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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Kratlow powered by Up North News.
Now, from our Lake WSOTA studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Well, hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
It is 6.06 on this Thursday morning, September 4th, 2025.
Another beautiful morning to have you here up north, chilly, cold, but still beautiful to be here live from Lake WSOTA from wherever you're spending your mornings listening across the Civic Media Radio Network.
or listening to us or watching us and all the other various platforms, Facebook, YouTube, podcast, app, website, you name it, we appreciate you being here today.
I got a question for you.
Yesterday, the question was, what would you do with a billion dollars?
Today's question is, what would you do with $2 billion?
Because it looks like already with no winner last night, the jackpot for Saturday night's Powerball drawing is going to be at least 1.7
billion dollars.
Closing in on some of the biggest jackpots ever, the largest of which was two billion dollars, just about two and a half years ago.
And apparently that that could be you yet.
So what would you do with almost two billion dollars?
Let us know in the comment sections or use that text feature on the Civic Media app to let us know what you would be doing.
On the program today, Congress is back in session and so we will visit live with Congressman Mark Buchan about the full range of issues, all of which have a bit of a deja vu feel to them because we're still talking about the Epstein files because there's been a noticeable lack of transparency from a certain president.
We'll be talking about another government shutdown showdown because yeah, that's still a thing.
and much more with Congressman Mark Polkan coming up at 7.35 this morning.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley came up north last week to see one of the ways that Wisconsin can address the ongoing problem of affordable housing.
We'll hear some of the comments that he made about his likely run for governor and when he expects to make that formal announcement.
Also, states are starting to go it alone when offering vaccine and other public health guidelines, now that the US Department of Health and Human Services is working in complete opposite of what you should do if you stand for health and human services.
In economic news, it is the worst of both worlds.
Inflation remains an issue, which is why you might want to hike interest rates.
But the job market is softening, which is why you might want to cut interest rates.
In other words, Trump's stagflation with a side order of political pressure on what's supposed to be an independent Federal Reserve Board.
We'll discuss that dilemma with Sean O'Malley coming up this morning.
And we'll ask Joseph Heckey about the possibility that the president will send military troops to Milwaukee for no other reason than he can.
as political stunts go.
All of that is coming up.
And of course, if you can't hang around for the full program, but some of this sounds interesting to you, you should get over to Spotify and you should follow this show.
Again, you don't have to listen to it every day, but you'll always have the most recent episodes right there, where you can just use your little finger, move up and down the screen to pick the part that you want to listen to, the guests that you want to hear from, or the part you want to hear again.
Do that at Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts, and take us along with you.
Otherwise, there's the menu of what's coming up for today.
The state forecast for meteorologists, Brittany Merleau, it's just cold.
Frost advisories are out on seasonably cold air.
It's taking over as the winds whip and another system is quickly going to clip us tonight.
It is 36 degrees right now in Black River Falls in Solon Springs and over in Accanto as well.
Today's forecast for the state partly cloudy and unseasonably cool.
Highs in the mid 50s up north, low 60s to the south.
a west wind at 15 to 25 miles an hour later today.
For tonight, widespread rain, maybe some thunder.
Lowes will be around 40 up north, 50 to the south, and a south wind at 10 to 15 miles an hour.
And again, full forecast details from Brittany coming up less than an hour from now.
This whole program doesn't happen by itself in Chippewa Falls.
It happens with
the essential assistance of one Parker Olson who produces this fine program at the Civic Media headquarters down in Madison at the top of State Street right near the state Capitol in Studio A dose.
Mr. Olson, good morning.
How are you?
know we were doing
It's a very international show.
It is a
Well, well, some do.
Yes, it's particularly
the global HQ.
That's us.
Yeah, we're worldwide.
Absolutely.
And I have done that.
I have rigged some of our numbers occasionally as I've been traveling.
I'm like, Oh, there's about to be a civic media listener in this country.
So whatever works.
But we also know that we have regular listeners in some other states.
They are callers, they are textures.
And we appreciate that very much as well.
