Spencer street committee discusses bump outs, Willow Drive project, cost sharing options

By Valorie Brecht One of the key responsibilities of any municipality is maintaining a strong infrastructure, including the local road system. The Village of Spencer street committee took action on a couple of items pertaining to local roadways at its meeting last Wednesday, including addressing the safety concerns at the Clark-LaSalle intersection.

Bump outs at downtown intersection The street committee — which consists of village board members Al Jicinsky, Tom Schafer, and Phil White — discussed adding bump outs to the corners of the LaSalle and Clark Street/Highway 98 intersection. According to Google, a bump out, also known as a curb extension or bulb-out, is a traffic calming measure that extends the curb and sidewalk into the roadway at an intersection or mid-block location. Extending the curb line improves visibility for both pedestrians and drivers.

The LaSalle-Clark Street intersection is a historically dangerous intersection because of poor visibility on the corners. The village was especially looking at doing something with that intersection because of expected increased traffic there next year. If the Office of the Commissioner of Public Railroads (OCR) follows through with its plan to close the intersections of Park Street and Wisconsin Street with Clark Street in 2026, because of those intersections being too close to the railroad tracks and thus deemed unsafe, that will increase the number of vehicles using the LaSalle-Clark Street intersection. That is why the village is looking at adding bump outs to increase visibility.

The city of Marshfield utilizes bump outs on South Central Avenue. They are geared towards pedestrian safety, as the pedestrians are not exposed to traffic for as long.

When utilizing a bump out, a motorist would stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk, then could pull out further to see without being in the lane of traffic.

“The street committee is generally supportive of it,” said Helgestad. “The biggest concern is snow removal. However, we already haul snow off of the street; we’re not piling it there. We also use smaller equipment to clear the sidewalk in advance of cleaning the street.

“It will take some time to do. The DOT (Department of Transportation) would have to approve it because it’s a state highway.”

In the meantime, the street committee voted to recommend to the village board that the village limit the number of parking stalls around that intersection to help with visibility. The village is looking at taking away two parking stalls in front of Nutz Deep II, one across from Nutz, and one in front of what used to be the Plan-It Earth store.

“Our police chief is going to check and make sure that it doesn’t conflict with any village ordinance,” said Helgestad.

Assuming it doesn’t, the recommendation will go before the full board. Helgestad also received the go-ahead from the streets committee to advise the village engineers to start a conversation with the DOT on bump outs. There is no money available in the budget to do it this year, but the village would look at future years. The DOT has various grant programs to promote pedestrian safety, which could help share the cost of the project.

If the village were to do bump outs, it would be able to restore the parking spots that were taken away, as the roadway set up would allow for better visibility, anyway.

Willow Drive

of the project cost.

The total cost of the project is $574,000. If the project were to be done next year, the DOT would pay 72% ($416,000) and the village would be responsible for the other 28% ($158,000). If the village willingly delayed the project until 2027, the DOT said it would try to pay 80% ($459,000) and the village would only have to pay 20% ($115,000).

“They didn’t guarantee it, but said they would try to do that if we postpone the project,” said Helgestad.

The village board discussed the issue at its meeting last week Monday and again at the street committee meeting Wednesday. They weren’t inclined to push the project back any further if they could help it.

“The road is in such atrocious shape,” said village board member Jeremy Carolfi at last week’s village board meeting.

“We’ve been at this two years,” added board member Pat Krause.

Because it wasn’t a guarantee that the DOT would pay more and because of the condition of the road, the committee decided not to delay the project.

“It’s important to note that it could still possibly get bumped back to 2027, depending on how many municipalities agree or don’t agree to take the buyout,” Helgestad said.

He said it hadn’t been confirmed, but if not enough municipalities agreed to take the buyout, the DOT might look to do a lottery system to determine which project was done next.

“The residents have been dealing with this for a long time. The reason it’s been taking so long is we’ve been waiting for a cost sharing opportunity,” said Helgestad. “The $43,000 more that the DOT would pay (if the village pushed back the project) is a significant amount, but the committee didn’t feel it was enough to delay the project. The DOT also did not guarantee it; they said they would try to increase funding. So it was a tough ask.”

The village is scheduled to bid out the project in August. The STP-L program provides payments as the project is being completed, so as the village gets bills, it will submit them to the DOT for the 72% reimbursement.

Village assistance on landowners’ projects Another topic of discussion was how much the village should contribute to projects affecting multiple property owners. Specifically, a property owner had asked the village for help rectifying a stormwater management issue on their property on Willow Drive. Other surrounding properties have also experienced drainage issues.

“It’s really that whole block surrounded by Willow, Park, Lincoln, and South LaSalle streets. In Spencer, we have a lot of interconnected lots that are lower than the streets,” said village clerk-treasurer/administrator Chris Helgestad. “So if it’s something where it affects multiple property owners like this, the village would be more inclined to accommodate that or help out.”

The street committee instructed Helgestad to come up with a proposal for cost sharing requirements for projects such as this one. They were unsure exactly how they wanted to do it, whether it would be a certain percentage every time or differ depending on the size and scope of the project.

“Regardless, it will still be based on the village budget. So if we don’t have the funds, obviously we won’t be able to do it. We would look at each project to review on a case-by-case basis,” said Helgestad. “We would lean more towards neighborhoods where multiple properties are involved. In this case, we would need to run drain tile through multiple properties, so it would make sense for the village to help facilitate that.”

He planned to bring back his proposal to the next street committee meeting.

Website and YouTube channel The Village of Spencer has a new, more user-friendly website which can be found at VillageofSpencerWI.gov. The village plans to post meeting agendas, including documents found in the board packet, to the website.

The village has also launched a YouTube channel. Meeting videos will be posted to the channel, which can be found at youtube.com/@VillageofSpencerWisconsin or by searching “Village of Spencer, Wisconsin” in the search bar.

The next Spencer Village Board meeting will be July 14 at 6:30 p.m. at the village hall.

Above, a graphic displays what a bump out intersection would look like and how it would affect traffic flow. The goal of such a configuration would be to increase the level of visibility at dangerous intersections. The intersection of LaSalle Street and Clark Street in Spencer has been flagged as dangerous due to low visibility.

CONTRIBUTED GRAPHIC