Dane County Board Recap

A little discussion on if county board chairs should get paid $100 more a month, some technical corrections and a spat about what gets referred to committees.  Lots of absences!

You can watch all the fun and excitement by following along here:

ROLL CALL/ABSENCES

Roll Call:  Stubbs, Veldran, Bayrd, Buckingham, Chenowith, Claussius, Danner, Downing, Kuhn, McCarville are all absent.  Bayrd, Claussius, Danner, Kuhn, McCarville, Veldran, Buckingham and Stubbs all were notified absences.  Stubbs was supposed to give the inspirational message but instead she is voting in the Assembly.

INSPIRATIONAL MESSAGE/PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

County Board Chair Corrigan says she thought she would talk a little bit about where McCarville is tonight and in recognition of Veterans Day and in honor of something special that is happening with her family.  Supervisor McCarville in Milwaukee accepting the remains of her uncle who died in the 2nd World War.  His remains were recently identified and the flags are being flown at half staff today in recognition of that.   She reads Governor Ever’s Press Release  to give you a little information about what Supervisor McCarville is experiencing and in honor of Veterans Day and all those who have passed away in conflict.

Gov. Evers Orders Flags to Half-Staff in Honor of Army Sgt. Robert W. McCarville

MADISON — Gov. Tony Evers yesterday ordered the flags of the United States and the state of Wisconsin to be flown at half-staff on Sat., Nov. 9, 2019, in honor of Army Sgt. Robert W. McCarville.

Army Sgt. Robert W. McCarville, 24, of Beloit, was killed in action on Dec. 5, 1942, during the Battle of Buna-Gona in New Guinea while serving with Company L, 128th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division of the United States Army. He was awarded the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Good Conduct Medal, Presidential Unit Citation, American Defense Service Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and Combat Infantryman Badge for his service. Army Sgt. Robert W. McCarville was accounted for on July 10, 2019, and will be laid to rest next to his parents in his hometown on Nov. 9, 2019.

“On Saturday we will honor the life and courageous service of Army Sergeant McCarville by lowering the flags to half-staff,” said Gov. Evers. “On behalf of the state of Wisconsin, we welcome him home and thank him for his bravery and service. I also offer my condolences to his family as they honor his memory.”

Executive Order #58 can be found here.

The all say the Pledge of Allegiance.

SPECIAL MATTERS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

There are no announcements (which is highly unusual, usually the majority of their meetings are taken up with announcements)

Corrigan reads off the November Birthdays – Ratcliffe, Chawla, Ripp, Kuhn and wishes them Happy Birthday.

Corrigan says that through the United Way annual campaign this year we raised $3,500 for that campaign with your contributions so thank you.

ITEMS PASS QUICKLY WITHOUT DISCUSSION

The following items (details here) pass unanimously on a voice vote without discussion:

• Bills over $10,000
• Claims recommended for denial
• Approval of minutes for Oct 16 & 17
• Consent Calendar 1 – 18 except for items 11 & 17.

2020 ANNUAL ACTION PLAN FOR FUNDING RECOMMENDATIONS

Patrick Miles asked for this to be separated.  He has a substitute to change the amount on the Dane County Housing Authority.  After it was passed at Personnel and Finance it came to his attention that there were some errors. The amount for the Dane County Housing Authority should have been in the CDBG column and near the bottom of that table the Lutheran Social Services line should have been in the HOME column.  The dollar amounts stayed the same.

Heidi Wegleitner asks to be recorded as abstaining.

Amendment and the main motion pass on a voice vote seemingly unanimously.

PURCHASE COUNTY SELF-INSURED WORKERS COMPENSATION 

Steve Peters separated this item.  He asks to be marked a abstaining on this item.  There is no discussion.

ZONING PETITONS

12 items pass with the committee recommendations, there is not discussion.

ORDINANCE TO RAISE COUNTY BOARD AND CHAIR COMPENSATION

Tim Kiefer asks to be recorded as voting no.

Amendment to cut county board chair additional compensation

Patrick Downing moves to delete paragraph 1(c).  Chair Sharon Corrigan asks if he has that in writing.  Downing asks if he has to write down everything that 1(c) is?  Corrigan says the rule is that you submit it to clerk.  Downing asks if he can give her a piece of paper that says “delete 1(c)”, Corrigan says yes.  Corrigan asks for a second.  At first there are no seconds, but Jeremy Levin seconds the motion.

NOTE:  1(c) says the following: (c) In addition to the salary set forth above, with the exception of the Executive Committee, supervisors who serve as chair of a standing committee or the Extension Committee and Land Conservation Committee shall receive an additional salary of $100 per month.

Downing says that he has chaired a committee 5 terms and he thinks it doesn’t take a whole lot of extra work because of the fine work of the department staff.  He really can’t see that it is worth any extra money at all and he would encourage them to leave this one out.

