Ok, not many of the departments got covered in the meeting that went til 11:00 last night, so all the rest will be doing their initial presentations today. And then the alders are off the races, asking questions, proposing amendments and tinkering around the edges. Monday was the start, that post is here, this post got to long and had to be continued here.
Here’s part 1 and part 2 of last night’s meeting. This is essentially a “live” blog. Check for Updates until I declare it “done” in the title.
STREETS
Chris Kelly says
– They added 4 full time positions to equipment and EAB – its mostly for stump grubbing and starts in April – some of it is charged to cap budget, the rest of the $24,000 is on the levy.
– They decrease $250,000 from sales in recyclables.
– They have $32,000 for mats to improve erosion areas.
Denise DeMarb asks about EAB and the costs in streets, parks and someone else. They says that Engineering had some too. DeMarb asks how much the total is that they are spending across departments. David Schmiedicke says that they can update the numbers. Kelly says that they have to keep up with the stump grubbing. They explain parks cuts the streets, streets does the stump grubbing and parks plants the trees.
Marsha Rummel asks about the mattress recycling. Kelly says thye started in 2014, they picked up 4,223 mattresses, they didn’t have a place to take them for a while. 800 were sitting on the street at a time – so they sit for 4 weeks if not tagged.
Mo Cheeks asks about the decrease in recyclables. Kelly says that the value of selling recyclables has gone down.
Mike Verveer asks about the mats in the supplemental requests, he thought they were already using them. Kelly says that engineering asked them to start doing it, the got the heads up from DNR they should start doing it. They took it out of their funds for this year and this is the cost for 2016. Verveer asks how long they have been doing it. Kelly says month and a half.
Verveer asks about the $93,000 for mattress pick up, does that exclude the landfill fees. He say yes.
Verveer asks about recyclables and the projection drop off, do we expect to have a hole, will that be a year end request? They say they won’t be able to cover it but they will ask for the money at the end of the year. They estimate a $200,000 in lost sales potential.
Verveer asks about China shutting out 3 – 7 recyclables, and that they are being landfilled since no one can take the materials. Is Pelleterri finding markets? Kelley says that they are still recycling them, we are still getting the price we negotiated but they are struggling to find markets.
DeMarb asks about the mattresses – why is it 4 weeks, please explain. Kelley says large items are picked up every other week, if there was no sticker, they wouldn’t come back for another 2 weeks. If it was stickered, they would take it. Stickers are no longer needed for mattresses.
TRAFFIC ENGINEERING – page 129
David Dryer says that they have a maintenance budget with 4 supplements for painting (as they do every year) 2 electricians and one other I missed.
Shiva Bidar asks about traffic safety education. He says that there is education, engineering and enforcement, they do good in the last two, but not the first because they don’t have education. They do some with kids in the schools, but they don’t reach out to the motorists. Bidar says other cities do campaigns and over time it does help. If they were to do it, would it cost $30,000? He would have to dig it out. If they focus on placards on busses $30,000 would suffice, but air time or tv that is more. Bidar asks them to put together some basic info and share it with alders.
Matt Phair asks about the electronic positions are for the speed signs? Dryer says that a lot of the need it to mark the conduit and fiber optic – but it is the speed boards as well. The underground infrastructure has to be marked for all that. They are asking for them again and in time they will see more revenue from them.
Sarah Eskrich asks about the painted crosswalks and how do you prioritize when they use color pain in the crosswalks. Dryer says crosswalks are to guide pedestrians safely across. Usually its two bars. There are the continental stripes. Epoxy is depending upon how wide the streets are. Maintaining it is $1500 every 3 – 5 years. They select them based on number of pedestrians and speed of traffic, its not a hard and fast rule.
Eskrich asks about the street parking yellow paint, how is that prioritized? He says near east and west are prioritized. They need to replace their go-cart machine. They go through the neighborhoods and its not as expensive as a cross walk, its 15 cents a foot. He says thye prioritize parking impacted areas.
Mo Cheeks asks about the more drastic markings of green and red. He doesn’t know what they mean since they didn’t exist when he took drivers ed. Green is for a bike conflict. Red means nothing, engineering does it and its decorative. Monroe St will get done and E Wash needs to be redone. They have a lot of green, they will be replacing a lot of that next year.
Verveer asks about hiring seasonals and the vacancies, have you had the same issues. Dryer says he hasn’t heard that from his staff. They say they have returning employees and that they have night time hours. Verveer asks how many seasonals they have. He says 50.
Verveer asks about the street occupancy program, has it been successful. They started in April, $9000 in new revenue, they need a vehicle to have the staff be more mobile. They think they are where they should be and hopefully you have noticed better behavior. Verveer asks if the program paid for itself. They had $90,000 gross, but $60,000 of revenue is in and it should come close to covering itself and they will when they do it for a full year. $200,000 is what was in the budget according to Schmiedicke. Verveer asks if there has been much enforcement action, are there tickets in Municipal Court.
