 forum sponsored by the Wisconsin Towns Association. We appreciate everybody coming. This forum, as I said, is sponsored by the Wisconsin Towns Association Cheboygan County unit. We are an organization that is comprised of the 15 townships in Cheboygan County, as well as several villages. Our chair is Mr. Bill Derry, who is the chair of the Town of Sherman, as well as the chair of our Cheboygan County unit. My name is Dirk Zeilman. I am chair of the Town of Mosul and vice chair of the Wisconsin Towns Association Cheboygan County unit. Tonight our forum is taking place in this beautiful fire building that is jointly owned by the Village of Elkar Lake and the Town of Rhine. It was a nice collaborative effort, so a special thanks to Village President Al Rudnick, Marzell, and to Town of Rhine Chair Don Sager for agreeing to host this event. This forum is intended to give people an introduction to those who are in contested races in Cheboygan County. These are state and local races. There are five such races, meaning that we have a potential of 10 candidates. Every candidate is here tonight, and we appreciate that. Because of the candidates and the limited time, obviously we're not going to be able to have a debate, so if you were expecting to see something like you saw on a 2C night, the candidates almost hitting each other, that's not going to happen. What we are asking instead is that each candidate take 10 minutes to tell a little bit about themselves and about why they are asking you to support 5 minutes. 10 candidates, 5 minutes. All the candidates are going to fell over, just writing as they told their speech. 5 minutes to tell a little bit about yourself and why people should support you. Chairman Bill Gehring will be the timekeeper. Now, Bill is a tough task master. If a candidate attempts to go beyond 5 minutes, Bill will press a button, the floor beneath you will open, and you will fall down a hole into the basement. Just kidding, but at 4 minutes and 30 seconds, Bill, this is just like a stoplight. We're going to have a green and yellow and a red. At 4 minutes and 30 seconds, Bill will hold up a yellow sign. That means that you would have 30 seconds to go. At 5 minutes, Bill will hold up a red sign, and then you are expected to finish your sentence and stop. Somewhat arbitrarily, I have selected the order of candidate appearances. We will begin with the county candidates for county clerk, and then followed by the candidates for register of deeds. We will then proceed to the candidates for the 20th and state senate district seat, and then we will be followed by the candidates for the 27th assembly district, finally having the candidates from the 26th assembly district. Now, the candidates have determined who will speak first through a coin set. To try to be completely fair and to save time, my introductions of each candidate will be very short. Basically, here's the candidate, here's the party, and here's the race they are running for. So let's proceed to the forum. First, we will begin with the county clerk's race. As a result of the coin set, the first candidate to speak will be the Democratic candidate for county clerk, Mr. David Werwine. David? Thank you, Dirk. Good evening, everybody. Again, my name is David Werwine, and I'm running for county clerk. I've been a lifelong resident of Sheboygan County. I graduated from North High School in Sheboygan. After I graduated, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, and after four years I was honorably discharged. Upon returning to Sheboygan, I attended UW-Sheboygan and Lakeshore Technical College. In 1987, I started my employment with Sheboygan County, first in the Sheriff's Department as a dispatcher, and then in the finance department in the accounts payable department, where I paid the bills for the county. After that, I moved over to the county clerk's office, which is where I have been working for the past 14 years. During this time period, I was also a part-time deputy sheriff in Fort Sheboygan County, so I've been around the area quite a bit. In this election, only one thing truly matters, and that's true experience. Because as a county elected official, it doesn't really matter if you're a Democrat or Republican, a liberal, or a conservative. County officials don't set policy and we don't make the laws. Our job is to implement the laws as set by the legislature in the most cost-effective manner possible. The position of county clerk is non-managerial position. It's a true, working job. The county clerk's office is responsible for a vast wide range of duties and functions. First thing is, you know, we are the secretary to the county board and we're responsible for all of their records. We maintain the website for the county board in all of the county meetings. We handle the property and liability insurance for the county, whether it's the vehicles, the property itself, and we also take care of the claims that arise from those factors. We oversee the county telephone and voicemail system. We issue marriage licenses and domestic partnerships. We oversee the dog licensing. We issue the tags out to the local treasurers and the money that comes back in at the end of the year, what is left over after our expenses of the tags, the advertisements, and so on, is donated to the county Humane Society. In the last few years we've donated anywhere between $45,000 to $60,000 a year that goes to the Humane Society. We process passport applications in our office. We are open 8 to 430, Monday through Friday, to do those. You can go to a post office, but there you have to make an appointment. With us, you can come in and at the same $25 