The failure to sell or lease the Health Care Center led to some unpleasant moments at a special board meeting at the end of June. There was some arguing between one of the leaders of the group to save the Health Care Center and the chair of the county board. The following day the chair of the board sent an email to all supervisors apologizing for his outburst at that meeting. Since then, there has been a call for calm and no additional action by any committee or supervisors. The path forward is unclear, but it is almost certainly to be rocky.

It caught my attention how jovial everyone was at the June board meeting. At that time, the Health Care Center seemed to be a done deal. At this month’s meeting the chair in his report noted how tight the upcoming budget would be. The undertone of those comments can certainly be directed to the Health Care Center issue. Now we are back to politics as usual.

We started this month’s meeting by appointing Ann Schmitz-Guy as a citizen member of the Transportation coordination committee.

The Pro Se Family Law Clinic was awarded a $2000 grant from the Wisconsin Law Foundation. The Wisconsin Law Foundation is a charitable arm of the State Bar of Wisconsin. They have received this grant the last four years. The clinic provides self-represented litigants access to user friendly forms and written instructions, all in English and Spanish, for those who choose to represent themselves in Family Law court matters. The Pro Se Family Law Clinic plans to use Grant funds to create short instructional videos on family law issues, in both English and Spanish languages, and to offer these videos on the Sauk County Family Court webpage and have them available for viewing during clinic hours.

The board voted 24-0 (1 Abstain) to amend an ordinance, changing the supervisory district boundaries resulting from the Village of Lake Delton annexation. The village annexed land from the Township of Delton. The current population of said land is zero.

The board voted 23-2 to delegate the authority to enter into settlement agreements with Opiod Defendants to the Sauk County Administrator and Sauk County Corporation Counsel. Supervisors Pepper and Lombard voted against it. These are the two supervisors who voted against another resolution that supported using Opiod funds to support a matching grant.

The board voted 24-1 to authorize the County Administrator to enter into a memorandum of understanding with the Sauk Soil and Water Improvement Group. A memorandum of understanding is required in order to receive grant funding from The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. If the grant is received it will be used by the Sauk Soil and Water Improvement Group. Supervisor Pepper voted against this as he had previously announced he will vote against all LRE resolutions until he gets satisfaction over some flooding that occurred on his land earlier this term.

The board voted 24-1 to authorize the County Administrator to enter into a cost reimbursement subaward with the Sand County Foundation. This will amend the Land Resources and Environment Department budget. The Sand County Foundation is a recipient of a grant from the USDA. This grant provides cost sharing to landowners who implement conservation practices on their land that protect land and water resources. The award is in the amount of $100,000 with $91,181 going to financial assistance to landowners and $8,819 going toward technical assistance. The Land Resources and Environment department is providing an in-kind match at $14,442 and $7,450. Supervisor Pepper voted against this for the reasons stated in the above paragraph.

The board voted 22-3 on an ordinance amendment to approve a map amendment to rezone lands in the Town of Sumpter from agricultural to single-family residential. The land covers approximately 17.88 acres. The chair of the LRE committee noted that several members of the committee found some aspects of this amendment problematic but did not feel they had the grounds to deny the request.

As always, any opinions expressed here are my opinions and do not represent the Sauk County Board.