The Week Ahead: July 30 - Aug 4 - Take Two!

Ah, that's better, a whole bunch of meetings I had in my calendar finally popped up on the Weekly Schedule. So, try again. Here's what's going on this week and what went wrong with public notices this week!

Monday, July 30, 2007
Board of Estimates 4:30 PM Room 260 Madison Municipal Building
Halloween
- accepting donations for Halloween costs and authorizing fencing
- increasing budget for police, parks, streets and engineering for Halloween
- glass ban
$2.7 in TIF for Arbor Gate in 2008
Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan
Borrowing to create affordable rental housing

Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Community Services Commission 5:35 PM Room 300 Madison Municipal Building
Cuts to agencies due to Mayor's request to departments to cut 3%
Another special last-minute Water Board meeting on another contract. 4:30 at the Water Utility

Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Economic Development Commission Room 120 Municipal Building 5:00

I'd also check out the public input and access improvments we're making to Chapter 2 this morning and tomorrow morning. You might also be interested in more problems we're having with consultants hired under contracts with the city which is the IZ meeting today and Thursday.

PROBLEMS THIS WEEK

1. The following meetings showed up in Legistar, many without agendas - but they do not appear on the Clerk's Weekly Schedule and therefore, likely are not properly noticed or something else is going on.

08/01/2007 Wed 5:00 PM Housing Committee (Canceled)
08/02/2007 Thu 1:00 PM Inclusionary Zoning Advisory Oversight Committee (No agenda yet, will be developed at today's meeting)
08/02/2007 Thu 4:45 PM Solid Waste Advisory Committee (In Legistar 5 times)
08/02/2007 Thu 6:30 PM Common Council
08/03/2007 Fri 8:00 AM Inclusionary Zoning Advisory Oversight Committee (Canceled)

2. These meetings show up on the City Clerk's Weekly Schedule, but you can't find any agendas on line (Legistar or list of additional meetings) so that you can determine if you want to attend or not.

Monday, July 30, 2007
8:00 AM MADISON METROPOLITAN SEWERAGE DISTRICT 1610 MOORLAND ROAD
9:00 AM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSOINERS EVIDENTIARY HEARING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROOM 300 MMB

Tuesday, July 31, 2007
9:00 AM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSIONERS EVIDENTIARY HEARING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROOM 260 MMB

Wednesday, August 1, 2007
8:30 AM CHAPTER 2 SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE ROOM 417 CCB
9:00 AM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSIONERS EVIDENTIARY HEARING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROOM 300 MMB

Thursday, August 2, 2007
9:00 AM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSIONERS EVIDENTIARY HEARING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROM 300 MMB
12:00 PM MADISON CENTRAL BUSINESS IMPROVEMENT DISTRCT BOARD OF DIRECTORS MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION 615 E. WASHINGTON AVENUE, 2ND FLOOR BOARD ROOM

Friday, August 3, 2007
9:00 AM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSIONERS EVIDENTIARY HEARING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROOM 300 MMB
1:30 PM BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS BID OPENING 1602 EMIL STREET

3. Then, there's the problems where the agendas appear, but there are no links to the documents that you need to truly participate in the meetings. But that will have to wait for another day as it is just too much information to wade through this morning.

4. There are some agendas that are there but you have no idea what they will be discussion. That too, will have to wait for another day, when we can play "What is this meeting about?"

Bottom line is, you shouldn't have to look in three different places and end up with conflicting or missing information. That is not good public notice.

Read more!

The Mayor's Two Favorite Sayings

1. We can disagree without being disagreeable.
2. There is no limit to what we can accomplish if we don't care who gets the credit.

Unfortunately, he repeats the sayings, but doesn't practice them. (Yes, unfortunately, this is another posting about the Mayor and me. But please read it, because important policy decisions are suffering because of his personal dislike of me.)

It's no secret, the Mayor dislikes me. And, he takes quite a few opportunities to express that dislike, in what he says about me to others and in his actions. People notice and then people ask me about it. The hardest question I have to answer is when people ask me "Why?" The question is hard to answer first of all, because I don't think there is just one reason. Second of all, because anything I say makes the Mayor look petty, vindictive, egotistical and well, disagreeable and if I say those things that make the Mayor look bad, it makes me look bad in the process as well. So, my answer to most people for the last 6 months or so has been to smile, shrug, bite my tongue and try not to stoop to his level, then tell people that they'll have to ask the Mayor why he doesn't like me. It's true, we have our differences, but he's right, we don't need to be so disagreeable and I've tried my best to rise above it.

However, it is difficult. Especially when he takes out his frustrations with me on my district (Gorman/Don Miller Project, James Madison Park, Breese Stevens Field funding, the East Washington BUILD, Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan) and on good policy initiatives. (That list is even longer and you can find many of them in previous postings to my blog.). So, what happened to make me bring this up all over again. Really, there are two things.

The first is the inability to work together on the East Washington BUILD and the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood plan. For some reason, Downtown Madison Inc, Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association, Marquette Neighborhood Association, Alder Marsha Rummel and myself are all on the same page about what we need to have happen and the Mayor is on the other side. And he won't listen. Essentially, it kind of boils down to this in my mind: If we're going to increase density in the downtown, we should be thoughtful about it. Part of being thoughtful about it is having not only good land use plans, but having good transportation plans that work with and are integrated into the land use plans. Seems simple enough doesn't it?

Apparently, the Mayor is against the transportation planning that we are requesting. At one point he offered Ald. Olson $200,000 for the transportation planning, but that offer has disappeared. Sad thing is, he could be the hero. He could call us all into his office and help us work out a compromise, but instead, he's being an obstacle. The Tenney-Lapham Plan has been done for over a year, and the East Washington BUILD committee had its last meeting last October, and yet neither plan is adopted because we're in a stalemate. Over what? Ego? Who gets the credit? Retribution? I don't know, and it doesn't make any sense.

The second reason, was tonight's Board of Estimates meeting. Oddly enough, the Mayor wasn't even there, but he did as much damage as he could via memo and mysterious staff requests. And instead was taking care of other important things . . . i.e. golfing?

MAYOR CIESLEWICZ WEEKLY SCHEDULE
Monday, July 30, 2007
7:45 a.m. Welcome at Wisconsin State Police Chiefs Association (Monona Terrace)
10:00 a.m. Policy staff meeting
12:00 noon 100 Black Men golf tournament (Bergamont Golf Club, Oregon)

The two items at the Board of Estimates meeting that were both referred were:

13. 06831 Creating Sec. 4.20(3)(d) of the Madison General Ordinances to prohibit proportional calculation of wages to employees performing both City and non-City work.

14. 06939 That the City of Madison should establish a capital borrowing program for affordable rental housing.

The first item, is really a housekeeping item that has been in legistar since June 26th. Several years ago, when I was Council President and on the Board of Estimates (2004-2005), we discovered that while the non-profits were held to one standard with calculating the living wage, the for-profits were held to a much more lax standard and in fact were not paying their employees a living wage while the employees were performing City contract work. It only affected two companies, Cintas and Octopus Car Wash. Apparently, they were incapable of doing what all non-profits are required to do, that is, figure out how to account for paying a living wage during the time that their employees are performing work under the City contract. What makes this really a housekeeping item is that we no longer have contracts with either of them. So, all the ordinance change does is make sure that in the future, if we contract with any for-profits that are not paying the living wage, that they are held to the same strict standard as the non-profits. Simple enough. A housekeeping measure.

Well, apparently, there was a request from "staff" to have this referred. Funny, the only staff that talked to me were the city attorney and the comptrollers staff and they were both fine with it. So, I explained to the Board of Estimates that this was merely a housekeeping item and asked what the issue was. Then, it came out, it was the "mayor's staff" that had requested the referral. Why? I don't know. You think they'll communicate with me about it between now and the next Board of Estimates meeting? I doubt it. And if they had issues with it, why didn't they mention it during the last month that it has been available? Looks like I have to write another memo. I can't wait to find out what the issue is.

The second item, is even more disturbing. Ever since the rental portion of the inclusionary zoning ordinance was struck down in the courts, I've been trying to figure out a way to provide incentives to developers to provide affordable rental housing, since we can't require it under state law due to the "rent control" provision in the state statutes. I talked to a lobbyist for several developers, a for-profit developer, a few non-profit developers, some city staff and I came up with an idea - based on all of their input. I wrote the resolution, and its been available since July 9th. I hadn't heard a word from the Mayor's office in the last few weeks. Not that that is unusual.

What was unusual was that the Board of Estimates members all had a memo, hard copy (not available electronically), placed at their desks when they got to the meeting. There was no copy of the memo for me and I wouldn't have even known about it, except that 2 different alders made sure that I saw it. One was kind enough to give me their copy. The memo boiled down to this: the Mayor didn't understand the proposal and he was asking people to vote it down.

Why? Well, I won't speculate, but the memo showed he didn't understand

• the program as proposed
• the Affordable Housing Trust Fund
  
• or even Inclusionary Zoning funding.
  

He made several assumptions that were erroneous. So, in deference to the Mayor, we referred the item. However, Ald. Bruer made the Mayor's office make a public commitment to work with me on this between now and the next Board of Estimates meeting. That ought to be fun.

Why am I writing all of this, mostly because I just can't tolerate bullshit. And the bullshit from the Mayor's office just keeps piling up. These are just a few more instances in a long line of examples that I could trot out. It's a pattern, not just a few minor incidents. I don't care if he doesn't like me. I don't care if his key staff people don't like me. I don't care if he's disagreeable to me. I don't care if he takes the credit for things that I do. But, I do care, when he uses his personal dislike of me to prevent good things from happening. Good neighborhood planning and creating affordable housing should not be the casualties of the Mayor's petty dislike of one of twenty alders.

Too bad the Mayor can't practice what he preaches, cuz he sure can be disagreeable, and sadly, I don't even think we disagree about the underlying issues. I think the whole City suffers when we have a Mayor that has knee-jerk responses to something simply because of who proposes it, instead of discussing issues openly and fairly based on their merits. I think the City deserves better from its elected officials and I hate being a part of this mess. This is politics at its worst. For my part, I've tried to reach out and figure out how to put this behind us, but I've been told in no uncertain terms that the Mayor just isn't interested. So, I'll keep pushing for things for my district and good policies and hope the Council can try to make the best decision based on what they know and the merits of the issues, not based on personalities. Luckily, I think we have a Council that can and will do that.
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Dane County Housing Authority Opens the Section 8 Waiting List

It's been about 5 years since people were allowed to apply for Section 8, so this is a HUGE deal in the housing world. Here are the highlights of their announcement:

Dane County Housing Authority is reopening their Section 8 waiting list starting July 30, 2007. Applications can be picked up at their office (2001 W Broadway, Suite 1, Monona, WI 53703) between 9:00 and 4:00. Applications can also be downloaded from the website www.dcha.net starting July 30, 2007

A date has not been set to close the waiting list but it will NOT be open for an indefinite period of time. ( i.e. do this asap!)

Some helpful suggestions they sent:
1. Incomplete applications will not be processed, they will be returned for completion.
2. Make sure you complete and sign all the attached forms.
3. Do not call and ask how long it will take to come to the top of the list or where you are on the list, as they will not know the answer.
4. They will not accept faxed applications.
5. Applications must be returned by mail to: Dane County Housing Authority, P.O. Box 6097, Monona, WI 53716-0097. Applications will not be accepted at the office.

Read more!

The Week Ahead: July 30 - Aug 3

Here's what's going on this week.

Monday, July 30, 2007
Board of Estimates 4:30 PM Room 260 Madison Municipal Building
Halloween
- accepting donations for Halloween costs and authorizing fencing
- increasing budget for police, parks, streets and engineering for Halloween
- glass ban
$2.7 in TIF for Arbor Gate in 2008
Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan
Borrowing to create affordable rental housing

Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Community Services Commission 5:35 PM Room 300 Madison Municipal Building
Cuts to agencies due to Mayor's request to departments to cut 3%

There may be more of interest, but there are some agendas not yet available or meetings that aren't on legistar yet, so I'll have to update this later in the week.

Read more!

Bus Detours: Cap Square and Atwood Summerfest

Here they are:

CAPITOL LOOP DETOUR: Bus Stop Shelter Replacements
Starts Saturday, July 28

Due to the demolition and replacement of the bus shelters on the Capitol Square, buses will follow the Capitol Loop Detour starting Saturday, July 28.

Routes operate one block from the Capitol Square on Doty, Webster, Dayton and Fairchild streets.

This detour will be in effect throughout the project, which is expected to be completed in the middle of September.

• Complete Info

ROUTE 7 DETOUR: Atwood Summerfest
Saturday, July 28; 6 AM - 9 PM

Due to the Atwood Summerfest on Saturday, July 28, Atwood Ave. will be closed between Division St. and Winnebago St. from 6 AM until 9 PM.

During this time, westbound Route 7 buses will detour via Dunning St., LaFollette Ave. and Winnebago St. Passengers are directed to catch westbound buses on Atwood Ave. at Jackson St. or Winnebago St. at First St.

Eastbound Route 7 buses will detour via Eastwood Dr. Passengers are directed to catch buses on Winnebago St. at Riverside St. or Eastwood Dr. at Division St.

• Complete Info
Read more!

Good News: Improvements to Railroad Tracks on Blair/Williamson

For all of you who have been riding your bike and wiped out on the railroad tracks by Blair/Williamson, we have good news!

Interim repairs to the railroad crossing of Wilson Street at the intersection of John Nolen Drive, Blair Street and Williamson Street will begin Monday July 30 and are expected to continue until Wednesday August 8th. The railroad crossing will be repaved, and a cut-in at the island will allow for a straighter crossing of the tracks by bicyclists. A bike lane will also be marked on westbound Williamson and Wilson Streets in this area. Here's a drawing of these changes.

For more info, contact:
Arthur Ross, Pedestrian-Bicycle Coordinator
City of Madison Traffic Engineering Division
215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Suite 100
PO Box 2986
Madison, WI 53701-2986
608/266-6225
Read more!

The banging is over!

Yes, the all-night-long banging has come to an end! Here's a note from City Engineer Larry Nelson that was sent yesterday with some interesting information about the future of this type of work:

Dave Beck-Engel of Findorff confirmed that the pile driving on Johnson Street was concluded this morning. While we did not get complaints in the immediate area, we had quite a few complaints from areas east of the square and reports that people in Monona could here the sound. George Hank reported that he could hear the sound at his residence some 2.8 miles from the site.

Apparently, the dampening of the energy waves was more detectable out some distance. To my knowledge, we have not generated a similar response from pile driving during the day. Barring additional information on the type of hammer used, its probably not a good idea to do pile driving at night in the future.

Read more!

Amplified Sound: Tenney Park 5 - 9 on August 6th

On Monday, August 6, the Madison Area Peace Coalition will hold their annual festival at the Tenney Park Shelter. They will have amplification between 5pm and 9pm.
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16% Hike in Water Rates Proposed

The Water Utility is proposing to the PSC that they raise their rates by 16%. Please see the public notice below, which includes the date and time of the public hearing.

PUBLIC NOTICE TO ALL CUSTOMERS OF MADISON WATER UTILITY

Madison Water Utility has filed an application with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSCW) to increase water rates.

The increase is necessary due to increased operating costs and plant additions since the last full water rate case in 2005.

The total increase in water revenues requested is $2,769,244 which will result in an estimated overall rate increase of 16% over the water utility's present revenues.

If the request is granted, the water bill for an average residential customer with a 5/8-inch meter who uses 4,300 cubic feet of water semiannually will increase from $66.21 to $77.10, or 16%, for general service; and from $71.81 to $83.10, or 16% overall, when the public fire protection charge is also included.

A public hearing on the application has been scheduled for

Wednesday August 8, 2007
10:00 a.m.
Amnicon Falls Hearing Room
Public Service Commission Building -- 1st Floor
610 N. Whitney Way
Madison, Wisconsin

Scheduling questions regarding this hearing may be directed to the PSCW at (608) 266-3766.

If you have any questions about the rate increase, please contact Robin Piper, Finance / Accounting Manager, Madison Water Utility, at 266-4656.

Read more!

Cities and Schools working Together

A former City Council member sent me this article about how Portland is spending spending $1.6 million to keep poorer kids in their schools. They have a program they initiated to keep poorer students in gentrifying areas of the City. Apparently they lost 11,000 students as the poorer people move out of the area and the richer people move in and send their kids to private schools. And of course, that then meant that the school district was losing state aids. The money is used for rental assistance, gap mortgages and grants to parent and neighborhood groups.

The program is called the Schools, Families, Housing Initiative. And the money will be spent as follows:

• $950,000, will go to the Portland Schools Foundation for grants aimed at promoting neighborhood schools, so newcomers will decide to send their children to them. The grants could be for anything from repairing broken windows to designing an after-school program.
• $450,000 in rental assistance for families with school-age children in schools with high student turnover. I should help 80 families avoid eviction and keep their children in the same school.
• $200,000 for a cash reserve, allowing the Portland Housing Center to offer about 40 below-market second-mortgages to help first-time home owners bridge the gap between the money they borrow and the house they want. The average amount would be about $5,000 per family.
  

