The Finance & Personnel Committee of the La Crosse City Council met on Thursday, April 2, 2026, at 6:00 PM in City Hall Council Chambers. Chair Erin Goggin called the meeting to order. All five committee members were present (Aron Newberry, Barb Janssen, Chris Kahlow, Erin Goggin, Larry Sleznikow); Rosanne Northwood was excused. The meeting adjourned at 7:27 PM after considering eight agenda items.
Good evening. We're gonna call uh to order the finance and personnel committee at uh 6 p.m. All members of the finance and personnel committee are present except for Roseanne Northwood. And with that, she's excused by the way. With that, um, we will start with new business. Item number 26-0204 resolution dedicating city property lot 42 of sex hours addition to the public for right-of-way purposes and approving requests from badge or corrugating company to vacate vacate a portion thereof. This is um open for public hearing. Does anyone wish to speak? Okay, councilmember Jansen. Move to approve. Motion to approve by councilmember Jansen, second by councilmember Newberry. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll move forward with the vote. And that passes unanimously. Next item of business 26-0238 resolution allocating unused sanitary sewer funds for the final payment on the wastewater treatment plant upgrades. Councilmember Jansen? Move to approve. Motion to approve by councilmember Jansen, second by councilmember Kalo. Any discussion. Seeing none, we'll move to the vote. And that passes unanimously. Next agenda item is 26-0258 resolution appropriating tax incremental district TID 11 funds for the design and construction of a rectangular rapid flashing beacon, RRFB across highway 1461 as part of the wagon wheel trail project. Councilmember Jansen. I would move to approve. Motion to approve by Councilmember Jansen. Second by Councilmember Kalo. Councilmember Jansen. I'd appreciate if staff wanted to just kind of uh talk about this a little bit more and uh maybe describe why that particular location was chosen. I could do that, Council Member Jansen. Um, do you want a little background or just why the location? Okay. So this is related to the wagon wheel trail project. If you're not familiar with that, that is a grant that we've gotten, uh a tap grant from the GOT to uh widen and improve the sidewalk from the western uh landing of the blue bridges uh along Pettingbone and then travel on the north side or the east side of Highway 1461 along Pettibone Park and then extend all the way towards Minnesota where once you hit the West Channel, the Mississippi West Channel, where we have a majority of the grants going is for a separated bicycle and pedestrian bridge to cross that and then connect up to where the landing is over in Minnesota. So part of the design of all of that uh was removing an existing curb ramp um near the intersection of where you enter in the Pettibone Park. Uh, the DOT did not like that. Uh they had said by state statutes and some of their other policies that because there's a sidewalk on the other side of 1461, we either needed to maintain that crosswalk there, or we could put in some other crossing, like a rapid flashing beacon somewhere else in that general vicinity because the one to the north is too far away. So we need to just still maintain some sort of crossing in that general location. Um talking with uh engineering staff, uh, we preferred to do the rapid flashing beacon, as that would be much safer to install um for pedestrians to cross rather than just trying to paint something in the road and then have the curb ramps there. This would be obviously people are gonna see the lights flashing when they start crossing. Additionally, uh, we moved it a little further south too, just in anticipation of the fact that the vacant lot over there is intended to be redeveloped with a lot of housing and residential. And so we were it was just sort of a staff consultation. If that's what we prefer to do, it would be safer. That location would make more sense and it does keep that distance from the other one, and then it was just what we decided we'd like to pursue rather than have it just a painted crosswalk. So the DOT is not actually opposed to like the R uh flashing beacon. No, they gave us that option. They said either put in a better crosswalk of where it is now, or you can do a rapid flashing beacon that'll also meet our requirements somewhere in that general area. And so we chose to do that after talking with engineering. That was the preferred method. Thanks for that clarification because if the public were reading the the documents online, they may have misperceived that like I did. Okay, my apologies.