Spring 2023 Primary Results

Below are the results of the Spring 2023 Primary, as per Eau Claire County Clerk’s office:

I would like to congratulate Mmes. Kurtz, Geske, Anderson, and Mattson, who are continuing on to the general election. Obviously, I will not be joining them. As the lowest vote recipient, I’m out.

My percentage of the vote dropped a substantial 60.93%, from 16.97% of the vote last cycle to a mere 10.34% of the vote this cycle, while at the same time the total number of voters actually increased by 162.82%. In fact, I received one less vote than I did last cycle, when I was running alone against Mr. Wright, which saddens and surprises me, as I spent roughly eight times more time out there, pounding pavement, knocking on doors, and listening to and talking with my fellow community members, all at the expense of my own family’s time with me.

I will still be waiting and watching for the Village Board election results when that time comes after April 4th, but as I received half as many votes for that board last time as I did for the school board, I won’t be holding my breath.

This is, frankly, disheartening to me, to fare so poorly. I understand that my presentation can be abrasive, and that I’m often times saying things that people don’t want to hear. It’s only because I care so much that I say these things, because I feel that they need to be said when nobody else seems to be speaking these truths. Everything that I do comes from a place of trying to improve things, to make them better, for our children.

However, the electorate, my fellow citizens, don’t believe that I am the one to fill that role this year, and I must accept that.

I will continue to try to reach out to you all one-on-one, time permitting, and to have the conversations that are necessary to learn just what it is that my fellow Fall Creek residents are seeking, so that I can be a better representative to you, and try to understand what it is exactly that you all are looking for. I’ve been told during my campaign that the people want to hear only positive things, fluff and smiles, and that they turn on ANY serious discussion or criticism, even constructive criticism, and that I was foolish to try to bring up such things. I didn’t want to believe that, as I was more optimistic about my fellow citizen’s desire to have serious civil discussions about important topics regarding the District’s well-being. I never was one to hold a “Pollyanna” viewpoint about things, I’ve always tried to be a realist. But, perhaps these results are proof that I was wrong, and that that viewpoint is what is actually desired by the people.

Regardless, with this utter failure, I can no longer justify spending so much time away from my family to attend and record meetings that the electorate does not appear to want me at. It is my hopes that the boards will voluntarily pick up this practice, and push to increase transparency in our local governments. I still believe that there is a deep-rooted desire in our hearts for us to know what’s going on around us, and not just what decisions are made, but HOW they are made.

I am not going away, I never will. I care too much to do that. However, I will be substantially quieter for the near future, and perhaps that’s for the best for everyone. My only regret is that I won’t be in any position to serve the community for the next year in a way that I’m confident that I could have done well in, if given the chance.

Village President Nominee Letters

It was brought to my attention that both nominees for Village President had sent letters to Fall Creek citizens. While I find it strange that I wasn’t included on these mailing lists, as I’ve been a resident for over a decade, I’ll have to assume it was a simple mistake.

Luckily, a kind citizen has given me access to these documents, so I have scanned them and provided them here, for anyone else that was left off of their mailing lists:

Karen-Hurd-Letter-1Download
Tim-Raap-LetterDownload

Tri-County Area Times – My Questionnaire Responses

**CORRECTION** I made the incorrect assumption below that the Tri-County Area Times had successfully contacted all nominees for the School Board. After it being pointed out to me that this was incorrect, I double checked my physical copy of the paper (which you can buy at Fall-Mart if supplies are still there!), and discovered that the editor only successfully contacted myself, AnneMarie Anderson, and Amy Kurtz. Jess Mattson and Jill Geske were NOT contacted.

The Tri-County Area Times e-mailed all of the candidates for School Board and asked them the same questions. Below are the questions, as well as my responses to them. Please don’t forget, that the primary is tomorrow! 7AM-7PM. You should be able to register the same day if you need to, as long as you bring a form of picture ID and proof of Fall Creek residency!

1). What criteria and qualities will you be looking for in hiring a new Superintendent for the Fall Creek School District?

Fall Creek has had an excellent program of celebrating and advertising the District’s successes. I would like to see our new Superintendent continue that tradition. They should also be a person that is focused on academic success, first and foremost above all other things, as that is the primary purpose of the school district – to educate our children, the best that we can. They should be intimately knowledgeable in the way that the Department of Public Instruction judges schools, and seek to use that knowledge to support continual, measurable improvement. They should have integrity, believe in full transparency, and be honest and unafraid to talk about areas for improvement.

