Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

The Project Begins

Welcome to SPRAWLED OUT, a blog which will accompany my work on a book designed to use my city of Franklin, Wisconsin as an example of the community planning process in modern American cities and towns around the country. As the title implies, there will be a certain bias against the sort of unchecked, freeway-fed expansion that the United States has seen since the end of World War II.

Franklin has a hiring freeze in effect; now Franklin has no director of city development

FranklinNow.com reports that Franklin's director of city development, Doug Wheaton, has resigned "to attend graduate school at Harvard University."

The story notes: "In the three years that he has worked for the city, he has overseen 41 commercial developments, including the Fountains of Franklin and Shoppes at Wyndham Village."

As I have noted here often: Franklin's director of city development is scored on the mere NUMBER of developments that occur on his or her watch, not the QUALITY of those developments. I was correct. This is why the quality-based plan staff should not report to a position that derives kudos from simple quantity.

Despite many attempts at a meeting, I have never had so much as a conversation with Mr. Wheaton; he invariably would have the city plan staff run interference for him.

Good luck to him, nonetheless, in his new endeavor.

Parade Prep

Parade Prep, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

What a beautiful day.

On my way to the library to set up yet another remote office (this time on the little outdoor deck, where I am right now), I met some forward-thinking Franklinites who are already setting up for tomorrow's 4th of July parade. They're getting a TENT up right now, and invited me to stop by tomorrow for bloody marys.

I will probably take them up on that.

But, once again, I'm reminded that the Franklin Library's barren and broad front lawn could sure use a coffee shop and/or public courtyard.

Kudos to Summerfest: Anyone with any respect for our armed forces would realize that war is not a video game

.... And therefor, convincing kids that war is a video game is a slap in the face to anyone who serves or has served. Veterans for Peace should be congratulated for all that they do, including their role in having the Army's "virtual wargame" simulator at Summerfest altered to something much more sane. Note: The US Army's exhibit is right where it always was; all that was done was to change a war simulation game and end distribution of the game on DVDs.

The very notion that narcissistic radio-squawker chickenhawks would dare to comment disparagingly about the sensible efforts of people who actually served is comical. That they would lie - - Mark Belling's web site has the falicious headline "US Army Thrown Out of Summerfest" - - is typical. 

ABOVE: An elegant illustration of the talk radio mentality. "U.S. Army Thrown Out Of Summerfest"? Incorrect. So, it's either a LIE designed to inflame uninformed dittoheads or Belling got it wrong; par for the course in the intellectual backwaters of squawk radio, particularly at Milwaukee's WISN.

As we approach the 4th of July weekend and its observances, let's hope that more and more people use the opportunity to reflect and eventually see through the empty platitudes of these integrity-challenged, attention-starved hypocrites.

UPDATE: James Rowen notes that radio talker Charlie Sykes has felt free on the air to call those who objected to the virtual wargame "moonbats." Rowen further notes that Uppity Wisconsin blogger Bill Christofferson, who Sykes lambasted for publishing the Summerfest adminstrative phone number so people could register complaints against the war simulation game, served two tours during the Vietnam War as a US Marine.

Nice, Mr. Sykes.

Shoppes at Wyndham Village/Temple of Target scheduled to open. Anticipated asphalt temperature at ribbon cutting: 112 degrees

The temple of Target, originally uploaded by johnruexp.

I imagine we'll soon see a big gong installed on top of this monstrosity so the native inhabitants (some sort of parking lot cult) can summon King Kong.

We get what we deserve.

Ribbon cutting for the Shoppes is July 7th. Target opens on July 24. Whether human sacrifice is scheduled for either event has not yet been announced.

UPDATE: For a look at yet another local monstrosity proposed by a different developer, be sure to visit Metro Milwaukee Today.

They really have our number, don't they?

Marquette Interchange to open early. In other news, Marquette Interchange will soon be declared too small to handle Milwaukee traffic.

Who needs sensible and attractive mass transit options when you can move one-person-per-car through asphalt spaghetti?

Furthermore, no one rides trains and light rail. Oops - I guess they do.

I imagine this dialogue in the near future somewhere in the United States.

"I'm think of moving to ... Milwaukee."

"Really? Why?"

"Dude, they have that fantastic INTERCHANGE!"

"But you don't have a car, and gas is $5.75 a gallon."

"Dude, c'mon - the Marquette freakin' Interchange! Who-hoo!"

