It seems to me you are calling for more endless speculation. They have held their cards close to the chest from the beginning and you don't like it. They appear to be working closely with the county, and their legal documents have been appropriately filed.

It's the same old flap you all had last time, with nothing new added. What kind of conversation do you expect to have?

The Hoyt Park Pool has been abandoned for a number of years. A group of interested people, the Friends of Hoyt Park Pool, began an effort to create a public-private partnership to develop funds to rebuild the pool and restore the pool house as a sort of coffeehouse. The County (Scott Walker and company) are on board, and a wealthy former Tosa couple gave the project start up money. They've been fundraising for a couple years and appear now to be in a position to move forward.

Some of us are excited about this wonderful opportunity. Others are concerned that it will cost taxpayer money, create too much noise and traffic in the area, or draw "undesirable elements."

So those who don't want it spend a lot of time complaining that they don't have enough information about the project or that the FOHPP are spending too great a portion of the contributions on administrative costs, or whatever.

Anyone go to Monday's meeting? What happened when this report/whatever it was about going ahead was made?

I love a good pool debate Strangely it's not even on the published agenda for Monday night's meeting. There are only 6 items and the pool isn't one of them. No minutes published yet...

Something that is supposed to be good for the community shouldn't be done in such a back door fashion. It's sort of like the UWM thing, where you just feel you don't have the whole picture...and there's usually a reason for that. Even that stupid upgrade with the football stadium had a little more facts around it. Did we start making money from that yet???

Unfortunately, it is what it is, I don't think the "pool people" really care whether the residents want it or not. If you want to see what it's going to be like, take a tour of the one at Lincoln Park in Glendale. It's right on the border of Whitefish Bay...well just take a look, you'll see what I mean.

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...I'm not here to make things better, only to observe and pass judgement.

Item 6 on the published Plan Commission agenda was for the conditional use for the pool.

I don't know what was on the agenda handed out Monday because I wasn't there, but it was clearly on the agenda for Monday published the previous week. I remember thinking it was going to be quite a meeting with both the UWM Innovation Park AND HP.

The Hoyt Park plans have been very well publicized and available for a long time, with no significant changes or modifications, unlike the UWM ones which have been evolving rapidly and were not pinned down until just recently.

I'm not sure what you mean by "start making money." For "us" to make money from these venues, we'd have to own and operate them for a profit. I think that's a great idea but if I suggested it everyone would be screaming "socialism." There are public activities and endeavors that are undertaken for the common good, like parks and schools. They add to the health and wellbeing of a community and make it an attractive place to live and, if maintained and managed properly, add to the property values.

Your suggestion that it's going to be like Lincoln Park is pretty baseless. When you say "it's next to Whitefish Bay," are you implying that poor people and people of color shouldn't be expected to come close to that hallowed ground? If not, what are you suggesting?

I missed the agenda item and stand corrected.

You know...I was going to reply to your comments, and then thought, I really don't care. My kids are out of the Tosa school system, I can move any time I want to and I will probably anyway regardless within the next 5 years (don't need such a big house). I can put up with it a few years. And if everyone is right about the pool, my house should sell pretty easy and at a good price....

My comment about Lincoln Park had different reasoning than you proposed and I want to make sure it wasn't misinterpreted. I work really close to there and at lunch time would run through there quite frequently. It was not the same after the pool. It wasn't this really nice drink the koolaid family pool atmosphere, but rather tons of unruly kids without any parents there spilling out into the park and surrounding streets. I can't remember how many times I saw cop cars there. I finally stopped running that way and went a different direction during the summer. I'm sure the people who organized that project had the best intentions too.

I'm just going to stick to fun topics...

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...I'm not here to make things better, only to observe and pass judgement.

Now that is funny....Denise wouldn't be caught dead out here in the open. As we have already seen she doesn't do well in unstructured debate dealing with the "real" world. Thats why she took her toys and went home and why her organization keeps the website so well updated.

All I can say now is lets hope they prove me wrong. I don't want to get the opportunity to come back here in a couple of months, years, whatever and have to say:

"I told you so!"

Tosa doesn't need that kind of press!

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"Today you have 100% of your life left"

I have no idea what you are talking about. It looks like Denise and the FOHPP sat down at their kitchen tables and got busy soliciting donations.

Prove you wrong about what? Bad press like this or this? How is that bad press?

I know I said I would shut up, but...but I need to understand the basis of your statements. Did you live by the pool in the last years it was open??? How many times did you walk by it or use it or have your kids bikes stolen by it??? Just because way on the west side of tosa, you never saw any kids spilling out into your neighborhood is not reason to say it wasn't true in the hoyt neighborhood. I did live here and it was a mess, and anyone that was around during that time in the area would agree. Let's hope it gets run right this time, but it doesn't change the fact that when it was open before it was not great for the neighborhood in it's last years. Trying to say how good this is going to be is one thing, don't distort the past in the attempt.

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...I'm not here to make things better, only to observe and pass judgement.

I appreciate your asking for clarification, just as I appreciate your giving me clarification about where YOU were coming from earlier.

No, I don't live near the pool.

My question wasn't about whether there WERE kids running about doing stuff they shouldn't in places they shouldn't have been. I trust that those of you who have those experiences are reflecting what happened.

My question is about the part that claimed those kids were brought in en mass by daycare providers and then not supervised. That interpretation (and don't you agree that's a guess, not actual knowledge?) doesn't make sense. A daycare center might bring kids in but even a negligent one wouldn't let them leave the premises.

So the kids remain a problem. But if you want to prevent the problem, you have to know the real source. In my experience with Hoyt, it appeared that some of the kids who were causing problems were kids whose parents dropped them there and left. Some of those parents were working in the gardens up the road. Some of them, who knows? Other kids got there by bike or bus or? The problem IN the pool area seemed to me to come from having too few young kids (lifeguards) in charge of policing the area. There need to be adults there, REAL security guards, and clear rules enforced strongly.

As to the spilling out part, I think the people who run the pool, the Tosa police, and the neighbors will have to come up with a plan to deal with that real problem.