Joe4Waunakee

The April 2, 2024 election is a little over over 90 days away.  Certainly there are many people who already know me, there is a lot of information available online with a simple Google Search , my LinkedIn profile is kept up-to-date , and my voting record is available to anyone who wants to look .  But the truth remains - one of the best ways to really get to know someone is to sit down and have an actual conversation. My initial thought was to schedule a handful of events where people could just drop in.  I may still hold some of those events - dates/times/locations TBD.  Of course the biggest problem with any drop-in event is actually having people show up.  If I were handing out hundred dollar bills, I'm confident that a lot of people would show up.  But lets be honest - talking local politics doesn't have the same draw as cash.  And I hope the moral and legal problems with handing out cash to voters while running for office are pretty obvious! So I...

One of the things that I pride myself on is missing village meetings only when absolutely necessary. While I did not analyze my committee attendance record, I did look closely at the 38 village board meetings that have occured so far during my curent term. I was present at 35 of them - and therefore absent for exactly 3 of them (that's less than 8% - for reference, someone who receives 4 weeks of vacation per year will miss roughly 8% of their work days). Two of my missed meetings were the result of family vacations (with the village president and village staff being notified months in advance to facilitate scheduling), and one was the result of an on-call issue with my full-time job (further discussion below). My preference and goal is to be present at every single meeting, but as we all know, work-life balance is important, even when part of that equation is an elected office. In the situation of my on-call absence, a system outage had occurred at approximately 3pm. By the tim...

Just after 8am on Thursday, December 21, I arrived at Waunakee Village Hall and officially submitted my nomination papers for the April 2, 2024 election.  By mid-afternoon, they were officially accepted, and verified. Based on the village web site ( https://www.vil.waunakee.wi.us/1131/April-2-2024-Spring-Election ), so far, two candidates (myself and Nila Frye) will appear on the ballot to fill three village board seats.  Erin Moran is a potential incumbent as well, but has not filed a Declaration of Candidacy nor a Notification of Non-Candidacy yet.