Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this Tuesday, March 18th, 2025.
Have your host James J. Mailoff here.
In part two today, we're going to speak with our friends from the United Way of South
Wood and Amps counties, then we'll be with us looking forward to that.
Right now, I've been looking forward to this.
We have Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacker in with us right now.
Good to see you Matt.
How you been?
I'm good.
Thanks for having me again, James.
Good to see you.
Always appreciate you being here, man.
And I want to send a big shout out to our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
Do yourself a favor.
YouTube, subscribe to their page and keep up to date and all the things that they are
doing by local support, local, that includes our local creatives and a great work being done
over there at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
Matt, how have you been?
Oh, doing well.
It's pretty amazing.
We're probably 11 months into it coming up on not my election, but a year into the term.
So it's exciting, fast things move and how many people are doing great things in the
community and days just fly by right now.
You mentioned your term.
And I feel like that's a perfect segue into talking a little bit about the decision to
what to do with the mayor terms.
And this is something that has got to be a bit of an awkward situation for you as the
current mayor.
But it is something that I think needed to be addressed.
Yeah, yeah.
I think the council had brought it up again, and I didn't really have any conversations
with them about it.
I kind of happy to stay out of that conversation when they asked my opinion at the meeting.
I would say, one, I'm fine with it.
And if you do decide to change it, please do it after I'm done being mayor.
They said, well, if we change it, it would be for the next election.
So you'd have to get reelected.
So I'm open to that as long as everybody understands.
This isn't something that I necessarily want or don't want.
What I would say is I think it would be beneficial for any mayor coming in to be able to
have that they were looking at four years.
And I think they kind of narrowed it down to three years, which allows it to rotate
through the different council elections.
So every two years, so it would kind of flip flops, so it wouldn't always be on the same
rotation as the same four aldermen.
So I think that that's good.
And it would give any mayor a chance to just get their feet really wet and see a vision
and be able to work towards it.
Otherwise, two years comes really, really fast.
I mean, the one year that flew by already, I'd be looking already at talking about re-election.
And either way, it would work out either way.
But I think it gives the mayor a chance to really dive in and know what they're working
with because it does take time.
So I think they've already kind of agreed to pass it, and they're just working through
the ordinance now.
It should sound like it's going to go through.
So it would be the next election cycle.
And that would be changing the current mayor from two years to three years.
That's what it was to three years.
And I understand the other side people say, well, if we really don't like you, we want
to get ready a faster.
I'm like, well, that's good, too.
Hopefully, we always have a decent selection of people running from mayor that we don't
dislike them that much, that we can give them three years to really help the community
out.
And that's a tricky situation because usually we don't dislike our politicians until they're
in office.
I'm kidding.
I'm joking.
No, it's true.
You never know.
But when it comes to this, so one right away, I think that it was important that we had
this conversation, let alone what's actually happened with it.
And I think like anything we're going to talk about, there are positives and negatives
to it.
But I think what it comes down to, what I hope that it comes down to for most people is
what is best for everybody, not just one individual or a certain group of people.
And when it comes to the pluses and minuses of this, I feel like the pluses of putting
it into a three year stretch here, if I can, is more positive for the community as well
as the person being elected.
Yeah.
Only just for the mayor that's getting elected, but for the 230 employees that work inside
the organization that are always on a little bit of an edge of not knowing who's coming
next and what their vision will be and how hard they're going to push to make changes.
So I think continuity is a good thing to some degree, but at the same time it is government
and it will become very complacent and complacency is never really a great position to be in,
especially when you're going through the significant amount of change that our community's
going through right now in terms of the economy and where we're going.
And it's got to be much more nimble in terms of how we get from where we are now to where
we're going to be in the future and the government kind of has to lead the way.
So if they're just kind of hate to say fat and happy and just kind of status quo, then
you got to shake it up a little bit and get people to realize that, hey, you still have
an important job to do and we got to use this money wisely.
And we hire individuals to do this job.
We need to give them the tools and the ability to do it, the job.
Having two years to do it, as you mentioned, well, previous mayors have done very well
with that.
I'm sure.
And re-elections and all these things, but you've done a really good job, I think, whether
it's intentional or not, of kind of giving us a little behind the curtain look of some
of this.
I mentioned before that you're 11 months in and how what a whirlwind it's been, how fast
it's gone.
It's hard to get a lot of accomplished in that amount of time.
At the same time, I will say a credit to you, a credit to at least every mayor I've gotten
a chance to interview in this job and everything.
You guys get worked on.
I think it is very noteworthy.
I talk to individuals all the time and I like to do my own surveys with people and everything.
And one of the main things that I've been hearing over the last 11 months is, whoa, where
did this business come from?
When did these guys get to town and that kind of thing?
Again, this is nothing against previous regimes or anything like that.
