You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Melissa Kay bringing you news in our community.
During this interview, I'm talking with the Wisconsin Rapids mayor, Matt Sacker, on Wednesday, June 24th.
Thank you for joining me, Matt, to bring the community an update from the city of Wisconsin Rapids.
You're welcome.
Good to see you again.
Yeah, good to see you too.
I realize that this episode is going to air on our airways kind of after the fact of 4th of July, but let's talk through a little bit of what you've found with trying to organize a much bigger
experience this
year for the city than in previous years.
Yeah, and I give...
Emily Kent, a ton of credit for taking on the bulwark of making something like this happen and Jake Klingsforth from the Parks and Rec Department has stepped up to really make things happen.
Raised a bunch of money, you know, we always set aside $25,000 and that was pretty much for fireworks and trying to have some speakers out there for the National Anthem and some music.
This year, obviously, we have two bands going on.
We'll have a more
elaborate speaker system so we can make sure that people can hear the band from further away and we'll do the the national anthem downtown so that that can be heard on the other side of the building stuff like that to just try to work that in.
We'll have a kid's zone, dunk tank, some games going on.
We actually just got word that the flyover will be at 125.
So it is going to
happen.
It is
going to happen.
It's kind of early.
So somewhere in that time frame, I don't know if it's right on that dot, but somewhere in that time frame.
So we're excited about that.
That was a big thing taken on by Sean Ryan.
So we appreciate all the work that he did on that.
Farmers market will be there, sounds like eight to one ish in the afternoon there, with there'll be some yoga in the park.
A lot more vendors, hopefully more diverse.
We have some crafts coming in on the second street there.
Of course, the city band will be playing as they always do outside of the Centralia Center.
So we're just trying to expand it so people can come down and enjoy the time with their families.
Of course, you can bring a cooler with beer.
The laws will be suspended for the afternoon until the night.
Please be responsible.
Get along well with each other.
Obviously, that's always a risk that you run.
Clean up after yourselves.
Clean up after yourselves.
Streets do a great job, you know making sure the parks and rec everything's cut closed off You know the cement blocks are in place stuff like that just to try to keep everybody safe So yeah, it's gonna be a great event and hopefully it sets the stage to continue growing I appreciate all the sponsors and donators that we got for from people we probably raised about 15 more than Then we're 15 more than the 25 that we usually put in
25 and as we've talked before with
the
prices of everything going
on
price of
fireworks going up
to be
able to continue to put on.
at least the level of display that you have in previous years
that's costing more money.
Agreed from this year to last year to get the same show as last year was $5,500 more.
So that went into that and be able to do a few other things.
And if we can build this up and be able to make sure we're getting great bands and stage and stuff like that, it's just going to be great fun for everybody.
And hopefully the community takes hold of it.
And typically the city doesn't necessarily do their jobs.
They set certain things up and put it in.
in place, but you need an engaged community to really take on certain things and build that up over time.
So hopefully that takes off.
Well, with that in mind, after the event is over, is there a way that people can give feedback about their thoughts
on the
event and ways that could maybe be expanded or improved on next
year?
Yeah, that's a good idea.
And I know we always have our new website that we've been promoting that is much more communicative.
If there's any issues, if you just want to reach out and share information, we can do that.
But I'll ask Emily to maybe we can send something out there and just have it specifically for that.
Yeah, like a community survey type.
Community survey feedback.
Again, everybody please whenever you want to give feedback to the government do it.
The website is there.
give us a call, we'll meet up and talk or whatever you need to do in order to express your thoughts on how things are going, good and bad, always helps.
Some good is always helpful to a lot of hardworking people in the government that make things happen every day that we take for granted, although there's other things that get us frustrated, but it's a big job, bigger than I realized before I was in the government.
And it's always interesting because you got to, as a mayor, you got to be a part of the community, part of the government, keep one foot in both sides so you can run the departments and the operations, but also make sure that we're in touch with the community as best as we can possibly be.
And there's a limited amount of effort that you can put into that, into reaching out to the community.
How important is it for people to make that initiative to reach out to you?
Yeah, it certainly helps.
Like, you know, right now we're facing some issues that are more
engaging, you know, data centers.
