What I heard from downtown business owners

I sat with downtown business owners Wednesday morning. I did not come to give a speech. I came to listen.

I have been doing that for months. Veterans. Neighborhood groups. People I have known for years, one conversation at a time. At this roundtable I wanted the people who open the doors, make the payroll, and live with whatever is happening on the sidewalk to be in the same room.

I am not going to put words in anyone’s mouth, and I am not going to dress this up. The people in that room are looking for a mayor who will hear what they are seeing and then do something about it.

What they told me

A few things came through from almost everyone in the room.

They talked about kids. Break-ins. Vandalism. Groups of young people moving through buildings and through the street, and a feeling that nobody is quite sure who is supposed to step in. More than one person said they have been told, in so many words, that there is not much the police can do.

And they talked about presence. Not a cruiser rolling past. A person. Somebody who knows the block, knows the owner, and can be reached when something is building instead of after it has already gone wrong. Several people said they used to have that. They do not have it now.

People doing business downtown said they are seeing more homelessness than they used to. They talked about panhandling near their entrances, people sleeping in doorways and parks, and customers who do not feel safe walking from the car to the door.

When we asked who thought downtown had less energy than it did a decade ago, all hands went up.

I have said for a long time that downtown is the heart of this city. When the heart is not working, the rest of the city feels it. A company looking at Green Bay does not start on the edge of town. They want to see the middle. If the middle looks like it is just getting by, that is the story they take home.

None of this was a surprise to me. I walk those blocks. I see the parks. What mattered Wednesday morning was hearing it from the people who have to live with it every day, and hearing them say it to each other. A lot of them have felt like they were the only ones saying it out loud.

Safety comes first

Before I talk about any next steps for this city, I have to answer the owner whose customers hesitate to walk from the car to the door. Police need to be present where trouble is happening, know the owners, and answer when they call. Break-ins and vandalism need a response people can see.

Kids need a place to recreate. They also need to be held responsible when they damage property or threaten someone. We can work on that now while we build a longer-term plan for downtown.

Compassion and order are not opposites

I work at New Community Shelter. I am not going to pretend that gives me a simple answer, and I am not speaking for the shelter. I am speaking as someone who sees, every day, that homelessness is not one problem.

Sometimes it starts with rent. Sometimes a job. Sometimes an illness, a family problem, an addiction, a mental-health issue, or paperwork that never gets finished. By the time somebody reaches a shelter, more than one thing has usually gone wrong. A lot of these stories start as one problem and become five.

If we can help at the first problem, before the job is gone and the housing is gone, that is better for the person and better for the city. That is what prevention means. It means acting early enough that the shelter never has to become the answer.

A meal and a bed matter. They are not a plan. If all we do is keep somebody where they are, we are managing the problem. We are not solving it. People need a path out of homelessness, and we need to know whether that path leads to stable housing.

The people in that room were careful about this, and I want to be careful about it too. There are people without a home who are not hurting anyone. They are trying to get through the day. They should not be talked about as if they are responsible for someone else’s break-in or vandalism.

There are also people, housed and unhoused, whose behavior is making a sidewalk, a park, or a doorway unusable for everyone else. That behavior has to be addressed. We can treat people with dignity and still expect order. We can offer help and still expect accountability. We have to do both.

And we cannot arrest our way out of this. Enforcement has a place. It is not the whole answer. People who want help need a path that actually leads somewhere. Everyone still has to follow the same rules.

What I want measured

I am not interested in another meeting that ends with everyone glad it is over.

If we are going to spend money, change a rule, or ask a department to do something differently, we ought to be able to say what success looks like before we start. Then we ought to publish whether we got there. If it is not working, we change course. That is how you find out whether you helped anybody.

For downtown, that means asking whether owners know whom to call, whether repeat damage is being dealt with, and whether people feel safe coming back. For homelessness, it means knowing whether someone who came in without housing reaches stable housing and stays there. Shelters, police, the county, nonprofits, and the city ought to work from the same facts.

And we need the rules we already have to mean something. Direction has to come from the top. Officers cannot be left to guess what the city actually wants.

I am not going to quote a count I have not verified or promise a dollar figure I have not had checked. The numbers have to be real. What I will say is that the people in that room do not need a chart to know what has been happening on their block. I heard them.

Downtown has to be worth coming to

Safety is the first thing. It is not the only thing.

If people only come downtown when they have to, we have already lost. We need a reason to come that is not a complaint. Events that are worth the trip. Clear, honest costs when somebody wants to close a street or put on a show, not a bill that shows up six months later. Parking that works for the person who cannot walk four blocks, not only for the person who set the rate. And we ought to use the river. Other cities advertise on our radio stations. We have water, history, and a downtown that used to feel like something was being built. We should be willing to say that out loud and then back it up.

The owners Wednesday morning were not short on love for the place. They were short on confidence that anybody at City Hall is going to treat their problem as urgent. I do not blame them. “We’re working on it” is not an answer when the same thing is happening every day.

Some of this can move faster than a four-year plan. Presence. A clear instruction. A permit process a small business can understand. A number we are willing to publish. Other pieces, housing especially, take longer, and I am not going to pretend a mayor snaps his fingers and a solution appears. I have done this job. I know what can move in the first months and what cannot.

What I will not do is wait for a perfect plan while the people who were in that room decide downtown is no longer worth it.

What happens next

I told them I would be back. Not for another meeting that feels like the last one. For a conversation that gets past the frustration and into what we are actually going to try.

I am going to keep listening. East side. Military Avenue. University Avenue. Downtown does not get to be the only conversation, and it does not get to be ignored either.

If you were there Wednesday morning, thank you. You gave me your time before the workday started, and you told the truth. If you were not there and you are living with the same thing on your block, I want to hear it.

Email me and let me know what you are seeing. I work for the people who are going to hire me.

Downtown should be the part of Green Bay we are proud to show somebody. Right now too many of the people who built it are just trying to get through the week. That is not acceptable, and I am not going to talk about it as if it were.