WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — Marathon County Administrator Brad Karger reflected on what was a busy 2018 for his office and outlined his priorities for 2019 as part of this week’s Mayors Monday segment.
Karger says one of his top goals is to develop a dialog among other Northern Wisconsin counties on the possibility of a regional morgue, something that he says came to the forefront after an unfortunate situation in the county.
“We just recently had a child death that really highlighted the lack of facilities to do a death investigation,” said Karger. “We had to beg the University of Wisconsin-Madison to take that baby’s body in, there was no other alternative.”
Karger adds that Marathon County isn’t the only one experiencing these situations. “We need a northern alternative.”
No concrete plans have been made but Karger says one option would be putting the facility near the Northcentral Health Care campus at the site of the old aquatic therapy pool.
Besides getting the facility built, Karger says the biggest challenge is finding a way to make it work financially to keep the facility running. “We are going to have to find a way to do that because what we have now isn’t working for us, and it isn’t working for our northern neighbors.”
No hard timeline on when a decision on the matter could be made was given.
Karger also calls opening a new police radio channel in the county a top priority item for 2019 as well.
Other topics that Karger discussed with WSAU’s Mike Leischner include:
Start of video: Recap of the events that led to the new warm-water therapy pool at NCHC
3:30- Integration of UWMC into the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point as UWSP Wausau
6:20- Completion of the county’s mining ordinance
10:10- Completion of a study for a regional morgue
11:10- Need for a new police channel
