The meeting started 12 minutes late, Alders Solomon and Kerr were not there, Alder Palm was late. And, it was hard not to notice it was Alder Rummel’s birthday! (It was just cute – heh, cute – when during roll call the clerk was calling the roll you know the routine. Clerk says “Rhodes-Conway”. Satya says “here”. Clerk repeats “Rhodes-Conway here.” and on and on and on. However in Rummel’s case, the third part of the routine turned into “Happy Birthday Rummel, here”) Ok, looks like I took my cues from the council, not getting to business . . . here’s the wrap up . . .
#1 – We declared it “Tap Project Week for Unicef” March 22 – 28 to bring awareness to water issues.
#2 – We declared it “Girl Scout Week” March 8 – 14.
Then, the “consent agenda” passing all the items on the agenda (82 items plus the addendum) but we referred items 42 (snow ordinance), 69 (sustainability plan for Northeast Neighborhoods), 79 (Economic Development Work Plan) and withdrew reconsideration of 105 (a rushed through, no longer needed right now resolution on Tenney Park Shelter).
We separated items 18 (housing committee appointment), 38 (smoke detectors), 82 (Affirmative Action Plan) and 104 (putting a Madison School District representative on Plan Commission) for discussion.
Next we went to public hearings – there was no discussion on any of the items except #8 which were assessments for Gilman St. Becky Anderson and Art Luedtke showed up to say that they were opposed to adding lights on the street. Verveer explained the process, why they were important and that Board of Public Works heard that same testimony and still wanted to add the lights. Because the assessments were higher, the property owners will have 15 years to pay it back if they need it. It passed with only Monson voting “no”.
#18 – Housing Committee Appointment
There’s a whole lot of confusion out there about why the Housing Committee was not asked to work on the “Merger” issue or the “Diversity” issue – the two recently created housing committees. The theory was that the “Merger” committee is supposed to work on a regional housing work plan. So, why we’re appointing someone from outside the city to the housing committee because we need to work on regional housing. It seemed that he was being appointed to the wrong committee. I asked for an explanation – the mayor insisted that he answer because “its my appointment” and he said that after the merger committee is done, then the Housing Committee will work on the plan. He also said it would help with diversity on the committee. When I asked what special skills this person had that would help him work on regional issues and why people who live in the city but work in other areas can fill the same need – then the Mayor punted to Ray Harmon – suddenly not knowing what this guy brought to the table. Because it requires 2/3 votes to appoint someone who lives outside the City of Madison to a city committee, we had to do roll call and they just got the 14 votes needed to appoint the person. Everyone voted for it except Rummel, Webber, Cnare and Konkel. (Solomon and Kerr were absent)
#38 – The smoke detector ordinance passed unanimously. The family of Peter Talen was there, as was Nancy Jensen from the Apartment Association speaking in support and Alder Verveer spoke eloquently, as usual. I simply can’t do it justice to try to write about it. Suffice it to say – we now have the most progressive smoke detector ordinance in the country. By 2010 all homes will be required to have either hardwired or 10 year lithium battery smoke detectors that can’t be disabled and you will need one in every room – inside and outside the doorway.
#82 – We passed our 2009 – 2013 Affirmative Action plan. I’m not very happy that the 6 areas identified as problem areas did not include the fact that women are under-represented (taking into account their availability in the market) in 5 out of 8 categories of jobs in the City of Madison and the action plans don’t include systemic ways to reduce these numbers. We knew women were underrepresented in top management positions (Officials and Administrators), but I didn’t realize that it carried through to Professionals, Technicians, Skilled Crafts and Service/Maintenance. For comparison, people of color were only underrepresented in 1 of the 8 categories. None of the problem areas specifically addressed gender, so I expect nothing to change for women in the City of Madison.
#104 – We added a Madison School District representative to the Plan Commission. I think this was the first time in 8 years that the Council actually talked on the council floor about how the City of Madison relates to the schools. Of concern is the fact that the city boundaries and the school district boundaries are not the same. And, as a result, much of the areas we are building in on the periphery are in the Sun Prairie, Middleton/Cross Plains, Verona, McFarland and even now DeForest school districts – so the question was – why Madison Schools and what about the others. There was a good discussion of some of the issues. I just brought it up because it just doesn’t seem like we’re doing enough to coordinate our efforts with the schools. Especially given that we just raised the bus fares – costing the schools more money. Most people agreed that putting someone from MMSD on the plan commission was something that we would “try”. And that it was a “goodwill gesture”. I just think we need more. Lots more.
I didn’t note what time we got out of there, but it was a short meeting. Afterward, we went to the Great Dane to celebrate Marsha’s birthday. Joining us were Don’t Eat My Fries Judge, Clear, Verveer, Birthday Rummel, Webber, Bruer, Sweetie Schumacher and Clausius.
