The Milwaukee County Parks System is beloved by many, but you could argue that one of its greatest champions is newly retired Milwaukee County Supervisor Gerry Broderick, who headed the county’s parks committee during some of the system’s toughest times. Broderick says he played defense for his 14 years on the board while county executives Scott Walker and Chris Abele failed to adequately fund the county’s award-winning “emerald necklace.”
In many ways the parks are thriving, thanks to the creativity of former Parks Director Sue Black, who launched the very popular beer gardens and gathered resources from volunteers and the public sector to make up for what the county wouldn’t provide. But the parks are also showing signs of distress, with more than $200 million in deferred maintenance, a shoestring staff and, most visibly, the temporary closure and possible destruction of the one-of-a-kind Mitchell Park Domes.
More warning signs are on the horizon. Last summer, thanks to a last-minute amendment slipped into the state budget, Abele now has the power to sell off county land with the signature of just one local real estate professional and no public bid or vote by the Milwaukee County Board. Although the provision protects land zoned as parks, it turns out that more than 40 parks throughout the county aren’t zoned parkland and could be sold in private to a private developer.
Broderick, a former Milwaukee cop and art teacher, sat down with the Shepherd to discuss the future of the parks system. He’s sharply critical of Walker’s and Abele’s failure to find a dedicated funding source for the parks and Abele’s near-unilateral power to sell off county land in secret. Here’s an excerpt from our very lively conversation.
Shepherd: You were elected in 2002 right after the supervisor in your district was recalled following the pension scandal and you’re leaving as the final bits of Act 14 are kicking in.
Broderick: I’ve been playing defense for 14 years. [laughs]
Shepherd: You’re leaving office just as the county board goes part time and the county executive who sought those changes just won re-election. How will this impact the parks?
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Broderick: The county government in a general sense has been diminished in several ways that are just unfathomable given the fact we supposedly live in a democracy. I think the most recent election was just evidence of the kinds of damage that an uninformed electorate can do at the polls. The results, particularly for the parks system, were in my opinion tragic.
Shepherd: Do you think the anti-county government folks have gotten what they wanted or is there still more to come?
Broderick: If you go back and review Sheldon Lubar’s master plan for the destruction of county government and the turning over of county responsibilities to the private sector, which is of course what it’s really all about, you’ll see that plan has been implemented almost to the letter. Again, tragic for democracy but wonderful for business. I mean, right now I think the Department of Administration is in the process of doing all they can to sell off as much land owned by the county, and some of it potentially park land.
And in fact, I felt that [Parks Director] John Dargle lied to my face in committee. Now, I like John and I understand the kinds of pressure that he’s under. But I asked him if the Parks Department had been approached by any potential buyers looking for land to be developed and he said no. I already knew that some offers were being pursued by businesses in Oak Creek and out on Brown Deer Road. Expect those to be sold sometime reasonably soon now that Abele has a four-year license to raise mayhem with our county assets. Poor John is often cast in the position where he simply has to misrepresent the facts when asked a direct question because he saw what happened to Sue Black—which, of course, has still never been explained.
I think I have some inkling about what that was all about. And I think that Sue and I are in agreement on that. Her dismissal I think followed closely Northwestern Mutual’s attempt to put out feelers on what it would cost to buy O’Donnell Park. And rather than the sweetheart deal of $14 million that Mr. Abele all but handed them, it’s my understanding she looked Mr. Schlifske in the eye and said, “Let’s start at $50 million and we’ll talk.” It wasn’t long after that that Sue was gone. Because she was representing the will of the people in our community. Why do you let the best parks director in the nation go?
Shepherd: Do you think Milwaukee County can take care of our parks system alone?
Broderick: Yes, given adequate resources. That’s always the question. But we’re going to see a movement for the imposed parks district by all of Abele’s buddies at the state, who are all Republicans, despite the fact he’s a Democrat.
Shepherd: What do you think of that approach, of spinning off the parks and putting an appointed body in charge of them?
