Four candidates seeking Benson City Council seat

Special election set for next Tuesday

Benson voters will go to the polls Jan. 10 to elect someone to fill the remaining three years in the city council term of Jonathon Pogge-Weaver. The person elected will start his term immediately.
Four people filed for the seat and will be on the Jan. 10 ballot - Mike Fugleberg, Brad Johnson, Larry D. Smith and Lucas Olson. The person elected to the seat will serve through Jan. 5, 2020.
Voting will be in the Benson Armory from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. City Clerk Glen Pederson has had no absentee ballot requests for the election and it likely that voter turnout could be very low. If it is, with a four-way race, anyone could win with a relatively few votes.
Pogge-Weaver was elected to a four-year term on the council in November 2015, but resigned his seat this past October when his family moved to Carroll, Iowa. The council appointed former long-time City Council Member Sue Fitz to fill the seat until a special election could be conducted to fill the vacancy.
Olson, who works at Swift Machine and Fab, LLC, in Benson, is making his first run for local public office.
Johnson, Benson Public Schools’ elementary principal, is also making his first run for elected office locally.
Smith, a local businessman, has made unsuccessful runs for both the city council and the District 777 Board of Education in the past couple years.
Fugleberg served on the Benson council from January 2012 to December 2015, but lost his re-election bid for a second term in the November 2015 election. He finished third in a six-way race for two seats on the council. Council Member Terri Collins placed first with Pogge-Weaver finishing second.
All four candidates were provided with the questionnaire and acknowledged its receipt. As of Tuesday morning as the Monitor-News went to press, Fugleberg had not responded to two additional emails requesting his answers. The Monitor-News called Fugleberg to confirm he had received the email with the questionnaire. He said he had last Wednesday....
 
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