District 3 candidates (from left) Mike Cerro, Lindsay Lemmer and Jared Schumacher
Three candidates are running to succeed two-term Ald. Amanda Hall on the Madison Common Council: Mike Cerro, Lindsay Lemmer and Jared Schumacker. Hall moved out of District 3 and retired from the council earlier this month. The two finishers of the Feb. 19 primary will advance to the general election on April. 2.
Public safety on the far east side is dominating the discussion in the aldermanic race.
“When I’m knocking on doors, I’m hearing a lot about increased crime in our neighborhoods. Break-ins, robberies, crimes where people feel violated,” says Cerro, a project manager and telecom consultant who has lived in the district for two decades. “People tell me they never see police but they do witness criminal activity.”
Cerro will push to hire more cops if elected.
Lemmer grew up in Madison and has lived in the district for two years. She says concerns about crime are “palpable.” She’ll push to give the Madison Police Department “the resources they need” but would also champion a more “holistic approach.”
“I think we need to look at initiatives that will make our community stronger. Initiatives that help neighbors get to know each other and to know when something looks out of place,” says Lemmer, a communications strategist for UW-Madison and the president of the Wisconsin chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Lemmer would like to see “more after-school programming, more support for neighborhood centers in the district and professional development opportunities for youth.”
Schumacker notes that the Subway on Cottage Grove Road has been robbed seven times in the last year. He believes the shuttered Sentry grocery store, which sits right next door, has contributed to lawlessness in the area.
“That abandoned Sentry has been empty for five years now. It’s a blight on the neighborhood. It’s not good to have a boarded-up building on a major thoroughfare especially in a city that is supposedly thriving,” says Schumacker, a delivery driver for Alpha Bakery who has lived in the district since 2015. “We are a very heavily residential district. If I become alder, I’d make it a real priority to keep retail in that [Acewood Boulevard/Cottage Grove Road area] and hopefully make it a real asset for the community.”
The district is flanked by the town of Cottage Grove to the east, the town of Burke to the north, and extends west until Stoughton Road. The section of the district east of I-90 is mostly residential housing built in the last 20 years and somewhat isolated from the rest of the city. To address slow emergency response times, all three candidates want to see ambulance service added to the nearby Fire Station 13 on Town Center Drive.
Cerro wants other municipalities in Dane County to invest more in affordable housing and homeless services outside of Madison, saying city taxpayers are unfairly subsidizing these initiatives for the entire county.
“Madison is really the only place that has affordable housing. [Outside of the city,] you can’t find an apartment that’s less than $850 a month,” says Cerro. “Besides a few in Fitchburg and Middleton, they just don’t exist.”
Lemmer says she would support housing developments across the city that “keep pace with growth” as well as investments in “green infrastructure” to help prepare for climate change.
“Folks want to see more engagement from city hall, too. They are telling me they need a representative who is strongly and consistently communicating with them,” says Lemmer. “That’s something I’m uniquely able to do because of my background in communication and outreach.”
Schumacker pledges to hold office hours at every Capitol View Farmers’ Market and to organize roundtable discussions with stakeholders every month.
“The biggest contribution I can make is to bring people together to find solutions,” says Schumacker. “I’m committed to investing the time and the energy to actually make that happen.”
