Silver Lake voters will be able to cast a ballot in a contested village president race on April 7.
The candidates are incumbent Sue Gerber and challenger Bruce Nopenz.
Here is their biographical information first:
Sue Gerber — age: 55. Education: Wilmot High School. Occupation: Postmaster. Previous elected and/or governmental experience: Elected as a Trustee in 2008 and President in 2013.
Bruce Nopenz — age 51. Education: BA University of Wisconsin, graduate studies Harvard University. Occupation: Customer service mgr. Previous elected and/or governmental experience: No other political activity.
westofthei.com sought to conduct video interviews with both candidates. Gerber declined to be interviewed live on camera. Nopenz’ responses, recorded in his home, are displayed below.
1.) Why are you running for village president?
2.) What do you see as the way forward with the villages police, fire and emergency medical services? (Note: This interview took place before the current move to explore contracting for police services. — DH)
3.) What do you see as the way forward with the library building?
4.) What would you do to move the village forward in a positive direction?
The president is the spokesperson for the village. A primary duty.
Declining to be interviewed during a campaign is not a good sign.
Four questions without answers is four demerits. Big demerits!
I read this as “Sue not wanting to be the president any longer”. She has already let the attorney run her meetings and she has taken herself out of the library board business. Now this. I’m not going to support someone who is stepping back instead of stepping up. My vote is going to Nopenz!
I want to point out that Gerber declined to be interviewed live on camera.
With all due respect to Sue Gerber, she should not have been expected to sit in front of a video camera answering specific questions without our “high buck” attorney sitting next to her pulling her strings. She can’t be faulted for that.
on camera, if a video was the goal of WOTI (and clearly it is/was), is a decline. If her interview appears in written format, she still declined.
Her actions are not representative of those of a leader.
Yes we were doing video for this race, so declining to be interviewed on camera was in effect not participating, especially when the other candidate did agree to a video interview. I just wanted to be clear about the circumstances before a whole bunch of comments built up here perhaps saying something else.
Due to the proximity to the election, and that assertions are surfacing in unapproved comments that may not be able to be answered before the election, I am closing further comments on these posts. An exception will be if the candidates themselves want to reply to comments already approved.