And so, you know, people are saying we feel so disconnected, but yet
For two and a half years, I'm saying call me anytime you want.
I have coffee with the mayor.
I'm at my office.
I'm setting up these meetings now so I can be more present after work hours so people can just have a conversation and ask the questions that they want.
But I'm always open to a one-on-one phone call or a meetup for coffee.
I know there's a lot of people in the community, so it's not always that easy.
But if you want to get hold and understand what's going on in the government, please call me.
Call your alderman.
call people in the departments and they're happy to talk to you about what's going on.
So we are connected, but yes, it's easier if you contact us.
We can only do so much.
And it's really tricky with the media.
platforms that are out there now and how things are shifting to more people are on the internet and trying to get out little videos and snippets to engage people that way and get them back to your website or get them back to the radio stations interviews that we have.
It's interesting how it all plays out and we keep moving forward trying to work on it.
WRCM, Joe Bachman does a great job trying to reach out to the community and get our information out there.
Emily Kent's doing work all the time to reach out and do surveys and just
communicate well and everybody really that calls and sends emails you know they're talking with her a lot too so she does a great job representing the community.
So those calls and those emails all of those communications matter and they're heard.
Absolutely yeah I mean that's how we communicate with each other and you got to keep in mind most of us are actually residents of this community we live here you know.
When people talk to me about this they're like well none of this impacts you I'm like I am right in the heart of the city where I live with my family I work a half a mile away from there.
I spend most of my time in the city You know like this this is my life and and I take pride in it and I appreciate everybody year That's helping make it grow and this transition between the mill economy and on what I consider an entrepreneurial economy It's huge and it takes all of us to do it and trust each other and learn to grow together and build bridges and move forward
together as one community.
And another way that people can get engaged is by signing up for meeting notifications.
So they know when the meetings are happening.
You can look ahead at the agendas that are coming up and see what issues are being talked about.
And that's on the city website, wiwrapids.gov.
Yes.
And hit the notify me button at the bottom or just type into the search bar, you know, notifications, it'll take you right there.
Take a few minutes to get yourself set up and then everything that's happening in the in the government will be emailed to you.
And it's a great email.
Next, you could choose
how you want it sent to you.
Appreciate it.
You're doing a great job of helping us out with publicizing it.
So thank you for that.
And you talked about building bridges, the bridge lighting display.
Let's talk about that a little bit because you have different themes throughout different weeks that happen.
the importance of that and the schedule, how
does that
all decided?
Well in the end it was a group of people at the city after we got the lights finally up and running that was a it was a challenge to make all that happen and of course you can go anywhere with it but you have to have some organization to it so in the end it was getting as much feedback from community and then looking at the national
you know, holidays, certain, like, say, mayoral things that are out there for, you know, press releases that we do.
So it was getting a group of people bringing it together, kind of formulating the entire year and what months, you know, what's going on throughout the months.
And then it comes down to me, I guess, in the end as the, you know, CEO saying, this is what we're going to do in the end.
And we can tweak it as we go along.
What's difficult is if you open it up to everybody,
then it's just going to be chaos.
So we try to bring in as much as we can to make it fair for everybody and kind of watch out for the landmines that are out there that you got to deal with and make sure that you're doing the best you can to reach everybody.
Make it right for the entire community.
So it's been a great effort and we have the website bridge lighting again tap type into the search bar bridge lighting and you'll get the whole yearly schedule as to what's what and why it's the color it's it is and
Yeah, and you can see and being downtown at night when the bridges are all lit up.
It is really pretty
It is I'm glad that it's happened and I know you know we have you know people that feel differently about it and I was you know as part of the end end product process of that
of that whole process that went through.
And so I did vote for it to go through and I'm happy that we did.
I understand the money is kind of crazy.
It was part of a TIFF experiment that people or project that people had taken on for almost 10 years to actually get to the point where the lights went on the bridges.
So I'm glad that it's done.
I'm glad it's as beautiful as it is.
So I look forward to seeing it for years and years in the future.
Yes, indeed.
Well, let's take a short pause here to hear from our sponsors.
talking with Mayor Matt Zacker, and you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.
97.5 FM WFHR.
Welcome, you're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 a.m.
