Interesting discussion at the Economic Development Committee, sounds like there is some backing off of the bold statements by the Mayor and the rapid timeline. Perhaps some “misinformation”. And, the message to the development community is clear, if you want to see changes, you have to show up, don’t just send your staff for your various groups, cuz there’s no data to support the concerns. And there are more open meetings concerns.
ANOTHER ERROR IN OPEN MEETINGS LAW?
The first one during the meeting was mentioned here.
The second one is that the staff had a different agenda then the one on the listed on the weekly schedule, and the one in legistar, and the one that several committee members had.
The one the public and committee members had, had an item listed as follows:
4 18121 A Communication from Tim Cooley, Director of the Economic Development Division Regarding the City’s Development Review and Approval Initiative.
5:40-5:55
Progress report to EDC from staff
The one the staff had indicated there would be a discussion. Which, indeed there was as you will see below. The discussion went from about 5:40 or 5:45 til past 6:30.
What’s annoying about this is that if I had just read this and not known they are notoriously bad at their agendas, I would have skipped it, why bother showing up right. I’m certain others did that. But I had a hunch that this wouldn’t just be an update. Which it wasn’t. The update is about 10% of this post. The discussion, about 80% of the post.
PROGRESS REPORT
Memo
Cooley tells them about his June 30 memo to stakeholders. Says unfortunately that the one he sent (and a certain blogger posted all over) didn’t go to all alders, but they were supposed to be included. He asked various groups get involved and interested, he asked them to put together written comments on process and get to them by the end of the month.
Calendar/Deadline
At the last Economic Development Commission meeting the Mayor asked us to take the lead and gave us labor day as a deadline. They realized once they looked at the calendar, there was not way they would meet that. They did try to put together a calendar to get this to the Common Council by mid-October, but the council will be bogged down on budget issues. However, they can get it to them and they can look at what action they want to take. Yes, it is an aggressive calendar, and it unfortunate it is going on through the summer, but that is unavoidable.
Comments and Materials
There has been work done by a number of groups, as they get the reports and comments directly into legistar, they are keeping a running file. He has asked staff to put together a hard copy briefing binder for the committee that has a tab system so its not all jumbled chronologically.
Misinformation
There has been some misinformation floating around, he is surprised no one called my staff to get clarifications, this is not an attempt to minimize or eliminate voice of neighborhoods, now there are even editorials in paper, there are a number of neighborhoods with reservations and concerns.
Neighborhood Summit
There is a neighborhood summit being planned, he will attend. Its Saturday, July 31st, 9 – noon at Trinity Lutheran Church. He says he’ll get the Economic Development Commission members the information. They will have workshops and breakout sessions. He is very interested in giving a small perspective in the beginning of that (hint, hint).
Looking at the Process.
He says that part of the packet is a revised flow chart that Brad Murphy from the Planning Department put together. (Document 1, 2 and 3) There is the pre-application process and what happens after the approvals by council.
Comprables/Chamber wants Presumptive Approval/Peer Review
Mayor also asked them to look at comps, he was hoping the Chamber would take it on, they will do a survey in the region and other cities they benchmark against, they only are looking at what happens once in city process. They are working on presumptive approval, if its not approved in 60 days it would be assumed approved. For the city staff to go out an talk with 10 or so cities to get a realistic handle on their process is cost and time prohibitive, its one thing to look at their website, but different to talk to the people there (bankers, lawyers, developers, staff, neighborhoods). Without that ability, to do anything more than looking at presumptive approval would be hard. LaFollette (appendices) did look at some cities. Once we have a framework or recommendations we might choose to get some peer review from other cities, they could send them to the planning director and neighborhoods and see what they think.
Public Involvement/Government Responsibility to review
Madison is unique in need and want for involvement, it may be interesting to compare with other cities from an intellectual point of view. We want to give everyone the voice they should have, but land use decisions are in the hand of government and municipality and that is where the discussion should go.
Next steps
It will go to Plan Commission next week, Landmarks as well, both next Monday. He’s happy to speak to anyone that would have me explain rationale and goals. Does want to make it clear, this is not to push someone aside as far as having a voice, they are trying to look at the process and how to go forward being efficient predictable and ?? (missed it).
DISCUSSION
Timeline
Mark Clear asks if realistic timeline is the one submitted to mayor.
Tim Cooley says he is sticking with one in the memo. Is it realistic?
Clear says that is the question.
