This week is full of questions. And the darndest thing is that good questions often have tough answers, or sometimes, no answers at all.

Take our elections on Tuesday for example. Who do we vote for on Tuesday? How many of us will even vote at all? Will it make a difference who wins?

We have both local elections and the Presidential Primary on Tuesday, of course. Will the outcome of the Presidential Primary determine the fate of this great nation of ours? Maybe not: after all, we’re only one state, and it’s only a Primary election. But then again, maybe so: every vote counts.

But consider this: if we don’t see a clear victor in the primary elections this spring, we may see a “Brokered Convention” for the Republican Party later this year. That is, if there aren’t enough “pledged” delegate votes to elect a Republican candidate on the first round of voting, then there could be multiple rounds of negotiation and arm-twisting and debates and speeches and then a vote, repeated dozens of times. There hasn’t been a brokered convention since 1952, with Adlai Stevenson eventually getting the Presidential nomination at the Democratic Convention. Will people be interested in a brokered convention, excited even? Or will it all fall flat?

Or another issue: will Democrats, who have no real presidential primary to vote in, cross over and vote in the Republican Primary? Probably. But in large numbers? Will they vote for whoever they see as the weakest candidate against President Obama? Is there any identifiable “weakest” Republican candidate against the President? We’ll just have to wait and see.

How about the local races? Are there any local races that really matter? Any that really count?

All of the Judicial races on our Little Chute ballot are uncontested, including the race of our own Municipal Judge Sue Hammen. There are two School Board candidates for two spots on the Little Chute School Board, so this is also an uncontested race. One of the County Supervisor races is uncontested also: Donald DeGroot has no opponents in his race (District 14,   map).

But the Appleton School District election (wards 1 and 3) IS contested. And so is the Kaukauna School District election (Wards 2, 4 and 12) with four candidates for only 2 positions.

In addition, two County Supervisor races are contested. The district 13  (map,)  race is between Jason Fischer and Leroy Van Asten. The district 15  (map,)  race is between Dan Schommer and Ken Vanden Heuvel.  Dan Schommer is the incumbent from old District 23 and Ken Vanden Heuvel is the incumbent from old District 19.

But the most hotly contested Local race on the ballot is the Village Trustees race. There are six candidates for the three Village Board seats. Two of these candidates are incumbents: Tammy Frassetto and Jim Hietpas (Trustee Dan Mahlik isn’t running for re-election). Two of the candidates have held office previously, and also ran for a seat on the Board last year: John Elrick and Brian Joosten. And there are two newcomers to this race: Jessica Schultz and Larry Van Lankvelt. Most of these candidates, with the exception of Jim Hietpas, have write-ups at the Post Crescent.

So, how will three of these six candidates tackle the challenges confronting the Village?  That’s a good question, and their statements at the Post Crescent give us some inkling into how they’ll approach their responsibilities, if elected. But what ARE the major issues confronting the Board? That, indeed, is a more difficult question.

Here’s a thought about one major issue that we at LittleChuteMatters.org were closely involved with last fall. In October and November of 2012, we were researching a series of articles about how well the health plans from the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds (ETF) work for our Village and our Village employees. The issue of health insurance coverage was contentious at that time because of the impact of the health plans on union contracts, non-unionized staff pay and retiree coverage. The issue became even more charged because of repeated representations by some that Governor Walker’s signing of Act 10 put additional constraints on what the Village could and couldn’t do in matters of Health Insurance. We thought that LittleChuteMatters.org might be able to clear up some of the confusion surrounding the issues with a series of articles on how the ETF health insurance plans work.

In the middle of our research on these articles however, we found that the Village of Little Chute had been managing the ETF Health Insurance plans in a manner inconsistent with the ETF’s requirements for the plans over a period of many years. We documented our research, findings and conversations with the ETF, and brought the issue to the attention of Trustee Jim Hietpas. It took several months of diligence, but eventually Jim Hietpas’ efforts to correct the errors and clarify our Village’s management procedures paid off. Going forward, the ETF’s health plans will be administered in Little Chute as required by the Wisconsin Department of Employee Trust Funds.

