City Finance Budget Amendments (21-25)

City Council budget amendments come out at noon and I never finished the 4 part series on the Finance Committee meetings, so here it is.  Snow and Ice, traffic safety, policing and wheel tax.

Part one is here, amendments 1-10. Part two is amendments 11 – 15 (failed cuts to the budget)  Part three is amendments 16-20.  This is the final hours of the meeting on October 21st into the morning of October 22nd.

AMENDMENT TWENTY ONE

Title: Snow & Ice Control on Arterial Shared Use Paths

Sponsors: Alders Kemble, Foster

Amount: $65,000

They are $162,000 remaining before they hit the levy limits set by the state.

AMENDMENT TWENTY TWO

Title: Police Educational Incentive

Sponsors: Alders Furman, Bidar, Moreland

Amount: $143,250

Motion:  Alder Keith Furman moves, its seconded.

Questions of Staff:

Verveer ask Interim Chief Vic Wahl if the agency request submitted by former Chief Koval on behalf of the department is in line with his prioritization as the current chief.  Verveer asks how these incentives prioritize versus adding officers.  Wahl says the short answer is that the budget priorities and document do still stand and reflect his preferences.  His clear preference, without any doubt is for additional staffing.  While he appreciates the need to address their retention issue, there are a number of things they are doing to address it but clearly their priority is staffing and specifically patrol staffing.  Verveer says they went through each of the closed positions at the other meeting and the various cuts to be made to supplant patrol services.  Can you explain how cuts to the specialty teams and related positions effect the ability to recruit and retain your colleagues.  Wahl says that one of the things that makes them attractive as a police department is having a lot of opportunities.  If you go work in a lot of departments patrol is your only option aside from promotion.  We have a number of units that give our officers a lot of opportunity to do things outside of patrol.  Different exercise, different skill sets, work with the community and public in different ways.  It can provide a respite from the day to day grind of patrol.  Someone might work for patrol and then compete for a closed session and then return to patrol more rejuvenated and he thinks that is something that weighs on their retention issues and makes them attractive as a agency to work for.  Verveer says that last MPPOA agreement was before some of his colleagues were on the council and at that time it was generous wage increases throughout the contract through 2021.  If you read the amendment, would you say educational incentive that would have been subject of collective bargaining during the long negotiations.  Are the compensation levels a real clear reason as to why they are having issues with retention and perhaps recruitment.  Wahl says that is part of it.  Especially to recruit experienced officers from other agencies that they historically had success with.  They simply aren’t competitive at the starting salary and during the early years before the incentive kicks in.  Verveer asks if the current collective bargaining agreement helps with that.  Verveer says the hardest part of our budget is the pay equity – we heard tonight over and over that some of the speakers that were critical of your department were saying that they were already receiving a $5M increase in their agency in the executive budget.  Verveer says much of that is the wages and over time and premium pay and benefits that came with the current collective bargaining agreement and now we are discussing that for other employees to get the same 3.25% for next year.  Wahl says that with the wage increases it’s too early to say if that is helping.  What he doesn’t know is how the other agencies they compete against what type of increases they will be implementing in that same time period.  If we are incrementally better is that enough to move the needle?  It’s probably a little better and that isn’t going to hurt.  The educational incentive is part of the MPPOA contract and part of the bargaining process.  Verveer asks if that area was subject to the recent negotiations?  Wahl says the entire contract was redone.  Verveer asks if this was one of the areas MPPOA wanted re-negotiated.  Wahl says he doesn’t know.  He says he doesn’t think the way the educational incentive is structured hasn’t been changed since he was hired.

Furman aks how many resignations there have been in the department in the last 5 years. Someone says 64 (later changes it to 54).  That is different than retirements.  Furman says he thinks the numbers he was given are lower.  Furman asks how many were here 0-3 years.  They say 33.  Furman says that they are seeing significant numbers of officers leaving early, what are the reasons for that.  Wahl says that their starting wage is not as competitive as it once was and during the period before the incentive kicks in finances are part of it.  He also thinks that the things they are seeing more when they talk to these folks aren’t really money focused, we hear about the stress of the job, the national narrative and the challenges the profession has been undergoing and a lot of people simply don’t want to do that.  He also thinks they are seeing a real generational change and the folks they hire now are not coming in with the presumption that they are getting hired with MPD and are going to retire with MPD.  They are more of the mindset that they are going to work there a few years and then go do something else.  Some of it is generational, some of it is the national narrative and the stress and additional challenges some of the work force feels.  He thinks the last two years in terms of the workload grind and the challenges that it has put on people’s ability to get time off and have flexibility in their schedules is a real challenge.  They are trying to address some of those things internally.  Staff change the number to 54.  Furman says 33 of the 54 are new and we spent a lot of money training them and then they left.

Henak asks about experienced hires and the attractiveness to hire from other agencies, would it make more sense to instead of shortening the from when they start with MPD to the time starting as an officer.  Wahl says it might, he says it would be a bargaining issue for MPPOA to have to address.  He says he can see pros and cons to it.

