Special Town Board Meeting — Minutes

1 MINUTES Special Town Board Budget Workshop Meeting Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at 4:30 pm Linn Conference Room W3728 Franklin Walsh St. Zenda, WI 53195 Held in-person Only Chairman Weiss called the meeting to order at 4:30 p.m. Present at roll call were Supervisors Zimmerman-excused, Livingston-excused, Leith, Palmer, Chairman Weiss also present were Clerk Morris and Administrator/Treasurer David Zimmerman Employee Handbook: Dental and Supplemental Policy: Leith/Palmer motioned to put this in the employee handbook to supplement the dental coverage. Motion Carried. As discussed at the last Town Board meeting, in the handbook is a general health insurance section that includes the general dental insurance coverage. The handout presented gives an outline of the supplemental dental coverage that would be offered. The employee would cover 100% of the cost. Attorney Duquette reviewed it and did not have any concerns, and David would like it added to the handbook. Clerk Morris explained that after the handout was inserted into the employee handbook an updated version would need to be dispersed to all employees and employees would need to sign a new acknowledgment form for them to sign. It then would need to be placed into their personal file. 2027 Town Budget Workshop-Discussion Only: David carried over numbers from last year, numbers in yellow are ones that he still needs and has notes on the far left. David has been playing with the anticipated loan number of 3 million and entered that on page 8. After speaking with Mary Lou from Town Bank the loan interest rate would be 6% last year it was 5.25%. This year the loan repayment might need to be over 28 days because January 1st falls on a Saturday so we would need to budget a little more for interest. Chairman Wiess wanted to know how short we are now for the borrowing of the $3-million loan. David stated expenses plus debit services we are 12.8; total revenue would be 12.9 Chairman Weiss stated that would be about 100k to the positive. After plugging in the 2026 assessed valuation the property taxes, short-term loan and equals the number on our levy limit work sheet of $7,567,832.00. The mill rate right now would be 1.74 and last year it was 1.9. There was a capital item for police that was adjusted and changed from the prior meeting. Items that were going to be discussed and added for this meeting were the Highway Skid Steer, IT, Town Hall Generator and Wages. Town Hall Generator: David received a quote from Foremost Electric. They came out to the Town Hall, and it did appear that all the buildings are connected to the generator. The device that exercises an outage is in the conference room and has not been exercising or testing. They don’t know if the current generator can supply sufficient energy to the current structure or Town Hall 2 during an outage. They would need to simulate an outage to test this. They quoted $69,590.70 which included a new generator, labor and material. This would be to install a new generator by the Town Hall at a cost of $44,473.00, with labor of $3,002.70 and material to run a new gas line of $22,115.00. Chairman Weiss would like David to go back to the Foremost and speak to them because their predecessor Vander Stoppen was the company that installed the generator. They were aware of what the town wanted during the installation process and did not do an adequate job. IT: Our current IT personnel John’s rates would stay the same. David spoke to both Travis and John and they both have different views on where the town should be. Travis views of the town are cloud-based. Travis’s company Hometown Tech Support’s rate of $150 an hour and John’s rate $125 an hour. We still would have Microsoft 365; it is just billed in a different category on the spreadsheet presented. John would like to go to the cloud. There was a small conversation about the server and if there was a time frame on when decommissioning of it would need to take place. The question came up whether the IT person owns the cloud or if the town would own the cloud space. David will find out the answer to this. Chairman Weiss would like an assessment done of all the computers. This would need to include all departments and the town hall. There are benefits to using the server and the cloud. If we need a new server down the road it would cost $20,000 - $30,000. Add about 26k to the budget line item to include a capital analysis of the computer hardware. Skid Steer: Matt reached out to Mid-State Equipment for a quote for a new skid steer. David mentioned to the board that the skid steer did breakdown when using it on the north shore so besides the tracks having issues it no longer starts and had to be towed back. For a new skid steer with a trade in a new one would cost $61,878.40 this quote was created prior to it breaking down and they may not be aware of it not running now. Since the highway department uses this every day if they would need to rent one it would cost about $2,700 a month. Before it broke Matt thought he was able to price ours to sell at 18-20k. There was a lease option that was present. The lease option was for 60 months and was similar to the wheel loader. The board had questions regarding a way to obtain the skid steer now and pay in 2027 and if there was a pre-payment penalty. Consider a motion to convene into closed session: Leith/Palmer motioned to move into closed session per WI Statue sec 19.85(1)(c) at 5:19 p.m. Motion Carried. a. Closed session according to Wisconsin Statues section per 19.85(1)(c) - considering employment, promotion, compensation or performance evaluation data of public employees. I. Employee performance and wages Roll Vote: Supervisors Leith-yes, Palmer- yes, Chairman Weiss- yes Motion to reconvene into open session: Leith/ Palmer motioned to move into open session at 6:49 pm. Motion Carried. 3 Possible discussion of/taking of action regarding closed session matters: Housekeeping items for next meeting: add loader to budget, update spread sheet with balance box sheet averages and put 25k into IT to include analysis of system. Leith/Palmer motioned to adjourn at 6:52 p.m. Motion Carried. Respectfully submitted, Alyson Morris Town of Linn Clerk