The Forum

I had plans for a multi-part series on Sunrise Senior Living and the Riverfront development site, giving readers the details on everything that has happened with the issue since the beginning.  But our time grows short.  The Plan Commission hearing on the issue is tonight, and the Village Board votes next Monday.  As such, I have put together a rough outline of what happened. 

Before we get into the outline, I need to emphasize that the Village Board does have the power to stop the Sunrise development from happening.  It is not a done deal.  Yet.  So if you feel passionately that this the Sunrise Development is not the right thing for Shorewood, now is the time to email your trustees.

Ok, here is the shortened version.

1. Sunrise Senior Living first approached the Village in August of 2006 through Andy Stefanich (An SHS classmate of mine), a commercial real estate agent for CB Richard Ellis.  At that time, the Village had already gone through several iterations of planning for the site, including the original Master Plan recommendation, and early interest from several developers who later pulled out.
2. There are currently 3 properties on the site which are or have been for sale.  Milwaukee PC, the Touhy Apartments, and the Riverbook Restaurant.  Sunrise has been in negotiations with the owners of these sites since as early as September, 2006, according the Open Record emails.
3. As it stands now, Sunrise is the only property which would be put on the site.  Other proposals, including condominiums, and an Advanced Health Care Clinic have been unsuccessful.  In the case of AHC, their proposal was even more out of line with what Shorewood is looking for than what Sunrise is offering.  The condo proposals were abandoned, at least for the time being, due to the sluggish real estate market.
4. Most of the early negotiations took place with Village staff rather than Village Trustees.  President Johnson was involved in some of the earlier meetings.
5. Negotiations and planning have gone through many twists and turns, including details related to traffic control, parking, building plans, the orientation of the building, green building concerns, and subsidies to the developers, among many other details. 
6. Email records indicate that members of the Village Staff were not aware of the legal and ethical issues confronting Sunrise Senior Living until as late as December of 2007. 
7. The final proposal would be as follows.  Sunrise would buy the Riverbrook and the Touhy Apartment Building.  They would build the assisted living center, which would take up the entire Riverbrook lot, and 1/2 of the Touhy lot.  The Village has guaranteed that we will repurchase the other 1/2 of the Touhy lot from Sunrise for $800,000. 
8. Various zoning changes and parking exceptions would be required for this deal to take place, all of which will be voted on at the Plan Commission and Village Board level within the next week.

In other news from the Village Board Meeting:

1. The Village will be holding a hearing on Shorewood parking policies on March 10th.  I am not certain what the agenda is here, but there is certainly plenty to discuss and potentially improve. 
2. The Village Manager is moving toward hiring a consultant to study options of online administration of the Village Parking system.  Such a system could potentially include online renewals, home printing of permits, and other improvements to the current manual, paper-heavy system. 
3. The Village is now studying ways to implement an online payment system for parking and other fees.  Village Manager Chris Swartz will be visiting Grayslake, WI to learn about the e-payment system implemented in that municipality.

Note: Sykes and Boots & Sabers have picked up the Rep Wasserman story.

State Rep. Sheldon Wasserman addressed the Village Board this evening, following State Sen. Alberta Darlings comments at the last meeting.  He covered a variety of issues, including gridlock at the state level, taxes, spending, Smoke Free Wisconsin, and the AT&T issue. 

Note: There seems to be something wrong with the BooMP3 player.  Hopefully it will be back online tomorrow.

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The entire discussion (about 27 minutes) is well worth a listen, but the most interesting part came around the 7:00 to 8:40  mark, when he appeared to blame Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling for preventing a balanced budget in Wisconsin by opposing the hospital tax. 

"The estimate on the budget deficit is $300-$400 million.  And the question is where the money is going to come from.  And we typically we have these repair budgets.  But the question comes in, if the repair budget includes a tax increase, any tax increase, the Republicans Assembly members say, 'we're not going to back it.'  We'd rather have a deficit than have a tax increase.  And then you also the only thing that could fill in this tax increase...the only thing that's really out there is the hospital tax, which is really more the Federal Government giving money through Medicaid.  It's kind of an exchange of money.

