1. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
2. There is no limit to what we can accomplish if we don’t care who gets the credit.
Unfortunately, he repeats the sayings, but doesn’t practice them. (Yes, unfortunately, this is another posting about the Mayor and me. But please read it, because important policy decisions are suffering because of his personal dislike of me.)
It’s no secret, the Mayor dislikes me. And, he takes quite a few opportunities to express that dislike, in what he says about me to others and in his actions. People notice and then people ask me about it. The hardest question I have to answer is when people ask me “Why?” The question is hard to answer first of all, because I don’t think there is just one reason. Second of all, because anything I say makes the Mayor look petty, vindictive, egotistical and well, disagreeable and if I say those things that make the Mayor look bad, it makes me look bad in the process as well. So, my answer to most people for the last 6 months or so has been to smile, shrug, bite my tongue and try not to stoop to his level, then tell people that they’ll have to ask the Mayor why he doesn’t like me. It’s true, we have our differences, but he’s right, we don’t need to be so disagreeable and I’ve tried my best to rise above it.
However, it is difficult. Especially when he takes out his frustrations with me on my district (Gorman/Don Miller Project, James Madison Park, Breese Stevens Field funding, the East Washington BUILD, Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan) and on good policy initiatives. (That list is even longer and you can find many of them in previous postings to my blog.). So, what happened to make me bring this up all over again. Really, there are two things.
The first is the inability to work together on the East Washington BUILD and the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood plan. For some reason, Downtown Madison Inc, Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association, Marquette Neighborhood Association, Alder Marsha Rummel and myself are all on the same page about what we need to have happen and the Mayor is on the other side. And he won’t listen. Essentially, it kind of boils down to this in my mind: If we’re going to increase density in the downtown, we should be thoughtful about it. Part of being thoughtful about it is having not only good land use plans, but having good transportation plans that work with and are integrated into the land use plans. Seems simple enough doesn’t it?
Apparently, the Mayor is against the transportation planning that we are requesting. At one point he offered Ald. Olson $200,000 for the transportation planning, but that offer has disappeared. Sad thing is, he could be the hero. He could call us all into his office and help us work out a compromise, but instead, he’s being an obstacle. The Tenney-Lapham Plan has been done for over a year, and the East Washington BUILD committee had its last meeting last October, and yet neither plan is adopted because we’re in a stalemate. Over what? Ego? Who gets the credit? Retribution? I don’t know, and it doesn’t make any sense.
The second reason, was tonight’s Board of Estimates meeting. Oddly enough, the Mayor wasn’t even there, but he did as much damage as he could via memo and mysterious staff requests. And instead was taking care of other important things . . . i.e. golfing?
MAYOR CIESLEWICZ WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Monday, July 30, 2007
7:45 a.m. Welcome at Wisconsin State Police Chiefs Association (Monona Terrace)
10:00 a.m. Policy staff meeting
12:00 noon 100 Black Men golf tournament (Bergamont Golf Club, Oregon)
The two items at the Board of Estimates meeting that were both referred were:
13. 06831 Creating Sec. 4.20(3)(d) of the Madison General Ordinances to prohibit proportional calculation of wages to employees performing both City and non-City work.
14. 06939 That the City of Madison should establish a capital borrowing program for affordable rental housing.
The first item, is really a housekeeping item that has been in legistar since June 26th. Several years ago, when I was Council President and on the Board of Estimates (2004-2005), we discovered that while the non-profits were held to one standard with calculating the living wage, the for-profits were held to a much more lax standard and in fact were not paying their employees a living wage while the employees were performing City contract work. It only affected two companies, Cintas and Octopus Car Wash. Apparently, they were incapable of doing what all non-profits are required to do, that is, figure out how to account for paying a living wage during the time that their employees are performing work under the City contract. What makes this really a housekeeping item is that we no longer have contracts with either of them. So, all the ordinance change does is make sure that in the future, if we contract with any for-profits that are not paying the living wage, that they are held to the same strict standard as the non-profits. Simple enough. A housekeeping measure.
Well, apparently, there was a request from “staff” to have this referred. Funny, the only staff that talked to me were the city attorney and the comptrollers staff and they were both fine with it. So, I explained to the Board of Estimates that this was merely a housekeeping item and asked what the issue was. Then, it came out, it was the “mayor’s staff” that had requested the referral. Why? I don’t know. You think they’ll communicate with me about it between now and the next Board of Estimates meeting? I doubt it. And if they had issues with it, why didn’t they mention it during the last month that it has been available? Looks like I have to write another memo. I can’t wait to find out what the issue is.
The second item, is even more disturbing. Ever since the rental portion of the inclusionary zoning ordinance was struck down in the courts, I’ve been trying to figure out a way to provide incentives to developers to provide affordable rental housing, since we can’t require it under state law due to the “rent control” provision in the state statutes. I talked to a lobbyist for several developers, a for-profit developer, a few non-profit developers, some city staff and I came up with an idea – based on all of their input. I wrote the resolution, and its been available since July 9th. I hadn’t heard a word from the Mayor’s office in the last few weeks. Not that that is unusual.
What was unusual was that the Board of Estimates members all had a memo, hard copy (not available electronically), placed at their desks when they got to the meeting. There was no copy of the memo for me and I wouldn’t have even known about it, except that 2 different alders made sure that I saw it. One was kind enough to give me their copy. The memo boiled down to this: the Mayor didn’t understand the proposal and he was asking people to vote it down.
Why? Well, I won’t speculate, but the memo showed he didn’t understand
- the program as proposed
- the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
- or even Inclusionary Zoning funding.
He made several assumptions that were erroneous. So, in deference to the Mayor, we referred the item. However, Ald. Bruer made the Mayor’s office make a public commitment to work with me on this between now and the next Board of Estimates meeting. That ought to be fun.
Why am I writing all of this, mostly because I just can’t tolerate bullshit. And the bullshit from the Mayor’s office just keeps piling up. These are just a few more instances in a long line of examples that I could trot out. It’s a pattern, not just a few minor incidents. I don’t care if he doesn’t like me. I don’t care if his key staff people don’t like me. I don’t care if he’s disagreeable to me. I don’t care if he takes the credit for things that I do. But, I do care, when he uses his personal dislike of me to prevent good things from happening. Good neighborhood planning and creating affordable housing should not be the casualties of the Mayor’s petty dislike of one of twenty alders.
Too bad the Mayor can’t practice what he preaches, cuz he sure can be disagreeable, and sadly, I don’t even think we disagree about the underlying issues. I think the whole City suffers when we have a Mayor that has knee-jerk responses to something simply because of who proposes it, instead of discussing issues openly and fairly based on their merits. I think the City deserves better from its elected officials and I hate being a part of this mess. This is politics at its worst. For my part, I’ve tried to reach out and figure out how to put this behind us, but I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that the Mayor just isn’t interested. So, I’ll keep pushing for things for my district and good policies and hope the Council can try to make the best decision based on what they know and the merits of the issues, not based on personalities. Luckily, I think we have a Council that can and will do that.
