Bill White’s Magic Development Memo

Wow, this is just kind of funny now. Bill called me the next morning, then sent me the memo and encouraged me to share it. Here’s the bombshell mystery document and my responses to it. It’s actually pretty mild. But that doesn’t mean that the other business groups will have equally mild recommendations and it doesn’t address the issue about the neighborhoods, Plan Commission and Urban Design being included in the process that is 3/4 of the way done since the groups have been working behind the scenes for months. I can see why the Mayor was disappointed in these recommendations tho. Anyways, here’s my thoughts.

MADISON DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
June 11, 2010

An ad hoc group of practitioners familiar with the City of Madison development approval process, which includes Tom Bergamini, Natalie Bock Erdman, Hank Gempeler, Alan Fish, Dick Wagner, Tripp Widder, George Austin, Susan Schmitz, Kris Euclide and Bill White have convened in person and electronically since the beginning of 2010 to discuss and critique the City of Madison development approvals process. It has been widely perceived, and is underscored by non-Madisonians seeking to do business here, that the Madison development approval processes are overly lengthy, fragmented, balkanized, unpredictable and largely impenetrable. The practitioners contributing to this report have been able to work their way through these processes and have comments on how the processes can be streamlined without compromising either integrity or input. The following summaries of the discussions leading to this report include comments from national and local developers and are intended to express the generalized views of ways to improve the approval processes.

1. The Development Departments of the City Should Present a Constructive, Positive Attitude Toward Development. There is a need to achieve a culture in the City Development Departments (and other areas as well) that promotes the many positive aspects of doing business in this City. There is a perception that other communities have a more friendly, can-do attitude toward development than does Madison. At a minimum, applicants should be treated courteously as investors in the City who are willing to develop, redevelop, and revitalize this City lest those investors go elsewhere. This constructive attitude must begin at the top with the Mayor, Common Council leadership, and department heads.

In addition, the Tax Incremental Financing and other Municipal Assistance Programs should be positive, available, and predictable in their approach and outcome. Currently, there is a perceived lack of predictability to these programs with the definite perception that an application is viewed by City Staff with skepticism, if not outright negativity. Applicants should be treated as investors in the City, because those investors could “invest” elsewhere.

Ok, here we go again, they create a perception, then say that because of the perception people have to be nicer to them. If they don’t want that perception, STOP. SAYING. IT. Seriously, privately many people tell me about places that are harder to do business in. Think of Shorewood Hills.

I agree, people should be treated courteously at a minimum. I’d be interested in the hearing their recommendations about what they want the Mayor and Council leadership and Department heads to do specifically.

I also agree that some of the financial programs, especially those in the CDA and Community and Economic Development Unit are hard to figure out how to access. There are no deadlines, no priorities, the information isn’t readily available in one place and it seems scattered. There also isn’t good communication between the units with the programs and in fact, there seems to be an active grab of the money coming from the Economic Development side of things to take the money from Community Development.

The point about their applications being treated with skepticism is hilarious to me. Um, been to a bank lately? They aren’t just giving the money away, the underwriting criteria is TOUGH. The city has to do the same to protect the taxpayer. We should be glad the staff are diligent in their review and not just giving money away because they are asked and there are investors who are interested.

Finally, I’d just say, yes, we want investors, but do we want investors for investors sake? Or do we want the city to set clear priorities and then ask the investors to invest in those priorities? This is one of my pet peeves, the city is bad a setting priorities and instead just reacts to proposals from the private market. I think priorities would make the process predictable and would stop wasting the investors time. (Tho, when you think about the Downtown Library, that might not necessarily be true, but that was just screwed up.)

2. The Roles and Jurisdictions of Various City Boards, Commissions, Committees and Agencies (“City Unit”) Should be Clearly Defined and Understood. Training and orientation should be given to new board members by the Chair of each City Unit, the Staff to the City Unit, and a representative of the City Attorney’s office regarding both the jurisdiction of the City Unit and the process for that City Unit. City Unit chairs should be trained in the means to control meetings and restrict questions and comments to issues that are germane. The inability of a member to attend several meetings in order to establish a quorum should be a reason for that member to resign. Also, members should be reminded that their personal or special interests are subordinate to the mission of the City Unit. Metrics should be developed to determine successes of the Board, Commission, Committee or Agency for the previous year (e.g. time frame for consideration of matters, length of meetings, number of referrals, etc.). Annually, the Mayor should require each City Unit to evaluate its performance for the previous year. Once each year, the Chairs of Major City Units related to development, should meet with key development staff and the mayor’s office to assess information, strategies, and plans for encouraging appropriate growth in line with city plans. Each larger or complex project should have a project manager whose role would be clearly defined to help secure appropriate feedback on a timely basis from all affected constituents. This feedback would include Neighborhood process and other board agencies and committee consideration. This project manager would likely be a plan staff member or economic development staff member.

