Lies, Damned Lies, and Municipal Budgets

 Trust the Government? 

A July 23 news article leads with the statement:

WESTON — Weston trustees Monday approved a $6.7 million police headquarters minutes after one trustee said she felt completely misled about the need for the building.

   In a comment on Nextdoor, a woman seemed a bit disillusioned upon hearing that the Weston Village president Mark Maloney effectively  lied about the upcoming need to build a new police HQ, just to avoid opposition to approval of a police department merger.

   I hate to break the news to her and anyone else, but governments do lie. They lie to the public and as we have seen here they lie to each other. 

   At the federal level the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2013, was passed allowing domestic (that's you) propagandization by the federal government. You think you are hearing "news"that we are winning the war, you think you are hearing "the science" about Covid vacines, but you won't know what is true, and what is government-placed misinformation intended to control your decisions, which in turn may be detrimental to you and your family. 

   That attitude of officially sanctioned deception of the people translates to lies and secrecy as standard operating procedure or "your" government. Trickle-down corruption has obviously found its way to the Village level. So no surprise at the mistrust and cynicism of the public at all levels. 

   As we saw in Weston, and see in living color here in Kronenwetter, that the shame that liars once faced has transformed and is now perceived by some as being "just the way it is".

   At any rate, lying or withheld information is done with impunity no matter what the cost to taxpayers. Everyone seems to know it, and thus we are seeing some of the same apathy and distrust from the public that pervaded the Soviet Union. 

   Accountability is no longer a word with meaning. Anyone that raises that issue with public employees or officials has been falsely derided as "micro-managing", "toxic", "stirring the pot", etc by those who seem to have a personal interest in non-accountability.  Raise the issue with elected officials and be ignored. 

    Decisions seem to be made without consideration for taxpayers or actual facts, as those are the least of concerns. Special interests, personal biases and personal politics seems to predominate what happens. Particularly where police are concerned, all three of those elements apply.

     Regardless of your attitude; love them or hate them I think we should look at the police as a separate entity; a privileged class insulated from and effectively ABOVE the rest of local government and certainly above the "civilian" commoners (this means you). 

   This unique privilege  makes them "the most special, of special interest groups". We see by this Weston example as well as Kronenwetter, that by hook or by crook cops will get what they want. Elected officials tend to appease them as they would to no one else.

   This is not to say that there are not individuals in government or police departments who are just there to do an honest day's work and/or have a sincere concern for the people of the municipality above all else. It's just that these types of people never seem to flourish or rise to the top.

   Regardless of these individual outliers of integrity and honesty, the organization itself is corrupt because the leaders make it so. 

The Story Behind the 2026 Budget - Operation "Snow Job"

    The very secretive process that created the 2026  Kronenwetter Village Budget is one example of contempt for taxpayers. For the past few years the Kronenwetter PD wanted more room to expand operations in a village that was experiencing less than 1% growth. In other words, for their own comfort and convenience they wanted a higher police-to-public ratio, when the budget could not afford it and they knew they would face some opposition because the factual need was not there, but instead only Chief McHugh's "want".

   So first off the entire 2026 budget process went dark. In the past, creation of the village budget was a step-by-step open book to the public, committees and trustees. Not so, since John Jacobs became treasurer, and doubly secret since Admin Davel and Prez Joling took over.

 In this alleged conspiracy to circumvent open government, it appears they came up with this idea to piggy-back the police "want" for more officers, cars, and office/operations space, on to the back of a Water/Sewer Dept "and Public Works "need" for heated garage space to house needed equipment. 

   The police got their desired "operations" space by calling it a "garage" because they said they didn't want to brush the snow off of their cars in the winter and didn't want to have to get into a cold car, so this garage was the answer.

    I'm not kidding. Forget the parks, forget the roads - "we don't want snow on our cars", and that takes priority.

   So, their "garage space" for a couple of police cars ends up being a  40X60 foot extension of the garage building planned for W&S/PW equipment, but the PD section would be separated by a concrete wall. 

