I was sick, didn’t video tape it and well, shit happened. But, I watched a video I could get my hands on. Here’s what happened at this forum. Yup, there still is a mayor’s race going on. Here’s all the forums in one post with links to comments and videos.
OPENING STATEMENTS
Scott Resnick says it has been a horrible week for everyone, the community is grieving, for loss of life, for the families involved, for the community. Where he was Friday night around 6:30 they were getting ready for One City, his wife is on the board, talk about hope and optimism that you could see at Cuna Mutual that night, they were talking about day care, making sure students were on the right pathways forward and had opportunities to succeed together right here in South Madison, he ended the evening on Willy St., with Paul, members of the family, people who were taking to the streets and it didn’t matter what anyone wanted to say about Madison on Livibility.com because the racial disparities were present on NBC, MSNBC, CBS, FOX, that is where we saw the true reflection of Madison and the problems we face in the community. Homelessness up 41% in the last 4 years, right now we have 1,000 students in the Madison School District that are homeless, we are going to break the numbers by this May. He looks at the arrest records and the 8:1 disparities in the arrest records, He looks at where the city is going, focusing on projects like Judge Doyle Square downtown, $1M for just the planning process for a luxury hotel. When it was time to vote on the project in November, the mayor said continue with the equity lens, this is a project our city needs, 8 figures for a hotel, I voted no in November, we need to stop placing blame, because there is no moving away from this, it is our communities responsibility to respond, for action. To acknowledge institutional racism in the City of Madison, to acknowledge we need to do more when it comes to childcare, to make sure every single student is entering the school district on an equal footing. To make sure people have opportunities to succeed, with career paths, not just internships, but career paths to move forward. He looks at his time on the council and how they make sure that everyone can successful, if that means access to the internet or mentorship or helping a new entrepreneur to make sure they have the background and financial background to make their company a success. We need equitable transportation so you can get to a job and not worry about what the transportation looks and feels like, we have to ensure we build trust, now it is more critical than ever, when we see our youth, my peers, protesting in the street over the lives they have seen, we need to build trust with the police department, we need to build trust in government and in our neighborhood. We need to make sure everyone can succeed and we can move Madison forward.
Mayor Paul Soglin if this debate had occurred a week ago, it would have been a very different opening, he would have come before you bit by bit corrected all of the misinformation of Scott Resnick as presented to you, particularly because we are not going to solve the problem unless we understand it, but instead what I prefer to do tonight is talk about what we are going to do to solve the problem, he isn’t here to define the problem, that’s been done, everyone in this room can describe the problem, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. It has been 4 difficult and frustrating years trying to turn around the ship of the city. Not getting the full cooperation necessary, 4 years ago when he came before you to run for office, he said we had two problems, the first was a city badly damaged by poor fiscal practices and if they were not solved, we would not get to the more serious problem of poverty and social inequity. My critics said I don’t know what I’m talking about, that there were no troubled neighborhoods in Madison, so he went about that job. They had 3 very difficult budgets out of 4, they were a test of values, what is more important, neighborhood centers, community facilities, facilities where we take care of the challenges of childcare, job training and job creation or building another police station and fire chief that the police and fire chief said they didn’t want for another three years. We did have difficult times in straightening out priorities, he makes no apologies for that, but now we have specific challenges, he wants to tell you some of the things they have been working on for the past 5 or 6 months, on the question of arrests, they did an analysis of where young people are arrested, they are not arrested in their neighborhoods, generally they are arrested for truancy, disorderly conduct, shop lifting, those arrests take place at 12 specific locations in and around Madison, 4 high schools, 4 bus transfer point and 4 of our malls and deep discount stores, those are 4 places kids spend a lot of time at, but what happens if they are white and middle class as opposed to what happens to them in the judiciary system if they are African American or Latino or Asian is very different. Those white youths have a better opportunity for diversion, counseling and work so they do not re-enter the system again. That does not happen with the African American, Latino or Asian Youth. They started two programs, one in the south district with peer courts and another through the municipal court, if we are serious about making a dent, we have to commit our resources to work with the kids early so they do have have recidivism (and he was cut off)
Why are there so many city committees, why do almost all of them meet downtown and why does the city council meet until late hours in the night or early hours of the morning, the citizens who have children or who are students and go on public transportation, how are they supposed to participate in city government, what ideas do you have to increase access to city government, meetings for all over the city and to easily access downtown after business hours.
