Waukesha Mayor, In Extensive Interview, Again Questions Lake Michigan Diversion

City of Waukesha Mayor Jeff Scrima, elected in an upset campaign last year during which the city's plan to access Lake Michigan water was a pivotal issue, is continuing to raise questions about it.

The Waukesha Common Council has twice at recent meetings voted to keep Scrima off the city's water supply negotiating team. An update, here.

Over the July 4th weekend, Scrima made extensive comments about the issue and related matters to Waukeshanow.com, and I pulled out some highlights:

What about water?

Q: Let's talk about the water project. Why have you been so against the Great Lakes option and connecting with Milwaukee?

A: Right now all of the documentation shows that if we are going to connect through Lake Michigan water it's going to be through Milwaukee. All of documents also show that Milwaukee will increase our water rates as much as possible and they want additional economic compensation above and buying the water rates. They want a non-compete clause for our jobs. Connecting with Milwaukee will not be good for the City of Waukesha in the long run. My objective to let the citizens know what's going on, to provide stability to our citizens and I believe our citizens know best how to spend their own money. Nobody knows what's right for our city better than the citizens of our city. So that perhaps doesn't make me a typical politician.

Q: Can you elaborate on some of this?

A: The City of Milwaukee has been very open that they're concerned if they sell water to an outside community they would be able to grow businesses and develop subdivisions at Milwaukee's expense. They passed a resolution that if they sell us water they want to know our economic profile, our median income, they want to have say in future houses that are built here, they want to connect to our transportation system, they want to have say in our future businesses and jobs. And at the same time they're creating reduced water rates in Milwaukee to attract businesses and jobs to Milwaukee. So that's not playing fair, charging us more for water and discounting it in Milwaukee so businesses will move to Milwaukee. That's not fair.

Q: What can you say about the negotiations and the team Waukesha has?

A: They want to keep much of this behind closed doors and away from the media and away from the citizens. While [Water Utility General Manager] Dan [Duchniak] is knowledgeable, his goal from the beginning is connect us with Lake Michigan. He's only looking in one direction. With all due respect, he doesn't live in Waukesha so he'll never have to pay the bill. We have differing opinions.

Q: If Milwaukee already laid out the parameters, what's the point of the negotiations?

A: In the direction our council is going and our water utility commission is going, they shouldn't call it a negotiating team. They could call it a purchasing team, because right now there is nothing to negotiate. But I'm giving you the no nonsense answer because I'm a businessperson. I come out of the business world whose telling you the way it is. Our application lays out some alternative solutions. There's a whole variety of solutions that have been pushed off the table because they want the simple easy solution, which is just build a pipe to the nearest, largest freshwater lake. Well that technology has been around for 150 years. It's not very innovating. Will it work? Yes, it will work. However, there are economic consequences and there are environmental consequences.

Q: What are the consequences?

A: $164 million is the estimate for the initial connection. It doesn't include increased water rates in the coming years. It doesn't include ramifications of the non-compete clause for our jobs and businesses. It doesn't include the additional economic compensation being paid to Milwaukee. Simply put, we're the highest taxed city and if we connect to Milwaukee our water bills will skyrocket. They will probably quadruple right off the bat. Over the course of the next 10 or 20 years, if we continue to have the highest tax rate, if we continue to have the highest water bills that will set us at a disadvantage at keeping families to live in our community and businesses to stay here or to attract new people to move to Waukesha. The first thing they will ask is what is the cost? And if they can locate outside the city of Waukesha and save thousands of dollars in lower property taxes and water bills they may decide to do that. We do have to be very careful with the cost of living in Waukesha and to be able to provide a better value that our citizens pay. It's a competitive world out there. Businesses and families have choices on where to live and my goal is to make Waukesha No. 1 and to be competitive. And that means shaking things up inside of City Hall and people always don't like that. But that's what I was elected to do and that's what I'm doing.