According to the candidates for Mayor of Superior, these are the major economic issues.

Economic Issues Facing Superior Today

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Mayoral Candidates Address Economic Issues

According to the candidates for Mayor of Superior, these are the major economic issues.We continue with the second of our six part series of questions for the Superior mayoral candidates. This series will continue through Monday, February 16th in anticipation of the upcoming primary election on Tuesday, February 17th.

The candidates’ answers to our first question “Why are you the best candidate for Mayor of Superior?” can be seen HERE.

Question #2   (Note: bold & underlines added by ES to highlight the 3 issues of each candidate)

What are the three biggest economic issues facing the City today?

Kalee Hermanson, Mayoral Candidate, Superior Wisconsin

Kalee Hermanson

Kalee Hermanson

  • Job growth. It is difficult to compete for large businesses because the State does not have the incentive other states do to attract and retain large businesses. However, we do very well with homegrown businesses like Genesis and Exodus. Larger businesses also worry about not having enough employees but once here, they realize they can find them. Finding Engineers and Machinists can be a challenge, but utilizing our resources like NORTHFORCE, UWS and WITC can be very beneficial to overcome challenges such as these.
  • The lack of family-friendly affordable housing is a sizeable issue that affects our community. We fail to provide housing that is adequately maintained and priced. We fail to provide housing that attracts young professionals. We need to work with local services and agencies to provide diverse housing solutions that create opportunities for people of all ages to reside in safe, family-friendly homes. Investing in our housing stock is the key to creating a vibrant and diverse community. The benefits of doing so create opportunities for all demographics to age in place. It allows us to have housing options and addresses the changing needs of our citizens. It creates investment and connection to our community. It also allows us to attract young professionals who provide our community a number of various assets. It is important that we as a City are setting an example for adequate housing. We need to create laws/ordinances for Landlords and Tenants to be held responsible for maintaining safe, family-friendly affordable housing.
  • Cost of Living/Livable Wage. It is no secret that we have a high cost of living in our City. The average rent for an apartment is between $600-$700/month. The average estimated cost of a house is $115,000 which doesn’t seem like a lot, until you factor in the high taxes while our average household income is only $39,000. Then we add in our Energy and Gas, Sewage, Stormwater and the new Recycling bills, and we’re barely surviving paycheck to paycheck. We need to do our best to keep costs low and attract higher paying jobs. We as a city will not prosper without doing so. We need to do what we can to make sure that our Citizens have the things they need to keep us moving into the future.

    Mike Herrick, Mayoral Candidate, Superior Wisconsin

    Mike Herrick

 

Mike Herrick

The three biggest economic issues facing the city today are

  • the landfill,
  • shared revenue, and
  • the need for additional large and small business creation to increase job growth.

 

Greg Mertzig

Greg Mertzig, Mayoral Candidate, Superior Wisconsin

Greg Mertzig

As Mayor I will initiate policies that encourage

  • an expansion of our tax base. I will encourage new residential construction and consider development of underused city property.
  • I will address challenges facing the Superior business community. I will facilitate policies that lessen the cost of doing business in Superior and I will work to minimize bureaucratic interference.
  • Additionally, I will aggressively pursue state and federal grant money to supplement our general fund and I will lobby Madison for a larger percentage of shared revenue.

Jim Paine

  • Jim Paine, Mayoral Candidate, Superior Wisconsin

    Jim Paine

    Low median income. Not only does this keep quality of life low on an individual basis, it impairs economic growth. Families with low incomes cannot invest in their housing and have limited access to capital to start a business.  When a whole city has low income, it limits retail spending and small, local business cannot open or grow.

  • Decreasing support from the State and Federal Government. State shared revenue has stayed flat or decreased for more than two decades. These cuts harm our ability to provide quality services and impair our ability to compete for business and residential growth in our region.  A reduction in Federal grants slows our ability to create, replace and repair our infrastructure.
  • Changing demographics. This is as much of an opportunity as it is a challenge.  The current young adult generation is very different than previous generations and will dramatically change our economy and way of life in the coming decades.  We must prepare ourselves to adapt and take advantage of these changes or we will be left behind.

Bruce Hagen

  • Mayor Bruce Hagen, Superior, Wisconsin

    Mayor Bruce Hagen

    Lack of housing– As we have said, you can create all the jobs in a community.  And we have in working with the private sector.  But if a community is not providing the right amount and type of housing, you lose not only the tax base, but the circulation of the household incomes within the community.  This has been the case in our community for more than just decades.  To counter and turn this matter around we have developed a four-tier plan that is now in the implementation stage.

    1. First, provide housing for seniors that chose to downsize.  We are now constructing a fifty unit senior community that will be filled with upgrades, community areas, business office, gathering room, patios, etc.  To show the need, over 250 senior applications have been filed.  Most being seniors that want to stay in our community but also wish to downsize.
    2. Second, the generations held households which seniors downsize from are being purchased by families starting out with many neighborhoods evolving with young families.  So many are now being remodeled, upgraded and growing the respective neighborhoods.  To assist, we are improving parks, playgrounds and the public areas such as streets.
    3. Third, is that of new single family sub-divisions.  One of these will be open for new construction this spring with 30+ single family home sites; some already called for.
    4. Fourth, we need to develop larger home sites for those that want to build larger homes in Superior where such locations are available.  This is a proven need.
    5. Combined with all of the above is that of young professional housing.  Many young professionals prefer to rent but want to rent upscale urban location housing.  To that end we are working on just that in the Tower Avenue Business District.
  • The State of Wisconsin– Continued reductions in Payment for Municipal Services (PMS), Shared Revenue, state fees (landfill), etc.  The state legislature, administration and governor fail to provide, or continue to share the revenue that was designed to partner with communities for over the past seventy years.  Reductions, further regulations and unfunded mandates must cease.  In the past four years the legislature passed and the governor signed sixty four (64) bills into law that negatively affected all units of local government, K-12 and UWS.  Without a reverse of these draconian policies and legislation, choices become very restrictive at the local level.  Quality and high level education has always been The Hallmark of Wisconsin.  We need to keep that in front of us.  As for local units of government, I always state it this way – “As go the cities of Wisconsin, so goes Wisconsin”!  In order for Wisconsin to grow, Madison needs to stop penalizing the 70% of the people live in the cities and the 80% that are employed in our cities.
  • Infrastructure – The three major components of any community, other than a quality school system (which we have), is that of “image”, “infrastructure” and “economic development” – Jobs.  We concentrate on our image more than ever before.  And it shows.  For so many years we did not prioritize the need for streets, parks, sewers and the esthetics that make a community – our home.  There is very little if any funding outside of what we can provide locally.  But as your Mayor I have made the components of the city infrastructure THE priority.  To that end, we have completed approximately 24 miles of new streets and sidewalks, restored and improved a number of our parks and playgrounds, baseball fields, Barker’s Island and the public entrances to our city.  The next four years will be equally aggressive with even more infrastructure upgrades, the reconstruction of the entire length of Belknap Street to resemble that of North Tower Avenue and the construction of a new Fire Department Headquarters.  I haven’t raised taxes in doing all of what we accomplished, and as your Mayor, I don’t intend to start now.



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