There are plenty of people who, you know, aren't in Wisconsin full time anymore.
but still want to stay in touch with what the heck's going on in their state, especially a particular baseball team that is doing really well once again.
And so the Brewers had a nice win yesterday, beating the Phillies yesterday six to three.
This is just a fun bunch to watch.
And especially when you see somebody who is quite likely, if he doesn't get to be the rookie of the year, Isaac Collins,
He's going to be way up there in the balloting.
I don't know that I'd put a question mark there.
I mean, he'll be pitching this afternoon against the Phillies and so he'll have another chance to make the case for that.
The pregame begins at 2.35 this afternoon on Civic Media Stations in Richland Center.
Oshkosh, Racine Kenosha, Park Falls and Hayward.
So yeah, I could completely see that.
His
that.
It's just it's been that good despite injuries and there are more injuries that are happening.
Christian Yelich was out of the game yesterday with back soreness, which of course gives everybody a reason to pause.
We thought we were past that, but maybe not.
But Jose Quintana pitched well in there, pitched effectively into the seventh inning.
But I mean, the thing here was the the bats, the bats.
They don't come to life every game.
Don't get me wrong, but we have had more four or more run innings than anybody else in baseball.
It's not even close.
And the Brewers had jumped out to a five to nothing lead before an out was recorded in the first inning.
So they they know how to jump on starting pitchers for opposing teams.
at
It should.
And look, especially for the first quarter of the season, first third of the season, when the Brewers had no late game comebacks.
And then it was like somebody threw a switch and suddenly we're like the team of late inning comebacks.
But it, you know.
You don't know which one you're going to get on any given day.
So that's a very well grounded concern.
Roger on Facebook tells us the Cubs lost five to one.
So the Brewers magic number is now 17.
17
I could believe that might be lower.
Here's the thing you'll recall that the Brewers had swept the Phillies earlier this season in Philadelphia.
And so they have now clinched the season series and a potential tiebreaker with the Phillies as well.
you go.
They've got a lot of
now.
They do.
Yep.
The only one they, the only tiebreaker they don't.
own that I'm aware of, of course, is a big one with the Cubs.
But the Cubs would have to, you know, they're definitely playing catch up if they even want that tiebreaker to mean something.
So again, the Brewers against the Phillies this afternoon, 235 is the pregame.
Then the Brewers take off on the road, they have three games in Pittsburgh coming up this weekend, followed by three games in Texas.
before they head back home and calling up his handy-dandy schedule here.
They'll be home against the Cardinals starting a week from tomorrow.
They'll have a home series against the Cardinals and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will be along as well.
And then there's not much more after that.
There's a trip to St.
Louis and San Diego and then a home series against Cincinnati to wrap up the month of September and that's it.
We're talking playoffs.
Are we talking playoffs?
We're talking
Yes, we are.
And I tell you what, while we're in the sports vein, while we've got the brewers going on, we've got football as well.
High school football on many civic media stations.
Badgers are playing Saturday against Middle Tennessee.
Coverage will begin at one o'clock on stations in Richland Center, Amory, Wisconsin Rapids, and Ripon.
And on Sunday, you've got the Green Bay Packers opening up the regular season against the Detroit Lions at Lambeau Field.
Pre-game coverage begins at one o'clock for a 325 kickoff on stations in Richland Center, Park Falls, Racine, and Wattoma.
Some of those Packer stations are not necessarily the stations where you'd hear the Brewers or the Badgers.
Different stations will have different, you know, games based on the arrangements that they made.
So you'll want to make sure to go to the civic media website, civicmedia.us to learn more.
Or as put so succinctly on YouTube by Tony, go pack go.
Do you know go pack go is copyrighted or trademarked, whatever the,
you can't, you can't just
grab that.
The team was smart enough to grab that, which I've
I and many others have had to learn the hard way.
You get set to incorporate that into something because it sounds rather generic.
Yeah.
It is not generic.
Well, go you Packers go.
That's a song though.
Is it?
Who is it?
