I’m super tired and I can’t guarantee that my fingers don’t just do their own thing, but I’ll do my best.
ROLL CALL & GETTING STARTED
All here but Alder Shiva Bidar-Sielaff, she was a notified absence.
Suspension of the rules to introduce things at the meeting and to take items out of order on the agenda and allow items to be discussed without suspension of the rules. Passes unanimously has it has for ever meeting I’ve ever seen.
Guy Van Rensselaer retirement. I think I can say this now – he’s been one of my favorite city staff people for a a very long time – ever since he helped us work through the conviction record issues with me and Bert Zipperer and Eileen Bruskewitz and the Apartment Association in the late 90’s. We’ll miss him. The Mayor talks about all the projects he has worked on and how challenging they were – and how he has helped many get along through taking risks and showing city staff how to take risks an minimize bad outcomes. And . . . too funny – Guy mentioned that committee and talked about one of the most challenging issues he ever did where he was in over his head . . . and it was the conviction record committee – he added that there were about 8 staff who also couldn’t agree. He thanks people and talks about his work. Tom Mosgaller also spoke his praises. Alder Steve King says that he sees Guy as a mentor in the work he does. Guy also sings the praises of Alder King’s day job work.
Poetry presentation – Oscar Mireles is starting his second term as Poet Laureate and he announces the event on Thursday as well as introduces the speaker – a 5th grader at Elvehem who wrote a book about bullying. Jaia Davis reads “I am F. A. T.” (Spoiler alert – she’s Fabulous, Awesome and Terrific) Mayor asks if before she leaves she will introduce her family. She tells him “I’m not done yet” – she shares some business cards with contact information to get a book. Then she introduces her family. Her dad is Norm Davis from the Civil Rights Division.
Presentation of petition.
EARLY PUBLIC COMMENT
Carl Landness speaks to two items. Giraffes, hearts, children, nature . . . I think there’s a point here somewhere but I didn’t hear the items and I”m not sure what he’s talking about. I think its Taco Bell and the 8 new officers but I don’t know what his point is. He took 6 minutes to speak about . . . I’m sorry, I’m really lost . . . it boiled down to he agrees with the mayor on the Taco Bell issue. He wants to wait until there is a moratorium and solutions. He also doesn’t want them to hire more police, he says there are other ways to transcend violence. He says the heart is difficult to master with those trained in being heroes. (Sorry I couldn’t do that better, I was trying to keep up and summarize but got lost)
PUBLIC HEARING
Mayor says he got three more early comments and he wants to skip to the public hearings and then come back to early public comment. There is no objection.
Number 4 – 118-122 State St. is re-referred.
Number 5 – ordinance on side yard set backs in Industry areas – no comments or discussions.
Number 6 – registrations in support from Veridian Homes – no comments or discussion.
Number 7 – no registrations – no comments or discussions
5 is adopt, 6 & 7 adopted with conditions unanimously on a voice vote.
EARLY PUBLIC COMMENT
All on the police. Cindy (?) says that if she sounds sarcastic she didn’t mean to. She says there may be more than one reason why we need more police officers. She talks about the northside meeting about shots fired and how an alder blogged about how staffing wasn’t mentioned at that meeting. She says that no officer would say that because of how she treated. She also says that the blog said that the chief’s blog from a year and a half ago wasn’t the reason vor the vile comments they were sent. She wants them to put aside their biases and the discussion is making them weary.
Steve Fitzsimmons says police staffing is short, he talks about people being shot and narrowly missed by stray bullets, people are running red lights, texting and driving, drunk driving and speeding in school zones, the police are short staffed and not on the streets enforcing. Car thefts are at all time high, herioine deaths are up, there were more emergency detentions and a record number of shots fired. We demand more from the police and give them less resources. The chief is begging for resources. He says he didn’t ask for the $00,000 for the study and $200,000 for council staff and he didn’t ask for that. He thanks the police, he says last week was law enforcement appreciation day.
Paula Fitzsimmons says there are more shots fired, heinous crimes not being previously seen (a pregnant women raped), post 911 cocners – the police face constant scrutiny just because they wear a badge. They don’t feel supported, have to work overtime and they have to eliminate programs to add more patrol officers. Police have less time to strategize with businesses and landlords. Sorry – I’m too tired to keep up – she says the OIR report says that the officers should spend 50% of their time on other activities but they can’t if they have to respond to priority calls. She says that we shouldn’t quibble over 8 officers and I quit . . . she’s so toxic.
Dan Fry supports – MPPOA president of the police union. He has to be on patrol tonight. He says the OIR has recommendations that they are considering but it isn’t about staffing. There were two other reports that indicate they are understaffed. Call loads are increasing – heroine deaths, violence downtown and shots fired take more time than basic calls, the investigations add to the workload and the effect is there are less officers on the street. Service is suffering. They have less officers to respond when these issues come up and they have to rush from call to call. They don’t have time to respond to routine calls. There are fewer officers to respond and it takes longer and it takes away from citizen and officer safety. There is also a toll on the officers. She says that other agencies might be short staffed but their days are different and they have to deal with death and that takes a toll on officers and they don’t know if their life is in danger. When you can’t get time off and have to work overtime this all has an effect.
CONSENT AGENDA
More people want to speak early.
10 is separated (Taco Bell mayor veto overide – 14 votes)
Unanimous vote is recorded on the following items because they amend the budget – #8 (committee appointments), #52 (Major streets – County M project), #55 (major streets – John Wall Dr/Grasscamp), #56 (fire department), #61 (MOU with Unity point health), #?? (Monroe St.), #65 (substitute for parks on Wheeler Rd)
Separated for discussion
#10 – Taco Bell
#34 & 35 – polling places on the northside
#48 – 8 more police officers – there will be a substitute by Ahrens
#71 – substitute on on line alcohol sales – there will be an alternate by Eskrich
Verveer says they need to remove item #75 and #76 because they rely on number 71. He also asks that item #88 add Downtown Committee and remove the executive committee.
Mayor says the record shows a unanimous aye vote on each item unless someone wants to be recorded as voting no on any of the items.
It’s worth pointing out that we are nearly an hour into the meeting at this point, its 7:25.
THIRD ATTEMPT AT EARLY PUBLIC COMMENT
Maria Milstad says that she is embarrassed by the council and she wants someone to prove they support the police. She says the police don’t have what they need to do their job. She is angry that she pays taxes and that’s ok, but she doesn’t want it to be fore studies to tell the police how to do their job – who are we to tell them what they know best how to do. She owns business on State St. and was born there. She is happy to pay taxes but not on studies, we need to trust our police. She says no one reads chief Koval’s blogs every day – she does – the first thing she does every morning is read them. How can you read those blogs and doubt that we need more police on this staff. It takes two officers to drive our drug addicts where ever and back. She reads Alder Verveer’s reports every month but she doesn’t know why they have to beg . . . she was over time and the mayor cut her off.
