Deputy Jason Molle, the Vilas County recreational officer is waiting for snow to patrol the snowmobile trails on new machines that are ready to go.
“We’re done with boat patrol and will receive $15,267 from DNR for our efforts,” Molle reported. “Our most common complaint is exceeding the slow-no wake areas on posted waters.”
Dep. Molle indicated they had 120 ATV complaints with eight accidents and no fatalities. “Our most troubling ATV areas are which town roads are open and which ones are closed. Eagle River and the towns of Washington, Cloverland, and Lincoln town roads are open all year. We need to have our county web site to show town roads that are open and closed and when they are open and closed.”
He indicated the most difficult question he got was if fat tire bikes are allowed on snowmobile trails. “It took some time to research this but I found fat tire bikes are not allowed on the Vilas County snowmobile trails but are allowed on state lands."
Emergency Management Report
Emergency management director Sherri Congleton reported COVID-19 issues continue to add work for her with PPE ordering and distribution problems for schools, county departments, assisted living, fire, and emergency management areas.
“We are now planning for vaccination in our schools, jails, courts and public health,” Congleton said. “We continue to work on modifications to recoup some COVID-19 expenses.”
The town of Cloverland received $9,175 from the Wisconsin Disaster fund for tornado damage cleanup from last August and there were 2,800 boxes of food distributed Dec. 4 through Farmers to Families food distribution.
Vilas jail administrator Bill Weiss reported a large drop in jail overtime probable due to COVID impacts.
“So far for 2020 we’ve had 268 overtime hour compared to 582 last year and 754 in 2018,” Weiss said.