Paul Nelson says that he will vote against the amendment.  He has also served as the Chair of Public Works and Transportation for three years and he says his first two years on the committee were not the same as the 3 years I served as chair.  It was basically was a big step up in responsibility and how he approached preparing for the meetings, in his interacting with staff and other department heads and other standing committee chairs.  With Public Works a large part of the agenda has to do with change orders and sometimes we have had 20 or more on an agenda and often time there is not listed in order, and with legistar you have to go back and forth.  So one of the things he did before every meeting was reformat the agenda so that all the change orders were listed in the order of the project.  In the example E1, E8 and E9 were all about the same project even tho there were not all together.  He put a little gloss of the reason for the change order, what it would accomplish and summarized the original contract costs, the current revised contract cost and a percentage above the original contract costs and he shared that with the committee. He says it is something he didn’t have to do, but he felt it was his responsibility as chair to take a much deeper dive into the agenda than he would do otherwise.  Another example would be what they just went through with the budget.  For the chair of Personnel and Finance, Supervisor Miles this year and Supervisor Dye in the past, it is really an extraordinary amount of work that they have to do.  He thinks this can easily be defended because in his experience in his 6 years on the board he has seen the committee chairs take a big step up in responsibility.  He does not support the amendment.

Jeremy Levin seconded it because he agrees with Supervisor Downing.  He also served a couple terms as chair of Health and Human Needs and he doesn’t think a chair should be paid more. He doesn’t want this to be an incentive to either run for chair or maintain a chairmanship.  He thinks its good to have turnover and over time chairs sometimes will step back and let someone else have a chance.  He agrees with the rest of it.  For those who saw his LinkedIn he is celebrating 11 years on the County Board and for the first 9 of those he was paid the same $8200 and it didn’t matter if I was chair or not and I was happy to get a raise starting in April of 2018, but he doesn’t think a chair, other than the Board Chair, who does do a significant amount of work more than the rest of us and is expected to, he doesn’t think a chair of a committee needs to have extra compensation and he thinks this will be something that will muddy the waters and be a negative to the board overall.

Pat Miles is in opposition to the amendment and supports the original language.  As Supervisor Nelson said, there is added responsibility for those who have had the privilege to serve as chair, which he has served as chair fo two different committees and from that experience he can tell you there is considerably more responsibility and meeting time, which means time away from our day job, family.  And we want the role of committee chairs to be a competitive position that people aspire to and if we are asking people to sacrifice time away from their day job and what have you, then its only fair that we compensate them and create equity in making it more viable for more people to serve.

Andrew Schauer is in support of the amendment.  He thinks when they do the math on this $1200 a year x 5 or 6 standing committee chairs, he can think of a couple things that would be a better use of $6, 7, 8,000 a year.  He thinks the committee chairmanships will be plenty competitive to get to that point with or without this extra amount.  He thanks all the committee chairs for their hard work and I think they should put in as much work as is necessary to do the job, but he is with Supervision Levin and Downing on this one and he will be voting in favor of the amendment.

Heidi Wegleitner appreciates that committee chairs have additional responsibility, they also have addition and kind of unique power in the committee as well and that is why people aspire to be chairs is so they can work to set the agenda on their committees and fulfill that leadership service to the board.  For her, she sees this as something that should be developed with more process and context about compensation across all committees.  She has served on some and chaired for multiple terms committees like the Human Services Board that have spent a lot of time working on staff and thinking about how to analyze budget recommendations and pour through a lot of materials related to the human services budget.  She understands that this would only apply to standing committees and certain chapters that are in Chapter 7 of the County Board rules and if they are thinking about equity, they should also think about how they are compensating chairs in other committees and how we are doing per diems and stipends for the community members that get involved in the committee process.  To put forward this amendment to increase in addition to the Supervisor raise that is in this, that she supports, to also add an additional $1200 to committee chairs just doesn’t seem fair to her and it deserves further discussion in the larger context of their committee structure and how they are compensating all members of those committees, including the community members who we want engaged who may not have the same amount of means to participate in county government.  She will be voting in favor of this amendments.

Roll Call on amendment

Aye – Wegleitner, Chawla, Chenowith, Downing, Doyle, Erickson, Kiefer, Kilmer, Levin, Nuygen-Hilfiger, Ripp, Ritt, Schauer,

No – Young, Audet, Bollig, DeGuarmo, Eicher, Jones, Knoll, Krause, Miles, Nelson, Peters, Ratcliff, Rusk, Salov, Schwellenbach, Corrigan

Absent – Stubbs, Veldran, Bayrd, Buckingham, Claussius, Danner,  Kuhn, McCarville

Fails 13 – 16.

Main motion

Downing asks to be recorded as voting no.  There is no further discussion, it sounded like a couple no votes.

RESOLUTIONS

Both resolutions pass without discussion.

ITEMS REQUIRING TWO-THIRDS MAJORITY FOR PASSAGE

Items M 1, 3, 4 and 5 pass without discussion.  They are recorded as them being unanimous.