Kronenwetter Admin Davel Again Brags About Village Failure

  

Once again Kronenwetter is in the news with Administrator James Davel acting as if Kronenwetter Village is Marathon County's pet poodle.

See the WAOW news piece here:

https://www.waow.com/news/village-of-kronenwetter-prepares-to-develop-new-campus-for-marathon-county-highway-department/article_bf1e3cde-2633-4df3-812f-7a2e35805aae.html

It is billed as "one of the biggest projects in Kronenwetter in recent memory."

Yes, it's "big", but it represents a LOSS to the Village with zero gain.

Davel is quoted as saying:

“They’re going to have a brine plant there. They are going to have a wash bay there for their trucks. This is not a little shop, this is pretty significant,” said James Davel, Kronenwetter Village Administrator. “We just need to make sure that we’re good teammates with the county, we follow our zoning and rules. That shop is also going to be supporting Kronenwetter, and we’re county residents, so we should be good teammates.”

   Childish rhetoric aside,  Davel apparently is not satisfied with selling out the Village Taxpayers' interests to the County, but he publicly acted as if he was proud of it, as if this was something GOOD for the Village. This is the very nature of "propaganda" and "gaslighting".

   The reality based on facts is that the subservient posture that Davel, President Jolling, and the Village Board have taken, has betrayed the Village Taxpayers to the potential tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue.

   Far from being a "benefit" to the Village, I believe as do others, that this sprawling facility (not just a "shop") is a huge liability and loss to Kronenwetter.

See the article detailing all that here:

https://kencharneskireport.blogspot.com/2026/07/facts-regarding-proposed-county-highway_07227818.html

   Davel misuses the term "teammates" twice. A team shares a mutual goal and benefit, and this is not the case here; Marathon County wins, and Kronenwetter Village loses if Davel and the Board have their way. Far from a teammate of Kronenwetter, Davel instead appears to in fact once again be acting more like a waterboy serving the "opposing team. It isn't the first time, in my opinion.

   Joling/Davel have led two Village strike-outs in the past few months in office. We had the January-February Milestone sand pit approval, and  we had the April firing of a highly competent community development director Pete Wegner (likely the most knowledgeable that this Village will ever see), and now the third strikeout of the inning is shaping up to be this "free-pass" County facility plopping itself on prime development land in Kronenwetter.

   In my opinion, accepting zero benefit to the Village is not just incompetence or stupidity, it has been a process of active betrayal which has taken effort on the part of Village officials to maintain.

   Notice for example, the absolute failure by the Village to even mention "what's in it for us?". Or notice the deliberate insult to taxpayers by the Village Board in giving Village land to the County that they were previously willing to buy (reportedly Davel's idea)?

   Or notice that when I chaired CLIPP committee we voted to not give the land away, but the very next CLIPP meeting with me gone and Aaron Myszka as chair, Davel brought the land giveaway back to the CLIPP agenda and basically groveled to the County in support of it. The committee suddenly all voted to approve this gift. Do you think there may have been some behind the scenes "talking to" in that month in between the two meetings?

   Or notice the May 11 Village Board meeting where they knowingly bypassed Village ordinance and skipped sending the land giveaway issue to APC committee. Trustee Coyle made the incredibly ignorant comment essentially that "since this [giveaway] doesn't involve money, APC doesn't need to see it". The fact is that it should have involved money if the Board would have sold the land. The absence of money where there should have been some, is just as relevant as it would be if money was actually involved.

   Regardless of the money issue, Ordinance 14-20 G (6) states one of APC's duties is " Acquisition or disposition of village-owned property;".

   How plain is that? How much evidence does the public need to show that this Board is either corrupt or plain stupid?

   The apparent vanity that puts Davel in front of a TV camera along with his nonsense comments, I believe serves only to reinforce Kronenwetter's position as the head-wagging laughing stock of Central Wisconsin.

   Aside from that, Davel's banal comments seem to betray his very low level of comprehension and business sense, while as it appears, also entering the realm of being actual deception. When he says "we follow our zoning and rules", that seems to me to be a LIE intended to mock the Plan Commission, as many who witnessed the "sand pit hearing" will attest to. This giveaway is not different, as described above.

   See this article for a bullet-point list of legal and ethical failures. https://kencharneskireport.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-milestone-sand-pit-approval.html along with two other articles on that website.

   When Davel says "That shop is also going to be supporting Kronenwetter", that does not mean Kronenwetter will get anything that the rest of the county does not get, like plowed county highways, etc. There is no evidence that the proposed facility will "support" Kronenwetter financially or in any other way.

   The last sentence of the article tells it all when it says this new facility:

 "will replace the current shop at the corner of West Street and South 17th Avenue in Wausau, a spot that the county has long desired to put up for redevelopment."

   They have been wanting to stick someone with this albatross for years, and Davel seems happy to volunteer Kronenwetter as the sucker. Joling and the Board are right behind him.