Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this January 22nd, 2025, of your host James
DeMail off here.
In part two, today we're going to speak with our friend Ann Lee Peck from the ODC Opportunity
Development Center, love talking with them.
Always a good conversation with Lance Pummel, he's in with us today Wood County Board Chairman.
We want to send a shout out to, of course, to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community
Media.
Big thank you to them.
Be sure to do yourself a favor.
Go to YouTube, type in near search bar Wisconsin Rapids Community Media, subscribe to their
page and keep up to the great work they are doing over there.
Lance, how you been?
Good, James.
Thanks for the welcome.
It's always great to be here and have this conversation.
Appreciate the time with you, man.
We're going to talk about a couple of things today.
We'll get into the ATV, UTV, ordinance from last night.
We will talk a little bit about the boards of supervisors meeting recently.
But I wanted to start with what is going on with the Sarah Park.
Being in this area for over 20 years and everything of certainly you've known that, I pass
it every time I go to see my daughter at point and I've noticed like many people I think
over the years, it doesn't seem as busy as it used to be and it seems that things have
changed over there.
But I don't know how much it's common knowledge of the changes that have happened over
there.
And I feel like it's a huge headlight to me, but I haven't talked to too many people
that have heard much about what is going on, not only with that, but with our here in
Wood County.
Yeah, Jim.
It's a really big deal for us.
We constantly look at those recreational opportunities.
How do we bring tourism into the area in a variety of ways?
Because we see that as the quickest way to build the area, to increase revenues, and just
to grow our population.
You know, as people see the attributes that we have, we hope that maybe they decide to
move here, open their business.
But Sarah Park, many of you are familiar because Sarah, C-E-R-A, you know, was the consolidated
employees recreation area and it was extremely well-used, well-maintained for many, many years.
But it is consolidated papers and all of the subsequent ownership occurred.
There was a lot of, you know, deferred maintenance and other things that just didn't happen.
And the park was used, some extent less.
It was not maintained at the level.
It was way back at one time it was, you know, really a dual level park.
So we were approached and said, you know, the whole purpose of this park and some of the
FERC regulations, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions are, there has to be recreational
use of these properties and who better to provide that.
Then probably the county and public access to this park, other than just the employee group.
So we were on board right away and it was a really great deal, I think, for everybody.
Because the park will be improved.
At the same time there will be public access, the cost of the county, other than the maintenance,
you know, updating and stuff like that, was relatively zero.
This is a two-year lease agreement to comply with the FERC regulations and then ownership
at that point transferred to the county.
But we'll have the additional sites there, hopefully have some additional docs for boats.
We have riverfront access, which takes some of the pressure off of the water facilities
we have at Lake Waziccia.
So, you know, I just think this is going to be a win-win for everybody.
It will certainly spur economic development.
It provides us with more campsites because you, as you travel around, you see Southwood
County parks fall a lot of time and then take some of the pressure off of a smaller Lake
Lake Waziccia and move some of that boat traffic up to the river.
But we're really looking forward to this.
It's a...
The opportunity is too good to pass up.
It's one of those kind of situations and it's such a smart investment, too, as you've
kind of laid out for us there.
One of the things that I think is exciting about this is certainly all the things you mentioned,
having more revenue opportunities for that and everything.
It's one of the biggest topics in any rural community is how do you get more economic...
How do you get more of an economic boom?
How do you get more businesses?
All of this.
It's something that...
I don't want to say it fell into our lap, but it kind of was just sitting right there
in the opportunity presented itself and the...
You guys were...
Everybody was smart enough to jump on this, I think.
One of the cool things to me about this, Lance, is I don't know that that area has been
even...
The surface has even scratched on it.
Like I feel like there's so many things that over the months and years ahead, we may
see, oh, there's another great opportunity for this.
Or here's something.
It's the stuff that we haven't even thought of yet that I think is really exciting about
this, just as much as the ownership change that's going on.
