I would love to see candidates actually research the landscape and decide if they can effect meaningful change for the majority of Janesville residents. For the last few cycles of CC elections we have elected people on their promise to cut spending, stop sidewalks. These people are well intended but what we really need is a candidate that can build consensus with a diverse group of people and actually move the city forward.
These well intentioned single issue candidates soon learn they are not able to actually fulfill their campaign promises because they are unwilling or unable to actually construct a meaningful argument that would convince others their ideas are sound and good for the community at large.
The Job of the City Council is to set policy not micromanage the city manager or the employees that make up the staff. Over the last 6 years or so we have seen the Council members go over every line of department budgets with a fine tooth comb and a suspicious mindset trying to find all the “waste” and member after member has had to admit there is not any wholesale deception or widespread waste and as a result they have wasted hundreds of hours of staff time looking for the golden unicorn of waste with no results.
I would hope the new Council members can realize exactly what their jobs entail and stop this silly merry-go-round of 2 year candidates that may not be qualified to run a Boy Scout troop let alone a city. Why a plumber or a restaurateur would be more qualified to make decisions regarding street repair or building code enforcement or sidewalk requirements than the person holding a Master’s degree in that specified field is a mystery to me.
Council members are charged with ESTABLISHING CLEAR CONCISE POLICY and when that job is done the staff members have clear marching orders and can move forward doing what they get paid too do.
Over the past few cycles we have no policy being set, the council could not reach a consensus on sidewalks so they formed a “committee” to do their job for them (another epic fail). The previous Councils have failed at identifying the famous “government waste” and as a result have not planned for what to do if there really is no waste to cut and now we are about 1 million in the hole for this next budget cycle and short of robbing Peter to pay Paul they have formulated no policy to guide us out of this mess such as DECIDING what services will actually need to cut to bring this bleeding to an end.
These positions are not for the faint of heart or indecisive or thin skinned but for the true leader who will take one for the team in the court of public opinion to actually effect change for the overall good.
Everyone will lose at one point or another in this game of budget balancing so we should brace for the worst and elect people who can actually make the tuff calls.

Yes, what we need is a radical thinker on our city council...said no reasonable person ever. No Rashkin, no Liebert, please!! This city already spends too much money. We need people to be realistic and control costs - not drum up more programs that do not work.

Write-In Yuri Rashkin. We need someone with some experience...

Yeah, Grassman resigned but why is he being paid till July?

Yuri lol ;(

Sigma for president ?

We need to do away with the city council way period.

Yuri Rashkin has announced a write-in campaign for city council.
Go Yuri!

Marklein seems to have planted signs around town.

I hope this will become a "dramatic turn"out. But given recent poll numbers, I believe we have cause for concern.