Via Smart Growth America:

Optical illusion helps create fake speed bumps - CNN.com

Optical illusion helps create fake speed bumps - CNN.com:

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania (AP) -- Cathy Campbell did a double-take and tapped the brakes when she spotted what appeared to be a pointy-edged box lying in the road just ahead.

She got fooled.

It was a fake speed bump, a flat piece of blue, white and orange plastic that is designed to look like a 3-D pyramid from afar when applied to the pavement.

The optical illusion is one of the latest innovations being tested around the country to discourage speeding.

"It cautions you to slow down because you don't know what you are facing," Campbell said.

A smaller experiment two years ago in the Phoenix area found the faux speed bumps slowed traffic, at least temporarily.

Now, in a much bigger test that began earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants to find out if the markers can also reduce pedestrian accidents.

The fake bumps are being tested on a section of road in a business and residential area in Philadelphia's northeastern corner.

But soon they will also be popping up -- or looking that way -- on 60 to 90 more streets where speeding is a problem.

The 3-D markings are appealing because, at $60 to $80 each, they cost a fraction of real speed bumps (which can run $1,000 to $1,500) and require little maintenance, said Richard Simon, deputy regional administrator for the highway safety administration.

On one of three streets tested in the Phoenix trial, the percentage of drivers who obeyed the 25 mph speed limit nearly doubled. But the effect wore off after a few months.

"Initially they were great," said the Phoenix Police traffic coordinator, Officer Terry Sills. "Until people found out what they were."

Learning from the experience in Arizona, authorities are adding a publicity campaign in Philadelphia to let drivers know that the phony speed bumps will be followed by very real police officers, said Richard Blomberg, a contractor in charge of the study.

Even after motorists adjust, the fake bumps will act like flashing lights in a school zone, reminding drivers they are in an area where they should not be speeding, he said.

"After awhile the novelty wears off, but not the conspicuous effect," Blomberg said.

For increased nighttime visibility, the markers, made by Japan's Sekisui Jushi Corp., contain reflective glass beads.

They are the latest in a long list of traffic calming devices in use across the country, including various types of real bumps, dips, traffic circles and roundabouts.

Proponents say fake bumps require little engineering or planning and can work in places where real humps or dips in the road may not be acceptable -- such as near a firehouse.

Philadelphia officials said they at least want to give them a shot.

The Associated Press interviewed about two dozen people who have driven over the fake bumps, and only a few said they braked for them.

(Continued at CNN.com)

WAR and OIL: Now the truth is bubbling up

Part THREE of today's OIL trifecta.

Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al-Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be ... the bottom line. It is about oil.

Bill Moyers

If you've read Greg Palast's brilliant ARMED MADHOUSE (handy ordering box below), none of what Bill Moyers lays out in this video is a surprise to you. The good news is, the truth is bubbling up to the mainstream; Bill Moyers is generally the pathfinder for the Katie Courics of the media world. 

Greg Palast could find no voice in the American mainstream press; "journalism" is not widely spoken here. He had to get his support and funding from the BBC. And Palast got it right. I have yet to meet the movement conservative who can confront any of the issues raised by Palast in his book and Moyers in his commentary below. The most I can get is, "You just hate George Bush."

When they eventually prosecute Cheney and Bush, can we hope that the vanguard of the right wing echo chamber (Limbaugh, Hannity, et.al.) is brought up on charges as co-conspirators? 

Watch the little local wanna-bes (you know who you are) scurry when that happens. They would rather go to war than invest - - - and I mean invest heavily - - in transportation, infrastructure, and energy alternatives that would make such a war unnecessary. 

Spend about nine minutes with Bill Moyers and the hard truth. (Transcription)

 

Oil Prices: Reality still hasn't descended upon mainstream media

Milwaukee isn't the only region in denial when it comes to the upcoming crisis. A confused nation waits for Dr. Phil to tell them how to feel:

All this reality content is beginning to penetrate the collective consciousness in the US, but the result is mostly panic or paralyzed disbelief rather than any set of intelligent responses. For example, I got a call from one of Katie Couric's producers at CBS news on Friday. Somehow, they had noticed that oil prices were becoming a problem in America. They called me for a comment. The scary part was they were clearly treating the issue as a "lifestyle" story. Did I think more suburbanites would move downtown? And would that be a good thing...?  They have no %$#ing clue how broadly and deeply these dynamics will affect the life of this nation, or even our ability to remain a nation. Also, by the way, this demonstrates how the nightly network news has become the equivalent of the old "women's pages" of the daily newspapers.

