Well, and the closed session. Getting off to a late start, at 4:32 only Amanda Hall, Mo Cheeks and Barbara McKinney are here . . . and Amanda isn’t on BOE.
Sara Eskrich and Shiva Bidar are now here . . . DeMarb wandering in . . . 5 minutes late . . . seemed like it would be more.
Consent Agenda
Registrations on 20 and 23. Consent Calendar is everything except 22, 21, 18, 19, 13 are all separated, the rest are approved as recommended on the agenda.
Item 18 – Security for Parking Ramps
Mike Verveer says some of the cashiers have had issues with the security and he says there has been talk of bringing this in house. Verveer asks if they have had any issues with JBM. David Dryer says they have not. There were three proposals and a staff team recommended JBM. Verveer asks if cashiers were included in the decision. Drayer says Colleen and David Wills? (Don’t know if they are cashiers or not) Verveer asks if they have heard complaints from the cashiers. He says no.
Marsha Rummel asks on behalf of Supervisor Wegleitner if they could combine the contract with the county. Dryer says the county would have to take care of that. Rummel says that she would like to send the email and have him respond, he says yes.
Item 18 – Special Charges for State St. Mall
Mo Cheeks asks for this to be explains. Parks staff says that they are charged for special extra services they get – snow plowing, lights, etc. Cheeks asks about the increase. Mayor says the increases can only reflect the true cost – this is about 1.8% increase.
Item 19 – Downtown Park
Ed Kuharski – from the public – speaks. He says he is curious how they use eminent domanin and if this park is a need or a want. It might be true there is a lack of green space in the immediate area, but near is Brittingham and Law Park that stretch on forever, its not like this area is deprived. This is 1/4 of a block of relatively affordable housing. He asks what they will do to replace the affordable housing, the rest of the development is a relentless loss of affordable housing and we need 1,000 units for at least 17 year. He asks how many tiny houses he could put there, we can build houses for $3,500 and we could get a lot of bang for the buck wtih $7M. We are one of the cities like Portland that didn’t build parks until the 50s. He says we should examine if this is a need or want.
Parks, Real Estate, Planning and City Attorney staff are asked to answer questions. DeMarb asks for an overview. Bill Fruhling says that the discussion about the need for a park have been going on for 5 years – to address the shortage of parks in the area for the 1,000s of units they are building. the council passed a resolution to negotiate with land owners, that didn’t get much. This is the best they got, plan commission approved it, parks will look at it this week and it will be at the council at the next meeting. This is a team effort between departments that has been going on for years.
DeMarb asks about a picture of what they are talking about and what has been built around there. Fruhling says the staff report has a map on page 5 that shows all the development in a 5 mile radius, in the last 20 years there have been 2500 new dwelling units built, half in the last 5 years and 600 new units under construction or in the approval process.
DeMarb asks Parks staff about the number of people needed for parks, what is the necessity.
Bill is points out items on the map, the site is an acre, there are 6 apartment buildings and the Ambassador and the map in the staff report shows the new development and the downtown plan continues to look for more dense development. He says the larger rooftops is the new development.
Mayor says that they looked at a target area identified in the plan. Staff dialed it down a little says Fruhling, they looked at several possibilities. Kaye Rutlegde says that the Parks and Open Space plan also calls for looking for some property. She says the downtown plan says there is 80 feet of park per resident and the rest of the city is 1100 sq ft. The new development has mad it worse, there are more people without more parkland. We are finding that the parks have are getting heavily used and that is hard on the parks.
DeMarb asks about the affordable housing, these apartments aren’t affordable, maybe I’m wrong. Dan Rolfs says that Affordable is in the eye of the beholder. These are older units, and therefore less expensive. One of the conclusions staff came up with, if we are going to build a new park, we will have to use condemnation power unless we buy options and let them sit there for years and expire. We can’t find a group of willing sellers, to have development move forward.
DeMarb asks again about affordable housing, what median income, 60% or 40% or 30% of AMI. Do we know if these apartments fall in this range. Rolfs says that he doesn’t know.
The mayor said something – but I didn’t hear it – he could have said that it is in the high 40% range. But then again maybe not.
