The committee asks questions about the Bus Rapid Transit Bus Route Study, Judge Doyle Square Consultant, Cross-fit Games closing Olin Boat launch and the 5-year Community Development plan.
Here’s the video if you want to follow along, its only 22 minutes.
GETTING STARTED
All members of the committee present: Alders Shive Bidar, Kieth Furman, Rebecca Kemble, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Donna Moreland and Mike Verveer plus Mayor Rhodes-Conway
Consent Agenda
- Item 2 (Madison Metro Study) is removed, but it is unclear by whom.
- Verveer has questions on 5 (Cross Fit closing Olin Park Boat Launch) and 11 (Community Development Consolidated 5-year plan).
- Furman has questions on number 3 (Judge Doyle Square Consulting).
Bidar moves agenda off all the rest of the agenda items with recommendations – 1 (fire department incident reporting system), 4 (fiscal note for community-scale solar projects), 6 (Madison Metro tire lease), 7 (facade improvement grant 828 E. Main), 8 (Facade Improvement Grant 824 E. Johnson), 9 ($1M for 11 affordable housing units), 10 ($1.8M for 1402 S. Park St. affordable housing) and 12 (Surveillance report).
Verveer asks to confirm that item 4 would be placed on file without prejudice. The Mayor says that is correct.
Those items all pass.
Authorizing the issuance of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a Metro Transit Network Structure Study
Alder Shiva Bidar moves adoption with the two additional with the two additional clauses recommended by the Transportation Policy and Planning Board (TPPB). It’s seconded.
NOTE: I have no idea what clauses they are adding because they are not in legistar that I can see. After the meeting Alder Mike Verveer and I figured out that they can see the changes recommended by TPPB on the internal version of legistar, but its not available externally because the minutes from that meeting are not yet approved.
NOTE: There is a version 3 that is now showing up that has the not yet made motion Bidar makes and the language which reads:
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the RFP will be approved by the Transportation Policy and Planning Board (TPPB) and that a member of the TPPB will serve on the selection committee for the consultant,
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Department of Transportation will forward their recommendation for a consultant to the TPPB for approval,
Alder Mike Verveer asks if they could be a little more specific in the fiscal note as to what this specific Metro Transit Network Structure Study might be estimated to cost. He says he doesn’t know if “Mike” is the one to answer that question?
“Mike” says he is not entirely sure how much money, he knows $1M was initially budgeted for this and it was reduced to $500,000. They have a note in the proposed RFP that the study is anticipated to cost between $300,000 and $500,000.
Bidar asks Laura Larsen from the Finance office to clarify the conversation they just had about this exact topic.
Larsen says that the amount that is referenced in the fiscal note it the entire appropriated amount for BRT in 2020. And “Mike” is correct, and she was initially mistaken, of the $4M that is authorized for 2020, its anticipated that half a million of that funding will be for this study.
Bidar asks if their recommendation was that we could add a “Be it resolved” clause that says that the study is estimated to cost $500,000. Larsen says “Yup”
Barbara Harrington-McKinney asks about the third paragraph where it says that the scope of the work will include an evaluation of several transit network alternatives, and it talks about outreach, is it still focusing on the first phase, not going West?
“Mike” says the consultant is supposed to assume that Phase 1 BRT is in place and that the rest of the network will be designed around that. They are supposed to incorporate the understanding that Phase 2 will be implemented in the near future. So what that might mean is that they will set up the network with a route that goes along the North /South corridor that could be converted to BRT, we sort of give that to them and we’ll have them deal with it, but they are supposed to understand that this is the next phase so whatever network comes out needs to have an understanding of how the BRT phase 2 will fit into there. But the main function is to design around phase 1 with phase 2 in the headlights so to speak.
Bidar makes and amendment to add a final “Be it resolved” clause “that the studies estimated to cost $500,000. It is seconded. The mayor asks if there are objections to considering that friendly to the main motion, there are none and it is part of the main motion.
Motion with the two mystery clauses form TPPB and the clause Bidar added passes on a voice vote.
Bidar moves adoption, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Alder Keith Furman asks about expectations, he knows this is until the end of December 31st, but he wants to better understand when possibly we will be able to bring more of this work internally in to the city as opposed to continuing to use a consultant.
