Well, “more on the agenda to talk about than usual” was an understatement. Here’s what I can remember and have time to write in the car on the way to the 10,000 Lakes Music Festival and edit while listening to music at the barn and saloon stages.
# 2 – Confirming the re-appointment of Larry D. Nelson to the position of City Engineer,
Director and Manager of the Engineering Division, Department of Public Works
Passed unanimously.
#3 – Supporting a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA)
As predicted, Transport 2020 will be taking this up on Wednesday. Long Range Transportation (LRTPC) and Transit and Parking Commission (TPC) will be taking this up on Thursday and then it was also referred to Long Range Metro Planning. It will be discussed on August 7th.
#13 – Referring 1501 Monroe Street for another 120 days. The developer requested that we change this to 60 days and not a single person on the Council took up the cause.
#20 – More modifications to the Parks budget – taking “Specific Parks Improvement” funds to fix a maintenance facility & #22 – Taking money from downtown parks to pay for Breese Stevens Field. I’ve written about this here and here. These two items were closely related as they both are about how we fund parks improvements.
Neither the parks staff nor the comptroller could tell me the difference between the different categories in the capital budget We have Development Fee Projects – which are the projects that are supposed to be for improvements to parks in areas where there is development, so they are largely on the periphery and downtown. We have 11 different funds set up throughout the city. We apparently have $3.5 million in the various funds. However, although I asked for a breakdown of the numbers a week ago, I didn’t recieve it. The capital budget also has three other funds with various projects called Parks Facilities Improvements ($175,000 – project number 6), Neighborhood Parks Improvements ($135,000 – project #10) and Specific Parks Improvements (($590,700 – project #12).
For items 20 and 22, we were moving money around between various funds, and I simply wanted to know what the policies were that we had in place to determine where to pay for projects, I was very unsatisfied with the answers I got from staff.
20 – In this project, we were taking money from park playgrounds to pay for a maintenance building. This item passed unanimously
22 – In this project, we didn’t borrow enough money, and so we were raiding the downtown neighborhood parks to pay for upgrades to Breese Stevens Field. For his one, I made a motion to borrow this money and leave the development fees for the area parks that are not locked. That motion needed 15 votes, and it failed. Vote was 10 – 9 and perhaps a preview of how things might go at budget time this year. Voting in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Cnare, Gruber, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway and Rummel. Those voting against wer Schumacher, Pham-Remmele, Skidmore, Brandon, Clear, Compton, Judge, Palm and Sanborn.
#38 – Creating Section 3.35(8)(g) of the Madison General Ordinances to establish limitations
on political and campaign activities of election employees. This was thoroughly rejected by the Madison Area Elections Committee and the Ethics Board, so apparently this will be referred while the authors come up with a new version.
Zach’s “first-thing-I’m-going-to-do” ordinance was referred once again. Apparently, after being thoroughly trashed by the ethics committee and elections committee, he has decided to re-write it. So sometime between now, and the next Council meetings I wanted the new version referred back to the Ethics Committee and Elections Committee. That vote lost. In favor were: Brian Solomon, Mike Verveer, Robbie Webber, Tim Gruber, Julia Kerr, Brenda Konkel, Satya Rhodes-Conway. Aganst were Thuy Pham-Remele, Rummel, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Judge, Palm, Clear Brandon, Cnare, Compton. Claussius was absent for the meeting and Ald. Bruer was out of the room for the vote.
Park Street – sorry you’ll have to find your own link – but we discussed for quite some time the flooding on Park Street and the effects of putting the runoff into Lake Monona. The items passed and we will be making some better efforts to clean up the water before we dump it into the lake. (Sorry, its a great issue, but I didn’t take notes so not much to say here.)
#99 Allied Drive – We got to this item right after the 9:00 break.
This item was referred. We talked for quite some time about whether to refer it, but it was referred unanimously. Some alders wanted more time to think about what was being proposed by the Allied Drive Task Force and it was a legitimate issue. The Mayor wanted us to pass it right away, suddenly he has a sense of urgency, after we’ve owned the properties for 14 months. Go figure. There was also discussion about what it meant if we adopted the report, the mayor seemed to think that it was just the resolution language we are adopting, but our City Attorney just got done explaining that the resolution adopts the language in the report so if we adopt the resolution (and the report) I believe we are saying that we accept the recommendations of the task force.
#56 – Water Utility Contract with EMA. This discussion last from 10:00 til nearly 2 am. Here’s info on the last discussion the council had and the water utility in general. This discussion started off with testimony from several water utility staff. Then we went to questions. Verveer started off with what appeared to be a prepared list of questions that I suspect the Water Utility Manager had in advance. Several other alders had questions for Water Utility Board Chair, the EMA consultant, staff members and the Water Utility Manager (David Denig Chakroff).
After the questions, Bruer moved to “call the question” or end debate and vote. That didn’t pass, but those who wanted to just vote and go home were Solomon, Webber Bruer, Cnare, Compton, Gruber and Skidmore. Those who thought that there should be a thorough discussion were Verveer, Brandon, Clear, Judge, Konkiel, Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Saborn, Schumacher, Kerr. By this point, Pham-Remmele has given her odd speech and gone home and Clausius was still absent.
We took three other votes, that went like this:
Compton proposed we just pay the $140,000 that the Water Utility Manager obligated us to and not apparove the contract for the additional $160,000. This failed. Only one vote in favor, Compton. She may have had more votes, but many of us didn’t want to pay the $140,000 until we were certain we owed it and decided that it was “for the attorneys to work out”. Clausius and Pham-Remmele were absent for that vote.
The net vote was proposed by Alder Solomon, and it passed. His proposal was that EMA give us an accounting of what we spent our $140,000 on and then give us a detailed proposal on what we would get for the additional $160,000. Those in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Clear, Cnare, Compton, Gruber, Kerr, Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Sanborn. Those against were Skimore, Brnadon, Judge, Konkel, Schumacher.
The final vote was on the contract with the amendment and a couple votes switched around. Voting in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Clear, Cnare, Schumacher, Compton, Gruber, Kerr, Palm, Rummel and Sanborn. Those against were Skimore, Brandon, Judge, Konkel and Rhodes-Conway.
As Zach pointed out to me, once again, that whenever we agree, we lose. There have been several votes that have been 18 – 2 with Brandon and I being the 2. Sometimes its 17 –3 with Zach and I being joined by Sanborn.
The whole water issue deserves so much more discussion, there are so many issues going on and while some people think we ignored the man behind the curtain, our discussion has to be limited to what is on the agenda and publicly noticed, so to discuss the leadership of the water utility and the employment contract for the Water Utility Manager would have been out of line.
And I think the Mayor was wrong when he stated that we couldn’t do anything until 2008. I beg to differ, the employment contract says that the Water Utility Manager cannot spend money without authorization. I think that is a material breach of the contract and the Water Utility Board and the Mayor have the ability to do something about it before 2008.
So, if you’re keeping track, at the next council meeting, we will be dealing with: RTA, Allied Drive, Zach’s ordinance and who knows what other interesting things, maybe the water utility? Third times a charm.
