As 2023 nears an end, the city of Whitewater aims to check in on it’s goals from over the course of the year and wrap up business before the holidays at it’s Common Council meetings. The goals set by the Office of the City Manager include “The five strategic goals: build single-family homes, communicate with the community without the newspaper, support a thriving business community, recruitment and efforts with a focus on diversity, and prioritization of expenditures with available resources.” 

With this goal being at the heart of their calendar year plan, they have published their agendas and meeting minutes made available to the public as a way of staying transparent. The main goal of the recent December 5 meeting was to discuss a project about lake cattails, next steps regarding a salary compensation survey and metrics from a fall job fair. 

The first topic discussed was how a cattail lake project is being handled with a presentation given by several UW-Whitewater students: Paige Robinson, specializing in environmental resource management; Adison Debo, a environmental science major; and Abigail Capper, environmental science major. These students did their final project on the Cravath Lake, and what amount of it is covered in the cattail biomass. For their final project, they collected two square meters of cattails. 

“We washed them first using tap water. After that we cleaned them and put them in a drying oven, and then left them until completely dry. Then we weighed them, and then averaged them out to find the biomass number.” said Robinson.

The goal of the project was to understand how the removal of the cattails will impact the suspended soil within Cravath Lake. This also affects Whitewater Creek. From the cattails collected, they began to create a map of what the soil looks like, as a way to help with what parts are dealing with worse issues. The conclusion of the presentation was coming up and sharing their plan to minimize the cattail regrowth, so that it can deter the heavy growth of them within the large quantities by evacuating the cattails. This is an ongoing project and will take more than a few years to complete, but the soil issues will decrease with time. 

The next topic discussed was by City Manager John Weidl about the “Commitment to Improve Compensation Evaluation.” There was a survey sent out to report on the salaries of staff as a way to take into consideration the average person working for the city, as a way to keep the “employees engaged and motivated,” according to Weidl.

The municipalities that were identified that were given the salary survey included Jefferson, Platteville, Fort Atkinson and many other surrounding areas. The results of this survey will not be released until mid-2024 due to the time frame of contacting the municipalities, the employees, and other parties involved, while keeping in contact with the surveyors. 

“It includes equalized value, property tax levy, spending per capita, property tax rate, per capita income, operational spending, general obligation debt, shared revenue and population,” human resource manager Sara Marquardt said.

The final part included in this meeting was presented by Maquardt who has been helping with the career fair from the Latino Academy of workforce Development, which was held Oct. 26. This fair included 47 attendants, and the following businesses: Amigo Construction, LLC, Associated Bank, City of Whitewater, Daybreak Foods INC, First Citizens State Bank, Fisher Barton Specialties, Fort HealthCare, HEXPOL, Jones Dairy Farm, JP Cullen, Premier Bank, Stoughton Trailer, and Sutton Transport.

“The goal of the far was connecting the gap between employer’s needs and Latino community in Whitewater,” said Marquardt.

For more information on job applications or to contact the city manager about the job fair, contact the staff at the City Manager’s Office. 

For information on the December 5 Common Council meeting visit Common Council video 12/5. 

The next Common Council meeting is Dec. 19, at 6:30 p.m., and is open to the public. For more information on Common Council meetings and other resources visit City of Whitewater.