Mixed Messages

Yesterday, I grabbed dinner and a beer at the Great Dane after a meeting. I happened to be facing the window and saw the "beer bus" circulating around the outer loop several times. It kind of made me laugh. While the UW is so focused on the drinking habits of UW Students and how to change the culture of drinking on campus; the City is talking about limiting alcohol licenses downtown; the public and periphery alders are up in arms about the drag on police resources we have in the downtown area due to drinking on campus; and the police are warning students to be careful when drinking late night because Kelly Nolans killer is still on the lose; at the same time we have this "beer bus" circulating around downtown sending a much different message. Oh, the irony.
Read more!

And then there were 5 . . .

A while ago I posted about the lack of women in top leadership positions in the City of Madison. And the trend continues. Yesterday the Mayor announced his intention to name Enis Ragland as the Interim Director of the Office of Community Services replacing 30 year veteran Dorothy Conniff. Out of about 31 positions, that only leaves the following women leading departments:

• Library: Barbara Dimick
• Clerk's Office: Maribeth Witzel-Behl
• Department of Civil Rights: Lucia Nunez
• Fire Department: Debra Amesqua
• Senior Center: Christine Beatty
  

That's 19% of the top leadership positions in Madison. Most of the recent recent positions have gone to or are recommended to go to men except the City Clerk and Department of Civil Rights - thats 2 out of 11 or 18%:

• Overture Center President: Tom Carto
• City Assessor: Mark Hanson
• Interim Water Utility Director: Larry Nelson
• Metro Transit General Manager: Charles Camp (formerly Catherine Debo)
• Public Health Director: Dr. Thomas Schlenker (formerly Kate Vedder)
• Inspection Unit: George Hank (formerly Linda Grubb)
• Office of Business Resources: Matthew Mikolajewski (formerly Katherine Naherny)
• Office of Community Services: Enis Ragland (formerly Dorothy Conniff)
• Human Resources: Brad Wirth (Interim was Roger Goodwin but permanent position was held by a woman)
  

We have some opportunities to change this with openings in Parks, Water Utility, Economic & Community Development and City Treasurer. The last two of those positions which have been open for quite some time. I hope they are making efforts to recruit women to some of these positions.

To add insult to injury, I'm kind of appalled that after 30 years Dorothy Conniff was making $90,000 but Enis Ragland will be doing the same job with only 16 years experience with the City of Madison and no where near the expertise in childcare issues that Dorothy Conniff had and he will be making $102,000.
Read more!

Wisconsin Poverty Rates Rising: 581,000 Living in Poverty

News from the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families about poverty rates in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Poverty Rates Rise Substantially, Increase Demands Comprehensive Vision

U.S. Census Bureau figures released yesterday reveal that Wisconsin's poverty rate has increased in the last year by nearly a full percentage point. More than 581,000 Wisconsin residents, including 192,000 kids, now live below the federal poverty level. For more details, see the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families' press release. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's coverage of the poverty figures can be found here, and the Appleton Post-Crescent's article can be read here.

These figures make clear that we need a coordinated and strategic plan to address poverty in our state. The Vision 2020 Campaign (a partnership between WCCF, the Wisconsin Community Action Program Association, and the Wisconsin Head Start Association) provides a visionary yet practical approach to ending child poverty, a proactive emphasis on policy solutions that will make a difference, and a great way for the public, elected officials and organizations to get involved in a tangible, focused way. Click here to learn more about the Vision 2020 Campaign and to get involved.

Here's some of the "highlights" from the press release, if you can call them that:

• Thepoverty rate for all Wisconsin residents rose from 10.2 percent in 2005 to 11.0 percent
• In 2006 and the child poverty rate increased as well, from 13.9 percent in 2005 to 14.9 percent in 2006.
• There are more than 581,000 Wisconsin residents living in poverty
• The residents living in poverty include including 192,000 children
• The federal poverty level for a family of four in 2006 was $20,000.
• Some good news that there are 4,000 fewer children in Wisconsin were living in extreme poverty in 2006 than in 2005
• The total number of Wisconsin kids living in extreme poverty still stands at an alarming 80,000.
  
• Extreme poverty is defined as income less than 50% of the federal poverty threshold ($10,000/year for a family of four in 2006).
• While there was a 3.5 percent increase in the median household income level, from $47,105 in 2005 to $48,772 in 2006. Median household income for African Americans actually fell from $26,318 to $26,161 while the median income for Whites rose from $49,244 to $50,794.
• 12.4 percent of families with children under age 18 are living in poverty, up from 11.5 in 2005.
  
• 32.5 percent of Wisconsin’s African American families are living below the poverty level.
• 24.3 percent of Wisconsin’s Hispanic families are living below the poverty level.

Here's the recommendations about Wisconsin should do.

• Education and training that meets the specific needs of Wisconsin families and new businesses by providing targeted training to potential employees.
• Improve the effectiveness of the state’s economic development incentives for businesses to ensure the public investments made are producing family supporting jobs.
• Continue to find ways to reach the more that 550,000 uninsured people in Wisconsin.
• Support and improve policies that help negate the effects of poverty on children, specifically quality early education opportunities for every child in Wisconsin.
• Maintain Wisconsin’s critical income support programs, including child care tuition assistance, BadgerCare and Medicaid, the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, Homestead Tax Credit, and food security programs.
  

Read more!

Another Mayor's Staff Person Recommended for City Position - UPDATED!!

Here's the news. I guess the rumors were true. That reminds me, again, what happened to that committee that was supposed to be set up? It's almost been another two months with no action.

From: Mayor
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 4:17:07 PM
To: ALL ALDERS; Dept Division Heads; All Agency Heads; CS GROUP; [other individuals deleted - I think they were all Community Services Committee members]
Cc: MY GROUP
Subject: Office of Community Services Interim Director

I am pleased to announce that I have named mayoral assistant Enis Ragland to lead the Office of Community Services (OCS) on an interim basis for the next year. Enis met with OCS staff earlier today to give them the news.

As many of you know, Enis is a longtime City government veteran, with 16 years of experience. He is no stranger to OCS, having served for 14 years as the mayoral liaison to OCS under three different administrations. His experience and commitment to the mission of OCS will be an asset to the agency and the community.

I am making this interim appointment because, given the retirement of longtime OCS Director Dorothy Conniff, this seemed like a good opportunity to review the mission of OCS and its relationship with CDBG. I will take the coming year to discuss this subject with City staff, organizations served by OCS, and other members of the community. I will not be proposing changes to the structure of OCS as part of my 2008 operating budget. I may not propose any changes at all. However, I do want to review the issue before making any long-term decisions about the future leadership of OCS.

Enis will begin his work at OCS in late September, pending Common Council budget authorization.

I am grateful for Enis' service to my office, and I hope you will all join me in wishing him well in his new role at OCS.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz
210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Room 403
Madison, WI 53703
608.266.4611
mayor@cityofmadison.com

Ugh, to add insult to injury, check out this line from the Wisconsin State Journal.

Ragland would begin his new job in late September, pending City Council approval. His annual salary would remain $102,206, compared with Conniff 's salary of $90,681, Cieslewicz spokesman George Twigg said.

So, someone who does the job for 30 years gets paid less than a political appointment?!
Read more!

Meeting Tonight: Should we just tear down the of neighborhood?

The James Madison Park Neighborhood between N Butler St. and the Capitol is a small neighborhood and one of the first that were built in the City of Madison. There are two developments that are being proposed for this area that would tear down several houses in the neighborhood, including the site of one of the first hospitals in the City of Madison.

The first project, I've blogged about before (this blog has some of the history of the neighborhood) and has been through a bit of the City process. This project proposes to remove 1 house, demolish 2 Houses and 3 garages, and Build 4-Story Apartment Building at 119, 123 & 125 North Butler Street and 120 & 124 North Hancock Street. And one of the houses may be moved to the corner of E Johnson and Blair. The meeting is Monday, September 10th at 7:00 at Gates of Heaven (small buidling on the west end of James Madison Park at 302 E Gorham). More information available here.

The second is a new proposal that would tear down housing on the 300 block between E Johnson and E Gorham, this is the block where the Pinkus McBride grocery store is. The details of this proposal are still in the development phases. This meeting is tonight at 7:00 at Gates of Heaven.

If you live in the neighborhood or know anyone who lives in the neighborhood and they want to get involved, please have them contact me.
Read more!

Lakes. When are we flooding?

This is interesting stuff . . . things we take for granted and usually don't have to think about cuz the engineers take care of it for us.

From: Nelson, Larry
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 11:00:44 AM
To: Dept Division Heads; ALL ALDERS; Ruckriegel, Ed; Cryan, Kathy;
Fahrney, John; Manning, Bryan; Dailey, Mike; Bachmann, Christy;
Hoffman, Jeanne
Subject: Lake Elevations

Lake Monona has crested at elevation 847.48 at 3:00 pm, Monday afternoon, August 27, 2007. The regional flood elevation of Lake Monona is 848 but the highest level on record was sustained June 15, 2000 at 847.48.

As a result of the unexpected rainfall events of yesterday, Dane County has reduced the discharge from Lake Mendota to about 130 cfs (cubic feet per second), as measured on the Yahara River at E. Main Street. At 7:00 pm, Monday, August 27, 2007, there were 285 cfs flowing into Lake Mendota at STH 113.

Lake Mendota crested at 851.81 around 10:00 am Saturday, August 25, 2007. The Lake maintained an elevation of 851.80 at 7:00 pm, Monday, August 27, 2007. The 100 – Year Regional Flood is currently 852 but the WDNR has a proposal under consideration to increase that elevation to 853. The previous highest level on record was sustained June 7, 2000 at elevation 852.74.

The lakes are being managed in accordance with the long-term strategy of holding water in Lake Mendota and attempting to release water from Lakes Monona and Waubesa as quickly as possible.

The City of Monona has had to sandbag portions of its Belle Isle neighborhood and other areas. The City of Middleton has sandbagged areas along Lake Mendota north of James Marshall Park.
City Engineering has placed sand bags and sand at six locations. Engineering has a mechanical sand bagger, which was delivered to the Town of Windsor yesterday. We will retrieve the machine if required by City residents.

We have had a few reports of damage to structures. FEMA will be assessing damage to Dane County today, preparatory to a disaster declaration by the federal government. Refer all reports of damage to Building Inspector George Hank and his staff.

What Can We Do to Reduce this Risk?

The lakes are operated in accordance with the order of WDNR which the following web page details:
http://co.dane.wi.us/landconservation/papers/lakes/DNR-3-SD-77-808.pdf

Lakes elevations are established to balance competing interests of the riparian owners, the boating /recreation interests and the environmental concerns, including fish propagation and protection of wetlands. The high water elevations, which cause “bogs” to dislodge from the bottom and float with the current, have significantly diminished the Cherokee wetlands.

We believe that this current situation would have been less of a concern had we been able to maintain a lake elevation one-foot lower than the maximum summer elevation established for both Lakes Monona and Mendota. We have sent a letter to the WDNR requesting a review of the order and that review is underway.

Another action that we need to develop additional information is the railroad bridge at the mouth of the Yahara River and Lake Waubesa. Kevin Connors, Director of the Dane County Land Conservation Department, reports that the bridge (railroad trestle) restricts the flow of the river as much as 0.5 feet. During high water periods, the “head loss” at the bridge increases the elevation of Lake Monona over Lake Waubesa. It has been proposed to install a new bridge that would increase the capacity of channel, facilitate boating, and widen the bridge to accommodate bike/pedestrian traffic.

Read more!

Water Utility Resignation Is A Start.

I gotta agree with Bill Leuders. Well, kinda. I'm not sad about seeing Gonzalez leave, in fact, it wasn't soon enough. David Denig-Chakroff is a different story.

I have mixed feelings about him leaving. On the one hand, he's the boss and the buck stops there and ultimately, he's responsible for what went on at the Water Utility. On the other hand, while I'm not there on a daily basis, I get the feeling that the problem was with some other top managers. So, I'm not sure much is going to change in the immediate future. I've been asked to name names, and I don't feel comfortable doing that as I do not have first hand knowledge, but it seems rather widely known that there are at least two other people that are a problem, and some people think there are three or four more. I don't know where it stops, but I don't think the problems at the water utility end until there is a major attitude change with a few employees.

I am somewhat hopeful that Larry Nelson, who was named interim manager, can help start a process of evaluating what the issues are. I don't know how quickly, if at all, disciplinary action can be taken there. And maybe the problem employees will act differently with Nelson in charge. One thing is clear, there is an attitude problem with some and some questionable hiring practices that have gone on for a while. These issues need to be addressed and if Mr. Nelson doesn't do it, the person who gets hired to be the Water Utility Manager is going to have their hands full until there are some bigger changes.

Finally, to be clear, this is about the top management, not the workers at the utility. The situation is alot like with the Police Department, where the Police and Fire Commission makes the hiring decisions, not the Mayor and the Common Council. The on-the-street workers can do their jobs and do them well, but if there are bad management decisions made, the whole department looks bad. Hopefully, at least in the case of the Water Utility, things are starting to change.
Read more!

Your Chance to Impact the Water Utility

This is from a neighborhood listserve and I thought I'd share it. Thanks to Dan Melton for getting this information together:

WANTED: Three new Water Utility Board members

Interested in serving on the Water Utility Board? Get an application in to The Mayor's Office by this Wednesday August 29 .

You need to fill out a short City of Madison Committee Appointment Application - Click on http://www.cityofmadison.com/mayor/pdfs/commappt.pdf
- same as you would for any other city committee or commission - and return To: The Mayor's Office.

It used to be called the "Board of Water Commissioners" and have 5 voting members. It will now be called the "Water Utility Board" and have 7 voting members.

The Mayor and city council will appoint two new members - plus a replacement for Board Chair Percy Mather, who retires at the end of September = Total: 3 new members.

The city plans to have the three new members appointed in time for the October board meeting.

Read more!

Real E-mail: Bill O'Reilly Fans

Every once in a while I get an email from a right-wing nut I just can't help replying to. Check out his exchange:

Random Email we received:

From a U.S. 20+ year military veteran! What the hell is wrong with you being a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, aliens, and undocumented workers. I didn't defend this great country of ours to have idiots like yourself disregard the law or let others do so.

Mr. Anderson

It seemed rather out of the blue and not relevant to any recent actions so my reply was:

What the hell are you talking about?
Alder Brenda Konkel
Madison, WI

His brilliant response:

Hey Jerk, check out this website you uniformed idiot!
http://www.billoreilly.com/blog;jsessionid=9D867519559BDCC55BCDB8E353B0EB70?action=viewBlog&blogID=362056141532353188

Mr. Anderson

So I reply:

Heh! You call getting info from Bill O'Reilly being informed? You're right, I don't read his blog and don't intend to.
Maybe next time you can be more specific about your complaint. Do you even have any idea what policies we have in place that landed us on that page?

And his response:

No, but please elaborate and let me know those policies and who I can contact to try to get these bogus policies rescinded. Bill O'Reilly is a class act, much more reliable than left wing, liberals like the Daily Kos, CNN, etc.

And at this point, I couldn't help myself:

Why don't you ask Bill O'Reilly?

I'm still not sure why I wasted my time replying. I guess it is because usually these people don't leave any contact information. Its interesting, cuz we get these crazy right-wing emails from people who don't live in Madison and usually don't leave any contact information. However, it does make a good point. If you actually want alders to respond to your comments off the City Council website, two things are extremely helpful:
1. Put an actual address (preferably yours!) in there so that we can see you are from Madison or just put Madison if you don't want to leave your address.
2. Actually leave contact information like your email address.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I usually don't spend time responding to some of those emails and then occasionally the person actually ends up being from Madison and they might actually have a a relevant point. So, leave your email address if you want a response.

Here's another one of my recent favorites from another nutcase from out of state. I wonder if he's another Bill O'Reilley fan:

The next time I have a bad case of the "runs", I am going to visit your stupid city and make a deposit!

Read more!

Operating Budget Highlights for Proposed Department Budgets

When we get the operating budget, the information is a summary of quite a bit of information and we have very little detail. As a result, the first thing we look at is the budget highlights that the agencies submit. Here are the summaries for the departments that submitted them to the Mayor. The full information is not easily accessible to the public and the alders were not given it until I requested it and we finally got a copy on Friday. Here's what the "3% reduction" for some departments (Police, Fire, Clerk, Overture and several others essentially excluded) yielded. More on that soon. Meanwhile, this is mostly just a cut and paste job, so there are some spelling errors that I didn't take the time to fix. Note, not all departments provided these summaries so some are missing. I'll provide more information as I wade through the cd full of files that we received.

City Attorney’s Office
1. In order to meet the request for a base budget reduction of 3%, we must lay off 1.5 attorney positions for 2008. We anticipate that the failure to have these positions filled would negate the resources we have dedicated to our Nuisance Abatement Program, as well as our ability to effectively prosecute ordinance violations in Municipal Court. The layoffs would have another deleterious effect. The City Attorney has made a commitment to increasing the diversity of the OCA. Since layoffs are made in reverse order of seniority, this means that one minority Assistant City Attorney in our office would be laid off.

2. In addition to the 2% budgeted salary savings that all departments are expected to have, we will meet an additional 2.72% through known salary savings throughout 2008, including two employees who work approved schedules of less than full time. The total for salary savings, outside of the layoffs above, is projected to be 4.72%.

