News – September 9, 2021


(Beaver Dam) Wayland Academy’s newly formed varsity boys’ lacrosse team will be adopting a boy with brain cancer to their club. A tumor was found intertwined in Mason Abraham’s optic nerves in 2019. The nine-year-old has completed three different chemo regiments, but the tumor grew 20-percent. Mason has lost complete use of his right eye with the sight in his left slowly deteriorating. More chemo regiments are planned. Mason will be officially welcomed to the team during a draft party, where he will sign an official draft letter and receive Wayland jerseys. The ceremony is planned for September 26th at 10am inside the Wayland Academy Swan Library.

(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam Common Council will cast a vote Monday that could result in a major restructuring of city government. The change would install a City Administrator tasked with finance and personnel matters. At the same time, the role of mayor would be reduced from full time to part time. The city administrator form of government could start as early as January 1 of next year. The salary of the mayor would be reduced from $60-thousand dollars per year to $20-thousand dollars in the spring of 2023.

(Juneau) The Dodge County Sheriff says the departments crash investigation team continues to do excellent work despite some recent turnover and retirements. Dale Schmidt says simplifying the procedures during crash investigations has helped. He says there are several people on each shift that can respond and if no one is working when an accident occurs, someone will be called in to investigate. Schmidt says the hope is their services are never utilized but realize that their expertise is needed. He encourages motorists to drive safely so the team does not have to investigate another serious crash.

(Fond du Lac) Fond du Lac’s Police and Fire Commission have selected Aaron Goldstein as the city’s new Chief of Police. Goldstein has served as an assistant police chief with the city since 2019 and was named interim Police Chief in May when then Police Chief Bill Lamb retired.

(Wisconsin) As the number of people hospitalized in Wisconsin with COVID remains around 1,000, available intensive care beds are in the single digits in much of the state. The Journal Sentinel reports that only three ICU beds were available Wednesday in the 12-county north-central region that includes Wausau, according to data from the Wisconsin Hospital Association. In the northeast region, which includes Green Bay, seven ICU beds were open. In the northwest region, one ICU bed was open; in the western region, three. – WRN

(Dodge County) There were 14 more hospitalizations in Dodge County reported Wednesday, bringing the total number of those hospitalized to 857. County health officials say there were 96 new COVID cases in Wednesday’s update. Forty-five-point-two-percent (45.2-percent) of people in Dodge County have had at least one dose of the vaccine while 42.2-percent have completed the vaccination series.

(Madison) Senator Steve Nass has formally asked Republican legislative leaders to sue the UW System, over its refusal to submit COVID policies to the Legislature for review. Interim President Tommy Thompson has said he believes the UW System has legal authority to implement policies such as requiring masks indoors, and having unvaccinated students get weekly testing. Nass, co-chair of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, said that the UW’s response was a dismissal of the legislature’s constitutional authority to oversee the university. – WRN