Town Board - Regular Meeting

of course this doesn't work

I have six o'clock, so I'd like to call this meeting the Talmud.

Order to order, we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. So we currently have just three of the five supervisors here. Tom Meyer will be a little later, and Linda said she could not make it. Has the public been properly notified?

They have.

Okay. So we start off with presentations from Jim.

Yeah, both of the folks that are here, or not here tonight, Torn and Ethan, have been with our department one year now, so I have their certificate and PIN. Just kind of, not that they're not appreciative, but kind of shows that they're really not here for just certificates and PINs, they're really here to do the job. That's kind of how they are, both of those guys. Torn is a, just a shout out to him because he's probably beyond all odds. If you'd have saw him tonight, I wish he would have been here because Torn is one of the, probably the only firefighter that I know of in the nation. He is an amputee, he only has one leg, so he's got a prosthetic leg, and is able to do all of the functions of the firefighter. And so he is a phenomenal individual. And if anybody's in arm wrestling, he competes in arm wrestling.

And he wants people to compete against him.

Yes, so he encourages people to compete against himself.

All right.

We'll assure that we pass them on to our next business meeting.

Yes, please do. Thank you. We don't have any public hearings tonight. So it's time for the public comment forum. If there's anyone who would like to address the town board on an agenda related item, come to the podium, state your name and address, and tell us what's on your mind. Anyone?

My name is Mark Andrews. I live at W926 County Road ZZ in Kaukauna. I would have come to the July meeting, but I spent a lot of time looking at your website, trying to find information on a road survey, the results, any of your comments. Spent numerous nights looking. Finally, two weeks ago, I called the town clerk. The other lady helped me. She talked me through how to get to your videos. And like what Ms. Rottier said last meeting, your website's horrible to try and navigate and find things. So I agree with her on that. So I watched the last three meetings and my comments tonight are gonna be about the survey and board discussions. Mr. Reinke said, The survey was a waste of money. I disagree because it showed that three of you thought the combination of the referendum barring would not pass. So it was good that a referendum didn't get pushed through really fast. You've got to look at this a lot more carefully like you've discussed. Also on a June meeting, Mr. Coonan, you gave an example of like a person having a $4,000 tax bill and maybe 500 would come to the town, a very small amount. That's 12 and a half percent. My tax bill last year was $5,100, 1200 came to the town, that was 23 and a half percent. Neither one of those numbers, in my opinion, are a very small amount. I looked at your chart in this survey, And if I use that same combination borrowing referendum thing, that column, using my assessed homes value right now, over these 20 years, I'd be paying 26,000 extra over and above what I'm paying already to the town. So again, that is not a very small amount. I like Mr... Mr. Routier's discussion with Mr. Brown and Meyer about looking again at the road priorities and not doing curb and garter everywhere. It's good to use that blacktop if you can. Extend the road 10 years, I agree with that. You can't just keep asking taxpayers for more money to do everything you wanna do. The Darboy area doesn't have to look like a city. with curb and gutter everywhere. If you looked at, I looked at the survey here in the next 10 years, your estimation, every single road you want to fix is in the Darboy area, nothing west, east of Highway 55. The other thing too is maybe when you're talking about some of those small streets, maybe you gotta bring back street assessments. Those are the people that use those streets every single day. I'll probably never use one of those streets ever, some of those. So that's something maybe you can consider. Maybe you're not legally allowed to do that. I don't know the rules. Now the other thing I noticed, Mr. Reinke said he doesn't like wasting taxpayers' money, I agree. Two examples, a past board, uh... want changed all the street signs from the green to the to the blue collar and at that time the town chairman said well someone's driving through the top can and they see that sign all they know they're not on the cannon what a stupid reason to change to spend money like that and change all those signs makes no sense to me the other ones are perfect fine last spring i read in your newsletter uh... you're gonna put signs up for the ATV use on roads. And it listed like mainly the county highways that you couldn't ride on. So if you would have posted that in like four newsletters straight, every single person probably would have saw that at some point because in one of your meetings, you said 88% of the people read the newsletters. So now you spent how much money buying four by four treated posts, probably 10 feet long and putting a sign on it that says you can drive an ATV on this road? Talk to me about wasting money. I live by Fox River Road and Widgen Road. It's like a U-shape that goes in off of ZZ. There's a sign on each one of those roads going in. That's just ridiculous. So maybe you need to look at the entire budget coming up. Maybe you can cut money somewhere. Maybe not every part of it, they need all that money. You could take some of that for the roads to help. I mean, you gotta look at different things. You gotta get inventive sometimes. The last thing I kind of want to say is being retired, I live on Social Security and my 401 . I don't have all this extra money to pay what you might be asking for like in the future or spring election coming up, which was talked about possibly doing. I'm already paying for 20 years for a new Kaukauna Middle School that I didn't want. Last year they took out the first one, 850 bucks extra for the first year. Now you're talking about taking money out for roads too. That school board wasn't transparent when they bought that land. I found out about it in the Times. There was no transparency on that. After they buy it, then they didn't even know where the access was to that land. They didn't know a roundabout was gonna be needed. So my point is that you need to be very transparent. How long should a referendum be for? How much every year is the cost? And does it change if an assessed value changes? Because in my opinion, if your assessed value goes up, that's what these numbers in the survey is based on, your assessed value. So if that goes up, am I gonna be paying more now this next year or the year after, whatever? Those are real serious issues. in my opinion excuse me and last thing please keep in mind how this could affect taxpayers uh... retired people like me single moms on their own hope trying to buy their own also on your own such as they You have to ask yourself, is it really fair or is it right taking or asking to take this much money from us for this amount of years? It's a long time. So if I'm wrong, like some of my facts or something like that I might be wrong about, feel free to contact me. I'm sure you can get my phone number from the clerk. I'd be happy to talk to anybody. So just give me a call if you want. So I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you.

Anyone else that would like to address the town board?

