The Tallgrass - Westowne Water Tower Controversy

Last month an issue--the building of a new Waukesha water tower in the area surrounding the UWW campus--boiled into a short-lived, but intense, controversy.

There are two subdivisions in the University area on the northwest side of Waukesha: one abuts the eastern edge of campus, the other hugs the western edge. Westowne (to the east) comprises about four hundred fifty lots (small, with typical dimensions of 50 ft X 125 ft, just east of the campus. It's a working class neighborhood, has been there since 1924. [full disclosure: I live in Westowne, have for 16 years; and I love it.] Not so long ago it was out-in-the-country, beyond the western boundary of the City of Waukesha. Now it is viewed as inner-city.

In another world entirely is the Siepmann-developed Tallgrass experience. It was platted and offered for sale in 1995--and almost immediately built-out--following a pattern that had been quite successful, both economically and esthetically, for Siepmann in the 70s when the nearby Pebble Valley was developed. Siepmann's idea has been to place residences on relatively small parcels, but provide an extensive meandering greensward of unifying common space.

Tallgrass, by comparison, has seemed like too much of a good thing. The houses are gigantic, averaging almost double the size of those in Pebble Valley. Tallgrass is out-of-scale. The tract mansions seem crowded; trees will take many decades to grow to a size proportionate with the dwellings. Pebble Valley, in contrast, has matured nicely. Its neighborhoods are appealing and much desired by conservative homebuyers.

Because of all the burgeoning subdivisions--Tallgrass for one--being annexed to the City, water pressure in the northwest pressure zone has been deemed insufficient. There has been, since 1991, on the boundary between UWW and Tallgrass (and the cornfield that preceded Tallgrass), a 65 ft standpipe (a type of comparatively short, squat water tower that resembles a silo rather than a mushroom). It was there, on high ground, looming over several properties in Tallgrass from the beginning. Most in Tallgrass couldn't see the standpipe; those lots that were close were said to have sold last and at a discount.

But the replacement tower is to be huge, over a hundred feet tall, with the bulk of the water storage in the upper half of a more typical balloon-on-a-stick water tower. It is going to be visible from most of the houses in Tallgrass.

The Tallgrassers (at least some of them) weren't happy. They pouted. They did a lot of homework and came forward with a lengthy and detailed jeremiad backed up by sixteen pages of topographical, geological, aerial photographical, economical, taxical and obtusely analytical argumentation. It was all very reminiscent of the famous Officer Obie report: "...twenty seven color, glossy photographs, with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one," the backbone of his airtight case against Arlo and the gang from Alice's Restaurant.

Their demand: Move that water tower over to the edge of that working class subdivision.

And why? We pay more taxes than they do.

Here's the page from their proposal with the rationale.


(reader: kindly forgive the inability of this blogger to get an inserted page up to readable size. The highlighted line is: "Tallgrass Subdivision Seemingly Pays nearly 2 1/2 times more taxes than University Meadows"

It is a corrosive and particularly ugly assertion.

We have by virtue of the size and location and valuation of our residences an a priori entitlement to extra consideration, preferential treatment, extraordinary deference.

Where do these people get such distorted notions?

Well, recently, they've come from members of the Waukesha City Council:

Alderman James Connors, October, 2005: "A lot of my constituents have assessments of over $360 thousand and they don't think they are getting their money's worth."

Connors, again, in October 2006: "My constituents are paying more than their fair share."

Alderman Rick Tortomasi, December 19, 2006, in a Waukesha Freeman guest opinion: "The west side is expanding even further west with the addition of of hundreds of new homes well above the Medium [sic] -priced home in this city. That means they are taxed higher than the average city taxpayer."

This attitude and belief is corroding a fundamental understanding.

The owner of each home in Waukesha pays at exactly the same rate of taxation.

Eighteen and seven hundred seventy seven thousand, eight hundred sixty seven millionths of a dollar/per thousand dollars of assessed valuation. $18.77 per thousand, for short. (Honest, look at a tax bill. The tax rate is precisely computed to six decimal places). Each of us has his or her own multiplier--the value of our property. Anyone who doesn't like the size of the multiplier is in complete control of that variable.

