Livish . . . mostly hear for the day center purchase, so that will likely be more detailed. But then again, there likely won’t be much else they talk about.
Getting Started/Routine Items
Roll Call: Richmond, Stubbs, Veldran, Bayrd, Chenowith, Clausius, Downing, Erickson, Jones, Nelson all absent. Erickson, Veldran, Downing all here within minutes. Clausius and Stubbs said they would be absent. Nelson will be late, Clausius might be here, had an emergency.
Inspiration: Denny O’Loughlin says that every meeting they try to inspire themselves. He wants citizens to know that they are here to serve, they don’t do it for the income, they listen to you, they “are wicked good” according to his grandson, they know the budget process and try to do what it good for the county. They represent their 14,500 citizens to the best of their ability and they are “the real deal”. He says also thank veterans for their service if you see one since this is a month to honor them as well. (Him or her.)
Special Matters: World Pancratic Cancer Day Resolution – Michele Ritt reads the resolution. Barb Harlan from the Pancreatic Cancer Network (also spoke at the council), her husband passed away in 2000. 5% was the survival rate then, it inched up to 7%. It is likely to be the second leading cause of death in a few years. Don MacCaulay (sp?) lost his wife 5 years ago, she lasted 4 months since she was diagnosed. Diane Cappy (sp?) lost her sister 3 years ago, she was only sick 3 months. Harlan says that World Pancreatic Cancer day is Nov 13th, 26 nations will observe this day. She says to wear purple and take a picture and attach a message.
Announcements:
– Nick Zweifel says Sun Priaire Colonial Club wine and beer tasting tomorrow night. $30, 6-9, its a day center for elderly in Sun Prairie. County funds them.
– Jenni Dye has legislation opposing child protective services changes at the legislature that would lead to greater disparities and require more reporting to law enforcement. She is circulating it for c0sponsors.
– Heidi Wegleitner has a resolution to have greater neighborhood input in the process of running the day center, it creates a staff work team to work on this and have a point person. There would also have someone from the neighborhood on the RFP selection process and work with Tenney Nursery to come to an agreement. Also has a resolution to award 4 projects the money from the Affordable Housing Development fund.
– Michele Ritt has resolution to have free menstrual products in Dane County Facilities
– Dave DeFelice was saddened by the closing of Oscar Mayer and he has a company closing in his district 2 (Nuematic?). He says he worked in the legislature and worked hard to keep a business open – he kept in touch with people who lost their jobs there, some took their lives, he wants them to keep this in mind, it reaches real people, this is a sad loss.
– Sharon Corrigan announces November Birthdays: 25th is Dave Ripp’s birthday
Bills over $10,000 pass without discussion.
Claims for Denial – items 1 – 3 – all pass without discussion
They approve the minutes without discussion.
F1 – F10 are on consent agenda, all pass without discussion
H 1 – 9 – Zoning petitions, item 2 is separated, all others pass without discussion.
H2 – Pat Miles moves to postpone. There are some property taxes that need to be paid at sale, sale has been delayed. They postpone.
DAY RESOURCE CENTER
Public Testimony
Susan Springman has questions and wants to raise concerns. She is concerned this is in the Capitol East district, it is one of the most used entrance to the city, it was neglected for decades, they are revitalizing it, they reconstructed the avenue, they did a BUILD plan to add housing and jobs, significant private dollars are needed to make this happen. 100s of millions of dollars have been invested, several high profile districts have happened and more are underway, more private dollars are needed. She says no one was ever contacted about finding a property to place this at. She represents the Mullins Group, they own 18 acres in the area, they own Shop Bop, Pasquals and have invested in that building, how the county handles the Messner building will impact them and the potential and future viability of the properties. How will having 50 – 150 people with no where to go after it opens and closes, how will that impact it. What is the transportation plan. How will this look during the rush hour and when people are going out to restaurants? This needs to be done right, developers have to comply with rules, county should have to do the same. They looked at the building, they passed on it. She thinks they will need to invest millions. She is worried that whoever runs the center will have to raise half a million dollars to run it correctly. The conditional use will be taken away if it is not run property. She wants to make sure they have enough money. I know you are feeling rushed, this building could be here for decades, it has to be done right. Please be open to other opportunities, please read the Smart Growth letter they sent, they will try to find another property.