The Weisenheimers?
Who does that song?
Oh God, I don't know.
Just go.
Oh, it's a it's a fun song.
It is.
Go you Packers go song was by
Oh heck, where is it?
Yeah, the Weisenheimers there.
You're gonna you're gonna have to look that one up.
I think that can become a regular Friday feature.
Oh, a
Now just a little a little song to play on Fridays.
Wow.
You know, we're more than yacht rock here on Fridays.
We can play other things.
Are we?
Well, yeah, we can try.
We can try.
Okay.
I have a question for you, young man.
Whenever you hear a young man, you know, kind of a question we're going to get.
Yeah, the boomer is about to
come out.
I saw a news report about something that's making a comeback.
Parents very concerned about their kids and cell phones.
And they want to monitor, you know, they want to know what their kids are doing that they're not going to get into trouble on those cell phones.
And so they got something else for the kids instead.
Landlines are making a comeback.
And I ask this in all seriousness, at the time that you were growing up, did you still have a landline?
All right.
So, well, should the landlines make a comeback?
Should that be something that households do consider?
Maybe, maybe we didn't have to cut the cord after all.
There's, there's a role for everything and maybe for kids, it's the landline where you kind of have to hide, take that long cord and hide in a closet if you want to talk to somebody.
From the heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Wissota.
Thank you for making this the place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Kroetlo.
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.
Hey, you can be one of the many folks, the growing number of people, subscribing to Sunday mornings with Pat Kratlow.
That's our Sunday newsletter that we put out at Up North News.
More of a politically themed newsletter compared to the Wisconsin future stories that you get on the weekdays from us.
And it includes our question of the week and we ask, should dreamers be deported from the only country they've ever known?
It's something that President Trump continues to target and advocate for most recently I see a news story today in the New York Times about going after financial aid For the children of undocumented immigrants again.
These are people who have only ever known the United States They've done their thing.
They've worked hard in school.
They've done their homework.
They've gotten good grades Of course, they're
their parents are working typically in low wage jobs and so to make something of themselves to live you know the American dream might require some financial assistance and some states see that as an opportunity to train a new generation of workers come to our university stay here become taxpayers and citizens in our state but not for Donald Trump who wants to end all of those financial assistance programs round them all up put them in camps send them wherever
So what do you think of it?
Head over to upnorthnewswi.com, subscribe to our newsletters, and be the first to get our question of the week on Sunday mornings.
Tomorrow on the program, we will have Dr. Kristen Lyrely as always on Friday mornings in the eight o'clock hour, along with Mike Clemens, who at about 8.35 on Fridays, gets us set up for the weekend in sports.
And of course, we'll have our Week in Review panel with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, Jennifer Sholesy, Mark Jacob.
They all come up in the 7 a.m.
hour tomorrow here on the program.
Looking forward to having you along then as well.
But again, for today, Congressman Mark Polkhan will be here just over an hour from now.
The headline across national news outlets right now is all about states having to go their own way.
when it comes to vaccine guidelines and mandates.
Because not only do you have quackery in charge of the White House and the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, but you now have the first state saying it's going to get rid of all vaccine mandates, including for children.
And that, of course, would be the dysfunctional state of Florida, where, again, this was the state that was first to really
buck safeguards during COVID and their death rate shot up like a rocket out of Cape Canaveral.
And for the leaders there, it was like, well, that's no big deal, you know, thinning the herd, as it were, which apparently is a, in their mind, a valid scientific approach to take.
For the rest of us, not so much.
And that's why you see states that are starting to go it alone.
There is, for example, a new West Coast Health Alliance made up of California, Oregon, and Washington state.
And they are going to basically, well, their goal is to, quote, ensure that residents remain protected by science and not by politics, say the three Democratic governors of those states.
The Alliance will provide recommendations to residents on immunizations and ensure the public gets credible information on vaccine safety and efficacy.
The governors say the partnership is a unified response to what they call the Trump administration's destruction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that's supposed to be responsible for vaccine guidance.
