We will call the Village Board work session to order on Tuesday, February 3rd, 2026 at 5.02 p.m. I would ask Callie to no roll call and I think that's all we need to worry about unless someone has announcements. If not, we will continue and we will move to item 4 discussion regarding development review process that Alex is going to lead us through. So I don't have a fancy PowerPoint, but this will be more of just a discussion item. This was a topic that was born out of discussion at the December 8 planning and zoning meeting. So we had a commissioner who would express interest in learning about developments earlier in the process. Specifically, this was in relation to the QTS data center proposal. We had another really good discussion at last week's planning and zoning meeting settled on a couple of different ways to get information out to commissioners. I think that this also applies to trustees. Obviously, you have a purview into development as well. So figured it would make sense to bring it to you all for further discussion and input and how you'd like to see that take place too. So for those of you who have been on the board for a longer period of time, some of this might be already familiar, but I just kind of wanted to start with an overview of the process itself and how that typically unfolds. The memo in their packets kind of plays it out, but I'll just sort of reiterate some of that here. Usually developers will reach out to village staff pretty early on in their due diligence process. A lot of times they've either picked a site in the village already, or they're sort of kicking tires to say, hey, you know, is there good options for my kind of development in your community. A lot of the time they're having that conversation with a number of communities simultaneously already this week. It's only Tuesday. And I've had three of these types of conversations. So it happens fairly frequently, especially in a community that's growing as fast as we are. As part of this initial outreach, they'll ask about things like utilities, infrastructure availability. Does it already exist serving the site? Does it need to be brought in? What are the costs? What are the timing associated with getting that in there? What's the regulatory process, stuff like stormwater management? What are our land use plans, the comprehensive plans, zoning districts, and the regulations around that schedule of approvals that would need to take place to permit. Construction and the likely timeline of that fees and impact fees and costs associated with development are typically a big one. We have design standards and landscaping standards that folks typically ask about as well, and then just general community preferences to the type of development that they propose. As part of these initial inquiries, especially for larger projects, we'll work with them to put together a schedule to say, okay, here's what you would potentially need to go through to permitting. And here's a timeline of those activities that does a couple things. It gives them a little bit of certainty as they go into the process so that they can evaluate how that fits with their process. But also from our standpoint, it just allows us to plan a little bit better from a staffing standpoint from scheduling meetings. Virtually in all instances, a developer will come in and because speed to market is typically important to them for competitive and cost reasons. They almost always set a schedule that I would say is ambitious. And I would say virtually all the time that schedule ends up sliding. Most of the time it ends up slowing down because they set their own unrealistic expectations of how fast it takes for them to get their plans together so that we can actually get it into review. But we do our best to say, here's what you could do. And then typically it slows down from there. When we're helping them identify what the process looks like, we'll also identify risks for them that they would face in that. So, for example, this was, I don't know, a couple weeks ago, a conversation with a developer who would potentially be looking to submit for a conditional use permit and a site plan. We have a cadence to our applications where we ask materials to be submitted 45 days ahead of a meeting. And so in that window, let's say call it March planning or February planning and zoning meeting, they would have had to submit for a conditional use permit 45 days ahead of time. And again, in the interest of them wanting to move through the approval process quickly, they'll say, okay, well, while that's in queue, so to speak, can I also submit for the March planning and zoning meeting for a site plan review. And we tell them like the risk that you face in that is, yes, you can certainly do that. But if the planning and zoning commission makes changes to the conditional use permit rejects the conditional use permit or postpone action on it. Now you've submitted a site plan that you'll either have to withdraw reshape or may not be relevant anymore. So I don't have the right and staff doesn't have the authority to say you cannot submit an application. We do have the authority to review those applications for completeness. And if they're not complete, we won't schedule them for an agenda, but I can't tell them they can't submit. I can't tell them what the risks are in that. And hopefully they weigh those accordingly. We also, I think this is a good practice that we have a staff level when we're coordinating development. We have a development review team. And those meetings take place virtually on the third, excuse me, second Thursday of each month. And that includes everybody from, well, most of the people on staff that you see here, as well as others, our engineers, planners, everybody who touches development to get early feedback into these plans. We've got, so next week would be the second Thursday of February, we've got a DRT is our shorthand for a development review team meeting. We've got a DRT meeting schedule for next week that we have two projects on there, for example. And in both of those instances, I don't think either of those projects has a formal concept plan. It's an early conversation that they can have to get input into. Design considerations process, those types of things. One of the ones that's on the agenda for next week, just to give us a sense of how long development can take. They initially came to me in August, I think of 2025 to have an initial conversation about a particular site that they had identified. They're still not at the stage where they're ready to submit. They still don't have a concept plan, but now we're just getting to the point of having some real conversations around. What it could potentially look like for them. So just to give a sense of the length of these things, they take time. As long as these take, I'll also say for every application that actually makes it to the review stage, there's probably five or six that don't. Again, more of that tire kicking, but also as they continue to work through our requirements, sometimes it just becomes clear that it's not feasible for them for either for cost considerations or timing. Both for their sake and for our sake, I think everybody would like that decision to be made earlier in the process so that we're not investing a lot of time and resources and then, you know, a project ends up falling apart. I want to just point out that during the discussion at the planning and zoning meeting, the commissioner mentioned that they wanted to, they felt it was unfortunate that they were learning about specifically the QTS project at that late in the process. I think it was at this meeting and I said point blank, like, this is the early stage of this process. These are the concept planning meetings and I didn't mean that flippantly. It was more of like my perspective sitting in staff as these things are like the life before they even get to a concept plan stage is long and I truly consider those early stage pieces to be the start of the formal process. You know, it's like I said, it's very realistic that a project may terminate before it actually gets to a formal submission. So I'm not going to consider anything short of a formal submission, the start of a process. Just a different, I guess, perspective. Again, just, I'm going to harp on this, but I really think it's an important piece. The length that development takes last week at the planning and zoning meeting. The first agenda item was for a senior housing development final development plan for that project. That was the first meeting that that came before planning and zoning. And that conversation that we, they initially approached the village was December of 2024. So that's over a full year that they even got to their, their review piece. So I know it's probably going to sound like a broken record, but development is a long game. If they do up to move forward, we could include concept plans. Those are typically required when it is a larger project or there is a comp plan amendment or there's different agreements that are associated with that. When we do get a submission, we go through a process to determine what's considered what we call a complete application, meaning they've submitted all the associated materials according to our ordinance. Once we determine an application to be complete, we'll formally let the applicant know that that's the case. And then that sort of starts the shot clock on any type of review timeframe that's contained in our ordinances or by statute. And again, I mentioned the cadence of our submissions. We usually ask that materials be submitted 45 days ahead of time. Before it's scheduled for action or review by either the commission or the village board action. I want to make clear is not always a positive or a negative vote. For example, a comprehensive plan amendment that could be a recommendation for planning and zoning from planning and zoning to you all as trustees to say, hey, we want to postpone action or request additional information. We want to postpone action or request additional information. Subsequently, you all have the right to then say, okay, we would like to further postpone this action or refer back to planning and zoning for further review. I want to just kind of make that point clear too, because I think some of the feedback that I've been hearing that we've been hearing a staff is that that's not clear, especially as it related to the QTS item is that there was there needed to be an action on the comprehensive plan amendment at those times. When it certainly is a was always an option for you all and our commissioners to request additional time and information to be gathered. So that's always an option that's available as well. Once we do get or within that 45 day period before the meeting, our staff typically brand new or zoning administrator or mark offers or planner. They'll compile a staff memo that incorporates all the analysis from the various departments. And then that goes to the planning commission and you offer further review. So the goal of this kind of overview was just to, I think, give you a sense of not just the length of some of this process, but also our approach as staff to development. And I think our playing commission has this approach too is we try to take a more collaborative communicative approach with a developer to get a better product at the end. And I think that shows, I think we have a lot of really nice developments in this community. And I think that's part of that process. So in terms of getting awareness out on a different proposal, once an application is considered to be complete, all the materials are in our staff said, yep, this checks the box and can go on to a meeting. Our staff will create a project page for that development on engaged to forests on our development tracker that has very basic information at that stage. And then as we go through a schedule, we try to keep that updated schedules very often change. So we do our best to stay up to date on those pages to reflect those changes. Again, if the initial proposal was quicker timeline and it ends up slowing or various things change, we try to reflect that. And I think that can also lead to some confusion in terms of, well, why is this changing now and what's going on? But the reality is we're just we're trying to keep up that information so that people understand when there are changes and it's just there's always going to be changes. That's kind of the nature of it. The other opportunity that this filters into the public view is when agendas and packets are published and for planning and zoning. And I would say generally for village board to that's usually the week like Thursday or Friday before meeting. So all that being said, what we discussed at planning and zoning last