Sprawled Out: The Search for Community in the American Suburb

Sales tax proposed for train line

Funds would also take buses off property tax

By LARRY SANDLER
[email protected]

Posted: Dec. 20, 2006

The new Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority is considering local sales taxes to help pay for a proposed commuter train line and to take public buses off the property tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties.

Authority members could vote Jan. 9 to ask the Legislature to authorize the new sales taxes. But other funding options, including property and gas taxes, remain under consideration, authority chairman Karl Ostby noted.

Under the sales tax plan, the three-county authority would be able to levy a 0.05% tax - or 5 cents on each $100 purchase - to cover the local share of building and operating the KRM Commuter Link, a train line that would connect Kenosha, Racine, Milwaukee and its southern suburbs. Federal and state aid and passenger fares would pay most of the train line's $237 million construction cost and $14.7 million-a-year operating cost.

The authority also would ask the state to give each of the three counties the option of levying up to 0.45% more in sales taxes to replace property tax support for local public transit systems. If lawmakers agreed to both the train and bus taxes and Milwaukee County opted for the maximum bus tax, the sales tax on most items would rise from 5.6% to 6.1% when the new taxes are added to existing state, county and stadium taxes.

A 0.05% sales tax in the three counties would raise $8 million a year. That would be enough to cover both the local share of the train line's annual operating cost and the debt service on the bonds issued to fund construction, transit authority spokesman H. Carl Mueller said. The transit authority itself is funded by a rental car tax that is raising about $600,000 a year.

As currently planned, the KRM Commuter Link would run 14 round trips each weekday - and seven on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays - with stops in downtown Milwaukee, the Bay View neighborhood, Cudahy, South Milwaukee, Oak Creek, the Town of Caledonia, Racine, the Town of Somers and Kenosha.

Shuttle buses would link the trains to downtown destinations, Mitchell International Airport and the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Passengers could transfer to Chicago's Metra commuter trains at either Kenosha or Waukegan, Ill.

Unlike Amtrak's faster Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line, the commuter trains would be aimed at workers, students and shoppers seeking relatively short trips between downtown Milwaukee and its suburbs, or from suburb to suburb, not at people traveling between downtown Milwaukee and downtown Chicago. Like Amtrak, commuter trains run on existing freight rail tracks.

By calling for both train and bus taxes, the authority would respond to two concerns:

• The push to establish the proposed commuter rail line. Business leaders portray it as a major economic asset for the region's future, by providing greater access to jobs and encouraging development around train stations.

• The plight of the Milwaukee County Transit System - and to a lesser extent, its Racine and Kenosha counterparts - as competition for limited property tax revenue continues a cycle of fare increases and service cuts. Some public officials, riders and bus drivers have pressed for a dedicated revenue source to protect the buses that tens of thousands of people ride to work and school every day.

Ostby said authority members consider the rail line their first priority, as they try to meet a June deadline for applying for federal aid. But the Legislature told the authority to recommend funding options for other forms of transit as well, and two authority members - George Torres, Milwaukee County public works director, and Len Brandrup, Kenosha Transit chief - have urged their colleagues not to ignore bus needs.

The Milwaukee County Board has failed in several attempts to ask the Legislature for a new sales tax to support the bus system, or even to hold an advisory referendum asking voters if they would support the idea. The concept became entangled in similar attempts to wean parks and cultural programs off the property tax, and both efforts ran into County Executive Scott Walker's opposition to any new taxes.

The rail line, meanwhile, has attracted relatively little controversy to date, but that could change once new taxes are on the table, Ostby conceded.

"I think everybody loves things until they have to pay for them," Ostby said.

By comparison, the five-county sales tax levied to pay for building Miller Park is 0.1% - twice the rate under consideration for commuter trains alone, or one-fifth of the combined bus and train tax. The stadium tax drew bitter opposition when the Legislature imposed it in 1995.

Sales taxes are among the most common ways of funding new commuter rail lines nationwide and transit systems in metropolitan areas about the same size as Milwaukee, the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission staff has told the authority.

State Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale), who sponsored the legislation creating the transit authority, said it was too early to predict how the Legislature would react to a request for new taxes. Packaging the bus taxes as a replacement for current property tax funding would be essential, Stone said.

Ostby said new property taxes would likely be less popular than new sales taxes. Visitors also pay a larger share of sales taxes than of property or gas taxes, which fall more heavily on residents, Stone said.

Link: JS Online:.

Lesson from a high-growth blue-collar city: upscaling beautifies, but inclusion stabilizes.

By MICHELE DERUS
[email protected]

Posted: Dec. 16, 2006

Hartford - Lesson from a high-growth blue-collar city: upscaling beautifies, but inclusion stabilizes.

This Washington County outpost 39 miles northwest of Milwaukee has 13,000 people; 8,000-plus jobs that pay an average of $16 hourly; and zero unemployment, city officials say.

About 40% of city residents work within city borders, and property taxes have fallen for four years straight.

The secret of its development success: housing choices priced for everyday folks.

 

"Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership"

When I started poking around local government entities in an effort to learn more about the planning process in Franklin, I was taken aback by the palpable suspicion with which I was regarded at every turn. My inquires were (and often continue to be) met with polite-but-curt replies, and information is rarely offered freely.

A peek at recent local history sheds some light.

I remember getting odd fliers in my mailbox a few years back, when I was fairly ambivalent about the workings of local government beyond that which affected my immediate surroundings. I was aware that a group had it in for certain members of city government and were making some pretty broad accusations.

Evidently, "Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership" succeeded in ousting the persons that they felt were "hindering progress." I hear the occasional faintly derisive reference to "the former non-progressive" city council at current meetings.

I left messages with Basil Ryan, the former alderman who seems to be the prime mover behind these charges, many months ago attempting to gain some insight into this imbroglio, but haven't heard back. He has quite an interesting website here. (A quick quote: "The following web pages will show you the corruption, influence and favoritism that continue in Franklin.")

Franklin citizens group accused

DA's office files civil charges alleging campaign finance violations

By ANNYSA JOHNSON
[email protected]

Posted: Dec. 17, 2006

Franklin - A local political action committee that campaigned using what turned out to be false or exaggerated claims to elect a pro-development Common Council in recent years has been accused by the Milwaukee County district attorney's office of violating state campaign finance laws.

The civil charges, issued this month, accuse Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership and former treasurer James Seymer of filing a false registration statement and failing to accurately record how much money it collected and spent between April 2003 and July 2004.

Though it names only Seymer and the citizen group as defendants, the complaint sheds light on how the organization's activities were financed, at least in part, by loans and contributions from local business interests, including Ted Grintjes and James Rhiner, longtime members of the city's Economic Development Commission and Community Development Authority.

"This only scratched the surface," Basil Ryan, the former Franklin alderman ousted by the group in a recall election whose complaint to the DA's office prompted the civil charges, said Friday. "I'm pushing for criminal charges. This group was warned. They had to know" their reporting obligations.

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Landgraf, who filed the forfeiture action, said he found no evidence of criminal intent. Both Seymer and the citizen group face fines of up to $3,500.

According to the complaint, Seymer registered Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership as a political action committee in 2003 but sought an exemption from financial reporting requirements, saying it would not collect more than $100 from individuals or more than $1,000 in a calendar year.

The complaint says the group then went on to accept contributions totaling $900 from business owners Howard Salter and James Stack in 2003. In addition, it said, the group reimbursed Rhiner and Grintjes a total of $300 they spent on printing fliers for FCRL, without documenting those loans.

According to the complaint, the group spent more than $1,600 on printing services between March and June 2003 but reflected only one payment, for $421, on its campaign finance reports.

Ryan uncovered the amounts by looking at the finance reports of state Rep. Jeff Stone (R-Greendale), whose company did the printing, and who is required by law to disclose any client with whom he does more than $1,000 in businesses.

Stone said Thursday that he is not affiliated with the group or its members other than as a vendor.

