Town Board - Regular Meeting

It's in consent agenda.

Yeah, I was just looking for it as an attachment and not in the actual agenda.

I didn't see it until just now.

Yeah.

There's still one seat left, right? Because we can, yeah.

Especially for like right now we're going back and forth.

All right, I have six o'clock, so I'd like to call this meeting of the town board to order. We'll start with the Pledge of Allegiance. Jenny is missing. We didn't hear from her, so I hope everything's okay. The other supervisors are here. Cynthia, has the public been properly notified?

It has. Okay.

Then we'll go into presentations. We'll start with Jim. Thank you.

So we have two folks on our department that actually have met their one year with our department. First one is Memory, Memory Anderson. So memory obviously said she's been here, been with us for a year. She currently is actually in our emergency medical responder class for the EMS side of the house. And she's also doing our driver operator in-house program training. As you can see, she's a little bit, I don't want to say under the weather, but she's going through some things with her ankle that she injured her ankle.

Well, he's just saying not on the job.

Yeah, exactly. It wasn't at a choir or anything, so that's a good thing. But I'd like to present her with the certificate and her pin of one year for appreciation of all work Will said he was gonna be here. He was taking a late lunch where he works, so he might be, I don't know if that's something we can just prolong if he shows up. So he works late at night, so he said he was taking a late lunch from the Texas afternoon to try to be here.

Okay, sounds good. And then we have Ashley here to talk about annexation.

I'm here for you guys to throw tomatoes at me.

I have a presentation.

It's a little bit repetitive. I'm not sure where you've left off on this issue though. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to let me know, would you like for me to give you sort of like an overview and the different methods of annexation and how those are reviewed by the DOA or the court? Or do you have specific questions and you want to get right to it? And that would be fine too.

I think a review of the methods of annexation and probably more importantly, things that we can do to avoid those happening.

So spoiler alert, not much. Which, hence the tomatoes comment. I'm not here to give popular opinions tonight. I just wanna warn you about that now. But yeah, let's, if Michael, if you don't mind.

Since when are attorneys popular? It helps when you quit. Okay. Um,

Annexation very generally is this process where territory is transferred obviously from a town to a city or a village and The thought process behind that is as a town develops these areas that are traditionally more rural That it might make sense for the territory to become a part of a more urbanized community where services for more enhanced development would be available. Landowners typically are seeking sewer, water, other city services that would be available to them in a neighboring village or city that might not be available for them in a town. And so the goal behind this is really orderly growth. Rather than having little pockets of development here and there requiring enhanced services, trying to consolidate those efforts to some extent. So that is the thought process behind annexation. If you wanna go to the next slide. They're really generally I lump them into three categories of annexation annexation by a unanimous petition annexation by a non unanimous petition or where we negotiate some sort of boundary agreement with a neighboring municipality. We might be expected or we would be expected then as a town to give up some of our territory in exchange for solidifying those borders for. hopefully future long periods of time.

Let me see what I have for my notes here.

With unanimous annexation, I'll go into it in a little bit more detail, but approval is almost totally unavoidable. It's a legislative decision. The legislature has determined that as long as you check these boxes, if the property owner is contiguous and they would like to be annexed, the town does not have really any ability to prevent that. With non-unanimous petitions, there may be more opportunity to challenge, but again, it's quite limited. And the court's overview of that is quite limited too. So we retain the most control if and when we're able to negotiate some sort of boundary agreement that makes sense to us.

By non-unanimous, do you mean majority of landowners or?

So non-unanimous meaning it could be 50% of the territory or it could be the 20%, a petition with 20% of the number of individuals who have voted in the last election in addition to 50% of the territory as a whole. So this is a really boiled down sort of flowchart, if you will, of the process. But if we're talking about petition by unanimous consent, we're really only looking at one, three, and five. There would be no need for notice or additional... opportunities to object by landowners because they've all already agreed to it. So that negates too. And there's no opportunity for the town then to object to it in that case. If you want to go to the next slide. So the town's role when we receive notice of a petition is to review and to confirm the correct procedure that we're operating under. In chapter 66, so 66 discusses these various kinds of annexation, 66021711, which talks about petitions by unanimous consent. It says very specifically, no action on any grounds whether procedural or jurisdictional to contest the validity of an annexation under sub 2 may be brought by the town. So when we have a unanimous petition what we do is we look at it and if we if we if we see a defect in that petition there might be an opportunity then to challenge it. But aside from that there's, there's really nothing that a town can do in that case.

And even in that case, all they have to do is refile.

Correct. And there was a case, there was a recent, maybe you saw that there was a recent Wisconsin case where that occurred. Um, the town was able to identify that one of the property owners was missing and that worked its way all the way up, I think to the Wisconsin Supreme court and was ultimately remanded and there was a new petition. So More popular attorneys making good money to argue about that for years just to get remanded back and get that final signature. And that's how that error was fixed. But you're correct. Now, if there was one property owner who, for whatever reason, did not want to sign off on it, then it pushes them into the non-unanimous category, right? But that wasn't the case there. So here, what this is sort of outlining for you is even when we have a non-unanimous petition, the DOA is going to take a look at it, and they're not going to say, is this what's best for everybody, or is this what's wise? They're going to say, does this make sense? Is what we are being asked to do... does it comply with what we have set out as important factors to allow this kind of exchange of property so are there enhanced services that are available again that contiguity contiguity requirement is going to be important are they contiguous with the neighboring municipality are we creating little pockets or islands because we want to prevent that too the court is going to take a look if there is a challenge and say does this does this comply with our rule of reason and so these are these are the factors again that the court is going to look at look at as well uh... There's a recent case and you may be aware of this one also that lays out These factors pretty clearly and I think it's worth a read if you haven't taken a look at it It is the town of Wilson against the city of Sheboygan and in that case The Kohler company had I think about 250 acres that they wanted to develop into a golf course and and the town was not willing to grant, I believe it was a conditional use permit in that case, and there were concerns about services and their ability to provide what would be needed to that property. And so Kohler acquired additional land, I think even some state park land, and then filed a petition to annex to the city of Sheboygan. And that was recently argued, and it went through all of those standards that the court takes a look at as far as, you know, is this reasonable? Does it check our boxes? But again, even in that case, and I don't know the exact language, but I think it's something along the lines of, you know, we're not here to second guess or to determine what is most wise or most beneficial. We're really here to determine if this complies with what has been set out by the legislature for us. I'll go to the next slide. Um, so here again uh... you know when we receive a petition the most important thing is to ensure that we're calendaring any required notices and deadlines we're monitoring that that annexation activity is occurring as as it is required by statute to do we should you know review the descriptions the legal descriptions the type procedure but as long as they're following following what has been set out by statute it's really a matter of evaluating that impact and if we can approaching that municipality to see if there's an opportunity to communicate sort of long-term plans again possibly through some sort of a boundary agreement understanding that they are likely to receive that property. Tomatoes yet?

Not yet.

No, okay. Told you it was repetitive. What questions do you have for me?

I'll start. Boundary agreements, so if we have a city, not Kana, that doesn't want to do a boundary agreement, how does it look if we would like to consolidate with a village? to increase our footprint?

That's a good question. It depends on the willingness of the village to make those efforts. And I know that those conversations have been had in the past. How long ago? Well, I've never been involved in direct communication on that, but there has been over my time in working with Buchanan, and I represent Combined Locks also. There have been multiple instances where we've talked about sharing services and consolidating efforts, and I think that there's always been kind of in the background this, well, if we are working together, should we be together sort of underlying tone?

Well, I would like to get a boundary agreement with Kaukauna, but from my understanding, they don't wanna come to the table to agree to that.

Yeah, a couple years ago, I approached Kaukauna at the time, spoke with the community development director, and we had a conversation. They were gonna look into some things and then just, nothing ever materialized after that. So, um, it's always worth reaching back out to see if they're interested. Um, but like I said, it's been a couple of years since we've had that. I've approached the topic.

There is one in place currently with Appleton, correct? We haven't, I think that I negotiated or I might've participated in something with them. Not that long ago.

We have an agreement with combined locks and with, I believe Appleton as well.

I thought you mentioned the village of Kimberly that we might have something to him.

We might have one with Kimberly. I don't recall though. I know for sure combined locks.

I don't think I've ever been involved in one with Kimberly.

So I guess my bigger question is if we would consolidate, does that help us prevent annexation?

Well, if you would become a village,

The problem would be the east of 55. That would be still a town because we're not contiguous, so we would not be able to bring that into Combined Locks, for example. So you would still have a remnant town out there.

If I am understanding correctly, post-annexation, there's some payment from the annexing municipality to the taken from municipality based on the prior property tax?

I think that's a five-year. Is that a five-year? For town taxes only.

Okay. is like, there's probably no way to, I'm sure this is illegal, but we couldn't just say your property tax every year is $50,000, $45,000 of which can be paid with a non-transferable voucher. And then that voucher becomes void when, and if your property gets annexed and then. Yeah.

So then you're going to get sued for some sort of excessive tax assessment. And, um, And if you're more than 20% off of or over what the court ultimately determines as the reasonable value, then you're on the hook for actual attorney's fees. So that gets expensive really quickly.

Would it be possible to check into a partial consolidation?

Yeah, I mean, those are political questions. They're not legal questions.

because I think we could, you know, but then I don't know where that would leave the east side.

One of the big things, and I know from going through the incorporation process when I was in Greenville, when they went from a town to a village, part of what the DOA looks at and what you have to prove in the large packet of information you submit to them, your application, is that if, in fact, you do split your town into part town still and then part goes to a village, can that town survive? financially, operationally, logistically. So those are some of the things that you would want to evaluate because if you said, hey, we'd love to consolidate with another village on the west side here, but then the east side, you may struggle to take care and manage the rest of the remaining town.

So, yeah, and that would still be the towns, the town of Buchanan's responsibility. I would just keep in mind though, in Greenville we were incorporating into a new village versus I think what you're describing is more of an a, an adjustment of boundaries that to protect our boundaries. But the town would still need to function as the town. We can't leave that portion out there hanging high and dry. So you're still staffing. You're still going to have a full board. You're going to manage your elections and open records and services. And that, I'm sure, could become very expensive for a very small group of people.

Especially when that's the area that keeps getting annexed. The one that, yeah.

Well, it's where the tax base is low, so there's not a big repayment. Like, Kekona doesn't owe a lot if they, you know, annex farmland and turn that into 100 houses, right? Because they get 100 houses to tax on that 40 acres or whatever. But if you do that to already developed land, then their payment on the back end would be quite a bit higher. And so it doesn't make sense for them to annex anywhere that's already pretty well developed.

Would mandatory mediation with a boundary agreement work?

I don't know that we have an ability to require some sort of mandatory conversation or mediation.

You don't have any state laws for that? Not that I'm aware of. What is the advantage for, say, the city of Kaukauna to enter into a boundary agreement with us? Is there any advantage for them?

I'm pleased, Jenny, when you talk. Did you hear me? Thank you. The people in the back have to hear you.

I can't speak for Kaukauna on that. I mean.

But for any city in general, is there?

So, I mean, looking at the condition of roads, looking at where we're going to have to extend services, that's more of a planning question than it is, again, a legal question. But there are significant interests in understanding how and where we are going to funnel our resources. And so oftentimes when you have development or boundary agreements, it's for that reason. I am almost certain that we had a revised one with Appleton when they were reconstructing Newberry and there were some town islands along that road and maybe the storage units had just gone up in that area. So that was an example of Appleton is gonna wanna know who is within the city, who are we assessing for this work? so that we don't have to go to the town and ask for permission or payment for the work that we're doing along those areas. And if we can have clean, easy to distinguish borders, that speaks to really the purpose of annexation in and of itself to orderly development.