Tim Olsen, lives in the neighborhood, served 2 decades on Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Board, volunteer with homeless people at The Road Home, when families stay in church basements. He wants to talk about what happens in the neighborhood, in their backyards. A mile and a half from this property, 96% of the emergency shelter rooms are located there. That is what they do in their back yards. He has a measuring tapes and is talking about how big Dane County is. He has a glass that represents 3 square miles, he fills the glass nearly full to show the shelter bdes. In another glass he has “benevolent housing” and is saying they have a large percentage of that. He says they have one of the highest concentration of Section 8 and public housing. This is 1/2 of 1% of Dane County and they do all this. We are good a disparities. What he is saying, they already take on much of the burden of taking on the poor and dispossessed and he is proud of that, he is also proud of their planning. He is distressed about creating an undue burden next to the Tenney Nursery. At 6:00 we don’t have housing, we have unhousing. That is bad for a lot of folks, but that includes people in the corrections benevolent housing. He says that they did the temporary shelter, under the condition it wasn’t placed there ever again. This was hard on the women who lived there – he ran out of time.
Michael Ryanjoy. Goes to the other side as Tim Olsen cleans up. He is a parent of a child at the nursery center, he serves on their Board and is the board’s designated representatives. They have worked hard to collect information on this issue. There is no consensus view in the community or among parents at the nursery, but the board is opposed. They are concerned about their business viability, they think it will have a disproportionate affect on their enrollment. He says at the very least this is unusual. They haven’t found a comparable example and the examples the county has come up with are misrepresented. He isn’t going to try to convince them to change their course. He wants an amendment to commit the city to a bilateral negotiation with the nursery. He wanted assurances in exchange for withholding the opposition. County Executive Joe Parisi will not negotiate with them, he says they need to take it to the city process. He doesn’t think that the county can meet the conditional use conditions. He feels that the board has taken the prudent measure they can to avoid a confrontation at the plan commission.
Richard Freyhoefer. A neighbor who says its a sad day when a middle class citizen has to come to a county board meeting. The whole concept here is absurd, serve people during the day and turn them lose at night to sleep on our porches. Enis Ragland says we have enough bed, yeah right. He shows the police calls from the 800 block of East Washington, he says this is collateral damage. He says that he can throw a stone form his house to 6 houses, including ARC House. The women don’t need men walking by on the way to Cork and Bottle. He says this is next to the Tenney Nursery and other new developments. He says his kids have to walk to school, who is going to have to watch that. He says that it was a party every night and tried to coax women to drink with them and they drown in the river. He says the county broke its own rules and the county is just wiping their feet on the neighborhood association. He says that you are doing things backwards, when he was single he made sure he had a date before he made a reservation. He says that a county board supervisor’s husband told him that they had the only supervisor silly enough to want to have this in their neighborhood. He says they need beds. This needs to be on a bus line on the periphery. WE have to generate tax base. This is dead on arrival at plan commission. (I missed a little and got that out of order)
Joey Hoey. A neighbor, across the street from the nursery. He doesn’t want to get into if we should help of homelessness. He wants to talk about democracy, he says it is a test to see if people like democracy when they favor something. Its easier when they are against it. He talks about Act 10 and the lack of notice – he staffed and organized the hearings, people felt disenfranchised and the movement grew – he worked for then supervisor Joe Parisi, he protested public review and input, the senators left the state to protest the process. Process is important and give a good result, makes informed decisions. To make this offer the county has violated its own resolution (72) and violated the process in the report. They were supposed to do a report and look at several properties, we can see the costs and benefits of different sites. They were supposed to have a robust and open siting process, with meetings and adequate notice. They didn’t get notice or input on this site. No one can tell him how this site relates to other sites. There is no way to evaluate the appropriateness of the site. There are good intentions but not good plans. Put this on hold and follow your own resolution and report. The public and the homeless both deserve that process. If they don’t do that, there is a good chance the neighbors will ever accept this and the only way they can trust you moving forward.
Patty Prime. President of the neighborhood association. She sent a letter. There is a public process that the county has followed in the past, like when they sited the jail, they had neighborhood meetings and looked at pros and cons and eventually the jail got built. They didn’t follow that process in this point. This has set up a difficult relationship with the neighborhood and it erodes trust. The neighborhood was caught off guard with this announcement. Is it good or bad to have this next to a nursery and two establishments that serve alcohol. They don’t know, they didn’t have that process. The other speakers covered most of this.
