Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Monday, February, February,
17th, 2025.
Have your host, James G. Mailov here in part two.
Today at 430, we're going to talk to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community
Theater, got the Silver Foxes in studio looking forward to that.
Right now, we want to send a big shout out to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
Big thank you to them.
Do yourself a favor, go to your search bar on YouTube.
Type that into your search bar and subscribe to their page.
Keep up to the great work that they're doing and they're here today because we
got Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacharyne with us.
A Monday edition of the show is a little different for us here.
How are you doing Matt?
Good.
Thank you for having me.
Thanks for being flexible to get me in since I got a busy week coming up here.
So we'll work around the day job comes first, sir.
Yeah.
We just appreciate the time as always.
Got a couple of topics that we want to dive into today.
And first up, I wanted to talk about some new business that's going to be coming to town.
We have a new tech into business that is looking to come into town and take up some space here.
Yeah, first of all, we're very excited that they are coming into town.
Certainly sets of precedence.
The puts us on the on the board for other companies around the world that are looking for space.
Also looking for a power and other parts of industries that are there.
There's water purification center that's there.
And it's going to be continued to be there as the craft mill comes down.
Waste water treatment center, you know, it's really developed in that whole area
as a industrial park.
It's some clarification points on the database center coming in.
That is not any, it's not on any of the land that is part of the mill at this point in time.
That was five acres that will be leased from Quabco, Consolidated Water and Power Company.
So it's something that I was a part of the original conversation in the beginning
to introduce them to each other, you know, and from there they kind of took it on a private level.
You know, Quabco is privately owned by Bill Roode still.
So they were able to hash things out and kind of come back to us.
So at the point that it came back and was released to the community was about the same time
that we knew that they were coming to this agreement together.
So we're excited about it.
It's got its upsides and downsides, you know, after it's built,
there'll be a lot of money, $200 million being put into building it.
That's infrastructure.
The people that will be in town, you know, that'll help out the economy during that time
and how long it takes to build it.
And then outside of that, when it's up and running, I don't know exactly,
but it's somewhere in the bulk of 20 employees to actually run it on a day-to-day basis.
But those folks will be living in town.
If they're not here already, good paying jobs.
Again, that helps our economy out.
It also makes Quabco strong, who has a good amount of employees in the local community.
So they're stronger knowing they have more customers that are coming in and plugging
into their system so that they have more money to go around, make sure the dams are solvent.
And those dams provide 30% of that power, so that helps the database companies
and people that are like that know that they're using some, you know,
more alternative renewable energy resources than just the open market.
But 70% of that electricity, according to what I understand from Quabco,
comes from outside sources, is bought on the open market and brought into service
those communities, those businesses.
So we look forward to bringing that in and building that infrastructure back up to the point
where at some point they may have to look at investing more money into building it bigger.
So these are all upsides to it.
And we just have to be excited about the opportunities that are presented to us.
I don't know that details as to what the database center actually supports
in the broad picture of the internet.
But I do know that whenever I ask you a question, she answers me pretty quick
within a few seconds.
And that is because these databases are being built and can handle this much information
that fast.
So we like our technology and this is part of what helps us do that.
This is the modern paper mill.
This is the modern kind of thing that we're going to be seeing more and around our country,
around the world.
It is things like this anywhere real company, real communities that can take advantage of this
and offer some land.
And when we have something that is a win for our economy as well as our environment,
that seems like a pretty cool thing right there.
That's all right.
That's that seems like a good one.
I do want to note something else real quick.
And this isn't just coming from me, but many in the community,
including my own parents about this.
You talked about in your campaign leading up to this.
One of the main things you wanted to do was bring in new businesses,
bring in new life to our economy and some of that.
You've been doing what you said you were going to do, sir.
We're not used to that in politics.
I say that with a little bit of jokingly, but I also say it in modern times,
like I appreciate that.
I appreciate that you said something and you're doing what you said that really
does mean something nowadays.
And we're actually seeing it.
Yeah, I appreciate you saying that.
And I appreciate when the people, you know, say, congratulations and, you know,
good job and all that.