Bidar asks about paint, Do you have enough in your budget to keep up with requests from Alders. Dryer says they can always use more material. It just depends upon how bad you want to have it get before they redo it.
Amanda Hall asks about the growth in communications budget. Dryer says it is for the communications system equipment. Hall asked what the lifetime of the system is. He says 15 years. Will it be another 15 years – probably.
Cheeks asks about if the equipment is compatible with other departments. Dryer says that it is similar to what they use today, they work with police and fire to get to this system and coordinate it.
PARKING
Dryer says they had a $13.6M revenue originally, with GE being down that is decrease by $1.2M with JDS. This is a maintenance budget for the parking utility.
Verveer asks about the reduction in cashiers this year – there is a decrease again with the ambassadors, why? Dryer says the positions are vacant so when GE goes down, they don’t have to lay anyone off. GE = Government East. Verveer says he didn’t make a big deal last year, but they had been told there would be no reduction in cashiers. Dryer says he will check on it.
MUNICIPAL COURT
Daniel Koval says no significant changes, he does appreciate the additional funding for the youth service programs through Briarpatch and Centro Hispano. He says the case numbers, last year was abnormal, there was a large decrease. And this year they are back on track. About 5000 cases above where they were at this time of the year last year. He thinks its more normal.
Verveer asks about if its parking and traffic. Koval says it was traffic. Verveer asks if that is because the safety team is back and it was only in the morning. Verveer says that there isn’t as much overtime and there was only a morning team.
Verveer asks what the $20,000 will do, how many more youth will be served. Koval says that it depends upon the services they are getting. Family counseling is different than a referral to a community service project.
DeMarb asks why they are continuing a pilot. Koval says it is no longer a pilot, its more regular programming. He can report that with the juveniles they get, they don’t have places they can do community services so the work team is a huge benefit. In the work teams the agencies get to know the kids and expand it to job training. Community Service hours are the gate to get them in and then more services would be provided. Koval says that they just started with 12 – 16 year old program that have an option to participate in restorative courts and if they go to the courts they will get services and not get charged in court and nothing is filed. They hope to see a lot of participation, some of the services in the budget will supplement that as well.
Barbara McKinney says she is a volunteer in the restorative court. She asks how many 1st offense drunk driving cases does he see? He says around 600 – 700 a year. McKinney asks about the racial make up of that, Koval says he hasn’t run it, but it seems across the board. The one thing with the program that is good, he was referring them to victim impact panels at first, those were only for 2nd and 3rd offenses at first and he says that 80 – 90% have not reoffended if they attended the panel. Most are pretty remorseful and recognize it was an error in judgement, those with more offenders are more alcoholics.
McKinney says that the juvenile programs are very important. Koval says it does have a lot of impact. Habitual Truancy cases staf soon and he is meeting with the schools soon. He talks about a kid with a parent that both have mental illnesses and when they were able to provide services, the kids has perfect attendance this year.
Phair asks about Truancy Court, do you have JFF workers or others there. Koval says UW has a program that will help. Phair asks if there is a formal network. Not really, some do, some don’t.
Bidar asks about interpreters, they based it on year to date numbers, they have reduced it with phone services. If it goes over, they will cover it with other lines. Koval says its mostly Spanish, its the majority of the cases. They have a contract for a interpreter to come on certain days of the week, they set the court dates for the times the interpreter is there.
Cheeks commends him on his restorative justice work – everyone makes bad decisions but not everyone gets caught. He is proud of the municipal court and their efforts.
ASSESSOR
Mark Hanson says that it is a continuation budget. He appreciates his budget being in tact. There are some salary adjustments. They did have to request money for a maintenance contract for the assessment software which is $66,000.
Mark Clear asks about the assessment system update – how is it going. They are working with Vision company, they are working with several municipalities, thye are doing their data conversion and may go live end of the year or early next year.
TREASURER
Dave Gawenda says not much is different, the one thing is that outsourcing responsibilities for the tax bills, they entered into a contract with Cubra (sp?) and they will print tax bills in December and water bills next year. This will allow for email reminders and a higher level of service for the taxpayers.
Clear asks when they will have a report on the 1/4ly tax payments. They met last week, it was productive, it was a postmortem of last year and getting in sync for the next year, they have a few issues to resolve. In general, it could have been worse, but it wasn’t too bad. The shift to the different system had a lot of moving parts and they had to deal with some of it on the fly. He says that human behavior was most interesting, there was a 10% reduction in January, but later on, people missed the 3rd installment even with reminders, there wasn’t a total significant change, he thinks people are getting used to the system. He says that there was $200,000 anticipate but $550,000 was collected in fines and penalties.