James Seymer could not be reached for comment Friday, and Rhiner, who is listed as the citizen group's current treasurer, did not return a telephone call.

Seymer's father, recall activist Orville Seymer - a founding member of both the Franklin group and the broader Citizens for Responsible Government - said any errors in filings were unintentional. Orville Seymer said his son had moved out of Milwaukee County but would not say where.

Franklin Citizens for Responsible Leadership emerged in March 2003, saying it intended to recall Ryan and anyone else members saw as blocking the city's economic development efforts. Over the next year, the group replaced four of the six sitting aldermen with one of its founding members - Ald. Steve Olson - and three others sympathetic to its agenda. Olson later distanced himself from the group.

The group made what turned out to be false or exaggerated claims against opponents in fliers, claiming in one case that the candidate knew a sex-offender home was being planned for Franklin and that the candidate did nothing to fight a landfill expansion whose height would "exceed the Empire State Building."

"It was 'take the office at all costs.' That was the tactic they used," said former Ald. Don Dorsan, who lost to Olson and complained to the district attorney's office that the group had knowingly distributed false information about him.

Dorsan said the group's actions had discouraged others from running.

"You'd need a lot of money to fight this group," said Dorsan, who chairs the city's Environmental Commission. "The average guy who wants to be in office for all the right reasons doesn't have those kinds of resources."

Link: JS Online:.

JS Online: Editorial - Making a highway safer

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Posted: Dec. 14, 2006

On the morning of this winter's first blizzard, Mother Nature closed the median openings on Blue Mound Road in Waukesha County by piling them full of snow. Snowplows had other priorities, and some drivers who weren't paying attention still tried to cross, but most got stuck in the mounds of white stuff that filled the openings. Ironically, those closures may have made Blue Mound safer than it is on a perfectly clear day during the holiday shopping season.

To its credit, the state Department of Transportation has come up with a makeover plan for the roadway that is designed to make it safer by closing some of those median openings and making other changes. Those changes may inconvenience some drivers and businesses. But the bottom line should be safety, and Blue Mound right now isn't very safe. According to state figures, from 2000 to 2004, there were 2,300 crashes, or an average of 1.5 per day. That's one of the worst crash rates in the state.

Those crashes can't be blamed entirely on the road's design. Blue Mound generally carries about 45,000 vehicles a day on the 3-mile stretch between Barker and Moorland roads, anchored by Brookfield Square mall at Moorland. It's when the drivers of those vehicles make mistakes that accidents happen. Far too many speed, and others become distracted by the sheer number of vehicles they face or by searching for a business or restaurant.

"It's like an ugly racetrack, a demolition derby during the day," is how Town of Brookfield Supervisor Robert Flessas put it, and he's right.

Blue Mound can be made safer, and the state's plan is a good start. Under the

$1.5 million hazard elimination and safety program, the DOT would relocate one traffic signal, brighten all signals, replace signs, add one sign, repaint pavement markings, build two right-turn lanes and change the medians by closing about one-third of the openings and reconfiguring the rest. The idea behind the median changes would be to have drivers make only right turns out of most businesses on Blue Mound.

As we said, some drivers and businesses may be inconvenienced by the changes. One of the medians that would be closed, for example, is in front of a Best Buy store on the south side of Blue Mound in the Town of Brookfield. Westbound traffic now has to cross oncoming traffic to get into the store's parking lot. Under the DOT's plan, motorists would have to turn left at an earlier median or they could drive farther west to the next intersection at Janacek Road, which is controlled by traffic signals. In either case, they then would have to travel across several parking lots to get to Best Buy.

That may not be as simple as the current system, but crossing at a controlled intersection such as the one at Janacek would be safer. And that should be the bottom line for drivers and for businesses.

The plan right now is to hold public meetings next summer and in the spring of 2008, with construction taking place in the summer of 2008.

Some tweaking may be needed, and the city and town should do whatever they can to help the state, such as putting up better and more visible street signs. Citizens should chime in with their own ideas on what adjustments may be needed.

