This is the meeting after the meeting about the jail. The County Board’s regularly scheduled business meeting. Usually consisting primarily of announcements and rubber stamping the committee recommendations, so I usually haven’t been blogging it.
Getting Started
Chair Sharon Corrigan calls the meeting to order
Roll Call
Ritt, Salov, Stubbs, Buckingham, Danner, Downing, Krause, Kuhn absent
Ritt walked in after the roll call and was actually present but I don’t know if the clerk was notified of that.
Corrigan says that Danner, Salov and Stubbs notified them them that they would be absent.
Prayer/Inspirational Message
Paul Nelson says that this is his 6th year on the board and he hasn’t talked about libraries in his inspirational message. It would have been more timely at the last meeting because it was National Libraries Week. The theme was a good one this year “Libraries equal strong communities.” In his teaching and research he uses a book that has a chapter “Brahmins, Bequests and Determined Women.” The chapter is a summary of library development in the second half of the 19th century. Brahmins refers to a Boston Library founded in 1854 which was the first public library funded by a large city in 1854 and set the tone for other cities to follow. The bequests came later and referred to Andrew Carnegie and the construction of 2,000 libraries. And determined women is an overlooked and under appreciated aspect of public libraries. He says that last year at their Wisconsin Library Association and they inducted 5 women into their hall of fame. Lucy Smith Morris was one of the women, was born in 1850 and lived most of her life in Berlin. She organized thee Wisconsin Association of Women’s Club and they chose public libraries as their mission and a year later they established 100 libraries. She went on to be the head of two Wisconsin Libraries groups. Her inspiration continues into the 20th century. In the 1920s the Middleton Women’s Club got permission of the Department store (insert plug for local business here) at Parmeter and Hubbard to add two shelves of books in the store. An early version of a little free library. This was the start of the Middleton Library where he has spent 22 years of his professional life. He says he wants to leave them with 2 numbers. The first is 464. That is the number of public library locations in Wisconsin – main libraries, branch libraries and bookmobiles. There are still about 10 in Wisconsin. The other number is 285 and that is the number of McDonalds in Wisconsin. He says that is a gratifying imbalance. He says Lucy (he forgets her last name) for this.
Pledge of Allegiance
Honoring Resolutions
Analeise Eicher reads the resolution thanking Rainbow Project for their work on child abuse.
Sharyl Kato says she accepts this on behalf of all the agencies working to end child abuse. She has handouts for them, a chart mapping the structure of their coordination. There are contributions from so many agencies in the community. For every $1 we spend, we save $28. There are over 700,000 children that have been abused, in her small agency they served 1500 last year, 13,000 in 39 years. She asks that they remember Child Abuse Prevention month every day. In talking about the jail, she knows Sheriff Mahoney would agree that the more we are investing the less we need our jail, she is talking about mental health and trauma in the young ones. The other hand out she has is for 100 ways to praise children, you can remember that every day to prevent this. They see it every day, its tragic and its intense. But she sees survivors, a woman who experienced 2 sexual assaults at age 4, neglect and domestic violence exposure and child abuse, but she graduated from graduate school and is a speech therapist in inner-city Chicago and is a coach for 6th graders and they are the all African American team that have now gone to state. We know this works and she wanted to share the successes as well as the pain that is there.
Announcements
Melissa Ratcliffe announces that at the next meeting there is a pot luck after the meeting. They will be at the East Highway Garage. She sent out a sign up and she hopes they will all respond to Laura. The theme is Wisconsin hot dishes so get out your family recipe book. She has been told it will be a short meeting.
Andrew Schauer thanks them for the card the wedding, Leo and he appreciate it.
Carousel Bayrd sent out an email about the YWCA Women of Distinction Leadership Awards and two of their colleagues, County Board Supervisor and Representative Sheila Stubbs and Human Services Director Lynn Green will be honored. She has the privilege of nominating them, with so much help from others, so thanks to Chair Corrigan, Karen Peterson Thurlow, Supervisors Eicher and Kuhn and former County Executive Kathleen Falk, they were fundamental in putting these applications together. If you’d like to join in honoring them and other fabulous women it is May 30th, they are putting together a table and contact her if you are interested.
Heidi Wegleitner says she wants to make sure everyone knows that we now have professional soccer in Madison and its in District 2 at Breese Stevens Field, Forward Madison is the team. As a retired soccer player and coach she is really excited to have this in her district. She knows the county clerk is a big fan and if you’ve visited his office you can check out some of the swag there. Check out the schedule on line, there is another home game this Saturday.
