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The city of Eau Claire is a big step closer to tearing-down the old Clarion Hotel and the Green Mill Restaurant.  Eau Claire’s planning commission last night approved a demolition plan.  The hope is to tear down the old hotel and build a new one on the same spot.  Eau Claire’s city council is expected to vote on the idea next week.

A western Wisconsin teen who fired into the dark last fall and hit a woman who was hunting will not go to jail.  A judge yesterday sentenced Nicholas Sempf-Nyren to 300 hours of community service, and took away his hunting license for five years.  Sempf-Nyren admitted to pulling the trigger on his gun last November, that bullet hit a woman as she was climbing out of her tree stand.  She survived, but with serious and lasting injuries.

State regulators say the city of Eau Claire failed to make sure everyone was safe from asbestos during the recent renovations at city hall.  The Department of Natural Resources is considering a possible 75-thousand-dollar fine for the city.  Colleen Schian with the city of Eau Claire says nothing is final yet.  She says the DNR investigation should not slow down the city’s renovation work, it’s scheduled to wrap-up by June.

Lawmakers in Madison don’t seem to have too much of a problem with the University of Wisconsin turning to out-of-state students to pay the bills.  A new audit shows UW schools saw almost 13-thousand fewer Wisconsin students from 2008 to 2018, but saw an additional ten-thousand out-of-state students over the same ten years.  Sen. Rob Cowles says he’d only be worried about those numbers if the UW system was shutting-out Wisconsin students in order to get more tuition money from out-of-state students, but he doesn’t know

A 15 dollar-an-hour minimum wage could cost Wisconsin 350-thousand jobs.  The  Badger Institute has a new report that says raising the minimum wage could cost about a third of workers in the state their job.  The report says almost 40-percent of all workers make less than 15 dollars-an-hour, and many of those people would be the ones to go if wages spike.  The Badger Institute report looked at what happened in other states that raised the minimum wage, and worries that the

Beginning the morning of Tuesday, May 7th, Starr Avenue will be closed between Seymour Road and Valley View Place to complete an asphalt patch. The street is expected to be re-opened to traffic by 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, May 7. If you need a detour, Seymour Road to North Hastings Way to Birch Street is recommended.

Senator Ron Johnson is saluting Wisconsin small businesses.  This is National Small Business Week and Johnson says nine-point-four-percent of businesses in Wisconsin are small businesses.  Johnson says one-point-two-million Wisconsinites work for small business which is nearly half of the state’s workforce. 

Wisconsin tourism is on the rise.  Visitor spending grew by nearly five-percent to over 213-billion-dollars, which generated nearly 22-billion-dollars in total business sales.  Nearly 200-thousand jobs were supported directly or indirectly by tourism last year.  About 112 million people visited the state in 2018.  Here locally however, it was a little dip: Tourism spending in Eau Claire County is down slightly.  According to the Wisconsin Department of Tourism, visitors spent just over 255-million-dollars in 2018, down point-four-percent from 2017.  Spending in Chippewa

An audit of the University of Wisconsin system shows a large growth in tuition revenue.  State Auditor Joe Chrisman says today tuition and fees totaled one-point-three-billion-dollars in fiscal year 2017-2018.  That’s an increase of over 335-million-dollars over the last ten years.  In terms of expenses, salary and fringe benefits were the system’s largest expense at three-point-two-billion-dollars, about 63-percent of total budget’s expenses. 

A Washington man received a 4th OWI while in Wisconsin. 31 year old Jason Kubitschek, from Mount Vernon, was arrested for operating a motor vehicle under the influence, 4th offense. Just before 8:30 on Sunday night, the Wisconsin State Patrol received a driving complaint of a Toyota Camry all over the road on I94 from MM 19WB. A trooper was dispatched but before he could find the vehicle it hit a median barrier and came to rest in the ditch