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.”


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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 Regional Transportation Authority Language revealed!!

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

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

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

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

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

DELETED

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

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

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

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

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

DELETED

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

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

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

DELETED

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

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

ADDED

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

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

ADDED "The University of Wisconsin"

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

DELETED

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

ADDED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DELETED

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

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

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

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

Same as it ever was . . . .

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

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

I wonder how many sponsors the Mayor's new proposal is going to have? Read more!

What's Missing?

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

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

Dear Alders,

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

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

Thank you for your consideration of this request.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz

Notice anything missing?

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

Thursday's Thoughts

Again, today, still much to blog about. So here's the schmorgasborg.
(How often do you get to use that word?!)

D'ANGELO

This whole D'Angelo thing is just a sad, disgusting situation. They should just give up the documents, now. Let's not make a bad situation worse.

REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY

Well, its about time. Tho I'm quite certain, no one really knows what they actually agreed to. Speculation is running rampant about what the agreement means and doesn't mean. In reading the press release and the "fact sheet" that was sent out with it, it seems that there are a few unresolved issues, listed as "next steps" that need to be resolved, such as:

• Work with the Governor and the Legislature to authorize the RTA.
• File the New Starts Application for Transport 2020 with the Federal Government at the end of this summer.
  
• Pass the intergovernmental agreements to form the RTA.
• Receive Federal funding.
  
• Ask citizens to decide if the sales tax is the right way to fund these transportation improvements.
  

No matter what, at least Mayor Dave and County Executive Falk at least pretending to get along. (Tho some are convinced they were only pretending to argue.) However, there is one HUGE outstanding question about all of this. Does it include trolleys? The press release and information don't even mention the word trolley, or streetcar as the Mayor prefers. However, in listening to AM radio yesterday, I heard audio of the the reporter asking if this means the trolley is dead and the Mayor replied "No. No. Not at all." Its also in the Cap Times. It looks dead. I wonder how he'll Dick Cheney his way out of this one?

BAD LANDLORDS

Disgusting Landlord of the day.

ANTI-BUSINESS

Sometimes, I gotta agree, the City of Madison is anti-business. Check out this email the entire City Council got yesterday. I don't really blame this person for being upset.

Dear Alders,

I want to give you an update on the adventures of being a small bookstore in this fine city. I have been waiting for the application I must now fill out to be able to buy secondhand textbooks in the city of Madison starting July 1 ( this coming Sunday). It is still not on the city clerk's web page, but my alderperson Ms. Konkel did have the city atty. office e-mail me a copy on Tuesday. It took me a day and a half to get the information from my employees, since it is information that is not legal for an employer to ask when hiring people ( i.e. birth dates, and if they have been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor). But I did take the time and call everyone that was not working that day and filled out the form. Today, Wed., I checked the city web page to find the hours of the city clerk's office and it states that the office is open until 4:30pm. I biked up the street and got there at 4:20 to hand in my application and pay my fee only to be told that they turn off the computers at 4:15 since they leave at 4:30 and have buses to catch. Yes, indeed, everyone had their bags and flowers from the market in hand ready to head out.

Now, I know everyone works hard, and the staff was nice, but they did not have anything to offer me except to come back tomorrow.

I know this is not the way I run my business, and I don't think it is the way to run a city. I close at 8pm and pay my employees until 8:15 so they have time to close down the computers, etc. At the very least, the city web page should state that the office closes at 4:15pm.

Maybe it is not just rhetoric when people say the city is not business friendly. I certainly I am feeling that way today.

Read more!

