Pleasant Prairie has an interesting quirk among its residents. Each time a local election comes around, I find my neighbors begin speaking and asking questions in hushed tones. They’re perfectly normal questions, such as “have you looked at who’s running for the Village Board?” or “did your property taxes go up this year?” I’ve always found it odd that such things are discussed over backyard fences with frequent glances to the side. My family moved to Pleasant Prairie from Chicago, where certain political things aren’t safe to discuss at all, even quietly. I recall being surprised at the similar fear that exists in this quiet Wisconsin town. Over the years, I came to understand why everyone spoke about Pleasant Prairie politics so cautiously: corruption is rampant, the governing bodies are unchecked, and accountability is nearly non-existent. In our attempt to escape the twisted legal landscape of Chicago, we had unwittingly moved into a smaller version of it.
While it’s not uncommon for politicians to hand-pick a candidate that they hope will be their successor, it’s still up to the taxpayers to decide whether or not the direction of things is one in which they wish to continue moving. Dave Klimisch appears to be outgoing Village President John Steinbrink’s golden calf. Anyone chosen by Steinbrink is most likely willing to further Steinbrink’s expensive vision for the village, and is at least tacitly unbothered by the scandals that have plagued the Village governance in the last few years. In addition, he’s already been a part of Pleasant Prairie’s governance as a Trustee for the last 10 years. If anyone has already had a chance to stand up to the government expansion, nepotism, and poor fiscal policy in the Village, it’s Klimisch. And yet…here we are. It’s about time we took a wrench to these broken cogs in the machine.
While Klimisch has remained quiet about the Village’s misconduct, Eric Meadows has publicly fought local government corruption and poor policy for the last several years. His work on the KUSD School Board was exemplary, even when consistently under fire. He has spoken out not just with wishes and dreams and slogans like so many, but bullet-pointed lists of possible solutions for long-standing issues. I’ve never seen a local politician provide a substantial list of fixes and avenues for their execution, except for Eric Meadows, who has done exactly that on social media and other platforms on multiple occasions.
Meadows has also been consistent in his concern for crime and safety in Pleasant Prairie, and throughout the county. While many don’t like to talk about it, the fact of the matter is that we are situated dead in the middle of a crime corridor that runs between Chicago and Milwaukee. All manner of things are being trafficked through our peaceful little village, and there is work to be done to curb the growth of these operations. Eric Meadows is not afraid to talk about these issues directly and with sincere concern.
Meadows has also served on the Kenosha County Board as a Supervisor, giving him unique insight into how Pleasant Prairie fits into the county- and state-level puzzle. He was successful in balancing the budget on both the KUSD School Board and the County Board during his time there. Imagine the possibilities if we had a Village President with the proven drive to save money, reduce regulations on citizens and small businesses, and who actively supports law enforcement to eradicate crime. Instead, all we’ve had for the last several decades are golf buddies like Klimisch who throw lip service to the people and coin to each other.
If Klimisch wins, the hushed backyard conversations will continue, along with more under-the-table handshakes and unnecessary raises to the tax levy. If Meadows wins, we can look forward to opening the blinds, and shining real sunlight on long-hidden issues that are costing the citizens of Pleasant Prairie money, business, and safety.
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52 Responses
THANK YOU for shedding light on the DIRTY backroom deals that are UNPLEASANT PRAIRIE!! WE need to VOTE FOR ERIC otherwise we will have Steinbrink still running the show thru his stooge Klimisch. Hopefully we can get rid of the other dirty player {Polloncoff} next election. Look how Klimisch did NOTHING when JR was convicted of STEALING our tax dollars? VOTE ERIC!!
These old politicians are like garbage, eventually it starts to stink and needs to be changed !
I truly hope Eric wins, but unfortunately Klimisch has all his cronies fooled. We need everyone to put an Eric Meadows sign in their yard and get out there and spread the word.
I have one and another on my car window!
Klimsich said nothing about the Jr scandal
How about look into all the things that happened with Sr getting work done on his house also.
Someone ask Dave about all the houses he flipped in kenosha with out pulling any permits.
I’m not sure if anyone knows this but Klimisch’s daughter is now a man. Had the transgender surgery as well.
OMG! this has nothing to do about this guy’s qualifications to ever on the board. There are plenty of reasons to not vote for this guy. This is not one of them, unless, of course, you are a stupid, small minded, bigoted person. Maybe if you dig deeper into this guy’s life, you will find that another daughter went on a date with a black guy. Your excited utterance is on the same level.
Don’t you think his views on DEI should place a high value on his character. If he agrees that a woman can be a man or vice versa, that shows he isn’t capable of being a conservative leader.
