Mayor Matt Zacher

Welcome, everyone, to Midday Magazine for this Tuesday, August 20th, 2024.

Have your host, James J here with you, and we're welcoming into the studio.

Our good friend, Wisconsin Rapids, Mayor Matt Zacher, Matt Good to have you with us.

Thanks for being here.

Morning, James.

Thanks for having me, as always.

Want to send a big shout out to Joe and our friends over at Wisconsin Rapids Community

Theater.

Do yourself a favor.

Go to YouTube, type into your search bar, Wisconsin Rapids Community Theater, subscribe

to their page.

Keep up to date on the great work that they're doing over there.

Big shout out to you guys.

We appreciate you.

Appreciate you, Matt.

Not only the work that you have done in the short time you have been in this position,

but we had an open house here the other day, and I was on the air.

I didn't get to go say hi, but I saw you bopping around.

You stopped by.

Thanks for doing that.

Appreciate it.

It was great.

I appreciate you guys doing that and giving people a chance to get out, and I know it's

a big part of my job, and I don't know if it's the one thing I feel like I'm not living

up to the most is just getting out with the community as much as possible, even after

hours and weekends just to say, hey, and be a part of the community and the conversation.

I don't want to start our conversation countering you or anything like that or argue with you,

but I couldn't disagree with you more, man.

I have heard from this community so much that they have enjoyed seeing you out there.

They've been able to talk with you.

One of the things that I heard really quickly into your run here is the mayor was here

at this event.

It wasn't announced.

He just showed up.

He just was here.

People have really been enjoying that, so I wouldn't be too hard on yourself on that

one.

I think you're doing a darn good job when it comes to that.

When it comes to the job, when it comes to being in this position, how have things been

going?

How are you feeling?

You're kind of legs together?

You're grounding there?

Yeah.

I know.

I think it's been great.

I very much enjoyed the meat and greets I call them.

When you first get going and just reach out to everybody and they want to share what they're

doing with you and vice versa what my plans are.

Everybody was very receptive.

If I thought back now, like I've never been a big social media guy, but I think I missed

a lot of opportunities to just do those selfie, I should bring my daughter with me.

She would love to do it now with us, but she's busy.

But yeah, just to be able to put that out there too, like the people I'm talking to without

making it about me, I'd rather make it about them and the businesses that are out there

and how many they're employing and what their plans are.

If they're willing to share, it's good publicity and community spirit.

Speaking of community spirit and things that support the community and enhance the community,

the proclamations, the different days of or weeks of that we have from the mayor's office

are always something that we look forward to and we enjoy highlighting.

And one recently that you announced going on August 23rd and 24th, Buddy Poppy Day.

Let's touch on this a little bit.

Yeah, I just happy to help the VFW and everybody that's working hard there to make it happen.

John and Misty were here the other day meeting with people.

I've known Gordy.

He's been a part of the VFW for years.

He was my neighbor up on the Strowdman location.

So he'd come over and got me to join the VFW and I was pretty young.

I do what I can.

I'm not a huge part of that day to day.

I'm just there to be supportive and I know at this part just every time I can bring them

up and what they're doing and this, for this event that they're doing, fundraising is

just great because of the things they do for the community and being able to raise that

money and put it out to the community.

They're selfless people that just do everything every day to try to help out the community

that has supported them throughout the years.

It was raised in part by a couple of vets and I'll tell you, one of the things I learned

really early in life is this is a group of people that are going to ask for nothing but

deserve everything, you know, completely selfless and just continue to put into their

communities.

Any chance we have to support them seems like a great call and this is a great idea.

Appreciate this.

Yeah, no, it's great.

And again, it's them coming up with the ideas and bringing it to us and us being able

to support their, what their efforts are, I know they're working on building a nice shelter

there where they can have more community events and have some fun there and bring people

together.

So it's important.

And stick right here with us, everybody, the first day, the first morning show of the

month, we have Tom Heizer joining us or their monthly veterans update, Tom keeps us up

to date and all these things.

So be sure to join us for that when it comes up.

And be sure to join our friend Matt Zacker and our good friend Kyle Kerns at a coffee with

the chamber.

You got that coming up August 28th, 830 to 930 over the City Hall Council.

This is going to be a fun one.

Yeah, this will be great.

You know, you never know it's going to come on you once you're sitting down and getting

questions thrown at you, but it's never been a bad thing yet.

I think people are super respectful.

This, you know, I had asked you about, you know, talking a little bit about the community

development department.

So this is a great segue to that also.

Bringing, you know, the, Kyle's got a tough job and the inspectors have a tough job.

