2025 Mayoral Race Vicki Markussen
Learn more about your 2025 candidates for La Crosse Mayor

Vicki Markussen
Candidate for La Crosse Mayor
Website: https://www.vickiformayor.us/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicki4mayor/
Contact: [email protected]
Phone: (608) 270-8943
La Crosse Primary voting has started and ends Feb. 18, 2025
The general election for city offices voting ends April 1, 2025
WIZM News Interview with Vicki Markussen:
Markussen’s answers to WIZM questionnaire:
Can you tell us about yourself — your work, family and history in La Crosse?
I came to La Crosse for my first professional job as TV Reporter with WXOW-TV19 and never left. I met my now husband three months after moving here. I had to leave that profession to advance locally. I am blessed to have learned from leaders of small and large local companies while leading the builders association, regional economic development, the Chamber of Commerce, and consulting as my own business. When offered the lead position in Workforce Development, I negotiated having one day a week to continue helping the North La Crosse Business Association and the builders association. The team and partners in Workforce Development remove barriers for people learning new skills that place them in higher paying, in-demand jobs.

Why did you decide to run for mayor and what experiences do you feel will help you excel in office?
I am running in gratitude and wanting to pay back the blessing I have received. Taxpayers changed my life – giving me and my family free school lunches, food stamps, and grants and scholarships that gave me a full ride to UW-Madison. That degree brought me to La Crosse where, from day one, I have served the greater community alongside tremendously generous local leaders of small and large companies. I have worked with, volunteered alongside, and learned from so many of you. It would be an honor to bring what you taught me, in gratitude, to the mayor’s role.

How would you plan to enhance community involvement in city planning and decision-making processes?
The creation of a Communications Director helps replace the role the media filled – communicating out what is happening in City Hall. With my media background, I firmly believe City Hall needs accountability to taxpayers, strive for transparency, and find easy feedback opportunities. In addition to pushing out communication, I believe neighborhood associations are a strong tool for the city to communicate, gather feedback, and also assist as they identify improvements to their area. Equipping Council members with information they need for outreach is also important. Availability of the mayor and Council members is critical through good times and those that challenge us.

CITY ADMINISTRATOR
I appreciate the City Council decided to delay a vote on hiring a City Administrator until after the election. I respect the task force that is formed. While I am confident in my skills to form budgets alongside staff and my track record of improving customer-focused processes, I have seen the election process. Rarely was I asked what makes me qualified to run, rather more about my philosophical approaches. Philosophy doesn’t create a strong budget or make them a problem-solver. I look forward to working with the task force exploring the city administrator or manager position. If the position moves forward, the individual must find efficiencies to justify the high wages and must also understand the accountability to taxpayers. I do know, as well, that many who work with City Hall state their interaction in other communities with a manager or administrator creates a much more efficient and effective experience as a result.

Do you support the Pathways Home initiative? If so, what aspects of the plan do you find most effective? If not, what alternative solutions would you propose to address homelessness in La Crosse?
We must continue with the Pathways Home plan. The County Health Department, at last, is engaged with their resources. We have invested too much to not let it run its course. I do believe, however, there is a key missing piece that must be developed if we are to achieve functional zero homelessness (which is an important distinction since we will not end homelessness). We must have strategies that both catch people entering homelessness – often the working homeless.
In my work with Workforce Development, I envision Frank (not his real name) who is a veteran, has an adult son with a disability. Losing his job caused both to be homeless. Frank had trouble finding his GED from forty years ago so a large employer would not hire him full time. Every day he came to the job-center to find work. Heartbreaking. We must catch those community members who need a temporary leg up before they end up evicted, or homeless, or food insecure etc.
I also have seen Tom – who was released from prison, got a job, began paying child support, and became another working homeless individual. He did everything we all want a person released from jail or prison to do. We must find solutions that prevent homelessness.
Lastly, I have seen individuals whose past trauma has made them unable to work full time. The City can use its Community Development Block Grants to unite nonprofit efforts to address mental health concerns that are causing and going through mental health lapses and inadequate ways to help them heal.

