LETTER: Precious Fredonia farmland threatened by 2-acre zoning

To Ozaukee Press:

My entire life has been in this area. I remember driving with my father at a very young age delivering seed oats in a 1950 truck. Heading west out of Waubeka every farm had dairy cattle. East of Highway 57 were all dairy farms. In later years, those farms were no longer in production. 

But all of these dairy farms are still here in a way. The large dairy farms expanded and took on what all of these smaller family farms did. The cattle numbers are still here. We still need farmland to produce crops to support farming. Many of the farms that stopped producing dairy products are still in operation as beef and cow calf operations. That means that the demand for cropland is greater then ever.

The Town of Fredonia was the first town in this area to work with the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission (SEWRPC) to create a land-use plan in the early 1970s. In the mid-1990s there was a development theft in the Waubeka area. Nearly 250 homes on 1-acre lots were proposed.

Several of us residents got signatures from residents and presented them to Fritz Koehler, the town chairman. He placed a moratorium on rezoning to A-2 1-acre lots. He then created a seven-member Long-Range Planning Committee. For a year and a half we worked on updating our long-range plan with SEWRPC. 

We have a good plan that has a balance in land uses. But there is now pressure by some Town Board members to create a two-acre agricultural parcel. They think that this will save farmland. However, it will do just the opposite.

They propose an A-4 2-acre parcel. This cannot support agriculture. The proposal will open up all agricultural parcels and be the demise of the farmland. Our land-use plan has an A-2 5-acre parcel and an upland woods 5-acre parcel. These sized parcels protect our rural character and our agricultural and wooded upland parcels from being chopped up into 1-acre lots.

The A-1 exclusive agricultural zoning is set at 35 acres to protect large parcels. Any new 2-acre parcel district would have to go through an update of the long-range plan. It would need an independent survey of the residents by SEWRPC. We have to keep tabs on the Town Board so they don’t try to slip this one through.

Stand up for the Town of Fredonia’s rural character and beauty and its agricultural heritage. Feed the people. I’ve been a warrior my whole life for this.

Christine Luft

Waubeka