A quick 40 minute meeting, mostly an opportunity for education. The new members of the committee are Keith Furman, Rebecca Kemble, Mayor Rhodes-Conway, Shiva Bidar, Mike Verveer, Barbara McKinney and Donna Hurd. This is essentially a live blog – sorry, no editing.
Video is here
Consent Agenda
The first 5 minutes of the meeting is spent determining the consent agenda. This means that all the items on the agenda will get passed with their recommendations unless someone pulls them out (separates them) for discussion. They pull out the following items.
9 – Rhodes-Conway says that there is a substitute
Authorizing the execution of a lease with Frank Liquors of La Crosse, Inc. for office space located at 100 State Street for the Madison Area Transportation Planning Board – A Metropolitan Planning Organization (“MPO”), and authorizing the execution of a Sublease with the Capital Area Regional Planning Commission (“CARPC”) to allow CARPC shared use of such office space. (4th A.D.)
11 – Shiva Bidar asks for separation
Amending Section 12.154(5) of the Madison General Ordinances to increase the grace periods within which to pay for a parking ticket without incurring additional charges.
Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway explains for the new members that this is like the consent agenda at the council meeting.
1 – Donna Hurd asks for separation
Recreating position #529 from a 1.0 FTE Program Assistant 1 (CG 32, Range 6) to a 1.0 FTE Librarian 1 (CG 33, Range 1) in the Library budget.
19 – Mike Verveer asks for separation
Amending the 2019 Engineering Major Streets Capital Budget to transfer $1,200,000 of existing GO borrowing authority between projects Park Street, South (W Wash-Olin, RR-Badger) and McKee Rd (CTH PD) Improvements. (7th, 13th & 14th ADs)
21 – Mike Verveer asks for separation
Seeking Common Council approval of the 2019-2020 Arts Grants awards funding as recommended by the Madison Arts Commission.
McKinney asks if she can add something later in the meeting once she finds the agenda numbers. Rhodes-Conway explains that once they pass the consent agenda the items are passed. McKinney wants to pull some items off the agenda and everyone tries to help her figure out which items they are.
4 – McKinney says she has a clarifying question
Authorizing the Mayor and the City Clerk to execute an amendment to the non-competitive service contract with MSA Professional Services to provide survey and design services to mitigate flooding issues at the Hawks Landing Golf Course and surrounding neighborhood. (1st AD)
5 – McKinney says she has a clarifying question
A Resolution authorizing the Mayor and City Clerk to enter into a competitively-selected, 2-year service contract with three optional 2-year renewal terms with Ergometrics and Applied Personnel Research, Inc. as consultant for the Firefighter Applicant Process
7 – McKinney says she has a clarifying question
Amending the contract with Timmons, Inc., authorized by adopted RES-17-00228 (File 46228), to include an additional $56,000 for additional training for the implementation of the Cityworks Public Works Asset Management System.
1, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 19 and 21 are separated – all the other items are passed as they are on the agenda.
Library Staffing
Donna Hurd asks if this is a replacement? They say yes. So the Program Assistant position will no longer exist? Yes. It passes on a voice vote.
Hawk’s Landing Flooding
Barbara McKinney asks for an overview of how they have made these decisions in the past to educate the new alders. Greg Frees from City Engineering says they are in the 3rd year of storms. In 2016 they also had an event that was a 100-year event. They looked at the area themselves going back to about 2006 and as part of that they worked with Alder McKinney and wanted to hire an outside firm to review it. They hired MSA and it was under the $25,000 limit (at the time). One woman’s house has flooded 5 times and they were in a hurry to move it forward. The bad part about it was that since they didn’t put it out to a competitive bid, they had to do a non-competitive bid because they had already done a lot of work, it only made sense to have them do the rest of the work. This is the second extension and they are working on 2 changes in the plat. They hope to start construction in early August to resolve one of the two major changes. They want to go with them again so it doesn’t take more time and they can get one of the issues resolved. Passes on a voice vote.