But a lot of those folks have been fired by Kennedy and have been replaced by similar quacks who want to cast doubts on, you know, science, facts, things like that.
Here's the thing that the Florida Surgeon General said in getting rid of these vaccine mandates said, your body is a gift from God.
Well, this all is in keeping with the ultimate far right goal.
which is self policing.
We typically see it with those, you know, those evil regulations, the red tape that they say is choking business and industry and so-called job creators.
And if you only let them police themselves, everything will be fine because they'll tell you it's in their own best interest to police themselves in order to be assured of ongoing profits.
That is, of course, uproariously stupid.
A corporation isn't worried about ongoing profits.
They want profits this quarter, and they couldn't care less about the damage being done in the future, whether it's to the environment, to workers, to customers, anyone, but themselves and other shareholders.
Self-policing is antithetical to a functional society.
A functional society needs rules, needs standards, needs shared facts.
That's not some stinging indictment of humanity.
It just is what it is.
If there weren't speed limits, you're going 90 miles an hour, doesn't make you a bad person, especially the 99% of the time that it doesn't cause trouble.
But we know that if everyone did 90 all of the time, the carnage would hit all of us.
Someone we know, maybe our children left dead on the road.
And that's what Kennedy, Trump and others don't mind.
Children left dead on the road,
through lack of vaccinations.
If it means that they can attract enough fringe support to keep winning elections and stay in power.
Dr Oz summed it up yesterday in an interview saying this is the decision that a physician and a patient should be making together.
Parents love their kids more than anybody else could love that kid.
So why not let the parents play an active role in this?
Well, Dr Oz, they can play an active role in their child being safe or their child being in harm's way.
The difference is that
They can also play a role not only in their child being in harm's way, but all of the children around them being in harm's way.
A child not being vaccinated based on a shared set of facts and standards and science is akin to that child doing 90 miles an hour cruising down Main Street right past your kid's school.
A bunch of other kids doing 90 leaves other kids dead on the road.
And so that's why I'm happy to see the beginnings of sanity returning to American leadership, even if it's got to happen at the state level.
Because yes, every child's body is a gift from God, and there are still enough of us who know God isn't stopping measles or COVID.
God is trusting humanity enough to use the gifts we were given to use our brains, our science, and our hearts to take care of ourselves and every child.
Today's history lesson is coming up next, the Midwest Farm Report first, here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Critello.
Parker's got the dance.
He's got the dance figured out.
He, uh, he knows the video for, for today's birthday girl, Beyonce, Beyonce Knowles, uh, is 44 years old today.
Happy birthday to Beyonce.
Uh, you know, formerly of Destiny's child, but I guess she's done some pretty cool things on her own as well.
I didn't know
Seriously.
Yeah.
Destiny's child has ring a bell now.
Not as
I guess not.
Okay.
Did you know that Coke changed its formula in 1984?
Oh, save that for another time.
Gotta buy this man a history book.
Anyway, on this day in 1957, the governor of Arkansas called out the National Guard to prevent nine black students from enrolling in Little Rock Central High School.
A couple of weeks later, President Eisenhower would federalize the Arkansas National Guard and order it to protect students and allow them to enter.
That's
how you use the National Guard if you are president.
Anyway, on this day in 1961, President Kennedy authorized the Agency for International Development, USAID.
It would become the world's largest aid agency with missions in more than 100 countries in areas like health, education, environmental protection, embracing democracy.
In just the 20 years from 2001 to 2021,
An estimated 92 million deaths were likely averted thanks to USAID funding.
It was originally designed by JFK as the soft power alternative to prevent countries from getting cozy with the Soviet Union.
Now, of course, dealt a death blow by Donald Trump.
It's China that is using its soft power to provide aid and business partnerships and potential military alliances as well.
but USAID was formed 64 years ago today.
All right, let's go to 1976 now where the number one album was Fleetwood Mac's self-titled album.
The thing about this self-titled album going to number one in 1976, some albums they fly up the charts, others not so much.
