Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this Wednesday, November 20th, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here today.
First up, want to welcome our friends from Wisconsin Rapids Community Media here to record
this segment.
Be sure to do yourself a favor.
Go to YouTube, type into your search bar, Wisconsin Rapids Community Media, subscribe
to their page, keep up to date, and all the great work that they are doing over there.
And we of course welcome our guests today, Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacker.
Matt, always good to have you with us, how you doing, sir.
I'm doing well, James.
Thank you for having me.
Appreciate you being here.
Get the right mic out here for you.
I'm used to the second chair.
Third chair is the one that we get a chance to talk on.
Yeah, thanks for being here, Matt.
So how are things been lately?
I know it's a pretty busy time.
One of the talk to you.
Touch on the election a little bit and how that went.
Especially for you, this has got to be a different perspective for you coming into this
election.
I probably haven't been on this side of that.
You haven't been on this side of things before for an election.
So we had Sheriff Becker in the very next day, according, you know, from his words and
everything, everything went smooth, had a good election, you know, here in our area.
As far as the, you know, I'm not talking about results or anything like that, that's
all here or there.
That's, but as far as the election itself, you know, everything went smoothly.
It was a big one.
There was a lot of people more than I think we've ever had that did early voting and that
was great just to get them in and through the lines and that helps out with because it
was such a big election and very passionate election.
You know, there was a lot of long lines west side, not so bad east side out a few little
hiccups just in terms of getting people through as fast as they could with the amount of stations
that we always have set up, you know, and the clerk, Jennifer has done a great job with
the elections over the years and she's very passionate about it and takes it very seriously.
So yeah, seeing it from the inside, just like, you know, we'll touch more on the budget,
but seeing all this stuff from the inside has been a very eye opening, even being on the
council for a couple of years and the chair, the finance, you know, but just seeing the
big picture of how everything's happening from the inside as a whole different perspective.
I'm a sucker for that.
I love to see how the sausage is made.
I like to be behind the scenes or I understand that, you know, in your head, you're taking
notes, you're learning, you're trying to be up to date on everything and get better
and better at the job I imagine.
But you have a chance to kind of enjoy the, just the perspective of it sometimes too,
being able to kind of just enjoy that part of it.
Yeah, I would say, for the most part, I'm enjoying myself a great deal.
You know, my passion has always just been developing relationships, building camaraderie
with people and trying to find the best way forward and make it a win-win and it always
makes everybody happy.
I mean, recycling was always great because I'd help them solve a problem and I'd give
them money if I could.
You know, so they're always happy with that.
But this has just been a great opportunity to really see, you know, what the folks from
the inside of the organization of the government are really like and as people who they are
and try to meet them where they're at, but also try to be able to bring things to the
table that they're not maybe seeing in a certain light so that we can improve the government
services for the citizens, but also taking that time to get to know the people out in
the community and all the different organizations and individual residents and businesses.
Yeah, it's been great and it does kind of bring me excitement, you know, like energy
right now.
Again, you know, talked to me in a few years, we'll see how things go on, but I certainly
see this as very an important thing and I, it seems to work well with me.
To that point, I talk with Representative Krug about this a lot and you know, how you've
been doing, he's been doing this for over a decade, are you still excited, it's election
coming up, you know, and it's still, he's like a kid whether he's still just as excited
and just as interested in it.
But one of the things that I think is important and I bring this up with him and any of our
representatives in our communities, no matter what their level is, I ask these questions
if you're enjoying it, if you're having fun and stuff, but not because the job should
be tough.
These are not, these are not privilege jobs, just the jobs you earn and it should be difficult.
But we also, if we want younger generations to do these jobs, we can't just focus on
the negative.
We can't just focus on, you know, every time we see a politician and we just trash them,
these kind of things.
Accountability is incredibly important and we need to be able to not only hold them accountable,
but to be able to speak our opinions, that's being an American.
But at the same time, from those representatives and from us in the media, we've got to be
able to cover both here and hey, we want somebody to be mayor, you know, after you're
done with your terms whenever you're 100 years from now, whenever you're done with this,
in order to incentivize people to want to do this stuff, got to find out if they're enjoying
themselves, the current people doing these jobs.
