28 minutes.
More interesting things happened before and after the meeting than during. Prior to the meeting, Ald. Judy Compton was regaling us with her tales of the olden days. Saving her pennies for her first bike and her first typewriter. Alder Eli Judge remarked how he remembered saving his dollars for his first calculator that could connect on-line. This all started because of Ald. Judy Compton sharing her dumpster diving story about someone throwing away some old documents and Judy finding a City of Madison transportation plan from 1955, complete with lots of roundabouts. Interesting document.
Also, at some point, Alder Compton did her best Marilyn Monroe impression and sang “Happy Birthday” to Alder Rummel. I don’t know how it all got started, but clearly, folks were a little punchy last night.
The other pre-meeting buzz was about our new “baby laptops”. This week we are exchanging our old laptops and deciding if we made the right choice between the “big” and “baby” laptops. Those of us who chose the small one were particularly pleased. Small, light, convenient to carry and hopefully durable. Makes my “small” laptop look huge. And the Council laptop is small enough I can carry both. Sounds ridiculous, but we can’t use city resources for personal/political activities and we can’t access city resources (legistar, financial info, software to update our website) from our personal computers. So, we’re forced to carry two laptops since we couldn’t find a better solution.
Anyways, the meeting started at 6:31. Alders Brandon and Webber were absent/excused. Comments about Favre and Ald. Rhodes-Conway’s mom visiting from New York kicked us off. We accepted the letter from our auditor (#1) and moved to the consent agenda. In the 609 pages (hard to believe some people, both left and right, still get printed packets) we only had 4 items we wanted to discuss/refer and three members of the public showed up to discuss a 5th. Two huge projects, passed without a word.
#19 – Alder Rummel questioned why we were appointing people who don’t live in the City to City Committees. When we do this, typically people have special knowledges or skills that we can’t find elsewhere. I’m not so sure that was the case with the Downtown Coordinating Committee appointment. When questioned, the Mayor’s response was sometimes the “best folks we have don’t live in the City” and that he’s “not a stickler” for having City residents serve on our City committees.
#23 – More concerns about alcohol server license decisions, so it was referred back to the ALRC.
#42 & 66 – Referred back to Board of Public Works to determine if the contractors were in compliance with our Best Value Contracting requirements.
#91 – Recycling at events thanks yous to staff!
Then we went to the public hearings and heard neighbors concerns (for and against) about who pays to fix a water runoff problem on the near west side (#13). Unfortunately, we did what we often do, we didn’t discuss or address their concerns, we just voted. We also then passed two pretty big projects – changes to the Hilldale project (#18) and Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery (#17), and placed Kenton Peters project on the Westside (#16) on file because he withdrew his application.
I had predicted the meeting would end at 6:48, and it would have if item #13 hadn’t become an issue. We adjourned at 6:59 and after the meeting, we went to the Great Dane to celebrate Marsha’s birthday. With the early end time, many went home to enjoy the evening. We were joined by Alders Gruber, Kerr, Soloomon, Clear, Judge, Schumacher, Bruer, Rummel and myself. While several alders spent time talking to the folks from Freed & Associates, the rest of us shared tales of our first political memories and involvements.
