Lynne stymied by Willow Road debacle

Those who have been down Willow Road in the town of Lynne are painfully aware of the road’s deteriorating status. For those who have not, imagine four-inch ruts in the roadway and never-ending bumps that jar the spine and conditions that make hydroplaning in rainy conditions not just a possibility, but headed towards a probability. While most towns in the Northwoods struggle to keep up their roads, the town of Lynne has a special situation with Willow Road, according to town board member Jeff Brown.

Willow Road in the town of Lynne is classified by the state under major connector status. With that status in place, the town does not qualify for certain state grants, Brown said, as those are available only for roads with minor collector status. When looking at a grant program, he said, though he was not exactly sure how it worked, he was told the town would have to fund the entire project and then apply to the state for a 50 percent reimbursement. That would not be possible for the town, either. 

The road was last resurfaced in 2005, for somewhere around $1 million, Brown said, which was done through a grant. With logging trucks heading south on Willow Road, weighing 80,000 to 90,000 pounds, Brown said, the road has deteriorated under the weight of those trucks, hauling from the county forest.

He recently traveled the road with a representative from Pitlik and Wick to determine what might be a viable solution. To simply pull up the black top, which was mostly chunked up, set that black top aside, grade the road, lift if a couple of inches, and resurface the road. Even that option came in at $251,000 per mile. That kind of money, he said, is simply not in the town’s coffer. 

The town of Lynne, he said, has the vast majority of county forest. In fact, of the 45,000 acres the town encompasses, only 703 acres have a valuation equal to the valuation of the entire town, he said.

“When you start reading about things, you find out that town supervisors, and the town, too, can be held liable for unsafe roads,” Brown said. 

He said last year the town started looking into what could be done. While the town has been extremely prudent and frugal with their money, he said, the $410,000 they have been able to put aside will barely touch the issue on the 13 miles of this road. Brown said he had been in contact with the Department of Transportation (DOT), and found that, per lane mile, the town would have to budget $550,000 to $600,000. He said this would mean almost $15 million to repair Willow Road back to good condition. 

Brown said that began the search to determine where funding could be found to that end. In 2023-24, he said, the Prentice school district, in which the town of Lynne falls, put out a referendum, which failed. After that failure, however, the school district secured a loan, increasing taxes for the school system in the town of Lynne by 49 percent, with the average increase as a whole being 26.6 percent, he said. With that additional burden already put onto the small number of tax payers in the town, Brown said the board could not, in good conscience, ask the residents of their 73 full-time households to yet again pay more in taxes in an attempt to cover these costs. With the average income being under $30,000, he said people were still reeling from that increase. He said, with 90 percent of land in the township being county, state or Managed Forest Law land, there was a great deal of difficulty in raising more money from the townspeople. With that said, the town looked for other ways to solve the debacle that had become Willow Road. 

The major collector status, he said, was one of the hold-ups on finding funding. The DOT was not interested in changing the status of that road.

“They’ve defined it that way because it’s the only piece of blacktop that connects Highway 8 to Highway 70 for 32 miles,” Brown said. 

While other towns with county forest land and associated trucking have county and even state highways, he said, Lynne does not.

“Because we don’t have a county trunk road now,” he said. “I’m saying that’s our long-term solution. I think anyone who’s going to reasonably look at the situation, would have to understand, if we’ve got a $13 million to $15 million investment to make, between the 73 households, and a couple hundred cabins and mobile homes, those 703-acre landowners cannot afford, could never afford $13 million for the road.”

He said that is the town’s dilemma, and the only way the town could see to move forward was to ask for a jurisdictional transfer to make Willow Road a county highway. He understood the county likely did not want to take on the maintenance of that road anymore than the town did. However, with the county forest being there, and the need to get logging trucks in and out, he said, the county may have more to gain, as well as more options for funding. While the county does pay severance (stumpage) to the town in the amount of 10 percent of net sales, even with an additional 2 percent given after a town board official approached the county about logging truck damage to the road, that still does not allow the town to repair the road properly. 

“I really, seriously, think there’s no other way out than to have this road go through the jurisdictional transfer to Oneida County,” Brown said. 

He said the town understood there may be a delay in things such as snow removal. However, the town would be willing to subcontract through the county to handle snow removal, which would be in the best interest of both parties. He said that could potentially ease some of the ongoing maintenance burden.

“We know this is going to be a problem for forestry,” he said. “We are absolutely not trying to create problems for forestry. But we have to consider protecting the value of that road, as bad as it is, a much as possible.” He said there was also an idea posed to remove the black top on the worst portions of the roads and committing to grading them continually. The other option the town would have to look at, he said, would be to change the classification of the road to a Class B roadway. This would mean a reduction in the weight limits by 60 percent. Neither of these options would be ideal, he said, but those would be considerations, as would lane wedging and cold patching over some of the worst areas.

“That’s what we’re stuck with,” he said. “We’re not trying to be bad neighbors to the county. We’re trying to do with what we’re charged with doing. We’re told how we’re responsible for making them safe, and if someone’s making them unsafe — you’ve got the county forest using this bad road to make their million dollars per year, and it’s not benefitting us at all.” 

The severance amount from the county, he said, may be enough to maintain and repair the gravel roads necessitated by hauling timber out of the county forest, but it would still not touch the repairs needed on Willow Road. 

Beckie Gaskill may be reached via email at [email protected].