Barrett back in Milwaukee: Lessons from Europe and a continued defense of The Hop

 

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — One of the longest serving mayors in Milwaukee history has returned to the city, and he's bringing some lessons back from overseas.

Tom Barrett has now been back in Milwaukee for nearly two months. He served as Milwaukee's mayor from 2004 to 2021, when former President Joe Biden appointed him to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg.

Following President Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election, Barrett resigned from the ambassador post and returned to the U.S. in late January.

Last month, Barrett sat down with CBS 58 at his home in the Washington Heights neighborhood to discuss his time in the small European nation and reflect on his Milwaukee legacy.

While serving as the U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, Barrett said his primary focus was relaying messages from Washington, D.C. regarding the U.S. government's position on various issues.

"We would receive from Washington, D.C. cables. They weren't cables like they were cables in the 1940s, but they still called them cables," Barrett said. "And they would say, 'Deliver this message to this part of government.' And, so, we would have people, including myself, that would literally go to the foreign ministry or go to the prime minister's office or another office and talk to the people there and say, 'This is the United States' position on this issue or that issue. This is how we would like you to vote in the United Nations,' for example."

One of the most pressing international issues during Barrett's time overseas was the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Barrett said a major concern then and now with European leaders he met is President Donald Trump's relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I think right now in Europe, there's almost a panic about what the relationship is," Barrett said. "I think President Trump sitting down with Putin, I think, was a shocker to the people there."

Following the recent Oval Office blowup between Mr. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Barrett said even before Mr. Trump's election in November, there was an increased urgency in western Europe to increase spending on defense following the Russian attack on Ukraine.

"That was, by far, the most substantive issue that we worked on. We worked on increasing the defense spending in Luxembourg because it is at the bottom of the NATO countries," Barrett said. "So, I think that there's a recognition now that that has to happen. Was it too slow? Absolutely, yes, it was too slow."

The Trump administration confirmed Monday it was pausing aid to Ukraine. While President Trump has openly called for European countries to cover a bigger share of Ukraine's defense needs, Barrett said Mr. Trump's predecessors were making a similar push, albeit, not as forcefully.

"I don't think the pressure was bad. I think the pressure was there under President Obama, under President Trump, under President Biden," Barrett said. "But, ironically, it was really Putin who did more to wake up the Europeans than anybody else because, now, the war is at their doorstep, and they are very concerned."

When asked what stood out most from his time in Luxembourg, a small country bordering Belgium, France and Germany, Barrett noted significantly less violent crime and an embrace of public transit.

Barrett noted Luxembourg is a relatively wealthy country, and it's population of nearly 675,000 is considerably less than Milwaukee County's population of about 915,000.

Still, Barrett said Milwaukee's wider income gap immediately stood out, and he maintained income inequality remains the biggest challenge facing Milwaukee.

"There's problems in the schools. Obviously, there's problems with violence in some parts of the city. There's problems with vehicles, things like that," Barrett said. "But, to me, those are all indicators of the underlying problem of people have to have an opportunity to have a piece of the American pie."

Barrett said his time in Luxembourg reaffirmed his belief pushing for the return of a streetcar to Milwaukee was the right thing to do. The Hop, which began operating in the fall of 2018, drew harsh criticism from conservatives at the time of its passage, and it continues to be a punching bag for those critics.

It hasn't helped that The Hop's time in Milwaukee has been anything but a smooth ride. Ridership plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it still hasn't recovered.

The Hop stopped posted monthly ridership numbers last August. Department of Public Works spokeswoman Tiffany Shepherd said that was because former streetcar manager, Andrew Davis-Lockward, had been in charge of publishing those numbers.

Davis-Lockward resigned last fall as he faced the prospect of termination over frustration with the state of the system's rail infrastructure.

"To address this vacancy, a temporary consultant has been brought in to bridge the gap," Shepherd wrote. "The consultant has been working to access the program containing the ridership data and compile the necessary figures."

Shepherd said current numbers show an average of 1,034 riders per day, with 957 of them riding the main M-line and the rest taking the newer L-line lakefront spur.

Those numbers are similar to the past two Februarys, but are about one-third less than the 1,500 daily February riders pre-pandemic.

Barrett said he believed politics have played the biggest role in the streetcar's failure to thrive because the project's success was always dependent on eventual extensions into residential areas on the city's north and south sides.

"In Europe, you did not have governments really zero in to try to hurt the city and hamper the city, and in this case, to strangle the streetcar," he said. "That's what's happened. You've got outstate legislators who want to literally strangle the streetcar."

When reflecting on his 17 years as mayor, Barrett declined to say whether he had specific regrets. Instead, he said he wanted to look forward while acknowledging there were things that could have been done better.

"If I went back, I'm sure I could find things that we did wrong or we could've done differently," he said. "But I'm proud of the fact that I worked as hard as I could for as long as I could for the people of this community."

As for what's next for him, Barrett said he was more concerned with getting he and his wife's car and personal belongings back from Luxembourg. They're still in transit via ship.

Barrett did say that his next job will almost certainly be in Milwaukee.