Deer and coyotes are the not the only intruders on the Noble F. Lee Lakeland Airport’s 520 acres in Arbor Vitae. It appears that humans have built a few structures on airport property without permission, according to Minocqua’s representative on the 4-town airport commission that oversees the airport.
Tuesday, Brandon Baker showed the Minocqua Town Board a survey map developed by Becher -Hoppe Architects of Wausau that revealed unauthorized structures placed by neighboring property owners. They include a couple of garages and an old shed. A driveway access is also on the property without a proper easement.
Contacted later, airport administrator Jon Schmitz notes that North Farming Road, Propwash Bay Road and even Airport Road veers onto airport property at certain locations. The structures are impeding the commission’s plans to install a 10-foot high perimeter fence designed to keep wildlife off the property, says Schmitz. Baker said he counted 32 deer the previous night on the airport land. Schmitz says two Sandhill cranes were killed last year when they met their fate with an aircraft under power. Those aforementioned coyotes are also present, including two killed by the airport’s snowplow. “We have a regular game farm out here on occasion,” Schmitz said. The animals pose a danger to aircraft either landing or taking off. On a typical summer weekend, they will have 20-25 aircraft using the airport’s two asphalt runways; weekdays, 7-10, “depending on what’s going on,” he said. “We have a bigger mix of jets than we use to have.” But the alleged unauthorized buildings are also worrisome. That’s because the airport commission must submit an updated airport layout plan when it applies for federal funding to install the fence.
The Federal Aviation Administration requires the airport to have clear title to all of its property before it will release funds, Schmitz explains. The mostly chain link fence will cost about $1.5 million, with the federal government picking up 90 percent of the cost. The joint airport owners, the towns of Minocqua, Arbor Vitae, Woodruff, and Lac du Flambeau, will pick up 5 percent of the cost. The state’s share is also 5 percent. The commission has already budgeted its share so there’s no additional cost to taxpayers, the airport administrator says. Baker says neighboring landowners may have relied on surveys that were literally off the mark when it came to establishing boundaries of their private lots.
The airport’s attorney Tom Lawrence will send letters to the property owners pointing out the encroachments. Schmitz is also asking the Vilas County zoning administrator to review permits issued for the offending buildings. The fence project was slated to start next spring. Now, the project may be delayed until the structures are removed. While the four town boards have given tentative approval, formal approval still needs to be made by the towns.
The Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics will also weigh in the grant submission. Schmitz says the four owners “have not been in lock step in supporting the fence.” Some residents living across from the airport object to “looking at a fence.” The final fence design and gates have not been determined yet. “There are so many pieces to put together,” Schmitz says of the work ahead.
The town board approved a recommendation by Director of Public Works Mark Pertile to spend $15,900 to replace the heating/ventilation/air conditioning controls at the police station with Johnson Controls brand equipment. The cost will come out of the town’s general fund with hopes that the police department’s own budget will have surplus money at year’s end to replenish the general fund for that amount. The current HVAC controls are unstable, resulting in personnel going back and forth in the basement to either turn on or turn off the temperature controls. The board upheld the plan commission’s recommendation to deny TNT Fireworks a change to Wal-Mart’s conditional use permit that would have allowed the sale of fireworks in the parking lot as well as overnight container storage. The board recommended approval to the county of a request by Chad Bierbrauer for a revision to his conditional use permit to operate his pontoon cruise and rental business at 8579 Highway 51. The revision includes a parking area that’s he is leasing from a neighboring property owner.
The board took up Police Chief David Jaeger’s offer to have the department’s boat patrol officer review a request by Ann Dell to place two slow-no wake buoys 100 feet from her dock on Lake Tomahawk. State law requires slow-no wake speeds within 100 feet of a shoreline or a pier. Dell’s property is across the lake from Lakeside Landing, where the lake narrows down before entering the thoroughfare. “Who’s next?” said a skeptical supervisor John Thompson, who said granting the request would mean more people coming in for their own waterway marker placement. Town Chairman Mark Hartzheim acknowledged that there’s heavy boat traffic at that point during peak boating weekends. Supervisor Bill Fried suggested getting approval from the lake association for the markers. Even if Lakeside Landing and Dell both placed markers, there would still be 300 feet of distance between the two, allowing boats to travel on-plane through that area, said one supervisor. The matter will come back to the board for a decision at their next meeting.
