Snow day proposal. This is a joke, right? The student newspaper just didn’t understand Mayor Dave’s sense of humor, right?
With students in mind, Cieslewicz unveiled talks in city government to allocate an annual “snowpocolypse” day, an annual day off for students for the city to prepare for dangerous winter weather that he said is inevitably going to come due to climate change.
The mayor said the reason for the day is two-fold. In addition to giving students a day off during a stressful month, he said he wants to “change the way [city government] thinks about how [they] do their work, because of global climate change.”
You gotta be freaking kidding me. Is he serious? Does he think it sounds good in an election year and students might vote for him and then he can rely on it being so absurd that it will never happen? Does he really think the UW would just shut down for a day, so the CITY can think about climate change? Has he finally lost it? Is his campaign feeling desperate?
Compare this to Mayor Paul’s thoughts about things that will help students. First, he’d eliminate waste in the Mayor’s office and use the money to hire one more streets worker (to plow the snow and pick up the garbage, etc) and one building inspector so that they can do more of the routine building inspections. If you’re seen the housing stock downtown lately, you know its suffering from neglect. Second, he’d appoint a downtown snow plowing committee made up of citizens to look into how the downtown snow plowing and parking issues can be resolved. Two things the Mayor’s office has resisted. During the last budget the mayor refused to add needed streets workers and when alders pushed to look at the downtown snow issues they had to do it on their own with resistance from staff. And of course, citizens were not included.
What do you need more? Services and solutions for the City of Madison? Or a day off during a stressful time of the year?
Maybe it’s sorta like the teach-ins they used to have during the Vietnam war.