Discussion:

Furman says at the last finance meeting when they went over department staffing numbers  one of the things that stuck out for him is that they got 311 patrol officers, out of that 311, 100 are in special units and 211 are assigned to patrol, but we have only hired 188 so we have 23 person gap.  We have another 50 that are in the academy and unavailable for use.  To him those numbers are staggering and scary.  That they have so many officers in a large academy class and it shows that we have retention issues.  He is not a police expert on retention, he has spoken to the department since that meeting to ask for suggestions and this education incentive came up as an option.  There are other options, and looks forward to the department coming up with the options and talking to them about it.  He thinks it is incredibly important to address retention.  They can add 3, 6, 12 officers, I doesn’t matter if we add 3, 6, 12 officers that are staying 3 years and leaving. We are constantly have a lot of officers we are paying in the academy training.  He didn’t come up with the education incentive, I didn’t know it existed until I started talking to MPD about different strategies and how little money we had in the budget.  It’s noteworthy, the department deserves a lot of credit for the number of degrees the department has – 29 officers have an associate degree or less than a bachelor.  272 with a bachelors degree and 60 with a Master Degree or higher and that does not include the 50 recruits that don’t have enough time to qualify for incentive pay.  This incentive was a way to speed up from 42 months to 36 months being able to reward the officers for that level of education.  He is not tied to this.  We need to continue to have discussion on this and he hopes the department continues to work really hard and comes back to us, he doesn’t want to micromanage the process, but he thinks they need to work with the union and ask us for the help that they need to figure out if its our starting salary, I heard money wasn’t necessarily a big deal or wasn’t the biggest deal, some of the flexibility of the job is an issue.  There is no department in the city that uses the parental leave policy more than the police department, so you have officers that have children, they come back and then struggle in the department because of scheduling issues or working hard because there aren’t officers available because they are being trained.  We have to figure out our retention issue and how to keep police working here.  He thinks the independent monitor will be a great step to address one part of the issue, but we need to continue to make investments and absolution work with the union.  He got an email from the union today asking that we make the incentive from time of service so if they come from another city they don’t have to wait 36 months here.  He is completely supportive of looking at those different narratives and he is looking forward to that coming out in the collective bargaining process.  He says this was intended to be a down payment to say that we understand and appreciate that retention is an issue.  Here’s an easy thing we can do to show that.

Kemble asks finance how this number was arrived at.  They say the police department came up with it.  Kemble asks what happens if they drop the threshold to 38 months.  Can you divide by 6 and its one month of increment or is it a more complicated calculus.  Staff say its a more complicated calculation.  They say this will impact about 41 officers in 2020, so it would be the September 2016 class and September 2017 class.  Kemble says she is just trying to shave a little off.  She says you can’t just cut it in half.  The 2018 class is the huge class.  Staff says that one of the challenges is that this cost is widely variable depending upon the size of the academy class that is captured in that snapshot in time.  This figure is for those two recruit classes, but if we did it a year later, or shifted the amount different recruit classes would be in that number.

Mayor suggests that if this is complicated enough that if they wanted to make a change to this amendment, they might consider doing it on the council level rather than tonight.

Moreland wants to clarify, if they had to choose between this incentive and more officers they would clearly choose more officers.  Wahl says that is correct.

Alder Sheri Carter asks about it being generational that groups coming in are staying less than 5 years and then moving on.  Are they moving on to other law enforcement or moving on and up.  Wahl says that most are moving to non-law enforcement, moving out of the field altogether.

Alder Marsha Rummel asks about if this was a topic that came up in collective bargaining, when would that start and what would it look like.  Can the amendment be to start working on this topic with our staff.  Wahl says the current MPPOA contract runs through the end of 2021, so the normal collective bargaining process would start late summer 2021, so there wouldn’t be a mechanism to do it outside of that, tho there could be.  We negotiate with the union on non-fiscal things from time to time and there is no reason why there couldn’t be something limited to this.  Rummel asks for clarification.  Wahl says the normal collective bargaining process under the normal circumstances won’t kick up again until 2021.  Certainly the city and MPPOA can decide to get together and bargain about educational incentive and amend the contract or put worth a MOU that they agree to that specifically addresses that topic.  They could do that at any time that both parties agree.  The MPPOA obviously has a say in that.

Verveer opposes the amendment.  If money were no object he’d happily support the amendment, we all can see the tote board and see that remaining levy capacity is $162,000.  He clearly has other priorities that haven’t been brought to the floor yet through later budget amendments as it relates to the police department and as you can tell from his questioning of the chief, the modest amendment that he authored to add additional police officer positions is something that our community is seeking.  If we had the levy capacity and had already voted to support additional police officer positions he would happily support the amendment, but he can’t do that this evening.  They will get into the need for additional police officers later in the meeting, but he believes that the additional staffing is demonstrated by data and reflected in the expectations of the community.  The number one issue constituents have contacted him about tis the need for additional police officers, and there isn’t anything close to second, including wheel tax.  The incentive pay should be seriously considered when they say thanks but no thanks, they clearly believe this is not a high priority.  This was in the agency budget request this summer in May, but not anywhere near the agency request list that was in priority order.  He has a good relationship with central district officers and has since he’s been in city hall and what he hears in his private conversations with officers about the fatigue level and why there is such a record number of resignations and retirements is because of the shortage in officers, it’s not because they are not getting paid enough.  If money was the issue, they could volunteer for overtime.  The overtime is unlimited for today’s commissioned staff.  Verveer says that in bargaining in the MPPOA contract one of the items brought to the table by management was incentive to convince MPPOA members to volunteer to work on the Downtown Safety Initiative Friday and Saturday nights downtown.  It was a modest request that was included in the collective bargaining agreement to allow for  a $5/hour incentive to work, because they weren’t having people line up wanting to work downtown around wartime.  When he asked the central district command staff it the $5/hr incentive has helped get volunteers to pay overtime, they laughed at him, it has hardly made a difference at all.   Pay is not the issue for the officers, its about getting time off.  Even gettin g1st shift vacation picks and spending time with their loved ones.  It’s the forced overtime when the officer in charge makes a difficult decision to hold over folks because of the calls for service and the fact that they are going to priority only calls for service 10% of the time now.  What they need is increased police authorized strength.  They don’t need additional financial incentives to encourage existing officers to stick around. He’s no expert, they’ve always been a progressive force in terms of compensation, they’ve had a tuition reimbursement program ever since he’s been at city hall.  He’s notes Vic Wahl attended law school while an office and was able to utilize that program.  He says that the existing contract is generous, but well earned.  He believes they earn every penny they  make, so he doesn’t take pleasure in opposing this amendment but compared to the amendments coming up he doesn’t think its even a close question for the department, the union or for the members of the department that would benefit from the incentive pay. He urges rejection to move on to the larger discussion of increasing the authorized strength for the police department.

