WAUPUN — Waupun Mayor Rohn Bishop plans to get the city departments more involved in City Council meetings by asking them to give regular reports on their current activities. The departments Mayor Bishop will ask to give regular reports include the Police Department, Fire Department, Public Works, Waupun Utilities, and City Administrator, among others.
The push for departments to give regular updates was inspired by the recent actions of the Emergency Medical Response Team in saving the life of a Waupun resident in May. The Emergency Response team was created last year as a solution to the increased emergency volume Waupun has experienced in recent years which has stretched resources for traditional medical emergency services.
“Our departments don’t get enough credit for the work they do,” Mayor Bishop told the Waupun Pioneer. Mayor Bishop argues that meeting attendance and citizen engagement would increase if municipal departments gave regular updates to the City Council. “Each department can take two to three minutes to brag about what they accomplished in the last month. It also gives the City Council time to ask questions to the departments,” he said.
Mayor Bishop highlighted the fact that the Waupun Fire Department is still largely volunteer-based and struggles to respond to the increased emergency call volume. Even with a new fire truck being purchased and future additions planned to the Waupun Safety Building, the Fire Department will likely struggle to meet demand without more funding and assistance. But if the community is unaware the city departments face these sorts of challenges it becomes more difficult to solve such problems.
“There’s still a need for people to know what’s going on,” Mayor Bishop said. “With how popular my Mayor’s Column is, it’s clear Waupun residents want to know what the city is up to.”
The City Council offers each department time to give reports at the monthly Common Council meetings but most departments do not take advantage of it, which is why Mayor Bishop wishes to encourage the departments to regularly address the city. Meetings of the Common Council are held on the second Tuesday of every month.
