Granton Village Board discusses staffing, policing, sidewalk repairs

By Valorie Brecht The Granton Village Board discussed a variety of issues at its meeting last Wednesday, including staffing, sidewalk repairs, policing in the village, and other topics.

The village has been without a clerk-treasurer for about two-and-a-half months. After longtime clerk Joye Eichten retired, the village hired Emily Steinbach and she started on Nov. 27, 2023. She was with the village about eight months before leaving. Fabreann Buffington was hired to replace her, with a start date of Aug. 19, 2024. She stayed about five months until January of this year. The village interviewed candidates in early February but did not hire anyone.

Village water department head Jared Thomas agreed to serve as deputy clerk until someone was found for the clerk position, and was approved for additional hours. However, he said at last week’s meeting, he has found it challenging to manage all the additional responsibilities on top of his full-time job.

“I would say, if you’re going to limit it (the clerk position) to 20 hours, it should be two people. I’m putting 27 to 30 hours in a week and I’m barely able to do it. Now, I don’t know everything, but someone brand-new coming in, you know? If there’s a system that’s in place for them, that’s OK; but as it stands for me right now with the audit and everything… it’s crazy.

“If someone would want to do it but for 20 hours, I say you get one person to manage. You could divide the tasks up and say, ‘Hey you manage this and you manage that,’ But…” said Thomas.

“Before we go any further with this, I think we’re going to go into closed session,” said Village President John Garbisch, ending the public discussion on the topic.

Ordinance enforcement Sheriff Kerry Kirn, who was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers to replace Scott Haines who retired last year, took the meeting as an opportunity to formally introduce himself to the village board. Kirn has lived south of Willard all his life and has spent over 32 years with the sheriff’s department.

“You don’t have a constable, so we’re responsible for coverage in the village,” said Kirn.

“The enforcement of ordinances is our biggest struggle. If someone needs police assistance, they can call the sheriff’s department. But as a village, we have so many ordinances and no one to enforce,” said village board member Bryan Vine.

“I think there is a process for us to get to enforce your ordinances, but as it stands right now we cannot. We can only enforce the county ones,” said Kirn. “Now if you didn’t have any ordinances, we could use our county ordinances then. But, I will get those answers for you.”

Library Kay Heiting gave an update on the community library. She said they had a treasurer now and two signatures on checks.

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“We are taking steps to be more self-sufficient,” she said.

She also said the library had lots of cool programs coming up, and that the Book Fair had been a great success so far. The day before the meeting, they sold $1,100 in books in a little over four hours.

“It helps us buy books too,” said Heiting.

Sidewalks Vine gave an update on the village’s sidewalks.

“Today we went through and measured everyone’s sidewalks. We have a section that’s 4 feet wide that should be 5 feet to be ADA compliant,” he said.

There is 803 feet of sidewalk in total that needs to be repaired, mainly on the streets running east to west from Highway K/Main Street to the downtown area. Vine said there is a light pole by The Burrow that would need to be relocated in order to replace that sidewalk.

Based on his rough estimate using numbers online, it would cost about $50,000 in concrete to repair all the sidewalks.

“We do have the authority to assess properties for this. So we pay for it, assess it, and return that money back. But we would be on the hook up front,” said Vine.

One of the attendees of the meeting asked if this was a new endeavor.

“No, we talked about it two years ago. We got the Highway K ones worked into the road project. But now the lateral ones to the downtown are the next phase. They are in disrepair and need to be replaced,” he said.

The board decided to get quotes for the project and invite the affected property owners to a meeting in May.

Miscellaneous Vine said the village eventually planned to repair the lawn by the school where there was a water main break. He said the park concession stand would be cleaned in the next week. He also planned to call a company to inquire about having pickleball lines painted on the tennis courts, per the parks committee’s request.

Josh Opelt, village wastewater plant operator, is working on trying to lower the phosphorus discharge. He also turned on the water for the concession stand for the summer season.

Thomas contacted Lane Tank to book them for a water tower inspection. The water meters have been read and utility bills were sent the last week in March. He needed to reach out to a few residents who had questions. He said a few residents had asked about a pay-by-month option instead of paying quarterly, and asked if he could put something about that on the bill. The village board said they were fine with that.

“I don’t know if a lot of people realize that you can pay monthly,” said Vine. “I don’t know when it started, but they can certainly do that. If people are habitually late though, even on the monthly, then we would go back to quarterly.”

Thomas also said he planned on issuing disconnect notices for people who were not paying their water bill starting on April 20. He said there were at least five delinquent taxpayers, including a couple that hadn’t paid for three consecutive quarters.