Welcome everyone to midday magazine for this April 17th, 2024.
Have your host James behind the mic.
In part two today, we're going to speak with Brandon, KC Austin.
They are a part of Lincoln High School's musical My Fair Lady.
Their performance is kickoff on the 25th.
We're going to talk to them in a little bit.
Right now, though, we have in with us in studio,
newly elected with Councillor Ravitt's mayor, Matt Zacker.
Matt, good to see you.
Morning, James. Thanks for having me.
Appreciate the time, Matt.
Thanks so much for being here.
We do want to send a big shout out to
current mayor, Shane Blazer, and a big thank you to him for everything he has done.
Not only putting up with me over the years on the air here,
but everything that man was able to accomplish in his time,
Shane taking this position at a time,
one of our nation's toughest times.
He gets the gig, and oh, by the way, here's a pandemic to deal with,
and a mill closing in these things and stuff.
And I think the perfect man for the time did a great job.
We really appreciate what he did.
He's steadfast, he helped strong.
Matt, I'm curious.
First off, congratulations.
You ran a great campaign in a,
appreciate the way that you approach that campaign and
approached being on the air with us,
and the highlights I saw of you in the public
conferences you did and those things.
So nicely done, and thank you so much for
handling the job, the campaign with respect.
I admired that, and I appreciate that.
We need more of it.
Matt, when it comes to the transition here between you,
from Shane to you, what does that process like?
Is there things about that that we as an audience,
as we as a community don't really know about?
We're never really in those positions.
Yeah, I would say it's going to more come down to the individuals.
And again, Shane and I, if it's a contentious campaign,
then maybe things won't go quite so well,
but with Shane leaving, and then the friendship
that we've developed over the years with our kids doing
different things, it was pretty easy going in that way.
I was able to start right after the election,
and he was more than happy to give me a little corner in the office,
and I was able to spread out some papers,
and I met with all the department heads within the first week.
And that went really well.
I know most of them are ready,
but it was good to just kind of ease attention,
let them know where I'm coming from,
a very positive response, granted we're all in our honeymoon phase for a while.
So we'll see how things go.
And I don't expect everything to always be smooth,
but I do expect it to be respectful,
and everybody looking forward to the future for the community.
You really hit the ground running.
The results were announced,
and I believe you were already down at City Hall.
You're already getting more.
That night we had an interview down there,
which I thought was a good place to have it,
and it was very good.
And again, I appreciate everybody in this community
that has supported me.
As always, I have nothing but respect for the person that ran against me,
just stepping outside of your home,
or you're out from behind the computer,
and putting yourself out there,
there's a lot of risks that go along with that.
So I appreciate anyone and everyone that runs for office in the government.
I have a whole new appreciation for it.
Yeah, you really teed me up there,
because I second what you said there.
Regardless of what I feel or believe,
or anything like that with any candidate,
I admire anybody putting themselves out there,
especially in this day and age,
where it's never been, I think,
more difficult to be a politician on any level.
So that part certainly is noteworthy.
I appreciate that.
When it comes to now you have the job,
you see those results.
What are your first feelings?
How does that impact you? How does that hit you?
Great question.
I probably last night, after the meeting,
I went up to gather my stuff,
and area I'm in this big old building,
nobody else is there, lights are off,
and it was pretty surreal.
And I do understand that this isn't Matt Zacker,
the mayor, this is I'm Matt Zacker,
and I have a job to do.
And that job title is mayor of Wisconsin Rapids.
So in my mind, it's two completely different things,
different ways of looking at it.
I'm coming in as a servant for the community
to help, I'm going to help anybody and everybody.
And anyway, I can, as long as they're respectful,
I'm going to make sure that we take care of business
because our goal is entrepreneurialism,
building businesses.
And I don't think I coined this phrase,
but I said it the other day,
and it resonated with me.
I would much rather have 500 small businesses
in this community than five really big ones
that we had to buy in order to come in here,
or give the keys to the castle way to get them in here.
Not that I won't, you know, a mix will be great.
We're going to go after anything and everything we can,
but at the same time, to me,
the backbone of any economy is the small businesses, the people.
And I want to get into your hopes and plans
in your tenure here, but just to piggyback on what you said there,
you know a little something about that.
For those in the audience that don't know your previous career,
or I should say what you were doing
and what you're continuing to do a bit,
but if we can tell the audience of what your day job is,
if you will.
Yeah, that guy.
Yes, so 18 years ago,
moved to the community,
and during that time,
my father-in-law and mother-in-law Pat and Joe Kazikiyad
had kind of had their ear to the ground
and caught wind of recycling business
that was turned over to the bank when the file passed away.
And they took the risk,
and they basically assumed the more the debt out of that.
