Here’s a half serious proposal – eliminate all city committees. It’s only half serious because I value the input of city committees and I think they add a lot of value to the outcome of various proposals, save the City Council time and that the City is a better place because of the hard work and dedication of the volunteers that make the committee process function on a daily basis here in Madison. However, not everyone seems to value that input. In fact, some seem to go out of their way to eliminate or greatly curtail the input of various committees. And worse, the Mayor has been more and more vocal about reminding people that they serve at his pleasure and removing those whom he does not see eye to eye with or somehow challenge him. So, if we just eliminated City Committees we could save staff time and money and hey, hire another 20 cops or so.
There are three very glaring examples of the City Committees being skipped and the Council voting before getting their input, two at the last meeting and at least one at the upcoming meeting.. The Allied Drive Resolution, the Zatch Act and the Chronic Nusinance Ordinance.
Allied Drive – At our August 7 meeting, the Mayor introduced his Allied Drive Resolution, abandoning the Request For Proposal (FRP) process we had been talking about for the past 11 months and announcing that the CDA would be the only people we would negotiate with to build affordable housing on Allied Drive. That resolution was then rushed through the process with the CDA, CDBG Commission and Housing Committee all being forced to schedule special meetings at the last minute at the request of the Mayor’s office. Unfortunately, the Housing Committee meeting wasn’t properly noticed by staff and the Housing Committee was unable to meet, but the City Council voted without their input. (Oddly enough, staff then showed up at the last meeting, after the council had voted on the matter and asked for the Housing Committee’s input. What was the point?)
Zatch Act – This was the “loophole” proposal to limit the political activities of poll workers and people who work in the City Clerk’s office. The Election Advisory Committee rushed and had special meetings and voted against the proposal. Alder Brandon decided to change the proposal, waited several more weeks after rushing it through the committee process and then at the last minute introduced a new proposal and didn’t want to get the committees input. The Council voted on this proposal that would have greatly impacted the elections process without the input of the Madison Elections Advisory Committee.
Chronic Nuisance Ordinance – This is the ordinance that the Mayor decided was important after hearing from folks on the Westside about their concerns about crime. This ordinance, in my opinion, has many unintended consequences for tenants in the City of Madison. What they say it will do is if there are more than 3 arrests for certain crimes in 90 days or 5 building inspection write ups in a year, then the police department will work with the landlord to remedy the situation – i.e. evict the tenants. This ordinance has been sitting around for months, and a new draft came out late last week (Thursday). The Equal Opportunities has been waiting for this draft. However, the Mayor and others have decided that we will be voting on this ordinance on today, without the input of the Equal Opportunities Commission, despite the fact they were told to wait for the new draft before acting on the ordinance.
This situation is exacerbated by the more distant comments by the Mayor to the Transit and Parking Commission when they were voting on bus fare increases which many on the commission were against but the Mayor supported; comments to the Parks Commission since they voted against the Mayor’s wishes about selling land in James Madison Park; the fact that the Mayor removed Paul Skidmore and myself from the Parks Commission and Plan Commission because we disagreed with him; and with more recent appointments, the removal of Kelly Thompson-Frater from the Plan Commission (without talking to her first) and Michael Barrett from the Urban Design Commission (without talking to him first). The message is loud and clear, tow the line, or be removed.
To me, all of this flies in the face of our proud Madison tradition of welcoming and valuing citizen imput, having a robust and thorough committee process and our rules about having a 45 day referral process for all committees. Some people wonder why process matters. This is why. When some people feel like they can just ignore the rules, the public process is cut short, the debate is stifled and the end product has less buy in and consensus within the community and we have longer council meetings because things have to be discussed on the floor of the Council instead of in committee. I’ve always been proud of the fact that the City of Madison was an open, public process oriented City and I’m sad to see that change and I don’t like the direction we are headed.