Mayor says for those of you who attended the community neighborhood sessions we had the last two years, you will realize that we did two things, we provided childcare and access to transportation who did not have their own transportation. On the length of meetings, since he has become mayor, they have significantly been shortened, the budget session used to run 2 or 3 nights are more likely to finish by 11:00 in just one night, things have improved significantly over the past 4 years. In terms of moving meetings around, given that we try to have people from all over the city participate, we hold them in the most central place, which is the city hall, but where we are looking to make changes and make a difference is to extend childcare and transportation access to get greater diversity. He has been making a concerted effort to look at the make up of every committee, they no longer have oral interview panels made up of 5 white males. We are now making sure that geographically by gender, by race (times up)
Resnick says we need to do a better job reaching out to our neighborhoods and our neighborhood leaders from city hall, we need to gather their input and listen to the decisions being made, he’s been out here, he’s out here having these meetings, one right next door, talking about transportation, they had it on a Saturday, they promoted it and no one showed up. I was here for a meeting, with public access, members of the panel, the media and we outnumbered everyone, I think we are doing something wrong here in the city when that is the case. I see the community meetings that we have and what we found was that the participation was great the first year, its starts to wiggle back the second year and we have fewer meetings and less participation, so I said, how do we do this, do we solicit feedback on line, to produce more information in their homes or at the library. Since he as been on the council he has seen a couple things, one, he has seen the raise the rates of the city council because they aren’t even paying a living wage to those that are serving. And we decided to increase the living wage. We have also been having more efficient meetings, but what the mayor doesn’t mention, as someone who has a perfect attendance at city council meetings and the mayor is gone for some of our major decisions, 30% of the time the chair is taken by someone else, we need to have more of an investment by our leaders in city hall.
More than 80% of the students that attend Madison Public Schools are impoverish and over 1000 are homeless, what will the city actually do within the next 4 years to assist those children and their families move from poverty to stability and what is the timeline for those promises?
Resnick says that the question is a great one and it is the challenge of the city to address and its going to take a multi-generational approach. What we need to be talking about immediately is jobs, not just for youth but for everyone, because if you struggle in poverty and you can’t find work how will you end up having a family structure that is supportive, its about immediately addressing transportation so that if you find that place to work, they give you a chance, that you can get there in an efficient and fast manner, its making sure that students in their homes can address issues of food security, of mental well being that every dollar that we put towards our community development division needs to go to innovative approaches, new approaches to address that very issue. We could list off all the programs that the city does, but we need to do so much more.
The questioner asks him to speak to the timeline aspect of the question.
Resnick says its immediate, and its not that the city isn’t trying to help, we need to be working with our partners at the city, county and state level, each one talking about how we can make immediate improvements.
Soglin asks why everyone here doesn’t make a note to go online and to look up Dr. Willam Casey Foundation, not the Anne Casey Foundation, and Cities United, one of those meetings I missed a council meeting he was in New Orleans at the Cities United gathering with 30 cities to discuss the future of young African American men, Latino youth, the future of our country. We worked to figure out what the best practices and successes were that we were experiencing. He attended it with a person who’s parents and grandparents grew up blocks from here, Michael Johnson from the Boys and Girls Club, and just one of three collaborative efforts they are engaged in. Specifically to the question they are putting together $3 – 4M for the next 5 years to create 1,000 units of affordable housing, if we don’t get an increase in homelessness, we should meet our goal of eliminating in the next 4 to 5 years, because of one of the trips he engaged in, we’ve got the MOST program going between the City and Madison Schools to make sure young children (out of time)
What is your academic development vision for the City in 20 words or less, and how will it help poor people and people who are not college educated and people of color and how will we get there.