"Even though the hospital association has been very for it.  At first they were against it, now they absolutely want it because the majority of the hospital systems in the state are going to get a tremendous bonus for supporting this and getting this thing through."

"The Republicans don't want to do it, because it's a tax, and to be point blank with you, two people in the city of Milwaukee are very, very powerful.  And when they talk the Assembly Republicans listen very, very, very well.  And that's Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling.  And Charlie Sykes and Mark Belling are absolutely opposed to the hospital tax.  Even though the hospitals want it.  Even if though brings them $200 million to the state.  They're opposed to it.  And my colleagues will tell me point blank, 'Sheldon, I've got to do what I'm told.' So in terms of where revenue would be coming from, that's really off the table"

The school district sent me several renderings of the proposed renovations to the SHS Library and PE Building.  These pictures should help to clarify exactly what Dr. McCann was referring to during the videos of the SHS referendum tour.

SEE THE RENDERINGS

A few notes on the presidential primary in Shorewood. 

• Turnout in Shorewood was solid, overall (53%). 
• Per usual, the highest voter turnout numbers were in wards 3 through 6 (57% - 59%). 
• Shorewood voters almost all opted for the Democratic primary, at a rate of 85% to 90%, depending on the ward
• Barack Obama pulled off a resounding win in Shorewood, capturing between 54% and 63% of each wards total Democratic votes.  The table below shows only those voters who participated in the Democrat primary.

Wards	1-2	3-4	5-6	7-8	9-10	11-12	TOTAL
Hillary Clinton	32%	25%	24%	25%	30%	30%	27%
Barack Obama	55%	61%	61%	63%	57%	54%	59%
Other Democrats	13%	14%	15%	12%	13%	16%	14%

Protecting our Riverfront is a community endeavor, and therefore we should work on it together.  I have reduced the email pile from 1,800 to about 700 (about 55 pages total) that are in any way related to Sunrise or the Riverfront property.

I will be writing about certain aspects of the emails in the days to come.  In addition to my efforts, I invite you to collaborate with me, in a community research effort.  As you are reading, if you come across anything interesting, please feel free to write your own story, or piece of a story, and add it as a comment below. 

Note: Large file, may take 30-40 seconds to open.

The Village has released about 1,800 emails in response to my open records request.  A large portion of them are unrelated to the Sunrise development, due to the way I formatted my request (i.e. anything containing the words "Sunrise", "Riverfront", etc.)

I am sorting through them to find what relates to Sunrise.  Once I have done that, I will post them for your perusal.

I took the videos below during the 2/16/08 Shorewood School District referendum informational tours.  Shorewood Superintendent Blane McCann gives the full tour of the key spaces which would be affected by the referendum. 

The video is split up into 4 parts: Intro, Library, PE Building, and Pool.  I am also working on obtaining the architectural plans for the Library and PE Building spaces so you can get a better sense of the proposed renovations.  The maximum video length for YouTube uploads in 10 minutes, so you will notice editing in some places.

If you experience problems viewing them, please let me know.  There may a download speed issue.  If so, I will see if I can reduce the quality of the video to make them play more smoothly.

REFERENDUM INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND (9 mins 51 sec)

SHS LIBRARY TOUR (2 mins 55 sec)

SHS PHYSICAL EDUCATION BUILDING TOUR (8 mins 32 sec)

SHS POOL TOUR (1 min 35 sec)

A few more "unnamed" reader comments about Sunrise...

Comment 1:

 Steve, FYI here are a few interesting websites about how Sunrise Senior Living:  

1. Story 1: Fought back against a community that tried to prevent it from building and won (would they also do that to Shorewood)?  In part because precedents had already been set.  
2. Story 2: Abandoned their plans and allowed someone else to come in and take over after the building was built (a concern that has been raised before)  
3. Story 3: An interesting blog dialogue that includes the public and workers from within Sunrise. 

