Saturday April 18 was a great day to be outdoors, but a group of thirty plus Isthmus neighbors decided to sit around and dream about a river....the Yahara River specifically. Some stayed all day while others dropped by (including our County Executive Kathleen Falk) for smaller portions of the day to contribute their thoughts or provide letters about what the Yahara River meant to them. The participants spent most of their time at Lapham School discussing how citizens could come together to support needed river landscaping initiatives. What a wonderful way to develop some personal and neighborhood resolutions for the next millennium!

The day started off with an excellent presentation by Prof. Arnie Alanen from the UW about the historic park planning efforts made at the turn of the century by the Madison Parks and Pleasure Drive Association and noted landscape architects O.C. Simonds and others. Small groups were then formed and expertly coached by the facilitators (Bert Stitt and Ann Forbes) through a very ambitious agenda. The groups put together a time line tracing human influence on the river from the time of the glaciers up to the present. Individuals shared their hopes and hesitations about the future of the river.

The value of the Yahara to our neighborhoods became quite apparent early in the forum. Neighborhood rituals like the canoe trip to school on the last day of classes and personal recollections of walks along the river to see a sunset on Mendota or a moonrise on Monona were all shared. Each group developed (cobbled up!?) a skit during a working lunch envisioning life along the Yahara in the year 2008. Finally we came together to develop action items so these dreams can become a reality.

These actions include a full range of neighborhood and broader community participation. For example, Dennis Tande and students from O�Keefe Middle School will take the timeline and put together a more permanent display to be shared with the students, the neighborhoods and others interested in the riverway. Working meetings for the landscaping and organization groups will be held at the Urban Open Space Foundation office at 200 N. Blount Street on the evenings of May 4 and 5, respectively. It is the intent of these action groups to work and coordinate the landscape projects with riverway residents, neighborhood associations and city staff to complement existing efforts to improve the parkway.

A town hall meeting to discuss parkway issues and the progress of the smaller sub-committees will be held on May 19 - 6:30 PM at the Atwood Community Center. All are welcome! For more information call the Urban Open space Foundation at 255-9877 or Ed Jepsen 255-2845.

The forum was sponsored by the non-profit Urban Open Space Foundation (great job Geri Weinstein-Breuning and Heather Mann) and was supported by contributions from the Brittingham Foundation, TLNA , the Marquette Neighborhood Association and the Greater Williamson Area Business Association. The generosity and hard work of these sponsors should be appreciated by all of us who enjoy the river now yet see and even better future ahead. It was one of the better forums I have attended and we even finished an hour early!

See you along the Yahara!- Ed Jepsen


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