Rhinelander City Council wants to have a naming policy in place before it renames a city street or property in honor of the Rouman Family.
Following the death of George Rouman earlier this summer, people called on the city to do something in honor of him, his family, and their contributions to the city.
Renaming Eisenhower Street, the plaza at the corner of Rives and Brown Street across from the State Theater, or West Side Park have come up as potential options. The plaza appears to be the leading choice, but no decision has been made.
City administrator Patrick Reagan clarified at the city council meeting Monday night that the plaza is currently unnamed and there appeared to be no restrictions on naming it.
“It was just known as the plaza. Colloquially speaking, it's always in the office been known as Diel Plaza. I looked, couldn't find anything as far as naming rights, as far as anything like that, any covenants, nothing like that,” said Reagan.
Monday night the city council voted to direct the city administrator to come up with a resolution regarding renaming places or streets for them to vote on at a later meeting. It’s not uncommon for a city or town to have an ordinance in place for such things.
“I think it's important, very important, that if we’re going to be renaming things in the city from here on out, that there should be a list to follow,” said Alderperson Thomas Barnett. “I think that this cleans everything up so that we don't have a big uproar again about who's going to rename this to that and that to this. This way we have a policy, we have an ordinance, and it keeps it nice and clean.”
Barnett said he wanted to “keep it simple.”
Alderperson Steven Jopek said he’d like to see a policy that requires support of people or businesses that would be impacted. For example, the impact of changing addresses on a business if the street were renamed.
“That was just one thing that kind of came up in our conversations repeatedly, was, ‘Oh, well, we'll just do it. Who cares if these people are impacted or this business.’ I don't really want to get into that game. I'd like to have it be more cooperative than that,” said Jopek.
The City Council gave the administrator several meetings before they expected a resolution.
Naming a place or street in honor of the Rouman’s was tabled until after the city has a renaming ordinance in place.
