BLOG | CURRENT NEWS 9-10-2025: Previous blog posts have mentioned that frost action in roads pushes rocks up to the surface. This becomes a problem in gravel roads when the grader blade hits those rocks. Little rocks get pushed out of the way, but larger rocks bounce the entire 20 ton grader. Federal Road 508 had too many protruding rocks, so the road crew recently spent a week digging 120 rocks from five miles of road. The smallest of these rocks were basketball size, and the largest is shown in the photo. Those grader tires are over four feet diameter, so that rock is about four feet long. The rocks are dug out using the payloader, the hole filled with gravel from the town gravel pit, and compacted and graded level with the grader. The Town of Worcester has a contract with the Forest Service where the town is responsible for normal grading, shoulder mowing, and addition of spot gravel on Forest Service roads within the town. Regraveling an entire road, as was done recently on Sheep Ranch and Sailor Lake Roads, requires a special contract. 9-2-2025: BLACKTOP ROADS PART 2 New blacktop roads do not last forever, and proper maintenance extends their life. New roads develop cracks that need to be sealed. Chip sealing after a few years adds life at low cost. Roads near the end of life need pothole patching. Crack sealing is best done about two years after a road is built. The cracks are routed, blown clean, hot crack sealant poured in, and troweled to form an overband. The result is a sealed crack that stays sealed and has a minimal bump. Good crack sealants meet the ASTM D6690 specification. There is a lower cost process that just pours sealant on the cracks, but that process does not last as long and makes bumps. Typical life of a blacktop road with good crack sealing is about 25 years. Chip sealing after crack sealing extends the life of the road. Chip sealing is a layer of stones about 1/4" in size embedded in a layer of tar. If done while the road is still in good shape, it can add ten years to the life of the road. WISDOT recommends chip sealing at PASER ratings of 5 and 6, while others recommend chip sealing at PASER ratings as high as 8. Chip sealing can be done at PASER ratings of 2 to 3, but is more expensive because of the need for spot wedging and double chip sealing. The life extension in that case is as little as five years. Blacktop roads develop potholes when they near the end of life or earlier at weak spots. Worcester currently uses approximately 10 tons per year of hot patch material to fill these potholes. That amount will increase over the next few years. Chip sealing has been used on gravel roads. While it is low cost and controls dust, it is not as good as blacktop. It is subject to rutting and easily develops potholes. It is difficult to plow snow because the plows can peel the chip seal off the road. It is best used on lightly traveled roads with very little heavy truck traffic. Chip sealing is also known as sealcoating. Sealcoating on town asphalt roads is not the same as sealcoating on residental driveways. Residential driveway sealcoating resembles thick black paint. It enhances the appearance of the driveway and protects against raveling. It does not extend the life of the pavement. It makes the pavement slippery. Residential sealcoatings cannot be spot wedged, chip sealed, or overlayed. Driveway sealcoating is not used on Worcester town roads. There is a process called “reclaim in place” where the existing blacktop is pulverized, asphalt binder added, and compacted. That process is done at one time with one big machine, then a top layer of blacktop is added. The process requires that the subbase be good enough and the original blacktop thick enough. Older Worcester blacktop roads do not qualify for this process. It is possible that Worcester blacktop roads paved in the last few years will qualify for reclaim in place when they wear out, but that will be many years from now. More information on maintaining blacktop roads: NCHRP Report 784 Crack Sealing Wisconsin Transportation Bulletin No. 10 Chip Sealing 8-29-2025: WAKE BOATS The Town of Worcester rejected a new boating ordinance regulating wake enhanced operation at the 8-19-2025 regular town board meeting. This process started with a petition to the Worcester town board. After the board decided to proceed, the town attorney drafted an ordinance. The draft ordinance was sent to the DNR for approval, after which the DNR informed us of the need for a condition report. After writing the required condition report, the DNR approved both the condition report and the draft ordinance with some minor changes. Only two written comments were received. Both comments were from wake boat owners in the Town of Worcester. No comments were received reporting harm from wake boats. The condition report is contained in this email. Thanks to Ann Patros for stepping up and helping to write the condition report. A public hearing was held 7-15-2025 with comments from both wake boat owners and non-wake boat owners. Comments included: Two wake boats based on Solberg Lake are