April brings us another election and in Cottage Grove, WI it brings us almost full circle. In the April elections bring the Village a series of unopposed races. For School Board we will have incumbents Lionel Norton, Jessica Ace and Jason McCutchin. I was happy to see them all run again because despite the fact that the State Government keeps dealing them bad hands, they are doing a very good job. The Cottage Grove village government is a different story.
All three incumbents have declined to run and three candidates stepped up to run. So we have an unopposed village board race also. Time to take a look at back at the incumbents legacy and what is ahead for the Village. First time for some quick backstory.
The spring election of 2009 was a change election in Cottage Grove. There had been a few, mostly very qualified board members and concerned citizens who ran the village with citizen input as needed. Things were not always perfect, but many things got done that were beneficial to the community at large and done with not much fanfare.
Then a group of conservatives, who turned out to be right wing extremists decided to get together and run for office. There were three open village board seats and the presidency. A group of four got together and ran as a a group with three village trustees(Duane Hubing, Micah Zielke, and Paula Severson) along with presidential candidate Scott Norton. Unfortunately for the citizens of Cottage Grove, in a very contentious race, all four of them were successful in their bid.
Immediately these “conservatives, right wing extremists with a vision” set about implementing their vision. The problem of course, was that they did not campaign on this vision(where have we heard that before?) and started implementing policy from their very first meeting. They came in, and immediately changed a well thought out and planned roundabout, at the Village’s main intersection to a much more costly traffic light. You would think that if this was your plan for the first meeting, that it should have been a campaign topic but things have not always been logical here.
They continued to govern like this for 6 months. Bring up a topic out of the blue, listen to public comment telling them why they should not do it, then vote quickly against the public will, while never explaining their vote. Then after not quite serving for 6 months, Village president Scott Norton resigned.
In his own version of the Friday news dump, Norton resigned on a Friday afternoon at 5:00 PM effective immediately. This event set the tone then for the next three years in politics. It is well known, but not talked about, that some members of the Village Board(along with Scott Norton & Mike Mikalsen) met in private ahead of Norton’s resignation to figure out the best way to transition from Norton to Mikalsen as seem less and as quietly as possible. They knew that they wanted to avoid an election and input from the citizens of the village as a whole. They planned a Friday afternoon resignation, followed by a Monday night approval of appointment (over special election) followed quickly two weeks later by the predicted appointment of Mike Mikalsen.
The CURRENT trustee told me how meetings were held behind closed doors for week, how Scott purposely resigned at 4:00 pm on the last business day before the next village board meeting, how you were selected as the next president, and how on the Monday meeting everything was handled efficiently so no one knew about it until after the board meeting. I also know through this trustee that Diane was not invited to speak or give advice, and that you guys had all of your ducks lined up in a row and knew exactly what to do before the public got wind of it.
The one thing that they did not account for in their secret (possibly illegal) meetings was that people do not like to lose their rights. As Thomas Paine said: “The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.” The severely miscalculated this fact badly. So much so that the two weeks between voting down a special election and running through formalities to appoint Mikalsen, were a crazy two weeks in the Village. A petition was circulated collecting well over 100 signatures in just a couple days, numerous letters were sent to the village board, the Herald-Independent editorialized to have a special election, and a few candidates stepped up and applied to be the next president. It was so bad that trustee Duane Hubing resorted to lying to his constituents in a bad case of damage control.
The meeting came and was packed with people begging for a special election, which of course, fell on deaf ears, and (as we all knew for weeks) Mikalsen was appointed Village president for 18 months of a 24 month term(despite being the least qualified of the applicants). Of this group, in the 2011 elections, we were able to vote out Mikalsen and Severson(for a short time) and Duane Hubing stepped down. This upcoming election three more have decided not to run(Severson(again), Jeff Weigand and Dave Viken). Lets take a look at these three.
