Yup, the city comes out with absolutely no net advantage with its new, screw-you-residential-ratepayer plan and avoids for at least another year dealing with the hard issue of excess capacity in its water system. Big water using ratepayers get an economic development rate discount; others get the bill for the city’s failure to deal with the issue.

A really, really bad aspect of this new discount is that the companies that get it don’t even have to show that new jobs they add have anything to do with the additional water that is going down the drain or with the rate break they are getting.

So much for Milwaukee city government trying to sell itself as “green.” Mayor Tom Barrett and the Common Council should be embarrassed about this one. Residential ratepayers and anyone who cares about the health of area waterways should be furious.

To qualify for the bad new discount, a new business must use 500,000 gallons of water per billing period, and an existing business must increase its water use per billing period from a baseline of at least 1 million gallons  to 2.5 million gallons, or by 50%, whichever is less.

A business seeking the discount must submit a water use and efficiency plan to the Water Works, and file an affidavit swearing that it would not increase water consumption without the encouragement of the economic development rate. (Emphasis added.) Enforcement of the plan? Water Works would be allowed to audit each recipient’s water use, but there is no mention of who would do the auditing. New staff? Doesn’t that cost money, requiring more revenue, requiring higher water rates? And if a company is caught cheating, it will have 90 days to stop. (“Really, officer? I was going a hundred miles over the limit? I promise I will slow down in three months.”)

The firm must create 25 jobs within 90 days of approval of the discount. There is no requirement that adding the jobs have anything to do with the additional water use or the water rate discount. There just needs to be 25 new jobs.

Let’s think about this one a little bit. Let’s say you are a big water-using-business planning to expand and add jobs. Wouldn’t you apply for the discount and wait until you know if you have gotten it before adding those jobs? It’s not a hard decision to make, since if you add them too soon, you won’t qualify for the discount! By waiting and adding the jobs later, you can get the discount that has nothing to do with the jobs you were going to add anyway. What a deal for the business! There is a downside, though, for the city: job creation may actually be put on hold until while the company waits for its free money to be confirmed.

And let’s say you are a new business that adds 600 jobs but only uses 400,000 gallons of water per billing period. What you get is — jack sh–! Too bad, buddy!

There are a few environmental requirements that must be met to qualify for the discount, but they are almost laughable. The Water Works must certify to the PSC that the additional consumption won’t hurt the water supply and that it will not increase water rates for other customers. If the latter is true — if the Water Works can lose revenue from one source without replacing it from another source — then it already is operating with a bloated budget and is overcharging customers and the PSC should re-examine the huge rate increases it just granted to the utility.

If  the Water Works must charge other customers more to recover what it loses by granting the discount, then it will either have to deny all discount applications or pass those costs on to other customers in the form of increased rates.

And how is the Water Works supposed to know the impacts of each business on the overall quality and health of the water system? Are cumulative impacts considered? It does not appear that they will be. So if each of 100 businesses receiving the discount has a negligible effect on Lake Michigan, but collectively they will destroy it, the collectively part of the equation will not be considered.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, meanwhile, must certify that it can treat the increased wastewater without adversely affecting the operation of its plants or increasing charges to other customers. Given the flooding and overflows in recent years, how on earth could it possibly do that?

This is a crazy, bad plan. The Milwaukee Water Works how has the authority to implement the crazy, bad plan, but it is not required to do so. And it should not.

This burdensome, idiotic requirement was adopted on a 10-4 vote without much thought at all. The justification behind it is absurd.

“The Common Council finds that a disproportionate number of vehicles that are for sale on public property are unlicensed, unregistered or are offered for sale by individuals who have no legal authority to do so,” the newly-expanded ordinance reads.

Poppycock. Show me the data on that one. And how the hell is requiring a $40 permit for a street sale going to prevent someone from selling a stolen car through some other — any other — means?

Ald. Robert Puente suggested the ordinance should apply citywide, rather than limited to areas where street sales of cars is a problem, so the police would have an easier time enforcing it. Yup, residents of Milwaukee should face a burdensome, expensive, useless requirement so cops don’t have to think or learn a new set of boundaries.  I thought the police were here to serve the citizenry, but it looks like that idea has been totally flipped backwards and upside down.

Technically, the ordinance prohibits parking any car for sale on public property, whether there is a “for sale” sign on the vehicle or not. You can get busted for driving the car and parking at the library, even if you leave the “for sale” sign at home. That is not what the council intended, but it is what the ordinance says.

Mayor Barrett should veto this idiocy. The ordinance, even narrowly interpreted, obviously will hit hardest at people in the city who can’t park their for-sale cars on private property — those whose garages are accessed through alleys or who don’t have private parking at all. The latter, of course, includes many poor people of the variety who don’t have the money or time to go chasing down to City Hall to pay $40 and go through a hassle to sell a $300 car.

