St. Germain board approves disc golf course — with conditions

After mulling the idea for several weeks, the St. Germain Town Board voted during its Thursday, June 27 meeting to allow the use of a parcel of town-owned property for the development of a disc golf course — as long as certain conditions are met.

When the town board first heard the proposal to use the property for disc golf, board chairman Tom Christensen said the land in question might possibly be put up for sale, so the board held a special meeting on Monday, June 17 to clarify the issue.

The land he was referring to sits on the north side of Wisconsin State Highway 70, just west of the town’s municipally-owned golf course.

“Not to throw any water on the fire here,” Christensen said, “but also something that came out of our last meeting, I’ve had several calls saying ‘Why don’t you sell the property around the golf course that you don’t use?’. This would be one of the lots that would probably sell quicker than some of the others, but maybe not.”

Christensen was referring to a May 21 board meeting when supervisors struggled — as they have for months — to come up with a plan for financing a complete replacement of 74 town roads, which is expected to cost anywhere between six and $10 million.

During that discussion, town supervisor Patric Niggemeier asked about the possibility of selling town assets — specifically including equipment, land-holdings, or even the golf course — to help pay for the roads.

During the meeting on the 17th, Christensen described the parcel to the west of the golf course.

“It would have to be surveyed,” he said. “It’s approximately 33 acres, and after you’ve had it surveyed, there’s probably 15 to 20 acres that are available at the highway.”

“The snowmobile trail runs through it,” he said. “That would probably have to be re-directed. You would have to get it…The northeast corner would have to be saved for the golf course, because the fairway is on that corner. But you have the front part of it that could be basically where the piece of property would be cut in half, if we wanted to try to sell that.”

“For what little money you’re going to get to sell that,” town supervisor Kalisa Mortag said, “That parcel is probably worth more to the town to keep than to sell it.”

She asked town supervisor Jim Swenson for his thoughts on selling town landholdings.

“If we were to sell that piece of property out there, what’s going to go up there, you know?” he asked. “We’re going to get yelled at if it becomes a storage unit. We’re going to get yelled at if it becomes…  So, you’re going to get scrutinized. We’re better off keeping it.”

“I think we’d be lucky to get $80,000 or $100,000 out of it,” Mortag said.

“I don’t even know if you’d get that out of it,” Christensen replied. “Probably $40,000 to $50,000 I think would be the very most.”

The board came to a consensus during the June 17 meeting not to seek elector permission to sell any town-owned lands.

Supervisors heard the initial request on June 10 from Cody Vojta, who spoke first with town supervisor Brian Cooper.

“So the cost for nine holes would be around $5,400 for the baskets,” Vojta explained. “The St. Germain Sportsmen’s Club has vouched to pay the first nine baskets. So what we’re looking for from the town is permission to use the land. We’d need to do the tree-clearing, which I believe is $2,800 for tree removal and brush cutting and all of that.”

Cooper told the board Dylan Jordan, owner of Legacy Land Improvements, offered his professional services at a deep discount.

“He’s a member of our fire department,” Cooper said, “and as such, decided he wanted to help out.” 

“It’s not stump-removal,” Cooper clarified, “but he’s got a mulching machine that can go through and make the trails in there.”

“These aren’t set in stone,” Cooper explained to the board as he referred to a diagram of the proposed layout. “This is going to be dictated by where the machine goes, and it says ‘Oh, there’s a big tree? Then we’ve got to go this way’, because we’re not going to take down huge trees out there. Dylan said he can take down and mulch trees up to ten inches. It’s a pretty impressive machine.”

“We discussed having like a ten-car parking lot,” Vojta told the supervisors. 

“We’d probably have to get with the state and get the road-access permit from them,” Cooper added. “And that would determine where the parking lot would be, because maybe they don’t want it right across from the Shell station.”

“And the snowmobile trail stays the same?” Christensen asked.

“Nothing gets changed,” answered Cooper. He said the trails, or fairways, would “be between eight and nine feet wide, unless instructed differently.” He then asked Vojta about maintenance.

“I’ve discussed this with the NHS group at Northland Pines,” he said. “They’d be willing to do like a spring clean-up every year. Other maintenance would be things like tree-cutting and limbing. I’m assuming maybe the town’s DPW could do that?”

“I met with the DPW superintendent this morning,” said Mortag. “And he saw that this was on the agenda. He said his biggest concern is that all these projects — not just this one, but many of the projects that have happened in town — start with a group that want to do something, right? The skateboard park being one of them, they raise the money; they put it in. And then it doesn’t get maintained; people move away.”