Barbara McKinney asks why they picked this one acre. Fruhling says it was mostly location. He says the development is happening faster than they thought, this was an area planned for less dense development. This is less intense. He says the park is for the additional residential density. Adding the north side of the street allows for sun exposure, if it was on the other side of the block and development happened as recommended it would block the sun most of the time. He says the size and shape of the site was good for programming. They won’t develop this park a lot, he talks about a vacant lot on Gorham where people hang out and play Frisbee and that is the type of use they expect. He says a corner lot has more visibility for public safety. He says people will use this for a cut through and that will add to safety.
Mayor interrupts for 5:00 Board of Health meeting. They move to recess this meeting.
SPECIAL MEETING – BOARD OF HEALTH BUDGET
County Board Supervisors from Personnel and Finance join them. Board of Public Health staff joins them. They introduce themselves.
Janelle Heinrich, Director of the Public Health Department, says it is a cost to continue budget. The presentation in city and county budgets are a little different. They are increasing fees and hope to add a position for Environmental Health. They are looking to equity and how to have entry level positions in the department. She says they have never spent all their supplies and want to take 35,000 to add a .35 position to aanother .65 position to have a public health planner.
Sup. John Hendrick asks about the EOC oversight of hiring since it is city and county. She says all the hiring is done through the county.
Sarah Eskrich asks about the position and how it would be funded in the future. Heinrich says that they learned munis better, but they don’t expect to ask for more money.
Verveer asks if they have salary detail yet. Finance staff say no. Heinrich says that they don’t have it yet, they are down a position. Verveer says that a bilingual position makes sense and he wants to know what the new position will do vs. what a staff does now. Staff says they will take on the lower risk establishments and it can be done by a technician, the higher complex establishments will be done at the sanitation level. Doug Voegli says that they will be hiring at the top of their positions and have a change to move up. Verveer asks if this staff will go with sanitarians since they are bilingual. Voegli says yes.
Shiva Bidar asks if they can break down the FTE’s in each of the areas of public health.
They adjourn and go back to the recessed meeting.
BACK TO BOE RECESSED MEETING – DOWNTOWN PARK ISSUE
Mayor Paul Soglin says this is not the first time they have used eminent domain to get parkland in the downtown, James Madison Park was half its size and through eminent domain and federal grants they were able to double the size. He says a number of parks serve more than just the immediate neighbors and host city wide events (Warner and Elver). The same is true of several of the downtown parks. He talks about festivals and ski shows. He says there is green space at the University, but it belongs to the UW, its not open to the public and a lot of our residents downtown are not UW students.
Barbara McKinney says that this was under discussion for 5 years and there were many new units in the area, she asks about the lawn usage and the condemnation and the property owners. There are 78 rental units, 130 residents, UW and other students. The question is . .. where are these students going, in terms of displacement.
Mayor says under law, they are required to provide relocation services. Doran Viste (from City Attorney’s office) says that if the residents stay more than 90 days or ride out their leases they don’t have to. McKinney asks about this being a 2 year process. Viste says it could take 2 years. McKinney says to take this property which is 1 acre and propose to continue growth, but you are taking units and displacing people – how does this balance. Fruhling says they were focused on the best location for the park and this is what they determined. There is nothing in the existing properties that requires them to be affordable. And nothing makes them stay there and not tear it down and build something new. Although today the units are rented at those prices, nothing locks that in beyond the existing leases.
McKinney says that the proposal doesn’t follow the downtown plan, can you speak to that. Fruhling says that plans are general, but in this case we had a couple block area that indicated this was the optimal location for a park, this property wasn’t identified in particular, these properties tough the outside of the target area, but the language in the plan says it should be in the general area. The plan also has criteria to consider and they did consider that. Once they got to more specific properties, this seemed consistent and the plan commission decided it was at their meeting.
Marsha Rummel asks about eminent domain. Doren Viste says the property owner is against condemnation, he says the letter from the property owner should be taken with a grain of salt, he doesn’t think the process was defective, he doesn’t think the legal issues are a problem, this is a policy issue. Rummel asks about the Kelo case, Viste says that was about development, this is about a park. Viste says we do condemnation routinely, the last one we did was Doty’s that was a “slow take” process. If we want to assemble land for a park, this seems to be the only way to do it.
