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Only four neighbors showed up to complain at a Licenses Committee last month, relatively few compared to other operations that draw dozens of neighbor complaints and are still allowed to stay open. Only four police reports were on the record concerning the bar, including one that involved the owner and her boyfriend having a fight in the basement of the tavern.
The neighbors complained about drug use in the area around the bar, bikini motorcycle washing promotions and loud noise and profanity coming from a volleyball court.
Neighbors said things have gone downhill with the bar in the past year since new owner Christina Elliot took over. She said due to health issues she hasn't been able to be a hands-on proprietor and that her ex-boyfriend Rick Lass was running the place.
"It was decrepit to say the least when I took over the business," Elliot said. "I can only do so much. I try."
Jersey's has been there in some form for 17 years.
"To me it's a whole lot of blah blah blah blah blah," said neighbor Kelly Murphy, who said her children are kept awake at night by the volleyball playing and have repeated profanities they hear from the court.
Elliot's attorney at the time, Richard Haney, agreed that "better fences can be mended."
Ald. Tony Zielinski, whose district includes the bar, said he didn't feel there was any sincerity from Elliot that things would change.
"There's a lot of questionable judgment going on here. This place is just fraught with all sorts of decisions lacking in judgment," he said.
Elliot burst into tears while Zielinski was talking and continued crying throughout the rest of the meeting.
Zielinski moved to suspend the license for 45 days and take away the volleyball court and patio access, but compromised with the committee to settle with a 45-day suspension.
Elliot then hired the well-connected to City Hall lawyer Michael Maistelman, who argued in front of the full Common Council this week that Pizza Shuttle on the East Side had dozens of police calls last year but didn't receive a penalty nearly as tough as Jersey's. The Council didn't buy it and the suspension upheld.
The perennial complaints about the Downtown Ladybug Club concerning traffic issues and activity outside the club garnered it a 60-day suspension.
Space cadets: Fond du Lac Republican Congressman Tom Petri used his post as ranking Republican on the House Aviation Subcommittee to listen to a proposal that a spaceport be built in Sheboygan to launch rockets into space.
The Wisconsin Aerospace Authority (WAA) was front and center recently as the subcommittee held a hearing on commercial space transportation.
The WAA currently teaches students about experimenting with suborbital craft, but it really wants to launch rockets, even though the trajectory in a launch from Sheboygan has been received dubiously.
"It seemed a novel and unusual idea at first, but it's becoming a greater and greater reality," Petri said in a statement.
The WAA argues that it would be a tourist attraction and a boon to the local economy.
Road warriors: It should be no surprise that there was only one bidder on the rush project to rebuild bridges in the Zoo Interchange. It could be connections.
A group called Milwaukee Constructors LLC is the only one that stepped up to do the work on the state's busiest interchange. It's predicted it will cost between $12 million to $22 million. State officials would not disclose the bid amount this week.
The State says the bridges won't last until the interchange is scheduled to be redone between 2014 and 2016 and emergency measures must be taken. Officials say the bridges would last until about 2012.
Milwaukee Constructors LLC is headed by Black River Falls-based Lunda Construction. This is rare turf for Lunda, which was long known for getting all the road projects in the state west of I-39 / Highway 51, while Payne and Dolan was considered most likely to get the projects to the east.
Healthy prisons wanted: Sure, it may prison, but some decent living standards need to be met, says the American Civil Liberties Union. It filed a class action lawsuit in federal court in 2006 contending that the Taycheedah Correctional Institution, Wisconsin's largest women's prison, "puts the lives of women prisoners at risk through grossly deficient health care, provides far inferior mental health treatment as compared to men and fails to provide reasonable accommodations to allow prisoners with disabilities to access basic prison services."
Federal Judge Rudy Randa, quite conservative by most court observers, would not dismiss the case this week at the behest of the state saying there "is a great deal of evidence demonstrating that there are systemic and gross deficiencies in staffing, facilities and procedures."
Randa noted that the state's own expert witness described health care at TCI as a system "designed to let people ‘fall through the cracks.'"
Randa earlier this year placed a preliminary injunction on the state, ordering that significant changes be made at the facility.
The ACLU, which has won class action suits against Milwaukee County for living conditions in the county jail, was, of course, elated.
"Judge Randa's decision recognizes a mountain of evidence showing the continued failure of state officials to fix a system that has been in crisis for years," said Larry Dupuis, legal director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, who also handled the Milwaukee County cases. "It is far past time that state officials be held accountable."
The lawsuit also charges the health system violates the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, because the women receive mental health care far inferior to what male prisoners receive. The ACLU says in the lawsuit that these lapses in mental health care occur against the backdrop of a prison system that has a suicide rate twice the national average.
An avid outdoors person he regularly takes extended paddling trips in the wilderness, preferring the hinterlands of northern Canada and Alaska. After a bet with a bunch of sailors, he paddled across Lake Michigan in a canoe.
He lives in Bay View.
