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 Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Sacker on Tuesday, July 14th.
Thank you for joining me, Matt, to bring the community an update from the city of Wisconsin Rapids.
You're welcome.
Thank you as always for having
me.
Yeah.
So we just got done with the first Freedom Fest in Wisconsin Rapids.
How did that go?
Yeah, it was great.
Wisconsin Rapids Riverside Freedom Fest.
It was a great success.
started off with the flyover.
Again, we don't necessarily have a lot of control over that.
Sean Ryan was the one who kind of with Emily Kent's help just set that up.
It was supposed to be two airplanes coming over.
I think there was three flying total.
So I'm not sure exactly, but I think they might have got a little bit later in time.
So they split up and we got one that came right over the bridges downtown exactly where everybody was.
They're supposed to come up the river.
So I think a lot of people were kind of sitting there.
but whoever could see it.
was able to see it.
And I think
that was a great tribute for the 250th anniversary of the country.
So that was great.
And then people stayed down there.
You know, some people went away.
I think we learned a lot from this year, looking into next year and seeing what kind of money you can fundraise, again, thanks to all the sponsors and donors to help us out there with some special activities, plus a bigger, making sure the fireworks stayed at the same level.
But I think we'd want, you know, if it's really sunny and hot, like it was that day, we want some shade where
people can go and eat and hang
out with their
families.
Otherwise, if you have nowhere to go, you're going to end up going home.
So to try to keep people down longer and make sure the vendors get a good deal out of it, I think would be good.
If it's raining, it would be a place for some people to go.
You can
never have enough for
everybody.
But it was a beautiful day.
I think I got dunked about 20 times or better.
It was going to
ask.
So I think that was great.
A lot of kids had a lot of fun with that.
So that was a lot of good stuff.
And I appreciate all the volunteers that helped.
out with Rapids Friends of Music with that program.
So the music was great down there.
Say the polka band and gray cats did a great job and played.
Eric did a great job with the sound system, had the speakers set up, everybody was very complimentary of the sound.
It was the first time most people on the west side down towards the end on the south side actually said they heard the national anthem and were
able
to hear
you know some announcements and stuff like that and and the music that he was playing so that really helped out
and that's where
some of that extra money went so
it's a
great time look forward to next year.
Have you heard feedback from the community about ideas for next year?
Yeah I think a lot of it was just reaching out saying thank you some of it you know that you know you always have the some
things that are said that aren't as helpful, but for the most part, I think we'll reach out to the community specifically and get their input.
That'll be coming soon as we're kind of decompressing a little bit and taking a breath.
It was a lot of work and we appreciate everybody that really helped out and making that happen.
So again, it's a great holiday.
It's
a great time of
year.
But we will be decompressing and then starting it up again really almost right away and starting to make sure that we're on track because it's kind of year round.
Well, it's good to review those things kind of like right after they happen kind of a debrief so that nothing gets forgotten right away while you're there you go Yeah So nothing gets forgotten and you can talk about what worked what didn't what feedback you get so that's great Well congratulations on the first year of doing
that
So another important thing that has been under discussion for quite some time is the development of the family health care center.
And this, the plot of land that it's by is on the West, is it the West Riverview Expressway?
It's a 24,000 foot square foot health care center.
It'd be near the YMCA or across from Subway, kind of right there on that site, on that Riverview Expressway.
How was that progressing?
Yeah, that's moving along nicely.
Just went through some planning stuff.
So I think everything's in order.
They just had to tweak a few things.
It's always a process.
It
doesn't just happen right away.
But they've been great to work with.
So we appreciate them building this here, coming in and doing that.
It's certainly going to help that area.
It's always struggled a little bit since the YMCA was built so beautiful with the VA clinic and the Boys and Girls Club.
So that'll be a big one.
And then right on the other side of the road.
kind of...
tagging off that a little bit is the foundry that will be coming down soon.
We just have a few final details to get through.
And then MRD was, if everything comes through there, granted the, you know, the, the bid or the job to get that done.