The sooner everyone gets on board with this plan, the smoother the process and the quicker the construction. And the sooner the construction gets done, the better for everyone.

Link: JS Online:.

Vote would open streets to more 'traffic-calmers'

(photo: Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel)

Council OKs plan to let residents pay for devices

By GREG J. BOROWSKI
[email protected]

Posted: Dec. 12, 2006

The Common Council approved a measure Tuesday that would allow "traffic-calming" devices, such as mini-roundabouts, to be placed in speed-plagued neighborhoods - if local residents agree to pay 90% of the bill.

The proposal would not prevent the city from installing the devices where officials decide they are necessary. Rather, it would give residents and local aldermen a way to approach the problem of slowing traffic on their own.

In the past, residents typically asked the city for more stop signs. But city Department of Public Works officials say too many stop signs could create their own problems, with drivers rolling through or ignoring them.

The measure passed 14-1, with Ald. Joe Dudzik objecting.

Ultimately, residents would get a menu of choices. A speed hump would cost about $3,000; a mini-roundabout or traffic circle - a raised concrete curb at the center of an intersection - would cost about $10,000.

If affected homeowners agree, 90% of the cost would be split among residents, with the remaining 10% coming from the city paving fund.

Link: JS Online:.

Big Park East plan advances

Committee backs city aid for North End development

By TOM DAYKIN
[email protected]

Posted: Dec. 11, 2006

The largest project planned for Milwaukee's Park East area moved much closer to reality Monday, with a Common Council committee recommending city financial assistance for the development.

The Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee voted 5-0 in favor of providing up to $8.5 million in city funds for The North End. Mandel Group Inc. plans to build the $175 million development, with nearly 500 apartments and condominiums, on the site of the former Pfister & Vogel tannery overlooking the Milwaukee River.

The full council is to review the financing plan today.

The city funds would pay mainly for demolition and environmental cleanup, along with new streets, a riverwalk and other public improvements.

The city would borrow the $8.5 million, and those funds - along with $3.6 million in interest charges - would be repaid through property taxes generated by The North End. Property taxes would flow to the city and other local governments once those debts were paid.

City Comptroller W. Martin Morics endorsed the financing plan. He told committee members that the city's exposure for initial funding of the project is limited to $2.4 million. Additional council approval would be needed before other funds could be spent.

Mandel plans to create 395 condos, 88 apartments and 40,000 square feet of street-level retail space from 2007 through 2012. Mandel hopes to begin demolition and environmental cleanup this month, with construction beginning by next summer.

The North End's $64.2 million first phase is to feature 109 condos, 88 apartments and 25,000 square feet of retail space in six separate buildings. Construction on that phase, south of E. Pleasant St. between the river and N. Water St., would take 18 to 24 months.

The North End will be "a major catalyst" for the city's 64-acre Park East redevelopment area, said Ald. Michael D'Amato, committee chairman.

The area includes privately owned parcels and 16 acres of county-owned parcels left vacant when the Park East Freeway was demolished.

There are two major projects in the development stage on the county-owned lands.

Chicago-based RSC & Associates plans to develop apartments, retail space and two hotels on two blocks bordered by N. Jefferson St., N. Broadway, E. Lyon St. and E. Ogden Ave. Also, Mequon-based Ruvin Development Inc. and Dallas-based Gatehouse Capital Corp. plan to build a hotel, condos, offices and retail space on a block bordered by N. Old World 3rd and N. 4th streets and W. Juneau and W. McKinley avenues.

Projects on privately owned parcels include The Flatiron, a 38-unit condo building under construction at 1541 N. Jefferson St.

D'Amato said he looked forward to the time when the entire area, running from E. Brady St. south to McKinley Blvd., then west on McKinley Blvd. to the former Pabst brewery, would be filled with housing, shops, offices and other developments.

Currently, with the huge patches of vacant lots, the walk from Brady St. to the area near Pabst "might as well be 20 miles long," D'Amato said.

Link: JS Online:.

