It’s been a while . . . I’m a little rusty.
GETTING STARTED
Roll Call – only Kemble and the Mayor are absent.
Marsha Rummel is in the chair
Samba Baldeh moves suspension of the rules to take items out of order and to introduce items at the end of the meeting, that passes.
#1 gets referred
No early public comment
CONSENT AGENDA
Everything passes on the agenda as noted with the following exceptions:
#2 is a public hearing
Mark Clear interrupts, the microphone system in the room is really quiet. I noticed during CCEC but I thought it was the noisy machine by me . . . turns out it was the entire system. They didn’t fix it right away and they continue to have trouble through the presentations.
The following items are extra-majority items and need 15 votes
36 – Borrowing
37 – Borrowing
38 – Grants for Alcohol and Seatbelt enforcement
40 – Police Grants
43 – Capital Budget Amendment for Monona Terrace Bike Path
54 – Loan for Wilmar to buy the building
Additional recommendations for
7 – Good Food Purchasing Policy – sent to Parks Commission
74 – Placemaking – re-referred to the 10/3 council meeting
100 – CDA Skylight work at Village on Park for Public Health – late item report
Exclusion List
21, 22 & 23 – Transportation Ordinance Revisions
25 – Language Access Report
31 – MOU with MG&E
62 – Darbo-Worthington Neighborhood Plan
99 – Report on Ending Veterans and Chronic Homelessness
More details are here if you’re interested.
Mike Verveer reports that it was unanimous on 36 & 37 at Finance committee just minutes earlier and so that should be approved with the consent agenda.
There is a registrant on 81, supports not wishing to speak – its an item for referral and they don’t allow people to speak to those items.
The consent agenda passes
PUBLIC HEARING ON CAPITAL BUDGET
No one is registered.
They refer the item back to Finance Committee.
PRESENTATIONS
25 – Interim report on language access plan
Norm Davis has a PowerPoint presentation on the Language Access Plan. It’s an interim report to the council. They just approved the extension for the full report until December. They have a copy of the PowerPoint and the draft plan in the legislative file. He first has a video that shows that if 100 people lived on earth, how that would be split up in different categories. (No volume issues there!!! It’s really loud!!!) He says the purpose of the plan is to recognize the importance of every individual and that every individual is entitled to all city services and should not be limited based on their Limited English Proficiency or a disability. They provide written translation and oral interpretation free of cost to make sure everyone has access. Additionally they are required by the federal government and local ordinances to provide this to residents and visitors. The major language groups are Spanish, Hmong, Mandarin Chinese and American Sign Language (ASL). They had a steering committee plus experts from the community assisting them on the steering committee. The IT staff were also helpful in making sure that services could be accessible. They did several focus groups, they want to touch every community, especially those that are not English prevalent in the community. They held a session with the Department and Division heads and sent out a survey to all city employees. Kate McCarthy said 500 employees responded. They identified the major groups that have requests, the largest being Spanish, Hmong and Chinese Mandarin. The other 8% was 12 other languages. The services people use are telephone interpreting, 24 hour language line and then scheduling an interpreter for a meeting and translating of documents. They looked at bilingual staff and emergency responders. 29.4% are bilingual, but only 9.2 have it in their job description, that was 12 employees. 22.1% reported being asked by other departments to provide assistance, 53.8% of the time they are asked by coworkers. 73% said they have someone in their department that are bilingual and 61% said that they asked for assistance from them. They also asked emergency responders, only 18% use the city vendors, we need to increase assess for them in an emergency situation. Kirsten Vanderscheuren says that they have a draft of the plan and they talk about the standards that interpretation and translation requires which includes competency and certification. Interpreters and translators are different skills and have different certification requirements. They said that they have issues with bilingual staff having extra responsibilities that they are not paid for. They also talk about what must be interpreted or translated, that includes council meetings and press conferences that must have translators available and what documents are vital to be translated. They also outline procedures for when and how to request different types of translation services. They also have a section on responsibilities to train staff, monitoring and updating the plan. There are 4 phases of the plan, this will cost more money than the $20-30,000 that has been in the budget, that has been inadequate to meet best practices that other organizations in the community are doing much more. $158,428 more is requested to cover the cost to translate vital documents to 3 languages and have 4 translators at meetings and press conferences, plus other equipment (listening devices and video translation for those who can’t read). Much of 2018 will be tracking items and they want to accomplish this in the next 5 years. LAP@cityofmadsion.com is where you can communication about questions, needs and concerns.
