From Thursday night – the brief, final meeting of the year where they approve an additional $11M for jail consulting services, allow refugees in Dane County, mental health access center and more.
I wasn’t in a hurry to get some of last week’s meetings done since there won’t be much local government new the next 2 weeks. Here’s the 38 minute meeting they had on Thursday if you want to follow along.
GETTING STARTED
Roll Call: All there except Carl Chenowith, Patrick Downing, Jamie Kuhn, Jeremy Levin, Paul Nelson – Chair Corrigan announces that Supervisors Nelson, Chenowith, Levin and Kuhn indicated they would not be there.
Prayer/Inspirational Message: Hayley Young says there wasn’t much to be inspired by in a week where she was studying for finals and being depressed by US and international news. She says when she thought about yesterday’s historic vote in Congress, she thought of the 7 people who chose to hold power to account and in their courage she found something inspirational. 2 months ago 7 freshmen in Congress in swing districts wrote and op ed that spurred the inquiry and vote that happened yesterday, while being told their actions would cost them votes and maybe their seats. They decided to hold their duty to their oath of office over potential political power. Everyone who takes an oath of office swears to uphold the constitution, preserve checks and balances, be stewards of the public trust and our responsibility at the local level is no less important even though our jurisdictions are so much smaller. Our duties as elected officials is to do the right thing even when it isn’t easy, especially when it isn’t easy. And, especially when holding power to account. She has been thankful to be part of a cohort of elected officials that has been willing to do that.
They say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Announcements: Dave Ripp says the Public Works Committee has “munchies” tonight for a meeting earlier, so there is cheese and crackers over there and he doesn’t want to take it home. There’s two slices of sausage left, he’d rather it go home with them.
Michele Ritt says she is a teacher and every year she does a project to promote kindness with her students. Last year some of you got roped into this already, but they had year two of Leopold Timberwolf Kindness rocks – she has a big bag of them here and she will not force them to take one, but she strongly encourages them to join in the fun of spreading kindness with her students. Anyone present is welcome to – you take a rock, you set it off on an adventure across the world somewhere inside Dane County and they follow all the adventures of all of the rocks.
Analeise Eicher says last week at the Parks Commission Supervisor Ripp asked if anyone baked with nuts, and she likes a challenge, so she has some shortbread cookies that she made with hickory nuts that Supervisor Ripp havested and prepped and they are delicious, I might be biased, but I have them and I’ll pass them around.
Corrigan mentions the December birthdays, Kristin Audet (today) and Chenowith.
AGENDA ITEMS THAT PASS WITHOUT DISCUSSION
Approval of payments
Approval of minutes – Nov. 21 committee of whole and board meeting
Consent Calendar, Items F 1-17 – Wegleitner separates F9, Stubbs separates F16, Chawla separates F1. The rest pass.
SEPARATED CONSENT AGENDA ITEMS
Yogesh Chawla says that he is happy to see that this agreement includes bike lane accommodations, connecting the Glacial Drumland Trail and Capital City Trail is a high priority thing to do. It will be tricky to do that off-road and have a dedicated bike path off road, but until that happens this section of Cottage Grove Rd. between those two trails, we should do as much as we can to accommodate bikes on it, particulary as we go away from the Capital on Sprecher Rd, that section is very dangerous for bikers and its well traveled especially on the weekends and he wants to thank the committee for putting in accommodations for bike lanes.
It passes unanimously on a voice vote.
Heidi Wegleitner has some questions for the controller, unless Mead and Hunt it here. They are. First she asks Chuck Hicklin, the controller about when the county board took up and approved the budget amendment in June to double the authorization for the jail, were these additional funds part of that total amount that was approved. Hicklin says yes, they were, when the new cost estimate came in, it included construction costs and soft costs like architectural and engineering and construction management. It was clear with the scope of the project change that the fees to Mead and Hunt and Gilbane would need to increase, that was known at that time.
Wegleitner asks if they will need to borrow more money later because this was already anticipated. Hicklin says at this point, to the best of his knowledge that is correct.
Wegleitner asks Mead and Hunt and Gilbane – she ask about page 20 of the presentation presented to public works. She asks about the current reviewed additional fees cost comparison, she asks them to walk them through what these costs are because it is not super obvious to her how they got to the totals at the bottom. Can you summarize that.
