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River Falls council approves 2025-26 legislative priorities with housing and mental-health amendments
Summary
The River Falls City Council approved its 2025-26 legislative priorities and adopted two amendments adding a housing-focused bullet about TID flexibility and changing a public-safety bullet to emphasize mental-health crisis supports.
The River Falls City Council voted to approve a resolution supporting its 2025-26 legislative priorities, adopting two council amendments that added a bullet on Tax Increment District (TID) flexibility for housing affordability and replaced a hospital-bed advocacy item with language prioritizing mental-health crisis supports.
The amendment adding the TID-language was proposed and read into the record during the meeting and was seconded; the council then approved that amendment. A separate amendment changed the wording of the item under public safety from "advocating for hospital beds in Western Wisconsin" to "improving mental health crisis supports," and the council approved that amendment as well. After adopting both amendments, the council approved the overall legislative priorities resolution "as amended," with council members voting "Aye" and no opposition recorded in the meeting transcript.
Council members discussed sources for the amended language. One council member said the municipal league’s housing work informed the proposed TID flexibility language and described the change as "a reasonable one that will work towards improving our city and creating tools that will improve our affordable housing in the city." The amendment's exact text, as moved, stated it would read: "advocating for flexibility in TID law for efforts toward increasing housing affordability and availability." Another council member proposed the mental-health wording and asked the clerk to read it aloud before the vote.
The record shows motions were made, seconded and voted on without individual roll-call tallies captured in the transcript excerpt. The council president opened the floor to amendments before calling the final vote on the amended resolution, which passed in the meeting.
Why this matters: The additions signal the council’s interest in state-level changes to tax-increment financing rules to support affordable housing tools and elevate mental-health crisis response in regional advocacy. Both items are policy-shaping priorities the city will carry to state and regional stakeholders if staff pursues the list in advocacy work.
The council moved on to other business after adopting the priorities; no further formal direction to staff about drafting legislative language or pursuing specific state contacts was recorded in the excerpt provided.
