Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Wednesday January 15th, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailoff here at 430 today.
We're going to talk to our great friends over at the Wood County Health Department, looking
forward to joining us in just a little bit.
Right now we have in studio Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zachar with us.
Matt, good to see you.
Morning James.
Good to have you with us.
And of course we want to send a shout out to our great friends over at Wisconsin Rapids
Community Media.
Love our friends over there.
Appreciate the great work that they do.
Look out that great work by going to YouTube, typing to your search bar, Wisconsin Rapids Community
Media, subscribe to their page and keep up to date and all the great work they are doing.
Matt, happy new year.
How you been?
Happy new year to you also.
Very good.
Yeah, it's great.
Great time.
We got some time off.
It was nice to take a little bit of a break after the world wind of the first eight months
and just decompress a little bit and kind of refocus.
So it was good.
The holidays are a marathon.
You got to pace yourself.
You have to breathe.
You remember to breathe throughout it and everything.
That's just in general.
But then you add on, like you said, just starting this new position, you know, into it for
a while, but still kind of getting your bearings, I imagine, a bit.
So you throw that into the mix, had to have been a wild set of holidays for you.
I imagine taking a breath right now into the new year feels good.
Yeah, it's good.
And again, refocus.
Like, you know, you come in with a set of ideas as to how things are going to go and
a lot changes in that time, but yet you've got to stay focused on the things that you
know.
So I do think it's been good and I'm hitting the ground again and getting going to make
some of the changes that I know need to be made to help out the next year.
And then crazy enough, once this year's, you know, closing down.
I'm looking at a campaign for another two years.
So it's an interesting cycle to try to run on a two year plan.
It's not easy to do.
But at the same time, it is what it is.
Everybody says, well, if we like you, we keep you, if we don't, we can get rid of you.
And I think that's a great idea, except for in reality, that's not the best way to really
run a large organization, you know, that is your city, but at the same time, government
politics are what they are.
So I get it.
It's interesting.
In an odd way, we talked about this with sports a lot, where you're very seldom that you
see they give a coach one year or two years.
It takes a while, especially in college, you build recruits, all of these things.
You would think that it would be a similar approach to something like this.
I'm with you on this.
I think that that's something that might have to be reimagined and relooked at at some
point.
Yeah.
I certainly won't be the one to bring it forward.
And we'll see.
We'll see where that one goes.
You mentioned, you know, getting the new year and the goals that you and your staff have,
we'll get into some of that in a bit and we'll talk about the ATV, UTV ordinance and some
other things involved.
But as far as for you, what does that mean starting the year off on the right foot,
and going, you know, running with the adrenaline that you have from last year into this, what
do you, your big, some of your plans starting off in this year?
Well, I kind of go, you know, everything still fits in under my, my original four, you
know, platform items, which was communication, which is still, still a big part.
And I spent a lot of time talking with the organizations that I needed to in order to
build this entrepreneurial, bringing together all the entrepreneurial organizations to help
businesses grow and get started and thrive, really focusing on the budget, which again,
we just met last night with the Council on a committee of the whole to talk about, instead
of waiting till the end of 2025 to really dive into 2026, we're starting right now on
2026.
So that as we're working through and getting more quarterly updates and monthly updates
from the department has what it looks like and what it's going to look like.
And then making some big decisions, like if people really want to get rid of the debt
and not take out any debt, well, that's doable, but it makes, you got to make some really
tough decisions.
And again, if we're not doing it, then it's not worth creating all the ripples in the
water that are going to cause, you know, a certain amount of chaos.
So we have to make some decisions from a board, a council level, and then I can implement
it and I can spend the whole year doing that.
And I'm willing to do it as long as we know we're on the same page and we have the support
for each other.
And then that comes with the entrepreneurial group and then from there was the mill and
the mill has, you know, been talked about enough right now.
No real new updates, they're just making progress with the craft mill and still looking
at the 16 building and figuring out what they're going to do with that.
So, but outside of that, you know, I have learned that some of the big things that I want
to focus on is the fire department EMS situation, we're going to have a new fire chief coming
on soon, you know, hitting the ground together, knowing that it's going to be a marathon.
We can't look at it as, you know, what are we going to do for the next year?
We really have to look at this 25 years out.
Like, what do we, as the entire community need in order to make this a successful program?
So we'll start bringing ideas again to the table, new voices, new thoughts on that.
I really want to, you know, continue to focus on the railroad track relocation.
There's some really big things.
Like, if I'm only here for a short period of time, if I can make the biggest impact possible,
not necessarily for legacy, but for, that's what I'd like to do.
I mean, it's important if we can get that track out of here.