Yeah, you know, when we look at development of a park, even when we looked at expansion
at Lake Waziccha and Southwuk County Park, we're looking at multi-million dollar projects.
I mean, we're talking like four, six, eight million dollars as we go forward and develop
campsites.
Well, there will be upgrades needed there, electrical and other, but it's there in
that opportunity to provide that also on that side of the river, which is a great location
as we have people coming in from that direction.
But I touched on this a little bit last night.
I happened to attend a Wisconsin Rapid City Council meeting, and there was a report from
the heart of Wisconsin.
They said the one thing that they noticed was at the top of their list was lacking in
our area right here.
And I'm speaking specifically to Southwuk County, it was a lack of identity.
And you know, one of the boards I sit on is our North Central Tourism Board.
And tourism is going to be the quickest way to revitalize an economy.
You know, why have people put their, whether they're boats, their trailers, their ATVs,
on a trailer and go way up North when we have the ability to be that mecca right here
in Central Wisconsin.
And this park plays into that perfectly because of all the opportunities.
So not only does it come to the park and generally our camping revenues make those parks pretty
revenue neutral.
They're not necessarily profitable in and of themselves, but then those people spend money
in our grocery stores at our gas stations, you know, occasionally part of the other families
at a hotel where we drive room tax.
So I mean, it's a tremendous room to the area when we have those opportunities.
And this came along at a very affordable price and at the right time.
It's something that they're working really hard on now to of course make it safe and make
sure that everything is set and ready to go when it does open and we bring it to the community.
Another thing that I thought was important coming out of the article that I, articles
that I read about this was the idea that they want to improve it but also keep the honor
the history of the area.
And I think that's unique and that's great to see as well.
Yeah, I mean, this park has a long history, you know, and we're not looking at making,
you know, big changes there.
We're just looking, you know, right, we've had a really good head start this year on
this project.
Probably because of the lack of winter sports activities that which hurts the economically
in that respect.
I mean, but our park crews that would normally be maybe up at powers blow off or doing
some of the grooming at some of the other trails across country ski and others have been
able to really focus on that park out there.
So some of the trees that needed to be cleared due to, you know, Emerald Ashbour or Oak
Wilt or some of those, you know, those danger trees there being taken down.
We have the opportunity to get out there and really do some planning.
So we're going to get a jump on this in our hope is that this park will open simultaneously
other ones and by May, you know, we're going to have this park open and ready to go.
Looking forward to that, we'll be covering that story for you and keeping you up to date
on that and any other developments going on over there.
But again, I really just a congratulations to the area.
This is a win for all of us.
Yeah, you know, our parks department works really hard on these kind of issues, these
kind of missions and the kind of funny part is like I said, it will increase capacity.
My wife said, that's a gorgeous park.
We've never camped out there.
We've been through it over the years and she said, you know, can we get like a reserve
site now?
I said, you have to go through the regular reservation process as does everybody, but I'm not
exactly sure, you know, if we've brought that aspect online yet in regard to that park
because I'm not sure exactly what sites we're going to have or how we're going to number
those.
But check our wood county parks, you know, the website, all that information is online
and, you know, it's our goal, like I said, to have that up and running.
Looking forward to it.
Lance, the other thing that wanted to touch on, you've touched on this too and really
this, all these two topics I can, I think, really bleed together in many ways.
They both come down to wanting to bring more economy to our community and raise that profile
for the community.
And when it comes to that, it sounds like a win, win with the Sierra Park.
And then there's the ATVU to be ordinance.
There was a lot of, there's been a lot of conversation about this, maybe more than any
other topic in this area in the last year, year and a half, if not longer.
It's something that's been kind of stirring, I think, for a while and it's starting to,
I think, finally, get to a right boil.
Personally, I don't think that, I think that this is just a matter of time, that this
does happen, but we have to get it right.
And something that Melissa and I were talking about, heavily this morning, when talking
about this subject, I think, is very important to take into the conversation.
