6-22-26 Village Board Meeting — Minutes

Village Board Meeting Minutes June 22, 2026 On June 22, 2026, President Mike Brusberg called the Village Board meeting of the Village of Brooklyn to order at 6:30 p.m. Trustees present were Frank Seitler, Christian Allen, Mike Gehrmann, Todd Klahn, and David Berland. Trustee Jake Bachim was absent. Also present were Kevin Visel, and Clerk-Treasurer Linda Kuhlman. Public Comments - Gehrmann was at public works and got a tour of the treatment plant, and as a facility manager of a pharmaceutical company he was beyond impressed with how its run. We have four public works people in this town and the quality of what they’re doing is amazing. Shout out to public works building and the way its run is exceptional. Allen agrees, a lot of great equipment and using of software. President’s report – Brusberg stated he spoke with Brad from O&A to walk through right of second refusal on the parcel. It was a really good discussion. Brusberg is going to do a tour of their building. He also spoke with Jason Marshall last week, but he had not talked with Ronek. He asked him to do that in the next two weeks, and Brusberg, Allen and Spilde will talk to him after that. Brusberg will reach out next week. Allen made a motion to approve minutes from June 8. Klahn seconded. Motion carried. Gehrmann abstained. Broker – Acres Ltd – Kevin Visel said his plan is to put a sign out on the property and develop a flyer to be shared with anyone who has interest. If we have anything to put in flyer, let him know; otherwise, he’ll put it together. If sold under right of first or second refusal, he would still get commission. Seitler suggested changing language about parcels being under rights of refusal. Klahn agreed. Kuhlman asked about confirming the price per acre. Allen said the other parcels are listed at $163,350, $3.75 for 1-5 acres and 6-10 is $3.50. Let’s make it $164,000. Brusberg asked what he’s seeing for pricing in other areas. Visel said around Madison it’s $7 and higher, sometimes above $10 a square foot. Around here it’s a little more complicated. Stoughton had some land a little higher than $4/square foot. He thinks around $4 is good in this area. The contract is good for a year. Brusberg made a motion to move forward with hiring Kevin Visel for sale of remainder of business park parcels with amendments as discussed. Klahn seconded. Motion carried. Capital projects – Brusberg asked for top 3-5 items from board members. Gehrmann asked about backup power for the village hall building, do we need it? Klahn said we have a generator, but it can’t hook up to this building. It can hook up to community building, sewer plant and pumps. Seitler asked if we should look at that, but he doesn’t think this building should be without power. Klahn is an equipment guy and would like to trade the loader and keep it upgraded. It’s heavily used for snowplowing, and we can take advantage of municipal discounts. All board members agreed. Allen said one of the ones most needed is the water lines, can they start doing an allocation for that and put money in annually. The statistics were not good. 49% of the pipes are over 70 years old. Klahn said we haven’t done it before because sewer rates are high. Discussion on other sewer/street work. Klahn said sidewalks would fit in there as well. Berland said there’s a lot we have to do. Brusberg said we don’t have a lot of funds, either. Klahn would like to redo the kitchen in the community center, but we don’t get enough on our return, unless we get a donation. Brusberg said we need to start with how to increase revenue to make it more sustainable. Seitler said he is working on that. Brusberg said if we get donations and increase the top line, what does it allow us to do to make it more sustaining. Allen, there’s a fourth one where it’s not necessarily the case that the building should be self- sufficient, but also calling it a community building makes it a community thing, and it doesn’t need to be a money-marker but make it an asset for people to utilize. Gehrmann would like to fix things so it can be used for more local community use, if people would use it with a new kitchen and village members use it for different things. Kuhlman mentioned we’ll be on a call Monday morning about Highway 104 future work. Brusberg also for the community building, people trade appliances out frequently from homes, so there’s a possible optionality there, depending on how we advertise the rebranding of the community building, but that’s a later date thing to think about. Berland said we’re carrying a large liability on the community building, but the reality is it’s always going to produce a loss, and is the community building worth having at the cost we pay for it. He’s not suggesting we do anything right now, but should we invest so much in it. Finance committee meeting will be soon to discuss these issues. Historical Society – Kuhlman said the Historical Society would like to paint the front door, the interior and put in new carpet. Berland suggested they share paint type and color and will they do the upkeep if it’s needed and maintain it Klahn is fine with them painting if we’re going to let them upgrade it. Brusberg suggested we watch 12-month electric and water use that we might encounter. Klahn made a motion to allow the historical society to do the upgrades they asked for. Gehrmann seconded. Motion carried. Strand Task Order for the wastewater treatment plant upgrade design costs of $370,000 – Brusberg made a motion to approve the task order #2601. Gehrmann seconded. Kuhlman said the funds will be included in the ultimate loan for the project. Motion carried. Gehrmann and Brusberg reviewed and didn’t see issues with the