The EDC report was the subject of plan commission discussion previously and they did a report back to the Economic Development Committee, but Julia Kerr’s new comments from Monday night are specifically are worth noting.
This is the entirety of the discussion on Monday. They had given their input earlier, and were asked again.
Judy Bowser says that mission of the landmarks commission should also include power to determine the appropriatness of developments in the landmarks district.
Brad Murphy, planning unit director, says that was the quote from the ordinance, the mission as provided for, it needs to be clarified – this is verbatim from a secondary source.
Bowser notes it is something they deal with on a regular basis.
Ker says she is sorry she missed the earlier discussion, she went through it and a lot of important recommendations are in there, she has two comments. She is not sure why the “50 reasons not to change” is in there, she finds it insulting.
Brad starts to explain.
Kerr cuts him off and says she is not asking him to justify it.
Murphy says, “it wasn’t my idea”.
Kerr says she feels confident it wasn’t.
Kerr says you can take this for what it is worth, I find it very insulting, there are lots of us who work very hard on economic development issues, lots of us who think carefully about these things and to be confronted with this in a City of Madison report is insulting. The second comment, Mr. Murphy please don’t feel you have to justify this, is that again, a lot of good recommendations are in this, a lot has to do with work we do here every other week, she is always glad to have people comment and we should be looking for a way to improve, both from staff and personal and committee perspective, what she finds startling is that she doesn’t ever really remember seeing a member of the EDC visiting with us and observing our processes before making the recommendations, how can that be, how can they be opining on something that they haven’t taken the time to come and sit and see what we have to balance here. People can adopt or not adopt it, what is critical and people keep missing is that the role of alders and effective alders in managing the development process, like it or not, alders are the point person for this, some do it well, some don’t. Some have success in some cases and not others, she has been on all sides, there is very little recognition of that. So, three comments, the reasons not to change should be removed, because it presumes that the decision makers in the is city – well, first of all, “its snarky, I mean really, it’s just snarky, let’s just face it, it’s like middle school” and it presumes that people who do this work and who are empowered to make the decisions are looking for reasons not to do anything and that is just not right. It’s a complete mis-perception. Second, they haven’t taken the time to attend our meetings and see what we are doing here so it makes me suspicious of the whole thing and this, I think we ought to look at empowering alders and giving them information to have good and fair process on the development and the neighborhood side.
That’s it, that was the discussion. I just thought she made some very good points.
Brenda
Would you provide a link to the document with the “50 reasons not to change”? I looked through some things off of Legistar and couldn’t find it.
I couldn’t find it either. I saw her hold it up, it was a full page, and the rest of the plan commission appeared to have it. I emailed Brad asking him for it. Not sure what it was attached to.
It looks like this, but I’m not sure that is what it said . . .
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_tpMcww_5qlA/SbwS_J0DzXI/AAAAAAAABhs/wYAuatuaezo/s1600-h/50+reasons+not+to+change.jpg
That’s the one.
And the conversation was pretty light Monday on account of the fact that this version of the EDC report came out the night of our last discussion (comments from that are in the link at the beginning of the post). If I had anything to say, it would have been “I refer you to the comments I previously made”.
This is the original reference and its background.50 reasons not to change
As an anthropologist (Beloit) it would be interesting to see the journey this poster has made (not always with attribution, unfortunately) from NM, Indonesia, and now WI
At taping of Access: City Hall last night, Brad Murphy said planning staff supports keeping Landmarks as separate, independent commission, not making sub-unit of Plan Cmsn. Left to policy-makers issue of supermajority on council to overturn LC actions.