Ted Erdmann, 2695 Hillside Drive, Appleton. Hello. I just want to make a comment on the agenda for a planning commission with the verbatim is there back in June it was a unanimous vote to deny it to deny this change now two months later they came back and they wanted changed again now they're saying that they're concerned about keeping the the four or five acres in Buchanan for tax reasons, for one thing. They want to keep the tax base in Buchanan, but the 30 acres they had go over to Kaukauna, this four or five acres does not justify what we lost. And verbatims, made a comment, if you don't get this change, they're gonna annex into Kaukauna. Well, the only reason they really wanna stay here is because Kaukauna has three times more taxes than we do. And that whole corner is gonna be Kaukauna in a few years anyhow, regardless. Because this town, the way we're losing land, we're not gonna be able to keep going and fixing the roads. and Kekona is really gobbling us up and they didn't care about, they didn't weren't worried about the town of Buchanan then when they sold that 30 acres and now they're so concerned. I just think that's wrong. So that's just what I want to say. Thanks.

Thank you, Ted.

Good evening.

My name is Jim Burbaton. I reside on N214 DeBruin Road. And in regard to what Mr. Erdman just said, I am part of the family that recently sold the property onto Bruin Road to Tom Dirks. I have no control over what Tom Dirks or anybody does with the property once I sell it. He had mentioned that it's four acres of land that's being questioned to be rezone single-family. It's actually two acres of land. It is currently agricultural, which really generates a minimal amount of tax base. There are two private people that would like to build single family homes on each of those two acre parcels. And I just think that it would just much more benefit the township For the tax base, taxing over a million dollars worth of property and the dwelling opposed to keeping it in agricultural. I guess that's the point I'd like to make. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else that would like to address the town board on an agenda related item? No one. All right, we'll move on. Come to the business agenda and the consent agenda. Is there anything that anyone would like to take out of the consent agenda to discuss separately? Part of the consent agenda, we have the law enforcement report. We have a deputy here. If you would like to address us and tell us what's going on from your standpoint, we'd appreciate it.

Hello, everybody. My name's Deputy Cody Porath. I work with the Sheriff's Office. I'm specifically assigned to the town of Buchanan and the village of Combined Locks. So for this past month, the biggest things we've had is vehicle break-ins. So I just want to remind everybody to please lock your vehicles at nighttime. Do not leave any valuable items in there. Obviously, the state of Wisconsin is a pretty proud Second Amendment state, I would say, but please avoid leaving your firearms in your vehicles because they are getting stolen as well. Any property that you have in there that's of value, please place near center console and away from the view, because they're not afraid to also smash out your windows. We had a few auto thefts too, and those auto thefts were done because the keys were left in the ignitions of the cars. Most of these, the vehicle break-ins occurred in the area of Coop Road and Springfield, so if you reside in that area, just please keep that in mind. But they've also been making their way to Kimberly and then north into Combined Locks. Other than that, we had the PGI event, obviously, which went pretty well. We didn't have too many calls for service down there. As far as any traffic complaints, we've received a few still on Emmons Road where it's a 25 zone there. So we're working to patrol that. And then Eisenhower Drive has thankfully dropped down to a 25 because of the construction. So we've been kind of sitting there and hammering that pretty hard. But other than that, does anybody have any concerns or anything for me?

Awesome.

Thank you so much. Yep, absolutely.

The other thing that I wanted to point out is in Justin's report on the town engineer, could you tell us when the pre-construction meetings are for Outagamie Road and Town Hall parking lot?

Yes, both of those are tomorrow, uh, August 19th. So we'll have a numbs back to back, same contractors. We'll get that taken care of and then find out the exact schedules. I'm thinking in the early September those will probably be starting, but I don't know for sure right now.

And what time was that?

That is at one o'clock tomorrow.

Okay. And the only other thing I noticed that caught my eye was in reading the Darboy Sanitary District notes, I think it's the first time that I have seen where the gallons of water sent out was more than the gallons of sewage treated. And that's because with the drought that we're in, People are watering lawns and there's a lot less infiltration in the system. So that's an interesting number. Anything else on the consent agenda? I'd look for a motion to approve the consent agenda as written.

So moved.

Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Then we go to the plan commission items for discussion and possible action. Ted, you wanna? Go ahead. Okay. First is resolution 2026-11, rezoning of parcels from general ag to single family residential. Michael?

All right. Thank you. Um, as you heard before, this is the verbating property. Uh, you did see this a couple of months ago at that time. Um, both playing commission and town board did unanimously deny both rezoning and CSM request. They have since come back for, um, slightly different request, different sets of property, different layout, and after talking with the town attorney, there's really not a whole lot that we can do to kind of stop the annexation that's already taken place in Kaukauna. We tried to have some conversations with those parties, but nothing came of it. So at this point in time, at least the Planning Commission felt that it was appropriate to approve the rezoning and the CSMs to at least keep a couple properties worth developing in the town. So with that, these next two items are go hand in hand. So I can answer any questions you might have.

How much was sold to Dirk's? Or how much to Irvine's own currently?

I don't recall the amounts of how much was sold.

To Dirk's. Last month we denied this.

We did that in an attempt to stop the annexation. Didn't work.

I don't think there's a reason that we would say no.

You need to speak up.

I don't see a reason that we would say no.

Dennis? No comment?

No, I have no comment.

Then I'd be looking for a motion to approve the resolution 2026-11.

I'll make a motion to approve 2026-11. Okay.

Is there further discussion? Roll call vote. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. Then I'd be looking for a motion to approve the certified survey map. That goes along with that.

I'll make a motion to approve the certified survey map.

Okay, further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries. I beg your forgiveness. I want to ask a couple other questions about the consent agenda. There was an operator's license request with violation.

It should probably not have had the violation. Let me double check it. We reviewed one, and it wasn't enough to put down that there was a violation, so she must have put yes when she did the report and then didn't fix it when I told her that it was okay.

Well, it was on the table, right?

It was on the memo or on the sheet?

Get back where it was. Where is that?

Yeah, they should have both said, yeah, they both should have said no.

Well, there were three of them on there, right?

Right. There was one for Olive Garden that had none to begin with. And then the fuel on one, something did show up on the report, but it wasn't anything that would create from keeping a license.

All right. Okay. Um, And then there was a routine request for fireworks in September. It said fireworks timing 9.30.

Timing is probably...

Completion? Because the sunset on September 11th is 7.11. Sure. And I would think that the fireworks would start at 7.45.