This company is so against what I feel Shorewood stands for - they don't care about the village. 

Comment 2:

Why did I find this so funny....and relevant?

          

Comment 3:

What I have been reading, that you have sent me, is scary. I feel Shorewood is going too fast to change what is a truly great place to live. I am quite upset with the people who don't seem to care about keeping Shorewood a great residential place to live, located near everything. 

Now they want to add senor citizen housing. If they do, it better be like Catholic Home or Bradford Terrace, not like the ones (River Park) on Oakland . Everyone that lives in Shorewood pays a hell of a lot of money on taxes, their homes, upkeep...the list goes on... I don't understand why Shorewood does not look at doing things more upscale.

I am ok with change, but not an uproar of it. The village must think of the quality of living and their residents' residences first...

I submitted an open records request on January 15th, 2008 for electronic communications relating to the Sunrise development.  Since that time, I have had extensive discussions with Village officials regarding this request, but have yet to see any of the documents.  Given the rapidly approaching public hearing, and Village Board vote on this matter, I am troubled by this delay.

If you have not seen it, Google Street View is a stunning application.  It is a pedestrian level view of the streets, enabled by Google maps.  It allows you to use the Google Map application to "drive around" your town and see 360 degree views of what is in that area.  This is being introduced in cities across the country, and has recently been expanded to include Milwaukee and the surrounding area.

The picture below is Village Hall.  Take a test drive.

The Shorewood School District is distributing an information packet on the upcoming $9.65 Million referendum.  It contains a breakdown of proposed expenditures, the need for the expenditures, and other background on the state of our school finances.

Shorewood School District April 1, 2008 Referendum

On April 1, 2008, the Shorewood School Board will seek voter approval to borrow $9.65 million to finance maintenance, technology and renovation needs throughout the Shorewood School District.... (READ FULL DOCUMENT)

In an earlier post, I suggested that putting audio or video files of local government meetings online would radically improve citizens' access to their government.  So here is the first installment of the Village "Boardcast".

As a test, I recorded several agenda items from yesterday's (2/4/08) Shorewood Village Board meeting.  I only stayed for the first few agenda items, so you will not see audio clips below for the later portions of the meeting. 

For your reference, here is the published agenda for the Village Board Meeting, as well as the committee meetings that took place last night. 

Item 1: Call to order, Statement of Public Notice, Presentation of Accounts

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Item 2: Alberta Darling addresses the Village Board on events and new developments in the State Senate.

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Item 3: Update on school referendum from Superintendent Blane McCann

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Item 4: Discussion on community survey proposal from Center for Urban Initiatives and Research (Development and Long Range Planning Committee)

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Take a listen and let me know what you think. 

Shorewood voters will be asked to decide on a $9.65 Million referendum for the Shorewood School District as a part of the April 2008 ballot.  The School Board approved placing the referendum on the ballot during a meeting this evening.  Following the School Board meeting, Shorewood School District Superintendent Blane McCann updated the Village Board on the status of the referendum.

Here is the complete audio of Superintendent McCann's remarks, and the discussion that followed. 

I have audio for several other sections of the meeting, which I will post tomorrow.

In looking over the Village Board packet for tonight, I decided to add a new series of blog posts.  These posts will highlight strange expenditures we make here in Shorewood, and will be drawn from the bills paid by our Village Board on a bi-weekly basis.  I bring these up only because I find them amusing, and am in no way hinting or implying that there is anything suspicious about these items.

To begin, we have this item, which comes to us courtesy of the Elder Services Fund.

FUND 107 ELDER SERVICES FUND
DEPT 110 VILLAGE MANAGER
E 107-10-110-5342 MILLER, JACKIE
LEMON BUNDT CAKES, $65.00