Here we go again . . . I missed the public input in favor of the police, hard to get here on time! Alders are also slowly trickling in.
GENERAL
Dave Schmiedicke, the Finance Director, does his annual overview. 3/4 of the general fund comes form property tax, state aid is up 3% (8% transportation aid), room taxes will be increasing if approved by the council and that adds 30% of the increase to the general funds. Building permits are up – instead of up. Moving violations, fines and forfeitures are down, due to moving violations and parking. 40% of the costs go to public safety and health. Debt service is 15%, public works and transportation is 20%, (I missed a bit about the library), debt service is up 6%. The percent increase is 4.6 average in 15 years, the increase has been increasing to 4.8% partially driven by debt service. The levy is $750,000 below the levy limit. TOAH (taxes on the average home) is up 2.67% which is $65 and average value of homes is up 5.5% driven by higher taxes and the mill rate is going up 3%. The changes from 2017 adopted to 2018 executive budget slide shows more info that I can’t type fast enough for . . . I will try to add these slides once I find them on-line.
Fiscal risks are the fund balance has been falling form 15%, we are below 14% and that is one of the pillars of our AAA bond rating. The executive budget moves $2M to the fund balance and we still need $3M and we hope to get to 15% by the end of 2018. The ERP program is shrinking due to inflation and we have 1.5M of room in 2018, assuming we appropriate $2M at the end of the year in 2017 and then our margin for a severe winter or other events, ERP (expenditure restraint program) is important because if we exceed it we have to give money back to the state and we get $7.5M. He says we still have to staff the new buildings for public safety and the forestry charge will end in 2018. Debt continues to increase, health insurance continues to be an area of pressure and other insurance with the “various events” has caused and increase in premiums.
Mark Clear asks something I didn’t understand but I think it was about ERP. Schmiedicke says look at page 12, the amount of money for the 2018 budget if we exceed that, we can only go $1.4M above that in 2018 before we have to pay the state back.
Mike Verveer asks about charge backs to agencies for services from finance, attorney, etc. Schmiedicke says when they moved to MUNIS they transferred money between agencies for various services (IT, attorney, etc) and when they moved to munis they set up direct allocations and that hasn’t been the case in those central service areas and based on their cost allocation and there is a gap of $2M that is funded by the general fund and they are trying to get a good understanding of that, they are bringing in a consultant to figure out a good basis to charge that. They want to figure that out and they put in a place holder for that. Verveer asks if the the Monona Terrace will pay $200,000, Schmiedicke says that wasn’t all of it. Verveer asks if that goes to other enterprise agencies? Schmiedickes says water, sewer, storm water will pay that, but Metro won’t because it is already subsidized.
Rebecca Kemble asks about the Insurance increases. Schmiedicke says its hard to know. There is about $30,000 on property premium but the biggest issue is on the liability side due to law enforcement and greater losses there. We have a retention of $350,000, we pay the first $350,000 on each claim but they are hearing, but haven’t seen yet, we get our insurance through WIBIC and then they have insurance companies and the other insurance companies are getting nervous and asking for more and other cities are having to pay as much as $1M for each claim. We may see some issues with the fires at Warner and Olbrich and xx playground. We don’t know for sure, but we need to hear from the insurers but we expect to see an increase.
ASSESSORS
Mark Hanson says that the budget is 2.5% increase. They have one highlight about getting commercial properties up to their full market value, they started but will work through 2018. They will prepare a new request for funding for a new software system.
Verveer asks about the request for new positions up to $300,000. Hanson says that they need three positions for each section, commercial appraiser, residential appraiser and an assessment technician to collect data and do prep work. Verveer asks what happens with the new positions – more timely assessments. Hanson says the city is growing and construction is up and they are feeling the pressure with the economy picking back up to keep up with the growth.
Verveer asks about personal property tax, the legislature might do away with it, and they exempted more items, how will that affect the city? Hanson says that is about 1/4 of the personal property value which is 3% of total tax base so about 1% will go away. Other things is there is no reporting, the state will give aid based on the 2017 value and that will be frozen. The computer value reporting is also going away and that will become a static number and that aid may go away.
Verveer asks how many employees works on personal property – Hanson says 1 but it won’t reduce their work much. Hanson says the changes haven’t impacted their work much.
Barbara McKinney asks about the vacancy analysis. It shows 1 vacancy, do you have any? Hanson says that they don’t have a vacancy at this time.
Sheri Carter asks about the position of data analyst? The Assessment Technician is the position. Are those duties done by anyone else? He says there are three people who do it now, this would be a 4th. Certain jobs have to be certified and this would be one and that limits who can do the work.
Marsha Rummel asks about the challenges to assessments and how that is going. Hanson says hotels and high rise apartments have a lot of appeals. They are making adjustments and meeting with alot of property owners and their agents. Rummel asks about the hotel building boom, is that what you are seeing. He says there are no ends to the projects, also with apartments. Rummel asks about the re-valuing. Hanson says they have to make a lot of assumptions, they don’t have much luck getting the voluntary information, which they have to do under appeal. It is just an argument about how they do it, they previously made vacancy assumptions, but they seem to be on the same page now.
ATTORNEY
There is only one significant change, the exception is the legislative policy analyst is moving to the common council office, that is $80,000 otherwise it stays the same. The municode project is 1/3 of the way through the transition, they hope in the new quarter of the year they will have that done and it will be much more user friendly. He reminds them of the summer project – they use the prosecution law project (form UW Law School), they can do trials after 2 years of supervision and they can do trials by the end of the summer, the professor is retiring. They also have the public interest project (UW and Marquette) and the 3rd is state bar diversity program, they use that instead of AASPIRE. The city signs up and they match a person with the project. Ordinance enforcement is increasing a bit, legislative support is a smaller area and the largest part is for council and representation. They are training in RESJI for the staff. They provide training on the legislative process for other offices.
No questions.
CIVIL RIGHTS
Norm Davis says their budget strives to expand access in 2018. They have a $1.6 budget, there is additional funding for the language access plan. The grant revenue is not new but is accounted for differently. There are slight changes for wages and benefits. The number of positions remain the same. They have 3 AASPIRE internships. Budget highlights are the continued funding of RESJI ($20,000), new funding of $100,000 for language access, the EOC grant is based on the number of cases they take for the EEOC. They get $700 per case. They have about 53 cases a year. They had a lot of salary savings in 2017 and all positions are filled except 1. They hope to expand their RESJI work but can only continue at the level of service they have without more funding. The CCP program is to try to spread the understanding of discrimination and train people to prevent discrimination and increase understanding of how to file a complaint. The language access plan implementation should start in 2018.
Barbara McKinney asks about the $20,000 for RESJI – say more about it, how is it spent? Davis says that the largest item they use the funding for is additional training. The initiative has one position and $20,000. The initiative itself is carried out by many city employees across many agencies and they do this work beyond their assigned work. They have to make sure people have proper training. They need additional training to assist with the equity analysis tools. They money gets used quickly because there are 60-70 people doing this work – they do training, events, they contribute to the YWCA racial justice summit.
