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.]

Comments

[franklin resident]

Kudos, John!!

Your report on the Taylor appointments in Franklin and how this guy has instituted his own version of TV’s “SURVIVOR” into Franklin politics, could not have been more explicit and accurate!

The self-revelation of Sen. Lazich’s intern, Kevin Fisher, concerning his bottom-feeding political philosophy and his attitude of cronyism trumping competency, is also a good teaching tool. I am sure he is mirroring his boss’s convictions or she would surely gag him when he “talks out of school”.

I will say it again as I did on Greg’s site:
IN RESPONSE TO TAYLOR’S COMMITTEE APPOINTMENTS

Considering the questionable political mind of Tom Taylor, one should not be surprised when he surrounds himself with his “yes men/women” and disregards the best interests of Franklin.

Choosing the most competent person for a job is known as the honor system. Taylor still employs the spoils system, or you might call this Taylor’s version of “affirmative action” concerning appointments. Affirming for Tom, that is, when he has his chosen lackeys expressing agreement and consent by “affirming” his whims.

Taylor’s prime driving force has shown itself to be self-aggrandizement whether it is in politics or finances.

Taylor’s record, from the onset, speaks for itself. When he was employed by Milwaukee County, he was one of the main characters in the Milwaukee County Pension scandal led by the infamous and former County Exec. Tom Ament. Taylor now enjoys his bloated pension of about $61,000. annually, thanks to some very “creative” but illegal maneuvers with County Pension Funds. We will be paying for this scam far into the future.

Someone once said, “corruption in municipal politics is inversely proportional to the size of the community”. Taylor has fit right in.

There is also another axiom: “Your reap what you sow”. My guess is that apathy and indifference will take it’s toll in Franklin as the Taylor Sleaze Machine will do its worst to change the landscape of Franklin with irresponsible and prairie fire-like commercial development irregardless of established zoning. It is simply changed to accommodate the situation.

Franklin citizens have already felt the Franklin Plan Commission and Common Council “steamroller”. The City pulled the rug out from under its citizens when they made a promise to never changing the zoning from residential development to commercial in the area that now displays the sprawling monstrosity named “Shoppes at Wyndham Village” Drexel Ave. & Hwy 100. The complaints from the residents of Wyndam Hills were simply ignored.
Now they are erecting a colossal, ugly, freestanding Target sign on that corner. I wonder if that was included in the original plan presentation.

Can you think of someone who has a very interlocking relationship with Franklin area commercial developers? Taylor must have his bootlickers to fulfill his and his developer partners goal of commercial sprawl throughout Franklin.

[FranklinResident]

Hey FRANKLIN _ RESIDENT .. Get an original nom de plume
I had it since 10/07
It's just going to cause confusion. Think of something original.