And good morning.
Welcome back.
It is the WXCO morning report part of mornings with pack right low on 98.9 WXCO online at wxco.fm mobile devices and Alexa by searching WXCO and on the civic media app
I am Chad Holmes along with Ian Welsh.
Ian, again, good morning.
Good morning, Chad.
We will have more with you coming up in just a little bit.
But first of all, I'm across the table for me this morning.
A guy that used to be with me every Wednesday for a number of years during the fall high school football season.
But now he's changed his hats and he is the school board president of Mosinee Schools, Paul Nowinski, and coach.
I will still call you coach.
Good to see you.
Chad, it's good to be back.
Ian, it was always nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you, too.
It's good that you've upgraded.
I was saying, have you been here before?
This is the first
time?
I've come to
visit, but not on the air.
But no, it was always such fun having you on the Big High School Sports Show.
And I guess I'm going to ask you this, because kind of into your current role.
For many years, you've been part of the Mosini community.
Did you start coaching at Mosini?
I started
coaching in 1990 in Mosini.
And were you somebody that was a Mosini native?
I
originally went to Mosini.
Never thought I'd go back.
I was actually at DC Everest.
And then just my old football coach called me and said, hey, we're going to have an opening and a football opening and I'm going to be retiring.
And you probably could be the head football coach.
And that was a, I'm like, well, you don't think about it at that time.
But you're like, wow.
And then how many years were you the head football coach?
I was a head football coach for till 2015.
And
then after that, you decided to step away from coaching.
And part of what you did was work with us and that you were always around.
And then now you've gone into elected officials and within your community at Mosini.
What made you decide that you wanted to be part of the school board?
Well, I'm always a person that likes to give to people service and give back and do the things.
I thought I had an interesting perspective, being a teacher, being a coach, being a parent.
And so I wanted to provide some input and provide some leadership and some direction.
When did you first take a seat on the board?
April 2024.
What was the biggest learning curve?
Because you do have a lot of experience.
Number one, within Mosini, but you know the community, you know the schools, but you had been a coach, so you've dealt with others in leadership positions.
What was the biggest
transition?
A little bit.
This is my second time being on the board.
I was on the board in like 1986.
I was a college student
and
Mosini was going through a budget crisis.
And we were going to cut some teachers and some of the teachers were my friends.
And so I became a school board member and we kind of solved, tried to solve that problem to the best of our ability.
Then I went into teaching, got off the board and then was a teacher.
And then when I got retired, I decided it was time to do it again.
And so again, my perspective with things is totally different.
Let me ask you about the board as a whole, because that's something that we were talking beforehand, and you talked about where the board is.
You said that there's nine members of the board.
You've been an educational background, a Mosany native.
What are the backgrounds?
Is there a mix in the backgrounds of the nine folks on this board?
Are there different life experiences on this board?
Yes, and I think that's a good thing.
We have six members that come from the different municipalities and then three at large.
It's a very large board, but um
It brings a lot of different perspectives to the situation.
I think we function fairly well.
What I mean by function very well is it's great that we have differences of opinions, and we get input, and we have discussions, and then we try to make the best decisions that we can possibly make.
Frankly, that is something that should be very common, but it has not been very common.
You become the president of the school board.
It sounds like that has been something that has been a focus for you, trying to be in a leadership position on the school board.
What are some of the goals that you brought into this position you've tried to implement?
You're still short time as the president of the board.
Well, I think some of the things I wanted to do is to ensure that all of our students
are successful in some ways and will eventually become positive contributing members of any community.
The second thing is I wanted to provide some financial stability and I personally I'm very conservative with my money and so I'm also very conservative with the taxpayer money.
I'm a person that believes we need accountability and we shouldn't just spend money.
for the sake of spending money.
We need to look at what our results are, and we need to be financially responsible to the tax taxpayers of the Mohsen East School District.
The other thing I wanted to do is I wanted to install something that, as you alluded to, that's been kind of lost.
The ability to disagree yet still be civil, still be respectful, and still be polite, and come up with decisions that you can work together.
to create where you're not personally attacking people, you're not fighting against each other, you're actually working for one cause and that's to educate the students in the Moseney School District.
