As a northside meeting about a specific apartment building nushroomed into a meeting about Northside Crime, similar to the one recently help on the Westside, some Eastside residents feel that their concerns about crime and other issues are getting ignored. Why? I’ll let you read that for yourself.
August 16, 2007
Mayor Dave Cieslewicz
210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, Room 403
Madison, Wisconsin 53703Dear Mayor Cieslewicz:
It is regrettable that you have chosen to cancel your participation at our Annual Ice Cream Social. I am sure that you are aware that although we have promoted this as a social, it is really an expanded Worthington Park Neighborhood Association meeting where the Board has invited the entire neighborhood, and our friends, to celebrate our successes and discuss our concerns. You attended this same event last year and knew that there was opportunity for you to speak and to take questions from neighborhood residents. Not only did we have excellent attendance at that event, it was instrumental in the development of our association as a tool for recruiting new neighbor participation. Members of the Association have been hard at work preparing issues and questions for your visit and were eager to discuss numerous issues with you, including a focus on public safety.
It is worth noting as well that while crime and safety have recently become hot topics in other parts of the city, those issues have been longstanding issues in our neighborhood, with seemingly no attention from you to resolving them.
The loss of the Darbo Worthington Neighborhood Officer next year was high on our list of concerns that we wished to discuss with you at this event. Your presence at this event was key to creating hope in those discussions by letting the residents know what is happening at the city level to increase safety in our neighborhood.
Vicky Selkowe, our neighborhood association secretary, confirmed your participation with Linda Lewis in your office nearly three months ago, on May 16th, and again on August 8th, prior to our distributing over 400 fliers (attached in English and in Spanish) door to door throughout the neighborhood. As she stated, among other important points, in her correspondence with Linda, once she was informed of your cancellation, we are very discouraged that you will not be attending. We echo her individual sentiments that it is cause for concern when another area takes priority, particularly when we had confirmed your attendance so long ago and especially when it certainly appears that the concerns of a predominately white neighborhood are taking precedence over those of a more mixed or minority neighborhood. Given the media attention to the issues of crime and safety on the Westside and likely to follow the upcoming meeting with Alder Schumacher and the Police, we are left to wonder if you would act differently with media attention on our area.
We agree that these conversations need to occur all over the city, but by not letting Alder Schumacher or the Northside Community Police know that you were already committed to the same conversation in another neighborhood, a couple of things occurred: they did not know they needed to find a different date, and it appears as well that our own eastside Alder must decide between the two meetings and is likely also now to choose the Northside meeting. Having neither of our elected city representatives at this important annual meeting sends a clear and disappointing message to the residents – especially the children, who will be out in force for this event – of the Worthington Park neighborhood. Voter turn-out is low in our area in part due to the feelings of disenfranchisement in the political process. Your last minute cancellation does not contribute to a positive change.
We are very pleased that Goodman Atwood Community Center and The Salvation Army will be at our event to listen to our needs and concerns, and let us know how they will be able to address some of those with the services they can provide. However, nothing will be able to replace your personal participation and the message that would have sent to our people.
Sincerely,
Tiffany Roberts Dace Zeps
President Vice-President
Worthington Park Neighborhood Ass’n Worthington Park Neighborhood Ass’ncc: Larry Palm, Alder
John Hendrick, County Supervisor
WNPA Board
Goodman Atwood Community Center
The Salvation Army
The East Isthmus Neighborhoods Planning Council