Department of Civil Rights
1. Reduction on one Clerk Typist position to 75%

2. Funds for a contract with the Fair Housing Center of Greater Madison for fair housing testing ($30,000)

3. Reallocation of expenses among services based on fte's.

4. Elimination of the BNA electronic fair employment practices from the Bureau of National Affairs ($4,000)

Overture – No 3% Cut
1. The City's subsidy for the Overture Center, is determined by the Operational and Cooperation Agreement. The amount is adjusted annually by the inflation factor used for the Expenditure Restraint Program (ERP). The inflation factor for 2008 is 2.3%, resulting in a subsidy of $1,720,185, some of which is funded from the Transient Occupancy Tax Fund.

2. Funding for Payment in Lieu of Taxes in the amount of $477,383.

3. Continued support for arts education programs. OnStage Programming, for example, will provide approximately 50 performances for school age children with anticipated attendance of 50,000 students, teachers and parents from public, private and home schools throughout south-central Wisconsin.

4. Continued support for community outreach at Overture Center including free and low-cost performances and events such as Kids in the Rotunda, Children's Art Festival, Musical Memories, Overture after Work, Artist Workshops, Take 10 Program, Meet the Artist, Duck Soup Cinema, and the International Festival. In addition, Overture provides free galleries for Dane County artists. These programs and concerts are further supported through grants and sponsorships by local foundations and corporations.

5. Continued economic support in the community, region, and state. In 2005, Overture Center and its residents had total direct spending of $37,532,933 and supported 1,395 FTE jobs. Overture audiences paid $608,132 in sales tax on performance tickets in 2005.

6. The addition of 5 positions - Graphic Artist Assistant (50%), Account Tech 2, Planning-Systems Analyst, Sales Associate, and Admin Clerk 1. These positions either generate revenue or provide support to revenue generating positions.

7. Establishing the authorized permanent staff positions for Overture Center. All other amounts are provided as informational. The Madison Cultural Arts District may transfer funds between accounts as necessary to keep the City subsidy at the authorized level and/or to accommodate actual revenues and expenditures while

Monona Terrace
1. The 2008 requested budget includes a 3.85% cut in the operating expense subsidy funded by the Room Tax over the 2007 budget, reducing it to $2,812,862. This reduction in the subsidy comes with an increase in revenues of 3.0% in total revenues over budget 2007, despite losing over $385,000 in net revenues from EPIC in 2008. The decrease in subsidy was also achieved by a 1.75% cut in overall operating expense from 2007 budget levels. The decrease in subsidy exceeds the Mayor's request of a 3% reduction by $25,000.

2. The inter-agency expenses increased 2.4% including an increase in PILOT of $6,600 over 2007 budget. The increase in WRS debt service interest of 3.03% for the Prior Service Obligation Loan and 3.34% in the WRS Prior Service Obligation Loan-Principal Debt Service represents the additional increase.

3. Continued support of community outreach efforts at Monona Terrace including approximately 77 free community programs. Programs include free use of the Hall of Fame room by Dane County non-profit organizations and quality community concerts and events supported through grants and sponsorships by local foundations and corporations.

4. Funding of $126,690 for the Greater Madison Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB) for direct marketing of Monona Terrace. In 2008, it is estimated that the GMCVB will book approximately $700,000 in convention and conference contract revenues from their direct marketing efforts on behalf of Monona Terrace. In 2005 and 2006 , similar groups generated $85.3 million in economic benefits to Madison, Dane County and the State of Wisconsin based on the Monona Terrace Community and Economic Impact Study prepared by Virchow Krause & Company.

5. Establishing the authorized level of City subsidy for Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center in 2008 and establishing the authorized permanent staff positions as adopted. All other amounts, except permanent salary and debt service, are provided as informational in order to determine the authorized subsidy level and may, in the course of the year, be adjusted by the City Comptroller to reflect income generated by Monona Terrace, if such adjustments do not increase the authorized level of subsidy or increase debt service.

The agency submitted no supplemental budget requests.

Community Services
1. Cuts to meet the Mayor's budget target:
· Community Resources - $104,433; 3% of the 2007 budget.
· Child Care Assistance - $71,845; 3% of the remaining budget. With a very small budget and few discretionary items, we have few choices.

2. A reduction in the salary level of the Community Services Supervisor to the level of Step 4.

3. Nine budget supplemental requests, to restore cuts made to meet the target, maintain program levels, and fund losses due to the termination of grant funds, and provide for some program expansions mainly to meet inflationary costs.

Library – No 3% Cut
1. Revenues: a 3% reduction from the 2007 library levy; expected COLA increases and an increase in debt service for the new Sequoya Branch capital project. Also included are projected reimbursements from Dane County and adjacent counties for use of Madison's libraries by people who don't live in Madison.
Expenditures: increases in utilities, rent, maintenance/service contracts, PC replacements and debt service; salaries and benefits to maintain current staff; the base budget for books and library materials is reduced nearly 40% from the 2004-2007 level.

2. Supplemental Initiative requests, as follows:
1) $413,568 to maintain the budget for books and other library materials at last year's level -- $1,050,000.
2) $97,603 to increase hours at the South Madison Branch Library.
3) $118,392 to increase hours at the Hawthorne Branch Library.

Planning
1. Reduce Neighborhood Grants from $223,000 to $163,000 to achieve the budget target.

CDBG
1. City-supported funding at 97% of the 2007 'base' for neighborhood-focused services and for homeless prevention and reduction servicees., and an estimated Federal and state funding level at 100% of the 2007 base. About 88% of the total budget, including continuing projects and revolving funds, are derived from non-local sources.

2. Authorization to allocate reprogrammed and other HUD-approved funds for continuing CDBG, ESG, and HOME-funded projects for the first two quarters of 2008, through revisions to previously approved Action Plans, and allocate later-approved funds to those or to new projects during the latter part of the year, provided the total budgeted amount per project does not exceed the amount approved by the Common Council upon adoption of ths budget.

3. Community Development Office staff participation in Neighborhood Resource Teams as part of a City-wide effort to improve the quality, delivery, and coordiantion of City services to resdients.

The Office submitted $72,308 in supplmental requests, of which __________is included in the Executive budget.

Economic and Community Development
1. Adding the Office of Business Resources Service and the Street Vending to our Division.

2. A supplement for sick leave payout for the potential retirement of staff in 2008.

3. A supplement for "Jobs For a Future".

4. Increased billings to the SR Funds.

Madison City Channel
1. Exclusion of funding for closed captioning of coverage of Madison Common Council meetings.

Comptroller
1. Salary savings budgeted at 2.9% which will be achieved by managing vacancies as they occur.

2. The transfer of the position of Safety Coordinator from the Human Resources Department to the Comptroller's Office. Expenditures for this position are included in Service 6000 - Risk Management.

3. New inter-agency billing to the Department of Public Health - Madison and Dane County in the amount of $30,700 to provide services from the Administrative Support Team and Document Services.

4. The agency submitted two suppplemental requests totaling $182,500. However, this amount is offset with anticipated revenue to the General Fund of $700,000.

IT
1. The 2008 budget includes funding for a new 1.0 FTE position approved in the 2007 budget ;but, not funded until 2008.

2. All 39.0 authorized positions are fully funded for the full year.

3. Includes revenue from TRACS Grant of $26470 distributed between Permanent Salaries, Overtime and Fringe Benefits.

Assessor
1. The 2008 operating budget request reflect a 3% reduction in expenditures compared to the 2007 budget.

2. To assist in reaching our 2008 target amount, salary savings was increased from 2.0% to 3.50%.

3. In the 2008 Operating Budget, I am proposing a change in the organizational structure of the City Assessor’s Office. Necessitating this change is a series of on-going problems caused by a management structure that is no longer suited for the agency now that the Department of Revenue has been dissolved. I am proposing a structure that was previously in place that functioned much more effectively than the current structure by adding balance to the supervisory workload.

4. We request that the Administrative Clerk I position be restored in the 2008 Operating Budget. To achieve the target budget, we needed to eliminate this position. The primary responsibilites of this position are data entry of residential property information, front line customer service including answering the telephone, scheduling inspection appointments, answering office policies inquires, walk in for assessment information, and work on special projects during peak periods. With the deletion of this position, a gap has occured in the responsibilities within the Assessor's Office. The Assessor's Office assess approximately 70,000 real estate parcels. In a typical year, approximately 2,500 interior inspections are scheduled for the residential appraisers.

Senior Center
1. The basic operation of the Madison Senior Center. The City of Madison pays for building expenses, staff salaries/benefits and related supplies. Rental income from the use of the building by community groups and the public offsets the costs of the basic operation.

In addition, approximately $50,000 is raised by the Board of Directors for programs and activities. Generated by participant fees, community gifts, donations, fundraising and grants, and since 2006, by the Senior Center Foundation, these funds are not included in this budget.

The budget includes a grant funded position from the National Council on Aging, RespectAbility Program, received in March 2007. Not included in this budget is the grant funded position from the Madison Community Foundation for Intergenerational Programs which ends December 2007. These programs will not continue, unless Supplemental Request #1 is funded. This Request is a priority item identified by the Senior Center Board of Directors.

Human Resources
1. Deletion of funding for one Personnel Analyst 2 position.

2. Supplements to restore Personnel Analst 2 position either at 100% or 80%.

Municipal Court
1. Funding for a continuation of existing services.

2. The largest expenditure in purchased services is for collecting unpaid forfeiture judgements on behalf of the City which brings in revenue for the City that is not reflected in the Municipal court budget.

Public Health
This 2008 Operating Budget is the first annual budget for Public Health-Madison and Dane County—the merger of the Dane County Division of Public Health and the Madison Department of Public Health. Many Public Health programs have already been merged. Beginning in January 2008 the merger will be complete and the last pieces put into place.

The Mayor and the County Executive and their staffs worked together to give Public Health a common budget target. This operating budget meets their requirements.

This budget continues Public Health programs that were previously found in the two separate budgets. The one change is in Animal Services—the County Humane Officers were merged with the City’s Animal Control unit in March 2007. This budget includes one new full-time officer and cuts back on the use of part-time staff.

With the merger, the Department is seeking to put a uniform licensing system into place. All sanitarians now carry tablet computers and enter data into an electronic data system. This will require far less staff time to maintain while giving better access to information. The merger allows for the implementation of a uniform enforcement system, to focus on high-risk food items and establishments. Other benefits will be the County-wide implementation of the Safe Food Crew operator training program and the availability of timely information on food safety for all food operators with the Foodfacts newsletter. The cost of merging and collocating the two environmental health programs and creating uniform standards will be covered through increased license and permit fees.

There is increasing awareness of the seriousness of water borne illnesses such as Cryptosporidium and E. coli transmitted at public bathing facilities. The merger will allow Public Health to have uniform standards across the County for commercial swimming pools, including monthly water testing.

The WIC caseload has steadily increased each year. Since the two WIC programs were collocated in May 2007, there has been an increase of 300 cases. There has not been a corresponding increase in staff. This budget uses some of the increased revenue Public Health will be receiving from the increased caseload to hire a Dietetic Specialist.

This merger has been a huge challenge. While there have been some bumps along the road, but it has been accomplished without major upheavals. Most programs are already functionally merged, with County and City staff working side-by-side. This operating budget is one of the last steps in completing this merger.

Clerk
This 2008 budget request is based on an expenditure reduction of three percent.

The biggest expenses in this budget request are associated with the 2008 Presidential Election. The Clerk will try to minimize overtime and postage expenses by offering voter registration drives during Open Registration, and extending office hours to accommodate absentee voting in the City Clerk's Office.

Treasurer
1. The 2008 budget request includes a 3% reduction in expenditures compared to the 2007 budget.

2. Interagency charges for webbilling and services to city agencies.

3. To reach our 2008 target amount, our fees and contracts were reduced through new pricing structures.

4. A supplemental request was submitted for postage costs. With the new US Postal Service fee structure, the costs for mailing tax bills, accounts payables, and animal licenses have increased more than 5%.

5. A supplemental request was submitted for Credit Card fees. With the convenience of online payments for consumers, our fees have increased substantially. The adjustment to the budget amountl must reflect the actual charges.

Metro Transit
In 2006, Metro provided over 12.0 million rides - its highest ridership level in 20 years. The proposed budget expands upon this sucess by maintaining services within the City of Madison for 2008. The Budget includes:

1. Proposed increases in fare tariffs to maintain current service levels for the City of Madison. The proposed fare tariff changes are as follows:

Adult Cash - $1.50 to $2.00
Senior/Disabled Cash - $0.75 to $1.00
Adult 10-Ride Card - $12.00 to $15.00
Senior 10-Ride Card - $7.50 to $10.00
31-Day Pass - $47.00 to $50.00
One-Day Pass - $3.40 to $4.00
Paratransit Cash Fare - Non-peak fare would be eliminated
Special Event - $4.00 to $5.00

It is estimated that the proposed fare tariff changes will provide $476,000 in additional revenue.

2. Additional funding of $600,000 to offset the escalating cost of diesel fuel.

3. Funding to lease additional office space to alleviate overcrowding that is occuring with the occupation of the current Maintenance and Administrative building for office employees.

4. A reduction in heating costs due to the installation of a garage door system in the Maintenance facility between the maintenance service area and the bus storage faciltiy as part of the City's Natural Step program.

5. Request to add 5 additional vehicles to the total number of buses that are authorized to participate in the two year full-wrap pilot project. This change will result in $50,000 in additional advertising revenue.

6. Reduce Sunday service hours from approximately 16.5 hours to 8 hours to provide $272,700 in savings.

Public Works and Transportation
1. Continuation of the additional incremental salary and benefits of the City Engineer for service as the Director of Public Works and Transportation.

The agency submitted no supplemental budget requests.

Traffic Engineering
1. $10,000 for funding of maintenenance and support of the Intelligent Transportation System. This system uses electronic message signs and traffic condtion cameras to reduce traffic congestion and increase safety. Traffic Engineering pays the State per contract for the annual operation of this system.

2. We are requesting salary and benefit funding for a 1.0 FTE Traffic Control Maintenance Worker position. Wisconsin One-call: Diggers Hotline is a service where an individual or contractor may request that all underground utilities be marked during excavation. State law requires that TE personnel respond to to an excavation notice within 3 working days by marking the location of transmission facilities (street light conduit etc) . In addition, TE is required to provide emergency locater service within 24 hours after receiving a request for that service. One-call requests have increased from 3,048 in 2000 to 3,995 in 2006 (31% increase). One-call marking for electrical conduit requires considerable electrical experience and is a time consuming procedure.

3. We are requesting salary and benefit funding for 1.0 FTE Traffic Control Maintenance Worker. This employee responsibilities will largely pertain to bike facilities, graffiti removal, and trafic calming signage and marking. This request is in response to proposals made by Mayor’s Platinum Biking Committee Draft Report. This report will call for biclyle related devices. Furthermore, the removal of graffiti from city signs is a an increasing task. Lastly, the city has a growing inventory of traffic control devices that require perpertual maintenance.

Parking Utility
1. Advertising funds to help change the public perception of a lack of downtown parking

2, $500,000 to improve interior and exterior parking wayfinding signage

3. Credit card fees have increased from about $100,000 in 2004 to $207,000 in 2008

4. Funding of $31,000 for Transportation Demand Management

5. Payment of PILOT will be over $1 million and a payment of $190,000 to the city for usage of on-street parking stalls

6. $131,000 in consulting fees to design customer friendly and efficient facilities

Parks
A reduction of $403,000 in our operating budget to meet the required 3% cut plus absorbing various cost increases in other portions of the budget such as permanent salaries (reclasses, steps, longevity and benefits). To achieve this target, we are proposing three initiatives:

The first is an unfortunate reduction of FT and PT staff reducing the various parts of our budget by $763,601. These positons include reducing the Cemetery Admin Clerk from FT to a 50% position saving $39,672. This position will become vacant due to a retirement. Eliminating a Clerk Typist at Warner Park saving $49,111 with a minor offset of hourly charges. We will delay the hiring to fill three other positions that will become vacant due to retirements saving $85,500. We will have to eliminate 7 PWMW1 positions saving $439,675. We will eliminate 1 Equip. Oper 2 positon saving $54,036. We will reduce hourly employees by $95,607. The FT positions listed above, except for the retirements, will require eliminating positons that are currently occupied. This number reflects wages and benefits.

The secong initiative involves service reductions. The Parks leadership team has identified activities that will have the lowest impact on our customers or that can meet customer needs by participating at a near-by city location. Beside the staff savings shown above, there will be utility savings for gas, electricity and water which are reflected in our line items. These service reductions are: Eliminating lifeguard staffing at Esther Beach, Bernie's Beach and James Madison Park. Eliminating ice skating at Goodman Park, Westmoreland Park, Garner Park and Warner Park. Eliminating the XC ski rental operation and concession operation at Odana Golf Course. Grooming will continue.

The third initiative is focused on new revenue. We are proposing a new parking fee at Warner Park for all Mallards home games and other major events in the park. The fee would be $5 / car. To reduce our cost of collecting this fee, we would bid out this work to a local non-profit organization who would staff it with volunteers in exchange for a percentage of the gross revenue. This model is in place in Sioux City and many organizations bid on the chance to receive this revenue. Our estimated revenue to the city is in the $125,000 range.
We are also proposing a minor increase in the following areas: Boat Ramp Fees, Shelter Reservations, Parking Tickets, and Special Services. Our anticipated new revenue would be $48,100. We also need to initiate a new fee with MSCR to recover our expenses associated with provided facilities to them for programs such as day camps.

Streets
1. An increase from three to four inches to the standard snowfall accumulation by which city-wide general plowing operations will be performed. General plowing operations are conducted after safe driving conditions are achieved on the City's arterial streets, hills, and side street intersections. General plowing operations are conducted on the remaining City side streets and require the City's full complement of plow trucks and additional private equipment. By increasing the amount of snowfall required before general plowing operations are conducted on City side streets, it is estimated that one less general plowing operation will be required, representing a budget reduction of $158,473.

