Kennedy Road Work and Closure

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We wanted to alert residents that sometime in June work will be happening on Kennedy Road West of the interstate.  The Town of Harmony and the City of Janesville have entered into an agreement to complete the section of Kennedy Road where the State DOT left off, west to where the curb and gutter are alread installed in the City of Janesville.  This agreement will save the Town of Harmony between $30,000 and $50,000 dollars.  The City of Janesville has left over tax incremental financing money that was set aside for this business district and needs to use these fund prior to a deadline.  The Town looses nothing and gains a nice new road.  Just as a heads up this will mean a road closure during this time frame.  I have asked the City to ensure emergency services is aware of this closure and if at all possible leave a lane open for emergency services.  

Thanks

Tim Tollefson  Clerk

New Ordinances

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At the June 2nd meeting two ordinances were passed.  Please see below.  The first ordinance is a revision ordinance making group homes permited only by Conditional Use Permit in the Rural Residential District and the Local Commercial District.  

The second ordinance is to make the position of the Town’s Treasurer position an appointed position instead of an elected position.  It must be approved by referendum at the August Election.  Many Town’s in Rock County have this as an appointed position.  In the event that the City of Janesville annexes the property where the Treasurer lives, it would not impact that position.  This has happened in the past.  

https://townofharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ordinance-060220A-Group-Home.pdf

https://townofharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Ordinance-060220B-Treasurer.pdf

 

June 2nd, Town Board Meeting and Public Hearings

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There will be a Town Board meeting and Public Hearing on June 2nd.  Please see the link below.  This will be an in-person and Zoom meeting.  The information to join this meeting via zoom is at the bottom half of the agenda.  Should you have questions or comments please email them to townclerk@townofharmony,com or call 608-563-4477.

https://townofharmony.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/06-02-20-TB-Mtg-Agenda-2.pdf

 

 

Advanced Disposal Bulk Pickups

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Advanced Disposal has resumed their bulk pickup schedule.  Our next bulk pickup is scheduled for June 8th.  This includes all electronics such as TVs, Computers, Monitors, applicances and so on.  If you have bulk items for pickup please call customer care at 1-800-248-2373 before June 5th at 2pm.  you will need to give them a list of what you are putting out, your name and address.  Please write down the name of the person you spoke with at Advanced in case for some reason they do not pick up your bulk items.  Please give them till Tuesday June 6th as I am sure there will be more bulk items than normal. Items inluded are Ewaste, large items too big to put in your container, tires (limited amount) Furniture, Mattresses,  Should you be told that you can’t put out Electronic items, please remind them you are in the Town of Harmony Rock County and our contract allows our residents to put E-waste for bulk pickup.

Thanks

Tim Tollefson

Road Work 2020

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Updated 06-03-20.  I just wanted to let everyone know that at this point the County is running behind by 3 to 4 weeks.  Due to Covid-19 Rock County Public Works was running on a skeleton crew so was basicly shut down for as much as 7 weeks.  Normally much of work would be completed by now.  For the roads where chip sealing was to happen around Memorial Day, that will likely happen closer to July 4th.  

Just to keep everyone up to date with regard to roadwork for this year.  

We will be chip sealing the following roads

Rolling Hills Subdivsion Sable Drive, Sable Ct, Pine Tree Ct.

Grandview Subdivision  Pleasant (west of NW Rotamer), Waverly, Grandview, Sylvan

The Vineyard   Zinfandel, Shiraz, Chardonnay, Catawba

Chip sealing is required as it will extend the life of a road by 7 to 12 years.  It does create a lot of gravel on the road and that gravel must be on the road for two weeks depending on the weather.  We have asked that the county hire the city of Janesville to come in and sweep the roads after about two weeks to minimize the amount of gravel on the roads after the sweep. This is scheduled to happen around Memorial Day so we wanted to prepare everyone.

