How the City of Middleton fails its business community (III)
In the August 1 Middleton e-View newsletter (number 8), I published the answers received from five Council members to my questions concerning City initiatives to provide serious support to local businesses affected by the pandemic. After multiple reminders, the mayor and two of the three remaining holdouts replied. Sort of.
District 8 alderman Mark Sullivan is the last holdout. Rumor has it that he did not acknowledge receipt of any e-mail, let alone answer the questions, because he does not feel concerned by the plight of the local business community, as his district is the only one in Middleton that does not include any retail stores, bars, restaurants or similar establishments. Besides, he can buy anything he wants online, and he does not have to answer to anyone until 2022.
District 3 alderwoman Katy Nelson could barely conceal both her disinterest in the topic at hand, and her disdain for the questions, when she finally responded to a second follow-up e-mail: "I guess I missed the deadline. Oh well. Sorry about that!"
District 5 alderman Luke Fuszard showed more class and diligence: "My apologies. I was not intentionally ignoring you, instead I have been working with the City staff on some economic development/business issues that we are hoping to announce in the coming days.” (That was August 4, but nothing has been announced yet.)
Mayor Gurdip Brar also finally replied, clearly frustrated: "We have gone over it multiple times. The City is helping the businesses through CDA. We have provided information about all the federal and state grants/loans available. I have been sending [City Administrator] Mike Davis all the information asking him to send it to businesses and to facilitate it. We have tried to work with MADC [Middleton Area Development Corporation] but it did not work out. We are still trying to find the ways to help our businesses. It is not easy. No point in my repeating what Robert [Burck, district 2] and Kathy [Olson, district 1] have already mentioned. Thanks for asking."
He probably did not really mean that last sentence.
The CDA (Community Development Authority), by the way, will meet this coming Thursday, August 13. Its agenda includes a 'brainstorming session for improving downtown Middleton', which could be hilarious if the circumstances weren't so serious. It should be noted that the CDA is by statute only concerned with the downtown area. Businesses located in the rest of the city fall outside of its purview, and might as well not even exist in the eyes of some City officials.
Bombastic frustration
Of course, mayor Gurdip Brar has a lot to be frustrated about these days. Not only is he finding out that dealing with the economic consequences of the pandemic requires qualities other than his standard bombastic cheerleading phrases, but he is also facing the fallout from his politicizing of the City's advisory-committee system, especially where the airport is concerned.
As reported earlier, in May the Common Council rejected his reappointment of town of Middleton resident Cynthia Richson to the Airport Commission. She also chairs the Middleton Town Board, and is an outspoken opponent of the Middleton Municipal Airport - Morey Field. In July, he submitted town of Springfield resident Steve Sperling, also an outspoken airport opponent, to replace her. In the face of stiff behind-the-scenes Council resistance to this appointment, he withdrew his choice on August 4. In my August 5 newsletter, I wrote:
Mayor Gurdip Brar withdrew the controversial nomination of Steve Sperling for the Airport Commission before it could come to a vote. When I asked Gurdip Brar (via email) why he had removed Steve Sperling's appointment from the agenda, his response was as profound, well reasoned, and enlightening as one could expect from a man of his caliber: "I used the mayors [sic!] authority to remove this item from the agenda." Since a common mortal such as I has trouble keeping up with the dizzying intellectual heights of the mayor's thought processes, I sent him a follow-up email, asking him again to explain why he had removed his pick from consideration. But he must have been busy doing important mayor stuff, because I didn't hear back from him.
Finally, I did hear back: "That is all I have to say. Thanks. George. Mayor Brar"
Some of his reluctance to say more might have to do with the legal attacks the City is now facing from the Town of Middleton. Since the City Council rejected the reappointment of Cynthia Richson to the Airport Commission, she has used her position on the Town Board to frustrate the City through legal means. These include cutting off road access for the 'Erdman Park' development, a project to be built on properties currently located in the town (the only access is via a town road), a proposed new boundary agreement, and unspecified challenges to the airport ('unspecified' because both the Middleton City Council and the Middleton Town Board have been discussing them in closed sessions, and no information has been publicly released yet).
Populists unite!
Opposing the Middleton airport has become an all-consuming obsession for Cynthia Richson, and she has been trying to recruit other local municipalities, departments and inter-governmental entities to join her fight, including the towns of Westport and Springfield. The latter has been fairly receptive to her advances, mostly because it borders the airport to the north, and because some of its residents are among the staunchest airport opponents.
But while it seems that Cynthia Richson would be happy to see the airport disappear completely, Springfield officials mainly want assurances from the City that the airport runway won't be expanded beyond its current 4,000 feet, and that the towns have a say in any future airport development. Like their counterparts in the town of Middleton, town of Springfield Board members are angry that the Middleton City Council in June rejected the idea of giving the towns reserved seats on the Airport Commission. And like their counterparts in the town of Middleton, town of Springfield Board members think, probably correctly, that they have a bargaining chip to force the City to the negotiating table: stormwater management.
