Day 2, City Budget (Operating, Part II)

See Part 1 here. It’ll be about 2 hours in when I finish the first post. Or 2.5 hours . . . I started this around 8pm.

AMENDMENTS
To see additional language on these amendments, look here.

11 – Direct Appropriations – Reduce funding for the HR & Diverse Hiring Strategies Study by Alder Cheeks, Alder Eskrich, Alder Clear, Alder Bidar-Sielaff, Alder Rummel, Alder Hall (90,000)
Cheeks says we need to do this, but it can be done internally. This is about fiscal responsibility and he is excited to work with HR to do this and he is excited about the work they have been doing. He talks about the city membership in a RESJI group and HR has done some reports – a guide for supervisors and a hiring report. He didn’t create the language on his own, this is to support the initiative but to do it internally.

Zellers wants to know what the intent of the study was, was it more than about diverse hiring. Mayor calls on his own staff, Enis Ragland. He says the initial intent is to review the whole department. He says that alot falls on supervisors and there are other models that we should look at, should it be decentralized. Managers don’t hire often and the support from Human REsources is inconsistent. This isn’t just about diversity.

Zellers asks if the group we area member of, can they assess things outside of diversity. Enis says their focus is on diversity. Zellers says her concern with the amendment is that this doesn’t address the overall study. This isn’t the kind of thing we can study ourselves. She would like to hear more input and isn’t sure how she will vote.

Mayor asks if Brad Wirtz, HR Director has an opinion. He says he finds value in both proposals. The original proposal would shed like on what you heard and if we are centralized or decentralized – he thinks it would be helpful for the organization. (yikes!)

Eskrich says this wasn’t requested by the department, it was added by the mayor and we were told it was about diversity. So it was clear in our discussion that we have an HR department in that area and she thanks Cheeks for addressing this in a collaborative way. She hopes they support the amendment.

McKinney sees an “and” in this. She asks what being a member of this group does. Wirtz says that the RESJI team has the membership, not HR. McKinney says that the police can’t evaluate themselves and this would be an investment in looking at how we do business, hire, promote and advertise and how that impacts the direction of the city. She would want to make sure the HR department would evaluate this, but we have been asking this question over and over. If this means the “and” means we do both, she thinks this should be looked at.

Bidar supports this, she says the executive budget says this is about diversity and equity. She says that we can use this membership to learn and benchmark. That is the reason alders go to conferences, and we need to make choices about our priorities and we have to make some cuts and we can do this here. This doesn’t appear to be a huge need by the HR director.

Soglin says that he worked with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity and they are not experts in other areas of HR, they might touch on it, but this is not their core mission. There are things we are beginning to learn and changes are taking place throughout the United States. We banned the box, but that is one small element of the hiring process. They are changing the way they are hiring and they might hire people who don’t have all the skills but can learn them in the first 3 – 6 months. There are challenges and we don’t know all of them, we don’t know what we don’t know. This is an attractive place to work and we get qualified candidates and we can write demanding and tight job descriptions and we will get As. That may have a disparate impact that is not necessary. Maybe there are folks that are Bs that can become As. We are filtering them out of the process before they can get here. We have had some top management positions where we should have 40, 60, 80 applications and we have 15 or 20 and we need to find out why we didn’t get more applicants in the positions. WE have different needs in many departments. We have to look wider and broader in terms of our thinking. WE have to figure out why we are filtering out people. Maybe its the competition or people who choose to go into public service get better offers. He doesn’t have answers to these questions. If we do the study we will get a better understanding. Maybe this is a universal problem. We have been successful in diversity in some areas, not in others, he thinks he know why. If we are right, perhaps we need to act upon that. Why does the Madison Police Department get a diversified, qualified workforce (race, sexual orientation, age, gender), its not just the best in the country, but in the city. The Fire Department uses the same staff and policies – but wheresoever along the way, this isn’t in the text books, he knows he taught the class, (he says oops). He thinks somewhere they broke the glass ceiling and the word spread but we didn’t get their with other agencies. Or maybe he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he thinks it would be good to get a view from the outside t reach the goals he knows we are all committed to.

McKinney says that she has heard employees talk about how they are treated and positions and classifications. She has also realized the city has lost some very qualified individuals, and not always because of more dollars. Some left because of policies and practices in departments and management. When she saw the class of recruits and I wondered why they want to be a police person, they were a diverse group of people. The reality is that the city has some problems in hiring and maintaining and the relationship with management. We are setting priorities and if hiring and HR is important, and we want to be a standard, then we should look at this. Priorities are just based on how we are setting them in this budget and this is a good investment as we look at where we want the city to move. She doesn’t support this amendment.