TACO BELL VETO OVER-RIDE
Motion
Mike Verveer moves reconsideration.
Verveer says he was an excused absence due to illness, he doesn’t think the outcome will change, but he is asking on behalf of the applicant so they can present their case. He urges them to consent to the reconsideration to allow the applicants to present their case and because 4 people were absent last time.
Reconsideration passes unanimously.
Public Testimony
There are 1 person registered in support and available to answer questions. 2 supporting, 1 opposed. 2 people speak in support and one person changes their mind and wants to speak. Attorney Buck. The attorney asks about the 4 or 5 people who voted for the license but not the override. They say the mayor’s veto is arbitrary. He talks about the ALDO ordinance that was lifted because it was ineffective and opposed by many – including the Downtown BID. The ALDO didn’t reduce alcohol crime and disorder or improve safety. The BID wanted the police to work with the chronic offenders (businesses and individuals) He talks about the overlay district that replaced ALDO and provides for an annual report. He says the law does not prohibit the sale of alcohol by restaurants.
Patrick ? speaks for Taco Bell. He said the poll results on the council website and it was only 117 respondents but 2/3 were in favor. He wishes the poll had been open longer. He says they understand the issue with violence related to certain businesses downtown. The looked at the police data and the serious calls are from bars and taverns, not restaurants. They would have 90 – 95% of sales from food, not alcohol. They don’t have a bar, alcohol is only ordered at the counter, there is no table service. He appreciates that not one person has questioned their responsible service of alcohol. He appreciates its a small number of businesses that cause the most problems and he thinks they can be part of the solution.
Susan Schmitz representing herself and in support of the override. He says that vetoes are used randomly to make a point and the real issue is the 600 block of University Ave. Not all licenses are the same, and restaurants are not proven to contribute to over consumption. If there is a moratorium, all stakeholders have to be at the table. We already have an overlay district that doesn’t’ allow new taverns since 2014. There will be more restaurants. She asks that the issues is bigger than State St. The market wants entertainment and restaurants and other businesses. It’s time to look at the policies again. 2017 is the best year in years, foot traffic was higher than ever and it was good.
Questions of speakers
Verveer asks the Taco Bell people if they have concessions they might want to make. The Taco Bell guy says that they are open to ideas and that they want to be part of the solution, they will do whatever it takes to run their business.
Maurice Cheeks asks what percent of alcohol they will have. They say 5%
Discussion
Mark Clear says this is the fourth time they are discussing this. He was on the Economic development Committee for 10 years. In those days we had a reputation as being hostile to businesses, deserved or not, it was wide spread – developers to retailers. Many people worked to repair that reputation – through actions about the development process – but also in creating an attitude that we appreciate businesses. WE might be more strict, but we are not arbitrary. The vetoes create that arbitrariness again. He says he wants to debate a policy but they should not create arbitrary rules.
Barbara McKinney asks for a clarification about what is before them. Attorney Michael May says that reconsideration was approved and if they vote for this it will be approved with the conditions – but it takes 14 votes. McKinney wants to know what concessions there might be. May says that if there are concessions they will have to take them to the ALRC if the override happens.
Mayor Paul Soglin says this is a public safety issue with the use of alcohol in this community. Several Wisconsin Committees have issues with excessive alcohol – binge drinking. The only reason we are not number one its because Oshkosh and others are ahead of us. If you’re worried about our reputation you should think about how we rank. He says there is no establishment that is the root cause of the problem, but we do have a problem. In 2011 we didn’t have the issues we have now on the 600 block and its not those businesses but the congregation of people from all areas. What has changed since 2011 and all the studies done since that point its the violence. He says its the cumulative effect, people have been badly injured, someone may die there. It drains resources that could be used elsewhere. You won’t see a specific license being the issues – its the cumulative effect. We have no obligation to grant a license as long as we are not being discriminatory based on a protected class. He goes on to rant about how you don’t create public policy through on line polls – if we do we need to do it right. He says the arrogance regarding applications that they had in recent years is new – it used to be that no one spent a dime on a lease or property until their license was approved by the common council. People got an option on the land or a lease or spent money on bar stools. To spend money and assume the council will approve it is the height of arrogance. He says that there are a lot of businesses investing in the city, from Madison and Dane County and outside the state. Our rankings in national polls has changed over the last half a dozen years. And yes we do things a little bit wierd, a little differently, but for bright people who want to make an investment and have a better life its wrong to promote the bad reputation of the city.
Steve King dittos Mark Clear. He didn’t take a pledge for arbitrariness. He watched the tape and he saw nothing new to create the vote switchers. He can’t figure that out. Please override the veto.
Matt Phair says that he has one more quick plea to his colleagues – the Mayor made the best argument to over-ride. You can’t pin this on one business. If you’re ok with pinning it on one business, vote the same, or you can think bigger. He says the online poll is just one tool to be a stronger council.
Larry Palm wasn’t here last time. He says he’s going to pull back language he said during the Frites discussion. He supports limiting licenses in a high density area, but he wants that done through a plan to mitigate the concerns we have and make sure they are implemented fairly across the board. He says others have been approved since Mad City Frites – he would support a plan but he wants the plan before the denial.
Amanda Hall says there are right ways to form a policy, the one we have before us is not one of them. She says that if your vote could get the city sued you are probably not doing it right. We need to think about the implications when others have been approved and we need to be mindful of that. What a waste of money and resources that would be.
Mike Verveer says that his argument in December when there were only 3 people who voted against it was that Taco Bell did everything the police, alder and ALRC asked. They went from a full alcohol license to wine and beer, they limited their hours of service, they agreed to cameras and addressing loitering. There is a reason why the police, alder and ALRC are supportive. He thought they would have more concessions – they are willing to come back to the ALRC and further limit the hours. They can’t do that on the council floor tonight, this would have to be through a new license application. He wasn’t here for the meeting, he watched from home in his sickbed. The mayor’s portrayal of the 600 block is accurate, the city continues to prioritize making that area safe. The problem is Friday and Saturday night because they have capacity of 2000 in one block and they all serve until bar time and they have increased capacity on this block and that was a mistake. We are not patsy’s or pushovers. The Red Shed wanted to increase capacity by 19 and they were denied because they are at the epicenter. He recommends reading Captain Feedman’s blog from the end of the year to see what they have been working on. What the mayor showed were problems on the 600 block of University not 500 State St. He appreciates that the mayor’s comments are about public safety. The police are not against this licenses, they are the experts not us. They do not object. The main reason you voted was because of the plea by the mayor about public safety, he shares the concern, but to single out this license to say its contrary to health, safety and welfare of the community is ?. He says not new taverns are allowed on the 500 block of State St, but we allow restaurants. They have Osaka House to consider tomorrow night and they are going from a full license to beer and wine. He says there is a policy decision coming up. He urges them to override the veto.