The 2018 flood showed that the city's own stormwater management capacities, not least in the northwestern corner of the city, are inadequate. But in order to increase retention capacity (and City officials have made it very clear that they want to do that), the City needs the cooperation of the Town, since any additional stormwater management infrastructure would have to be created on town of Springfield land north of the airport.
Normally, such boundary-crossing issues, including concerns about airport noise and development, could be dealt with in a civilized manner through regular meetings between officials from all involved municipalities. Unfortunately, the divisive politics of Gurdip Brar and Cynthia Richson have poisoned the climate to the point where unprejudiced dialogue is becoming increasingly difficult. (Hence the Town Board's and City Council's closed sessions mentioned above.)
But the City is at a disadvantage here. While Gurdip Brar and Cynthia Richson are both opportunistic populists who use their elected offices to pursue personal agendas and raise their own profiles, there is a key difference between them: She gets things done. She also has the support of her Town Board, while he has trouble getting a Council majority together beyond roll call.
That is not really a surprise. As alderman for district 2 from 2008 to 2017, he built his political career on antagonizing his colleagues on the Council and scoring cheap political points at the expense of collaboration and consensus-building. When he was one alderperson among eight, his self-centered populism, irritating as it was, didn't do much damage to the community, but as mayor, it now risks clashing with the interests of the city as a whole. This is nowhere more obvious than in the discussions about the future of the airport.
Out of whatever political calculations or personal preference, he seems to have thrown his support in with the airport opponents. Since the vast majority of them live in the towns and not in the city, the mayor of the city of Middleton is de facto siding with the towns against his own Council, his own administration, and his own City-owned airport.
So Gurdip Brar and Cynthia Richson have one more thing in common: They are both on the same side.
Still, it seems that an inter-governmental meeting with officials from the towns of Middleton and Springfield and the city of Middleton might take place on Thursday, August 20, virtually presumably. As of this writing, it is not known who will participate, nor what will be on the agenda.
Town of Middleton hires airport opponent’s son as consultant
On July 20, the Middleton Town Board unanimously approved 'a consulting agreement with Dan Bartholomew to provide consulting services to the Town of Middleton on issues related to cooperative planning concerning the City of Middleton Morey Airport, including the airport master plan, airport improvement plan and environmental impacts.' To pay for the consulting services, funds will be diverted from the budget earmarked for Pioneer Park.
Dan Bartholomew has professional experience in airport management, and was vice president of planning, engineering and environmental management at the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority until his retirement in 2019. He is also the son of city of Middleton resident Bob Bartholomew, another outspoken airport opponent whom mayor Gurdip Brar appointed to the Airport Master Plan Advisory Committee, and who, as part of the so-called Gang of Three with town of Springfield resident Julie Loeffler and Cynthia Richson, helped obstruct the work of the committee to the point of rendering it inoperable and ultimately irrelevant.
Serial complainers
According to data presented by airport manager Rich Morey at the August 6 Airport Commission meeting, the number of flights in and out of Middleton Municipal Airport - Morey Field in July is sharply down compared to the same month last year, while noise and overflight complaints are sharply up.
The number of flights by Morey Airplane Company and others was down 20% compared to July 2019, but complaints were up 200%, from 11 in July 2019 to 33 in July 2020. Of these 33 complaints, however, 20 (60%) were made by just two individuals, both town of Middleton residents, one of which is - wait for it - Cynthia Richson.
In May, the discrepancy between flights and complaints was even more striking: While the number of flights in May 2020 was down 55% compared to May 2019, the number of complaints was up 1,000%, from 4 in 2019 to 44 in 2020. Again, the majority of complaints was made by the same two people, who over the course of the last twelve months have consistently been responsible for over half of all complaints.
For students of mathematics: If the number of flights went down by 100%, by what percentage would the number of complaints go up?
BOE decides to publish public comments
At a special meeting on August 5, the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District's Board of Education (BOE) decided unanimously to publish online all the public comments it had received for its June 22, July 13 and July 20 meetings dealing with the 'school resource officer' (SRO) program (and, less confrontationally, its return-to-school policy). The Board has been severely criticized for its lack of transparency and its refusal to allow an open public debate during those discussions. In "the interest of time" president Annette Ashley had also refused to read the numerous e-mail comments the Board had received.
While publishing the comments is a step in the right direction, the BOE has so far shown no inclination to have an open public debate about the SRO program. That is currently stalled anyway, because the Middleton Common Council refused to approve the old program-agreement, and the BOE has not yet submitted its (very slightly) revised new agreement proposal to the Council.