Village Board — Minutes

VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – March 3rd, 2025, PAGE 1 The Friendship Village Board meeting was called to order followed by the Pledge of Allegiance by all present. President Tony Sindelar called the meeting to order and roll call was taken. Present were Trustees Brad Oberbeck, Ernie Klicko, Jerry Sonnenberg , Melvin Waller, Bob Berry, Jason Pierce and President Sindelar. Also present were Attorney Joseph Hasler, Clerk/Treasurer Sandy Shawback, and Deputy Clerk/Treasurer Rebecca Reuter. APPROVAL OF MINUTES MOTION by Berry, second by Pierce to approve February 3rd, 2025, Village Board minutes, motion carried. TREASURER REPORT General Water Sewer October 1, 2024, Balance (61,452.07) 392,950.10 63,686.55 October Receipts 110,229.29 139,166.78 45,424.46 October Disbursements 51,648.40 57,215.60 7,339.28 October Balance 10/31/2024 (2,871.18) 474,901.28 101,771.73 November 1, 2024, Balance 474,901.28 101,771.73 November Receipts 13,919.51 7,589.09 November Disbursements 8,528.09 32.09 November Balance 11/30/2024 480,292.70 109,329.61 December 1, 2024, Balance 480,886.70 109,329.61 December Receipts 27,903.17 13,209.40 December Disbursements 19,778.40 5,123.25 December Balance 12/31/2024 489,015.53 117,415.76 LGIP #1 TIF $1,035,206.97 – LGIP #9 ARPA $ 0.38 – Capital Project Checking $33, 826.75 - Building Fund $ 65,000.00 – Money Market $1,64 6.91 – CDBG Working Fund $13,857.48 - LGIP #6 Park/Beach $ 43,733.43 – Tax Checking $1 6,746.85 – TIF Checking $ 95.00 -Street Equipment Fund $ 72,725.00 – Court Order Proceeds $3,808.03 – Water LGIP #3 Special Redemption Fund $225,334.74 - LGIP #4 Water Replacement Fund $3 80,491.96 – LGIP #8 Water Debt Reserve Fund $77,142.37 – Sewer LGIP#2 Special Redemption Fund $88,548.50 - LGIP#5 Sewer Replacement Fund $ 54,329.71 – LGIP#7 Sewer Debt Reserve Fund $62,720.25 MOTION by Klicko, second by Sonnenberg to approve treasurer report, motion carried. PAYING OF BILLS MOTION by Klicko, second by Oberbeck to approve February vouchers 27533-27581 in the amount of $405,343.21, motion carried. CITIZEN INPUT No citizen input ROPORT FROM COUNTY REPRESENTATIVE RICK PEASE Not in attendance DISCUSS AND APPROVE WINE WALK DATE Reuter stated that the annual combined Wine Walk between the City of Adams and the Village of Friendship Wendy would like to have again this year. The organization they are planning on helping is The Adams County Humane Society. They have requested a date of May 17th, 2025, from 1-5 p.m. The city has approved that date, and they are just waiting to see if we will approve that date also to move forward. MOTION by Berry, second by Sonnenberg to approve wine walk date, motion carried. DISCUSS CHAPTER 396 FROM THE COUNTY REGARDING NR 117 Berry stated that they did discuss it at Public Works and they decided to table it until they could get with the attorney to have him look at a few things and figure out exactly what we need, what’s the minimum we need to do, what do we need to have and move forward from there. Hasler stated that last week in anticipation of this he visited with the person at the DNR who handles issues like this for Adams County. She reported that their office has a record that Friendship adopted a shoreland/wetland ordinance April 1, 1991. It apers that we have in our records documentation that we indeed have that, that happened. We just need to track down the ordinance itself. The DNR indicated that there was nothing that Friendship needed to do at this VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – March 3rd, 2025, PAGE 2 time. The next time that we are going to be required to update will be within the next 5 years. The DNR and FEMA are in the process of updating the floodplain maps. When they update the floodplain maps, we may be required to update our shoreland/wetland ordinance. But for the time being the advice from the DNR is to do nothing. UPDATE ON THE .GOV ACCOUNTS Reuter stated that one of the last things that Flanagan did when he was working with us was to help us get our .gov dominion. We are now in compliance and have our .gov emails. We also were able to get a grant through the Wisconsin Election Commission that pays for the clerks .gov email for a year. UPDATE ONEAST LAKE STREET PROPERTY Hasler stated that he communicated with Reuter who provided him with a little bit of history on the property along with the documentation the Village has gone through. It appears this has been a long-standing problem. We had some agreements back in 2023. It appears there is some sentiment that we need to do something. If we want an option would be to start a full scale inspection on the property by the building inspector, and Adams County Health as well for the purposes of determining if the property qualifies as a nuisance for the purpose of a raise-and- remove order. That process is started by requesting the cooperation of the resident for an inspection. If that is not forthcoming then we would go to court and ask for special inspection warrant. That would allow us to go on the property and inspect the property for determining its condition, and whether or not it meets the