By Jared Schmeltzer
Reporter
Thursday night’s recall forum saw all five City Council Aldermen up for recall voice their opinions on why they should still represent their districts. On the other side, the four opposing candidates did not to attend. The forum was divided into two parts, with the first part for aldermen of districts 1 and 7 and the second half for aldermen of districts 5, 6 and 8, respectively.
District 7 alderman, Rob Norton was one of the first to speak on Thursday, stating his reasons for retaining the five aldermen om City Council. “I would like to keep all the aldermen we have.” Norton said. “The five aldermen that are being recalled, they have no personal agendas, their agenda is Merrill, making Merrill grow and keeping it on the right path.”
Later, when asked about the city budget, Norton pulled out the audit report for the city and said, “We are not in debt folks.” Norton continued, “We asked the company who did our audit, “‘How are we looking in five and 10 years down the road?'” They said we are good, we have a class A mod rating, our borrowing is good.”’
District one incumbent, Paul Russell, addressed rumors of the audit report not being legit. “I think the other really important piece of that (audit) report is, when they said that what we are doing with our investment and development in the TIDs, is right on track and following a course that is recommended for our community.”
Paul continued, “Some people came back after the report and said ‘well that’s not an independent agency that did that audit.’ If I remember right, this particular firm has like 652 businesses and costumers. I’d like to share with everybody, that a corporation like that doesn’t play games when it comes to audits and investigations, and providing a city or a business a result, or they wouldn’t be a business anymore.”
When asked about the city audit relative to Merrill administration, management and operations, Russell added; “A couple of minor management recommendations in the report, that report is posted publicly, nothing major. And more housekeeping issues of who does what on the city staff with the information. And I’ll use this opportunity to say, Merrill’s Finance Director, Kathy Unertl, who has taken some heat rounds for a mistake that she made for the the past several months, she has done far more good than bad, and performed and completed many more tasks than she has made mistakes on.”
The current 8th Diistrict alderman Tim Meehean opened up by saying, “Merrill has made progress. The council, in collaboration with constituents, businesses, community organizations and city employees, have created conditions that encourage growth to happen. During my tenure, we have completed 54 infrastructure projects to redeem lost ground.” Meehean said. “Four new affordable housing initiatives will keep Merrill accessible for the next generation. Six building renovations will keep Merrill fresh and vibrant. Twelve property rejuvenation projects and 17 new building initiatives create opportunities for current and future businesses and 11 properties were cleared to make room for new opportunities. In order to maintain this progress, we need to stay on our long-term plans. To keep Merrill moving forward takes investments. The investment we all have made to this community, brings services we all reap the rewards from. From the removal of lead pipes before many other cities even realized they had a problem, to taking over the neglected fairgrounds and making it a destination and an economic engine.” Meehan wrapped up his statement saying, “I am proud of the progress we have made. Keep the five council members in place so the community is on the right path. Where the only agenda is to keep Merrill growing and make Merrill a better place to shop, recreate and live. So make sure to support me and the other four incumbents on Tuesday, July 16. Your vote will determine the future of our community.”
Meehan later answered a question about changes he would make to the common council, stating they need better communication with the community. “The one thing we need to do better is, we do a terrible job communicating with the public on decisions we made, how those decisions were made and the information we used to make those decisions and I think that’s part of the issue with the recall. I don’t think people fully understood what was going on,” Meehan added. “The budget was approved at a 3 percent tax levy. The notion that we agreed to a 7.4 percent tax increase is ludicrous. We voted on a 3 percent tax increase, but what happened is the assessed valuation of the city went up. But all of that assessed valuation went up in the TIDs, the assessed valuation of Merrill outside of the TIDs went down 10 million dollars last year. So consequently, the 3 percent tax levy had to be spent over 10 million less dollars of assessed valuation. After we found that out in the last meeting, the tax statements had already been printed, the budget had already been approved and sent to the state, there was nothing that could’ve been done to change it.”
While answering the same question, district five incumbent, John VanLieshout, called for more community involvement. “If there’s one thing that I could change, it would be more community involvement. Some of these meetings we sit down and it’s the same maybe five or six people. Just because we are your elected officials, doesn’t mean you need to rely solely on us for your information or to be involved in these meetings. All of our meetings have a public common period, which is rarely if ever used.”
District 6 incumbent, David Sukow explained who is responsible for the fiscal well-being of the city. “We depend on the city administrator and the finance director to provide us with correct information, the department heads tell us their needs and we make the final decisions. What happens is, we get the material requests from the departments, we discuss them and sometimes question the department to see why they need that material, but ultimately the buck stops here.”
In his closing remarks, Sukow announced it will soon be time for a new District 6 alderman. “There was an opportunity for someone to go out and get signatures to run against me and you know what happened, no one wanted to do it. It’s not a wonderful or glorious job, that’s why not everyone wants to do it, but it is a very good job and very fulfilling job and it’s a job that I enjoy doing. But, it’s time for some young blood. I don’t know how many sixth district people are here, but I would recommend that if you’re interested in serving the government, that you do that.” Sukow then went on to mention how none of the opposing candidates showed up to the forum. “I am very sorry to see that none of the people who say we are so awful bothered to show tonight. They didn’t come. I wonder why. It’s open to the public, but all they want to do is write something in the paper saying negative things to get people stirred up. We voted for a 3 percent increase. There was a foul, we’ll admit it. We put our pants on one leg at a time just like you folks do. We messed up, but we are putting things in place so this will not happen again.”