March 23, 2023 at 11:41 a.m.
Bombshell: DNR sat on resolutions opposing Pelican River Forest purchase
The towns of Sugar Camp and Monico passed objecting resolutions. Monico would be most heavily impacted by the easement: The proposed Stewardship acquisition would cast more than 80 percent of the town's land into state ownership or permanent easement.
The agency also failed to properly notify Oneida County of the project, sending a notice to the home of a former county board chairman who was no longer on the board, according to records obtained by The Lakeland Times in an open records request and from interviews with officials.
All of which is problematic because state law requires the department to notify affected local governments of the proposed acquisition and, if the jurisdictions pass timely resolutions supporting or opposing the acquisition, the NRB must consider such resolutions before any funding for Stewardship projects is approved.
"If the department receives the copy within 30 days after the date that the city, village, town, or county received the notification of the proposed acquisition, the department shall take the resolution into consideration before approving or denying the obligation of moneys for the acquisition from the appropriation under [the stewardship program]," the statute states.
At the critical meeting of the Natural Resources Board (NRB) on October 26, in which the board approved spending approximately $4 million of state money to purchase an easement in perpetuity on about 56,000 acres of land in the Pelican River Forest, DNR staff touted record-breaking public support for the project, but what senior agency staff did not tell the board - and apparently did not know themselves - a DNR real estate specialist in Rhinelander serving as the point person for resolutions coming from local governments had received the two objecting resolutions within a department-set deadline about a week before the NRB meeting.
That was as far as the resolutions ever went, however. The DNR real estate specialist, Niccole Smith, never forwarded the resolutions to Jim Lemke, the real estate section chief of the DNR who was making the project presentation to the NRB, or to any other DNR staff prior to the NRB meeting, and her supervisors apparently never inquired of her about the existence of any such resolutions before their NRB appearance.
Sugar Camp town chairman Scott Holewinski said he repeatedly tried and failed to get the DNR to answer questions about the purchase before his town passed its objecting resolution on October 17.
The NRB meeting
At the October 26 NRB meeting, Lemke pitched the project enthusiastically to the board, outlining the reasons he said DNR staff were recommending approval for a working forest conservation easement on 56,259 acres in the Pelican River Forest for $15,512,000. Specifically, Lemke told the board, the acquisition would be financed with a combination of funds including a $600,000 gift from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, a federal forest legacy grant in the amount of $10,884,000, and the remaining $4,028,000 from the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship Program, with $3 million of the stewardship funding allocated to fiscal year 2023 and the remaining $1.028 million to be paid from fiscal year 2024.
During his presentation, Lemke hailed the broad spectrum of support from the public and said he had never before seen anything like it.
"Never have I had an acquisition with as much public support as this has generated," Lemke said. "Among the notable support letters are from the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation, statewide ATV and UTV clubs, .... Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association, Ducks Unlimited, and The Nature Conservancy ...."
Lemke never mentioned any opposition. He did say Langlade County had some potential concerns over the easement, but their concerns had been allayed.
"I attended their county board meeting to try and address some of those concerns," he said. "Langlade is very pro-active, they are very passionate about recreational use of their properties."
But they had some concerns about what was going on within their county borders and with their tax base, Lemke said, and the board had written a letter of concern to then DNR secretary Preston Cole.
"They did not rule in favor of continuing with that opposition," he said. "It was 14-3 in favor of not opposing this acquisition in front of the board."
The biggest concern was the timing the county was afforded to weigh in on the conservation easement, Lemke told NRB members.
"They felt that the 30-day time limit was too small of a time frame," he said. "I talked with them and assured them I would do better with these large asks in front of Langlade County and I told the county board that I would make a mention of that 30-day notice as a concern on their part to make it a part of the official public record of this meeting."
As it turns out, Oneida County was having the same concern, and the issue surfaced at the Oneida County board of supervisors meeting in February, as did the fact that Lemke did not mention any opposition by the towns.
Lemke said he did not mention the objecting resolutions at the NRB meeting because he had not received them and was not aware of them.
This past week, in an email sent to Holewinski, the DNR point person for those resolutions, Niccole Smith, acknowledged that she received the resolutions within the 30-day time limit but did not give them to any other DNR staff, despite the rapidly approaching NRB meeting and statutory requirement that they be considered.
"I do not have any emails showing I forwarded the Sugar Camp resolution on to other DNR staff," she wrote in a March 16 email to Holewinski, and she also acknowledged that, by January of this year, when town and county officials had begun to ask questions about the Monico and Sugar Camp resolutions, Lemke sent Smith an email asking if anyone had received it.