With that bank,
we moved up.
I wasn't first sure.
I didn't want to be so pushy,
but we had just had our first kid,
and our next one was on the way.
And so there's a little bit of nervousness
like that's along with young parents.
And I knew in the social work field,
my opportunities to raise a family
where there's a lot of stress that goes along with
being it was kind of what was offered at the time,
was high intensity foster care social work.
And there's a huge need for it,
but at that time, I made it a decision,
and we had bought out the old partner in the business
and moved forward with express recycling.
So since then, my brother-in-law joined,
and then my brother Tim joined.
My brother-in-law, Damon and Lori, Tim and Anna,
my brother and Jenny is my wife and his her sister.
So I think I mentioned that before.
So anyways, we bought out Joe and Pat,
and then we bought out Damon and Lori.
So then it ended up being Tim and I
for the last 15 years with Jenny and Anne.
And we've grown from Wisconsin Rapids to a shop
and Steven's Point, across from the Point Brewery,
and then we opened up a consolidation center
where we purchased a bigger bailer
and put that in there so we could
service commercial and industrial accounts.
And we've really grown it.
Now after I was in the operations,
Tim was in the administration side of things.
So we, I'll go into that more in a minute.
But it helped for us to have separate responsibilities.
So we try not to stop on each other's toes
as much as possible because family businesses
are tricky, but they can work if you put the family first
in the business in the money second.
But anyways, so we are now at 12 employees.
I'm total.
So Tim and I count as employees.
And they're great men.
We do have one lady working with us,
Bonnie, in the office and the rest of us,
our guys, but they all work hard.
And it's always a challenge.
Even with 12 people, the key is always communication.
It's not about power.
It's not about hierarchy.
It's about how does the communication flow
so that everybody has accountability
and everybody's doing the job.
And we go home and take care of our families.
Because in the end, that's what matters more than anything.
Nobody's going to remember the jobs we did
in the business that we built.
But you're always going to have the legacy
of the kids that come after you and in the future or so.
Well, Matt, I think a lot of us can see a parallel
between the management and some of the things
that you did there and how those skill sets might apply
to being a mayor and doing a job like that.
But as far as how the growing of the business
and growing of making a business bigger
and bringing in more employees, all of that,
how do you see that helping you
bringing in attracting more businesses
or helping others see their dreams come through
as far as entrepreneurialism and having new businesses
sprout up around here.
Yeah.
So it does, and it's been pretty nice
because I kind of developed my platform over the course
of my campaign and it just focused on four things
and they still, I got a whiteboard.
I got a whiteboard and put it up.
I got four columns in each point as a column
and I'm just going to work on it
and try to overlap when I can.
But the first thing is first
and that is if we're going to have an impact
as a government on the community,
then we have to get the government itself running lean
and mean and together in the communication.
So everything I learned with 12 people
and now I'm going to work towards
and you have to take it in chunks.
Like if you want the departments to run well,
then you have to have the department heads running well
and in order for those departments to work well together,
then those departments have to work well together
and it all comes down to communication.
And if everybody's doing their own thing
and it's real easy to do in a government
because there is the difference is
like you're not fighting for every dollar
like a private industry isn't granted
when they get so big it becomes a different story
when they get sold to a public market.
I think then maybe things change.
I don't know for a fact because I've never been there
but it seems like it would become more governmental
like where there's so much money
that you're not taking care of the customers anymore.
We can't do that at our government.
We have to bring everybody together
and get everybody working on the same page.
And if you know, once the department heads
are working together and they're moving their people
in the right direction and we're all working together,
you know, maybe there's going to be things
that come to the surface that everybody's going to say,
oh, we don't have to do things that way anymore.
I'm hearing it a lot.
This is the way we've always done it
and that really can't be the mode of thought anymore.
Like that's all got to change in order to be lean
and mean enough to move into the community
so that the community can,
it's not that we can start any businesses
but we can be the leader or the beacon that says,
we are here to help you start your business,
start your dreams, start your future and build that.
And then we move in, you know,
with the school systems and the Chamber of Commerce
and the MSTC, the county governments,
the foundations and work together
to build a more comprehensive entrepreneurial program
from young and like it's a model and it can be done
as long as you're teaching the basics
but you're doing it within the model
of understanding and running business
and investing money and saving money
and working together in teams, you know,
that's the important part because no entrepreneur
makes it on their own like you can't.
You have to know how to take care of your employees,
you gotta know how to take care of your partners,
your customers so that's the platform
that we're working towards.
And then the last part of that is the mill.
We just wanna stay on top of the mill
as best as we can be a part of that conversation,
build that relationship.
So at the end result is much of a win-win as possible
for us and for them.
