Marathon Co. Board to vote on ice rink repairs next week

By Kevin O’Brien

Marathon County supervisors will be asked next Tuesday to approve $940,000 for repairing the ice rink facilities at Marathon Park, which may not be useable next winter if the facilities are not updated.

Jamie Polley, director of the Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department, has told supervisors that declining to install a new refrigeration system on one of the two indoor rinks could result in the facilities being unavailable for local hockey teams and figure skaters when the season starts up again in November.

“This past year, we had significant issues with Rink 2, which is the 40-year-old rink,” she said, noting that the other rink is actually 10 years older. “We were almost to the point where we weren’t going to have that second sheet of ice this season.”

Polley spoke last week to the Human Resources, Finance and Personnel Committee, which was tasked with developing a funding strategy for the $940,000 in repairs after the Environmental Resources Committee initially endorsed the project. After a lengthy discussion last week, the HRFC voted 5-2 to recommend a proposal that includes a mix of excess timber sale proceeds and general fund reserves.

Because the $940,000 project was not included in the 2025 budget, a two-thirds majority vote of the county board is needed in order to amend this year’s budget and reallocate the needed funds. Board chairman Kurt Gibbs, a member of the HRFC, voted to move the funding proposal forward to the full board but said he was “not 100 percent sure” if he can vote for it to pass.

The Parks Department proposal is to purchase a refrigeration mat that could be placed over the concrete and used to produce ice. The mat will need to be hooked into the existing refrigeration system, and a cooling tower at the facility also needs to be replaced. Polley noted that the existing refrig-

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Jamie Polley Ice rinks

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eration equipment was used when it was bought in 1974, so it is more than 50 years old.

Going forward, Gibbs said he would like to see money set aside from the ice rental fees to help cover capital expenditures, something which is not currently done. Polley said the $155 per hour charged for using the ice rinks is only used to cover operations at this point.

The current fees are competitive with other ice arenas in the area, she said, but a lot more revenue could be generated annually if the county were to invest in making one of the rinks useable 12 months of the year, Polley said.

“Those buildings sit empty a large portion of the year because of how they’re built,” she said. “If you put a year-round sheet of ice there, there would be constant activity – tournaments, camps. You would have a year-round revenue source versus right now, it’s seasonal.”

The West Side Master Plan approved by the county board in 2023 includes a proposal for building a new year-round ice arena on the corner of West Street and 17th Avenue if the current Highway Department shop were to move. However, due to the high cost of such a facility, Polley said the citycounty park commission is also considering the option of converting one of the existing ice rinks to a year-round facility.

Supervisor Jean Maszk, a member of the parks commission and self-described “hockey mom,” said the immediate concern is keeping the county’s current facilities operational.

“We need to fix what we have or we are going to lose what we have, and that would cost us more money than anything,” she said.

County administrator Lance Leonhard confirmed that the decision currently confronting the county board is whether to fix the ice facilities it has so it can continue considering its long-term options. He noted that the proposed mat system and cooling tower should have some resale value if the county decided to go a different route in the future.

Supervisor Gayle Marshall wanted to know if any of the hockey teams or the figure skating group is going to contribute toward the repairs. Polley said they have not been asked to pay for the shortterm repairs, but she’s had some initial conversations with those groups about paying for a longterm upgrade of the facilities.

“Nobody has committed any funds at this time,” she said.

However, Polley also noted that the ice rinks are the third largest source of revenue for the Parks Department, with 71 percent of the costs being covered by user fees. That cost recovery could increase to as much as 80 percent if a yearround rink was provided, she noted.

Polley said the parks commission is essentially asking the county board to buy more time for the county to make a decision.

“This is a short-term repair to get us to that longer-term fix,” she said.

When supervisor Corey Hart asked what would happen if the county did nothing to address the issues at this point, Polley said she can’t answer that question but she noted that Rink 2 was three weeks late in opening this past season due to corroded piping and leaks.

Questions were also raised about how many county residents outside the Wausau metro area actually use the ice rinks at Marathon Park. Polley said she knows there are kids from as far away as Athens and Edgar who participate in youth hockey, and promised to bring in participation numbers for the next meeting.

Hart, who represents a portion of Wausau, said he’s spoken to a lot of his constituents who use the ice rinks at Marathon Park and have told them that no other facility is available within a 50-mile radius if this one closes.

“If we don’t move forward, do we just shut out a bunch of families immediately without making a decision and without moving forward?” he said. “So, that’s what I’m really concerned about. I don’t want that to happen. I feel like we are going to hurt a lot of families in Marathon County by deciding to either do nothing or get out of the ice business without a long-term solution.”

Still, Marshall said there a lot of recreational activities that the county does not subsidize, and she doesn’t feel like she can support the $940,000 in repairs without contributions from local hockey teams and figure skating group.

“It has value, but we need our user groups to help,” she said.

Supervisor Ann Lemmer said the request was “a bitter pill to swallow,” because she doesn’t want to pull the rug out from under the groups who use the rinks, but she also wants those groups to take on more of the costs.

“I think I could support this ask as long as there is a lot of planning going on with increasing that revenue, because I’m not happy with the subsidy part of it,” she said.

Ultimately, the committee recommended using $540,000 from general fund reserves, plus $290,000 in excess timber sale revenue from 2024, and $110,000 in excess timber sales from 2025 to pay for the ice rink repairs. (Timber sale revenues normally go into the Parks Department’s operational budget, with any surpluses rolling over into the county’s capital improvement fund.)