Marsha Rummel says Jim Verbick and Captain Freedman are here. She asks how many parcels have licenses on the 500 block. This is about saturation, not just one operator. If half or more of the block has a license, its about saturation. She notes no one knows the answer to the question.
Rebecca Kemble says that the first meeting she was at her sisters sick bed watching the meeting. We are more than a policy body, we are oversight. There is a reason that this comes to the council for approval. We have responsibility for creating health conditions for people to live safely and we get to make decisions that way. We don’t have to abide by ALRC standards when making decisions. We can make decisions based on protecting the city. She isn’t going to make her decision based on the fear of lawsuits. She sees it in her job, its a serious issue and its about cumulative impact and she is interested in talking about issues in the future.
Barbara McKinney wants to know if there is additional information about saturation and tipping point and the sense of urgency. Captain Freedman says that they ahve significant concerns about the safety issues – its their number one priority of the 80 people on his team and this is going to be a major driver on their activity. Consumption and capacity create a concern. (missed some) Barring a clear framework of what is and is not allowed he tried to approach the licenses consistently himself – he asks the same set of conversations. There have been a number of applicants in 2017 and he gave input on them. He looks at several factors and in being internally consistent, this applicant met or exceeded the goals. He makes the assessment of safety and impact and the attitude and abilities of the applicant. He stands by what he said at ALRC, but this is a complex and significant issue that he is looking for answers and solutions to mitigate.
Denise DeMarb says her opinion hasn’t wavered since last fall when she voted in favor. But she wants to address that we have several roles (policy, oversight) and we take it seriously but when it comes to this – she can’t see how Taco Bell serving alcohol for 4 or 5 hours a night isn’t going to push us over the edge. She has been contacted by residents in her district because of the newspaper articles and she tells them the same thing. She doesn’t think this small retaurant will make a difference and she doesn’t believe in making an example out of a business and she doesn’t think they should change policy on the floor. Verveer and the Zellers, the alder and Zach Wood all support it.
Verveer says that the difference between the Red Shed and Taco Bell – he says the Red Shed is open til bar time, is at ground zero and Taco Bell is not. There are only 2 taverns on the 500 Block (Monday’s and Whiskey Jacks) and its an issue because they are popular, and that is why they don’t support full licenses there and want restaurants with beer and wine to close early.
No votes were: Kemble, Rummel, Skidmore, Ahrens, Baldeh, (Sielaff gone), Carter, McKinney
12 ayes – Fails as there were not 14 votes.
POLLING PLACES
Alder Palm says that he has moved a polling place before and somehow this is quite extraordinary. He has two polling places at St. Paul Lutheran Church and on is at Packers Townhouse. The residents asks to change that for several reasons. He has asked about this in the past – Warner Park is already polling places for two other wards. That only left the Lakeview Library – he didn’t want to choose between the two requests. The Lutheran Church was about the religion and signage that wasn’t welcoming – he says that when it comes to voting that is important. Plus the clerk’s office had some logistics issue. For Packer’s Townhouses there are parking issues. He says there was a poll during one of the elections to find out what people think – it was inconclusive. It wasn’t a groundswell. When Goodwill asked to build a store and he made one request – to put in a community room for voting. He was really clear about why he was doing this, the clerk went and visited with Goodwill to have a community room to have enough space for voting. He says they have been talking about this for 2 or 2.5 years. This sort of fell of the radar until they realized they needed it passed tonight. The church does need to be moved because of the concerns. Many people may need to find transportation and not be able to walk. Packer’s Townhouses is very near to Goodwill. He understands the concerns that we are moving too quick, but he likes to do this for the spring not fall. He appreciates the questions.
Alder Kemble says she pulled them both on behalf of the Northside Planning Council. They all got the email and the clerk’s answers. She has never had to change a polling place and when she saw this she wondered about the process and why it was introduced by an “advisory group”. She didn’t answer the question about how communities of color are impacted by the change. She says they do an equity analysis about accessibility, but she is wondering why this is all done at the staff level with the alder and there is no opportunity for public input except now at the council. She is also concerned they use the RESJI tool. She has questions about if there is no primary, could they do this in April?
Mark Clear says something and I didn’t hear it.
Kemble seems satisfied with that answer.
Seems to pass unanimously on a voice vote.
Kemble says this one is more important to postpone because of the question on the impact on people of color. She wants more time for discussion. But she doesn’t know how that would be done.
Attorney Michael May says they could have the discussion after the change or vote it down. He says this is traditionally the way it is done. He says she is raising issues they have never grappled with.
Maurice Cheeks says during his first few months they made a change based on request of a poll worker and the neighborhood association was used for the process. It seems that everyone does this a little differently and maybe we should have some suggested recommendations on how to publicize with the neighborhood. One was in Midvale and one in Allied and the people who were engages were very active people at the polling place and they could say why they agreed or disagreed.
Verveer says that 72 and 73 are also changing polling locations and the best practice is to have the clerk, alder and Steve Brist in the attorney’s office to have this in at least 2 weeks in advance so the public can know about it. Most of the time it is done in advance like those items.
McKinney says she also had a poll change, but she was the chief inspector and she knew why the change was needed and they were very diligent in making the change. They had a lot of input before they made the change. She says normally there is a notification period and she thinks they need the two weeks to let people know about the change and allow the opportunity to weigh in.
Passes on a voice vote with a handful of nos.
8 MORE POLICE OFFICERS
Public Testimony
I crashed and burned. Will have to rehab this in the morning, I have partial notes, but they are embarrassing!
Council Discussion
David Ahrens has an alternate. He takes the $170,000 that was in the police budget that is unspent and put it into the contingent reserve. If the police department we can move it back, but it stays in the contingent reserve.
Mark Clear asks what the precedent or standard practice for when money is in a budget an unallocated. The City Attorney says that Finance should answer it. The Mayor says that it would be a 15 vote item if it changes the budget. The City Attorney says that if it is used for anything besides to match the grant we didn’t get – it would be 15 votes. Finance (DAve Schmiedicke) says yes. Clear asks what about it not having a purpose. Finance says it was supposed to match the COPS grant, but that hasn’t been done. It’s like when we budget for snow and ice removal and we might not use it. Clear asks if it doesn’t make any difference because either way it takes 15 votes. Finance says its just a matter of how you want to track it.
Larry Palm says he likes consistency and he thinks keeping it in police its more consistent but he recognizes that part of the notion would be to allow for the money to be spent in other areas, so then he does support it being available for other departments that isn’t earmarked. He says in this extraordinary situation we know we won’t hire more officers, it seems ok to be outside our normal procedures.
King clarifies what it means to be an alternate.
Samba Baldeh says that we know the money won’t be used for the purpose it was allocated, so it should be out there so other departments can use it.
Rebecca Kemble wants them to clarify what this vote is. The City Attorney says this makes it the main amendment.