McKinney asks about the additional ask of the mayor, what would it have done if granted. Davis says they identified a couple pending actions or demands that were going to stretch the city employees even thinner. One was the council action to increase equity tools – they need to train more city employees. They are at capacity with their ability to train employees. The trainigs are filled very quickly. Part of the funding will go to training. There are 51 capital projects that need to be evaluated and while agencies do that but some agencies don’t have teams and they need to provide technical assistance. They feel like they need a program assistant to coordinate, the equity coordinator does some of that work now. McKinney took a really long time to ask something I didn’t understand. Davis repeats what he has already said – he points out that the departments allow workers to work on RESJI but sometimes they can’t contribute as much as they would like to so if there are commitments that they made, they can’t do anything except to have the equity coordinator do that work, but the demand is high. McKinney asks what happens if they can’t cover those instances – what happens. Davis says departments elect to conduct an equity analysis or send employees to training. If they need technical assistance they may not do the equity analysis on that project. If they can’t staff the training they may have to postpone or re-schedule. McKinney asks about the 51 projects they would refer to the tool, when do you see that additional expectation directed to your department, what is your assessment of that? Your are doing excellent work building the relationships, but when I went through the agency heads identifying 51 projects that they would refer to the assessment tool, I was wondering how that would be used. Davis says that will be a real challenge. The design is to have RESJI baked into the work we do. That means they need equity teams in each department that are fully changed and fully capable of doing the equity analysis. If that were the case they could meet the demand. They may still need to pull together some teams, but because they don’t have that, it will create a strain on those already involved in equity. They want to be supportive of the agencies to complete the equity analysis, they don’t do it, but they assist the agencies in that work. McKinney says that racial equity is a priority for they city but are we giving it the financial support to meet our goals says McKinney.
Shiva Bidar asks about the $20,000 supporting the YWCA conference, she asks how much? $1000 or $1,500 – that is sponsorship and funds to attend.
Bidar asks about the language access – Judge Koval also has money for language access, is the intent to bring all the lines together? That is being done to maintain the integrity of the services. Bidar asks if they discussed this with municipal court? Davis says not yet, but he will, they did communicate with department and division heads through the survey and one of the meetings. They will reach out. Bidar asks if they should just move that money to the centralized budget.
Denise DeMarb asks about the resolution for the capital budget they determined (executive committee) it was determined they would be trained in the process and the tool. The executive committee and the council passed that, including elected officials and their staff – what she thought was happening was that there was already training going on but there would be a re-prioritization on who would be trained. Davis says they will, but there is a continued demand for other employees too. They will prioritize department heads, elected officials and finance people. DeMarb reiterates that they were to re-prioritize, he say they will. She asks what kind of staff they need to get on with this work if its really a priority. Davis says their request was their estimate of what would work for 2018, a program assistant position and $80,000 for training for RESJ team members and in order to allow us to ramp up the tool, technical assistance. That level of funding, the position and $80,000 was an attempt to do the right size. They wanted another position, but they wanted to meet demand and be realistic about the budget. He thinks the ask they had would meet the demand. DeMarb asks what the total was. Davis says it was $127,352 including the $20,000. Mayor Paul Soglin says it was 140,050.
Rebecca Kemble asks about how it looks like the staff only worked on one state case. Davis says its $700 per case, they processed 53 cases at $700 but those are not the only cases they process, they also do other protected classes outside the EEOC grant and the additional state protected classes. She asks again about the numbers, Dave Schmiedicke says the estimates are off, they didn’t have the info yet. Kemble asks if the money includes state cases. Davis says the state cases are a referral from ERD for the state cases. A staff person I don’t recognize says the $700 was the women’s initiative money that was a one time contribution for an account that was closed. Kemble asks again about where the money from the state is reflected in the budget. Davis says it is a new funding stream, they initiate the cases and forward them to the state $50 per case. They only get $2500 or so, that money is not earmarked in the grant. Kemble asks if they are increasing that charge. Davis says they would like to but they have policy and software issues. The software should be online by 2018 and help bring their 30 year old system more current.
CITY CLERK
The revenue is from the flood, ignore that, we hope we never had that again. The tornado missed the storage by three blocks. Their priorities were set by using the equity tool. They want to staff to minimize lines at the polling places. The prioritized that over absentee voting, they doubled the number of hourly employees to minimize overtime. They also will focus on RESJI in the clerks office.
Mark Clear asks about $200,000 increase in wages, is that because of living wage. The living wage will go from $12.83 to $13.01 and they haven’t had that big of increases in the past.
McKinney asks when alders weren’t able to serve as chief, where is that legislation. Marybeth Witzel-Bell says the hearing will be on Thursday. McKinney asks where that is at. She says that other cities want to see that go through elsewhere in the state, McKinney says great job.
Verveer asks about absentee voting, he says the slide and budget book are different. She says to use the slide. They will only do 4 weeks instead of 6 weeks. In 2016 6 weeks of absentee voting almost killed them, she worked 600 hours in 6 weeks and others work 80 – 90 hours a week. There is also legislation that would allow them to use the tabulator when people vote absentee. Part of the challenge is that the county clerk would have to program the machines – 6 weeks might be too early for that to happen. Verveer asks about the library locations only, Streets East and campus locations would also still be used. It is a challenge because they have limited hours, but its better than nothing.
Verveer asks about the budget highlight on page 75 for reimbursement for alcohol establishments, there is a key word missing, the word fees needs to be inserted, it is worded different in Parks and elsewhere
Carter asks about the different polling machines, have you looked at them for our area? Witzel-Behl says that the presentation was before the flood and the insurance covered the new technology. They have express vote and they can generate polling places. They have 90 of those.
EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAM
Sorry, took a quick break while she presented what was on the slides . . . . she noted that they now have their stand alone office and that is going well, and they have slight increases. She says there is more requests for caregiver assistance.
McKinney asks about their outreach and how it impacts violence prevention and that seems to fit with the work they are doing. Is the EAO program on of the collaborators with public health? She says they could have a role in that, obviously community violence has a direct impact on city staff as well and that is where we come in to play. McKinney asks how employees know about their services? She says they expanded their website, created a monthly newsletter as a promotional piece to help people understand the services, they also have EAP peer facilitators that help make referrals. McKinney asks about if the departments have someone assigned dot connect people. She says they have 42 EAP facilitators and in the police department they have a whole team and she supervises them and works closely with them in critical incidents.
Mark Clear asks about trends she might be seeing in the work force? They see the same stressors as in the community, especially with the first responders, and Maribeth also talked about time stressors and then divorce, caregiver and other issues. We are doing the same as others, but the demands are greater than others. Clear asks if there are more requests in one department, is there any protocol to manage that by notifying policy makers. She says they do a lot of collaborating. Where appropriate they would talk about trends but not talk about individuals. They do a lot of work on the organizational development side as well.
Carter asks about the move and what impacts they are seeing. They aren’t seeing more, but they are busy. People appreciate the new place.
Amanda Hall asks about the caregiver training. She says that they have a broad definition. Hall asks about the prevention program in the MPD. She says that this is a new program to teach looking at heart rates as it relates to stress and how to re-set after stress. She is getting more training in November. They are starting with the recruits but also doing it individually with city staff.
