On Tuesday, Feb. 16, voters in the Second Aldermanic District will choose from five candidates who are running to succeed Alderman Joe Davis in the nonpartisan primary. The top two vote-getters will advance to the Tuesday, April 5 general election. All of the candidates spoke to the Shepherd about their campaigns for Common Council. Here are excerpts of our discussions.
Also—the state’s new voter ID law is in effect for the election. To learn more about bringing ID to the polls, click here.
KEITH BAILEY
Keith Bailey is the residential real estate coordinator for the Department of City Development. Last year, his department sold more than 500 foreclosed properties, the most sold by the city in one year, and in 2014 his department sold 437 properties. Bailey was a recruiter for the 2010 U.S. Census and was active in the 2008 Obama campaign.
“I’m blessed to get a job in 2013 to increase the amount of money that will come back to our city in taxes as a result of my day to day profession and my effort,” Bailey said.
Bailey said he’s running because as a long-term resident of the Second District he sees the need for accessible representation.
|
|
“Folks need someone in the administration that they can count on, that they can call and tie city services into the city of Milwaukee,” Bailey said.
He said a top issue is neighborhood safety and community policing. Bailey is the grandson of an MPD officer from the Harold Brier era whose beat was the Bronzeville neighborhood.
“The Second District is a broad base of a community with beautiful neighborhoods,” Bailey said. “However, the city completely is under siege by some of the things that are going on. The police don’t trust the people and the people don’t trust the police. My goal is to take the police department and make sure that we continue to incorporate them in this representation.”
He said the key is to organize the neighbors, who will be connected to him at City Hall.
“I’ve done strong organizing work and organizing communities to help them know that the greatest power they have is each other,” Bailey said. “From lighting up their neighborhoods to communicating and consistently meeting with one another to identify the trends in the neighborhoods so those trends can be reported back to a representative—me—so that I can deal with the police department to make sure that our trends concerning crime and safety are being addressed. If you don’t represent your people you won’t know the trends.”
Bailey said he’d also like to improve the soft skills of residents so that they’re better able to seize job opportunities and make the district more attractive to employers. He said that at least two generations have been affected by the closing of major manufacturers, which has led to mass unemployment as well as a lack of job-readiness among many residents.
“We currently don’t have a middle class that is consistent throughout the city, where young adults and youth and some people that aren’t working can’t see people going to work every day and maintaining a standard of living with a livable wage that’s sustaining their families,” Bailey said. “As a result of generations of that, some of these young folks have depended on doing whatever they can do just to survive. I don’t want those trends to show up in the Second District, where the innocent get hurt as a result of a poor broken middle class.”
Bailey said he’d like to develop an economic, entertainment, arts and shopping corridor between Fond du Lac Avenue and Capitol Drive and Fond du Lac Avenue and Mill Road.
“Then folks can actually go to the movie theater, they can go roller skating, they can go shopping, they can do things in that area,” Bailey said. “But it’s going to take the people and organization.”
To learn more about Keith Bailey, go to keithbaileyformilwaukee2nddistrict.com.
TRACEY DENT
Tracey Dent works in accounting and he’s also a community activist whose main focus is on violence prevention. He organized the petition to require Milwaukee police officers to wear body cameras, delivering more than 2,100 signatures to the city’s Fire and Police Commission. Dent works with the MPD and District Attorney’s Office on their restorative justice program, helping young people resolve their low-level criminal issues peacefully and thoughtfully instead of charging them with a crime. He’s also the only African American man on the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault.
Dent said he’s running for Second District alderman because he wants to take his community activism to the next level.
“Right now Milwaukee is in a state of emergency,” Dent said. “Milwaukee is in the top five of the worst categories in the country. We need strong leadership to start turning things around. I think I did as much as I can as a community activist but now it’s time for me to go to the next level and go to the city government to motivate the Common Council and to work together to work on solutions. When it comes to education, employment, even with the culture in the city of Milwaukee, when we’re dealing with race, when we’re dealing with police and community relationships, I have the ability to bring people together and I want to use that as an alderman.”
Dent’s top issue is violence prevention. He’s advocating for block watches and an adopt-a-block program in which churches get more involved in neighborhood issues. He said that no major companies will locate in crime-ridden areas because they’re concerned about the safety of their employees and customers.