2. Elimination of the litter container route. As part of the solid waste service, the Waste Oil drop off sites are serviced twice weekly. In addition various heavily used litter containers throughout the City are emptied twice weekly. Elimination of this program will result in the loss of a separate collection for these containers. Budget reduction of $47,957.

3. Elimination of sealcoating of the City's unimproved streets. Currently, unimproved streets in the City of Madison are prepped and sealcoated on an approximate five year rotation. Budget reduction of $210,000.

4. Elimination of overtime used for snow and ice sanding operations after midnight. Budget reduction of $88,239.

5. Elimination of overtime hours for clearing snow and ice from cross walks. Walks will be cleared after all plowing, salting and sanding operations have been completed. Budget reduction of $52,280.

6. Reduce funding for public education regarding Streets Division services by $75,000.

Reduce funding for purchased services by $37,000 for the EnAct program, Community Adolescent program and landscaping.

Water Utility
1. Funding for continuation of existing services.

2. Increased funding for our unidirectional flushing program to $400,000. In 2007 we budgeted $220,000 for the unidirectional flushing program.

3. The utility will be filing a formal rate case with the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin in 2008 and the revenue figures in the 2008 operating budget request include an estimated 8% rate increase. The rate increase is projected to be phased in beginning with the August 2008 billing and the full 8% increase will be effective with the February 2009 billing. Our last full rate increase was granted in August of 2007 and averaged 16%. We will begin phasing in this rate increase with the October 2007 billing and it will be fully implemented with the April 2008 bills.
4. A revenue bond issue of approximately $20,000,000 is anticipated in the fall of 2007 and another of approximately $12,000,000 is expected in the summer of 2008. Our last bond issue was in June of 2006.

Golf Enterprise
The golf budget continues to be a challenge as we are experiencing a continued decline in rounds played due to two factors: The first is the number of new golf courses in our market and the second is a demographic slump in the age group most likely to be players. The National Golf Foundation has studied this issue over the past several years and they predict a continued decline in the customer base for public courses at least for the next 6 years. The daily fee non-public courses seem to be in a more difficult position. 2006 was the first year since they started keeping records that more golf courses closed than courses were constructed. Two courses in our market are looking at conversion to residential development but that market is also in the dumps at this time. The City of Madison has to address the number of City courses that our customer base can sustain.
The municipal courses face a difficult challenge in that we employ highly paid unionized employees with substantial benefit packages. The trend at municipal courses appears to be away from enterprise operation to receiving financial subsidies from their communities because of the environmental benefits and open space benfits.
By reducing FT staff, we hope to provide a balanced budget for 2008.

Municipal Pool
1. Increase in revenues for the followin new programs for a total of $19,000.
Red Cross Lifeguard Training - $4,000
Swim Team - $6,000
Additional Revenue (Facilitiy) - $5,000
New Lessons - $4,000

Police
1. The target for the Police budget offset the loss of revenue from the close of the COPS hiring grant, and included funding to maintain all positions currently authorized.

2. Additional supplemental requests totaling $891,000 were included, to request a total of 18 additional Police Officer positions needed in order to meet the growth and complexity of the city. At the end of their pre-service Academy, these officers will be utilized to address a variety of identified issues which may include patrol services, neighborhood positions, gang-related problems, training requirements, mounted patrol and/or community policing teams. Although utilization of the 2003 Staffing Study recommendations would have meant hiring an additional 27 Police Officers, most of these issues could be addressed through the addition of the 18 Officers requested.

3. Supplemental requests were also included to add desperately needed civilian support staff, including an MIS-2 position that will be utilized to match potential federal funding, an Account Clerk position in the Finance Office, and the upgrade of one Parking Enforcement Officer to a Leadworker position. The total of these requests is $89,980.

4. Continuing efforts to civilianize positions currently staffed by commissioned personnel resulted in supplemental requests for 3 positions, which include the Court Services Supervisor, the Records Section Manager, and an MIS-2 position currently filled by a commissioned Lieutenant. The total of these requests is $134,305, which includes partial year funding for the Records Section Manager and the MIS-2 positions due to anticipated delays in hiring.

5. The critical need for additional promoted positions, particularly at the command level, was addressed through a variety of supplemental requests that total $82,400.

6. The need for vehicles to be utilized by the Detectives added in 2007 and the additional commissioned staff that have been requested for 2008 resulted in supplemental requests totaling $247,000.

7. Due to changes in the availability of facilities in the future, a proposal to provide funding to assess the need for an appropriate training facility for public safety has led to a supplemental request for an additional $5,000. The Madison Fire Department will also be requesting equal funding for a portion of this study.

8. Supplemental requests totaled $2,086,355, and included $636,670 for unfunded overtime and vacation convert-to-pay.

Fire
1. The goal of maintaining a minimum staffing level; of 68. The staffing level assumes both the continuation of creative staffing methods developed by labor and management to optimize personnel resources and an absence level based on future projections and past experience.

2. Funding to conduct at least one promotional process.

3. Funding to cover changes due to agreements reached with Firefighters Local 311 Contract.

4. Upon a vacancy occuring, any Fire Inspector position may be deleted and a non-commissioned Code Enforcement Officer 3 may be created.

5. Funding of $10,000 to start a new firefighter hiring process in the last quarter of 2008.
Read more!

I love my neighborhood!!

Living Downtown has its pluses and minuses. I don't think I need to outline them here, however, I have a picture and story that will sum it up pretty quickly.


That's my little white house with the screened in porch in the background. They're doing street construction and that's a whole different blog about communication and parking. I have a huge hole in my street (that's where the pile of dirt came from) and can barely get in my driveway. This is the third day the equipment is sitting there idle due to the rain, so the whole thing is less than pleasant and I'm sure Rob wasn't happy when he parked 5 blocks away last night after running sound all evening. However, notice the pile of dirt. This is why I love my neighborhood.


Talk about making lemonade out of lemons. And, last night around 3:00, I heard some drunk people arguing on the street. One guy wanted to wreck the sandcastle and another guy was yelling at him to leave it alone. Apparently, the second guy won.

Kudos to the 2 guys and girl who took the time to add some humor and art to the situation. It brightened my day and I'm sure from the looks on the faces of the passers by and the comments I've overheard, that your efforts were much appreciated.

p.s. Just so you know, I'm sure that's not the official City position on this matter. Just a comment from an appreciative neighbor.

Read more!

No one?

So, we are being told that can't do an RFP (Request for Proposals) to find someone to develop 9 acres of land on Allied Drive because no one wants to develop the property. Or so they say. Tell me, can you believe that if we offered $300,000 in soft costs, $4.7M in free land, 47 Section 8 vouchers to help pay the rent for the units and a $3.5M loan from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and not one single developer, for-profit or non-profit will step forward?

That's what the City would be expected to provide to the CDA. Why not offer that in a request for proposals and see who might apply? I bet someone might come forward if that was all offered. And, I bet that the city tax payer could get a better deal.
Read more!

Water Utility Award?

I'm sure quite a few people are wondering how the Madison Water Utility got the award for the 2007 Gold Award for Competitive Achievement. The press release says the award "recognizes the utility's accomplishments in implementing a process to apply competitive business strategies to meet the expectations of drinking water consumers and municipal leaders."

Here might be one of the answers, look who's on the board of directors of the Association of Municipal Water Agencies.
Read more!

Policing Discussion

If you have time, take some time to read the policing thread over at thedailypage.com. It's clearly one of the most interesting threads they've had there in a while, once you get past the initial trolls. And "Walter", beyond his initial cheap shot at me, has added alot to the discussion. Too bad thedailypage forums wouldn't all be of this quality.
Read more!

Allied - About Face!

Gulp. This article in the Wisconsin State Journal is a pretty fair assessment of the situation with Allied Drive. The thumbnail sketch of what has happened to this point is as follows:

1. We bought the properties in May 2006. 16 months ago.

2. In September 2006 Mark Olinger spearheaded a neighborhood process to plan the 9 acre site with the AIA (architects group). Those plans were never approved because they didn't include single family detached housing which the staff wanted.

3. In January I got impatient because many decisions had not yet been made and introduced two resolutions.

a) One was to let people move into the vacant properties, which passed but still hasn't really happened in any meaningful kind of way, so we're still sitting there with empty buildings.

b) The other one was to decide what kind of housing we would have.

4. At the last council meeting, after having the Allied Drive Task Force work for months on what the RFP should have in it and then the alder writing a resolution that replaced the one I wrote last January that was questionable about if we did or did not support the recommendations of the Allied Drive Task Force, we finally passed a resolution saying what we wanted to have be built on the properties.

5. At the same meeting, the Mayor completely changed course and decided to skip the RFP because now, there isn't time.

6. And yesterday, I got the latest version (version 6) of the RFP (written by the City Mark Olinger and his staff) that they've been working on since last January. The RFP doesn't follow the recommendations of the Allied Drive Task Force. It also doesn't really support the CDAs plan. No wonder they (the CDA headed by Mark Olinger) don't want an RFP

And now, after all this time, there is a great sense of urgency. Where was his sense of urgency last January? or last September? Or last May? Why didn't the mayor and his staff attending meetings on his behalf, help the RFP process along instead of sitting back and watching all the in-fighting between Mark Olinger's staff? Why didn't the Mayor just speak up at the last Council meeting and tell us he didn't really think we had a role in this and don't bother passing a resolution telling us what you think, we're going with the CDA and they're just going to do what the Mayor tells them to do. (He can do this because CDA Mark Olinger is still City Mark Olinger who is hired by the Mayor.)

And, two criticisms that didn't make it into the story.

1. The CDA did one project 10 years ago. They don't really have the experience to pull this off. The project they did is no longer affordable - the $95,000 condos that they sold had no pricing restrictions on them and are selling for nearly double. And the apartments are very hard to get low-income people into because poor people have bad credit and they have strict screening criteria that doesn't take that into consideration.

2. Mark Olinger, negotiating with Mark Olinger to find out if Mark Olinger, who wrote the resolution to have the CDA do the project, thinks that Mark Olinger should do the project is a bit of a problem.

And finally, to further comment on the money.

1. I don't think anyone on the Council thought we were buying that land to give it away. I think that might be a hard sell with council members expecting to recoup some of the money we spent.

2. I don't think that the Affordable Housing Trust Fund money was set up so that the City could use it to build roads and demolish housing.

3. We're not going to get the tax credits on our own. We need to partner with someone with experience. And just choosing someone without an RFP is like the Water Utility situation all over again.

And lastly, why would we spend all this City money and not have the control of the 9 acre site?
Read more!

Just the Facts Ma'am! Westside Police Calls Going . . . Down?

Could it be true, are reported (and responded to) police calls on the Westside of Madison down? Granted, data from the police department is not exactly easy to get, but from what is available on the police department website, i.e. the west police district neighborhood newsletters, it appears that police calls reported (and responded to) is not increasing exponentially on the westside. In fact, for some months, the police calls that are reported (and responded to) is down ever so slightly. This is what a quick perusal of the info in the newletters tells us.

Month 2007 - 2006 - 2005
(na = not available)

Jan - na - 2760 - 2700 (up slightly in 2006)
Feb - 2551 - 2572 - 2600 (small trend down)
Mar - 2881 - 3020 - na (down a bit)
April - 2738 - 2960 - 3165 (trend down)
May - 3392 - na - 3264 (up but skips a year of data)
June - 3507 - 3519 - na (down ever so slightly)
July - na - 3586 - 3479 (up a little, no data for this year)
Aug - na - 3647 - 3485 (up a little, no data for this year)
Sept - na - 3188 - 3266 (down a little, no data for this year)
Oct - na - 3034 - na (inconclusive)
Nov - na - 2934 - 2955 (down a little, no data for this year)
Dec - na - 2787 - 2445 but data only through 12/26 so inconclusive

Ok, so its not the best data, but it also doesn't show police calls running rampant and 6 of the 10 months where it was possible to do any kind of comparison, it could be argued that "crime" was slightly down. In fact, comparing this year to last year for the first half of the year, "crime" basically down according to the newsletters.

Jan - inconclusive
Feb- down
Mar - down
Apr - down
May - inconclusive
June - down

So, what's going on? I don't doubt people perceive something is different in their neighborhoods, but what? Is it just because more people of color live in the neighborhood? Is it because renters live there? Is it because the renters who live there are lower income than past tenants? Is it because "crime" has shifted from one neighborhood to another (the west police district is rather sprawled out). Are the nature of the calls being responded to changing? Since these calls include traffic incidents, is that impacting the "data"?

Something seems off. The "data" doesn't seem to support the claims of "westside residents". Granted, since I don't have very good data, and hardly any detail, its difficult to say what the real story is, but it is certain that the numbers aren't showing rampant crime growing out of control as some would have you believe.

Since we don't have data about the extent of the problem, I have to ask, what are our 18 new officers going to do for these residents? If crime is shifting from neighborhood to neighborhood, then maybe the personnel should shift with the problems and we just don't need more officers? If crime is taking longer to respond to, then we need to know that and come up with strategies to address this issue. However, throwing more officers at a problem without knowing what the problem is with some hard data, doesn't make any sense. In fact, it could be a waste of taxpayer dollars. This deserves more careful thought not kneejerk feel-good reactions. Otherwise, we're just asking for more discontent.
Read more!

It's a stick up!

Police overtime. You have no choice, you have to pay it. It's an annual heist and we pay and pay and pay and pay some more. Or, more correctly, the taxpayer pays. Here's some highlights from the July 2007 overtime report from the police for 2006 and the first half of 2007. It's all the good news you can handle. Ask yourself, isn't there a better way to manage this? After all, its a pretty big chunk of change for a department that is already nearly 25% of the entire $210M operating budget. Also note, overtime won't really decrease if we add 18 officers, in fact, due to the union contracts which are 60% of the overtime costs, it will increase even more.

• The total 2006 budgeted expense for the Madison Police Department was $48,507,296.
• Wages and benefits accounted for $41,015,602 or 85% of budgeted costs.
  
• 93% of budgeted expenditures were determined by labor contracts, other City agency costs, or additional mandates from outside of the Police Department.
• In the past three years overtime hours required by contract (such as briefing time, holiday day in future, etc.) accounted for 60% of the overtime hours earned.
  
• The total cost of overtime for the Madison Police Department in 2006 was $2,143,472, or $430,774 more than initially budgeted. This represents a 14.5% increase, or $272,760 over the $1,870,712 expended in 2005, and is approximately $446,416 more than the average cost of overtime for the previous four years.
  
• In 2006, the hours earned totaled 99,024. This compares with 94,478 hours in 2005, 94,669 hours in 2004, 91,623 hours in 2003, and 80,195 hours in 2002.
  
• The hours of overtime only increased at a rate of 5%, the cost of overtime increased 14.5%. This increase in costs is primarily due to the rise in the Departments pay-to-time ratio, as increasingly employees are taking their overtime as pay rather than time. This resulted in an accrued time adjustment of $123,503 at the end of the year.
• Demand-Driven overtime increased 12.4% from 2005 to 2006. Although Routine overtime dropped, this savings was offset by a considerable increase in Extraordinary Events, which includes four homicides, significant initiatives in response to incidents in the Allied neighborhood and Downtown, and several high-risk ERT search warrants. In addition to Extraordinary Events, overtime categorized as Holdover also demonstrated a significant increase. This overtime is primarily due to staffing shortages.
• The comparative breakdown of Demand-Driven overtime hours is:
  

2006 - 2005 - 2004 - 2003 - 2002
Routine 15,902 16,844 15,244 16,587 16,882
Extraordinary Event 7,917 3,166 6,061 8,515 2,149
Planned Event 7,177 7,674 6,777 6,084 5,054
Holdover 5,140 4,709 3,143 2,530 2,839
Meetings 967 607 527 379 441
TOTAL 37,103 33,000 31,752 34,095 27,365

• From 2005 to 2006 there was a slight increase in Contractually-Driven overtime hours. Although the overall change was fairly small.

• There was a 27% increase in the number of hours converted to pay. The increase in this expense corresponds with the rise in the pay-to-time ratio, as more employees opt for overtime payments rather than accruing time.
  
• The comparative breakdown of Contractually-Driven overtime hours is:
  

2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
Briefing Time 25,883 25,971 25,780 26,160 25,308
Legal Appearance 4,820 5,426 4,728 5,753 5,664
Holiday Day In Future 19,886 20,017 23,309 17,548 12,232
Convert to Pay 7,144 5,621 5,381 4,512 4,910
TOTAL 57,733 57,035 59,198 53,973 48,114

• Civilian overtime decreased to 4,188 hours in 2006 as compared to 4,443 hours in 2005, 3,719 hours in 2004, 3,555 hours in 2003, and 4,716 hours in 2002.REPORT OF 1st HALF 2007 OVERTIME:

• The total hours of overtime earned in the 1st half of 2007 increased by 5% when compared to the 1st half of 2006.
  
• The year-to-date hours for 2007 are 42,679, as compared to 40,889 in 2006, 36,183 in 2005, 38,388 in 2004, and 38,490 in 2003.
  
• The greatest increases occurred in the categories of Extraordinary Events and Holiday Day-In-Future.
• Demand-Driven overtime hours increased 6.5% in comparison to 2006.
  