It's important.
Everybody knows it's important.
We've just never stuck with it long enough to be able to put it all together and make
it happen.
Eight streets, another big one that, you know, even if, you know, if we can make enough
noise as a, as a community, not just me, but, you know, if I can get enough people, you
know, talking and putting pressure on to make sure it's done, but at the same time, we
also need a viable plan for that street that really looks at, you know, 50 years down
the road, what's going to make it more beautiful, what's going to make it safer, what's going
to make it more efficient, then what it is now, and we should have that plan in effect
in the number two.
So that then we can really put some pressure on the state to say, look, we need to get
this done for not just for our community, but you got all these businesses that want
to be coming in, you do have the airport there in San Valley, that's a part of bringing
a lot of people in from around the world, and I think we want to put our best foot forward
as the community of Wisconsin Rapids, but also as the state of Wisconsin.
You know, we don't plant trees for us to see them grow.
We plant them for our kids to see them grow.
We plant them for the younger generations.
So much of what you're talking about is building a good future around here and a reliable
future.
Now, in a world where nothing, it feels like can be reliable, especially if you're looking
ahead or anything, what you're trying to do, what you're talking about here is not only
building an economy for now, but for the future.
And I got to say this is very hand in hand to me with a lot of the people I talk to in
the community.
I would say over the past couple of years, since we put shovels in the ground for the
new jail, I've talked to so many people in our community, long time members, I'm not
talking about people that just moved here, I'm not even talking about 20-year-olds.
Like 30, 40, at the youngest, most of people I've talked to are in their 50s and 60s, long
time residents of this area, if not lived here, this whole lives.
And one of the biggest things I hear from them, man, we should have done that sooner.
Man, we should have done that sooner.
It comes up in exactly, completely understandable.
There's no point in fingers here or judgment here at all.
I cannot stress that enough.
Hindsight is always 2020.
But they are feeling that.
They are feeling, oh, we should have done this sooner, oh, it would have been cheaper
sooner, oh, we could have used this sooner, et cetera, et cetera.
I think that goes hand in hand with what you're talking about, whether it is repurposing or
not purposing, but redoing the bridge line of the tracks and everything and doing something
with that, or having businesses in town that we know are going to stay here, that we can
keep here, that kind of, so many of these things, it helps us now, but it really helps us
in the future.
Yeah.
That's a key part of this.
And I think that's a really, I think that's exactly what we needed in this area right
now.
That's a really nice balance of, you know, there's, you know, trigger words, I guess, progressive
being, you know, looking into the future and saying we have to do this, but at the same
time, figuring out how to make the money work so that you're not, you don't putting yourselves
in a bad situation where now you're in a weak financial position.
So, you know, I've always been frustrated with that, the two different sides, the two
different parties.
Like, we've always understood that, ultimately, we're all looking for the same thing.
You can disagree with me if you want, but I say 95% of us, or 95, or all of us are like
95% the same, 5% different, and wherever that 5% comes in, but ultimately, we're looking
for, you know, how do we take care of ourselves, how do we take care of our family, you know,
take care of the bills and really focus on that, and we're all relatively conservative
when it comes to that, but then when it comes to progressing in the world itself, then
you get a little bit different in terms of what that looks like, and by, in all reality,
it really just comes down to a play on words as to how people phrase it because in reality,
everybody's spending money when it's in the government, they're just doing it because
what I understand is we're kind of indoctrinated into this thing of government has to grow
every year.
Now, I don't believe that necessarily, but I've heard it enough now that I'm like, oh,
so if that's what they're being taught, whether it's in the different programs that we're
in, or just once you get into the government and start getting orientated into, you know,
your different roles, that comes up a lot over and over again, that government has to
grow every year.
We're speaking with Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zach, along with our friends from Wisconsin
Rapids Community Media.
We got a question from one of our listeners, and I always encourage our audience to give
me questions for any of our mayor or representative crew or testin' or any of the people that
join us.
I don't actually came from two feet away from Pam, so I had to get this one, yeah.
But she was curious about what is happening over on One Mile Creek and Wisconsin Rapids.
See the two mile avenue has been closed for several days, big equipment over there, can
give us an update on what's going on over there?
Yeah, I did talk with Joe Hicks that about it a little bit just to get the updates because
they are busy, and winter's kind of neat because you have your big plans for the road projects
during the warm season that you can do that work and do it fast and well.
So now it's kind of the time that they fit in all these smaller projects, so the One Mile
Creek is part of a project of keeping the storm sewer retention program or keeping the
waters clean.
It's a tricky one.
That's a word.
