Category Archives: Uncategorized

Jackie Ove, Public Health Administrator of the South Milwaukee Health Department, recently received the prestigious award of 2010 Health Officer of the Year.

Congratulations, Jackie! It’s a well-deserved honor.

Learn more on the front page of the city’s website.

The South Milwaukee Downtown Market is returning bigger and better in 2010.

The outdoor street market — billed as a “farmers’ market … and so much more” — will be held every Thursday starting June 3 on 11th Avenue, south of Milwaukee Avenue. Hours are 3 to 7:30 p.m. in June, July and August and 3 to 7 in September and October. The market concludes October 14.

We’ve made a number of upgrades for 2010 and have added some great new vendors, including those selling fresh meat, eggs, cheese and honey. We’ve also added more prepared food vendors, so why not do a little shopping and then stay for dinner?

Also, enjoy our expanded site, new seating area and entertainment options — including some great music.

Check out our press release for more information. Also learn more at our website, and be sure to add us as a friend on Facebook.

It’s truly been a pleaure to be a co-founder and active participant in this event, and I am so very excited to see it take off like it has. We hope to see you there this summer, and tell your friends!

Here are some other Journal Sentinel headlines of interest from around the South Shore …

• Agreement in Works with Former Cudahy Judge Over Case Backlog
• Waukesha Mayor Sets Water Meetings with Oak Creek, Racine
• Amateur Golf Overcomes Obstacles
• South Milwaukee Water Bills Expected to Spike

Thanks to everyone who joined us for this evening’s public information meeting on the Pennsylvania/Nicholson Avenue reconstruction project.

The crowd was larger than I anticipated, but maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised given the nature of the project. There was a good mix of Oak Creek and South Milwaukee residents, and most came with an open mind.

I hope everyone had a good chance to study the two four-lane options — divided and undivided — and had most, if not all, of their questions answered and concerns addressed. There will be additional chances to offer your feedback going forward, and I pledge to keep you posted on those.

I, too, continue to learn more and more about this project, and I appreciate all the feedback I’ve been given so far.

Do not hesitate to contact me about this going forward, and feel free to post comments below.

And don’t forget that there is still time to submit written comments. Comments are due June 11 to Foth Infrastructure & Environment, 2514 South 102nd Street, Suite 278, West Allis, WI 53227, Attn: Munzer Haidar, P.E.

A woman confessed to stabbing a man during an altercation inside one of the Alpine Meadows apartments Tuesday evening, police said.

The 51-year-old man suffered injuries to his arm, chest and leg and was taken to Froedtert Hospital for treatment. The 49-year-old woman was taken to the county jail, and charges could come later this week.

Learn more in the full press release. I’ll keep you posted when I get more details.

The 4th District is seeing its share of road improvements.

In 2010, it’s 15th Avenue. In 2012, it’s going to be Nicholson Avenue.

Now there’s one on the drawing board for 2011: College Avenue between Nicholson and Packard.

The roughly one-mile project — funded with federal stimulus money administered by Milwaukee County — includes pavement patching, signal improvements and pavement grinding, according to a public information meeting notice I saw today.

When completed, it will create a first-class road from Packard west to Howell Avenue. As I’m sure you know, extensive work on College around the airport is already underway and continues into 2011.

Want to learn more about the project? A public information meeting will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. on Wednesday, June 2, at Cudahy City Hall. You may also contact Mike Malcolm, project manager for OMNNI Associates, at 920-830-6175 or via email at mike.malcolm@omnni.com.

Don’t forget about the upcoming public information meeting on the Pennsylvania/Nicholson Avenue reconstruction.

Stop by anytime between 5 and 7 p.m. at City Hall, 2424 15th Ave., to learn more about the project and the two most viable alternatives.

Check out my previous post on this topic here.

I hope to see you there and look forward to hearing what you have to say about the project.

The South Milwaukee Police Department has a couple events planned for the summer.

• The 10th annual DARE Golf Outing is at 8 a.m. on Monday, July 19 at Oakwood Golf Course. The four-person scramble event costs $65 person. Contact Officer McLean or Officer Kozlowski for more information and to sign up.
• The ninth annual South Milwaukee Community Night Out event is from 5 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, August 12, at City Hall. This first-class event includes booths, games, food, entertainment and fireworks.

Learn more on the Community page on the SMPD website.