Mark Clear says that the city communications are decentralized, and asks how will that affect the effectiveness and the cost? Davis says their focus is vital documents and critical communications – every agency will use the DCR (Department of Civil Rights) to make sure certified services for translation and interpretation . Clear asks if DCR will become the centralized communications department, do other cities have other methodologies? Davis says we need additional staff in the City of Madison, but they want to measure what services are demanded over the next year to expand to the right size and fit. DCR will coordinate the services, but not be the mouthpiece for other agencies.
Mike Verveer asks how much money DCR puts towards language access now. Davis says $20-30,000 but they run over every year. This year there was $22,000 in the budget but they are at $60,000 right now. Verveer asks as of when – she says 3rd quarter, it may be more like $85,000 for the year. Verveer asks if the majority of that is in person interpreter services like at ALRC? She says that the language line is $1000 per month, translation and interpretation is split. They have had some larger documents in the past year. Davis says this doesn’t include the additional services they sorely need. They need to have interpretation services at council and press conferences so the public is not left out of those communications.
David Ahrens asks how they identify the languages needed? They looked at 4 years of information and based it on the requests. They did look at language by the area and it matched the census information. Ahrens asks if they are grouped together, what is the size of these. Jason Gloeser says that they looked at the 15 top languages in Wisconsin and compared it to census information – the languages they were requiring matched the demographics of the community. Ahrens asks what the groups were, they say about 60% Spanish, 20% Hmong, 10% Mandarin and then a variety of other languages.
Shiva Bidar thanks the staff and says it’s a huge step forward to have a language access plan. She says that she wants her colleagues to look at the interim report and actually read it, not just the PowerPoint so if they have questions before the plan comes back to council they can have some back and forth. This is intended to increase the services across departments, so there is a standard for all departments, there are clearly different standards. The second is to have quality services across departments. The quality of the interpreters and translators and bilingual staff varies greatly. They need a vendor list and good contracting. The third thing is the tracking, the department doesn’t provide the language access but they are the dispatch for that so they can track it better. They need an account coding in the finance system to track the money better. The last issue is equity and that because there is no standards, some do more or less than others, but as a city as a whole doesn’t look at what the priorities are and what are vital documents for residents of the city. She says that language access budget at UW Health is $3.5M and she wanted to put the budget increase in context.
Sheri Carter thanks them too, she uses translators all the time at her meetings and she appreciates this, she asks if they as alders want to send a letter, is that translation element built into the budget? Davis says yes.
Rummel asks for a motion to accept the report and passes unanimously.
The Mayor just walked arrived.
