Continuously serving Kosciusko County since 1854
SYRACUSE - At Tuesday's Syracuse Council meeting, a public hearing was held on the North Trace RV Park annexation.
Town Manager David Wilkinson said this was a statuary obligation that gives the public the right to speak on the matter, but there’d be no vote tonight.
Nick Meier, 1401 N. Huntington St., and his wife were at the public hearing and they had concerns about reselling their property after it is annexed into town. They currently have livestock and a big barn and mainly use it for 4H animals. They’ll be able to continue using their property as they currently are, but their concern is “the big beautiful barn could be a financial liability if they can’t continue to have that option, and we’ll suffer a loss,” he said. “We wouldn’t have bought the property if we couldn’t have animals, so is there anyway we could pass it on to the new owners?”
Councilman Larry Siegel asked town attorney Jay Rigdon if they could make an exception and he said that’s a zoning question, but the town has ordinances prohibiting livestock in town so unless they want to open it up for everyone in town to have livestock, they can’t make an exception for one property.
Council President Nathan Scherer asked if they could make an exception for anyone in town with a certain size property with agricultural zoning. Rigdon said he didn’t know for sure. He thought they could write an ordinance allowing other people who met the qualifications to have livestock, but he wanted to do more research.
Councilman Paul Stoelting and others said they were supportive of his request. Meier said he appreciated their consideration.
Meier’s neighbor, Larry Dowty, owns the farmland behind Meier and wanted to know why they were taking half of his farm into town limits.
“It’s going to raise my taxes by double,” he said.
Wilkinson interrupted, saying anything that’s zoned agriculture the taxes won’t be changed. As to why his property was needed, Wilkinson and Siegel explained it was state law math. Scherer looked up his property and said it was assessed agriculture and they’ve confirmed that taxes will not go up.
Scherer said, “It’s important, in order for us to grow prudently, for people to know if agricultural land is assessed agriculture, it will not affect property taxes if they’re annexed into town.”
Dowty also wanted to know if he could still shoot groundhogs on his property without getting into trouble because in the town of Syracuse, it’s not allowed.
Scherer said it was “a valid concern,” that he understood because his neighbors are in the county and his property is in the town limits.
Scherer told him, “From the town’s perspective, we want to be good neighbors and we need to grow our town. We’re facing a lot of obstacles with the change in state legislation so we appreciate landowners like yourselves, willing to work with us and we’re being open to what you have to say because it matters.”
To both men he said, “We’ve heard your concerns and we’ll do our due diligence.”
Siegel added, “If something is reasonable and we can do it, we will.”
Department Reports
Wilkinson said he’s had a couple of requests for block parties and closing the street and there’s no ordinance for that so he talked to Rigdon about it. Rigdon told the council he recommends that they authorize Wilkinson to make decisions on these requests because of the time involved. Siegel asked if the street department or the police department would put up the barriers. Wilkinson said he wasn’t sure, those were things they’d need to work out.
Both Stoelting and Scherer said they were all for allowing block parties and having Wilkinson make those decisions. They advised him to work with department heads to set up parameters.
Wilkinson also again brought up what they want to do with the extra money in the general fund. He reminded them of options, which are all in the master plan, including renovating the Main Street parking lot, new gateway signs, changing the stoplights in the village area to decrease overhead clutter and a boardwalk in the village. He told the council he heard they did receive a $500,000 grant from the CAP (Community Amenities Project) through Kosciusko County, which is part of the money that Rep. Craig Snow brought to the county. They also applied for a REDI 2.0 grant, which would give them $800,000 of the $1.6 million project.
He told the council that the Main Street parking lot would cost around $1.4 million, the gateway signs would cost about $100,000 for both and changing the streetlights is estimated to cost $640,000. He reminded the council the general fund has $9 million. A couple of council members thought the stop lights should be a priority. Scherer said he wanted to talk more to Wilkinson about the boardwalk project, which he thought was also important. No decision was made.
Public Works Superintendent Mark Aurich had two funding requests from the wastewater depreciation. He said the council previously approved a while back purchasing two sliding gates for the disinfecting unit and not knowing when they’d come in, he didn’t ask for installation. The sliding gates are now in and he got two quotes for installing them. One quote was for $40,000 and the other from Mason Engineering, Mongo, for $19,128 so he asked for and received approval from the council to go with Mason Engineering.
The second request was to line the old clay sewer lines on Branch Street. The town has many miles of clay tile, which is susceptible for roots getting in and groundwater intrusion and they have 520 feet on Branch Street that needs to be lined. He also got two quotes for this project, one was for $50,000 and the other from Visu-Sewer, Pewaukee, Wis., is for $38,787.50. He said they’ll come in and clean and camera and have the lining done in a day.
Employee Handbook Amendments
Under old business, Wilkinson brought some changes to the employee handbook they’ve been updating. Some changes the council agreed with, like personal days, can be used in half day increments; that training can be authorized by department heads, not just the town manager and clerk-treasurer, and leaving the section about emails may be monitored as is.
A few items created a lot of discussion and need to be checked into further, including whether employees on call (especially public works employees) should be compensated since they are restricted to staying in town and how much they should be compensated. The council agreed but wanted more information on what the amount of compensation should be.
Designating who should speak to the media, especially in times of emergency —Wilkinson was asked to come up with a list. Employees asked about having a shareable bank of sick days they can share with other employees who need them. The council asked Wilkinson to come up with a proposal and some parameters. Also, they wanted to set up a matrix for how much compensation should be given for different certifications and licensing. The council thought something should be included about staying employed with the town for a set amount of time after they’ve obtained the certifications.
In other business, the council:
• Approved the ordinance renaming Doctor Clark Street to Rabbit Ridge Road.
• Heard construction on pickle ball courts will be starting next week or the week after and should be completed in four-six weeks.
• Heard the Farmer’s Market will end the Saturday of Labor Day weekend but will be at the Harvest Festival in October at Lakeside Park.
