County Supervisor John Weishan said he will seek a delay in County Board action to sell County Grounds property to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for construction of an engineering school and other facilities.
The deal is to be considered by the County Board’s Economic and Community Development Committee during its March 9 meeting, scheduled at 9 a.m. in room 201-B of the courthouse.
Building an separate UWM engineering school when the research park already exists could create “two taxpayer-subsidized placed fighting over the same piece of meat,” he said. It might make more sense for the school to operate as part of the research park, which includes significant county involvement and land control, he said.
“Why are the taxpayers going to pay to put us in a bad competitive situation?” he said.
Weishan also said the proposed buyer of the property is a private foundation, not UWM itself, a public entity. He said he wanted to know more about how the foundation would work with the county.
“If I have a problem with a real estate foundation, I don’t know what course of action I can take,” he said.