99- Homeless Services Consortium
Linette Rhodes, from the Community Development Division is here representing the Homeless Services Consortium. She is here to give an update on the Zero Initiative, usually the Veterans Administration and County Human Services do this presentation with her, but there was a scheduling conflict. Torrie Kopp Mueller is also with her and she is the Homeless Services Consortium
In October 2015 she did a presentation to talk about the Zero Initiative that the city was signing on to – the community was going to house 130 vets and 135 chronically homeless individuals and we included families even though not part of Zero Initiative. We also wanted to engage with individuals experiencing homelessness and advocates and service providers. We want to make data informed decisions for budgets and policy. Coordinated Entry is a no wrong door approach to services we are using, in Oct 2015 we were still trying to expand and improve. We’re trying to make sure everyone gets a common assessment and we quickly move them into housing so homelessness is a rare, brief and non-reoccurring incident. 130 vets was our goal, that was a conservative estimate. We exceeded that, we housed 208 homeless veterans. We started with a By-Name List and used the common assessment and put people on a list and prioritied based on length of homelessness and needs. We did this for all types of Permanent Supportive Housing. There are no individual requirements to get into various programs, the person interacts and gets on list and we wanted to house 6 vets a month and we exceeded our goals each month. In 2017 we are still exceeding our goals, we house about 7 individuals a month. Inflow, however, is still 5 vets a month. So, we have 2 people leaving our list every month. We only have one chronic veteran that is homeless and he is approved to get into housing. We have 42 non- chronic vets on the list and about 29 of them are in Grant Per Diem which is transitional housing for 18 months, we consider them still homeless but they are in a housing situation. A group of 8 of us just came back from Chicago and spent 2 days strategizing on how to house the rest. She shows the summary of the strategies – they are going to focus on Grant Per Diem beds being more bridge housing, we want to get people into temporary housing but quickly move them to permanent housing. Another goal is maintaining stakeholder engagement. The vets have a great resource because they have VASH vouchers (like Section 8) and several are looking for housing with them. For chronic individuals who are not vet we want to house 135 individuals, we also exceeded that goal. We housed 162 in 2015-2016 – not as strong as our vet goals, but when Rethke opened we had a huge increase, so thank you. That really helped us in moving above our goal lines. In 2017 we started off strong, Porchlight had an opening & Housing Initiatives also bought so housing, but the numbers have dropped because our Permanent Supportive Housing is full. The only way to get people off the list is if someone exits and we don’t want people to exit if they are not ready. We need to look at the exits from our programs, we are housing about 8 a month, but that is low. Inflow is 9 right now. We really tried to focus on that. We have 324 chronically homeless on the list, that is about average for the last 5 months, Strategies include e promoting supportive services in our housing – they need case management services available. We also need to gather and target our resources and leverage all the funding we can. CDD just released the RFP and they had 1.5M in requests and only $750,000 available. We have tough decisions to make to meet our goals.
Mayor Paul Soglin adds (wow, this information is not entirely correct! A tad bit of revisionist history going on here.) that in 2015 we had a housing report, adopted a strategy of housing first and we knew that both Salt Lake City and Utah and Phoenix and the State of AZ has committed to housing first and ended chronic homelessness. It was at that time the White House was asking for commitments from cities to end chronic homelessness among veterans (end veteran AND chonic homelessness). At that point we established our new program about how to relate to the private section on WHEDA tax credits. Instead of developers finding site sand submitting applications – we identified the right sites and made contacts with prospective developers who then made an application we could vigorously support. (This has nothing to do with housing homeless persons . . . this is not where they are getting housing, they can’t afford this housing.) Since that time there has been some criticism from other municipalities about how much WHEDA tax credits are going to the City – we’re doing a fantastic job. In 2015 he was asked to end chronic homelessness for veterans (end veteran homelessness) by the end of the year, he made that commitment because of confidence in the staff. Knowing that our city staff could work with the private sector and get this done. Linette, Jim O’Keefe, Natalie Erdman and the whole team did a great job and should be recognized, even tho they sometimes tell him he is wrong like they recently did. He wants to make the point that if Salt Lake City can do it, with its state and Phoenix can, with its state, there is no reason the City of Madison can’t do it too, with the state. And then we move on to the other populations. Mayor asks Linette to list the staff who have been involved so she will be responsible for forgetting someone and not him. (ha ha)
Linette says Sue Wallinger has retired, Torrie Kopp Mueller & Sarah Lim (both new in 2017) and herself partnered with community organizations, they heldmore community meetings and it was very helpful to get different perspective from agencies, she also appreciates the support from other departments.
Maurice Cheeks says that CDBG has talked about this several times and he is getting a better understanding, from her observation there are many cities that have made the commitment, what are the commonalities of success? Rhodes says leadership higher than the staff understanding and supporting the mission is key. It has to be bigger than staff and be a community wide initiative. We need written policies and procedures to get to functional zero. We have advocates and others helping us, they are keeping us on track to make sure we are doing everything right. Other communities move people to an inactive list, instead we are housing as many people as possible to house without barriers. What we are doing is far beyond what they are doing in other communities and we are pushing as far as we can to house as many people as possible. It’s also access to resources and using them in the most appropriate way.