Broderick: It’s really not about the governance structure. The governance structure we have works just fine. It’s about resources. And without a dedicated source of funding as recommended by the task force that [then-County Treasurer] Dan Diliberti led in ’03 we’re up a creek. It doesn’t matter whether a failing system is run by a parks district or by the county. If it’s not properly funded, it’s going to fail.
Shepherd: Do you think the sales tax is a nonstarter?
Broderick: No, the sales tax is something that the people wanted. I think the business community decided it was a nonstarter. But who the hell gave them the right to make those kinds of decisions on behalf of the public? These are private interests, these are for-profits, these are people who are lining their pockets at the public’s expense. How this is permitted to continue without a chorus of angry voices being raised is quite beyond me. I guess everyone is too occupied watching television and the lying ads that the executive put up tying Chris Larson to Scott Walker. I mean, is this a cartoon?
Shepherd: One of the very negative and false ads Abele ran late in the campaign was about Larson’s so-called tax plan, which actually was the advisory referendum that won 52% approval in 2008, which would have created a dedicated funding stream for parks, transit and other services by raising the sales tax 1 cent while taking these services off of the property tax rolls.
Broderick: Essentially, yes. Back in ’03, Dan Diliberti headed the task force that reported back on ways to save our slumping parks system. And serving on that task force, curiously, were Julia Taylor from the Greater Milwaukee Committee, Peter Beitzel from the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce [MMAC] and Patti McKeithan, representing, I’m assuming, her husband’s [Jack’s] interests. They took an exhaustive look at what it would take to salvage our parks system from the direction it was going in, which was collapse. They recommended essentially a sales tax. A group of us on the county board led the fight to get it on the ballot and in ’08 it prevailed. By a slim margin, but nonetheless when you ask people to tax themselves that’s pretty incredible when they come up and say yes. And that I think is an indication of how deeply felt our attachment to the parks is.
The association of commerce very actively opposed that idea. Most recently, [MMAC President] Tim Sheehy was before the finance committee and I made reference to the fact that they had opposed it. And he said, my memory is that we sort of sat that one out. I had to contrast that response with the reports that we were getting back at the time it was being discussed at the state from our lobbyists who were following the association of commerce membership from door to legislative door and reporting back that they were opposed to it and they were in the process of persuading legislators that the taps would be turned off if they didn’t behave themselves. Then, ironically, the association of commerce comes out with their own plan for a sales tax and how to spend the money.
It’s just another indication of the fact that local government is so much a captive of special interests that the people’s will is always, it seems to me, subverted in favor of the corporate will. It’s maddening when it was my view that I was there to serve the public good, not the corporate good, not the private good, and that was being stymied at every turn, as in the case of the sales tax, which should have been implemented. We should by now have eight years under our belt of treating deferred maintenance and so on and no such thing has happened because of corporate opposition.
Shepherd: Missing in those ads was the fact that people living outside our county, but spending money in Milwaukee would be contributing toward the upkeep of the county’s parks and assets.
Broderick: Right. About a third of the revenues would come from out of the county and we could decrease the property tax.
Shepherd: But Abele’s ad said it would raise taxes.
Broderick: Well, a lot in the ad was not true. But let me tell you the impact of the ads—if I could spend $4 million to convince someone of one idea, like I’m really a good guy, I could probably manage that with $4 million. What did Larson have, $200,000?
Shepherd: Thanks to a last-minute amendment to the state budget, Abele was given the power to sell non-park land without a vote by the county board, but it turns out that many parks aren’t protected from sale because they aren’t zoned as parks. Now it’s up to the municipal leaders to clean up this mess by rezoning the land. There’s the assumption that these municipalities will change their zoning, but I don’t know if that’s a correct assumption. If you’ve got a developer and some really nice land…
Broderick: Watch Oak Creek. Watch Oak Creek. That’s where I would focus my attention like a laser over the next year, year and a half, because we already know that they are looking to purchase county land, various entities in Oak Creek. Private companies. Or it may be that the municipality wants to develop one of those bait-and-switch ideas—we’re thinking about putting in a swimming pool and suddenly it becomes and industrial park. Anything for tax base.
Shepherd: Why not sell off park land?