Yes, for the love of god, training for the committee members. Technically, that is the responsibility of the Mayor’s office and they hold one training in AUGUST each year, cuz yeah, that’s when people are around to show up. In addition to committee training in general, there should be an orientation program and materials for each committee. And yes, that includes the staff, the chair and the city attorney’s office.

Chairs should have better training on not only Robert’s Rules, but how to run a good meeting and adhere to the open meetings laws. I constantly see some committees trying to bend the rules to get around those laws.

On the issue of being germane, that would come from not only training on the criteria people should be looking at, but if there were “how to testify” materials available for the public, they could be instructed on what that criteria is and have them stick to it. There is a little danger in getting too bright lined, because people don’t always express things the same way, but a little more focus would be welcome.

There are rules in place that if a member misses three meetings in a row they are supposed to be reported to the Mayor’s office and the Mayor has the discretion to remove them. Can you say . . .

The council office has copies of the reports that staff are supposed to submit. Not all of them do. Perhaps we also need some training for the committee staff about what the rules are. MGO 33.01(8)(b) says:

The chair of each board, commission, and committee (or staff if delegated by the Chair) shall report to the Mayor and Common Council Office each instance in which a member is absent from three consecutive meetings or five (5) meetings out of twelve (12). For purposes of this reporting only, a called meeting that is not held due to lack of a quorum shall count toward a missed meeting by any member not present. The Mayor shall take appropriate action to secure the attendance of such members including, in the Mayor’s discretion, requesting their resignation or requesting that the Council remove the person from the Sub-unit.

Really people, if you spent months working on this, at least do your homework or ask someone who knows. And many of them should know.

On the issue of people having their personal interests take a back seat to the interests of the City as a whole. Well, two things. If they have a personal interest, they may have an ethics issue, ahem some of the people on the committee that made these recommendations. Second, some people are appointed to the committees because of their personal interests, there are seats assigned specifically to represent certain interests.

On the issue of setting goals and evaluating, that could take a lot of time and resources and there is work that can’t get done the way it is, this could really burn people out and slow things down even more. It’s a good idea, hard to know how they would implement it.

The project manager issue is odd, cuz it sounds like a mix between the alders job and a staff job. I’m not sure what they want, but last time we did this, we set up the development committee for staff and I thought that the planning staff did get assigned to a project but they need cooperation from the other departments. I think we even tried to get an ombudsman position in the budget, but it failed. The development one stop shop has been postponed for years while we decide what to do with the municipal building.

Finally, if there was a project manager for each project how do we know that they wouldn’t handle it the same way they are handling this process now, but cutting out everyone except the business community and labor? Seriously, this isn’t a good start. I’m not sure it is the fault of the group that put this report together, but the Mayor and Economic Development Director sure don’t seem interested in the input of others, including those affected.

3. Supermajority Votes Should be Critically Examined. Supermajority votes are embodied in either ordinance or statute and are used now to overturn grants of conditional use permits, demolitions, budget amendments, local landmark designations, some historic district developments and verified petitions protesting a zoning map amendment. A list of the supermajority actions is attached as Exhibit A. The appropriateness and role of supermajority votes, which grant veto power to a minority, should be reviewed carefully. This is especially true where it may take a supermajority vote of the Common Council, the elected governmental body, to overturn a decision of an appointed body whose authority arises under a delegation from the Common Council. These supermajority votes are embodied in ordinance or statute and so would require careful balancing of the need to have predictability in governmental actions against the need to alter the decision of a lesser City Unit.

I think this one is a can of worms. First of all, some of these items are in state law and we can’t change it. Second, some of this will lead to the council dealing with more issues and even longer meetings or, result in everything getting rubber stamped. And, while it sounds good to grab that sound bite of the Mayor and Clear about the council being the deciders, sometimes, this could come back and bite them in the butt, depending upon what side of that vote you are on.

4. The Role of the Neighborhood Plan Within the Comprehensive Plan Should be Clarified. Are the plans mandatory documents, or are they advisory in shaping future development? Flexibility should be built into all plans to allow for unforeseen circumstances and opportunities. The interaction between Neighborhood Plans and the Comprehensive Plan should be regularly reviewed with Planning and Zoning Staff and with Neighborhood Groups with emphasis on the Neighborhood Plans’ advisory nature to avoid confusion. It should be emphasized and clarified that Neighborhood Plans should not be automatically included in the City’s Comprehensive Plan since they did not go through the same inputs and participatory protections as did the Comprehensive Plan. Recent state legislation (Wis. Act 372) confirms that
even the Comprehensive Plan is a guide and not a regulatory tool.

Um, yes to clarification. Chris Schmidt brought this issue up with the Mayor and I was stunned by his response. I think some of the neighborhood plans were adopted and incorporated into the Comprehensive Plan, some were not, so that would need to be carefully considered. Some of them are not advisory and shouldn’t be as they were adopted by the council. Others were controversial and didn’t make the cut. I think the neighborhood plans should be included in the Comprehensive Plan, that is how things become predictable.