This one had been released a year ago and was finally really getting traction with Rihanna over my head, say you love me, and more.
And again, was the number one album this week in 1976.
On this day in 1940, CBS began broadcasting television as a single station in New York City, station W2XAB.
It really doesn't flow off the tongue the same way that CBS does.
quite.
letters.
This is the W2XAB evening news with Walter Cronkite.
It just doesn't have the same sound to it.
By the way, speaking of CBS, happy birthday to The Price Is Right.
That that song just says I was too sick to go to school today And so I'm gonna be watching daytime TV with Bob Barker America's longest running game show made its debut on a be on a CBS rather this day in 1972 It was not really a debut so much as it was a revival It was a
Similar to a game that ran called The Price Is Right from 1956 to 1965, but that earlier version in black and white, it was a lot more sedate.
You know how you have those four contestants that bid on a prize and then one of them gets to come up on stage and play other games?
Yeah.
Well, the old black and white show in the 50s and 60s, the whole show was just the four contestants repeatedly bidding on various prizes.
And it was this new version in 1972 that added all the other little games.
Like, remember Lucky Seven, to get a new car, you had
to
have the seven $1 bills, you had to have at least one left, as you guess, the numbers and the price of the car, which was a lot easier back in the days that I was watching it when a new car was like, you know, $4,822.
Not many
No, no.
And what's the other Oh, cliffhanger.
with the Yodeling Mountain Climber.
I think they still use that one as well.
It started off as like a rotation of like five of these games, and there are now more than 70 of these games that Drew carried the host Rollster now.
Do you have a favorite?
I'm
You did not come here for the abuse, and yet you hear a whole bunch of us rattling our canes and our walkers going, what?
What?
Anyway, let's go back to 1976.
I said that Fleetwood Mac had the number one album.
The number one single this day in 1976 was by the Bee Gees.
Oops.
No, it wasn't.
There
Now, you might think that it was number one because of its appearance in Saturday Night Fever, but you'd be wrong because the movie hadn't come out yet.
It predated the movie, but the song would be part of the soundtrack a year later when Saturday Night Fever came out.
On this day in 1951, Frank Sinatra played Las Vegas for the first time at the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino
By 1959, he was the city's top draw.
And then later, of course, moved on to the Sands, because Sinatra Live at the Sands would be Cal Basie Orchestra is simply one of the greatest albums you could ever own.
And why you don't is a mystery to me.
You got to go out and get that.
Biter, what do the kids call it?
Download it?
So what you do with music nowadays?
There you go.
So that was 1951.
So now you're playing Vegas for the first time.
Let's go to 1971, where Bruce Springsteen was playing a show in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
And the East Street band finally came together.
when saxophone player Clarence Clemens joined the band on stage for the first time.
I miss the big man.
Loved hearing him play sax.
Now up to 1982 and here's some deja vu.
Steve Miller band hit number one this day 43 years ago with this song.
There it is.
Abracadabra, number one song this week in 1982.
Here's a little alpha and omega from the corporate world.
On this day in 1888, George Eastman registered the trademark Kodak and received a patent for his camera that uses rolls of film.
That was 1888.
Fast forward 110 years to the day.
On this day in 1998, Google
was formally incorporated by two students at Stanford University.
So happy birthday to Google.
I can't remember if I told this story a week or two ago or so about the day that I was at a some kind of a training seminar or whatever.
And it was about internet searches.
This is 2001.
So the internet's not brand new, but obviously still in its relative infancy.
And we were using like Alta Vista and Ask Jeeves and some of Yahoo.
And one of the guest speakers was like, you guys, there's this new search engine called Google, it's going to change everything.
And we all gave it a try and we're like, Oh, yeah, somebody figured it out.
You can search the internet and actually get the things that you want, which is what Google did for about, you know, 20 years.
And now I'm sure I'm not the only person.
I know I'm not the only person saying this.
Google searches aren't what they used to be.
It's like, I don't want to see all these sponsored links first.
Just give me the answer, you know?
And is that the way about everything?
