Know Who You are Voting For Part 5: Trustees

 The 2025 Trustee Candidates

The following are my first-hand  observations and opinion.

Once again the candidates for trustee position have been polarized by those who have joined as a block and identified themselves against the conservative candidates. It seems to happen each year.

  The three who joined together as a block are Terry Lewis-Birkett, Ryan Leff, Jessica Stowell. They have basically refused the invitation to engage with the public to answer questions in an open forum along side the more conservative candidates Dan Joling, Chris Eiden, and Sandra Sorensen.  

  Likewise, Aaron Myszka declined an invitation from David Baker to participate in Baker's town hall type meeting with the public.

 Instead, Birkett, Leff, Stowell, and Myszka have opted for having their own event, with the conservative candidates not being invited. 

  This "Them vs Us" mentality is a continuation from the past few years and calls into question their lip service to "working together", "respect", "constructive dialog" and anything else that might indicate an open mind or cooperative spirit. 

   Their actions thus far tell the story of what we might expect in the future if any of them were to get elected.   

Who's Who

  The block consisting of Birkette, Leff, and Stowell are from or supported by the Kelly Coyle, Chris Voll, and Alex Vedvik camp of voters; all three of these elected people will be out of office in mid April, and have been identified by many as the core of Kronenwetter's problems. 

Kelly Coyle claims to have recruited Terry Lewis Birkett to become a candidate, and other sources say that Coyle recruited Leff and Stowell as well. I don't see a diversity of opinion or knowledge in these hand-picked candidates. 

Ms.Birkett is currently a Chris Voll appointee to APC, the Village's finance and HR committee. She doesn't even show up for a lot of the meetings. As a whole, APC has had a disastrous track record in the past 2 years both in finding/recommending candidates for employment and in completely failing to monitor Village finances.

A recent video of an APC meeting shows that Birkett contributes virtually nothing to the meeting, other than to vote for whatever Kelly Coyle suggests.

Ryan Leff is a member of CLIPP committee, and another Voll appointee. He also seems to have attendance issues for the meetings. Leff, like Kelly Coyle seems prone to drama and to being easily elevated to anger or contentiousness.

As a candidate for trustee last year, Leff came to a candidate forum with the apparently sole purpose of having a tantrum about the questions being asked, then making a scene and walking out. All for the benefit of the Channel 9 reporter who ran the story.

As an attendee of a Village Board meeting he threatened to punch out a trustee, resulting in a police complaint.

During at least one CLIPP meeting he got so argumentative and agitated that the chairman of the committee had to instruct the clerk to stop the audio recording to avoid embarrassment to the committee and to the Village.

When Leff does attend the CLIPP meetings, he normally contributes little of value, but since he has become a candidate for trustee, he seems to put on a bit more of a show.

Jessica Stowell is not on any committee, but she is yet another candidate with friendship ties to Kelly Coyle and which again indicates a "more of the same" drama/contention type of expectation. She is so detached from what is going on in the Village that she does not even know who the trustees are. 

   It appears to me that since the Vedvik-directing-Myszka situation of the past ten months seems to have worked so well (see separate post) , that Mr Coyle has adopted it as his own model plan for influencing votes on the Board.

 All three of these candidates obviously support Fire Chief Theresa OBrien's ill-conceived and potentially disastrous plan to create a local ambulance service, also supported by Kelly Coyle. Yet, they are not even honest enough to admit it head-on in their joint flyer. Instead, they make the statement that "we support out first responders".

Of course they do, but it is a given that so does everyone else. So why do they make it a point to announce it in the flyer other than for the purpose of virtue-signaling, and as a message of support for OBrien's plan?

The Ambulance Plan

The proposition of a local ambulance service was put forth by Theresa OBrien almost a year ago. It was presented to CLIPP, who took OBrien's statements and figures at face value and passed the matter on to APC with the chairman's request that APC thoroughly examine and verify the numbers and financial details that were presented.

When it got to APC, which consisted of Chris Voll, Kelly Coyle, Terry Lewis Birkett, Mary Solheim, and Jordyn Waddle Leff, (wife of Ryan Leff), that committee approved the whole plan within a matter of a few minutes. Again, this gets back to the utter failure of Birkette as a committee member, and APC as a whole to perform their designated duty to protect the taxpayers.

