Plan Commission - Regular Meeting

Oh, easy to leave it somewhere because it's small. You know, it collapses down to about like that. But it's got a loop on it. She was wobbling a little bit. Ready in the back. Okay.

Good evening, everybody. You are at a planned commission in the city of Wausau. It's Tuesday, July 21st, 2026. It is 5.01 p.m. Wausau City Hall Council Chambers. First item on the agenda tonight, we do have a quorum, so I'll call the meeting to order, is public comment on agenda items and a reading of the city of Wausau public comment. This is going to be a public hearing contained in this meeting, but if there's anyone here with public comment outside of the public hearing, you're free to make comments at this time. Seeing none, we'll move on to the consideration of the minutes from June 16th, 2026 plan commission and June 23rd, 2026 special plan commission meeting minutes. Would entertain a motion.

I move to adopt. Motion from Trueblood.

SECOND FROM BORNEMAN. SEEING NO COMMENTS, ALL IN FAVOR SIGNIFY BY SAYING AYE. AYE. ANY OPPOSED? AND THAT PASSES. FIRST ITEM OR ITEM NUMBER THREE IS THE PUBLIC HEARING UNDER ITEM A, IT'S DISCUSSION ON APPROVING A CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT FOR 151 Meckendoe Street to allow for the construction of an assisted living facility in a downtown periphery mixed-use DPMU zoning district for Beacon Resources LLC. And we do have the applicant here today, Mr. Redenz, if you want to kick us off with comment.

Sure. Good evening. Tom Redenz, 234810 North 96th Avenue, North 96th Avenue. I'm here with Jeff Stubbe with Beacon Resources and Dwight and Linda Davis Foundation, and Mike Tice with Godorgy. Mike is a project architect. Quick update on the Grant Place, which is a building right next door, and these two are really in tandem. They're very important to each other because they're going to serve each other. You can see that our days of shopping at Prangie's are over, and they're going to be really over about the middle of August. That building should be gone. We did some environmental drilling on that site. We know what we have. There's a little bit of containment that we're gonna deal with. But big picture, that building will be cleaned and demoed and gone very quickly. That'll set us up to start that building construction in early or mid-August. And then this building, pending the approval this evening and the next meeting, will start late fall. But again, they're a partner. This building's very important to the Grand Place building. This building's set up, it's a 25-bed assisted living facility. The grant place is a 70-plus bed, excuse me, unit building, 55 and over. So when you get to a point in life where you need some help, you have the ability to slide over to the assisted McIndoe place, the assisted living. So again, 25 beds. We've got underground parking. We've got staff parking on the adjacent property, on our property, that we'll be sharing with the YMCA lot and also in front of the facility. We've got all the utilities are all stubbed in and taken care of, so we shouldn't have any more street closures or any intrusions into the street. And so we're ready to go. So if you've got questions for us, we're here to answer and look forward to getting the project started.

All right. Thank you. Anyone else interested in speaking for the public hearing on 151 McIndoe? Last call for public comment for our public hearing on 151 McIndoe, conditional use for assisted living. Seeing none, we'll close the public hearing. I was there the other night when they pulled her down. Didn't want to give up easy, but it's down. That's good. Any questions from the commission? FOR STAFF OR FOR PARTITIONERS? BRAD, YOU WANT TO SAY SOMETHING?

SURE. JUST PROCEDURALLY, THIS IS THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR THE CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT. THE USE IS TECHNICALLY INSTITUTIONAL RESIDENTIAL, WHICH IS CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT IN THE ZONING DISTRICT. SO AFTER TONIGHT, WE'RE NOT LOOKING FOR ANY ACTION. WE WOULD COME BACK NEXT MONTH WITH A STAFF REPORT AND LOOK FOR FINAL APPROVAL ON THIS CONDITIONAL USE PERMIT.

Thank you. Seeing no further comments on that, we'll move on to the next item. It's item four, discussion and possible action on approving the specific implementation plan for 1010 South 16th Avenue. I would entertain a motion.

I'll make a motion.

Motion from Balkan. Second. Second from Bornemann. Staff have any comments?