This is an interesting concept. It's great to see the City working with their School Board. Do you think the City of Madison City Council, the School Board, Mayor's office and School Administration will ever get to the point where they are actively looking at the impact of schools on our neighborhoods and develop strategies to help keep our schools and neighborhoods strong? Or will we continue down the path where we say "It's the school board's problem"? And the School Board says "It's the City's problem"? It's not our responsibility, with everyone pointing in the other direction.

It's painfully obvious to so many in the community that as the schools go, so goes the City. I had thought there was some serious momentum to work on these issues between the City and Schools after last year's school budget, but those efforts seem to have fizzled or taken the back seat to other issues and I think that is a shame. In fact, the Board of Education-City Liaison Committee hasn't even met since the new council has been appointed. They have agendas for January, February and March but only minutes for their February meeting. Note, the two City Council members (Knox & Thomas) didn't even show up.

Just think, if the Cities and Schools were working together in a meaningful way, perhaps we could find partnerships and ways to help each other with the following:

• Getting kids safely to schools
• Crossing Guards
• Bussing (I think the schools spend something like $750,000 to get kids to school, in addition to $250,000 for bus passes for poor kids.)
  
• Space sharing
  
• Community and Neighborhood Meetings
• After school uses of space for community uses
  
• Sporting events & activities (We could coordinate usage of the parks. Most notably rentals at Breese Stevens, Warner, and a West Side park plus MSCR activities cost $80,000)
  
• Police Officers in the Schools - The schools pay for 4 police officers
  
• Coordinating planning efforts so that when we create new neighborhoods we are working with the schools to figure out where the kids will attend schools and what impacts it will have on the school district
• Coordinating human services
• Coordinating services at our libraries

I'm sure you can probably think of more areas where we could overlap and mutually benefit each other. But it seems, we can't even get this conversation started. I'd like to see it happen before the schools face their next big crisis and before our neighborhoods have to struggle more. Now is the time to be working on these issues, instead of taking a 4 month vacation from meeting. Or worse, before we're spending even more money like Portland to fix the problems we helped to create.
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Making Money Off Inmates?

So . . . could you imagine not having enough money to make bail or pay for a decent attorney, trying to figure out how to pay rent so your family doesn't get evicted, attempting to keep your job while negotiating the county jail system and needing basic services and getting gouged to purchase them? Please consider supporting the good work of the folks at Madison Urban Ministry, Voices Beyond Bars and the Prison Ministry Program. Life is hard enough for some folks, they shouldn't be getting taken advantage of by County Government on top of it all.

End Unfair Profiteering in County Jails

Each year the County and private corporations rake in millions of dollars from inmates and their families in the county jails. The county contracts with companies in the jails that overcharge the families of inmates to provide for telephone, vending, and laundry services. For example, every time an inmate calls a family member, a loved one, or their attorney it costs those on the receiving end a $4.25 connecting fee and $0.50/minute. This brings in massive profits to the private telephone contractor, ICSolutions, and generates over $800 thousand in revenue to the county. The County also makes over $200 thousand/year by overcharging inmates for basic hygiene/medical products and laundry services. Jails largely consist of people from the poorest most marginalized neighborhoods of the county, and many of these inmates are incarcerated because they couldn't afford bail.

An ordinance to end all unfair profiteering in the jails has been introduced to the Dane County Board of Supervisors and is being propelled by the Madison-area Urban Ministry, Voiced Beyond Bars, and the Prison Ministry Program. The proposed ordinance would end county revenue generating from services provided to inmates in the jails. It would seek the lowest cost to inmates with all jail services, reversing the current practice of rewarding contractors who guarantee the highest revenue to the county. The proposed ordinance will help curb an exploitative and growing jail industrial complex in Dane County...

TAKE ACTION!
Email all Dane County Board Supervisors and County Executive Kathleen Falk and Urge them to Support this Ordinance: county_board_recipients@co.dane.wi.us , county_executive@co.dane.wi.us
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Gender & City Employment - The Controversy Continues

So, Vikki Kratz calls me and asks me what I think about the Mayor hiring another man. I say, you can't look at this on a case by case basis. I don't know who applied so I can't really comment. I also say that until the report comes out, I don't expect anything to change and that likely, our problem is in recruitment and maybe not in the actual hiring decision and that I look forward to the committees recommendations about how to get more women to apply for jobs.

So, Vikki writes a story, Jason Joyce starts a thread on thedailypage, I get attacked (again) and the thread goes to hell. And so it goes. However, it does give me an opportunity to update you on some information I have about how the City of Madison is doing in general.

The Department of Workforce Development groups jobs into job families and somehow, they can tell you the percentage of women and people in racial/ethnic groups are available in those jobs. We can then compare this to the number of women and people in certain racial/ethnic groups that are currently in those positions. Here's the areas in the City where women are being under-hired compared to their availability in the job market:

Job Family 1A - 1B (Senior Official & Executives; Unit Directors & Managers)
Available in the Job Market: 36.6%
Currently Hired: 28.89%
Women are 13 of 45 employees in these job families

Job Family 1C - 1F (Program Managers & Supervisors; Major Program, Project or Operations Administrators and Supervisors; Program, Project and/or Operations Administrators and Supervisors; Program, Project or Operations Supervisors)
Available in the Job Market: 49.9%
Currently Hired: 36.11%
Women are 39 of 108 employees in these job families

Job Family 2F - 2J (Police Captains; Police Lieutenants; Fire Captains; Fire Lieutenants)
Available in the Job Market: 21.9%
Currently Hired: 17.28
Women are 14 of 81 employees in these job families

Job Family 2K - 2M (Expert Consultants; Public Health Protection; Heath Care Services)
Available in the Job Market: 87.4%
Currently Hired: 80%
Women are 36 of 45 employees in these job families

Job Family 3A - 3E (Police Sergeants and Special Investigators; Firefighters/Paramedics; Fire Inspectors and Investigators; Advanced Specialized Regulatory and/or Code Enforcement; Specialized Regulatory and/or Code Enforcement; Inspectors)
Available in the Job Market: 32.6%
Currently Hired: 27.62%
Women are 50 of 81 employees in these job families

Job Family 3F - 3K (Engineering Program Specialists and Surveyors; Engineering/Planning Technicians; Architectural/Engineering and Related Aides; Property Assessment and Real Estate Aides; Biological and Chemical Science Technicians)
Available in the Job Market: 32.6%
Currently Hired: 19.67%
Women are 12 of 61 employees in these job families

Job Family 6A - 6K (Advanced Administrative and Program Support; Fiscal Processing; Resource Assignment; Administrative and Program Support; Advanced Administrative and Clerical Support; Administrative and Clerical Support; Clerical Support; Library Clerks; Library Page; Cashiers; Inventory Clerks)
Available in the Job Market: 84.3%
Currently Hired: 76.98%
Women are 408 of 530 employees in these job families

Job Family 7A - 7F (Crafts Group; Advanced Electrical Systems Installation, Maintenance and Repair; Facilities and Buildings Maintenance/Construction; Water Supply Operators, Skilled Mechanical Maintenance)
Available in the Job Market: 12.1%
Currently Hired: 1.35%
Women are 2 of 148 employees in these job families

Job Family 8A - 8B (Service and Maintenance Leadworkers, Coordinators and Crew Leaders; Specialized Grounds, Conservatory and Arborist Workers)
Available in the Job Market: 23.20%
Currently Hired: 12.96%
Women are 7 of 54 employees in these job families

Job Family 8D - 8P (General Public Works Maintenance and Equipment Operations; Advanced Public Works Maintenance and Equipment Operations; Advanced Equipment Operators; Refuse Collection, Street and Sewage Maintenance Operators; General Facility/Equipment Repair and Maintenance; General Maintenance/Mechanical Repair Work; Custodial and Facility Maintenance; Metro Transit Custodial and Service Workers; Hourly Public Facility Service Providers)
Available in the Job Market: 30.8%
Currently Hired: 22.28%
Women are 123 of 552 employees in these job families

So, for those who think that we don't take various factors into account, such as availability in the market place, you're wrong, we do. And even after taking those factors into account, we're still failing.
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Changing E Johnson and E Gorham to 2-way Streets

You'd think that asking City Staff to look at changing E Johnson and E Gorham back to 2-way streets was the beginning of the end of the world. It's not like this is an idea that hasn't been discussed before. In fact, as long as I have lived in this neighborhood (since 1991), traffic on those two streets have been of constant concern.

In fact, this idea was adopted by the Common Council as part of the current Tenney Lapham/Old Market Place Neighborhood Plan that was approved in 1995 and therefore is part of the adopted Comprehensive Plan:

Evaluate making both E. Johnson and E. Gorham Streets two-way between N. Blair and N. Baldwin Streets as recommended in the Isthmus Area Traffic Redirection Study (1978). Evaluate this option in light of its diversion potential and impact on the central business district. (page 74)

The language in the proposed Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Plan is much the same.

1. Develop a Transportation Management Plan for the central City that will implement Transportation System Management (TSM) and Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies that will (1) make central neighborhoods more livable and (2) improve mobility for all residents and visitors by distributing trip demand across multiple modes (auto, bike, bus, streetcar, commuter rail and pedestrian).

2. As part of the Transportation Management Plan for the central City, explore strategies to reduce the arterial operation of East Johnson Street and East Gorham Street, by redesigning the traffic flow on both streets to two-way instead of one-way streets between Wisconsin Avenue and Baldwin Street (East Johnson is already two-way from Baldwin to East Washington Avenue.)

However, the staff are completely resistant to traffic planning for the Isthmus as we first discovered in the East Washington BUILD process when they issued their staff report last May.

The article in the Cap Times yesterday sparked discussion on three different neighborhood listserves (Capitol Neighborhoods, East Isthmus Neighborhood Planning Council and Tenney Lapham Neighborhood). Here's some of the interesting comments from neighbors:

COMMENT ONE: (TE = Traffic Engineering)

This is part of a long-range, grass-roots generated isthmus traffic plan that SASY & Wil-Mar hoods were involved in as well.

Of course, TE has to trot out their old bugaboo:

>McCormick said the neighborhood association is "proposing shunting the
>traffic onto other street in other neighborhoods where we don't think it
>can be sustained."

That is complete & utter balderdash. It which completely ignores just such a (relatively) successful situation on the south side of the isthmus. Two way streets, such as Willy & Atwood foster urban vibrancy in a way that the mini-interstate feel of E. Johnson & E. Gorham could never achieve. I think they deserve better. And McDonnell proposes better.

COMMENT TWO:

It sounds like TE, based on their public statements, has already disqualified themselves to conduct or lead the proposed study in an objective manner. The basic sentiment expressed was, it’s a stupid idea but we can study it. Measures should be taken to ensure an objective assessment of 2-way streets.

COMMENT THREE: (MH = Mansion Hill)

The call for two way on Johnson and Gorham was in a street use document endorsed by CNI a couple of years ago. (Number one under Neighborhood Rules on the attached). This would be good for MH and has been called for by many for the MH plan, which is still in draft form. Two way streets results in 20% fewer turns and reduced miles driven. In the recent Nolan Conference it was promoted as being a better approach for city planning...also supported by Donovan Rypkema, downtown economist/consultant who spoke to many groups in Madison about 5 years ago.

COMMENT FOUR:

In general terms two-way streets are better than one-way streets, Adam. They certainly bring about significant degrees of traffic calming; slowing things down and reducing accidents. The one-way streets were designed by a generation of engineers who's main driver was unimpeded movement and speed of the car.

COMMENT FIVE:

Hopefully with the joint effort of multiple neighborhoods pushing, a transportation study can more forward.

The city of Madison needs to start thinking outside the box now when it comes to transportation. In 20 years, when the United States war coffers are bankrupt, where will the oil come from? We need to have in place a transportation infrastructure that will take into account the skyrocketing cost of fuel. Cities that continue to expand on the model of the automobile are going to suffer greatly. Will we let the traffic engineers, whose sole job it seems is to increase auto capacity, continue to dictate our city's transportation directions?

We not only need to reclaim Johnson/Gorham from the one car/one person commuter pattern, we MUST get Madison policy makers to look at how we as a city will fare once the cost of oil will force major changes in our lifestyle. We need to stop building massive parking structures that one day may sit empty. I think we can get people out of their cars with a series of incentives and disincentives:

-employer subsidized mass transit (the university has a successful free bus pass program)
-pay people not to drive
-increase parking fees for those who insist on driving with waivers for those who need to drive but cannot afford the fees.
-reduce auto capacity (johnson/gorham) and increase capacity for alternative modes (peds, bikes, rails, busses etc.) This will equalize the transit options, perhaps giving mass transit an advantage

A side benefit to reduced single car commuting will be cleaner air for all of us!

I'm sure folks have noticed that the students are migrating closer to campus which makes the johnson/gorham corridor full of vacancy signs. So much of that housing stock is already in disrepair, what will happen when they become even harder to rent? Returning Johnson/Gorham would breath new life into some of those tired old houses.

These comments came from a wide variety of people of different political persuasions and philosophies of how to deal with local government. They also came from a wide range of neighborhoods. This issue at least deserves some discussion and study.

Read more!

Madison Metro: Dream Big!

With all the talk about trolleys and trains and regional transportation authorities, it seems that the Madison Bus system is being ignored. Well, here's your opportunity to talk about what you think the future of Madison Metro should look like. Express busses to and from transfer points? Express busses from cities and towns surrounding Madison? 24 hour service? On demand late night service from the transfer points? More weekend service? Or maybe, you just want a bench to sit on at your bus stop. Here's your chance to dream big and get your ideas into the long range plans for Madison Metro. This announcement comes from Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway.

Four Public Participation Meetings have been scheduled to get feedback on the work of the Long Range Metro Transit Planning Ad Hoc Committee.

Feedback will be focused on the Midterm Report of the committee. (A complete copy of this Midterm report will be available soon.)

Additional meetings on the north and west sides of Madison as well as the University of Wisconsin campus will be scheduled later in the year.

Monday, August 6; 5:00 PM
Lakeview Park Shelter, 6300 Mendota Ave., Middleton

Wednesday, August 8; 5:00 PM
South Madison Health and Family Center - Harambee
2202 S. Park Street, Room 310, the Villager Mall
Please enter through the South Madison Library.

Thursday, August 9, 2007; 5:00 PM
Madison Public Library - Pinney Branch
204 Cottage Grove Road, in the Meeting Room.

Tuesday, August 14
Transit and Parking Commission Meeting
Madison Municipal Building, 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Room 260.
Note: The Public Participation Meeting will be held at the beginning of the TPC Commission's agenda which starts at 5 PM.

Read more!

BSR: 4 Shows in 3 Days!

You have four chances to catch Baghdad Scuba Review in the next 3 days.

Mr. Roberts
Thursday, July 26th
2116 Atwood Ave
9:45

Cosmic Railroad Family Gathering Festival
Friday, July 27th
Camp Rotamer 5245 E Rotamer Rd Janesville, WI

Atwood Summerfest
Saturday, July 28th
Maximum Ink / Berghoff Rock Stage
(located in M & M Investments parking lot behind Player’s Bar)
They play 4:15 - 5:15 and open for Canned Heat

Cool Rock Chaos
Saturday, July 28thach Rd. in Cross Plains
You just need to read the details of this event for yourself.

Read more!

Workers' Rights Picket Cancelled, but Childcare needs your help!

This just in from the Worker's Rights Center . . . and Wisconsin Council on Families and Children

The WRC Board has called off the picket scheduled at La Hacienda for Wednesday, July 25 at 5pm as a show of good faith to representatives from a number of community organizations working to resolve the dispute. Representatives from the WRC board will be meeting early next week with the owner of La Hacienda to discuss the wage and hour complaints. We will keep supporters posted on developments. The WRC board would like to acknowledge the overwhelming support that the community has show as the key that has brought the owner to the table.

Patrick Hickey
WRC Director

However, childcare issues could use your support tomorrow. This is from the Wisconsin Council on Families and Children. And its only part of the picture of how childcare funding is being slashed at the state capital.

Help Ensure Wisconsin’s Budget Reflects Our Values!

Every parent who needs it should have access to high quality early care and education for their children.

Wisconsin Shares funding is in jeopardy. Wisconsin child care providers need your help to maintain the bipartisan funding package for WI Shares and quality improvement initiatives.

Budget Background: The Wisconsin legislature is continuing its work on the state budget. The eight legislators who make up the conference committee (see bottom of email for names & contact information) are expected to start their work on the state budget this week. They face the daunting task of trying to reconcile vastly different Senate and Assembly versions of the budget – budgets with very different priorities. Whatever budget document the conference committee comes up with goes back to the Senate and the Assembly for up or down votes (no amendments or changes are allowed) and then to the Governor.

What can you do to help make sure that WI Shares is protected?

1. Contact the Conference Committee:

Take 2 minutes THIS WEEK and email all 8 members of the conference committee with the touch of a button! Click the Take Action button above you will have a sample message ready to add to and/or send as is. Thanks!

2. Join us for the Wisconsin Values Event

State Capitol Building, Senate Parlor
Thursday, July 26th @ 11:00 a.m.

The Wisconsin Values Event: A large and diverse set of organizations (including SEIU, AARP, AFT, AFSCME, Wisconsin Counties Association, WI Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Planned Parenthood, Wisconsin Early Childhood Association and the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families) are coming together this Thursday, July 26th for this Wisconsin Values event to provide an opportunity for policy-makers, the public and the media to hear from individuals whose daily lives are impacted by the decisions on this budget. These individuals could be our neighbors, our friends, or members of our families. Like all of us, they value good schools, access to health care and child care, protection for our most vulnerable residents, strong communities, and higher education.

