Cassian town board shelves enhanced wake ordinance

While several area towns in the past year or so have approved hazardous wake ordinances, the Cassian town board has shelved the matter at least until after the April 1 election.

The decision was made at Monday’s meeting of the town board, one of the final meetings of the current three-member board before the election as town chair Patty Francouer and town supervisors John Schaub and Dave Priegnitz are not running for re-election. 

The town board had voted during its February meeting to send a draft hazardous wake ordinance to town attorney Greg Harrold for review before sending it to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) for a 60-day review.  

Jennifer Lepak with the Last Wilderness Alliance explained at that meeting the reason she and others feel the ordinance is necessary for Cassian is to prevent the spread of invasive species.

“Also shorelines, docks, other issues that would come up with a lake bottom with sediment and everything in a lake stirred up,” she said. “Our goal, as it’s been all the way through, is to have the town of Cassian put such an ordinance in place.”

The question Lepak said her group had is whether or not the town board intended to submit a draft ordinance to the DNR for review.

Lepak, in attendance at Monday’s meeting, got her answer. 

Priegnitz said since the February town board meeting, he talked to Harrold about the draft of an enhanced wake ordinance for Cassian. 

“I took him a copy of the proposed ordinance,” Priegnitz said. “We talked quite a bit about, you know, what’s the purpose of doing it and how easy it will be to enforce. Enforcement’s always going to be the issue.”

He mentioned a couple of the Oneida County towns such as Newbold and Lake Tomahawk that have adopted an enhanced wake ordinance. 

“Newbold went over it quite a bit,” Priegnitz said. “They looked at it as a deterrent but if someone ever wanted to challenge enforcement of it. It’s difficult because there’s a lot of things you’ve got to prove ... it would be a hard one to enforce.”

Priegnitz said Harrold’s recommendation to him was that since Francouer, Priegnitz and Schaub are all leaving the town board in the next month “doing an ordinance now wouldn’t be fair to the next board that’s coming up.”

“Let them make the decision because they’re the ones who will have to do the enforcement,” Priegnitz said. “So, let the board look at the proposed ordinance to decide whether they want to proceed. That was his recommendation.”

Priegnitz didn’t disagree with Harrold’s recommendation. 

“I think in fairness, I think, you know, it’s only going to be another month,” he said. “I think we should just let the next board decide whether they want to do this or not.”

Priegnitz then made a motion to have the town board “pass on doing anything on this and let the next board make a decision on it.”

Francouer seconded his motion and it passed. Schaub was absent. 

Lepak stepped forward to give Priegnitz some information regarding enforcement that he said would be passed on to the next town board. 

“So you’re not sending it to the DNR then?” she asked. 

“No,” Priegnitz said and that was the end of the discussion for now. 

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