City Platform

1. OPEN AND DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT

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WE SUPPORT open, accountable, accessible, and anti-racist government for all people, meaningful civic engagement and elections that are free from corporate influence. We support:

1. Making all City of Madison decisions through an equity lens, including and valuing input from marginalized residents and those most directly impacted.


PUBLIC INPUT AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION

2. Providing residents with the right to address the Common Council at the beginning of Council meetings on any issue.

3. Expanding opportunities for all members of the public to offer informed and timely input to all public officials. Enhancing the ability of all residents to fully participate in City boards, committees, and commissions, including the ability to participate in meetings by phone or video, compensation for committee membership, enhanced per diems for low income people (below 200% of federal poverty level), and free transportation, food and child care to encourage public and committee participation. Prioritize equitable and proactive outreach efforts for appointments to city boards, committees, and commissions before considering eliminating committees.

4. Adopting an inclusive, transparent, participatory budgeting process over several months, whereby the residents of Madison directly determine a portion of the City’s annual budgets. This includes making budget information more transparent, timely, and understandable for members of the public, including information about agencies funded through the Community Development Division, and allowing more time to consider Alder amendments.

5. Increasing access to education, television, virtual platforms, and other community media offering interactive and informational programming, to foster open and democratic government:

  • Ensure the independence of such media, they should receive public funding and have community advisory boards with diverse membership.

  • Invest in the necessary equipment, maintenance costs, and staffing to ensure all city meetings are video recorded and easily available to the public, with written transcripts.

  • Make all public documents, including supporting materials for meeting agendas, easily accessible in a timely manner.

ELECTIONS

6. Establishing full public financing of elections.

7. Ensuring timely online publication of campaign finance reports to the City.

8. Extending local voting rights to all adult residents of Madison, including returning residents who are serving parole or are on probation.

9. Ensuring all City residents are able to register and vote by online voter registration, same-day voter registration, early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting.

10. Using voter-marked paper ballots or printed receipts, providing physical documentation for all votes and elections.

11.Public transparent, and non-partisan redistricting processes.

12. Maintaining a 20 seat Common Council to keep elections affordable, constituent access more manageable, and elected officials more knowledgeable of their districts in order to better serve their constituents.

13. Policies and practices that ensure voting is safe and convenient, including extended periods for early voting and voting by absentee ballot., Ensuring that all poll workers, volunteers, and voters are free of intimidation or harassment. Before making any changes to polling locations, including closing or moving polling sites, engage the impacted community directly, not just the Alder.

ETHICS AND LOBBYING

14. Amend the ethics code to protect community members who engage with City of Madison institutions, city employees, and elected officials who experience discrimination, harassment, and other threats to their health & safety, and ensure a clear accountability process for city officials, including elected officials, who create an unsafe environment for others. Provide a strong ethics training program for City employees, including elected officials, with required refresher sessions each year.

15. Vigorous enforcement of the current City ordinance requiring the annual registration of lobbyists, and a stronger and more straightforward lobbying law that provides for frequent reporting and disclosure by anyone being paid to influence elected officials or staff.

2. HOUSING JUSTICE

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WE BELIEVE that housing is a human right. The City should ensure high-quality, safe, fair, accessible, and affordable housing for all. We support:

1. Making all decisions on affordable housing, fair housing, tenant rights, and homelessness through an equity lens, and with input from low-income residents and those who have housing insecurity or are or have been without housing.

2. Policies that further fair housing and facilitate economically diverse and inclusive neighborhoods, free from discrimination and all types of segregation.

AFFORDABLE HOUSING

3. Developing additional affordable/low-income and accessible housing throughout the City, including the construction of new City housing, particularly in areas accessible to transportation, jobs, green space, and food. Investing in creative affordable housing solutions, such as tiny homes, modular housing units, accessory dwelling units, housing co-ops, land trusts, intergenerational housing, and co-housing.

4. Pursuing policies that provide qualified nonprofits with the right to first offer and refusal when multi-unit dwellings are for sale to preserve and extend affordable housing options.

5. Progressive incentives for developers who maintain a substantial proportion of their developments as permanently affordable housing for households at lower levels of area median income (e.g., 30%).

6. Ensuring fair and transparent processes when considering proposed developments, acknowledging the power differential between developers and neighborhoods and publicly reporting on any developer spending to benefit their proposals. Robust facilitation of neighborhood meetings with equity as a core value, ensuring that current residents have meaningful input on proposed developments without making negative assumptions about their potential future neighbors based on their income level or other demographics.

7. Funding strategies to increase home-ownership among Black, indigenous, and people of color.

8. Oppose use of eminent domain that has a discriminatory effect against low income communities and communities of color.

