Resolution calling for highway department renovations goes down in flames

A resolution calling for the county to undertake extensive renovations of the Oneida County highway department’s Rhinelander facility was soundly defeated at Tuesday’s county board of supervisors meeting.

Some supervisors even tried to resurrect the ghost of failed resolutions past, wondering if the county might reconsider an offer by Kwik Trip nearly a decade ago to buy the current highway property, should Kwik Trip still be interested.

In the end, the resolution’s defeat by a tally of 16-4 did not mean the board was satisfied with the status quo, or that they were rejecting extensive remodeling or a new facility.

Rather, supervisors homed in on a number of flaws in the measure proffered by the county’s public works committee, among them being the lack of hard project boundaries or definitive plans, and it seemed to lock the county into renovation of the existing site rather than potentially opting for a new facility.

So a solid majority of the county board voted to kill the resolution, with supervisors then unofficially directing the county’s executive committee to explore the future of the facility.

There was some skepticism that the executive committee would actually act upon that task, but those concerns were assuaged by the fact that executive committee chairman Billy Fried sits on the public works committee and supported the resolution.

County board chairman Scott Holewinski acknowledged that the public works committee had made its wishes known.

“I believe the public works committee has gotten the point across and I would hope that the executive committee will debate this,” Holewinski said. “We already have the committee, the executive committee, and I think that would be something — since the chair of that committee sits on the highway committee — that Billy [Fried] would put on for discussion based on this discussion and debate.”

Fried also asked that, starting in November, there be monthly updates on the executive committee’s actions and discussions to the full county board.

The resolution

The defeated resolution was an open-ended one, but it would have put the county board on record as supporting extensive renovations that would include, but not be limited to, remodeling the existing vehicle repair garages, remodeling the existing parking garage, remodeling the second floor, adding a vehicle wash bay, upgrading electrical, and adding an addition to the administration areas to include offices and a new meeting room.

The county would have also been on record as supporting a new vehicle repair garage to include a welding and parts department, additional cold storage, a sand shed, replacement of an existing scale, and other site improvements. The resolution would have also enabled the public works committee to seek quotes for the work.

Supervisor Mike Timmons said he was a primary driver of the resolution because he was tired of the back and forth when it comes to funding improvements for the highway department facility.

“We’ve sent requests in for CIP [capital improvement projects] funding, and it’s back and forth, back and forth, administration committee to CIP, and it keeps coming back,” Timmons said. “We’re playing ping pong or volleyball and we’ve got to do something.”

Timmons said the decision was made in 2015 to renovate rather than relocate and build — the county undertook an extensive study that looked at both relocation and renovation options — but a decade later the Woodruff representative said the results have been disappointing.

“Nearly 10 years later and we haven’t done half of it,” he said. “We’ve got to do something to make it up somewhere. We’re going to have to come up with the money either to build or whatever. We’re a disaster away from having nothing.”

As each year passes, Timmons said, the costs go up and up.

Supervisor Robb Jensen, who was a vocal and leading proponent of the failed effort to build a new highway department in 2015, renewed his sojourn Tuesday. But while his heart was a largely lonely hunter then, he might have better prospects now, given that 14 of the board’s 21 members were not on the board during the previous discussions.

“Some things just never seem to go away,” Jensen said, adding that the board decided not to counter Kwik Trip’s offer in 2015 but instead postponed that resolution indefinitely and didn’t pursue other options related to renovation.

“The feeling of it was that this board wasn’t ready to borrow anything,” he said. “You can continue to Band-aid that building all you want, but the majority of that structure is inefficient and I don’t know how you fix it with the existing structure. So I guess I’m at that point where I think we need to step back, do a study again.”

Jensen underscored what he called a dire situation at the facilities.

“Have you seen the cold storage, folks?” he asked supervisors. “The door’s open 24-7, 365 days a year. It hasn’t changed. When they do mechanic work they open the door and they do mechanic work in the entryway. It takes a whole new renovation to — I think you need a new building. We never took the time to ask for an economic feasibility study.”

Jensen said the county never considered what the economic impact to Oneida County and Rhinelander would be if the county had sold the land to Kwik Trip.

“Well we don’t want to consider that so I think we have to take a step back, contact whoever to do an entire site analysis, figure out how things have changed and whether or not we should look at a different location and I think we can get that done in eight months and we’ll be back in June of 2025 to make a new decision,” he said. “I’m not in favor of continuing to Band-Aid that thing, it’s just throwing money away.”

Throw the resolution away instead

Holewinski advised supervisors to defeat the resolution. He said there never had been any formal vote to complete all the recommendations of the previous study and that in fact serious renovations had been made to the current facility.

“Since then we’ve built the brine building,” Holewinski said. “So we moved the brine facility out of the old shop, built a $750,000 building. There are three new parking spots heated for that.”

Holewinski also said he didn’t remember the CIP committee rejecting many public works committee capital improvement requests.

“We have a policy that all departments submit proposed projects to what used to be the administration team and is now the executive team,” he said. “The executive team takes that and prioritizes what’s best for the county. Right now, between 2025, 2026 and 2027, we’ve got $22 million of CIP projects coming up and now we’re asking for this.”

The highway department should utilize the standing CIP process, Holewinski said.

“My recommendation to the board is that we turn this down, have the public works committee submit prices to the CIP committee or the executive committee, and the executive committee tries to work some of these improvements into there,” he said.

Holewinski also said he thought the resolution’s wording was vague: “If we pass it today, it’s like an open checkbook.”

