In a couple of hours, County Supervisor Mark Borkowski will be holding a town hall meeting at Greenfield High School to discuss the Milwaukee County budget. I will be there with several other Franklin residents to speak to Supervisor Borkowski about the effort that so many residents have signed onto. The push to convince Milwaukee County that Franklin is indeed a community that would appreciate one of their Aquatics Centers has been extremely successful so far.
While the petition still has a few weeks left to gather signatures and citizen support, right now we are only a few signatures away from 200, which was the original benchmark I set up almost a month ago. This petition has been the most successful petition I've circulated, and I'd like to believe that every petition that has been created by me has had positive results for the residents of this community.
Some of you who have just become readers of Franklin Today ask, "Just what exactly is an Aquatics Center?" I could even pick up a sense of confusion from Mayor Taylor's remarks in the Franklin Citizen, which indicated that an Aquatics Center is more "Wisconsin Dells" than a "swimming facility".
An Aquatics Center is nowhere near being a Kalahari Resort or Noah's Ark. In fact, simply put, an Aquatics Center is just a community pool that has several additional features to make it a regional attraction. These features include:
- Several (?) water slides
- Splash pads
- Diving Boards
- Possible wading pool
- Plenty of lounge space
Other facilities like the one the petition is pushing for include Cool Waters @ Greenfield Park and the David Schulz Aquatic Center @ Lincoln Park. The facility won't likely be any more fantastic than what Cool Waters or the Schulz Aquatic currently boast, but that's fine with me. It makes the facility a reasonable addition to the City of Franklin and will have a positive draw of residents from within our community and the surrounding suburbs.
If you haven't signed the petition, please do so today. Let's break that 200 barrier and keep the momentum going!