“The only way to curb violence in our community is to work together, meaning that we should form block watches,” Dent said. “We need to have more neighborhood associations. We also need business associations. And youth associations. There is a lot of youth violence, youth robberies. We need their input and have them be on the front lines and support them to find solutions to all of the violence that’s going on.”
Dent would also like to address Milwaukee’s human trafficking crisis.
“It’s important to bring resources to Milwaukee and work with the police department, work with these agencies that deal with human trafficking,” Dent said. “We need to make this a priority in the city of Milwaukee and let the pimps know that this will not be tolerated. We are going to protect our children. It’s not just for the black population, it’s for the whole city of Milwaukee.”
Dent said he would like to see city leaders display the same level of passion for addressing crime that they’ve shown for launching the streetcar and the Bucks arena development.
“We need to stop ignoring what’s really hurting our city instead of focusing on spending millions of dollars and the streetcar,” Dent said. “It’s just a waste of money when people are dying on our streets and children are being molested and our children are failing in our school system.”
For more about Tracey Dent, go to his Facebook page.
CHEVY JOHNSON
Chevy Johnson is taking a break from his work as an aide to Mayor Tom Barrett to run for alderman. Previously, he had worked for the Milwaukee Area Workforce Investment Board. Johnson, said he chose to work in public service after earning a Sponsor-a-Scholar scholarship from the YMCA, which requires recipients to give back to their communities. Johnson helped his neighbors in Milwaukee and worked on projects in London, Chile and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.
“I’m running for alderman because I figured out a long time ago that the way for me to serve my community on a daily basis, to give back and make people’s lives better and to effect positive, was to get involved in this process,” Johnson said. “Some people decide to do it from the outside and some people are able to make that sort of impact. But for me, I remember when I first got involved with that program at the Y and I looked up and I said ‘This is a way that I can make a positive change in people’s lives every single day.’ And for 15 years I said that this is the way to do it. And I’ve never looked back.”
Johnson said he’s most concerned about public safety, infrastructure investment and economic development and job growth.
Johnson said he’d like to improve neighborhood safety by launching virtual block watches so that neighbors can create and maintain connections even when they aren’t able to attend block watch meetings. He said he’d like to expand the ShotSpotter program, work with state legislators to reduce gun violence and make sure that those who shouldn’t have access to firearms don’t get their hands on them.
Johnson said he supported the city’s investment in street repairs, especially the high-impact paving program, but he’d like to see more attention focused on side streets in neighborhoods. He said he’d like to see renewed efforts to repair laterals and sewer pipes to mitigate flooding, especially in the Dineen Park area.
“I think we can also be innovative and use some new ideas to get people to invest in things like sump pumps and taking care of their home laterals and rain barrels so that we can take some of the strain off of the combined sewer system and hopefully mitigate some of the issues that we have with flooding,” Johnson said.
Regarding economic development, Johnson said he wanted to make sure that in addition to creating jobs for those building new developments, he wanted to ensure that Milwaukee businesses and workers find jobs within the new buildings.
“You build a strong backbone economy and then for us, the city, I’d like to see us have a stronger effort supporting locally owned businesses on our main streets,” Johnson said.
In addition, he said city residents should get connected to jobs in the surrounding counties, where there are modern, clean manufacturing sites.
“We had so many people who have skills who used to work at A.O. Smith and American Motors and Tower Automotive and they have the skills to work in manufacturing they just don’t have the means to get to the family-supporting jobs in the outlying areas,” Johnson said. “We need to connect those dots.”
For more information about Chevy Johnson, go to chevyformilwaukee.com.
SHERMAN MORTON
Sherman Morton is the legislative aide to Alderman Joe Davis, who is resigning from his position as Second District alderman. Prior to that, Morton worked for Davis when he was a county supervisor and also for Supervisor James White. Morton is on vacation from his job in Davis’ office. He said he’s thoroughly familiar with the district’s varied needs.
“This is not a cookie-cutter district,” Morton said. “Like, for example, if you picked one side of our district, like 107th and Mill Road, their topics are totally different from someone who lives in Midtown. Or someone who lives near 68th and Hampton, their issues are different from someone who may live near Madison High School.”
He said his biggest goal is to build strong neighborhood relationships.
