2019 to 2023 Gym Use Records
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“Bury A Friend”
Waunakee Village Board Edges Toward Eventual Termination of Joint Fire District. Proposal from Trustee McPherson provides increased support to Waunakee Firefighters.
The Waunakee Village Board meeting on February 3, 2025 resulted in what I’ve long expected given Westport, Vienna and Springfield’s ongoing intransigence over any level of accountability or oversight of the Waunakee Area Fire District. Waunakee is on a path to permanently terminating the joint fire district made up of Waunakee, Westport, Vienna and Springfield.
Video of the meeting is available here:
The relevant section presented by Mr. McPherson for benefits to Waunakee is as follows, which doesn’t exactly describe Waunakee as being in opposition the fire-fighters:
- Ensures the Village protects the legacy of volunteer firefighting by making it a permanent part of the department;
- Gives clarity to current and future firefighters with job descriptions, community risk assessments, and strategic planning;
- Control through the Village gives faster response time to the needs of the department;
- Lets the Village start facility improvements immediately, as the village owns the building;
- Provides faster and better access to training for firefighters;
- All recommended with the purpose of maintaining the 100% volunteer service for as long as possible.
This is a tad bit different than how conflict has been presented at the Fire District, in particular through the conduct of Vienna and Springfield representatives. In late December, two officials from the towns wrote a letter to Village President Runge to advocate for McPherson’s immediate removal from the Fire District board.
I can think of a couple unique (and accurate) descriptors for Robert, having listened to him in several meetings of the fire district. “Boring” might be the most obvious. “Nasally” is probably accurate. “John Lennon haircut cosplayer” perhaps? All of those are way more accurate than “unbecoming, unprofessional, and wholly disrespectful…” is ludicrous.
Mr. Laufenberg and Mr. Endres sound like men who have never heard the word “No” before and can’t handle it.
But they couldn’t be that honest.
But let’s get to the issue of what they actually bothered to ask Ms. Runge to do here. Of course, rather than setting to work forming a “state law obligatory” Fire Commission that they learned several months ago that they were ignoring, these two gentlemen took the time to write a letter that asked for the impossible instead. Runge would need to bring extraordinary parliamentary efforts to bear to revoke McPherson’s seat on the Fire District board if she even wanted to do that which she obviously doesn’t.
I have trouble coming up with sufficient negative adjectives to describe Vienna and Springfield’s behavior here. Delusional? Moronic? Jug-hooting, glue-sniffing brain dead?
McPherson and Nila Frye were deliberately placed on the Fire District board by VP Runge with specific directions from the Village. They have followed the Village’s plan. In response to this clear and direct action, at least 3 staff members and representatives in the Fire District have complained, whined and borderline defamed them.
To suggest that they were doing anything beyond what the Village Board wanted them to do makes several assumptions:
- It assumes Kristin Runge is an idiot (she obviously is not)
- It relies on ginning up community resentment against two liberal members of the Village Board about something as esoteric and obscure as fire district policy (spectacular failure)
- It predicts that the local media will labor on into irrelevance and report none of this (a safer bet than the Chiefs to be in the Super Bowl)
1 out of 3 isn’t too bad…
As a Westport resident, I am thrilled that Town Board Chair John Cuccia and Westport have been appropriate and civil in engaging with Waunakee’s direct advocacy, doing their best to work with Mr. McPherson and Ms. Frye and Waunakee in general. But the behavior by Vienna and Springfield appears to leave Waunakee with little choice but to move forward in its own best interests. Instead of confronting complex issues with dignity, the municipalities instead chose to throw a tantrum.
As such, it appears Waunakee is set to eventually finally bury their old friend, the Waunakee Fire District, for good.
Honestly, I thought that I would be dead by now (wow)
Calling security, keepin’ my head held down
Bury the hatchet or bury a friend right now
Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe
Village of Waunakee blocks Waunakee Fire Department’s (Probably Illegal) Election of a New Fire Chief
“Tell me your purpose is petty again
But even a small lighter can burn a bridge…”– Kendrick Lamar (probably not singing about inter-governmental agreements)
A LINEAR TIMELINE OF SMALL TOWN POLITICS AND VIBE-KILLING TOMFOOLERY
June 24, 2024: The Village of Waunakee reports to the Waunakee Area Fire District that it plans on moving forward with an audit and study of the Waunakee Fire Department. The Fire district largely declines to participate in the study, with Waunakee incorporating all requests in the report, produced by McMahon Associates of Neenah, Wisconsin.
