City Wants Commitment From County to Reconstruct Layton Avenue

Layton Avenue is an important thoroughfare and one of the few streets that stretches from one end of Greenfield to the other.

It’s an important vein that allows the city’s police and fire personnel to flow throughout the city, provides direct access to several schools and is home to the library and a major park, among other attractions.

Yet a 1.4-mile section of the county-owned highway has gone neglected for too long, Greenfield Director of Neighborhood Services Richard Sokol said.

City of Greenfield officials want a promise that Layton Avenue from 27th Street to West Loomis Road will be improved in the coming years. They’ve asked the Milwaukee County Director of Transportation, the Milwaukee County Board and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele to pledge to reconstruct that stretch no later than Dec. 31, 2018.

On Tuesday, the city’s Common Council requested a response from all three parties by Sept. 30, 2013.

Sokol said he believes the project is in the County’s plans for 2016, but that it has been delayed many times in the past.

“They set a date a couple years out and we wait and they don’t meet it,” Sokol said. “We make some noise, they set a date, and they don’t meet it. We’d love to have some pledge of assurance that it doesn’t get changed.”

The segment, Sokol said, is the only portion of Layton from the City of Cudahy to the Waukesha county line, approximately 20 miles, that has not been reconstructed to urban street standards, which include street lighting and sidewalk improvements.

Sokol said the city wants to install sidewalks and streetlights there because of significant concerns for pedestrians and bicyclists. But the city wants to wait because it’s economically prudent to install sidewalks and lights in conjunction with permanent street reconstructions, which would be done by the county.

“I get regular complaints about how dark it is, and we’re trying to encourage children to walk and bike to school more, but they have to be able to do that safely,” Sokol said.

“It’s important for (the county) to take the lead,” he added.

Sokol said one of the more recent delays to reconstruction came after the county received state funding to improve alternate routes while the nearby freeway interchange reconstruction project was taking place. The county, Sokol said, used the money to repave some of the area called into detailed in the resolution.

“I think the county used that to push back the reconstruction,” he said. “Because Greenfield was hospitable to detoured construction traffic, we’re being asked to wait longer to improve the safety components of the street, and it doesn’t seem right.”