Yeah, from a planning perspective, if I put myself in the place of a village or a city, there's really no advantage to entering into a Boundaries Agreement unless the town comes to the table with something to offer, right? Um, and ultimately the town is going to have to give up something as well, right? They're going to give up certain areas of land of town that they say, all right, you city or village will allow you to annex this over time, but this is as far as you can go, right? So really it's, it's a matter of I think timing of just the lane, the inevitable. um, from a town's perspective. Um, and then to like a lot of times, you know, city or village, they may not be able to extend services right away. Right. So they may be limited from that standpoint. But just knowing that they have the ability to take land if they so choose and they have the capabilities of doing so, might be an advantage to them.

Or we could make the town a place where developers wanna build without making it Kekona, right? Because I would like to sell houses to people who like lower taxes than Kekona is willing to charge as a pretty good sales pitch, but we'd have to have services that are gonna match the price point of whatever house that they're trying to sell, right? It's gonna be a lot easier to sell your $400,000 house if you've got sewer and parks nearby as opposed to uh here's a 400 000 house and here's ditches that fill up right um and so that's kind of the value proposition that i think kana brings and so if we could somehow find a way to match that value proposition which maybe we can maybe we can't with um the sanitary districts limitations on where they're willing to pump dirty water um

And where they're able to.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the other thing. A lot of times preventing annexation becomes nearly impossible, not because we're not willing to provide those services, but we're actually not able, you know, we're outside of the sewer service area or whatever the case may be.

But the last annexation that happened, we could provide those services and we lost a big chunk of property because of it. Does Wisconsin have an extra territorial jurisdiction? Caveat at all?

Not for a town. I mean, there is extraterritorial zoning, but nothing that would apply to you to prevent a transfer of property. Not that I'm aware of.

I guess that moves us into our easement stuff then.

Yeah, my understanding is that town of Clayton and town of Neenah been somewhat successful in staving off probably in both cases the city of Neenah through buying properties along the border any thoughts on how wide that property needs to be to make it effective or

Well, looking at your map of your town and you're identifying what is contiguous to a municipality that has the ability to annex. I used to represent Clayton. I will tell you, Clayton is the only client that I have ever said, thank you, but no thank you, I will no longer work with you. And a lot of it was because of that process. And they were so wildly upset about the limited power that they had to prevent annexation, it became a very difficult situation for me. But what they did, and it was successful, was they went out and they identified property residential property that they could purchase that would really provide a buffer between them and the city. And then they worked, I believe with the city of Appleton ultimately, to try and extend water service. So it was very expensive for them. And I don't know from a financial standpoint where they stand now. My concern, and this was 10 years ago, my concern at that time was how do you sustain this? How do you purchase all of this property and incur all of that debt? How is that sustainable for you? But once again, not really a legal question, but from a political and an administrative standpoint, do we have the spending power and do we want to utilize it in this way to protect our borders?

Well, sort of a question that Tom might ask. can you buy property and allow the current residents to stay there under some lease agreement that is as if they still own it yeah but do you want to play landlord I mean it's not as if they still own it the town owns it and they are leasing that property at that point

They're your tenant.

Depends on the terms of the lease, right?

No. I mean, I think you're talking more about a term as in like a length of time versus a legal status, right? So if you own the property, you own the property. you could have somebody living there for the rest of their natural life, and that could be the length of that contract, but you're still the property owner.

No, but I mean, the terms of the agreement could include that the resident is responsible for all maintenance, all... everything that has to do with it. So it's really a hands-off landlord situation.

But there's still the transaction cost of buying it. Depends on the cost.

And also what if they wanted to move? Yeah, and they're paying rent.

It can't be a sham transaction, right?

And if the town owns it, there'd be no taxes either. What's that? If the town owns it, there probably wouldn't be any taxes that you'd be collecting as a town. Correct.

But depending on how large that is, I mean, it could be a foot, you know, that we're looking at.

That's my question, is how big an area does it have to be? I mean, if we can buy a one foot wide strip of land... Oh, I see what you're saying.

Just an easement to run along the... Correct. I'm not aware of that preventing... I think the parcel itself would need to be purchased. So... I don't know if anyone's ever tried that. I don't think that there's any precedent to suggest that that would protect you from annexation. If there was an easement running along the property versus the entire parcel being purchased. I don't see that as saving you, ultimately.

What was it?

I can be contiguous and easement is just, it's, it's, it's a, it's a right that runs across the land, but it doesn't change the legal status of that property as a whole.

But if you own a strip of land, especially in a new prevent that land from being annexed,

I think that if the strip of land was its own parcel, if it were subdivided from the parent parcel, that could potentially prevent that basically touching of boundaries, right? But I mean, you're not gonna subdivide a 20-foot strip.

But you could prevent the city then from providing services across that strip of land.

I don't know about that. I don't I'm not I'm not I'm not saying it's I don't know that it's ever been tried before and I don't I don't believe that that would ultimately prevent an annexation. The the whole purpose and this is the tomatoes part, right? The whole purpose is that these towns are essentially holding areas for land that if it develops, if it urbanizes, ultimately, if it's going to be better served by a neighboring municipality, should become a part of that neighboring municipality. So Town of Grand Chute, they're offering all the services. They have all of the things. Their borders probably aren't going to change. But if you are a town that is more rural, that is not offering all the services, the legislature has identified you as a part of the state that likely could and maybe even should ultimately become a part of a village or city when that property is ready to develop in an orderly fashion. So it's not popular. And I understand it. And I remember the first time that I was going through this process going, how could it be? How could we not provide water to our own residents if we want to do that? How could the state be telling us you're outside of the sewer service area? And so the sanitary district can't provide services. How could that possibly be? It's a letter to the legislature. That's just how it was designed. And it was designed, again, because what we want is we want growth that goes like this and not growth that goes like this. So the tips and tricks to avoid annexation, I have zero. And the 20 feet idea, I don't think it's a bad idea. I understand that you've thought a lot about this and it makes sense to me because it, it, I, it unchecked a lot of those boxes, but I think that if you ended up in court on it, somebody would probably look at it and say, no, but I've been reading about conservation easements and land trusts.

Can we incorporate something of that nature? That's very similar to what he's talking about to prevent development. to prevent annexation?

I'm not aware of how that would prevent annexation.

So the easement is like a right to use the land. It's not owning it.

Yeah, land trusts and conservation easements typically are to prevent development.

Of sensitive areas.

Right, sensitive areas. Or if you've got other areas, depending on what the type of area is, that's what those are usually involved with. It still doesn't prevent annexation, it just protects it from ever developing, which is not probably what the goal would be here in the town.

So my concern is when KK starts that development, what's going to happen to our town as well? How much land will be gobbled up? That's a concern I have.

Well, when you say town, do you just mean acreage? Because, like, Kekona's not taking already developed spots, right? And if a farmer wants to sell their land, a farmer wants to sell their land, right? They're going to sell to the highest bidder, and they should be able to do that, right? That's what we should be helping them do. So, like, what do you mean our town is being lost to... Because it's just, it's land, right? It's potential tax base, but it's not the majority of our tax base. If it was the majority of our tax base, Kaukauna wouldn't be trying to take it in the first place. Because they owe that back to us, right? So, I don't know. I would like Buchanan to stay the same forever, but nothing ever does, right? And so I don't want to spend a lot of time and energy tilting at windmills, and that sounds like what we might be trying to do here if Kekana is not willing to negotiate, and I don't know what leverage we can generate against them, at least. That would hold up in court and not just pay a bunch of lawyers to argue and then have us lose. That's kind of where I'm at.

I don't, there's no, you would have to bring something to the table. It would have to be, it would have to be an earnest negotiation. There's no ransom note that we can send. No, I'm not looking.

I'm just looking for a fair fairness.

I know. I know. Um, they're going to want something in exchange.

And so what, what are some examples of that that they would want in exchange?

Here's a part of the town that's been identified as a possible shopping mall. We want the shopping mall. We'll protect the rest of your existing property or we will not annex the rest of your existing property if we can have the shopping mall because it's going to increase our tax base and we're already prepared to offer services. I don't know if anyone actually wants to build a shopping mall anymore.

We have that area.

Other questions?

Sorry. who was saying I wasn't popular when I got here. Are there materials that I can provide? Do you want, can I send you that case that explains sort of court oversight? Maybe some of the materials that the state has on, have you seen those things? Talk about the process? Would that be of interest to you? I don't know how much conversation you've had on this at this point.

Yeah, I'd say not enough because there's still too much frustration. We need to either have enough conversation that we are convinced that there is truly nothing we can do or we need to figure out what we can do.

Well, and I think part of the, you guys got burned on that development. You got burned bad.

Which one are you referring to?

What's that? Wolfinger? Yeah.

That never should have happened, but no. And it happened to be with great pain the first act that I had to do as chair. But even our latest one, 30 Acres, simply because the developer wanted to work with Kakana and didn't want to work with Buchanan. So he bought the land and annexed it into Kakana.

I mean, I've been in those meetings, right? With my city and village clients where they have developers, prospective developers coming in going, I want to do this and... My plan would be to make it a part of this community. And those conversations can be had and they will be had. With the Wolfinger development, I don't know if it's something that you wanna, if you have questions about or if it's worth, I guess, picking at an old wound. But... More pig farms. The financial guarantee was a real concern for us there. And we would not, for any of our clients, give a legal opinion that a municipality should enter into a development agreement where there is substantial work to be done without some sort of financial guarantee to back that up. Because we cannot, in good faith... allow for that kind of risk without warning.

I would want to review that with the thought of even if it sat for another five or 10 years, we'd find a different developer.

But you didn't own that property.

No.

Yeah. No, that's not your, I mean, ultimately that was the property owner's decision to make. But you guys got burned on that.

I have a question, and I apologize ahead of time if this doesn't make sense. So if we were forward thinking about five years and ten years, and if the consensus is that we're feeling like at some point we're just prolonging the inevitable of some sort, so what in an effort to be proactive for the long run, if combining, let's just say, Buchanan and Combined Locks, if that, knowing that their tax base is as close to ours and what they charge as any other around, so that would be the one maybe that we would want to combine with, but obviously we could not have the east side then. Is there any other municipality besides Kaukauna that the east side could annex into? Does that make sense? I know that's not the greatest answer, but.

Can they cross county lines? I debated whether I should bring this up, but right now, the town of Wrightstown, has incorporated the Greenleaf area as a village. And their plan is to annex the rest of the town of Wrightstown into the village of Greenleaf. And the town of Rockland is planned to be absorbed through annexation by then the village of Greenleaf. So they would then take both towns into this massive, mostly urban village. We are contiguous with that for about a half a mile, or a mile, where potentially from a legal standpoint, we could maybe have them annex the east side into that same mess.

Yeah, so I think you just have to be careful when you say then we could have them annex, right? Because are we going to have unanimous consent by the property owners in that area or are we going to have to look at this and say, okay, now the petition needs to look like A, B, and C. We need to have at least X number of signatures and then we need to show that... the services are there and all of those things. So assuming you can check all of those boxes, then that's like the meeting where people are sitting going, I don't know what I'm gonna do next.

So that would be the only opportunity that I would see.

But you can cross county lines with towns? Yes.

Yeah, you can.

It's more complicated. Yeah, the town has to give permission. So if a city or village wanted to cross a county line, they couldn't just outright annex you. They would have to get your permission to annex property from your town.

And you don't want to create islands because then that's where you have issues. But, yeah. Okay. So I don't know. Strategy to be adopted.

Speaking of another wound.

Yeah.

You know, Kakana split us in half by annexing across the county line. Is that no longer able to be done because it did split us in half or town just don't have that?

I don't know about that.

we couldn't talk to Harrison and then just buy a strip on the South end of that. And then we'd be continuous again.

We're starting to get to a point where you are so familiar with what the map looks like. And I'm not that I, I don't, I can't offer a legal opinion on that.

