Milwaukee County’s parks are like motherhood and apple pie: We are all supposed to love them, every green acre.
Milwaukee County’s parks are a financial sinkhole. All of those public employees are too expensive, and all of the property taxes we pay for them are just too much.
That, in a nutshell, is the choice we’re often given. You’re either a tree-hugging, Parks People lover of green, green, green, or you’re a hard-boiled, anti-tax fiscal conservative. There’s not much middle ground (pun intended) on this issue.
The Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did an excellent front-page story on the parks, and just a few statistics dramatized the issue. Milwaukee ranks fifth highest among 56 metro areas in the amount of parks/open space as a percent of total land area and 43rd in the amount of park spending per resident. The tax levy for the parks has plummetted by 64% since 1986. In short, we have a lot more parkland than most places yet we spend far less than almost any metro area (including Milwaukee of 20 years ago) to maintain it.
This suggests that we have a tremendous and rather rare asset in all of this parkland. But it also raises the question: Do we need every last acre? And are we maximizing the value of this precious asset? Parkland should pay for itself, through increased property tax value for adjoining homes. Is that happening throughout the county?
Visit Lake Park and Washington Park on a weekend. Lake Park is filled with people; Washington Park has far less foot traffic per acre. Lake Park is a long, thin green space that fronts many homes, raising their property tax value. Washington Park is sort of square, meaning that most of its green space adjoins other parkland. Worse, its entire west end abuts a freeway, a lost opportunity for higher home values.
Maybe Washington Park would get more use and the county would get more property tax spin-off if it were turned into two parks, interrupted by new residential development, with new homeowners and renters who would doubtless use the green space facing them. The new taxes generated would help support the park.
The fact is, some of our parks are not getting much use. Parks director Sue Black has essentially conceded this by proposing many changes to make parks more popular. Among other things, she suggests closing some underused pools and improving others, ending winter skating on lagoons and creating dog parks. The idea is to increase usage. If you want people to love parks and pay taxes for them, then give them want they want.
It’s a cinch that if you proposed closing Lake Park, East Siders would be up in arms – because they all use it. Similarly, people in Wauwatosa might feel strongly enough about Hoyt Pool to support its reopening. Black has suggesting asking Tosa residents for donations to do that.
But how much concern would there be if Washington or Jackson parks were reduced in size? There simply aren’t enough residents in proximity to those green spaces to provoke a passionate defense. Both parks might have more defenders and more nearby property tax spin-off if they were split in two and separated by a thin band of residential development.
Few parks are smaller than Cathedral Square, at just one square block. Yet it probably gets more visitors than a vast park like Jackson. And Cathedral Square has a tremendous impact on the property tax value of buildings facing it.
County Supervisor Roger Quindel has proposed selling Bender Park in Oak Creek to help solve the county’s fiscal crisis. Certainly, private developers would line up to buy this prime lakefront land, but it should first be offered to the City of Oak Creek. Do citizens there love it enough to buy it? Maybe they’d love it more if it were smaller, with some high-end, tax-generating residential development nearby.
As parkland begins to be looked at in this strategic way, it might make sense to add small green spaces in other areas, such as in the Menomonee Valley, which is now being redeveloped. Parkland isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Parkland shouldn’t cost taxpayers, it should pay for itself in higher tax values.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a county executive who understood the strategic advantage of green spaces? This is a community whose leaders loved parkland, going back to Charles Whitnall a century ago and extending through every county executive – John Doyne , Bill O’Donnell , Dave Schulz and Tom Ament – all of whom were committed to the county’s “quality of life” institutions and amenities. What does Scott Walker love about the parks or about any aspect of county government?
Walker’s solution to the parks is to cut staff, freeze property taxes, oppose a dedicated sales tax and invite Starbucks to open a few coffee houses. He’s like the Crabby Appleton of county government, the bean-counting Scrooge of Milwaukee. When do we get some love, Scott?
Meanwhile, Black is ferociously committed to saving the parks and making them work. Some of her ideas may not fly, but they are the beginning of a creative approach that makes parks work for people. The opposite approach — making people work for the parks — is what the liberals and Parks People want, which will never capture the hearts of the majority.
Parks, after all, are supposed to be about pleasure, not moral goodness. We want the splendor in the grass, not the dry virtues of do-gooder-ism. If anything, Black’s ideas are not radical enough. We have to stop hoping that families sitting around watching TV and surfing computers are going to suddenly rediscover parks. We need to bring parks to them and thereby maximize their impact on property taxes. It’s easy for everyone to love a park, as every successful one in America continues to prove. But it will take leadership from county officials to get us there.
Is MATC’s Spending Out of Control?
Milwaukee Area Technical College remains perhaps the least-covered part of government in this metro area. Last week, the Journal Sentinel made a beginning attempt to remedy this omission with a top-of-the-fold story on MATC’s budget since 2000. The story also repeated information previously reported in this weekly column — that the average pay for a full-time teacher at the college is $90,845. A new and jaw-dropping statistic: Some faculty earn more than $140,000 by taking on additional teaching duties.
The story provided no context by which to understand just how high this pay is. A $90,000 annual salary is about $23,000 more than the average professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee earns and about $12,000 more than the average professor at UW-Madison earns. It is also more than most MATC administrators earn: In 2005, MATC had 18 administrators earning more than $100,000, including 14 who were deans or above. Meanwhile, there were 153 teachers and eight counselors at the school earning more than $100,000.
Looking at the statistics in the JS story, there are two key reasons why local taxpayers keep paying more for MATC. First, state legislators have been regularly cutting spending on vocational and technical education. The state’s share of the budget has dropped from 36% to 14%. It’s a bit hypocritical of state legislators to push for a freeze on local taxes even as they slash state support to these schools.
But the other reason local taxes for MATC are rising plays right into the hands of tax freezers: The MATC board is an unelected group of civic leaders that has traditionally been sympathetic to unions and has supported generous wage and benefit settlements. Some legislators have proposed changing the governance of vocational technical colleges to make board members elected. Perhaps the legislature needs to study how other states handle this. There may have to be some pay for anyone serving on the board, or no one will run. But certainly some kind of change in governance deserves serious consideration.
