By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
After spending more than a year trying to iron out the details, the City of Burlington on Tuesday took the first official steps needed to bring a new business to town.
Applied Material Solutions, which is currently headquartered in Elkhorn, is looking to build a production facility at 1956 South Pine St., formerly the site of Echo Tech.
AMS makes defoamers and other related products. President Tom Rebernak and his wife, Nikki, are waiting for the final permit resolution the company needs for effluent discharge.
“We still have some glitches to work through,” Mayor Bob Miller said Tuesday night at the Committee of the Whole meeting of the City Council. The two items discussed at the meeting allow for a water main connection as well as a sanitary sewer connection.
Both items will come to the City Council for a vote at the Feb. 2 council meeting.
AMS is expected to bring about 150 jobs to the area with the new plant – jobs paying more than minimum wage, as clarified at the meeting.
Nikki Rebernak – who handles engineering and technical support at AMS – said the company will be hiring engineers, technicians and skilled tradesmen.
Because of the current delay in ironing out the details with the DNR, Tom Rebernak wouldn’t commit to a firm opening date.
He did say, however, he hopes to open the plant by the summer.
Other business
The council postponed voting on a motion to contract with Swagit to provide agenda management software and web streaming of City Council meetings after Alderman Bob Grandi raised the possibility of other, cheaper options.
Grandi had contacted a number of other cities to research options, and found out that Verona uses YouTube to broadcast meetings and Lake Geneva uses Vimeo.
While Grandi said he liked the transparency broadcasting the meetings would offer, he also didn’t want the taxpayers footing the bill – an estimated $17,000 to start and $11,000 a year in maintenance.
City staff is going to study other options, and also research how much money the city would save in using the agenda-processing software.
Also at the Committee of the Whole meeting, the city found out another change order would be made with the Aurora Care Center project – but this time coming in at about $34,000 in credit to the city.
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