You know, and that's where a lot of contention, I guess, in the community happens.

And I heard a lot about it while I was a businessman and, you know, every time I wanted to make

a move and with the business and be able to do stuff, you really have to learn a lot,

learn the language of the city and understanding what they want.

Well, it's really the city and the state and there's some federal stuff that goes into

it at times, too.

But for the most part, the city has their things.

And, you know, as a business owner, you always kind of, you know, you get frustrated and

you want to take it all out on the city.

Now, part of the reason I joined was to just understand it at a deeper level what all

goes into the city and why they need what they need and how it all comes to be.

And I guess, so being able to see it from both sides now, I have a better understanding

and I'm not, I'm not, you know, trying to make excuses for one side or the other.

I think it's just a bigger conversation about the city didn't just make up stuff.

Like the city is a combination of all the aldermen and all the mayors and all the workers

that have been for there for the last 150 years for the most part.

And every council that comes through votes on new stuff and they bring it to the table,

they vote on it, they bring it in and remember, these are the people that are voted in by

the people.

So it's not that these are just, you know, I'm sure there's, who knows if there is

times, you always say, oh, it was the good old boy network and they all were in it together

and I don't know.

I don't see that.

The granted you have to develop relationships with each other in order to communicate

effectively and my take right now is I need to educate the aldermen as much as we

can because as an aldermen I realized that I was making decisions with a part of the information

that I needed or the information was, I don't know, I say what was given to you was given

to you to see it in a certain light so that you may or may not make a vote in that light

or whatever.

And I don't think anybody's necessarily doing any, it's just an aferious big, you know,

crazy stuff.

It's just human nature to want to get the your vision accomplished, whether you're elected

or you're working for the city.

So there's all these things, but in the end, we voted on everything that is there.

So now as a business owner or a resident, you have to deal with what's been voted in

and the best way to do that is to educate yourself like you don't, you don't get the

easy road to say, I'm just going to hire a contractor and they're going to do everything

for me because that contractor is still your employee.

So if you're a resident and you're getting worked on on your house, you're the employer

of that contractor.

So you're responsible for everything.

You don't, if the contractor doesn't do it, doesn't get the permit, doesn't do it right,

it's coming down on you, not on the contractor.

And so who gets the brunt of all this is Kyle Kerns, excuse me in the inspectors, you

know, and rightly so, they still need customer service like they need to be respectful and

do everything according to what we as a city expect them to do and to do it politely.

And that's a hard task sometimes, but that's what they're hired to do and I believe they're

doing a great job and working with them to make sure that they understand that this is

what's expected as employees of the city that the residents pay for.

So that's all been really good understanding and learning and trying to bridge those gaps

and getting stuff down.

The one thing that I will say is the more we can get everybody educating themselves,

not waiting for somebody else to do it, but taking your own responsibility for your own

projects and your own money, then the better we're going to be in terms of getting stuff

done without all the frustration and heartache and bad mouth and each other and all that

kind of stuff.

Whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, it will be accomplished better and quicker

if you are more informed.

Absolutely.

Giving you not only the project yourself, but the people you're working with some grace

when it comes to that.

We oftentimes don't know everything that is going on with a subject and before we end up

giving our opinion about it, it's maybe hold on to that opinion or maybe hold on to

the number of that feedback before you have all the information.

And I think it's always a good note and it's interesting this comes up with Sheriff Becker

all the time when we're talking.

But reminding people, there's a human being behind that badge and that human being is a citizen

of the same community you live in.

Very similar with what we're talking about here, this board, yourself, all these different

individuals were locals, were your neighbors, were your people, were coming at this from

this, oftentimes the same angle you are.

And with the same, oftentimes same information that you have or you can have.

So keeping that in mind as well and taking advantage of these opportunities to be heard,

you have this coffee with the chamber coming up.

Here's an opportunity.

You have feelings, you can express them as an adult, to Kyle, to Matt, to be able to

talk to them.

We don't, we have an advantage here in this area that not everybody has.

We've got a mayor, we've got a public works organization, a group that want to talk to

the public, that want to feedback from the public, that are encouraging the public to reach

out and attend these events.

So be heard.

Any dog can bark, do you want to actually get something done, you know, go ahead and

be at these events?

Yeah, this is the more I'm a part of this, the more I see two things, one, there's nobody

coming to save us as a community.

There's no government entity that's coming down and is going to bring their decision-making

powers and all of a sudden everything's going to be great.

And there's no big businesses that are going to come and make our community financially

strong and secure again.

It all comes down to us taking pride in this community.

And that's for everybody working together as one big community and really helping each

other.