David Way, principle at Mead and Hunt, with him is Chris Harp, the project manager from Mead and Hunt and Mark Manning from Gilbane. He says they tried to break it down. He says under current is the original construction costs for the project. The soft costs is project costs and that is the total. $50M was the construction cost estimate and then the fee was $4M at that time. FF&E is furniture, fixtures and equipment. AE fixed costs is time and money needed to determine what FF&E is. And then cost estimated consultant. And then there were change orders 1 & 2 and the county wanted to include that. The current column cost of fees was $4.8M. With the new South Tower addition project the costs the construction cost estimate was $115.6M and then the basic A&E services was $10.3, again the FF&E goes up with a larger building, and the fees associated with the FF&E and then they needed to add some other consultants on the team because it was a much different project – if they have questions about that they can explain those. The total fee was then $11.7. Those fees were in the $148M that was approved. Those were in the soft costs already approved, there are no additional fees that need to be approved tonight.
Wegleitner asks if it includes all of the additions in both change orders. He says it is just for Mead and Hunt. Wegleitner asks if there is another slide with the costs of the additional people that need to be on site. Way says there are two different contracts, so that is why it is different. Wegleitner asks if they could go over the “small print” and summarize the changes with the additional staff needed. Manning says the changes boil down to the number of staffing needed due to the magnitude of the project and the duration of the project, simply put, its the extra man power and resources needed to manage the project throughout the longer duration. 27 months vs. 13.5 for pre-construction and then 25 months of construction under original contract and 42 months for the revised project.
Wegleitner says it says originally that there would be one person on site, and this change order would have three people on site, is that standard? Manning says there is not a standard, he says it is the magnitude of the project, the scope of the work and involvement that dictate the staffing requirements. This is a pretty significant project, a lot of real estate to cover, a lot of detailed work to be reviewed throughout the construction project and submittals that need to be reviewed and released timely.
Wegleitner asks Mead and Hunt about new drawings and studies. What is in the contract in terms of engagement or oversight in that process. Maybe this is better directed to staff. Will you be coming back to any committee to present information or just talking with the sheriff’s office. Way says in the contract they have meetings scheduled to meet with the project review committee which is PP&J along with community members that were selected, so they have a couple more meetings scheduled to review. They had one meeting recently and it went very well. Most people were very happy with what we were presenting, so they have that. Gilbane has been hired by the county as the right arm, they have oversight in what we are doing along with the county, so there is a lot of interaction.
Wegleitner asks the sheriff, Dave Mahoney, if the committee the consultant referenced is the committee that was set up when the initial jail funding was approved, that includes community stakeholders. Sheriff says yes. Wegleitner asks how many meetings are going to be scheduled? These are open to the public right. Sheriff says yes, they are posted and part of PP&J and he thinks they have 3 more meetings.
Wegleitner says that the large change order took her off guard a little bit that it is a lot of money and when we were debating the jail in June I heard the argument that this is the same project, we’re just kind of moving the legos around and its going to be a different shape, but the program is going to be the same, and the project is really the same. It’s obviously not the same when you look at the comparisons in this presentation and when you look at the cost differentials and that we will be doing another staffing study, and there is additional input that is going to be gathered. It strikes her that this is not the same project and this is another opportunity to stop a really large, expensive public works project that cements the legacy of this county board. She would encourage them to not just vote yes because you think this needs to get over with without more discussion or input or evaluation, but take this opportunity to vote no and think about what we really want to be designing for our future. We recently received a study of our behavioral health system, we are in the project of convening a behavioral health subcommittee and implementing new interventions to provide better access to care, and thinking about recommendations to provide more accessible 24 hour crisis care. And this project, this plan, does not incorporate that. We should consider doing something else with all that money that was approved in June and say no to this contract tonight and imagine a future that we really want, where people get access to the care that they need and aren’t going into jail because they are sick, profiled because they are people of color, because they live in low-income over-policed, over-surveilled neighborhoods. Please vote no.
