45 minutes, short and sweet. As will be this round up as not much of note happened.
ROLL CALL/GETTING STARTED
Mic troubles.
King, Maniaci, Palm, Verveer and Johnson are missing. Verveer comes in within minutes, Maniaci came in for the last 20 minutes.
Cnare moves to suspend the rules. There was some sort of confusion because before they voted on that Cnare started talking about the next items, Mayor Paul straightens things out and they vote to suspend the rules.
HONORING RESOLUTIONS
1. Recognizing January 2012 as Human Trafficking Awareness and Prevention Month.
Bidar-Sielaff moves adoption, Cnare seconds, they do not read it. It passes on a unanimous voice vote without discussion. Not much of an awareness raising campaign going on here, I guess.
2. Recognition of Italian Workmen’s Club Month – January 2012.
Resnick moves adoption (in his district), Cnare seconds. Resnick reads it. Members of the club thank them for the resolution.
ITEMS OUT OF ORDER
62. New sister city in Mexico.
There are two speakers. The first one hopes they can be honored like the Italian Club in 100 years, talks about how the sister city will be good for cultural, educational and business reasons. They are working with Latino Chamber of Commerce on this. Mexicans are a large portion of the latino immigrants in the community.
Second speaker talks about how this city is a center of culture in mexican arts, its the birthplace of the Mariachi, worlds greatest tequila making center. They also are a dairy center and come to the Expo here every year, we already have relationships with them.
Shiva Bidar-Sielaff says that she is glad the council is recognizing the value of sister cities after all the discussions. This is exciting for people in the community, she visited there over Thanksgiving, you should see their council chambers, it puts ours to shame. They have a woman mayor, council president and pro tem. This is exciting, this will be a great relationship.
66. Support of in-state tuition for children of illegal undocumented immigrants.
Wow. How embarrassing. There had to be a substitute resolution due to an error in drafting . . . a rather LARGE one!
There are several speakers, they talk about its hard for a teacher to look a kid in the eye and tell them they can be anything when they know that they can’t afford to go to college. It’s hard to get kids to think about a different future and higher education and how things could be done differently than dropping out of high school and going into the workforce. The hispanic population has the highest drop out rate in the nation. This has impacted not just undocumented people, but even those on the path to citizenship. Kids have lost their faith in the state and 100s of kids have been hurt by this. It’s frustrating to see in-state tuition passed and then to have it taken away so quickly. This is one of the biggest policy issues in the community beyond immigration reform. This would impact at least 300 students in Madison every year based on statistical analysis. Its an insurmountable task to try to get higher education for these kids. In WI 4 of 5 immigrant children are citizens nationally it is 9 of 10, that’s the good news, laws like this will not stand in the future because these kids will not forget brothers, sisters, friends, etc and this will change in time. From a practical perspective, it makes no sense to spend money on kids educating them and then shut the door when it comes to higher education. It’s immoral. Their parents support the UW system through their taxes, this is taxation without representation. We are taking their money and not giving anything back. These are not someone else’s kids, these are our kids and we should not deny them the opportunity for education and take away the opportunity to be a productive member of society – that is what we are telling them.
All council members are added as sponsors.
CONSENT AGENDA
More Robert’s Rules and process confusion over if they should do the consent agenda or the public hearings. Clear tries to make a point of order about skipping number three – Soglin says Cnare has the floor (i.e. she can include that in the motion.)
Cnare makes a motion to accept everything on the agenda except the public hearings and notes the following:
Item 22 – there is a speaker available for questions
36 & 57 are separated for discussion by Verveer and there are a few speakers.
There is more confusion about item 94 being a duplicate, but they eventually pass the consent agenda
PUBLIC HEARINGS
Items 4 – 7 public hearings are open and closed, there are no registrations, they pass on a voice vote without discussion.
Items 8 – is referred to Jan 17
Items 9 – 11
The mayor tried to skip to item 22 instead of doing these, he apologizes by saying “my bad”.
These items are open, closed, and passed with no discussion or registrants.
