This coming week, there will be a special meeting of the Economic and Community Development Committee this coming Tuesday as they try to ram through the final plan needed to close the sale of the county grounds.
There have been some modifications proposed to the resolution of the terms of the sale that are not necessarily for the best. There are some good things like the effort to protect the monarch’s natural roosting spots. Unfortunately, these efforts still aren’t very legally binding and there will be no recourse when they do irreparable damage to this rare ecological wonder.
There is also something very disturbing about the proposed changes. Apparently, in exchange for the slight easement of the proposed infringement on the Monarch’s habitat, the Board is poised to allow the developers greater access to an area designated at Outlot 1 in this map.
In my communications with some of the environmentalists involved in this project, it is apparent that there is deep concern about this plan as that it violates the original understanding and undermines the original purpose, which is to try to keep as much as the Monarch’s habitat intact as possible. This is extremely vital in light of the fact that the Monarchs have been designated by the World Wildlife Fund as being an endangered species.
I further have concern about the viability of this plan in the financial sense, seeing how that University of Wisconsin Board of Regents didn’t even address this plan, much less approve of any funding for it, in their most recent session in which they did approve of funding for the freshwater school.
I also still don’t understand why the developers need that much land. Most of the actual school will be built on the front section of the land, closest to Watertown Plank Road. The rest of it will be a hotel, a restaurant, retail space and parking structures. If the powers that be see nothing wrong with forcing faculty and students in driving crosstown between their far off school and the main campus and the other schools that they are partnering with, why cannot they ask people to drive a few blocks to Hwy. 10o where there is an abundance of hotels and restaurants? That will eliminate the need to encroach any further into the natural habitat and give the environmentalists a chance to salvage the Monarch Trail and the local ecology.
However, despite all of these important factors, my conversations with some of the Board Supervisors don’t lend me much hope. Mismanagement and poor budgeting techniques have led the County into such a fiscal mess that many Supervisors only see the green of the money and not the green of the land. Other Supervisors, as well as the county executive, only see political and personal gains from selling the land, and show complete disregard for the impact of their decision.
Milwaukee County First again encourages the County Board to stop this reckless path of rushing into this without having all the facts and information. Once this decision is made and the final OK is given, there will be no going back, regardless of the consequences to the Monarchs. It is too important not to make absolutely sure all has been done to protect this priceless asset. The Board needs to lay this over until after the holidays in order to give everyone time to come to terms on this project, before they do something we will all regret.