2). What aspects in terms of how the District functions are you satisfied with and like to keep the same and are there things that you would like to see changed or improved?

Our office staff and educators are excellently professional and very good at what they do. They also care deeply about the success of our children, as I do. That does not need to change. 

What I would like to see changed however, is the Board of Education itself. It should act as a check and balance for the Superintendent, rather than a rubber stamp for their policies. While not necessarily adversarial, a good Board of Education should be filled with passionate people that represent a cross section of the electorate. There should be strong, deep discussions about the challenges facing the District, and vigorous but civil debate should not only be tolerated, but in fact be fostered and encouraged.

Transparency should be strongly encouraged, and if I get on the Board, I’ll push to have it codified in the Board’s written policies that all meetings will be video recorded and published on the District’s website, along with the informational packets that the board members receive at the start of the meetings. I would like to see these packets provided to the public BEFORE the meetings, so that the citizenry can make educated comments at the start of Board meetings before the issues are discussed and voted on by Board members.

Additionally, I would like to put forward what I call the “Take a Break Act”, which would set term limits on Board Members. These term limits would, however, NOT be absolute. Board members would be able to serve two consecutive terms, and then must wait for one full term before running for office again, at which point they can run for another two full terms before taking another break. In this way, the Board of Education and community can reap both benefits of having new blood, new ideas coming into the Board periodically, as well as the benefit of retaining the wisdom of Board members that wish to keep serving our community.

3). How can the Fall Creek School District benefit from the growth in the Chippewa Valley region (Eau Claire-Chippewa Falls-Lake Halle-Altoona) especially in terms of gaining new students?

I don’t think that a School District should be attempting to reap the “benefits” of any growth that may occur in the Valley, nor attempt to chase any specific growth in its student population. What I call “The Fallacy of Perpetual Growth”, I actually see as large a problem in our society that causes organizations to continue to push for greater continual growth, while at the same time gutting their internal resources to fuel that growth, making their staff do more with less. I call this “The Jenga Effect”, and it inevitably results in the collapse of the organization. Enron, KMart, and WorldCom come immediately to mind as examples of this. This is short term thinking.

I would rather have our District practice long term thinking and prepare itself to handle the natural ebb and flow of the community’s population. Rather than focus on growth, focus on bolstering its own internal resources, improving on what they already do, which is to provide an excellent education to all students of the Fall Creek area.

2023 Spring Primary Nominees

Here’s a list of the current nominees for school board for the primary tomorrow, in ballot order, with links to their webpages and/or an “official” posting of their candidate statements. (*) Indicates incumbents:

Amy Kurtz – Personal Facebook, Candidate Statement
*Jill Geske – Personal Facebook, Candidate Statement
*AnnMarie Anderson – Personal Facebook, Candidate Statement
Jessica Mattson – Personal Facebook, Candidate Statement
West Bennett – Candidate Facebook, Candidate Statement

Endorsements and Promises

I’ve been giving thought to standard campaign practices lately. Two of them are campaign endorsements and promises. I’d like to talk for a moment about each, if I may.

Endorsements

Frankly, I don’t believe in them. They amount to a form of peer pressure, and I find them insulting to myself and my fellow citizens. The concept of endorsements suggests that citizens are too ignorant to make their own choices, and must rely on the opinions of others to form their own thoughts. I believe that anyone that pushes endorsements or seeks them thinks less of myself and my fellow citizens. I think more highly of us than that. I think we are wise enough to look at each candidate on an individual level, and decide for ourselves the measure of their worth and their words, and decide for ourselves whether we align with that candidate on the issues.

To that point, I will neither seek nor give any endorsements. Now, you may see some of my signage around town and consider this a hypocrisy to my previous statement. I, however, do not see these as endorsements, but rather as citizens that believe in free speech and have decided that the message on my sign is inoffensive enough to be worth being posted publicly. I do not expect their vote, nor do I expect them to pressure others to vote for me. A person with my signage on their lawn may or may NOT be voting for me. They may or may NOT believe in anything that I say or write. They just believe that information should be spread, so that the electorate has the ability to make the wisest choice possible.

I would be happy to share lawn space with any of my “competitors” for office, and I invite any local candidate running for Fall Creek office to place their signage on my lawn. More information is always better than less. When it comes to the state or national levels however? That’s where I have to be a bit more “choosy” because of how strongly tribalism has invaded those realms.

