Partially written from the DMV . . . so you know its not a good morning! Waiting to get a replacement title for my crashed car. Multi-tasking!
The Council meeting started about 10 minutes late, Mayor home sick, Solomon absent, Bruer in the chair.
First, we did our honoring resolutions including:
– Women’s Hockey
– Arbor Week
– Earth Day
– Enis Ragland
We did our consent agenda – where we pass everything on the agenda with its recommendations except public hearings and the items we pull off the agenda. In doing so we only left the following items:
#17 – Making staff non-voting members and adding a UW Student voice to the ALRC
That about sums it up. Kudos to Sch umacher and Judge for making this happen.
#25 & #28 – Property Tax Exemption for Low Income Housing
This issue took 1.5 hours. It was an interesting process whereby the City Attorney’s Office admitted to having a staff person spend 60% of their time “aggressively” pursuing this issue to “clarify” which non-profits should be property tax exempt – when no other cities in the State were doing so. The City Assessors Office wasn’t even there to answer questions. The City Attorney kept saying that we were bound by a local court decision – but then clarified that the case wasn’t binding, and then kept saying it was binding. Mayor’s staff was whispering to alders that the city attorney’s office just went off and did this on their own – but also have been non-cooperative with requests to help the Housing Committee on this matter – refusing to come to our meeting this evening. L-O-N-G story short – it was referred to the Mayor’s office, the Assessors Office and the City Attorney’s office.
#27 – Property Tax Exemption for Educational Purposes
Same issue – different purpose, same results in referrals.
#33 – TIF Policies
A few more minor tweaks and after two years, the policies finally passed with the amendment from the Board of Estimates. We’ll follow up with Smart Growth Madison’s idea to create affordable housing by waiving the equity kicker at the Housing Committee.
#40 – Grant for “Project Safe Neighborhoods”
Something was making Noble Wray twitchy . . . or, as my colleagues put it “unprofessional”. He really scoffed at having to answer questions about why we needed overtime for Crime Analysts – laughing at me for asking the question. We added 30 officers last year, and this grant for $40,000 asked for $19K in overtime for crime analysts and preventative activities – which sounds good, I just understand why we still need to pay so much overtime.
#44 – BioAg Gateway
We broke all the rules. See the memo. Passed 15 – 4 to give them over $2M more than we budgeted (which was $0). Voting no were Sanborn, Konkel, Rummel, Webber. Sanborn absent.
#45 – Capital West
We placed on file, without prejudice and will try to work out something.
#143 – 6 or 20 new police officers in next year or three years
The police got us to agree to hiring the first of 6 more officers. They have a plan for 20 over the next three years. The supporting documents, not available to the public, only emailed to the alders at 4:30 on Monday were clear as mud. We all voted for it, since it was just a grant request and it seemed unlikely that we would get the grant.
With that, it was 11:55 and the council, no longer one big happy family, split up with people going to two different bars. Way to end the last meeting of this council.
Sorry to be brief – had other things to do this morning!
