COVER FEATURE
by B.C. Kowalski
CITY COUNCIL CONTESTS More city council seats than not are being challenged this April
As City Pages and others have reported already, this year is surely a record for the number of contested races in area elections. The city council in particular is no exception. There were two primaries, and six of the 11 city council seats are being challenged. That means as many as six of the 11 seats could be brand new people to the council, and at least two will be since the incumbents stepped down. We’ve done our best to summarize each candidate below based on questionnaires sent to each of them. We’ve marked where there is an open seat with two newcomers facing off, and where someone currently holds the seat, we’ve marked them as an incumbent.
DISTRICT 1 (open seat)
Lukens
Kroll
John Kroll, 38, is an energy auditor/rater. Visiting thousands of homeowners through his work led him to want to help in a broader way. He is the chair of the Sustainability, Energy and Environment Committee and serves on the Citizen’s Advisory Committee. Listening and responding to needs of those he works with is a skill he’d like to bring to the council. Kroll would like to see transparency improved. He wants to see the city focus on affordable housing, attracting and retaining working families to Wausau, and one of his main priorities is developing a comprehensive environmental and sustainability plan. A lot of those changes, including affordable housing, transportation, employment and energy, for instance, can also lead to cost savings. Kroll cites the recent PFAS situation as a good example of that. Carol Lukens, 57, is an educator in the Wausau School District. As such she is passionate about the community and the importance of understanding the importance of the roles of government, and has worked with people of diverse backgrounds to understand how their needs and services intersect. She’s taught U.S. government, psychology and worked as a tutor at NTC, and worked in the legal field before that, as well as working at ATTIC Correctional. Her number one priority is to inform, educate, listen to and involve area residents, including both adults and youth. She wants to help overcome barriers to involvement many face. She’s also concerned about public housing, public transportation, attracting and retaining employees, the child care shortage, the PFAS issue and making sure ARPA funds to help residents.
DISTRICT 3
Tom Kilian (incumbent), 43, owns Kilian Integrated Marketing. He was first elected to office in 2020 after advocating at meetings for better environmental cleanup around Thomas Street and wants to continue advocating for residents to have a voice in city government. Kilian cites numerous policies he helped launch that increased transparency and participation in city government. He was
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Kilian
Egelkrout
named one of 2019’s Wausau People of the year, 2021’s Marathon County Citizen of the year and the 2021 Bill Iwen Environmental Award. Kilian wants to see the city stop funneling dollars to “elective decadence” for a select few and instead into projects that help regular residents. Kilian wants to put an end to the back room dealing in municipal policy, and reform what he calls a longstanding, damaging culture of the political class at city hall. Jo Ann Egelkrout, 61, recently retired from American Family Insurance (after working at WPS, the U.S. Postal Service and Aspirus, the latter which she left because of their COVID policy) in order to run for District 3. She wants to bring her experience both professionally and as a single mom to the city council. She believes the council should stick to local city matters, as opposed to “hollow resolutions and mandates.” She says some of the subcommittees have too much power and that the council and its standing committees should alone handle decision-making. Egelkrout says the city council has been focusing too much on big city ideologies and solutions and, as a result, crime is up and quality of life is down. Egelkrout wants to focus on lowering taxes, stronger law enforcement and reducing city spending.
DISTRICT 4 (open seat)
Diny
Kearns
Doug Diny, 60, is in process and control automation. Diny has been paying attention to city issues since 2016 when the city mulled giving then mall owner CBL $4.1 million, and has been involved in city issues since. He is currently serving in his second term on the city’s Airport Committee and serves on the N2N Committee and cites his military and business experience. Diny supports following the will of the people, especially when it comes to important financial decisions. He wants to bring a jobs approach to the city council, and wants the council to get out of the real estate business. Diny wants to get on the economic development committee to ensure taxpayer value in the city’s development agreements, pay better attention to revenue-positive finances and focus on manufacturing jobs instead of entertainment. Affordable
housing is an important issue to him since he lives in the East High Apartments. Street maintenance and workforce development are also key issues. Jesse Kearns, 42, is an inside sales rep for Heartland Business Systems. After moving back to Wausau, Kearns says he noticed progress in social issues he cares about such as We Are Wausau and in homelessness, poverty, inequality and economic growth and stability. Kearns spent time in student government at UWMC, which taught him the importance of dialogue in resolving a contentious issue. Addressing the PFAS issue and the high levels of social anxiety are his top issues. Kearns highlights the issues around homelessness in Wausau, the prevalent “not in my backyard” attitude around solutions to those problems (including the police chief warning about doing too much for the homeless problem) as barriers he’d like to help the city overcome. And, he’d like to see great improvements to the city’s public transit system, since it’s a major barrier preventing low-income residents from getting jobs as many major employers are often off the bus line.
DISTRICT 5
Gisselman
Wadinski
Gary Gisselman, 79, is a retired librarian at the Marathon County Public Library, and works part-time as a historian at the Marathon County Historical Society. Gisselman served on both the Marathon County Board and City Council in the past, and wanted to run again after being encouraged by many to do so again. He questions the city’s participation in high-end housing projects, wants the city to be more deliberate in spending city resources and wants to look deeper at the city’s infrastructure needs. His priorities are being more environmentally sustainable, cleaning up contaminated soil and moving toward wind and solar energy. He wants to advocate for affordable housing and the removal of lead pipes. Jim Wadinski (incumbent), 62, served for 33 years as a Wausau police officer and currently works as a reserve deputy sheriff in the courthouse. He wants to continue in his seat to bring his perspective from being a police officer in the city to ensure the quality of services to residents and be mindful of the costs of those services. Wadinski says he wants to encourage the right development in the city because that can help relieve taxpayers. Right now the number one priority is to address the water issues around PFAS removal. He also wants to prioritize development, and address the city’s roads, which he says are in dire need of repair. New development would help pay for road repair without burdening taxpayers, he says.
DISTRICT 8
Sarah Watson (incumbent), 42, is a social science instructor. Watson says she voted to declare Wausau a welcoming community, demolish the mall and implement a
