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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 15 May 2013 15:34 |
Conservation groups have a better idea for lakeshore land that failed as a tax base windfall
Examined through the telescope of hindsight, the decision 18 years ago to annex to the City of Port Washington the hundreds of acres of land known as the VK property looks like a mistake.
The land stretched far south of the city along the lake, past the Town of Port Washington and into the Town of Grafton. The development planned for the land seemed likely to become, as an editorial in this newspaper at the time worried, “an isolated Mequonesque enclave without ties to the Port Washington community.”
But annexation nonetheless was alluring in 1995. There was the mega-developer Vincent Kuttemperoor distributing heaps of money to buy up lakeshore farmland and talking about investing tens of millions more in a spectacular development to include luxury homes, a resort hotel and commercial center and even a marina. For elected officials eager to boost the city tax base, accommodating Kuttemperoor’s proposal for annexation looked like a surefire way to win the lottery.
It turned out that annexation did not buy a winning ticket. Instead of advancing the plans for the annexed Port Washington land, VK splurged on a similarly extravagant development in Naples, Fla., and went bust. The Port land, now owned by the bank that foreclosed on loans to the developer, has languished under agricultural zoning, yielding insignificant tax revenue. The oversized lift station built to serve the development (funded mostly by VK) is used at a fraction of its capacity, sitting at the south end of Milwaukee Street as a sort of monument to the failed VK extravaganza.
One way of looking at this is to say things worked out pretty well, because the land is now available for a better use—a lakeshore nature preserve. The Ozaukee Washington Land Trust and the powerful national conservation organization The Nature Conservancy are seeking to buy 210 acres of the land with help from Ozaukee County in the form of a small part of the purchase price and a commitment to own the park.
One reason this is a welcome initiative was expressed unintentionally in an ad in the Wall Street Journal offering the VK land for $18 million and touting it as one of the last large undeveloped tracts on Lake Michigan. That was meant as a pitch to developers, but the fact that the land is among the last of its kind is really a cry to save it for public access to the lake.
The Land Trust/Nature Conservancy proposal goes beyond preservation. It’s designed not just to protect a natural area, but to make it available for the public to enjoy. The model for this is the Lion’s Den Gorge, the result of a partnership between the Land Trust and Ozaukee County that has proven to be an immensely popular recreational resource while protecting natural resources.
City of Port Washington officials, however, are lobbying against the nature preserve plan. While it is not surprising that they are reluctant to write off the hope of salvaging some tax-base growth from the annexation, there are benefits to the city in the nature preserve plan that should be considered.
Making a large portion of the annexed area parkland would help get the VK albatross off the city’s neck. Absent the euphoria of instant tax-base gratification that made annexation look so wonderful 18 years ago, purchase of the land by a developer now would be a recipe for the kind of urban sprawl enlightened municipalities are trying to avoid—widely-spaced oversized houses on oversized lots far from the utilities that would have to be extended to service them.
And, clearly, a nature park with more than a mile of Lake Michigan beach close to Port Washington would be a city asset, an amenity for residents, an attraction for visitors to the city.
The Ozaukee County Board will consider the city’s concerns in deciding whether to support the nature preserve plan, but those concerns should be weighed against the reality that this opportunity to do something of lasting value for the people of Ozaukee County is fleeting. When it’s gone, it’s gone forever. The county and city should work with the conservation organizations that are willing to put up more than 95% of the cost to see that it doesn’t get away.
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 08 May 2013 15:23 |
Note to applicants seeking jobs in local law enforcement: Be ready to deal with four-legged perpetrators and victims
Security cameras helped nab a killer in Port Washington the other day. That wrongdoers can be caught in this manner is hardly breaking news in this age of burgeoning 24/7 electronic surveillance of public and private places, but this incident had some unusual twists. The murder weapon was a pickup truck. The victim was a whitetail deer.
A West Bend man called Port police at 5:25 a.m. to report that his vehicle had collided with and killed a deer and, by the way, he wanted to claim the venison. The collision happened on South Beach Road next to the We Energies power plant—not a good place, it turned out, to stage such an “accident.”
A power plant employee told police he had observed the truck waiting patiently for three deer to cross the road and then lurching forward and slamming into a fourth. The eyewitness account was confirmed by the plant’s security video. Instead of venison, the driver got a ticket for reckless driving.
The case of premeditated deer killing by pickup truck was probably a first for the Port Washington Police Department, but its officers are no strangers to animal crime investigation. In fact, taxpayers would probably be amazed to learn the cost of law enforcement involving animals in terms of police hours, injury claims and incarceration (boarding). Suffice it to say, small town police work entails a lot of interaction with creatures that are not human.