DeMarb asks about if that is about officer wellness. She says that is one of them. They have other programs as well.
DeMarb asks about the shifting money for the 3rd party provider for other programming, was that not needed year over year or just one year. DeMarb is worried it was an anomaly. She says that is a risk, but with the increased demands from police and fire, and technology and material costs – they can’t do it without shifting costs, but over the last two years they had that money available. They are hoping it stays steady. How much was shifted? $9,000.
McKinney says the council should visit. When you walk in the door there is calmness, peach, security and all that. When she went there it felt welcoming. She says they should be asking how they are doing more, as we interact with staff and with each other. She says if we are looking at the health of the city, we should be mindful of triggers and make sure we are connecting people to the services. We are experiencing, just the budget process, is a critical area we are going through. She wants them to go to the office and see what they are promoting. She says “thank you”.
HUMAN RESOURCES
Harper Donohue is the Interim Director, he says they added a position that will be charged with doing the guidance team work, they will lead city wide initiatives. He says the strategic manger position will work on domestic partner benefits. Domestic partner benefits will end January 31st, they are communicating to employees, they have 83 employees that are accessing ETF benefits. To address this they are communicating with the employees using this, they are looking to move funds to HR to accommodate that. They assume there will be 36 in 2018 and there should be in no fiscal impact.
Verveer asks about the domestic partners benefits, has the legal council been involved to make sure the new statute won’t prevent them from do that, they are in very close communication with the city attorneys. He says that another goal is the race and equity best practices research and they are working on breaking down their policies to look at retention, recruitment and workplace culture and they have many recommendations that they want to put in place as well. Verveer asks if there is a written memo from Patti to discuss the laws that were passed and how this will work. Mayor says that the legislature didn’t ban domestic partners – just the participation in the state system. Verveer said that was what the governor did, but the legislature went further. Harper says that this might be new information. Verveer appreciates all the work done, but he is concerned that after the letter was sent, joint finance made it worse than the governor. Greg says that ETF just released a letter, health and life insurance isn’t included, the memo just came out this afternoon.
Verveer thanks them for their work on transgender healthare, and he wants to codify that. Staff says that based on what they know, gender reassignment services were allowed for a short time, but only two members sought it and it might be easier just to pay for it. Verveer says he wants to work on that. He appreciates the mayors office supporting it as well.
Bidar asks about page 155 employee-labor relations, what is the difference in those lines between 2017 and 2018. I didn’t quite understand the answer. Bidar asks where the strategic management position is, she can’t find it in the budget. This is a range 12, comp group 18 position, they need this to take on more work. This position will work on citywide alignment.
Sarah Eskrich asks if they can see the position descriptions. He will get that to them. She says the there are several buckets of work, some done through a consultant and some by staff and she would like to see how this position would fit in the two different areas in the budget and wonders if the position should be split. Donohue says this would allow us to rely less on outside work.
Rummel says she has the same questions, and she wants to better understand the policy roles. She thanks the staff for their help in the hiring process for council staff.
McKinney asks about the Thursday session, she couldn’t attend, but once the department processes that information, will you come back to us and talk about the Thursday session so they can look at that as policy makers. Donohue says that part of it is to make sure people are aware of what we are doing, and that the communication is open. Also, there are some great things going on out there. McKinney says sometimes we are our best kept secret. He says that when people get to work with us its a pleasant experience and they just need to get the word out there.
Denise DeMarb asks that the position description gets sent to all alders not just finance committee.
Mark Phair says that he agrees there are two different things going on with the position and he wants the council to be updated on the work they are doing with the guidance teams.
IT
Paul Kronenberger and staff are there – he introduces the staff. (He wanders away from the mic while he’s talking and they make jokes about how his staff at citichannel will give him grief) The budget seeks to maintain services, but adds a communications piece. He reads the slides. New projects will be new software, open data portal with interactive mapping and civil rights case management system. They are looking at a new security monitoring system that will be more efficient.
Mark Clear asks about the communications director position and their vision for that position and how they will work with other city departments. Kronenberger says it will serve agencies, city council and the mayors office, they will work with the media, public information officers (PIOs), media strategy and work with those who don’t have public information officers. He says it might consolidate some of the services, he thinks this position will help coordinate citichannel to enhance services to the public and the agencies. Clear asks if the PIOs will be replaced? He says it would support them and assist them. CLear asks if they would be director of the media team? They will be separate.
Eskrich asks about the 3 vacancies, did they consider using those positions and reclassify. He says no, they are recruiting for those positions now. She says that most departments couldn’t add positions, did the mayor support it. She asks the mayor about his strategic goals. Mayor says that other agencies are adding PIOS and we can’t pull them out of the departments and others are requesting those positions so the idea was to start out by creating this position and make it available to all city agencies that don’t have their own officers. Then with that underway, the existing PIOs convene themselves to discuss their relationship and this new. Should everyone be in one agency and not attached to a department. That was rejected for 2 reasons, for those that have PIOs they are fully engaged and if we pull them out, they would end up back where they started, spending 99% of the time with police and fire. If they are working for a specific department, will we create chaos if someone else is directing their activities. It was their recommendation that we do this instead of creating a public information department in IT. He says that he thinks IT didn’t want to take on this responsibility. Katie Crowley says that there can be more internal communications with city employees as well after the mayor asks her what he missed. She says alot of time she spends answering media calls and she is not always at her desk and she gives them out to others. Mayor says today they were asked about the real estate closing on ?? – the call got shuffled around quite a bit and no one knew about it, it ended up at the plan department but this would have been a good time to have this position since the plan department was asking for this position for years. Eskrich asks if this should be in the Mayor’s office instead of IT? Mayor says they could put it there, the previous mayor had one, but he prefers not to, because the utilization will be by other city departments not them. Eskrich says, but aren’t you their supervisor. Mayor says he’s never been in a position when council wanted to put a position in the office and said no, he thinks the greatest demand is public works, transportation and plan department and in emergency streets and parks. He says that this would be available to the council too and he doesn’t want that person reporting to him if they have different positions. Crowley adds that department heads know what they are talking about and they don’t want to be the gatekeeper. Mayor says that is an important point, different mayors have different positions, some have everything go through their office, he says he says that department heads can all talk to the media as long as they think they know what they are talking about.
Bidar says the experts are the people doing the work and the PIO helps with knowing the press and working on message and she supports that, but she doesn’t see how this one role fits in IT and she doesn’t see that communication role fitting here when she reads the description of the department, this doesn’t see to fit. She says that it looks like they want PIOs to have a portfolio like the deputy mayors have and one person would be overwhelmed.
Clear says that IT is the defacto communications manager through the website and social media.
Clear says he is concerned about the growth in needs of services without a growth in staff, particularly in the area of security. Also, what resources do they need to catch up with the requests they have. They says that application development and software requests are a large need. There is a lot that has to happen to support the software in the city, particularly with security. We spend a great deal of time working on that. We have turned away vendors that sell software all over the city. . . . missed some . . .
Marsha Rummel is in the chair now . . .
TREASURER
Dave Gawenda says their budget is straight forward and not much change. The two big changes are technical, credit card processing lines of $138,000 and an increase of $9,000 on overtime. They continue to process a million payments every year and it increases every year. They try to stay in touch with people and how they pay.