if the post office collects, and you can keep that here locally. We issue conservation licenses and DNR vehicle registrations, ATVs, boats, so on. We process wood cutting claims, probate claims. We maintain the county's corners records, and other items, too numerous, but not trivial, by no mean to mention here. And one of the most important parts of the county clerk's job is we administer the elections for the county. Part of the county clerk's role in the elections is programming the elections tabulation equipment, what you are putting your paper ballot into at the polls, or if you're touching the touch screen, the electronic voting. Doing the programming requires not only experience in the programming of the software, but understanding the interplay between wards, districts, and reporting units. It also requires attention to detail in meticulous fashion upon which step can be done, because if you don't do the steps in the correct order, you're going to screw up the whole election. Trust me, it happens. I said a few minutes ago it's our job as elected county officials to do our jobs in the most cost effective manner. According to the Milwaukee Journal of Sentinel, the errors that were in Waukesha County, which I'm sure many of you have heard about in the last year or so, cost Waukesha County over $60,000 just for the elections, reprogramming, and so on. Now, Sheboygan County is not as large as Waukesha County, but if the person that the county elects to do the job of county clerk doesn't have the experience or expertise to do this job, just our April election will cost us over $60,000 a program. Now, Julie Glance is retiring after 18 years after being our county clerk, and she's endorsing me to replace her. When our local municipal clerks have a question or a problem, they call the county clerk's office. The office with experience. So, with your vote for Dave Warrowine on November 6th, Sheboygan County will continue to have that experience. Thank you. The speaker will be John Doulson, the Republican candidate for county clerk. John? Thank you for the opportunity to talk. I'd like to get to meet you after possibly one-on-one and tell you more about myself. Dave did a great job of explaining what the county clerk's office does, and I'm going to have five minutes to tell you why I think I'm right for that leadership role as the county clerk. About me, am I back on? I'm currently a self-employed financial advisor dealing with investments in insurance for my clients, and prior to that I was a private banking officer for M&I Bank in Sheboygan and before that, I was a finance and bank in Kohler. And along with all of that over the years, I was the chairman of the YMCA Board of Managers for the Sheboygan branch for 12 years in a row dealing with just shy of a $2 million budget there, and dealing with all the employees and their issues there that the board deals with, and currently I'm on the county-wide board of directors for the YMCA. Along with that, congruent to that, let's see, I was the past Commodore for the Sheboygan Yacht Club dealing with a half million dollar budget there, and 25 part-time and full-time employees and dealing with their insurance and tax issues there that the board deals with. The current vice chair for our church council, Trinity Lutheran Church in Sheboygan, dealing with just shy of a $2 million budget there, and dealing with employees with the church and school, and I sit on the financial review committee for the church as well. And with that, I've been a 16-year classroom volunteer for junior achievement consistently, and along with that, I was on the steering committee for my son's Boy Scout troop. I was on the steering committee for the Ellis Historic Neighborhood Association that was recently started, along with several others, the Sheboygan Neighborhood Pride Project that's going on at Sheboygan. And the reason I'm telling you all these things about leadership roles dealing with budgets, it does deal with leadership, it does deal with managing people. I've owned several small businesses employing people. Being a financial advisor with the governance of finger on the SEC, you have to keep meticulous records. With all these boards that I've sat on and dealt with, there's been setting budgets, meeting budgets, which is extremely important. And with all of that, I find that these make one right for leading an office. There's a few people in staff in the county clerk's office, and with that, I feel I'm the right person to lead that office. So I appreciate your time here, and I'd appreciate your vote in November. Thank you. Thank you, John. We will now proceed to the register of deeds. Our first speaker will be Ellen Schlegger, the Democratic candidate for register of deeds. Ellen? Thank you for inviting us and sharing your time with us. I appreciate that. I've been your register of deeds since 2006. Prior to that, I worked at the Fuller Company for 36 years. Don Seder was one of my first bosses. Kind of a mentor to me. He talked me into going to school. So I attended Lake Shore Technical College and got my degree in my social degree in supervisory management. Then I went on to Lakeland College to study for business bachelors. I got my bachelors. I currently am enrolled in UW-Madison with their certified public manager program, because I believe in education, I believe in learning. And I think in our jobs, we always have to learn. My husband, Mike, and I have been married for 32 years. He works at H&H Utility, and our night job is our farm. We farm, we raise livestock, and cash crop. I am very active in the community also. I currently serve on rebuilding together. I'm a