But in the reality is in that campaign, I always understood that going into this position,
it was not, it's not that I am the one who can, you know,
wave my magic wand and bring this stuff in.
But my goal was always to say, I know enough to be able to build the bridges,
make the introductions, let these businesses know that we are open to them coming
here and be as welcoming as possible and try to, if they're going to talk
about incentives and we have to go that route, then we'll have that conversation.
But ultimately, it's my job to make sure we stay out of the way as much as possible
so that they can take care of business.
And then when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of getting what the city wants,
so everybody's safe, then that's, you know, where we have to step in.
But again, building the trust in those relationships allows them to be more
comfortable dealing with us and knowing that there are going to be, you know,
the regulations that everybody has to deal with.
But they're more apt to do that in a better light when we present ourselves
in that fashion.
So every community is looking to bring in new people, whether we're talking about
a major metropolitan city or we're talking about a city like our size.
And part of how you do that is being attractive to businesses, to, to your
community, the way they respond.
It was many decades ago that my papa drove semi-ferspector for 40, 50, 50 years.
And he would go from Chicago up to Canada all the time and he traveled through
Wisconsin.
They traveled through Rome, Wisconsin a lot.
And eventually was like, I really like it here.
And I like this business pretzels over here and I like some of these other spots.
Yeah, I think I'm going to retire here.
It was just my non-apoppa that did.
And then my knucklehead self came up here and my sister and all that.
And before you know, you got a bunch of mail-offs in this area.
And, and now this is kind of where my family story starts now, where my brother,
my, all my kids, their kids, they're all born in Wisconsin.
The economies that my family has created in this state are not that
significant, but there's something, especially when you add it on to other
people that have a very similar story to my families.
This is how cities are built.
This is how cities survive is by being attracted to other people, whether it's a
business or community members, but nothing sells a community like its people.
And, and, and, and I know that's not lost on you at all, sir.
And I want the audience to remember that as well with how we treat each other
and how we are with people coming into our town and stuff.
Take it a step further, too.
And again, I never want to harp on social media because I think I was thinking
about the other day like that was that spider man saying, you know, with great
power comes great responsibility.
We have this internet that's got so much power.
And I think at some, at some point in time, we'll be able to utilize, it's not
that I don't want people to express themselves.
I think that that's great.
I just don't necessarily know if people realize how the negativity that they
bring forward does no good.
That doesn't do any good for anybody.
So the responsibility is saying, use our free speech wisely and use it to
benefit like the, to progress into the future.
And to your point, I'm so happy that you and your family or your ancestors,
you know, saw this place and moved here, you know, me and Johnny,
Johnny grew up here and I saw this place and I said, I would be willing to raise
our family there.
And so we moved up here and made a go of it.
Now for my kids, this is their life.
Someone to stay, someone to go to school, come back, who knows, you know, what'll
happen. But ultimately, I see people all the time that are moving in here,
whether it's, you know, so what if it is retirement?
Hard to, hard for me to imagine now that I'm, you know, 54, you know,
I'm looking at this whole retirement thing, but you're still young.
You still have money.
You still have, you know, ideas and opportunities up,
but the other people that are bringing in their young families and all this
growth that's happening, we are not dying.
Like people, it's hard to reach out to the people who are saying we're a
dying community and I'm just saying to you, no, we're not dying.
Like we are, we are going through a transition and I know that we're all sad
that the industry that was here for so long has gone, but it's gone throughout
the whole world for the most part.
So we have to move forward.
And if, you know, if you say we're dying, then, then in your mind,
and what you're doing for your community is helping it die in that sense.
But on the other hand, there's all these other people that are helping
it grow and seeing the big picture.
And honestly, those are the people that I want to focus on.
Those are the people I want to talk to because I think you kind of take on
that personality of those people that you hang out with.
I think that's always been a given, right?
