The Whitefish Bay Village Plan Commission began its evaluation of proposed changes to the Karl Jewish Community Campus Tuesday by determining what its top priority issues would be.
And Jay Roth, executive vice president of the Harry & Rose Samson Family Jewish Community Center, the largest single organization on the Milwaukee Jewish Federation-owned campus, agreed that all the issues “are important.”
He also expressed confidence that the commission’s seven members will objectively evaluate the proposals — which village president and Plan Commission chair Kathleen Pritchard pledged to do at the meeting’s start.
They “are going to try to do what’s best for the village,” said Roth. “As part of that, they will recognize that what’s good for the campus is also good for Whitefish Bay; we’re an integral part of the village.”
By the meeting’s end, before an audience of more than 60 people, the commission set roughly this priority order for the issues: traffic and parking; security and safety; storm water management and sewage; potential costs to the village in the operation of the facility and in evaluating the plans; and potential noise, especially associated with the proposed outdoor swimming pool.
Roth said he particularly felt “pleased that the pool is still an integral part of what they’re exploring. They are seriously looking at the entire improvement plan, so that’s a positive.”
The pool would be the only totally new service that the JCC would offer as a result of the proposed plans. The rest of the plan calls for adding additions to the JCC building at the campus’ south end and to the school building at the north end, remodeling the interiors of existing buildings and building new parking areas and access roads.
The commission also decided that its next meeting on July 30 will be devoted to evaluating the potential effects the proposals will have on traffic near the campus, located in the north part of the village.
Commissioners said they wanted to hear from both of the traffic engineering firms involved: the Wisconsin-based HNTB Corporation, hired by the federation, and the Chicago-based KLOA, hired by the village to review HNTB’s study and do its own.
Commissioners, board members and audience members, particularly opponents of the project, have spoken about the extent to which the village needs independent study of data in the MJF-JCC proposals.
Roth said that while he “had hoped they would respect our experts more,” he said that “whatever the village wants to verify is a legitimate part of the process and we will work cooperatively with them.”
An organized group of neighbors opposed to the project, meanwhile, recently had two defeats.
At the Plan Commission meeting, village attorney Christopher Jaekels said he found no conflicts of interest in two members of the commission who had been challenged: Mark Huber, director of community planning for Aurora Health Care; and Paul Mathews, president of the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Jaekels said he found that neither Mathews nor Huber is in any position to “obtain financial gain” from the JCC or MJF.
In addition, at the village board meeting Monday, Jaekels recommended that the board reject a second protest petition filed by some neighbors of the campus.
Under state law, if zoning changes are being sought for a property, and if owners of 20 percent of the land near that property sign a valid protest petition, then the rezoning must be approved by a three-fourths “supermajority” vote of the local governing body. For Whitefish Bay, that would mean six of the seven village trustees.
Jaekels said the second petition had notarization of the signature of the person who circulated the petitions, but not of the signers; and was therefore invalid under state law. The board followed his recommendation to reject it.
However, Jaekels and the board also agreed to make available to the public in about a week the requirements for a valid protest petition as a way of guarding against potential litigation over the issue.
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