board member where I write grants for dollars to help folks stay in their homes. I run various fundraisers where I raise money to help out the Shroy County Food Bank, Bridgeway, Safe Harbor, and other charities. Salvation Army I volunteer with and then a little bit about our office. If you don't know what our office does, we record your deeds, mortgages, less pendants, trade names, corporations, articles of incorporations. We also issue certified birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates, domestic partnership. And we also have the DD 214s that we give to the veterans for their when they retire. Since I've been in office, I've implemented new software programs that have helped our land records be more efficient. I've worked with the folks who come in our office every day and helped them with things that they, their ideas and took their ideas and implemented them to make things easier for their office for what they do. So, I'm sorry I'm very nervous. I just really love to help people and I try to do the best customer service I can do and I appreciate your support in November 6th. Our next speaker will be Chris Wheeler who is the Republican candidate for Regim-Serve Deeds. Chris? Good evening and thank you for hosting this night. Again, I'm Chris Wheeler, the Republican candidate for Regim-Serve Deeds. I guess I'll start off by saying I've been a lifelong resident of Sheboydon County with the exception of the years I spent in college and a few after that where I moved to Barron County and started a small business for a few years. Then had four children of my own within a very short time span and decided that grandparents were just a wonderful, wonderful thing to have around and that brought me back to the Sheboydon area. I went to school at UW La Crosse and got my bachelor's of science degree there and after getting that degree again we moved to Barron and I started up a small business. When I moved back to Sheboydon I started I actually worked with the day care center at the, with Sheboydon County Interfaith Organization to establish a day care center within the Bridgeway House. After that experience I started up a business up in my own home. Through all of my small business experiences I have gained some knowledge in the area of working with state government. I have experienced in grant writing. I've experienced in doing financial reporting to the state and I've also done some work with businesses that required us to follow specific licensing regulations going through the licensing process with the state of Wisconsin. Those experiences led me I think toward an interest in government operations and in 2008 there was an opening in the district that I live in County Board Supervisor and it was approached and asked if I would be interested in trying something like that and I thought sure I'll give that a shot. So in 2008 I ran as a writing candidate and won that election. In 2010 and 2012 I was re-elected the position. I serve on the Health and Human Services Committee and currently vice chair of that and now this last term I was also put on the property committee. My experience with the County Board has led me toward my interest in the position of Register of Deeds. I think that I can take my experience in working with some of the other management team members. Spring County has a wonderful management team in place that is just doing an awesome job at keeping the tax rates low in the county. Not only the County Board members but the management teams that had each department in the county. We should all be very proud of the work that they do and I would be honored to be part of that team. As a Register of Deeds I would strive to provide just timely and accurate and friendly customer service. I've held a lot of different customer service jobs as I was coming through high school and college sometimes three or four at a time just to pay my way through and had been offered management positions at several of those jobs. I think it's important that we work together as a team and I would strive to have a team approach and I get this position. I also want to make sure that we're taking advantage of all of the efficiencies that we can and that we're running the office in the most cost effective way possible. And that effort would start not just within the office itself and the procedures that we follow as a local unit but I think one of my goals would be to become an active member of the Wisconsin Register of Deeds Association. I'm specifically interested in becoming part of the Legislature Committee and possibly a representative with the Wisconsin County Association. I think that the fees that we pay when you come in to have a property transfer done or any of your records copied the state takes a very big chunk of those fees that the county collects and I think we need an advocate for Sheboygan County as for each county throughout the state to make sure that the state isn't just taking this big chunk of funds and using it for things other than what the fee is supposed to cover. In my mind a fee has been to cover the service that you're providing and if there is an access fee to the fees being collected I think we need to really push the state to make sure that either they take less from the county so that we can cover our costs or those fees should be lower to not be such a burden to the consumer members of our county. So on November 6th I would appreciate your vote and look forward to possibly serving as the Register of Deeds. Thank you. Thank you Chris. We will next go to the race for the 20th state senate district. The 20th represents a portion of the south and western part of Sheboygan