9. Zoning policies that increase the supply of quality affordable housing citywide. Flexible zoning policies that promote affordable housing alternatives, including co-ownership and cooperative housing arrangements, throughout the City.

10. Additional dedicated sources of funding for the city’s Affordable Housing Fund.

11. Re-examining affordable housing programs to ensure that affordable housing dollars are reaching those most in need, prioritizing those earning below 30% Area Median Income (AMI).

12. Improve land banking policy to combat gentrification and create permanently affordable housing in partnership with community land trusts in high opportunity areas. Using land trust to include affordable commercial space for locally owned businesses to foster thriving residential communities.

13. Ensuring that all residents of affordable housing have easy access to nearby greenspace and safe outdoor recreation opportunities.

TENANTS' RIGHTS

14. The right to publicly funded legal representation for residential tenants facing eviction or termination of subsidized housing.

15. Public funding for tenant organizations, tenant organizers, and tenant advocates.

16. Security of tenure for tenants and a good cause standard for eviction.

17. Improved enforcement of the Madison General Ordinances. Licensing of property owners and management companies renting three or more residential units, with repeat violators of housing regulations losing their licenses to rent residential units.

18. Supporting updates to state and local building policies to establish a maximum temperature for residential units, such as with air conditioning requirements.

19. Prohibiting the use of credit history which is unreliable, dated, or unrelated to a housing obligation, information from court records, or criminal convictions unrelated to housing to discriminate among applicants for housing.

20. The Community Development Authority (CDA) adopting policies for minimal tenant certifications for increases in tenant income, to reduce staff burden and focus resources on supporting residents. Ensuring timely rent adjustments in response to decreases in tenant income.

21. Eliminating racial disparities in denials and terminations from CDA housing programs by reducing eligibility barriers and grounds for eviction to those required by federal law.

HOMELESSNESS

22. Making long-term housing available to people without homes of their own, including making vacant public property available for housing the homeless, ensuring:

  • Adequate, safe and welcoming shelter space for homeless individuals and families, not limited by gender identity or expression.

  • Around-the-clock access to facilities providing basic needs and supportive services to homeless individuals and families.

  • A third-party complaint process for grievances related to homeless shelter services and subsidized housing.

23. Securing rights of those applying for and participating in emergency shelter and Community Development Authority (CDA) housing programs to services delivered with respect, courtesy and care.

24. Prioritizing funding for no- and low-barrier housing services that are sensitive to trauma and service models that meet clients where they are, without requiring sobriety.

25. Prioritizing City-owned property for safe sheltering and access to clean water and sanitation for people experiencing homelessness, especially during public health emergencies when fewer people can safely access congregate shelter.

26. Before long-term housing is available, working with the County to secure motel and hotel rooms for vulnerable people experiencing homelessness. Require new emergency heat and cold day policies and protections for people experiencing homelessness.

27. Opposing the criminalization of homelessness. Prohibit sweeps of persons and encampments on public lands.

3. COMMUNITY-CENTERED AND -CONTROLLED POLICING

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WE BELIEVE the police must operate within the standards our community sets, prioritizing human life and dignity for all. We support restorative and transformative justice programs, and ending the criminalization of poverty and homelessness. We support:

1. Making all policing decisions through an anti-racist lens, to dismantle the white supremacy ingrained within policing and public safety policy.

2. Effective formal community control and oversight of the police, including maintaining the full authority and independence of and robust funding for the Community Oversight Board and Office of the Independent Monitor.

3. Transitioning funding away from law enforcement and towards community development, public health, early childhood education, and human services. Police policing duties while other professionals are hired to provide social work, mental health and other services.

4. Allowing non-disruptive use of alcohol in parks and non-policing solutions to problematic behavior.

5. Prohibiting the cooperation of any City agency, including the police, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

6. Eliminating police enforcement of school discipline policies and limiting their presence and authority within the schools.

7. Rejecting militarization of the police. and placing stronger restrictions on the police department’s participation in the 1033 program (military spending purchasing).

8. If body cameras are to be implemented by the Madison Police Department, funding should not come as an increase to the department’s budget. Additionally, before being implemented, MPD must have a clear, appropriate policy around data as well as access to footage by the Community Oversight Board, Office of the Independent Monitor, and public. Public access to the footage and other police records should not be restricted by cost.

