City Council Recap – Part I

A day late, but here it is! (with a few bk comments)

They only started two minutes late. Yay! Love the new world order.

ROLL CALL
All present.

MINUTES
Wait! What?
The mayor says that if there are no objections, the minutes will be approved.
The approval of minutes isn’t on the agenda (despite my efforts to get them there) and therefore not attached, so the council members probably have no idea what they approved, but no one says a thing.

SUSPENSION OF THE RULES
Lauren Cnare moves suspension of the rules, Bidar-Sielaff seconds. Soglin says its not debatable and it is approved.

OPENING REMARKS
Cnare announces that it is Mike Verveer’s birthday on Thursday (today!)

Cnare also announces that it is Cap Times reporter Kristin Czubkowski’s last night and that they will be going out for drinks afterwards. (She’s going to law school, but took an early leave to prevent more layoff’s at the paper. No word on if or when the city will get a replacement. It’ll be lonely in media row this summer with no student reports and essentially no media. Sad.)

HONORING RESOLUTIONS
Ben Masel
Cnare moves, Bridget Maniaci seconds and jumps in kind of awkwardly.

Maniaci says that she wanted to do this for Ben, he was a constituent, he worked tirelessly for advocacy and mayor Soglin will read it, but the resolution speaks for itself. Last summer she had a conversation with him about medicinal marijuana, he knew it was uphill even with Democrats in charge, he still wanted to talk about next steps if it should happen. He worked with compassion and humility that he brought to the table, she was proud of it, she hopes we can honor him this evening.

Mayor Paul Soglin reads the resolution. He notes a typo in the resolution on the plaque but doesn’t say what it is, but says that he doesn’t think they will fix it, he likes it better with the typo. As he struggles with the names of Ben’s daughter and granddaugher, he looks to Rummel to help with the pronunciation.

Soglin calls on Marsha Rummel, Rummel says she wants the speakers and presentation first, there is confusion about how this should be done.

Soglin presents the plaque to Leslie Peterson.

Peterson says she was sent by Ben’s daughter Semilla who had a prior commitment with his granddaugher Anandi, the love of Ben’s life. Semilla sent a paragraph she wanted read. She says thank you for your kind words. Ben was a New Jersey native, he relocated here 40 years ago. You knew him as an outspoken community activist and defender of rights, to me he was my family. He loved the bill of rights so much he spent his lide making sure rights were not violated. He always tried to to the right thing if it was troublesome, obnoxious, or illegal. He was committed to ideas, he didn’t worry what people thought about him. He even petitioned his doctors to furlough him while he was sick so he could be at the capitol so where he was most needed that day. In 1985 and 1986 was the first occupation of the capitol and he fought for the right to assemble without a permit. This occupation would have been very different had he not done that. As Paul Soglin said, Madison is Madison because of community – it would have been a different city if he had not come here to make this his home. His passing came too soon, but she is comforted by the outpouring of gratitude. Ben loved Madison and now we know Madison loved him back.

Rommel said she was trying to decide when first met him, it was probably the 70s, he was a young person them, but he was the same guy his whole life. He was smart, he had that Cheshire cat smile and you didn’t play chess against him. She tried to get this in the resolution, but in 1985 with the early occupation in the capitol for divestment in South Africa, he was there with a computer and he was talking to someone in California. We decided he invented the internet because he knew about it way before everyone else did. He was an early adopter. He would have run for senate again in 2012, he didn’t care about parties, Libertarian, Dem or Republican, he just thought to use it to raise issues. He was one of the people to look at the industrial and other uses of hemp for fiber, fuel and food. If we had changed the farm economy during years he urged us to, we could have created assets to our economy now. Even in last the days he was on facebook and everyone was saying to feel better, we will all miss you and that smile will follow us forever.

There are 5 or 6 registrants in support.

Housing Initiatives
Mayor Paul Soglin reads a small portion of the resolution.

A gentleman who doesn’t introduce himself but whom I presume is the chair of the board thanks the CDBG office for support in last 15 to 16 years, they are appreciative of that help and support and also appreciative of grants for weatherization to make better life for people they serve. They have 170 mentally ill homeless. disabled and low income tenants, they provide housing supplement funds an develop housing for them.

Michael Basford the Associate Director of Housing Initiatives, says the resolution talks about what they do for the community and he wants to say what City of Madison has done for them. HOME funds are a part of what they have given, but they also 75 units of development, they got 100K HOME match, 316K in neighborhood stabilization funds, 33K in scattered site funding and 80K in CDBG and 50K from the affordable housing trust fund. He points that out cuz discussion about it, that your trust fund does good work for the city and could do more good work and better work if operating at level is was supposed to be when funded, at a time when state capitol and fed budgets have cuts to CDBG and CSBG and HOME funds, we in the community need to have our own fund that Paul Ryan and Scott Walker can’t touch. And any more you could do to restore and improve the Affordable Housing Trust Fund capacity would not be ?? average ??. What they do on a day to day basis would not be possible without hard work and wonderful staff from different departments, CDBG, CDA and others like Zoning and Building Inspection and police and fire. Every one of the people we work with are top notch and they couldn’t do it without the city. Those of you who have been here know that and the new people, you will find that out.