• A new category of overtime has been added in 2007. In order to track information related to emerging issues, a new category of Problem Initiatives has been developed. In prior years, these costs were included with Extraordinary Event overtime. At present the two specific Problem Initiatives are the Downtown Safety Initiative and the Allied Initiative.
• To date in 2007, grant funds have been utilized for the efforts in Allied, so the overtime listed on this report is all for the Downtown Safety Initiative.
  
• Contractual overtime also increased, rising almost 9% from 2006 to 2007.
• Civilian overtime decreased during the 1st quarter of 2007. The total hours in the 1st half of 2007 were 971 as compared to 2,307 in 2006, 2,164 in 2005, 2,227 in 2004, and 1,843 in 2003. The primary reason for the drop in civilian overtime is related to the lack of vacancies in civilian positions throughout most of the 1st quarter.
• The year-to-date cost as of the end of payroll #13 was $881,001. This compares to $744,654 in 2006, $628,592 in 2005, $638,130 in 2004, and $634,647 in 2003.
  

PROJECTED COSTS FOR 2007:

• Early in 2007, the overtime allocation of $54,900 for the Downtown Safety Initiative was added to the Police budget. This raised the total 2007 MPD Operating Budget to $1,995,736 for overtime costs.
  
• Based solely on data from the first half of the year, if the trends continue the MPD would be $275,000 over budget.
  
• However, since the close of the first half of the year, there have been two homicides and an officer involved shooting. In addition, there are indications that the pay-to-time ratio will continue to rise. The combination of these events could result in an even more substantial shortfall by the end of the year.

Why can't we seem to get this right? Every year the overtime increases. Every year they underestimate how much will be needed. Why can't the police department be held to a budget they present and if they go over in overtime, why aren't they forced to find it in their budget like any other department would be expected to do? To me, this is poor management. If this was Madison Metro would they get away with this?

Read more!

David Denig Chakroff Gets it Right.

Sometimes things are not as they appear. It seems my blog has once again stirred up some news about the Water Utility. However, I'm afraid I may have contributed to the some of the perception of what the problem with the Water Utility is. In my rush to leave town for a few days, I didn't include some kind of important information in my blog, like where I got the email about the fluoride from. The e-mail about fluoride came from David Denig-Chakroff. That's right, the Water Utility leader was the one who did the right thing and sent the information to the alders instead of waiting another day for the Water Utility report to come out. While the original email was sent as written in my blog from Joe Grande to the water board. However, it was sent to the alders as follows:

From: Denig-Chakroff, David
Sent: Thursday, August 16, 2007 8:17:48 AM
To: ALL ALDERS; MY GROUP; Nelson, Larry
Subject: FW: Well 28 elevated fluoride

In other words, we wouldn't have found out if David Denig-Chakroff hadn't forwarded the information to the alders. This is part of the reason that I hesitate to say that getting rid of him will solve the problems at the Water Utility. I think that the problems in the Water Utility go deeper than one person and we will just be disappointed if we just change one staff person. If we expect systemic changes, we need to make some major changes, not just removing one person.
Read more!

Who's Crime is More Important?

As a northside meeting about a specific apartment building nushroomed into a meeting about Northside Crime, similar to the one recently help on the Westside, some Eastside residents feel that their concerns about crime and other issues are getting ignored. Why? I'll let you read that for yourself.

August 16, 2007

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz
210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, Room 403
Madison, Wisconsin 53703

Dear Mayor Cieslewicz:

It is regrettable that you have chosen to cancel your participation at our Annual Ice Cream Social. I am sure that you are aware that although we have promoted this as a social, it is really an expanded Worthington Park Neighborhood Association meeting where the Board has invited the entire neighborhood, and our friends, to celebrate our successes and discuss our concerns. You attended this same event last year and knew that there was opportunity for you to speak and to take questions from neighborhood residents. Not only did we have excellent attendance at that event, it was instrumental in the development of our association as a tool for recruiting new neighbor participation. Members of the Association have been hard at work preparing issues and questions for your visit and were eager to discuss numerous issues with you, including a focus on public safety.

It is worth noting as well that while crime and safety have recently become hot topics in other parts of the city, those issues have been longstanding issues in our neighborhood, with seemingly no attention from you to resolving them.

The loss of the Darbo Worthington Neighborhood Officer next year was high on our list of concerns that we wished to discuss with you at this event. Your presence at this event was key to creating hope in those discussions by letting the residents know what is happening at the city level to increase safety in our neighborhood.

Vicky Selkowe, our neighborhood association secretary, confirmed your participation with Linda Lewis in your office nearly three months ago, on May 16th, and again on August 8th, prior to our distributing over 400 fliers (attached in English and in Spanish) door to door throughout the neighborhood. As she stated, among other important points, in her correspondence with Linda, once she was informed of your cancellation, we are very discouraged that you will not be attending. We echo her individual sentiments that it is cause for concern when another area takes priority, particularly when we had confirmed your attendance so long ago and especially when it certainly appears that the concerns of a predominately white neighborhood are taking precedence over those of a more mixed or minority neighborhood. Given the media attention to the issues of crime and safety on the Westside and likely to follow the upcoming meeting with Alder Schumacher and the Police, we are left to wonder if you would act differently with media attention on our area.

We agree that these conversations need to occur all over the city, but by not letting Alder Schumacher or the Northside Community Police know that you were already committed to the same conversation in another neighborhood, a couple of things occurred: they did not know they needed to find a different date, and it appears as well that our own eastside Alder must decide between the two meetings and is likely also now to choose the Northside meeting. Having neither of our elected city representatives at this important annual meeting sends a clear and disappointing message to the residents – especially the children, who will be out in force for this event – of the Worthington Park neighborhood. Voter turn-out is low in our area in part due to the feelings of disenfranchisement in the political process. Your last minute cancellation does not contribute to a positive change.

We are very pleased that Goodman Atwood Community Center and The Salvation Army will be at our event to listen to our needs and concerns, and let us know how they will be able to address some of those with the services they can provide. However, nothing will be able to replace your personal participation and the message that would have sent to our people.

Sincerely,

Tiffany Roberts Dace Zeps
President Vice-President
Worthington Park Neighborhood Ass’n Worthington Park Neighborhood Ass’n

cc: Larry Palm, Alder
John Hendrick, County Supervisor
WNPA Board
Goodman Atwood Community Center
The Salvation Army
The East Isthmus Neighborhoods Planning Council

Read more!

Well 28 - Elevated Flouride

I just got this this morning.

From: Grande, Joseph
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 4:53 PM
To: WU GROUP
Cc: Cnare, Lauren; 'percy.mather@dnr.state.wi.us'; 'gwharrin@facstaff.wisc.edu'; 'georgemeyer@tds.net'; 'standridge_consulting@copper.net'; Schlenker, Thomas

Subject: Well 28 elevated fluoride

On Tuesday, August 14, as part of routine water quality testing, the Water Utility discovered that water from Well 28 had an elevated amount of fluoride, a water additive that promotes dental health. A water sample collected as water enters the distribution system measured 3.3 parts per million (ppm) of fluoride compared to the target level of 1.1 ppm. The EPA maximum contaminant level for fluoride is 4 ppm. Short-term exposure to water containing 3-4 ppm fluoride is not considered harmful to human health. The cause of the elevated fluoride, which is believed to be a malfunctioning pump, is currently being investigation by the utility.

Upon discovering the high fluoride level, the well was shutdown and staff was dispatched to determine the extent of high fluoride water. Water testing results (3.14-3.96 ppm) from locations around the periphery of the Well 28 service area (west of Gammon Road and north of the Beltline and Mineral Point Road) suggested the entire service area was impacted. Additional Water Utility staff was dispatched to flush hydrants and clear the high fluoride water from the water mains. Initially, twelve hydrants were opened at the edge of the service area to pull elevated fluoride water away from the well and out of the mains. Later, hydrants on dead-end courts in the affected area were also flushed to clear these mains.

The combined action of shutting down Well 28 and opening multiple hydrants caused many customers on the far west side to experience reduced water pressure and/or discolored water. Some customers also reported temporarily being out of water. By early evening, service was restored to all water customers and Well 28 was delivering water with normal fluoride levels.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
JOE

Joseph Grande
Water Quality Manager
Madison Water Utility
608-266-4654

Read more!

My Experiences with Brittingham Park

So, after I wrote my blog about how the City and Non-profits are thinking about dealing with the homeless, I decided that I had better go check out Brittingham Park myself. I was familiar with the car campers, but not the Brittingham Park situation. I've only been there two times, and here has been my experience.

Thursday, August 9th around 12:30 in the afternoon. It was hot and muggy and overcast. I drove around the outskirts of the park, it was nearly desserted. I parked my car and decided to walk over to the bike path and walk along the bike path. I had on a pair of flat flip-flops and navigating the goose poop was quite disgusting. There was a group of about 20 - 25 mostly african american men of a wide variety of ages at the shelter. They were sitting around in smaller groups talking, some of them were goofing around, some sat there rather somberly. They were essentially just hanging out. I didn't see any sign of rowdy drunk behavior, or not even drinking that I could tell, but I was trying not to stare too much and it was shortly after noon. I kept walking down the bike path. No one really even noticed me, I wasn't harassed and I didn't feel threatened. That is, until I spotted the little memorial that they had for the person who recently died there. I was sort of focused on the memorial and looking at it and not paying attention to my surroundings when suddenly my path was blocked and I heard a horrible hissing noise. It was the largest goose in the area and it wasn't going to let me pass. I laughed, turned around, and walked back to my car. I decided I should come back another time.

Saturday, August 11th, around 7:30 in the evening. It was a nicer day than Thursday. The park was alot more active. About 30 to 40 fisherman lined various parts of the park. People were playing frisbee and catch off on their own and there was a volleyball game in progress. There were more like 40 - 45 people, 95% people of color, now around the parking lot and in the shelter. I sort of did the same routine, minus the goose. I got out of my car, left my window unrolled and didn't lock it. I navigated my way through the goose poop, wishing I had remembered to wear a different pair of shoes and wandered along the path. Again, no one really noticed me or approached me or talked to me. No one stole the change out of my car. One table of four black guys looked at me kind of curiously, but I didn't feel threatened. I saw two bike riders, one white guy walking on the path and a younger white couple walking their dog. The black guy on the bike met my eyes when I looked at him and he greeted me. The white guy on the bike diverted his eyes away from me when I looked at him. Neither the young couple nor the other walker would look me in the eyes and they didn't greet me. There was one guy sleeping on a bench. Another bench had a well worn blanket tossed over it but there was no one there. The most surprising thing to me this time was that the people in shelter were not all men. There were also women with 5 - 8 little kids (less than 10 years old) running around (barefoot in the goose poop!) It looked like, for all outward appearances, that it could have been a family picnic in the park. Again, I didn't feel threatened or unwelcome. I walked back to my car and drove away.

I plan to go back, talk to a homeless outreach worker I know, talk with City Staff who work with the homelessness programs and try to get more information from the police. However, this letter written to the Cap Times yesterday tells me an awful lot.

All People Have The Right To Use Brittingham Park

The Capital Times :: EDITORIAL :: A7

Wednesday, August 15, 2007
This column was written collaboratively by the people of Brittingham Park, Thao and Nancy Nguyen of Freedom Inc., and Cindy Breunig and Kristen Petroshius of Groundwork.

We are the mostly black and homeless people who often use Brittingham Park and its shelter. We are the Southeast Asian youths, elders, women, men and children who have used Brittingham Park for celebrations, sports, fishing and relaxation over the last 27 years. We are white community members working for racial justice some of us live in the neighborhood, and all of us have used Brittingham Park regularly for recreation and for important events such as immigrant rights political gatherings and Madison PRIDE events.

Together, we unite in response to allegations made by neighbors about the people who often use the Brittingham Park shelter, and express our concerns about the call for a fence around the shelter and increased police presence.

People from all walks of life should have the freedom to walk, eat, sleep, gather and socialize at this park without fear of harassment from the police, other park patrons and property owners who are seemingly more concerned with the loss of property value than they are with the loss of a life.

We are against unfair racial profiling and the continuously discriminatory practices of removing specific community members from the park instead of looking more critically at the situation at hand. The people of Brittingham Park are real human beings, not people to fear or lock up because white people don't want to feel guilty when they see the violence of poverty and racism inflicted on people of color by this society. Instead of policing us and spending money to lock us up, why don't you use that money in more productive ways: Help us find jobs, make more affordable housing and shelter available or create a warming center so that we will not freeze to death in the winter?

Until Madison can make sure that all our residents have a safe space to sleep, food to eat, medical care and affordable transportation, leave the people in Brittingham Park alone. It is a public park and we all have a right to be there.

Together we are asking all of us as a community to look deeply into the situation and recognize our fears. It means searching for the root causes of poverty and homelessness, and looking honestly at how we as a community have not found a comprehensive or dignified way to solve these problems.

We are asking you to listen to and prioritize the voices of the poor, homeless and mostly black people who are residents of Brittingham Park. We are asking you to recognize us as neighborhood residents equal to the homeowners. We are asking you to put our experiences central in the defining of what the problem is, and in the creation of solutions. We are asking you to question the kind of mentality that allows black, poor and homeless community members to be seen as people to be feared, disposed of and eliminated. We are asking you not to use the death of a human being who was black, poor, homeless and transgendered to further perpetuate oppression and pain, and instead use it as a motivation to engage in the honest and painful path to build a more humane, just and dignified community.

In memory of Miss Alene, we all have a right to the park. As human beings, we all have a right to LIVE.

Read more!

Mayor Dave's Summer Vacation

With all the talk about Mayor Dave's priorities (trolleys vs. pet peeve of anyone and everyone) I thought I'd take a look at what he's been up to this summer. According to his Weekly Whereabouts posted on the news section of thedailypage.com since Memorial Day, or for the past 12 weeks or 58 work days, this is what it revealed:

• 60 public appearances, parties, ribbon cuttings, media events and speeches, none of these appeared to be business meetings and it doesn't include the 4 golf outings.
• 57 private meetings with various citizens or groups of citizens, including lobbyists, plus an additional 10 lunches or breakfasts with individuals
  
• 52 meetings with various staff or groups of staff
• 24 quarterly meetings with key staff leaders (He met with some more than once and some not at all. Chief Wray and Mark Olinger meet with him monthly.)
• 20 meetings with various alders (5 with Brian Solomon, 3 with Marsha Rummel, 2 with Julia Kerr, 1 with the rest except for the following who didn't meet with him at all: Gruber, Palm, Clausius, Compton, Skidmore, Schumacher, Webber.)
• 17 business meetings (5 Council meetings, 2 Board of Estimates meetings which he actually chairs and 17 other meetings)
• 16 days out of town for vacation or conferences
  
• 6 meetings with council leadership, these should be weekly meetings, so in 12 weeks he only met with them half the time.
• 4 golf outings, including one full day where he played 4 courses
  
• 3 chunks of time set aside for "work time" or phone calls and correspondence
• 3 listening sessions or town hall meetings with the public
• 3 conference calls for his Mayor's group
  
• 2 meetings to review the plan commission agenda for the 5 plan commission meetings during this time period
• 2 department and division head meetings in 3 months

Granted, I don't think the schedule he publishes for his weekly schedule is his actual schedule, but it is what he wants people to see. What does that tell you about what the mayor did with his summer? Or what he wants you to think he did with his summer?
Read more!

Moving Day, Without the Tenant Resource Center?

As you curse the garbage trucks and moving vans and dig through the piles of trash to find goodies, I'd ask you to think. What would Madison be like without the Tenant Resource Center? What would happen if we stopped helping students with their housing issues?

Unfortunately, it's something we ask ourselves more and more lately. The decision by SSFC to determine that after funding us for 10 years, that we did not meet their re-created definition of "student organization" has left the Tenant Resource Center $55,000 short, it was nearly 20% of our budget.

Our board made a commitment to try to find a way to keep our doors open, maintain our level of service and work hard to raise the money we need to keep our doors open. And, re-apply for funding from the University this year. However, best case scenario, we won't receive funding until July 2008.

Meanwhile, we may have to

• cut back our service hours and instead of being open until 6:00 so people can stop by after typical work hours we will have to close earlier; and
  
• stop answering emails; and
• we won't be able to return calls in 24 - 48 hours and instead it may take up to a week; and
  
• stop presentations in the residence halls for first-time renters; and
  
• stop tabling and outreach on campus making our services more accessible for students; and
  
• we won't be doing Tenant Education Week; and
  
• and we won't be putting ads in the campus newspapers to let students know about our services; and
• we don't really want to think about what else we might need to do, but we've lost two part-time student staff positions and we just won't have the time to do some of the things that we do because its the right thing to do, even tho we don't always get funded to do it.
  

It's a mess. We hope to not cut services and continue do some of the things listed above, but we can only do so with your help. You can help in two different ways.

1. Make a donation. We've been getting $10, $12, $20 checks and it all helps. The $100 checks help more, but its all equally appreciated. You can donate on-line, or you can send your donation to Tenant Resource Center 1202 Williamson St Suite A, Madison WI 53703 or donate through your workplace giving campaign this fall through Community Shares of Wisconsin; or

2. If you're a student, join the Student Tenant Union. We can only get funding back to provide services on campus, if students make the case they need these services and help us figure out how to make it most effective for students. If you're interested in joining, email uwmadstu@gmail.com.