Rummel asks about the MIfflin/Bassett area and the angst they had during the downtown plan. Fruhling says the downtown plan was a 4 year process, most areas of the downtown fell into place quickly but the Mifflin area from the beginning to end seemed to be in flux, there were special meetings about the area. Some thought it was a major new growth area and others liked the scale of the housing and neighborhood feel in the middle of the city. They were affordable units for students. For the entire 4 year process, it went back and forth and at the end of the day they decided to let the area redevelop and that is what we have been seeing. There was also a recognition that this is what should happen.
Mo Cheeks asks about the ratio of parkland to people (80 vs 1100 sq feet). What does this park bring the ratio to downtown. No one knows, Fruhling says it is negligible. Rutledge says we are losing green space where people can sun bathe or read a book or get out of their small apartments, this park would provide that. Cheeks says that is an important public amenity, but some of the new properties are providing this but not for the public.
Cheeks asks if they measure distance to a park? How far should it be. Rutledge says 1/4 for a mini park and 1/2 mile for larger park. Cheeks asks if it is still deficient in the 1/4 mile range. Fruhling says Britting have is a little over 1/4 mile. Cheeks asks what % of residents are not within 1/4 mile of a park. Rutledge struggles to answer and I didn’t hear the answer . . . booo . . . stupid room 260.
Cheeks asks Verveer if he hears about a need for a park. Verveer says that it is an issue that has come up for several years, especially with the new development. He says that impact fees are an issue and the developers often ask where their impact fees go since there aren’t new parks downtown.
Mayor asks for a measurement from law park to shoreline of Lake Mendota and then how far to James Madison an dBB Clarke and the closest park to the south. Rummel mentions Peace Park, Mayor says it not suitable. He has more parks he wants included and not included.
Sarah Eskrich asks about the role of private developers in creating green space for their residents. Rutledge says that the park impact fee requires that any redevelopment that increases residential units they have to dedicate park land or pay a few in lieu of dedication. In many cases downtown they don’t get land because the sites are so small and then they can use the fees for park deficient areas. This is deficient, in many of the other areas that are deficient there are some parks, this is more than other areas of the city. Fruhling talks about usable open space but that is often balconies, common spaces and roof tops.
Eskrich asks about set back requirements – fruhling says usually downtown you don’t see that. Eskrich asks about how much space is being dedicated. Fruhling says they haven’t calculated that. Eskrich asks about restrictions on usage of UW land. Fruhling says however they want, for their students, not the public. They did include the capital grounds in the calculations, but didn’t include university. Eskrich asks about all of the land parks maintains downtown, what are operations like. Rutledge says Peace Park, James Madison, Law, Brittingham and State St. Mall Concourse and there are quite a few areas, this park in terms of workload is contemplated as passive recreational park, while alot of people might use it, it won’t be a athletic field that requires additional maintenance. Eskrich asks what impact fees could be used for? Are there challenges in using the fees for maintenance and upkeep? Viste says that state statutes says there are parkland and park dedication fees. One is for acquiring land, we have to spend it or return it and it has lots of money. It can only be used for legal costs. The development fund can be for improvements. This is from the land dedication impact fee, it has to be used in a certain period of time.
Rummel asks what will take 2 years, what is next if approved. Viste says there is a memo with the process. First there is information that must be sent to the owners, there will be appraisals, they will make an offer, if not accepted then they petition for condemnation, they go to court to establish the value, the city can pay or back out but hey would have to pay costs, if they proceed it can be appealed. There are a lot of court hearings, this is different than the transportation where they get the title up front and then argue about the value, here they argue about the value and then get title. Rummel asks if the fees can be used for legal work, its seems no.
Cheeks asks about the amount of work Parks is doing and the staff not increasing, he asks Rutledge about the plan to keep up with adding parks. Rutledge says that each year they have supplemental requests. She says if they need more staff they have to weigh that. This is something they have been trying to educate people about. Cheeks asks about the city continuing to grow and how they will keep up, when do they reach a tipping point. Rutledge says they evaluate that when they do the Parks and Open Sapce planning, the last time was 2011. She says in the future they may no longer be able to do so. Parks are one of the things that makes Madison great and we hope to keep up with this goal. Cheeks asks if the parks fees are paid at the same time, what is the ratio. Viste says that the council sets the fee, they are taken out at the time the permits are issued, it is a strict formula. The developer might pay one check, but it is split. On the outskirts of the city there may be other impact fees as well.
