County Board Strategy: Bury Head in Sand

Will we have a day center by November 1? December 1?Odds are, no.

WHAT IS THE CURRENT STATUS?
If I follow this all correctly, and I’d give that is about 60/40 odds, this is where I think we are at.

1. The county has the building permit that they need, with 14 conditions. Those conditions need to be worked out yet. That part can often take as long or longer than the approval process, so that all needs to be worked through. The conditions from the planning committee are as follows:

Dave Bloom moved and Brian Burkeland seconded the motion to approve the site plans with the following conditions:
a) Owner shall comply with the State of Wisconsin Commercial Building Code, Dane County Code of Ordinances, and Town of Madison Code of Ordinances.
b) Owner shall provide an Erosion control and Stormwater Management Plan as approved by Dane County (if required).
c) Owner shall provide a parking, loading, and circulation plan in accordance with Dane County Code of Ordinances.
d) Owner shall sprinkler the building; provide a monitored fire alarm and Knox box as per the Town Fire Chief.
e) Exterior lighting shall be dark sky compliant.
f) Owner shall be responsible for all costs associated with the extension of public water main, sidewalk and curb and gutter, and terrace landscaping (including trees, driveway aprons, seeding and mulching, and restoration) from Fish Hatchery Road west to 1490 Martin Street.
g) Owner shall enter into an agreement with the Town of Madison for the extension of public facilities within the Town right-of-way of Martin Street.
h) Owner shall reimburse the Town of Madison for the costs of all police, fire, and ambulance calls to serve clients of the Day Resource Center, wherever the call may originate from within the Town of Madison limits.
i) Owner shall be responsible to self-monitor occupancy of the building. When maximum occupancy has been reached, entry to the building by clients shall cease and transportation of clients to the center shall cease.
j) Owner shall provide a privacy fence between the buildings on the east side and repair the privacy fence on the west side of the property.
k) Owner shall provide an ejector pump at the nmth end of the building to discharge sewage to a downstream sanitary sewer manhole flowing easterly toward Fish Hatchery Road.
1) Owner shall be responsible for proper snow removal as per the Town Public Works Director.
m) Future alterations requiring a building permit shall require Town Plan Committee approval.
n) Any proposed increase in occupancy shall require Town Plan Committee approval.

I bolded the items that are going to cost the county more money and therefore likely need another vote of the county board or items that I think are going to end up being problematic in some way. The parking is particularly curious to me. The materials submitted to the Town of Madison say:

“Dane County Zoning Division approves the reduction of parking stalls at 1490 Martin St. for the purposes of the new day resource center. Roger Lange has reviewed the proposal of itensifying the existing land use at 1490 Martin St in the Town of Madison. Persuant to the Dane County Code of Ordinance section 10.18(60(a), reduction of required parking stalls may be permitted if bicycle parking facilities are incorporated into the design and the facility is within 100 feed of public transportation route. Given that bike racks will be provided, van service will be part of the facility operation, and the facility is approximately 400 feet from a bus route, Dane County Zoning Division will allow the reduction of parking spots for the new facility at 1490 Martin St.”

Really? Are they calling the “van service” which is minimal the public transportation within 100 feet or are they just ignoring that. And, doesn’t this ignore the issue that car campers (a growing number of them) may want to use services there too?

Anyways, there is work to be done, but the Town of Madison isn’t going to work on resolving any of these issues until they resolve the next issue.

2. The Town Board is appealing the zoning decision to the Board of Adjustments that doesn’t meet until August 28th.

BEST CASE SCENARIO
1. The Board of Adjustments meets and has quorum on August 28th
2. The Board of Adjustments agrees with the county.
3. The Town Board does not appeal that and go to court, or any of the neighbors who may also file.
4. A quick negotiation is completed on all the 14 conditions on the building permit in September, which would take heroic efforts to get that passed through the County Board and the Town Board, they’d have to negotiate it in a week, get it scheduled. Most likely couldn’t happen til at least mid-October and given the way things are going this has about a 1% chance of happening that they would come to agreement after an appeals battle between lawyers. And don’t forget this includes the CITY of Madison and the Water Utility extending water services to the county.
5. Let’s play along, they get their building permit mid-October, they then have to get the water extension (rip up the roads), install sidewalks and curb and gutter, put in the injector pump, do landscaping plus all the interior work which includes a sprinkler system. In two weeks to meet the Nov 1 deadline, in six weeks to hit the Dec. 1 deadline.

Really, its not going to happen. We all know this right?

WORST CASE SCENARIOS
1. Board of Adjustments doesn’t have quorum.
2. Board of Adjustments agrees with the Town then either could happen
a) Dane County appeals this to the courts
b) Dane County has to go through the Town Board zoning process which may be a conditional use or it may be an entire rezoning, either way, that will take months.
3. Board of Adjustments doesn’t agree with the Town, Town appeals to the courts and we wait for that process for months or years.