If you cannot afford the taxes, you've got too much house. Don't moan about how some--at the high end--are taxed higher than the rest, or that they are paying more than a fair share. And, if you're a politician, don't encourage that kind of thinking.

Note : My wife, my children, and I know a number families and individuals who live in Tallgrass. Wonderful, decent, modest, generous people. It is clear that not every one of the residents of that nearby neighborhood stood behind (or even knew about) the statements made by the vocal group. Doubly a shame, because they may get tarred with the same brush. But not by me--A special thank you to those Tallgrass residents who apologized for the ugliness of the whiners.

Waukesha Water Utility pushes "aggressive" (their word) conservation pricing plan. It is a lightweight, lackluster attempt.

The monthly meeting of the Waukesha Water Utility was held this afternoon.

News: Tortomasi is out. Bull is in. Rick Tortomasi was appointed as Common Council member, less than a year ago. It made little sense to put him on the Utility Commission a year ago, as he had just been elected, didn't know his way around. Nelson also put him on the Finance Committee, as a greenhorn. He was clearly in way over his head. No word on why he's out. So, a year of orientation is wasted.

Peggy Bull--appointed Alderman a year ago, ran for her seat unopposed last month--is the newest greenhorn alderman, who will need months to get up to speed. Probably for the best, though. Tortomasi contributed little. Bull is bright and in touch with the broad issues.

"Seldom-seen" Commissioner, Gerald Couri was absent AGAIN. Mayor also absent, so a quorum of three did business.

In the midst of a long list of routine approvals of contracts and consultants came the unveiling of the "ascending block" pricing of water to residential customers.

In the past in Waukesha, and universally throughout Wisconsin, water utilities have had "descending block" pricing schemes. Under pressure to demonstrate aggressive conservation measures as a condition of tapping Lake Michigan water, the Utility has turned the system on its head. Presently, customers pay $1.69 per thousand gallons of water--up to 75 thousand. Gallons used beyond 75K cost $1.46 per thousand gallons. The price keeps descending in blocks, thus the name. The more you use, the cheaper it gets. Not exactly a formula for conservation.

It is not actually a new idea; this blogger--long before the word "blog" was in the vocabulary--urged the Commission to go to an effective ascending block pricing scheme. What the Commision is backing is a weak attempt, weak to the point of being little more than symbolic.

Peggy Steeno, the Commission's Administrative Services Manager--an accountant with an extremely sharp pencil and a refreshing air of competence--is often the only one in the room willing to cut through the BS. After outlining the new pricing scheme:


First 30,000 Gal. --- $1.69 per thousand gallons
Next 10,000 Gal. --- $1.92 per thousand gallons
Over 40,000 Gal. --- $2.24 per thousand gallons

She announced the actual effect on customers. Words to the effect that "This will only apply to people for whom it doesn't matter". What's the problem? Hardly anyone among the utility customers gets into the second block. They have the brackets all wrong. Good concept, bad execution.

All that straining to present this scheme as revolutionary (My pop, God rest him, a lefty to his core, always warned me to be wary of suburbanites announcing that they are in the vanguard of this-or-that revolution) and they have produced a weak-kneed Potemkin Village of a plan. It has been crafted to have minimum effect on the water usage behavior of the customers and to keep revenues up. The current rate case (including this bogus ascending block element) before the Public Service Commission wants an increase of 17%.

And they already have projected another rate increase of 17% in January, 2009--19 months away.

Henry, why are you here...? Waldo, why are you not here?

This exchange of e-mail with my son in Bangkok (a recent graduate, working an internship in Thailand) is an attempt to fulfill an obligation incumbent on all civil disobedients--public declaration and acknowledgement of consequences.

On 4/13/07, Jim Bouman wrote: [from Waukesha]
It is 6:45 Friday evening here, a really nice day. We'll grill some chicken in a little while, then watch a movie.

Mom and I talked something over and made a decision. We'll probably owe about $6,000 (in four quarterly chunks) in federal taxes on the 16th of April [see April 17 update below]. We are going to send in the tax form with that number on the bottom line.

We will be sending a letter instead of a check, explaining that we refuse to pay this first installment. If they want it, they'll be doing what they did the last time we did this--in the 1970s. They came and took my check, our savings, mom's check. One day they even came to the house on Madison Street and threatened to impound our car to cover the taxes and penalties we had incurred. Those were the days.