DeMarb asks if 1100 sq feet is what you are aiming for, what is the goal. Rutledge says 1100 sq ft per single family home for the fees, for multi-family it is 700 sq ft per unit. DeMarb asks if 4 or 5 students in an apartment, they are the same. DeMarb clarifies this is per square household.
Mayor asks Natalie Erdman to find the 600, 700, 800 sq ft apartments in the area and let us know what the retns are and what they would need to do to be affordable. Erdman says that none of the properties have rent restrictions on them, they could be renovated and could have any income level person living there and they might not be serving low income people.
DeMarb says that the circumstances around this are unique and she hopes that items come before them that will be retrofitting, how do you make green space where there isn’t. DeMarb says that they have parks but not other amenities and to get those amenities we will need to retrofit and this won’t be popular. As policy makers we need to get our arms around this, how do we make neighborhoods what we need them to be today? Sometimes that is difficult.
Verveer says they started this discussion a few weeks ago, he appreciates that they supported the budget amendment. The reality is that this area is the most park deficient given the densities there. And that isn’t going to stop any time soon. He says there are thousands of new units in the area. Hub II (The James) broke ground in the last few days. That space is no longer available. Unlike your constituents that have convenient green space, his constituents do not, its an issue that has become more acute. He’s surprised that the property owners aren’t here, another space they own was looked at and they said they were going to develop it and they haven’t done that. Verveer says the numbers are in “units” and not in terms of “beds” and we don’t know how many people are available here, that hasn’t been calculated. When you look at the number of units, many are 2, 3 and 4 bedroom units. The number of bedrooms is increasing by leaps and bounds. Private swimming pools and balconies don’t cut it. The rear yards are often all parking lots, not a good land use, but that is the reality. The backyards aren’t options for constituents. As for the affordable housing, he ways that these are market rate. Yes, compared to the new development they are more affordable given the age of the property. Some were built in the 19th century – and you get what you pay for. They are in no way housing that the working poor is using. These are UW undergraduate housing, they tend to move every year and even tho this has gotten alot of attention, no residents seems concerned that they won’t be able to live there in a few years. He says that a development across the street is more affordable, they will be maintained as affordable, they will be tax exempt. They will be more affordable and guaranteed to be affordable. He says the MDC staff surveyed and found that their units are more affordable than the existing old housing stock. Verveer says that they learned about the park impact fees during the budget amendment and the park impact fee is not what is being used, this is the citywide fund and in the years he has been here not one penny has been spent downtown. He can name where it is being used, where no development is supporting that. This is a real issue for his constituents. He says developers often ask where this money will go. He says that he shouldn’t say we need our fair share, we get tremendous benefits in the budget, but we have not benefits from new parks downtown. The residents should be able to enjoy parks like the rest of the city. The Plan Commission approved the resolution unanimously. We are being asked to join the plan commission in supporting this.
McKinney says that her question about what this is being driven by was answered. She is concerned about affordable housing and what the priority of this space at this time, what is driving this, why is now the time.
Verveer says this has been discussed for many years, the neighborhood association has also been asking. This is not a new issue. This has been an incremental issue. Real Estate staff haven’t been able to find willing sellers so we need to go the eminent domain route, they don’t take this lightly, the last case was Overture. Time is of the essence because we have lost out on other spots with redevelopment. Options have been executed as we were approaching developers. This location was recommended by staff. They aren’t in the process of redevelopment or options, but that has been an issue with other properties.
