St. Germain to hold two electors meetings in September

The town board of St. Germain decided during its meeting on Monday, Aug. 12 to hold two electors meetings in the month of September. Per state statute, the gatherings will be called “special town meetings”, but each one will put forth a vote on matters which can only be decided by consent or denial from the town’s resident taxpayers.

New toilet facility for Fern Ridge Recreation Area

The first of the two meetings will be held on Thursday, Sept. 5 at 7 p.m. in the St. Germain Community Center. The town’s Non-motorized Trails Committee has proposed the purchase and installation of a permanent outdoor toilet facility at the municipally-owned Fern Ridge Recreation Area.

Currently, the site uses porta-potties, which require pumping by a septic service roughly every two weeks. Jimmy Vogel, a member of the Non-Motorized Trails Committee, told attendees at last week’s meeting the responsibility for maintaining the structure would fall to the town’s department of public works (DPW). 

Vogel indicated he spoke with DPW superintendent Tom Stoltman, who said the new building would not represent an increased workload for his crew.

The new structure would sit above a concrete vault with an exponentially higher storage capacity than porta-potties, and Vogel estimated the vault might only need to be pumped as infrequently as once per year, which is the minimum requirement set forth by Vilas County regulations.

Supervisor Jim Swenson, who represents the town board on the Non-motorized Trails Committee, said the structure would be located at the north end of the Fern Ridge parking lot, and its placement would still allow for future development in the area.

Swenson said the new toilet — like the current porta-potties — would be used by more than just visitors to Fern Ridge.

“All the people using the porta-potty out there now, it’s not just the hikers and the bikers,” he said. “It’s people using the yard-waste facility; the ATV-ers; the snowmobilers; and anyone driving by.”

The roughly 10-foot-by-eight-foot building will serve as a unisex facility and comply with requirements laid out in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The price tag for the facility should come in at slightly less than $23,000. A grant from the St. Germain Chamber of Commerce will cover $14,250 of the cost, with the rest being paid by the St. Germain Silent Trails Non-Profit. Taxpayers will not shoulder the burden of payment. 

Grants from the chamber come from monies raised by collecting room-tax, which is a premium paid by out-of-towners who rent lodgings in St. Germain. Tax-levy money will not be spent on the project. 

Following last week’s meeting, Swenson told The Lakeland Times the new structure should be an easy sell.

“It will be a great upgrade for this area, and will get used year-round,” he said. “Our electors have been very supportive of (purchases for) the Fern Ridge Recreation Area in the past.”

Re-structured tax levy and debt-service

The second meeting — and vote — is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 26 at 7 p.m., also to be held at the community center.

The board proposed a change to the structure of the town’s near-future taxing-and-borrowing policy, which requires approval from the electors for implementation.

The town is facing a conundrum in that a total of 74 municipally-owned roads require complete replacement in the immediate future. Costs for the project could range from $6 million to $10 million dollars. In an effort to find every available dollar to pay for the new roads, the board proposed a cessation of borrowing money from banks in the short-term. Such a move could potentially save St. Germain somewhere in the neighborhood of $75,000 per year in interest payments.

Per state statute, increases to the tax-levy of more than a few thousand dollars must be approved by a vote of the electors.

However, the state allows spending for debt service to be regulated by the town board, without elector consent. 

In the case of St. Germain the board proposed eliminating $536,349 from the debt-service portion of the levy and shifting it to the allowable levy limit agreed to by resident taxpayers.

The board voted unanimously to ask the electors to “Approve an increase of the levy by $536,349 and decrease the debt-service by $536,349, resulting in a zero increase of the total levy.”

While the request for a tax-increase of more than a half-million dollars may sound dramatic, the plan is for the overall levy to remain the same, with homeowners seeing no increase to their property taxes. 

Payments to banks (including interest) would cease, and would shift directly to contractors who perform work for the town.

Multiple audience members in attendance at last week’s meeting urged town board chairman Tom Christensen to come prepared to the Sept. 26 meeting with a detailed, yet easy-to-understand presentation explaining the nuances of the proposed change.

Christensen spoke with the Times following the meeting.

“This makes perfect sense, and the people in the room were in support of it. It’s a sizable amount of money,” he said. “To me, if we get it explained properly, it should pass overwhelmingly, as long as people understand it.”