"I responded stating that it had been sent to me ...," she wrote, adding that she then sent the resolution to Lemke and other more senior DNR staff. But the NRB had approved the funding three months earlier.
In addition to the suppressed resolution, Oneida County, like Langlade County, was also chafing under the tight time period the DNR gave towns and counties to enact resolutions for or against the project.
A 30-day notice is part of the established process, Lemke said at the February county board meeting, but, in this case, with the size and significance of the purchase, he said he should have communicated sooner.
"I miscalculated based on past conservation easements that the state has done and the popularity of those within those counties, and, since Phase 1 (the 12,500 acres) wasn't objected to, that this too would be received favorably by the county," he said. "That's my mistake."
The timeline
The timeline begins on Sept. 19. That's the day Lemke sent out notification letters to town, county, and state officials whose constituents would be impacted by the easement purchase, notifying them of the project and of the time-limited ability to pass an opposing or supporting non-binding resolution.
In the letter, Lemke tells the officials the department is required to notice the local government board and to alert the board that it may adopt a resolution. The agency real estate chief also assured officials that the department would consider any resolution passed and forwarded to the department.
"If you decide to adopt a resolution for or against this easement purchase for conservation purposes, it must be adopted within 30 days of receipt of this letter," Lemke wrote. "While non-binding, the department will consider the resolution. The deadline for sending a resolution to me is October 21, 2022."
And if local governments did pass a resolution, the letter instructed them to send a copy of the resolution to Niccole Smith, who works out of the agency's Rhinelander office.
There were other problems with that letter besides the short time period to consider such a significant purchase, Holewinski says, namely, the letter to Oneida County was sent to the wrong person. Instead of sending the letter to Holewinski as county board chairman, the agency sent it to the home address of former county board chairman Dave Hintz, who had stepped down from the board five months earlier.
"Oneida County was never properly notified," Holewinski said.
Holewinski himself was notified as chairman of the town of Sugar Camp and so, to try and meet the deadline, he says he set about trying to get answers from Smith that he and other supervisors had about the acquisition. That turned out to be a frustrating process, Holewinski says.
"From September 19 to October 16, I made several calls to Niccole Smith," he said. "I left two voice messages but never received a call from her during this period of time."
It should be noted that, in another communication with Holewinski, Smith says she had left him "a few voicemails." Her communication suggests it was late in the game, October 18 or after, but the communication does not make that clear.
In any event, Holewinski viewed the agency as unresponsive, and the Sugar Camp town board passed a resolution objecting to the easement on October 17. The next day, Holewinski said the town clerk emailed the resolution to the DNR and also sent the agency a physical copy. That same day, October 18 at 2:51 p.m., Smith responded to the town clerk saying the resolution had arrived.
"Received," Smith wrote. "I also left a voice mail for Scott Holewinski with my cell number so he can contact me for additional information and/or I can answer any questions he has."
But Holewinski said it was too late to answer questions. The deadline to respond was only three days away, he said, and the town had already passed and submitted a resolution.
In any event, while Smith had indicated to the town clerk that she had left Holewinski a message, Holewinski said she did not actually leave a message until two days later.
"Hi Scott, Nicole Smith calling with DNR," Smith began her message on October 20 at 3:32 p.m, Holewinski says his records show. "Trying to get ahold of you regarding the resolution you passed in regards to opposing the conservation easement that the DNR is pursuing around the Monico area. I believe you may have questions about this purchase of this easement so I'll be happy to answer these questions for you."
Smith left her phone number. On that day, Holewinski happened to be in another state, so he said he forwarded the voice mail to another town supervisor, Paul Sowinski, and asked him to return Smith's call. Holewinski said Sowinski placed the call but Smith did not answer, and Holewinski said Sowinski did not leave a message.
Casually dropping the bomb
In a March 16 email to Holewinski, Smith delivered her own timeline of what happened with communications. She was responding to an email and text from Holewinski, in which Holewinski was seeking answers about what had become of the Monico and Sugar Camp resolutions.
"This is Scott Holewinski, chairman for Sugar Camp," Holewinski began his text. "You acknowledged to my clerk that you had received our resolution and you left me a visual voice message on October 20th, 2022 affirming you received it. Who did you forward the resolution onto and include the Monico resolution. Please reply."
Smith did reply.
"I received the email from the Sugar Camp clerk with the resolution attached on Tuesday October 18, 2022," Smith wrote. "I replied via email that same day stating I had received it. I also left you a few voicemails which you responded via text message that you were on vacation and one of your supervisors would contact me."
