How Much Is Too Much?

Probably no such thing if it’s on the public dime. To chase a niche market, Milwaukee “District” officials want to expand the convention center again:

With Milwaukee’s convention business in a holding pattern, the chairman of the Wisconsin Center District said Wednesday that it’s time to revive the idea of expanding the Midwest Airlines Center.

Franklyn Gimbel said the region’s ability to attract what he called a “gangbuster” convention was diminished compared with recent years because of the lack of hotel rooms in the area and the size of the convention center.

The center was last expanded at the end of 1999, when the building’s exhibit hall was increased to 189,000 square feet. When the center first opened in 1998, its supporters said it would put Milwaukee in the big leagues.

It was built 8 years ago, when “district” officials said it would put Milwaukee in the big leagues. It wasexpanded 7 years ago when “district” officials were wrong. Now, those officials want to spend more public money to get it right this time.

Color me skeptical. However, on the plus side, “district” officials are unelected and ultimately unaccountable to the public, so they’re in no jeopardy of consequences for being so wrong, so often, so expensively, so they’ll be free to continue pursuing more no matter how much they get.

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Milwaukee Admirals Celebrate Halloween Every Day

The Milwaukee Admirals have a new look and a new logo, and it’s goofy:

In conjunction with its new slogan “Never say die,” which has been teasing local billboard readers for the past month, the Admirals introduced the new logo: the admiral of a ghost ship. A pirate explained to the crowd that the admiral had been at the bottom of Lake Michigan for the past 20 years and that this was what was left of him.

The new logo is quite a bit edgier than the last logo of the salty seaman admiral. The new admiral, designed by Joe Locher of Yes Men of Milwaukee, is a skull with a black admiral’s cap with ice blue trim.

The team’s new colors will be black, ice blue and silver, replacing the old red, white and blue. “We wanted to do something that would be really popular with the younger crowd,” Locher said. “We wanted to avoid the idea of a trendy logo, yet we wanted to tie it in to the heritage of the team to have it make more sense.”

Yeah, a skeleton logo in black, white, and ice blue. That’ll impress the kids these days. What, did they think they weren’t selling enough merchandise to the gangbanger crowd that flocks to Raiders apparel?

Plus, let’s just savor that insight from the marketing man again:

“We wanted to do something that would be really popular with the younger crowd,” Locher said. “We wanted to avoid the idea of a trendy logo, yet we wanted to tie it in to the heritage of the team to have it make more sense.”

Avoiding a trendy logo yet tying it into the heritage of the team.

Obviously, this fellow’s skill lies with imagery, and not expressing cohesive concepts in language.

(Link seen a while back on The American Mind.)

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Sanity Returning to Wisconsin Government?

Lessons in tax and spend?: MATC’s levy plan could bolster case for elected board:

Two area state senators suspect their summer homework will be easier thanks to the Milwaukee Area Technical College and its proposal to raise its property tax levy 5%.

Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) and Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) had planned to spend a little free time building support for their proposal to require elections for all boards that have the authority to tax.

The proposal went virtually nowhere in the last legislative session, but they figure tax increases proposed by MATC and the other technical colleges in the state will bring some momentum. And it will help that those increases will appear on tax bills mailed in December, just a month before the next session.

“I believe it’s best to have representation that’s accountable, and that means being elected and having people know who’s making the decision; and to give people the opportunity to make changes,” Darling said. “People have to be accountable for spending and taxing.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.

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Tax Shell Game in Milwaukee

The Milwaukee County Transit System has budget problems, as described in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story Transit system at ‘critical point’: Transit funding options skidding into pressures on tax dollars. Setting the dire scene:

It is a route that never seems to change.

Every weekday, more than 150,000 times a day, someone boards a Milwaukee County Transit System bus to reach a job, a class, a store, a doctor or a home.

And every year, for six years straight, the Milwaukee County Board has cut bus service, raised fares or both.

With one of every 12 county residents riding a bus to work or school, transit supporters believe the county must find a new route to keep the buses and the local economy driving forward.

