Short and sweet regular meeting here (25 minutes). Part one of budget amendments here (2 hours 15 minutes). Sorry about the amendment numbers, can’t type fast enough, the amendments are all here.
Amendment 11
On the table til the author comes back
Amendment 12
Delayed for same reason.
Amendment 13
Passes
Amendment 15
Eskrich asked a question about when neighborhood centers can come in again. O’Keefe says that their process was in 2013 and set funding for 2014, 2015 and now they are extending that. Eskrich asks why we did that. O’Keefe said that every 2 years all the program areas and all the dollars would go out in multiple requests for proposals and staff and committees would do it all in one process. When the mayor and council wanted an evaluation and this summer was the first step out on the other side, even though it isn’t complete, but it is complete enough to do funding for senior and crisis funding. The resolution called for continuing the rest of the contracts for another year. Center support and community gardens were done in 2013. Eskrich asks when they will come up for center support funding. Laura Noel says that has not been decided. Eskrich asks if Bayrview is the only center that doesn’t get support. He says center support helps keep the doors open and program support is for specific activities. Bayview is the only city supported one that doesn’t get it, and there is a story there. O’Keefe says that it started long ago. The Bayview Foundation collects rent and that is used for center support. They get $45,000 – 50,000 for youth programming. They have been to use for two EOP grants and we recommended funding for it but the conference committee thought better of it, staff is recommending money again and the conference committee meets tomorrow.
DeMarb says this is outside the process of funding. She is not saying that they don’t need the funding, but she won’t support it, its outside, it gives someone an unfair advantage, there is a reason we look at like type funding at the same time and describe need and she won’t support this.
Eskrich says the reason she did this, and you received correspondence from Alder Andy Heidt and they got a new director and they haven’t been up for a funding cycle. They are struggling with needed repairs, she appreciates this is outside the process, but this director hasn’t been able to apply and don’t know when he will be able to. O’Keefe doesn’t disagree. The center support allocation is broken and needs to be fixed.
Motion failed.
Amendment 12
Cheeks asks O’Keefe to describe the program and original request and outcome. O’Keefe says that they spend about $290,000 in youth employment, which doesn’t county the Wanda Fullmore dollars. That is split between 6 organizations, its mostly youth summertime work, some more supportive than others. Briarpatch and Operation Fresh Start have group work that they support. We provide with that $290,000 we have have $1M of programming, much of it comes from wages from private businesses. It supports about 320 employment slots for young people. We know that the agencies that recruit youth have more interest than employment slots and they thought this was important enough to ask for an expansion. They asked for $125,0000 for 60 slots. It’s about $2,000 per slot, but it varies. Faced with lots of other requests, the Mayor scaled it back to $75,000. The amendment is for $225,000 and double the size of the program.
Mayor asks if the programs we fund is for Madison residents only? O’Keefe says yes.
Phair says that he talked to a lot of people about violence prevention and the thing that rose up was youth employment. He talked to many agencies about if they doubled the funding could they do more, it would be too much to do it this summer, but he is confident there is the need. His thinking is that they need to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to violence prevention. There have been studies showing that kids with summer jobs are not re-offending. He wants to help with success. (I missed a bunch) He says he wants to add language for collaboration among the groups and he put language about targeting the Neighborhood Intervention Program, they know the most succeptible kids and he wants to target them. He hopes they can support it, he wants to do something big around youth prevention.
Ahrens asks if this is a new program. They explain it has been funded. Ahrens says this looks different and is a specific group. Phair says this will go into youth employment funding process. This will be RFP. Ahrens says “oh, its really badly titled”.
DeMarb was also in the conversations and certainly supports youth employment programs. Normally what is the funding cycle? Noel says when they take up youth programs, yes. O’Keefe says they have had stand alone RFPs, independent of the summer process. DeMarb asks why $125,000 now, if outside the normal funding process. Is there an emergence, is there something going on we don’t know about. O’Keefe says they develop programs, there are waiting lists and they think it is over due. They were going to do a separate funding process, and thought they should do this ASAP. DeMarb asks if there is data to show this decreases violence. Mayor asks Tariq to send the report tomorrow. Says it immunizes them for 14 months. When she asked the question before the answer was that there isn’t data.