Cooley indicates its still a stretch.
What is the scope of what they are looking at?
Ed Clarke says in talking to people, a couple people pretty quickly got into conversation about the grounds on which landmarks commission can make their choices, he thought we were at higher level about how to move between and among the agencies, some people are afraid we are going to tell Plan Commission and Urban Design Commission what criteria they should use.
Cooley says they should stay at higher level, they should look at the pre-application phase and what happens once approved. Landmarks Commission is looking at its own ordinance, our role is not to micromanage commissions or get into fire inspections, that is not our purview, our purview is predictability. Realizing that there are a number of constituencies, they to can come up with a way to make it smooth as possible, 95% of projects proposed go through just fine, it’s the defining ones, the large ones, the exceptions to the rule that define what is a city is. People quick to ask if this is a Edgewater response, it is not an Edgewater response. There were issues before the Edgewater, if don’t do anything we’ll just be in the same spot. Cooley says a measure of success is that everyone a little pissed off.
Clarke says we are already there
Cooley says they should not roll over for the developer nor should they give up their statutory requirement to be a land use decision maker, neighborhoods should stand up and not lose sight of city’s role to balance short term want with longer term needs, its a balancing act, no one will be completely happy, can it be approved from predictability and time perspective is the question, time is killing the investment, constant referrals and cost to development and city resources is huge, no one has documented this, we know anecdotally, if had resources for cost benefits analysis, they could find out what it costs.
Neighborhood input and plans
Chris Schmidt says that a lot of jurisdiction is defined by local and state law, in his limited experience. In his part of town, the lack of clarity on how procedure works and how input matters and where is decision made, and they should “back off” – where is it appropriate to show up. Hilldale apartments are at Urban Design Commission, if don’t like the building, where do I go, can go to Urban Design Commission but that is not their bailiwick. He told them to go to plan commission, some of that structure could be clarified, and neighborhood plan relationship to comprehensive plan neighborhoods need to know what they mean, even the ones passed recently.
Cooley says plans are just that, we have plans from 1985, times change, landscape and economics change dramatically and can we work through that with idea that we still have idea of where we are going. How that works in the process and how to have that input, we should discuss those changes, not have plan cast in granite, that is both a policy and process issue.
Schmidt says that neighborhoods knowing the relationship and understanding what their recommendations mean is important, for some critical as to whether they pursue their plans. He says that is something they should clarify. When they did their plan, sometimes advisory and sometimes part of plan, makes a legal difference now.
Cooley says they are working to get in one place an explanation of how they work together and where exceptions are, if I ask 5 people, I will get 5 answers about the relationship of comprehensive and neighborhood plans.
Doug Nelson says he needs more background on the issue. There has to be a right answer.
Cooley says they may define it, without getting city attorney to write a 35 page opinion.
Clear says even the city attorney’s memo wouldn’t be internally consistent.
SHOW ME THE DATA
Julia Stone asks about information gathering, where are complaints about the process already?
Cooley says investment and development community and public at large that feel not included in discussion or being represented.
She asks if they can see the complaints, where are they?
Cooley tells them that they can look at the Bugher report from 2004.
Stone asks why they don’t have recent information.
Clear says there are not formal written complaints, its anecdotal.
Cooley says someone will chew his ear off, and he knows that is one side and he hears the other side and the truth in the middle. When he asks an upset person to discuss with mayor or alder or committee, they say they can’t do that, they don’t want to, the information is anecdotal, that is what we have to live with.
Chamber/Comprables/Presumptive Approval
Stone says if relying on Chamber to get data from other cities, not work for her, there are other ways to communicate, is there something we can do on our own staff to talk to similar communities,
Cooley says very clear the Chamber has asked Sue Gleason to look at presumptive approval, the mayor’s request was to benchmark what other communities are doing, they don’t have staff, can’t do an RFP with no funding, he says what kind of info really getting at but the process can look like one thing on paper and different in practice, have to go to city to be accurate, question he has is that really necessary to design a process that works for the city of Madison? Can they talk to Wisconsin communities, there are statutory things peculiar to Wisconsin that may not exist in Portland or Austin, they will get info and discover new ideas, just like every project is different or peculiar, so is every development process with the city.
Nelson says that they can find cities that are better and more predictable, more timely, to see areas of opportunity, can’t do much beyond that, not time or money.
Cooley says that some of the areas have median income twice that of Madison, developers have different motives than what they do here, variable all over the place.