Patrick Miles speaks in support, we looked at this issue last summer when the increased cost became known to us for the site and some of the stie conditions required us to re-evaluate what we are going to do there and we went through a whole process of looking at if we were going to stay in that location, do a different site and so forth. After all that analysis, we made a decision already, we went through this debate and made a decision to proceed with this downtown site with adding a tower next to the existing public safety building. We were responding to unknowns that became known as far as challenges for the site conditions. The programming effort and so forth does not change, what has changed is what we have to do to be able to build on that current site. What this change order is about truing up a contract that is part of the decision we made last summer. He will be voting for it.
Ripp also wants to speak in favor, Heidi is right about one thing, the lego thing, he shuddered over here because he spent over 30 years in construction. Obviously were going to knock off the roof and build on a flat surface, but if you look, its not a flat surface, now you are building on a good incline, so you have a lot more support below, you have mechanicals that you wouldn’t have needed, you have a lot of things that have changed. The basic part of the jail is pretty much the same thing, the program etc, its all the other things now that we have to run into. We made that decision to do it, this is how we have to do it.
There were a couple nos, but it was a voice vote and I don’t know who.
Sheila Stubbs thanks the body for allowing per diems for the subcommittee, that is really important as we talk about diversity and who we bring to the table and childcare and some of the other barriers. She thinks allowing the per diems for community members is wonderful, so thanks for these dollars that will helps some of the most vulnerable populations.
Passes on a voice vote.
OTHER ITEMS THAT PASS WITHOUT DISCUSSION
Zoning items H1-H10
Resolutions K1 (Refugees resolution) – Executive Committee recommends approval
M1, M3-M5. They record a unanimous vote.
CREATING A NEW DANE COUNTY UNIVERSAL ACCESS CALL CENTER AND AUTHORIZING NEW POSITIONS DCDHS – ACS DIVISION – BEHAVIORAL HEALTH
Stubbs is in support, this resolution authorizes extension of a crisis training with the National Alliance of Mental Illness, NAMI, county-wide. Which is critical for some of our most vulnerable populations. In addition a call center would create 8 full time positions, one supervisor. They would staff the call center which will start in April. The hours of the call center will be 12 noon to 8 pm and 8pm to 4am, 7 days a week. We know these are some of the most critical hours in which it is difficult to navigate our system, so this call center creates a one-stop shop. She is honored to stand in support because we get it here in Dane County, we create what is necessary and what we think is best for our constituents in Dane County. The call center would augment the available resources and serve as a one-stop shop, but does not replace or eliminate any other public or private outreach being done. It augments the existing crisis infrastructure as it exists through Journey and other providers. The concept of the universal access point is something that the Recovery Coalition has been working on over 3 years. This proposal directly responds to 2 of our 7 recommendations from the PCG report that has been mentioned tonight and has been supported by the Charles Tubbs family. It is important to talk about the opportunities for partnerships across the public and private sector, and we have talked about that in many of our projects here in Dane County. This is not the only solution, its another approach to reaching the barriers that exist in our mental health environment. We know first hand that families bounce back when they have the access they need. She thanks Executive Director Charles Tubbs and his family for all the work they have done to share the story concerning his son, that we lost. We lost a really great person. She thanks Chief Tubbs, Chair Corrigan, County Executive Joe Parisi, the members of the Health and Human Needs Committee he listen and created a subcommittee, this body, the providers, private and public partners, mental health community, those that have shared private stories. This is what Dane County looks like when we are very inclusive. No one takes a win, all of us are winners when we all stand and champion really important work. She thanks the Chair, this body and all that helped put the $1.5M towards the mental health services that are necessary in Dane County.
Matt Veldran echoes and thanks Supervisor Stubbs for her discussion just now and the points that she made, because they are all well founded. He says the testimony at Health and Human Needs was some of the most moving testimony that we have had in almost any of our issues. There were people opening their hearts to us, talking about suicide, frustrations with the mental health system, it was obvious to all of us, that we felt how Stubbs described it would work, we felt that and it was powerful, the whole Tubbs family was there. There were wet eyes. There were a lot of people really taking this in, so he thanks the Chair and all that were behind this, obviously we know its important, but just to see those families come before us and bear their souls was really poignant, moving and we know this was the right thing to do for mental health.
Stubbs forgot to think Director Tessman and Todd Cambell for the work they have done in the Human Services Department.
Corrigan says that they will record it as passing unanimously.
WRAPPING UP
The items on the agenda with the Towns changing the comprehensive plan don’t require action. The adjourn.
