If you’re here, you’re probably looking for information to help you fill out your ballot. Good on you. The 2022 WCC Trustee election is about as far down the ballot as you can get. Don’t let its position “below the fold” fool you. It is just as important as the high profile races.
And don’t believe that its position in the “non-partisan” section of the ballot means anything. This race is very much influenced by partisan politics and partisan political philosophies.
What’s at stake is control of about $400M in property taxes over the next six years. The seven people who sit on the Board will have influence that goes well beyond the campus boundaries.
So, when an incumbent Trustee (Bill Milliken) is asked a simple question about his goals for the position during an interview in the local newspaper, his answer should stick out. Not for what his goals are, mind you; but rather, his answer is important for what it doesn’t say. (It doesn’t say what his goals for the position are.)
It is no accident that the 2022 WCC Board of Trustees Chair (Milliken) and Vice Chair (Davis) also happen to be the two incumbent trustees running for re-election this year. So, the newspaper reporter’s question (soft as it might be) about what the Trustee’s goals are is important.
Milliken’s answer means one of three things: he either:
- Misunderstood the question.
- Has no goals for the position
- Has goals for the position, but does not wish to share them with the electorate.
Know what you’re voting for in the 2022 WCC Trustee election
Regardless of what the answer is, those three possibilities should raise the concern of all voters. A man with Milliken’s pedigree does not understand a simple question. Or he literally has no particular reason for wanting a seat on the board. Or he knows why he wants the seat, but he does not want you – the voter – to know why he wants the seat.
His voting record speaks a particular truth, though. In his six years on the Board, he has cast a single No vote. One. In six years. What are the odds of that? His one recorded “No” vote was on a motion to move the discontinuation of the Culinary Arts program to an action item. It was a procedural vote. Now, that might come as close as he’ll ever get to a protest. Frankly, the best way for a Trustee protest against canceling the Culinary Arts program is to vote No on canceling the Culinary Arts program, not on the procedural bullshit that surrounds the vote. When it came down to the vote to cancel the Culinary Arts program, he voted “Yes.” (Maybe he just wanted to know what voting “No” felt like.)
Keep that in mind when you’re deciding how to vote in the 2022 WCC Trustee Election that you have a candidate on the ballot with no stated goals for the position, who also wants the authority to spend $400M of your tax dollars.
Photo Credit: Ian Sanderson , via Flickr
