More Budget Tidbits: BOE Amendments due in 2 weeks

So, night two of a the public forum to ask the staff questions. Here’s some items of interest we heard last night:

Office of the Director of Planning and Community and Economic Development

• The CDA does not have a budget for the development side of things, they do, however have an extensive budget for the $14M Housing Operations side of things.
• The City does not charge the CDA for City Staff time spent on development project, but they do in Housing Operations.
• The City does not even know how many hours are spent doing CDA development work, but they do in Housing Operations.
• The Department does not have a work plan. The council used to approve the workplan for the department on an annual basis.
• Much of the work done for the CDA is charged against TIF districts.
• The CDA does have about $100,000 in cash reserves.
• Mark Olinger, who is the Director of the PCED and the CDA Executive Director, thinks that the CDA responds to the needs of the City. However, lately, the CDA is bringing proposals to the City (Allied, Villager, Truax).
• Despite the $400,000 budget, they have no “Madison Measures”
• More to come on this issue.

Planning

• They do have a work plan – an extensive one with 68 large items they are working on.
• Now someone, not necessarily the staff of this unit, are in a hurry to form the Office of Neighborhood Support and they want to short circuit the resolution the Council passed last March and change the process.
• They never hired the Planner 3 that we put in the budget last year to work on the Office of Neighborhood Support and Neighborhood Services
• There will not be the report on the Office of Neighborhood Support that we asked for last year so that we could make good decisions this year at budget time.
• The budget does include the 2nd year of the Zoning Code rewrite.
• The way they prioritize what neighborhoods get planning services is a combination of council resolutions, who gets neighborhood planning grants, where the CDBG neighborhood planning money goes, who gets BUILD grants and the areas designated in the comp plan that are likely to be developed on the periphery and the annexations that we do.

Neighborhood Preservation and Inspection

• This department “feels like they won the lottery”
• The new inspectors will help them decrease the amount of time that the do systematic inspections and increase the areas where they do systematic inspections, as opposed to complaint based inspections.
• They were not funded $15,000 for mileage reimbursement. This is not an optional payment for them. They will just overspend in that line item, regardless of what we budget.

Economic and Community Development

• 7 people in the real estate department have 374 projects they are working on
• The Office of Business Resources has two things they are working on for the next year. Completing the 3-5 year Economic Development Plan and a Marketing Plan for the Southeast area of Madison.
• The housing loan programs are humming along and have goals.

Housing Operations

• Their reserves have slowly decreased over the years. They are down to $170,000 in reserves but a healthy organization would have a reserves of $1M.
• Last year they made $18,000 or essentially broke even.
• While they only get $50,000 from the City, this is a $14M operation.

Community Development Block Grant

• For those who watched the grilling of the Office of Community Services, Hickory Hurie made a completely thorough presentation of the extensive process they go through to decide who gets money, to avoid being equally grilled. Zach Brandon had left by that point, however, there wasn’t much to say after he got done. Too bad the Office of Community Services hadn’t had fair warning and couldn’t have had the opportunity to do the same thing.
• The “Framework” or goals for CDBG are approved by the Common Council every year. The same is true for the Office of Community Services and I handed out the resolution we passed in 2006 at the beginning of the meeting.
• All groups funded have two reports, one program and one finance, that need to be turned in before they get checks.
• There is a “B” list of programs that we need in the City that are currently unfunded.
• There was more discussion of the jobs program in Allied that the Building Trades are doing. While the goal is for 32 people to get an apprenticeship, only 1 has. Only 2 people have gotten jobs and I believe the goal is 20.

Department of Civil Rights

• It seems to me that the Department decided that the Fair Housing Council was not a good fit for them, not necessarily that there were performance problems. They were just concerned about the appearance of being neutral if they are funding testing.
• The problems that they do have is that reporting is hampered by privacy issues.
• The number of housing complaints has nearly doubled. There were 19 so far this year and 17 last year. In the past the number hovered around 10 or 12.
• While they claim to be able to do the “intake” that the Fair Housing Center, it is a very different service than what the Fair Housing Center does.
• There is one more town hall meeting to hear about issues in the community scheduled for November 5th.
• 200-300 people apply for AASPIRE internships and there are only 8 – 10 slots.

Madison City Channel & Public, Educational and Government (PEG) Access Funding

• They too have dipped into the “trust fund” year after year and are putting less and less money aside for big purchases of equipment in the future.

Public-Health- Madison and Dane County

• No too much comment.

