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 Scott Walker’s mismanagement of our transit system is starting to catch up to him and us. This morning, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that ridership on the Milwaukee County Transit System was down 9%.
Two years ago, the Public Policy Forum had warned that an increase in fares and a decrease in service would cause such a fall in ridership due to making the bus more inaccessible and harder to afford. Walker willfully failed to heed this warning and now we all have to pay the consequences.
Adding insult to injury, Walker then tries to spin the blame away from him and his decision:
Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker blamed the economy.
Pointing to high city unemployment, Walker said in a voice-mail message, “If people don’t have jobs . . . it makes it less likely that they’re going to be riding the bus to and from work. . . . We’ve maintained our routes, and our fares are compatible with other metro systems, and the bottom line is that you’ve got to get more people working.”
Um, would someone please remind Walker of the PPF study and point out that he has only worsened our economy by making sure that workers don’t get to their jobs and that consumers can’t get to the store.
Also remind him that he was the one that refused to budge an inch with MPS and lost a multimillion dollar contract and thousands of riders in one daft move.
To exemplify what a mess of things Walker has made, JSOnline is pointing now pointing out that Milwaukee’s drop in riders was twice the national average. Interestingly, the same article points that light rail systems, like the one that Mayor Barrett is promoting for the City of Milwaukee actually gained riders.
For further reading on Walker’s failure to both effectively manage MCTS and to own up to his shortcomings, we recommend reading these authors:
This also emphasizes why we need a dedicated funding source for the transit system, like we had called for a year and a half ago. This will allow Milwaukee County to restore many of the routes that Walker has slashed over the years as well as lower fares. This will undoubtedly help bring the ridership numbers back up. And as an additional bonus, it will lower our property taxes.
Speaking of the sales tax, there will be a rally early Thursday morning and becoming a bus ride out to Madison where they will be taking up the issue in the State Legislature.
Here are the details:
DETAILS ABOUT THE BUS AND THE PRESS CONFERENCE
The bus to the Assembly RTA Hearing in Madison will depart at:
* 7:30 AM from the ATU 998 Hall, 734 North 26th Street
* 8:30 AM from the Milwaukee Area Labor Council, 633 S. Hawley Rd. Milwaukee, WI 53214 (just south of I-94)
* The bus will go to the press conference at 3850 N 35th St, at the former Tower Automotive site, DPW Field Headquarters. The press conference starts at 9:00 AM. At 9:20 the press conference will end and the bus will depart for Madison!
* RSVP by Tuesday for the bus and/or the press conference at legislativedirector@atu998.org, or call 414-342-4300.
Everyone is encouraged to attend the press conference at the former Tower Automotive Site, whether traveling to the Madison hearing or not. It is on bus route 35. It will be a great way to show your support and kick off an exciting day!!
And they say some of the most proud people are academians. It appears that UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Carlos Santiago is not above the weakness of hubris, and is setting himself up for a big fall.
Santiago wants to make a name for himself by building all sorts of new schools in order to make UW-Milwaukee even more renowned and an even bigger asset to the community. These are commendable goals and we should all support him in this ambition.
Unfortunately, Santiago is apparently hoping to use the school’s expansions as bullet points on his resume as he shops himself around the country for a new job. And in this sense, Santiago has been ignoring and being openly dismissive of his faculty, his students and of the community as a whole. He does this because these people are opposing, in greater and greater numbers, some of his poorly thought through plans.
Santiago wants to build a new freshwater school, which most people are in support of. Unfortunately, the placement for this school is becoming increasingly contentious. First, Santiago wanted to put the school on the land where the old Pieces of Eight restaurant stands. Due to a high level of opposition, he was forced to withdraw that plan.
Now he wants to build it at the Reed Street Yards. Today, it was reported that his faculty absolutely rejected that plan, but that Santiago doesn’t care:
The school’s faculty and scientists unanimously approved a resolution that recommends UWM either improve the current site of the Great Lakes WATER Institute, which overlooks the harbor at 600 E. Greenfield Ave., or propose an alternative site on the harbor, to house the school.
The main problem with Reed Street Yards, on the Menomonee River canal south of the Harley-Davidson Museum, is “serious obstructions” to research vessels from drawbridge operations and barge traffic, the resolution says.
The resolution was sent to UWM Chancellor Carlos Santiago, who says Reed Street Yards might be a better site.