Regina McNaughton. Chief Operations officer for Pasquals. They do not oppose a day center, they feel there are better options to create a path to end homelessness. They are in opposition of this location. They are worried about the impact on their business – sanitary, safety and emergency calls. They are worried about 100 – 150 people exiting during their busy time for their business. That sounds callous and cold, but they are also concerned – they don’t think there is enough money to renovate the building. She says they spent 1.5M on a 12,000 sq ft building. She is worried they are paying a premium and don’t have funds budgeted to make the renovations. She says they won’t pay property taxes. She says in 3 months they generated $30,000 in sales taxes. She says they should not choose a premium retail space for this and forego those taxes. She hopes that the Landmarks Commission and Urban Design Commission hold them to the same standards that they were held to. This is adjacent to and across from a Landmark and that will cost them money. They have transportation plans and thinks a shelter closing at 6:00 sending 100 – 150 people out there with bus passes, will they be queued up for an hour. She hopes that they have a plan for the two businesses that surround this location.
Ryan Schultz. Own Baldwin St. Grille – it was a dive bar, they have tried hard to fix that and make it neighborhood friendly, they are trying to be more restaurant. He is working on improving the building. Pasquals has worked hard on their building, Avenue has redone theirs. He was surprised when he heard about this on the news. He has a 3 year old and was thinking about living in the neighborhood. He is scared. They have given food to homeless, they donate to leukemia/lymphoma society, they help the high school booster club. He is not opposed, he is just frightened on this site, he doesn’t think work has gone into this, he is opposed because the businesses built on customer participation will be impacted. They are trying to keep p.c., they aren’t biased towards the homeless demographic, but their customers will be. A day center is worse than if we housed them. We help them out for a few hours and let them go. They should not let this process go further along with the opposition, it would be proof that most of us smaller businesses or neighborhood folks are not being listened to or heard. He has 14 employees, a wife and a son and its ironic that it is a homeless shelter that might put us in the same situation.
Mike Basford, was chair of the homeless issues committee 2012 – 2014 and they spent most of that time talking about a day center. He says this is a manifestation of what they thought was a good idea. Location would be best between Yahara River and Camp Randall. Why did we site this here? That is where homeless people are, that is where the shelters are. The other issue is capacity and size. WE could warehouse people anywhere, but if we cant to be successful, it has to have a wide array of features, showers, storage, laundry, group meeting space, space to get services one-on-one and a place where homeless people can have access to community service and community services can have access to people to get them into permanent housing. They don’t want to see people warehoused, we want them moving into housing. This isn’t turnkey, it will need work, they have space to make this successful. He says that he’s sympathetic to the concerns of the neighbors, it will be controversial anywhere, what is important going forward, is that there are plans for security, what happens when its not open, a transportation plan for people to get to shelters. You have a great opportunity before you, this is the beginning, please vote to begin this process.
Questions for speakers
Wegleitner asks Bashford how a comprehensive day center helps with the larger homeless continuum and helps people find housing. He explains his day job is that they house 250 in permanent supportive housing for homeless people with severe mental illnesses. He says you have likely heard about housing first. It is a strategy where communities can more quickly get people form homelessness to housing. The agencies are making systemic changes, but we need to access people. It is hard to find homeless people when they are scattered all over the place. When they have a place to go during the day when we are all working. He has housing units available, he has people to co in them, but he also has outreach workers combing the city to find them.
Corrigan reads other registrations 4 in support, one opposed.
Motion on day center
Jeff Pertl moves sub 1, its a combination of all the amendments in one spot. Corrigan introduced it.
Tim Kiefer says when we vote, we vote yes or no, we can’t vote “yes, but”. If it were an option he would vote that way, he says he hears concerns and some of the speakers for the businesses live in his district. He understands the business perspective. He says valid concerns are raised, he wants to highlight 2 of them. Transportation to and from – he doesn’t think 50 people should wait at the bus stop, they need dedicated vans at pick up time. The second concern is to have a place to wait that is not in front of Pasquals. When they are busy at 6 in the evening and the day center is closing, that is damaging for the business. He spoke with Wegleitner who will meet with the businesses to address these concerns, he is voting yes, but these concerns need to be met.
