First, you may recall that November was a little bit crazy with rushing through a draft, with an original goal to actually wrap things up by the end of that month. Some EDC members put their foot down and demanded that the committee move on to other, more pressing issues, and the report back to the council with recommendations has been kicked back to later this spring.
The subcommittee is Alder Mark Clear, Peng Her, Vicky Selkowe, and Al Zimmerman. They’re scheduled to meet once more, though I’m almost 100% certain they’ll meet at least once more after that to sign off on a final draft, and maybe even more for a total of four or five meetings.
My notes aren’t perfect, but I did try and go over them with the recording. For people who want to know exactly what happened, I’m happy to report that I did record the meeting, and the audio is available as part one and part two. I didn’t immediately start recording, and there’s an interruption in the middle (it turns out that if use my iPhone to record the meeting, my recording software stops if someone calls me. Oops.) The whole meeting is about 1 hour 45 minutes, as the snowy roads meant they were a bit late in getting quorum. Beyond the committee members, city staff Peggy Yassa, Matt Mikolajewski, and Tim Cooley were present, as were myself, Bert Stitt from Capitol Neighborhoods, and Kevin Little from the Greater Madison Chamber of Commerce. Alder Paul Skidmore also attended, though he’s not on the subcommittee or even the Economic Development Committee.
The first agenda item was election of a chair. Until they had a chair, Selkowe served as acting chair, and because Al Zimmerman was also delayed by the snow they tabled the actual election of the chair until he arrived. Skidmore interrupts, to clarify that though he has worked for developers in Dane County in the past, he has not economic interests in this outcome.
We finally get into the heart of the meeting, and I hit record, and we start out by talking about “what are the goals or purpose for this report”. Peng Her spoke about how we can use this report as a way to combat the false perception that Madison is anti-business or anti-development. Clear agrees, though qualifies it by saying while most of it is just perception, there are anecdotes that tell us the truth is somewhere between “everything is fine” and “everything is horrible”. Agrees with the sentiment that the process should be predicable and accessible. Important goal is to empower “the people” in the small-d democratic sense of the word, to have input into how changes in the built environment are made. Some of the criticism in both sides of this equation is “I don’t know how to access the process”. Developers/constituents have questions. Different neighborhood associations have different experience level of how to interact with the process.
At the 5 minute mark of the recording, Zimmerman arrives, and Selkowe reviews the committee charge – come back to the February meeting of the full EDC with a final version of the report.
Clear adds that the expected new planning, community, and economic development director, Steve Cover, has experience in this field in the city of Atlanta and in Fullerton County and may have input, starts Feb 22nd if he is approved at the next Council meeting. That’s the same day as the EDC meeting, so hey, he has a full day to day to get to work on this. Cooley says that Cover has received a copy of the draft, so Cover knows what he’s walking into when he starts.
Selkowe: A lot of good stuff in the report – wants to make sure report has clear recommendations. Too heavy on “consider” or “think about”, not enough “Please do this” Also, set priorities. A lot to do, limited staff and commission time to actually get these things approved and implemented. Lay out a timeline and priorities so it doesn’t sit on the shelf.
Selkowe adds: Some neighborhood folks feel that parts of it single out and alienates neighborhoods by casting them as part of the problem, and in addressing one perception we’re making another one worse. Probably not intentional, but with some language changes we can change the feel, without changing the substance. Lets us move forward without leaving one whole group of stakeholders feeling offended or put upon.
Clear: Or worse, disenfranchised. Sort of goes to the way Peng started out, the perception that Madison is anti-business. There’s also a perception that this report is an attempt to railroad this through or steamroll neighborhoods. Neither perception is true, and we can use this report to combat both.
Skidmore: Bullshit. Write that down. [You asked for it, you got it! 00:09:58 in the recording!] Been dealing with this for 20 years, developers and builders running up against roadblocks. We need a fair and balanced system, but don’t need a system that throws up roadblocks that would be people from coming forward. Would use Edgewater as an example.
Clear: Committee has been trying not to use that as an example.
Skidmore: I am. I just have to say that, I’ve done this for years, worked with [a bunch of people]. There are significant roadblocks where neighborhoods throw up unrealistic roadblocks.
Selkowe and Skidmore have an exchange about Skidmore making comments. [Particularly because the committee has heard and discussed and beaten this subject to death months ago. Where has Skidmore been through this process? There’s not really any time for the subcommittee to fix the language AND have this discussion again, and the subcommittee isn’t going to have this discussion.]
Zimmerman: Intent of the meeting on Nov 29 was for the subcommittee to take this report as a framework, and mold it from there. Go through the report, identify what we still want to work on, and what we agree on. Criteria we should use for our procedure: One) – Have we achieved the balance between the various stakeholders that we’re looking for? Two) – What are the problem areas that we’ve identified, and have we addressed those problems? Three) – Is the language in the report sufficiently actionable and ready to be voted on and moved forward?
Committee decides to go through the report, starting at the beginning, agree to criteria, come back at the next meeting, maybe assign some editors and give everyone homework.