County and our first speaker will be Tanya Lore, the Democratic candidate for the 20th state senate district. Tanya? Well I'm Tanya Lore. I'm running for state senate in the 20th senate district and thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to speak with you today. I grew up in the small town of Marathon, Wisconsin. Has anyone ever heard of Marathon? Excellent. Very good. Small town just west of Wasil, Wisconsin. My mother was an elementary school teacher. My father was a high school social studies teacher until he left the profession to take over his family's small business. Inspired by my parents I decided to become an educator as well and I'm currently in my 17th year of teaching and I taught at West High School for the last 14 years. That's where I met my husband Andy who is a chemistry teacher there and we've been married for over time years. We have six year old twins Elena and Edric and I also have two stepdaughters from Amy's previous marriage who are a very important part of our family as well. I spent the first 15 years of my profession really taking education for granted. I just assumed that my students would have the same high quality education that my parents students had had and that my children would have the same high quality education that I had and I didn't really consider that it could be any other way in the state of Wisconsin. The other thing I took for granted was politics and I assumed that we elected some Republicans and we elected some Democrats and we all got together in Madison and worked together and came up with legislation that everyone could live with. So as long as I read the newspapers and watched the news and always voted that meant that I was playing my role in a democracy we lost that art of compromise over a year and a half ago and the partisan divide that has occurred afterwards has split our families and our neighborhoods and our friendships and I realized that it was going to take a whole lot more than voting and reading the newspaper to get everybody working together again. So I decided to run for state senate and I started doing the doors knocking door to door on July 1st and I've knocked on over 4,000 doors since July 1st and it's been a fantastic experience because the people at the doors have really taught me a lot about what it means to be a good leader and the politics that I had observed was really politicians telling people what they should be worried about and what they should be concerned about and it didn't take me long in the doors to realize that people know what they're concerned about. They don't need an elected official knocking on their doors and telling them you should be worried about X, Y, Z. People know it keeps them up at night and what they need is elected officials who are willing to listen to their concerns regardless of party and also willing to listen to their solutions because what I found is that not only do people know what they worry about and the issues that they're concerned about but they also have some really good ideas about how to solve it because they're living it this is their life. So I've had a fantastic time talking to people about their concerns and hearing what their solutions are. The other thing that I've learned on the doors is that people really have a lot more common ground than sometimes we like to believe and when I ask people what their concerns are, it's amazing how similar they are to the concerns that their neighbors are talking about and that their colleagues are talking about, that my colleagues are talking about and that I have myself and when you find that common ground it opens up a dialogue that we've been missing for a year and a half but we really need if we're going to start working together again. What I bring to the table is a willingness to sit down with colleagues, Republicans, Democrats, independents and start working together again to find the solutions that we need to keep our state working and moving forward again. So again thank you for your time and there's going to be time afterwards to meet and I also have a website www.lawrepresentat.com and you can find out a lot more about my issues, my positions and a little bit more about me. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you town, Tanya. Our second candidate for the 20th district state senate to seek is Mr. Brian Grossman who is the Republican candidate for state senate. Well I'm glad to be here. I'm running for election and you've seen me before at a lot of the town's association in the past. I'm running on my record, I'll also tell you a little bit of what I'd like to accomplish in the next four years. In the last two years we've done a tremendous lot in a variety of fields. I think the area where we had the biggest impact is on education and that's in the area of Act 10. Since I've been in a legislature I've tried to help out the school districts by making it easier to remove a bad school teacher. I met with, maybe similar to this, with the school superintendent they've got a lot of other complaints about Wisconsin Deviation Arbitration Law. So we've changed things by Act 10. Even though it was controversial with teachers you didn't plot aside, we have made it easier to remove a bad teacher, we've made it easier to have the administration in school districts assign teachers to do what they want to do. We've made it easier to have them keep teachers around after 215 or 230 or 245 whatever the individual district is. And we think therefore we've overwhelmingly improved the schools in this state. We also had a challenge in the business climate. Two years ago Forbes magazine ranked Wisconsin the 48th