Recycling demolition and construction waste, Midvale-Westmorland Neighborhood Plan and some harsh words for Cliff Fisher . . .
RECYCLING DEMOLITION AND CONSTRUCTION WASTE
George Dreckman says that during the 1st quarter of this year, when construction was slow, even for a slow year, 7,259 tons of construction and demolition waste found its way to the landfill, making up 21% of the waste. Under this ordinance residential and commercial and multi-family will have a different standards for recycling. This new ordinance would now require that single family home projects recycle clean wood, metal, clean dry wall, corrugated cardboard and shingles. For commercial projects and multi-family units with more than 3 units 70% of the materials are supposed to be recycled. When I tried to do something similar a few years ago, we decided against it due to the lack of markets and instead, just required a recycling plan but didn’t have any way to follow up. So the good news is that the materials now have markets and they have competition. Madison has two companies will take a mixed load of debris and will recycle 60 – 80% of the load. The good news is that this won’t cost the developers any more money and in some cases, recycling is actually cheaper. And the ordinance isn’t onerous in its reporting requirements, all they need to do is bring in their ticket showing what they took to the landfill. Eventually, the reporting can be done on line. The effective date of the ordinance will be 1/1/2010 for the ordinance. All around, good news!
On a funny side note, the Madison Area Building Association lobbyist probably should learn a bit about his industry. I could answer the questions about building materials better than he did. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but he was making a recommendation that the multi-family should not be determined by weight and volume (impacted by snow and ice), he wanted to multi-family to be the same as residential projects and just list the materials to be recycled. And leave the commercial projects with the % standards. When Cnare asked him why they didn’t just talk about the types of materials used in construction. He didn’t know that 4 stories is where they move from wood to wood to concrete and steel. And he didn’t know how many units might be in that type of a building. Wow. There were plan commissioners that were more informed about his industry than he was and he’s been doing this for at least 6 years.
I would also note, again, the plan commission struggled because they had no attorney in the room to help them with some of their questions.
And hmmm . . . Kent Disch is not registered to be a lobbyist! He says he’s been working with former Alder Gruber and others to make the law better, isn’t that lobbying and shouldn’t he have been registered?
MIDVALE-WESTMORLAND NEIGHBORHOOD PLAN
Hmmm . . . the good Alder Pham-Remmele did not attend the plan commission to discuss this issue. Instead, she chose to make a scene at the Board of Estimates and I’m guessing that when this comes up at the council, she will do the same there, instead of attending the meeting with the lead committee where they had a full powerpoint presentation and discussed this over an hour.
CLIFF FISHER DON’T NEED NO STINKIN’ PERMITS
The hardest items to come before the plan commission are those people who do work without getting the required permissions adn then come back and ask for approval on what they have already done. This time, Cliff Fisher, who sent his attorney and architect to take his grief, hadn’t gotten permits but had managed to start moving a house. Now, the house is up in the air and sitting on Butler Street and the plan commission has to choose between making him put it back or just let him move it without the proof of financing that was required so this exact situation would not happen. Smoooooooooth . . . . . . the official explanation was that “we just proceeded” and it was an oversight.
Anyways, here’s what some of the commissioners and the alder said:
Hiefitz – He reluctantly moved to approve the house move but noted he was “extremely uncomfortable”, that there were “significant and legitimate” questions when the project was approved and now we’re put in a box. He said the applicant has “used up the wiggle room” from this body and probably from city staff.
Maniaci – Wanted to see house get put back on the foundation and allow it to be inhabited and further renovations can happen. She had concerns about timing of the move with construction on 600 E Johnson across the street, she is concerned about what happens to Butler St if the house moves because it leaves an empty tooth, she says the city staff was working with best intentions of the city. She thinks it will be a number of years before there is financing and she is concerned because Fisher has other projects he is working on and this won’t be a priority. She says she is frustrated because there are noticeable discrepancies with what the owner is wanting to do with the property and city staff’s understanding of what is supposed to be done.
Gruber finds it troubling that conditions were put on and ignored and now here we are.
Schumacher wonders if we are being played or if people are that naive. Or is it a calculated risk? He has two problems – one that Fisher didn’t get the permits. Fisher and the group “know better than that”. And second, the financing is not in place and that was there to to tell us what the next steps are. Very uneasy with asking for forgiveness approach because if they approve this, why won’t others do the same in the future. He said he might not support it to send a message this is not how we do business.
Staff delicately tip-toed around questions from the commission and Parks said he has never seen something like this where a developer blatantly ignored conditions and did the work anyways.
Ultimately, they referred it to their next meeting, so they get to talk about it again. And hey, Buck Sweeney isn’t a registered lobbyist . . . maybe he’ll find the time in the next two weeks to register?