older, smaller boats used only in the center of the large part of the lake. They are not the big $500,000 boats that create big problems on other lakes. Wake boats stir up bottom sediment, putting nutrients into the lake and causing algae blooms. Water quality data from the WIDNR show no increase in the Solberg Lake Trophic State Index since 1971. Wake boat wakes cause shoreline damage. Wakes from a small wake boat operated in the center of the lake dissipate before hitting the nearest shore. Big, heavily-loaded pontoon boats generate wakes as large as wake boat wakes. Neither the Price County Sheriff's Department Recreation Officer nor the DNR warden enforce local boating ordinances. The sheriff and DNR warden can and will enforce Wisconsin state boating laws. Below are the Wisconsin state laws that regulate boat wakes, including wake-enhanced boating. The town board voted, at the 8-19-2025 meeting, to post these laws at all Worcester public boat landings. Wisconsin Statute 30.68(2) NEGLIGENT OPERATION. No person may operate or use any boat, or manipulate any water skis, aquaplane or similar device upon the waters of this state in a careless, negligent or reckless manner so as to endanger that person’s life, property or person or the life, property or person of another. Wisconsin Statute 30.68(4) CREATING HAZARDOUS WAKE OR WASH. (a) No person shall operate a motorboat so as to approach or pass another boat in such a manner as to create a hazardous wake or wash. (b) An operator of a motorboat is liable for any damage caused to the person or property of another by the wake or wash from such motorboat unless the negligence of such other person was the primary cause of the damage. As a practical matter, enforcement of boating laws requires evidence. Typical evidence would be photos or video showing the offending boat, the damage caused by the boat, and the boat registration number. 8-14-2025: BLACKTOP ROADS PART 1 Of the 115.54 miles of Worcester town roads, 57.40 miles are blacktop. It's easy to think that blacktop roads are simple - just bulldoze a path, dump some gravel, add blacktop, and done. Many of our town roads were originally built by piling dirt on top of swamp or forest land. Today, we regularly dig tree stumps and boulders out of roads that were originally built 100 years ago. These stumps and boulders are moved up by freezing action until they create bumps in the blacktop and eventually break through. It is impractical to dig out and replace the base under all of our roads, so we will be digging rocks and stumps for the foreseeable future. A properly built blacktop road is started by removing all stumps, boulders, and topsoil. It is built up with sand or pit run to the desired height, then a layer of breaker run gravel, a layer of road base gravel, and topped with blacktop. Every layer is fully compacted. The finished road has enough crown that water runs off and correctly sloped shoulders and ditches. Many older Worcester blacktop roads have less than two inches of blacktop on little or no sub-base. The sand and gravel that underlie almost all of Worcester's roads does not properly support blacktop. As a result, these roads experience early failure. Normal practice when reconstructing a town road is to pulverize the existing asphalt; use the pulverized asphalt as base; add additional gravel base; and then place new, thicker blacktop on top. This is a cost effective compromise between replacing failed blacktop with the same thickness of blacktop or digging down to virgin soil for a full reconstruction. Blacktop is a flexible paving material that requires a solid sub-base in order to stand up under traffic loads. The minimum sub-base depends on the amount of traffic and how much is heavy trucks. Because blacktop is flexible, it bends a little bit every time a wheel travels over it. That bending eventually causes cracking. Blacktop shrinks in cold weather, causing cracks. Cracks allow water to get into the sub-base, which weakens it. The weaker sub-base causes the blacktop to develop more cracks until it disintegrates. This is made worse by rutting or raised shoulders that trap water on the road. Many blacktop roads have ruts, dips, or bumps. These defects are the result of thin blacktop, inadequate sub-base, or insufficient compaction after removing rocks and stumps. Another type of deterioration is raveling. Sunlight, weather, and traffic break down the surface, causing the fines and sand to erode away. The stones stay and the surface gets rough. Asphalt is made to a specification. A typical specification is 58-28. Those numbers mean that the asphalt has a specified minimum strength at 58 deg C and a minimum flexibility at -28 deg C. A typical road has the blacktop placed in two layers, with 58-28 in the bottom layer and 58-34 in the top layer. Today's Worcester roads are constructed with three to four inches of blacktop. Roads with much heavy truck traffic get thicker blacktop. More information on blacktop roads: Asphalt PASER Manual Wisconsin Asphalt Pavement Association Design Guide Additional reference on