The Kewaunee Nuclear Power plant is offi­cially closed. 

Domin­ion Resources Inc. on Tues­day shut down its 556-megawatt Kewaunee Power Sta­tion east of Green Bay.

Domin­ion was unable to find a buyer for the plant, which employs about 650 peo­ple.  The Rich­mond, Va.-based energy provider announced plans last fall to close the plant and decom­mis­sion it.

The reac­tor is clos­ing because util­i­ties that had pur­chased its elec­tric­ity decided to stop buy­ing it, cit­ing the low price of nat­ural gas.

David Hea­cock, pres­i­dent of Domin­ion Nuclear, says the deci­sion to close the plant “was based purely on economics.”

Kewaunee went into ser­vice on June 16, 1974. Over its life, the plant gen­er­ated about 148 mil­lion megawatt-hours of electricity.

The big win­ner in all this is Green Bay-based Wis­con­sin Pub­lic Ser­vice.  They’ve made dra­matic improve­ments over the years in their coal and nat­ural gas plants which has helped keep prices low.  Per­haps some­day another nuclear power plant will come online — with­out all the protest headaches — and power the needs of north­east Wis­con­sin once again.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Terry Van Akkeren, you’re the first guy in the his­tory of She­boy­gan to lose the may­oral race twice in a four year time span while simul­ta­ne­ously hav­ing a year as mayor mixed in there for good measure.

It likely will never hap­pen again.

Mike Van­der­steen defeated incum­bent Terry Van Akkeren Tues­day, 4,059 to 3,862, accord­ing to unof­fi­cial elec­tion results.

Van Akkeren was seek­ing a full four-year term, hav­ing emerged from an eight-way pri­mary race in Jan­u­ary 2012 and then defeat­ing then-Mayor Bob Ryan a month later to serve out the last year of Ryan’s term.

Van­der­steen, who man­ages DuBois For­mal­wear, has a long polit­i­cal resume as well, hav­ing served as a She­boy­gan County Board super­vi­sor since 1998, includ­ing four years as County Board chair­man from 2008 until April 2012, which is the max­i­mum tenure allowed under board rules.. He also served two terms as a She­boy­gan alder­man in the 1990s.

This was Vandersteen’s sec­ond run for mayor, fol­low­ing an unsuc­cess­ful bid for the posi­tion in 1997.

In other She­boy­gan polit­i­cal news, local men­ace to him­self and future Bad­ger pol­i­tics (He’s all yours lib­er­als!), Asher Heimer­mann lost his bid for the city’s 6th alder­manic district.

He fin­ished third, behind a write-in campaign.

Mark Her­mann led a three-way race for Sixth dis­trict alder­man, with a total of 487 votes. Chal­lenger Asher Heimer­mann was third with 68 votes. There were 174 write-in votes, most of those pre­sum­ably going to incum­bent Bill Wange­mann, who was run­ning as a write-in can­di­date after pre­vi­ously stat­ing he wouldn’t seek re-election.

At the rate Heimermann’s going he’ll be the Demo­c­ra­tic ver­sion of Mark Block by the time he’s 30.  That’s gen­er­ally not a good thing to be com­pared to.

This makes sense.  Lake Michi­gan Car­ferry has been seen as stalling for so long by envi­ron­men­tal­ists that the EPA has pretty much given them their final warning.

Also, it pretty much shows that attempts to make the boat a his­tor­i­cal land­mark aren’t going to make a hill of beans to a bunch of DC bureau­crats who think the com­pany should have made the switch from coal to nat­ural gas (or diesel) years ago.

In its 60th anniver­sary year, the SS Bad­ger car ferry will set sail again, accord­ing to a news release from Lake Michi­gan Carferry.

The owner of the Bad­ger has signed a con­sent decree agree­ment with the Depart­ment of Jus­tice and EPA that will require the SS Bad­ger to end the ash dis­charge within two years.

“Manitowoc’s long mar­itime his­tory has been an impor­tant part of our iden­tity for many years, and the Bad­ger is a very vis­i­ble reminder that the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues,” said Man­i­towoc Mayor Justin Nick­els. “The car ferry is a big part of our tourism indus­try and is a valu­able trans­porta­tion alter­na­tive for our local man­u­fac­tures. We con­grat­u­late Lake Michi­gan Car­ferry and the EPA for work­ing together to ensure the con­tin­u­a­tion of this impor­tant trans­porta­tion asset for Wis­con­sin and Michigan.”

The agree­ment is the prod­uct of a lengthy process of work­ing with the EPA to find the best solu­tion, and includes the instal­la­tion of a sophis­ti­cated ash reten­tion sys­tem. The con­sent decree will be lodged in fed­eral court in Grand Rapids by the Depart­ment of Jus­tice. The process includes a 30-day writ­ten pub­lic com­ment period prior to final approval by the court.