Palm asks if this doesn’t pass, all the money remains in the police budget?
Schmiedicke says yes, the funds remain in the police department budget, but they can only be used to match a COPS grant.
Rummel says that if we take the money away, we could spend it on the public health initiative that they didn’t have enough money for.
Mayor Soglin says that the item we talked about was not public health, it was community based intervention, but he appreciates her point.
A roll call vote results in 19 ayes. Shiva Bidar still gone.
Discussion on the main motion
Skidmore asks Chief Vic Wahl how many officers were added in 2017 vs 2018. Wahl says last year it was 7 new positions for mid-town and this year there is 1 for mid-town station. Skidmore asks how many people are eligible for retirement – over 100. Skidmore asks what the recruit class size is for May – Wahl says depends upon what happens tonight and how many retire, but they are looking at 21. Skidmore asks if there is a number for 2017 – all off mic and I couldn’t hear.
Ledell Zellers asks about the Etico report that was done and they talk about reactive vs proactive activities and how important that is for staffing levels, what is our goal for proactive vs reactive and what our experience currently is. Vic WAhl says when Etico did the original report in 2007 or 2008 we had a shared understanding between mayor, council, Etico and the police, it was 50-50. It effects response time and other things, but it is the goal. They never reached it, it has varied year to year. They were around 35-45 reactive time. Zellers asks how it is measured. WAhl says its a formula they were given. It’s based on several factors. Zellers asks what they do in the 25 minutes that is not reactive. Some they do, some they do not. Some is captured on the CAD. Etico made recommendations to capture it better and they are working on it. Not everything is captured like routine patrol. Zellers asks about improvements to data collection. Wahl says that they added incident types to capture the work – like foot patrol. Zellers asks when they enter it in? Wahl says they don’t enter it, the dispatcher does. Zellers asks about if it covers a complete hour? Wahl says no, not every minute of their day.
Sheri Carter asks about the 21 candidates for next year, does that include the 8? There are 32 in the current class. CArter asks if we know where they will be assigned? Mid-town or South or we don’t know. Koval says they will be disbursed, typically pms and nights and they will be dispersed throughout the city. How many officers do we have on patrol? 183 but it fluctuates. How many staff total? 469. Williams corrects the chief.
Baldeh asks about the duty allocation for the 469 officers. Wahl says that 196 are patrol, 90ish are non-patrol. A few of those were cut back, some temporary, some permanent. That is 300 that are police officers and about 68 or 69 detectives, 46 or 47 Sargent, 23, lieutenants, 10 captains, 3 assistant chiefs and the chief. That is the authorized amount, but not necessarily where we are. WE are at 468 but 33 are in the class.
Baldeh asks what the non-patrol police officers are doing. Neighborhood officers, community policing teams, traffic enforcement safety team are some of them. 6 or 7 are assigned to training staff full time, a half dozen canine and K-9, crime stoppers, crime prevention, gang task force, mental health and CORE officers.
Baldeh asks about the sargeant positions – what do they do? Koval rattled off a bunch of things like payroll, briefings and other things I missed.
Baldeh asks about the recruitment class and how many they need, Wahl eplains that they can hire up to their authorized strength without coming back to council, these are new officers above an beyond the retirements and people who leave the force.
Baldeh asks about the officer that came to the door – could other people do that. Wahl says they have cut back on that. The patrol work is too needed. THey don’t keep track of that kind of thing.
How do we know how many more officers we need? Koval says that they don’t just listen to their workers, Koval inherited the 5 studies and the contract and he defers to the subject matter experts to capture what is the work. THe best evidence he sees is that looking at the call workload on an annual basis. Based on patrol workload, we need 13, at the end of2017 it went up to 23. It’s an elusive prey, its not an exact science, its the best estimates we have based on what is out there.
Baldeh asks about the officers being overworked. Koval says they have peaks and valleys and it was a rigorous summer. It put everyone at a heightened sense of vulnerability. The statistics have leveled off, kids are in schools and weather can be an ally. Like anyone’s work schedule it has peaks and valleys and calls for service have a sense of immanency that they want to address.
Baldeh asks what else we can do, what other options do we have besides more police officers. Koval says that its childcare, mentoring, schools etc. They are not against those efforts, they are appreciative of looking at other models to look at redirection or prevention but at the end of the day they have to deal with realities from the 911 center. They are always working from behind with less resources. Shots fired draw more resources and then there are less officers for calls. He says they are a full service provider – mental health, kids in gangs etc and they are just trying to be around 24/7.
Cheeks asks about the COPS grant – when we found out we were not rewarded you sent a link – did we hear why we didn’t get the grant? Sue Williams says that it had to do with the economic status of the city and the crime in the city, but we scored high in community policing so we did score 196 out of the rankings. That was quite high. Wahl says it was close to the agencies that were awarded. He would like that sent to them.
Cheeks says that community policing is 50% of the score, 30% crime and 20% is fiscal need. If we take community poling off the table, did we suffer more in not scoring for fiscal need or crime. Williams doesn’t remember.
Cheeks asks because both are relevant to him as we look at our selves. He has mixed feelings about COPS grants – it gives tax relief but incentivizes us to continue to grow. If their concern is that our crime isn’t high enough we need to consider that. If they think we don’t have the fiscal need – that is of interest to him. He is worried if we put the money in we could hurt the grant money in the future. If crime isn’t high enough we should invest in other things. Williams says they did get a couple years ago. They knew this would be more difficult because we were asking for patrol officers and that is something the COPS office doesn’t want to support.
Clear asks how we end up short, more demands, shifting roles to other roles, have we shifted more officers to other duties or are there other factors in consideration. Wahl says a little of it all, but also the retirement bubble. When someone retires it could be a long time before we can hire train and get someone on the street. If they retire today they can’t get and officer til next January, if they retire in June it will be Janurary 2020. Clear says that has always been the case. Part of it was the mental health officers that have been taken off patrol. Clear says that all these new functions have come from patrol – Wahl says yes, but some has been grant funded – those were new. Koval says that they wanted to grow the neighborhood response – he got five new neighborhood officers. Clear is still trying to figure out how we got so short in the officers we need. Wahl says that the workload is driving it. Quantity of calls and increasing complexity. Koval says the mental diagnostics for mental commitment. Wahl says the 3rd quarter they looked at the data and the average trip to Winnebago was 19 hours.
McKinney asks about the 15 officers we would have been given the COPS grant – would we have to take all 15 officers and that discussion left some leeway – and the answer was no. Koval says first we had to ask for permission to apply. Then if they got it they had to ask to take it – you would have made the decision.
