MenomoneeFallsNOW.com
search all things local
     
Blog Home |        Welcome to MyCommunityNOW - Blogs Sign in | Join
Browse By tag All Tags » 27th Street Corridor » Blogs (RSS)

Related Tags

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

By Bryan Maersch
Monday, May 12 2008, 03:28 PM

The great Aretha Franklin spells it out as she says: R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me!

For the past couple of weeks, I quietly sat back and witnessed a great deal of Lack of Respect in the City of Franklin. This Lack of Respect has been on many levels.

  • Lack of Respect for the citizens of the communities of Franklin and Oak Creek by the 27th Street Steering Committee to dare to criticize the name of Boomgaard District and the costs involved in naming it.
  • Lack of Respect for members of the 27th Street Steering Committee who have spent much time working on the 27th Street project. Yes they may be bull headed but have spent a lot of time and sweat on the project which they get paid nothing for.
  • Lack of Respect from City officials (like Alderman Sohns) to bloggers (who are their constituents) and to the other vocal citizens of Franklin.
  • Lack of Respect from the media as we become a laughing stock due to this Boomgaard fiasco (Sykes, Belling and Stingl)
  • Lack of Respect from other communities as we weather the issues of mistrust of our community leaders and their leadership.
  • Lack of Respect from the Zizzo group to the citizens of Franklin for not involving us in renaming a major part of our city.
  • Lack of Respect to our city officials, who some say, do not deserve our respect on how they have handled this issue.
  • Lack of Respect from a fellow FranklinNOW Blogger for other community bloggers that choose to blog about this Boomgaard fiasco.  Who asked in one of his blogs "How's that "New Day" working out for you guys?"  I guess not too well with all this Lack of Respect!
Filed under: , ,
Permalink |  Mail to a friend

Comments (2) Add Comment
 

Just Bad PR for the Boomgaard district!

By Bryan Maersch
Wednesday, May 7 2008, 04:23 PM
I was sitting next to Fred Keller at the City Council meeting on Tuesday night.  My mouth dropped and I was stunned when Ted Grintjes the Chairman of the 27th Street Steering Committee let loose with both cannons in a public tirade against local blogger Fred Keller. You can read the blow by blow description in Greg Kowalski’s on site blog entitled Grintjes v Keller - Boomgaard got heated in Council chambers.

 As I said, Grintjes is a citizen appointed member of both the 27th Street Steering Committee and the powerful Community Development Authority which is authorized to transact business and exercise any and all powers, duties, and functions set out in Sections 66.40 and 66.431 of the Wisconsin Statutes for housing and redevelopment authorities. Ted often spends 40 hour plus of his personal hours ,working on these two City committee / commission according to people tha t know him.

The berating of a Franklin Citizen who disagrees with Ted and his committee members leads me to believe that Ted does not realize that this was just outright bad PR for the 27th street project. One can only assume it was his many hours of time he spends on these committee / commissions that set Ted off.

Fred Keller had no intention of standing up to defend his opinion and information he presented asresearch he discovered about the Boomgaard District’s redlight reputation in Amsterdam. But how could he not respond to Ted’s intentional verbal attack on this private Franklin citizen?

Ted Grintjes has done something that is destructive to his committee; he has brought further bad public relations to a public relations fiasco brought about by the naming of the Boomgaard District via the Zizzo group who handeled the annoucement badly.

 Ted –  You needed to turn this around to become positive public opinion but now have instead blown up this public relations disaster  even further. 

 Had this outburst not happened, I truley believe this issue would have died out sooner than later. However, I believe the personal attack of Fred has encouraged him to pursue his research even further.
Filed under: , , ,
Permalink |  Mail to a friend

Comments (6) Add Comment
 

Updated: The Real Boomgaard Boondoggle?

By Bryan Maersch
Friday, Apr 25 2008, 07:00 AM
The true boondoggle is that a local FranklinNOW blogger wasted two hours of the Mayors time discussing something as trivial as the naming of the 27th Street Corridor to Boomgaard District.

To paraphrase that same blogger on Fred Keller's attempt to get our council to pledge holding down the tax rate:

I also feel it's going too far because, in all honesty, how many Franklin residents read the blogs? How many Franklin residents who know the blogs exist even read them?  How many people even know Fred Keller exists?

I ask the same question – How many people even know that Greg Kowalski exists and why is he wasting the Mayors time?

Most of the Franklin Bloggers and commentators just chided the Council on the funny name the Zizzo group came up for the district, while Greg felt he needed to take it to the extreme.

Talk about WAGGING THE DOG.

 

Updated 4/24/2008 - 10:46PM

Greg Responded with:

Honestly, the Mayor was doing his job earlier today. He represents all citizens, and he wanted to answer my questions in person instead of responding via e-mail. The Mayor and I also needed to discuss other items, and the meeting was scheduled for some time.

Where his original Blog stated:

First, I want to personally say thank you, Mayor Taylor, for sitting down with me for 2+ hours this morning to discuss Franklin...in particular, this Boomgaard of a name.

The Mayor told me with a straight face,

I did NOT suggest Boomgaard as my first choice for the district.

He also took note in the numbers of people reading this information on my blog. I e-mailed him and Alderman Steve Olson and informed them that as of 12:35am last night, FranklinNOW's hit numbers were 1084 for the Boomgaard blog entries of mine. As of right now (12:46pm 4/24), according to FranklinNOW's system, 2347 visitors have seen these blog entries.

Taking notice of that, he went on to discuss the corridor's past - all orchards for the most part. He also answered questions I had sent him and Steve Olson last night.

My apologies to Greg as his posting looked like he was taking up 2+ hours of the Mayors time to discuss the naming of the Boomgaard District. You may remember that Greg currently is Vice Chairman of the Environmental Commission and an employee of Alderman Kristen Wilhelms Conservancy organization Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy (MALC) .

 

Filed under: , ,
Permalink |  Mail to a friend

Comments (15) Add Comment
 
More Posts