Yes, thank you Mayor Denny and members of the Pine Commission. I'll just briefly we did just have this last month we had the zoning map amendment and the general development plan which the reason for that is because it is planned unit development as a zoning district so now what is before you tonight is the specific implementation plan so it's kind of analogous to like a site plan review we're looking at site specifics with this review like parking landscaping lighting and site design. And so we did talk about that a little bit at the last meeting, but there is a building addition in conjunction with a parking lot expansion that'll be housed on that new lot. And so it's a specific implementation plan amendment for the site. And there are a few exceptions that are being requested. There's a pavement setback exception, a parking exception, and then landscaping. And staff after review feels like these exceptions are minimal compared to the overall site design and what's being requested. It is considered a neighborhood business. It is consistent with the overarching planning guidance, and we're recommending approval with, of course, a contingency on parcel combination, and then the revised landscape plan be submitted just because we do want the islands at the ends of the parking area landscaped. And if there's any questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

I've seen this a few times. Any questions of staff? Okay, seeing none, with a motion and a second to approve the specific implementation plan for 1010 South 16th Avenue, signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Aye.

One, two, three. Five, one? Okay, record that as a five to one. Pass. All right, Item 5 is a discussion on the City of Wausau Comprehensive Plan Update, Chapter 1, Issues and Opportunities. And that is in the packet. Carrie, would you like to kick that off?

Yeah, thank you. I'm just going to give a brief kind of overview. So I'm sure the commission remembers it was just a couple months ago that the commission adopted the public participation plan. So we have a few efforts underway now, and I just wanted to quickly touch on that. So our website we're keeping updated. We have done a press release about our public engagement strategy. We have a survey that's active now that regional planning worked hard on, and we think it came out really well. We have a meeting in a box document that this body saw a couple months ago that is live and downloadable now on our website. Brad and I have begun to attend neighborhood meetings and we will be doing so over the next month or so. And we're in the process now of working on our focus group composition and how that'll look. And then regional planning will be holding stakeholder interviews. So we do have public engagement underway. And then tonight, Sam Wessel from regional planning is here to present the first chapter.

Sam. Thank you Kerry and Mayor Denny. Before I get into the chapter itself, a few other comments about the public participation. So far 56 people have taken the survey and we have it structured where the first question asks you if you work in Wausau, if you live in Wausau, or if you go to Wausau for whatever reason. So you don't necessarily have to be a resident to take the survey, but we'll split out the results so that non-residents don't skew the data from residents and you can see them separately. Additionally, that's available on our website. We're keeping our website up to date as well as you guys are doing with the city. And then I just wanted a quick touch on the public participation plan. We already discussed that numerous times, so I'm not gonna go too into detail, but if you remember, there's a timeline at the back that we said this is roughly how we expect things to go, but it's subject to change. What we ended up doing based on some of the other projects city staff were doing was to pull that survey sooner in the process and to push the chapters a little later so that we don't give the impression that we're writing the chapters and then asking people their opinion and this way it it flows better where we can get the feedback first and then incorporate it so we don't have to go back and rewrite everything if something changes in terms of process in reviewing the chapters what I like to do is I This is based heavily on the 2017 plan. I didn't deviate much from its structure, but we update all the relevant information, all the census and Department of Administration data. Chapter one we can review before a lot of the public participation stuff because it's mainly background, it's not a whole lot of giving any direction yet until you get to the other chapters. What I like to do is go through the pages, sort of scroll beginning to end and see what everyone thinks about each page individually and if there's anything that needs to be visited in detail. I know I found a few typos that I'll correct, but we don't want to spend a ton of time on that stuff. But in terms of content, that is what we're looking to discuss more. The first chapter doesn't have goals, objectives, and policies, but all the other ones do, and those I kept identical to the 2017 plan so you can see what was done last time. And that's really the bulk of where we're looking for plan commission input, because that's the direction you take based on the data. And we can talk a little bit about how There are these projections based off the 2020 census that showed us declining, but now estimates since then have seen us growing. The point of those different data sources is not to say the population's gonna be exactly this or that, it's more just to give you a variety of tools to work with as you're making decisions, because ultimately they're just estimates, they're not always finite. And then I just wanna remind everyone the survey closes September 30th. And I think that is it. And we can get into the chapter if everyone, unless there are questions so far. All right, so Brad's got it up on the screen. It's also in your packet. I usually use the page number that's on the page itself, but I know if you're like viewing online, it might be different because it's in a PDF format. But this is footer page five is the first one where the chapter starts. The pages before will have just the acknowledgements and the table of contents and that sort of thing. So we start on five. Starting out with the plan purpose, this just goes through the history of Wausau's comp plan and why we do comp planning based in Wisconsin state law and what it requires. And at the bottom of that first page, once we have all that public participation data, we'll come back and summarize it here so it's right at the beginning. So that's why you see that sort of to be determined spot that's highlighted. Are there any thoughts on this first page before we move on? All right, seeing none, we can move on to page six. This again is pretty straightforward. It's more of that state statute background along with the 14 planning goals. We're not required to have those goals specifically, but a lot of times if there's a grant or something involved, it likes to see these goals addressed in some way in a comprehensive plan, so we just have to keep these in mind as we're developing the plan. Are there any questions about that part in particular? All right, let's move on to seven. Here's just a summary of other plans that have been done so far. Throughout the chapters, we'll bring them back and reference them in more detail on a topic by topic basis so that we're not repeating ourselves a lot, but here's just sort of an overview to start things off. as well as the Marathon County plans that are relevant to the city down below. And then a summary of NCWRPC, which is my employer, the guys that you hired to do this plan and how we function. Any questions on chapter seven? Nope, yeah, page seven, not chapter seven.

