OCONTO – Less than a day after City Council members voted to discontinue maintaining Copper Culture State Park unless a new contract was in place with the state by the end of the year, the Department of Natural Resources is poised to come to the table.
The city and a DNR official confirmed Thursday that they are planning to negotiate a new deal to replace the one that expired at the end of 2010.
However, statements from both sides illustrate differences of opinion on how things reached this point and on the structure of the lapsed agreement.
City officials said it was frustration that led them to take the action at the April 13 Committee of the Whole meeting, saying they had tried periodically for years to get the DNR to update the contract.