David v. Goliath in Jefferson;
You might want to bet on David
There's a big battle brewing in Jefferson, where supporters of a Wal-Mart superstore are trying to recall one of the aldermen whose vote helped defeat the project.
Let's disclose my biases up front. I know and like the alderman in question, David Olsen. I don't like what Wal-Mart is doing to small town America.
Olsen grew up in Jefferson, left for awhile to work in politics and government, but came back to help run the family funeral home. He also worked for the local Chamber of Commerce and the city's development office before being elected an alderman in April, 2004. Aldermen are elected city-wide, and he was the highest vote-getter of the four winners.
When Wal-Mart's planned superstore was turned down by Fort Atkinson, it moved down the road and came knocking on Jefferson's door. It proposed a 22-acre development, a 158,000-square foot superstore, on land adjacent to the city. Part of the plan was for Jefferson to annex the 22 acre parcel.
It split the community of Jefferson down the middle. An anti-Wal Mart group, the Coalition for a Better Jefferson, formed to oppose the development. Soon, a pro-Wal Mart group, the Coalition for the Best Jefferson, formed, too, and battle lines were drawn.
It was a classic economic development vs. quality of life debate and it raged for months. It is also a classic case of small town politics at its worst.
When the first vote came in April, the city council voted 5-3 against annexing the site. But Wal-Mart supporters kept the pressure on, and there were enough votes to reconsider. On June 7, the vote switched to 5-3 in favor of annexation. But it required two-thirds, or six votes, to pass, so the annexation was defeated. Wal-Mart said the project was dead, but Olsen says it has renewed its option to purchase the property, so there may be some life there yet.
A month later, a petition drive to recall Olsen was launched, and enough signatures have been filed to force an election. Olsen says he won't challenge the signatures.
He is the only one of the three "no" votes targeted for recall because the other two aldermen were just elected in April, and no recall can be started until they have served a year. Aldermen only serve two-year terms, so Olsen would have been on the ballot next April anyway, but the Wal-Mart supporters couldn't wait.
What was Olsen's crime? The petitions first said he had violated the open meetings law and wasn't acting in the best interest of Jefferson. They later toned it down to say he may have violated the law.
His crime was to yield his time at a council meeting to allow some members of the public to speak in opposition to Wal-Mart. The agenda called only for a Wal-Mart presentation, not public response. Wal-Mart wanted to make its case, get the vote, and go home. But Olsen thought the other side should have a chance to be heard. Pretty serious violation; he's lucky he's not in jail.
Is Wal-Mart behind the recall? Olsen thinks so, but there's no proof. But Wal-Mart's supporters certainly are. A Journal Sentinel story reports:
. . .Charlotte Goers-Nevin, a 69-year-old retiree, launched a grass-roots organization in support of the multinational corporation and called it Coalition for the Best Jefferson.
"The number one complaint of the older people is they don't have a place to shop," she said. "Wal-Mart was going to be a good tax base for us, and it was going to be nice for the older people."
Goers-Nevin spoke regularly in support of Wal-Mart at Common Council meetings, collected 2,118 signatures in support of the store and persuaded aldermen to pull city legal notices from the Daily Jefferson County Union because of its editorial opposition of Wal-Mart.In May, aldermen switched the city's legal notices from the Union to the Watertown Daily Times, even though the Union sells nearly five times as many papers in Jefferson than the Times.
Mayor Collin Stevens said the switch was made in response to the Union's anti-Wal-Mart editorial stance.
"The council members didn't think they were getting an accurate printing, and they didn't appreciate the editorials that were anti-Wal-Mart," he said.
The Union's managing editor, Christine Spangler, said she expects the switch to cost the paper about $15,000, a lot for a paper with a circulation of about 7,800. But she said the Union's circulation has increased since coverage of the issue began.
On July 6, Goers-Nevin launched the recall effort against Olsen. . . Olsen's infraction, she said, was letting the Wal-Mart opponents talk at a public meeting between aldermen and Wal-Mart executives, though the meeting notice stated the public would not be able to speak.
But no open-meetings complaint has been filed with Jefferson County District Attorney David Wambach, and Kelly Kennedy, a spokesman for the state attorney general, said the office reviewed one complaint on the matter and determined Olsen broke no laws.
Dave Olsen is a gentle giant in the mold of Hoss Cartwright. He is so easy-going and has such a positive, optimistic outlook on life that his nickname in Senator Herb Kohl's first campaign was "Darkside." It was the epitome of irony. He still hasn't shaken the name.