97.5 FM.
I'm Alyssa Kay bringing you news in our community.
I'm speaking with Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacker and where we left off we were talking about the bridge lighting improvements that have happened downtown.
We touched on
the fourth of July Freedom Fest that will, once you hear this on air, have already happened.
But a thing that will be going on all summer is the Wisconsin downtown, Wisconsin Rapids Farmers Market.
And that takes place every Thursday and Saturday from eight to one.
What are you hearing and seeing from people in the community with the farmers market?
Oh, I only think it continues to grow.
People are happy.
I think there's some talk about how we can make it even better and expand it, make it a little bit more permanent downtown, how that would play out.
That whole downtown area with the talking about bridge lighting, the county will have their parking lot done soon as we're doing Jackson Street.
That's in three phases.
We're working on the first phase now.
that between that and then our piece of land, the city piece of land that's going to be up front, Second Avenue or Second Street will be dividing those two and going to the roundabout.
Like it's going to be a different configuration.
So as we do that, you know, we want to look at what's the best use of that property to bring more people downtown, bring them downtown at night, have a little more of a nightlife between restaurants and bars, get the lights on the bridge to enjoy Veterans Park.
Like that's all part of this, you know, bringing the farmer's market in and getting more people to enjoy.
the downtown area, be able to walk here for that, walk over to a different area across the bridge.
So the whole downtown project is always in play and always moving forward.
And the farmers market has been a great addition to that.
And like you said, one of the challenges is just actually getting people to come
to the
downtown area.
One of my frustrations is when I want to go to one of those restaurants and they're not open certain days
because they
just don't have enough traffic.
is that there's just not worth it for them to be open.
We just recently lost bees taphouse closed at the end of May.
Are you hoping that a lot of these improvements will help?
attract new businesses and
attract
people to the downtown area.
Yeah, I think that's the goal.
It's getting, you know, getting things established that are bringing people down there so that they can go to the bars and restaurants.
It's my understanding, and I hope I'm right on this, but Beastap was bought and will be opened by new owners, new ownership, so we're very excited about that.
Good.
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of interest in, I think as the roads are being redone, we have a lot of new interest by developers, seeing what the council would want, you know, to ultimately go into those downtown areas.
Again, not only that is good for the residents and, you know, the civic engagement, but also for, you know, hopefully tax based to help us, you know, be able to increase that so that we can continue to, you know,
be viable as a government entity, you know, we're going to go through some struggles like we did last year with having to cut, you know, $850,000 out of the budget in 26.
We're not sure how 27 we're just going to get started in the budget process after the 4th of July.
So that opens up that whole door to, you know, what's coming next.
So yeah, it's all placed together in terms of trying to make this go between the economy that's in the city and the economy that helps keep the government funded.
Yeah, it's an interesting time to be in the government.
For sure.
That's a bit of an understatement,
I think.
And you touched briefly on the Jackson Street project.
How is that coming along?
It's coming along very well.
That first phase is on track.
They've got everything out of there.
It's going to be a nice more, I guess, main street.
the flow is going to be better instead of having too big.
It was a four lane road basically that didn't handle a ton of traffic.
But yet it's part of that downtown, you know, corridor maze there.
So it'll be nice.
We're going to have a couple of roundabouts.
Again, I know people have, you know, different feelings about roundabouts, but they did agree to put in the one that exists and then two other ones that kind of just keep the flow going in that downtown area without having to stop or stop lights or anything.
So we're looking forward to that.
And again, like I was saying, that then sets us up.
for those properties to be a little bit more defined and be able to be marketed from there.
So looking forward to that.
And second, I'm sorry, I don't know if it's Street or Avenue,
but
second Street, that's going to continue.
now through, but it's still going to be one way.
Is that
correct?
So let me take a minute.
So Market Street is vacated now.
Right.
So that will be gone.
Just up to the
edge of the parking lot.
A little bit will remain.
Yeah, a little bit will remain so that the capital, the capital, the courthouse can keep their address as Market Street.
And then First Street, we're looking at vacating First Street.
So then Second Street will be the main corridor.
And that way, that piece of property that the triangle, we call it, will go all the way up.
to the park there.
