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LA CROSSE COUNTY BOARD PROCEEDINGS

COUNTY BOARD PUBLIC HEARING AND PLANNING MEETING

MONDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2007

The La Crosse County Board of Supervisors Public Hearing and Planning Meeting was held on December 10, 2007 at the Omni Center, Onalaska Wisconsin. Chair Doyle called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. The County Clerk, Marion I. Naegle, took attendance. All supervisors were present except as noted:

DISTRICT - NAME		DISTRICT - NAME
1	Richmond, Andrea – Excused	19	Robert Keil
2	Geary Jr., Ralph	20	Bina, Donald
3	Belzer, Keith	21	Hanson, J. Terry
4	Johnson, Jai	22	Ebert, Ray
5	Gamroth, Jacie – Excused	23	Kapanke, Brian
6	Billings, Jill	24	Pfaff, Leon
7	Plesha, Roger - Excused	25	Schroeder, Jeffrey
8	Freedland, Maureen	26	Burke, Vicki
9	Hampson, Sharon – Present at 6:15 p.m.	27	Hammes, George
10	Wood, Margaret	28	Doyle, Steve
11	Gillett, Jason	29	Pfaff, Brad
12	Ehrsam, James	30	Spiker, Charles
13	Maney, Bernard - Excused	31	Fisher, Ann
14	John Medinger	32	Schippers, Patrick - Absent
15	Montgomery, Lyell - Absent	33	Berns, Jim
16	Sebranek, Gerald	34	Rauk, Tom
17	Meyer, Donald	35	Bilskemper, Joe
18	Johnson, Tara

County Board Chair Steve Doyle

The meeting was called to order at 6:00 p.m.

County Administrator Steve O’Malley

· Proclamation – Zoning, Planning and Land Information and Metropolitan

Transportation Planning Month

WHEREAS, the staff assists and advises individuals, businesses, professionals and governmental communities by uniformly administering the zoning, floodplain, shoreland, subdivision, telecommunication and nonmetallic mining ordinances; and WHEREAS, they coordinate land information systems for the assessment, taxation, mapping, permits, planning and the educational needs of the public and private sector; and, WHEREAS, they help provide a safe and efficient transportation system which is maintained and funded partly through state and federally required metropolitan transportation planning. NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the La Crosse County Board does hereby proclaim the month of December 2007 as Zoning, Planning and Land Information and Metropolitan Transportation Planning Month and urges all residents to join in recognizing the valuable contributions of the staff dedicated to promoting the public health, safety and a property tax base through encouraging planned and orderly land use development.

Motion to approve by Burke/L. Pfaff passed unanimously with 4 excused – Richmond, Gamroth, Plesha and Maney and 3 absent – Hampson, Montgomery and Schippers.

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Opening Comments

· Doyle made the public aware that they could either speak to the Board Supervisors on the Comprehensive Plan or they could write their comments down on available forms. This information will go back to the La Crosse County Comprehensive Plan Committee. He feels everyone’s opinion is important to the process. The Committee has had various meetings throughout the County to get public input.

· Reed Dunbar of Schreiber/Anderson Associates, Inc. explained the process that was taken to get the Comprehensive Plan Draft completed.

· Process started in November 2005

· Did a random sample survey – 2500 households

· The La Crosse County Website was updated periodically

· Sub area meetings (5 sub areas) – went to the towns with meetings versus the public coming to the County buildings.

· Went back out to the public with each phase of the draft for input:

o Existing Conditions

o Vision and Goals

o Land Use Plan

o Policies and Recommendations

· In the Appendix of the Public Hearing Draft is a summary of public responses from all of the meetings.

· The plan that is in front of you is a copulation of all that has been done.

· A recommended version of Issues, Visions and Goals Report was presented to the County Board in July of 2006 and approved the document.

· You looked at the Land Use Element in June of 2007 and approved the document.

· The Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee will discuss the comments collected here tonight and then make recommendations that will go directly to the Board in January and at that point will take action on the Comprehensive Plan. Up to this time, you can make any changes you want to the Plan.

Public Hearing

Speaker	Residence	Issue
Cathy Wade	Mindoro	Wants to keep the Town of Farmington rural and feels that Zoning needs a lot of work.
Stan Hauser	Town Onalaska	Felt the Public Hearing timing was not good and there should be another Public Hearing in 30 to 45 days.
Dave Paudler	Town Onalaska	Supports the plan. He feels it was a good process, a balanced plan and the meetings were very organized.
Doug Shefelbine	Town of Onalaska	Feels the landowners have been ignored. He wants his family to be able to build on his land if they do not want to farm without interference.
Al Bushek	Town of Greenfield	Not in favor of the 20% slope
Francis Brown	Town of Holland	Free Enterprise. Does not believe government should tell people what they could do with their land.
Al Schulz	Town of Shelby	Is in favor of getting more farmland and wet lands back instead of losing them to housing and commercial. He is an advocate of the 20% slope.
Charlie Weeth	City of La Crosse	He was a member of the Steering Committee and learned how interconnected we are. Thinks we all need to look out for the area as a whole not by town or city. We are all responsible for the County.
Ron Amel	Town of Onalaska	Excellent plan. Thanked all involved. Hopes the County will be able to make the Purchase of Development Rights work.

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Howard Erickson	Town of Onalaska	Thinks the County should look into Efficient Microbes, which are used in Brazil to clean the soil of chemicals.
Rick Hinkley	Town of Onalaska	Wants to be able to sell his farm when the time is right and have it done tastefully.
Steve Mader	Town of Greenfield	The Town of Greenfield will not be able to develop enough land down the road with this plan. The Town is a developers dream, but they only get 24 acres a year to develop with this plan, which is not enough.