James Howard Kunstler, Cluster$%$ Nation

"The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership."

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Professor Marc. V. Levine gets it right in his op-ed from this Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Meanwhile, we have in County Executive Scott Walker a living example of willful obstinacy that is slowly and oh-so-surely killing Milwaukee and the surrounding region. This blind obstructionist is planning to proudly veto an advisory referendum on a (much-needed) 1-cent increase in the county sales tax! 

Read that again: Scott Walker is vetoing a vote in which the people decide - - in a nonbinding vote - -  whether it's worth a tax hike to fix the broken county.

He doesn't want to know how the citizens of his broken county feel about the current state of transit, parks, and other infrastructure?

Who does this sort of thing? A politician who is plotting a run for governor and who fears the likes of Mark Belling, that's who. Scott Walker is looking out for Scott Walker.

Once again, self-interest reigns, and Milwaukee's reputation as a non-starter that cowers under the clumsy brickbats of conservative radio talkers - - a cartoon-character breed that squeals in desperate search of attention and ratings and without regard to any larger truth - -  spreads across the nation as surely as this poorly formed, run-on sentence spreads across your screen.

It's time to ignore the talk-radio narcissists and pandering politicians and do what needs to be done. And if a County Executive fears an advisory vote by the people that may hinder his political future, his time is up.

Dim light at the end of the tunnel

The region needs higher wattage ideas for transit

By MARC V. LEVINE

The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership.

It is a public policy debacle that threatens the very economic viability of this city and region — and it comes at a time when we already are struggling with stagnant growth, spreading poverty and shockingly high rates of joblessness in the inner city.

Skyrocketing gas prices and awareness of climate change are reshaping the way Americans live, work and play. Mass transit ridership is surging in cities with rail transit systems, as commuters seek alternatives to $4.50-a-gallon gasoline. Suburban and exurban communities, whose growth was predicated on cars and cheap gas, are facing bursting housing bubbles and an uncertain future.

In this new era, the economic winners will be cities and regions that have invested in state-of-the-art mass transit. Unfortunately, few metropolitan areas are less prepared for these changes than Milwaukee.

Unlike in virtually all other large U.S. cities, leaders here have balked for two decades at building any form of regional rail transit.

By contrast, other cities, such as Baltimore, St. Louis and Minneapolis have built light rail systems since the 1990s (and ridership has soared by 15% this year in all three places). In 2004, Denver voters approved a $4.7 billion bond issue, underwritten by a sales tax, for a 119-mile expansion of their system, while Kansas City recently approved financing of a $1 billion, 27-mile light rail line.

Even in conservative, historically anti-tax “red states,” civic leaders and voters have understood the economic imperative of investing in rail transit. Salt Lake City recently raised the sales tax to expand regional rail. Phoenix is building a 20-mile, $1.3 billion light rail line. And in Texas, that bastion of big-government liberalism, Dallas is investing $4 billion to double the size of its regional light rail system to 90 miles.

In an era of expensive gas and pressures to reduce carbon footprints, it takes some magical thinking to believe that Milwaukee can remain economically competitive as one of the nation’s only large cities without such infrastructure.

The intransigence of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker, bolstered by know-nothing talk radio hosts, columnists and bloggers, is obviously the biggest impediment to sensible transit policy.

Fortunately, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett supports rail transit. Unfortunately, he has offered an inadequate plan: a streetcar Downtown Circulator that would run in a three-mile loop around downtown, which is too small and too slow to generate either of the two key economic benefits of rail transit — linking workers to employment hubs in the region or promoting development along rail corridors.

Barrett sees the Circulator as a “starter” investment toward a more elaborate rail system, touting its links to the vastly oversold KRM commuter rail proposal. But it’s likely that the mayor’s trolley to nowhere would draw meager ridership, thus providing more ammunition to the opponents of light rail, foreclosing future investments and leaving us with an underutilized white elephant ringing downtown.

Barrett, properly concerned about fiscal responsibility, notes that “advocates have failed to explain how to fund a more extensive system.”

Yes, public finances are tight everywhere. Yet leaders in places as varied as Denver, Baltimore, Dallas, Minneapolis and Charlotte have financed the construction or expansion of their systems in recent years. Moreover, even in fiscally strapped Milwaukee, we’ve found a way to spend billions in the past decade on a baseball stadium and a convention center, mega-projects that nearly all economists agree contribute precious little to regional economic growth.