And
then that's to collect all of the materials out of there.
And then once the buildings are all down, the fences, it's just a piece of property.
The cement, we don't, we can't disturb the ground until we have further
testing done and
then we
can, the city will be able to take the cement out and grind that up and clean up the rest of the land.
We just have to make sure that any
contaminants in the soil are taken care of properly.
And that's because we're a government entity and we got grants from the state and the feds in order to make sure that that's done right.
So in the end, when you're wondering why it took so long, it's because we had, you know, three levels of government involved in making that happen.
And so you just have to bite your time because nothing
is slow process.
It is
very frustrating.
But at the same time, it's, it's people.
So I'm
not going to
pick on the people themselves.
In the end, it just is what it is.
So
I'm glad it's coming down, though, especially at this time when
that, you know, the healthcare center's going in and it'll just kind of rejuvenate that entire area there, so it's gonna look
great.
Because that's a big, I mean, right now it's just kind of a big parking lot area.
It's all cement there, so it's not, it just, it'll look nice to have something going in there.
Yeah,
there's restaurants there, there's a car wash there, you know, so it hasn't done well and it's just overgrown and bad now, so it'll be good to just get it all taken out of there and start over again.
Bring back some activity to that space.
Well needed in the end.
It's very well needed for a large portion of our community
So
we're very appreciative of that too and the people that are investing in it
because this is more of a walk-in clinic.
This isn't
people won't be staying there overnight.
This is just a treatment area like of different.
And they call it affordable.
So it's
going
to be able to help a lot more people in that sense.
And it's part of Marshfield, you know, family health.
So we appreciate them for what they're doing.
You know, they finished up their hospital up on 54.
And, you know, they contributed a lot to the community and they've come through a lot in terms of what they had to go through to get to the other side.
So we appreciate all the people that are working hard to make them successful.
Nice.
And then we've got a lot of its construction season.
And so we've got a lot of construction going on.
How are things going on the Jackson Street project?
Jackson Street's coming along well.
Again, everything takes time, especially when you're redoing all the infrastructure under the roads.
And that's going to be a big part of the whole downtown area with the courthouse and the switch in the second street to be the main corridor, vacating first street and market street.
So it's all part of that phases.
This is the first phase out of.
three phases but it's coming along well and when that's done it'll be open so you'll be able to navigate through there then other roads will be closed down after that so but it's just gonna be beautiful when it's done I can very exciting and can't wait to get that done.
And one other thing let's touch on in the last couple minutes of our first segment here there was a committee referral by Jake Katnott to to talk about
um, a potential ordinance on electric bike and scooters because those are becoming more and more common.
We see a lot of more people zipping around on a bike that, and they're not pedaling going real fast.
Um, so let's talk about that a little bit.
Yeah.
I think, uh, everybody can see it between the bikes and the scooters and, uh, if they can override things, add battery power to it.
I mean, you're getting, I don't know if they're built this way.
I think some are built that fast and then some are being converted.
And again, it's it's fine except for now you're acting more like a motorized vehicle on the road But you don't have to follow any rules.
That was always the issue with you know, like the atvs you atv utv questions is like we should all if you're on the road you should be following the same exact set of rules and I think that's a big part of it safety
safety is the overarching goal here
and you can only be safe when you know how to What to expect from the other drivers on the roads, you know accidents happen when somebody does something that they're not supposed to
know
right
next thing you know you can't avoid it but also people are getting hurt like somebody just got hit it was a person driving an e-bike on a sidewalk person walked out of a store and they ran right into him like
they're okay
they're they're okay they're surviving but there it could have been
It
could have been
fatal.
So we have to do something about this.
And then we have to be able to enforce it because there are young kids on them and older people on them like anybody, but they're just doing whatever they want to do.
And at this point, we got to, we got to set some ground rules.
So that'll be coming.
So the way that this works then is there's the city attorney will draft an ordinance and then.
It'll be it'll go through committees.
