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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Good morning.
It is 7 0 6.
It's nice to have you here up north on this Wednesday, August 6, 2025.
Parker Olson is producing this show down in Madison Studio A2 in meteorologist Brittany Merleau is here as well.
Brittany, we were talking about the musical Hamilton opening 10 years ago today.
Have you seen it?
Are you a Hamilton fan?
I have not seen it.
No,
but I
would love to.
I
would love to.
You would love it.
What I learned over the news break here is that Parker here, he was in high school when this musical was peaking and makes a unique claim about his knowledge of Hamilton and that claim Parker would be.
since we don't have a guest for, you know, another 28 minutes or so here, we're not going to turn the show over to Parker.
She's going to recite Hamilton, the clean, clean, take out all the naughty words.
So we like to take,
that?
Oh, wait, see.
Never mind.
In the very first line, there's words we can't say.
So I guess we'll just have to go to weather instead.
Yeah, you got it.
line.
Yep.
We'll come back to it.
Shoot.
We'll workshop this.
In the meantime, we have been talking about the wildfire smoke, which by the way, the advisories for at least parts of Wisconsin
This is the 23rd day, I believe, of advisories exceeding the record from 2023.
Not a record you really want to break, but we do appear to be on the tail end of it, Brittany.
Let's
hope so.
This morning, it kind
of went backwards this morning.
Areas that aren't even in an air quality alert are seeing some of the highest levels throughout the state right now.
Just south of Madison, you're in a red.
unhealthy level at the moment.
It's orange, unhealthy for sensitive, pretty much all throughout central Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin, and all of eastern Wisconsin, still seeing that wildfire smoke, that fog, that thick haze out there.
Hopes are that by this afternoon it should clear the entire state.
We've got winds starting to move out of the south.
They're starting to get feisty, so they should gust around 15 to 20, hopefully miles per hour this afternoon, kicking out that air mass and bringing in a new one.
But the new one comes with rain, more humidity and mugginess and of course, hot temperatures as we push towards the weekend.
So changing weather patterns completely here as the jet stream starts to lift north.
We are looking at a low pressure just off to the west that is wrapping in a warm front to the western parts of the state right now.
So that's where those south winds are coming from.
And today we are going to hit the low to mid 80s.
So getting a little bit warmer there.
We will become mostly cloudy because we do have rain on the way.
Light rain and drizzle is possible today, kind of working its way throughout the state.
And then overnight, we got another round coming through with some more scattered showers, maybe some rumbles of thunder, no severe weather to worry about just yet.
And of course, as we go into tomorrow, highs will be in the low to mid 80s.
And we've got the mugginess seeping in at that point.
It's going to get very hot and humid.
Temperatures nearing 90 degrees on Friday and Saturday.
and dew points in those 70s, so it's going to be feeling closer to those mid to upper 90s and then the cold front hits.
That'll be Saturday and into Sunday.
That's where the severe weather chance moves in and some heavy rain that could cause some flash flooding.
So much to watch over the next few days here.
Good morning from Tigerton, writes Rob on YouTube.
It's partly cloudy with light fog and 58 degrees, still very smoky.
Yesterday I got four yards mode west of Tigerton and had no breakdowns, which is something we always like to see.
I went to the Tigerton library after work to get the latest information on Highway 29 plans to put into my Highway 29 scrapbook.
and then had tacos sponsored by Tigerton Main Street Incorporated.
Yesterday was his sister Debbie and her husband Kevin's 30th wedding anniversary, some lawns to mow and then a doctor's appointment in Shawno and here's a traffic update from Tigerton.
Beginning August 11th there will be road work along 29 Westbound between the Wolf River Bridge and the Highway 22 interchange.
It'll be down to one lane in each direction and the Highway 22 interchange ramps will be closed until late October.
Take note.
I know.
We would do more of these, but given what construction season is like in Wisconsin, that would take the whole three hours.
So we're just going to put them in from the Tigerton area.
If you want to add your own to the comment section, that's fine as well.