And in the end, all of that water ends up back into the river, so what the DNR wants
us to be able to do is clean it as much as possible before it gets there.
So then we have these, some retention ponds I learned, you know, retention means it
goes there and filters back into the ground, detention pond means or detention area means
it comes in, it sits for a while, and then it filters back out again.
And the reason for that is to let all that sediment and all the fast, all the things that
they don't want to try to get into the river, although you can't stop all of it because
it is naturally occurring stuff.
And we're dealing with stuff downstream with the lakes down there that people are trying
to control how the weeds grow and all that stuff.
So it's, you know, there's a whole lot of moving parts of that whole thing.
But ultimately what's happening on One Mile Creek between Lincoln and 2 Mile Avenue is
they're dredging it in order to give it some depth in order for the water to come in
and settle and settle that resident residue out and then flow back out at the top side
of it and keep going.
So that's the goal is to keep our waters clean as possible.
Excellent.
And it's not only appreciate the answer, but it's really appreciate the work being done
on that.
Yes.
Yeah.
And of course we got to get into this one too, sir.
The Wisconsin Rabbits Common Council is considering a revised ATV-U2B ordinance.
This is one of our main talking points over the last couple of months, if not last year.
This one has been coming up.
What are the new, and what is the new information on this, what happened the other day with this
and the ordinance?
Yes.
So, yeah.
It's tricky.
And again, I've been here four years now and this isn't going away.
Like it's only going to keep coming back, keep coming back.
But I can go back to where it started for me and I've kind of gone through this a lot
with different groups of people to try to understand like we, my determination when I was on
council was I want everybody as many people who are willing to try to participate in the
community aware that this is coming, that these vehicles will be on the road and they just
don't show up one day and all of a sudden, you know, we're dealing with them.
So in the end, we kind of voted it down, but we wanted to send it to referendum.
Well, we ended up not being able to send it to referendum because of some state statues
that were passed that says you can't, for whatever reason, you can't do it this way.
And we said, okay, well then we voted it down in order and we voted it down in order
to allow the people in favor of it to get the signatures for the referent for the ordinance.
Problem is, and these are all good people, you know, there's, I've met a lot of people
throughout the years that are in favor of it and against it and it's been good getting
to know the people and just understand it from both sides.
So that being said, the folks that were in favor of this took that ordinance and changed
it, made it into what they wanted and one of the big ones in there that became a sticking
point was that 12 to 15 year olds could ride on the roads with their parents with them
in between their parents and that I think, you know, again, a lot of this, that are against
it, it's based on fear of what if, understandably so, you know, what if this happens and a 12
year old does get hit and killed and, you know, nobody wants that.
So anyways, they brought that, they ended doing a great job and they got it out to the
community. They got all the signatures. They needed very impressive people to be this
passionate about this. But the problem was that they put the 12 to 15 year old in there
and because of that, the council again voted it down, which then sent it to referendum
on the last voting ballot and it got voted down by the people. I don't know exactly
numbers like 5,500 to 4,500 somewhere in there. So then, but the, as the laws go, they're
able to bring that back immediately anyways. Like it was, and in this instance, they're
actually changing the ordinance again to go back to the older version, which was you have
to be 16 years old with a driver's license to be on the roads. You have to have insurance.
You can't be drinking and driving. And, you know, so there's more things that go along
with it. But the monkey wrench that's thrown in there now is the people loaded on it.
And so now they're going to be pretty angry at the government if they don't abide by
the vote at the will of the people and vote it down. But the other variable in there that
at the same time as that referendum was being voted on, there was new alderman being
voted into seat, into their seats. And those alderman are more inclined to be in favor
of ATVs and new TVs being on the roads. Again, good people, you know, they're not, they're
just for one specific agenda, at least I can't tell because they're participating in
all aspects of the government to a high level high degree. And I appreciate that. But at
the same time that that brings the vote back to the table to say, well, some of those folks
around the public works committee, it got switched over to the public works because
public works deals with everything that has to do with roads. And so they voted it through.