“At this point they’ve been lost,” Morton said. “We have a lot of homeownership but people have gotten comfortable—I don’t want to say with living good, but we don’t have some of the issues that other parts of the city have. So we have gotten to the point where they stopped calling, they stopped calling the police, stopped calling the alderman’s office, they just got comfortable in what I call minding your own business. What that has done is shown an increase in smaller crime activities things happening in the neighborhoods because people aren’t saying anything. We need to get neighbors out because when you know your neighbors that stops people who aren’t supposed to be in your neighborhood from being around. ‘Nosy neighbors’ is what I call it.”
Morton said he’d like to help reduce the number of foreclosed homes in the neighborhood by helping prospective homeowners have access to lenders, who’d tightened their lending practices after the housing bubble collapsed.
“We need to figure out a way to work with maybe some local banks some smaller banks who are willing to look at people a little differently,” Morton said. “They’ve got to look at their credit score,of course. But there are people who want to get into these homes but may not qualify for a traditional loan because of the way things are.”
He said a major concern at the doors is lack of pothole repair, but he said residents need to let the city know about them.
“I tell people there is no one from the city who drives around and looks for the potholes,” Morton said. “It’s up to the neighbors to call. And if they’re not getting a response through the city number, I tell them to call me personally.”
Morton said the city needs to invest more in neighborhoods and not just in Downtown.
“I think their focus is totally off,” Morton said. “They are focusing Downtown but ultimately Downtown can’t spur the rest of the city. What they’re doing in other cities is that they look at the areas surrounding Downtown and help develop those also. It makes no sense to have a vibrant Downtown looking great, but you walk two blocks outside of Downtown and you have some of the poorest areas in the city. It makes absolutely no sense. No business is going to go into a neighborhood that is crime ridden that is struggling on all levels of income. We need to build our neighborhoods up from the inside out.”
To learn more about Sherman Morton, go to his Facebook page.
LARRESA TAYLOR
Larresa Taylor is a Milwaukee Public Schools special education teacher, educating students with an emotional and behavior disorder. Prior to her teaching career, Taylor was a police officer with the Wisconsin State Capitol Police, was a correctional sergeant with the state Department of Corrections and served in the Navy reserves for eight years. Taylor was a block watch captain in the neighborhood for 20 years.
Taylor said she was spurred to run because of her deep roots in the community.
“I wanted to make sure that we had someone that really cared about our neighborhood,” Taylor said. “I just thought that I didn’t want someone to come in to represent our neighborhood that didn’t know anything about it.”
She said she saw her work on the Common Council as an extension of her career as an educator.
“When I look at the neighborhood I look at educating the residents of what their rights and responsibilities are,” Taylor said. “That is what we’ve been doing as a block watch—looking at how to make calls to the police, what information we need to record when we’re calling, how to protect ourselves as far as lighting around the house. That sort of thing. When I look at education I’m looking at it more from a whole perspective not just academics.”
She said she would take a closer look at how our educational dollars are being spent and do a better job of communicating with the MPS board and partnering with them on some programs.
Taylor said that housing was a priority for her as well. She said the city has a wide range of programs for homeowners but she wasn’t sure that the public was aware of all the city has to offer.
“Right now I don’t know if all of the residents know of all of the resources we have in Milwaukee for getting housing,” Taylor said. “There were some programs for people who may not have the income right away so that they can build that income. I don’t know if they know that we have this foreclosure list that they could look at and maybe get a home at a reduced cost. I don’t know if they know about the neighborhood improvement program.”
Taylor said she’d like to support small businesses to enhance the neighborhood.
“So many buildings have so many storefronts that are empty,” Taylor said. “I think that we could really benefit from having small businesses fill them. I think that would add more of a neighborhood feel and people would come together more. If we get everybody on the same page and we’re looking out for each other that will cut down on crime.”
She said she was concerned about the complaints brought to the attention of the Department of Justice at a recent community hearing.
“There is a lot of work that needs to be done,” Taylor said. “Because I was a police officer I understand that side of things. But then I am a citizen too so I understand both sides. I know that it’s a job where there can be some subjectivity as well. There needs to be some balance. Do you need an overseer sometimes? There might need to be. I don’t think that it’s all bad that the DOJ is here. But I just would like to see that with all of the info that the community was bringing to the forefront, all of the issues and concerns, that hopefully they’re going to be addressed and for there to be a balance between the job that the police officers have to do and keeping themselves safe and providing that service to the community.”
To learn more about Larresa Taylor, go to her Facebook page, Larresa Taylor 4 Alderwoman.