Yeah, it's for the eve of destruction. I don't think it's till 9.30 is what they're saying.

Oh, it's after the eve of destruction.

Yeah, it's after the eve of destruction.

Got it. Okay.

And before midnight.

Yeah. Understand. All right. Apologies.

That's okay.

Uh, let's see. Then we go to unfinished business and talk about the capital improvement plan. Michael.

All right. Thank you. So last month we had a discussion about the CIP, the capital improvement plan. Um, the board was happy to keep the capital improvement plan kind of the way it is. We, uh, Justin just really updated the years, kind of some of the dollars, um, and then added an additional year on to the end of the CIP. Um, as we just keep moving it from year to year. So he added year 2035 and added on, um, some additional roads there. Pinecrest Boulevard, coop road and Hank drive. Um, otherwise the, um, order of the roads from each year stayed the same. And again, just some updates to dollar amounts. But really what the board was focused on during the discussion last month was road maintenance. And so while internally staff has been working over the last few years with kind of a list of sorts for road maintenance, um, Justin sat down and looked at what this would look like looking at all the different types of roads based on the pacer rating as well as the different techniques that should be used based on the pacer ratings as well as the side of town. So Justin, if you want to kind of elaborate more on the maintenance, uh, plan that you put together. Um, we can have some discussion from there.

Sure. Uh, that one up there. So we'll start on west side of town. These are kind of broken up east and west of 55. Um, we said we're trying to get, Instead of just an all-out list, we're trying to get tools, I guess I'm gonna say more like tools in the toolbox, we're based on pager ratings, hey, here's what we can do. Trying to look at that, well, these are not all-inclusive, these were just kind of the first blush at it, looking at it, and... Getting a list together though, as we're going on this year to year, we can kind of group some of these together and move forward. No means really a priority yet. I think that'll be kind of the next step, but we just want to get these down right now. So this was kind of an area we were looking at that ultra thinly process. You know, these were five to sixes on there. These are some of the roads that could be done.

All right. Um, this one and it pertains to the CIP for year 2035 as well. Um, it lists Pinecrest from Ammons to Creekview. I believe that should be split with Kimberly.

Yes. Some of these, I didn't, that should probably be in the comments, but yeah, you are correct. I think that is some of that.

And that's on the capital improvement plan as well.

I can check that. Good catch. Okay.

Okay. That's all I had on that so far.

But that's, that's kind of some of the stuff we can do there. Those are the roads. If you guys have any questions, let me know. But this will be too. We'll also depend on how this work and on the next couple of years, we ought to really see how this is the first year doing it. So how that goes is going to have a big impact. You know that these roads would either, if we don't do ultra thinly, they get added to the back of the list on the possibly, uh, cip list for urbanization or a lot of these roads are in areas that aren't urbanized right now so that's kind of what I picked and said okay in this area right now we're not urbanizing their prop or their cul-de-sacs or something out in the middle of you know other areas are kind of isolated many of them that's kind of, that's the list there for that. Um, the second page there, this, there is a Fontana ways, one that has curb and gutter right now. Um, so that'd be a spot. Maybe we just do a mill and overlay instead of a, you know, just mill off the asphalt and put it back in to meet the curb and gutter. And so definitely one we can kind of throw in somewheres here. Not a, it probably doesn't need a full reconstruct. All these would need borings. You know, we check all that and make sure the base is right before we do some of this as well. Next page, then I kind of went, okay, what about, you know, get hit these roads early. Um, crack ceiling is kind of what you do when you have yours, you know, your sevens and some of these that have been, some of these were crack sealed prior, but they're still in good condition. So here's a list here that we could run some more crack ceiling out here just to get some maintenance on those.

It's simple crack ceiling and, and uh, some sort of a, something that makes it not sticky over the top of that and that's it. But not chip seal.

Not a chip seal. We're trying not to, we're trying to move away from chip sealing west of 55 if possible. We're trying to do that just that way. These crack sealants are just taking those cracks and getting them, it's basically preservative, try to maintain that road for as long as we can. That's kind of the point of that. We'll hold that seven there for as long as we can. And then east side, here's some where there's, we've done a lot of work out there recently, so this is not all-inclusive, but we've done a lot of chip sealing out there, so a lot of these roads are in kind of that condition where they've been done, so... this first layer here was more of a pulverizing cave though these are roads with three ratings of three or less so they're kind of past the point you're going to want to chip seal at the same time it's probably the next way to really doing it it's probably a pulverizing pave a lot of these though if you'll see in the comments you know it was Feldenkamp Road was chip sealed in 2025. There's only three houses. So there's stuff we gotta watch. Cavanaugh Road is one there's with Kaukauna as well, depending on what spot. So some of these, there's maybe opportunities to work together there. There's also Loder Bowers on there, depending on when we'd wanna try that. But that's kind of where these roads are at. So I tried to find some of those roads that were in that three range there. And then there's a small cul-de-sac Jillian Court on there as well.

Sorry, I'm having a late break. I want clarification on Feldkamp Road. That is west of Double G?

No, it's the eastern part.

Okay.

East.

The one where we replaced the culvert? Correct.

Correct. Yes. Okay. East.

Got it.

The East ends. Yep. That's my mistake there. It's a longer portion there, but that's another portion. We just chip sealed not too long ago, but it's still in a pager rating of three. There's only three houses on it. So it's kind of decisions have to be made on when to do that. Obviously. Okay. Um, okay. Then some other chip seal ones down since we've, a lot of the roads are chip sealed already, but there were some that are in that pacer ratings of four that I believe are chip sealed or five, six years ago, I want to say, but they could be done again just to preserve them as much as possible before we have to pulverize and pave them. That's in that Allison drive. Caitlin, we had Jacob court, Andrew drive.

You want to consider in that subdivision, um, to do the ultra thinly.

That's your other option there. If we would, um, we can look at that based on the borings in the, uh, yeah.

Part of the concern with the ultra thinly is if you get past a certain taser rating, the roads is that rough, the ultra thin middle, he may not do justice. Yep.

What was the target pays a rating to do the ultra thin light?