If you, you know, so, so I would encourage everybody who's angry about the past
to figure out how to look to the future and see like if, if, if your
decision is to be angry about what isn't here and what's not, I would encourage
you as an, as a business man and investor on that side of things, save your
money up, stop drinking, stop smoking, stop doing drugs, stop wasting your
money on whatever you're wasting it on, save up $1,000 a year, do whatever it
takes and invest that in your future and your children's future and start
looking at the big picture in the future versus what was and what's never
going to come back.
I think it's important to have perspective.
And that's one of the best friends you'll have.
The older you get is perspective.
And when you look at our community compared to some that are we're right next
to or near or is maybe 20 minutes away from us and how they're doing compared
to how we are.
Now, having that perspective is really intent.
I think we stand out quite a bit in this area when it comes to that.
And I think another part of this that is really key to it too is I, I like
you, especially in this position, I hear from a lot of the community.
I hear a lot and I don't mind good, bad.
I look at all as data.
I don't look at as good or bad information.
I'm like, this is how you feel.
Thank you for that data.
What I have an issue with is an under any circumstance no matter what the
topic sports, politics doesn't matter what we're talking about.
Are you just a dog barking or are you trying to be heard?
Do you have solutions?
What are you doing to fix this?
Anybody can point a point out a problem.
But what are you doing to fix it?
What are you doing?
What are you bringing to the table with ideas?
What kind of take that same energy and harness it and use it to do some good
in this community or at least have some answers, some solutions to what you're
saying.
Because otherwise, you're just a dog barking.
That's all you are.
Do you actually want to get something done or do you just want to get this off
your chest?
And if you just want to get it off your chest, that's fine.
But that's why we have friends.
That's why we have significant others and everything.
You don't need to take it to social media.
Not everything you think needs to be published.
You know, and I think keeping that in mind, especially with where we're going
next with the conversation, the next couple of things I wanted to talk about.
There is a discussion or referral from an older person in the ordinance
banning the addition of fluoride to the city water supply and the motion
was brought on by a couple of different people.
One of the bring up this one with you.
Yeah, this came on actually really fast.
Although it's, I know it's been a conversation for for a long time.
And it's really, this has been in our water to one degree or another for almost
a hundred years.
I mean, it's got a, you know, it's, it's a long standing thing.
I think again, it's, it's really tough for me to even necessarily talk about it
because, you know, there's a very strong possibility.
It could be a split vote tie vote, which means that I have to speak
up and make a decision one way or the other, which again is always not as fun as
it looks, just because, you know, you got four people that you're going to make
angry one way or the other.
But I encourage everybody to say, look, this is a vote.
Don't take it personal.
We all have to make our decisions and move forward.
We're all doing the best that we can based on who we are as are from our
upbringing and where we are now.
So don't take it to personal.
But ultimately, when it comes to the fluoride, we do know that it does protect
our teeth like we know that.
And we know that it's, it's been in the water for a long time.
What we don't know, and I don't even know how to begin to understand how
would you gauge, you know, I've spent a lot of time trying to think this through
how you would gauge, like loss of IQ, like how does that play in?
And, and understand that.
And if it is really happening, then we, of course, that's a whole different
conversation.
What I haven't seen yet is proven fact, at least to my desired level that says,
yes, this for sure is causing brain damage.
So right now, it's a tough call.
It's been here a long time.
I think the council a lot of times has to understand that this is a conversation.
We don't have to make a decision.
Absolutely.
Right now we could say, well, let's bring it back next month.
Let's get more information.
Let's continue the conversation because this is a really, really important
decision to be made.
I was raised to question everything and I do.
And I believe in that and I encourage others to do that.
And once I do that and I get my answers, I move on.
The earth is round.
I found that out at a young age and I'm like, okay, I know that the earth is
round.
I'm good.
Science has proven that we can move on to other subjects.
If we had no problems in life, I would be fine with us dissecting this.
But the fact that we are spending our topic and spending time that we don't
have a lot of on this and our other people are out there.
If it wasn't, if the man's last name was not Kennedy, if it was Smith,
nobody would be talking about this.
This is something that you just said over a hundred years, this has been in our
water.
Science has proven over and over and over and over and over again.