“The res­o­lu­tion of this issue has taken far longer than we had hoped, but the end result has been worth the effort,” said Bob Man­glitz, pres­i­dent and CEO of Lake Michi­gan Car­ferry, in a news release. “This agree­ment will save the jobs of our 200 plus employ­ees as well as many other jobs in the states of Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin. We appre­ci­ate the sup­port we have received from our elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Michi­gan and Wis­con­sin and the encour­age­ment of the thou­sands of peo­ple who have sup­ported our efforts to keep the Bad­ger sailing.”

The Bad­ger takes close to 200 trips across the lake annu­ally, adding close to or sur­pass­ing $35 mil­lion to the Man­i­towoc and Lud­ing­ton economies.  The loss of the car­ferry would have been a major blow to the Lakeshore economy.

Now here’s hop­ing they use the extra time they’ve been given to accom­plish what they need to and ensure the boat oper­ates every Sum­mer on schedule.

Woman accused of steal­ing money from the Girl Scouts’ cookie money.  Appar­ently, she’s been doing it for years. 

A 37-year-old Two Rivers woman was charged in Man­i­towoc County Cir­cuit Court with embez­zling more than $3,000 from Girl Scout cookie sales over a period of sev­eral years.

Beat­rice J. Leurquin, charged with felony theft on Feb. 18, is sched­uled to make an ini­tial court appear­ance at 2:30 p.m. Mon­day in front of Judge Jerome Fox.

Leurquin, who started as a Girl Scout advi­sor in Sep­tem­ber 2007, was a vol­un­teer in a non-paying posi­tion, accord­ing to the crim­i­nal com­plaint. She is no longer asso­ci­ated with the Girl Scouts, accord­ing to a spokes­women for the organization.

Accord­ing to the crim­i­nal complaint:

Leurquin is accused of mis­us­ing cookie sales funds total­ing $3,816.41 between 2008 to 2012.

Accord­ing to media reports, Leurquin said she was merely “bor­row­ing” the money with the intent on pay­ing it back.  Obvi­ously, that never happened…yet.

One could assume that in any sort of legal find­ing or set­tle­ment, she will have to.

It’s been a while since I’ve been in Man­i­towoc, so the “awe-inspiring” sight of see­ing two giant Bud cans and one giant Bud bot­tle when I drive down Wash­ing­ton Avenue hasn’t come into my view in quite a while.

Would I be dis­ap­pointed to see them gone?  Maybe, but I also have to ask what were the city fathers think­ing when they thought that using tax dol­lars to save them?

Last fall, it was decided a Man­i­towoc land­mark would stay put, thanks to a huge com­mu­nity outcry.

The city stepped in so the iconic Bud­weiser paint­ings on silos could stay.

This after the silos owner, River­land Agri­cul­ture, tore down the ban­ners and was set to sand­blast the paint­ings in November.

“The city took a posi­tion awhile ago through our ordi­nances that they were non-conforming signs and River­land did what they had to do and started tak­ing them down,” said Man­i­towoc Mayor Justin Nickels.

But Nick­els quickly heard from com­mu­nity mem­bers who wanted to save the Anheuser-Busch beer cans.

“We had an out­cry from the cit­i­zens. I received on my own well over 1,000 emails in a 48 hour period to keep the murals,” Nick­els said.

So he struck a deal.

“We met with River­land to see what we could do to save them,” said Nickels.

He told River­land Agri­cul­ture the city would pay up to $25 thou­sand to can­cel the work. The city coun­cil approved the pay­ment ear­lier this week.

“The can­cel­la­tion costs were loss of profit, they had vehi­cles they were send­ing up from Salt Lake City and dif­fer­ent areas to power wash that needed to be returned,” Nick­els said.

After the murals were saved, the mayor encour­aged res­i­dents to help raise money for the costs of can­cel­la­tion — plus preser­va­tion and main­te­nance of the murals.

“I’ve never intended to use tax dol­lars to main­tain, pre­serve or the can­cel­la­tion costs for the beer bot­tles. The cit­i­zens wanted to keep it, and I believe through fundrais­ing efforts they can,” said Nickels.

But Nick­els says the money’s been trick­ling in slowly. Ini­tially, only $2,500 was received from from Larry’s Dis­trib­ut­ing, which sells Anheuser-Busch products.

This week, another $50 came in. But other than that, no other money has been donated by those who wanted to keep the murals in the city’s downtown.

$2,550?  That’s it?