You’re invited: To ensure that the state legislature sees the strength represented in our collective voices, we need you to join us at the Capitol this Thursday morning! The event will last less than an hour, and participants will then stop by conference committee members’ offices to deliver a Wisconsin Values message about the budget. Your participation in this event is critically important and we hope you can take the time to join us.

More information about the state budget is available on WCCF’s website: www.wccf.org

Questions? Contact Vicky Selkowe at WCCF at vselkowe@wccf.org or (608) 284-0580, ext. 326.

This morning, the City's Early Education and Childcare Committee had to make recommendations to request supplemental funding in the City's budget for the following programs due to CCCI State funding cuts that are likely to affect the following programs:

• Dane County Parent Council - Latino/Hispanic Program $13,930
• Rainbow Pride Project $23,483
• Community Coordinated Child Care - Latino Child Care Project $26,985
• Wexford Ridge - Elementary AFter School and Summer Camp $5,300

That's on top of the cuts we made because of the Mayors 3% cut budget instructions, where funding was cut for:

• Simpson Street Free Press - Elementary School Summer Writing Workshop $8,647
• Community Coordinated Child Care - Training and Professional Development $33,554
  

Those are completely different cuts than the cuts to Wisconsin Shares listed above, so childcare funding is getting hit all over the place, so please, if you have time, consider stopping by the State Capital or emailing in support of both Wisconsin Shares and CCCI funds.

Read more!

Banging: All Night Long!

What is that noise?!? That is the single most popular question I've had for the past two days? Most of us who live on the Isthmus don't have central air and leave our windows open for the breeze. However, for the past few nights, people all over the Isthmus, Sherman Avenue, E. Dayton, N. Livingston, E. Gorham, E. Mifflin, Few St. and others have been forced to shut their windows and try to drown out that sound of metal pounding on metal.

So, what is it and where is it coming from?

Campus/Murray St. And worse yet, I found out the council unanimously approved the all-night-long noise, in early June. Never did I imagine that when I approved noise for W Dayton, W Johnson and University Ave that I would have complaints from as far away as Sherman Ave or the 900 block of E Dayton.

How much longer will it last?

Our City Engineer Larry Nelson says:

I talked to Findorff and they say Sunday night the pile driving will be done. However, Terra Engineering, the subcontractor doing the work is hopeful that they will conclude the work by Thursday night.

What's the theory on why there are complaints far away, but not closer to the site?

Our City Engineer Larry Nelson says:

We are not getting complaints in the immediate area of the construction but rather a considerable distance away. This must be the frequency of the sound of the pile hammer.

Why is it necessary?

Traffic.

Lessons Learned!

1. Noise travels in an interesting way throughout the Isthmus, especially with the lakes. I have to say, its odd I don't hear the noise downstairs in my house with all the street noise, but when I go upstairs, I clearly hear it and I live on the 500 block of E Mifflin. It doesn't bother me, but its interesting how irritating it is once you start hearing it. It's like being at a concert and dancing on squeaky chairs, you don't notice it until someone points it out and then its all your brain hears.

2. Ask more questions before approving pneumatic hammers as noise after 7 pm or before 7 am. Even when it is two alder districts away.

Here's an update on the situation.
Read more!

Watch what you eat . . .

While it is good to "buy local" and support small local businesses, sometimes, it just isn't enough. Sometimes, you need to think about labor practices of that local business and make another decision.

A message from the Workers' Rights Center:

Support the workers from La Hacienda
Join the Picket Line
Wed. July 25 at 5 pm

Come help us make some noise to send a message that Madison does not support businesses that don’t treat their workers right!

La Hacienda has engaged in systematic violations of State and Federal wage & hour laws, failing to pay many of its workers for all hours worked, for overtime worked, or at the minimum wage.

For years the Workers' Rights Center (WRC) has assisted workers at La Hacienda Restaurant at 515 S. Park Street to receive their proper wages. La Hacienda has been cited by the Department of Labor for these violations. The WRC has tried to work with the restaurant over the years to get it to clean up its act. But the violations continue.

Read more!

Well 3 Replacement Newsletter Updates

Here's a not-so-pretty version of the newsletter.

About the Project
Madison Water Utility is in the process of abandoning Well 3, which served east isthmus neighborhoods since 1928. Well 3 was taken out of service in September 2006 due to documented industrial contamination from past land uses. To replace this water source, the Water Utility is beginning a search for a replacement well site. In the meantime, all homes and businesses in the former Well 3 service area are receiving drinking water primarily from Wells 7, 8, and 11 although some locations also receive water from Wells 13 and 15.

A team of consultants led by Montgomery Associates is under contract by the Water Utility to lead the search for a new site to replace Well 3. The team is conducting detailed groundwater analysis, mapping potential sources of surface pollutants, and coordinating public involvement.

The search for a new well site in the east isthmus area is challenging because of the history of industrial use and landfills with contamination, lack of land open for new development, and desire to preserve park land and open space.

Due to the strong community interest in this project, the Water Utility formed a Working Group of east isthmus community representatives to help inform the siting process and guide public involvement.

What Is Happening Now?
This summer, the consultants are conducting assessments of surface contamination and subsurface geology in the search for a set of candidate sites for a test well. About 25 technical factors have been identified for evaluation and mapping; the majority of these are required by Wisconsin Administrative Code NR 811. Examples include minimum distances from storm sewer mains, fuel storage tanks, landfills, and existing drinking water wells.

If there are no candidate sites identified, the search will extend beyond the immediate area of the east isthmus.When and if this occurs, we will seek participation from the alders and neighborhoods added to the search area.

The expectation is that a set of well sites that meet the technical criteria will be identified in the fall. At that time, we will bring the results to the community for feedback on the candidate sites and to help weigh the pros and cons of each. More detailed scientific assessment of the prospective sites will also be underway at this time, as will initial consideration of construction and operational costs.

The DNR must approve any recommended test well site before drilling and sampling may begin.Test wells are used to collect site-specific hydrogeologic and water quality information to assure their suitability for a permanent water supply well. The replacement for Well 3 is to be operational in 2012.

What Is the Working Group?
Working Group and Project Team members are working together to inform the site selection and public involvement process. Community representatives to the Working Group are:

• Alders: Brenda Konkel (District 2), Marsha Rummel (District 6), Satya Rhodes-Conway
(District 12)
• Neighborhood Associations: Emerson East (Marty Cieslik), Marquette (Fae Dremock), Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara (Dan Melton),Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Association (invited, not represented)
• Community Organizations: East Isthmus Neighborhoods Planning Council (Cassandra Garcia & Mikelanne Northrup), Friends of Starkweather Creek (Laura Hewitt)
• If the project area for the new well extends beyond the east isthmus area, we will extend the representation on the working group.

The Project Team providing support and information to the Working Group includes Joseph Grande (Water Utility), Steve Gaffield (Montgomery Associates),Anne Forbes (Partners in Place), Bill White (Michael, Best, and Friedrich), and other technical experts.

The Water Utility has asked the Working Group to help make sure that:
• The community's issues and concerns are consistently understood and considered.
• The invitation to the community to participate is welcoming and inclusive.
• The technical information is crafted so citizens can understand and participate in the process.
•We communicate how community issues and concerns are reflected in the alternatives.
•We provide the rationale for the final decision, including information about how public input was considered.

What are the Community Issues?
Thanks to the previous public meetings about drinking water hosted by the East Isthmus Neighborhoods and Water Utility from October 2006-April 2007 and to the many people who attended, there is an existing base of information about community interests and needs. Working Group and Project Team members are reviewing the notes from these meetings to make sure that the issues identified to date are addressed. There will be an opportunity for people to review and add to this list of issues at upcoming public meetings. Some of the key issues citizens have identified to date are:
• Concern about surface contamination in the east isthmus area and its relationship to the deep aquifer, our source of drinking water
• Concern about constraints for a location for a new well on the east isthmus, including preserving park land, history of industrial use and landfills, lack of land open for new development
• Need for confidence that public health is not at risk
• Desire for a communication and accountability throughout the well siting process
• Concern about the cost of the replacement well to consumers
• Citizen interest in “coming to the table” to learn, be heard, and be part of the solution
• Interest in water conservation, citywide as well as on the east isthmus

How Can I Learn More and Get Involved?
Everyone in the community is welcome and encouraged to participate in public meetings about the project.

• This fall, the Water Utility and Working Group will host a public meeting where we will bring everyone up to date and provide opportunity for input. An informational open house providing background information will be part of the meeting agenda.
• To be put on the mailing list to receive information about public meetings, or for general information, contact Joseph Grande (266-4654 or jgrande@cityofmadison.com).
•Watch the Water Utility website for a link to the East Isthmus Well Replacement project page in early September.
• Information about the project and public meetings will also be posted on the East Isthmus Planning Council website at http://eastisthmus.org.
• To get news about drinking water, join the East Isthmus Neighborhoods Planning Council (EINPC) Yahoo! Groups Drinking Water listserve. Send an email to the list Moderator, Dan Melton, oakville000@yahoo.com. He will email you an invitation to join the list.

The expectation is that a set of well sites that meet the technical criteria will be identified in the fall. At that time, we will bring the results to the community for feedback on the candidate sites and to help weigh the pros and cons of each.
Read more!

Barely Navigating the Madison Weekly Schedules

After trying to post the interesting meetings coming up this week, I was so frustrated I wrote the following memo to several city staff members and the Mayor's office. You really shouldn't have to check three places on-line and go to the clerk's office to figure out the week's schedule and you really shouldn't get differing information.

Every week I try to look at the "Weekly Meeting Schedule" on the city clerk's website, what is listed in Legistar and the Notice of Additional Meetings to figure out what is going on in City Hall and every week, I find several issues that cause confusion for me and leave me wondering if the meetings that I am going to are properly noticed. Here's this weeks sources of confusion. Can someone please tell me if the meetings are all properly noticed ( i.e. hanging in the clerk's office) or if something else needs to be done.

These meetings are in Legistar and not on the Weekly Meeting Schedule posted on the Clerk's website:
Mon 4:30 Landmarks
Wed 8:30 Board of Assessors
Thurs 5:00 CDBG
Fri 8:00 IZ Oversight

These meetings are on the schedule and I can't find an agenda in Legistar or the Notice of Additional Meetings
Mon 1:30 Capital Improvement Review Committee
Tues 9:00 Capital Improvement Review Committee
Tues 4:30 Madison Election Advisory Committee Annual Report Subcommittee
Thurs 5:00 Madison Board of Police and Fire Commissioners
Fri 10:30 Board of Health for Madison and Dane County Budget Committee

And here's a few other issues:
In Legistar on Wed is a CDBG meeting with no agenda - I presume this is a mistake since it is also not on the Weekly Meeting Schedule
In Legisar on Wed is a Street Use Staff Team meeting with no agenda - but it also is not on the Weekly Meeting Schedule
On Wed at 5:00 there are already minutes listed for the Vending Oversight Committee meeting

At least this is what was showing up this morning as I was trying to catch up and figure out where I needed to be this week. Can someone please figure out how to resolve this persistent confusion and tell me how I know if the meetings I am going to are properly noticed or not? After all, the members of these committees are the one's that will get fined if there is an error and there should be a way to figure this out without calling and bugging the clerk's office or running down there ( i.e. I always presumed that the official schedule was what showed up on the Weekly Meeting Schedule, but I recently discovered this was not so.)
Thank you all.

Sincerely,

Ald. Brenda Konkel

Honestly, all I want to be able to do is look in one place on-line and know that these are the officially noticed meetings for the week, that shouldn't be too much to ask, is it? And worse yet, the public shouldn't need to know the secret code to know that they have the correct information as well.
Read more!

The Week Ahead: July 23 - 27

Last week of the month things are always a little slower . . . but here's what I've got: (NOTICE: This weeks schedule is a little screwed up.)

MONDAY

5:00 - Long Range Metro Transit Ad Hoc Committee
201 W Mifflin ST Room 202 (Downtown Public Library)
This group is nearing completion of their report and things should start getting interesting, plus, they are taking up the resolution on the Regional Transportation Authority.

5:30 - Plan Commission
Room 201 City County Building
Of interest to the second district is Cliff Fisher's project at 119, 123 & 125 North Butler Street and 120 & 124 North Hancock Street.

6:00 - Allied Area Task Force Housing Subcommittee
Room LL-120 Madison Municipal Building
They're discussing the appeals process if their application is denied to live in the City owned properties

TUESDAY
4:00 Board of Water Commissioners Special Meeting
119 E Olin Ave
Special meeting to talk about security cameras. (Don't they have other things to be worrying about.)

4:30 Madison Election Advisory Committee Annual Report Subcommittee
Room 103A City-County Building
No agenda available on-line.

WEDNESDAY
8:45 Early Childhood Care and Education Board
Room 300 Madison Municipal Building
Includes a public hearing on budget cuts to Childcare programs.

4:15 Urban Design Commission
Room 260 Municipal Building
For people in district 2, there is a Don Miller site demolition happening but I don't know of any concerns with this proposal.
Read more!

10K Lakes Festival - The Final Day

The final day was probably the best of all . . . here's a bit of what we were able to catch:

The Grasshoppers


We caught one song by Kaki King and she was pretty good, but we were on our way to grab some food and catch a bit of Keller Williams.

Little Feat was interesting to see, but then we wanted to go catch


Chinese Fingertrap and I'm glad we did. I really enjoyed their show. They had a great sound and the woman singer was worth catching.


Then we were lucky to hear a few songs by Toubab Krewe, including the drum finale which was worth sticking around for


Then it was finally time for Government Mule. I swear, I could listen to Warren Haynes sing all day long.

We started out up above, but had to make our way down to the dance floor.


I was thrilled to hear him sing Patchwork Quilt and Beautifully Broken. Patchwork Quilt was so good it had me in tears and I'm certain I wasn't the only one.

We were thrilled to see Government Mule joined by Derek Trucks

And the absolute best part of the entire weekend was the encore when they did Soulshine.

Next up, Bob Weir & Ratdog


And more Bob Weir & Ratdog. I was a little weirded out when Bobby started singing Lazy River Road. I just couldn't fathom anyone but Jerry singing the song, and was somewhat offended, but the more I listened, the more he won me over and I was glad he did it so well. Made me miss Jerry even more than the Warren Haynes song.


Speaking of which, Warren Haynes also came out to play a few tunes with Bobby & Ratdog


When the dancing was all over


then there were fireworks.

As if that were not enough The Derek Trucks Band played as we walked back to camp, too tired to walk back up the hill to catch Dumpstaphunk. Overall, it was just a beautiful few days.


In the morning, we packed up camp, drove back to Madison and when I got home I found cake from my sister (her own special recipe)

and flowers (from whom I still have to discover)


And now, back to the grind. Tho, its always great to be back in Madison!

See here for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday 10K Lakes reports.
Read more!

10K Lakes Festival - The Birthday Edition

So, I couldn't imagine a better place to spend my birthday!

After my shots of tequila to kick off the day, we wandered back to our usual spot to use the electricity and wireless internet. While doing so we were able to catch Cosmic Railroad

Outformation

Some WBPN and then Fancy Bastard which we stayed to watch based on the name alone . . .

I missed the Everyone Orchestra which is always fun to see, Rob caught of little of it.

We then walked back to camp, dropped off our stuff and stopped by the tent in Lake Sallie and caught Pert Near Sandstone on the excellent advice of our neighbors to the south

Then we went back to see Down Lo with MC Deploi

and The String Cheese Incident which sounded the best of the three times I have seen them

And a good time was had by all!

Well, at least everyone I saw seemed to be having a good time! We went back to camp and hung out with our neighbors to the North. We have excellent neighbors on all sides. The neighbors from Minnesota even bought me birthday cupcakes when they went to town! So we hung out, had some beers and birthday cupcakes and called it a night.

The oddest things we saw yesterday: a guy with a kusch ball cut open and put on his head, some guys in hockey helmets, a fully dressed magician, lots of fairies and body paint and just people having fun! Mostly we saw lots of fun and sun and music.

The crowd is moving slow this morning - tho I'm sure people are saving their energy for Government Mule, Ratdog, Fireworks and then a tough choice between Derek Trucks and Dumpstaphunk. Another beautiful cloudless day, not too hot, and a great breeze. Cheers.

See here for Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday 10K Lakes reports..

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10K Lakes Festival Update: Thursday.

The birthday update . . . yes, it's my birthday today and Rob tells me he can see some gray hairs today . . . I don't believe him . . .

So, as you can see from yesterday's report, we woke up, ate breakfast and headed to the Barn and Saloon stages. I found a place where the wireless was working and I could plug in to the electricity and settled in to do a few things on line - sadly, it took me nearly 3 hours! But, if you have to be doing some work and blogging, how much better can it get than doing it while drinking a Guinness and listening to music.

I was able to catch portions of:
Super American Happy Fun Good Time Jamband
Hunab
Green Lemon
Polydypsia

All while working. They were all great bands, Polydypsia and Green Lemon seemed the best to me as they had the most energy. I really enjoyed the long Particle-like jam at the end of Green Lemon's set.

And of course, The Super American Happy Fun Good Time Jamband was just all of that. Tho I will never remember their name. Rob says his favorite band yesterday was Polydypsia, at least that was the band that impressed him the most.