9. Increasing data collection on racial disparities, publicly reporting the data, and acting to reduce disparities. Analyzing fines, fees, and forfeitures for disparate impacts on poor people and Black, Indigenous, and people of color; and making policy changes to eliminate any disparities. Any revenues generated from tickets should be invested in the community. Rejecting funding that increases stops, road checks, and other practices that increase racial or ethnic disparities in policing. Ending the criminalization of loitering or panhandling, which disproportionately targets BIPOC community members.

10. Increasing de-escalation and mental health resources:

  • Training for all police officers, along with resources for their own emotional and mental well-being.

  • Prioritizing the response of trained mental health professionals and crisis response teams to calls for service over that of armed law enforcement.

  • Expand CARES to offer 24/7 service within the Madison area.  Work with the County government to expand CARES service to additional communities.

11. Use of force policies that emphasize a duty to preserve life and use of proportional force.

12. Rejecting state and federal law enforcement grants to conduct the "War on Drugs," and ending the City’s participation in the Dane County Narcotics Task Force.

13. Prohibiting the use of no-knock warrants.

14. Banning the use of tear gas and other chemical munitions.

15. Opposing the use of policing & technology to surveil & track activists, protestors, and organizers.

4. PROTECTING CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS

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WE BELIEVE that City policies and practices should support the civil rights of all, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, citizen status, disability, and all other protected classes. City agencies, including law enforcement, should consistently reflect the goal of protecting and serving the public. We consider the right to housing, access to healthy, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food, education, safe drinking water, and health care to be human rights. We support:

We support:

1. The protection and exercise of First Amendment rights in public spaces and parks, including the right to assemble, protest, record police and City officials (including legal observers), provide political and civic information, and use amplified sound within reasonable guidelines.

2. The right of all to enjoy public spaces, art, libraries, parks, and other non-commercial public spaces. We support improvements to ensure access by people with disabilities.

3. Strong enforcement of the Equal Opportunities Ordinance and adequate funding of the Department of Civil Rights. Expanding culturally competent public education on the ordinance and ensuring robust and prompt investigation and case processing.

4. Transparency and public reporting of City-sanctioned recording and large scale data collection, including the use of personal video in public spaces; the use of drones and public surveillance equipment in public, City-owned spaces; and the use facial recognition software.

5. Abiding by the separation of church and state. Contracts with faith-based organizations must ensure fair, open, and inclusive employment practices, and provide a full range of services to all.

6. Protecting the human rights and civil rights of all immigrants, regardless of status. Providing City-funded services to immigrants, including but not limited to legal services, public benefits, and municipal identification cards.

7. Protecting people's right to express their gender identity, including non-cisgender individuals, such as trans and nonbinary individuals, in all spaces in the City of Madison.

8. Working with and following the lead of those most impacted, with direct knowledge and community contacts when addressing human rights concerns. Collaborating with the Ho Chunk Nation and other Tribal sovereign nations to protect Indigenous spaces in the City of Madison and recognize the inherent sovereignty of the Ho Chunk Nation in Madison.

5. HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

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WE BELIEVE that improving health, public health, and safety-net programs benefits us all. We support:

1. Making all funding decisions for health, public health, and safety-net programs through an equity lens.

2. Prioritizing the local public health infrastructure to monitor problems, implement evidence-based interventions, provide programming, and collect data essential to improving population health.

3. Sufficient funding and annual cost-to-continue increases for service providers.

4. Improving and expanding job training; child care assistance for families and training for providers; services and accommodations for people with disabilities; domestic violence prevention; mental health services; public health, including HIV and AIDS services, prevention and education; dental services, alcohol and drug abuse treatment services; and medical and legal services for the poor.

5. Initiatives that promote clean air and environments for the health, safety, and comfort of all, including people with respiratory illness.

6. Health care coverage that includes gender affirming care and transition.

7. Recognizing racism as a public health crisis, and mounting a multifaceted response with adequate funding, and leadership by those most impacted.

8. Reproductive justice, including supports for safe pregnancies and births and access to reproductive health care, including abortion past 20 weeks. Find ways to support people's right to choose, regardless of state and federal policy, including covering procedure and travel costs. Ban any cooperation with potential state and federal law enforcement agencies' efforts to target people's right to choose and their health care providers.

9. Living wages and paid sick leave for all health care and direct care workers.

10. City support and participation in multi-sector initiatives to make Madison an age-friendly and dementia-friendly city.

11. Recognizing crime as a danger to public health, with an emphasis on prevention and remediation strategies as part of defunding traditional policing. The City should work with the County to provide:

  • Early intervention and integrated supports for at-risk youth.

  • Crime prevention through environmental design.

  • Screening and evidence-based interventions, such as counseling and motivational interviewing, for people at risk of alcohol abuse and violence.

