The Village of Cottage Grove meeting this week was very telling of four members of the board. This item:
e. Ad Hoc Sustainability Committee
i. Discuss and consider the 2011 action steps.
In most cases this would be a blip on the screen and passed quickly and move on. The idea behind this is that the Sustainability committee, along with community input, comes up with recommendations for the community to save energy, recycle, etc… Some of the “controversial” recommendations that were put forth by the committee were such crazy things as:
* With a new park and ride being built just north of the Village that we(as in the village) recommend people carpool when possible.
* We would like to partner with Alliant Energy and make sure we have the most energy efficient light bulbs in our street lights.
* providing village newsletters online and via email for residents who elect to go paperless
* establishing a Green Star program to annually recognize a resident or business for incorporating sustainability principles
* holding a tree fair to encourage the planting of shade trees.
* and other assorted “revolutionary” ideas.
Unfortunately before that happened, far right extremist Jeff Weigand, taking time away from infringing on Democratic State Senatorial press conferences, decided to put a stop to this. Wiegand, who used to be on the sustainability committee, went into a diatribe. Weigand first showered perfidious praise on the committee, which is made up of intellectual and professional citizens from the community, the way that a teacher does when a 1st grader comes up with a “great idea”. Then he let it be known that he would be voting against this “radical” idea.
“We have to prioritize what our role here is in our village government,” he said. “While a lot of these things are good things, I don’t think these are anything the village needs to coordinate or invest our time and resources into.”
According to Weigand it is great if individuals want to perform these actions on their own, but the government does not need to facilitate them. (Essentially saying that’s nice but take your Global Climate Change silliness and go play in the corner).
Giving credit where it is due, Trustee Paula Severson, took a stand for the vast majority of Cottage Grove. As I have stated before, Cottage Grove overall is a progressive community, added to the fact that most Americans understand the danger of Global Climate Change( So does the Scientific Community), and Severson recognized this.
“We do have a segment in this community who believe strongly in sustainability,” she said.
According to Severson, the action steps presented are not even half of all the ideas citizens brought to the sustainability committee.
Newly elected president Diane Wiedenbeck and Trustees Ken Dahl and Paula Severson voted for this and Trustees Dave Viken(whose claim to fame seems to be his brother is the village inspector) Jennifer Pickel(who was recently elected on a platform of independence has yet to fulfill that promise), Micah Zielke( who obviously cares little for what the citizens of Cottage Grove believe) and Jeff Weigand voted this list of meager recommendations down.
Jeff Weigand said he ran on three things 1. Parks and Rec(yet he is against sustainability and in order for the parks in our community to be upgraded, the citizens had to work around the government and upgrade the parks themselves), 2. Village Safety (yet the police force is running at 2005 levels despite a major increase in population) and 3. taxes (while property taxes have remained stagnant, housing values have dropped considerably thus causing taxes in the community to rise dramatically for those of us in the community who are homeowners). Not the best record, unless of course you want to turn Cottage Grove into West Bend. Some final words of wisdom to the four deniers:
Global warming is a threat, one that will affect generations to come. The atmosphere surrounding us that supports life is a God-given gift. It must be protected. Those of us living in the United States should be leaders in efforts to curb global warming, not resistant followers.
-Archbishop Harry Flynn of the St. Paul and Minneapolis Archdiocese,
delivering letter to Senator Norm Coleman
encouraging national leadership on global warming, 20 Nov 06
More on Global Climate Change here, here and here.
PS: One more item of note from the VB meeting. The Village Board voted to go ahead with road repair in the village this summer WITHOUT getting bids on the services. As a citizen wrote recently:
It is counterproductive, if not damaging, to the efficient, creative and effective administration of government of our village. (Take note that we are apparently “late” in getting word to Dane County regarding the Highway N project; Related? Maybe? Maybe not?) It has now gone so far as to attack under the guise of rejecting attack.
Could the wrangling to “stack the board” and continual shutting down of opposing viewpoints have caused the Village a chance to bid out these services? How many thousands of dollars has this cost the taxpayers of Cottage Grove? When will the majority of the board put the taxpayers of the Village first and foremost over their own partisan agenda?