I was shooting for like fives and sixes for that. So this is one notch below it. I missed that. We'd check it out and we could also, I mean, that's one way to probably check with contractors and contractors to get their opinion, what they think. Yep. It's either kind of chip seal it again or there's, there's options. And then the last part here, there's some crack ceiling that could also be done out here. A lot of these were roads that were done, I want to say 20, 20, 21, the last five, six years. So they're, they're pays ratings of eights. Um, they could be cracked sealed though to preserve those. These were roads that were pulverized and paved on the last couple of years. So

Those are all very low traffic roads.

Yeah. And then just to crack seal them, then at least it'll keep them in that seven, eight range though for future years. I treat them now, try to preserve as much as we can.

And again, I think what this will do is it'll give the staff and the board a a good plan to look at when it comes to budgeting. Like I said, we didn't add years in here because it's gonna kind of have to wait and see what do we have available for road maintenance every budget cycle and then kind of pick and choose roads that are near to each other and what makes most sense and again what the priority is at that time from the board. So it provides you some flexibility but also gives you a snapshot of what's out there.

I think that addition to the plan is what we were looking for.

Um, so with that, we'd be looking for, um, you know, approval of both the CIP and the maintenance plan. And again, like I said, every year we'll review this, uh, review it during the budget time too. And again, really, um, especially with the maintenance, really look at that come, um, early spring, late winter, early spring, and kind of figure out what do we want to do. Typically we've been bringing you the maintenance work in January, February timeframe so that we can get that out to bid and be ready to go by the time spring breaks.

Yep.

I think it's good to take a look at both at budget time. So you're looking for approval of

Yes.

For a motion to that effect.

I make a motion to approve the capital improvement plan and road maintenance plan.

Further discussion.

It's something we're going to want to evaluate every year, but at this point we can move forward.

Good. All in favor say aye. Aye. Motion carries. Then we move on to the new business, building inspector agreement. Michael.

All right, thank you. So last month you approved an RFP to go out to search for a new building inspector. We did go out for that. We received one proposal from Ryan Geiger. He is here this evening, so if you have some questions for him, he is available. But basically, what our previous inspector was, you know, did the billing inspections, approved the permits, did the inspections. for both homes as well as smaller building projects, zoning projects and such. His agreement that we had with him was he would receive 80% of the permit fees, the town would retain 20%. Ryan's proposal is he would retain 90%, we would retain 10%, and then there's an additional $100 administrative fee every month. So I think that's fair. Um, especially when there are other companies out there that actually they charge for their time and materials basically. So, um, if we were to have received, you know, proposals like that, um, our current fee structure would not be able to cover something like that typically. So, um, I think this is fair and reasonable and, um, I actually worked with Ryan when he's in Greenville right now. I worked with Ryan there. He's a former state inspector, very knowledgeable of the field. He's actually certified for both commercial and residential, so very qualified and knowledgeable about building inspection processes. With that, staff would recommend approval of the agreement. This has been reviewed by the attorney. Like I said, Ryan is here this evening if you have any further questions for him.

Do we need to suspend the rules?

You should. I'll make a motion to suspend the rules to speak with Ryan.

I'll second that. All in favor say aye. Aye. Ryan, would you come to the podium?

A little.

Aye. Michael, would there be I think I asked you this last time, but with him here, is there a need for us to utilize his commercial building inspecting

I don't think at this time we don't see a lot of that right now. Um, there is a process that we actually have to go through to basically request the state to give up that right and give it to us. Um, I think if we had start seeing more commercial development in the future, that might be something we can look into. But at this time I don't think that's necessary.

Okay. Um, I did a quick, um, internet search and you're a busy guy.

Yeah.

says your building inspector for village of Fremont, village of Greenville, village of Greenleaf, town of Vandenbroek, town of Dale, commercial building inspector for Lincoln County.

I don't do Lincoln County. That's just on the internet from years past.

Um, building inspector for town of Winchester, town of Holland and town of Glenmore and, uh, city of O'Connor lists you as a state building inspector.

Yeah, that's just years ago as well.

Okay. So my question to you is, do you have capacity?

A lot of those municipalities are very minimal permit load. Um, so talking with Michael, I feel that it would be able to accomplish it yet. So he kind of went over the permanent volume with me and, um, I think it's doable. Yes. Okay. And I do have other local inspectors that are willing to help me out as well. Um, on that end of it too, if it needs to be through, through the business.

Okay. Questions. This is just all new construction then? No, no.

It would be any residential permits for here.

Who's doing Kimberley right now?

I think they hired MSA. I'm not 100% on that. I don't know who's doing that. I don't want to say it's MSA.

And I'm surprised that they didn't quote or propose something. Sure. is that when we had our county meetings, a lot of them talked about having them as their inspection process.

Is this something that we have to approve tonight?

We don't have an inspector right now, so I think legally we would have some issues if people start coming in for inspections that we can't legally perform or approve for permits.

Where do you live? Ryan in Appleton. Okay.

Is Simon, is this a certain term that we use?

The way that the agreement set up is that it would renew yearly automatically. Um, and both parties have the option to, um, terminate the agreement with a 90 day notice.

I just know that Linda has a lot of questions about this, so I hate, I mean, I know that she couldn't be here.

She didn't submit any questions, right?

She did not. Yeah. Like I said, if, if, if you don't make it, if you don't approve it tonight, then we go another month without an inspector and then we run into problems because we won't be able to issue permits or perform any inspections.

Well, I mean, I think there's options, but I mean, I'm not saying not to. I just, we have one person, and I know she had a lot of questions she told me, but.

Well, actually, if I'm reading the agreement correctly, you basically would have a month and a half period probationary time before 90 days before the end of the year, which we could terminate with the timing. That's an hour. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, but the way it's written,

and I had reached out to other local inspectors similar to Ryan that do this on the side as well. Um, but didn't get any response from them. So.

Okay.

The, you reached out to the inspectors that do the other municipalities around us.

There's a couple that I know of, um, that I reached out to directly.

Do you have anything else you'd like to say to us?

Not off the top of my head, no. It's only good for one year? No, it's auto-renewing.

A 90-day, either party can cancel.

Okay.

I think one of her questions for the last inspector was about the expectation of being on site when doing inspections? Sure.

