Mayor speaks out following resignation

ANTIGO — Terry Brand, who leaves office today following just over a year as the city’s mayor, shed further light on the reasons for his resignation.

Brand announced his resignation in a letter sent to the city council Monday morning. In it, he cited his family’s planned move to Summit Lake as a primary reason for the decision, but Brand said in a phone call with the Antigo Journal Wednesday that family was another large motivator behind the choice.

“It’s a family decision to make it our permanent home and sell our house in town. There’s some health issues in the family that we’re dealing with and that we want to keep private,” Brand said. “But I’d like people to focus their concerns on what’s next for the city. I’m 15 miles away, so I’m not going anywhere: our ties are still in the City of Antigo. But I just felt strongly, just like I did with the aldermen when they wanted to be absent and vote remotely, that the mayor needs to be living in the city and be active in the city.”

Brand said because his address will be outside of Antigo, he would have been ineligible to run for re-election.

“I’m giving up nine or ten months of being in office, but it’s hard to go out and lobby for things to happen when you’re not having to live with your decisions,” he said. “I didn’t want to give people that idea to attack and say, ‘Well, what does he care about it? He doesn’t even live here?’ Because I would feel the same way if it was somebody else. I’d say, ‘Hey, you need to be here. You can’t be absent and making decisions for us.’ I could raise taxes, but I’m not raising taxes on myself. I could cut services, but I’m not cutting services on myself. I wouldn’t want somebody else doing that, so I can’t allow myself to do that either. It’s not fair to the constituents for me to not be here.”

The soon-to-be former mayor said he regrets not being able to complete his two-year term because it means business he intended to accomplish now won’t be, and because he fears “slipping into the past.”

“The aldermen have already proposed the absentee voting again — that’s on the agenda for next month. So it’s an ongoing issue. I won’t be involved in it, but I sure have an opinion on it,” he said. “They need to be here. They’ll get it through because I’m gone. I vetoed it the first time, and they’re not going to veto it this time. They’re going to get it passed and it’s going to happen and they’re going to be absent. When you go to council meetings, there will be five people there, and the other three or four will be zoomed in from another state.”

Brand encouraged Antigo residents to get involved in local government and hold its representatives accountable, and thanked those he worked with while serving as the city’s mayor.

“I always want to thank the voters and the citizens for putting me in that position. I’d like to thank our staff. I think we have a pretty good staff in our parks department, our streets department — some of our department heads are just excellent people,” Brand said, going on to say that he believed voters appreciated changes he brought to city hall. “I think I delivered the things I promised, like the changes we made in some ordinances to clean up yards and businesses and the downtown area, just to make people more accountable and have more pride in their property. People appreciated the openness that I had with the residents, and that I allowed them to come to council and speak their piece and that I listened to them. I think there’s a lot of initiatives that need to be continued.”