Big & Small Changes at City Hall
As you probably already know: Jim Shrewsbury is out as President of the Board of Aldermen, Lewis Reed will be the next to hold that city-wide office. Besides the obvious, we’ll see new staff in the President’s office. I want to wish Mr. Shrewsbury and his out-going staff best wishes. To Reed and his incoming staff, I want to wish you the best as well — the city has many issues facing it and we all need to get on or near the same page to move forward. And yes, you’ll hear from me often about what I think it takes to move forward.
Kacie Starr Triplett worked her way to the top of a 3-way race to replace Lewis Reed as 6th ward alderman. Some said he was too young, others said she was not next in line.  On the campaign trail, she proved how tenacious she can be. Although I endorsed 3rd place Christian Saller I am content that voters selected Triplett over Cacchione.
Craig Schmid will be returned to the Board of Aldermen for another four years after defeating challenger Galen Gondolfi in one of the most heated races this season. Schmid needs to take this election as a wake-up call and to be a bit more open minded about alternate approaches to problems in the ward. Schmid was a Shrewsbury supporter so we will see how he does with committee assignments under Reed’s leadership.
Republican Fred Heitert easily defeated ex-cop Matthew Browning in the 12th ward but now faces a challenger in the general election. Will this seat go Democrat for the first time in a generation?
In the 4th Ward incumbent OL Shelton was sent packing in big numbers, receiving less than 30% of the vote. Shelton was just elected in the summer of 2005 after the previous alderman was recalled. We’ll see if newly elected alderman Sam Moore will have any better luck bringing the factions together in this ward.
Two other northside aldermen, Boyd (22nd) and Williamson (26th) soundly defeated their repeat rivals. In the 24th former alderman Tom Bauer was again defeated by voters although he managed more than 40% of the vote. Bill Waterhouse, the winner, was also a Shrewsbury supporter.
I stopped by the Reed HQ just as License Collector Mike McMillan was about to announce Reed had won the race. Most certainly, the mood was very upbeat. I didn’t make it to the Shrewsbury event and by the time I was ready to head there I had already heard the news he had lost so I figured the crowd would quickly disappait.
Now begins that period where we will see if Reed’s actions match his words. The first test will be to see if he is less vindictive than he claimed Shrewsbury to be. That is, how will aldermen such as Wessels, Villa, Young, Ortmann, Jones-King and others who backed Shrewsbury be treated? What about those that sat on the fence, such as Dorothy Kirner?
If it were not for blogs like this one there would have been next to no good information about the various races on the ballot yesterday. The one race that did get media notice was the 12th ward Republican contest, the problem was it only got attention because one of the candidates had been injured on the job as a police officer.
More time was spent rolling tape from the night of the injury than looking at the resume of the two candidates. This was a disservice to both the retired police officer and Alderman Heitert.
Still, voters still made their voices heard loud and clear, giving the primary to Alderman Heitert with 77% of the votes cast. My bet is once you look at the write-in votes on the democrat side you will find many democrats who wrote Heitert’s name in on their party’s ballot.
I work with Ald. Kirner. I’ll keep you posted as to how she’s treated by the new powers.