week was a process where when applications do or new projects do go on engaged to forest, staff would be proactively noting fine commissioners. And I think this also pertains to trustees as well, when there is a new project on there so that you can all see, well, hey, what's coming in. And then the other thing that we talked about at P&Z also was the meeting ahead of. So at the end of each meeting, basically a preview, if you will, of what's going to be on the next meeting's agenda. So if we know that, well, for example, in this case, we'll have for the February planning and zoning meeting site plan submission by the Dickman company for a project over on cake Parkway. Rather than first time commissioners here of that being either if they independently check the project page on engaged to forest or they get the packet the week before they would know that that's coming at the future meeting a month at a time, essentially. And we're able to do that because we get those submissions 45 days in advance. There was a request that planning and zoning as well that they would like to have notification of annexation petitions. Typically, those, that was a great flag. I don't know, Jim, that that was you. But typically those don't go to planning and zoning first so they wouldn't have an awareness. So in this case, we would commit a staff when Cali does get those notices early on to communicate to planning and zoning commissioners that we've received those. And obviously, I think in all those cases that also applies to the village board too. So that's a general overview. That's how I think we're orienting in terms of communicating the stage at which we're communicating development coming in and I guess open to any questions discussion or suggestions on an alternative approach or anything else we can do. Jim. One thing that you mentioned at the planning and zoning that I don't know if you directly mentioned it here is that when you receive the submittal that those 45 days, like you said, it starts a clock, but you commented how much changes even in those 45 days. As we talked as a commissioner, what could we get that say that submittal? But the answer is more or less like I just said that so much changes between now and actual meeting, it wouldn't benefit us to get all those iterations. Yeah, that's a good point. And I think that is mentioned in the memo. So once we, there's a substantial amount of back and forth, typically between our plan or mark and the development team that submitted the application. And I guess a lot of it is also with our engineers too on some of the technical details as we review those and get them ready for planning commission. There may be suggestions or comments from our engineering team saying, Hey, can you revise the sidewalk layout or, you know, can you XYZ and then there's a back and forth. So the plans that they initially submit are very often, like you mentioned, different from what planning and zoning actually ends up reviewing at that meeting. That can. I like what you brought forward your suggestions with the communication strategy, the changes and so forth. I think that it was needed and I think you have a lot of good ideas here and it's going to help with transparency. So it would be good for everybody. Thanks. The only thing I worry about is there's a lot of stuff on the engaged floors page ready to somebody new trying to figure out what products are ongoing. That if every submittal has a new project created when a quarter of them aren't going to even move forward, is that really worth our time and is that really being transparent because then people are going to get confused about what's actually going on. Yeah, that's, that's a good point. So when we put a project on engage, it's when we receive a complete submission. So, um, I don't know, whoever's got a mouse, are you able to bring up the engage page. So, like, for example, let's say there's a project that's going to require a rezoning site plan, a CSM and infrastructure agreement. There's a number of different steps in this process. And when we put it up first, we'll be. So in this case, a rezoning would be the first submission that we get. So when we have a complete application for a rezoning submission, we'll put it up on engaged for us. If there's just the project that's having early conversations or they've been to the development review team, but they haven't actually submitted an initial formal application, they won't go on here. So it's when we get that first complete piece that they'll go on there. So what would be a good example here? Whoever's got the mosque, you scroll down a little bit. Oh. Sorry. Is that kind of what you were getting to not wanting to get projects that and. I may am missing her. So would you said, like, you said, like a quarter or fifth of them don't move for that's from the initial conversations, not necessarily once they complete the. Correct. Okay. Yes. That's true. But I will say, like, we've had, I don't know if they're still up. There's the Holm Street one on the completed project. Sure. Did that get removed entirely? So, for example, we had an application, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago or housing development on the Holm Education Center site, which was up here at one point is probably off now because they've canceled, but they did submit. They went through an initial step of the approval process. And so we get that on there, but even it's a good example, because even when they do end up moving through, at least some portion, there's always a risk that they back out. And so I think that probably has been taken off here because we knew that they, they ended up backing out of that project. Okay. Other questions for Alex. All right. This is, this is helpful and it's part of ours in the public education process. So we will continue, but it does demonstrate how. Complicated, some of these review processes are and so it's helpful for us to hear this. Thank you. All right. Moving on, we were going to go through department updates will begin. I don't think bill is on. But does anybody have an administrative update on behalf of bill? I don't have anything from bill to share an administration update point of view. Great. Thank you. Financial Carol. All right. Least department. Yeah, I'm online. Sorry. A couple of things, just it's been a bit since we really give you an update, but our last officer graduated from the academy end of December. She's out on field training, doing well. Officer Bailey. So it's a positive step. And then lately, it seems that we have been getting a lot more scam complaints coming through people being victimized by scammers. So we're going to be working with the cornerstone, try to work with Natalie up in her staff to try to do some presentations for our seniors. It's not just a senior citizen victimization pattern right now. People are falling for these scams all over. So if you can, please talk to your friends, talk to your neighbors. The IRS will not ask you for target gift cards. The Wisconsin does not have toll roads. So you're not, you don't pay for tolls anywhere in here, but the scams are getting more and more creative, more and more aggressive. And we're doing our best with an education piece. So I just wanted to get that out in the universe for people to pay attention to with your neighbors, friends and everything else. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Wilson. Let's go on then to Judd Blau for public services. It's great. I'll give the update tonight. So we've been, we've got a lot of our projects out for bid reconstruction project. Reserve scene projects. We have a playground for rivers turned park that we are sending all of our fees for and then also party permit bathroom and epoxy floor. Bidding is going out. We've got a lot of tree trimming going on on throughout the village. We've got a crew of, I think, six guys working on tree trimming on over 5000 trees that we have. So we got to keep on that in the winter time. And then we've just been doing a lot of facilities maintenance and equipment repairs through those cold weather. Okay, starting to get warm so they're getting antsy to get outside. Your idea of what's warm and many of our ideas about what's warm is a very different. All right. Alex along community development. Just an update we did begin on boarding our new third party code enforcement. Provider and when we start getting them out into the community a little bit more, we'll make sure to let you guys know just in case you're getting any calls on anything. And then on the CDA side of things, I think I may have mentioned this last time, but it was official. We did receive a $150,000 site assessment grant for demolition and environmental remediation on the. Project at the corner of the and main street. Okay. Callie administrative services update. Just a quick update about the upcoming election in two weeks in person absentee voting started today. We had one person. We have sent out. 411 ballots and have received back about 36 of them, I believe. So it is a very showing to be a low turnout. But we're all set and ready to go. Right. And with that, don't forget the next meeting will be moved to Thursday because there will be an election. So it'll be Thursday the 19th. Instead of Tuesday the 17th. All right. And does everyone know what the election is? I've had a lot of people go. I don't know what this is. So. You want to share. It is for Dane County circuit judge. Branch one. So that's all I really know. Not sure anything else. Right. Recreation community enrichment. We don't have either resource. You got. I got an update from Sam. Both Sam and Trisha are up at the WPA. WPRA Wisconsin Parks Recreation Association conference in the Dells. But Trisha's the forest dragon art fair. She's got 112 confirmed artist applications with 126 booths reserved. She's working on sponsorships for all the various sponsorships we have throughout the community, right? Whether they be ball field signs events of the athletic complex. So she's working with current sponsors to renew them and then also talking with the potential new sponsors. As well as she's concerned confirming vendors for the 4th of July celebration and dragon. The forest dragon art fair. And we also have in our first kickoff planning meeting coming up for. You are a river fest in a few weeks. So she's got a lot of things happening as it starts to be your busy season. Sam's been working on the spring summer guide. They've got all the info over to the paper last Friday. And allow a few editing periods before the release on February 27th. Volleyball season started a few weeks ago. The last handful of weeks to the month he's been trying to recruit and hire many ice skating instructors. They haven't able to hire many instructors over the past few weeks. The winter session started back up on February 1st. He was at lessons. They went really well. Their new instructors did a great job working with the kids on ice skating. So that's happening down at the forest yards of the ice rink there. They have a break this Sunday. The lessons will resume on the 15th of February. He's starting to work on complex concessions hiring. So that's a lot of high school students that they need to hire to make sure the concessions are running appropriately. He's also starting to work on volunteer groups for that out there for 2026. The volunteer signup form will go out on February 9th at noon. Last year as a reminder, we gave a total of about $18,501 to local nonprofit groups that participated. Having been a part of two of those nonprofit groups is greatly appreciated because it certainly helps us all. They have started to receive sanction group and local league applications for the baseball season. And then softball, football, that kind of stuff. So he's already approved Norsky Thunder as a local league team for 26 season. And then as I said, he's gone to the WPR conference this week and outside of just attending educational sessions. He'll have many other responsibilities at this year's conference. So he's one of the leads for the region for the Parks and Recreation were part three. He's very highly integrated in that. He'll be doing a presentation in a session Wednesday with his colleague from Emerging Professionals Committee. He'll also, he's on the WPRI board. We'll have a variety of opportunities to work with his colleagues who are also on the board. He will be recognized during a career development boot camp, how to stand out session that will take place tomorrow. He's reached out to my speakers attending the conference all the way from North Carolina during a session he plans to use me as an example of a young professional and possibly getting their name out of the profession. He received my name from Numer's Professionals within the state. He's