The Leader

Issue date: 4/12/06 Section: News

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Members of the Student Association originally considering a recall of Third District Alderman Mike D'Amato were still exploring their options after a meeting with the alderman on March 17.

The meeting was arranged as an effort to bridge communication between the students and D'Amato. After forming a recall exploratory committee in February, SA President Russ Rueden and SA Chief of Staff Sam Prahl asked for a meeting with D'Amato to discuss their concerns. A date was decided and the group went forward.

Unbeknownst to them, however, D'Amato had invited residents from the UWM neighborhood to the meeting.

"It was a really bad start," said Ben Butz, a University Student Court Justice and advisor to the recall effort. "He had agreed to meet with us without the neighbors. Some of the neighbors did leave because they didn't feel it was right that he had brought them into the meeting without us knowing about it."

"I don't think when you are meeting with constituents that you bring people into a meeting who you know are going to oppose their viewpoints without telling them," Butz said.

The student group approached the community members to ask if they could speak with D'Amato alone. The members agreed and the student group was able to talk with D'Amato separately for around two hours.

"I don't think you would do that to a neighborhood group," Butz said. "I don't think that if he was meeting with a company that was planning to move into the neighborhood that he would invite neighbors he knew opposed that company to that meeting even if he wasn't strongly in favor of that company."

Prahl said SA strongly disagrees with D'Amato's assessment that UWM students do not have an impact on the local economy. D'Amato also said that the city has made an effort to inform students of street sweeping on Friday's with campus signage, something Prahl has "never" seen.

The possible Columbia Hospital acquisition was also addressed. According to Butz, D'Amato said that Columbia will "never have any student housing" because of the negative impact on the neighborhood with the expansion of Sandburg Halls five years ago

"[It] really bothered me...that he said that students prefer to live further from campus," Prahl said.

By the end of the debate, both Prahl and Butz had mixed feelings.

"Unfortunately, Mike was very defensive the entire meeting basically saying, 'well SA never contacted me so I wasn't going to contact them'," Butz said.

"I think that students still have the same problems they did before we met with him," said Prahl. "D'Amato says that he is 90 percent reactive and 10 percent pro-active and what we need is an alderman who is going to help us with our rights."

Butz said D'Amato admitted to being reactionary and that he disagreed with the alderman's style of addressing problems only after they have already come up.

"I just think that there's not a level of respect from his office for students," Butz said. "He doesn't treat them as constituents. I don't think you would do that to any constituents even if you didn't agree with them. And I don't think that's fair to anyone."

Some progress was made by meeting's end. In light of a possible recall effort, D'Amato agreed to address the student body on campus in an open forum before the end of the school year and once a semester thereafter. The first session will be held April 20 at 1 p.m. in the Union Ballroom.

"This is an effort to engage the students and see how he reacts to them and how they react to him," Prahl said.

Recall Concerns

The student group was also considering other options outside of a recall.

"Right now, we're trying to decide if it's worth possibly breaking some relationships with a lot of the neighbors that we've done a lot of good work with over this recall," Butz said. "My biggest contention with the recall was the communication aspect. It sounded like there hadn't been any communication between the two parties at all."

Butz said that simply disagreeing with a policy is not grounds for a recall, calling a recall effort "premature" but adding that refusing to speak with constituents is an issue he would support a recall on.

"At this point I think there are too many issues that are too important to have the students spending time on just recalling," Butz said.

The group is researching a number of options outside of a recall and has not yet made a decision on their future.

"Right now we are just an exploratory committee engaging students," Prahl said

D'Amato could not be reached for comment.

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