Trains and Trolleys Follies

Someone needs to lock County Executive Kathleen Falk and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in a room, give them a stern lecture on how they are potentially limiting our community's ability to move forward with transit options and then not let them out until they can stop all this silliness and agree to act in a manner that is not harmful to our community. Much of the discussion about transit options seems a bit of a mystery to me, mostly because it occurs in a long list of committees in a very fractured manner or worse yet, in private meetings where the public and many elected officials are excluded from the discussion. In the City of Madison alone, we have appointed people to the following committees (I hope I didn't miss any):

• Transit and Parking Commission
• Pedestrian, Bicycle and Motor Vehicle Commission
• Long Range Transportation Planning Commission
• Transportation 2020
• Madison Streetcar Study Committee
• Platinum Bike Task Force
• Ad Hoc Long Range Madison Metro Committee (sorry, got that name wrong)
• Parking Utility Strategic Plan
• MPO
• High Speed Intercity Rail

Meanwhile, the Common Council ends up isolated from the discussion, partially because some of these committees have their own independent abilities (Transit and Parking Commission and Metropolitan Planning Organization) and partially because this discussion can get quite technical and detailed and a small number of people become "experts" in this area and the rest simply don't have the time to keep up on the discussion.

At the moment, the way I understand it, there is a huge problem with either commuter rail or streetcars moving forward in any way, shape or form simply because we won't be able to submit competing applications to the federal government. And as long as this discussion about commuter rail and streetcars remains in this weird state that it is in, we seem to be in a stalemate.

Most people I talk to realize that Transport 2020 (starting with commuter rail) is in the best position to move forward at the moment and feel that it should happen. Then some people, actually a very few, think that trolleys can become part of that plan in the future. Many, many others think that trolleys are dead in the water.

One of the major stumbling blocks for Transport 2o2o moving forward is how a commuter rail system would be governed and funded. One of the key ways to fund any of these projects would be to form a Regional Transit Authority (RTA). And, in the next few days we have the opportunity to get the state legislature to give us the authority (and several other communities around Wisconsin) to create a RTA. Currently, we don't have the legal authority to create a RTA.

Now, here's where the locking the two executives in the room comes in . . . the possibility of having an RTA move forward is in jeopardy as Kathleen Falk and Mayor Dave argue over the details of what the RTA should look like. It seems, or so I've been told, their disagreement lies in what the state legislature allows the boundaries of an RTA to be. Their disagreement seems to stem from distrust over if this RTA would fund streetcars or be limited in a way that would exclude portions of the county. Could a few municipalities to form an RTA or does it need to be countywide?

As the two of them argue, the deadline for the state legislature to put this language in the budget slips away and in the end, our community may end up with nothing, for now. This silliness has to end if we are to move forward. We need to get them to come to some agreement over RTA language at the state level so that we, and several other communities in Wisconsin, can continue work on these transportation plans that have been in the works for years. And someway, we need to get this conversation into the public realm so that these two can't single-handedly continue to be obstacles to good transit planning for our community.


(Links will be added in just a bit . . . ) Read more!

Trolleys: Missing Information, Stretched Numbers?

I was talking with a few alders about trolleys the other day and tried to look up additional information about them. Someone was telling me that they had identified 91 development sites along a proposed route that were going to help raise taxes to pay for the system. I wanted to see the information that was provided. Their advice, read the Wisconsin State Journal? That wasn't a very satisfactory answer, but the information wasn't available anywhere else.

First, I checked the last agenda (4/23/07) of the Streetcar Committee. No links or additional information were provided.

Then, I checked the streetcar portion of the City website. Also, no recent information about routes, ridership, budget or development sites. Many of the minutes of the meetings seem to be missing? Or didn't they meet since November?

Finally, they were correct, I looked at the Wisconsin State Journal on-line and found some information. I didn't find the map I wanted to see, but I did find this article that had some budget information. And this article that mentions the 91 development sites, but no map. Now I hate to rely on a newspaper article to be accurate, but if this information is true, it's absurd. It starts off with:

The potential first phase of a Madison streetcar system would cost $58 million to build and would increase Downtown property values enough to offset some of that cost, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Monday.