After all that we checked out a little bit of Particle, but Galactic was calling to us from the Field Stage, so we had to go down there and finish listening to their set,

all the while being tortured by the bouncing crowd up at Particle . . .

it seemed so unfair to have two really good bands playing at the same time . . . and interestingly enough, there we met several groups of people from Madison. I was most impressed by the woman with the broken leg that got in a motorcyle accident less than a week ago . . . she was hardcore. I asked her why she was here as she was clearly in pain and she said "Well, I bought the ticket." Made sense to us.

We listened to a little of Zappa Plays Zappa. I was never a Zappa fan, so it wasn't too thrilled by it, but Rob definitely liked it. I think the only song I recognized was Joe's Garage, but I wasn't paying that much attention. We grabbed some food, did some shopping, walked back to the tent, dropped off all the electronics and headed back to festival grounds for Umphrey's McGee.

We listened to most of Umphrey's McGee and then walked back to the tent after a long day of drinking and sun. Tho I have to say, if I would have know that The Disco Biscuits were going to be so good, I would have convinced Rob to stay. They almost made me want to get up and start dancing right there in the tent, almost.

Oddest things we saw yesterday: Santa, the guy that's been wearing the blue bunny ears for two days, the girl with the leopard tail, and the top two favorites were the guy I just can't describe, he was in full white body paint and some weird mask like thing on his face, really, somethings you just have to see to believe. And my favorites, the teenage mutant ninja turtles that were wearing watermelons on their heads. I'm just sorry I wasn't quick enough to get some pictures for you.

The cutest thing I saw . . .

or maybe this



This morning, Rob let me sleep until 11:00 . . .we ate a little lunch and wandered over to the camp of some friends we know from Madison. We hung out with Fee from Yokanizu Project and Cory from Northern Pines Band. They gave me some birthday tequila and a PBR to start the day out right. And we had some great entertainment from Cory playing the guitar with a little improvisation from the woman sitting next to him. Some of the best entertainment to date at the festival. However, we had to leave to go see Cosmic Railroad who at the moment are being drown out by Outformation. I liked Cosmic Railroad, and Baghdad Scuba Review will be playing at their festival coming up soon.

See here for Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 10K Lakes reports.
Read more!

Council Recap: July 17th (from the music festival)

Well, "more on the agenda to talk about than usual" was an understatement. Here's what I can remember and have time to write in the car on the way to the 10,000 Lakes Music Festival and edit while listening to music at the barn and saloon stages.

# 2 - Confirming the re-appointment of Larry D. Nelson to the position of City Engineer,
Director and Manager of the Engineering Division, Department of Public Works
Passed unanimously.

#3 - Supporting a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA)
As predicted, Transport 2020 will be taking this up on Wednesday. Long Range Transportation (LRTPC) and Transit and Parking Commission (TPC) will be taking this up on Thursday and then it was also referred to Long Range Metro Planning. It will be discussed on August 7th.

#13 - Referring 1501 Monroe Street for another 120 days. The developer requested that we change this to 60 days and not a single person on the Council took up the cause.

#20 - More modifications to the Parks budget - taking "Specific Parks Improvement" funds to fix a maintenance facility & #22 - Taking money from downtown parks to pay for Breese Stevens Field. I've written about this here and here. These two items were closely related as they both are about how we fund parks improvements.

Neither the parks staff nor the comptroller could tell me the difference between the different categories in the capital budget We have Development Fee Projects – which are the projects that are supposed to be for improvements to parks in areas where there is development, so they are largely on the periphery and downtown. We have 11 different funds set up throughout the city. We apparently have $3.5 million in the various funds. However, although I asked for a breakdown of the numbers a week ago, I didn’t recieve it. The capital budget also has three other funds with various projects called Parks Facilities Improvements ($175,000 – project number 6), Neighborhood Parks Improvements ($135,000 – project #10) and Specific Parks Improvements (($590,700 – project #12).

For items 20 and 22, we were moving money around between various funds, and I simply wanted to know what the policies were that we had in place to determine where to pay for projects, I was very unsatisfied with the answers I got from staff.

20 – In this project, we were taking money from park playgrounds to pay for a maintenance building. This item passed unanimously

22 – In this project, we didn’t borrow enough money, and so we were raiding the downtown neighborhood parks to pay for upgrades to Breese Stevens Field. For his one, I made a motion to borrow this money and leave the development fees for the area parks that are not locked. That motion needed 15 votes, and it failed. Vote was 10 – 9 and perhaps a preview of how things might go at budget time this year. Voting in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Cnare, Gruber, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway and Rummel. Those voting against wer Schumacher, Pham-Remmele, Skidmore, Brandon, Clear, Compton, Judge, Palm and Sanborn.

#38 - Creating Section 3.35(8)(g) of the Madison General Ordinances to establish limitations
on political and campaign activities of election employees. This was thoroughly rejected by the Madison Area Elections Committee and the Ethics Board, so apparently this will be referred while the authors come up with a new version.

Zach’s “first-thing-I’m-going-to-do” ordinance was referred once again. Apparently, after being thoroughly trashed by the ethics committee and elections committee, he has decided to re-write it. So sometime between now, and the next Council meetings I wanted the new version referred back to the Ethics Committee and Elections Committee. That vote lost. In favor were: Brian Solomon, Mike Verveer, Robbie Webber, Tim Gruber, Julia Kerr, Brenda Konkel, Satya Rhodes-Conway. Aganst were Thuy Pham-Remele, Rummel, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Judge, Palm, Clear Brandon, Cnare, Compton. Claussius was absent for the meeting and Ald. Bruer was out of the room for the vote.

Park Street - sorry you'll have to find your own link - but we discussed for quite some time the flooding on Park Street and the effects of putting the runoff into Lake Monona. The items passed and we will be making some better efforts to clean up the water before we dump it into the lake. (Sorry, its a great issue, but I didn't take notes so not much to say here.)

#99 Allied Drive - We got to this item right after the 9:00 break.
This item was referred. We talked for quite some time about whether to refer it, but it was referred unanimously. Some alders wanted more time to think about what was being proposed by the Allied Drive Task Force and it was a legitimate issue. The Mayor wanted us to pass it right away, suddenly he has a sense of urgency, after we've owned the properties for 14 months. Go figure. There was also discussion about what it meant if we adopted the report, the mayor seemed to think that it was just the resolution language we are adopting, but our City Attorney just got done explaining that the resolution adopts the language in the report so if we adopt the resolution (and the report) I believe we are saying that we accept the recommendations of the task force.

#56 - Water Utility Contract with EMA. This discussion last from 10:00 til nearly 2 am. Here's info on the last discussion the council had and the water utility in general. This discussion started off with testimony from several water utility staff. Then we went to questions. Verveer started off with what appeared to be a prepared list of questions that I suspect the Water Utility Manager had in advance. Several other alders had questions for Water Utility Board Chair, the EMA consultant, staff members and the Water Utility Manager (David Denig Chakroff).

After the questions, Bruer moved to “call the question” or end debate and vote. That didn’t pass, but those who wanted to just vote and go home were Solomon, Webber Bruer, Cnare, Compton, Gruber and Skidmore. Those who thought that there should be a thorough discussion were Verveer, Brandon, Clear, Judge, Konkiel, Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Saborn, Schumacher, Kerr. By this point, Pham-Remmele has given her odd speech and gone home and Clausius was still absent.

We took three other votes, that went like this:

Compton proposed we just pay the $140,000 that the Water Utility Manager obligated us to and not apparove the contract for the additional $160,000. This failed. Only one vote in favor, Compton. She may have had more votes, but many of us didn’t want to pay the $140,000 until we were certain we owed it and decided that it was “for the attorneys to work out”. Clausius and Pham-Remmele were absent for that vote.

The net vote was proposed by Alder Solomon, and it passed. His proposal was that EMA give us an accounting of what we spent our $140,000 on and then give us a detailed proposal on what we would get for the additional $160,000. Those in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Clear, Cnare, Compton, Gruber, Kerr, Palm, Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Sanborn. Those against were Skimore, Brnadon, Judge, Konkel, Schumacher.

The final vote was on the contract with the amendment and a couple votes switched around. Voting in favor were Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Bruer, Clear, Cnare, Schumacher, Compton, Gruber, Kerr, Palm, Rummel and Sanborn. Those against were Skimore, Brandon, Judge, Konkel and Rhodes-Conway.

As Zach pointed out to me, once again, that whenever we agree, we lose. There have been several votes that have been 18 – 2 with Brandon and I being the 2. Sometimes its 17 –3 with Zach and I being joined by Sanborn.

The whole water issue deserves so much more discussion, there are so many issues going on and while some people think we ignored the man behind the curtain, our discussion has to be limited to what is on the agenda and publicly noticed, so to discuss the leadership of the water utility and the employment contract for the Water Utility Manager would have been out of line.

And I think the Mayor was wrong when he stated that we couldn’t do anything until 2008. I beg to differ, the employment contract says that the Water Utility Manager cannot spend money without authorization. I think that is a material breach of the contract and the Water Utility Board and the Mayor have the ability to do something about it before 2008.

So, if you’re keeping track, at the next council meeting, we will be dealing with: RTA, Allied Drive, Zach’s ordinance and who knows what other interesting things, maybe the water utility? Third times a charm.




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10K Lakes Festival Report: Wednesday!

Well, we made it to Detroit Lakes Minnesota and the 10,000 Lakes Festival around 6:00 yesterday. We didn’t leave Madison as soon as we wanted to, cuz after the Council meeting, I gave someone a ride home and my car finally broke down (alternator) and I didn’t get home until after having my car towed . . . it was after 3:00, so I “slept in” and we didn’t leave town until 9:00. When we got here, we set up camp and were able to find one of the last trees in Lake Sallie that gave us some shade this morning so I could really sleep in. After setting up the tent and the canopy tent, we had a few beers(Guinness for me and Island Wheat for Rob) and then went to check out the bands.

First up – Blueground Undergrass. At first, all I heard was pretty straight up rock and I asked Rob if they were going to play bluegrass. He said, well, it may sound like rock but they are playing a banjo and a fiddle. And sure enough, after listening for a while, the blue grass started to come out. My favorite song they did was Midnight Moonlight which I think is a Peter Rowan tune. I was amazed that at 9:22 in the evening it was still light out. (I'll try to add photos later)



Next – we checked out That 1 Guy and I’m glad we did. I expected some weird Art Paul Schlosser thing to be going on based on the description in the pamphlet: A magnificently insane one-man show, That 1 guy performs on the unwieldy homemade instrument “The Magic Pipe". And not only did he play the magic pipe which was some kind of harp/drum/slide guitar. He also played the electric boot and electric saw. It really reminded me of seeing Rob Wasserman playing his electric stick bass on the same stage a few years ago and it sounded a little like Les Claypool. And it reminded me even more of Les Claypool as the crowd caved in to the bounce - the whole crowd, bounding up and down in unison. I said the music was funky, tho Rob corrected me and said it was ultra-funky. That 1 guy was as fascinating to watch as he was to listen to. He had pointy porkchop sideburns and his amish/hasidic jew/cowboy hat and curly hair.



I was really impressed by all the sound coming from the stage until I saw the DJ off to the side and then I couldn’t figure out which sounds were coming from the magic pipe and the looping machine and which were the DJ. However, it was well worth the trip up the hill, not only for the music, but for the Guinness. Most of his songs were orginal, however he did do a version of “Word Up” by Cameo which was a little surprising.

So far, the festival was like so many festivals, hippies, glowing things that are cool the first time you see them and annoying by the end of the summer. It was as crowded as it was on Friday and Saturday night last time I was here, so I suspect this festival has grown more than I realized. And as far as festival grounds, this place is hooked up, complete with “taxis”, showers, flush toilets, internet access (obviously) and just about everything you could need. The only annoying thing so far, is the pebbles that keep getting caught in my shoes But I digress . . .

On to Wookiefoot! The soul reason we made sure we were here by Wednesday night – I even had my Board of Directors reschedule the meeting so I could be here for this! And they did not disappoint. They kicked it off with bagpipe solo and went into Mushroom Jazz. The stage was filled with dancers. The second song they kicked it up a notch and the dancers were fire dancing to Get Out of My Way. The third song was one of my absolute favorites The Frog and the Scorpion. The fourth song was All You Can Eat Buffet (Go USA!) and then, I just stopped keeping track and enjoyed the rest of the show and as always, with Wookiefoot, it was a show, not just on stage, but all around. The fans are as much of the show as the band. Well, ok, there’d be no show without the band, but the fans are one of a kind.

I'm not sure if you can see this, but the big guy in the black t-shirt has a tree branch duct taped - er, majorly duct taped - to his head.

The evening was full of random weirdness, like the girl who insisted that I “put em up” for a hug attack, and the obligatory things like getting hit by at least one flying glo stick and the hippies cleaning up the garbage after the show, most likely looking for groundscores as much as worrying about the environment and being kind. Over all, a great way to kick off the festival and I hope the sign that the rest of the weekend is going to be wonderful.

So far this morning, I slept in, Rob made breakfast and we grabbed the computer and wandered up to the Saloon Stage to hear the Super American Happy Fun Good Time Jamband and the Saloon is packed and hardly a place to sit outside. They’re a good jam band, and its great to be blogging, drinking a Guinness (with ice in it! Ick.) and sitting in the shade. Next up Green Lemon on the Saloon Stage. More to come.

See here for Thursday , Friday and Saturday 10K Lakes reports.

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The Regional Transportation Authority Language revealed!!

Here's the changes made to that ever elusive Mayor's version of the RTA resolution. It's not yet available in Legistar as of the time I'm writing this. It came with instructions to contact the Mayor's office if you want to be a co-sponsor. As far as I can tell, I don't see street cars in here, except as Phase II of the Transport 2020 plans. We'll have to see if the Mayor continues to claim that trolley's are still in here. If there are, he loses votes, if their not, this has a few controversial points, but will likely pass unless there are amendments that make it too hard to swallow.

7/16/07 - Proposed Substitute Language for Legislative ID #06762

Title
Supporting the creation of a Regional Transportation Authority that enables the expansion of multi-modal public transit in the Madison metropolitan area and supporting State legislation that would enable the formation of Regional Transportation Authorities.

Body
WHEREAS, the Madison metropolitan area has experienced marked population growth in recent years, estimated at 23 percent since 1990 by the U.S. Census Bureau, putting increased pressure on the region's transportation network and many travel corridors; and

WHEREAS, efficient transportation is essential if the City of Madison and Dane County are to meet their community and economic development goals and maintain the region's high quality of life; and

DELETED

WHEREAS, traffic congestion affects thousands of commuters from the City of Madison and other Dane County communities who must travel to and from work and other destinations; and

WHEREAS, the travel corridor through the Isthmus, the heart of the greater Madison metropolitan area, has experienced increasing traffic congestion, safety problems and pedestrian and bicycle challenges; and

WHEREAS, almost two-thirds of the county's population lives in the area being studied by Transport 2020, 80 percent work there, and the study area also includes many of the region's largest cultural and special events destinations; and

WHEREAS, roadway expansion in the Isthmus is not feasible due to costs, impacts and neighborhood concerns; and

WHEREAS, Dane County, the City of Madison and area communities have been working cooperatively for several years on regional transportation issues; and

DELETED

WHEREAS, Transport 2020 has been investigating options for improving transportation for all people who use and depend on this important regional travel corridor; and

WHEREAS, an initial route has been designated for commuter rail running from Middleton to Reiner Road in the Town of Sun Prairie; and

WHEREAS, the City of Madison has made a significant investment in mass transit through the Madison Metro bus system, which serves not only the city but also several of the adjacent communities, as well as users of park-and-ride services from a larger geographic area; and

DELETED

WHEREAS, area communities and the County have cooperated for many years in the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), which is the designated policy body responsible for cooperative, comprehensive regional transportation planning and decision-making for the Madison metropolitan area; and

WHEREAS, current problems with the existing structure for providing transit service include: integration of public mass transit services provided by different municipalities; coordination of city paratransit and County specialized transportation services; and coordination of Metro fixed route and shared ride taxi services; and

ADDED

WHEREAS, the City of Madison will continue to support efforts to expand the Madison Metro Bus System to outlying cities within Dane County, such as, but not limited to Monona, Sun Prairie, Waunakee, Stoughton and Cross Plains; and

WHEREAS, because of the inter-relationships of many of these key transportation issues, the need to carry out planning at a regional level, and the need to develop adequate funding sources on a broader level, the County needs to create a regional transportation entity; and

ADDED "The University of Wisconsin"

WHEREAS, The University of Wisconsin, Downtown Madison, Inc. and the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce have expressed support for joint regional efforts for transit improvements;

DELETED

WHEREAS, other communities around the state also seek to have new tools for regional transit, and the Alliance of Cities and the Wisconsin Counties Association, among others, are supporting efforts for enabling legislation for local areas;

ADDED

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, the City of Madison, by way of this resolution, hereby affirms our commitment to legislation at the state level that would enable the formation of Regional Transportation Authorities; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the City of Madison hereby supports the work of the Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force, including its recent selection of a phase I corridor or minimal operating segment and urges Transport 2020 to move forward with its work; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the City of Madison recognizes that to fully serve the transit needs of the Madison Metropolitan Area, any local Regional Transportation Authority shall include participation by the City of Madison, Dane County, other local municipalities from throughout Dane County, and community partners including the University of Wisconsin and the Madison Area Metropolitan Planning Organization; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Regional Transportation Authority enabling legislation shall allow for up to but no more than a half-cent sales tax, which would go to the citizens for a countywide referendum and would be contingent on receiving federal transit funds; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that a Regional Transportation Authority would be a comprehensive, countywide, regional transportation system, which would provide transportation infrastructure to the entire region, with funding to be apportioned as follows; 33% for the first phase of Transport 2020, 25% for Metro Transit Busses, 25% for town, village, city and county road maintenance, and 17% for Paratransit services, Rail and Bus enhancements, and Bicycle Facilities; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the City of Madison and Dane County will work together to support Federal Transportation Administration applications for bus and rail enhancements, when those applications are ready, starting with the New Starts Application for Commuter Rail, as recommended by the Transport 2020 process, to be submitted to the Federal Transportation Administration by the end of summer 2007; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, upon adoption of a Regional Transportation Authority, the City of Madison agrees to work with neighboring communities on the expansion of Madison Metro Bus service both to neighboring communities and within the City of Madison; and

DELETED

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the City of Madison Common Council hereby supports the creation of a Regional Transportation Authority that enables the expansion of multi-modal public transit in the Madison metropolitan area; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the City of Madison requests, by way of this resolution, and makes a part of its legislative agenda, legislation at the state level that would enable the formation of Regional Transportation Authorities; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the City of Madison Common Council recognizes that to fully serve the transit needs of the Madison metropolitan area, any local Regional Transportation Authority should include participation by the City of Madison, Dane County, other local municipalities and community partners including the University of Wisconsin and the Madison Area Metropolitan Planning Organization.

