The Business Journal reported yesterday that Milwaukee County executive Chris Abele has vetoed a Milwaukee County Board resolution calling for an advisory referendum on a Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District plan to [re]pay the city of Franklin for costs related to building a sewer interceptor on the city’s southwest side.
The county board on Sept. 29 approved holding the referendum, which is nonbinding; Abele announced his veto on Monday. The project would extend an MMSD regional sewerage line at South 60th Street and Ryan Road to the Milwaukee County line at South 124th Street abutting Muskego in Waukesha County.
Abele said the Ryan Creek interceptor project has the support of city officials in Franklin and Muskego as well as the MMSD, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Southeast Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. He said the project will help open parts of Milwaukee County and the region to new development and expand employment and the tax base.
Earlier this month in an exclusive story, THE FRANKLIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL questioned whether Mayor Tom Taylor was cooking a back room Deal with County Executive Chris Abele over the Franklin tax payer-funded, $41 million Ryan Creek Interceptor Project? Our story also included a six-page letter from Mayor Taylor to the county executive asking Able to veto a September 29, 2011, action by the County Board adopting a Resolution for an advisory referendum on the plan by Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) to repay approximately $41.1 million to the City of Franklin for the costs related to building the Ryan Creek Interceptor Project.
On Monday morning, October 24, as a Franklin tax payer, I sent the following email to County Executive Abele:
Dear County Executive Chris Abel:
I am a twenty-year resident and home owner in the City of Franklin. The purpose of my email is to ask you to deny the October 5, 2011 request by City of Franklin Mayor Thomas M. Taylor to veto the County Board’s September 29, 2011 action adopting a Resolution providing for an advisory referendum on the plan by MMSD to pay more than $41 million to the City of Franklin for the costs related to the construction of the Ryan Creek Interceptor project.
Mayor Taylor has claimed on several occasions and in a September 26, 2010, JSOnline story that this project will “[Open] much of the land to a building boom [and] would add more than $1.2 billion to the city's property tax base by 2025.”
We have made two open records requests to Mayor Taylor asking him for documentation proving his claims; to-date he has not been forthcoming with any such documentation. My latest request dated October 13, 2011, to-date has gone unanswered and makes me highly suspect of the mayor’s claims, which appears to be the primary reason he and certain Franklin Alderman favor this project.
I am asking you to deny Mayor Taylor’s request for your veto and to allow the referendum go forward.
Thank you for your consideration of my request.
Sincerely,
Fred V. Keller
Franklin tax payers should ask themselves and the honorable Mayor Tom Taylor why he does not want the people of Franklin to vote on this $41 million sewer project, which will be funded up-front by Franklin Tax payers?
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