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By Bryan Maersch
Thursday, Aug 14 2008, 06:00 AM
I was on vacation in relaxing Door County on Wednesday, when the news hit FranklinNOW readers; Development leader resigns key city posts. Apparently Ted Grintjes is seeking to avoid future conflict-of-interest entanglements, so he resigned from the 27th Street steering committee, as well as positions he held on the Franklin Economic Development Commission and Community Development Authority .
FranklinNOW blogger Kevin Fischer said of Grintjes in his posting Ted Grintjes is leaving.....now what? Who can admirably replace him? I honestly don’t know.
Well Franklin has many eager, competent people and as the city of Franklin has done before Grintjes got involved with these high profile, high powered, Franklin Commissions. The city will find some other qualified person and move on.
I also believe Kevin Fischer once said of Greg Kowalski, former Environmental commissioner: I would venture to guess most people in Franklin have no idea there is an EC. Most of those that are aware of the EC probably don’t know who the members are. Giving un-elected, unaccountable volunteers greater authority would be a mistake.
Ted Grintjes is-non elected citizen who was making multi-million dollar decisions for the City of Franklin on three powerful commissions and is now just realizing a threat that he may have a “conflict of interest” due to his wifes real estate business.
Kevin I agree with you!
Especially in the case of the commissions that Ted was appointed. To giving this kind of power to spend the money that is passing through the commissions that Ted was on should not be in the hands of non-elected, unaccountable volunteers like Ted Grintjes and Jim Rhiner. Especially multiple high profile and powerful commission that the two of these men are/were members of.
This is why I would like to see the Mayor move to install himself or one of the aldermen to replace, (Yes Ted is replaceable) with a new member which would better represent the city in decisions made on an important commission such as the 27th Street Corridor.
As Sprawled Out blogger John Michlig states in his blog about the subject "It's time for new blood".
Ted, thanks for all the time you dedicated to the city of Franklin, but I think your decision was correct given those possible conflicts of interest.
DATELINE: AUGUST 14, 2008
Steve Olson voted to replace Ted Gringes on 27th Street Committee. Read all the details in Janet Evans posting - Franklin Economic Development Commission Meeting 8/13/08
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By Bryan Maersch
Monday, May 12 2008, 03:28 PM
The great Aretha Franklin spells it out as she says: R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me!
For the past couple of weeks, I quietly sat back and witnessed a great deal of Lack of Respect in the City of Franklin. This Lack of Respect has been on many levels.
- Lack of Respect for the citizens of the communities of Franklin and Oak Creek by the 27th Street Steering Committee to dare to criticize the name of Boomgaard District and the costs involved in naming it.
- Lack of Respect for members of the 27th Street Steering Committee who have spent much time working on the 27th Street project. Yes they may be bull headed but have spent a lot of time and sweat on the project which they get paid nothing for.
- Lack of Respect from City officials (like Alderman Sohns) to bloggers (who are their constituents) and to the other vocal citizens of Franklin.
- Lack of Respect from the media as we become a laughing stock due to this Boomgaard fiasco (Sykes, Belling and Stingl)
- Lack of Respect from other communities as we weather the issues of mistrust of our community leaders and their leadership.
- Lack of Respect from the Zizzo group to the citizens of Franklin for not involving us in renaming a major part of our city.
- Lack of Respect to our city officials, who some say, do not deserve our respect on how they have handled this issue.
- Lack of Respect from a fellow FranklinNOW Blogger for other community bloggers that choose to blog about this Boomgaard fiasco. Who asked in one of his blogs "How's that "New Day" working out for you guys?" I guess not too well with all this Lack of Respect!
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By Bryan Maersch
Wednesday, May 7 2008, 04:23 PM
I was sitting next to Fred Keller at the City Council meeting on Tuesday night. My mouth dropped and I was stunned when Ted Grintjes the Chairman of the 27th Street Steering Committee let loose with both cannons in a public tirade against local blogger Fred Keller. You can read the blow by blow description in Greg Kowalski’s on site blog entitled Grintjes v Keller - Boomgaard got heated in Council chambers.
As I said, Grintjes is a citizen appointed member of both the 27th Street Steering Committee and the powerful Community Development Authority which is authorized to transact business and exercise any and all powers, duties, and functions set out in Sections 66.40 and 66.431 of the Wisconsin Statutes for housing and redevelopment authorities. Ted often spends 40 hour plus of his personal hours ,working on these two City committee / commission according to people tha t know him.
The berating of a Franklin Citizen who disagrees with Ted and his committee members leads me to believe that Ted does not realize that this was just outright bad PR for the 27th street project. One can only assume it was his many hours of time he spends on these committee / commissions that set Ted off.
