Photo credit: Troye Fox / UWM Photo
Last week’s meeting at the Mitchell Park Domes about parking meters in Milwaukee County parks revealed an overwhelming rejection of County Executive Chris Abele’s plan to impose another “revenue stream.” The Tuesday, Feb. 6, event drew more than 300 citizens, with nearly all opposing this latest attempt to “balance the county budget on the backs of those who depend on parks.” Among the many hand-made signs was one warning: “Chris Abele, Your Meter Is Running Out.”
A memorable image was of Abele fleeing the hall amid catcalls-—flanked by his two private bodyguards—the minute the first citizen was permitted to publicly speak. Abele exited without even a feigned excuse. He never addressed those attending an event cautiously staged by his office—down to a highly visible security presence inside and a police department command vehicle outside.
Meanwhile, Abele had stood off in a corner uttering sound bites to TV crews. He told them that no one, including himself, “likes the idea of paying for parking in parks,” as if explaining a brass-tacks situation to a child. Abele’s I-feel-your-pain riff was coupled with explanations about how his hands are tied by budgetary challenges. In any case, snubbing hundreds of constituents who had gathered on short notice on an 18-degree night, was a telling move for Abele, a billionaire’s son known for being detached and out of touch.
It had taken citizen and Milwaukee County Board efforts to even allow unfiltered public testimony. On Friday, Jan. 19, a Parks Department Facebook event page, the only official source of information about the meeting, announced the Feb. 6 “public-input session” from 6 to 7:30 p.m. It said there would be a presentation about paid-parking plans followed by small-group discussion opportunities to “provide input that will be used to develop a plan for this initiative.” It sounded like window dressing for a fait accompli.
County Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic, who co-sponsored a budget amendment regarding paid-parking proposals, instead urged using a town-hall format “where all attendees form a single audience” and can speak to all present. She told event organizers that constituents attending public meetings with breakout groups felt they were “designed to limit participation and control the outcome of what is discussed.” She was later informed that a town-hall format would be “incorporated,” news she shared through a memo and social media.
|
|
One reason citizens erupted at the meeting’s outset was that they learned that the first hour of the meeting, still scheduled on the official Facebook page for only 90 minutes, would be taken up with presentations by Abele administrators and small-group circles. After briefly participating in a county-staff-moderated circle, Ann Green of Milwaukee angrily confronted Teig Whaley-Smith, the county’s director of administrative services and the event’s apparent host. “Seriously, 30 minutes to talk about how we use our parks? I feel manipulated and treated like a 5 year old,” she asserted. Eventually, the crowd was told that anyone who wanted to speak could do so for up to two minutes, starting at 7 p.m.
A Moving Target
The only major new information Whaley-Smith revealed during a time-killing, dense-data slide show was that the top proposed hourly parking rate was now $2.50, not $2. That’s $1 more than the City of Milwaukee’s highest parking-meter rate. (Rates as high as $3.50 per hour had been floated.) Whaley-Smith also speculated that the county might pocket 60% of fees collected by a private vendor, a guesstimate extrapolated from income generated at several leased, county-owned, gold-mine lots in Downtown Milwaukee. No prospective vendors have hinted at potential revenue splits, so it’s anybody’s guess what a countywide operation requiring major start-up infrastructure and monitoring might actually yield.
When asked by a reporter how county administrators would address the fact that hourly parking fees of $2.50 could make many parks unaffordable for some residents, Whaley-Smith noted that they could still use their neighborhood parks, take public transportation to parks with paid parking or visit on a possible midweek “free day,” if the chosen vendor includes that. He stressed, “This is not something we just dreamed of to make parks less accessible.” If that indeed happens, apparently it would be someone else’s problem.
A Moved Audience
During two-and-a-half hours of public testimony, a chorus of civic leaders and other citizens voiced relentless, near-unanimous (98%) rejection of paid parking in parks. The audience respectfully listened and frequently erupted in spontaneous cheering. Repeated refrains included heartfelt appreciation for Milwaukee County’s parks and urgent pleas to keep them free, open and affordable for all. An MPS teacher was overcome with emotion when he asked how families could pay for parking in parks “when they don’t have enough money for food.” County Board Chair Theo Lipscomb and County Supervisor Jason Haas, chair of the parks committee, there to listen, stayed till the end.
Representatives of Preserve Our Parks, Urban Ecology Center, Fondy Winters Farmers Market, League of Women Voters, the Milwaukee Ultimate [Frisbee] Club and numerous park friends groups objected to parking fees in any county parks. Collectively, it would have made for good listening as a public archive. However, the Abele administration did not document the session through video or audio recordings. Written public comments will be posted on a county webpage.
Citizens recounted family picnics, beach outings, softball games, dog walking, bird watching and other park activities. Several people honored the contributions of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of American parks who designed three early Milwaukee parks. Others lauded the vision of Milwaukee’s parks-creating Democratic Socialists including Charles B. Whitnall, who one vivid poster said was “spinning in his grave.”
Some proposed funding solutions. Cheri Briscoe suggested raising the tax levy about $3 for a $100,000 home to bring in $2 million. Others supported a dedicated sales tax for parks. Ken Leinbach called for “harnessing the energy in the room to go to Madison together to lobby” to get more of the revenue that local taxpayers send to the state. Many predicted negative ramifications. An Ultimate Frisbee spokesperson said his group would stop leasing fields in county parks that charge for parking. “Then there will be zero revenue captured,” he said. “When fees go up, use goes down. That’s not the way to run a park system.”
A Groundswell of Rejection
The Winter Farmers Market coordinator calculated that shoppers and vendors would have to pay $75,000 in proposed parking fees to attend the popular Saturday morning market in the Domes Annex. She said they would surely relocate if parking fees are imposed. A parks friend who volunteers at three parks and walks his dog in Brown Deer Park twice daily said a $1 hourly parking fee for those outings would cost him $60 a month.
All this venting represented a groundswell rejection of Abele’s seven-year tenure as county executive. It’s now clear that parks are no longer sacrosanct community assets. He has initiated transfers and an attempted sale. Citizens should be nickel-and-dimed to fund their parks operations through ever-higher fees. But with such clear collective resistance to paid parking in parks, it seems likely the Milwaukee County Board will soon reject any proposed vendor contract.
Nevertheless, any board decision could be rendered moot. Abele has acquired a new trump card. He invested at least $350,000 in lobbying of the Wisconsin State Legislature to get legislation introduced in Madison last week that would allow him to proceed with this scheme, and others, without board approval. The Legislative Reference Bureau states that Senate Bill 777 “gives the county executive sole authority to exercise the powers… establishing parking areas” on lands owned or leased by the county, as well as giving the executive exclusive authority over procurement and contracting decisions, without county board review.
When Abele was asked why he wanted more power, he told Channel 58 that the bill would let executives run government “more efficiently,” to which Supervisor John Weishan responded: “I’m sure that Mussolini and Hitler said the same thing.”
