Our Plan to Unite Against Bad Development!

Talk to people in the property development field and they'll say "Shorewood isn't a resident forward city, it's a developer forward city." Talk to anyone who's lived in Shorewood for long and you'll get a story that goes "it was a terrible development but what there was nothing we could do." Our experience is that the first is true and the second isn't an accident, it's just part of the first - being developer forward means making sure residents don't have power. We know the city needs to grow and we support smart development that benefits the city, but new development should benefit residents and not just developers.

Part of our goal at KSB is to fix this imbalance, to give residents more say over the future of our city.

But what does that mean and how do we hope to do it?

• Resident Playbook - if you've ever been faced with a bad development, you know that it's virtually impossible to figure out what to do. There are many different approval agencies, lots of obscure or unwritten rules, Shorewood city policies that change depending on the goal of the Planning Department and other obstacles that leave you feeling locked out. Our Playbook, which is coming soon, will try to make it easier for residents to know how to be heard and make a difference.

• Candidate Endorsements and Candidate Duds - although they might tell you otherwise, the City Council DOES have the ability to stand up against bad development - if they want to. So you might want to vote for city council candidates and others who support smart development, but how can you know who they are? Our candidate endorsements highlight candidates that go out of their way to support residents, and our candidate duds will highlight candidates who never met a development they didn't like (there will be more duds than you would hope). We will base our endorsements and duds not only on what candidates say but what they do - accountability starts with information.

• Information - we will rate as many developments as we can with our Development Score so you can see in one place whether a development benefits the city or just benefits the developer.

• Unite and Conquer - Most bad developments only affect dozens or hundreds of residents, not enough to move the needle when weighed against the money of the developers. While we might think "it's not my problem", if you live in Shorewood long enough, a development will come that is your problem. Only by working together can we say enough, we stand together to oppose bad development. We hope KSB can be the place where that united resistance happens.

Our hope is that KSB can be a hub to right the imbalance between residents and developers, in order to Keep Shorewood Beautiful.