Zellers says that she won’t support it either, she hears we need to cut in appropriate places and be conscious of where we are spending out dollars. Hiring and retention and diversity is fundamental to who we are as a city and we can’t audit ourselves. I did hear a level of frustration that this could a help in validating somethings and that there could be ideas for improvements. There are firms that could help us do that. Her sense is that the membership group is limited and she won’t support this.

Cheeks asks the mayor about his comment about the membership group not having expertise in writing job descriptions. Can you clarify the objective. Cheeks says he based his comments on what is written in the budget.

Mayor Paul Soglin says the over-riding concern is diversity and equity in the hiring process – that is the core focus, but there might be other issues that we have that might not be about diversity. It might be management practices in dealing with promotion. It may not have any prejudice in it or any form of discrimination or disparate impact. There are many issues involved here. There is alot to be done, if Ragland articulates on part of the issue and I talk about another, we are not talking about things that are mutually exclusive but are aligned. Cheeks asks about what the goals and objectives of this would be and can we fund it appropriately, what is the basis for $100,000. It that sufficient? Mayor says he will speak generically about comments over the last few days, the budget amendments weren’t out until Friday at noon. There was a weekend and then we went right into the capital budget. We don’t know the thinking and motivation of the amendment. Between the two budget there are 45 or 42 amendments and we spend hours here and one of the things we learned during the past year – instead of going through questions – a staff gives a comprehensive presentation. There weren’t enough work hours between Friday and yesterday and the time that went into all the amendments. It would have been nice if on this amendment and all of them, we were only consulted on 3 of the amendments, if these issues are so important it would have been nice to contact them or their staff any time in the last 3 months. That would have given us more time to be more thorough and we would have been out of here a long time ago, so he apologizes if we are not giving the best answers off the top. It’s been less than 2 working days that we have seen the amendment sand the capital budget was one working day. We could have done research and have answers. He doesn’t know if the $100,000 is enough, he is concerned it might not be, but he thinks it is reasonable, its their best estimate and he doesn’t want to make it $200,000 because that would be the low bid.

Cheeks says this is his second time and he will wrap it up. He knows the mayor has been working on it for three months but we’ve only had it since the beginning of October. To be fair, within 50 minutes the mayor had a list of things he would threaten to veto the budget over. He doesn’t think this is about time. He says that if he had been consulted he might have wanted to double this, we saw the MAC report in May, the employees wanted this exact same issue. 5 years into this administration the culture isn’t want we need to be a place for us. Its word of mouth and that is why we likely won’t get the applications, the culture doesn’t work and that’s uncomfortable and culture starts at the top. He says that this is something that he is interested in, this was fiscal responsbility based on waht the mayor wrote. If this is bigger, then so be it, he supports something ambitious and then he will put more money into it with stronger outcomes. Our management needs to change the culture and needs training. The way this conversation has evolved, he can see it both way. He won’t tell them how to vote on this. If the Mayor has grand ambitions to address the MAC report, then lets do that.

DeMarb says if the purpose of the study is different than what is articulated in the budget, then we need an amendment to the budget if this amendment fails. What is in the budget is not what the Mayor and Enis talked about. She says what is in the budget language is not the intention of the mayor and his staff.

McKinney starts out asking a question but I have no idea what her statement ended up being. She’s asking about a substitute amendment and how to do it, I think? She wants to know if there needs to be a substitute and asks who would put that forward.

Voice vote too close – 6 nos are Harrington McKinney, Skidmore, Verveer, Zellers, Baldeh and Carter. Motion passes. (Palm and Kemble absents)

12 – Finance – Eliminate Funding for Employee Benefit Review by Alder Eskrich, Alder Phair, Alder Clear (50,000)
Eskrich says that when we hire a consultant we need to be clear about what we are funding and what we expect. She isn’t convinced this is the best use of our funds at this time to look at our employee insurance programs. She says we can put this off for a year to be clear and this is not at the top of the priorities and we need cost savings.

Mayor asks Dave Schmiedicke (Finance Director) – what are our health insurance costs annually. $35 – 36 million be year. What have the annual increases for us been – not including the employees. Reductions because of the changes in Act 10 and increases in employee contributions, but without that it would be as high of 6 – 7%. Mayor says we are in the state insurance pool. He says the state is considering closing the pool and looking at alternatives. Employee groups are asking about self insurance. It is possible that in the next few years there will be a significant change in our ability to participate i the state insurance pool and we need to think about the alternatives. He says not participating in the pool is a viable consideration, this cost is small compared to the consequences if we are not prepared if changes are made. Talk about stupidity of being penny wise and pound foolish.

