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According to the Mayor - angering the police and delaying the public market and of course, $67M for Judge Doyle Square.

No much. Not Judge Doyle Square . . . and everything else seems to be sailing through as per usual.

The committee finally succumbed to the pressure. As of October 1st, homeless will face trespassing tickets if they are at the City-County Building after meetings conclude on weekdays, and on weekends and holidays. After 3 hours of testimony and staff presentation that no new services were necessarily being offered, the committee decided there were tired of hearing about this, said it wasn't their job, suggested churches should just take care of this and then voted with the mayor 7 - 1 to remove homeless from the City-County Building with no plan in place as to where they might go. All this, despite the fact that the first statement was this: Enis Ragland says that they have heard a lot of passionate testimony about the conditions and lack of services and resources that are available to homeless individuals and its very true, its true, there is a failure of government to provide mental health services, at the federal level down to the county level which has a responsibility for doing so and failure to provide alcohol and drug treatment and there is also a failure by government to provide services for the homeless, so I don't argue against any of those.

Here's the report and a quick summary of the recommendations.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what they are, there is no information available to the public - I guess we'll find out in the next 14 days, when it goes to council? Um, was there going to be general public input as to any of this? Wouldn't that be important for the committee to consider?

Ran into George Austin and Natalie Erdman going to the City-County Liaison Committee at 5:30 yesterday and they told us the negotiating team was...

Based on looking at the budget and summary, you won't be able to tell - but its true, they called me and told me on my birthday, July 20th. The official department budget request was submitted Friday. Parisi is holding his budget listening sessions tomorrow and Wednesday. That was a surprise announcement to most of us last week. The hearings will be held in Fitchburg and Sun Prairie. Please read on to see how this all unfolded to the best of my ability - given that most of what happened will be kept a secret until after the budget has passed.

This week is nuts . . . too much news, too little time. Right now I'm missing the press conference on the Dane County Supervisor's Report on Racial Equity - can't wait to see that report too! But that will have to wait!

Interesting use of county resources to influence legislative activity . . . er, some call it lobbying, especially when you are getting paid for your efforts. And, well, here's the talking points for those who support removing people from the city county building . . . nothing to see here, its all taken care of, services are being provided! Those homeless people are violent and present a danger to us all!

Love the bureaucratese - "All shelter, housing case management, information and referral, and food pantry and clothing distribution services are maintained at their 2015 budgeted levels." Funny, cutting 1/3 of the Tenant Resource Center budget makes it feel like something in that sentence is disingenuous. The "services" realistically can't be "maintained" when it comes to tenants in Dane County outside the City of Madison - what other agency has the knowledge, resources and skills that the Tenant Resource Center has?

Come to meetings or contact your elected officials on Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday (again), Wednesday, Thursday and if Monday goes poorly, major damage control on...

What a weird week - at the same time they're trying to kick homeless people off the steps of the city-county building, they are throwing open the doors to give millionaires, millions more. Taking the minimal safety away from those who have the least and giving away our tax dollars to those who need it the least in a gross game of Casino Capitalism. Email your alders on Judge Doyle Square! The votes seem close! Show up on Tuesday if you can stomach it.