We don’t know if he agrees with what his children have done, but if he does, your girls may start sharing bathrooms with the boys. So yes, it kind of does matter….IF he agrees with DEI.
What has that got to do with the price of tea in China??
Just admit, you don’t want him stealing your women; he probably gets more puss than you do.
Comments like this have nothing to do with either candidate’s policy. Every person decides their own life and the job of a parent is to love their children and support what makes them happy. Grow up!
At the townhall question and answer between the 2 candidates, I asked the event moderator to ask them both about the corruption and the moderators never asked the question.
I also don’t undetstand why Trump supporters, flying a Trump flag, are supporting Klimsich! Klimsich and Pleasant Prairie need a good helping og DOGE, or at least a forensic audit and criminal prosecution where warranted.
Eric Meadows and Matthew Henby…the new small town D.O.G.E! We need a sign made up like that!
Go to the Trump supporters and show them. Trumpers listen.
Your move.
You got to ask them both wuestions?!? I saw that eric left the debate early, was he losing to dave? Why would he have left the debate?!???
There is still corruption going on I the Village. There are employees “working from home” when in actually, they are not working. They are taking care of their children, doing housework, running to Dr. appointments. Klimisch at the forum stated there are no employees working from home. A total lie to us all. He is just covering up for the employees who are abusing the system, stealing money from the taxpayers. I hope Kevin looks into the next story of corruption in the Village. This is ongoing. It is happening. Wake up people. Drain the swamp!
Just curious, who in the Village is working from home? Has this been verified?
Just ask around Kevin. HR, IT, Finance, Community Development, Engineering, DPW, every department. Our tax dollars are being wasted on lazy ass employees who want a paycheck but don’t want to be in the office. There is A LOT of abuse.
If I remember correctly from the forum meeting, candidate Klimisch sort of qualified his statement about who was working from home, something like, all the people in positions or departments X, Y, and Z are not working from home, but I could have remembered it wrong.
Simply put, Klimisch lied. There are employees working from home. He knows it. Kremer, Kedrow, Klimisch, Pollocoff and Steinbrink know there are A LOT of employees working from home and abusing the system. Once again they turn a blind eye to it. Even the so called Republicans, Kremer and Kedrow. I have been told by village employees that HR and administration not to address it. If that doesn’t smell like corruption, I don’t know what does.
I believe this information would be available to anyone hrough a record request (including you!). All you have to do is phone or email the village and request a specific record or group of records. Usually they will send it to you for free, but if it takes them more than 2 hrs to assemble the information, they can charge you for it. Where I work (state), we have to file a form requesting to hybrid work from home/office. I imagine the Village requires something similar, but have not looked into it.
I suppose there could be some employees working from home but wouldn’t they need permission? Every time I’m at the village hall, which is pretty cramped, it looks like there’s full house. Name names.
Baseless claims with no evidence is nothing more than a strongly worded opinion. Prove there are people WFH before spreading lies
Why was Meadows absent from so many meetings during his time on previous boards? Only attended something around 25%?
Is this John Steinbrink?
He’s a slacker.
He answered that question on his campaign page. A lot of the meetings are held during the day and he works full time. He was told he didn’t have to attend those meetings.
He couldnt even finish the debate for the office he is running…. Guy wants to half ass and show face….
Watch your back Jack . The big guy isn’t fooling around.
I appreciate Eric’s interest and think he got screwed on the school board. I question his commitment to the village, though, especially because the county and village are not always aligned. Village taxpayers send more money to the county than we get back. The same with KUSD. Eric has rightfully brought up the latter point and thinks PP should form a separate school district. Good idea but it was tried in the past and the law makes it almost impossible to accomplish, especially with the enormous financial burden of assuming a chunk of the KUSD debt plus having to build at least a new high school and new middle school (and probably a new elementary school). We would be talking hundreds of millions of dollars — if it could ever get off the ground. School board then county board and now village board?? Is he committed to the county or the village? How many village board meetings has he been to? As much as I like Eric I want to see more commitment to the village. And if he did his homework he would have known about the issues surrounding forming a new school district and the cost. It would in no way, shape or form save PP taxpayers money. And what has he done to ensure that village taxpayers get their money’s worth from the county?
Steinbrink was a piece of work. He’s gone. If there’s all of this “evidence” of “corruption” then by all means let it be investigated and prosecuted. Jr. got what he deserved and his dad is on his way out the door.
JR got a sweetheart jail term anyone else would be looking at hard prison!! Sr groomed Klimich to be a figure head on village board with SR still collecting his back room money lets not forget about his buddy Polloncoff who found village money to shut-up previous village administer with a contract than he could not speak about village dealings. Ask yourself if Klimisch has done anything about JR and SR stealing from the village or speaking up??
