Middleton mayor admits excluding city residents from Airport Commission
In an e-mail statement to the Middleton Review, mayor Gurdip Brar has as much as admitted that he does not, and never did, intend to appoint a resident of the city of Middleton to fill a vacant seat on the Airport Commission, but that he wants to appoint a representative from the town of Middleton or the town of Springfield.
The position was formerly held by Cynthia Richson, a town of Middleton resident and outspoken airport opponent (she is also the chairwoman of the Middleton Town Board). Gurdip Brar tried to reappoint her in May of this year, but the Common Council, in a rare move, rejected her, among other reasons, because of her 'disruptive' and antagonistic behavior on the commission.
At the time he made the decision to reappoint her, the mayor could choose among five candidates: besides Cynthia Richson's, he had received applications from David Boyd, David Lorman, Joe McDonough (all three city of Middleton residents) and Jeffrey Russell (town of Westport resident). All five had applied before the mayor's official deadline, April 27.
But instead of picking a new nominee among the remaining four candidates, he went on a fishing expedition until he had found his new pick: Steve Sperling, a town of Springfield resident and also an outspoken opponent of Middleton's airport who only applied for the position on June 22.
When asked by this newspaper why he hadn't chosen one of the four remaining original candidates, Gurdip Brar replied: "In my applicant pool, I wanted to include applicants from all areas impacted by the airport, including the areas west and north of the airport." The fact that he went out of his way to find a candidate from one of 'the areas west and north of the airport' (i.e. the town of Middleton and the town of Springfield, respectively) shows that he had no interest whatsoever in a candidate from the city of Middleton.
On June 16 (six days before Steve Sperling applied), the Common Council had unanimously rejected mayor Gurdip Brar's request to reserve two seats on the Airport Commission for residents of the towns of Middleton and Springfield. If his nomination now of a town of Springfield resident looks like an attempt to subvert the Council's vote, then that's because it is.
Why exactly Gurdip Brar insists on stacking the Airport Commission with airport opponents is anybody's guess. It is not the Airport Commission's role to promote the agendas of airport opponents, nor to represent the interests of the towns of Middleton and Springfield. Inter-governmental dialogue needs to take place on a different level.
It is the Airport Commission's role to supervise airport operations and, quoting the relevant City ordinance, to "advise the administrator and the common council with regard to planning, development and operation of the airport within budgetary guidelines and legal requirements. (...) The Commission shall make studies and conduct surveys as appropriate to assist in improving the operation of the Airport. It shall cooperate with the Wisconsin Bureau of Aeronautics and the Federal Aviation Administration in airport and system planning functions and other activities."
Middleton Municipal Airport - Morey Field is a City-owned airport, and as mayor of the city of Middleton, it is Gurdip Brar's duty to defend the interests of the city. If he can't or won't do that, then he should reconsider his position in city government.
The high cost of low-income housing
City of Middleton district 8 alderman and chairman of the Finance Committee Mark Sullivan voted against approving a request for more than $3.2 million in tax-increment financing (TIF) assistance by the developers of The Trotta apartment building on Parmenter Street. He was the lone no-vote on the Finance Committee and the Common Council.
The Trotta, to be located on the site of the old Colonial Motel, will be a 124-unit, four-story building with 50 income-restricted 'affordable' or 'workforce housing' units. Only five of the latter will be three-bedroom units, however, which means that low-income families are not really the target-renters that the developers hope to attract (half the units, 25, are two-bedroom units, and the remaining 20 are one-bedroom). The low-income units are reserved for individuals and households earning less than than 60% of the area median income.
As soon as words like 'affordable', 'workforce' or 'low-income' are attached to any housing project and TIF request, members of the Workforce Housing Committee, Plan Commission and Common Council get all teary-eyed and social-minded, and after having approved the requests feel really good about themselves for having stricken another blow against the housing crisis.
