I think that what they decided was that the process had gone pretty far and they would make the decision later when they do the 2014 budget, when it is too late because the items had all been ordered for the renovations. Tho, I do think that there is interest in only doing the things most necessary. WARNING: There are some really obnoxious statements coming up. “Wow factor” indeed.
Here’s the audio.
This item is out of order, this didn’t get taken up until well after 10pm. I have lots more to blog, but there was a reason I wanted to get this done, see the next blog I post.
They took up items 33 – 39 all together. They were all the items for Monona Terrace renovations – millions of dollars.
PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Ed Kuharski – Ed says that he has separate objections to items and registered to speak on two items and doesn’t know why they combined them. He toured the building today. He says that the carpet condition is fine, it is sustainable to keep it for another 10 years, the objection is to the carpet itself. He says it is much better than the Hilton carpet after his third martini. We are in austerity and we have to have priorities, we consistently have a nice meal for the people t the end of the table and by the time the people at the other end get it there is nothing left. He is asking for .1% for the homeless. ADA requires 20% of costs be spent on ADA issues, .1% is modest. This is about good marketing and image. Having 68 people sleeping on the square last Thursday night is not saying good things about our city, it is a glaring problem, it doesn’t fit who we are, lets balance our priorities a little bit, he is just asking for .1%.
Allen Barkoff – Against spending 1.2M for improvement, particularly for the cosmetic changes that are not functional. A portion of that money should go for people who are homeless and for affordable housing. He hasn’t seen any improvements in the recent past, no bus passes, no bathrooms at night, no medical recovery facilities, no storage facilitates and people need to carry around their homes on the back. Mayor was right, that when subsidized housing is provided people won’t be homeless, but you still need money. There are 400 – 700 without shelter in Madison, you will see many around the square, sleeping n doorways, why? They save their days for the winter so they don’t have to sleep outside in the winter. Overnight there are no bathroom facilities and they urinate and defecate outside and if caught by police they get a ticket and that seems cruel. A few months ago he asked for port potties, I was told there was no money in the budget. He called Bucky’s and it costs $100 a month. When he mentioned to Mayor’s aide that he could get contributions, which he could have, then it became a health and safety issue, however portapotties are there for art fair, and other occasions, but then they are taken down. He was also told there is one protapotty vandalized several years ago, you don’t punish a whole group of people for one issue of vandalism. The city spends huge amounts of money all over the city, aand it is shameful to spend 1.2M to upgrade bathrooms for Monona terrace without providing bathroom facilities for those without homes who are trying to carry out life sustaining facilities – don’t vote for this unless there are porta potties put on the square.
Marty Dapin – left
Sue Pastor – She comes to this from recent advocacy around issues around homelessness. Most recently with Stone Soup, we have austerity and people are suffering and to know that we are spending 1.2M for cosmetic issues is difficult, she understands that this is room tax money, but this communicates a profound message, At Board of Public Works when this was presented, it was presented as cosmetic. To rip out walls to studs for style seems wrong, put in water saving toilets, fix the chips in the grout, do the maintenance, but ask for the cost difference between cosmetics changes and other changes. You might decide we need the luxury, that this is so “completely necessary” but you should know how much is necessary and how much is cosmetic. Let us see that. I have no problem with staff strong advocacy, I would expect that, but the shifting representation of this is concerning – now there are leaks and flooding, you have a separate budget item for that.
Ronnie Barbett – He wanted to mention something about all the projects he doesn’t really understand, on Homeless Issues Committee, they are trying to get a 365 24/7 hour men’s shelter, they have all kinds of proposals, one where permanent day resource center is with a night time shelter, I understand repairs are needed, beautify the building, he can’t imagine all the improvements that need to be done, he is still new at this, we have money to do this and that, but you need to remember people first. The buildings, sidewalks bike paths if need to be done, you will do it.
Another speaker had left. Two more registrants registered against. One wrote “Vote no for fancy potties and yes for porta potties”
Ed wants to speak on both of the issues. They allow that by unanimous consent. He says he didn’t realize that when they combing the items they were consolidating his time as well as business items. He took a tour of the building today, he found 2 instances of missing grout and 3 broken tiles that were cited as reasons to tear out the walls. The fixtures should be changed, that should have been there during the construction, esp if it is a LEED certified building. You can change the fixtures without changing the cosmetics. He thought we built a building that was so timeless that we built it 50 years late and it would stay relevant and superior forever, the fact we need style changes would not be what Wright would want. We could improve the functions, the towel dispensers could be changed and put them as part of the lavatory counter, that is done on a regular basis, we could do it more modestly, we could do better lighting (technology keeps improving) we can have both. We can have a better Monona Terrace and leave some crumbs for those who have nothing right now. It costs us $40K, HUD says, for not serving a homeless person, that is a lot of money to cash in to go to improvements.
