| is now just a plain old county executive who has a lot of insight into the issues and challenges facing Dane County. Three of the major issues that Falk and the county are facing are containing urban sprawl, strengthening mass transit, and maintaining budget priorities in a time when the county is being squeezed by unfunded federal and state mandates and shrinking and declining federal and state revenues. Dane County is growing by 60,000 people every ten years creating sprawl through the outward expansion of Dane County's major urban areas and the growth of towns and villages. The sprawl oftentimes eats up some of the most fertile farm land in the world. "I think if you asked most people what they wanted our county to look like over the next 100 years, they would draw the same picture: charming cities and villages of all shapes and sizes, separated by the best farm land on the planet and we have that all here, sprinkled with incredible natural resources of the Ice Age Trail and the lakes and streams that are world class," Falk said during an interview with The Capital City Hues. "We have no legal authority to say how fast or where cities and villages can grow. They have unilateral annexation authority. And once they make that annexation decision, county government has no role. So we have had to go through a variety of mechanisms of persuasion and cajoling, ' you name it, we've tried to do it ' to have cities and villages make smarter land use decisions and then for county government itself to make smarter land use decisions. So I do not approve of unsewered subdivisions in rural Dane County. But we've taken many other steps and we'll continue to because once the development decisions happen, you can't undo them. And people know we are at this crossroads and have thisopportunity to do it right." County government in Dane County is increasingly being locked out of development decisions because of the large-scale annexations that have occurred recently. "Planned sprawl is just as bad as unplanned sprawl," Falk emphasized. "Short of the state laws being changed, which we have argued for for many years, but it isn't going to imminently happen, then it's the public electing local officials in cities, villages, and the county that really are important to make different land use decisions." Falk has been stuck in traffic on University Avenue on some weekday afternoons and contemplates how the additional 60,000 people per decade and the massive amount of people commuting to and from work in the Madison area will have on Dane County's transportation systems. "We have to literally get tens of thousands through this central part of the county on any given day to work or go to school," Falk observed. "Yet there are very limited options given the lakes. And does anyone serious think we can double-decker Johnson Street or University Avenue? No! So there has to be alternatives to get people through the county. Falk is a big advocate for the Transport 2020 planning process that is looking at using the existing railroad tracks that run from Sun Prairie through downtown Madison and out to Middleton as the beginnings of a light rail system. "We would be using these new, light-weight, clean, quiet and environmentally-sound vehicles -- they look like busses, but smaller on top of the train tracks," Falk said. "And with the option in the future of using the train tracks to get to the airport and down the Park Street corridor into Fitchburg, it has a lot of possibilities for the future. Not only will we expect the federal and state government to help us like they do for roads, but it's pretty vital for our economy given there are tens of thousands of people who come into our county as well to work every day. We've got to be able to move people around. The big, continuing issue that Falk faces is maintaining her budget priorities, which include helping families move up the economic ladder. Falk points to including stakeholders and consumers in the decision-making process as a way to keep costs down while maintaining a high level of service. She gave services for people with developmental disabilities as an example. "We have a very strong system for helping to provide services for people with developmental disabilities," Falk said. "Again, Dane County is known historically for our commitment to people with developmental disabilities. I sit down regularly with the leaders in that community and ask them what we can do more efficiently so that we can continue a high level of services despite tight times. That kind of collaboration with their good ideas helps us accomplish this goal of having the highest level of service than any county in the state, and yet in a way that we can afford given these tight times. On example of their own good idea was if consumers, people with developmental disabilities, had better personal choice of what services they individually needed, they would be wise consumers with our county dollars. In fact, that is what has happened. We've actually increased the efficiency in the system by also improving their personal choice." Another major way, in Falk''s view, to keep costs down is combining facilities and services whenever possible. For instance, when the Town of Middleton built a new town hall, Dane County purchased space for its deputies who serve the western half of Dane County. And the merging not only makes fiscal sense, but Falk says it makes programmatic sense as well. In discussing the merger of the city and county health mergers, Falk emphasized that nothing stops at political borders. "We have better health services given that public health problems don't stop at political boundaries whether it's tuberculosis or implementing the WIC program for children, moms and newborns," she said. Falk will be up for re-election in 2008. At the present time, Falk said that she doesn't know what she plans to do. "I don't know what the future is," Falk confided. "If it's anything I've learned in 55 years is that whatever you plan doesn't happen. I'm just grateful to have a job where I get to work on the things I care the most about. And that' all I ask." While Falk lost her bid to be elected the state's attorney general last November, don't count her out. After all, she is the longest county executive standing in Dane County history. |
| Kathleen Falk is Dane County's longest serving executive Last County Executive Standing Part 2 of 2 By Jonathan Gramling |
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| Kathleen Falk, the first woman elected as Dane County Executive, set a different historical milestone in the recent past. She became the longest-standing county executive in Dane County history. This milestone was reached without a lot of fanfare, perhaps because Falk ran unopposed in her 2005 reelection bid, something else that had never occurred before in Dane County. There just hasn't been the forum to showcase it. While Falk may have been under a microscope 10 years ago as a "female" county executive, she |
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