August 18, 2024: The McMahon study proposing long-term dramatic changes to the Waunakee Fire Department is published and discussed by the Waunakee Village Board. Copies of the study are provided to Westport, Vienna and Springfield.
The study explicitly notes the following:
“MCMAHON recommends that the Fire District Operating Agreement be updated immediately to include a Fire Commission that appoints the Fire Chief and confirms appointment of officers and subordinates of the Fire Chief to conform with State Statutes.
August 20, 2024: I post “Burning Down the House” an article about the study, which is available here.
The McMahon study is discussed again in August, September and finally discussed at length by the Fire District in October 2024.
December 11, 2024: The Village representatives at the regular Fire District meeting explicitly request that plans be made for the Department’s officer succession, as Mr. Gary Hansen has indicated he planned on leaving his role as Fire Chief effective January 20, 2025. The fire district declines to move forward with any work in creating a fire commission. The district explicitly moves to not change any aspect of the Fire District Operating Agreement by a 3-2 vote (both Waunakee representatives oppose this motion). Waunakee representatives argue that moving forward without planning will lead to the Department being in non-compliance with State law. Reps from Springfield and Vienna in particular appear non-plussed.
December 16, 2024: The Village of Waunakee passes an ordinance expressly requiring the Fire Department’s chief to only be appointed the (non-existent) Fire Commission, noting that “The fire chief shall be appointed by the Fire Commission pursuant to applicable Wisconsin Statutes, including, but not limited to, Wis. Stat. § 61.65(2b) and (3g), as may be amended from time to time.”
December 2024: Waunakee posts an FAQ on the need for a Fire Commission, with the hilarious understatement that “The current Board of Trustees for the Village of Waunakee deems it important to comply with Wisconsin State Statutes.”
January 20, 2025: The Fire Department elects Josh McWilliams, an 18 year volunteer firefighter and Waunakee Public Works employee, as its next Fire Chief.
January 21, 2025: The Village of Waunakee meets in closed session to discuss the Fire Department’s election of a new fire chief, in contravention to local ordinance and State law. The Board unanimously crafts a statement to be read at the January 27th Fire District meeting. The statement is as follows:
January 27, 2025: The Waunakee Area Fire District meets. The board engages in a general discussion, but from my impression it takes the position that it will be unable to formalize a Fire Commission until at least August 2025. This timeline makes literally zero sense. The district has been told that they are out of compliance with State law since at least August 2024. I know bureaucracy is slow, but starting a fire commission could have already been done, if only to collaborate with the Fire Department membership in picking a new chief. In short, elected officials in Waunakee, Westport, Vienna and Springfield conclusively KNEW that they were in non-compliance with State law, and there seem to have been no concrete steps taken to create a fire commission, at least by anyone other than Waunakee.
It hurts me to write this. I enjoy nothing more than poking fun at the #waunakeeway. But in this, I am deprived of any criticism. There isn’t even a funny political angle, as the two candidates for Village President (Robert McPherson and Kristin Runge) appear to be in total lockstep and in my view are being fairly straightforward.
For my part, with all due respect, I am confused by the Fire District’s refusal to move more quickly on establishing a fire commission. The McMahon report in August 2024 made the immediate need for change clear, and there appears to be no objection to their legal analysis.
The Department’s desire to continue its tradition in the face of explicit laws preventing them from continuing to choose their own fire chief appears to be revelatory about the organization itself. The Waunakee Fire Department has operated under its own authority with only nominal oversight by the Village or the Fire District for many decades. More than one employee of the Department has privately stated they will refuse to allow “politicians to run the Department”. The Fire Department itself is not subject to open records laws. This means that membership lists are secret, applications to serve the Department are secret, rejected candidates have no recourse or avenue of appeal, communications between what appear to be public employees (but are not) are secret. I have joked half-seriously that Fire Fighters in Waunakee could commit all sorts of heinous crimes and hijinks out of their trucks, and Waunakee would have literally zero recourse to remove them.
Waunakee appears to be acting proactively. It has launched a FAQ page (linked above) on its website that answers questions about the necessity of a fire commission. It has never taken any position that disrespects or minimizes the contributions or value of the volunteer fire department or its members. It does however, refuse to continue to allow the Fire Department to do exactly what it wants.
