ANTIGO — The Langlade County Board has unanimously agreed to enter into a joint task force with the Antigo City Council, a move meant to enhance communication between the entities regarding matters in which they have shared interests.
The city council announced plans to start the task force during an April 30 meeting, during which Seventh Ward Alderman Glenn Bugni expressed concerns about public disputes between county and library officials.
Members of both the county board and city council have indicated the initial focus of the task force — which will be made up of three members of each of the county board and city council, as well as two administrators from both the county and city — will be the library.
District 3 County Board Supervisor Chet Haatvedt said the task force will likely need to discuss details of the city’s and county’s joint library agreement. That agreement governs rules about the library board, which determines library-related policy, as well as the library’s funding.
“The library agreement is an agreement between the city and the county,” Haatvedt said. “The library board is a product of that agreement. That agreement has a provision in it that automatically renews the conditions of that agreement. If either the city or the county wish to change that agreement in either way, the city or the county must give the other party notice two years prior to the expiration of the agreement. The agreement is set to expire in December of 2026, so if the county wishes to make changes or the city wishes to make changes, they need to notify the other party before December 31 of this year. It’s a chance to get everybody talking.”
The county board approved supervisors John Medo, Steve Maier, and Bruce McDougal as its representatives on the task force. They may meet for the first time in June with the city’s task force members, Bugni and his fellow councilmen Tim Kassis and Tom Bauknecht.
Though Medo, Maier, and McDougal were eventually approved 16-1 (four members were absent), District 1 Supervisor Ben Baumgartner voiced preliminary caution about the selection of task force members.
“I’d just like to know that people are going to be in the task force that represent all sides of the issues,” Baumgartner said. “I understand that it would be favorable to choose people that align with us, but reflecting society, I think it’s very important that we intentionally seek out voices of opposition so that on that committee, they are also speaking for the people that may not otherwise have been represented.”
“This will be a co-chaired event, of course, so as not to show favor to either side,” Ben Pierce, county board chairman, replied. “But to your point, they (the city council) have their picks with the direction they want to go, so I don’t see anything wrong with our picks.”
Langlade County Corporation Counsel Robin Stowe said the task force would bring transparency to the county’s and city’s communications.
“I personally take this as a good sign that the city, who is our partner in this joint library, is interested in establishing a formal task force with us subject to the open meetings law,” Stowe said. “We will have a formal channel of communications which does not exist between the two bodies.”
Pierce said he believes that if the task force works together following the library discussions, it has enormous potential to create cooperation between the county and city on other ventures as well.
“There’s a lot of things that we are redundant with,” Pierce said. “IT services, fuel purchases for the city and the county, the sheriff’s department, the police department, maintenance…we have a highway department that does roads and the city’s got a street department. We already partner on economic development. We partner on social services, the senior center — there’s quite a list that we partner on already. But I think the sky’s the limit. If we combine forces, I think the taxpayers would benefit greatly on a lot of these issues.”
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