How do you view that? I document all my inspections with a report. So anytime I go anywhere, it has a paper trail behind it, essentially. It's mandated by the state that we do that. So to stay in compliance with the state, it's a requirement anyway. So if someone has questions, I have documentation from every stop I make.

And are you allowed to I know you just said this, but I think she was seeing issues with people sending photos and then things being approved.

Um, so the way I look at photos, they're not meant as in all the time inspection. It's like a quick follow up. If there's an easy fix that they can easily snap a picture and show you it was done or if, you clearly can't make it in the timeframe you're allowed by statutory requirements. Um, sometimes photos are accepted then it's not as a alternative to an inspection.

My most recent experience with building inspection was when I built, um, when I put solar panels on my shop and uh, our, The former inspector said he didn't need to come out and inspect it because WPS does that. They don't care about structurally how it is, they only care electrically. And he should have checked it to make sure that it's attached properly and isn't a hazard in the wind. Things like that.

There's definitely things that an inspector looks for that the utility doesn't. They're worried about back feeding the grid is their main concern versus inspector has all the codes as far as structural and electrical behind it.

So I'm looking for a motion to approve the agreement with Ryan Geiger with RG Inspections LLC for building inspector services.

I make a motion to approve the agreement with Ryan Geiger with RG Inspection LLC for building inspector services.

I'll second that.

Is there further discussion?

I do have one question. It said the insurance shall include a million dollars coverage for general liability. Is that number set by our insurance company or by our attorneys? I mean, I'm asked to have more coverage than that for our food truck.

Yeah, it's kind of a general that standard that we use for the town. Um, and um, Ryan did indicate that he is able to get all the coverage he did me with his insurance company.

And again, is that enough?

Yeah. So previously with some other services that we were going out for, um, service for, I reached out to our insurance company, and they said that that is pretty standard for a town our size and for the types of services. Now, for example, when you get into the larger construction projects, I think sometimes there are larger insurance requirements, but for a service like this, it is acceptable.

I think in general we should review that. I mean, my insurance agent suggested that I increase mine to two million, personally.

Yeah, I can show, I can touch base with our insurance company.

When would, what would be an example of when the inspector would be held responsible if something went wrong? Like I'm just asking.

Do you have an example?

I mean, basically, the main cases I've heard is if an inspector goes and writes up a violation and doesn't follow up on it, doesn't notify the proper people, and basically throws his report over his shoulder and walks away from it, and there's no follow-up. Otherwise, I mean, typically it's homeowners and the contractors that install the work. Um, but our main thing, as long as we notify the proper people, have the documentation and then try to follow up on it. Um, I haven't seen many cases that go on that way.

What an example of me. I'm just thinking of historically that if you signed off on something, but we're never actually on site and then something went wrong, would that be something that potentially, I mean, if you said you were on site,

then I would say that would definitely be a liability.

Um, but yeah, I would like to see if they agree. Our insurance company that a million dollars coverage is enough.

Yep. I could ask them.

Okay. All in favor of the motion. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ryan. Um, then we move on to a website update.

Michael. All right. Thank you. Um, and so as part of this website update, the main purpose started with ADA compliance. Um, there's some federal regulations that are out there that require us all municipalities large and small to be compliant with our electronic media, website, social media, um, video recordings, et cetera. Um, And so we have until, because we are a community under 50,000, we have until April of 28 to comply with this. Communities that are over 50,000 have until April of next year to comply with this. And so we've been working with our website company, Granicus, who also oversees We work with them on our videoing and our agenda and minutes, et cetera. And so I actually have Brittany here from Granicus who has a short presentation to give you, um, to kind of talk about this. So you kind of understand what's going on. So I guess we'd be looking for a motion to suspend the rules, allow her to speak.

I'll make a motion to suspend the rules for her to speak.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, Brittany.

All right. Well, thank you for having me tonight and for the opportunity to speak with you. My name is Brittany Greer. I'm an account executive at Granicus. As mentioned, we're the current provider of website solutions as well as agenda and meeting management, including video streaming. I've been working with your administrator, Michael, and some other staff over the last several months now. I'm here tonight really just to speak to the recommended path that we've aligned on, answer any questions that you may have as you take these into consideration for the 2027 budget. So feel free to stop me if at any point you really want to ask a question, totally fine with that. So going to the next slide, just at a high level kind of introduction, I'll be touching on a strategic website redesign project as well as enabling closed captioning for the public meetings that are currently streamed live and on demand. So with the website, it's the more involved of the two, the bigger undertaking for sure. We're focused on accessibility, digital service delivery, making information and services easier to find and interact with, and then proper governance and compliance. Whereas with the video for the public meeting, again, both live and on demand, we're updating some aging hardware, which also comes with some enhancements, both for the resident and staff, but really aimed at enabling that closed captioning and improving equal access. So both of these initiatives really are aimed at reducing manual work for staff, making information and services more accessible, and then improving transparency and communications overall. But of course, reducing legal risk and compliance risk is a critical piece. So on the next slide, I just wanted to take a quick moment around the compliance piece. So as Michael just mentioned, these conversations really were initially sparked and given urgency in response to the DOJ's ruling that set those new standards for accessibility. So that does require all state and local governments to meet WCAG 2.1 level AA, standards going forward, given the deadlines that he had just mentioned. For those not super familiar with it, simply put, there's a lot that goes into it, but ADA compliance in the digital world means making sure that every resident, including those with disability, can access government information, services, public meetings, just online. So just as a city hall needs a ramp or accessible entrances, websites, documents, forms, videos, images, all of those need to be accessible as well.

I have a question. Yes. I went back to look at some of our videos. Normally I don't because I'm there, right? But I was surprised that closed captioning isn't already there. I mean, for example, when we live stream from our church, it's automatic. Why is it not automatic with these videos?

Currently it has to do with the the encoder that we're currently using. So the there is an option. It's a live human captioning is the only option right now, which is a truly alive human typing away, which is a much more costly versus an automated closed captioning.

So, okay, so say that again. Your proposal then is to use an automated closed captioning?

Correct. And that just requires, it's the hardware, so the streaming device, the hardware itself, just needs to be updated. It's on an aging, more of a legacy encoder for video streaming.

So what you're using is... not capable of closed caption currently, even though Facebook and YouTube are.

