We're starting our interviews off this morning with four people in the studio.
Ron Rivard, the superintendent of the Rippon area school district, is here along with business manager Jonah Adams and a couple members of the referendum committee.
Emmy Jess and Jesse Johnson.
Jesse's also the principal of Murray Park Elementary School.
Folks, welcome to the show.
Good morning, Bob.
Good morning.
I'm gonna let you hog the mic first, Ron.
Where do you want to start?
Actually, Amy and Jonah and Jesse are going to talk a little bit about some dates and some things coming up regarding the referendum.
All right.
Amy, we'll let you take the mic first then.
Yeah, absolutely.
So one thing that we want to make sure that we share, we want our community members to be able to feel informed and confident when they head into the polls.
So we're encouraging people to join us tomorrow evening at Ripon High School in our community room for an informational session.
And that's at six o'clock tomorrow evening.
Okay.
Where do we want to go next then?
Is it Jesse?
Yeah, with the November 3rd vote just around the corner, it's a great opportunity to learn facts, ask questions, and better understand what the referendum means for our schools and our communities.
So we'll be available to share our presentation and answer questions that people might have.
So we're really hoping to pack the room tomorrow night.
Okay.
And Jonah, you have some financial news when it comes to mill rates and...
Also, what the state is giving us in general aid for the school
here?
Yeah, we were pleased to announce that we have a new all-time low for our mill rate the tax rate per thousand dollars of property value It will be six dollars and twenty five cents down from last year's six dollars and thirty six cents.
So it's down eleven cents per thousand dollars or
$11 per $100,000 of property value.
So really pleased about that.
One way that this happened, although state aid was not increased for schools.
and we're going to receive more than $300,000 less in state aid.
We were able to reduce the amount that we levied for our debt because last year we had levied extra amounts to do extra principal payments.
And so basically the amount that we're losing in state aid, which would normally have raised property taxes, we were able to eliminate from our debt levy.
And so we're really pleased to see that the property taxes
The mill rate is going down.
The total tax that we're levying is about $157,000 more than last year.
It's about a 2.15% increase, very small increase.
So we're excited the mill rate is going down.
We were already lower than 64% of the state for our tax rate.
And now as it goes down, we're anticipating that we'll probably be even lower in the statewide.
rankings.
So we're excited about that.
And we just wanted to share that news with everybody.
One other thing, though, I do want to mention the property reassessments that are going to take place and that have taken place in the city of Rippon and in the town of Rippon.
Those will change the property tax burden quite a lot for people.
It doesn't mean that the school district receives any more funding, but it's just shifting the tax burden from
Often it's going to be shifting it from commercial property to homeowners.
Again, it doesn't lead to any more taxes for the school.
The city of Rippon is going to see about a .9% increase in tax from the school district.
But the amount that a homeowner pays, you know, for example, I'm expecting a 13% increase on my property because of the shifting due to the reassessments.
And the reassessments.
No, it's not anybody's fault.
Um, just something that was mandated by the state.
So just wanted to share that
and they only give you so much time to be up, up to date on those assessments.
So.
All right, you want to talk more about the referendum or
I just want to you know reinforce the same message that that you just heard Bob and and let all the listeners know that Our job is to try to help communicate and educate details not to influence how people vote but just to make sure that they make an informed decision when they do and and the other piece of that is I just want to say thank you to you for letting us be able to get the message out and
We're, and thank you to the team actually because we've been going at this for about eight weeks and making stops with the Ripintown Board and visiting other places like Vines and Rushes and just trying to integrate and share that message with as many people in the community as possible.
So thanks for letting us do that and we look forward to hopefully a big turnout on November 3rd.
And just one more note about voting in person absentee voting actually begins today You can check with your municipal clerk on the hours, but you do that right at city hall in rippin.
So great.
Yeah.
All right Board met last night.
We were a few pieces of business that are worth noting.
Yeah.
Yeah, thanks So the the first thing that I wanted to share is that and again, I'm doing a lot of celebrating today
We had a team of teachers and administrators come together to help review our health insurance and for them it was important that they achieved the two goals that we wanted to achieve and that was to mitigate cost because we know how everything is going up and health insurance is one of those.
essential pieces of what we do and what we provide, but we also want to be cognizant of the financial state of our system.
So they were able to mitigate costs and still provide a
Quality health care option for our teachers that they had an option of being able to just renew our current plan and that was capped at a 15% increase, but they didn't want to do that They wanted to do their part knowing how budget constraints are all over so they were able to save somewhere in the neighborhood of about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars By picking a different plan and the board approved it unanimously yesterday, so we're excited about that
Okay.