Promises

Promises can be hard to keep when you are in a governmental body that contains more than just yourself. Making outlandish promises like that you’ll make X or Y happen can just lead to disappointment if others in that body don’t share your views. As such, it would not be wise to make such promises. However, what I can promise is my own behavior.

Read More

Fall Creek Village Board Trustee Ballot Order

The names have been drawn, and below you can see the names of all of the individuals competing for three open spots on the Village Board. I have denoted incumbents with an asterisk (*) and attempted to link next to all candidates’ names either their official website(s), and/or their social media page(s), if I could find them, so that you can learn more about us.

  1. Karen Hurd* – Election Website, Business (2), 2022 Assembly Election (2), Personal Facebook (may be old/out of date)
  2. Mark Pranckus – Personal Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
  3. West Bennett – You’re on my election website, Facebook (2), LinkedIn
  4. Dusty Levasseur – Personal Facebook
  5. Karen Herbison* – Business, Facebook, LinkedIn
  6. Matt Mattoon* – Personal Facebook

If any of this information is inaccurate, please contact me and I will correct it immediately. Good luck to all those participating.

Upcoming Primary

Due to there being more than four candidates running, Fall Creek will be having a Spring Primary for the spots on the School Board on February 21, 2023.

I hope that I can count on the support of anyone reading this to show up on that day and vote for me to continue into the general election.

I’ll go ahead and publicly state here for the record my most important priorities if I got onto the School Board:

  • Transparency – People have busy lives, yet are still interested in the happenings of their local government. And I believe that they have a right to have such knowledge at their fingertips. As such, I’ve personally attempted to attend all of the school board meetings that I could and recorded and released the video of these meetings online for anyone to view at their leisure. I would like to make it policy that the school board choose to voluntarily do this, and to release it to their website within a week of the meeting occurring.
  • Accountability – the Fall Creek School District mission is stated as being “Committed to Academic and Personal Excellence”. Yet, from what I have seen from the outside looking in, barely any time at all in the school board meetings are actually devoted to discussing academic progress. Our teachers are doing the best that they can, and I’d like to help them to do even better. I will push to have academic excellence as the Board’s top priority again, and to include at the very least a short discussion on academic progress of the District and the School at every meeting. Ideally, I’d like us to use a “big data” approach so that we can view objective progress towards these goals. I’d like everyone to be able to see where we are, and where we are going, in clear and unambiguous terms. And us taxpayers should be able to see, at all times, just how well our schools are doing.
  • Dynamism – It is important that governments have both a constant churn and influx of new ideas, as well as to still maintain the experiences of those that came before. We need both youth, enthusiasm, and wise experience to be successful. As such, and to reduce stagnation, I propose what I call the “Take a Break” Act. Rather than setting absolute term limits, this act would allow sitting board members to serve for a maximum of two consecutive terms, after which time they are forbidden from running for another term until at least one full term has passed. After which time they may choose to again run for up to two more consecutive terms, repeating this pattern indefinitely. This gives others a chance to get in and get their ideas heard, while at the same time giving those with the drive and experience the ability to keep supporting our schools.

I hope that you can agree to these goals. I dearly wish the best for our students, and want to see them given the best possible education.

My Primary Ballot for August 9th

The State of Wisconsin, at https://myvote.wi.gov has a FANTASTIC app built into the website that lets you pre-fill a ballot form online, and then print it out. If you do this with your phone, you have a chance to export it as a PDF. This is a GREAT public service, and I appreciate it.

Now, you should note that this is NOT an official ballot. This is merely a web form that you can then print off and bring with you to the polling place, so that you can more easily remember who you’re going to vote for. No election security concerns here!

That being said, here’s my ballot, do you have yours ready for Tuesday? Let’s make it happen!

My BallotDownload
Tri-County Area Times Survey

Tri-County Area Times Survey

As a denouement to the election, I wanted to post a couple of surveys that I took that were sent to me by Sean Scallon, editor of the Tri-County Area Times (formerly called the “Augusta Area Times” before being eaten up by a larger company). Below are my answers to their survey questions. I wanted to be sure that I had them available on my site, as other sites and pages have a tendency to “disappear” given enough time.

Village Board

Why do you want to serve on the village board?

