Committee postpones GLITC CUP decision

There’s no decision yet from the Oneida County board’s planning and development committee on a conditional use permit (CUP) application for an adolescent recovery and wellness center (ARWC) the Great Lakes Intertribal Council (GLITC) wants to build in Cassian. 

At the end of a nearly two-hour discussion and question-and-answer session Wednesday, Jan. 17, the five-member committee, which is chaired by Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski, decided to postpone its decision to allow the GLITC  design team to work with Cassian officials to come up with proposals for gravel road improvements and to better specify plans for emergency vehicle access to the proposed 36-bed treatment facility intended for use by 13 to 17 year-olds. 

In November, shortly after the zoning office received the GLITC CUP application, planning and zoning director Karl Jennrich told The Lakeland Times, it appeared the application met county zoning requirements.

Jennrich also acknowledged at that time that he was not the final decision maker; the decision would ultimately come from the planning and development committee. 

Even before that, in September of 2023, the town board, citing concerns about the impact on public safety, property values and infrastructure, approved a resolution expressing opposition to the ARWC and hired Green Bay attorney Frank Kowalkowski to provide legal advise.

Kowalkowski is also representing the town of Lac du Flambeau in its ongoing road dispute with the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians. 

 The matter of the rehab center CUP has been a very emotional one for GLITC chief executive officer Bryan Bainbridge and  the Cassian town board as well as residents of the town of Cassian, several of whom, along with town chair Patty Francouer and town supervisor John Schaub, attended Wednesday’s meeting in the county board room.  

Among those with Bainbridge were GLITC’s president Shannon Holsey and the organization’s attorney, Rod Carpenter. 

Holewinski began the meeting by giving those in the audience of approximately 35 people an opportunity to speak. There were no takers, a stark change from the Dec. 28 public hearing on the CUP application where more than 30 people spoke.

Holewinski then turned to Oneida County planning and zoning director Karl Jennrich and requested that he go over information received by his office since the CUP application was submitted and answer questions raised during the Dec. 28 public hearing. 

That took nearly 45 minutes. When Jennrich was finished, Holewinski once again provided an opportunity for anyone in the audience to speak on the matter before the committee proceeded to deliberation. Once again, no one chose to speak.

“It is not our job as the planning and development committee to determine if there’s a need for this (facility),” Holewinski advised, before committee members asked questions. 

Land trust question

Bainbridge brought with him members of the ARWC’s design and engineering team which, it was noted, had met earlier that day with representatives of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). 

Questions about the water supply needed for the facility had arisen during the Dec. 28 public hearing.

Those questions were addressed by Nate Brown, a project manager with Green Fire Management Services, who over the course of several minutes, in addition to letting the committee know he also attended the meeting with the DNR that morning, provided an overview of findings that water well drilling in and around the immediate area where the facility would be built revealed. 

Those findings showed there would be sufficient water for the ARWC, he reported.

Other questions asked included what would be done to address anticipated additional traffic on town roads as well as better access to the facility by firefighting equipment, questions that eventually led to a postponement of a decision on the CUP application. 

The discussion became more contentious after Holewinski asked a question about a potential deed restriction to ensure the nearly 300 acres the non-profit GLITC purchased in Cassian for the purpose of constructing AWRC is not, at some point, transferred to federal land trust and removed from Oneida County tax rolls. 

“Is GLITC willing to deed-restrict the land so it does not become federal trust land exempt from state, county or town (taxes) or as a non-profit ... can you deed restrict it so it can’t be done in the future?” Holewinski asked. 

“I think we’ve demonstrated that it would be difficult for GLITC to somehow convert it to be tax exempt in the future,” Carpenter, the GLITC attorney, said. “I guess the concern ...”

“Sir, the question was ‘Will you deed-restrict it?’” Holewinski said, interrupting Carpenter.

“We would deed-restrict it if the county could show it has made that requirement of other applicants,” Carpenter replied. “I think the concern with questions that weren’t directly answered is that they go to what is, and I’m not comfortable saying this, but it’s an illegal bias toward my client’s status as a tribal nation or group of tribal nations. Who they admit and how the bills are paid and those are questions we can answer today but quite frankly, I don’t know that the county wants to be asking those questions and basing a decision on any answers we would give to those questions if this were to proceed beyond the deliberations today and if you have a court reviewing records. I hate saying that, but that’s my answer and that’s why Bryan’s not standing up.”

Holewinski said the reason he asked the question was because the land trust issue was brought up during the Dec. 28 public hearing. 

“We’re trying to determine what would be the possibility to resolve those concerns with the public ... there was a couple people who brought that concern up,” he said. “So, the question is and the answer is, no you will not deed-restrict it, period,” he said. 

“No, we think we meet the requirements of the ordinance for the conditional use and we don’t think there’s a basis to deny approval,” Carpenter replied.

Following the process

A few minutes later, after another of the facility’s designers told Holewinski any remaining concerns regarding access for emergency vehicles would be addressed and Holewinski indicated he wasn’t in favor of approving a CUP without receiving all the information requested, Bainbridge told the committee he felt that he “could see where this is going.”

“One of the first things that we did was have a conversation with the fire department and asked ‘What would be needed to accommodate?’ and make it easier because there were questions about the capacity of their (Cassian’s) fire department,” he said. “So, we made that initial contact. We went through and we implemented different things in the design within the fire suppression just in case there’s an incident.” 

As he stated during previous meeting, Bainbridge said he and the other members of the GLITC team have “tried to accommodate.”

“We’ve been following this process and being those good neighbors as I mentioned in that first ask,” he said. “My first ask to the town was to say ‘I want to share the project.’”

Bainbridge said he went to the county’s planning and zoning office in Minocqua and shared the proposal with zoning staff before GLITC made the initial land purchase in Cassian.

The lack of acknowledgement of some of the information in their packet by committee members “is concerning to me,” he added.

“I’ve tried to answer every question that comes from your zoning department,” Bainbridge said. “Showing up to every meeting to the township to answer questions that I could.”

He echoed some of what Carpenter told Holewinski earlier in that many of the questions that have been posed “aren’t part of the process for a conditional use permit.”

“These are questions that go above and beyond,” Bainbridge said. “I think just moving forward, we have done our due diligence.”

He referred to the water well question. 

“Looking at, going above and beyond and making sure we are looking at the closest wells to the facility,” Bainbridge said. “Not stretching out miles and trying to find something. We heard the same concerns ... it’s just good practice to do our research. Sit with the DNR and your staff.”

Some of the issues, he said, have been addressed. 

“But whether or not there will be a paved road, that’s an added expense, but there will be access for a fire truck or an ambulance or whatever it needs to be to go around the building,” Bainbridge said. “That accommodation will be made.”

Holewinski attempted to eradicate any notion of a racial motivation on the part of the committee.

“What I’m doing is I’m asking questions,” he said. “There’s nothing racial about this with me. You put something in the application, it got brought up and I questioned it. Don’t be insulted if I ask you a question to verify what’s going on. I’m taking what’s in the application, what you put in there or your attorney put in there and I’m asking the questions. It’s not an assault on you.”

The meeting continued on for another 40 minutes and by the end of it, Holewinski issued the directive regarding emergency vehicle access, gravel road improvements and more specificity on the security fence.

The CUP application is expected to be included on a planning and development meeting agenda in February or March.

Brian Jopek may be reached at [email protected].­­