According to the City of Madison website, the Economic Development Commission (EDC) set the following meeting dates which are the first Wednesday of the month. However, they seem to be consistently meeting on dates that inevitably conflict with other meetings on the same or similar topics.
The first meeting they scheduled on repealing the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance was scheduled on Tuesday, November 15th. This was not a regular meeting date for the Economic Development Commission, as they regularly are scheduled for the 1st Wednesday of the month. This also happened to be the first night of the budget meetings for the Common Council. I drove out to the Water Utility building to attend the meeting scheduled right before the Council meeting, but they did not have quorum, so we all went away.
They subsequently had a meeting on Thursday, December 1st at which they didn’t take action on inclusionary zoning. I was able to attend this meeting, but had to skip several neighborhood meetings to do so since they rearranged the agenda and attended to other issues first.
The next meeting they scheduled on inclusionary zoning was scheduled on January 9th at 5:00. Not so surprisingly, this was also the same date the Plan Commission was scheduled to take up inclusionary zoning. And the same time the Board of Estimates was supposed to talk about the TIF request for the Gorman project on the 800 block of E Washington Ave in my district.
Now, on Tuesday, November 17th 5:30 – 9:00, they have another meeting scheduled the same evening as a Common Council meeting to hear from the business community about paid sick leave. And this, despite the fact that the Equal Opportunities Commission tried to hold a joint public hearing on the ordinance on December 14th. What’s the purpose of this second public hearing?
Anyone sense a pattern? Think this is coincidence?
Normally, an alder on the committee or a staff person would point out such obvious conflicts in scheduling and the meetings would be re-scheduled. Could the Economic Development Commission members and staff be doing this on purpose? Or are the alder and the staff not serving their committees very well? Could it be that the Economic Development Commission actually doesn’t want the alders to hear personally from the business community about paid sick leave? Is it just me, or does it seem that they don’t really want to have a discussion about the issues with all sides represented? Just like they don’t seem to support doing anything about creating an economic development plan.