Clarke says they should measure benchmarks against THRIVE communities, they have 6 or 7, they were chosen cuz same economic and demographic profile and size, we have a lot of date about those communities already, what do their poverty and schools look like, what is their average age, the level of people have insurance, etc. The THRIVE report its extensive and constantly being updated.
Clear says that is a statistical abstract, not kind of info we are looking for to compare, agree with Stone that info is valuable, but hard to obtain. Not reality if just look at paper, there may be 6 different realities.
Data Please
Selkowe says there is data on complaints, there should be some sort of info beyond anecdotes, how many go through the process in two years, how many approved and denied, average time of process, quantify how many took 45 days for plan commission, what kind of projects are those? They could sample some of that data, she is not comfortable with anecdotes with no facts, if process is too long, how long does it take? If too cumbersome, how many denied? Some of those facts we can quantify.
Cooley says Brad put out a document a couple months ago, one about the formal application, average time of approval, etc, but that is only half of the equation – anecdotally projects wallowing for 4, 5 or 6 years, or didn’t make it cuz they were stopped early on.
Nelson says data valuable but it doesn’t measure missed opportunity, what if they chose to go elsewhere, or becomes economically infeasible, you can’t capture that data.
Selkowe says without a complaint, how do we know what halted the project?
Peggy Yessa says they are working on some of the data, they might have ti early next week.
Nelson says Edgewater serves as an example, you can see that chronicled in the public, some data is not available, Epic moved to a different city, other things happened and moved that economic opportunity outside the city.
Schmidt says there are things we can get from our records, there are two sets of data, formal applications, how many times at Urban Design Commission, can quantify that easily, missed opp is a different measure, but looking at how many times go to commissions, if something stands out, several appearance of several projects. (See UDC discussion of this below, also from yesterday.)
Stone says that two issues, more efficient process that is what we can examine.
Nelson says should look at scope and better the process – he wants the statistics of projects built, how many permitted, how many needed a conditional use, is that unusual, for a city of our size, I don’t know the answer, he says so many things kicked into that bucket regardless of size.
Cooley says zoning cod could work on some of that, we have a couple things coming together.
Peng Her says they have their 3 – 5 year plan, wasn’t there some software that allowed city to enter complaints and have those been broken down, can we get something beyond anecdote on paper? There is the neighborhood summit to chime in, some might not know where to complain. That would help him. He asks if staff can get that info.
Matt Mikolajewski says there was a recommendation in 3 – 5 year plan to develop system to provide feedback, positive and negative about going through the process, no resources to move forward.
TIMING
Selkowe asks about timing in August, they expect to have a preliminary report on Aug 18, and Sept 1 draft report, will we get something ahead of time?
Cooley says they are going to take all feedback and if can’t get info from neighborhoods, the time frame is going to slip, we needed goals on paper.
Ed asks if what form the staff recommendations will come in, will they get recommendations or a menu of options?
Cooley says that they will get a narrative of the situation, what is currently there and where some of issue might be and present options of how to address solution and then discussion and come up with a recommended option, final report will go to council with recommended options but also other options listed in there, they can put a draft on the table and look at options and see if good ideas that are something we didn’t think of. It can be an iterative process. They will try not to go back to things that they harve covered, but it is hard to not do that.
Clarke says that a staff recommendations would be helpful,
Clear asks who is “staff”?
Cooly says planning and economic development staff will come up with their best ideas.
Really, we need some data!
Stone says that she is struggling with fact that there is no un-anecdotal information since 2004.
Clear says that is why we are doing this.
Stone asks if they could do a survey to people with some questions to understand some of the information outside of the public hearing time?
Clear says there are no rules against that, but what methodology would you use, who do you send it to, etc.
Stone says that is should be available to everyone, she struggles to understand that developers come to staff at the pre-application process, but there is no information on that, in her business has a folder and she keeps track of what is going on, she says she is not sensing we have that info available.
Clear says we don’t.
Stone is still struggling with lack of info.
Clear says could be alder said forget it and it never happened, or financing fell through – Clear says could gather information from the DAT committee (Development staff review committee), but not every project gores through that more formalized part of pre-application process, they could go through those agendas for that committee. They can find what projects went away, and why or why not but we might get different answers, he’s not sure how practical that is.
Yessa says she will ask Brad Murphy about that.
