Wisconsin

Robert Plant surprises Madison record store with a visit

Published

2 years ago

June 13, 2024

Robert Plant surprises Madison record store with a visit

A Madison record store owner had an unexpected visitor earlier this week when Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant walked into B-Side Records on Monday afternoon.

Plant “kind of gave me a glance as he walked by. And I recognized him but didn’t say anything,” owner Steve Manley recalled. “So, he just went to the back of the store and started browsing, and I left him alone.”

After about 20 minutes, Plant approached Manley again. He wanted to know what was playing over the store’s speakers. It was the 2023 LP “The Window” from Chicago indie group Ratboys.

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Manley posted what happened next on Facebook: Plant bought the Ratboys record on vinyl and posed for a picture.

https://www.facebook.com/bsidemadison/posts/pfbid02kPaCkiDAkw8gefoJ19ueBG3crpFQRitM6XmEqxd8vrFC7syqBDhGzoPdgypLdNwCl

“Excuse us while we calm down,” Manley wrote underneath.

Manley told WPR it was exciting to introduce a newer band — who had recently played on the nearby UW-Madison student union terrace — to “the biggest rockstar in the world.”

Plant was in Madison after playing a concert over the weekend with bluegrass legend Alison Krauss. Manley, who has worked at the shop for more than 40 years, and owned it “for 15 years, maybe more,” said it was the biggest celebrity visit he’d received.

Steve Manley helps out customers at B-Side Records in Madison, Wis., on Wednesday, June 12. The store, which Manley owns, received a surprise visitor in Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant earlier this week. Anya van Wagtendonk/WPR

And it was a personal coup for Manley, who said he grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and saw Plant perform in Chicago a few years ago. So he asked the rock star to sign one of his own albums: 2017’s “Carry Fire.”

“He really liked his own record. And he said, ‘This is great. Great record. Why don’t you put it on?’ So I did,” Manley said.

“And he said, Turn it up.’ So I did,” Manley added. “It was all very fun and exciting, and completely unexpected.”

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Wisconsin

Lacey Eden gets 100th goal, Wisconsin hockey moves closer to WCHA title

Published

2 hours ago

February 21, 2026

Press Room

Lacey Eden gets 100th goal, Wisconsin hockey moves closer to WCHA title

MADISON – History and a hat trick? It was all in a day’s work for Lacey Eden.

On the way to record her second career hat trick, the senior forward for the Wisconsin women’s hockey team became the fourth player in program history to score 100 goals.

Eden also recorded two assists for her first five-point game.

“It was a really fun game to play,” she said. “I think we played a complete game. We played 60 minutes. They came out pretty hard in the first period and gave us some competition there and we were able to get over that (hump) and just work hard and it showed up on the scoreboard today for us.”

The accomplishment was part of an eventful afternoon for the nation’s No. 1 ranked team.

First and foremost, the Badgers (28-3-2, 22-3-2 WCHA, 69 points) defeated St. Cloud State, 9-2, at LaBahn Arena to move within one victory of the WCHA regular-season title.

And individually Eden wasn’t even the team’s top goal scorer. That distinction went to junior Kelly Gorbatenko, who finished with four goals, two better than her previous single-game high.

A lot of Badgers in the mix. Six players had multi-point performances. Senior Vivian Jungels and junior Laney Potter set single-game career highs with three and four assists, respectively. Freshman Charlotte Piekenhagen scored twice for her first multi-goal game.

Not bad considering when the teams last met Nov. 14 they skated to a 4-4 tie.

UW is 5-2 since its top players left for the Olympics.

“The group that we have right now, they’ve come together,” Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson said. “Out of the seven games we’ve played, this was one of their best from start to finish.”

Eden joins Hilary Knight, Brianna Decker and Meghan Duggan as Badgers with 100 goals. Her pursuit of the milestone has been steady this season. She has scored a goal in 18 of 33 games and has put one on the board in nine of the last 11.

Goal No. 100 came off assists from sophomore Emma Venusio and Potter and gave the Badgers a 3-1 edge at the 3-minute 43-second mark of the second period.

Goal No. 2, which proved to be the game-winner, came 20 seconds into the third period and the third goal came at the 10:47 mark.

Eden has much respect for the players in the group she joined.

“Those three are girls that I’ve looked up to since I was a little kid and I’ve had the honor to play with two of them,” Eden said. “They’ve just been such big inspirations for me as a Badger and just throughout my hockey career so it’s it’s really cool to be on that shortlist with them.”

While Eden has been on a hot streak, Gorbatenko hadn’t scored in six games. Saturday she had the most consequential score of the day when she found the back of the net with less than 1 second to play at the end of the first period.

The power play goal was the difference between leading, 2-1, and 1-1 tie after one period. A flood of goals ensued.

Ohio State’s 6-3 win at Bemidji State on Feb. 21 assured the need for the Badgers to get a win in the season finale, which will begin at 11 a.m. Feb. 22 at LaBahn to win the league title. A loss gives the Buckeyes, who completed their regular season, the tie. An overtime loss would leave the teams tied for first.

The game is expected to be the last the Badgers play without its Olympians, who are expected to return to town Monday.

