In Support of 300 ft Wetland Buffer

Photo of the southwest portion of Lake Waubesa and wetlands to the west by Nadia Olker.






Fitchburg has written into the Comprehensive Plan the use of 300 ft. buffers for wetlands outside of the current urban service area. This is a major step forward by the Fitchburg Planning Department, because the County only mandates 75 ft.

Below is an appeal by Peter Ellestad to protect our wetlands.

Please submit your comments to the Planning Deportment on this or other aspects of the Comprehensive Plan by the Dec. 28th deadline, or better yet, give them a bit more lead time and turn them in by Dec. 23rd. Click here for the city's comment form.

-- Terry
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Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Members of the Fitchburg Planning Dept and the Common Council:

I am sending you this message to go on record as supporting the maintenance of a 300 foot buffer for wetlands outside the urban services area. I believe that the reduction of that barrier to 75 feet would provide almost no protection at all, and would put the precious west Waubesa wetlands, and the lake itself, at unacceptable risk. If in spite of compelling arguments against it, a large subdivision is created in the northeast neighborhood, the city should mandate requirements that allow as little damage as possible to environmentally sensitive areas.

In my opinion, a 75 ft buffer would lead to the creation of a sterile greenspace speckled with inert ponds and patches of invasive grasses, one that would be more like the numbing sprawl of suburban Chicago, with its depressing and inadequate imitation of a natural landscape, than the flourishing natural communities that exist in the watershed now. Please don't allow that to happen.

Sincerely,

Peter Ellestad
Fitchburg

Drumlin Community Garden

Here's a beautiful and timely letter from Rich Eggleston followed by several others on the same important topic. For more information about Drumlin Community Garden, check out their website here. -- Terry

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Date: November 3, 2008
To: Elected officials and planning staff
From: Rich Eggleston, Fitchburg

Much of Fitchburg's celebration of 25 years as a city has focused on our strong rural roots, and as we contemplate our next quarter century, it behooves us to consider how to combine the best of our urban future with the lessons of our rural past.

One way to do that is to bring agriculture, even on a small scale, to families that otherwise might not enjoy the rewards and frustrations that come with tilling the soil. And I can't think of any program that is better at that than Drumlin Community Garden.

The northeast corner of Fitchburg has been an issue since before we were a city, and maybe that's a good thing, because we know more about what we've gained -- and lost -- through development than we did in the 1980s.

Maybe we're learning that every spot that brings us closer to our rural past is special.

Drumlin Community Garden is one such place.

It comprises more than 40 families working together to provide roughly 1.5 acres divided into family-size garden plots rented out on a sliding-scale basis, and two acres of larger plots managed cooperatively where crops are grown for the South Madison Farmers Market and local restaurants, all of it managed in an environmentally responsible fashion that's about as organic as can be.

Besides hands-on experience in sustainable, small-scale urban agriculture, the garden partners with neighborhood organizations to educate families and youngsters in sustainable food production, and offers workshops in some of our rural traditions like composting, canning and making meals from scratch.

Drumlin Community Garden isn't just a "commercial zone" on a land-use map. It's a doorway to our rural past. It's a very special place.

Preserve Existing Gardens

Submitted by: John Fournelle and Judith Munaker, Fitchburg
November 3, 2008

Dear Planning Commission

We would urge you NOT to change the Southdale/Rimrock Neighborhood's zoning to "commercial" status.

In this time of growing difficult economic conditions, it is becoming increasingly obvious that we should not necessarily rely upon food coming from long distances -- which assumes low transportation costs. The day may not be far away when food grown locally will be considered absolutely essential, rather than an idiosyncrasy of a minority of citizens. Thus, zoning away a local community garden and replacing it with asphalt and luxury hotel rooms, is nuts.

Rather, if anything, you should instead insert language to "preserve existing gardens" with specific mention of Drumlin Community Garden located at 2849 Oregon Road. The decision to eliminate one of Wisconsin's first organic urban garden projects, now supplying healthy food to forty families, should not be made without exploring all the options available. We owe it to ourselves and our children to save all the urban farmland that we can.

