Items discussed in this 3/9/20 Finance Committee recap include managerial pay, rainbow murals, senior services and sending 100 police officers to Milwaukee for the Democratic National Convention.
You can watch here if you want to follow along.
GETTING STARTED/CONSENT AGENDA
Mayor calls the meeting to order.
Roll Call: Alders Shiva Bidar, Rebecca Kemble, Barbara Harrington-McKinney and Donna Moreland plus Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway all present. Keith Furman and Mike Verveer absent.
Consent Agenda: There is a speaker on #8, Moreland excludes #2, Kemble excludes 11 & 12. There is a registrant on #5 available to answer questions (Claire Oleksiak from Sustain Dane in support and available to answer questions.) There are no questions.
Items that pass without discussion
#1 – Appointment of Connie Thompson as Monona Terrace Director (5 year contract)
#3 – Allowing staff to click on legal terms and conditions and services available on social media.
#4 – $75,000 to BID to activate downtown spaces
#5 – Sponsorship of Sustain Dane Accelerate Sustainability Workshops, Green Team Roundtables and Sustain Dane Membership.
#6 – $10,000 for police for overtime funds for methamphetamine investigations
#7 – Amending budget income by $614,000 for Fish Hatchery Road construction funded by City of Fitchburg
#9 – $130,000 amendment to Sewer Utilty Budget for Rimrock Interceptor-Industrial Drive Extension
#10 – $10,000 from National Lead of Cities Rapid Response Grant Program for “Get Out the Count” activities to reach historically under-counted communities.
#13 – Water Utility financial management and planning practices audit
#14 – Accept donations for 3 new K9 dogs and 1 Mounted horse for the Police Department
All those items pass, with their recommendations without discussion.
NOTE: You have to click on the links to see the recommendations and sometimes recommendations from other committees aren’t showing up for the public if the minutes are not published, so only the alders and staff know what they are actually passing by accessing legistar on the back end of the program.
#2 – Compensation of Managerial Employees
Bidar moves adoption, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Questions of Staff
Moreland asks the staff to explain the memo, what is this informing us of?
Dave Schmiedicke, the Finance Director says that there is a second related to compensation for those employees that are in compensation group 21. Those are all the department managers (department and division heads) and they have a separate process for receiving pay increases than the rest of city employees. Part of the process is to identify a pool from which the mayor can then grant pay increases to those individuals. This memo walks through the calculation laid out in the ordinance for calculating the pool. One part is an estimate of the step increases and longevity increases by city employees in the prior year, that generates 1.18% pay increase. That is added to what compensation group 18 employees received. Compensation group 18 is primarily the professional staff, managers, supervisors. That increase for 2020 is 3.25%. So the overall increases is 4.43%, that is applied to the salary base for all of compensation group 21 employees, that creates a pool of $147,500. The mayor can award pay increases that total no more than that amount to compensation group 21 employees.
Moreland says, “but they are already getting an increase”.
Schmiedicke says they have not received an increase, that increase does not occur until the mayor makes a decision, and then that is retroactive to the date that the compensation group 18 got that pay increase, which was the first pay period in December.
Moreland asks if when they were in budget deliberations, the 3.25% didn’t apply to all city staff?
Schmiedicke says the amount of money was set aside to pay all city staff a 3.25% increase, the amount has not actually been paid to the compensation group 21, because that is a decision of the mayor, all other employees have received that pay increase, with the exception of teamsters, they are still in bargaining.
Moreland asked if they anticipated the 3.25% was going to happen.
Schmiedicke agrees.
Moreland asks what the additional 1.184 is?
Schmiedicke says that under the ordinance there is a calculation that is made that tries to establish an equivalent percentage amount associated with longevity increases that all other employees receive and step increases. Compensation group 21 employees don’t get that automatically, so its an element of the ordinance to create that amount of a pool should the mayor want to award something more than 3.25%. It’s part of the calculation set up many years ago when this procedure was established for compensation group 21.
Moreland asks if this happens every year.
