Now that I’m back in town and have had a few minutes to look at the election results, I have a few thoughts on the local races. Here are the Washington County Results.

First, turnout in Washington County was impressive for an April election. Some races on the ballot pulled in 42% turnout and the county average was about almost 37%. Not bad.

Second, congratulations to Chris Zwygart and Kurt Rebholz who won convincing victories for seats on the West Bend School Board with 38.45% turnout. And thank you to Monte Schmiege for his service to the community. As I said in my column, I think that the four candidates are pretty conservative and would find agreement on probably 90%+ of issues. I have a high degree of confidence that they will be solid stewards of the school district. It is curious how different the results were with the same four candidates in the primary election. Clearly, a lot of work happened between the primary and the general election.

Third, I am flabbergasted that the City of West Bend voters voted FOR a tax increase to fund spending increases for transportation. Granted, it was for the cheapest option and it only won by 110 votes, but that’s shocking in this community. They also voted to encourage the county to share sales tax revenues with local communities. That makes more sense.

I’m going to admit that I didn’t really have any time to figure out the the aldermanic or county supervisor races. I did find it curious that the two incumbents for the Kewaskum School Board won reelection. That district just passed a big school referendum, so it appears that the voters up there are still pretty satisfied with that.

Overall, the Blue Wave we saw at the state level clearly had an impact locally too. Given the results, I would expect every local unit of government that wants more money to get a referendum on the November ballot to capitalize on the wave.