Eskrich says point of order. She says this is short term and long term disability. Mayor says he didn’t realize that. We have similar issues, people are living longer, our care needs are changing, the availability of support is an issue. Our plan is old and outdated and they think they can save 6 figures annually. It hasn’t been reviewed for 30 plus years says the contract was signed in 1974 and its time.

missed some – had to pass the candy to the next row.

King asks if we would be looking at FMLA and carriers and program design. Wirtz says carriers and program design. King says there have been alot of changes in the world and we look at this all the time and to the chagrin of our employees make changes all the time and $50,000 is a small amount of money. He is inclined to support, benefits are a huge piece of the pie. We ought to review it.

DeMarb says this is not her area of expertise at all and she was looking at this and there was confusion about insurances . . .and I took a break . . . sorry, its been 3.5 hours . . . .

I came back to the room to hear DeMarb says that anything that hasn’t been reviewed in 30 years needs to be reviewed.

Clear moves an amendment to add the word “disability” to be clear. He says at Board of Estimates discussed a proposal to look at health insurance and he wants to make sure there is no mission creep.

Gruber has a point of order about the amendment that if they are eliminating it there is no need for an amendment. Clear will work on it.

Bidar says that things should be reviewed on a regular basis, is there no capacity to do these reviews? Do we not have the expertise. Wirtz says someone from the outside would have to come in for this expertise and area of insurance.

Bidar asks if there has been discussion with employees about this? Wirtz says no, as far as he knows.

Bidar supports the amendment, she thinks that this isn’t clear, and before we engage a consultant we have to have an internal assessment about what the priorities are and what the employees want and then have the consultant see what the options are. That is how she would do it, she thinks it premature. She says employees should have been asked about this. $50,000 won’t be for a consultant and employee engagement. She says this is not ready.

Eskrich says she can’t say it better than Bidar just did and it highlights why they should support this amendment.

Clear says if the amendment fails, there will be an amendment to fix the language as he tried to do it previously. He asks why this is in finance instead of HR. Schmiedicke says it is a joint effort, payroll has some interaction, but it will be a joint effort.

Motion failed on the voice vote, but there was a call for roll call vote. Amendment passses – the no’s were Gruber, King, Rummel, Skidmore, Verveer, Baldeh and Carter. (Kemble and Palm gone)

9:10 the council takes a “10 minute” break.

13 – Mayor – Transfer Position to Oversee the Alcohol Licensing Process by Alder Eskrich, Alder Bidar-Sielaff, Alder Ahrens (50,000)
9:25
Eskrich says when the Food Policy and Alcohol Coordinator became the Food Policy, that created a need in the clerk’s office to support alcohol licensing. She says that the role in the clerk’s office needs to be filled and the mayor should absorb this gap created by the creation of the food policy coordinator. When we add we have to cut and we have been adding alot and this could be cost savings and it could be determined by the executive.

Verveer asks about if the position would be in the mayor’s office or the clerk’s office. Clerk’s office.

Mayor says this is a series of amendments that is retaliation for disagreements they have had over the years. He hears from council members and if you think about it, the positions in the mayor’s office compared to Midtown or other added staff, that weren’t all asked to make cuts, were they? No. If you look at the sloppiness of the amendment you see what is going on here. Mayor says originally the alcohol positions were in the clerks office. The UW and city works to do a alcohol policy coordinator for issues on campus. Then it became all liquor licenses, then it was change at the request of the mayor to include food and beverage. Then the UW pulled the grant, so we absorbed it 100%. At this point, it did not make sense to have an admin function in the Mayor’s office, that didn’t make sense. The function is moved to the clerk’s office, but the workload remains and we need $50,000. There’s not much growth in the mayors office in the last 6 years, we’ve been adding positions and operating expenses like crazy. This $50,000 is designed to do one thing, to accomplish what Clear tried to do at Board of Estimates, lets stop horsing around here. We are driving public policy to be defined in relationship to the mayor and you’re hurting the public. The nonsense on the previous amendment where 100’s of thousands of dollars would be saved, by reviewing the disability insurance. He can write a novel in each amendment and we can triple the budget. We are picking out things that aren’t perfect that they didn’t so for so much of the rest of the budget. What happened to demand that everything go out to bid? He will be blunt to this, his staff tells them not to antagonize the council, you want to win votes. He is here to talk about the larger issue, our disagreements have spilled over to the point – like the legislature and congress – where the public suffers. There is no justification for these votes and he can be determined as you are, but he will put on thing ahead, the public interest and looking out for the people of this city and the employees. Two votes back we did survey the employees through MAC and then look what you did. He asks how many cities would do that kind of study? WE could have done something about it, but you turned it down.

