You may recall from my blog "Rice, Cooked" in May, that the Milwaukee County Board approved a preliminary plan to redistrict the county and dissect Whitefish Bay. Part of Whitefish Bay will be added to Milwaukee's East Side district.  The other part will be added to Milwaukee's northern district.  This move effectively consolidates more power for the City of Milwaukee, redacting one suburban district. The preliminary plan was widely panned by groups near and far.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was against it, as was the NAACP, the Milwaukee Intergovernmental Cooperation Council, and Bayside…

I wanted to write a short piece about the 4th of July Parade and festival on Monday: It. Was. Awesome. Spectacular weather, huge, huge crowds along the parade route and at Klode Park. You might have noticed more of the parade participants were in vehicles / trailers, which was by design. And a new beer lemonade garden at Klode Park, with partitioned picnic tables that seemed to be busy all day. Even the fireworks were upgraded from last year. Join me in thanking the WFB Civic Foundation for their dedication in pulling off this Norman Rockwell event, year after year. The sheer hours these …

It's official, Sen. Alberta Darling will face current Rep. Sandy Pasch in a recall election expected to be held July 12th. Anyone who thinks either candidate will have an easy victory has...irrational exuberance. This will be a tight, tough race. In 2008, Darling beat Rep. Sheldon Wasserman by a slim margin, even though 2008 was a great year for Democrats.  I heard a talk radio squawker suggest Pasch was an easy candidate to face. I don't believe that. Her 2008 Democratic primary race was against a squad of very solid candidates, including one who outspent her by a factor of two. Pasch won't …

In Milwaukee County government, the elected Supervisors and County Executive positions are "non-partisan," but one can easily split the Supervisors into two philosophical camps:  Those that represent City of Milwaukee residents, and those who represent suburban interests.  Since the population of the city outweighs that of the suburbs, the city enjoys a perpetual majority on the County Board.  Like him or not, former County Executive Scott Walker's suburban bias helped keep some semblance of balance, although his vetoes were often overturned. Such is life in the minority. Last week, city …

GOODBYE PRITCHARD & FEHRING With the April elections over, this week marks the end of the Katie Pritchard era, as she completes nine years of service to the village, and by service, I mean unbelievable service.   The number of hours she spent on village business is well into the thousands, a sacrifice extremely few are willing to make.  Trustee Tom Fehring is also closing out his term.  Both will be missed, as we welcome two new board members, Brenda Szumski and Lauri Rollings. CONSOLIDATION UPDATE At the last Village Board meeting, Whitefish Bay moved closer to consolidating its 911-Dispatch…

Tuesday is election day in Whitefish Bay, with School Board and Village Board positions on the ballot. You can see the entire sample ballot here. As you'll notice, there are no candidates listed on the ballot for the two Village Trustee positions, however, four candidates are official write-ins. I attended Patch's candidate forum last week and honestly found all four candidates to be solid citizens who I applaud for stepping forward.  Andrew Martin, William Demet, Lauri Rollings and Brenda Szumski all show capacity to listen, reason, and question in varying degrees. (As a point of information…

The Whitefish Bay Village Trustee election is next week, and I'm pleased to see that Patch is holding a candidate forum for the four write-in candidates. Date: Wednesday, March 30th, 7-8:30pmLocation: Whitefish Bay Women's Club, 600 E. Henry Clay St. These past few days, I've been trying to think up a good question to ask of these candidates. Surprisingly, I have none. There are a bunch of obvious questions. Except all of the obvious questions have obvious answers. Q: Should we fix our sewers? How?A: Yes! This is important. We should fix them up real good in a cost effective manner by …

The Trustees have been putting in lots of hours lately, meeting four of the last five days.   Most of the time has been spent interviewing Village Manager candidates. From a personal perspective, while my wife wasn't pleased with being a single mom this past week, the process was one of the most satisfying issues I've been a part of during my term on the Village Board. I believe we had several home-run applicants, and I'm honestly excited for one of them to take the helm.  The "big" news at the regular meeting came from our sewer consultants, Donohue, who explained their report would be …

The Village Board narrowed the pool down to five candidates last week.  Here's the list, plus a few of each applicants' highlights, listed in alphabetical order: Patrick Boyle - Masters of Public Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Boyle worked in Whitefish Bay Village Hall from 2001 to 2005 as the Assistant to the Village Manager and Management Assistant before leaving to be Cedarburg's City Administrator. Curt Carver - Northern Illinois University, University of Virginia and Harvard.  He has been Village Administrator for Carpenter, then Inverness, Illinois. Paul …

It's been difficult to cobble together the ramifications on Whitefish Bay from Gov. Scott Walker's 2011-2013 budget proposal. Firstly, the village itself appears to have a $35,000 cut in shared revenue, a $75,000 cut in state transportation aid, and a $100,000 cut in the grant the state gives Whitefish Bay for its recycling program. That's $210,000 in cuts. To put that in perspective, the village's annual budget is $13.8 million... so a $210,000 cut is 1.5 percent, which is a manageable figure. The bigger issue is that the budget proposal also implements a zero percent tax levy increase …

Just a few items from this past week. Firstly, Shorewood's police chief gave a presentation on the idea of merging the Whitefish Bay and Shorewood police departments.   The highlights are: A new police station would be required to house the combined departments. The building is currently estimated at $5 million and potentially housed in Shorewood on Wilson Drive.   A combined force could mean a reduction of 5 members, mostly supervisory. This is where the bulk of the projected $500,000/year savings occurs. Due to the $5 million building cost above, the savings to each community, if split …

I've been wondering how this week's political soap opera in Madison impacts Whitefish Bay.  Beyond the discussion on public unions' collective bargaining rights: the train coming down the tunnel is a potential $1 million dollar cut in state aid for schools.  In a recent Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article, Milwaukee Public Schools was expecting a $500 cut in per-child aid.  Applied to WFB, that's a $1.5 million loss.  And usually, property-rich districts are cut more than MPS, so $1.5m may be on the low end of what we might expect.  Could be much more. (Disclaimer: What do I know?)  For the …

I'm pleased to write there's now a four-way race for Village Trustee via write-in. Hugo Rojas has filed papers to run for the Village Board. You'll need to remember their names, as none of these people will show up on the ballot in April because they will all be write-ins. Andy Martin - UWM professor, Will Demet - student, Lauri Rollings - lawyer, and now Hugo Rojas - lawyer. I remember a few years ago, listening to villagers gripe about the make-up of the Village Board being all lawyers. That's not true today. The current board has one (retired) lawyer, Trustee Jay Miller. -- This week, the …

In 2011, Whitefish Bay will have three different governmental consolidations on the proverbial table. We’ll debate consolidating the Health Department function, the 911-Dispatch function, and a merger with Shorewood’s police department.Cliché alert: The devil is in the details for all three.First up is a discussion on merging the Whitefish Bay/Shorewood Health Department with the North Shore Health Department, which is comprised of Bayside, Fox Point, River Hills, Glendale and Brown Deer, where it is located.Didn’t know we had a health department? That doesn’t surprise me. It’s in the …

(Editor's Note: I am pleased to announce Kevin Buckley, a local resident, blogger and Village Trustee, has joined us as a columnist. He has written about local issues on his own blog, Village Spillage, since 2007, so his perspective on village affairs will be an asset to the website. As on his blog, the opinions expressed in this column do not represent the official position of the board.) I started writing Village Spillage about four years ago to help fill the local news void.  After the Whitefish Bay Herald folded into the Journal-Sentinel/NOW family, the amount of news coverage dwindled to…