5 hours into the discussion of Judge Doyle Square, Denise DeMarb asks the question we’ve all been asking. What happened to the commitment to racial and economic justice, a.k.a. equity? It sounded good during the election, people all SAY its the lens we should at everything through. Where’s that lens?
Denise DeMarb says “One of the questions that was asked early on by the public is the equity impact and I’m curious, has there been an equity impact analysis on this project, that has been looked at yet?”
Natalie Erdman, the new Director of Planning and Community and Economic Development says “no” – they haven’t run this through the equity team. She thinks from the negotiating teams standpoint, and when they look at equity they look at Exact Sciences working closely with the Urban League to provide jobs, they look at Exact Sciences historical numbers about their current population of workers and that shows that they not only have an intent, but they have already done better than the city of Madison in terms of people of color and women, etc. And they look at the willingness of JDS to work with those organizations that help people get trained into construction jobs. So that was the things that she looked at in terms of equity, but they can talk with the equity team as well.
DeMarb says that they would probably look deeper and she agrees those things do speak to equity, but she would like to have an analysis done.
David Ahrens asks if they see any downside, your response to the question – it typicfied the problems with the report, its only upside and there is no downside, no risk, no problem for the city if this goes down, if there are competitors if there is a default, for all the many things that could possible happen, there is no mention of it, and in the question on equity, it seems evident that there are equity issues here of the City making a grant of x number of potentially 10s of millions of dollars to a for profit corporation in the face of the fact that we’re struggling to make ends meet, so I just hope that we could have a more blaanced kind of conversation and presentation rather than an advocacy piece.
That pissed the mayor off! He says “Alright, we’re not going to go into executive session, I’m just getting started now.” He asks George Austin about what happens if Exact Sciences leaves in 2 years or gets put out of business, what’s the risk . . . .
Sigh . . . and I thought he was going to give us a better answer on equity . . . after all, this is HIS ISSUE, right? Not so much. Thank you Denise DeMarb for raising this issue. For $67,000,000 you’d think we’d get more than – they do a good job already.