Clear wants to clarify that the alcohol and food policy coordinator was split into two positions. Mayor says that functions of alochol went to the clerks office and (oops, I got lost)

Bidar says she co-sponsors this because she wanted to have the larger policy discussion. She asked about this earlier, she wanted to understand what they do when they re-write the description and the work still needs to be done. She thought it went through an approval process. She knew there would be a fiscal impact. She says this happens often and she wants them to know that we see the fiscal impact later when we have no choice. She thinks we need both positions. That is the reason to have the amendment so we understand where the need for funding came from. This is not a hill that she is going to die on. She says that she apprciates his comments and she is glad he is talking to alders, but its not me. He says calling my female colleague sloppy and foolish and called us stupid and inept and teabaggers and does not lead to good civil discourse and she hopes he takes responsibility for the words he uses in discourse with the council, who like it or not, were elected by our district.

King says that all that aside, he thinks this is a policy concern for the city and it makes sense the role would be divided and we have two roles. We can argue about the process, but $50,000 isn’t going to be removed from the budget. Unless we have specific rationale why, we can’t jsut say its up to the mayor to figure it out, if we want to do this we should give direction, he won’t support it.

Clear asks about Wolfe leaving city service and his recommendation for two positions. Mayor says Wolfe recommended it before that. Clear asks how this all happened. Mayor wasn’t involved in the detail, he sent staff to take it to HR. Clear says someone made the deicsion. Mayor says Brad Wirtz is here. Clear asks when the second decision was determined. Clear says he remembers the title change. Mayor says two things were done . . . (lost me). Wirtz says that you hired the Food Policy Coordinator, it paid the same as the person who left. Changing the title came later. He thinks that is what they did but he can’t remember. Verveer confirms that is how it was done. He agrees with Bidar’s account. He says Ragland and the HR staff has an ordinance amendment but the position description was posted previous to that. Verveer says additional staff wasn’t until the 1st of the year.

Clear still clarifying . . . seems like this is a way of boxing in the council. He understanding the motivation for the amendment because of how this happened.

Eskrich says we are tasked with reviewing the budget and finding savings to fund our priorities. She has worked with other cities people got their own budget and out of deference to the mayor she didn’t make the cuts. She points out room rentals, conferences and training and that would make up the $50,000. She hopes they can move quickly through the next amendments if they won’t take their checks and balances seriously.

DeMarb also now wants to clarify. Mark Wolfe left. It was changed to Food only. The alcohol position was moved to the clerks office, the clerk had a .5 person and left empty and they moved .5 alcohol position and now they are hiring a full time person. Clerk helps clarify. DeMarb seems like there are some things that are not best practices in terms of transparency but the money is where it needs to be. This became a 1.5 position, the clear has 1 and .5 is in the clerks office and so she can’t support this. THe council was backed into this without knowledge. And ALRC was without support.

Rummel won’t support the amendment and she wants to remind everyone that there will be a person dedicated to alcohol issues – Mark Wolfe was not doing this job to serve her constituents, he used to come to meetings and help, but his talents were redirected for a good cause.

Carter calls the question.

King is in the queue, “perhaps to make the same amendment” says Verveer. They move to a vote.

Amendment fails on a voice vote.

14 – Mayor – Eliminate funding for Deputy Mayor Reclassifications by Alder Clear, Alder Eskrich, Alder Hall (30,000)
Clear makes the motion but doesn’t speak to it.

Mayor says there is a handful of positions, this isn’t about the titles but its the classifications of 1s and 2s. These positions were all 2s before he returned to office. When he returned to office he wanted to save some money and requested that they take the positions as 1. Some of those people have left, one person had that position for 20 years, one was a career city employee and in discussing the work they do and what he has done is not fair, they all have the same level of responsibility and level of authority. They all should be at the higher level position. They perform work comparable to the department heads and in some cases have tremendous respect and their working relationship is collaborative but they don’t get the benefits a career person would get. No seniority, and that is a hit if you’ve done this for 14 or 25 years. So what they did in the budget was rectify a problem he shouldn’t have created 6 years ago to save money.

