(Bi-?)Weekly Roundup
Election results, housing studies, Mayor McBride, the Equity and Inclusion annual report, and new school district hires.
I am still experimenting with different formats for some of these newsletters, so in addition to longer pieces on a single topic, I thought I might try a round-up of multiple news items with less commentary once every week or two. It also provides an opportunity to follow-up on previous stories.
I.
Sean Lowe, a candidate for alder of District 5, wins in a recount. The original count on April 5 ended in a tie with both Sean Lowe and incumbent Rob Gustafson receiving 702 votes. The race hinged on a single voter whose ballot would not be counted unless he or she returned by the end of the week to present a valid form of identification. The voter did eventually return to City Hall to present ID, and their vote was for Sean Lowe breaking the tie in his favor. A subsequent recount did not change the results. Rob Gustafson, seemingly a good sport, was reported to have joked that he'll know who to call if his trash doesn’t get picked up.
II.
Votes on the referendum (discussed in detail here and here) to reduce the size of the Common Council from 16 to 12 alders and limit them to two consecutive four-year terms were also recounted on April 14th. Vote tallies changed slightly but the referendum still passed with 5,081 votes in favor and 5,078 against. The original count on April 5th had 5,082 votes in favor and 5,077 votes against.
III.
On April 5th the Common Council approved funding for a non-competitive bid of $69,660 by SB Friedman Development Advisors to complete a study of the City’s housing availability and future needs. As I discussed previously, the City completed the exact same study in 2018 so it was not obvious what benefit doing it again might provide. Although the posted minutes (see page 9) from the meeting say that the Common Council approved the contract with a vote of 11-6—with Mayor McBride voting Yes—if you watch the video recording of the meeting (see time 13:10) it actually passes more narrowly on a 9-7 vote.
Multiple alders were opposed to funding the new study, because:
(Ald. Kofroth) the City hasn’t even implemented the housing study from four years ago,
(Ald. Walsh) we need to think more carefully about what we want to actually get out of this study since hiring consultants and giving them vague requirements leads to underwhelming results like we saw with the consultants hired to help distribute ARPA funding,
(Ald. Welch) the Common Council is too quick to spend money and hire consusltants when we don't like what the previous consultants said or want to do something different,
(Ald. Byre) they are not willing to approve money for more studies before making use of those that have already been completed. It’s not entirely clear what she means, but it sounds like there were recommendations from a Midtown Study completed in 2018 that the Common Council still has not provided funding to implement.
(Ald. Morgan) it was not clear why we were waiving the competitive-bid process for this contract. (To which City Attorney Alan Kesner reported that City Staff receommended the waiver because these were the same consultants who had done the original study).
Few spoke in support, although Ald. Stippich mentioned that he found the prior study useful and a number of its recommendations were implemented. He also mentioned that significant changes to the housing and job market have occurred as a result of the pandemic and that it’s worthwhile to take another look. Ald. Tilleson emphasized the use of such studies in allowing the Common Council to educate the public about what the City’s housing needs are.
IV.
There was an interesting article in the Wisconsin Examinern two weeks ago about the back-and-forth between Mayor McBride and the Wauwatosa School District following a presentation given by attorney Kimberley Motley about her experience as a civil rights attorney to a group of Wauwatosa East High School students in December. Although most of her presentation focused on her work as a lawyer in Afghanistan and other countries, a number of slides described her ongoing suit against the City of Wauwatosa and the Wauwatosa Police Department regarding the deaths caused by former-Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah. Mayor McBride sent numerous emails to school officials decrying the presentation and its advertisement on Facebook as one-sided and biased. The Wisconsin Examiner article describe an email from Mayor McBride to Superintendent Demond Means and Wauwatosa East High School Principal Nick Hughes:
“2020 and 2021 have been difficult years in Wauwatosa,” McBride emailed the pair. “Protests and counter-protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the shooting of Alvin Cole by a Wauwatosa Police Department (WPD) officer — and the lawsuits resulting from the Cole shooting and the protests — created extreme divisions in our community,” he continued. “From early 2020 to the present, city officials have been working diligently every day to heal those divisions. The process has been long and painful.”
Mayor McBride is also reported as saying that the way the presentation was advertised on Facebook “certainly does not create confidence in me or anyone else in city government that the school district is a true partner with the city and the police who protect our schools,” and that “Your actions can only undermine the careful work we’ve done over the past decade to form a good working relationship with the school district. They also will divide taxpayers who do not want the school district to take positions that appear to be political.”
V.
During the March 29th Government Affairs committee meeting, Captain Vetter from the Wauwatosa Police Department gave an update (Starting at min. 24:00) on the department’s new hiring initiatives. In November, the Common Council allocated $203,000 to the WPD to help fill eleven officer vacancies stemming from early resignations and expected retirements over the last several years. Money has been used for targeted marketing and for signing and referral bonuses for new officers. They currently have nine potential officers in the training pipeline who, if they successfully complete their training over the next four to six months, will reduce the number of vacancies to two. When Ald. Welch asked if they had been able to identify what barriers were preventing the department from filling these vacancies, Capt. Vetter, after a long pause, responded: “Wauwatosa had a tough 2020.”
VI.