Soglin says we have to look at our economic development plan through an equity lens, it is great to have an institution in our city that is dedicated to growing tech jobs, but, not everyone is ready to go to work for Google or Epic. It has to be a comprehensive plan and that is one of the reasons why he is so enthusiastic about growing a food economy, that has an opportunity for jobs in preparation, owning a restaurant, adding value through processing and aggregating food, it has an opportunity for everyone regardless of level of education or skill set, with living sustainable wages. What’s more important is that we do the preparation in our community, we’ve got to start with the kids, when it is another inequity that kids that are low income don’t get to participate in out of school time activities whether it is music lessons, athletics or after school, during the weekends or during vacations, they are falling behind. Kids do not need to be doing academics all the time to succeed but they do have to be engaged in learning together, it means moving the city with the school district to moving programs that provide accessibility to neighborhood facilities, such as the expansion of the Meadowridge neighborhood facility and library, or the library next door here, which is so critical to the academic performance and cultural engagement of the youth of our community.
Resnick says there is a misunderstanding about tech jobs and who they are actually targeted to in the 21st century, because not everyone in the 21st century is a programmer at Epic or Google, there are so many opportunities out there, the president of the United States just issues a $100M focusing on how to get more women in the tech field, more people of color, because if we find out there are more tech jobs in sales, customer service, in supporting applications, that there are jobs for everyone. So what he did when Kaleem Caire came to me and said that we have an issue in south Madison, how do we bridge the gap to the tech community? We brought 12 CEOS to this very room, we gathered them to see how we would bridge the gap with internships, with job training, with hands on experiences. The first thing the majority of the CEOs said was that they had never been to the Urban League, they had never been to South Madison. That is the first divide we have to conquer with an economic development plan. The second is with capital, talent and land that benefits everyone in the community, its a job plan that provides opportunities for everyone, to make sure you can get the finances to start a new business no matter your skin color, to make sure we have resources in place right now in our communities.
There have been some efforts to champion employment for marginalized groups in Madison, but not enough. Beginning the 8th of April, what ideas do you have to convert south Madison into a revenue generating powerhouse by using current residents, rather than gentrifying the community?
Resnick says south Madison is a great place for entrepreneurship, he was out here for the Meet and Eat and someone came up to me and knew I was a politician, it was someone who was working on bikes and he was trying to figure out how to open up his own bike shop and he didn’t care about anything else about food and politics, that is is what he was interested in, how do I start my own business. A 17 year old. WE have a wealth of knowledge and opportunity, but its going to take the entire community to focus and understanding that there is financial knowledge that needs to be brought in, that there is capital and other talents that you find in the downtown and other communities, but it is creating the jobs and the other opportunities right here by residents in south Madison. He sees that pathway forward, I can say it as a business leader, as someone who at his age started a company with 22 employees right now, we can do it right here in the neighborhoods but it is going to take a lot of work.
Soglin asks “Where are we?” Audience says “south Madison”. The mayor asks what city. Audience says Madison. He says if you go down S. Badger Rd and take a turn about 300 yards and cross the street, where are we? Town of Madison. If we take a left turn on Badger Rd. and stay on the that side of that street after a few hundred yards across from the church where are we? Town of Madison. He could spend the rest of the time walking us up and down the Beltline between here and Fish Hatchery Rd, but he spent a good deal of time over the years trying to figure out why with all the economic success and the strength of neighborhoods in Madison, does South Madison not be given the opportunity that everyone deserves and its because every time you cross the street you are leaving the city you are going into the Town of Madison, and if that is the way it is when you take a walk, imagine the legal difficulties trying to put together a lond use or economic plan, that is the greatest impediment to success on the South side, that is the battle we are fighting and we have to go move up the annexation date of 2023, when he met with the Town chairman, he tried talking nicely and was reasonable and gave him all the social and economic reasons about why we had to do this now and he said to me, you have not given me a compelling reason why to advance it. Mayor says “I’ll tell you why we have to wait til 2023, they want to make sure that by the time the agreement is struck all the Town employees are ready for retirement. They were more concerned about them than the 10,000 residents.
