Common Ground

Tonight, Tuesday, I voted in a rather empty gymnasium on a rather empty ballot. I believe that I made the best choice for Supreme Court basing my vote on information from people that I trust.  Voting for alderman was not as easy.

There were a total of four names on the ballot, one being the current appointed incumbent, a former alderman and the other two people that I do not recognize.  Information on each is near nonexistent with a piece or two that I found by Googling names, but did not provide any information on political positions. All I learned is that there might be some animosity with the police department, valid or not, involving a former alderman.

I voted for Joe Pieper who is the appointed incumbent in the 4th ward. I have met Joe several times and he has a few yard signs up and has held a Q&A session that I was invited to. He is also endorsed by another former alderman who I have had some respectable interaction with. The other candidates did not ring my door bell that I know of, though I am seldom home till the late evening, but it has been customary to leave a flyer in the door if no one is home.

I subscribe to two local newspapers and thought for sure that there would reporters questioning these candidates on positions and publishing the interviews.  If they were published, I missed them. If history repeats itself, there will be a greater turn out for the general election in April and I hope the two remaining candidates have ample opportunities to speak of their views and perhaps argue their differences. We have the issues of fire stations, water and growth that need to be discussed among other topics worthy of review. At this time I don't know who the two winners of the primary are. I hope that they are the two best persons of the four. But we will never know. 

As I previously said in a preceding blog, I have been a fan of libraries throughout my life. Growing up in Milwaukee I spent much time in the Finney and Villard neighborhood libraries as well as the small but useful library within Holy Redeemer School.  When I was old enough to get out and about on my own, I took the public transit system to downtown and would wander the wonders of the downtown public library. This was when the museum was part of the building. Another place of wonder. 

So I’ve established two things. I appreciate public libraries and public transportation. However, one thing I’ve learned through the years is that things change.  

This weekend my grandson was doing homework for geography or sociology, whichever it is called now. His topic was Greece.  Did he make a trip to the public library? Not when we have two computers in the house and Road Runner with a wireless router. Everything and more that he needed was just a matter of a few clicks of the mouse.  

I believe that public libraries are still a necessity, but have become less important since the growth of the Internet.  There are also some services that the libraries provide that I am amazed are even legal.  To explore this, let’s go back to an Internet site called Napster. 

For those not familiar, Napster is still around but started out as a site that provided free software that could search for music contained not on its site but on other peoples computers!  The software would read music content of a person’s drive, with their permission, and people looking for some Frankie Vallee songs could download them from frankiefan123 or whoever. I will admit to nothing other than saying I thought it would great to get some scratch-free Herb Alpert music as I already have the albums in my closet with no record player to play them on since.  

The music industry decided that this was a violation of copyrights and court action took place. The way I see it, sharing music and other intellectual material are the same. The reasoning is that you are depriving the author of their income.  If this is so, then we have to look at other intellectual materials that we might be depriving someone of income. 

I used to have a whole bunch of magazines stuffed into my mailbox. I decided to save the money and read them for free at the library. I saved money and the magazine lost money. See the parallel with the Napster service?  I also see that the library has music to loan out as well as videos. And then there are the books themselves.  I suppose some writers of books spend all the time writing them just to have one or two copies in each library across the country.  However, here is another example of library Napsterism.  In one of the free magazines that I was enjoying intellectual material from, one of my favorite writers advertised that he wrote a book. I wanted to read the book.  But $29.95 plus tax and shipping and handling?  I can wait until the library gets it and I can read it for free. However when this is done, the author may decide it is not worth the time to write any more books. Do you see something wrong here?No, I am not endorsing the wholesale abolishment of public libraries of even the rental of books and other material. Apparently it is legal, never mind the economic and moral side of it. What I am saying is that perhaps the library as we currently know it is more a source of community pride than it is a necessity.   

There are certainly reference material that should be contained and made available to the public.  Children cannot do all their research on the Internet.  Flipping through the pages of research material while seated at a table often is much better education than clicking a mouse, and I realize that not all households have Inte

I said that I would next write about sacred subjects of either libraries or fire protection. I would have made a more timely blog but for the fact that I lost track of time while researching alderman candidates and  records of incumbents. Not an easy chore! I did find some time to make it to the water utility meeting at city hall Monday night. I felt it important enough to leave a few items untended to at the store.

A quick count was made by me of approximately 45 individual in attendance to meeting.  Many more people present were part of government or consulting firms. Mayor Nelson was pleased with the turnout mentioning that there was undoubtedly more watching on cable channel 25.The meeting was well done with a good balance of the technical put to words that all of us could understand. I imagine there will be newspaper articles about this meeting.  I’d like to tell you what I heard.

It seems that based on the fact that while the city’s population has grown, our water usage has decreased. Remarkable! This is not the first time that I heard this and wondered about it. Personally, I am using less water but not by being a conservationist. Like many families, the kids have struck out on their own much to the relief of the clothes washer and shower. One of the boys was a fanatic about washing his car. All that stuff uses many gallons of water. So, has our drop in water usage been a result of the birds leaving the nest?  If so, when mom and pop fly to either warmer climates or to the condos and young families move into the empty nests, will a surge in water usage result?

Many of the questions submitted were questioning the wisdom of allowing continued growth when there is only so much water to go around. Here is where it got interesting.  Mayor Nelson said that if we don’t allow both business and residential growth, it will take place in surrounding towns and still strain the water supply that due to conservation is going down as the population grows.  Sorry, I don’t buy into that logic.  It doesn’t add up. To me it seemed that the water utility management is doing a great job.  I admire them. They are faced with a job of making sure that the water supply is there for the growth that the politicians and planners invite to happen. I'd like to get them off to the side and ask them about their personal view on all of this. Anonymous discussions happen at top levels of government. No reason it can't at the lowest levels.

At the meeting, I was talking with my alderman Joe Pieper.  One thing I mentioned was the need to make better use of the Internet.  I offered to allow a guest blog from time to time from him. It is only fair that I make the same offer to all Waukehsa Aldermen. How's one guest blog for each Alderman a month sound?

I also want to offer one guest blog for any registered alderman candidate. Please email me at sbukosky@hotmail.com if you are either a alderman or a candidate and are interested in my offer. Please include ALDERMAN in the subject line to catch my attention.  I get hundreds of email even with the spam filter working overtime.