Village Board Meeting — Minutes

VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 1 The Friendship Village Board meeting was called to order followed by the Pledge of Allegiance by all present. President Robert Berry called the meeting to order and roll call was taken. Present were Trustees Brad Oberbeck, Ernie Klicko, Nadine Ashworth, Melvin Waller, Justin Hutter, Antone Sindelar and President Berry. Also present were Attorney Joseph Hasler , Public Works Director Beth Schultz, Treasurer Sandy Shawback and Clerk Rebecca Reuter. APPROVAL OF AUGUST 3 and AUGUST 26, 2026, BOARD MEETING MINUTES MOTION by Oberbeck, second by Ashworth to approve August 3 and August 26, 2026, Village Board minutes, motion carried. TREASURER REPORT General Water Sewer July 1, 2026, Balance 80,352.85 395,221.14 16,713.07 July Receipts 77,968.45 207,903.14 98,591.07 July Disbursements 72,769.88 193,044.09 110,345.23 July 31, 2026, Balance 85,551.42 410,080.19 4,958.91 LGIP #1 TIF $925,652.60 – LGIP #9 ARPA $0.45 – Capital Project Checking $34,450.88 - Building Fund $ 75,000.00 – Money Market $1,646.91 – CDBG Working Fund $13, 857.48 - LGIP #6 Park/Beach $46,991.38 – Tax Checking $10,000.02 – TIF Checking $95.00 -Street Equipment Fund $30,379.50 – Court Order Proceeds $3,808.03 – Water LGIP #3 Special Redemption Fund $210,058.20 - LGIP #4 Water Replacement Fund $ 414,294.50 – LGIP #8 Water Debt Reserve Fund $ 72,632.63 – Sewer LGIP#2 Special Redemption Fund $ 69,868.56 - LGIP#5 Sewer Replacement Fund $57,926.04 – LGIP#7 Sewer Debt Reserve Fund $59,046.16 MOTION by Ashworth, second by Oberbeck to approve treasurer report, motion carried. PAYING OF BILLS MOTION by Klicko, second by Oberbeck to approve August vouchers 28377-28417 in the amount of $50,109.84, motion carried. CITIZEN INPUT Berry - Many of you in the village knew John Jones. He passed away this week. I would like to just have a quick moment of silence for him. He was on this village board for 46 years. He was president for 14 years. He was a pillar of this community. He did many, many things. So, I feel that we should just have a quick moment of silence for him. ROPORT FROM COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE RICK PEASE IF IN ATTENDANCE Pease - I can see that you already know about the moratorium that the county passed. One thing about that moratorium is on the data center is it only covers what we zone. So any township that's like you guys that have your own zoning, City of Adams, Rome, a couple other ones. If they don't take their zoning, it doesn't cover them. That's why I'm glad to see that you guys are looking at our ordinance. The other thing about that is that's only your 1st step. The next step is then you look at your land use in the village and make sure that your land use is zoned the way that you don't want a data center in. That's the next because after a year, you don't want to keep doing it year after year, make sure your way of using the stuff is done properly. He had his 1st meeting on Monday, and the budget has started. He chaired the health and human services then it’s zoning. Yesterday it was land and water. That's just the 1st step, though. So please, if you're interested in our budget, whenever you see something in there, we will have a public hearing in the later part of October or early part of November, and you can come and speak on our budget and say what you want would like to say or see or do or so we know. Our leachate we did approve. That was in the paper last week. That’s only the application part, though. The application is now going through. Hopefully there's not too many people in for that money. Right now, we're hoping the DNR will refund us up to 70 percent of the $7,000,000, so that would be quite a savings for the county. One of the things that was a big topic as to putting money in a leachate project. It’s not only for the garbage we're going to keep getting, but also for the garbage we already have. When we get a huge rain, we struggle keeping the leachate in without getting fined. And right now, we transfer a lot of leachate over to City of Adams or up to Plover or Marathon. And eventually, they're going to cut us off because they're going to only handle their own leachate. We'll be trucking it out somewhere if we continue this. That leachate VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 2 product needs to go forward either way. There is going to be an osmosis system as of right now, and going forward, that's going to be a big part of that solid waste project out there. UPDATE ON: OLD BRUSH TRUCK Schultz said that we had Manthey Salvage come and pick it up. They gave us 160 dollars per ton. That's minus the tires. The total of $1,087.60. That's better than any bid we received. UPDATE