Keep downtown Rhinelander blooming

Editor,

Spring is here, and Forth Floral has been hard at work planting 112 large flowering baskets. Each summer you have seen them hanging throughout downtown Rhinelander, greatly enhancing the beauty and appeal of our downtown. Now your help is needed. The cost of the baskets is paid for by generous donors, individuals and organizations in the community plus many businesses. Some organizations donate several baskets a year; perhaps other local organizations would be interested in annual donations. Each of the baskets costs $100, including care for the season. Forth Floral donates much of their time and effort for this project. This is a wonderful way to support the community and contribute to a local cause, something that countless people enjoy all summer.

Please consider donating to help fill the downtown with the 112 baskets. Checks should be made payable to Downtown Rhinelander Inc. (DRI), designating that it is for the flower basket project. Donations of any amount are greatly appreciated and are tax deductible.

Donations should be mailed to:
Downtown Rhinelander Inc.
P. O. Box 1638
Rhinelander, WI 54501

Marilyn Norden, Rhinelander

Reader relays testimony for Sen. Tiffany

Editor,

Since Sen. Tom Tiffany, who was paid to be there, left hours before the hearing ended, this is the testimony I gave at 7:30 p.m. after waiting 10 hours to speak for two minutes before the Joint Finance Committee April 24:

Wisconsin is investing billions in FoxConn, a foreign conglomerate. How does that help us? We need that kind of investment here, but instead our Forestry Mill Tax, the ONLY source of state revenue devoted to our needs, was eliminated. Why?

Our infrastructure is decaying: unsafe bridges, rotting culverts, pot-hole infested roads, yet we must pay BIG bucks to improve the highway system south of Milwaukee. Why?

We approve multiple referendums to keep our public schools operating. But private voucher schools? They’re thriving, on our tax dollars. Why?

Rural hospitals and clinics are on life-support. Yet Republicans stubbornly refuse to accept Medicaid expansion funds. Why?

Legislation enables corporations to ravage our beautiful state: open-pit and sand-mining, CAFOs, unfettered development, unregulated pumping of groundwater. Invasive species choke our lakes; CWD threatens to decimate the deer herd. Gone are regulations that once protected us. Why?

In 2016 State Senate candidate Tiffany promised us state-of-the-art technology. Yet our internet service is sporadic at best, like TT’s time-on-task when he was at the hearing. Why?

Instead of gambling billions on a shaky foreign company, why not invest some of that money here? Every thriving area of Wisconsin has something we don’t: a publicly-funded educational institution. How about building a state-of-the-art research facility here to find a solution to CWD? That would attract a skilled workforce and private investment. It would be the economic engine that revitalizes the Northwoods. That’s the answer, so here’s the question: WHY NOT?

Kathleen Marsh, Townsend