More dire news today for residents of Milwaukee County about our public spaces:
Milwaukee County would close all but four pools in its parks system next year, and lay off one-fifth of its full-time parks maintenance workers, under a 2007 budget proposal submitted Wednesday by Parks Director Sue Black to County Executive Scott Walker. – JS Online
This is really disheartening news to me for a number of reasons. The first and most important is our County leaders are knowingly and systematically killing off our public parks and pools. I don’t blame the parks director Sue Black, she was told last year to either slash funding for the parks or she’d be out of a job by her boss, County Exec. Scott Walker.
The only thing he can utter about the situation is, “None of this is easy”. Wow! Thanks for that insightful analysis Mr. Walker. That’s exactly the kind of response you’d expect from someone with the title of ‘County Executive’.
I’ve got a quick story about our County pools by the way.. On a hot day last Summer, my 12 year old nephew Tony, Jenny and I set off to our nearest County pool at Washington Park to cool off. When we showed up, we were surprised to find out that it was closed. One of the hottest days of the year, on a weekday, the pool was closed. OK we thought, we’ll try another pool.. Maintenance or something.
So when drove across town to Lincoln Park only to find that it too was closed. On one of the hottest days of the Summer, on a weekday. From the parking lot of Lincoln Park, we called the County Parks number listed on the ‘CLOSED’ sign only to get an automated voice recording thanking us for calling the Milwaukee County Parks system.
We were pretty disappointed to say the least, more even more so for the tens of thousands of kids from Milwaukee who have one less option for positive recreation while they’re not in school during the Summer. It’s ridiculous to hear some of the same politicians complain about unorganized ‘gangs’ of youths while they’re busy boarding up any kind of public service for those kids to keep them off the streets.
I don’t blame the county parks workers either. They’re just following marching orders as they nervously anticipate the next round of budget cuts that will bring the ax down on their job.
The bottom line is something needs to be done. Imagine a city the size of Milwaukee with only four public swimming pools. Imagine your kids not being able to play or enjoy a picnic in a County park because the grass is 10 inches long and you need a weed whacker just to make it from the street to a picnic table. Imagine the eyesore that hundreds of under-maintained or neglected County parks buildings will be when they’re left to rot because there’s no staff to take care of them or money to fix them.
The leadership of Milwaukee County just doesn’t seem to get it, and it’s not just Scott Walker either. The only thing Parks committee chair (and my County Supervisor) Lynee DeBruin could muster up about the situation is,
“It’s been difficult to close them because people love them. But the question is, can we afford the fix?”
Again, this is a real lack of leadership from someone who should be taking the reigns and finding a solution to the problem we’re facing as a County.
Instead, we’re getting verbal shrugs of indifference and rhetorical questions.
The real question is why aren’t our elected County officials doing more to solve this issue that we’ve all seen coming for years? The residents and visitors of Milwaukee County who enjoy our great County parks deserve an answer to that question, and soon.
I live in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, WI with my wife Jen, our daughter Emerson, and sons Carter and Colton.
I think they should just raise taxes.
Question: Are there many private pools in Milwaukee? Is this partly a problem of the County not willing to continue to pay for the pools because only poor kids use the pools? Perhaps the movers and shakers in the city don’t care about the proposed closures because those parents all send their kids to the country club to cool down during the summer?