best state in the country to do business. There's a ranking in which we said that businesses in Wisconsin were 43rd best in the country in tax business climate. I was fortunate enough to be a leader in changing the tax laws so that we are going to make Wisconsin a state in which agriculture and manufacturing our essence income tax free over the next five years. There is no income tax in places like Texas and Florida. I think it's important to do something big to put us in a situation in which we pull our figures up quite a bit. I also was fortunate enough to author a law removing a law that was only two years old which is a real problem for business. Great punitive damages, jury awards, if someone screamed discrimination, be it age discrimination, sex discrimination, race discrimination what have you. That was really having one of the worst laws in the country that put Wisconsin at a big competitive disadvantage compared to states like Minnesota, Michigan, and Iowa. Not to mention it was incredibly unfair to business and we repealed that law. I also think in the last couple years as I had in the whole rest of the time we were in the legislature I established myself as an independent. I disagree with Governor Walker on some issues. Fought him on his desire to allow the University of Wisconsin in Madison to raise tuition on their own. I think tuition is high enough in some way about it within the state legislature. Fought him on his effort to deregulate or largely deregulate rental owned industry in the state of Wisconsin. Which I think continues my past practice of what I think I'm one of the more conservative senators on legislature. I find it very easy to cross the aisle. As far as in the next session, I think with regard to education we have two goals. I think I want to make the schools more skills driven. Right now we have too many people graduating from college with kind of a liberal arts degree but they're sitting out there with a big student debt. Meanwhile we have a product we talk to particularly in manufacturing. We have a shortage of welders, a shortage of machinists. We have to do what we can to push more kids in these fields and maybe begin to learn more about these fields even on the high school level. With regard to business, while we're no longer that low as far as business climate is concerned, I think there's more we can do. In addition to improving the education system for them, I think there are changes we can make in the labor laws that will benefit Wisconsin business and not only Wisconsin business but municipalities as well. I also think it's time to simplify and cut the income tax. I used to do some income taxes prior to being in the legislature in Wisconsin as one of the most complicated income taxes in the country. I'm fortunate enough to be on a committee right now which is looking at that and I'll be disappointed if in the next two years we don't both cut the income tax and make it a lot simpler like other states. Another goal I have in this session is to rein in actually high municipalities on things like shared revenue that you get places like the city of Milwaukee maybe getting over 20 times per person. The amount of shared revenue that you get sometimes around here. That's a left over from the time maybe 15 or 20 years ago in which a shared revenue formula was skewed to the big cities. I don't know why we're getting city Milwaukee so much or the Milwaukee schools for that matter so much to educate kids the city of Milwaukee school system may be getting a significant amount more. They are getting the same amount more to educate the kids from places like Busburg, Random Lake and Cedar Grove and I think we should turn that around as well. But my final goal will be to do something about the out of control welfare. Our welfare system right now is one more time in Wisconsin a welfare magnet and in addition to the cost giving greater damages to the children I think we've created a system in which even though many families, single parents do a good job, I think we can we should do something about it so we no longer encourage that sort of family makeup. We will now hear from candidates for the 27th assembly district Broadly speaking the 27th represents kind of the northern part of the county. Our first speaker will be the Republican candidate for the 27th assembly district Steve Castell. Thank you. Well thank you for all for being here and for having us. Considering the kind of year we've been through in Wisconsin the last couple of years I got to give you credit for putting yourself in a position to listen to one camp painting for another night. It'll be all over very soon. We're getting there. You know Senator Lyle mentioned at the beginning of the night that two years ago we were facing that $3.6 billion budget I think we met in the southern end of the county two years ago and we talked about that. It was easy to talk about because we were used to talking about deficit budgets and big numbers. But there weren't a lot of certain ways that we knew we were going to be able to solve it. There was a big nut to crack and the fact that we had been talking about those deficit budgets over the years meant that by the time we got to two years ago all the tricks had been done. All of the sleight of hand and the moving around of money and the budget gimmicks were done. There was no more of that to do. So we had to do something that actually fixed the problem. Senator Lyle also mentioned earlier that we're looking at not only a budget surplus but for the first time in forever we put a significant amount of money to make a name fund. That's good news. I know there are people who