Surely, then, given the existential importance of transit for metro Milwaukee, a financially sensible, $1 billion regional fixed-rail plan can be crafted:

• Using the $91.5 million in federal funds already allocated.

• Minimizing capital costs by extensively utilizing existing rail rights of way.

• Creatively deploying such tools as tax incremental financing.

• Selling station-area development rights.

• Receiving infrastructure support from the State of Wisconsin.

• And, yes, implementing a regional sales tax (with rebates to low-income residents) to fund transit improvements and operations.

If Sen. Barack Obama is elected president, more federal funding likely will be available for rail transit. Obama’s campaign platform calls for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that could provide an infusion of funds to cities like Milwaukee to invest in transit (as well as in other infrastructure vital to economic development).

But the biggest problem is not fiscal but political.

Barrett and his allies should boldly confront the anti-rail demagogues, advocating a comprehensive fixed-rail plan for Milwaukee’s future that would link key hubs (downtown, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the County Grounds and the airport) and stretch from the North Shore suburbs through the central city, perhaps to Brookfield.

The region’s corporate leaders, represented by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and the Greater Milwaukee Committee, supposedly support regional rail transit. If that’s true, they should make it the centerpiece of the Milwaukee 7 initiative, turning it into a more muscular regionalism that could underpin an economic revitalization of the city and region.

Rail is not a panacea for Milwaukee’s economic woes: It will not single-handedly solve the crisis of inner city joblessness, end poverty or create a culture of economic innovation here (although it will help in all of those areas).

But imagine a future of $8-a-gallon gas, in which Milwaukee is one of the few large cities in the United States without rail transit.

Businesses increasingly will locate in transit-friendly regions that offer the efficient and economical flow of people, goods and services. A Milwaukee without rail transit runs the risk of becoming economically obsolete, a city whose leaders failed to invest in its economic future.

Investing in rail is not like flipping a switch; the lead time is substantial. We already are way behind other cities, and our economic viability is slipping away.

The time for action is now.

Marc V. Levine is a professor of history, economic development and urban studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

One of the many concepts that were reinforced for me while recovering from this month's flooded basement adventure was the idea that adversity can bring out the best in your neighbors. In my case, my next-door neighbors opened their house completely to me and my family as we struggled to put things back together without running water or electricity. They also let me stay in their guest room so I could get up every couple hours at night to pour gas into the generators so the sump pumps and fans could keep running. (And, I shouldn't neglect to mention, introduced me to a Mexican dish that is incredible, and may soon become a staple in our house as well.)

This great op-ed ran in the New York Times recently. It's about a guy who decided to ask all the people in his neighborhood if he could stay over night at their house, just to see if that exercise might bring down some of the walls we erect around ourselves in modern communities. It makes for a very interesting piece.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

By PETER LOVENHEIM 

THE alarm on my cellphone rang at 5:50 a.m., and I awoke to find myself in a twin bed in a spare room at my neighbor Lou’s house.

Lou was 81. His six children were grown and scattered around the country, and he lived alone, two doors down from me. His wife, Edie, had died five years earlier. “When people learn you’ve lost your wife,” he told me, “they all ask the same question. ‘How long were you married?’ And when you tell them 52 years, they say, ‘Isn’t that wonderful!’ But I tell them no, it isn’t. I was just getting to know her.”

Lou had said he gets up at six, but after 10 more minutes, I heard nothing from his room down the hall. Had he died? He had a heart ailment, but generally was in good health. With a full head of silver-gray hair, bright hazel-blue eyes and a broad chest, he walked with the confident bearing of a man who had enjoyed a long and satisfying career as a surgeon.

The previous evening, as I’d left home, the last words I heard before I shut the door had been, “Dad, you’re crazy!” from my teenage daughter. Sure, the sight of your 50-year-old father leaving with an overnight bag to sleep at a neighbor’s house would embarrass any teenager, but “crazy”? I didn’t think so.

There’s talk today about how as a society we’ve become fragmented by ethnicity, income, city versus suburb, red state versus blue. But we also divide ourselves with invisible dotted lines. I’m talking about the property lines that isolate us from the people we are physically closest to: our neighbors.

It was a calamity on my street, in a middle-class suburb of Rochester, several years ago that got me thinking about this. One night, a neighbor shot and killed his wife and then himself; their two middle-school-age children ran screaming into the night. Though the couple had lived on our street for seven years, my wife and I hardly knew them. We’d see them jogging together. Sometimes our children would carpool.