Yeah, absolutely.
I appreciate you sharing that.
I agree with you 100% though.
I mean, it is challenging.
I mean, certainly you have to find time to decompress, turn it off.
It's going to be there the next day, you know, sometimes I did come to realize that you
are mayor 24 or seven.
Yeah.
There's no checking out.
Yeah.
Cluck it out.
Cluck it out.
But for the most part, people are always respectful, you know, and if I get phone calls,
you know, I can return them when I have time to and nobody's faulted me for that.
For the most part, everybody's very appreciative that I do do my best to get out and answer phone
calls and answer emails and come and visit with people and much, much rather talk to people
in person because you can get to the root of the issue as much faster and better and be
able to solve the issues in a better light.
So I think that that's been a very well.
I guess just touching on the bigger picture, like I've been doing some reading and talking
to people about things that I talked about in the beginning of the campaign or as I was
progressing through, you know, the difference between servant leadership and there's two
ways to lead in my opinion.
And I think I learned this in the military and I always kind of keep that in the back of
my head.
You can either push people up the hill and be behind them or you can lead up the hill.
And again, I'm not saying I'm a perfect person, but I always try to lead from the front
and make sure that everybody knows that I'm not going to ask you to do anything that
I'm not willing to do myself.
Granted, there is that caveat that when you're way more professionally trained to do that
job better, then I'm going to be as close to as possible, but let you do the job.
Like our police and fire departments, I've told them and they're very appreciative that
I don't hear the sirens and come running to see what's going on.
I stay out of their way and let the professionals handle it and they do a great job in our community
as well as the streets and all the other departments that are there.
So very, very great group of people that are taking care of our city for us.
This is one of my grandfather's favorite phrases, former military, marine himself and
everything.
And a military guy loved talking about that.
I appreciate that.
I hear it in that and just made me think of them.
I don't think that a lot of people look at the budget and necessarily think, oh, there's
a lot to talk about there.
Oh, there's a lot of drama with that or something.
But every once in a while, it's not every budget season, but every once in a while there
is one that is a little more contested or a little more talked about than others that
we happen to run through one of those this year, where there's a lot of conversation
about the budget this year.
The budget just passed.
Can we touch on that a little bit?
Yeah.
If I can say like it's been a humbling experience, you know, being a part of it from the inside
and seeing, you know, working with Tim and, and Dessourci was done a phenomenal job this
year and for 30 years, he's been at the city taking care of the finances and, and a great
group inside Karen, Laurie and Aaron who really take a lot of pride in making sure that
things run smoothly.
And I appreciate that.
Thank you for that.
But the big picture is that there's so many moving parts and to be able to continuously
bring, bring in the numbers and, and then the numbers are going out at the same time.
And it doesn't ever stop.
So really when you're saying you're taking a snapshot of, you know, you're presenting
a budget that's really a moment in time to be able to take that snapshot and say, this
is it.
This is what it looks like for right now for the, and this is what we're going to work
on towards next year.
But at the same time, there's so many things that are going to happen between now and
the end of 2025 that you can't see.
You can't foresee.
So it's, it was pretty great that way.
And there's a lot of big things that kind of happen this year that we had to take into
account and figure out, you know, we did decrease the budget by quite a bit in terms of the
overall cost of what's going on.
We still have expenses for some debt.
We're going to have to take off for the roads, but we're able to decrease that from like
usually 2.2 million down to 1.3.
And we're able to shift some things around because I know we're going to touch on the transportation
utility.
There's a good time to bring it up.
That was a system that we put in place that in my opinion was well thought out and
well planned as a as a user-based system, like you use a gallon of water, you use a
own a wide of electricity, I'm not quite sure how they do that or how they measure it.
But we were, it was based on how many times you use the road.
So it was a trip charge and we tried to make it equal to everybody that don't, you know,
so if you're a resident, you have basically, you know, eight trip charges a day, meaning
you leave the house four times and come back per day, granted every day or not.
It's not going to be the same.