This is healthy for us.
This is okay for us.
I trust science.
I trust our government.
I think that if this was an issue, we would have been tackling it a long
time ago.
It wouldn't have taken somebody who does not know what they're talking about.
Did not go to school for this.
There's nothing but read a bunch of online articles online about it.
And we wouldn't be at this point.
Like we've already spent more time in this than we need to.
We got other, we got bigger fish to fry.
We got big topics to be doing, dealing with in society, let alone in our town
here.
And yet we're spending time on this topic because of a bunch of people that
didn't even read any homework on this, didn't even read any articles.
They're just listening to other people that didn't read any articles, read
up on this one, read your science on this.
And again, we got other things that we could be talking about.
And do we need to be putting our focus on that really need our attention in
this country right now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm going to throw a caveat in there too.
Like, this is something I learned just recently.
Maybe I understood this in the back of my head, but it never in the front.
In the sense that our phones are very personal, right?
We, we, it locks off to either our face or digits or whatever.
And you got to, you know, get into it.
You don't spend a whole lot of time looking at somebody else's phone pretty much never.
So anyways, I, I really, you know, I understood there was this algorithm or
whatever you want to call it behind the computer system that was showing me
stuff that I wanted to see and whether they were picking it up.
And I think, again, we all know this.
My ongoing joke was when people would say that all of a sudden, something which,
you know, I'd say snowmobiles and something would show up on my phone,
boss mobile, and I jokingly said, oh, I thought that was God answering all my prayers,
you know, but the funny thing about it is I did look over it, you know,
my wife was listening to something looking at something and I caught my attention.
I'm like, oh, that's something that I would really kind of want to know,
whether it's talking about, you know, relationships at certain age and all the
stuff you're going through.
And I come to realize, as we're looking at it, like I really should be seeing
the stuff that she's getting sent to her phone and she should be seeing the
stuff sent to my phone to help understand the other side butter.
But a lot of times they're just sending you what they think or it thinks that
you want to read about.
So my point to say all this is, be very careful because what you're getting
when you say, hey, Siri or whatever it is, what they're sending you is things
that they think they want you to know.
And it's going to be very inclusive to what is or very specific to that.
So be careful with it because yeah, you're getting fudge specific information
that take that sways you one way or the other.
Well said, speaking with constant rapids, Mayor Matt Zach,
right now, along with our friends from Wisconsin Rapids Community Media,
another discussion that's going up is a referral about the idea of increasing
the terms of an older person and the mayor from two years to four years.
This was another one that's been brought up recently.
Yeah, I think again, this was brought up kind of quick.
So it doesn't have to be voted on again.
I think the council jumps the gun a lot where we don't even have enough
information to know what we really need to know and to make the best decision
possible. So I'm always more and more now I'm going to encourage to say,
hey, let's just take another month and read up on it.
I think in specific or to this one specifically, you know, I could say from
my side of it, two years is a little tricky.
But I'm kind of rare when I come into this because I'm not in the
retirement age where there's a lot of times we have mayors that are more into
that retirement where, you know, whereas for me, I still have things I want to
accomplish. So when I try to plan out two years in advance, it seems a little
bit tricky, not to mention if I do have specific plans for the city to try to
work with, it's tough to try to accomplish those in two years and then have
to go through reelection and, you know, all that time.
So I get the fact that two years isn't a lot in the big picture.
But the other side of the argument is if for some reason we don't have an
option and we vote in somebody that we really, really don't want there, then
they're going to be able to do.
Let's just say a lot less damage in two years than they would do in four years.
So I see that side of it too.
And in reality, you know, if it stays two years, I'm totally fine.
Like I'll do it in two years segments and I'll, you know, I will cease being
mayor when the time is right and kind of go forward from there.
And it seemed like the aldermen for the aldermen positions two years was
still still good as somebody had thrown around the one year.
And I'm like, but then you're just spending more time trying to get reelected.
Then you are actually doing the job of the residents, citizens.
So I think, I think it's fine.