Pertl says it is a challenging process and he’s been on the board for 4 years and they have been having this discussion that whole time, during that time they had several sites, he’s toured 3, they had 2 temporary locations and this is not simple. The neighborhood is now involved in a personal way on something that they have been discussing this at a policy level. That said, this is about their commitment. There is an issue of trust. There is a lot of process left to go. There is still the CUP process, if we don’t deliver on the pieces that go with this, then there is no CUP and a day center. This is not the done deal. This is going to come down to how we engage the neighborhood and how we run the day center, not this vote tonight. He will vote yes tonight, this is the first step in the race, not the last. Wegleitner is talking to everyone on earth trying to pull this together, but this is the board vote, not just for Supervisor Wegleitner.
Mary Kolar asks if the amendment could be given to the people in attendance.
Corrigan says that sub 1 is the amendments that are in the packet, posted prior to this. It is attached on the agenda. They will work on projecting it.
Wegleitner thanks them for adding the language from the Housing Issues Committee, Pan, Ritt, Zweifel and others were on that committee including people from the business community and those who lave lived experiences of homelessness. This addresses concerns of the neighborhood and to have highly trained staff and transportation. This is the beginning. We have a lot to do to make this work and get the CUP approved, otherwise we will have to sell it and start over. This is a challenging project. She appreciates the patience and engagement of the neighborhood. Of the homeless people who have waited for this for a long time. She thanks Lynn Green and Todd Violante for getting information to the neighborhood. She says they could have done better and they have to do so moving forward. This language and the resolution she introduced shows their commitment to have a neighborhood representative on the selection committee for an operator. The operator has to be responsive to the neighborhood. There will be steering committee meetings to address these concerns. This is not easy, there would be issues any where, but that is part of the commitment to make sure this is successful. She says that many people got to visit the 847 facility and it was bare bones, no amenities, short staff and too small of a place. Everyone I talk to about that had good and positive things to say. It left people with optimism about what could be done, not just for the people providing services but the volunteers who meet new people. She is optimistic about this site, we can build on that experience, we can plan and work to mitigate issues with a permanent site. She appreciates the frustration about not planning. The purchase is about being able to go forward with that planning. She will be here to fight for the neighborhood, more resources for the center and more affordable housing.
Jeremy Levin says he has been on Health and Human Services for 7 years and they have been working on this for a majority of that time. It was more balanced with the registrants when this went through the committee. We saw how important a transportation plan was with other sites as well, we need to get people to the job center and other places of employment. We need van service or we need to work with Metro, transportation will be key. Basford talked about the planning that has gone in and this has gotten the closest to their recommendations, to allow for storage, showers, laundry, etc so they can go to work. To have case management, computers and assistive technology to find a job. As we talked about planning, this has had a lot of planning, maybe it wasn’t the best with a specific neighborhood association but we are a public entity and we aren’t the best at negotiating, we set a price and one of the people who responded to the RFP wanted just a little bit more. He doesn’t fault the county executive and administration for moving forward. He is dispirited to hear about the businesses, he has been to Pasquals in his neighborhood and he goes to Baldwin St. Grill, this won’t stop him from going to your establishment. This is a resource center to help people who we need to help. The door is on the far side of some of the businesses and they can work on that with renovations. He has some concerns about the language that doesn’t match what his committee passed. He says they need to move forward. He looks forward to working through the process to get this done in the CUP process.
Corrigan says they passed out copies of the resolution.
