Staff Outline of Recommendations to “Improve” the Development Process

Staff did a rushed through presentation of this information, that the Economic Development Committee was first getting to see. They wouldn’t hand out copies at the meeting. The committee got a copy this morning, and it will appear in legistar star later this morning. Here’s a few comments from the meeting last night, and of course . . . the presentation.

WHO ATTENDED, NO EXTRA COUNCIL MEMBERS
This was billed as a presentation to the Council and EDC, but no additional alders showed up. Mark Clear made an appearance, Chris Schmidt had to leave early. I think the only alder to stay for the whole thing was Joe Clausius.

WORSE YET . ..
The meeting notice says this:

Note: A quorum of the Madison Common Council, Plan Commission, Economic Development Committee, Landmarks Commission, and Urban Design Commission may be present at this meeting.

But UDC was in a meeting downtairs and the Plan Commission was meeting on the zoning code upstairs, so they couldn’t have had quorum here. Let alone participate in the process. AND, the zoning code rewrite directly impacts these discussions. No additional members of any of those bodies attended the meeting. The only people there were lobbyists, lobbyists and lobbyists and 2 bloggers and 2 or three neighborhoods folks, but the Downtown BID, Chamber of Commerce, Smart Growth Madison, Common Sense Coalition (does that even exist any more), Downtown Madison Inc.(?), landlords and developers etc had their folks there.

STAFF PRESENTATION
The staff (Tim Cooley and Brad Murphy) presentation did have a little more information than in the slides, and they didn’t emphasize everything, in fact skipped some items. So, after I compare what they said to the written document, I may have some further comments.

Overall, the recommendations aren’t really anything new if you’ve been following along. The question is, who will show up advocating for what. What do people think got in there that should be removed? What do people feel strongly enough to advocate for?

WHAT IS IN THE REPORT
Overall, its not bad. A quick and dirty of what you might be wondering. They do want the developers to contact city staff first, not alders and neighborhoods, they want businesses to be members of neighborhood associations, there is no presumptive approval except in staff sign off. They do want to take away the 2/3 vote to overturn landmarks and rewrite their ordinance. The suggest as an option combining UDC and Landmarks or moving them under plan commission. And some other things, which flew by during the presentation and need further analysis.

WHAT’S NEXT
Watch for another Neighborhood Round Table coming soon, was going to be the 23rd, but that no longer works, so maybe the 24?

The first draft will be presented October 20
The final draft will be sent to committee members November 15 – 18
The final draft will be discussed be out November 29
The final draft approved and sent to council December 15

DISCUSSION
Meanwhile, this is the discussion after the presentation.

Ed Clarke said he liked the theme on empowering the staff, he wants to empower them to think, he’d like to ask for the staff’s individual recommendations about what they would like to see.

Tim Cooley jokes and asks if they can do that under an assumed name. But then says we’d be happy to do that.

Vicky Selkowe says it is helpful to have the options, recommended by certain input. She’d like to know where the recommendations came from, she’d like that identified on the presentation.

Cooley says they can do that, some are combinations and got reformulated, but in a perfect world there would be footnotes with that information.

Selkowe says she doesn’t need all that, but the basic info would be good.

Al Zimmerman, the Danisco guy, (my comments in parenthesis) says it was “wonderful” of the mayor to “push this through”. This is a great thing for the City of Madison, this is the direction we need to go. Comments that he likes that neighborhoods get first say, (tho that isn’t what this does) and alders to too. Likes that Landmarks and UDC would be under the plan commission, that is a better alignment. (but might take longer!) Thinks that exception focus on UDC and landmarks. Likes economic impact statements (I think that is what he said) and stream lined conditions, and he likes the checklist, the more they have the better they can be prepared, instead of getting to a meeting and finding out they don’t have the right documents. He thinks it is great to use the cost benefit focus and their framework adds structure to earlier discussions. He says people look at what good for holistic but what is the brass tacks? (Edgewater supporters argued just the opposite.) This is a good balance for discussion. He likes the idea of empowering people, Matt and Al are sharp and know what they are doing. They do this every day. The city will be better if steamlined. He wants to add priorities from start to finish, at the end will we still be on a time frame of 30 days and still 6 month process or is it scaled back for people to do investment. He likes the equation at the beginning – they city can better provide services if the levy rate is better. This is a cleaner process, more streamlines and it will take them less time to get to market. The more money I can make, the more taxes I pay to support the city and help pay for what makes Madison special. (Yeah, except the city doesn’t collect employment taxes.)

