Tough Luck

Well, it's been a couple of days, 'scuse me. Thursday, was the actual day of the meeting for the Milwaukee River issue, so I made it there. That was fun. The room was filled to capacity and the only true aristocracy manned the door, holding it open so folks inside wern't too blastin hot. The guests speakers from UWM, otherwise known as the foot in the door bait, talked up a storm. They not only promised to take over state government, but it sounded almost seditious enough like they were planning to take over the federal government too. The promises they made to us were completely outlandish. They did insist that our neighborhoods were crime ridden and that they would put a stop to it. Probably bust our kids writing on the sidewalks with that big chaulk.

At the end, the Aristocrat, mentioned above, forced a vote on the issue, the real hero of the evening! Everyone voted against putting the road through to Meineke except for one and a half people. [this Lakefront Organic ESB is really good with Oreo cookies]. So the deal is over according to Alderman D'Amato. So what are the consequences of this?

First and most important, will be to watch and see if the vote holds. There were only two non-white heads in a room of about 150 people in an area that's probably about 50% not-white. The last time we had a vote, it was for a basketball court in Gordon park - a mostly Black issue. There is no basketball court in the now long finished Gordon park. So much for the democratic class's authority. This meeting was a mostly white issue, even if the minority population at U.W.M is higher than at U.W.M.

The real consequence is that a hugh piece of the property along the river was supposed to be donated to the county to connect to Gordon park and make the migratory corridor more permanent in exchange for the 5 acre parcel north of North where the plans are for the 500 student dorm and two condo-plexes. Now assuming that when Scott Walker gets his hands on a piece of undeveloped property he doesn't immediately think of selling it to condo developers, the decision not to go through with this project was a bad choice. On the other hand, the entire property, the donated piece and the project piece is zoned for mixed industrial, which means it can have appartments, condos, factories and a bunch of other stuff done to it. So, both the U.W. guests and the exchange thingy were bait to accept the demolition of the migratory bird corridor so that the condo developers could continue to devalue their own property.

IIIFFFF... The city council were to somehow find the power, that they alone have, to invent a zoning category for the river (Milwaukee does not mean beer, that was just a beer slogan, it means "meeting place of the waters" in Ojibwe, yet the city can't seem to find the sense to invent a riparian zone category), they could zone all the river valleys and sufficient green space as is required by migratory birds, which extends past what the DNR classifies as riparian wetland, as such. In which case they would hold the upper hand in the deal, leaving open the possibility of the fool condo developers to do one last river wrecking project before the housing market collapses. The trick would be to get the city forestry department to plant a coniferous screen around the perimeter of the project.

Why? because, the main issue with migratory birds is motion. When something in the woods moves independently of the wind, they all freeze. If they can't see it, it doesn't bother them, although they do have a minimum area, below which they won't visit at all (the DNR never figured that out in their classification scheme either). Conifers also provide shelter and often a food source, so they tend to improve the general quality of an area for migratory birds, which would make up for the loss of space due to the construction thingy. If such an integrated situation were possible, without the road through the close knit neighborhood with all the kids riding bikes for the drunken college students to run over, the project could be done. But the cold, calculating ostensibly observing contractors have their own ideas and once they have the go-ahead, will do whatever they want (ever wonder how someone could bulldoze a meadow teeming with living things?). If a back door is required by the zoning code, they will build without it and bring the law in at the end and put the road through no matter what anyone promises at the beginning. How many times have we seen this happen in the past ten years?

Tough luck.