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that copies of this resolution be sent to Governor Jim Doyle, Dane County's state legislative delegation, Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin and U.S. Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.
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Tonight's agenda: Items of Interest

Looks can be deceiving. The agenda looks shorter than usual, but there is more on the agenda to talk about than usual. Here's the items I thought people might be interested in.

#1 - Honoring the life of Jeff Erlanger - This item is going to be referred until a date that the family can be there.

# 2 - Confirming the re-appointment of Larry D. Nelson to the position of City Engineer,
Director and Manager of the Engineering Division, Department of Public Works

#3 - Supporting a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) - This item is going to be referred, however, we could be taking public input tonight. For more info on the referral, look here for my thoughts, and here for the local media coverage on why its being referred. The short story is - at least according to the paper:

The resolution, which has not been drafted yet, was supposed to come before the council and board this week, but after the leaders met with the Dane County Towns Association and the Dane County Cities and Villages Association last week, they agreed to postpone their votes until August.

If you're interested, Transport 2020 will be taking this up on Wednesday. Long Range Transportation (LRTPC) and Transit and Parking Commission (TPC) will be taking this up on Thursday (It's still not on the LRTPC agenda when I'm writing this, TPC) and perhaps other committees, depending upon what the council decides. And here's an interesting note, posted by a TPC member to a list:

At the TPC meeting of 7/10, WE (the TPC) decided that it should be referred to TPC and LRTPC and that the only way to do this with the timeline requested (passed by the end of August) was to have a joint meeting.

My guess is that the Mayor wouldn't have had ANY referrals for this resolution. And HE didn't ask for a joint meeting.

Again, he seems to be taking credit for things that are the work or ideas of others. It isn't a big deal once in awhile, but it gets pretty irritating when it is repeated again, and again, and again.

The responses were even funnier ("I'm shocked, SHOCKED!"), but I'll refrain from posting the rest of those.

#4 Citizen Appointments, to be approved at the next council meeting. Months later, still no appointments for James Madison Park Planning Committee or the Office of Neighborhood Support Committee.

#11 - Office building for Meriter on the far southwest side of Madison. Approving more sprawl and medical facilities without bus service. (Also #39)

#13 - Referring 1501 Monroe Street for another 120 days. This is the project Paul Soglin likes and was upset about referral. I think the issues here are a little deeper than his analysis. Starting with, some developers are their own worst enemies when it comes to dealing with neighborhoods, especially those neighborhoods that have worked with developers in the past and know that things can we worked out to address concerns of the neighborhood. Makes those developers that draw lines in the sand look really unreasonable.

#19 - Establishing rules and procedures for Common Council deliberation on the City of
Madison's 2008 Capital and Operating Budgets. This includes the calendar for the fall budget process. Including the Mayor's "public" hearings.

#20 - More modifications to the Parks budget - taking "Specific Parks Improvement" funds to fix a maintenance facility.

#22 - Taking money from downtown parks to pay for Breese Stevens Field. I've written about this here and here.

#35 - Approving secondhand book dealer licenses.

#38 - Creating Section 3.35(8)(g) of the Madison General Ordinances to establish limitations
on political and campaign activities of election employees. This was thoroughly rejected by the Madison Area Elections Committee and the Ethics Board, so apparently this will be referred while the authors come up with a new version.

#56 - Water Utility Contract with EMA. Here's info on the last discussion the council had and the water utility in general. (Sorry, I meant to write more about this, but ran out of time, since Sunday night, I've been doing nothing but working. I had meetings on Sunday 4 - 8 then worked 22 of the next 26 hours so I can go on vacation starting early tomorrow morning. Will try to blog from 10K Lakes Festival, if electricity and internet connections cooperate with me.)

There's quite a few items being introduced, but the agenda essentially ends there, with a relatively low number of items, but plenty to talk about.
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Finally doing something about the Water Utility?

Well, this puts a whole new twist on things.

The question over who has the legal authority to manage anything at the water utility continues to be a question to me, but, its good to see that someone who might have authority is finally doing something. The resolution I introduced passed the council on May 18th and I was hoping to get another alder on the Water Utility Board and more information for the Common Council. The mayor then introduced an ordinance that is along the same lines in that he is adding people to the Water Board, but removing certainty of an alder being appointed and he also tries to clean up the legal issues. This is the ordinance the Mayor introduced June 26th. Apparently, at the last meeting, the Water Utility Board asked the City Attorney for advice going in the exact opposite of the direction of Mayor Cieslewicz's ordinance. (i.e. they want to maintain control over the Water Utility instead of having the Mayor and City Council have management authority under state law.)

Meanwhile, check out this email the Common Council members received today. And later, I hope to write more on the EMA Contract we discussed at the last council meeting.

Dear Alders:

I am a City of Madison resident, City of Madison employee, spouse of a Water Utility employee and former union steward who worked extensively at the Water Utility in the late 1990's. At that time I saw that there was a very sick culture there, with the creative, questioning employees regarded as threats to be pounded down and punished by being passed over for promotion, given the rotten assignments, etc. Management in general treated the employees with contempt and disrespect. There was an arrogance and sense of superiority that allowed no exchange of information, no communication because they did not value anything that the employees could contribute. There was no concern for the employees' well being, safety, dignity, no sense that they were all working together to deliver a precious commodity to the community. It was so bad that I raised my concerns to the then HR director Maryann Stalcup, Mayor Bauman, Water Board Alder Jean MacCubbin and Priscilla Mather. All that happened was Water Utility mgmt. went to Labor Relations and the Mayor demanding that something be done about me!

In any case I have followed recent developments at the Water Utility with interest. It was no surprise to me that the EMA consultants reported in their Appendix B (available from the Water Utility web site--takes about 10 to 15 minutes to read) that the employees were not allowed to give input to their managers, that their managers did not deign to speak to them, that morale was abysmal, that favoritism was rampant, that the employees FEARED their human resources manager, Gail Glasser (imagine fearing the person you are supposed to go to when you need Family Leave because your wife has been diagnosed with cancer, or you have been injured on the job and are dealing not only with the physical pain but the distress of worrying about your livelihood). These were the same concerns I raised back in the 90's but I was not able to put it into chart form demonstrating how this causes a loss of productivity!

I was happy to see that this was all finally out in the open but I was concerned that it cost EMA $50,000. to find this out when the City of Madison has its own HR organizational development section that deals with issues like this, and we live in a City with a world class university. Then, while watching the July 3, 2007 City Council meeting I was astounded to discover that the Water Utility had spent another $115,000. without permission to continue the work of EMA. As I listened to Robin Piper, the Utility's finance officer and Joe Grande spout off that morale was up and trust was building at the Utility I was nauseated. This simply is not true. Denig-Chakroff has carefully selected the followers in his dept. to take part in the committees, there are no minorities, none of the employees who have spoken up over the years about the injustices, none of the creative types whose ideas have been ignored, just the people he can count on to go along. What a waste. EMA is being manipulated and their work has become a sham.

So I read their contract with the City to see what was up--how could it possibly happen that the Water Utility would spend $115,000. more without a contract--was it an innocent mistake? Was it because there was a sense of urgency as Joe Grande kept saying at the Council meeting? Well in a way it was--a sense of urgency because of Denig-Chakroff's incompetence, Robin Piper's incompetence, Al Larsen's incompetence, Dan Rodefeld's incompetence. One Wisconsin State Journal reporter called Water Utility managers the "Keystone Cops" but those guys are funny. These managers border on the criminal.

First of all the contract provides that the City will be invoiced monthly based on the actual hours worked. So every month you are going to know how close you are getting to that original $50,000. sum and when you go over that $50,000. amount, right? You would think so.

This is the first and only contract the Water Utility has with EMA. Here is what is important:

On the first page, #4 "however in no case shall work commence before execution by City of Madison." "the term of this contract shall be one year from the date of execution."
second page #10 "extra services may not increase the total contract price . . . unless the contract is amended as provided in Section 9"
fifth page #23 "It is expressly understood and agreed that in no event will the total compensation for services under this contract exceed $50,000."
fifth page #24A7 "compensation in excess of the total contract price will not be allowed unless authorized by an amendment under Section 9, amendment."
#24B3 and 4 "If in the contractor's opinion the order for extra services would entitle it to extra compensation or extra time, or both, the contractor SHOULD NOT PROCEED TO CARRY OUT THE EXTRA SERVICE (my caps), but shall notify the City, pursuant to Section 15 of this agreement . . .
The City shall review . . . and respond IN WRITING EITHER AUTHORIZING OR REFUSING (my caps) to authorize it. The contractor shall not receive additional compensation or time unless the extra compensation is authorized by the city in WRITING.

This contract is pretty clear, even I can understand those words. There was no amendment to the contract.

Now EMA is a professional organization that seems to know what it is doing. I expect that they submitted to the Water Utility, in writing something stating they needed extra hours or time, and in fact, they did. They allotted a certain period of time for Steering Team Guidance but ended up using additional hours and time to the tune of $66,436. to deal with the four chlorine leak crises to help the Utility develop a chlorine standard operating procedure, they came up with a SCADA design plan that they had not intended to do, and they had to help with external communication that was not in their original allotted hours. You will find this in the Strategic Plan Implementation Project Scope, pages 7 and 8.

There is something fishy about the whole contract. It was signed on August 6, 2006 with a one year term but it states that Phase One will take 6 months and that Phase 2 will take 18 months. Apparently, they planned to continue on with another contract without having to bid on it? So as Joe Grande said, there was a sense of urgency, but it wasn't to increase morale of Water Utility employees, it was so EMA could save managements' behinds by managing the crisis of the chlorine leaks, and to help them with their external communication so they knew how to "snow" alders and the community alike. And what was Robin Piper doing all this time? Isn't he paid by the City of Madison and the Utility to handle fiscal matters? Does he or does he not read contracts?

Denig-Chakroff should be held accountable for this huge blunder. As I have said before, if this were a union member, they would have been fired. We have progressive discipline. On the four chlorine leaks alone, a union member would end up fired. On the first leak there would be a verbal warning; the second leak would result in a written warning; the third leak would result in a suspension; and the fourth leak would be termination. Those chlorine leaks are just the tip of the iceberg of all the things that have gone on down at that Utility. Now this spending of $115,000. without permission? Might this be misconduct in public office?

I think the City could NOT pay that money from my reading of the contract but I'm no attorney. I expect the Council will have to approve the expenditure but then cease and desist the contract with EMA. Bring in the City's in house organizational development people, or ask Alder Schumacher for advice. I don't want to volunteer him without his permission but he is an expert in this field and even worked with the City in the late 1990's. We have all the resources here, in house, or at least locally. We as a City do not need to contract out for thousands of dollars, especially, when the process is already being controlled and tainted by Denig-Chakroff so that most employees will not buy in to it. Do you realize too that we are paying EMA employees between $146 to $190 AN HOUR to facilitate!!!! (and that doesn't count additional "project management support"). Don't you think we can find someone less expensive locally but equally as good or superior? Have we looked into people at the UW business school or psychology departments? We don't need experts in water to deal with many of these personnel and communication issues. The EMA report clearly identified the bulk of the problems at the Water Utility stemming from management. The Utility's high marks came from the workers doing the job well in spite of management.

Another note of concern that even Alder Cnare stated is that there are "deep wounds" at the Utility, but EMA plans to be done with Phase 2 in 18 months. They have allotted a rather small amount of time and small amount of money on internal communication compared to the other monies spent and allotted. I have to believe for "healing" to take place, it will take considerably longer--the employees will have to be given time to confront their managers to air the past hurts and have acknowledgment of the injustices done to them. It cannot be covered up and swept under the rug with the happy faces of EMA and Denig-Chakroff, Joe Grande, and Robin Piper stating that morale is up at a Council meeting for alders to take at face value. This infuriates the employees and these feelings will fester and only scab over to erupt again. It needs to be cleared up now if a true culture change is to take place.

Thank you for your consideration. I would be happy to speak to any of you if you would like more information.

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Again: Mayor's office doesn't understand public input, or care?

Some things, can probably speak for themselves, take a look at this, and remember, the agenda for the Common Council has been available since Thursday:

From: Twigg, George
Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 8:30:59 AM
To: ALL ALDERS
Cc: Plant, Joel; Cnare, Rebecca; Mayor
Subject: RTA resolution

Alders:

At the last Common Council meeting, the resolution regarding the RTA (ID #06762) was referred to the mayor's office, to draft a substitute reflecting the agreement reached between the Mayor and the County Executive on this issue. We are still working on the draft of that substitute, which would be identical to a substitute introduced for consideration by the Dane County Board. Our hope is that both bodies can pass identical resolutions, sending a strong message of city-county cooperation.

The resolution has been placed on the agenda for next week's Council meeting. In the interest of gathering public input, we will be asking that it be referred to the Transit and Parking Commission and the Long Range Transportation Planning Commission, returning for action by the Council at its August 7th meeting. Because TPC does not have a scheduled meeting before Aug. 7, we have asked them to hold a joint meeting with LRTPC on July 19th, which they are amenable to doing.

We will circulate the proposed substitute language for your review as soon as it is available. We appreciate that many alders co-sponsored the original resolution, and have a strong interest in this issue.

As always, don't hesitate to contact the mayor's office if you have any questions.

George Twigg
Office of Mayor Dave Cieslewicz

What in the world could they have been possibly thinking? They waited until Saturday morning to let the alders know this was the "plan". There still is no language for the resolution and the "input" is scheduled for Thursday (and Wednesday?). At best, the public might be able to get a copy Monday or Tuesday. How is one supposed to know that they want to comment if they don't know what they are commenting on? And if this was really the plan, why is it even on the agenda as if there will be a recommendation from the floor?

You might not think this is such a big deal, but as an organizer and someone who cares about public input, I can tell you that is it difficult to get people to show up and give their input. Think about this, not just for this issue, but for many others.

1. Up until the agenda came out on Thursday, the public had no way of knowing if this will or will not be on the agenda. 5 days notice isn't much.

2. On Thursday, if you looked, you could have spotted it on the agenda and made plans to be at the council meeting Tuesday night, but when you looked and saw it was the same thing as the last meeting, you may have either:
a. been lulled into being satisfied that it was what you agreed with or
b. assumed we wouldn't be talking about it because it hadn't changed.
And, more than likely, you didn't even look for the agenda til Friday, cuz that is when it typically comes out, which is only 4 days notice. And, you were probably confused because it says a substitute or a recommendation will come from the floor. Either way, if you are interested in this issue, you pretty much have to attend to figure out what is being proposed.

3. In this case, on Saturday morning, alders are notified of the new plan. If you know an alder and the alder knows you are interested in the issue, you might at least get a copy of the email sent to you.

4. This weekly schedule isn't even up on the city's website.

5. The Long Range Transportation Planning Commission doesn't have this on the agenda at the moment I'm writing this.

6. The Transit and Parking Commission is listed in Legistar as having a meeting at 5:00, but there is no agenda listed.

Even worse, as an elected official, you would think that we would have some sort of inside track, but Saturday morning was the first time I had any communication on this item, and I'm am, or probably more appropriately, was a co-sponsor. I know the mayor is lousy at communicating with the council, but he's usually all aces when it comes to the press release. My guess is, he really doesn't want any public input, only the appearance of wanting input.
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The Week Ahead: July 16 - 20

I'll only be in town Monday and Tuesday, but it looks like another big week ahead. Tho there is alot of missing information this week. First of all, the clerk's office has last week's schedule on the Weekly Meeting Schedule late Saturday night when I'm writing this. (It was fixed by Sun at 1:30 or so - or at least that is when someone noticed and let me know.) Does that mean that all meetings for Monday need to be cancelled? I'm trying to find out. Second, some of the agendas for meetings that are supposed to be happening this week are missing or still need to be amended, so here's my best guess at what is going on and where I think things have gone wrong at the moment. Tho, I can't possibly keep track of everything going on in City Hall and I could be mistaken and without the official schedule to verify, I"m kind of guessing. I can't imagine how Joe or Jane Citizen is supposed to try to get involved under circumstances like this. Well, here it is, I'll be starting my Monday morning, bright and early at 8 AM working on marketing issues for Inclusionary Zoning, if we can legally meet? Here's the other meetings of interest this week.

