Mike's Conservative Club - May 12th Kickoff Event

Back on May 12th, we had our first gathering of like-minded folks who appreciate Conservatism. Again, for lack of a better name, we simply call it Mike’s Conservative Club.

To kick things off, we had Dane County Board Supervisor, Jeff Weigand, who represents Dane County’s 20th District, speak at our inaugural gathering at Kavanagh’s Supper Club. During Jeff’s 90-minute talk, we learned a lot about the updated make-up of the board following the spring ’25 elections, topics that are near-and-dear to Jeff that he is working on currently and then he took questions from the participants.

Jeff confirmed that he is still the only moderate to conservative member on the board and he really does not have any allies that are willing to work with him. He shared with us some extraordinary dollar amounts for projects that Dane County spends our tax dollars on annually. For instance, 10 years ago, Dane County spent approximately $650,000,000 annually, now we are over $965,000,000, and counting. Our population has grown about 60,000 people during that same time period and Dane County’s borrowing has grown much faster than our population growth.

Jeff also gave us an update on his closer look at the monies that have been funneled into Urban Triage over the past few years and other expenditures that trouble him. All in all, it was a very interesting discussion on the inter-workings of our county government. Thanks, Jeff!

We are currently working on lining up our next speaker, State Senator Howard Marklein, sometime in July to talk to us about the State’s next bi-annual budget and the intense negotiations with the Governor’s staff over his desired spending spree. We will let you know when that meeting will take place in an upcoming issue of Four Lakes.

Thanks.

Mike Herl

Mike Herl has been a life-long Republican and a member of the local Republican Party of Dane County (RPDC) for the past 30 years. He served as its chairman from 2008 through 2014. Mike has been in the commercial real estate and development business for the past 23 years and is the founding partner of Madison Commercial Real Estate LLC in Madison.