It has been reported that Madison has as many as 30 gangs with about 4,000 members, it has also been reported that these youth are homegrown and not form other cities, what is your plan to address this problem and what timeline do you have.
Mayor Soglin takes comfort in the fact that those numbers are based on estimates of youth that have contact with gang members, in terms of the numbers participating, the numbers are not that extreme, but that does not mean that we don’t have a problem. The problem is more serious than just gangs, its about opportunity, dreams, hope and I’ll tell you, in talking to young people in them community the last week, after last week’s tragedy, it is of deeper concern than ever. We have been spending time recently looking at the history of Madison’s youth commission, which has basically been put out of business. If you go down tot he 600 block of University on a Friday or Saturday night in warm weather, how many of you have been there? I don’t think most parents would want their kids there. That is where Monte Ball was beat up, that is where in a crowd of 150 we had a shooting. What we have to do is have a comprehensive plan reestablishing a youth commission and most importantly, its not about adults making decisions for youth, but about 16 – 26 year olds taking command of their own lives and getting us to re-prioritize our resources so again, we are not building police and fire stations too soon, but instead are building community centers.
Resnick says he was 14 years old when he served on his youth commission, he is a product of one, he didn’t stay in Wausau so it didn’t work out perfectly. He was the youngest member of the Madison City Council and he remembers his first meeting or in the first month and we were going out for drinks afterwards and we were dealing with a parking issue and I had one of my colleagues come up to me and say when you grow up you’re going to understand this issue. And that is someone who is an elected leader in this community. We don’t listen to our youth, we scold them, it might go in one ear and out the other, but what they want is action, that is what he wants to see. About gangs, Lestor Moore and others have been making a presentation saying we need to do more and we have increased the numbers of gang officers. It is about hope and opportunity, but also when they enter into our community we need to make sure they do find housing and they do find economic opportunity so they are not re-entering again. We need to ensure if gang members want out, they have a safe haven to go to, whether its a police station or faith based organization or neighborhood center. The mayor is correct, it is more critical than ever to find hope and opportunity and make sure we foster an environment where every since young person can find success in the city of Madison.
Food access policy has been a big issue in recent years, why is the public market, and innovative and progressive initiative, being placed on the East side where there is not food desert instead of South Madison where there is a food desert. How will this include entrepreneurs and give access to people of color that want to tap into the business opportunities.
Resnick says we should have waited for an equity analysis before deciding between South Madison and the Eastside. I’m really excited about the public market, the new opportunities and vision. What he is concerned about is that when you look at the busiest plan for these operations, they are very dicey and we don’t know if we will have success. But the real conversation should have been about where will it go and how does a business plan develop from that location. A public market here in S. Madison is going to look and feel very different than the east side, it should have been a priority. He credits the Mayor, Alder Mo Cheeks and others on the city council that have been addressing areas of a food desert in the Allied area and he was there to support them and he hopes we continue on that mission, but it does come down to how we are making investments in our entire community.
Soglin says on of the trips he took at your expense was about food access and food accessibility, the health and nutritional element of what we eat and the single greatest impediment during the school day for a child learning, is hunger. That is hurting our kids during the day more than anything else. He was privately routing for Park St. for the first public market, the reality is in terms of generating businesses, we needed to make it viable, we were told that 1st St., with its access to areas with greater needs for food such as Northport Drive and Darbo/Worthington, it was the best place in the entire city. We are not done with Park St., right now very quietly he has the real estate department looking at other properties on Park St. or location for food enterprises and access to fresh produce. So just because there is no public market here, it doesn’t mean we won’t have those opportunities. Our Neighborhood Resource Teams were the ones that were ready to step in when we had the crisis with Walgreens, they had the plan to get greater food access to that neighborhood and if it is successful they will apply it to other areas of the city.