We also see the same kind of issue that we’ve been fighting with Santiago wanting to build an engineering school all the way across the county from the campus, even though the only people that want it there are those that would make an obscene profit.
But it appears that UW-Milwaukee might be having problems raising the money after one of their sponsors, Michael Cudahy pulled out his support. They’ve had to ask for more time before making their first payment to Milwaukee County:
University officials say they still plan to develop the site despite the loss of funding they had expected to receive for the project from retired business executive Michael Cudahy.
Gilbert said the delay has nothing to do with the funding issue. He said UWM is close to replacing the funds the university had expected to obtain from Cudahy.
“It’s not in the bank,” Gilbert told me. “But we think we have a coalition coming together to do this.”
James Rowen, renowned blogger and environmentalist, thinks the sale is about to fall through:
Imagine you are selling a lot to a buyer who wants it for his dream house – - big house! – - and then the buyer comes to you and says he wants several more months to get you your money – - after his rich uncle who was going to put up a lot of the construction cost decided against it.
In the worst economy since the Great Depression.
And your lot site is really too far from the rest of the buyer’s business, and the neighbors want to set up all sorts of conditions on the lot because it’s in an environmentally sensitive setting.
You’d know where the deal was headed.
We certainly hope so, James. We certainly hope so.
And speaking of hubris, I certainly hope that Scott Walker is taking the time to figure out what he is going to do about the $15 million short fall in his budget if this plan does fall through.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is reporting that Mitchell International has just had a record-smashing January, with more travelers going through the airport than ever before.
It is obviously very well managed and is a huge revenue generator for Milwaukee County since it uses no tax payer dollars, but receives all its funding from the airlines.
But this does raise a couple of questions.
Since it is so successful, why did Scott Walker jeopardize this valuable asset by laying off workers that make it run so smoothly and successfully?
And since it is such a boon for Milwaukee County, why would Walker want to privatize it?
Let us hope the County Board regains its common sense and continues to recognize what a dumb idea this would be.
Wow, I almost forgot we do have some.
Supervisor John Weishan gives a little history lesson and then shows vision on how Milwaukee can survive in the future:
Milwaukee County’s municipal boundaries were constructed to meet the needs of industrial Milwaukee during the 1890’s and early 1900’s. Today, we have examples like West Allis (Allis Chalmers), West Milwaukee (Paulings & Harnischfeger P&H) and Cudahy (Patrick Cudahy) and other small municipalities. This, along with the anti-Milwaukee annexation hysteria of the 1950’s, created cities like Greenfield, Franklin and Oak Creek, producing a fractured and complex system that is no longer capable of meeting the economic needs of our area for the 21st century.
I am not seeking the elimination of local units of government, but we do need cooperation from municipalities in addressing the true issues facing Milwaukee County. We should look at the successes of intra-regional cooperation, like what we have done with Emergency Medical Services (EMS), as a template to move forward. We must embrace the policy of countywide-shared services and disregard those looking to exploit our current situation for their own personal gain.
The ICC is letting Walker off the hook for his failures as County Executive and overlooking the efforts of the Milwaukee County Board to restore Walker’s cuts to vital community services. Ignoring his obstructionist politics on stimulus funding does not serve the citizens of each municipality, or the region as a whole.
The overriding conclusion is that we need a strong, viable County to sell the entire region as part of the widely touted Milwaukee 7 group. Why would anyone want to consider this a region if all they continue to see is fragmented services, degrading infrastructure, and political leadership unwilling to lead?
It’s about time people start getting a little more assertive to help stop the damage Walker is doing.
If you live in Milwaukee County, odds are at some time in your life, you will have to go the the Milwaukee County Courthouse at some point in time. You may get summoned for jury duty, you may want to get married and need a license, you may need a copy of your birth certificate or other document, or you might have to appear in court for something.
But whatever your reason for going to the courthouse may be, you should take a few precautions and prepare for it, so that your day will be more pleasurable and a lot safer. So as a public service, we are offering you our Survival Guide to Scott Walker’s Courthouse.
First, you will need to gather the necessary equipment:
 Hard hat |
 Hiking Boots |
 Lots of money |
 Toilet paper |
 Plunger |
 Baseball bat (with or without spikes) |
Once you gather all of these items, you will be set.
