Should Milwaukee annex part of Racine County for housing?
If state and local authorities aren’t willing to invest in transportation options to ferry low-income Milwaukee workers to the proposed $10 billion Foxconn plant in Mount Pleasant, Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman has another idea.
What if, Bauman suggests, the city annexed a piece of land in Racine County and helped build a neighborhood of singleand multi-family homes where transplanted Milwaukee workers could live?
That’s one of the ideas the 4th District alderman would like his colleagues on the Common Council’s Zoning, Neighborhood & Development Committee to consider at its Dec. 12 meeting. Bauman has asked the city attorney’s office and Department of City Development to weigh in on the feasibility of creating what he calls a “satellite community” for Milwaukee workers near the planned Foxconn plant.
“If it’s not feasible from a formal annexation perspective, perhaps we can partner with the real estate development community – or with Foxconn, for that matter – to provide housing for Milwaukee residents,” said Bauman.
Annexation would likely be, as Bauman concedes, “a stretch.” Racine County officials would certainly object. Efforts to reach Racine County Executive Jonathan Delagrave on Saturday were not successful.
Other options, Bauman said, might be to provide lowincome housing vouchers or stipends to subsidize workers’ relocation costs.
Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group has said it will hire up to 13,000 employees for a 22-million-squarefoot flat-screen manufacturing complex it plans to build near I-94 and Highway KR in Mount Pleasant.
The company, which will receive up to $3 billion from Wisconsin taxpayers, has begun posting employment ads on the Chicago Transit Authority’s suburban Metra rail lines, according to Bauman. But Milwaukee leaders want to make sure their constituents, many of them low-wage workers for whom the 60-mile roundtrip commute will be a challenge, also get a shot at those jobs.
The issue was the topic of a Community Brainstorming Breakfast in September that drew economic development leaders, politicians and community activists. Increased transportation funding, many argued, will be key to getting workers to the site.
Bauman said he raised that issue with Department of Administration secretary Scott Neitzel.
“And he told me, ‘That would be a government solution,’ ”said Bauman.
“I said, ‘Really? We just spent $3 billion (in taxpayerfunded subsidies for Foxconn) and you’re telling me this is a government solution?”