Lifelong Port resident says he’s ready to be mayor

Lifelong Port Washington resident Ted Neitzke IV threw his hat into the ring last week, announcing he will run for Port mayor.

Neitzke, 49, of 513 Brentwood Ct., made his announcement a day after Port Mayor Marty Becker announced he will not seek a second term.

“I’m not upset about anything. There’s nothing broken I want to fix,” Neitzke said. “Serving in Port Washington has been on my mind for a while. I’ve lived here my entire life and watched things as they happened.”

People have asked him to run for office before but, he said, “I wasn’t ready.”

Now, he said, is the right time, especially since Becker isn’t seeking another term in office.

This isn’t Neitzke’s first foray into local politics. He was a Port Washington alderman for one term in the mid-1990s and served as council president.

But Neitzke is perhaps best known for his work in education.

He has been the chief executive officer of CESA 6, which provides collaborative services for public and parochial schools and non-profit organizations, since 2016, and before that worked in a variety of positions in education, including superintendent of the West Bend School District, principal of Badger Middle School in West Bend, assistant principal at Horace Mann High School in Sheboygan and district coordinator for children at risk in the Sheboygan School District.

He started his career as a teacher in the Random Lake School District.

He’s also been active in a wide variety of community groups, including serving as president of the Riveredge Nature Center board of directors and helping found the Riveredge Nature Elementary Charter School, and as a member of the West Bend Rotary Club and a member of the West Bend Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

Neitzke said he enjoys the “strategic part of leadership” and, if elected, would work to engage all sectors of the community in setting goals for the city and coming up with a “long-term definition of what Port Washington wants to be.

“That’s our lighthouse,” he said, and should guide the city’s decisions. “Where do we want the city to go.”

He would also like to see the city be more regionally collaborative, he said, working with other communities in the area.