Common Ground

Hindsight is 20/20. So, there are questions that one can only ask incumbents or candidates who were in office at one time and have a voting record to examine. A great alderman has a crystal ball to see into the future. I've been trying to buy one for my job. All were defective. But it doesn't take too much vision to analyse an issue to see how it will affect our two biggest issues, water and taxes. How has your incumbent fared on these things?

Many items that affect our taxes are not readily apparent or visible.  I know of two things that are. The Saint Paul fire station and the library.  Both seem to be sacred topics but they must be looked at. They are there. The damage, if any, has been done. Time machines don't exist yet. Elections do. Did your incumbent vote for the library expansions or the new fire station? Perhaps they did and you approve of that. That is your right and you should then vote for your incumbent if they are with you on other issues too.

Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE libraries! Three of my favorite places to spend an evening in Milwaukee were the downtown library, Finney on Sherman and North and then the Villard neighborhood library. For the record, I did indeed put that Al Lindner fishing book in a drop box. Milwaukee owes me $12.00 for that one. With thirty year's interest.

I also love to keep fire confined to my gas stove and within my furnace, water heater and clothes drier. When it doesn't behave, some help that is here within a few seconds of my 911 phone call is desired. I also like to pet the Dalmatians and invite them to a dog park.

There are some hard questions to ask about these topics and to think about. I'm going to talk about those in my next two blogs, unless something big happens.

Usually the motive for promoting downtowns is to protect the core businesses that are the center of the community. With few exception, these businesses are locally owned.  Sometimes called Mom and Pop stores. I'm taking  liberty to promote a fun event at a Son, Mom and Pop store that is in the neighboring community of Oconomowoc. My son Michael took a leap of faith and bought a floundering pet supply and tropical fish store out in the country, so to speak. There is a cornfield across the street so that qualifies as country.

The locally owned pet store is fast becoming a thing of the past. National chains come into the area and mom and pop owned pet stores are pushed out, lacking the buying power of the big boxes. Such is the fear of the proposed Pabst Farm development. So far I read only of the threat  to downtown. Well, this blog today is not about political considerations. It is about fun.

Saturday, Michael is having the Grand Opening of HIS store, Aquatic World Discount Pet Supply. I refer to it as the Oconomowoc Zoo. Mike has worked hard to overcome a "colorful" history that the location has. Saturday he celebrates with his friends and welcomes everyone to come by for some food and beverages. Besides all the critters of the store such as Harley the Parrot, Keko the Monkey, Tortuga the Tortoise and an eight foot Python that doesnt need a name, there will be dog and cat rescues with pets looking to match up with a new human. There will be seminars, manufacturer reps showing products, hamster races and more. Kids like face painting. High school volunteers from the area will doing that and help with other kids activities. Did I mention there there are drawings for aquarium kits and stuff for dogs, cats and critters and some stuffed toys for the kids?

Stop by and if you need some pet supplies, there will be plenty of that too. The store in located on Brown Street which is Highway P north of Hwy 16, just west of Hwy 67 and downtown Oconomowoc.

Geocaching is a relatively new activity where GPS, Global Positioning Satellite receivers are used to locate "caches" hidden in publicly accessible areas. The GPS coordinates are then published on the Internet allowing "Cachers" to use their GPS receivers to locate the cache.

Historically, government parks department frowned upon the activity saying it was no different than leaving litter behind. That and the participants would trample the area and make paths. That all is an exaggeration and Waukesha is fortunate to have a Parks Department that recognizes Geocaching as a great activity. Again this year they are sponsoring a cache hunt this Saturday 8AM beginning at the Schuetze Recreation Center.

I became involved in Geocaching soon after it's inception when President Clinton ordered the Air Force to eliminate a confusion signal that made civilian GPS accurate to about the area of two football fields. Now they are accurate to a few feet. When this happened, a person in Washington hid the first cache and challenged people on the Internet to find it. Soon it exploded to thousands of caches around the world. I've hidden a few myself and have found several hundred.

My greatest enjoyment was being taken to interesting places that I would otherwise not have visited. My favorite caches are located in the Kettle Moraine Forest. Now I look for them occasionally and as an activity where my fuzzy companion, Kanook, and I can enjoy some outside time together.

A local geocaching team, The Tapps, have been prolific and have hidden caches in about every park there is in the city. Others have also hidden caches around the area. So if you have a GPS, visit a couple websites to check out Geocaching. One is www.geocaching.com and the local club is www.wi-geocaching.com . If you don't have a GPS, adequate ones for Geocaching can be bought for around $100. If you are just curious, show up Saturday morning at Schuetze and see what's going on. Maybe someone will offer to let you tag along.

Pine Street has become an alternative to driving to Union Grove to watch the drag races. I once mentioned this to a friend in the police department. He had a squad sit by my house and picked up a few dinero's for the doughnut fund. Just kidding. We don't do doughnuts in Waukesha. We do biscotti with our latte.

In an effort to slow the speed down on the strip, stop signs were installed at the Irving and Pine street intersection. If you live in the area and missed seeing them, it is because they are folded down most of the time.

Imagine the fun a patrolman (person) could have with a motorized stop sign and a remote control!

I recently wrote about paying my taxes at the city hall. One thing that I was amazed at was a bulletin board apparently reserved for posting legal notices. It was full of foreclosure notices. So full, in fact, that I suggest that the council budget for a bigger bulletin board for this year.

I'm sure that each sheet of paper holds a story that that could bring pity. We are, after all, besieged by many businesses trying to get families to live to excess and extend their credit to the point of snapping. How ever did my parents raise two boys in a 750 square foot cape cod with no garage, one car, no cable TV, and no iPods? We probably could have afforded the iPods but they sent my brother and me to private schools.

Could it be the city's fault for these foreclosures? Many municipalities require huge houses on huge lots for reasons short of saying that they don't want the trash moving in. The rule used to be that your mortgage could not exceed 25% of your take home income. What is that now?

As a way to work around such rules, ARM's, adjustable rate mortgages were created. They are a way of enjoying excess for a while until the sheriff arrives with a moving van. Looks like we need more deputies. I wonder how that is paid for in the county budget?

I'm told that Brookfield is warning residents about coyotes in the city. At Mitchell Park Dog Park Kanook and I have encountered them the last three years with a close encounter a few weeks ago. We frequently visit the park in the evening and this particular night I had on a baseball cap visor light. It clips on the visor and and is always shining where you are looking. Kanook was his usually 100 feet or so in front of me when I looked into the woods and four eyes were glowing back at me! I could see that they were coyotes and they were only fifteen feet away! I verified the distance the next day. Kanook had trotted by, oblivious to them and they paid no mind to him. Thinking that they might follow and tear into Kanook, I took a step towards them and growled in a low voice, "get outta here!" Wise or not, they turned and took off. Kanook still oblivious to them. I never claimed he was the sharpest pup in the pack.

Fast forward to this week. Because of the muddy conditions at the park, I have a back-up park. The property of where I work in Pewaukee. It is literally just up the railroad tracks from Mitchell Park about three miles. While walking around the property one night Kanook and I heard the howl of three coyotes to the south, in the area of the Waukesha Gun Club. Kanook was showing a desire to heed the "call of the wild" but I brought him back to sanity. I suspect the pack had followed the railroad tracks west and cut south where some woods yet to succumb to development are and a drainage ditch continues to another small forest awaiting the destiny of development.

As the Fox River begins near Mitchell Park and runs through it, I suspect that they will someday enter the city by Frame Park when their habitat is totally destroyed. We don't want them in our back yard. I'm sure they miss theirs.