Facebook, it used to be, it used to be a sequential list of the things your friends were posting.
I just want to see what my friends are posting in the order they posted it.
Facebook, Google, all the rest of you, Twitter.
Why can't you just go back to the thing you invented that people liked?
Absolutely.
Yes.
I'm screaming at the cloud that is Google.
I'm completely guilty of that.
That's fair.
Uh, let's see.
Tony, I'm sure Parker remembers the Steve Miller band like it was yesterday.
Uh, yeah.
Oh
The
And it's tied to UW-Madison, which I guess you'll have to look into later.
What?
In that history book I'm going to buy you.
That's not in the
No, no, but there's some things you got to look up on your own.
You know what you do?
You Google it.
Okay, here's a little here's a little audio now from a TV show a brand new show this day in 2002 Well the the season finale of a new series back in 2002 called American Idol and here was the first winner Wait wait
It's a lot of waiting
Kelly Justin,
The
winner of American Idol 2002 is There
we go Why does every reality show have to do that now?
Yeah.
Why?
I thought it was funny.
Again, old man yelling that cloud.
I don't just tell me who won.
The winner is.
And then it's basically the whole thing I like about the Saturday Night Live Skit, the Californians, is that that's what it does.
It just takes all those camera shots of everybody and plays the dramatic music.
Just tell me who won.
Why is this so hard?
was
my god.
I forgot
Back to the history lesson on this day in 1993.
This was a big deal.
Everybody had already was admiring Jim Abbott, a pitcher with one hand and his ability to be an amazing pitcher to make it to the major league level.
He'd pitch, he would instantly throw the glove off into his other hand if need be to catch the ball and field and he did all those things wonderfully and everybody was very happy for him.
On this day in 1993, he took it up a notch and threw a no-hitter against Cleveland at Yankee Stadium this day in 1993.
On this day in 2012, Imagine Dragons released their debut album, Night Visions.
Okay, now this is where we turn the tables and You know Parker gets to school me on you know the what the kids are like in these days imagine dragons Okay, they had this debut album.
It took off like crazy Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken there was a very noticeable backlash to imagine dragons.
Have they recall are they still do they are they still as renowned as they were 13 years ago?
I like he's taking this big inhale right now like he's either has no idea why I'm asking about this Or he genuinely doesn't know or maybe it's both.
I don't I don't know
just
There is an infamous Washington Post music critic review of of and Imagine Dragons album.
Maybe they're follow-up one and just how vapid and empty it was and it's symbolic of how empty and corporatized music has become.
Oh, it's just it's a work of art, but that doesn't necessarily mean the end of Imagine Dragons.
That's the thing.
On this day in 2016, Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis as a saint at a ceremony in the Vatican.
Today is National Wildlife Day and it's National Macadamia Nut Day, which should not be a thing.
Not
just the
day, the nut.
It's garbage.
This... We are here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
I'm Pat Critello.
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.
Eight minutes before seven o'clock on this Thursday morning, welcome back live from Lake Rosota on the Civic Media Radio Network.
It is 45 degrees in La Crosse right now.
Amory is at 42 Oshkosh, 42 degrees.
And in Altoona at the Cabin Coffee Company, it is 42 degrees.
And Altoona is where we go with our next story.
Altoona, here in the Chippewa Valley, right next door to Eau Claire, where we had a visit recently from the Milwaukee County Executive, David Crowley.
David Crawley came up to the Chippewa Valley at the invitation of State Representative Jody Emerson of Eau Claire to check out a particular housing project although I'm always hesitant to use the word project when we talk about affordable housing because it is a very real problem and the solution comes in all shapes and sizes and this particular one in Altoona that David Crawley came up to look at a place called Solis Circle.
was a former assisted living center, nursing home, something like that, that had been remodeled into micro apartments.
So very small, but affordable apartments.
Now there are all kinds of ways that you can address the affordable housing crisis.
And by the way, it remains a true crisis in every sense of the word here.
And it's one of the few things
there will be bipartisan agreement on in the Wisconsin legislature.
