19-Year-Old Paulite Elected Mayor of Rice Lake, Wisconsin!!!

[BuddyRey]

Very impressive!

http://wcco.com/local/19.year.old.2.1620097.html

Rice Lake Voters Elect 19-Year-Old Mayor
Reporting
Bill Hudson
RICE LAKE, Wis. (WCCO) ―

A young man wearing a Hollister T-shirt, shorts and sandals picked up election signs Wednesday in Rice Lake, Wis. The 19-year-old wasn't a campaign volunteer. Romaine Quinn is the new mayor.

Quinn, who served one year on the Rice Lake City Council before being elected mayor on Tuesday, said, "Age, I don't think, necessarily makes a difference, I mean, it's about the issues."

Judging by the talk at Maxine's restaurant, he might be right.

"Apparently, a lot of people wanted change," said 78-year-old Del Hanson, who voted for Quinn.

A couple seats down the counter, Richard Cerminar wished he could have cast a ballot for the young candidate.

"From what I understand, an extremely nice young man," said Cerminar, who lives just outside Rice Lake proper.

Cerminar thinks Romaine's big win had a lot to do with what happened on Manwaring Avenue and other roads around town.

"They cut down trees that were 40 and 50 years old and put in sidewalks nobody needed or wanted," he said.

"They just didn't listen," said George Erickson. "Basically everybody on this street didn't want a sidewalk."

The "improvements" being made by the city are effectively taking away half of Erickson's front yard.

It doesn't help that the project got started late last fall and is still ongoing.

JoAnn Erickson said her front yard has been a muddy mess much of the past several months.

The Ericksons and their neighbors filled the council chambers to protest plans to put in sidewalks.

"The council wouldn't listen, but Romaine was one that said, 'I think we should listen to the people,' and no, they wouldn't," Joann recalled.

"People want someone who's proud to serve as mayor, but still humble enough to realize he's no better than anyone else in town," said Quinn, who takes political science classes at the University of Wisconsin-Barron County.

He cites Ron Paul, the libertarian-leaning Republican congressman from Texas, as his political role model.

The Ericksons voted for a young mayor once before. JoAnn said that was a "disaster."

She's not worried about Quinn's fitness for the job or his age.

"Doesn't matter. He's got a head on his shoulders," said JoAnn. "He'll do fine. I'm sure he'll do fine. It'll surprise me if he doesn't."

During his campaign, Quinn told voters he wants to hold the line on taxes, replace the city administrator and, of course, reconsider plans to put sidewalks all over Rice Lake.

He beat incumbent mayor Dan Fitzgerald with 53 percent of the vote.

[TheTyke]

Wow... that's really amazing! Not only is he young, but he even beat the incumbent, which conventional strategy holds is very hard to do. Hats off to the guy!!! We need a lot more like him.

[Badger Paul]

I heard about him. Rice Lake isn't too far from where I live. I didn't know he was a Paulite. Yeah!

[Icymudpuppy]

Originally published June 23, 2008 at 12:00 AM | Page modified June 23, 2008 at 12:39 PM

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Napavine's young mayor shakes up the town
It was another busy day last week for Nick Bozarth, who at 22 years old is this town's youngest mayor in its 95-year history. Bozarth isn't looking for...

By Erik Lacitis

Seattle Times staff reporter

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JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Napavine Mayor Nicholas Bozarth, 22, has shaken up his small conservative town of 1,400 in his first six months in office.

JOHN LOK / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Bozarth is the youngest mayor in the town's 95-year history and has drawn criticism for acts such as ordering city workers to keep clear of local watering holes during lunch breaks.



NAPAVINE, Lewis County — It was another busy day last week for Nick Bozarth, who at 22 years old is this town's youngest mayor in its 95-year history.

Bozarth isn't looking for controversy. But since he took the unsalaried office in January, somehow it has just seemed to find him.

Napavine, 35 miles south of Olympia, is a conservative place. In the last presidential election, 65 percent went for George W. Bush.

So perhaps it was a bit unusual that when he ran for mayor last year, Bozarth borrowed from Gandhi for his campaign theme: "Be the change that you want to see."

But change is what this town of 1,400 wanted. Now six months into a four-year term, he certainly has shaken things up.

First he ordered city workers to quit hanging out at local watering holes during work hours.

Last week, he suspended the controversial police chief. And now he has managed to get into a tiff with the local fire district.

But by and large, it seems folks around here have been giving him a chance.

"I think maybe some people were a little worried about his age, but some people are excited," said Shawna Hannum, who runs Get A Haircut, a local hair salon that charges 14 bucks for a haircut.

"He brings new ideas into our little town."

Learning and growing

Making change in the city has been, as they say, a learning experience for Bozarth. But learning is something he loves.




After graduating from Napavine High School in 2004, Bozarth worked at a supermarket and attended Centralia Community College for a year and a half to study management and marketing.

He says he gets his influences from books and reads about history online.

Lately he's been reading Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," which might be the most influential tract of the American Revolution. He picked it up for $6 from the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble.

Bozarth's outward demeanor is low-key. He is unfailingly polite. He works long hours as an emergency-room technician at Providence Centralia Hospital, where his girlfriend works as a nurse.

Nonetheless, Bozarth says he didn't want to be one of those people "sitting around the kitchen table," complaining about an increase in water rates or something. So he decided to run for mayor.

He spent about $1,300 of his own money — refusing any contributions — to buy 200 yard signs and to place ads on the local country-music station.

He knocked on the doors of nearly every one of the roughly 450 households in Napavine.