Then it tells us that:

Based on the effect that the consultants say the streetcars have had in other U.S. cities such as Portland, Ore., Tacoma, Wash., and Tampa, Fla., the properties would increase in value by 5 percent to 10 percent five years after groundbreaking, or about $100 million to $200 million, Cieslewicz said, citing the study. That would generate about $720,000 to $1.4 million a year, based on 2007 property tax rates.

Unless they forgot to report something, that means that it will take 41 - 80.5 years to pay for just building the tracks, if the cost and taxes remain in proportion.

If the feds (we) pay for half, it will be 20 - 40 years.

And then, if all that money goes to the trolley, where will the taxes to serve those additional properties with police and fire services etc., come from? And finally, where will the money for operating costs of the trolley system come from? Surely, the fares won't cover the costs to run the trolley system.

Too bad more information isn't available to the public. Or even council members. Read more!

Trolley Referenda

My referendum (Cap Times) is better than your referendum (no print press coverage?). Sigh, a classic case of the politics of "me too". And a classic example of us talking about the wrong thing. Instead of talking about a referendum on trolleys, we should be talking about improvements we can make to the bus system today.

As way of background, on Wednesday, the Common Council got this email from the Munoz campaign.

From: Munoz for Madison
Sent: Wed 1/24/2007 2:49 PM
To: Thomas, Cindy; Bruer, Tim; Radomski, Noel; Van Rooy, Paul; Rosas, Santiago; Compton, Judy; Palm, Larry; Knox, Isadore; Benford, Brian; Gruber, Timothy; Golden, Ken; Skidmore, Paul; King, Austin; Brandon, Zach; Olson, Judy; Verveer, Mike; Sanborn, Jed; Konkel, Brenda; Webber, Robbie; Cnare, Lauren
Subject: Munoz calls for Trolley/ Streetcar Referendum

Dear Council Members:

Today I released a statement asking you to place an advisory referendum on the April 3rd ballot. The referendum asks voters whether the City should consider installing streetcars/trolleys as part of its public transportation system.

I hope you will take this opportunity to support the advisory referendum so taxpayers can decide the future of Mass Transit within our community. I would greatly appreciate your support in providing voters the opportunity to express their will on this important issue. Please feel free to call me for further discussion.

Best Regards,


Peter R. Munoz
[phone number deleted]


MUNOZ for MADISON
NEWS RELEASE


For Immediate Release:
January 24, 2007
For More Information Contact:
Napoleon Smith
[phone number deleted]

Peter Munoz, Mayoral Candidate, Calls for Madison Voter Referendum on Streetcars/Trolleys

Madison - City of Madison mayoral candidate Peter Munoz is calling for a voter referendum on whether the City should consider installing streetcars/trolleys as part of its public transportation system. The referendum is to be included on the April 3, 2007 ballot.

Peter Munoz stated: "Mayor Cieslewicz dreams of having streetcars/trolleys in Madison. This is a very expensive dream that Madison simply does not need or can afford. I think Madison taxpayers do not agree with the Mayor nor want to foot the bill to make his dream a reality."

Mayor Cieslewicz wants to pay for trolleys by combining Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) with room tax and other local funding. Peter Munoz stated: "The City is facing a crisis with its inability to provide basic services, such as safe, clean drinking water, and assuring public safety. The City must ensure its resources are invested wisely to address this crisis rather than spend them in pursuit of frivolous dreams. Taxpayers simply cannot afford to pay for the Mayor's vision of a 'cool' transit alternative. They must have the last word on this issue."

By Thursday, Mayor Dave was calling for his own referendum.

Ignoring the politics of trolleys and the upcoming Mayor's race, is a referendum or referenda on trolleys what we need as a City? Don't we need the community discussion on the transportation options available to us? Safe, reliable, affordable mass transportation is clearly a need in a City like ours. I'm skeptical that trolleys are the way to get us there and prefer to see us putting all this time and energy and media attention into the bus system. Why aren't we focusing on studying the bus system and improvements that could be made there? Changes to the bus system can happen within the year, we won't see a trolley, or light rail or intercity rail for years.