Verveer asks about credit card fees – this year there is $165,000 deficit this year because we thought more people would be paying with credit cards is that right? Gawenda says that with MUNIS they are trying to push the expenses to the enterprise agencies but some of these fess it is hard to anticipate how this will break out. Part of this is just adjusting how that is done. The fees that the credit card processor charges change each year and they scheduled a meeting with the bank and credit card processor and they will look at a few things including the alignment of the pricing. There are different pricing for utilities, government and small transaction fees and he wants to make sure we are coded correctly. He also wants to look at things they need to plan for in the future, will we get to the point where people will want to pay by phone. They are starting to do a regular review. They had hoped by this time to be online by now but they want to roll everything out at the same time. With the new system the customer will pay the convenience fee on water bills in the future. Verveer asks who is to blame for it being delayed. Gawenda says it is just very complicated. Verveer says that he’s not a fan of the vendor.
Verveer asks about the accountant position. Gawenda says that they have separate accounting from the finance department as checks and balances. They do bank reconciliation. That is something the auditors say is a better way to do it. He understands this is not a high need but they will likely continue to bring this back to them. Verveer asks if it is a full time job – Gawenda says more than full time.
Verveer asks Schmiedicke if he wants to add anything. He says Gawenda covered it.
Ledell Zellers asks if it is better to segregate the responsibilities, why don’t we just transfer a position. Schmiedicke says that they do other functions in addition to the reconciliations. Zellers asks what portion of time, Schmiedicke says its split between two positions. Gawenda says that person retired when MUNIS came in and the new people brought enhancements to the process and they no longer do monthly entries but do it sooner, but it takes more time. Schmiedicke says there are other best practices – can’t hear.
Rummel asks if there is an update on the state RFP for bank services. Gawenda talked to the bank today and state today and hasn’t heard back from DOA, the bank doesn’t know where they are in the process and aren’t privy to the information – if the contract that expires June 30 does expire, the pricing will remain the same. Rummel asks him to explain. Gawenda says that he did an RFP for banking services when he started and its a major relationship. OUr services are complex and only a few banks can provide these services. One of the options is to use the state banking contract. At the time they looked at the changes in costs and the pro forma showed a 30% reduction in banking costs. It would benefit us to opt into that contract which we can do, 5 years later we exercised that option and we are approaching the end of the contract. Rummel says its now UW Bank who has been called out by activists over the pipeline and that is why she brought that up.
Rummel asks about progress with the AirBnB – they have an agreement with AirBnB where they can get room tax directly form them, they got their first payment for May and June. THe will ge the next quarter payment soon. They cannot audit their information. They also hired a third party to police the websites (Host Compliance) and they will then figure out how to get compliance. The third issue is to make the host process as easy as possible. They are progressing, getting payments, and dealing with host compliance and trying to make it easier for the hosts.
ROOM TAX COMMISSION
Schmiedicke says to look at pages 20 & 21 for information (again can’t hear). He says its all approved by the room tax commission – they are the body that decides how 70% of the room tax dollars are allocated – 30% goes into the general fund.
No questions
MONONA TERRACE
Gregg McManners says its a cost to continue budget, employees are the same, revenues are a little less for next year. One of the bigger events has re-tooled and aren’t having a large event. This is alarming and they have gone through this before. They are reclassifying so they have a lead workers on every shift in the building. They have a room tax reduction because of the state legislation.
David Ahrens (hmmm, when did he get here?) asks about the 10% decline in ?? – McManners says that 2016 revenues was an abnormal year. This year is more normal (wow, i missed what he was saying even tho I heard it)
Ahrens asks about the catering costs and rental facility charges, why did the charges drop by 20%? He says that if they spend more on food and beverages they charge less. Ahrens asks if that benefits the concessions person. McManners says that we get a percentage of the sales. Ahrens says that we pay for the facility. Ahrens asks where this is on the balance sheet, 28% of $6M doesn’t show up? McManners says that it shows up under events, but not as a line item. It’s under the type of event that it is. Ahrens asks him to look at what they have. He doesn’t have it. Catering commission is first and rental is second but they are not mutually exclusive. Ahrens asks where the catering fee is. They straighten out the confusion but I”m not sure what that was all about except arguing about what line revenue goes in.
POLICE
Sue Williams presents, Koval is sitting in the back of the room. She goes through the slides. The authoritized positions went up 583.4, 468 are sworn. 2018 it will be 587.7 and 469 are sworn officers and the rest are civilians. The three positions are for Midtown – one gang officer, a clerk and a training center coordinator so the sargent can be a mental health officer Sargent. Highlights are if they get the COPS grant there is $350,000 for the match to allow 7 more patrol officers. If they don’t get the grant, that funding will fund 3 officers for patrol. They are also getting smart phones for detectives and sargeants and premium pay for education. There are some things not funded – sick leave and convert work to pay and they still have overtime issues. They did not get carry over funding to supply naloxone. They also have staffing problems related to patrol services. Edico study was re-done formula using 2016 data and they were 23 officers short in patrol services in 2016.
Clear asks about the COPs grant match – is that built into the budget? If we get the grant we get 7 that won’t be in the total, if we don’t get it – that would fund 3. That is hypothetical, the funding for the match it there. If they get the grant they have to come back to accept the grant, the mayors intention is to give the money if they get the grant. Clear asks for clarifications for the 3 positions. There are two civilian positions. Clear says the column headings are missing and that is the confusion.
Phair asks about the grant – Sue Williams says that Terry Genin might be able to explain better – Genin says that they don’t want to say they got the money, because it would be supplanting. The mayor provided the money, if they don’t get the grant, it would be up to the discretion of the council on how to spend the money. Phair asks when they find out? They usually find out 3rd week of September but nothing is working as usual with the federal government.
Phair asks about the acute violence – does this budget get us ready to deal with rooting out – identifying and dealing with violent perpetrators and if not, what do we need to do? Officers or not, just broadly. Chief Mike Koval says that we are faced with difficult choices, we are providing services, but still had violence. The overtime costs is not sustainable to provide the services and is not good for the health and welfare of the officers. We are just treading water and we aren’t keeping up. Phair says I think I hear you saying you need more bodies. Koval is blathering buzzwords . . . his bottom line is that there is no one indicator that tells them how many officers they need, but he thinks Etico is the best one for community policing. This allows time for decompression, outreach and problem solving. WHAT THE . . . 30 bodies at St. Maria Garetti’s?? Huh??? Amortizing pain?? WHAT THE . . . sigh . . .
Phair asks about the fire chief comments on mental health ambulance issue. Chief Koval says he appreciates the willingness to help, they are the only 24-7 crises. We have all seen the blogs and they did 165 conveyances to Winnebago and that doesn’t include voluntary admissions. It continues to be EPIC, they have 5 mental health offices, 30 liaisons and 2 Journey staff. We are at best diagnostic and referrals, they can’t do what clinicians can.
Phair asks about public health vs police violence prevention work and how they can partner in that. Koval says they already pledged to support that process – the conflict is when there are shots fired in real time public health can’t offer much, but we should look at the root causes and prevention and how other social services can prevent it. It’s not an all or nothing proposition.