As a matter of fact, while I was in college, I rode the white and green limousine several times a day as I shuttled between home, work, school, work again or home, school, work, school again. So I got plenty of benefit from the robust transit system, and any cuts would have inconvenienced me.

So I’m not arguing that cuts wouldn’t hurt or adversely affect a number of people. But the leaders and their cheerleaders in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel face finitude with great pluck, as they perhaps would prefer to merely posit infinity and act accordingly. When referring to tax money, of course:

But that new route could lead into the politically dangerous neighborhood of new taxes. The transit system is one of the few its size that compete with other agencies for limited property tax dollars.

Limited property tax dollars are a bad thing in this scenario, and special interests–and understand, every government body and agency is its own special interest when it comes to feeding at the public trough. But since property tax dollars are limited, those official special interests have other solutions in mind:

And long before the recent push to create a sales tax for parks, recreation and cultural programs, transit backers were seeking a new revenue source to wean the bus system off the property tax levy.

So instead of the trough marked property tax dollars, they want to feed a little from the trough marked sales tax. Especially given this horror:

Further down the road, officials also are concerned about exhausting federal funding that now helps balance the transit budget. From 1993 to 1998, the federal government gave the transit system more money than it needed to buy buses, building up a reserve of more than $30 million. Starting in 1998, federal rules allowed the transit system to use that money for major maintenance, and officials started to gradually use up the reserve.

The buffet pan marked federal dollars is running dry.

Instead of making hard decisions, the mass transit special interest has thoughts on levying automobile fees, sales taxes, and all sorts of other creative mechanisms for increasing the overall tax burden on the people upon whom it serves itself.

By creating various and sundry unelected Authorities and Boards and Committees with their own focuses and their own ability to request or raise taxes, our elected officials get to abstract and insulate themselves from these actions and can avoid making the hard choices that balance the needs of some of the population. Instead, they can churn new programs, boards, and authorities to do the hard work for them, without direct accountability to the voters, and every time some special governmental interest, they’ll have a new, creative revenue source and the taxpayer to tap out.

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I Wonder How I Voted In 2004 In Milwaukee

City drops 105,000 names from voter registration rolls:

The City of Milwaukee has dropped about 105,000 names from its voter rolls after completing the first purge since 2001, city officials said Tuesday.

That represents about 23% of the 450,000 names that had been on the rolls. Officials had said they were unsure if a purge of the rolls had been conducted after the 2000 election.

As Weber and Dolan pointed out today, 450,000 registered voters represents over 80% of Milwaukee’s population. Men, women, and children.

So I apologize to my family members in St. Louis who might be disappointed to discover that I voted for Kerry in 2004 even though:

  • I haven’t lived in the city of Milwaukee for 12 years.
  • I didn’t actually ever register to vote in Milwaukee, since I did all my voting absentee in Missouri during my college years.

Hopefully, with this diligence on the part of the City of Milwaukee, though, I won’t vote for Chelsea Clinton in 2020.

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Taxation Litigation

More fun with government units suing each other to prevent funding cuts, with a twist: this time it’s the courts themselves threatening to sue:

Chief Judge Kitty Brennan is telling Milwaukee County supervisors that they could face a lawsuit on court funding unless they restore judicial and court staffing that County Executive Scott Walker has pegged for elimination in 2006.

Perhaps I’m not really up on the Wisconsin constitution, but the way I thought it was supposed to work is the legislature raises and allocates funds with some discretion to the executive branch.

But I’m not a power-grabbing judge.

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Local Government Pleased To Lose More Of Its Employment Base

Owen at Boots and Sabers covers the story of a yeast manufacturing plant’s closing in Milwaukee’s formerly industrial Menomonie Valley. The closure will cause the loss of 80 jobs, but the headline of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel focuses its headline on a by product of manufacturing: Aromatic era may be wafting away for good.

Yes, industry does tend toward the unsightly and to the unscently, but it tends to employ people at more than minimum or service level wages, union or not. But the powers that are commissioned (often not elected) see the loss of industry as an unfettered win:

Red Star’s possible closing is sad, but it opens up another potential redevelopment site, said Laura Bray, executive director of Menomonee Valley Partners Inc., a non-profit group that leads redevelopment efforts in the valley.

