Little Chute Matters

More Podcasts !!

February 15, 2011 Comments off

Podcasts of the interviews with the Little Chute Village-President Candidates are now available online. The three candidates were all interviewed last week. A separate podcast is available for each candidate: Mike Vanden Berg, Chuck Fischer and Steve Ransbottom (listed here in ballot order).

Due to a series of technical mishaps, recordings of the individual interviews with the County-Executive Candidates will not be available before the end of the day today (Primary Election day, February 15th). However, voters should be sure to check out the podcast from the County-Executive Candidates Forum recorded a week ago yesterday (February 7th) by LittleChuteMatters.org, in cooperation with the League of Women Voters of Appleton. At the forum, all six of the candidates answered questions posed by the League about their candidacy, giving a good flavor of each of their temperaments, experience and vision for the future of Outagamie County.

Also, the podcast of the County Clerk’s Forum, recorded last Monday (February 7th) will not be available before the end of the day today.

For more in-depth information about all of the candidates in the Primary, please check out Primary Candidate Summary and Candidate Contact Information in the Information Center, both of which include website information for most of the candidates in today’s Primary Election.

And please, remember to vote today ! Your Vote Counts !!

 

 

Michael

 

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Podcasts and Information for the Primary

February 13, 2011 Comments off

The Spring 2011 Primary Election will be held on Tuesday, February 15. There are 16 candidates running for 4 different offices that affect us in Little Chute. The offices include a Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Outagamie County Executive, Outagamie County Clerk (the only Partisan race) and Little Chute Village President.

There’s a podcast of the County Executive Candidates Forum that you can listen to on your computer. And, we will soon have the podcast available for the County Clerk Candidates as well.

Background information on the Primary can be found in the 2011 Spring Primary entry in the Information Center. Or you can jump directly to the Primary Candidate Summary Tables or Candidate Contact Information to find out specific information about the candidates.

Also, the Candidate Interviews for Village President and County Executive are complete, and will be available as podcasts in the next 24 hours.

So, stay tuned for more Primary information, coming soon !!!

 

 

Michael

 

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Remember the Primary on February 15

February 7, 2011 Comments off

A week from tomorrow, February 15, there will be a primary election throughout Wisconsin. On the ballot in Little Chute are:

  • 3 Candidates for Village President (non-Partisan)
  • 6 Candidates for Outagamie County Executive (non-Partisan)
  • 3 Candidates for Outagamie County Clerk (2 Republican, 1 Democrat running unopposed)
  • 4 candidates for Supreme Court Justice (non-Partisan)

 
The League of Women Voters is holding a forum tonight February 7, at the UW-Fox Valley Student Union, for the 3 County Clerk candidates (6:00pm to 7:00pm) and the 6 County Executive candidates (7:00pm to 8:00pm). LittleChuteMatters will cover the forum tonight. We’ll be posting additional candidate information for the Primary election of our Village President and our County Executive.

Supreme Court candidate interviews can be found at this Post-Crescent article.

Stay tuned for further developments !

 

The Editor

 

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Welcome to 2011 !!

January 11, 2011 Comments off

We’re all looking forward to 2011 being a great year for our Village of Little Chute, the Fox Valley, the great State of Wisconsin and all of the United States of America !

Last year, we saw quite a commitment by ordinary people to participate in government at all levels, debate issues with civility and propose workable solutions to vexing problems.  This spring, we see this trend continuing, with considerable competition for the spring elections.  We will have a Primary election on February 15 for Village President, County Executive and County Clerk.  We’ll have a General election on April 5 for these offices, plus the election of three Village Trustees.

There are three candidates for the office of Village President.  The Village Presidency is a non-partisan office.  Since there are more than two candidates for the office, there WILL be a Primary election for this office.  The candidates for Village President are (in ballot order):

  • Mike Vanden Berg
  • Chuck Fischer
  • Steve Ransbottom

 

There are six candidates for the three offices of Village Trustee.  The Village Trustee offices are non-partisan.  Since there are six candidates for the three Village Trustee offices (exactly two candidates per office), there WILL NOT be a Primary election for these offices.  The candidates for Village Trustees are (in ballot order):

  • Brian Joosten
  • Bill Peerenboom
  • Bob Berken
  • John Elrick
  • Don Van Deurzen
  • Skip Smith

 

There are six candidates for County Executive.  The office of County Executive is non-partisan.  Since there are six candidates for the office of County Executive, there WILL be a Primary election for this office.  The candidates for County Executive are (in ballot order):

  • Michael A. Marsden
  • Jack C. Voight
  • Anne Strauch
  • Tom Nelson
  • Charles Kramer
  • Michael R. Thomas

 

There are three candidates for County Clerk.  The County Clerk is a Partisan office.  The election for this office is normally held in the fall of the year, along with other partisan elections.  In this case, though, the current County Clerk is resigning.  This election is to fill the remainder of the 4-year term expiring January 2013.