The plan then went on to the Village Board twice, for the full presentation, and trustees like Coyle, Vedvik,  Aaron Myszka were willing to approve going ahead with this plan immediately, while others more experienced had a number of serious questions and were supported by numerous citizens with similar concerns.

The issue became divisive almost immediately. OBrien made comments to the effect that Kronenwetter residents would get better, more concerned treatment by an ambulance staffed by other Kronenwetter residents. A notion that Trustee Charneski immediately challenged as unfounded and disrespectful to all ambulance staff.

There were those who wanted to create this ambulance service as a matter of local pride and control, and making the claim that this service would be a cash-positive enterprise for the village.

Then there was the other side that recognized that there were major flaws with the facts as presented, and that the cost would be much higher than the presentation indicated, and the quality of service lower.

To summarize very briefly the events of 9 months:

• OBrien's plan originally called for a $720,000 start up debt, and predicted a $10,000 per year profit over maintaining the current contract with Riverside.

• It was quickly discovered that OBrien forgot to include the interest on the debt, which brought the annual debt service projection up from $72,000 to $90,000, and replaced the $10,000 projected profit with an $8,000 annual loss. Somehow, the claim of a profitable ambulance service remained a selling point

• Alex Vedvik said that he calculated that the service would actually make much more money than OBrien predicted, but was unable to explain his numbers in an understandable way. He said "there are too many variables and moving parts" to explain it in simple terms.

• Citizen research later showed numerous other negative discrepancies with the facts and figures of OBrien's plan, including her assumed $5 per hour wages for on-call ambulance workers having to remain at the KFD station over night, and the training level of the proposed ambulance staff.

• An independent State expert on ambulance services was brought in to examined the proposal, and he cautioned the Board of a likely $200-300,000.00 annual deficit that would need to be subsidized by taxpayers.  

• He said that the reality is that all ambulance services like this need taxpayer subsidies in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is not reasonable that Kronenwetter should expect a different outcome.

• Kronenwetter's current cost under the Riverside contract is an enviable $8.50 per capita for top-notch service. One of the lowest rates in the state.

• The inevitable outcome of the proposed local plan is expected to be upwards of $35-40 per capita, and for potentially slower and lower grade service.

• An independent committee was proposed to verify the viability of the plan, and to then supervise the implementation of the plan.

• Kelly Coyle moved to have Theresa OBrien determine the makeup on the committee, and this was passed on a split vote.

• The committee which effectively was working under OBrien's direction, never pursued a viability study, but supported the plan without serious examination of consideration for opposing facts. The one member who disagreed with the plan resigned, apparently under harassment and pressure from other committee members.

• Trustees Charneski and Eiden secured for the board a verified offer from Riverside Ambulance Service that amounted to about $8.50 per capita, with an annual increase of 2% locked in for a time period of 5 years.

• Given that the details of the plan had shifted back and forth numerous times over the previous months, Trustee Charneski asked Trustee Alex Vedvik for a basic explanation of the merits of the plan as it currently stood. That plan or its claimed merits never materialized.

• OBrien seems to have given up on trying to justify her plan of any basis of merit, but instead has resorted to polarizing politics, petty, unprofessional attacks on our current ambulance provider, and by political action in supporting those who will vote for her interests.

• Candidate for president Aaron Myszka has bought into OBrien's plan, even though no one seems to know at this point what the plan actually is, or how much the taxpayers will need to pay annually in support of it. His stated reason for still supporting it is that "we can use the cash flow", even though the "cash flow" is projected to be negative to the tune of $250-300,000 per year.

• Trustee candidates Birkett, Leff, and Stowell as mentioned, obviously support this plan without explanation.

• Presidential candidate David Baker sees no reason to engage in this this plan at this time. given the facts and costs as they currently are.

• Trustee candidates Chris Eiden, Dan Joling, and Sandi Sorensen all oppose the plan based on the obvious financial and service quality drawbacks that the plan represents.

  With a new president coming our way, it seems extremely important this year to know who you are voting for. Bad choices at this particular time, will have a lasting effect on the future.