Furman says that he wants to be clear, he’s not saying pay is an issue, he is saying retention is an issue.  Absolutely we are going to have staffing issues if we have a large chunk of officers in the academy and unavailable to patrol.  He doesn’t have the answers on retention.  Adding three officers, they won’t start tomorrow.  It will take a very long time for them to be in service and when the good economy chases them to something else or other policies chase them to something else we’ll just be back in the same position of not having the officers available.  He says if the police department says its not their priority he can vote against it as well.  He is fine with it being figured out through negotiations with the union.  He just thinks its important to show we understand retention is an issue, he respects the police department continuing to push for their staffing models they believe in. If you add 3, 6, 12 officers, it won’t matter if they are not staying.  We will continue to have officers that are exhausted because there won’t be officers that are available.

Vote:

Voice vote, sounded like 2 in favor (not Furman), motion failed.

AMENDMENT TWENTY THREE

Title: Traffic Safety Enhancements

Sponsors: Alders Kemble, Foster

Amount: $160,000

Motion:

Kemble moves adoption.  Furman(?) seconds.

Questions of Staff:

Furman asks for details on what this is.  It talks about 4 intersection and there is not a lot of detail, he’d like to learn where this money is going.  Tom Lynch says the TPPB has been discussing Madison becoming a Vision Zero city.  (Someone says “what’s that”?)  He says it would entail them joining the Vision Zero network and focusing a lot of their efforts on eliminating fatalities and high injury crashes.  They have not moved forward with that yet. They anticipate initiating or moving in that direction this spring, however, over the last three weeks there have been two pedestrians that have been killed and a cyclist.  One on Northport, one on Broadway (technically not Madison) and one on Baldwin at E. Washington.  I think there is just a general feeling saying, do we really have to wait 18 months to start doing things that could maybe make a difference.  He thinks that is what prompted this amendment.  Speed is the primary determining factor, if you can reduce speeds you can take a fatality and make it just an injury or you can take a serious injury and make it a less serious injury.  So this would focus on that at 4 of the most severe injury intersections in the city.  On the little handout that Alder Kemble handed out on the back, it shows the 20 highest injury crash intersections in the city.  The red dots represent all (motor vehicle, pedestrian, bicycles) but he has another on that has  –

Mayor interrupts and says the alder emailed it but not everyone has it.  Also someone interrupts and says that the batteries in the mics are going dead and the mics that just dropped down will be the only ones that work.  Pause . . . everyone has the maps.

Lynch says that injuries on the transportation network are real and affecting lives and it’s important.  They are considering Vision Zero.  If they adopt this amendment they would focus on speed.  A low costs improvements, particularly signing and pavement markings at intersections.  As far as where the costs come from, they were asked about how much it would cost to lower the speed limit on a couple corridors.  They looked at five different corridors and the costs were from $135,000 – $600,000.  This would provide funding to address 4 of the high injury intersections in the city.

Moreland asks if they looked at other measures that other cities have taken, especially ones that can’t use the cameras.  She doesn’t see this as being effective.  The speed limit all over town is pretty low.  There are some places where it might be 45, maybe 50 and people blow right through them.  I don’t think signage is going to change any behavior.

Lynch says that it can be effective.  Some of their highest injury arterials have surprisingly high speeds. Mineral Point Road has 40 miles per mile.  East Washington Ave has 35 miles per hour.  Portions of University Ave have 35 miles per hour.  The difference between 25 and 35 is rather significant as far as injury.  He says he put a couple graphics.  Gammon Rd has 35 miles per hour.  Milwaukee St. has 35 miles per hour.  A lot of these arterials could be lowered.  I think you make a good point regarding enforcement.  Sometimes we can use paint like continental crossings and like, to emphasize that this is a pedestrian place.  You can time signals so they progress at 25 miles per hours instead of 35 miles per hour.  Automated traffic enforcement is also helpful.

Moreland asks about automated traffic enforcement.  Lynch says that is a whole different discussion for a year or years from now.  Cities are starting to do this, Portland did.  He was just at a conference where someone from Bogota there where they chose 5 corridors to lower the speed limits.  They didn’t even put signs up for 3 months, they just had a campaign.  They reduced their fatalities by 85 per year.  They have a much higher fatality rate than we do.  He asks if they did any geometric improvements?  They said no.  Most of the injuries that occur don’t happen during congestion periods.  We don’t have to travel speeds.  7:00 or 8:00 at night is when travel speeds are high.