Oh, I’m sure more checks will be in the mail after this story was pub­lished in local Lakeshore media, but the real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion is two fold here: 1)  No one still knows how much it will cost to main­tain the murals in the future — also on the tax­payer dime it would seem.  2)  This was an emo­tional deci­sion not a fis­cal one, sadly, that is often is par for the course given Manitowoc’s past spend­ing decisions.

The city is still mil­lions in debt due to bond­ing from unneeded projects dur­ing the Kevin Craw­ford days and it decides it can blow $25,000 on what essen­tial is cor­po­rate art.  Sure it does.

River­land had main­tained them for years because they were a stor­age facil­ity for Anheuser-Busch for its upper-Midwest bar­ley sup­ply.  That stopped a few years when the facil­ity was closed and the own­ers were told to scrap the murals under pub­lic adver­tis­ing laws (giant beer bot­tles cause kids to drink in Man­i­towoc or some­thing like that…) and then a group came along and said to save them as “pub­lic art.”

We have strange lead­er­ship run­ning the city up in Man­i­towoc.  Sadly, I don’t see that end­ing any­time soon.

This could get interesting.

The SS Bad­ger announced its sail­ing sched­ule for 2013 , although it does not yet have a per­mit to operate.

The ferry oper­ates between Man­i­towoc and Lud­ing­ton, Mich., with the first sail sched­uled for May 17.

The SS Bad­ger is a coal-fired ves­sel, and it dumps coal ash into Lake Michi­gan. Its pre­vi­ous per­mit expired last month. It has applied to the U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Agency for a dif­fer­ent type of per­mit, but a deci­sion has not been made on that.

The EPA says it expects to issue a pre­lim­i­nary deci­sion by March 1, and will then ask for pub­lic com­ment about that decision.

With the envi­ron­men­tal left (and Illi­nois Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin) hell­bent on shut­ting the ferry down, who knows what the end rul­ing might be.  The own­ers of the Bad­ger have been try­ing for years to con­vert to nat­ural gas or diesel, but has lacked the cap­i­tal needed to make the conversion.

At stake is at least 500 jobs on both side of the lake and mil­lions in tourism dol­lars for both Michi­gan and Wisconsin.

This could be inter­est­ing to watch and see how it works out.  I’m a fan of pod­casts.  They’re mobile, work great as a sub­sti­tute to mod­ern radio when I’m on long dri­ves, and another means of com­mu­ni­cat­ing a message.

Wouldn’t be shocked to see other cities and other police depart­ments copy this idea in the years ahead — if they aren’t doing it already.

For every She­boy­gan res­i­dent who has won­dered how the win­ter park­ing rules apply to his neigh­bor­hood or how to file a com­plaint, the She­boy­gan Police Depart­ment has some­thing new to offer: podcasts.

The brain­child of Offi­cer Matt Friedl, “SPD Roll Call” will be 10– to-20-minute long audio dis­cus­sions of top­ics that affect the peo­ple of She­boy­gan, includ­ing issues like scams hit­ting the area, and neigh­bor­hood policing.

Pod­casts are audio record­ings avail­able online to be lis­tened to or down­loaded to an MP3 player.

Unveiled dur­ing a press con­fer­ence Tues­day after­noon, the pod­casts — dis­cus­sions among two or three offi­cers — will be posted on the She­boy­gan Police Depart­ment web­site, www.sheboyganpolice.com, and on YouTube.

Even­tu­ally there will be an RSS feed as well, Friedl said. [This means it will be iTunes-compatible in the months ahead, if you know how to set it up.]

Friedl said he that although video pro­duc­tions might be slicker, pod­casts are an easy way for peo­ple to get infor­ma­tion while they’re doing some­thing else.

“I think pod­casts are still rel­e­vant,” he said. “I lis­ten to pod­casts when I’m dri­ving around patrol. I would love for every­one to come in my neigh­bor­hood that I’m assigned to and meet me in per­son, but I under­stand the dif­fi­culty in doing that. This is a lit­tle more infor­ma­tion I can get out and if helps two or three, I’m happy with that.”

Dur­ing his state­ment Tues­day, Chief Christo­pher Doma­gal­ski said the depart­ment is always look­ing for new ways to com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, and Friedl’s idea hasn’t been tried before.

“We’re still work­ing to find ways to improve meth­ods to share infor­ma­tion,” Doma­gal­ski said.

Newer pod­casts will roll out every third Mon­day of the month in the future.  So far, the depart­ment has released two pod­casts; one explain­ing the project, the other on neigh­bor­hood policing.

The project is being over­seen by Sgt. Kurt Zem­pel, who once upon a time, ran for state Assembly.

Wel­come to the lat­est “Big Trial” in the Lakeshore. 

Some­thing tells me, it will be more open and shut than the Steven Avery tri­als were.