However, the resistance by some of the Village staff to acknowledge errors and clarify administrative processes is troubling to us. Village staff aren’t elected officials like the Village Trustees are. They’re employees hired to work at the direction of the Board of Trustees, for the benefit of all of the people of Little Chute. So what should the relationship be between the Village staff and the Board of Trustees? How should Villagers address perceived errors on the part of Village staff, whether the perceived errors are eventually verified or not? How should Village staff treat Village residents when there’s a disagreement on matters critical to one side or the other? These are good questions, without clear-cut answers at this time. But the next Village Trustees will, in one way or another, have to address questions like this.

And there are other issues as well. Take for instance, the recent presentation by the Little Chute School District on Tuesday’s referendum question on the ballot. David Botz gave a power point presentation to the Village Board in mid March, on the technology needs of the school district. The total increase in the school tax levy needed to pay for the technology upgrades, will be greater than $1.5 Million over the next five-year period. The money from the increased taxes will be used for needed improvements to the school’s computer equipment room that currently houses many of the school system’s computers, as well as new wiring and wireless routers. But the money will also be used to give expanded access to student’s own smartphones and i-pod/i-pad type devices for in-class learning.

Trustee Tammy Frassetto raised a question at that presentation that we at LittleChuteMatters.org think went right to the heart of the matter: How will children who don’t have these personal technological devices participate in classes that are massively geared toward in-class personal computing equipment? If a child’s family either can’t afford the personal smart-phone, or believe on principle that 6-year-olds shouldn’t have their own personal i-pad, how does this impact the education of the child? Are there any education options, except the one laid out in this presentation?

Even though the Village Board doesn’t have any say-so over the School District’s decision to put this referendum on the ballot, Village Trustees (and County Supervisors) face similar questions in their own work. Under what circumstances should the tax levy disproportionately benefit just one part of the residents of our Village or County? Or to put it another way, if some minority of the public doesn’t benefit from the programs initiated by the taxing authority, if they indeed must pay out-of-pocket expenses as well as taxes for a program that richly benefits others, if they have no choice but to comply with a policy that they disagree with in principle: is such a policy a reasonable public policy? Or is such a policy an abridgment of the rights and freedoms of the good people of our Village and County?

There are many more such issues and questions. One such issue is the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in financial guarantees that the Village may have to pay to Evergreen LC Development, LLC over a period of five or more years. These payments from the Village to the developer were agreed to in a May 2009 contract between our Village and a local developer. The idea was to make financial guarantees to the developer to attract development into the Village. But things went south since 2009. The Village appears to be on-the-hook for what could amount to a million dollars (or more) of financial guarantees. Jim Hietpas has sought to nail down the range of payments that the Village may be liable for, and the Village is now considering its alternatives.

But the question is: with 20/20 hindsight, was this 2009 contract the right plan for Little Chute? Would we do the same thing today, take the same financial risks today that our Village took in 2009? How can we better identify ahead of time the financial risk of these kinds of contracts, and manage them better in the future?

And there are some success stories too. The “handshake agreement” between the Heesacker family and the Village of Little Chute in the 1950’s that established Heesacker park has been adopted as a written resolution by the Board of Trustees. Don DeGroot (past Village President and one of our County Supervisors) and Bill Peerenboom (one of our current Village Trustees) both worked very hard to see this Resolution through to the end. Village staff and the Heesacker family are pleased with the resulting agreement.

Still, why did it take 50 years for this Resolution to be codified and approved by the Board of Trustees? If it’s the right thing to do today, to memorialize the “handshake” that took place in the late 1950’s, wouldn’t it have been the right thing to do in 1980, or 1990, or even in 2010?

Answering these kinds of questions may be tough for our elected officials. But not answering questions like this, or at least failing to grapple with the questions, guarantees that we won’t see the kinds of improvements that we’ve come to expect in our community.

We at LittleChuteMatters.org hope that you all turn out on election day, and participate fully in the workings of our Republic, this great experiment in democracy that we call the United States of America. May God bless us all !

the Editor