The June meeting of the UW System Board of Regents is generally held at the UW-Milwaukee campus. It is also the one where the regents decide how much they want to raise tuition for the next school year. As a student at UWM, I thought the confab was held in June because classes were out of session and it was hard to organize a student presence to urge regents not to continue pricing people out of school.

Nonetheless, sometimes there were organized protests. In a rare winter meeting at UWM's Chapman Hall, the quintessential example of an Ivory Tower building was bombarded by students throwing snowballs and attempting to scale the building with ladders. It was great theater, no matter the end result.

The regents' meeting last week at UWM was met with protests, indeed, but not from students. It was the neighbors of the university that came to voice their displeasure with any possible expansion of that bastion of higher education that happens to stand alongside their East Side homes.

Folks from Shorewood even made the trek into the big city to lend their voices to the cause. Featured protesters included newly-elected Ald. Nik Kovac and County Board Supe Gerry Broderick.

Residents organized a picket line to press a message to the regents that UWM should cap its enrollment, not expand into the soon-to-be-vacant Columbia Hospital. They also asked for a crackdown on off-campus rowdy behavior. In essence, they tire of the university as their neighbor. Never mind the Wisconsin Idea or the fact that UWM is the only urban four-year campus in the state.

According to a statement issued by the Mariners Neighborhood Association: "The neighborhoods adjacent to UWM are the only ones in Milwaukee to experience a rise in absentee ownership over the past decade. Properties have deteriorated, neighborhoods declined, and crime increased. Scarce crime fighting resources needed in more dangerous neighborhoods are diverted to control illegal student parties which have turned increasingly violent in recent years."

Showing how in touch the association is with their university neighbors, a press release asking people to come to the protest urged people to meet at the UW-Milwaukee Memorial Union. Unfortunately, UWM's union is called the "UWM Student Union," while the Memorial Union is on the UW-Madison campus. Perhaps they were geographically challenged on that one.

UWM student leaders, however, were nowhere to be found, either to defend students from the attacks of the neighborhood associations or to defend the student body from what was to become a proposed 5.5 percent tuition increase.

Paper roses: It's not General Motors, and maybe that's why another state plant shutdown with larger economic and hardship implications didn't make the big-time headlines last week as did the announcement that GM was shutting down its Janesville plant in 2010, forcing some 800 people out of work.

NewPage Paper Corporation's announcement that it was shutting down its plant next month in Niagra, Wis., will have a much more devastating impact on that small northeastern Wisconsin town and region than anything GM could do to Janesville. Consider that the paper plant's closing will cost the community of 1,980 about 320 jobs and it is easy to see that this is going to hurt.

As of last year the company's plant along the Menominee River employed 520. Consider that NewPage is the largest employer in Niagra, something that GM can't claim in Janesville. The next largest employer in town is Gunville Trucking, which has 105 on the payroll. Following that is a nursing home with 100 employees. So who has the family-supporting jobs in this town? The paper-making guys.

While the pols were lined up to shed crocodile tears in Janesville, they were missing in action for the Niagra debacle. Included on the MIA list were Congressman David Obey, Gov. Jim Doyle, State Sen. Roger Breske and state Reps. Jeffrey Mursau, Dan Meyer and Don Friske.

Ode to the Acapulco: The Acapulco Restaurant on the corner of 6th and National was long known as one of the more interesting after-bar spots on the South Side. Consider it the Mexican food version of Ma Fisher's, where all types and creeds would pop in after bar hours to slide guacamole and beans down the gullet in an attempt to stave off any possible morning sickness.

It was bustling to say the least and was sorely missed by many when it closed last year. But the Acapulco Lounge was the bigger and more interesting draw. And while it closed several years ago, it had one of the larger venues for corner celebration in the area. Mariachi bands were a regular feature and -- washed down with some Negra Modelo or margaritas -- dancing would fill the hall and mirth abounded. It was one of the more interesting rooms that had live music on that end of town.

The Spanish Center purchased the corner earlier this year for $350,000 and had designs on gutting the lounge and the second and third floors, which were unused. But thanks to the rains on Saturday, the top floors collapsed into the lounge and onto National Avenue, demolishing the 19th century building and maybe saving the Spanish Center some reconstruction costs.

Staying the course: Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is sticking with the status quo for his second term, changing no key posts in city departments for the foreseeable future. Two recent posts up for approval were for the commissioners of Building Inspection and Department of City Development.

• Marty Collins, head of Building Inspection, received his last confirmation for the job, since he says he's leaving in July and using up his accumulated vacation until sometime in fall. Collins, who spent 27 years with the city after coming from New York, took the opportunity to take a swipe at the city's daily newspaper in his confirmation comments. The Journal Sentinel "dutifully" reported recently that Collins is the second highest paid city employee behind Police Chief Ed Flynn. Collins reminded the Zoning and Neighborhoods Committee that when he was hired at Building Inspection he changed the way notices were sent out. Instead of sending violation notices out certified mail with a receipt to be sent back, he just started sending letters out by regular first class. He said the savings in that move alone paid for his salary throughout his entire career.
  
  "You've had me free for 27 years," he joked.

• Rocky Marcoux, head of DCD, touted that the city has built just more than 1,000 new units of single-family housing under his watch, and defended the use of tax incremental financing districts, which a recent report by a public policy group noted that were sometimes overused at the expense of neighborhoods. Marcoux agreed that more TIFs are needed for neighborhood upgrades. TIFs take property tax dollars from a specific area and invest them in that area, keeping those properties off the general tax roles until a specific investment is paid off. Marcoux and Collins were given unanimous approval.