Mark Clear violates ethics ordinance?, TIF falling out of favor with Madison School District and County (could future TIF districts and expansions . . . ahem, Edgewater . . . be in jeopardy?), the city budget shortfall (are newspapers partially responsible?) and towing . . . Thuy failed to show on Meadowood if folks are wondering, but Clear didn’t fail to disappoint in geeking out, while grinning ear to ear, over software.
This isn’t a typical line by line recap, just a few items of note.
CLEAR VIOLATED ETHICS CODE?
So, the ethics code, which there has been alot of buzz about recently clearly says the following:
An elected official who has or whose immediate family member has a financial or personal interest in any matter coming before the Common Council shall disclose on the records of the Common Council the nature and extent of such interest. This provision shall not apply if the elected official disqualifies herself or himself from participating in discussion of the matter and from voting on it. An elected official shall disqualify herself or himself from discussing and voting if the matter under consideration involves her or his or her or his immediate family member’s financial or personal interests to the extent that such interests conflict or appear to conflict with her or his official duties or would impair or reasonably be expected to impair her or his independence of judgment or actions.
While discussing the small business bus pass program at the Board of Estimates, Clear had this to say:
As a quick comment, as one of those companies that is ready to sign, I am very excited about this, and I think its a great program and I’m looking forward to being on of the first to participate.
That didn’t sound like a disclosure, and it didn’t sound like an abstention. I sounded like someone who has a financial (tax savings!) or personal interest in the passage of this resolution who violated the ethics code.
FED UP WITH TIF?
In discussing the “half mile rule” issue with the Board of Estimates, there were a few interesting tid-bits that were disclosed. Verveer had a substitute that was a “compromise” as a result of some of the concerns.
Gromacki explained that the Joint TIF Review Board had concerns about the project plan that was presented, they got alot of feedback that wasn’t positive and he thinks if they had put it to a vote it would have failed. They were concerned that they were committed to paying $2M during a time when there is alot of concern about where funding is going to come from for school districts and underlying jurisdictions. The district is doing well and there is $5.7 million dollars of excess increment without identified costs in the district. That gave them pause and there was alot of pushback for the first time since Gromacki has been here. He said they came up with a compromise, which the joint review board still has to vote on that, that they would eliminate the $5.7M expenditure since it has unidentified costs. They think the $2M of budgeted costs for the capital square area that would be ok.
Bruer asked if, given the growing sensitivity of the other jurisdictions (County, School District and MATC) that have to approve our TIF districts, what the staff saw coming with other TIF district requests (everyone had to be thinking Edgewater, they still need to get the Edgewater in a TIF district before it can get TIF money and that has to pass this board.)
Gromacki says there is growing concern, School District is particularly cash strapped and they are looking at TIF districts that are doing well and wanting to recover cost, they want their foregone revenue back. They aren’t really questioning our use of TIF, but they are in a situation where every dollar counts. They county surprised him because they got in the fray. Their concern was primarily with the $5.7M and even the MATC representative was concerned.
Bruer was really pushing for the city and Mayor to follow up to smooth things over to smooth the way for any future TIF requests.
Clear asked what happens from the $5.7? They said that it would be deleted and then it would force an early closing of the district.
Sanborn took the opportunity to explain how the schools and county and technical college fore go increases in taxes in those areas and re-made his argument that we should just borrow for items we think are appropriate. He, of course, was the sole no vote.
GEEKING OUT
So, I sort of was giving Clear grief for being a geek about software, but as they were discussing the upgrades, Dean Brasser mentioned that part of the project means the there will be web based tools to help access data in the financial database to limit the inquiries they get. I can’t wait to hear/see more on that! There, now my geek is showing.
BUDGET . . . SHORTFALLS?
Brasser explained the resolution. He says its just a technical change, it presents information about budget amendments necessary throughout the year, they are pretty minor. There were a few departments who went over costs, Rhodes-Conway made sure they were called up to explain themselves. Brasser says streets was the biggest issue, but it was due to recycling costs being down by $1.22M. (See next item). He also then explained that the city, when they can, under the limits of the Expenditure Restraint program, we like to put funds towards the Workman’s Comp Fund. We’ve had a deficit in that fund for years and when we can, “if we have available resources” we try to transfer money to the fund to help make up the deficit. This year we have 2.77M under the Expenditure Restraint program and after all the adjustments they have $1.625M that the CAN transfer if they CHOOSE.
NEWSPAPERS RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR CASH FLOW PROBLEMS?
This caught my ear . . . in response to Verveer, Al Schumacher was describing the recycling revenues being down, he said that newspaper and cardboard has been the main staple of the recycling program and it is down. He said “the downturn in daily newspapers has really caused a big hit and the foreign economies don’t want our newsprint because they don’t have a market for it.” There you go! Blame the media . . . or is that the damn internets?
TOWING
They spent a good hour and a half on this issue. In a nutshell, disputes about zoning, who is the cheapest, who provides the best service and the bidding process were at issue. Prairie Land Towing went through a process, ended up the cheapest and had the best score (95 vs. 76 score) and got a letter saying they were awarded the contract, then there was a protest letter from Schmitz towing, then Prairie Land was told on the phone the contract was a problem because of zoning issues. When Prairie Land looked into their zoning, they found Schmidt’s Towing was also in violation. Then the police weighed in saying they preferred the more expensive Schmidts. So the Mayor, Bruer and Clear proposed to overturn the process and scores and go with Schmidt’s instead. Lots of talking . . . I skipped through a bunch of it (Bruer). . . in the end Sanborn suggested they go with 6 months and settled on a 9 month process. Bruer and Clausius argued they should stick with 18 months. I found Sanborn’s arguments, once again, very responsible and convincing. Something kind of stinks here and it looks bad.