But in the end, yeah, that's a tricky one
because they have the ability to go off on their own.
So you have to play it right and build that relationship strong.
We're speaking with newly elected Wisconsin Rappers Mayor
Matt Zacher right now.
And Matt, I can't be the only one that saw the symmetry in this
and I think some, for lack of a better word,
justice almost in this.
We mentioned before Shane takes over
and a couple of big things happen.
One of them being the mill.
As he's leaving office, we have the sale of the mill.
And I see a symmetry in that and a beauty in that and everything.
It's good to see, for those that have not heard,
the bill, bill Rudd has announced that they will be selling the building
at a capital recovery group LLC.
The deal is expected to close in the next months here.
But the companies have already discussed a liquidation auction
for some of the equipment that set idle for the last four years.
With this topic, with this big one right here,
this mill you mentioned before,
working with this company and that,
expanding and having more entrepreneurial businesses and small businesses.
What are some of the other things that you're hoping to do
in your time and in your tenure?
I'm just going to keep on the same page
that you just opened up there.
Because it is such a big one, like in my opinion,
I have to devote as much time as I possibly can to the mill
with, again, Kyle Kerens is the department
had for community development.
So he's right there and he's doing a great job.
And I'm not looking to step on toes.
I'm not looking to, I just want to be a part of the process
to help where I can.
Because this is what I'm going to,
a lot of what's going to be happening is recycling.
And we know how to do that.
We know a lot of the people in the market.
And when I say we, I mean, express recycling.
To be able to understand better how that can play out,
what questions to ask outside of just the government side of permitting
and doing this to do that.
So I talked with a gentleman, a name,
I'm just going to say Glenn for now, it's his first name.
And he is the person that was hired from the last mill
that CRG did this process for.
And it's a system.
They're going to sell off the easy stuff that is going to go away.
They're going to then probably have to sell off the big stuff.
And again, this is public information.
So I'm not crossing any boundaries.
But it looks like they're going to end up marketing
and selling the number 16 mill machine.
And it's going to be dismantled and carefully dismantled
and shipped overseas and remantled there.
And somebody's going to use it for something different,
which is just crazy when you think,
I really think that.
Different America is, and it comes down to wages
and what we need in order to survive in our economy.
But then you have a beautiful building.
And they, I did talk yesterday, and you know,
they understand that they cannot gut.
They cannot gut the cat.
Like there's a lot of money worth of copper in there.
And you know, that's where a lot of the money could come from.
They need that infrastructure to be there
so that they can bring in new industry.
Whether it's one industry or three industries
that can come in, they need to be able to do that
because that's where they're going to make their money back then.
Converting bill, bill of root converting
is going to stay there.
Sonoco and their processes are going to stay there.
Looking like the craft mill and those parts will, you know,
probably be gone because there's nothing there.
But again, talking about that situation, if we clean that off,
it's most likely not going to be able to be residential
because of, you know, whatever mayor may not be in the ground.
Right now, there is no way of knowing.
And he said with the last mill, a lot of stuff came up
way cleaner than they, you know, were anticipating it.
So that was good.
But then you have a lot of acres for good.
Unfortunately, it's not the best
because it's right on the river.
But at the same time, it's set up that way.
And you have a wastewater treatment center there.
You have all the electricity you need to run more industry.
So chances are good.
It'll be there for more industry to come in.
So it's very exciting.
I know Shane, Shane got the hard stuff
because what happened at that point,
it was a waiting game.
Yeah.
So everyone, you know, and people want to look to the mayor
and say, what are you doing?
What are you doing?
Well, there's nothing he can do besides just have a conversation
and see how things are going.
If they're willing to talk, the fact that CIRG has a person
that is designated strictly for community or PR
and talking things through, we're going to go on a tour there
next week and just to be a part of that conversation is great.
But he didn't have that with Bill Roode
because they weren't ready to move into that phase.
So he didn't really have the opportunities that I'm going to have.
So that's my job and it's a exciting job
because the more industry that can come into those buildings,
the more jobs that'll be created, more ancillary,
I think the word is for like other businesses
to help just start up to help them.
And at the same time, do it all the way
to get what the young people in the community or really anybody
in the community that wants to start a business.
There should be one location to go to and that
and they have all the pieces in place
to help you get through that process.
Because businesses don't fail because entrepreneurs
love the operations.
They love their passion.
They love to just get in and do the work.
They fail because of all the other stuff, the accounting,
the saving the money, the investing properly,
the legal, the marketing.
And if you have those things set up in place for them,
then you can plug them in and they can go
and they can develop their business.
There's so many different opportunities
that we lose out on as a community
with these businesses being able to run
because of some of those simple things
that you're talking about there.