  • Public health responses to opioid abuse, alcohol abuse, drug and other addictions that emphasize treatment rather than criminalize illness.

6. SUSTAINABLE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

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WE SUPPORT economic development that will benefit the public by creating family-supporting jobs,; equal opportunity,; an equitable standard of living,; and a more equal distribution of wealth while guaranteeing workers’ rights including the right to organize and join unions and engage in collective bargaining. The City of Madison should have an Economic Development Plan that is annually updated through a public process, that guides the City’s policies and practices, including budget and planning decisions, and that focuses on neighborhoods most in need of investment. We support:

1. Making all economic development decisions through an equity lens, including tax and revenue-generating decisions.

2. Neighborhood-based economic development and City policies and programs that foster small, local, and start-up businesses, and worker-owned cooperatives. These include entrepreneurial training, micro-lending, business incubators, assistance with business plans, and help identifying available office and manufacturing locations. Such job training and educational opportunities should benefit those who have been underrepresented due to income status, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic background, or citizenship or ex-offender status.

3. City contracts that, in granting economic support for development projects or purchase of goods and services, prioritize locally-owned firms, Black, Indigenous, person of color-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 good health care benefits, and respecting workers' rights, as well as strong environmental, safety, labor and civil rights records.

4. Programs of economic and social aid and protection of our most vulnerable residents, as part of the City’s economic development agenda, including Internet access for underserved areas of the city and net neutrality.

5. Ensuring that health care benefits are available and affordable to small businesses and the self-employed.

6. Enforce Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) guidelines that require businesses receiving public TIF funds to support Union card check neutrality, pay their employees a living wage indexed to inflation, and provide health insurance benefits.:

7. Strengthen TIF district criteria to ensure that:

All districts have sufficient revenue sources identified;

Funded projects would not otherwise occur, have clear public benefits, and legally enforceable

8. Community Benefit Agreements

Funds are targeted to neighborhoods where the City has not historically invested

A uniform application of minimum financial feasibility criteria for TIF districts

Preference to proposals that add affordable housing units at <30 percent area median income

9. Developers who fail to follow TIF requirements should be required to repay the publicly-funded subsidy with interest.

10. A transparent and predictable development approval process takes into account neighborhood and independent expert opinion (e.g., the Landmarks Commission and the Urban Design Commission)and the significant need for affordable housing.

11. Initiatives and programs that promote:

  • energy conservation and the use of renewable energy by the City of Madison and its residents, including distributed renewable generation.

  • locally sourced, healthy, nutritious, organic, and culturally diverse food into school, congregate meals, and other public meal programs.

  • environmentally friendly technology and employment, including urban agriculture.

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

13. Exploration of the creation of a public municipal bank that would house the City's assets and facilitate sustainable economic development.

14. Progressive local taxation based on the ability to pay and sufficient to meet local needs.

7. WISE LAND USE AND A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT

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WE BELIEVE that City policy should contain suburban sprawl and to preserve and protect the environment, including clean water, greenspace, and prime agricultural soils. We support:

Viewing all land use and environment decisions through an equity lens.

2. City policy that discourages suburban sprawl and encourages community-oriented infill development and redevelopment, prioritizing affordable housing.

3. Recognizing that the City exists on land stolen from the Ho Chunk and other Tribes and honoring the leadership of Indigenous groups on sustainable practices.

4. Zoning codes and development of infrastructures that further sustainability, such as community gardens; edible landscapes; water catchments; urban agriculture; run-off capture and prevention; and marketing, storage, and commercial preparation of local food products.

5. Zoning codes that allow temporary land uses to facilitate creative measures to meet emergency needs, such as public health and housing.

6. Sustained attention to Madison’s water system to ensure a comprehensive long-term plan for new and existing wells, water conservation, efficient water distribution, avoiding or cleaning up contaminants, and support for innovative techniques to save and reuse existing water.

7. Expanding and preserving public access to shoreline and greenspace. Planting diverse native species, including plants that provide food for pollinators and humans.

8. Enforcement of laws regulating industrial, commercial, agricultural, and residential pollution, and reinstatement of local powers to reduce pesticide pollution. Relying on environmentally friendly pest management practices .

9. Strong support, adequate staffing, and funding for neighborhood planning, and support neighborhood conservation districts' preservation of history and prevention of gentrification, but oppose bad faith efforts to utilize neighborhood conservation to preserve socioeconomic & racial segregation.

10. Evaluating mixed-use development proposals, understanding that walkability and urban density is more environmentally sustainable but also ensuring walkable access to green space and avoiding gentrification.