QUESTIONS OF STAFF
Mark Clear asks David Schmiedicke the City Finance Director to tell us about the funding source for the project and how it can be and not be used. He says there is confusion about that. Schmiedicke says typically it is from the room tax or from revenues generated by the Monona Terrace, the renovation project has been in the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP – 5 year capital budget) for a number of years and the costs are being refined, the room tax itself has o be used 70% for tourism related activities and convention centers are included in that definition, that is generally how the funding is identified and the room tax is collected by hotels and other transient occupancy services, a 9% tax.
Ledell Zellers asks to hear about what has been approved related to the projects, what has been spent and what is left to be approved. Particularly the restrooms. The second question is related to the room tax and tourism, could that include the Overture Center, and we have spent both room tax and General Obligation dollars towards the Overture, so presumably some of the room tax dollars could go to the Overture Center. Schmiedicke says that one of the allocations in the room tax fund is to transfer to general fund to pay for the Overture Center, that is a reasonable use for the room tax fund moneys. He says that right now we are allocating 80% of room tax to tourism related activities, that would be Monona Terrace, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, adding the Overture subsidy would increase that number. In terms of the CIP, there have been a number of projects programmed in the budgets, there has been an understanding that there would be a renovation, funding was approved in a resolution recently that allocated reserves from surplus room tax revenues in 2012, $600,000 or $650,000 was additional funding for renovations, for the 2014 cap budget, there is $2.25M for the bulk of the renovation projects and there it more in 2015. Greg McManners, the Monona Terrace Director says “Dave’s right”, we started planning for this in 2004 when they finished the last renovations, they took 6 weeks out of the schedule for events, they lose $250K in revenues because this renovation was moving forward. The capital budget was for maintenance projects, typically about the carpet that is planned to last for 10 years, we try to find customer driven ideas that we do – the carpet has been purchased, a portion of the $600K is being used for the bathrooms, items are being ordered, we don’t know what the restrooms will cost, the Board of Public Works is going to bid these out, there is a dollar amount set so there is leeway, it is a sizeable number, but they have 20 restrooms if they include the 4 on the rooftop, the restrooms are in need of a major upgrade, they don’t meet customer expectations cosmetically or the environmental goals, this will save water with the new fixtures. He was talking about how proud they are of the library and they want them to be as proud of this. He says they can’t buy people to go there, they have to want to come.
Zellers asks if they can separate the fixtures for the rest. McManners says once they bid it out they will be able to tell the difference. LED lighting will improve by 50%, we don’t have an accurate number now.
Zellers asks if this comes back to the council. McManners says “No, it’s approved”. However, that answer changes later.
Lisa Subeck asks – how many toilets there are, McManners doesn’t know.
Subeck asks how many people are using the restrooms, how many people served on a typical day in the center. McManners says that there are 150,000 per year, that doesn’t count those who just come through and use the restroom facility.
Subeck asks how they got feedback about the cosmetics being an issue – will these changes help us bring in more people. McManners says that in their industry it is all about the customer experience, we have a lot to offer, because of where it was built, but our goal is to make sure it stays in a first class in the manner in which it was designed, people need to be “wowed” to come back. Restrooms are less cosmetic, people don’t come there because of the restrooms.
Subeck asks if the restrooms are keeping people away. He says the finishes are critical to the overall experience the customer will have.
Denise DeMarb asks how much is maintenance or cosmetic, we don’t want Monona Terrace to go by the way of the Municipal Building or the Library, but how much is a facelift, it seems pretty nice to me, how much more revenue would this generate given a “wow experience” I’ve never gone in there and said its cool It’s pretty nice. McManners says “pretty nice is not our standard”, they put in some of the cheapest finishes at the time, because of the cap, they were done the least epnsive because they didn’t want to except 65.2M. The renovations were a result of that cap, tearing down permanent walls in the conference rooms, replacing windows, replacing chairs, we can make something good better, to make a better overall appeal to the facility.
DeMarb asks how much more revenue will you get? McManners says with the hotel too . . . there will there be a payback. She says lump them all together, she thinks it is important to address this, we have heard about other needs, what kind of revenues are we expecting or not expecting because we are spending money here, how much is above and beyond to make it superior? McManners says it is hard to assess, he worries about what we will lose, there is competition in our own backyard that has superior facilities, are we moving forward or backwards? We are on the offensive, we don’t want that to occur because we haven’t addressed something, I can’t say we will get money, but it will stop the bleeding of money from there.
Marsha Rummel asks about the previous budget expenditures, is it $1.2 plus $600K, he says that is a combination of money in the budget, %600K in late May was approved to be used towards renovations without it being driven by a particular project and then there is a portion we need approval on in the capital budget. We have $900K we could apply it all to the restrooms if we want to, but we want to use it for supplies and other things they need.
