 I will call the meeting public works to order. We'll start with roll call. All the person, Hydeman, here. All the person, Raimi. Here. All the person, Rust. Here. All the person, Salazar. Here. And I'm all the person, Decker. So I'm here. We'll start with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Already, we're going to get a guest here. So we'll do a little quick introduction then, today. I'm all the person, Dean Decker, from the sixth district. I'm the chair of the committee. I'm all the person, Rust. I'm from district eight. I'm vice chair. Hi, I'm Alder Salazar. I'm district three. Alderman Hydeman, 10th district. I'm Alder Raimi, district five. Ryan Sassman, Department of Public Works. Joel Colesty, Department of Public Works. Joe Garland, Superintendent of Parks. Administrative clerk, Stacey Wesselger. Heather Burke, Administrative Coordinator. David Bebal, Director of Public Works. Thank you very much. Hi, I'm Steve Jorgensen. I just moved to Oregon about a year ago now. Okay. And it's just kind of finally gotten settled enough to start trying to integrate a little bit more and find out how things get done. Okay, great. I'm retired. We moved here for our grandkids are in town, so. Yeah. Michelle's dad, right? What's that? Michelle's dad? Father-in-law. Father-in-law. Okay. Cool. You met my parents at the harvest party. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. And you're a district five, I believe. Well, we're 10. Oh, awesome. We're in, oh no, district five. We're 10. Yes. Yes, so. So I'm your older. Yeah. So I have some plates I got. Yeah. No, no. Thank you. Joe, you're better. Well, my name's Zach Hatter. I've been here for 36 years. So, yeah, I'll come one year to 36. Okay. Then change. Yeah. Alrighty, item number five for a little minutes from October 11th. I move. Question made and seconded. Any discussion on those minutes? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye. Minutes are approved. I have a possible discussion. Number six, our own number 74, 22, 23, October 17th, 2022, submitting a request from Zach Cotter for approval to tear-hunt in a section of woods within the city limits. Director? Yes, Mr. Chairman. Zach is here this evening, President and author of the request. Just a little background, what we're looking at is South Side of Sheboygan. This area along Stahl Road and East of Manning, there's an L-shaped parcel that the city bought and purchased roughly about this, approximately maybe 20, 25 years ago to be future development. Okay. It hasn't been developed now partly because we weren't very close with utilities and such. In this area, I think you were all familiar with is the Cartman Farm that we recently purchased for future development as well. So there's an awarded section of the Pulf Farm, runs almost just, I would say, a little bit somewhere in here along this, it's not this whole woods, there's a property line between the two and this area. So it's natural, it's city-owned and although it's natural and city-owned, we've pretty much had a policy through the years where hunting is not allowed on city, city land. When I say city land is city-owned land, you are, this ordinance has been updated to allow hunting within the city limits because as the city expands and more people come into the city, for instance, the Garmin property and so forth, if he was in the city and it was owned by him yet, he was able to hunt on his own land. So given that some of the reasons in the past where the majority of our land that we do own that's largely typically natural or part of it, this was held for future development. So it is natural and I understand, it's probably great habitat. So especially with a nice source of food from the farm immediately west in this area, one of the problems is that we don't necessarily have the resources as a city, municipality to manage hunting on property such as this. So that was one of the concerns that we, that's easy just to continue to say, hey, we don't get a lot of these requests and we don't have a lot of resources. So sorry, look beyond the city to areas to ask for permission to hunt. That was the premise of this. And our recommendation is to pretty much continue along that path that, yeah, we understand there's probably wildlife and probably that there's an opportunity to hunt but being that it is in the city and we have a history of denying these types of requests in the past, we feel that we want to be consistent. And it's no disrespect to Mr. Cotter. I'm sure he's an avid outdoorsman. He's done everything proper. He's followed all the proper channels to get requests. We do have a process in place that he's followed and we do, you know, it's up to this board here to say, you know, we think it is time to continue this or change it or we've kind of had this as a longstanding practice. We're going to continue along those lines. But I think since Mr. Cotter has joined us this evening, I think it would be good to have him have an opportunity to explain his side as well. Yeah, if I may, that'd be great. So that parcel of land that you surrounded was it butts up to Riverdale Country Club. It's kind of all around the corner. The half of that that David was talking about to the east is owned by the Kohler Trust, not Kohler is in KOH, L-E-R, K-O-L-L-E-R, okay? So that's private land that's there and there is, I know him personally, a guy that hunts on that side of the land. And so my, I guess my question or the part that I wanted to bring, if we talk about policing the woods that we would allow a hunter, it's the same police that would come to that side of the city land. It's the same DNR that we have that polices, all of our public lands and not private lands as well in the state of Wisconsin. So we don't, I mean, never are you gonna have a city policemen patrolling the forests or anything, but if there would be anybody that would see anybody with any of our properties that would be hunting, that would be baiting illegally, et