As a member of the Fall Creek community for a little over a decade now, this place has become my home. I grew up as a Navy brat, moving from place to place, never staying in one place for more than maybe 4 years at a time. I’d been looking for a true home my entire adult life. When I got here, to this community, and found my wonderful wife Rebecca, and looked around… I knew that this was home. And I want to try to help make it the best possible place to be. For myself, my wife, my kids, and for all of my fellow Crickets. It’s as simple as that.

With gas prices high and looking to stay that way for the foreseeable future, is the moment for Fall Creek to try and bring businesses to town like a grocery store or restaurant or others that would save drivers from trips to Eau Claire or Altoona and how should the village go about to attract such businesses?

Well, first of all, we have to reduce barriers to entry in the community. We need to take a good, hard look at our bylaws and ordinances, and ask ourselves if they are really necessary. A business will be less reluctant to move into the community, if they have to go through pages and pages of what are sometimes very archaic and silly rules. For one example, the entirety of section 6.1.6., “Animals, fowl and insects not permitted in the village.” would seemingly preclude most any kind of pet store that would attempt to sell anything beyond a typical dog or cat. No local exotic pet stores allowed in Fall Creek. We have to remove these kinds of barriers to entry. It’ll make it substantially easier for businesses that want to come into the Village to have a chance.

Another issue that’s come to my mind is that some local business owners feel that they have a lack of say or a vote when it comes to village matters, even though they are working to help build the community in their own ways. For one specific example, Kristi LaRosa of Kristi’s Sweets and Treats, a store which has become not only successful locally, but has also become something of a renowned institution. She has stated that even though she owns her business and her building, she cannot vote in elections in Fall Creek and she has no voice at all in the running of the Village, because her home of residence isn’t here. Yet, she provides so much to this community. She provides a gathering place for family and friends to meet, as well as a great place for lunch and sweets! We should be able to rectify such a situation as this, and give business owners the CHOICE over which district they vote in. Not allowing them to vote in more than one, mind you, but letting them choose where they want to voice their opinions, in all of the communities where they have a stake. As it stands right now, she has no chance to speak with her vote when it comes to decisions that the Village Board makes that might affect her business and livelihood. That’s just one example, I’m sure there are many more.

What are some upcoming challenges the village faces and what’s your plan for meeting them?

In the last few years, I’ve been blessed to be able to travel across Wisconsin with my family through areas such as Rice Lake, Spooner, Ashland, Bayfield, Eagle River, and more. And through those travels, I’ve seen the results of rural decline, and it’s not pretty. Communities eviscerated by the consolidation of family farms into corporate farms. Small Towns that dwindle when the factories closed and production moved elsewhere. The slow decay of abandoned buildings, barns, and sheds all over our great state. It’s truly disheartening. Fall Creek, as a small village, may also potentially fall victim to this. I believe, given enough time, it is inevitable if nothing is done about it. We need to do what we can to promote the prosperity of the Village and make it attractive, especially to young people, so that they want to stay after they graduate, and to draw young people from other places as well.

That includes, but is not limited to – increasing our standards at the schools, seeking out and communicating with regional entrepreneurs that wish to create new small start-up businesses, and developing further our recreational resources. We have a lot of beautiful outside space (such as the trail at Keller Park) that have seemingly not been updated or maintained in years from the looks of them. On top of that, we live in part of the world where it’s seemingly winter for nearly half the year and people don’t want to go out – yet we have no multipurpose functional indoor recreation center (not a gym) open to the public, where the public can get together and have fun with each other away from the bitter cold. These things are all within our capability and within our grasp, we just have to be willing to put forth the effort. I hope to be able to help push for these kinds of reforms.

School Board

Why do you want to serve on the school board?

I have two children in the Fall Creek School district, my twins Abby and Will, who are in the second grade. I’m running, simply, because I want the best for them. But not only for them. For all of the children of the Fall Creek School District. Our children deserve the best. Our children are our future. What we do now, today, will affect their lives and the future of our community for generations to come. Every little decision will have a big impact on hundreds of lives going forward. I originally put my hat into the ring because I wanted to have a bigger voice, and be a better advocate for my children’s education. But then I found more reasons to get onto the board.

You can find on my website, http://www.bennettforoffice.org, the District’s and the Schools’ numbers for the last five school years that we have data for, along with links directly to the DPI website if someone doesn’t trust the numbers I provide and wants to pull them themselves. After looking at the numbers from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I was surprised to see that, on paper at least, the Fall Creek School District does not in fact have the results that show that they are a fantastic school district, as public reputation and opinion seem to suggest. These numbers, this objective data, shows that Fall Creek is not in fact a top tier school district like we’ve all been lead to believe. It’s a “middling” school district in terms of actual results. This was again surprising and concerning to me.