McKinney says that while the OIR report isn’t about staffing but she can’t unknow what she knows and there were real questions about data in there and how do we know that the 8 officers will increase safety. Will it have an impact on her neighborhoods. How will the 8 officers really impact the safety of the neighborhoods. She says that when this body is said to be against officers, she absolutely rejects that. If it were true, look at the mid-town station – we approved that. This council approved that and we are not against police officers. She wants to know the impact the 8 officers will have to make the neighborhoods safer. Wahl said that the greatest need is in patrol – there is an expansion of workload and stress and time off issues. That is where the 8 officers will go – putting the 8 officers in the mix will show more pro-active time across the whole department. You will see community policing, problem solving and decrease wait times and increase the liklihood they will get the officer from their neighborhood. Koval says that they have been trying to compensate for that by stopping positions. Williams says they have eliminated positions in 4 Safety Education, 3 PM TRaffic enforcement, vacant position 1 Allied Drive, 1 West Neighborhood Resource Officer, 5 CPT, 1 Langdon and 2 day traffic enforcement and 1 more I missed.
McKinney says fear and anger are a threat to justice . .. it can make us blind, irrational and ? There has been a lot of fear that this has lifted up. When you gave the list of officers really concerns me, the council needs to look at, with you, the vacancies.
Zellers is trying to understand the data – you indicated 50-50 proactive, reactive. Is that patrol officers or does that include the new dedicated officers that are community policing and neighborhood officers, is that counted in the balance. Wahl says it is specifically for patrol because they are the only one’s who do reactive calls. Ledell says since the Etico report we have added a fair number of proactive positions but still looking at patrol as a 50-50 split do decide if we have adequate patrol officers. Wahl says it is only patrol, not nonpatrol or the upper ranks. So, some of the reassignments of patrol to proactive things this is how we end up where we are. Wahl says its a small part of it. Some fo the units were grant created and didn’t impact patrol. The other were intended to assist patrol workload by being proactive and problem solving. With the changes this year, any increases are going back to patrol.
Zellers asks about the data collection and the OIR report raising questions about the data. It sounds like you made improvements but it sounds like there is still an issue that we hear form OIR. Wahl says it was not looking at patrol staff. They didn’t look at the CAD data or the methodology. The data they have for that process is top shelf industry top standards. He thinks the OIR was about qualitative and outcomes instead of outputs. We have a lot of data, but we can’t measure the effectiveness and that is more challenging.
Zellers says that the Etico report recommended that data be collected on priority calls only, do we have that back to 2008. Koval says they started doing that in 2017. Williams says it is being captured manually.
Carter says 32 in the process and 21 they are planning on if for May? Koval says the 33 will start in June, the 21 would start training at the end of May. She is struggling with when the 8 officers would start. Koval says they would be added to the next class in the spring.
Carter asks about the special teams. Could some of the teams be combined. Wahl says that they went through a rigorous exercise last spring when they realized their dire straits. That is how we eliminated safety and pm traffic. He doesn’t recall if consolidation was considered. They spent a lot of time making these decisions.
Carter asks the average length of service of an officer? Koval says that they have been ok with retention, but the last year or so people have moved to the private section. Having lifers is not the new normal. Carter says what is an average number. How many positions of new recruits leave in the first 2 years. Wiliams doesn’t know, a couple from every class. That is because they don’t make it through the training. Koval says at least 3 during the probationary period of 18 months.
Palm asks asks if we have more extensive info on patrol officers and how they spend their time? Yes.
Palm asks what the process is to determine when it is priority calls only. The sargeant make the call and work with dispatch.
Palm asked about how many times we go to priority call – that information is all manual, how does that happen. Koval says it wasn’t recorded prior to 2017. Its a daily manual spreadsheet. They record they went on and how long. Williams says they have to remember to tell them.
Palm asks what time is for paperwork and briefings. Wahl says its a separate category. Administrative time is challenging because it is not captured through the CAD. Palm says its 50-50 of the time after administrative time. Yes.
Palm asked about 49 hours a day being spent on mental health. Where did that come from. Wahl said the chief’s 3rd quarter updates. Palm asks if that is patrol or all. Wahl says all units all ranks.
Palm asks about positions being moved form commissioned to non-commissioned. He assumes that you continue to evaluate that. Koval says yes, they are looking at a records position to hire a civilian. They want to do that in human resources as well.
Palm asks how many positions – Wahl says not many in the last few years, they did more of that 10 years ago when they moved 8 positions.
Rummel says this has been an interesting conversation. She asks how we can leverage the resources we currently have. Rummel voted on mid-town station. It wasn’t that popular, but if we are opening mid-town, how does that impact all this? Wahl says no impact on this discussion. The 8 officers are reallocated to 6 districts instead of 5, it doesn’t impact the level of patrol. Rummel asks if they added more management or specialty staff. 3 CPT, a gang officer, mental health officer, a captain and 1 more.
Rummel asks about the vacancies. She is troubled that they didn’t prioritize neighborhood officers, they are key assets. Can you go back to the union and talk about staffing. Do you try that or is it not possible. Williams says the union president is on the management team and when they discussed which positions to leave open, he was involved in those discussions. MPPOA has been vocal about wanting more patrol services. That is where they are feeling the most stress, burnout and overtime demands. They realized they need to do something immediately.
Rummel asks about CPTs doing patrol – have they looked at that. Wahl says just about all officers do that from time to time or when there is a major incident. It’s hard to know which of the work on the CAD is patrol or nonpatrol. Wahl says that when an officer assists patrol, it is unplanned. They are expected to do a certain amount of patrol throughout the year to maintain skills and to help with overtime. The number of days per year when they are pulled for patrol has increased.
DeMarb asks if the chief can reallocate people. Yes. She asks if the they have taken positions out of patrol? Yes, 5 mental health officers. So that is the issue correct? Yes. She asks about the mid-town station and only having 8 patrol officers – that came from a conversation with the finance committee – is it true that there will only be 8 patrol officers. Koval says that is what will be allocated. Wahl says 8 more positions but they are not patrol. Captain, 3 cpt, mental health, gang, mental health and neighborhood officer. How many patrol officers will they have? 20-25. How many of the 32 in the class are because of mid-town. 7 and 1 gets hired in May. DeMarb is having trouble reconciling the benefit of mid-town. The city has committed to a multi-million dollar investment and we don’t know the benefit of it. You told us that we needed it but we don’t know the benefit of it and yet you are coming with a need for more before we have them in the field doing the work. Koval says yes. DeMarb said we could have reallocated the districts and instead we added a district and we don’t know the benefit of that yet. shouldn’t we get in place what we already improved before we make changes. Koval says its about geography. I missed some of this . . . sorry.
McKinney says that the data gathering is manual and in the PSRC meeting they were told gathering info is a manual thing. She says that we keep talking about more bodies on the street – but have you looked at updating information to be collected and dissemination through technology. Do you need an update of equipment. Wahl says he’d like to have it be automated, but the challenge is that the data comes from the 911 center and they have a different system and we don’t have an interface. He isn’t sure if their CAD can capture the information.
