Party to the Polls stickers drape a Washington Street light pole in downtown Green Bay on March 12, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Green Bay wants to put its best foot forward for the 2025 NFL Draft, but cleaning up an outside group’s mess is adding an unwanted task to beautification efforts.
Downtown business leaders have counted more than 200 stickers on dozens of light poles that have been up for about five months.
“Plain and simple, under our ordinance, that’s vandalism,” said Steve Grenier, the city’s public works director.
The purple “Party to the Polls” stickers showed up overnight in mid-October, according to Jenny VandenLangenberg, Downtown Green Bay, Inc.’s director of first impressions.
“That took us by surprise,” said VandenLangenberg. “We were not happy to see that.”
Downtown Green Bay, Inc., along with the business groups that represent Main Street and Broadway, are gathering volunteers to get the stickers off.
“In order to take them down. we need a solvent that doesn’t freeze, so we’ve been waiting for the weather to warm up to really work at getting the stickers off the poles,” said VandenLangenberg.
Grenier says the city never would have granted permission to put the stickers up. He says the city hasn’t had the resources to remove them, so the volunteer effort is welcomed.
“The frustrating part is there’s a million ways that a group like this could have done something,” said Grenier. “Spray paint probably would have been the only thing worse.”
The QR code on the stickers takes you to the website for Daybreaker — a group that says it’s nonpartisan and organizes morning dance parties that have gone global.
The group had 50 Party to the Polls events in 15 states, including one in Green Bay.
“I think there were three or four people on the southwest corner of Jefferson and Walnut,” said Grenier. “So, they were on the sidewalk playing music and a gentleman was singing.”
“We’ve been in contact with them recently in the past couple of weeks,” said VandenLangenberg. “We finally made some good contact with them and they’ve been engaging with us.”
Downtown Green Bay, Inc. says Daybreaker had sent them an email saying it would be willing to cover the cost of cleaning up all of the stickers.
A Daybreaker spokesperson said in a statement:
Our team has been in active communication with the city about this and has proactively offered to cover all costs associated with removing the materials. We’re committed to making this right and appreciate the city’s attention to the matter.
Downtown Green Bay, Inc. confirmed it has already received payment from Daybreaker.
Downtown and city leaders hope this serves as education to not put anything on the light poles. Grenier says it is possible the city will have to repaint the light poles as a result of the stickers.
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