A quick question, and this, I'm new, I don't know. We have an entire chapter on older adults housing, and yet our first, as I looked over this, our first real research is on 17 and under, but we have no chapter addressing how we are meeting their needs.

That's a good question.

So is that just not part of the study? We've just not done it before? It's not something that would fit in the scope of this? It fits elsewhere? Am I just missing something?

Yeah, so we did an older adults housing study in 2026, and that piggybacked off of the Wausau Metro housing study from 2022 or 23. And since that was related to housing specifically, frequently 17 and under aren't buying housing, so they're not really the target audience for that kind of study. But that's something we can certainly look at as we go through the chapters of the plan, what aspects might make it... easier to raise kids in Wausau or give them more things to do, whatever it might be. So that is a good thing to keep in mind. Does that help answer the question?

Yes, I think so. The council has requested an emphasis on how we're meeting the needs of our younger citizens. So it would be good if we could have that in there. Sure.

Yeah, I think to clarify, the chapter will be on housing in general, not specified. We did a study, a separate study, for older housing. after we did a study about just metro housing in general. But, yeah, again, for the comp plan, the housing chapter could address younger, middle, older folks. I imagine we'd touch on all of it in that chapter.

And the purpose of providing, you mentioned the chart that shows 17 and under in this chapter, that's more the background. Once we get into the chapter, you know, like natural resources, we can talk about parks that younger kids might be using, or we get to community facilities, that's when we talk about schools. So we do touch on a bunch of topics in future chapters that we haven't seen yet that will definitely relate to that age group. So are there any other questions on page seven? All right, so moving on to page eight, and this is something I want to touch on with where a lot of the data comes from. So in the past, the census was done every 10 years and it had all the different types of data that you'll see in here, you know, the really detailed stuff like, you know, how much money people make by age group and that sort of thing. At 2010 they split, so now the census has fewer topics in it and the American Community Survey has more, but the census goes to everyone and the ACS just goes to a small sample size and then they put it through an equation that estimates it for the entire population. So that's what that table summarizes. and that a lot of the measurements we're taking where we do like the percent change or the net change, I started at 2010. 2024 is the most recent data set we have available because they're always two years behind because they have to process it and whatnot. And I picked that timeframe just because there was a pronounced shift demographically around 2010 where Baby boomers and millennials were the two biggest populations at the time, and that was right around where a lot of millennials were moving out, forming their own households, and then the recession happened, and that's one of several explanations why there was sort of a drop in the number of babies being born around that time as well. So now you have a more slowly growing population, but a huge jump in the number of households because there are fewer people in each household. Does that make sense why we're kind of measuring that timeframe? We all know like the 90s and the 2000s, population growth was much stronger nationwide. It's not just a Wausau thing. So that's why I picked that timeframe from 2010 to more recently. Any questions on where all the data is coming from? I SHOULD MENTION, TOO, THAT DEPARTMENT OF ADMINISTRATION, WHICH IS A STATE AGENCY, ALSO COMES UP WITH THEIR OWN. THEY DO THE PROJECTIONS. WE USE THEM BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT THEY LOOK FOR IN GRANTS WHEN WE'RE, YOU KNOW, APPLYING FOR ROAD FUNDING OR WHATEVER PROGRAM COMES FROM A STATE AGENCY OF SOME KIND. AND THEN THEY DO AN ANNUAL POPULATION ESTIMATE THAT'S OFTEN QUITE DIFFERENT THAN THE CENSUS ONE, SO THAT GETS CONFUSING, TOO, BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW HOW THEY COME UP WITH A DIFFERENT NUMBER. The best we can do is just state all this included in here for reference so that when we do make decisions, it's all there and you know where it came from. Any questions on anything so far?