Schmiedicke says yes, this memo is prepared and presented.
Moreland asks what the total increase was last year.
Schmiedicke says that its the same as all the other compensation group 18 employees, it was a 3.25% increase last year as well.
Moreland asks if they got the additional 1.18%
Schmiedicke says no, he says that ever since he has been doing this, which is 8 years now, it is just whatever the compensation group 18 employees have gotten, there has not been any additional amount. It has been awarded on an across the board basis as well.
Moreland asks if the calculations will be something new going forward every year.
Schmiedicke says it has been done for many years before now and will be done until the ordinance is changed.
Discussion/Vote
No discussion.
Motion passes on a voice vote.
#8 – $50,000 private donation for Rainbow Streets
Moved by Bidar, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Public comment
Richard Procash (sp?) is in opposition. He had a lot of question being able to speak here, so thank you to every body who I spoke to, I’m not sure if it is anybody here. Thank you for the work you do. He’s from Madison, he’s from the entire state. He got his degrees 20 years ago here, sociology and economics. He came from a lot of places of controversy. Ideological controversy. With everything that he studied he was able to answer and get a lot of clarity to the questions that he had. And he had a silent vow to bring, wherever he was living, if he had to make hard calls in the community for people, he was going to make sure he was going to make those right calls. This is a very small measure, but this came up and he hasn’t felt the need to really say much in Madison. He has been back in Madison now for 5 years, he probably has a conglomerate of 10 years living here, he was in Milwaukee for about 10 years. This came up in the paper and I am speaking about it because I couldn’t help but to be grappled by it. This is the LGBTQ community proposal, a gift to the City of Madison, and he is raising it as an issue, because these are not art projects, these are flags. These flags bring a political message from a minority group. What’s, I think, termed as a minority group. I don’t mean to be insensitive to that group by any means, but the places that these are proposed – the mall area off the square, and the bike path, those are public places. I know this is a gift, however, I think its termed a s a mural and its not an art project, its a flag. And that becomes a political stamp. And these are not just a time based observation that gives reverence to a minor community, this is something that is going to be there for 4 years. I sell this community to a lot of friends and its beyond – I’m still flabbergasted – at their influence in this world – and its comes from places that aren’t detected by the media. But its huge and I sell Madison and all that is great to all my friends.
Mayor interrupts and asks him to wrap up.
He says “forgive me” but he feels this crosses lines and its hard for me to do that, and say “ah, that’s great”.
Question of Speaker
Alder Harrington-McKinney has a question. She asks him to say more about the equity issue he alluded to, or did she mis-hear him.
He says that he got clarity on this 20 years ago, his focus has been on society economy, mainly American level. Even a world level. Hasn’t been so much on Madison, but he feels the term equality has gotten misappropriated from an ideological perspective. He believes in equal rights and that stands with the integrity, but if I’m trying to answer your question – he’d love to relate it once again to this issue. But there is a true integrity that breed the better welfare for everybody, even those groups that might have the label of minority status. He’s not arguing equity or equality, he’s arguing for true integrity that observes everybody and he truly believes that – he’s a little concerned that its three aldermen that brought this up. He thinks he personally talked to him, and they were nice as heck, its great, that kindness mattered. But I have lived in all of their districts here in Madison and I’ve been in places that I don’t think you would believe the observation I can bring. I was homeless here in Madison, as well as in the best places. I’m a little bit concerned that those aldermen’s didn’t shoot down this proposal or this gift right away, because its discriminatory, its a flag, not a mural. It’s a flag and a flag has a message and its a political statement. So that is the heart of the concern that he is bringing to the table here. There are places you can put a flag, on private property, there’s ways around this. There’s ways to honor that community, but he is very concerned that its truly a discriminatory measure. I’m sorry, this came up two weeks ago and I don’t know if this is the best place to bring this up, but I know this relates to the transportation department because its going to be on the roadways. But that is a discriminatory message, unfortunately it is.
Mayor interrupts and asks if the question has been answered. McKinney says yes.
No questions for staff.
