Mayor’s Column April 11, 2026
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun,
On Tuesday, I was re-elected to another term as your mayor by a final tally of 1,196 votes to 40 votes. I am honored and humbled to have earned your support for another term. I love Waupun and work hard every day to be the best mayor I can be. I know you don’t agree with every decision I make, heck I don’t always agree with myself, but I want you to know I am always trying to do what is best for Waupun. Together, we have made Waupun the best little city to live in!
On Wednesday, Congressman Grothman and his Washington, D.C. Staff visited Waupun. We met at and toured Waupun Correctional Institution. It was a great opportunity for the congressman and his team to learn about the important work our correctional officers and team do to help keep the rest of us safe. They learned all about religious services, education opportunities, license plate production, mental health services, and the importance of WCI to Waupun, both economically and historically. I want to thank Corrections Secretary Hoy and Warden Mason for personally going on the tour and answering questions.
Later on, Wednesday, I was joined by Envision Greater Fond du Lac for a visit to Waupun’s King Manufacturing in our Industrial Park. I was able to present Warren Baley with a Mayoral Proclamation and a Congressional Citation in honor of King’s 100 years in business, with 60 of those years being here in Waupun! It was a great opportunity for the Envision folks to tour King and to learn more about what they do, specifically the science into building convenient store canopies!
As I look back at the previous week and four years, it reminds me how fortunate we are to live in such a great little city. We have our challenges, yes, every city does, but in Waupun we really come together as a community to make Waupun better. When you’re mayor of a small city, you don’t have the luxury of blaming the other political party for failure, you have to figure it out, or the voters will find someone who will. It’s the “Waupun Way” and quite frankly I think many of our state and national leaders could learn from us. Over the past four years we have embraced our heritage honoring the legacy of Mr. Shaler branding ourselves as “Wisconsin’s Sculpture City.” We brought back the End of the Trail as our city logo. We honored the Recording Angel on her 100th anniversary; we fly our city flag at city buildings and other places, too! We’ve worked hard to defend our brave men and women who work at our three prisons, and have taught the rest of our state our history as “Wisconsin’s Prison City.”
We’re a growing city, we are bringing more housing, some you can see, and much more that’s in the works. Our industrial park is almost now filled up, adding to our tax and jobs base. We’re a very safe city, always one of the 10 safest in all of Wisconsin. Our fire department is top notch and now offers our citizens EMT services, too. Our new community center is an absolute gem to our community, and we have many nice parks. Work continues upgrading the county park, we’ll be putting new flag poles at Heritage park, and we have new turf at the baseball complex and new ice at the ice arena, and we’re working on purchasing a new scoreboard at the softball fields. We’ve begun the process of improving and saving our historic City Hall and already have made big time investments into both the Carnegie Library and at our great Public Library. I can’t thank the crew over at Public Works enough for their efforts to help keep Waupun great!
Waupun also has very reliable power with rates significantly lower than neighboring areas. We have delicious and healthy drinking water and now other cities are coming to Waupun to learn how we do it. Waupun also has the cleanest wastewater discharge of any city in America, and that’s pretty dang cool!
Waupun continues to tackle the challenges of childcare and flooding. In both cases, we didn’t cause the problems, but we’re being aggressive in addressing them.
When you drive though Waupun it’s busy! You’ve seen new businesses come downtown, on the west end, and in the business park area. The east side continues to expand along the highway, too. And for the last few years, Waupun honored Good Friday instead of the generic “spring holiday.”
Our finances are strong, and we pass responsible budgets. Waupun really does have it going on and it’s an exciting time to be mayor of such a cool city! Thank you Waupun for the opportunity and we’ll all continue to work hard to keep Waupun a great place to live!
God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