Public Works and Transportation

• No comments

Fleet Service

• Brief update on the fuel contracts. Our fuel contracts are based on numbers of gallons, not a specific period of time

Metro Transit

• They are buying 48 – 55 new cameras in the Capital budget (or perhaps enough to equip 48 – 55 buses which would make more sense than my notes.)
• 1/3 of the buses will have cameras
• There was discussion about why we’d be adding more bus wraps to the pilot program before the pilot program was over. Apparently, if we put it in the budget, it would come back to the council for changes to the program.

Traffic Engineering

• Sorry – I was busy doing something else and not paying attention, but I don’t think they discussed much.

Parking Utility

• The ads in the parking ramps were supposed to fund transportation demand management programs and only about half the money is going for that purpose.
• The ads in the parking ramps are not making as much money as we thought they would.
• The advertising company has actually removed some of their signs and so likely our revenues will go down.
• They have alot of credit card transactions and the fees have doubled from $100,000 to $200,000.

Parks

• Marla Eddy impressed us all on her knowledge of bugs. Gypsy Moths. Emerald Ash Borers and all kinds of gross stuff. Thank goodness she’s on top of all of these issues.
• While we are adding two more park rangers, they really don’t have the skills to address issues of alcohol in the park. These are college kids that are more of a public service for people who rent shelters and patrol athletic fields, boat ramps and parks with big shelters.
• They have $155,000 in payout for retirements that are not optional that are not funded in this budget.

Municipal Pool

• Zach wasn’t there, so there were no real questions.

Golf Enterprise

• Trends downward in usage continue but are likely to go back up soon with the boomers retiring.

Streets

• Depending upon what the State does, we may have more landfill tipping fees.

Water Utility

• There was a brief presentation on the new management structure for the water utility. It’s a little less hierarchical and more of a sectional structure.

Engineering

• I don’t have any notes

Sewer Utility

• No comments

Stormwater Utility

• There are some plans laid out for Monona Bay. This is the largest density of storm sewers going into one area and the area where we are likely to see the most improvement.

Landfill, Comptroller, Common Council, Mayor

• No comments

Miscellaneous Appropriations

• I asked where all the communication was that we were promised from the Collaboration Council. The Mayor agreed with me that he didn’t think we were getting some of what we asked for and said that an amendment to ask for a report from them about how our $18,000 was being spent would be a good idea and he’d work with anyone who wanted to make such an amendment.
• I asked if there was a way to make the Emerging Neighborhood Grants more flexible. The Mayor also said he’d work with anyone who wanted to make an amendment to make the process more flexible while remaining accountable. Two for two.
• I asked why the paid sick leave for hourly employees wasn’t funded again. It seems they didn’t implement the program in 2007.

Debt Service

• We’re around 10 or 11% and our goal is 12%

General Fund Revenues

• While we’re adding police, we didn’t increase revenues for tickets.
• Cable franchise fees were likely underestimated
• There were several other questions that were answered by staff

Capital Revolving Fund

• Good flexible program to work when not in a TIF district
• Tomo Therapy loan was never given out, after all that.

Affordable Housing Trust Fund

• Bomb shell of the evening. Ooops, it appears we would need to change the ordinance in order to use the money for Allied Drive. Imagine that. How? They didn’t have any details.
• Also revealed, the CDA would get a loan, not a grant from the Trust Fund. It is unclear if they will pay it back with interest. The source of the pay back of the loans is the TIF district.
• The trust fund wasn’t funded by the Mayor because it’s “not a priority”.
• I asked where, with all the talk of policing and also doing things to help address the core issues of poverty, where was the commitment to the second piece. Mayor said he gave OCS and CDBG 2.4% COLA increases. I explained that is really a cut as 2.4% COLA doesn’t cover real expenses. He shrugged it off.

Inclusionary Zoning Special Revenue Fund

• Major oooops. The Mayor forgot to budget for incentives for developers and money to buy back homes for the program. He promised to take a look at it.

City Insurance Fund & City Workers Compensation Fund

• I was out of the room.

While the Mayor has worked on the budget for more than 3 months and gives us very limited information it seems very unfair that for the last two evenings he was so vocally and visibly irritated when we ask questions. We’ve only had the budget for one week and the amendments for Board of Estimates are due in 2 weeks. Apparently, they think the 20 alders should just ask all these questions off-line on our own time. However, they forget, we have full time jobs and staff aren’t really available when we are. We got into it a little bit when he inappropriately cut me off. I’m sorry, but this is the time when all the staff are there to answer our questions.

Next Steps: Board of Estimates amendments are due on the 24th at noon. They will vote on the amendments on October 29th. Public input is allowed at that meeting.