It might take me as long to think about this post as the meeting lasted – an whopping 45 minutes.
Ok – it wasn’t even 45 minutes since we started late. Partially because the alders stole the gavel and the mayor couldn’t bang it and start the meeting . . . I know who took it and gave it to me, but not why they did . . . I just passed it along and it ended up in Schumacher’s hands, which let the Mayor to quip that he had to “wait his turn” to be Mayor.
The meeting only had one citizen there to testify. Alex Saloutos, who sits on the Inclusionary Zoning Oversight Committee as the Mayor’s representative came to question the “Housing Diversity” Committee that the council unanimously passed at the last meeting and we reconsidered (see below).
We passed the consent agenda, with only two items separated for discussion. The budget adjustment and the Housing Diversity Committee.
BUDGET ADJUSTMENTS
Alder Rhodes-Conway kicked it off by asking some questions. Then made a statement. I asked some additional questions – like why do we budget if the departments just spend what they want anyways? Particularly, the police department. At the request of the Board of Estimates, all the departments that had adjustments had to send us a memo, we didn’t get the information from the Assessors, Clerks Office, Human Resources or Golf. Madison Metro gave us the handout at the meeting. I was concerned that the police have a pattern of spending about $400,000 for the past three years on conversion of vacation to pay but don’t budget for it and when we didn’t approve their supplemental requests for additional money, they spent it anyways. No other alders spoke. The motion passed. Here’s how it all shook out:
Departments that spent more than budgeted are:
Police $731,400
Fire $70,000
Streets $766,000
Departments that are under what they budgeted are:
Municipal Court $72,000
Attorney $170,000
Comptroller $25,400
IT $89,000
Human Resources $80,000
Engineering $231,000
Parks $135,000
Traffic Engineering $137,000
Building Inspection $178,000
Misc. Appropriations $108,000
Some other departments made adjustments in their line items that had a neutral affect on the budget including: Assessor, Clerk, Fleet Services, Golf, & Transit.
The numbers make Alder Rhodes-Conways point. We fuss over $5,000 at budget time and then the departments are over or under by much bigger numbers and we don’t think twice about it.
In the end, we allocated $342,000 of our approximately $1M we budgeted for reserves in the 2008 budget.
HOUSING DIVERSITY COMMITTEE
After we passed a resolution creating a committee of 5 alders and 2 other yet to be named people to work on a “housing diversity” plan for the City of Madison to be completed by May 1, some of us heard a bit of an outcry from people who sit on committees that already work on housing. The biggest issue is, what is the point of the City’s Housing Committee if not this? And, we have a wealth of experience from the IZ Oversight Committee that we shouldn’t lose. (Tho, they don’t want to take this task on.) As a result, at the request of the IZ Oversight Committee, Lauren Cnare and I requested reconsideration. We ended up adding two people to the committee, one from the Housing Committee and one from the IZ Oversight Committee (even tho the committee hopes to resolve by the end of 2009 after doing some clean up work). The substitute resolution passed unanimously with an explanation from Alder Cnare. The Mayor actually thanked Alder Cnare and myself for helping to resolve this issue.
And with that . . . we were done for the year! (Unless, we end up having to have a special meeting for some issue that just can’t wait, which has happened 2 or 3 time sin the last 6 or 7 years).
Folks went out to Magnus afterwards, I bailed . . . I had too much work to do at home, so I don’t know who went out.