Hey, Brittany, thanks so much.
We'll talk to you in our next hour.
Sounds good.
See you.
All right.
A reminder that you can always sign up for our newsletter up north news wi.com, including our Sunday morning newsletter about Wisconsin politics.
And we have a question of the week this week that asks, how should blue states respond to the red state gerrymandering going on in Texas?
Coming up across the civic media radio network later today.
Well, of course, you've got Matt and air on air, which follows this program from nine to 11.
Political strategist Joseph Pecky will be joining Jane and Greg just after nine
30.
And then in the 10 o'clock hour, Darren Van Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
Again, Darren Van Ruden, not to be confused with Derek Van Orden, the congressman, who is decidedly not working in line with things the way the Wisconsin Farmers Union is.
The Todd Alba show is on from two to four this afternoon.
And I'll be making an appearance there.
in the two o'clock hour and maybe Trig V. Olson from the Lincoln Project.
I know that he is traveling, so he may or may not be checking in.
He's so far away right now that we may actually have him on this show tomorrow morning, Trig V. Olson, because we can't get him to wake up.
It's 7am in Wisconsin, but it'll be well past that where he is.
So we might have a Trigvielson sighting, if not this afternoon, then tomorrow.
And then Jim Santel is the guest host on the Maggie Dawn Show, starting at four o'clock this afternoon.
Hey, Pete Schwabba's got a couple of guests this evening as well at 6.30.
He'll catch up with musician and photographer Chris Rogowski and then Madison film critic Rob Thomas.
at 720.
So much to see, so much to hear across the Civic Media radio network, you can see more over at their website, civicmedia.us.
We've been talking more sports lately than we otherwise normally would.
That's what happens when your team is on another winning streak.
This one is five games after the Brewers beat up on Atlanta again last night, seven to two.
So the winning streak is at five.
The lead over the Cubs is now four, a four game lead in the National League Central Division.
Freddie Peralta win five innings, giving up only one run on four hits.
Andrew Vaughn singled in two runs and he extended his hitting streak to 11, matching his career high.
And National League Rookie of the Year candidate Isaac Collins drove in two runs on two hits.
Jose Quintana will start game three and once again pregame at 5.40 this evening on several civic media stations.
Then a travel day tomorrow as the Brewers come home and will have a weekend series against the Mets.
Do we think the radio station tickets for the Brewers, those nice club seats, do we think they're all probably all snapped up by
about no?
no?
Well, that's what happens if you want to go to a White Sox game.
I mean, there's tickets.
If you want to go to a Twins game, it's already tough enough to be a fan of a sports team that is not doing well.
In the social media era,
you at least can laugh through the tears.
The memes that have been put up, the TikTok videos that have been put up by Twins fans after the ownership had a fire sale, you know, last week.
I mean, what was it?
10 out of the 26 players.
10 at yes.
We're traded away in some way, shape or form.
So you've got like the, you know, the John Travolta one from.
Pulp Fiction or, I think it's Pulp Fiction.
He's just looking around the room, like looking,
is
anybody here?
And of course they put him in Target Field.
Looking around, does anybody hear from this team?
You've got from the Fresh Prince, when Will Smith comes down into the family home and like all the furniture is gone and everybody's gone, like where did they go?
No shortage of movie clips that point out just how hard it is to be a twins fan this year anymore.
don't have to feel bad for the
I think the only the only team I would say I don't like in baseball would be the White Sox because they had is he still there?
Is he gone now?
That announcer of theirs?
Hawk Harrelson or something like that.
I mean, just it
was
him and another announcer.
And it's just that, you know, that Chicago tough guy thing where they just they just dump on all the other teams.
They can't just call the game.
They always felt the need to punch down back when they thought they were all tough.
And then, of course, the White Sox, you know, before the Brewers were big rivals with the Cubs.
The Brewers were in the American League, and it was the White Sox games that got particularly nasty.
I mean, in the couple of years before the Brewers switched from the American and the National League, those games, I'm not saying they were all bench clearing brawls, but they got to be tense at times.