I think about, you know, my wife Jenny and I go for walks.

We used to do it a lot more.

We spend more time at the Y and L. I got such an amazing Y.

We got great past the walk on people got to look up, look at each other and say hello.

We have to turn this into a community where we're in it together and we're here to help

each other.

And that can just start with the simple things like saying hello and smiling and know

that somehow, some way that person's in the same exact position you're in in life right

now.

And to have some compassion for each other and for yourselves is going to go a long way

in terms of how we move forward as a community into the new economy that we develop and the

new personality that we develop our community into.

It's a good reminder, a good reference and well said.

We're speaking with Wisconsin Rabbits Mayor Matt Zacker right now.

Along with our friends from Wisconsin Rabbits Community Media and I want to remind everybody

coffee with chamber with the heart of Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce coming up August 28th,

830 to 930 over at their city hall council chambers.

You can also attend it virtually find out more at the city's website or the chamber's

website encourage you to do so and follow them on social media as well.

Sir, you talked a little bit about the community development project.

How has the feedback on that been and certainly could probably use more of it?

Just about the topic itself and getting more and more people's feedback on businesses

or different things that we're looking to do in this area to help out the economy or

strengthen the economy in this area I should say.

Well, in the end, business is business.

The city doesn't develop business.

They don't really stand in your way unless you need a state license to buy and sell or

if it's certain licenses you need for all costs, stuff like that.

For the most part, this government stays out of your way and again, until you're in the

public sphere and you need certain safeguards, I guess.

But ultimately, when it comes to your desire to move forward and build a building, if that's

what it comes to, I mean most businesses right now aren't going to be started in a building

until you grow into something.

These are happening in people's garages and people's basements or working with each other

and I think that that's great, but that's the spirit and the community development is

there to help.

It's really there to my understanding as I am going through this to a higher level.

When I used to say in the campaign, it's a municipal corporation.

I didn't fully understand that, but I start to understand this better.

It's a corporation just like the United States.

We have the United States of America, that's us.

Then we have the United States, the corporation, Wisconsin's a corporation, Wisconsin Rapids

is a corporation and they do it that way so that we can do business with other businesses

and track everything and keep the paperwork straight.

Everything we do, we're doing to build, let's go into the assessments because that really

what that does is that tells you what the municipal corporation is valued at.

The state says, okay, we need to know pretty much every house, every business, every industry,

what the value of it is so that at the end of that project, you know what the value of

your community is.

I don't know exactly what they do with all that information.

I mean, it plays a part into the bigger picture of what is the value of Wisconsin as a whole

and what is, although its numbers mean something, especially to the people who understand

and better than I do.

You mean both.

Yeah, that's a lot.

But it serves a purpose in that and we do have to understand that within that corporation.

There's a set of rules that we agree to when we move into that to the city limits of

the corporation.

Like a lot of people will say when you get mad, if they have to, they're being told to

finish something in their property and what right do you have to tell me what to do on

my property?

This is my property, private, private property rights and all that.

But when you move into the corporate, the city limits, so that corporate city limits,

you do have some rules that we all agree to and we have voting rights to bring the people

in and talk about that stuff.

So we do have to understand that what the city is doing is what's best for everybody within

the city limits and then you go out to the outline communities and they have the same practices

just to differing degrees, but cities are different and in and of themselves, they have

a big responsibility because this is where the majority of commerce happens.

This is what it is to be a part of a community.

This is what it is to be a part of society.

There are certain rights that we have being born in this country that we live and we uphold

and we appreciate and cherish.

And sometimes I think that there is some bleeding into other things with that.

As in the idea of, you know, this is my property, I can do what I want.

You can't though.

You share this land with all of us.

While that specific address may be your property that you own, that land is attached to

other address and another address and you are sharing this city, this community with the

rest of us.

And any chance that we have to remind people of that, I think it's important and I think

it goes a long way.

You mentioned before about looking up and saying hi to each other.

This is acknowledging other human beings in your community.

This is a very similar thing.

You're acknowledging that, okay, I'm not in this alone.

This, my land affects other people's land.

We talked about this with PFAS quite a bit.

You know, well, it's my land.

I should be able to dump what I wanted to it.

Don't stay there.

It goes all over.

You understand how this works, right?

The ground thing and all that.

This is a very similar thing.

When it comes to this revaluation that's going on and what we're talking about here with

the mayor, Matt Sacker, this is important data that needs to be collected.

Now, I'm with you.

I've done my homework on this and even I don't know everything that they need this information

for.

But I know it's important.

