Neighbors have fallen in love with Jeffy Path and the surrounding green space and do not want to see the path replaced by a road.
At a 2014 conference of the Placemaking Leadership Council, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin delivered an inspired appeal to people power. He encouraged neighborhoods to take the lead in developing their public spaces, asking, “[D]o you want my vision, or do you want a process that allows you to become a part of your own solutions?”
Residents of one far-southwest-side neighborhood have come to find such talk of self-determination exasperating. Their ongoing struggle to preserve a cherished public space suggests that, when it comes down to it, the city will push its own vision, and push it hard.
Proposed extension of Jeffy Trail to Raymond Road.
At issue is the “Jeffy Trail Extension,” a proposed road construction project. In 2012, the city purchased about 10 acres of land in the High Point-Raymond neighborhood, between Raymond Road, a more-or-less east/west street, and the southern endpoint of Jeffy Trail, a north/south street that runs through the Hawks Creek subdivision.
Soon thereafter, the city constructed an “interim multi-purpose path” through the land, connecting the Jeffy Trail dead-end to the Ice Age Junction Path, which leads out to Raymond Road.
The neighbors immediately fell in love with the path. The city, on the other hand, immediately announced a half-million dollar plan to destroy it, and extend Jeffy Trail, the street, southward to Raymond.
The neighbors have managed to keep the project in abeyance, thus preserving Jeffy Path, for several years now.
The neighbors, I should note, are not a selective group of super-activist residents. In and around Hawks Creek, opposition to the extension is overwhelming, if not unanimous. On its website, the Madison West Neighborhood Association has posted a map on which all the signatories of a 2015 anti-extension petition are plotted. Hawks Creek and its neighboring subdivision, Stone Crest Estates, are virtually invisible under a sea of plot pins. Barbara Harrington-McKinney, the city alderperson for the area, told the Cap Times that when she initially ran for her seat, “Jeffy [Path] was absolutely the first thing I encountered … What I’ve heard the residents say over and over again is that they value that property.”
Yet, as far as the city is concerned, the extension project is very much alive. Staff is urging the Plan Commission to keep it in the High Point-Raymond Neighborhood Development Plan when the panel updates the document this summer. Commission member Brad Cantrell even noted at a meeting that he recognizes the city’s desire to act quickly in the growing area “so there’s not a huge population to oppose [the extension] in the future.” And a recent entry on the city’s engineering project page states that “Jeffy Trail construction funds have been shifted to 2019.”
Why does the city persist? There might be an element of bureaucratic stubbornness at work but, mostly, city officials are just convinced they’re in the right.
Though authoritative estimates have varied widely, from a few seconds to a minute-and-a-half, no one doubts that an additional vehicle entrance would improve emergency response times in the area. Bill Sullivan, Madison’s Fire Protection Engineer, supports the extension.
Thing is, almost any new road, anywhere, will improve emergency response times. And emergency officials like Sullivan are — as we want them to be — hyper-focused on response.
To Jeffy-area residents, emergency response is just one of myriad factors that feeds into overall quality of neighborhood life. Consider that city staff has preliminarily estimated that the extension will have a traffic count impact of “less than 1,000 vehicles per day.” The neighbors, understandably, read that as “up to 999 vehicles per day,” a level that could have major implications for safety, noise, and general disruption. And it’s the neighbors, not city officials, who stand to lose their prized path and the green space that surrounds it.
David Handowski, vice president of the Madison West Neighborhood Association, emphasizes that the neighbors have carefully weighed all the pros and cons involved. “We put a lot of thought into this. People should be able to select what is most valuable to them.” In stating his case, Handowski sounds remarkably like the mayor.
Handowski urged me to come see the path for myself, as a sort of research trip for this column. But my personal assessment of the path’s value is, ultimately, irrelevant. No one — not me, not city experts — can understand the neighborhood’s needs better than the neighbors themselves.
I would, though, be happy to suggest some better uses for that half-million dollars, if anyone cares to ask.
Michael Cummins is a Madison-based business analyst.
