Mayor’s Column September 2nd, 2023
Rohn Bishop, Mayor of Waupun
Hello Waupun!
It’s budget time, and despite having to make a few tough decisions, on the whole I’m pretty excited about the 2024 budget! We had our first presentation to the council this week, and I’m happy to say we reached a general consensus to check a few projects off our city to-do list.
First, we’ll get the old Carnegie Library—aka Heritage Museum—fixed up. The Historical Society is dealing with water coming in on rain events, and the building is in general need of repairs. This budget will get the Heritage Museum tuck pointed and some roof repairs, hopefully making it good for another couple of decades.
Second, we’ll get the roof at city hall replaced. It’s wearing out fast, and if we don’t act soon, Angie Hull will be placing buckets to collect dripping rain water. It costs money to maintain these two historic buildings, but how do we expect our local business people to invest in historic buildings downtown if we as a city aren’t willing to invest in our own historic buildings? They’re worth saving, so we’ll work on the upkeep.
Next, it’s time we close out the ARPA funds. As you may remember, we used a large portion of the ARPA funds to replace a failing roof at the safety building and to help a local daycare provider expand. That leaves us with about $250,000, plus the interest monies we earned. We can invest into saving the rink at the Waupun Community Center, which keeps hockey, figure skating, and open skating going, for another half century. We’ll also invest in the baseball turf, keeping that city owned complex going strong for another 20 plus years. Finally, we’ll use the remaining funds to create a youth sports grant program, meaning if a need arises for a youth sport, this fund would be available to help them meet that need. My example would be the softball scoreboard isn’t the most dependable. When it finally goes kaput, this can help replace/repair it.
A little bad news regarding the budget, the state is once again cutting our MSP payments another $20,000 for the services we provide to state owned facilities. It’s a big enough cut that we may no longer be able to give a stipend increase to our firefighters, and that ticks me off. It’s laughable, how messed up this is, and I’m quickly reaching a breaking point with them. I now feel if they want to keep cutting our payments, it’s time we stop providing them services. As we can see, the state has enough money to build their own water treatment plant, maybe they have enough money to buy themselves a firetruck and staff it.
Some exciting news! As you know, the Recording Angel Centennial rededication weekend is coming up and it keeps getting better! On Friday morning, October 6, WTMJ Radio will be broadcasting live from Real Sportscards here in downtown Waupun! “WTMJ NOW” and hosts Steve Scafaddi and Sandy Maxx will be here to help us kick off our celebration weekend. Thank you to Real Sportscards for sponsoring this cool opportunity to let Waupun show off what we got going on, on the state’s largest radio station!
Once again, I really appreciate the work former mayor Kyle Clark and Waupun Fine Arts’ Sue Hafemeyer have done in leading the Ad-Hoc committee I created to put together this rededication. It’s been about a year of preparation, but it looks to be a fun weekend celebrating our city of sculptures. Featuring a WTMJ live broadcast, a beer walk, the rededication ceremony, and the Waupun Community Players presentation of “A Poison Pen Letter to an Angel,” it’ll be a jammed packed weekend celebrating Waupun, and Mr. Shaler’s remarkable legacy to our city.
As I wrap up this column, I want to express a huge thank you to the Lions Club for the donation of new playground equipment at Dodge Park. Playground equipment has gotten really expensive, and thanks to the Lions Club, kids have some fun new stuff.
Finally, please pick up after your dogs at the dog park. We’ve gotten a complaint about dog poop bombs being left behind. If your dog poops, please scoop, otherwise we’ll have to turn it into a cat park!
Thank you and God Bless,
Mayor Rohn