And we're back to doing it. This war is so ugly. It is a crime committed by this generation, that will be hung on you and your children to pay for.

I'll start the grill now. Talk to you soon. Sunday early would be a good to time to Skype.

Dad


On 4/14/07, jesse bouman wrote: [from Bangkok]
I don't understand what withholding taxes actually does. Does it make you feel better, that you are doing something against the war? Is it productive in any way? Are there any real benefits that come from this decision? I don't see the benefits outweighing the costs and I think there are more practical ways to voicing your opinion. You are living in an age where technology gives anyone the ability to voice their opinion. You have a blog, use it. National publications quote blogs as sources now; you know this. Something like [blogging] can incite actual change. I don't agree with withholding taxes....

It's your life, your money, and your decision.

Jesse


On April 15, Jim Bouman wrote [from Waukesha]:
Thoreau called it: "...the Duty of Civil Disobedience".

Thoreau objected, to the very core of his being, to the Mexican War--perhaps the most unjust war in earlier American history)--in 1847. There were a number of taxes citizen Thoreau was obligated to pay, including a poll tax, road tax and others, but no income tax. Refusal to pay the poll tax carried more weight than mere words. To be sure and he and others had written and spoken many words on the Mexican War--all to little effect in ending it. He went to jail for that refusal. While he was in jail, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit and said: "Henry, why are you here?". To which Thoreau responded: "Waldo, why are you not here?".

Refusing to pay a portion of taxes that are specifically required for carrying out war was his--and now my--way of speaking with greater force and urgency.

One cannot be a tax evader--one who tries to get away with non-payment of taxes. The refusal must be public, intentional, principled, carefully-thought-out, and with the aim of stopping something that has not been stoppable by the ordinary constitutionally-protected means --public statements, organizing, working together in groups, blogging.

This war has now gone on for 49 months. The cost in lives and treasure and suffering is beyond imagining for most of us. More than 650,000 Iraqi lives (the vast majority of them civilian non-combatants), more than $416 billion, four million refugees, 3,300 American lives. And the President is arguing that his Iraq project needs $92 billion more, right now, and demanding that Congress appropriate that money right now.

And these April 16 taxes we intend to refuse to pay are to be part of that wad that will be spent. Sending in the money is assent; it says that we are doing our part

We pay--cheerfully--for Head Start and cops and streetlights and Universities and research and foreign aid, and school bands and orchestras--most everything else that is governmental. And since 1975 we have always paid, cheerfully, on-time, all the taxes we owed, Federal State and Local.

And we always, always vote.

At this moment, though, we think that these things are not enough.

We are going to do it publicly; we'll be urging others to do it, as well (punishable as conspiracy). And, perhaps, like a snowball rolling down hill, it will gather the weight and mass necessary to become a roadblock to more of this war, more of any war.

A story: In 1970, mom and I joined the war tax resistance and refused to pay a portion of income tax, as well as a little-known excise tax that had been identified as being specifically necessary to pay for war. It was the 10% telephone excise tax on long distance phone service. Eventually about 50 thousand Americans began refusing each month to pay this phone tax. The way we did it was to send in payment for phone service to the phone company and deduct the 28 cents or 41 cents (some piddling amount) that was listed as Fed. Tax. The phone company simply reported to the IRS that the customer had refused the tax. Didn't hurt Ma Bell. The phone companies, in fact, hated being the unwilling tax collector.

People laughed at this ineffectual, chickenshit, approach to bringing the war machine to a halt. Johnson, then Nixon, just kept on escalating the Vietnam War, despite growing revulsion toward what we were doing in that far-off country.

But the kicker: years after Nixon was gone--resigned in disgrace for other war-related criminal activity, (it wasn't the crime, it was the cover-up) his White House/Oval Office taping system that had secretly recorded years of presidential conversations was released, a few tapes at a time, by the National Archives.

There, in the Oval Office, at just the moment he was preoccupied with the heat coming down and impending impeachment, Nixon is heard complaining loud and bitterly to Haldemann to "Get something done about those damned telephone tax protesters".

Drip, drip, drip. Twenty eight cents a month multiplied by 50 thousand. It clearly got under the skin of the guy--sleazy, lowlife, quack-Quaker that he was--we were sending a message to.