No one else in the queue!
Discussion
Skidmore is a sponsor, urges support, says its a reasonable request. We have gotten a number of reports. There is quite a bit that we know and we have a demonstrated immediate need. We are understaffed, the two staffing reports indicated we need more staff. There have been a lot of questions and indicators that show that we are short staffed. He says the priority call status was collected – there were 105 incidents where they only took 911 calls. There was no pro-active policing during those times because they didn’t have the staff. The other issue is the chapter 51 transfers. They approved the report last fall and there were 145 transports – that is a full FTE that is not available. 53 additional transports were local and don’t take as long, but the evaluation takes time. He says that they also 49 hours a day on mental health, that is two full time positions. That’s 6000 hours a year – 3 full time equivalents. He says there are other things that take a lot of time. 249 heroine overdoses were reported in 2017, only 143 in 2016. And not all were reported and handled by family. Those investigations take time. He also talks about the shots fired data increasing. He says they don’t have data on the stress level on the officers, but they go to EAP and there is no data collected on that. He says that he talked to two officers about being shot at and another had a gun pointed at him. These 6 officers will fill the voids and provide some respite. The number of vacancies due to retirements and departures will fluctuate and hopefully we will get more information. The OIR report didn’t look at staffing but some things point to it and that information is important. We were prepared to hire up to 15 officer but we would have probably deferred some of them to the following year. This isn’t drastically different, we just need to follow through. We are already supporting crime prevention and this is a both/and. We need both programs, but we won’t get to the point where we don’t need the police force. Please support this.
Carter asks Koval when the response to the OIR will be complete. Publication date of October 31st. She asks why we can’t refer this until we see the response. Koval says you are still in control, but they do have a tight time schedule. Carter asks if that is the timeline. Williams says yes.
Mayor is back in the chair.
Rebecca Kemble will not be supporting this, but she did support the amendment. She thinks the entire $750,000 should be in contingent reserve and it should be spent on mental health. She wrote a blog post, but we are responsible to the entire community. We can consider department requests and we weigh that against our other priorities. She hopes they do that in a fair manner and treat the departments equally. Historically that hasn’t been the case. She wishes that in making the decision we apply the same strict standards as we apply for small amounts of grant money for violence prevention, but we don’t demand that kind of data from MPD. But we don’t demand that data and even if we did, they can’t provide it. We don’t know that the cause for officer burnout is about staffing. We don’t know the effectiveness of department. We demand a lot more of other departments and grassroots organizations than we do for the MPD. She says that there are 6 things she needs before she can vote for this. (I cut and pasted and missed some here.
Lack of a consistent and objectively verifiable reason for more staff
(missed some)
Lack of data and analysis about the effectiveness of the current staffing model
(missed some)
Lack of performance data (qualitative or quantitative) that shows that MPD staff are meeting the standards of community and problem-solving policing to which they aspire. She made a spreadsheet with the recommendations and 55 of the recommendations are about accountability based in performance data, 51 are transparency, 36 structure recommendations. There are so many ideas before the ad hoc committee and 71 policy and procedure recommendations that could generate the data for us. How do we get care services to people instead of interacting with the police. Are there other ways to devise city services to care for these people. They heard interesting things from the Fire Department. WHy would we invest in a model when we are on the cusp of reorienting how we do services.
Lack of broad community involvement in setting general standards for MPD that can be evaluated in a transparent way
Climate of distrust and combative attitude of Chief Koval toward Common Council. HIstorically the combative attitude of Chief Koval has prevented us from working together and has showed poor leadership and derailed more productive convesations.
Lack of justification for the consistent and large budget and staffing increases over time that are not enjoyed by other overworked departments providing vital city services. There are other departments that don’t get this same support, its an equity issue of huge proportions and she thinks this needs ot be put on the back burner until we work on the recommendations and get into the details of what we really spend on community policing. These discuss what we want and be clear and honest about it and have a clear community consensus. Her vote is no for fairness sake and good management she hopes they will too.
Ahrens says that the bugaboo in understanding a complex phenomenon is imperfect information. Some part of this is unknown and is a reason why the existing explanation can’t be trusted. There were a number of exchanges about understanding what officers do and he got the sense that the OIR report may have overstated it and even if they did not, the notion that the police officers are doing nothing or engaged in nefarious activity is unsupported. Because you don’t know what is happening the assumption is that it is a bad thing. He says the OIR report points out that this, like every department and people as individuals, is an imperfect department. We could find faults with anyone. This isn’t enough to shift us from 15 staff to zero. He thinks that the notion that we don’t know what the 8 officers get us in terms of effect, that is less than 2%. For any organization with the scale of the MPD to be expected to show an impact with 2% is unreasonable, it can’t be documented and it would be difficult to demonstrate. He had many discussions about the metrics of effectiveness with OIR. There are so many complex variables at play. 2% may help, or maybe not. His hope is that a few more police will allow some of the cops to be what we want them to be, and who they want to be. It will provide – he was stunned to see the number of officers that feel they can’t get vacation – this is a unique problem and we can’t put that off. If 8 officer will allow police to take vacation they earned and be healthier that is good. His hope is greater than that. He hopes the new officers will create the circumstances for them to be who we want them to be.
DeMarb says that she thought this was going to be an easy vote because they supported it at budget time. We knew we would be back here debating this and come to a decision. She fully expected it to have support. Her position on this last fall was support of the mayor’s budget, but she didn’t support adding more police. It was twice as much came through in the budget amendment, but it was still linked to the COPS grant. If we hadn’t done that we wouldn’t be having this discussion. She says that the people who contacted here directly wanting more police did so because they want a crime reduction – but we debated that too with the public health initiative. Police officers won’t have a direct reduction in crime or violent crime. That is important to understand. It was stated by the mayor, director of public health and alders that work in health that this is a public health issue. There is a misconception that they feel hiring more police officers makes them safer, especially patrol officers. Patrol officers respond to something that already happened. Most people in this room understand it – she hopes that people at home start understanding this too – we need to support this public health initiative for violence reduction. She expected to show up and vote for it but there has been a lot of soul searching over the past few weeks. It seems premature with mid-town, and the lack of strategic planning and we need to understand through that process if we want 50-50 community policing, there is no proof it reduces crime. It might make people feel good. The mental health officers were added, but should we have been hiring social workers. The chief was defensive in his answer, and it went forward but he took patrol officers to do this. She says it doesn’t make sense to hire without more info, we should be looking at what we really want and who we want in these roles. The school board will be making a decision about cops in the schools. Should we take the year to analyze this and then if the answer is to reduce staff, then not budget more officers to be hired because some are retiring. I assume that is possible, but we’ve never done it. She is coming down on this that she has had coffee with cops and they talk – yes they talk with police officers – sitting down with cops and understanding the stress levels – it’s real. So what is coming down to for her is that she is inclined to support only with the caveat that work is done this year.