In contrast, multiple Fire District/Department employees have either openly threatened that if Waunakee seemingly does anything, that it might be without a fire department at all.
I take this implied threat with a bit of mirth. I have oft-heard it suggested that the Fire volunteers are the most selfless guys you’ll ever meet. I’ll just grant that without questioning it. If it is true, why would the wonderful volunteers quit merely over the Department losing its ability to pick all of its own members and pick their own supervisor? I don’t believe a majority of the Department feels that way.
This kind of manipulative, controlling statement is the not the hallmark of dedicated public servants; it’s the hallmark of the abuser.
If the Fire Department is in fact, as I believe, filled with men who are dedicated to the best interests of their communities, they should repudiate threats to quit over changes to the Fire Department. I walked around the exterior of the Waunakee Fire Department last night and I noticed the large number of trucks carrying vanity plates about fire fighting. The members laud their accomplishments publicly, they work in the community to keep us safe, and they have made being a volunteer firefighter a part of their families, their culture, and their very personalities. No one is disrespecting them, but those who would attempt to threaten the Village with withholding vital public services in a fit of pique and egotism, certainly are causing harm.
It seems like the Fire Department had a good vibe going. Why has the Fire District let them down by not acting more quickly?
Most egregiously, at least one member of the Fire District, Matt Wright, town board member of Springfield, explicitly stated in December that he saw no need for the fire district to exercise any oversight over the Fire Department. This means that Mr. Wright, who controls 20% of the fire district through his vote, both abdicates any responsibility he has to supervise while maintaining his own municipality’s desire to deprive Waunakee of control over its own Fire District. Springfield paid literally $59,387 (equalized) toward the Waunakee fire district. Waunakee paid $734,000 (and change). Through that $59K, Springfield buys itself a vote in a 3-2 majority to refuse to change inter-governmental agreements, to stall changes to the Fire Department, to prevaricate over even starting a Fire Commission.
And people want to blame… Waunakee? I like criticizing Waunakee as much as anyone I know. But this is monumentally stupid.
When considering how to title this article, Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party (And I’ll Cry if I Want To” was strongly considered.
I’ve asked the 2025 candidates for Village Board and Village President to opine on the Village’s position statement and will update this post as they’ve shared their opinions, without commentary from myself.
FIRST UPDATE
Multiple generations of my own family have served as volunteer firefighters in Waunakee over its history, and I have great respect for the dedication and commitment of our current volunteers. When I first took my oath of office four years ago, I swore to support all local ordinances and discharge my duties in accordance with the law, as did all other village elected officials. State statutes are abundantly clear that the fire chief must be appointed by a commission of citizens, not volunteer firefighters. I strongly support the volunteer fire department, have no desire to push volunteers out, nor do I disagree with the qualifications of the individual the membership selected. That’s not what this is about. However, I have an obligation to uphold our state statutes when the village and/or the fire district board is knowingly in violation of them. That’s why the board voted unanimously to change local ordinances to comply.
- Sam Kaufmann
As was read in the written statement, the village is in unanimous agreement in support of a continued volunteer fire department. The village made multiple attempts, both at the monthly fire board meetings and then by definitively and unanimously passing an ordinance, to indicate that the fire district must come into compliance with state law on the selection of a fire chief. Despite those actions, the membership held a closed-door secret ballot election of a new chief, with no transparency to the public, in open violation of state and local law. There will be further discussion at upcoming village board meetings in February on this topic, which were planned for knowing that our statement would potentially cause concerns and confusion. I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to attend, make public comment, and hear from the entire board on future actions, or reach out to the board via phone or email.