Matano is voting “hell yeah”. We have been looking for a day center for years, we need it, we need it yesterday. The site was a surprise to him too. He found out about it an hour before it became public, he isn’t mad at the Executive for that. We had Bellini’s and lo and behold 10 minutes later that site was dead, we can’ shop for real estate in public. We’ve had issues with overpaying before because that is what happens when you negotiate in public. They have been working on this for years, the failed sites indicate the direction they have had. Martin St., Wright St., Lien Rd – they have made their intentions known for years. As for democratic reasons, if there were reasons to vote no they would. A business plan needs to have a business, we have to secure a building, we can’t do everything in one day. Our business plan is that we ran a day center before. He was at the crux of a controversial vote to send people away from the front porch – there was no “away” to send them to, he was the lone no vote. This is one place they can go. The porch has no programming or staffing, we expressed a policy of behavior based policy, there was no staff. One of our county staffers had to come down from his office to deal with it. In the day vs. night distinction, it is because if you can meet with people, you can find out their issues and help them get services and benefits and work with them to get their lives back on track. If they can take a shower, use a computer to find a job or housing. He doesn’t see people as toxic waste. He hears the fear and he sees these people as people, if we can connect with them and get them back on their feet or develop their talents with carpentry or art, that would enhance our community, it could become an economic engine. We can get them off the streets, but first we have to meet with them. Are the other services a problem, is there a limit where one more will cause a problem. They have thought about this site and heard about it being downtown. In his neighborhood senior housing was opposed, he can’t imagine why, and instead we are going to get a police station, but that isn’t in the CIP, so that won’t happen for a while and the rats can stay. He says we need to look at the greater good, Judge Doyle Square was corporate subsidies, guts the parking ramp, and there were lots of people opposed regionally, we aren’t hearing that kind of opposition. Yes they are hearing people and will have a business plan and full steam ahead. Thanks the county executive.
Leland Pan says he is impressed by the restraint and respect towards they have towards those who are opposed. They are not as nice to poor black people. He says that the government is bad at transparency and if they want to have success they need buy in and they can’t top down make decisions, that has been a problem at every level of government. What troubles him most is the attitude or underlying tone – we are talking about populations with behavioral issues. There is a population of peopel that if responsible for public urination, police calls, and other disturbanced, but they are college students, and he doesn’t hear an outcry about that. They are loud, they party, they are a source of crime and drugs. But he doesn’t hear complaints, is that because they are upper class and white. Homeless people are more likely to be victims. They get urinated on by college students. The critique of the behaviors is problematic, we can get away with drugs, sex and violence because we have a home, he thinks the language has been discriminatory, classist and racist and he feels he has a duty to voice that. He says that people can’t say they are for this but not at the expense of me. That is NIMBYism and he won’t stand for it.
Denny O’Loughlin says he heard this is a first step, are we doing what we did a year ago and wasting our time. Where is the city, the alder, the mayor? If he was mayor or an alder, he would think about what is going up in that community (5-6-7 story buildings) and we are going to take that key parcel off the taxroll. He will vote for it, we have the neighborhood saying no, the businesses saying no, but do we have the support of the city, will we have the same issues as a year ago. Usually we have a sense of what is going to happen after this, but he wants to know what the city thinks. Are we just doing what we did a year ago.
Nick Zweifel offers an amendment to strike “and potentially other uses”. He says this is a day center, we need a CUP, it will be specific, this is ambiguous language, it lacks open government and has no place in the resolution. They voted on HHN to take the words out. Somehow it found its way back in.
Corrigan says there are two motions on the floor, they need to vote on the sub and then take the amendment. They vote for the sub, and then take the amendment.
DeFelice says the day center has two purposes, a walk in resource center and the other is showers. You could sign up for anything from Obamacare to meals for wheels, would this language prevent that. Corrigan asks staff if that is true. Corporation Council says that would not be precluded, it is part of what a day resource center is. Other uses would be things not included in a day resource center.
John Hendrick says that he wouldn’t vote for it without Wegleitners good work on neighborhood engagement. The first two calls before the press release should have been to the neighborhood association and the nursery. One of the concerns is what happens when this closes and one of the solutions might be some positive uses of the building after the day center closes. This might be a way to address some issues. There are three buildings and there might be a different use in one of the parts of the property. There might be things the neighborhood and city would approve that might help address concerns. He thinks they should be transparent and keep option open.
Matt Veldran says he seconded it in committee to be clear with the neighborhood because it opens it up to too many things. This is not the time to add ambiguous uses.
Wegleitner is an amendment from Alder Marsha Rummel, the city of Madison, who has extensive experience engaging neighborhoods and it was because of Smart Growth and some of the businesses, there might be uses that would address concerns. She says that they will have to know that before they apply for the CUP and they want to signal they are open to addressing the concerns. I have met with people, talked on the time, talked to the city, she would appreciate a little trust about the intention of the trust and the purpose.
