Some people will say the most amazing things . . .
Tonight, Phil Salkin from the Realtors Association of Southcentral Wisconsin got up in front of the plan commission and said that, despite the fact that he has been to at least two housing committee meetings, two plan commission meetings and maybe an EDC meeting or a housing subcommittee meeting, the process to talk about inclusionary zoning wasn’t good enough. In addition to that public process he has also met privately with myself and five or six other realtors and in a separate meeting with Alder Golden and likely several other alders, we’ll find out in about 5 more months when the lobbying reports are due.
He essentially said that he wanted a process set up to that we could sit down and talk with the Realtors for “hours” about inclusionary zoning. He wanted to know who he should talk to and what the process was going to be. He said that now, after they supported repeal and refused to talk about changes, they’re willing to come to the table. Of course, this is after the ordinance has gone through two committees is about to be passed by the plan commission and it has become clear that repeal doesn’t have a chance.
Now what makes him think he gets a special process? Is he somehow better than the rest of the public? Why aren’t the public meetings good enough for him?
We tried to get Phil to tell us what the top three or four issues were that they had with the ordinance. He wouldn’t tell us, but he offered to put it in writing . . . later. We tried to get Phil to tell us what parts of the ordinance could move forward . . . but he didn’t want any part of the ordinance to move forward. We tried to get Phil to talk about specific changes that he wanted, but he said he couldn’t talk about any of them individually because it had to be a complete package. He also kept talking about the “questions” that he had. I asked him what they were, he offered to write them down. Another alder recently called folks like Phil “mushrooms”, cuz they like to do things in the dark and that’s all I could think about when he was (not) talking.
The other criticism he had was . . . we didn’t show the ordinance amendments to him before they were introduced. He said they should have been “consulted”. What? I missed that in the Common Council handbook where all ordinance changes had to be cleared with the realtors before they could be introduced.
How arrogant can someone be that they think that they get a special process and have to be consulted before things get done? I guess, these are the special favors lobbyists expect, I’m just not used to them demanding them so publicly. They sure have gotten brazen since they were able to gut the lobbying ordinance and they’ve gotten all the media support for their anti-business rhetoric.