Clear asks if he has any recommendations for changes. He says the penalties aren’t necessarily a good thing. Gawenda says no policy changes, they don’t have much latitude there. He says the procedural changes he is looking forward to, she says with the reminder emails, we can be more aggressive in helping people remember.
Clear asks if they can do a survey again, he is concerned about delinquent payments. He wants to know if they forgot or had financial payments. Gaweneda says its mostly forget in the his experience. He says its too late for the printed materials, but they can put something on the website. Clear says alders can help spread the word.
Verveer asks about the 3rd party vendor, do people still have to get things by mail. Gawenda says that he thinks they are required to mail the original bill in December. Milwaukee is trying to allow electronic bills but for now, everyone gets a mailed bill in December, reminders can be electronic if people sign up. If the electronic mail bounces back they will mail.
Verveer asks if we were using the state to print the bills. Now the company will do it, we print the bill, the state took our bills and folded and inserted and mailed it. This will all be done by Cubra. Verveer asks if they can get lower mailing rates than the state did. Gawenda says that they will at least match the state rate. Cubra has utility customers and they may have procedures to be a step beyond what the state could do, it could decrease.
Verveer asks about the credit card purchasing fees. Tell us about the convenience fee. Gawenda says that the parking tickets are the biggest issue. He says they just went live with that a few weeks ago, the first day they saved $100. He hopes to save $30,000. The convenience fee is not charged if they enter the bank info, but if they use a credit card they pay 2.5%. He says that is about $1.25 and goes to US Bank. That saves us $100 a day, or $30,000. He says the Water Utility will see the same thing when they switch. Verveer says that it went form $.25 for a $20 ticket to $1.25 for a $25 ticket.
Verveer asks about the levy limit issue talked about last night. Gawenda is pessimistic to impact this year. He says it was extraordinary that the number of parcels in the Attic Angels and the closeness to the due date that the settlement was reached. They didn’t find out that the 157 claims were late until last Monday. They got 28 entered, one every 6 minutes, they did they highest amount, it was about half the dollar amount. They did the best they could. He hopes they can have a plan in place for when there are large numbers of claims and not a lot of time that they can have additional time. There have been other accommodations made in other areas. They had the spreadsheet and they can extract the data from that in other cases. Verveer asked if we missed a notification, or they failed to tell us. Gawenda says that the two offices didn’t feel they were notified (assessor and treasurer) and he asked for confirmation. At 11:30 that morning he got an email saying they got them. Why they didn’t say at that time they didn’t take them, they told them 4 days later.
DeMarb compliments him in dealing with her constituents – says they were treated well and well explained. Gawenda says they stress treating people with respect.
CITY ATTORNEY – p 40
He says nothing but a continuation, only increases in salary. They had one supplemental request to upgrade Municode system, they will continue to look at ways to upgrade that.
No questions.
CIVIL RIGHTS
Lucia Nunez has a hand out. It’s cost to continue. There are a few items to be brought to your attention. She has an at-a-glance sheet with statistics. They are Equal Opportunities, Disability Rights and Affirmative Action. They had 75 MEOD cases, mostly employment. Top three are race, retaliation and color. They fulfilled the EEOC grant with 55 cases and they get $650 per case, but only employment. Prevailing wage will be changing, there have been 20 violations. For targeted business they got 37 applications and 14 were new. $72M in contracts for small, women owned and minority disadvantaged own businesses. They got the consultant information on disparities reports. They track applications for 621 hires and they have all the info there. They had two supplemental items, AASPIRE interns – they had 82 applications for 13 positions. Many agencies want them. They asked for 5 more AASPIRE interns, at about $4,000 per intern or $23,000. For language assistance, they didn’t use the budget for years and for years they hit it and they are already over for this year. They will be over budget for $5,000 this year. They asked for more money, that just is to make it for this year, they really need $10,000 more. They are denying some requests now so they don’t go too far over budget. They don’t deny services, they make them think about what they need to do. Not the whole report, but maybe the executive summary. She also has an update on Ban the Box if they want it.
Cheeks asks about the equity coordinator position transfer to the Mayor’s Office. What is your response and the pros and cons of this. DeMarb says that Gloria called and that it would be moved back to Civil Rights. Mayor says for 2015, but mayor wants to change it for 2016. Nunez says there was a transition team crated with RESJI and Mayor’s office to explore the options, they have met with the mayor and she missed one of the meeting when she was out of the country and they are looking at best practices and what the best options there are. There are a number of models, the team still has work to do and its not done. They are supposed to report back to the larger group. The options are many. She wants to continue the relationship building and communication between the teams. She says that this has to be infiltrated throughout government. She says that there is much to be discussed. Her understanding was that it was back in the budget, she approved payroll and Tori got paid today.