Should I go on . . . I haven’t even gotten to
4. Town Board and County can’t come to agreement on or resolve any of the following
a) Owner shall comply with the State of Wisconsin Commercial Building Code, Dane County Code of Ordinances, and Town of Madison Code of Ordinances.
b) Owner shall provide an Erosion control and Stormwater Management Plan as approved by Dane County (if required).
c) Owner shall provide a parking, loading, and circulation plan in accordance with Dane County Code of Ordinances.
d) Owner shall sprinkler the building; provide a monitored fire alarm and Knox box as per the Town Fire Chief.
e) Exterior lighting shall be dark sky compliant.
f) Owner shall be responsible for all costs associated with the extension of public water main, sidewalk and curb and gutter, and terrace landscaping (including trees, driveway aprons, seeding and mulching, and restoration) from Fish Hatchery Road west to 1490 Martin Street.
g) Owner shall enter into an agreement with the Town of Madison for the extension of public facilities within the Town right-of-way of Martin Street.
h) Owner shall reimburse the Town of Madison for the costs of all police, fire, and ambulance calls to serve clients of the Day Resource Center, wherever the call may originate from within the Town of Madison limits.
i) Owner shall be responsible to self-monitor occupancy of the building. When maximum occupancy has been reached, entry to the building by clients shall cease and transportation of clients to the center shall cease.
j) Owner shall provide a privacy fence between the buildings on the east side and repair the privacy fence on the west side of the property.
k) Owner shall provide an ejector pump at the nmth end of the building to discharge sewage to a downstream sanitary sewer manhole flowing easterly toward Fish Hatchery Road.
1) Owner shall be responsible for proper snow removal as per the Town Public Works Director.
m) Future alterations requiring a building permit shall require Town Plan Committee approval.
n) Any proposed increase in occupancy shall require Town Plan Committee approval.

5. The Town Board or the County Board don’t agree with what staff has negotiated.
6. The scheduling of the meetings and who votes first becomes a political struggle
7. There are issues with the scheduling of the contractors.

Really, should I go on . . . .

Not. going. to. happen.

BACK UP PLAN?
Last night Heidi Wegleitner’s resolution (also sponsored by Al Matano, Michelle Ritt, Kyle Richmond, John Hendrick, Leland Pan) to spent up to $4M for a downtown location only got additional votes from liberals Sheila Stubbs, Abigail Weist, Patrick Downing, Dorothy Krause and conservatives Ronn Ferrell, and Mike Willett. With 12 votes, it clearly failed. One might ask, where were the rest of the liberals? Well, they were being, “liberals”. (See explanation of “liberal” here.) The whole issue here is that Wegleitner introduced this resolution on May 2nd and it was referred to Personnel and Finance and Health and Human Needs Committee along with the Homeless Issues Committee. One committee has acted on it, guess which one? Yeah. Jeff Pertl (pertl.jeff@countyofdane.com) chair of Personnel and Finance and Jeremy Levin (levin.jeremy@countyofdane.com) have refused to schedule it for discussion, so Wegleitner had to make a motion to pull it from the committees so it could even get to the board floor so they could even discuss it. Yes, $4M is a lot, but the staff wouldn’t look at other options beyond the price point that was offered so they made a ridiculously high number so many more buildings could be considered. Now that even Lynn Green says it doesn’t look like the Martin St. location is going to work (end of the post), there needs to be a back up plan and the resolution could have been that option. Since this failed, this is where we are at.
1. The next county board meeting isn’t until August 14th and unless a miracle happens, nothing will be introduced at that meeting because they are waiting for the 8/28 Board of Adjustments meeting.
2. The September meetings are the 4th and the 18th, so if they scramble over the Labor Day weekend they might be able to get something together for the Sept. 4th meeting, otherwise it will wait until September 18th to be introduced.
3. Then that goes to committees – which on the county board, might get back to the board by Sept 8th if the bust their butts, but likely it wouldn’t be until October 2nd that they would vote on something – and who knows what that might be.
4. Assuming whatever the vote on works with zoning and budgets and whatever, they might have found a place they could negotiate a lease and move in Nov 2. Bloody unilkely, since a LEASE means operating funds, and they don’t have operating funds, they have capital funds.
5. So, more likely scenario, we look at the real estate purchasing process, architectural drawings, construction schedules, and scrambling to furnish and make things work and we are into next year again.

BACK UP, BACK UP PLAN
Start looking at gap services funding again and try to do better than last year – which means services on days the library, churches and Bethel are closed and Sunday mornings between w7 when people get kicked out of shelter and 1:00 when the library opens. But remember, much of that might have to go through the board again, depending upon how much it costs, they only have $10,000 left in the line for homeless services.

Yeah, that’s where we are. I will work on the audio from the county board meeting last night, but frankly, I didn’t want to have to relive it. It was ridiculous. Sigh . . . “liberals”.