We can have all the “good feelings” that we want about how we FEEL about our school, but will those good feelings help our children to be educated? Will those good feelings help them to prosper in the future? They will not. We need to take a serious look at these performance metrics, and at the inner working of the school district itself, find the “pain points”, and fix them.

What should be the district’s policies on COVID-19 or any other kind of pandemic for the future?

I am, politically and personally, a conservative libertarian. I truly believe that the government’s primary role should be to protect its citizenry from harm from others who attempt to violate their God-given rights. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, we “derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness”. That should be the single role of our government, to preserve those rights. And the ORDER of those rights is no accident. For you cannot have The Pursuit of Happiness without Liberty, and you cannot have Liberty without Life. That, as framed by the founders of our Constitution, are the order and importance of each of these rights, and the order in which they should be considered. A global pandemic is an extraordinary and rare event. The last time that we had a global pandemic of this magnitude was the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed anywhere from 17 to 100 million people, making it the second most deadly pandemic in human history next to the bubonic plague of the Middle Ages. COVID so far has killed anywhere from 6 to 24 million people worldwide.

Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures. Life should be preserved above Liberty, and Liberty above the Pursuit of Happiness. Death is the ultimate negator of every one of those rights. The District’s policies should reflect this. While I do not believe in vaccine mandates, as those are a violation of a person’s bodily autonomy, I do however believe in mask mandates, for one simple reason. “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. Your right to expel potentially deadly microbes through the air ends where my breathing space begins, it’s as simple as that. A person should not be permitted to cause harm to another person, that’s the one basic role of government, to prevent that.

I believe in Truth, and I believe in Science. The science has shown us that masks provably reduce (but do not completely prevent, mind you) contagion by the simple matter of blocking or reducing the number of water particulates from exiting them. Other barriers as well, such as distance and plexiglass, also help prevent the spread of those same particulates. So yes, I believe in mask mandates. However, I do NOT believe in living in a permanent state of fear. We must use statistical analysis and modern contagion modeling to determine the course and spread of disease, and adjust our measures accordingly. Mask mandates should only be in place when there is a very good risk of spreading something as extraordinary as a deadly pandemic further. When that pandemic has finally become manageably endemic, and natural immunity and vaccination rates are high enough, then those mandates can and should be dropped as soon as it’s been determined safe to do so. And who should make that call? In my opinion, the CDC. These are intelligent people who have spent a lifetime learning about, and whose entire JOBS are to study disease and its spread. If you’re not going to believe and trust in them to do their jobs properly, are you going to believe and trust in other media personalities that have far less expertise in such matters? I feel that it would be foolish to do so.

What are some upcoming challenges the district faces and what’s your plan for meeting them?

The primary challenge facing not just our district, but many others in Wisconsin, is rural decline, which is a very real phenomenon. Children who grow up in rural areas are much more likely to leave their home town than those in urban areas. While Fall Creek may be partly sheltered from this effect with its proximity to Altoona and Eau Claire (as the statistical data from the Census Bureau shows), it is in fact a very real danger lurking around the corner. The only way that we can prevent this kind of decline, is by providing things that the big cities can’t – a personal touch, a dedication to academic excellence, and the ability to adapt quickly to individual student needs. These are the kinds of things that you can’t get in the larger cities and towns. But in the Village of Fall Creek, with the student population size that we have? This is absolutely possible.

Our teachers are working hard to do their best in educating our children. We just need to ensure that they are getting the right resources that they need in the right places. And seeing many asks from our teachers for additional funds on the DonorsChoose website? I’ve donated to a few of them myself, but the NEED for them to me is indicative of the district failing to meet their teacher’s needs. And if the teacher’s needs aren’t being met, then the student’s needs certainly aren’t. I hope to be able to change that, and to help funnel resources in the right way, in the right places. For example, on the site at the moment I type this teachers have stated that they need more library materials for their classes, curricular materials to help our children learn how to read, and one teacher needed new kitchen and market play sets to help teach young children about those functions in our community. These are important projects, which should be funded by the district. That they are not, means that there is an issue with how we are managing our budget. I’d like to get in there and try to fix that, putting academics and learning first before all other things.