Meanwhile, take a deep breath, leave a little extra time to travel through the downtown area and be grateful that way back in 1969 the Madison Tenant Union and the Student Tenant Union came into being and later in 1980 the Tenant Resource Center was born. We've helped hundreds of thousands of people throughout the years, and we with your help, we will stick around and help hundreds of thousands more.

asktrc@tenantresourcecenter.org
257-0006
1-877-238-RENT (7368)
1202 Williamson St Suite A - walk-ins welcome, no appointment necessary M - F 9 - 6
Open until 7:30 tonight (August 15)

Mediation - 257-2799
Housing Help Desk - 242-7406 or walk-in, no appointment necessary M - F 8 - 4:30
1819 Aberg Avenue (Dane County Job Center) Room 2
Read more!

FREE! At S Ingersoll and E Wilson!!! FREE!

One of the cooler things that has happened the last few years is the free exchange of usable, but somehow deemed not movable, items. I don't exactly know who organizes it, or if it is meant to be an organized activity, but things of no value to some appear and things of value to others disappear. This morning, when I was on my way to work, the "Free" sign reappeared and things are accumulating.

So, instead of tossing those things that may be of value to others, and in addition to the campus drop-off sites, you can also leave or take things from S Ingersoll and E Wilson in the developing Central Park, now with plenty of bike parking.

Sorry would have gotten you a photo, but I would have had no way to transfer the photo to the computer without going back home again.

Read more!

Moving Tips You Can Actually Use.

It was nice of Eli to post the City's "garbage tips". However, I find the City's tips kind of silly. Given the questions that people have that walk through the doors at the Tenant Resource Center, here's some other "tips" you might find more useful.

But first, a story. The worst, most egregious one so far, a landlord rented a building that is planned to be torn down. When the tenant arrived at the unit with their moving van, the landlord tried to talk the people into renting another unit. They didn't want that unit and the were sitting there with their van trying to figure out what to do. (The sad part of this story is I know the landlord and the house and it has not been approved to be torn down, yet. Way to go Cliff!) Could you imagine looking for a new apartment under those circumstances? And I wonder where they slept last night?

Anyways, here's those tips!

TENANT RESOURCE CENTER (TRC) OPEN EXTRA HOURS

• TRC will be open until 7:30 tomorrow night. Normally we're open Monday - Friday 9 - 6 and you're welcome to stop by (1202 Williamson St. Suite A) with your questions, which will be quicker than trying to get through on the phone. (Can't pick up the phone cuz we're busy helping walk-ins but here's the number if you can be patient 257-0006. It might be 48 hours before we can get back to you!)

SAFE DUMPSTER DIVING!

• Bed bugs and cockroaches might be hiding in the upholstered furniture, think twice before you take it home with you.

CHECK-OUT/MOVING OUT TIPS

• Schedule a check-out time with your landlord, if possible. If there is a dispute about something, it can often be quickly resolved by talking with your landlord in person. (For example, you could decide to clean the stove better or just pay the cost for the landlord to do it, or other similar items pointed out during a check-out inspection.)
• Fill out a check-out form and make sure you keep a copy. In the City of Madison the landlord is required to furnish you with one; if s/he doesn't, s/he cannot deduct for cleaning or damages. If you need a check-out form, or a check-in form for your new apartment, download them from TRC’s website at for free!
• Clean your apartment. It should be as clean as when you moved in. (Well, if you moved into a pig sty, leave it in better condition!)
• Take photographs or make a video tape if necessary to document the apartment's condition.
• Get a disinterested witness (not relatives or roommates) to walk through with you to verify the state of the apartment and its cleanliness; try to get a written statement from them or a future address where they can be contacted should the need arise.
• Forward your mail and leave your new address with your landlord (all correspondence and security deposit returns will be sent to your last known address unless otherwise specified in our lease).

MOVING IN TIPS

• When you arrive at your new place, take the time to thoroughly inspect your apartment and document ALL existing damage and wear and tear on your check-in form, so that you won’t be charged for those items when you move out next year.

DONATE USABLE ITEMS

Yes, the following information is important!

Goodwill Industries and St. Vincent de Paul Stores have downtown drop-off sites as well as their regular donation pick-up services. Donate any usable clothing; unopened, nonperishable food items; dishes, pots and pans; decorative items; furniture and other functional household items at the following pick-up sites:

• Broom & Mifflin (Near Capitol Centre Foods): Goodwill truck August 11—13, 11 am—5 pm; August 14, 8 am—noon
  
• Gorham & Henry (Behind Holy Redeemer Church): St. Vincent de Paul truck August 11—14, 9 am—9 pm
• Regent & Mills (Behind McDonalds in UW Lot 51): St. Vincent de Paul truck August 11—14, 9 am—9 pm
  

More information on donation sites: http://www.uhs.wisc.edu/ or call 267-2626.

For non-campus folks, you can drop off usable items, and pick up some new ones at the corner of S Ingersoll and E Wilson. It's a free exchange of items.esq

BE SAFE IN YOUR NEW APARTMENT

• Be sure to inspect your new unit closely for locks and other safety features, and report anything that is not functioning properly to the landlord right away.
  
• Be aware of your surroundings while you are moving and stay safe!
• Door locks, chains, and deadbolts. Always lock your doors—even when you are home. Don’t make your apartment and yourself easy targets for intruders by propping your door open or leaving it unlocked for friends or roommates. Always use your deadbolt, and if you don’t have one at least an inch long, request that your landlord install one.
• Sliding doors. Unsecured sliding doors are a common target for unauthorized entry. Be sure to use your patio door lock, plus a secondary locking device such as a stick in the sliding track to prevent the door from opening.
• Window and ventilation locks. All first floor and second floor windows are required to have both regular locks, which do not allow the window to open at all, and ventilation locks, which allow the window to open a few inches for ventilation but not wide enough to allow entry. These locks, when installed and used properly, will not allow entry without breaking glass. If locks are missing or don’t work, request repairs.
• Security-locked entrances. Controlled-access buildings are only secure if the common doors remain closed and locked when not in use. Remember, if you prop them open, you are compromising the safety of the whole building.
• Keys. Never label your keys or key chain with your house or unit number. If you lose them, your apartment will be at risk. Landlords are not obligated to change the locks between tenants, but if you’d like the locks rekeyed and the landlord does not want to do it, you could offer to pay for the rekeying. You can ask your landlord for extra sets of keys, but you may be required to pay a small deposit.
• Door viewer. Always use your door viewer before you open your door for someone. If the door viewer is broken or not provided, notify the landlord.
• Common area lighting. Be sure hallways and basements have adequate lighting. If bulbs are burned out, notify the landlord right away. Common area lighting is required by Madison General Ordinances. Parking lots for more than three cars must have lighting.
• Getting repairs completed. In most instances, the above-mentioned security measures are required by local building codes. Always notify the landlord if repairs are needed. If the landlord does not respond, call the City of Madison building inspector at 266-4551.
  

GARBAGE

• OK - try your best to be nice and neat about it. However, I fully realize that if you bag up your garbage and set it out, within 20 minutes it will be torn open by passers-by looking for treasure.
  
• If you need more tips, visit Eli's blog or the City's website. And please tell me those tips Eli posted weren't from the police department, I hope they were from the streets department. You'd think the police would have included some safety tips! (Sorry Eli, glad to see you finally posted! :) I guess the "command" worked!)
  

p.s. My pet peeve. NOT EVERYONE WHO MOVES ON AUGUST 14th/15th IS A STUDENT. MANY NON-STUDENTS LIVE DOWNTOWN AND ARE CAUGHT IN THE SAME DUMB TRADITION!

Read more!

Mayor Takes Streetcars "Off the Table"! No kidding!

NEWS RELEASE
Date: Monday, August 13, 2007
Contact: George Twigg, (608) 266-4611

Mayor’s Statement re: Streetcars

Madison – Mayor Dave Cieslewicz today made the following statement regarding a potential streetcar system for Madison:

“There’s an old saying in politics: when you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first thing you do is drop the shovel. So I have decided that I will not continue to pursue the issue of streetcars in Madison. The issue is off the table.

“The Streetcar Study Committee will meet one more time to finalize its report, and will then be disbanded. I will not pursue streetcars as part of the Regional Transit Authority.

"Major public investments like streetcars should only be undertaken when there is broad consensus in the community, and that is clearly not the case with this issue. Ironically, I have not taken the time to build support for streetcars because I have been focused on more important priorities such as public safety, just the opposite of what has become a common misunderstanding.

“I continue to be concerned about the challenges that our regional transportation infrastructure faces in the years to come. I will work with community and regional leaders to develop answers to those challenges that have broad public support. Addressing this issue is vitally important to our region’s quality of life and economic development future.”


# # # # #
Read more!

What's a Brownfield? The State Capital?

Ok - so in actually reading the info for the Economic Development Commission Meeting, I discovered that my house and my recently redeveloped office building are both in a brownfield redevelopment area. This was news to me! And even more surprising was the State Capitol and a huge chunk of my residential district that I didn't expect. Yes, the E Washington Corridor, that makes sense, but it didn't make sense to include housing that we are trying to preserve or areas that are planning to stay residential. Then again, seems to me that we need to get that Downtown Plan done for the Comprehensive Plan and until it is, we shouldn't be "target areas" for brownfield redevelopment.

In looking at these maps, it got me to thinking. Um, why hadn't the Director of Planning and Development (or whatever we call it) and the Office of Business Resources (or whatever we're calling that now) mentioned any of this to me or sought my opinion? Why hasn't it been discussed with our neighborhood association? Or mentioned during the discussions of the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan? How did these maps get drawn in the first place?

If you want a more detailed picture, take a look here for
a - Isthmus
b - South Park Street
c - Packers & Sherman
d - the entire map on the left.

I'm all for getting brownfield redevelopment money and creating jobs, but hey, who said that this current housing was a redevelopment area for jobs? Here's the proposed requirements (click on the microsoft document) for the program and the resolution the City Council will be asked to pass. I find the "map" issue most disturbing and find it hard for me to think that I want staff to randomly select which areas they think are appropriate after their first go at it.
Read more!

Budget time is coming, and I"m feeling cranky.

You know, when we pass the budget, we fight quite a bit over what does and does not get funded. We scrimp and save and cut here and there and add here and there and when we're all done, we're under the impression that what we did actually matters. I find out, more and more every day, how things we do get ignored and pushed off by staff and/or the Mayor's office. Here's just a few examples from last year's budget:

We put $50,000 in the budget for an Economic Development Plan. It'll be September and we'll finally be approving the use of those funds. We were promised that this would happen in the 2006 budget with private funds, but that never happened. What the heck took so long? We decided in November and it took 8 months to choose someone to do the work. They won't finish their work until Feb 2008.

We also put $100,000 in the budget for a Downtown Neighborhood Plan as well. And I don't see anything happening.

What happened to this:

i) A study to consider the whole of service delivery to neighborhoods by a joint committee comprised of two Plan Commission members, two CDBG Commissioners, two members of the Office of Community Services Commission and one member appointed by the Mayor. This group shall study services to neighborhoods and make a recommendation to the Common Council by June 1, 2007 for the 2008 budget. The committee is to be staffed by the Director of Planning and Development and/or his designee.

June 1 came and went and the Mayor still hasn't appointed the committee. I think that committee morphed into this in the budget process, but still, the committee isn't yet appointed and their report is due Oct. 15th.

Who is the new neighborhood planner we authorized and what have they been doing? There's a long list of neighborhood plans that are languishing.

What about the $150,000 we put in the budget for re-writing the zoning code? What has happened with that? We had also put $250,000 in the 2006 budget and nothing happened.

We also put money in the budget for marketing of the BioAg Gateway and they're first thinking about putting out an RFP for that.

Are we going to see the results of the $50,000 we gave to the police department for their police staffing study?

I wonder how many other projects staff haven't had time to get to that I haven't noticed. This year, when we're fighting over which non-profit to cut, I suggest we look at the unspent money in some of these departments and reconsider where we put our funds. I can guarantee you that with one notable exception, those pennies for the non-profits are not going unspent.

I'd even go a little further, this year, when we do our budgeting, I think we need to ask for workplans. We shouldn't approve money for projects that aren't going to get done, or we should spread their funding out over two years if that is what is going to happen. Or, we should give the departments the resources they need if we're serious about getting this work done. We really need some truth in budgeting and some better information for the public and the council members who have vote on this stuff.

And finally, a bit of a side note, every single one of those projects listed above is under the supervision of one guy, with one exception in the police department. This is the same guy who runs the CDA and some people think can negotiate with himself to redevelop a 9 acre parcel of land when he has no development experience. If you ask me, I think we have mis-management issues that are not limited to the Water Utility. If he can't complete the projects we have already given him, how can he or the Mayor expect us to vote to give him even more responsibility?

Read more!

The Week Ahead: August 13 - 17

iWell, this is the week of hell for me. August 15th. Working at the Tenant Resource Center, this is the beginning of a few months of crazy stories and desperate people and larger than usual numbers of people needing our services. While the City is taking care of its business, I'll be listening to all of the "I can't move into my apartment because . . . " stories and then 21 days later its the "I didn't get my security deposit back because . . . " stories. I often wonder how anyone ever let us get to this point where everyone packs up on one day, moves out and hopes they can move in to their new apartment and that they won't be homeless for a few hours with all their belongings sitting on the curb outside their old or new apartment. While some of us live through this nightmare, here's what's going on of interest in the rest of the city.

Monday, August 13, 2007
See below for agendas with no links to supporting materials.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007
5:00 PM AFFIRMATIVE ACTION COMMISSION ROOM LL-120 MMB
I'm interested in hearing the report about how the County and State do things differently from the City of Madison. Perhaps we can learn a few things and do things better.

5:00 PM TRANSIT AND PARKING COMMISSION ROOM 260 MMB
Public listening session on the future of Madison Metro. I hope people show up!

5:00 PM PUBLIC SAFETY REVIEW BOARD ROOM LL-110 MMB
Hmmmm . . . given all the issues with crime lately, you'd think maybe they'd be talking about strategies to work with neighborhoods that are feeling neglected by the police. Or maybe not.

6:30 PM COMMITTEE MEMBER TRAINING ROOM 201 CCB
(Hmm, there was an agenda sent around, but none linked anywhere in legistar or additional meetings.) Seems to me this should be mandatory for committee chairs and staff people given the many mistakes in open meetings laws and Robert's rules that I've seen committees making lately. So, here's the agenda:

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

Wednesday, August 15, 2007
5:00 PM ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT COMMISSION ROOM LL-110 MMB
I'm interested in the Living Wage Calculation and the discussion of the Economic Development Study that we approved in last year's budget. Also, a new interest of mine, why is my house and the state capitol a brownfield redevelopment site? (Blog entry with details coming soon.)

5:30 PM ALCOHOL LICENSE REVIEW COMMITTEE MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARING ROOM GR-27 CCB
I think there's only missing information for 17 of the 39 issues, I think that might be progress? Anyways, this committee gets the award this week for poorly timed meetings. On August 15th when everyone is in the middle of moving, they are having a hearing on the downtown alcohol density plan. I guess they didn't really want input from renters downtown now did they?

Thursday, August 16, 2007
5:00 PM LONG RANGE TRANSPORTATION PLANNING COMMISSION ROOM LL-110 MMB
They'll be discussing the Tenney-Lapham Neighborhood Plan. Unfortunately, I will be out of town. Fortunately, Patrick McDonnell of the TLNA is the expert on this plan and we are in total agreement on the issues being discussed. (It's almost like having a second alder!)

And for the record, here's the problems I found trying to hunt down what different committees will be discussing this week.

1. No agenda on the List of Additional Meetings or in Legistar, so who knows what they will be discussing:

Monday, August 13th
8:00 AM MADISON METROPOLITAN SEWERAGE DISTRICT 1610 MOORLAND ROAD

Wedensday, August 15th
8:30 AM CHAPTER 2 SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE COMMON COUNCIL ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE ROOM 417 CCB, COUNCIL OFFICE CONFERENCE ROOM

Friday, August 17th
1:30 PM BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS BID OPENING 1602 EMIL STREET

2. Meetings listed in Legistar, but no agenda and not on the Clerk's lists of meetings for the week so there may or may not be the following meetings:
08/13/2007 Mon 5:00 PM COMMUNITY GARDENS COMMITTEE
08/15/2007 Wed 8:30 AM BOARD OF ASSESSORS
08/16/2007 Thu 5:30 PM BOARD OF HEALTH FOR MADISON AND DANE COUNTY

3. I don't know if these meetings would be of interest or not, since the agendas are available, but there are no links to the materials that the committees will be discussing:

Monday
4:00 PM SUSTAINABLE DESIGN AND ENERGY COMMITTEE ROOM 300 MMB
4:00 PM MADISON CULTURAL ARTS DISTRICT BUDGET AND AUDIT COMMITTEE 201 STATE ST, OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS BOARDROOM
5:00 PM CPD EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE ROOM LL-120 MMB

Tuesday
4:00 PM DEPARTMENT OF CIVIL RIGHTS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION COMMISSION SUBCOMMITTEE ON GENDER, RACE, AND DISABILITY ISSUES ROOM LL-120 MMB

Wednesday
8:00 AM CENTRAL PARK DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION TASK FORCE ROOM LL-110 MMB (It might be unfair to put this agenda in this category, since there might not be any handouts or additional infromation, but my guess is there will be.)

Thursday
5:10 PM ADA TRANSIT SUBCOMMITTEE TO THE TRANSIT AND PARKING COMMISSION ROOM 303 MMB
5:30 PM DOWNTOWN COORDINATING COMMITTEE ROOM 120 MMB
5:30 PM BROADBAND TELECOMMUNICATIONS REGULATORY BOARD ROOM 103A CCB

There you have it. Hopefully soon these agendas will be getting more useful. Hopefully. The Mayor says he's working on it.
Read more!

Solving "Crime" - Feel Good Ordinances or Real Solutions?