also will be helping my EPC colleagues with their trade show booth, a speed networking event. And on Thursday night, he'll be accepting Wisconsin Parks and Recreation Association emerging professional of the year award. It's very cool. He received multiple nominations for this award and was chosen for this award by the WPRI award committee. Reese is one of the multiple professionals who nominated him. Reese will be introducing me and presenting me the award during the awards banquet. So several of us from the village are going to try to get up there on Thursday night and as well to support him. So that's pretty exciting for Sam. So when you see him, make sure you congratulate him on that. Great honor. That's great. Thank you. All right. The Forest Windsor Fire and EMS update. You have a lot at the Village Board meeting. Yeah, I got it. All right. If there is no other business to lawfully come before this committee, we will entertain a motion to adjourn. We will adjourn until our six o'clock board meeting. I would ask you to be on time for six o'clock. So motion to adjourn. Is there a second second motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Post. Motion carries were adjourned at six thirty or five thirty two p.m. And we will come back again for our six p.m. meeting. Okay. Okay. Oh. I would ask Callie to note roll call. And I would ask. Let's see, Brad, do you want to lead us in the pledge? I pledge, and it's just a good light of the United States of America, to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, to the liberty of God. I still don't know if you should stay in that part. All right. The one announcement that I wanted, well, two announcements tonight. One is Bill Chang. He is on vacation and called in to be with us, so thank you, Bill. Also, I would ask and remind you that during this meeting and during appearances, we need to be respectful of everyone, and there will be no clapping, no cheering, no unnecessary talking. And I do ask, if you take your conversation out in the hall, that you know that your voices travel in here. So try to keep it down if you go out in the hall because it's disruptive to the meeting. So we appreciate that, and you're being helpful with those things. Does anyone else have an announcement? No, okay. So with that, we will proceed with our agenda. First is the consent agenda. I would ask if anybody wanted to separate out any item. If not, I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda motion to approve. Is there a second? Second. Motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. There are no presentations and there is no items under old business, so we will move on to new business. And the first item is discussion and possible action to reject petition for direct annexation by one half approval of 1572.5 acres. As specified, MBR number one, four, two, eight, one. I would note that this is a rather a poor pro forma item. We would ask that. We continue with it. The staff presentation. We will then have opportunity for the board to say anything they want to say before public appearances. And then we will have discussion and possible action. So with that, I would like to turn it over to Bill. Are you comfortable? Yeah, so I can, I can jump in here. First off, I just want to confirm that my Wi-Fi is working great and you can hear me clearly. We can. Okay. Well, thank you to the board for letting me join by zoom this afternoon. It means a lot to my family to be able to take some vacation time with them. We just left us all here in the Bahamas. So in regards to the QTS project in the annexation petition. I've provided a memo as part of the packet, which provides the background the history to this project. And quite frankly, in short here over the last several weeks, we've noticed a change in. And challenges in negotiating the pre annexation agreement. We were trending towards objects, objectives that. We believe we're challenging going to be challenging to meet in benefit of the village. And then also, you know, we've seen change and sentiment in the village board. Trustees towards this project. So we believe that it was time to consider this annexation petition. Primarily to reject it. And say, save on those resources and time. And also QTS and their time and resources to. And just, you know, be able to move forward on this project or life after this project. So therefore, at this time, we are recommending rejection of the annexation petition. And since that announcement or release of that recommendation from staff. We have received a letter from QTS. We're trying their application for comprehensive plan, their conference of plan. And their reasoning application. They've also requested that the village not take any action. To adopt a annexation petition. As they are concerned about the current statuses of the landowners involved. So I'll leave it there. I'm happy to answer any questions or as long as my Wi-Fi continues to work here. Thank you. Thank you for getting online and being with us tonight. Are there any questions for Bill? Yes, Jim. Thank you. So Bill, I know we were in the middle of like gathering information and there was a couple of consultants that were hired to say report to the village board. And I'm assuming those consultants ended their work with us. I'm just wondering where those data packets will say sit. And if that can be something that we will still collect. Yeah, so. Yeah, so regards to our consultant contracts. The ones that we do not utilize regularly we've stopped or pause work as early as we could. And are working through a termination of those contracts. We do currently hold a reimbursement agreement with QTS. So I believe that those costs to the village for those services will be reimbursed by QTS. Because we continue to monitor that with our finance team. And the work that's produced at least the ones that are public record will be available at the village. You know, anything that we've learned from this project. Well, you know, maybe utilize moving forward to help the village in its planning process. Other questions for Bill? Yes, I have a quick question. You noted in your commentary that QTS or QTS had stated that also they're pulling out due to some misinformation. I'd received a couple of questions from people asking like specifically what the misinformation was on their behalf is the conversation over at this period with QTS. Yeah, at this time, there's no more discussion in regards to the project per se. You know, with them withdrawing and, you know, the village sports possible vote on this this evening. I don't believe that there's any reason to continue discussion of that and understanding what that quote misunderstanding is. You know, we assume that it's, you know, through this process, we had set out a timeline for due diligence. And some of the information that may have been provided may be in conflict or different from some of the information that may be out there currently. Thank you. Other questions. I don't have anything to really add to what Bill just said, except that I think it's important to recognize that we're at a point where we could finally make a vote, take a vote. Process required that we go through a complex review of the project and we got into a point where we can can vote. So I'm hopeful that we can come through this and then find a way to come back together is community. So with that, we'll move unless there's more questions. We'll ask if there's anything that board members want to say before we move to public appearances. Yes, Brad. I know there's going to be public appearances, but before the vote this evening, I just wanted to pause the recognizer community. No matter where each of you stand, I sincerely want to thank everybody who showed up spoke out and engaged respectfully throughout the entire process. Seeing neighbors come together, organize and make their voices heard exactly how local government is supposed to work. Also collecting more than a thousand petition signatures in just six days. It's a no small feat. So it's a powerful reminder that your voices do matter and your engagement matters and your participation truly does shape the direction of this village. I can admit that I haven't enjoyed getting home after 10 30 every other Tuesday past several weeks, but I generally appreciate seeing so many of you advocates and show that you carefully deeply care about this issue. So the level of civic engagement is something that this community should be proud of, something we've been asking for. And I also want to give a sincere thank you to our village staff. I know they put in behind the scenes countless hours researching, responding to questions, providing information not only to the board, but to the public. They've navigated a high stress and challenging period with professionalism and grace and that deserves recognition. So I truly thank all of you for your time, passion and commitment to the community and hope to see all of you in the future. Thank you, Brad. Anyone else? Yeah, go ahead. Brad kind of said what I wanted to say, so I'm not going to go through too much here, but pretty much same regards when we started this process. I just want to acknowledge, you know, it's kind of some of the negative sentiments that majority of you said you wanted to have a say. And this and that was not able to happen. And so there's some emails I felt like people on both sides of the issue felt like, you know, a little bit hopelessness or feeling like decisions are being made for you and not with you. And so I want to say the positives through this is you're sticking through the process as much as we could hear. You're allowed to empower yourself to show up. And so you guys made the choice to continue to show up here and communicate with us on both sides. And so I think that's a win for us for the forest that, you know, if anybody asks me about us, I would say we've got a passionate group of people who care. And so as other issues come before us, I just encourage you guys to continue to show up, continue to, you know, be involved in. I hope that when we walk out of here, we can walk out the same way we walked in. And that says neighbors who care deeply and want the best for divorce. Thank you. I'm going to challenge this organization and all of you who are here in the no data center group and all of you that are here in the support of the data center group. I have received lots of communications from the noted data center group. But also I'm hearing from a lot of the people who supported it and are very concerned that they loss of jobs or loss of potential work to build the center. We're concerned about not having some of the land sales that they might add others who are very concerned about not being able to contract with with QTS and the data center. But I think it's incumbent on all of us as members of this community want to make a peaceful community and a community that works together to reach out and listen to one another. The village board can't do this alone. We need all of you engaged in reaching out to form relationships with those people as well and think about how we can help to solve problems on both sides. Some of you might feel very victorious tonight. Others are feeling a great loss. And I think as a community, we need to bond together and work together to try and heal that rip. So I encourage you to take that on as a challenge and work with us to make it better. So with that, is there anyone else who wants to say anything? Yes, Jim. I guess I'll say that as far as my sentiment, I do. I'll say my background's engineering for people that don't know that, but I feel like I'm one that wants to. Like say data and make a better informed decision. I don't personally feel like we completely fulfilled that. So that's a bit of a struggle that I have for the vote that's going to happen. But knowing, I'll say in retrospect, or I guess not retrospect, but that QTS is asked us to. So I think my goal will be affirmative. But I do feel that we didn't quite fulfill what I feel obligation to the citizens that gather all the data. So that is a bit of a struggle that I have. But I do want to echo a lot of the sentiment here. I think no matter what side you run, I think you were very civil. And I commend you because there's been different topics that haven't gone quite as well as this in the last few years. So your groups did a very good job of making sure that it didn't become too personal and adversarial to us. So I can again commend you for that. And I look forward to seeing what is next. I hope a lot of you keep advocating and hopefully see our committees filled up. Not just, I'll say our community, but not just the community that a forest because I look out in the room. And now there's people out there and Dane and Vienna, probably