ON: 600 MAIN STREET Schultz stated that she wanted to commend the owners on the property. They’ve done a fantastic job. job. I think it is phenomenal. You guys have really worked your butts off. Mr. Minigh said thank you. And thank you for the 30 days that you gave us to get it done. DISCUSSION & POSSIBLE ACTION ON: CHRISTMAS LIGHTS/DECORATIONS Schultz stated that she applied for the $25,000 grant, and we got $2,500 grant. She’s really at a standstill. She doesn’t know where else to get grants for Christmas lights. It's very hard to get grants for Christmas lights. Berry asked if that is an outright $2,500 dollar grant, or is it a matching grant? Schultz said that they will give us that $2,500, but they want to see when we start ordering. They won't disperse it until we’re done, and $2,500 you’re not going to buy much for that. Ashworth stated that not commercially, but they’ve got some really cool things out on Amazon. She bought some string lights for my trees and stuff. It lasted the whole winter. And sometimes they have them on sale. Schultz said that she did go through a company. The best quote that she got was 30 percent off, and it ended up for 27 polls. It ended up being a little over $10,000. Ashworth stated those are more commercial. Berry felt it worked really good letting businesses decorate a poll too. He thinks that has gone over really well in the village in the past. Oberbeck asked, is there any way we could add some sort of incentive for business fronts, etcetera? Like, for judging or something like that. You know, if somebody would need to form a committee or just volunteer. Where you know, maybe it's citizens. Maybe somebody from the board and citizens that would say, we're going to judge it. Whoever does the best, we're going to give you X…. It's just a thought to get the ball rolling anyway because it did. Last year was great when everybody came on and did their own thing. Berry really likes the idea, but we as a board cannot give anything away. But we can think about it and see what we can come up with for doing something. Schultz stated that we do have our old Christmas wreaths. And she honestly don't know how much to sell those for. They're not too bad a shape. The bows are faded. Berry added that the bows can be replaced. Maybe we could come up with some kind of a bracket where we could mount them on the new poles. He thinks they were designed where they kind of went over the tops of them. He knows in the city, we had big wreaths, but they hung from the side. He doesn’t know if we could find some brackets to modify them to still put them up and use them in some way. That might be something to look into too. Ashworth added that if they aren’t into bad of shape we could buy solar lights and put them on them. Al Arndt from Nights of Columbus and American Legion asked did you put in the grant that it could also be for flags or something for, your veterans? A lot of times, if you add that to your charitable grant, they'll add that because they'll look at that and you possibly bump that up. 2nd of all, a lot of cities have what looks like a channel iron, but it's aluminum with 2 stainless steel shafts around it. Something like that could be used for multi type things. In our case that I brought up before about hanging the flag or banner of a veteran or something on there, we'd all use the same brackets type thing. And it would just be a couple of stainless-steel brackets through that channel, and all it does is hang. That stays there year-round, so all it's doing is going down with plenty of wind. Berry said that's what we had in the city too. They were an aluminum bracket with straps that went around, it’s something to look into. Maybe we can come up with something and use the wreaths. And I like the idea of maybe trying to put some solar lights around, so they at least are lit up then too. Let's keep moving on that. DISCUSSION & POSSIBLE ACTION ON: 10-YEAR PLAN BY WRWA Schultz stated that Dan from WRWA has offered to do a 10-year plan with her free of charge. He VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 3 was going to come this week, but he had something come up. So, he's not going to make it this week, but hopefully next week he'll be here. DISCUSSION ON: RESOLUTION SENT OVER BY ADAMS COUNTY FOR 12-MOUNTH DATA CENTER AND BATTERY ENERGY STORAGE SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT MORATORIUM Berry’s first question is, what I understand and know about these things, they need a lot of land. Do we here in the village really need to be super concerned with this in the village? Reuter replied that they don’t need a lot of land. When Cynthia from the county talked at a meeting, she says they're starting to put up storage box size data centers. And you