Yeah. What you were just talking about with the different sets of numbers that the same agency is bringing, isn't that just working against themselves?

Good question for them, yes. I have the same question. Well, yes, so the population projections are based on the 2020 census. 2020 was a wild year. You know, people were not at their primary residence. They were working remotely or they weren't answering the door. So how good is the quality of data from 2020? I don't know. But then after that, you saw a lot more people moving out of the bigger cities to, you know, midsize and smaller communities based on some other observations people have had. So I suspect that's kind of why they projected this, but then the actual was slightly above that. So that's my best guess. If I worked for one of those agencies, I'd probably have a complicated equation to explain all that, but I don't. So we just go with what they say, and we say, this is the best that's out there, and this is what people look at when they're reviewing applications for stuff.

Do they increase the range of, I'm trying to think of the term, but...

The margin of error?

Yeah, I took statistics.

Yeah. So it's interesting, if you go to the census data, in their tables they do have a margin of error. It tends to be a bigger margin of error the smaller the population is, so... or a mid-sized community, it's a little easier than if you're in a town of 500 to 1,000 where they can be all over the board and the numbers go up and down quite a bit more from year to year. But yeah, all good questions to ask. I think the big takeaway is, Without having this discussion, you might look at the numbers and go, those are the numbers, why are they doing that? But in reality, there's a lot of here's the best guess based on a variety of perspectives, and that's what helps us make the decision, and we can always adjust up or down. It's a 10-year plan, so five years from now, a trend might change, and so here's our baseline.

Thank you.

Yep. All right, so moving on to chapter, or sorry, page number nine. We have this community profile, I based that heavily on what was in the 2017 plan, just sort of gives the context of where we're located. There's a reference to map one. The maps are coming, you'll see them soon. Map one just shows where Wausau is in Marathon County and where Marathon County is in Wisconsin. It's not terribly complex. And then just giving sort of like the overall layout of what the city is like and what the climate is like. Are there any comments on page nine? Cool. Yeah. This is why I like chapter one. It's relatively straightforward. Um, but it's a good background information to have. So then moving into 10, all the stuff we talked about with those data sources, here's where they show up. So chapter 10, we start with demographics. Uh, you can see Wausau grew not as much as, you know, city of Eau Claire, but much more than city of La Crosse. Those are the two peer communities that were used in the last comprehensive plan. So I just kept them for reference. I think they're probably, as a metro area, they're probably pretty comparable to us because once you get to the Fox Cities, Green Bay, those are a little bigger. Elsewhere, you know, it's always much bigger, much smaller. So these two, I think, are still good comparisons to use. Any question on the population or how the metro statistical area works or the combined statistical area?

Question, I just recently saw a report where Wausau is over 40,000, like 40,400. Would that get picked up then at 26? Or do we have any data on that?

That probably came from DOAs. They have 2025 for DOA. This is the newest one, 2024 for census. I can make a reference to that. Sometimes people like to throw that in there as well. 40,000 just, when you look at the census, we were six short of that, and it's just kind of nice to finally just show that we're over 40.

But just, it feels with the recent additions of housing, we've had an uptick.

Sorry to interrupt. At the bottom of page 10, just above the chart, the last paragraph, it is mentioned.

Oh, for 2025. Right. Wisconsin Department of Administration is 40,571.

Thank you for finding it. I thought I had come across that too, and I couldn't remember if I, okay. Thank you. So that is in there. Just one more data source set, and that's the one that makes us look the best. So we'll keep it.

And just a question on this. Eau Claire, they have quite a bit of land to expand into. So we would be much more likely across being landlocked now. So is there another community that would be landlocked that might work as a better comparative?

That's a good question, yeah. Let me think for a few seconds. I know Appleton is kind of landlocked in three directions. They can go north, I think, but they can't go east or west unless, well, Grand Chute is maybe annexable, I don't know. Yeah, it seems like everything touching Lake Winnebago can still grow into flat land more than we can.

I just think that that resource, the one resource we cannot create more of, that's probably a heavy thing to consider. So if we're being compared to, and Eau Claire has quite a bit of land to grow onto.

