Showing posts with label Fitchburg municipal public policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fitchburg municipal public policy. Show all posts

Oct 16, 2017

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—Creating a Slush Fund in the Scott Walker Era

Fitchburg, Wisconsin is a freak show.
Corruption in Plain Sight in the Rats' Nest of Dane County Wisconsin


Fitchburg, Wisconsin—This isn't about the money; it's about making a "better way" to fund community non-profits, said Fitchburg ald. Tony Hartmann in an October email to Mal Contends.

It is about the money.

What Hartmann calls media "misinformation" about a proposed Common Council scheme to fund nonprofit groups draws laughter, anger and the start of a recall-the-Mayor initiative in this politically progressive community with the Republican-dominated City Hall, police department and elected municipal government.

With growing minority and young populations here, Fitchburg civil and elected officials have accelerated a Republican program to consolidate political power as this city becomes a flashpoint as Gov. Scott Walker kicks in 2018 reelection mode.

In Fitchburg, Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker has been defeated at
the ballot box. Above are the results for Fitchburg in the 2014
general election
. First column is the total votes, second column is
Dem. nominee Mary Burke's votes, and third column is Walker's.
Gov. Scott Walker, (R), made numerous public visits to Fitchburg since becoming governor in 2011. At the ballot box, though, Walker was clobbered here in the 2014 general and 2012 recall elections. In ald dist one, (one of four voting districts composed of 19 wards), Mary Burke defeated Scott Walker with 1,528 votes for Burke and 410 votes for Walker out of 1,966 votes cast for a 77 percent to 20 percent defeat of Walker in the 2014 general election. Since 2014, incidents of voter obstruction and harassment of voters by white poll workers and white Fitchburg City Clerk staff, Patti Anderson and Tracy Oldenburg, have increased in wards one-four, district one, as has been documented and stated publicly at municipal civic trials by former Fitchburg poll worker, ((2007-2016), Mal Contends).

On the Fitchburg Common Council, Hartmann, Ald Julia Arata-Fratta and Mayor Jason Gonzalez, (after amassing a wide coalition in his 2016-17 campaign), have thrown in with Republicans on the eight-member Council, and are eyeing money in the city's Community Development Grant Program, (CEDA), to be used as a slush fund [information describing the city's CEDA including how to apply, was posted on the city website Aug. 18, 2017 some five weeks before Mayor Jason Gonzales posted his proposed 2018 budget calling for the "removal" of $110,000 in non-profit funding, (The Capital Times)].

We want that money

"Fitchburg Alds. Julia Arata Fratta, Dan Carpenter and Dorothy Krause are sponsoring an amendment to the proposed 2017 budget that would remove club funding from the city budget and put it under the control of the Community Economic Development Authority, whose eight members would decide how to allocate it," notes The Capital Times in 2016.

Many Fitchburg residents are watching whether Arata Fratta-linked non-profits have become new applicants for the slush fund, if the budget proposal gets passed.
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Meanwhile recall alders and mayor efforts continue as political observes gaming out scenarios fish around for mayoral candidates in a possible 2018 recall election, including perennial mayoral candidate Jay Allen, a supporter of several Republican Party congressional nominees, including John Sharpless, Dave Magnum and the far-right fringe candidate, Ron Greer

Oct 10, 2017

GOP-run Fitchburg, Wisconsin Looks to Zero-out Funds for Popular Community Non-Profits

Fitchburg, Wisconsin Republicans Become Objects of Disgust in Budget Spectacle


Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Elected in April 2017, first-term Mayor Jason Gonzalez did not run on a Republican platform to eliminate funding for community non-profits.

That's because local politicians here do not publicly oppose successful community initiatives anymore than national politicians want to go on record against Social Security and Medicare-Medicaid.

The only plausible way for local Republicans to cut all funding to popular nonprofit organizations here is: Cut all funding for nonprofit organizations and then deny this black-and-white budgetary commitment in Mayor Gonzalez' proposed 2018 budget, (Facebook).

Among Gonzalez and his diminishing political coalition black is white and $0.00 equals $110,000.

Gonzalez' proposed 2018 budget calls for the "removal" of $110,000 in non-profit funding from the 2018 budget, (The Capital Times).

Gonzalez and his campaign manager, Ald Tony Hartmann, say this proposed budgetary cut comes because they have found a "better way," (Hartmann's term), of funding the non-profits: By not funding the non-profits.

Only Fitchburg politicians holding the citizenry in contempt could axe popular non-profit funding by offering an equally contemptuous lie.

Reads p.22 in a the Mayor's Proposed 2018 Budget, (Facebook): "The $60,000 allocated to the private charitable partners was removed from the 2018 budget. The $50,000 in property tax funding for the CEDA, (Community and Economic Development Authority), community grant program was also removed."

Hartmann and Gonzalez' effort is underhanded and disingenuous, continuing a long hostility of white Fitchburg Republicans against its growing minority citizenry.

