Town Board’s Diligence to Pay Off for Forestville Residents

Photo by Jim Lundstrom.

Municipal and business cooperation was displayed in its best light on June 11 when the three-member Forestville Town Board went out with a crew from American Transmission Company (ATC) to identify the road repairs required following damage done by heavy equipment during ATC’s recent replacement of utility poles in the town.

The Forestville project is part of a larger one that began in the fall of 2017 to replace an aging, 69,000-volt line that runs from Green Bay to Kewaunee and Sturgeon Bay. Built in 1951, the line’s 850 utility poles are being replaced with 600 much larger poles. The project is expected to be finished by January 2021 at a cost of $61 million.

“They knew they had damaged the road; we knew they had damaged the road,” said Forestville Supervisor Larry Huber.

Huber, fellow Supervisor Jason Tlachac and town Chair Roy Englebert first met with ATC representatives on a cold and windy spring day to survey the damage and then agreed to do a more complete survey once all the heavy work was done in the town.

“So this is really determining, OK, what have we got, and what percentage will they pay?” Huber said.

The damage was on two town roads: Old Substation and County Line roads. At each area, the town board and ATC representatives piled out of their trucks – except for Tlachac, who was riding his sweet, new, 250-cc Janus motorcycle, built specially for him for his Feb. 12 birthday – to determine where the damage began and ended, and then measure it.

Upon examining the damage, ATC project manager Dustin Johanek said whether ATC would pay for both lanes or just one. At each of the locations, the town agreed with Johanek in his assessment.

Englebert said the next step is to have the Door County Highway Department’s Patrol Superintendent, Thad Ash, view the damage to prepare a cost estimate to send to ATC.