Mayor Behaving Badly.

I listened to this twice before blogging it, and I’m still stunned. This one has some bk comments.

So, the Occupy people met with the Mayor on Friday. It didn’t go well. Which is the understatement of the year. They did audio record the meeting, and the Mayor agreed to it and told them he didn’t care what they did with it. Ok, mayor . . . I’m sorry to have to do this to you, but after listening to it, I can’t not blog it as it was so very stunning. You might want to listen to it yourself. (Technical difficulties, but it will be up soon.)

The first part of the meeting was missed, but you’ll catch up on what you missed. Just know, the mayor was extra prickly from the start. Also, I apologize, I wasn’t at the meeting, so I don’t exactly know who is speaking all the time. The group went in trying to have a conversation.

I think the mayor was asking them why they were there.

Allen (from Occupy) says that they want a conversation or are concerned about the lack of a conversation about not being able to use another site.

Mayor Paul Soglin clearly irritated says “oh yes there is” these conversations have been going on since last summer, as part of our homeless program, we are not in the business of providing real estate for camping.

Allen clearly taken aback and choosing his words carefully says this isn’t camping, they are not on vacation, they are out there for a place to store their few possession and its not a fun time out there, but its a less fun time on the streets. And you realize that there is a problem with homelessness in the city and you probably know that there are people that are, for various reasons, not being served by the current social services.

Mayor interrupts and says “they choose not to be”

Allen says that is not exactly true.

Mayor, again, clear irritated says “that is true.”

Several people talk at once, one says “excuse me”, one says “have you ever talked to them”.

Terry asks the mayor to explain that.

The Mayor, less confrontational and calmer, says that there is an intake system and there are millions of dollars that are expended on this and if people choose not to go through that process that is their choice.

Terry (from Occupy) calmly says he doesn’t think that that is entirely true, it might be true in part, but he doesn’t find that true all the way thorugh, as someone who has dealt with homeless people, for example, with Porchlight, when they find someone a place of the street they have a lot of conditions, you have to be in by a certain time, you can’t have visitors, you are cut off from family and friends, its more like a halfway house situation, instead of a living situation like the rest of us have, where we can visit with family. I don’t find that – I’d like to address one other thing. You said that when they leave here they can go back to wherever they were before. I’m sure you are aware of, as I am, that means that they will be back being a burden and a problem for the city, back by the downtown businesses, in our parks where our children are and the revolving door for getting tickets, fines and jail time, how much does that cost the city all the time.

Mayor says “We. have. a. homeless. program.” WE spend millions of dollars on not just homelessness and poverty. Separate from that we had an agreement with Occupy that they would be out by April 30th. Now what else do we have do discuss.

Allen says the people there are more than willing, and from many people he has spoken with there, they want to be fully cooperative with the city, but when they are asked to leave the site with no alternatives, I don’t know what they are going to do, they don’t know what they are going to do.

Mayor says they have the same alternatives as they did before Occupy Madison came on to the site.

Several people speak.

Steve (from Occupy) says one of the reasons he is involved and put a lot of time into it is that he sees and opportunity for the city to – he was not aware of and many others were not aware of – and that opportunity is for homeless people themselves to be more than just a drain on the city, but to be a resource for the city. I think about the 100s and 100s of volunteer hours that people like Terry put in, at no cost to the city. To provide services to other homeless people, instead of just being recipients of services provided by the city. It would be a shame if we throw that away because we don’t have the imagination to figure out how to make use of it. I understand there was this business of an agreement, I think you should know that the people who were involved with negotiating that agreement with the city are no longer involved with Occupy for various reasons

Mayor says “well”

and the people living on the site were not part of the agreement. I’m just saying that because there is not some bait and switch

Mayor interupts and says “then they should never have come on to the site”

Steve says look, I’m just saying, there is not some bait and switch going on here, where we had some secret plan to establish a homeless shelter in a parking lot under the cover of a political protest. It started as a political protest, people had good intentions, for a lot of reasons it changed into something different. And in some ways, what came out of it is better than just people protesting against the 1%. And other cities do make this work, other cities do see some potential in that. What I’m saying is Terry has, I’m in this because of Terry, I see he has some amazing skills in terms of conflict resolution, in terms of people seeing some value in their lives, that they are not getting from the existing system and I just think the city has to have some imagination about how to make use of his skills instead of telling him get lost, we have no place for you.