Smart. I think I'm sure a number of years ago, there were a number of changes to legislation regarding annexations. And, um, a lot of it had to do with some of the more recent changes, incorporations, right? So they made a lot of new rules about incorporations specifically on what you can and can't do. So for example, what Greenville did was when they originally petitioned the state, they petitioned the entire town. The state said, you don't meet the criteria because you're too rural. They said, we'll let you redraw the line. try to incorporate the urban area, if you're successful, then there was a process at that time to basically bring the rest of the town into the village.

And that was, just not to interrupt you, but that was a density requirement.

Correct, right.

Greenleaf had the same thing.

Right, so, but what they did now is that took, took less than six months once the village incorporated and then was able to go through the process with the town to basically eliminate the town and make it all village. They've changed those rules now because of a lot of those types of situations where if you try to do that, I think there's a five year waiting period before you could do that type of a land grab basically.

I think Fox Crossing did that too, didn't they?

Yeah, I think Fox Crossing did that. Harrison did that. Greenville did that. So there are others around the state that have done that too, but the state kind of got said, all right, this is not the intent of incorporation. And so they kind of put a kibosh on that. At least they put a timeline in there. And again, too, there might be other ways. Maybe it's not considered annexation, but they are consolidation agreements, right? Because those are contemplated with the incorporation process. So there might be another way that if you were to say instead of trying to annex, you say we're going to consolidate and there's different rules involved with that that I don't believe involve the property owner's consent. I don't know.

It's been a long time since I've looked at it. Um, I mean, I think that property owners can object to it.

I think it has to be to a referendum.

The incorporation has to be, but the consolidation when, at least when Greenville went through it did not require a referendum.

Yeah.

But again, the laws have changed, so I don't know if they threw more red tape in there like a referendum question.

Anything else?

I mean, you guys are doing what you're supposed to do. You're sitting here trying to math the math.

The math's not mapping.

Well, it sounds like maybe it could. But conversations to be had with probably people who are not in this room. Scheming to be done.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Thank you.

Yep. Thank you. Glad to have you back. Okay. Then we go back to Jim.

Thank you. Well, so we have one more certificate of one year completion with our department. Uh, this is Will Hamilton. Will actually is new to our department but not to the fire service. He's got over 20 years of experience in the fire service. He moved here from Arkansas a little while ago and decided to join us. So we love his experience and everything that he's brought to our department. He's currently with memory finishing up his EMS training so he'll be firing EMS with us. So I'd like to present the certificate of one year and his pin.

We do not have a public hearing tonight, so it's time for the public comment forum. If there's anyone who would like to address the board on any agenda related items, you're welcome to come to the microphone, state your name and address, and tell us what's on your mind.

Ted Erdman, W2695 Hillside Drive, Appleton. Reference to the annexation, I'm hoping Ashley would be able to look back into, I don't know if there is a time frame of the annexation. that we can look back how and why Kakana split us in half. Because that is the whole structure of why we're in this whole mess. Now if there's some little tiny loophole, I know you'll probably fight me on this, Tom, but to look that we could still go back and even just get a little piece because that roundabout bar that annexed into Kaukauna after we gave them, Dennis, what was that, $2,500, $3,000? And then a very short time later, they annexed that bar into Kaukauna. That was a very bad situation in my books. But if there's just any little loophole that they screwed up and the judge made the wrong decision that we could grab back so we could continue our land continuously to the east side, then we could look at becoming a village and take everything back again. I know when Travis was with Harrison, he was willing to work with Buchanan to put sewer down on the south side to get around that little land area. But then he's no longer there and the current board didn't even want to deal with Buchanan. So we had a chance, but it got slipped away. But that's just all I got to say is that if there's just a little slight piece that we could look back into the history, because that was in 2002, 2003 is when that took place. I found a bunch of, in the archives quite a few years ago back in that room, how it went down and it wasn't, Something just wasn't right. So there was a certain contractor that kind of messed everything up for us. So just saying, thanks.

Thank you, Ted. Anyone else that would like to address the town board?

Mike Bongers, W two one eight seven block road. Schmaltz Landscaping is back on the agenda. This time they're asking for a noise variance. But before you go and grant him another special exception, let's talk about what he has done so far. I had a conversation with Mr. Brown and I'm glad to hear that Mr. Schmaltz is keeping him informed about changes he has made. What is built this year does not look like the plan that was approved. It sounds like Mr. Brown is being quite lenient with the resolution the first year. There is no paid parking lot so the small overflow grass lot that he said would be used for weekends a year. It has turned into a huge field of grass for all the cars and trucks Park. There's no paid services for his is his equipment. So some equipment and tanks are being stored along the weed line and Creek in the back of the orchard. Well the developing the site. I did contact Mister Schmaltz and remind him there is no access to local town roads. Thankfully he did talk to his employees and stop them from continuing to access the property from Block Road. Have any of you been to the site? I have not been to the new Schmaltz Acres, so my brother and I can only speculate from what we can see and hear from our yards and living rooms and can read from their website. We watched the surveyors out there pounding in stakes to locate the different areas and could see he has a 200 foot setback in lieu of the berm this year. Is he going to do the berm along the north side? We watch them plant stuff all over the place and wonder what's going to grow in all these roads. Then the structures appear. What are the blue and red huts? Are those chicken coops? Is that a stage or loading platform? How many huts, stages, tents, tunnels, observation bridges is he allowed on top of all the old farm equipment parked in the field? How high can his equipment stack those huge bales of hay? Is that a sand pile? How tall is that pile of material? That looks way taller than 10 feet. Does the corn maze go through the corn that is planted within 200 feet of the apartments? But our biggest concern prior to Sunday have to do with the dust and noise. Before the huge amount of rain we recently received, and then received again last night, we would watch trucks and equipment drive down a dirt path, which we assume was for the wagon ride. And then there would be a huge cloud of dust following each of them. Each day it got drier and drier, the cloud got bigger and bigger. Is there something that can be done to mitigate the dust since it is starting to dry out again? and second is noise. We see a large white trailer mounted, what we assume is a diesel generator. We understand there's a need for power out there. We assume there will be cash registers because they are charging emission and probably selling caramel apples. We now see that they are planning to have live music outside. We appreciate the effort he is taking to limit the hours to midday, locate them in the center of the property, and point the speakers away from our residential properties. I don't think the established tree line to the north that he calls out of the six cottonwoods and a couple dead ash trees along with some straggly looking things that are spread out more than providing any type of screening will do anything for the sound, but at least there is someone on site monitoring the sound levels. Our concern is the generator. It would be cruel to run the generator 24 hours a day, seven days a week for two months straight. We hope he is restricted to running it during business hours only. If he does require power throughout the night, can you require a temporary service be installed? I don't think any of you would want to listen to the obnoxious rumbling of a diesel engine all night, especially on nice fall nights when the windows are open. Is this generator allowed only for the first year? Can you require an electrical service to be installed in future as the property is developed? And now for the biggest surprise. I was gone for most of the weekend. I did not get home until after lunch on Sunday. I wasn't home for more than 10 minutes when I went outside and took five steps down my driveway and I heard it. A cow mooing. The timing was so perfect. The first 10 seconds that I'm outside whilst most acres is open, you couldn't recreate it if you tried. Why are there live animals over there? At the December 9th Planning Commission meeting, Mr. Brown said there would be no petting zoo allowed. But if you go on Schmaltz Acres social media, they are advertising the petting zoo and pony rides. Did something change? Or was this a choice to ignore the board's direction? At that same December 9th meeting, the wagon ride path was discussed and Mr. Schmaltz assured us it would be a grass path. They had time to plant multiple acres of grass for the parking area and festival ground, but chose to keep the wagon path as dirt. Is it time to take a look at item seven of the special exception? Should the board be reviewing what is actually built before giving another approval? Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else that would like to address the board? Anyone? Okay, we'll move on. Move on then to the consent agenda. There are a couple of things that I would like clarified in the consent agenda. Unfortunately, Justin, they're both for you.

Good thing you showed up.

When you started with unfortunately, I thought they were coming my way.

In your engineer's report, it doesn't refer to a change notice for the town hall parking lot. Isn't there supposed to be one?

As far as? We have the, there is some extra excavation. We don't know what the total dollar amount is yet, so then once we know what that total dollar amount will be, then that change order would be identified.

That's not the way things are supposed to be done. I mean, the excavation's already been done. We should have that cost before the work is done and approved before it's done. Right, you told us that it was coming. All they needed to give us as a figure, give you as a figure in order to approve it and get it into our documentation.

We had an estimate from Justin on that. That's what we had. We didn't have an actual dollar amount from the contractor yet.

But it wasn't listed in your financial tabulation.

Not yet, and I did put prior to this, this was completed about two weeks ago, so it may have been before we even discovered all that. That's quite possibly a data right about the same time. So I did not have that in there at that point. But yes, there was an estimate when they ran into it to keep the guys winning. We did run that by Michael here at the town. It was just insufficient base on some that has to keep moving. So that's what was done to make that move.

Okay, so it will be in there next time? Correct. Reading the Darboy sanitary notes, they referred to a water main along the Eisenhower Trail that needed to be relocated because of it interfering with a planned sewer line. That was a surprise to them. Can you tell me more about it?

Yes, that is a spot where, to get too technical, there was an existing storm sewer going across Eisenhower in there that we were replacing It was a corrugated metal pipe and I wasn't out there, but I think what they did when they put that original corrugated metal pipe, they put that pipe right on top of the water main pretty much. And it's probably, probably not exactly straight across is what I'm guessing from what we had because when we measured from one manhole to the next, it worked in our plan. So We had a that was a corrugated metal pipe and then we also when we changed. When we did these design plans we went to a concrete pipe which is a thicker fight so instead of them introduced you got 4 inches thickness. So when they dug that all up they saw that top of the pipe we didn't know exactly where it was either on there we didn't we're hoping. What I would have assumed happened when they built that storm sewer across there is that they would have lowered that water main and put it in correctly. There is, per codes, it should have been a foot and a half below it. It wasn't, so that's what we ran into there. That's why.

Thank you. Anyone else have anything on the consent agenda? I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as published. So moved.

Seconded.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Then we move on to the plan commission items for discussion of possible action.

Thank you. So Planning Commission talked about these two. I kind of go hand in hand. It is a rezoning request as well as a CSM. And I will pull up the CSM here just so that you can kind of get a picture of what's going on here. So there is property out here on double Z. It's a large property that is being subdivided by CSM into four lots. Lot one here is intended to stay as agriculture and continue farming. Lots two through four are intended to be developed into single family homes, one home per lot. Lots two through four are being requested to be rezoned from agriculture to rural residential in order to make that happen. And then as well as the CSM to subdivide the properties here. The Planning Commission did review both applications and recommended approval for both of them. And so they are here before you this evening. Um, if you approve these both, the rezoning then will be submitted to the County for their approval process. And once that is completed, then the CSM can be signed or recorded. And then the, um, I know there's at least one, uh, property and are looking to start building rather soon. Um, at least get plans submitted later this year yet to start building a house out there.

Okay, looking for a motion to approve Resolution 2026-12. So moved. Is there a second? I'll second that. Okay, any further discussion?

Just one question I have, I think, for Michael. On your memo that you put together, I'm just trying to make sense of the graphic that you have on the memo, and maybe I'm reading this wrong, but it looks like there's an arrow pointing to the middle of the river, and I just don't understand it.

An arrow pointing to what?

Oh, the middle of the river. And I'm trying to figure out how I should be interpreting this.

So that might be, I guess I'm not sure which arrow you're referring to.

So on your memo, not on the application itself.

It's a snippet out of the comprehensive plan.

Oh, that's where that comes. Okay. I just didn't know. Like, I don't know why there's an arrow to the river and that's all.

