A fierce community spirit saves a village icon

The elected officials of Grafton brought angst and anger to their village with a puzzling failure to act with needed urgency on an issue of surpassing importance to the community, but they made amends for it with a rousing display of small-town representative government at its best.

The display was a meeting in the Grafton High School auditorium last week where Village Board members and the village president welcomed citizens to speak their minds, petition the board for action, criticize village officials for their inaction and hold forth on responsibility to environmental and historical values. All of this with no restrictions—no time limits, no gaveling to shut off speakers.

Well over 100 people packed the auditorium. The meeting went on for more than three hours. After everyone who wanted to speak was heard, the board voted on the issue—and the crowd applauded.

The village trustees deserved the applause, not just for making the decision that was advocated by the majority of the citizens at the meeting, but also for providing a forum for the unfettered expression of their constituents’ views and expectations of their local government.

The issue, of course, was Grafton’s broken Bridge Street Dam. A gate in the dam failed in May. Instead of repairing it, the Village Board decided to put off action for 60 days while it explored options, essentially a choice between repairing or removing the dam.

While the days, weeks and months of dithering ticked by, the millpond in the heart of Grafton drained away through the open gate. As the water level of what had been a scenic lake within the Milwaukee River ebbed, acres of unsightly mudflats were revealed along with something else—a fierce community spirit.

The millpond had gifted generations of Grafton residents with its scenic beauty, recreational opportunities for fishing, boating and ice skating and nostalgic ambience evocative of life “down by the riverside.” Created 185 years ago, it is the centerpiece of the village’s history.

If village officials didn’t know when they entertained the idea of removing the dam that the people of Grafton would not abide the loss of this beloved feature of their community, they know it now. Opposition started with the first signs of the disappearing millpond and grew into an irresistible force.

Meetings to organize opposition, newspaper letters to the editor, yard signs, social media posts and coffee shop conversations culminated in the impassioned demands to restore the millpond at last week’s meeting.

The fervor of the opposition to dam removal that gripped Grafton has similarities to the organized resistance in Port Washington to the approval by city officials of the Vantage data center development. There was nothing similar, however, in the ways village and city officials handled the protests.

Unlike the free forum of the Grafton millpond meeting, City of Port Washington meetings dealing with the data-center issue were marked by rigid time limits on public comments and warnings of ejection from the meetings for speaking out of turn. Far from welcoming, the mood was defensive, seemingly fearful and resentful of dissent.

The enduring image of the city government’s attitude toward public disapproval of its data-center decisions is of a woman being forcibly removed from a meeting by police officers for the offense of saying “recall, recall, recall” after making her comments within the prescribed limits. Charged by the city with the municipal offense of disorderly conduct, the woman is fighting the arrest in court as a violation of her First Amendment right to free speech. Regardless of the outcome of the case, the city can’t win. The disturbing image is viral and won’t go away.

In Grafton last week, the save-the-dam proponents prevailed, but the environmental benefits of removing the dam to energize the river’s flow were persuasively articulated in the free-speaking atmosphere of the meeting.

After listening to hours of testimony, the board made a unanimous decision: the dam will be repaired as soon as possible. Grafton will get its millpond back—along with a measure of trust in its government.