Wisconsin
New La Crosse County Board chair Tryggestad sets goal of trying to unite members
The La Crosse County Board has made a leadership change for the new term that began this week.
At its first meeting since the spring elections, Tina Tryggestad of La Crosse was elected as the board chair. She succeeded Monica Kruse, who chose not to go for another term.
Tryggestad described the election process as “nerve-wracking,” but she told reporters she’ll work to avoid divisiveness on the 30-member county board.
“Cohesiveness needs to be strengthened,” said Tryggestad, who is in her fifth term on the county board. “We all get along on a personal level, and we all work together, and so much, 99 per cent of the work that the county board does is non-partisan, and it’s just neighbors doing the best that they can for the neighbors in their districts.”
Tryggestad represents an area on the south side of La Crosse.
In her acceptance speech Tuesday, Tryggestad said she would try to eliminate an “us-versus-them” attitude in county government. She says county leaders have several old and new issues to work together on.
“We have a Hillview (nursing home) remodel,” she said, “a really strong homelessness issue that we’re working on, and again, that cohesiveness” and building “camaraderie.”
Tryggestad is in her fifth term as a La Crosse County supervisor. During that time, she has served on county committees dealing with veterans, health and human services, and aging.
Bob N.
April 18, 2024 at 7:02 am
All together now. We are non-partisan.
Tryggestad won by 19-11 to be County Chair. That’s about the Democrat edge on the Board, 2-1.
Her predecessor on the Board, Ms. Kruse, was fond of advisory referenda, attempting to turn out the liberal vote numbers, while accomplishing nothing but gumming up the ballots and spending 5 grand on it.
As Human Services Committee Chair, Tryggestad marshalled the biggest budget in the County, about 62 million a year. Lots of money. Debatable results.
Will she be fair to all viewpoints? Who knows? They’re all cute when they’re puppies.
LG
April 18, 2024 at 10:29 am
Why speak of unifying the board Tina? The benefit of free market capitalism and a democratic Republic requires the ideas an input from the many, Not a group of elites that speak with one voice. Always remember you won, in part, because you ran unopposed. you had a consensus from the people against your citizen review board, yet you voted to overturn the will of the people by supporting the citizen review board. And I agree with the above commentator With regard to the big budget and questionable results for all that spending. You got $22 million of ARPA funds and still raised taxes. This is poor fiscal management.
Kevin Keeffe
April 19, 2024 at 7:50 am
We may all get along, meaning we tolerate each other. We are a far distance from working together and unified. If we were unified our current president would be kicked out on his ass, he isn’t intellectually or physically capable of doing the job. If we were unified, our mayor would not have invited the homeless from every state in the four state area to come and camp in the city parks and other locations. If we were unified we would have a broader distribution of votes in our local, state and federal elections. We have a group of people who will not acknowledge that life is life, no matter how small, go read Horton Hears a Who! We have a group of people that believe a ‘fair share’ is ‘everthing someone else has that they don’t, and if you don’t give it to us, we will burn down your neighborhood, loot your stores, block your bridges, beat your cops, ignore your borders, disrupt/censor/block your ideas from being presented to the public, promote harassment of people by color, usually the white color, take away your right to self defense, and soooooo many more. That group of people believes that ‘being unified’ means do what i want, or i will make you, either by means of law, taxation, censorship, jailing, or if need be, by the point of a gun.
I call bullshit on your call for unification!