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| Affiliation | Green |
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| Name | Leon Todd |
| Address |
Milwaukee, Wisconsin , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
Unknown
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| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Last Modifed | Ashley
Apr 20, 2007 01:50am |
| Tags |
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| Info | In a field filled with would-be cheerleaders for the city, Todd happily - and earnestly - plays the naysayer.
America's Dairyland?
"Wisconsin is America's Prisonland," Todd often says.
The old "Great Place on a Great Lake" slogan?
"Milwaukee is a poor city on a polluted lake."
Indeed, Todd said that if he were advising a company on whether to locate its new factory in Milwaukee, he would suggest someplace else. Health care costs are too high. The freeways are too clogged. Pollution is too great. And local government is too dirty.
"We need a reality check," said Todd, 63, a former Milwaukee School Board member who is now a business consultant. "Are we supposed to live in a fantasyland? . . . I've never been bashful about speaking my mind."
At candidate forums, Todd gets so busy speaking it, he often finds himself stopping in mid-sentence once his time expires, offering a shrug and: "I just got the hook."
In two stints on the School Board, Todd made plenty of waves, from clashes that helped lead to the departure of Superintendent Howard Fuller to a proposal, with a potential $18 million price tag, to put laptop computers in the hands of all MPS high-schoolers.
When it comes to the city's problems, Todd says fresh ideas and a new way of thinking are required: Put the Harley-Davidson museum in the Menomonee Valley but at a different site, and "I would put that under glass."
A segment of the valley. Part of the RiverWalk, too. Under glass to account for Milwaukee's winters.
To assist truck traffic that must get through the city, Todd proposes a "toll bridge" that would run from Ozaukee County to Racine County, adding, "I would hang light rail in the middle of the super three-dimensional toll road."
Who'd pay for it?
"Tolls, tolls," Todd said, later adding, "I think you're really going to need a different level of thinking to bring us into the 21st century."
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