Rummel asks how much is summer jobs and how much is after school and is one better than the other. O’Keefe says most of it is summer oreinted. That is when they have time for the internships. There are a few that are year round and that is a minority. Rummel says internship means you don’t get paid. Everyone says NO! Mayor says they are paid a reasonable wage. Rummel asks if it is living wage. Noel says $9/hour. Mayor gets snippy with Rummel again. Says they don’t pay rent and then cuts her off.
Mayor asks $125,000 was 60 jobs, mayor put in $75K, this amendment takes it to $300,000.
Bidar says that she supports this and we can play a significant impact. There is a waiting list, its a big amount of money. They can do something significant for young people and they can do it with much collaboration with the county.
Cheeks says that this reminded him of discussions over the summer, there is a finite number of kids (500) identified that are “at-risk” and in a position where they can go one way or the other and conditions in their lives make it more likely they will go in a negative position. While this isn’t restricted to that list, but we could really seriously get to a place where we say we are going after this. He has an issue with how we fund so many good efforts, we fund services that make it easier to be poor or homeless, it is uncommon that we find something that is about funding opportunity, we are changing people’s lives. Knowing the data we know, seeing the outcomes in the schools, knowing the change in demographics for years to come, we need more opportunities to double down.
Rummel is sympathetic to this, but we haven’t gotten through half of what we want to do. Do we do this and then come back, we need to think about this, we are doing this ad hoc, can we look at what is left.
Schmiedicke says so far they have a levy change of -492,718 compared to the executive budget because of amendment one. They have spent $276.194, taxes are at 2.99%.
Eskrich has been cutting but also wants to spend some money. She struggles with the operating expense and the city being a leader, but we should have partners, particularly in the private sector. She says that private employers think the workforce is critical and we should get some money from them. She says they put in a lot of money for services with no money for evaluation. We need to know if this is the right thing to do. She struggles knowing the other decisions and can’t support this amount at this time.
DeMarb hasitates to speak because she supports jobs for kids, but this is a lot of money. She is not saying there are not kids to fill the slots, there are waiting lists all over the city, this is not the only need and this is outside the cycle. They might be looking at youth this summer. There are many youth programs on hold. They don’t get the same opportunities and we need funding for 8 year olds too. (missed some) We need buy in from the private sector.
Mayor asks if when we fund the jobs, we cover salary and administration. We fund transpiration in some instances and financial education. This program, what are we paying for? O’Keefe says some of it is like the city funded programs. Where the employment opportunities are in a private business setting, city funds are used to support staff of nonprofit orgs to recruit businesses. To make sure its a meaningful experience for the employer and the youth. He says that the wages are not paid by the city, but by the businesses, so we do leverage private sector funding. He says that our $290,000 supports $1M, others comes from United Way, Dane County and private businesses. Mayor says the nonprofit partner would have to find the jobs and work with them to develop a meaningful employment experience. Mayor says that in talking to businesses he said to them that the cost is more than the salary. How many of those kind of private sector jobs have been created. O’Keefe says he recalls the same thing, employers were reluctant to create jobs, but ok with internships. He says that he thinks they will find businesses to participate.
Rummel amends to $125,000. DeMarb immediately seconds. She clarifies is it $75 + $125K. Motion carries.
Motion passes to add $125, not $225K.
Amendment 11
Cheeks refers to Bidar. She says this was a way of, they were trying to be fiscally responsible, they wanted to have a bigger impact. Forever after there were COLA increases given, we went from a trend of 10 years where there was no COLA, and not it has been 2 years that it was provided. This was an attempt to save money. She is not dying on this hill (with a nod to Alder King).
