New North Region Stepping Up to the COVID-19 Challenge
Curd immunity: How Wisconsin cheesemakers and dairy farmers are getting vaccines for workers and others in the community
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The list of registered COVID-19 vaccine providers in Wisconsin features hundreds of hospitals, pharmacies, doctors and health centers — and some cheesemakers.

Grande Cheese Company, a longtime Fond du Lac-based family business known for its Italian cheeses, began holding vaccination clinics after food supply chain workers became eligible earlier this month.

Sargento Foods, a nearly 70-year-old cheese company founded in Plymouth, has started administering vaccine doses at its on-site wellness centers and is planning to soon host a mass vaccination site for other food production workers.

Meanwhile, Organic Valley, the largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the nation, has started holding vaccination clinics for not just workers, but for any member of the community who is eligible.

It's all hands on deck in America's Dairyland, where the push to vaccinate people across the state is getting an unexpected boost from cheesemakers and dairy farmers...
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Economic Development Feature
Not Seeing What You Want at the Store? Global Shipping Pinch Felt by Wisconsin Businesses
Spectrum News 1
APPLETON, Wis. — If you’re not always finding what you’re looking for at a store, you’re not alone.

The world’s shipping pattern has been, well, messed up since pandemic shutdowns last year. Add to that a shortage of some shipping containers, bad weather and people spending more money and goods and services and you have a brew of trouble when it comes to moving products around the world.

Just ask Patrick Murray, owner of Murray Photo and Video in Appleton. He has a hard time getting his hands on some products these days.

“Little point-and-shoot type cameras, we’ve been told by one manufacturer, ‘You’re not going to see anything, don’t even bother,’” he said. “The other ones are a first-come-first-served type of thing.”

What product is available is in high demand.

“The big players that demand more products they’ll get first grabs at those products and then guys like us, we don’t get as much...
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Economic Development Feature
Federal Office of Management and Budget to consider redefining city size
WFRV
NEENAH, Wis. (WFRV) – The Office of Management and Budget is the agency that decides metropolitan designation and they determine it based on population and the threshold might change.

Mark Rohloff, Oshkosh’s City Manager, said “The office of management and budget has a committee that’s recommending that cities between 50,000 and 100,000 get removed as cities under the metropolitan statistical area designation.”

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is a federal agency and local officials said their decision could have serious implications in small cities here in Wisconsin and across the country.

“There’s a lot of unintended consequences that I don’t think the Office of Management and Budget are truly aware of...
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Economic Development Feature
Northeast Wisconsin tribes receive housing grants
WLUK
(WLUK) -- Native American tribes in Northeast Wisconsinare receiving more than $5 million in federal coronavirus relief money aimed at combating housing issues.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a total of $450 million in Indian Housing Block Grants. Of that, the Oneida Nation is receiving nearly $2.8 million, the Menominee tribe more than $1.9 million and the Stockbridge-Munsee community nearly $370,000...
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Promote the Regional Brand
Navy leadership tours Fincantieri Marinette Marine
EagleHerald
MARINETTE—A small, unassuming plaque situated on the desk at the entrance to the Fincantieri Marinette Marine Tech Center conveys some profound words attributed to the founder of the American Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford:

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

In many ways, those words reflect the leadership, employees and the workmanship instilled with each weld, rivet and contract secured in the construction of those giant marvels of technology the shipyard builds for the United States Navy in its mission to protect and defend the nation....
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