McCullough re-elected as chair, Stene as vice-chair of the Dunn County Board
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — The Dunn County Board has re-elected Kelly McCullough of Menomonie (District 17) as chair and Gary Stene of Colfax (District 5) as vice-chair.
The chair and vice-chair were elected by secret ballot at the April 16 meeting of the Dunn County Board.
Nominations also were conducted by secret ballot.
Mike Kneer, county board supervisor from Menomonie (District 12), was nominated for chair but declined the nomination.
Larry Bjork, county board supervisor from Menomonie (District 26), accepted the nomination for chair as did incumbent Dunn County Chair Kelly McCullough.
John Calabrese of Menomonie (District 14), and Vaughn Hedlund of Boyceville (District 3) gathered the ballots and counted the votes.
Larry Bjork received eight votes for county board chair, and McCullough gathered 20 votes for chair.
The Dunn County Board has 29 supervisors. Donald Gjeston of Knapp (District 10), who was newly-elected to the county board April 2, was absent from the meeting.
Five people were nominated for the vice-chair position.
Larry Bjork declined the nomination for vice-chair, as did Kneer, and Monica Berrier of Menomonie (District 13).
Berrier said she was honored to be nominated for vice-chair but declined the nomination.
Stene and Luke Wilsey of Menomonie (District 8) both accepted the nominations for vice-chair.
Wilsey received 13 votes, and Stene received 15 votes.
McCullough was first elected as chair in April of 2022. He replaced David Bartlett of Boyceville (District 2) as chair of the Dunn County Board.
Bartlett had served on the county board for many years and lost the 2022 election by six votes to Patrick Breslin.
Chair
McCullough has served a number of terms on the Dunn County Board and ran unopposed in the April 2 election for District 17.
McCullough has been a member of the Dunn County Transit Commission, Emergency Medical Services Committee, the Land Information Council, the Legislative Committee, the Local Emergency Planning Committee, the Traffic Safety Commission, the Dunn County Board’s Executive Committee, the Neighbors of Dunn County Committee, the Historical Society Board (county board representative), served as chair of the Dunn County Highway Committee and served on the Menomonie City Council.
McCullough is the author of fantasy, science fiction, and books for children of varying ages. His novels include “Numismancer,” “Winter of Discontent,” the WebMage and Fallen Blade series, “School for Sidekicks,” “Magic, Madness, and Mischief” and “Spirits, Spells and Snarks,” according to his website, www.kellymccullough.com.
He writes science fiction as science education with “The Chronicles of the Wandering Star,” part of a curriculum funded by the National Science Foundation, and is the co-author and co-editor of the science comic, “Hanny & The Mystery of the Voorwerp,” with funding provided by NASA and the Hubble Space Telescope.
McCullough’s non-fiction work includes an illustrated collection adopted as part of a middle school physical science curriculum — “Interactions in Physical Science” curriculum — funded by the National Science Foundation that has been adopted by several state boards of education, according to the Kelly McCullough Wikipedia page.
Stene
Stene was first elected as supervisor for District 5 in 2012 as a write-in candidate and was elected to his first term as vice-chair of the Dunn County Board in 2016.
After Stene’s first term as vice-chair, James Tripp, county board supervisor from Menomonie, served as vice-chair for two years.
Stene was elected as vice-chair again in April of 2020.
During the Dunn County Board term that just expired, Stene served as president of the Dunn County Economic Development Corporation Board of Directors; as the county board supervisor at large on the Civil Service Rating Committee; as chair of the Legislative Committee; as the county board representative on the Colfax Public Library Board; as chair of the county’s Library Planning Committee; as vice-chair of the Health and Human Services Board; and on the county board’s Executive Committee.
He also serves as a trustee on the Colfax Village Board.
New supervisors
Along with the incumbents re-elected to the Dunn County Board, newcomers sworn in as county board supervisors at the April 16 meeting included Tim Lauffer (District 1); Dustin Shackleton (District 6); Michelle Bachand (District 11); Sheila Stori (District 18); Spencer Berndt (District 20) and Gordon Wolf (District 28).
District 20 did not have an official candidate on the ballot, and Spencer Berndt received 31 votes as a write-in candidate during the April 2 election.
Hilary Robinson, the Dunn County Board supervisor who was representing District 20, filed a notification of non-candidacy in December.
In District 18, Stori filed nomination papers to be on the ballot and had previously served on the Dunn County Board until April of 2022. In the April 2 election, Stori received 156 votes, and challenger Jim Uhlir received 81 votes.
In District 1, incumbent Brian Johnson had filed a notification of non-candidacy in late November of 2023, and Lauffer ran unopposed for the position.