Fred Keller had no intention of standing up to defend his opinion and information he presented asresearch he discovered about the Boomgaard District’s redlight reputation in Amsterdam. But how could he not respond to Ted’s intentional verbal attack on this private Franklin citizen?
Ted Grintjes has done something that is destructive to his committee; he has brought further bad public relations to a public relations fiasco brought about by the naming of the Boomgaard District via the Zizzo group who handeled the annoucement badly.
Ted – You needed to turn this around to become positive public opinion but now have instead blown up this public relations disaster even further.
Had this outburst not happened, I truley believe this issue would have died out sooner than later. However, I believe the personal attack of Fred has encouraged him to pursue his research even further.
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By Bryan Maersch
Friday, Apr 25 2008, 07:00 AM
The true boondoggle is that a local FranklinNOW blogger wasted two hours of the Mayors time discussing something as trivial as the naming of the 27th Street Corridor to Boomgaard District.
To paraphrase that same blogger on Fred Keller's attempt to get our council to pledge holding down the tax rate:
I also feel it's going too far because, in all honesty, how many Franklin residents read the blogs? How many Franklin residents who know the blogs exist even read them? How many people even know Fred Keller exists?
I ask the same question – How many people even know that Greg Kowalski exists and why is he wasting the Mayors time?
Most of the Franklin Bloggers and commentators just chided the Council on the funny name the Zizzo group came up for the district, while Greg felt he needed to take it to the extreme.
Talk about WAGGING THE DOG.
Updated 4/24/2008 - 10:46PM
Greg Responded with:
Honestly, the Mayor was doing his job earlier today. He represents all citizens, and he wanted to answer my questions in person instead of responding via e-mail. The Mayor and I also needed to discuss other items, and the meeting was scheduled for some time.
Where his original Blog stated:
First, I want to personally say thank you, Mayor Taylor, for sitting down with me for 2+ hours this morning to discuss Franklin...in particular, this Boomgaard of a name.
The Mayor told me with a straight face,
I did NOT suggest Boomgaard as my first choice for the district.
He also took note in the numbers of people reading this information on my blog. I e-mailed him and Alderman Steve Olson and informed them that as of 12:35am last night, FranklinNOW's hit numbers were 1084 for the Boomgaard blog entries of mine. As of right now (12:46pm 4/24), according to FranklinNOW's system, 2347 visitors have seen these blog entries.
Taking notice of that, he went on to discuss the corridor's past - all orchards for the most part. He also answered questions I had sent him and Steve Olson last night.
My apologies to Greg as his posting looked like he was taking up 2+ hours of the Mayors time to discuss the naming of the Boomgaard District. You may remember that Greg currently is Vice Chairman of the Environmental Commission and an employee of Alderman Kristen Wilhelms Conservancy organization Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy (MALC) .
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By Bryan Maersch
Wednesday, Apr 9 2008, 07:00 AM
Thank you Terry and Mary Briscoe a million times over.
The Franklin insurance executive of National Insurance Co. and his wife have given $1 million to the YMCA proposed for Franklin, claiming the naming rights to the new complex located just north of the Northwestern Mutual Networks Franklin campus.
As you may remember, Northwestern donated the 4.3 million dollar, 18 acre, piece of land the complex will be built on.
With these donations plus 1.4 to 2 million in additional fund raising, the YMCA is looking to open its doors in Franklin in the spring of 2009.
The 45,000-square-foot Franklin center being marketed as a "Healthy Lifestyle Village," in collaboration with Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare is expected to include an indoor track, multi-lane swimming pool, group exercise studios and a child care center. A medical clinic and physician’s offices will be built by the Wheaton’s adjacent to the YMCA.
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By Bryan Maersch
Tuesday, Mar 4 2008, 04:35 PM
In case it has escaped you, a new retail expansion development due to open this spring has been going up on the south side of the Lowes Home Center. This development has a town center flavor and has a southern exposure to Rawson Avenue. Unlike most of the retail developments that we have seen on 27th street, you notice that there is four sided architecture with multi-architectural elements not seen on most so called strip malls. The available square footage of the Lowes Development is approximately 11 to 14 thousand square feet of retail space.
Lowes Development last Fall
Currently it looks like the only tenant for this development is the Topper’s restaurant franchise with a pizza type fare. Based out of Madison, they serve pizzas, sandwiches, quesadillas and buffalo wings.
With the recent criticism of Paul Bouraxis's Golden Corral Restaurant development, not much has been said by local development bloggers on this recent 27th Street corridor development.
As this corner will most likely be a busy gateway to the 27th street corridor with a round-about proposed for the corner of 27th and Rawson. I think this is a well though out addition to the corridor with a quality set of design plans and I am not Wagging the Dog.
Lowes Development opening Spring of 2008
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