Nope. Yeah. That, that came from, it was just an image to show this is what the comprehensive plan shows from a land use perspective. Got it. Yes. Okay. Thank you.

Other discussion is a resolution. We'll call. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Next we look for a motion to approve the CSM associated with that project. So moved. Second. Seconds. Is there further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Let's see. Then we move on to unfinished business. Town communication, Michael.

All right, thank you. So, back in July, the town had some conversation about communication. We talked about some of the things that we currently do, processes that we use to help communicate, get information out to people, as well as allow people to speak with us, give us information, talk with the board, et cetera. So, There were some ideas that were thrown out there, some things that you wanted me to look into. Kind of have a recap here of some of those concepts. Just kind of want to walk through those and then some of them really may not require any formal action. Others may require some direction. So I'll kind of just walk through those one by one and at the end we kind of go back and see what you guys have with questions or comments or other thoughts and ideas. The first concept that was thrown out the last time we met was the concept of coffee with a mayor, coffee with a town chair concept. kind of more of an informal gathering with residents after talking with her attorney, kind of the best route to go with this so that we kind of avoid open meetings and public public meetings and publications and things like that. Quorums and issues with that. The idea would be that the town chair could hold some kind of a regular office hour time or be available to meet with residents if they want to come in, talk, have questions, have a conversation, bring up issues, and then at that point in time, if there are things that the chair believes are worthy of bringing back for further conversation with the town board, he can bring those back at a future meeting, at the end of the meeting where we have on the agenda any future items for discussion at a future meeting. That was one concept that was kind of thrown out there. Again, this would require the town chair's participation. I did speak with Joe about this concept beforehand. He's willing to do this if it's something that the board is interested in. Um, so that's one, one topic. Uh, one of the other concepts that was brought up is having board members submit a news article. Um, so we obviously we do quarterly newsletters. Uh, we could have, you know, just rotate one member. Each newsletter provide something that they would like to share, get out there with the town residents, et cetera. Um, again, that's rather simple. Um, just kind of have to figure out if you're interested in that. And if so, we can kind of figure out a rotation for that. Also kind of reached out to East Central. I know there was questions about what are they doing to try to get information out, seek public comment, and get engagement. I spoke with our representative that is working with our Congress of Plan, Carmen, over there. She said that they use a lot of social media, online things, obviously they publish things in the newspaper. And I know that Joe mentioned, he mentioned to me that he had talked with another person over there that they're looking at different ways to try to get communication out and seek input on different projects and such as well.

The reason this came up is I sit in the municipal planning organization meetings and they will repeatedly say that they had a public comment period of time. that they requested comments and received none. It's always received none. I said, maybe you're not asking it the right way. There's gotta be a better way to reach the public to get feedback. And the guy that responded then, Chris Kola? Kola, I believe, said, that they're working on a different method to try to get more responses. So that's what I was after here. And so then after I saw the agenda packet and I contacted Chris and he responded yesterday and said they're still working on it. They don't have anything concrete yet but we'll keep in touch with that.

And at the last playing commission meeting, we did have the central healer here to kind of go over the public participation results for the conference plan update. Um, unfortunately we had, I think it was 32 responses or 33 of the night of by the night of the meeting over, uh, three month period where we've been advertising the information in our newsletter. We've been posting information out on Facebook every couple of weeks. Uh, we have a project website in addition to the site, the interactive site that East central has created. Um, So we've been making an effort and ultimately the planning commission said, hey, let's keep it open. The survey and the mapping exercise opened through the end of October to give people some more time. So again, we're continuing to push that out through Facebook. We're gonna have an article in the newsletter again to try to get people hopefully to engage and provide feedback on that. So again, East Central is trying, we've been trying. not really sure how to get more engagement with the public. I did talk with Miller Communication, because I know one of the ideas was brought up, do we need a communication consultant? I did have them take a look at that list that we talked about back in July, and they said, you're doing everything that you should be doing. There are a few things that you could do, but you know, aside from, you know, they, they mentioned you could create a communication plan. Well, all right, one, I don't know what that looks like or how that happens, but then two, then you'd have to, you know, be able to implement it, um, obviously. And what Miller communication does is a lot of times they come in and help communities do that, right? So you'd be paying for a service, but would it garner any more participation is the question, right? Um, so, um, That's kind of where that sits there, at least. I mean, it's an option, but whether or not it's worth going down that path, I guess that's a point of discussion. We have a concern form on our website, right? So the public can talk to us. They can go on there and submit a concern. most times it's really just concerns, right? People say, Oh, my neighbor is doing this or doing that. You know, there's a problem here, a pothole there. Um, you know, we can take care of that. So it's really kind of one way communication from them to us. Uh, but this can also be used to even direct concerns directly to the board, right? So most of what we get as administrative, we go take care of it. You know, we have the deputies go out there, address certain things. But again, if they have a concern that they want the board to address, they can always submit that to us. I can relay that to you. And then if you feel it's appropriate to bring it up for future conversation at a future meeting, you can always do that as well. So again, there is that a different form of communication that they can reach out to us and then give you the opportunity to hear about those more broad general concerns. Um, next item is a website update, which we talked about the last month. And again, we'll be talking about this evening again, um, as a followup. Um, but we are updating our website. So hopefully through that process, there'll be more opportunities to communicate and get information out with the public. Uh, many of the companies, they have a feature where if people sign up for receiving alerts, um, via email or text messaging, um, anytime, say agendas are, uh, posted to the website, they can sign up to get notifications about that so they know, oh, I can just open up the agenda and take a look and see what's going on. Or if we have other events, news, information that pops up, they can be notified as well more readily than current methods. Again, we have Facebook, we have our website, the paper newsletter, but hopefully with the new website design and different options, there will be better communication options available. Budget information, a suggestion was made to provide kind of a snapshot or a summary of the budget. Again, budget's a large document. Try to do that. Do a budget presentation in November with the public hearing. That can easily be attached to the front end of that budget document to kind of give that summary to people so it's kind of a quicker read so they don't have to go through the entire document. And that's, again, easily implemented with that process. Um, and then, uh, kind of the final option and a lot of communities do this, um, just putting a Facebook paste post out there about when a meeting's coming up in the agenda, right? So, um, that's something that's easily done in house. Um, I know that Tina recently posted this meeting out on Facebook. Um, and we did talk internally that moving forward, you know, we're also going to put a link in there directly to the agenda. So it's easy for people to click on it. pull it up, see what's going on and see if they want to come to the meeting or even if they just want to watch online. So that's kind of a recap of what we talked about last month. Um, I guess let me know what kind of questions you have, if there's anything that you want to look into further or any other ideas that came up, um, within the last couple of months since we've talked. like I said, kind of this coffee with the town chair concept, kind of like some direction, you know, you don't have to take formal action, but if you guys are interested in this, and Joe's willing to do it, that's something that, you know, Joe and I can work on together.

I think it would be great to try it, see how it goes.

Yeah, I mean.

As well as the newsletter portion, trying to, each of us take a month or...

I mean, would that make sense for each of us? Well, it goes out quarterly, right?

Yeah.

So just rotate that through and maybe don't do anything like the quarter before your seat comes up for election just so it doesn't look like we're using town resources to electioneer. Not a great plan. But other than that, I think those are pretty good ideas. As far as coffee with the town chair, I'd be willing to join in on that to the extent my schedule allows. But we can't have more than two of us here, right?

Yeah. And realistically, when I did speak with Ashley, she, even then, even with two, you're technically should have, you should post for a quorum and realistically a public meeting.

Okay.

So that's why we kind of looked at it as it's either a, it's an all or nothing kind of a thing. It's either just one person as a town chair, for example, or, um, we publish for an entire meeting for all of you to be there. So we thought that this would kind of be an easy way to do this more informal, let Joe chair, whoever have those conversations and then he can bring those back to you as the board and say, Hey, this is what I heard. What do you guys think? You know, do we want to have further conversations about X, Y, and Z.

And another twist on that with the board contributing to the newsletter, we could do a topic and do a joint, you know, put our comments all together and then we can rotate who puts together the structure of it too. So it's not just one person and that we have everybody contributing, you know, to a topic. Just one thought.

I think we should also revisit the communication after we have the website redone. And obviously through that process, we're talking about things that we can do to improve communication via the new website and using that process and the people who are building that to also help us.

Yeah, and we'll get into more of that when we talk about that website proposal. But I don't think at this point we want to... consider the communication consultant?

I don't think yet, no.

Dennis is all in favor of consultants.

All right. Well, like I said, I'll work with Joe on that kind of coffee with the town chair concepts. I'll put together some, some kind of, I guess, a schedule to start with on that newsletter concept and see what people are thinking. I mean, if you guys have specific topics that you're thinking of, maybe do this. Maybe send some topics that you'd be interested in talking about and doing a little article on. And then, obviously, this next you know, the next newsletter is already being put out and being published. So it'll come in with the, uh, the first one I guess would be the, the one that comes out in December, beginning of January. Um, and then we can kind of see what those topics look like and then kind of see who would be willing to start out that process.

So, and just based on that cycle, we'd have at least one board meeting when we could make the decision of who's going to write it. Um, before it would go out, right? Timeline-wise that works.

Anything else? I do appreciate the Facebook posts on upcoming meetings and like you said, having the link in there would be a good add. Okay, great.

Anything else on that? Are we merging the website or is that going to be the next item to talk about? That's the next item.

Move on to the website. Michael.

Right. So last month I brought to you update regarding ADA requirements that all communities and governmental bodies have to comply with by a certain deadline based on our size. Ours isn't until April 2028, so we've got some time. However, going through and updating a website, It doesn't happen overnight. So we want to start early, make sure we budget for it properly to do it in 2027 so we have enough time and we are in compliance by that April 2028 deadline. Um, at the time I had just looked and worked with Granicus, our current provider as we are still currently in a contract for another three years. Um, so they provide some pricing. Uh, the board did ask, Hey, could we look at other, other consultants and other website designers. So I did that and there is a table here that kind of outlines what those prices look like. There's the one time set up fee as well as annual fees for the first five years. In addition to that, we would, if we were to choose a different provider than Granicus, we would still have to continue to pay out Granicus annually for the remainder of that contract. So I did include that into this calculation so you can kind of see where that lies. What you will find is that Granicus is still the most expensive, even with the existing contract and new stuff. what i can tell you is most of these website companies have very similar features tools involved uh... the revised company, which is the cheapest, they actually threw in a tool that they normally charge for. Uh, and that's the tool of the email text notifications through the website. So I said, you know, that's really important. I think for you to you guys, cause we have been talking about this communication issue. Um, so they threw that in, um, no charge for a setup or annual fees. So that's just included with the base price. Um, Two of the companies, and this is not reflected in these prices, but Revise and Civic Plus, they offer a tool that will convert PDFs to HTML to make it more ADA compliant. Now, what I've learned is that it's not 100% foolproof. not all the companies have that tool because it isn't foolproof. Um, some of them are still investigating that. Um, and it is a significantly higher cost and what we've kind of talked about at the staff level and even with some of these other, um, website companies, they all agree that, PDFs are great, but if you can take what you have in PDFs and turn them into an actual website page as opposed to PDF, that's going to make your ADA compliance a lot easier. It's not to say that we can't make PDFs ADA compliant. There's a little more work involved, but that is not reflected in these prices here. I don't think that it's necessarily worth it. I've talked with a couple other communities and they don't have that tool. Um, they're just, you know, they're doing their best to make sure that their PDFs are ADA compliance as well as the rest of their website. So just throw that out as a caveat. Um, the, like I said, if we, if we don't go with grant cause we'd still have to pay out those remaining years of the contract. Um, I did ask some questions about, you know, what does it look like for when we, if we do transition to a different website designer for open records purposes, we need to be able to preserve the website pages there. There is a tool, there is a feature that they can pay. I didn't get a cost on that yet. I did request it, haven't received it of what that would cost to basically have those available for us in an archive. So if anyone comes back and says, Hey, I want to know, what's your website look like on this particular date with Granicus, we theoretically would be able to pull that up.