Dad


Update: Our extremely competent and and conscientious tax accountant informs us that we actually overpaid 2006 taxes by about $3000--a combination of lack of coordination between quarterly estimated tax payments and withholding on withdrawals from IRAs.

I'm torn beween "Drat!" and "Cool"! The refusal will have to wait until July estimated payment is due (drat). The unexpected refund will go to paying off the school debts of our two--a recent graduate (that's you) and a soon-to-graduate (that's Daisy).

Waukesha's Magic Number.

It is quite the interesting number—referred to often in Waukesha City Council discussion and in news reports of developers approaching the Waukesha Plan Commission. Don’t look for it in the ordinances; it’s more like a principle, a benchmark, a little nugget of conventional wisdom.

Here it is: A new single-family dwelling in a new subdivision shall, ideally, carry a $360 thousand sale price/assessed value, in order to be worth Waukesha’s while.

Jim Payne, City Administrator, did the number crunching several years ago, and asserts--even today-- that this number is right-on-the-money. It is what's needed to produce enough tax revenue for the city of Waukesha to stay solvent and expand services to meet the increase in population.

It is clearly not hard-and-fast; some budget tract mansions (lacking granite countertops) are going for less—but not much less. Moreover, when the rare proposal for low-and-moderate income housing comes up, those houses have to be, by definition, in the range of $190 thousand to $200 thousand.

But, the pressure is there--get all the new stuff to average upwards of a third of a million bucks. Otherwise, the city will not be able to maintain the same level of services to existing residents, as well as the new ones.

How much does it take every month to pay for a house-and-yard that’s priced at $360,000?
The newspapers and the internet are full of teaser ads. . . Mortgage Rates Near 40-Yr Lows $310K loan for under $999/mo. . . . that make one think it isn’t really so much. Read ‘em (and weep over) the fine print. Here’s what I worked out with an old fashioned mortgage guy. He says a prudent person (the only kind he’d make a loan to) with a 20% ($72 thousand) down payment can get a mortgage of $288 thousand, with a fixed interest rate of 6%, for 30 years.

The monthly payment would be:

Principal and Interest $1775
Taxes $540
Insurance $85
Total $2,400 / month

That’s a big nut to crack every month. And it raises a question: what kind of family income does it take to shoulder a monthly obligation of $2400 every-single-month, for the next thirty years? Assuming the normal expenses of suburban lifestyle, plus furniture, kids, existing debt, savings for retirement, heat and electric, kids, college loans, a couple of cars and a Harley, not to mention kids, a prudent lender wants to see $105 thousand-a-year in income.

To those who have that much down payment and that much income, I say mopar to ya. I encourage you to settle in Waukesha, in a house, priced at $360 K. If you manage to just barely meet the criteria, prepare to eat macaroni and cheese every night in house with no furniture.

To those who don’t meet the income standard (or cannot count on maintaining it) I’d suggest trying to live well, but not that well…. Don’t go after a starter manse that costs upwards of a third of a million. If you, the potential buyer, lack a substantial down payment; if you need an Adjustable Rate Mortgage to get payments you can handle; if you are counting on your house as an investment that’ll appreciate thirty percent every four years, or--and this is the big one--if you cannot afford the taxes on a $360 thousand residence (which will, of course, go up 30% if your hopes about appreciation turn out to be realistic), don’t even go to the open house, don’t burn little candles of desire for this kind of over-hyped and over-priced subdivision lifestyle.

This codger, who has lived in two houses in Waukesha over a span of almost thirty five years, who raised two kids in a really fine working-class neighborhood where they could walk (not that they always did) to elementary, middle and high school, plus two years of University of Wisconsin, will not have to listen to whining from those who have chosen to get in over their heads--but think the problem is the taxes. The problem is with the choice made, or about to be made—to get in over your head.

If you cannot afford the taxes on a $360 thousand house, you cannot afford the house.
Finally, this isn’t an argument for retaining the property tax, as is. I believe schools should be funded by income tax, rather than property tax. But, city and county government and services will remain forever supported by the property tax; and the amount paid will always be tied to the assessed value of each citizen’s real estate.