Other than contracts and managing contracts with nonprofits for funding, how does the Community Development Division actually drive community development in the City, what ideas do you have about increasing access and participation in community development all over the city?
Soglin asks for clarification, they ask Dr. Rose to clarify, Soglin says he understands the question if Dr. Rose is going to answer. One of the things they are very concerned about in regard to the future of the city, that when we spend money or partner with developers that our funds are used to give greater access to businesses in terms of procurement in terms of construction and development. One of the things they did quietly was the disparities study they just completed (mayor says that is the best response he has seen yet) Dr. Rose, 100 Black Men, Juan Jose Lopez, Latino Chamber of Commerce came together and we have this disparities study focusing on construction contracts and it tells us what is wrong in our community in the trades that needs to be addressed, it means not just having successful apprenticeship programs, we have to go further than that, we have to have retention, we have to have a workplace that is welcoming and inviting to Latinos, to African Americans and women, because unless they develop a career as a plumber, they are not going to eventually have their own plumbing shop, which can then have a public works contract. Another things we are finding is that we are finding that too many contractors are finding greater profits in Milwaukee, how can you make more money going to Milwaukee every day than working here in Madison.
Resnick says that the numbers that came back from the disparities study were absolutely jarring. It was difficult for many council members to listen to how bad it has gotten. But when it comes to funding for the disparities study. The council funded that study Jan 1, 2013 and we didn’t get it off the ground until 2014, we sat on it, while there are many priorities in the community, that should be a higher one, because we saw exactly what the outcomes were. We were at Nehemiah listening to a debate and one of our coordinators that works on recruitment into trades was there, I saw him get pale in his face as he was asking a question and I went back to talk to him and he said “Alderman Resnick, people are being hazed on job sites, they are going into a work environment where they don’t feel safe”, that they are going into situation on the ground that we need to be addressing in the community. So we question why we don’t see a hiring that we expected, its because they don’t feel safe in the places that they are going to work. There are so many issues, whether with community development division, or the neighborhoods, ti takes listening to the users of those services, it takes reaching out to see who is effective and who isn’t. As mayor it means having an open door to hear people express successes or displeasure with the money the city spends.
The city management team is more white and male than it has been in many years, we have seen chief’s Wray and Amesqua retire, both were replaced by very talented, yet very white males, right now Lucia Nunez in Civil Rights Department is the only manager of color in the City of Madison, what will you do as mayor to ensure that city management is diverse in different cultural and ethnic perspectives and life experiences as vacancies come up in city leadership.
Resnick says you absolutely hit it, there is a lot more work to do and he’s not saying they didn’t have success in the past, because we did. He looks at it from the business community, he says that as an employer, the first thing he takes off the docket is he doesn’t ask for a college degree, he asks for skill sets, because he knows that a college degree can create an impediment. We need a workforce that reflects the community and he personally has a passion for in his own company where it is incredibly difficult to find people in technology, he is committed to an equitable place to work for all citizens of the City of Madison, but it is also encouraging that when we have openings that we reach out to make sure they are posted and we have the budgets to go into the community and make sure we have the best candidates. Unless we have an equitable environment in city hall and an equitable workforce, we won’t be able to make the decisions that benefit all of Madison.
