What happened in that secret meeting, PFAS resolution placed on file/killed but new information, affordable housing presentation (which are also in separate posts) and many updates including campus district vacancy.
Several of these topic items were also made into separate posts to facilitate getting the information available sooner.
- What was the secret meeting about?
- City’s next steps on PFAS
- Great Homeless Services and Housing Overview (includes presentation but not discussion)
GETTING STARTED
You can follow along with the meeting here if you are interested.
They start late. Looks like alders present include Shiva Bidar, Barbara Harrington-McKinney, Tag Evers, Sherry Carter, Grant Foster are there, Martin is excused, Kemble and Baldeh are absent. Keith Furman joins them, but not a committee member. They approve their minutes without discussion. There is no public comment except for one registration on item 8. There are no disclosures and recusals.
DISCUSSION WITH THE MAYOR
Opportunity Zones
Info found in this post:
City Start Grant
She says we were selected to be a part of the City Start process which looks at a section of the wealth building picture that has to do with connecting communities to financial services, to savings and good advice around wealth and wealth management in the long term. She says that it covers programs that connect people to banks or credit unions, child savings accounts and tools like that. We are receiving technical assistance on these issues. They had the first meeting and she didn’t stay but there was a good discussion about where the city is at and where we might be going. It’s a multi-phase process and she says you will hear more, but the process has kicked off. She says especially around child savings accounts this is another resource for us to think about the best approach.
REFERRALS
Grant Foster is the chair and says they are making great progress but the final resolution calls for a final report next month. They think that given he work they think they can be done by March.
Tag Evers says that he appreciates all the work on this, cuz he is a luddite and is easily intimidated. He thinks the idea of updating the tools to communicate with constituents is a great idea, you do it so well already, along with others. He doesn’t feel like he does and anything that would help him he appreciates.
Motion to approve passes.
There is a substitute. Attorney Michael May explains this is an annual report that they do. They keep a list through the year when they spot an inconsistency or find something that was supposed to be changed and he puts it all together. The first corrects a typo – says charged instead of charge and they eliminate the d. Another changes Transit and Parking Commission to Transportation Commission. Another is a change to reference – paragraph 6 should be 7. Another change is changing Ped, Bike Motor Vehicle Commission to Transportation Commission. Plan commission description of how it became an ordinance is deleted and another change to Transportation Planning and Policy Board. The next is what the substitute is for. Some numbers were transposed. Another change to the Transportation Commission.
There is a section that takes out a reference to existing buildings on the Capital View to make it consistent with the state law, which has no such limitation. The Zoning Administrator has never tried to apply this limitation and it only applies on existing buildings and the third is that it is hard to define what “existing building” means, how long would the building be there. He says this would bring our ordinance in line with what the state law says. These are exceptions to allow things built on top of a building that would otherwise exceed the capital height view limitation.
The next are eliminating “something we don’t have or use any more. Item 11 added the word written, it is how sub-units are created and it says that they are created by ordinance or oder of the mayor or president of the common council and he has always taken the position that it has to be a written order. For some reasons it requires a written order of the mayor, but not written order of the president. He asks for an amendment to add written for the president. Item 12 eliminates portions of the ordinance that don’t apply any more.
Grant Foster asks about item 3, “corresponding changes”, are there additional changes included in that. May says that when the Transportation Committee changes happened they missed some changes and that section gives them the authority that if they find another they can just change it without coming back to the council. He says he doesn’t know if there are more right now, Foster says there are. May says they can do a search for that and look at it. Grant says there is one on their agenda this week, but he knows of 4 or 5 that are not on here. He says there are probably more Ped, Bike, Motor Vehicle changes too and they should add that to the blanket authority to change those too.
Adopt substitute with changes for Ped Bike Motor Vehicle Commission and adding written. Passes on voice vote.
PFAS COMMITTEE
Info found in this post
UPDATES
Update: Permanent Supportive Housing- Capacity Building, Services & New Ideas Meeting – Linette Rhodes, Community Development Division
Presentation in this post
Great Homeless Services and Housing Overview
Questions
Alder Barbara McKinney says they have done a lot of work and they are committee to housing first and affordable housing for a long period of time. She notes there is a $10M system and as we push to add more affordable housing, we need to pay more attention to the success of placement of these individuals in the homes, because they need services attached. How much preliminary and best practices were going on before that. What you are finding is what is already know, you cannot stack people up with the same level of need. She would hope that we seriously look at how to increase the housing stock but also intentionally begin to increase the services that will support that so you have successful units. The communities around those sites are saying not in our backyard. You’re going to hear that anyways, but some of the complaints are viable complaints. How do we as a city support those efforts so the sites you are developing are getting services so they will be good neighbors and they will be successful models rather than what you are seeing. So, she wanted to commend them, because she knows where you started and people won’t appreciate where you are today if they don’t know. But there is still work to be done, and we need to be a partner in that, not just financially but where we are putting that money.
