The B team is in charge. Shiva Bidar-Sielaff is in the chair, Joe Clausius is making the motions. The Mayor’s plane is late but he shows up at the end just in time for the introductions of items from the floor.
ROLL CALL
I think Cnare and Palm are the only ones truly missing. But Bruer wasn’t in his chair all night. In fact, the majority of the seats in the room were pretty much empty – not much of interest to the public I guess.
Clausius moves to suspend the rules. Passes unanimously without discussion.
HONORING RESOLUTIONS
The UW Football team had a resolution honoring them, they snubbed the council and didn’t show up, didn’t even send one person.
PETITIONS AND COMMUNICATIONS
Passes without discussion – its an attachment from the Town of Middleton.
MINUTES
Number 3, fixing the minutes from last time is approved. It’s rare to see minutes on the agenda.
EARLY PUBLIC COMMENT
Another racist rant by Will Sanstrom – you can catch part of it here. He starts out talking about how his father died from alcoholism in the back seat of his car and how a grandchild was murdered but I didn’t understand what he was saying and then I turned the recorder on . . .
There was another person registered to speak early, Greg (Higher? Hire?)
CONSENT AGENDA
13 – Ad hoc committee on moped parking – referral to Feb 7 meeting
55 – Selling land to Health Center – correction, simple majority vote required, can stay on consent agenda
58 – Restricting Alcohol in City-County Building Ordinance – city-county liaison recommends approval
71 – Correction on the referral, instead of Board of Public Works, should go to Committee on the Environment and Board fo Public Health
77 – Study of (fireworks?) contamination on Warner Park and Lagoons, Board of Public Works should be lead referral
14 – 2/3 vote for appointments to BID board and plan commission
29 – Brownfield remediation grants for E Washington – 15 vote item
So, they are passing everything on the agenda as noted unless just mentioned and pulling out items 4 – 12 which are public hearing items and item 31 for which there is a speaker.
That passes.
PAUSE
It’s not 6:45, so they pause, Mark Clear welcomes the new fire chief to his first meeting.
They eventually move on to item
ITEM 31 – E WASHINGTON $175K ON MORE CONSULTING FEES
Mary Jo Walters – This item is about the Capitol East District, someone told me to come and speak, I do not know how to speak before knew what is happening, tried to read the BUILD, it talks about the East Corridor and I researched it, as much as I could at the Victory Cafe, I am not a representative of Occupy Madison, but it is home for the resistance movement. The idea of the East corridor being discussed in not a 10 year back view would be very disappointing, the Neighborhood Association and consultants didn’t talk to Occupy Madison, how could they, we weren’t there. We’ve got a think tank going on in terms of land use and civic responsibility so I’m inviting myself and others from Occupy Madison to get involved in the corridor plan, won’t make it to meetings always, but it would be great – we are on the ground, not getting paid. Please consider the fact that our economic situation is in crisis, that will happen for the next 10 years, condos that block the view won’t help us, the last time she was here she saw that they allowed a building to be built. It looked like it was ok to block the view for rich people to look out to the lakes, people on the ground are opposed to the higher building at 700 E Wash, she hopes that the timelines don’t come in a hypervolt way and you try to reach out to the community.
No discussion or acknowledgement of the speaker by the council. Passes unanimously on a voice vote.
RECESSED PUBLIC HEARINGS
Goodman Community Center Liquor License
There are two registrants. Jason Tish in support, not wishing to speak. Mary Jo Walters in opposition, does not wish to speak.
Clausius has Marsha Rummel make the motion – she says they will re-refer one more time, they recess the public hearing and refer to Feb. 7th council meeting.
That motion passes without discussion on a voice vote.
Honeybees
Clausius moves to recess and refer to plan commission, seconded.
They stop, open the public hearing, Clausius makes the motion again.
Satya Rhodes-Conway says that for their info, she is working on a substitute for this, but also it has not been to all the committees because of lack of quorum and the Board of Public Health asked to see it again. It will be back as a substitute.
It passes unanimously.
Project on Bassett/Dayton/WJohnson
Clausius moves to recess the item and refer to plan commission – seconded and passes.
PUBLIC HEARINGS
Demolition of church and school for apartments and other items.
No registrants, Clausius moves approval and second.
Clear suggests open and close all the public hearings at once.
Bidar-Sielaff says there is a registrant on #9.
Steve King moves approval of all items with recommendation of the plan commission.
Winnedbago St. Project
Dave Porterfield urges support, they are putting together the financing, some of the housing will be affordable and for people with permanent disabilities.
Paul Larson is in opposition. He’s really nervous and not used to public speaking and says he did a bad job speaking at Plan Commission and so he has a written statement to correct some things. He planned to speak at plan commission about why they should not get the PUD, he was struck by lack of understanding of surrounding area, by questions of specifics of the design and then he lost his point rambling about why neighborhood view might be different. His attempts to remember caused him to misspeak, and make his point. If there are questions from neighborhood’s perspective, he will be available, and he will make it short and brief before heart explodes. The first mis-statement is that there was support for the organization and its goals, the dissent is with density and lack of parking. There are also separate concerns of abilities to manage and maintain the property and the concentration of affordable housing in the area. The second mis-statement is that this would displace artist co-op. He meant to say artist community, they rent to the artist community. It’s no accident that there is a wheel chair ramp in front of his house or that worked for 4.5 years with people with disabilities, it is hard to find housing. He splits a 2 bedroom with his brother. The only way to afford rent is to move into apartment that was cheap because of a shooting in the apartment below him and re-negotiating his rent and not having them replace the carpeting which has rainbow stripes. This is not a good site. This is a artist community and sector 67, these are projects that support artists and entrepreneurship. They bring people with disposable income into the area. This is Adam and Johns property to develop as they see fit, but we don’t have to give the illusion that this is a good project by granting the PUD and opening it up for public funding. It is displacing two worthy projects that provide more benefit to the community.
Buzzer goes off. They allow him to speak for one more minute.
He says there is more benefit now without the need for public financing, the artist studio is at capacity at 100% market rate. There is already class A office space and apartments that are empty. The city is displacing residents and serving no one, this density could be better elsewhere, there will be two construction crews working in that area at the same time and that will drive up the cost of both projects. Also, it is at a low point in the land and there will be flooding.
Adam Churn, the owner is available for questions.
They move to adopt and there is no discussion or acknowledgement of the speakers. Passes.
INTRODUCTIONS FROM THE FLOOR
7:03 – mayor walks in
Bidar-Sielaff says there is a registrant on #74 but because it is for introduction, they don’t allow speakers on those items and they can speak when it is on the agenda for action.
Clausius has legistar item 25093, purchase of note from Madison Metropolitan School District of $2.77M, they refer that to the Board of Estimates.
Clausius has legistar item 24961, a new class A beer license application for 4810 East Washington Ave. Refereed to the Alcohol License Review Commission.
ADJOURN
7:05
MAYOR ANNOUNCEMENT
The mayor yells out “wait a second”, and says that all those who offered to help pay the wager on the Badgers, he is here waiting for the checks, “we owe them!”
I didn’t see anyone bring him a check, one alders asked how much they owed, the mayor said “a lot”.
Mayor yells out again “Come on all you welchers”
I wish the council would discuss these issues. Not sure what the right answer was, but felt like the community was done a disservice. And, it would be nice if there were a few good examples of how the issues can be addressed so when the egregious ones come forward, people can distinguish between the two.