Fascinating, it is! Twelve school board candidates for three spots, and yet all city council seats up for grabs have candidates that are running unopposed. After my personal note, I will jump right into thoughts, bullet-point style.
Personal note: In engineering, there is a semi-official law of 80-20. When developing an idea, or a product, or a solution, your initial goal for the first iteration is to spend twenty percent of the time and resources needed to achieve eighty percent of the result. This is also my goal here on Discerning Whitewater. Call it allocation of resources or even laziness. Eloquence as a writer increases dramatically with half a dozen re-writes; however this blog typically gets a quick once-over when complete and that is about it. I have decided to live with this for now, punctuation and grammatical errors and all. Getting the point across is my primary goal here. I am not currently looking to be Mark Twain.
Another quick note before I get to school board candidates. No city races with more than one candidate is a little disappointing, particularly after my city taxes went up 27.1%. I got feedback from city manager claiming I misrepresented the city’s report on the referendum. This would be from the PR campaign paid for with roughly $50k of Whitewater tax dollars. If Mr. Weidl or Ms. Dawsey-Smith can share with me where in the report it says my city taxes will go up 27.1% and that almost two hundred (166 to be exact) residences in Whitewater would have their city taxes go up so high that even after the huge reduction in school taxes, their overall tax burden would increase… I will gladly share it with my readers. People know where I work and my responsibilities. If I wrote a report, so one-sided as this was, in order to deal with a real issue… I would probably lose some of my responsibilities. My frustration over the huge city tax increase stems from a mere desire to have an honest conversation.
Alright, school board bullet points and initial thoughts:
- For starters, I do not agree with anyone 100% or even 80% imho. School Board politics can get very emotional and not typically my cup of tea. When I go to school board meetings, I primarily go to support our board members and superintendent.
- Having been involved in several campaigns since 2016, I am disgusted with how ugly elections can become. I think it must be easy for progressives to remain aligned. They all want higher taxes and wrongly believe government can regulate the heart. Conservatives, on the other hand, do not agree on much. Alexander Hamilton dying in a pistol duel does not surprise me in the least.
- The two remaining members of the school board (Casey Judd and Steve Ryan) that voted to keep kids out of school in 2020 are not running in 2023.
- I think Caroline is doing a pretty good job. I support her fairly strongly. I would not want her job in a million years.
- I believe Thayer is doing a pretty good job too. If you want my vote, you will have to convince me you can do a better job than him.
- Three of the candidates are current or former UWW instructors.
- Three of the candidates appear to be backed by the group that had the big sign demanding to fire Caroline.
- I have been attending, when I can, school board meetings since they have been back in person. Of the eleven non-incumbent candidates, the only one that I have physically seen at a meeting is Chuck Mills; and I see Chuck at all the meetings. I see him asking great questions.
My advice for the school board candidates:
- Keep a journal. Seriously, keep a journal. This is a new experience and you are going to learn a lot that you will not want to forget.
- Pray about being a servant leader. Pray for wisdom.
- You will not get my vote if all you are going to do is give random gripes about test scores and no solutions. The progressives on the board that are responsible for kicking kids out of school are gone. What are you going to do now? I seriously do not know. I hope you figure this out.
- Who is going to have the guts to come out against all of the identity (racial/sexual) garbage in the schools? You will likely get my support if you do.
- Be mindful of gossip and lies within the campaigns. Look out for people that talk too much. Boundaries with these people are critical.
I am tossing around the idea of podcasting with the candidates. If you are a candidate and you want to talk for a podcast, online or in person, let me know and I would do this. Talk about your background and ideas, and maybe get your name out there a little more.
I have a lot more to write. Should be a lot of great conversations over the next few weeks. And… four? weeks til early voting for the primary? Crazy…..
If you would like to keep up, please follow my blog:
Peace OUT,
-mike
Discerning Whitewater 
Dude! I would love to hear your blog.
Did you catch the WWFD response to the John’s fire?
As the guy who coordinated all the water beyond what they brought, the official response is pure BS. The soundbite from Assistant Fire Chief Joe Uselding blames “a lack of water, wind, and cold weather.” Not a single truck left to refill and we had them connected to about 700,000 gallons of water and a diesel fire pump. There was no wind. And apparently fire now has an affinity for cold. That’s wild…we should reconsider the whole fuel, air, and HEAT equation lol.
About an hour into they said they need 300 yards more hose. First off, you should have known that within minutes of arriving. There were at least 7 or eight different departments responding in full. I pointed to the many many fire trucks parked on Co Rd U and one of them said, “they have the wrong fittings”. Even if that statement was true, you are still an idiot for all having different fittings.
I have seen the WWFD put out a fire at that facility back before they were insolvent. It was an extremely different response.
Uselding has personally told me he can’t enforce NFPA rules, which is so profoundly stupid and untrue I want to slap the man.
As a final slap in the face, 8 hours into it as it was well under control and most of the responders went home, two snowplow drivers were still shutting down U and would not let power plant employees in. I called the profoundly misinformed plow boys and explained that they are violating critical infrastructure protection laws by interfering in power plant operations. I also informed them they are fucking with the staff that is providing the water to fight the damned fire. They ignored it saying they needed a call from the sheriff. I drove out to them and exploded, They looked scared and confused, but still sat there blocking the road and power plant employees.
The last line I read in one article said it was reported that the roads were opened at 0600. Apparently the scumbags realized I was right and had to throw in one last CYA lie.
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