Carl Chenowith says that in addition to the pot luck, May is a special month for Stoughton, Syttende Mai starts and its just a short drive down there after the meeting to start the celebration and plan to follow up on Saturday and Sunday for the celebrations and parades. Make plans to walk the run/walk from the Capital to Stoughton. Please consider coming to visit our community during that weekend. Corrigan says it just a short 17 miles stroll.
Corrigan mentions the birthdays. Supervisor (Maureen) McCarville is celebrating on the 21st.
She also mentions that there is an envelope going around for the flower fund, we have many things to celebrate and condolences to give and we try to keep that fund up so we can send flowers on behalf of the board and if you toss a few dollars in there they will be able to continue to do that.
Bills and Payments
Passes, no discussion
Claims recommended for denial
Passes, no discussion
Approval of Minutes
Passes, no discussion
Consent Calendar
Passes, no discussion
Reports on Zoning Petitions
Passes, no discussion
Award of Contracts
All pass, no discussion
Chuck Erickson leaves.
Resolutions
Only discussion on one item, the rest pass without discussion
Edward Byrne JAG Grant Memorandum of Understanding
BK Note: This item shortcuts the process for the police and sheriff to apply for and get new toys outside of the budget process – things like body cameras, tasers, rifles, etc.
Wegleitner asks about the mechanics of it. She says it looks like we are giving advance approval of applying for the money but will have to approve it after its been awards, how will that work.
A staff person (sorry, no one said who it was and I don’t know the county staff all that well) says this comes out every summer and there is short timeline to submit the application. It comes out in June and they have to submit by the end of July. They have to specify what they get in the grant. The City of Madison is the applicant and the county is a sub grantee, but the application process has to say how the money will be split up and this allows the County Executive to sign the agreement for the application to go in. When the grant is awarded it will have to come back to the county board for apporoval.
Wegleitner says she is familiar with tight timelines with HUD and the funding bodies she is on identify priorities and while they might not know what they will get, they identify the priories for the funding they may get. Is there a way the county board could have a sense for what that money would be for. He says that they run into problems getting the agreement signed.
Sheriff Dave Mahoney says that as soon as they learn that the grant is available the meet with the city and come up with the priorities for the grant and have an idea how much they will get. The issue they come into is getting the signatures to DOJ. It has never been spent without your permission. He doesn’t see a problem notifying them of the priorities, but they need the mayor and county executive to sign to apply and then they will come for final approval from this body.
Wegleitner asks if they get the grant, we can’t change it at that point.
Mahoney says they have identified what the priorities are. He says that the grantees of this agreement are the Drug Court and the Crime Response program in the DAs office. So it’s the city, sheriff, courts and DA that are the recipients of the grant.
Wegleitner asks if they would be ok with notifying the board when this memo is signed.
Mahoney says he has no issue letting them know what priorities they have identified and letting them know they are applying. And then they will do the resolution before they expend the resources.
Passes.
Items Requiring 2/3 Vote for Passage
M2 and M4 are separated.
The rest pass with an unanimous vote, no discussion.
Henry Vilas Zoo Accounts
Jeremy Levin wants to ask a question of Supervisor Chuck Erickson (I saw him in the hallway as he was leaving, he had to go to the emergency room for a family member). Levin realizes that Erickson is gone, Corrigan points out staff are here. Levin says it was just a rhetorical question to point out that while the lines are needed, the contributions will not be charitable or tax deductible until we get a long term partner we won’t see much going into them.
Passes unanimously with no further discussion.
Sheriff Office budget line items
Tim Kiefer says his understanding is that someone wants to give them $8,000 and he wants to know who the “someone” is.
Sheriff Mahoney says that this is an item that was placed in his budget in 2019 and they made the decision to go look for private donations instead of keep it in the budget. David Wood, a significant supporter of Dane County and the Sheriff’s office, stepped up to pay to create the app.
Keifer says this is unusual. Do you know what the motivation is?
Mahoney says he is not surprised, they got $180,000 for the beltline truck donated by businesses and individuals. He likes the idea reaching out on public-private partnerships to take some of the burden off the board and taxpayers. His motivation is that he was a supporter of Dane County and the Sheriff’s office.
Kiefer says that he is in favor. He says that there is a reason there is a low that says if we accept money we should know who it comes from to make sure it is legitimate. Here is sounds like it is. And it is great that David Wood did that. The resolution should disclose this in the future.
Passes on an unanimous vote.
Other Business
Chair Corrigan says that these are other matters that they don’t take up, but they put into the record as having been before the county board.
No Items
Adjournmentxx
Chair Corrigan reminds them the next meeting is at 6:00, it is a tour of the Bio-gas facility. A bus will take them there and then they will have their meeting at the East Highway Garage.