Levin also supports removing the language, they felt in HHN that it was stronger. This is how HHN passed it, they felt it gave certainty. This will make people move on after it closes. She says that Rummel opposed this in committee and we shouldn’t follow her lead.
(This is silly. Why so vehement on this?)
Dorothy Krause said she went to the neighborhood meeting, explored the building, there is more space than needed, they might want to put the bookmobile there in the garage. She wonders if this language would prevent that happening. Could there be other government uses of the space.
Corrigan says that maybe Corp Council could address if this language is binding. Would this prevent the building being used for the bookmobile. Marcia says probably, the major barrier would be the CUP process. She says they’d have to do another resolution and do another CUP.
Zweifel says they were not opposed to other uses, but who knows what they are? Those other uses need thought and debate and allow stakeholders to look at it and talk about. He just thought it was stronger without that language. The money set aside is for a day resource center and that is what taxpayers are expecting us to do. We just need transparency.
Kyle Richmond, opposed this, thinks Alder Rummel was wise to think through the other uses, this shouldn’t be taken out to do something symbolic. We want to make sure this benefits the homeless but also want to make sure the nieghborhood has flexibility.
Jeff Pertl says Personnel and Finance voted it back in, he thinks this is semantic, the CUP is what matters, this is non-binding language and we can continue arguing, but we should be smart about how we use this space. This doesn’t radically change the universe, vote your conscience.
(YAY!!!!!)
Henrick says “ditto”, he says that this might have sounded good at HHN, but the people at the neighborhood meeting and in many of Supervisor Wegleitner heard this, leave the option open to not shutter it at night, please think about what the alders and supervisors in the area want, please vote no.
Levin says its semantics, we have heard some mixed signals, it is dependent on the CUP, HHN thought we should have a better plan, if that could be stated before hand we’ll all be happy,
Fails 29 no, 9 yes, motion fails.
Back to the main motion to purchase the day center.
Veldran understands the concerns of the neighborhood and he is convinced that Supervisor WEgleitner and the neighborhood will find every way to make it a safe place. We did extra work for the Rainbow Project and the temporary center. He was in a meeting on sensitive crimes and they did an intervention on a hotel on E. Wash and those people had no place to go. This is for those folks, not just those that we see. What the officers did, they could send people there. This facility will show the strength of what we have been trying to do. Please vote yes.
Ronn Ferrell says that they got a letter on the process from the County Executive. Marty Rifkin was the broker to sell the building, he should be broker of the year. He took us for a ride. We made an offer on the 9th, after several proposals, by the 22nd we raised our offer and removed our contingencies. That is a broker, I want him. Some of the speakers talked about the building being in good shape. Why did you go through it with a flashlight, why not turn the lights on. This is an old building, we will have to spend a lot of money to make it ready. The neighbor spent 1.5M, we want to be proud of this, that people will be safe and be comfortable. $1.5M might be cheap, we need to make this ADA compliant, staff and the homeless need to get up stairs, what will an elevator costs? That alone could be 6 figures and we need to bring the electric up to code. He didn’t realize that the Landmarks commission gets a kick at the can, he’s not sure that’s true, that might be the highest hurdle out there. I wouldn’t pin my hopes on the plan commission stopping this, he thinks the city will make it happen. The steering committee will spend a lot of time and have a lot of recommendations and in the end they might not be what happens. Buying a building is a step in a process, we are doing it as the first step, we never bought the building before we had more information, we had plans being formed before we saw the others, we didn’t have any of that, how much will it cost to get up to code. If this doesn’t get city approval, we have a bad building in bad shape and we will be a seller that wants to get rid of it, we won’t get our money back out of it. This should have been an open and robust process, we didn’t follow our process, but he also understands the need and he is torn. He abstained. There were 18 people who voted for this once, there are 34 people in the room, will anyone change their mind, I don’t think so. We are doing this out of order, we don’t have information, what happened to the Dane County Way, we are doing this backwards. No matter where we put it the neighbors and business will object. That is the reality of Madison and anywhere in the world. He doesn’t know that he will change votes, but he needed to say things that haven’t been said. Mistakes were made, we didn’t listen to the neighborhood up front, I don’t blame the county board supervisors, I blame the 4th floor, they were wrong, we can’t change it, its going to pass, they city might stop it, but don’t county on it. He still doesn’t know how he will vote.
