Prior to Tuesday’s election, Disclosure is bringing you the coverage we’ve given of the majority of our readership area so you’ll be aware of the contested races. This information is appearing in the current print version on stands right now, so if you need a hard copy of it, hurry and get out to pick one up; the new issue is due to hit the stands beginning April 16 and 17, which means we’ll have a full recap of election results in the new issue. In the interim, we’ve opted to go ahead and post the contents of the current issue’s front-page coverage of the ballots by county, to spur interest and ensure that everyone gets out and VOTES. There may not be many contested races, but that doesn’t mean these offices are not important. The school boards, township officials, aldermen/council seats, mayoral races and other items on the ballot, including ballot questions (such as whether a location should remain ‘dry,’ or whether a public safety tax should be imposed) are the bottom-line basics of public service…and they’re being abused daily in Illinois (and everywhere), so it’s important to PAY ATTENTION TO THEM. And the best “attention” you can pay to them is to show that we can do a better voter turnout locally than something in the teens or 20s.
So here is the tenth of the posts, which will conclude Monday and will be run alphabetically between now and then, continuing with Wabash.
Wabash County: The saga of the Cheeseboy in Bellmont
Rigg, Colby. Aka Cheeseboy.
While there’s not a whole lot of ballot activity in Wabash County, there exists one election that has come to the forefront, once again because of the corruption of the person currently holding the office—that of village president in Bellmont.
The strange little former Wabash Emergency Management Agency second-in-command dude, Colby “Cheeseboy” Rigg, remains village president of Bellmont up until the newly-elected one is seated in May, even though in 2011, Rigg, in a snit of rage, scrawled “I quit!!” on a piece of paper and left it on the desk at city hall. That, unfortunately, wasn’t enough to remove him from office, and so there he is until either Ed Bowman or Larry Sloss prevails in this election.
However, Bellmont won’t be any better off if Bowman is elected: he’s the old guy who put Rigg in place in 2008 with his own resignation after his son, serial killer Greg Bowman, was finally hemmed up on charges of killing a girl in Missouri. Bowman set in motion the factors that got Rigg in office in the first place; then, when Rigg was charged last summer (August 2012) with multiple felony Theft counts from the county’s E-911 agency, it only compounded problems already present. So the common sense candidate is Sloss; but it remains to be seen which way Bellmont voters will go.
The board in Bellmont will be composed of Mike Berberich, Shawn Dorney, Peggy Walling, Shane Vaughan and James Stoneberger, as they are the only ones running, but most are incumbents and have done a fine job in the absence of their errant village president.
Wabash has road districts instead of townships, and in that vein, there is a race in Road District 2 for road commissioner: Independents Danny W. Deisher, Joe Hall and Alan Marx are competing for that seat.
In Road District 3, two Independents, Timothy M. Glick and Derek Guisewite are running for the singular position of road commissioner.
School board races
Only a couple of school districts involving Wabash voters have races.
The first is that of Edwards County Community Unit School Dist. 1, where three will be selected from five: Lawrence Speir, Jr., Rita James, Dale Woods and Richard H. Wolfe in Twp 2S Range 10E, and Jayare Buerster Jr., in Twp 1S Range 10E.
In Grayville Community Unit School District 1, Robert Armstrong, John Stockton, Stephanie Hatcher, Charles Turner and Chad Alldredge compete in the incorporated area of Grayville, and Vanessa Fullop and David Kleinschmidt compete in the unincorporated area for three seats.