Communities prepare stimulus wish lists

Let me go on record right now in saying I will NOT support any attempt to have Ripon take part in this boondoggle. WE should be embrassed as a country for this whole sorry episode. One of the main reasons our economy is in the mess it is in right now is because of the massive amounts of debt which choked the credit and finance system. AND the solution is the federal government borrowing MORE money and creating more debt to prop up our standards of living and sentencing our children to a life of debt repayments and high interest rates? No thanks....I will pass.

FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL: Communities have begun compiling their "wish lists" for federal economic stimulus money, should Congress approve such a package after the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama. Greendale's list, which exceeds $9 million, includes a proposed $3.8 million to restore the original police and fire station building, 6600 Schoolway. There would be some symmetry to that project, in that the building was constructed in 1938 as part of another historic federal program, President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. The village proposes that the building, vacant since 1998, would be used by the historical society and the school district and would highlight Greendale during the Great Depression. Oak Creek, meanwhile, is asking for $82 million, including $7.6 million that it would use toward a proposed new I-94 interchange at Drexel Ave. A Drexel interchange is not part of the state's planned rebuilding and widening of I-94, but the state has said it would consider the interchange if the local funds are committed.