Left, Mayor Andrew Halverson talks with local media during an impromptu press conference following the March Common Council meeting. (Photo Bradley Makuski)

By Brandi Makuski

Stevens Point will forever be known as the first meeting place of the very first Heroin Summit held in Central Wisconsin.

The summit was designed to encourage “open and frank discussion”, according to Stevens Point Police Chief Kevin Ruder, which is why he and Mayor Andrew Halverson coordinated the event under the radar. The event was informal- part information presentation, part roundtable discussion sharing the circumstances and struggles surrounding the transition from prescription pain medication to heroin, the ease of obtaining the drug and how various professions in Wood and Portage counties deal with the health and legal consequences.

While Ruder promises more such summits in the future and surely bugs need to be worked out, this event should have been publicized by those who coordinated it. This was a huge deal: lawyers, judges, pharmacists, doctors from St. Michaels/ Ministry Health, Mayor Halverson, Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Zach Vruwink, Portage County Executive Patty Dreier, law enforcement from both Portage and Wood counties and Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen were all brought together in one room to share their experiences and information.

Promoting the event itself didn’t necessarily mean opening the meeting to the public: there’s not a news reporter alive who hasn’t waited outside the room during a private, or closed-session, meeting- but letting the parents and young people as well as drug dealers in our community know local leaders are going after the heroin on our streets would have been a huge shot in the arm for all involved. Instead, news of the meeting came two weeks after the event in the form of an open letter signed by those in attendance.

The mission behind this meeting deserved more promotion.

Whether or not anything beyond talking points and clichés were shared with the media and the public is irrelevant: it would have created a show of force, an action, the presence of an important first step our community leaders are taking to battle the rising heroin problem. It’s another sign of communication issues leaders in Stevens Point need to overcome.