Town Bias?
Did You Know?
During the recent Town Board Meeting on March 11, 2024, the Clerk/Treasurer of the Town of East Troy felt it necessary to add two comments to the end of her report to the board after declaring she needed to counteract “the lies” being posted. Here is exactly what she said:
28) Correction of Misinformation:
A) DPW Superintendent Scheel notified me that Mr. Jahner had placed campaign signs in the road right of way and that they would have to be moved within 24 hours. While he was still in my office, I immediately gave Mr. Jahner a courtesy call and notified him that campaign signs could not be in the road right of way and that the Department of Public Works would have to remove them if they were not moved, (The DPW does the same thing with all realtor signs that are placed in the right of way.) The signs are not destroyed but are placed by the dumpster behind the Town Shop building. The very next day, Superintendent Scheel said they were good, and only one sign was pulled. I again gave Mr. Jahner another courtesy call and told him that the pulled sign was by the DPW garage and he was welcome to pick it up anytime.
B) Not a single meeting video has been deleted since the Town started streaming its meetings and we, the staff, have no intention of doing so. To address the Clerk on her “Concerns of Misinformation” we offer the following Truth:
A) The “SignGate Fiasco” only has pertinence to the citizens of our town from two perspectives;
(1) is this sign policy fairly administered throughout the year, is the policy evenly applied to all signs and why are we enforcing county rules instead of the confusing Town ordinances?
(2) Why are there no Bill Wucherer signs found behind the town hall dumpster even though there are many examples posted on Informed Citizen’s Facebook Page of flagrant violations? In fact, a Bill Wucherer sign has continued to be in the ROW (well outside the utility box line) on East Shore Drive just after you leave County Road J since at least 3/4/2024. This sign was still there on 3/13/2024 and I suspect it is still there today!
So… we’ve concluded that flagrant violations are OK if it’s Bill Wucherer’s campaign materials but NOT ok for anyone else… Got it.
B) The WTTP Post did not say that the Town employees were deleting videos of the town meetings! In fact, what was recommended by the Communication Committee was to retain videos as “Public Records” for seven years per state statute. Instead, the Board passed the ordinance to treat videos as “sources for minute’s creation” reducing the MANDATORY retention period to 90 days only! Nothing has been deleted yet, but the Town employees can legally delete the videos after 90 days! We will be watching to see if that happens in the future!
Link to PDF Of Clerk/Treasurer Report by Kim Buchanan, WCMC February 2024.