The park will remain, but the road will be taken out eventually when it's developed.
And so Second Street is going to be the only corridor.
Instead of having three small streets going to the same roundabout, we're going to have just the one going there.
Okay.
And Kyle Kerns said something in one meeting I was listening to that I think is worth pointing out.
The idea of some of these downtowns is to actually slow down traffic.
Yeah.
So because you've got pedestrians walking, you've got
You want people to look at your storefronts and your restaurants that you have in a downtown area.
So
slowing down the traffic is not necessarily a bad thing.
No, I think it's a great thing.
And roundabouts are great for that.
I will throw this out there.
And again, I asked Joe a while back to throw out some informational videos on how to navigate roundabouts, because I think people are still a little bit.
Sure.
It can be tricky.
It's different.
Well, they've been
around for a while.
You don't necessarily encounter one all the time
on a
day-to-day basis, or if you do, it's one you're used to, you know, exactly where you're going out of it.
So, to learning how to navigate
them correctly.
Learning how to navigate.
Looking to the left, always looking to the left, and if no one's coming.
And making sure you
signal when you get out.
That's
actually something you can fail your driver's test.
No.
But, you know, enter slowly, but you don't have to stop.
And then don't enter too fast.
You know, some people come flying in there and there's no reason for that.
You know, if they're just trying to do it as fast as they can, but that's when you're going to hurt somebody for no reason.
Cause if you come in at a decent pace, you're slow enough that nobody's really going to get hurt, even if you come in close to each other.
But the only time you're going to hit each other is when you're coming in too fast and you, you're, you know, the other person's going slow and you end up digging each other, but it's not a 40 mile an hour T bone where that's when people get killed.
So they are much safer.
all have to work together to navigate them, right?
Another thing that the council has been working on to help safety in Wisconsin Rapids is the committee of the whole met to talk about the sex offender ordinance that was proposed, I believe, by Michael Tim, Alderperson.
And that was, let's talk about that a little bit.
What prompted this and where is it at?
Well, I think what prompted it is just knowing that other communities had ordinances in place for like residents, like resident where they can live and then save zones, which is like an expanded area around schools or places where kids are going to be at parks and schools, stuff like that.
So there's two fates.
two aspects to that.
It isn't, you know, it's just very interesting because I've read enough on this and I, you know, it's always tricky, like where do I put my input in?
But right now I'm not in the council, whereas with the council, it's usually them talking, I'm the mayor, so I give them their space to have that conversation.
You know, but the tricky part about creating an ordinance for residential, you know, having to declare, like right now, we know
For the most part all sex offenders Register where they're living and we can see on this on the website where they're living So it's very clear and everybody's very cooperative in it And sometimes they're closer to institutions than we would like them to be but a lot of times they're living with relatives or they're living because they're in a bad place, you know, like they have limited options now so
So the fear is if you put in, you know, restrictions to say you can't live here, you can't live here, you can't live there.
Well, if they're still going to live there, but they're not going to register now and we're not going to know where they are.
I think that's the other side to the to the fear of trying to over, you know, micro manage that whole process.
Whereas right now, I've always liked that people
Have always told us hey just so you know these these people are you know this far from your house or at this address So we always kind of knew what was going on when and where and that made me feel comfortable as we were raising our kids My understanding is that the more you try to
manage that and push them further into different pockets of the community, the more they're going to just go underground.
So there's a little bit of fear around that happening in that sense.
But at the same time, for those who want to try to have
that ordinance in place.
We'll see how things move forward as it was sent back to the city attorney to draft one.
They're using MEC-1 as a pretty comprehensive one that was able to provide a lot of those details.
Kind of a template to work off of.
Yeah, and that don't have to recreate the wheel kind of thing.
So I think that, yeah, they're going to do that and then it'll come to a legislative committee from there and they'll decide if they're going to create that ordinance.
Okay, so still in the works, but something to keep an eye out for if you're interested in that.
Well, I do appreciate you taking the time today, Mayor.
I am Melissa Kay speaking with Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zachar.
Thank you for talking with me today,
Matt.
Good to see
you.
You too.
And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community on Perspective, 1320 AM, 975 FM WFHR.
