On Tuesday, April 5, Tom Barrett will be on the general election ballot for his fourth term as Milwaukee mayor. Seemingly amiable and easy-going on the surface, in recent years he’s become more aggressive on implementing his agenda items despite stiff opposition, including the Milwaukee Streetcar, reinstating the residency rule for city workers and helping to broker a deal to finance the Bucks arena.
Last week, Barrett stopped by our offices to discuss his record as mayor and what he’d like to accomplish in his next term if re-elected.
We extended an interview invitation to Barrett’s opponent, Alderman Bob Donovan, but, unfortunately, he declined, citing his busy schedule. Donovan is on the ballot twice in April—as a candidate in the mayoral election and to represent the 8th District on the Milwaukee Common Council. We spoke to Donovan’s opponent in the Common Council race, Justin Bielinski.
Here’s an excerpt from our discussion with Mayor Barrett.
Shepherd: Why are you running for another term?
Barrett: I absolutely love this job and every day I get up and pledge to do what I can to improve the quality of life for people who live in the City of Milwaukee. We’ve been through some tough times. We’ve gone through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression and we fought back. We fought back against a hostile state government, against very challenging economic times. I think now that we have battled our way through a lot of that we are going to start seeing some of the dividends from investments that we have made over the years, both in neighborhoods and in the heart of the city.
Shepherd: What are your goals for your next term if you are re-elected?
Barrett: We want to do everything we can to make sure that people have family-supporting jobs. Along with that is to make sure that in every neighborhood in the city in the summer a grandma can sit on her front porch and watch her grandkids play safely in the front yard.
Shepherd: Milwaukee is experiencing unacceptably high levels of violence, specifically gun violence. What have you done to improve public safety?
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Barrett: Let’s talk about this over a several-year period. Leading into 2015, we had six of the seven lowest years for homicides that we have had in a generation. If you go back to the early 1990s, when the crack epidemic hit, that was the time that we had the highest number of homicides. We saw between 2010 and 2014 a lower-than-average number of homicides. We were also seeing more gun violence. Some of that is related to changes in laws at the state level making it easier to have guns on the streets of the City of Milwaukee, but there’s no question that in 2015 we took a tragic upturn in the number of homicides in the city.
What we’re doing is making sure that we are maintaining the strength of our police department. We are working closely with faith leaders and community groups and youth groups and we’re working with the state government to the extent that we can on a number of initiatives.
We have the ShotSpotter implemented in more and more neighborhoods and that is important. Sadly, most of our police calls for shootings in those neighborhoods come as a result of ShotSpotter. We don’t get a call from someone. We find out because ShotSpotter has detected it. We want to make sure that we continue to do that.
We also were successful in obtaining changes to state law. In some quarters it was controversial but what it stated was that if you were someone who had already served time for a violent felony, and you were then caught with a gun you were going back to prison. It’s not for misdemeanors, it’s not for nonviolent offenses, it’s for violent felonies. I want there to be certainty that if you’ve already been in the prison system for a violent felony then I want the word to hit the street you’re going back if you have a gun.
Shepherd: We’re also experiencing a wave of car thefts and car-jackings by young people. What are you doing about this?
Barrett: We have seen an increase in those areas as well. The arrests that our Milwaukee Police Department has made over a four- or five-year period have increased 330% [for juveniles operating a stolen vehicle]. We have seen an increase in stolen cars. It’s half what it was in the early 1990s, but we got used to seeing [lower numbers]. It’s not just the stolen vehicles. We have had roughly in the past year period 15 people who were killed in vehicle accidents involving stolen cars. None of these were police chases. The argument I want to make is that if we have a 330% increase in the number of arrests, the police are doing their job. We are arresting the individuals.
So then the question becomes, what’s going on? I have been working very hard with the other components of the criminal justice system—and I stress the word system—to see what’s happening that’s not working right now. I’ve worked closely with the district attorney and we’re going to be embedding in their office two of our crime analysts so that we can analyze what’s happening with these cases that we present to them.
Shepherd: The city, like the country in general, is rebounding from the Great Recession, but what have you done to spur job growth in the city?
Barrett: I’m very, very proud of the work that we’ve done in the Menomonee Valley. If you recall, when I started this job you needed an all-terrain vehicle to get from one end of the valley to the other. We have put tens of millions of dollars into the Menomonee Valley and now it’s teeming with jobs.
My priority moving forward is Century City. Many people still think of it as the A.O. Smith site. We have probably 80 acres there. That’s very near the population that needs to be served.
Right now there’s good news. I give a lot of kudos to Northwestern Mutual. They are making the windows there for the Northwestern Mutual development in that building, in the Talgo building. They have subcontracted with a business that is employing all city residents, who are putting those windows together. I give a lot of credit to Northwestern Mutual because they have surpassed our goal in having City of Milwaukee residents working there. They have employed a lot of people going into apprenticeship programs, over 100, and many of them are people of color, which is also a major concern of mine.
Shepherd: There are a lot of complaints that you’re too focused on Downtown development and not as concerned with helping neighborhoods.
Barrett: I’ll go right back to Talgo. The fact that you’ve got a couple dozen people who are working there and a lot of these construction jobs are going to city residents. If you’ve got over 40% of these jobs going to city residents, that’s a really good thing. But we clearly want to have the fruits spread to the neighborhoods.