Matt Mikolajewski, the Economic Development Director says that the resolution before them is to retain George Austin, AVA Civic Enterprises, to continue work on the Judge Doyle Project and specifically 2 projects that he would work on this year is concluding the work with Stone House Development on Block 88 and then continue negotiations with Beitler and their potential hotelier for the hotel project on block 105. Really the though process behind extending this contract for the balance of this year is the fact that we are currently down a manager of the city’s Office of Real Estate Services with Matt’s promotion to the Director position. At the same time, this year we have a couple of other significant significant real estate projects, possible bus facility acquisition at Oscar Mayer, the Truman Olson property and a couple of others so our thinking is by retaining George for the balance of this year we can have him really be sort of the team lead on this project, allowing us to focus more of our efforts on some of those other projects with the goal that once we have that manager position filled, which will be by the end of the year, that we will be able to transfer more of those responsibilities internally.
Furman thanks Mikolajewski, motion passes on a voice vote.
Authorizing the City to execute an agreement with CrossFit, Inc for the temporary closure and private use of the Olin Park Boat Launch for the production of the CrossFit Games for the years of 2020-2023.
Bidar moves approval, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Verveer asks Eric Knepp, Parks Superintendent, about a rumor that the Cross Fit games was not bringing back the barge because Reebok has dropped their sponsorship and they were the main sponsor of the exercise barge. I don’t know if you want to confirm that or not, but could you remind me if the barge is not going to be utilized, can you remind us what other activities are used at the Olin Boat Launch by the Cross-fit Games. I know we have competitions and …
Knepp says the barge, he cannot confirm that there won’t be a barge, I know there has been ongoing conversations around that issue of sponsorship with the Cross-Fit games, but he has not heard of a final resolution. They are not a party to that, or regulating the barge itself on the water, that’s a Dane County regulatory framework. The closure agreement really isn’t impacted by the barge. The barge mostly goes in and out as a normal boat would, it takes a little longer. The closure agreement is related to the event related activities for the Cross-Fit that occur in the water at the launch location. Swimming events mostly, speed swimming, they do some sprint swims, they do some distance swim, not like Iron Man distance swim, but out of this area. It does allow for them to, we encourage them to put the barge in during this time, but they could put the barge out without it. And so the closure is for the safety and welfare of the people, participants and the drivers operating board trailers to not create a conflict when they are doing things on the ramp that involve more people in places where you wouldn’t normally find a person on a boat launch. We’ve found with the volume of people they have, that’s higher than the Half Ironman, where they do a partial closure. So two slips are closed, two are open and that works pretty well, in this case, with the volume of people, its too many to not close it. It’s really about the activities for the events. They had a conversation last year with the Park Commission about reducing the closures here by having them move to the pool for one day, to do some of the swimming. The Commission chose to recommend against closing the pool for public access for the day and instead focusing here. And its somewhat logical I think, he doesn’t want to go into all of it but the commission pointed out, and its fair, there is one public pool, there are multiple public boat launches, so they felt the balancing act of promoting this really good event, this was a better trade off for opportunity costs. They continue to look for other pools as well, potentially, cuz there are certain things they do in the water, that they prefer to do in a pool, but he doesn’t think they have been successful yet. They encourage them to continue to look at other private venues for that portion, because we don’t love the closure, it impacts our boat launch users, but it is certainly a reasonable compromise, I think. And they do keep the timing very tight, as tight as they can. You can see in the agreement they open by noon two of the days of the weekend, so after boaters can still get in and out and the weekdays they are out by 2pm. Across the four days.
Verveer, says the bottom line is that whether or not the barge repeats or not, has no impact on the agreement as it is before us this afternoon.
Knepp says not on the cost or their legal rights. He thinks there is a potential that if the barge weren’t going in, because they have used this agreement time to put it in before. If it were not to go in, there may be one day they don’t close it, which they don’t have an interest in closing it if they don’t need to. If they can smash the events together the other three days. That wouldn’t, for this body, change the price they are paying, or anything like that, they’re locked in to the amount, no matter how much of the timeframe they use.
Motion passes on a voice vote.
Approving the Community Development Division’s HUD 2020-2024 Consolidated Plan.
