All 18 seats on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors are up for election on April 7. Just three of the races are contested.
Kathleen Vincent and Ryan Antczak are running for the District 11 seat.
What does a supervisor on the Milwaukee County Board do?
The board is Milwaukee County’s legislative body. One of its main responsibilities is to review, amend, and vote on the Milwaukee County budget each year. It also establishes programs, services and laws for the county and votes on executive nominations.
Each supervisor represents a different region of Milwaukee County on the board. If elected, supervisors serve two-year terms and are paid about $26,000 annually.
As a group, they make decisions that affect our parks, public transit, mental health services, and more.
Where is District 11?
Milwaukee County's 11th District includes Greendale, Greenfield and southwest Milwaukee. If you're not sure about whether you live in District 11, you can look up your ballot for the April 7 election here.
Meet the candidates
Kathleen Vincent
Kathleen Vincent was elected as the representative for the 11th District on the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors in 2022. She is a Kenosha teacher, union member, and veteran public educator with over 35 years of experience and a master’s degree in education.
Currently serving on the Milwaukee Public Library Board since 2022, she holds a leadership role as the Region 11 Director for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards and has served on the Greendale School Board since 2017.
WUWM interviewed Kathleen Vincent for the upcoming election. Her responses below are edited for length and clarity.
What do you believe makes you prepared for continuing the job of county supervisor?
I definitely think I'm prepared to continue because there's always work that needs to be done, and it doesn't stop just because there's an election cycle. I've been doing the job now for four years [and] I can honestly say, before I became a supervisor I wasn't quite sure what it entailed. But once you're boots-on-the-ground doing the job, really you learn a lot. There's the learning curve, and I've been learning ever since, but there are some things that I feel I'm getting specialized in and I'm going to continue to advocate for the residents of District 11.
What do you think are the two biggest issues for your district specifically, and how would you address them?
There's a budget deficit in Milwaukee County, so funding for any of the resources is getting to be very challenging. One of the most immediate things that I am dealing with right now is the MCTS busing services. There was a several million dollar shortfall in the last budget cycle, so now they've had to scale back and cut routes. The extent of my district goes all the way to Greendale, which we have a route that as of March 8 is going to be discontinued into our downtown area. I've worked very closely with the Greendale Village Board of Trustees and the manager to try to reestablish that route, and I will be working with my fellow supervisors to make sure that we try to get that back running because people rely on it.
I would say the [second issue] is just the budget in general. With the county, all services are being impacted right now. I know the County Executive David Crowley is working very hard to work with the Board of Supervisors to put [our] best step forward. The budget was passed unanimously this year, but we all knew there were going to be some cuts. Our parks are a very big part of that as well. Trimborn Farm in Greendale is the only historical park in Milwaukee County, so I definitely will be working with residents getting feedback. People want that site to continue in our district. If we don't put some funding in there and work with a public/private partnership, it is very possible that the farm will either at some point not be viable, have to put a fence around it, or they might even have to sell it.
The Wisconsin Policy Forum has warned that Milwaukee County is likely to see “increasingly painful budgets” in the coming years. How are you hoping to work to balance the county budget without overburdening taxpayers?
I was on the board of supervisors when the .04% sales tax went into place and that was a very tough decision, but a very necessary one just because of where we're at. But obviously it's not my goal to continue to raise taxes for the residents. It is something that we've had to look at in the past, but now we're also making hard looks at the actual programming and the things that we offer and starting to scale back in areas that maybe can be scaled back a little. But nobody wants to have their services cut, and so it's very hard. I will say mental health services in the county are very important to me, and that is not an area I do feel we can scale back. I think we need more support in that area, so my hope is that we can fund programs that will help people be successful in our community.
In January, the Board of Supervisors learned that the county's employee health care contract expired, and there was a rush to approve a new contract. How can the county rebuild trust with employees and taxpayers after this kind of oversight?
I would say trust is probably the number one word in all of that. I was very upset, and I voted against the contract at that point because I was not sold on the idea that we couldn't have tried something else before [approving it]. When you're talking a $490 million contract, that's not something you race through in one or two days or a week, and honestly, we weren't even really informed about it as a County Board. So I do think there needs to be an audit. I actually have a resolution on the table that we'll be going through in March to audit the total rewards program and all the contracts that they're currently working on to ensure that there are no other gaps in there.
What do you think you've done well so far on the County Board of Supervisors, and what would you still like to accomplish if reelected?
I would have to say I am a people person, and the way I do things is on the ground, to walk into doors, being in the neighborhood, being active. I'm involved in several aspects of my community, not just in the village of Greendale where I live, but the entire community. For the most part you will have people in my district tell you that I am responsive to their needs. I don't always vote the way that everyone wants, because you can't necessarily please everyone, but I do listen to everyone and I ask for input.
I am not a politician in my mind — I'm a school teacher who decided that it was time to serve the community in other ways, and so that is why I got involved in politics. I care, I work tirelessly, and I do it because I want people to know their voice matters.
In terms of areas for me to work on, I want to fine tune some of the work I'm doing in the area of mental health. I think I work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services. Since the mental health complex closed, I do not feel that we have adequate services for people that are in crisis in our community, and the reality is that affects everyone. It's a burden on our taxes, and if we're not proactive and trying to work at the root cause, then then we're not doing our jobs.
I do respect our law enforcement very much, too, and I work closely with the Sheriff's Department. I've been involved in their Citizen Academy just to learn more about their their needs. Milwaukee County is the only county in the state of Wisconsin out of all 72 that is required to do their own highway patrol, and that takes our officers out of other areas. So those are some areas I'd like to show some more support to.
Kathleen Vincent's campaign website
Ryan Antczak
Ryan Antczak declined WUWM's interview request. The information below is from his campaign Facebook page and past news coverage from previous races he has entered.
Ryan Antczak is a former corrections officer, father and boy scout troop leader. His platform emphasizes reigning in government spending, reducing taxes, and supporting law enforcement. He's a perennial candidate for local and state offices. Since 2020, Antczak has unsuccessfully run for Milwaukee Common Council seats (2020, 2024), State Assembly District 9 (2022, 2024) as a Republican and the Milwaukee County Board District 12 seat in 2024.
In 2024 when he ran for Milwaukee Common Council District 8 against JoCasta Zamarripa, Antczak pleaded guilty and was fined for making false statements about his opponent, distributing flyers with the false messaging despite prior admissions they were untrue, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Antczak's campaign Facebook page states, "the condition of our County is the DIRECT REFLECTION of our County Board. If you don't like the direction of where our County has gone. Vote them out of office! They had their opportunity & they royally screwed it up." If elected, he states his goal would be focusing core spending on services everyone benefits from and greeting someone at every house in District 11 in the two-year term. He also notes that being a county supervisor would be his only job and would plan to attend every meeting, paid or unpaid. The position of a county supervisor is technically a part-time, salaried role and board members can have other jobs.
Regarding the future of Trimborn Farm in Greendale, Antczak writes, "There's no perfect way to fix this. Its unfortunate the decline of the Farm in the County's care. We wouldn't be at this point."
