I hope you all enjoyed a happy and safe New Year! We wrapped up a busy 2023 with a packed County Board meeting and launched a new resource to make it easier for constituents to engage with us.

Thank you for reading,

Sarah

Engage with the Dane County Board

If you’ve made a resolution to be more involved in our community, we have the resource for you! Dane County has created a new webpage with information on providing public testimony.

Information about our meetings can be found on the County’s Legislative Information Center. The agenda for each meeting includes a link where you may register in support or opposition to an item or sign up to speak. In order to register online to speak, the registration needs to be completed 30 minutes in advance of the meeting.  In-person registration can be done at the meeting and does not need to be completed in advance.

PFAS and the Dane County Airport

At our December meeting, the County Board held a vote on RES-168 that would execute a Joint Use Agreement which governs the Air National Guard’s use of the Dane County Airport. The Air National Guard and the Airport’s previous Joint Use Agreement has expired so this new agreement would formalize our relationship for the next 10 years.

Under the Joint Use Agreement as proposed, the Air National Guard would be released from “any liability that may arise from the use of fire-fighting foams, chemicals, or other materials…” which includes situations that “may result in hazardous substance exposure or pollution of or contamination to air, land, water, person or property…”

After the resolution was postponed at an earlier Personnel & Finance Committee meeting, we filed an open records request to review the communications and identify the level of negotiation that occurred between County staff and the Air National Guard. You can see a memo we drafted outlining the content of this records request here. In particular, the open records request made it clear that though the Air National Guard and our staff agreed that the indemnification clause should only apply in non-military incidents and only apply prospectively, that language was not clarified in the contract itself. Given this uncertainty, I moved to postpone our vote on RES-168 until the January 18 County Board meeting so that county corp counsel staff can submit, in writing, to the Air National Guard our preferred contract language which includes language consistent with the emailed understanding. I’m grateful that a majority of the board agreed, and the resolution was postponed.

I am hopeful that the Air National Guard will agree to close this loophole in the contract before we hold our final vote on it in a few weeks.

Dane County Jail Status

In September, a Request for Proposal (RFP) went out for bid to construction firms that would like to be considered for a county contract to construct the new Dane County Jail. On November 14, all bids were due, and it was disappointing to discover that only one bid was received, from Miron Construction, which came in $27 million over budget.

In my last post, I indicated that if we wanted to move forward with the only bid we’ve received, we would need to start the process at our December 21 meeting. The bidder agreed to provide an extension so we will now be considering RES-287 at our January 18 meeting which would award the contract to Miron Construction. Please don’t hesitate to reach out and share your thoughts with me and the rest of the County Board by emailing county_board_recipients@countyofdane.com.

Flood Reduction Project

In December, County Executive Joe Parisi announced that the Flood Risk Reduction Project removed 118,700 cubic yards of sludge and sediment from the bottom of the Yahara River. Throughout 2023 two crews worked on a stretch between Lake Waubesa and Lower Mud Lake, and between Lake Kegonsa and Highway B down by Stoughton. Check out the schedule of the Yahara River Sediment Removal Project here.