Part of me is tempted to support an immediate referendum on the trolley issue to put the issue to rest so we can move on to some real discussions about what our city's mass transportation needs are. Part of me thinks the community discussion on ALL of the transportation options is a better way to go. However, based on past experiences, I'm skeptical that this community discussion will happen in a meaningful way. But . . . the Mayor's press release on this said something that has some appeal. It calls for:

. . . a three-step process:

1. Allow the Streetcar Study Committee to complete its proposal for a streetcar system sometime this summer.

2. Evaluate that proposal together with recommendations from other committees reviewing transit issues, such as Transport 2020, which is studying commuter rail, and the Mayor's ad hoc committee on the long-term future of the Madison Metro bus system.

3. If there is agreement to go ahead with the streetcar or a more comprehensive proposal, he would take that to a public referendum before the project moved forward.

It's hard to ignore the mayoral politics going on here and make a decent decision. It is hard to trust that any decision about public transportation is going to have meaningful community input, given past promises of public input. It is hard to see us likely wasting all this time on discussions of trolleys when it seems unlikely to be a viable solution for our community and meanwhile, not focusing on improvements to the bus system - that can happen now.

Referendum now or later doesn't seem to be the solution. We need a firm, detailed commitment for a meaningful community discussion - i.e. not the way we usually do it. It's unfortunate that the Council will be discussing trolley referenda at the next Council meeting when we will likely have more pressing needs on our agenda . . . like Allied Drive and the reorganization of the Department of Planning and Development (proposed to be Department of Economic and Community Development) and meanwhile, we won't be talking about the City bus system.
Read more!

An agenda for the City

This spring's elections need to be about more than water, trolleys and taxes. Yes, our water needs to be safe to drink. What candidate isn't going to say that? Yes, we need to keep our taxes in line. What candidate isn't going to say that? And trolleys, well, there's so little support, or need, for them they're hardly worth talking about. We need to get down to some issues that the City of Madison will have to deal with in the next few years, that haven't gotten so much attention. Here's a list of things I worked with Progressive Dane members to come up with, that we hope to hear this spring's candidates talking about and hopefully supporting. Don't let candidates running for office get away with vague statements about supporting economic development and local small businesses, improving Madison Metro, supporting creation of affordable housing, etc. Ask them, what they intend to do to work on these issues. Here's a few of our ideas.

Economic Development

• We need the Economic Development Commission to finally get that Economic Development Plan for the City done. The last time we had a plan was 1983.
  
• We want to see a local small business bus pass purchasing pool so small businesses can provide free bus passes to their employees similar to programs of large employers at local hospitals and the University.
  
• We need a local purchasing preference for City purchases so that when we can, we keep our money in our local economy. (Local doesn't mean limiting our purchases to businesses in the City of Madison, we can look more broadly at the regional economy.)
  
• We need to make sure that when we talk about job creation, we are not only talking about high skilled bio-tech jobs, but instead, jobs that people with few skills can get into after some training and have a career path or chance for advancement.

TIF

• When talking about TIF, we need make sure that the City of Madison is setting the goals and priorities, not simply responding to individual developer proposals.
• We want to make sure that there are clear community benefits to providing TIF assistance. The City should set goals for the number of jobs and amount of workforce housing we need. We should also prioritize areas we feel are in need of redevelopment.
  
• We should work on methods to have TIF assist small businesses, perhaps by helping them buy affordable condo space for their businesses.
  
• High-end condos in the downtown are no longer needed to spur revitalization of the downtown; we need to be looking at workforce housing throughout the City.
  
• Finally, as with economic development, we want to make sure the jobs we create or retain with TIF funds are jobs that low skilled people can obtain with a little training and have opportunities for advancement.

