By Anita Weier
Northside News

Two candidates are vying for the Madison Common Council seat in District 12, including current Alder Syed Abbas and challenger Tessa de Echeverria.

The large district stretches from Warner Park to the Dane County Regional Airport to MATC to East Washington Avenue.

Abbas, 34, lives in Eken Park with his wife, Holly Burns, and their two children. He works for a nonprofit that advances sustainability.

Originally from Pakistan, he worked for human rights there and has master’s degrees in public policy and human development from the United Nations University in Maastricht, the Netherlands. 

Abbas came to Madison five years ago and “quickly fell in love with the people, the culture, the Midwestern values and the opportunities the city afforded to me,” he said.

“I have always had a passion to serve the community, so I started getting involved. My neighbors gave me such a warm welcome that I wanted to advocate for them, starting in the neighborhood where I’m raising my family. I’m more invested than ever in keeping the north and east sides of Madison a great place to live for all people, regardless of their socio-economic backgrounds.”

He strongly supported retaining the Hartmeyer property on Roth Street as a natural area and worked hard to secure council passage of preserving 16 acres of the property. He also advocated for finding another site for the Metro bus barn, which the city has apparently done.

 Other achievements were a plastic straw ordinance to reduce single use plastic in Madison and an ordinance creating an electric vehicle charging infrastructure in the city.

Abbas cosponsored a budget amendment to support a crisis response team that pairs a community paramedic with a trained crisis worker to focus on behavioral health emergencies. He helped develop an ordinance to completely ban chokehold measures by the police, a measure that passed unanimously.

He also supports housing affordability and favored development of the Madisonian Apartments on Aberg Avenue, including units for those with low incomes, and he favored the Oscar Apartments on Huxley Street. He cosponsored a bill to fund the move of the homeless men’s shelter from the Warner Park Center to the city’s former streets facility on First Street, and he supported an emergency bill to develop a tiny home village on Aberg Avenue to house people facing extreme conditions this winter.

The city must address middle-income as well as low-income housing, according to Abbas. “It is time to focus on how middle-income people can purchase a house. There is a very successful system with cooperatives in New York City. People can buy a share of market value. I see opportunities here,” he said, adding that New York has rent-stabilized apartments subsidized by Tax Increment Financing.

Tessa Wyllie de Echeverria, 31, a democratic socialist, is seeking election to District 12. She has a B.A. in economics from Evergreen State College in Washington state. She also earned a technical degree in electrical engineering at Madison College.

She grew up in Washington state and moved to Madison in 2010. Her partner, Luis Perez, is a high school art teacher. They live in Eken Park.

Echeverria currently works as an electrical technician and draftsperson. She formerly owned Williamson Magnetic Recording and worked at Nature’s Bakery Cooperative.

Her main priorities if elected are democracy in development, participatory budgeting and racial justice. “I believe we need to make big changes at the city level for our lives now and for the sake of future generations,” she said. “We must develop a sustainable Madison, one that offers living wages, good housing for all, racial justice and access to health care. District 12 is at the front of many of these issues with F-35s flying over our homes, the loss of hundreds of union jobs at Oscar Mayer, and the raging COVID pandemic.”

Echeverria also favors municipal Internet, a public buyout of MGE for affordable green energy, and affordable housing development for working people in the community.

“I support economic development that will benefit the public by creating family-supporting jobs, equal opportunity, an equitable standard of living, and a more equal distribution of wealth while guaranteeing workers’ rights. The City of Madison should have an economic development plan that guides the city’s policies and practices, including budget and planning decisions, and focuses on neighborhoods most in need of investment,” she said.

“COVID has shown us that we must stand together and fight for basic human needs for everyone. We can’t just go back to normal. Let’s build the future together.”