Farms, Downtown Not Only Losers In Janesville Growth Plan

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It wasn’t bad enough that folks who love Janesville knew the city’s growth plan was deeply flawed by laying waste to rich farmland and abandoning the downtown business district. Now comes word from a city official that the city’s newly minted Comprehensive Plan is a powerless guide for most of the city's future growth. At least 60% of the growth is expected to occur inside the Milton School District. This coming at a time when the Janesville School District is struggling with an enrollment decline of 259 students and projected estimates running as high as 500 in the next year or two.

City’s growth plan abandons own schools

JG Excerpt: (April 2, 2009)
Despite thousands of job losses at General Motors and other companies, Janesville will grow in the long term. And much, if not most, of the growth will be in the Milton School District.

Janesville school enrollment falls dramatically

JG Excerpt: (March 24, 2009)
Several board members have suggested the district might consider closing an elementary school if enrollments dip low enough.

The Janesville Comprehensive Growth Plan, rushed into "incontinence" eight months early by a belligerent city council, is a plan with guidelines so weak and cockeyed, it can’t even muster the strength to control it's own destiny, let alone protect it’s own school district.

If the plan has no control over growth - why have a plan? But I'm not going to try to fool myself into thinking that the Comprehensive Plan, a mere document, is solely responsible for itself. It was developed and approved by folks who knew exactly what they were doing. That's the part that really hurts.