NWRPC held its semi-annual meeting on December 3, 2014 at Flat Creek Inn & Suites in Hayward, WI.
The meeting started with the standard approval of the agenda, approval of the June 25th, 2014 meeting minutes, approval of the November 2014 vouchers and the approval of contracts. The NWRPC 2015 operating budget was discussed and approved before the Federal and State Representatives gave brief updates. Representatives that spoke included Scott Bolstad – U.S. Senator Ron Johnson’s office, Bryce Luchterhand – U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin’s office, Jesse Garza – U.S. Representative Sean Duffy’s office, and State Representative Nick Milroy. There were also State and Federal Agency Representatives that gave updates including Gary Brunner with the Department of Transportation, Seth Hudson/Marie Steenlage with the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, MaryAnn Lippert with the Department of Administration and John Gozdzialski with the Department of Natural Resources.
Guest speakers for the meeting included Mark O’Connell with Wisconsin Counties Association and Ryan Hexum with Wildwoods Manufacturing, a recent start-up furniture manufacturing company, which has grown due in part to assistance from NWRPC. The keynote speaker at the semi-annual meeting was Senator Bob Jauch. Jauch gave one of his final speeches as a state senator before he retired on January 2, 2015 after serving northern Wisconsin for 32 years. “I want to express my honor in serving you and to let you know we set a good example, the gold standard on good government, on good public service, and creating good opportunities, in a way we are not only serving the citizens today, but more importantly we are creating the right kind of opportunity for people whose faces we will never see and names we will never know, but will be impacted by the good we all do,” Jauch said.
Myron Schuster concluded the meeting with a “State of the Commission” and a quick review of the meeting schedule for 2015.