You could have the greatest idea in the world,
all the energy and passion, but if you don't have somebody
to help you find the right things that you need to have this building
or to have the right different types of licenses
you need for different things.
So all the little questions that I wouldn't even know
because I've never done it before,
but I know that there's other people in those positions.
It's great to have somebody not only in that position of mayor
that sees that and sees the importance of it,
but has some experience with it.
We all talk better with people that know a little bit
of what we're talking about.
And you have that to you within so many layers.
Another thing that stands out too,
that certainly our community isn't like others
or is like others in the sense of doing this,
but I think Rapids is really good at this.
At the Hermit Crap thing, this building has,
it was a gas station, it was a cell phone store now
and now it's a radio station.
And you drive past it, you couldn't tell.
You would think that it was built for this.
It was built to be a radio station.
I think we're really good at repurposing these buildings
and why not the mill?
Why, what's to say we can't do it
with something even bigger and something like that?
Yeah, not to mention the ingenuity we have of the people,
like we've been programmed kind of to think
that college is the way to go and don't get me wrong.
I'm all for college and I'm all for the people that go through it.
But we've lost this connection between white collar
and blue collar or whatever you want to call it
because the amount of intelligence that goes into doing
the jobs with machinery and the trades,
it's a whole different type of intelligence
and whether it's hard to bridge the gap between the two
and maybe it's just human nature
to the ego that goes into it, but we have to.
We have to understand that we need all types of intelligence
and all types of ingenuity in order to change
the direction of a community.
And we're fortunate enough to be a decent-sized city
but not a huge city where you're trying to,
we have the ability to work together as a community.
And if we do it well, we can help other communities do the same
and we can learn from other communities
that are doing it right now.
For an example, we can take what Appleton and Fox Valley
has done in working together as multiple communities
and figuring out how to share resources and work together.
And we have that opportunity to do that now
and I'm gonna take full advantage of all the communities
that are around here to all the people
that want to see everybody grow.
Yeah, we are stronger together.
I think the pandemic taught us that
if other things haven't already.
And to be it, we all have so many people that,
well, I live in this town but I work over here
or that we've got across a pollination going on already
with our dollars, with our time.
It only makes more sense that we come together.
We can be rivals on the football field.
We can have all that and stuff.
We can have a fun with that there.
As far as off of the diamond and off of the football field
and all those things, we gotta get it worked together.
We're only made stronger by working together
in central Wisconsin here specifically.
So I do think that, you know,
an old saying, I guess true character
is gonna be seen in tough times, not in good times
and there's all sorts of things that go along with that.
But I think, you know, what we're seeing right now
is all the communities they had, the money they needed.
Now everybody sees the writing on the wall.
So for better, for worse, you know,
it's the time, it's the time to be able to come together
and we need leaders in all of those communities
that can see that.
And then it's gotta be fair.
I mean, we can't have, you know, one entity losing out
to subsidize other entities.
It's gotta be fair across the board,
which isn't always easy,
but there is a way to find that common ground.
Mm-hmm, I appreciate the time so much, Matt.
This is a great conversation.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Looking forward to talking more and more
as we go along here and your run
and looking real forward to seeing what Shane does next fishing.
I imagine it's something, hopefully,
it's something very relaxing and something fun.
Thank you so much again for the time, Matt.
If people wanna get in touch with you,
have follow questions or anything,
send them to the website
or is there a number that they can reach you at?
My number, my personal number,
705-321-0727.
Otherwise, Emily's at the mayor's office and there's email
and you'll find me.
My intention is to, so far, that's the hardest part
is sitting in an office.
I feel like I'm gonna be in the community helping, you know,
communicating, making sure everybody, you know,
is connecting the way they need to
and having the conversations we need to have.
So I look forward to being out there and mobile
and anybody can give me a call when they need to talk
and bounce ideas off and figure out their next move
if they wanna do that.
I just wanna say thank you for having me
and thank you for all you and everybody here does
to bring the communication to the community as a whole.
I know that's not always easy
and we're still kinda going through transition
country-wide, worldwide,
and how we're all getting our information and news
and that's another thing that I'll be working on
and we'll be talking more about in the future.
So thank you.
Looking forward to that and thanks, appreciated Matt.
Thanks for the time.
We'll talk again real soon.
I wanna send a big shout out to our friends
at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media as well
doing some great work.
Do yourself a favor, go to YouTube
and type in your search bar
Wisconsin Rapids Community Media,
subscribe to their page.
And if you wanna find out more information
about the Rapids area or some of the questions,
if you have some questions, you can reach out to
them at wirapids.org,
wirapids.org.
We'll be back with more midday magazine
right here on WFHR locally grown radio.