Different time every day is a different set of circumstances.
So given that, there has been an influx of business in this town.
There has been, it is very noticeable.
You don't even have to be driving down A Street to see it.
You can see it in all kinds of different areas.
So to give you the opportunity to do more of that and see that full vision completed
I think that's a big important part of why we elected you and why we were elected the
next person or what have you is so that they can complete that vision.
Right.
And again, I give all the credit and rightly so, it all comes down to the people that are
willing to take the risks to, you know, blood, sweat, and tears to put into a business
that, you know, you don't have a safety nut like every, you know, if you're doing it,
you're doing it on your own, you know, with your loved ones and you're making things happen.
And all I want everybody to know is I support you 100%.
Like I can't do it for you.
I can support you.
I can make sure the city takes care of their business and then gets out of the way as
soon as possible so that you can do it and take the stress off as much as possible.
So the more people that are doing it, the better off we are as a community.
And I love the fact that people are doing it and taking the risks and making the investments
and, you know, really building up our economy from the bottom up, which is how it's got
to be.
One of the ways we can build that economy up, make our community better is certainly
those of us in the community reaching out and filling out the survey that is up there
right now.
There is a survey at the website, www.irrapids.org, encourage you to bookmark that government
priority survey.
What can people expect with this survey?
And there is a lot of different ways for people to take it by the way.
I do want to mention that real quick as far as just testing it out over the weekend and
everything.
There's a QR code.
You can scan it.
That's the way you like to do it.
You can go to, it's pretty basic, but when it comes to the survey itself, what is the
importance of this?
Why do we need people to fill this out?
Well, it started out as, you know, part of my platform is just communications and understanding
how we build the organization strong enough, communicating with each other so that we can
then enter and take it out to the community and make sure that we are doing what they need
us to do.
Within the kind of fines of yes, we have rules to follow.
That's kind of, you know, a big part of the government, so we're kind of planned by
the same set of rules.
And so we did the mission vision values with the department heads to get their input.
We went out to all the employees to one of the thirty employees.
We got their input.
We took it to the alderman to get their insight as to where they're at.
They said, let's take it to the community, which was our next kind of on the, you know,
next thing to do anyways.
So Joe Bachman here with WRCM and Emily Kant have done a good job working together
to put this out to the community and get it out there so that we can get their feedback
as to what they see as our priorities and how we want to set up the government for the
next two, five, ten years, twenty years to make sure we're being as impactful as we can
for them and where that goes.
And that opens up the bigger, you know, understanding of the website that we're working towards so
that we can be more communicative.
It's going to be a much more up-to-date on your phone.
You know, my goal is to get this app or at least our homepage on everybody's, you know,
first page on their phone, their drinking coffee, they tap onto the website so they're
getting the information that we're going to be providing to them.
We're doing a lot more videos like this and how we get it out there.
You know, we want people to know that we're kind of lacking a continuity in terms of how
we're getting our information.
I'm not talking about, you know, like political, opinionization, all that kind of stuff
that we deal with all the time.
I'm just talking about pure information.
This is what's going on in the city.
So you know what's coming, whether it's, you know, community development stuff or streets
department and just, you know, just getting as much of that information out to the people.
But again, you got to get it outside of the echo chamber of the government and the people,
the small group of people.
Like, I needed in 40,000 people's hands on the front page of their phone.
So once we get this set up and going, we got to make sure that we do this huge marketing
campaign to get this out so that people are using it as a tool.
And they know that we're here doing what they need and we're able to communicate.
You can even ask questions.
What do you guys thoughts on this?
And we have a way of getting some of that feedback because a lot of time like, so I'm going
off on a tangent a little bit.
But like with the ATV-UTV thing, I thought it was, you know, every, in my mind, everybody
did a great job doing the democratic process, you know, the representative government.
And it all came down to when they've, when the people voted on the referendum and they
want to vote it down, creating nothing.
And then, you know, government, perceived government, but certain people, and again, all, I respect
all of them for what they're doing, tried to move it forward.
And finally, the silent majority came out.
And those are the folks that usually allow the people they vote for to do the talking
for them.
But at this point in time, they're, they weren't doing the talking for them.
And they spoke up, and we want more and more of that.
We want to hear from the people, the silent majority, to be able to have a, a way to speak
their, their opinions and, or get their voice out there and heard quickly so that we can
make decisions based on that.
You really, you get what you put into life, you know?
If you want your community better, if you want to be heard, you've got to speak up.
Yeah.
You've got to talk.
This is a way of doing that.
I've been adamant about wanting a Simpson's Museum in town here for many, many years.
And while I am alone on this one, I'm going to keep trying.
No, it's, we all have our, you know, our causes, our things that we care about and everything.
And every one of them have their individual importance.
But the way we treat each other, getting these things across is vital.