The South Milwaukee Water Utility has prepared a letter to residents who have questions and concerns about the 52 percent rate increase it is seeking with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

Click here to see the document. From it:

If the PSC grants this increase, customers may see an increase of approximately $8.00 to $10.00 per month on their water bills. How the PSC arrives at applying the increase is to be determined, and the increase to individual customers will vary with water usage. …

It’s important to provide residents some background on how we got to this point. There are a number of reasons behind the rate increase, including:

• Mandated plant improvements;
• Declines in industrial water use; and
• Improved conservation efforts (low flow appliances, toilets, washing machines, shower heads) resulting in declining residential water use.

The plant upgrades were a significant contributor – but also a necessary one …

The down economy has only served to drive that increase higher. South Milwaukee began to feel the effects of the struggling economy just when the upgraded facilities were placed into operation, and we began to realize that many of our heavy water users (industry and manufacturing), as well as many smaller users, had cut back on water consumption. Today, water consumption is running approximately 20% less than projections. This, in turn, impacts Water Utility revenues.

The Water Utility is also encouraging residents who have questions, comments or concerns about the rate increase to call them at 768-8070.

As I wrote about last week, a large water rate increase is in the offing. Now we know the proposed size of that increase: 52%.

Learn more in this Journal Sentinel story.

I’ll have more to post on this in coming days. And feel free to post your comments below.

You can see my previous posts on this here and here.

City Engineer Kyle Vandercar had an excellent presentation about the planned Nicholson Avenue reconstruction project on Tuesday — a preview of the public information meeting planned for May 26.

• You can see a copy of the fact sheet shared at the meeting here.
• Click here to see the letter sent to area residents promoting the public information meeting.
• And here is a PDF of the official public information meeting notice.

I hope to see you at the meeting, planned for 5 to 7 p.m. next Wednesday at City Hall.

The meeting on Tuesday night provided me my first real glimpse at the options, and I like what I saw.

I go into this thinking some type of widening is necessary to address what I believe is an unsafe road that can no longer handle the amount of traffic that uses it every day. The two options on the table are both four lanes — one with a median, one without. There are pros and cons of both, and I’d like to hear what you think at the public information meeting … and learn more about the project myself.

South Milwaukee is joining other area communities to put our best foot forward with real estate professionals at the industry’s largest leasing event starting this Sunday in Las Vegas.

City Development Director Danielle Devlin is attending the International Council of Shopping Centers convention to promote our city-owned development parcels and other redevelopment opportunities in South Milwaukee.

It’s part of a larger effort to promote the area around Mitchell International Airport via the Airport Gateway Business Association.

Learn more in this Journal Sentinel story. From the story:

Representatives from Milwaukee and some of the suburbs that are members of the Airport Gateway Business Association are cooperating to staff a booth at the convention to promote the area within a 15-minute drive of the airport as a place to do business.

Efforts to promote urban airport complexes – dubbed aerotropolises – have been around for years at a number of cities across the U.S. The local effort focuses on cooperation among eight municipalities near the airport: Milwaukee, St. Francis, Cudahy, Oak Creek, South Milwaukee, Franklin, Greenfield and Greendale. Most of them will have at least one person at the International Council of Shopping Centers convention, said Tom Rave, executive vice president of the Airport Gateway group.

But they will not be promoting any particular retail venue, Rave said. With 15-minutes-from-the-airport as the defining criteria, the effort would include Milwaukee’s Third Ward as well as the downtown, where retail vacancies abound, particularly in the Shops of Grand Avenue. In Greendale, Southridge has lots of space looking for tenants at the south end of the mall.

I’m glad South Milwaukee is a part of this effort. I’ve said since my campaign that we need to do a better job of selling ourselves as a city, and this is a great way to do it. We have a great story to tell, and we’ll be telling it in the City of Lights.

Good selling, Danielle!

Pavement reconstruction work is scheduled to begin this week on 15th Avenue.

Work is being done in two phases, with phase one from College Avenue to Oak Creek Parkway. The second phase goes from Oak Creek Parkway south Rawson.

Learn more in this letter sent to area residents. From the note:

Emergency vehicles will have access to the area at all times. Local emergency services have been notified of the construction schedule and will route emergency vehicles accordingly. There will be no on-street parking in areas of active construction. The Milwaukee County Transit System has been notified and will be rerouting bus lines to accommodate construction. Please be advised that some driveways, sidewalks and crosswalks will be temporarily closed during construction.

I’ll keep you posted on this project as the summer progresses.

South Milwaukee has a new alderman.

The City Council on Monday night chose former Cudahy City Clerk-Treasurer Joe Bukowski as the new 3rd District alderman. He replaces Jim Shelenske, who was elected city clerk in April and resigned his seat on the council.

Six 3rd District residents applied for the job: Jon Spansail, Rich Raduenz, Tom Arend, Patrick Hintz, Rodney (Buck) Hillestad and Bukowski, who won the initial round of voting 5-1-1. Raduenz and Hillestad also received votes.