Allied Drive

• We need a plan; an agreed upon strategy for redeveloping the neighborhood. We need this sooner rather than later. We need to agree how much affordable housing we want to have in the area and how affordable it will be. We need to agree on how much of the new housing will be rental vs. ownership.
  
• We need a clear strategy to keep people in the neighborhood, not pushing them around and simply moving low-income neighborhoods throughout the City as we have done in the past. Removing people from the neighborhood and moving in all new people should not be considered a success.
• As landlords are forced to clean up their properties, we need to make sure that families who are not a part of the problem are not displaced from the neighborhood. The City owned properties should be part of the solution to preventing displacement of current residents.
• We need to utilize the City owned properties to help residents with less than stellar rental records or credit records rehabilitate their records to help move them into successful housing - either rental or ownership, as appropriate.
  

Strong neighborhood services

• If we're going to have a "one stop shop" for businesses, we can have something similar for neighborhoods
• We need strong neighborhood plans for more areas of the City that are new to seeing development proposals.
• We need to be more customer-friendly to neighborhoods, not just for developers.

Neighborhood policing and preventative services

• We need more neighborhood officers, not less. We need officers in the neighborhoods in the evenings when social services providers go home for the day. Neighborhood policing is a key to prevention and removing the neighborhood officers is a step backwards.
• We need to be increasing preventative social services to address issues with people prior to turning to our busy police department for law enforcement.

Safe, affordable, reliable mass transportation

• We need mass transit in this City that works for the people who work non-traditional hours. 2nd and 3rd shift workers should be able to use the bus to get to work and home again. During the holidays, bus schedules should match extended retail hours.
• We need more frequent bus service so transit dependent people don't spend hours trying to get to where they need to go and to encourage more riders to feel like the bus is a viable option.
• Express buses between the transfer points and during peak hours.

Childcare

• When it comes to childcare, we need to continue to work to continue to fill the gap for those who have low-income jobs. If you're working and 50% or more of your income is going towards childcare, it quickly becomes unaffordable to live in this City. While we increased the funding for the childcare tuition assistance program this year, we still have not closed the gap.
  
• High quality affordable childcare is key to the future of our schools and our community. We need to work to make high quality childcare available and a viable option for more families in our community.

Affordable housing

• We need to fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. At the moment, it is going to take over 20 years before the fund grows to the point where it generates significant money to invest in affordable housing. Putting $300,000 - $500,000 a year into the fund is not putting our money to its best use. Capitalizing the fund quickly simply is more effective, it, too, is an investment in our future.
• We need an affordable housing strategy for Madison. With State restrictions on what we can do when it comes to affordable housing, we need to invest money into affordable housing and we need a strategy to do that most effectively.

Transparent, accessible government

• We need better information available to the public in a more timely manner.
• We need a clearer budget process with more information.
  
• Our public input process needs to be more meaningful and generally speaking, the public needs to feel like their voices are being heard and the government is serving them.

To sum it all up, our government has to work, not only for the business community, but also for the people that make the business community successful, their employees. An affordable safe place to live, an affordable dependable bus system to get to work, daycare that doesn't eat up half your paycheck and a job with opportunities for advancement are just as much basic services our government should be addressing as plowed streets and safe drinking water. We need to make sure Madison is a high quality place to live for everyone, not just catering to the needs of the business community.

p.s. More to come. I know there are criticisms of some of our issues and I will address them in the coming weeks.
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It's agreed, we're "Skeptical"

Last night, at the Progressive Dane General Membership meeting, we had a little discussion on trolleys. Some of our candidates were hearing quite a bit of anger over the trolleys when they were knocking on doors and we decided to get a sense of the membership. Needless to say, there wasn't anyone willing to stand up and tell us why trolleys were a good idea. Some of the comments are as follows:

1. We want affordable, accessible, frequent and 24 hour transportation choices and we're not convinced trolleys can be affordable.
2. What is the problem we're trying to solve? The busses already run where the trolleys would run. Why would loyal bus riders get off the busses and pay more to ride the trolley?
3. A thought that there were other options to be explored and while we want to consider innovative and new ideas, this doesn't seem to be the answer.
4. Experiences in other cities might not be all they are saying that they are, we heard anecdotes of people not liking the expensive trolleys and their construction in other cities.
5. The only argument for them are that they are "cool" and that's not enough.
6. Many weren't convinced that the argument that this would create economic development was a solid argument.
7. There are questions about how trolleys interact with bike lanes and the danger of crossing the tracks for our many bikers in this City.
8. Will the overhead wires lead to more butchering of our trees ala MG&E?
9. There's no demand for trolleys.
10. While we are "skeptical", no one seemed ready to vote against them until we saw the results of the study.

I'm sure you can add many other things to this list like trolley tracks can't be flexible, fix the bus system instead, why would we rip up streets we just reconstructed (State St and E. Washington), they should run to the airport and downtown hotels if we're going to do it and much giggling over Shelbyville and the monorail. And I'm sure there are many more comments. Bottom line is, I'm hard pressed to find people in this City that are behind the trolleys. And at best, people are skeptical. Read more!

Trolleys vs Busses

A recent article in the Isthmus by Vikki Kratz about the Mayor suggesting that we pay for his street car proposal with local funds prompted one foron to ask "Is Mayor Dave insane?" I chimed in with my two cents:

Alternative? Busses.

1. They aren't restricted to one area (there's more flexibility) - they can change routes when necessary for greater efficiency.

2. If more people rode busses them we could have better (more frequent and longer) service.

and now I feel the need to lay out an alternative vision, so after sitting on the Transit and Parking Committee for three years, here it is:

1. Add express buses that go between the transfer points. One going clockwise, one going counter clockwise as well as a route running North/South and East/West. (Hopefully this will cut down on some ridiculously long rides people need to take.)

2. Run busses so that people who work 2nd and 3rd shift can ride the busses to work. i.e. Run limited bus routes all night. This might even be eventually expanded help prevent some drunk driving late night.

3. Late night, run smaller busses. (If we can buy a trolley with local funds, we can buy some smaller busses.)

4. Run express busses from park and ride lots in Sun Prairie, Verona, McFarland, Waunakee etc.

5. If these busses run and are more reliable, we should have more riders. More riders may mean we could increase the frequency of the busses, so people don't have to wait an hour for the next bus.

6. Make sure we find a way for small businesses to get in on the bus pass deals that the University and other big businesses can. In other words, have a purchasing pool for small businesses to buy bus passes for their employees.

7. Stop raising fares and discouraging riders and placing bus rides out of reach for low-income people.

8. Allow people to buy half-month bus passes for those who don't have enough money together to buy a full-month bus pass.

I'm sure I missed a few good ideas I've heard over the years . . . may add more later . . . but now, back to the streetcars . . .

So, the Streetcar Study Committee was supposed to have a report to the Common Council by November 1, 2005. They're a little late. I've heard estimates that the trolley would cost 100M and I don't know how much of that is operating costs vs. capital costs, but I'm guessing my plan would be a better long term investment, be more flexible and responsive to changing needs and with hybrid deisel-electric busses can be more enviro-friendly than our current system. Our 2006 Transit Utility budget has the Transit Utility spending $43,940,821 but the City of Madison is only contributing $9,238,720 (21%). Could you imagine what the $100M could do for the bus system? And, after all, a trolley downtown isn't going to serve most of Madison and we'll still need our bus system to operate efficiently, lets put our efforts there.

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Surface Parking Lot . . . Brilliant!!!

So, the Gorman project is dead.

No TIF generator for the TIF District . . . no users for Central Park . . . no riders for the trolley . . . no kids for Lapham School . . . no catalyst for revitalizing the E. Washington corridor . . . no affordable housing options for workers in the downtown area . . . brilliant! Just brilliant! Read more!