David Ahrens doesn’t support this, we have a living wage agreement with the service programs and what we do is increase the living wage and don’t increase the wages and this is a 2% director cut. He says that a the East Madison Neighborhood Center almost everyone gets paid the same after 6 month or 6 years. The net effect is a program cut, services or people are reduced. If we are interested in some level of equity in employment, the people who work under the contracts are among the lowest paid employees in the city.
Eskrich echos what Ahrens says. Later tonight we will have equity for pay for city employees. These contracted employees are doing essential city services and deserve to get paid.
Bidar says she is “totally happy” for the record to see this fail. (i think that is what she said)
5 nos. Motion fails
Amendment 16, 17, 18
Pass without discussion
Amendment 19
Rummel asks why they need staff if they aren’t opening the station.
DeMarb asks to place this on file.
Bidar asks about placing this on file. Sue Williams says that they delayed a bunch of hiring, they will be hired in September in 2017 and not graduate until 2018.
Mayor says he got the memo late, but if the amendment is placed on file, if adopted it would add 145,000 in next years budget and what happens in 2017? Mayor wants to get at the difference for next year and the following year if this is adopted as opposed to if the memo is adopted. Terri Genin says 683,000 and 486,000 in 2018. At then end of 3 years it would be 1.3M. The change would hav e0 in 16, 411,000 in 2017, 852,000 in 18 and 52,000 in 2019 but its the same total. Some of it is one time cost but the ongoing cost is 912,000. Mayor says amendment is to place on file for now until they can work on Chief Williams memo.
Clear says no further amendment would be necessary in 2016, though, right. Correct.
Eskrich says it is ok to not fully staff up, but to use the new approach, she wants to staggar out the impact by moving it a year later.
Amendment is placed on file.
Amendment 20
Eskrich asks staff to come up. She asks them to speak to this amendment. Janelle Heinrich from public health. She says they do (damn missed it) She says they are mandated to do somethings. This is about assessment. This is about understanding frequent flyers and trying to figure out how to serve our constituents in the best way. She says they are moving to see what the role of public health could be to have a different outcome for police and fire.
Eskrich says that we are paying for the poor outcomes, can you say more about the data and evidence. Fire says two programs they are working on, the frequent contact and the care program. They are doing a survey to see the baseline and determine their needs. We would not have done or interpreted the survey without their help. They are working with a high risk community. They can measure how many times they go somewhere and how long it takes to get there. We aren’t good at outcomes. We don’t have the expertise to do that piece. Another piece they are working on is the Opium and overdoses. They have been providing statistics since 2011 and they are the canaries, but they don’t have the data to see what happens. They don’t have data on what police are doing with Narcan. Public Health is in a unique position because of HIPAA regulations – Public Health is the bridge to get around police and fire sharing data.
Eskrich asks why they can’t do this now, what added capacity do they need. Heinrich says that assessment is patterned off of national standards and then they add in issues that are local to our community. They have 14 staff in policy planning and evaluation. They are responsible for assessing the health of the community around priority areas. On this topic, they have to do that community by community. She says this will be AODA and mental health issues with chronic diseases after that. Hopefully they will have the number of calls go down, but they won’t be case managing individuals. She says there are models around the country that they can use.
Mayor says that he thinks this has the potential to bring services to the public, but also save both public and private sector an extraordinary amount of money. If there was a position that should be funded jointly, this is it. If we pay 100% and keep all the research and data to ourselves, that would be unconscionable, he hopes the county will pay money.
DeMarb says thanks, its needed, this will save us money with calls for service that should be done by others. That is fair. Gathering data to support and coordinate is great and she supports it. Her hesitation is spending $100,000 when we know of the other positions that need to be filled. She is wondering if the can backfill it with existing staff for the next year, to get the data and then we can add the person. Heinrich says “no”. They can’t backfill it. They have 12 – 14 staff responsible for this work throughout the county. The reason they can’t make greater progress is because they don’t have the person power to take it to the next level.