Zimmerman asks Cooley, what do you think. He says it’s fine, and over time we’ve taken what was a contentious process down to something that many people sees value in. This is our shot at getting it done after attempts with past several reports. We have an interested council, a new director, an interested Mayor, a report with actual actionable recommendations. After the report is adopted the city attorney and department heads to turn it into reality, and they’ll have the mandate from the Mayor and the Council to do it.
Selkowe takes the opportunity to nominate an official chair. By acclimation, Zimmerman is elected chair.
Selkow: Starting at the Intro, heard a lot of comments about it. It’s so general and broad it doesn’t really help relate to the topic at hand. We can tighten it and save some space. Would offer to wordsmith it to make it a bit more relevant. Clear and Peng agree.
Zimmerman: What are the couple of things we want to communicate in this section?
Clear: How do we make the intro section more relevant to the goals of the report?
Cooley: Key point of the intro is the rational for being concerned about the investment environment. The levy on the assessed environment is how we fund the city. Making the case for an improved development/investment environment – why should people build here as opposed to somewhere else? We’re making the case to the general public. [That was pretty heavily paraphrased]
Zimmerman talks about the objective of the intro – it’s a two-fold objective. We need an atmosphere that is conducive to development so we can fund good services, but we want to protect the environment that we do have [where environment is understood to mean more than just nature]
Cooley: What it all comes down to is the paragraph on page 9: We want to improve Madison’s competiveness in the investment and job creation by streamlining the development process, and maintaining the quality of built environment and ensuring the efficient, fair, and responsive regulatory environment.
Selkowe: That lede is sort of buried, can we move it to the front.
Zimmerman: We need to add some more meat to the protection of the “environment” – our historical areas, our neighborhoods.
Clear: Not sure that’s our goal, but will think about it. Interested in seeing what Vicky will come up with, will share some thoughts with her.
ACTION: Selkowe to tweak the language, will work with Cooley
No comments on “Guiding Principals” section. [Drat, CNI had some good comments there. Guess I know what I’ll be testifying about]
Moving on to the “Relationship of Comprehensive, Neighborhood, and Special Area Plans” section. It’s a brief summary of all the plans we have. Committee is skipping ahead a bit to the mission statements of the commissions, but basically moves on.
Next, ‘The Development Approval Process”, page 14 of the draft (minute 32 of the recording)
Selkowe asks “Do we ever come back to distinguishing between the ‘Simple’ projects and ‘Complex’ projects”. At the end of the report, you couldn’t easily answer “Here’s what they’re recommending change for simple projects”, and “Here’s what they’re recommending to change for complex projects”
Clear: Initial thoughts, “Simple” project gets just staff signoff, “Complex” needs board or commissions review
Skidmore: Occasionally get request for minor alteration on SIP. Is that a simple project?
Clear: Usually, but not the only example or category of a simple process. Example of a demolition/subdivision of a lot in his district that just finished. He’d say that was a “simple” process, even though it had a number of steps.
Skidmore: How long did it take? [Sounding incredulous]
Clear: Took 60 days, from start of the large part of it was demolition notification process.
Skidmore keeps coming back to the 60 day thing and questioning that, is that really simple?
Selkowe: It’s important that we address that – time is not our metric for “simple” versus “complex”. Peng Her and Clear agree. “Just time does not necessarily” from Clear.
The language in this section is from Brad Murphy, who measured it in terms of steps. Selkowe thinks that we should try and lay out in the report “here’s what we think it will take under our old process, here’s what we think it will take under our new process”
Committee in general: Report should note that time-to-completion is not the only metric for simple versus complex. Report looks at simple as permitted use, versus complex which needs board or commission review.
[That’s not really true. Some things are trivial signoff at Plan or Landmarks]
Zimmerman: Definitions are OK, now we need to be sure we’re clearly communicating where we are currently and where we plan on going for project duration (on average). Currently the report measures some things only looking at after formal application process, other parts of the report measure including the pre-application phase. That’s what people are really interested in. This will clarify on Page 14 and 15, and be sure people know what we include in the figures.
Clear: We don’t really have any data on the how long the pre-application process could take. Cooley adds that it could take from weeks to years.
Cooley moves on to the big question for the report – how does Pre-application process works? Brad Murphy wrote about what we could measure, and when the economy returns to a more normal state we need to start collecting that data.
Skidmore: Question and Comment, it could be provocative.
[I’ll be darned if I can figure out what his point is. Nobody else does either. Start at 00:43:00 of the recording and try it yourself]
Oh, finally we get to his point at 00:44:45. Is there presumptive approval?
[Oh for the love of God, this was discussed months ago and rejected]
Selkowe: The EDC has discussed this, had testimony on this, and the EDC is not going to make presumptive approval a recommendation.
Skidmore: I’m an Alder, and I don’t agree with that [Well then.]