Interesting, I
that.
And either way, you had to put up with Chicago fans coming up to Milwaukee, and that's...
That's a thing.
You know what though?
Over time.
I mean, we used to say this about Bears fans too, but you know, when you spend enough time in the basement, you're eventually a little bit more humbled when you're able to, you know, come out of the basement and meet up with the rest of the folks.
Bears fans have been
better behaved.
I'm not, I'm not going to say well behaved.
Don't get me wrong
here,
but
they've been
better, better behaved.
Roger putting up on Facebook here.
Hawks partner was Tom Pechorek.
Yeah, it was him and there was, uh, was it John Rooney for a while was with them as well.
Anyway, they were just, they were just so, so sad.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So not fun to listen to.
Uh, so for the, for the brewers to be having the kind of year that they're having,
especially this lead up on the Cubs, if it can maintain, it's just going to make things that much sweeter.
Plenty of things to see over at couriernewsroom.com, Courier Newsroom being the parent company of Up North News.
For example, there's Mark Jacob, who joins us on Friday mornings.
He also has the Stop the Presses newsletter.
You can also see it at stopthepresses.news.
And this week in his newsletter, he says, will journalism become impossible in the U.S.?
Trump's war on the free press is following the foreign dictator's playbook, and he outlines that.
Let's see, we also have our friend Jennifer Scholesi who has a newsletter on Substack.
You can find her newsletter in distinct chatter on Substack by searching for at news Jennifer.
She is talking about the Paramount merger with Skydance and its takeover of CBS.
And in her newsletter this week, she says, a CBS investigative piece on the Epstein jail video broke important new ground.
under its new mega mandate, that story might never be allowed.
And so you can look for that again from our friend Jennifer Schulze.
And then back on Courier Newsroom on YouTube, go to youtube.com and then put in Courier HQ.
and look for the series.
How is this better with Akilah Hughes?
And again, this one is about the Trump media takeover and why Americans are increasingly split into the informed and the manipulated.
So all that and more to find over at couriernewsroom.com.
A local update is coming up next for some of you.
And then when we come back, we'll have this week's homeroom segment.
We'll be talking to folks from Green Bay, from the school board, from the city council, about the ways that they
created better taxpayer transparency when it came to the cost of voucher schools and how you can do that in your community as well.
From the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
Powered by Up North News, I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Keep in mind there are a number of different ways you can join us here on these mornings powered by UpNorth News on the Civic Media Radio Network.
We can be found on Facebook both under UpNorth News and Civic Media and on YouTube again for UpNorth News and for Civic Media.
You can go to either one of those places and put something in the comment sections but you can also use the Civic Media app and send us a text message that way.
You can also
use the voice note feature.
Again, go to one of the stations on the Civic Media app, send us a little voice note.
And if we like it, we might pop it up there as well.
Although now to be fair, if you jump into the comment section and you give a take that shall we say is not necessarily popular.
given with the listeners of the show, don't be surprised if there's a little pushback.
I'm noticing, for example, on one of the Facebook pages, hearing all about, you know, let's just do more to have Canada put out their wildfires and stop trying to take away my gas stove, to which somebody responded basically along the lines of, nobody is trying to take your gas stove, sweetie.
It's just another one of those cases where rather than address the real problem,
it's easier to throw things out there and say, well, what about this?
Never mind a changing climate.
What about my gas stove?
We are seeing it in, for example, the Epstein files things as well, where yesterday you had Donald Trump wandering along the roof of the White House, creating a new diversion so that people stop talking about things like, you know, the Epstein case and his role in it, or trying to overturn elections, things like that.
I noticed that in the story about Trump up on the White House roof yesterday, it was implied that he was trying to change the subject and things like that, but I noticed that the Epstein case wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article, nor the economy, nor the job cuts that are being made.
Instead,
down the street on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are trying to create that next distraction and they're going back to their moldy oldies, their greatest hits, their break class in case of emergency distraction.
