The local newsletter, the Middleton Review, sends a questionnaire to local candidates. Here are the answers that Lisa provided including her answer to the last question indicating why she is the better candidate for Mayor.
1. Personal background
Family: My husband Ed is the Chief Business Officer at the Wisconsin Union and a Board member of Middleton Glen. My daughter Catherine is ten years into her career at Epic. My son Nat is a violist in Reno where he lives with his partner Fran, who works at the Nevada Museum of Art. My youngest child Michael graduated from MHS and is now in his second year at Madison College.
Professional Experience: In 2021, I retired early from a 29-year career with the Council of State Governments (CSG). I directed CSG’s Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Legislative Caucus, a binational, nonpartisan group of state and provincial legislators collaborating on policies to restore and protect the Great Lakes. I also directed CSG’s Midwestern Radioactive Waste Transportation Project, bringing federal, state and tribal officials together to collaborate on policies, plans and procedures for shipping spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive waste through the Midwest.
Education: master’s degree in public policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy; bachelor’s degree in geology from Lawrence University.
Early Life: I’m the youngest of five children born to first-generation Americans who grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago during the Depression. My father Joseph Shuster was a proud union carpenter for decades, and he served in World War II in the Pacific as a Navy radio operator. My mother Rose Shuster left school at the age of fourteen to help support her family. She obtained her GED decades later when I was a child. She worked in many different jobs, including at a greenhouse and a clothing distribution center.
Community Engagement: volunteer at WayForward Resources; member of the Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy; member of the League of Women Voters of Dane County
Contact Information: LisaJ4Mayor@gmail.com * 608-630-7500 * www.LisaJ4Mayor.com
2. What qualifies you to be mayor?
My record as an alder, professional experience, liberal arts background, and life experience qualify me to be Middleton’s next mayor.
Record as an alder: My constituents know me to be an effective, hard-working, and responsive alder. I’ve served on eight different committees, chairing three. These posts have given me the opportunity to learn and digest information about the City’s finances (Finance and Personnel Committee), growth and development (Plan Commission), roads and infrastructure for non-drivers (Public Works and Ped/Bike/Transit Committees), housing needs and possible solutions (Workforce Housing Committee), water resources and flood prevention (Water Resources Management Commission), and goals for reducing our impact on the environment (Sustainability Committee).
I also take the time to communicate regularly with constituents through my monthly e-newsletter ‘E-News on 6’, which goes out to over 1500 readers city-wide. I’m the only elected official in Middleton who writes a newsletter and I’ve been doing it since January 2022.
Professional experience: My career helped me learn how to research, analyze, and write policies at the state, federal, and regional level, as well as how to evaluate and improve programs. I know how to bring people together to collaborate, achieve common goals and address shared problems. As the director of two major projects, I was responsible for financial management of several different funds, including budgeting, grant writing, compliance reporting, and managing pass-through grants for state emergency preparedness projects.
Liberal arts background: Critical thinking, problem solving, strong communication skills, and a commitment to evidence-based decision making are vital for the role of mayor. I use these skills every day as an alder and I will bring them to the mayor’s office.
Life experience: I was a kid whose parents moved to an affluent community where they didn’t fit in – and which they could barely afford – just so their five kids could attend great schools and have a shot at a college education. I was a young professional, just starting my career, who loved my apartment home but desperately wanted to be able to buy a house with a yard for kids and a dog, and where I could decorate the walls however I wanted. I was a single mom with a special needs child, and I had to advocate tirelessly to get the support services my child needed so they would have a decent chance at self-sufficiency and a good life. I was a middle-aged professional who, during the pandemic, opened my home and retired early from a career I loved to take care of my elderly mother whom I loved more. I have empathy for anyone in Middleton who struggles or feels overwhelmed, because I have struggled and felt overwhelmed, too. I care deeply about helping my neighbors have a good life and be part of this vibrant community – to be connected, engaged, looking out for each other, and working together to move Middleton forward.
3. What is your agenda as mayor?
I have a vision of Middleton as a place where we meet the needs of our growing city, our sense of community is strong, and people have access to good information about what our city government is doing and how it affects all of us. I share this vision with the community leaders who asked me to run for mayor, and with the growing number of Middleton residents who have endorsed me, donated to the campaign, and are volunteering their time to help me become Middleton’s next mayor.
I see both the big-picture vision of Middleton as the Good Neighbor City and the steps we can take to make that vision a reality. It starts with bringing competence, accountability, collaborative leadership, and humility to the mayor’s office. It continues with building relationships – between the mayor and Council, between committees and staff, and with our community partners like MCPASD and the Chamber of Commerce. The more tightly we knit the fabric of our community, the better we’ll manage our growth while preserving the things we love most about living here.
4. What are the main challenges facing Middleton, both the City and the city?
Affordability: It’s hard for people to make ends meet, and it’s hard for the City to meet our growing needs. Residents understandably don’t want property taxes to go up – many are on a fixed income and can’t afford any increase. Without these increases, though, we’d have to cut services. Reaching an agreement city-wide on which services and staff to cut would be difficult.
