Board of Public Works - Regular Meeting

All right. Welcome, everyone.

I am calling to order the Utilities Committee for Tuesday, August 11th.

Please rise and join me for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you all. Please be seated. Roll call of membership. We are all in attendance. Let's start with Alder Crote, who is joining us virtually. Go ahead and introduce yourself.

Hello, Chris Crote, Alderman District 14.

Thank you. And we'll continue from my left.

A. Wolf, District 12.

Brad Meltzer, District 2.

Patrick Hayden, District 7. Alex Schultz, District 9.

Thank you all. We now need approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. We have two sets of minutes, 26-1037 to approve the July 7th Utilities Committee meeting minutes. Motion to approve. And 26-1038 for July 15th, the Special Utilities Committee meeting minutes. Are we okay with taking up both of these items at the same time? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstaining? There are none. Those minutes are both approved.

We do not have any public hearings or appearances today. And we have one action item.

26-1039, approved contract amendment number one for engineering construction services contract with Donahue and Associates Incorporated as part of utilities department network system upgrades project in the amount not to exceed $169,445. Move to approve.

Second.

All right. We have a motion and a second. Would someone from staff like to introduce the item?

No, I don't think you have the record.

Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm so sorry. Okay, so the minutes that we approved were actually the August 19th Special Utilities Committee meeting minutes. And our one action item is request to approve resolution number 2026-09, 2026 Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Urban Forestry Catastrophic Storm Grant Resolution. That makes a lot more sense. This was the one that I was more prepared for. All right.

Motion to approve that one. Second.

Okay, we have a motion and a second. Director Youngworth. Go ahead.

Thank you. So this grant, our forestry team was made aware of from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It is a catastrophic storm grant that is available for us to apply for. The dollar amount can be anywhere from, I believe it's $4,000 to $50,000. And we will be submitting this to hopefully replace some trees that came down during the storm event. They open this up for 60 days only after a catastrophic event such as this, after the tornado. So this is one that is timely and of course we want to get on and capture if we can. October 1st is the deadline for this. And you can actually request a 50% reimbursement of costs that you're approved for in advance. There are some nuances along with this, but generally speaking, hopefully there is some funding there that we're able to capture to help replant some of our 260 trees that came down during the tornado. So we're going to do what we can to recapture that.

Thank you. I'm glad this opportunity is out there. And Alder Schultz.

Yeah, just a couple questions. One, are we expecting to go for the full grant amount to cover those costs? And then second question would be, is there a cap to the number of applicants, municipalities that can apply on that cycle? In other words, if we've got nine municipalities that are affected by it, does our application affect what they might be granted, or is there individual dollar amounts based on what each municipality is asking for?

We don't have full perspective on the full amount being allocated or what they have set aside budgetarily for this It basically is tied to the governor declaring that state of emergency And then I presume that there's some funds that are able to be pulled on as a part of that process It is it is not for private property owners it is really only for municipalities so that narrows it down and I presume they're going to verify the area once those applications are submitted if they fit the criteria, being an impacted area from the catastrophic storm that was declared a state of emergency. So I don't have full perspective on how they operate the program. It's infrequent that this opportunity arises.

Certainly.

But it's there, and we're going to try and capture the maximum amount that we can.

Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Seeing none, let's go ahead and vote. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed or abstaining are none. That is recommended for approval, 5-0. Moving down, we have two information items. Or sorry, we do not. I was looking at the wrong agenda again. We do not have any information items. So thank you all for taking the time to take up this very timely item. And we can move along to item number eight.

Motion to adjourn. Second.

All right, we have a motion and a second to adjourn. All in favor say aye. Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you all very much.