Kronenwetter truck resolution, a TV appearance, livestream debate coming and other tidbits

Cindy Schulz-Juedes was convicted of murdering her husband Ken Juedes in 2006. She was then killed in prison last year. A new TV show about the case drops soon.

The story of Kronenwetter nearly missing the first payment on its new fire truck, because the borrowing for it for some reason was never approved, because the village’s old director dropped the ball. In the chaos that has been Kronenwetter the past few years, it’s not surprising, but it is alarming.

(A previous post involving that finance director highlighted how Kronenwetter couldn’t make an unrelated payment once because the log-in for the website they had to use to make the payment was lost between directors.)

At its last board meeting, the village passed a resolution ex post facto approving the loan. Staff suggested to the board that was the best way to handle it. CoVantage seemed OK with everything on their end.

Ken Charneski voted against the resolution, the only one to have done so. He suggested the whole thing ought to be redone if the village wanted to do things properly. “To me it’s a matter of integrity,” Charneski says.

But that would likely cost the village more money, says current Finance Director Lisa Kerstner. If it were redone, the village would get today’s high interest rates versus the rock bottom rates of 2022. Needless to say, it would cost the village quite a bit more on its more than $700,000 loan.

Charneski at the previous meeting was the one to suggest that Kerstner, instead of using contingency funds to pay the surprise fire truck payment and save the village $45,000, should have held off and discuss it with the board, which would have been too late to avoid the late payment.

Leonard Ludi, the public works director turned administrator of the village, said as far as he can tell, CoVantage seems ok with everything on their end. They have what they need on their end, they received their first payment on the truck, and so this is just a matter of fixing things on the village’s end.

Even Charneski was clear that the mistake wasn’t fraud, but that didn’t stop at least one resident from calling for President Chris Voll’s resignation.

That came before a third party investigation could be conducted to find out exactly what happened. That should be ready soon. The Wausonian will be watching for that report when it’s finalized.

Watch your Wausonian editor on TV

Last year I was interviewed for a TV show about the trial of Cindy Schulz-Juedes related to the murder of her husband Ken Juedes in 2006.