- Robert McPherson
As a candidate for Village Board and a member of the Waunakee Fire Department, I want to make my position clear: I fully support the establishment of a citizen-based fire commission. The fire commission should appoint the Chief. It is the law. The citizens of all four municipalities also deserve a means of accountability should they require it. No one is disputing this. The ongoing conflict stems from the collective failure of all four municipalities to reach a resolution on this matter, and it is a dereliction of their duty as sworn officials. This lack of compromise created a challenging and unprecedented situation. I am disappointed by the Village’s statement and rushed ordinance three weeks before the retirement of a sitting fire chief. Chief Hansen gave ample notice of his retirement at the beginning of his two-year tenure. Despite this, the municipalities could not come to an agreement to accommodate a law that was authored before 1937. It took our Village officials 88 years and $35,000 to determine that the Fire District was out of compliance. In the absence of clear legal precedent, the department followed its bylaws to maintain day-to-day operations and comply with SPS 330.08(3). The Wisconsin statutes do not provide any direction on how to handle this matter when the municipalities’ failure to create a fire commission is to blame. With no clear timetable for a resolution, emergency services cannot afford paralysis. If we were to follow the Village’s statement, it would leave no mechanism to replace officers in critical situations, including a line of duty death, which jeopardizes the safety of both the department and the community. The Fire Department wants to follow the law, but Village officials did not provide the department with the means to do so.
- Max Ujdak
No comment provided.
- Chris Zellner
Editor’s note. Chris Zellner was Village President and a Village Board member for 12 years while the Fire District was in non-compliance with state law.
No comment provided.
- Dustin Mueller
Request for comment unanswered.
- Kristin Runge, Village President
Editor’s note. Ms. Runge was one of seven members of the Village Board to vote in favor of the FD statement read on Monday.
No comment provided.
- Jack Heinemann
“Possibilities”
Game Haven opens in Waunakee, creating local space for in-person community and connections.
I had the chance to spend an hour in Kevin Thornberg’s new store, Game Haven, last week. While Thornberg’s interest and talent in sales is obvious upon first meeting him, if he was trying to sell me on anything beyond being a completely positive addition to the local community, I’d be very surprised.
An obvious labor of love, Thornberg’s long-time interest in gaming led him to opening Game Haven, a new retailer of RPGs (role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons), standard board games (think Monopoly, Catan, etc.), card games (Pokemon) and other table-top games (i.e. Warhammer 40K). In addition to providing the community’s new (and only) local option for such hobbies, Game Haven provides the only source for everyone to try out games, meet up with friends to play, and to have space for new experiences in person and in real life, rather than meeting up with friends to game online. The store includes ample space in the former Salt Therapy location next to Papa Murphy’s, the UPS store and Ace Hardware in the Village Mall.
In our current atomized and dissociated communities where isolation is rampant among far too many young people, Kevin spoke of providing an outlet for people to be together, to have fun, and create actual human connections. Not to put too fine of a point on it, this is something that is otherwise completely lacking in the Waunakee community. While there are ample opportunities for athletics, for senior citizens, and for anyone who wants to get drunk, there is effectively nowhere for people to meet new people or to gather with friends in a quasi-public community space that doesn’t involve alcohol or athletics. For all the crusading done by well-intentioned local organizations, I’ve never heard anyone (other than churches) pitch anything to confront social isolation.
Doffing a black fedora, I got the sense that Thornberg has little interest in being anything but completely authentic. No one wearing a fedora in 2024 can truly care overmuch about controlling what other people think of them. From handling impromptu pleas for local athletic fundraisers and local civic groups, to dealing with lawyers, to watching his kids while at the store, and even in taking brief phone calls, he moves through his day to day life with a palpable intent to create positive social space.
Robert Putnam wrote in his foundational work, Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital, that there “is reason to believe that deep-seated technological trends are radically “privatizing” or “individualizing” our use of leisure time and thus disrupting many opportunities for social-capital formation.” When Putnam wrote that in 1995, the technological trend away from social leisure time was pinned on television. Today, the obvious culprit is the internet, with social media, online gaming, and whatever is the latest-greatest dopamine distributor pulling our attention away from in-person interactions.
Thornberg, via Game Haven, expressly intends to give the Waunakee community a place to be with others, without judgment, expectation or exclusion and above-all-else: in person. He doesn’t even have aggressively capitalistic intentions, in that he is not banking his financial well-being on this store and is not intent on extracting immediate profits from the venture. In short, he’s not quitting his day job just to make a business. When he shows he wants to provide valuable social capital to the community, I believe it.
What I find most interesting about the use of gaming to create social capital, lies precisely in what in-person games are at their core: expressions of freedom and power within the confines of specific rules.
“We’re not fuckin’ animals. We live in a society.“
- Jim Jefferies
Take for example my personal favorite role-playing game: Call of Cthluhu, based on the writings of H.P. Lovecraft. In a standard game, players create a character and pretend to be that individual through the entirety of the game (role-playing). The game, usually a set scenario, is run by a game master (known in Cthulhu as the “Keeper of Arcane Lore” or simply “The Keeper”). The rules are fairly straightforward, in that the players are usually investigating some sort of mystery or event of note, usually ending in some or all of the players’ characters going insane or killed through exposure to eldritch horrors (or are otherwise successful in their quests).