   Concrete? What... the cops don't trust the Village employees not to steal their cars?  This was OBVIOUSLY going to be more than a garage, and the insiders knew it.  

At budget time, the Board got its first look at the proposed budget, just 48 hours before the special budget meeting

The $800,000 building, about $300,000 of which was for KPD, plus 2 additional officers($250-300k per year) and an additional car ($60K) all sailed through with little discussion and no opposition except from me. APC of course had already approved it and members were speaking in favor of it at this meeting.

   None of the above-mentioned building details were known to the Board at the time of the budget approval; only the $800,000 cost figure. As chairman of CLIPP I asked Public Works director Gref Ulman for the preliminary layout several time but was told that they had none. This apparently was false information, as the $800,000 figure had to have come from somewhere.

   After the budget was all approved, the police chief came back and said "oh, by the way, could we get plumbing installed at our end of the building for some bathrooms?". This $15,000 request was of course approved because the fix was in - Public Works Director Greg Ulman made the comment at a meeting - "If you're going to put offices in there, you will need a bathroom anyway".

 So, here's where it gets interesting -

   I found out months later, that Chief McHugh and Lt. Smart had greased the skids for the whole approval by holding a private meeting with resident Alex Vedvik and three members of APC - Sandi Sorensen, Sean Dumais, and Chairmen Dave Baker. All for the apparent purpose of fixing pre-determined approval of the police "wants".

   State law prohibits private meetings that include a quorum of any legislative body, including village committees. A quorum of APC is three members which in this case were Baker, Sorensen, and Dumais.

    That little meeting they held was in violation of Wisconsin Open Meetings Law and in my opinion the sole purpose was to rig the approval for the police wants by putting a hard-sell on Sorensen, who, being a new trustee, was unaware of the manipulative game taking place. 

   I have no idea what Alex Vedvik was doing at that meeting, since he as a former trustee had to have known that the meeting was illegal. 

   Prez Joling (former KPD chief) later appointed Vedvik to the Police and Fire Commission apparently due to his devotion to police interests, and he is now chairman of that commission. 

 Aside from Vedvik's apparent "insider" status, and aside from the fact that he hardly seems like the objective, unbiased person that a position like this calls for, Joling's  appointment of Vedvik was just another example of cronyism and disregard for the ordinances that Joling is sworn to uphold.

   In this case it was the village ordinance forbidding Police and Fire Commission members from holding any other Village office. 

Village ordinance 14-16 states

 "The police and fire commission shall consist of five members, none of whom may be elected or appointed officials or employed by the village."

   It is well known that Alex Vedvik has been a Utility Committee member for a few years, and that committee members are Village "appointed officials" as identified in ordinance 14-9 entitled "Members as local public officials." 

   Vedvik, being a loyalist, apparently got a free pass on that ordinance. This is that corrupt, special privileged status for police  that I mentioned earlier. "Rules for thee, and not for me".

 This is yet another in a list of  illegal acts that Joling seems so prone to engage in. But then what can we expect when his record as police chief which shows similar corruption? Dirty cops make dirty presidents, I guess. 

   It appears that there is no accountability in Kronenwetter government because there us no honesty ethics, or integrity to even consider the concept of accountability. If so, where are they?

   Contrast that with the strict police-state obedience expected of the public. 

   The new Weston/Rothschild PD got their merger approval and then their $7 million HQ through openly admitted lying to the public and board members The Kronenwetter PD apparently took a more surreptitious approach of holding an un-agendized public meeting that the public was unaware of, as described above.

   Neither type of betrayal (overt or covert) seems rare lately among municipalities. The attitude seems to be "yeah, I did it. What are you (voter/taxpayers) going to do about it?"  The answer usually is "nothing", and they know it.

   So, this was an example of how the sausage is made lately in Kronenwetter. I've seen it and I am telling you about it, since apparently there are still people out there who are shocked at government lies. 

 This situation is nothing new, since the ancient Greeks had a name for it, which is a  Kakistocracy.  Definition: A government run by the least qualified, most incompetent, or most corrupt individuals. 

   "...and they all live together in a crooked little house."