And, what does all of this have to do with water?
Quite a bit, actually. We have enough water for now, and enough for a conservative future. We do need to conserve it. It's the CONSERVATIVE thing to do. We might do well to recognize that continued uncontrolled growth of the city through annexation will produce a situation in which we do not have sufficient water from our only available source--deep wells and shallow wells.

Cutting back on development and annexation is the sensible choice. Pursuing an incredibly expensive and decidedly iffy path like trying to get expensive Lake Michigan water pumped to Waukesha (and then back to the lake) is not the choice of the homeowner who is concerned that the taxes are too high in Waukesha.

The Wall of Pain

"The crimes in Chinatown include incest and murder, but the biggest crime is against the city's own future, by men who see that to control the water is to control the wealth." Roger Ebert, 1974

This blog may have a title that focuses on water, but, as in the 1974 Oscar-winning film (Eleven nominations, just one statue, in the year of Godfather II) starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway and John Huston, the thing that underlies all of the action is people who buy land cheap by manipulating water, and sell it dear after they've induced the taxpayers/government to assure an endless water supply.

Waukesha's no Chinatown, but it has a cast of analogous characters: Wm. Huelsman, Bryce Styza, The Bielinski brothers, and a host of smaller fry. I'm not even remotely suggesting these big players do anything untoward. In fact, they are deemed locally to be the leading edge, the engine of growth, the facilitators of much-needed tax revenue. I'm merely noting the way they operate, the way they spin fantasies of upscale, exclusive (exclusive: Is this a word with a few ugly overtones?) residential communities that induce people to move to a contorted version of the good life in ever-more-remote subdivisions.

Places of anomie and alienation where parenting is synonymous with chauffeuring, where kids never go to the park, because mom and dad have a park-like lot. Places where you'd like to be friends with your neighbors, but you know they'll talk behind your back if you have dandelions. Places ever more dependent on the availability of cheap petroleum, ever more likely to foreclose what's left of the agriculture--the culture part--and the farmland we are going to need in the future.

There's always been a lot of money to be made, but developing hasn't always been easy for developers.
When I first came to Milwaukee in 1966, the air was full of shock and gossip and derisive commentary about the spectacular fall from the pinnacle of hubris by Francis Jay Schroedel and his doomed Rainbow Springs development out near Eagle. In the late fifties, early sixties, when he was cooking it up, SE Wisconsin was still in the planning and early construction phase of I-94 to Madison. The farmers way out there still had fairly prosperous dairy operations; they wondered what was going on in this developer's head. And there were few, if any, commuters.

Schroedel got himself pretty far out on a very fragile limb. Mercifully, Schroedel's name is still attached to his successes; few know that the post-war wunderkind of the cradles of the baby boom was the same guy whose big dream is still a nightmare fifty years later.

The highs and crashing lows of Waukesha development surfaced again in 1976 in the person of Bob Nanz, the hotshot of his decade, backed by a couple of bank insiders. There was a clear appearance of winking at a yearlong check kiting scheme by Nanz as he tried to paper over the hemorrhage of cash from his developments with a blizzard of bad checks, kited from one empty account to another. One of the insiders was declared non compos mentis by a compliant judge (saving him from possible indictment), but Nanz went to jail.

But, why indulge in this review of long-forgotten Waukesha developer nightmares?

Because it is coming back. It is not hard to imagine today's mega-developers sleeping less than soundly, waking in cold sweat and tremors from dreams that borrow images of Scrooge waking up to Marley's ghost, warning "Don't get over-extended. Beware the bankers who'll toast your Midas touch with single malt scotch tonight and foreclose in the morning".


So, what leads this blogger to predict the return of gloom and doom?


It's Waukesha's Wall of Pain.
This is a bulletin board in the main lobby of City Hall. Over the years, I've seen as many as five or six public notices there at any given time. Yesterday, I saw 72 of them. Sheriff's auctions to be held on the Courthouse steps. Foreclosed houses all over Waukesha County.

And underneath the legal lingo, the anguish of people who are losing their homes is palpable. None of the notices I read was for a debt of less than $100 thousand. A surprising number were for mortgages-in-default in the range of $370 to $490 thousand. One of them was for a house in my neighborhood. I checked the details on the Assessor's web site when I got home. A couple bought the house for about $168 thousand at the end of 2004. Next month their place will go to the highest bidder. Their present indebtedness on the mortgage: $183 thousand.

