(Note: You’ll have to excuse me, I’m a little cranky this morning . . . GABLEMAN???? What is wrong with Wisconsin voters????)
Last year, in November, I pointed out several items where the council passed amendments in the budget, and they were promptly ignored. At the time, the pattern was pretty alarming and I vowed to keep a closer eye on things this year. After the first quarter, I haven’t really kept my promise as I haven’t done the research necessary to find out what isn’t happening, but just off the top of my head I’ve already found a three things that seem like the intent of the Council has once again been ignored/modified. Two of these items were in the budget in 2008, one is from 2007.
- The “Fair Housing Testing” is now a “Fair Housing Study”
- The Parks Department is planning to not spend the money for James Madison Park and roll it over to 2009.
- The “Economic Development Strategic Plan” became an “Economic Development Strategic Implementation Plan”
FAIR HOUSING
So, during the 2008 budget, we passed this (amended) language in the Department of Civil Rights budget.
2. A change in the administration of a Fair Housing Testing program, which has historically been included in the budget of the Department of Civil Rights, but is more appropriately administered by the CDBG office.
And this language in the budget of the Community Development Block Grant Office
$30,000 for a Fair Housing Testing Program. Note that these funds have historically been included in the budget of the Department of Civil Rights, but are more appropriately administered by the CDBG office.
I believe this was a simple transfer of the Fair Housing Testing – not a wholesale change of what is being done. This week the RFP came out and now it is a “Study of Discriminatory Housing Patterns within Rental Housing in the City of Madison”. What was once testing by the Fair Housing Center to help people get proof they were discriminated against is now a request to seek proposals “from consultants to explore patterns of housing discrimination” and “should validate those patterns through the use of systemic testing and/or other techniques.”
When and how did this change happen? Admittedly, the Council may have been asleep at the wheel. When I look back in legistar now – its “unclear” what we approved, if we approved anything at all. I’m not sure if this is a legistar glitch, or just really sloppy Council work. But this, along with the Economic Development item below, reminds me that the Council should not just pass a resolution, but ACTUALLY SEE the RFP or RFQ before it goes out.
PARKS
$200,000 was added to the budget at the Board of Estimates for improvements to James Madison Park (see amendment 10). It was further modified at the Common Council. At a neighborhood meeting in February, City Staff said the money was a “surprise” and gave me the first inkling that they didn’t have any plans to use the money this year. It was later confirmed by a constituent who recently sent me an email with this line in it:
I phoned [name removed to protect the “innocent”] about how to approach this years allocation for James Madison Park. He told me that the money was unexpected, that the Parks Dept. had not planned for it and that the money would likely be rolled over to 2009.
Um, we’ve known about it since October 29th. And likely before but it was “unintentionally left out” of the budget according to the Mayor.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
This was actually in the 2007 budget:
f) $50,000 in the budget of the Office of the Director of Planning and Development for consultant fees to develop a specific 3-5 year economic development strategy for the City’s long-term economic development. Funds will be solicited from other sources to match the City’s $50,000;
At that point, it was an “Economic Development Strategy” Plan.
When it passed the Council it was a “Economic Development Strategy”. But when the RFQ went out it became an “Economic Development IMPLEMENTATION Strategy”. This becomes important because when you ask why we got the plan we got, its based on the RFQ and instead of getting a Strategy document, we got a somewhat goofy implementation plan. Some are calling it the “communications plan”, but its not a strategic document.
These items are just the ones I noticed. It’s too early in the year to spot others and we have no way of really checking to see what staff are planning on doing or not doing without calling them on every single item of interest. Sometimes, being an alder seems like such a waste of time as there are so many games that can be played and without staying on top of every single detail, which are typically hard to track down so things quickly get lost. Worse yet, it seems like often there isn’t even any remorse on the part of staff when these games are being played. I guess they figure they can ignore the few alders who are paying attention. Maybe the Council should just all resign and stop wasting our time if we’re just going to be ignored or our actions modified after we vote?
