Council Recap: Jan. 22, 2008

Here’s the run down of the council meeting that lasted til after 11:00 last night. Sorry, the links will have to wait until tomorrow if I have time.

Prior to the Council meeting we had a presentation from the Office of Community Services. After the grilling they got at the Board of Estimates last year, they figured they had been educate us a bit about the 1.6% ($3,633,505) of the City of Madison Budget that gets so much attention year after year. The handed out alot of information with the painstaking process they go through along with the goals/priorities the commission sets and debates every two years. Alders there at the beginning of the presentation were: Gruber, Solomon, Cnare, Konkel, Bruer, Schumacher and Judge. We we joined by Rhodes-Conway, Kerr, Clear, Pham-Remmele for a majority of the presentation and Compton and Webber joined us near the end.

We took what should have been a 15 minute break that stretched a bit longer than that. We finally started the council meeting about 10 minutes late. Alder Verveer was in the chair as the Mayor was in Japan. Claussius was absent as he was in Cancun and we were surprised with the news that Alders Brandon and Sanborn weren’t going to be joining us either.

We started off honoring the son of one of the City Attorney’s who placed 5th in District 2 in the Veterans of Foreign Wars oratorical scholarship contest, The Voice of Democracy.

By the time we were done with this item we then passed the consent agenda (everything on the agenda except items 17, 22, 29, 40, 77, 85 and 89 with a referral on item 82 which was Alder Bruer’s hotel/motel ordinance, some additional referrals and quite a few abstentions by alders on various items) and went on to the public hearings.

This was the meeting of referrals. Item 5 (City approving condo documents was referred during the public hearings.) We then tried to get a bunch of items done “quickly” before going on to the Allied Drive issue. We considered the petition signed by hundreds of people who were opposed to the advertising of gambling and alcohol on our buses. We heard an explanation from the City Attorney about why we have first amendment issues with limiting this advertising, despite the fact that other cities limit this advertising and eventually we placed the petition on file.

The next issue was buying a gas station on Park Street. While it was assessed at $203,600, it was apparently worth much, much more than that. It sold in 2001 for $525,000 and the city had an appraisal for $715,000 and we paid $876,000. The explanation about why the assessment was so low was that it was one of the properties that was formerly in the Town of Madison and they apparently don’t reassess very often. No wonder they are going out of business.

The next issue was an assessment of a sidewalk for Troy Drive from School Drive to Forster Drive. It was referred because it did not have a sponsor as well as alders wanting to discuss this further with their districts.

The Zoning Code Rewrite Advisory Committee was also referred.

Then we discussed a resolution requiring City buildings to be LEEDS certified. Alder Compton attempted to refer this to a ridiculously long list of city committees, including the TIF committee (which has nothing to do with City buildings) and that motion failed. The resolution eventually passed. We spent quite a bit of time stating the obvious about how LEEDS certified buildings was not just a good thing to do, but would eventually save us money. Many alders added their names to sponsor the resolution as they were lost along with the piece of paper they were written on. They can’t blame this one on legistar!!

The second surprise of the evening came when the advertising for bus wraps failed to pass the council due to the absences in the first surprise. We took a roll call vote and it turns out, with Brandon and Sanborn missing, they didn’t have enough votes, tho this one is sure to be reconsidered. Those voting for the advertising, even though several noted that at the end of the pilot project they may not vote the same was and that many people had received complaints about not being able to see out of the buses were as follows: Kerr, Palm, Pham-Remmele, Schumacher, Solomon, Bruer, Clear, Cnare, Compton and Gruber. That was only 10 votes, and everything needs at least 11 votes to pass. Those voting no were Judge, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Skikmore, Verveer and Webber. Absent were Brandon, Sanborn and Clausius.

At this point is was 8:00 and we took a break before digging in to the Allied Drive topic. We were handed a new resolution after the council meeting started and after the break Alder Solomon took some time to explain the changes in the 4 page resolution. Then we jumped right in to questions.