Soglin says that two weeks after he returned to office he had some meetings with human resources department and civil rights which includes affirmative action, and very frankly he was stunned by the fact that we were engaged in practices that he thought we had eliminated in his previous tenures. There is a lesson in there, unless there is leadership from the top, the culture changes and there can be regression, it is not always progress. During his tenure in the past, they hired the first non white police chief, Chief Williams, the first nonwhite fire chief, they both came from out of town. If you want to hire people and want to hire your own, you have to build them up through the ranks, you have to have opportunities for promotion and changes in policies, so what did they do? They changed the minimum qualifications as it relates to degrees, they changed the oral boards, no more of 5 white guys on an oral board, it has to have women, latinos, asians and african americans. They changed seasonal employment, which pays well and has benefits, retirement, health insurance, that is the best entry into permanent employments, but if someone doesn’t have access or know this, and doesn’t go through seasonal employment as a launching pad . . .
Closing statements
Lets go back and talk about our youth, he says he went out of town at your expense, and came back and listened to people who had been through this to a greater extent than I have in this community if you want jobs, city and county government can’t do it. We can do part of it, but it has to come from the private sector, and what came out of it, its almost too obvious is that 85% of all employers have not been asked to create meaningful jobs for summer youth employment or for adults on sustainable fair wages and benefits and that is critical for the mayor to do that. So they started out a couple years ago and they started at 20 jogs and in three months, they increased summer youth employment where the city’s share jumped from 3 to 45 and the total number of 25 jumped up to 125. Then they had a series of meetings with the private sectors, the Rennebohm Foundation was involved in these discussions and one day, I look at the newspaper and see that the Urban League’s Director Noble Wray has received a $300,000 grant and Boys and Girls will help administer and create 650 jobs over the next several years, in partnership with 6 private employers, that is how you do it. He went to the United Way and talked about the 2 generation approach to employment, its not just the kids, the parents have to have sustainable incomes to raise their families, we put in $30,000 to a total pool of $1M and now United Way has HIRE which is a commitment from the private sector for 200 adult jobs over the next two years. My mentor is a guy who is two years older than me who just passed about, who talks about how to run a city. Go read the obituary of Mayor ? of Boston, and in that obituary he tell show when Boston hit 7,000 jobs for the youth of the community, he turned around and said, 10,000. We are just getting started, there has to be the creation of full employment, childcare universally, we have to make sure the healthcare that is available for people at Access is available for the entire community, there has to be transportation access for the entire community, the expanded to Owl Creek at the behest of the Lafollette High School students who lived there, to make sure that there is access to school, to work and to play, because that is only fair for all of our kids. This community can do it, we can be number 1 for everyone and we will do it.
Resnick says when we talk about leaving the city to pick up a few good ideas, not all of that is travel, the issue is a mayor who left 174 days out of office, 6 months, to pick up these new ideas and I’m looking at a community that is struggling, looking for engagement, community leaders that are looking for empowerment. We need to have cooperation, and at a time when things are so vulnerable in the city, less resources from state and federal government, we need to be leading from a local level, he is excited about that. He isn’t excited to point blame at other bodies or mistakes in the past, put that aside, and say lets work with the executive branch, the legislative branch, the judicial branch of the city, the county and the state. We all need to be at the table because not one person alone will be able to address issues of the 8:1 racial disparities in our community, not when we are pointing figures and placing blame. Its going to take everyone sitting down at the table, so he is excited for new ideas, to tackle the digital divide, to make sure communities have internet access in their home, a 7th grader trying to turn in homework if they don’t have a computer and internet access, they won’t be able to succeed in school in the 21st century. He has looked at how to expose students to 3D printers, they are doing that at Starting Block, Sherman Middle School and East High will have access to 3D printers, they could do that in Stoughton, we should be able to do that here. He looks at how to expand affordable child care and that anyone in a neighborhood can find access. It is a great way to move a child forward if they have equal opportunity. Its about the future and advancement of transportation in the city, its about building trust and breaking down barriers, he still sees fellow alders talking about two Madisons, he sees it on the South Side, the North side, the far East side, we have a difference in the communities, its time to break down those silos, not making excuses, not looking for multiple years to do it, but do it today, tomorrow and working together so we can have a more prosperous community, that is why he is running, that is why he is running today and what he is looking to accomplish for Madison.