8 ayes, 10 nos motion fails. No votes – DeMarb, Eskrich, Hall, Phair, Ahrens, Bidar, Cheeks, CLear

15 – Metro – Examine the Feasibility of Increasing the Number of Allowable Bus Wraps by Alder Phair, Alder Cheeks, Alder Clear, Alder Hall 0
Phair thought this would be a common sense opportunity to look into and think about. He thinks the TPC should look into a policy change. He talked to staff and came up with this to find revenue for the city, for more money in the general fund. He doesn’t find the wraps to be offensive, some do.

Gruber strongly dislikes the the rider experience and the hypocrisy of banning billboards and then having rolling billboards, but realistically we need the revenue and until we have a Regional Transit Authority he begrudgingly supports this.

Hall like the wraps, its built in shade and its glamorous and it depends upon how you look at it. She points out this is a small amount of money, but every nickle and dime counts so lets look high and low.

Cheeks co-sponsored it – he is a bus rider and has no feelings about billboards – this stuff is all over and the market is dying, every year we waste is a missed opportunity, we should capitalize on it while we can make a couple bucks off it.

Baldeh says that since yesterday we have been spending money, so thank you for this and this is one amendment that should be unanimous because it is making money.

I didn’t hear any no votes. (but there must have been some . . .)

16 – Multiple – 1% Pay Increase for General Municipal Workers by Mayor Soglin, Alder Verveer 446,233 taxes, 143,073 (other funds)
Verveer explains what was testified about last night. But it took quite some time, as only Verveer can . . . sorry, love ya Mike!! This is because of the 311 agreement, and MPPOA . . . this is in keeping with the pay equity in the 2015 resolution.

Passes on a voice vote

17 – Parking – Parking Utility Information Clerk by Alder Zellers, Alder Kemble 21,000 (other funds, not city tax dollars)
Zellers says this came to her attention after the Board of Estimates – its front desk customer service. This has been hourly since 2012 to see if we need a permanent position, clearly we do. WE don’t pay benefits to hourly positions and she doesn’t think this is right. She urges support.

Passes on a voice vote

18 – Parks – Add 1 FTE Park Ranger Leadworker by Alder Rummel, Alder Cheeks, Alder Clear 39,788
Rummel has been working to get more rangers for years, they open shelters and bathrooms and you can call them when you have problems, sometimes the police need to be called, she thinks this will add capacity. WE only have a few park rangers and use seasonal workers. This will add more capacity.

Motion carries on a voice vote.

19 – Police – Police Detective Sergeant Promotion by Alder Eskrich, Alder DeMarb 4,450
Eskrich said the police wanted 3 positions, but given the violence we heard about, she thinks this is a compromise. She says this will start meeting their needs in a way that is fiscally responsible.

Passes on a voice vote.

20 – Public Health – Public Health Reduction of Med Drop Disposal Charge by Mayor Soglin, Alder Verveer (25,000)

Passes on a voice vote, no discussion.

21 – Public Health – Health and Wellness Events by Alder Phair, Alder Eskrich, Mayor Soglin 7,000

Phair says that he and Mayor Soglin are sponsors and that is reason enough to vote for it. Bidar recuses herself.

22 – Water – Double-fill Deputy Chief Administrative Officer by Alder Carter, Alder Ahrens 98,972 (other funds, not city tax dollars)

Carter moves adoption, asks for support.

Passes on a voice vote.

23 – Increase alder salaries – McKinney
2,000 increase after the 2017 elections. McKinney says this is not about equity or parity and its not to discount or roles, she won’t sell it to th alders, she wants them to vote it up or down.

Gruber says its a 15% increase and won’t support it.

Skidmore is against it.

Motion fails on voice vote. They call roll call and only Hall, McKinney, Rummel, Verveer, Baldeh, Carter and CLear.

ADOPTION OF THE OPERATING BUDGET
Dave Schniedicke says that they increased the budget by $619,096 over the Board of Estimates meeting.

Total expenditures are $300,304,741

Levy is $219,728,630

There is a 4.7% increase on the levy.

Average Value home will go up $82.86 which is a 3.55% increase.

They says their thank yous.

No comments, budget passes on a voice vote with no audible nos.

OTHER STUFF
Dave Schmiedicke is reading the whole resolution . . . is he trying drag out the meeting and win the bet? I’ve never seen this done before, usually they just give us the numbers to fill in the blanks.

Mayor says he wanted to say things about misinformation but since its late he will wait until later.

THe motion passes.

King moves adjournment.

10:28.

Chris Kelly from streets wins the bet. Won’t take the money, gives it to finance staff to go get a drink.