Coming up in our next segment of the WXCO morning report, we'll have more with Mosini School Board President Paul Nowinski.
I also want to let you know that what you hear this morning is only part of the conversation that I was able to have with Paul Nowinski last week.
The entirety of our interview is available on YouTube.
We had filmed it on YouTube.
Go to youtube.com and the 98.9 WXCO part of YouTube, our channel, and you'll be able to see and hear.
the entirety of our discussion with Paul Nowinski and also when we put out our podcast or daily podcast just after 9 a.m.
this morning you'll be able to hear the entirety of the interview as well so again we are hearing most of the discussion but there are some other areas that we're able to get into with Paul Nowinski so you'll be able to hear
the entirety on the podcast and here and see the entirety again if you go to youtube.com and the 98.9 WXCO channel there as well.
But we'll be back with another segment with Paul Nowinski on the WXCO morning report at 722.
Coming up next it is a top of the hour information update followed by more of mornings with pack right low right here on 98.9 WXCO.
WXCO morning report part of mornings with Pat Crite Low on 98.9 WXCO.
I'm Chad Holmes and this morning hearing a conversation I had late last week with the president of the Moseney School Board Paul Nowinski and we continued by talking about the importance of listening to the constituents even in a case where you may disagree on a potential item for a referendum like we saw in Moseney in the past year.
Yeah, absolutely correct.
I spent most of my coaching teaching career building relationships and building teams that were better than individuals.
Paul Levinsky is just one person and I don't know everything.
Matter of fact, construction is one thing you do not want me to do.
You don't want me to build a dog house because your dog would not like me.
So the concept
is to how can we create something better than one individual?
How can our community do it?
And so I made the motion for the referendum and we sent out numerous surveys and to get responses.
And then we went and talked to people.
I I love just going for a Friday fish fry at a local place.
And hi, hey, tell me what you think.
And and that's a big factor, I think.
We were missing where they weren't listening you there's a big thing I can hear you But will I listen to you and their input is really important It was we had some major fundamental problems in the moseley school district with facilities We had a cafeteria that was built in 1965.
We had pipe issues At one point the ovens had caught on fire
We had locker rooms that were not remodeled since 1965.
We had tech ed rooms that weren't adequate for what we were trying to do, woods, projects, space, things like that.
We had security issues.
We had some roof issues.
We had some fundamental issues.
Initially, there was talk of adding a gymnasium.
This is what you alluded to.
Personally, I was all for the gymnasium, but that's not what the constituents in the Mosinist culture said.
And that's what I was representing.
So when I made the motion, we took the gym out and there was no need for it.
30% of the people said they would support a gym when 70 said no.
And so we went with what we felt.
We could show the people was legitimate concerns and was very financially responsible with their money.
So we went for nineteen point seven five million dollars to basically fix all the issues, the cafeteria, the locker rooms, some of the space, the doors, windows, things, things that needed to be fixed, especially security.
Securities and I just I hope this never happens to anybody, but you have to be prepared For some things that if they do happen, but we we wanted to have a two-door entrance Where if somebody tried to get in they would have to go through two security phases And then we hope that that would be time to get the proper authorities there.
So we did that we then went and did a campaign of
informing our voters, vote yes signs.
I spent most of my time going to local establishments and taking the pictures, the brochures and just honestly answering the questions about what this will cost you, why we're doing it, and then we had open houses.
Don't, don't, don't.
Don't believe me, totally.
Come in and check it out for yourself.
We'll show you where those pipes are leaking.
We'll show you this, you know, and you
mentioned that you had somebody come in who said, hey, that's my locker from 1972.
That
was one guy that came in and said, yep, that's the same football locker I had in 1972.
And one other point I'll make is that the discussion that we had on these on these airwaves back in the run up to that referendum with the school board president and your superintendent, you were the one that facilitated it.
So obviously communication.
Is a hallmark for what you're trying to accomplish
within your community according to the moseley school board policies the President is the spokesperson So that's why I felt it was mr. Hermione to come in and did a great job mr. Dover spike and and really did a nice job And you did a nice job of just getting the information out this isn't political
right
this is all about
what is the right thing to do.