Fantastic Opportunity

Here's an excerpt from another letter regarding Drumlin Garden. -- Terry

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Submitted by: Shannon Day, Fitchburg
November 3, 2008

Dear Fitchburg Officials,

... I feel that City Planners are missing a fantastic opportunity here in Fitchburg. We can preserve Drumlin Community Garden and work within the confines of current neighborhoods to make Fitchburg great. We should PROMOTE the gardens and the community it represents and be smarter about using surrounding land to promote the long-term health of greater Fitchburg!

My Confession of Terrorist Ties

by Rich Eggleston
October 6, 2008

Fellow Fitchburgers:

Well, given the conduct of the McCain-Palin campaign, I guess it's time to confess my ties to domestic terrorism before they run an ad about me, or worse yet, hustle me off to Guantanamo Bay and throw away the key.

My ties to former Weatherman radical Bill Ayers are almost as strong as presidential candidate Barack Obama's.

It turns out my father, Bill Eggleston, worked for many years for Ayers' father, Thomas G. Ayers, who was CEO of Commonwealth Edison, the power company in Chicago. They didn't work closely together, but undoubtedly greeted each other in the elevators in the Edison Building at 72 W. Adams St. in Chicago's Loop. They may even have talked about their children, who were nearly the same age.

At the time, of course, no one could have known that Bill Ayers would grow up to marry Bernardine Dorn and join the radical movement, and later become Barack Obama's neighbor and an advocate for public education, a dangerous radical concept. Worse yet, Bill Ayers is now a professor at the University of Chicago, a dangerous radical institution.

During the 1960s, I admit that I had dangerous radical thoughts. I thought the war in Vietnam was wrong and the guy in the White House was a dangerous criminal. To this day, I'm a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. I was never convicted of anything, though.

Neither was Bill Ayers, though he was charged. I don't know what evidence the feds had against him, but I know it was obtained through illegal wiretapping, because that's why the charges were thrown out. This was long before Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, and illegal wiretapping became legal.

Like Bill Ayers, I've been rehabilitated by the passage of time. As the Phil Ochs song proclaimed, "I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keepin' ol' Castro down." Bill Ayers may feel the same.

But by the standards of attack politics, he is still fair game. A campaign that has seen attacks on Barack Obama because of statements by his former minister can surely stoop low enough as to attack a man based on who lives in his neighborhood.

I wonder who lives in John McCain's neighborhood. Or, rather, his seven neighborhoods.

Rich

Is Fitchburg Serious About Sustainability?

By Phyllis Hasbrouck

Once in a while we see flashes of brilliance among the alders of Fitchburg, and they must be acknowledged. Though I no longer haunt each and every Fitchburg Common Council and Plan Commission meeting, being too busy organizing and fundraising for Fitchburg Fields, I do catch up on what happened by reading that excellent publication, the Fitchburg Star. And I was delighted to read that on Aug. 5, Alder Jay Allen took a principled stand and voted against the Lacy Rd. interchange with Hwy. 14!

Why did Alder Allen do it? Because the interchange is integral to the current plan for Green Tech Village, and he wanted to get people's attention as to how far the city has strayed from its original conception of that development. He said that the city "lacked the political will to enforce the standards it had once deemed essential. He referred to the protracted discussions involving the development of Orchard Pointe, the failure of the [Green Tech] Sustainability Task Force to endorse standards, and continued pressure by developers to create just 'another run-of-the-mill development.'"

I admire someone who can admit that something that they have supported is turning out differently than they had hoped. Conditions change, commitments are not always kept, and a person with flexibility and intelligence can change their vote if they realize that a project is no longer in keeping with their values. I want to know what happened to the rest of the alders? Why didn't they vote with Alder Allen?

As we parents know, if there are no consequences for bad behavior, children will stop taking our pronouncements seriously. Likewise, if developers' initial statements about how "green" a development will be are discovered to be just window dressing, but no one says, "Meet our standards or go somewhere else" then developers will just learn to give lip service and then do what's best for their own bottom line.

Stopping that interchange would have gotten the attention of all those who aren't taking sustainability seriously. I hope that we'll continue to see such leadership from Alder Allen, and that the rest of the alders will follow suit.