bills. Gehrmann made a motion to approve the bills as presented. Klahn seconded. Motion carried. Public Works/Utilities/EM - Allen reported they put a bid out to many contractors for the fence by Legion Park, and they received two bids. Allen said public works committee recommends the lower one, which is under $7,000, for the fence, with the owner adjacent to put in a gate at his expense. Klahn seconded the motion. Allen said they’re not replacing, just extending. Klahn said it’s an old farm fence on the majority of the area, and the brush had overwhelmed it. It’s been cleaned out and the ball diamond is in front of his place. Motion carried. Allen said the dry hydrant on Lincoln Street was pulled out. Klahn said it used to keep full when we had all the flooding and huge issues, but they’ve been keeping it lower by pumping. Our needs have changed since it was put in. Klahn talked about the loader. It’s more difficult to change brands of loader. It would be nice to get more bids, but with the number of attachments we have for the loader, there are just enough differences in hookups that makes it difficult to get the other ones. We have a Case loader, and there’s nothing wrong with the Case, but it would be nice to get more bids, but it’s hard with the attachments. Allen had a report on Dumpster Days which was slightly higher this year. Klahn said they removed a building out front of public works, and so it was a little higher. If we take that out, it would be about the same as other years. Klahn heard good things, so he thanked Berland for doing it. Klahn said the last six months to a year, we’ve been testing the temperature of the affluent coming into the river, and it’s been too high, but there’s a new directive that we can test the incoming temp and the past temp of the creek and if it’s not changing from input to output, that we’re going to fall within and won’t have to worry about cooling down the affluent. That’s what the new work study is. Berland said we figured that was going to be the case. Gehrmann added even if it doesn’t pass, no one knows what the fix will be. Klahn said Spilde does a good job, and so DNR throws all this stuff at us. Kuhlman stated we have replaced 490 out of 613 meters in the village, so about 80% of meters can be read in the clerk’s office by the tower. Brusberg thanked Hollis and public works for getting basketball hoops replaced in the community building and Smithfield Park. Allen thanked Brusberg for donating the money. Clerk’s report – Food truck night in June was a cold and windy night. We had three trucks lined up, but Jolly Frog cancelled due to a gas connection problem, and the other truck had a problem with their door falling off. We had the pizza truck that sold 65 pizzas by 7 p.m., and the ice cream truck, and we had over 100 people there. Next month we have Jolly Frog, Curd Girls, and a beverage truck. We received a letter from IRS that most of our employment taxes were late by a week, but in reviewing, the IRS had our payroll date off by a week. We’ve called them, and the rep found the error but she couldn’t change it on her system. We sent a letter confirming what she found. V. Olson is looking at the new ADA compliance rules for website and Facebook. Berland can help. The Red Cross asked if they can use the building for a blood drive on July 15 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Kuhlman attended a Green County Development Corporation meeting, and we will be meeting with Olivia Otte in the next few weeks. GCDC will be raising rates next year. Otte is going to meet with O&A to get hiring stats. They do a lot of work for Green County. Assessment letters should be sent out by the end of the week to everyone, due to the reassessment. We’ve been trying to get information out to everyone. Green County will be affected over the next three years because of the new jail. Representative Pocan’s office is coming here on July 14. July 13 meeting of the board will be at 7 p.m. due to the PZ meeting. Northern Metal is coming in with building plans, and a builder on Second Street wants to talk about building. Week of July 6 has an ordinance meeting and finance meeting and recreation meeting. Fire/EMS District – Brusberg said they met last Wednesday. The McMann study, they are willing to come and do interviews of all elected officials. It’s optional to go to the next meeting on July 15. UTV Trailer, the association is willing to replace the existing trailer. They’re mostly worried about tires aging and weight capacity. The association will pay for it, and the funds from the sale of existing trailer will go back to the association. The board was supportive of that. Employee manual, they made a few adjustments and passed it. They used the Village template for that. Tender, there’s really no major update. We applied for a grant from Senator Baldwin’s office, but it didn’t gain support. They are still waiting to hear back. Barber was asked to get further clarity from Oregon on where to get used apparatus. They will probably talk about it at the joint meeting in the fall. There’s concern on what if we have a problem with the tender. They decided as a board to move to UBS from Lincoln Financial. We are only one of three in the state still using Lincoln, and there were service concerns. There’s a lot of other districts that use UBS, and they’re local with a Madison office, rather than work with someone out of Nebraska. We have a good medical director, and he put in for a pediatric training grant with the STARS team for our members. It’s a good training for our group. He cares deeply about the department. Allen made a motion at 7:32 p.m. to adjourn. Klahn seconded. Motion carried. Linda Kuhlman, WCMC, CMTW Clerk-Treasurer