Regardless of the outcomes, what RPGs like Call of Cthluhu (or the far more well-known Dungeons and Dragons) provide is the opportunity to be something beyond yourself while still being social with other people, all with the goal to create amusement, fun and positive experiences. And while I cynically point out these games are owned by corporations that are really seeking your money, from the multi-national Hasbro, to international companies like Games Workshop, to small companies like Chaosium, they are all focused on sales involving human interaction at their core. And they make money by ensuring they keep the fun going.
If you “lose” a board game, you just pick up the pieces and play again. If your RPG character “dies” you can probably find some way to revive them, and if you can’t, you get to create a whole new character. This is no different from the other games offered at Game Haven, from the Pokemon Trading Card Game or standard board games. Game Haven even offers a pathway into deeper hobbies, like the insanely intricate (and expensive) mini universe of Warhammer 40K.
I don’t write much about entirely positive subjects, so I’m thrilled spread a little bit of attention to something that is not only entirely positive, but one that needs the community’s support. If our community values social well-being, and if it wants to be more than simply a bedroom community, it needs people like Thornberg and places like Game Haven.
I wouldn’t have initially thought that a guy like Kevin Thornberg would look like all Waunakee needs, but meeting him and touring Game Haven left me positively considering the possibilities of an expanding community with spaces for everyone.
“Burning Down the House”
Study produced for Village of Waunakee proposing dramatic changes to the Waunakee Area Fire District.
Several months ago, the Waunakee Village Board authorized the retention of McMahon Public Safety and Municipal Management to conduct a study of the Waunakee Fire Department/District on the issues of staffing, operational effectiveness, funding, and governing structure.
The current Waunakee Area Fire District is nominally managed by a Fire District Board made up of 5 elected officials, two from Waunakee and three from Vienna, Springfield and Westport (one each). The current representatives on the Fire District are Robert McPherson and Nila Frye from Waunakee, John Cuccia (Westport), Matt Wright (Springfield), and Gary Endres (Vienna). The Fire District contracts with the Waunakee Fire Department (an independent volunteer-run organization) to provide firefighting and other services. Surprisingly, only one employee of the Fire Department is technically employed by the Fire District: Battalion Chief/Fire Inspector Brian Adler.
A brief review of meeting minutes and notes from the previous half decade suggests the Fire District Board, up until recently, has largely abrogated its authority over the Fire Department to the volunteer members of the Waunakee Fire Department, who have effectively run it themselves. By all available accounts, community satisfaction with the Fire Department is high and from a limited external view, the Department appears to be well-run and organized and is described by the report in no terms worse than “adequate”.
The Fire District is governed by an intergovernmental agreement between the four municipalities since the mid 1990s under which each community would pay a proportion of the Fire District’s costs based on equalized land values within each community served. Because of this agreement, which the municipalities entered into during a time in which Waunakee had a much lower population (and lower land values), the Village of Waunakee has, over the course of the last 30 years, grown to now paying over 70% of the Fire District’s costs while having no functional control over the district. Yes, you read that correctly: the adjacent communities hold voting control over Waunakee’s own fire district with their three votes to Waunakee’s two, all while paying less than 30% of its costs.
In an almost absurd outcome, Waunakee controls only 40% of the vote over the district, while paying 71% of the district’s expenses. In contrast, Springfield controls 20%, while paying 5.7% of district costs. Vienna pays only 0.97% of district costs, while maintaining 20% of the district’s voting control.
In summary, Waunakee provides over 70% of funding for Fire District, yet has no functional control over it short of the power to withdraw from the intergovernmental agreement and terminate the fire district (an effective nuclear option). Because of this delineation of control, there has been no functional oversight over the Fire Department by elected officials or any municipal employee in decades.
It is unclear why the Village allowed the Fire District to turn into a runaway train controlled (or ignored) by outside municipalities under former Village Presidents John Laubmeier and Chris Zellner. Under new Village President Kristin Runge, it appears outsider control over the Fire Department will come to a swift end.