Correct.
Yeah, it's gonna take a while, but it'll start there Well, actually we have to the council.
I guess the public works and the council will have to put it to the agree to you know, send it to the
city attorney to make sure that she can create that ordinance, base it off of other ordinances, do the research, and then go through council and then bring it back to the next month so that they're ready to start reading it and tweaking it and comparing it to other ones
and see where
it goes from there.
Then they'll go back to council if they pass it through or if it goes to the next month and they want to do more changes to it.
So it is a process, especially when you're trying to create an ordinance because you're creating a law and you want it to be as fair as possible, as comprehensive as possible.
will say don't.
try to foresee all the issues that are going to come from it so you're not going back and forth to it.
And if people want to follow along with the process, it's the easiest way to just go to the city website, sign up for meeting notifications.
Yeah, if you can sign up on notifications, notify me, you'll get all the information from the city, any city meetings, other things that are out there that this is the best way for us to be able to communicate through email anyways, and we can set up some texting.
So yeah, let us know.
is going to get you into the conversation so you can be a part of it otherwise you can call me at the mayor's office or call anybody at the city get on the website and just type in who you're looking for and you'll get to their name.
And the website is wirapids.gov and your office number is
My cell number is 715-315-2925 so you can call me and I'll be able to get in touch with you either then or as soon as possible.
Okay, well this is a good place to take a short pause.
I'm Melissa Kay talking with Mayor Madzakar and you're listening to Perspective on 1320 a.m.
975 FM WFHR.
Welcome.
You're listening to Perspective on WFHR 1320 AM, 97.5 FM.
I'm Melissa Kaye bringing you news in our community.
I'm speaking with Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacker and where we left off we were talking about some of the projects that are going on in downtown Wisconsin Rapids, some project updates.
We discussed the potentially creating an ordinance to help safety on the roadways with e-bikes and scooters and things of that nature.
Now I'd like to delve into talking about the comprehensive plan that is in the works now.
The current plan was approved in 2010 and updated in 2018.
So it's been eight years and state guidelines recommend those be updated every 10 years.
So you're already on top of it and starting to look at this comprehensive plan.
for the whole city of Wisconsin Rapids.
Now, this is different than the downtown master plan that was approved and is underway now.
And that was finished last July in 2025.
Let's talk about that process a little bit and how people can get involved.
Yeah, so just a little bit, because I think there's some misunderstanding.
I mean, I didn't fully understand this either.
Like the comprehensive plan, like where did the zoning that
book that we voted in in 2018.
It's a comprehensive zoning book.
Where did that come from?
And why did we put all these extra regulations on ourselves?
And so I didn't fully understand that this was a state statute driven process, which was basically saying we want to help communities kind of update themselves.
You figure, you know, we've been here since the beginning of the state and it's evolved over time as a city.
But then as you get further and further to where we are now, you can kind of look back and say there's
lot of say haphazard to how things grew up and and if you had farmsteads and then houses grew up around it and you have houses that are cockeyed in different you know pieces of land and how does that fit in when you're trying to fit a square peg into a round hole so it wasn't something that the city just came up on its own every every every city municipalities going through a similar process and has been going through them since the state really kind of pushed for this.
And in 2018, we updated this.
And then we brought in a new book of zoning, which really sets out where industry should be
and
where residential neighborhoods should be away from industrial.
But then the commercial corridors running through the residential parts, where should they be?
And how do we consolidate that?
And then how do we actually take the steps to.
bring more aesthetics to it, you know, beauty, I guess,
to just say.
Making them look good.
Yeah,
to make them look good, like A Street.
We all know that it's, I always say it's more industrial looking than it is, you know, pretty.
But
then we enacted a new zoning book in 2018 and we try to get more trees, more grass, more less parking lot to try to make it look, you know, 30
years down the
road as old.
businesses leave and new ones get built, that they're being built more aesthetically beautiful.
Well, and we also know that more green, more trees, more green space helps keep cities cooler.