Ahrens thinks its a good idea, but he thins it is money that could be used better for providing some level of services when the gap is known. IN his review of the health department budget, program evaluation for 2015 is the largest segment of the health department and community services are zeroed out. He thinks adding $100,000 to policy and program evaluation seems excessive, they have 17 staff and if this has merit it should be addressed. People have to do more with less, if this is a priority and has promise, this should be prioritized and use existing funds instead of adding more money to the largest program in the health department.
Heinrich says that there is a way to go to provide you information about our budget. The policy planning and evaluation is the smallest division, as compared to the 65 they have for direct services. Ahrens says then there is an issue with the finance numbers. He says nonetheless, it has grown exponentially.
Rummel says that DeMarb raised her question, her experience is that staff don’t get hired, we fought for things that didn’t get hired. Part of her is just, good luck with that. Her other question is how does the city do data, should every agency have their own data people. Heinrich doesn’t know. She says that as a member of city staff it is a conversation that is amply resourced. The public health has to do this by mandate.
Verveer says that they don’t have as much contact with Public Health as they had to, he wishes this position was discussed when the county board supervisors were here two weeks ago. He is confused, this would be a county employee but city funded. Yes. Verveer asks what other positions are like this. None. Under the intergovernmental agreement, how would this work. Heinrich says that one entity can add something if they fund it wholly. Verveer asks if anyone talked to county board supervisors? Heinrich says they need one person to get things going. In Milwaukee they do this around homicides and they started with one or two staff and now they have 4 or 5. She can’t predict, but she’d like to think that they will be so successful that they can scale it bigger. She says this was just brought up last week.
Verveer asks how they can be more involved in the work public health does. He says a few years ago the ALRC had public staff appear and work on binge drinking in the downtown area. He was pleased with the large amount of staff there. He asks again for salary detail. Finance says they are still working on it. Verveer says it is easy to see what sanitarians do, but when they could see permanent salary detail there were less public nurses to hire more planners. She says they have added epidemiologist and planners. Verveer asks about what the data analysts are called. Heinrich says that unit is representative of our mandated functions – that they framed in 7 priority areas. Prior to a couple years ago, all the functions were in the community health division. It was challenging to balance and manage the direct services with the other roles and often the community health assessment wasn’t being supported in the way it should be. They filled the positions in house, from a direct service perspective, we have not jeopardized those services. They looked at the best skills and roles and resourced to that.
Cheeks asks about software they would need. Heinrich says not different than what they already have.
Eskrich says that this was added at the last minute and her background is in public health and she thinks this shift is critical and we need to have it in every single policy decision we make. She thinks they don’t want to have this discussion in public health, but we need to put our money where our mouth is, but when we are making those decisions she doesn’t see data to keep them accountable. She says that we have expensive problems we are solving at the backend. This is funded in city dollars because we will save city dollars – we should have that discussion with county (she notes she is talking out of both sides of her mouth tonight). She says that we are not equipped to make decisions based on data and she hopes the public health can work on this and other areas. She says we need to start funding like this. We need evaluation and we need to fund it.
Phair says that he is on public health and they have had this discussion many times and from his observation they are ready for this, and hopes they play this role. He says that we can go too far with data, sometimes there is a human element to things. He asks Heinrich how health can continue to play this role. Heinrich says the sky is the limit. She says they have staff who are working in planning to infuse health indicators in the comprehensive plan. They are working with Parks and there is opportunity in the a broad range of things. Fire says that all EMS agencies are using the same data and public health now has direct access to that info. When they don’t transport that info sits in house. They have a gold mine of data and they reached out to get help and it would be a shame to have the systems in place and not have the experts to get to the next steps with this. The health department has been generous to help them.
