April 21, 2026 is my first board meeting. The agenda looks spicy. 🔥 🔥 🔥
There is both a Board and Committee of the Whole meeting. These topics are from both agendas and in no particular order.
I’d like to thank the staff and board for accumulating all the really juicy topics for my first board meeting. We might be up late on Tuesday.
Topic: apartment proposal at 4 Mile and Old Green Bay Rd #
I’m eager to see the financial side of this proposal but what’s on the agenda is just the building, site, and operational plan that was reviewed by the Plan Commission. The parcel is in TID 6, which grants the village much latitude in terms of financing. I spent lots of time criticizing TIDs during the campaign, especially the developer incentive payments. I’ll keep an open mind, but there has to be benefit for the residents even without incentive payments. If we’re giving someone future tax revenue back, the bar gets really, really high.
I will ask for clarification about what we are approving but it appears that we are being asked to approve that the proposal is permitted under current zoning regs and is consistent with the 2035 Comprehensive Plan. I am curious, though, whether a TID-related municipal financing proposal is forthcoming and whether approval at this stage implies future approval of that.
The 4 Mile and Old Green Bay Rd intersection is also a mess now. The agenda includes a traffic impact analysis that might be the bulk of the discussion. At the plan commission meeting, adding a left turn lane heading west was the proposed solution. I suppose I’ll spend the weekend doing light reading of the traffic impact analysis.
Topic: Gorney Park shooting range #
Approved in January 2026, the village is planning to start using the old Gorney Park shooting range for required police training. It will save us money, largely by avoiding overtime for police officers who are at the whim of the shooting ranges we currently use.
However, in 1996, there was an incident where someone shot over the berm and a bullet entered a house nearly a mile north in Oak Creek, narrowly missing two people inside. Shortly thereafter, the range was closed permanently.
Local residents are concerned about safety and noise and it’s hard to blame them.
On Thu, April 16th, we had a 3-hour community meeting on the topic, from which my major takeaway is that the village needs to do a better job of socializing major changes. I had flashbacks to the data center proposal – 300 ft notification requirements and expecting everyone to read every board and committee published agenda and minutes rightly raises concerns from residents when the proposal is even remotely controversial. I worked in large organizations for most of my career and socializing change is an acquired skill. Doing it wrong is unfortunately really easy.
The board meeting agenda item that Fran Martin and Lee Wishau have sponsored is to rescind the prior approval.
Topic: social media policy for trustees #
Not sure what to expect here. I didn’t run for trustee to talk to people less. And government trying to manage or control speech instantly makes me suspicious the problem is speech someone doesn’t like. Then there are innumerable practical problems:
- Define social media.
- Define the problem you’re trying to solve.
- Who will police it?
- Will we spend time proactively monitoring?
- Will we need staff to take and investigate reports of violations?
- What is the mechanism for reporting violations?
- What’s the ramification if policy is violated?
- Who adjudicates disputes?
The agenda item also suggests that the board might go into closed session to discuss “Concerns Expressed Related to Trustees Code of Conduct and Social Media Statements.” I guess I should keep an open mind since not much detail is provided on the precise concerns, but I’m really skeptical that closed session is appropriate for the topic identified in that quoted text. The referenced statute 19.85(1) on quick reading doesn’t seem to cover talking about social media statements, which by the way are public already.
Topic: Title 14, Chapter 3, Subdivision Controls #
The name seems bland. The content of it is not. Here are the first two bullets under Intent and Purposes:
- To guide the future growth and development of the community in accordance with the Village’s adopted Comprehensive Plan, as amended from time-to-time.
- To preserve the rural character of the Town through the permanent preservation of meaningful open space and sensitive natural resources, including those areas identified in the Town’s resource inventory maps.
So it’s kind of important to the board’s vision for Caledonia. The board should not just rubberstamp its approval.
I think this is meeting number 3 or 4 where it has been discussed and the board is no closer to approving it than when they started. Given the scale of the changes proposed, I don’t see it ever getting approved as written.
There are likely changes in the proposed text that are important and that don’t change the vision for the village. I will recommend a different approach that might get the non-controversial changes done quickly and implemented.
Topic: TID misinformation update #
I’ve posted about this on Facebook so I won’t repeat what I said there. Ok, I will repeat this: If this is the big reveal of misinformation, what a dud. If anything, I was too kind to TID 1 and TID 4.
I don’t think the agenda item should be about debating the content. It would be fun but not productive. We should debate:
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Should the village publish the content?
A: maybe.
Pro: the historical context is helpful if someone is really interested in digging deep into what happened.
Con: publishing it implies a commitment to keep publishing new information, and is that the best use of village staff time and potentially 3rd party expense?
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Should TIDs have a more regular update cadence with the board?
A: yes.
How about semi-annual? We could even combine the natural output of the two annual updates with published updates on status, history, and decisions on TIDs. The inquisitive resident might be eager for such information.
A dangerous ramification of the lack of understanding of tax increment financing is how little diligence there is around their management. Approving them whimsically is bad enough, but then managing them over 20 years without proper oversight is bound to lead to bad outcomes. There are commitments in single TIDs that are larger than the village’s entire budget. Why wouldn’t we want to manage them with at least the same discipline?