And if we were paying out Granicus, wouldn't that be included with what we're paying them out? No, it's an additional cost. We're still paying them for a service? And they're not providing the service?

Yeah, and I haven't gotten an answer on if it's a one-time, I'm assuming it's a one-time fee that we'd have to pay for that, but I don't have, I didn't get an answer yet, unfortunately. Okay.

it's taken included in what we're paying for with the live website.

Yes. So we have that archive, um, ability. So if right now I could go in there and go back, I can go to a page and I can go back and look and say, pull up this archive from this dates. Right. Um, but once we deactivate the website and we switch over to a new website, What they've indicated is that we can access that, but we have to pay for that service to basically export that information to us. Again, I did ask for a price and asked for some more details. I have not received it yet.

Well, push them to include that in the contract payout.

Right. Yeah, I'm not sure what leverage we would have to make them do that, but I can ask.

I think that's a reasonable Well, we could always just leave the website up and just get townofbuchananwisconsin.org, right? Just register a new domain name and then use the new company on the new domain name and then they can do all of the work for the money, right? Or they could just do a little of the work for the money. Right.

So Michael, I noticed on these proposals only one, and correct me if I'm wrong, only one gave us examples of actual websites in use, and that was Revix. Revise? Well, I got a V-I-X-E, so I didn't know how to pronounce that.

There's an X on the one, yeah.

I think they're the only ones that we were able to actually go in and look at and play around in those websites. I don't know if anybody else really gave us an example of a place that they currently operate, and that would be a key to making a decision, too, on how navigable the website is.

Sure. Yeah. And I mean, I sat through, I sat through multiple meetings. Some of these companies, I sat through three different meetings, which I thought was a little excessive, but they have a process where they go through. Um, and all of them showed different websites. I know I didn't get, I didn't take notes specifically on where they were. Um, but I can definitely go back and ask for examples if you did not see any in there.

Yeah, we should have examples of what the product is that they produce so we can look at those websites. And I noticed Revise has most of the local places around already.

I don't know if any of you took the time to click on that link of that call with Michael with Revise, but it was very informative. It was an hour long. And he went through very quickly a lot of screens and a lot of capability, comparing different websites that they've done that he was calling them up active. It was pretty impressive.

When did we re-sign the contract for Granicus?

It was a couple years ago.

And it's a five year when we originally signed it?

Yeah, it was intended because they gave you a break on the cost per year, right? So they had like one, three, five-year options, and so five-year option was cheaper long-term from a year-to-year basis.

So this is their cheap price?

Yeah.

Well, did we compare them then to anyone else?

No, not at that time. Obviously, like you said, there's less expensive options out there. I think, like I said, they all have very similar features and functions. They're all going to look very similar in nature. That's kind of just the way of websites currently, especially when it comes to municipal websites. They all look very similar and function the same. But yes, I can definitely... Like I said, if their website examples are not in their proposals anywhere, I can definitely ask for those and forward those on.

Seeing the amount of work or hearing the amount of work that Revise or Revix, whichever one, put into it and obviously the significant cost difference, maybe, I mean, I feel incredibly comfortable moving to a different company. Maybe we invite them in. um, to a meeting if possible, or you can send us some of that update.

Yeah. Um, and we can do that. I just, the tricky part is trying to budget for this for next year. I'm trying to get a number so I know kind of what I'm working with.

Um, and I think we could budget a little hot. We see what we'd have to pay with Granicus and if we go with a different company and we're just saving money,

Right. And it's just finalized. Like putting the budget together is just the tricky part. So, um, trying to get that finalized. I try to have that budget really narrowed down by time. We have the meeting in October on October 20th. Um, so if we wait until then, there'll be a little, it'll just kind of be a little questionable on kind of what that expense would look like.

Well, like Jen said, if we put the 65,000 in the budget and it's less than that, No problem, right?

Yes, true. Then it just takes away from something else that you could put that money towards.

Or it goes into fund balance later in the year to go into the building fund. Right. I mean, I can definitely budget for that.

I can definitely budget for the grant guess amount. And then later in the year we can, you know, decide what, what has to happen there for budgeting purpose.

And for the sake of having a number, I would budget with the high number.

I was quite impressed with everything I saw on revise.

Yeah, I did click through a bunch of the local municipalities are using them. What I am going to do when I get home is my parents are quite, well, my mother in particular is quite technologically illiterate and lives in Appleton. So she's gonna click through the Appleton website and tell me how it works.

And if they get a good review from her.

That's going to be my suggestion. All right.

Um, so I can, I will ask for website examples and when I get those, they can forward those on. And then I guess for the October meeting then, depending on if you want to try to bring somebody back in to have a conversation with them or it's at another future meeting. Like I said, if we just budget conservatively for that 65,000 number, we don't have to make a decision right away.

Would we have to budget for 65,000 or would we budget for 33? Because we'd only be paying the one-time setup fee and year one, not all five years, right? Sure, that's correct.

Okay. I apologize for that.

Oh no, I just wanted to make sure that we didn't lose $30,000. Thank you for catching that, yeah.

Okay. And Revise is in Michigan. I don't remember the city, but lower Michigan. And he said it's a small company, about 50 people. And they have a lot of clients. Would you feel comfortable with having him join us remotely? Mm-hmm. Linda, instead of in person?

Oh, yeah, if we're looking to interview, absolutely.

They'd raise our price because they'd have to pay $1,500 to get that person here and back. Or lower their price so they don't have to pay. It's gonna come from somewhere.

I'm comfortable not needing examples because I looked at those websites and looked at what they sent. So I mean, I feel comfortable with the work they can do and how well they can do it. It's just that people have more questions. I offered that if we wanted to talk about it with them at the next meeting, but I feel comfortable with their resume and with the significant price difference with moving forward with them.

Is there an advantage to doing that right now as opposed to?

I don't think so. I just, if it meant making them do more work to send examples, I mean, I think we have examples here. We could.

I could also just bring my mom to the next meeting. Right, exactly. She could tell you how clicking through the Appleton.

I love your mom. I would like to go show her. Okay.

So I will get more examples and then I guess if you guys want to let me know via email who you'd like to bring back for an interview or do you want to bring back specific people right now that you have in mind? Yeah.

I'm like, like I said, I'm very comfortable with Revise's capabilities. They are, and if you look at any of these websites, the thing that they stressed is it is all whatever you want it to be. So some of them may look very different because it's directed by them.

The question I would have is after year five, what will their contract look like? I think it's great. I agree with you guys that they look great right now. So is this a one-time low to get in? And then we're back up to everybody's prices after year five.

And I think the responsible thing to do would be at year four, we should probably search out companies again and. Right.

I mean, I suspect these prices are gonna go down as AI gets better at automating this. The prices might not go down, but the barrier to entry is the sale on the front end, right? That's the hard part. And then once you have a system set up, the updates are gonna be automated. Like you look through the proposals that we got and the amount of these that are AI generated, right? The one that mentions your retirement at the end of the year and has Buchanan's population listed right at this specific place. And it's totally irrelevant information, it's just AI is good at finding it and sticking it in places. And so that back end processing on these kind of websites I suspect is gonna keep prices low because everybody's gonna be able to do that and not pay people to do it.

Right, and I'm just thinking that's something we need to look at. I agree with you guys that revised looks good in what I looked at with the current websites.

Working, when I saw that they did Menasha's, I have Menasha's website every day with the tornadoes and with work, and it's incredibly easy to navigate. I honestly said in the past that they had a great website, and I wish we had it, so I'm glad that we know who made it.

Okay, so then what are we going to do about Granicus? Are we just going to pay them out, or are we going to keep them on the books until their contract runs out, or...? and run two websites trying to make that one disappear?

I would recommend you only have one website. So if you're going to go let's say you're all in agreement with revised, we start working with them, we go through the implementation process development and then there's a go live date, right? So what happens typically then if you're switching, you've got your go live date, they flip the switch, they turn it on, Granicus turns theirs off, right? Now we, like I said, we still have to continue to pay Granicus and we can pay that I guess it depends, right? I'm sure they'd take a one lump sum payment if we really wanted to or we could just budget for it every year for the remainder of the contract.

Right, and even with the payout, it still comes in under everybody else's as well.

It seems like something they could just hand us on a thumb drive, right? And we'd say we'd pay you all out in year X and accelerate the payment schedule in exchange for the thumb drive. Right.

Or we offer to pay them out upfront for a discount or we tell them we'll pay them out through the next few years.

I can definitely ask him about that. You know, too, like if we said like, Hey, like I said, there's, they told me there's costs to get that archive version. Um, maybe we say, Hey, we'll pay you upfront the remainder of the contract. If you can throw that in for free, right. Or something. Right. So I can see what I can negotiate with them. Again, we still are, you know, the plan is to stay with them for the agendas programs and the minutes program and the closed captioning, the video streaming, everything. So, um, again, that would be another contract that would come back officially for approval. Um, and what, what we could do with that is, um, make that a shorter timeline. We could say, hey, let's maybe just consider three years instead of five years. Because many of these other websites have very similar agenda modules. So for example, like revised in the future, we could potentially shift over to them. So why wouldn't we shift over now? Well, again, we've got existing contracts with those other components. And the problem is they're all different, which, right, they all were added at different times. But one thing when I was talking with Granicus is they said, like with the agendas and minutes module and then the streaming with the closed caption, they could combine that into one contract. So it's all running at the same time. Um, and then that way, right, those, those two really go hand in hand and together with each other. And, um, like all the other sites can take the agendas and minutes and streaming video and basically build it into the, to the new website. So, there's that capability. So we can stay with Granicus on that. And until those contracts run out and then look at, um, potentially switching over with, you know, whoever we have for a current website provider, not do that right now. They do. They have the, I didn't go into that detail with them at this time. They do have an agendas platform.

Um, if we're canceling, what's the cost? I mean, yeah, if we're canceling and moving to a different company, wouldn't we want everything to be aligned at the same time?

Yeah, I guess what are the current costs of the contracts for the agendas and the streaming?

Because we might find that yours is still cheaper even with the cancellation as well. And then we could run the contract for each service at the same time to renew at the same time.

I was thinking about that as I reviewed the information and thought it would be good to do the website with revise and then see how that all works out because there's really a lot of integration with compiling the agenda packet and everything that Granicus does now. and to do that on a different system now as we're developing the website might be a bit, it might be easier to see how things work with revise and make the switch later. Cynthia, you have a comment on it?

Yeah, it'd be a lot of work for the office staff to be trying to do all of those things at one time and then with everything else that they have to do on a regular basis. it'd be better to do it in pieces over time.

They're not that integrated, um, between the website and, and the agenda packet.

Yeah. And like I said, I can work with Granicus to figure out, okay, if we combine these two into one contract, what does that, what are we looking at for contract terms? You know, can we do a one year? What does one year or three year look like? What are those costs look like? Um, and come back with that information as well.

Yeah, and I'd like to revise this cost as well, if we would add that.

Sure, like I said, we didn't get into those details. I didn't see a presentation on that, so I really have no idea what the functionality is, and like I said, I mean, I know from working with Granis, I guess in two communities now, the agendas and minutes module component, it's very slick. I mean, it's a nice program, so I want to make sure that whatever the other companies can provide, would be comparable.

But I think it would be good if we would know what the cost is right now. Not saying we'd move to it, but... One of the...

Revise Towns is Greenville? Yes. Did they switch over their agendas and minutes to Revise?