ITEM 22
There is one speaker available to answer questions, it passes with no discussion or questions on a voice vote.
LIBRARY
36 – Verveer moves to place the appointment on file without prejudice and adopt 57 which is to rebid.
There are two speakers from the two companies that are threatening legal challenges no matter what the city does.
J.P. Cullins
Brian Mullins is their attorney and says he is opposing anything that results in not awarding them the contract. He says that there were mistakes in the bidding process and that can be corrected tonight without delay instead of starting over. They were the lowest responsible bidder if the mistake is corrected. He explains the mistake was about DBE’s (women and minority owned businesses). He says 3 of the 5 bidders were rejected, themselves and two others (Miron and Tri-North), which were the ones who built the last two libraries for the city. All of the bidders were responsible bidders. He says no one knew about the mistake, not the city attorney, civil rights department or engineering. They took the requirements seriously, they tried to maximize participation. They submitted a 300 page, hand-written report describing their efforts. This problem can be remedied by having a local law. The illegal provisions should be nullified, they should make all bids eligible and then look at lowest responsible bidder and that is JP Cullin. The city has two options, award or rebid. Rebidding is problematic, it could make matters worse, it will delay the project and add uncertainty to the process, the bids could come in higher, some bidders could elect not to submit, there could new errors, all this uncertainty could be avoided by awarding to his clients, that is the quickest, safest and best option.
Findorff
DavideBeck Engle is the Executive Vice President of Findorff, when the bids were opened, they were the lowest responsive bidder, that was confirmed by the Board of Public Works hearing and what is under consideration is to reject that bid and all others and rebid the entire project. As Mullins points out, that is problematic. The project documents were clear about what was required. Findorff has also lost bids in the past due to these requirements but they educated themselves and talked to staff to make sure they were in compliance. The goals were clearly stated, and if there were objections the process is to make them prior to the bid being closed, not after. That just adds delay and costs. Also, a non-responsive bidder may not appeal for award of the contract. They waited until after the bids were open and it sabotages the projects. It exposes the bids to subcontractor community, to rebid has potential for a number of problems. The DBEs are out there, everyone knows them, this could lead to unethical practices. The city council did this to do the right thing, to have DBEs be part of city process, you should stand up for the ideals you put in place. It’s wrong to reject the bids.
City
The alders have no questions for staff or speakers.
Mike Verveer says he makes the motion to rebid without enthusiasm. It will result in delay, its a short delay, they received a fairly substantive memo by Attorney May and the best and right and legal thing to do in staff’s estimation is place on file and rebid the project. The representatives made valid arguments, they also have additional correspondence from each of them, but we should follow our attorney’s advice. The major issue is that our own attorney’s believe that Mullins and their colleagues raised a valid legal argument, this is not part of our ordinances unlike the SBEs so the bottom line is if we proceed and award it to Cullin or Findorff it is highly likely there will be protracted legal proceedings that will result in unfortunate and unnecessary delay for the project. This delay will be minor in comparison to potential exposure if they award the contract this evening. He wants to acknowledge that he does not take this position easily, there was tremendous cost, effort and time of the contractors in submitting the bids. They realize that and know they are asking a lot for them to sharpen their pencils and submit new bids, legally we have the right to do this, the bid has not been awarded. He hopes they will all re-bid. There is some reason to be optimistic that the prices will come in under estimate again as they did a couple weeks ago, he won’t say why, but there is that recognition. He also should mention that they are well on way to meeting its private fundraising goals and one of the major gifts is with a requirement that this project start without delay, if we award the contract it could have a negative impact, and up til now fundraising has been going well. He will close by acknowledging several staff working on it that can answer questions and he hopes that his colleagues adopt the motion and allow them to rebid the project.
No discussion.
Passes on a voice vote seemingly unanimous
ITEM FROM THE FLOOR
Verveer moves amendment to contract $49,000 for architecture and engineering design services related to rebidding
ANNOUNCEMENTS/ADJOURN
It’s Shiva’s birthday on Saturday. Also the bowling tournament.
Adjourn = 7:16
