By Kim McDarison

The Whitewater Common Council and the Whitewater Unified School District Board of Education on Wednesday discussed terms for snow removal at the Whitewater Aquatic and Fitness Center. The discussion is anticipated to be among the last required to finalize a six-year lease and operational agreement for the aquatic center between the two parties.

Opening the joint meeting, Common Council President Jim Allen, describing events from previously held meetings, said: “I think, for our (city) side, we were down to the nitty-gritty and left everything preliminarily approved once our attorneys had a chance to look at everything.” 

An earlier story about a joint meeting held in September, including discussion about snow removal, is here: https://whitewaterwise.com/city-district-consider-first-draft-of-six-year-aquatic-center-contract-language-changes-discussed/. 

Allen noting that he had, earlier on Wednesday and in advance of the meeting, been in communication with Board of Eduction President Larry Kachel and the two had “preliminarily approved” the concept that, Allen said: “the school board would allow a city truck to come into the school property on such times, like over Christmas break — something where we got a snow, school was out, and they wouldn’t be there to plow — rather than to pay them — someone to come in full-time — our (city) trucks would just swing in and make a spot as long as they don’t make any big piles that would have to be removed by an end loader or something like that.”

Recounting a previously held joint meeting discussion about snow removal at the center, Allen said: “I know we went back and forth, and kind of just left that one in the air.”

He asked fellow council members if they were in agreement with the tentative solution he and Kachel had discussed. 

City Manager John Weidl asked panel members if they had read a memo included in the city’s meeting packet from Public Works Director Brad Marquardt, whom, he said, had outlined the nature of city equipment and commitments his department already had across the city during snow events.

Several panel members indicated that they had read the memo.

Within his memo, dated Sept. 21, Marquardt wrote that “in regards to plowing the parking lot at the Whitewater Aquatic and Fitness Center, I do not believe we have sufficient staff and/or time to accomplish this work and would need to hire an outside contractor.”

Marquardt continued: “Our first priority during a snowstorm is trying to keep the 50 miles of city streets in a drivable condition so people can (traverse) from one end of town to the other. This typically is accomplished using seven plow trucks. Depending on the timing of the snow storm, and the severity, crews will either continue during the day plowing city streets or be sent home to return around 2 a.m. to start back up. When arriving at 2 a.m., crews typically stay until 3:30 p.m., working on cleanup. Larger snow events will require crews to return again at 2 a.m. to continue with cleanup.”

He said city skid steers and a loader are used to clear 11 downtown parking lots, municipal areas and “miles of public sidewalk.”

Additionally, he wrote: “Could the city swing through the parking area while we are plowing Elizabeth Street? Yes, however, that would only be to plow the driving aisle. Our snow plows are not designed to maneuver amongst and around parked cars. We would have to send a skid steer or the loader to plow that small area of the parking lot. This would entail removing someone from a designated street plow route or interrupting the plowing of the city-owned parking lots and sidewalks.

“There is also the logistics and public perception. If the city was to plow the parking area, we may be there before or after the school plows, leaving the possibility — depending on the amount of snow — of windrows being left behind for motorists to drive through. And if one area is plowed while another area is not, people are going to be confounded as to why.”

Within his memo, Marquardt noted that the cost to hire a contractor to plow could range between $160 and $225 per hour.

Citing the memo, Weidl described the proposal advanced by Allen as “a bad idea.”

Both Allen and Kachel expressed confusion in response to Weidl’s comment.

Kachel said he did not believe a situation during which the district would not plow the parking lot would occur frequently.

“It won’t happen very often because during the school year going on, during the week, we always have school the next day, we are going to be in there plowing and we’ll plow the entire lot, like we always have. It might be on a weekend — let’s say we’re snowing on Friday, and snow is expected to continue through the weekend, we have nothing going on there from the high school, going on until Monday, we would not normally come back in and plow it until Sunday.”

Additionally, he said, plowing could become an issue over the district’s Christmas break. 

Said Kachel: “If we are gone, again, nothing going on sometimes over Christmas break — there might be a basketball game or something, and that we have, we have to plow it. So we are not talking about a whole bunch of times.”

He asked Weidl to clarify his position.

Weidl said that city staff would not be using city equipment to plow the district’s parking lot. He cited the possibility of a bidding process to hire a contractor as described in Marquardt’s memo.

Kachel suggested the city contact Eddie Skindingsrude, president of Whitewater-based Property Services, Inc., which, he said, is the company with which the district contracts for landscaping work. The company, in a memo dated Sept. 16, offered the following rates: plowing, $100 to $140 per hour; sidewalk plowing, $60 per hours, and salting, 40 cents per pound.

Said Kachel: “We use Skindingsrude, and it would be somebody to reach out to if you have not yet, in terms of doing that, but, again, most of the time, we’ll just do it. But there will be some circumstances where we might have something — and I remember with my daughters’ teams playing basketball, and basketball tournaments in the winter, many times we showed up and there was snow on the ground and it didn’t stop anybody. It didn’t bother us; we walked through it.”

Councilman Neil Hicks asked if the school board would be open to allowing the city to use a third party.