That of course would be Bill and Hillary Clinton.
because the House Oversight Committee voted to subpoena for the Epstein Files at Trump's Department of Justice, but only after adding subpoenas for a who's who of distractions.
The Clintons, former Attorneys General Merrick Garland, Jeff Sessions, William Barr.
It's pretty clear that the Trump administration's gonna ignore that subpoena and hold on to the Epstein Files.
What about the others?
Should they ignore Congressional subpoenas?
Once upon a time, I would say I don't recommend that.
If you're subpoenaed, you should take that seriously.
But let the record show that when the January 6th investigative committee subpoenaed representatives Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Kevin McCarthy, they were given the metaphorical middle finger.
And you should expect the same from Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi to do the same with these new subpoenas because actually, you know, look, why seek justice for Epstein's victims when there's, you know, quote unquote, real work to be done, like attaching a gaudy gilded ballroom to the White House.
So the subpoenas are out there.
But again, it's more about creating a distraction.
I always feared that the same thing was happening with something called Marcy's law.
And I'm pivoting now to the state level of things.
It's something that has been in referendums.
It's been in legislation.
It is supposed to expand and strengthen the rights of crime victims.
And look, who is against the rights of crime victims, right?
But again, should that be a blank check and undo things like, you know, due process in the Constitution?
But heaven forbid you stand up against something that is trumpeted as victims' rights, even if it has flaws.
Well, State Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, politician that she is, has certainly figured that one out, because in a new Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article by Dan Bice, Justice Rebecca Bradley blasts Judge Chris Taylor over her opposition to Marcy's law.
Last week, Bradley sharply criticized Taylor for opposing a constitutional amendment aimed at expanding and strengthening the rights of crime victims.
Bradley noted that Chris Taylor had twice voted against the constitutional amendment and said, Chris Taylor's radical political agenda is out of touch with the people of Wisconsin.
Taylor would tarnish the Wisconsin Supreme Court with politically driven decisions and voters cannot trust her to exercise good judgment.
Again, every assertion is usually a confession in cases like this.
Taylor did vote against the measure in 2017 and 2018, and her campaign treasurer, Bice Rights, was among those who took the measure to court even after 75% of the voters backed it in 2020.
The Supreme Court ended up finding the amendment was properly enacted, even though, as a lower court judge noted, its language was confusing and insufficient.
Well, what do we mean by confusing and insufficient?
Well, this whole package of victims' rights laws called Marcy's Law has been criticized for undermining due process, for basically equating victims' rights to the rights of the accused.
But
the rights of the accused are important for this reason.
It's not the victim that is going against the abuser, it's the government.
And before government should be able to put you behind bars, they should be able to make their case.
And if the victim is able to do things like withhold certain evidence, saying that it's a violation of their privacy,
And if due process then doesn't come to the person being accused of a crime, you can see the slippery slope that we're on toward putting people behind bars who may not have committed a criminal offense.
I'm sorry.
I almost forgot who was president of the United States and what's actually happened to Americans in this day and age.
So Rebecca Bradley knows that if you use something like this and say that Chris Taylor is opposed to victims' rights, that's going to stick with a lot of people.
Hopefully more folks take a look at what it is the package actually does and whether it's the right way to go.
Our homeroom segment is up next.
You're up north.
Welcome to our weekly homeroom segment where we highlight public education in Wisconsin and the opportunities and especially the threats to it, including the lack of taxpayer transparency when it comes to things like the ongoing voucher school movement in Wisconsin.
And today's topic takes me back several years to 2017, particularly when I was helping my friend, then state representative Dana Wachs, in his campaign for governor.
And one of the things that he liked to talk about, that he thought not enough people were talking about, was that need for greater taxpayer transparency on property tax bills.
That not enough was being done to let taxpayers know that when they see that line on their property tax bill that says, you know, school district of Chippewa Falls.
that not all that money is going to the school district of Chippewa Falls.
In fact, a lot of money is skimmed off the top and put into the voucher program, but the taxpayer wouldn't know it.
