WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) -- County Administrator Brad Karger says a handful of towns in the northwest corner of the county will get to hang on to their old address through the winter. Crews will begin working on changing over street names and addresses for property owners once the ground thaws in the spring of 2019.
Those who are hanging on to their old addresses will be notified of their new address next spring and can begin using it as soon as crews have changed the sign in their driveway.
The other delay in the project will be the state Supreme Court's pending hearing over the Town of Rib Mountain's involvement in the plan.
"The issue comes down to if the county can determine that the whole town as rural, and therefore have the authority to do the readdressing. Or whether it has to define rural and then either parts of it or all of the county or none of the county in relation to its own criteria," said Karger.
He says there's a couple of decisions the court could hand down, including siding with the county that declaring the town as rural was the correct decision, or force the county to define urban and rural then address only those areas determined to be rural.
Karger said it's in everyone's best interest that the case is solved quickly and by an outside party because the county will have to work with Rib Mountain on future issues as well. "Rib Mountain will always be a big part of our metropolitan community, a big part of our county. We can't let it get personal."
He called the issue a "dispute among friends." Adding that it's unclear exactly when the case will be heard by the state's high court.
Karger did leave the door open for the possibility that if the court determines that the urban parts of Rib Mountain should not have their addresses changed, then all addresses could stay the same in the town as well. "[Sheriff Parks] may think it's more confusing to have uniform addressing in the town, and then have it switch in the urbanized area of the town than to just say 'OK Rib Mountain is out' because his officers know where the boundaries are better than some arbitrary determination of what's rural and what's urban, that could change over time."
Other topics Karger discussed with WSAU's Mike Leischner include (Timestamped):
Start of video- delay in the uniform addressing process.
2:00- Status of the Rib Mountain lawsuit
6:30- Future of the County's Secure Detention Facility for those under 17, and using the facility to help fund a new police radio channel
9:15- Possibility of having other counties partner with Marathon County on the facility by paying a "membership"
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