Mayor’s Column August 1, 2025
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun!!
As you know my slogan has been “Waupun has it goin’ on!” and that’s definitely been the case this week!
On Tuesday, I was happy to have Senator John Jagler and Representative Mark Born join me at my monthly update/listening session. They gave a “Waupun” update on the state budget, answered a lot of questions, and had a really good dialogue with the 60+ people who turned out. My update/listening session is always the last Tuesday of the month at 1pm.
We’ve sold the old Senior Center! The Chic Tique will be moving across the street to operate a two story store! This is going to be a fantastic addition to our already booming downtown.
We also bought a house! The city was able to buy a house at a Sheriff’s sale. The house is on Franklin St. next to the municipal parking lot, across from the Post Office and behind Jud’s Bowling. We will be tearing the house down to make room for more parking. My thanks to Kathy Schlieve and Alderman Pete Kaczmarski for attending the sale and getting the house at a very good price! I owe Kathy a beer!
Then on Thursday Kwik Trip East opened up, and later the new Dollar General Market opened on Waupun’s West Side! All this along with the Carver Flats apartment complex that’s being built on Bayberry Lane (near the truck stop) and the Eagle Flexible Packaging building going up in the Waupun Industrial Park, along with the land the city recently purchased along Libby Street (across from old Siligan) for more housing, and the process to finish Shaler Drive is underway… Waupun really is booming!
In other city news, we purchased land on Gateway Drive (across from Homan Chevy) for another stormwater pond.
At the August Board of Public Works meeting, we’ll be reviewing the Flood Study for the west end of Edgewood Drive and Beekman Street area.
It’s summertime, so I’m getting complaints from people about campers being parked on streets and in front of houses for longer than 48 hours, and then when officers make contact with the camper owner they’re upset that Waupun, like most cities, has a 48 hour ordinance about parking RV’s, campers, boats, etc. It’s an ordinance that’s been on the books for about 20 years now and was passed then in an effort to help make Waupun look better. However, as Waupun becomes a wealthier city, more and more people are buying fun things like RV’s, campers, and boats, so I have suggested we look into relaxing the ordinance during summer months (Memorial Day through Labor Day).
And finally, work has begun on the ‘26 budget. There are always difficult choices to make, but some smaller items I’ll push for is new flag poles for the city streetlights. We can get poles that keep the flag from wrapping around the pole and that would allow us to display flags for the entire nice weather months, and that helps make Main Street look nicer. I would also like to incorporate city and state flags to fly among the US flags. I would also like some aesthetic improvements at Heritage Park (park with the Windmill) Being that it is called heritage park, and was set aside to celebrate Waupun’s Dutch heritage, we should add the state, city, and Dutch flags, I’d also like to get some volunteers willing to plant and maintain some tulips around the windmill.
Congrats to Waupun’s Kailie Westphal on being nominated by Sports Illustrated as one of the top hitters for high school softball, and Waupun’s Sutton Nelson who’s up for Sports Illustrated’s “Athlete of the Year”. You can vote for Sutton at athleteoftheyear.org.
Thank you and God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