would love to get their hands on that money and use it for something else and I understand that. But the fact that Wisconsin finally has put itself in a position to be able to do that is something that not only is historic for Wisconsin but I think people around the country are looking at it and saying maybe we should get our act together too. We were in deep trouble. One of the reasons I ran for the legislature go back when I first did was because I had been a long time school board member and education was something that was very, very important to me. What I knew from those years out as a school board member is that our system was completely unsustainable and it was being held up with really funny math for a long time. We had run away at labor costs. They were driven by something that had absolutely nothing to do with what was being done within school buildings and absolutely nothing to do with what our expectations and hopes were for kids. It was driven by layers of contracts that built up over many, many years. Every new school board that gets elected inherited that layer of contracts over the years and you could never take anything away without a quid pro quo. The first phrase you ever hear in contract negotiations is quid pro quo meaning you got to buy it with something to be equal to greater value and so we just kept escalating. Not only was our educational system funding and financing on the verge of collapsing the fact that it should have collapsed years earlier if it had been propped up with kind of false funding mechanisms but it was going to bring our whole state down. We were in that deep of trouble so when we started kicking into the corners last session we found some more surprises. We found out that we owed something like $50 million to the state of Minnesota because we had not paid the bill on our reciprocity agreement. We found out that the courts had slapped back the previous administration and said you know what you're going to have to pay back the patient's compensation fund, $100 million plus interest. Which we got to grow to a pretty large number. All that's paid, the bills are now paid and now we're at a place in Wisconsin where we can start making budget decisions from a point of long term planning of consideration and prioritizing rather than just trying to put out the latest fire and crisis management. That's a really good place to be. We didn't get there with a singular kind of action. Act 10 played a huge part. And frankly I think we all should and if you know someone who's a public employee in Wisconsin you should thank them for being a major participant in that. We all, any of us including legislators who get a state paycheck took a hit. It was, and it saved literally thousands of jobs. It prevented the potential the very real potential and likelihood of massive layoffs. That wasn't the only thing that got us into good shape. It took a lot of fiscal discipline on the part of the legislature and the governor's office. It took a lot of people not being able to fund their pet projects or to start that new program that was so rampant over the years. Everybody has great ideas and they all want to get them started. And so finally we were able to, as a legislature, along with the governor's office, we weren't going to be the big kids. We're going to be the adults in the room and get things in order. So what we need to be very careful about now is not doing things to get us back to the bad old days. Thank you. Thank you Steve. Our next speaker is Steve Bauer, who is the Democratic candidate for the 27 assembly district. Steve? My notes are a little bigger than everybody else's. I want to thank the Village Board, Bill Curtin, for hosting this event. I also want to thank the WTA for putting this all together. This is the time we should be putting inside whether or not one's a Democrat or a Republican. You should be deciding on who's best to serve the interest of you and the interest of District 27. My name is Steve Bauer of Plymouth, Wisconsin, and I'm running for State District 27. For the past 40 years I've been self-employed. For 34 of those years, my wife and I have owned and operated the SNR bar and restaurant located between Chewagon Falls and Plymouth. I'm not a newcomer to business and I'm not a newcomer to government. I currently serve as town chairman in the town of Chewagon Falls for the past three terms. Without increasing the tax limit while repairing roads and maintaining services, I still kept the balanced budget. We need a fresh face in Madison with new ideas and I intend to be that fresh face. I plan to offer much needed ideas serving the people like those I know and respect in my district. A common sense approach is needed everywhere, especially in Madison. As town chairman I recently turned down the largest PCB landfill site in the state of Wisconsin. At some point in time we all need representation from time to time. As town chairman of town of Chewagon Falls, I was in need of some representation. So I called my representatives. I had the landfill site on my agenda. I called to invite them to my meeting for their input or were they still on the issue. One assembly person I called and no one called back. I called that person twice. I also called our senator and was put on a calendar 30 days prior to my meeting by his staff. He did return my phone call three hours before my meeting just to cancel. The other assembly person not from our district showed interest in coming but also did not show up. I believe this is a controversial issue that they were unwilling to enter into. This is why I'm running for state assembly. Some of my priorities working with