11. Practices that avoid or reduce problems of groundwater shortages, flooding, lake contamination, and algae blooms, and that improve stormwater management and reduce harmful runoff, including responsible land use and stormwater management requirements for large retail developments

12. Policies that help mitigate the impacts of and increase resiliency around climate change.

13. Policies aimed at reducing and ending vehicle idling by public and private vehicles.

14. Policies and funding to support alternative energy sources.

15. Banning the sale and commodification of our water.

16. The ethical treatment of animals, including population management, entertainment, and research. Specifically, we oppose euthanization for population management of geese on City land.

17. Advocate for the removal of F35 fighter jets from being based at Truax in Madison, which disproportionately impact people of color and lower-income households with noise pollution, exacerbate PFAS pollution of our surface and drinking water, and disrupt local businesses; advocate for changes to the state & federal Truax mission that promotes supports and resources for the community over the exportation of violence.

18. Divesting and reallocation of City resources from fossil fuels, nuclear energy, weapons manufacturers, and tobacco.

8. SAFE, EFFICIENT, ACCESSIBLE TRANSPORTATION

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WE SUPPORT policies and infrastructure that reduce on motor vehicle use in the City, with funding priorities and development policies emphasizing alternatives to driving. We seek efficient public transportation that is accessible and affordable to all. We support:

1. Making transportation decisions through an equity lens.

2. A regionally integrated public transportation system, including a convenient, accessible inter-city bus station with easy connections to other forms of transport.

3. Comprehensive, efficient, fare-free, fully accessible 24-7 transportation services, along with assistance for employers to provide employee incentives for alternatives to driving alone.

4. Local funding to support quality, affordable, on-demand, door-to-door paratransit services.

5. A parking stall or impervious surface fee to generate revenue for alternatives to driving.

6. A complete streets policy, taking into consideration safety, accessibility, street trees, and cost to local homeowners. Facilities investment and engineering, law enforcement, and public policy should encourage bicycling, walking, and accessibility for people with different mobility. Prioritize the development and maintenance of pedestrian and bicycling paths in low income neighborhoods and increase access to bicycling for people who do not own motor vehicles. Promote traffic calming measures and non-policing, infrastructure design efforts to reduce speeding.

7. Investments in sustainable transportation to ensure that any vehicle owned or leased by the City is as fuel-efficient and non-polluting as practicable.

8. City policies that promote accessible public transportation options in every area of the City to ensure economic development along transportation corridors making jobs and commercial activities accessible without relying on personal motor vehicles. Ensuring that routes and community access to Bus Rapid Transit prioritize areas of the City without previous bus lines and access to downtown.

9. City investment and land use decisions that facilitate the expansion of public electric vehicle charging stations.

9. WORKERS’ RIGHTS

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WE SUPPORT comprehensive collective bargaining and the rights of workers to join unions, to gain job security with just cause protections, and enjoy protection from discrimination as defined by law. We support:

1. Making all employment and human resources decisions through an equity lens.

2. Banning of privatization or contracting out for services that public workers provide. Oppose public-private partnerships that unnecessarily privatize services, resources, and workers in a way that undermines democratic input, union representation, and workers' rights.

3. Better enforcement of provisions against discrimination and harassment in the workplace.

4. Prohibiting pre-employment drug testing of prospective City employees and drug testing of current City workers without probable cause.

5. Improved communication and transparency concerning human resources processes, including the discipline of non-union workers and revision of job descriptions and positions.

6. A public process for department and division reorganizations that includes vigorous worker input, including when to undertake reorganization.

7. Increased support for undocumented workers’ rights.

8. Decriminalize sex work, and supporting the protection of the health and rights of sex workers.

9. Support city employee union rights, union rights for all people the city contracts with, and all union drives in the city.

10. Funding to ensure that community services agencies can pay their workers a housing wage. The 2022 housing wage for a 2 bedroom apartment is $24.12 according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

10. COMMUNITY-SUPPORTING STATE POLICIES

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We urge the State Legislature to:

1. Pass a resolution calling for state enabling legislation to allow local governments to use alternative electoral processes for local offices, including instant runoff or ranked-choice voting.

2. Repeal laws limiting local governments’ ability to expand housing opportunities and tenant protections, including but not limited to rent control and just cause for eviction.

3. Return local control over independent contractors offering transportation for hire. Support expansion of public mail and parcel services and regulate parcel and other delivery services."

4. Repeal restrictions on collective bargaining and on municipal regulations regarding bargaining with local public employee unions.

5. Repeal state-imposed caps on local taxing and spending.

6. Enact statutory changes allowing additional revenue options for local units of government.

7. Return local control to advance the principles supported in our platform.

Passed by General Membership 12/15/24