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. Th e city council in particular is no exception. Th ere were two primaries, and six of the 11 city council seats are being challenged.

Th at 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)

Kroll

Lukens 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 aff ordable 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 aff ordable 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 fi eld 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 fi rst elected to offi ce in 2020 after advocating at meetings for better environmental cleanup around Th omas 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

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 fi nancial 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 fi nances and focus on manufacturing jobs instead of entertainment. Aff ordable 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 aff ordable housing and the removal of lead pipes.

Jim Wadinski (incumbent), 62, served for 33 years as a Wausau police offi cer 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 offi cer 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

budget that keeps taxes and services stable. She’d like to keep working to move Wausau forward. Watson says her experience in economics and sociology give her unique insights into the issues facing Wausau, and being an instructor has helped her better communicate with fellow council members. She wants Watson to tackle the affordable housing challenge, wants to make sure ARPA funds are spent wisely, and she wants to see the development along the riverfront continue to progress, to help grow the city’s taxbase and to provide amenities for Wausau residents to enjoy.

Thomas “Tony” Brown, 74, works part-time delivery for Krueger Floral. Brown says he has more life experience than the current office holder and believes he would ask better questions on the council. He cites his experience building homes in central Wisconsin, California and Washington state, working union and non-union jobs, running sales territories and teaching high school and college math and even teaching in the United Arab Emirates. Issues he’s concerned about are fire and police contracts coming up for renegotiation, housing stock that’s 100 years old and under-assessed, lack of affordable housing options, a transit system that’s too costly and an electorate he says “hardly cares.” Wausau is good but he says it could be great.

DISTRICT 11

Chad Henke, 34, is an electrical engineer with 3M. Henke decided to run because he feels there needs to be more young professionals in local government if the area is to attract more of them. Henke cites his engineering background as giving him the ability to think logically and methodically through problems. He also cites that he has experience working with major employers in the area, which he says would be a benefit to the council. Henke says he would like to see the city council operate with the highest level of professional, courteous and ethical standards. His priorities are protecting the city’s natural resources (referencing the PFAS situation as an example), executing a plan for downtown development and recruiting and retaining young professionals to the area.

Deb Ryan (incumbent) is a retired Wausau resident who worked in utility and comptroller’s offices, has experience in accounting and grant management, and has a masters in business administration. Before being elected to the council Ryan was a regular at city meetings for about a decade, and learned much about Wausau’s processes through that attendance. She is running again because she doesn’t want to see pandemic relief funds go to just downtown businesses but to benefit all Wausau residents. She wants to see the city council have more control in areas such as how to spend pandemic grant money (she opposed the grant that would have funded a downtown pedestrian bridge). She alerted city officials about a grant that could have helped provide handicapaccessible bathrooms for transit riders and says no one followed up. She wants to see the city better inform its residents, wants to see more prompt action on replacing the city’s lead pipes, wants pandemic relief funding to go toward the new water plant and would like to see the UWSP dorms saved as senior housing instead.

Henke Ryan

LENTEN ORGAN MEDITATIONS

at St. Paul’s United Church of Christ

426 Washington Street, Wausau, Wisconsin 54403 Fridays from 12:15 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.

Come for a time of meditation and music during the lunch hour March 25 – Irene Beethe & Kartika Putri

April 1 – Daniel Larson

April 8 - Patrick Burkhart and Jim Holt

Sponsored by the Wisconsin River Chapter American Guild of Organists website: agohq.org/chapters/wisconsinriver Facebook.com/AGO-Wisconsin-River-Chapter154526781226983 Free Will Offering