The Waukesha Common Council decided in last year's budget to cut the mayor's travel budget and organization membership budget. Included in the cut was his membership in the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Mayor Larry Nelson tells the Waukesha Freeman he didn't fight it at the time because of the difficulty in getting a budget passed. So he claims he asked the city administrator for a solution.
Administrator Lori Luthor told him to go around the city council and ask a department of the city, the Waukesha Water Commission, for $5,000.00.
It's kind of a novel solution when you think about it. When the top governing authority in the city decides the membership wasn't worth it, climb down the ladder and find a governing body underneath to cough up the cash. Heck in upside-down Waukesha where the mayor is asking the city administrator what he should do, this makes perfect sense. And think about it from our evil genius Lori Luthor's point of view. If she gets Mayor Larry out of town, she's in control of everything, de jure as well as de facto.
Unfortunately for the mayor and the city administrator, the Waukesha Water Commission decided -unanimously- they didn't want to catch trouble for authorizing money the common council already denied, especially when citizens are already complaining about the price of water in this town.
"If the commission doesn’t think it is right to do it, then I will have to go back and find the funding elsewhere." Next stop for the mayor, the Taj Ma Library.
