Wauwatosa Common Council sees updating infrastructure as top issue

A survey of the members of the Common Council completed last year identified infrastructure updates as the No. 1 "hot topic" facing the city at this time, said City Administrator James Archambo in a Committee of the Whole meeting Tuesday.

"We have been talking about infrastructure improvements for five years," Archambo said. "But most of that discussion has happened in Budget & Finance (Committee), either in the budget process itself, or in various discussions within the committee. And so perhaps what we should do is have a status update of the half a dozen areas that we've identified as critical."

All of the 14 respondents, among the 16 council members, saw infrastructure updates as "very important" or "important" in a scale that ranged down to "somewhat important" and "not important."

In a second category of hot topics, Innovation Campus, the HSA development at Burleigh Triangle, and the implementation of the North Avenue and Village plan all achieved a rating of "very important" by 64 percent - or nine - of the respondents. Innovation Campus and the North Avenue and Village plan received no lukewarm ratings, with all respondents seeing them as at least "important."

Eight council members said the impact of the Zoo Interchange project on the city was "very important," and the same number saw the impact on city resources of future growth in the County Grounds and Research Park as "very important."

Alderman Don Birschel, noting the relatively low ranking of the Zoo Interchange project, predicted it "will jump to more important when closures start."

In addition to those mentioned above, the many topics rated by the survey included Nordstrom, coming to the Mayfair Collections project at Burleigh Triangle, which most saw as "somewhat important"; council efficiency, which was seen by most as "somewhat important"; the Eschweiler buildings, which half of the respondents said were "very important"; a complete streets ordinance, which more than half said was "somewhat important"; and property valuation, which half the respondents saw as "important."

There were 19 total topics in the survey.