Discussion
Bidar asks to have her name added as a co-sponsor and says that she thinks this is a great project and reflects our values as a city, I’m not sure what the political statement is, but the value statement I know what it is. And I’m very proud to have a value statement that is inclusive of our LGBTQ+ community in the City of Madison. And as a reminder for those who are tuned in, this is going to be paid by private fundraising sources, so there is no taxpayer funds involved. There is certainly public right of way involved, but the same way that we have named some of our streets, the one that we sit on right now, Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. expressing our values for our equality. She thinks this is another way to publicly express what we stand for as a city and she is grateful for the alders and Alder Lemmer has joined us and others in bringing this forth. She thinks its a great way of expressing our support and values for the LGBTQ+ community.
Harrington-McKinney is not going to add her name as a sponsor, and it has nothing to do with, because publicly, privately, this community is a community that her family is a part of. The reason she is not going to add her name to it is because for those communities who many not be able to have a donor to give an amount to expressly show our values. That is why she wanted him to expand, she didn’t want to put words in his mouth, but she wanted to make sure it was part of the record because this is where she is standing. She is grateful for the offering, but she remembers in February for Black History we did not even have a flag. And when I say we, that was very discouraging to her to find out we have black history and we didn’t even have a representation of a flag for that community. For her it sets up a tone of privilege that she has to speak to, even tho personally she absolutely am supportive of it, but when she is looking at the community as a whole, she doesn’t see it the same way, so she won’t be adding her name as a sponsor.
Alder Lindsay Lemmer says she wanted to work on this and worked with her other alder colleagues on this because she thinks it sends a really important message to youth in our community and outside of our community. That we welcome and include everyone. And the reason they made the choice to make this privately funded is because we wanted to be very careful with public dollars. We have a very tight budget as we all know and there was a lot of interest in the LGBTQ community in supporting this. And its a way of bringing everybody together. Outreach feels very confident that they can raise this money and its not about a wealthy agenda. There are so many people that want to support this and its a way of including everyone. And she doesn’t think signaling to people who have been discriminated against, who have been marginalized, that they are welcome here, is discriminatory, its the opposite. She thinks it is something that we need to do and its something that makes us stronger overall as a city.
Vote
Motion passes on a voice vote with Alder Harrington-McKinney clearly voting no.
#11 – Policy Paper and RFP for Senior Services
Bidar moves adoption, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Questions of Staff
Kemble asks staff to come up and talk about it and the memo they gave us. She says this has been a long time coming and it marks an important change in how we are supporting adult services in this city. The senior coalitions have been through a 3-4 year long process that completed last year, they have re-organized themselves and now we’re re-organizing in the city about how to support them. Can you summarize the high points of the memo for us.
Sally Jo Spaeni, the Senior Center Director says the policy paper will inform the REquest for Proposal for the adult services in the City of Madison. We have asked for case management, senior activities, volunteer guardianship and home chore assistance. The senior activities and case management pieces pull in the process that we underwent last year with the Southeast Asian elders and the process that we have laid out here is one that is inclusive for all. Does that help?
Kemble says for people watching and for our colleagues, could you talk about that transition and how you are really re-envisioning. Your policy paper is good, but not everyone is going to read it and she wants to highlight the great work that has been going on there. So, if you can talk about the relationship with New Bridge and the other service agencies that are coming into the fold and how that is different and how you see that working moving forward. Also, in terms of budget numbers, is there an increase in the overall amount of money that we’re able to invest in our senior services or are there other pots of money that they are able to tap into to supplement.
Spaeni says I think I understand now, thank you. She says that the work that they have done with New Bridges, they have merged from 4 coalitions into one. The way we work together now is to see them as one whole organization. They have their offices in different areas of the city but they are still providing the same services. We just had an update form Jim Krueger at the last Committee on Aging meeting and between his testimony and the reports that receive quarterly it appears that services have gone uninterrupted to the seniors in our community. There has been a slight decrease in senior activities services, due to the cuts from United Way that they received earlier this year. The Southeast Asian services that we are folding in to this RFP process is because those services do fall under the same perview of senior services and it makes sense to run them concurrently. In terms of budget the overall amount is the same with $115,000 that the council approved last year for Southeast Asian seniors. We intend to support that this year. But there has been no reduction.