Yep.

So they're going to be able to take that into account as they make decisions. So just that for consideration.

Yeah, we can think on that. If anyone has an idea of a peer community we could add, I could easily do that. Eau Claire sure is doing a lot of the same infill stuff going on here too in addition to that. So I think that's interesting that THEY DO HAVE THAT RESOURCE, AND YET THEY'RE ALSO DOING REDEVELOPMENT ON TOP OF THAT. SO GOOD THOUGHTS. ARE THERE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS FOR PAGE 10?

SO JUST ONE LAST THOUGHT. YEAH. AND I DON'T KNOW THE SIZE COMPARISON FOR, LIKE, FONDULAC OR... BECAUSE WE ALSO LOST THE UNIVERSITY. SO LOST IS PERHAPS NOT THE RIGHT, BECAUSE THEY MOVED. WE DIDN'T LOSE THEM. SO THAT IS, SO THERE ARE A FEW THINGS THAT AS WE LOOK AT OTHER COMMUNITIES, SO LACROSSE STILL HAS, THEY'RE ACTUALLY TWO FAIRLY DECENT SIZED UNIVERSITIES, AND YET THEY'RE LOSING POPULATION. SO THAT'S ANOTHER THING TO CONSIDER.

Yeah, because Fond du Lac has what, one private one and maybe a two-year? Okay.

Sorry, the two-year closed.

Okay. And I think as a city, they're much bigger, but as a metro, they're maybe not as big. I don't remember. Okay. Probably something along those lines, but I'll look into it and see what I find. Because I think they are not growing as fast as like the Fox Valley or Eau Claire, so that might be another one to look at. All right. Moving to page 11, we've got age distribution, which we touched on a little bit already, but yeah, mirroring nationwide trends, global trends, there are people, fewer people are having kids, people who are having kids are having smaller families, so you're getting much more in the 65 plus and much less in the 17 and under. Marathon County tends to be better than most Wisconsin counties in terms of sort of not having enough young people, but it certainly is impacting us too. Are there any thoughts on this topic? And then that topic continues on page 12. where you can see the change in the 17 and younger population over time in that first figure. And then we do the same thing with the 65-plus population. Any thoughts on these visuals?

Was it fair to say we're not aging as fast as the rest of the state? We've found the fountain of youth here.

But you wonder, too, when you look at, I mean, we're not super geographically isolated, but if you look in certain directions, there's not a whole lot. And if you go north, there's not hospitals all over the place, and you wonder how many people might move closer to care as they age, and that's a consideration, too. So we'll see how that shakes out. Moving into households, I touched on that a little bit too where you have fewer people in each household. So even if you have a flat population, you could still have housing demand because the housing growth reflects the change in households rather than the change in population. Any comments regarding households?

Is the definition in here of what a household includes? If it is, I'll look at it.

I could bring it up on my phone. I'll add it. It's however census defines it, which I'm going to get the exact wording so I don't get it wrong.

I think it's under the first sentence on page 13 under the households header. Household includes all the people who occupy a housing unit as their usual place of residence.

And if you go to the census website, it says all the people who occupy a single housing unit, so as their usual place of residence. So that's word for word from census where we get the data from.

So generally speaking, then, these are an increase in units as well. Yes. To accommodate the households.

Mm-hmm.

And it's interesting, too, when we get to occupied versus vacant. So if you have... Vacation homes aren't huge in Wausau like they are in the Northwoods, but you can split it out to see the year-round housing units versus the seasonal ones, and then that's how you would compare how much is available for how many households you have. When we get to Chapter 3, we get into more of that because that's a whole housing-specific chapter. Any other comments on households?

I guess the only thing I would say is there any way to, like that last paragraph on page 13 is just really data heavy and word heavy. I don't know if there's a way to like pull the data out a little bit and do the narrative on the side. I don't know. It's just a lot. But I love the data in it. I love the information you're presenting.

Sometimes I take those paragraphs and I make it more into like a bulleted list and it helps tremendously. So I'll do that. I like... I like splitting stuff up visually. All right, moving to page 14. Here's where we get into household growth, which you can see the change in household growth is higher than the overall population growth. One typo I had, once we get into population household projections in that first paragraph, after the word Wisconsin, where it says 3.3%, that should be 3.1%, minus 3.1%, because that's pointing to the table five. But I'll fix that, that's just a typo on my part. But you can see in figure three, the trajectory where Eau Claire has gone up, La Crosse has gone down, Wausau has also gone down, but not as pronounced as either of those other two communities.

