Meet the candidates: Terri Wipperman for City Council

Meet the candidates: Terri Wipperman for City Council

Terri Wipperman, retired City billing clerk and former City Councilmember is running again for one of the at-large Council jobs in the May 6 municipal election. Mrs. Wipperman sat on the City Council from 2017 until she voluntarily left the Council in 2022. She was born and raised in Olney, and has deep experience at City Hall, first as a parttime municipal court clerk and as a billing clerk for the Public Works Department for 15 years. Her mother, Mary Thompson, ran M&M Beauty Shop in Olney for 50 years, and her husband Mark Wipperman served as Mayor and Municipal Judge. She is running for one of the seats held by incumbents Brad Simmons, Harrison Wellman, and Chuck Stennett, whose terms expire in May. The Enterprise interviewed Mrs. Wipperman about her candidacy and positions on the issues. Stay tuned for more candidate interviews in the lead-up to the election.

Q: Why did you decide to run again for City Council so soon after leaving the Council?

A: ]After I quit work in 2017, I filed for Council and I got it and I filed for my second term and got it again. My term was up last year. I quit because I was asked to go back to work for the City. But I called Tammy and said, I’m sorry I just really don’t want to go back to work and they hired all the new people and I decided, ‘That’s good. I’ll just run for Council next year.’

Q: Were there any issues you left undone in your last term in office?

A: There are a lot of changes, and I don’t like some of the changes. We need to clean this town up. I never thought I’d see Olney like this. I think the Council needs to prove that they are for the citizens of Olney and not individually for themselves. The citizens are mad at the city because of the dumpsters. That’s one thing that needs to be shown is that we are making more money with the little dumpsters than we were with the big dumpsters.

Q: What do you see as the City’s other big issues? A: One thing is the pipeline between here and the lake; after this episode with our pipes this month people blame the City for that and it’s not the City’s fault. There’s no need of fixing a pipeline if you don’t have water to run through it. We need to get that water treatment plant going – talk to the contractors and engineers and see what we need to do.