Local News Briefs Thursday 9/24/15

A January jury trial has been scheduled in Dodge County for a 26-year-old Waupun man accused of being involved in multiple inappropriate actions involving minors. The two-day jury trial for Roberty Moungey is scheduled for January 25th and 26th. He is charged with one felony count of being party to the crime of 1st degree sexual assault of a child under the age of 12.  According to an alleged note his wife, Cassandra Scheuers gave police, Moungey had pornographic images of minors on his computer.  She is facing the same charge. 

Standoff Suspect Found Not Competent To Stand Trial

Fond du Lac County Judge Gary Sharpe this week suspended a case against a 23-year-old Waupun man who barricaded himself in his home last December after threatening to harm himself. Kenneth Becker Jr. was found not competent to stand trial. The 6-hour standoff ended without any shots being fired last December 30th. Waupun Police and the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s SWAT team were involved in the call. They were able to talk Becker into giving himself up.

Unemployment Rates In FDL County Drop

The unemployment rate for the City and County of Fond du Lac both dropped below 4 percent in August. According to federal labor statistics released by the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development the City of Fond du Lac’s jobless rate last month was 3.8 percent and the County’s was 3.6 percent. Both rates dropped at least a half a percentage point. The City’s unemployment rate in August of 2014 was 5.5 percent and the County’s stood at 4.9 percent.

Full Steam Ahead For Governor

State Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt says anyone who thinks Governor Scott Walker will be an ineffective governor now that he’s dropped out of the presidential race is sadly mistaken. The state lawmaker from Fond du Lac says he had a chance to meet with the governor Wednesday morning. He says he will be fully engaged on issues and will aggressively sell his ideas to the public. He says running for president would take its toll on anyone and the governor will deal with that privately. But he says it will be full steam ahead for the governor when it comes to the state. Thiesfeldt says the governor’s run for president was a good thing for the state making the nation aware of the success the state has had.

FDL Works Is Working

The president and CEO of the Fond du Lac Area Association of Commerce says the Fond du Lac Works website is already paying dividends. Joe Reitemeier says it was one of the things they came up with to try and fill job vacancies with more and more baby boomers retiring. He says between now and 2026 there will be 19,000 job vacancies in the greater Fond du Lac area. He says hundreds of available jobs are listed on the Fond du Lac Works website. He says that current number is 550 and never before could you go to a database and search for that many opportunities. He says they’ve gotten a lot of visitors to the website. He says they are starting to hear from employers that that is where they are hiring applicants from. Reitemeier says it’s also a place jobseekers can fire out about careers, what types of courses they may have to take for certain fields, and what type of compensation is available.

Appointed DPI Chief

North Fond du Lac Schools Superintendent Aaron Sadoff doesn’t believe an effort to change the State Constitution to allow governors to appoint the head of the Department of Public Instruction will succeed. He says Republican state legislators had an opposing point of view when it came to appointing judges. But he says they flipped when it came to the State Schools Superintendent. He doesn’t think it will happen. He says it would have to be passed in two successive sessions of the state legislature and then be approved in a statewide referendum. Sadoff says public education in the state is fine the way it is without all the tinkering state lawmakers have been doing.

NFDL Ladder Truck Discussions Continue

North Fond du Lac Village Administrator Chuck Hornung says a committee will continue to meet to discuss the possible purchase of a new ladder truck for the Fire Department. He says there is no way at this stage they can include in Capital Improvement purchase for 2016. He says the committee is busy fact-finding on the issue. He says they continue to gather information on the issue and hope to hold another committee meeting in November. The Village Board discussed a 5-year capital improvements plan when they met this week, but Hornung says borrowing for a ladder truck purchase is about two years off. He says it takes about a year to build one of those trucks.

MPTC Will Host Diversity Conference In FDL

Moraine Park Technical College in Fond du Lac will host the annual Higher Education Diversity Initiative Team conference on Thursday October 8th from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The community is welcome to attend the conference. This year’s theme will be “Empowering the Disempowered” and will include topics such as immigration, disability, race, LGBT and religious discrimination. Jonathan Page, director of Citizen Leadership and Social Justice Education at Longwood University, will be the keynote speaker. For more information click here.