Windsor. So I hope you fill up their communities and all those committees too. So thank you all. All right. First of all, I want to say thank you to everyone who dedicated their time tonight and all the nights after that. And before that, one of my asks for everyone in your shot of this meeting is that we take time to pause and reflect. And we identify the winds, not victorious or what, what not, but the winds of what went well in terms of communication and collaboration and pulling out the strengths, but also what could have gone better. And not just from a board perspective or a community perspective or a staff perspective. But one of the things that I try to teach, not just my kids, but my students and all my patients is every opportunity is an opportunity to do better. So this situation went, went the way that it did, but what can we do going forward, what worked well, and where do you see some of the pitfalls that we could have. Pause reflected and put a better foot forward. So I think as a community as a whole, not just a forest, but all communities involved. I mean, this topic went across Wisconsin and beyond, right, which means we have become, you know, the satellite of how to do things collaboratively and effectively. And so in that I would just ask not just the board members, but everyone involved. What could we have done differently and what did we do well so that communities that are watching can use us as a template of how can we discuss very difficult conversations or very difficult decisions in a very kind and compassionate way where you still feel heard no matter what side of the line you're on. Thank you. Jan, did you have anything. I think that a lot of what I would say has already been said, I echo the sentiments of what the rest of the board is saying and appreciate everyone showing up and voicing and also in a in a in a good way. Both sides have gotten along pretty well. And I do appreciate that being on the board. Thank you. All right. I don't have a flowery speech. This project was a little scary to me from the beginning. It was very large. There aren't any state federal, whoever rules and regulations at this point. I think it's a good thing that they will come in the future. I don't think data centers are going to go away. It was a good thing to see the community come together. I was not too happy with some of the things that the board members were accused of. That had no basis in fact, and are untrue. I know it's very difficult on staff as well as trustees on the board. And I guess that goes back to what tissue you were saying, what we do good and what can we improve on. There will be further development into forest. There has to be in order to keep us alive. But maybe we can do better than something this big. All right, with that, we'll move to the public appearances we have on this topic for tonight. And we'll start with past summer field. Help you. Okay. Can you share your name and community? Yes, I'm Cassandra Sommerfeld and I'm in the forest. I'm a resident of the forest as well as a high school graduate and I have a bachelor's in sustainability management and I have a passion for water. I pose the annexation of the land from Vienna for a plethora of reasons. A big thing for me is the impact on the environment and water. They advertise a water free cooling system, but tell us it takes a million gallons to fill each building. Last I checked a million is in free. Not to mention that there's never been or based on the calculations. There's no way to really have the energy needed in order to be able to accommodate. Sorry, I'm trying to change things a little bit based on what you guys are talking about. I want to go slightly different direction. But the big thing for me is even looking at this project at all for annexation. This is part of the agricultural enterprise area. I had gone over this before. This is a significant area that's been designated by the state that's supposed to be used for Wisconsin's agricultural future. If this is really something that you guys want to look at and you want to have some sort of big development, this is not the area for it. This area is far more valuable as farmland and it's far more valuable for its natural resources than any development would be. And I think that it really should be recognized that this was designated to be protected. So these areas should be left as they are. Now, in going with a company in the future, if you do want to go with say QTS or somebody else, I think it's very important to look at the methods that they use and when they're preventing people from knowing what they're actually doing, planning and what they actually need, that's a problem and people are really starting to notice that. So as you mentioned, you know, this isn't just a local issue. Hyperscale data centers are a major concern for people across the nation. According to the Associated Press between April and June, two thirds of the data centers they were tracking were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state level pushback, equaling 20 proposals valued at 98 billion in 11 different states. There's multiple issues across multiple different areas, including just in Minnesota. There was a different challenges that arose and residents felt betrayed and lied to when they discovered that the state, county, city and utility officials knew about the proposal for an entire year before the city, responding to the public record requests filed by the Minnesota Center of Environmental Advocacy, released internal emails that confirmed it sound familiar. I think the fact that a lion energy is the one who's trying to push this is concerning and should be looked at. I would really stress. Staying away from any annexation of this area, like I said, it's far more valuable as it is. And there's many other areas that can be developed downtown specifically when looking at the comprehensive plans. That's what a lot of people talked about. So if you really want to. Look at something that's going to draw people and it's going to. Bring a lot more revenue in. I think that's what the focus should be. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the next person is Melinda Murphy. Is she online? Oh, you're here. Please identify yourself in your community. So I'm Melinda Murphy and I'm a homeowner and resident of Windsor Lake Windsor to be specific. So my name is Melinda Murphy. I'm a homeowner resident of Windsor. I'm also an experienced attorney of 35 years. I'm here tonight to urge the board to reject the petition for direct annexation of the 1572.5 acres associated with the proposed QTS data center project. This annexation is not simply a boundary change. It is a gateway to a massive industrial development with long term consequences for village utilities. Infrastructure, the environment, and most importantly, public health and safety. Yet this project moved forward for months before there was meaningful public discussion. Residents and even some village trustees and planning and zoning commissioners were brought into the process late, despite needing to be involved from the start. That lack of early inclusion is not open government and it undermines public trust. The village board, Alliant Energy and QTS Blackstone failed to hold a community forum where the residents impacted neighbors and decision makers like you could ask questions and receive clear answers. That was a missed opportunity for transparency and accountability. Throughout negotiations QTS did not make firm commitments to key protections, including meaningful renewable energy standards. The Department of administration has determined that this annexation is against the public interest, noting that the land lies outside the villages approved sewer service area. Approving it under these conditions reverses responsible planning and creates unnecessary risk. Combined with the town of Vienna's rejection and widespread resident concern, this project clearly lacks public support. I appreciate the staff's recommendation to reject the petition, and I respectfully request that the board take this vote tonight by roll call so residents can clearly see where each elected official stands. This decision will shape the forest for generations, and I urge you to put residents public trust and responsible planning first. Thank you for your time and your service to the village we love. Thank you. Rhonda mine holds. I'm still Rhonda vinyl and I still live in Vienna. I am here to speak regarding the once proposed QTS data center on the 1572 acre massive property north of I 94 and county highway V. The recent letter from QTS's attorney confirms that the company is pausing its pursuit of development approvals citing public opposition and ongoing concerns. While described as a pause, this decision underscores what residents have been saying for months. This proposal has generated deep and sustained concern across the community. Even in its current state, the potential impacts remain significant. A development spanning more than two square miles would dramatically alter our community, bringing increased heavy truck traffic, strain on roads and municipal services, enormous demands on electricity and water and lasting impacts on wetlands, wildlife and open space. The letter also requests that the village refrain from annexation or actions that would change current landowner circumstances. That requested is an important reminder that annexation and zoning decisions must serve the community's long term interests and the village's adapted plans, not the uncertainty or timeliness of a single developer. Beyond infrastructure, the proposed parcels are regularly shaped and only minimally contiguous with the village. This fragments the town's cohesion and creates long term governance and service challenges that residents not developers will be left to manage. Given the lack of transparency that has characterized this proposal, residents and neighboring communities are left in ongoing uncertainty, never knowing whether this project is truly over or quietly being pursued behind the scenes. That uncertainty erodes public trust. I'm asking the board to end this definitively by formally disengaging from any data center related annexation or development and stating clearly on the record that this proposal is closed. So residents and neighbors can move forward without continued concern. We need to refocus on development that aligns with the comprehensive plan and reflects community priorities. Thank you for your time and consideration and thank you for your service to the village of the forest. Thank you. Dan Janssen. My name is Dan Janssen and in April, I'll be a 21 year resident of the forest. I'm submitting the statement for the public record of the meeting. I'd like to thank the village staff for bringing the recommendation to reject annexation to the board. I believe for this round, we have achieved the correct outcome. I do fear that somewhere between the need for net new construction, a lion energy painting a target on our back and the vendor that is going on throughout this country, that this isn't the last such proposal we'll see. And in light of that, I'm interested in protections being put in place to ensure that the residents of the forest continue to be heard. One agenda item in the working meeting was intended to address a concern by village commissioners and trustees about how late they found out about this development. The proposed solution would not, I believe, have resulted in any earlier communication. I submit to you that the trustees should hold out for measures that bring to their attention even earlier in the process. Any development above a certain size requiring a change to the comprehensive plan. Second, I'm very concerned that the village administrator and community development director entertained this proposal for as long as they did, knowing full well, it's in compatibility with the comprehensive plan. A plan such as these are often general enough that you can drive a truck through them notwithstanding. It feels like a 30% increase in the size of the village in one go does not equate to the kind of balance development that our plan specifies. I'd like to see the village staff board and commissioners undertake some kind of exercise to reaffirm the priorities laid out in our plan and determine what those really mean to them. Third, I'd like to see a public review of the job descriptions of the village board president administrator and community development director. Based on this recent experience, I think we need to make sure that these descriptions prioritize behaviors that represent the interests of village residents more so than behaviors that I would expect to see out of a chamber of commerce. Just as importantly, I'd like to see what performance