Amen! Paul Soglin said it pretty well – except for the part where he said half the city council is making it hard to evict tenants. (Eviction laws are state laws and the City of Madison can’t contradict or change Chapter 704 of the Wisconsin Statutes. This crazy notion has surfaced several times recently and I don’t know who is spreading this crazy misinformation.)
Somehow, most of the emails we’re getting based on the Westside crime meeting seem to be advocating for the loitering ordinance or the chronic nuisance ordinance, and now the Mayor has jumped on board.
The Cap Times got the issues mixed up a bit. This isn’t stalled in committee, we’ve been waiting for months for a new draft. When the council met, significant concerns were raised and the author agreed to address them – I didn’t blog about it, cuz I was waiting for a new draft. I don’t think anyone from the Mayor’s staff was there at the meeting, otherwise, I don’t think the Mayor would have jumped on this as a solution. We’ve been told this ordinance won’t be used more than 10 times a year. This is hardly a widespread solution for the many problems we are facing.
In short, setting this “landlord law” up to be the solution to our crime problems is just silly. Why can’t our community have a decent discussion about solutions? Why can’t we take a critical look at what is causing the problems and make some informed and intelligent decisions about how to fix the problems, instead of glomming on to “feel good” measures that are sure to disappoint. And what has the Public Safety Review Board been doing? They should be the policy group that helps to address these types of issues and they seem to be completely asleep at the switch. We haven’t heard a peep out of them during any of the current policing issues.
And worse yet, I fear that this whole thing is being framed as a “give the police more money”, “basic services only” kind of discussion in preparation for the 2008 budget. The police budget has increased in the last few years as follows:
1998 – 32,672,502 of the total city budget of 148,100,704 or 22%
1999 – 33,757,344 of the total city budget of 154,044,007 or 22%
2000 police budget 35,197,123 of total city budget of 159,267,459 or 22%
2001 police budget 37,180,315 of total city budget of 169,090,499 or 22%
2002 police budget 39,679,894 of total city budget of 174,670,848 or 23%
2003 police budget 41,397,279 of total city budget of 179,707,633 or 23%
(Sorry, I can’t get the city website to work for me on this one. I’ve asked them to fix it, but to no avail.)
2004 police budget 42,912,642 of total city budget of 185,775,527 or 23%
2005 police budget 44,092,020 of total city budget of 192,725,458 or 23%
2006 police budget 47,331,958 of total city budget of 203,295,005 or 23%
2007 police budget 50,106,451 of total city budget of 210,761,770 or 24%
Meanwhile, what has happened to CDBG, Office of Community Services and Madison Metro?
- Metro has gone from 4 to 4.8% of the budget
- CDBG has gone from .1 to .4% of the budget
- Office of Community Services has gone from 2.3 to 2.6% of the budget.
- These three departments together are only 8% of the budget.
However, which departments do you think will get the most scrutiny?
Folks, Soglin is mostly right. (I cringe when the assumption is made that the poor cause crime. It’s a overly broad statement that needs to be nuanced.) This is about making sure that people in our community have a decent quality of life. And making sure the services are available so that people don’t have to turn to crime. High quality childcare, good jobs, decent bus service that actually works for people, affordable housing and services that help people sort out the issues they are having and build support networks, those are the things that build community. Creating this “fear factor” and finding more ways to punish people, creates a further divide, more anger and resentment on all sides and isn’t going to solve the problem. In fact, it can help exacerbate it.
Meanwhile, I’ll point out once again, we need to look at how the police are spending all this money and try to figure out if we need to approach things differently. Soglin mentions community policing. He’s dead right. However, we’ve been shifting away from that in the last few years and I think our community is feeling that loss. And then, we need to look at what “basic services” are needed in our community to help families thrive in Madison.
These issues won’t be solved by a loitering ordinance or a chronic nuisance ordinance. We need more than that.
