Interesting scheduling

Interesting scheduling situation for a meeting on Shoppes at Wyndham Village's Target store. A morning meeting on the Friday of Labor Day weekend? "May take action"?

It may simply be a meeting between Target and the two plan commissioners designated to deal with the store's design, with followup at a meeting of the full Plan Commission next week.

As explained on Franklinnow.com:

At 11 a.m. Friday, a sub-committee of the Franklin Plan Commission will meet and may take action on the architectural plan and elevations for the proposed Target store at the Shoppes at Wyndham Village.

The site for the Shoppes, a commercial development proposed by Franklin developer Mark Carstensen, is located near Drexel Avenue and Highway 100. Target would be the primary anchor of the development.

Last week the full Plan Commission voted to allow construction of Target and other stores to begin, but asked Target officials to revise the architectural plan.

Friday's meeting will take place at the lower level of Franklin City Hall, 9229 W. Loomis Road.

Comments

[Josh Strupp]

The timing of this meeting is outragous to say the least. I guess Franklin residents shouldn't be surprised that this meeting is going forward at just about the most ridiculous time and date as can be imagined. As for the commission, 11AM on a Friday before Labor Day is perfect for them. They can get the meeting over with little public confrontation and at an early hour so they can get back to the house, load up the car and get up north at a respectable hour I suppose. Good ol' city government, lazy, incompetent and afraid of conflict as usual.

On a side note, I noticed that Mr. Fischer thinks that the commission has to finally come to a decision about the Target project and has no objection to the timing of this Friday morning meeting. I find this particularly interesting considering he spent many hours on WISN talking about how "outragous" school board members were by scheduling referenda votes during summer vacation when kids were out of school and parents were were planning trips. So I guess if it serves Kevin's purpose, than these impromptu meetings are just fine but talk about tax increases and school funding? No way! A bit hypocritical if you ask me.

[Greg Kowalski]

I received interesting e-mails pertainig to this meeting. A Plan Commissioner thought it was "offensive" that we're even discussing this in a negative light, and found my "fishy" comment a bit off-base.

I think it's the way the meeting was presented to the public that really hit a lot of residents' nerves. You hear time and again City officials proclaiming that we're so open and its residents are so informed...but then when a project that people in every aldermanic district are interested in knowing more info comes up...they don't get informed. In fact, it would be to the point of residents not being informed at all.

A Plan Commissioner told me last PC meeting that residents bare most of the responsibility, and that the City doesn't need to go out of its way to inform anyone...

This is a community elected by the people to serve the people, if I'm not mistaken. It's the responsibility of the City to get the word out well in advance of meetings to its constituents, especially on such a controversial project as Wyndham Village is.

It's shameful that the community comes 2nd rate to developers' pocketbooks.

Perhaps this community needs to take some action like they did in the past...RECALL.

[Josh Strupp]

I wouldn't go as far as to say anyone needs to be recalled but this meeting being scheduled the way it was is just another example of government representatives not wanting the people to get in the way of what they feel is right.

In this day and age, there is no excuse for not informing residents of pending meetings. When meeting dates are not announced until the last minute it's intentional, plain and simple. Obviously, confrontation and debate is not something these representatives are interested in because that means they actually have to do more than rubber stamp the plan and go home.

Just imagine if this meeting was to approve a referendum to increase taxes on a new school. Probably would get just a little bit more exposure than this I'll bet.

[Greg Kowalski]

You're absolutely 100% correct.

As for the "R" word - from what's been going on...the clear intentional last-minute meeting announcements, the ongoing struggle just to have officials abide by what the City ordinance clearly states, etc, etc, etc...

I mean, people recalled aldermen in the past for what exactly? Did they do something so terrible way back in the day to be recalled or ousted?

In the present day, this has hit the point of absolute ridiculousness (if that's a word...)

As my dad put it last night at dinner...

"All of these dirty tactics for a Target store? You almost think they're trying to have the people look in one direction while they're doing something a lot worse..."

[Bryan Maersch]

It almost sounds like the sneaky tactics the FPS used to coral FHS seniors into voting for the Referendum!!

[Greg Kowalski]

I didn't know FPS did that...I knew about the children carrying flyers home, but seniors?

Man, what a City we got!

[John Michlig]

I'm out of town for a couple days - I'm anxious to egt back and see what transpired.

[Kevin Fischer]

There is nothing unusual about a local government meeting being held at 11:00 am.

Many units of government, if not most hold their important meetings during the day, including the Milwaukee Common Council, the Milwaukee County Board, the state Assembly and the state Senate.

My blog entry on this subject never addressed the timing aspect, but the need to get this project moving.

It appears that the city, giving 24 hours notice, properly and legally gave notice of the Planning Commission meeting.

I'm happy Josh Strupp is reading my blog and listening to me on WISN.

He is correct that I oppose holding referenda during non-regularly scheduled election times, like summer. The Legislature approved a bill to prohibit holding school referenda votes, except during regularly scheduled election times. However, Governor Doyle, who is firmly in the hip pocket of the state teachers' union, vetoed the common sense bill.

Holding a school refendum during the summer is and always will be wrong because it is extremely unusual. On the other hand, there is nothing unusual about an 11:00 am meeting held by a local Planning Commission.

[Greg Kowalski]

Almost sounds like a politician...

Unfortunately, I guess I fail to understand how politics will handle this situation.

A decent example of good City reporting was recently done by Alderman Joe Dudzik of Milwaukee's 11th District.

When Joe heard of Wal-Mart controversially wanted to expand the 27th Street store into a Supercenter, he always kept his consitituents informed about this - through his website and flyers. He informed residents - concerned or not - about meetings concerning Wal-Mart at Milwaukee City Hall DAYS in advance.

Here in Franklin, we're lucky to get the "24 hour notice" stamped on a website and plastered up at City Hall. This Target "strip mall" has generated enough public interest that it should have been taken a bit more seriously when the agenda was published. We need Alderman Dudzik's in Franklin concerning the aspect of informing the residents as soon as information comes out that concerns many people in the district.

I don't know what happened over in Solomon's District, but I do know that everybody in Wyndham was just as caught off guard as I was last Thursday - and couldn't change their work schedule or vacation plans with less than 24 hours notice.

[Joe]

Sir
Thank you for your kind comments.