statutory test with regards to the presumption of whether or not it should be raised. You then provide the owner with a raise-and-remove order. It gives them 30 days to respond. And if they don’t do that your option would be to proceed to a Village proceeding to raise-and-remove. Or in the alternative you might go to the Adams County Court and ask for its involvement. The bottom line it this, if you’re going to do something you need to be committed to doing something. Berry asked how the process is going to get a full scale investigation of the house? Hasler answered by making a request of the property owner that we would like your permission and your cooperation to inspect the premises to determine the condition, both structurally and whether or not they are inhabitable. You can anticipate they will refuse. And your response to their refusal is a request to the Adams County Circuit Court that the Judge on duty to get us a special inspection warrant. A special inspection warrant is triggered by an affidavit from the Village President or the Village department of Public Works who says we have reason to believe based on our observation that this property presents nuisance conditions, and may not be inhabitable and apers to be in some structural disrepair. Based on that we have asked the owner for permission to inspect, the owner has refused therefor the law provides that the circuit court can issue a special inspection warrant. The special inspection warrant is then enforced again by a letter or communication with the property owner that says we have this special inspection warrant, we plan on being here on this date at this time and we would expect your cooperation, but be advised that we have the warrant and we are going to exercise it. You then have the right to enter into the property and look at. You will then get a report from your engineer that says these are the conditions I’ve observed. In my opinion in order to bring this property into complete compliance the cost is going to be X-amount. You are going to compare that cost to the equalized value of the property. If that number is 50% or more of the equalized value the presumption is that cost of repairs would be unreasonable and the remedy is raising. It’s a process that requires a commitment on the part of the Village to cross your T’s and dot your I’s. Go through the process of going through the special inspection warrant , fallowed by the inspection. There is a structure on that property, and if that review turns out negative the cost might be to high. We need to see the inside of it, and in order to do that you have to go through the process of asking nicely, and if they decline the exercising your right under Wisconsin law to look at the property via a special inspection warrant. Oberbeck stated that in his opinion, all things considered every step of the way for the 8 years or so now. We absolutely owe this to every person who’s come to these meetings and addressed this, for everyone who’s written a letter, made a phone call, I think we owe that entire group, we owe it to them, in his opinion. Hasler stated that the 1st step would be to direct the Village attorney to work with the Village Clerk and the Village engineer to begin the process of requesting a voluntary inspection. In the event of a refusal to voluntarily fallow our request we would proceed with an application for a special inspection warrant. Fallowed up by action to the special inspection warrant involving the Village building inspector. Contact Adams County Health to see if they will be part of it. Probably contact Adams County Sheriff’s department so they’re aware of when we plan on doing this so that they can be there, so if there are any conflicts we can point to the fact that we have authority VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – March 3rd, 2025, PAGE 3 from the Adams County Circuit Court to do what it is that needs to be done. Then direct that the Village engineer prepare the report to the Village Board. You can then determine your next step. MOTION by Berry, second by Sonnenberg to approve the process of inspecting and receiving a report with respect to the condition of the property to determine Village next steps, motion carried. PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE REPORT Pierce stated that the first thing they talked about was the kayaks at the beach and the location of where to place them. The committee has a few locations in mind . They are going to wait until it warms up a little bit and then go down there to find a spot. In the meantime, they need to find out if there is electric requirements. The recommendation of the Public Works is to approve the Kayak rental at the Friendship Beach. They think it will be a good thing for the community. They met with Ron Beemen to go over and discuss his concerns coming up, and if anything needs to be changed with our new director coming in. They discussed the replacement of the tables and chairs in the Village Hall. There are a few broken ones that need to be replaced. They are going to start looking at some and see if we can get some samples in. The beach cleanup was