And that is, or I shouldn't say have gone down, but that's the future projection.

And those projections are based on the existing age cohorts and deaths versus births. I know there's talk of the Great Lakes states are going to be a climate haven if other places run out of water. It doesn't factor in things like that because stuff like that is way too hard to predict. And if somebody's sick of getting hit by hurricanes on the Gulf Coast, I don't know if they'll move to Wisconsin right away. They might move to Arkansas instead to be a little more inland. So Those are just my own opinions, but DOA made it clear when I was talking to them that it's mainly based on existing trends and not those sort of the things you really can't foresee that people talk about and speculate about, but how do you quantify it? All right, any other comments for population and household projections?

Can I ask you a real quick question? Is there any data out there about like population migration, especially with climate differences or like legitimate sources about that or?

So that's what I was getting at is like a lot of it's speculative where you'll hear stories of, you know, we left Colorado because of all the wildfires for summer that we don't have smoke as much or, but it's usually Sort of one-off experiences that people are getting interviewed about. I haven't found anything yet that shows, you know, thousands of people from this community found this place they really like over here, and now there's this big trend. It's usually pretty isolated and scattered. Yeah. One thing to keep in mind, though, is a lot of the Sunbelt states are seeing lots of house prices decreasing, whereas up here we have not experienced that to the degree they have. It may have cooled off a little bit, but a lot of the Great Lakes states, they didn't have the rapid building like the Sunbelt states over the past decade, so we're still playing catch-up, and that's why... And then another thing, too, is just talking with the landing over here. They find that a lot of people sort of boomerang back to Wausau, whether it's they go to college and come back to raise their kids here, or they retire and then they want to go to a cabin or they want to go to Florida. But then after they've experienced that, maybe they want to be closer to grandkids or to their hospital again, and then they move back to Wausau. So we do have that sort of trend going on. All right, any other thoughts about the population or household projections? As you can see, the projected household change is less pronounced than population again, and that's also because of the smaller household sizes. And at the bottom of page 15, Carrie found us some sources where, I don't remember which presentation that was from, but

Healthy Community Summit.

Okay. And that was held here.

Yep.

And it talks about how a lot of the recreation heavy counties have seen a lot of population growth over the past decade. They attract higher incomes, but they also have led to higher income growth within the community for people who already live there. And Marathon's not considered a super high outdoor recreation county because we're a little more urban and agricultural, but we still have a lot compared to other cities our size. And because we're surrounded by so many counties that are destination counties, that's one of our biggest strengths is you can live here and then drive an hour or two and be on a lake easily. So I thought that was, Carrie and I both thought that was really cool to include here.

I'm going to back up to 14. Yes. To Bruce Trueblood's point. On the city of Eau Claire, comparable. One, they have space. Two, they have the migration from our friends to the west in Minnesota.

A lot of them coming over to that region to live, commute.

So I don't know if that's... Do we have a reason for that?

We can include that in there, because I used to live in the western part of the state, too, and especially once people were hybrid or remote, it was like, well, I don't have to go to downtown Minneapolis five days a week. Maybe I only have to go once a week. Well, housing is cheaper the farther away you get, so a lot of, Eau Claire got a lot of But also, I think a lot of the companies in Eau Claire are well connected with the Twin Cities, so if one expands, it affects both markets, whereas we're a little too far out of the way to really feel it as much as Eau Claire does, but I think that's an important thing because they're benefiting tremendously from something that's out of both cities' control.

Well, there seems to be a migration to the bigger cities in general, but are we potentially competing with that group, or is it a non-factor? You know, obviously a lot of their northern counties are depleting. Those people are moving down into the cities. And I think we're a potential draw for that population. I just don't know how much somebody going to Eau Claire would look at Wausau similarly if we had the...

I'll try to see if I can find some articles explaining, because I do think Eau Claire is kind of a standout statewide even, because La Crosse doesn't get that. Duluth Superior isn't growing that way. It's really Dane County, St. Croix County, Eau Claire, Fox Valley, who are really, they seem to be in the spotlight right now. So I think it's important to sort of maybe highlight, you know, here's some things that are out of our control that are benefiting them maybe. whereas these are the things we can maybe learn from them and try to duplicate here. So I'll look up some articles.