We are in danger of having a bad ordinance that has been poorly drafted inflicted on the city. The Common Council should have realized that is a common result when legislation is rammed through without  much thought or consideration. Barrett really needs to kill it.

Anyone wanting to sell a car on public property — namely, streets — will have to fill out an application and have the vehicle inspected by the Department of Public Works. There could be fines and towing for those who don’t obey.

The public not notified of the ordinance or provided an opportunity for input before the measure was  debated and approved, 10-4, by the council Tuesday morning.

The $40 fee already is in effect in small areas of the city, and Ald. Joe Davis asked the council’s Public Safety Committee to extend it to his district as well. The committee, instead, recommended Tuesday morning that it be extended to the entire city and the council agreed a short time later.

A portion of Ald. Robert Donovan’s district was the first to be subject to the $40 fee. Donovan told the committee that the large volume of car sales on the streets were causing problems in some areas. He said some of the cars sold turned out to be stolen.

Ald. Robert Puente said it would be easier for police to enforce the ordinance if it were citywide.

Voting against the measure were Aldermen Jim Bohl, Michael Murphy and Joe Dudzik and Alderwoman Milele Coggs.

“I’ve received complaints on the ad hoc placement of officers,” he told the Common Council this week.

Traffic near the stadium has become a bigger issue since the Brewers started winning regularly and drawing large crowds. Brewers-generated traffic jams made it extremely difficult to enter or leave the Story Hill neighborhood last year on some big game days because there were no traffic officers assigned to intersections such as W. Bluemound and N. Hawley Roads or Bluemound and N. Story Parkway.

The Brewers pay for the city to provide security at Miller Park and the council this week approved a $1.5 million agreement for the upcoming season. There apparently is disagreement, though, between the Brewers and the Police Department about who should pay for traffic officers working on city streets outside of Miller Park, Murphy said.

“The two of them need to get that resolved in the coming season because there is a traffic safety issue,” Murphy said.

“My office, in meeting with landlords, regularly advises that one of the things that landlords can do to make sure their properties are not facilitating drug dealing or gang activity is to screen their tenants,” Assistant City Attorney Adam Stephens told the council’s Judiciary and Legislation Committee ealier this month.

“That would be a problem” if the landlords had to worry about becoming criminals themsleves, he said.

Under the proposed legislation, a felon who served four years in prison for a serious crime would be protected under the law because the conviction would be more than three years old, Stephens said.

“Obviously, that’s a very practical concern,” he said.

A less serious offender serving probation on a more recent conviction would not be protected, he said.

“I’m a little confused as to the point of this legislation,” Ald. Ashanti Hamilton said.

The major sponsor of the draft legislation, which has not yet been introduced,  is State Rep. Marlin Schneider (D-Wisconsin Rapids). Assembly co-sponsors  include Milwaukee Democrats Annette Williams, Tamara Grigsby and Fred Kessler, city officials said.

Schneider has long been concerned about the misuse of electronic court records in employment screening, and other legislators believe that convicted criminals need a place to live and deserve a second chance, city lobbyist Jennifer Gonda said.

“There’s sort of a sympathetic factor there,” she said.

Ald. Jim Bohl said he was confident the vast majority of constituents would support him in door-to-door debates with the legislation’s sponsors over the proposal’s merits.

“This is not something that would be positively viewed by most of their constituency,” he said.

Bohl predicted the committee’s recommendation to oppose the measure would sail through the full council.

It did — unanimously.

“This is a very important piece of legislation,” said Ald. Michael Murphy, who sponsored it with Aldermen Jim Bohl, Robert Bauman and Willie Wade. Murphy said the ordinance is being eyed as a nationwide model.

Under the legislation, lenders must inspect a property once a foreclosure action is filed and register the property if it appears to be abandoned. Lenders must reinspect occupied properties every 30 days.

The ordinance also requires lenders to assure that:

•    Buildings are secured and inaccessible to unauthorized persons.
•    Litter, trash, debris and graffiti are removed.
•    Grass is mowed, noxious weeds are removed, vegetation trimmed.
•    Immediate risks to health, welfare and safety are eliminated.
•    Public walkways are kept free from ice, snow, mud and other debris.

Violations can bring fines of $100 to $2,000.

Many banks and lenders support the ordinance, which was modified in draft form after lending institutions objected to some of its original provisions, according to testimony before the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee.

The city has 1,700 foreclosed properties, with another 4,500 “on the waiting list,” Murphy told the council.

In some instances, owners who can’t make their mortgage payments are simply walking away from the properties, he said.

