Elk Mound approves $50,000 line of credit for library & community center

By LeAnn R. Ralph

ELK MOUND — The Elk Mound Village Board has approved taking out a $50,000 line of credit with Independence State Bank for the Elk Mound Library and Community Center Committee to finish the project.

“We would like up to $50,000 for one year to finish out the project,” said Andy Peterson, village president and a member of the library and community center committee, at the Elk Mound Village Board’s April 2 meeting.

Finishing the library and community center located in a building that has been a beauty shop, Laundromat, and, before that, a garage, will include painting the exterior, blacktopping the parking lot and landscaping.

Setting the line of credit would involve a one-time $70 administrative fee, and the interest rate for the money would be 2.5 percent, said Gordy Boos of Independence State Bank.

The library and community center committee can draw on the loan as needed and will only pay interest on what is drawn out, he said.

No principle is required to be paid during the first year, Boos said.

“This will give flexibility for finishing the project,” he said.

The library and community center, which officially opened April 1, will generate revenue through renting out the community center portion of the building and through additional donations, Peterson said.

When donations come in, the money will be used to pay off whatever has been drawn on the line of credit, Peterson said.

The Elk Mound Village Board unanimously approved the $50,000 line of credit with Independence State Bank for the library and community center.

Police software

Travis Hakes, Elk Mound police chief, reported that he had been researching some better bids for the software that would connect the Elk Mound department with Dunn County.

Several years ago, the county received a grant to set up the hardware for connecting all the police departments in Dunn County, but each individual department would have had to pay tens of thousands of dollars for several years for computer software.

“We need it now more than ever,” Hakes said.

The good news, he said, is that he had found software for a little over $3,000.

The Elk Mound police department currently budgets $1,500 per year for software, Hakes noted.

“We are paying half of that now for software that does not link up with the county,” he said.

The new software would provide a link with the county and would provide mobile dispatch.

“It would save us a lot of time,” Hakes said.

Right now, Hakes must fax his reports to the county, and the county must fax reports to Hakes.

When Elk Mound receives a report from Dunn County, Hakes must type the report into the Elk Mound police department computer to have the report on Elk Mound’s system.

With the new software, once the officer types up the report, it would automatically be accessible to Dunn County and vice versa, Hakes explained.

Peterson asked Hakes to gather more information and said that the item would be placed on the agenda for the next Elk Mound Village Board meeting.

Other business

In other business, the Elk Mound Village Board

• Learned that the tentative date for Elk Mound residents to turn off their water to keep the laterals from freezing is April 12. Mark Levra, director-of-public-works-in-training, reported that while the frost is thawing from the top of the ground, the warmer weather is still causing the frost to drive deeper. The water temperature is still relatively cold, too, at 38 degrees, he said.

• Learned that the 21-year-old influent sampler at the wastewater treatment plant needs $3,000 in repairs. The effluent sampler also is 21 years old, Levra noted. A new sampler that would sample both the influent and the effluent would be $10,000, he said. The existing samplers have been taking samples 24 hours per day, seven days per week, for 21 years (or have been running for nearly 184,000 hours). The existing samplers have needed relatively little maintenance over the years, Levra said. The Elk Mound Village Board scheduled a special meeting for 6:30 p.m. April 8 to discuss purchasing a new sampler.

• Learned that there will be a meeting about the new phosphorus limits in Vesper on April 10 and that either Levra or Terry Stamm, director of public works, would go to the meeting to represent Elk Mound.

• Approved a motion to allow business links on the Village of Elk Mound website with the stipulation that the business must pay any costs associated with adding the links to the website.