Further, given the effective non-governmental status of the Fire Department as a volunteer organization, the Waunakee FD is largely not subject to open records laws or other methods of public oversight. For this and a variety of other reasons, the current structure of the district has been described by sources within the Village as non-viable long-term, and it may currently be outright illegal (or in non-compliance with various state statutes).
The McMahon report explicitly recommends a dramatic reorganization of the Fire District and the Fire Department itself to change this.
Particular recommendations of note:
- Effectively re-organize the Fire District to confer no less than majority control to the Village of Waunakee.
- Update the Intergovernmental Agreement to immediately create an independent Fire Commission to appoint the Fire Department’s Fire Chief (currently chosen by members) and to confirm appointment of officers and members (currently chosen by members).
- Independently audit the Fire District through an independent accountant and present the findings to the Fire Board.
- Make a variety of large scale changes to prepare the Fire District for eventual 24/7 staffed fire coverage, with a plan towards hiring an entire first shift staff by 2029 and full-time staffing and phase-out of the volunteer department by 2039.
Perhaps the most dire warning by the Report is contained deep in its analysis, noting:
An alternative, if additional board seats or supermajority voting cannot be achieved in the governance, is for the Village of Waunakee to leave the District and create a municipal fire department with the assets it obtains. The Village’s Fire Department could then contract with interested townships for service and ultimately have full control of the financial and operational issues in the fire department. (p 27, Final Report)
In such an event, the Village leaving the Fire District could prove financially catastrophic for Westport, Vienna and Springfield, as the termination of the agreement would mandate those municipalities to buy out their shares in the current fire district assets owned by Waunakee, and in turn then forced into buying fire protection services from Waunakee or other municipalities, such as Middleton or Madison.
The documents in their entirety are as available for download here:
Waunakee Community School District Passes 3 Year DEI Plan
“Save it, Get Gone, Shut Up.”
Following another election in which openly conservative candidates fail to gain traction in Waunakee following the publication of direct attacks on the school district over DEI and LGBT+ issues, where will the community turn?
Last week, the Dane Undivided blog posted an anonymous screed, titled “Gender-Bending Books at Waunakee School District’s Camp Kindergarten” with such catchy subheadings as “Are Schools Fostering Gender Dysphoria?” and makes the following closing argument to a WCSD audience within short distance before a School Board election where at least one conservative candidate is openly seeking to do battle with “DEI” in schools:
“Most parents want their elementary aged children to be taught valuable academics at school. We want the school to stay out of trying to influence our child about thier [sic] sexual identity. We see great harm being done even by reading books to our children about gender identity. But the bottom line is that our schools are not what we want them to be. They’re mostly not run by people we can trust. In truth, our schools have been captured, and many of the teachers and administrators who staff them think they’re actually doing our children a favor by teaching lessons on gender identity. Parents who sit back these days run the real risk of seeing their children isolated from them and permanently damaged. Is it a risk you’re willing to take?If any of this information concerns you, then you should demand to be fully informed on every single book, lesson, survey, and activity that your child is doing at school. It’s not just Waunakee that’s taking liberties…”
In short, the Anonymous Author sees “great harm” in a book being read to children about a boy who puts on a dress with some pretty pictures. Further, the author claims our schools are “not run by people we can trust” and suggests the schools are permanently damaging children by reading such books as “Julian At the Wedding”.
As any recent parent of a young child knows, if you read to your kids, you’re likely to end up reading a panoply of boring, inane or otherwise forgettable works of art designed to sell books to parents desperately holding off sticking their children in front of a tablet. Julian at the Wedding is a fairly anodyne entry in the thousands upon thousands of books in the milieu of children’s literary entertainment. If you’re tired of reading Paw Patrol or Roald Dahl to your kids, you can read a book about a boy who tries on a dress at a Big Lesbian Wedding and then dances at the party. BFD.
Perhaps those afraid of Julian are afraid of the sequels to this work of fiction (that they’ve created in their own brains), including: “Julian Scores a Hat-Trick on the U8 Girls Soccer Team”; “Julian Decides That Peeing Sitting Down is Preferable”; and “Julianna’s Grandparents Are Cancelled for Deadnaming”.
“At Heritage Elementary in Waunakee, WI, we definitely see some things happening around both LGBTQ+ and gender-bending books that administrators want to keep in the dark.”
