May 14 Complete answers to reporter Brian Kowalski

 Brian Kowalski has put out a few articles on Kronenwetter again. He sends me questions, but usually only uses some of the answers in his articles. Here are the questions he sent, and my complete reply.

 

 Question:  How do you respond to the allegations made by current village employees that you're specifically the reason past and current employees are leaving the village? 

  I would say give me specific examples. This is an exact replay of the tactic Alex Vedvik and his wife have been using for two years now. You recall the Big Trouble in Little Kronenwetter articles. There were lots of accusations but no specific examples for me to say whether or not it ever happened, or why, or other context. There were several issues with the village then, that do not exist now, that contributed to employee turnover.

   I have requested hardcopies of what they read at the meeting, but have not gotten them yet. You might have better luck with that than me. The request would be for copies of the statements read by staff members at public input. Once we get those, we can analyze what was said.

 Going only from memory of what I heard last night, none of those four women gave an example of anything they had personally seen or heard me do that could be considered harassment. Their claims against me are merely conclusions based on hearsay from anonymous sources, or what they "felt". All to say that I was the cause of people leaving.

   It was a 15 minute long orchestrated smear campaign of name-calling, accusations, and vilification obviously made for purely political purposes. Village Clerk Bobbi Birk LaBarge, and three office workers, all read prepared statements, and I believe the whole event was an embarrassment to the Village.

   The feedback I'm getting from people is that they saw last night's event as an unprofessional, deliberate personal attack on me rather than an honest grievance of any type. True grievance complaints would go through a certain process for resolution, not grandstanding before a full house of Village residents. It was kind of absurd.

   I believe that this was a defamation ambush staged by LaBarge as retaliation for my complaint filed against her with the WEC for numerous election law violations.

   Alex Vedvik has proposed that the Board officially censure me, based on what the staff said. Mr. Vedvik seems to have some kind of obsession with me that is still unexplained. I assume that it is left-right political animosity and opportunism on his part.

 

Question: Assuming you refute the allegations and believe you're not the cause, what do you believe is the cause of all that turnover, and how do you think the village can turn around the trend of employees not sticking around very long at the village?

   For the record, here is the history of administrators - 2022, Downey was let go by a vote of the Village Board; 2023 Interim Duane Gau left due to his wife's health; 2023 Interim Mahoney contracted for a limited pre-set time only, then he had other plans for the rest of that summer; 2023 Interim Kim Manley also contracted for a limited pre-set time only, then had other issues to take care of back home. These people were intended to leave on certain dates as part of the contract. That's all there was to it.

Administrator Ludi was hired with a 90 day probation, and has not said exactly why he is leaving.

Two employees were let go, one last year and one early this year. Those were both decisions of the Village, not the employee. So, who else left that they might be talking about?

On a positive note, Peter Kampfer was hired last night as the new Village administrator. He was in the room and had a front row seat to the show. I look forward to working with him.

I think he is the first truly qualified administrator that the Village has had in nearly 20 years.

My blog page is at kencharneski.com   if you want to direct people there for these complete answers.