By Kevin Boneske
Staff Writer
ASHWAUNBEON – Village voters will have the opportunity April 7 to weigh in on whether they favor having an appointed clerk-treasurer.
The Ashwaubenon village board voted 4-2 Tuesday, Dec. 17, to direct staff to put together the wording for an advisory referendum question for the spring general election to determine the level of support for amending the village’s charter ordinance to provide for an appointed, instead of elected, clerk-treasurer.
Prior to the advisory referendum going before voters, board members voting in the majority also favored having informational meetings as to why the village is looking at making the switch to an appointed clerk and treasurer, subject to approval by the board.
Trustees Gary Paul and Ken Bukowski said they favored making the switch to an appointed position and questioned the value of informational meetings.
They voted against the motion. Trustee Chris Zirbel was absent.
The village’s current clerk-treasurer, Patrick Moynihan Jr., who was re-elected in April to a new-three year term, has announced he will be running next year for Brown County clerk on the Republican ticket.
Moynihan, who is also the county board chairman, is not running for a new two-year term next spring as a county supervisor leading up to seeking election next fall to a four-year term as county clerk.
If elected county clerk next November, Moynihan said he will be resigning as village-clerk treasurer on Jan. 5, 2021.
Moynihan, who was elected Ashwaubenon’s treasurer in spring 2013, was appointed by the board to also be the clerk after the elected clerk, Dawn Collins, resigned in the fall of 2014.
The board also combined the positions of clerk and treasurer into one elected clerk-treasurer position.
In light of Moynihan’s possible departure, Village Manager Allison Swanson recommended the positions of clerk and treasurer be separately appointed by the board rather than elected with the clerk position remaining full-time and the position of treasurer being absorbed by the finance director.
She noted Finance Director Greg Wenholz now serves as both the finance director and deputy treasurer.
Swanson said the board would have no control over someone elected clerk-treasurer if that person didn’t show up for work or wouldn’t perform the job properly.
“That is for the electorate to do,” she said.
Though the village statutorily needs a clerk and treasurer, Swanson said having those positions appointed would ensure the people in them are qualified.
Swanson suggested mailings and meetings regarding the advisory referendum, so residents would be informed as to why the village would make the switch to having appointed positions for clerk and treasurer.
“That referendum is advisory, so you’re not bound by it either way,” she said.
Trustee Mark Williams, who is a member of the village’s Finance and Personnel Committee which recommended an advisory referendum, said when the village previously held an advisory referendum in the spring of 2012 about whether the positions of clerk and treasurer should be elected or appointed, about 70 percent favored leaving the positions elected.
“We should allow the people to vote on it through an advisory referendum, because it hasn’t been that long (since the previous referendum),” he said.
Williams said the treasurer and clerk positions would be kept together until the board would decide to make separate appointments, if it so chooses.
Village President Mary Kardoskee said she wouldn’t want to take away the right of village residents to vote for the clerk-treasurer position without them agreeing to want an appointed clerk.
“It is now an elected position,” she said. “I will not vote to take (away) people’s right to vote people into an office. I won’t take that away from them without them understanding why we would do that.”
Kardoskee said she didn’t feel a lot of information was provided to voters before the previous advisory referendum.
Bukowski said changing the charter ordinance to have appointed clerk and treasurer positions “is a difficult issue for a referendum.”
“Unless you’re here daily seeing what transpires in the clerk’s office, clerk-treasurer’s office, you don’t really understand…,” he said. “My feeling is we should make the change, and it needs to be done.”
Bukowski called the clerk-treasurer “an administrative position,” rather a board member who is in a policy position.
“If you’re not here, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to educate about something that happens in this building, 8 hours a day, five days a week,” he said. “You can’t educate people about that. You have to be here.”
Paul said it would be “for the safety of the people that we hire someone that is qualified to do the job, rather than an elected position that somebody could walk in and take the position and not know (anything) about the clerk position.”
“I just can’t see trying to get the whole village to understand what we’re trying to do,” he said. “I just don’t believe we’d see 50 percent of the people here understanding what we’re trying to push through.”
Trustee Michael Malcheski said the board would be able to change the charter ordinance regardless of the advisory referendum results.
“Sometimes you have to make decisions for people who don’t understand the complexity of the decision and the background,” he said. “I’m fine with the referendum as an information-gathering thing.”
Trustee Allison Williams said she agreed with Malcheski about using an advisory referendum for information gathering about voter sentiment.
“Let’s say this vote comes back 51-49 (percent), well, I have a better chance of overturning a 49 percent vote,” she said. “If it comes back 70-30, overwhelmingly, well, we might have to talk.”