Wisconsin Republican lawmakers and perhaps the Democratic county executive seem hell-bent on dismantling not only Milwaukee County's parkland "necklace," but also upon breaking up the three jewels of that necklace’s setting, too. Those jewels, one of which is pictured here, are the glass domes of the Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory. www.google.com/...
Billed as “Milwaukee’s living landmark,” the Domes, as local usage has it, enclose an impressive set of outdoor environments under towering, crystal-like, brassiere-shaped structures.
Once again, in Milwaukee as in too many other places across this nation, taxpayers and residents at large are not only facing the awful outcomes of deferred maintenance, but a deferral and even denial of democracy itself.
A new consultant's report suggests that the Mitchell Domes, built in the 1960s and one of the region's most treasured public spaces, may require refurbishing or maybe rebuilding at a cost of up to $75 million. www.jsonline.com/... That prospect raised the eyebrows of County Executive Chris Abele, who has overseen the continuation of a decades-long deferral of critical county maintenance needs. Those deferrals have endangered the county's amazing 40,000-acre public park system, the Eero Saarinen-designed War Memorial building and other facilities.
The list includes the Milwaukee County Courthouse, a massive Classical Revival structure on the national historic list, where outdated electrical systems caused a hugely damaging fire several years ago. It includes the O'Donnell Park parking structure, where in 2010 a concrete slab abruptly fell, fatally crushing a teenager and injuring two others. That happened on the watch of an earlier county executive, an obscure fellow named Scott Walker, who exhibited an especially acute, deferred-maintenance fetishism.
The sad fact is that none of these tragedies and witherings of public pride needed to have taken place. Among all the deferrers of the public trust, the biggest culprits of all may be the people who run state government, where for years governors and legislators seem to have had their own fetish: Ignoring Milwaukee's needs and the will of the local electorate.
In 1996, Gov. Tommy Thompson was pushing hard to build a new ballpark for the Milwaukee Brewers and as part of the deal rammed through the legislature a 0.1% sales tax to help pay for it. Milwaukee County residents voted against the tax in an advisory referendum, but the legislature blew that off and imposed the sales tax on the county and several adjoining counties, and for good measure approved a non-elected board to manage what became Miller Park.
In 2008, foreseeing a funding crisis in local public services and amenities, Milwaukee County residents in another advisory referendum approved creation of a 1% sales tax to fund county parks, recreation and cultural programs, mass transit services and emergency medical services. The sales tax would have taken these entities off of the much hated and politically problematic property tax. Again, however, the legislature chose to ignore the will of the local electorate. Thereafter, then-County Executive Walker continued to dial back the maintenance budget for parks, the county transit system and cultural institutions.
Then, in 2015, the legislature once again dumped on Milwaukee County taxpayers, voting to approve "state" aid for a new Milwaukee Bucks basketball arena. I put "state" in quotes, because the deal was so structured as to make the supposedly awesome state contribution relatively minimal. Walker, by now the governor, talked about the state's $200 million public contribution, but the final numbers didn't even come close to that level of support.
Upstate residents, stuck on that original number, remained furious Milwaukee would get a new arena through their taxes. However, the truth is that most of the public costs for the private venture are being extracted from Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee -- the government entities least fiscally able to manage those costs. The Bucks arena will cost close to half a billion dollars and will represent decades of continuing local public indebtedness.
And now come the Mitchell Domes, beloved and treasured by residents. The three domes -- not strictly geodesic, in the Buckminster Fuller regimen, but close to it -- are 85-foot-tall artifacts of glass and steel, futuristic greenhouses respectively devoted to preserving an arid desert climate, a rain forest, and a changeable environment used for special exhibitions. That last dome has become a favorite place to stage weddings, a big revenue boost.
But recently a chunk of concrete a couple of feet wide fell from near the top of the arid-environment dome. The chunk fell from concrete that coats the steel superstructure's joints. A half century of moisture infiltration and temperature shifts, produced cracks not only in the cement but also in some of the huge glass panels making up the domes. Temporary patches failed to hold, so the county shut down all three domes this weekend while it arranges a more ambitious repair.
