Do We Love Farms to Death?

This is the text script of the Art Hackett story on urban sprawl problems north of Milwaukee, which aired statewide on Wisconsin Public Television and on WIS C-TV in Madison.

Live Introduction:

Farmland may be one of those things we "love to death." We like to be near it...so we build houses on it...destroying acre after acre of farmland in the process. But urban sprawl is more than just subdivisions. It's a process that has a life of its own. To understand how that process works...and why things happen as they do, Art Hackett of Wisconsin Public Television went to Ozaukee County, just north of Milwaukee.

Art Hackett:

This is the cutting edge of urban sprawl in the Ozaukee County suburb of Mequon..which is just north of Milwaukee. A front end loader is digging a grave for the stone foundation and silo of a dairy barn. Farm's are no longer what Mequon is known for...but they were the thing that the city's mayor, Jim Moriarty, remembers most from his youth.

Mequon Mayor Jim Moriarty:

Farms. What you saw going up the road were the wagons hauling milk to the dairies.

Art Hackett:

Sometimes farms are demolished to make way for factories that have lawns that cover more land than their buildings do. Sometimes they are cleared to make way for homes on lots that must under zoning laws, be an acre, perhaps two acres or more in size. But the farms are gone. That's only one reason why Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist doesn't like sprawl.

Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist:

Urban sprawl is ugly. It doesn't work very well economically. It spreads everything out. It gobbles things up people like farmland.

Art Hackett:

Norquist argues urban sprawl begins when you build highways that stretch out the distances between the places where you work..and where you live.

Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist:

Instead of walking to work or driving a couple of miles to work it encourages people to drive twenty miles to work.

Art Hackett:

That long drive is justified by the chance to buy large homes with spacious yards. Homes that seem to attract entrepreneurs who are likely to start their own businesses. And when they do, they tend to stay close to home. That's how the Kapco company in another Ozaukee County suburb, Grafton, came to be. Kapco's president, Jim Kazmarcik, recalls his father's explanation of why the company is where it is. Jim Kazmarcik:
From what I talked to and spoke to him the primary focus was Hey, I live in Cedarburg, it's a close drive, it's just as good as Milwaukee, in '72, And things were right here and we got a good deal on the building and land here and it's where we started.

Art Hackett:

So roads attract homes, homes attract people who may start businesses. Those businesses to expand, need industrial parks. This is the cycle of sprawl. But there's still another reason businesses are attracted to suburbs. That's because units of government provide tax supported financing for sewer and street improvements which businesses need. Industrial parks are frequently set up as tax incremental financial districts or "TIFS". Under a TIF...the city, in effect, loans businesses the money to put in site improvements. Which is why Mequon's mayor feels industrial growth actually winds up costing taxpayers money.

Jim Moriarty:

And that's why I'm opposing the Department of Development when it gives block grants, when it approves TIF districts, I'm opposing federal grants that support urban sprawl. I'm opposing any time the government comes out and changes the level playing field and facilitates that urban sprawl.

Art Hackett:

But the industrial growth in Ozaukee county may have hit a problem TIF's can't solve: a labor shortage.

Jim Kazmarcik:

Today the employment levels don't allow that. You have to go out and even though you might get low cost land, or affordable land real estate, you might get sweetheart deals with local municipalities there's not enough labor staff to support it.

Art Hackett:

Land use aggravates the labor shortage. These jobs start at eight or nine dollars and hour. Few homes built in Ozaukee county are affordable for people in that income bracket. Because of the shortage of workers, Kapco's president Kazmarcik says it's no longer a foregone conclusion that future expansion will be in a suburb. Seeing that firms might be interested in the inner city again, Milwaukee is developing an industrial park style building of its own on the near north side using...you guessed it...a TIF district. But the financing may not be what's important. What is important is that the new building is adjacent to homes. Homes spaced close together. Homes where people who are likely to work in the factory can afford to live.

Aired July 28th on the "We The People: A Search For Common Ground" special.
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