Vote for Madison (Strongest Town Contest)
My last plea as West Allis' mayor, teachers, and students vote.
The most important thing you can do, more important than reading this, is vote in the Strongest Town Contest.
On Monday I had the honor of joining West Allis’ reps for the Strongest Town Contest Championship Stream. It was a live stream where Norm from Strong Towns asked us questions about why we nominated our cities, what makes us “strong”, and why voters should consider us when casting a vote.
I’m honored to be at this stage at all. Strong Towns Madison (our local conversation) meets on the first Saturday of the month and I get to celebrate with everyone this weekend1 that we made it to the final round! As much as I’ve become a recognizable face for this campaign2, most of our story is born from hard work other than my own. Sure, I’ll commit to saving a meeting space every month. Go to a Common Council meeting in support of by-right duplexes. Sit in a car taking down speeds of drivers for two hours. But it was our other members who did the same things and more that made this year’s nomination so meaningful. Our members pushed our engineering staff over months and years to adapt a trial-mindset to traffic infrastructure. They biked 12 foot barriers to a parking spot to ensure we could host a Park(ing) Day. They made a public comment statement of 53-0 (support/oppose) for incremental housing reform. Win or lose, we have a championship resume, which is what I hope Madison can strive for each and every year.
I’m ecstatic that four Midwest cities made into the Final Four. It was cool to see people rallying around our culture and I hope it leads to a National Gathering in Wisconsin.
But I’ll be honest, I’m nervous. When I logged on to our Zoom call, I met West Allis’ nominators for the first time. “Mayor Dan Devine” was the name of their Zoom account. I was introduced to the mayor and to the nominator, who is also a West Allis city planner, Emily Wagner.
I’m excited to see city officials contend for the Strongest Town title. We wouldn’t be here without Madison officials aligning with the Strong Towns ethos. Politics is interesting to me, but it’s also an impossible challenge that I don’t foresee myself getting into because there are so many balancing acts at play. As much as I think Strong Towns gets things right, I’ve met many people who don’t agree. Those people vote in the same elections I do. I can push as hard as I want as a citizen, knowing that if I fail, I’ve failed only to convince officials and fellow citizens that my ideas are good and no blame can be passed on to me for not implementing them. When decision makers clearly announce how they intend to govern, it opens themselves up as a target. I sincerely hope Dan and Emily don’t receive backlash for nominating and pushing West Allis forward as a Strong Town. West Allis’ story can be seen in so many distressed, rust-belt cities and it takes courage to try something different. If it doesn’t work, people blame you, and that seems miserable.
At the same time though, there’s a whole city apparatus (probably) working for you. If elected officials and staff are aligned, so many things can be accomplished. I’m lucky that our Mayor and Common Council agree that duplexes by-right is important. But at the same time, they want to keep seldom used on-street parking on an important bike network connector and push those bikers instead to use an RRFB across a six lane, “35 mph” stroad called University Avenue.
This decision happened before a high schooler, Sasha Rosen, died two months ago after a vehicle going 62 mph crashed into them on a similarly designed stroad with an RRFB. I hope this tragedy can spark change and rethink the design of S Park Street, University Avenue, and every road that resembles them. We will certainly be speaking out to make these streets safer. But I’ve learned that change is hard and difficult and it can take months and years to see progress.
As the sole representative for Madison’s nomination (because our coordinators and members are working and take personal time for these passion projects), I felt isolated at the beginning of the live stream. We’ve garnered some news coverage, but we don’t have a city press release. We make mistakes like spelling our own freaking city wrong on expensive, color-printed flyers:
But when Norm (from Strong Towns) asked me the questions about why people should vote for Madison, it was easy to break out of that feeling. This is my passion.
I love this City and the surrounding areas. It’s where I first fell in love and it has allowed me to be the person I want to be: the guy who goes to Common Council meetings on Tuesday nights (or writes about them)
The people are willing to try new things and learn from each other. We don’t stay stagnant; we observe, hypothesize, test, and improve. That could be adding a missing bench to a bus stop or removing entire lanes to increase safety in a popular City District
We do this for the love of the game. There’s no pay stub or election waiting at the end of the year. As much as I appreciate the elected officials and staff who have helped us implement these changes, because we can’t do it without their support, it means more to me that we saw bottom-up change blossom from our monthly gathering
I nominated Madison because we set goals that we achieved as a group of ragtag Strong Towns enthusiasts located in the Dane County area. We’ve shown that with optimism, consistency, and hard work, it’s possible to promote positive change, even in a city as large as 300,000 people. Win or lose, we are an example for ourselves and communities around North America to get to work now so we can compete on the championship stage in 2027.
Please vote! And at this point, please vote for Madison. You have until Friday (4/3) at 9am central. The winner will be revealed next Monday.
Addendum: West Allis (as revealed by Emily at the live stream) has also strategically employed teachers to encourage their students to partake in a form of voting that they are allowed to vote in. I worry that there is an engine of elementary and middle school students southwest of Milwaukee powering the Midwest Miracle, then Madison, and finally West Allis, to victory. Madison needs every vote it can get.
I’m planning on bringing donuts and putting it in a footnote makes it official
It’s really odd when four coworkers and a friend say they randomly saw you on Instagram