Monday, August 17, 2015

Waukesha water diversion plan will speed up region's tilt

The State of Wisconsin misallocates transportation dollars and their development consequences to road-building, and to starve transit - - though a recent federal court settlement provided some temporary funding.

SEWRPC - - the seven-county Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission based far from urbanity in Western Waukesha County - -  has no designated City of Milwaukee representative on its 21-member board - - so of course it advocated for the multi-billion-dollar 'free'way plan it wrote under contract for WisDOT, and separately backed diverting Great Lakes water, too.

And the airing at a round of hearings this week for Waukesha's Lake Michigan diversion plan will take place in that same distorted planning and spending environment which led to SEWRPC's decades of delay before launching a fresh regional housing plan, too.

As if housing, or transit, or water for and through Waukesha to an expanded service area which SEWRPC planners mapped should be considered by officials behaving as if big issues are disconnected, and also disconnected from the region's deep social, economic and development problems and imbalances.

Keep this headline in mind if you follow the water hearings, or freeway expansion, or job growth patterns, or the region's lack of affordable housing, or the relationship between so-called public planning and spending and their impact on the culture and the so-called free market.

Keep it in mind as Waukesha searches for a big federal grant to offset some of its ballooning water diversion projected costs as you read about cuts in programs for lower-income Wisconsinites:
How suburban sprawl causes segregation and isolates the poor
That won't be the focus of the  hearing in Waukesha tonight -- two other sessions are set later this week for Milwaukee, and Racine - - but it will be the proverbial eight-hundred pound elephant in the room

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