[yeah, no question there]
Alder Rebecca Kemble asks about the inventory chart, it looks like there is not a whole lot for families and can you talk about why that is. Are families lower acuity or what’s up with that given that every year in MMSD they have over 1,000 kids by the middle of winter that are recognized as homeless. Rhodes ways this is just permanent affordable housing. A barrier that we have, especially with the numbers coming out of the school district is that permanent supportive housing is for chronically homeless individuals, that have been homeless over a period of a few years and have a disability. What we see is that families are finding some type of housing before they reach that chronic status. She says something not included in there is a project of what they see of the needs for permanent supportive housing. If you were to look at the number of units that we have for families that are chronically homeless, that have a disability and need those support services. And if we make some assumptions about how many of the units will naturally turn over and how many people we annually serve, we only need 26 more units of permanent supportive housing for families. That will not hit all the families that the school district reports. That is why we continue to use our affordable housing funds so that they can access some of those units. They continue to push the developers coming through the Affordable Housing Fund to look at the tenant screening because whatever the barriers are we continue to push to reduce the barriers even in the non-permanent supportive housing.
Kemble asks about the tenant screening, because they see the evictions and non-renewals due to tenants who complain about the standard of their housing and get non-renewed because they called building inspection. Is there a way to create a fund to support landlords in improving their properties but tie that to better screening criteria or certification for good landlord practices that respect tenant rights. Rhodes says that she says in the world of non-profits they are still having that conversation to get them to loosen some of their tenant selection criteria. Our nonprofits, even tho they are committed to affordable housing they don’t have the case management if someone is in need of additional support. They are also having the conversation with the developers coming in for the affordable housing funds. Where it gets hard is with private landlords who absolutely need to increase the quality of their housing stock. We have a rental rehab loan program right now. And every year they try to strip away some of the requirements, they used to require that tenants be low- to moderate-income and they still haven’t found the hook to get private landlords to engage with us to improve their properties in a way that is comfortable for them and us. We need to continue to have this conversation about the quality of housing stock that is not controlled by us. Like a loan where we can push them to do those things.
Patrick Heck asks about the Continuum of Care slide. $10M is the cities commitment to the entire continuum or? He also heard $1.6M. Rhodes says overall its about $9.8M. As funders they try to coordinate with United Way, the County, what’s coming in from the state and then from the federal government through our CoC grant. They do a funding analysis each year to look at where most of the money comes from in our community. This is really important as the federal government talks about cuts so we can see how it would impact our community. We also want to see what the funders are prioritizing. They do an analysis every year. Every year, the system is $9.8M in just operating dollars. The city’s contribution in our operating budget is $1.6M which is city levy. We do get a little bit of emergency solutions grants (ESG)
Sheri Carter says there is almost a shortage of case workers. She says the pay for case workers is an issue, have the agencies talked about increasing the pay or any kind of plan to increase the number of case workers in Madison. Rhodes says that is in the capacity building conversations.
Tag Evers wants to invite them back after the first of the year. There is not much we can do for the 2020 budget, but early on in January it would make sense for the council to work collaboratively with you. If we are going to prevent and end homelessness we have a lot of work to do, its a nation scourge and also one here in our city. He would like to focus on the capacity building issue, is there a role for the city to play in this. He says it would be good to see the numbers not only of who is housed, but those who are not. What is the data? What is our take on the problem? What kind of resources would it take to make a substantive dent. Perhaps that would be a good thing to continue to make this a topic of discussion. Not a task force or another committee, but to commit ourselves to working on this. Come January it would be prudent for us to get out ahead of the 2021 budget and start having the conversation early. Rhodes says they will be doing a request for proposals (RFP) next year. They plan on having lots more conversations with our community partners to look at the need.
Bidar thanks them and says what you are hearing is a high interest form CCEC members to also be involved in this conversation, again realizing we have colleagues who serve on committees who’s direct purview on a monthly basis is this. We can bring them to the conversation, but she thinks the interest is a broader number of council members being involved in the discussion and really understanding. This is a good way for us to understand where we are now and I think the next step is where we want to go, and for them to provide input into that, including what financial resources might be available.
