Last Sunday, I questioned what kind of green the County Board was. Today, they gave their answer. With the exception of Supervisor Theo Lipscomb, the supervisors all chose to go with the money, and to hell with the ecology.
But where Scott Walker brought us shame, the County Board apparently felt that selling the land for a fraction of its worth, just to partially fill a whole 
that they and Walker created was worth the risk of receiving scorn from the world. Just as the Monarch butterflies have been put on the WWF’s endangered list, the Board takes action that all but guarantees the destruction of the Monarch Trail, one of the few spots where they come in droves as they migrate back to Mexico for the winter.
The biggest chump of the day regarding this issue was Luigi Schmitt, who claims he put “thousands of hours” into studying this issue. If he really had, he would have realized that similar piece of land, the Burleigh Triangle, had recently sold for three times the money sold the county grounds for. And the Burleigh Triangle was not nearly as vital ecologically speaking.
The other thing that Schmitt failed on was when he said:
“We need, after 10 years, to put a small amount of closure on this, and I don’t think UWM is 100 percent excited,” he said, “I don’t think some environmentalists are 100 percent excited. But you know what? We represent everyone.”
Closure was reached fifteen years ago, when the County Board promised to keep it as a wild area. It was the Board that allowed Scott Walker to reopen it, despite his promises to keep it natural as well.
It almost seems like Schmitt had other reasons to push this so hard, and those reasons had nothing to do with what is best for the County.
But fear little, my friends. Although this battle did not go as we would have hoped, there are other steps along the way that may allow us to preserve the land, at least more than the Board was willing to.
I believe that next best chance will be with the UW Board of Regents.
Stay tuned.