Ahrens asks about the COPs positions. Can we allocate 10 positions in this budget and if we get the COPs grant delay implementation to the following year. Williams says that they have done that, it is a decision by the COPs office, but we have to ask permission. She isn’t sure how far they would let them push it but they have done one year – and the positions are up to three years.
Chief says that the mayor looks like Welcome Back Kotter trying to ask a question.
Mayor explains that they will implement the positions over 2018 and 2019. If we put the money in without the contingent then it can’t be the match. If they are rejected, they will have to decide what to do with the $350,000.
Ahrens asks about the violence prevention unit – Chief says there is an initiative that is department wide.
Ahrens says that they will develop data and show hot spots. Williams says that public health would have other data about how many people come to the ER – and where they occur and the police would never have access to that, unless they are there. Ahrens questions that – he says that if its public information its public information and its de-indentified. Williams says they have data in public health. Chief says they do criminal intelligence . . . Williams says that is with their data.
Paul Skidmore asks about the Etico study and lack of 23 positions, if we add 4 officers they wouldn’t be patrol, they would be midtown officers. Williams says only 1. Skidmore says were still 20 officers short. Skidmore asks if they think they will get the positions. Koval says that if the Koval curse continues they will not get it. We are not the neediest children and they will massage those wounds first and we are asking for traditional officers – and we got the Byrne grant and they might not give it to us.
Skidmore asks about the 160 chapter 51 conveyances – which take 6 – 8 hours for 2 officers, he says that adds up to one officer over the year. After 4:00 there are only 18 officers and after 2:00 unless you have a blockage don’t bother calling. That has an impact, what triggers priority call status. Williams says that officer in charge makes the call when they go to priority calls only. Koval says it also is based on officer safety and it is based on back up also.
Skidmore talks about an accident at a gas station and suicide rates for police and . . . . rambling . . . how is this impacting the morale of the staff and with all the retirements how is this impacting institutional memory and morale . .
Koval says that it impacts morale when you don’t know where your back up is coming from. He talks about 40 cops showing up to a 2 hour meeting where they heard from officers and how it is impacting them. He says that they are sending a lot of officers back to patrol and they are deferring some things to when the recruits come on. The safety ed program is great, but they have to cut it, its too bad. THey have to shift to essential services and the 9-1-1 call is what they will defined by.
Skidmore talks about overtime and burnout and how they took people off the street. (I’m not sure what he was saying) Koval says he has an after action report that he wants to share, and yes they had strategic arrests and they also got into the neighborhood and ensured that information would be protected and they got actionable information from people. People and the media like to seize on the arrests but there was also significant engagement.
Bidar asks if the body cameras were in the supplemental request. Williams says they were not.
Bidar asks about priorities and the additional staff that would be needed for body cameras and that was three more staff, where does that fit within the priorities. Williams says their priorities are absolutely in patrol services.
Ahrens asks if the council added 10 patrol positions, irregardless of the COPs grant? Williams says that would be in addition to whatever else they have added.
Mayor is back in the chair.
Verveer asks how many positions they are down for sworn staff. Genin says that they have no vacancies because of the academy. Verveer asks how many slots they are short. Genin says there are 16 that are in the academy.
Verveer asks about ?? – Williams says that they lose most people Jan – March to retirements. Even tho the recruits start in sept they aren’t available until June. There have been holes, since they moved the academy up to May, that aligns better with the retirements, this will still be a problem in 2018, but in 2019 the recruits will be ready. Verveer asks if that will be a permanent change. Williams says she hopes so.
Verveer asks about the overtime deficit. He asks about the MPPOA contract impacts. Genin says the pay to time ratio is down but they will still be over $400,000 – 500,000. Verveer asks how that compares to previous years. Genin says it is more like $200-250,000 in other years. It is more significant than they thought. They say this is because of the homicides and shots fired.
Verveer asks about the Downtown Safety Initiative (DSI) and if that is costing $100,000 in overtime, we doubled staff due to the violence. Genin says at the end of the 3rd quarter they were at $122,000 and last year they were at $90,000.
Verveer says that they used SET last weekend. Koval says 2 weekends. Genin says they don’t have those costs yet.
Verveer says that this goes to the mayors initiatives to recoup the costs, will SET be DSI costs? They haven’t tracked that yet.
Verveer asks about the traffic citation revenue being down and that is a trend. Why? Koval says that traffic enforcement unless you are called to a crash, that is a proactive activity, TEST teams write 15% of the tickets, but when there are calls, they chase calls. Also, TEST has two people retire and one got injured and so they have 4 new people. 3rd quarter will be better. Citation are down and quite frankly, with the discussions of equity and disproportionate impacts, they are asking not to consolidate tickets, only write one and only the most hazardous one. They are not encouraging not to write for no drivers licenses.
Verveer asks about grants for traffic enforcement. Genin says it expanded in 2018 but they are awarded to collaborations. They work more with Dane County and they are subgrantees in some of the grants, but the funding has increased starting this fall. Verveer asks if the trend is in the right direction. Genin says yes.
Ahrens asks Schnmiedicke if anyone has attempted to use room tax for the issues of downtown tourism. Schniedicks says it needs to be used as municipal development, tourism marketing and ?? for 70% of the funds, the other 30% could be for policing.
BUILDING INSPECTION
George Hank says not many changes. They are looking towards the Town annexation and looking at taking over the weights and measures duties. They want to create the ability for the property owner to have an account where they will get alerts when they get tickets for shoveling so that they can fix it. They have lots of agencies that use their plans and they want to digitize them. They are only kept for 3 years and then destroyed and that is a lost. They are looking at having info for alders about building inspections.
No one is paying attention – only Kemble, Wood, Rummel, Verveer and McKinney are in their seats. Alders are wandering all over and many have left.
They have lots of requests for records and many could be solved by opening them up to the public, not all of them, but some of the main documents without personal information. They would like to open that data portal. He has been an advocate of that for 15 years.
Zach Wood asks about the Landlord Best Practices program, would they be able to implement that with their current staff. George Hank says yes, but not today. They have an absence and a vacancy.
Verveer asks about other vacancies. Hank says two other employees left as of last Friday. One for family reasons and an early retirement cuz something happened. Verveer is concerned about plan review – one of the staff did all one and two family plan review. Alot of people are pitching in, but one employee stayed until 9:30 on Friday night. They eliminated the back log.
Verveer says one plan review and 3 inspector positions and one long term leave? Clerk is being filled, property maintenance inpsector (139 applicants), and 2 vacancies last Friday (plan review and inspector) and a program assistant 3 position left 1st of June, they filled it quickly and then left but they were able to use the same pool. The new employee wasn’t internal and will do well but there is a learning curve.
Verveer says that the initiatives sound great and he’d sponsor the ordinance on electronic ??