Unless you take the bus, you will need your boots and/or cash right away upon reaching downtown. You will have a choice of parking in a parking lot like MacArthur Square which is very expensive or parking farther away and hiking it to the courthouse.
Once you approach the Courthouse, you should put on your hard hat, in case another chunk of its concrete decorative molding comes breaking off due to years of deferred maintenance. The hiking boots could come in handy to help you scale over the rubble already on the ground, since Walker has laid off the maintenance workers, and no one is there to clean it up.
Once you make it inside the building, you will encounter a checkpoint. These checkpoints, for the rest of this week, will be staffed with the usual county security guards. There will also be Wackenhut private security guards and Milwaukee County Sheriff Deputies as well. Well, maybe not Wackenhut guards since the company thinks that only showing up 72% of the time is acceptable.
The security check point is where you will need more of that wad of cash you brought, whether the Wackenhut guards are there or not. Wackenhut has a history of overbilling and defrauding governments for services not rendered, including Scott Walker’s administration.
You will also need the cash to help pay for the overtime costs that are being racked up by the deputies to make sure that the Wackenhut guards are actually doing their jobs.
Once you get past the security check point, be prepared for a long wait. This is due to the bogged down legal system caused by all the furlough days that Scott Walker ordered in order to try to cover for his illegally deficit-ridden budget.
But the wait itself could be problematic. If you are waiting for a long time, odds are you might need to use the restroom. This is why you will need the toilet paper and the plunger. Yes, we know it’s disgusting to contemplate, but it is unlikely that Scott Walker would allow you to use his toilet, since it is the only one that is stocked and cleaned in the entire building.
When you are not busy cleaning the toilet or guarding your hoarded toilet paper from those who didn’t use our guide, you might find you will need to use the baseball bat (with or without nails) to kill the rodents that are scurrying around the place. You may also wish to have a can (or several cans) of Raid Insecticide at hand for the cockroaches.
Once your business at the Courthouse is complete, please remember to put your hard hat back on and move along quickly to make it least likely to be struck by the falling concrete.
If you follow these basic steps, and come well-prepared, we are sure you will survive your trip to Scott Walker’s Courthouse. You might not enjoy it, but at least you will survive it.
 There are lots of breaking news going on around Milwaukee County this afternoon.
I have heard learned that Scott Walker has just given lay off notices to more than 70 county employees this afternoon. So much for his promise to try to avoid lay offs and to maintain services.
These workers include all of the security guards at the courthouse, children’s courts and city campus. Word is that Walker already had contracts in place with a private agency, which the County Board had rejected due to not being cost effective. That would raise a red flag on why Walker is still pursuing something that is a total waste of money.
Also being given notices of lay off to all of fleet maintenance which includes three mechanics and one maintenance worker. These are the people that keep the county cars and trucks in working condition. If you see a county vehicle after the next two weeks, you may want to show proper precautions since they will no longer be properly maintained.
Also being laid off are several workers at the airport, including six maintenance workers, a clerk messenger and a telephone receptionist. This is an obvious set up for a future attempt at privatizing it. The County Board has already made it perfectly clear that they would not allow this to happen, so this will only leave Walker with egg on his face.
Other workers include at least 26 park maintenance workers. These people are the front line workers who do the maintenance at the pavilions, cut the grass, maintain the ball parks, repair broken equipment among other duties. So if you have an event planned in a county park, or you belong to a baseball or softball team, be prepared to come early to cut the grass and pick up the trash before your event or game.
I checked with some members of the County Board and this was breaking news to them as well. So much for his garbage of being willing to work with the Board in resolving the County’s financial woes which Walker created.
UPDATE: More information: Because the way unemployment compensation works for governmental lay offs vs. private sector layoffs, the lay offs could actually end up costing tax payers $1.3 million more than if the workers were allowed to keep their jobs. And that is not counting the inevitable legal costs coming because Walker did it in the wrong way. Again.
One other thing that I have just learned this afternoon is that there was an all day arbitration hearing today regarding the privatization of the housekeeping staff at the Behavioral Health Division. The crux of the issue at hand is that Walker had shown clear intent to privatize the service by sending out RFPs early in 2009 and started on contract negotiations well before the privatization was approved by the County Board. He did this all without talking with the unions to try to find ways to economize the services, as required by the contract that he signed himself.
