It’s a slow week, but somehow, I still found a few things to comment on.
WYOU BLUES
If you ever thought about donating to WYOU, now is the time to do it. Please. After looking at the budget last night, its grim. And our only hope to survive is YOU. There’s no other place to find this kind of local programming. And, if charter goes with their “consumption based billing” you may be watching a little less youtube. (Tho, I gotta wonder how that will work with all the free wifi – I bet they start blocking video streaming.)
DON’T RENT EARLY!
I blew it on this interview, I forgot to say that in addition to the price, the other big reason not to rent early if you are a student . . . some of the better apartments, the ones that landlords don’t want to rent to students, are held back til later in the year in hopes of getting either more mature students or non-students. And I can’t stress enough that when you are asked to renew earlier and earlier every year, you don’t get the opportunity 2 months into your lease to know what the heating bills are, if you get along with your roommates, what kind of repairs the landlord will do, how alternate side parking affects you, will you be coming back next semester, is there flooding in the spring, etc etc etc. Because, the next thing that happens after people rush out there to sign leases . . . is that they decide to break the lease or sublet. My guess is Maniaci’s ordinance won’t do anything, as long as the landlord’s still have the option to change the date in the non-standard rental provision.
SO MUCH FOR BUDGET CUTS
At a time when people are desperate for jobs and most places are getting tons of applications for the few jobs available, wouldn’t this year have been a good time to cut back on say . . . recruiting . . . especially driving 14,000 miles in a year to places like Fargo N.D. Most departments can’t even advertise their positions in their professional magazines and the Human Resources Department has said that they have cut back on advertising because of the economy and our attempts in the past to give them more money have been refused. But the police department, no need to be frugal there, they get a credit card with no limit.
MORE BAD HEADLINES
City subcommittee changes snow clearing ordinance [ONLINE EXCLUSIVE] – Right . . . a subcommittee changed an ordinance. In what universe? I don’t really know where to begin, but given the professional media can’t get their headlines right, I guess we can hardly expect UW students to get it right. What I’m confused about is are they planning for Madison Metro to get the tickets, cuz the bus pads are the city responsibility to clear. Or were they intending to make that the responsibility of nearby property owner? I re-read the article, wasn’t sure what the intent was.
OVERCROWDING
Define overcrowding. These same homes, if they were family members, likely would not be “overcrowded” but because they are “unrelated” they are “overcrowded”. And, given our definitions of “family” in our zoning codes and the lack of desire to fix it in the zoning code re-write, I think we should tread lightly. One of the odder questions I have even been asked was when 3 straight guys wanted to rent a 4 bedroom but couldn’t because they were “unrelated”, and asked if they should pretend they were gay. Which was inventive, but . . . still wouldn’t help.
