Editorial: The Metro Wire’s annual ‘Airing of Grievances’

By Brandi Makuski and Patrick Lynn

Metro Wire staffers work hard every day to bring you the very best in hyperlocal news in an unbiased, straightforward manner. Over the past five years, we’ve experienced some terrific changes: doubling our subscription base annually and celebrating our first year in print in October. Despite our continued staffing shortage—a malady facing every industry today—it’s been very humbling and we have a lot to be thankful for. But that’s another story.

Over the past year, we’ve gathered volumes of off-the-record comments and behind-the-scenes hilarity, and we deal daily with absurd bureaucracy and non-answer answers in our newsgathering efforts (See: Post office).

We generally keep these items within the walls of our newsroom, but we hang a few out to dry each Festivus, a fictitious, secular holiday made popular by the television show “Seinfeld.” One of the traditions associated with this day is the “Airing of Grievances,” designed for blowing off verbal steam on Dec. 23.

We’ve compiled our annual Airing of Grievances for 2022, listed in no particular order:

Candidates who announce their campaigns for public office in private

On Nov. 11, 2022, Meleesa Johnson announced she intended to run for mayor of Stevens Point. Her announcement was made at a private, invite-only, no-press-allowed (at least, that’s what her event flyer read) event held in one of the buildings at Iverson Park.

On Nov. 14, Ms. Johnson sent out a press release announcing her campaign—after it had already been announced on social media.

A few weeks later, we asked Ms. Johnson why she’d chosen a private kickoff for the highest at-large elected position in city government. Her response? “I felt some of my supporters would be uncomfortable in front of the cameras.”

Concern for one’s supporters is laudable to a point. Carrying that torch to the point of eliminating the general public serves to only divide a community, and furthers the false belief that any city office is a partisan one. It’s also far from good practice by a public official who so regularly touts the need for greater inclusivity.

When someone runs for office because they truly feel a calling to public service, and not because they seek to prove a political point or further a political agenda, they understand the importance of fairness, transparency, and at least attempting to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

Ms. Johnson must understand that she is running for an office that does not represent her group of supporters exclusively. It represents every city resident, whether they are homeless or run multimillion-dollar businesses, and without regard for the officeholder’s personal political ideologies, or those of their core support group.

Beyond this, one needs incredible intestinal fortitude to hold the office of mayor. Whether you support Mr. Wiza in that role or not, no one can deny he has been involved in controversial topics on a number of occasions and appears to realize, like his predecessors, that serving in a public office does not afford one the opportunity to surround oneself with supporters in a comfortable environment away from the cameras.

Ms. Johnson should have made her announcement in a public fashion, as many before her have done, typically on the steps of the County-City Building.

Local government’s continued habit of bypassing the press

It’s clear that municipal employees don’t understand how Facebook works, how the algorithm is constantly changing, and how posts don’t show up in a newsfeed, sometimes, for hours or days after it’s been posted. No one, short of those of us who spend hours every week studying it, understands how it works—and even then, once we get the hang of it, the gurus at Facebook change it up again. How do we know this? Because they tell us so, via some vaguely-phrased explanation of how it improves a user’s experiences, every year.

The fact of the matter is, no news outlet has time to monitor dozens of department pages to properly engage the public in a timely manner. To all the police, fire, public works, and other municipal departments: stop using it as a means to distribute information. All you’re doing is further causing damage to the local press. Seriously. It serves no other purpose.

When you also consider that more than half of Portage Co. residents are not on Facebook, it becomes clear that social media simply isn’t reliable means to communicate with the public.

People who don’t read a story before commenting on social media

We get it. Facebook is nice and easy. That’s also the problem. While many media outlets post links to their published stories on Facebook and other social media platforms, the posts themselves only contain rudimentary information about a story. A headline does not give complete information; nor is it intended to. When people comment without reading the story, the comment section becomes loaded with misinformation.

Unprecedented divisiveness

Are you a Republican or a Democrat? We don’t really care, but apparently, there are a lot of people in our community who do, and they use their own definition, and assumptions, of a political party to determine how they vote in municipal elections—which are actually nonpartisan.

Sadly, social media has become a breeding ground for hate-filled remarks against one political belief system or another. Last time we checked, America was the country where one could choose their own political and religious beliefs.

A city council, and county board, that operates inside a silo

The majority of the Stevens Point Common Council this year found itself on one side of a particularly electrified fence, opposite of many vocal constituents. Few have publicly made any statements of apology to residents expressing frustration over not having their concerns heard on the Bus. 51 project, an alarming suggestion to remove public comment from committee meetings, and other issues.

Some on the council have remained steadfast in their ideas, appearing to ignore concerns from the public, oblivious to local press coverage, and ostensibly unaware a council actually existed before they, themselves, were elected—or of the reasons driving previous decisions—and have shown their true colors: they are unwilling to bend when provided with new information.

The drastic new direction the council began taking began in 2015 with a massive overturn of city council members. Some retired or moved out of the area, while others were successfully challenged but a newcomer. But that was a seismic shift for our community that resulted in the resignation of multiple department heads and longtime employees who were uncomfortable with the new direction. And who can blame them: when a public works director didn’t give the council the answer they wanted regarding a controversial road diet on Stanley St., the council went engineer shopping until they found one (from Indiana) who said the road diet was the right move.

The former director of public works threw his hands up in 2016, taking a job in the private sector. Four other department heads had also left the city since that time, those from the community development department, and two city clerks. The parks department director retired during this time as well.

Many council members came into office displaying very little knowledge about this community, its financial background, or its ordinances and disrupted the continuity of city government in ways we have never seen before. Sadly, many continue to be this ignorant.

The council majority has gone out of its way to remove as many powers from the mayor’s office as it possibly can, and some council members have no issues with insulting the mayor in public or sharing misinformation with their constituents, both during city meetings and on social media.

Incredible lack of accountability in local government

Portage Co. government has a long history of finger-pointing. Committee meetings often slow to a maddening crawl because of personality conflicts. Earlier this year, one county committee spent 45 minutes discussing complaints from board members that the process of filing complaints against other board members wasn’t easier.

And no, there’s no way to make that sound less ridiculous.

The years-long debate over a new jail facility is also evidence of this—and countless facility studies at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars later, we still have no new facility. County board leaders still can’t agree on the need for a new facility at all, despite all of the factual evidence to the contrary.

Meeting minutes for county committees are incredibly light, almost always lacking most of the details behind decisions made on behalf of the taxpayers, and while agendas for meetings are available to the public via the county’s website, the meeting packets themselves usually are not.

Until next year,

Brandi & Pat