Council Agenda Amended: To Hear Testimony About Tony Robinson

TONIGHT! But . . . since it is only for “public comment”, the alders will not be able to speak to the issue. Here’s more on the developments in the last 24 hours, since yesterday’s blog.

First of all, here is the amended agenda. The agenda has a new item called “PUBLIC COMMENT – TO BE TAKEN UP NO EARLIER THAN 7:00PM” with the explanation “The Common Council may receive public comments on matters not on the agenda.”

This was the note to the council members from the clerk’s office at 2:59:

From: Christianson, Eric
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2015 2:59 PM
To: All Alders; Lauten, Patricia; May, Michael; Monks, Anne; Ragland, Enis; Schmiedicke, David; Soglin, Paul; Veldran, Lisa
Subject: AMENDED Common Council agenda for 3.17.2015

Please review the attached:

https://madison.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=A&ID=339222&GUID=25D9AF8D-0F30-4482-9D48-7C535BB24DF6

The change is the inclusion of a Public Comment section just after the Public Hearings.

Thank you!
Eric Christianson
Municipal Clerk II
Certified Municipal Clerk

This is Council President Chris Schmidt’s explanation from yesterday at 3:02

From: “Schmidt, Christopher”
Date: March 16, 2015 at 3:02:08 PM CDT
To: All Alders
Subject: Reason for the addendum

Dear Colleagues,

You will shortly see an amended agenda that adds “Public Comment” to the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting. I requested this because we are expecting speakers to show up to speak to us about the shooting death of Tony Robinson, and we did not have an item for them to speak on. For what it is worth, I was attempting to create such a thing last week but was running into the issue of there being the ongoing DCI investigation. This item allows us to hear those speakers but it will not allow us to discuss the issue. I do not intend to make this a practice of ours, but I believe that these qualify as extraordinary circumstances and the inclusion of the item is justified in this case.

I request everyone’s continued patience as we collectively work out next steps and how (and when) to get to action items.
-Chris

With only 26 hours notice of the change and the jail resolution at Public Protection and Judiciary and Health and Human Needs agendas, I’m not sure how many people will be there to speak. Hopefully there is a resolution introduced tonight to address the issues with policing. And then we will be able to speak to that in the future at committee meetings and eventually the council. We’ll see, seems like there is a lot of politicking going on, and the city attorney seems worried that the alders might say something that gets us sued or weakens the cities case if there is one. I guess I’m grateful for the change, but it would have been good to know this on Friday, 4 days before the meeting, instead of just meeting the minimum notice required by law (24 hours)