Village Board to revisit eminent domain issue
By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
East Troy Village Administrator Eileen Suhm offered some clarification on comments she made in last week’s article about the Jan. 23 East Troy Village Board meeting titled “Hot topics raise heat at Village Board meeting.”
Suhm said the comments she made regarding the eminent domain topic to allow property access on three landlocked parcels, which the owner is seeking to combine into one, could use some more detailed explanation on the timeline and how the matter came to the Village Board. She said the board would be revisiting the topic at the Feb. 6 meeting.
“The vacant property owner’s attorney requested the topic to be placed on the agenda through the village attorney (Linda Gray), who sought approval from the Village President (Randy Timms) for the item to be placed on the agenda,” Suhm said. “This is why staff was not able to provide materials for the packet. The vacant property owner does want to combine the three parcels into one parcel, which does create a land-locked parcel. However, as it stands currently the three separate have no existing access. Regardless of whether the three parcels are combined or separate, an access issue exists.”
Suhm said she wanted to clarify that the village had been working with the vacant property owner to investigate options to address the issue from late summer through the end of September. She said village staff held a meeting in late September with the vacant property owner and one of the other property owners, whom they were requesting a portion of land to create an easement for access, in attendance to explain potential options to the parties involved and to try to come up with a possible solution everyone could agree on.
Suhm said this meeting didn’t yield results and “there was no further contact until the vacant property owner’s attorney contacted the village attorney.”
The discussion of whether or not the village would exercise it’s right to eminent domain at the Jan. 23 meeting was long with the board members hotly debating the issue.
While the board ultimately passed the motion to have the village attorney start the eminent domain process, the board was split 4-3 with several members saying they didn’t feel they had enough information to make their decision, considering this was the first time they were hearing about it and they didn’t have information on things like how much land the village was going to have to take from the other property owners for the easement and how much it was going to cost the village as it is required to compensate the property owners when exercising eminent domain.
The motion put forth by Stanford allowed for the village attorney to move forward with the process and to investigate how the village could abandon the unnamed road bordering the properties in question and give the homeowners that property in exchange for the easement. Stanford said he felt the village had no choice but to move forward, but wanted to make sure the homeowners were compensated fairly and with the unnamed road option, the village would be able to do that.
Trustees Scott Seager, Ann Zess and Forty Renucci all voted no to the village moving forward with eminent domain. Trustees Fred Douglass, Matt Johnson, Dusty Stanford and Timms voted yes.
Timms said the village was really left with no choice, be-
cause all other options had been expended and what it boiled down to was that the village couldn’t land lock property and the situation had to be rectified. At the meeting, Timms told the board it appeared the problem was stemming from a “clerical” mistake from 2002 when the properties were platted and it wasn’t designated who would benefit from the easement. Because of this, the title company handling the sale of the property refused to sign off on it.
Suhm said the eminent domain issue for this property will be revisited at the Feb. 6 Village Board meeting. It starts at 6:30 p.m. at Village Hall.
Trustee responds
Stanford responded to comments made by John Jacoby in last week’s Village Board article. Jacoby is running for Village Board trustee and at one point during the Jan. 23 meeting, Stanford had asked Jacoby be removed from the room because he was “heckling” the board.
Timms asked Jacoby to tone it down and he did and was allowed to stay.
In the article last week, Jacoby said Stanford and Timms “operate as at team” and that they “allow some people to have a strong voice and others to have none.”
Stanford said Friday that “Randy and I have different voting records out there and while we have many similar ideas on things, the reason the board is there is to have disagreements and work through it.”
Stanford said he only asked Jacoby be removed because he was so “animated” it was getting disruptive to the meeting.
He said he wanted to maintain the professionalism of the board and its meetings because they all needed to work together and the way to do that was to treat each other with respect.
