Please Attend our Special Meeting!
We hope you can join us for our Special Meeting on October 24th, at 9 AM (agenda follows). The need for the meeting was caused by a legal problem with the budget which was passed at the Annual Meeting. In short, the motion, which was prefaced by, “pending legality”, zeroed out our budget for building a Storage and Maintenance Facility for our weed harvester. However, we have learned that we cannot zero a capital budget line out. We reviewed this problem at our last regular meeting, and unanimously decided to leave $10,000 in that account and transfer the remaining funds into the Harvesting Equipment capital account (see enclosed proposed budget). We will not be able to build the building this year since the majority at the Annual Meeting voted to prohibit us from borrowing money. If you cannot attend the meeting, although you will not be able to vote, you can certainly contact one of our commissioners or committee chairs, whose contact information can be found on our website at: https://www.gooselakewi.org/contact/.
Invasive Species
You may have noticed our weed harvesting volunteers working overtime this year. Thanks John Melamed and Dan Timpel for all your hard work! They had to work extra hard because unfortunately, we now have a proliferation of Eurasian Milfoil, an invasive species. If we leave it unchecked, it will take over and potentially choke off the over 30 other native water plants in our lake. We had the DNR come out and survey the lake, and they have recommended that we spray it with herbicide either next spring or the year after. At our Annual Meeting, we voted to move our excess operating funds into our Lake Maintenance Account for dealing with this problem. However, in order to apply for a permit and grant to combat the invasive species, we will need volunteers both before and after the treatment. Please consider signing up to help on our website at: https://www.gooselakewi.org/getinvolved/
Voting
In order to vote at our Annual or Special meeting, you must be a property owner or a property owner’s spouse within the Goose Lake Watershed District. Other family members not on the title of the property are not allowed to vote, although they may attend, just like any other member of the public.
After reviewing the state statutes which are silent on whether property owners may vote via Zoom, we reviewed our by-laws, which require that in order to vote, one must be “present.” We have decided that attending the meeting by Zoom, showing both your name and face in order to verify that you are a property owner within the district, meets the requirement of being “present” at the meeting, and therefore, those who attend by Zoom will be allowed to vote as long as we can see their face, name, and hands. For those of you who do not usually put your name on your Zoom screen, we ask that you do so for this meeting if you are a property owner and you intend to vote.
Meeting Location
Please note that, as indicated on the agenda, we are trying a new location for this meeting as it is larger than the Town of Jackson Hall so it will allow for better social distancing. We are meeting at the Grand Marsh Community Center, 627 Mason Court, Grand Marsh, WI.