Mayor Bernando Marquez Garcia, right, shows Mayor Paul Soglin around Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, which was hit especially hard by Hurricane Maria last year.
When Mayor Paul Soglin visited city officials in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico, last month, they couldn’t meet in the city council building. That’s because Hurricane Maria tore the roof off the five-story building eight months ago. The sight of city hall filled with muck and mold humbled Soglin, who has served as Madison’s mayor for 21 years.
“I saw local officials who are doing everything they can to get services to their communities, especially the kids who need schools and the elderly who need medical care,” says Soglin. “But their building was destroyed.”
Worse was the destruction of the neighborhoods, the mayor says.
Toa Baja’s devastation received international attention. The town of 89,600 people had 24,000 of its homes damaged. The houses are modest 900-square-foot family homes built on small lots only slightly larger. Sheet metal has been ripped off the roofs and debris is piled up in the streets waiting to be collected. In addition, numerous businesses and about six of the town’s 20 schools were severely damaged. “It’s a pretty depressed situation,” Soglin says.
Madison is assisting in Toa Baja’s recovery through a “Mayor Exchange” created by the Open Society Foundations, which connects mayors on the mainland with mayors in Puerto Rico.
“For us, it is really important that we can address the priorities of the mayors, who were the very frontline responders to the crisis after the storm,” says Karina Claudio Betancourt, a program officer with Open Society. “We thought this would be a great way to bypass federal bureaucracy, and have these relationships help bring aid that is quicker, more efficient, and more cemented.”
So far, 40 mainland mayors have participated. Soglin was matched with Toa Baja Mayor Bernardo Marquez Garcia because of a shared belief in creating local economies.
“We thought [Soglin’s] experience in Madison might translate to Toa Baja,” says Claudio Betancourt. “The mayor there is seeking to improve infrastructure, boost economic development through private partnerships, and help sort out issues over land control.”
Soglin wants to help Toa Baja officials nurture both community centers and businesses. The city, 20 minutes outside of San Juan, already has many small businesses. Toa Baja has three rivers, oceanfront property, and numerous landmarks that could be developed into recreational attractions.
“When we think of recreation and enjoying the sun in Puerto Rico, we think of lavish, expensive resort communities that first, are mostly for foreign tourists and second, demand an extreme amount of wealth,” says Soglin. “Yet there’s wonderful recreational opportunities that could be enjoyed by local residents and which can create economic benefits.”
Soglin laments that two Puerto Ricos have been created — one for the super rich and another for everyone else. “When it comes to the 90,000 real people living in this community, the blueprint for fixing it is there,” he says. “But there’s no action.”
With the city council building out of commission, Soglin and Deputy Mayor Gloria Reyes met with Mayor Marquez Garcia and his staff under the bleachers of a local athletic stadium. They discussed two issues that transcend local economies.
La Plata, the largest river on the island, runs through Toa Baja and during the hurricane it put neighborhoods underwater. Flooding forced more than 2,000 people to evacuate and countless others onto their roofs. However, La Plata floods every year and, according to Soglin, the Army Corps of Engineers has plans they have not acted upon. “Nothing has been done for years.”
The housing crisis also needs to be addressed. Six thousand of the homes damaged do not have deeds so FEMA will not provide assistance to those residents. It’s an island-wide problem that dates back more than 100 years when landowners began to give away or sell plots of land based on a gentleman’s agreement.
This suppresses the local economy, Soglin says, because real estate cannot be insured or marketed.
The mayors will lobby the Army Corps of Engineers regarding the river, and elected officials about FEMA assistance and emergency recovery.
“It’s a federal issue. Everyone knows what the challenges are and what the solutions need to be. The mayor of a local municipality was sleeping on a cot in a gymnasium while Donald Trump was golfing,” says Soglin. “Most of the time, I don’t like using those kinds of analogies because they aren’t really accurate. In this case, it’s tragically too accurate.”
On May 29, Mayor Marquez Garcia and an aide will visit Madison where Soglin will connect them with city managers from planning and economic development. They will tour Madison’s Central Library, Brittingham Park and Bayview Community Center to see how to develop neighborhood programming. Madison officials also want to connect Mayor Marquez Garcia with the Latino Chamber of Commerce, Centro Hispano and Puerto Rican families with the hopes of creating relationships that lead to community fundraising and assistance.
Soglin will also take Marquez Garcia to see the food carts on Library Mall. Soglin had a light bulb moment while riding down the Toa Baja causeway on the oceanfront. He saw men in pickup trucks serving food on the side of the road. He saw diners sitting in plastic chairs inches away from moving cars. He saw economic opportunity.
“With a little planning and hopefully not a great investment, it can be made a better experience, more profitable, and provide better access to food,” Soglin says. “And with that, you can build a local economy.”
