Reflection on Votes at 9/8 Common Council Meeting, Recent Events, and Upcoming Budget

Hi everyone. I hope you all are doing well and have gotten a chance to enjoy some of the cooler weather that has rolled in recently. It has been a few weeks since my last blog post, and I wanted to share some updates about things happening in the district and the city at large, starting with some important votes we took earlier this week at our most recent Common Council meeting. 

Landmark Status for the Wonder Bar

The Common Council voted on the most recent petition to recognize the Wonder Bar as a Historical Landmark, which was filed in reaction to the proposed housing development at the site shared by it and the Coliseum Bar. Last month, the Landmarks Commission recommended that we deny the Wonder Bar this status, and that is the path that we took on Tuesday. 

For me, the decision ultimately came down to the distinction that the Landmarks Commission laid out between buildings that have historical significance and those that deserve to be recognized and protected as landmarks. I know that the Wonder Bar has immense personal significance to a large number of folks in South Madison and beyond, and I thank you all for reaching out with your memories and feedback about this petition. But these personal connections and memories, while meaningful, do not a landmark make. That is a much higher bar - one that has only been met twice over the last 13 years. Those two buildings (The Kathryn Clarenbach Family Residence and The Benjamin & Amy Butts House) have documented histories tied to critical national and local activism - the former being the home of one of the most influential early leaders of the modern feminist movement in America and the latter being a historical refuge for Black Madisonians and the launching point of the first Black neighborhood in our city. By comparison, the Wonder Bar's history is largely unsupported by the historical record and tells a story of violence, trafficking, and crime that does not merit enshrinement through the preservation of an abandoned building. 

Emergency Budget Request for the Williamson St Business Relief Fund

Due to the economic impact of the prolonged memorial and encampment on Willy St in the wake of the police killing of Corey Ruiz, several businesses in the area face uncertain futures. Workers at these businesses have also felt the impact of this disruption, missing shifts and paychecks due to the unexpected closures. Many of these businesses also went above and beyond during the encampment in fulfilling their civic duty, providing space and often times support for our grieving city, and dealing with an unprecedented situation with an admirable grace and understanding.

Alder Mayer, who represents the area, proposed an emergency budget allocation to help support and stabilize these businesses. While he initially requested $300,000 (which would have required using $200,000 of the city's contingency reserves), he amended that request to just $100,000 that would have come from funds that had been previously budgeted for economic development but had been unspent.

I voted for this measure, not only to support the workers who rely on these businesses, but, as Alder Zhang eloquently stated that night, to return to Willy St the sense of place and community that will allow the community to heal and recover from the immense grief of the horrific killing.

The measure received 13 votes but did not pass, since adjustments to the budget like this require a 3/4 supermajority. The most common argument against these emergency funds was the precedent it would set - that the city would be called on to bail out any businesses that were impacted by street closures. I think that Alder Mayer responded to this argument particularly well in his blog post, which I would encourage everyone to read in its entirety:

"The argument that stuck with me most was the comparison to how the city handles businesses inconvenienced by planned road construction. The reasoning was that if we don't offer assistance there, why offer it here? 

But those two situations are not comparable. Businesses facing disruption from road construction get months of advance notice to prepare, restaff and adjust inventory. Our Willy Street businesses got zero notice before a City of Madison Police Officer killed a man in broad daylight, steps from their doors.

We can debate precedent all day, but when there's a clear path to doing real public good, I think we should take it. I also disagree with the notion that helping a community experiencing sustained harm, harm it might not fully recover from, is somehow unprecedented. The whole purpose of city government is to invest in our neighbors and community, particularly when they're hurting and in need. Madison's 2026 operating budget is roughly $452.7 million. It's disappointing that investing just 0.02% of that in readily available funds was seen as too much to ask."

Additional Funding for the Office of the Independent Monitor

Lastly, we considered an additional $28,500 in funding for the Office of the Independent Police Monitor, to allow their part-time data analyst to work full time for the rest of the year and allow members of the Police Civilian Oversight Board to attend the National Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement Conference. Like the Willy St Relief Fund, this adjustment to the budget would require a supermajority vote. Since all 6 members of the Finance Committee recommended that we not adopt this measure, I knew that it was not going to reach the necessary threshold of the whole council, and so I treated this vote as largely symbolic - not only was the dollar amount relatively miniscule, this measure was our first vote having to do with police oversight since the killing of Corey Ruiz. 