And they were very honest and very transparent.
And through all this, through the campaign of yes, going out to talk to people, positively answering questions, making sure the concerns were addressed.
It passed last year in November, 65%.
And you don't see that
very often, to
be honest with you.
I think we have 34 referendums in Mosini fail.
I mean, and the past, and it makes, and I, and bottom line is when you do have a referendum that passes, you don't want it to be 50 plus 1%.
I mean, it's like you want it to be where the community says, yes, this is what we want.
And that, I thought it was, again, something that was very much a very important piece of showing how it should be done.
Well,
And then, Jed, we had talked off the ear, and we're going to talk now about it, but almost 70% of all the constituents in the Mosany School District really don't have kids or grandkids that are in the school.
And so we wanted to provide an opportunity to build relationships.
And how can we help you?
How can you use the school?
How can we let you see your tax dollars that will benefit you?
Well, we have a we have a great pool The Kresge pool is just incredible.
We have open swim We have aerobics open to all of our members of our school district in the morning all the way to like nine o'clock we have Saturday Sunday Friday You can use our pool
all the time.
You can have birthday parties in the lobby.
You can use our Kresge lobby and then use the pool for your birthday party.
You can use our auditorium, our library.
You can use our facilities.
We have, in fact, we have dance studios come from Wausau.
to use now we charge them because they're not you know it's not a great amount but they love it because it's a state-of-the-art auditorium it's just wonderful and so one of the things we want to do is how can we provide a benefit to you that maybe don't have a direct impact with a child
And we will continue with a few more minutes of the conversation with Mosini School Board President Paul Nowinski.
We'll be back at 7.52 for our next segment of the WXCO morning report.
More Pac-Right little coming up next here on 98.9 WXCO.
It is the WXCO morning report part of mornings with pack right low on 98.9 WXCO online at WXCO dot FM mobile devices and Alexa by searching WXCO and on the civic media app I am Chad Holmes along with Ian Welsh and we're continuing a conversation that I had late last week with the president of the Mosany School Board Paul Nowinski and continue to talk about the ways of being successful and I think you can talk about
this, whether it's at the school board level, whether it's at the state level, the national level, in terms of what do you need to do in order to reach people in order to get things done?
The other thing is,
life is how you treat people chat.
It doesn't matter what they do, or it's how you treat them.
And so that's one of the things I try to do as president.
How do we treat the students?
the staff, the administration, the board members, and the community members in the Moseley School District.
You can have disagreements with people.
I just don't feel you need to personally attack and belittle the person.
It's about their idea.
It's about their plan.
It's about their concept.
It's not about their personality.
And when you make that,
It becomes really a war.
You know, I don't like the words people use all the time.
Like, we've got to fight.
I'm like, what are you fighting?
This is a discussion.
This isn't.
Now, you should use words like, we need to work.
We need to work together.
We need to compromise.
We need to come up with great ideas.
Collaborate.
Collaborate.
We need to understand people.
We need to listen.
Not just hear their words, but listen to their ideas.
and understand it, and sometimes you can have your mind changed.
It's happened to me many times.
I used to as a coach and as a teacher, I used to have kids say, hey, Mr. Nevinsky, why don't we do it this way?
And I'm like, yeah, why haven't I been doing it that way?
This is the right way to do it.
And so I think we've lost some of that ability.
And in Mosini, I think we're trying to bring it back.
Just at a school board meeting last night, one of the things I didn't like about the school board meetings is you had to fill out an electronic form to talk at a school board meeting.
I'm like, that's just wrong.
So we went back to the old clipboard.
You could talk about an agenda item.
You can talk about a non agenda item.
The only thing you need to do is be a resident of our community or
If you want to speak, you contact us.
If you're somebody from outside the community and we can give you permission to talk, like if you have a service project,
you
want to talk about stuff like that.
So again, it's giving people the idea that their voice matters and it does and transparency, honesty, listening, and then learn to work together, collaborate.
And when you have differences, there's nothing wrong with that.
Just accept them.
