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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 20 March 2013 17:55 |
Inspired by tragedy, a citizens group is leading Port Washington in a long overdue effort to make the enjoyment of Lake Michigan safer
The drowning of 15-year-old Tyler Buczek in Lake Michigan was truly, as characterized in Ozaukee Press news stories, “the tragedy that broke the collective heart of the community.” And how the people of Port Washington embraced Tyler’s family with an overwhelming display of empathy and shared both their grief and their pride in their son’s extraordinary accomplishments in his too-short life was truly a testament to the community’s character.
That was remarkable, but not unexpected. It is natural for small-town communities to react to terrible events in their midst in this manner, though perhaps not to the amazing degree seen in Port Washington. Time heals, however, and often the good intentions expressed in the raw aftermath of those events fade.
But not here. A citizens group has worked with unflagging fervor in the nearly seven months since Tyler’s death in the waves along the north beach and is ready to launch an ambitious campaign that should go a long way toward preventing a repeat of a deadly lake accident.
The campaign will start April 17 with a presentation by the highly regarded Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project. Organized by the citizens group called the Port Washington Waterfront Safety Advisory Committee, with assistance from the Greater Port Washington Kiwanis Club, the program will teach fundamentals of survival and rescue in surf conditions typical of Lake Michigan. It’s a public event open to everyone.
This is crucial. Though an ever present fact of life in Port Washington, the lake remains a mystery to many residents, even as they are attracted to it by its beauty and recreational opportunities. Besides rescue lessons, the program will provide a primer on the power of a Great Lake.
The committee has plans for much more: informational signs on the city’s two beaches about dangerous rip currents and life rings and throw ropes on the north beach, the breakwater and the entrance to the south beach. There are plans as well for 911 call boxes and video cameras on the beaches.
These safety features, particularly the basic ones of throw ropes and life rings, have been needed for a long time on the popular city lakefront. This is another of those instances frequently seen in these times of strained municipal budgets when private groups have to fill a void on behalf of a public good that local government has failed to provide.
The absence of life rings and sound ladders on the north breakwater has, for example, been a standing invitation to tragedy for years.
Private fundraising will be needed to make the safety committee’s plans a reality, and we are confident organizations and individuals will come through to support this initiative. Nonetheless, the taxpayers should lend a hand. These are essential public improvements and room for financial support should be found in the city budget.
Employees of city departments should be tasked to check, maintain and replace the safety equipment.
Though tragedy was the impetus, the lake safety campaign is more than a response to last summer’s drowning. It is well-crafted package of education and safety aids that will add to the value of the city’s defining feature, its proximity to Lake Michigan. While making it clear that the potentially violent nature of that resource must be respected, it will enable its safe use.
This good work is being done in Tyler Buczek’s name, and we can imagine no more meaningful tribute than a lake safety initiative that will improve the chances that the community will not have to endure another heartbreaking accident like the one that took a promising young life last Labor Day weekend.
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 13 March 2013 14:39 |
It would be easier to put up with daylight-saving time if it did something good, like save energy, but there’s no evidence it does
Memo to conservative members of Congress: Please add abolishing daylight-saving time to your to-do list of changes needed to limit the intrusion of the federal government into the private lives of its citizens.
Daylight-saving time is a mandated annoyance that disrupts the lives of Americans while offering no offsetting benefit.
The “spring ahead” clock change last Sunday caused Wisconsin residents to give up an hour of sleep for the privilege of rising when mornings are still dark and having extra light after supper to watch snow melt at a glacial pace.
The purpose of this clock-setting by government decree is to save energy. If it actually did that, there might be a reason to continue putting up with it. But it doesn’t. It is more likely that daylight-saving time wastes energy.
That is evident from a study conducted by Profs. Laura Grant of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Matthew Kotchen of Yale University.
When some Indiana counties that had refused to go on daylight-saving time were forced to adopt it in 2006, it gave the researchers an opportunity to compare energy use with and without the effect of daylight-saving time.
They found that daylight-saving time increased energy bills in the affected counties by $9 million during the months of a year when it was in effect. They calculated that this added 188,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
The study found that the biggest energy-use increase under daylight-saving time is caused by morning heating in fall, but close behind is summer air conditioning.
If daylight-saving time does not save energy, why put up with a twice-a-year nuisance?
It might have made more sense when Benjamin Franklin suggested a voluntary version of daylight-saving time as a way to get an extra hour of daylight and save on candle use. More than two centuries later, we save a bit on our version of candles—electric lights—but blow the savings on air conditioning in the extra hours of sunlight.
