Council to Public: Meh.

Council essentially says to the public: You don’t really need to know what is going on with changing police policies . . . we’ll get it to you when we want to, despite it being 2 months since a Madison police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson. No hurry.

Here’s the audio:

I testified at the council meeting, because this item was not taken off the consent agenda and it was just going to be referred to “a future council meeting”, nothing specific.

Council President Denis DeMarb moves approval of item 77, which is still “by title only” which means there is no language for the resolution.

Public Testimony
Brenda Konkel said I’m not sure if I support because it is still by title only but I am hoping I support it by the time it comes out. The reason I wanted to speak tonight is because I know there are a lot of members of the public who have been asking what is going on with this and I was hoping we might be able to hear something about a timeline, when we might expect to see some language. I know its taken you guys 6 weeks and there is still nothing on paper so it probably means its controversial and I’m guessing that once the public sees it it might be controversial as well and I’m wondering if maybe you might want to have it referred to a committee so someone else is looking at it with public input before it comes back to you. Because if it just gets scheduled on a Friday and suddenly its in legistar and on Tuesday you are discussing it on the council floor, you may be doing a lot of committee work on the council floor if members of the public do attend and have things to say about the resolution which will probably just lead to another referral so I was hoping there would be a way to get this done a little bit sooner because I’m guessing there will be all kinds of people with all kinds of opinions and I’m guessing they are not going to all line up, so I was hoping for two things: One, let the public know what is going on or what to expect. And number two, to think about if you want to be doing that committee work here on the council floor. So, that’s my input for tonight.

Questions and Discussion
Mayor Paul Soglin asks for further input on the question, he rushes to vote and says he sees no discussion, but Rummel interrupts him.

Marsha Rummel says she would like to hear an update about where we are at and how its coming, but the mayor went to a vote really quick so I’m not sure, she would would like to know if it would be appropriate to refer to the PSRC or EOC or if we will do that when it comes back for introduction, she is not quite clear on that. Thanks.

Barbara McKinney says she wanted to add her comment as well, the items is by title only since March and she would like to see some kind of move forward in terms of the timeline.

No answers. Mayor asks for further discussion on the question.

Mayor says the city attorney wants to make a point about where we are technically.

Michael May, the city attorney, says that this was introduced by title only and its still by title only so you can’t adopt something by title only, so you can’t adopt something by title only so it has to be referred to somewhere, and I think the motion on the floor is adoption so some other motion . . .

DeMarb says the motion is to refer to a future meeting to adopt at common council. (but that isn’t what she said originally)

Chris Schmidt said he was going to ask the same question about the motion, but he would like to hear if we have a rough timeline on this item, its been officially (?) for a while now.

DeMarb says she can speak to it and talks over the top of him and I couldn’t hear.

Mayor calls on DeMarb, she says she can give some background, she says one mistake that was made was when we put this out that there was a date the first time it was introduced to council and in hindsight that probably should have been removed because then we were forced to bring it forward and it wasn’t ready to happen. This resolution is in draft form, it is not ready to bring forward, there is still more people that need to look at it before folks are comfortable taking it to a wider audience and the four alders who are working on this resolution are crafting it at this point and she sincerely hopes to have it before you at the next council meeting.

Mark Clear says to respond to former alder Konkel’s suggestion, he is not making a motion, but throwing out the concept of referring to CCOC as a place to have further conversation before it comes to the floor, it still could come back to us on the 19th, they meet on that day he assumes. DeMarb says they do. He is not making the motion, just a suggestion.

David Ahrens asks who the four alders are that are working on the resolution. (Wow, DeMarb doesn’t want to have to answer that question publicly! You should have seen the look on her face.)

DeMarb asks if she can respond, Mayor calls on her.

DeMarb says it is Alder Zellers, Alder Bidar, Alder Cheeks and herself.

Mayor asks for further discussion.

Rummel moves for it to be referred to the CCOC meeting before the council meeting that it will come back to. DeMarb seconds.

No discussion.

Motion passes with one no, couldn’t tell who it was. (Seems like it was Skidmore, but without a roll call vote that is hard to confirm)

Thanks to the alders who tried to get information out of the Council President, Denise DeMarb.