Don't make it personal.
and move on.
The idea that disagreements or personal attacks have to end in order for us to move forward as a society, right?
I agree.
That's really a bottom line thought and it's sometimes easier said than done, but it starts with individuals and hopefully... Well, you hit
it right on the point and I've had kids all the time ask me, well, what can I do?
You can take care of yourself.
If every human being takes care of themselves with the idea that I'm going to listen, I'm going to collaborate, I'm not going to make personal attacks.
It'll change rather quickly.
It'll change in a day.
Makes a lot more difficult for another person to then to attack you if you're treating them with respect.
Well,
the hardest, I tell this to a lot of people, the hardest thing I've had to do as a teacher and a coach is when somebody is personally attack you to not attack them back.
It's human reaction.
And when you do that, when you sit there and say to somebody, okay, I'm hearing you.
I'm not agreeing with you, but I'm here, but I'm not gonna personally attack you.
Again, we're talking to Paul Nowinski, the president of the Mosini School Board here on 98.9 WXCO.
Well, let's talk about the current issues that you and the board are talking about or dealing with.
The school district itself is dealing with.
Of course, last summer, it was another budget time where education funding is one of the big topics that always is near the top of the list.
And talk to you beforehand.
And you've enlightened me a little bit here in terms of what
Happened with the budget in terms of discussion of of higher revenues, but it's not always what it seems I would like you to maybe explain what you saw during the budget process what ultimately Happened and how it does affect school districts like Mosini.
Well, you notice that the state budget really affects a lot of people It affects us more than the federal budget almost because it's local dollars the
Budget was approved with a three hundred twenty five dollar revenue increase per pupil The only issue was that it wasn't funded.
They didn't give you the three hundred twenty five dollars They gave you the permission to increase the revenue limits on the local taxpayers I'm gonna say that again and just so where all the listeners know When you get your tax bill this year You're going to see that three hundred twenty five dollar pupil increase and
And we all know that the tax bill is probably one of the largest bills, property tax that you're going to get.
And I'm, I'm, I don't know if using property tax to fund education is the best way to do it, but it's the way we do.
Um, and so when you look at your property tax bill, you're going to see increases.
And I just want everybody to know, like in the most in the school district, we're going to have a brief, you know, we had a referendum.
So there was an increase there.
Um, but we also have this $325 increase that is going to be funded.
So we can increase the revenue, but it's going to be funded by the local taxpayers.
And that's going to affect was a DC or every school district.
So it's, you're going to see that there's a potential that your taxes will go up and that can be an issue because people get generally.
Upset because it's the largest when you get your property tax bill.
You're like what right?
It went up a hundred dollars again
Mosini School Board President Paul Nowinski and again, there's plenty more of our discussion.
We got going and we talked a whole bunch more and a little bit too much even to fit into three complete segments of the WXCO morning report.
So again, I would encourage you as at the end of the program, there will be a complete link to the complete conversation.
Also a link to it on YouTube as well, unedited.
So to hear everything that we had in our discussion with Paul Nowinski, you'll be able to get that again as part of our
Show Notes, part of our podcast page at wxio.fm and the news segment as well.
And again, I think Paul Nowinski is a guy that I've known for a long time and a guy that really is able to talk sense.
And I think talk to people eye to eye, no matter what the political persuasion is, very, very effective indeed.
Well, coming up, it's more of Mornings with Pat Crichtlow, and then Ian and I will be back at 822 here on 98.9 WXIO.
And
welcome back it is the WXCO morning report part of mornings with Pat Crite low on 98.9 WXCO online at WXCO FM mobile devices and Alexa by searching WXCO and on the civic media app I am Chad Holmes with Ian Welsh Ian.
Good morning.
Good morning, Chad.
How was your weekend?
Pretty quiet in our preparation for this upcoming tech week of Sweeney Todd.
Yeah, actually, I guess after we get done here this morning, you're heading right over to help in the building.
Yeah, we're starting to load
in nice and early today because we have a lot to do before our first official run through of this evening, but there's plenty of us in the cast and
crew, and if we all work together and be patient, we should be able to get the set assembled to make sure we're all set for the final few days of rehearsals.