don’t need a lot of land for that. They will come in and they will take your high-speed internet and basically put it down the dial up. One of the things that the county is going to do when they work on theirs is not only talk about data centers, correct me if I'm wrong Mr. Pease, but it's going to be also by square footage. Because they're not all big. They know that there's people who don't want these big, huge, giant data centers. So, they're popping little ones up where they can. Pease added that he went to a meeting and he listened to someone from EW extension and a couple of things that they actually said to us was that the data centers, the bigger data centers like to buy land outside of the city or village, and then they want to annex into the city or village because of the ordinance rules because they're different than the county’s. So that's one of the ways they get around it. And she's right about the sizes the UW Extension guys just says there's 140 data centers in the state right now, and they range from a closet size data center, and then there's these humongous ones like down in Port Washington. Now another thing I would say, they were talking about JDAs and that sort of agreement you get with them to for fire protection and stuff. One of the things they said was you should make sure that if you don't want to build a data center, they also build a power plant to do the data center instead of running it off your own grid because that way you won't see that spike in electricity. And they should have their own self- enclosed water source. So, they're not drawing out of a river or one of your lakes. Once they get their water, they just keep recycling their water through their own set of self-enclosed water sources. Those are two big things that if you start negotiating with one, that's what you consider looking at. But I would think for the fair amount of people in Adams County, they don't want one period. And if that’s the case, then you should start your moratorium, start looking at your land use, and go from there. Reuter said when she talked to Dustin, he said that they at the county made this really easy where any municipality could adopt this, you would just have to change a couple whereas like instead of where it say whereas Adams County, we can change that to say Village of Friendship. He said that they did that on purpose to make it easy so that anybody not under them could go through and edit this very easily. Hasler asked if this should go to the Planning Commission? He feels it should go there and then they can make a recommendation. In Adams County, it went to the Planning and Zoning Commission. So, the question is whether or not our planning and zoning committee should consider this and then bring it to the village board. Pease thinks that's a good way to go because there might be a citizen that shows up and be in favor of one and not want to stop it. So, I mean, going forward. So, it's a good thing to have one committee look at it, maybe hear some more comments on it, and then go to bring it forward. That's what he would do also. Berry will make the recommendation to send to the planning and zoning for them to make a recommendation to the board for consideration at the October meeting. PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE REPORT BY CHAIRMAN SINDELAR - DISCUSSION & POSSIBLE ACTION ON: a) Citizen input Sindelar stated that it started off with one citizen that had some concerns b) Discussion & Possible Action on: Split Tree on Roberts Street We had Schultz check with Griffith Tree Service for a quote on the tree and look it over to see just what it's going to need. Schultz said she talked to him and he would charge $250. The tree the structure of the tree itself is fine. It's just that limb that needs to come down. So, he would just drop it, and then she would clean it up. c) Discussion Regarding Health and Fire Inspections of Hotel and Motels Basically, that came down to is inspections per your licensing. VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 4 Hutter stated that the health inspector is not going to come and do anything in the current form. The next step if we went to do an inspection would be building and fire, and those would just be exterior inspections. He thinks Schultz was going to see as far as given the date because she said she was going to come back to us with a contractor before deciding what to do on that. d) Discussion on: Room Tax We're going to table that one until our next meeting so we can verify in the village boundaries just how many these short terms and rentals there are to see if it is actually worthwhile to move forward with this or not? Oberbeck asked if they received the information that he provided to the office