Downtown development/Apex, police wasting money, media hysteria, alders looking for input, Madison other Statue of Liberty, Badger Herald fact check . . .
DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT, EVERYONE HAS AN OPINION, SOME THOUGHTFUL
Emily Mills shares her thoughtful comments about the Apex development and the surrounding neighborhood. Paul Soglin, in contrast, just seems angry . . . and bitter. He just spouted off a bunch of general statements in his blog. Bizarre. Which is exactly how he acted at the Apex presentation as well. Angry and bursting out loud, out of turn, when something was said he didn’t like. Pssst, Paul, the pink flamingo issue was over with a few weeks ago. His other post is just dishonest. The concern about the towers was the air and light surrounding the buildings and canyon affect created by the towers – the woman used Boston as an example. Frank Lloyd Wright’s tower respected that. In fact, the photo makes the woman’s point.
By the way, the neighborhood blog has a new post with more information about the presentation. Thanks to Erik Paulson for doing this!
SERIOUSLY, THEY’RE STILL DOING THIS?
Isn’t the city in tough economic times, pinching every penny, cutting back on unnecessary costs, yadda, yadda, yadda? So why are they still doing this citizen’s academy? Maybe if they cut this they wouldn’t need more money for that unexpected Halloween event that sneaks up on them every year.
Also, while I enjoy reading Dusty’s stuff, I was also surprised to see the whole writing be essentially a police press release.
Last year, I asked how much money this cost. I didn’t get a bottom line dollar amount, but this is what I got:
Here’s the information I received from Police. They budget $500 for supplies and use a free facility. There is usually no overtime involved. Most of the sessions are repeats from previous years, so there is not a lot of prep time needed. There may be some minimal time used during the workday to set up the session. There are a total of 27 class hours with about 40.5 hours of staff time as detailed below. If they use the Range, there are also several officers available due to safety concerns.
Chief – 1 hour (1/2 hour opening and 1/2 hour closing)
Lt. – 4 hours
Officers – 26 hours
Sgt. – 2.5 hours
Det. – 4 hours
Investigator – 3 hours
Here’s one explanation of why they do this . . .
I recently received information on the City of Madison Police Department’s upcoming citizen’s academy. The goal of this academy is to expose participants to subject matter relating to the duties and responsibilities of police officers. This year’s academy will run from late January through mid-March on Wednesday evenings.
I can get you information on attending this if you are interested. There is an application, a waiver to sign, and must be accompanied by a letter of recommendation by a current PO (which I would gladly do for you) and you must go through a background check if you are interested. Applications will be reviewed, and the class will be selected from those applications.
The academy is designed to be a “hands on” course. It is desigend to give the public a working knowledge and understanding of the values, goals, objectives, and operation of the MPD. Course topics include computer crimes, forensics, drugs and gangs, legal updates, officer involved shootings, use of force decision making (including firing a weapon, interactive video scenario machines, and Defense and Arrest Tactics), OWI and traffic enforcement, K-9’s, crime scene investigations, and domestic preparedness. It is NOT designed or intended to be a pre-cursor to a law enforcement career, but rather designed to produce informed decisions.
If you are interested in this or if you would like more information on this, let me know!
Do we really need to be doing this at this time? Don’t the police have better things to do?
OH, NEVERMIND
Emergency crews remain on the scene! Girl shot on Allied Drive! . . . Or, um, er . . . turns out it’s a “very minor non-penetrating wound”. You wouldn’t know it from the original headlines tho. Why was this even news? (Covered by Channel 3 and WSJ too.)
DID YOU EVER NOTICE . . .
Alders rarely hold listening sessions or go out to the community to get the public’s opinion . . . except at budget time. Skidmore, King and County Supervirors Hampton and Hesselbein other did their underwhelmingly attended session on public safety Sunday night. Now Cnare, Palm, Compton and Clausius are doing their library meeting. Cuz, there just aren’t enough meetings being held about the library.
September 21 – Hawthorne – 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.
September 22 – Lakeview – 6:45 – 7:45 p.m.
September 23 – Alicia Ashman – 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
September 25 – Pinney – 7:00 – 8:00 p.m.
September 28 – Sequoya – 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Of course, they didn’t let people know about these meetings and the alders couldn’t make the first two because they were at budget meetings. So, maybe the alders aren’t too off base taking that one into their own hands.
THERE’S A STATUTE OF LIBERTY AT WARNER PARK?
I didn’t realize this meeting came up so soon! Missed it!
Community Meeting to Discuss Statue of Liberty
Wednesday, September 23, 2009 7:00pm
Warner Park Community Center
1625 Northport Dr Madison, WI 53704-2300
Turns out, on Tuesday night during the budget meetings, the Mayor interrupted the Art Coordinator to find out about the Statue of Liberty that is in the park. As Karin Wolf explained, it was a project of the Boy Scouts in the 1950’s to place these Statues of Liberty in cities throughout the nation. I wonder what the neighbors had to say last night?
BADGER HERALD FACT CHECK
Oh dear, should I ask for a correction? What would be the point? Let me just say, this statement is untrue. “First, a landlord does not have the right to enter your apartment without your permission.” That wasn’t at all what I said. Landlord doesn’t have the right to enter your apartment without 24 hours notice in Madison and Fitchburg or 12 hours in the rest of the state. And in Madison, if they are entering your apartment to show it, they can’t give you a notice for more than 3 days for more than 3 hours at a time. This has been the law since the 1980’s and I’ve been telling people about it since 1991 – I’m pretty sure I didn’t get that wrong. More info on landlord entry here.
I think I only read two articles in the Badger Herald this week (because I had to for work) and both contained errors. The other was the one I mentioned on Tuesday where they said the Student Tenant Resource Center never got SSFC funding when it did for a little over 10 years since the 1990s. And I didn’t even point out that the group applying for SSFC funding is the Student Tenant Union, and they are seeking their 3rd year of funding, but had funding back in 1969.