McKinney asks about race, retaliation and color, what kind of cases are there. Nunez says they are mostly employment – terminatino and conditions of hire or promotion. Sometimes more than one protected class are marked, there are cases against large and small employers. She says they are seeing increases in retaliation cases. Those are the highest. Year after year race is the highest number, arrest and conviction record is in the top 5 for employment, they don’t take that for housing. McKinney asks if this is defined by the application – race, color, etc.. Yes.
McKinney asks about the review of where the coordinator position is. Mayor says that it is in the budget. Mayor recommends it be in the mayor’s office. He says if you agree leave it as is. If not, make an amendment.
Nunez says that Ban the Box will be reviewed Thursday at EOC, Board of Public Works and CDBG has recommendations, Community Services and AA will see it and then it will go to the council on December 1.
Cheeks asks about what is going through at the moment. Nunez says they passed it for city hiring, except for police, fire and metro. This is for contracting vendors.
Phair asks about the equity coordinator and who it reports to, Nunez says it reports to her and Gloria. Nunez says that the job description has the dual reporting. It was added to the job description.
Clear asks about the state legislation on civil service and ban the box – is there any preemption clause in there. Nunez says she didn’t see any, she is not sure if the city attorney has reviewed it.
COMMON COUNCIL
DeMarb says nothing additional, some work to be done next year to not do some things by hand. There is less spending in office supplies, that includes alder accounts. We don’t think we will be under budget there, we can’t really know since 20 people spend money. The increase in salaries is from the 2015 budget.
Rummel says that Alders should be included in the NRT language in other budgets.
Rummel says that our policy analyst seems to have disappeared, should she be under our services. There is no acknowledgement of the service to the council. Lara Larson says that it is in the City Attorney budget.
The mayor once again cuts off Rummel very rudely. Mayor says they will come in with that language. What did she do to piss him off?
HUMAN RESOURCES
Brad Wirtz says that they only change is what they will discuss in the next section, otherwise it hasn’t changed much since last year.
Bidar would like a report on the Wellness program and the metrics, there is a lot of literature that says that migh tnot be aas effective as people thought.
EAP
Employee Assistance Program. Enis Ragland says that it is realigned into an independent office. The mayor was approaches by police and fire regarding concerns about confidentiality, this is an international issues. He says that in most governments this is separate from Human Services, true or not, the perception is that there is a conflict of interest. The issue was contentious. The biggest users are police fire and metro. They are the front line employees that we have great investments in and EAP protects those investments. This is where trauma is involved. He says that they will realign it from HR and it will be at the Village on the Park, instead of in this building. There will be support staff for that program and they believe that is the best practice.
Mayor says that the EAP and city attorney staff agree. The mayor was there last year and was talking to staff and they asked the mayor to leave so that the mayor didn’t see the person coming in for services. That is why the physical move in a more public place since they could be going anywhere.
Clear says he understands the physical separation, why not by HR. They say HR does hiring and firing and that could lead to confidential info being shared. Clear says that police and fire aren’t. Mayor says that Metro and everyone else is. Ragland says other cities contract this out.
DeMarb says she talked to the Chief’s, HR and the staff. She says that it is important to point out there hasn’t been a breach of confidence, this is about best practices and procession. HR is handing out discipline and that is a perception problem. EAP does counseling and there is trauma in their jobs and when they looked at this, they thought it should be realigned if they don’t have a 3rd party provide the service.
Rummel asks about he external program with the city. Ragland says they have one now. They need to figure out how much purchase of services are needed. There may need to be adjustments. Rummel asks if there would be an RFP? Ragland says they are satisfied with the services they get now. Schmiedicke says that $28,000 is build out of space and $3600 is rent, $10,000 is contracted services.
Verveer asks why they need a full time clerical. Ragland says they need a full time staff at Villager, they don’t want people to get a recording or not be able to reach someone. They feel like they need a confidential full time staff to support the program, they don’t currently have that. Verveer asks if physically the person is across the street or upstairs. Ragland doesn’t know where they are. They feel there is enough workload to do full time.
Verveer asks why comp group 20 vs 17? Ragland doesn’t know. Verveer asks if that is a placeholder. Ragland doesn’t seem to know much of anything.
Bidar asks about utilization of EAP, number of phone calls vs in person counseling, % of employees that access the program. She says that one of the metrics should be if people use it more. She says they should have a baseline. Ragland says it is up 17% across country and it is up in the city.
Eskrich asks if they looked at contracting this out? Was there savings, or perception issues. Ragland doesn’t know. Employees love Theresa and Patrick, they are relied up and trusted and are an invaluable resources to our employees.
Mayor Paul Soglin says it might be someone with troubles at home and it is affecting their work, it could be horrific situation involving auto accidents and things we don’t want to think about with children that our employees deal with. They measure this in hours, not people served. Mayor says people who have had counseling with them, have expressed it with co-workers who then use the service and we’d have a rebellion on our hands if we discontinued this.