Give Arizona officials credit for not letting that happen there. Because the last thing that sun-baked place needs is an extra hour of sunshine, it is one of two states (Hawaii is the other) that reject daylight-saving time.
Railing against overreaching by the federal government in everything from health care to school lunch guidelines is daily fare in Congress. Last year a number of House and Senate members made a fuss over federal rules that prevent the manufacture of most incandescent lights bulbs. The administration defended that Big Brotherly intrusion on grounds that the use of fluorescent bulbs saves energy. At least that claim, unlike the one about daylight-saving time saving energy, is true.
Congress has only itself to blame for daylight-saving time. Twice it has lengthened the number of months it’s in force, most recently in 2007 when it moved its start into winter on the second Sunday of March, thus giving many Americans weeks of black mornings and lighted evenings of no use. If doing away altogether with daylight-saving time is deemed too radical, its annual duration should be cut back.
Libertarians in Congress, unite! Save your people from the tyranny of daylight-saving time.
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News
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Written by Ozaukee Press
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Wednesday, 06 March 2013 17:13 |
Saukville’s refusal to agree that a DOT pact requires snow removal on walkways along Highway 33 deprives the public of the use of taxpayer-funded improvements
For a hypothetical exercise in culture shock, consider a lifelong resident of Florida moving to, say, Saukville last week. The bitterness of the cold and the ubiquitous piles of snow would be mind bending, but the most shocking revelation about life in the northern latitudes might be the display of sidewalk stewardship. What would the newcomer make of the hundreds of residents out in the elements engaged in the taxing physical labor of clearing a blanket of water-laden snow a foot or more thick from public walkways?
Denizens of the snow belt take this sort of thing for granted, but that makes it no less an amazing phenomenon—private citizens routinely doing hard work for the public good.
Yes, removing snow from sidewalks adjacent to private property by owners is required by ordinance. But here it’s done more out of a sense of pride and duty than out of fear of the consequences. Except in extreme cases, the law is not enforced because it doesn’t have to be. Residents of the communities of Ozaukee County shovel snow as a civic responsibility.
Make no mistake, for many dealing with the results of last week’s epic snowstorm, the work was brutal. Those equipped with only shovels or small snow throwers used muscle power to move what could have amounted to tons of snow from some stretches of residential sidewalk. All to make sidewalks safe and convenient for walkers.
This prodigious effort by private citizens makes any failure of government or commercial sidewalk stewards to do their winter duty all the more disturbing. Such a failure has been evident along Highway 33 between Port Washington and Saukville this winter.
Long stretches of the sidewalk and paved multi-use path beside the highway have been made impassible or treacherous by accumulations of ice and snow. This has not only discouraged pedestrians from using the route, but has forced those who insist on doing it, or in some case have to do it because walking is their only means of travel, to walk, run or ride in the four-lane highway.
The writer of a letter to the editor published in Ozaukee Press last week put that in perspective by pointing out that traffic on the road is deemed so dangerous that the U.S. Postal Service will not deliver mail directly to homes along it.
The path and the sidewalk were touted as significant improvements in the recently completed reconstruction of the highway, and rightly so. The old narrow-shouldered road without walkways was a menace to anyone on foot or a bike. It’s a sad comment that the marvelous improvements that came with the new road cannot be used during part of the year.
An agreement drafted by the state Department of Transportation calls for the city to maintain the portions of the path and sidewalk east of Jackson Road and the village to take care of the part west of that dividing line, even though some of the area for which they are responsible is located in the Town of Port Washington.
The city has met its responsibility, but Saukville has refused to plow snow beyond the village limit. Saukville Village Attorney Gerald Antoine informed Town of Port Washington Attorney Steven Cain in a letter dated Feb. 28, 2013 that the village contends the DOT agreement applies only to repair of the concrete sidewalk, not to snow removal on the sidewalk or to any maintenance of the multi-use path.
The letter goes on to say that the village “for the moment” and “at the village’s discretion” will provide snow and ice removal on the sidewalk, but “has no responsibility for the multi-use path and it will not perform maintenance or snow and ice removal on the multi-use path.” This narrow interpretation of the agreement the village signed when it authorized the Highway 33 reconstruction is hair-splitting of a high order that has the effect of depriving the public of the use of taxpayer-funded improvements. That hypothetical newcomer would be impressed by the citizen snow removal phenomenon, but would surely notice an embarrassing quirk: Homeowners break their backs to clear walkways but, in the case of Highway 33, their government doesn’t want to be bothered.
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