Misc. Friday Thoughts

A bunch of racist skinheads attached a Hispanic man at Sporties, the bar inside Sunset Bowl.  I hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and I hope they get their asses stomped in prison.  I have no place for people like that. What I want to know is why the bar workers, who reportedly witnessed these douchebags handing out Nazi literature, allowed them to stay in the first place.  If I owned a business and a bunch of skinheads came in I would ask them to leave immediately.  If they didn’t, I would call the police. 

Alderman Paul Furrer of the 6th District says he will likely vote against the Clarke Hotel financing agreement claiming that  he has heard from many of his constituents and they were predominately against it.   Maybe Mayor Nelson and his wife Dawn, who live in the district, need to start making some phone calls.

Hammer’s Landing, a shitty downtown bar will close at bartime on Sunday morning to make way for a sports bar, which is something I have been clamoring for since I moved here.  I would love to have a place to grab a nice bloody mary and watch the Packers.  Even better would be a simple menu of pub fare like burgers and wings.  Not sure if they are planning on food, but if they can clean this dump up it might breathe some more life into the west end of downtown.   Now if we can just get Buffalo Wild Wings to buy out the Salty Toad or move somewhere else downtown, I will be really happy.

I noticed in last week’s Onion that the new Waukesha BID advertising campaign started. It mainly featured ads for bars and restaurants like House of Guinness, Neighbor’s Bistro, The Rochester Deli, Daves, and Nice Ash.  The ads really caught my attention. Good job BID!  Most interesting was a new martni bar that is slated to open this week in the back of Dady-Oh’s.  I forgot the name already but I may swing by and see what it is all about.

The truth about the Milwaukee 7

For the most part, I disagree with 90 percent of what comes out of Mark Belling’s mouth. However the Spring City Chronicle has a link to his editorial in today’s Freeman where Belling rips Waukesha County Economic Development Corp. is agreeing to shut down its online website aimed at attracting new businesses to the county because it feels the Milwaukee 7 group will provide that service. Belling is correct when he chastises Waukesha County for actually believing that the Milwaukee 7 gives a crap about the economic well-being of the suburbs.

One of the major agreements among the Milwaukee 7 is that one community will not oppose development in another but, as Belling also noted, Milwaukee will never follow this agreement and has already shown that it will indeed oppose any development outside its borders. A couple of months ago Ald. Michael Murphy ripped a proposed Hotel and Water Park in New Berlin calling it sprawl and a waste of water resources (I guess the Hilton waterpark downtown is different?). Never mind that the hotel will bring jobs, tax revenue (hotel and property tax), and will give New Berlin its first upscale hotel, the consensus among Milwaukee’s leadership has always been and will always be “if its not in Milwaukee its sprawl and we oppose it.”

The Business Journal dedicated several pages in last week’s paper about the water issues that are facing southeastern Wisconsin and of course Milwaukee seems to be setting the stage to either never sell water to Waukesha or to make it so expensive that Waukesha will look for other solutions. So much for working together as a region. One local developer hit it on the head, the City of Milwaukee is using water as a means to control suburban growth. Though not as bad as during the Norquist years, Milwaukee still believes that the best way to get people to live in the City of Milwaukee is to force them to. From requiring MPS teachers and City Employees to live within City limits (thereby ensuring that they are not getting the best employees and teachers available) to opposing any freeway widening projects, Milwaukee figures that if they make it more of a pain in the ass to live in the burbs, people will have no choice but return to Milwaukee. That line of thinking is flawed to the core and goes completely against the goals of the Milwaukee 7 group. Yet nobody (except Belling) says a word.

As Belling notes in his editorial, Milwaukee has no qualms about luring high-value businesses away from the suburbs with promises of TIF money and developer incentives. They spent millions luring Manpower about 4 miles south of their current location in Glendale. Wouldn’t that money be better spent attracting a new business to the area or helping existing Milwaukee businesses expand?

How long until someone from Milwaukee starts ripping the redevelopment of the Flemming Property, calling it sprawl and crying to the media that it just shows that Waukesha doesn’t really care about water resources? It should be noted that in general, redevelopment of abandoned or underutilized land is the exact opposite of sprawl. Sprawl would be for the developers to keep heading west until they found an undeveloped corn field and to build a large development far away from homes, other businesses, and residents. Waukesha should be commended for its redevelopment efforts downtown, on the Flemming property and elsewhere throughout the City. Too bad Milwaukee politicians, many of whom are making assumptions about Waukesha without even visiting the City or just by driving by on I-94, will never see it that way.

