City projects, budget amendments highlight Rhinelander council meeting

There’s a busy slate of city projects being readied for Rhinelander.

Mark Barden of Town and Country Engineering, LLC delivered a preview of what’s to come this year and next in a presentation at the Rhinelander Common Council meeting Monday, Feb. 9.

Plans are being finalized for construction this year on Brown, Frederick, Timber, Alban and Phillip streets.

“We’re going to be replacing curb full depth asphalt on the majority of those, less Phillips Street, which will be a mill and overlay,” Barden said. “That one is dependent on funding through DOT (Department of Transportation) ... Hopefully it will be $400,000 in grant funding if the city gets that. That funding list will come out in either late February, end of March … that one will probably go out in April or May to bid.”

In Wells 7 and 8, Barden said, “the pilot testing is ongoing. That will be going through spring. At that time we’ll start working on the design of the well house improvements, and we’re going to have to add a force main from the well house down toward U.S. Highway 8. We’ll get that design going on that as well.”

Regarding TID 10 improvements, which he said “run in utilities north from Stevens Street along the bypass,” the design is being finalized and he planned to meet with staff this week to make some final decisions.

Messer Street project

The Messer Street Area Utility and Street Improvements project, begun last year, is now “substantially complete,” Barden said, with final completion expected by the end of June. 

“Once the snow melts, we’ll do a warranty walk-through,” he said. “We have a punch list put together from this fall, do some warranty work as in some concrete work, asphalt patching, get all the final lift of asphalt on and do any repair or restoration work or anything else that needs to be done.”

With some loan funds and grant funds not yet spent, he added, “we’re working on potentially doing some work on two lift stations, Chippewa Lift Station and Oneida Lift Station, and potentially some additional blocks of work that would be kind of covered under the funding of this. We need to finalize that with Rural Development and obviously have discussions with (city administrator) Patrick (Reagan) and the Mayor (Kris Hanus) to see how far we want to take that funding.”

Later in the meeting, the council approved two requests from last year’s Messer Street Area project work: Change Order No. 8 for $29,179.88 (for which Barden said Rural Development will pay 50 percent, and a response is awaited from the DNR to have 40 percent paid by Safe Drinking Water, in which case the city’s share would be 10 percent) and Pay Application No. 9 from project contractor Musson Brothers, Inc., of Rhinelander, for $395,461.70.

Construction in 2027

The Spruce Area project is currently in the preliminary design stage, with some important funding deadlines ahead. 

“We will have plans put together for June 30 submittal for Safe Drinking Water Fund … Safe Drinking Water will pay for your water main,” said Barden. “In September we need to have plans put together for Clean Water Fund (which) … funds sanitary sewer. We will have an application in to Rural Development this spring, April-May, for that project as well.” Bidding and construction are anticipated for 2027, he added.

Also mentioned were plans for reconstruction of Coolidge Avenue from Timber Drive to Lincoln Street. “Along with that, we’re going to line the sewer and water mains,” he said. Funding through Safe Drinking Water and Clean Water Fund is being sought for that as well. “That is going to be done in conjunction with the DOT road project, and all that construction should be done in ’27.”

Budget amendments approved

Also on the agenda, the council approved a resolution of 2025 budget amendments as submitted by city finance director Wendi Bixby.

“The main takeaway from this is, the general fund budget was under budget, which was a great thing, for the year, and we’ve had that trend for the last couple of years,” Bixby told the gathering.

“It’s approved by the government functional level, and two of these budget amendments are just to reduce one function to increase another, but it nets as a zero change.”

One is to increase the transfer into the ambulance fund. “There was a borrowing in 2023 for the ambulance that put money into the ambulance fund, and the ambulance was finally ready for purchase in 2025, so there was just a little bit of catch-up now of that extra cash that was covering what kind of gap we would have had from the last two years,” she explained.

“And then the other transfer that we want to do is to transfer an additional $100,000 into the special projects fund for the tax revaluation assessment,” Bixby said. “And we currently have $331,000 set aside for that project … we wanted to make sure that we have enough set aside for that project.”

“There’s estimates of north of $400,000 for that,” Hanus noted. “The perk is, it will be a multi-year project, so we still have about two more budget cycles to save up.”

Other highlights

The council also approved the formal designation of the Heal Creek property and Northwood Golf Club, about 700 acres combined, as the “Heal Creek Recreation Area.”

“This would allow us to brand this, to sign it, to show it to be a 365-day recreation area,” said Reagan.

The next regular meeting of the Rhinelander Common Council will be on Monday, Feb. 23, at 6 p.m. at Rhinelander City Hall.

Ardith Carlton may be reached at [email protected].