Broderick: Where do I begin? A legacy has been passed down to us that this civic body has taken great pride in for generations. Now why not sell park land? Well, maybe in some cases you might want to sell park land but let’s have the public make that decision, not some Boston bungler who’s in from out of town and decides that he knows what’s best for Milwaukee.
Shepherd: You also led the opposition to leasing Kulwicki Park to Greenfield. Why did you feel so strongly that it shouldn’t be leased?
Broderick: It’s a very bad idea. In terms of Kulwicki, who would have access to the park once it’s operated by a municipality? Would they grant a license to the NAACP in Greenfield if the NAACP wanted to hold a picnic there?
It would create a two-tier park system. I think we’re going to see more of this too. We’ll see municipalities, particularly south and west, looking to control their own parks, which is contrary to all of the good reasons by which the parks system was brought together under one roof back in 1938. The economies of scale, purchasing, all the rest of it, the administration—do we want to have 19 separate parks departments? There are efficiencies in all of this and to reverse that idea argues against every economic theory that I’m aware of. It makes little sense and encourages duplication.
Shepherd: But the suburbs say the county can’t afford to keep up the parks and that they can do a better job. Why not let them?
Broderick: Yeah, and the inner-city parks can go to hell. Exactly. That’s what they’ll argue. Because they’re short sighted and self-interested. Anyone who values our parks system values it in its totality. If parts of it are enhanced while other parts are denigrated, that’s not something to aspire to.
Shepherd: Let’s talk about the Domes. What, exactly, is going on over there?
Broderick: Well, we’ve known for years that the Domes were in a mild state of disrepair. I think perhaps that state of disrepair has been exaggerated and once you kind of buy into the notion that perhaps it’s being exaggerated then you have to look for the motive there and see which direction that may be moving in and what’s really operating, whose agenda is really in play.
Shepherd: Can we talk about something positive? We’re talking about how dire the situation is but at another level a lot of the parks are really thriving, and the beer gardens and other activities and amenities have certainly drawn more people to them.
Broderick: All of those things were accomplished by Sue Black. I was initially really dubious about the notion of beer gardens. I foresaw, as a former law enforcement guy, that this would create more problems than it would solve. It’s turned out not to be the case at all. Sue was absolutely right about this. She is a visionary. That’s why she was fired. She was able to marshal resources from the private sector and well-intended people in the private sector who were all for doing what they could.
The real estate community understands that the value of a lot, if it’s across from a park, goes up 10% or 15%. Parks have that intrinsic value to any community that is manifold. There are so many positives attached to it. It’s all about the quality of life.
Shepherd: The Friends groups are also a huge bright spot in the parks. Where would we be without them?
Broderick: Sue Black started the Friends groups movement. There were a few around, but she used Lake Park Friends as kind of the grandfather of those and encouraged their development. There are well over 50, probably 60 now, Friends groups throughout our parks system that make regular contributions. There are volunteers out weeding, getting rid of mustard garlic and all of the invasives and contributing in big ways. This is all in recognition of the fact that there is no money to do it. And they’re witnessing the diminishment of something they value so. Our parks staff has been diminished by over two-thirds in the past 25 years. And we wonder about maintenance?
Shepherd: What’s next for you?
Broderick: I was invited to join the board of Preserve our Parks, which I am very interested in doing. But beyond that, I’m sort of letting it evolve.
For years I’ve stared at the dried-up old paintbrushes in my studio and thought about returning to more creative pursuits. We’ll see how that plays out. It was always a dilemma. As a young police officer I got my nose every night as a cop in the misery of poverty and crime and all the rest that attaches to it. And then I’d go to my classes at UW-Milwaukee, where I was an art student, and I’d approach the easel and every time I went to the easel I’d feel curiously guilty and self-indulgent because I wasn’t doing anything about that. And then when I got involved politically and I’d get immersed in that and look at the easel and kind of yearn. It’s been a dichotomy and it’s kind of screwed me up in a lot of ways. [laughs] I don’t know if I’m going to go in the direction of writing or painting or both but it’ll be nice to have the time to consider those possibilities.