As a result, “the snow is not shoveled on the sidewalks, the grass is not cut, the garbage is not picked up, these properties end up becoming attractive nuisances, they become problems with gang members, solicitation. They also become fire traps, they also provide further decline in property tax values of the properties adjacent to them.”

The new ordinance, he said, is “not a silver bullet in terms of addressing all of these issues.”

The ordinance gives the city one way to deal with an issue made more difficult by the securitization and sale of loans between institutions. Murphy singled out Deutsche Bank, based in Germany. Deutsche has more than 400 city properties that have been foreclosed upon and 14 servicing agents.

“None of them can be reached,” he said.

The ordinance, he said, “is not a panacea, but I think it’s the right direction.”

Bohl made his comments after Paul Vornholt, city intergovernmental relations director, said the city would seek more funding for local road aid in the upcoming state budget. Bohl argued that the state was not going to help the city, and that the road builders, generous to both sides of the political aisle, realized the real money was in building new lanes that eventually will have to be reconstructed, generating more revenue and profit.

The Wisconsin Department of Transportation is seeking just a 1% increase in funding for local road aids in the 2009-11 state budget. Very little of the projects that qualify for the aid actually get it. Last year, general transportation aid (local road aid) paid for just 22.5% of eligible costs for counties and 18.4% for municipalities.

Many Neighborhood Improvement Development Corp. loan programs are restricted to targeted areas. The new program also would be operated by NIDC, but residents throughout the city could take advantage of it, according to a city report.

The repair loans generally would be limited to $1,500 to $7,500, according to the report.

“Eligible work items would include roofing, plumbing, heating and electrical repairs,” the report said. ”Loans would be repayable and structured to be affordable, with payment and terms based on income.”

Funding for the program would come from proceeds from the sale of the Kilbourn Tower at 923 E. Kilbourn Ave.

The loan program backed by the Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee also would include additional funding for loans in targeted neighborhoods and money for “catalytic projects” in areas near targeted neighborhoods with similar efforts.

“These loans will help homeowners who would otherwise do without, or might refinance with a predatory lender,” the report said. “They also would be used to support catalytic neighborhood redevelopment projects.”

“I first want to express my complete regret, sorrow, and responsibility for the charges I was recently convicted of,” he said in a 12-page letter to US District Judge Charles N. Clevert. “At sentencing, I will publically acknowledge my role as well as write you.”

McGee last month asked to be released pending his Oct. 24 sentencing. The US attorney’s office opposes the request.

McGee said in his latest letter that defense lawyer Calvin Malone did not present critical information.

“If you, or previous judges would have had all facts surrounding allegations that my behavior is indicative of a dangerous individual, I believe I would be out on bail,” he wrote.

McGee, whose extra-marital activities are a matter of public record, said he is a “family man – who has made mistakes in my marriage. I am not a rough, disrespectful, or violent person. I have dedicated my whole life to creating an atmosphere of peace and respect for each other – amongst individuals. I am not a drug dealer or gang member, nor am I loosely affiliated with illegal enterprises. I have, as well as my family — suffered through this whole experience humiliation.”

McGee, in his letter, discusses Jack Adel, a key government witness. McGee denies that he tried to block a block party organized by Adel and another figure in the case against him.

“The block party in question was requested at the same intersection where a twelve year old was killed in a hit and run accident,” McGee said. “Out of respect for the public and neighborhood outcry for traffic signals and safety precautions at the aforemention intersection, I respectfully requested that the planned event be moved to a block not widely traveled; or to the neighborhood school’s playground.”

McGee also denied ordering a “hit” on a man suspected in a break-in, and said slang language he used in conversation was taken out of context.

“Your honor, I have suffered greatly both physically and pyschologically since my incarceration on May, 28, 2007. I have been housed in three (3) facilities, and kept in the ‘hole’ for seven (7) months because of the ‘high’ profile nature and protection of my person. I have lost over 30 pounds and contracted shingles.”

The street in front of my house sucks. It’s got all sorts of potholes and it is a really, really, rough ride. Now that the wheel tax has been adopted and my neighbors and I don’t have to worry about special assessments, we’d like the street rebuilt. Now. No? If we don’t get services for the money, why the hell are we paying that wheel tax? And why does street X get rebuilt before my street does? My street is just as bad.

I also wonder if the folks who rejected street projects because of the onerous special assessments will get another chance now that there aren’t going to be those assessments. The rules have changed, after all.

The assessments, as outrageous as they were, at least functioned to moderate folks’ desire to have their streets repaired so the Department of Public Works wasn’t overwhelmed with demand. Now that those special assessments are gone, it’s doubtful that will be the case. There still is not enough money to repair all the streets that need repairing, but there is no motivation any more for residents to limit their demands for street repairs.

Watch out, aldermen, you got what you wished for. By the way, Ald. Murphy, Pinecrest Street really is in sad shape….