Broadcast, Budget, and the Interurban Trail
Broadband, county budget, and the Interurban Trail were the main topics of discussion at a recent Jefferson County Board Meeting.
The first topic on the agenda was the broadband agreement with Jefferson County,
Broadband is the gathering of data from the internet at very high speeds. It is important to Jefferson County because it impacts everybody in the County including rural residents, urban residents, and local businesses by providing access to education and lifelong learning. The importance of broadband expansion was brought to the forefront by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jefferson County, with the help of the Broadband Working Group, was able to engage in conversations with broadband service providers Bertram Communication and Netwurx with its goal being to expand broadband coverage. As a result, the partnerships resulted in $1,118,000 in funding.
Bug Tussel, a subsidiary of Hilbert Communications, would primarily pay for the project, with Hilbert Communications covering the rest. The project would consist of the construction of three cell towers, over 100 miles worth of fiber optic cables and the connection of numerous Jefferson County communication systems.
The proposal was well received by board members such as Supervisor David Backlund, who represents Supervising District 20.
“We felt it important for the community and the county to be able to go forward and build this and this seemed like a really good intention of being able to finance this going forward with the partnership.”
The partnership that Supervisor Backlund is talking about is that of Jefferson County and Bug Tussel/Hilbert Communication LLC.
Amy Rinard also expressed her support of the resolution by saying that it is the biggest proposal that the board has ever put forward.
“This is really the biggest project we’ve ever proposed, it’s [huge]. And that’s why it’s so important that we could move forward regardless of whether we got a grant or not. It covers the whole county. We’ve never done that before.”
While proposing resolutions is important, the county budget is what keeps these proposals and resolutions moving.
County administrator Ben Wehmeier spoke at the board meeting and said that the county’s budget is in good shape.
One of the areas that was in good shape was the results by fund.
“The thing that is positive here for the most part is you see surpluses across the board, with the exception of some small areas. We saw revenues better than projected in most cases and we saw expenditures underneath budget in most cases as well.”
He goes on to say that because of the positive surpluses, it puts the county in the positive fiscal picture.
Another key area that Wehmeier touched out was the sales tax.
He said when they put the budget together for the county, the year was 2020 and nobody knew what would happen.
Some of those budget numbers include: a sales tax of $7.9 million, TIF (Tix Increment Finance) dissolution-$93,000, transfer fees at $356,000.
The last major topic of the night was the Interurban Trail. The Interurban Trail is an in-progress trail being constructed on the former interurban rail line between the cities of Watertown and Oconomowoc. The trail would be primarily used for hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing. It would be a 10-mile-wide asphalt surface trail with 2-foot-wide-aggregate shoulders. The trail would be primarily in Jefferson County with 10 miles and 1 mile of the trail would be in Waukesha County.
Amy Rinhard once again offered her thoughts, but this time on the Interurban Trail.
“This trail project has been in the works, as Ben [Wehmeier] said. It’s gone through different phases where it’s kind of lingered, then the speed has picked up. I’m very happy to see it moving forward or make plans to make it more forward.”
She goes on to say that she thinks that the trail will be a benefit to the community of Ixonia.
The Jefferson County Board meeting was very eventful as many agenda items were resolved.