McKinney wants to support this, yesterday we lightly talked about the impact of trauma and trauma informed care, for the city to realize that in some employment situations it can be stressful and to go and seek help takes a great deal and to have that in a safe place is critically important. She wants to know how the transition works, she is aware of how this can impact a person’s performance. Ragland says they are looking at an advisory board to guide the future of the EAP.
DeMarb asks who EAP reports to. Only the mayor for budget. The advisory board would handle policy changes.
IT
Paul Kronenberger says that their operating budget is continuing, they have supplemental positions for security specialist and for work on an asset management system for public works agencies and a position for contract management.
Cheeks asks about finance software options. Kronenberger says that they are working with them, but budget has kept them busy. Laura Larson says that they are waiting to get experience with this budget and make sure that they get a tool that will last. They hope to have a tool developed in the 2017 budget.
Clear asks about security person, is that external attacks or internal protection. Kronenberger says that it could be both, we need people to monitor and be proactive and update and renew tools. Clear says he knows this year has been challenging. Kronenberger says that they worked for weeks on end trying to address attacks. They have some features in place to strengthen but they need a stronger security program on an ongoing basis.
Eskrich asks about report a problem, how can they enhance that. Mobile reporting or app based reporting? Kronenberger says they have put a lot of work into it, the initial program is straightforward program, they are working to integrate and automate that. They are looking at a mobile app to integrate with the asset management program.
PUBLIC LIBRARY
Gregg Mickells says that he wants to do a short PSA for the finance department, he says kudos to the finance department on the munis system, they have been accessible and done a great job. The tutorials are great.
He says that they appreciate support for the Bubbler program and bringing on an assistant there, its been going great. It shines a bright light on Madison and is internationally recognized.
He says the bilingual community engagement coordinator is important, they have capacity issues and want to address early literacy issues and how do we deal with capacity issues – how do we reach populations that can really use the services, we don’t have staff to go into the living rooms. They partner with visiting nurses. Nurses are providing literacy training and they give them packets when kids sometimes get their first book. There are a number of agencies looking for those kinds of collaborations.
DeMarb asks about the Bubbler program, what is that. Mickles says this is about the maker program, it values participatory learning. He says that they are working with UW to study this program. There is tremendous value in play. They have been able to use creativity of the community to contribute to the program. (wow, that was a lot of babble)
DeMarb asks about e-books and library collection expansion. She says that the Eastside of Madison past Alder Rummel’s district only has Pinney Library and her kids can’t access the library, even adults cannot too. Pinney cannot serve the east side, we need more service and we talked about not having brick and mortar but other ways to expand library service. We have had a planner on staff for a year or more and we have yet to see a report, and that was supposed to be to get a report on the east side. She asks if there is a plan to expand and when can we anticipate the plan. Libraries have been removed from the capital budget.
Ebooks and books is our collection, we still have a lot of need for that core service, they always get a minimum that they can for their collection, whenever they can get more they do, they have $4M circulations, it is one of the highest in the country and they are proud of it.
The planning process is starting to get results from the community info collection tool, they will be releasing info this fall about the Pinney project. As far as the charge from the Common Council about a strategic plan, that report is due April 2016. It took some time to establish relationships and gather information, she is doing the summary now, April of 2016 is the deadline so it could inform the next budget. It was good that projects were removed, they can now proceed strategically with a plan that has been vetted.
DeMarb asks about services to reach people who can’t access the library either cuz of technology or transportation. Micklell says that they see lots of obstacles and that is why he talked about public nurses and he sees they need to find alternatives to reach people. He says that he had a long discussion with Dr. Anthony from Urban League and they are looking at partnerships to reach other populations.
DeMarb says she is not sure how much Urban League works with people in her part of the city. She says we need to look beyond NRTs, there are so many small neighborhoods and groups, maybe they should work with the preschools and schools, she has more need than served by the NRTs. Mickells says that there are endless opportunities for partnerships. He talks about 800 vs 10,000 word vocabulary between low income and middle income families. He says they are working on 0 – 3.
McKinney says that police an fire are first responders, but how do you see the library in that roll when talking about kids. He thought that libraries are first responders as well, we are on the front lines and a lot of times police and fire are second responders for what they deal with on a daily basis.
Verveer babbles and thanks people and does his Verveer thing. Finally he asks about maintenance of Central Library and staffing levels. Mickells says they could improve on it, they had a supplemental position, they got some relief last year, they are looking at different approaches to scheduling and other assistance with other staff. For the responsibilities they have, they are doing a great job, but its very thin, its a large building for one person to maintain. He is exploring some staff restructuring for additional support. Verveer says that he is at central often and it seems better this year, and he appreciates that. He would like to see full time instead of hourlies. Mickells says that his many of his services are privatized and the complaints are down. They are able to do daytime activity this year.