cetera, et cetera, you would still call the DNR warden, like that's exactly who would be able to issue citations, et cetera, et cetera. So there are policing measures in place for all properties in the state of Wisconsin. The other point that I just wanted to make was that the city is growing its footprint, obviously with the addition of the Gartman farm, I'm sure that there could be potential expansion in the future. There's gonna be a lot of rural property in Sheboygan that potentially would be acquired. And all I'm asking is that just because we've had a time old acceptance that we're just not gonna allow hunting on any city property, should there not be at least a reasonable discussion on particular plots such as this that has been idle, there are no houses and things that are at least are gonna be imminently putting up in that area. Should there at least be a discussion on a case-by-case basis to allow somebody the access to what could be obviously maybe fruitful? I have no idea, but at least recreational, it's land that is there that's vacant. And as long as it's being used in the proper fashion, I just don't see why there's not a reason to allow that because as David stated, I don't think that there's too many people asking for permission all of the time because you do have to go through the proper channels. So, that's me. Well, I respect you and I appreciate you bringing this forward the way you did. Sure. You did the proper channels, you did the proper paperwork, you've done all the things like that. I will say that I am a little bit concerned about opening this up because the problem is, who's gonna place, you know, if you've got permission then there's gonna be other people there, also who's there, who's not. So, I am a little concerned with it. I have reservations about it. I'm here with the rest of the committee has to say. Zach? How big is the plot? There's like how many acres? This is probably close to 20 acres, the wooded section, and there's another 20 over here. So, it's 40 total. Okay. The plot that I had requested was not the 20 acres on kind of that, yeah. It was not really the farmland. There's two, there's actually, there's three parcels that are very long, a long stall road going north. Yeah, one, two, and three. And really, to get up all the way up to where Riverdale is, there's, yeah, up in that car, like that's, my house is right on the backside. It's on Sherwood Drive, right there. Yeah, it's right on the backside of this property, which is what was very intriguing to me. Obviously, I'm right there. And so, don't worry, I don't see very many deer there. But that's why it's very intriguing to me. And I started looking in terms of, well, how do you get permission? Like, what exactly is the process of doing it? So, I don't have so much, you know, the farmland itself isn't that big of a deal to me. It would be the actual wooded section, which there are two parcels that are inside of there that would be of, you know, if I was gonna go and do it, the only access to that would be then right off of the stall road, which is, you can see, I think you'd pointed that right in the beginning. That would really be the access to the right of that. Yeah, right into there. Yeah, that would be really your access point that would be down into there. Other thing being, you know, hunting is pretty widely accepted in Sheboygan. So, I don't think it raises too many red flags in terms of policing. All I say is that why couldn't it be on a case-by-case basis? Of course, when you start developing and putting houses and putting residential things on the Gartman property, well, then if I sit in this board meeting come next year or two years from now, yeah, I would expect to have a little bit different answer. But until then, as long as the property sits vacant, I would think it would at least be able to be used for different purposes if it would meet, you know, your approval. And so then you're asking for those months. So the months during November, December and January, asking for three month period? Yeah, so the idea was I wasn't exactly sure how all this works. So bull hunting, and it would not be for anything gun, I mean, you can discharge a gun in the city of Sheboygan with certain rules obviously in place, but this would specifically be for crossbow hunting. It lasts into, in Sheboygan County on the east side of I-43 until January 31st. And so that's why I brought up a few months. I managed to rupture my Achilles tendon back in July. And so I was just walking a couple of weeks ago. So I figured I'm not gonna be able to get out like right now and do this, but I thought, well, if we can at least have a discussion, I would at least go probably in that November through January timeframe. And then after that season's over, I wouldn't have to be reasons to occupy or be in a city on land anyway. So there's no violation within the city ordinances where you could not shoot a crossbow in the city of, I mean, I can't go down A Street to crossbow. You have to be, there's certain criteria within the city ordinance. You have to be so many yards away from any other property in a certain distance. And also in that plot of land, that's all in the city. There's not a private property owner that's not in the city that he could hunt on that property. Yes, he did talk about the land, he immediately jaded there, he was private. Private, and then you could contact him and you could hunt that out. A lead job. So we tried. He doesn't want you hunting that. So that parcel of land, that was actually from what I understand the beginning of an annex. That was the first one, kind of the balloon and string. And so that is, it used to be Tauna Wilson, which is now city is on that side. And there was a while there that you could not hunt within city limits. And I don't know when that has changed, but from everything that I've read, it certainly is now that you can within city limits. But you have to be, for instance, away a