The Argyle Village Board met on Wednesday, May 6 at the community center conference room in the former First National Bank and Trust building and approved a chemical storage option for the wastewater treatment plant and discussed the new playground coming to the Argyle American Legion Park last this summer.
Ben Heidemann from Town and Country Engineering told the board that due to them changing over from an individual variance on at their wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) to a multi-discharge variance (MDV), they need to meet a low-level amount of phosphorus of 1.0 mg/L. The village has to make a payment to the county of $68.40/1b of phosphorus in excess of the limit. The village could make a payment of $35,000-$49,000 annually. The first payment penalty would be March 1, 2027. It would be pro-rated from the time the permit was issued through December 31.
In order to do that, one option is to put chemicals into the plant to lower that level. Chemicals cost around $11,000 annually. The chemicals could be stored outside in an enclosure and then pump them into the WWTP or the village could build a shed to keep the chemicals in. The shed would need to be at least 14’x20′.
The cheapest option to store those chemicals would cost around $15,000-$20,000. This will help the village same some money so they can work on a facility plan. They are required by the DNR to make a plan for the next 20 years. It is a process to review the water treatment, understand the community needs and check on any leaks or buildings structure. They need to look at the future due to the age of the equipment, building structure and capacity. The plant was built in 1991. It is the most expensive thing the village owns. This facility plan takes 12-18 months to complete.
For the chemical storage building, it will be built by the village workers. Dustin King made the motion with Colton Plossel seconding. Halie Helvfogt made a motion to get started on the facility planing study with Johnny Hinojosa seconding. Both motions passed.
Also along that same subject, the water tower recently sent out a notification that it was overflowing when it was actually almost empty. The transducer was throwing out a false positive. Heidemann stated that the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) water control system has had some challenges. The monitoring system is very old and is running over copper phone lines. Newer systems have computer monitoring systems. They cost around $200,000-$300,000 for a basic system. That will be discussed in the facility planning study.
New playground
The Argyle Community Parks Foundation has raised $164,000 as of April 28. They recently shopped around for a new supplier and are working with the same supplier that the Argyle School District used to build the most recent orange playground. This supplier is allowing the community to build the playground, which is saving them around $50,000 in installation costs. With the new playground design, Kayla Nikula-Emberson stated there are two different color options they will need to decide on.
The base of the playground will be wood chips for now. The next tear in fundraising is to get accessible spaces to and from the playground with a sidewalk and rubber material for under accessibility equipment. Nikula-Emberson is looking at options.
Nikula-Emberson asked the board to sell the current equipment on the Wisconsin Surplus website. The purchaser would be responsible for taking the equipment down. They are hoping to have the equipment sold by mid-July so that the new equipment can be put up before the new school year. There are several local people who have stated they are willing to help put together the new equipment but there is always room for more volunteers.
King made the motion to sell the equipment with Hinojosa seconding.
Old Argyle Cemetery stones
The village has been looking into restoring some of the old gravestones at the Old Argyle Cemetery. They had a company come and do a walk through to see what it would cost to get things fixed up. The cemetery account has around $6,000 in it. They spent $2,400 on mowing last year and estimate they will spend that same amount this year. That would leave around $3,600 for the village to use to spend on restoring the old gravestones.
The estimate stated that different stones will cost different amounts do to size, shape, and style of stone. The board discussed which ones they should even begin with as there are several historic stones that are deteriorating. There were questions if village employees could do some leveling themselves or if acid wash could be done as well. The board ultimately agreed that the most at risk ones of falling, creating a liability should be fixed first. King made the motion to spend up to $2,500 to fix/restore the gravestones with the highest liability risk (leaning, on the verge of collapse) with Plossel seconding.
The board also approved:
– the final pay request from Maddrell for $18,000.
– to contact the village attorney to solve issues the village has been having with 811 Monroe Street.
– Kevin Slater as the park coordinator.
– Braden Slater to mow the park and do field prep.
– to move the remaining budget from Community Development to the library since the new library director will also be taking on the role of community development coordinator for the village.
to sell the daycare parking lot back to Keith and Tina Ritschard so it will remain with the daycare since the village no longer is worrying about parking so much due to them purchasing the old First National Bank and Trust building and being able to use that parking lot for public parking. A CSM will need to be completed and it will then be sold back to them for the same price the village bought it, for $1.
– to purchase a wall mounted water fountain in the community center and to purchase an Owl 360 camera to put in the conference room.
– the request from Randy Russell to have additional dogs over the two dog limit. The board then discussed updating/installing signage around the park that states all dogs need to be leashed and no dogs are allowed in the shelter house along with putting a notice out that owners must pick up after their dogs messes when not on their own property.
– asking ComputerKnowHow to create village emails for board members for $211 per user for $1,265.76 per year.
– paying Southwest Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission $3,000 to make changes to the Outdoor Recreation Plan and the Comprehensive Plan since the state government made changes.
Events/Information
The recycling hours will be staying the same at Wednesday 9 a.m .- 12 p.m. and 4 p.m .- 7 p.m. and Saturday 8 a.m .- 1 p.m.
There will be no Mud Volleyball this year.
Garage sales will be June 13-14 with the Farmers’ Market at the same time.
The next board meeting will be June 3.