Olsen is not a guy to go looking for trouble. But he's not someone to back away from it, either.
His opponent, it appears, will be Chris Havill, whose family owns an automobile dealership and probably wouldn't mind the increased traffic Wal-Mart would bring past his lot. One thing is certain: Havill will not outwork Olsen. It is easy to foresee another Olsen weight loss coming as he knocks on every door in Jefferson -- probably more than once.
He's counting on the people of Jefferson to decide that there is nothing wrong or illegal, or against the community's best interests, in standing up for what you believe in. We'll find out when the votes are counted, with a late September or early October election likely.
In the meantime, if you'd like to help David take on Goliath, you could send a campaign contribution to Olsen for Alderman, 117 E. Dodge St., Jefferson WI 53549. Or if you want to volunteer to help in other ways -- phones, door-to-door, literature drops, whatever -- you can e-mail him at olsen@jefnet.com
posted by xoff @ 8:14 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Damn that Wal Mart with it's successful business plan and low low prices...how dare they.
I agree with the folks in Jefferson, the Coalition for a Stagnant Town, we really have to start punishing those who figure out how to do things with greater efficiency. Damn it, why don't they kick out that damn Havill car dealership while they are at it, I hear there are three or four folks in Jefferson just waiting to sell $10,000 horse and buggy combos.
You've been duped by a political con man. "Darkside" must refer to natural attraction to nasty political tactics, or perhaps Kohl's staffers were referring to his resemblance to Darth Vader. Instead of a lightsaber, though, he wields a finger that he'll poke, poke, poke into the air in front of your chest when he's pushed you into a corner when you don't agree with him.
The Journal story you quote has several errors. Two complaints had been filed against Olsen with the local DA weeks before that story, but our sleepy DA didn't know about them when the reporter called. The AG's office had received at least two other inquiries earlier this spring from a fellow Council member who had questions about other Olsen incidents.
The recall petition paperwork isn't specific (and legally, need not be) about when and where Olsen violated the Open Meetings law - it only said that he had. Yes, the petitioners were later quoted in the paper referring to the Wal-Mart forum incident, and yes, that incident is in a gray area and not worthy of much consideration. Leave it to Olsen to find a gray area to exploit to his benefit.
Olsen freely admits to violating the Open Meetings law at last fall's strategic planning sessions, where he and other Council members plotted to eliminate the City Engineer and Park & Rec manager positions. Gee, why wouldn't you invite the press and the public to a strategic planning session? Their absence raised no red flags to our Man of the People.
Olsen has years of other violations and abuse of the OM/OR laws. I know. I fought him on it, tooth and nail, filing successful complaints against his organizations with the DA and AG.
And in more than six years of chasing, I've heard other impolite nicknames regarding his size or sloth, but I never heard him referred to as "Darkside" before, either. Puh-leease. You want to dig? Go ask Kohl's and Doyle's staffers what they really think of Olsen.
From 1997 to 2001, Olsen was employed by the City of Jefferson to serve as Executive Director of two of its economic development agencies as well as the Chamber of Commerce, and served as the city’s representative on a County economic group. Olsen vehemently opposed opening these groups to public scrutiny, ignoring the opinions and orders of the City Clerk, City Attorney, a District Attorney, and even the Attorney General’s office.
Three of the groups disbanded and were forced to re-structure to comply with the law. Olsen was on the executive committee of the County group that disbanded rather than open up, never delivering the contracted services they promised to the County and leaving a $10,000 debt for unpaid rent.
In March 2001, his City board unanimously reprimanded him for “lack of prudent judgment” when he doubled his insurance coverage and back-dated documents to create his own retirement account without authorization, promoted Internet travel services over local businesses on the cover of a national magazine, and for filing a police report for “feeling threatened” when he was ordered out of a private office.
In December 2001, the City Council and his Chamber Board were furious to discover that he’d hidden a $30,000 slush fund, intentionally and repeatedly supplying misleading financial statements to the Council in order to plead poverty to justify more public funding. He was, as they say, "given an opportunity to resign."
Even after this, in April 2002 the Watertown Daily Times reported an incident where Olsen accosted a City employee at City Hall. The City Administrator ordered that Olsen have no further contact with City employees unless it was official business. Our Friendly Giant gets a little testy sometimes, it seems.