Just a thought, maybe we could look at the metro areas too. I mean, I think Eau Claire metro is growing, but like was pointed out, I mean, it's not as landlocked as Wausau, and I think La Crosse is probably the most landlocked, which may contribute to some of that decline. So, I mean, if you look at metro areas, that may take out some of the annexation factor.

and outside of Altoona and Chippewa Falls. I mean, that's three communities driving the growth versus it being spread out over six, seven, eight like we have here.

Thank you.

I have just a quick question about like, and I've had a few residents ask me about like just our metrics, the scale we use on the side of our graphing. So on like page 16, I'm not sure, sorry, I'm just sort of skipping around. SO IT GOES FROM 80 TO 100%. I KNOW THAT MAKES SENSE FOR THE DATA, BUT I JUST WANT TO SORT OF, I GUESS, LIKE, TALK TO WHY YOU USE THE SCALE YOU USE AND THAT MAYBE IT'S JUST TO HELP US CONSUME THE DATA EASIER. I DON'T KNOW.

Yeah, so that's a good question. So right now there was just a rule about ADA accessibility. So producing documents that people can read with a device if they can't, you know, it reads it to them. But also just visually people who don't use a device but just don't have the sharpest vision maybe. I try to make it so that it's the most legible. But I can see too how if you smash the Y axis too far down, then it looks like we have this huge skyrocketing data when it's really, you know, just a very minor change. So I will continue, since this is new to us, I'll continue to play with it and see. The final draft might have larger fonts, it might have different scaled elements just because this is a new thing we're trying to do to make these more accessible. Another thing that we're gonna be doing is if there's a picture, you embed a caption so that if someone is using a reader, it reads what they're looking at. So that is a good question, but much of that will likely change between now and the final draft based on the more I learn about that.

And also, I just wondered, too, like, I don't know if there's just a way to call it out, like, scales from 80 to 100. I don't know. Just, you know, just be more transparent. I thought it was a good point. Yeah, that's very good. Yeah, the savviness, right?

Yeah.

Cool. Thanks. All right, so I think we discussed everything up through 15. Moving to 16, we get to education levels. Like we mentioned, it looks a lot more pronounced than it actually is, but they are improving across the board, and a lot of that is just older generations just frequently didn't finish high school or college if you go back far enough. And now as more and more people complete those stages, that's kind of naturally how they have been increasing. One thing to point out, I mean, it makes sense because we're not a college town, so we don't have a large cohort of professors living here. But the data does show that Marathon County has maybe less higher education than some other counties, but the peer communities in this all have four-year universities, whereas we do not. So I don't think that's necessarily an alarming observation. So I'm curious what you guys think about that.

And is it also maybe important to mention here that even though UW-Stevens Point and Wausau is still serving us, it's just a little different kind of capacity?

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

I don't know if that would go here or just wait for the education chapter.

We do. Yeah. In chapter four, I do describe sort of the change in enrollment plus the relocation and all that. That's not to say it's not a significant asset. It's just the sheer population of it is much different than the main campus down in point in terms of the percentage of the community that it comprises.

Just out of curiosity, is there somewhere where we record what percentage of those graduates actually stay in the area? That's a good question. Because a lot of the degrees that are represented are from outside of Wausau. Doctors, teachers, nurses, people who probably did not get their degree from the UW.

And conversely, if you went to NTC, there might be a higher share of people who went to school here and stayed.

But they would only be counted as a two-year, and yet they're the ones who are, yeah, here.

I'm going to look into that because I'm curious if there's any data on that. Any other thoughts on education? All right, then we can move on to... 2017 sort of wraps up the four or more years of college then we get to employment The way census measures it is how many residents of a community have a job Later when we get to some more detailed economic analysis in chapter six We'll get into more how many jobs are physically located in the city regardless of where the person lives There's just two ways of measuring it because then you can track you know like our higher paychecks being earned in one community, but then they go to live somewhere else and that could indicate there's more need for more variety of housing in the community where the paycheck is being earned. So we'll get into that more in chapter six, but here this is just the basic census trend of what employment is doing, if it's going up or down. And of course it's gone up, especially since 2010, because unemployment was relatively high back then compared to now. Any thoughts on employment?

Do these numbers reflect inflation at all, or are they just straight data points?