And then came word of that engineering consultant's report warning that refurbishing one of the state's greatest man-made landmarks could cost up to $75 million. The price tag if true might sound huge, but it is only about a sixth of the cost of either Miller Park or the new Bucks arena.
Nevertheless, the report led County Executive Abele in a news conference to suggest that the community needs to ask itself: "Is this what we want to do going forward, replicate the domes again?"
Well, your correspondent, a Milwaukee County resident, is one member of the community who emphatically says yes. And I think a lot of other residents are with me.
The Domes are a matter of local pride and are one, or rather three, of a kind. Other cities much more recently have erected glass conservatories that to some extent approach the grandeur of the Mitchell Domes, but the Domes remain original, and they are generally beloved among locals.
Catching a glimpse as you ride past them on I-94 heading toward downtown Milwaukee, the Domes from a distance appear utterly futuristic, even after all these decades. They are a struggling remnant of an era when Milwaukee's city and county leaders, public and private, took a number of truly bold steps to mark urban Milwaukee as something special in Wisconsin and the world at large.
The problem with aspiring toward greatness, of course, is that you can never stop aspiring. That progressive, ambitious animus drove Milwaukee's development to the point where, in the late 1950s, it was the nation's seventh largest city. Now that animus is mostly awash in enui, as local and state leaders wring their hands and tell us what they can't do. Or, more accurately, what they refuse to do. And it isn't just Republicans who are pushing hard on the brakes.
In his first four-year term, Abele, ostensibly a liberal Democrat, has worked deals with Republican legislators in the state Capitol giving him more one-man authority to run the county and in particular to singlehandedly decide to sell the county's publicly owned properties. In theory this power doesn't include county parklands, and Abele has said in reaction to vocal skeptics that he has no such designs.
But the new permissive law remains troubling and even in the most benign interpretation might let the county executive unilaterally sell off non-park properties, such as Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Abele already tried to sell O'Donnell Park, but was rebuffed by the County Board, leading to the new law limiting the board’s power.
Privatization, like deferred maintenance, is a fetish among Republicans, and the business-oriented Abele seems to lean in that direction, just like Walker, his GOP predecessor.
In fairness, Abele has along with the Milwaukee County Board previously put some money toward temporarily patching the Domes, repairing the Courthouse and working a deal to rescue the endangered War Memorial building, another architectural gem that was deteriorating rapidly.
Nevertheless, you can lay much of the blame for all this deferred maintenance on the conservative meme that, as Walker has often liked to say, "We're broke," and so can't afford millions or tens of millions of dollars to keep public treasures and important public services in good working order. Primary blame goes to Republicans for implementing that meme legislatively -- but only selectively.
Cooperate with Green Bay and the Packers? No problem. But for Milwaukee, the GOP response is almost always this: Whatever the local citizens and their elected representatives want, Republicans chose to do the opposite, which sometimes means doing nothing and other times meaning sticking the locals with an unwanted bill, as in the case of the Bucks and Brewers playgrounds.
In rejecting local project planning and funding ideas, even in some cases making them illegal (as Republicans tried to do in shutting down Milwaukee's new streetcar line), it's almost as if Republicans think they are dealing with the City of Obama and the County of Obama. Any Democratic placeholder will do, apparently.
But here's the thing: Wisconsin without Milwaukee would be Iowa. Still a nice place, but not world-class. Even now, the most populous county by far faces insufficient budgets and further obstructions from the state Capitol. It comes down to fewer cultural or recreational wonders alongside crappy public services, brought to you by your suburban and rural tormenters.
It might satisfy Republic schadenfreude to knock Milwaukee off balance, but Milwaukee is also the state's number one economic engine, and remains that way despite years of neglect in every quarter. Among the state's 72 counties, Milwaukee County also is home to 16 percent of the state's entire population. Mess with it at your peril, state lawmakers.