Last Night's Council Meeting

As predicted, the Council voted last night to extend the Akcess deadline, and to eliminate parking on Ohio St. Both were 4-3 votes, with Palmeri, Esslinger, and McHugh the no votes on each.

The Akcess proposal came with an interesting provision to allow the city OR Akcess to terminate the development agreement if nothing happens by the end of December. I compared the situation to marriage counseling: anyone who's been through it knows that if the counseling is going poorly, there comes a time when the counselor says, "I think we are now moving toward divorce counseling." The fact that Akcess--who until this point had difficulty even acknowledging a possibility of termination--wanted this provision says that we are now in the "divorce counseling" stage.

For those who got into this late, let me restate what my position has been from the beginning. Initially, Akcess came to town talking about a true mixed-use development that would include retail, restaurants, housing, etc. etc. At that point it sounded like an exciting development worthy of support. It had the potential to be the "living learning community" that UW Oshkosh Chancellor Wells has advocated and that I had stated was a good idea for the area.

Soon after getting the attention and interest of the community, however, Akcess announced that in order for the mixed-uses to materialize, a class-A office building would first have to be built. They said that there was a great need and demand for such office space in Oshkosh, and that most of the tenants they would recruit and sign on would already be in the city. For many people in the city, myself included, the move from mixed use to office space felt like a bait and switch, and many red flags went up. (I can't remember when the Supple Hotel and restaurant came into the mix, but we were told that that too could not happen until the office building went up first.).

As time went on in 2007, it became clear that Akcess was going to have trouble getting tenants for the office building. We kept hearing about a "letter of intent" from a financial institution, but little else. Supple even pulled the restaurant (but brought it back into the mix last month). Then, in July of 2007 the common council was asked to purchase the Chamber of Commerce building, which would allow the Chamber to move into the new office building. The Council rejected that proposal by a 7-0 vote.

In November of 2007, with Akcess still not able to secure a sufficient number of tenants to proceed, I requested that the staff and council come up with a "Plan B" in case the Akcess project did not materialize. That request was met with zero support from Community Development and the majority of the Council. Last month it became clear that staff and Akcess was already working on their own "Plan B," a scheme to reintroduce the Chamber building purchase. This was met with more email, phone calls, letters, and on-the-street feedback than any other issue since I've been on the Council. On the strength of Jess King holding steady against a wave of enormous big shot pressure, the proposal was once again defeated (this time by a 4-3 vote).

So here we are, now told that if something doesn't happen by the end of December the agreement can be terminated. Let me be clear: even if the project moves forward, it is not a victory for citizens. Few people have expressed support for an office building that will sit minimally occupied, and Akcess themselves admit that the condo part of the project probably won't happen until 2012 at the earliest.

On the Ohio St. issue, I'm simply tired of what I referred to as "bureacratic blackmail" that forces us to vote in a certain way due to threats of losing state or federal monies if we don't. City councils around the country need to stand up to that kind of crap.

More important, Ohio St. is a mixed use neighborhood, the kind of area that wise planners would see as an important hub in which to grow small businesses (which will be the backbone of the 21st century economy.). Having a 4-lane highway run through the area does not help us move in that direction, and in fact forces existing and new businesses to build more and larger private parking lots. These are the "impervious surfaces" that contribute directly to flooding. The width of the Ohio St. sidewalks will also be narrowed one-foot on each side, which is bad for pedestrians and bikers (who will have to use the sidewalk unless we can find a way to get bike lanes on Ohio.).

During citizen statements, Justin Mitchell talked about the beach water quality issue, and it looked like there was support for moving forward on ideas for better testing and/or signage.

After the meeting we had a workshop on a proposal to create raised medians on Jackson St. from around Smith St . south to Murdock. Turns out that such medians (especially south of Viola Ave.) could create some real access problems for traffic moving in and out of businesses in the area. Our options appear to be to put in some medians excluding the area south of Viola, or do nothing and look for other safety and/or beautification measures for the area.

We cannot minimize the safety issues on Jackson. The late Carol Erdman, a teacher's aide at Oshkosh North High School, died in December of 2004 in an accident at the intersection of Jackson and Smith.

You can see the entire July 8th meeting here.