The Franklin Common Council will once again be holding a meeting at the Law Enforcement Center on Thursday night. This time, it's to discuss Mayor Taylor's veto of the approval to submit 51st Street from College to Rawson to the state for consideration of federal stimulus dollars.
Over on Wag the Dog, Bryan Maersch indicates that the hoopla with the residents is overwith and the only ones that will be attendance are the bloggers and Franklin Senior Citizens, Inc. President Casper Green. He almost seems to mock the efforts of residents along that section of 51st Street, almost indicating with his comments that residents can only handle going to one meeting regarding this topic. To me, that sounds like Bryan is questioning the level of commitment and desire that residents have, which is rather incredible.
From this angle, I can fully understand why residents may not feel inclined to go to the upcoming meeting. The treatment they got from the Common Council was to the point of almost being impeachable. As I mentioned on Metro Milwaukee Today, the council...and that includes Mayor Taylor (who later vetoes the resolution causing the mess)...treated residents very poorly and with tons of negative attitude and feelings.
I hope Mike Buelow can persuade his neighbors on both sides of 51st Street to attend another meeting on this. There is a reason behind the Mayor putting the special meeting in the Law Enforcement Center, after all. It's to hold more residents that could be in attendance.
As a last note, I also hope that several members of the council apologize to the residents for their actions and words displayed and said last Tuesday. Their treatment of residents is no different than the constant controversy our State Senator's aide, Kevin Fischer, receives for his bullying and horrible treatment of Mary Lazich's constituents on his FranklinNOW blog. The aldermen I'd be expecting apologies from would be Common Council President Steve Taylor and Lyle Sohns, at the very minimum. Aldermen Steve Olson and Tim Solomon were also rude and rather condescending towards residents, but I believe CCP Taylor and Sohns, along with the Mayor, went a little above and beyond that.