Correct, yes. There's certain things going on with accuracy rates and things under the guidelines as well that we have to be mindful of, but yes. Okay. Um, it's kind of that next piece. Um, I think, you know, ADA compliance aside, a lot of these things, a lot of the parts of the conversation that we're having when we're talking about ADA compliance, uh, is really helpful to every resident. So, uh, there was comment made just earlier in this meeting. How about, you know, it's frustrating when you can't go on, find what you're looking for, be able to complete that form online or request that service. Um, and to have closed captioning when you can't, and you want to be able to know what's going on in a meeting. So I think all of these things really apply. We want things to be easy to find, easy to understand and easy to use. So resident access I think is a more overarching kind of theme, not just the compliance driven. And then last thing, that long-term governance. We talked about different approaches that an agency can take here when it comes to ADA compliance, meeting that deadline. And I think ultimately we agreed that like band-aids and quick fixes were not gonna be the answer and not gonna set the tone up for long-term success. A, reaching ADA compliance isn't something that you reach, you pass that finish line and you're done. It's ongoing maintenance, ongoing effort, ongoing governance to be able to maintain ADA compliance. It's every piece of content that you create every user that's creating that content. So it's an ongoing effort and a shared effort. We are, of course, doing our pieces on the back end of product and design. The one thing a vendor can't control is the content that's created. So I appreciated the moment where it was kind of take a step back. If we're going to have to put in the work and, you know, fixing all these little instances, why not take a look at that bigger picture strategy, address some of the complaints and the issues that people have had with the website, and put in some of that governance. So how can we make sure that we get to this point? How is the governance systems in place to prevent ADA compliance from getting out of hand again? Perfect. So these next couple of slides are going to really focus on the website side of things. Currently the CMS that you're on is an older CMS. It's still very much prevalent out there, but it's a lot less service forward. So many agencies are kind of making that move. One major difference is the CMS was built mobile first rather than just mobile forward. All of this design was done, you know, pre-pandemic and things. A lot has changed since then. I think it's, you know, clear mobile devices are the go-to. So having that accessibility from any device, looking at content, you know, it's normal. A lot of agencies deal with this, but content gets built up over time. You have staff turnover, people create different versions of things. There's duplicate out there and it can kind of get out of hand. So Just understanding that content sprawl on document hygiene was an issue. And then PDF and form burden. This one will not be entirely what you'll be working on with Granicus. It can apply maybe permitting software, things like that. But we took a look at what kind of forms are out there in PDF form, which are ADA compliance red flags that can be turned into web pages, digital forms, or other more accessible means. Even the agendas, we were already kind of taking care of some of those things. So we changed those to HTML format instead of PDF form. not to get in the weeds. And then finally, just board level communication needs and communication in general. So I've seen it. You have a lot of content out there that information is somewhere. How can we make sure that we're serving it up, putting those top tests, figuring out the navigation so that residents do find what they're looking for, but also the information that you're wanting to push. When you have surveys and things out here, how can we make sure that we're delivering those, getting people informed about them? And a lot of that can be done when we think about information architecture and design. well. So just a quick highlights again service oriented and mobile first so designed for the mobile we we put a lot of work our team does a fantastic job going over data with you talking through that content rationalization what needs to move over and then that information architect what makes sense to you what are the best practices Granicus only works with governments and So we can use a lot of the data and insights that we've gleaned and then paired with how well you know the community to make sure some of those top tasks are important and then that they can change too. So everything on this website, you have complete access and control over to the design, a big deviation from historical CMSs for all companies, including Granicus, so that you can say relevant, adaptable, change things for the season, whatever's most important during that time. And then the next slide. The search. I don't know what took companies so long to figure out search, especially for government websites, but it has been awful, and that's probably my favorite changeover in the new system. We actually have a built-in government thesaurus, if you will, based on resident speak kind of translated to government, so sometimes there's a difference in that language. Someone types in waste, it understands it's garbage, it's predictive search, and on the back end, you also can tell what people are searching, what's not delivering responses, and you can tweak it even further, which can be really helpful, again, when there's certain terms and things within the community that Granicus wouldn't have built in the back end. So again, getting people to what they need a little bit quicker. And then this slide, so there's some back end tools that are extremely important when I keep saying governance. One of them is the accessibility checker. So staff that's creating content on the back end, I think it's great when we have a decentralized kind of management system where departments and people kind of own their content or out there doing it, but it runs the risk of accessibility compliance getting out of hand. So this can be turned on to be required to run so that when someone's doing content, it will tell them if they've passed, if there's errors, those are hyperlinks where they can click in and say, okay, I didn't put alt text describing the image on that one and be able to do that. There's also things like deactivate, schedule a deactivate, schedule a review of a page, Some of those tools that we talked about where that content is getting duplicated or it's out of date. So just some helpful kind of tools like that to ensure that even if there's staff turnover, like there always is, someone's getting notified, hey, this page needs to be reviewed. It's got 2025 fee schedules, whatever it may be, just to make sure things are relevant. And the whole gamut of permissions, controls, page version control, all of those on the backend to help with that ongoing maintenance. And this just kind of summarizes it. The county is an incredible partner of ours, really, actually. They were just at our annual conference, did a speaking engagement. They have more than just our website, a lot of tools kind of built in. So I just wanted to highlight that if anyone's interested. I can definitely pass along contact information for some references there in the communications and administration. But this just kind of summarizes what I just went over. Again, data-driven and really focused on that content governance, creating the accessibility today, but making sure that can carry on. And then first and foremost, really making sure we're connecting residents with what they're looking for. And then this one I don't have so many slides on. Public meetings. So closed captioning is required by the DOJ under the new standards. Again, we went through kind of the two options that we had with the live human being the only option on the current encoder. So it would require an encoder upgrade to what we call livecast. So if you see that mentioned anywhere, that's the name of the encoder. There are some additional benefits. One of it based, it's a cloud-based solution, but now it is web-based. So the person is not held to a certain computer where that program's downloaded. Someone could actually control the meeting from a different room if they wanted. There's pause. some features like that and then the AI closed captioning so we'd be enabling that 720p it's a little bit higher quality and there's also some additional health monitoring as well as simulcast options so if you did want to cast to the website as well as YouTube and Facebook you could be doing all of those at once just to further increase the number of channels and reach more people And just to highlight, we always talk about what are the greater priorities and goals with any community that we're working in. So we did talk about where this aligns. I'll call out just a couple, is that again, cleaner governance, workflows, content ownership, just having some of those systems in place for people that are here today and in the future. Also fiscal responsibility. So like I mentioned, we went through a couple of different ways. There can be the piecemeal kind of option where we get an audit done. You find out every red flag from ADA compliance and then you retroactively fix those. Again, that's not going to help with the greater challenges or goals that you all have for your website or that kind of residents are expecting, nor does it put that governance in place. And then for community development engagement, again, just the communication, getting information, service pathways, helping guide. We'll talk a lot about wayfinding during that implementation phase. Like I said, that's that for that one. And then I believe that Michael provided already cost details. I did highlight them here with some additional details about implementation. So for a website, we like to say 9 to 12 months. I've seen it done a little shorter. I've seen it take longer. It really depends mostly on the availability of your staff, how quickly we can move through things. But we do like to take the time, and it does require lift from you all, input in those early phases. in order to get that design right, but also that information, what's coming over. So we've got the one-time fees as well as the increase in annual. I'm happy to talk through that process. And then the final slide is the meeting and closed captioning. This one can be implemented a lot quicker. And the one-time fees, again, are really for the hardware setup and shipping of the video components. And this was just my final recap, so I had to get it all into one. I feel like I probably talked fast and a lot there, so definitely open to questions.

