A few topics to chew on as you drink your coffee or tea, or hot cocoa and try to warm up . . .
GOOD THING THE COUNCIL MEETING WAS CANCELLED
Maybe the Worker’s Compensation Fund might not get so much money. They had slated it to get extra money from the general fund so that we spent up to our Expenditure Restraint Program (ERP) limit. But with this snowstorm that is supposed to break the bank, they’ll like have to adjust that. Won’t impact our general fund quite the way this article says, since they were going to put that money into the fund (optional), instead, it will go towards plowing. At least that is what should happen. Of course, the Governor did declare a state of emergency, so perhaps the state will come through for us?
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE TO WEIGH IN ON EDGEWATER
Gee, I wonder what they will say . . . I’m on the edge of my seat!
The Economic Development Committee hold a special meeting at 5:00 pm on Monday, December 14, in Room 260 of the Madison Municipal Building, 215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. Please use the Doty Street entrance to get into the building.
This meeting is a rescheduling of the December 8 meeting which was cancelled due to bad weather, and has the same agenda. The agenda may be found at: http://legistar.cityofmadison.com/meetings/2009/12/8792_A_ECONOMIC_DEVELOPMENT_COMMITTEE_09-12-14_Agenda.pdf
METRO SPINS
Sound like many bus riders spent extra hours on the bus yesterday. Tales of two hour bus rides seemed common among my facebook friends. Lots of kudos for the drivers for handling the snowy conditions and not many complaints as the buses were stuck in the same traffic with everyone else. What did make me laugh was this:
Morning Madison Metro Announcement
Due to icy road conditions, Metro buses are running approximately 10-15 minutes schedule.
Drivers are maintaining schedules as conditions allow. Delays may increase through the rush hour.
Please plan extra time in your commute.
Evening Madison Metro Announcement
Thursday, December 10: 4:09 PM.
Due to icy roads, many buses are running 10-30 minutes behind schedule. Drivers maintain schedules as conditions allow.
Please plan extra time for your commute.
Optimistic group of folks they are! Sounds like they should have added an hour to that notice.
CITY WANTS TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
Sustainable Madison Information and Survey Available on the Web.
You can now view information regarding what Madison has done regarding sustainability and green initiatives from other cities.
You can also fill out an on-line survey and help the City priorities sustainability goals and initiatives.
BRUSH WILL BE COLLECTED
Sounds like the storm did quite a bit of damage to the trees . . .
Winter Storm – downed trees, branches and brush collection
Due to the heavy, wet snow Madison has many downed trees and branches. The city of Madison is asking citizens to do the following:
Street Tree – if a street tree or branch, by definition a tree planted in between the street and sidewalk, is blocking a street or sidewalk or if there is a hanging branch, please call 266-4816 to report the damage. City Forestry crews are currently responding to over 200 calls for service on damaged trees.
Private Tree – if your private tree was damaged, you may need to call a private contractor to address the damage.
Brush collection – please place the brush for collection on your property’s terrace just as you would normally. City crews will collect the brush after they have completed the clean up from Tuesday’s storm. The brush may not be collected immediately and we ask for everyone’s patience as city crews continue to work on the clean up.
You may also bring the brush to the Streets Yard Waste Sites. They are open Monday – Friday, 7:30a.m. – 3p.m.
East: 4602 Sycamore Ave. West: 1501 W. Badger Rd.
For more information on winter in Madison Parks, visit www.cityofmadison.com/winter
WOW, THAT WASN’T FAIR
The Tenney Lapham Neighborhood and others have been talking about a two-way Johnson and Gorham for years, its been in city approved plans for years. There are even plans for where the stop lights would go and that have identified costs and issues to be resolved. We just decided to get the Downtown Plan done first. When talking about this, the neighborhood was looking at slowing down traffic, returning the neighborhood to a more family friendly place with hopes of getting more owner-occupants downtown, quality of life issues like noise and actually being able to open your street facing windows in the summer and still hear the tv, making it easier to cross the streets and much, much, more. But how does the new alder frame the issue?
Ald. Bridget Maniaci, who lives on Johnson Street, has mixed feelings about the idea. “There are a lot of good reasons to do it, but we don’t have a lot of data,” she says. “We have to [show] why this is good for the city, not just that property values will go up.”
What?! In all the discussions, pro and con, this hasn’t been the issue. Every time she insults her constituents, I feel a greater sense of responsibility for letting my neighbors down. I think they deserve an alder that supports their positions, not insults and dismisses them.
STRANGER STILL
This is the email sent to the neighborhood listserve last week, in the middle of the Edgewater controversy:
On a non-Edgewater related topic…
A number of folks in the neighborhood have been interested in the long-term prospects of turning Johnson and Gorham Street back to two-way streets. Our council staffer, Lisa Veldran sent the following article to council members, and I thought it’d be worth it to send it on to you all and weigh in on. It’s not that I’ve been totally skeptical, but such a prospect would require a lot of planning for our neighborhoods and a lot of city resources (millions of dollars) that requires broad city-wide buy-in. If our neighborhood wants this to happen, we need to embrace the full realization of what needs to happen and the full planning and impacts of the proposal. So let’s try to be real and check the pie-in-the-sky philosophies at the door on this one moving forward and get working on the hard issues.
