Scott Williams, swilliams@wolfrivermedia.com
A farmer who raises crops on property owned by Shawano County will not lose his lease, despite concerns among some county supervisors about how the lease was renewed.
Kraig Rosenow, who pays the county $35,000 a year to lease 284 acres in the town of Belle Plaine, was confronted with possible termination of the lease just weeks after it was renewed Dec. 31 for another five years.
Rosenow’s lease involves property that once housed the old county “poor farm,” located along state Highway 22 in Belle Plaine. The poor farm was dismantled in the 1990s.
Discussion of Rosenow’s lease came up up shortly after he spoke against a proposal by some county officials to sell most of the farm as a way of raising cash for the county and returning the land to private ownership, possibly for redevelopment. By some estimates, the sale could have netted the county more than $500,000.
The public property committee endorsed selling the property.
After hearing opposition from Belle Plaine town leaders and others, the County Board on Feb. 24 voted against pursuing the sale. Just before the vote, Rosenow urged county supervisors to block the sale.
One week later, the committee met to discuss terminating Rosenow’s lease. The timing and sequence of events caused some observers to question whether Rosenow was being targeted unfairly.
Members of the public property committee assured Rosenow on Thursday that they were concerned only with how the lease was approved, and were not reacting to the defeated attempt to sell the land.
The committee also agreed Thursday to honor the farmer’s lease and to give no further consideration to terminating it.
Currently set at $125 an acre, the farmer’s rent payments have been used in recent years to fund maintenance of facilities on the county fairgrounds in Shawano.
Supervisor Sandy Steinke apologized to Rosenow.
“We’re going to let you go home,” Steinke said to Rosenow, who has leased the land from the county for at least 15 years. “It’s your land to use for the next five years.”
Supervisor Jerry Erdmann joined others in assuring Rosenow that he had simply gotten caught in the middle of an internal county disagreement about whether the farm lease was approved without going through proper channels.
“It’s nothing personal,” Erdmann said. “It’s just that our rules were not followed.”
Supervisor Deb Noffke described Rosenow as someone who got caught up needlessly in an internal procedural snafu.
County officials said their only concern with the lease had been the manner in which it was approved, which they said should have involved review by multiple County Board committees before being implemented.
The committee voted Thursday to recommend new procedures under which all such leases will be open to competitive bidding among prospective tenants before a lease is signed.
Rosenow, who previously made an emotional plea to county officials to keep his lease intact, left the committee meeting in smiles. He declined to comment.