Mayor says that this has been an ongoing problem for 25 years. The downtown area has not seen any work in this are besides the Central Park which has many different kind of uses (its a regional park with the skateboard park). The challenge is the location and cost. The problem was delayed for a number of years because of the desire to have a downtown plan. Now that we have a downtown plan, staff started working on locations. He says that the recreational space as used in the downtown on rare occasions you will see people with a blanket and picnicking in Peace Park, it wasn’t designed for that purpose. A little bit to the west on Dayton St. you will find students from the dorms using the lawn of the Kohl Center which has been adopted because there isn’t enough space in the southeast dorms. As someone who lived in the area was go to the dorms or leave downtown. On the site of the Ambassador there was a house that he lived in and that is how he knows the area. The staff worked on a number of options, they might find something if a number of owners come forward. He could find better spaces but its too complicated even with condemnation. Students are usually in this area for 4 years and they don’t have the staying power and longevity to see this through, freshmen now will be lucky if they see this as a park space. On backyard parking, all the rest of Madison created the demand for the illegal utilization of the backyard parking, most of it is commuters. The use is basically illegal. He says we have an important legacy here and we have been a very diligent city in terms of working on parks and open spaces but we have done a poor job in the downtown area and the Isthmus, this is not the only neighborhood that is deficient. Whether we will have the perseverance to continue the expansion of James Madison Park is another thing.
Exkrich voted against this, Verveer and Mayor are right that this is a policy decision and this is the only way to do it, but she says she was a student here, it is a mobile community, we accept density downtown because we have expected that and there is a burden on developers to bring open space into their development and we get what we approve. She sees stresses as maintenance of current parks, we need to think about where we are using our fees and if we are collecting money that is not being used, we need to make a change, we need to support the parks we have and she feels this area is well served by greens space due to the fantastic location it is in.
Rummel supports it, we build a lot of buildings lot line to lot line, buildings on steroids, there are not public spaces that are open, but on the other hand there are 1000s of people that deserve a place to hang out. She does struggle with the loss of affordable housing, they rents are affordable and it could change, but it hasn’t. Because we have made decisions to give up the area that was single family and 2 flats and turn it into a high rise area, we will be losing this housing stock. We acknowledge we are in a crisis, but how are we going to replace it. We just say, oh sorry, old, underutilized and tear it down and lose more affordable housing. We can’t just build to the high end of the market, we need workforce housing. We are losing this more affordable housing, this stock has been paid for and we need to balance those things. We need more open space, if nothing else we need a place to put mopeds – they are taking over the green spaces we do have. She supports it.
DeMarb supports it, this is in the downtown plan. We asked staff to look at it and implement it. Maybe it should be revised, plans don’t remain current past 5 years typically, she doesn’t know if it should be updated, but we approved it and told staff to work on it and implement it. This is a policy statement that if we are going to create the plans we need to support them and the staff working on them. She understands retrofit is necessary and painful. Condemnation is a last resort. We need more planning not less. We need a review of this. AS of tonight she supports it.
Passes, Eskrich and McKinney vote no.
ITEM 20 – Change in pay dates in city payroll
A staff person representing former unions is supporting it assuming that they wait til after the holidays to implement it. Other staff are there to support it, including AFSCME 6000.
Verveer asks if they have copies of the second substitute.
Dave Schmiedicke, Finance Director, has a presentation – He says the changes proposed is a best practice for large employers, increasing the time between the end of the pay period and pay time. He says it will increase the accuracy of information, it will reduce costs and better service delivery to employees. Right now the pay period ends on a Saturday and they get paid Friday. They have 12 working hours to get time keeping down. The State and UW allow and additional week. If they move to the following Friday they will have more time to get the work done and better accuracy with the information. They have complex collective bargaining units and embedded much in the employee handbook and that takes time to make sure everyone is getting paid accurately. If they could do this in October, they would have an additional week. They couldn’t do that all at once, but they have a transition plan to implement it by April and in April they would get paid on the first and the 18th, then May 6 instead of April 29. This is in a 3 paycheck month, they split the wait between several pay periods and then they would be on a new schedule. He says that if employees have a hardship, they have $500 advance people can get on the 15th and it would get paid back over 6 pay dates. They show how it impacts the lowest paid workers, they worked with employee associations to figure out how to impact them the least.
Verveer asks about the drafters analysis which doesn’t say “why now”. We have been doing this since 1962, they think this is cuz of munis or the police department, can you respond to that. Schmiedicke says the new system is an opportunity to make the change. Time is being entered by the staff itself. They missed an opportunity 20 years ago, this is a change talked about in payroll circles for years and the handbook isn’t going away. They feel like with munis they have more real time information. Each payroll ahs charging embedded in it. This will improve services to everyone. He says Metro is also an issue, Engineering, Fire and Streets, not just the police department.
Verveer appreciates the compromise that was worked out.
Motion passes. The second substitute.