Housing: We need more housing. We’re doing a good job with market-rate housing, but we need more housing that is ‘affordable’ – meaning, a household spends less than 30% of their gross income on expenses for rent/mortgage and utilities. According to the Dane County Regional Housing Strategy, we need to build about 83 units of legally restricted affordable rental units in Middleton each year to meet the demand. We’ve produced only about half the units needed, and since 2023, we haven’t permitted any new legally restricted affordable units. This is a failure of the market and it needs to be corrected.
We also need more opportunities for home ownership. Finding an affordable starter house in Middleton is very difficult. With the median sale price for a house currently at $553,000, even households with incomes at the area median ($90,900) are priced out of the market. For older residents who want to downsize, there are too few condos, smaller houses, or accessible townhouses available.
City facilities: We have three aging downtown facilities that no longer meet the community’s needs. City Hall, the Senior Center, and the Library all need to be remodeled, expanded, or replaced. Our Community Campus Project will be a major multiyear construction project. The challenge is to find a way to pay for the necessary improvements without worsening affordability for our residents.
5. How do you suggest dealing with those challenges?
Affordability: While affordability is a national issue, there are things we can do locally (see those related to housing below). We could collaborate with our peer cities – for example, partnering with Waunakee on shared Emergency Medical Services. We can advocate for changes in state legislation to 1) use more of the state’s surplus from sales taxes to increase state aid to municipalities and 2) limit property tax increases for seniors, veterans, and other people that meet income thresholds.
Housing: Over the past two years, the Workforce Housing Committee and Community Development Authority (CDA) developed a draft Housing Action Plan for addressing the housing crisis in Middleton. Possible actions include investing in new affordable housing units, making grants available for energy efficiency and accessibility improvements to existing older housing, and enacting new ordinances to protect renters. Implementing the plan will be a principal focus for Council, the mayor, and the staff over the next five years. We’ll need our community partners – MCPASD, Chamber of Commerce, nonprofit sector, service organizations, and more – to help us in this effort so we can develop a sufficient number of housing units to meet the demand. I have good working relationships with many of these partners and look forward to enlisting their support for our new housing initiative.
City buildings: Middleton’s highly skilled finance staff have already identified strategies to make the Community Campus Project affordable for our residents. I have every confidence that, with their help, we’ll find a way to get the modern spaces our residents and staff need at a price we can afford.
6. Why are you the better candidate?
I’m the better candidate because I have a documented record of working collaboratively and achieving results for the city and our people. Examples include: Working with the Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy to protect water quality through stormwater projects on new conservancy land; partnering with WayForward Resources, MCPASD, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Downtown Middleton Business Association to launch a highly successful community-wide food drive less than 48 hours after the need was identified; actively researching and helping to draft Middleton’s Housing Action Plan as part of a joint Workforce Housing/CDA subcommittee; writing a new Sustainable Purchasing Policy with Sustainability Committee members.
I’m the better candidate because I put in the time as an alder and I’ll put in the time as mayor. Here are some specific things I will do that Mayor Kuhn does not do: Continue to write my e-newsletter and expand its scope and distribution city-wide; hold regular office hours during the day and in the evenings so that residents can meet with their mayor at a time that works for them; take on the mayor’s traditional role of chairing the Plan Commission and the CDA (Mayor Kuhn quit the Plan Commission after one year and the CDA after less than two years); expand outreach to recruit new members for committees, commissions, and boards; I’ll strive for diversity of all kinds so that these advisory bodies reflect the makeup of our community; work with Council and experienced committee members to develop a clear, consistent onboarding process for committee members so they’ll be prepared to do their best work for the city right from the start; continue putting in the time to study and understand the issues fully, ask thoughtful questions, and conduct myself in a way that inspires confidence in residents that their mayor knows what she is doing.
I’m the better candidate because my campaign is a people-powered, grass-roots movement that has grown from twelve Middleton residents to over 130 since the campaign launched on November 19. Middleton residents are volunteering their time, donating so I can buy campaign materials, writing letters to the editor, putting up yard signs, wearing buttons, talking to their friends and neighbors, hosting meet-the-candidate events, and sending in photo or video endorsements explaining why they’re excited about my candidacy. In contrast, Mayor Kuhn’s campaign is top-down, run by paid staff, and largely self-funded. Ten current and former politicians from the Dane County area have endorsed her. I greatly appreciate their public service and believe they’re good people, but most of them don’t live, work or vote in Middleton. They likely never had trouble getting Mayor Kuhn to respond to their calls or emails.
The people endorsing me as the better candidate are all Middleton residents – community leaders, voters of all ages, some born and raised here, others recent additions to our community. Our Moving Forward Together campaign demonstrates that I’m able to bring Middleton residents together to work toward a common goal. I can’t wait to see what this kind of energy and enthusiasm can do city-wide once I’m elected mayor and we all can start moving forward together.