Edgar hires new police chief
By Kevin O ’Brien
Starting in January, the village of Edgar will once again have a chief of police.
Zachary Zaug, currently serving as a sensitive crimes investigator on the Lac Courte Oreilles Tribal Police Department, was officially selected as the new police chief at a special village board meeting on Oct. 17. According to a motion adopted by the board, Zaug will be paid $68,000 a year, with a performance evaluation every three months during his first year on the job.
Zaug was chosen out 17 applicants, including seven who were interviewed by the board.
At Monday’s monthly board meeting, village administrator Jennifer Lopez said Zaug has passed his mandatory psychological evaluation, and is slated to start the job on Jan. 2 after finishing up work on his current investigations in LCO.
Edgar has been without a police chief since May of last year, when Tyler Jeske accepted a job offer from the neighboring village of Marathon City, where he took over as police chief after the previous one retired. Since then, Edgar has also lost its of See EDGAR/ page 2 Edgar
Continued from page 1
ficer-in-charge, Ramsey Plautz, and several part-time officers have either left or minimized their duties.
In the meantime, deputies from the Marathon County Sheriff’s Department are providing police protection village for the village.
Other business
■ After hearing competing proposals from Jesse Furrer at Spectrum Insurance in Wausau and Michael Boehm at Boehm Insurance in Edgar, the finance committee decided to table the issue until December. The proposal from Furrer, which is offered through the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, would provide roughly $10,000 in savings over Boehm, which has been providing insurance to the village for over 20 years.
■ Following a public hearing, which generated no comments, the board voted to adopt a 2025 budget with a property tax levy of $406,266, an increase of $15,459 over this year. The nearly 4 percent increase in the levy is based on the amount of net new construction within the village.
■ The board voted to vacate one block of South Sixth Avenue between Maple and Beech streets, after a public hearing generated just a handful of comments from neighboring property owners. One resident, Jeff Hall, stands to gain a 30-foot wide strip of land, with the village retaining the other 30 feet from the abandoned right-of-way. When he asked if the village plans on selling its 30-foot strip of land, Lopez said the village board will discuss that at a later date.
■ Lopez updated the board on the Scotch Creek project being spearheaded by Edgar native Gordon Krall, who has started looking into installing solar panels on property he owns along the waterway that could be used to generate revenue through electricity sold back to the utility company. This money could then be used to cover ongoing maintenance costs of the property.
“One unit could power a small farm,” Lopez noted.
The village recently supported Krall’s grant application to Wisconsin DNR’s Surface Water Grant program and agreed to spend $20,000 upfront for an engineering firm to write a plan for rehabilitating the creek and the surrounding watershed.
■ The board approved a motion to register with Benevity, a software platform that will allow the village to accept third-party donations. Lopez said Krall recommended the service as a way to make it easier for him and others to make donations to the Scotch Creek project. Benevity will take a 3 percent cut of each donation, but there will be no direct cost to the village, Lopez said.
■ The board voted to provide each village employee with a $50 holiday bonus to be spent at any Edgar business.