In 2004, Olsen was appointed to the Governor’s Council on Tourism against the wishes of local tourism leaders who wrote to the Governor and Secretary of Tourism to plead against his appointment.
In 2004, Olsen was elected to an uncontested seat on the City Council. This summer, a group gathered more than 1,000 signatures on a recall petition to remove Olsen from office, citing his disregard for Wisconsin’s Open Meetings law. Olsen routinely disregards the City Attorney’s requests to conform to the law - which led to the two AG inquiries.
All this is documented on my community web site at www.goJefferson.com. There are hundreds of documents that show his misdeeds and bizarre personality. I could go on and on.
Olsen does go looking for trouble in ridiculous ways. A few weeks ago, Olsen filed a complaint with the County Sheriff against the fellow Council member (who made the AG inquiries above) for (allegedly) calling him a liar in an argument at a tavern after a Council meeting.
Olsen's anti-Wal-Mart stand is questionable, too. For years, he was the full-time person who was telling us he was working hard to bring big businesses to town. Bringing a big-box store to town would've been a cherry accomplishment.
Any fair-minded observer needs to ask what brings about Olsen's change of heart. He doesn't base his anti-WM stand on the books of Al Norman or a desire for high-paying jobs. He only describes his stance as "the will of the people".
As any political operative knows, this can change with the wind (or the voices in your head, or undocumented phone calls, or imaginary surveys) and no one can accuse you of flip-flopping if you're only doing What The People Want.
Given his history in Jefferson, it's not hard to imagine why his actions provoked a recall, why it wasn't hard for them to gather 1,000 signatures, and why Olsen's now fighting for positive PR to un-spin the worsening situation. A similar puff-piece appears in this month's SE WI Goodwill Industries newsletter.
The burden of proof is on Olsen to show Wal-Mart is behind the recall. Why would mighty Wal-Mart bother to fight a small-town
Council member? Four Council members are elected every year; the Mayor every other year. If they want a Council in favor of Wal-Mart, all they need to do is wait. It's a ludicrous suggestion. The wasted effort alone (due to the proximity of the next election) should be proof that Wal-mart wouldn't bother.
John Foust, for reasons not clear to me, is a rabid Olsen hater who spends a lot of his time posting negative information and attacks on Olsen.
For example: this post.
Well, Xoff, if you read a few of the pages on my web, the reasons should be more clear to you.
My post you link to is titled "In Defense of Ald. Olsen."
I've documented what he did, what other people had to do to stop him in the past, and that ain't the half of it. On my web, I've stuck to the facts and documentable details. As I suggested, go seek some alternative views of Olsen from people he's worked with, either here in Jefferson or elsewhere.
I'll give you a list of names. You dig a little off-the-record background on it, and get back to us with a non-specific summary of just how much everyone loves Olsen.
No, Spotlight, Wal-Mart's tax revenue won't save Jefferson. Olsen isn't Mr. Rogers, either.
The Town of Jefferson gets the money for the first five years, as per state law on annexations like this. The few hundred thousand it would bring annually in taxes won't cover the City's shortfalls between rising costs and a depressed tax base. Wal-Mart's jobs won't refill the City's coffers, either. You're going to have to think deeper and smarter to fix Jefferson's problems. Its problems are probably the same as a hundred other small towns in Wisconsin.
Olsenhead - Ald. Olsen has been sticking his thumb in our pie for years, hunting for plums for himself. He's not new blood by any stretch of the imagination. We need better Council members who sincerely want to solve the City's problems.
I think the Council rejected the annexation because they realized they didn't have the chops to actually play hardball with Wal-Mart when it came time to design the site. They took the easy way out.
Check out my comments at Brian Christianson's blog.
I quote from the article about the candidate forum in yesterday's local newspaper, the Daily Union (a paper whose masthead editorials have opposed Wal-Mart):
"Since he took office, Olsen has come out as an opponent of the Supercenter plan in Jefferson, at least at the current proposed site."
I confirmed with the reporter the source of this sentence; he claimed that this is what Olsen has been saying all along.
Before you give him a blanket endorsement and encourage volunteers to work for him and contribute monetarily to his campaign, I urge you to directly confirm whether Olsen is simply "anti this site" (and determine whatever that actually means) or whether he is actually "anti-Wal-Mart" on any principle.
I think it's very misleading of Olsen to attempt to gain the vote and support of people who oppose Wal-Mart on principle, by giving the incorrect impression that he's anti-Wal-Mart in the same way. He is apparently not.
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