small and local businesses to create jobs and keeping jobs in our community. To increase accountability. Work to cut wasted spending. Ensure our tax dollars are being used and spent effectively. Higher education is a key to our future and the community. Affordable health care act. For instance pre-existing conditions. I'm one with pre-existing conditions. It wouldn't have been for the Affordable Health Care Act. Right today I would not have my insurance. I was canceled earlier prior to this. I'm an advocate of term limits. If there were term limits put in place in the state assembly we would all be better off. Accountability from start to finish. Example. The Morgan aircraft. The process of determining financial soundness of a company and the credibility of a product had widely been overlooked by our local legislatures. There was wasted spending there. I'll do what's necessary to keep the 27th district in balance. As I go door to door I have passed out over 10,000 of these pieces. I've been able to talk to people personally. I am watching them and what I've been finding is uncertainty in which the economic balance the economy is facing. I'm sure I can do a better job. Hard work and hands on approach is a good start. I see division of friends, relatives and neighbors. This direction of the division is not the answer. There are other solutions. Usually when you're unhappy with the way your legislatures are handling things it might be time for a change. I have learned government is only as good as the people who are elected to office. At this point I would like to thank you for this opportunity and please vote for Steve Bauer on November 6th. Thank you. Thank you Steve. We're now going to hear from the candidates for the 26th district. The 26th broadly speaking again represents kind of a solid and central part of the county. Our first speaker will be Mike Ensley who is the Republican candidate for the 26th assembly district. Mike? Thank you Dirk and thank you to the town's association for the village of El Carpeg to as well as the town with Ryan. I'm just finishing my first term in Madison. As you all know it was a real quiet, kind of slow term. Give it back on to myself. Born and raised in Sheboyton Falls. Went to Sheboyton Falls High School, graduated from there and then graduated from University of Wisconsin-Platteville with a double major in business and psychology and a minor in sales training and personnel. Spent literally the last, almost the last 30 years in the private sector. My year is spent with companies such as Stolting and Keele, or what used to be called Stolting and Keele, Pemko and Sheboygan. And then I was at Thomas Industries for the last 17 years up until a famous date for me and that was September 11th, 2009. That was the day that someone walked into my office to tell me I no longer had a job. I've never not had a job. I've been working literally since I've been about 14. I knew it was coming because I watched a whole lot of what my other friends did walk out the door as well with a cardboard box with their belongings and someone who'd been there for 30 years themselves. The first time that happens to you, your life changes. I had a good job, I made good money and I knew that I had to make some major change to my lifestyle. I'm a divorced father of two. Two kids in college. And I sat down with my budget and said I've got to make changes. I sold my house because I couldn't afford to stay there for very much longer with my own income coming in from unemployment. Sold a vehicle. Got me on a direct TV and I couldn't watch a Sunday Annabelle ticket and all the Annabelle games which was my favorite. And I looked for jobs and I received a check, an unemployment check. And there were no jobs. And I had a pretty good resume. I've always wanted to become involved in politics for a long, long time probably since after college. I was always thinking more along the local level of city council or county board, that type of thing. Then I got together with a bunch of my friends who also lost their jobs and somebody said you know, why don't you take up one of the interest you've had and that's running for public office. And I ran. And I won. And now I ask for your vote in my reelection effort. The politics I sometimes think people make it more complicated than it is. There are some complicated parts of it. The majority of it in my opinion isn't that complicated. It's common sense. The thing that bothers me is that we had a $3.6 billion budget deficit. And we were stealing money from one pot to make the big pot look a little more full than what it really was. Our federal government right now owns $16 trillion in debt. Most of it to China. I happen to believe that it's just wrong. There's nobody in this room. I don't know of any entity that can do what our government does. And that is they take money from us out of our wallets for taxes. And then they run out and they just keep asking you for more money and then we still go into debt. It's wrong. I don't care if you're Republican or Democrat or independent. It's wrong. When I ran for office and I went door to door, I told the people I had three things that I thought needed to be done. One, we needed to balance our budget. Number two, we needed to eliminate our budget deficit. And number three, we needed to improve the business climate in the state of Wisconsin. Believe me, after nearly 30 years in the business world, I was well aware because my customers and prospective customers told me that our business was literally and figuratively going south. More and more taxes on the businesses, just like the homeowners. A lot more taxes, more regulations, more