Save the County Grounds -- Contact a Regent!

Dear Environmentalists, 
Please help preserve the open green space and habitat on the Milwaukee County Grounds by contacting the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, who will be deciding their fate this Thursday and Friday, December 10 and 11, when UWM’s Chancellor will be asking that the Regents approve a request for $35 Million for the purchase of 80 acres of land and infrastructure improvements for the proposed development of UWM's Engineering Campus.

The Regents must hear our environmental concerns about the future of this environment, green space, watershed and migratory habitat. Take these points, edit and add your thoughts in a positive way. Add alternative ideas and potential successful outcomes. We are FOR UWM, just not on this precious land.

You can find contact info for the Board of Regents here.  Please contact as many as your time allows.

Here are some ideas of what to tell them:

• Environment, balance, and living within sustainable parameters now define the future of education. The Board of Regents must address these issues before they go through with the development of the Milwaukee County Grounds.

• The need for excessive development on a biologically diverse and ecologically sensitive area has not been presented openly and the destruction of an international route of Monarch Butterflies based on its geography may be a black-eye for the UW System as a whole.

• The Board of Regents has the authority to oversee the future of UWM as Urban campus. We ask that you reject the Land Purchase and review the Faculty, student, and community comments (via the Masterplan-Feedback).

• We are in need of your leadership, and hope you will step forward and recommend a more sustainable urban location that better integrates the input of all and is more fiscally and socially responsible.

• The Monarch Butterfly Migration has just been added to the 10 most threatened species list by the World Wildlife Fund. Habitat destruction in the US is one of the main causes of their decline. This habitat needs to be preserved for future generations.

Here are some other tips:

Writing the Board of Regents is important.  Please consider making the following points:

a) In the Milwaukee Initiative Plan sent forward to the Regents, the $35,000,000  fund request  for the County Grounds site includes no building,  but only purchase for the property and putting in infrastructure. However, UWM is in need of functional space NOW. So, how does this project help the engineering department expand into a robust school?

b) Hit hard on destroying a major green space. UWM and the Regents are not acting as 21st century minded stewards of what is left of the natural world. Other urban areas would be envious for such residual space for their communities. The watchword now is restoration and preservation,not destruction.

Our collective input WILL impact this critical decision. Thanks for being part of this preservation effort!