Dear Friends:

Communities United (CU) is sending the attached letter to the Madison Common Council expressing its opposition to any attempt to reinstate the loitering ordinance.  As you may know, the Council failed to adopt the loitering ordinance when Mayor Bauman casted the deciding vote against it.  However, some members of the Common Council have indicated that they will continue to reintroduce the ordinance until they succeed in having it adopted.

We ask that you consider joining CU on this effort by signing on to the letter.  If you would like your name or your organization included, please reply indicating the exact name and title that should be used for the signature.

We deeply appreciate your kind consideration of this request to lend your support for this important effort to address a critical issue affecting our communities.

Thank you.

pm

 

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To Members of the Common Council

Communities United is just that: communities which have come together to seek constructive solutions to the many issues which confront us. We who are part of CU come from and are a part of those communities. Moreover, we are, indeed, united in the concerns about which this letter is written.  For that reason, we add our name to this letter from Communities United.

Communities United opposes any attempt to reinstate the so-called "loitering ordinance." The expired ordinance impacted persons of color in a pervasively disproportionate manner, while the need in the neighborhoods was and is to stop open-air drug sales and improve safety. There was never any empirical evidence that the "loitering ordinance" even had such impact. There is no reason now to believe that a similar ordinance or any variation of it (including one with a sunset provision) would or could address these two critical neighborhood issues.

The "loitering ordinance" we believe was not and is not a part of the solution and has only served to cloud the City's ability to deal with the real issues of open-air drug sales and neighborhood safety. It's time to move on to real solutions.

We call upon the Common Council to defeat any and all attempts to reinstate the "loitering ordinance" in all its variations and, in its stead, to focus its attention on finding solutions to stopping open-air drug sales and neighborhood safety.