The decision might not come for a month or so, but if the unions are successful in their arbitration, the privatization contract would have to be set aside, the former housekeeping staff would have to be returned to their positions, complete with full back pay. Furthermore, Walker would be prevented from any further privatization of this service for at least 180 days and not without first sitting down with the union to look at ways of streamlining the system and proving that the union workers could not do it at a comparable cost to the taxpayers.
Obviously, Walker has decided that the title “county executive” really  means “king”, and that we are all nothing more than his serfs to do with as he sees fit, even if it means diminishing our quality of life, raising our taxes, and giving our money to his campaign contributors. It also goes to show that Walker does not have the best interest of Milwaukee County citizens and tax payers in mind, but are only using us as pawns for his political aspirations. This sort of malfeasance must stop and stop soon, before he bankrupts all of us.
 On Thursday, the Milwaukee County Board put on an expensive display of futility for the public. They had a special session for the whole board to meet to pass a resolution by County Executive Scott Walker which would add ten more furlough days to targeted AFSCME workers.
As Supervisors Chris Larson and John Weishan accurately point out, the whole charade was a pointless gesture. Walker could wake up tomorrow and decide he wants to up the furlough days by another 100 days, and the Board would be unable to do anything about it but complain. Once the Board approved the illegal, deficit-ridden budget last year, it was out of their hands and up to Scott Walker to administer it as he sees fit.
The only thing the Board really accomplished Thursday was to give Walker political cover for when the full effects of his ineptitude and inability to lead comes crashing down on us.
And this, I’m afraid, will be a very expensive gesture of grandiosity. There is, of course, the cost associated with taking everyone out of their other duties to attend this meaningless session. But there will be more and dearer expenses attached to this as time goes on.
One of the first costs will be the legal costs that the County will incur in trying to defend the resolution. By adding the ten furlough days, it violates the existing contract with the unions as that it directly cuts into their employment status as well as towards their earnings for pension, health care and other benefits. It also violates labor laws regarding disparity and prohibited practices dealing with contract negotiations.
Scott Walker is assuredly going to stretch out these legal proceedings as much as possible. By stretching out the legal proceedings, he is hoping to try to delay the inevitable crash that he has steered Milwaukee County towards. It will also allow him the option of making a very grand display of showboating by laying off hundreds of workers just while the race is heating up.
Needless to say, stretching out the legal proceedings will only cost the tax payers that much more money that could have been put to use in providing services or filling the deficit that Walker had created.
Then when the County does lose the legal challenge, it will be back where it started from, but with much less time to fix Walker’s fiscal irresponsibility. Despite the false assertions by Walker and Board Chairman Lee Holloway, the fact of the matter is even if the union capitulated tomorrow to all of Walker’s demands, the only way to work through the hole would to be laying off another 300 to 400 workers on top of the sixty that will be laid off in March. This number will only grow exponentially as time goes on. If Walker waits until midyear, he will need to lay off about 800 workers. If he waits to do it in September, just before the primary, the number grows to be around 1,200 workers.
Also associated with the furloughs and lay offs will be the ripple effects from the County’s inability to provide services as it should. We see how well the cut backs worked in the income maintenance program. Where there were supposed to be 30 workers in the call center, Walker would only allow five workers. This caused such a disruption in people receiving Foodshare, Badger Care and other such programs, that a class action lawsuit was filed against the County and the State. This in turn forced the state to do an emergency take over of the system and a higher cost to the tax payers, to the tune of over $5 million.
I can see the State doing this to the rest of Milwaukee County Department of Heath and Human Services, since both the Disabilities Services Division and the Behavioral Health Division are currently the subjects of investigations and lawsuits.
There will also be costs to the county in the fact that many of the positions targeted for the furloughs and lay offs are revenue generating. The revenue being lost by laying off or furloughing a worker in one of these positions can be as high as four or five times the money being saved. That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Yet it as for some reason this approach has some sort of political appeal to the far right fringe, so Walker sticks with it.
Yet another cost associated with these furloughs is that some of the targeted employees are in jobs that require 24 hour a day care, like that Behavioral Health Division. I have heard reports that there are as many as 70 overtime shifts available at BHD in any given week. Any money savings will be lost in the overtime costs alone.