Verveer asked about the recent RFP (Request for Proposals) – his understanding is that the RFP is quite targeted for next year and some traditional agencies that have been funded are not eligible for the pot of money – he knows some moved to crisis – but for those who don’t serve on CDBG what is the timeline from here on out now that the proposals are submitted? Do we expect we will see some agencies that will ask us for earmarks? Linette says that the timeline is the applications were due on Friday, agencies will do a presentation on Oct 5 and there will be written questions from reviewers. They have a review panel – not just city staff – who will do a funding allocation recommendation that will go to the Nov CDBG meeting and it will come to council Nov 21st. The RFP is different, in the past we said, we will fund homeless services. This time they looked at the Community Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness and looked at strategies and goals and they have 3 goals – ending homelessness, preventing homelessness and services while homeless. The RFP states the strategies. The basic needs are still in the RFP, there are few programs that would not be able to find a strategy in the RFP – they just wanted the strategy clearly stated and for agencies to list the goals. They also put additional benchmarks in the RFP. Jim O’Keefe adds that the focus is on helping get people into permanent housing and support them while they are there – the second piece is new – and to adopt strategies that prevent new homelessness and keep homelessness as short as possible. We will have to see that agencies will contribute to those goals.
Mayor asks Jim about challenges particularly Rethke’s operations – case management dollars are not being covered, can you expand on that? Jim O’Keefe says we can produce housing, not fast enough, but we have not cracked the code on support services to individuals that occupy the housing. We believe that CCS is a critical piece of that, we had been too optimistic about to what extent that could fund those services. It will take a while to build that capacity and it won’t cover everyone and we need to look for more sources of funding – those services will make or break this initiative.
Matt Phair says he was going to ask about support services – he asks if Rhodes has anything to add to what O’Keefe said and congratulations on the good work.
David Ahrens says that the funding was wide open – he says transitional housing at Safe Haven came up and they say they don’t qualify – if it’s wide open why don’t they qualify? Rhodes says that Safe Haven never received City funding – that $350,000 came from HUD in the CoC competition. 20 years ago HUD funded Safe Havens but people can can only stay there 18 months, about 5 years ago HUD said they are not going to fund Safe Havens because those programs don’t help move people into permanent housing. They want to support permanent housing instead of shelters. The Safe Haven was grandfathered in, but through community conversations they ranked lower and lower in the application every year. Porchlight decided not to submit an application to the CoC process, and didn’t apply to city either. What will happen is an ongoing conversation. They are talking to the county about that – but if we want to create permanent housing, we need to look at this emergency shelter and decide how to best use the building. Those are ongoing conversations – could it be a group home, could it be permanent housing? We’d have to ask them about why they did not apply. O’Keefe says that the situation with Safe Haven is a difficult choice that we need to make to adopt more effective strategies for permanent housing. Without the resources to do everything, these are the choices we need to face. You may see those consequences when agencies don’t get funding.
Ahrens asks about transitional housing being less effective, was that a study of a specific institution – was that all transitional housing? Yes. He asks if there was a question of effectiveness of Safe Haven in our community – Rhodes says we have not looked at that yet.
Barbara McKinney asks about Rethke – congratulations by the way – she says at budget hearings they heard that Rethke did not have adequate operations funding for their staff – at what point in time would we have known that? McKinney says they have had tremendous successes in placement but if they have a deficit – at what point to we look at that? Rhodes says they meet with them on a quarterly basis to talk about services. We did give them $100,000 to start up their staffing but we didn’t realize the challenges with billing CCS and thorough this process of the RFP and focusing on case management we encouraged them to apply. No one was prepared to meet the challenges of billing CCS when they first opened.
TRANSPORTATION ORDINANCE CHANGE
They take up items 21, 22 & 23.