No. Jr. probably got exactly the right outcome. Why? His supporters think he got shafted while his family’s enemies believe it was a sweetheart deal which suggests it was the proper outcome.
Klimisch isn’t speaking g up about our tax dollars being misused by employees who instead of taking vacation or sick time, use the working remotely. There are employees who constantly work from from home weekly and abuse the system. Everyone knows it, HR and administration, as well as the village board and yet nothing is done. The whole board needs to go. Time to clean house.
Don’t start a new district, join westosha.
Interesting.
No. Jr did NOT get what he deserved! He doesn’t deserve to be out every day on an Electric Monitor running his business! Visiting his girlfriend or, from what someone else has posted, “working for” the pool company. Since he IS though, he should be turning every cent over to the tax payers of Pleasant Prairie.
Instead, he only got a $30,000 fine and only 1 urine in jail. He gets out in May but still had the audacity to ask to get out early recently! He should have gotten at least 10 years for what he did!
Correction. *1 year in jail!
We in Pleasant Prairie are subsidizing Kenosha children educations, and it is not fair, and not right. When you do the math, we in PP are paying $33,000 per PP student enrolled in KUSD. Catholic schools charge on average maybe $10,000, which includes teachers, school facility, everything. So lets split the difference and say PP could save $10,000 per student per year on the cost to educate our children if we formed our own school district. Assuming as a guess that as a guess, there are 7,000 PP kids enrolled at KUSD, then we could save $10,000*7,000 = $70,000,000 per year by separating from KUSD. At that rate, it would only take a few years to pay the KUSD debt buyout, and in only a few years we would have the needed infrastructure paid for. PLUS, AND this is the BIGGEST THING,…are kids would not be stuck on schoolbusses with drug dealer teachers and 12 year old rapists from Kenosha! PP would be so much nicer that way, truly a family destination. The other thing we need to do in PP is increase our police force by 50%. Currently, PP pas fewer police per 1000 residents than the state average, and with our challenging positional location between major crime centers, we need to have LOTS of police, more than average. My two cents.
We need to take those extra 25 police officers and post one on each major road through town at all times (Greenbay, Sheridan, etc.). We need to do this in conjunction with lowering all speed limits on the major roads through town to 25-35 mph. Each road will be manned, and every person driving through town will be observed and pulled over for any infraction. People will soon learn not do drive through PP if they are up to no good, but instead best to just stay on the interstate. We can fund a lot of the extra police by writing about 500 speeding tickets per day. Those committing more serious crimes can be sent to Guantanamo bay or CECOT. I have the assurance of both the POTUS and DOGE that they are fully in support of this plan.
In brief, we will make Pleasant Prairie the Riviera of southeast Wisconsin, “better than Monaco”.
The Cheddar Riviera
You are a complete whack job.
The village has some good officers, they chase the trash driving through constantly. Can’t get rid of it though being trapped between Illinois and Milwaukee. The FLOCK cameras are vital.
Hahaha that’s some pretty dumb shit. There is a teacher shortage already. I’m assuming though many of the kids are going to St Joes or Westosha under open enrollment. You’re also forgetting the cost to build the schools and the property needed. Where is that all coming from?
Dave Klimisch as a village board member claims to be a supporter and promoter of the village fire and police services as per his own advertisement.
As a board member he went along and voted for a village referendum for police and fire additional staffing, but did not demonstrate an active role in promoting or explaining them. One might ask how did village protective services become so understaffed? The answer – years of not increasing staff in relation to village growth and expansion . In village town hall meetings someone asked “if the referendum was to purchase fire trucks or a station” and the village fire chief and administrator at the time said “no, personnel only”. And within months of the referendum approval the village board approved a 15 million dollar fire station.
Well the referendum was approved and taxes increased but to date the fire department is under staffed and the approved positions remain unfilled. Would someone ask how many people are staffing the three fire stations on a daily basis? And how many unfilled referendum positions remain years after referendum approval.
Why is there no accountability from the village board as to the filling of needed positions and holding people’s feet to the fire to recruit and fill fire department positions. Had anyone on the village board raised this issue? If these positions are not needed then Dave and the village board should return unused referendum money to the villagers. I early voted already and voted for change and hopefully accountability in the VPP.
The understaffing was because of tax levy limits. The plan was to add a couple each year but then levy limits got in the way.
That’s bull shit
If you went to the board meetings you’d know.
Insiders know the environment is toxic. Chiefs, lieutenants all internal hires perpetuate toxicity. Nobody wants to work there. They train and get the hell out!!
The question still remains, why isn’t there oversight regarding unfilled fire dept positions when the referendum has been collecting revenue for such positions for two years?
Recruitment is ongoing and applications are being accepted for both new candidates and lateral hires.