Rummel asks about the photo of the elevator, what is projection for that to be kept up. He says that he doesn’t have the service records, but they have 10,000 trips a month in the elevator and they have break downs. They have a significant amount of calls in the summer, as soon as they break down we have a call out and get it repaired that same day. They do need to follow up on how many service calls they have had, to find out when they need to replace it to see have less calls.
Rummel says the bid will give us the details, so it feels like we are in a catch 22, so if we approve this we won’t have the answer – can you help us through that dilemma. McManners says we have a board and a finance committee, Verveer is on the finance committee, he has seen it and supports it. We believe that through this process, the board supports the need and they are recommending we move forward on the project. There are a lot of projects that we do that the council doesn’t know about, things we need to address, some are cosmetic and some are funditonal. But they are there to keep this a first class facility, but the council needs to decide if they have confidence in that board.
Anita Weier asks about the bathrooms, I can see you need it if they are flooding the desks of the employees and low flow toilets, is it true you need to fix the walls to make them more frank Lloyd right? McManners says that is an exaggeration, they want to remove tile on walls and floors and add LED lighting, and sustain the facility, but we are not spending a ton of money on those cosmetic improvements, but they want them to be consistent and up to the standard of the rest of the facility.
Subeck says if all things were equal, this is $60K per restroom, do you know if this is comparable, generally? McManners says that it’s a good question, $60K doesn’t go very far, he is hoping economy of scale creates a competitive situation, where we can drive the prices down further, until you go out to bid you can’t figure out what the prices are, without approval by the council, but a portion has to be approved in the capital budget.
Subeck asks Schmiedicke about the fact that they approve bids that come in, do we typically approve a cost without seeing the bid. He says that there is a timing issue, they will enter into a contract that is contingent on adoption of 2014 budget because that is where most of budget will occur. Usually with street reconstruction, they approve a contract, then approve to bid them out, not sure comes it comes back to council again. Rob Phillips from engineering says not if in the adopted budget. He says its unique because of the timing. It has to be contingent on approving the rest of the money.
Subeck says we don’t know what this will cost. But I guess they go over budget all the time, will the bids be in by the time we approve the budget. McManners says that is the intent, to get the bids out early, the intent is to get the contracts bid out so we know what the numbers are. If we delay, we may not have that info when the time comes.
Zellers says you could come back with the break down on maintenance, water saving toilets and LED lights and we could have the option then. We could have an option to go with the maintenance then, is that correct. That is his opinion, they have not had their 2014 budget approved, that would be part of that approval and you would have a break down based on what I know you are looking for.
Mike Verveer asks Rob Phillips about what the next steps would be – on tonight’s agendas we have a bunch of public works contracts, would each of these items come back to us after the bid, to award the contracts. Rob Phillips says the plans and specs would be approved by BPW and Council, that is what you are doing now, the next step is solicitation of bids over the next month or so and then resolution at BPW and Council awarding the public works contracts. That is slightly complicated by the timing of the budget, we would wait for the budget to be adopted and the following council meeting the projects would be awarded, or awarded in advance contingent on the budget. McManners says all contracts have that language in that. It’s already in the documents.
MOTION
David Ahrens has a motion He wants to separate 33 and 34 and refer to Monona Terrace Board for further consideration. There must have been a second I didn’t hear. He says he is on BPW and it came before the board and the agenda item we have doesn’t represent the vote there, he dissented, he voted no and he did it because of the representation of 33. The facilities manager and an engineer from public works were at the meeting – the reason they gave to remove the carpeting is that it is time to remove it, not that it is needed to be removed. When we have other projects there is an element of necessity, not 10 years and the time is up. We all go there and no one has ever said the carpets look shaggy and its time to go, they may have other criticisms. Second when came to Board of Public Works it was 360,000 for installation of the carpet and he asked what about buying the carpet, they told him its already bought, that was never an item before us. On 34, the restrooms, at that time at Board of Public Works the emphasis was on the design features, tile work making it “Wrightian” and design updates. Certainly a flooding toilet, LED lights and the low flow toilets are needed, but tile work is expensive and very different from the issue of making toilets and lights sustainable. Finally on room tax, we are sometimes led to believe if the money is not spent on the Monona Terrace that it will go away or not be used, we are way above what we need to spend on room tax related facilities and the notion this is a room tax, these are fungible funds and some of it goes to general revenue, but not as much as could if we didn’t need to replace carpeting that doesn’t need to be replaced. What needs to be looked at and improved, if a toilet is overflowing that needs to be fixed, but we need to scrutinize this more and have further consideration, this might not get us to ‘wow’, but listening to conversation at 5:00 we talked about ambulance and clean streets, we need to be scrupulous about that, the money can go into the general fund.