Some thoughts on how it could happen (maybe):
1) the major stumbling block to this idea is the intersection of Baldwin and Johnson/Gorham. One idea I’ve visualized is to put in a large roundabout to get access to both Johnson and Gorham Street. That roundabout would likely require the removal of the CDA assisted living facility on the peninsula between Johnson and Gorham to be consolidated with a new (larger, denser) replacement housing facility where the Baldwin Street facility and parking lot currently stands.
Pro: that housing could probably use to be upgraded & use more efficient use of the Baldwin lot.
Question: what happens to the residents of that housing while construction is underway?
Question: How much money would be required for new CDA housing & for the intersection reconstruction. My stabs in the dark: $3-4 million for the intersection, $7-10 million for the new housing (variable depending on underground parking).
Con: Streets city staff is totally opposed to this idea. Many alders are leery of this idea because of the impacts to their constituents’ commutes and questions of manuverability (think Badger football weekends). Substantial studies need to be done to determine traffic flow patterns under this scenario. We need to hear what CDA’s plans for their facilities are.Question: who’s going to pay/do those traffic studies? What reasons outside of our own parochial interests are there to convince Alders and city-staff that this is in the best interest of the city?
2) We usually talk about the farther end of the neighborhood, but what about the impact to the near isthmus neighborhoods?
Concerns I have: Blair Street is a small, residential sized road. We don’t have our infrastructure built to handle the transfer of massive amounts of Johnson Street traffic to E Wash via Blair Street. -Blair St. reconstruction needs to get into the 5-year city budget & stop getting pushed back as it is because the road is falling apart.Also, I’m very concerned with turning N Blair Street, which is residential, into a car-laden thoroughfare more than it already is (even if we physically had the street in a condition to handle the traffic). There is a great divide on S Blair between neighborhoods stemming from it’s highway-like nature. N Blair has a very different character and I don’t want to see a divide and disconnect develop when it’s a continuous neighborhood from one block to the next. How do we mitigate that? -Could N Blair Street also turn 2 way? Would that do anything?
3) What is the cost to our neighborhood in real metrics under the current situation? What are our goals for change and can we make the case for millions of dollars such a plan would require for our neighborhood? How is our residential character & local businesses different/ more deserving of attention than other major thoroughfares throughout the city (Whitney Way, Midvale, Mineral Point Road, Bassett/Broom, Willy St.)
Some of these points are easier than others to work through, though none are simple. The Baldwin intersection/CDA tie-in is a 10 year plan idea. Other questions: Are any federal road funds available? This part of Johnson isn’t a highway (like E Wash is). Are parking issues at all intertwined in this? What sorts of parking improvements could be made? Would we lose street parking by going 2-way? If so, how much?
The last sentence in the article hits the quandary on the head:
“I wouldn’t argue that two-way streets are any sort of panacea for urban revival, Vancouver’s experience notwithstanding. And I understand that they are not always practical. Some streets simply are too narrow to have traffic moving in both directions; others have to be designated one-way because their purpose is to feed traffic onto expressways. What I would say is this: When it comes to designing or retrofitting streets, the burden of proof shouldn’t fall on those who want to use them the old-fashioned way. It should be on those who think the speedway ideology of the 1950s serves much of a purpose half a century later.”Let’s see if there’s a way to work forward on this idea, but I ask you to acknowledge the amount of work and time ahead and realize that our neighborhood won’t get everything we want out of this process. We have to be cost-conscious, realistic and pragmatic if we want this to go from a nice idea to a functioning, improved reality, if indeed this concept operates in the best interest of our neighborhood.
Like I said, Traffic Engineering has done the studying, and it will cost a little over $600,000 in 2008 dollars. There’s so much else in there to respond to, I don’t know where to begin.
IT’S ALL ABOUT ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Immigration, that is:
Washington D.C. – The Immigration Policy Center has compiled research which shows that immigrants, Latinos, and Asians are an important part of Wisconsin’s economy, labor force, and tax base. Immigrants and their children are a growing economic and political force as workers, consumers, taxpayers, and entrepreneurs. With the state working towards recovery, immigrants and their children will continue to play a key role in shaping the economic and political future of the Badger State.
Highlights from Wisconsin include:
* Wisconsin was home to 252,150 immigrants in 2007.
* 41.2% of immigrants in 2007 (or 103,291 people) in Wisconsin were naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote.
* Latinos accounted for 4.8% (or 268,879) and Asians 1.9% (or 106,431) of Wisconsinites in 2007.
* The 2008 purchasing power of Latinos totaled $5.3 billion and Asian buying power totaled $3.0 billion in Wisconsin in 2007.
* If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from Wisconsin, the state would lose $2.6 billion in expenditures, $1.2 billion in economic output, and approximately 14,579 jobs.There is no denying the contributions immigrants, Latinos, and Asians make and the important role they will play in Wisconsin’s political and economic future. For more data on their contributions to the Badger State, view the IPC fact sheet in its entirety.
* New Americans in the Badger State (Wisconsin)
DIDN’T EVEN TRY
Our house was fully shoveled by 10:30 or so, but still, no mail. Here they explain why the creed is dead. Not a bad excuse, probably a good decision. Just sayin’, the times they are a changin’.
SPEAKING OF CHANGES
You may have noticed I’ve been playing around with the look of my blog and what extra tools are available on it. And I’m allowing anonymous comments. It’s all a big experiment, so let me know what you like, and what you don’t. Looks like I may have added too much, as its loading a little slowly. It’s work in progress, feedback welcome.