Some of the neighbors attended the funerals and called on relatives. Someone laid a single bunch of yellow flowers at the family’s front door, but nothing else was done to mark the loss. Within weeks, the children had moved with their grandparents to another part of town. The only indication that anything had changed was the “For Sale” sign on the lawn.

A family had vanished, yet the impact on our neighborhood was slight. How could that be? Did I live in a community or just in a house on a street surrounded by people whose lives were entirely separate? Few of my neighbors, I later learned, knew others on the street more than casually; many didn’t know even the names of those a few doors down.

(Read the rest at NYTimes.com)

For whom the road tolls

ABOVE: New York Times photo

James Rowen notes that SEWRPC leader Philip Evenson is OK with the idea of toll roads in Wisconsin.

The latest issue of THE WILSON QUARTERLY magazine contains a discussion of LEASED TOLL ROADS - - something Wisconsin will undoubtedly be tempted to look at.

Indiana has a state budget of $13 billion; they leased their tool road for about $4 billion to "a private Australian-Spanish consortium." Evidently, a few months of interest on that payment exceeded the amount Indiana had made in 50 years of tolling that road (a New York Times story says Indiana earned $287 million in interest from the $3.8 billion the state received last year).

However, the lease runs until 2081; that could be trouble according to critics who fear Indiana sold too low. And privatized public utilities are prone to break (witness the California power debacle).

As the New York Times notes:

“Early on, there was excitement about the big checks that came in,” Jonathan R. Peters, a finance professor at the City University of New York and an expert on toll roads, said of the arrangements in Indiana and Chicago. “But now academics and departments of transportation are starting to see that you can give away too much.”

Governor Jon S. Corzine was looking to privatize New Jersey’s toll roads as well - - including the iconic New Jersey Turnpike! - - but irony struck him particularly hard. A serious auto crash that almost killed the Governor took the wind out of his sails for a while.

Watch this issue bubble up in the near future.

The Decline of the Exurban Lifestyle: Still not convinced?

Though this blog is more concerned with improving present suburban communities than it is in seeing them wiped out, a story in today's New York Times paints a pretty dismal picture for those suburbs that are even more far-flung - - the so-called "exurbs"; collections of subdivisions that are utterly and completely dependent upon automobiles for their very existence.

Sure, people like having their space and their 5-car garages, but ...

... life on the edges of suburbia is beginning to feel untenable. Mr. Boyle and his wife must drive nearly an hour to their jobs in the high-tech corridor of southern Denver. With gasoline at more than $4 a gallon, Mr. Boyle recently paid $121 to fill his pickup truck with diesel fuel. In March, the last time he filled his propane tank to heat his spacious house, he paid $566, more than twice the price of 5 years ago.

Though Mr. Boyle finds city life unappealing, it is now up for reconsideration.
....

In Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Minneapolis, homes beyond the urban core have been falling in value faster than those within, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.

Car-worshippers (and Bush-Cheney-Big Oil apologists) who constantly confound Milwaukee's efforts to get a sane light rail system built would do well to observe Denver, Colorado's experience:

A $6.1 billion commuter rail system has been in the works over the last four years, drawing people downtown without cars, while stimulating swift sales of densely clustered condos near stations.

Coors Field, the intimate, brick-fronted baseball stadium for the Colorado Rockies, has transformed the surrounding area from a desolate skid row into fashionable Lower Downtown, a neighborhood of restaurants and microbreweries in restored warehouses. Along the Platte River, new condos set on a park strip offer an arresting tableau of glass, steel, and futuristic geometry, attracting throngs of buyers at rising prices.

“This is a city where it’s fun to be in the center,” said Tim Burleigh, 56, who sold his house in the suburbs and now walks to Rockies games from his downtown condo.

But, alas, you gotta spend some real money and change the one-person-per-car paradigm to get out from under the thumb of Big Oil. The same "conservative" attitudes (and a few liberal ones as well) that have led to the current crumbling state of our national infrastructure and dismal community standards (optional sidewalks?) are raising the stakes of the upcoming crisis by obstinately denying the fact that we desperately need a mass transit re-fit program at the level of 1956's Federal Aid Highway Act.

And, what the heck, put the word "defense" in the name of whatever act we come up with (ala the Highway Act's alternate name, National Interstate and Highways Defense Act). Imagine a foreign policy scenario wherein OPEC-member nations observe an entire nation gearing up to drastically reduce consumption of their cash cow. Imagine NOT spending lives and money in Iraq (because that's an oil war, pure and simple).

