Good afternoon.

We are going to call this meeting to order at 302 PM on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026.

We have one commissioner out.

She is excused, and everyone else is present, and we do have quorum.

I'll take an approval of the minutes from I gave you my sheet that had the date.

The last meeting.

Right, fill in the blink.

Is there a motion?

Motion made by co commissioner Marcus and second by Commissioner Lee.

Any discussion.

I will be abstaining since I was not at that meeting.

All right, Council President will be abstaining.

Um see no other discussion.

All in favor, please signify by saying aye or raising of the hand.

All right.

Any nays.

That motion passes.

Go on to our first agenda item 260446 presentation from family friendly workplaces, which the City of Lacrosse is one, so I just want to, you know, screw our own horn about that.

But Julie.

Um yeah, so we've invited, I invited Neil Klein, who's the executive director of family friendly workplaces to come here and to present on this topic.

He actually I heard him present last month um at the Chambers Workforce Innovation Series event, and he just does a really excellent job of um connecting our shifting demographics to the impact we anticipate it's gonna have on our workforce, things we can do to address that, and of course how family friendly communities play into that.

Um so he I did ask him on somewhat short notice, so he's coming uh joining us remotely um instead of in person, but he's online.

So Neil, if you want to go ahead and share your screen and get started.

You bet I will uh fight find my way here.

It would not be a modern meeting if someone didn't narrate while they tried to share their screen.

Um I really appreciate the opportunity uh to talk with everyone here today and to present to the commission about uh family friendly workplaces and um and everything that we're up to.

Uh I will be brief and I will move as quickly as I can so that we can try and have time for questions.

Um you are correct, the City of Lacrosse is a certified family-friendly workplace.

Um so it's Amplify Health, State Bank Financial, and Trust Point to name a couple more employers in the LaCrosse area that have become certified as a family-friendly workplace.

I always like to start these presentations out by talking about what we at Family Friendly Workplaces really believe, which is that um family is central not only to the individuals that make up those families, but to the communities that are built from those families.

And so if we can strengthen family, we have an opportunity to positively impact um both sides of that spectrum, you know, the folks that are in those families and the communities that are built from them.

And we work through employers, um, really for two reasons.

The first is that employers touch a lot of lives.

So if you think about beyond kind of the concept of covered lives um in health insurance or something like that, the number of people, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, grandparents, cousins that are connected to a job, um, let's just say at the city of La Crosse, um, is actually pretty big.

And so if we can strengthen the benefits that those families receive and strengthen those families, we can impact a lot of folks.

The other reason is because we have a workforce shortage.

And so I'm gonna fly through some data that I went through with the chamber to try and help provide some color about that workforce shortage.

And I start at the top.

So this is a projection of Wisconsin's total population that is developed by the Department of Administration.

And you'll notice that in 2020, the Department of Administration projects that Wisconsin's total population will peak and will be in kind of this soft decline through the projection window, which is out into 2050.

This is unique for us to be operating in this kind of a demographic environment.

And the two things that the demographers at DOA look at when they make this presentation when they do this forecast is the number of expected births and then the number of expected deaths.

So there's not any other evaluation that's included.

They're not looking at in-or-out migration, people moving here or moving away, none of that, just births and deaths.

And so what I what I would like to do is just zoom in on kind of both ends of that spectrum.

And I'm gonna start with this map.

This is a DOA map, and what it shows is the percentage of each county's population that is over the age of 65 in the year shown.

So this is in 2020.

Uh so if you look at LaCrosse County, the way to read this would be this to see that 17% of La Crosse County's population is gonna be over the age of 65 in 2020, or was in 2020.

And for our world, that's relevant because if you're over the age of 65, um, I joke it's it's feed up in margarita time, right?

It's it you are retired in all likelihood.

And and you might have a job, you know, um, there are folks who are over the age of 65 who work or who are picking up a job at Menards or somewhere in their local community, and that's valuable, but broadly speaking, you are not participating in the workforce after 65.

And so what we can do is march through time and watch how this plays out across the state.

So this is what 2020 looks like.

I'm sure folks are focused in La Crosse County, but I encourage you to kind of keep an eye on the broader map.

Because as we move to 2030, you'll notice that the state just got a lot older.

And then as we go through 2040 and 2050, that continues.

We never really see a change in those numbers.

And so if you've ever heard the phrase silver tsunami, this is what folks are talking about.

Uh, that we are aging uh rapidly, and that that is gonna have profound implications for our local economies, our local workforce.