Tim Ryan tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
Stay the course might not be the perfect phrase to describe the direction Jeanne Cronce believes Shawano should take after electing a new mayor Tuesday, but she does feel the city has been on the right track — even if that’s not always evident.
Cronce, a former Shawano School District teacher and principal, is facing off Tuesday in the mayor’s race against Jim Oberstein, who retired from Johnson Controls in Milwaukee in 2010.
Cronce said there’s a mistaken perception held by some people that nothing, or at least not enough, is being done to move the city forward.
“I think it’s the old adage, you can’t see the forest for the trees,” she said. “It’s happening, and it happens slow and succinctly, and there’s a lot of background work that goes into it that people aren’t aware of.”
Cronce said most activity takes place behind the scenes, until suddenly a new business or development pops up — as has happened recently with Dunham’s Sports moving into the vacant Kmart space and a new industry moving into the city.
Cronce said it’s not just the new development. She said Shawano residents need to appreciate what’s here already.
“I think because we live here we don’t see what we have a lot of the time,” she said. “One of my friends lives in Suring and she comes here for exercise class and she says, ‘The ladies I come with are so excited to come because Shawano has such great little shops to shop in.’ I don’t know that we look at it that way.”
Cronce said another out-of-town friend said it looked to her like Shawano must be booming.
“She came through town on a Saturday and there wasn’t a parking spot,” Cronce said. “She saw people walking with packages, people talking and visiting. There are things going on that maybe we just don’t see because our lives are so busy.”
On the other hand, staying the course doesn’t mean improvements can’t be made, according to Cronce.
“I’m not blind to the fact that we need things in Shawano,” she said. “There are things that I’d love to see here, but we need to accentuate what we have.”
Cronce has emphasized her familiarity with the city and her lifelong ties to the community in her run for mayor.
Though she has named many of the same priorities the city needs to address, unlike Oberstein, she has not proposed a plan of action for what she would do if elected.
“Before I can have a grandiose plan, I need to see what’s working and what’s not working. From there I will develop a plan,” she said.
Cronce said that in broad terms the plan is, of course, to move the city forward, attract new business and industry, and make sure the citizens of Shawano are safe.
“But I need to see what’s working first,” she said. “I don’t know that we have a lot of things that aren’t working. I’m not saying we can’t enhance what’s working, but to come in with a big plan at this time is not something that I feel I should be doing.”
Cronce said she prefers a collaborative, team approach, rather than imposing her own vision of the city’s future.
The way Cronce sees it, that’s not the mayor’s role, at least not under the current structure under which city government operates in Shawano.
Shawano government operates under what the National League of Cities refers to as a “weak mayor-strong council” structure, meaning the mayor defers power in most cases to the Common Council.
Cronce said she would continue that arrangement.
“That’s the government structure that Shawano has,” Cronce said. “That is how our government is set up as, as 90 percent of cities in Wisconsin are. It’s not unique to Shawano.”
Cronce said the strong mayor-weak council structure is better suited to bigger cities.
“Shawano doesn’t fit into that category, and for me as mayor coming in and changing all that, to me that’s not something that I’m looking to do,” she said.
“On the outside, it looks like the mayor has all of this perceived power,” Cronce said. “The mayor really doesn’t. The mayor listens to the citizens’ concerns and directs their questions to the correct department or commission or the legal counsel. The mayor does not have a lot of direct power. They can’t go out and make promises to businesses and industries on the mayor’s own behalf.”
Cronce said she has faith in the city’s department heads and the Common Council.
“I think our council members really study what the issues are,” she said. “They do their homework. They don’t come in without the knowledge of what needs to be done.”
Cronce said she has learned from 14 years on the city’s plan commission how Shawano has grown and the process it takes to move things forward.
“You have to work collegially and collaboratively with people and you can agree to disagree without becoming angry at one another or being hurtful in your words,” she said.
Cronce said she also wants to work with Shawano County Economic Progress Inc. and the Shawano Country Chamber of Commerce in their efforts to attract new business and promote tourism.
“I think they’re doing an awesome job,” she said.
Cronce said she also wants to reach out to members of the community that she hasn’t yet had contact with, and plans to make herself available to the public as much as possible.
Her weekly office hours, she said, would probably be a couple of full days, a couple of half days and by appointment.
“I’m not averse to meeting with someone if they don’t feel comfortable coming into City Hall,” she said.
“The only way we can get information and we can move forward is finding out what the issues are, and if that means I have to be more visible, more able to go here and there and the next place, attend social functions, I’m a pretty social animal, so that doesn’t bother me in the least,” she said.
There are a few proposals Cronce said she would like to put forward, including creating a committee to organize a large tourism-related event to promote the city.
“Each town needs to develop something that is a big draw for people to come in,” she said.
Cronce said she will also be open to hearing other new ideas.
“I’m not one to say, ‘Let’s just sit on our laurels,’ because nothing progresses,” she said. “You can always do more.”