No, they're still with Granicus. When I was in Greenville, Revise was their website provider at the time, and then they were also using Granicus. They've been using that even before I was there. Did they have any issues that you became aware of? Not that I'm aware of, no. It all integrated. and worked together. But I can definitely get costs and do a little more research and maybe get a presentation from them on how that side of things would work. So are you comfortable moving forward with revised tonight or do you still want me to bring back more information?

I'm comfortable.

I mean, I don't need a formal motion tonight, but if you're comfortable giving me direction to say let's move forward with revise, I will then work with them to put a contract together to bring back for a formal approval, if you're comfortable with that. If not, let me know and I can bring back more information, possible interview.

Yeah, I'm just trying to think if there's any information any of the other companies could say that would make me not comfortable and I can't think of any. So I'm, unless my mom is like, Appleton's website sucks. So I'm fine with going forward with Revise.

Yeah, me too.

Okay.

Okay, I will work with them. bring something back for formal approval, and then also work with Granicus on the agendas minutes and closed caption streaming stuff to see what kind of contract terms they're willing to provide. Are you? And the website. And the website, yes.

And cost on revised for the agenda minutes.

Yes, yes. And I will also get, um, I'll ask for them to give me kind of a demo on that as well.

Yeah, and if you're gonna do that, just make sure it's user-friendly and compatible and comparable to Granicus. And if it's a giant learning curve on the new thing, that's something that we should, just because it's gonna make sure it carries.

Trust me, I'll share my opinion, because like I said, I'm familiar with Granicus and how it works, and it's a rather smooth system. Okay. And then... with the Granicus video agendas and stuff, I'll ask them for shorter terms so that in the future we have more flexibility to get out of it sooner, see what they come back with.

Can I ask a quick question? When you guys go into your agendas and minutes, how many of you use iLegislate or do you go in through the website?

I use the website.

I use the website.

Uh, cause I legislate takes forever. You have to click back out and then click back in. You can't just go from one to the next. It's not efficient, particularly through where there's multiple attachments and you forget which one you're on. It takes 15 seconds to open the websites way better.

And I don't know if that is something, I don't know if that's an extra cost or if that's something we can drop or if it's just included in the price. You know, but I can look into that. I mean, if no one uses it, I can see if it's something that we can remove and have a cost savings on.

Because I legislate just Granicus there.

But it is, yeah, it's part of Granicus and you can go in and you can post like post-its. So like if you have a question, you can highlight different things. There's more capabilities you can actually do in there. But like Tom was mentioning, it's wonky on how you move around and that's the problem.

It's messy. When we do switch, I would definitely like to see a demo of some sort and what options are out there down the road for that because ours is clunky. Sure, okay.

All right, well, I have direction and I will work on this and bring information back at a future meeting.

All right, then we move on to new business. the Schmaltz noise variance. Michael.

All right. Schmaltz is requesting a noise variance for having some bands over the weekends through their fall festival time at the Orchard. So what we've done in the past, similar to game day, for example, where they have bands throughout the year, certain times they've come in, gotten noise variances for those types of events. So when this was brought to my attention, I reached out to Nick Schmaltz and said, Hey, if you want to do these, you're going to have to make this request and get it approved. We did talk about the generator. The generator, he said, is only going to be running during business hours. I said, all right, then, because if you plan to run it 24-7, that should be included with the noise variance request. And he said they're not going to do that. They're just going to run it during business hours. So I'm sure if it's not, we'll hear about it.

Does he have sound barriers around the generator?

Not that I'm aware of. I don't know where it is exactly.

But it's possible for him to put up a very simple, non-expensive structure to put some sound barrier around it.

Right. I don't know that we have any leverage to require that or not, but...

It'd be worth investigating if we do.

I mean, I can definitely ask him. He's been very cooperative. He has reached out on multiple occasions to check in on things, say, hey, can I do this, can I do that, and they have submitted for their site plan review for the full development, so that's under review. Cedar and I have reviewed it. We've provided comments back to them, so they're in the process of making revisions to the plan, so... Their goal is to be able to get those plans approved this fall yet and be able to start working on grading for their stormwater facilities because that's really the first thing that's got to go in before you can start developing any other impervious surface.

I was going to say, what's their timeline? How does that work with what we've approved?

Yeah, so their timeline, like I said, they're hoping to be able to start grading this fall for the stormwater facilities and then next spring be able to start development of the site. So parking lot and then building or buildings. Again, they have five years to phase in to this. So obviously costs are concerned, so they're not going to be doing everything at once, but they're going to start with the parking and then at least a building and then kind of see where things go from there.

And what about the petting zoo?

So when they came forward at the Planning Commission last year, they had shown petting zoo as part of their process. We identified that farm animals are not permitted and so that a petting zoo, a regular petting zoo would not be permitted.

Which was a barn housing the animals.

Right. It was going to be onsite animals, um, whatnot. So, and at the time I was not aware of the, this, the petting zoo on the weekends, which apparently has been happening. Um, I was only made aware of the, um, of the band and the noise. So that was kind of the bigger concern. So I guess the question is, um, you know, do you consider what he's doing with his current operation of this petting zoo, which again, sounds like it's just on the weekends. I did ask him. They don't keep the animals there. They just bring them out for the day, take them back, and it's only on a Saturday and Sundays.

Does that include the pony ride too?

I'm sorry?

The pony ride? They have a pony ride thing? I don't know.

I have not been out to the site, so I'm not familiar with what the operation looks like, but he did indicate that they take the animals on and off each day. They are not housing them there, and it's only on the weekends, the Saturday and Sundays, he said. So if you have a concern with that, let me know and I will reach out to him. If not, again, let me know one way or the other what you're thinking on that so we can make sure to communicate with him. Again, tonight is specifically review of the noise variance request, but if you have other concerns, let me know and then I can reach out and have conversations with him.

I have concerns approving anything without an update, considering that we heard things that I think are not what we had originally agreed to. I think that there's things happening that we maybe weren't aware of, or if there's things he's not doing, I'd like to see an update and hear where they're at and what they're doing before we're approving. I mean, he's asking for a noise variance for, This week, Wednesday?

No, this weekend. Saturday, Sunday.

And I don't know how far in advance you're supposed to typically ask for these, but I've gotten photos and I've seen things that I don't remember being part of it. I mean, if we need to revisit it, but it's, it doesn't seem as though he's following what we've asked him to do. Specifically I mean the animals for one I mean that was definitely talked about that he and specifically so it's now there's a loophole I guess to have those animals there. I guess I just feel like it would have been even respectful to have a conversation about it, because it was an ordinance issue and it was removed. And so are we saying that now he can have them because they're not staying? So was the ordinance not based on a petting zoo, but more based on them living there?

To me, that's the case. That, for example, Cavanaugh's, brings their petting zoo to various parks and it's not an issue.

Because I would just question then what animals and is it appropriate I mean, if it was, let's say a cow, um, or they had cows and they were, I mean, eating grass or mooing really loud or if they brought chickens or roosters or, I mean, I don't know what he's bringing on site. So I guess my question is what animals are there and what, how is he managing that?

Yeah. So if we take a look at ordinance two Oh three dash two, thank you. I was just going to ask about that farm animals. Um, No farm animals shall be raised, harbored, cared for, or provided for on any parcel of land in the town of Buchanan in the following areas. Within the boundaries of Darboy Joint Sanitary District number one. Is it within that?

Yes.

Okay. So does that answer our question?

Well, I don't know it doesn't because does bringing animals in for four hours on a day constitute that terminology?

Does it consider harboring them? They're bringing them onto the property that's harboring them intentionally and charging money for it, right? That's harboring them. They're being cared for while they're there. They're provided for while they're there, right? I mean, we either have the ordinance or we don't. If he wants to get a variance around the ordinance, he can apply for the variance around the ordinance. But I suspect there's a reason that's not listed on their website as something that they're doing. I don't see that. It might be on their Facebook. It's not on their website. So if you just go to Schmaltz Acres, and you click on their website, or adventure zone attractions. There's a corn maze, hay rides, pumpkin patch and hen house hustle.

Yeah. The town enforces blanket prohibitions on farm animals in specific areas regardless of how many hours they spend on site. Darboy joint sanitary district number one. That's what you said they were. Farm animals are strictly prohibited from within the boundaries of this district. If your orchard falls inside this line, bringing farm animals on site for a temporary daily event or petting zoo style setup is generally illegal without a hard to get municipal special exception.

What's that from?

AI.

Oh, okay. Mine was straight from our ordinances, for whatever that's worth.

If the orchard is part of a recorded residential subdivision, farm animals are banned. If the orchard is outside the prohibited zones above, farm animals are only allowed in specific zoning districts, allowed district, general ag district, and our rural residential district. So what does the district that the orchard operates? What's, what is it?

It's a commercial.

It's a what? I'm sorry.

It's some commercial. Yeah. I mean, again, they're in the sanitary district. So that right there, at least based on that general ad prohibited to in commercial.

So I don't understand why, if that's true and they have this petting zoo, why that's brought to the board and it's not just they're in violation of the ordinance, here's how we enforce the ordinance, let's enforce the ordinance, right?

Because one of the criterias that we discussed in order to approve this was them following what they said they were going to do.

And I do think it's a separate question. I don't have a problem with... concerts during the day, provided they do all of these things but I do have a problem if they're just allowed to violate ordinances when I can't shoot the rabbits on my property because the ordinance says I can't. If I'm gonna follow the ordinances, they have to follow the ordinances.

Well and the more that we let them not follow, I feel that's just going to continue to grow as we've historically seen with this and so we need to be diligent about enforcing that.

And I just learned about this yesterday from, um, someone that brought to my attention. So this is again, and Mr Bonger brought it up tonight. So, um, you know, I just wanted to clarify from you guys what your feelings are on it. If you know, I mean, you want me to go talk to him and say, Hey, this isn't allowed unless he gets a special exception permit from us. I don't think that's allowed though.

From the plan commission.

No, it's not indicated in the code that you can do that.

Was part of their plan to have a berm on the north side? Was that what we approved and was that for noise as well as? Yes.

Yeah, so the berm is only necessary if the activities are closer than 200 feet to the property lines. Um, so like Mr. Gonger has indicated, you know, it looks like they've staked everything out out there and they're 200 feet away from the property line. So technically they don't need a berm. Um, now I can tell you on their plans and Justin can confirm this. They are showing berms on many parts of the property on the north side, on the west side, um, and even on the east side.

But they have five years to put it all in.

Only if, it's an, it's an or, right? So if they keep everything that would trigger the berm inside 200 feet away from the property line, they technically don't need a berm. However, they are showing it on their plans and they're very heavily landscaped. I mean, Justin and his landscape architect have reviewed it. Um, so they're showing it, they're planning, I mean, presumably planning to develop it. Otherwise they wouldn't have shown it. But again, it was an or option, right? Either 200 feet buffer or the berms with landscaping. I mean, what I'm hearing from you is, you know, he's got farm animals there, regardless of how often they're there and the duration, it's still considered a violation. Definitely can go out, you know, talk to him and let him know that he's going to have to stop that if that's how you all feel. Yep.

Well, I mean, I don't think it has anything to do with how we feel, right? It is a violation of the ordinance, correct?

I mean, I will look at it as they're considered farm animals.

So what's he charging?

He charging people to, so there, there is a penalty and enforcement provision of section two Oh three dash two. So you might want to look at subparagraph G it tells you what we need to do. we need to deliver a letter and then they have five days. And then if they're not, we get $50 a day plus the cost of prosecution plus the cost of what prosecuting. So if we have to pay an attorney to go and get a court order, um, to say, remove those, they pay our attorney, but it wouldn't come to that. He'd just stop.

Or Dennis, did you mean is small to charging to get in?

Yeah, that's what you mean.

Yeah, they are.

It's $12. $12 of yours is that music should be, is it playing between 10 30 at two 30? Is that right? For four hours?

Yeah.

Yeah.