People point out the amount of money that is going to the arena. Let’s talk about some of the things that more than offset the city’s commitment to the arena. Over the last three budgets—2014, 2015, 2016—we have put well over $30 million into the foreclosure crisis. That means we’ve torn down some homes. We’ve deconstructed some homes where there’s more labor involved because we’re trying to salvage things. We’ve rehabilitated homes, we’ve sold homes. Since we’ve started our aggressive program in selling foreclosed homes, in the last month we just sold our one thousandth home. And most of these are going to homeowners.
We have put over $20 million in my neighborhood library renovation plan to create 21st-century libraries. We put $3.5 million in Tippecanoe Library. North Avenue is phenomenal, which has three floors of condos that we don’t own. The first one was Villard Square. That worked out so well we went to the East Side. Then we went to the South Side. Next is Forest Home. Then Mill Road. Then Martin Luther King and Capitol Drive. So we have this planned through 2020 and it’s over $20 million to breathe new life into these libraries.
Then we were very successful with the federal government in getting a $30 million grant for Northwest Side. As you may recall, we redid the eastern part of Westlawn. Now were are going to do the western part of Westlawn. So just those three things it’s over $80 million spent in the neighborhoods.
Shepherd: How will any of that alleviate Milwaukee’s poverty?
Barrett: There are more Milwaukee residents that are working at the end of 2015 than were working in any years since 2001. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we still have a serious poverty problem in the city.
I’m in these neighborhoods and I can see the distress. One of the ways that we’re trying to combat that is making sure that people have health care. That’s one of the distress factors. We’re very proud of the fact that among the 20 cities that accepted President Obama’s challenge, Milwaukee came out No. 1 in increasing the number of people who have health coverage.
We’re happy that more people have jobs but there’s clearly a wage issue because if people can’t afford to support their families they’re going to have to work an additional job. That’s where the minimum wage is important, where the Earned Income Tax Credit is important. To make sure that people, the working poor, are able to benefit. I want people to know there are more people working. We’re trying to make sure they get health coverage. But the wage issue is real.
Shepherd: Let’s talk about the Milwaukee Streetcar. How will this benefit the city as a whole?
Barrett: I view this as an economic development tool as well as a transportation tool. I think you can already see the economic impact of this even before we have the system up. What I mean by that is the Grand Avenue Mall, which a year ago sold for $17 million, just changed hands for $24 million. The Post Office went for over the asking price and that’s right on the streetcar route. We’ve had developers and employers both say they want to have proximity to the route. I think our challenge going forward is going to be how we can extend this to other parts of the city.
Having said that, I’m well aware that it remains controversial. I’m well aware that particular people who don’t often come Downtown don’t see the value in it. But ironically, when I talk to people who say, “I want Downtown to be like it used to be,” well, it used to have a streetcar. [laughs]
What’s also missed in this is that it’s part of a bigger vision. We’ve done a lot to decrease the replacement cycle for roads. When I started it was 108 years for local streets and it’s now 62 years. So we’ve put a lot of money into the infrastructure. We’ve been supportive of the bus system, smart freeway reconstruction, Bublr Bikes. We’re trying to get this as part of a comprehensive transportation strategy that includes the buses, cars and bicycles.
Shepherd: What are the biggest differences between you and your opponent?
Barrett: This is an important story. [Internet retailer] BuySeasons initially wanted to locate in the Menomonee Valley, in Alderman Donovan’s district. They came to see me and it was something the Department of City Development thought was a good idea. They came to me and they had with them a check to purchase the land. They were concerned because the alderman in that district hadn’t seemed supportive. And the controversy was because these were seasonal jobs. My view was, with the unemployment issues we have in the city, there’s a group of people who need to get their foot on the first rung of the ladder. They had to get a job. If it was a seasonal job it was still a job. We could deal with that.
I thought that this was a total no brainer. So we literally said, “You should talk to the alderman right now. We’ll make the phone call.” They went down and a half hour or 45 minutes later they came back and said, “We’re going to New Berlin.”
They made that decision because of the way that Alderman Donovan treated them. This would have been one of the largest if not the largest addition of new jobs to his district. He verbally abused them and they said we’re taking our jobs out of the city. People should know that.
The second thing is residency [requirement for city employees]. We have a constitution that for 75 years has said that this is a local decision. And this Legislature and this governor took it away. And we were sued by the police union and they were joined by the firefighters union because we reaffirmed our ordinance to say that as a condition to take this position you have to reside in the city. The police union sued us and we lost at the trial court level.
I went to the council and said I’d like to appeal. Alderman Donovan was one of two aldermen who said no. We did appeal it and we won a unanimous decision and a lot of the decision was based on the negative economic impact this would have on the city.
But it goes beyond that. Police-community relations are an important issue in this city. And if you look at two of the tinderboxes in the last year for police-community unrest, they include Baltimore and Ferguson. In Baltimore, 79% of police officers live outside the city.
We cannot have a situation at a time when we want to improve police-community relations that our public servants, particularly those in public safety, are not part of our community. Alderman Donovan likes to say he’s a fighter but boy, he really hid under the table on this one.