hundred yards from a habitable structure, which there is no habitable structure within that plot. Besides being very close to Salt Road, which I never would be anywhere, that would be anywhere close to a hundred yards, 200 yards, probably even 300 yards from a point of habitat from any type of shed, any type of dwelling. If I recall, I find or recall as best as I can, when this land here was annexed for the golf course, there was part of the state park that was included. And that's now in the city. And because of that, it's huntable. That's why the hunting in city limits, which changed and it was defined better that you're able to hunt now, because prior to this, we really didn't have any area that was even close to being able to be defined such as this. So when we changed that, that then now opened up the next possibility of anything city-owned that would be available, that would be public land. Right now it's all posted no hunting. We had originally, when this was in a broad end, people were hunting on it and it was not controlled very well. So it's posted that way. And other than this most recent, we haven't had many requests because it has been posted for many years already, no public, no hunting. I'd say that it's probably about 40 guys that work here and that would love to hunt on land like this. And they just know that it's really not something that's probably gonna happen. So they've never gone through the, they've never did what you did and gone through the whole sequence. So they know where the public land is doing. Joe, can I go on? Here's your process. Hence my concerns with this is that once you let the genie out of the bottle, you're gonna have all of a sudden, well, you let him do it. So why can't I do it? Then how many people can we say that we'll, next thing you know, we have 30 people on that land, something, you know, that's the issue that I kind of worry about. You're gonna have, you know, I don't necessarily, you know, fault you on that. You probably would go back towards, see that nice bucking gold, why can't I hunt this? It would be nice. And if we could limit it to say that, but I don't think we can. We're gonna give it to you. We have to allow anybody. And I think we get too many people. Well, and that, Mr. Chair, that raises a good point and Joe, I kind of, you know, I did completely forget about that. And I guess in a sense of fairness, if the committee so desired to open it up, I would suggest then that there'd be a process to allow for applications. And then if there's so many, you know, too many applications, then it would be like a lottery in other words. We would pick and then out of, out of let's say there's 20 people, but we're only gonna allow five permits for this area. So then there's a sense of fairness. I don't want it to be a first come, first served, you know. Sure. Look at that David, you'd probably be having to do background checks too. I mean, it's gonna be a process. Yeah, right. And you know, do you have, you know, your license? Are you, you know, I'm not, I don't know if there's, I'm not a crossbow hunter, but is there a zone that you have to have a permit for hunting in this zone for a crossbow? And do you have, you know, so we'd have to, it's reliable. Pretty a lot, yeah, that's my concern. Yeah. Can you expand on when you said it was, people were hunting there before, but then we had to put the signs up because it wasn't being managed well or whatever. Can you just kind of talk about that a little bit? Yeah, initially when it was sold and vacated, there wasn't being farmed anymore and it was just natural. People, you know, within the area, if they may know other farmers and they may have been hunting and then they just start migrating into areas, it happens. And we just, people were saying, hey, we probably need to be putting up signs. And it's interesting, if I recall, I think Mr. Government may even asked, who's farming this, hey, can I get in there and hunt? And we've told him no over the years too, we say it just because it's in the city and we don't, on city property, we just have kind of had a history of saying no. But there's some very valid points. I mean, if we start expanding and we have these natural areas and they're going to be natural for decades and not being used, then what do we classify them as? Do we allow recreational activity, hiking and other activities? But then if you start allowing that recreation activity, then eventually, all right, now is it a part? Because you've been allowing people to access it and recreate on it and do certain things. Somebody comes on and says, well, wait a second. You can't develop that because it's a part. Yeah, so that, it's all, it's more complicated and sane. Yeah. Yes. That's my feeling, but it is more complicated and sane. I think we're very certain we would be opening up a lot of people, despite it. And it's a clear clarifying. So it's not about opening the land up for anyone to find what the issue is right now, it's giving youth him the license. So it'd only be one person hunting on that land. And what you're saying is that it would open up with other people who could come forward. Or if we said yes to this, that means it's open for anyone to go hunt. Well, we said yes, I think it would be. Right. We would get out of other people that come forward for permission also, I think. Because like you said, we need council approval for each person. Yeah, so that's another thing to look as is going to be individual council approval for everybody that wants to put in. We've never done that. So it's something we've never done before. This will still go up to council. Yeah. Oh, but since we go to council, if we would send it, we go to council on council. And this isn't the only area. I mean, this is the request for this area. We've had other requests for other areas. This is the first time we've had a request. Right. So there's, there's the past, haven't we? Last year we had a request for right here. This, this