A 4-4 vote. Since it ties, it fails. 4 quick observations this morning.
4 points of note.
1. They voted on this last time, there was only one vote. This time the county executive’s office (Jeff Kostelic) joined the mayor’s office (Enis Ragland).
2. Mary Kolar (champion for the Day Center at the Porchlight Hospitality House at 1290 Martin St.) and Sheri Carter (President of the Board of Directors of Porchlight) both voted for the change. No. comment.
3. Samba Baldeh kept saying that he would vote to change the signs if people had some place to go. Where will they go? He wanted to know who would work on the issues. I tried answering the question, Karen Andro, chair of the Homeless Services Consortium also tried answering the question. Samba continued, asking who was going to come up with the solution. Sheri Carter joined in asking (remember, she is the President of the Board of Directors for Porchlight, so apparently, not them.) Mark Clear welcomed them to government. Enis Raglnd pointed out that Karen can’t answer your question because they system is . . . and I forgot his word . . . but he essentially said the system is broken or doesn’t work. After a meeting in the mayor’s office, the only groups that went and followed up on the mayor’s concerns were grassroots and faith community groups, not the ones paid to do the work. Since Samba didn’t get an answer he wanted, he wouldn’t vote to kick people out without a place for them to go, which I believe was also Al Matano and Paul Nelson’s problem. They wanted to support the staff concerns, but these are human beings with no legal place to exist.
4. Enis Ragland announced that the city and county are looking at the “Fairchild Building” located right next to the Dane County ramp on the outer loop to be a day center and maybe a men’s shelter. The city and county are in negotiations about this. Funny negotiations, everyone (council, county board, staff, mayor’s office) thinks they are the one’s negotiating on it, but its hard to know who really is. My version of the plan has a majority of the services there paid for with existing services and funding. I suspect it will be popular with the elected officials for that reason, but because I proposed it they will hate it. So, they’ll have to put more funding in to he proposal. The second piece of this is that Hovde is doing renovations and to get what they want, they have to work on Grace Episopal’s property and displace the men’s shelter and apparently they are willing to give up money to help make it happen. I think they are thinking about a temporary displacement, but I’d like to see a permanent displacement to a facility that was built to be a shelter and then use Grace (who want to continue to do something) for specialized needs.
UPDATED NOTE: Mark Clear made the most cogent arguments. We have the rules in place to address the behaviors, we don’t need more rules, they just have to be enforced. It makes no sense to punish all for the actions of a few.
That’s it, that’s all I got for today. Chew on that. Lots going on, too busy to report it.