The full NYT story is after the jump. (NYT story Via Calculated Risk:)

See also this entry from Calculated Risk linking to an LA Times story that describes a California community where 15%(!) of homes are bank-owned or in some level of foreclosure.

New York Times Graphic (click to enlarge)

Fountains of Franklin: No tenants, but looking to build. Here's a suggestion -

(Image above from Cooltown Studios)

Let me make a (in light of my current situation, rather selfish) suggestion to the developers of Fountains of Franklin: TWO STORY BUILDINGS with co-working spaces up top - - WiFi, phones, electric, desks and chairs - - that collect nominal monthly/weekly/daily "user fees" whether or not the commercial spaces below are leased. Maybe a handy FedEx Kinko's Office and Print Center moves in. Starbucks loves these gatherings of coffee-swilling laptop pounders who can be counted on to show up every day (better yet, let a locally-owned coffeeshop get in there).

Imagine - - actual all-day foot traffic! People coming and going! Impromtu meetings in the greenspace! Bike racks!

Truth is, you should have done that with the ANDY'S building, which now has attractive empty windows on either side of the service station section of the building - no tenants.

C'mon - think outside the box already. Shoppes at Wyndham Village is certainly no threat to do something the least bit innovative or outside their build-a-stripmall kit - - make yourself stand out! Create a positive vibe over there!

Or build another strip mall.

See also:
Third place coffeehouses and coworking sites as economic development tools
Attract more creatives with 'anchored coworking'

From FranklinNow.com:

For the second time in six weeks the Plan Commission conditionally approved a plan for the next phase of the Fountains of Franklin Sendik's development. The Common Council has yet to cast its vote on the plan.

The $25 million to $30 million project would feature two commercial buildings totaling 39,700 square feet. Both structures, which do not have tenants yet, would be adjacent to the 61,500-square-foot Sendik's Fine Foods, a popular store that opened in November.

After reviewing revised architectural plans, the commission on June 19 conditionally approved a revised certified survey map for the next phase of the multiphase development in the 5300 to 5400 blocks of West Rawson Avenue. The commission called for more tweaking, particularly to the larger building's south elevation, which will face Rawson Avenue.

The commission approved a similar plan last month, but it was rejected the the Common Council on May 20.

Was that so hard? 27th Street Committee launches website with a sane name

south27thstreet.com.

How much did THAT name cost?

And these clever guys went out and locked down all the domain names with "Boomgaard" in it, and were prepared to pay giant money to the holder of domain rights to one particular version of the name.

Whoever thought of south27thstreet.com - buy that person a cold beer or their preferred beverage.

They need a new copywriter, though. Whoever wrote this:

....this up-and-coming area has all the amenities of a great Milwaukee suburb – including easy freeway and interstate access, commercial development and a sense of character.

... is either in on the joke or hasn't recently visited a suburb ("sense of character"?)

So, ladies and gentlemen of Franklin and Oak Creek, allow me to list your amenities:
- easy freeway and interstate access
- commercial development
- a "sense of character"(!)

That's all, move along.

So, so sad.

Franklin Plan Commission sandbagged

Signs that post-flood normalcy may be returning:

- On Tuesday I found time to go running (in the process discovering all kinds of brand new aches and pains that come from days of hauling wet pop culture debris from a flooded basement);

- Tonight I'm going to mow the lawn;

- And right now I'm going to bellyache about the decomposition of Franklin's Plan Commission.

Weeks ago, when it looked like Kevin Haley was being forced off the commission (he's since been reinstated for reasons still unclear), I'd put in an open records request for the volunteer sheets submitted by current members of that body. With Haley possibly off the commission, the point I wanted to make was that the remaining members had little in their backgrounds to engender confidence in their ability to safeguard the city's long-term goals and well-being against the ambitions of developers who look no further than their personal bottom line. As has been noted here before, commissioner Kevin Haley was the lone voice against some pretty blatant developer manipulations. No one else on the commission felt moved - - or indeed seemed qualified - - to support Haley's legitimate objections and informed observations.

Now comes news that the mayor has successfully placed former alderman Pete Kosovich on the Plan Commission. As reported by Greg Kowalski on his now-defunct FranklinNow.com blog (continued at his new blog, Metro Milwaukee Today), Kosovich squeaked in when the mayor broke a 3-3 common council tie. The tally, which I'm pasting from Greg Kowalski's blog (with my comments in parenthesis), was:

Olson: NO (Very interesting, and should have set the tone)

Solomon: YES

Wilhelm: NO (Expected)

Taylor: YES (I'll assume Taylor felt he needed to be magnanimous after defeating Kosovich)

Sohns: NO

Skowronski: YES

Mayor Taylor YES (tie-breaker)

With all due respect to the mayor and Mr. Kosovich: What th'...?!?!