Wherever you fall on this one, I think you should be proud and happy to live in a
community that thinks these things through, that works through these things, that talks
them out, that figures it out together as a community, as a group.
I think we can take a lot of pride in that, living in an area where we talk these things
through, we treat each other like adults, and we have good people making good decisions
for everybody.
That's what, that's politics, that's how these things work.
I think we're very fortunate in this area to have the people that we do.
I also know that we have some barkers out there, we have some people that like bark, and
I want to reach out to them and ask them to watch your tone, to act like an adult, that
if you want to be heard, have you ever listened to somebody that talked down to you?
Have you ever listened to somebody that barked at you and whined at you like a little kid?
No, you tend to tune that stuff out.
It's no different on the other side.
You want to be heard, act like an adult, and treat our representatives that way, treat
our board members that way.
I encourage you to do that, and I'm saying that because I want you to be heard, I want
everybody to be heard, and the only way to get heard is to act like an adult in the
staying age.
That's how we are going forward.
When you were at the meeting yesterday, what did you take away from it?
The first thing I think I want to comment on is what you said.
One of the things I touched on is we are extremely lucky in our area to have conversations
with our city leaders, with our town leaders, village leaders.
We could go I sat down with the village of Port Edwards and just had breakfast.
We have these conversations, and you always want to be civil because people don't realize
where those governmental lines and where the borders are or how they blend.
You try to be respectful of everybody.
The ATV-UTV issue is a big issue.
It came to the county a number of years ago.
We've been working on this for probably close to 10 years in the county, and we slowly
opened areas of the county up.
What we found was the trouble that we anticipated might occur did not.
As they saw that, other areas said, we probably should get on board with this because there
is an economic picture of this.
It even has to do with where people want to locate to live.
I've had people tell me they're going to move out of a certain area and locate to another
one just because they can get in and out with a recreational vehicle, for instance.
I used some numbers last night, not saying they're perfectly accurate because some of them
are a little old, but the recreational vehicle industry in Wisconsin, about $11 billion
or industry, and about $4 billion of that, a little more than that, is an ATV-UTVs.
More of that use is happening with ATVs and UTVs as opposed to a growth in snowmobiles
because just weather has dictated that some extent.
Most of the counties now open to ATV-UTV traffic, but then at the same time, the city had
a referendum.
It was voted down to open everything, and I don't know that it's from a county's perspective.
We didn't open everything at once, either.
I think there's some common sense and some thought that goes into this.
I think the point that you made that, I think at some point, it's inevitable, and I think
it's as vehicles changed, too.
Some people's thought is the child you saw on the little ATV scrambler running up and
down the street is not what we anticipate, and not what we saw, for instance, in Grand Rapids
or some of the other communities where you have people riding 20 to $50,000 UTVs with horns,
horns, signals quieter than cars is big, and I think that inevitability happens because
the demand will occur.
It's going to be incremental.
The original ATV-UTV resolution that went out to the city included the 12 to 15-year-old
driver who had the DNR certification.
Well, that's probably not going to be acceptable on roads in the city.
Actually, if you're under 18, there's some other restrictions.
I can't have a helmet, some other stuff.
I'm not telling any governmental agency or entity that they should do anything, but I just
hope that, like we did in the county, that you continue to look at it.
You continue to get input, and you try to come up with solutions that hopefully work for
everyone.
Just say a note to anything.
If you ask me, do you want to build a jail?
No, I don't want to build one.
Do I need to build one?
Yeah.
A lot of these issues are like that.
Do I want to?
Maybe, maybe not.
But eventually, you kind of see that if we're going to be at the times, if we're going
to be a desirable place, if we are going to be that recreational mecca that we talk about,
sometimes we have to adapt to some of those uses.
Getting the bill right, getting the ordinance right is key, getting the wording right,
every single syllable right.
