County joins stewardship fund campaign

The Ozaukee County Board on May 5 joined the chorus of environmental groups statewide in urging the state to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, which has helped purchase and improve local recreational facilities such as Lions Den Gorge Nature Preserve, the Interurban Bike Trail and Tendick Park.

County supervisors voted 21-2 to approve a resolution calling for the fund to be reauthorized for 10 years “at a level that meets the growing natural resource protection and recreational needs” of the state and county.

In his state budget, Gov. Tony Evers has proposed reauthorizing the stewardship program for 10 years, allocating $70 million annually for it. However, the legislature will now debate the proposed budget and, given the fact the program has come under fire in recent years and funding has been cut to its current level of $33 million a year, it is a likely target.

But county officials say the need for parks and open spaces has become apparent this year, noting that during the Covid-19 pandemic use of county parks has reached record levels. Lions Den Gorge Nature Preserve in the Town of Grafton was visited by 160,000 people in 2020, an increase of 50,000 people from the previous year and the Ozaukee Interurban Trail saw historic use as well.

Voting against the resolution were supervisors Josh Haas of Fredonia and Chris Duecker of Cedarburg.

Haas said in an interview that one of the major reasons he voted against the resolution is that land purchased through the fund is taken off the tax rolls. Not only do communities lose the value of the land right now, he said, they also lose the potential value of development on those parcels.

He said he’s also concerned about the amount of land being purchased, saying he would like to see a cap set.

“I’m not arguing that they’ve done some good things. How much more land do we have to have?” he asked. “There’s no real guideline.”

He also questioned how much state funding should be dedicated to the cause.

In a memo sent to supervisors supporting the resolution, officials note that the proposed $70 million annual stewardship allocation is a significant amount of money, but with $5.7 billion in federal Covid relief funds coming to Wisconsin “the state is well positioned to undertake the investment at a time of historically low borrowing costs.” 

The cost of the program, including interest, is less than $20 per resident each year, the memo states.

The stewardship fund has, in large part, shaped Ozaukee County, funding a wide variety of programs not only for the county but also for municipalities and nonprofit organizations such as the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, county Planning and Parks Director Andrew Struck said.

“It’s critical for the parks and open spaces we’ve been able to protect,” he said. 

The fund helps not only acquire valuable natural areas and parkland, it also helps finance development of those properties, such as trails and pavilions, he noted.

For example, he said, the stewardship fund provided $623,000 to purchase Lions Den and develop the roads, trails and boardwalk, as well as conduct habitat restoration, in the park. 

Three grants were used to pay for a shelter, trails and park development at Tendick Park in the Town of Saukville, and two grants to pay for the Interurban Trail bridge over I-43 and the trails leading to the bridge on either side of the freeway.

In Virmond Park in Mequon, stewardship funds helped pay for a staircase from the bluff to Lake Michigan as well as a bathroom shelter, Struck noted.

In all, Ozaukee County has received more than $2 million in stewardship funds during the past 20 years to help finance nine projects in the county — including a $1.186 million grant that will be used to purchase the proposed Clay Bluff Cedar Gorge Nature Preserve in the City of Port Washington.

“That’s going to be critical,” Struck said of the Clay Bluff grant, noting it will be used to match other federal grants received by the county and the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust for that acquisition. Most of these grants require a one-to-one match. 

“We couldn’t come up with the money needed to match these grants otherwise,” Struck said. “That’s where stewardship has been extremely critical to us. This gets us very close (to the fundraising goal).”

The county’s earliest stewardship grant dates back to 1971, Struck said, and was used to acquire Mee-Kwon Park and Golf Course in Mequon.

The stewardship fund has traditionally been authorized by the legislature for 10 years, but in 2019 was only authorized for two years.

The long term reauthorization of the fund is important, Struck said, because it allows communities to plan.

“A lot of these projects take multiple years to come to fruition,” he said. “It’s a huge thing to be able to depend on Knowles-Nelson funds consistently.”

Although the stewardship fund has provided a significant amount of funding to this point, there continues to be a need for the fund, officials said. The county’s parks and open space plan calls for 33,262 acres to be preserved, but less than half of that is protected. A 2010 estimate showed it would cost more than $40 million to protect these lands.

The most obvious benefit of these properties is recreational, Struck said, noting they are all open to the public.

“You can visit all these places that might not be there if not for the stewardship funds,” he said.   

The lands also serve a variety of ecological purposes, benefitting water quality and wildlife habitat, he said.  

In addition to quality of life benefits, Struck noted, the stewardship grants also promote tourism in the county.

“This is a program that touches everyone in the county,” he said. “There’s a whole slew of benefits for us all.”