The ones that got the, the branch of that is going to be the businesses and the restaurants
because, you know, fast food restaurants, you got every time somebody pulls in and leaves,
that's two trip charges.
But at the same time, they don't get to run their business without the roads.
You know, so there's a very important thing there and it also helped us because some
of the communities outlying, the outlying communities that are great and I appreciate
everything that they do in being there, but they don't contribute to the roads at all
that we use inside our city, which everybody uses.
So this was a way of being able to get a few pennies from them to add to the pool of
money that we use for special, special assessments.
And the whole reason we got rid of special assessments is because they were just going
up and up and up before getting 15 to $30,000 bills depending on if they lived on a corner
or not.
So really, in the end, it was a, it was a great system.
But what happened?
It was in Piwaki.
They went through the system and the manufacturing group, the state, at a state level contested
it and they went to court and the court, the local court upheld it and then they went
to the appeals court and the appeals court overturned it and said it was illegal.
And then they took it to the Wisconsin Supreme Court who then chose not to see it, which
then put it back in the appeals court as illegal.
So we had to, we didn't disband it, but we did pause it for right now until we figured
out for sure what's going on.
So unfortunately, then we got to not collect the revenue that was coming for that, but
we don't want to go to the back to special assessments.
So we were able to kind of work internally between the utilities that use those, they
underneath of those roles for the water, electricity, sometimes the storm water utility and
then the wastewater.
And we were able to kind of shift some money around and everybody agreed that it was a
fair process.
So we weren't doing anything that, you know, hurt anybody.
So that's going to be able to cover special assessments or not, you know, going back to
that outdated model at this point.
So.
Yeah.
And the behind the scene of that and everything with the, with the rest of the budget, everything
else, certainly some conversations about a couple of big things in town here.
I know you wanted to touch on some of that too.
Yeah.
You know, they're, they're, they're tough subjects because there's a lot of emotions
behind them.
You know, and two of them that came to the forefront and they kind of have for the last
couple of years.
So they're, you know, there's, there's issues that are there.
I'm not going to dive into the exact issues and again, that's kind of my personal opinion
too.
And I'm, I'm learning as mayor at the council meetings that I, I don't speak as much
as I did when I was a council member, but just because one, I don't know how much it'll
help.
And two, I just don't know if it's my place as the mayor because my job is to take care
of them.
It's a tough line behind the scenes.
Yeah.
So I'm learning as I go there.
But anyways, the two touchy subjects was obviously the library and the Humane Society.
Very, very emotional subjects just because people really love the library and people
really love the Humane Society because it takes care of the animals and everything.
So we are working on those and it's going to be a continuous process.
I think people get scared when they hear certain things or if a council member does make
a motion and they do have to hear if it passes or not, you know, that's, that's kind of
what's happening.
Like, in the end, we, we vote our, our alderman in and they're there to speak for the
people.
And again, they have their own opinions according to how they feel, how they're raised
and everything.
Ultimately, this comes down to the budget and knowing that money is going to continue
to shrink for us as a city, as we still have to wait and figure out how the whole mill
system goes and what new businesses are going to be brought in.
And now that's going to play out for taxes and all that.
But ultimately, we built this amazing city to include the library and to some degree,
the Humane Society, when we add a lot of money flowing through this community and a lot
of what was being brought in by individual donors, private donors versus the city.
But then what happens with these big organizations like the library and again, it's a beautiful
library and it does great things and there's great people there.
But it costs a lot of money and now it's been put out, you know, not a hundred percent
because there is different funding to it.
But the majority of it is put on the back so the Wisconsin Rapids taxpayers know.
So there's, there's things to be discussed and I hope everybody can understand that there's
nobody that's looking to harm our community.
It's just having conversations and dealing with the money behind what it takes to keep
it running the way everybody wants it to run.
And, you know, right away, I do want to say, because I talk to listeners almost every
day about these topics.
And, and they, they, it's a wide variety.
There's, I don't think in the years I've been doing this job that there's ever been
one topic that the 100% of the listeners are on this side of it.
It's always 50-50, no matter what we're talking about.
And, and there's always a lot of passion and energy.