Bidar moves approval, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Verveer says they are all used to the annual action plans that are required by HUD but the 5 year plan we don’t talk about as much. Do you want to share any highlights and differences. Obviously there was an executive summary I’m sure we were all able to read if not the whole 100+ page plan. Were there any highlights that you wanted to share with us at that time or changes from the existing consolidated plan.
Linette Rhodes from the Community Development Division says every 5 years they have to do a needs assessment of our community to tell HUD what is going on in our community for us to continue to receive those federal funds – its the Community Development Block Grant Funds, our HOME funds and the Emergency Solutions Grant funds that run through this plan. We did a lot of public participation. We did surveys, we did some focus groups, we did a very interactive bean poll with residents where we found it very interesting for staff to be out and actually talk about some of the stuff that the Community Development Division does. It was very interesting getting that feedback. For the most part they are going to continue to funds similar services as they did in the past. They have a goal of having affordable housing, small business assistance that they fund with the CDBG funds and then making sure that they have strong and healthy neighborhoods through funding neighborhood centers, neighborhood revitalization plans and activities that come out of there. she wants to highlight the one thing that we are adding to the 5-year plan is tenant-based rental assistance. They have not funded that previously and through their interactions with the community and talking with community partners they found that would be something that is a unique opportunity for us to use HOME funds in order to help subsidize people’s rent. So what tenant-based rental assistance is, its very similar to a voucher program, like the Section 8 program, where individuals get a voucher from us and they only have to pay 30% of their income towards their rent, so its a new program that they are going to be launching in 2021. That is the main highlight and the difference.
Verveer says in the legislative history there were only minor changes in between the several month period at CDBG, were those really just super minor and they aren’t worth calling out.
Rhodes says the plan was posted for about 60 days for us to get public input and they got very little public input throughout the process, but the only minor change that they made to the change from when it was originally posted to now is changing terminology of our goals. So through Results Madison and work with the finance department they are really looking at how they phrase what they are doing so its very clear and transparent. So, instead of saying we just have a blank or big goal of affordable housing, our goal in that area not is about housing development and financing. So talking about how the money goes out the door. So we used to have a goal of Economic Opportunity or Economic Development, we now are changing that goal to small business assistance. So, much more clearer in what we are funding for those things.
Verveer asks Jim O’Keefe, Director of Community Development Division if he has something to add?
O’Keefe says that they are bringing those into better alignment with the new services that we are using under the Results Madison framework.
Harrington-McKinney asks about the Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, you said you had very low public input, what did that look like, could you say a little bit more about that.
Rhodes says that they had a lot of public input before we wrote the plan, so we do citizen participation before we wrote the plan, and that was very robust. So getting that input in to write the plan, we thought we had a healthy return on surveys and people coming to our focus groups. It’s the public comment after we post the plan, we hold two public hearings, which no body came to. And then we allow people to send in written comments as well. They did receive one set of written comments, just more questions, so we actually created a PowerPoint and took the show on the road of talking about our consolidated plan to various groups, like the Affordable Housing Action Alliance Group, some Homeless Services Consortium subgroups to talk about the plan. So we didn’t get any official public comments but we went out to the community to talk about this plan. We also worked a lot with our planning department to get input through Imagine Madison, we kind of overlapped a little bit when we started working on this, at the same time that Imagine Madison was out getting feedback from the community as well. So, we kind of relied on our partners down in planning to provide us input.
Harrington-McKinney asks if there is an eviction assistance when you are talking about voucher, I get that, but is there any opportunity for eviction assistance, because there is a lot coming up related to that.
Rhodes says for eviction assistance, right now they fund two things. They fund Tenant Resource Center, they give them over $150,000 a year, they also fund Legal Action in their eviction defense project, ensuring that there is a lawyer representing everybody who goes in to eviction court. They are already funding those programs and through conversations will continue to look at those performance measures of those programs that we fund and see if we need to expand that kind of stuff. This year, especially looking at homeless and prevention, we are partnering with United Way and the County to really do a gaps analysis on all of the services in that goal area and seeing where we have gaps in the system.
Harrington-McKinney says her final questions is in the area of eviction, could you share or make available what the stats are looking at, it would be interesting what those numbers, have they increased over time or where are they saturated, to get a better idea of where we stand with funding for that.
Motion passes on a voice vote without discussion.
They adjourn.