Ozaukee County Sheriff’s Department deputies had to deal with a case in April of a pair of pit bulls that were terrorizing folks in the Town of Saukville. So menacing were the free-running dogs that residents beseeched the Town Board for help. A woman told the supervisors a harrowing story of having to climb a tree to escape the snarling beasts—and this on her own property.
The town does not have a police force or even a dogcatcher, so the best the board could do was to ask the county for help. Latest word is that deputies have informed town officials that the menace has passed; the dogs are now in the custody of a pit bull rescue organization.
Welcome as this is for town residents, it is disappointing that it did not come with news that the dogs’ owner was facing some sort of punishment, a municipal citation at minimum, for allowing vicious creatures to be at large. In any ranking of nasty things you can do to your neighbors, letting pets notorious for clamping their jaws onto human extremities free to roam and intimidate deserves a place near the top of the list.
In Fredonia, the animal problem is cats, not dogs. It became the Village Board’s problem when a citizen appeared at recent meeting to ask for action to deal with the village’s large population of stray cats. “There are wild cats running all over,” she said. “They are spraying my home and having a good old time yowling at night.”
The trustees were sympathetic, but for want of a good answer tried to pass the problem off to the police. Village Marshal Mike Davel lobbed it back by pointing out that catching feral cats is something police are not really equipped or trained or to do. In other words, there’s a reason the term “herding cats” is synonymous with impossible tasks.
The marshal also informed the board that there is no law against feeding feral cats. The question came up when a trustee reported that sort of misguided charity is going on in the village.
The subject of cats that live outside and do not have owners is controversial, igniting a good deal of conflict among those who maintain the animals should be trapped and neutered and then allowed to lead their feral lives, others who like the trapping part but would make it a final solution by combining it with euthanizing the feral cats and folks who put out food for the wild felines.
This editorial page has no intention of getting caught in the middle of a cat fight. We’ll just make the following observation: A report signed by the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service states that feral cats spread disease and kill 3.7 billion birds every year. This pretty much tells us where bird lovers stand on feral cats.
But there’s more data to consider. The report also estimates that feral cats kill 15 billion small rodents annually, which may soften the views of gardeners battling voles, gophers and chipmunks.
Communities expect a lot of their police in dealing with animals, but cat control is clearly asking too much. On the other hand, just as Port officers apprehended a deerslayer, police are obliged to arrest anyone who tries the same thing with cats. Unsanctioned killing of cats, including feral cats, is a violation of state law.
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 01 May 2013 16:55 |
Village officials have been careful to a fault in considering it from every angle, and now it’s time to say, yes, we’ll accept the $600,000 gift
No one can say Village of Belgium officials haven’t done their due diligence in preparation for the big decision.
They’ve studied, examined, investigated, parsed, discussed and debated the issue for months, and now, it seems, the Village Board is ready to make the decision.
The big decision is to accept the gift of a new village hall worth $600,000.
Very few municipalities are lucky enough to face a decision like this. Belgium’s good fortune comes because Mike and John Ansay’s roots in the village go deep, and they want to help their hometown.
The brothers, successful in the business of insurance and real estate, want to give the village the money to build a new village hall on land they will provide without cost in their New Luxembourg development.
You could almost say Belgium has won the lottery, for the value of this gift will likely exceed the benefit of having a shiny new home for the village government. It will also help spur investment in a development that bodes well for the village’s future.
When the gift was offered, village officials did not exactly erupt in cheers. In fact, some expressed reservations. These included worries that the cost of the building (whose exterior design the Ansays will control) would exceed the gift, that the cost of a lift station eventually needed for the New Luxembourg development would be a burden, that extending the life of a TIF district covering the development site, as the Ansays requested, was not what the village planned and that finding a use for the old village hall would be a problem.
There was also some discussion about the Ansays’ motives. When the subject came up at a recent public forum, Village President Richard Howells addressed it like this: “What does this do for Mike Ansay? He hopes it will spur development around the village square. There’s not a single business person I know who’s willing to go into a project expecting a loss.”
True enough, but let’s first give the Ansays credit for uncommon generosity. A $600,000 gift is not diminished because it happens to fit the business plan of the donors.
And yes, of course, the presence of the village hall, just west of the Luxembourg American Cultural Center in a village square with business buildings and apartments, will be a boon to the development. That only makes the gift even more valuable to the village.
The future the Ansays see is of a vibrant village square surrounded by small, energy efficient, European-style homes, with architectural features reminiscent of Luxembourg setting the visual tone for the entire development. It’s a vision that should be attractive to all Belgium taxpayers.
The issues that worry some officials are good “problems” to have. The lift station, for one example, won’t be needed until 26 houses are built, which will mean the development is a success.
Monday, May 13, is D-day—decision day, the day the Village Board, barring any unfortunate second thoughts, accepts the Ansays’ gift. That will be a good day.
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