Condos planned for Milwaukee's Third Ward

Mandel would break ground in spring

By TOM DAYKIN
[email protected]

Mandel Group Inc. is proceeding with plans to build new condominiums adjacent to the firm's Marine Terminal Lofts project in Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward.

The new development, called Domus, which is the Latin word for house or home, will be built on a parking lot just east of Marine Terminal Lofts, which overlooks the Milwaukee River at 120 N. Broadway.

Mandel plans to break ground on the five-story project in spring but has not yet filed any plans with the Department of City Development or the Third Ward Architectural Review Board, said Bob Monnat, Mandel's chief operating officer.

Monnat declined further comment on the project. The Business Journal reported Friday that the $40 million development will have 61 units, priced at around $450,000 to $1 million.

Mandel has been marketing the Domus project through its Internet site for six months. The firm acquired the parking lot in 2003 when it bought the Marine Terminal building, an empty industrial property that Mandel later converted into housing and commercial space.

Mandel has since sold all but four of the 84 condos at Marine Terminal Lofts, according to the firm's Internet site. The building's street-level commercial space is anchored by Hammel Green and Abrahamson Inc., an architectural and engineering firm that leases around 30,000 square feet.

Domus becomes the second Third Ward condo project to move forward recently.

Earlier this week, Chicago-area developer Yiannis Konstantinou completed his purchase of the former Reliable Knitting building, at 233 E. Chicago St., for $3.6 million, where he plans to develop 57 condos.

Link: JS Online:.

Great things happening in Wausau, Wisconsin

I got a note regarding my post about re-visiting my hometown of Wausau, Wisconsin:

Thank you for taking time to share your thoughts about re-visiting Wausau and including a nice juxtaposition of new photos with old memories to relate the past to the present to plan for the future.

Wausau has been my hometown since I was 2 years old. Though I left town after HS too but returned two years ago to live and work. I'm pleased with its changes and its possibilities.

Regarding two of your thoughts: 1. Wausau East HS and 2. More in store:

1. The retrofit of old East into apartments is a significant addition to our city because it suggests that the old can be new again and this past month the owners, Stone House Development in Madison, of the new old East won the 2006 Restoration Award from the State Historical Society. In addition, I was fortunate to be an associate architect hired by the lead architect, the architects ltd.com in Madison, to assist in the design and construction of this building which also happens to be my old HS.

2. There is more in store too because a new grocery store opened at 607 Third Street this past Summer. It might have even been open when you visited recently and I hope you stopped inside. The store is called Downtown Grocery.com! I hope you make time on your next visit because it's a special place too because it's interior was part of an interior reconstruction of a 1912 building and its part of a new/old idea: a neighborhood “corner” grocery store. I'm one of the founders and owners of this store plus the other owner is a local certified organic farmer, Blaine Tornow of Moonshadow Farm, where we’re working to grow a local food economy and instill opportunities to nurture new food entrepreneurs --- combining two old concepts, local food production and a small (accessible, easy-to-use, neighborhood, historic yet modern) store, to create a new version of those old ideas.

Re-visiting your hometown is an important event and it becomes even more significant when we, the citizens of Wausau, have been fortunate to have had leaders-citizens working to retain and grow our city's charm, character and complexity. Yes, it's true that we could have saved more of our buildings or places (such as the Pranges Christmas window displays*) but we are fortunate to have retained what we have as many midwestern cities have retained much less of their historical urban context.

Perhaps mixing "new with old" and "old with new" is a method to reveal our possibilities where a re-visiting hometowner might like it so much that they return to become a new citizen and add to the charm, character and complexity?

Thank you again for sharing your memories and photos about Wausau!

Kevin Korpela

* Regarding the old Pranges Christmas window displays: You can see figures from the displays as well as Bruce the Spruce (remember him?) at Green Bay's Neville Public Museum from December 2nd to January.

On my last trip to Wausau I had time to go downtown and see site where  a new  multi-use commercial and residential complex is going to be built. The "Plaza Mall," which was torn down (see pictures below; the second one is from the Wausau Daily Herald) was one of the last contempo-ugly buildings left downtown. The new structure will be a vast improvement just off the central square.