Another development site for entertainment venues, like an expanded Indian casino and a Harley Davidson museum. These entertainment-style things, often called the signs of a big-league city by people who want more of them, don’t pay as well as manufacturing jobs and don’t build the community infrastructure and draw families to live in cities; instead, they draw infrequent visitors from the suburbs, divert tourist dollars from other venues within the city, and give the ultra-urban types–who want to think of their cities as big-league more than merely “home.”

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Sunday Drive.)

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Milwaukee Humor

You know you’re from Milwaukee when….

However, note:

  • It’s not just a Packers flag. You can stand in most rooms in about 80% of the residences in southeastern Wisconsin and have a Packers logo visible somewhere. The waste basket, a photo/wallhanging, an article of clothing, the fine china….
  • What, no mention of the Witch’s House?
  • The Safe House IS better than Disney Land. Don’t forget to order a Hail to the Chief for your friends.
  • Please note that spending all day bashing the Cubs is not strictly a Milwaukee, nor a Wisconsin thing, nor are bashing those people from Illinois. Remember, Illinois borders five states.
  • Isn’t Brother Ron off the scene? I haven’t seen him anywhere on my last few visits (“The Jesus Car” as this unknowledgeable blogthing person calls him).

Just offering you a bit of insight into your noble host, gentle reader.

(Link seen on Triticale.)

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There Ought Not To Be A Law

Apologies to Radley Balko for misappropriating his title.

In Milwaukee, a close reading (and by “close” I mean actually reading) of a city ordinance has uncovered that every tailgate party with alcohol at County Stadium or Miller Park has been illegal and subject to citation. Instead of simply not enforcing the law (and leaving it on the books for arbitrary enforcement), the city of Milwaukee will rewrite the law:

Ordinance 106-2.1, which was passed in 1980, is the one we’ve been blissfully ignoring out there. It says it shall be unlawful for anyone to drink the strong stuff in public parking lots or parking structures. The fine is $50 to $250, probably depending on how much abuse is heaped on the arresting officer.

Schrimpf remembers reading the ordinance several years back when there was talk of building Miller Park downtown.

It struck him that popping a cold one in a downtown parking structure or doing it in the sprawling lots around the ballpark were no different under the law. But he always thought there must be some exception for tailgating, which he himself has enjoyed.

But there was no exception under the city ordinances, nor is there any county ordinance that says go ahead and imbibe in the shadow of your vehicle.

“The answer is yes. It was illegal,” Schrimpf said.

So at Murphy’s request, the council recently voted to allow tailgate drinking for this season as a “special event” under the ordinance. And last week the Public Safety Committee recommended to the council to make it permanent.

Granted, they’re just making ball games a “special event” not subject to the prohibition, and aren’t completely throwing out the “no drinking in public” law, but it’s a good step in good governance.

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Moving in the Right Direction

Developers scale back plans for PabstCity complex: New proposal for entertainment center seeks smaller city subsidy:

Plans for converting the former Pabst Brewery into an entertainment, shopping, office and housing complex have been scaled back, and developers will cut by almost one half the amount of funding sought from Milwaukee taxpayers.

The proposed downtown development, known as PabstCity, is now expected to cost $317 million, with $39 million sought from the city, the project’s developers said Wednesday. Their estimate last summer of a $395 million development included $75 million in financial assistance from City Hall. Mayor Tom Barrett and other city officials said that earlier request was too high.

Good on Barrett and the other city officials. If only they had said that any welfare benefits to wealthy developers and corporations were too much.

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Milwaukee Police Want to See Boobies

City considers police cameras

Of course police like cameras. They’re cheap and allow the police the ability to gather evidence of criminal activity without having to leave the warm confines of their surveillance centers. Police watching through cameras won’t actually prevent crime with cameras–the victim will still be beaten/mugged/raped/killed, but at least the police will have full color tapes of it.

