This is getting embarrassing. He’s being irrational, contradictory with himself, lacks compassion and is just being mean, is coming up with silly solutions that don’t work without talking to community stakeholders and ultimately, I’d bet it won’t pass.
The council isn’t going to pass this? How will it be enforced? And will it accomplish anything?
I knew about the press conference but didn’t waste my time going. Apparently he was on his standard attack against the homeless and those who volunteer their time to assist them.
– He says people have services and are refusing them, but its absolute bullshit. Just like when he promised the people sleeping on E. Washington that anyone who wanted housing could have it – I think one person got housing and they were eventually evicted because they couldn’t afford it, the other 20 or so people that signed up at his requests didn’t get any assistance. (Some of them, 2 – 3 years later, are finally getting into housing, but not because of those efforts, but because of the efforts of others.) One of the people who the mayor says is “refusing housing” won’t go into housing because the person believes a family member is going to pick them up any day, so they don’t need it. He considers that, refusing housing. I call that lack of creativity and individually crafted services for that person. A good and “true” housing first program (none exist in this community, yet) with highly qualified outreach workers connected to a day center with real services to offer people, would work wonders. (This is the contradictory part, he talks about Housing First, but doesn’t understand how it works, you put people in housing and then offer them the services they want to meet their goals, He signed us up for Zero 2016 but isn’t helping make it happen, in fact he’s making it harder to find landlords willing to rent to people by bashing homeless persons and making landlords fear renting to them. He is talking about building a new men’s shelter and a day center to provide appropriate services, but then blames the homeless because appropriate services don’t exist.)
– He is blaming people who give homeless food, says if they give them food, they should be responsible for also providing them with restrooms. (That’s the irrational part. The ordinance doesn’t address this.)
– He’s saying that we are going to force people to either go into the shelters or we are going to run them out of town, institutionalize them or arrest them. He ignores that people can’t get into shelter because there are annual limits to the days people can be in shelter. 30 or 60 days for women, 60 days for men, 120 days for families with exceptions for single men and women on nights when it is below 20 degrees. Why 20 degrees, no one knows. There are no shelters for couples without children under 18, or people who have been drinking as they test for alcohol, but not drugs. (This is the lacks compassion and is just being mean part. It’s also into the “silly” part because he really just can’t do it.)
– He says people abused “services” offered, like the one portapotty that didn’t get cleaned often enough or the dog kennels set up for storage that didn’t have shelves, weren’t water proof and had no lock.
Ah, Remember Mayor Poverty and Equity and Social Justice, the campaigning mayor vs. the governing mayor. He is being none of those. How is there equity in this? How does this address poverty? Where is the Social Justice? None, none and none.
His silly proposal is here.
So, he’s removed the benches from inside the municipal building that used to be by the post office. He’s removed the seating in the lobby of the City-County Building. And now, he wants to limit the time that people can sit on the benches to 1 hour, except between the hours of 11pm or 1am to 5:30am in the central business area and on properties where there are city offices. The map of the area is here, language here.
The draft includes such gems as:
– “The City of Madison has a significant public and governmental interest in encouraging the public presence of residents and visitors in the CBD, and their unimpeded use of public areas and private businesses in the area by insuring that residents and visitors are able to walk unobstructed in this area without persons sitting or lying in their way.” Are people laying in sidewalks and preventing people from walking on the sidewalks, I think not.
– “Because a person sitting or lying on a sidewalk or other public area may be in need of services, a police officer shall first warn the person before citing them for violation of this ordinance, and shall ascertain whether the person needs services available from the County or other welfare agencies.” And at 5:30am or 10pm, who will be available for the police to help offer services?
– Exceptions for babies in strollers. 🙂 And for downtown events,
– “This ordinance may be called the Downtown Pedestrian Protection Ordinance”. Or not.
This won’t pass.
What a waste of people’s time. This has to be referred to committees, people will show up and testify for hours, the committee members will deliberate for hours and feel bad about all the things they heard and have nothing to offer to real people struggling and pouring their hearts out, they may make some suggestions about how to “improve” this silly ordinance but probably ultimately vote against it. And then it will go to the council where we do the same thing all over and ultimately, people will figure out there is no real way for the police to enforce this, and that it will be used in a discriminatory fashion, probably against black people, and that there is no equity in this proposal. Plus it cruel, if people are out of shelter days, this essentially says that people can only sleep 4.5 hours a night. That is just cruel after making people walk all over town to get basic services (food, shower, shelter for some, storage, etc) Plus it works counter to our goals, fining people without money just makes it harder for them to get out of debt and get into housing. They’ll have to vote it down. This isn’t a real solution. All this does is waste time we could be working on real solutions.
Can we talk about REAL solutions! Please.
We need someone to facilitate a community discussion about this. The discussion has to include decision makers in the nonprofits providing services, grassroots organizations, advocates and homeless persons (i.e. Homeless Services Consortium plus Executive Directors of agencies). It also has to include the business community (DMI, the Chamber, GSSBA), alleged downtown neighborhood associations and actual downtown neighbors. And it has to include the mayor, city staff, alders, the county executive, county staff, county board members and affected city and county citizen committee members. We gotta get on the same page. If this is one of the huge issues being talked about, we could put in just 25% of the effort and money going into Judge Doyle Square and have HUGE results. If people want to actually solve the issue. Otherwise, we can just resume taking pot shots at each other and spin in circles for another 4 years. This is stupid. We are better than this. Leadership isn’t going to come from the Soglin or Parisi, its going to be up to the council and county board to take this on. Grassroots organizations, advocates and homeless persons affected by this crap stand at the ready to engage. Please invite us to the table and communicate with us and we can resolve this. We have ideas and real solutions ready.
What can you do?
– Email the alders and ask them to shoot this down quickly and efficiently and then help us move on to real solutions. allalders@cityofmadisonc.om
– Email the county board and urge them to work with the council to do what the Soglin and Parisi aren’t doing. They promised 2 years ago that a day center was their number one issue and they have not been supported in that, they did their job, put the money in the budget multiple times, but the executive branch blew it. Thank them and ask them to help again. county_board_recipients@countyofdane.com
– Give them your address so they know you are a constituent, for homeless people, simply say how long you have been in Madison or Dane County since the mayor tries to make people think that this is about “drifters”
This is a no-brainer. If our elected officials can’t come up with a workable solution, it’s time to have a public hearing and let rank and file citizens figure it out.
The solution is simple. Install those parking meter stations around the park benches where the problems occur. Madison loves to charge outrageous amounts for parking a car; the city should charge people for parking their butt on a park bench too. (This would be non-discriminatory because it would apply to everybody.) The parking monitors could add to their routes, and maybe they could be cross-trained as social workers. And the city would have a new source of revenue. As Tommy Thompson used to say, it’s a win-win situation.
I think someone should assure the mayor every day, “Mr. Mayor, don’t worry you are not like ‘those’ people, the homeless; therefore you don’t have to attack them to show the world you aren’t a moocher off the tax payer. Who cares that you get your pension from the city that you set up for yourself in one of your early reigns, and who cares that you get a salary and are able to park your butt at the Shorewood Hills Country Club, because by now you get the senior citizen rate. So, Mr. Mayor take back your projection of your shadow side from the homeless because any good therapist would tell you that every thing you hate about the homeless is a projection of your dark side.” Take it back, Paul. Do some personal work and quit displacing your dark side on the homeless, that or set up a gas chamber for them. You are a national embarrassment for Madison.