gravel roads by the FHWA 7-25-2025: GRAVEL ROADS Of the 115.54 miles of Worcester town roads, 58.14 miles are gravel. It's easy to think that gravel roads are simple - just bulldoze a path, dump some gravel, and done. Many of our town roads were originally built by piling dirt on top of swamp. Today, we regularly dig tree stumps and boulders out of roads that were originally built 100 years ago. These stumps and boulders are pushed up by freezing action until they break through the surface. A properly built gravel road starts by removing all stumps, boulders, and topsoil. It is built up with sand or pit run to the desired height, then a sub- base of breaker run gravel, and a top layer of road base gravel. The finished road has enough crown so that water runs off correctly sloped shoulders and ditches to get the water away from the road. It is impractical to dig out and replace the base under all of our roads, so we will be digging rocks and stumps for the foreseeable future. Road base gravel is a mixture consisting of 40% to 80% broken stone, 20% to 60% sand, and 8% to 15% fines. The ratio of sizes is important. The sand locks the stones in place, and the fines lock the sand particles in place. Broken stone has rough surfaces for better locking than rounded stone. Too much or too little of any ingredient results in a road that develops potholes shortly after grading. Breaker run comes from the first stage of a rock crusher. It has larger size broken stone than road base gravel, and is used underneath road base gravel. Gravel roads need regular maintenance. Worcester grades gravel roads at least twice per year. Grading must be done when the road is not too wet and not too dry. Grading while too wet results in potholes as soon as the next day. Grading while too dry results in a loose surface, gravel pushed onto the shoulders by traffic, and excessive dust. Normal traffic and snowplowing moves gravel onto the shoulders, eventually making the shoulders higher than the roadbed. The extra material in the shoulders traps rain water on the road. Trapped water on the road weakens the roadbed and is a cause of potholes and ruts. Some of the gravel lost onto the shoulders can be reclaimed using a recently purchased reclaiming machine, while the remainder is permanently lost. The reclaimed gravel has excess fines, so it must be mixed with new gravel and the gravel already on the road. Regular addition of gravel is needed to make up for the permanent losses. Keeping our 58 miles of gravel road in good condition would normally require adding several thousand cubic yards of gravel every year. The reclaiming machine is not only reducing the need for additional gravel, it allows us to cut down raised shoulders without creating big lumps of sod. The following sources have additional information on gravel roads: Wisconsin Transportation Bulletin No. 5 Wisconsin Transportation Bulletin No. 19 PASER Manual Gravel Roads 7-21-2025: UNUSED TOWN LAND The Town of Worcester owns 25 acres near the north end of Solberg Lake that is currently in the process of being subdivided for sale. Worcester has five other parcels of unused land that are potentially available for sale. All of these parcels have frontage on Musser Lake. Some of these parcels were originally intended for boat launch sites. None of them have been developed for boat launching. Current laws make it difficult to create new boat launch sites, and Musser Lake already has two public boat launch sites. The list of potentially salable town properties and their tax ID numbers: 22220 0.21 acres undeveloped Musser Lake access from Woodland Lane 22278 A portion is undeveloped Musser Lake access from Musser Heights Lane 22256 Landlocked 0.1 acre on Musser Lake 28384 0.90 acres – Undeveloped Musser Lake access from Shady Hollow Lane 28385 0.50 acres – Undeveloped Musser Lake access from Wundrow Shores Lane The procedure for selling Town land is as follows: 1. The town board recommended selling the land at the 6-17-2025 regular town board meeting. 2. At a special town meeting, scheduled for 6:00 p.m. on 8-19-2025, the town electors will vote to authorize the town board to sell the land. 3. The town board, at a separate meeting, decides to sell the land. View a map of each property by going to Price County GIS. Click on Price County GIS, enter the tax ID number for the parcel of interest, and click for the map. 6-17-2025: NEW FLAG POLE The new town hall flag pole was installed on Tuesday, 6-10-2025. The town had previously received complaints that the flag was not at half mast when required. The previous flag pole was too short and too close to the town hall to fly the flag at half mast. We wanted to get a new flag pole several years ago, but higher priorities prevented it from happening. We thank Angela Michler for stepping up, doing the investigations, and coordinating with the town board and road crew to get and install the new flag pole. 5-1-2025: WORCESTER BLACKTOP ROADS IN NEED OF RECONSTRUCTION Worcester has 115.54 miles of roads, of which 57.40 miles are blacktop. Blacktop roads have an average