Wednesday night, Alderman Nik Kovac held a public meeting to allow feedback to be voiced regarding the three proposed alternatives for the redevelopment of the one-story East Library into a mixed-use facility. The meeting was a follow-up to a meeting last November discussing the potential of issuing a request-for-proposal (RFP) for the redevelopment of the East Library site. Attendees at the meeting were provided with an update on the process and allowed to ask questions about the process and proposals. The predictable East Side public meeting questions were aired, but which, if any, of the proposals will be selected?

Yesterday, Alderman Donovan called for a referendum to be held before moving forward with the Milwaukee Streetcar project. A referendum that wouldn’t be held until the Spring primaries on February 21st, 2012. Making a proposal such as this reminds us that there wasn’t a referendum for the Hoan Bridge reconstruction, the I-94 expansion, or the $810 million, not including utilities cost, Marquette Interchange project.

Talks between M&I, MSOE, and Milwaukee County regarding MSOE’s proposed parking garage in the Park East have dragged on for months, and it is likely because of a new detail that makes a marginal project into a bad project.

One day before the start of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) 19th annual conference in Madison, former Mayor and current CNU President & CEO John Norquist returned to Milwaukee with a number of his former deputies to offer a tour of many of the urban projects started during his tenure as mayor.

It was clear that the election of Scott Walker to the Governorship was going to negatively impact transit as well as other services in Milwaukee, but beyond the ‘fiscal’ matters the agenda he has laid out goes far behind what even we predicted.

To say that access to Milwaukee County records has been less than transparent is an understatement. Milwaukee County’s committee agendas are poorly formatted, currently contain little information, lack the associated public input documentation, and almost no committee meetings are carried on TV, so the context and history of legislation is often difficult to ascertain.

Our belief that 2010 could have been the Year of the Park East, came up a bit short, and unfortunately it wasn’t the only project that was derailed in 2010.

Milwaukee’s former Mayor, John Norquist, in his book The Wealth of Cities writes up the impacts of U.S. policies on our cities, lays out his foundational beliefs that today form a key plank of the New Urbanism movement, and shares his insight into how he believes cities should be governed.

On election night, Governor-elect Scott Walker promised Wisconsin 250,000 news jobs by the end of 2014.

Critics claim the goal is unrealistic and his jobs plan as lacking and juvenile.

The preparation of the Downtown Plan Update has involved various public input sessions, countless hours of community and stakeholder input, resident surveys, the involvement of the business community, and the work of city staff. The process is still ongoing and the presentation before the City Plan Commission for approval was the next step in the process.