We disagree. Wow. Yesterday was supposed to be the final meeting of the Inclusionary Zoning Oversight Committee where we worked on our annual report to the Mayor and Common Council and we were supposed to have our recommendations ready for what we think should fix the ordinance.
Essentially, we ran out of time. We’ve been working hard, discussing lots of issues, arguing, listening, agreeing, disagreeing and we even have had fun within the committee. We’ve met every Friday morning at 8:00 for months. We’ve worked hard. However, in the end, we still don’t have a report. When it came down to the final vote, we voted 5 – 5 against/for the report. Against: Brian Munson, Curt Brink, Matt Miller, Lauren Cnare, Brenda Konkel. For: Nan Fey, Judy Bowser, Tom Hirsch, Alex Saloutos, Marianne Morton.
So, we’re back to the drawing board. We’re meeting on August 11th at 4:00 and hopefully we can work on a report that we can all support. For me, the biggest reason to not vote for it is that we rushed and wrote it by committee and as Lauren put it “If I was handing this in to my English teacher, I’d be embarrassed.” We just weren’t done and it wasn’t a report I’d want to put my name on. I was pretty clear about that, I wasn’t going to vote for a report that we slammed together to meet a timeline and was essentially not ready.
As a result, Lauren and I are getting together to spruce it up, make sure it is crystal clear on a few points and to bring it back to the committee in a week and a half. So, the report won’t be ready for the council meeting on Tuesday, it will have to wait until the next council meeting in September, but I believe the extra time will make the report stronger.
All that said, in the end, our report doesn’t really have a single conclusion. We didn’t offer one package of fixes that we thought would fix the ordinance. We ran out of time for that too. However, we did collect data, report on our activities and laid out many of the issues that we felt were important. We had a balanced committee, with friends and foes of the ordinance and we simply don’t agree and our report reflects that. The fact that we didn’t come up with one set of fixes doesn’t really mean that the ordinance is irretrievably broken – it means we didn’t agree. Some people want the ordinance repealed, some want to try to fix it. You can’t try to fix an ordinance with people who don’t want to fix it.
So, the report will be done in a few weeks and hopefully reflect all of that. Meanwhile, numbers we got yesterday say that with the first ordinance, with the screwball equity model and loopholes in marketing, one family got into housing (Feb 2004 – July 2006). Once we changed the ordinance, 32 families got into housing (July 2006 – July 2008). With some more changes, perhaps we can get that number even higher and make the development community a little happier – although they will never like this ordinance. If we don’t do that, what is our alternative? With the budget the way it is, the options seem so limited.