So now it's going to go to council and they're going to see where the votes are at. And nobody
really knows, you know, nobody's out, you know, you talk to each other, you try to get
some understanding of the age of a little bit, but certainly we don't know how the vote's
going to fall. The downside to this on my level is if it's a four to four tie, I have
some talking to do. So in decisions to be made. So I don't look forward to that. But at
the same time, it's my responsibility. And I'll step up no matter what the vote comes
down at, you know, we got to, we got to keep it going. We got to make decisions. So the
greatest negotiators will tell you that any good negotiation, both parties leave a little
unhappy, a little happy. Yeah. It's got to be a win-win. Yep. And that's what we're in
right now. But we're in this situation with this. We're fine tuning it. We're getting
the details right so that when this does happen, and I'm with you, I think this is just
a matter of time before this happens. It's the best thing for our community. Comparing
our community to any other community, including ones that are right next door to us, doesn't
make a whole lot of sense to me. Every community is different. And while there are certain
communities that are desperate for this, and desperately need something like this, I
don't believe Wisconsin Rapids is one of them. I think this would be an addition to our
community. I certainly think this would help a lot of businesses in our community. But
I don't believe that this is something that, oh, if we don't do this in the next five
years, our community is going to dry up. I don't see that happening. And I would like
to see a little perspective from my fellow Wisconsin Rapidsites. However, I word that. Rapids
is Rapids people. I don't know, but we got to come up with that. Rapid Indians maybe.
But we are so fortunate in this community. And while things could always be better, and
we could use a little more of this or a little more of that, and I'm not saying we couldn't,
I think some appreciation of how good things are is also needed to be able to make these
decisions. I don't think you can do one without the other. I don't think when you're
sitting there voting on something like this or putting this ordinance together, that you
cannot take into consideration, well, our community is not desperate. We're definitely
in a situation where we're not turning down businesses. We want to move here or anything
like that. But considering how some places look when that mill goes down compared to ours,
not so bad. Pretty good. Have some perspective on that. Also want to send a big word out
there to anybody who was working on this ordinance to join us on the air. I want to talk
about this. I want to share the same conversations that are happening at our board meetings and
at our budget sessions. Want to have them on the air here. I want to invite you all on
any of you, whether you're for or against, doesn't matter. WFHR has always walked the line.
We don't take sides. We would love to have you on the air to talk about this. I do want
to say a big shout out to the people that are working the grassroots effort behind this.
I don't ever want to discourage that. Whatever the topic is. Really give a big tip of the
hat to all the people that have worked on that. I did want to just say one, to your point,
Wisconsin rapids to a different degree or another, different names of the different sides of the
river has been here a long time, a long time before that mill was here. It's about the people and
the ingenuity of the people, the hard work of the people to create new things and get the
government, you know, keep them at bay and out of the way so we can, you know, develop our ideas
and move forward and we're not going anywhere. I do want to also touch base on a little bit more of
like what I learned in the last couple of years is that this isn't Wisconsin rapids dealing with
the ATV-UTV ordinance. This is statewide all over the place and though I'm on a pressure from the
state to kind of, this is just my opinion. I'm not looking to, you know, make people in the state
angry, not that they're listening to me right now, maybe they're, I don't know, but in the end,
it would have been nice if the state said, you know what, this is happening and let's make it
easier on everybody and just pass the statute that says, these are allowed on the roads with,
let's license them, let's make sure the drivers are lights, just like any other vehicle. If it would
have just been out of the other vehicle would be fine and let the families figure out how to make
that work for the trails and all that stuff for family entertainment. But they didn't and they said
let's just let everybody create their own ordinance and then fight with each other about, you know,
who gets this and who gets that and kind of create a whole lot of chaos that I don't believe
needs to be there and then that puts pressure on the county because the county wants to, you know,
they have more rural areas and more rural communities so they're trying to work with them.
They're putting some pressure on like right now they want us to open that 600 feet on Griffith
Avenue part of highway Z and you know that would give you access or the riders access from
from Port Evers and Acusa to Grand Rapids and it could be a good thing but there's all sorts of
other pieces to it. I think it would be that just chipping away at the iceberg and if we can
get that chipped and eventually other things will kind of calm and it'll come a little bit slower
so people adjust to it and say oh this isn't really as big a deal as we thought it was.
I couldn't agree more. I wanted to mention just a couple of quick notes before we let you go.
Tree pickup in our area is going on January 20th through the 24th. Make sure to get those trees
out there in time and registration is open for winter and spring programs and activities.
Find out more about those getting registered especially always looking for volunteers, coaches
for some of these things or just want to get the kids involved. Find out more at www.rapids.org
www.rapids.org and sir if people want to get in touch with you reach out to you about anything
how can they get get hold of you. I have a city cell phone now 7153152925. It took me a
little while to memorize that. I think I'm doing pretty good. And thank you. Yeah and thank you Matt
appreciate the time and want to send to all of you to youtube to subscribe to the Wisconsin
Rapids Community Media's page. Keep up the date and the great work that they are doing a big
thank you to the gang over there. We'll talk again next month. Thank you James Creek. We'll have
more midday magazine coming up for you right here at 975 FM 1320 AM. WFHR we are locally
ground radio.