McKinney supports systematic code enforcement. As you do building inspection and there are so many building code violations in a specific location, what is the process to flag them. He says if neighborhood wide they will increase their presence there. For specific properties and we see repeated violations they educate first and enforce when necessary. They ticket for recurring violations if education isn’t working if they are compliance challenged. McKinney asks if informing the alder happens in this process and at what point? Just like the police started giving alerts, what is that process. Hank says when something starts to bubble up, the supervisors talk about it and then let the alder and mayor know. We don’t want you to be surprised either. If they think it is extraordinary, they will make sure they know about it. They want them to hear it from us.
PLANNING DIVISION
Heather Stouder says the budget is static. The have 3 LTE positions they will lose when the comprehensive plan is finished. They mayor’s neighborhood conference will be the full conference next year, most of the other funds are about the same. She reads the slides, plan review is taking a bit of time and comprehensive plan will be done in June or July, they are looking at a BRT analysis and they need to update peripheral development plans, hopefully 4 or 5. They will continue to update the neighborhood indicators. The MPO is in this budget too, they do the transportation planning. They will be doing several neighborhood plans (Triangle, Oscar Mayer special area plan, Town of Blooming Grove for Hoyt farm and Mifflin/W Washington area). They are also doing their historic preservation plan city-wide for the first time.
Rummel asks placemaking and what they have money for. Stouder says they need to look for more money, they will need to look at that closely. They may have some carryover for funds in 2018. Rummel says the neighborhood art initiatives are incredible, keep doing those.
Rummel asks what the Bus Rapid Transit alternatives analysis is? Stouder says they will get them more information soon. At this point, they don’t envision construction until 2023 and they want to move forward with federal funding.
Rummel asks if this is next steps or changing things. Stouder says they are looking at next steps and Phase 1 and to figure out the details of costs for the system. They want to get the right alignment for the first route.
Rummel asks about looking at all plans for historic preservation, this is mostly and acknowledgement of all the work being done. Can’t hear Rummel . . .
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY
Tom Conrad, Interim Director of Housing Operations. He says they try to provide the best services they can with the funds they get from HUD, about $20M. They won’t know their 2018 funding until the end of the first quarter. They budget is placed on estimates. There are no changes to staffing. They are emphasizing setting their payment standards at the right level to help the most amount of families and that is difficult because rents are going up and just recently HUD published their Fair Market Rents and it is 14% higher than last year. They still want to help the same amount of people. They will likely get funding reductions in 2018. They want to have a program to help homeless youth aging out of the foster care system, they are putting 20 vouchers into Tree Lane and they want to help with the homeless efforts by letting people move up to vouchers to open up slots in permanent supportive housing. The will not be redeveloping Truax as anticipated so they are going to be renting them again but they will need to spend money to fix up the units.
Phair asks about plans for Teresa Terrace. Conrad says that just went to HUD and asked about the bureaucratic hurdles are to redeveloping some 4 unit properties and they were very encouraging. They have a few ideas about it.
McKinney asks about 766 units of public housing maps, she would like to see it. 1650 families are housing in 766 units. Conrad says they own and operate 766 units where they are landlords. 1650 are the vouchers in use. 2400 households get rent assistance.
McKinney asks about public housing that have numerous complaints with building inspection, where does funding come from to fix the units? Conrad says the money to make repairs comes from landlords, they are in constant contact with Building Inspection and they have stopped doing business with some landlords – they want to keep the landlords to give freedom of choice but if the landlord is incapable or unwilling to to maintain the properties they stop doing business with them. How often to they inspect? It used to be annual, now biannual, and at the beginnning of a lease and when there are complaints.
Rummel asked to have the Fair Market Rents sent to all alders.
Verveer asks about the reclass of the positions – was there a minimal increase. Conrad says its a 2 step increase.
CDA REDEVELOPMENT
Natalie Erdman says that there is zero levy, its an enterprise. If they make or lose money it adds to or subtracts from the reserve. They have 2 positions. Those positions are in the operating budget, they are not filling one of them. Only one will be funded in 2018. They have a general fund (development and operation of property, plus bond transactions), the Village on Park (1.5M in costs and revenues, they are taking on more debt and they will have a $70,000 deficit) and the Allied Fund (Revival Ridge Apartments and Mosaic Ridge) where there is mostly income. They have 240 units of housing separate from the Housing Operations funding. Sorry, took a break . . .
Erdman is talking about working in neighborhoods where private developers are not. She is looking for direction from the city on where to work. At this point in time they have limited capacity and have to focus with the staff they can afford and to do more they need a better income stream.
Rummel says they have special skills, but they have special authority under state law. She says they used to look at the work plan as a council and this is a tool for us we are not using. Erdman says that the bonding authority is useful but they haven’t used it lately like they did for block 89 or Monona Terrace.
Eskrich says she is concerned about the capacity and they haven’t been doing work in the past two years because of limited staff capacity and they have some of the highest vacancy rates for staffing in the city, how will the gaps be filled, especially the role Matt has been doing with Jim’s team – will the expertise be filled and how will the director be able to do that all. Erdman says that the CDA has the skills to do affordable housing development they have been working on permanent supportive housing and the rental initiative. The staff in CDD has taken over the RFP process, but they don’t have the development skills. The city real estate department could do that. Under Matt WActher’s leadership the CDA can then do their work. The oversight of their 4 apartment buildings will be done by Housing Operations and they will bill them for that. The Village on Park will be filled by real estate. To re-fill Matt’s position they will get it in to CDA and be reclassified and then will need to be approved.
Eskrich asks about the filling the CDA Housing Operations positions. They will post for the housing operations director when the other positions are filled.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Matt Mikolajewski reads the slides. They have freed up funds to do more blight studies. (i.e. more TIF districts) There will likely be a few more TIF districts next year and they will be working on the Oscar Mayer project. There wasn’t much else new in what he said.
Eskrich asks about the Capital Revolving Loan funds and the policy changes. Mikolajewski had hoped to get that done by the end of the year, but they hope to do it soon. Eskrich is asking for him to be proactive.
Rummel thanks them for their good work on the public market and the changes in the staffing and changes to the committee.
PCED DIRECTOR
This is a continuation budget, there is one vacancy but it has been posted. They also right sized the salary savings.
NO questions
COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
There are only 8 alders left . . . Eskrich, McKinney, Verveer, Rummel, Wood, DeMarb, Kemble and Phair . . . .
Jim O’Keefe says its a cost to continue budget, on the surface it looks unremarkable. They survived another year of threat to federal funding. There is a $400,000 jump in funds but that is from work to align positions with funding sources. They filled 9 of 11 vacancies they had. They have not just filled them but found quality people. With the stronger staff team they can make more effective use of their funding. They are reallocating resources around housing and homeless services and youth and adult employment through RFPs. There is more emphasis on those with the most serious barriers to success. They support service continuums instead of stand alone programs and have measurable outcomes. They place a premium on collaborations. The rest of the budget redirects support of employment center in Park Edge/Park Ridge area and the 1st year of a 5 year initiative to increase quality childcare. They also have the Peer Support services that is in the final stages of the RFP. In affordable housing they are turning attention to making sure the units are put to use to prevent homelessness, in some cases it is a clear and direct connection (Rethke, Tree Lane, Park St.), in other cases it is more subtle. They are looking forward to the opening of the Beacon, the funding is at the level you agreed to a year ago, $110,000. He talks about job programs and working with Urban League and Exact Sciences, they are proud and excited about that work. They are working on other projects on a smaller scale too. They are going to try to fill the neighborhood planning position again – sorry I missed some . . . got distracted by facebook . . . its 9:30 . . . 5 hours in . . .