measures these roles are evaluated against in their annual reviews to ensure that they support the goals and objectives of the comprehensive plan. Finally, I'd like to submit to you that as part of this process, villages have been the village residents have indicated to you that they do not feel that such a development is within the scope of the plan at all. As such, in light of the tremendous uncertainty in the data center industry, I asked for the immediate imposition of a two year moratorium on data center development involving the village of the forest. Thank you, folks, for putting up with us during this process. Carl, Peggy. Carla, I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. Just one minute, Dan. He has a clarifying question. Dan, when you you questioned or a review of job descriptions, you said president and economic. Director, I'm not sure what paperwork exists for these types of things, but I'd just like to understand what exactly the roles of those individuals are defined as. So maybe that only applies to the staff. I can see that. I'm not sure. Okay, so you. I was just concerned that you maybe said. President and when you meant administrator, but you did mean president. I meant president, administrator and community development director. Those are documented on paper. I think it's important that. Supporting our comprehensive plan. It is a primary performance objective of those roles. Thank you very much, Dan. Carla, sorry. My name is Carla. I'm a resident of forest since 1978. These past couple of months have been trying for many of us to forest residents, as well as you are village board. With the announcement by QTS withdraws annexation request, we have been given a small sigh of relief. However, I was very disappointed to see that they are accusing residents of spreading misinformation is a reason for withdrawal. Seriously, they are a multi billion dollar corporation. We didn't push them away with misinformation. In fact, there were several of the NDC team members that did extensive and thorough research on QTS and data centers and presented QTS with very specific questions in regards to the build and operations. The fact that they were met with resistance from informed individuals working together is the real reason for their withdrawal, in my opinion. Our hope is that because of this withdrawal, the forest will honor the recommendations from village staff and the DOA and efficiently deny the annexation request. The forest has been able to remain a steady growing community. And we foresee that will still be the case in the future. Slow and steady wins the race. I hope this momentum of residents participation in the building of our community continues. And I would like to thank those on the board that have been here and heard us through all these meetings. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That concludes our public appearances on this item. Did you sign up? I just put the data on it. Yeah, I'll speak then. Okay. Oh, no. Did you see everybody again? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, yes. And pull it a little closer to you. I'm Trisha bulky. Everyone knows where I live by now, but in case you forgot, my address is on the forum. It's hard to believe that it's been over three months since I came to the October 21st board meeting to support putting fluoride back in the water. That's the day I met Ron and my adults. And she was here talking about the data center. Before her three minutes were up, I had already found her on messenger and sent her a message that said, I'm at the board meeting where you're speaking about the data center. I've been very upset about this too. Ever since I heard about it, let me know what I can do. I'm outraged about this as well. At the time, neither one of us could have imagined what we set in motion that day, but it was still the beginning of a beautiful friendships between people, most of whom had never met before the words QTS or pig roast came out of anybody's mouth. The family week, Sean Haney of Vienna, Nancy Roth of Dane of a Beninsky of Windsor, Dilly of Griffiths of DeForest and myself or all sitting around Ron is dining room table. Kelly Mack of Windsor couldn't attend and no data center to forest was born. One people for municipalities, eventually our leadership team expanded by a few more and so did our army today there are over 4000 people and are no data center to forest Facebook group who represent people from all over Dane County, Wisconsin and outside of Wisconsin. It is humbling to look back and see what we started. Most of us from leadership have limited experience in this arena. One of us came fresh off the recall of Bill Glandgraft. One of us had prior local government experience. One of us had building community background and one of us has project management management experience. But all of us were building the plane as we were flying it. I'm sure to see that democracy is still alive and well into forest Wisconsin. Looking around at all these people who joined our fight, many of whom have not been to a board meeting some who have never spoken in front of more than a handful of people have been brave enough to stand up for what they believed in. I've never been so proud of a community I live in and the community that surround it. Being a part of this fight to keep the forest small and protect my most of us moved here has reinforced exactly why I moved here to begin with to forest and be in a deserve to be protected based on history. I don't trust this fight is over. And it's for that reason I'm still concerned about our future. I'm asking you as members and staff that you make some changes in the way that you run our government. We will be watching and reporting back because this is not just about the data center. This is about protecting our comprehensive plan, keeping our land zone agricultural, growing from within and not stealing lands to grow outwardly. This is still about transparency, the people of the forest having to say and what's important to us. Our commissioners not blindly rubber stamping projects are those trustees being trustworthy. And it's still about being a good neighbor to Vienna. I think the trustees who met with us listening to us and I'm still very. How are you as a staff and as trustees going to ensure the direction of the forest, how can no data center to forest work together with you and make sure we don't go through this again. Most importantly, will you please consider a moratorium much like Madison did. Thank you. With that, we will move to discussion and possible action regarding this matter. I would ask Al to help repeat when we do get to possible action. What a yes vote and a no vote means if you could do that for us. Well, you're going to need a motion either to accept the annexation of the decision or reject it. So yes, vote would be dependent on what the motion is. All right. Just so everyone's clear, we often get. I'd up and with that, I would ask if there's any comment or discussion from the board. If not, we are going to do a roll call vote. Okay, with that, if there is no discussion. We will move to a, I think we need a motion first. So we do need a motion. We do. Yeah, we do. Let's get in motion. I'll make a motion to reject the petition for direct annexation by one half approval of 1 5 7 2.5 acres and everything in parentheses. Is there a second? All second. All right. With that, we are going to ask for a roll call vote. And I would ask Callie to do that, please. Rusty Williams. Present. And I don't. Yeah, your vote. Okay. So my vote is to make them. I guess to vote down. So no. Which I thought you were going to explain what yes or no. This is why we clarify these things. The motion is to reject the annexations. Yes vote is a rejection. So yes to reject. Thank you. Trustee Allen. Hi. Trustee cords. Hi. Trustee little. Hi. Trustee Simpson. Hi. Trustee Stefan Hagenheim. Hi. President K Hill Wolfgram. Hi. Motion carries 7 0. Thank you. All right. We will move on to 8.2 then. Resolution 2026 dash 009. A resolution approving village participation in the renew the blue council. Judd, do you want to make the presentation in yes. I'll give you a brief update. So this is part of the clean lakes alliance, which has been doing work. Around the channel aches and then the watershed that contributes to it. James ties here from the clean lakes alliance. He's been running that organization that basically from the beginning, which is probably I'll get it wrong, but I think it's 10 11 years. He does have a presentation. If somebody can bring it up, it's the PowerPoint that's available. And then you can give James the control to run the PowerPoint would be great. But there is a resolution in the packet. So at the end of this and after your discussion, we would look for discussion of possible action to. One, join the clean lakes alliance and then to become a part of the renew the blue. And with that comes the obligation by. Y'all is if you do that, that there's two appointees that can be made to this organization. They ask that one, be an elected official and then one, wherever you might want, if it's staff or somebody at large. So with that, I'll turn it over to James and let him give you a little bit of information on the organization. Good evening. My name is James tie. I'm the executive director of the clean lakes alliance for the past 15 years since it's founding. While the presentation is coming up, I'm here tonight to invite the forest. To formally join a council that we've created of now over 40 nonprofits, municipalities, the higher watershed to both track and implement and renew the blue, which is the community plan to improve our water quality and beaches. And if I do this correctly, I'm going to hit continue. Wonderful. So over since 2008, the partnership has grown under the leadership of clean lakes alliance back in 2008. Secretary Matt Frank, County executive in Kathleen folk and Mayor Dachys, let it launched it. And then in 2010 clean lakes, lions came on. We then grew that partnership. And the last partnership was in 3.0 during COVID. We had 19 signatories. Now that moving on implementation, we have now over 40 to work in what's called a collective area to bring everybody's voices. So the renew the blue that was passed in me of 2022 has a lead of scientists from our communities lead scientists for. Around the watershed sets clear goals and targets and what everybody can do. And it's not just government. It's also agar culture. There we go. There we go. Residents, builders, parking open spaces, managers. So there's two areas of focus. There are 12 impacts in total. These are the direct impacts to improve water quality in the watershed. One, build additional manure processing capacity. We need to do something about our amount of manure that we have and how it is spread, especially with the development constraints that are becoming over the next 10, 20 years. Increase the ability to handle and transport the manure. We are phosphorus rich. You might not know, but it's an element that is basically going to run out. And so Wisconsin and Dane County has an amazing way to actually reuse that phosphorus and actually transport it to areas around the state and around the country that does not have enough. Increase the number of farm acres guided by nutrient management plans. Before 2017, when clean things going around this issue, we were at 37% of our farms had nutrient management plans while other parts of the state were at 60, 70%, 80%, even 90%. We're now up to 15, 57%. So we want to increase that to 100%. Increase the farmlands under no till continuous cover crop, living cover, and those type of practices to keep the soil in place and do better healthy soil. Increase municipal street clean miles and frequency drain fall. If some of you are judge was probably in the forest many years ago, we did the leaf work with the forest when the pilots to look at how leaves are taken care of. Also protect internally drained areas and wetlands. Those are really important to the overall community and then also increase that green infrastructure across the community. It's just one minute. Thank you. The other thing is the indirect. And this is really a lot of the work of the council to continue to work together as compact members because we need to work harder and stronger together with all the uncertainties at the federal level. We have a rich local government. You've seen that recently we have actually 21 municipalities in the higher watershed. That's not even all Dane County, but there's 21 just in the higher watershed. Increase participation and water farmer groups clean lakes lines is proud to be a co founder of your hard pride farms with Jeff and risk and that group have done a lot of work leading the country for producer led