If they choose to change it, I am saying ahead of time that I think it should
be put on hold until I'm done with my entire ownership, not just this term.
Yeah.
And that way it's not perceived as Zach or trying to sign a furious
order to get something done there.
So I understand that side too.
But at the same time, I don't control their votes.
So we'll see how things, that was kind of my one follow up to that.
And you kind of answered that one.
So I think that that's an interesting, that adds another interesting element to
that. And in kind of wrapping up, uh, ordinances, uh, certainly bringing up the
ETV, YouTube, uh, ordinances that we have in round about talking about, uh, in
everybody's, everybody's talking about.
Yeah.
And this is a long one.
So I don't know, you know, I don't want to expect too much time on it.
And it's, it's really, I never knew that this is a hill I was going to climb
because it started when I got into, to the aldermanic position.
So, uh, and I won't take you through the whole history of it.
But at this point in time, the folks that wanted it, sent it to referendum.
Uh, they thought that everybody in the community wanted it.
What they found out was that everybody doesn't want it.
And there was a pretty significant margin to say we don't want these in here.
And it's not, uh, because the amount of phone calls and emails that came
since then, and thank you to everybody for, especially that silent majority that
really woke up when it came to this.
And I realized through this, through this, uh, event that that silent majority
speaks really through the people that they vote for.
And they expect you to be able to understand that and not be swayed specifically
by the small minority groups, the loud and minority that want specific things
and be able to hold your ground, which again, I respect, um, and then, but you
also at the same time, if I can explain this real quick, what I, I didn't fully
understand this.
And I'm going to use this, this example first before I related to the referendum.
But let's say that, let's say the alderman voted to pass, uh, refer, uh, uh, an
ordinance for our UTVs.
If they vote to pass this, they create something.
They create an ordinance that now says you can drive a UTVs on the road.
Now, me as mayor, I could actually veto that.
And then they would have to revolt and it have to pass by two thirds.
But if they don't vote to create that ordinance and there, there's, there's
nothing created made the mayor cannot veto the non action and create something
on unilaterally on his own.
Yep.
So the same thing that happened with the, this is why I say this.
So the same thing happened with the referendum.
Instead of the alderman voting, the people are voting.
So if the people voted to create an ordinance through this referendum, that
said, UTVs are allowed on the roads, then, then they could, because something was
created, it could have been bound for two years.
That was part of this whole referendum.
So for two years, we wouldn't have been able to talk about it.
But because the residents, the citizens voted it down, they didn't create
anything.
Nothing was created.
It was a non action.
So therefore there is nothing that can bind it for two years or a year or anything.
And I think that's what got people really frustrated.
Now, that's the legal way of doing it.
But there's still the moral ethical way of saying, and I think everybody
understands this now because the people that are in favor of it wanted to go
ahead and push it anyways and kind of see if they could get it passed.
And the uproar that came from that kind of put everybody on their heels and said, OK,
OK, OK, OK, OK.
But just so everybody knows that was the reason they could.
They didn't do anything illegal.
They can bring it up the next week, the next month and so on and so forth.
So that's how it got back to the table so fast.
But I feel like everybody's hearing it and kind of taken a step back and saying,
you know what, they're right.
And we got to pack off on this.
So what's coming on Tuesday is a way to move forward.
We have to vote on these things in order to bring it to its conclusion.
Do we want to and you to ordinance or not for all the roads?
Yes or no, if we don't, we have to deal with highway Z because of the
counties opened it.
So do we vote on opening that and just that?
Or do we vote on shutting everything down?
And then we fight with the county and on Z and how that's going to play out.
So that's all going to happen on Tuesday.
So we'll be talking about the results next time we get the next month.
Appreciate the time as always and the work you're putting into the community.
Matt, and thanks a lot for it.
I appreciate you.
Thank you, James.
Appreciate it.
Big thank you to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media as well.
Appreciate you guys and be sure to subscribe to their page.
Everybody will be back with more midday magazine right here at WFHR.
Thanks for watching.
I hope you enjoyed this video.
Thank you.
And thank you for watching.
See you next time.
Bye.
