cur-mud-geon:
anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
I noted, while reading the Saturday Milwaukee JournalSentinel, that the selection of the replacement to Tom Kempinski as Trustee of District 4 will be held in a public forum at 6:00PM on Monday evening, May 7th. Apparently the Board had entertained holding the interviews in closed session with the stated reason that of keeping each candidate from hearing the response of the others to the battery of questions.
The move to an open forum with two candidates excluded from the room while the other is being interviewed appears to have been made following a JournalSentinel objection made on Friday. This seems a very reasonable solution to what might well have caused a furor in our community.
Two of the three candidates have run in election races before and are therefore better known to the public than the third person. The two who have run before are Mr. Wyatt Wiehr and Ms. Anita Hilleman. The third candidate, who has never run previously, is Mr. Dean Wolter. I have no personal knowledge of any of the three.
On the one hand, those who have been in earlier races are likely better known quantities than the third. That blade has two edges. Either of the two better known candidates may fare better or worse as the result. The third candidate will respond to the questions raised during the interview as will the other two, and the Board will make its decision. Might there be favorites amongst some on the Board? We would be naïve to presume anything else. Our Trustees are politicians, after all. Certainly one or more will have “a horse in the race” to paraphrase a cliché in honor of Derby week-end.
It is unfortunate that more citizens are not sufficiently interested to cause them to turn out to witness our democracy in action…self included. If we’re going to make judgments about decisions taken by our elected officials, it seems reasonable that we would gather some information before concluding.
Of one thing I feel certain…each of the three candidates feel a commitment to Germantown and we residents, and I thank each of them for that.
