Chicken shit. That about sums it up.
Last night’s meeting started late and it was past 7:00 before we were done saying good-bye to Zach and thanking him for the role he played on the council, tho many of agreed that he was irritating from time to time, we all appreciated his efforts. After we said our good-byes, we seated the new Alder Libby Monson.
In our mega-motion we passed everything on the agenda except we referred the TIF policy to the Economic Development Commission and then back to the TIF committee, and we discussed the following few items.
CHICKENS
I’m not sure what happened here. We knew Alder Schumacher was going to make an amendment, which I assumed would have been prepared, but we had to table while they worked it out in the back of the room.
LIGHTBULBS
Lack of information and legal confusion led to another referral of this issue. This time, back to the Attorney’s office for an explanation of the legal issues.
CHILD SAFETY ZONES
This was a pretty vague law we passed adding performance spaces to the child safety zones. I’m still not sure if I know what the ordinance actually means.
CENTRAL LIBRARY
I’m not sure there is a single alder beyond Larry Palm that thinks this is a good idea. While we are asking private developers what they might do for the site, it seems like we don’t have a whole lot of information that we need to even determine is that is a step we want to take. They can’t tell us what it would have cost to renovate the current space or what a scaled down version of the last plan might cost. However, we are moving forward towards a plan to spend $28 million to gain 2,000 square feet over the current space. Seems awfully expensive in my mind for such a little gain. Plus, several alders had concerns that we are building mega-libraries and closing neighborhood libraries. So, we’re moving forward, maybe.
BACK TO CHICKENS
After they got it all worked out in the back of the room, we went back to chickens and dangerous flying chicken shit and samonella. Alder Compton did her best to embarrass us and half the room was laughing so hard during most of her comments that it was hard to pay attention. Eventually, the ordinance passed allowing renters to have chickens.
It was a huge relief when the meeting was over after 2, mostly agonizing, hours.
Afterwards, a pretty big contingent went to Brochach. Alder Clear, his mother, Rhodes-Conway, Webber, Solomon, Rummel, Kerr, Mayor Dave, Schumacher, Clausius, new Alder Monson, Bruer, Gruber, and myself plus Alder Verveer and his posse sat off in a corner – last night’s posse included Kasey, a McFarland student, Rosemary Lee and Alder Judge.