Public Comment
21 – Gary Weber in opposition, He’s on the committee on Parking for People with Disabilities and this was talked about a year ago and when we asked they didn’t know what we know about people with disabilities. Hy-Vee had to change their signs 3 different times before they got it right. Their signs were illegal and anyone could park there. They helped other people – on Willy St. They also had issues off State ST (Francis) on weekends they couldn’t get into the stalls because of the lines of cars and it was a simple fix to move the machine. If you put this with transportation they won’t solve problems. He talked about solutions that haven’t worked in our community – small cars only sign. They do a lot of good and give information people don’t know, they have a brochure with information such as even if the ramp fits, you have to have enough room to have the chair get off the ramp. He talks about a car parked in the striped zone and he couldn’t get into his van. They give a lot of people information, if you want information about disabled stalls, what do you look under? State of Wisconsin? Most people would but it wouldn’t do them any good, Madison laws are completely different. You have to know what you are looking for, check the manual we put out. If we end up in Transportation , they don’t know much and it doesn’t seem like it’s a priority. You don’t want to give this to an organization that won’t look into it well and give the information out. Do not put us in Transportation – right now we only have 4 people, which makes our quorum but we have others who want to see what is going on. You have to live in the City of Madison to be on the Council, we need time to find people and get them out. Give us time to get our act together, it’s a good council, it’s been there for many years.
Ann Covich also registered in support
Discussion
Denise DeMarb says they have been working on this for a year and a half, the work has been before committees for the past year, there was a special meeting. They worked to understand ordinances and practices, how other cities do it, got input from committees and we planned for the future city – she does a ton of thank you s . . . starting with the public, but I took a break . . .
When I got back Barbara McKinney says is talking about the RESJI tool on equity and she says we need to have engaged community conversations, not just an electronic survey. She is pleased that the team was there for the language of the meeting, but she wants to point out that the tool is used after the fact and not along side. It doesn’t rapidly gather community feedback. We cannot leave out the community engagement and hearing the voices of those most impacted by our policy decisions.
Steve King thanks the thanker, Denise DeMarb for working with the committee and moving things along.
Passes unanimously
REOPEN ITEM 13 – HOMEOWNER RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE TERRACE
They move to reopen because there was a speaker.
The Mayor says Carl Landness supports and wishes to speak – but Carl says he’s opposing. He says that Marquette Neighborhood is impacted by this – they are concerned about the complaint driven aspect of this, particularly with rain gardens. They are concerned about the beauty and freedom. A building he is thinking about buying and building a coop has been intimidated by an anonymous complainer and he wants to see neighbor to neighbor resolution and place making. He wants it to be clarified to create the real community some of us seek.
No discussion – passes unanimously on a voice vote.
MG&E MOU (MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING)
David Ahrens asked for it to be excluded because there were many individuals at the committee level that asked them to reject the MOU and he thinks their voices should be heard and some of the questions they posed were significant and not thoroughly answered. The issue is that the MOU makes no requirement of MG&E to change its goals from 30% renewable energy in 2030 to a higher number. That the implication here is that the city is satisfied with that and that our goals are to be carbon neutral and we wouldn’t have intended to enter into an agreement where MG&E doesn’t have similar goals. Why is this necessary?
Richard Heineman (sp?) says there were a lot of discussion – the MOU is a framework for collaboration for the City to work with MG&E – the discussions could take place without the MOU, but this creates the framework for those discussions. Ahrens says it’s a theoretical construct – why couldn’t these discussions happen outside of the framework? Richard says that it could, but he thinks the framework gets people to talk about the priorities outlined in the MOU and hopefully that will result in concrete projects. He says that this document is not imposing a set of regulations on MG&E. Ahrens says the City is not held to the goals of the MOU either, we have adopted our own plan. (I missed a bit of David talking instead of asking a question.) He also then starts thanking people from the Sustainable Madison Committee. David asks if the talks with MG&E will only be with city staff. Jeanne Hoffman says that they talk a lot and just learned today Metro got a grant for 3 electric buses. She says there was s a process to get here – a sustainable plan, an energy plan and those plans called for this agreement. It doesn’t do everything for everyone, but it’s a step in the right direction and she is confident there will be more steps in the right direction as we have more conversations with our utility.