The budgetary cuts that Gonzales and Hartmann implausibly say are not cuts have caused community outrage as the political world in progressive Dane County viewing the scandal steps up to contribute to the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, one of the targeted-by-Fitchburg non-profits.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, (Madison), after hearing the news solicited over $3,000 in new funding for the Boys and Girls Club in the second congressional district. Taco Bell, the restaurant chain, has contributed $10,000. Other contributions are coming in to make up for the underhanded Fitchburg Mayor's budgetary scheme, (Facebook). (See Michael Johnson in Facebook for updates).

No municipal scandal in Dane County has ever caused the local congressional member, restaurant chains and community members to roll their eyes with such collective political disgust.

Ald. Tony Hartmann, Mayor Jason Gonzalez and Fitchburg Republicans have politically tied their future to this scheme and their credibility is in the offing.

A public hearing in Fitchburg, Wisconsin on the zeroing of funding for non-profits is tonight.

Oct 7, 2017

Fitchburg, Wisconsin—An Exercise in Social Domination, Emboldened White Supremacy

Villainous Boys and Girls Club of Dane County, Wisconsin

Blacks will not replace us


Fitchburg, Wisconsin — Municipal politics have been long racist in this suburb of 25,000, just south of Madison since the city's incorporation in 1983.

White entitlement, entrenched racism, Evangelical Christians, an ascendant Republican Party and white supremacists coalesce with the dim bulbs of white municipal bureaucracy generating a toxic concoction that is bubbling over now.

Lived in and worked in Fitchburg since the late 1980s, serving then as a correspondent for the The Capital Times, (Madison, Wisconsin).

Recently, Fitchburg has crossed a threshold as the Republican-dominated and white Fitchburg Police Dept efforts have been unsuccessful in driving out minority residents, a longstanding enterprise known and confirmed, but not acknowledged by any City official. [Ex-cops who know won't object and confirm publicly out of fear for their careers. Ratting-out follows cops and it's a rare breed who blows the whistle on the blue gang.]

Non-whites and non-Republicans comprise strong numerical majorities here so Republicans are desperate to crack-down on citizens outside of their political coalition through the use of public office. In a manner of speaking: Scott Walker and Donald Trump are in charge, Fitchburg is for whites, this is our community; and there ain't no John Doe statute anymore for a DA public integrity investigation.

The signs of the back-lash against people, mud people, are obvious and to a non-racist mind the system is blinking red.

It's business as usual as police target minorities with traffic citations, white poll workers discourage the wrong types of voters in aldermanic dist. one. [Emboldened whites actually blacklisted me, Mal Contends as a voter, obstructing me from for some 30 minutes on Aug. 9, 2016, followed by two non-traffic civil citations totaling $626, two 1:00 a.m. harassing visits to our home by Fitchburg police with voiced and deceitful claims crimes had been "traced" those early mornings, and repeated conspicuous tail-gating of our car by police.]

But the latest in Fitchburg is perhaps the worst.

That enemy of proper, white society, the villainous Boys and Girls Club of Dane County Wisconsin, is too friendly with non-Republicans and non-whites, way-too-heavy on civil liberties and they have been making atonal political noise for too long.

The Fitchburg Common Council has announced it's dropping all City funding for this community organization.

The new Fitchburg mayor, Jason Gonzales has decided to go with the Republicans on the eight-member Common Council, as he and his former campaign manager, alder Tony Hartmann, have lowered the boom on the uppity black Community group, per an evolving series of justifications.

Hartmann claims no funding elimination, no removal of expenditure but rather the instituting of a new and "better process," as written in an email to Dane County resident, Tonya Ellis.

Actually, Hartman is lying.

Reads p.22 in a the Mayor's Proposed 2018 Budget, (Facebook): "The $60,000 allocated to the private charitable partners was removed from the 2018 budget. The $50,000 in property tax funding for the CEDA, (Community and Economic Development Authority), community grant program was also removed."

Tony Hartmann and Jason Gonzalez' attitude is captured in Rob Schultz's reporting in the Wisconsin State Journal this morning.

Both don't like Michael Johnson of the Boys and Girls Club of Dane County getting uppity and voicing views publicly.

Both Hartmann and Gonzalez display the plantation attitude of greater-white Fitchburg deigning to "gift," (Schultz's paraphrase), funding to the Dane County Boys and Girls Club, aka them, the others, the dark folks living on King James, Allied Drive, Fish Hatch, Post and Leopold.

Gonzalez and Hartmann conceive investing in our community as a different proposition when it's investing in initiatives serving folks in hoods where dark folks live. King James, Allied Drive, Fish Hatch, Post and Leopold are not places of 'us'-inclusive.

To white Fitchburg, they are different, separate from the white homeland envisioned by the Fitchburg City geniuses who named my neighborhood, Jamestown, after a 17th century Virginia slave colony.

Doubt I'll see a change in my lifetime from these chucks relating to and identifying with black people. To serve on the Fitchburg Common Council means: Nobody breathe, careful, and go along.

No matter, now it's getting really uppity in Fitchburg, Wisconsin:

Many children above are black, hence a problem in
Fitchburg, Wisconsin.