Verveer asks McManners on the amendment, explain the carpet purchase and how it was made. McManners says there was an RFP, there are specific requirements, we went through Monet and made the purchase through them (finance department – purchasin), it went through city systems it wasn’t a public works project, it was competitively bid and we issued the contract, that was in the 2013 budget.
Verveer asks about the lead time. McManners says it had to be ordered by the middle of May to get it mid-November.
Verveer asks about carpets being manufactured in United States, do they have to order it from over seas. Yes, that is correct, they don’t make the carpeting in the United States.
Verveer asks what effect the motion would have on delay of the project. McManners says they couldn’t get the info they need by the capital budget time. The board has looked at the projects, they have approved the 2014 budget and I recognize the concern about costs, but the best route to go is – is to bid it out so they don’t lose control, they should find out what the costs will be. The board will look at it and understand it, they want to improve customer experience, he doesn’t think they would not decide they are not interested in pursuing this.
Verveer asks about the timing issue, what is the amount of time needed after the plans and specs are approved before the bids are due back and reviewed by Affirmative Action and that process. Verveer asks if vote is delayed till Sept would the process run past or run into the budget process. Rob Phillips says that bids will be received and opened on Aug 9, go to Board of Public Works on Aug 21 and Council on Sept 3. If referral, and not lead time needed, it looks like you could possibly do that, if you could get to Board of Public Works in Oct, then you would be well in advance of the November date, you could sustain a referral, but not sure if missing anything, wants McManners to confirm that. Verveer says Mayor and Board of Estimates wouldn’t have the info during their process, but it would make it by the Common Council date.
DISCUSSION
Verveer appreciates the discussion tonight and at Board of Public Works and the motion to refer. We have talked many times at the monthly board meetings about how surprised we are that we receive so little scrutiny and we would like to think it is because we do such a good job. This is a new experience for him, he can’t recall this much discussion about the Monona Terrace budge ever. He says that they have discussed this for a year about the renovations and the planning, they were involved and looked at the carpeting and other details, but in terms of the restrooms this has been discussed at many board meetings this calendar year and this 5 year renovation project has been in the budget for years. Have we asked the detail questions, they weren’t all asked and answered, but he is nervous about the delay tonight. Would like to oppose referral and then they will discuss at the next meeting – I missed some, but I don’t think he said something new.
Ahrens says that the best method is not to bid, because we may be getting bids on items we don’t want. We can get this done and bid in a timely fashion, the horses are out of the gate, the carpet has been purchased, I think that is done, but if we can save a half a million dollars that’s worth it, we were just arguing for hours on $200K. If we could save half a million that would be worth it.
Joe Clausius votes against referral, we are going in circles. The Monona Terrace staff know what they are doing, he doesn’t know what referring it back would do. We are just adverting for bid and we can look at it when it comes back. Vote it through or vote it down.
Subeck says referral is tempting because it will buy time to make the decision but she is comfortable going forward with the bids and we will have more info at budget time. We are not spending the money at this point we are just seeing bids, then we can make the final decision, then we will know that we are or are not flushing money down the toilet. (laughter)
DeMarb says her line of questioning fell short of what she wanted to vet, she is supportive of community services and affordable housing and help for the homeless, understands that these program are needed, they need to be paid for and are necessary funding. But Monona Terrace is a revenue generator, people spend money, businesses pay taxes and all that helps pay for the service people spoke to, we need to keep that in mind, when spending money to bring people in and they have a “wow experience” that will cost money, how much will we recoup, that is important and it’s important to go through the exercise, she thinks that work was done just couldn’t pull it from McManners when she was asking him questions.
Lauren Cnare says we just talked about how we take care of our buildings, we can’t take care of our buildings. It’s not like when your dog pees on your carpet and you run to Target to get a new one. We need time, and if we do that we lose a convention, these things need to be done before the fall into disrepair, we keep this on a regular schedule and it is expensive. No one agrees on what the “wow factor” is, let the professionals do their work, do the planned renovation, we can go look at the facility now and later to see what I means to have it in tip top shape, lets vote yes.
Mat Phair asks if Monona Terrace is a wow building, Missed a bunch.
Mike Verveer says we will have this discussion again. We have been planning for it for 5 years, the facility will be shut down and this allows us to have better information. He says the main motivation for Judge Doyle Square is not the fact that we need to replace the parking ramp or need to fill in surface parking ramp – but it is for hotel rooms, to keep the investment growing in Monona Terrace – it is critical to maintain this as a first class facility, that is why we need the room block and why we need to maintain Monona Terrace as a first class facility.
Rummel says that what happens is that every time we have a public works item we have the homeless advocates show up – this is unfair to juxtapose the building with homeless services, we need to invest in our buildings and our people. We have an investment in Monona Terrace, we need a hotel but if we don’t have a facility it won’t matter. She points out that WOW earlier was about Women of Worthington, let’s put that all together
Amendment failed, Motion passes.
Wow.