I know that when it comes to whether we're talking about, you know, federally funded

dollars or any of the above, like there's a lot of different areas that this can affect

and the information is important.

So it's important to keep up on and to do.

Yeah, it's an important process and it goes a long way to understand that and we are

fighting these battles now of saying, okay, nobody's looking to come down with the

heavy hand.

Nobody wants that.

But at the same time, you have minimal tools at your disposal to try to get people to

work together as a community and clean stuff up and make sure that your neighbors are

being able to enjoy their home and what they are able to look around at and participate

in that community spirit.

But again, it's tricky because you don't, you know, it's not like anybody's looking

to come down with the heavy hand of government.

I have more and more people saying, you know, you got to go into this business and fix

it.

I'm like, that's not really what we do, you know, if you don't like that business,

then you start a new business that competes with it and put that one out of business or

go and buy that business from the current owner because obviously they, if they're not

given it to do, do attention, then they probably don't want it anymore.

A lot of people don't, they just kind of let it go until it, you know, runs into the ground.

It's weird sometime, you know, we, we have a capitalist society, whether you like that

or not, we do.

Right.

And it seems like some people forget that sometimes and you have to remind them every once

in a while.

One of the touch on before we let you go, a construction update and there's, looks

like they're doing some good work on the bridge over there and we have a track relocation

with one of the touch on as well.

Yes.

So we know that Lincoln Street by the Witter Park got finished up for that last, just,

just barely for the last few games, but they were able to open it up for the entire season

so that people could get in and out without too much trouble, but you'd have to find your

way around that subdivision.

But that's looking great.

They're just finishing it up between Chestnut and Quick Trip.

Should be, if not today, pretty dang, pretty dang soon, so that'll be great.

And what a great road to have done and connect to downtown and there's going to be great

things happening downtown as the county's finishing up with their, with their construction

project and other things that are coming from that as that evolves.

We'll talk more about that as decisions are made, but it's going to look great down

there.

And then we are looking that's been on the radar, we'll be on the agenda tonight for

council talking more about, you know, I know maybe people get sick of hearing about it,

but trying to do something with the track coming through Grand Avenue on the west side

and seeing what we can do.

And it's still there because there's a lot of federal money that is being put out there

for grants in order to get rid of railroad crossings.

And it's still a viable project and it would be so great for the west side in that area

to be able to, you know, take that whole track out of there if at all possible and figure

out how to reroute that.

And it's a long process, but I'm determined to stick with it and get the right people

on board to have that conversation and hopefully we can get it done this time.

Last time it was on the table was about 20 years ago and it was so close.

And just didn't just didn't go, just didn't happen and now is the time with the money

that's available to try it again for around the same price as it would have cost then.

I'm excited to hear what develops with that and looking forward to talking more and

more about that and certainly more with you about all of these projects and about

all these different things.

I do want to send a shout out to our construction workers out there of city workers doing such

amazing work.

Keep an eye out then.

We still got orange cone season for a little while here and everything.

Slow down.

Keep an eye out for our construction workers out there.

By now, I'm sure others might have heard your other interviews and heard some feedback

in the town.

There is murmurs about mill news.

I don't want to press you too much on this one because I know there's not much you can

share.

But I would ask that you keep the breaking news for us now, kidding.

But is there anything you can touch on with the subject?

Well, it's nothing really that I didn't say from the beginning, which is the craft mill

most likely won't be there and that stands firm.

Now, you can't really start talking about names or anything because you don't want

to egg on anyone's face or anything like that.

But ultimately, CRGs doing a great job and their whole goal here is to redevelop that

whole area and turn it into the best hospital industrial park that they can.

So everything goes in line with that and that gives the city a lot of security to know

that if by chance anything were to be walked away from, that would be detrimental to the

city if it was half done and we didn't have the money for it.

So a lot of time goes into the eyes and tees in order to make everything set not only

for CRG and the people that they're doing contracts with, but also for the city and making

sure that we have safeguards in order to make it happen because as much as we trust everybody

that's involved in it, you still got to have it on paper and make sure that when if bad

things happen, we have some safeguards.

It's security for all parties, really.

Security for the city as well and great works or keep up the great work.

Looking forward to hanging out again next month already.

Thank you for the time, Matt.

Thanks, James.

Appreciate it.

Find out more about some of the things we've talked about with Matt today at the city's

website, w-i-rapids.org, and be sure to follow them on social media.

Great way to keep up the data and everything they are doing in the city of Wisconsin Rapids

here.

And a big shout out to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.

Subscribe to their page on YouTube to keep up the date and the good work they are doing

over there.

More midday magazine coming up for you right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR.

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