Is the standard for serving on the Plan Commission of one of the fastest growing suburbs in Wisconsin really nothing more than a desire to serve and, as blogger Kevin Fischer explains in his blog entry supporting Kosovich's nomination, a presumed "knowledge of local ordinances, state rules and regulations, and ... experience in dealing with Franklin business and economic development issues"?

The answer more likely resides hidden in the cynical language of a comment Fischer left after his entry:

Appointment of friends, colleagues, etc has been going on in politics for all time. This is nothing new.*

Jim Doyle has appointed tons of people that have been confirmed by the state Senate when it was controlled by Republicans and now Democrats.

Taylor appointed Kosovich because he knows him, likes him, respects him, is familiar with him and thinks he will do a good job.

But you know what else? There are certain developers in town who likely thought they'd been rid of their only obstacle on the plan commission, Kevin Haley. When the mayor inexplicably reversed himself and brought Haley back on to the commission, a "gesture" had to be made.

Enter Pete Kosovich, plan commissioner.

Don't get me wrong; it appears to me that Mr. Kosovich is a nice enough gentleman and should be commended for his desire to serve, but, verily, I doubt that intricate land planning and development theories regularly weigh heavily upon his mind. Will we find on his bookshelves dog-eared, yellow-highlighted volumes like Zoned Out: Regulation, Markets, and Choices in Transportation and Metropolitan Land Use, A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb, the harrowing Edge City: Life on the New Frontier, Community and the Politics of Place, The Geography of Nowhere, How Cities Work, Suburban Nation, the pro-sprawl Sprawl: A Compact History, the required-reading Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Regulating Place: Standards and the Shaping of Urban America, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, Land Use Planning and Development Regulation Law, and the noxious but still informative in a "know the enemy" sort of way, The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future?

(I must confess, I don't own the above books either: My dog-eared, yellow-highlighted volumes of these tomes washed away when my office was flooded last week.)

No, Mr. Kosovich will rely on his "knowledge of local ordinances, state rules and regulations, and ... experience in dealing with Franklin business and economic development issues."

Just the sort of bootstrap knowledge you need when a developer is trying to sneak in another self-enriching, city-draining strip-mall, huh?

Notwithstanding Mr. Kosovich's admirable desire to serve, this was a bad, old school pol move that will have potentially devastating consequences down the line unless something is done very soon to fix a sandbagged plan commission.

* [Note - I was a fly on the wall (harmless intern) during Tommy Thompson's reign in Madison. Those guys might not have invented cronyism, but they certainly perfected it. What a pit of incestuous vipers. It led to my first (and so far, last) legal deposition, as part of a sexual harassment claim against a Thompson good-old-boy appointee.]

FLOOD NOTE: Get that well water tested!

If you're like me and don't have city water (we have drinking water delivered), be sure to get your well tested.

Our results came back yesterday via a phone message: "Your water is bad." The message went on to explain that I should  run my garden hoses for 24-48 hours to flush it until he can rechlorinate the system.

I finally caught our well guy on his phone this morning.

"Oh yeah," he said. "You have E. Coli in there. Haven't seen that in years."

What?!?!?

"E. Coli?!?!?" I sputtered. "I've been brushing my teeth with that stuff!"

"Oh, no no no, sir. You aren't gonna want to to do that," he replied. "Any ingestion is bad news."

E. Coli?!?!? Fortunately, the rest of the family left town; I'm home alone.

"Wait a minute," he suddenly said. "Did I say E. Coli on the phone message I left you? I think that's someone else. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was another house."

"'Pretty sure'?"

"I have to go out to Yorkville; I'll call you when I get back to the office and let you know."

And so it goes. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: All clear.

FLOOD NOTE: IRS may cut you a break

As noted in the online video I watched at the Small Business Administration website (and via tip from Kevin Fischer), the IRS is willing to cut a break for persons affected by the flood.

As a self-employed writer, I could certainly use a few extra months to pay my first quarterly tax bill. We bought a new furnace to replace the drowned one with our stimulus check ...

Oak Creek boots Boomgaard; Franklin remains quiet

Will they get their money by from Zizzo Group? Don't hold your breath.

Would this name have been deflected without blogger pressure?

