CITIZEN I Jim Rowen
Be afraid, very afraid, of multi-county planning
Madison could wind up getting shafted like Milwaukee has
Suppose you woke up, Madison and learned that renegade planners and highway-hungry engineers in the next county were recommending widening Regent Street, or Odana Road, or U.S. 51 from Sun Prairie to the Capitol Square, for the convenience of suburban commuters.Imagine that they tried to mollify outraged homeowners in the corridors with the siren song of "regionalism"
— and, as a fallback, ugly noise barriers.Things like this could happen if Gov. Scott McCallum's imperious decision to replace the Dane County Regional Planning Commission with a six-county planning agency is allowed to stand. It's happening right now in Milwaukee, where the powerful seven-county regional planning body has preliminarily recommended paving 658 acres for 127 miles of new freeway lanes. The plan would level 31 businesses and 216 homes.
Milwaukee, Waukesha, Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, Washington and Ozaukee counties constitute the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC). There are 21 appointed commissioners -three from each county. That gives the smaller counties, like rural Ozaukee County and its 83,555 residents, the same influence at SEWRPC as Milwaukee County's 932,012 citizens.
The six-county commission envisioned by McCallum would repeat these imbalances: Dane County has 432,654 residents, while Columbia County has but 53,365 people. None of the other counties in the new region
— Jefferson, Sauk, Rock or Dodge — have anywhere near Dane's population, let alone its tax base, racial diversity or urban character.Exacerbating SEWRPC's governance imbalance is the fiscal imbalance. Though Milwaukee County is underrepresented on the commission, its taxpayers contributed 36% of the SEWRPC's budget line collected from counties in 2002. Ozaukee County's contribution? 6.5%.
And how many SEWRPC commissioners represent the city of Milwaukee, whose 596,974 residents outnumber the populations in each of the six non-Milwaukee counties? Zero, because commissioners represent counties, not cities. Sounds like taxation without representation to the city of Milwaukee, and it will sound the same to Madison, too.
SEWRPC's structure, and the agencies that may be coming your way, disenfranchises minorities, people with low incomes, apartment-dwellers and non-automobileowning citizens
— the very people who are most in need of comprehensive planning.Real regional planning needs to be more than a buzzword that conjures up images of efficiency - something that goes on routinely between Milwaukee and the suburbs when it comes to purchasing, water sales, emergency mutual aid pacts and other basic activities.
Big surprise: that's what you can get if the planning body is appointed, really reports to no one and puts the city out of sight, out of mind.
So don't be shocked if McCallum's new commission buffs its new rural image by fleeing downtown Madison for a far-off site. SEWRPC just completed a move from downtown Waukesha (it never would have been caught dead with a Milwaukee address) to exurban Pewaukee, in Waukesha County.
Don't expect the fight against sprawl to be led from a site where there isn't a pedestrian, bicyclist, bus stop, train platform, apartment complex or coffee shop in sight. And certainly don't expect an emphasis on comprehensive planning with diversity in mind if the new digs are in a nearly all-white enclave.
SEWRPC's entire 11 member senior staff is white, as are all 21 commissioners, records show. From their remote, antebellum outpost, they launched their plan to ram new freeway lanes through the city of Milwaukee and to steamroll its critics.
One particularly onerous expansion would require an elevated double-deck freeway bridge near Miller Park at Story Hill, a premier westside locale that looks and feels like Madison's Vilas or Monroe Street neighborhoods.
Never mind that testimony at SEWRPC's public hearings ran overwhelmingly against expansion. Or that the Milwaukee Common Council voted 16-1 against the bridge or any
new lanes in Milwaukee County Or that Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist opposed all 127 miles of new lanes.How is SEWRPC handling that pesky opposition from Story Hill? it's top planner says noise barriers will be considered, but the Berlin Wall solution is not appeasing the heavily organized neighborhood. (See "Hood Happenings" on the area's very newsy website, www.storyhill.net)
Critics with impressive credentials don't fare much better. Walter Kulash, a nationally noted traffic engineer, came to Milwaukee this spring and said the SEWRPC vision was narrowminded and the plan-antiquated.
In great detail, with a riveting PowerPoint presentation, he showed how the plan was a wasteful investment that would hurt the downtown, the city of Milwaukee and closer-in suburbs. He cited better planning in Toronto and Cincinnati.
SEWRPC responded simply that Kulash was "entertaining."
Then there is the June 5,2002, technical critique sent to SEWRPC by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee planning professor Edward Beimborn, who has worked for years with the agency.
Beimborn said SEWRPC's highwayonly approach "doesn't conform to your own regional plan." He said SEWRPC was using 1970's traffic forecasting methodology that "desperately needs" updating. While praising SEWRPC's track record, Beimborn urged SEWRPC to submit the plan to peer review.
Regardless of the feedback, it's widely believed that SEWRPC will adopt its committee recommendation and urge the full expansion to the state transportation department, which would have to seek a gas tax or income tax increase to pay for it.
The recommendation and the "public input process" will be spun by SEWRPC and the two consulting firms hyping the plan as regional planning at its finest. That's because SEWRPC is accountable to no one. It produces sprawl. It is not cooperating with city residents. It is not a planning model for Madison's future.
CITIZEN IS A FORUM FOR ISTHMUS READERS. JIM ROWEN IS POLICY DIRECTOR FOR MILWAUKEE MAYOR JOHN NORQUIST. HE HAS A LONG HISTORY IN MADISON, INCLUDING A STINT AS AN AIDE TO MAYOR PAUL SOGLIN AND AN UNSUCCESSFUL MAYORAL RUN IN 1979.
©2002, Isthmus Publishing Co.