Amen! Paul Soglin said it pretty well - except for the part where he said half the city council is making it hard to evict tenants. (Eviction laws are state laws and the City of Madison can't contradict or change Chapter 704 of the Wisconsin Statutes. This crazy notion has surfaced several times recently and I don't know who is spreading this crazy misinformation.)

Somehow, most of the emails we're getting based on the Westside crime meeting seem to be advocating for the loitering ordinance or the chronic nuisance ordinance, and now the Mayor has jumped on board.

The Cap Times got the issues mixed up a bit. This isn't stalled in committee, we've been waiting for months for a new draft. When the council met, significant concerns were raised and the author agreed to address them - I didn't blog about it, cuz I was waiting for a new draft. I don't think anyone from the Mayor's staff was there at the meeting, otherwise, I don't think the Mayor would have jumped on this as a solution. We've been told this ordinance won't be used more than 10 times a year. This is hardly a widespread solution for the many problems we are facing.

In short, setting this "landlord law" up to be the solution to our crime problems is just silly. Why can't our community have a decent discussion about solutions? Why can't we take a critical look at what is causing the problems and make some informed and intelligent decisions about how to fix the problems, instead of glomming on to "feel good" measures that are sure to disappoint. And what has the Public Safety Review Board been doing? They should be the policy group that helps to address these types of issues and they seem to be completely asleep at the switch. We haven't heard a peep out of them during any of the current policing issues.

And worse yet, I fear that this whole thing is being framed as a "give the police more money", "basic services only" kind of discussion in preparation for the 2008 budget. The police budget has increased in the last few years as follows:

1998 - 32,672,502 of the total city budget of 148,100,704 or 22%
1999 - 33,757,344 of the total city budget of 154,044,007 or 22%
2000 police budget 35,197,123 of total city budget of 159,267,459 or 22%
2001 police budget 37,180,315 of total city budget of 169,090,499 or 22%
2002 police budget 39,679,894 of total city budget of 174,670,848 or 23%
2003 police budget 41,397,279 of total city budget of 179,707,633 or 23%
(Sorry, I can't get the city website to work for me on this one. I've asked them to fix it, but to no avail.)
2004 police budget 42,912,642 of total city budget of 185,775,527 or 23%
2005 police budget 44,092,020 of total city budget of 192,725,458 or 23%
2006 police budget 47,331,958 of total city budget of 203,295,005 or 23%
2007 police budget 50,106,451 of total city budget of 210,761,770 or 24%

Meanwhile, what has happened to CDBG, Office of Community Services and Madison Metro?

• Metro has gone from 4 to 4.8% of the budget
• CDBG has gone from .1 to .4% of the budget
• Office of Community Services has gone from 2.3 to 2.6% of the budget.
• These three departments together are only 8% of the budget.
  

However, which departments do you think will get the most scrutiny?

Folks, Soglin is mostly right. (I cringe when the assumption is made that the poor cause crime. It's a overly broad statement that needs to be nuanced.) This is about making sure that people in our community have a decent quality of life. And making sure the services are available so that people don't have to turn to crime. High quality childcare, good jobs, decent bus service that actually works for people, affordable housing and services that help people sort out the issues they are having and build support networks, those are the things that build community. Creating this "fear factor" and finding more ways to punish people, creates a further divide, more anger and resentment on all sides and isn't going to solve the problem. In fact, it can help exacerbate it.

Meanwhile, I'll point out once again, we need to look at how the police are spending all this money and try to figure out if we need to approach things differently. Soglin mentions community policing. He's dead right. However, we've been shifting away from that in the last few years and I think our community is feeling that loss. And then, we need to look at what "basic services" are needed in our community to help families thrive in Madison.

These issues won't be solved by a loitering ordinance or a chronic nuisance ordinance. We need more than that.
Read more!

A Little Hate to Start Your Morning Out Right.

Maybe, I should have said that most people wouldn't get paid $600 a month to get these types of emails:

From: Joannie [edited]
Sent: Thursday, August 09, 2007 9:09 AM
To: council
Subject: crime

I warned you about the crime wave coming to youir city years ago. Its what criminals do they flock to left wing cities were they know their protected like the illegal immigrants n gays But don't worry the side walks are nice sparkly green on willie street!!!! This city council is a failure!!!!!! Chuck [edited]

Read more!

Budgets - City and Personal

Cute. Actually, that picture is kind compared to the rest of the rust, peeling paint and dents that you can't see.

What'd you expect on an alder's salary (click on 3.29)? According to the Council Office Staff we actually get $592.75 per month, which is $7,113 a year, the ordinance linked there is OLD (it should have been updated twice, once for alders starting in 2005 and once for alders starting in 2007). Anyways, as you can see, we got a huge raise from 2003 when we got paid $6,771 or $564 per month. I bet you couldn't pay some people $600 bucks to sit through one council meeting per month*, let alone two, plus committees, neighborhood meetings and constituent contacts.

If we ignore all the costs we have as alders:

At minimum wage ($6.50) we get paid for 21 hours of work per week.

At the City's Living Wage ($10.58) which we require our contractors to pay, we get paid for 13 hours of work per week.

At a housing wage ($12.61) for one person to live in a one bedroom at below market rates (4oth percentile) we get paid for 11 hours of work per week.

My theory is, by the time you factor in breakfasts, coffees, lunches and beers for meeting with all the lobbyists and other interested individuals plus random office supplies and gas for driving around town, you probably end up paying to be an alder in this City.

Anyways, here's my thinking on my car, it still runs with a occasional trip to the mechanic, it gets decent gas mileage and only has 125,000 miles on it. Why throw away a perfectly good running vehicle just cuz its ugly? This society focuses too much on aesthetics.

* Ugh, Nevermore just pointed out to me that there are people (he named names) who regularly get paid $600 to sit through a council meeting, they're called lobbyists!
Read more!

The Politics of Policing

So, 600 people on the Westside want more police services. Maybe. I'm not sure what they want. The angry emails I have been getting say they want a loitering ordinance and a chronic nuisance (it's been drafted for over a year and we've had council discussions on this, but the sponsor is still working on it) ordinance and they don't want trolleys and swimming pools. Interesting. I wonder what they know about these two ordinances and what they think they will do and how they seized on these two "tools" to solve their problems.

The TV news reported they just wanted more police. That's something I understand a bit better. Last year at budget time, I sponsored the following amendment so that we could look at how police are using their resources and try to focus their efforts on neighborhood concerns. This is from my four part blog (1, 2, 3, 4) at budget time last year:

Amendment #13 - The original amendment would have made the 10 new police officers neighborhood officers. After asking the police chief some questions about previous police staffing committees and the plan for how they were spending the $50,000 for a staffing study, I offered the following substitute:

A police staffing subcommittee shall be established by the Common Council to review the police staffing report funded in the 2007 budget, if completed, and shall make recommendations to the Common Council and Police Chief which shall include, but not be limited to recommendations regarding the number of neighborhood officers, the staffing levels for Community Policing Teams and other community policing initiatives. This committee shall report back to the Common Council by October 1, 2007.

There were several amendments and friendly amendments to this and we voted on if the language should just say:

A committee shall be established by the Common Council to provide input in the creation of a the police staffing report funded in the 2007 budget.

That motion failed on a voice vote.

Then we went back to the substitute language above. At issue was whether the Council gets input into major policing philosophy changes or if we just hire the police cheif and let him make the decisions. I was hoping we could have a community discussion about what community policing means to us. However, that motion failed. Votes were as follows:
Yes - Webber, Benford, King, Konkel, Olson, Sanborn, Skidmore, Verveer
No - Brandon, Bruer, Cnare, Compton, Gruber, Knox, Palm, Radomski, Rosas, Thomas, VanRooy
Present: Golden (this essentially means they don't cast a vote in favor or against)

I find that interesting in that several of the emails accused us of not supporting their alder's efforts. Well, if their alder is Thuy Pham-Remmele, she hasn't proposed anything. In fact, I think the only thing she did was send out that crazy press release. If they're talking about Cindy Thomas, I'd say she didn't support the budget amendment above that their neighborhood seems to want and need.

As for me, what I really want, is some damn communication. This isn't a new issue, we've been through this before. I swear, they police have mastered the press release and the media and are very savvy users of the media, but they can't seem to give us alders the information we need. I've had two sexual assaults (1, 2)that affect my district in the last three weeks where I got the press release or information from the newspaper or from neighborhood listserves before the police contacted me on them. In fact, the police didn't contact me. I had to contact them to find out what is going on and didn't hear back until days later. This, despite the fact that we've had this discussion with them and they promised to do better.

There's no doubt, we need to take a serious look at what the police are, or are not, doing in this City. We need to see the results of that police staffing study. As the largest budget in the City ($50M), one has to believe that there is room for efficiencies and improved management. Tho, as I've stated before, we won't know until we get more information about how that money is spent. This ought to be an interesting budget season. I'm afraid, instead of making good budgeting decisions, we'll be making political ones that are based on fear.

Read more!

The "Problem" with the Homeless

Has war been declared on the homeless? Should we fence off our parks, prevent people from getting food from food pantries and prevent them from parking their cars (homes) on the street?

I look around and see homeless and I see a problem. The problem I see, is that we live in a society that has haves and have-nots. We also live in a society where we have grown quite callous and indifferent to the needs of the poor. We live in a society where we often blame "them" for their situation and accuse them of enjoying "feeding off the system". We live in a society where individuals have personal problems that cause them to do things that society frowns upon. We also live in a society that doesn't want to look at these problems and try to solve them in a reasonable manner. That's what I see.

Others look around, and what they see makes them uncomfortable. People are dirty, they have no place to put their trash, they have no place to go to the bathroom, they cook their food in the park or on the side of the road. And some have more serious alcohol and drug problems or mental health issues that cause other behaviors that are not acceptable, whether you live in an apartment or own your home or if you are homeless. Many of these folks just don't want to see humans that are worse off than them and they want the police to make it go away.

Where I work, the "car campers" all park their vehicles along E Wilson Street and they have done so for years. People clearly have all of their worldly possessions crammed into these vehicles and are living out of them. Sometimes you see grills, towels draped over the windows to block out the sun, a lawn chair set up to sit on and various other signs that this is their home. These same folks often use the phones or computers at the Tenant Resource Center and the bathrooms at the Social Justice Center. And when we form relationships with some of them, we sometimes help them find permanent housing. Sometimes their health problems make it so that they just need to come in and "enjoy" our air conditioning and rest a while in comfort. Sometimes things don't go so well. Sometimes they steal our soda money. Sometimes their mental illness is too disruptive for our office environment. But its clear to me, these folks need assistance of various types. And each of them, as individuals, have different needs. It might be a place to get messages so they can find a job or place to live, it might be a computer to print off a resume, it might be help with a security deposit for their new place to live, it might some kitchen supplies for their new apartment, it might be money for a new id. Or, it might be mental health or alcohol and drug counseling. Or who knows what, but the only way we're going to know, is if we talk to these people and find out what obstacles they are facing.

But what is the solution that some people are proposing? Make them get permits for their vehicles and if they don't, they can get tickets for parking on the street. The kicker, they only want to give permits to people who have an address. And what will this accomplish? It will move them somewhere else, but it won't solve the deeper issues that need to be addressed.

One neighborhood that is upset about the use of park space by the homeless wants to fence off portions of the park so that it can't be used. It can't be used by the homeless or anyone else. And it just moves the homeless out of their neighborhood and someplace else. It doesn't solve the deeper issues that need to be addressed.

The most shocking, and disturbing suggestion actually came from an agency that is supposed to serve the homeless. This is what a recent email that was forwarded to me said:

I met with several members of the MPD yesterday. It was a good discussion. We talked about three basic strategies concerning the shelters and the parks, and to some extent the more recent problems with Carroll Street.

The objective is to try to change behavior. We talked about: (1) Making a significant effort to issue citations and arrest on the third citation for violations of the rules (this will require some significant police time but has worked elsewhere; (2) try to reduce food given to these persons for household use (from the food pantries) and the Drop-In Shelter; and (3) try to restrict access to alcohol.

I will make an effort to talk to some of the food pantries about giving food to those without addresses -- but we may need some help in identifying these people either with photos or names to food pantry providers. I know the general rule is the food given by food pantries is not for on-site consumption and not allowing persons to simply take to the park and prepare it would seem to be consistent with that policy. I will also talk to Drop-In Shelter (DIS) staff about guests receiving food at the DIS. Typically we do really control whether a guest signs in, eats and then leaves. That is okay, but if the guest comes in, it counts against the guest's 90 days. However, it was reported that a number of the persons on Carroll Street are just coming in for breakfast and not signing in, thereby getting unlimited time. We will try to eliminate that. For the most part, however, the major problem persons and problem areas do not involve the use our services.

That's right, the solution to helping solve some of the issues with the homeless is to prevent them from getting food, and gasp, eating it in the park. Brilliant. That's right, homeless shouldn't be allowed to eat food in a park.

Another great piece of news. Starting November 1st, the men's shelter will reduce the number of days that people can stay there per year from 90 to 60. They do let people stay if the temperature is 20 degrees or below with the wind chill factored in. They're doing this to "relieve pressure on shelter usage".

Is it just me, or is arresting, ticketing and starving the homeless not what you expect to be the response of our local government and non-profits?

We essentially have two ways to deal with this, the expensive/hard way or maybe with a teeny tiny bit of compassion. Let's not just write these people off as anti-social degenerates. We can have the police deal with these issues, or we could get some non-law enforcement trained professionals that were on the streets trying to help solve the problem. Do you think the proposed approaches aren't going to cost us all more money as we now house these folks in jails and have them go through court processes and have the police just chase them from place to place.

Wouldn't two street outreach case managers go a lot further towards getting these folks out of these situations and likely be a whole lot cheaper?

Read more!

Move Out Trash

August 15th. The day a large percentage of downtown residents, not just students, all have their leases renewed, and many of them move. It causes a myriad of problems in the downtown area. One of the most unsightly, is the trash. Unsightly because of so many reasons including the commentary it is about how we live in a throw-away world but also because even if you bag up your garbage and dispose of it properly, huge crowds descend upon the downtown and dig through that same trash to look for things they think are of value and leave it quite the mess.

Ok - now is probably the time for the annual warning. Before you pick up that upholstered furniture . . . a few words. Cockroaches. Bed Bugs.

Moving along. For downtown residents, be aware, the following plan for trash pick up has been approved:

Our plan for student moveout is to work crews starting at 4:00 a.m. when they are needed. It is much better to work early in the day than later in the day because of traffic issues of the students moving in and out as well as regular vehicular travel and construction vehicles. The plan, as of now, is to work from 4:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on August 14, 15 and 16 and then evaluate after that.

MGO 24.04(7) states that the Director of Public Works may allow exceptions to the noise ordinance regarding the no operation of refuse collection equipment prior to 6:00 a.m. This can be done for a period not to exceed 15 days. I am requesting this for a period of 3 or 4 days.

Read more!

Castle Place - Ooops!

No parking?!
Castle Place is a little street going up a relatively steep hill between E Gorham and Lake Mendota next to Christ Presbyterian Church on the 900 block. It was recently widened to allow for parking and yet leave enough room for big old firetrucks. The work is finally done and it looks great. There's no longer a pole for street signs sticking out of the middle of the sidewalk and several other things were fixed. However . . . one little problem. Three signs recently went up, and they all indicate that there is no parking! What? No parking? Upon investigation, it seems, there is an error in the signs . . . they forgot the arrows. Here's the explanation.

Parking is allowed on Castle Pl in the widened area between the "No Parking Anytime" signs. The first "No Parking Anytime" to the north of Gorham St sign should have a right arrow below it indicating no parking is allowing from the sign to Gorham St. I will contact our field operations crew and have this corrected.

Read more!

Common Council Recap

Well, despite all the referrals, we still managed to meet until 11:00 last night. September 4th will likely be a long meeting. Here's what happened! Or, what didn't happen.

1 - Honoring of Jeff Erlanger.

Jeff's parents attended the meeting and were warmly received. Jeff's father spoke a few very touching words and Ald. Mike Verveer thanked them for sharing Jeff with us over the years.

2 - We honored Dorothy Conniff from the Office of Community Services Office for her 30 years of service to the City.

She, too, spoke to us about her experiences with the City, the importance of quality early education in children's lives and she thanked the low paid hard working non-profit workers that give so much to the City. She also reminded us that the many services that are provided through the Office of Community Services are part of what makes Madison so special and help to address the changing needs of the City. Particularly, she reminded us that childcare and early education is "a classic example of market failure" because "people who need it can't afford it". She cautioned us to keep these programs a priority and not let them slip into non-priority status because there is no advocate for them. Her speech was classy she expressed faith in her staff and thanked the people she worked with. Meanwhile, it seemed that she was the one that really deserved so much of the thanks.

24 and 26 - We moved on to the development in Cherokee Marsha and Hill Farms. Both passed after some public input.

We then went to the consent agenda and passed the remainder of the agenda with the following exceptions:

46 - Halloween fencing etc.

This item was disposed of quickly. Eli Judge separated it to abstain, I voted no and we moved on.

102 - Resolving the legal status of the Water Utility and increasing the number of members of the Board.

I think there were three issues here and a procedural concern. First, we were increasing the size of the Water Utility Board by 2 members. This was done to increase the skill sets of the members of the Board and to enhance communication between the members of the Board. With a small board, no two members can talk to each other about issues before them because they are negative quorum and they would need to publicly notice their interaction.