There's a little more than needed, but, but there's a lot of it involved doing it.
And, and I, one thing that I realized with this current, this current, well, past couple
of weeks, I'm so thankful for that.
I'm thankful that we have a community that cares.
I'm, I'm thankful that we have a community that is engaged, that they're not being, they're
finding out about these things that the last second because they haven't been paying
attention.
This, this community cares.
They're listening.
They're paying attention.
They're, I'm also thankful for the communication from the board, from you, from your
front office, from the city hall and all this, because they're able to be able to care
about these things, because they're kept up to date on these things.
We have an open communication here, nobody's trying to hide anything, nobody's trying
to get rid of things or, or make the community less than it is, we're trying to make it better.
And we're trying to be adults about this too.
Everything in the marriage is laid out for you, couldn't have been more exact.
We want to keep these things.
These things cost money.
We have to balance way of life and way of living with how do we keep the lights on.
Right.
It's, it's business 101, it's life 101.
And I think most people, when you strip it down like that and you explain it the way
you did, get that.
That's true.
And, and one of the things is, especially with these topics, the library, the main society,
these are things that I'm personally attached to.
I care.
I, I get as passionate as anybody about, right?
You got to put those motions aside.
You really do.
You, I know how impossible it can be to do.
But if we're going to really talk about these things and really get into them and really
make our community better for our kids and our future kids and all that, we've got to
be, have his little emotion involved sometimes with these things because this is numbers.
And there's no feelings involved with numbers.
There's no, the future, the future needs us to think about these things with, you know,
a direct focus.
And, and being emotional is, is part of being Midwesterners.
That's what we are at everything.
But we also have to approach these things to a degree as adults and realize we got to
keep the lights on.
We also want to keep these things.
How do we do that?
We've got it, we figure it out together to keep the, the personal, personal grudges away
from like the aldermen who are voted in and they stepped up, whereas most people won't
step up.
So one, give them the credit for stepping up.
Two, if you don't agree with what they, what they are bringing to the table, then you vote
them out.
This is the way our system works.
But two, personally, again, you go back to the social media.
So there's no, you know, there's just, I know, it's frustrating, but it, it is what it
is.
And it's not going away in terms of the ability to speak your mind freely.
Again, when it has no, there's no checks and balances to it.
There's no eye to eye contact.
There's no person, people can say whatever they want and they feel like they can get away
with it.
And they must somehow make them feel happy.
So you can't take that happiness away from them on my head.
No, that's what it is.
I will say, I don't disagree with you.
I will say, I think that, I think those people are continually unhappy and want to make
others feel that way.
And if you really want to be a dog, you want to be heard or you just want to be a dog
that barks.
If you want to be heard, well, we happen to have a radio station right here that I open
up the phone lines every single morning to talk about topics, whatever you guys want to
talk about.
You can be a dog that's heard.
You can be heard.
But if you want to get things done, we encourage you to be an adult, to be a part of these things,
to be a, heck, be a board member, get involved, get behind the, get into these things.
That's how you, that's how good work gets done.
Yeah.
And again, I encourage anybody to do that.
I always have my line open, my, I'll come to you guys and talk to you about the issues
of what's going on.
We are doing some great things at WRC and we've set up a new studio in there.
They've all worked hard.
I heard moved about 12, 1200 pounds worth of material to set up this new studio.
It's pretty cool.
Angelica, our intern is here.
She got to participate in that.
So some great things going on and that's all being designed so that we can sit down and
talk more about the issues.
It's not that I don't like, you know, when the media gets involved in stuff, but it seems
we've kind of learned that they get involved when the social media gets loud enough and angry
enough that they're like, ooh, there must be something here.
And I think they've been doing a really good job and I try to talk with the reporters
as much as I can to try to develop that report and say, look, you know, I'm happy to give
you this to help you with the stories, but we don't want our community, you know, you
don't need to be making our community look negative at the same time.
If it's an issue and it's an issue and let's deal with it.
So we want to be able to get to these podcasts more and just get more of this information
out there from the city's perspective on both sides, then just an outsider coming in
and kind of getting the clicks they want off of the anger that's, you know, boiling up
about certain things.