Yeah,
it does because
parking lots, which is what, you know, A Street kind of is right now is
mainly
a lot of parking lots.
Anyways, I think everybody would agree that we would like it to look better and be more welcoming and more, you know, like easier to travel on
and
get to the businesses that are there.
So we are working on that as much as we can, and that's all part of this.
So now we're going into a new round of saying, okay, are we following the plan?
Is this stuff work?
Does this not work?
It's not easy to take an industrial site and try to move it to a different area or to decommission it, and then you have a brownfield, right, where you
have
chemicals in it, stuff like that.
You can't just build houses on it.
So there's a lot that goes into it, and Kyle Kearns is leading the way to help us do that and try to make it as...
welcoming as possible, all inclusive for people to feel a part of that conversation.
This doesn't have a ton to do with, like a lot of people are asking me lately, how do we, that's kind of something I said since I got elected.
There is a personality shift that's going to happen with the community.
We're not going to be a mill town anymore.
We're going to be more entrepreneurial.
We're going to be this, you know, but a lot of people are saying like, well, the city should help us decide who we're going to be.
Like, what are we going to be in the future?
But I always say that.
We can do that.
We can be like cheerleaders kind of encourage and try to lead the way.
But in the end, the people are really going to decide what kind of town this is going to be.
Are we going to spend money, start businesses for tourism on the river, the different aspects we can do, small shops.
We try to build industry.
We try to bring it in, but can you bring industry in?
when those same industries are looking at every other city in the United States for a place to put their business?
Do we start industries mainly if we can get young people to go out and work jobs and go to school and get more ideas from the world and bring them back to Wisconsin Rapids?
That's going to help us probably a lot more than.
being just focused on one business that bringing it in that's rather you know on the larger side 500 businesses with 20 people is better than one business with 2000 people in
my
opinion.
So all those things play into the comprehensive plan of how we want to encourage people and what we want to do.
So we are meeting at the library tonight at
Five o'clock, I believe.
Yeah, thank you.
And we'll be there for a few hours just talking with the community about outreach and what they want and what they see and so they can understand that comprehensive plan.
And today is Tuesday, July 14th.
So for people listening on the airways that that has already happened that meeting, but it's it's an open house opportunity for people to come out and and have those conversations.
After the fact, they can go to the city website and fill out a survey there.
You have a link on.
It's very easy to find, just a comprehensive plan that's right on the front page of the first.
page you land on at the website, wirapids.gov, and you can just click on there and fill out the survey and give your thoughts.
Yeah, Emily, Kent does a great job just getting things as front and center as possible on the website, so we appreciate that work that she does.
If you need to, the search bar is always there and you type in comprehensive plan or whatever it is that you're looking for will get you to where you're looking for as fast as possible.
But you want to hear from the community about this because this is
what is going to guide what happens in the, I mean, roughly, guide what happens in the community for the next potentially 10 years.
Um,
yeah, we want the people involved and they have to understand that the people in the government are just people too.
We don't have all the answers.
We're running a process and that's what the states asked us to do.
And that way we can get some, uh, you know, grant money from them.
Like we're all kind of working on the same page.
It's not that they want us all to be alike.
They just want to know that we're all, you know, doing what we need to do to move forward, build the economy, build the community and make sure that we're doing what are due diligence to help.
And another thing that you've been doing.
to try to connect more with the community.
make yourself available is these chats with the mayor that you've been holding on Wednesdays.
And you've had several now.
Tomorrow, which is the 15th, you'll be at the zoo from 430 to 630.
And then there'll be a couple more at the library.
How are those going?
What are you hearing from the community?
Yeah, they're doing they're going really well.
I think it's it's just the time to talk.
And, you know, we always talk quick, I'll say quickly, but I want to open it up to any questions, you know,
and just to get information out to other people as to what we're doing, why we're doing it, and if they have issues, I'm happy to bring them back and see what we can do.
Usually, right now, it goes more towards the data centers for most of that conversation, just to bring some continuity to us.
