A short video about Scott Walker and Jacobus Park.
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Scott Walker and Jacobus Park — reposted
Sunday, August 15th, 2010Cullen’s amendment would require layers of approval for transit funding
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010State Rep. David Cullen (D-Milwaukee) just offered an RTA amendment that would require the funding raised in Milwaukee County to stay with the Milwaukee County Transit System for buses. The amendment would also require a binding referendum and the approval of the county executive and the County Board to take effect.
The full Assembly tabled his amendment. Cullen represents the district that includes Story Hill.
Voting is so lonely
Tuesday, April 6th, 2010At 7 p.m., I was number 27 in Ward 282. Ward 281, which also has its voting digs at the Wisconsin Humane Society, was waiting for number six to walk through the door.
Zowie!
The Zoo Interchange and bad spending priorities
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010The finger-pointing between gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Tom Barrett over who is to blame for the problems with the Zoo Interchange would be laughable, if it did not draw attention away from the real issue — the state’s refusal to take care of the highways it builds.
The past few governors and the state legislature never figured that out — if you build a highway, you need to take care of it. They got the first part of that equation — highway building — down pretty good, but the taking care of it part? Not so much.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation has been an agency run amuck for a long time now, enabled by Governors Thompson and McCallum and Doyle and the state legislators who perennially suck up to the road builders. Got an unnecessary interchange project in Waukesha County? The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is there for you. Want to build a sometimes interchange because of a single sporting event? Just call WisDOT.
But boring ol’ maintenance? Never mind.
The facts are rather neatly and depressingly laid out in the Wisconsin Department of Transportation’s own Budget Trends report. From 1994 through 2009, spending on the three big highway-building programs — major highway development, state highway rehabilitation and southeastern Wisconsin highways rehabilitation — totaled $13.6 billion (transportation debt, most of which is incurred because of those programs, is a separate category). Spending on highway maintenance and operations totaled just $2.7 billion over that same period.
The top blue line is annual highway construction spending. The pink line is annual maintenance spending. Source: Transportation Budget Trends, 2008
Yup. In a state with an aging highway system, the state powers that be decided that only one dollar should be spent on maintenance for every five dollars spent on new construction. Worse, the spending disparity grew over that time period. In 1994 maintenance spending was about 25% of the amount spent on highway construction. In 2009, maintenance spending equaled about 19% of highway construction spending.
Republican Walker, when he was in the state legislature, cast some votes for those bad budgets. But this is a bipartisan issue. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle rejected a request for a 1% annual highway maintenance budget increases for 2009-11.
Imagine what Walker could do to the state
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010I used to be just a touch envious of the folks who lived in the houses neighboring Doyne Park, just a few short blocks from this neighborhood.
County Executive Scott Walker, a Republican candidate for goovernor, is changing all that, though, by pulling staff from the park’s golf course on weekdays. It’s part of Walker’s path of golf destruction, which also includes Lake, Madison, Noyes and Zablocki. Walker is putting in fareboxes and closing pavilions. Park patrons will be asked to use porta-pottys. (I don’t know about that one. Walker’s convicted felon security chief might be lurking in one of them!)
Don’t know much about the non-Doyne parks, but walk in and near Doyne a lot. We’ll have — gosh — an unstaffed golf course in a park that has been vandalized before. What a terrific idea!
County Supervisor Lynne DeBruin isn’t happy about it, either.
“This decision puts the future of these golf courses at risk,” she said in a prepared statement. “Anyone wishing to golf during the week would have to use payment boxes that are based solely on the honor system, and that will lead to a drop in par-3 golf course revenue for Milwaukee County. It also raises concerns about theft from these payment boxes. Beyond that, we cannot base the County’s revenues on the honor system. This decision effectively sets these courses up for failure, because everyone knows the best way to close a county facility is to depress its revenues.”
“Closing down clubhouses and installing port-a-johns are not the way to go,” Supervisor De Bruin added. “Once again, a major change is made without informing either the County Board of the public.”
And he wants to run the state? The mind reels.
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