So this is just the number of jobs, but once we do get into income... Sorry, I'm on the wrong page. Yeah, once we do get into the incomes, I left them not adjusted for inflation, but I usually, hopefully I remember to include it. I say what the rates of inflation was between them according to the inflation calculator. I think I have that in there. I'm just looking for it. Okay, inflation rates was 43.9% between 2010 and 2024. So this is the last paragraph on 17. but I also indicate that housing values have gone up 50.2%. So even if your wages outpaced inflation, it still might be under the inflation of housing specifically, meaning you can't qualify for as much house as you used to be able to, if that makes sense. So I line it up that way because when you inflate the past numbers, it's sort of, I find that it's easier to line them up this way where you go with their actual value and then just state what the inflation rate was between then. And you can kind of mentally do the math, but I'm open to suggestions. Part of it too is if someone picks it up and says, you know, I wasn't making that much in 2000, that might throw someone off because the after the fact adjustment. And just like the jobs, income levels are the incomes that live in Wausau, not the incomes that are necessarily earned in Wausau, if that makes sense. Any more thoughts on employment and income before we move on? All right, so then on the bottom of 18, we sort of just summarize the big trends where we've got a lot of positive trends going on, but they might not be as rapidly moving in a positive direction as they are countywide or in other parts of the state or our peer communities. So good thing, we're a really good place to live and there's a lot going for us, so we can maybe keep that momentum going. Then we move on to issues and opportunities. So this is just a quick intro to how we got a lot of the content that will go into the plan through those public participation activities we talked about earlier. And then every chapter will close with the goals, objectives, and policy. This one doesn't have any. It just explains what those are and how they work. And basically they just get more specific when you, like a goal is a broad statement. Objectives are, okay, how do we achieve that goal? And then the policies are the really specific, you know, we're going to do this exact thing. And like I said before, I'm planning on keeping them exactly the same as they were in 2017 so that we can review them and know, you know, what have we been doing for the past decade? And then how do we want to change it if we want to change it?

And that is all I have so far. Thank you. Any further questions from staff or staff comment? So what's next, Carrie?

So this just provides context for us for the rest of the document. So it kind of gives us our framework to work with. And the next chapter will be a natural resources chapter, and that should be coming forth next month, I think. We'll double-check our schedules.

Mm-hmm.

And I'll plan to just do it sort of the same way where we introduce it and then go through the chapter chronologically if you've got any suggestions. And sometimes if you have a suggestion or an idea, you read it ahead of time and you just email me so I can remember to sort of research something a little more in depth before getting here. That works too. Carrie should have my email. Otherwise, it's on our website too.

Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, before we adjourn, it looks like our next meeting would be August 18th.

I have a request for something to be put on that agenda. Mr. Trueblood. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. At council, we discussed the, go ahead, tell me, AI data center that we had brought up last month. So if we could bring that back for review next month. for further...

Revisit? Yes. Update?

Updates.

Okay, so you want this for August or September?

August. August. We need to send it back to council in September.

Okay, we did ask for it to come back to Council in September, so you wanted it to stop here first.

Yes. So then if we can't finish it in August, we would have our meeting in September as well, because we asked it to come back the second meeting in September. Okay.

Can I just get clarification? So in terms of updates, just more specifically, what the commission or council would like to be updated on, just so we make sure that we do our research and we come prepared?

At the council meeting it was suggested that we add some buffer zones in number of feet, increase the number of feet. And then there was further discussion about berming, about water retention, about noise. There were several other issues that council members brought up that they would like addressed before the September meeting. We did adopt, but they were looking for further details. So really an expansion. Would that be correct as you understood it?

Yes, I think because Alder Trueblood sort of brought it, moved to bring it back at the end of the very tail end of the meeting. I think we just want to add some extra things. I think there were several Alders that had ideas. So I don't know.

Yeah. So rather than taking council time in a council meeting or calling a cow, we thought we would bring it back before the committee.

So, so just, just so I make sure I have clarification. So are the, are the alders, I guess, are they planning to attend the commission meeting or would they be communicating with staff about recommendations or I, I would encourage them to communicate with staff and forward their recommendations. Okay.

So I think the way the meeting was going, it looked like there were potential for multiple amendments, and it didn't feel like the place to do that. So I would agree, if they have suggestions on those amendments, they should run them through our planning office, planning department.

Okay. Anything else for the good of the order? Suggestions?

All right. I would entertain a motion to adjourn. from Barnum and second from Balkan. All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Meeting's adjourned.