(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam Chamber of Commerce hosted its 2022 Economic Update Luncheon at Old Hickory Thursday. Speakers included Beaver Dam Mayor Becky Glewen who gave her state-of-the-city report. She says the community is facing a housing crisis.
“Our housing inventory is way down…prices are way up…by 2030 Dodge County will be short over 1,500 housing units,” says Glewen. “It really affects our workforce. As we talk to new businesses about coming to the area [they say] ‘how can we come to the area if people can’t live.’”
Beaver Dam School’s Superintendent Mark DiStefano touched on issues facing the district including special education funding.
“Supports and services from the state continues to lag behind in nearly all districts,” says DiStefano. “We alone in our district transfer between $3.5-and-$4-million-dollars out of our General Fund to cover special [education] costs. That reality affects all students…those students who receive special education and those who do not.”
Dodge County Board Chairman Dave Frohling spoke to the workforce shortages at the county-level. He says there are currently 100 openings, but they are finding ways to work through this problem.
“Our biggest issues are at Clearview…we’ve got two households closed right now because we don’t have enough staff to adequately take care of the residents,” says Frohling. “We are thinking outside the box on some of this…we’re working with the federal government and with Filipino healthcare workers on a path to legal citizenship here in the U.S.”
Frohling says Barron County has successfully implemented a similar program and notes that this will not replace local workers but augment where staffing falls short.
State Representative Mark Born highlighted priorities in the state’s next bi-annual budget.
“Probably no surprise…tax cuts will be a budget priority,” says Born. “You might say ‘well geez, there’s all these challenges…the city needs money the schools need money why would you do that.’ Well partly because that’s what we’ve done and its been a successful model for over a decade. We’ve cut taxes in the last decade $21-billion-dollars in the state and we still have a $5-billion-dollar surplus.”
The Economic Update Luncheon has been cancelled the last two years due to the pandemic.
