What’s Wrong with How we Do Business in Madison?

Specifically, the development process? Just cuz a ordinary citizens who LIVE and work in Madison, have a different visions of what they want their neighborhood and community to look like and how their tax dollars get spent than the developers who don’t live in the City of Madison and just want to make money off of it, do we need to turn the development process upside down?

I think that was the original intent. But the original report that came out wasn’t that bad. And last night, a new report came out.

The plan commission had this on their agenda last night, they made a whole list of suggestions, pointed out where there were clear misunderstandings of the process and indicated what points they liked. But it was too late for that feedback to make it into the new draft. In fact, no one except staff has had public input into the the draft. Even the Economonic Development Commission has only gotten a presentation on the outline, and then emailed the new draft last night.

I think anyone who cares about their neighborhood, what the city looks like and how we grow as a city, should read the staff team report. And then ask yourself the questions . . . .

1. What is wrong with the process? Why are we doing this? We’re the Mayor’s goals of making the process more efficient, predictable and maintain our high quality of standards for development the right goals?
2. Given the goals, do these recommendations address the goals?
3. If they address the goals, what difference will it make? What will be different?

The first question is the starting point, this is the part we never had a discussion about. What’s wrong with the process and are these the right goals? Are they the goals you’d like to see for the city? Will it produce the results you want to see? And I wonder, do they really want teh rules to be predictable . . . or do they want them to be flexible . . . cuz we know the rules were pretty broadly ignored on a high profile case we all know about and the elected officials substituted their political judgment for the ordinances.

I wrote about the development process meetings this week. Tomorrow night the Economic Development Commission will get their first chance to really discuss “their” report. Right now, its an Economic Development Staff report. I wonder if they will actually make it theirs. I wonder if that feedback from the Plan Commission gets considered. And, I wonder why they are discussing how to improve the development process when they don’t work with it and therefore don’t have the knowledge that is probably needed to make good recommendations.

On that last point, this is why you are needed to show up this week. Share your experiences, make sure the report addresses the goals of the community and the recommendations actually will accomplish those goals. All that written input is likely long forgotten at this point, they are focusing on that new document, so read it, and get your input in! Now is the time, before it gets too late and they don’t have time! You know the lobbyists have been doing their jobs . . . and well. For more information about this weeks meetings, go here.