Bruce/Terry (?) Something I would like to raise, you say we have all these homeless services here, as someone who has been involved with homeless for a while, and in other parts of the state I should add, it makes it very difficult for homeless people here to get back on their feet. With the shelter system you have here, you have 60 or 90 days, when you leave there, you are kicked out at 7:30 in the morning, every day. You have to carry your house on your back. Imagine trying to go to an employer and you have your whole house on your back. Other cities do not have this, I can verify that, Oshkosh, Appleton, Fondulac, these people when they go there have a spot to lock up their clothes, they have access to computers, they help them to get on their feet, not to be a revolving door, not you’re here you’re out the door and you are back on the street again. To help them get back on their feet, to be a productive member of society again. Not to be a revolving door, the next thing they have to do is go through the lines of at this time of day I have to go eat here, at this time of day I have to do this, I have to try to find a bus ticket to get somewhere, you go to Porchlight and get ahold of Hasan to look for work and you get two bus tickets and you burn one of the tickets just to go get the bus tickets if you are not living in that area. It makes it very difficult for these people there, what we are finding out through Occupy Madison, which was a political movement, which is why I got involved in the first place, we were all up at the capitol, and all that, but this is something that has come to the forefront obviously the services and system that we have going, and we’re dumping tons of money in that, obviously isn’t the end all and the solution for everything here that there are cracks in this program and something isn’t right and now we are seeing people coming in now, that place is growing by the day, we never counted on that. We planned to have 20 – 25 people. Currently I got 80 people staying there a night and more and more coming because they have no where to go. What I’d be looking for, I don’t care about a political movement at this time is to come up with some sort of solutions, there has be more than what we got here.

? One thing I heard you say mayor, I hear this thing, “my days are up”. My days are up in the shelter. So what it means, that the community that is there, and the security they get, and the independence they get, from what I understand, they won’t be able to go back to the system, there is no system, there is no days in the shelter. I went around the city with many of the people when they were looking for their new locations and there are just unsecured places with 2 or 3 people living out in the woods and that is one thing that the tent village provides, a level of security for people. When you live with 2 or 3 people behind trees, you lose your stuff. The number of days thing concerns me because you’re saying they should go back to intake, but I hear this “my days are up in the shelter” so there is no, there is something, they are in the margins here.

? Another thing I would like to say is that yes, we have some of the typicals, we have some people from State St. that are chronics, but we ahve a lot of people over there who are on fixed income, they get $600 or 700 per month, we got other people that are working poor, that are having to work temporary day labor jobs that are trying to get their feet back underneath them, but they are not making enough money to afford housing. I checked into Commonwealth Development over there and they are charging over $500 per month plus you pay your utilities. If you are only getting $600 – 700 a month, how are you supposed to afford stuff. From what I understand, the City is saying that housing is a human right, and we don’t have section 8 no more.

Mayor says “we don’t”?

That was what I was told, after January.

OK, I don’t know what this is about, but it is true, you can’t apply for Section 8, the waiting list is closed and has been for years. It opened once, people applied, and then it closed again. If you didn’t fit in that window, you can’t apply. I don’t know what changed in January tho. He may be talking about public housing? Housing owned by the CDA.

And even then, the waiting list was over a year. It was up to a year and a half.

Allen says, can I ask you something on a personal basis. I know that you are a person of compassion, I was here in 1969, someone brought that up, and I know you put in a lot of effort to end the Vietnam War. I assume you did that not for personal gain, but because you had a real personal interest in ending suffering. Well, there is suffering here too. And do you want, personally, people who are out there using porta-potties, going back to where they were, which is what you said they should do, urinating in the parks, defacating in public places and doing all the kinds of things that they don’t have to do because they are ??? (at Occupy)

Mayor, in a real soft voice says “What should I do about the 930 children in the Madison public schools that are homeless?

Silence.

Stutter, Allen says that I personally don’t have a solution to everything.

Mayor sarcastically says “oh . . . ”

Allen says that I know that there is a creative partial solution, not a total solution, but there is a partial solution here to things that are wrong in Madison. Madison is . . .

Mayor interrupts, “what should I do with those 930 kids that don’t have a home?”

Allen says “That don’t have a home?”

Mayor says, that are homeless, that are in the public schools?

Allen asks “and where are they living now?”

Mayor says, some are living in cars, some are living in temporary shelters in the Salvation Army.

Steve (from Occupy) says, yeah, so lets talk about the people living in their cars, can we secure a parking lot . ..

Mayor interrupts, getting more aggitated “I want to know about the 930 kids.”

Allen says “ok”, Mayor says don’t change the subject.

