Often, what happens at Board of Estimates is considered to be a preview of what will happen at the Common Council . . . if the Mayor’s appointments represent a cross section of the council (plastic bag ban, TIF agreement on Capital West, stimulus money, personnel issues and paid sick leave for city staff).
START
The meeting started with only 4 members there (Bruer, Sanborn, Clear and Clausius). The agenda can be found here.
Stimulus money item was skipped for later.
PERSONNEL ITEMS
They quickly dispensed of items 2 – 19 which were all personnel items. Some of the items I pointed out were
– Mini reorganization in Community Development Block Grant office – here and here.
– Police are getting a new LTE position
– Human Resources folks seem to be getting raises – here, here, here and here.
– Finally, after 3 years, sick leave for hourly employees!! We put it in the budget 3 years in a row and they finally are going to have the ability to spend the money!
Thanks to Clear for asking what’s going on with all the personnel changes. The answer, of course, is “nothing to see here”. Except, the impact of all these incremental changes come at budget time, when the council has no ability to do anything. Clear asked the right questions, but I think the answer was tantamount to “none of your business”. This is a tough area, as personnel drives so much of the budget, there is no alder on the Personnel committee and the Board of Estimates is mostly told to stay out of it. So, who’s looking at the bigger picture and strategy when it comes to personnel costs throughout the city? I think that this is the biggest investment we make, and most of the time the city gets it right, but there are certain things happening that don’t seem quite fair.
Also in these items was the paid sick leave. They explained that is it was already being implemented for the unions and the ordinance makes it applicable to non-represented employees. The Mayor bristled at the fact that the Council put the money in the budget instead of it being bargained and the comptroller said it was now going to cost $75,000 – 150,000, which is WAY OFF of the projections they previously made ($60,000). The mayor says that the paid sick leave has already been implemented this year. It’s about time after us budgeting it in 2007 (not implemented), 2008 (not implemented) and again in 2009.
All the items passed unanimously on a voice vote.
POLICE OVERTIME
Assistant Chief Davenport said that the fact that it went down was a result of the new police officers. He said that briefing overtime was up, but the demand-driven overtime was better – however, Terri Genin pointed out that there wasn’t the extraordinary event overtime as there as been in the past, which seems to be the biggest chunk of savings.
The Mayor seems a little sassy, giving Bidar–Sielaff grief for sitting in Alder Verveers seat “self appointing” herself to the Board of Estimates.
Report passes unanimously on a voice vote.
PLASTIC BAG ORDINANCE
George Dreckman explains this is the only ordinance of the kind in the country. He says that other cities either ban the use (usually restricted to larger stores or those with a certain number of chains), charge a fee or tax the bags (Irish model, but we can’t do it), require retailers to take take the bags back (not clear if they actually get recycled) or require biodegradable bags (cost is the biggest issue there). The Mayor asked about if we could ban the use of them, and I don’t think he got the answer he thought he would, George says that we do have the legal authority to do it according to at least on assistant city attorney (who no longer works for the city). There also is the issue of how the bags would be picked up – including perhaps another separate container to put the bags in – which is dicey so for now, it sounds like they would have drop off sites. The ordinance they are passing is just the ban and they will figure out how to implement it, and pay for it, later. In the future, we could pay for for recycling in our normal recycling containers when our contract comes up with the people who do the recycling for us – but that will have to wait 2.5 years until the contract is renewed. Alder Compton says she’d like to have curb side pick up a few times a year. George makes clear you can still use plastic bags to pick up after your dog or line your trash can. They want to encourage reuse of the bags. The Mayor makes it clear that the violation for throwing away a bag is the same as throwing away a pop can – which you can be fined for. But, they basically said that no one will really ever get fined. They continued to talk about the issue for nearly an hour. Sanborn spoke most vehemently against the ordinance, and I think the only one to vote against it.
REDOING MDC LOAN FOR THE AVENUE
One quick question – passes unanimously.
STIMULUS MONEY
Bill Clingan explains that we are getting $534,096 in CDBG funds. He says the funds which are usually for suitable living environments, affordable housing and economic opportunities are required to be spent on infrastructure which means rehabilitation, retro-fitting, energy efficiency and conservation activities. He explains that there is a tight time line and that they need to get the information to HUD by June 5th. He says Council would approve general spending categories for not and specific awards of the money would come back to the council later. Bill says 15% can be spent on service and he says that he is looking at foreclosure prevention services (hire an lte to answer questions) and he also said that he might want to have a job development job search with people who are pending homelessness. The rest would perhaps be spent on economic development around energy issues or home rehab.
Bill also talked about the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. He says there is a round 2 of the funding available ($2B nationally) and they have to apply for at least $5M. He says that there will be a need analysis.
The only other update was from Metro on cost of hybrid buses and they are more expensive than anticipated, so there will only be 15 buses instead of 18.
CAPITAL REVOLVING LOAN FUND
There were some questions about the Capital Revolving Loan fund for the Wingra project. Jed Sanborn votes against and speaks against us using the money in these ways.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INTERN
Alder Rhodes-Conway asks why we aren’t getting an intern for free. He says that its true that it probably won’t cost $9,000. Mayor asks him to explain what the intern will work on. Cooley says working on some projects and research they haven’t had time for, looking into commercial real estate database software, and some software for entrepreneurs. He also explains that the $9,000 that should have gone for software isn’t enough and not a high priority right now.
I believe it passed unanimously on a voice vote.
PLANNING FOR UNIVERISTY AVENUE
There was some questions and it was approved.
CAPITAL WEST TIF AGREEMENT
Cliff Fisher speaks about how he believes that the City shouldn’t have given TIF money to Alexanders because they undercut his condos at Metropolitan Place. He says that the assessment of his project was impacted by $8M as a result of Alexander underselling him. Cliff talks about how he’s been on Sly and Mitch Henck and other shows. Cliff publicly asks Alexander to come on Mitch’s show to debate – Cliff gets directed to talk to the Board of Estimates problem – Cliff says that the Alexanders won’t come on the show and debate them.
Clear asks Cliff about what would happen if Alexanders are required sell the units by the current deadline, won’t the units get sold at rock bottom prices and won’t that negatively impact him. Cliff doesn’t understand the question whatsoever.
Schumacher asks the Alexander folks a few questions and the Mayor says that Cliff’s comments seemed irrelevant given they were about the original granting of the TIF, not the current deal.
Sanborn points out the hypocrisy of the compromise, given the principles that people were so adamant about the last time they talked about this.
Clear says that the agreement should be followed and that it shouldn’t be renegotiated at this time and that the City should stick to its agreement.
Clausius seems like extending this agreement won’t do much, he also says its unfair to other developers.
Verveer and Bruer defend the new agreement. There are more questions of staff. Staff say that this agreement is sound and that they did review the financial info and it did not seem unusual. In fact, they seem to be saying that the new agreement to extend the time is a sound decision given the legal issues and the cost to the city and the market in pursuing a breach of the agreement.
They spent nearly an hour discussing this issue. Which is amazing in that this was a compromise between Bruer and Verveer. It passes, it was a 3-3 tie, with the mayor breaking the tie.
WALGREENS
No discussion – they approve Walgreens getting their money and then go into closed session to talk about several tax cases. I wonder what they learned?
p.s. It looks like alders Schumacher, Rummel, Bidar-Sielaff and Compton attended portions of the meeting and were staying for the closed session, but it was hard to tell from tv.