However, Smith said she had no emails or voicemails from any town supervisors, not surprising since Sowinski had said he did not leave a message.
Then Smith delivered her bombshell: "I do not have any emails showing I forwarded the Sugar Camp resolution on to other DNR staff. My intent had been to discuss the project with you and answer any questions I could prior to sending the resolution on, but we never connected."
She also apparently did not forward the Monico resolution to anybody until she was asked about it in January.
"I received an email from Robert Briggs with the Town of Monico's resolution at almost 8pm on Friday October 21, 2022," Smith wrote to Holewinski. "He followed up with a second email on Saturday October 22, 2022 explaining a typo on the resolution. I cannot find an email where I replied to Mr. Briggs on receiving the resolution. I did however return a phone call to Mr. Briggs on October 20, 2022 and also to his clerk on October 20, 2022. I spoke directly with each of them."
Then, on January 26, Smith wrote, Lemke sent an email asking if anyone had received the Monico resolution.
"I responded stating that it had been sent to me; my response, which included a copy of the email from Mr. Briggs and his resolution, was sent to Jim Lemke, Peter Wolter, and Ron Gropp, all DNR staff," she wrote. "Also included in my reply was a summary of the phone conversations I had with Mr. Briggs and Ms. [Monico town clerk Barbara] Henderson."
Holewinski was incredulous and replied to Smith less than an hour later:
"So to date nobody has asked for a copy of the Sugar Camp resolution?" he asked. "The notice to the town said to submit a resolution by October 21 to be considered. Doesn't say that you will hold on to it till everything is a done deal. We assumed once a resolution was submitted, for or against, it would be presented to the Natural Resources Board."
But Holewinski said it was not all Smith's fault. He directed blame at Lemke, too, saying the DNR real estate chief should have been tracking the resolutions coming in and asking about any that might oppose the purchase.
"He is in charge of easement purchases," Holewinski told The Times. "He sent out the notice. He told us where to send a resolution for or against and gave us a deadline. He never followed up with his department if they received any. Somebody should find out when he became aware."
The Lakeland Times did ask Lemke that question and, more specifically, the newspaper asked when he first became aware that those town resolutions had been passed and sent to the DNR but not forwarded to him or other senior staff, and second, the newspaper asked if there was a reason he did not inquire with staff about the existence of any town and/or county resolutions - both for and against - so they could be part of his report to the NRB, especially since he was citing letters of support from various groups such as The Nature Conservancy.
In his reply, Lemke again said he was not aware of the objecting resolutions prior to the NRB meeting.
"I did not learn of the objections until well after the NRB meeting, most likely at or near the January 26th date," Lemke said in an email.
As for inquiring about the existence of local resolutions, Lemke said he usually depends on staff to inform him of important matters.
"I typically rely on staff to bring forward a variety of subjects they feel needs involvement from me, versus resolving questions themselves," he said. "In this instance, I believe Niccole felt she was appropriately answering the town's questions on the conservation easement, and as such was dealing with the resolutions at the local level and didn't involve me."
A central issue in the easement deal is the amount of land government already owns in Oneida County. According to the resolution being debated in Oneida County, Oneida County has 791,413 acres of area that consist of 78,091 acres of public lakes and rivers, 11,183 acres of federal land, 129,322 acres of state, DNR and Board of Commissioners of Public Lands, 81,733 acres of county forest, 1,703 acres of other county lands, 10,694 acres of towns, churches and school exempt lands, 124,502 acres of Managed Forest Land (MFL) open lands and 78,643 acres of MFL closed lands for a total of 515,911 acres.
Cost is a another big issue. According to figures calculated by state Sen. Mary Felzkowski's office, the state's Stewardship fund has accumulated significant debt, almost $453 million, which would cost taxpayers $579 million with interest if carried to maturity.
In 2022-23, according to those figures, the state will pay a total of $63,975,932 in stewardship-related debt service, including $44.1 million in principal and $19.8 million in interest. That includes $26.4 million in principal and interest that had been paid as of December, 2022, and an additional $37.6 million that is scheduled to be paid in May 2023.
The state typically makes two debt service payments each year, in May and November. Averaging the $64 million debt service payment the state is scheduled to make in 2022-23 over 52 weeks, the state will pay $1,230,306 in debt service, including $848,379 in principal and $381,927 in interest weekly, the figures show.
The proposed Pelican River Forest easement purchase would not be funded through bonding but critics say it's still tax dollars used to squeeze local tax bases and kill the long-term potential for economic growth in northern Wisconsin.
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