Item 21 – Garver Feedmill
They don’t go into closed session. Dan Rolfs from Real Estate says things are moving along, they will have finalized agreements on November 3rd, they have the meat and potatoes done and are finishing up pieces on the side. They hope to have it back to council in December after it goes to Landmarks, Plan and Parks.
Verveer asks if Baum has been awarded tax credits. Rolfs says that there are moving through the process. Verveer asks if this is a concern. Rolfs say its not a major concerns to staff.
Passes
Item 22 – TIF for Galaxie Phase 2
Joe Gromacki, TIF Coordinator, talks about 4.4M in Phase 1, 205 apartments, 34,000 commercial and a grocery and 501 parking stalls and a roof top garden ($440,000). Phase one nearing completion, the parking portion for the grocery needs to be completed in phase 2. The phase 2 proposal was $1.8M, which is 92% of the TIF, that is unfeasible, so they want the $440,000 for the rooftop garden to be transferred and for it to be done at a lesser cost. We are unclear how that solves the problem. Gromacki says what is problematic is that it is $1.5M and that is 75% of the TIF and we don’t exceed 55% without an exception. Also, this is a tight timeline to analyze the project. We have 50 pounds of mud for a 5 pound sack. That being the case, we need authorization to negotiate, not to exceed 75%, that is unusual. The actual number could be less and then it would be a savings for the city. The maximum would be 1.5M that could come before them. This is 50 market rate apartments, 21,800 commercial, 66,000 retail and 190 parking stalls. There is only one exception, the condition of the TID is improving, it can cover its expenses but there isn’t much of excess increment for cushion. The first 9 years it was $400,000, its starting to be better now. With the final $1.5M that is the final amount under the current project plan, for additional projects there would need to be a project plan amendment in 2016. There are some things to discuss in closed session.
Rummel asks how they would be out of compliance with the lease for the grocery? What’s the nexus? Gromacki says its the 198 parking stalls that need to be done, only 100 would be done. The complicating factor is phase 2 also has a gap and they need the additional parking from phase 2. Rummel asks about Zellers, she has approved this, she understands the compressed nature of the deal and told them to proceed until she returns. They will complete in the next few days – they need the term sheet by Thursday to get it in legistar for the 20th.
Verveer asks about the Nov 3rd deadline, is that the council meeting? Gromacki says if that doesn’t happen then deadlines are missed and they can’t get financing to complete phase 2. Verveer says this is Festival Foods parking – yes. You should have seen what they wanted us to do. Verveer says to explain the roof top garden again. Gromacki says it will be in a different location, not on top of the grocery. Verveer says that he remembers the discussion – they ask the developer to come up. Chris,the developer, says that it was part of the overall project – for phase 1, as they talked to operators, they couldn’t find a place that had enough sun, in phase 2, they found a better location, it was always part of the project, it just shifted sides of the roof. Verveer asks if the size changes? He says they are equivalent, they are both designed to be expandable if it is a desirable feature. They are moving it from Livingston to Patterson.
DeMarb asks if everything else promised was delivered. Gromacki says the biodigester was dropped, it wasn’t a safe option in a dense neighborhood, one exploded so it was taken out. The passive haus hasn’t been started yet, but it will be. They ask what it is. It is a measurement. DeMarb says Phase 1 is not completed and funds were given for it, but now we are being asked for Phase 2. Gromacki says it is a separate loan. We have to look at it like it is $1.5M loan, we have to estimate how much TIF it supports. Phase 1 is reduced from 4.4 to 3.9M, it was at 60% and would be at 54%. The phase 2 is lesser value so the $1.5M in TIF is a higher percentage. Matt Mikolajewski says that the rooftop garden money is in escrow.
Mo Cheeks says that the developer was not timely in making the request, what would have been timely. Gromacki says 2 or 3 months before. We have until Nov 3rd to decide, that was the problem set before staff, theoretically the developer knew, we didn’t, the lease we got was redacted, we had no way to know this was coming. This is not the optimal way to do it. Cheeks says that you said it doesn’t matter, but it does when they are asking for an exception.
The move to go into closed session. Passes.
When they came out of closed session after 20 – 30 minutes, they approved the report. They then took a 10 minute recess. The rest of the report is here.