life of 25 years. The road review meetings of 9-25- 2024 and 4-8-2025 resulted in this list of blacktop roads that are in need of reconstruction at this time. • Old 13 Road from salt shed for 1.0 mile north • East Solberg boat landing road has scrape marks on center hump - 0.06 miles • Crosscut Road and Highland Acres Road - 0.9 miles • South Worcester Road from corner east to Alfalfa Lane - 0.4 miles • Springs Drive from Hwy 13 to Worcester Road plus paved portion east of Worcester Road - 2.7 miles • Hillcrest Road paved portion - 0.71 miles • Little Elk Road from bridge to Little Chicago Road - 1.5 miles • Liberty Lane paved portion - 0.4 miles This is a total of 7.67 miles of blacktop road in need of reconstruction at this time. Blacktop roads need reconstruction when one or more of the following conditions are present: 1) The blacktop itself has lost its resilience and is breaking up. 2) The gravel base under the blacktop has failed, causing rutting and cracking. 3) Boulders and stumps are working their way up through the blacktop and breaking through. The scope of reconstruction varies according to the specific road conditions. A typical blacktop reconstruction may include replacing culverts, digging out stumps and rocks, grinding up the old blacktop, adding gravel, compacting, placing new blacktop, and shoulder work. The cost to reconstruct depends on exactly what work is done, but the typical cost will be $200,000 to $250,000 per mile of road. It would cost $1,500,000 to $2,000,000 to reconstruct the roads in this list. Future blog posts will discuss what causes roads to fail, road maintenance, and what we can do to make roads last longer. There will be additional discussion of available grant programs and the town budget. 4-11-2025: WORCESTER HAS A NEW CLERK- TREASURER Regina Damjanovic was appointed Worcester clerk- treasurer by the town board at a special town board meeting on 4-8-2025. She was appointed for a term ending 12-31-2025. Regina then appointed Alli Mathys as deputy clerk-treasurer with the approval of the town board. Alli had resigned as clerk- treasurer effective 4-1-2025. Regina has been Worcester’s deputy clerk-treasurer since 2-11-2025. She has been working with Alli to learn Worcester’s systems and procedures in order to have a seamless transition. 3-12-2025: WORCESTER 2025 REASSESSMENT The Town of Worcester will be completely reassessed in 2025. More correctly, the Town of Worcester will be going through a complete Revaluation for Assessments. How does it affect us? Reassessment does not change the amount of property tax collected. When property values increase, the assessments increase, and the mill rate decreases. The mill rate changes as needed to keep the total taxes the same. However, some properties increased more than others. Those people will see their tax increase, while everybody else will see their tax decrease. The reassessment will not change the total property taxes collected from the Town of Worcester. Why is this being done? Property values change with time. When the assessed values differ too much from actual market values, state law requires that all properties in the town be reassessed. Worcester was last reassessed in 2006, and a market adjustment made in 2013. Property sale prices, and the assessed values of those properties, are reported to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue (DOR). When the difference between sale prices and assessed valuations become too large, the DOR requires the town to revalue all town properties. Your property tax bill shows both the Assessed Value and the Estimated Fair Market Value. Your property taxes are calculated from the Assessed Value. For those who want to know more, the 2025 Guide for Property Owners, by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, is the first place to look. It is a 41-page document that covers basic aspects of property taxes, property owner rights, and the assessment process. For those who want to know even more, the 2025 Guide has a link to the Wisconsin Property Assessment Manual. That manual has 966 pages covering the qualifications of an assessor and tells exactly how to assess property. Other links in the 2025 Guide connect to the state laws on property assessment. Mike Schnautz, WI Certified Assessor, and assessor for the Town of Worcester, helped write this post. 2-25-2025: WORCESTER RECEIVES $1,830,786 GRANT The Town of Worcester has received an Agricultural Road Improvement Program (ARIP) Grant for a total project cost of $2,087,555.40, of which the State of Wisconsin will reimburse the Town of Worcester 87.7% of the actual cost up to a maximum reimbursement of $1,830,786.09. The town portion of the total cost will be $256,769.31. Little Chicago Road from Highway 13 to the railroad tracks will be reconstructed and upgraded. Cranberry Lake Lane from Little Chicago Road to the culvert will be reconstructed and upgraded. Those two stretches of road total 3.5 miles long. The ARIP is a new State of Wisconsin grant program created in 2023. This program provides grant money to towns to improve certain roads, culverts, and bridges. The roads to be improved must be used to transport agricultural and forest products and be currently subject to load limits. The improved roads will last longer and not have load limits. As with all government-funded projects, there are specific requirements for engineering, bidding, construction, reimbursable costs, and documentation. 