6. SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

WE SUPPORT economic development that will assist people to become self-sustaining members of the Madison community. City policy should promote economic development to benefit the public by creating family-supporting jobs; equal opportunity; a rising standard of living; and a more equal distribution of wealth while guaranteeing workers’ rights. The City of Madison should have an Economic Development Plan that is annually updated through a public process, that actually guides the City’s decision, including budget and planning decisions, and that focuses on neighborhoods most in need of investment. We support:

1. Ensuring that all economic development decisions are made through an equity lens.

2. Neighborhood-based economic development and City policy that fosters small, local and start-up businesses/worker-owned cooperatives, for example: entrepreneurial training, micro-lending, business incubators, business-owned storefronts, assistance with business plans and identifying available office and manufacturing locations and other resources.

3. City contracts that, in granting economic support for development projects or purchase of goods and services, prioritize locally owned firms, minority-owned firms, women-owned firms, unionized firms, worker-owned cooperatives, and firms with a proven track record of recruiting and hiring a diverse workforce, offering affordable health care, and respecting workers' rights, as well as good environmental, safety, labor and civil rights histories.

4. City policy to promote and expand job training and educational opportunities, particularly to benefit those who have been underrepresented due to income status, disability, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, racial and ethnic background, including undocumented workers.

5. City policy to provide programs of economic and social aid and protection to our community’s most vulnerable residents. Such programs should be part of the economic development agenda.

6. City strategies to make health care benefits available and affordable to small businesses and the self-employed.

7. Critical evaluation by the City of prospective development projects to fully understand any potential environmental and economic impact.

8. Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) guidelines that

a. Support card check neutrality.

b. Require businesses that receive economic subsidies from the City to pay their employees a living wage, indexed to inflation, and to provide health insurance benefits.

c. Ban creation of TIF districts that do not have an identified sufficient revenue source.

d. Use TIF to support projects that would not otherwise occur, that have clear public benefits, economic, environmental, community-enhancing, and otherwise, and that is secured through legally enforceable Community Benefit Agreements. Developers who fail to produce these results should be required to repay the TIF subsidy with interest.

e. Are targeted to neighborhoods in need.

f. Ensure a uniform application of minimum financial feasibility criteria for funding TIF Districts.

g. Give preference to proposals that expand the number of affordable housing units for low-income people.

9. A transparent and predictable development approval process that takes into account both neighborhood and independent expert opinion (e.g., the Landmarks Commission and the Urban Design Commission).

10. Initiatives and programs that promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy by the City of Madison and its residents, including distributed renewable generation.

11. Initiatives that integrate greater amounts of locally sourced, healthy, nutritious, organic and culturally diverse food into school and other public meal programs.

12. Initiatives and programs that promote environmentally friendly technology and employment, including urban agriculture.

13. Recognition of access to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food as a human right and initiatives that allow the community to exercise that right.

14. Exploration of the creation of a public municipal bank, similar to the bank of North Dakota that would be used to both house the city's assets and facilitate sustainable economic development.

15. Internet access for underserved areas of the city and net neutrality.