Should county forest be sold to pay for dam repairs?

By Matthew Ryno

Careful scrutiny of Sauk County Department heads wrapped up with a surprise Thursday after two days of hearing. The idea to sell a portion of the Sauk County Forest was brought up and on top of that, $1 million to $1.6 million would still need to be cut from the 2009 county budget.

At the end of exhaustive testimony by various county departments, officials discovered some members of the Property and Resource Committee want to sell portions of the 690-acre Sauk County Forest to pay for about $150,000 of dam repairs recommended by the state at Lake Redstone.

Though Lake Redstone dam repairs were slated to begin in 2010, the early push for repairs would likely have the county struggling to make ends meet. The county is also faced with repairing a dam on Mirror Lake in 2009, for about the same amount or more.

Parks Director Steve Koenig brought the news to the Finance Committee during the hearing to prepare them for a possible resolution being pushed by the Property and Resource Committee and Highway and Parks committee by the chairman of both, Virgil Hartje.

"Lake Redstone has significant impact on (Reedsburg), there is repair needed on the dam," said Marty Krueger, Sauk County chairperson and Finance Committee member. "You throw in paying for it by selling the county forest… (and) you are dealing with a few buzzwords that inevitably divide board members."

Joe Van Berkel, a county conservationist, warned the Finance Committee that the county took responsibility for dam repairs a long time ago, and dams are part of a maintenance operation. He thought it was wrong to have to sell property to pay the price.

"I mean, I need an oil change, is there something else I can sell?" he asked.

He also doubted if dam repairs were needed immediately based on the dam's prior history, and thought they could be pushed back until at least 2010 like they were originally slated for.

Finance Committee Chairman Tommy Lee Bychinski, said he thought dam repairs were needed sooner than later. He is also a member of the Reedsburg Utility Commission.

Hartje said in an interview that waiting another year to repair the dam was too much of a gamble.

He said he had the support to pass the resolution in the committees he chaired. Other board members interviewed questioned whether the board would approve such a sale.

Proposals, or financial debates such as these, were issues Finance Committee members heard from all county departments Wednesday and Thursday.

Supervisor Tom Kriegl also attended the meetings to remind committee members of his proposal to close a part of the Sauk County jail in order to save money — part of the "jail debate" Krueger referred to at the committee meeting.

Krueger said like many on the Finance Committee, he had pages of notes, and hundreds of pages of documents to go through before he could even start to react to all the news he has heard. Finance Committee member William Wenzel agreed, noting that like Hartje's proposal, any reaction at this time would be premature.

The next Finance Committee meeting is Monday, and committee members said at that time they would be prepared to start formulating budget recommendations.