The second issue was if an alder would be one of the additional members. Apparently, this offended some people on the Council (Compton & Brandon) who thought this was an attack on Lauren Cnare. However, I explained that this was much like we did with the EOC in the mid-90s, when they were dealing with controversial issues we added an alder to add some experience, a different perspective and to increase communication among the alders. This, too, seemed to offend some. If you ask me, adding an alder would show the public that we are taking the issues with the Water Utility a priority and that they are of great interest to us. My guess is, no alder will step forward because no one wants to take the heat and its alot of work.

The third issue was that the ordinance cleared up the legal responsibilities between the Council, the Mayor and the Water Utility Board. We may have been working under some rules that weren't quite set up correctly. Hopefully with these clarifications, we won't continue to be in limbo about who has which authority.

Finally, this item was "taken out of order". The Water Utility Board had met and discussed this item, but didn't vote on it, instead they asked for additional information. Alder Zach Brandon called Alder Rhodes-Conway, who made the motion to take this item up a hypocrite because the same people who care about process were now not concerned about process. I explained that I was concerned about legal liability and that kind of took precedence. You know, protecting the taxpayer from paying for lawsuits.

Anyways, the Mayor expressed his concern that this be resolved quickly. Several members of the Water Utility Board were in the room and confirmed that the Board would likely support the item as presented and that delaying would likely result in the same outcome. I believe it passed unanimously.

103 - Water Utility contract for Video Surveillance equipment

Here we go again. Another contract where there was no Request for Proposals as is likely required by our City policies. No surprises there. Lame excuses were given for why they thought they could just make up their own process. I finally asked what kind of training people got. I should have known better, the answer was essentially, none. We've cut staff and they don't have time. Luckily City Attorney Michael May said that they have a group of city staff that works on purchasing contracts and that they were planning on talking about this, but it keeps getting pushed back due to other priorities. Hopefully, after these last few debacles, it might move up on their priority list. I believe this was the vote where Brandon, Konkel, Rummel and Judge voted no. (My notes suck.)

184 - Water Utility "do-over" on the EMA contract.

And, again. We kept it pretty short. There was written materials from the Water Utility, a few questions and we mostly refrained from repeating our arguments from the last meeting. The vote ended up with the Konkel-Brandon or Brandon-Konkel "team" voting "no" and therefore losing. A few joined our team! Brandon, Judge, Konkel, Rummel, Rhodes-Conway voting no. Pham-Remmele abstaining. Kerr and Bruer absent. That leaves Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clausius, Clear, Cnare, Gruber, Palm, Compton, Sanborn, Skidmore, Schumacher. I continue to think that we had other options, but no tools to explore them as a council and that we are throwing our money away and should be spending it to resolve the situation.

108 & 111 - Were both CDBG contracts with non-profits for services that were referred because we didn't have the answers to several questions that alders were interested in getting answered prior to voting.

125 - Regional Transportation Authority

This was referred after some suggestions from the Council about having a publicly noticed meeting where we could get a presentation and ask some questions about the proposal before this comes up for a vote. The Mayor agreed to put something together and get staff as well as himself and Kathleen Falk or someone from her office to be available for questions.

129 - The "Zatch Act"

Referred without explanation. Many of us are waiting for the new version which was promised. And it caused at least on Elections Committee members to snicker about how the-most-important-thing-ever-that-had-to-be-the-first-thing-that-got-done-with-the-new-council and was so important that the committee couldn't have more time to work on it . . . is now . . . not . . . so . . . important . . . or . . . in . . . much . . . of . . . a . . . rush . . . .

130 - Allied Drive

There was alot of procedural mumbo jumbo and guessing at what this 4th version of the resolution really did. We either
a) made a commitment to Allied Drive residents to follow the recommendations of the Allied Drive Task Force, or
b) we decided we'd make a "good faith effort" to follow their recommendations, or
c) we were skeptical and said that we weren't really making any decisions without more information, or
d) really didn't take any action because the real resolution that makes real decisions is yet to come.
I don't think we're going to agree on what the effect of passing the resolution had.

We do know that some people wanted to "accept" the report. Meaning they didn't want to be held to it. Others wanted to "adopt" the report, giving more weight to our action. The vote to do the weaker version was as follows:

Yes - Compton, Pham-Remmele, Sanborn, Schumacher, Skidmore, Brandon, Clausius, Cnare
No - Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clear, Rhodes-Conway, Gruber, Judge, Konkel, Palm and Rummel
Absent - Bruer, Kerr

One thing is certain, the last clause where we asked the Mayor to appoint one person to be the point person isn't going to happen. If you want to discuss Allied Drive, the Mayor told us that you should talk to Enis Ragland or Joel Plant in is office and Mark Olinger says you should talk to him, but you never know if you are talking to the person who heads the CDA and wants to develop the land or the guy that supervises the many City staff that work on this issue and are completely all over the board and don't speak with one voice.

More to come on this one!

131 - Impeachment

Was referred after an impassioned plea by Tom Link about how this is indeed an issue that the Council should be taking up.

And then we retreated to the Great Dane. Rhodes-Conway, Rummel, Gruber, Webber, Konkel, Clear were joined by Michael Jacob in one room. Verveer and Judge had dinner with a few other citizens in the other quieter room. I'm not sure what happened to the rest, but if they were smart, they went home and went to sleep. I didn't, and so there are no links to the agenda items this morning - ran out of time. You can find the agenda here and look up the links yourself. Sorry.
Read more!

Tonight's Council Meeting: Items of Interest

There's only one meeting in August, and so you'd expect us to have a long one, but due to absences (Kerr & Bruer) and for other reasons several items are expected to be referred. So, it could be a shorter one than expected and September agendas are going to be very packed. Here's the items of interest.

1. Honoring the life of Jeff Erlanger.
We'll be honoring a great volunteer for the City of Madison.

2. Congratulating Dorothy Conniff on her retirement after 30 years with the City of Madison.
Another great loss for the City of Madison. While I've known Dorothy Conniff for years, its been a pleasure getting to know her even better the last few years on the Early Childhood Care and Education Board. She, and all the knowledge she carries with her, will be greatly missed. And unfortunately, it was previously thought that her position would simply be filled, but it looks like the Mayor might take this opportunity to do yet another consolidation and eliminate the position. A big mistake in my mind, as we need someone in a leadership position for the Office of Community Services. As the City continues to grow and we can't solve everything through policing, it becomes more and more critical that we have strong city services for families.

4. Mayor's appointments.
There's some interesting Plan Commission appointments. It seems the Kelly Thompson-Frater has been unceremoniously dumped from the Plan Commission. In fact, she didn't even know about it until someone pointed it out to her last night. Instead, former Ald. Judy Olson, who is already on three other committees and a "vice president of governmental affairs" a.k.a. lobbyist (?!) is being appointed. So far, that's not working out so well on the Urban Design Commission, I"m surprised he wants to try it again. Interesting, former Alder Ken Golden ends up on no committees at all, and former Ald. Olson is now going to be on 4 committees. And appointing lobbyists? The Mayor's appointments get curiouser and curiouser.

6. Expressing support and appreciation for Erin Davies recent efforts.
This is an interesting set of co-sponsors.

24. Development in Cherokee Park.
I don't think this project has been all worked out with the neighbors.

26. Redevelopment of the State owned Hill Farms property.
We'll be getting a recommendation tonight based on last night's plan commission meeting. Ald. Rummel and I stayed as long as we could, but it was so cold, we eventually left, so I don't know what the plan commission final recommendations were, but there seemed to be some controversy left on this project as well.

46, 47, 48 - Halloween Resolutions regarding fencing and funding, glass ban and amending budgets (i.e. giving the cops more money, again.) You'd think we could have done this in the regular budget process.

50. Agreement to continue with cops in the schools.

52. $2.7M TIF for the Southside.
We didn't follow our new process outlined in our TIF policies. One has to ask, what's the point of passing policies that just get ignored? This better be the first and last time this happens and I suppose one can overlook it cuz the application is "the first one".

70. Approving noise on the Westside.
I hope this "routine item" doesn't bite them the way a recent decision did on the Isthmus. Looks like it won't, but I guess you never know. Don't worry, it eventually stops.

103. Water Utility Contract for Surveillance Cameras.

121. Fining kids for playing with toys.
As has been noted by Lisa Subeck, police have efficiently used their full time public relations officer to make sure we're all aware of the dangers of toy guns.

125. Regional Transportation Authority.
Known to many as the "trolley tax" and likely to be referred mostly for that reason. If you ask me the RTA has alot of potential to help fund Madison Metro in ways that increases ridership, keeps flexibility and extends services both geographically and hours of service. However, the Dave and Kathleen deal that was cut hasn't gone over well with many council members. Look for this to be referred to see if there is any way to get to 11 votes, cuz at the moment, it's looking grim. Perhaps we should go back to the original proposal, it had 15 sponsors. Now, Mayor Dave's deal only has 9.

129. Restricting Poll Workers from Participating in the Political Process
There's supposed to be a re-draft, but no one has seen it. I would expect it would get referred, but you just never know.

130. Housing Plan for Allied Drive.
This is where we decide if we take the recommendations of the Allied Drive residents seriously, or pat them on the head and promptly ignore them. This plan and report from the Allied Drive Task for is supposed to be what we use to go out for an Request for Proposals to see who the best developer for Allied Drive is, but some people, have changed what they have been telling people for months and switched game plans.

131. Impeachment
That is being referred until September at the request of the main sponsor.

184. Water Utility Do-Over.
We'll see if the City Council approves the Water Utility contract this time.

That's it. And then we take a break until September, sort of, kinda, not really.

Read more!

The Week Ahead: August 6 - 10

Here it is, the week ahead. I worked off the Clerk's Weekly Schedule, with notes below with all the problems I found, again.

Monday, August 6, 2007
5:00 PM TAX INCREMENTAL FINANCING POLICY AD HOC COMMITTEE ROOM LL-110 MMB
This meeting is improperly named in Legistar, but we should be wrapping up the one item that wasn't our charge but we just had to deal with for Union Corners, which is now a dead deal and hopefully we'll finally be able to get to the 10% TIF set aside program and next time, we can talk about what we were set up to talk about nearly a year ago - what should our priorities be when handing out TIF?

5:30 PM PLAN COMMISSION MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARING ROOM 201 CCB
Items of interest include the East Washington BUILD (this item is proposed by staff to be referred to a sub-committee of the Plan Commission - sorry no link, I received that information in an email.), demolition of the building at 1110-1112 E Gorham that burned a while ago, Hill Farms redevelopment (which will be considered the following day at the Council meeting), Cliff Fisher's project on N Blair and N Hancock is back again and the demolition ordinance is being referred because the Landmarks Commission, which meets every other week, still hasn't taken it up (most likely because they don't use legistar properly and the staff doesn't realize that they should be taking it up.)

Tuesday, August 7, 2007
12:00 PM AD HOC COMMITTEE TO DEVELOP PARKING STRATEGIC PLAN ROOM 120 MMB
This committee is just getting started, but if you're interested in this topic, they will be getting some good base information at this meeting

4:30 PM COMMON COUNCIL ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE ROOM 103A CCB
There are several items on there that may be of interest if you are interested in public input and access, technology issues, the council budget, when the council meets and several other issues. I will likely add these items to another blog posting tonight or tomorrow.

6:30 PM COMMON COUNCIL ROOM 201 CCB
I'll do a blog tonight or tomorrow about the items of interest, but they are essentially that we will be discussing Allied Drive, the Regional Transportation Authority and, there's supposed to be an addendum today where we discuss the EMA Contract with the Water Utility again.
Impeachment is expected to be referred, and we haven't heard anything more about another draft of the Zach Brandon ordinance to prevent poll workers from being politically active.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
12:00 PM PERSONNEL BOARD ROOM 103A CCB
I particularly like the description of item number 2. If you follow the links, you can figure it out.

4:00 PM BOARD OF PARK COMMISSIONERS TENNEY PARK BEACH PARKING LOT
This is the annual park tour.

4:15 PM URBAN DESIGN COMMISSION MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARING ROOM 260 MMB
District 2 residents, the Don Miller parking lot issue is there again. Not a big deal, but it may be of interest.

5:00 PM HOUSING AFFORDABILITY SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE HOUSING COMISSION ROOM 120 MMB
We'll be discussing ways to make the Affordable Housing Trust Fund work for us as we make our way to the $10M mark where it starts generating enough interest so we don't need to make further investments as well as the Capital Borrowing Program, which the Mayor has opposed, even thought it would be a tool for us to create affordable housing and not cost the City a dime. To find out why the Mayor opposes it, you can read the fiscal note/opinion which says essentially what the memo he gave to the Board of Estimates said, but sorry no link as it was only given out in hard copy.

5:00 PM BLUE RIBBON COMMITTEE ON CLEAN ELECTIONS ROOM 403, MAYOR'S CONFERENCE ROOM
This group is just getting started and if you're interested in helping influence what they do, now would be the time to speak up

Thursday, August 9, 2007
4:30 PM COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION ROOM 260 MMB
I'll have more to comment on later this week on at least one of the items, however, this agenda is also kinda gacked up.

6:00 PM STATUS OF TEST WELL DRILLING AT RESERVOIR PARK 125 LARKIN STREET, RESERVOIR PARK, OUTDOORS
This seems to be a Water Utility Board meeting without quorum. And here is the topic:
Status of test well, reasons for project delays, project schedule details and long term plans for the site. Parks Department staff will be available to answer questions and take comments.

6:30 PM COMMON COUNCIL - DISCUSSION ROOM GR-27 CCB
We'll be discussing the Downtwon Alcohol Density Plan.

I can't really tell you if you want to go to the following meetings, because there are no materials attached to the agenda, so the issues being discussed may or may not be of interest.

Monday, August 6, 2007
12:00 PM COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY CAPITAL REVOLVING FUND SUBCOMMITTEE ROOM LL-130 MMB

4:30 PM LANDMARKS COMMISSION MEETING AND PUBLIC HEARING ROOM LL-130 MMB (Note, Item 5, which just says "Discussion" is particularly bothersome, what do you think will be discussed?!?)

Tuesday, August 7, 2007
1:30 PM CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT REVIEW COMMITTEE ROOM 403, MAYOR'S CONFERENCE ROOM

Wednesday, August 8, 2007
7:45 AM MDC BOARD OF DIRECTORS 550 W. WASHINGTON AVENUE, MDC BOARDROOM
Do you know what MDC is?

10:30 AM MINORITY AFFAIRS COMMITTEE ROOM LL-130 MMB
I'm particularly interested in what might be discussed under the agenda item "New Business and MAC Roundtable". Do you have any clue what that might be based on that discussion? Those skilled in figuring out all the alphabet soup we use could figure out that the Minority Affairs Committee (MAC) will be having a roundtable, but "new business" is a problem.

4:30 PM BOARD OF PUBLIC WORKS ROOM 103A CCB
Item 3 looks interesting if you're interested in Water issues, and but I have no idea what they will be discussing and item 35 will be about "Bridge Inspections" however, items 6 - 29, 31 - 32 and 34 - 39 have little or information.

5:00 PM MADISON BOARD OF POLICE AND FIRE COMMISSIONERS MONTHLY MEETING MAY CONVENE INTO CLOSED SESSION 201 W. MIFFLIN STREET

Thursday, August 9, 2007
9:00 AM CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT REVIEW COMMITTEE ROOM 403 CCB, MAYOR'S CONFERENCE ROOM

1:30 PM CENTRAL PARK DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION TASK FORCE LAND ACQUISITION SUBCOMMITTEE ROOM LL-130 MMB

4:30 PM MONONA TERRACE COMMUNITY AND CONVENTION CENTER BOARD ONE JOHN NOLEN DRIVE, HALL OF FAME

5:00 PM ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS ROOM LL-110 MMB
They always have that last item about discussion of procedure, which doesn't seem like true notice to me.

5:00 PM EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES COMMISSION ROOM LL-120 MMB
Lots of reports here that I'm sure are handed out, but not available for the public to view unless you attend the meeting.

Friday, August 10, 2007
9:00 AM CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT REVIEW COMMITTEE ROOM 403 CCB, MAYOR'S CONFERENCE ROOM
Third verse, same as the first (and second).

These items show up in Legistar, but are not on the Clerk's Weekly Meeting Schedule, and don't have agendas. I know that the IZ meeting is cancelled, but I don't know about the others.

Wednesday 8:30 - Board of Assessors
Wenesday 1:15 - Board of Review
Thursday 4:30 - Madison Public Library Board
Friday 8:00 - Inclusionary Zoning Oversight Committee

These items are noticed, but I can't find an agenda on-line, so I guess, once again, you'd have no idea if you want to go to the meeting, unless you find those elusive agendas.

4:00 PM 201 STATE FOUNDATION INC BOARD OF DIRECTORS OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS BOARDROOM

5:00 PM MADISON CULTURAL ARTS DISTRICT EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE 201 STATE STREET, OVERTURE CENTER FOR THE ARTS BOARDROOM

Some progress was made this week, still a long way to go.
Read more!

Walkable - How the Common Council Scores.