From FranklinNow.com:

The South 27th Street Steering Committee will likely have to come up with a new name for the 27th Street Corridor after its first choice -- the "Boomgaard District" -- was ridiculed by bloggers, radio talk show hosts, columnists and many residents.

The Oak Creek Common Council last night unanimously approved a motion referring the name back to the committee, with a recommendation to consider selecting a new name.

The formal action follows a consensus reached last month by Oak Creek and Franklin officials that the name should be re-evaluated by the committee. The committee decided that it would wait at least 120 days before making a final decision on a name.

Flood note: Manage your cel phone bills

In the aftermath of the flood, many people who lost land lines but still had to communicate are finding themselves way, way over their cel phone's maximum minutes and well into the .40¢-.50¢(!) per minute territory that comes with "overages." I ended up 200+ minutes past my limit even after expending a pretty good supply of the "rollover" minutes I had banked.

The expenses are piling up, so this is one you can and should nip in the bud.

Tip: Call your cel phone company and let them know you are in an area declared a Federal Disaster Area. Often they will forgive the extra minutes. In my case, AT&T (the only company you can use with an iPhone) agreed to backdate a plan upgrade for me so I'm billed for the next-higher service plan this month, which keeps me out of overage trouble. That'll cost me $20 more on one bill (I can switch back immediately, and there's no charge for plan-switching); much better than the $80-$100 I'd get socked for if I paid the per-minute overage rates.

Lost in the flood; found in the flood

Where to begin?

I'm sitting at a Starbucks, taking advantage of free wi-fi because we have no internet or cable at home.

We have no basement - - like many people here in southeastern Wisconsin, we were "affected" by flooding; eight feet of water found it's way in and drowned my office and its entire contents, not to mention everything we had in storage. So, what you see at left is ten years of my professional and personal life mixed into a slurry - the water line is just below the ceiling. The other half of the basement looked even worse. I'm not alone; dozens of households in Franklin have been upended by the storms, and the entire Midwest is absolutely reeling.

The storm was Saturday night, and it's the following Friday before I can sit still long enough to think. As many are learning, putting the pieces back together after an event like this is an exhausting, all-encompassing experience that leaves little or no time for contemplation or tapping notes into a laptop. In fact, I really have no business being here, away from the myriad things that still need attention at home. This will have to be a short entry with a promise of more later (you'll want to hear about an army of FEMA folks touring my humble abode, for instance).

This is a blog about finding community, and I found it in spades the morning after the flood. You have no idea the amount of stuff a writer with a pop culture jones can accumulate over the course of 10 years in one house; the basement was literally packed with books, memorabilia, publications, product samples, about 100 GI Joes (I wrote a book about Hasbro and their movable man of action, which pretty much put me on the mailing list for every new figure), and it had to be emptied ASAP, a task that looked like it could take the better part of a week. If not for the miniature army of help that showed up at our house the next morning once word had gotten out  -  people I knew well and people I'd never before met - I would still be hauling buckets of waterlogged books, furniture and files.

And I'm not talking about simply "helping out"; these people were in the water hauling container after container of heavy, waterlogged debris up a narrow stairway, over and over and over again. It was sweaty, dirty, painful, work that went on all day, and I was surrounded by people willing to stay with it until we got it done. And, unbelievably, we did. Six tons worth. I can't imagine being able to adequately pay back their generosity and selflessness.

Mayor Taylor came over, not to pose for pictures or gaze ruefully at the mess, but to lug containers of my office-soup up the stairs. My alderman, Kristen Wilhelm, got elbow deep, working for hours. FranklinNOW blogger Greg Kowalski and his sister pitched in. Alderman Steve Taylor came by - - and I'm not even in his district.

In the days that followed, Alderman and plan commission member Ken Skowronski stopped by to offer his expertise on battening the hatches (and my open basement window) for subsequent rain. Jerry Schaefer, Franklin's superintendent of Public Works (a busy man this week), did the same. With their advice and input I was able to take steps that helped me relax a bit as even more rain came.

In this space I talk a lot about the built environment and how it can promote or negate the sense of neighborliness and community in a suburb like Franklin. I'm seeing now what I'd always suspected - - that this is a city whose citizens and leadership are well worth bragging about and on whom well thought-out development and planning will not be wasted. We can disagree on how we get there, but we unquestionably have the human element in place that guarantees success.

What's lost in the flood is just "stuff." What you find in the aftermath of an event like this is what's really worthwhile.

Thanks is too small a word.