Dana Walks wrote a bill that called for that chunk of money to be put separately on the property tax bill.
Republicans in the legislature year after year said no, that they weren't going to require that through state law.
Some folks in Green Bay said, well, maybe we need to make that happen at the local level.
and they recently did.
And they're here to talk about how you could do that same thing in your hometown and have, again, greater taxpayer transparency.
This isn't about whether voucher schools should exist.
And this time around, it's not even whether they should get state funding, though I'd argue that they shouldn't, but at the very least,
You should know how much of your tax dollars go to that when it's on your property tax bill.
So we welcome back to the program our friend Denise Gomer Hutchinson from Wisconsin Public Education Network.
We're also happy to be joined by Laura McCoy of the Green Bay School Board and Alyssa Prophet who's an alder on the Green Bay City Council.
Nice to have all of you here.
Thank you, Denise, Laura, Alyssa.
Good to see you all.
It's nice
to be here.
Denise, let us start with you.
I know we've talked to you about this previously, but lead us up into what happened in Green Bay.
In other words, before we even get to what they did, maybe you can say, you'll say it better than I can.
Why is it important to have this kind of transparency on property tax bills?
Well, it's critical for taxpayers to make well informed decisions on if they support future referendas, but also just to know and understand where their tax dollars are going.
Yeah.
And so, again, the state legislature wasn't making this happen.
Laura, do you want to pick up the story and talk about how things started to get rolling in Green Bay?
Yes.
In the fall of 2023, our school board passed a resolution asking the city council of the various municipalities that fall underneath the
Green Bay School District umbrella to please include this information on their tax bill.
We started with Green Bay, which is obviously the largest municipality.
We passed the resolution on our board, passed it unanimously.
It went before the city council following January and it got tabled.
It didn't pass and they didn't even take a vote.
What happened is that this is where Alyssa comes in.
She was elected the following April and brought this back to the City Council.
The up make of their City Council had changed.
And she really pushed hard for this.
Alyssa, why don't you go ahead and take the baton from there to talk about how you got started in this process.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm thankful to know both Denise and Laura, who are great advocates for public education.
I also value public education.
I have a kindergartner and first grader starting up in about a month here at Green Bay Public School.
This was a conversation that I hate to say was easy at the start, right?
Because I've yet to talk to a voter who wants less transparency when it comes to where their tax dollars are going.
They want more.
in this conversation, like where do we put it?
I believe there's a few pieces of mail that taxpayers will look at and take seriously and that's likely their W-2 documents if they still receive those via mail and it's their tax bill, it's their property tax bill.
The entirety of the council sees calls go up when it's that time of year, right?
So really what I did from there was bring back a communication really for
just staff to investigate the feasibility.
That's the first step is really like, can we get our staff who are phenomenal at the city of Green Bay?
They're willing to run with a lot of things that the council wants to look into, right?
So that was the first step we thankfully got that through committee level.
worked legal and finance, worked with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue, showed examples of where and what we were looking to do.
They came back and Wisconsin Department of Revenue was really our end all, or you know, the final say when it comes to the feasibility piece, they said, yeah.
Yes, we can do that.
The imaging that was shown was then sent back to council to discuss further.
Was it interesting night at council in terms of who spoke in favor and who spoke against?
I can maybe let Laura or Denise speak to that a little further, but thankfully it did pass.
Unfortunately, when a lot of things passed easy in this cycle for us, this one was not.
It was a 6-6 and it was broken by the mayor.
but it was a pass.
So we'll take that.
Well, without a doubt.
So once you looked at the feasibility, I'm wondering if part of it too was then the cost.
It's one thing to say you want the transparency, but A, you have to go get the numbers and then B, you have to change the way that you do your property tax bills to put it out there.
Was cost any kind of a consideration in this as well, Alyssa?
That was certainly a question from a number of elders as well.
And our finance department is the one who creates and does the work there.
And then the county is the one who prints the bill.