groups. Inventory of our shorelines and streams. We've not actually had a good inventory of what our streams and rivers and around the lake of what the what that is like and so that inventory is going to be very important in partnership with the DNR. Test E. coli at our local beaches, even though the forest is does not have a lake. Last year we had 2.7 million visits to the higher chain of lakes. So the population is just about 600,000. So you can just imagine how often all of our residents go to local lakes and then continue to track report progress. And that's one of the really good things that's happening is that while the forest might do something good and then Vienna do something good and then Westport. It's really hard to collectively show the community the good work that's being done. And so we need to do that as different municipalities and nonprofits. So again, this is one of the biggest recommendations is for clean lake clients to be the backbone to bring all the partners together through a logic model and collective impact to make sure everybody has their voice. So we actually have a facilitator house and legal who does this professionally has done it for the DNR, the county. Because if I was during the means, I would just probably talk over everybody because I'm sort of a personality in my own. And so it's good to know when you just step back and let other people have their voice because some people need the time. Some people want to do in writing. Some people want to step back. Some people want to be vocal. And so having that facility to make sure that all the nonprofits and all municipalities can have their voice at the table is going to be important. Acting together for healthy lakes, lands and shorelines. This is actually a project. Sometimes things move slowly. This project. Goes back to 2008. We took out part of the lawn at the governor's residence and put. 10 feet of native shoreline along governments, but it took. All the way till two years ago, it took over a decade to get everything lined up to do that, but that is something to show the power of persistence to get something done. The really the Rubik also is going to work in the wire to move clarity and sign a bacteria blooms decrease the runoff on the land because farmers. That's the most important product they have is their soil and so health is really, really important. So it's not just about runoff, but it's also keeping their, their gold is the soil to keep that more open beaches. If a beach closes in the higher chain of lakes, we lose over a million dollars of economic impact. Last year, the lakes had a $220 million economic impact to our community. The lakes are the 8th largest employer with 1,800 direct jobs on those lakes. It's also making sure that everybody is voice. So this is last night was in one of key they voted. Yes. I think Bob Weaver is online with the village of Windsor. They have voted. Yes. Yeah. Horror headwaters is voted. Yes. Hard pride farm. Yes. So I'm here today to have asking answering questions and hopefully join the council. Some initial objectives is to create these five facing metrics. One could be a number of rain gardens in our community. Madison has a way to track those and we are pertinent of curtsy. So as a community, we can see how that dial moves. In inventory of the shoreline. This is the one that I think everybody, especially in this room will be interested in. And I've, if you know, Jeff Endress, I propose this to him. I've reposed it to the county, the carpsy. So we have a great dairy business in Dane County. Going back to a lot of farms just after the Civil War. We have immense pressure on this community to move here. Move it here because of the lake. Let's just be frank, right? And they're, when you're for the soil. Let's say there's a farmer out there and they have 2000 cows. They have, let's say, 9,000 acres that they spread them manure on and do crops, but they only own 3,000 acres. They rent from their neighbor because that farm has been over a long time and they rent another 3,000 acres. But that last 3,000 is already owned by a developer. There are thousands of acres very owned by developers that are ready to be developed into something. We actually don't know as a community how many acres are already off the table and slated. So what happens to our dairy farms when all that land goes away? So if we want to protect our natural spaces, our areas that are in our community plans, we're going to have to come up with a way to either do development rights, protect their farms, but it starts with the metrics. It's hard to protect something that you don't know what you have as a cross borders. And then inventory, the green infrastructure. Back to impact model is really important. This is something that's going around around the country, how you bring different voices together. We also have the realtors involved in this, the home builders, the farms. It's really have all the different voices at the table are growing membership as you see there. It's even growing up since then, including the whole chunk nation and different groups and all the groups also are local groups. While there might be really good work going on by the nature conservancy or clean Wisconsin. This is a hyper local group. And so the groups that you will see there, the nonprofits are ones that are organic and unique to the horror watershed. Commitments, each of the communities are becoming a member of the Clean Lakes Alliance and also a grant to support the work of the group, which also include the state of lakes report and will be doing a new part of that, which is actually the annual land health assessments. So right now it will water quality assessment that signed off by the scientists in the area. Now we're going to be a land health assessment to show the community what type of improvements are mean. You know, this community is already does a lot of work to protect its parks and open spaces. So how do you take that work and combine it with the other to show the community the real movement? And I think I'm available for questions. All right. Brad. Thanks for coming and presenting. I think this looks pretty great. All the things that your group is doing. How do you get farmers to work with you on doing some of this initiatives that you have for the manure spreading and. Run off. So I am born from Madison. My grandfather was a farmer. My uncle was a dairy farmer up in partyville, but I am a. Preppy guy with, you know, who to hair. And so I knew that the first thing I needed to do is. Have the farmers take the lead. So we spent I spent. A year almost on a Monday night at seven o'clock me with farmers in time that they can meet because they can meet at seven o'clock at night. And we actually started your hard pride farmers, which is a producer led organization. We incubated them and we've also donated to that group just under a million dollars to do work. So we brought we got the farmers here doing the best work to tell the other farmers to do good work and breaking down those barriers. And so doing that is really important. Just know what your places and what your voices and let other people speak up with their voice. So don't tell farmers about to do have farmers tell their farmers what to do. First of all, thank you for visiting us here into forest and sharing just a wealth of wonderful information. This presentation gets better every time I hear it. So thank you. I really appreciate a couple of the facts that you pulled out in light of everything that we have going on here. Lakes and soil is so very vital and important, but also protecting the natural spaces and I would like to know how many acres are off the table. And then just water quality and the land health assessment like this is a lot of great data that most people definitely I would want to know what's going on and just being able to participate with an organization of this nature. You've named so many amazing organizations and a lot of brains coming together. I think is powerful and it shows not just this community, but all communities, the power of collection and collaboration and shared information. So I appreciate the presentation. Thank you very much. All right, Jim. Thank you again for coming. I guess my curiosity is you're you're creating this council and I'm wondering what is sort of driving the council. Is it going to be driven by the council themselves or you said there is scientists or they bringing things for the council to sort of vote on or the. Are they really making any decisions or is it just for those council members to bring it back to their own communities and the add to that you commented how there's clear goals. So I'm wondering if those clear goals are set or again is it something that the council members are going to try to create. So the council is made to do many different things versus to implement redo the blue, which are those 12 actions that we've agreed upon already create metrics then to track those because we have 21 municipalities. It's hard to understand how the community is making impact when everything is being done in silo. So creating those metrics to measure. Then once you have metrics to measure, then if we don't move those dials on an annual basis, we as a community will be responsible for that. So the council actually has two co chairs this upcoming year. One is Jason Valerius, who is the executive director of carpsy. So they're going to be our backbone organization with the GIS. He's excited that somebody's asked him to pull this data together because within their scope of abilities, but nobody has basically asked that group to do that. The second is Shelly on this Shelly is the secretaries appointee for the south region for the DNR. And so those will be our two co chairs. So they, them along with myself. Laura Hickland, who's the head of land and water for Dane County is the steering team, but the council will set its own direction. And once they start working on something, they will create an implementation team. And I'll give you an example of how this worked in the prior iteration. So we were, if you're familiar with Willow Creek, which goes from campus drive over where the vet school is, and then goes straight out towards University Bay. So you drive and go through campus. There's like a little creek that grew over that creek. If you go in University Bay, Lake Mendota is almost an island of all the silt that comes through University and Hildell, right? And so all that stuff is just blowing in. So we had implementation team around that. So you had somebody from the DNR, you had somebody from the city, somebody from the UW, a scientist, and they needed, they decided they did do an engineering solution. And the solution is that you build a picture of a box the size of this room to have the silk go into it and the trash before it goes into the creek. The problem was that you can't, the DNR does not let you remove land from a creek because of the spacing. It's very tight. So you had a creek, the big stormwater outfall, which started the creek, but a long time ago was a creek. So the regulations really didn't allow this to happen, but DNR was in the room. They were able to talk to UW. They were talking to the county. They were able to talk to it. And they all moved and cooperated and figure out a way for it legally happened. And then the county said, well, we can do a grant for stormwater improvement in this budget. And then Greg freeze from the city of Madison. Well, I can do it because it's actually in the city of Madison with the UW and they figured that out and then somebody else figured that out. And so, you know, with zoom technology, it's all great. But as when people can talk and be in the same room together and no offense, but not under government regulations, but under a nonprofit regulations, that team building can happen. They can solve solutions. So some of it's going to be very indirect action that happens. But I think the passion for our watershed, our streams and our culture is really strong. And they're going to be you're going to be self guided. So if Jim, you're going to be one of the delegates. And then somebody else from your community, you're going to be able to actually directly that's that collective impact model that's being designed so that the council will will under the framework will sort of guide what they want to do. And it's a hands on. So if you want to do implementation team around updating your ordinance of how a citizen could do a rain garden. Just raise your hand and Middleton will join you. And then one of the cool things is that you could have the same regulation or ordinance of how you build a rain garden. In the forest as Windsor and as Middleton so that everybody can do the same thing no matter where they're living and get that serve across municipalities. I hope that answered your question. You answered it very well. