Donegan Declares Candidacy for Mayor

With the , 1st District Ald. Peter Donegan has declared his candidacy for the office and said he would file his election papers Monday.

It's now a two-person race for the seat, with .

Donegan, 59, has served six years on the Wauwatosa Common Council and for three years has been chairman of the Employee Relations Committee. He is also a member of the Budget and Finance Committee and the council liaison to the city's Redevelopment Authority.

Donegan has lived in Wauwatosa for more than 23 years, and he and his wife, Marge, raised two children here, a son who is now 26 and a daughter, 23.

Donegan began his professional career with the Milwaukee Insurance Co., where he was a vice president when the $200 million firm was sold in 1995. He joined a start-up insurance products business as its president and part-owner in 1998 and retired after the partners sold it in 2005. However, the new owners hired him back in 2008 and he stayed on until the company was again sold in July.

Supports Infrastructure Investment, Redevelopment Projects

Now firmly in retirement, Donegan said that he feels he qualified to guide the city through difficult financial times that call for significant continued investment in city infrastructure, including streets and sewers, while maintaining the city's AAA bond rating and holding down overall spending in the face of stagnant revenues.

Among other issues Donegan addressed in a statement announcing his candidacy (below) are pursuing the Village and North Avenue redevelopment plans in a fiscally responsible manner and leading an ongoing discussion of the structure of city government, including the role of the mayor and the size of the Common Council.

As chairman of Employee Relations, Donegan has been in the center of important debates this year over city workers' union contracts and the .

Besides his service as an elected official, Donegan was on the board of the Wauwatosa Economic Development Corp. for three years and coached softball and basketball for 10 years with the Wauwatosa Recreation Leagues and the Boys and Girls Scouts.

"I also coached one wholly forgettable season of soccer," he said. "My son hated it and I knew nothing about it."

Marge Donegan is known as one of the "movers and shakers," her husband said, of the Wauwatosa Beautification Committee and a founder of the "Gardening Angels," a volunteer corps of some 340 citizens who took over civic flower beds and plantings when the city could no longer afford to maintain them.

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Statement of Pete Donegan announcing candidacy for Mayor of Wauwatosa:

"I am running for Mayor because I believe I am, at this time, the best person available for the job.

My qualifications include:

1.) Six years as alderman on the Wauwatosa Common Council including three years as Committee Chair.

2.) Thirty years of management experience including positions of corporate vice president and small business president.

3.) I have the time (I am recently retired, and ordinance prohibits the mayor from holding a job that may interfere with the performance of mayoral duties).

4.) My wife, Marge, and I have been extensively involved in various forms of community service during all of our 23-plus years in Wauwatosa.

I am particularly motivated by a pressing need at this time for continuity in the City’s Administration. We have a lot of 'balls in the air' right now and a challenging set of financial circumstances and organizational change.  The need to orient a newcomer to city hall at this time could become a serious distraction.

As Mayor, my primary objective would be the maintenance of a high quality of city services including recent significant increases in infrastructure funding along with maintaining our AAA bond rating.  That’s easy to say but very challenging in an environment of stagnant and declining revenue sources. Certainly organizational change and productivity improvement are required on a fairly urgent basis.

The improvement plans for East Town North Ave. and the Village should also be important to the next Mayor. They are financially challenging but, I believe, offer significant paybacks.

I see the sewer lateral issue emerging as the most difficult controversy that we will face in the next Mayoral term. Whether we deal with it privately or publicly, our citizens could face a huge expense to correct this problem.

I am also willing, early in the term, to lead the discussion on the long simmering issue pertaining to Tosa’s “form of government”; that is, the formal role of the Mayor and the appropriateness of diminishing it as well as the size of the Council.

I will have much more to say on all of this as the campaign proceeds."