Shoreline Committee — Minutes

Town of Onalaska Shoreline Committee Meeting Tuesday, July 29, 2025 The Shoreline Committee meeting was called to order at 7:04 pm, Tuesday, July 29, 2025 by Chair Marcou at the Town of Onalaska Town Hall, with a publicly-noticed Zoom teleconference call option. Members attending: Steve Wage, Luke Marcou and Marc Schultz inperson, with Fritz Funk attending by Zoom. Also attending in person were Ashley Kiley with Robin Schmidt remote. Agenda: Motion to approve the agenda by Marc Schultz, seconded by Steve Wage, passed unanimously. Minutes: Motion to approve the minutes of the June 24, 2025 meeting by Marc Schultz, seconded by Steve Wage, passed unanimously. Public Comment: Robin Schmidt commented that the Town should consider both the long term and short term implications to changing lease. The town’s management of the lease is efficient, cost effective and provides consistency of management. The Town is doing a great job of managing the boat landings. Reverting to US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) management of individual leases would be detrimental to the Town’s purposes, very costly to individuals and to USACE. Discussion and possible action making recommendation to Town Board regarding parking area striping at boat landing. Frank Fogel made a motion to recommend yellow striping on the asphalt and curb areas of the no- parking area near the boat ramps used for trailer turnaround. Marc Schultz seconded the motion. Discussion centered on the need to provide more obvious notification of the no-parking zone. Motion passed unanimously. Discussion and possible action making recommendation to Town Board regarding donation boxes at boat landings. Discussion centered around the need to provide better informational signage and visibility for the donation boxes at both Fred Funk and Mosey Landing. Ashley Kiley mentioned that USACE has "iron ranger" boxes that might be available, which have dual lockboxes so that one can be removed and securely counted off the premises. Frank Fogel made a motion to defer discussion to a later date when more information about USACE lockboxes was available and for the committee to develop ideas for the signage. Marc Schultz seconded the motion, which passed unanimously. Discussion and possible action making recommendation to Town Board regarding development of inspection process relating to land leased from ACOE as related to Shoreline Structure permitting including but not limited to fee structure and contracting for an inspector. Discussion centered around itemizing costs for the inspection process, splitting administrative costs from costlier inspection costs and the time involved to inspect each location. USACE intends to do their inspection during the first or second week of September and is willing to accommodate a Shoreline Committee member or two. Marc Schultz made a motion to have a couple committee members work further on the topic and bring the results back to the next Shoreline Committee meeting. Steve Wage seconded the motion, which passed unanimously. Review of ACOE shoreline lease with Town of Onalaska. As the committee reviewed a copy of the provided lease agreement, Marc Schultz noted that the committee needs to have a better understanding of Exhibit D. Ashley Kiley clarified that USACE expects an annually-updated operational plan. She noted that “AirBNB” style use of a dock was acceptable unless the owner was specifically making money off of the dock. No action was taken on this item. Review of shoreline ordinance. The committee was not provided with a copy of the current shoreline ordinance as passed by the Town Board and notes that there is uncertainty about what the Town actually adopted that is not reflected on the Town’s website. No action taken. Discussion regarding draft of revised shoreline operation plan. The committee noted that this agenda item depends on developing the plans for an inspection process and revisions to the permit process for next year. The operational plan does need updating. No action taken. Discussion and possible action making recommendation to Town Board relating to request for Ordinance Approval regarding slow no wake zone on Lake Onalaska. Marc Schultz made a motion to advise town board that it would be in the public interest to have an identical ordinance to the Town of Campbell. Steve Wage seconded the motion. It was noted that State regulations or statutes require a majority of the local units of government surrounding a lake to adopt identical ordinances for slow no wake zones to be enacted, even if the slow no wake zone is only in one of the local units of government’s boundaries. Motion passed unanimously. Update from Lake Onalaska Lake and Rehabilitation District. Lake District chair Marc Schultz reported that the Lake District is looking at tax for Lake District members for weedcutting and other projects. La Crosse County has been providing some of the funds for projects on Lake Onalaska, but is requiring that Lake Districts tax their members in order to continue to provide some of the support. The County supports Lake Neshonoc in this manner also, and the Lake Neshonoc District has had a tax for many years. The Lake District Annual meeting will be September 3, where members will vote on the tax. Adjournment. Motion to adjourn made by Marc Schultz, seconded by Steve Wage. The meeting was adjourned at 9:03pm Submitted by Fritz Funk, secretary.