Moreland asks how many of the crashes are car to car and car to bicycle or motor cycle crashes.  Lynch says this info is from a TPPB presentation, there are 26,000 motor vehicle crashes.  The fatal and injury percentage of the motor vehicle crashes is less than 2%.  He says the graphs might be confusing.  He says there are 421 pedestrian crashes, which is less than 2% of all the crashes, yet pedestrians are 20% of the fatalities.  1.6% of the crashes but 20% of the serious injuries and fatalities.  Moreland says that there are more pedestrian and bike crashes that result in fatalities.  Lynch says yes, they are disproportionately represented because they don’t have the protection of a car.  He says you can see there are 26,000 motor vehicle crashes on only 420 or 530 bike crashes.  But when they do get in crashes the chances of an injury are much greater.

Rummel thanks him for all the visuals.  She says she sees the writing on the screen and this is a really important thing to her but she knows police is really important to others, so I know someone is going to be unhappy, probably me.  She would like to delve into this topic.  Someone just died a month ago.  At night, it was rainy, this is my neighborhood, me and Alder Heck share it.  I hear about traffic safety for pedestrians all the time and I pass those along and its getting worse.  We’re building new housing along a corridor where people are reckless drivers and it’s dangerous.  At the practical level this amendment says 4 intersections.  Could you talk about what you would do, there are more than 4 on your maps.  Lynch says they are not fully into Vision Zero and they would like to initiate it in the spring.  He thinks what prompted this is do they really want to wait 18-20 months before they do something and he thinks that is what prompted the amendment.  He says they would do as much as the money allotted would allow.  If they were to change the speed limit on a portion of E. Washington, they would do a portion, enhance the crosswalks so they are continental, they would reduce the speed limit and treat it as a system.  Conversely they could do a similar thing on Mineral Point.  Mineral Point and Gammon Rd is a high injury intersection.  At that point he thinks Mineral Point is 40 miles an hour and Gammon is 35 miles per hour, why?  Why is that intersection so high speed?  It doesn’t need to be that high speed.

Rummel asks if they can just lower the speed limit, isn’t that just cost of signage?  Lynch says that the signage is the least expensive part of these proposals.  The pavement markings help reinforce the environment.  We probably won’t have the extra enforcement, but you raise a good point.  3/4 of the proposal is pavement markings and less, maybe 1/4 is the markings.  Eastwood once you get through Willy St., you’re headed to Atwood and then its a little speedway.  It’s flat, its wide, the next thing you know, even cautious drivers are going fast.  Part of it is the geometry of how the streets are built and we fix them over time.  if we did a lot of speed changes and some pavement marking and less money in this budget it might be a way forward to get a little bit of what everyone hopes for out of the last part of this evening.  I heard you say you’d work with what you got.  Lynch says he came up with estimates for 5 different corridors that range from $130,000 – $500,000.  Some we may not pick.  For instance on University Ave, there are two high injury intersections but because it is being reconstructed perhaps they wouldn’t choose those.  It would go through the committee process.  Rummel asks if it would go through a committee process.  She served twice on Ped Bike and they never looked at speed limits.  Lynch says there’s a new philosophy that is growing that previously they thought you based your speed limit on the 85th percentile of vehicles traveling.  The vehicles traveling were determining your speed limit.  This Vision Zero is saying no, you can say what the speed limit is and they are advocating for a 50th percentile.  You can do that and some people say that people won’t obey it, but they are finding that it does lower it a bit.  Rummel asks him to restate it in non-technical terms.  He says previous engineering thought had speed limits based on how fast cars were traveling.  The new thought process is that rather than to have the traffic determine the speed limit, you can determine the speed limit and have the traffic follow it.  Rummel says “I like that”.

Alder Patrick Heck says if they target intersections or larger street scape associated with an intersection.  Is there any chance some of it could be used to promote a relatively inexpensive trial run of 20 is plenty?  Lynch asks why they have to make it a trial run?  He says that would be a city wide initiative on residential streets.  That would probably be – yes – if they enter into Vision Zero – he suspects that will be part of the action plan.  He says this just targets the high injury intersections and they tend to be where travel speeds are higher.

Verveer asks what it would take for Madison to sign on to the Vision Zero Network.  Lynch ask Yang Tao to answer.  Tao says that there has to be a public official has to sign on to the idea publicly.  It could be the Mayor or Council leadership.  The second requirement is that departments have to sign on to it.  The third one is the city has to come up with a strategic action plan to achieve Zero Deaths and Serious Injuries by a certain time frame.  Some cities use aggressive ones, 5 years as a time frame.  Some use 15 year.  Verveer asks if they have to do all three things before it’s official.  He asks if a Common Council resolution adopted at the next meeting wouldn’t be enough?  We have to have have an action plan.  Tao says that those are the three main requirements and there are some other smaller ones. You have to go through an application process and have an interview.  Lynch says that you might be recognized while you are in the process.  Minneapolis is recognized as one but they just released their action plan a month ago.  Verveer says that at a very basic level we should at least be doing that and work towards being part of the Vision Zero initiative.

Verveer asks how this relates to the Mayor’s capital budget initiative for intersection safety on the horizon list, the $500,000 in geo borrowing where they talked about it during capital budget and the mayor said it was on the horizon list because the scope had to be clarified and there are three steps codified in the capital budget by the finance committee for the scope.  Is this the same?  Lynch says they are similar, the half million was for safety to be an evaluation component for prioritizing our infrastructure projects and the half million was more directed on physical changes.  This one is directed on not physical changes but pavement marking and signage.  Verveer asks why this is in the operating budget instead of the capital budget.  Lynch says striping, as opposed to curb and gutter or bump outs which are physical changes that will last 20-30 years.  Verveer asks how long the epoxy markings that contractors apply last?  They says 3-5 years.  Verveer says he wished they had talked about this more in the capital budget process since this is on the horizon list.

