Alderman Tony Zielinski is asking the commissioner of the Department of Public Works to report to the Common Council within 30 days all DPW tasks previously performed by city workers that have been outsourced to contractors during the past 20 years.
“I am very concerned that the workers working on projects in the city no longer reflect the population of the community they are serving,” said Alderman Zielinski, chair of the Licenses Committee.
Alderman Zielinski said worksite incidents – most recently a viral photo circulated on Friday (December 8) showing a possible contractor worker’s cooler displaying Ku Klux Klan and Confederate flag stickers at a site near N. 25th and W. Wells Streets – has “shown me there is some evidence to be very concerned about who we have performing taxpayer-funded city work in our neighborhoods,” he said.
“We cannot deny that we’ve had these horrific images circulating in the news media and across social media from city work sites over the past several days,” the alderman said. “As bad as they are, they are the symptoms and not the disease. The disease is the reality that crews working on city projects no longer reflect the population of the city.”
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Offensive stickers are the least of problems facing our society and many urban areas across the country. Living lives of scarcity, lack of family supporting jobs, voter suppression laws from ALEC, drug testing people on food stamps, extracting millions in education funds, cutting public worker wages by 15%, Wisconsin cheating Milwaukee for decades out of just payments of revenue sharing collected from income taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes and fees that removes wealth, and a Federal government that extracts millions in income taxes with nothing in return. Outsource of jobs and public workers that now live outside the City, like police and fire, and thumb their noses at the City are issues we face.