Here’s the recap of the meeting that I didn’t really tell you about yesterday! (Sorry.) And the meeting that nearly wasn’t. The Mayor, the City Attorney and Alders Cnare, Compton and Clear were all missing, making it difficult to do a few things.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
At 5:00 we had a presentation and discussion of the latest (6/19) draft of the Economic Development Plan, which we were handed at the meeting. Alders Brandon, Rummel, Konkel, Schumacher, Clausius, Rhodes-Conway, Gruber, Webber, Kerr and later Judge all attended. 10 of the 16 or 17 alders in town. Alder Pham-Remmele was spotted going to the Chophouse for dinner with her husband instead of attending the meeting. We were joined by members of the public and Economic Development Commission (Sue Gleason, Ed Clarke and Vicky Selkowe). Unfortunately, because we were just handed it, it was hard to have a discussion about the content. Admittedly, it was pretty much the same as in the past, but the formatting was all new and it was somewhat confusing. I think we all agreed tho, that the new format was much preferable than previous drafts of the report. I think we also all agreed that most of us found alot to like in in it and a few things we probably each don’t like so much. Concerns of the alders were that too many things were high priorities to be done in 2009, while we all want to create jobs it is not clear what kind of jobs they are (high tech? career ladder? mid-level? etc.), even tho we will be adopting the plan it will only be implemented piecemeal as various alders or the mayor make the plan a priority and many of the things are in progress and perhaps not progressing the way it is in the plan. We were all urged to give the Economic Development Commission our feedback . . . but when I asked, twice, how they wanted that feedback, the answer was not clear.
PASSING OVER 100 ITEMS IN ONE MOTION
After about an hour, we took a break and the council meeting started at approximately 6:30. In addition to the above mentioned people who were absent, Alder Solomon was also late as he was trying to get back to Madison from Milwaukee. With Alder Bruer, or Mr. President, in the chair we all congratulated him as it was his birthday. We did some of our preliminary motions and went quickly to the consent agenda. In one motion, we passed over 100 items including fines for graffiti on “movable objects”, allowing ourselves and the mayor to turn back our salaries, reconfiguring funding for Breese Stevens and making improvements so the WIAA soccer tournaments will come back and project for the Garver Feed Mill – and so much more.
SEPARATED ITEMS AND PUBLIC HEARINGS
The items that we didn’t pass in the first 10 minutes of the meeting were:
Alcohol Licenses (some in the beginning of the agenda, some on the addendum) – Retail Licenses in Alder Verveer’s and Judge’s districts had restriction put on them. The restrictions prohibited the following sales: 1) No sale of beer or fermented malt beverages in less than a 6-pack of 12-ounce cans or bottles. This is not applicable to imported or microbrew beers. 2) No sale of fortified wines in any package size. 3) No sale of liquor in bottles of 200 ml or less. The licenses in Alder Rummel’s, Kerr’s and my district did not have these same restrictions, even tho we are all in the downtown area. We did not add them, with the promise from Alder Schumacher, which I’m sure other alders have promised before, that we would find a way to have a city-wide ordinance. Once again, we took the leap of faith.
BIZARRO MOMENT NUMBER ONE: Did Ron Tractenberg actually call Alder Mike Verveer a “sissy” or “wimpy”, accuse him of not listening or failing to comprehend what they were saying, accuse Alder Verveer and the police department using “threats” and of using “strong arm tactics”, claim that cheap alcohol was not marketed to alcoholics, that Alder Verveer only did this for “re-election brochures”, and the police department refused to get back to him. And did he follow all of that up with this gem that communication is a “two way street”. No wonder people don’t want to communicate with him. That was the most obnoxious thing I’ve heard on the council floor in quite some time. Who hires this guy? Obviously, he better go back and read the book on How to Win Friends and Influence People, cuz he has some work to do! He offended people across the political spectrum with his lunatic ranting.
31 S. Henry (#21) – Passed without comment.
Emerging Neighborhood Funds (#46) – This is the so-called “slush fund” that we’ve tried to rehabilitate and put some process to, but still seems broken in most people’s minds. The fund has $200,000 in it and $44,315 we made commitments to last year. There was $24,000 or so that was held back and the rest was allocated to project we voted on last night. We heard from the public (David Glomp) and Alder Thuy on how they needed $10,000 for their neighborhood watch. As Alder Rhodes-Conway pushed Glomp to tell her what they needed for we discovered that these 4 neighborhood watches already existed and that they needed $2,500 for each for “software” because they were not on the same listserves and to communicate with the police department and to print brochures. I’m not kidding.
We also discovered that even though the 40 or so applications were scored, some of the higher scoring projects did not get funded. Some of it was because it was determined that the projects would be better funded through the Office of Community Services process – where the applications were due earlier this month and its not clear if those agencies were instructed to apply for these projects or if there will be additional money to fund them.
BIZZARO MOMENT NUMBER TWO – So, the neighborhood watch issue was strange enough . . . but after alot of whining from Alder Thuy about how her neighborhood groups don’t have a meeting space and have to meet in a church (isn’t that true for many neighborhood associations?), and how she was the ONE who voted to double this fund from $100,000 to $200,000 and the fact that her district (1 of 20 or 5% of the city) got 36% of the funding and the southwest side of Madison got $70,000 – $80,000 of the approximately $130,000 of funding and that she was on the committee but the process was too rushed. She voted AGAINST the funding. Which momentarily stunned Alder Rummel. I jokingly said “Konkel changes her vote to “no””, but I think some are seriously thinking about reconsidering this decision. Heck, I’m seriously considering it! She gets the most money for her district and still isn’t satisfied?
The roll call vote was AYE: Bruer, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Konkel, Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Sanborn, Solomon, Verveer and Webber.
NO: Brandon, Clausius, Pham-Remmele, Schumacher, Skidmore
ABSENT: Clear, Cnare, Compton
Decreasing the fine for fireworks (#77) – Alder Cnare wanted to change the fine for fireworks from $300, to $150 for first time offenses. I really object to this. It seems they rarely catch the folks downtown who love to set off the year round fireworks and if they finally catch them, I say fine ’em. Since Alder Cnare wasn’t there, we referred this item to July 15th, when I will be there.
Bus Wraps (#83) – Also referred. Given the large number of absences, we referred it to avoid reconsideration at the next meeting. This item should come back on July 1st.
Renewing contract for 911 Services (#87) – We did some non-controversial clean up of the language and asked them to renew the contract for no more than 2 6-month periods of time.
Report on Gender, Race and Disabilities and our Committee Appointments (#88) – Since these are the mayor’s appointments, we referred it until the Mayor was there. This item will be discussed on July 15th.)
After that, we went to the Great Dane . . . to celebrate the birthday of Mr. President, without the “B Team” city attorney that sat on the bench the whole time! 😛 Those joining us were Judge, Rhodes-Conway, Webber, Konkel, Solomon, Kerr, Bruer, Schumacher, Rummel, Verveer (and his entourage – Roie and Rolf) and Tammy from the Clerk’s Office!
(Sorry, no time for links, the agenda is here.)