Moreland asks if Minneapolis is in a similar situation as we are not being able to use video surveillance for traffic enforcement?  Lynch doesn’t know.  They were not able to set their own speed limits until the last year and then “20 is plenty” is their slogan for their residential streets.   He knows Portland is going for automated enforcement.  Many Vision Zero cities . . . he says this is very controversial so he does’t want to link Vision Zero with automated enforcement . . . he says the advantage is compliance.

Discussion:

Kemble says that Alder Foster and her are putting it forward out of many months of work and deep thinking of the Transportation Commission (TC), the Ped Bike Motor Vehicle Commission (PBMVC) before that and the Transportation Policy and Planning Board (TPPB).  Around this important public safety issue with traffic.  As you can see at the top of the hand out those are the stats from 2014-2017.  She assumes they all get the same contacts about speeding, there is not a week that goes by that isn’t a concern about speeding.  The data around fatalities and injuries bears out how really dangerous it is.  It’s not only an actual safety issue, but its on the top of the minds of even the Orchard Ridge Neighborhood folks asking for more police.  In their survey traffic safety was actually at the top of the list of what people were concerned about in that neighborhood.  As they dealt with it in the TC and PBMVC they get quarterly reports from the police and what they have struggled with is that the quarterly reports are personnel stats of when the TEST (traffic enforcement) teams are active and how many tickets they write.  They have been trying to work with MPD, first with Lt. Knight and then with Asst. Chief Wheeler and now Capt. Cheney Austin to have them mesh their reporting with the incidences of traffic danger, instead of speed traps at easy places where they can catch speeders several times a month because they have a grant to do it, but to actually deploy where there are real safety issues.   In those many conversations and in talking with police on the Northside, they are kind of frustrated, because they all say that enforcement doesn’t work, it doesn’t create safety because we can only be out there a few hours at a time.  Requests to put out the mobile speed radar signs are all the time and they are in high demand.  Police officers will come to neighborhood associations and say they can do it for this period of time but it won’t solve the problem.  What solves the problem are design, engineering and other behavior modification things you can do with traffic signals and narrowing streets.  This is what Lynch brought to TPPB and they are been looking at it for months, and they can do this immediately to start trying out what approaches work.  Signal syncing, painting, putting cones up, reducing turn radiuses, etc.  She says its a critical safety enhancement they can do for relatively little money as a start and next year come back in the capital and operating budget with a more robust plan that they talked about to be a Vision Zero partner.  Hopefully this will give us a good experience in implementing some of the principles.

Verveer says he can’t support the amendment even tho he agrees absolutely and completely with the sentiment of Alder Kemble that this is a crisis and a clear public safety priority we need to address which is why he believes every penny of the remaining levy should go towards additional officers.  He has sat at this table for years begging for additional traffic enforcement by the police.  He berates them regularly when they are before us to increase traffic enforcement.  He thinks that is a tremendously large part of this equation that is lost.  He says that during the hearing process when the police came up right before midnight there was just another pedestrian fatality on Baldwin St. and when will this ever end.  Obviously Vision Zero tries to address that in a proactive manner absent traffic enforcement and he wishes it was in great partnership with more robust traffic enforcement.  He supports this, but what he was getting at when he cut himself short was that he wants to support this, he just can’t given the remaining levy capacity they have.  He would be interested in a motion to refer this amendment to the capital budget at the Common Council in November.  He believes that they can clearly argue that they can capitalize these costs.  In the 24 years he has served on the committee they have capitalized more and more initiatives.  Labor we didn’t used to capitalize when he was first on the Board of Estimates.  If we are capitalizing all kinds of cats and dogs, he doesn’t see why they can’t capitalize these costs and have this as a universally supported capital budget amendment, perhaps even more robust than $165,000.  Engineering – Major Streets requested half a million in their agency request.  That would be his way forward.  He agrees it is a huge priority but he doesn’t see how they can accomplish this tonight as part of the operating budget.

McKinney says when she was first elected she was called out to a location where there was a bike/car crash and a 23 year old young woman who worked at Epic was killed.  The family is still struggling with that in 2019.  I have heard what the values are, but this is life and death and if you’ve been with families who have lost their loved one due to an auto or bike crash, its traumatic.  When this was on the capital budget side on the horizon list I didn’t not understand it then and didn’t advocate strongly.  But now that it has come back before us and we have to make a choice between making our intersections safer with pushing up against the levy limit, that disturbs her in who we say we are and who we want to be.  We are policy makers, we are responsible for the budget, but the way we process this budget – when we get to this and we know it should pass but we can’t because we bumped up against the levy limit – it concerns her deeply and it should concern them to.  This is just not the way we do it.  We made concessions, we approved of so many things going back to number one and looking at this and we cannot pass it because we are pushing up against the levy limits.  She is ashamed at this point, she is discouraged, she is ashamed and we have to do something with this.

Rummel likes Mike’s idea.  The one she came up with is smaller but maybe helpful.  She says to look again at the item where they were doing the planning.  She suggests they take the $25,000 from engagement for East and West Towne Planning and put it to pavement markings for Vision Zero and then go the capital budget route.  At least the E. Wash route could be in a TID 36 area and TIF could pay for it.  She supports the planning thing and she thinks the market study is the most important part and the engagement could wait a year.

Mayor reminds them that they have another chance to make amendments, if they want too.  She says it would be a very bad idea to start crafting amendments on the floor tonight.