Joe Clausius says it is an excellent report. It dramatizes the issue of possible conlsolidation of UDC and Landmarks bu putting them under the plan commission. He likes they informally take up supermajority. Lots of information to discuss before the target dates.

Joe Boucher says that if they can get to a process where multiple agencies go through at same time is a big deal.

Cooley says internally they discussed the consent calendars – they want people to pull off projects 48 in advance of the meetings, which would require the agendas being done so much earlier so they have time to do it.. The problem is the developer and all his staff (lawyers, architects, etc) all having to come when it takes 30 seconds to make a decision, those are expensive huge teams that show up that do not have to be there. It would take cost and time out of there to maintain standards. (You know, if the info has to be out earlier, that means staff will have less time to work on it and this could, ultimately, end up delyaing projects because they cannot get the info out on time. If they want the info out a week earlier, staff aren’t probably going to magically just shave off a week.)

Matt Younkle says that with technology people can get more involved early on. He thinks it is useful for developers if can see what others did and what was successful and what was not.

Cooley said the budget will be important, and then I missed a bunch, but he said they will figure out the budget and timeline for these costs.

Younkel says that some of this is public relations and some of it is an actual problem and if people can see we are in the 21st century system for development work that will help.

Cooley says that people doing business with us produce products that cycles in terms of a month and our development process can take months.

Peng Her thanks them for combining all the materials, he is looking at the time line and wondering, this is a presentation of your recommendations, what do you want from us? Do you want recommendations on the recommendations to put together the first draft or are you just presenting.

Cooley says the presentation will be available tomorrow, please send us written information. He says they tried to condense the stack of material and internal work, they tried to coalesce into big buckets and goals and tried to do that as much as they can. Is it bold enough? They are looking at continual improvements, and tried to have goals for pre-application, application and post application stages. They want to be able to revisit these issues and measure if there is improvement. I they get to the point where the city and web are the initial contact, then they can measure what gets approved and what doesn’t go farther. It will help them determine what the problems are, is it internal, or attitude but they need to capture that info and make it more efficient over time.

BRAD BOILS IT DOWN FOR THEM!
Brad Murphy says that they should look at the report when they get it. It would be good to know what individual members things between now and when the initial draft report is due, which is not far away. In a couple weeks the bullet points and options turn into recommendations. He says they should ask what would change if they do the things recommended. What would it accomplish? Would it have any impact on the goals and objectives presented at the outset. He has his own opinion and some are stronger than others and some won’t really accomplish goals identified. You should ask that question. You should also keep in mind when you look at the simplified and complex process, we already have a simple approval process. Take a look at it, there is a process to get a permit in 3 – 10 business days. They are called permitted uses. Things have to be submitted consistent with building codes and if not they might have to re-submit. Some uses may not be permitted, some require additional approval or are not allowed at all which means they have to be rezoned or look for a different location for the project. There are also projects that are in an Urban Design District, Historic District or overlay district. The more permitted uses, the more simple the process. It gets longer after that. The zoning code rewrite could make this easier and efficient, along with the ELAM computer system.

I don’t know if Cooley or Murphy said this. He says that the economic development planning, zoning code rewrite and planning and what happens to the physical planning department will all line up in a few years. In a few years, are we going to do this again?

Cooley said that in another few years, we don’t’ want to do this again and just add our report to the background materials.

MORE DISCUSSION
Selkowe says they need the report by mid-November to review it and she wants that date to be added to the timeline. She is frustrated they do not have it, they should have copies, its hard to gather and get quorum and without the report it limits what they can talk about and limits discussion. She wants that final timeline to see it a week and half before they review it.

Murphy asks if they want to look at the initial report, that would be 2 weeks from today.

She wants the commission members and public to get the report well in advance – wants time to review it, public too, so they can give feedback based on conversations they have.

Clarke says that they are trying to improve a process, how will they know if it is any better? He would like to see evaluation methods, what would you measure so in 3 years can see if better?

Selkowe says there are so many options and suggestions. She says it would be helpful if they can id things they can do right now, those that require new funding and those that need ordinance changes.

Zimmerman says he would like them to highlight the proposed impact – and indicate which would have the most impact.

Doug Nelson reminds the committee staff asked them to look at that as well.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?
I’m guessing neighborhood groups and others should start by reviewing the presentation, decide if it goes far enough and think about what you think will be the result. Since they never identified the problem, I don’t know how we know if the problem is fixed, but after all of this . . . what improvements will we see? Are they the improvements you are looking for? Do other things need to be done, will some of these things be done in vain?