“All of a sudden,” she said, “it falls back on the town to take care of all this stuff. So, you’re going to consider doing this? Regardless of who says they’re going to maintain this, they’re not going to maintain it for the next 25 years. Eventually, it’s going to be on the town to do everything.”

“Yep,” Cooper acknowledged. “But who knows? Something might happen in the future where it can’t be maintained, but you cross that bridge when you come to it. If it comes down to ‘Well, it’s not being maintained and nobody’s playing frisbee golf’, then we pull the baskets out and it just goes back to its natural state because we didn’t destroy anything.”

During the meeting on the 27th, Christensen asked about specific costs.

“I remember, we kind of roughly talked about a culvert and gravel for the approach, for the hookup to Highway 70,” he told Cooper. “And then some kind of parking area with some kind of gravel in that. I can’t remember, but I thought there was something else (to pay for). And I think it was approaching $15,000. There was some kind of signage, too.”

“That was a guess,” Cooper replied. 

“Did you come up with firm numbers from anybody, or no?” Christensen asked.

“I did not come up with firm numbers because I did not know where we were going to be with this course,” Cooper answered. “I did come up with a donation of a culvert from Pitlik and Wick. I don’t believe that includes the install. I called and had a conversation with a fellow at the DOT…who does the permitting for the access roads, and the permitting is $75.”

“Yeah,” Christensen replied, “That’s not a big deal.”

“I don’t remember who told me this,” Cooper said, “But I heard in the past our town crew had rented a mini-excavator, and they’re capable of putting the culvert in. That is — as much as we’d have to ask them really nicely to do that — would be a minimal cost.”

“I don’t think that the number that we’re asking for from the town or from the chamber (of commerce) is going to be anywhere close to $10,000,” he said. “I think if you want to add in the cost of the gravel that we’ve got in the gravel pit, some time to run the trucks over to do that, and clearing that top dirt out of there, that’s not a huge parking lot.”

“Involving the Department of Public Works I wouldn’t be in favor of,” Christensen countered. “You need to get this done some other way, and not with the Department of Public Works. They’ve got enough stuff to do. People are already on their backs that they’re not getting stuff done. So throwing more stuff on them is just going to make the situation worse. I would not be in favor of having the DPW doing anything. And you know that it takes forever to move gravel with those small trucks.”

“In our last meeting, as we were talking about different projects, it kind of sounded like the board wanted to go in the direction of fixing up what we have first and getting things done before we take on new projects,” Christensen said. “I realize that this isn’t a lot of money. But I don’t think you can pick and choose. If you’re going to go down the path of ‘we’re going to fix what we’ve got first before we do other things’, then I think we should go down that path and do that. And get those things done. And then look at expanding to different areas.”

“If it’s 100% not funded by the town, I have no problem whatsoever in approving the use of the property for that,” the chairman said. “I don’t have a problem with that. And I think it fits better than the other (property) over here that you talked about. I think this one is a better property. Your comment that if nobody takes care of it, it goes back to the way it was. Obviously, some trees are going to come down, but it’s not like any structure was built. The parking lot will remain, as will the entrance. I would approve of using the property, but not spending any funds at this time on its creation.”

“I feel like it’s two different topics,” Mortag said. “I’m good with committing that property for that use. But I don’t feel like there’s enough numbers or enough conversation to even talk about funding. I don’t know.”

She suggested Cooper and Vojta check with the chamber of commerce to see if the project would qualify for its numerous grant offerings. Those grants are funded with room-tax dollars, which come from a surcharge paid by out-of-towners who rent lodgings in St. Germain, and do not include funds procured through the property tax levy.

Christensen also suggested to Cooper he should stay conscious of keeping the total cost of the project under $25,000. Should the expenses surpass that number, the entire project would then be subject to a public-bidding process.

“So, can we talk about committing the property to it,” Mortag asked Cooper, “Which would allow you guys to move forward with getting pricing, figuring it out, getting your plan together, seeing what funding there is. and then come back with a next step?”

“Yeah, that would make sense,” Cooper replied. “And we could talk with the chamber.”

Ultimately, Mortag made a motion “that we commit the Town of St. Germain parcel number 24-49 for the development of a disc golf course, not to interfere with the golf course or Bo-Boen snowmobile trails during their use, with a requirement that the town board approves the final plans.”

The board unanimously approved the motion.