Five candidates have applied to be the next alderman of South Milwaukee’s 1st District.
- Patricia Gruber, 1216 Monroe Avenue
- Dan Jones, 505 Hawthorne Avenue
- Michael Moeller, 719 Hawthorne Avenue
- Meghan Nitz, 811 Carrington Avenue
- Frank Van Dusen III, 914 Minnesota Avenue
The City Council will interview the five candidates at a meeting starting at 5:30 p.m. on August 2 at City Hall, and we will likely make our choice that evening. The meeting is open to the public.
The appointee will serve until next April, when that seat will be decided with an election. The winner of that election will serve until April of 2013, when the entire council is up for re-election.
Of course, we are doing this because Mike Karbowski passed away (too soon) in June. You’ll also recall that Moeller ran unsuccessfully against Karbowski and Craig Maass for the 1st District aldermanic seat in April. He finished third.
South Milwaukee Blog 
Just wondering what type of criteria the Council uses in selecting the winning candidate? For example, as you mentioned, Mr. Moeller lost to both Mr. Karbowski (whom I believe came in first) and Mr. Maass. That would suggest to me that the people of Mr. Karbowski’s district have already spoken about him, at least to the extent of the most recent election and how he ranks in relation to Mr. Karbowski. Assuming that all candidates are qualified and don’t have any questionable items in their backgrounds, I would like to suggest that the Council then base their decisions primarily on the making sure the candidates’ views on the major topics are in line with those of Mr. Karbowski. Since he had served for a number of years, I would think we would have a fairly accurate picture of his thoughts.
SM Guy: Good question,and good points. There really isn’t set criteria that I know of. But I promise to think long and hard before making my choice, carefully reviewing all candidates and how they perform in the interview setting, among other factors. That said, I don’t want to, nor shouldn’t, pledge to only consider candidates with certain views. I go into this with an open mind, and have to.
To throw an analogy out there, let’s say that state senator Larson got offered a job by the President, due to the press coverage he received and resigned to go to Washington tomorrow. Instead of current system, let’s assume the state had one similar to SM. What would be the response to the current state senate choosing the replacement? Does anybody actually think the seat would be filled by a Democrat, given that the seat has been held people thinking along those lines for quite awhile (Larson – Plale – Grobschmidt)? Would the district (in general) be happy and think they are being represented? Just something to think about regarding candidate views….
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