Jim O’Keefe, Director of Community Services says this is the first policy area, program area that was put out to bid following the completion of the funding process study, the FCI study that was done. This RFP and this policy paper seek to continue to sharpen the focus of what we are looking for under that Request for Proposals (RFP) process in terms of being more explicit about the programmatic standards. That we are looking to fund with city resources. And the coordination of those services across the network of service providers. Sally Jo mentioned that we are folding in, recognizing the services that the council authorized be expanded for Southeast Asian elders in the last budget. But those are older adult services so we believe they belong here. With respect to funding, he would note that when we have occasion to put funds out to bid through our RFP processes, this will be the first time in 5 years, it presents the best opportunity to contemplate the possiblity of additional funding. The timing of this RFP process is such that the responses to the RFP that we get will be available to us and able to inform recommendations that we will make to the mayor and you will have available to you when you make budget decisions. We are not seeking a funding change in this RFP but we are recognizing that the types of responses we get might set the stage for those requests in the 2021 budget process.
Alder Harrington-McKinney thanks Alder Kemble and the staff for expanding and the work they have done. She was impressed by the depth of funding and commitment Sally Jo brought to the organization, to expand the vision. She doesn’t think Sally Jo quite hit it, what is your vision for seniors and the programming you are developing and the RFP structure that you are putting together, could you say more about that.
Spoeni says the vision that she has for seniors is that they are making sure they are using city dollars to benefit those who have the least access to services in our community. To be able to categorize the services into seniors activities and home chore assistance and volunteer guardianship is actually setting out to make sure that the agencies that we are working with like New Bridge, Outreach and RSVP are actually really listening to what their clients are telling them and what their needs are so that they can provide exactly what people need to be able to age in place, stay in their communities longer, live a higher quality of life and be able to access whatever is needed, whether it is medical, housing, food, nuitrition, in a way that is easy and equitable to every body.
Donna Moreland asks about the two measurable outcomes, but will there be something about the number of people that are able to stay in their homes because we have the extra case management support.
Spoeni says we don’t have a measure of how many people stayed in their homes due to this, but we can make an assumption that if 75% of the folks that are being served by case management services are hitting two of the three goals, we know that is a success and it is allowing them to stay in their homes.
Discussion/Vote
No Discussion.
Passes on a voice vote.
#12 – Sending 100 cops to Milwaukee for 10 days for Democratic Party Convention
Bidar moves adoption, Harrington-McKinney seconds.
Questions of Staff
Alder Kemble asks Acting Chief Vic Wahl about basic stats. Milwaukee is asking us for 10 days of a number of officers to be deployed in Milwaukee, before, after and during the DNC. How many officers are they asking for and are you considering sending.
Wahl says that they are not asking for a specific number of officers, they have made requests based on specialty and capacity and we have been working with them to give some ball park numbers of what we think we will be able to provide. Ultimately once the agreement is finalized and goes through the council and the mayor’s approval, then we will sit down and identify the exact officers that will go and that will be in context of looking at our staffing during that time period. The ballpark is around 100 officers, but the intergovernmental agreement that will be signed with Milwaukee doesn’t specify. The number that would actually go is up to us.
Kemble asks what kind of specialties they are asking for?
Wahl says the special events team officers that do crowd management or tactical team, and mounted patrol are the main specialties that they are looking for from us.
Kemble asks if he is willing to let 100 officers go for 10 days?
Wahl says that it will create a burden on us as an agency, and its going to create a burden on our work force. Restricted vacations during that time period. The officers that are identified to go to Milwaukee will probably be working overtime, they will be working their days off. But ultimately, we are frequently in a position where we are requesting assistance from other agencies to police things in Madison, so I have to be a good partner and the National Convention is really an event of international significance and the security requirements for Milwaukee are massive and so they have a significant need for assistance. Particularly from agencies in Wisconsin, so he feels compelled to give the assistance that we can. Recognizing that it will be a burden for us.
