Plan Commissioner Speaks Out . . . Re: Edgewater Process

Or at least attempts to, I'm not exactly sure what happened as he reports he was "squelched" while trying to make the statement. Here's what was attempted:

Thank you, Madame Chair. I would like to request that at a meeting in the not too distant future or at a special meeting that we have a discussion regarding our procedures and how we exactly should handle applications that are known in advance to be very controversial and that we know will take many hours to hear and decide.

Even three weeks later I, for one, don’t really wish to revisit how we handled the Edgewater’s CUP and PUD applications and the ordinance amendments that are required to make that a reality. However, I can’t shake the feeling that 1:30 in the morning on March 23rd was not exactly the Plan Commission’s finest hour. We have received a fair amount of criticism for how we acted on this application. I happen to agree with a lot of it.

At that moment we really needed to not make haste with our decision. We knew for months this applicant would be before us and what we were facing. This wasn’t a surprise. We heard hours of testimony and asked and had answered many questions and some of us needed more information. We had information dropped off at our desks that evening that I, and I suppose others, couldn’t digest at that late hour. We had asked on February 8th for information that on March 22nd wasn’t 100% complete or 100% accurate. And we knew then that we could afford to, like we planned to do on February 8th, defer the decision to the next meeting without impeding the timeline in the slightest way. Then, we thought April 20th would be when the Common Council brings up the application. Now, we know that it may be at least May before it happens. We could have taken our time.

But, it appeared that many of us believed we needed to move on those items that night and not hold up the application. So we soldiered on. One of my colleagues told me that at the time of our deliberations that he had been up over 20 and half hours. I, myself, had been up nearly 20. I’ve joked in the past about this regarding the Common Council, but now am not laughing: Sleep deprivation is what we do to suspected members of Al Quaeda at Guantanamo and then Americans have debates as to whether or not this is torture. It is not a state of mind for this or any body to make decisions that we believe are in the best interests of Madison.

I don’t wish to belabor the point, but due diligence is our primary responsibility, Madame Chair. At the last meeting and at the meeting where we decided the setback ordinance amendment on February 8th, the late hours, the grind of the meeting and external pressures resulted in us, frankly, shirking that responsibility.

And when I say “us”, I certainly include myself as being responsible for this. I do not believe that our processes are “broken processes”, but the bottom line is that we have to find a way to better do our job.

I’ll conclude by making a response I should have made to a point my friend and colleague Alder Schumacher made on March 23rd. He mentioned the Eiffel Tower in Paris and how it, like the Edgewater, was controversial and had much opposition. He’s correct in that point. But please consider for future purposes the rest of the story. Why is the Eiffel Tower so iconic in Paris’ cityscape? You see it on TV, in the movies and, if fortunate enough, in person. It defines what Paris is and looks like. But why it’s so iconic has a lot to do with Paris’ building codes. They don’t have zoning or planning like we know it. But they have very restrictive height regulations – yes, even more restrictive than Madison’s. At the offset, the maximum height for a building cannot exceed 37 meters – or about 7 or 8 stories. Then, heights are further restricted based on the width of the streets they are on. Grand boulevards like the Champs Elysee can have taller buildings but most of the streets in the centre-ville are so narrow that you almost never see buildings taller than four stories. Irony of ironies! The proposed Edgewater may become Madison’s Eiffel Tower, but it couldn’t be built in Paris. It’s simply too big!

Now, some might argue that such building codes are anti-business, or impede progress or are “profoundly undemocratic” or are part of a “broken process”, but I wouldn’t want to make that argument to the many people whose livelihoods are dependent on the over 50 million people who visit Paris every year.

Consider that food-for-thought to go with dinner tonight – which, despite my ranting, we should be able to make it to tonight. Thank you, everybody, for your time and consideration.

I'm not sure if he was allowed to finish and I don't know what happened, but regardless, I thought his comments were definitely worth sharing. Food for thought indeed.

Oh, yeah, ahem, the Commissioner was Michael Basford. That little tidbit is helpful, eh?