There are some possible changes coming up for your 4k programs.
Yeah.
Well, we don't know just yet, but the 4k team of teachers and myself and Mackenzie Olszewski, the principal at Barlow Park are engaged in doing some exploring.
Well, we're doing some research about area 4k programs to see what we can do to bolster ours and try to attract.
people to come to RIP and because we know that the education that they get is high quality.
So we're looking at trying to, I guess, enhance our already strong program by looking at what other places around us are doing and having some success with.
So we're engaged in that process and our goal, if we have a program recommendation, is to bring that to our board in December.
Okay.
Anything else,
Ron?
No, homecoming went well.
Homecoming
week,
yeah, we were
here before that.
Last time to talk with you and things went well.
So I wanted to thank all of our families and staff and students for having a lot of fun and not, how could we say this appropriately?
Not overstepping, not having
way
too
much fun.
They enjoyed themselves in a safe way, so we always appreciate that.
while the homecoming parade looked like it was a lot of fun so
huge
turnout a lot of participation so well we'd like to thank Ron Rivard, Amy Jess, Jesse Johnson and Jonah Adams for coming in this morning talking about the operational referendum for the Ripon area school district and some of the action that the board took at last night's meeting
Joining us this morning, we have Natalia Chalner, who is the program coordinator for the Young Professionals of Fond du Lac, which is a program of Envision Greater Fond du Lac.
Good morning.
Good morning.
All right.
Today we're talking about the YPF Future Five.
I guess it's nomination time for that distinction, right?
That's right.
YPF is currently accepting nominations for our Future Five Awards.
The nominations are open through October 30th.
Okay.
When are they actually awarded?
The final five award winners are going to be announced at our holiday party in December and then celebrated at our future five awards ceremony January 21st at South Hills.
Okay.
Now you can
Are the nomination forms available on the Envision website?
Is that how you do it?
Yep, you can go to the YPS page to find the future five nomination form.
All right, can you nominate more than one person?
Yes, absolutely.
As long as they're between the ages of 21 and 40, they live or work in Fond du Lac County.
And as long as they're nominated by someone they worked with professionally or through volunteering, such as a coworker, a professional peer, or a volunteer colleague.
All right.
And tell us a little bit about the young professionals of Fond du Lac.
You mentioned that 21 to 40 age range.
Is that pretty much the fact?
It's not a rule.
It's our recommended age range.
We welcome anyone young at heart.
The young professionals of Fond du Lac are for our emerging leaders in the county.
Okay, and you get together on a regular basis and do fun things, right?
Networking and, well, fun activities.
That's right.
We'll do a midweek meetup, typically in the evenings, once a month, and then we do professional development series.
Where we'll bring in an assortment of different speakers.
We try to do about one of those each quarter
I'm trying to remember.
Is there a young professional of the year award?
Yes, there will be our young professional of the year in April at the Envision annual meeting
and does that come out of the future the future five or is that something separate?
It is something separate.
Okay, so how do you become a
young professional fundalac member.
Well, you can reach out to me, Natalia Tellner.
You can find my email online on Envision's website, where you can also find the application for individual membership or corporate membership.
If your employer is a member of Envision, you may get a free membership with YPS.
Okay.
All right.
Well, that's good.
So how did you become interested in this?
Well as a young professional myself, I was very interested in some of the engaging midweek meetups and networking events that YPF hosts as well as the fun annual events like we just hosted Casino Night in September where we played a bunch of roulette games in Blackjack and winners were awarded prize baskets that were kindly donated by
A bunch of different businesses across our community.
Sounds like fun.
All right.
Anything else that people should know about the Young Professionals with Fond du Lac?
Obviously, you can get information about that on the Envision website, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
But we're really encouraging people to think about the Young Professionals in their lives that are going above and beyond.
This Future Five Award is a great opportunity to recognize those individuals and celebrate the impact that they're making right here in our county.
And you said they'll be recognized in December for the future five.
That's right.
Okay.
That's right.
Nominations are open until October 30th, and then our judging panel will select the five award winners.
All right.
And where is this going to be held?
I imagine there's some kind of dinner or something?
Yep.
The future five award ceremony is going to be January 21st at South Hills Country Club and Golf Course.
Okay.
Anything else that people should know about the YPF Future 5 or the YPF in general, Natalia?
No, I think that about covers it all.
Thank you so much, Bob.
You've been talking with Natalia Chalner, who is the program coordinator for the Young Professionals of Fond du Lac.