At least one council member, Barb Jansen, told council members that she changed her vote because of your emails. Thank you for taking the time to write them. But think of the other minds we could change if we sent 100 more emails.

Last Thursday, 1/8/26, the council voted 9-4 to remove the invocation. But council member Erin Goggin doesn't think this is over and is encouraging everyone to continue to send MORE emails to the council members to let them know that you are disappointed. I've rallied people before and this is the quickest and highest number of emails that I've seen sent...100 in 36 hours. It is why I think it's the tip of the iceberg about how this community really feels about the invocation.

Here is Goggin in an 8 minute interview with wizm.

https://omny.fm/shows/wizm-la-crosse/councilmember-erin-goggin-speaks-on...

Goggin said this issue can still be addressed in a few different ways:

1.) One way is for more people to continue to write in, and the council can revisit it in a year. This way the council knows you do not want it to just go away. So, email again and ask a friend to email. Zzcouncilmembers@cityoflacrosse.org

2.) Another way is for a council member who was part of the prevailing vote to ask for the resolution to be reconsidered before the next board meeting. This would trigger a "do-over" so-to-speak where there would be another public hearing and another full council vote. This would give the public more time to debate the issues. This means one of the nine who voted for removal of the invocation would need to request reconsideration. Some people have doubts that any of the nine would change their minds, but that doesn't mean we don't try.

3.) Another option would be for a council member to offer their own invocation, during the council's opening business in the same way that the mayor offers the Ho Chunk moment of silence. According to the La crosse City clerk, the current mayor began the moment of silence without any resolution from the city council or from the community, but because he, himself, wanted to do it.

4.) This is my suggestion: Going forward: like the prayer rally that we had outside in the rain, we could ask our local faith leaders to say an invocation outside city hall at the next meeting on the second Thursday of each month of the council meeting. Ask your pastor if they would do it. Mine is open to it.

During the council meeting, council member Gary Padesky pointed out that the moment of silence sounds a lot like a prayer and questioned if the city could be setting itself up for a lawsuit.

During my "email watch", I noticed that a few emails that had been sent had not been received nor uploaded by the clerk. The clerk explained that a few of their spam filters were not allowing some emails to get through. My own email was not received after two attempts. So, I had to email the clerk personally. This obviously is a concern that some emails are not getting through. How many more did not get counted?

Here is a link to the city's page. Find the "comments" link, and click on that to view the emails that were sent to the city.

*Make sure your email is there, and read some of the other wonderful letters you wrote.

https://cityoflacrosse.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=7767504&GU...

Below is a link to wxow's coverage of the invocation story.

https://www.wxow.com/news/la-crosse/la-crosse-city-council-to-vote-on-di...

And here is coverage from Chris Muller:

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/chris69162/episodes/Tell-La-Cro...

Finally, I received information from the clerk that showed the number of times that invocations were said since 2019. According to the policy for invocations, faith leaders signed up for slots for specific months, 12 months in advance, with the rule that someone from a different church had to do the invocation. Here is how many were said per year since 2019: 2025-7, 2024-4, 2023-8, 2022-7, 2021-4, 2020-8, and 2019-9.

As you can see, we did not fill up every slot.

For those interested in viewing the portion of the council meeting where the invocation was discussed and voted on, it is about 15 minutes and starts at the 57:30 and ends at the 1:13 mark.

https://cityoflacrosse.granicus.com/player/clip/2212?view_id=1&redirect=...

Thank you again for writing an email. And please... write another one.