Good questions
Another goodie from the Waukesha Freeman Sound Off:
Closed session
I would like to know the exact reason the mayor does not want the closed-session meeting that caused the aldermen to change the reporting structure to become public. After 12 months of his campaign team complaining about the reporting structure, now the mayor wants to move on and not talk about it. Sounds like the mayor is afraid of the truth coming out. Based on Wigderson’s article on Thursday, it looks like the truth is already out. The mayor should ask that the closed session become open record, unless he has something to hide. What are you trying to hide, Mayor?
Meanwhile, WISN-AM’s Mark Belling asks a pretty good question, too. Yesterday during the last segment of his program (at 10:45) Belling asked if we really need another convention center in southeastern Wisconsin. I suspect Belling will talk about it in his Waukesha Freeman column tomorrow.
In addition to the demand issue, I wonder just how willing the current businesses in those spaces are willing to sell. Will Hardees move? The announcement took the antiques mall owner by surprise. Will he sell? How much is Scrima willing to use eminent domain to get what he wants, and will property-rights conservatives question Scrima about it?
Then there’s the question of using TIF financing, something Scrima campaigned against when he ran for mayor. Is he now a convert?
One more thing. Where does Scrima think the water necessary for a hotel and convention center is going to come from?
James – I don’t believe that any of those businesses, even Hardee’s, owns the land they are on. I think they are all lease situations. The owners of that land would of course have to agree to sell but I imagine they aren’t getting a ton of money in lease revenue, with maybe the exception of Hardee’s.
I also don’t think this convention center will compete with places like State Fair or the Air Tran center downtown. I think it will compete with larger hotels like Olympia, Brookfield Suites, and other similarly sized hotel-convention center combos. It will likely attract small conventions like say the Wisconsin Arborists, who only need space for a couple hundred attendees. I could also see local businesses utlizing it.
I think with the hotel it is a good idea, without a hotel it will fail miserably.
“What are you trying to hide, Mayor?”
His complete and utter incompetence and inability to perform the job to which we have so unfortunately appointed him.
Here’s another question: has the Freeman so much as made an open records request? I’ve never seen a “newspaper” with such an aversion to news lately. Do they even call it a newsroom over there anymore? Or do they just wait for Scrima to tell them he’s going to be wearing a tie and holding a shovel of dirt somewhere, and there needs to be a picture?
You cannot make an open records request for closed sessions. The Council would need to vote to authorize this, I believe.