Anonymous Author on Dane Undivided
I must respectfully disagree. I filed an open records request on March 26, 2024 with the Waunakee Community School District, as follows:
I never believed there was anything happening in the school district related to LGBTQ+ or “gender bending books” that the district wants to keep in the dark. This is buoyed by the fact that multiple individuals have done records requests over the last 2 years regarding these issues, and the district has presumably responded. The records obtained today (April 3, 2024) in response to my request are addressed below.
The individual who requested the information disclosed in the Dane Undivided piece stated her name is “Ruth Nelson”. I’ve attempted to contact the only Ruth Nelson I could find who lives in the Waunakee area and have received no comment.
It is unclear why Dane Undivided decided to redact Nelson’s name from the email chain.
Dane Undivided’s desire to prevent things from being kept “in the dark” clearly does not extend to their own identities.
It is not clear if Nelson is the author of the Dane Undivided piece, or if they were merely the conduit of information to the anonymous authors. Regardless, I place no value judgment on Mx. Nelson, as nothing in their emails indicates any level of animosity towards anyone, as they merely requested information from the District.
Further, the following documents display the records requests the district received from other individuals related to DEI, CRT, gender issues in the last two years:
- Five (5) requests from an “Ann Marie Malich” (who bizarrely copies Board of Education member Ted Frey on every email).
- A request from (presumably failed BOE candidate) “Zach Jensen” in which they claim that a teacher “read a book either about or involving drag queens, and then showed a subsequent video of similar content to her first grade class”.
- A request from a “Greg Gentz” over a spectacularly broad range of items.
And in a grand dénouement, these are those dastardly lesson plans in which Waunakee Camp Kindergarten teachers plot the destruction of the gender dichotomy that has upheld western civilization for +2000 years.
In summary:
Waunakee district staff are not grooming children. Don’t be stupid.
Teachers are not pushing gender ideology in class. No one really thinks this.
They are doing the best job they can to teach children through a transiently hostile work environment created by chronically misinformed, jughooting muppets.
Email your child’s teacher(s) today and tell them they’re doing a good job.
That’s what I’m going to do. And while you’re at it, email your Board of Education representatives and tell them to visibly speak out against this nonsense.
Last night, Mark Hetzel absolutely rinsed his challenger for his long-held board seat. If that’s not a mandate to support what Mark has already been doing by supporting public schools, I’m not sure what is. To his credit, Mark actually has already publicly fought back against Dane Undivided drivel while most others remained silent.
Above all else, I’m selfish. I’m supposed to be retired from these issues. I’m sure they’d be thrilled to never hear from me again. Maybe even tell the BOE members that if they bothered to publicly advocate for their staff and shut bad faith individuals down, “Mike Brandt might actually shut the fuck up for a change.”
It’s not likely, but it’s obviously worth a shot. ;-D
Blame It (On the Alcohol)
Octopi Executives appear to be quietly lobbying Waunakee Village Board members to continue tax incentives despite Octopi’s recent sale to the multinational beverage holding company, Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd.
“Cause shawty know what she want
Jamie Foxx
But she don’t wanna seem like she easy”
(or developers, singing about Waunakee, probably)
The Village of Waunakee, over the course of the last half decade plus, has provided a dramatic amount of tax-incrementalized financing to the development of Octopi Brewing, LLC, located in the Waunakee business park off Hogan Road. Given the dramatic local investment in the spot, it’s odd that the local media has barely reported on the sale of Octopi to Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. of Japan early last month. Specific terms of sale have not been publicly disclosed. Asahi has publicly noted the property was purchased to develop North American distribution of its current Japanese beer product line.
Given that local media appears relatively uninterested in reporting on the sale, it should surprise no one that there is literally zero coverage of the private lobbying of Village officials that Octopi has been engaging in over the course of the last month. Multiple sources have confirmed that Mr. Isaac Showaki has held closed-door meetings with most, if not all, members of the Waunakee Village Board of Trustees. These private meetings have been held in advance of today’s Village Board meeting, which has publicly noticed the aspirational title for a “Presentation by Isaac Showaki on Asahi/Octopi Future Growth Plans in Waunakee and Introduction to Asahi“. With many aspects of government, the meetings available to the public are at times conducted after understandings have already been reached. It remains to be seen how Village officials will react to Mr. Showaki’s public presentation, nor how Waunakee will exercise its rights under the current TIF agreement, if at all.