During the day. During the day. Yeah.

Okay.

Um, again, there is another provision in the special exception that, you know, gives the planning commission and town some, but the ability to review the process, you know, kind of the operations on from time to time. So what I've kind of told some people that have asked the question is we kind of got to wait and see how things are going, right? Obviously it sounds like might be a little rocky start. Um, and we can correct it by, you know, having, I can have those conversations with them, let them know, Hey, this isn't allowed, or you gotta do this. You can't do that. Um, and then as we go through, you know, obviously after this first season, if there's more issues that come up, that's something that the planning commission can have a conversation on over the winter and say, Hey Nick, come back in. We want to talk to you about what we're seeing out here. Um, you know, we need to work on some different things or maybe again, if some more specific things need to be put into that special use exception, a special exception approval, um, that's something that, you know, we can have those conversations with Nick about.

Well, we, when we originally approved it, there was specific conversation regarding him and also reviewing it and we could pull it if he's not following.

Right. I mean, we'd have to, you know, again, check with the attorneys on what that legal process would look like. But, um, there is that option too. If he's, you know, if there's my, you know, I think, I think it says if there's three violations in the calendar year, the town could revoke the special exception so that there are obviously penalties and there's consequences if he doesn't comply longterm.

So do we need a motion on the noise variance? Yes. Uh, I'll move to approve the noise variance. Is there a second?

I'll second it. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye.

Aye.

That's everybody. Um, but you'll follow up saying no animals. Yes. Thank you. Next is a PGI follow up for discussion. Tom.

Yeah. So I got to listen to 99 complaints and I still have one personal call back. I was afraid to call her from my personal cell phone and I haven't been able to make it to the office during regular business hours to give her a call. But I owe someone named Tammy a call. Um, but she's included in the 99 total complaints that were fielded. Mostly they had to do with noise and sleep disruption and they were significant, right? People definitely felt the pain of this and were not shy about sharing the particulars of their sleep deprivation. 13 of the 99 people did suggest ending earlier on weekdays, and 10 of them did specify that their house was shaking, and a couple of them specified that their property was damaged. Anyone who did say that their property was damaged, we got in touch with PGI's legal counsel so that PGI could pay to fix that, because that's part of what we did on the front end in their permitting. Kind of what I expected when I voted to approve is most of the impact of this was felt by people in Kaukauna. And so I broke down the location of the complaints. If they were provided, one gave a Buchanan address, 55 gave Kaukauna addresses, and then Combined Locks or Harrison was 19 mostly. Those folks were in Harrison in the apartment building that's right on 55, just south of KK.

Before you go on. Sure. We received the one letter with multiple names on it.

Yeah. I did not include that one.

And they claimed to be Buchanan residence. Yeah. But didn't give any names or addresses. Yeah. Is there any, I mean, we have no way of substantiating whether that was

Legit. Right. I didn't include that in the one. So there was one that legitimately was in Buchanan. That second one claimed, that letter claimed to be in Buchanan, but it also claimed to be multiple people. And there were a few lines in there that made me question the sanity of the writer. And maybe they were really tired.

Also made me question where they were, which bar they were at, but...

Yeah, but it started talking about being hit on by men and having to put them in their place. I don't know that. It was... Yeah, I did not include that one in the one.

I don't feel like it's comfortable to include anything if they're not willing to put their name on it either. I mean, that could have came from anybody.

So it could be two or however many people were actually involved in that group. But I don't know. So it could be more than one, but primarily it was Kakana. So anybody who identified as being from Kakana and gave me an email address, I sent them an email that included the letter from Kakana's mayor that said, we tried to talk to your government on the front end. Here's what they told us. Feel free to take it up with them. My apologies. And several people apparently did take them up on that and were appreciative of that. What else?

Yeah, I didn't like the Facebook post from the Kaukauna Police Department saying, stop calling us. It's not our problem.

You can call them. What do you expect from Kaukauna though?

I mean, right. What do you expect them to do?

They showed us who we are. We can believe them or not. Right, I'm done expecting at least kind of the public facing portion of Kaukauna to kind of do the right thing and take accountability for things. I do think just based on some kind of outside, with members of Kakana's town board that they take it a little, or I guess it's the city council, but they take things a little more seriously than their mayor does. And so that's why my first suggestion would be that if we ever get an application from PGI again, we go to one of their council meetings or contact the council directly because if they have, do they have districts? I assume cities have districts.

The words?

And so you'd have one dedicated representative for the geographic area that would be most impacted. And so they're gonna be able to mobilize whatever, outreach they would like to do on the front end. And so I think speaking to the city council instead of the mayor would make some sense to see if we can come to some sort of workable solution. A number of people suggested earlier cutoff times on weeknights relative to weekends, so I think that would be an obvious at least point of compromise if that's possible in the future. Uh, one thing I did want to add to that, that I just thought of later, um, was that there are different types of fireworks and there were a lot of, um, complaints specific to the fireworks that just make a big loud noise as opposed to the ones that make a big pretty show in the air. And so you could also put, cut off times for those or specific windows of those to non-sleeping hours. That would do a lot and I don't know if I can edit this document or someone else would. So we can save that. So that should somehow make it into this document. I can change it if you want me to. And then the last two are just kind of proactively publicizing information about it. on the front end because um any ambiguity gets resolved with wrong information and people being mad because they felt lied to and um i think this is a great example that i think we did a good job i mean our fire departments put out a facebook post that was pretty cool yeah

There were, yeah, there were several that we put out and it was advertised everywhere. So I felt like the town of Buchanan was very informed about it. Not that they necessarily liked it, but just that I think there was a much better job done this time around of letting people know what was happening.

Yep. Kekona is divided into four aldermanic districts with 17 voting wards. Eight alder persons. Okay. two from each of the four aldermatic districts.

And it was mostly concentrated within about a mile of WIR where we got the complaints, which would make sense. And so just make sure that those folks are aware.

I think if this comes up again, we also need to address the admission time and like the traffic coming in, there was an incredible amount of confusion there as to what time the gates opened. They'd say four, then they'd say five. It was a communication issue between PGI and WIR, but which ended up causing a lot of backed up traffic that people weren't happy about. And so I'm not sure who in the end was responsible or didn't follow through with what they wanted. Honestly, it sounded like it was on WIR, but I mean, I'm not sure, but it's just a note that if it ever comes back around that we have to discuss the times that people are allowed to get in to try to avoid some of that traffic maybe.

I think WIR offered the venue, but PGI should have been doing all the logistics.

But then WIR didn't let them. I was there. It was a difficult communication for them process. Interesting.

I do know that PGI kind of threw out the event whenever anything that would come up. Someone said they heard fireworks outside of a range or there was anything where there was a question as to whether PGI was operating outside of its permit. Craig from PGI was really quick to get back to me and he was responsive to everything. I think PGI acted within how we ask them to act I think if we do it again we should pretty strongly consider just putting a few more dampers on on what we'd allow them to do I think Linda on the front end you had suggested that so in hindsight I think you were right well thank you she suggested earlier cutoff times during the week especially for the booms that are louder than a sonic jet yeah

I mean, if they would have done those at eight o'clock or nine, you know, just it's all about the noise. I like the pretty stuff, but yeah.

It'd be cool if we could bring in a drone show instead.

They did do drones. Drones were part of it, yeah. Drawing late at night, you know. Was there anything about debris in people's yards?

There were two mentions of debris specifically.

Can you guys see anything in terms of mitigating that? I just don't know how you avoid it.

Well, there were some people that were offering their business parking lot or area for people to come and view, and I think they were charging. And then there was some damage done, too. And then there were other people that maybe weren't. But I don't think it was like, PGI is the group. Well, that's what I'm saying about the debris, though.

There were complaints of the firework goes in the air. like little bits of cardboard go with it, those don't completely burn and then you have all of these cardboard tubes sitting in somebody's yard.

But I don't know if we can mitigate that.

Yeah, and a lot of that would just be, from their end, it's just a safety thing where if the wind is too much, they're not gonna fire anything, right? They're insured, they can't start any fires. And so, I don't know. how that could be mitigated, if at all. The other thing we could do is, there's no way Kekana would do this, but if anybody from Kekana is watching this recording, Kekana could just pay WIR to not have them come back Right? They could, because as far as I'm concerned, the big benefit to Buchanan was WIR got rent for the week. Other than that, most of the benefit was felt outside of the town of Buchanan. And if you're going to look after WIR's business by, you know, you don't want them to do this thing to make money, just make up the money.

Well, we could have suggested to them to pay the town of Buchanan an amount as well. you know, they said, Oh, we'll get the, you know, yeah. Remember when they said, yeah, but then it fell out of the agreement. It never happened. It wasn't in the agreement. Yeah.

No PGI. And then, um, right.

And then there was something floating on Facebook, I don't know, fact or fiction, that they can't come back because of the new Kekona Middle School. I don't even know how that factors in. I mean, it's a mile north.

I asked Craig and he said.

Yeah, that's just somebody yapping. Okay. But yeah, ours.

Yeah. And within the next few years, it'd be a tough sell. But I think if you wait five years. And PGI is on a rotation with constraints. Yeah. Uh, several years out with constraints.

I see who's left here.

Yeah, that's true. And the other thing is I don't know how to make this easily searchable. So like if 10 years from now, none of us are still on the board, right? Um, how are they going to find this? And I don't know that.

Well, we can definitely put it in. Uh, if you want to probably be easy, if you can update that and have that right now and then, um, just email it to me and then we'll put it in the file. And, um, everything we do is based on parcels. So other information is in the same parcel file. So in the, so it would just be in the WIR file pretty much. Yeah. So, you know, and, and obviously it just can't hold that hostage. Right. And obviously, everybody, I mean what the last time they were here is what, 2010 or something like that. And everybody, everybody knew about it, right? So when they were coming back and well in 23 I think it was or 22 they got approval but then never showed up. So there are enough people here on staff that knew about it that were telling me like, Hey, this is, you know, so there's going to be people that are going to remember regardless. Like this is a pretty big event, but we can definitely put that into the file and have it there for, nostalgia. Okay.

And then there were a couple of people who, there were a couple of people who requested, like I said, we're going to be talking about it over the next couple of meetings and we'll make some rules. And they requested a copy of this. So I'll email this to those folks too.

We add that we should revisit the traffic.

Do we have jurisdiction over KK though?

We have jurisdiction over the time that they opened the gates. Sure. And we also did give them some guidelines.

And obviously they work directly with the sheriff's department to coordinate on traffic and stuff. So.

Okay. How's that any different than either construction?

Well, as far as traffic, even destruction, the traffic was totally insane as well. Yeah.

I didn't go. For your Thursday night races.

Well, that's not near as bad as even destruction.

There was one email saying they didn't mind the fireworks, but they should make sound barriers for the Thursday night races. And then there was one other email and I could not tell how much of it was sarcasm, but they talked about how great it was. Um, and so I suspect it was just excellent sarcasm, but maybe one person was just like, Hey, this guy's getting a bunch of mad emails. We'll send him a happy one. Um, but it's probably just sarcasm.

Okay.

Great.

And we move on to the cost of living and merit increase.

Michael. All right. It's that time of year. Again, we're working on the budget, looking to get approval for the cost of living increase as well as the merits increase. So based on our budget, personnel manual we use CPI consumer price index as the starting point for consideration for the cost of living increase. The last 12 months between July 25 and July 26 was 3.4. So staff is recommending 3.4 for that COLA.

So you use July to July consistently?

Yes. That's what the last couple of years have been. Um, because of the timing of when the data comes out. Um, and when I put this together, that that's when I had the data that was available as July to July.

Okay. Cause when I looked up the consumer price index, it's at 3.6%. Okay.

I mean, again, it's a starting point, so you as the board can decide what you want that to be, but that's kind of what we use as a guide to say, all right, we're going to start here so that we're kind of in the realm of...

