Lac du Flambeau town board approves monthly road payment

The Lac du Flambeau town board on May 31 approved easement permit applications from the Business Development Corporation (BDC), part of the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

The 2-year-old project is funded primarily by a grant from the federal government’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). 

Dion Reynolds, chief operating officer of the BDC, was at the meeting to provide an overview of the broadband project and some of its history, explaining the NTIA grant provided the Lac du Flambeau tribe and others “the opportunity to write for funding in underserved areas.”

“It was very easy for us to show that we are an underserved area,” he said. 

The town board, after a question and answer period, eventually unanimously approved the easement applications for the broadband projects on town roads through Dec. 31, 2026, town supervisor Matt Gaulke later telling The Lakeland Times the road easements for the project will expire and the town board would review them then.

‘I want your opinion’

The other item on the agenda for the May 31 special meeting of the Lac du Flambeau town board had to do with the ongoing dispute the town has had with the Lac du Flambeau tribe regarding expired easements of tribal land on four roads, Annie Sunn Lane, Center Sugarbush Lane, East Ross Allen Lake Lane and Elsie Lake Lane. 

“As you know, the monthly fees increase by $2,000 every month,” Gaulke said at the start of the discussion. 

As of May 1, the payment was $44,000 with a total of $456,000 paid to the tribe since the monthly payment arrangement was agreed to last year, initially to be $20,000 per month until a long term resolution to the matter could be reached, something that hasn’t happened. 

“The town cannot continue to pay and absorb that cost,” Gaulke said. “So, I thought it was time to bring it to the board to see or suggest what they want to do.”

He said the title companies involved have been paying half the monthly payments in “the past few months.”

“The town is paying the other half,” Gaulke said and he asked town supervisor Bob Hanson, attending the meeting via conference call, if he had any comment. 

“This issue is really frustrating for me because I understand the tribe’s position on this,” Hanson said. “I mean, we are, technically, dealing with a landlord/tenant situation and the rent hadn’t been paid for 10 years. I think the tribe has been extraordinarily patient in that regard.”

Even so, he said he’d like to see the matter resolved. 

“I’d like to see this worked out to where we get credit on an easement fee for the payments that we’ve made so far and have the easements billed at a reasonable rate,” Hanson said. “We can have a discussion as to whether or not the title companies should be required to continue supporting those payments and whether or not the residents on the roads in question should be responsible for those payments.”

He mentioned a couple other situations where that was the case, property owners on roads paying a fee.

“If the residents are taking responsibility for easement payments on some roads, I think we should make that more universal, something that should be done fairly all around,” Hanson said. “We shouldn’t have one group of residents paying for the easement and another road where the town pays the easement fees for the residents.”

“Well, Bob, some of these people had an easement agreement with the tribe,” Gaulke said of the examples elsewhere in town where property owners were paying easement fees. “They knew about it. In this case, it was an unknown. So, I guess that’s what really differentiates the two of them.”

“Well, I think there was notice given of these easements but it was believed the title companies were going to take care of it and they did not,” Hanson said. “We, and I’m including myself in this, we as a board did not follow up on that to make [certain] they were doing it.”

The owners of the properties in question, he said, should be looking to the title companies “to step up and take the weight for that.”

“The title companies have really fallen down on the job here, too,” Hanson said. 

Town supervisor Gloria Cobb asked people with property on the four roads what they felt the town board should do with regard to making the payment, which if paid, would cover the period of June 12 to July 12. 

 “I want you[r] thoughts on continuing the payment,” she said. “I want to hear it from you, should we or shouldn’t we? Because the end result could be they (the tribe) shut those roads down again.”

Cobb, a tribal member and former member of the tribal council, said she voted for the broadband permit easement item earlier because she is “fully supportive of” the project “but I am not willing to be put in a position where all roads are shut down.”

“So, I want your opinion ... because I, of all people, understand this issue 100 percent because I’m a tribal member. I understand it more than anybody and it hurts.”

Mary Possin, a property owner of Elsie Lake Lane, spoke first, taking a shot at Hanson’s comments regarding the easement fees. 

“I can’t believe that I’m sitting here listening to a member of this town board tell me as a resident that I should be responsible for the fees of a public, town road,” she said, adding she had called the town office in 2011 to ask if Elsie Lake Lane was a town road and was told it was. 

“Now, I’m sitting here in 2024, listening to a town board member say that somehow, I should be financially responsible for the road that the town represented to me was their road,” Possin said. “Are you kidding? This is ridiculous!”

Possin briefly went into what the title companies have invested in properties involved in the matter which is, basically, face value of the insurance policies.

“They’re never gonna spend a nickel more than that,” she said. “On any of this. So, at  some point, these title companies are just gonna say, ‘Here’s your check. Sorry. Peace out.’ And then we’re stuck.”

Possin said there were “two schools of thought” regarding whether or not the town should make the payment. 

“One of them is to not do that and force the issue and see what happens,” she said. “The other is I really don’t want to go through this again because it was horrible. We can’t stay at our house. The reason we can’t stay at our home if the road closes is we don’t have access to emergency medical care.”

Hanson, a retired attorney, later said Possin’s comments about the title companies only paying face value for policies “was misstated.”

“There’s a lot more to it than just the basic value of the property,” he said. “If there’s a tort action, a tort action can get into a lot of money and the title companies, I think, do not want to get into that sort of action because there, they could actually lose some big bucks.”

“Diane and I can’t go through this again,” East Ross Allen Lake Road property owner Darwin Lohse said. “I hate to see our taxpayers pay this monthly fee but if we keep paying it, maybe that will get you, the board, our legislators ... involved to get this thing settled. The stress that was on our family was horrific.”

Eventually, Cobb, saying “I don’t want the roads closed” if the payment doesn’t happen, made the motion to make the payment, which is $46,000. 

In addition to the payment, Cobb said she also wanted to see a letter go to the tribe that would inform the tribal council there would be a reversion from July forward of the monthly $20,000 the two sides had agreed to last year “in hoping to open up lines of communication with the tribe.”

Hanson voted against the motion. 

“My concern is if we go back to the original $20,000 figure, we could go back to the roads (being) closed,” he said. 

Cobb’s motion passed, 2-1.  

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].