Council overrides veto, Froemming Park remains top site for Kayla's Playground
After an hour or so of citizen comments, and another hour of discussion and debate, the Common Council overrode Mayor Olson's veto on a Council decision regarding the site selection of Froemming Park for Kayla's Playground on a 4-2 vote. Despite the Mayor's repeated claims that regardless of the veto being upheld or overridden he would move forward with a meeting with Milwaukee County on Wednesday, the Council maintained their stance that Froemming Park remain the top site. Aldermen questioned these intentions and subsequently asked for the Mayor to withdraw his veto. He refused.
Another passionate position taken by several aldermen was the notion that Mayor Olson's veto was a direct political attack against them. In the veto, Olson characterized the Council's decision to locate the playground at Froemming Park as "disregarding" the wishes and intentions of the community and specifically Kayla's Krew. These remarks brought forward the more passionate side of the nonprofit organization, which now only thanks the aldermen who voted against Froemming Park and Mayor Olson for their support. This, despite the entire Council being on record for both verbal and financial support for the playground. Those talking points in the veto further convinced the four aldermen that only overriding the veto will maintain their position as being supporters of the playground, and believed that allowing the veto to be upheld could be interpreted by some as Mayor Olson's remarks about the aldermen being accurate.
The motion to override the veto was supported by Aldermen Mayer, Schmidt, Mayer and Council President Wilhelm. Aldermen Dandrea and Evans voted, in essence, to sustain the Mayor's veto.
With the veto overridden, Mayor Olson is scheduled to meet with County officials on Wednesday, as originally planned, and a subsequent Council motion has him coming back before them on Thursday to provide an update to the Council. This will be the second Special Common Council meeting this week. At Thursday's meeting, the Council will also review two other park sites. They will be expanding their research of Lions Legend Park to include the entire parkland for other possible playground sites, and a new park location - Franklin Woods at approximately 36th & Puetz - will also be considered. These locations are simply backup options in case the talks with the County fail to produce a solid timetable or approvals in general.
The split between the Council and Mayor Olson was predicted in an opinion piece posted on Franklin Today a few days ago.