GREENWOOD TWP- The issue of noise from outdoor music at the site of the former Bay View Lodge consumed many hours of time for Greenwood Town Board members in the early 2010s. After banning outdoor music as a condition for the business’s liquor license, the township did come to an agreement with the former owners of the lodge about music on the outdoor deck, limiting the number of bands per summer as well as requiring music to end by 9 p.m.
But now, music offerings by the new business, now called Tavern in the Bay, are again raising concerns from nearby residents.
At the Aug. 12 meeting, Lloyd Ollila spoke to the board about the issue, and requested they meet with the owners to keep the sound levels below 60 decibels.
“Most of the time it isn’t too bad,” Ollila said. “But a number of times this year the decibel level has been very high.”
Ollila said the issue isn’t the outdoor music, just the noise level at night.
The board will discuss the issue at their September meeting. The board noted they do not have a way to enforce a noise ordinance.

IRRR grant projects
In other action, the board has approved new furnaces for the town hall and fire hall, as well as a new water storage tank for the fire hall and everything is expected to be installed soon. The township received an IRRR grant to pay half the costs of these projects, as well as replacing windows in the town hall.
Chairman Paul Thompson said he is hoping to get permission from the IRRR to use some of the grant money originally planned for window replacement to repair a heat pump and to replace the well’s pressure tank and switch. The board thinks these issues are contributing to the failure of the Brassmaster water treatment system which was installed to remove the naturally occurring arsenic from the well water. He said if this is approved, there still would be grant money available to replace the windows most in need of replacement.

Fire department updates
Greenwood Fire Chief Brian Trancheff briefed the board on the department’s work on the July 6 lightning fires. The department worked on scene five days and were on-call for five additional days. Trancheff said the department brought Tender 3 to work on the fires, sending two department members each day, but the department also made sure they had department members home that could respond to any calls. He also said other departments have been stepping in with mutual aid, if needed, while a department was deployed on the fire. In addition, he said, they could have been released from the fire scene, if needed for an emergency in the township.
“We got to work with a lot of really cool people. It was a learning experience.”
Trancheff said those days were long and hard, but he felt the department had made an impact in that firefighting effort. Several department members completed a wildfire training class earlier this summer.
The department is paid an hourly rate for both bringing equipment to the scene, as well as having equipment and staff on call. In addition, salary costs are also reimbursed. The department will be billing for about $27,000, and about $22,000 was the charge for using Greenwood’s tender.
This was on top of a very busy month, Trancheff said, with 27 fire calls, the most he had ever seen.
“We had everything from false alarms to structure fires,” he said, “everything but the cat stuck up a tree.”
Trancheff told the board that Fire Boat One had been repaired and was back in service, and the issue involved a crank positioning sensor. He reiterated the issue with the age of the boat’s e-tec engines, for which many parts are no longer available.
Trancheff asked the board to consider adding three new types of department members: seasonal, driver/engineer, and wildland firefighter.
“This would ease the strain on our trained firefighters,” he said. “I see people who want to help but can’t do the firefighter training, but they can drive a truck or run a pump.”
Trancheff asked the board to review the draft job descriptions.
“I know this isn’t traditional,” he said, “but we can train them to a job class and then get more manpower out in the field.”
He explained that the seasonal membership would be helpful for trained firefighters who are gone for longer periods of time and wouldn’t meet the existing membership requirements.
“Even with the killer mutual aid we have, we get stretched thin,” he said. “We have to assume multiple roles on a fire. If you can pull me off a pump, I can run a hose attack.”
The board discussed issues with the fire department pension system, but Trancheff said PERA does allow pension benefits to be accrued month by month. The other option would be paying an annual bonus, similar to the EMR members.
The board will be discussing the proposals at the next board meeting.

Isle of Pines bridge
Supervisor Lois Roskoski presented a compilation, once again, of the history of the new Isle of Pines bridge, dating back to 1979. This included a letter from the St. Louis County Attorney, dated in May of this year, saying the bridge is and has always been owned by Greenwood Township.
She also noted that in 1995, when the special assessments fees had all been collected and bridge payments had been made, there was a $21,000 balance in the bridge fund. By 2023, that amount had grown to about $39,000.
“In my opinion the board in 2023 did not do its due diligence,” Roskoski said, adding she did not believe they consulted the township attorney before paying the bridge fund dollars to the Isle of Pines association. The association has signaled its willingness to return unspent funds back to the township.
The board gave Roskoski permission to work with township attorney Mike Couri on developing an agreement with the Isle of Pines association over the return of the money.
St. Louis County will be doing some minor repairs to the bridge this fall and expect the bridge to be closed for a few hours when the work gets underway. The work is being paid for by the county.