Sean Lowe, in addition to being an alder-elect for District 5, is also chair of the Equity and Inclusion commission and presented (Starting at min. 6:20) his annual report to the Government Affairs Committee on March 29th. He spoke about the commission’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion on the police force, convince the common council to ban no-knock warrants, and fund fair and affordable housing. He seemed somewhat frustrated with progress on these issues, noting that the Government Affairs committee ultimately declined to implement a ban on no-knock warrants1 and—referring specifically to a failed motion to use ARPA funds to create a Land Trust2—that the “Common Council voted no on affordable housing” despite their stated commitment to this issue. In the coming year, he hopes to focus on gender equality, affordable housing, and working closely with the city’s newly-hired organizational development specialist who will have Diversity and Inclusion-related job duties.
However, some took issue with his characterization of the common council’s stance on affordable housing. Ald. Stippich thought it was disingenuous for him to conclude the council was opposed to affordable simply because it did not approve the Land Trust while Ald. Tilleson noted that improving affordable housing is the result of many actions and that almost every large development the council has approved over the past 18 months has included affordable housing. A somewhat heated back-and-forth also occurred between Ald. Wilke and Mr. Lowe concerning the level of thought put into the proposed Land Trust.
Ald. Wilke: Last year my frustration was it was a lot about your role and what you do as the leader of the commission but what I was just curious to hear a little bit more about [are] others’ perspectives on what you’re doing as a team. Some of these items here are—I’m hearing a lot of ‘I’ again tonight—I’m just wondering if this was a report that the rest of the commission put together with you or is this just your thoughts and perspective?
Mr. Lowe: Well, if you go back and listen to the past Equity and Inclusion commission meetings—and everyone is welcome to attend those—we actually did discuss these items for the last two Equitry and Inclusion committee meetings, and then I worked closely with vice-chair Arney to wrap up our final agenda for this evening.
Wilke: Okay, so which things do you think this next coming year are going to be the real focus?
Lowe, looking confused: I just answered that exact same question. Chair Stippich just asked me that.
Wilke: I guess I didn’t catch which one was going to be the most important.
Lowe: Well, I think there’s a lot that we have to cover. And again—
Wilke: Do you see any of these needing a budget to assist with?
Lowe: Affordable housing had a budget and that was not approved. So that was the biggest, I would say, budget item—was affordable housing.
Wilke: And to be fair on that, I think a lot of us were not comfortable that the program was not fully thought through and presented to hit the ground running from what we were given for the price on that. I think no one was completely against that. As I think staff is probably going to continue to work on developing that idea or some sort of program [that’s] similar. Because we heard some similar ideas that had a little more interest at least from myself. But I don’t see that being we were opposed just because the funding at this time didn’t—
Lowe: Voting ‘no’ is opposed to something, but okay.
Wilke: I’m just saying for everyone else, that we’re not opposed to these things in such a way that you kind of pose it.
Lowe: Then in your position I would love to see you come up with a long term plan for affordable housing that everyone agrees on. Because that’s what we do as elected officials, right? Come up with a plan?
Wilke: Yeah, I think that's what we would like to see come to us. Keep working on bringing that to us, thank you.
Lowe: Mmhmm, yeah.
To which Ald. O’Reilly responded:
I will take some exception with my colleagues because I’ve sat in a lot of these reports where chairs of a commission have come before us, and we have never once said to them ‘Is this your opinion or is this the opinion of your entire commission?’ and I really think it’s out of line. Thank you.
VII.
The Wauwatosa School Board approved the following new hires during their March 14th meeting:
Chief Finance and Operations Officer for $172,000 per year,
Chief Academic Officer for $143,000 per year,
Chief of Talent for $158,000 per year,
Chief of Pupil and Family Supports for $143,000 per year,
Underwood Elementary School Principal for $105,000 per year, and
Jefferson Elementary School Principal for $118,000 per year.
This came after much public comment from teachers, former School Board members, and union representatives about the District’s relatively low pay for teachers. While the board did vote during the meeting to give teachers a 3% pay increase, as far as I can tell—and contrary to what the article here seems to suggest—this is a one-time raise and future increases would need to be approved each year as part of subsequent budget negotiations (See video).
The meeting caught my eye because I remembered that fighting increased administrative bloat in the district was a campaign issue for recent School Board candidate, Todd Dalhgren, and I thought maybe this was an example of the type of thing he was talking about. A similar sentiment was echoed by a teacher during the public comment period of this meeting. I’ve never heard of some of these jobs. For instance, what does the Chief of Talent do? The job description says “the successful candidate will have demonstrated past experience serving as a coach to principals and associate principals as they build their capacity to manage talent through rewarding exceptional performance and engaging in courageous conversations about opportunities for growth,” which seems suspiciously like an administrative job to support other administrators.
At the same time, I followed some of the links Todd Dahlgren posted on his campaign website to demonstrate the excessive administrative costs of the Wauwatosa School District. He points out that Elmbrook spends $800,000 less in administrative costs despite serving 1,000 more students than the Wauwatosa School District. However, if you look at the comparative cost data that he links to, it is Elmbrook that seems like a bit of an outlier and Wauwatosa School District’s administrative spending seems roughly in-line with the state average. So, while I’m broadly sympathetic to the idea that the U.S. education system has a lot of administrative bloat, I can’t tell if the Wauwatosa School District is suffering from the same problem.
I plan to write more about this particular issue later.