La Crosse is like many cities facing challenges with affordable housing. How would you work to improve the availability of affordable housing for working-class residents?
The River Point District (formerly known as the Mobile Oil site) is opening up many apartments for our community as well as retail and restaurant opportunities. It’s an exciting opportunity we have and one that allows for more development in the decades to come. With my 14 years with the La Crosse Builders Association and work with the City’s Economic Development Commission, I understand the barriers developers and construction face when building and interfacing with City Hall. Affordable Housing is a top priority of mine in this campaign.
A recent housing study concluded that La Crosse needs to build about 230 new housing units every year until 2030 to keep up with demand. Through my Builders Association work, I hear young professionals and young families are not choosing La Crosse to live. We must reverse this issue. When it comes down to it, high demand for and short supply of housing is fueling unaffordability. We have seniors with cash from recent large home sales competing with first-time young professionals for smaller homes. In my work with the Builders Association and the City’s Economic Development Commission, I understand that multifamily housing is great, but we need all types of housing stock – single-family, condos and townhomes.
Particularly, if we can provide affordable, maintenance-free housing for our seniors as townhomes or condos, we allow them to downsize and retire while aging gracefully. When that is available, we can open up their homes to first time homebuyers to purchase. Those families’ updates increase the value of homes, spark additional investments in their neighborhood, and they send their kids to our schools. Best of all, those improvements increase the tax base in La Crosse. A larger taxbase can reduce individual burden.
Our Community also has a tremendous opportunity if the right developer can be found for the Trane Headquarters on the City’s south side. While it will be privately developed, the City has a voice as the space comes to be rezoned to work with the developer on what makes sense for them, the neighborhoods, and the City.

What is your vision for economic growth in La Crosse, particularly in attracting new businesses and supporting existing ones? How do you plan to balance development with preserving the character of downtown and neighborhoods?
A place people love to visit is always a great place to live. My more than eight years working in economic development has taught me that it is easier to grow from within than to attract from outside – but the City needs to be a strong partner in both strategies. A point of clarity. Anyone walking down Caledonia Street would be quick to point out – we have both character and a need for economic development throughout the city. Our far southsiders ask for more restaurants and activities, downtown needs to fill large empty office buildings, and the Northside needs to find ways to make improvements in areas marked as floodplains.
Due to my work with the North La Crosse Business Association during the pandemic to encourage people to continue supporting local businesses, I am well aware that many companies have not fully recovered. Remote working has changed lunchtime crowds everywhere as people eat at home versus getting out.
Thankfully, we have organizations such as the La Crosse Area Development Corporation, Coulee Region Business Center (business incubator), and business startup + strengthening organizations WWBIC and the Small Business Development Center are all helping with strengthening our businesses. The City needs to be a good partner and value its businesses for their profound impact on our community. Not only do these businesses create vibrancy, the services they require of the City are significantly less than residential homes. For example, they pay for their own trash pickup, they don’t ask for parks or pools or libraries. Their property taxes make these amenities possible for the rest of us. These amenities – such as the Northside Pool – attract people to our neighborhoods.

Recent reports show a decline in La Crosse’s population. What strategies would you implement to attract and retain residents, particularly younger people and families?
La Crosse is a wonderful, accessible, place to live where you can walk and bike to great destinations. But we do a terrible job telling our story. As proof, our outlying areas are growing while La Crosse’s population declined. The change has to start with a vision and a plan. My vision is that if we can find places for seniors wanting to downsize, La Crosse in five years will be THE place where young families can find a home, fix it up, and help create a new wave of vibrant, safe, walkable neighborhoods. We must be aware of what amenities these families want. Meanwhile, the City must constantly be asking the question, “Will this decision before us cause someone to want to continue living in or relocate to La Crosse?” Our neighborhood associations, realtors, and businesses are critical partners in these conversations.

What is your approach to improving and maintaining the city’s infrastructure, including roads, public transportation and utilities?
Thank goodness the condition of La Crosse Street is not dominating this conversation this time! Some also would be happy to know that the new waste-water treatment plant is now running completely “off the grid”!
In all seriousness, we have Department of Transportation plans to revise Highways 35 (George, Lang, West Avenue), 53 (Rose, 3rd/4th, Mormon Coulee), and 16 (Losey / La Crosse Street) that we have to be a part of. Decisions today will impact the project when it begins quite a few years from now. Don’t worry, they’re not widening or re-routing the roads. However, the plans today get implemented a few years from now. Bike lanes, reducing turn-ins and turn lanes, and more are all in the conversation.
We do have many residential streets in poor shape and Third and Fourth Street road conditions (part of the Highway 35 DOT jurisdiction) are often pointed out. We have tens of millions of dollars in road repairs. We pledge a certain amount of miles a year to repair (in 2018 it was eight miles), or our roads will slip into such disrepair, the cost will increase and we’ll never get ahead. Without a goal, too many other projects will take precedence.

How do you plan to improve transportation options in La Crosse? What ideas do you have for expanding public transportation, enhancing pedestrian and bike pathways?
We have a bus system that is a lifeline for people and businesses. I know at Workforce Development, we purchase bus passes for quite a few individuals where it is the only option to get to school or work. Businesses near a bus stop have access to an additional pool of individuals without a vehicle. I know our MTU does a great job of assessing where individuals needing the bus live and their desired destinations.
As for pedestrian and bike pathways, planning is underway for continuous routes throughout the city. I recently spoke to an avid commuter bicyclist who explained how critical it is to create a safe bike path across the railroad tracks on the Northside and bikers ideally would like to take a side-road but only if it’s convenient.
In both biking and busing, we must ensure we are listening to the avid users for improvement opportunities and constantly adjusting to what we hear is needed so our Bike-Pedestrian plan is up to date.