Kemble says its going to be a burden on our city too, as far as people staying in Madison, being in Madison, potentially if our ALRC allows it, bar time being extended to 4am. I mean, we’re also going to have increased security needs. She is having a hard time squaring that, with us losing … how many sworn officers do we have? 500?
Wahl says 483 is the authorized strength.
Kemble says over 1/5th of our force to Milwaukee when our needs are also going to be increased.
Wahl says that it is important to recognize that the DNC event is a much bigger footprint than just the City of Milwaukee, in fact, as part of the security plan, they will be providing security coverage into Illinois, into Chicago and if any events in Madison are affiliated in part of the DNC, that will be part of their security plan. And the officers that are part of that plan in Milwaukee will return to police those incidents here in Madison. Of course, the agreement has a provision where if we have a substantive compelling need to withdraw our people and bring them back, of course we can do that.
Kemble asks what the command structure is like?
Wahl says Milwaukee PD will be the lead agency during the event. The U.S. Secret Service has lead for planning the event, because it is designated as a national special security event, which are very infrequent. It will be a unified command operation which is a model that we have run in many other contexts before, so that piece of it will not be new to us.
Kemble ask if he will have discretion at any time to pull your officers out?
Wahl says there is language in the contract or agreement that there has to be a compelling need here in Madison to pull them back. That is the prime avenue for us to withdraw. There are a few other avenues where either party could withdraw from the contract prior to the actual DNC beginning. We can’t arbitrarily decide we will bring them all back, but if we had staffing needs here that we were unable to meet that would be one thing that would allow us to withdraw some or all of them.
Kemble asks about the stress on vacations and overtime, what about afterwards? Given that those 100 officers, are they all going to be on for 10 days?
Wahl says the agreement is written for 10 days, ultimately the actual convention itself is only 4 days. There’s some before and after activities and there is also training that is built into that. He says it is unlikely that all of those officers are going to be gone for 10 days. He thinks the contract is just written that way because there is some of the planning components that they are finding in Milwaukee that just aren’t done yet. So he doesn’t think it is a full 10 days, he thinks it will be significantly less, but certainly the officers that go will be working for whatever period they go, so they won’t be swapping officers in and out, it will be one group that goes. So they will be there and depending upon where it falls in their work rotation and exactly how long their shifts end up being, it might be a challenge for them if they end up working longer shifts and it covers a period that would normally be their days off. He thinks those will be things they can address pretty rapidly as we put the final staffing plan together.
Kemble asks about that this could be the case, your ability to staff will have even more pressure, more than usual, which you have been coming to us for the last several years saying we’re stressed out, our people can’t get time off when they want to, can’t take vacations when they want to, and now this is an additional stress. What’s your plan for managing that?
Wahl says its a stress during this time period. Our people have known this was coming so when officers last year were going through their annual vacation pick process they knew this week would be restricted so they built their vacation picks around that. Officers who have expressed an interest in assisting and being part of this have build their vacation picks around that reality, both before and after to work that in. So certainly during the time period we have our folks in Milwaukee it will be a challenge for us because we restricted vacation during that time period. But before and after I don’t anticipate it will have a significant impact.
Kemble says “except that the 100 officers you say may be working on their days off and doing overtime” so that will affect their ability – they are working more, they are working a lot more overtime than they normally would, or no?
Wahl says, “not necessarily”. We don’t know if they will end up working overtime during the event, they may end up working only 8 hour shifts, we don’t know that yet. Certainly we have all sorts of units and employees that end up working overtime for other things, for crimes, investigations, to fill staffing shortages. So it is not unusual where officers have to have a stretch where they work a lot of hours or have a subpoena or something like that. On one day events we have done this for many years, if you consider Freakfest or Mifflin St., we dedicate a lot more people to those events than we will be dedicating to this. And if you go back to Act 10, we dedicated significant amounts of personnel over a much longer time period than this, to face the necessity of doing that. So we have some experience being able to handle this sort of burden on a short basis. He feels comfortable that they will be able to put a plan together to address all those needs.