There is also the human costs associated with the decline in services that are associated with Walker’s ideological posturing. For example, people in psychiatric crises are already being turned away from BHD due to the shortage of beds and staff. Many times these people are returned to the city streets without support or medication. Very bad things can happen when mental illnesses are left untreated. Can anyone imagine how much worse it will be with even less services that might have prevented these sorts of tragedies?
What doesn’t help the situation is when people like Supervisor Lynne De Bruin shoots off her mouth and is more concerned about the animals at the zoo than the people living in her district. It shows how clueless many of the Supervisors really are.
Another thing that boggles my mind is that when I spoke to several different supervisors from across the political spectrum, they each admitted that Walker and his staff has continuously presented false and/or incomplete information to them, but they still feed into his nonsense instead of trying to hold him responsible for his actions. It is no wonder that Walker has been able to lead the county so far down the path to becoming another Detroit, Michigan or Colorado Springs, Colorado.
But despite all the folly and foolishness that the day produced, there was one small ray of good to come from it. One of the amendments to the resolution, introduced by Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, will force Walker’s department heads to issue reports on what the impact of these cuts will be on services and programs. The only problem is this: Given their past records towards misdirection and omission, how can anyone take what they say with any degree of credibility?
But no matter what, the overriding concern for every citizen in Milwaukee County should be how long is Walker going to be allowed to continue to waste our tax dollars and put us in harm’s way as he continues to put his own political aspirations over the best interest of Milwaukee County and its citizens.
The Public Policy Forum issued a report last month which highlighted the problems with the legacy costs. The biggest cause of the high price associated with these costs was health care.
It is easy to agree with that conclusion when you have Anthem Blue Cross increasing its rates by 17% here in Wisconsin, and as much as 39% in other places of the country.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out why some politicians, like Scott Walker, are so opposed to meaningful health care reform. It’s as if they don’t want our taxes to go down.
Last night, we alerted you to the fact that the City of Wauwatosa was having
 Wauwatosa Mayor Jill Didier their meeting of their Community Development Meeting. One of the topics that they had on their agenda was “preservation” of the butterfly habitat on the county grounds.
The resolution in question, which had been introduced by Mayor Jill Didier read:
WHEREAS, the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (“UWM”) has proposed to construct the UWM Innovation Park on a portion of the county grounds in the city of Wauwatosa; and
WHEREAS, members of the community have expressed concern that the proposed development might unduly interfere with existing critical habitat areas adjacent to the existing Eschweiler Buildings, which are expected to be incorporated into the development; and
WHEREAS, in response to these concerns, UWM worked with the Milwaukee County Parks Department, the Milwaukee Public Museum, and a representative of the Friends of the Monarch Trail, to develop modifications to the original purchase agreement to more satisfactorily address these concerns; and
WHEREAS, at its December 17, 2009, meeting the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors approved a habitat protection area immediately north of the Eschweiler Buildings, with boundaries defined precisely as request by the Friends of the Monarch Trail; and
WHEREAS, the Wauwatosa Common Council has previously expressed its support for the development of the UWM Innovation Park, with an important qualification that the development comply with the previously approved plan created by the Kubala Washatko firm with joint funding from the county and city; and
WHEREAS, critical factors that the part of the original plan included emphasis on sustainable development and preservation of the important natural features of this highly visible site; and
WHEREAS, the habitat restoration landscape plan incorporated into the real property purchase agreement as amended by the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors in December 2009 represents an important assurance that these factors will be incorporated into the ultimate development of the property; and
WHEREAS, necessary approvals related to the development, which will come before the Wauwatosa Common Council and the Plan Commission within the next few months will not focus specifically on, nor require specific approval of the habitat restoration landscape plan;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT, the Wauwatosa Common Council does hereby express support for the plan to restore and maintain critical habitat within the boundaries of that area defined as “Outlot 1 (Habitat Zone)” on the Site Plan for the UWM Innovation Park, a copy of which is attached hereto and incorporated herein; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT the Wauwatosa Common Council, by taking this action, does not at this time specifically approve the entire development plan proposed by the UWM, nor does it limit itself in the upcoming full hearing and review process for the overall UWM proposal, but instead intends to assure all involved the[sic] it is dedicated to maintaining support for this habitat restoration landscaping plan throughout the approval process for the UWM Innovation Park.