Two 13-year-old boys accused of using a hatchet and a ham­mer to mur­der a 78-year-old woman this week in her She­boy­gan Falls home made their first appear­ance in court today where they were each charged with first-degree inten­tional homicide.

She­boy­gan County Court Com­mis­sioner Rebecca Per­sick fol­lowed Dis­trict Attor­ney Joe DeCecco’s rec­om­men­da­tion and set bail for Anto­nio D. Bar­beau and Nathan J. Paape at $1 mil­lion cash.

“This is a hor­ren­dous act. … An extremely vio­lent crime,” Per­sick said in court.

DeCecco said the two boys were dropped off at the house of Bar­bara J. Olson, at 210 West Ridge Drive, on Mon­day, Sept. 17, by Paape’s mother. Olson is Barbeau’s great-grandmother.

The boys, both of She­boy­gan, told police they were caught in the act of ran­sack­ing Olson’s house by Olson and they attacked her, with Paape hit­ting her in the head twice with the ham­mer and then Bar­beau hit­ting her with the blade end of the hatchet, bury­ing it in her skull “so hard it took both of them to pull it out,” DeCecco said.

The boys tried to drag the body to the woman’s car, leav­ing a trail of blood through the house, in hopes of dri­ving it to another loca­tion and dis­pos­ing of the body. They were unsuc­cess­ful, and left the body on the floor of the garage.

They finally put jew­elry and other stolen goods in the car, drove it to a She­boy­gan bowl­ing alley and left it there with the keys in it, hop­ing some­one would steal the car and the oth­ers items and be impli­cated as the murderers.

Then they went and ate pizza. After eat­ing pizza, they bought some clean­ing wipes and cleaned the car of their own fingerprints.

Out­side the court­room Fri­day, DeCecco said the boys con­fessed that they went to the house with the intent of rob­bing and killing Olson.

Good news, with an expla­na­tion of the Man­i­towoc num­bers to follow.

The increase statewide in prop­erty taxes this past year was just 0.2 per­cent, the small­est increase since 1997, when the total tax levy dropped 9 per­cent due to an influx of $1 bil­lion in state funds to buy down school taxes, a recent Wis­con­sin Tax­pay­ers Alliance analy­sis showed.

The City of She­boy­gan did even bet­ter than the state aver­age, with a levy of $2,184,240 in 2011–2012, up just one dol­lar from the pre­vi­ous year. Most com­mu­ni­ties in She­boy­gan County could say the same or came close.

She­boy­gan County com­mu­ni­ties whose levies rose included Elkhart Lake (up $31,751), Vil­lage of Kohler (up $70,257) and Vil­lage of Oost­burg (up $90,000).

The Vil­lage of Cedar Grove’s levy dropped more than $14,000 to $912,396.

For the past 11 years, from 2000 through 2011, net prop­erty taxes rose an aver­age of 4.8 per­cent each year, the WTA reported in the most recent edi­tion of its pub­li­ca­tion, “The Wis­con­sin Taxpayer.”

Of the 50 largest munic­i­pal­i­ties, levies were up the most in Mid­dle­ton (11.5%), Man­i­towoc (11.0%), Stevens Point (8.1%), Mount Pleas­ant (6.4%), and Water­town (4.3%), the group’s analy­sis showed. Prop­erty taxes decreased the most in West Bend (-4.6%), Franklin (-2.4%), and Mequon (-0.3%).

Manitowoc’s levy jumped because the city is try­ing to bail itself out of years of bond­ing for var­i­ous projects dur­ing the Kevin Craw­ford years.  This has led the city into a fis­cal abyss that will take much of the next decade to get out of.  It would have hap­pened with or with­out Act 10.

It won’t be much fun.

Seri­ously, I do.

From this morning’s “Politico Play­book” email:

BEST GET: Steps away from Willie Geist’s “Way Too Early” set, Carl Toe­pel, a cheese­head attend­ing his 10th con­ven­tion, handed Playbook’s chief assis­tant a ‘Mit­twurst Lover for Rom­ney’ but­ton. Turns out Mit­twurst is Ger­man for “sum­mer sausage,” a pop­u­lar meat to pair with cheese and crackers.

Dr. Toe­pel — he’s a retired ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal and admin­is­tra­tor from She­boy­gan — has one of the most impres­sive col­lec­tions of cam­paign swag I have ever seen.  Think of a cam­paign, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat (mostly Repub­li­can) and chances are Carl has some­thing — a but­ton, a bumper sticker, a pin — from it.  Carl also makes his own cam­paign but­tons, which he hands out to any will­ing to take one.

He’s a true stu­dent of his­tory, a great guy to share a laugh with, and in 2006 was one of my county vol­un­teers when I was with the Green Campaign.

Glad to see him get a moment in the national press while down in Tampa.