litigation, fraudulent lawsuits, all cost money and add to the cost of the product of this service that provided. Wisconsin was losing its competitive edge. Hence companies left. ASA, Lear Corporation, Pentair, Thomas Industries, the list goes on and on and on. I've lived in Sheboydon Falls, in Los Angeles, Atlanta, in Detroit, and I've had the fortune of working for companies where I sold products to people that run the realm of an organizational chart, meaning a CEO up in the top board room to people at the low level. All of us know that we have to live within our means. We absolutely have to. I am proud of the fact. We took a $3.6 billion budget deficit. It's now wiped out. There was some pain, but we are now where we need to be. There's probably, there's hardly any other states that can say that. Now we have to maintain it and continue our reforms to give the taxpayers what they really deserve, and that is a proper use of their money. Thank you. Appreciate it, and I ask for your vote. Thank you, Mike. Our next and our last speaker this evening is Mike Helke, who is a Democratic candidate in 2016. Mike? Thank you, Derek. Thank you everyone for coming tonight. Thank you guys for your service to your communities. And I know that you didn't get into these town and local government jobs for the money. Trust me, I understand that. But you're fulfilling a great civic duty to your communities. And if it weren't for you, we wouldn't have the quality of life that we have today. We wouldn't have the ability to come up here and express our ideas in an open venue like this. So thank you very much. Thank you Towns Association for hosting us. Thank you to the village for having us here tonight. Mike, I want to express my condolences at the loss of your uncle today. I knew him and I knew your, your cousin. So Mike, I want to express my condolences to you on that. I'm Mike Junki, 33 year resident of the Sheboygan County Sheriff's Department of Lifetime, resident of Sheboygan County, born and raised in Plymouth. Currently live in Sheboygan with my wife and two adult children who are growing in two young grandsons who live up in Howard's girl. They're the apples of my eye and I love my family very much. And all of the things we talked about tonight from both sides of the aisle are very important issues that cannot be taken from education to, I don't think anybody in the room feels that they aren't being taxed enough because if they do, you know, I could use a little extra money. Within the last eight years I was your sheriff, elected sheriff. I ran a 180 member department with a $17 million budget. I worked on both sides of that union aisle as it related to collective bargaining and the ability to sit down and compromise. I worked both sides of that. When I was in union I sat on the negotiating committee. I worked on the bargaining committee and the grievance committees. As sheriff I was on the other side of the table. I had to terminate a handful of people in my job as sheriff and that's not an easy thing to do. But, you know, there's a system in place that a process that you go through that we've lost now is part of this act. In the stripping of 30 plus years of labor rights and, you know, I have an issue about that. Now I'm not to say that any of us can't give a little bit more but it wasn't even presented that way. It was presented in a way, you know, it's our way or the highway no negotiation. Shut people out of the process. Ram through legislation in six days. I don't know if any piece of legislation in the state of Wisconsin that has gone through the process that quickly. So there are some real issues from the get go. And the governor himself admits that had he had that to do over again he would have done it differently. So, you know, this whole process created what Tanya had talked about before, that divisiveness that anger within our communities and, you know, we all suffered as a result of that and I don't think that's right. I'm a man that spent his entire career in law enforcement upholding the constitution of the state and the constitution of the nation and forced the laws and I believe in fairness for all and I think a lot of people are slighted in this budget process. Community involvement. I think it's very, very important and I know a lot of you are involved in your communities in a vast number of ways but I think it's very important for a legislator to be involved in their community. I'm on the board of directors for the nationwide county United Way where I also serve on your planning and allocations committee. Planning and allocations committee is responsible for allocating the money to the 26 programs at United Way funds in Sheboygan County to the tune of over 2 million dollars. I think our goal this year is like what, 2.6 million dollars. I'm also on the board of directors for the Chaplaincy Health Care program in Sheboygan County. We have a broadcast at all of the Wigley-Wigley's this Saturday. I guess that five minutes were really quick and I know the food is waiting there. I have a reputation that I'm very proud of. I think you all know who I am. I've been, I worked on the village level. I've worked in Cascade for 25 years. I've worked for the Count of Linden. I know the issues at the local level. This fairness and the road thing that you started your business meeting with tonight I have right here and I certainly see your concern with that. Thank you for your time. Thank you Mike. This concludes our U-28 candidates forum. I'd like to thank you all for coming and why don't we conclude the program by giving another round of applause for all the candidates that have been here.