On the surface, this looks like a real nice idea. Unfortunately, the glimmer fades rather quickly when one takes time to read what it actually says.
The first major flaw with the resolution is that it is pointless and not legally binding. It is not UWM that wants to buy the land and develop it. The county grounds are being sold to the UWM Foundation which is nothing more than a group of developers. The UW Board of Regents have long ago distanced themselves from these developers and were quick to point out that they have no say or control over this group.
Another flaw was that the language in the purchase agreement did not contain sufficiently binding legal language that would keep the developers from doing whatever they wanted to the land once they were in possession of it.
 The meeting room was standing room only with people packed in to every seat and many people standing in the hallway trying to listen in. There were people from the Friends of the Monarch Trail, the Riverkeepers, and of course, Milwaukee County First. There were also many of the power hitters from the County and UWM there to try to ram this thing through.
However, all of the citizens there were concerned about the meaning of the resolution and the way it was being handled, and joined their voices as one to express these concerns.
Mayor Jill Didier tried to explain it as a resolution to show Wauwatosa’s resolve in protecting this international natural phenomenon. She explained that his resolution was just like one passed a few years ago expressing the city’s resolve to preserve the Eschweiler Buildings.
They then had an engineer from the county come up and give a overview of how we got to this point. His presentation was very glowing, and very much full of it. He glibly passed up the shortcomings of the plan and tried to paint it in much rosier terms than the reality of it is.
The the people spoke.
Among the speakers was a professor from UWM that pointed out that there was much doubt and controversy at the campus regarding the wisdom and the appropriateness of even locating the school at the county grounds.
Many citizens expressed their concerns about how the situation was being handled and what the motivation behind this resolution and the rush was really all about.
Barb Agnew, of the Friends of the Monarch Trail, pointed out that the current plan does not fit in well with the Kubala plan, and that these differences need to be addressed and resolved before anything further is decided or passed.
I also spoke, first thanking the committee and the Mayor for wanting to protect the habitat, but that I also had concerns about the resolution. I pointed out that approving the resolution now, without knowing the entire plan, would be akin to approving purchasing a tire without knowing anything about the car it was supposed to be on. They could not be sure that the preservation plan would be sufficient without looking at how it works with the hole.
I also expressed concern that this was like the Eschweiler Building resolution, since the Eschweiler Buildings were not being very well preserved at all. I questioned if this resolution would let the same thing happen to the habitat.
The committee members than had their chance to state their opinions.
Alderwoman Linda Nikcevich stated that the grounds had been even more built up in the 1950s and the 1960s, yet the Monarchs were able to contend with that situation. Apparently she does not understand that that part of the county was also much more rural back then than it is now.
Alderman Dennis McBride was the biggest disappointment. He gave some lip service about how everyone agrees that the habitat was important to save and that it was vital to the entire county and not just to the city. He also gave some of the same lip services to the preservation of the Eschweiler Buildings.
But then he showed how insincere these comments were by stating that this was the most valuable land in the county, if not the entire state and that it was entirely understandable why UWM would want to build there. He also stated that the county has been a lousy caretaker (true) and that UWM has a good history of restoring and maintaining an Eschweiler Building (also true). What he omitted was that it was not UWM buying the land and would not have control of the habitat or the buildings.
He also said how the development is vital for the city’s economic growth. Considering all the restaurants and the hotels that are already in Tosa, as well as Mayfair Mall, I cannot imagine that the city’s ability to survive is dependent on one more hotel, one more restaurant, or another strip mall. He even tripped himself up when he pointed out that UWM Chancellor Santiago complained that the current campus has been around for 150 years, but only a couple of bookstores and bars are in the surrounding area. If UWM is unable to draw business to their main campus, what makes him think they will have any luck elsewhere?
Alderman Jerry Stepaniak showed that he was aware of the folly of this resolution and made the same points that I had made. He also pointed out that they only received the documents literally minutes before they sat down to conduct the city’s business, and did not have sufficient time to read it through.
The vote was taken and it was unanimously decided to table the matter until they had a chance to thoroughly read the material and look at all the options available to them.
There will be other public hearings over the next couple of months, as well as an open house on March 23rd, hosted by the Parks Department, in order to try to explain and sell this plan.
We will keep you informed of these events as they come near.
We may have won the battle tonight, and gained a momentary reprieve, but the war is far from won yet.
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