For every person, couple, family that is subjected to this, there are probably twenty (or fifty, who knows?) who are on the brink, and hundreds (or thousands, who knows?) living from paycheck to paycheck, knowing a layoff means bankruptcy and forclosure.

Too much house. Too much offered. Too much inflation in the appraisal. Too far from work. Too much mortgaged. Too much fantasized equity taken out and spent through home equity borrowing.

A prediction:
Aurora will not build a Pabst Farms Hospital in Oconomowoc. Comes time to float bonds, the implosion of confidence in growth scenarios and looming chaos in real estate financial markets will send the plans up in smoke. Good thing: the best thing that could happen to Pabst Farms is that it goes back to being farms.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel demands Mayor Barrett jump on Waukesha's water wagon in the name of regional cooperation.
Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 3:24 PM

"... entire region is trying to work together on a
host of interrelated issues that include water,
transportation and economic development"
MJS: 2/28/07

Water and transportation have been, until now, only marginally "interrelated issues". Transit is being linked now only because there is going to be a big honkin' quid pro quo: Waukesha County can afford to--and must--make a big commitment to regional transit before Milwaukee even considers pumping Lake Michigan water to Waukesha and beyond.

This editorial argument would be more credible if the editorialist would point to something significant--something beyond blue sky talk--about regional transit that is actually being worked on. Waukesha's need for water is
just about the only thing that has afforded Milwaukee some leverage with the hundreds of thousands who have fled Milwaukee to surrounding counties with little interest in looking back at the economic decimation that is the direct result of their flight.

The editorial encourages something-for-everyone; but most of the benefits accrue to the developers of more and more fallow farm land--currently controlled by speculators--that is slated to become annexed "upscale" subdivisions devoted to exotically-priced tract mansions.

It is a clearly-stated preference in the City of Waukesha: neither the Plan Commission nor the Council wish to see proposals for low and moderate income subdivisions on land that is proposed for annexation. Such housing proposals are steered to brownfields or ignored. And the developers have sunk so much money into purchased
farmland, that they crave lot prices of $100 thousand and up. Developers are not about build low and moderate income subdivisions.

The editorialist says that houses on five-acre lots amount to sprawl. But, houses built on lots of three to five acres, served by well water and septic systems can be built in the townships (as opposed to being
annexed to the city), and they are self-limiting. Developers cannot make big profits without the gigantic-houses-on-small-city-lots, served by city services. It is the subdivisions and developments that demand annexation, then cram over-sized and over-priced houses on 1/3 of an acre (every house thus far built in Pabst Farms is on 1/3 acre) that fuel the worst kind of sprawl.

Waukesha's water problems and the Waukesha Water Utility's proposal to divert 22 million gallons per day (present usage is 8 million gallons per day) from Lake Michigan is aimed at fueling more annexation and more of the dense sprawl that craves city water and sewer as well as all the other essential, yet costly, city services.

At a bare minimum, Mayor Barrett should answer Waukesha's proposal to take Great Lakes water--should a diversion be permitted under the Great Lakes Compact--only if the amount of water is ten million gallons a day,
or less, and if Waukesha bargains as if there's a two-way street, with a two-way streetcar. That means rapid transit, fast rail, regional transit, and the kind of access that will provide access to Waukesha jobs for those without SUVs.

I have lived in the City of Waukesha for almost 35 years in a working class neighborhood with terrific neighbors and lots of services--including 14 years of public education--within walking distance. I've seen lots of other Milwaukeeans move out here with undisguised contempt for Milwaukee, Milwaukeeans, Milwaukee's economic
life, Milwaukee's problems.

They do, however, like to be able to zip into the big city for sports and nightlife and work in the office towers
downtown, so long as they are guaranteed a 70 mph commute, without slow-downs, back to their homegeneous, land-o-sprawl subdivisions where each of the houses is a slightly different shade of beige from the one next door.

I like Mayor Barrett's bottom-line consideration. He's not willing to give Waukesha what that suburban area demands without a significant gain for the city and the people of Milwaukee in return.

And that's the way it should be.