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Town of Onalaska residents agreed to purchase land next to a condemned landfill and a dangerous road, also voting to sell off “a cliff and a hole” to two other residents at a town meeting Monday night.

By voice vote, residents chose to pay Sue and Richard Prinsen $19,000 for a little over an acre of land off Sportsman Road in Brice Prairie that once bordered the town landfill.

After the Environmental Protection Agency condemned the landfill in 1991, the Prinsens said they could not obtain an easement on their property, which sits directly south of a Superfund site established to clean up the dump.

“As of today we continue to be landlocked and unable to sell this property,” Sue Prinsen said at the meeting. “Had the prior town board done their responsibilities properly, this would never had happened to us.”

The Prinsens asked $19,000 for the land, which is the combined cost of a 2007 sales agreement that was voided by EPA restrictions and a $1,100 land survey that was mandated by the town. Three months ago the Prinsens also sought “rent” payments for two monitoring wells that had been mistakenly drilled on their property, but they didn’t include that cost on Monday.

Since it was a voice vote there was no official tally, but it sounded like at least two-thirds of residents voted to buy the land from the Prinsens. Twenty-five people attended the meeting, including four board members. Jeff Henessee was absent.

Before the vote, Town Chairman Stan Hauser said he consulted attorney Dan Dunn for an opinion, and Dunn said it might be cheaper for the town to purchase the property than to litigate the case in court.

According to state law, the town must obtain the support of residents before buying or selling any property.

“Personally, I don’t like it, but the townspeople authorized it,” Hauser said before an audience of four people at the town board meeting that immediately followed the special town meeting. “I guess I have to go with the townspeople on this.”

The board then voted 3-1 to purchase the Prinsen property, with Joe Schaller opposed.

Also Monday, residents voted 14-11 to authorize right-of-way purchases for a road improvement project at the intersection of Briggs Road and Highway XX. The intersection, which descends a slope and connects at a non-perpendicular angle, has been the site of recent automobile accidents.

“It’s something that’s long overdue. This has probably been hanging out there I’m guessing three, four years, maybe longer,” Hauser said. “We are getting cost-share money, so the town is not having to foot the entire bill, so basically it’s a win-win, I feel, for the town.”

The vote came over the objections of Dave Brady, who owns land on Briggs Road that is set to be acquired in the right-of-way purchase. Before the vote, he said his land includes the rare sand prairie habitat and houses five endangered plants and animals.

“This property has been in my family for over 70 years. We agree that the intersection needs to be made safer, but I don’t agree with the need to take an acre and a half of habitat that is never going to come back,” Brady said.

After a voice vote proved inconclusive, residents voted by a show of hands. Fifteen residents — including all four board members — approved the Briggs Road project, while 11 residents opposed it.

Finally, residents voted to sell 1.13 acres of land off Hilltop Drive to Scott Siefkes and Dale and Annette Lehman, neighbors who will own the land jointly. The property had once contained a well house for the Heritage Hills subdivision, but the well was abandoned and the building torn down long ago.

“I’ve been there for 28 years. The land is nothing but a cliff and a hole,” Dale Lehman said at the meeting, adding that he wanted the land to put an addition on the back of his home.

After obtaining an appraisal, the town offered to sell the property to Siefkes and the Lehmans for $12,500. According to a resident’s motion, the town must earmark those funds for purchasing other property.

The Siefkes and Lehman parcel will now return to the tax rolls. That vote was unanimous.