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The number of extreme hot summer days is increasing around the world with global warming, but sprawling cities are racking up these sweltering days faster than more compact cities are, a new study finds. This finding could be important to city planners, particularly because heat waves are a killer worldwide (heat waves kill more U.S. residents than any other natural disaster) and the number of hot days is expected to increase as climate change ramps up. Anti-Smart Growth activists in Oneida County suffered a setback as Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a formal opinion that says that towns have no statutory authority to require other units of government to engage in a process described as “coordination.” Van Hollen said some towns have enacted resolutions stating they are requiring counties, state agencies and other governmental agencies to engage in a “coordination” process. The Attorney General said municipal planning statutes do not contain a “coordination” power that would allow a town to ignore its own statutory obligations or permit a town to impose non-statutory obligations on other municipalities or units of government. The effort has been led by a radical “property rights” group in Texas known as “American Stewards of Liberty.” For more information on “coordination” go here. Two Wisconsin lawmakers are joining the fight to delay preliminary engineering work for the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail project. State Reps. Jeff Fitzgerald, R-Horicon, and Robin Vos, R-Racine, sent a letter to the Federal Transit Administration asking that it deny the Southeastern Regional Transit Authority’s application to begin preliminary engineering on the estimated $232.7 million rail project. “It makes no sense to me,” Vos said Monday. “We should fix transportation first before assuming the state is going to pony up all this money for the project and before we know where the Legislature is going to go on the issue.” A half-cent sales tax increase would give Dane County planners the money they need to craft a regional transit strategy. But the Dane County Regional Transit Authority needs the strategy to persuade voters to hand over the money. “Yeah, it’s a bit of a conundrum there,” said Steve Hiniker, executive director of 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, RTA member and chairman of the Plan for Transit subcommittee. “Basically, we just have to rely on the dedication of a lot of folks.” Hiniker’s subcommittee is piecing together the RTA’s explanation for why voters should approve the sales tax increase. That pitch, he said, must cover expanding bus service and explaining how the Madison-to-Milwaukee high-speed rail line would blend in with proposed commuter rail between Middleton and Sun Prairie. Hiniker, like the other eight members of the RTA, is a volunteer. He said he spends 15 to 20 hours a week working on transit issues. The Madison Common Council on Tuesday lifted a 50 percent pre-lease requirement to provide a construction loan for a proposed business incubator. The council’s action allows planning to proceed for BioLink, a 31,000-square-foot project that will hold a greenhouse, office and research space for new businesses in the city. The project will be developed by the non-profit Madison Development Corp., and last month received a $4.5 million grant from the U.S. Economic Development Association. However, the federal money would have been unattainable unless the city freed up a $2 million tax incremental financing loan it approved last year for the project. TIF districts let municipalities borrow money to subsidize developments and pay for utility and street work that serves projects. Communities then use new taxes generated by the developments in the district to pay off the debt. By Mike Johnson of the Journal Sentinel Summit - Voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a referendum measure to turn the Town of Summit into a village. The vote was 483 to 85 in favor of incorporation as a village. Voter turnout was 14.6%; 570 of the town’s 3,898 registered voters cast ballots. Of the ballots cast, two were blank. “It’s loud and clear,” Town Chairman Len Susa said of the “yes” vote to become a village. “I’m very pleased at the turnout.” High-speed rail advocates are racing the state’s gubernatorial election cycle to line up support for an expanded track network to Green Bay and Minneapolis. “This is not a done deal,” said Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz at a rally Tuesday for high-speed rail expansion. “We don’t know what the next governor will do.” Republican gubernatorial candidates Scott Walker and Mark Neumann said they oppose the expansion of high-speed rail in Wisconsin. Furthermore, they said they would order the state stop construction of the Milwaukee-to-Madison line approved this year. Environmental consultants can count the minutes a home is affected by the strobe-like flickers of a wind turbine’s shadow. They can measure the decibels of the rhythmic thrum of turbine blades cutting through the air. They can use those flicker and sound measurements to determine the best placement for wind farms. But, wind farm developers argue, basing placement on those tests means sacrificing the one thing the industry needs to build in Wisconsin: certainty. Establishing setback distances would give developers that certainty, said Jim Naleid, managing partner for Holmen-based AgWind Energy Partners LLC. Milwaukee County officials must make up for estimated $10 million budget gapBy Steve Schultze of the Journal Sentinel An estimated $10 million shortfall in the Milwaukee County Transit System’s 2011 budget is fostering renewed worries about possible route cuts, fare increases or trims to the county’s paratransit service for people with disabilities. Higher operating costs and expected cuts in federal and state aid are behind the transit budget gap, Anita Gulotta-Connelly, the transit system’s top official, told the County Board’s transportation committee Wednesday. Reduced ridership prompted by the recession and a shift by Milwaukee Public Schools to greater use of private buses to transport students also were blamed for the shortfall. DNR notes city search for options other than lakeBy Don Behm of the Journal Sentinel Waukesha — State Department of Natural Resources Secretary Matthew Frank told Mayor Jeff Scrima Wednesday in a letter that the department will not begin reviewing Waukesha’s application for a Great Lakes water supply until the mayor and other city officials stop their search for other possible sources. A 2008 Great Lakes protection compact requires a municipality seeking lake water to demonstrate “there is no reasonable water supply alternative” other than the lakes, Frank says in the letter. Though the city’s application documents repeatedly state that lake water is the only sustainable water supply option available to Waukesha, the mayor has publicly stated his preference to continue evaluating other options, such as more wells, the Fox River and even continuing to remove radium from water pumped out of deep wells in a sandstone aquifer. |
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