We're seeing this throughout the state right now when it comes to voter ID laws and wanting
to get that correct and getting that specific and everything.
It's going on around with a lot of things nowadays.
In order to get these things in action, we got to get it right first.
We got to do the hard work first and figuring that out what's best for the community, what
safest for the community, and best for the economics of the community.
There is a even ground here, just finding it, that's all it takes, and it takes adults
to do that.
It takes treating each other right to do that.
Yeah.
You always find two things.
I was out in DC, not this week, the prior week.
By the way, the side story is really interesting.
It's a trip that's planned a year ahead of time.
It's not a trip, it's a conference, but I guess it's a trip too because they have to go.
To be out there during a state funeral was a really impressive time to be in Washington.
It's not very often or very many days in anybody's lifetime where you see the pomp and
circumference around the death of a president.
When you're standing there on the side of the street and see a case on rolling up with
the horse drawing carriage, it's pretty impressive.
While I'm out there, one of the things I have the opportunity to do is attend the George
Washington Leadership Academy everywhere.
One of the things I take away from that and other things, and I don't make these sayings
up.
I wish I did.
You know, one of the things that I take back that I try to do in government, it's doing
the right thing at the right time for the right reason.
That takes, like I said, it takes time.
We have to explain the process, and then at the end of the day, it has to take everybody's
concerns into consideration.
I think that's what the leadership in our city has done.
I think I see that in our villages, and I'm hoping that that continues.
And one of the things, I'll segue here for you real quick, you know, we for the first
time ever have a county boardroom, a dedicated county boardroom.
We use it for the first time yesterday as part of that new, you know, Justice Center construction
project.
It will give us the opportunity to set days aside to meet with other governmental leaders
from around the air and say, what's your problem today?
What are you dealing with?
How can we help?
How can we coexist and how do we make things better?
And that's my goal always.
You mentioned a board of supervisors in the new room and everything you're at on that,
that's awesome.
What are some of the other highlights from the meeting yesterday?
Well, you know, first of all, I was really interested in getting this brand new room,
which was not, I don't think it was the answer team that we're going to be in there until
Monday.
So we walk into a brand new room, which never seen the set up in and you have all the
new electronics and computers and in fact, the microphones really nice are so sensitive
in there that you actually can't turn them off.
So you have to better be really careful what you say.
And there's some in the ceiling and I said it's so sensitive, not only can it hear any
side talk, it could probably pick up what you're thinking.
So be careful.
But, you know, we have that dedicated room.
There's a conference room to the side of that where we don't have to schedule around
the different judges.
We've not had a designated wood county boardroom since the mid 80s, since branch three came
to fruition and that became a courtroom and there's occasional conflict on scheduling.
But within that facility, other than, you know, the new jail, which provides better safety
for our officers that are in there, better safety for the, you know, I don't want to call
prisoners, but the detainees, the guests, you know, if you're arrested for something,
you haven't, you know, yet been charged and or convicted, you would anticipate that
you are going to be in a safe environment.
And this actually creates that.
We have programming space for rehabilitation, education and other programs.
And it's a big facility and a lot of the public has seen it.
We had an open house there, ribbon cutting, what's interesting, even I got locked in there
the other day.
I walked in to check a set up on something I don't know how to get out of here.
So we're still working through something that had to take the elevator down to the first
floor and then walk out another exit.
I was hoping I wasn't setting off any alarms.
But the opportunities for those who are incarcerated will abound for the county board and for us
to have a better meeting space for the community is fantastic.
It's really good to hear too, especially because some of the logistics and the ways that
this can not only free things up a little bit, maybe make things move a little smoother,
a little faster along the process.
And that couldn't have happened, like we talked about, without the cooperation of the
city.
I mean, the realization that, you know, we want to, you know, I want to see downtown Wisconsin
rampets thrive.
And we've had tremendous changes there over the years.
You know, we have, you know, the largest enamel coated paper company in the world has gone.
And it's not going to come back.