So from a city perspective, our staff said to them, this would be $0 cost.
I mean, they said it's it's work that we're already doing.
It's it's something that if that's what the body wants, it was kind of funny, the discussion, you know, folks were like, well, what else can we add to it?
And they're like, yeah, what else do you want to add?
I mean, it's printed.
for the city of Green Bay?
Yeah, so cost certainly was a factor, but staff was confident in saying that it wouldn't be at any additional cost for us.
Yeah, it's funny that you say that.
It is sometimes politically convenient when you want cost itemized.
I recall being in the legislature and hearing Republicans say, well, there should be a Google government should be essentially like a checkbook where you can look line by line at all of the things that cost taxpayers money, which nobody really totally
disagrees with Denise unless you're looking for obfuscation.
And so it's one thing about whether, you know, it's it's feasible to get the numbers.
It's another thing if you can afford to put the numbers on.
But it seemed to me first and foremost, the reason we weren't seeing these numbers on tax bills was that there were too many lawmakers trying to hide the cost of vouchers.
And Wisconsin Public Education Network has basically made a cottage industry out of going, Oh, we'll get those numbers for you.
Yes, we have.
And that's been really important and valuable because we're finding a lot of legislators and therefore also city council members have no idea what the costs are for the voucher program and also what the costs are on the taxpayers.
Right, and so that's Denise Gomer Hutchison from Wisconsin Public Education Network.
A moment ago, you heard from Alyssa Prophet on the City of Green Bay City Council.
Now back to Laura McCoy on the Green Bay School Board.
And again, this whole notion of getting the numbers and providing the transparency.
This does not sound like it was a heavy lift for the school district of Green Bay, nor for any other school district.
The transparency is something you would naturally want the taxpayer to have, it seems to me.
Yes.
And I think that the indicator of the importance, the political importance of this statewide is who showed up at our city council that night to argue against voucher transparency.
I think you might be interested to know that John Gard showed up and Kate Zeiske showed up to argue against this measure.
And remind people who they are.
John Garg used to be in the state legislature and his wife, Kate Zeiske, used to be the secretary of state treasurer.
And state
treasurer,
yeah.
So I mean, they've had leadership positions that were part of a legislature that was not looking to make these costs transparent.
And as you just said, they're still arguing against that to this point.
Let's carry it then to...
the next step and that is other communities around Wisconsin if they want to do this and I don't know if the order in which you did it was the way that everybody should do it.
Denise do you want to go with this first that if somebody just wants to start this from scratch in their particular school district what are your recommended first steps and then I'll ask Laura and Alyssa the same question.
Well, you'd want to contact Wisconsin Public Education Network.
You can contact one of the regional, you can go to our website, find out information, how to get a hold of us, and we'll gladly have a conversation with you and get you all the background details.
In fact, we're gonna, we have a toolkit that we're going to make available to communities that want to take this on.
And yes, the first step is the school board.
um writing that resolution and asking the city to do this or the municipality or the township because that's where it really has to start is they have the information and they can move forward with it.
So
And that would be at wisconsinnetwork.org, a great website to learn more about taxpayer transparency.
And so yeah, that's Laura from a school board standpoint.
Again, if somebody is looking to get this going, what are your recommendations for first steps they should take?
Well, yes, as Denise said, it starts with that resolution.
And since we were able to do this in Green Bay,
People have been reaching out to me across the state.
In fact, after I'm done here this morning, I'll be calling someone on the eastern part of the state who is very interested in trying this in their community.
This issue is heating up.
And I was in Milwaukee over the weekend to see Beto O'Rourke at a city.
um, hall kind of, um, situation.
And I've got to speak and tell people about this, you know, what's going on.
And I got to tell you that the room, um, when I told them that next year there might be as much as $800 million taking out of public education for about the voucher program.
I mean, this is
people are paying attention to this right now.
So if this is important to you, if this is something you want to try to do, start with your school board.
But you're also going to need your city officials.
