ELLSWORTH — During the April 21 Ellsworth Village Board special reorganization meeting, the board heard that the South Grant and Woodworth streets’ subbase is “not ideal.”

“It has passed the testing, but CBS Squared and Albrightson have no faith in it being suitable for a road,” Village Administrator/Clerk-Treasurer Brad Roy said during an update on the Grant and Piety area street project. “One option [Albrightson Excavating gave] is to remove one foot of the subbase, put the geogrid down in this select crush material. That would be best case scenario that that would be satisfactory to get that ready to put the road on… The risk we run if we do just the one foot with the geogrid and it doesn’t work, then we’ve got to pay to dig it out and go on to a foot of breaker under that as well.”

The other option is to put in the breaker rock right away and not run the risk of banking on the other option working out. A CBS Squared engineer recommended going with the breaker rock option right away to avoid the risk, which costs about $153,000. The other option would be about $86,000, with the potential need to start over and go with the breaker rock plan on top of that.

“If we do the foot of breaker with that, it is a large expense, but at that point, everyone is very confident that it will [work],” Roy said.

Roy said workers dug down and did testing, decided to remove another foot and then one additional foot in some areas for testing.

“They said that they were just not getting any good results,” Roy said.

Trustee Andrew Borner asked village staff to look over the contract to see if the responsibility falls on the village or the bidder. He said future contracts, including the East End project, should protect the village from similar issues.

“What was in the contract, though? I just find it frustrating that they didn’t do their due diligence to find what was under there,” Borner said. “What’s to say that that’s not going to happen on East End. I just don’t understand why that’s not written right into the contract from the get-go, that they make sure they know what they’re dealing with before we even accept a bid.”

Roy was told that “all sorts” of soil boring has been done for the East End project.
Trustee Lance Austin said if they do not correctly complete the project now, it will come back to bite the village for years to come.

“We have to do it right now, so in 10 years we don’t have to do it again,” Austin said. “We really need to look at the big picture.”

The board unanimously approved the full scope project with the condition that village staff look deeper into the contract to find which party is responsible.

Reorganization

Newly-elected trustee Dick Hines and incumbent Tony Hines were sworn into their village board seats as they kicked off two-year terms. Dick Hines, Tony Hines and fellow Trustee Lance Austin were appointed to the Board of Review meeting, an annual May meeting where residents’ property assessment objections are reviewed.

The board approved the following appointments:

Village Attorney: Robert Loberg, Loberg Law Office

Health Officer: Pierce County Health Department

Animal Warden/Humane Officer: Police Chief Eric Ladwig

Weed Commissioner: Public Works Director

Cemetery Sexton: Village Staff

Official Depository: CCF Bank

Official Newspaper: Pierce County Journal

The board heard an agenda item on meeting decorum, both from the board’s perspective as well as public comments. The item allowed the board to give direction to village staff to compose a policy that sets decorum into writing.

Borner asked that they explore how other nearby municipalities handle decorum and public comment periods to gain an understanding of where they could go next. The board agreed with Borner’s comments and Roy said he will get the ball rolling on that research.

Other business

• Approved a contract for Wastewater Operator in Charge services with MSA, as the DNR requires that role is filled by someone with an advanced wastewater certification, which no village staff have. Roy said there may be village staff interested in getting the certification down the line.
• Resident Sean Hall spoke during public comment asking the village to step in regarding the concrete vehicle approach at Circle K. He said it is the village responsibility to fix that portion of the concrete, so the corporation will not pay it.
• Approved the village committee member list for 2026-27.