TOWN OF TURTLE The poll will open at the Town of Turtles single polling place at 7 a.m. Tuesday in the first contested election for Town of Turtle board chairman since 2009.
The poll at Turtle Town Hall, 6916 S. County Rd. J, will close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Roger Anclam, who has run unopposed for the position eight times since winning the job by a 489-284 margin over Jim Brandenburg, is facing a recall election with Donna Redner as the only opponent. Redner is a former teacher in Janesville and Rockford, Ill., who moved to the Town of Turtle in 2018.
Although several people picked up nomination packets, Redner was the only one to return papers. She was involved in the initial group of township residents who collected 600 valid voter signatures calling for a recall election. The township has about 2,400 residents.
The recall election will be the first of its kind in Rock County since 2024 when a Town of Newark supervisor was successfully unseated, and the third this decade. In 2022, the Village of Orfordville officially held a recall election for village president even though the person who was subject of the recall vote had resigned before the election.
It also appears to be the first recall effort to make it to a vote in Wisconsin that was sparked by the growing furor over hyperscale data centers being built in the state.
The recall paperwork was filed after Anclam was one of three board members to approve a cost-reimbursement agreement with a California company that was working on a proposal to build a $1 billion data center campus that would stretch into both the Town of Turtle and the Town of Beloit.
When that company, Panattoni Development Co. of Irvine, Calif., wanted revisions to the agreement, Anclam and the other two board members reversed course and rejected the agreement at the end of July. The town board has since approved a 12-month moratorium against any large-scale development, which obviously would include data centers, while it reviews its zoning codes and ordinances.
Redner also was among a group of Turtle residents who were upset with a June board decision to sell the long-closed Lathers Road Bridge so that it can be removed and replaced and the road reopened to traffic. Redner started a petition asking for the state, county and Town of Turtle to hold more public hearings over the future of the bridge.