Verveer asks about the community activists that opposed, that was a fair statement to make at the July 17th meeting, but thanks to the good work of the Sustainable Committee and staff, there was a new draft done and he hasn’t heard about concerns. Is that fair? Hoffman says the process worked, they listened, made changes, not everyone will be happy but many were. They heard that at their last meeting. It is noteworthy that the Sierra Club and other advocacy groups are here, but they will fill the room at their meeting coming up (there is an upcoming meeting at the library that they expect to be big, but I missed the details). This is one tool and they are pursuing a goal and everyone says that utilities are an immovable industry but we are starting to see that change, wind and solar are becoming cost comparative and that will be a big change and the city needs to position itself to take advantage of that for the environment and the the economy. Richard says the process worked and they should thank the city attorney for their clarifications at the last meeting. There is a lot more work to do and let’s give the city and MG&E the tools to do it and hopefully we will have concrete projects to unveil.
Passes unanimously on a voice vote.
DARBO WORTHINGTON NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN
Public Testimony
Deborah Sellers – sidewalks, she has a letter about the flawed plan. She lives in Blooming Grove and was trying to help sidewalks happen but Blooming Grove was excluded. The plan for sidewalks on the east side of town – she asks that the portion of the plan be set aside until there is more study – at Rethke and Commercial if the sidewalks are guilt the will be right up against some houses and take away from a driveway for a business and there will be no place to put snow and how will they mow the lawns where there are hills, this will take out flowers and trees by Powers. She has concerns about curb stops being damaged by the sidewalks. She is concerned about a guardrail and thinks that they need a bus shelter. (I gotta admit, I couldn’t follow some of what she was talking about in great detail)
Carl Landsness – with many organizations in the neighborhood – they have been involved in the planning and he is in awe of the planning process. He says there is a lot of heartbreak in this area. There are frustrations with being heard and people have issues being heard authentically. He wants to talk about the hopes of connecting people with each other and nature. To heal the place while we are healing ourselves. He says they will see grant proposals for restoring the creek and art to heal and address violence.
Dave Pulkowski – There is a slide show about Worthington Park Neighborhood Arts project. He works for a non-profit. They collaborate with Mentoring Positives and for events in the neighborhood. They make sure the arts are free and people can participate. They learned as much as they could – there was a lot of joy. They are also writing grants to make it a sustainable program so people can come and create. He explains the slides – says they had a lot of support from the Police Department. He was with Community Unity Arts.
Discussion
Motion to adopt
Larry Palm asks about the boundaries and the shift and how it was accommodated? Jules Stroik says that 2027 Town of Blooming Grove will be brought into the city and they were included in the planning process. The earlier speaker talked about connectivity and they talked about connections to major destinations and increasing walk ability. They looked at where they needed sidewalks in the future, it won’t happen until it is attached to the City of Madison.
Palm asks if the final product includes Blooming Grove. I missed the answer, sorry.
Rummel says this was not typical, usually there is a steering committee, that meets for a year or more. They worked with staff and did it a different way. She asks Jule about that different way and would you do it again? Linda Horvath says there was quite a bit of public engagement and they did a lot of activities and had community gatherings in the beginning. They went door to door and did interviews, they went to neighborhood association meetings, Town of Blooming Grove meetings. They had a lot of public participation and that was the way to hear form as many voices as possible, they had interpretation at the meetings – the emphasis was to be out talking to as many people as possible. They did surveys at the library, this also happened in Arbor Hills as well.
Passes with one audible no (Sheri Carter?)
INTRODUCTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
Legistar #48934 – introduced by Clear – development agreement TIF loan for Exact Sciences in TID 46 – will be back at council on the 3rd of October.
Wow, got to the end, I guess I can still do this . . . 🙂
