There were only two or three items of discussion, but we were still there until 9:00 or so. There were a few other items of note.
The night started off will an honoring resolution for some Iraqi war Veterans and some routine business.
The first item we got to before the public hearings started at 7:45 was the $100,000 safety initiative. Even though they are already spending the money, they asked for referral while they backed up and decided to ask the alders in districts affected what they thought was needed in the area. Interesting. We’ll be voting on that on the 16th of October.
The second item of interest was a contract to hire a consultant for the zoning code re-write project. This was also referred as the details were not complete and we weren’t authorizing them to sign anything until after the budget was over. It was referred until the details are worked out and the budget it approved. We’ll be voting on it on November 20th. At that point, hopefully we will have more details about the public participation plan.
Then we went back to the public hearings. The entry way to the hotel on W. Washington Avenue took over an hour. Even though the issue appeared to be resolved, it seems that it wasn’t. The issue was should the area between the street and the building be used as a loading zone for customers. At issue as the 11 feet and 3 inches of space between the drop off area and the street and the 18 foot wide drop off area. The issue wasn’t resolved, except to say that it would be decided at the time of the SIP and with the “privilege in streets” process.
We place the Madhatters liquor license “on file without prejudice” meaning that we didn’t vote on it but said they can come back at a later date if they want to re-apply.
The next item was a re-write of a piece of our zoning code. This change would allow a conditional use for County uses in a Conservancy District. To me, it is not a good procedure to change laws for one project, but we do it all the time. In this case, I wanted to limit the “city and county uses” in Conservancy Districts to “existing” uses. In other words, no expansions into the Conservancy District. In addition to the bad practice of changing laws for one project, there was also the issue of having a Conservancy District apply the same to City and County uses as everyone else. This change would not have affected the project in question. Also, one plan commissioner tried to argue that the Council could always vote on conditional uses at a later date, however, conditional uses only go to the Plan Commission and the Council doesn’t vote on them. The roll call vote was to preserve the Conservation Districts with Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel and Webber voting “aye”. Voting “no” were Brandon, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Compton, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Palm, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Solomon, Verveer. Absent: Thuy Pham-Remmele and Lauren Cnare.
We then voted on the “consent agenda” with everything else passing as noted on the agenda with two outstanding issues. One was where the Bill Clingan confirmation as Economic and Community Development Unit Director would be referred. Referrals, in addition to the Board of Estimates, were to CDBG, Community Services, Economic Development Commission, the Senior Citizen Advisory Committee, Senior Center Board of Directors, the TIF Ad Hoc committee and finally back to the Common Council on November 6th.
This brought up an issue in that we have a rule on the council that if we don’t confirm the appointment of the Mayor within 20 days they are automatically approved. I was going to introduce a rule that we have already talked about, changing that to 60 days. I passed around an ordinance with that language on a piece of paper so it could be referred to our next meeting. Verveer, Webber and Rummel signed on, then when it got to Zach he changed it to be no automatic approval at all and then a bunch of people signed on to that, so we went with that. I introduced it at the end of the meeting with nearly every council member signed on as a sponsor.
That left the final item of the evening. It was an ordinance that would allow double damages, court costs and attorney fees if a landlord retaliate against tenants who join a neighborhood watch or neighborhood association. It should have been a no-brainer with all of the safety talk we’ve been doing. However, it took another hour at least. The issue was that the ordinance took the language from State Statute 704.45 and the Administrative Code from the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection 134.09(5). At issue were three issues as far as I could tell:
1. The Apartment Association of South Central Wisconsin was threatening to sue. (They’re the ones who sued over the rental piece of Inclusionary Zoning and won.) For what it is worth, the DATCP regulations allow local governments to pass additional Consumer Protections as long as they don’t conflict with their regulations.
2. The Apartment Association of South Central Wisconsin and Lisa Subeck (trying to play lawyer) were arguing that the “renewal” language was going to cause problems in practice.
3. There was an issue about what the tenant got as damages at small claims court as the language used was from the Fair Housing Laws not Tenant/Landlord law.
The “renewal language” was taken directly from 704.45, but the Apartment Association was still opposed. The language from the Fair Housing Laws was removed. The vote, over if we should protect tenants from retaliation if the tenant joins a Neighborhood Watch or Neighborhood Association was as follows:
Aye: Brandon, Clear, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Solomon, Verveer, Webber
No: Clausius, Compton, Bruer, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore and Palm
Absent: Thuy Pham-Remmele and Lauren Cnare
Odd vote given the crime hysteria. You’d think we’d want to encourage tenants to join their neighborhood watch. Also interesting is one alder who voted for it asked me “why’s Dave against this?”, so the Mayor must have been opposed as well and lobbying against the ordinance. He apparently didn’t say why and didn’t speak up even though he was out of the chair for most of the discussion.
The others then went to the Magnus. I went home as I’ve been sick, so sorry, no report on that.
