Sometimes, intelligent citizen volunteers on committees get led astray . . . and I blame the alders and staff involved. Check out what happened recently with an ordinance (I’m not going to say which one for now, but many of you can probably figure it out) that I care deeply about . . .
1. The ordinance has been being blocked from passage by the Mayor’s office for three years now.
2. It got lost in committee and two committees are haggling over who’s fault the delay is.
3. A “big development project” suddenly needs the ordinance to pass so it can benefit from the ordinance.
4. The ordinance is put on rush . . .it suddenly shows up on everyone’s agenda when previously they couldn’t get it on the agenda.
5. The first committee to discuss the ordinance is handed a brand new version of the ordinance, without indications of what had changed, after the public has already spoken and they are asked to look at the new version instead of the one that I had 21 recommended changes for.
6. The committee likes the new slimmed down version, and rush to pass it so that it can benefit the development and then they’ll go back and clean up the ordinance to make sure it really says what they want it to say.
7. Committee two reviews this new ordinance. People come and testify about the important project, a member of the group doing the project sits on the committee and advocates for quick changes to benefit said project.
8. Committee members admit that the item passed out that evening hasn’t been read by them (this is the item handed out after the public testimony at the last meeting with handwritten changes on it) and they don’t know what the changes are.
9. Committee rushes to pass the item. No discussion of the changes . . . just a rush to get the item done.
10. The rush is a little manufactured, as they received and extension and the rush isn’t as quick as the committee members were lead to believe, and even after I pointed it out to a committee member, they didn’t correct it with the rest of the members of the group.
No, I’m not talking about the Edgewater, I’m talking about the new way the City of Madison does business, this happened just yesterday.
Now, if it took three years to make these changes they now love, how long do you think it will take to make the fixes? It wouldn’t bother me so much, but this is has a hefty price tag on it, we’re talking about $1M
More will be revealed when I have time to do a more thorough post . . . and try to read the several page ordinance to outline what the changes are . . . .
