A short meeting, only an hour. That’s always trouble for us in the months to come. Or actually, more likely, next week when we start our budget marathon. Rumor has it that there are 100 amendments, I think that might be exaggerated. Anyways, here’s the rundown on the meeting.
Mayor called the meeting to order on time, relatively speaking.
BILL CLINGAN/ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT UNIT DIRECTOR
We placed the appointment of Bill Clingan to the Economic and Community Development Unit Director on file since he withdrew his name after there was a deal struck in a nearly illegal (or perhaps illegal) meeting.
ALLIED DRIVE
We took testimony from Stuart Levitan on the Allied Drive project and then, after an admittedly pretty poor excuse for a “point of order” by me, we tabled the item so that people waiting for public hearings wouldn’t have to sit through a long discussion about Allied Drive.
BUDGET TESTIMONY
We heard testimony on the budget. Three people came to speak.
1. Delora Newton, lobbyist for the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce testified that they were in favor of an amendment to split the Economic and Community Development Unit Director position into two positions. One for Economic Development and one for Community Development. Just like I advocated for in the first place.
2. Bill Rowe, a Northside resident, came to talk to us about the police. He said we didn’t need more officers, we needed police officers that paid more attention to kids and got out of their cars.
3. Carol Kiemel from the League of Women Voters testified and provided us with a written statement that said the following:
a. Thanks for the amendments at Board of Estimates that supported early childhood care and education.
b. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund should be preserved and not all spent on Allied Drive. They said that a small amount of money has gone a long ways in 26 months and we should preserve this valuable tool. They also make the point that it is supposed to be a “permanent endowment”.
c. Finally, while she did not say it, this was in the written statement:
The League has one comment on this year’s City of Madison budget process. We registered our support of and opposition to a few of the budget amendments considered by the Board of Estimate, but we did not ask to speak. We were surprised that non-speaking registrations for and against amendments were not brought to the attention of the Board prior to the deliberations as is usually done at hearings. In order for alderpersons to make informed decisions it is necessary they hear the opinions of both speaking and non-speaking registrants.
ALLIED DRIVE/CDA IN THE RED
We quickly disposed of the rest of the items, then went back to the Allied Drive discussion. The biggest questions I had is why is the City negotiating with the CDA to give them land, $3M of demolition and road improvements to the land and paying them to give us the information that proves that they can handle the project? What do they bring to the table? And why isn’t the CDA paying for this prep work to get to the point where we can enter into a contract?
The answer, which I thought I knew but was much worse than I knew, is that they don’t have any money. In fact, I knew that they have a negative cash balance of $35,000 and that even though some city staff bill the CDA for their work, they just don’t pay us. And that doesn’t count the time that the City staff doesn’t charge for. What I learned that was new, was that the CDA already owes the City $550,000 because we gave them a working capital loan a few years ago. Additionally, what didn’t get said at the meeting was the fact that the Monona Shores project that they are patterning the Allied Drive project on is not only not successful because of who lives there and how affordable it is, but that project has a negative cash balance of $1,443,649. That’s $1.4M. And our $4M line of credit we have from Fannie Mae is actually costing us money and that project has a negative cash balance of $20,799, and its getting worse by the day.
Anyways, after my amendment to remove language in the resolution about the demolition and preparation of the land (and if we would pay for it with the Affordable Housing Trust Fund) passed unanimously, the whole thing passed unanimously.
Afterwards, a reporter asked me why I voted for it. It’s actually quite simple, I’d rather spend $75,000 now to get information that will help us figure out if we will end up $1.4 M in the red a few years from now, like Monona Shores. Their track record on projects not in the red is not so hot.
MAYOR APPOINTMENTS – LEGISLATIVE VS. EXECUTIVE POWER BATTLE
Finally, we resolved the whole issue I raised a few meetings ago where the Mayor’s appointments to positions that have 5 year contracts need to be approved by the Council within a certain time frame. We had a law on the books that said if we didn’t act in 20 days, that appointment was automatically approved. I had proposed (on behalf of Schumacher and Rhodes-Conway that serve on a chapter 2 revision sub-committee with me) that we change the 60 days to 20 days, which ironically was what the Mayor wanted. Then, Alder Brandon proposed we just remove the language altogether. After some compromise between the Mayor and Brandon we changed the law to say that we had to placed it on the agenda for a vote within 31 days of the appointment. That passed unanimously.
ADJOURNMENT IN HONOR OF OTTO FESTGE
We adjourned after a moment of silence and in memory of former Mayor Otto Festge who passed away this last weekend.
AFTER COUNCIL PARTY
We then gathered at Brocach. I believe the Mayor, the entire Mayoral staff and the City Attorney Michael May joined Rhodes-Conway, Webber, Schumacher, Bruer, Clear, Rummel, Bruer, Kerr, Solomon, Palm, Brandon and I think Clausius and Gruber, and of course, Judge and Verveer were joined by their growing entourage. I hope I didn’t miss any alders that were there, as I was busy talking . . . or should I say listening . . .