discussed and moving the buoys to get the weed harvester in there. They didn’t see a problem doing that once or twice a year. The committee inspected the red plow truck, and the recommendation of the committee is to not repair it. Theres too much to repair on it. The problem is that they are now down 3 trucks. They are going to start looking at replacing them. There are at least 2 that they will need to replace. Hasler gave a fallow up for the fence on Raymond Street – He stated that he was provid ed with some of the underlining paperwork for the property at 205 Raymond Street. He talked with Jeremy Phillis this morning who is the building inspector for the Village . The sta rting point is to just determine if the fence is an encroachment into the right of way that triggers the Villages ability to take action to insist upon the removal of an obstruction on an encroachment in the right of way. Or if the issue isn’t an encroachment onto Village property, but rather an issue strictly of violation of the setback. He understands that the set back on both sides for this fence would be 8 feet. And in one case it could be 3 feet. And another cas e it could be 5 feet. If it’s a encroachment you do one thing, if it’s side yard set back you do something else. The starting point there is again what kind of mapping do we have that tells us what the issue is. According to Mr. P hillis the mapping is something that is perhaps not as current as we would like. It’s interesting, if you go on to the Adams County property site and take a look at the map that they have of this area you ’ll see that on that map the property line apers to be well off what is Raymond Stree t and West 2nd Street. And that suggest that this is an encroachment issue not a setback issue. But again the question is how current are the maps. He doesn’t want to suggest to the Village Board that they spend money that we don’t have to get surveys that we don’t think we need, but if we want to enforce in matters like this you really need to have the evidence that says here’s what the maps show, here’s where your fence is and it ’s clearly an encroachment, or this is clearly a setback issue. So the 1 st step is are you prepared to authorize the Village building inspectors and zoning administrators to spend some amount of money to clearly map and delineate what the issue i s? Because if your not he doesn’t know how we can enforce the right of way or encroachment issue or setback issue. If we go to court the judge is going to ask to see a map. He doesn’t think there ’s any action to be taken , that’s a report. You will have to determine as you look at your budget if this is something you want to pursue. Berry made the recommendation to have it go back to Public Works to discuss it further. FIRE DISTRICT REPORT Klicko stated that they had 9 calls in the month of January, only 1 was a structure fire. That’s 1 every 3 days. They have 3 new members, and 2 new auxiliary members. They’re still discussing repairs for the ladder truck. It’s a big truck for this area. They’re buying some shop tools. They want to use the room tax to use as seed money to use for fundraising, it’s about $6,000.00. They need some tiers. The next meeting is March 13th. AMBULANCE COMMITTEE REPORT Nothing new to report as they don’t meet until the end of April. VILLAGE BOARD MEETING – March 3rd, 2025, PAGE 4 FRIENDSHIP LAKE DISTRICT REPORT Sonnenberg stated that they are going to meet on April 10 th. Yesterday morning he received an email about the beach. They were talking with Mark Webber, the harvesting operator. He would like to see the weeds cleaned out near the 2 resorts. He would like it to be done before the weekend, so the weeds are clea ned up before people come to visit . Sonnenberg hasn’t responded back to them yet because he wanted to discuss it here first. It’s a matter of how often we think it should be done. Mark made the recommendation that we do it every week. Sonnenberg thinks it should be a flexible schedule. It should be based on how the weeds are looking. Berry stated that the buoys that they ’re talking about are not so much the big buoys on the far outside, but the little ones that go on the inside that delineate the children’s swimming area. The far west side they can get in from. So it’s just a matter of moving the small ones. Sindelar thinks it should go back to Public Works for discussion, because the beach will need to be shut down for cleaning, or mark it that the beach is down for this purpose. Sonnenberg stated that the 2 nd part of his email was about the kayak rental and that the y are offering to put down a gravel pad for the rental cage. DISCUSSION & ACTION ON OPERATOR’S LICENSE MOTION by Berry, second by Pierce to approve operator’s license for Julie Schultz and Joshua Chernoff, motion carried. CORRESPONDENCE No correspondence SET AGENDA ITEMS FOR APRIL 7th MEETING East Lake Street update Closed session for employee conversion Being no further business to come before the board, MOTION by Waller, second by Sonnenberg to adjourn, motion carried. Meeting ended at 6:45 __________________________________________ Rebecca Reuter Deputy Clerk