After years of attending Village Board meetings, Fairmount Avenue resident Tara Serebin will now become a Whitefish Bay trustee.
The Village Board on Monday night reviewed applications from four village residents interested in filling the open trustee seat previously occupied by Lauri Rollings, who left the board because she is having her first child.
In a paper ballot appointment process, three of the five trustees present at the meeting voted for Serebin, a former elementary school teacher who now serves as the executive director of the Peace Learning Center of Milwaukee. A village resident since 1996, she holds a master's degree in elementary education from UW-Madison. Her first board meeting will be on July 1.
Other residents who applied for the trustee position are Mario Gonzalez, an Assistant United States Attorney; Jay Saunders, a public information assistant for the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors; and Ken Wysocky, a freelance writer who unsuccessfully ran for trustee in the most recent April election.
Serebin has been actively involved in Village Board discussions ever since her house was flooded in 2010. Although her house was flooded, she said she believes it is important to balance the village's infrastructure needs with fiscal constraint.
Serebin said she will work to improve public education of village issues, and also to build consensus among people with differing opinions.
"I feel like it's important to have people that are willing to listen to different points of view, and that's one of the things I'm willing to do," she said after the meeting. "My goal is to find common ground whenever possible and to educate people about village issues."
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