DeMarb says this was informative, she loves the idea of looking through he health indicators lens, outcome based budgeting could be through that lens and it talks to equity. She doesn’t know if this is the best place to start because they haven’t had the discussion. Some members of the council might be completely versed in this, but she is not. She can’t vote for this.
Mayor says that while the amendment might not pass, he supports and disagrees with some things people have said. Interesting what Phair said about too much data. He says that most of the best practices were originated in Boston (food policy, public health, summer youth employment) and one of the points he the mayor often made, if you spend too much time with the data, you don’t get to the point. Some of you have heard me make the point that a significant amount of money ($30 – 50M a year) is for mental illness and substance abuse responses. All you need to do is take a small sample of the police contacts, fire conveyances to know that. If we could address mental health and substance abuse issues or the lonely people we could significantly save money to pay for the growth types of things. That is what is obvious, what we need the data for when it is not obvious. He thinks we are ready for this position, there is work to do, he is not sure what will happen with it, he thinks it will fail, but he can assure Eskrich that they will work with the county on a collaboration. He would like to see the partners pay their share since they will benefit. He says he will work with Judy Olson to see if they could get a grant.
Phair says that perhaps Public Health has not enough to reach out to the council, take his word, he thinks they are ready and should support this.
Rummel says that we should talk to the county and see what the funding options are. This is a good idea, she wants her to work on it and bring it back in a week as an amendment.
Cheeks supports it, he says there are good software tools out there, cloud based, that would significantly expedite this work and one of the companies is in Madison.
Motion fails (Eskrich and Cheeks vote aye)
Amendment 21
Verveer moves an amendment to strike “contract with provider located in Traverse City Michigan” and replace it with an RFP process to select a provider. He says there is a change since two weeks ago, he asks if there interest in hearing from staff. DeMarb asks George Drekmann to explain. He says that the county decided not to put this in the budget right now. He says the county would provide a facility at the landfill to use, if they get 20,000 they can make it work, the issue is that it might not be ready til April. There is another option to work with an outfit in LaCrosse. Hauling to LaCrosse would ruin the economics. An RFP process would be worthwhile.
The amendment passes.
Cheeks asks how much we are paying now. Dreckman says 70,000 in 2015, no money in 2016. It didn’t make the cut in the discussions.
Motion passes
Amendment 22
Passes.
Amendment 23
Bidar asks what this is. Arhur Ross says this is 40 back wraps on the buses with pedestrian safety messages for pedestrians and drivers. This is an issue all over the city, we want to move to a more curteous community. Staff say this is a behavioral problem that infrastructure can’t address. We need cooperation to make sure people cross the road safely.
Clear asks if this works, do we have data. Arthur says they have to work more on education, this fills that in. They have enforcement, but they need to be hitting this on all sides. The police are interested as well. Clear asks if we will use local talent. Ross says yes, but if they can get pro bono they will, but there is stuff that has been developed that is out there.
Eskrich says she wants to get data out of this.
Bidar says that they could spend $10K more for advertising but she didn’t put it in there. She wants to be cognizant that with $40,000 this isn’t a large investment. Our behavior of drivers needs some enforcement of what the rules are, especially with the changes to our streets. People don’t know the new rules and expectations, especially about what bikes can and can’t do.
DeMarb asks how this will be done without the $10,000. Ross says they have done these campaigns in different areas around the countyr and the artwork was paid for with federal funds and they have to make those available. They have to tap into what is already out there, they might be able to get a grant from the DOT> They will also do press releases to draw attention to it.
Rummel asks who will look at the ads? Ped Bike, or staff? Ross says staff, but they can go to a committee. Rummel says that she would be interested. They agree to run it by Ped, Bike.
Amendment 24
Rummel moves a substitute that is handed out. She spent a lot of time trying to figure out equity and comp groups, she is just doing a flat rate and changing the text to delete the second sentence.
Amendment to the amendment and the amendment passes.
The operating budget is referred to the public hearing on the 10th. That passes without debate on the entire budget.
They adjourn.