The remainder of the roads will patch work like you see on most of our roads.  Last year we changed from doing grader patching to a much better practice where the road ride much smoother and it should hold up better.  Everyone of our major roads will get some patch work done this year.  As always the roads that receive the highest traffic counts get the work done first.  But all of the non subdivision roads will have work done on them this year.  We will also be crack filling a number of roads through out the township Such as East Rotamer, Bingham, Galaxy, Apollo, Lunar, Saturn and Polaris and sections of Town Hall Road. 

We received a grant from the State of Wisconsin for Harmony and Town of Milton to redo sections of Townline Road.  The sections are From Kennedy Road to County Y and from Henke to Vickerman (Tarrant Rd).  We anticipate this work will start happening in 2021.   

Our road traffic from heaviest traffic to lowest is as follows (does not include subdivison roads)

Town Hall Road

Newville Road (we share this road with Town of Janesville)

Townline Road (we share this road wth Town of Milton

Kennedy Road

NW Rotamer Road

Henke Road

E Rotamer

Milton Shopiere Road

Bingham Road

Tarrant Road

Wilcox

Thanks

Tim Tollelfson

Clerk

Thank you All!!

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I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone.  I want to thank all the voters that showed up on election day for their patients and understanding.  My election team really appreciated all the thank yous and appreciation the voters showed them.  Thank you to all the absentee voters for learning how to request an absentee ballot and your patients with the system.  We had over 700 people that were mailed an absentee ballot.  

Thanks to my entire election team.  Those that chose to work and those that chose not to.  It was a difficult and emotional decision for everyone and the struggle you all went through was understandable and appreciated.  Thank you to those that were not part of the original team but came forward and volunteered to help in this difficult time.  We had many volunteers and asked a number of them to help out.  Their contribution to our effort was impressive and I hope all of you will consider becoming a part of our regular election team!

Thanks to Duane Jorgenson who is the head of the Rock County Public Works Department and his team of employees.  He organized delivery of the personal protection equipment to all the polling locations in Rock County and many of his team volunteered to help at different polling locations on election day. 

Thanks to the County Clerk Lisa Tollefson (yes she is my wife) but no matter, she arranged production, purchasing and distribution of the personal protection equipment such as face shields, face masks and sanitizer from local facilities like Prent who is making face shields and she did much more with communication with all Clerks.

Thanks to all the Clerks in Rock County.  Rock Counties Clerks are a team and everyone shared ideas with one another as to what safety protocols they were putting in place. 

Thanks to the Wisconsin National Guard.  While we did not take advantage of their offer for assistance in Harmony, where they did help, the Clerks said their contribution was incredible and appreciated.

Last but certainly not least a thank you and my gratitude go to Lucille Vickerman (Chief Inspector) and Linda Zainer (Deputy Chief) for all the work they did during the month or better leading up to election day.  They are both true leaders of the election team.  What was done could not have been done without them.  THANK YOU!!!!

 

There were so many offers from the pubic, the board and outside oranizations to help, so a blanket thank you to everyone that offered to help.  Lets hope this is the last time we ever have to run an election this way and lets hope that everything gets back to normal as quickly as possible.  I would rather see a smile on peoples faces than a face mask.  

Thanks

Tim (Tolly) Tollefson

Clerk

April 7th Election

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Updated at 9:45pm on April 6th.  

The US Supreme Court this evening ordered that all outstanding absentee ballots must be post marked by April 7th or hand delivered to the polling location by 8pm on election day.  This was a change from what was announced over the weekend where they did not indicated a post marked date.  

This election is kind of like the weather in Wisconsin, give it 10 minutes and it’s going to change.

We have worked hard to the the Town Hall set up to be a safe location to vote.  We believe that we have done what is possible to minimize cross contamination.  However we are working on a skeleton crew at this point and we must limit the number of people that can be in the building.  This may cause lines and extended waiting periods.  Due to running on a skeleton crew we also must minimize the amount of curbside voting.  Wait periods for this may be quite extensive as we have only enough staff on hand to run the inside polls.  Only when we have no one waiting inside can we send a team of 2 people out for this.  Curbside voting also takes 10 minutes or more and to be honest there is a greater chance of cross conamination when do this then just coming in to vote. Either way this will be an election to remember and hopefully one that will not get repeated.  Stay safe!