As I drove up the hill to the PSD campus, I saw the number of cars in the lot and thought, Oh my, this is going to be an interesting meeting. You see, the lots we getting full and it was only about 6:40pm. As it turns out, there was a basketball game and most of the cars were not for the consolidation meeting. For a while there, I thought there would be standing room only. That is not to say that the meeting was not well attended. I was in the front row facing the speakers, so I did not get a chance to get a good head count, but I would guess about 100 were in attendance.

The meeting itself went pretty well. I have a copy of the handout from Phil Evenson.There were a few people who felt necessary to make rude commentary during Phil's presentation. During the presentation, Phil explained briefly the background including the 2002 study, the meetings that have been taking place between the City and Village officials and presented some of the information that was gathered. One of the outcomes from these meetings is the creation of a theoretical joint budget which was based on the 2008 adopted budgets for each municipality. This budget did NOT include the water utilities. That joint budget showed a potential savings of $800,000. Some in the audience described that $800,000 as a drop in the bucket. I beg to differ from that opinion. $800,000 is about 7% of the City's 2008 budget. I have to wonder if those audience members would feel the same if the City requested a 7% increase in the budget. I doubt it. Funny how that same $800,000 can be a drop or a tidal wave depending on which side of the balance sheet you are looking at.

It was also explained that the $800,000 could turn into additional savings in future years. To that, one audience member suggested that we should focus on now and not worry about the future. We should let the future tax payers worry about their taxes, we should not. That is the first time anyone ever told me that government officials should not plan for the future. Normally it is the other way around, we are accused of NOT thinking long term.

One of the biggest issues facing us regarding the consolidation issue is that of the disparity in municipal fiscal capacity, which is the equalized value per capita. At this point in time, the City has approximately twice the fiscal capacity as the Village. Is there a way to merge the communities and realize a cost savings for the taxpayers and at the same time making an equitable transition. That is something that still needs further study. Right now, if we were to wait for a possible constitutional amendment to allow differential tax rates, the soonest that could happen would be 2011. If we wait that long, the City would probably be spending money on infrastructure changes in the water utility that could be avoided by either a joint utility or a merged municipality.

Besides the money issue, are there other issues that need to be addressed. Sure there are. Many of the issues would need to be included in a complete study. However, there is one issue that I am not sure could ever be addressed properly in the study.

There was an article in the MJS regarding the meeting. The article starts with Can these kissing cousins ever marry?. There were several people in the audience who felt that any actions that would benefit the property owners in the Village, even if there were no negative impact on City owners, should not even be considered. Why should we bail out the Village? They are the ones that got themselves into this situation. I have always considered Pewaukee a single community, even if there are to municipal bodies. Considering the fact that some residents don't even really understand there are two entities, I feel I am not alone. (No honestly, some people do not know which municipality they live in.) The City -vs- Village attitude that some maintain is surprising and I do not understand where it comes from, but for some it is very real. Unfortunately, because of that, I think we are less like kissing cousins and closer to the hatfields and the McCoys.