.

No, everything goes through the same non-emergency line. Um, and generally that would be the way to report it. We're really, it's very difficult to enforce these things after the fact, as you can imagine. So we're relying on our officers to take action. Like I said, that one officer that lives in your community, he's very hot to trot about this. So you're going to see some action. But we are actively working to educate our officers on it, make sure they're wanting or knowing what to look for and how to approach it. So today was a good test of the system in a way because it made us figure a lot of things out about a very specific case.

It's just a new thing until we can get it back under control.

Yep. And I think we're on a good path. I do think we're on a good path.

Like we said, Jim and his crew are here so they can kind of talk a little bit about what their thoughts are on this bike rodeo concept. And, you know, maybe you can provide some feedback to them on your thoughts about it too. So Jim, if you want to kind of talk about that a little bit.

sure thank you so actually the bike rodeo concept currently is kind of in its infant stages of development we've been working with the sheriff's office having some basic conversations with them obviously you heard the captain before mention that they have the equipment to be able to provide that we're also looking for there's some opportunities for us to be able to so part of it be able to obtain some safety equipment for the kiddos that are going to be attending the safety rodeo for the bikes. We're looking at a spring start. I know that's a little bit behind probably what a lot of folks are looking for right now because we have the situation that's in front of us here, but within a month or two, the bicycle situation is going to be going away because we have our wonderful winter coming along so we're looking to have this in place in spring to be able to educate age group we're looking at you know grade school maybe into the middle school a lot of again working with the sheriff's office on what what's appropriate for the age group for us to be educating at that time so it's going to be kind of a multi-pronged opportunity for us we also have in the fox valley it's called the fox valley regional trauma advisory committee they're heavily involved in education in all age groups it's a group of folks from the whole fox valley region that includes all of the ambulance services and hospitals. So these are things that they love to be part of and looking to have them support us in that venture when we move forward with this and a lot of times in the past they haven't done it recently. just made some contacts initially with some folks that are part of the committee there but in the past they've done things where they've donated bike helmets and things like that so during the rodeo the kiddos not only get sized for a free bike helmet but also have the opportunity to be able to be sized but also trained in how to appropriately put a bicycle helmet on which Sounds like a pretty rudimentary thing, but it is actually kind of a big deal to make sure that they have the helmet on correctly and sized correctly for their head. So those are the things that we're looking for.

The thing that might be important there is the knowledge or the education on when it's time to replace a helmet.

Exactly, yeah, they have expiration dates on them. No, just, I mean... Once they are used yes, and you know have a Contact with pavement they're supposed to be replaced yeah Yeah, exactly if they if then that's that's a good educational point is if they've had an accident And that's something that if we would be involved we'd obviously that along with car seats is you know car seat involved in an accident or vehicle Accident should be replaced also so those are things we do carry In our vehicles we do carry free stickers actually in that stickers So if we catch a kiddo doing something good, wearing a bike helmet, we issue one of those.

I think this bike rodeo is a great idea. You would possibly think about working like you did the mock, like fire departments have always come mock crashes, you know. That way you'd have a captive audience if the schools would allow you to go during the school. Besides doing your own separate event, but if you do it in conjunction with the schools, you've got them.

Yeah, that's something we can look into.

Especially spring when they start getting on their bikes again.

Yeah, and look, it's similar to what Fox Valley does at the PAC. That's the RTAC that does a lot of that where they do the prom night crash.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about that anymore. I'm talking about just do the bike safety thing. Correct. That way you have everybody there.

Yeah, so we have to kind of look at the school district itself. you know, how far do we reach? Is it just within our township or do we look at the school district proper of the, you know, we're who serves the town of Buchanan, you know, so those are things, those are things that we have to look at. Obviously a little bit of change that occurred here recently with the sheriff's office and coverage of certain communities around us, you know, that will increase our opportunities with that too. So we have to take a look again, it's infant stages. Um, we haven't even had any conversations with our partners that combined locks and Kimberly fire. It might be an opportunity for us to work together as more collectively. It was a concept that we came up with in the community risk reduction part of our department. We brainstormed on all the different things that we want to try to achieve in our township to make it safer place to live. And those were one of the things. And then this happens to come up in the middle of it. So we're kind of a parallel thought process. So we're And that's why we picked spring. We want to do it right. Yeah, I think it's great. So we want to make sure that we do it right, have the right involvement, have the right people there. Our initial conversation with the sheriff's office, as Nate mentioned, they have a trailer full of bikes and everything. So we have a lot of the bigger expense items covered to be able to do this. So these are things that now moving forward, where do we go? Also, we got to look at our friends in the south, Harrison, even though they're in a whole different county, but they have a... Sunrise school the south of us have a really nice opportunity in parking lot for us to be able to host things of that We actually already work with them on a regular basis That's where we do a lot of our driver training with our fire trucks is in their parking lot So we already have a working relationship with them. So those are things that and one of our members of the fire department is actually the head of maintenance for the Kimberly school district. So we have a little bit of a connection there to at least get, not necessarily get preferential treatment, but obviously to be able to be put in the right direction or the right context to be made.

So I think it's great.

Any questions for the chief? Thank you, sir.

Okay. Thank you. One for the captain.

Okay.

Do you see, um, some of the overpowered motorcycles, whatever you want to call them, being used as rides to school?

I have to imagine there are. One of the problems with knowing if it's overpowered is you really have to inspect the bike. So identifying the motor size can be a little bit tricky, but I'm sure there are.

And it might be an opportunity for liaison officers to put information on those bikes to make them aware, at least through the kids, as to what the classifications are and where they are able to be ridden.

I do, and I agree with you. I think that is a good idea. I do suspect we're going to see through the schools that kind of contact being made because of this. So no, I agree with the idea.

Appreciate your time to come in here. Absolutely.

Well, like we kind of talked about it, I think from staff's perspective with fire police, um, other contacts that we've had with the school district, um, start with the education, right? We have the statutes, the law enforcement or the rules already in place to, um, take care of the problem problems that, you know, captain Borman identified. Um, you know, If you create your own local rules, they're gonna be different from everybody else and it just causes more confusion on what are the rules. So I think, like I said, our push is education. We've got the bike rodeo that they're gonna be working on. The school district is already making a conscious effort and being very active in that. And we can continue to do that as well. The Sheriff's Department has some brochures and materials that they've been using that we can use on our sites as well. So that's kind of where we'd like to see it go from here is just to start with that education push. Hopefully if we see this, unfortunately if we see this become a bigger problem, realistically we need to really start talking to our legislators at the state level. Because as we've talked about before, this is a top down problem. If you have at the state level, if they have to update and modify those rules, it's going to cover everybody consistently. Um, and that's really kind of the best way to go with this type of situation.

Alrighty. Anything else, Michael? Nothing on that.

Okay.

Well, at this time, uh, no new business. Um, Project updates, correspondences, none. Future agenda items. Any thoughts on anything? Get hold of Michael or Cynthia. So, at this time, to adjourn. Yeah, I'll make a motion to adjourn. I have a motion to adjourn. Do I have a second?

I'll second.

I have a second. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

We're out of here.