Mayor’s Column August 30, 2025
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun,
Happy Labor Day weekend! As usual, summer flew by. The Brewers are the best team in all of baseball, the Waupun Warriors are 2-0 after one heck of a game Friday night, the Badgers started off with a win, and the Packers made a huge trade! Exciting times!
Around town, on Wednesday, we had a huge turnout for the Waupun Utilities open house to show off the new ABNR addition to the wastewater treatment facility. Waupun currently operates the largest wastewater treatment plant of this kind in the country, and we have the cleanest wastewater discharge, too. ABNR stands for Advanced Biological Nutrient Recovery, which uses algae to consume phosphorus and nitrogen, producing clean water and valuable algal biomass for products like bioplastics and shoe insoles. The water discharging from our wastewater plant is likely cleaner than water being consumed in many parts of the world.
The public works crew has been doing a fantastic job keeping Waupun looking great. They cleaned up along Harris Creek, trimmed the trees at the Veterans’ Memorial, have the boardwalk looking good, painted and did some repairs to the windmill, repaired the steps in front of city hall, keep the parks looking good and maintained, and even removed a very large spider from the West End Park shelter light.
On Friday, Chuck Stobb, a linchpin of our Public Works Team, showed me how he maintains the street sweeper at the end of each day. While it shouldn’t have been surprising, I was kind of surprised at just how much dirt, grime, lawn clippings, rocks, etc. that he cleans off the streets. While the street sweeper does help to keep the city looking nice, its primary purpose is to remove debris from the streets as to not pollute the Rock River during a rain event. The street sweeper is part of our DNR Storm Water Management Mandate and is paid for by the Storm Water Utility Fee.
As for the Storm Water Utility Fee, it’s projected that going into the 2026 budget, the Storm Water Utility is looking at a deficit of $65,000. My solution for this is to slightly raise the fee to cover the shortfall, however, the recommendation to the Common Council is to hire a consultant to review the Storm Water Utility, look at where it’s going long term, and to recommend a fee increase. This annoys me. I don’t want to hire a consultant with tax dollars, to tell me to increase a fee that we already know we need to increase. I support the mission of the Storm Water Utility, which is to fund our Storm Water Management Program, not enrich government consultants. I admit at times we do need to bring in an expert to help us with an issue, like the engineer for the flood study. I’m no engineer and we needed to learn where the water is going and possible solutions to help relieve the flooding, but not every situation needs an outside expenditure.
The annual river clean up day is coming on September 20, and we’ll also be having the official unveiling of the new sculpture along the river at Harris Mill Park. This too is part of our city’s pride in our water. The sculpture, called Eddies & Etchings, is a reflective outdoor sculpture designed to highlight the relationship between people and our river. The sculpture came to Waupun thanks to a grant from the Protect Wisconsin Waterways Water Quality and Education and Involvement. We’ll be adding educational signage to the sculpture as we continue to promote both Waupun’s commitment to clean water and our heritage as Wisconsin’s Sculpture City!
Thank you and God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