Verveer asks if they are fully funded on hourly for pages and maintenance and Mickells says that they have an adequate budget. Laura Larson says it is $1.4M.
WATER
Robin says that they have a meter supervisor, otherwise its maintenance. The rate increase was approved and went into effect for this month’s bills, this is the first they will see it and its the first time they are using conservation rates. The other thing is that where they had nonresidential rates, there is no reduction now, its all a flat rate that is different for commercial. This is because of all the date they have. The other highlight is that the purchase of services number is higher this year to paint 3 of their tanks, they have had trouble getting a contractor on those. High Crossing, East Towne and Buckeye are the ones they want to paint.
Mayor says someone asked him how a water tower catches on fire. Robin (sorry, last name??) says that it was out of service, they were insulated cables inside and the insulation started on fire and there was no water inside due to the maintenance.
MAYOR’S OFFICE
Enis Ragland says it is cost to continue. Transfers equity coordinator. He defers to the mayor.
Mayor says that the equity coordinator, he says there are three types of agencies, service agencies (to the public – police, streets, fire parks), internal services (finance, attorney, hr, communications) and then one that does both (clerk, assessor). The very rare kind of department is one that enforces or monitors the other agencies and historically the best example is Affirmative Action, that started in the mayor’s office, to make it clear that when you are making a commitment to a new service that might get resistance you want the chief executive behind it. AA did well that way for years. When he returned to mayor’s office he wanted to move AA to HR, city council didn’t like that, but they created he office of Civil Rights. The Equity Officer will bring clashes and disagreements about priorities and resources with agencies. At some point it should be out of the protection of the mayor’s office, but that shouldn’t be what they do now. To maximize the effectiveness it should be part of the entire time and work with the four people who direct and address all the issues of the city departments.
McKinney asks about a change in performance or effectiveness in the Department of Civil Rights? Mayor says they only had the position a couple weeks. McKinney is worried about the independence of the office, why does it need to be protected? Mayor says because it is new and it will run into resistance with other city agencies. McKinney asks why that can’t be support by the Mayor in Civil Rights. Mayor says its more effective to report to chief executive. Ragland says there is extreme frustration working with departments that see you as equal or less and they will ignore your requests to address issues, that was his experience as head of AA. That is a reality. He faced that sometimes on a daily basis. You want that authority with you not to have to run to the mayor’s office.
McKinney says that the Civil Rights Department doesn’t seem as strong as it should be. Ragland says yes, it isn’t as strong as it should be and it doesn’t have the teeth to move the needle in the area of equity in the city. McKinney says that concerns her alot.
Mayor says lets go back 40 years. Compared to 40 years ago there are significant differences in departments, they used to be equal. The police have done a far better job than any agency, the fire department has done well. Others, like Streets and to a degree Parks, Fleet has not done as well. Engineering is facing challenges because women don’t go into the profession and can get lucrative salaries. We need to change the culture of the agency, including changing your reputation. He says that you need to see the diversity in the applicants, changing the culture of the agency is one of the toughest around. Change has to happen from the top down, we don’t want to sit around and talk about it. This kind of position that has to challenge decades and decades of culture, they need support. He says at 10 minutes to 3:00 on Friday a former AA Director (Milele Chikasa Anana) would come and say she needed the mayor help.
Ragland says that it wasn’t a criticism. McKinney says she was concerned about the teeth they have.
Mayor still giving history lessons . . . .explaining the difference between EOC and AA. (I’m frustrated, its been three hours without a break and this is pretty basic . . . but new alders don’t know the history)
Phair asks about the Mayor’s office right and repsonsibility to support and work with all department heads. Mayor says yes . . . . mayor says if the person reports to the chief executive it makes a difference . . . they don’t have his 40 years experience, if you don’t want my recommendation fine. Phair says in Seattle it isn’t in the mayor’s office, they are just trying to figure it out, he understands there needs to b a change in culture and that is a huge life. He says they also have to work on policy of the council and mayor and he is concerned that this will get politicized and that it might be better outside a political office. Mayor says “I believe you want it politicized, you want that force, you want that response”. Phair says “fair, no pun intended”
Cheeks appreciates the mayor’s enthusiasm. He is nervous for this person because it seems a lot is on their shoulders. If he’s following how it is explained, he almost wonders if every new position with a new initiative should start in the mayor’s office. Mayor says depends up on teh nature of it. Look at the food policy position, that made a difference. And look at the NRT application, they didn’t get a great set of applications, that was in public health at his request, when it was in the mayor’s office they got better applicants. He doesn’t like his budget growing, he says that it has political implications. This afternoon the staff had access to him, that is not the case for a couple thousand other city employees.