Absolutely.
So again, the shows will be on Friday and Saturday in the evening at 7.30, is that correct?
or 7 o'clock.
7 30.
Yes.
7 30 on Friday night and Saturday and then on Sunday, a Saturday and Sunday you have a matinee at what time?
Yep.
2 p.m.
on those.
Manne shows
so four different chances to see Sweeney Todd from the wasa community theater.
We'll talk about it later in the week We'll have some cast members.
I believe coming in and exciting talk about the show So again, if you have an opportunity this coming weekend at the University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point in the wasa the James F. Venega theater
Make sure you get over there and see Ian Welsh and his compatriots in terms of seeing Sweeney Todd real quickly at the top of the hour during the news update.
We had a sound bite from CBS news from Donald Trump and saying that Democrats should open up the government Democrats should open up the government that Obamacare is a disaster and that he and Democrats can get together and have a whole new health care.
That be able to fix the health care problems.
He has no idea no plan He's been saying this for for ten years since 2015 that you'd have this repeal and replace plan He had a chance in his first term.
He's had a chance when he was running for president He has a chance right now to say what this plan would be But it's the Democrats who have to give up the subsidies and these though the subsidies that
Donald Trump and the Republican Party are taking away from the American people who are on the Affordable Care Act is more than doubling the premiums as open enrollment started this weekend.
So again, when you hear the sound bite, don't just sit here, oh, Donald Trump says...
Democrats should open up the government then they can get together and and magically have this brand-new incredibly less expensive plan that will be better than the Affordable Care Act.
I do believe that there are plans that are better than the Affordable Care Act, but none of which that would be put forward by conservatives.
They don't want any sort of government intervention in the healthcare system.
They want the private insurance companies to be able to make as much money as possible.
Spend as little
and make as much.
Basically.
I mean, it is ridiculous.
And hearing that comment, it's like, how about some perspective behind it?
Donald Trump and his allies have had a decade to put out a plan.
He has had control of all three branches of the American government for multiple years during that time frame.
And yet they have nothing.
Nothing.
And their big plan is to take away the subsidies that have kept premiums at a certain level and now expected to double because of this.
And his idea is Democrats just give that up and come back and negotiate with me because he's been such a fair negotiator over this year especially because there's been money that has been put
into budgets and has been delegated by the Congress of the United States of America that Donald Trump is then cancelled.
So his word means nothing.
So don't fall for what Donald Trump is saying here that somehow it's the Democrats that need to reopen the government.
That it's the Democrats fault here.
No, this is the Republicans and Donald Trump's doing.
They made this bed and it's time for them to say if Donald Trump really wants to go to the table with
Democrats, then you re-implement these subsidies until you have this magical new plan that he seems to think that can be accomplished.
Give me a break.
So I just wanted to make sure we said that before we wrap things up here this morning.
Alright, well let's go to the number for the day quiz.
We'll start a brand new week.
It was on this date in 1992.
I voted for the first time in a presidential election.
Okay.
It was election day on November the 3rd of 1992.
I was going to school at UW Eau Claire.
There were long lines.
The presidential election was between the incumbent George H W Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross parole and the Democratic challenger Bill Clinton won the election.
Okay.
However, the third party candidate parole got the third highest percentage for a third party.
Theodore Roosevelt is a progressive.
had the most votes.
Miller Fillmore, an American party candidate, former president as well.
Second, your number for the day is what percentage of the vote did Ross Perot get in 1992?
Your choices are 14% of the votes, 19% of the vote, 24% of the votes.
So that what percentage Ross Perot get has a third party independent candidate in 1992.
14, 19, or 22?
Yep.
Okay,
I'm gonna say 19%.
One with 19 is my final answer.
Ross Perot in 1992 got 19% of the votes.
Nice.
So you're one for one.
Start of the week with a win.
I like that.
Very good.
Well, have a enjoyable and safe move in and we'll see you tomorrow.
I promise I'll be careful.
Happy Monday, everybody.
Have a
great day.
More of Morty's with Pat Crichtlow coming up next on 98.9 WXCO.