1. Paula Severson, was one of the original “conservatives with a vision” and was also right at the forefront of voter suppression in Cottage Grove. She did excellent work on the Deer Grove EMS committee, but for her time under Mikalsen voted as she was told(Mikalsen had a heavy hand and usually started a vote with telling everyone how to vote). Severson then lost her re-election bid in 2011. Unfortunately for all involved, there was a very underhanded scheme to have her unethically put back on the board , despite the fact that there was massive community outrage. Severson even had, by all accounts a very good year showing independence for the first time,out from under the heavy hand of Mikalsen. However the fact that she had a hand in her re-appointment (once again subverting the voters of the village) and gladly accepted this position, coupled with her not disclosing her current position as a lobbyist, made it appear that she was more interested in serving herself than the public.
2. Jeff Weigand: Two years ago, the right wing of the Cottage Grove Village Board, held a 6-1 majority. Not happy with having someone question their votes, they recruited an aide to Glenn Grothman to complete a total takeover of the village. While Weigand won by one vote, he ended up knocking off one of their own, and left the board at a 6-1 split(why so many republicans who ‘hate big government” cant get enough of taxpayer dollars is a topic for another post).
Weigand was known for doing little work, writing strange letters to the editor, and not really taking his position seriously. He usually remained quiet at meetings except, for his one brilliant suggestion, of saving taxpayer money by firing the custodian service and having the village board do all the cleaning of buildings in their spare time. It took about 7 months for Weigand to actually take a stand, unfortunately for him the stand he took was 'severely punish four people who had a meeting at the PUBLIC fire station". (Full disclosure, I was one of the four)
While several on the board expressed their gratitude towards Wiedenbeck, Potter and Henrich for the sincerity of their apologies, trustee Jeff Weigand pushed for harsher punishment for those involved.
“I’m not comfortable with just walking away,” Weigand said. “I believe every single person there should be held accountable.”
Weigand said the situation reflects poorly on the community, and said other communities would view the village as a joke if nobody were held accountable.
Yes Weigand took a position where he became completely irrelevant as a politician, we were all embarrassed for him. Since then he has taken such positions as the government must stay out of sustainability , we must be allowed to carry guns everywhere, and childishly fighting with the town of Cottage Grove and working to make the Village the only Village not paying for DaneCom.
After such an undistinguished and harmful record as a politician in the Village of Cottage Grove, whats next for Weigand? Moving to Middleton of course.
3. David Viken. After doing a search of the initiatives and successes that David Viken led during his time on the village board, I was only able to find this.
We never knew the vision that these “conservatives” had, they never campaigned on specifics. We can look back upon their actual record and see that it is not pretty. They are leaving behind a legacy of the end of local community owned business, and the beginning of turning Cottage Grove into a faceless realm of big chain stores. , a divided village, a government known for secrecy and breaking open meetings laws, rush to judgement and lack of public discussion on important topics, zero compromise, open disdain for public opinion that disagrees with them, pushing good people out of Village service, responsible for lack of services in our village and having no interest in what the voters have to say.
Maybe, like the current state of Wisconsin, when the head person lacks morals and ethics, that is a policy that actually trickles down. The problem is no one knew this about Scott Norton at the time, they just knew he spent ALOT of money to become president, was new in the Village and seemed like a nice guy. We all got burned.
PS: The next interesting story to come out of Cottage Grove will be how Micah Zielke conducts himself. Zielke is the only original member of the gang of four left on the Village Board. Within the past three years, he has sent a very unprofessional letter to Village President Diane Weidenbeck, ridiculously accused incoming board member Jack Henrich of malfeasance when the police chief was suspended for a short time, talked openly of breaking contracts, attempted to childishly dress down fellow board member Ken Dahl when Dahl suggested that the electorate of the village have a say in who represents them and walked lockstep in every single vote mentioned above. We will see if he still will stand by his extreme agenda or try and work with the rest of the board in helping advance out Village forward.
April 3rd can not get here fast enough!