Bidar says the reason we are where we are is because their job is to balance a budget.  When we propose amendments we need to figure out how we are going to get to the end of the evening and be below the levy limit.  On your own, what you are going to vote for.  Although she opposed many of things because she didn’t think they were the right cuts to be made, at least she appreciated that there were cuts being put forward.  They can’t just come here at the end of the night and say its a bad process.  The process is what they make it to be.  If you were able to balance and be under the levy, wherever you leave it at the end of the night, you followed your process.  They have another chance at this.  She is going to vote no on everything from now on because she doesn’t believe in using every penny to the levy.  We have another chance to relook at everything that is going to be put forward and see if they can find other places where they can propose any cuts that wasn’t proposed, was proposed and didn’t pass, needs to be proposed between now and the council meeting.  She says this is the budget process they have had as long as she has been on the council, its not great because we all would like to be able to do more than what we have before us.  Some years have been easier than others, and we have a tough year before us, but there are a lot of competing priorities and that’s a reality that we have. If one wants something else, then we need to find something that we can cut.

Alder Grant Foster says he is supportive, he’s a sponsor.  He calls attention again to the hand out.  He says that in a three year period 44 fatalities happened on their roads vs 38 homicides in the city.  About 3500 incapacitating and nonincompacitating injuries happening on the roads vs 4500 rape, assault and robbery.  Another 5600 possible injuries.  As many people are dying and getting hurt because of traffic safety issues in our city as for any other reason.  These are very real numbers.  We talk about performance excellence, we talk about using data to drive our decisions.  He came from a place, health care, where data was often manipulated and people were chasing data.  This is actually an opportunity where we can use data, we can use maps that show us where we have our issues and we know how to fix it.  We can take money and turn it into pavement stripping, signage, speed limit changes and we can measurably reduce fatalities and injuries.  This is not hoping, this is practical and real.  He understands why the $500,000 got put on the horizon work and clearly we have work to do there.  He is confident in Tom and his team and we will move quickly on Vision Zero, but he is not waiting 20 months or whatever that time is, before we make some progress.  We know what our biggest issues are today and in my conversations with Tom it was specifically, what can we do this year, what can we do in 2019.  This $160,000 is from that.  It’s what we can do with our resources and the knowledge that we have, we can make these changes in this year and have a measurable impact.  Alder Kemble talked about the Orchard Ridge survey on public safety.  It was used to say why that community was demanding more police officers and when he looked at the results of that the only thing that stood out was that they were mostly talking about traffic safety.  Dangerous driving was the number one concern for the neighborhood – over 33% of the respondents said that was what they were most concerned about that.  The one that was close to that was home and auto burglary.  When he was running for alder and talked to Captain Snyder, he heard the same things.  What I heard over and over from command stuff was that there is nothing that we can do about that, people need to lock their cars and garages.  He has heard over and over that its not that they don’t have enough police, its that these are things they are not going to prevent.  That is next to dangerous driving and walking after dark and if you look in the comments its all about cars and not feeling safe walking in their neighborhood at night.  It is what he heard on the campaign trail and he gets emails every week.  If we are serious about public safety, we know that we can do something this year to improve it.  That, as compared to just trying to deal with fear, which is something we can help people have less fear, maybe we can’t.  This is something practical and real and there is a lot of value in it.

Heck says that he agrees with Foster and with all due respect to Alder Verveer’s constituents, by far his number on communication is about traffic safety and its not that a week goes by without communications about traffic safety, he gets multiple emails every day from all over his district.  He thinks this is a tangible thing that they can do now to address public safety.

Vote:

Sounds like 2 ayes.  Motion failed.

WHAT’S NEXT?  REMAINING AMENDMENTS EXCEED THE LEVY LIMITS

During that last section they were testing the mics toward the end and there is another announcement that the microphones are losing their battery charge and only six will work, the nonworking mics are being removed and they have to share.  The Mayor suggests they talk really fast.

Mayor asks for an update from staff about where they are on the levy limit.  $162,000.  Mayor suggests that none of the additional amendments fit under the levy limit at this point and a motion to place all of them on file would be in order.

Verveer has been seeking the mayor’s attention since the vote.  He moves reconsideration of the Vision Zero amendment.  Mike is the only one to vote for it that I heard – but I think that was because of the mics.  Mayor doesn’t announce what happened.

Verveer moves to refer the amendment to the capital budget, Mayor says it is not in order.  She says he should submit another amendment in the council process.  Verveer asks if that is because they completed their action on the capital budget?  Mayor says she is not clear this item is appropriate for the capital budget.  She thinks that he could craft an amendment that might be.  Verveer says that he will accept the ruling and says that it is his intention to do so.  Mayor says the motion to reconsider was made and seconded, Mayor suggests that they place it on file, Verveer moves to place on file and she says it doesn’t pass either, but then corrects and says to record Kemble as voting no.  Mayor again suggests that they place them on file.

Bidar is recognized and says she is thinking.  Mayor reminds them again they can bring their amendments to the Council and that there is still one item on the agenda.  Bidar moves to place the remaining amendments on file.  Someone seconds.  Mayor reminds them again that they can be introduced in the Council process if they can find a way to make a balanced budget.

Bidar says that staff has been here all night, she says that although they are placing it on file she suggests if it is the will of the body they could still ask questions and learn before bringing amendments to the council.  Mayor says that is in order.  McKinney wants to ask a question.  Bidar interrupts and says they should go in order of the amendments.  Mayor asks if there are questions for the fire department.  Verveer interrupts and wants to speak generally.