And then there are those who, like Mark Sullivan and other experts, voice concerns about the narrow-minded focus on TIF assistance and other public subsidies to solve the housing crisis. It is becoming increasingly clear that public subsidies and income-restrictions do more harm than good overall, and could actually have the perverse effect of reducing the available housing stock, and of increasing the cost of land, thus contributing to an overall increase in housing prices, which in the end favors only the rich. It is probably no coincidence that the only two recent multi-family housing projects in Middleton that are not located in a TIF district have failed (both were on University Avenue).
Abolishing the antiquated zoning restrictions and the wasteful on-site parking requirements that still exist in Middleton, allowing for greater density (in spite of what some fossils on the Plan Commission and NIMBY residents in the often-not-so-Good Neighbor City think), and increasing the availability of developable land by not reserving housing for certain income categories would increase the overall supply of housing for everybody, including the vast majority of middle-income earners who are now shut out to a large extent because City policies favor the independently wealthy and the subsidized poor.
At the July 21 Finance Committee meeting, Mark Sullivan asked for the City's Finance and Planning departments to prepare a report on the true cost of subsidized affordable housing, including lost tax revenue because of lower valuations, waived fees, and increased service calls, among other aspects.
"People would be astounded at how much we have been spending on affordable housing in the last five years," he said. We might be about to find out.
2021 budget: Say the magic word ...
The City's annual budget ritual has begun. In July and August, the different departments submit their operating- and capital-budget requests. These are first presented to the appropriate committees, where they receive more or less scrutiny and prioritization, before coming under the axe in the Finance Committee, and maybe undergoing some restoration work by the Common Council.
Among the first committees to look at 'their' departments' proposed budgets were the Pleasant View Golf Advisory Committee, the Park, Recreation and Forestry Commission and the Public Works Committee.
The Pleasant View Golf Course's capital budget for 2021 includes resealing the parking lot. The Golf Course has its own fund, and its operating budget is predicted to be self-financing (including paying for its own capital project and capital reserve) and able to continue paying back its internal debt to the City.
The Park, Recreation and Forestry Department's (very preliminary) capital budget, as discussed by PRFC on July 20, consists mostly of a wish list so far, which includes replacing the heater at the Aquatic Center, adding ADA features to Firefighter's and Penni Klein parks, fixing the tennis courts at Lakeview Park, renewing the playground at Meadows Park, rebuilding the shelters at Firemen's and Parisi parks, improving the basketball courts at Firemen's, Woodside Heights and Middleton Hills South parks, acquiring a spider lift for the forestry department (second try), and converting the Splash Pad at Lakeview Park to a chlorinated water system. This would save about 21 million gallons of water a year, and the taxpayer $30,000, because the new system would be a closed circuit.
Many of these projects could be funded through park development fees, and thus not impact the City's capital borrowing.
That, however, is not the case for the Public Works Department's budget, which comes out almost entirely of the general fund and the capital fund, except for some projects funded by TIF.
The City's stated policy is to spend about $2 million on road reconstruction and improvements every year, and the department's plan for next year stays reasonably within that frame. The two biggest items on the road schedule, besides $250,000 for general city-wide crack filling and surface treatments, are the reconstruction of Hubbard Avenue and Mayflower Drive (about $1.5 million) and the resurfacing of Marigold Circle ($195,000).
As Public Works Director Shawn Stauske explained at Monday's Public Works Committee meeting, guidance from the Finance Department is to keep non-road capital spending to $100,000 for 2021. As the department's original wish list came to just under $670,000 (see table), the committee had some trimming and prioritizing to do. Items that so far have made the cut, so to speak, are traffic-signal changes at the intersection of Century Avenue and Donna Drive, a storm sewer video camera that will allow the department to check pipes for damage and fix them before they break, and a new pick-up truck.
District 6 alderwoman Susan West got excited about supporting this last item when it was explained that an extra truck would allow crew members to spread out over more vehicles, thus helping prevent the spread of covid-19. 'Covid' is one of several magic words that trigger an almost Pavlovian response in Susan West (others are 'storm water', 'safety' and 'liability'): include any of them in a proposal, and her support is as good as guaranteed.