FINALLY, the CDA admitted, that they are not willing to make a commitment to have a certain number of units affordable for people at or below 30% AMI. Technically, the Allied Drive Task Force recommended and the Common Council approved that that project would have 25 – 30% of their units affordable at that level, but the CDA staff would not make a firm commitment because they wanted “flexibility”.

Also, FINALLY, they admitted that the units at $184,000 per unit were actually the $214,000 per unit once they added in the additional costs.

While the questions were quick, the answers sort of dragged on but eventually, we got to the resolutions. I offered several amendments to the new document we were handed last night, starting with the easy ones.

The first was to change the resolution to refer to the correct resolution that we passed last year. It was considered friendly.

The second was to clarify that the City would not demolish all the buildings, but instead leave two of the Birch Hill buildings standing during construction of Phase I.

It then got a little rockier.

The next attempt was to define what “low- and moderate- income” meant. There are various definitions depending upon which funding source is defining “low and moderate income rental housing”. I attempted to define it as 50% AMI, but that failed and the council I believe would allow the rental units to be affordable to people at 80% AMI. To explain the difference in the level of affordability, check out this chart for what rents would be at various levels. This chart is for IZ but here are the rents that can be charged.

• Efficiency $640
• One bedroom $686
• Two Bedrooms $824
• Three Bedrooms $952
• Four Bedrooms $1,061.

That’s hardly affordable, but apparently, we needed even more flexibility, to provide rents at people up to 80% AMI. To further put this in perspective, here are the incomes, by family size, of those at 80% and 50% AMI. (Sorry this chart is a little messed up, but I didn’t have time to fix it.)

Folks, that is hardly creating housing for those who are most in need. You really have to wonder why we were even bothering to do this project at this point. That failed with the following vote:
AYE: Judge, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Skidmore, Solomon, Verveer, WEbber, Cnare
NO: Kerr, Pham-Remmele, Bruer, Clear, Compton, Gruber, Palm, Schumacher
ABSENT: Sanborn, Brandon, Clausius

The motion to add the following language failed, I think, but I don’t know for sure: If the units in phase I are converted to condominiums the net proceeds received due to the sale of rental housing shall be reinvested in rental housing for households at or below 50% AMI. (See income chart above.)

The next motion to put a whole bunch of the new language in the cooperative and development agreement passed.

The next motion to add the following language failed: Developer Fee & Net Proceeds. Any developer fee or net proceeds on the development or sale of the land in Phase II shall be reinvested in rental housing for households at or below 40% AMI. This one failed with only Konkel, Rummel and Webber voting aye.

And the last motion I made that also failed was: 27 of the units in phase one shall be affordable for households at or below 30% AMI for at least 15 years. Only Rummel and I voted for this amendment on a voice vote.

I believe Alder Clear may have made one more friendly amendment. We then went on to discussion by the council where various council members said all kinds of things about why we shouldn’t vote for the project but then proceeded to do so anyways. Some of my favorites were calling the project a “mistake”, likening it to drowning in quicksand and saying that they were “swallowing sand” by voting yes and saying that they were voting for it because they had “no other choices”. Ouch. But, we all praised Ald. Solomon for his hard work, patted each other on the back and it passed 15 – 2 with the three aforementioned absences. Alder Pham-Remmele and myself voting no.

In addition to the post from the other day where I outlined the problems with the project, I couldn’t vote for this when they wouldn’t guarantee the 25% of the units being available to those who truly need this affordable housing. If the CDA is unwilling to build housing for the most needy people in the community, we certainly can’t expect the private market to do it. It’s all up to WHEDA now . . . if we get the tax credits . . . then we get the approval from HUD for the 36 sticky 8 vouchers . . . and we get the financing . . . the project will move forward.

And with that, it was 11 and we went to the Great Dane. We were joined by the City Attorney, Mark Olinger, Stuart Levitan, Kate Stalker from Schreiber Anderson, Leslie McAllister our Weed & Seed Coordinator & Lisa Subeck. Alders in attendance were Rhodes-Conway, Bruer, Clear, Schumacher, Gruber, Solomon, Rummel, Webber, myself and I hope I didn’t miss anyone else.