Verveer says he doesn’t support a motion to place on file not only because of the reasons articulated, including staff have been there since 4:30 but also colleagues have.  He says that the process they followed in the past, this isn’t the first time they reached the levy capacity, that happens all too often and the way we have done that is to reconsider previously adopted amendments to make levy room or amend amendments before us.  For a 9th ambulance he doesn’t have bright ideas for that.  He does have plans to amend the amendment to add 3 officers, he has an amendment to his amendment to bring them to levy capacity.  He would object to placing all the remaining amendments on file, he says they have a responsibility to the people here tonight but to the community to discuss the need for additional paramedics and officers.

Bidar withdraws her motion and makes a motion one at a time.

AMENDMENT TWENTY FOUR

Title: 9th Ambulance

Sponsors: Alder Henak, Tierney (sponsored as a courtesy to allow on Finance agenda by Council President Bidar)

Amount: $637,400

Motion:

Bidar moves to place on file.  Someone seconds.  She wants an opportunity for questions.

Questions of Staff:

Alder Michael Tierney says there was an email with statics sent to alders today and he has questions.  Tierney asks about the comparison of Station 14 to the rest of the city.  Chief Stephen Davis says he doesn’t know where to start on the data.  They have a shortage of ambulances in the system that they have brought before the body for the past 4 years.  Their response times in the city – they get an ALS unit on scene about 89% of the time, the particular territory of Station 14 they meet the goal about 53% of the time.  They added a fire station last year and added a paramedic to the engine company, they do get some ALS response out of that.  It’s not a transporting unit, last year at this time we agreed to put the paramedics on the engine to have some ALS.  The data he sent out shows how many times of day they run out of ambulances or get down to 1 or 2 capacity city wide.  They get down to 7 ambulances occupied one and a quarter times a day, 2 med units 4 times a day and 3 med units 10 times a day.  That is your ambulances in our system in the city that are not available to take calls.  They have to have a shift in thought process and paradigm, this is a city wide response, its not a territory thing any more.  Our system often gets upside down with east side ambulances on the west side and then west side ambulances have to go to the east side to cover and the only way around that is to put more ambulances in the system.  They have one of the lowest ambulance to population ratio in the country.  He’s embarrassed to say that Montgomery Alabama has a population of 198,000 and they have 15 stations and 14 paramedic ambulances.  Not the best comparable probably.  But they as a city have figured it out.

Discussion:

Tierney says that it’s not reflected in the amendments, he has/had to be out of town but in order to fund this he added his name to amendments 12, 13, 14 and 15 in hope of getting the funding for this amendment.  And also one to add additional police officers.  For him it is a difficult situation because he talks to his constituents about the budget and he spent the last week running through numbers for different constituents and playing around with the city assessor website.  One of the lower value homes in his district if they own two cars would see $126 in total tax increases, one of the higher value homes in his district with 2 cars would see $217 tax increase.  But both of those homes are in areas where the transport for an ambulance can take 15-20 minutes.  They are being asked to pay a lot more but the service increase doesn’t provide them with anything more for the dollar they are paying.  He says he has a lot of people that were formally in the Town of Blooming Grove and they are being annexed to the city and he got his ear chewed off by a guy who is looking at curb and gutter and sidewalk, getting hooked up to the water utility and a higher property tax view and it all adds up to $16,000 and he talked to me about services and brought up ambulance service.  It’s hard to look someone in the eye and say we are treating them right. I can’t tell them that the ambulance service they will have will be worthy of a city of our size.  He says that he will continue to look at this and continue to figure out something to do.  It’s troubling when he has constituents that ask if there is a legal process to leave the city and become Village of McFarland or Town of Cottage Grove, Town of Dunn.  He says 50 years when station 5 was built there were cornfields around it and municipal budgets allowed us to plan ahead and spend money in anticipation of what we needed. Now, because of this state we are stuck waiting for our developments to build out before we can provide the services that are needed.  We are dealing with a lot o neighborhoods that have built out.  They are dealing with a lot of business development that needs to have ambulance service.  That is something he is going to keep working on.

Bidar asks finance how we would still have $400,000 of overtime.  Why wouldn’t the additional staffing reduce overtime.  Staff say that the additional overtime is to make the service delivery work.  The funding in this amendment would be an enhancement to service levels.

Vote:

1 person that I could hear said not, but it was placed on file by the group.

AMENDMENT TWENTY FIVE A

Title: Add 3 Police Officers-Option A

Sponsors: Alder Verveer

Amount: $168,000

AMENDMENT TWENTY FIVE B

Title: Add 6 Police Officers-Option B

Sponsors: Alders McKinney, Henak, Carter

Amount: $335,830

Motion: Not taken up

AMENDMENT TWENTY FIVE C

Title: Add 12 Police Officers-Option C

Sponsors: Alder Skidmore (sponsored as a courtesy to allow on Finance agenda by Council President Bidar)

Amount: $671,700

Motion: Not taken up

FULL BUDGET PACKAGE

Bidar moves to adopt the budget as amended.  No discussion.  Sounded like McKinney voted no, may have been others, but the mayor says the ayes have it.  She says that item is adopted and sent to council.

WHEEL TAX ORDINANCE

2 speakers registered.  One was still there and said he was concerned about the regressive nature of the tax.  No discussion.

Bidar says that they will have to have a special meeting if this passes.  Verveer moves to make it effective Feb. 1 vs March 1.

Amendment to move the start date to Feb 1

Verveer says that they had a fairly lengthy discussion during the public hearing about what the lost revenue for February would be.  He says they all know that it is imperative that the “wheel tax, excuse me, vehicle registration fee” be collected if at all possible in the month of February next year and be collected starting Feb 1.  He would encourage council leadership to ask council staff first thing in the morning to start polling members as to when we might ascertain a quorum that would meet preferably still this week while the president is still in town.