Great.
And I like hearing that.
I'm glad that you guys see that too.
I'm glad that you're aware of that too and doing something about it.
That's cool.
Well, I did want to make sure that we mentioned the ribbon cutting ceremony coming up.
We have our bridge lighting ribbon cutting ceremony right around the corner.
Yeah.
It's exciting.
And again, I kind of came at the last hour for the most part.
I did vote on it last year and I know, again, there's some controversy behind it just
because of the cost that goes into it.
But at the same time, this was a program that was carried through multiple leadership groups
throughout the years and they've been saving up money and again, it would have taken
forever to be able to save up the amount of money.
And maybe we can still do some fundraising.
But what happened is some money came available through that TIF district, the TIF district
down there, the TIF money that's there to be able to do the bridges and we had voted,
talked about it and voted on doing all three different types of light, like you'll have
puck lighting and then stretch lighting on the sides and stretch lighting on the pillars
going down.
And it's all going to be shining off the water like in the end, it's going to be pretty amazing.
And I understand how people feel about the money.
The money was there and we did decide to do both bridges because it would have looked
really kind of awkward to just do one, especially when you're downtown.
And it is going to be phenomenal and these are very high quality light like the system
itself is going to be great.
We're working, we're reaching out to people in the community that, you know, have the
ability to set up programming with these to be able to do it to some music maybe and
be able to have different shows, but also just have ambient lighting during different times,
different colored lights during different holidays, stuff like that.
I think it's a huge addition to the downtown and again, I'm one person's opinion, we voted
on it to make it happen and I appreciate all the effort that everybody's put into carrying
it forward and to include Mayor Shane, former Mayor Blazer.
He was a big proponent of pushing it forward and got Joe and Kyle and Paul on board to kind
of make it all happen and they did a lot of work to kind of bring it all to fruition.
So it'll be exciting.
And that's happening during Rekindle the Spirit, right before Rekindle the Spirit.
Again, hard to Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, always putting on a great parade and entertainment
night to start out the holiday season.
So I think that's going to be exciting.
So they're giving us a few minutes ahead of that on the 27th at 5.25 I believe is when
that's starting and then we'll light up the Christmas lights and make a great night out
of it and have a great holiday season.
It's going to be really cool.
It's going to be very cool.
I'm excited about it, we're going to be down there, we're looking forward to being
a part of Rekindle the Spirit in one of our favorite events throughout the year.
I'm excited about this.
I know Shane and I were talking about it for years and here we are where it's finally
going to happen.
These lights are going to be up there.
I will encourage the audience if you're curious.
You can look at big cities.
You can look at rural cities.
How do cities keep their population?
How do they bring new people in investments, investments in their community and making
a community that people want to come to, people want to bid?
If you're moving to Rapids or you're checking Rapids out and you drive down one of those
bridges and you see those lights or you see some of our nonprofits, our library, our
Humane Society.
You see a community that is well kept up.
You see good roads.
You see these things.
Our schools are strong and solid and funded.
These are communities people want to stay in.
These are communities people want to live in.
That is an investment.
That is, to me, that makes this very simple and very exciting and now we can just focus
on the fun cool parts of it like, oh, these lights are going to be awesome.
To me, that's just my thoughts on it.
I encourage people to learn more about these things and find out more.
You can do that again, completely transparent, everything's for you at the city's website
wirapids.org.
You got the budget summary there.
You got budget hearing notices there.
You can keep up the date and all these things, encourage it to do so.
Matt, always good talk with you, man.
Thanks for the time.
Yeah, you're too.
Thanks James.
Have a good day.
Big thank you to Angelica and our friends over at Wisconsin's Rapids Community Media and
the gang over there.
Thanks for the great work that you guys do.
We'll have Mayor Zachary and with us again next month, we're looking forward to almost
made you do double billing here.
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
I appreciate that.
We'll talk with you next month.
We'll talk with you soon and then later.
You've got the lights of love celebration coming up.
Everybody be listening for that right here at 975 FM 1320 AM WFHR locally grown radio.