Mikolajewski says that data might not capture things, becasue they go there right before they are ready to apply. They usually have a site plan and are ready to apply and making sure all in order before they do.
Clear says that might still be some information to address Stone’s concerns, which are “completely valid.”
Clarke says she should read the testimony from 2004, he doesn’t think it would be different today. He says he thought there was a website where people could offer comments when that process happened, he’s not sure the development process changed much.
Nelson says this isn’t project specific, but they can’t ignore Edgewater comments, he can see points of concerns on both sides.
Clear asks if city channel recorded the hearings, do they still have recordings?
Selkowe says there were hearings 2 or 3 years ago, those comments might be good, those were actually people to talk about their experiences.
Schnmidt says that lost opportunities are hard, we have very little signal and a lot of noise there, hard to quantify, its emotional reactions and not business reactions, what is practical issue? Keep that in mind, he says they should work at investigating, but not much hope, they should be looking at own process and understand, see if anything stands out with data we do have, are there inefficiencies, or is it perfectly fine, that would be more productive for us.
Clear says that experiences in district, sometime developers really excited and they vaporize and you don’t know why disappear.
Matt Younkel asks about being more efficient and predictable than it has been, he has no no sense if any one rule that is there to focus on, is there an area to look at, if speed up can we get an answer faster, is there something more predictable, are there areas to focus on, instead of broad look in next 2 months.
Cooley says staff will work on that, where are issues from stakeholders giving us input. They will look internally, does this match with the data, then narrowing in on where have greatest impact, we don’t want to cut one day off of a 6 month process,
Back to the process
Selkowe asks about our process, not realistic to have a preliminary report on Sept 1?
Cooley says not unless there is a hard cut off and no comments, 30 days is what it is, its hard to get together, hate to not be inflexible, rather get it right than do it quickly. He says once they have a better handle, may make adjustments and will poll on dates and make adjustments.
Clear says some of the things flipped, preliminary report should be after public hearing, not before.
Selkowe asks the difference between the preliminary report and initial draft report.
Public Hearings
Cooley says preliminary report, provide you all info you want – will put together a matrix to show big rocks within this, you need to have as much data as we have, it will be in raw form and compilation, will be a lot of info.
Nelson says updated progress report, will have more data.
Cooley says if they can get teh data, since the summit is not until the 31st they won’t his date says Cooley, they could have public hearings.
Nelson says that is still of value tonight.
Stone asks why we broke up the hearings?
Cooley says recommendations of Brad Murphy, after application process is inside baseball, the sign off on building permits as opposed to pre-application which is done outside with alder and neighborhood associations. It is split to make more sense.
Stone asks if some people will have to come two nights.
Cooley says some will come two nights, associations that present developers will come two nights, one will be more attended than the other.
Clear says they also might not limit comments to those subjects,
Cooley says after public hearings draft, and public can give input again, and they can again at final, they are all public meetings, one is a listening session and one hearing. One the Economic Development Commission can interact, that would be more efficient and rewarding, and one is more information gathering, instead of 3 minutes to talk.
Yessa says she didn’t didn’t know the difference, hearing can’t ask questions, listening session would be different, need to change them around. [for the record, I’m not sure this is true]
Cooley says alders are busy, and then there is hunting season, football weekends, etc. scheduling is challenging, trying to do best, want participation especially by Economic Development Commission members.
Private Discussions?
Cooley asks about anecdotal, any interest in, or can they individually as members meet with people with concerns? He could give them each two names and let them talk directly to people with concerns. They could hear first hand.
Clear is interested in that.
Selkowe asks who, they’d meet with?
Cooley says that it would be people complaining to me anecdotally.
Nelson says it could be owners, investors, or whatever, talk with you individually, but you’d have to promise confidentiality,
Clarke says there would be too much variability.
Selkowe says that is the elephant in the room worse, we are all blind the same way, but if we do this, we’ll all be looking at something different.
If you want changes, speak up publicly
Cooley says people will talk our ears off individually and ask them to come in and they are like lambs and tigers and they scatter,
Nelson says that hopefully they will get that information.
Cooley says that DMI and Chamber etc. have to bring their members not just the officers. Neighborhoods need to bring people who haven’t been to the meetings.
Selkowe says hopes encouraging investors and developers that are pleased with something to come forward as well.
Cooley says we don’t hear from them, there was a student housing project on University Ave, they had a wonderful experience with the city, but doesn’t call me up and talk for an hour.