Kachel said, “sure,” but, he noted, that the district would require the city’s contractor to not “just plow that area and leave the piles right around it, because then it might require the school district, when they come in later in time with a front end loader (to remove piles).” 

Kachel added that he did not believe the district had a front end loader. 

He said the city’s contractor would be required to plow the snow “all the way to the end.”

Addressing Weidl, Allen spoke in support of the plan, saying: “I don’t think there’s going to be that many times that you need to put it out to bid, really.” 

He added: “If we tell them not to plow unless there is more than two inches, you know, it’s going to be one time a year, maybe.” 

Neil Hicks also spoke in support of the plan, saying: “140 bucks per hour? I mean in an hour, I’d think you’d be able to push it all to the edge of the road.” 

Councilman David Stone, reading a clause from the city’s lease agreement document as presented in the meeting packet, said he was confused by language pointing to a “cooperative agreement.”

He said he believed the council could opt to approve the presented document between pages 3 and 22, but he became confused with any additional language.

“I don’t see two agreements, so is there something I’m not aware of with this other ‘cooperative agreement?’” he asked.

Neil Hicks said he was similarly confused. 

Kachel asked Stone and Neil Hicks if they were reading the city’s version of the lease.

He noted that a document from the school district’s attorney was forwarded to the city’s attorney Jonathan McDonell on Tuesday.

“So you’ve got your (city) version; we’ve got our (school district) version,” he said. 

“We only have our (city) version,” Allen said. 

Weidl said that the city’s meeting packet included only the city’s lease agreement because a document that is intended for inclusion in an open meeting packet must be submitted to the city clerk within 72 hours of the public meeting.

Weidl said he, nor members of the city’s staff, had received a document from the school district.

Said Kachel: “Well at this stage, when we left the last meeting, the idea was, all we were talking, we agreed on all of the major things, all we were talking about was language and leases, and to send it to the attorneys. So the attorneys have — did your, did you send your copy to our attorney? How soon, that we forward it on, if you did not?”

Weidl said he corresponded with the district’s Superintendent Caroline Pate-Hefty.

“She had received our (city) document,” he said. 

Kachel said he believed the city attorney had the district’s document.

McDonell, who attended the meeting from the gallery, said he was not in receipt of the district’s document.

Kachel expressed surprise, saying that he was of the understanding that the document was sent to the city attorney on Tuesday.

Weidl said he had sent a followup email to the district’s superintendent, looking for meeting documents after none were received for addition to the joint meeting packet.

“You did? And still nothing?” Allen asked.

Kachel asked McDonell for an email address so he could have the documents sent again. He told McDonell that he would make sure he received the documents Wednesday night.

Kachel asked McDonell if he had talked with the district’s attorney, Brian Waterman, “about anything.”

McDonell said he had not.

Neil Hicks asked of Kachel: “So you’re saying this cooperative agreement is in your lease?”

Kachel replied, saying: “I don’t know, but we’ve got — at this point, it was to send the two, and let the attorneys deal with it then, so they go through the legal mumble-jumble, then we come back, us, we (school district) have our next meeting Monday (Oct.) 23rd, and we’ll deal with ours in closed session. Hopefully, we (district and the city) are in agreement. Then we have one more meeting.” 

Weidl said the city’s document worked to combine two documents into one.

Council members in attendance during Wednesday’s joint meeting discussed removing language within the city’s document that referenced the cooperative agreement, because, Weidl said, “there is no other agreement.”

Stone recommended that, if council opted to approve the (city’s) document, it limit its approval to pages 3 to 22. He believed that would remove further confusion, he said.

Further, he noted that pages within the document following page 22 were from an agreement signed in 2016.

He noted that the city was not approving the former language. 

Councilwoman Lisa Dawsey Smith said she believed the added pages were included “for context.”

“It was because one of our council members wanted to be able to see what the moving pieces were between the former agreement and this agreement,” Weidl noted.

With four council members in attendance — Allen, Stone, Hicks and Dawsey Smith — council voted unanimously to approve pages 3-21 of the city’s document, pending final review from the city attorney. 

Board of Education members in attendance Wednesday included Kachel, Stephanie Hicks, Miguel Aranda, Maryann Zimmerman and Lisa Huempfner.

Common Council members absent from the meeting included Jill Gerber, Lukas Schreiber and Brienne Brown. School board members absent from the meeting included Jennifer Kienbaum and Christy Linse.

Following the vote taken by council members, Kachel said: “We obviously, we never voted at this meeting, we always go back to our school board and go into closed (session).” He, again, noted the district’s October meeting date, saying, “so that’s the deadline we’re kind of shooting for with you, back and forth with attorneys.” 

“Can we ask that at this time you don’t have any foreseen changes when you’re going to come back again?” Allen queried of Kachel. 

Said Stephanie Hicks: “I think at this point it’s just between the two lawyers in particular. None of the district, itself, would be asking or trying to change; I think it would just be between the two lawyers.” 

In a followup phone interview with WhitewaterWise, Kachel, on Thursday, said that McDonell had confirmed Thursday morning that he had received the document from the school district, but it had inadvertently gone into his “spam folder.”