I agree with following the CPI. Yep. Just concerned about... The merit pay. The accuracy.

Yeah. Oh, the accuracy?

Of the number. So you're negotiating we should pay people more?

Uh...

So that's one part of it is the cost of living increase. So again, you...

I just don't know how we're gonna handle if the CPI ever goes down.

When I was in education, it went down. We got the CPI at two, if it was at two.

No, I meant negative. Negative.

You guys are gonna be earning less. No, wait. No, I don't think we've ever, when has that ever happened, Joe?

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Deflation of the currency anytime soon.

We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I think the COLA.

So again, that's one topic. The other component is the merit increase. So what we've, what I've recommended is we have a scoring system one through five, right? Uh, three is, you know, meets expectations. Four is your exceeding expectations and five, you're a rock star, which generally you gotta be a rock star to get that score. Um, but the, the idea is that as you go up those different scorings based on your performance evaluation, um, we've indicated, you know, a score of, um, three you would get a one percent merit increase a score of four would be 1.5 and a score of five would be two percent um so that's kind of what i've thrown out there as a recommendation um obviously if you guys have different thoughts yeah is it common for towns to be using um the merit system

Because I don't, I've seen that really mostly it's a step in grade pay, you know.

It's, every community is different. It depends on how their system is set up, right? There's no right or wrong. way to do it. Um, I, I was at a professional development session last year in the region of the state where city managers and administrators and towns, villages and cities are all, they were talking about this and everyone could agree there's, there's no magic way to do it. There's no great way to do it.

So where I'm going with this is, I think merit pay after a certain milestone is reached or just not an automatic first-year employee, in addition to the COLA, you're also going to get a 2.5% bump. That's another...

Yeah, so for example, in other communities that I've worked, our pay range does not have steps identified. We just have a range. But what other communities have done where they have actual steps within the range is if you meet whatever the score is, you get that jump, right? Now, we don't have those steps built into our system right now, but if that's something you're interested in, developing or looking at, we definitely can look into that. I mean, it's not gonna happen quickly, at least not for this coming year, but that's an option too, or milestones, whatever that might be.

I'd like to look at structuring something that X amount of years, you know, you have your range, but yet within that range in those years, you can do step and grade.

Why do you want it seniority-based rather than merit-based?

I just think somebody who's put a lot of years in should have that ability to go up. It's a lot. Again, I go based on my education experience where first year you're here, second year you're here, and they can kind of count on it after every year it goes.

Yeah, and I think Typically in business. It does cap out. Typically in business it's based on merit, not on seniority. And education has been more seniority based and I disagree with that.

I mean, I think from a kind of incentive standpoint, from like if you're looking at an educational system and you're trying to figure out how to make a fair system for 40 employees, right, as opposed to a fair system for four, right, I think that the merit-based system makes more sense.

It's also harder to judge how well a teacher's doing. Right, because like, I don't know. Oh, do you do it on popularity with the students?

No, no, that's not how it's evaluated.

You have to do it based on 20 years out, and that doesn't work either.

Yeah. So, like, I think that the merit-based system works in an organization as relatively small as this one. Yeah. Yeah. But I see the merit of like, here's the ladder, this is what the next rung looks like. But having a bit of a carrot, I think helps too. And varying the size of it, you can... That also leaves it very subjective on one person or two. Well, I mean, several people figure out the performance evaluation, right?

And I mean... In private business, it's typically subjective of your supervisor. I mean, I think it's subjective of the five of us, which makes it more of a level playing field. I've never been with an organization that gave merit increase based on tenure, so I'm not really familiar.

I think as long as we create a performance review process, and I think we might have to tweak it. I mean, not necessarily objective, but I think that feels fair to the people, right, and have some sort of outside review. If it is one person making a decision, give them the ability to appeal it to somebody else.

I can go with that. Yeah.

Because I don't think objectivity is actually possible. But I think that you can make a process that feels fair to all involved.

And that there's a possibility to appeal if they feel. I like that. Okay.

And the current process right now is, as you've seen it, the employee does a self-evaluation, submits it to their supervisor, then their supervisor does the evaluation, sits down with the employee, goes through it, talks through it, and then scores from there, right? Um, I think, I mean, I haven't gotten really any feedback from people on that. I mean, we've been using that process the last few years. I know before I came here, there was a lot of inconsistency and how things were done. So trying to get something that's consistent and um, throughout the years over time is important. So people know, okay, you know, it's not this year we're doing this kind of review or in the next year we're going to do something completely different. So having the consistency I think is important as well. Now, regardless of the, what that merit increase looks like, the percentage wise, that's totally, again, totally up to you on how you want to approach that. But from just the administration of it, from the scoring, reviewing and having that consistent process and that tool that we currently use, I think is an important aspect. I mean, I can definitely, I guess I can definitely do some research into that. Um, bring them back in the future, you know, sometime next year before, you know, well before this timeframe to kind of look at that to see, you know, what other communities are doing. Like I said, everyone does a little differently and I'll be honest, And those of you that do reviews as well, nobody likes doing reviews, right? Whether you're the reviewer or the review eat, right? It's just, you know, it's mean depends on how it's framed.

People love that. It depends on how it's framed.

If you're looking at it to improve, I think it's just, you know, it's one of those things that, um, yeah. it, you know, you've got to evaluate people somehow, right? So there's, there's a way that needs to be done and it's just one of those, sometimes it can be great. Other times, you know, some people just think it's uncomfortable.

So how many people does this apply to full and regular full and part time employees? How many people does this apply to the merit part?

The merit part will applies to, um, six, six people, six of us.

I think we hear a year. Like if we would have hired a clerk treasurer two weeks ago, would this apply?

Right, not this. We don't have anything specifically, but I would say like if you just got hired right before the review process, well, there's nothing really to review, right? So we haven't hired that many people recently. I mean, Jim is the most recent one.

Hiring three or two.

So yeah, I mean, I think, let me just count this off one. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah, I think there's like six right now. Five or six. So it's really the full-time, it's the full or part-time people in the office right now. Right. As it applies to. So like, I mean, me, Dennis, Cynthia, Tina, Jim, and Megan.

Okay, so with new... And the maintenance guys.

And the maintenance guys, too.

So with new employees... Do you have a one-year no merit on the second year? I was hearing some different things.

Like I said, we haven't had... We haven't done that.

Right, but we have people coming in that'll be new, so that's why I'm wondering how we're going to handle that.

And if you want to give me direction on that, that's fine. We don't have anything in writing or any kind of even discussion about that previously. Like I said, I think if you're here for at least six months before the review process, I think that's a good enough time to have enough data and evaluation.

Yeah, okay, then that's fair.

Six months, okay.

You know, if you're like, oh, three months.

I just didn't want to say one month and all of a sudden, boom, look.

It's usually six months or something.

So that year they both went through the review process and stuff like that. When I was officially hired, mine was in December, so of course not. Even though I had been here since September as a temp. Okay.

All right, yeah, six months then, okay. I just wanted to make sure that was clarified too.

Yeah.

Okay.

And again, the, the, the personnel manual says we should, you know, be completing this in October. So I'll start this with at the end of September with staff and then completed at the beginning of October so that we can, again, it helps me with the budget, right? Because depending on, you know, if there's a different merits, increased percentages, I kind of got to factor that in. So I got to get that number, those numbers early in October so I can, you know, finish the budget.

So I don't know. Do we need to somehow double check the cost of living increase?

I mean, if you, like I said, it, it, it's at your discretion. Um, those are the numbers that I pulled up from July to July was 3.4. And if I got it wrong, I apologize, but all right. 2025. Yes. From 2020 from July 25 to July 26.

So did you get, where did yours come from? So I'm just looking at the BLS. Yeah. Yeah. It says all index items rose 3.4% for the 12 months ending July.

All right. There it is. What did you say? I'm sorry. 3.4. 3.4. Yeah. All right. So the, Michael suggested motion is to use CPI of 3.4 for the cost of living adjustment, budget adjustments, and adjust the wage scale by 3.4 accordingly. And to implement a 1% merit increase based on performance scores of three, one and a half for four, and 2% for a score of five. Someone want to make that motion or a variation thereof? So moved.

Second.

Second. Second. Jenny. Further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. That's I think everybody, right? Okay.

Then we move on to the snow and ice removal for County N sidewalk. Michael.

All right, just taking some notes here. All right, snow and ice removal. So, a couple of topics here. First we'll start with, does everybody like the new county end? A lot of work, hopefully.

I'm still confused about the two lanes down to one, and think that maybe the approach should say, the right lane coming from the north should be for right turn only. And the left lane would be straight or left at the roundabout. Yes.

Yeah, I agree.

So that you're not getting through and then quickly have to merge into one. But we could give that feedback to the County, but that's their call.

Yeah.

All right. So, um, When this project was started many, many years ago, even before my time here, they talked about there's gonna be a trail, sidewalk, bike lanes. Um, per ordinance, the town takes care of trail maintenance, snow removal, et cetera. Um, sidewalks are the requirement of the adjacent property owners. Now at the time back in 2023 when this was really getting going and they were having some decisions that need to be made, the town talked about this of who is going to be responsible for taking care of the sidewalks. Um, on county end. The reason for this was, I'll show you this diagram. It's kind of hard to see, unfortunately. But there are a number of properties on the west side here with red dots on them that don't have frontage. Basically, the back of their lot backs up to County N, and there is a ravine and a creek in the way. the thought process was, well, we can't expect people to, at the time, take care of this in the winter because how are they going to get out there to take care of it? So back in 2023, the board voted to say, we're going to take care of snow removal and ice removal on the sidewalk. Right now we do have an RFP out there to solicit proposals to do that contract that we had talked about that last year during the budget process that we would contract this first year. So part of the question, the two-fold question, first part is we're gonna contract this year. We have the proposals out. But moving forward, do you want to continue to try contracts or do we want to try to purchase a piece of machinery that can remove the snow? The idea is right now our current tractor that we have and snowblower option is too large. It won't fit on a five foot sidewalk. So Jim Burke, one of our maintenance guys, has been doing some research and has looked at a couple different products and different pieces of machinery that have different attachments, different capabilities that could take care of this. The idea would be that we would, if you want to buy a piece of machinery to do this, we would buy a piece of machinery that can replace the existing tractor and do very similar work that it can do currently. Why?

like there has to be a machine that you could use to clear the snow that doesn't cost a hundred thousand dollars.

Yeah.

Right. Like you can get an ATV with a plow on it. My neighbor does the whole cul-de-sac before anybody has a chance to wake up. Sure.

I mean, the thought process at the time was when we talked with the board previously was that we could have a multifaceted tool and piece of equipment that could do multiple things. Plus we wouldn't need, uh, There's limited room in the shed right now, so if we add another piece of equipment, takes up some space. But if that's the route you're interested in going, we can definitely do that too.

I'd like to know how much it would cost us to contract it out first.

Yeah. I don't think we can make that decision until we get those things. The deadline's the end of this month. The thought process is I would be able to bring those proposals back at the October meeting so we're ready in time for the winter season.

Yeah, I'm not ready to make a decision on that until I see how much it is to contract it out.

I think we're ready to assume contracting at least for this winter anyway.

Right. And this was more just a conversation for moving forward in the future. You know, do you want to consider looking at budgeting for something like this next year or just wait, you know, continue with the contract and see how that goes. Like I said, I wanted to make, bring it here now before we get too far into the budget so that if you were interested, we can, you know, incorporate that.

How long is the stretch of sidewalk?

I don't recall the top of my head. Um, it's in the, it's in the RFP. I just don't remember. The other question, too, is these areas that have the green dots on it, they all front on the sidewalk area.

I have a question on the corner one. That's showing a large lot. Is that where the house?

Which corner?