Is Franklin Mayor Tom Taylor Cooking a Back room Deal with County Executive Chris Abele over the $41 million Ryan Creek Interceptor Project?
County Executive Chris AbeleIn a six-page letter filled with half-truths and unsubstantiated tax revenue figures dated October 5, 2011 (See below), to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, Franklin Mayor Tom Taylor asked the county executive 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 pay approximately $41.1 million to the City of Franklin for the costs related to building the Ryan Creek Interceptor Project (RCI).
In a JSOnline story a little over a year ago Taylor was praising the project proclaiming “Development would follow the pipes.”
The story confirmed that the City was seeking, and has since received a nearly $31 million in low-interest Clean Water Fund loans through the state of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) in order to build a large sewer across franklin’s “frontier,” a nine square mile corner of the state's most populous county where only a few scattered homes are visible within a mosaic of farm fields, fence lines, marshes and woods, without sewers and without neighborhoods.
Mayor Taylor forecast with confidence that building the overdue RCI would “[Open] much of the land to a building boom [that] would add more than $1.2 billion to the city's property tax base by 2025,” adding that the added businesses would take some of the local tax burden off the shoulders of homeowners in Franklin.
This latest turn of events connected with this highly controversial project leaves us, and more than likely many of our readers, perplexed, confused and frankly, suspicious of Mayor Tom Taylor’s true motives for applying for a $31 million in low-interest Clean Water Fund loans with WDNR, and the subsequent sale of the RCI to MMSD for $41.1 million beginning in 2015. MMSD would take ownership of the RCI in 2031, after paying an estimated total of $41.1 million in principal and interest. The motives of those Franklin Alderman who voted in favor of seeking $31 million in low-interest Clean Water Fund loans from WDNR, should also be questioned.
Why the about face by the mayor, now?
We, like many of our fellow Franklin tax payers were under the impression that, based upon Mayor Taylor’s own words, “Development [would] follow the pipes, and that the project would [open] much of the land to a building boom [that] would add more than $1.2 billion to the city's property tax base by 2025.”
What would the County Executive’s veto accomplish? It would prevent a county-wide referendum vote on the RCI project; essentially silencing county, and more importantly, Franklin voters on the RCI project. Apparently, Mayor Taylor knows what’s best for us—"the unwashed masses."
Mayor Tom Taylor can be reached by phone at 414-427-7529 or Email at tom2563@att.net
Mayor Ltr to CoExec 10-05-11
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Monday, October 31, 2011 at 1:31 PM 