area right here is a big square of an old lot wetlands. Now, this was a much smaller, but there is an area in the middle that technically you could hunt. And someone requested it. Again, it was probably, I think it was a neighbor that was in this area or over here. It says, hey, I want to go back in here, this is a city land. You mind if I hunt in the last year that you said no? The difference being there is that you're talking probably a distance of maybe 300 yards wide from the house that would be on the West to what that would be on, God, a Lakeshore Drive. Whereas that would be similar to when Gartman farm starts to be developed. Like, yeah, of course, you're not gonna be having bolts be flung through the air. You're gonna get people nervous. You're gonna have all sorts of stuff. I can completely see why a smaller section like that, like we're all sitting around a table. I think we can all agree like, yeah, something like that in a little tiny spot with residential all over the place. Yes, okay, I'd be a little bit more nervous about letting some people on versus a place that is wide open and rural. With that, I'll let it die. That's fine, I'll listen to you guys. But yeah, there are distinct differences and probably not too many properties like that that have that amount of rural woods put it that way. Is the golf course used at all in the winter months for like skiing, crossing from skiing or anything recreational or, you know, not really, no? It used to go, it used to go at once. You can drink at the bar? Yes. Good to know. So at one point as well, just another, you know, we owned the sugar land, the annex. Sure. And prior, I mean, we held it for, I'll probably, I don't know, close to 10 years. And it was just city land. And we had many, many requests to go back in here and hunt again. This is probably about 40-ish acres. It was, we didn't allow it. But now we've, now it's conservancy. So that really takes it off the table. Yes. They've got problems. People actually try to do that. Yeah. I mean, across the street by Essent Park, I do land the bookroom there. We have that problem all the time. It's such a little spot. We have to be like, what are you doing? So just, just, I mean, a point of reference. I'm just trying to. Fine. There's children. Yeah. So, what's your thoughts? Anything? It's a hard one, you know? Because I get, I see both sides, but my thoughts are, if, yeah, I mean, we're saying a lot like, okay, but then once the garden farm is developed, and that's the plan, right? That is the plan. How hard is it now then to take that away? You know, it's the back and forth and back and forth that kind of doesn't seem clean. My feelings are, is if we would open it up, if we wouldn't allow this gentleman to have it, we would also then have to open it to other people. We would have to have a procedure. Like they've said, we would have to almost have a lot of, and things like that. Do we want to get into that business? Yeah, right. And then other, like, how many hundreds? Because we only, it has to be fair. It has to be fair. It has to be fair. And just be, you know, the first one that came in, requested, gets it not to be, you know, but that's how, that's how it, it should be, you know, because there, there, there are gonna be other, I think as soon as this would, if this would be approved for him, I think you would have more people coming forward to say, I would like to do the same. And then we would have to establish a perimeter of how many people we can allow in there, and things like that. We'd have to set some kind of boundaries to sign, you know, rules on it. So can I have the question? Why do we even have a process for people to apply if we've never allowed people to hunt on the land to begin with? Because it was, I think it's been fairly new with the areas, especially with, that was associated with the annexation. So people did get to hunt there? Yeah, because it's state-owned, they have a process. And it's in the city, and they have a process. I think, you know, it was a matter of, wait, I, you know, I don't know about how the ordinance was changed and how it was, you know, I wasn't an author on it. So I'm trying to, I don't want to put how it was developed or whatever. We've really never had lands that were, quite frankly, eligible to be hunted, because most of the lands that are natural and large are park or recreational. And we didn't really have something like this, that this large that. So did we look at the, or do we, can we look at the ordinance? Can somebody sort of understand why, I guess I'm just curious of like, if we wouldn't have allowed it to begin with, why are we even allowing, I guess I'm, I don't want to waste Zach's time, right? Like, I guess it would say don't even have a process, don't submit anything at all, because it's not an option. And that's, well, that's been our history. We've said it hasn't been an option, but quite frankly, we haven't had a request specifically for this area that really would be eligible. I mean, under the criteria, let's put it that way, the way it's defined now. Prior to this, you're right. Has anybody ever been arrested for hunting on there? I wouldn't say arrested, but people were like, hey, get out of here, you can. We have, again, when we, I'll be perfectly honest, when we had the business center, that was, you know, it was, if we city owned it, we were leasing it for farm and some kids, some, you know, went out there and set up their geese decoys and we're hunting and I got the call and met the sheriff out there and, you know, we just said, hey, you know, we could have cited them, we could have, but my point was, hey, they were, you know, they've had permission from the farmer to the north that was allowing them. And they just kind of might, you know, not everything has a fence and a property line. So everything, you look at farmland, you can go from a plot of farm when they go across property lines. So, you know, hey, now they