COVER FEATURE
In a crowded Wausau Municipal Airport lounge on a spring day in 2019, something rare happened for a Southeast Side neighborhood meeting: things got a little heated. The group has some very strict rules to ensure that doesn’t typically happen. Meetings are held to exactly one hour, to ensure that no one feels like their time is being wasted. Guests can speak at the meetings but they must get permission beforehand, and it must directly involve the neighbors. So that meeting, which was about the North Central Health Care expansion, was a rare exception. The meeting was formed to disseminate the facts about the project, since some folks in the neighborhood had gotten some early word about the revamp and started sharing some incorrect information around the community. But one thing you couldn’t say about that meeting, or about most of the Southeast Side meetings up to that point, is that it was poorly attended. Meetings typically ranged
Participation in neighborhood groups had been declining even before COVID-19 — now there’s a renewed effort to bring them back
▲ A meeting in 2019 about the North Central Health Care expansion was one of the rare meetings to get heated. Neighborhood meetings on the Southeast Side are typically quiet affairs, and held strictly to one hour.
”We are proud to be part of a third-generation, family-owned company that is passionate about bringing you the world’s best dairy.”
from 25 to 40 people, one of the most robust of the city groups. Attendance at neighborhood groups across the city had started to decline even prior to the emergency of COVID-19, but the pandemic really put a hamper on efforts to keep residents informed about their neighborhoods. Out of 12 neighborhood groups prior to the pandemic, today there are only seven of them operating right now. And attendance has really dropped in a lot of the remaining groups. Folks are hoping to change that, says Sue Nowak. Nowak was part of the effort to start neighborhood groups going back to the 90s. In 1992 the first group, the Longfellow Neighborhood group, began as part of a project that chose Wausau among ten communities nationwide to launch neighborhood groups. The first meetings were held at Lopnow’s Bar and arose out of concerns about alcoholism’s effects on the neighborhood. Johnson and Johnson funded the grant.
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Neighborhood regrouping
by B.C. Kowalski
Presents...
MERRILL, WI – 8100 County Road K South
As a French-owned cheese manufacturing facility, we are part of the largest Dairy Company in the world, Lactalis Groupe. Our Merrill facility is home to gourmet spreadable and processed cheese products: Président, rondelé, Pub Cheese, Black Diamond, and Wee Brie. Currently we have multiple positions available:
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Nov. 18 @ 6:30pm Nov. 19 @ 7pm Nov. 20 @ 2pm Nov. 21 @ 2pm
Lactalis American Group and Subsidiaries is an Equal Employment/Affirmative Action
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November 11-18, 2021
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Apply at www.lactalisamericangroup.com/careers click on location/Merrill
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