Media

There are several retirements and tomorrow is the filing deadline for candidates. At the moment is looks like . . .

They haven't posted a legal notice since December 18th . . . enjoy the break.

Heads up - the county board meeting for this week has been cancelled. (I've don't think I've seen that in the last 20ish years . . . )

Whoa . . .the weekly schedule (5 meetings, 1 cancelled) appears seriously messed up - it doesn't even have the city council meeting on it. Here's what I was able to piece together between the weekly meeting schedule and legistar (11 meetings, 8 with agendas). I wish just one of our elected officials cared enough out the public having access to accurate information about their meeting to take it on and champion it. It takes just one . . .

For people who live on the streets, they can expect to have a lower life expectancy and many will die on the streets. On the longest night of the year, Madison-area Urban Ministry pulls together faith communities from Madison to remember and honor those who have died while homeless.

^^ That should say "proposed to be" . . . but not much changes between the proposals and what passes. What became SB639 on Friday afternoon has a hearing today at 10am, notice came out yesterday morning at 5:12am for the hearing. Please stop by and register against if you have time today - its likely to drag out. Here's the details!

3 meetings . . .

Only one day this week to meetings start after 5pm and that's today, the rest of the meetings are at 7:30, noon, 8:15, 3:45, 9:30, 8am and 12:15 . . . seems like a new low 3 of 10 of the meetings held after 4pm.

Usually this is more the county's thing but they have meetings starting at 9:30, 11:00, 2:00, 8:00 and 12:30 - in addition to their 4:30 and 4:45 start times. 9 out of 21 start before 5:00.

Everything will be passed in one big motion except for the following unless it changes at the meeting or someone shows up to speak. Looks like they plan to talk about youth and adult employment programs (Bidar-Sielaff), 134 Fair Oaks TIF (Ahrens) and Public Market Foundation (Rummel).

Often there are over 50-100 items the city council votes on in one motion on the council floor unless an alder pulls it off the agenda to discuss - or a member of the public shows up to speak on it. And even when members of the public speak, they hear what they have to say then pass the items without comment. Here's and overview of the meeting and a brief summary of what they probably won't talk about tonight, but we'll find out when the consent calendar comes out later today - I usually post them as "Things the Council with Talk About" or similarly labeled blog posts. So much gets done with almost no comment at this point.

Last night the Homeless Issues Committee met - and they got updates and presentations on the County Affordable Housing Fund, the City Affordable Housing Fund, the Street Outreach Program as well as City and County Budgets, the homeless day resource center, Messner's site proposals for affordable housing, and the proposal to place a portapotty downtown for people sleeping outside - plus they talked about their priorities for the upcoming year.