This is going to be not up to par . . .
Here's some numbers for you to help sum up the evening:
- 2 - 2.5 hours spent on other issues.
- Over 50 speakers - seemingly even for and against.
- Hundreds of phone calls and emails.
- They did the questions every 10 speakers, so the public testimony went until after 2:00.
- 5.5 hours of testimony and questions.
- 3 hours of debate.
- 4 planning staff, 2 clerks, 2 economic development staff, 1 city assessor, 1 city engineer, 1 comptroller, 4 Mayor's staff, 2 city attorneys there well after midnight. And after 2:00 only lost one Mayor's staff. I'm not sure, but we may have lost a few more along the way.
- 5 pizzas ordered by council members.
- Over 30 members of the public still here until 2:00.
- 17 alders present. (3 absent - Pham-Remmele, Schumacher and Compton)
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- 74 people registered in support not wishing to speak
- 29 people registered in opposition not wishing to speak
- 4 people taken to detox at Dusty's party (Just kidding)
- 2:22 they take a 10 minute break, and the mayor tells them to return at 2:35 . . and I think they nearly started on time! (Unlike the first 10 minute break that took 30 minutes)
- 11 hours of meeting
- 5 sleeping staff
- 8 bleary-eyed bloggers and media stayed til the end.
- 12 of 14 votes to override the Landmarks Commission.
- 5 no votes. (Rummel, Verveer, Solomon, Cnare, Rhodes-Conway)
- 0 winners.
I'm going to eat something, take a shower, take my car to the shop (no power steering) and get to work, and see what I can do on this blog, but for now, suffice it to say . . . this is one of those "wins" that while I believe the correct outcome was achieved because they had to follow the law, everyone lost and not many are happy with the results.
Brenda -- if you have time to recap (I stayed up only until 1:30 am) as to the legal rationale used by those alders who voted to overturn.
ReplyDeleteI am espcially interested in how they construed that Hammes (who is not the "owner" and the City Attorney should be embarassed by his "legal" analysis in his memo on that issue) had suffered a serious hardship that was not self-created. As we learned at the meeting, Hammes does not even own the property yet.
At one point, Hammes' team argued that they could not even set-back the building 15 feet as it would encroach on NGL. What a joke, NGL owns 28% of the Edgewater (and Faulkners own balance) -- another thing learned at the meeting.
Why do these council members think the law applies only to George Bush?
Thank you for including the names of those who voted to uphold. Neither Madison.com or channel3000 have included those yet . . . each time I think the content on those sites couldn't get worse, it does.
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing out every negative point you could and having a hand in killing the project. You should be proud.
ReplyDeleteThanks to the 5 alders who voted to uphold the Landmarks Commission ... I think the mayor needs to have a little more respect for the work that went on in that commission and I hope he gets that he can't just strong arm folks when he feels like it
ReplyDeleteand thank you for your reporting and ongoing dedication to the city
Thank you for your dedication to your readers, Brenda. As to anonymous, above, Ms. Konkel's point of view on this topic has been very clear from the outset. We know where she stands. Reading this account after a good night's sleep is, I think, a far better experience than I would have had, had I gone to Dusty's party.
ReplyDeleteOffered as constructive criticism...
ReplyDeleteI'm proud to be a Liberal. I cheered when the Mayor wrote an article oh so long ago about reclaiming the word "Liberal." A big part about being Liberal is listening and governing to the will of the people, and I think most Liberals would agree with that statement.
On issue after issue, year after year year now, the Mayor has violated this basic tenant of Liberalism. So many of us who helped get him elected and stood by him even after several issues where he didn't do what most Liberals wanted, can only be taken advantage of for so long.
I think recently, he's gone too far without throwing us enough bones, and it might be starting to come back to bite him now. I know for a fact that myself and several friends would've become active on the Edgewater issue if we felt the Mayor represented us still. Perhaps that extra organizing would've been enough to get this through. Instead, most of us now are calling him "Dictator Dave" rather than going to bat for him when he asks.
This is 100% based on his actions over a long period of time. As we teach our kids, there are consequences to your decisions. I haven't really followed the Edgewater issue that much, but if the Mayor hadn't eroded my trust in him, I certainly would've pressed my Alder to back him up on this if he asked us to do that.
Good news is, he can still get us back. As Randy Newman sings in a song, "God bless the potholes down on Memory Lane..." and I'd be happy to have his back and help him navigate around future legislative potholes if he'd start listening to those who got him into office.
What'll it be, Mr. Mayor?
(by the way Brenda you're a treasure for doing this work. Thank you! Hmmmm....Mayor Konkel? Kind of like the sound of that...)
Bob Dunn is a very good salesman.
ReplyDeleteMayor Dave? Not so much.
And a partridge in a pear tree.........
ReplyDeleteIt was probably the right decision per the ordinance. However, in terms of policy, it highlights a HUGE problem: You can build any type of crap in a greenfield in Madison -- the big box ordinance is a paper tiger -- where there are no NIMBYs. But if you try to do infill, which the comp plan smiles on, God help you because the NIMBYs have dozens of ways to cut you down or at least make your life miserable and add so much uncertainty to the time line that you don't even try. The mayor exacerbated the problem by making the Edgewater, which was always a risk to fail at Landmarks and Board of Zoning Appeals (on the lake setback), the test case for this, rather than championing one of the hotel projects near Monona Terrace.
ReplyDeleteYes, "the mayor exacerbated the problem."
ReplyDeleteThat's something he's quite good at (snojob, undemocratic).