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Hey, any other questions. So what you're asking for us to do tonight is to approve the resolution. Which would then automatically have us paying those fees. Correct as it shows on the screen. There's a $500 membership for the Clean Lakes Alliance. And then there's $1,000. Support that goes to help implement renew the blue. So it's $1,500 total. That would come out of our stormwater fund. And then separately after this resolution you're looking for appointments. One lay and one not elected official. One needs to be elected official. And then there one could be another elected official staff or community member. All right. And not necessarily making the staff recommendation or the trustee recommendation tonight. Whatever you would like. I'd like to make a motion to approve the resolution. 2026 dash zero. Just kidding. 8.2. I'd like to make a motion to approve resolution. 2026 dash 009. A resolution approving village participation in the renew the blue council. Second. Motion and a second. Any further comment. If not, all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Post. Motion carries. We'll work on those appointments. Thank you. And the public is also welcome tomorrow night. We're launching the council. The county executive was speaking and I'm doing a panel discussion with the local mayor. So it'll be lots of fun. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your time. All right. Moving on to item 8.3. A resolution. 2026 dash 010. Resolution authorizing village president clerk to execute. An intergovernmental agreement for fire station construction and cost sharing with the village of Windsor. Al and I will kind of help with this, but so will. Chief, so feel free to come forward in case there are questions. All right. Al, do you want to talk about the IGA at all or. Well, we kind of went through this agreement once before and I don't want to go through it line by line, but I just do want to point out that there are a couple of items that are still being negotiated. They're fairly. Incidental items like insurance coverage and things like that. I did set a revised draft to. The lawyer for Windsor. Last two day having her back on that. So those. I'm not sure there's any dispute on those issues. They're just not resolved. They're shown as redlined in the draft that is in front of you. The resolution provides that those remaining issues can be resolved. Which Jane can sign off on the contract once bill and I have both approved the final language on those those issues. And this is important step in terms of moving forward on the second station. Are there questions on the intergovernmental agreement. If not, I would entertain. Oh, Brad. Sorry. One question I had is if this is being built in. Windsor, why is the forest responsible for 57% of the funding for. That's that's because. The percentage that that the communities pay. First of all, it's a joint district. It's to forest and Windsor. But it's based on statistical use of the. MS and the fire and the forest is is bigger and uses more. It's based off a equalized value. Right. So. That's that's been what we're very good at using the service. And it was. With the station remodeled the same formula was used so Windsor invested into to this building. Not as large. So, like I was saying, both projects were moved. Done the same way. Yes, Al. And just to clarify, it's it's not apples to apples. The way the. The forest building was done when the remodeling was done. The cost of that remodeling was added into a lease that the village had with the fire district. The fire district is contributed to 57% to forest and the rest by by Windsor. So in effect, each lease payment was a 57% by by the forest. In doing the second building, the numbers people decided it made more sense to do it as a capital expenditure rather than an ongoing operational expense of paying rent. So with this agreement, both buildings are basically going to go to. To no rent, but capital contributions. That's why there's a big chunk of money that would come from the forest up front here. Okay. Yes, Jan. On the memo on page two, the chart regarding the impact fees. First of all, what are group quarters? Well, I'm just looking at the memo. Here's the chart with the impact fees. I need that would be a question for Bill Chang. I do not know what group quarters are. Is he still here? That would be like CBR. It'd be like what? Okay. Okay. Okay. And then secondly, why under the commercial industrial. Section are the impact fees based differently for deforest and Windsor. One is on square foot. The other one is on per $1,000 evaluation. Why is that? Each, each municipality has to do their own impact for your ordinance. That's based on a needs assessment that is done by the municipality. When we had ours done, the people who did it came up with that, that formula. Windsor did it separately and came up with a different formula. Gotcha. Thank you. Yes, Brad. And that's our new homes or new residents being built or existing. It's a fee that's paid as the condition of development, getting a building permit to pay the fee. Bill Chang. It's just going to note that I'm still here. The answer questions, but I think the group did a good job. All right. Good. Thank you. All right. Other questions or comments on this? If not, I would entertain a motion to approve. The resolution. 2026.01. Oh, so moved. We have a motion. Do you want to? Sure. Be second. Oh, yeah. All right. And we have a second. Is there any further comment or questions? I just have one comment. Yeah. I am. I'm really happy to see this project move forward and continue to grow and develop. I really do appreciate the collaboration between Windsor and DeForest. Our fire and EMS work really hard for our residents and being able to have this second conversation. To decrease the call time and increase our response to our residents just as a nurse moves me in so many different ways. So I really appreciate the due diligence and the work behind the scenes. And now the going back and forth with the lawyers to really make sure that we are doing our best to serve our community with health and wellness. So thank you. Thanks. I also want to note that I received a question. This afternoon asking why we were locating a second station where we are. And it's because in part and chief can weigh in on this. That's where a lot of our activity is. If you think about the forest. We have Savannah Brooks. We have Bear Tree. We have Bell Labs. We have, you know, industrial development in that area. And a lot of other residential development. So it's kind of the southern part of our community now and it will improve our response times. Chief, do you want to add anything to that? Well, yeah. Again, from our standpoint, we look as a district versus villages. But when our initial needs study was done in 2013. They pointed in this direction. And we've been, as we've been working out our 10 year to do list. And tracking the call data. All the data is showing these are hot, hot areas. North and south is growing at a greater rate as far as risk is concerned. Then east and west. So thank you. All right. If there's no other comment, I would entertain a motion. We did that. We did. We're voting. I'm tired. Right. As we say, it takes a village to run a meeting. So all those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. All right. Item. 8.4 resolution 2026 dash 011 resolution authorizing bidding for the construction of fire station number two. All right. Staff presentation would be. Coming from chief. I will chime in if there's any value. We also have with us tonight. The architect. The project and Craig now. So if you guys want to come forward and join, feel free. And I would ask you to share a few comments with us. All right. Ryan's going to stay back here. But if you need to fire away at him, I'll just get out of the way. So before we get going, again, Ryan Frank with OPN, Craig Knapp is our. Assistant chief is in charge of public safety. So we're talking fire inspection plan reviews, et cetera. He's been helping out with the project. So for those of you who are new, we'll just do a quick recap of how the process. Started with the design looks like. And then we'll get into the money and go from there. So as we started the project, again, we did, we're doing an internal needs analysis. As you can see, this is a lion's share of our current district. The green is where we're looking in that zero to seven minutes, which is where we want our response standard to be throughout the district. So you can see clearly between the northern section where station one is. And the southern section where we're proposing to is kind of there's a huge difference there in those response times. The purple line is in there to indicate kind of where we're looking for what would be covered in those stations and those response times. Certain areas as we head to the west and to the northeast, the call volume is much lower and it's hard to build a multi million dollar station for 12 calls a year. So we're kind of focusing on our high volume targets here. Again, just another way, different way to show the map of where those stations would be able to respond to those call volumes. The purple line is up there again, just to give you an understanding. We do roll down to some of those response times we could cover portions of Burke as well. I know some of that is headed our direction in the future, but a very small sliver. So that's in there as we started talking about our station design goals. This was one of the first things we initiated before we started design with OPN. And we had the kind of the three big ones. We wanted to reduce response times with a subcategory of improving, improving health of the fire and EMS responders and station function. We wanted to stick to a budget and become a cost effective project and we wonder reflect the community that it was involved in. Fire station can be initially anyway pretty invasive into the community until they get used to us. So we wanted to stick out the least amount as possible. So as we started rolling into site plans, this piece of land here is where the station is going to be constructed. So to the top left of the station site under the word station is quick trip at Windsor road in North town, just so everybody has an understanding. We're just going to be south of that by the water retention and the wooded area there by Windsor's trails. So as we laid out the site outline itself initially, we wanted to be sure we had a public and active in a private zone. The private zone is kind of facing away from public where you'll see the offices, the training, the living quarters in that area. The active zones, the fleet public edges, what most people are going to see driving by and for privacy. We'd rather have people not looking into the windows. And then also with the site emergency egress and return. We're taken into great account. So we are trying to reduce the amount of times we back up into the station. For safety of both our fleet are building people may be using the crosswalk and the three o'clock backup alarm in the morning that people may not enjoy. So we did circulate it so we have a drive through station. Returning is coming in off of North town to firehouse drive. Exit is either way out of North town there. Just another look at it kind of bottom right would be the public entrance and we'll get to some more pictures on that. That's just kind of how the site is laid out. We threw in some trees and some fluff in there. So you get a good idea of what we're looking at. So when we start looking at outside appearance, this is one way you're kind of looking at it. From North town, but what you see is the public vestibule on the bottom there with the public parking. That is a secure room. So people will be able to come in, ring the buzzer. And if we're not in the station for whatever reason, they won't be able to go farther into the building. We are still throwing away or throwing around the idea of that being a panic room. So if somebody came in and hit the button, they could lock themselves in until safety. We're working on that. That's a little farther down the road with our security contractor. Well, what you're kind of seeing, the flagpole and these outside signage is just concept by no means is that firm yet. But this is kind of the look. It matches kind of the construction in the area. You see a lot of glass. We're trying to utilize natural light to keep the bay and the offices. Right now, a major money sucked for us for lack of a technical term is heating our apparatus bay. We have very few windows and we use the tube heat from the ceiling. And everybody knows heat