Mark Clear says that we need to decouple the notion that crime and police department strength, much of what they do isn’t about crime, what they do is provide services. WE don’t have a rapid response team of social workers. That is what we don’t have here. He says that we adopted the Etico model for the metric for how big the patrol services should be. WE are behind more than twice this resolution, we may come up with other metrics in the future. It’s going to take a while. WE have the Etico study and that is the lens that he sees this through. He hopes they will support this and improve the ability to deliver the services our constituents want.
Palm says that he’s conflicted and he speaks his mind and comes to a conclusion. He says 55% opposed, 45% support on 20 emails. He says its hard to draw a conclusion with that. There is a geographic split, nearer to Warner Park they are in favor of the officers and on the other end they are not. Our districts aren’t that simple. He says that there are people have been negatively impacted by police. Not hiring more won’t really solve that. He agrees with the relationship between crime and police – and police realize things are random and they can’t respond to that all the time. There will always be changes – one year people breaking into cars, and another year its something else – we need to allow for change. More people allows for more work – but with large organizations there is inertia. I must have voted to take people out of the patrol pool but I hadn’t realize we had done that and we need to look at that. He is surprised by the number of people who are impressed by an officer showing up – that is proactive, but then he hears complaints about the police not calling them back. He’s not sure how he will vote, but as a community we need to support our communities and nonprofits to reach out to people. He sees the students who are blessed when they have someone in the community. Sorry, its late and he’s still talking but . . . yikes. Whatever we do tonight we have to firm up our expectations of staffing the police.
Matt Phair says he agrees with what Kemble and DeMarb have said and that they agree on much. People don’t vote to increase inequity or for re-election. He says that on the public health model he wants the people who don’t want the police to support that model, he didn’t see people out supporting that model. There are elephants in the room due to that OIR report, he looks forward to working on that. (missed some) He says that we need to support this for the staff who need support.
McKinney is very conflicted with this resolution. It is clear to her that adding more police won’t equate to making the community safe, it does not. The notion that having more police will make us safe is not valid. In many of the communities of color police are not welcome in. With the OIR study the recommendations have been seen by the police and she is looking to their response, but it is incumbent on us that the OIR report is a living and breathing document, not one we receive and put on the shelf and we must hold the police accountable for making our community a better place for all to live. She says that we authorized the COPS grant application, we didn’t get it, but the caveat was that if we didn’t get it, we would bring on additional officers. What is actually before us – if we don’t make the report an active living document, that we are hold them accountable – we have to look at it all. She thinks if Chief Koval could go back to the council meeting where he sat behind Alder Baldeh he would change it – that was the night that divided us. This is a city issue we could have addressed as a team – but you cannot unring the bell. She knows about profiling and she was offended about the email they got – it is not ok. We have do denounce that, an apology is not good enough, the climate should never have happened. What they voted on was if they got the COPS grant they would determine how many officers to bring on board. She’s not sure how she will vote – she’s been all over the place. She wants the chief and staff to look at the OIR report, how police are received, positive and negative – to look at the culture in the police department – when people of color are recruited but not honored. She is deeply conflicted with the vote. Her heart and passion is not in the vote. There are so many unanswered questions out there. We’re not passing this along any more, we can’t rubberstamp. Emotionally, I expect more and expect better and if we don’t ask for it and demand it we won’t get it.
Carter says were at a crossroads, but it lands on the shoulder of the council and the police department. The police department with their leadership is no longer the 21st century its the 27th century. The young girl that is afraid because when you knock on the door someone will be taken out of the house – that is a life long fear. WE all have to embrace the report. If patrol is your bread and butter you don’t keep stealing form patrol. You’re no different than a hospital that knows where the foundation is at. She didn’t get a lot of response in her district, but it is conflicted. And district with diversity will be conflicted. When you don’t have to deal with sirens and officers it easy to say right on, you’re doing great and here’s two donuts. Cultural diversity doesn’t mean reading a book, it means having compassion and knowing the people. It means having the ability to work with someone in crisis without labeling them or dismissing them. This is all society is asking from you. Your response to this report she hopes they dig in and dig in deep to work with the council and community.
Cheeks says he is pleased to serve with diligent people who can take in all the emotion on polarized sides and dig deep into the policy. The issue that the decision was made with the COPS grant in front of us and yet we set ourselves on this path. The OIR report is still before another committee. To have this much discussion on 8 officers when we have all this new information makes it more difficult. He doesn’t think they are at a crossroads, he was conflicted coming in, now he is not. The timing on the OIR thing creates confusing. 8 more or less officers doesn’t make a black youth more or less scared. It doesn’t make someone who calls more or less safe. These conversations get muddied by the 200 years of oppression, we tie so much to the police and its just not that simple. This isn’t black and white – a vote one way or the other isn’t about race and oppression – he refuses to be pulled into thinking about it this way. But he knows we live in a city that is one of the worst places to be black and brown and that comes from the reality that starts with interactions with the police. Police are not the reason for the social will or the solution. We need to hold two things in our head. WE need people beating the drum on the other issues at budget time. He is surprised by how quiet it is at budget time. We will make decisions at that time. He supported it in the past and is not conflicted about supporting it again. He wants to know how we get a community that is safer.
Rummel isn’t conflicted either and she isn’t sure how we are spending our resources. We have a lot of money in this department and she is not satisfied they unpacked that. Why can’t we reallocate our resources. She says this conversation is important. Her constituents are 3 to 1 against. People who are concerned about about shots fired, overdosing on heroin and needles in the street. When the police show up that is reactive. What would you do with the $600,000 instead? That is what she has been thinking about. There was an incident in December where a man holed himself up in his house with guns and the whole neighborhood showed up. The community was solving the issue – people do appreciate the police even when they are being policed. She was surprised that the council supported the 50-50 division of labor – she doesn’t recall discussing it. She doesn’t think they really thought about it. There has been a lot of changes since 2008 and international changes in the role of policing. I s that the right ratio, do we have the right number of officers. She agrees with alder Kemble, we need more information about what we expect and how we will leverage these resources. WE don’t count the other officers that might show up – that is a disconnect. WE are getting better at getting our data to work for us and she wants to keep that work up. Since 2013 she has thought a lot about community policing – she thinks she believed a lie about it – she embraced something she thinks even exists any more. She doesn’t think the CPT is community policing. It’s up to the captain. She wants to work more on those issues.