Ok - Subeck beat me to this one, but I went at it with a different angle. Alder Satya Rhodes-Conway sent a link to several of us that was kind of interesting. It's a site that determines how walkable a particular address is. It does so by measuring how close you are to various things such as libraries, schools, restaurants, health clubs, book stores, etc etc etc. I plugged in several of the Alders scores to see how we did. There's a few surprises. Here's the scores out of 100 total possible points:

18 - Michael Schumacher (District 18 - Northside) 517 Nova Way (04)
22 - Zach Brandon (District 7 - Far Southwestside) 3526 Mammoth Trl (19)
26 - Judy Compton (Distirct 16 - Far East) 6030 Fairfax Ln (18)
28 - Tim Bruer (District 14 - Southside) 3310 Leyton Ln (13)
29 - Jed Sanborn (District 1 - Far West) 12 Cherbourg Ct (11)
29 - Lauren Cnare (District 3 - Far East) 5218 Kevins Way (14)
37 - Mark Clear - (District 19 - Northwest) 110 Shiloh Dr (05)
49 - Tim Gruber (District 11 - Near West) 4349 Bagley Pkwy (05)
51 - Thuy Pham-Remmele (District 20 - Southwest) 5406 Denton Pl (11)
52 - Joe Claussius (District 17 - Far Northeast) 18 Clarendon Ct (04)
65 - Robbie Webber (District 5 - Near West/Campus) 2613 Stevens St (05)
69 - Paul Skidmore (District 9 - Far West) 13 Red Maple Trl (17)
71 - Larry Palm (District 15 - Mideast) - 2502 Dahle St (04)
75 - Brian Solomon (District 10 - Near West and Southwest) 2148 West Lawn Ave (11)
75 - Mike Verveer (District 4 - Downtown) 614 W Doty (03)
77 - Marsha Rummel (District 6 - Isthmus/Near East) 1339 Rutledge St (03)
80 - Julia Kerr (District 13 - Near South) 1626 Madison St (11)
82 - Satya Rhodes-Conway (District 12 - Near Northeast) 2642 Hoard St (04)
85 - Eli Judge (District 8 - Downtown/Campus) 1002 Spring St. (15)
92 - Brenda Konkel (District 2 - Isthmus/Near East) 511 E Mifflin St (03)
(Map of the districts is here.)

After several of us compared scores, we decided to figure out how Susan Lampert Smith did. She got a SIX. It's kind of fun, you should try it out and see what score your home gets. Tho, you have to be careful, as somethings get credit for being walkable that might not be necessarily your cup of tea or exactly what you're looking for. For instance, Red Letter News counts as a book store.
Read more!

Where's Waldo? City of Madison Verison.

Who's meeting? What are they talking about? And where can you get more information? I wish there was a simple explanation. However, like much of life, the more you ask, the deeper you go, the more complicated it gets. And when it comes to government, that's not good. We should be striving to be transparent and easily understandable. And we should be doing everything we can to make it easier for the public to interact with us.

Clerk's Weekly Meeting Schedule
The City Clerk's website is updated every Sunday to post meetings for the week ahead. They have a summary of what group is meeting, the date and time of their meeting and where they will be meeting. It's a handy reference when you're running out the door and forgot which room your meeting is in, but it doesn't tell you what the agendas for the meetings will be. And, even if a meeting is on this list, it IS NOT legally posted. It is likely that it is legally posted, but mistakes happen, there are computer glitches and life happens. Even more likely, as I discovered yesterday, a meeting may not appear on the list and yet it might be legally posted. So, if this isn't the list of legally posted meetings, where is it?

Legistar
So, if you know there is a meeting and want to find the agenda, where do you look? The easiest place, which isn't obviously linked from the Weekly Meeting Schedule is to look in "Legistar". It's linked in the list on the right and called "On Line City Hall." For the past two years we have a new software program that helps to track legislation. This tracking program has a list of meetings, the date, time and place of the meeting AND it adds the agenda and eventually the minutes. Then, theoretically, when you click on the agenda, it provides further links to the actual legislation that is being voted on. And, theoretically, it also attaches the additional information that is handed out to the committee to help them make decisions. It's a powerful tool for the public and alders when it is used properly. However, even if a meeting appears on this list in legistar, it IS NOT legally noticed. It's true, that it likely isn't legally noticed unless an agenda has been created in legistar. However, not all committees use legistar and some people create agendas in other formats. So, if this isn't the list of legally posted meetings, where is it?

List of Additional Meetings
This is where they put agendas and minutes for committees that don't use legistar. Usually these are ad hoc committees, subcommittees or one time meetings that need to be publicly noticed. Usually. But again, even if a meeting appears on this list, it IS NOT legally noticed. So, if this isn't where you can find legally noticed meetings, where is it?

Other postings of meeting dates and agendas
Some committees post additional calendars of when their meetings are going to be. I'm most familiar with the Plan Commission, Urban Design Commission and Landmarks schedules that are posted for developers. I'm sure you can find other committees who have also posted their meeting dates and times in a schedule, but this, too, IS NOT where you can find legally noticed meetings.

Additionally, if you look at the City Committee website that explains who is on committees, what their mission is, who staff's the meetings and posts some agendas and minutes, you may also find a list of dates of meetings and the description of the committee with probably say when the committee typically meets, but this, too, IS NOT where you can find legally posted meetings. So, where is it?

Legally Posted Meetings - A meeting is legally posted when the City Clerk posts the agenda in the appropriate designated area for the meeting 24 hours before the meeting is scheduled to begin. If this doesn't happen, the members of the public body are the ones that could get fined for holding an illegal meeting. And lately, there have been more than one illegal meeting. So, the million dollar question for all of you this morning is, where is this designated posting place? Do you know? Would you even ever look there? Or would you choose one of the on-line versions? If you find the legal postings of meetings, let me know! I had to call and ask where they were physically posted and when I was told, I had recalled seeing them there when I was in that spot for a completely unrelated purpose, but they are not in an obvious or sometimes even accessible (i.e. locked) place! In fact, I wonder how many of the 20 alders or members of the Mayor's staff even know the answer? And what about the hundreds of committee members we have?
Read more!

CDBG 3% Cut in the Budget - Good Choice!

Last week the Community Development Block Grant made their recommendations in response to the Mayors request for a 3% cut from current funding. They couldn't have made a better choice! Here's the memo summarizing last week's meeting:

TO: Persons Interested in CDBG Commission Actions
FROM: Barbara Constans
DATE: August 1, 2007
SUBJECT: CDBG Commission Meeting

The Mayor has requested that City agencies (except for Police and Fire) submit 2008 budget proposals to him based on 97% of the 2007 level of City general purpose revenue. For the CDBG program, this translates to a 3% cut, or around $21,308. In order to meet this request

The CDBG Commission took the following actions at its Special Meeting of July 27, 2007:

Recommended the Office meet the 3% goal by decreasing the 2008 funding level of the Labor Council pre-apprenticeship training project by $21,308. The Commission based their recommendation on the fact that initial reports for the first 4 months of this year suggest that the project has been more successful in assisting individuals gain employment who live outside of Dane County than in recruiting and preparing people who live in the City including the area of focus on Allied. Of the total reported to have gained employment, 82% live outside of Dane County. Of the total provided training, 7% were from Allied. Even with a cut of this size, we believe the project will be able to continue to grow, to develop support from its natural Union and contractor partners, and successful on a more modest, but City-focused scale. (This project is currently administered through the Centro Hispano organization.)

The Commission also recommended that its choice of cuts be considered as a supplement for restored funding. (Apparently this language was a mistake and they didn't not ask for a supplemental request. A new synopsis of the project has been issued and this language is removed.)

What?! This group took City money and assisted people outside of Dane County?! And they were supposed to be focusing on Allied Drive?! Not only should they be cut, we should get our money back!
Read more!

La Hacienda Boycott - On Again!

From the Workers' Rights Center; the owner acted in bad faith.

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Workers' Rights Center,

Last week the WRC board was contacted by a community activist who told us that the owner of La Hacienda Restaurant was interested in meeting to resolve the dispute over unpaid wages. The board agreed to cancel the picket on Wednesday, July 25 to facilitate the process. But the owner - in an act of bad faith - now refuses to meet. And so we are resuming our pickets to keep the pressure on and let him know that the community will not support businesses that violate their workers' rights.

La Hacienda Picket
515 S. Park Street
Friday, August 3
5 - 6:30 pm

For more information about the La Hacienda Boycott click here.

Read more!

New Bus Routes Starting September 2

SEPTEMBER ROUTE/SCHEDULE CHANGES

Effective Sunday, September 2

Metro will undergo route and schedule changes effective Sunday, September 2 including new Fitchburg Routes 44, 48 & 52 and new Middleton Routes 70, 71, 72, 73, & 74.

Changes will be made to Routes 1, 2, 11, 19, 34, 44, 48, 52, 55, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 & 80 and schedule adjustments will also be made to most other routes.

An updated Ride Guide is now available online. Hard copies of updated Ride Guides and System Maps are being printed and will be available in the middle of August.

• RIDE GUIDE: Effective September 2

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.

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".

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


Read more!

BSR: High Noon Saloon & Grateful Garcia Gathering

In fact, they're playing at the High Noon Saloon right now! Well, tonight! Tonight Baghdad Scuba Review is playing with Yokanizu Project (Madison) and Downer's Grove (Eau Claire) at the Grateful Garcia Gathering Pre-Party.

This weekend, they'll be playing at the Grateful Garcia Gathering, otherwise known as the 3Gs festival to celebrate Jerry Garcia's birthday. Rob's running sound on the second stage all weekend and my sister and I will be heading up on Friday to enjoy some camping and music and maybe finally find time to finish my Harry Potter book!. And of course, I can't wait to hear Melvin Seals and the JGB Band again and all the other wonderful things that I do not expect including random music around the camp sites and drum circles or the band's that I haven't yet heard. Any which way, sounds like another summer weekend of sun and fun and music!
Read more!

Clean Air Action Day Tomorrow (Thursday, Aug 2)

So, free bus rides! But what else can and should be done?

The Wisconsin DNR has included Dane County in its Air Quality Watch for tomorrow. Tomorrow, Thursday August 2nd is the fourth Clean Air Action Day of 2007.

You can help by implementing actions that reduce ground-level ozone. These activities include:

Turning off or lowering lights
Turning off computer monitors when not in use
Lowering air conditioning levels
Using public transit, biking or walking for transportation
Delaying unnecessary mowing, weed trimming, and the use of 2-cycle engines
Gassing-up vehicles in the morning or at night

I'm glad to see so many people care about the quality of the water we drink. Now, we need to start paying a little more attention to the air we breathe. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we can't point to an agency that is being mismanaged or call for a department head to resign. In this case, we all have to take responsibility.
Read more!

Making the Simple, Complicated. Updated. Twice.

Sometimes, doing the simplest thing around City Hall, can be so unnecessarily difficult if you're paying attention and trying to make things happen in a reasonable and rational manner.

Yesterday, I told you about an issue before the Board of Estimates that was asked to be referred by the Mayor's office. It's a housekeeping item, that cleans up a loophole Cintas and Octopus Car Wash found in the living wage ordinance. And it was on my long list of things to fix that I'm finally getting around to now that I have extra time on my hands.

Anyways, I got an email from City staff as follows:

Hi Brenda. The Ordinance "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" was introduced July 3rd and referred to BOE (as lead) and EDC. The EDC canceled their July 11th meeting so they will be considering it on August 1st. BOE meets July 30th and then not again until August 27th. Do you want BOE to take it "out of order" (i.e., before EDC) or can BOE wait until its August 27th meeting? Thanks.

I respond:

That would be great if you could take it "out of order". I don't think it matters in this case.

It appears on the agenda, I show up to the meeting to support it. The "staff" then asked for it to be referred. And like I said, it didn't really matter in this case, except that there was no real explanation at the time about who was requesting it or why. So I followed up and got this response from the Mayor's office who requested it:

It's a process concern. Since as you noted, there is no urgency here, the Mayor asked that it be referred out of deference to the EDC, which under council practice, would consider it first and make its recommedation to BOE as the lead committee.

Ok, fair enough. But the Mayor chairs the Board of Estimates and theoretically sets the agenda, so why was I asked if I wanted to do take it out of order if the Mayor would then oppose it? Actually, all that is beside the point. Here comes the kicker.

The Economic Development Commission canceled their July meeting where this item would have originally appeared. The August meeting, which should be tonight, is not on the Clerk's Weekly meeting schedule this morning. And the agenda for the meeting just showed up in Legistar sometime on Monday. However, the state law requires that the agenda be posted in the City Clerk's office to be legal and once the clerk posts the agenda, then, and only then, does the meeting appear on the weekly meeting schedule.

So, a routine item, introduced on June 26th now won't be considered by the Economic Development Commission until the first week in September, then the Board of Estimates can consider it and then . . . the Council can vote on it in OCTOBER. This is absurd, luckily, its not something that is urgent.

Note: After I sent my email this morning, the Economic Development Commission meeting suddenly appeared on the Clerk's Weekly Schedule, so now I've been told that if it wasn't there, it wasn't legal. But if they posted it this morning, I would think it's ok. Anyways, more to research.

UPDATE: Here's the explanation from the clerk's office. So, maybe we can get to this issue yet in September? Well, depending upon what EDC does tonight.

I just ran down to our posting area, and the agenda for tonight's EDC meeting has been posted since Monday. I still have to figure out why the meeting wasn't showing up on the online meeting schedule; it is there now.

The meeting has been properly noticed.

- Maribeth

UPDATE TWO: The issue may be a technical one:

It looks like the new system used for the online meeting schedule has a glitch that is refusing to show more than one meeting at a time for a single committee. We have Information Technology working on a solution.
- Maribeth

Read more!

Getting Involved in Transportation Planning

How would you like to participate in deciding which roads, bike paths and other transportation projects are recommended for funding by the Madison Metropolitan Planning Organization?

FROM: Robert McDonald, Transportation Planning Manager
RE: Draft MPO Public Participation Plan
DATE: July 20, 2007

The Madison Area Transportation Planning Board, the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for the Madison Urban Area, is updating its Public Participation Plan and would like your input on the best ways for the MPO to inform you about transportation planning activities and to include you in the transportation planning process.

Attached for your review and comment is a copy of the draft Public Participation Plan, which describes the public involvement procedures for development of the annual Transportation Improvement Program, future updates of the Regional Transportation Plan, and other MPO-sponsored studies. The draft plan is also available on the MPO’s Web site at www.madisonareampo.org.

The draft plan revises the existing plan adopted in 2004 to incorporate expanded public participation provisions in the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), the current legislation authorizing Federal surface transportation programs. Federal regulations require MPOs to publish and use public participation plans, and to allow 45 days for written public comment before the plan is adopted.

The following meetings have been scheduled by the Madison Area MPO staff to provide an opportunity for you to discuss your ideas with staff and provide comment on the draft plan:

Informal Information Meeting
Wed, August 15 at 5:00 Room LL110 Madison Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)
Wed., September 5 at 5:00 p.m. Room 300 Madison Municipal Building (215 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.)

You may also submit comments by phone, fax, or in writing to the address noted below, or via e-mail at wschaefer@cityofmadison.com. We would appreciate receiving them by Tuesday, September 4. Staff is also available to meet with interested persons to discuss the plan and take oral comments at the MPO offices. If you have any questions or would like to meet with staff, please contact the MPO office at 266-4663.

It is anticipated that the MPO Board will take action on the draft Public Participation Plan at either its September or October meeting, depending upon comments received at the public hearing.

Thank you for your interest.

Read more!

Dane County Comprehensive Plan

Volume 1 of the Dane County Comprehensive Plan is done and ready for public comment.

On July 2nd the Steering Committee unanimously approved and released Volume 1: Policy Recommendations for public review and comment.

There will be 2 public meetings held for summary and review.

August 2nd is at the Alliant Energy Center at 7:00 PM
August 8th is at the Fitchburg Community Center tentatively scheduled at 5:30 PM

The most current version will be available online here.

Read more!

Well 29 - Update.

You may have caught this in the Cap Times, but here's the update on putting Well 29 back into limited use.

Well 29 to Operate on Standby through September

Madison – Unit Well 29 was recently brought into service on standby status to provide a back-up water supply for neighborhoods on the far east side of Madison. The well may be needed in fire or other water emergencies. “Standby” refers to a condition in which a well operates twice per week to turn over the water in the reservoir. This action ensures that a proper chlorine residual is maintained in the water and that fresh water is regularly added to the reservoir in case it’s needed in an emergency.

Through September, Well 29 will operate on Mondays from 8:00 am to Noon and from 10:00 pm Thursday to 2:00 am Friday. Water from Well 29 will enter the distribution system during these two periods. Last year, the utility had operated the well on standby only at night (10 pm to 2 am) to minimize customer impact related to elevated levels of manganese and iron in the water. The revised schedule enables the Water Utility to have staff on-site each time the well is started up this season to ensure that the unit is functioning properly, confirm correct chlorination, and take water quality samples.

Earlier this year, the Water Utility was authorized to construct a filter at Well 29 to reduce the high levels of iron and manganese in the water. The water pumped from Well 29 has 180 parts per billion (ppb) manganese and 0.4 parts per million (ppm) iron. A filter is expected to be operational in January 2009. Until the filter goes on-line, use of Well 29 will be limited to the high-demand summer months and the well will primarily serve as a back-up water supply. The filter is being installed because levels of manganese and iron, although not high enough to cause health problems, may cause staining of laundry and plumbing fixtures.

Well 29 is located on Madison’s far east side. Homes and businesses located within the area generally bounded by Commercial Avenue, Interstate 90/94, Lien Road, and Walsh Drive may receive water from Well 29 when the well operates. Customers in the affected area are asked to contact the Water Utility (266-4654) if they experience discolored water.

Information on which well(s) serve a specific address can be found on our website, www.madisonwater.org, under the Water Quality tab, or by calling the Water Utility.


Inquiries about this update on Well 29 or water quality in general should be directed to Joseph Grande (266-4654).

Sincerely,
Joseph Grande
Water Quality Manager
Madison Water Utility
608-266-4654

Read more!