Firefighter Applicant Process
Barbara McKinney doesn’t remember her question so Rhodes-Conway asks for an overview. Chief Davis says this is the 3rd party vendor that helps with their hiring process. They have been using this group since 2014 and they have been very satisfied with the work. He asks if there are any questions, he’s not sure what they are looking for. McKinney says that when she circled this . . . there were many she circled, so thank you.
Mike Verveer asks the Chief to explain why they use a third party vendor when the police does it in house, what is the difference. Davis says that they have done this for many years for liability and legal purposes. They do all the data collection for the process for the written examine, the interview steps (3 of them – community, oral board and chief) and the physical agility test. It all happens in that sequence. The says that they go through the process then give a list to the Police and Fire Commission and then they do the medical and background check and then that goes back to the Police and Fire Commission.
Verveer asks what the legal issues are. Chief Davis says that many cities have been sued for not following the correct process and they have a more physical nature of their job and that is where the challenges come in. This company makes sure the tests are valid and apply science to it.
Passes on a voice vote.
Cityworks Public Works Asset Management System
Rhodes-Conway asks for another overview. Dave Faust the Applications Development person from the IT Department. It money has been budgeted and is there. There is some additional training that they are looking for, they need additional spending authority. Kathy Cryan from the Engineering Department says there are 4 departments involved (Traffic Engineering, Parking, Water Utility and Engineering) and it’s not only a big undertaking but its a big change in the way they do business, particularly for people in the field. They are going from a paper system to a computer system where they will get their work orders and file paperwork on the computer. They want some time with the vendors but they will go to train the trainer afterwards.
Passes on a voice vote.
Lease for MPO and CARPC
They hand out a substitute that is at their places, no copies for the public. Matt Wachter from Real Estate says that this is a lease so the MPO and CARPC can have a shared office space at 100 State. This is new for them to be together. It’s the result of a lengthy search for space and the substitute is because they wanted to make it clear that separate IT services would be paid for separately, not jointly paid for.
Barbara McKinney asks why they are leasing space at 100 State St., why is there no lease in this building, why is it a leased space. It’s 108 (thousand!) listed annually.
Bill Schaefer, staff for the MPO says they are currently in a private office space at 121 Pinckney and have been since the MPO was split off from the RPC. They looked for spaces here and in the city-county building and there wasn’t space that was sufficient for both staffs.
Shiva Bidar says she will ask questions just so its on the record but who funds CARPC. Schaefer says “county”.
McKinney asks if it is joint with the city and the county. The city pays for a portion of the costs. Schaefer says the city will have a sublease for about half of the cost of the space.
Substitute passes on a voice vote.
Parking Ticket Grace Period
Bidar asks for a summary of this. She thinks its brilliant and she wanted to give the sponsors some time to talk about it. Michael Tierney says this isn’t an original idea. A few months ago he was reading in the Milwaukee paper that they were doing this and that times are tough for families and the initial 10 day grace period is before the next pay day and this puts them in a bind. There are a lot of families that live paycheck to paycheck. They still have to pay the ticket but it will help families manage their finances to get their next paycheck. He says the current tickets have the current ordinance information printed on them but they need to be printed and they are about to place a new order, so there won’t be waste with the current tickets. This won’t change the habits of those who don’t pay their tickets, but it will help those who are struggling to get by. It will give them a little bit of a break and not penalize them for having a tight budget.
Keith Furman says that he had lunch with Alder Tierney and he thought it was a great idea and asked to sponsor it. He says “please pay your parking tickets”, we need you to pay your tickets.
Bidar asks Attorney Michael May about the ordinance, but he hasn’t studied that section of the ordinance. May says there are some parts of the traffic code they can change and some they can’t. He asked and this is one of the parts they can change so he asked her (?) to change it. He could check on it more and get back to her. Bidar says yes, we should know what our limits are. She thanks the sponsors.