Assuming, of course, the police behave better than the security officials at Caesar Atlantic City, who were fined for using the security cameras to ogle women or than law enforcement officials in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who diverted traffic cameras to look at young women.

I don’t want to sound too anti-police on this matter, but I don’t think that cameras improve public safety much, if at all, and certainly not enough to justify the expense or the loss of privacy involved.

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Althouse at the Art House

Ann Althouse visited the Milwaukee Art Museum and has pictures.

I saw that Masterpieces of American Art show in October and thought it was pretty good. I even took the headset for the multimedia presentation, although I only listened to one part of one snippet before deciding that the headphone presentation, with its musical interludes, sound effects, and deep-voiced narrator would have merely created the experience of a 3-d Discovery Channel presentation instead of augmenting the museum experience.

Also, they misspelled Masterpiece in the text in the player’s LCD display.

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My Favorite Suburbs

So as I passed into Milwaukee, I spent some time musing upon my favorite suburbs there. I passed through Wauwautosa, an inner ring suburb and my favorite suburb of Milwaukee. Its homes are older, brick construction and are well-maintained. The flukish shape of Milwaukee, stretched oddly from the downtown to the Northwest in a sort of trapezoid, means that Wauwautosa is closer to downtown than the part of Milwaukee in which I spent more than a scattered third of my life. Its proximity to the city and its inclusion within the web of mass transit in Milwaukee County means that Wauwautosa is more reminiscent of a neighborhood than an individual municipality, but Tosans have a municipal government of their own, I think. Maybe they just think they do.

I compare it to the suburbs in the St. Louis area that I like. If you’re judging from criteria that include security/personal safety, brick construction/history/cohesiveness, and proximity to art, in St. Louis you can pick two of three sometimes, and maybe one in others. For example, Casinoport has, well, relative safety. Closer suburbs in St. Louis County like Webster Groves or Kirkwood have almost all three, but hey, I live to romanticize Milwaukee, so they’re no Wauwautosa, ainna?

By the way, if you’re insisting I round out the list, I prefer West Milwaukee and West Allis. Sorry, Owen, but those outer communities like Menomonie Falls, Brookfield, Franklin, and anywhere the Milwaukee County Transit System cannot take me in forty minutes of bus riding with one transfer don’t make the list.

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A Homie Too Harsh?

Owen over at Boots and Sabers links to a Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story about a 71-year-old, wheelchair-bound hit and run victim in my old neighborhood in Milwaukee. Here’s Owen’s post on Boots and Sabers:

There are some cold, cold people in this world.

Police searched Tuesday for the driver of a white, late-model Oldsmobile that struck and killed a 71-year-old man in a wheelchair in the 9100 block of W. Appleton Ave.

The victim, Ernest McNair, was wheeling down Appleton Ave. about 7:40 p.m. Monday when he ws hit by the westbound car, police said. He died early Tuesday morning at Froedtert Memorial Lutheran Hosptial.

I sure hope this dirt bag dies a long, painful, and lingering death. I think that may be too good for him (or her). Bastard.

Owen’s being a little harsh on the “dirt bag.” Here’s more details from the Journal-Sentinel:

McNair was a resident of the Marian Franciscan Center, 9632 W. Appleton Ave. He frequently signed himself out of the nursing home against doctor’s orders and did so sometime Monday afternoon, according to information gathered by the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office.

A friend of McNair’s told an investigator he came by his apartment Monday looking for money to do some drinking, but left when the friend told him he didn’t have any cash.

The circumstances of the accident were sketchy Tuesday, while police asked for any witnesses to contact them.

I don’t know about McNair, but I do know that some wheelchair-bound residents of Missouri travel in the road on occasion. So McNair’s out, possibly wheelchairing drunk in the street in the dark and he gets hit. The driver runs. Tragic, but not pure evil. The “dirt bag” might be a kid, might be a scared housewife, but the absolute condemnation is wasted, particularly if the circumstances are sketchy.