on Strongs Prairie? And did you get to the point where why they established that? That was his key point in providing that information. Hutter said yes, but please remind them. Oberbeck stated that just within that verbiage, within that ordinance and what they did there was an entity that was specifically named and why they chose to move forward with that and why. They felt they would benefit from that. And that was his point in providing that information. Just so you could see how much that benefited that area and how much they were going to, you know, benefit from that. He just wanted that as a benchmark because he remembers they discussed wanting to talk to the 3 municipalities. e) Discussion on: 2027 Budget items He requested that they gather information for the next public works meeting to have a rough idea of what is needed for the 2027 budget year for the futures of straight across the pocket or plan. He'll have more information at the next meeting about that. f) Discussion on: Functional Classification Changes That one we just kind of tabled for right now because he is going to reach out to the highway department just for more clarification on that. He thinks it is g) Discussion and Possible Action on: Leaf Pickup We're going to reach out to the city to verify dates from them, and pricing, and also reach out to Property Works to try and get a rough idea of what it would be through them just to compare. Schultz said that they did get the estimate from the city, and that was over $3,000 dollars. That is for two days’ worth. h) Discussion and Possible Action on: Tornado Siren Maintenances Schultz checked into them, and they are not insured or bonded because they are a nonprofit organization. They said sometimes the village's insurance would cover them doing that, but otherwise, they are not bonded or insured because they're doing it for free. Berry asked what the city does for their siren? Klicko said that they don’t have one. About the time that we upgraded ours, theirs needed work too, and they declined to have it done. He appreciates what they're doing. And if they want to work with the city to get theirs going again, that would be great. But ours has just recently upgraded to all solid-state stuff, and he thinks they could spend their time better than on us, actually, if they want to go and look at it. Theu said since it didn't need any head maintenance, no lift truck would be required, but our controls are up high enough to where they would need a lift truck to look at them anyway. So, I don't know what that would mean. He can talk to them if we want. Sindelar replied that would be great if he wouldn't mind because he’s more familiar with the whole setup. i) Update on: 401 Main Street Schultz talked to her at the beginning of the week. She told her that we needed to have her contractor contact Schultz to see if he was bonded and because it's on a state highway, he has yet to contact me. She understands it is her son-in-law that is doing it. He works for Findorff. She said that they would be putting a dumpster in, and she asked if she could put it on the main street or if she should put it on the side street. She said definitely the side street, but it's going to take up probably 3 parking spaces for the post office. But it shouldn’t be there for very long. j) Public Works Directors Report She has hauled out two loads of scrap, so all of our scrap is gone. Even our light poles, everything, except for the 2 light poles that we're going to sell. We should be getting a check from Bucky's once he goes through all that. VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 5 k) Our flagpole down at the park has our flag back up, and RC Electric donated his time to do that. Other than that, I've been working on some grants. Berry asked what the status of the light polls on Main Street was? Schultz said she can't get ahold of that lady. She keeps calling her and calling her and leaving messages. She’ll leave her cell phone number, and she'll call back at the office. And she won't be in the office. She will try calling her again. But he would like to put them both up at the same time. Which makes perfect sense. FRIENDSHIP LAKE DISTRICT REPORT BY TRUSTEE HUTTER Hutter stated that this Saturday, we have our big meeting where we're voting. I think there's an election going on, and then we have our private board meeting after where we're going to discuss and approve stuff. He thinks the big thing is they're really trying to push forward on that grant to look to get one of the little harvesters hopefully by spring. That'd be great. We did have testing where we failed our 1st water test of the year, and then they just retested it, like, a week later, and it came back way low. And, actually, like, started