You're going to need the support of your community to some degree, as well as potentially your superintendent, maybe some statewide elected officials.
In Green Bay, it took a team of people to take it through all the stages.
And in the end, that's what it took.
Alyssa, in our final minute here from a city standpoint, again, whether somebody is hearing who is serving on a city council or is close to people who are, what should they do?
Yeah, absolutely.
I would say reach out to Wisconsin Public Education, ask those questions, and you don't have to wait, I would say, from a city perspective, right, for your school board to take something up.
If this is something that interests you, I think we always hear how education funding is complicated.
It is, but sit down, grab a coffee with someone like Denise, get an understanding, because even though you might be from a municipal perspective, you still have.
you can increase some transparency for your township.
And everyone should consider doing it.
We can't wait for the state to act.
No.
And our friend Chris Handbook Boyle puts on Facebook, what a team for the taxpayers, what community will be next?
And it's true.
Oh, wait, did I?
I want to make sure I get that right.
I did say .org, right?
On mine?
Yes, WisconsinNetwork.org.
Okay, I just want to, I saw in the comment section, somebody fixed theirs.
And again, just want to make sure it was clear, WisconsinNetwork.org to learn more.
Laura McCoy from the Green Bay School Board, Alyssa Profitt, a District 7 alder in the city of Green Bay, Denise Gomer Hutchison from Wisconsin Public Education Network.
You guys are taxpayer rock stars indeed.
Thank you so very much.
Good to see you today.
Nice
to be here.
All right.
And again, this is something that you can do in your community as well.
And I think back to Dana Walks's original bill.
This is a basic thing.
The legislature should have done it years and years ago.
They didn't, but you can.
A local break is next.
For some of you, others will catch up with Jimmy Koska from Civic Media next year up north.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Hey, Civic Media sports director, Jimmy Koskis here now to tell us about, well, little sports, a little bit of some of the news stories that he's following there in Western and Southwest Wisconsin.
If he's not snoring, let's check in and see if he's still napping over here.
Jimmy, you up, buddy?
You
up.
I am wide awake, man.
It is day two of high school football season, so we're ready to go.
Let's do it.
Yeah, yeah.
So what were you doing at 2.30 this morning?
Adjusting some depth charts, making sure that our players set paperwork in, and sending off about 80 emails about our practice plan today.
No rest
for the weary.
All right.
How long were you on the field yesterday?
I started my day with football at about 12.30 because we had to issue equipment wrapped up around nine o'clock after a coach's meeting.
So, you know, eight and a half hours, nothing like a volunteer coach doing a nine to five.
That's a nice side hustle you got there for very little pay.
So, uh, how, how are the kids?
Is it like, Oh, why are we here so early?
We can wait another week.
Or were they, were they wanted summer vacation to last?
Are they fired up to be there?
A little
to be honest, when I tell them that our scrimmage is a week from Friday and our first game is two weeks from Friday there, I was getting a little bit wide.
I'm like, Hey, we only have eight practices till we're, uh, going out and hitting somebody else, you know, for, for a change in the scrimmage.
And then, you know, you only have 12 practices before your first game in Wisconsin.
So it's, it's, it's right there.
And that's only if you practice weekdays.
There's teams that practice like on Saturdays.
but I'm like, man, I need the weekends.
Oh yeah.
I mean,
again, you're allowed to have a life no matter how dedicated you are to sports or work
or
anything.
You need the rest too.
I always say, if you want to get better, best thing as a player, if you want to get better is to get all that rest, you know, get that nine hours of sleep and rest and that's going to be the thing that helps you the most.
That's not just for football player.
That's for life, you know, sleep.
I obviously don't pay attention to that though.
No,
I mean.
If we practiced what we preached, I mean, come on, what kind of an example would we be setting here?
Oh,
exactly.
Let's
get
an update on stories you're following, including the mystery of the not so babbling bubblers.
They've been turned off because they weren't ADA compliant mysteriously like 30 years after the law was first passed, but there's talk about putting new drinking fountains in Green Bay or in La Crosse, I should say.