Clear wants to encourage that if want to see progress on complaints they have to go public.
Cooley says he has had that conversation and he was accused of getting in their face. He says it is real simple, if you want to get something changed, they got to show up, they can’t depend on association, have to be at the table,
Peng asks why not, what about fear of retribution of staff, or mayor?
Cooley says he noted that when he read Bugher’s report, not fear of retribution, he didn’t get it, it is true there is a fear, true may be some. There are some developers and investors that are a pain in the neck to work with them, city’s role is to work with them, let’s see if we can make it work, but staff remember him from last time, have to change that attitude, part of process is flow and other is attitude of individuals in the city, we need an attitude to make this happen, as effectively as possible. Part of this has come through in city staff.
That was roughly the end of that discussion, I went to two other meetings, then came back to UDC, that finally talked about the process about 10:00.
UDC BRIEF DISCUSSION
Al Martin, UDC staff says that there is info in their packet, they have forwarded comments from the zoning code rewrite that had to do with the process, they can talk about it and make recommendations based on that, so you should study the materials.
Mark Smith, asks about the number of times they have to come to the committee for approval, are they suggesting that we go from 3 to 2, or 1, since the informational presentation is optional.
Martin says that maybe they could do an informational and go right to final. Or, if minimal conditions, the staff could sign off on the final.
Dick Wagner says that there are a lot of applications that are not complete, maybe they shouldn’t be allowed on the agenda to encourage them to do their due diligence.
Martin says if they pass that policy, he would do that. They did that at a meeting that wasn’t legally noticed, so it officially didn’t pass.
John Harrington says they should make a list of what they want to see.
Martin says that they started that discussion, and they have to do it to take report to clerk next year about what goes beyond Robert’s Rules.
Harrington says we need to lay it out.
Martin says that there are no special meeting in August and the September ones are full so they can’t get to this until October. They are having a joint meeting with the library board.
Jay Ferm asks if this will be after they already designed it. Will a lot of the design work be done.
Smith says that there is a check list, are you saying that is not a requirement.
Martin says that there is no policy to let him deny due to lack of completeness, their actions were dismissed cuz not a legal meeting, they were going to develop the list, but they did not have a special meetings to go further.
Smith says that he would like to have staff be able to look at what is requested by the committee and look at the submittal and not have them present if that information is not there.
Todd Barnett says that the Water utility building went smoothly because there was a top notch designer, they knew what they were doing, easy to get through in 3 meetings.
Marsha Rummel says could have been a two meeting thing, except for neighborhood process, he skipped something, he didn’t take the plan to the neighborhood, presented concept, he did that, but didn’t go back to bigger neighborhood, maybe he thought the steering committee was the neighborhood, she says she couldn’t let me get initial until the neighborhood saw it, even though half a dozen people saw it, how do you weigh that, is that our job.
Dick Wagner says that is not distinguishable, its just all hoops.
Martin says everything is a hoop outside of instantaneous approval.
Wagner says if we have a process and neighborhood has a different timetable, that is hard to understand.
Martin says that from staff perspective, people don’t believe that things need to be changed, they need to hear it several times, if they don’t, they get referred, if they still don’ hear it the second time, they get refereed again.
Dawn O’Kroley says we give them higher concepts to pursue, hard to put that in staff hands, and sometimes we have bad ideas.
Dick Wagner says that there are some comments and some threshold conditions, we don’t make a distinction, one person’s opinion might not match rest of commission.
Rummel says that she thought a lot about their request to only present what’s new, she doesn’t always remember, so, we should not let them drive the packet and if they come more than once, she would like to see a supplemental, she would not like to rely on them to know what is different, wants to see what was there before, she has no benefit of staff report, that would be helpful, might be too much paper, or need minutes.
Barnett says its on line.
They indicate Martin has the info with him.
They suggest that maybe they should be asked to bring the old board back.
O’Kroley says if they have the old information, that does not move the conversation forward.
Smith says not require to present, should bring it with them
Wagner says this sounds like a good discussion for a special meeting.
Rummel announces the information about the neighborhood summit.
Ferm asks if other parties will be there, i.e. mayor and business community, will they show up?
Rummel says yes, she has already gotten rsvps.
And with that, their conversation was over. I was wishing they gave themselves more credit, they make a motion, with specific things they want to see at the next meeting most of the time, I find their process much more clear than in the past, but they didn’t seem to realize that.
Anyways . . . more to come.