SkyscraperCity.com has a great thread (with lots of pictures) concerning Wausau's rebirth.

All snark and no substance

Though it has the tone (cute wordplay) and substance (as in: lack of) of your average blog entry, the following is an actual editorial printed by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently regarding a Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed for the community of Hartford, Wisconsin. My comments follow.

EDITORIAL: An open letter to Hartford

By Dan Kenitz

Posted: Nov. 30, 2006

For those of you who have lives and therefore don't know this, the city of Hartford has been divided recently over the proposal for a Wal-Mart on Highway 60.

The people who are for it - I'll call them the "smarties" - are saying that Hartford's recent growth logically means bigger and better businesses. The others - the "wrongies" - are hiding their wrongness behind a thick coat of anti-imperial aggression.

So here's my letter to Hartford, the city I grew up in, and especially to the section of the population that would hate to see a Wal-Mart go up. Allow me to play amateur psychologist just this once:

Dear Wrongies,

I'm usually more than a little suspicious when a person gets so outraged and offended by something relatively trivial - aggression usually betrays deeper feelings of fear and insecurity. So when you raised a stink about a Wal-Mart possibly coming to Hartford, couldn't you have stepped back and asked yourself, "Hey, is this really that big of a threat or that big of a deal?"

Bear with me because I know you've already compiled a list of a dozen bad things about Wal-Mart to e-mail to me. We all know the "evil empire" stories: Wal-Mart supports sweatshops, doesn't offer decent pay and benefits and throws cute kittens into a furnace every winter to heat the supercenter.

Did it occur to you that you might be biased? It's possible that you hate the idea of your comfortable, little town changing so much that you'll believe anything bad about Wal-Mart. This is similar to the principle in which Brett Favre could walk up and punch you in the gut, and you'd just say, "Wow, what an arm! Good luck on Sunday, Brett!"

You're against Wal-Mart because it means Hartford might change a little. Even if Jim's House of Worms on Utopos St. did go out of business because of Wal-Mart (hey, Wal-Mart has everything), would you give it any thought beyond "oh, shucks"? Have you noticed that Hartford has been dramatically changing over the past 20 years?

Opponents such as Hartford Citizens for Responsible Government - avidly anti-Wal-Mart - are against a big supercenter when it suggests a sudden threat to their small-town stability. Don't tell me you haven't driven to the West Bend Wal-Mart once or twice because Kmart didn't have what you wanted.

If the only issue here was Wal-Mart itself, we should be hearing about big stinks every time a big corporate chain came to Hartford. Somehow, you overlooked the Cousins, the Taco Bell, the McDonald's, the Walgreens, the Kmart, the Dairy Queen, the Pizza Hut, the Blockbuster, the Quizno's, the Subway, the Aurora Medical Center, the . . . you get my point.

If Wal-Mart had built a tiny franchise in Hartford and gradually added to it so it became a supercenter in 20 years, we wouldn't hear a peep; your egos could handle gradual change. It's not Wal-Mart you're against; it's the feeling of uncertainty a supercenter gives you.

Every community eventually has to grow up.

I don't know why everyone in Hartford is so afraid of Wal-Mart when we've got a sasquatch running around Washington County. Bigger fish to fry, people!

Ultimately, Hartford is just a town - with roads, farms, buildings and trees. It's the people who make up a community, and Wal-Mart can never touch that.

So all of you Citizens for Ego Protection and even the smarties have nothing to worry about. Let your tight grip on the good old days go because the past is gone forever. Today's good enough for all of us.

Plus, I hear a Target is on its way.

Dan Kenitz of Hartford is a writer who runs a political Web site, BipolarNation.com. His e-mail address is  [email protected]

Link: JS Online:.

First off, let’s deconstruct the very first sentence of Mr. Kenitz’s “letter,” a collection of words so exquisitely condescending that one can only marvel at the spectacle of it all.