Mayor lecturing and repeating himself.
DeMarb says she spearheaded this job with others last year, she spoke to many people about where it should be located, originally she thought mayor’s office for the same reasons the mayor said, perception of more clout and visibility, she was prepared to do that, but there are as many reasons to put it elsewhere, she put it in civil right and we passed a resolution, because of politicizing it. It’s all about how important the executive thinks something is. One of the reasons it is in Civil Rights so it lives beyond administrations. We don’t know the decisions of the next mayor and all the employees are employees at will. She says the people she talked to thought that if it was in the mayor’s office it could be a negative working with staff. I hope she’s not watching and hearing the debate. If she is the most important thing is that we get this right. This has to be totally embraced.
Rummel says that there were arguments on both sides and she will think about it. They mayor’s overview should call out the specialty employees in the mayor’s office.
Cheeks says that it is interesting, and he doesn’t know why it took three budgets to notice this, we have a weak mayoral system and an executive and strong council mayor and there is $2M in the two agencies but 3/4 goes into the mayor’s office. It’s noteworthy that the legislative and executive branch are not equally funding, and the legislative is so low funded and we need to look at the balance through budgeting. The mayor has incentive to keep funding there, this isn’t suggesting anything inappropriate, but he would want to keep that power that way.
ROOM TAX
This is presented in the budget differently as described yesterday. All of the Overture amount is from the room tax. Convention and Visitors Bureau increases each year, it will be 22% in 2016 and is set to increase to 30% over the years. Hard to type all his numbers, so you might want to watch. Madison Music City has several programs, see footnote G. Dane Dances increases $10,000 and Make Music Madison is increased by $5,000. Sports Commission is not continued. They need to spend 70% of room tax on these costs in 2017.
Eskrich asks about increase in Dane Dance and Make Music Madison, is this an increase in services. No, just in support says Schmiedicke.
DeMarb asks if there could be an overview on the room tax because of the 100% funding of Overture. Mayor says we are in compliance, but not doing what they wanted, they wanted us to spend it on advertising and marketing to bring people to hotels. They are working o the premise is that the way to create hotel night by paying for advertising in Chicago. WE are smarter than they are, we know it is by providing a convention center and sense of place to bring in tourists and other visitors that would see a range of opportunities in Olbrich Park, Breese Stevens Field and investments in State St. We don’t know how they will react next year when they see our budget in 2016.
DeMarb says that her question is about operations and cleaning to keep things going, is there a way to understand or get data to support room nights. Mayor says they are doing that. They are asking visitors to Olbrich if they are buying hotel space.
DeMarb says there is a big increase in revenues, how was that calculated and how comfortable are you with that. Schmiedicke says he ran through the numbers yesterday. They saw 16% growth in first two quarters. They set it at 11% for next year. They are using 2/3 says the mayor, we are being conservative. Schmiediecke says they are being more aggressive than in past years, if they are short, then they will have to look at expenditures, but since GMCVB gets a percentage they would look at it. DeMarb asks if our projections are the same as GMCVB? He says he is sure they will hear form them. They have seen that adding hotel rooms has added revenues. He says it is hard to make the projections, they have been fairly accurate, but they will talk with Deb Archer and see what they have to say but they are pretty confident in the numbers.
Bidar asks about the categories, are they statutory or ours? Schmiedicke is only tangible municipal development and marketing is called out. They looked for examples of 501c3 performing arts centers being supported.
MONONA TERRACE
Staff (Kathy) say that the revenue line item is changed with Munis, Monona Catering revenues are recorded differently, its about $5.1M in 2016 and for the projection is will be more like $6M. They get their steam from the State of WI and they are converting from coal to gas because of lawsuit by Sierra Club and they passed on the costs for $75,000 in 2016. They have services provided by City Channel that is passed through but you now see it.
Verveer asks about credit card fees. It used to be $60,000 and now it is $100,000, the biggest challenge is customer service to charge 2% ON $50,000 because they want their miles. They are tying to make it the cost of doing business. They convinced some of the higher billed people to pay with bank accounts. Eventheir wedding clients can have big bills that are impacted.
BUILDING INSPECTION
George Hank says it is a continuation of services.
Mayor tries to cut people off.
Clear asks about programmed inspections vs complaints. Hank says that they started to do programmed inspections outside of the Isthmus, North Thompson – they asked staff to pick areas to spend increased time. Programmed inspections are not just downtown but other areas, it has been very effective, some owners have been surprised.
Clear asks if they are expanding where they get higher than typical complaints. Hank says these are community pride violations , tall grass, trash. That usually means that if the outside is in disrepair, the inside is.
Rummel asks about the additional authority they have for Landmarks area. Hank says they assigned one staff person to do this of consistency, they are working closely with the preservation planner. That will be an effective process as they move forward, there are 8 other inspectors that could write report in areas of the city.