Allen says, ok, there is a lot of effort on the part of the City now to develop areas of the city, like I said the other night, East Washington Avenue, South Park St., around the capital square, and I realize that the city gets money from the businesses there, but I think that there needs to be some effort at the same time, rather than just satisfying realtors and satisfying business owners, to do something about the 900 and . .. .

Mayor says, “let’s kill all the lawyers”. OK?

silence.

Mayor says, who’s paying for all of this? Where do I get the money?

Silence. Allen says, that’s a good point, and . . .

Mayor says, that’s not a good point, it’s a reality I have to deal with. (they start talking over each other)

Allen says the site didn’t cost the city anything.

Mayor says “excuse me”

Allen says the site didn’t cost the city anything, except . . .

Ok, I’m going to interject here with a bit of reality. The city, according to their landbanking guidelines, can’t lose money on the deal. They are selling the property at a higher cost to the developers than they paid for it to make up for lost taxes, etc. Unfortunately, then we are also giving them TIF grants and other funds and assistance to make up for it, so its hard to tell where we end up. But, that is a different choice. On the raw sale of the land, the city appears to actually be making money. There’s about to be an argument and I just wanted that clear first. I’ll comment afterwards again.

The mayor says the site cost $4M.

Allen says, but the people there didn’t cost money.

The mayor is super agitated now and he says “That is the most reactionary, right-wing, tea party argument I have heard.”

Allen “tea party argument?”

Mayor, says “yes”, that is the most selfish, right-wing, tea party argument I heard, I listened to it on Tuesday night, and to me that was the most offensive thing I heard all evening. That the site didn’t cost anything, that there was no public expense.

Allen asks what was the public expense that would not be spent three or four times as much if these people were out in the community?

Mayor says the city has a public health department. Who pays for it?

Allen says “How many people out there were served by the Public Health Department?”

The mayor says you are missing the point.

Allen says I guess I am.

Mayor says the city has a fire department, how many people were served by it?

Allen says, would those people still have to be served by it if they were in the community?

Mayor says, you are making the right-wing argument . . .

Allen says I am not right-wing and I don’t think that is the right way to argue it.

Mayor says you are making the tea party argument.

Allen says “I don’t think so”

Mayor says “which is this . . .

Allen says, ok, tell me.

Mayor says that the notion that a standing government, not army, is unnecessary, because if you don’t directly use the service, you shouldn’t have to pay for it, the point is we have in place a health department, we have in place a fire department, we have in place a city treasurer, we have in place all these functions that are available if needed which cost money every single day. This is not Horatio Alger, this is not a world where everyone is in there on their own. And there may have been days when the fire department wasn’t called in, but it had to be paid for every single day because we wanted to know it was available.

? Yeah, we’re not asking for . . .

Mayor says there are dozens and dozens of city staff people that cost . ..

? When we say that we are not . . .

Mayor, who cost 10s of thousands of dollars if not hundreds, who have been serving the area, they have been meeting with the people on that site for the whole last 6 or 7 months, they were the ones that made sure that the city building codes and fire codes were not violated, there is people who have to be paid who are skilled who do those sorts of things and for you to come in and say the site didn’t cost anything, you don’t have any flooding in the area when you were there, you didn’t have any flooding because there has been millions of dollars spent for both infrastructure and engineers who made sure that the old former swamp area doesn’t go under water.

? Could I

Mayor, don’t say it didn’t cost anything.

? Could I say something? In the first place, I’m a bit offended that you would lump me in with the tea party . ..

Mayor, well, you’re making their argument.

Well, I’m a bit offended by that, as a matter of fact, I’m mostly of a socialist philosophy personally, and I think that there is a role, a very important role for government and I certainly want to see a good compassionate, creative government in place. And to tell you the truth, I’m not seeing compassion and I’m not seeing creativity here and that’s all I have to say for this moment here.

Terry? So, I get the costs of that, and who pays all those costs? The taxpayers. We’re all taxpayers here. There is a good share of people on that site that are homeless, that are working, which means they are also taxpayers, do we chose between this group of people for services that say ok, its justified for them because they have a higher income level? And our poor people that are working aren’t? I mean, if you want to make the argument that it costs, ok, I’ll concede to that, but everybody is taxpayers around there, not all the homeless people are unemployed. We have a pretty fair number of people that are also working, part-time, or full-time/part-time, they have full hours one week and another week they don’t. that’s beyond their measure. We have people there that were tradesmen, chefs, college educated people, I mean, you’re looking at the job market and I don’t know myself, I went for a city job and there were 3,000 people who applied for it. I mean.

