Mayor’s Column May 31, 2025
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun!
I was awakened early on Thursday by a phone call from our utility’s general manager about an overnight fire at our utility building on S. Madison St. A fire started in the cab of a bucket truck, the heat of the fire caused the windows to blow out, and the smoke set off the alarm and sprinkler system. Thankfully, the sprinkler system and quick response of both Waupun PD and Fire contained the fire to the one truck and nothing else was damaged.
Speaking of fire, incidents like this remind me how fortunate Waupun is to have such a professional volunteer fire department. The average response time of our fire department to a 911 call is nine minutes! Heck, it takes me nine minutes to wake up, and that’s how quickly they respond to a call. Thank you to everyone over at the fire department for all you do for Waupun.
This is a good segue to Tuesday’s Special Common Council meeting, because we honored two retiring firefighters, David Duer and Wayne Opperman. Thank you both for your many years of service.
Also, at the council meeting we took the next step to connecting Shaler Drive. Connecting Shaler Drive will help us bring in more housing and commercial businesses to the southeast corner of Waupun. It will also be a nice street for those who already live in the Robin Road, Clagget Avenue area of our city.
Eairler on Tuesday was my monthly listening session at the new Community Center. This month I had over 60 people attend and ask many good questions. My listening sessions are always on the last Tuesday at 1pm and are free and open to the public.
My week started Monday with the Memorial Day Parade and ceremony. It was a family affair as my daughter Reagan played in the school band, and my daughter Maggie is this year’s Poppy Princess.
Then on Thursday, I was at the Waupun Recreation Department Summer Kick-off event, and they sure had a great turnout! It was fun to see the kids all excited for another fun summer with the Waupun Summer Parks Program. Rachel and her team do an amazing job and it’s awesome we give kids something positive to do during the summer.
Friday, I had the quarterly Community Corrections meeting at Dodge Correctional. At these meetings we bring together city, county, state, and correctional leaders to a roundtable discussion of ongoing issues. I’m excited to say that not only is the state preparing to invest big into Waupun Correctional, but significant investment is coming to DCI, too. The projects at both WCI and DCI will continue the proud tradition of Waupun being Wisconsin’s Prison City!
Finally, you’ve started to see this year’s rotating sculptures come to Waupun. We also have our newest permanent sculpture arriving soon, “Kite Girl.” She’s a girl flying a kite, and the historical tie-in to Waupun is that Mr. Shaler had a patent for kites. What didn’t he make? I am excited that Jeni Maly and I have been doing the research on what it will take to get a sculpture of Mr. Shaler made and brought to Harris Park, where he can stand and see both his Recording Angel and the End of the Trail. This would be yet another fundraising effort, and we’ve had a lot of them lately, but Waupun is doing such a great job of coming together as a community to build on our City of Sculpture branding, that I think we can do this!
Thank you Waupun and God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