What strategies would you implement to ensure that La Crosse remains a safe community for residents and visitors? How do you plan to address issues such as police-community relations, crime prevention and emergency response preparedness?
Our police and fire departments deserve our thanks for the time and effort they spend, often with reduced staffing, working with our unsheltered population. My father-in- law is a retired police detective. I have heard the stresses of the job and the time away from family. I am grateful they do the work many of us are not called to do.
The innovative program Police Chief Kudron spoke of four years ago was implemented – having a mental health individual go with officers to certain calls to help connect those in need with resources.
Through my work with the North La Crosse Business Association and attending both the Lower Northside and the Logan Neighborhood Association meetings, I value and support the presence of the Neighborhood Resource Officers in creating positive faces to law enforcement in the areas in which they serve.
I am concerned about incidents I hear of bold thefts and increased violence, often from arguments taken too far. While I helped the Northside install always-live police cameras (“Blue Cams”) on Caledonia & Clinton Streets, those help catch criminals after-the-fact versus prevent crime.
The City must stop losing our safety personnel to outlying areas by offering a competitive wage. Having eight open positions in the police department impacts their ability to keep our community safe. If we are to be a city where young families choose to live, we must equip our safety officers with what is needed to excel at their jobs.
I support and want to thank several of our neighborhood associations that have started neighborhood watch groups. I know these efforts provide tremendous assistance to officers proactively and reactively if needed.

What steps would you take to address climate change and improve sustainability efforts in La Crosse, particularly in areas such as renewable energy, waste reduction, and green spaces?
Our City has done a great job of receiving grant funds to implement sustainability improvements, city-wide. There has been remarkable progress on the Climate Action Plan with additional solar panels, working with commercial buildings for energy efficiency, educating the public on rainwater runoff containment, and the hiring of a dedicated sustainability coordinator.
To the credit of the City’s vendor, the recycling arm of Harter’s Quick Cleanup, recently won an award for the high percentage of recyclables it identifies that would have otherwise gone into our landfill.
The plan is extensive – from electric vehicles to residential energy audits, water conservation, increasing tree canopies, stormwater plans, food insecurity, and more in the 170-page plan.
We need the Sustainability Coordinator to help prioritize this plan, however, it would be interesting to align some of the community outreach aspects of this plan with available Community Development Block Grant, which is federal taxpayer dollars vs strictly local taxpayer funds, to enact components of the plan.

What is your plan for supporting local schools and youth programs in La Crosse? How can the mayor’s office collaborate with the school district and other organizations to ensure educational opportunities and services for young people?
The City needs strong schools and the schools need a strong City. We are lucky to have organizations like The Boys and Girls Clubs, The YMCA, Big Brothers Big Sisters and Pre-Kindergarten programs that are helping parents raise resilient, engaged, and active children. The City’s Park & Rec department along with libraries provide opportunities to engage our youth in affordable ways. Our family appreciated many of the Park & Rec, library, and School District summer classes as an affordable way to keep our kids active and engaged. Through collaboration, these classes that engage our children socially, mentally, and physically must continue and be accessible to all.
We have an adjustment coming to downtown and the Northside with the ending of year-round school. This is a critical coordination piece between the City and School District to ensure there’s adequate and well-timed activities for students who will now be off for several months. Let’s go back to the constant question we must ask, “Will this cause people to choose to stay in or relocate to La Crosse?” The answer is the quality of our public education matters as a school district deliverable. Meanwhile the City must provide a diversity of housing that allows families to be less transient. The City and School District must have continuous conversations of how each are impacting each other with the last question for each being, “How do we help?”

With technological advancements affecting cities across the nation, how do you plan to incorporate tech and innovation into La Crosse’s growth? This could include areas such as digital infrastructure, smart city initiatives or fostering a local tech industry.
Our City started the process by expanding fiber optic lines to key buildings! This allows for additional security options such as my work with the North La Crosse Business Association to install live police cameras on the Northside. New federal funding for high-speed internet are also bringing affordable options to more families to create more equitable access to users in the City.
This expansion is critical. A Governor Evers-driven task force showed the introduction of artificial intelligence (A.I.) has the potential of negatively impacting our more marginalized people due to lack of adequate internet access. We must work with partners to ensure there is digital literacy in our citizens and communities so our disadvantaged or non computer literate do not fall behind.
This same infrastructure investment can cause our city to operate more efficiently and effectively with technology such as traffic management, energy use monitoring and more. I support the City’s goal to try to continue upgrading this infrastructure, but with a cost-benefit analysis due to its cost.
