We recently had Budget listening Session in Cottage Grove, conducted by our State Representative Gary Hebl and Legislative Fiscal Bureau Head Bob Lang.
Village President Mike Mikalsen spoke: Mikalsen pointed to his two
children standing at the rear of the hall.
“It is important that we as adults solve
problems. And frankly I am sick and tired to see within this community and throughout
Dane County we have seen intimidation, division and we have seen reckless character
assassination on the parts of many people. And that needs to stop. Because the issue
at hand is about those two young people in the back of the room whose futures you
as an elected official and I as an elected official are playing Russian Roulette with.”
(More posts to come later today showing the one person using intimidation/division just so happens to be Mike Mikalsen)
Yes it is about the children, they are the future after all!
Then last night I received the following email(here it is unedited) regarding our President-Select Mike Mikalsen, that I felt needed to be shared widely.
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
We don’t normally send e-mails like this but felt this issue was important enough to ask for your help. This week’s election for Village President is between two candidates – Mike Mikalson and Diane Wiedenbeck. Both of these individuals are good people that have worked hard for this community in recent years. However, this is where their similarities end. Unlike Diane Wiedenbeck, Mike Mikalson was not elected for his current position. He inherited the interim Village President position when Scott Norton was elected but then had to resign his position shortly after he became Village President. Under somewhat questionable circumstances this position was then quickly handed over to Mr. Mikalson. Diane has been elected four times as a Trustee in the Village and has served this community for many years in many different roles. During the past two years we have gotten to know her quite closely while serving on the Cottage Grove Sustainability Committee (which she chairs). We’ve been impressed with her diligence to lead our group under difficult circumstances as the current majority leadership in the Village has clearly not been supportive of our cause. She has shown an ability to continue to find ways to help our community make progress without compromising our fiscal stability. For example, she led an effort to make Cottage Grove one of only two communities in Wisconsin selected for free participation in the Alliant Energy Home Energy Management Program. This gave hundreds of Village Citizens the opportunity to install energy monitors in their homes to study their energy usage patterns and habits and recognize ways to save on their monthly energy bills.
Meanwhile, during the past two years we have watched Mr. Mikalson struggle to lead this community. He particularly has a hard time seeing the bigger picture of issues and tends to tow the Republican line without considering what may be truly best for our community. One of the most disturbing examples of this was his response to concerns brought forward by committee members regarding reports received from Village citizens of increased frequency of potentially harmful odors coming from the Hydrite plant during the past two summers. Rather than asking for more details or considering investigating what was going on, his response was to dismiss this as “probably coming from the Hwy. 12 landfill” (even though he was told that the descriptions of the smell didn’t match that of a landfill at all) and then advising us to “not bring any attention to this problem” because “it might make Cottage Grove seem unfriendly to big business”. This was said even though he was made aware that many of the complaints came from people with small children living near Hydrite. Since then Village citizens have had to take it upon themselves to contact Hydrite and determine the source of this smell and work with them to alleviate this problem.
Is this the type of person that we want leading our community? Bringing new businesses to Cottage Grove may indeed help offset the tax burden of Village Citizens but at what other expenses? Many of us chose to live in Cottage Grove to get away from the big business focus of other communities and to know that we’ll have clean air and a safe environment for our children. We cannot afford to have a narrow-minded, one focus type of leader. Diane Wiedenbeck will work to bring new businesses to Cottage Grove in a way that we can trust.
Please consider voting for Diane Wiedenbeck as Village President on Tuesday.
Thanks for time in reading this e-mail.
Sincerely,
Rev. Rebecca Ninke and David Travis, Ph.D.
Cottage Grove Residents and Members of the Cottage Grove Sustainability Committee
So it is about the children, except when its politically expedient for it to NOT be about the children. Election season is so confusing!