So if you said, when I'm answering my questions about closed captioning needing a different translator, not sure what you... Encoder. Encoder. Isn't that system-wide?

Sorry, I don't know if I understand.

Is there a separate encoder for the town of Buchanan? Or is it for Granicus?

No, there's an encoder that's actually here in like an equipment rack. I don't know exactly where.

Yeah, back in the room there. Okay.

It's the design, the 25,879, I think I saw, is the... It's for the current website design that you're saying that's like nine months, depends on how. Is that billed as like a bucket of hours that you're like pulling from that you're expecting for it to take? So that could necessarily go up or you're saying that would be the price no matter what?

Yep, that's a fixed cost. So as many hours as it takes, we've accounted for any of that. So yeah, it wouldn't change unless there was like something crazy custom that you wanted us to create, which I wouldn't expect, but that's the only time we see that.

Is just based on that timeline there, if we did wait and make a decision and put this in the 2027 budget, that would still give you time to have everything done by the April 26, 2028 deadline.

Correct. Yep.

Okay.

Yeah. The plan is if you're comfortable moving forward with, you know, at least giving approval tonight, we would put this in, we would budget this for 2027. And then, um, I spoke with Brittany and I met this afternoon. We wouldn't start this project until January of next year. Uh, potentially there's room to start in December, but we wouldn't make any first payments, uh, until 2027. Okay.

And you, in your comments, you said something about having the monthly increase start potentially after the work is done.

Correct. So Brittany and I did discuss that. She's going to go back to her leadership and ask about that. Um, you know, my, my position was I don't feel we should be paying the new annual upgraded fee until the work is done and the website is implemented. Um, you know, so, um, I said, you know, the plan is to pay for this in 2027 completed in 2027. You know, if we have to pay a little more upfront than what was initially proposed, you know, I'll be willing to do that if we can get that annual fee not to start until the website's been implemented. Yeah.

Have we reached out to any other companies to get proposals for this?

Um, we have not mostly because we're in a current contract with Granicus. Um, so if we were to do that, we would potentially have to probably pay out the rest of the contract.

When, how long is our contract?

Um, we just renewed it recently. I think it's another four years or so for three or four years.

Further questions, Tom?

No, I think I have what I need mentally.

I was expecting a lot from you.

All the yelling that I took last week has beaten it out of me.

Are you able to put together, so like you have the current website, then current videos, and then proposed, and then Can you put all the new pricing on one document with the old pricing so we can see what the total fees are gonna be? Is it because I'm seeing some is monthly and some is annually?

I don't know where the monthly is coming in. Typically, unless it's requested, it would be an annual billing. The one-time fees standard, they come out as payment milestones of 40, 30, 30, but we do have flexibility on billing terms of those one-time fees, so changing payment milestones, pushing upon completion, whatever that may look like.

Yeah, so each contract is an annual fee. Um, so we could definitely put something together to show that in one document, kind of be able to compare what we're, we're currently paying annually 4,919.

Is that correct? And the proposed for the video is a 63, but then the new subscription fees, I guess there's subscription fees on all of them.

Correct. There's an annual fee every year for using the service or product.

Right. For the website, it's hosting, security. Because we are a public sector, it has security and data protection and things. But the hosting of a website is typical for the annual maintenance.

But that would include updated ADA compliance in the updated... that wouldn't be a separate every time there's a big ADA change, there's another fee to get caught up. Right.

Right, okay.

And then those fees increase 5% per year?

That is what's quoted currently, yep.

When and how does that get reviewed?

So it'd be at the end of the contract term. So if that was five years, we also can do three years or add three years, two years optional. There's different options there, but it would be at the end of that contract term that we would read, discuss or reset. And that can change too, if you're doing another multi-year or it would just go into like an auto year to year. If you didn't choose to do another multi-year.

Did I read, trying to flip back and forth. Year one is, And then year two is 7,756. I don't know, I'm all over it. There's numbers everywhere, I guess.

I can't tell, are you seeing the quote documents? Is that what we're?

So I'll pull up the website proposal.

Yes, you'll see the terminating subscription that was that first box. That's the current website. And I apologize. You can kind of ignore the prorated fee. That will change depending on when we sign the contract. So if there is an unused portion of your current subscription, so you pay an annual fee for your current website, and we make an amendment during that year in the middle, you get credited back for any unused portion. That credit can be applied to the new. So that changes.

We're not going to do any of that prorated stuff, right? You said because we're not starting until January.

