From e-Notify:
A burglary was recorded in the 4700 block of Woodlawn Ct. at about 7:20 a.m May 2.
Crime reported in Story Hill
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Monthly Archives: May 2009
Help defeat the evil weed!
Sustainable Story Hill (disclosure: I’m on the board), along with the City of Milwaukee, Milwaukee County Parks Department, the Park People of Milwaukee County, the Bluemound Road Business Advancement Association and the Story Hill Neighborhood Associatiom, is sponsoring a weed-out in Mitchell Blvd. Park from 9 a.m. to noon this Saturday, May 9.
Yup, it’s time once again to do battle with the evil garlic mustard.
Evil garlic mustard as juvenile delinquents in Mitchell Blvd. Park
As the National Park Service puts it:
“Garlic mustard poses a severe threat to native plants and animals…Many native widlflowers that complete their life cycles in the springtime occur in the same habitat as garlic mustard. Once introduced to an area, garlic mustard outcompetes native plants by aggressively monopolizing light, moisture, nutrients, soil and space. Wildlife species that depend on these early plants for their foliage, pollen, nectar, fruits, seeds and roots, are deprived of these essential food sources when garlic mustard replaces them. Humans are also deprived of the vibrant display of beautiful spring wildflowers.”
Mitchell Blvd. Park is at 51st and Bluemound.
We will have snacks for volunteers, as well as prizes. The Park People has donated discount coupons to parks attractions and will supply gloves and bags, and the Bluemound Road Business Advancement Association is kicking in gift certificates to the restaurants and bars along Bluemound Rd. Sustainable Story Hill is supplying some of those gift certificates as well, and will provide more child-oriented incentives, too.
The City of Milwaukee is matching a $500 Sustainable Story Hill gift with a $500 Healthy Neighborhoods grant. This will allow us in another month or so to buy new plants for the park and to engage kids from the Hawley Rd. Environmental School summer enrichment program in learning about and planting them.
All are welcome to help on Saturday — we’d appreciate the assistance!
Same garlic mustard, 1 1/2 weeks older
– becoming a more potent threat.
That stupid bird
I am spending way too much time apologizing to the stupid bird that has taken up residence in the curve of a downspout not far enough away from the back door.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Bird,” I say as I walk out to go to work.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Birdie,” I say as I let the dog out.
This is one rude neighbor. Almost every time I walk out the door, no matter how many times I apologize for disturbing her, she flaps out of her nest to sit on a wire and bitch, bitch, bitch at me about interrupting her day.
She is in the family way so I try to understand and remember that soon there will be little, bitty robins constantly demanding that mom feed them.
Heh, heh, heh. That’ll show you, Lady Robin Rudeness.
Then, just to show whose children they are, the little birdies will poop down the side of my house in cement-like fashion.
There is no justice.
Sherard keeps on slum lordin’; feds seek city help
Will Sherard, one of Milwaukee’s most notorious landlords, continues to thumb his nose at the federal government four years after the feds sued him over the poor condition of his properties.
“Sherard was to have twenty-nine (29) properties abated by the end of March 2009,” Assistant US Attorney Stacy Gerber Ward wrote in a court document late last month. “To date, the United States is aware of Sherard completing abatement work on only two (2) of those properties.”
The federal government now is asking a judge to order Sherard to put $550,00 into escrow and to appoint the City of Milwaukee Health Department to administer and oversee the repair work that Sherard has refused to do.
The feds’ showdown with Sherard has been in and out of US District Judge Joseph P. Stadtmueller’s courtoom for years.
A 2005 federal court consent decree required Sherard to complete window replacement and lead-based paint hazard abatement work on 39 residential properties by July 2008 and July 2010, respectively. He was found in contempt of court in July 2008 for failing to repair the properties. Stadtmueller set new deadlines and $500 daily fines for each property not repaired in a timely fashion. In February, the judge ordered Sherard to provide the government with a financial disclosure statement.
“The financial disclosure forms submitted by Mr. Sherard provided almost no information,” Gerber Ward wrote last month. “In regards to his income and other financial information, Mr. Sherard stated ‘see tax returns.’ While Mr. Sherard’s tax returns do identify the various institutions in which he holds his assets and his dividend and/or interest income from these assets, the tax returns do not identify current balances or transactions that would be significant to the United States assessment of Mr. Sherard’s financial condition.”
Sherard told an official from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development that “the work is expensive, that he did not anticipate these expenses, and he suggested that he did not have the funds to complete the work,” according to a government court filing. City of Milwaukee records, though, show that Sherard took out a total of about $1.7 million in mortgages on many of the properties he was supposed to fix right before and after signing the consent decree. The total estimated cost of the work on all the properties is $496,000. Another $30,000 or so is needed to pay for new or updated property assessments, according to court records.
The accumulated contempt penalties Sherard faces is more than $711,000, according to court documents.
Previous coverage of Sherard’s legal adventures is here.
Steve Smith, rich guy with a raise, stiffs shareholders
As Journal Communications stock plummeted in value and Journal Communications employees lost their jobs, CEO Steve Smith did the real corporate thing: he grabbed the money and screwed his stockholders.
Reported the paper in March:
Total compensation increased almost 22% last year for Journal Communications Inc. chairman and chief executive Steven J. Smith, according to a regulatory filing by the company Thursday.
Smith earned no bonus, but his salary rose 3.7% to $798,077. He received stock awards worth $1,672 and option awards valued at $397,003, a proxy statement for the Milwaukee-based media company and publisher of the Journal Sentinel said. The biggest change in compensation was in the value of Smith’s retirement benefits, which grew to $233,110, compared with $74,782 in 2007. He received other compensation last year worth $16,095.
Journal Communications posted a $224.4 million loss in 2008.
And then, this morning, we are treated to this:
Citing “the challenging economic environment,” the board of Journal Communications Inc. said Thursday it will suspend the dividend on Class A and Class B shares of its stock.
Quarterly dividends on the shares had been cut to 2 cents from 8 cents in February.
“While we regret having to make this difficult decision, we believe this is the prudent choice in order to maintain financial flexibility,” said Steven J. Smith, chairman of Journal Communications. “Given the continued challenging economy and business conditions, we believe that this will allow the company to continue to direct a significant portion of its cash flow to debt reduction.”
What a damned joke.