Bukowski, who has lived in the 3rd District for eight years, is no stranger to politics, and he easily had the most experience of the six candidates.

He was Cudahy clerk/controller/treasurer from 1990 to 1997, winning elections in 1992, 1994 and 1996 and serving as chairman of that city’s Community Development Authority and Fourth of July Committee. Bukowski was also involved in developing Cudahy’s tax incremental financing districts and economic development plan and managed major projects like the remodeling of City Hall.

Bukowski, who has a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and MBA from Cardinal Stritch University, currently serves as vice president and branch manager for the Northwestern Mutual Credit Union in Franklin.

His community service experience is also extensive. Bukowski is active in Boy Scouts at Divine Mercy — where he is also on the FunFest Committee — and is the volunteer advisor and auditor to Cudahy’s Project Concern and Cudahy/St. Francis Interfaith. He also served for years on the Cudahy Historical Society and Cudahy Lions Club.

That experience was certainly a factor in him winning my vote. But I also liked what he had to say in response to a number of our interview questions. He was honest, forthright, and showed a sound vision for the city — one that he said includes the downtown opportunity brought by the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line and its planned South Milwaukee stop.

Service, he said, is a part of his life, and serving on the City Council will be an extension of that.

Bukowski will officially be sworn in at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. He will serve out the remainder of Shelenske’s term and face his first election next April. Please join me in welcoming him on board.

Carrying what had to be 50 pounds of gear, gulping air through an oxygen mask and dragging a hose down a pitch-black, smoke-filled stairway on the way to put out an actual fire in the next room, I quickly realized something.

I am not cut out to be a firefighter. And those that are — those that do this for a living — are true heroes.

I, and fellow 4th District of South Milwaukee Alderman David Bartoshevich, had a chance to experience this at FIRE OPS 101, a crash course for elected officials and members of the media hosted by the Professional Firefighters of Wisconsin at the Madison Fire Department’s Fire and Safety Education Center on the Madison Area Technical College Truax campus.

It was a day I’ll never forget.

It started with a chance to practice our extrication skills — my chance to use the “jaws of life”  and a hydraulic “spreader” tool to literally take apart a junker car. Later, I got to practice ventilating a burning house by chopping and chainsawing a few holes in a roof. I gave CPR a try and watched some of my teammates perform a search and rescue operation. (Full disclosure: I begged off that assignment because of this nagging fear I have about crawling on my hands and knees in dark, confined spaces, wearing only an oxygen mask to breathe.)

That brings me to the burning home. It’s almost impossible for me to describe the feeling I had walking through that door and being greeted by the thick smoke and blackness … breathing thanks to a cannister of oxygen on your back … knowing that there were stairs in front of you that you couldn’t see …. four other people behind you feeding you hose … and a fire in an adjacent room that was waiting for you if you could feel your way through the dark.

After a stumble on the stairs … and losing my helmet due to the fall … I avoided the couch in the middle of the first room and slowly crawled into the second room … where the fire was burning. And there I waited, on my hands and knees, for the other team members to catch up to me. I then sprayed some water from the hose (to see what it felt like) and happily got the heck out of there.

Never before had I been so happy to see daylight. I about ripped off my oxygen mask and thanked God I would not have to do that again.

It was frightening and fascinating at the same time. It was also enlightening, much like the entire day was.

Making the day even richer was South Milwaukee firefighter Brian Bieganski, a member of the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1633. He was terrific as our team leader, making sure we got the most out of the experience by answering any and all questions about the successes, and challenges, of the South Milwaukee Fire Department. His depth of knowledge was impressive. From the intricacies of structural design to sharing some of his real-world firefighting stories, Brian provided invaluable perspective.

IAFF Local 1633 firefighter Mike Landgraf was also an instructor at the event, joining dozens of firefighters from around the state in ensuring that newbies like me didn’t kill ourselves.

So, what did I learn from all of this? Of course, I learned how hard it is to be a firefighter — just how physically and mentally demanding that job can be.

More importantly, however, I learned just how complex the scene of a fire, car accident or other emergency can be, just how many simultaneous moving parts there are once a firefighting crew arrives. Hose crews. Ventilation. Search and rescue. Medical services. Everybody on that scene has a job, and each one is vitally important to ensuring that lives are saved.

It is a lesson I will take with me every time the City Council ponders the South Milwaukee Fire Department budget and its staffing needs … a lesson forever seared in my mind by those five minutes inside that burning building.

(Check out some other media coverage from the Capital Times and NBC 15 in Madison.)