What's the latest on that?
Yes, the last night was the first committee meeting.
They forwarded a recommendation to add drinking fountains around the cross that are ADA compliant.
So that was the measure that passed.
The measure that failed was a resolution to protect the historic bubbleers.
That would be to delay removing them, but that
that measure failed because as the city noted last night, there's no plan to remove them.
They just have them shut off because they're not ADA compliant.
So the measure to add drinking fountains around the cross did pass because as I said, they want to have them available for people, especially with the heat waves, with people that are just out and about.
This was the first year they'd actually shut off the bubblers.
So the free public drinking water option wasn't there this year in La Crosse.
And well, pretty notably, it's been kind of hot this summer.
So they did forward that recommendation.
the full city council votes on this a week from tomorrow.
Are they talking like a one for one replacement?
Like at each location where there's this old style one, they're going to put a new one?
They're looking at several options, I guess, like just how many they would do in locations.
They haven't really hammered that out, but they do want to add some around the city.
Okay.
It just seems and I'm not trying to be too cynical here about it.
It just seems a kind of a backdoor way of just completely reconfiguring, you know, the drinking fountain system and saying, well, we don't want some there anymore, but we will put some over here.
And hey, if that's what you want, just say so.
Just this whole notion of turning them off because you suddenly learned 30 years later that they're not ADA compliant is just again, still kind of a head scratcher for me.
It is a little weird.
And I think
when you consider lacrosse has had a lot of ordinances and issues dealing with people who are on housed and how they've managed that by banning camping in public places, by now adding security to parks and public parking ramps and things like that.
feel like there's the advocates for people that are dealing with that.
I think they're paying very close attention to this, too, because where are these resources going to be for people?
Are they going to keep them away from the areas where they consider trouble areas?
What are they going to do?
And I think there's a lot of attention to be paid for it, because, as always, policy affects people.
And that's something they have to deal with there.
You really touch on something here the the pivot that we're making from you know old historic drinking fountains to the very real current problem of homelessness and I was reminded of it
you know, being in Madison a couple of weeks back to get all these civic media folks together, that there's an area, you know, near the state capitol where a lot of folks who are unhoused will gather.
There's certainly a lot of communities have that.
Downtown Eau Claire has a place where they gather.
And I'm just reminded that this continues to be
a a challenge almost unlike any other in in every community and I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers.
I'm happy to work in this smaller community Chippewa Falls with a group called Hope Village that is using the tiny houses approach and there's all all of these tiny houses that people can go to instead of getting
hotel vouchers or motel vouchers, which can get to be really expensive.
I'm not going to pretend that that's that that's a one size fits all problem solution.
Only to just, again, recognize what you're saying, Jimmy, is that, you know, while lacrosse has a lot of issues to talk about, homelessness is the one that a better solution seems to elude all of us, that we all seem to be looking for the best way to go about this, that shows some compassion, but also doesn't break the bank.
Yeah, there's a lot of parts to it too, because it's not just one issue.
I mean, this is an issue with, you know, the lack of affordable housing.
It's an issue with, you know, resources to allocate to it.
I mean, they talk about, you know, how much they have to spend to clean up things like the marsh area after encampments and things like that.
Like
how do you deal with those things?
It's really
complicated and it affects so many different areas of public policy.
There's not really a one size fits all approach to it.
And you and I could talk about this for a whole show.
There's so much local
government without
a
doubt.
I mean, there's a criminal part of it for some folks who are that desperate.
There is a drug addiction part of it.
There's a mental health part of it.
And then there's the folks who just fall on tough times and don't have any support staff.
And all of those things need to be addressed by local
government members who, by and large, also are essentially just volunteering, trying to serve their community, doing the best they can.
Jimmy Koska, thank you so much for the update.
As always, hope you have a great day.
Get some rest.
We'll do.
All right.
We will be talking to Earl Ingram and much more coming up, including our climate check on this Wednesday morning, powered by Up North News.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
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