letter to L-T editor

Tom,
Your editorial in Sunday’s paper was wrong & miss leading.... in fact it was an example of very bad journalism as it now creates a more mis-informed public at a crucial point in time.

The City Council (that is that body of elected officials who represent the best interests of the city of Eau Claire - you know the ones who have public input on Mondays and face their constituents on a regular basis) – the City Council will have to re-zone the area that the county wants to build on... The Plan Commission will also have to take up the matter of changing the Comprehensive Plan to allow for the construction of a Jail & other future county plans in the Courthouse district in opposition to the comprehensive plan as it now stands and it’s intent. When will you mention those points????

You asked the question of where was the public during all of the county’s march toward placing the jail across the street from the bike trail ...(is that better?) on the riverfront? Well, most of Eau Claire was listening to the city talk about a new commitment to our river front development. They were attending Phoenix park events, hanging out at a restaurant downtown & watching the debate over when new projects would begin to make better use of the riverfronts. They were getting excited about a new commitment to liven up our waterfronts with restaurants, music venues, boutiques and unique shopping experiences. Some of them may have either been involved with or heard about the city’s 2 year effort to develop an award winning comprehensive plan that also promoted those same efforts. Unless they were directly involved in the development of that plan for the city, they may not have noticed that the county had refused to attend and turned its back on the opportunity to talk about their Jail plans during city’s planning sessions.

So Tom, maybe you should really be asking where has the county been the past 3 or 4 years? The downtown direction has been clear. The intent was documented and the effort was begun ..... but the county has not been paying attention to what the members of the city of Eau Claire have been saying.. The location they will be asking the city to re-zone for their future growth plans, the 4 to 5 story expanding jail, the new courthouse and the 3 story parking ramp, was not intended to hold all of that. The public read the plan, saw the direction the city was going and “assumed” the county would have heard this as well. You put the onus on the public when you should actually put it on the county. Where have they been?

I believe you need to correct the facts of your editorial. First of all we did not have a “protest” march on the county board. I helped organize it Tom. It was clearly stated as an AWARENESS RALLY. We were trying to put the focus on this issue as it will approach the city council in the near future. Then, your question of the week about referendums clouded the issue. Sure it was a disgrace that they would not give the taxpayers a change to vote on this.... but that was not what people were talking about the most. It was the focus the LT decided to follow. Either you don’t get it or you were intentionally mis-directing the discussion.

How many letters you have received about the jail issue that you have not yet published? And now your bogus editorial has done another dis-service to your readers by mis-informing, mis-accusing and mis-directing the issue once again. . If you can’t figure out what is going on right now ..... how can you expect the public to stay abreast?

Not once have you reported the procedures that still need to occur with regard to the construction of the jail. You have not reported that the city will eventually be taking up this question and will need to re-zone this property before it can continue. Without the re-zoning of this land, the jail can not be built. You have not reported about the possibility of a protest petition from the public around the re-zoning of the land that could force a required super majority vote on the council. Now who is falling down on their job and will later say that the public should have been there to stop this when they could have?

You have a responsibility to keep people informed. Something is clouding your vision.

Ken Fulgione