It was a beautiful day for a parade in Story Hill. Everyone seemed to have a fine time, except for that one police officer, who kept a frown pasted firmly on his face. See the last photo in the gallery. Click on the pics to make them larger.
Archive for August, 2008
Harley parade photo gallery
Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Oh, no! Deadlines loom.
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008It’s Aug. 26 and three or four Sept. 1 deadlines loom.
It will be rare blogging this week.
Parks Department budget cut slashes maintenance funding
Sunday, August 24th, 2008The Parks Department would slash its major maintenance funding by 72%, from $918,000 to $252,500, under the department’s budget request for 2009.
The department uses the fund to pay for small or mid-size unexpected repairs, said County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin, who represents Story Hill and other portions of the city’s west side on the County Board.
A good size for that budget is $400,000 to $500,000, though it has varied over the years.
“Every year you go on with less and less in there you end up with more of those (large repair) issues,” she said.
Cutting the budget by $665,500 would be a problem even if the Parks Department gets a generous capital budget.
“You can’t capitalize redoing a single window,” she said. There also are legal restrictions on using capital budgets for maintenance, she said. “You just can’t flip that money back and forth,” she said.
The requested maintenance budget would be a “true impact,” she said. “There’s still a hole and it’s not getting fixed.”
Conditions in the parks have been deteriorating for years as the
Parks Department budgets have been squeezed. This picture was taken
last week in a restroom along the Menomonee River Parkway.
The Parks Department’s request also includes:
- Closing the Martin Luther King and Kosciuszko Community Centers, which would save $735,000.
- Eliminating 50 park worker positions for salary savings of $2 million, and adding about $1 million in seasonal labor.
- Creating a Security, Safety and Training Section to oversee the Park Ranger program and coordinate with the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department, municipal police departments and internal staff. This section also would manage training.
- A proposal to contract out the parking concession at O’Donnell Park. “Based on similar parking structures in the area and on information provided by the Department ofAdministrative Services, this proposal could provide the Department approximately $200,000 in additional revenues that are built into the base budget,” according to the request.
- Additional proposals to privatize some golf course concession stands and to find businesses, such as day care centers, that may want to operate in Parks Department facilities.
- 10 new dog parks across the county. The sites of the dog parks are not identified.
Harley’s letter to Story Hill
Thursday, August 21st, 2008Here’s the text of a letter from Harley-Davidson to Story Hill residents regarding the 105th Harley anniversary celebration that runs from Aug. 28-30 (with a couple typos corrected):
August, 2008
Dear Resident/Business Owner:
As you may know Harley-Davidson Motor Company is celebrating its 105th Anniversary this year with a number of exciting events. We would like to make you aware of specific activities that will be taking place in your neighborhood over Labor Day weekend.
On Thursday. August 28, Harley Owners Group (H.O.G.) members from all over the world will help celebrate 25 great years of riding together at an all-day CLUB H.O.G, 25 event on the Miller Park grounds.
This event will be exclusive to one H.O.G. member and a guest. The event will begin at 11:00 a.m. and conclude by 11:00 p.m. The event will feature live musical entertainment, comedians, a motorcycle Ride-In Show (motorcycling styling contest), stunt riding and Muscular Dystrophy fundraising activities.
Then, on Saturday morning, August 30, the Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary Parade, led by the Parade of MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association) Heroes, will make its way from Milwaukee’s Miller Park, up Story Parkway to Bluemound. Riders will continue east on Wisconsin Avenue, turn south on Milwaukee Street, then turn east on Erie Street to the parking lots of the Henry Maier Festival Park.
The parade will begin staging at 6:00 a.m. Riders will be advised to enter Miller Park from Interstates 94 and 41. The parade will depart from Miller Park at 9:a.m., with an anticipated completion time of 12:00 noon.
The parade will be led by the MDA Heroes, who are those individual, who have raised at least $6,400 each, that is equivalent to sending eight kids to MDA Summer Camp. Since 1980, the Harley-Davidson family of customers, dealers, suppliers and employees has raised more than $65 million to fight muscular dystrophy.
The parade traveling through Story Hill during the 100th Anniversary was one of the highlights of the event and we hope you will once again come out to welcome riders from all over the world to Milwaukee. We are very proud to be a Milwaukee-based company and we sincerely appreciate the fantastic support we have always received from our community.
Harley-Davidson hopes to make the 105th Anniversary activities a great experience for everyone. We have had several meetings with your neighborhood association and we continue to work with law enforcement and city officials to manage traffic flow issues and safety. We also continue to communicate to our riders about safe and respectable riding practices while participating in our celebration.
For more information on Harley-Davidson 105th Anniversary events, please visit us at www.harlev-davidson.com.
I would also be happy to answer any of your questions. Feel free to drop me an email at tony.shields@harley-davidson.com.
Thank you and we look forward to once again working with your neighborhood.
Almost impossible-to-read yard signs urging Harley participants to keep their bikes’ volume down also have been distributed in the neighborhood.
Be wary of Walker’s corrections proposal
Monday, August 25th, 2008Transferring the Community Corrections Center from the House of Correction to the Sheriff’s Department would give Sheriff David Clarke, who proved himself so incapable of running the County Jail that the county was found in contempt of court, more power over more inmates.
Bad idea.
The proposal, reported today in the JS, would require more work-release inmates to be held at the House of Correction in Franklin, according to Sheriff’s Inspector Kevin Carr, That means they would either lose their work-release privileges or be housed where transit isn’t exactly plentiful, which would amount to pretty much the same thing as losing their work release privileges.
While the move could put the health and well-being of inmates at risk, it would benefit the one person County Executive Scott Walker cares about most: Scott Walker. The Community Correctional Center is a pit. Running it is a losing proposition. Simply running a work release program carries the risk that participants will do something bad while they are in the community, with great political consequences for any elected official standing nearby.
So why not dump the whole, entire steaming mess on some other independently elected official? Why not dump in on the sheriff?
Tags: House of Correction, Milwaukee County, Scott Walker
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