Full disclosure: The first novel I started in college, entitled Tragedies, dealt with the hit and run accident of a housewife at the corner of Villiard and Appleton in Milwaukee, which is the 9000 block of Appleton. The corner between the Westside Liquor store and what used to be a Sentry foods. The assailants were a couple of scared kids. The tragedies, of course, referred to the fact that all the lives were destroyed. So that’s the perspective from whence my bleeding heart liberalism potential for perspective springs.

Of course, running from the accident is wrong, but on the scale of evil, accidentally hitting a hard-to-see object in the dark is substantially less than shouting, “Crippled old man, one point!” and swerving into McNair.

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Artist Capitalist Talons Come Out

Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, a new theatre venue opening up is causing problems.

Because those same proponents who want the citygoers to “support the arts” by giving graciously to their particular theatre are suddenly threatened by the competition that a new theatre will bring.

Hey, I got an idea. How about tickets that cost ten to thirty dollars, huh? Make a play a comparable value to a movie (not to mention far cheaper than a sporting event, and certainly a better value than a Brewer’s game). How about you just put out a better product more cheaply than the other guy and then win, huh?

I guess lowering prices would (sniff!) let the proles in, but don’t forget those very same common men stood at the base of the Globe stage and saw Shakespeare in the original Middle English and they got the jokes without the footnotes, werd.

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Our City Is Too Good for the Likes Of You, Citizen

A piece today in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel about the inner ring suburbs of Milwaukee working to improve their neighborhoods by squelching small entrepreneurs: Tapping out liquor licenses:
Corner taverns squeezed out as communities work to upgrade images, tax revenue
.

A spokesecrat for West Milwaukee speaks ex cathedra about what the monolithic entity wants, says:

“The times that there are two or three bars on every block is passed,” said West Milwaukee Village President Ron Hayward. “West Milwaukee wants to upgrade its image.”

Got that, citizens? West Milwaukee, the organic entity, has determined that the time of small entrepreneurs running their own taverns is over. Instead, it’s time for West Milwaukee to look like Springfield, Missouri, and Chesterfield, Missouri, and most of the other suburbs in most other towns. Bring on the Applebees! Wait, sorry, I mean:

“What they’re deciding is what’s good for the neighborhood and what’s not,” said Weinzatl [owner of a building denied a liquor license renewal], 36. “When they didn’t have the tax revenue coming in, the Chili’s and Chipotle’s, we were all good enough for them. Now that they have all these opportunities, they’re going to squeeze out the little guy.”

Bring on the Chili’s! West Milwaukee wants to sacrifice its local character to the gods of suburban sameness to sucker in some traffic from Miller Park attendees who wouldn’t walk through the worn wooden doors of a corner tavern with the name of the owner above the door on a discolored Schlitz sign but who would be much happier to pull the jalapeño door handle just like they do once a week out in Sussex.

And the West Milwaukee citizens who would like to run their own businesses?

Melody Nordness, 45, a homemaker and homeowner who has lived in the village for 17 years, had hoped to lease Weinzatl’s space in her first crack as a small business owner. She wanted to create a corner tavern where neighbors could stop in for a beer while walking their dogs, chat about the village goings-on and just sit for a while, she said.

She had already paid for her license and started fixing up the place when she received a letter July 14 providing her with reasons for a denial.

Among the reasons:

“The Village of West Milwaukee Board has identified the need to change the culture of the community, to encourage redevelopment and reduce the property tax burden on homeowners.”

“One of the redevelopment goals identified by the Community Development Authority is to encourage restaurant uses in the village, in lieu of taverns that do not primarily serve food.”

While Nordness got her money back, she wanted the license.

“I was very upset for the fact that I have lived here 17 years, and we wanted to keep this bar/tavern a community-type business,” Nordness said. “We kept them afloat for 17 years, paying the highest taxes in the state of Wisconsin.”

Quiet, citizen! You forget your place. You serve the Government’s needs, not the other way around. Do you not understand that the Government is adjusting your culture as It sees fit to broaden Its tax base or improve Its image to Itself. Love It or leave It by moving to another community just like this one.

And be grateful that the Government has not taken your land for Its own vision of megastripmalldom. Yet.

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