Kemble says the difference being those two events that you mentioned were actually in Madison, so the officers were actually working in our community, not outside.
Wahl says that at all those events we have officers from outside Madison who are assisting us. The Act 10 protests there were 100s of officers from across the state who came to assist and every year at Freakfest we have outside agency officers that we ask to assist. So there have been a lot of examples over the years where we have been the ones asking other agencies to assist us because of our needs. It cuts both ways. In fact, unlike those events, we’re also getting reimburses for all the costs of our officers during this event whereas typically that is not the case.
Kemble says she is concerned about that 10 day period when we have more people in town, its the height of the summer where we typically experience a lot more police calls, a lot more violence in our community and I’m concerned, given what you have been telling us for the last couple years that even with those 100 officers in town we don’t have enough.
Wahl agrees, its a busy time for us and certainly he is not enthused about it, providing htis level of support, but when you think of the magnitude of this even and the massive security needs that they have and the number of officers they have to bring in from across the country and the unique position we are in here, with Wisconsin officers, being the next largest agency in the state with levels of training and specialization that are critical to them being able to carry off this event safety, he feels compelled to do it. We will certainly be striking a balance between what we can afford to provide them to assist and what we need here to provide service to the City of Madison during that time period. But it is a very short time period and hopefully its a one-time event here in Wisconsin to deal with.
Bidar asks how many officers we have in one shift for patrol.
Wahl says it varies by time of day, the day shift our minimum staffing level is 25.
Bidar asks if it is “up to 100” or is 100 the number?
Wahl says there isn’t a specific number, its a ball park, that’s the top “ish” end of the range we are looking at.
Bidar says so its “up to 100”, but again we don’t have 483 officers working at any time on the street, we just have the staffing we have, but with the time off, the overtime and the ripple effect that may have, correct, this 10 day period?
Wahl says that as they have been looking over this for months, and as they have put together what we think we can offer them, it has been in the context of looking at all those patrol minimum staffing shifts every day and how many people we can pull from them knowing that we have restricted vacations and still send to the DNC but maintain those staffing levels and still have flexibility.
Bidar says he mentioned the concept of mutual aid, the City of Madison has actually been on the side of having the big national renowned people coming, like for presidential election time, so has Milwaukee helped us at times with the staffing for those big events that we have had in the City of Madison?
Wahl says he is not sure if in the biggest Freakfest years if we had Milwaukee assist us? He knows they talked to them back then about mounted patrol, and he doesn’t know if they assisted with the Act 10 protests because the State Capitol PD coordinated that. So he can’t say for sure if they have or not.
Discussion
Alder Harrington-McKinney says Madison does not sit on an island and the cost of hosting the Democratic National Convention is absolutely huge. We get that. As the alders indicated the stress that is going to be locally, we get that as well. She is one of the sponsors of this because this is not only a regional issue, but it is international and there is absolutely no way that she sees that Madison can say “no” to this. Even with all the other things that are on the table, all the challenges, all the stress, all those pieces that have to be knitted together, she doesn’t see any way that Madison can say “no.” Already they are looking at hotels way outside of Milwaukee so there will be responsibilities, but there will also be income generated that will flow to other areas, Madison as well. So you’re going to have to navigate all of that, the cost, the burden, the mutual aid, all that we get and we understand but as the citizenry of Madison and this huge undergoing of hosting the Democratic National Convention, she doesn’t see any way that we could not be a part of that. That is why she is a sponsor of that, in consideration of everything else that has to be pulled together to knit this together, I get that. I understand that. But there is choices and this is one that we as a metropolitan city have no choice in, so she does support that. That is why she is a co-sponsor.
Vote
Passes on a voice vote with Alder Kemble voting no.
ADJOURNMENT
Alder Moreland moves to adjourn, Bidar seconds.
