Minocqua, Lynne mull petitioning Oneida County to take over road shared by the towns

A jurisdictional transfer request submitted to the Oneida County board’s highway committee by the town of Lynne was on the committee’s April 2 meeting agenda. 

The request centers around Willow Road being transferred from the town’s road inventory to the county highway system.

“They set it aside for further review,” interim Oneida County highway commissioner Ben Rich said of action on the matter taken by the highway committee last week. “We all heard the rumors the town of Minocqua was going to be doing the same thing as the town of Lynne.”

That “same thing” is going to be a topic of discussion at the April 8 Minocqua town board meeting. 

Willow Road, also known as Squirrel Lake Road and Pine Lake Road, runs nearly 30 miles between the towns of Lynne and Minocqua. 

“It’s in horrible shape,” Rich said. “All of it is. So ... I don’t know. The financial burden on the county is tremendous.”

No magic wand

Minocqua town chairman Mark Hartzheim said the April 8 town board meeting is expected to include discussion about possibly transferring road jurisdiction to the county, calling it  “just some initial discussion on a topic that has come up over the years to explore that.”

“The primary impetus right now is probably the town of Lynne, our neighbor to the south,” he said. “I think they’re struggling with their budget and their ability to maintain that roadway through their town and they want to see about it becoming a county road so the county would maintain it and perform the snow removal on it.”

Hartzheim said the reasoning is based on the fact Oneida County “does a lot of logging and forestry.”

“There’s a lot of county-owned land in that part of the county,” he said. “There are a lot of logging trucks and equipment that are traversing these roadways and probably causing a little more premature failure than most roads might experience.”

The logging operations on county-owned property in that area, he said, are a revenue source for Oneida County. 

Hartzheim said town officials with the town of Lynne have approached Minocqua to consider petitioning with the town of Lynne for a jurisdictional transfer to Oneida County of the road shared by the towns. 

“The fact is, over the years, a large percentage of logging traffic comes through Minocqua, leaves through the north and comes through on our roadways as well so would it be fair to have that road become a county road?” he asked and he said there was “one other factor here.” 

“A lot of towns in the county have county roads in them and even though Minocqua is one of the largest towns in the county, we have almost no county roadways in our town,” Hartzheim said. “We account for about a quarter of the county’s budget and we have almost no county roadway.”

The small portion Minocqua has is roughly half of County Highway J between the U.S. Highway 51 intersection and the intersection with State Highway 47. 

“Half of that is in the town of Woodruff,” Hartzheim said. “That little segment of Hwy. J is the only county roadway in our town.”

Acknowledging Oneida County has budget struggles as well and would need to come up with funding for the road, he said “looking at the big picture, nobody has a magic wand.”

“This will be our first time discussing this as a board,” Hartzheim said. 

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