Phair says that he sees the improvements and testimony to that was all the wonderful applications for homeless services, its a credit to the agencies but also the team that laid the ground work for that RFP.
Where are we with Griffs? O’Keefe said it had to be bid a second time, they are evaluating the proposals. They are looking at 2018 to open. How much money have we spent? $1.1 – 1.2M. The property was about $450,000, the bulk of the renovation work lies ahead. The Urban League has been operating out of temporary space and they have been supporting that work.
Phair asks what happens if we stop the project, what would that mean? O’Keefe says that they have raised alot of expectations, and gotten alot of neighborhood input. Surely there would be disappointment. Urban League could stay in its location? They have been operating out of that facility for more than a year, at Gammon and Watts. They are functioning and working with and serving clients. Phair says he asks because they are talking about a community center and across the street is the job center and several other projects, he says maybe they could work on these things together into a new grand center at Elver? Griffs is not, lets be honest, its not going to be a wonderfully big facility that will serve the neighborhood beyond employment. We could stop, he just wanted to plant that idea. O’Keefe says that is not a new idea, since the property was acquired for one purpose, and address acute needs so no one expected that to be the final answer in the Park Edge/Park Ridge neighborhood. A project that might be more impactful might cost more money and resources and time. Phair says it might be more efficient.
Eskrich asks about the reclassification of the planning position. Why is the reclass necessary? O’Keefe says that the person would work beyond the work on Elver Park, and will play a primary role in turning our attention to an RFP for neighborhood center funding. Laura form Finance says that it is a technical correction to get back to the original intent.
Eskrich asks about the average we contribute to community centers. O’Keefe says this is a higher number but doesn’t have an average. He says it reflects what has happened with the last few projects, they are city owned facilities and they are relying on city support for their operating funds. Usually they fund 25-30% or a little higher, but this would stand out. Eskrich asks about the original intent for this positions. O’Keefe says that there was a desire to guide the council/policy makers about when and where to do community centers. They tried to recruit and weren’t successful in finding a candidate. She asks when the last time the neighborhood centers could apply for funding. O’Keefe says it was 2014. Most of the money goes through youth and family support and the last time they did an RFP was 2012.
McKinney asks about the community center planner position and she wants to talk about Park Edge/Park Riedge but not at quarter to 10. She wants to more about the reclassification timeline and details. (My typing is getting briefer and briefer, my apologies) She says we need to ask the people most impacted about the decisions we make. She also wants the annualized cost of community centers. (I’m not sure she is asking a question . . . I can’t tell where this is going) O’Keefe says the 16 centers get $2.5M per year, that’s just a fraction, that is our contribution and its a declining share, and that varies center to center, as does the city contribution. Mayor says Allied Drive and Goodman get the highest amount of dollars. O’Keefe says it a Vera/Bridge/Lakepoint and then Boys and Girls Club, then Wilmar. He says that they tried to reallocate support and that system defies logic and its a product of decisions made over many years. Its impossible to explain and use those subsidies as a guide for how to fund centers in the future.
Rummel is glad Alder Phair asks the question, but these facilities are all close together and it strikes her as an alder that has a wonder facility, I guess I”m not working hard enough at getting my stuff in the queue because I thought there was a process. She just heard about Elver, and wonders where this money comes from. O’Keefe says that there is not money in the budget for Elver. Rummel says that is what the position is for. The council shouldn’t create positions, they never work well, its takes years to get it. This is not the first time we put a position in the budget and years later its not filled and now its being changed, she doesn’t care if its 10:00 this is the time to discuss it.
Rummel asks about the Eastside Planning Council having money in the budget when they didn’t ask for it or spend last years money.
Rummel asks about the Beacon where we a junior partners, the county board approved the vendor without seeing the budget, we would never do that, but now they think we should pay for a quarter share of the gap and several alders are interested in doing something, she wants to have the conversation that there is a $62,000 gap they are trying to put is on us, what is the best model to share this. The finance committee will need to address this. O’Keefe says the division did not ask for additional funding. The division request was due before they discovered the problem. The Mayor says we are not partners in the Beacon we never were. Would you outline the process, because you mentioned the county board voted on the vendor without seeing the budget. O’Keefe says that the county RFP process set funds that the county knew would be available from public sources (city, county, united way) $330,000, $100,000 city, $100,000 United Way and $130,000 county. The vendors submitted a budget, the reviewers did not have access to the budget, they assumed there was a $330,000 budget. One of the things that was attractive was that Catholic Charities was going to bring $150,000. Most places around the country there are not public funds. Catholic Charities was chosen based on information given to the reviewers and that was the last role the city played. It wasn’t til July or August that the discrepancy in funds was disclosed, they thought the budget was $480,000 but now its more than $700,000. The County Executive has suggested the difference be split. The mayor says that Jim is being too nice, the mayor was told a decision was made that the city would pay the funds. The mayor says that if we had that kind of money, what would be spend it on? O’Keefe says that a proposal to divide the budget 4 ways equally is a departure from the agreement between the funding parties. It is also important to understand that the operating budget is only part of what is happening and what is being spent. Catholic Charities is providing few services, but the direct services (housing, employment, health, substance abuse) work will be done by other nonprofits – it would be a mistake to think the city’s only contributions was $110,000.
Rummel says they used the word “partner” in the budget, she personally invested 3 years and is proud it got this far, she was ashamed for a while, and here we are at the 11th hour, she doesn’t want to threaten it, but wants to do what is reasonable. It took her two weeks to get a budget from Catholic Charities, there is a gap of $62,000. The storage at the Social Justice Center won’t be continued there and there is $25,000 there but they won’t have long term storage which is something we wanted. O’Keefe says the $25,000 for storage was rolled into the RFP for homeless services and they received no viable proposals to provide overnight storage and that service will end and the Social Justice Center is no longer interested in hosting it and they will recommend to reallocate the funds.
Rummel asks about the 15 point plan and the Public Health violence proposals, do they work together. O’Keefe says that this is an evolving issue and they took a first step and that is one small portion of violence prevention and there is room for other strategies and they should coordinate and align services. Laura Noel says that Public Health has been involved in the work they have done and they are all just finding out about what this looks like in other cities for it to be a public health initiative and that varies city to city.
DeMarb says this is her first budget, she has been instrumental in 4 positions and she is happy this is finally coming to light and the reason she pushed this four or three budgets ago was because we weren’t planning for resources. She is super happy Bridge/Lakepoint is in the budget cuz it also serves her district. In the past there have been spots held open for kids at Owl Creek and a van was donated to transport them. Although she was grateful but also guilt because the neighborhood has a waiting list for their own kids.
