Home

A loss of business income from the COVID pandemic is forcing the closure of an iconic Wisconsin attraction.  The Tommy Bartlett show is closing after nearly 70 years in the Wisconsin Dells.  Canceling the summer season was the final blow and owners say with so much uncertainty surrounding the future of the pandemic and travel they can’t undergo additional financial risk.

The invasive emerald ash borer is detected in Oconto County.  The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed the presence of the insect in Little Suamico and also in the city of Shawano.  The ash borer kills all varieties of ash trees and it’s estimated that the state will lose 99-percent of its ash trees in coming years.  Woodland owners with more than ten acres of wooded property are encouraged to meet with their local DNR officials.

Police are seeing an increase in mail theft in the Chippewa Valley. Chippewa County Sheriff Jeff Kowalczyk says their office has had more calls about mail theft in the last month than before. Police say others are claiming to have checks stolen from their mail which offenders are then washing and re-writing checks to themselves. Sheriff Kowalczyk says he recommends sending mail to the post office to prevent it from being vulnerable to theft. 

A man accused of killing his grandparents is pleading not guilty. Twenty-one-year-old Adam Rosolowski was charged in June for the death of his grandparents, Robert and Bonnie Rosolowski. Yesterday, Rosolowski, and two others pleaded not guilty to intentional homicide. The next scheduled hearing is in November. 

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is surveying deer hunters this season to get a better idea of which animals hunters are taking. The agency hopes hunters will keep an online diary to record the number of hours they spend in the woods, the deer they see and the size and age of the bucks they don’t take. The project will run through the season ending November 29th.  CLICK TO TRACK MORE DETAILS

A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire says the smoky haze from the wildfires in the West is not going to affect air quality. Haze is blanketing the skies over the Midwest this week because of smoke from the wildfires in California and Oregon. Smoke is traveling between 30-and-40-thousand feet above ground in the jet stream. That high up, the smoke won’t affect anyone sensitive to allergens in the air.

Do not wait. That’s the advice from Wisconsin Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe. She is telling voters across the state to return their absentee ballots as quickly as possible to avoid any problems in getting them to their local clerks, and getting their vote counted. Wolfe yesterday said over a million voters have already requested an absentee ballot. She expects that number to go up. Wolfe said all absentee ballots must be returned to local election clerks by 8 p.m. on Election

The two Eau Claire County board members who want answers about missing and possibly misspent money in the county’s Department of Human Services will have to wait a little longer. A county committee last night scuttled the proposal for a forensic audit at DHS. Supervisors Mark Beckfield and Steve Chilson asked for the audit after a county employee was charged with stealing money from DHS, and after DHS has been seven-and-a-half million-dollars over budget for the past three years.

Wisconsin’s governor says he’ll extend the state’s face mask requirement if he can. The governor told reporters yesterday that he is looking to see if he can extend the mandate past the 28th of this month. The governor is facing a lawsuit from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty that challenges his power to extend his mask order. The Wisconsin Supreme Court back in May also checked the governor’s power when they struck down his Safer at Home order extension as too broad.

Prosecutors in Dunn County are not saying why it took so long to bring felony sexual abuse charges against a man from Boyceville . The D.A. filed three felony charges Monday against 55-year-old Franklin Bignell. Investigators say he repeatedly assaulted a young girl for years. The abuse was reported back in 2004, but no one filed any charges. Bignell faces 120 years in prison if convicted.