2-11-2025: THE TOWN OF WORCESTER HAS A NEW DEPUTY CLERK/TREASURER The Town of Worcester has appointed Regina Damjanovic as deputy clerk/treasurer. This is in light of the resignation of Alli Mathys. Regina is a busy person; she is also the town clerk for the Town of Elk and owns the Hidden Cove Resort. The voters of the Town of Worcester approved a referendum April 2, 2024 to change the town clerk position from elected to appointed. That change takes effect April 1, 2025 because that is the date at which an elected clerk would run for reelection. When the position is elected, the clerk/treasurer must be from the same town. When the position becomes appointed after April 1, 2025, that residency requirement no longer holds. Regina lives in the Town of Elk, so the board voted to appoint her deputy clerk/treasurer at this time. The board will revisit filling the clerk/treasurer position after April 1, 2025. Alli Mathys has agreed to stay on as clerk/treasurer until April 1. 1-27-2025: OPEN RECORDS REQUESTS The Wisconsin Open Records Law states that any person can view or get a copy of any Town of Worcester public record. The requester does not need to provide a reason for requesting the record. The power to get records is not unlimited. The regular business of the town must continue. A typical request might be for a current list of town registered voters with delivery by email. Since the voter list is on a spreadsheet, such a request is easily delivered. Alternatively, a request for paper copies of all time cards for all road crew workers for a six year period requires advance preparation to locate those time cards and time to copy them. Such a request takes more time to fill. A person can request to view town records in person, which requires a meeting at a mutually acceptable time. The Town of Worcester has received a large number of open records requests starting some time before 2020. In order to properly deliver and track these requests, the town worked with the town attorney to develop a standard form for all open records requests. The situation is more difficult when a particular requester has a history of abusing and threatening the town clerk. Because of that abuse, the town worked with the town attorney to protect the town clerk. The town clerk now has the option of requiring that two town board members be present during requests to view or deliver records in person. Since the Town of Worcester has a three-member board, two members is a quorum. A board quorum requires a public meeting with at least 24 hours advance public notice. The Town of Worcester started tracking open records requests on 4-5-2022. The many requests before that date were not tracked. This link is the list of open records requests from that date and up to the date of this post. The town clerk has the current list that includes requests after that date. 1-14-2025: TOWN CLERK RESIGNS Alli Mathys, Worcester Town Clerk, announced her resignation Monday, 1-6-2025, at a special town board meeting. Her letter of resignation stated that she was subjected to threatening behavior from a few people in the area. That behavior was driven by Facebook posts by one person. Alli did a very good job during her time in office. She will be missed by all who worked with her. Alli is the fifth person to resign the Town of Worcester Clerk/Treasurer position in the last five years. The previous three clerks have all stated that their reason for leaving was harassment. The details are in their letters of resignation, which are linked here: Roberta Reese, Scott Revak, and Marcie Bogdanovic. Letters of resignation from public office are subject to the Wisconsin Open Records Law and so are public information. The position of Town Clerk/Treasurer is a public office with statutory duties. 1-7-2025: HILLS ROAD When the federal government renamed Squaw Creek to Aabajijiwani-ziibiinsing Creek, we believed that it was only a matter of time until Squaw Creek Road would also be renamed. Nobody in the area wanted the road name changed to Aabajijiwani- ziibiinsing Creek Road. This road has long been locally known as Rollercoaster Road, and there was initial support for renaming to that. The people living on that road, however, did not like that name. They have had experience with people driving that road at dangerously high speeds, and did not want a road name that would attract even more speeders. While the speed limit is 40 MPH, the maximum safe speed is as low as 25 MPH because of limited sight distance. The property owners on Squaw Creek Road asked the Worcester Town Board to rename it Hills Road instead of Rollercoaster Road. The board agreed,and passed an ordinance to rename it Hills Road effective January 1, 2025.