When they opened their doors, voters saw a young man who seemed more like he's in his 30s, a volunteer for the local fire district who spent a month helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. He had even helped deliver a baby when a woman went into labor at a freeway offramp.

By contrast, opponent Jim Haslett was a 66-year-old longtime city councilman and community leader.

Looking back, Haslett says that for voters, maybe it was a matter of, "I've got old ideas. He's got new ideas."

Bozarth got about three-quarters of the vote.

Haslett, also a history buff, thinks Bozarth will do a good job.

"In the Revolution, some of the generals were 28 years old," he says.

No free lunch

Then it was time to govern.

Back in April, Bozarth sent out a memo ordering city employees that while on the job, they couldn't go to establishments that were "recognized" as bars.

He specifically named a venerable local hangout, Frosty's Saloon & Grill, which proudly proclaims it was established in 1901. It is a bar but also has an extensive food menu.

Nobody was accusing city employees of drinking on the job, Bozarth says. But he had gotten complaints from citizens that employees were taking extended lunches and breaks there. Like maybe an hour and a half or so.

This is Napavine, after all. Everybody seems to know everybody else's business.

Of course, the restaurant's owner wasn't very happy. She said she was being picked on.

A letter to the editor written by a Napavine man to The Chronicle, Lewis County's daily paper, had the headline, "What does mayor have against Frosty's?"

Bozarth apologized and rescinded the memo.

Now he says he has learned something from the episode: that a differently worded memo could have accomplished the same goal. He issued a new one that said that on a temporary basis, city employees would have to file a daily log listing what they did all day — and include when they took their lunch breaks.

"The kid" and the chief

Then there was the police chief, Shelby Clements.

In the summer of 2006, the chief was a main character in what grew to be known around here as "Pattigate." Clements, along with at least 10 other law-enforcement officers all over the area, got caught having racy text-message sessions with Patti Prouty, who happened to be a county manager in charge of hooking up computers in police cruisers.

One exchange between Clements and Prouty went like this:

Clements: "so are ya nakie?" He added :-P, an emoticon for a tongue hanging out of a mouth.

Prouty: "top on no lower."

Someone printed up T-shirts that said, "Are You Nakie?" They sold like hotcakes.

Clements received a brief suspension. Prouty was fired.

Then, just last week, Clements again was in the news.

Bozarth had to rush back to town from his job at the hospital in Centralia. He conferred with the City Council, then placed Clements on paid administrative leave. The chief's city-issued Chevy Tahoe now is parked in Bozarth's driveway.

Bozarth says he can't talk about the specifics. He has asked the city's insurance provider and the Lewis County Sheriff's Office to look into the situation. He says it's because he wants to be fair to the chief.

That hasn't stopped the chatter.

On Lewis County Buzz, an online public forum hosted by The Chronicle's Web site, someone commented: "Sort of a gutsy move by 'the kid.' "

One more firestorm

But that isn't the last of the controversies for Bozarth.

More than a month ago, he sent a letter to Fire District 5, asking how much manpower and how many vehicles the fire district has. The district had shut down one of the four fire stations in the area, posting a large sign: "STATION CLOSED DUE TO LACK OF VOLUNTEERS!"

This concerns Bozarth because he wonders about response time to emergencies. He wonders if it's time for Napavine to form its own fire department.

But he got no reply from the fire district. So he sent an e-mail and another letter.

This time, he says, he was faxed back a blank public-records request form.

Bozarth says he couldn't understand why one public agency was being so uncooperative with another one. He has read up on state laws about public records, and his conclusion is that his letter was good enough.

As Bozarth tells it, the fire district's secretary, Linda Wolfe, told him, "Nick, why don't you fill out the damn form?"

Well, Bozarth says, it's a matter of principle. Why should he — or his constituents — have to fill out unnecessary forms and make government even more complicated?

Bozarth says Wolfe called him "pathetic and sad." He says he then stepped outside of the fire district's headquarters in Napavine and called one of the fire commissioners, who promised that Bozarth would get the documents. Bozarth says he got them last Friday.

Meanwhile, Wolfe responds by saying she is filing a complaint with the Napavine City Council that Bozarth harassed her.

"This will probably go to legal action," Wolfe says.

Bozarth still has 42 months left on his four-year term. He says he's staying the course.

Luckily, there are plenty of calming Gandhi quotes to be found online.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

[BuddyRey]

Wow... that's really amazing! Not only is he young, but he even beat the incumbent, which conventional strategy holds is very hard to do. Hats off to the guy!!! We need a lot more like him.

I know. I'm pleasantly shocked by this news, since I always thought it took clout and connections to get into politics. This almost inspires me to run for something...almost. :D

[dannno]

Ya know in the TV show "Weeds" two of the main characters are corrupt city council members, one of whom is an accountant. He would make deals with contractors on the side and then convince the rest of the council to vote for whatever made the contractors money.

That's what sounds like was happening here, they had a city council who just wanted to push through project so they could steal money from the people and give it to this contractor.

That is a great example of an argument for why privatization of roads and other government infrastructure would be beneficial.

[Vessol]

Awesome. I hope he does a good job.

Makes you wonder why we have some pre-conceived notion that only old white guys=politcians.

[Bruno]

RP inspiration ftw!

[krazy kaju]

This makes me want to run for city council where I live.

[SovereignMN]

This makes me want to move to Rice Lake, WI. Unfortunately my mother in law resides there and there is no way in hell I'd live within 100 miles of her.

[BuddyRey]

This makes me want to move to Rice Lake, WI. Unfortunately my mother in law resides there and there is no way in hell I'd live within 100 miles of her.

ROFL! That bad, huh?