MONDAY
TIF Meeting - 5:00

TUESDAY
Common Council meeting - 6:30

WEDNESDAY
Alcohol License Review Board 5:30
- Alcohol Density Plan

Transport 2020 Implementation Task Force 5:30
- City of Madison Substitute Resolution ID 06762, “Supporting the Expansion of Multi-Modal Public Transit in the Madison Metropolitan Area and State Legislation that Enables the Creation of a Regional Transportation Authority”: Review of Resolution by Dane (and the agenda stops here . . . but I"m guessing its meant to mean that they are reviewing the Dane County Board resolution on the RTA.)

Community Services Commission 5:35
- 2008 POS Budget Recommendations (Who's getting cut this year due to the Mayor's instructions for 3% cut?)

THURSDAY
Long Range Transportation Planning Commission 5:00
- Sounds like the LRTPC will be taking up the RTA resolution according to the mayor, but as of the time I blogged this, it wasn't on the LRTPC agenda. This is supposed to be a joint meeting with the Transit and Parking Commission, but they don't have an agenda yet either.

Downtown Coordinating Committee 5:30
- Halloween Resolutions (1, 2, 3)

Sorry this post is not as useful as it should be . . . the City of Madison deserves an F for transparency this week in my book. And if I was a member of the public and not a public official, I would completely in the dark. This has to change! Soon!
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Noise from the La Fete de Marquette

Last night between 10:10 and 10:30 I got three complaints from people in district 2 about the noise from La Fete de Marquette. The complaints came from Sidney (on behalf of several neighbors), Marsten and the Sherman Terrace Condos. I've talked to Ald. Marsha Rummel and she'll be talking to the event organizers to see if there is something they can do to be less disruptive to the neighborhood to the north.
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Events in Area Parks

City Staff usually updates me when there will be events in the parks that may disrupt the neighborhood, I then forward them to various neighborhood lists, however, not everyone is on those lists, so I'm putting the information here as well.

Event at James Madison Park.

On Tuesday, July 24, Foley & Lardner will have their annual company picnic at James Madison Park. They will have a tent, and will have amplified sound between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

And Trek Bike will be at Breese Stevens Field.

TREK Bicycle Corporation will host an International Sales Meeting and Trade Show participants at Breese Steven Field on August 13,16 and 18, 2007 in which the event will include the service of alcohol during the picnic portion of the scheduled activities at Breese Stevens.
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Bus Detours - Watch out, there's lots of them!

Messages for July 13 - July 19, 2007 from the METRO RIDER ALERT NEWSLETTER

UPCOMING DETOURS
CAPITOL LOOP DETOUR: Art Fair on the Square
Now in Effect - Due to the Art Fair on the Square, buses will detour to the Capitol Loop all weekend starting Friday, July 13 through Sunday, July 15. Buses operate one block away from the Capitol Square on Doty, Webster, Dayton and Fairchild streets.
Buses will return to the Capitol Square on Monday, July 16.

LAKE MENDOTA DR. STOPS TO CLOSE: Street Repaving
Saturday, July 14 and Monday, July 16 - Due to street repaving on Saturday, July 14 and part of Monday, July 16, bus stops along Lake Mendota Dr. will close. While the paving is occurring, passengers are encouraged to board bus stops along Eagle Heights Drive ("inside" of Eagle Heights) during this time.

ROUTE 15 DETOUR: Mineral Point Rd. Construction
Starts Monday, July 16 - Do Mineral Point Rd. reconstruction, the intersection of Mineral Point Rd with Randolph Way and D'Onforio Dr. will be closed to cross traffic. This will cause Route 15 buses to detour from Randolph Dr. and Tree Ln. Detoured buses will use High Point Rd. between Mineral Point Rd and Tree Ln. In addition, all Route 15 service will travel clockwise around the D'Onfrio Dr. & High Point Dr. loop.
This detour is expected to last through the middle of August and will change as the Mineral Point Rd. construction project progresses.

ROUTE 68 DETOUR: Opera in the Park
Saturday, July 21 ; 6:30 PM - 9:00 PM - On Saturday, July 21, Route 68 buses will detour from Rosa Rd. between Mineral Point Road and South Hill Dr. from approximately 6:30 PM until 9 PM. Buses will detour via Whitney Way and South Hill Dr. in both directions during the closure.

DETOURS IN PROGRESS
UW CAMPUS DETOUR: Observatory Dr. Construction
Now in Effect - Affects Routes 11, 28, 38, 44, 53 & 80
Detours are expected to last through summer of 2008.

CAPITOL LOOP DETOUR: Concerts on the Square
Wednesdays; 3 PM - End of Service
Buses follow the Capitol Loop Detour every Wednesday from 3 PM until the end of service due to the Concerts on the Square. Routes operate one block further from the Capitol Square on Doty, Webster, Dayton, and Fairchild streets. This event detour will be in effect through August 2. Concerts on the Square Rain Date: If the concert is rained out, buses will follow the Capitol Loop on the following Thursday from 3 PM until the end of service.

ROUTE 67 DETOUR: Ganser Way Construction
Now in Effect - Construction will close Ganser Way between Mineral Point Road and D'Onofrio Drive starting Friday, June 15. Route 67 buses will detour via Mineral Point Rd to LEFT-D'Onofrio Drive, resuming regular route on D'Onofrio Drive at Ganser Way. The project is expected to last through the first two weeks of July.

WEDNESDAY FARMERS' MARKET DETOUR
Wednesdays; Start of Service through 2 PM - During this detour, buses detour from 200 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. to King St. Special Note: Buses will not follow this detour on Wednesday, July 4.

CAPITOL LOOP DETOUR: Farmers' Market
Saturdays; Start of Service through 3 PM - Routes operate one block from the Capitol Square on Doty, Webster, Dayton and Fairchild streets. Buses will follow the Capitol Loop every Saturday until 3 PM unless another event on the Capitol Square keeps buses on the detour for the entire weekend.

EAST WASHINGTON DETOUR: Construction Stage 2 (Temporary 5, 14 & 15)
Now in Effect - Affects Routes 4 travel and closes stops on Routes 6, 14, 15, 56 & 57. Route 4 travels on S. Fourth St. between E. Washington Ave. and Winnebago St. Route 4 northbound to the North Transfer Point will detour onto E. Johnson St. and North Lawn Ave. between E. Washington Ave. and Commercial Ave. Bus stops on E. Washington Ave. at Sixth/Winnebago St., Pawling St., Oak St, and McCormick Ave will be closed. Temporary bus stop locations will be provided at the traffic signals at Marquette St. and E. Johnson St. Stages 2 & 3 of this detour are expected to last through August. Stage 2 will also require occasional, temporary detours and closure of two bus stops affecting Routes 5, 14, & 15.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
RECEIVE INSTANT ROUTE UPDATES WITH METRO'S ELECTRONIC RIDER ALERTS
On occasion, Metro must detour buses on short notice. In an effort to more effectively relay this information to its customers, Metro will send detour notices via E-mail as soon as notice has been given. If you would like to receive electronic Rider Alerts, E-mail mymetrobus@cityofmadison.com and type "Subscribe".

PARATRANSIT ANNOUNCEMENTS - NO-SHOW APPEALS
Can Now Be Made Online - If you're going to cancel your Paratransit trip, you need to contact Metro at least 30 minutes before the scheduled ride to prevent the trip from being considered a "no-show". Riders are charged $5 for each no-show. No-Show appeals must be made in writing and sent to Metro Transit (1101 E. Washington Ave., Madison, WI 53703) or submitted through Metro’s new online form.

SCHEDULES AVAILABLE IN ACCESSIBLE FORMATS
Riders who wish to have schedules or other Metro information available in accessible formats, such as Braille, should contact Metro's Customer Service Center or send an E-mail request to mymetrobus@cityofmadison.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact the Metro Customer Service Center at 266-4466 (TTY:866-704-2316) or mymetrobus@cityofmadison.com between 6:15 AM and 6:00 PM weekdays; from 8:00 AM until 4:30 PM Saturdays; and 12:30 PM until 4:30 PM on Sundays. Interpreter services are available for all calls.

Customers may also get the latest information about Metro service inside Metro buses; in the "Calendar" section of ISTHMUS; on Madison City Channel 12; and mymetrobus.com. Customers wishing to receive a weekly copy of this Rider Alert should E-mail mymetrobus@cityofmadison.com and type "Subscribe".

Information in Spanish
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Engaging the Public - In August?

Two recent items caught my eye. August is typically a month where City Hall is running at a little slower speed. The Council only has a meeting the first Tuesday of the month and we skip the third Tuesday of the month. Many committees take August off. It's kind of our way of acknowledging that many people are taking that last vacation before school starts and to give people a little break before life gets hectic again after Labor Day. Knowing all of this, it surprised me that the two following events would be held in August, especially during downtown moving days.

Mayor's Public Hearing on the Budget - Aug 15, 21 & 23
Mayor's Committee Training - Aug 14 & 30

Seems to me, if you really want to engage the public and care about what they have to say, this is one of the worst times of the year to hold these important events. Particularly the Committee Training since so many plan to be out of town. As I move through City Hall, it is abundantly clear that committees need this training and so much more. I have several ideas for additional training for committees, more on that later.

The Mayor's budget public hearing will be held at the following places

• Wed. 8/15 6:00 Ashman Library
• Tues. 8/21 6:00 East Police Station
• Thurs. 8/23 6:00 Central Library
  

More info on the proposed budget schedule is here. We'll be voting on it on Tuesday.

And here's the info on the committee training (previous trainings can also be viewed on line).

July, 2007
TO: Board, Commission and Committee Members
FROM: David J. Cieslewicz, Mayor
SUBJECT: COMMITTEE MEMBER TRAINING – NEW OR REFRESHER TRAINING

Thank you for serving on one or more of the many City boards, commissions and committees and for the time and expertise you share with City staff, your fellow committee members and the citizens of the city of Madison.

Your dedication and hard work are appreciated!

It is important that we provide sufficient training so that you are able to carry out your membership responsibilities. Two training sessions have been scheduled on Tuesday, August 14, and Thursday, August 30. Both sessions will be held from 6:30 - 9:00 p.m. in the Common Council Chambers, Room 201, City-County Building, 210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. The sessions are identical; you only need to attend one. The agenda is enclosed.

Newly appointed members and those who have not received formal training are encouraged to attend. If you’ve attended training in the past and would like a refresher course, you are welcome to attend.

If you are not able to attend one of the meetings in person, Madison City Channel will broadcast the meetings on City Channel 12. Please check Channel 12’s schedule for replay dates and times.

The training session is also available on the City’s committee Web site at: www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/CommTraining/CMTIndex.htm as a streaming video. The materials used in the presentations can be viewed and/or printed from this Web site.

Please RSVP to Pam Williamson at 266-4434 or pwilliamson@cityofmadison.com only if you plan to attend one of the sessions. Feel free to contact Pam if you have any questions.

DJC:pw

encl.

cc: Common Council President and Council Members
City Department/Division Heads
Committee Staff Persons
City Clerk (for meeting schedule)

A G E N D A

Committee Member Training

Tuesday, August 14, 2007 or

Thursday, August 30, 2007

(Identical sessions; attendees need only attend one)

Room 201, City-County Building

210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

6:30 – 9:00 p.m.

I. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz

· Welcome

II. Karl van Lith, Human Resources/Organizational Development and Training

· Role/responsibilities of committee members

III. Michael May, City Attorney, and Roger Allen, Assistant City Attorney

· Ethics

· Robert’s Rules of Order

· Open Meetings/Public Records

IV. Questions and Answers

If you need an interpreter, materials in alternate formats or other accommodations, please contact the Mayor’s Office at 266-4611 at least 48 hours prior to the meeting so that proper arrangements can be made. Thank you.

Read more!

Current Vacancies on City Committees.

Here's your opportunity to get involved in making Madison a great place to be! Check it out! If you are interested in any of the committees below, please consider filling out an application to serve on these committees, women are particularly invited to apply! You will also need to fill out a statement of interest form and sign the oath. You also might want to take a look at the other committees that are out there in case you don't get your top choice, there is space for up to three committees. It also helps if you find someone the mayor likes and have them listed on the application, and if you have a resume, you might want to attach it. Here's the list of current openings, however, some of them might have special requirements. The official report updated periodically is here.

• ADA TRANSIT SUBCOM TO THE TRANSIT & PARKING COMM(majority of members are representative of disabled citizens)
• AFFIRMATIVE ACTION COMMISSION
• BROADBAND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REGULATORY BOARD
• BUILDING CODE, FIRE CODE AND LICENSING APPEALS, BOARD OF
• COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY
• DISABILITIES, COMMISSION ON PEOPLE WITH(first priority for membership shall be given to people with disabilities family members & advocates)
• EARLY CHILDHOOD CARE AND EDUCATION BOARD
• ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION
• EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION
• GARDENS, COMMITTEE ON COMMUNITY
• HOUSING COMMITTEE
• HUMANITARIAN AWARD COMMITTEE, REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
• MADISON ARTS COMMISSION
• MADISON DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS
• MONONA TERRACE COMMUNITY AND CONVENTION CENTER BOARD
• PARK COMMISSIONERS, BOARD OF
• PARKING COUNCIL FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
• PLAN COMMISSION
• POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSION
• PUBLIC SAFETY REVIEW BOARD
• PUBLIC WORKS, BOARD OF
• SENIOR CENTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS
• SENIOR CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE (members must be at least 60 years of age)
• URBAN DESIGN COMMISSION
• VENDING OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

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Trash Talk

Sometimes I think you'd have to be living under a rock not to know what is going on in City Hall, then I remember, not everyone is as obsessed with our local media as elected officials are.

So, in case you missed it, THE GARBAGE CANS ARE COMING!! THE GARBAGE CANS ARE COMING!!!

Ok - District 2 residents, you can pretty much assume you won't be getting your garbage cans until after August 15th, since they traditionally wait until after the infamous "moving days" downtown before they deliver them. It's just helps cut down on the confusion.

IMPORTANT - Even if you do get your cart early, they won't start using them until the week of September 10th.

Each cart will come with the new edition of the Cart Chronicle, a booklet that gives residents complete information on the new program, including instructions on how to recycle their old trash cans once automated collection begins on September 10th.

Each household will receive a cart in one of three sizes: 35, 65 or 95-gallons. Households can exchange their cart for a different size without charge, beginning 90 days after the program has started. This will give users a chance to better assess their needed cart size, based on experience with the automated collection system.
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Same as it ever was . . . .

I thought we referred the RTA Resolution to the Mayor's office to be worked on. I'm still seeing version one on the agenda for Tuesday (Item #3).

Version 1 (Mike Verveer's version) had the following sponsors:
David J. Cieslewicz, Michael E. Verveer, Satya V. Rhodes Conway, Brenda K. Konkel, Tim Gruber, Brian L. Solomon, Robbie Webber, Mark Clear, Michael Schumacher, Julia S. Kerr, Tim Bruer, Joseph R. Clausius, Eli Judge, Lauren Cnare, Marsha A. Rummel

I wonder how many sponsors the Mayor's new proposal is going to have?
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Demolition Ordinance

It's finally done. (Well, its in legistar now, but it may not make it on the agenda for Tuesday and the timeline below may be wrong, will write a new blog when I know more. Note: I found another hidden benefit to blogging, this should have been done and in legistar days ago, and when I went to link it, it was missing. Since I noticed it now, it still has a chance of getting on the agenda for Tuesday, maybe.)

According to staff, the schedule is as follows:
Introduced at Council on July 17.
Plan Commission on August 6th??
Back to Common Council on September 4th??

The committee also asked for it to be referred to landmarks commission, so that will need to be added to the schedule and that may change things.

Sounds like a fast track, but we've been meeting for months and months (8/7, 8/21, 9/18, 10/9, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20, 12/4, 12/18, 1/10, 1/22, 2/5, 2/19, 3/19, 4/9, 4/23, 5/7, 5/21 and 6/14.), and 4 Plan Commissioners served on the committee, so I'd expect few changes, but that doesn't mean we don't want to hear from people.

For background, here's some of the previous thoughts I've had on demolitions and demolition related-items.

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UDC: This sucks.

So, it's 9:00, the Urban Design Commission (agenda) is on item #7 . . . and I'm here for items #10 (scheduled for 6:15) and #11 (scheduled for 6:30).
Luckily, I accomplished several things this evening, but I'm afraid I"m going to run out of batteries soon and I didn't bring my power cord. And I should have brought more than a granola bar for dinner.

What is amazing me at the moment is that there are still 12 people waiting to speak in the room and another 6 (including a sleeping Cliff Fisher sprawled across a bench) in the hallway and that the citizen volunteers on this committee do their jobs so thoroughly.

Fortunately, I was able to talk to several people that I had to talk to, get some IZ work done, complete some other tasks, answered some emails, chatted with someone in another meeting I should have been at and now I'm blogging.