Rummel asks about the demolition by neglect. Hank says they have their first property they are working through on Williamson St. We are learning as we go on how the process will work. We need to see how the owner and court responds. The concept is good, he thinks it will go well, but until they go to court they won’t know if they need to tweak it. He is concerned about the language that has the city repairing things, he is concerned about the costs. He wants to see the property owners do the work themselves.
McKinney asks about the NRT areas and what challenges you have, what successes do you have. He says that over the years they have done a very good job in the NRT areas, some have more success, some we have driven the property owner out of the system. They have forced a change in ownership and it is totally different. It’s not as affordable as it used to be is a downside, we need to find the balance of strict enforcement, change in ownership but creative rehab to keep rents affordable.
McKinney asks if there were city dollars to assist with repairs or rehab? Hank says other divisions do have financial assistance. There is also federal money. One of the issues is that the work can be more than anticipated.
McKinney thanks mayor for reestablishing NRTs. She hopes they can sustain that, it is critical to have the hands on in her area. She is concerned it might go away with future administrations.
Verveer asks if there is an additional code enforcement officer. Hank say no, they filled a vacancy – they had someone almost hired but had a background check problem that they couldn’t offer the job. They have 9 positions. Verveer says that it looks like an additional FTE and he thought the mayor’s budget message said that too. Confusion. Larson says that this has something to do with the new system. They will look at it and clarify. Hank says they have a vacant unfunded code enforcement officer in new construction. Larson says that is funded in the executive budget, Hank says they won’t fill it. Verveer asks if it is about salary savings. Hank says 4 positions are adequate for the load they have, if they filled it, they would make one of the 3’s a lead worker, but he doesn’t envison that happneing in the calendar year or even the next. Schmiedicke says that this is an example of the manipulation by departments, here it is funded, but not filled and then savings is realized, it is just a way to show long term unfilled positions. Apparently, this will be different next year . . . it is an iterative process that will be further along in the 2017 budget. Schmiedicke says that this is a result of years of decisions, and this is identifying where unfunded positions are being used to balance a budget. Each agency has approached this differently. Verveer asks if that is a fair explanation. Hank says yes. George explains it again how creating a position and funding it are different. Larson says that this is used in agencies where they have career ladder positions. (mumbo jumble . . . . . sorry, not sure that they are explaining anything different, but its been nearly 4 hours without a break)
DeMarb asks if there are 47 or 48 FTEs. Schmiedicke says there are 48 positions, 47 funded positions, they realize this is a long term vacant position and they realized the salary savings. There are 48 positions, all funded, but they won’t fill to to meet the salary savings. DeMarb asks if they will have 47 in 2017? Schmiedicke says that is up to George.
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY
Tom Conrad says this is a continuation budget. The highlight is that they are changing some of the grant funded services to bringing them in house. Natalie Erdman says that the $18M revenue and expense is rent from HUD and the residents. Almost all the budget is funded through HUD contracts.
Rummel asks about why one says funding is stable and the other is uncertain. Conrad says that they are two different programs with the same name.
Rummel asks about cancellation of contracts with Journey and Urban League. Conrad says that they ahd a good relationship with both, but mutually agreed that it would be better to do it in house. They will work with both in the future.
McKinney asks him to be specific. Contrad says it was a mental health person, 80% of the Triangle is disabled renters and that social worker helps stabilize the area – both long term and crisis work. East and West was aimed at helping people underemployed find employment. They think they can do that LTE in house.
Erdman says that the other area is the development side. In the new system there are three positions where there should be 2 without offsetting salary savings.
MISCELLANEOUS APPROPRIATIONS – page 17
Three cost to continue items for Mark Wolfe
Support for Mad Market double dollars and EBT Farmers market program – this is cost to continue. Community Gardens is restructured, Community Groundworks and UW Extension fund it, more flexible than CDBG funding and then there are the SEED grants for food access related programs. Mayor says if they want to increase them, they have the Mayor’s support.
Cheeks asks about the $25,000 for Farmer’s Market. (sorry, missed the answer) Sounds like the money is adequate but they might want to expand, they need more matching dollars if there is a need. There has been $50,000 raised privately. There will be a need to raise more private funds.
Cheeks asks how long it takes to use the money. Wolf says that they started the program late last year, mid-August or September and that was too late, they didn’t get through the $15,000. With the increase in advertising it started in July and they had just about spent the money. They have talked to CAC about continuing to fundraise, they would like to see some improvements on that.
Eskrich asks about the Food Policy Council dollars, is there coordination between the council and other programs. He says yes, the SEED grants are flexible, and we before the food access map. SEED grants are targeted to areas and have to be about food access. One of the needs is thatthey need more permanent retail.