doing this last year last year when we passed, but I bought my own little testing things too. I don't know if you guys want to see it, but it basically is right in the middle, so it doesn't really go down to where it said it was dangerous. Obviously, my side is a little bit different than theirs. So, I don't know if that's something like if we have their testing schedule, if we can make sure the beach is cleaned up beforehand. I don't know if that's a possibility. Do we have it scheduled when they come in for testing, or is it just, like, whenever you can go down there? Reuter said they come every other Friday. Schultz said that’s it like fighting mother nature trying to keep up with the seaweed. She finds it ironic that the test went down because of the humidity and the weather's been so hot. Berry stated that when they took it , we hadn't had much rain. There was not as much flow going through, and that makes all the difference in the world. There for a while, we were in a real dry spell. They took the test, and we didn't have a lot of flow going. We've had some good rain since then. Oberbeck said especially at that time of year, when you really look at it. And now that we’re where we are, I mean, the month of August is traditionally the worst . When it comes to those levels because of aqueous weather conditions, but you also have all of that ecosystem starting to die off. And everything else starts to change and then it all starts to prepare for it. So, he thinks that all comes into play. But it was a significant drop. FIRE DISTRICT REPORT BY TRUSTEE KLICKO Klicko stated that a week ago, Sunday, there was a fire call in Quincy. During that time, there was some interactions between the chief and various people on fire ground after which chief on Facebook or whatever social media submitted his resignation. They haven't seen one in paper yet at the fire district. He's returned some of his stuff, but we're working on more of it. They had a closed session last night about it. That's all the details there were. They’re g oing to meet again next Tuesday. Hopefully, he'll have more information on that. As it is, they haven't taken any formal action because they haven't had a formal resignation from him. The 3 assistant chiefs are running everything right now. There was a pretty big fire in Adams there on Kenwood Street. There was a spectacular rescue that took place. It's been on been on the news. Read their Facebook page, covered some pretty good. AMBULANCE COMMITTEE REPORT BY TRESTEE ASHWORTH Ashworth stated that there wasn’t a meeting. CONSIDERATION & ACTION ON THE APPROVAL OF PROVISIONAL OPERATOR’S LICENSE – STACEY SCHWABE, STEPHANIE KLOPOTEK, DENNIS SCHWABE, AARON BONNETT, AND BONNIE NACHREINER MOTION by Oberbeck, second by Sindelar to approve Provisional Operator’s License for Stacey Schwabe, Stephanie Klopotek, Dennis Schwabe, Aaron Bonnett, and Bonnie Nachreiner, motion carried. CONSIDERATION & ACTION ON THE APPROVAL OF WATER/SODA LICENSE – KNIGHT OF COLUMBUS 6718, ADAMS COUNTY SNOWMOBILE ASSOCIATION, INC., AND OLD FARMERS ANTIQUE CLUB, INC. VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – September 2, 2026, PAGE 6 MOTION by Oberbeck, second by Sindelar to approve Water/Soda License for, Knight of Columbus 6718, Adams County Snowmobile Association, Inc., and Old Farmers Antique Club, Inc. , motion carried. CONSIDERATION & ACTION ON THE APPROVAL OF TEMPORARY ALCOHOL BEVERAGE LICENSE – KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS 6718 SEPTEMBER 8 -13, 2026, ADAMS COUNTY SNOWMOBILE ASSOCIATION, INC. OCTOBER 2 -3, 2026, OLD FARMERS ANTIQUE CLUB, INC. SEPTEMBER 25-27, 2026 MOTION by Ashworth, second by Sindelar to approve Temporary Alcohol License for Knights of Columbus 6718 September 8-13, 2026, Adams County Snowmobile Association, Inc. October 2- 3, 2026, Old Farmers Antique Club, Inc. September 25-27, 2026, motion carried. CONSIDERATION & ACTION ON THE APPROVAL OF OPERATOR’S LICENSE – DALE JOHNSON MOTION by Klicko, second by Oberbeck to approve oper ator’s license for Dale Johnson, motion carried. CORRESPONDENCE We received a nice letter from the ATV / UTV club thanking us for opening up Highway 13. We received a letter from somebody who's interested in us building a pickleball court. We received a letter from Trustee Hutter, and he wanted us to look at the circular loop driveway that the village owns through Hillwood. He sent pictures where it was crumbling. SET AGENDA ITEMS FOR OCTOBER 5TH MEETING Preliminary Budget Update on 401 Main Street The moratorium Being of no further business to come before the board, MOTION by Sindelar, second by Waller to adjourn, motion carried. Meeting ended at 6:59. __________________________________________ Rebecca Reuter Village Clerk