rises. So heating from the top of an apparatus bay is not the most cost effective way. But again, another view from the north north town. This would be the public facing view. So you're looking down from Windsor Road down north town into this. We did reduce the size of the host tower to be less visual throughout the community. As now we've got a three story host tower and we got that down to a two to kind of match the roof line of the building. Another view, again, you're going to see training and storage up in those little windows across the top. But you won't the public won't get a clear shot into the station. On the outside, not much different here. It's just you pull in the doors open the truck drives through and then we're ready to go. From this view, you will kind of see this would be from in theory 51 looking into town. So the Windsor would be kind of back against the side. You'll see the workout facilities. The training room is on the first floor upstairs is the day commute or the day room where the kitchen and those items are located. A big portion of employee mental health is using and utilizing the scenic views and the daylight and being able to cycle people through their normal patterns. As much as we can sleep deprivation is a large problem in the fire service. So we'll put around. This is kind of where you're going to see that private view. The wooded area and the path runs along the backside here. Again, you have public outdoor space. You have the training room and the sleeping quarters will go down that back side of the building. Again, security is a large focus of our staff and getting people in a safe spot that they can enjoy the outside was key to us. We do have people staying and living at the station for up to three days at a time. So I'm making them safe and comfortable. It's a number one priority. So externally, that's kind of what you're looking at inside as the floor plan lays out. So you would be looking bottom side is north town top side is 51. We have three office spaces. We have the main work room is across the bottom there. We have a reception area. We have the fire inspectors office is going to be out of this building. There'll be a spare office for whatever may happen in a day. If I post up at that station for a day, I'll have a workspace or whoever's coming and going. We have the conference room training room workout facility all located on the first floor. And then when we go back from the initial planning, you're looking at the hot zone. To the to the left, which is where all the girls decon is done. You move inwards. You're looking at the yellow zone or the decon showers for personnel and duty where. And then you enter into the far right side of the station. And that would be the green zone. So you can't come from a structure fire without hitting two different showers into the living zone. And again, cancer reduction drives all of that. And when you go upstairs. Oh, sorry. These are some of the design concepts. I don't think we're not in internal design 100% yet, right? For like colors and whatnot, but these are some kind of concepts of what you would see on that first floor. The second floor is all green space. So you can't come from a call and enter this area without at least taking a shower or changing your clothes. So upstairs is a lot of mechanical and it rooms storage. But to the far right is where you're looking at the living space. So we have the kitchen, the secure sleeping quarters, which are not gender specific. So they're universal rooms. We have the officer quarters upstairs where the reports will be written at four in the morning. The unisex bathrooms and then we have gear storage and laundry upstairs. So we are pushing that when a member comes in to work, they're not in uniform. They change into the uniform when they get there. They store their clothes to take home. Their bedding stays at the station. All those things that can trap those carcinogens stay at the station. And when the members leave and go back to their families, they're not taking gear that may be contaminated back home. So that's why you see multiple washing machines. You know, we don't want to be washing bedding where we're washing bloody clothes. Again, this is kind of what it's going to look like upstairs. Just some concept drawings. Well, you can go right into cost. Jeez. Everybody, this is what it looks like. Now we'll go into cost. So initially, well, let's start it out. We don't know true costs until we actually go out to bed. But our design team and Windsor's contract construction manager went through and put together kind of a cost comparison. I would say these are conservative numbers. But they're also kind of in that middle range of what a fire station is going for at this time. So, you know, we have the construction cost, design cost, construction management costs. FFNE, which is mostly furniture and those types of things, the contingency and then the total project cost. And we'll go through and we can break each one of these down for you. So we actually hit first bullet point. The design cost of the 700 and $6,500 is already been paid or is in the process of being paid. It's not an additional cost. That was phase two's approval. The construction management fee is the service that Windsor uses as the advisor to their staff. Listening here that they're the general, they're not technically the general. They advise staff and communicate between staff and the general contractor. So again, construction will be handled not by the fire department, but by the village of Windsor. Furnishings, we talked about this area here may not be covered under the impact fees, which is both current and future funds for the impact fees is how the forest is planning, or I was told was how they're going to plan on paying for this project. Furnishings would not be covered under impact fees. So that might be a separate category in the future that we may have to come back to you. The contingency plan is normally 10% of the project costs. We plan on using very little of that. Working with our architect and the last year of meetings we have had to be sure when we go in with the plan, we are ready to go. Upper planning, we are not rushing through this planning process as much as some days I would love to. This has been a very long process. And again, the cost allocation, 57% would be the village of the forest. And I know Carol's getting yell at me because it's not exactly 57%, but I don't know the current decimal points to the 10th power. But she'll have that for us. So you're looking roughly 7,000,000,000, $633,000, I say that. Yeah, thanks guys. That number. Yeah, 7.5 and some change. Timeline. Just so everybody knows we're at the green. This is kind of how we're looking to go at it. We're hoping to go to. Bid in March 20 would be the last scheduled meeting or the 19th is the last scheduled meeting with the village of Windsor. So I believe their plan is to go out for bid on the 20th. OPN has got to work on some construction documents for that process. The bidding will close on the 16th contract should be awarded. In May, and they do have the anticipated completion of 13 months, falling somewhere in July of 27. Which would be a little behind our initial plan, but that number has been pretty solid for about a year now. In relationship to the numbers, I just wanted to thank you and congratulate staff. It worked hard to keep the costs down on the project and cut out a lot of things and that's really appreciated. It's still a very efficient and nice station, but the cost is reasonable. Thank you. We've tried to limit. We had some things that we wanted, but weren't necessarily needs. And then as those prices started coming in, some of them were no brainers. Like our flooring choice was, I think, how much was that first cut? $75,000 just by changing the floor. So that's easy. Thank you. And I think this timeline, as you said, is very similar to what we were first shown a while ago this year last year. Yes, Brad. I know one of the things, one of the concerns that you guys had when we did a tour is the training space. It's now currently with the engines and don't have anything dedicated. Does this address that? Yes, at the completion of this project, fleet will move from station one to station two and he deployed properly. That leaves a lot of open space that we can build props in the current facility, as well as the extrication and outdoor training space Windsor provided at their public works building. So that now opens up to two spots for training. Plus there are props built into this station. So folks can do ladder training inside. Did you finish your presentation? I kind of interrupted. Well, Jane, I guess I'm done. All right, other questions, Colleen. Chief, what you're going to have down there? One truck and one ambulance? Nothing's confirmed yet, but there'll be at least two ambulances down there because we are going to have an ambulance and a reserve ambulance at both stations. So we do not go down. And yes, we will have one truck. I cannot tell you what that truck is, but we will not be buying more fleet. Just to fill the station, we have the fleet we need. Any new apparatus will be in the life replacement. Ryan, the architect, do you want to say anything? I'll just say we've gone through a really. I'll just say we've gone through a really comprehensive process to get to where we are today. And that's included Windsor staff in the fire department EMS staff. We've really engaged kind of everybody to make sure that their voices are heard and the station is functional for their needs. And everything kind of relate back to those initial goals of, you know, reducing response times, improving the health and safety of the firefighters and EMS staff and being a good neighbor for the for Windsor and being kind of a. A building that reflects, you know, their other buildings municipal buildings, you know, that was part of the design choices that were made. Were to be reflective of the community in their village hall and pull those materials in. So I think we're developing a really, you know, solid building that will meet the needs now, but really looking for the needs in the future. So this is a building to last, you know, 75 years. Great. Thank you for your work. And I've heard from the fire department. How easy you were to work with and you listened and you took in their suggestions. So that's important. You weren't supposed to share that. Sorry. There we go. Any other questions or comments. Okay, we got a question and to sheet. I just have a quick comment comment, just to say, just thanks for really talking about. Just how safety is like top of mind for everyone who works for us. And so I really like, although you can't speak to the exact details of the numbers, that's not your wheelhouse, but safety is. So thank you, because it's reassuring to know that that is put into a redecision point, not only for the people who serve us, but as you guys continue to serve us. Thank you. Yeah, that started even with the station remodel here. We had a locked on the sleeping quarters and we just updated security cameras and. Yeah, number one priority. Thank you. I just have one quick question. You mentioned a panic room or a panic button. I know we have that here on our public safety door where if community members are feeling like they're in distress or needing something they can go in there and push that. I don't know where the process is, but I would really support that in that area as well. Just having that as a piece of mind in the community that if anyone is feeling like they're in danger or distress that they have a safe place to go because not everybody has a home to run to. So I don't know how where that is on the priority. I just know that I would fully support something like that. We have it here. So it would be nice to have it there for the community. Yep, we can look into that. We haven't got as far as talking to actual vendors of services. Yep. It is a concept we have thrown around. Can I make a motion to approve 2026 special one one. Okay. And a second. If there's any further comment. Otherwise, all those in favor signify by saying I. Opposed? Motion carries. All right. Thank you. Thank you. I know that was a good presentation. So we appreciate it. Okay. Then we have no registered. Then we have no registered public appearances for item nine. So I would note your check register was in your packet. Committee Commission and board reports were in your packet. I don't have anything additional to add tonight. So I would ask that unless there's other business. I would entertain a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn. Is there a second? Okay. Okay. A motion and a second. All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries were adjourned at 736 PM.