Baldeh says he doesn’t know how to run a police department, but he does know how to manage. When the mayor vetoed the Taco Bell thing we asked how to move forward and he came up with some ideas. The issue of policing and the things we are talking about we need to take seriously. Beyond the council, the mayor and police chief need to take leadership on this. HOw will we fix these issues – if we can’t police ourselves out if it, we need other ways to address the issues. If Black people are more than 50% of the population arrested, there is a problem. He didn’t vote for this, we shouldn’t police ourselves out of situations. What he does believe that we voted to allocate the money, but it was contingent on the grant, and we didn’t get it. For that fairness he thinks the money should be allocated for the officers as long as the other money is removed from the budget. He says that older white make testify for the police. His cousin was the last homicide victim of 2016 – he is not anti-police. But they are policy makers. His emails were 50-50 for and against. The question is will the chief work with people to look at the recommendations – I hope he will promise he will work with the council. Some of the testimony from tonight speak to the fact that leadership matters, particularly from the police. They heard about troubling numbers around people of color, but the leadership reflects how the officers fear. He will vote for this for fairness sake. I hope the police understand that he wants to fix the problems of distrust between people of color and the police. And they are arrested at a much higher rate. What is that happening. The chief should call a meeting of the leaders and work to stop it. This needs to come from leadership. He is not for or against. What will you do when the money is given to the police – are you going to work to make the problems better. Will you be part of the process, we all need to be.
Mayor Paul Soglin says that the staffing study doesn’t enter into his recommendations, he has serious doubts and always has. He hopes that the issues between the chief and the council doesn’t impact people’s vote – the people we serve are the ones who drive our decision. Prior to August 5th of this year we set a record in homicides, and we’ve gone 5 successive months without a homicide. Think about that. Think about what would have happened if the last 5 months had been the first 5 months. On August 1st there was an intensive police presence in hot spots with hot individuals – it took a lot of time. Sometimes police do reduce crime. The other initiative was about the council funding the interruption and disruption initiative. He can’t say for sure what happened, but he’s certain the two initiatives were a contributing factor in the change. It’s one of the reasons why we are looking at violence as a public health issue. They are doing new things around the country and it is having an impact. The real driver here is that when there is danger we need to have significant resources available. You have seen the video and when those incidents happen, we have to go to priority calls only and when there are shots fired there has to be an investigation and when it happens at night it is more challenging. Someone said earlier that this was a 2% impact. To cover one shift for patrol they need 6 officers. It’s really one officer on the shift all the time. WE have service demands and presence on the streets while we are trying on the other end to break the cycle of violence. (missed some) No mater what we do with housing, mental health or job training, some individuals will choose guns instead of a job. He doens’t follow a lot of time on facebook but someone tagged me on something that happened outside the city of Madison, and he doesn’t want to insult surrounding departments, but if you call you’d better have a Madison officer over the others. There is at least on township that deliberately understaffed knowing that they will send a Madison officer if needed.
Arvina Martin says that often what she hears is the same or similar as others, especially at 1:05 in the morning, but she feels the need to say it anyways. It’s been difficult to grapple with. Many of these things have preceded her and she has not been part of the decision making process. She still has a lot to learn. She says some of the testimony kind of hit her in the gut, the things she heard were hard to hear. AS a person of color that does not look like a person of color she knows she has privilege and hearing the stories hit her hard. At the same time a lot of the things we heard is about the fatigue of our officers because of inability to take time off. She thinks rested officers will take care of the city better. She is supporting this so we have people with a full tank so people can protect us the way we want it to. We all have heard about staffing not being the only issue and there needs to be a public health response to violence in the city. She hopes they look at the culture for people of color in the department. When she worked in admissions in the college we would say the school worked hard to get us here but didn’t support them once they were there. She hopes we continue to think about that experience.
Rebecca Kemble says that the Etico study, that the mayor has doubts about, even if you think that is objective data, that is not the kind of data we need to make a decision – we need to know about how the decisions are made to take patrol officers to beef up the rest of the department and then because of the ratios in the Etico study we don’t have enough cops. The effects the management decisions are making impact this and we need to know the information figure out how resource decisions are being made. Around accountability we only have one tool, its the budget, this is a budget decision and if we want to affect some change and do it meaningfully, not just be saying strong words tonight, make a good decision about this that reflects the words we have been saying.
No: Kemble, Rummel
17 ayes, 2 nos.
ONLINE ALCOHOL SALES
Motion
Move the alternate.
Mayor says he has to be up in 5 hours, he reminds them what he said last week and he asks Rummel to chair. Eskrich thanks Bidar for drafting this to make it pertain to grocery stores instead of liquor stores. She says its a good compromise and hopes they will support it.
Zellers says that this disadvantages mom and pop stores like Cork-n-Bottle and Star Liquor.
Verveer agrees, there was no support for this at ALRC, he thinks big box retailers will be able to take advantage of this. He says that Bidar knows he opposes.
Public Testimony
One registrant is still here wishing to speak. Breanna Cotton. She works for Roundy’s and is in support. She says that people shopping for groceries want to purchase on line and in the stores. They are doing “click list” to order on line and come pick up the groceries. They want to pick up the whole order – this is for accessibility and convenience. People don’t want to take screaming kids into the store. They have 19 stores who do this already. Roundy’s has created responsible policies around this. They think this is socially responsible and economically feasible ordinance.
Clear asks the speaker if they support the substitute, she does.
Discussion
Palm doesn’t understand the need for the ordinance and will vote against. The 4 hour waiting period is most amusing to him – its a wierd solution to a problem he is not sure we have. He agrees with the concerns about mom and pops.
Skidmore is not supportive of the alternate.
Cheeks doesn’t understand that mom and pops would be disadvantages – Zellers turned around and explained – now he gets it. He asked if the mayor would veto this – have the sponsors talked to the mayor about his concerns. He’d rather work through the issues than put the community through a veto.
Rummel says that the mayor said he doesn’t support this on the way out.
Eskrich supports this for the grocery – where you might add a bottle of wine to your order. She thought this was a reasonable way to address that, she did not intend for it to hurt mom and pops.
Verveer says explains that he worked with staff to create the guidelines. He says the underlying ordinance was worked on the city attorney, law school program and police. These are strict regulations that go beyond the state statutes. He says that this is for seniors and people with disabilities and for people with small children. He says the mayor represented this – this is not drive through windows for alcohol sales. This is far from it. They are extending the license to the parking stalls. The mayor is against this in general. He wants people to go into the store. The mayor and he agree to disagree, the mayor doesn’t support the alternate. If this is adopted the mayor will veto is and they will be back for an override.
Clear asks if people who don’t like the alternate would vote for the underlying ordinance.
Rummel asks why the grocery model is undesirable.
Verveer says that the alternate was not supported at ALRC is because the mom and pop stores can’t do it. If the alternate is adopted Roundy’s, Walmart and others could do it.
City Attorney raises and issue about there being three items that may get vetoed.
Alternate fails on a voice vote.
The underlying substitute passes on a voice vote. There are a handful of no votes.
75 & 76 are the licenses for the grocery stores. No discussion. Passes on a voice vote. Another handful of nos.
INTRODUCTION FROM THE FLOOR
Resolution saying Trump is abhorrent.