Between the last two council meetings and the constant stream of emails we've received since July, alders have heard from hundreds of Madison residents about the structural problems with our police force, their fear about interacting with officers, and the faith that have placed in the Office of the Independent Monitor to stand against these injustices in the face of historical political pressure. I felt that if we as a council had completely rejected the very modest request for additional funding, it would have sent the message that we were not listening to these concerned voices or did not care about them. The process of reforming our police department and re-earning the trust of community members who feel betrayed and threatened by their recent actions will be a long one. My goal in voting yes on this measure was to show that we were not giving up on that process before it had even begun. There has also been a small but vocal subset of people calling for the office to be defunded and disbanded completely, and I wanted to use this vote to let the advocates for criminal justice reform know that we were not going to let that happen in the upcoming budget votes. 

With all that being said, I know that this vote also carried symbolic weight for another reason; For a considerable number of people, this vote served as a referendum on the Interim Independent Police Monitor Aeiramique Glass and her actions over the last few months. This was not the primary lens through which I evaluated my vote, but I understand the concerns of my constituents who have reached out regarding some of the things IM Glass has said and done in recent weeks. I agree that some of her statements have been quite inflammatory or personally antagonistic towards my colleagues in city government, and I have been dismayed at how frequently she has allowed the conversation over the last two months to be about her, rather than about the reforms and investigative steps that need to be taken (though I also want to acknowledge that shifting the conversation to be about her conduct rather than the policy issues at hand has also been a tactic of some of the opponents of police reform). However, I don't feel that all of the critiques of her have been entirely fair – namely, I don't agree with the complaints that simply partaking in the protests calling for justice disqualifies her as an independent monitor. Based on the wording of the ordinance creating the role, I think that the title of the office should be understood as independence from the Police Department and Common Council, rather than independent and removed from all community conversations and activism around incidents of police misconduct. I think it is incredibly fair to criticize the Independent Monitor for some of her actions, but I don't want us to set a precedent that any engagement with activists is a reason for dismissal in future cases, which I fear is the rule that some of the most vocal critics are hoping to set. 

I believe the OIM has done some very good work in the last year, closing the office's first cases and publishing a revised annual report with detailed statistics and critical areas of improvement for the police department to address. But the IM has also failed in some key parts of the role in my opinion, chiefly getting buy-in from the MPD to voluntarily implement their reforms. In the last two months especially, I have become concerned that the relationship between IM Glass and the other stakeholders in this process have become so strained that they are becoming a serious impediment to long-term reform. I haven't wanted to say too much about the IM over the last few weeks because I do think it is critical to the integrity of independent oversight that the power to discipline or remove that position is vested with the Police Civilian Oversight Board, as is required in the ordinance. However, feedback I've received since Tuesday's meeting has made it clear that I was not communicative enough about my vote and how it pertains to my feelings about the recent developments with the Office of the Independent Monitor. I still vehemently believe that we need independent police oversight in Madison, among a broad range of other reforms to our police and criminal justice system, to correct the historic and ongoing injustices and biases throughout our city. I believe that the Office of the Independent Monitor and the Police Civilian Oversight Board will be instrumental to that work, but that there is still a long way to go before those institutions are fully functional and ready to live up to their purpose. I am committed to making the necessary changes and giving them the support they need to make that happen.

I know that this is an issue with strong feelings on every side, and one in which I cannot please everyone with my votes. I want to be very clear with you all going forward about where my head is at, why I take the votes that I do, and what I'm doing to help us move forward. Thank you for understanding the nuance of this situation, and please continue reaching out with your thoughts, questions, and ideas on this vitally important subject.

Upcoming Issues and District News

• The Mayor's Executive Capital Budget was released on Tuesday. There are a lot of District 14 projects included in there, but I want to give a special shoutout to the Park Badger development, which is receiving more capital funds to ensure that the infrastructure around the project is ready to handle the new load. We will have more information about the next steps with that development soon.
• The Executive Operating Budget will be released in a few weeks. All departments are being asked to make cuts to keep us under the state-imposed expenditure restraint, and I am working with leaders across city government to make sure South Madison is impacted as little as possible. I want to protect the services that matter most to you, so please let me know if there is work being done that you want me to pay special attention to.
• Congratulations to the Madison Parks team on a great summer of Parks activities, especially around the Goodman Pool, which celebrated its 20th summer in South Madison. And a very special shout out to the new Youth Engagement team at the Parks Department, which went above and beyond in supporting our south side kids this summer.
• The jurisdictional transfer of Park Street is official. Thank you to everyone who voiced their support for this move, and to the Transportation team for making it happen. We'll have more news about what this means for possible design changes to the Park Street reconstruction in the months ahead.
• Ride For Your Life Madison is holding a bike ride/walk/rally in honor of the late Sasha Rosen on Sunday, October 4th at 1pm. The ride will go from Brittingham Park to the Capital. I hope you will join me there in celebrating Sasha's life and calling for more safety for our kids on Park St and beyond.