Dean Loumos, is the Executive Director. He went to Washington DC for a conference to get this thing, and that was nice, they gave us this (he holds up an award), but there is no mention of us, it says City of Madison, they will swap it with them for the plaque they are getting tonight. When in DC we found out we are further along that most communities in dealing with a wide range of people, they have 75 units spread out all over the city, our houses are in each of your districts, we have 17 projects, 18 by next month and we found out that all around the rest of the country they are asking how we are doing this, how is it working? That was an interesting experience for us, Pam Rood was there and they asked us about our model, that was cool, but he was more satisfied to be nominated unknown to them by the CDBG office and much more satisfied that they thought that highly of us. The building we built, the Robert Bielman House, that houses our office, is a unique combination of funding sources and that make it permanent forever, for some that means 15 or 30 years, but for us, it will always be that way. The CDBG office is doing some stuff that is way further along in pushing the bar on how to do this for the rest of the country, we are doing ground breaking work and he is happy they think we did something nice, thank you.

The motion passes.

Confusion
Soglin says its 6:45 and they will go to public hearings.

Cnare indicates that isn’t what they do next.

Satya Rhodes-Conway requests they finish the honoring resolutions.

Soglin says they need to suspend the rules.

Cnare makes a motion to suspend the rules, it passes.

Archie Nicolette Retires after 39 years
Soglin says “Archie, what’s going on?” He reads the resolution. He presents the resolution to Nicolette and asks him why he won’t make it 40 years and asks something about pictures.

Nicolette says that he is retiring because of Scott Walker, and that he learned early in planning career if take good pictures you get to go outside on the nicest days and you get to spend time away from the desk. He has three things to say. When he started it was the 60s, people were protesting at the capitol, the reason he is saying that is because people don’t realize how important employees like us are and how dedicated we are and how we contribute. Alders have to do more work than people think, they put in a lot of time and its a thankless job and working in neighborhoods is where learned a lot about each alderperson. Each have their own personality and things they like and don’t like, he learned to trust how people view their neighborhoods and the opinions they have about it and let them use our skills to make their neighborhood better. Second he was lucky to work in planning, he worked in the best department in the city, they have lots of longevity in the department, they work well together with respect, he learned how to become a planner and he learned cuz they cared and checked his spelling so he looked good, it was a real pleasure working with them. Third, he is grateful that he stumbled into a job when he graduated with 18 landscape architects who all left town. He was a little upset cuz he thought he was supposed to leave town too. But this job has fit his personality and the fact could be creative on the font end and help shape and make Madison better, prettier better place was great, staring with his first real project which was street trees on Willy St, this has been real fun and he thanks everyone, particularly Paul Soglin becuase he was instrumental in changing the city direction, he started working when I did, we accomplished a lot, many of the projects had a direct bearing on planning dept, especially the State St. mall, those are the jobs you love to do and he gave us the opportunity to do them.

Soglin thanks Nicolette’s family for sharing him through late night meetings and on behalf of all council members and mayors he served with and thanks for all you taught us, I know you had fun with the camera, so did we.

Rummel says to Archie on behalf of district that had quite a personality and gave you a hard time on the Willy St. BUILD, thank you for for your hard work, its good know you started with the Willy St. trees. She went to his retirement party and they had these really cool buttons, she took one that said “learn to love the process”, she will cherish that and his willingness to do that with us to get to plans we can implement – thank you so much.

Mike Verveer congratulates him and thanks him and is glad to see the love of former colleagues in the planning division, he can’t help but think of all the years we have spent together working on projects downtown, it has been a lot of fun working with you. As he looks at his friends in the gallery, he thinks he should have worked hard to convince him not to leave. When you said you were leaving April 1st, I knew it was a joke, but then you switched to April 15th as your last day and no one took you seriously, sadly it was true. We’ve lost you, at least officially. The downtown plan won’t be the same without you, wish you’d stay to see it adopted, it sad Governor Walker and his allies have shown you the door. I know that isn’t a flippant remark, he saw Nicolette protesting and taking pictures. All I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you. When you said you make the city prettier, the downtown would be a different place without you. Verveer says he probably won’t visit the planning department as much, you are a great fun guy, who’s going to fill your shoes? Wishes he had convinced him to stay, the last attempt was getting Paul into office and even that didn’t work, we can’t thank you enough for 39 years, wish you the best and congrats on well deserved retirement.

Paul Skidmore, says thanks for all you have done, he remembers when moved to Madison, Nicolette was his first supervisor when worked at the environmental center, Soglin was my alder, he had a dog and lived on Langdon. He thanks him for everything you did and taught me, you were a wonderful mentor through the years, those were great days. Take care and congratulations.

Motion passes.

Ladies of the Light
When Soglin announces the agenda item he says “Ladies of the Night” and the young women giggle. Soglin reads the resolution.