McKinney says she realizes they will need a vehicle registration fee but she will not be supporting it at the rate of $40 and she appreciates and acknowledges the efforts of President Bidar and the Mayor but she is still concerned about the non-eligible groups that will be excluded or fall through the cracks, she will not be supporting the $40 wheel tax.

The amendment to move to Feb 1 passes on a voice vote – I only heard McKinney say no.

Marsha Rummel says that she has heard from constituents that they are a lot of questions and concerns about this fee and when she tries to explain how the mayor so deftly weaved it into the budget and they say “unweave it” and she doesn’t know how to do that.  She says she wanted to report that she thinks it is a think that will really hurt a lot of people.  She is struggling with it but she doesn’t know what the option are.

Amendment for a sunset

Verveer moves an amendment to add the following “no motor vehicle registration fee shall be imposed by the city after December 31st, 2021.”  That is a sunset clause.  It’s seconded by McKinney.  He says this isn’t an original idea, several colleagues have discussed this with him privately.  He told the mayor privately that this isn’t a totally original idea because when they instituted a similarly unpopular, except that they didn’t disclose much in advance that they were going to proceed with an urban forestry special charge back in 2015, there was as sunset provision in the original ordinance that created the special charge.  The sunset expired the end of 2018 and the council voted to eliminate the sunset clause earlier that year.  The reason why some of us would feel more comfortable if there was a sunset provision on the city wheel tax is that is send a message that we don’t wish to do this, that this wasn’t our first choice but they are forced to do this by the state legislature at the state capital.  They all know how the statutes treat municipalities.  He says Tierney reminded him that the governor will be introducing 2021-2023 biennial budget and after the 2020 census that legislative redistricting will yield legislators that are more sympathetic to the plight of municipalities.  The sunset would sent a message that we don’t like the statutes we are forced to deal with, that we have strict levy limits, that municipal aids are anemic at best or that there is a darkstore loophole the legislature refuses to close as it relates to big box and most importantly that we can’t form a RTA by law.  Governor Walker and the legislative majorities abolished the right to establish an RTA by law in 2011.  He thinks the sunset provision sends a signal that none of us like that this is the only tool that they can use to close the budget gap.  He says is the BRT initiative doesn’t move forward, it says to the naysayers in the community that the vehicle registration fee ordinance will sunset and end.

Furman doesn’t support it.  He is not a fan of the vehicle registration tax but does understand that is where we are.  He doesn’t think sunsetting this at the end of 2021 is a realistic time and there won’t be a realistic time to give people the false perception that we will be able to get rid of the vehicle registration fee.  Nothing precludes them from gettin grid of it if they can figure out other funding or make cuts.  The reality is that we will continue to have departments that will ask us for money, we will continue to have strong transit needs as our population continues to grow and he doesn’t want to see them back a future council in a corner with a sunset that he doesn’t see as realistic.

Mayor asks if she can speak from the char and there is no objection.  The mayor says that one of the hallmarks of her budget is truth in budgeting.  She thinks that this amendment goes directly against that.  If we want to send a message to our constituents and the state legislature or to anyone we should send that message by saying it.  They can do that individually or collectively.  But I tell you what kind of message we are sending if we put a sunset on this. We are sending a message that we are willing to lie to our constituents in order to make them feel better.  Because Alder Furman is right, they are not going to be able to get rid of a vehicle registration fee in two years.  Because our costs are going to continue to go up.  And they are going to continue to see less revenue from the state.  She certainly hopes that changes, that the legislature flips entirely and sees fit to return state aids to what they used to be, that we get another government in Washington that believes in cities again, that they will be able to form a RTA, that the state funds transit at the level it should be funded, that the state and federal government fund infrastructure at the level they should fund infrastructure.  But the reality of any of that happening is a very small chance.  So she is not interested in lying to our constituents about what is necessary to deliver a balanced budget.  She urges them to oppose the sunset.  She does not think it is a productive addition to the conversation.

Another voice vote where I only heard Verveer say no, but who knows.  The no’s were louder and the amendment failed.

Main motion

Kemble has also been getting a lot of concern from constituents, they make a lot of different points, the one that we all know to be true is that it is a regressive tax, its unfair and why are we taxing only Madison residents for a system (roads, BRT) that is supposed to be regional and she kind of agrees with them on that.  She says to make this more fair they should work with the county for them to use their wheel tax to help us build our BRT and we need to start working on that now, she wishes they could have been working on that all summer long.  That would still be a regressive wheel tax we are already paying, but if they would pony up some percentage of their wheel tax to support a regional transit system they would mean they wouldn’t have to rely on as high of a vehicle registration fee for the city – which she willl support.  One of the things she talked a lot about when she was doing doors and first elected is she was running because the state and federal government had turned against us and prevented us from doing what we needed to do to take care of each other and our collective good and we need to find new ways to support that and all the things we find important.  Unfortunately this is on way we can still legally do that – its not the best, we should be able to implement a sales tax to fund what we need to fund.  She encourages all of us, the mayor and council members to talk to our county supervisors and county executive and build a case for fairness in how these tax monies are going.  The city shouldn’t have to shoulder all the costs and the county is already imposing this fee on us and there isn’t much to show for it in terms of what the county is doing for transportation.  Lets work on that and do something to fix it in next year’s budget on our side and theirs.

Sounds like McKinney was the only no.  The agenda is adopted.