Today's Blog: Time for the Guv to morph into Chris Christie My husband and I and a couple hundred friends watched in Green Bay as ...(more) Search Archives

Blogs

Time for the Guv to morph into Chris Christie (6/28/2011)

Time for Gov. Walker to talk more about the cake (3/4/2011)

Today, reality hits home (3/1/2011)

FoxPolitics News going on hiatus (1/28/2011)

Brown County Executive candidate forum Feb. 8 (1/28/2011)

Education done right (1/27/2011)

To Obama, the ‘We’ is Government (1/27/2011)

(more)

The citizens of Mount Pleasant have the distinction of being the second community in Wisconsin (the first was the City of Pewaukee) whose board has bestowed the “privilege” of allowing the voters to have a voice in any capital spending in excess of $10,000,000. Pewaukee’s super-high $10M cap was enacted in 2003 by an administration which has since been rejected by the voters. Our former Mayor was recalled, and successfully voted out of office. Most of the other members of his Common Council chose not to run when their terms were up in 2007. Those sitting aldermen, as a last hurrah before the Spring Election, lowered the cap to a still super-high $5,000,000. The new Council has promised to revisit the issue still again.

At face value, a cap may seem like a good idea. But when an unreasonably high spending cap is enacted, direct legislation cannot be used to lower it. No matter what the citizens may want, the decision is no longer theirs to make. Mount Pleasant’s Board of Trustees has taken that right away from the public; these elected officials are telling the voters they don’t trust the people who elected them to know when a project has merit, providing needed services to the general public.

The enactment of an ultra-high spending cap perpetuates the “them versus us” mentality. We hear so much about the change in attitude people have when they are voted into office - even in a small community. They seem to forget that any money they waste also comes out of their pocket in the form of the general levy.

If we could trust our elected officials to spend our tax dollars prudently, there would be no need for a cap, or for citizen action through direct legislation. In Pewaukee, a $6,500,000 fire station proposed in 2004 was one of the issues that led to the recall of former Mayor Jeff Nowak. In 2006, the new Mayor proposed a $2,800,000 station, plus road and utility work of $1,000,000. That project was embraced by the citizens and construction has begun. Why the change in attitude? We really need a fire station; we just did not need to spend $6,500,000 to build it.

My advice to the taxpayers of Mount. Pleasant: Find people to run against the arrogant board members who enacted the too-high cap, and keep a close watch on any proposed building projects. The current board has no obligation to be accountable to you. They have taken away your right to petition for a reasonable spending cap and have given themselves far more power than any elected officials should have. They have taken away your right under State Statutes to curtail them from wasting your tax dollars.

Barb Whitcomb is the President of Pewaukeeans for Better Government.

Post a Reply

Print this Article

Email Article to a Friend