Bruce says I actually made that argument, I should have said additional costs. There was not that much additional costs to the city, so I would agree with that argument. That it is. I mean, when you open the meeting, what are we asking for, anther piece of land with no additional costs.

Wow, ok. Sounds like that one is settled, right? Ahem.

Mayor says we don’t have another piece of land. eyeroll. Just about everyone I know can point out several under-utilized pieces of city land.

Someone says what about the land on Park St.

Allen says there are two pieces of additional land, and I can name them right now. One is Union Corners, no one has claim on that. There’s one . . .

Mayor interrupts . . . You don’t know that, do you?

Allen says that I was told by the city realtor, that no one has a claim on it except one group of people that want to have a community gardens there, I was told that by Don Marx.

Mayor says “that site is not available.”

Allen says, ok, then there is another site. Well, you say it is not available, but you are not giving a reason why its not available.

Mayor says “the site is not available.”

Allen says well . . .

Steve (from Occupy) says lets talk about the other one on Park St.

Allen says the one on Park St. 1402, teh Army Reserve Place, the city doesn’t own it yet, but I know also that the city has plans to purchase that site, sometime at the beginning of the summer. And you’re negotiating with the federal government right now for it. And I also know that the site originally was slated for homeless services, by the Goodwill, and they had plans for it, and because of city opposition, not city, but community opposition,

Someone says “an alders opposition”

They moved their facility all the way heck out somewhere else and nothing for the disadvantaged and vulnerable took place on that site. And so I think that site is going to be available. What I was told by someone from the city is that it’s not available because the building is scheduled to be knocked down, which I consider a total waste coming from a biology background and an environmental background, and used for development of S. Park St. Well that doesn’t have to be if the city will is there. It doesn’t have to go that route.

Mayor says the city will is to go that route, that is a decision that was made before I became mayor and I haven’t seen any change in the city will in that regard. Now, let’s get a couple things straight here. One of the things I am fairly good at is hearing what people say, and also hearing what they mean, which are two different things. People say specific words and sometimes it has other meanings. When somebody is talking about the deadline on April 30th on East Washington Avenue, and then asks questions about what if we are not off the site by April 30th, I hear that and I know what it means. It means we are playing with the idea of not leaving on April 30th.

Allen says that is not exactly true.

Mayor says it is true.

Allen says its not.

Someone says, let him finish Allen.

Allen says alright.

Mayor says that he wants to caution everyone, this goes back to the 1969 comments, because the people might know their history form April and May of 1969, clearly have not been paying attention for the following 40 years, if it is necessary for the Madison police department to take action to enforce the ordinances, while I am Mayor, they will. It’s that simple. The big thing that concerns me is that folks aren’t reading me right and aren’t listening to what I am saying. The big concern he has got is that they are going to get there April 30th and there is going to be property there. Giggle, they have a little state law problem they figured out when looking at an ordinance for the city about property left on public property. Now just let me give you and example with the automobiles. The automobiles will be towed. Once they are towed and impounded that is outside of the city’s control. Once that happens it generally gets very expensive, there is the cost of the towing, there is the cost of the impundment, the owner of the vehicle has to provide ac lean title to get the car back and every day they wait the cost of the impoundment goes up and I can predict right now, at least one or two vehicles will end up in the possession of the company that does the impoundment and when they don’t pay they are going to take the cars and get rid of them for salvage to recover the costs. In terms of other personal property, it will be taken into custody, and go through he normal process for property that is found and then after a period of time, if not properly claimed, it too will most likely be destroyed. so I would really suggest that you listen carefully to what I am saying. If you encourage anyone to stay, and not get their stuff out of there, prior to noon on April 30th, you’re heard me spell out what the consequences are. The consequences are very serious and I don’t want to see that happen, given that we are not even at April 15th, there is absolutely no reason that anyone should not be able to be off that site by April 30th. in fact, the prudent thing to do would be not to wait but to be off the site earlier than that. Now, there are 930 children who are homeless in the Madison public school system. When I left office in . . .

Ok – there is 10 minutes left, I just heard that there will be a press conference today at 1:00 in the mayor’s conference room. Most likely because Alders are working on a resolution to be considered tomorrow night to extend the deadline. So, um, I gotta stop this for now, but I will finish this later today.

Watch for part two . . . to find out why you should never be on a sinking ship with the Mayor! 🙂