How cold is it? Growth for the sake of growth is bad.

Luck was invented by the weak to explain their failures 

I'll get to a couple more comments about IamanORGE later (why do these people comment with ridiculous claims, it's like tossing gas on a fire to put it out, is he baiting me to find out AND PRINT the REAL truth?).   sigh

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So far this year this has been the 18th coldest winter on record so that should make people feel good. We are actually tied with 1969-70 for 18th but if we can drop an average of 0.2 more degrees we will tie 1883-84.  sweet.

The Weather Channel took the 100 largest cities in America and ranked all 100 on how many "cold" days there were each winter.  Not HOW cold, but HOW MANY. 

First Place went to Minneapolis, 2nd place was Anchorage, 3rd place??   MADISON WI!!  

Madison is the 3rd continually coldest town in winter in America for the last 30 years.

YEA BABY!!!   

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We all know I'm a numbers geek.  I've poured over the last 5 years of Columbus budgets, have studied Lake Mills, Cottage Grove, Edgerton and Stoughton and Prairie du Sac and Waterloo  budgets just to get an idea of what other towns are doing and . . . .I do it for FUN!!  

Why do I bring this up?  Wisconsin Basketball!  :-)  

Orange Leaf Frozen Yogurt has a contest on Facebook, guess the final score of the Badgers and win 10 oz of FroYo.  Well . . . . . I have guessed (not actually guess but . . ) correctly 4 out of the Badgers last 5 games.  The one I missed they held the ball for the final 24 seconds and I lost by 2 in a blowout.  

We spent my first 10 oz Sunday after a lunch at Texas Road House where I was forced to ride the saddle and yell  YIPPEE I'M A COWBOY!            

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I have  GoPro camera and the very first YET boring thing I filmed was below my bird feeder.  I just wanted to see how good the camera was and started recording.  Not bad at all - I'll have to learn the editing software.  I recorded 1.5 hours so perhaps a feature film is in the works! 

It gets really exciting around the 2 minute mark of this intense video.  WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT!  

http://youtu.be/kkPQmCqbYUc

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Wisconsin Tourism Federation -  WTF   LOL 

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IamanORGE - "any reasonably sized multi-state company and you will find they have had a run in or
two with some type of regulatory issue"  

This is like Lance Armstrong saying everybody cheats so it's all right.  Not sure this is a great argument.

State agencies have assessed ... his company more than $400,000 in back taxes, back wages, fines and penalties.

And this is the developer we said - sure you can borrow $150,000 - not a problem and don't worry about paying it off on time like everybody else does. Let's be clear though - I don't hold grudges.  That is all in the past, actions are stronger then words in my book, I've only met him once and he seemed very nice. OH YEA - one more thing and this is more of a general opinion and not aimed at developers . . well . . sort of but all developers. 

"This land sat empty for 15 years and you couldn’t give it away."

The thing is empty land doing nothing is not costing the citizens of Columbus anything. Bang for buck in the long run a corn field as a MUCH greater positive impact then long term liabilities.

Anybody that thinks developing a corn field into business is cost effective is living in the past. It's just not true. There are OTHER reasons but financial is not one of them. All it does financially is line developers pockets.

Business really has no tangible financial returns , we have no sales tax, no income tax. If we spend $100,000 in creating jobs there is no bases to believe we will ever get that $100,000 back through taxes.

Columbus's primary funding source is property tax. We fight other cities for business with subsidies, gifts and business friendly approaches but never consider long term maintenance and the costs it assumes.

All it does is drive UP property tax's down the road. Columbus funds new growth for short term cash and we do not consider that 2 generations down the road we will be paying DEARLY for what we do today.  But who cares about 2 generations from now right?

I CARE!  There are better smarter ways then giving away money.

OF COURSE - that is only financial speak. There are other reason for developing because people want stuff so I'm not ANTI-growth.  I'm anti-growth just just for the sake of growth.

WE NEED TO FIX WHAT WE HAVE!

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Another new post card