Well, we, we, we're still in the middle of a contract year. I think our, I forget what, I forget what our current contract year is. We have, we have three different products with Granicus and they're all, their annual contract renewal is all at different times of the year. I think the website is April. Yeah, that sounds about right. So we would be paying, you know, theoretically, like I said, I've requested that we don't pay this new, um, annual fee for the new website until it's implemented. So again, Brittany is going to go back and check with her leadership if that, see if that's acceptable. Um, so we, you know, we've already paid the bill for this year through April at least of next year. Um, so depending on what that timing looks like for implementation, my hope would be is that we continue paying the current, you know, website fee based on the updated year contract of the contract. And we wouldn't pay that new fee until it gets going. So then if, you know, we paid the whatever it might be next year and then we start the new service, they would credit us for what we didn't pay in the old contract. And then,

Again, or just prorate new annual fee to the number of months within the fiscal term of the contract.

So what contract is four years left? But he just said they all are different.

They are all different and I can follow up with that. I don't have it.

Cause right now the different contracts we have is one for the website, one for the video streaming and then one for the minutes and agendas program. So, and they all work together, right? So obviously the minutes and agendas program work together with the streaming. They kind of go hand in hand. Um, obviously you could have a separate company do the website and still have the integration of the video streaming and minutes and agendas program. But, um, they all really work together. Um, it, you know, is there an option? Could you look at a different company? Yes, you could. Um, but that would mean you would get rid of, Granicus all together potentially and then you wouldn't have the video streaming that we have. We wouldn't have the meeting and agendas program that we use to develop and the agendas and minutes efficiently that we do and have it as transparent as we have right now.

Just saying if we used another company to design our website, we wouldn't be able to use you?

That's not my position. That'd be up to Tom. Would we be able to use the video

like the minutes and agenda portion of it.

Yes, you can still use it. We could iframe it into a different website. It shouldn't be a huge difference from that perspective for the website. Obviously, we have a really smooth integration, but I think it can look fine on another CMS.

Is there any pricing discount for having all of the contracts through you that we would lose if we did go another direction?

Let me have to double check if there was any. My instinct says no because they were on different contracts, but let me double check. But my instinct says no because they were each contract different. Usually they'd be on one if we did it that way.

I just think, and I've built websites before and I built a CRM from scratch, so I understand the cost that goes into it. It's just at $25,000, $26,000, I just don't know if it's worth us potentially getting a second estimate. because I know we can obviously, like they said, we can use a different company if, if it came out to be something where we saved a significant amount of money.

I mean, at this point, Michael, you need to know if we should budget money for, I mean, we should definitely budget money. And so if we say that and say, kick the tires elsewhere, is that

I mean, if you'd like me to look at that, I definitely can. Um, like I said, I wouldn't, I told, and I told her and I said, I wouldn't be signing the contract until, you know, after the budget's been approved. So I know that the money is there and you're comfortable moving forward with it. So, um, I guess if you'd like me to do some further research, um, you definitely can. Um, you know, like I said, I think that, the options right now would be you could potentially go with a different website designer. Um, but if you want to continue with the meetings and agendas program and then, you know, the, the streaming with the closed captioning, those would have to be, those would stay together. Right. Um, you know, I mean potentially you could scrap all three contracts, but again, what does that cost to get out of those contracts? Right.

So, well, but you're saying the website contract is up in April.

We just have annual renewal, like every year you get a new invoice. So that's like the cutoff, like when we make amendments and things, but there's like a master contract that's a multi-year.

It looks like it runs through the 6th of April, 2030. Right. And if we stop that one in 2027... Looks like we'd probably be on the hook for about $15,000 worth of things just to pay someone to not host the website. So I don't know that that makes any sense.

I just think it doesn't make sense to only get, I mean, for the website design.

Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I think that makes sense.

Yeah, and when we started down this path, my focus was on ADA compliance. And as we started talking more about it, Like Brittany explained, could you put a bandaid on this? Yes, but there are bigger issues at play with just the website in general. So, um, at that point, because we had so many other components tied together with Granicus, now if we just had Granicus as the only thing right with the website, um, I would've looked further, got some more numbers. But I'm more than happy to look at other companies to see what's out there and what they can do. Bottom line is we need to budget to do the work in 27. Whether that's with Granicus or somebody else, obviously that's up to you as the board. So if you'd like me to do some further research, I can see what I can put together, at least get some numbers before the next meeting.

I mean, that would be my preference. I have no reason to think Granicus would do a poor job. I just don't know what I don't know. And having options isn't going to hurt particularly since the website is how people interact with the town most of the time. And anything going wrong there means we're idiots, right? Those are separate things.

And then my only recommendation is just that ADA compliance piece, which I think he's getting at to making sure any partner you work with is understanding of that because, you know, one penalty is costly there. So just from a public sector perspective, but definitely. Thank you. Thank you all. I appreciate it.

Thank you. So, Michael, what would you... like from us now?

Uh, we don't need any action tonight. Um, if you want to just hold off on this, I will work on seeing about getting what I can get as far as just some basic numbers from some other companies and then we can bring this back at the next meeting. Um, depending on where things lie, then you can give me some direction. You know, if you say, Hey, we're just gonna stick with grant gifts, that's fine, let's move forward. Or if you are seeing something based on what I find, then you can tell me otherwise and say, maybe we should go down this path and still budget money in the budget, but then work on separate contracts depending on what your pleasure is.

we need clarity from Granicus as well at our next meeting on whether, um, we will be billed after, you know, on the improvements after implementing and, uh, clarity on what the terms are as far as, um, termination or time of each contract. And perhaps a different proposal on whatever variation, right? That would fit better with a website designer by another company. All right. Okay. Thanks. Good. And that brings us to the end of the open session agenda. We then are looking to go to closed session and would you do the honors Tom? Sure.

Uh, I moved to move to closed session pursuant to section 19.8 five sub one sub C of the Wisconsin state statutes. considering employment, promotion, compensation, or performance evaluation data of any public employee over which the governmental body has jurisdiction or exercises responsibility. The board will then reconvene into open session under section 19.85 sub two of the Wisconsin State Statutes and act with appropriate clerk treasurer recruitment.

That is a motion, looking for a second.

I'll second.

All in favor say aye. No, no, no. Oh, roll call, sorry.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Aye. Motion carries. We are moving to closed session. Thank you all.

All right, how are you doing? Huh? Living the dream?

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