know, okay. Discharge carrying weapons. Here you go. You can see E, A, B, C, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E, E. Here we go. Conditions of discharge within the boundaries of the city, shotgun, muzzle, rope, crossbow or other like weapon, instrument, maybe discharged within the city, but only under the following conditions. So then it goes here. Two. Number two, as I said, yes. Okay, again, these know they can't be discharged within 20 yards, 200 yards, excuse me, of a bombing Jason Platt at subdivision or 100 yards of the habitable building or Jason property, unless the owner of such a Jason property has given written permission to be closer in no case. They can be discharged, projectile, leaving fine over any other properties. Down here, number two. Yes, again, pretty much the same. Fine regulations, no, discharge 100, unless the owner. So the ordinance is about discharging, hunting in the city, discharging a firearm within the boundaries and then it says prohibited areas and then, now not be discharged from parkland or on the island, not owned by the person. Unless rent permission is okay. So because this land isn't parkland, it's just land owned by the city, he is now asking rent permission from the city. Now, again, it's the right thing to do. He's followed everything, right? But again, we have the, I guess, ultimately maybe to clarify this better, it should be prohibitive areas, any parkland or city owned lands are not available. In other words, if that land, like the Garmin Fund, as I'm using it right there, was just in the city and owned yet by the Garmin's and not by us, he could easily get permission and then hunt that based on this, because even though it's in the city, it's a large enough track of land, it's far enough away from a subdivision as well as other areas, he could safely discharge those types of weapons that are in New Orleans. So that's probably the biggest thing here is it doesn't, it prohibits parks, it's just not other lands and we're an owner of those lands. So therefore, technically, so I'll probably ultimately to clarify this, if the committee, this committee so desires to continue on that past practice of not allowing hunting on city lands, regardless if it's park or owned by the city, I think then it would be basically you could, you could say we're gonna deny this request and then ask this committee would do a report, a committee to have this ordinance changed to reflect that moving forward. Or do we say some ingenious of this? If you do say, yeah, that's the other thing. You could say, we think this is good. If the city has land that the city owns and it's in the size that is allowed to be huntable, then I think what you would need to do is make an ordinance and then have a policy developed so that it can be properly managed because right now, again, it's kind of like a first come, first serve and not a lot of people have come because the answer has been, if they call, it's not happening or if they ask, no, we're not gonna let you do it. It's kind of been handled administratively in a lot of cases. They never really got to this point until, again, again, I think this was updated in 19. General Ornance in 2019 and that 2020 is right around the annexation period. So prior to this, it was 17 and 18 other things. Okay. Comments, questions, any more further? What's your thoughts? Possibly that we would get a retaliation from the other property owner that we allow him to hunt there and then he's gonna say, what are you doing? I own this property right here. Now you've got a guy hunting me next to my property. Would he be coming to the city single? That's why you're allowing this guy to do that because he's afraid, it's like that. Can I go on your farm land? We get at my mom, they ask me, they call us up, they say, can you go on it? Go ahead, it's not a problem, but it's not in the city. Right. So I guess I'd like to be able to really be able to respect the rights of the other property owners in there. Because if we make a change like this, that's gonna affect it. Right now we probably have to go in there and actually start posting the property lines. Right now, yeah, it's not. Yes, my thoughts on this is that, again, this would be a expense to the city because we would have to go in and take out the signs. We'd have to have our guys go in there and take the long-term science out of me because every hunting, we would have to mark the area that is the city boundaries. We'd have to have markings and something because we have to, it has to be a boundary, right? So there would be expense to the city. I think, I'm just afraid that we're gonna be opening a patent for this box. I just think that that's my opinion on it. So my thoughts are that this should be filed. That's my thoughts. And looking for, I guess, some kind of emotion on this file or to move forward or... Is it moved to file or moved to deny? I think it's denied, right? Both would do that. Yeah, file. File and it's denied. That's filed and it's denied. I move to file. I will second. Motions made to file. Any other discussion? Okay, so say we move the file list, then the next process would be changing the ordinance. Okay, so if we allowed him to do that and then we change your ordinance, he's got one year that he can do that or wouldn't that lead to that? If we change your ordinance right after you got his bull ready, then he would no longer be able to... No, no, we would change. He would be done and it would affect this request that he has for this time period. All right, any other discussion? Any other questions? All in favor? All right, any opposed? Chair votes aye. That is filed. Okay. Thank you. It was a fruitful discussion and now we need to change it. Okay, next meeting date is November 15, 2022. I'll be the motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. Second. Motions made to second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All in favor? Aye. We are adjourned. Thank you.