I'm usually more than a little suspicious when a person gets so outraged and offended by something relatively trivial --- aggression usually betrays deeper feelings of fear and insecurity.

So, in one fell swoop, the folks in Hartford ("the city I grew up in") who have concerns about a Wal-Mart Supercenter entering their economic ecosystem have been diagnosed as "fearful" and "insecure" - -  and anyone who might bother to address the situation (present company included, I'm sure) is reminded that they are clearly wasting their effort on something “relatively trivial.” We are off on the Right (possibly far-Right) foot, aren't we?

So, thus belittled, the good citizens of Hartford - - who have been oh-so-adorably delineated as "righties" and "wrongies" - - are taken to school by Mr. Kenitz (who evidently lives in the Big City now and can therefor credibly toss nuggets of wisdom over his shoulder to the old hometown).

It's time to "grow up,' he admonishes.

If the only issue here was Wal-Mart itself, we should be hearing about big stinks every time a big corporate chain came to Hartford. Somehow, you overlooked the Cousins, the Taco Bell, the McDonald's, the Walgreens, the Kmart, the Dairy Queen, the Pizza Hut, the Blockbuster, the Quizno's, the Subway, the Aurora Medical Center, the . . . you get my point.

"You get my point" as a declarative statement - - pretty brave assumption on Mr. Kenitz's part. What is his point? That the entry of a franchise fast food place or pharmacy somehow equates with the sudden infusion of a gigantic superstore which is unprecedented in human history in terms of raw size and economic impact?

If Wal-Mart had built a tiny franchise in Hartford and gradually added to it so it became a supercenter in 20 years, we wouldn't hear a peep; your egos could handle gradual change.

Their egos? How about their infrastructure upheaval, present zoning, traffic patterns, noise levels, employment stability, ongoing tax structure and leverage, environmental impact, community interaction, etc.? Does Mr. Kenitz know how each of these elements of Hartford's community are going to be utterly (and irreversibly) changed in the blink of an eye if a Supercenter is built?

Well, maybe not ..

Bear with me because I know you've already compiled a list of a dozen bad things about Wal-Mart to e-mail to me. We all know the "evil empire" stories: Wal-Mart supports sweatshops, doesn't offer decent pay and benefits and throws cute kittens into a furnace every winter to heat the supercenter.

As evidenced by the paragraph above, he obviously does not grasp beyond the most superficial the myriad issues surrounding Wal-Mart's impact on a specific community or society as a whole.

And, finally, this gem:

Ultimately, Hartford is just a town - with roads, farms, buildings and trees. It's the people who make up a community, and Wal-Mart can never touch that.

My goodness. Unfortunately, Mr. Kenitz, Wal-Mart can do much, much more than "touch" a community like Hartford. It can (and has) bludgeoned the very foundations of what we once took for granted as the building blocks of what it means to be part of a city or town. Feel free to bring the debate over here and we can get very specific: Do you grasp the unprecedented  power, for instance, that Wal-Mart exerts over the tax base of a community? Are you aware of the enormous and costly concessions Wal-Mart wrings out of local municipalities when it comes to town? Have you noted Wal-Mart's ability to ignore local environmental and zoning ordinances because the fines incurred by each violation make no financial impact whatsoever on their monstrous bottom line? How about the huge tax liability handed to state governments because so many of Wal-Mart's employees need public assistance in order to make ends meet (note: pdf link)?

Wal-Mart is most assuredly not the lone culprit, but if you look around you'll note, for example, that we are becoming a society of detached, self-interested individuals. You honestly don't see how Wal-Mart contributes to that condition?

Above all, I'm left to wonder about the larger issue here: Why has the Journal-Sentinel printed - - as an editorial - - something so thin and unfettered by supportive facts. Is this what the blog culture has wrought? Are traditional newspapers now more accepting of some of the conventions of "blog-speak" in their pages, even in the context of a "community columnist"? Frankly, I imagine that even pro-Wal-Mart folks look at an editorial like "An Open Letter to Hartford" and scratch their heads.

"Wrongies," indeed...