Two political newcomers vie for District 11

Timothy Howe and Bruce Trueblood face off for an open seat

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the location of the tavern that Howe ran. It has been corrected.

District 11 is one of two open seats that have two challengers.

On April 7, voters will choose between Timothy Howe, a retired systems analyst and owner of the Gaslight Tavern, and Bruce Trueblood, a teacher at Montessori Middle School and who once served as the chair of the local Republican party in another area.

The races comes as the current council member, Chad Henke, announced he would not be running for re-election this cycle.

Both were critical of the way the city spends money currently, and Trueblood specificdally took aim at the firefighter referendum, as many other candidates have. But they also come from different backgrounds.

Timothy Howe

Howe is a former systems developer for Wausau Insurance and also ran the Gaslite Tavern in Wausau for several years. He also served as a Boy Scout troop leader when his children were young.

He is running because he wants to be part of the solution when it comes to combating city spending. As a senior on a fixed income, he says he wants to make sure seniors aren’t getting priced out of Wausau. When he learned Henke wasn’t running for re-election, he took that as a sign that it was time for him to seek public office.

To do that, he says, he plans to treat spending every city dollar as if it were his own. And, he’d like to stop coddling out-of-town developers who he says make money at the city’s expense. He likens it to The Music Man, in which an out-of-town salesman fleeces local townfolk.

Howe expressed interest in serving on the city’s infrastructure and finance committees if elected, since he says that’s where most of the city’s important processes start.

Howe says Wausau is a place where neighbors help neighbors — he points at the recent blizzard as examples of that, where residents helped each other out. But as far as government is concerned, the city just spends without enough fiscal constraint, and he promises to be a check on that spending while holding regular meetings in order to listen to his constituents.

Howe says that he understands the value of a dollar, knows what seniors on fixed incomes are going through, and he aims to be responsive to the constituents in his district.

Bruce Trueblood

Trueblood is a Montessori teacher and has served on parks and recreation committees in other states. He’s lived in Wausau and previously served as the chair of the Marathon County Republican Party during the Act 10 era.

Trueblood says he is running because he thinks Wausau can do better than the current managed decline residents he’s spoken to believe the city is in. Trueblood says he wants to grow the city’s tax base, increasing housing affordability by reducing city restrictions (he brings up the possibility of allowing “mother-in-law” suites or outbuildings) and streamlining government processes. That will help build more, which would ease affordability issues.

Trueblood criticized the current attitude of raising taxes as the answer to everything - he says the city should be financially planning better and cites the current Wausau firefighter referendum as a good example of that. While he agrees the city needs the additional firefighters, he though the funding for them was poorly planned.

Trueblood says he would like to serve on the city’s parks and recreation committee and the historic preservation committee. And he said he thought the two parks groups — the city parks committee and the county’s parks commission — were unnecessary where one committee ought to do.

Trueblood says the city has seen a return to vibrancy since the end of COVID. Trueblood says he wants to see a longer-term vision for the city planning, and for the city to be open to more business possibilities. While he doesn’t think a large data center makes sense, he says with the closing of mills, the area has more water and power capacity than it did in the past.

Trueblood said the city working together could help make Wausau a better place for current and future residents, and that’s what he wants to work for.

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