Wow! This says something about our priorities and speaks directly to equity. Please, don’t show up, the public is sooooo pesky! Over 150 meetings were scheduled after the city weekly meeting schedule comes out late Friday afternoon since the beginning of the year . . . why? Most of these meeting people had less than 72 hours notice before thy started. And the patterns show that most of the topics covered in these meetings have to do with poverty and equity issues.
So far this year, there were the following late meetings (remember, its still only the second week of September, we may hit a new record)
Sept – 10
August – 13
July – 16
June – 23
May – 19
April – 13
March – 15
Feb – 21
Jan – 22
WHO ARE THE OFFENDERS?
There are a couple ways to look at this but here are the things I see:
Habitual offenders (more than half their meeting notices were late this year)
Equal Opportunity Commission – late for 7 of 8 agendas
Minority/Multicultural Affairs Commission – late for 7 of 9 agendas
Commission on People with Disabilities – late for 5 of 8 agendas
Madison Food Policy Council – late for 5 of 8 agendas
CDA – Community Development Authority – late for 5 of 8 agendas
Homeless Services Consortium Noard of Directors – late for 5 of 8 agendas
Patterns
1. The largest offender appears to come from the Department of Civil Rights – responsible for 20% of the meetings (31) which includes:
Equal Opportunities Commission and Employment subcommittee
Minority/Multicultural Affairs Commission
Commission on People with Disabilities and accessible taxi subcommittee
Women’s Issues Committee
Humanitarian Award Committee, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr
2. Food Policy – is responsible for 18 of the late notices meetings, they had lots of sucommittees, but it looks like they make no attempt to get them out on time.
3. Community Development Division – is responsible for 14 of the meetings, the issue here is that they didn’t even think they had to publicly notice the first meeting listed until I challenged them and the Allied Drive Task Force was meeting and they weren’t even on the list til I brought it up. The CDBG meetings that were late were where the decided nonprofit program funding for the next two years.
Homeless Services Consortium Board of Directors
CDBG
Early Childhood Care and Education Committee
Allied Area Task Force
4. Planning – They do fine with the plan commission, urban design, landmarks and other standing committees that developers attend, but they had 15 late agendas on neighborhood meetings which didn’t fair so well, including:
University Hill Farms Plan
Joint West Campus area committee
Emerson East Eken Park Neighborhood Steering Committee
South Capital District Planning
5. Engineering had 14 misses, but they were more random with the exception of the latest facilities planning meetings with Smart Growth Madison and Downtown Madison Inc and Capitol Neighborhoods
6. CDA was responsible for 10 of the meetings, which includes their subcommittees, it might not be a large number, but the pattern of being in the top 7 offenders is worth repeating.
7. City Council! Ok, the council meeting agendas got out on time, but 8 of their meetings for special meetings or subcomittee meeting for CCOC or the City-County Liaison Committee didn’t. I only mention this because leadership starts here!
WWBK Do?
Grab the equity report, make copies, pick up the phone and talk to folks, ask people to do better, follow up with an email citing the equity report, give them a few months to do better, if they don’t, talk to their supervisors. In some cases, this might be coming directly from the supervisors. Especially on the things that are the Mayor’s office initiatives, fix it fast! This is embarassing.
From the equity report “One of the guiding principles of the RESJ Initiative is authentic, ongoing public engagement and participation.”
Let’s be serious about it! It starts here! You can’t participate when you don’t know about the meetings!
Indeed this is a problem. That said, at least at the county level, the Office of Equal Opportunity, continues to get cut and there are now only 2 staff to do all the work, including affirmative action reports, contract compliance, community engagement, committee staffing, etc.
I thought that too as I was writing this. The people doing this work probably get paid a lot less than people in other departments with more resources as well. But again, that just points to our priorities.