Patrick Downing says this is a worthwhile endeavor and there will be location problems anywhere, but in this case there were process problems, when the caution lights went off, was the realtor pressure. They took us for more than this is worth in anyone’s mind. He wants to know if the CUP process viable, he says if they show up with the concerns they have tonight that won’t happen. Even if we go ahead with this it won’t be ready this winter. One of the neighbors working for a realtor said they would help us find another location, what’s the rush. There may be other locations. Ready, fire aim is how we are going about this.
Andy Schauer, every great undertaking starts with a single step. We need to do this to get started, we are helping those who need it most. There are concerns, but we need to do this. He voted for it at Martin St, he would vote for it in his back yard and we need to go through with this. He is confident, we need to take the bold first step to show our investment. It will light a fire under those who have already done so much to make sure it is successful. The CUP process will make sure there is input. Lets take this first step.
Wegleitner agrees that there are better locaitons, however, we don’t have an accepted offer and this is a good locaiton, there are sisues and we must address them and continue to address issues that came up. She pushed to get $4M in the budget when we didn’t have enough money, that failed. Martin St. got stopped in the courts. We put more money in the budget to re-focus downtown. She met with city and county staff and elected officials to look for other sites, she pushed for Judge Doyle Square, Fairchild Building, Brayton Lot, Bellini’s – we looked at other sites that we edidn’t have political support for, here we have an accepted offer. She is open to other options, but we need at least one. This is a high priority of the board, it is shared priority of the city and United Way, there is a lot of support in the community and she hopes they will help make it happen.
Pertl says he hopes we don’t walk away because there is a fantasy option, he went through the other options, they all had issues. If you want to find the easy path, find another line of work. Vote yes.
Passes 30 – 4. 4 no votes are Solberg, Villettt, Ferrell and Downing. Stubbs, Chenowith and Clausius absent.
Jail Improvements
There is a sub that incorporates the work of the PP&J commission. They had workgroups, they built in the reocmmendations of the workgroup here, those will be revised by Mead and Hunt. Rusk hopes they vote for this.
Passes.
Digester
Downing says EANR was impressed with the plan – he was most impressed with the plant improvements. This is forward loooking, they have the qualifications and they support them.
Kiefer asks Mr. Heckle about reverse osmosis system – assuming DNR rules stay the same, cna you remain profitable without the county giving you a reverse osmosis system. Yes. Can you assure you won’t be back if DNR stays the same. He’s not the engineer, he is interested in technologies that would get greater nutrients, but nothing in our planning or thinking will cost the county $1.3 or $1.8M. This was not on their radar screen.
Kiefer says this will come up on budget night or nights, this contract vote is important because it relates to reverse osmosis. Levin does point of order to cut him off. Keifer says that this vote is important to see the larger picture. There is a study to study for $75,000 for this digester in the budget. He asks for more time because he keeps getting interrupted. He says that the county would buy equipment and land and company would run it, and they would make a profit. There never was operating subsidy or capital improvements. There were three major flaws that meant we had to replace the company. We had a contract that was not well done. It was not a community digester, only for select number of farmers. Competing farmers couldn’t use it. And they picked the wrong company. These decisions were made by the previous County Executive – to be clear. The county had to find a new operator because the previous operator did so poorly and here we are. We should keep in mind that this is not a charity, its a venture capital company from California, they turn around distressed businesses, they are here to make a profit. The future of renewable energy is in the profit sector. They are not a family farmer. We can’t always count on corporations to do what we want (Oscar Mayer), but he is voting on this because they don’t need a reverse osmosis system. He is talking about what we will hear, Levin still objecting, Corrigan tells him to stay on topic and I have completely missed a few things here. He says we are correcting mistakes of the past and we will continue this at the budget meeting.
Dave Ripp thanks the company for joining us. This is in his district. We need someone who needs what they are doing, its great. He toured digesters all day. He filled his water bottle with water from the digester and it good, its gone.
Levin supports it, he supports the transfer of the operator and nothing more.
Passes.
Other
Res 293 passes
2/3 majority vote items M1 and M2 – DeFelice votes no on 273. They have unanimous support save the no vote. No discussion.
Adjournment.
