County ordinance would stifle new, existing events

Marathon County seems to be hell-bent on making sure no new events are held in rural areas of the county and in attempting to kill the events that are already there. Most noticeably is that the only existing event being impacted by the mountain of new paperwork and bureaucratic busybodyness is the Edgar Steam Show held in the town of Wien.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, Edgar Steam Show has been going on for more than 50 years — this is incidentally longer than over half of the residents in the county have been alive.

In typical heavy-handed county government fashion, those sitting in board rooms and offices in Wausau feel they know how event planners should run their events. It is unclear if anyone involved in the drafting of these onerous regulations has ever organized and directed so much as a church pancake breakfast, let alone a major community event. Yet, they are full of insight on how they insist organizers should be doing the job.

The generations of organizers of the Steam Show know what they are doing. They know what and when things have to happen. They know what has worked and what hasn’t worked. If anything, the board members and bureaucrats should be asking organizers of an event like the Edgar Steam Show how events should be run, rather than attempting to dictate rules and drown volunteer organizers in oceans of paperwork.

In their defense, for what it is worth, the boards and bureaucrats who wrote these rules have the stated goal of looking out for the health and safety of residents and visitors. They also have the goal of justifying passing usual and normal costs of government — such as additional patrols by law enforcement — onto outside entities.

A large-scale event that doesn’t take into account things like having adequate restroom facilities or proper food sanitation could easily become a nightmare scenario. However, there were already established rules in place governing these sorts of things and the Marathon County Health Department has never been shy in enforcing them.

The regulations are a way for the county to gain more power over what happens on private property in rural parts of the county. While county administrator Lance Leonhard uses the language of protecting First Amendment rights of people to peacefully assemble, the county’s heavy-handed approach closes more doors than it opens while creating additional unnecessary costs, such as the foolishness of requiring “state-certified” security personnel, which just drives up the operating costs for events and pads the pockets of security companies.

The Marathon County Board should halt implementation of this overreaching and event-destroying ordinance and call together a special committee made up of people, such as the organizers of the Edgar Steam Show, who have actually been active in running successful and long-lasting large events to review it. Just as at the state level, industry representatives are involved in the regulatory rulemaking, local groups must have a voice in shaping the regulations that will impact how and if they can hold events.

At the very least, county leaders must take pause in enacting any rules which will impact only one or two events. As it stands now, county bureaucrats have put an unwarranted target on the backs of the organizers of the Edgar Steam Show.

If Marathon County wants to make an example of the Edgar Steam Show, it should be to show them as an example of how to run a well-organized event rather than using it as a punching bag for bureaucrats more concerned with pushing paper than getting things done.

Marathon County must put a halt to this overreaching and unnecessary effort to undermine successful community events.

Central Wisconsin Publications Editorial Board consists of publisher Kris O’Leary and Star-News editor Brian Wilson