By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
While the incumbents ruled the day Tuesday in the Village of Rochester trustee race, an incumbent was unseated in both the Village and Town of Waterford.
Rochester’s three incumbent trustees – Chris Bennett, Christian Johnson and Russ Kumbier – totaled 818, 707 and 674 votes, respectively, to outdistance challenger Douglas Webb (563 votes).
But in the Village and Town of Waterford, lingering bad feelings about the policing contract being switched from the Racine County Sheriff’s department to the Town of Waterford may have played a role.
In the village, challenger Andrew Ewert – a first-time candidate – finished with the most votes, 845 to incumbent Jim Schneider’s 841.
With just three seats available, Don Houston clinched the final spot over fellow incumbent Ron Kluth, 777 votes to 682.
In the Town Supervisor race, long-time domestic abuse prevention champion Teri Jendusa Nicolai – the challenger – earned election with 1,079 votes. Incumbent Tim Szeklinski edged out fellow incumbent Jan Alvey, 1,020 votes to 998.
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The town/village switching to local yocal police was the #1 reason for ousting the incumbents. That was a horrible idea and that contract can’t end soon enough. New militia state in Waterford, ran by Mayberry wannabees. Just hoping nothing serious happens on their watch, they couldn’t handle it.
Let’s take a look at some of the numbers according to the county’s unofficial vote tallies.
In the village of Waterford there were 2,121 voters. Roughly 70% voted republican in both the presidential primary and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Mr Tom Roanhouse received 1,361 votes on an uncontested race for county supervisor. 737 or 35% of the village voters flat out declined to vote for the lone candidate. To bad someone didn’t run against this tax raising fiscally irresponsible village president.
The trustee numbers are a bit harder to decipher. However, many, many village voters under voted this race. What does that mean? Well, they either didn’t vote at all, or only chose one or two of the candidates. Given that you can vote up to three times for race, there were 3,203 under votes!!!
The school referendum also failed miserably.
These results are telling and a clear and direct message to this board. Stop over-taxing! Stop paying more for a obvious reduction in services!
It’s to bad a primary didn’t unseat the other two village trustees. It’s obvious this village has a fiscally conservative contingent. Next years trustee and village president elections should be very interesting!!!
While the dumb decision to go with the town of Waterford for policing certainly contributed to the overwhelming support received by Mr. Ewert, I believe strongly that the biggest contributing factor to the failure of the referendum was the asinine decisions made by the village board including the additional unnecessary costs for policing Services as well as the significant increases in property taxes due to the revaluation and other unnecessary expenses. The high school board should be really angry with the village officials given that so many people had their property taxes go up by $1,000 or more they were simply fed up with all the spending