Photo/Paul Marose
Photo by Paul Marose Dodge County Supervisors assembled at the county highway shop in Mayville Wednesday morning as part of their tour of county roads, parks and facilities. Shown here, District 19 Supervisor Ernest Borchardt discusses the future of the Mayville site with Dodge County highway patrol superintendent Chuck Bernhard. The all-day tour was attended by 30 board supervisors and other county officials and included lunch at the Dodge County Health Facilities.
JUNEAU — “Sounds like a good idea; that way, we’ll know what they’re talking about.”
Dodge County Supervisor Dean Fuller supported Wednesday’s county board bus tour with that statement when the tour was announced at a county board session a few weeks ago and he supported it again, Wednesday, with his presence.
Fuller, along with 29 fellow supervisors, joined county officials for a guided tour of sites central to various debates and discussions when the 37-member board, as a whole or in committee, considers the past and future of the county.
Organized by board chairman Russell Kottke, county administrator Jim Mielke and others, the tour took off from Juneau early Wednesday morning in an effort to familiarize the board with various county locations and issues attached to them.
“We’re just touring the county to acquaint county board members with future, major projects of Dodge County and check on some projects we’ve done in the past,” Kottke said while waiting for the bus to pull up in the Clearview South parking lot.
Posted and conducted as an official board meeting, the tour’s early and late legs were guided by Dodge County Assistant Highway Commissioner Pete Thompson.
Thompson opened the ride by referring to the pavement upon which the bus rolled. County Trunk Highway G, between the villages of Lowell and Reeseville, benefitted, Thompson explained, from the county’s 2009 road rehabilitation and resurfacing program.
Another stretch of CTH G, between Beaver Dam and Randolph, recently had
its final two miles rehabilitated with the help of federal stimulus money and Thompson wound up his late segment of the trip discussing that stretch of blacktop and how it came to be renewed.
In between, the board got first-hand looks at facilities and features scattered within the four corners of Dodge County.
All five, county highway shops, which were prominently featured in one of Dodge County Highway Commissioner Brian Field’s recent presentations to the board, were visited by the tour bus, with Thompson and others outlining history, headaches and hopes attached to each.
In Reeseville, Thompson noted the shop, built in 1945, lacked space for the multi-wheeled trucks and heavy equipment required to maintain roads, especially in winter.
Ideas raised by board members included expansion of the shop to the west to gain space for trucks fitted with plows and sanders.
The Neosho highway garage suffers a similar lack of space, according to patrol superintendent Chuck Bernhard, who also told his visitors the septic system which serves the premises is failing.
Board members milling about the structure were cautioned by Bernhard not to drink from any faucet because, he said, the building’s water supply had been contaminated.
Bernhard followed the bus to the highway department’s satellite in Mayville, where space is at a premium as well and where, he said, the roof above the garage leaks. In Mayville, Thompson said, expansion ought to be considered, but not at the current, Horicon Street site.
“We’re trying to get out of town,” Thompson said of the point of departure for equipment serving roads in the northeast quadrant of the county.
Thompson said when the Mayville shop was built in 1937, “this was out of town,” but his vision of the future places the garage elsewhere, away from residents, but still within reach of city water and sewer.
The highway department headquarters in Juneau, built in 1975, also was targeted by a board drive-by and the spin around the rear yard allowed Thompson to note current use of space, both interior and exterior, as well as proposals for expansion or relocation of existing structures.
Enroute to Juneau from Mayville, the bus bumped along County Trunk Highway S, which Thompson said his department’s road budget hopes to address in 2010 or 2011. Currently an unofficial detour for State Highway 33 through Horicon, CTH S, Thompson said, carries as many as 2,400 vehicles per day.
The day’s tour ended with runs past the former highway department garages in Beaver Dam and Fox Lake, both of which were closed in favor of the new, spacious building on County Trunk Highway A, in the town of Trenton.
There, Field reinforced his subordinates’ positions regarding ample room for parking and servicing heavy equipment.
In between garages, before lunch, the board stopped at Harnischfeger Park where Dodge County Land Resources and Parks Director Joyce Fiacco gave an update on progress at the county’s newest park. Fiacco also joined the tour after lunch, for passing mentions of Derge and Nitschke Mounds parks.
Lunch was served at Clearview North, in Juneau.
Thereafter, board members got guided tours of the two, connected health facilities for which a multi-million-dollar replacement has been proposed.
At Clearview, Dodge County Corporation Counsel John Corey boarded the bus. When the tour reached Beaver Dam, Corey presented a history and pointed overview of the former Monarch Iron Range property to which the county took title in July, 1988.
Following that, Corey noted changes in downtown Beaver Dam stemming from last year’s spring floods and concluded his component with a history of the former Metalfab site, to which Dodge County took title in November, 1995.