It's vital.
We, I've talked about this.
I've done about 20 interviews with local candidates and everything for a lot of the,
the election coming up on the first.
And one of the most consistent things I have with all these candidates, or talking to
community members, or if you just look at surveys in our nation, we are talking about
higher the divisiveness.
We are tired of the childish bickering that is going on in not just politics, but into
everyday life.
These surveys are a big help filtering that, a big help of you.
You kind of have to be an adult when you're filling this out.
You kind of have to treat people with respect the way these things are designed.
And so I think that they're even more important going forward, especially when you add on to
that, the communication part of things and how important it is to you and your staff to
be understood, how important it is to the community to have reputable sources.
You know, going to the website, wirapids.org, that is a reputable source you can go to.
You know, you can trust that information.
I will also put Wisconsin's Rebs Community Media in that regard and say that that is trusted
information you can go to.
It's a, you know, these are, these are things that we need in our community and you can
help enhance those things by adding to this survey or just speaking up and making sure
that you're heard as an adult.
Yeah.
I run the, I try to be as cognizant as I can in terms of making sure that this is never
about me.
Granted, you still got to live in your own body and I'm just as susceptible to, you know,
the sins or whatever you want to say as anybody else's.
But, but ultimately, you know, I want everybody around me to make sure that what we're doing
is for the benefit of the community.
It's not for the benefit of Matt's Acre.
Like we're looking at a work with Joe and Taylor at WRCM.
We made it.
We're making a move.
It may not pass yet.
It's going to come through tonight to just bring them out from underneath the IT department
and put them online with the mayor so that we can talk more about the issues that are,
you know, having closer contact and communication to get this information out there faster.
And, but I also want them to know like you have to call me on.
If you ever feel like, you know, mayor's Acres doing this stuff for his own benefit,
he's kind of walking too close to the line, tell me like, I don't know, that's not why
I'm here and it has nothing to do with what I want to try to accomplish.
But at the same time, we all have egos.
We got to do us.
So, you know, by all means, let's make this about the community and let's move forward
together as a group of people that are trying to do the best for the entire community.
You have until noon on April 1st to fill out these survey.
Encourage you to get on over to wirapids.org and fill that survey out and have your voice
be heard.
Someone with Wisconsin Rapids, Mayor Matt Zecker, along with our friends at Wisconsin Rapids
Community Media.
Matt, one of the other things I wanted to talk about, well, you mentioned doing these videos
and I had put in the catch one of them the other day.
And in it, you were talking about community development and kind of taking the burden off
of code and process for home projects, essentially helping people, homeowners, do be able to
do the work on their homes or get work done, maybe without as much red tape or some of
that.
Am I summarizing that pretty well?
Yeah, yeah.
I'd say I think it's any government, especially when it's designed the way ours is, you know,
we've been here 150 years, I guess, probably 100 years in terms of when the city became
Wisconsin Rapids.
And you've had older men ever since then and Mayor's since then and they all vote.
That's what they're asking us to do is vote on stuff.
So then you vote and you create stuff that kind of compiles on top of other stuff.
And in 2018, we voted on a zoning code where we divided up the city according to what made
sense for commercial, residential, and industrial to try to keep things separate, keep people
safe, keep the noise down, you know, all good intentions.
And then on top of that, they said, well, we want to make the city look nice over time
so people will want to move here and you know, so then you design these codes or you get
a book that says, all right, all these codes are what we're going to follow.
Well, you don't really know it's in the book until you actually start having to bring
people in and they're like, I can't get anything done because of the book.
And you hear a guy, Kyle Kerns, who has the best intention, but he's very black and white.
Like, this is the book.
You hired me to follow the book if you want me to do something different, change the book.
So what we're doing right now is we're changing the book and we're looking back at ordinances.
We're trying to lighten up things so that people can one kind of more enjoy themselves
with all feeling so overburdened with that red tape.
If they're trying to get projects done, we're trying it, we're taking off.
We're voting out a lot of stuff that has been overburdened and trying to get that stuff
removed.
Some people say, just get rid of the whole book.
I kind of see it on both sides like we still want some continuity.
We want some kind of a playbook, I guess, is the best thing I can come up with and move
forward like that.
But again, once we see things that are inhibitive and don't make any sense at all, then let's
get rid of them.
Like, that's what we're there for is to make new votes on things to say, okay, this isn't
working.
We don't have to stick with it.
It's not, that's what the beauty of this is.
We continue to vote if something isn't working, we change it and if something new is needed,
we vote on it.
So it's kind of a beautiful process as long as we don't overburden ourselves with red
tape.
That is kind of meaningless in the end.
I don't know how much time you or Joe spend in Arizona, but just to give you guys a heads-up
in Arizona on Sundays, it is illegal to write a horse backwards in trying to fish.