Again, my hope is to be as transparent as possible.
I'm not gonna hide from it.
I realize when I do this, it kind of puts a bigger target on my back, because it could go anyway when you do that, but I think...
that the people of the community are the most important part of the community so the more I can do to bring information to them and and try to
quell some of the fear, hopefully, um, and just, just talk.
I think that's the important part.
You know, as social media is here to stay, but it's not, it's not the real world.
It's not, you know, like so many things are made up and you can't fight it from social media.
So to me, I'm just going to follow the real life path of having face to face conversations with people and let the chips fall where they may, but I think it's very important.
And, uh, and I hope everybody can come down and, you know, meet me and ask their questions and we can sit and debate.
I'm happy to.
debate people and I don't really want to go into too many of my opinions because that's really not what this is about from my job.
My
job is to say this is the process that we have in place and we're following that right now.
We don't just get to say, you know, you don't get to do this and you get to do this.
It's got to go through the process and then we decide that they've followed the process to the best of their ability and what we need and the standards are there.
And typically we let it through.
We've never really been in a position where people are telling us that we just don't like the business that wants to come here.
So you have to do what we tell you to do and make it go away.
And things like that have come to the community before speaking with Pamela Hilke here at the station.
She talked about a nuclear site that was going to potentially go in and root off way back.
And I want to say in the 80s or 90s, I know that there was a slaughterhouse considered.
the community kind of push back on.
So those conversations do matter.
And hearing from the community is important in what the community wants to bring here and have those conversations.
And like you said, the data center right now is kind of the hot button topic that everybody's talking about.
But to keep that open and have these conversations about any
topic.
Yeah, it's a little tricky because you're trying to understand it from both sides and I've heard talk about the nuclear facility and the slaughterhouse I don't know exactly what happened back then
like if
it just didn't if it didn't happen because they didn't follow through on the paperwork or they decided to go somewhere else like a lot of times things happen and and they just
fall by the wayside because it doesn't
turn out much like the data center from two years ago two years
ago there's been I mean since I've been in office there's probably been another you know 10 businesses that have come and really kicked the tires and really wanted to see if this could happen and for whatever reason they decided to go somewhere else so it's not you know and if you bring it out too quick then
then it gets kind of weird because then everybody's fighting over something that may not even happen anyways.
Whereas this data center was brought to the planning commission because we passed the ordinance
that made
them have to get a special conditional use permit.
So they had to do that.
So I don't really know exactly what's happened in the past with all those.
So I can't really speak to it
because
if at that time the government was designed in such a way that the council could say, well, we
We heard the people and some of the people don't like this.
So we're going to vote it down versus some of the people don't like it, but some of the people do like it, but they're just not as vocal as the ones that don't like it.
So
how
you pick and choose is it just because of the loud segment of the people that are most passionate about it or most scared of it at the time?
Those are all things you have to take into account because there's a lot of people, the silent majority of people that
don't speak out.
They
just let the government do the work that they're hired to do or elected to do.
But there is always the option to be involved and to have those conversations and your chats that are will be available or you will be available to the public two more times once this airs next week because it is the 14th and this will air the next week.
Those will be on the 22nd and the 29th at McMillan Library from 430 to 630, and those are open to anybody.
And we, I believe Emily helped me set up another six or so more, so they'll be coming out as we get them more solidified.
I'm trying to keep them at the library just for consistency.
Sure.
And if we're enough ahead in advance, we'll see if we can get the same room or find a different room there.
And if you want to find out when those are happening, you can head over to wirapids.gov, sign up for meeting notification.
I get them all the time, and it pops into your email, or if you choose to have it texted to you, that's all available there to set up on the website.
Well, I really do appreciate you taking the time today.
I'm Melissa Kay speaking with Mayor Matt, Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacker.
Thank you for talking with me today, Matt.
Thanks, Melissa.
And thank you to listeners joining us for news in our community.
On perspective, 1320 a.m.
975 FM WFHR.