Meanwhile, there are several people in the room, most of them likely getting paid much better than I am for my time, that don't see to be utilizing their time in any kind of constructive manner. Sure, I saw a few people read a few newspapers, but they all just seem kind of dazed and bored. I've seen a few people take some phone calls or check their treos/blackberries, but I"m kind of amazed at the colossal waste of time these folks can afford. Haven't they ever heard of multi-tasking?

Seems to me that there has to be a better way to do this. Here's a few suggestions:
1. The citizens that are here, several of whom left and came back, should have been able to give their testimony and go home.
2. We should consider televising the meetings, so that folks can watch from home, work or the bar and show up when appropriate.
3. They should just bite the bullet and schedule these presentations 20 to 25 minutes apart or allow the staff to make more educated guesses about the length of time the items will take so that folks at the end of the agenda get a little more realistic estimation of when to be there.

Another suggestion from the audience . . . don't let the commission members take a break and go to Starbuck's for coffee! (My comment: Starbucks?)

My two cents for now . . . I'm guessing I"ll be here another two hours or so, so expect a little more blogging tonight. I'll update later for the results on the items I am here for.

***************************

I actually got out of there by 10:30, a half hour before I expected to.

625 E Mifflin passed unanimously. It's a little disappointing to have a 3 story building where a 5 story building was originally approved, but its better to have a project instead of none at all. And its interesting to wonder what this will do for plans for density in the E Washington BUILD area.

The Blair/Hancock project was rejected. 4 - 3. Interestingly enough, the UDC would have referred it, but the developer (the aforementioned guy sleeping in the hallway) preferred rejection. The concerns seemed to be the driveway off of Hancock squeezed between two houses, the way the building stretches to the back of the lot and the width of the building. My concern is still about what the project means for the future of the house in this downtown area. On to the plan commission.


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Gender (and Race and Disability): Preliminary information

The Affirmative Action subcommittee had their first meeting on the "gender resolutions". The two resolutions asked them to research and report (by Feb 2008) on recommendations to improve gender (and race and disability) balance in top management positions and on city committees, commissions and boards.

Preliminary information presented is as follows:

As I reported earlier, for top management positions, the salaries as of 5/17/07 are as follows:

• Average: $86,561.46
• Average for Women: $84,544.83
• Average for Men: 87,266.05
• Average for Racial/Ethnic Minorities: $95,314.70
  

It's slightly better for women and worse for racial/ethnic minorities than it was on 12/31/06

• Average: $86,086.16
• Average for Women: $83,191.67
• Average for Men: 87,086.72
• Average for Racial/Ethnic Minorities: $91,596.44
  

The DWD "job families" have 18 categories for all city employees.

• Women are under represented in 10 of the categories.
• Racial/Ethnic minorities are under represented in 7 of the categories.

When it comes to cities, commissions and boards, I can tell you this preliminary information, which is pretty close to what I originally figured when it comes to gender.

• Women are the most under represented, they are only 40.2% of the appointments, while being 50.9% of the population.
• Asians are 5.8% of the population, but 1.7% of the appointments.
• People with disabilities are 10% of the population, but 6.8% of the appointments.
  
• Hispanics or Latinos are 4.1% of the population but only 2.5% of the appointments.

The staff did a wonderfully thorough and efficient job of presenting the information needed for the committee and the committee already decided that for the study they would define "top management" as Comp Groups 18 (Supervisors), 21 (Department heads with 5 year contracts), 44 (top people at Madison Metro), the city attorneys and top fire, police and engineers.

All that, in less than an hour. Next meeting: August 14th before the Affirmative Action Committee meeting.
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Follow up information on Breese Stevens Field funding

Here's the list of other parks that will also be affected by the Board of Estimates decision on Breese Stevens Field. My previous blog entry about why I don't think it should happen here. And here's the brief explanation:

The funds that we are talking about are the funds developers pay when they build their projects. That's the $500,000 that is in the budget for 2007, project number 5 I think (Note: I know, we need to make this budget information easier to understand!) These funds are split into 11 different segments of the City and are supposed to be spent in those areas. The frustrating thing here is that Breese Stevens only has 100 soccer games played on it per year, and that is virtually the only time that it is open (its literally locked the rest of the year), and you typically have to pay to get in. What they are doing is taking the funds that should be spent on parks that we can actually use, and spending it on Breese because they miscalculated the costs and the architect made some better improvements. I support the necessary improvements, but it shouldn't be at the cost of the other parks in the area. Currently, the fund for Tenney-Law area is at $447,073, if they take $340,692 for Breese (76% of available funds), that leaves $106,381 for the list of parks below and my partial list of issues to be addressed. That's not acceptable. The money should not be coming from these dedicated funds at the expense of these parks.

PARK NAME	Alder District	Address
Breese Stevens Field	2	917 East Mifflin Street
Filene Park	2	1610 Sherman Avenue
Giddings Park	2	429 Castle Place
Madison (James) Beach	2	614 East Gorham Street
Madison (James) Park	2	614 East Gorham Street
Madison, (J.) (Bernard Boathouse)	2	622 East Gorham Street
Madison, (J.) (Gates of Heaven)	2	302 East Gorham Street
Madison, (J.) (Landmark Houses)	2	640 / 646 / 704 East Gorham Street
Period Gardens	2	110 East Gorham Street
Reynolds Field	2	810 East Mifflin Street
Tenney Beach	2	1254 Sherman Avenue
Tenney Pk & Boat Strge	2	1338 East Johnson Street & 1501 Sherman Avenue
Tenney Pk. Access. Boat	2	1615 Sherman Avenue
Law Park	4	410 Blair Street
Blair Gardens	6	Blair, Williamson, & Wilson Sts.
Clarke (B.B.) Beach	6	835 Spaight Street
Hawthorne Playground	6	220 Division Street
Isthmus Bike Path	6	Blount to Waubesa Streets
Kerr - McGee Triangle	6	728 Jenifer Street
Morrison Park	6	1451 Morrison Street
Orton Park	6	1103 Spaight Street
Schenks Corners	6	1900 & 2000 blks. Atwood Ave., Eastwood Dr., & Winnebago St.
Yahara Place Park	6	2025 Yahara Place
Burr Jones Field	12	1820 East Washingtron Avenue
Burrows Park	12	25 Burrows Road
Demetral Field	12	601 North Sixth Street
Pennsylvania Parkway	12	1915 E. Johnson St

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Belated Summerfest Report - Music & Politics!

So, people keep asking me, "How was Summerfest?" Here's the belated rundown.

Baghdad Scuba Review rocked! (What else did you expect me to say? My boyfriend is the percussionist!)

OK, seriously, in my humble opinion, Baghdad Scuba Review was awesome. If you don't believe me, you can check out a little of my shaky video/camera audio of one of their originals here, a less biased review here, and here's some pics . . .


John Schneider in front, Rob "the everything guy" Bloch (that's my sweetie!) hiding behind the congas and John.


Here's my attempt to get the whole band in a picture. It's alot harder when they're on such a big stage, a little different than being squished in to Mr. Robert's! (Note the Scuba Team T-shirts in the crowd.)


Chad Thompson.

I wish I had pictures of them in the t-shirts they had on for their 2nd set, you can see some of them here. Their white t-shirts had a variety of messages on them, some of them only numbers (as of July 5th 585 = days that Bush had left in office, 3588 = the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq).

If you want to hear more about how they mix politics and music, Maximum Ink has a nice article (print only at the moment) on the band in their July 6 issue.

And if you want to check them out for yourself, they will be playing at Mr. Roberts tonight (more info below) and the rest of the schedule is here.

Beyond that, Summerfest was, well, Summerfest. Lots of cement. Few places to get a good beer (This year, I went with the Oktoberfest, which was better than the Capital Amber in cans and PBRs on the bus.) A little bit of rain. Bob Weir was better than expected (I haven't seen him and Ratdog for a while), he pulled out some good less played tunes and I didn't have to complain about him doing too many womanizing songs. (I still miss Jerry!)

Overall, I'd prefer a good outdoor festival where you park your car, hump your camping gear to a shady spot where you can hear the stage but not too loud, camp for a few days, listen to a bunch of bands, drink some beer, relax, dance, laugh, stare at the fire, sleep some, then pack up your gear and return to the real world. But Summerfest was still a blast for a Thursday in Milwaukee.

As for me, next big music events are 10K Lakes Festival, then 3Gs (Grateful Garcia Gathering), then Austin City Limits. Someday, I'll hopefully convince Rob to do this!

Meanwhile, I'm sure you will catch me around town at a few local places as well. It was nice to meet several people who just figured out that I was "Brenda Konkel" at JT Whitney's last Saturday when I signed the email list for Logarhythm. They were playing with Yokanizu Project and Little Marsh Overflow. It's interesting that so many people either know me from the music world or politics world, but few overlap. If you ask me, music and politics should mix more often. Tho its nice to be somewhat anonymous and blend in to the music scene from time to time as well.

Cheers! And here's the band's latest email with their thoughts on Summerfest and a description of what they'll be playing tonight.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound largemouth bass in my lake." --George W. Bush, on his best moment in office, interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, May 7, 2006

Catch this!

Yes, yes....

We're BACK! We are overwhelmed by the amount of people who attended this year to show their support at Summerfest '07! We expected a great crowd, but not like last Thursdays! Just as well, we had great success for our BuSRide to Summerfest last Thursday... (A HUGE THANKS to Fee for helping us out! ;) We ended up being in a position where we were short the number of seats available verses the number of seats demanded!!! Because of this, next year we plan on having TWO buses to cart your shakin' a$$es down to Summerfest! So be on the lookout for news next summer on this! First come, first serve!!! BSR would personally like to thank each and every one of the "SCUBA CREW" for being part of this years adventure!!!

Now, we all know it's short notice but we're trying something new... this Tuesday we're playing an "unbuttoned" version of our regular show at Mr. Roberts. Ladies and gentlemen; BSR at it's finest: Uncut and uncensored! (No, no we will not be performing in the nude.) We're simply trying something new! We're giving our fans something that we have never given them before -- unconstrained jams. Yes. We will be at our best behavior letting the music speak with intentions that will set you unrestrained. Off the cuff, taking requests and performing in protrusion...

Baghdad SCUBA Review
LIVE
Tuesday, July 10th
Mr. Roberts Bar
2116 Atwood Ave
Madison, WI

Be well, be free and at best: just be. See you tomorrow night!

--
Sincerely,
Baghdad Scuba Review
www.baghdadscubareview.com
www.myspace.com/baghdadscubareview
For upcoming Shows:
Please visit www.jambase.com & search for "Baghdad Scuba Review"

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Court Date 7-10-07: Eviction of last Hickory Lane Residents

This falls into the "there ought to be a law" category. This press release is from the Wisconsin Manufactured Home Owners Association.

To Whom It May Concern:

You are cordially invited to the Wisconsin Circuit Court eviction process of the last six homeowners, formerly of Hickory Lane Mobile Home Park (MHP). See below for specifics, date, and times. These modest homeowners had no means to vacate and no means to relocate. Through no fault of their own, they will now be stigmatized via this eviction. To date, the State of Wisconsin has shown no urgency in attempting to resolve this crisis and has no language in place to transition them with fair compensation of any kind.

Currently, Wisconsin Law has zero language addressing the problem of Closing of Mobile Home Parks, the last bastion of independent affordable housing-­a phenomenon that is occurring nationally due to the rapid escalation of real estate values and redevelopment;

Wisconsin has zero language requiring timely Notification of MHP Closings to residents with homes (valued up to $90,000) in these Parks;

Wisconsin has zero language that addresses fair compensation and relocation assistance to homeowners in MHPs that close permanently.

The Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP) / Wisconsin Circuit Court Access
Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA)
New Dane Co. Courthouse, 2nd Floor - 3 PM to 3:30 PM
Displaying records (6)

Dane Open Johns, Mansel (MHP owner)
-
Mansel Johns et al vs. Valerie Byrd 2007SC007134 06-22-2007 Dane Open

Mansel Johns et al vs. Patrick Hogan 2007SC007133 06-22-2007 Dane Open

Mansel Johns et al vs. John Spaerl 2007SC007132 06-22-2007 Dane Open

Mansel Johns et al vs. William H Beck 2007SC007131 06-22-2007 Dane Open

Mansel Johns et al vs. Brent Holman 2007SC007130 06-22-2007 Dane Open

Mansel Johns et al vs. Katya Whiterabbit et al 2007SC007129 06-22-2007 Dane Open

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Water Updates

Here's your water update from the Water Utility.

First of all, the agenda for today has been amended to include the following:

(1) The Board restructuring ordinance referred from the Common Council meeting of July 3 (was not yet posted at the time the agenda was issued last week).

(2) The regular update of the Strategic Plan Steering Committee, which was left off inadvertently.

Water Quality Update for July 9, 2007:

Daily Water Monitoring Results

During the last couple of weeks, as part of its routine water quality monitoring, Water Utility staff collected three water samples that tested positive for coliform bacteria. Coliform bacteria are indicators of potential water contamination. All three samples tested negative for E. coli, a specific type of bacteria that would indicate contamination from animal or human fecal waste. The three sample locations were Orchard Ridge School (6/25/07), Unit Well 7 (7/5/07), and Unit Well 17 (7/05/07). Follow-up samples collected at these three locations and additional nearby taps tested negative for coliform bacteria. These results confirm the absence of microbial contamination and that the water is safe.

To reduce the possibility of microbial contamination, the Water Utility disinfects the water with chlorine. At the time of sample collection, adequate chlorine residuals were detected at all three sample locations. The Water Utility recently completed the implementation of its new chlorine policy, which identifies 0.3 mg/L free chlorine as the target level for water leaving unit wells.

A coliform-positive test result within the water distribution system triggers additional sampling to confirm the presence or absence of contamination, and if present, to identify the extent of that contamination. Samples are collected at the same location of the original coliform-positive result and from upstream and downstream service connections and they are tested for coliform bacteria. Collection of additional samples continues until a complete sample set returns coliform-negative.

Coliform-positive results may arise when sample bottles are not properly sterilized, the sample tap is not completely sterilized prior to sampling, or as a result of human error in collecting the sample or analyzing the test results.

Orchard Ridge School – June 25

Water Utility staff collects water samples in a maintenance work area at Orchard Ridge School each Monday and Wednesday. On June 25, the water sampler noticed damage to the sample tap in the work area and contacted the school custodian. After some consultation, the custodian cut the damaged tap with a saw and the water sampler proceeded to sterilize the tap and collect the sample. The Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene reported a “coliform-positive” sample the next day. On June 27, Water Utility staff collected four follow-up samples (one more than was required) for additional testing; two samples (one from the original tap and another from a utility sink) were collected at Orchard Ridge School, one was taken at a church, and another at a fast food restaurant. All four samples were reported “coliform-negative” on June 28. Water Utility maintenance staff has since replaced the damaged sample tap at the school.

Unit Well 7 – July 5

Water Utility staff routinely collects water samples from Unit Well 7 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. These samples are tested for coliform bacteria at the Microbiology Laboratory at the Department of Public Health for Madison and Dane County. On July 5, a water sample was collected from a sample tap attached to a booster pump that delivers water from the 135,000-gallon reservoir to the distribution system. The chlorine residual measured 0.24 mg/L at the time of sample collection. On Saturday, July 7, the 24-hour water operator was notified by the Public Health Department of the coliform-positive result. The unit well was taken out of service once a follow-up sample could be collected at the well. As an added precaution, a water sample was also collected at the Maple Bluff Town Hall. Both follow-up samples were reported coliform-negative (safe) on Sunday, July 8. Unit Well 7 is now available for service.

Unit Well 17 – July 5

Water Utility staff routinely collects water samples from Unit Well 17 on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. These samples are tested for coliform bacteria at the Microbiology Laboratory at the Department of Public Health for Madison and Dane County. On July 5, a water sample was collected from a sample tap attached to a booster pump that delivers water from the 375,000-gallon reservoir to the distribution system. The chlorine residual measured 0.27 mg/L at the time of sample collection. On Saturday, July 7, the 24-hour water operator was notified by the Public Health Department of the coliform-positive result. The unit well was taken out of service once a follow-up sample was collected at the well. As an added precaution, a water sample was also collected from a nearby restaurant. Both follow-up samples were reported coliform-negative (safe) on Sunday, July 8. Unit Well 17 went back into service last evening.

Subscribe to the Drinking Water Quality Listserv

People who want to receive regular updates on Madison's drinking water quality can subscribe to this Listserv at:

http://lavos.wiscnet.net/mailman/listinfo/drinkingwaterquality

Sincerely,
Joseph Grande
Water Quality Manager

Phone: 608-266-4654
E-mail: jgrande@cityofmadison.com

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Another Busy Week Ahead - Especially for District 2

Another busy week (3 days!) ahead . . . lots going on for people interested in District 2 issues*.

MONDAY

Board of Estimates 4:30 in Room 260 of the Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Blvd.)

• *Using money for improvements to downtown parks for Breese Stevens Field. More info here.

Landmarks Commission 4:30 in Room LL-130 in the Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Blvd.)

• *Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Plan

TUESDAY
Affirmative Action Commission Subcommittee on Gender Issues 4:00 Room 523 City-County Building (210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

Madison Election Advisory Committee 4:30 Room 103A City-County Building (210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

• Proposal to limit campaign and political activities of elections workers (including poll workers).

