Last night’s council meeting was alot of fixing things that we shouldn’t have to do on the floor. Here’s what we did.
#1 – Honored our hard working snow removal staff after the long, long winter of way too much snow. This was fixed, we had a new version honoring ALL the staff.
#7 & 12 – Fix – We assigned people as 1st, 2nd etc alternates in the Zoning Committee on the consent agenda.
#17 – Fix – Allowing mayor and city clerk to sign documents for us to accept a grant for the Committee on Clean Elections
#19 – Fix – New fiscal note
#21 & 28 – Fix – the title should have been Economic Revitalization Specialist not the Neighborhood Economic Revitalization Specialist. I voted against it. We essentially have a person who does Community Development and staffs the Community Development Authority who has a name change cuz this position is in the Economic Development Unit instead of the Community Development Unit. And, the position probably belongs in the Community Development Unit. But hey, why let logic get in our way.
#31 – Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh. In this resolution we decided to amend the budget of the CDA. I had to ask, how do we amend something that doesn’t exist? I was told that with that “amendment” we were creating it. So, we now have a CDA budget with one item in it, this one. While it took hours and hours of meetings with many staff to figure out how to get a CDA budget, apparently, in one likely mis-statement, we suddenly have what I wanted all along. A CDA budget. I think its kind of a silly mistake, and I can’t wait to see how it all works out.
#45 – Fix – It took us so long to pass this that we had to change the report date from March 1 to May 15, but both dates were in the resolution, so we removed the March 1 date.
#47 – The CDA Work Plan probably took the most time. We really need to decide what the CDA is and what our relationship to it is. Good questions were asked about how we set priorities when we do redevelopment districts and they admitted they needed to think about things a little different. They missed their deadline to get the workplan to us, twice. The workplan was due initially in May or June according to the contract that we have with them. In the budget we placed a second deadline of Feb 1 which they technically missed as well. As a result, they should have been billed for all the City staff time they used in 2007 and all of 2008. But . . . since they kinda met it, I introduced an amendment to remove the billing requirement. However, we referred the whole matter so that we could consider their, heh, budget and the workplan together. The budget is due April 1. It will be interesting to see if they meet this deadline.
#48 & #49 – Landmarking the Schubert Building (Badger Office Supplies) & Doris House. An odd moment occurred when Ald. Zach Brandon asked the supporters why they are always landmarking things when development threatens them. The answer is the City doesn’t put any money into it and its all done by volunteers. Ald. Julia Kerr sort of thought it was odd he was kind of rude to the citizen volunteers. To which Ald. Brandon responded by having a tiny little fit. He insisted that it was “just a question” and we got a little speech about how the day we couldn’t ask questions of people who appear before us was the day . . . oh, I don’t know what he was saying. I think he doth protest too much.
#58 – Fix – Despite the fact that the TIF 10% Set Aside Committees elimination has been introduced since 2005, and passed the TIF Subcommittee by a 4-3 vote with Ald Rummel, myself and Tom Hirsch realizing it wasn’t ready and Chris Laurent, Dave Gawenda and Ald. Zach Brandon (who missed the entire discussion and abstained until he realized it was a tied vote if he voted) voting with the Chair Tripp Widder . . . it just wasn’t soup yet. In fact, it doesn’t even make sense. I pointed it out, the Mayor said he agreed and we referred it back to his office to be fixed.
#61 – Should we buy a filter for Well 29? Yes. And thanks to Larry Nelson for the humor.
#62 – Fix – We didn’t re-refer the hotel/motel ordinance! We apparently finally came up with a winner. But I want to get paid for work I do for the City Attorney’s office. We fixed a bunch of “registration record” issues, removed the requirement that people need a current address on their identification form so that homeless people can rent motel rooms and added language that makes it clear that people renting hotel rooms as the only place where they live have to go through the eviction process and can’t just get thrown out without following the eviction laws as required by state law and added some other language that I gave to the clerk. And then it passed unanimously.
#64 – Fix – Kicking people off committees for not doing their statement of interest forms. We did get an updated list at 6:00. We ended up kicking 8 people off city committees for not filing their paperwork. At least one of them intends to stay on the committee and will have to reapply and get reappointed. I half-heartedly tried to refer just that person to the next meeting so that we didn’t have to jump through alot of unnecessary hoops, but Ald. Brandon was concerned that “the rules are the rules”. And he’s right. We ended up having to have a roll call vote on it. I don’t know who called it, but the referral failed and he was kicked of the CDBG. Aye (to refer): Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Sanborn, Verveer, Webber, Cnare, Gruber, Konkel. No (kick him off and make him re-apply): Palm, Pham-Remmele, Schumacher, Skidmore, Solomon, Brandon, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Compton, Judge
With that, we adjourned, I think at 8:45. Some of us went to the Magnus. Alders Bruer, Schumacher, Clausius, Clear, Konkel, Rummel, Rhodes-Conway and City Attorney Michael May sat at one table. We did not have the pleasure of the companty of Ald. Verveer and Judge who blew us off and sat with their posse at another table. 😉
