First Community Conversation about the Budget

Was more about how to improve the conversation, and not much of a conversation.

PLEASE GO
OK, so first, let me just say, please, please, please show up to these community budget conversations. The next conversations will take place as follows:

Administration
Monday, August 1, 7-9pm
Olbrich Botanical Gardens
3330 Atwood Avenue
Madison, WI 53704

This meeting will cover:
Departments & Divisions – Common Council, Mayor, Municipal Court, Civil Rights, Attorney, Assessor, Clerk, Treasurer, Finance (Comptroller), Information Technology (including City Channel), Human Resources

Committees & Commissions – Affirmative Action Commission, Equal Opportunities Commission, Commission on People with Disabilities, Personnel Board, CCOC

Infrastructure
Tuesday, August 16, 7-9pm
Madison Senior Center
330 W. Mifflin Street
Madison, WI 53703

This meeting will cover:
Departments & Divisions – Public Works, Engineering, Streets, Traffic Engineering, Metro Transit, Planning Division, Economic Development Division, Building Inspection, Water

Committees & Commissions – Madison Arts Commission, Downtown Coordinating Committee, Long Range Transportation Planning Committee, Ped/Bike/Motor Vehicle Commission, Board of Public Works, Committee on the Environment, Solid Waste Advisory Committee, Vending Oversight Committee, Plan Commission, Urban Design Commission, Landmarks Commission

Large Community Facilities & Parks (Recreation)
Monday, August 22, 7-9pm
Orchard Ridge UCC
1501 Gilbert Road
Madison, WI 53711

This meeting will cover:
Departments & Divisions – Library, Monona Terrace, Overture Center, Parks (including Golf)

Committees & Commissions – Madison Public Library Board, Monona Terrace Community & Convention Center Board, Board of Parks Commissioners

Public Safety
Wednesday, August 31, 7-9pm
Warner Park Community Recreation Center
1625 Northport Drive
Madison, WI 53704

This meeting will cover:
Departments & Divisions – Fire, Police, Public Health

Committees & Commissions – Public Safety Review Committee, Board of Health for Madison & Dane County, ALRC

PLEASE FILL OUT THE SURVEY
There is a survey that is essentially the dot exercise at the meeting, you can do it but its a 40 questions survey monkey survey and its a little long. The good news is, I started taking it and decided it was too long and I wasn’t sure what the “you, your neighborhood and city” categories meant, so I stopped. When I went back to it, I was on the question I left off on. So, I didn’t have to start over. Of course, the bad news about that is that they have your IP address and they won’t let you fill out the survey a second time. Sounds like a good idea, until you consider that if you use a library computer or community center computer, if anyone took the survey on the computer, you won’t be able to take it. They are going to look into that, and it might change. However, I still recommend the survey.

HAVING MADE THE FIRST TWO POINTS . . .
I have to say, both were fatally flawed. But please, PARTICIPATE! You might wonder why I’m encouraging that, and I’ll get to how they are flawed, but first, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE participate! The reason why I want you to participate is because they are listening. I don’t know what it will lead to, but they are working on improving the process and want to continue this into the future and it could lead to a much better way of budgeting, but we can’t give up on it.

REPORT ON THE FIRST CONVERSATION
Ooops, too many people showed up. There were over 100 people there. About 15 alders were there, the only ones I didn’t see were Phair, Subeck, Resnick, Palm and Johnson, but they could have been there . . . there were just too many people. There were about 20 – 25 staff people. The rest were a mishmash of community services folks, union members and advocates. There was only one business community leader I saw (Susan Schmidt from DMI), one county board supervisor (Carosel Bayrd) and I saw two conservatives (former Alder Cindy Thomas and one of the Blaska cronies)! The sheriff showed up. To which the mayor joked, “you’re not getting any of our money”.

The meeting started off with the mayor’s comments. He introduced members of the council and others, thanked a few people and said that his biggest concern was that only 5 or 6 people would show up, but his concern switched to worrying about if it “would be too hot in here’. He said he wanted to have a value based conversation about the budget. He admitted up front that he wasn’t sure we were going to get it right the first time, but it would get better each time. He explained the budget process and explained that the public gets involved after all the decisions have been made and can only tinker around the edges, and he wanted to get the community involved sooner. He thanked everyone for their time, noting that he really appreciated that people would spend the time there.

They quickly listed off the areas of the budget of each of the departments, had a little power point presentation. Then explained that we were all supposed to walk up to the wall and put 9 dots on the 6 values (in the survey), 3 for our priorities, 3 for our neighborhood priorities and 3 for the city’s priorities.

Then, things quickly spun out of control. The room was over flowing, there were about 35 people standing in the hallway. People sitting on the floor, people standing in the back of the room, side of the room, etc. A woman asked the facilitator if they were serious that they wanted this overflowing room to actually try to move around and put these dots up. People were grumbling and agreeing with her comments. While there was discussion, Shiva Bidar-Sielaff ran across the hall to the library and asked a bunch of people to move to a smaller room so that the group could use that room too, and about 25 people broke off and went in the other room. That helped a little, but when we broke to put up our dots there were all kinds of conversations going on, but not many, if any, were about the budget. At some point, they asked to then put up 12 dots (I think?) on the services that were posted around the room, again with priorities for you, your neighborhood and your city. Some people during the “values” part of the exercise put their dots on the services portion of the exercise and there were plenty of dots already there. Mostly people were just confused and it was difficult for some people, especially an older person who wanted to have copies of what they were putting dots on at the tables so you could make the decision before you went up and stood in front of the papers, blocking the way for others who wanted to put up their dots.

After that, I was in the big room and then we had a “conversation”. The conversation consisted of people griping about the process and who wasn’t there. Nothing was said about community services to a large degree. The feedback was super constructive and there were tons of ideas about how to do outreach and make the process better for the next conversations. There were criticisms of the survey and lots of explanation about why the questions were not really good indicators of how people felt and concern that they would be used to make decisions when there were issues with how they were worded. And the facilitator did a lot of talking. We didn’t talk with the people at our tables, we didn’t talk about community services and we didn’t really interact with the staff or the committee members. Well . . .

The major cringe moment of the evening was when Community Services Chair Alan Sweet was responding to Satya Rhodes-Conway’s request to help them do outreach. Rhodes-Conway didn’t seem to realize who he was. He finally spoke up and said, I’m the chair of the Community Services Committee and they’d really like to see her there. Apparently she’s a member, and hasn’t shown up to any meetings since being appointed in April. She tried to explain, making it worse, that she couldn’t be there because the redistricting meetings (that determine her political future) conflicted with the Community Services meetings.

The mayor stayed the whole time, listened and didn’t talk much. At the end, he recognized that this process was going to evolve. That they will expand it in the future and encouraged feedback – noting that we might get to the point where we do participatory budgeting where the community actually decides where a pot of money goes. He seemed open to suggestions and remarked that we could try a few things.

Overall, that seemed positive, but the actual event and the survey seemed pretty flawed. Hopefully, there will be improvements in the next four meetings and I really hope people continue to show up. I think the process and feedback are worth it, even if it isn’t perfect, so I hope to see you there! I’ll have more on this later, but I gotta run!