Since this is a partisan office, there WILL be a Partisan Primary between the two Republican candidates.  The Democrat in the race is running uncontested in the Democrat primary.  The Democrat candidate will face off against the winner of the Republican Primary in the General Election on April 5.  The candidates for County Clerk are:

  • Amanda Dietrich (Democrat)
  • Lori J. O’Bright (Republican)
  • Aaron C. Pluger (Republican)

 

We’ll be following all of these candidates, their positions and views, up through the April 5 General Election.

As we consider the upcoming political races, and look back on 2010 for guidance, it’s striking how many important questions raised throughout 2010 are still left unanswered.  Often, when our leadership struggles with a challenging problem, there are one or two important questions that go to the heart of the issue, questions that are at the core of the problem.  Sometimes these important questions are obvious.  Sometimes though, it’s a struggle to identify the core questions.  And sometimes, even when we do manage to ask the core questions, they don’t have straightforward answers.

Some of the core-questions in the Spring elections are:

  • The Economy: How do we encourage the growth of businesses that create jobs in our communities?
  • Government Finances: Taxes, Fees and Unfunded Mandates – what do they buy us and are they fair and effective?
  • Transparency: How free is the access to public information?  How much do we really know about how our government is working?  Or not working?
  • County Social Services: How do we control costs while assisting children, the elderly, the sick and the disabled?  Are there others who can’t help themselves, who need government assistance?  Are there other avenues to help those in need?
  • The Village’s Downtown area: How do we develop the downtown area east of the Village Hall?  How do we retain existing business and attract new businesses and business startups to the downtown area?

 

Here at LittleChuteMatters.org, we will strive to identify core questions, seek out areas of agreement and identify differences between the candidates.  We invite all of our readers to help clarify the issues that face us, ask core questions about the issues, debate the issues with one another, and advocate common-sense solutions that work.

 

The Editor

 

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The November 2010 Landslide

November 30, 2010 Comments off

Well, the 2010 fall elections have come and gone. We’ve had a landslide victory for Republicans in the US House, and the Democrats have decisively lost their filibuster-proof majority in the US Senate. Similarly, Wisconsin now has a Republican Governor, and Republican majorities in the Assembly and State Senate. And Wisconsin’s change from Democrat to Republican control was reflected to varying degrees in other states across the country, as well.

OK. So what does all this mean for, like, Little Chute and the Fox Valley? Good question. Without a really clear answer yet. But I’ve got a few preliminary observations anyway.

From where I sit, the clear message of this election is about financial discipline. Yes, I know, there were other issues in Washington as well, like a deluge of earmarks and pork and the government bailout of GM and investment banks and the failure of Fannie-Mae/Freddie-Mac and a Health-care bill that topped two thousand pages of one-liner changes to the US code. And there were similar issues in Madison too. Fair enough. But we’ve seen this kind of thing coming from both parties in recent years, to one degree or another.

But the financial soft-headedness of the current administration and of many in the Democrat party seemed to resonate with an awful lot of voters this year. In order to carry out the agenda favored by President Obama and the current Congress, an unimaginable amount of money has recently been borrowed, or will be borrowed, by the US government. And borrowed from countries that don’t always have our national interests at heart. The increased debt and profligate spending that’s the hallmark of this administration is unsustainable without eventual tax hikes, substantial inflation, or both. And tax hikes and inflation, or even the prospect of future tax hikes and inflation, may well turn our anemic economic recovery into a much deeper recession.

On the other hand, our newly empowered Republican legislators have yet to transition from campaigning to actually governing. The challenges facing our state and our nation are quite difficult, and in some cases are very hard to see clearly. The new legislators are going to face a political minefield of competing philosophies and principles when they begin their terms in January. And many of them are new to the job, so they’ll have to learn the ropes while going into battle. Not an enviable situation for them.

In the coming months, we’ll get a closer look at the new Republican agendas in Madison and Washington. If the implementation of the new Republican agenda is found wanting, I’m convinced that voters will not be amused. If the new Republican leadership begins to favor rhetoric over the values and principles that we all cherish, I doubt the voters will be swayed.

And I’ve already caught whiffs of some Republicans going back to the old incompetent, hard-hearted, ideological mindlessness that got so many Republicans voted out of office in the past decade. Americans seem to be in a reform-minded mood, right now. And I suspect that this desire to reform what doesn’t work in the political arena will continue unabated for years to come. So the clock is already ticking for our newly elected legislators. We’ll just have to stay tuned, to see what actually develops in Washington and Madison in the months ahead.

Meanwhile, our local election cycle is beginning once again. We elect part of our Village leadership every year in the spring. December 1st (tomorrow) is the first day that candidates can start collecting signatures to place their names on the ballot. So hopefully, we’ll be hearing from a number of people who want to run for office, who want to make Little Chute a better place to live, work and play.

Michael

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