Well, despite all the referrals, we still managed to meet until 11:00 last night. September 4th will likely be a long meeting. Here’s what happened! Or, what didn’t happen.
1 – Honoring of Jeff Erlanger.
Jeff’s parents attended the meeting and were warmly received. Jeff’s father spoke a few very touching words and Ald. Mike Verveer thanked them for sharing Jeff with us over the years.
2 – We honored Dorothy Conniff from the Office of Community Services Office for her 30 years of service to the City.
She, too, spoke to us about her experiences with the City, the importance of quality early education in children’s lives and she thanked the low paid hard working non-profit workers that give so much to the City. She also reminded us that the many services that are provided through the Office of Community Services are part of what makes Madison so special and help to address the changing needs of the City. Particularly, she reminded us that childcare and early education is “a classic example of market failure” because “people who need it can’t afford it”. She cautioned us to keep these programs a priority and not let them slip into non-priority status because there is no advocate for them. Her speech was classy she expressed faith in her staff and thanked the people she worked with. Meanwhile, it seemed that she was the one that really deserved so much of the thanks.
24 and 26 – We moved on to the development in Cherokee Marsha and Hill Farms. Both passed after some public input.
We then went to the consent agenda and passed the remainder of the agenda with the following exceptions:
46 – Halloween fencing etc.
This item was disposed of quickly. Eli Judge separated it to abstain, I voted no and we moved on.
102 – Resolving the legal status of the Water Utility and increasing the number of members of the Board.
I think there were three issues here and a procedural concern. First, we were increasing the size of the Water Utility Board by 2 members. This was done to increase the skill sets of the members of the Board and to enhance communication between the members of the Board. With a small board, no two members can talk to each other about issues before them because they are negative quorum and they would need to publicly notice their interaction.
The second issue was if an alder would be one of the additional members. Apparently, this offended some people on the Council (Compton & Brandon) who thought this was an attack on Lauren Cnare. However, I explained that this was much like we did with the EOC in the mid-90s, when they were dealing with controversial issues we added an alder to add some experience, a different perspective and to increase communication among the alders. This, too, seemed to offend some. If you ask me, adding an alder would show the public that we are taking the issues with the Water Utility a priority and that they are of great interest to us. My guess is, no alder will step forward because no one wants to take the heat and its alot of work.
The third issue was that the ordinance cleared up the legal responsibilities between the Council, the Mayor and the Water Utility Board. We may have been working under some rules that weren’t quite set up correctly. Hopefully with these clarifications, we won’t continue to be in limbo about who has which authority.
Finally, this item was “taken out of order”. The Water Utility Board had met and discussed this item, but didn’t vote on it, instead they asked for additional information. Alder Zach Brandon called Alder Rhodes-Conway, who made the motion to take this item up a hypocrite because the same people who care about process were now not concerned about process. I explained that I was concerned about legal liability and that kind of took precedence. You know, protecting the taxpayer from paying for lawsuits.
Anyways, the Mayor expressed his concern that this be resolved quickly. Several members of the Water Utility Board were in the room and confirmed that the Board would likely support the item as presented and that delaying would likely result in the same outcome. I believe it passed unanimously.
103 – Water Utility contract for Video Surveillance equipment
Here we go again. Another contract where there was no Request for Proposals as is likely required by our City policies. No surprises there. Lame excuses were given for why they thought they could just make up their own process. I finally asked what kind of training people got. I should have known better, the answer was essentially, none. We’ve cut staff and they don’t have time. Luckily City Attorney Michael May said that they have a group of city staff that works on purchasing contracts and that they were planning on talking about this, but it keeps getting pushed back due to other priorities. Hopefully, after these last few debacles, it might move up on their priority list. I believe this was the vote where Brandon, Konkel, Rummel and Judge voted no. (My notes suck.)
184 – Water Utility “do-over” on the EMA contract.
And, again. We kept it pretty short. There was written materials from the Water Utility, a few questions and we mostly refrained from repeating our arguments from the last meeting. The vote ended up with the Konkel-Brandon or Brandon-Konkel “team” voting “no” and therefore losing. A few joined our team! Brandon, Judge, Konkel, Rummel, Rhodes-Conway voting no. Pham-Remmele abstaining. Kerr and Bruer absent. That leaves Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clausius, Clear, Cnare, Gruber, Palm, Compton, Sanborn, Skidmore, Schumacher. I continue to think that we had other options, but no tools to explore them as a council and that we are throwing our money away and should be spending it to resolve the situation.
108 & 111 – Were both CDBG contracts with non-profits for services that were referred because we didn’t have the answers to several questions that alders were interested in getting answered prior to voting.
125 – Regional Transportation Authority
This was referred after some suggestions from the Council about having a publicly noticed meeting where we could get a presentation and ask some questions about the proposal before this comes up for a vote. The Mayor agreed to put something together and get staff as well as himself and Kathleen Falk or someone from her office to be available for questions.
129 – The “Zatch Act”
Referred without explanation. Many of us are waiting for the new version which was promised. And it caused at least on Elections Committee members to snicker about how the-most-important-thing-ever-that-had-to-be-the-first-thing-that-got-done-with-the-new-council and was so important that the committee couldn’t have more time to work on it . . . is now . . . not . . . so . . . important . . . or . . . in . . . much . . . of . . . a . . . rush . . . .
130 – Allied Drive
There was alot of procedural mumbo jumbo and guessing at what this 4th version of the resolution really did. We either
a) made a commitment to Allied Drive residents to follow the recommendations of the Allied Drive Task Force, or
b) we decided we’d make a “good faith effort” to follow their recommendations, or
c) we were skeptical and said that we weren’t really making any decisions without more information, or
d) really didn’t take any action because the real resolution that makes real decisions is yet to come.
I don’t think we’re going to agree on what the effect of passing the resolution had.
We do know that some people wanted to “accept” the report. Meaning they didn’t want to be held to it. Others wanted to “adopt” the report, giving more weight to our action. The vote to do the weaker version was as follows:
Yes – Compton, Pham-Remmele, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Brandon, Clausius, Cnare
No – Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clear, Rhodes-Conway, Gruber, Judge, Konkel, Palm and Rummel
Absent – Bruer, Kerr
One thing is certain, the last clause where we asked the Mayor to appoint one person to be the point person isn’t going to happen. If you want to discuss Allied Drive, the Mayor told us that you should talk to Enis Ragland or Joel Plant in is office and Mark Olinger says you should talk to him, but you never know if you are talking to the person who heads the CDA and wants to develop the land or the guy that supervises the many City staff that work on this issue and are completely all over the board and don’t speak with one voice.
More to come on this one!
131 – Impeachment
Was referred after an impassioned plea by Tom Link about how this is indeed an issue that the Council should be taking up.
And then we retreated to the Great Dane. Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Gruber, Webber, Konkel, Clear were joined by Michael Jacob in one room. Verveer and Judge had dinner with a few other citizens in the other quieter room. I’m not sure what happened to the rest, but if they were smart, they went home and went to sleep. I didn’t, and so there are no links to the agenda items this morning – ran out of time. You can find the agenda here and look up the links yourself. Sorry.