And that's because studies have shown that if we want to keep the next generation of workers, we need affordable homes.
If we want to keep some of our retirees here, we need affordable homes as they downsize.
You know, it makes no sense to say you want to downsize and sell your family home for a really good price if you can't find a place to retire to.
that is also affordable.
So for all these reasons, it's forecasted that Wisconsin will need 227,000 new affordable housing units by the end of this decade.
And so there have been various programs who offer financial incentives to either build new units or renovate some existing spaces like the one in Altoona and turn them into these micro apartments up here in Chippewa Falls.
You've heard me talk about Hope Village, which is essentially the tiny house model where you're building these things that are not much bigger than sheds, but they're well built, they're insulated, they're secure and they
They are far less expensive than hotel vouchers or sleeping on park benches.
So you start someplace and David Crowley is, is no stranger to the issue of affordable housing.
Given that under his administration in Milwaukee County, they have produced some $45 million worth of resonances and not just in the city of Milwaukee, but in some of the suburbs around Milwaukee County as well.
So when the county executive came up to the Chippewa Valley, he said that the tour would help him highlight not only the ongoing progress being made around Wisconsin, but the ongoing need for various partnerships and financing and legislation that will be needed, especially if he becomes Wisconsin's next governor.
and Crowley did say in Altoona that he expects to announce within a few weeks that he is formally in the race for Governor, but he did tour Solar Circle and then one of our former colleagues at Up North News, Julian Emerson, who now works with affordable housing issues in Altoona, had the opportunity to speak with him and Julian was nice enough to share that tape with us.
So here's a little bit of Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley talking about
why he came up to the Chippewa Valley to focus on this issue of affordable housing.
Well, being here at Solar Circle has given me the opportunity to see the groups on the ground who are doing incredible work from our local community leaders, private developers, Jonah, faith-based leaders.
It's extremely important to continue to build a table.
that allows everybody to really focus on the end goal.
And that is creating affordable housing as well as wrapping around different services.
I know the governor Evers and his administration have been investing in affordable housing all across the entire state of Wisconsin.
But I want to be able to do more, right?
I want to make sure that we can
get faster permits that we can focus on different housing models because every city village in town throughout the state of Wisconsin is facing an affordability crisis when it comes down to housing.
And so I'm looking forward to bringing that to this particular campaign once I enter the race because we need more affordability.
But we also need housing that is attainable.
And that's the other thing is it's one thing to say you want housing that's affordable, but it's got to be attainable.
You have to have enough of these units and they, again, can't be built by some kind of fly-by-night operators.
And that's where the financial incentives come in.
For the most part, over the past 20 years or something like that, most of the financial incentive for builders has been in what I would refer to as McMansions.
And they're fine.
Those are perfectly fine homes if you have the income for them.
But somewhere along the line, that financial incentive has been lost to build smaller homes.
more affordable homes, especially for, like I said, either people just coming into the job market or for retirees.
And so that's where the legislature has been working on things like loans and other incentives to local groups.
It's something that the Evers administration has worked on.
The Evers office has bragged that they have helped create more than 17,000 units.
throughout his two terms and it's something that David Crawley says he wants to work on as well.
Now coming up in our next hour we'll hear a bit more from David Crawley this time about of course the terrible flash flooding that took place in Milwaukee County and what were his thoughts on the FEMA assessments.
that have been going on so far.
And whether he is optimistic that despite the way that the Trump administration has politicized disaster relief, does he have confidence that they will get the federal aid that's needed for the dozens of homes that were completely destroyed because of the damage from the flash flooding?
So we'll have that coming up for you in just a little bit.
But first for us coming up at 707 meteorologist Brittany Merleau will tell us how long we're going to be in this September version of a deep freeze with temperatures in the upper thirties around parts of Wisconsin.
maybe a little chillier than that.
She's the one looking at the maps right now, and we'll hear more from her on that front.
And then at 735, we will be talking to Congressman Mark Bocan as Congress gets back in session after the August recess.
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