Come on down to the Farmer’s Market.

The Farmer’s Market in downtown Waukesha opened up a few weeks back.  Typically the early weeks don’t yield much food stuff from the farmers but you can get some great deals on vegetable, fruit, and herb plants as well as flowers.  The good stuff usually starts appearing in early July and by the end of August the stands are filled with corn, tomatoes, beans, peas, brussles sprouts, and just about any local produce you can imagine. This year there appears to be some new additions including live music, grilled food, and some new vendors including my new favorite, Greek Acres Farms.  They sell lamb and pork products that are naturally raised. 

Many people might be frightened to purchase meat from a truck parked downtown, preferring instead to buy from a grocery store.  I would argue that I would much rather buy meat directly from the producers like Greek Acres or at Roberts Specialty Meats at 135 E. Sunset.   Take pork for example.  The crap at Pick n’ Save is almost always injected with a solution that is supposed to ensure tenderness even when overcooked, which everyone does with pork.  People have been tricked into being so scared of Trichinosis and the food police insist that we cook pork to 170 degrees (I cook mine to 140-145) rusulding in dry, rubbery pork.   America’s obsession with fat has also resulted in breeding of leaner pork which while being good for the waistline, is terrible for the taste buds.

The pork sold by Greek Acres at the Farmer’s Market is all natural.  That means that nobody has injected it with some chemical solution (that can make up anywhere from 10-20 percent of its volume.  I don’t know about you but I would rather be paying for 100 percent pork.     These pork chops are incredible.  When cooked properly, that is to 140-145 degrees, the pork is tender, juicy, and succulent.  There is a nice tinge of pink and the pork actually tastes like pork.  The stuff at the grocery store usually tastes bland.  I have purchased pork chops from Greek Acres twice so far and I would recommend them to anyone.  They are frozen and vacuum sealed so there is no freezer burn.     

Republicans love feel-good wasteful spending too.

Republicans and Doyle have agreed to use GPS monitoring to track sex offenders  once they are released. The proposal will cost $5.8 million through mid-2009.  Funny how they don’t tell you how much it will cost after that.  What I find interesting is that nobody is concerned about the effectiveness of this.  Everyone in the legislature is so busy patting each other on the back because they are so tough on sex predators that nobody realizes what a joke this is.  GPS monitoring does not involve having a camera on sex offenders 24 hours a day.  They will simply show up as a blip on a map.  Unless you have GPS strapped to your kid, they will not show up as a blip on a map.  A sex offender could have a room full of children in their house and this GPS will still show the sex offender sitting in their house. 

Sex offenders can leave their homes after they are released.  They can drive around and the monitors can watch the blip on the map move around.  If they see it near a school they can dispatch a patrol car to see what is going on but again children are not equipped with GPS so the offender could see a kid walking down a street and grab then and the GPS will do nothing to stop this and the GPS monitors will not be able to tell what is going on.    Further complicating matters is the fact that the majority of sex offenders prey on children they know.  The notion of the offender as this creepy guy driving around looking for kids likely only accounts for a small percentage of offenders (I think its under 10 percent).   Police can use the GPS to see if any sex offenders are in the area of a reported missing child, but by that time it is probably way too late.   Plus, the offender could simply remove the tracking device or figure out a way to disable it and go out and re-offend.  There are also many instances where the satellites cannot find offenders due to weather, tall buildings, or other things that block GPS signals. This whole thing is a waste of money and merely an opportunity for people like Joel Kleefisch to raise their public profile and pose for holy pictures.  Nobody wants to oppose this because the public is stupid and will make the assumption that the legislators are soft on sex offenders.  I think a better solution would be to toughen sex offender punishments so fewer of them make it out of prison in the first place. 

