Osakis: Dvorsak, Anderson and Thornbloom in; Wessel and Larson out – Alexandria Echo Press

OSAKIS — Judy Dvorsak says she’s ready for the challenge. Dvorsak defeated incumbent Osakis Mayor Dan Wessel 512-403 on Tuesday.

“I know I’m going to have challenges and I know I’m not going to keep everyone happy all the time,” Dvorsak told the Echo Press, “but I really want to make it more open so that the people of Osakis feel like we’re working for them work. And I still have a lot of work to do in terms of teaching myself and learning about all the different aspects of this job, but I’m up for the challenge.”

In the Osakis City Council race, incumbent Tim Thornbloom received 507 votes, former Councilman Randy Anderson received 499 votes, and incumbent Al Larson lost his council seat by 403 votes.

Randy Anderson is returning to the Osakis City Council after serving about 15 years, starting in 2008, and he hopes to address some of the communication problems he says have plagued the council. “I just think there’s a lot of miscommunication and lack of communication. Communication is very difficult. We are all busy and different groups communicate in different ways. I hope to come up with a process that can make that better, so that there is less confusion and less hostility. I hope, I mean, I don’t have a silver bullet for it.

“Communication transparency means different things to different people,” Anderson continued. “The more transparent you are, the more people see, but more information can also be taken out of context because you haven’t vetted everything.”

Councilor Tim Thornbloom was re-elected to his council seat and is already busy resolving a number of ongoing issues. “I’m the liaison for the municipal liquor store, so we’re in the process of finding a new manager, and that’s a major issue that we’re going to address right away. There’s going to be some changes and stuff with the new manager and we’ve got to make sure that place makes money for the city. End in the water plant. There are some valves on back order, so they are on standby now. It would be huge to get that project completed and completed.”