Do-over and refer. That was the theme of the evening.
CPR
Pre-council meeting we learned the new CPR. You know, the one where you no longer have to to mouth-to-mouth. Instead, you just get someone to call 911 and start chest compressions if someone is non-responsive. 100/minute, middle of the chest. I hear there is a picture of me practicing floating around.
HONORING RESOLUTIONS
We started out the evening recognizing two different sets of boy scouts who were there to observe “important” city meetings to earn their merit badges. We then recognized our Public Health workers, Terry Jensen who was retiring after 33 years with the City and proclaimed the week of May 5th Public Service Awareness Week.
Next we recognized Mike Verveer for his year as Council President and did the annual thank you’s to staff, Tammy Peters the Clerk and others. We also recognized Alder Bruer for his year at Pro Tem and he had a nice. short. speech. Really, I’m not kidding!
NEW COUNCIL PRESIDENT AND PRO TEM
We quickly did the consent agenda. Dispensed with the public hearings and then went into the Committee of the Whole to vote for Council President and Pro Tem. Alder Bruer was elected Council President by unanimous consent. Alder Palm nominated Alder Clear for Pro Tem and Alder Clear nominated Alder Palm for Pro Tem. We had to vote 4 times to elect Alder Clear as our Pro Tem. The votes were 10 – 8, 10 – 9, 10 – 9 and 12 – 8. After the first vote, a somewhat punchy Alder Verveer called our City Attorney Katherine Harris . . . for which I’m sure he owes the City Attorney an apology. After the first three votes, some of us wanted to table this and go on to the items that the public were there to speak to, and actually had a roll call vote (not called by me!) to table. Those voting to table and get on to the business the public was present for were: Sanborn, Verveer, Webber, Cnare, Compton, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway. Voting no were: Schumacher, Skidmore, Solomon, Brandon, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Palm and Pham-Remmele. Rummel was out of the room. So the vote was 10 – 9 and we needed 11 votes. After all that, we finally got the votes. I do have to say, the “council leadership” has become somewhat of a joke as one of the main functions is meeting with the Mayor and sharing information with Council members. However, even though the “council leadership” meetings appear on the mayor’s schedule, they are cancelled about 50% of the time. I suspect this trend will continue, but we’ll see. The leadership, drunk with power, says it will change . . . (This is just a test to see if Alder Bruer really does read my blog!)
REFER
The reports on women, race and disability and committee appointments and management hires were both referred since we didn’t have the final reports.
ATTEMPTED REFERRAL
The Minority Affairs Committee and Women’s Issues Committee ordinance was not ready to be passed as there is still quite a bit of discussion about how these committees will operate, and I suspect we will change it at some point, but meanwhile, we passed it so the committees could be formally recognized.
SISTER CITIES
The report on sister city grants for this year was passed, but not without comments from Alder Compton worthy of You-Tube. I wasn’t quite paying attention but there was a tea bag, a truffle, cheese and a cow involved as well as the made in China pins commentary.
LIBRARY MONEY
We debated whether or not to refer spending $8,000 for the Sequoya Library back to the Library Board. Alder Brandon chastised us for spending money outside of the budget cycle. And we had a roll call vote (not called by me!) Voting aye to refer: Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Brandon, Clausius, Cnare, Compton, Kerr, Pham-Remmele. Voting no: Rummel, Verveer, Webber, Clear, Gruber, Judge, Konkel, Palm, Rhodes-Conway. Excused was Solomon. So the vote was 10 – 9 and that motion failed. We then voted and the motion “passed” – at least temporarily, kind of.
HORSES
We spent more time than we should have on a resolution about cops and horses. Several people wanted to be added as sponsors. Alder Cnare started it all by asking to be added to support “full employment of horses”. So that Mayor just couldn’t resist . . . asking any of us opposed to vote “nay” . . . and then urged us to “stop horsing around”. He just loves those opportunities and it comes so naturally to him!
POOL
Next we debated spending $10,000 for a water purification system for the pool. We were chastised again by Alder Brandon for spending this money. He was particularly annoyed with the “rhetoric” of “doing it for the children” and in the name of “public safety”. Judy Compton revealed that she was a “health professional” and argued that we needed to do this for public safety. Apparently we aren’t immunizing our children any more and that was one reason we needed to do this. Alder Cnare made some more rational arguments. One of Alder Brandon’s reasons for not spending the money was that it was not required by the state legislature. Alder Cnare pointed out that we shouldn’t wait for the do-nothing legislature to determine when something was or was not necessary. She reminded us that there were many important things that did not pass the legislature this year. Our IT Director, who is also filling in as our Parks Superintendent informed us that one cryptosporidium outbreak in the pool would make it even harder for the pool to break even. He informed us that it would take 10 days for chorline to kill the effects of one “crypto-dump” in the pool. Alder Brandon poo-pooed (sorry) the “diaper incidents” as us worrying needlessly over public health issues. The discussion ended with Alder Sanborn suggesting that if we were so sensitive to the health concerns raised in this discussion we should be more concerned with kids drowning and we should just fill the pool with concrete and shut it down. The motion failed as it needed 15 votes to pass to amend the budget. Voting aye were: Schumacher, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Cnare, Compton, Gruber, Judget, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway. Voting no were: Rummel, Sanborn, Skidmore, Brandon, Palm and Pham-Remmele. Absent was Solomon.
LANDMARKING
Despite urging to refer at least one of the nominations until we found out what ULI is proposing for the block, we ended up landmarking several building on the square. (7 – 9 N Pinckney, 21 – 25 N Pinckney & 27 N Pinckney). Sorry I didn’t take better notes, but there was lots of great testimony from the public and many, many public there in support as well as 28 registrations in support. Two motions to refer back to the Landmarks Commission were defeated. While the discussion wandered a bit and we’ll have to re-visit some of the issues discussed about how much of a building is historic – the council decided to landmark the buildings in their entirety.
LIBRARY DO-OVER
We then went back to the library discussion because it was a 15 vote item because it amended the budget and we didn’t take a roll-call vote on it. We then ended up referring this item back to the Library Board.
PARKS/POOL DO-OVER
They reconsidered pool issue and did some shuffle of money in the parks department. They wanted to take money out of the parks facilities improvements fund. That failed 10 – 8. Voting Aye to take the money from other projects were: Rummel, Schumacher, Skidmore, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Compton, Gruber, Palm and Pham-Remmele. Voting no were Sanborn, Verveer, Webber, Cnare, Judge, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway and Brandon. Excused were Solomon and Kerr.
REFER
We referred placing on file the Sensitive Crimes Interview Procedures because there was no one from the police department there to discuss this issue with us.
REFER
We referred the CDA Workplan because it was supposed to come back when we had the CDA budget.
PARTY
Everyone attended the rookie graduation except three alders – Sanborn, Kerr (childcare issues) and Skidmore. Oh, and the Mayor blew us off too. We were joined by Janet Piraino, Michael May and Carole Schaeffer. By the end of the evening, we believe we may have determined what our skit for our holiday party is . . .
Note: I hope this post makes sense, had to run off to a meeting without time to proofread it!
