Vacant board seat will remain open until April
By Jason Arndt
Editor
A vacancy on the Burlington Town Board will remain until voters decide who will fill the seat at an April 2 special election.
The special election, which coincides with the general Spring Election, comes after the Town Board presented two motions at an Oct. 10 meeting.
It will fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Tyson Fettes, who resigned before a Sept. 12 meeting amid allegations he solicited prostitutes in Rockford, Illinois, earlier this year.
“I do not want to be a distraction to the board and the good work they are doing for the community. Therefore, I am resigning my position effective immediately,” he wrote in a resignation letter.
While the special election earned unanimous approval, the decision on what to do with the Supervisor No. 1 seat until the election was another matter, following a 2-2 deadlock.
Town Supervisors Jeff Lang and Russ Egan voted in favor of temporarily filling the seat while Chairman Ralph Rice and Richard Isaacson opposed.
Mulling options
Lang presented three options for the Town Board to consider when making a decision.
The options included allowing the seat to stay vacant until April 2021, when Fettes term was set to expire, schedule a special election with a choice to fill the post temporarily or appoint someone to complete the rest of Fettes’ term.
“I like option No. 2 – schedule a special election for the seat, to take place at the same time as the regular spring election in 2020,” Lang said. “It would be no additional cost to taxpayers.”
Lang, who motioned to call the special election, received a second from Egan with Rice and Isaacson voting in favor of the decision.
According to Town Administrator Brian Graziano, if the Town Board hadn’t moved forward with an election by Dec. 1, it would need to wait until the following fall.
Rare stalemate
Lang, meanwhile, suggested the Town Board fill the seat until the special election to avoid any potential 2-2 deadlocks.
He proposed allowing prospective candidates to submit letters of recommendation as well as summaries of their relevant life and career experiences for review by the Town Board at a November meeting.
“I like the idea of temporarily filling the seat, if we voted on somebody to fill that seat at the November meeting, or the next meeting, they can take the seat in January because we don’t have a December meeting,” he said.
“They would be in place for January, February and March meetings and then April, somebody would have won the seat,” he said, adding he is “mainly concerned about the fact that we could end up 2-2 on issues.”
Isaacson, however, believes appointing supervisor close to the election could “give someone an unfair advantage.”
Rice concurred with Isaacson, noting voters should make the decision, and opposed filling the seat temporarily.
“There’s an awful lot of people that are interested. And then if we appoint somebody, we sort of offend people,” Rice said.
“Let all of the people make a decision. I don’t feel we have a problem. In my 30 years I have sat here, there has probably been about two tie votes.”
Looking ahead
With the special election, whoever wins Fettes’ seat will serve for one year, and must file for re-election in 2021 to continue his/her tenure.
Lang and Egan, who was appointed in August to replace the late Barbara Ruud, will also need to file for re-election to seek a two-year term.
Fettes, first elected in 2007, served on the Town Board for 12 years until his resignation.
Fettes, the former Racine County Register of Deeds, resigned from that post April 26 and began working as market president at a local bank days later. He was appointed to the county office by Gov. Scott Walker in 2011 and was re-elected in 2012 and 2016.
To read the entire story, see the Oct. 17 edition of the Burlington Standard Press.
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