Board of Water Commissioners 4:30 119 E Olin Ave.

• Discussion of $300,000 Water Utility Contract. More info here.

Public Safety Review Board 5:00 Room LL-110 Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

• Neighborhood Electric Vehicles
• Halloween Resolutions 1, 2 & 3
• Fake Guns. More info here
• Automated Red Light Running Enforcement (i.e. cameras)
  

WEDNESDAY
Urban Design Commission 4:15 Room 260 Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

• * 100 N Franklin & N Hancock Project
• *625 E Mifflin Project
  

Housing Committee 5:00 Room 260 Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

* The Central District Police Community Meeting will be 7 - 8:30 at Lapham School Gym, 1045 E Dayton St.

Board of Parks Commissioners 6:30 Warner Park Community Center

• * Tenney Lapham Neighborhood Plan

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Complaints about Wasting Time . . . Waste Time.

More from the world of the ridiculous. While most of the contacts I get are about things that are relevant to the neighborhood like how to reduce traffic accidents on E Gorham Street, obnoxious neighbors shooting off firecrackers, questions about how noisy construction can be and if there are decibel limits or if the Taste of Madison should have extended hours this year . . . we also get the right-wing AM radio listeners/WSJ editorial believers that like to complain about wasting time . . . thereby, wasting time . . . however, this one, wasted a little more time than usual. Enjoy!

From: removed [mailto:removed]
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 7:35 AM
To: ALL ALDERS
Subject: Contact Alder Form
General Information
Name : Jeffrey Miller
Address : (removed) Ridgewood Way
City : Madison
State : WI
ZIP : 53713
Phone :
Work Phone :
Email : removed
Should we contact you?: Yes

Message :
I was watching a City Council meeting on television the other day (I was bored!) and noticed the desk placard for the Police Chef (sic). I'm surprised none of you ninnies know how to spell Chief. You should concentrate more on City issues and less on your ridiculous liberal agenda, such as worrying about what I eat and filing useless impeachment resolutions. Do you really think the President and Vice President are in their bunkers shaking in their boots over your nonsensical impeachment resolutions?? Get a clue and concentrate on City issues.

And of course, this prompted the following response from our Council staff:

Dear Mr. Miller,
From time to time, I'll hear from someone who watches the Common Council meetings on Channel 12 that the nameplates for Noble Wray and Debra Amesqua read "Police Chef" and "Fire Chef," respectively. The way the nameplates are engraved, the letters are very close together, and I can understand how it might appear that there is no letter "i" in the word "Chief," especially since the letters are all capitals. I can assure you, however, that the titles are spelled correctly. The attached document is a scanned image of the actual nameplates and will verify the spelling.
Thank you,
Debbie Fields
Council Secretary

Thanks, Mr. Miller, for wasting our taxpayers' dollars.
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When toy guns are outlawed, only churches . . .

This is just too weird not to share. From the East Side Police Newsletter:

CHURCH ORGANIZES WAR GAMES

On 6/17, an officer was on routine patrol, shortly after midnight, when she observed several juveniles in the back of a pick up truck in a church parking lot. Her attention was drawn to the boys because of the late hour and they appeared to be holding handguns and rifles. A nearby adult contacted the officer and explained that the boys had air soft guns. He stated that the church organizes this activity for the boys where half of them hide in the woods with their "guns" and the other half go and find them with their "guns". Some of the boys were dressed in black trench coats and gas masks. The air soft guns looked like AK47's, shot guns and handguns.

The officers attempted explain that juveniles carrying guns, dressed in dark clothing during the middle of the night may alarm anyone who sees them and might result in a tragedy if confronted by police who believe the guns to be real. A follow up contact was made with the pastor of the church. While he acknowledged our concerns, he did not commit to ending this practice.

So, is that what this is about? I guess the paintball guns weren't enough?

And I thought it was the lefties that were supposed to be the "nanny-staters"? This is going to be confusing to the AM talk radio listeners!

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Robbing Peter (Downtown Area Parks) to Pay Paul (Breese Stevens)

Two weeks ago, an item that was never introduced through the council magically appeared on the Board of Estimates agenda. That item was one which would have taken money from neighborhood parks to accommodate a changed construction schedule for Breese Stevens Field. This proposal would take $100,000 from Development Fees and $340,692 from funds set aside to go to downtown parks. This would leave $106,381 for improvements to our downtown parks from Broom Street to Commercial Avenue (Law-Tenney fund).

Essentially, what happened was that we budgeted $1.3M for phase one construction of Breese Stevens Field. While working on the project, they discovered that it would be more cost effective to do several of the renovations to make it more accessible during Phase I, instead of Phase II. So this all makes sense, spending money now, to save it later. However, that doesn't mean that the long term improvements to the parks should suffer. Instead, we should borrow the money now, and not borrow it later.

However, the proposal as it stands would essentially eliminate $300,000 worth of improvements to downtown parks. While I don't have the list of desired improvements for all of the downtown parks, I can list a few:

Reynolds Park

• Rehabilitate the grass playing surface.
• Create an entryway at the corner of E Mifflin and N Paterson with landscaping, benches and walkway. Move the sign here from its current location on Dayton St. near the playground.
• Provide nets for the soccer posts.
• Install water access for the garden area at E Dayton and N Paterson.
• Replace the wing set in the current playground.
• Add a bicycle rack.
• Provide benches, game tables and adult exercise equipment.
• Provide operational lights for the tennis courts.
• Install another set of access stairs to the tennis court.
• Plant more trees where feasible.
• Provide more utilization along Livingston ST. side such as hopscotch and 4 square lines on the pavement and use of the wall for tennis and handball practice.
• If the Reynolds Crane property west of Livingston St. becomes available, acquire the area and connect it to Reynolds Park by removing all or part of the 100 block of N Livingston.
  

James Madison Park

• Remove concrete stacks on the James Madison bathhouse to improve the view of the park. Maintain vegetation on the top of bathhouse.
• Clean the Gates of Heaven Parking lot and driveway on May 1 to Nov 15 schedule.
• Lake shore pier.
• Playground and shelter furnishings.
• Irrigation for the "grass".
• relocation of basketball courts.
• Major shelter renovation for restaurant/concessions.
• Port-a-Potties for when the restrooms are closed.

Giddings Park

• Restore the dock at Giddings Park.
• Vacate (tear up and remove) part of N Brearly Street between Sherman Ave and Lake Mendota and incorporate it into Giddings Park. Replace the street with a lane for pedestrian, bicycle and utility access.
• In coordination with landscape restoration plans, clear underbrush and vines.
  

Tenney Park

• Maintain and restore historic bridges in Tenney Park.
• Maintain and restore historic boathouse at corner of Marston/Sherman in Tenney Park - find suitable use for this structure (e.g. community meeting space or volunteer work space).
• Maintain and restore Tenney Park Shelter or replace it with a new one. Keep bathrooms cleaned year round.
• Continue removal of non-native vegetation in Tenney Park and replant with vegetation as detailed in historic planting designs for the park.
• Have a sign made detailing the historical significance of Tenney Park.
• Add more park facilities for adults, including, benches in Tenney Park.
• Horseshoes and boccie court in Tenney Park.
• In coordination with landscape restoration plans, clear underbrush aneud vines.
  

Yahara River Parkway

• Add more park facilities for adults, including benches in the Yahara River Parkway.
• Add stone access dock along the west bank of the Yahara River Parkway at the end of Dayton St.

Burr Jones

• In coordination with landscape restoration plans, clear underbrush and vines.

And generally speaking, there is lighting that needs to be repaired and a desire to add public art to our parks.

Given the huge needs, and how far this $300,000 could go toward downtown parks that desperately need some attention, I hope the Board of Estimates will decide tomorrow to do the right thing, borrow the money for upgrades to Breese Stevens Field and give the downtown parks a shot at some of the improvements they so desperately need.

Then, when they're done with that, they can all ask the Mayor to please appoint the dang James Madison Park Committee that the Council approved last February so we can sell those houses and get some money to improve the much loved to the point it is over-utilized James Madison Park.
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Council Meeting Recap: July 3 2007

No better way to celebrate the 4th of July than talking about local government, eh? Ok - so before I forget, here's my version of what happened last night at the Council meeting. (I really should learn to take notes. Or perhaps I should have skipped Gomeroke at the High Noon after the Brocach. It feels good to sleep until noon every once in a while!)

We breezed through items 1 - 9 and 30 - 73, except #72 in the first 5 minutes or so. I separated item #72 which was the extra half million dollars needed to purchase the new garbage cans for the automated garbage collection.

#72 - Budget amendment for over half a million dollars for garbage cans.
I still think people are going to be freaked out when they see the 95 gallon garbage cans that get dropped off at their homes because they didn't read, understand or return the postcard by last March. Something like 75% of the city will be getting these monstrous things. The default size of the recycling bins were 65 gallons. People will be stuck with the 95 gallon garbage cans for 90 days. Then, if they still don't want them, they can get them exchanged. The staff thinking is that people will need them for when they have extra trash. I'm thinking, I'm going to get quite a few complaints.

After item #72 passed unanimously, we went back to the public hearings that we can't do until 6:45. We passed items 12 - 29 and quickly went on to the consent agenda. We passed the rest of the agenda except items 74 (transfats), 103 ($300,000 contract for water utility) and 122 (RTA resolution). Click here for some of the items of interest that didn't get any discussion.

#74 Transfats
This resolution, is only a voluntary ban. And actually, there was another version handed out at the Council meeting, so its a little different than the language linked here. I understand why people abstained from this, but as the author Ald. Tim Gruber explained, this is really just like any resolution we pass where we honor someone or the work they do. In a way, this was honoring the work the folks are doing to bring this to the attention of the public. I would have abstained, but it turns out, I was the 11th vote and I didn't want it to fail as there is not harm in passing the resolution. This was a roll call vote, with folks voting as follows:

For: Schumacher, Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Kerr, Bruer, Clausius, Clear, Gruber, Rhodes-Conway and Konkel (11)
Against: Cnare, Pham-Remmele (2)
Abstaining: Skidmore, Brandon, Compton, Judge, Palm, Rummel (6)
Absent: Sanborn (1)

#103 $300,000 contract for water utility
This was a tough one and there were multiple issues. The one that I was most annoyed with, was the fact that the water utility had already spent $50,000 and obligated us for $115,000 or $150,000, I didn't quite hear how much. But either way, this isn't acceptable. Why bother even having the Council approve contracts if they're already a done deal? Why bother having rules if they're not followed? And even more insulting, was the after-the-fact excuse that this was a sole-source contract, even tho the resolution never mentions it.

Here's a little background. On May 15th, the Water Utility Board knew that the staff were spending money without authorization and asked for more information. Instead of putting a rush on things, they delayed for more information. Meanwhile, the staff went on committing to more expenses. Seemed to me that someone from the Mayor's office or the Alder should have stopped this much earlier. We should have been discussing this at our June 5th meeting. Or our June 19th meeting. We definitely should not have let this situation get to the point where nearly half the contract money had been committed before we even approved the contract.

Some on the Council were calling for the head of the David Denig-Chakroff, the manager of the Water Utility. To me, the Water Utility Board, the Alder, the Mayor's office, the Comptroller's office (purchasing) and many others had a role here too. Unfortunately, many of them were not at the meeting. So, we postponed until the Water Utility Manager and the chair of the Water Utility board and the Comptroller could be at the meeting.

Meanwhile, there's still questions about if the work that is proposed to be done, or has already been done, is necessary or effective.

#122 RTA resolution
As I told you yesterday, the Mayor asked for this to be referred back to his office and out of the public eye. The Council, out of courtesy, agreed. However, all this does is postpone the discussion for another two weeks and makes it incredibly difficult to discuss with our colleagues without breaking open meetings laws with a walking quorum.

After the 2 hour long Council meeting, we were off to the Brocach. Those who attended were as follows: Tim Bruer, Mike Verveer, Eli Judge, Michael Schumacher, Joe Clausius, Mark Clear, Lauren Cnare, Satya Rhodes-Conway, Marsha Rummel, Robbie Webber, Julia Kerr and myself. We were joined by the "21st alder" Rosemary Lee, the City Attorney Michael May and some of the Mayor's staff including Rebecca Cnare, George Twigg, Janet Piriano and Mario Mendoza.
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What's Missing?

Just a few minutes ago, the Common Council received this e-mail from the Mayor:

From: Mayor
Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 3:08:55 PM
To: ALL ALDERS
Subject: RTA Support Resolution

Dear Alders,

As the County Executive and I have publicly agreed to work together to promote a Dane County-Wide RTA, I am requesting that we refer the RTA Support Resolution (Council Agenda Item #122, & Legistar ID #06762) back to the Mayor's Office, and return it to the Council for action on July 17th. This will enable me to continue working with County Executive Falk on the drafting of identical substitute resolutions that express our shared commitment to the creation of a countywide RTA, and of our support for the passage of enabling legislation by the State Legislature.

As you know, passage of this resolution simply expresses our request that the legislature allow us to create an RTA consistent with the agreement reached by the County Executive and myself. If and when that enabling legislation is enacted, there are still a number of events that would have to occur before the RTA would be put in place. These include: securing federal funding; passage of intergovernmental agreements to create the RTA; and a countywide referendum.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz

Notice anything missing?

Why not have a public discussion about it? So much for open government. Or at least pretend to involve the "legislative branch" of government? This will still need 11 votes to pass and if it passes with less than 15, we won't be anywhere near consensus.
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What ever happened to . . .

The Committees to deal with the Office of Neighborhood Support and James Madison Park?

The resolution to create the Office of Neighborhood Support committee was introduced March 20th and passed March 27th. That's over three months ago.

The resolution to create James Madison Park committee was introduced last November and passed February 27th. That's over 4 months ago that it was approved by the Council.

At least in the case of James Madison Park, there is no great mystery about who should be appointed, in fact, the Alders are appointed.

Why is the Mayor stalling on making the citizen appointments?

I get the feeling, there may be a few other appointments out there that we are waiting to have happen, but these two seem a little extreme.
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Tomorrow's Council Meeting

When most people are off on family vacations or doing something fun and interesting this week, at least 19 of the council members will be in a meeting Tuesday night. Technically, I have the week "off", but I'll be going in to work tomorrow and the Council work never stops. The highlight of my week "off" is Rob's band Baghdad Scuba Review is playing at Summerfest on Thursday and my sister and I will be on the bus. Today, we're off the zoo with the nieces.

Here's the highlights of the actions we'll be taking on Tuesday.

#58 - Orpheum (Also #8)
Accept the following stipulated agreement: 1) License holder will pay fine of $1,747. 2) License holder will confiscate false ID's during events and give to MPD monthly. 3) All employees will attend MPD Tavern Safety by October 1, 2007. 4) License holder will serve a three-day suspension, which will be deemed served upon compliance with stipulated agreement.

#59 - City Bar (Also #9)
Accept the following stipulated agreement: 1) License holder will pay fine of $1,810. 2) License holder will provide brighter lighting and a blacklight for bouncers to check ID's. 3) License holder will confiscate false ID's and give to MPD monthly. 4) All employees will attend MPD Tavern Safety by October 1, 2007. 5) License holder will serve a three-day suspension, which will be deemed served upon compliance with stipulated agreement.

# 60 - Kollege Klub (Also #6)
Accept the following stipulated agreement: 1) License holder will pay fine of $3,826. 2) License holder will confiscate false ID's and give to MPD monthly. 3) All employees will attend MPD Tavern Safety by October 1, 2007. 4) License holder will discontinue all-you-can-drink specials. 5) Employees at the front door to the establishment will use a tape measure and blacklight to aid in identifying false ID's. 6) License holder will serve a five-day suspension for the dates of September 6th through September 10th.

#61 - Bullfeathers (Also #5)
Accept the following stipulated agreement: 1) License holder will pay fine of $4,834. 2) License holder will confiscate false ID's and give to MPD monthly. 3) All employees will attend MPD Tavern Safety by October 1, 2007. 4) License holder will serve a ten-day suspension for the dates of September 6th through September 15th.

#62 - Church Key (Also #7)
Accept the following stipulated agreement: 1) License holder will pay fine of $5,069. 2) License holder will confiscate false ID's and give to MPD monthly. 3) License holder will utilize an ID scanner at the front door to the establishment. 4) License holder will serve a three-day suspension from July 8th through July 10th.

#72 - More money for Garbage Cans
It seems as tho the budget for the new garbage collection process is going to cost us a half of million dollars more than projected. The reasons given are that

a) more people are getting the 95 gallon carts (most recycling bins are 65 gallons) because that is the size you get if you didn't respond to a postcard months ago.
b) petroleum prices.

#74 - Transfats

#83 - Throwing in the towel on Mid-State St. Parking Ramp.

#103 - Spending $300,000 to find out what is wrong with the Water Utility.

#122 - Regional Transportation Authority
Well, after all the splash this week, the Council's vote on the RTA will be largely insignificant. And once again, we're left out of the conversation. When it looked like Mayor Dave and County Exec Kathleen were going to continue fighting, this resolution was a good idea. Now its useless. However, it is important to note that this resolution DOES NOT ratify the agreement the two of them struck. In fact, I'm still not sure I understand all the ins and outs of what they agreed to, as Paul Soglin notes, keep a close eye on what folks are saying.
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