Picking up Timmons’s analogy of playing ping pong or volleyball, Fried said he felt like the net in the middle of a game.

“I’m like, ‘yeah, I see the need for this and that, but where are you going to get the funding?’” he said of public works committee discussions. “And Mike said to me, ‘Hey, that’s your job. You guys got to figure out the funding, we’re just telling you what we need.’”

Like Holewinski, Fried said he didn’t remember the CIP committee rejecting many highway department requests to the CIP fund for money out of the general fund. 

“And the concern you’ll hear probably next month when we talk about the budget is, as we use money from the general fund, it’s been noticeable over the last three years how our balance is going down and understanding what’s out there for the future, not just for highways.”

It’s going to be hard to have a sustainable budget for the next five to 10 years, given the highway department’s ask in conjunction with other requests, Fried said. 

“The executive committee has given the finance director permission to seek funding options such as bonding,” he said. “So it would be new funding that’s not available to us right now that we could consider possibly using toward the highway department, not just for the facility.”

Fried said the county also had to look at the roughy $2 million a year put into road construction, as well as equipment needs, such as trucks to maintain the roads.

“These are costly items,” he said. “So I think it is good for the county to look at and bring you back some options to possibly consider. The downside of it is, it means we need to tax our constituents more to get that type of funding, but that will all be spelled out for you.”

Fried said he supported the resolution because it would create a “mindset” that the highway department has some big-dollar items that need to be funded.

“Are you committed to doing it?” he asked. “Are you going to turn us back to funding and the CIP process and going back and forth. So I think this resolution is just asking, ‘Hey are you guys committed to helping us get dollars to improve it?’ We’re certainly going to come back to you with what those projects are, but we want to know that you’ll work hard to get the funding for the things we need to move the highway department forward.”

Supervisor Mitch Ives wondered if the county could resurrect the old Kwik Trip proposal, which wouldn’t seem likely, and Jensen said he just wanted all options considered, whether the facility stayed or moved.

Angst and more angst

Supervisor Connor Showalter said he wasn’t against any option but expressed reservations about the language of the resolution. 

“My one concern in this resolution is that we don’t say anything about potentially building new,” Showalter said. “It’s all just renovations. And if you think about Rhinelander as a whole, we’re completely landlocked, surrounded by townships. There’s no building opportunities. That land is worth, I would think, more than double what it was in 2014, especially with the new hotel going up across the street.”

Showalter said it was a great commercial location but probably not the best location for a highway department.

“So they could be anywhere, but they could be at a different location,” he said. “So if we were to get a bid or potential proposal on that property, I would think it would be significantly higher than it was before. Probably not the Kwik Trip since they already had two locations found, but looking at that or housing development or something else.”

But the resolution didn’t talk about any of that, Showalter said.

 “I’m not opposed to building a completely new facility somewhere else or renovating, but I think the feasibility needs to be looked at, and the economic impact of just putting it out there just from a resolution standpoint,” he said.

Timmons said he was not wedded to the resolution, he just wanted action.

“We cannot keep dragging it on and wasting the highway department’s time, chasing and fixing projects versus rebuilding projects versus real estate projects,” he said. “It’s supposed to fix highways and I think that’s where we have to take it and do our jobs. Like I said, it is just getting it over the hump of back and forth. I personally don’t care one way or another where it goes, we just got to go somewhere with it.”

Supervisor Steven Schreier echoed some of Showalter’s concerns.

“It appears the only option we’re given with this resolution is to fund a remodel because there’s no mention about reaching out to anyone to see if they’re interested in selling property, et cetera,” Schreier said. “So just for that reason alone, I would not support it. I don’t want the county to have its hands tied until you’ve at least had some definitive answer in regards to that.”

If Showalter was right, Schreier said, and the property is worth twice what it was, that would be a “big chunk of money” to offset whatever the county wants to do with a facility project.

Schreier said other language in the resolution was problematic, such as language saying projects would “include but not be limited to.” 

“What the hell is that?” he asked. “You guys are just going to add anything and everything in here as time goes by? I mean I totally agree with everything everybody said. I wish we had been a little more forward thinking almost nine, 10 years ago, but apparently we’re now paying that price and unfortunately when you look at the numbers quoted in the resolution, I can’t imagine any of these are even close to what they’re going to be now, whether they are renovation or new building.”

Schreier said the resolution should be postponed while the county reaches out to see if the offer is still out there or if anyone is remotely interested, while also getting the land appraised so the county knows its true worth.

Supervisor Dan Hess said the highway shop was a mess but that wasn’t true in other counties, which he said had newer buildings and facilities. He also agreed with Showalter that the area was prime for economic development. He called not building a new facility in 2015 a “a mistake.”

“The county has not had a loan that I’m aware of since 1998, the law enforcement center,” he said. “And I believe that was paid off early, if I remember right. I’m not a big proponent of getting a loan because it is basically increasing taxes, but something has to be done out there. We can’t keep band-aiding and band-aiding stuff.”

Holewinski warned of the dangers of borrowing, citing experience with the very law enforcement center Hess mentioned.

“When we built the sheriff's department, we took out a loan for seven years, paid $2 million a year, and then never took it off the tax roll because people were used to paying it,” Holewinski said. “Most of us didn’t know that happened. But that $2 million a year stayed and that’s why we’ve had such a healthy balance over the years.”

As discussion continued, a consensus slowly emerged that the executive committee be tasked with exploring highway facility options, especially with two members of the highway committee on the executive committee, including the executive committee chairman, Fried. 

Fried also proposed that monthly updates on that committee’s progress be given to the county board starting in November.