So you guys know anytime there are laws on our books that are just hilarious to me as
something that Carl and I used to do on our morning show where we just find these old
laws that are still around.
And if you actually were doing that, you could actually get in trouble for it.
I bring it up as a point of what we're talking about here and how the best of intentions,
but time changes, things grow and we need to adapt to those and making sure that these
things are done right.
Certainly don't want anybody to be able to, you know, on the front lawn, they want to
put a racetrack.
You know, you can't necessarily do something like that, but we also want to give people
homeowners the ability to, like you said, have fun do these projects, especially with
the rise of, you know, do your self-projects and some of these things.
It's a great note.
I also think you're getting maybe even ahead of something like this.
Maybe maybe we're late to it for some, but for to me, I think you're getting ahead of
this a little bit.
I know that every one of my friends, I got a lot of people to live out in California and
they love it out there.
But one of my friends wanted to try to put up some solar panel.
What's the name of the size of this board here?
And I would say it's been about 70 years.
They've been trying to get that done just and nothing and a very little progress.
So I don't think that you were alone in this and wanting to get a little bit, you know,
less red tape and make it a little bit more simplified if I can't say it.
Just caveat on that, everybody has to understand there isn't this boogie man, there isn't this
conspiracy in the government.
This is just people that represent you at the time that made decisions.
And again, we can fix them if we work together and say, these are the issues we're running
into.
Let's fix them versus saying it's your fault, it's your fault, you know, I know some,
we've talked about it enough.
Some people just kind of, they make their social media career about, you know, being negative
in my opinion.
Yeah.
And it is what it is.
And again, I've always reached out to them and said, give me a call and let's talk because
it's way better than this.
But at the same time, that's what sometimes social media is designed for right now.
Well, there's a perfect example of if you do want to be a dog that's just barking or
do you want to be heard?
Now we can, you can tell real quickly what type of person that is into anybody out there
reading those posts or anything like that, you can tell yourselves right away.
If this person is not reaching out, if they're not following up, if they're not answering
your calls or something like that, that's just a dog that wants to bark.
They don't actually want to get anything done.
The people that want to get stuff done are filling out that survey or reaching out to
you personally.
These things don't have to necessarily be posted on all of social media.
If you really want to be heard, wouldn't you go right to the source?
I know that if I got a problem with my dad, I go right to my dad.
I don't post about it.
Let's talk.
Yeah.
I mean, we got to be human beings.
The Wisconsin Rapids Public Works Department recently received an award for excellence and
snow and ice control from the American Public Works Association that had to feel pretty good
for the team.
That does pretty cool.
I talk a lot with Paul and Cody and Matt down there at the streets and they do a great
job just looking ahead and seeing what they can do, understanding the issues.
I went and they invited me to one of the conferences on the salt and the fact that it's a
real issue, that salt, one way or the other, is going to end up in our water.
If the salt content of our water continues to increase, we're going to be hurt because
it's not something you can easily take out, at least not inexpensively.
Again, I know that that makes its way downstream, eventually ends up in the ocean where there's
a bunch of salt.
Anyways, but the still effect remains that we don't want to continue down that path.
They're doing a lot of brining, which is a lot less salt because it's way more efficient.
Instead of just tossing salt, you don't necessarily try to control that salt when they're laying
it down, but the brine, you can't beat that.
There's other solutions out there, but they're more costly than you're dealing with other
kind of chemicals, so dealing with what we have right now, which is, and there is the
other side of that, which is people I've grown very used to.
That's boiled.
Just used to the faster.
We pretty much, it's snow as in our roads are clean.
That's big in terms of what the streets department is able to do and they're doing, they're
up there on it right away.
They're safe to drive on, you know, like that's unheard of, no matter how much snow comes
down, we're able to drive on our streets within a few hours and that's pretty impressive.
So we've got to give those guys a lot of credit for the entire streets department, garbage,
all the pickups that they're doing, the construction that we got, the engineers that are designing
it.
We have a great government and we own a lot of valuable departments that are doing great
things for us every day.
So I'll talk more about that over the next coming year and just diving into those departments
and what they do for us.
Looking forward to it, looking forward to hanging out again next month as well, Matt, if
people have follow up questions would like to know more reach out to you, how can they
do that?
I got a new cell phone with the city, 715, 315, 29, 25, I like the fact that that's easy
to remember.
It's a very easy, yeah, that's easy to remember.
I encourage you to do that, everybody, and again, keep in mind you can find out more about
the things Matt and I have talked about today along with budget summary and plenty of
other things and that survey at wirapids.org, wirapids.org, and be sure to go to YouTube and
subscribe and follow along with our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media.
We appreciate you doing that by local support, local support, the local arts.
We will come back with more show midday magazine right here at 975 FM WFHR.
