DC could have a vote at lake district annual meetings
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — If the Dunn County Board were to approve the Tainter Lake Rehabilitation District, then the county would be able to vote during the lake district annual meetings if the county’s 14 parcels remain in the proposed district.
One question that has been asked by the Dunn County Planning, Resources and Development Committee is whether the county would have a vote at lake district annual meetings as a property owner since the county owns 14 parcels in the proposed lake district, said Chase Cummings, Dunn County conservationist, at the PR&D committee’s September 27 meeting.
The answer is — yes, the county would have a vote and would be represented at the annual meeting by the chair of the Dunn County Board or the chair’s designee. The county would have only one vote, even though the county owns multiple parcels, he said.
Dunn County does have the option of removing the county’s parcels from the proposed lake district. The Towns of Tainter, Menomonie and Sherman also own parcels in the proposed lake district and could ask to have their parcels removed from the boundaries as well, Cummings said.
Comments from the Town of Tainter clerk indicate the town board will likely ask to be excluded from the lake district boundary, said Heather Wood, Dunn County water quality specialist.
The Tainter Town Board does not meet until October 13, and the next meeting of the PR&D committee is October 11, so if the Tainter Town Board decides to exclude the four parcels, the information can be passed along to the Dunn County Board for the October 19 meeting, she said.
The Town of Menomonie and the Town of Sherman each have one parcel in the proposed lake district.
The PR&D committee held a public hearing on the proposed lake district in August, and then according to state law, must submit a report to the Dunn County Board within three months.
Tom Quinn, county board supervisor from Downing and chair of the PR&D committee, said he would like to wait to take formal action on approving the report on the public hearing until PR&D members Diane Morehouse and Gary Bjork could be at the meeting.
Morehouse, county board supervisor from Menomonie, and Bjork, county board supervisor from Colfax, were absent from the September 27 meeting.
County board
The county board, after considering the PR&D committee’s report, must decide whether the proposed lake district meets four criteria, Cummings said.
The first part of the criteria is whether the requisite number of signatures of property owners has been included with the petition to form a lake district, and the answer is, yes, there are enough signatures, he said.
The county board must also consider whether the proposed district is necessary; whether the public health, comfort, convenience, necessity or public welfare will be promoted by establishing a district; and whether the property to be included in the district will benefit by establishing the proposed district, he said.
The Dunn County Board must also appoint the initial Board of Directors for the lake district and must name the lake district, Cummings said.
Within six months of the public hearing date, the Dunn County Board must issue an order to establish the lake district or deny the petition, he said.
Board of directors
The initial board of directors for the lake district would have one member representing Dunn County, one member appointed by the township with the most parcels in the district, which would be the Town of Tainter, and three members who are property owners.
The member representing the county would be from the Land Conservation Committee, which is an extension of the PR&D committee, Wood said.
The representative for the Town of Tainter and the representative from the Land Conservation Committee would remain on the lake district board of directors after the first annual meeting. The property owners in the lake district would elect the other three members to carry forward at the annual meeting, she said.
Mike Kneer, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the PR&D committee, said he would recommend removing Dunn County’s parcels from the lake district boundary.
Monica Berrier, county board supervisor from Menomonie and a member of the PR&D committee, said the comments at the public hearing indicated there was disagreement about what to do with the lake and that it would be good to have someone appointed to the board of directors by Dunn County who had an opposing viewpoint.
Kneer said he agreed with Berrier and added that one member of the board should be from the group that circulated the petition for the lake district.
All three of the members appointed by the Dunn County Board should be residents of the lake district and not only property owners, since people who own property are not necessarily residents of the lake district, Kneer said.
The county should have a list of people to consider for the board of directors and criteria for how to evaluate the applicants, Quinn said.
The Dunn County Board will have to decide whether to approve the lake district at the January 18, 2023, meeting, so there is time to develop a recommendation for the lake district board, Cummings said.
The PR&D committee should offer to the Dunn County Board that the PR&D committee would establish a process for recommending the Dunn County representative and for appointing others who are suggested by the applicants, Quinn said.
Annual meeting
If the Dunn County Board approves the lake district, the first annual meeting would have to be held within a certain amount of time, Kneer said.
If the Dunn County Board were to approve the proposed lake district, then the county board would also have to name the district, finalize the boundaries and appoint the four members, Wood said.
The Town of Tainter would have 30 days after the Dunn County Board’s approval to appoint a township representative, and the lake district would have 90 days to hold the first annual meeting, she said.
The first annual meeting must be held within 90 days of the district being established, or within 60 days after the township with the most parcels appoints a representative, Cummings said.
The names for the lake district’s first board of directors would have to be submitted to the county board in January, Wood said.
The PR&D committee should make a presentation at the Dunn County Board’s October meeting about developing a process for recommending lake district board members and submitting the names to the county board by January, Quinn said.
At the next meeting, the PR&D committee must vote on approving the final draft of the report, consider a process for selecting board members to recommend to the county board, make a recommendation for removing public property, and recommend a name for the lake district, Quinn said.
The lake district report, after being approved by the PR&D committee October 11, must go the Dunn County Board’s Executive Committee October 12 for consideration and then must go to the Dunn County Board October 19, Cummings said.
The timeline for the proposed lake district report is right at the statutory timeline, he said.
The Dunn County PR&D Committee approved a motion to postpone action on the lake district report until the PR&D committee’s next meeting on October 11.