“It’s going to feel like playoff hockey where you just have to do the little things right to kind of just get some momentum going,” Gorbatenko said. “We want that trophy. We know what’s at stake.

“The B squad will be ready to go. We’ve done such like a great job, like with our Olympians gone and been able to hold on the fort. We’re just one, one game away from a trophy and so we don’t want to let it slip through.”

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Wisconsin

School debt repayment should be a priority, not deferred | Opinion

Published

14 hours ago

February 21, 2026

Press Room

School debt repayment should be a priority, not deferred | Opinion

Debt is not inherently irresponsible. Schools need safe, functional facilities. But when debt becomes permanent, it stops being a tool and starts being a constraint.

Will Flanders
| Special to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Each year, Wisconsin property taxpayers contribute more than $6.5 billion in local school levies. Those dollars are commonly understood to support classrooms, teachers and student services. In reality, a large — and growing — portion is diverted to debt service, a non-negotiable financial obligation before a single classroom dollar is spent.

In fact, the debt-service share of the local levy continues to grow, not because students are receiving more, but because past borrowing decisions increasingly dictate today’s budgets. Fortunately, at least one school district is showing that a debt free future is possible.

Statewide, nearly 18% of all local school levies — about $1.18 billion each year — are used to service debt. In practical terms, almost one out of every five local school tax dollars is unavailable for instruction or student support because it has already been committed elsewhere. Unfortunately, long-term debt has become a routine feature of school finance rather than an exception.

Looking at debt on a per-student basis makes the impact clearer. Across Wisconsin, districts levy an average of $1,483 per student each year simply to service existing debt. In districts that carry any debt at all — roughly 85% of districts statewide —that figure rises to $1,550 per student, before any money is spent in a classroom.

At the same time, Wisconsin is experiencing sustained enrollment decline, and while per-pupil revenue limits may decline with enrollment, existing district debt does not shrink when enrollment falls. The obligation stays fixed, and the burden shifts. Even if no new debt is added, fewer students are left to carry the same costs.

Over a ten-year period, a 1.5% statewide enrollment decline — far slower than the actual current rate of decline — would result in a 16% increase in per-student burden without a single new referendum, project, or improvement.

Debt-free school districts are rare

Against that backdrop, debt-free districts have become rare — especially among larger systems. Among the 100 largest school districts in Wisconsin, only four operate without any debt service levies. When the Waukesha School District retires its final obligations on April 1, 2026, it will be the largest debt-free school district in the state — by a lot.

Serving 10,600 students, Waukesha will be more than 6,000 students larger than the next-largest debt-free district. The next few —Tomah (67th), followed by Merrill Area (92nd) and Arrowhead (98th) — sit near the bottom of the top-100 by enrollment or just beyond it. No other district operating at Waukesha’s scale is debt-free.

That matters. It shows that operating without long-term debt is not a function of being small or rural. It is a function of choices: how projects are scoped, how debt is structured and whether repayment is treated as a priority rather than deferred indefinitely.

Homeowners shocked by schools’ part of tax bills

While many homeowners have been shocked to see the school portions of their property tax bills increase exponentially in recent years, Waukesha’s has declined, on average, with fluctuations that reflect the year-to-year complexity of the funding formula.

The school tax levy increased by 2.25% this past year because of shifts in state aid allocation beyond the district’s control, including millions more going to Milwaukee for passing it’s own massive referendum. While the board could have taken steps to keep the levy flat, instead, they followed through to retire debt and recognized a 26% savings on total borrowing costs ($1.5M less than the anticipated $6 million 10-year repayment).

Meanwhile, referenda themselves have become routine. Last year, dozens of operating and capital referenda passed across Wisconsin. This spring’s ballot again includes districts seeking additional authority — often not for discrete, time-limited projects, but to cover ongoing maintenance, capital costs, or basic operations. Increasingly, districts are asking voters for more money simply to operate. Over the past three election cycles (spring 2024-spring 2025), Wisconsin districts have placed $3.8 billion in operating and capital borrowing referendum requests on local ballots.

There are consequences to this approach. When districts rely on recurring referenda and long-term debt to sustain basic functions, strategic consolidation and shared-service models become far more difficult. Few communities are willing to absorb another district’s long-term debt, particularly when those obligations were incurred under different assumptions and governance.

Debt is not inherently irresponsible. Schools need safe, functional facilities. But when debt becomes permanent, it stops being a tool and starts being a constraint. And when nearly one-fifth of all local school taxes are treated as a non-negotiable obligation before student and classroom needs are even considered, flexibility disappears.

Fiscal discipline is not measured by how easily costs are added. It is measured by whether leaders are willing — and able — to start paying them off.

Will Flanders is the Research Director for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

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Wisconsin

Ski trails for Birkebeiner in Wisconsin ready to go, organizers say

Published

1 day ago

February 20, 2026

Press Room

Ski trails for Birkebeiner in Wisconsin ready to go, organizers say

The weather is looking a bit more cooperative for Saturday’s American Birkebeiner ski race in northern Wisconsin. Officials earlier this week had to change the date and location of a few events due to the unusual warmth. NEXT Weather meteorologist Adam Del Rosso spoke to an executive director about the condition of the race trails.

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