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SUPERVISORS
OVERRIDE WALKER ON PARK EAST DEVELOPMENT
County
Board approves community benefits compact
by John-David Morgan
February 3, 2005 |
The Milwaukee County Board this week placed high priority on investment in Milwaukee firms and workers in the development of the county’s 16 acres of Park East Corridor land, overriding County Executive Scott Walker’s veto of the Board’s community benefits compact.
An overflow audience of construction tradesmen, service employees’ union (SEIU) members and representatives, Teamsters, faith-based workers, clean environment advocates and community organizers erupted to a standing ovation in the boardroom gallery as the last of the 15-4 majority votes were cast and the compact withstood the veto.
County Executive Walker had raised funds last month to block the veto override, and had planned automated push-calling campaigns against supervisors supporting the compact. He backed off those plans when the state Elections Board advised that the calls would be misuse of campaign funds.
The county land compact sets goals for developers to contract with Milwaukee area companies employing county residents, contains a minority contracting percentage goal and sets two main requirements: use of state prevailing wage standards for the work and that parcels of land be set aside as greenspace.
The county is the largest Park East Corridor land stakeholder, and is set to begin accepting development proposals this month on two of its parcels.
Walker, in his veto message, called the compact an “onerous” provision that would lay “significant impediments to the path of redevelopment.” He also said it was “narrow” and of a “political nature,” and would put developers “at a serious disadvantage … relative to others developing on non-county land.”
“There seems to be a misapprehension that these goals are a mandated requirement,” said East Side Supe. Gerry Broderick in defense of the compact, noting that prevailing wage standards were in place during the construction of Miller Park and the Midwest Express Center.
“There is nothing new in the this,” Broderick said, noting that greenspace “tends to add to land value. You have to look hard to find any greenspace in this development plan.”
Given “the massive investment of public dollars” in tearing down the Park East freeway spur, Supe. Roger Quindel urged that Milwaukee companies and workers deserve a return.
“We can’t trust developers to [make local investment] on their own,” said Quindel, who represents Milwaukee’s northwest side. “And it’s not because they’re evil; they do it out of convenience. If it’s convenient to contract with a company from California, the company from California gets the work.
“We’re told it is an ‘onerous burden,’ that people in Milwaukee would have jobs, would have employment – that’s all this does,” he said, answering Walker and other compact critics. “They say this is not a worthy goal.
“We’ve heard all this before, over and over [with the Miller Park and Midwest Express Center projects]. If we want this to be done, we have to stick to our guns, stick to our goals so that local people get jobs, get work, so that in Milwaukee we don’t get the $6.75 an hour job. We want the $25 an hour job for doing the work.”
North Shore suburban Supe. Joe Rice, one of the four supervisors to back the veto, echoed Walker’s concerns, warning that developers “would go elsewhere” and Milwaukee County would lose investment money. Supes. Mark Borkowski, Paul Cesarz and Ryan McCue joined Rice in supporting the veto. Rice also argued that developers were locked out of the process of drawing up the compact, a claim rebuked by many supervisors, who oversaw a cooperative community input process.
“This was a public process,” responded Supe. Willie Johnson, who represents Riverwest and the near North Side. “The County Board is a public body. We have open doors. We told developers they could and would have their input.”
Despite opposition from the Metro Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and Walker, supervisors said they heard little complaint from constituents, developers or realtors. Many supervisors remarked that the dissent they did field came from parties who admitted they had not even read the compact, shades of the legislative concerns raised by conservatives during failed campaigns in the state last fall.
Other critics questioned why, if the city rejected a community benefits plan for its parcels in the corridor, the county was set to approve one for developers on county land.
“To say this is like to compact the city proposed is like comparing apples to oranges,” said near South Side Supe. Peggy West. “This is very different, and more doable. We don’t have a stringent, step-by-step A to Z process; it’s not there.”
“The compact only ensures that the minority community benefits, that everyone in Milwaukee County benefits from development in Milwaukee County,” she said.
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