The quote found on the last link provided below best sums up what this bill does: “This law does not make people safer; it makes them feel safer”

Read more about shortcomings of this big waste of money at:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15839727&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=-3million-paedo-spy-farce–name_page.html

http://www.kcet.org/lifeandtimes/blog/?p=117

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/10/24/prop_83_sex_off.html

Peggy Bull tells Developers to Build Elsewhere (sort of)

The Spring City Chronicle has a link to an editorial written last week by Waukesha Alderwoman Peggy Bull.  She is demanding that the developers of the rumoured Super Target Development do all kinds of things that are not required of any other development in the City.  What I think she really is telling them is to go to another City.

The developers of these projects should be held to the same standard as every other developer in Waukesha not to some pie in the sky ideas of people like Bull who don’t seem to grasp the fact that if you put up too many hurdles businesses will just go elsewhere.  The City should work with them and try and get them to consider higher architectural standards and stormwater controls but should not kill these projects by demanding too much. To create extra hurdles and regulations that are above and beyond what Waukesha’s ordinances specify will not only drive development away from Waukesha but it also may be illegal.  To get around this she is suggesting changing the regulations quickly before an application is filed, which I think is a foolish idea.  Rushing to implement code changes without doing research and studies on how it will impact development just to add regulations is not a smart idea.

Opus is proposing to redevelop the abandoned Flemming property into a large retail project.  So not only is Opus looking at developing in Waukesha, they are looking at redeveloping an old industrial building that likely will never be used for industrial again.  The City should be looking at giving them some flexibility in the development regulations for redeveloping property instead of developing on a vacant “green” parcel, not throwing up more hurdles.  The developers are likely to seek TIF financing and if the numbers work, the City should consider expanding the nearby TIF district to include this property.   TIF was created for this very purpose;  to take abandoned, run down, or functionally obsolete industrial land and redevelop it. 

As far as her arguments about these developments hurting other businesses, that is no reason to not approve these plans (which I might add, have not been submitted yet).  Competition should be determined by the marketplace, not elected officials.  If Joe’s widget shop is put out of business because SuperTarget has cheaper widgets, so be it.  Yeah, it sucks for Joe and you want local businesses to thrive, but who is Peggy Bull to determine whether or not we need another grocery store or a big-box retailer? How much market research has she done?  I am sure Opus and the retailers they are working with have done extensive studies to determine whether Waukesha can support these stores. The answer appears to be “yes.”  I for one would like an alternative to Sentry and Pick n’ Save who pretty much can charge what they want since there is very little competition in the grocery store market with the closing of Kohl’s and Jewel-Osco stores over the past 5 years or so.

As for her assinine question asking: “Will it all even out or will the new developments cost the taxpayers money?” shows me that Peggy Bull may be in over her head as an alderwoman.  Most single family homes do not pay enough taxes to cover the services it receives from the City.  Businesses pay a whole lot more in taxes than than they use.  To keep taxes in checkyou need to continually add non-residential development.  Take a look at what kind of revenue Waukesha’s shopping centers generate.  The Pick n’ Save and strip mall on Silvernail netted the City nearly $168,000 in taxes last year.  Based on my tax bill last year I would have to pay taxes for 48 years to cover what that center generates in a single year.  Given the size and number of buildings being proposed on the Flemming site, the taxes generated will likely be some of the highest of any property in the City.  If they apply for TIF financing, they will have to show the City that the tax increment will pay off the TIF in a timely manner.  Additionally, if this development is successful it will likely result in additional development and redevelopment nearby, which also adds to the tax base. 

In her editorial, Bull asks “Will the developer voluntarily use pervious pavement without our having an ordinance in place?”  While pervious pavement sounds fine and dandy in climates such as ours they can be problematic, especially in the winter as the holes in the pavement can become jammed with salt and sand.  Who is going to pay for the equipment, maintenance, and time that it takes to regularly vacuum the pavement to ensure that it remains unclogged?  Why would they voluntarily do this without some kind of incentive from the City?  If the City demands this, I would assume they will soon be looking elsewhere. She talks about a parking structure, which again will add tremendous costs to the project.

I do think that the City needs to work closely with the developers to make sure that the development is attractive, that traffic can enter and leave the site safely, and that there is adequate pedestrian access throughout the site.  I think that the City could encourage them to embrace some of the things that Bull advocates (except the parking garage which would be a waste of money) but if the developers balk at the extra restrictions the City should back off.  Redeveloping this area and injecting life into a stagnant Sunset Avenue business district is far too important to get caught up in the latest environmental technology fad of the week.