Verveer asks Finance staff about the fiscal note. He asks if there will be revenue loss, have they attempted to ascertain the negative fiscal impact. Staff seem to indicate it will be “nominal”. Off mic.
Passes on a voice vote.
$1.2M Change to Capital Budget
Verveer asks about there being more “joints” than in the original estimate and that contracts are coming in higher at bid opening. Could you speak more in detail about which was more a result of the gap in funding. Chris from Engineering says that joints are hard to predict and they have to do it one by one. You often can’t do that until you can walk it can count it and it could change after a winter. He says that this spring there were quite a bit more than they had estimated. It’s still a good project that will prolong the life of the pavement 10-15 before they need a full $6-8M reconstruction. That was a large part of the costs. They have also been receiving higher bids on arterial roads where there are issues working around existing traffic. Verveer asks if it is primarily the arterials or all projects. Chris says that if the street can be closed, those prices are holding more steady, its the ones where they have intense traffic control where they see the additional costs.
Passes on a voice vote.
Arts Grants Funding
Verveer says this is a light agenda and he says they can use it as a teaching moment about what MAC (Madison Arts Commission) does and more often than not these don’t come to the finance committee, they go straight to council and they don’t have a chance to talk about it at this table. He says he appreciates the color coded chart and he asks her to explain the hotel related items. He says that he particularly is interested in the hotel night generator items and says that the business owners were really questioning that at the Room Tax Commission and he wants to know if they are really room tax generators or not. He asks her to speak generally to the highlights and general funding vs. room tax funding.
Karin Wolf says that her understanding is that the law says that part of the funding can go for marketing your city and she hopes they agree that arts is part of what attracts people as visitors and tourists. Even tho the law says that, we also have some events that bring people to Madison. It broadly applies to all arts funding, but the ones in yellow we have data that shows it generates hotel stays. They normally have $100,000 to give to 60-70 area nonprofits. Most of it comes through the budget, 10,000 comes from the state and $15,000 comes from the room tax. That allows us to spread the money more widely. The commission spends three nights having panels hear proposals and debating the applications. They seek a balance between genres, seed money for new projects and some foundational pillar organizations that succeed year after year and although they get less money, they like to support those foundations to the arts economy.
Verveer asks if that is the ones labeled legacy. Wolf explains that the legacy ones are capped at $1,500 and the others can only get $3,000. We are trying to give them the message we still support them, but they have had more time to develop relationships with funders and donors and they want to spread the money more broadly throughout the community and seed some new projects.
Verveer says it has been many years since he served on MAC, Sheri Carter sits on there now. He asks about the other types of funding since he’s not sure if she is part of the new alder orientation. He says they still have Link grants and signature grants. Wolf says they individual artists grants, which were called the signature grants when he was on the commission – it allows artist with new or unique projects to be funded, a new exhibition or a new cd. They fund Arts Education grants. One of the goals of the commissions is to help supplement arts education, in school and extra-curricular. They also fund summer concerts and festivals. And then the different genres of arts. They give about $10,000 for BLINK grants, temporary public art. They find a location and have a concept and ask for the piece to be commissioned. This year they got an extra $20,000 from Room Tax to do “Downtown Doors” inspired by Bucky on Parade. The artists will get a license and then they will wrap the doors with things people have already created. That is about it from the operating budget.
Verveer asks if it is true that they have never had enough funding to meet all the demand. She agrees. Verveer asks if this year is representative of other years. She says it is less, but they didn’t advertise as much. They recently did a RESJI (Racial, Economic and Social Justice Initiative) analysis and that will change the way they do things. She expects that if they fully execute the recommendations they would likely get double the applications. This is fairly typical.
Rhodes-Conway asks about the withdrawn applications. Wolf says one was a East High and Children’s Museum collaboration and the capacity of the organizer was an issue. He was young and overly ambitious and couldn’t pull it all together. The other was Make Shift festival and they were unable to get a permit and they had to delay.
Passes on a voice vote.
They adjourn.