5. Neighborhood Input is Valuable, Provided Sufficient Input is Secured. Property owners should be part of the neighborhood process as they have a valuable stake in the outcome of development. In addition, neighborhood association policy and political positions should identify how the “neighborhood” was defined and notified and how many individuals attended meetings in order to assure that the association positions actually reflect the widespread sentiment of the neighborhood and not the opinions of a few. Too often, a small minority will claim to represent all “neighborhood” interests when they actually do not.

Look there are business groups and neighborhood groups and condo associations and community groups that work on specific issues and they all are important to the process, and property owners should be included too. But its the alders responsibility, not the neighborhood association’s responsibility to bring all that input together. Otherwise, all business groups should be required to have neighborhood representatives in them and be able to vote on their positions. That would be silly. If a neighborhood association wants to have just people who live there as members, that is their prerogative. But then, it’s also important to be transparent and I agree that it should be clear, but the reality is, the world is run by those who show up and bird dogging a development can be grueling and many people drop out of that process along the way, but hardly ever is a volunteer turned away. I know the business community wants to be able to vote in every neighborhood association where they own property, but that would mean they could theoretically have a say in every neighborhood, while those who are merely residents would get one vote, once. That is what would be unfair. A couple last thoughts, if the city wants to require certain notices to members of a neighborhood, they should fund it. It’s a lot of work to drop 2000 fliers to notify neighbors. And lastly, you can’t force people to participate in the neighborhood association. Usually, people are ecstatic whenever someone new shows up and they are quickly sucked in if possible. The reality is that its hard work to run a volunteer neighborhood association and get people to participate unless there is a controversial project. More people participating would be welcome by most, I’m sure.

6. Advance Notices of Intent and Engagement in the Development Processes Should be Standardized. All notices regarding proposed development should be sent at the time the development application is submitted. Often, development projects come together on a time sensitive basis so that a required notice 30 or 60 days in advance of the actual submission date often hinders a development proposal because the details are not yet known. Also, the process and formats for neighborhood consideration should be standardized to avoid delays and minimize the sense of fragmentation within the City.

Hmmm. Advance notice is required so that you don’t get tripped up and the alder can always waive it if they think that there isn’t an issue with the neighbors. Additionally, the notices sent out at the time the development application is submitted are often wrong, and they should probably also be sending out corrections when all the dates change due to delays by both the city and the developer.

On the standardized process and format for neighborhood associations, I might agree to some protocols that the neighborhoods agree to, but then we need that Office of Neighborhood Support that the Council tried to enact and the mayor nixed. The neighborhood associations are volunteers that mostly don’t have the resources to do much of this work and get little to no support from the city.

7. A Streamlined Approval Process Should be in Place for Smaller Projects. Currently, a PUD for a two-unit duplex goes through the same review and approval process as a 150 unit owner-occupied condominium development, shopping center, or a research park. Simplified processes and input should be developed to make sure that impacts are known, yet small projects are not treated as if they were big projects. The new zoning code should include this streamlined process.

8. Miscellaneous Items.
(a) The Lobbying Ordinance Should be Simplified. Currently, not only are the public official and staff contacts required to be identified, but also the real costs to an applicant of engaging in the development process. The identification of costs have little intrinsic value in an otherwise transparent system. However, disclosure of actual costs signals to the outside world how difficult and expensive it is to do business in the City of Madison. Our neighboring communities do not require such disclosure.

No surprises here. I think the lobbying ordinance should be enforced. And how much they spend is necessary. The law is clear on what costs should be included and not included, the lobbyists just need to read it and fill out the forms correctly. The forms are a mess and people are doing it in 1,000 different ways.

(b) Time for Presentation. Applicants at the Plan Commission should be given at least 10 minutes, or an appropriate period, to holistically present the parameters of the project. If opponents to a project need a similar expanded timeframe to present the counterproposal, then that is acceptable also. The Common Council should allow only 3 minutes per speaker. These changes would streamline the ultimate approval at the Common Council and ensure that the Plan Commission is adequately informed.

This one is precious. Give us more time to present, give the public less time. Also, 10 minutes is interesting as it would be the same for a duplex and a 150 unit building. Sound familiar? I’m not sure how the 3 minutes at council streamlines the process except that they will have less information to think about.

(c) Room 201 Needs Work. Our neighboring communities generally have sleek, and comfortable legislative facilities. Room 201 needs some updating for comfort and technology. Upgraded visual technology and improved audio systems will enhance the public’s participation in the process. A sense of pride and positive action in our community should begin with the government’s physical setting.

Amen.

Original document here with attachment.

My other comments about the process being broken and my recommendations off the top of my head are here. The rumblings from yesterday had everyone up in arms and several neighborhoods and Alder Rummel are planning a forum to come up with a neighborhoods plan about what is broken with the process. Of course, they are months behind and they have about a month to figure it out, but I think they can act quickly. Stay tuned.