Posted on November 13, 2018
Two items in the proposed 2019 budget drew protests from residents at the Nov. 5 common council meeting: $500,000 to repave, widen and add a 5-foot walking path on a portion of Milwaukee Street; and $500,000 to dredge Lake Nagawicka at the mouth of the Bark River.
Milwaukee Street
The Milwaukee Street project would be between Oak Street and Main Street, according to city documents.
The widening of Milwaukee Street, currently 23 feet wide, would be on the north side of the roadway and tack on an additional 2 feet. The 5-foot pathway would be on the south side of Milwaukee Street and go from Fireman’s Park west to Main Street.
A public information meeting about the proposal was held Sept. 13 at City Hall.
Alderwoman Jackie Valde, who represents the area where the proposed project is located, said she was not included in the planning of the project.
“The mayor has self-described this as the most proactive process in the history of the city,” Valde said in September. “I’m a teacher. I was home all summer when he was putting this together, and my phone didn’t ring. I had no clue.”
At the public hearing, resident Jackie Lyden felt the project would be a negative for the community.
“It is not leadership, and it is not vision to build a bunch of stuff you don’t need and can’t afford,” Lyden said. “It’s not wise leadership to pit neighbor against neighbor. These aren’t the lessons we want in this community. This project is destructive, divisive and financially foolish. Bad planning eventually affects everyone, and this is a very bad plan.”
Another resident, Chloe Wandschneider, said she does not support the project because it would require the city to borrow money.
“The cost of the path is endangering the city’s reserve borrowing dollars,” Wandschneider said.
According to a chart presented at the September informational meeting, the city conducted a citywide survey with 66 percent of respondents agreeing Delafield should provide multi-use paths separated from vehicle travel lanes for family bicycling that avoids healthy trees.
Valde said those results are misleading.
“The survey, it was overall like 80 questions, and if you read the question it says, ‘Do you support safe, separated pathways?’ Well I do, I just don’t support a half a million dollar project that plows through people’s front yards,” Valde said.
Dredging
The dredging project is an issue of safety and navigability, lake welfare committee chairman Mike Hausman said at the meeting.
“The mouth of the Bark River has gotten worse and worse over time,” Hausman said. “People get stuck there. This isn’t so much people who live on the lake, it’s really visitors because they don’t know any better.”
According to documents from a lake welfare committee meeting, area residents had previously spent $400,000 to have the nearby areas dredged at the mouth of the Bark River in the past. At that time, the proposed area in the 2019 budget was not included in the dredging area.
Documents also state several people had to be pulled out of the sediment-filled area by nearby property owners recently.
Resident Laura Schult was not in favor of the city spending half a million dollars on dredging.
“That $500,000 could be used to benefit everyone in this city, not just a few,” Schult said. “You pay a high price to live on the lake. I realize that taxes are high, but that is the cost of being on the lake. I’m sorry. If you cannot get your boat in the water, I have nothing to do with that. I don’t live on the lake; I don’t benefit from the lake.”
A final decision on the budget is slated for the Nov. 19 common council meeting.
Source: jsonline