Citizens listed below chose not to speak but wanted their comments read into the minutes.

Resident	Residence	Issue
Pete Jansson	City of La Crosse	Does not want the slope restricted to 20%, but wants the Erosion Control Department to enforce the existing ordinances.
Tom Brindley	Town of Farmington	Feels the growth threshold for the Town of Farmington is too high. He thinks it should be 200 acres.
Brian Fukuda	City of La Crosse	Thinks the plan should be amended less often than 1 year. Feels big property owners need to take responsibility for their land and consider how it affects the rest of the community. Sprawling development is not efficient and puts undue tax burden on the urban area. Thinks the development acreage thresholds are a good idea

Report by Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee on the November 15^th Draft of the La Crosse Comprehensive Plan

Supervisor Vicki Burke

Spoke to her knowledge of the Comprehensive Planning process through being on the County Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee and working on the Town of Onalaska plan. She feels the County Steering Committee had a very diverse group of people working on the plan, which was an asset.

The Committee was very dedicated and worked very hard attending many meetings over the two-year period. She feels County Supervisors and elected officials are stewards of the lands. Her personal opinion is that the Comprehensive Planning is about stewardship of the land not ownership of the land. The Comprehensive Plan was developed from the goals and the land use part of the plan and with public input. The Committee recognizes the role of local control in land use decisions. The Committee does not believe the plan is overly restrictive, but strives to keep the character of the county. The Plan also recognized the ability for municipalities to work together. Boundary agreements are essential in the Comprehensive Plan. There are two areas of controversy; one on the slopes and the other on the thresholds for development. We looked at the percentage of slopes very carefully and some wording was changed. The Plan says that the threshold is when the town needs to review and amend their plan. The threshold numbers came from demographic information the Committee received. No landowner, no matter how much or how little land they own, has the right to decide how the land should be used. She feels the Comprehensive Plan is very important because it will determine what La Crosse County will look like 30, 40 or 50 years from now.

Steve Kujak

Background – he is an engineer from Trane Company and hires people from all over the world. He asked the last two hires why they chose this area to work and they responded because of the parks, scenic

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beauty, schools, good services, festivals, low crime, good people and a place where you can raise a family. He has been working on comprehensive planning for the last five years. One of the fears of working on this plan was that issues were going to change and they have, so they had to build a plan that would compensate for change. There were many diverse opinions. They had major discussions on zoning. Zoning is not planning and it took a while for everyone to figure that out. Zoning is a good implementation tool and is not always a good planning tool. They used the existing County Comprehensive Plan as a foundation. We updated the goals and strategies. We let the Towns have the freedom to do the details. They had many sub area meetings. The kick off meeting tested the vision that was framed initially from the Planning Dept. and other committee people. They framed the goals. The second process was to do visioning and test and revise goals. The four big issues that came out were land use and growth management, economic development jobs, transportation and environmental resource preservation and air/water quality. Next, we worked on land use, which is a big issue and had a separate meeting on that. They got tremendous input from around the county and used that information to frame the survey. They asked very detailed questions and got fabulous responses back from around 300 people from 1200 surveys they sent out. Next, they framed strategies and the implementation. At each meeting, they had spirited debate and sometimes reviewed things three or four times. It was a tough process.

Review and amend the November 15th Draft of the La Crosse County Comprehensive Plan

The is an opportunity for County Board Supervisors to have the Committee look into a specific topic or issue that they want more information on concerning the Comprehensive Plan.

o Supervisor Ebert – wanted to know the timeframe and the process that this will be coming to the County Board. County Planner Charlie Handy responded with the Committee taking any requests from supervisors and comments from the Public Hearing to their next meeting on December 27 and possibly amend this draft with that discussion. The results from that meeting will be submitted to the County Board in Ordinance form for a first reading at the January County Board meeting. It will receive a second reading at the February County Board meeting.

o Supervisor Schroeder – He wants the committee to look at amending this plan quarterly or every six months instead of the yearly amendment now proposed.

o Supervisor Bina – feels the quota system needs to be clarified much more than it is now to the Towns. The second item is he is concerned as to when and where you dissolve farm assets and farms. He has concerns and wants clarification on when the farmer can sell or develop their land because it is no longer profitable and they cannot make a living in farming.

o Supervisor Medinger – questioned the demographic numbers that were used in the process of the Comprehensive Plan. He feels areas will grow more than what the numbers show. He also understands that these demographics are all there is to go on.

ADJOURN:

Motion by Hanson/Sebranek to adjourn at 7:30 p.m. passed on a unanimous voice vote with 4 excused – Richmond, Gamroth, Plesha and Maney and 2 Absent – Montgomery and Schippers.

The above minutes may be approved, amended, or corrected at the next Board meeting.

STATE OF WISCONSIN	)
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COUNTY OF LA CROSSE	)

I, Marion I. Naegle, La Crosse County Clerk, in and for the County of La Crosse, Wisconsin, do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and correct copy of the Journal of Proceedings of the La Crosse County Board of Supervisors Public Hearing and Planning Meeting held Monday, December 10, 2007 and that it is the whole thereof IN WITNESS THEREOF, I HAVE HEREUNTO SET MY HAND AND AFFIXED THE OFFICIAL SEAL THIS 11^th DAY OF DECEMBER 2007.