As we went into the meeting, several people were commenting about how it was going to be a long meeting. Seemed kinda silly to me, but we dragged it out til after 10:00. Hardly a late night.
Prior to the meeting, I observed the oddest thing. It was a little after 6:00 and there were maybe two or three alders in the room and one member of the public sitting in one seat of the many in the galleries. The so-called “21st alder” strode into the room and actually asked the guy to move because that was “my seat”. She followed up by explaining her request in condescending authoritative voice saying “I”m the 21st alder.” Stunning. The guy obliged and got up and moved to the other side of the room – I just kept staring at my computer and tried not to get involved. I gotta wonder what he was thinking. How incredibly unnecessarily rude. A real alder wouldn’t act that way.
The room quickly filled up after that and the meeting started slightly after 6:30. Mardi Gras beads in tow, matching ties by Alders Verveer and Palm and bad puns by the Mayor started off the meeting. We celebrated Half-Pint Book Day, had some early testimony (I think people were confused), we did our consent agenda where we referred the ridiculously huge zoning re-write committee and its citizen and alder appointments and the hotel/motel ordinance and then went to public hearings.
There were the two projects in district 2 commonly referred to as the Cliff Fisher Project and the Pinkus McBride project. We had quite a bit of testimony for and against the first project, then the Council discussed it for nearly an hour even tho it is likely to be a moot point due to financing issues. 4 or 5 citizens against, only Erik Minton in support beyond the “development team” which was constantly spun as widespread neighborhood support (?!). We had a long, and for geeks like me, somewhat interesting discussion about density, comprehensive plans, PUD criteria, aldermanic courtesy and “larger” and “smaller” buildings. In the end, after some inappropriate questions/accusations to me by Alder Pham-Remmele and a somewhat humorous point in the meeting where the Mayor has to intervene on my behalf, aldermanic courtesy (which Alder Brandon urged the Council to ignore) definitely didn’t prevail. Despite a pretty negative staff report, inconsistencies with the Comprehensive Plan and questionable meeting of the PUD standards, the council voted 12 to 8 in favor or the project with a clear split between downtown and periphery alders. Those in favor: Palm, Pham-Remmele, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Brandon, Bruer, Clausius, Blear, Cnare, Compton and Gruber. Those in opposition: Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Verveer, Webber, Judge and Solomon.
The second, larger but more appropriately placed project passed unanimously without comment. And a big congratulations to Phil Hees, the land owner in the project, for the birth (yesterday!) of his first child. I can’t believe he sat there for the entire meeting!
Then we took things slightly out of order to accommodate people who were there to speak.
East Washington BUILD was next. Big kudos to DMI, neighbors, Curt Brink, MG&E and others who worked with the alders the plan commission subcommittee to reconcile the differences in the various neighborhood plan and getting us all to consensus. The plan passed unanimously with only people in support speaking, now on to the Urban Design District Criteria and the Downtown Transportation Planning! It’ll be a huge change a lot more density if that plan comes true and its pretty exciting! Also, tho we didn’t take it off the agenda, the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan passed and I have to say one more time, a HUGE thanks to Patrick McDonnell for working so hard to get that passed.
Then on to the bus wraps, again. (Jed and Zach missed the last meeting where we discussed Allied Drive so Jed reconsidered this item) 3 or 4 people showed up to tell us why they don’t like the bus wraps on the buses. Concerns about how dark the buses are, people with visual impairments having difficulties and concerns about the inappropriate advertising of alcohol and gambling were the themes. Alder Brandon got on his high horse about the budget and how we needed this money. I exposed a dirty little secret about the City that in reality, even tho we moan and groan about $10,000 here and $4,000 there, in 2006, we didn’t spend $8 million that was budgeted. I attempted to point out that we are frequently over or under budget by various amounts. Metro has a $48.7M budget and $50,000 is a relatively small amount of money which can likely be made up somewhere. Alder Brandon attempted to characterize my comments as me saying “we have plenty of money” but he corrected himself when I objected.
We also discussed why we were amending a pilot project mid-stream, why we don’t try half-wraps, who does (downtown) and doesn’t (periphery) have constituents that are bothered by these wraps, the hypocrisy of limiting alcohol licenses while sending beer buses around the city, the possibility of getting sued over ADA issues and probably a few other things I’m not remembering at the moment. In the end, they lost a few votes but kept enough for the pilot project with a 11 – 9 vote. Aye votes: Palm, Pham-Remmele, Sanborn, Schumacher, Solomon, Brandon, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Cnare, Compton. No votes: Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Skidmore, Verveer, Webber, Gruber, Judge.
Then we discussed if we should grant or loan money to the CDA. I made the amendment, seconded by Brandon, so it was sure to fail, but we picked up another 4 votes. The issue at hand was during the last meeting we approved the CDA getting a $974,000 and I made an amendment that said if they realize those development fees, we should get paid back (no interest) within 60 days of them getting that money. This had nothing to do with the underlying project, the issue was: Is the CDA the City? Some argued we shouldn’t be discussing this project by project or that we were changing the rules of the game, but we did that when we voted on Allied Drive at our last meeting. Those voting with Alder Brandon and myself were Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Sanborn and Webber.
Incredibly, after this discussion, I expected when it came time for introductions at the end of the meeting we would get the report we required in the budget. This is the amendment we passed unanimously:
“By February 1, 2008, the CDA will report to the Council on its annual work plan for 2008. Absent such a plan, the Comptroller’s Office will initiate billings to the CDA for all City personnel charges to the CDA for 2007 and for the remainder of 2008.”
While the plan was emailed to us on February 1st, it was never introduced to the council.
The Council then scattered, with Judge and Brandon joining the Barack Obama party at Brocach and Webber, Rummel, Konkel, Solomon, Kerr opting for the Great Dane. Others were scared off by the weather and went home.
