Sometimes, doing the simplest thing around City Hall, can be so unnecessarily difficult if you’re paying attention and trying to make things happen in a reasonable and rational manner.
Yesterday, I told you about an issue before the Board of Estimates that was asked to be referred by the Mayor’s office. It’s a housekeeping item, that cleans up a loophole Cintas and Octopus Car Wash found in the living wage ordinance. And it was on my long list of things to fix that I’m finally getting around to now that I have extra time on my hands.
Anyways, I got an email from City staff as follows:
Hi Brenda. The Ordinance “Creating Sec. 4.20(3)(d) of the Madison General Ordinances to prohibit proportional calculation of wages to employees performing both City and non-City work” was introduced July 3rd and referred to BOE (as lead) and EDC. The EDC canceled their July 11th meeting so they will be considering it on August 1st. BOE meets July 30th and then not again until August 27th. Do you want BOE to take it “out of order” (i.e., before EDC) or can BOE wait until its August 27th meeting? Thanks.
I respond:
That would be great if you could take it “out of order”. I don’t think it matters in this case.
It appears on the agenda, I show up to the meeting to support it. The “staff” then asked for it to be referred. And like I said, it didn’t really matter in this case, except that there was no real explanation at the time about who was requesting it or why. So I followed up and got this response from the Mayor’s office who requested it:
It’s a process concern. Since as you noted, there is no urgency here, the Mayor asked that it be referred out of deference to the EDC, which under council practice, would consider it first and make its recommedation to BOE as the lead committee.
Ok, fair enough. But the Mayor chairs the Board of Estimates and theoretically sets the agenda, so why was I asked if I wanted to do take it out of order if the Mayor would then oppose it? Actually, all that is beside the point. Here comes the kicker.
The Economic Development Commission canceled their July meeting where this item would have originally appeared. The August meeting, which should be tonight, is not on the Clerk’s Weekly meeting schedule this morning. And the agenda for the meeting just showed up in Legistar sometime on Monday. However, the state law requires that the agenda be posted in the City Clerk’s office to be legal and once the clerk posts the agenda, then, and only then, does the meeting appear on the weekly meeting schedule.
So, a routine item, introduced on June 26th now won’t be considered by the Economic Development Commission until the first week in September, then the Board of Estimates can consider it and then . . . the Council can vote on it in OCTOBER. This is absurd, luckily, its not something that is urgent.
Note: After I sent my email this morning, the Economic Development Commission meeting suddenly appeared on the Clerk’s Weekly Schedule, so now I’ve been told that if it wasn’t there, it wasn’t legal. But if they posted it this morning, I would think it’s ok. Anyways, more to research.
UPDATE: Here’s the explanation from the clerk’s office. So, maybe we can get to this issue yet in September? Well, depending upon what EDC does tonight.
I just ran down to our posting area, and the agenda for tonight’s EDC meeting has been posted since Monday. I still have to figure out why the meeting wasn’t showing up on the online meeting schedule; it is there now.
The meeting has been properly noticed.
– Maribeth
UPDATE TWO: The issue may be a technical one:
It looks like the new system used for the online meeting schedule has a glitch that is refusing to show more than one meeting at a time for a single committee. We have Information Technology working on a solution.
– Maribeth