In private meetings with Village Board members, sources communicated that it was disclosed that Octopi was sold to Asahi with the hope that the Village would not enforce the current TIF agreement with Octopi and terminate the TIF/TID early, and that it would effectively transfer the TIF to new owners. In short, Showaki and Asahi will presumably ask the Village to decline to enforce claw-back provisions in the TIF agreement with Waunakee, and ask that the Village continue to provide the TIF/TID to the new owners.
It is not clear how waiving protections in the TIF agreement would benefit anyone but Octopi’s owners, old or new.
Given the mere title of their presentation, Mr. Showaki and representatives from Asahi will likely tell the Village Board (in public) that continuing the TIF is necessary to create future investments in the Octopi/Asahi property in Waunakee, the implicit threat being that investment in the property may not continue if the Village doesn’t authorize Octopi/Asahi to draw on money from the TID increment for its own internal improvements.
This may come as a surprise to local residents, who are likely in the dark concerning the agreements between Waunakee and Octopi. Most community members certainly are unaware that the Village has agreed to pay up to “$1,190,000” to a developer for internal improvements, effectively to defray costs, increase a business’s profitability, or to pay off its own lender. See Section 8.c. of the Development Agreement linked in this article. The local media hardly covers Waunakee’s aggressive use of tax-incrementalized financing, nominally designed to incentivize development that would not happen “but for” the government assistance conferred through complex agreements between developers and municipalities. In short, TIF are tax breaks only available in Waunakee to developers who can convince gormless and ignorant local elected officials that they won’t invest otherwise. How many voters realize that several current elected officials actually voted to effectively cut a blank check to businesses for their own internal growth? Do they know which elected officials lobbied against it?
From the Village’s website regarding TIF
Each project should demonstrate sufficient need for financial assistance. In accordance with State law, the Village will not provide TIF assistance unless the proponent can demonstrate that “but for” the use of TIF, the project could not proceed as proposed. The burden is on the requesting party to prove that the proposed project would not be feasible without Village assistance.
Waunakee’s legal team drafted the TIF agreement which authorizes the Village to claw back TIF funding in the event the TIF-supported properties were sold, the idea being that the agreement for development was between a developer and the Village to grow and sustain the local tax base, not to help a business dress up and twerk for a global corporate investor. In short, the Village extracted a promised investment. What Village elected officials are being asked to do is effectively to :
1) presumably continue to ignore that the tax breaks weren’t really needed to develop;
2) hold that the TIF should be continued;
3) pretend that the TIF wasn’t merely to make a business more marketable; and
4) continue to make TIF available to new owners, despite their own investment in the property being based on building a North American distribution center, not for the tax assistance provided at a mere municipal level.
Once again, Waunakee is left to decisions made by elected official(s) who are demonstrably illiterate on million dollar issues. You get what you vote for, and the cost to giving developers whatever they want could cost local taxpayers those same millions. I have no objection to a business doing whatever it can to make a profit. No fault to Octopi/Asahi for fighting for a great deal. Scorn and derision should be reserved for elected officials picking corporations over community, and connected developers over local longtime residents.
‘A Report to the Shareholders’
As previously promised, all emails sent to the Waunakee Community School District, published per an open records to the WCSD, completed by Mr. Randy Guttenberg and provided to me today, June 7, 2023.
The records request, dated May 22, 2023, read as follows:
Hi Rebecca:
Can you please forward me copies of all emails the district (just going off of emails rec’d by Ms. Ensign, Mr. May, and Mr. Guttenberg to limit it) has received re: Former Coach Mackenzie in the last two weeks?
I’ve had some people say that only negative stuff gets shared, and I’m going to publish everything on all sides, good, bad, neutral, etc.
Can you please also share or otherwise post the letters the district got back in October 2022? There were a bunch of letters/emails from the 10/24/22 meeting that the minutes said would be available in the extras, but I don’t believe they were ever posted.
Thank you! Hope you are well.
The following PDFs are all emails received by the BOE from October and May regarding Mr. Mackenzie, offered without commentary beyond this:
1. Whoever claimed there were “hundreds” of emails and comments sent to the district was dramatically exaggerating. There are about 25.
2. Ms. Ensign noted that the BOE decision to non-renew Mr. Mackenzie was a unanimous 7-0 vote.
3. Not a single email references anything that the BOE apparently used to make their decision.
Waunakee & Friends 