And so what else can we do?
And the governmental buildings down there are pretty attractive buildings.
And it puts another four or five hundred employees downtown, you know, visiting those restaurants,
coffee shops, retail outlets.
So we strive to not only be part, you know, to exist there, but to be part of the community.
Lance, as we're wrapping up here, I did want to touch on one of
the other things.
And that's something that you and I have touched on before.
But I always like to bring it up, especially if we have the time.
And it's about being a board member.
And I don't know if I've asked you this before.
We've been talking for years now.
So I apologize if I've already asked this before.
Probably couldn't answer to anything.
But what made you want to be on the board?
What made you want to do this all those years ago?
You know, it's really interesting.
And I think this has probably lends to the length of time I've been in office, some
of those things.
I never had a grand desire to be politically involved anywhere.
But I came out of, you know, private industry.
And at the time I had, you know, those chambers, say, back then we were a paper town.
And everybody involved in government at some level tended to come from those industries.
And I had the chambers of small business.
I said, you know, you really need to run.
We need a different perspective.
And I thought, well, I can do my two years.
And then I get out of here, somebody else can do theirs.
And, you know, over time, you come educated.
And then I think the key to that is if you're willing to listen, you know, to cooperate,
to collaborate, to compromise, that gets noticed.
And, you know, I made a comment the other day when I finished this term, I'll have been
here 30 years.
That there was no anticipation.
I have no desire to be a, you know, typically there's some climbing there.
I don't want to be a state legislator.
I'm not looking to, you know, be elected at the federal level.
I really want to serve my community like most of the people do in that job because let
me tell you, you don't get paid.
It really is community service.
If you're broke down the per-deems and stuff, we make less than the minimum wage.
So there's nobody out there doing this for a living, nobody's insured, it really is
public service.
But that, you know, that becomes part of your being, I guess.
And my goal, always, is to mentor and to try to convince the next generation to get involved.
And as part of why I bring it up, we want more people to get involved with this.
We want more people to be on county boards or just, you know, a local non-profit boards
or anything, just being a board member and encouraging people to do that more and more.
Yeah.
And it takes thick skin to get out there in front of the public and get elected because
you get skewered at times.
But I can tell you this, if you're interested in serving in some way, I have a column committees,
different commissions that I get to appoint people to that don't have to go through that
election process where you can serve the community at a very high level.
So if you're interested, my number's available on the website.
Give me a call.
We'll get that out there before we wrap up.
To that point, Lance, one of the questions I had lined up for you was asking you,
are you, do you enjoy this?
And I think that the audience and I can hear it in your voice.
I'm sure there are hard days.
There are days harder than others and everything.
And you mentioned the pay and some of those things.
I think we have our answer, you know.
You definitely have to enjoy it.
Yeah, you have to be involved.
My wife has these conversations with me all the time, you know.
You can run again if you promise not to cancel any more family vacations,
but it does grow on you.
And over time, if you pay attention, you do garner a vast amount of knowledge on
a number of issues, departments and what they're doing.
But the day isn't fun, is the day I'm gone.
Lance, appreciate the time as always.
Thank you for joining us.
And people have follow questions and want to know more about some of what we talked about.
How can they reach you?
Well, the easiest way without me spewing a whole bunch of numbers in places is go to the
Wood County website.
All my information is there.
You'll find my email address, my phone number, all those ways to contact me.
And that is woodcountywi.gov.
Woodcountywi.gov.
Appreciate the time again, Lance.
Thanks for joining us.
Looking forward to talking next month.
Thanks, James.
And a big thank you to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media, being here and
recording.
We appreciate the work they do here and recording our board meetings and all these other
things.
Find all of them at their website, their web page or subscription, subscribe to their
page at YouTube, type in your search bar, Wisconsin Rapids Community Media and subscribe
to the great work they are doing over there.
We will have more Midday Magazine coming up for you right here at 97.5 FM 13.20 AM.
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