Update: Aldermanic District 8 Vacancy – Council President Shiva Bidar Update: Task Force on Structure of City Government (10/15/19)
She says they got the press release on this subject. There are 5 applicants that sent in their resumes by the deadline. The five applicants are:
- Yogev Ben-Yitschak
- Max Prestigiacomo
- Sally Rohrer
- Amelia Stastney
- former alder Zach Wood
They have a meeting scheduled for Tuesday, the 22nd at 5:30. She is wondering if people can make it at 5:00. That is the date the majority of CCEC members could attend. The plan for the meeting to be parallel to other meetings where they had vacancies. They will have a set of questions and rotate asking the exact same questions. The applicants will be called in alphabetical order but the other applicants will be waiting outside and can sit and listen after they are done. Her plan is to use the same questions they used in the past, maybe with some variation of that and there is a scoring that was developed with previous council membership. And then they will make a final decision and vote that night for a recommendation to the Common Council. Please expect more detailed instructions around this in the next few days on how they will procedurally run the meeting.
McKinney asked about using the same framework and questions we used before. Would you be clear because one of the questions is about if the person wants to run. She wants to have some clarity around that question and the weighting of that question. Bidar says she can work to clarify that, but the previous decision was that we would not, not consider people who said they were not running because we cannot control whether someone will run or not and they can change their mind. The previous decision was to ask the question and let the individual alders consider that information. They are not asking applicants to only apply if the answer to that question is yes or no.
McKinney says that if it is not weighted, why is it even included in consideration. If its not weighted why is it one of the questions. Bidar says because they can personally weight that in your own recommendation.
Attorney May says that the ordinance includes it as something you are supposed to ask. Bidar says that we are supposed to ask, but it doesn’t say we need to reach a conclusion based on that asking. It does not tell us what to do with that information. McKinney asks for it to be provided. Bidar says it was sent when the announcement of the vacancy, but they can re-send it.
Carter says that prior to what they did last time, they were scored lower if they said they were going to run. Bidar says yes, and that was changed after much conversation and we landed on that people have different opinions and she decided to follow the last round. McKinney clarifies that this was to be consistent. Bidar confirms.
They will get final instructions and finalize the date and time of the meeting.
Evers says he can’t make it cuz he has a neighborhood meeting, unless you made it at 3:00 or 3:30 he can’t make it. He says he is sure that this was the best that could be done. Bidar apologizes.
Update: President’s Work Group on Council Communication Tools & Processes (10/15/19) – Ald. Grant Foster, Chair
Foster says they identified and acknowledged a big overlap with city communication processes and work and they have great participation coming in from deputy mayor Crowley and the PIOs (public information officers) and they are headed in a really positive direction.
Bidar says that the other update is that Alder Heck is being appointed to that work group (Keith Furman resigned) and that is on the council agenda tonight.
Update: President’s Work Group to Develop City-Wide Surveillance Equipment & Data Management Policies (10/15/19) – Ald. Rebecca Kemble, Chair
No update
Update: Task Force on Structure of City Government (10/15/19) (aka TFOGS)
Initially skipped over but they come back to it. Attorney May says there is memo that has a lot of references to what they are doing. Three things is the community engagement process that has links to the information used by TFOGS when they are looking at their recommendations. The second part of the memo is recommendations related to Boards Commissions and Committees (BCC) that were made by the full task force, some of them are slightly repetitious and they may deal with that when they write up the final report. He says there is some discrepancy on what was done on appointments to the BCC at this meeting and the last meeting of the Task Force that they are going to have to sort through. And finally there were some recommendations related to the Common Council, he kept that brief because it is likely that entire issue is going to be reconsidered at the meeting tomorrow night. Those were some significant changes with regard to the council that he wanted people to be aware of. Whether they will continue to be in the recommendations of the task force he does not know.
Furman says he wants to make one clarification, and he knows this is going to be revisited but one of the recommendations was about the 2 year term for president. The task force specifically discussed that would be the recommendation if they move to 4 years, not if they stay at 2. And if they stay at a 2 year term, it would still be one year, obviously the council could re-elect a president for a second year. But that was a clear recommendation that will be revisited tomorrow night.
Update: Common Council Chief of Staff (10/15/19) – Kwasi Obeng
There is a written update. She asks for questions or highlights.
Obeng says he will send out the survey again on the position and expectations for the position. He also put in there that a few months ago there was a Young African Leaders Institute, there is a Young Southeast Asian Leaders Institute and they have a fellow that will be shadowing him coming, she in interested in community engagement and a lot of the work the council is doing so he will get her up to speed on the work being done at TFOGS and the Urban League sponsored a workshop which he wants on their radar. There is a lot of concern about gentrification on the south side of Madison and they are interested in applying asset based community development and community wealth building and there are some case studies and examples from Milwaukee. City staff were there too and it was an interesting conversation.