DeMarb asks Coral Manning (??) to come talk about early childhood care. She introduces the staff and says she has been instrumental in the work in the past 10 months and asks her to describe her work. She says that the Early Childhood Care committee wanted to take a more active role, they looked at strategies to close the achievement gap with limited resources. They looked at long and short term strategies and are looking at increasing low income kids in accredited facilities in 5 years. They are requiring facilities that are accredited to serve low income families. They are also increasing grants to facilities already serving low income kids. Enrollment is inconsistent with low income kids and they are looking to stabilize funding for those day cares. DeMarb interrupts to recognize the mayor’s efforts in this area over the years. Manning says they are increasing grants to get another center on line. DeMarb says that some of the work they found was that child care in this area is in crisis. Manning says that the number of slots they need is about 5800 0 to age 5. Right now there are 4200 slots needed and they have 1600 kids in accredited care and looking at the capacity there is only 2% – usually that is not a full time infant slot, not something that would work for a low-income family. DeMarb interrupts again, he says that George says “people will not wake up until and accountant from Epic cannot find child care.” Manning says there is currently a waiting list of 1500 and you need to get on the list a year an a half before you are pregnant. Stabilization grants would need to be increased, they typically get 15 – 18 requests and can give them about 10K. DeMarb says that people who are poor in Dane County are poorer than in other counties. They can’t afford to pay. Manning says that with rent and childcare someone making a living wage a family would only have $100 left. IN other counties making $12.85 per hour would be livable. DeMarb says that violence prevention starts with little kids, but other things rise to the top because they are noisier. Our most vulnerable residents are going wanting. When we talk about early brain development and the trauma of childhood it is not being addressed. These accredited centers – we need to do more to help these families. It’s a passion of hers and she hopes it becomes a passion for them, we need to address early childhood to not continue to feed the beast of poverty.
Kemble asks about the neighborhood centers, the diffuse efforts on violence, what seems to be lacking isn’t a planner or organizations, its basic community organizing. On the northside they have the strongest planning council in the city, they play a impactful role in efforts. The Northside Planning Council was formed out of organizing efforts, there is a firm basis for bottom up planning. Because it has so much credibility they can play a major role. She thinks if they want to relook at neighborhood centers, they need to look at lack of organization on the ground. She is wondering if community development could focus on that. WE can build a lot of neighborhood centers and have a planner but there needs to be cohesion of the people who live there otherwise it will be rough going. Things that are rising to the top are trauma informed care training, De-escalation training and child care.
Kemble asks about the senior center collaboration and how it is going. He says that they are formally merging the 4 center to reduce costs and standardize approaches to services, in doing that they will save money that will provide direct services. It has been a three year effort and nearing the final stages and is paying off the way we and they hoped it might.
Verveer congratulates him on another 5 years and on being fully staffed. Verveer says he likes the information and readable presentation on the community service contracts. He says that the coalitions are working on combined budgets for 2019. The budget includes the money for the continued efforts. He asks about the budget message that listed the CDD projects that he couldn’t fund. He wants to know what might be included, clearly you are not requesting money for the Beacon, could you comment on MUM and Big Step. The mayor says there are asterisks and it says what order items are in. The ones with the single asterisks are the highest level. He says that we are struggling to make Rethke work, it was successful, we took some of the most troublesome homeless individuals with real needs and the bottom line is that we have not figured out how to complete the funding for that project. WE may have a bill of $50,000 or 70,000 because we don’t have the revenue to fund the costs. That is much more important that the money demanded of us for the Beacon. He wants to make a larger commitment in working with people with the larger issues in employment, there is a mismatch of skills and well paying jobs.
Verveer asks about if this was CDD requests? O’Keefe says that outside of the formal recommendations there were other conversations about the Beacon. The MUM item was a small request that they continue to support, it focuses on members of the community that are likely to be involved in criminal activity. The homeless case management for the library may have come from the library. From his perspective that was an arrangement that was made in lieu of the resource center and it was understood that would go away when the center opened. They don’t want competing venues and confusion of where to get services. Verveer says that was consistent. The position at the Senior Center was form the committee but the director says it is not needed now. Those are the items he recognizes but they were not part of the department request.
Verveer asks about the services at the Beacon, how much would you estimate they city is funding through the division? Is it fair to say that beyond the $110,000 that many of the services are funded in part by the city. O’Keefe says many or most of the agencies would be operating in some way shape or form with city funding. He says the idea is to make that the venue for any and all services directed at persons without housing, so people have easy access to those resources and to ensure easy collaboration. He thinks they will see agencies the city, county and united way supports will spend their time there or use it for outreach.
Verveer asks about Rethke and the concerns about getting a bill for $70,000, what is the operating funding agreement at Rethke. O’Keefe says that they get money from rent, most are subsidized through Section 8 or VASH vouchers, they get steady income that is sufficient to support the operations, but not the services for the tenants, which are critical. As they discussed this project, they use medicaid and the county CCS program and they hoped and believed that would cover the services at Rethke and indeed it is an important source of funding but it not the complete answer so they are looking in other places for support. It is very important that property is successful, we made commitments to neighbors, residents and the community. He says that they should support them and push them to get funding from else where. They did participate in the funding process this summer (BK sez . . . the Beacon didn’t!! ahem) O’Keefe says that they will likely get additional resources. O’Keefe says it would be fair to say that we don’t have the resources in the RFP to fund the full request but we are going to offer some support. O’Keefe says they can’t fund both requests and have other needs.
McKinney says that she shares the frustration about the lack of coordination of services on the southwest side and they do need strong community organizing and organizations. She says they are not done with this conversation, she wants the mayor to weigh in, we need to sit down and talk about planning for the southwest side as a whole. The success is the Northside Neighborhood Planning Council looked at the entire northside and we need to get out of our silos. She says it more than just about the buildings. Her challenge is to look at the social, emotional side of the southwest side, including public safety. They are not done with this conversation.
Phair mumbled . . . he says the Byrne grant talks about organizing, which we didn’t think we would get, he says that htey need to form a lasting institution – they organized the southwest side before. He wants to make a point on the Beacon, we have been treated not fairly by our partners and we need to continue to argue for paying our share, but, if we can’t figure this out, we all look like idiots. No one will care who was supposed to pay what. He will not allow that to happen, yes we need to stand firm and try to work it out but at some point we will have to swallow our pride.
GENERAL FUND REVENUES
Page 11 summarizes it. Building permists are up 11% and fines and forfeitures are up 1.5%, those are corrections.
NO questions.
DIRECT APPROPRIATIONS
Page 17, 18 & 19 – I missed most of this because of lack of use of the microphone and people leaving and talking in the room. There are now 10 people left in the room. Me, the mayor, Anne Monks deputy mayor, Dave Schmiedicke and Laura from Finance and Rummel, Verveer, McKinney, Eskrich and Wood. Oh, and me!!!
Verveer asked a question about revenue delays . . .
The mayor is back in the chair . . .
FINANCE
Their budget is $3.8M, they are going down one position. He reads the slides.
Verveer asks about the $50,000 consultant for insurance programs. Schmiedicke says that its no where right now, they are looking forward to a new HR director before they move forward.
ADJOURN
They refer the budget to Oct 17 for a public hearing.
Tonight the alders I didn’t see were Palm, Cheeks, King (in Aruba?), Martin
It’s 11:00 . . . the meeting started at 4:30, no formal breaks.
Good night.