Selkowe: You’re welcome to propose an amendment at the council, that’s your right. [Oh, SNAP]
Skidmore: I will
[So, after a few minutes of the subcommittee trying to explain to him that they’re not doing presumptive approval, it turns out he’s not really talking about Presumptive Approval as the whole rest of the world understands it. Thanks for reading the material. The Chamber/Smart Growth wrote pages and pages on what Presumptive Approval is and is not. The Chamber’s Vice President spent almost all of her time testifying in September on what Presumptive Approval is and is not, precisely so there wouldn’t be any confusion.]
Cooley thankfully steps in and explains what Skidmore is trying to say – it has to do with the “ping-ponging” of city commissions, where at each meeting new conditions are added and the project is referred to the next meeting and never makes progress [Do we have any actual data on this being a real problem? I think this is greatly exaggerated]
Zimmerman makes it clear that the report has tried to address this problem.
Skidmore: You say potato, I say potato. [Head on desk moment. Hats off to Clear and Her for continuing to bring Skidmore up to speed]
At 00:50:30, we’ll rejoin the discussion
Selkowe: Page 15, implementation goal. Phrasing is weird, sounds like we’re going to spend a year trying just convince people of the goals, and not actually make them happen.
Zimmerman: In a year, this process needs to be enacted and moving. Clear wonders about Metrics, Selkowe agrees. Zimmerman wants to beef up the section,
Skidmore wants to add in “acceptance” to the paragraph “The one year goal in streamlining the approval process is to achieve buy-in and cooperation by investors/developers/business owners, neighborhood associations, boards and commissions, Mayoral and Common Council support, and budget allocations on changes to the development process.” Skidmore wonders “from the investors and developers. If people who are actually spending the money accept it.” Clear wonders if “buy-in” says the same thing? Skidmore says No. Cooley suggests just pulling buy-in and replacing it with acceptance.
Selkowe: This is the section where we should lay out where within 6 months these bullet points are adopted
Skidmore: Are you talking dollar amounts? [WTF are you talking about?]
Selkowe: No, we have a numerous goals, and we should lay out what we expect to be adopted soon. We may mark with an asterix of what needs a budgetary allocation or an ordinance change, but many of them don’t need anything. Treat the intro as an executive summary.
A discussion about what it means to be accepted and “effective” – adopted by the council, or actually in place. It’s both.
Clear: Going back to simple versus complex, we have to compare that even within complex projects, there is a tremendous variation. People often compare Hilldale Target versus Edgewater. It’s an unfair comparison, even though both are large projects, even within complex projects there is variation.
Cooley: There will always be outliers, the BFDs.
Zimmerman: more complexity measures
Skidmore: There are really three categories, simple, complex, and then the projects like Edgewater, Overture, University Avenue.
Now moving on to the “Organization of Goals and Implementation Options”
Selkowe: Strike the bit of Administrative Improvements from the report
We are now finally out of the Introduction and on to the Real Part. This will be made more clear in the final print draft.
Recommendation A:
A – GOAL: Establish predictable expectations for neighborhood & staff review of development proposals during the Pre-Application Phase of projects.
Part 1.a:
1. Encourage first point of contact in the Pre-Application Phase of the project to be with the Department of Planning & Community & Economic Development.
a. Require developer/property owner to register project via web-based system
Selkowe: Clarify when the clock starts, per Ed Clarke
Skidmore: If there’s no clock, what’s the purpose of starting the clock? [Ugh. Again, did you even read the report?]
Selkowe: The very first goal, which should be a recommendation/requirement is to start tracking projects as soon as we know about it. We want to record that with city staff, it doesn’t happen that way now.
Zimmerman: Intro to pre-application process section, can we bullet-point out the points we’re trying to make? If a person who doesn’t know the process, can we explain why we’re trying to make these changes?
Peng Her: At the last EDC meeting, we wanted to use stronger language on action items.
Clear wanted to back up one step to the word “Expectations” in A.1.a
The audio got interrupted here for about 30 seconds or a minute, so skip to part 2 of the recording.
We pick back up with “expectations” meaning that it helps developers, neighborhoods, and policy makers to understand what’s needed and what will happen as part of the process.
2.a: Standardize the process of notification and review of Projects during the Pre-Application Phase of the project.
a. Meet with Alder(s), Neighborhood Association President(s), Neighborhood Business Association President(s), and DPCED staff to determine the structure of the Pre-Application Phase of the project.
Selkowe: Here we’ve got an ‘encourage a near-term-meeting’ – what does near-term meeting mean, and should we just require it? Rather than list all of this material, could the city create a standard form letter that goes out, and describe a framework for the meeting?
Clear: Should we add a timeline? Maybe 30 days after you register a project you have to have this meeting. Really likes the idea of framing the meeting expectations. Some people come out of the same meeting thinking “wow they didn’t tell us anything” and others may think “this is already a done deal”. Selkowe: It could be just a standard letter that sets the stage and says here’s what going to happen next.
Zimmerman: What we’re going to say here, 30 days the meeting has to happen, if you’re not ready to have the meeting in 30 days you’re not ready to have this meeting. The second thing that we want to have is a framework for what information will be disclosed at this meeting.
Skidmore: I like this idea. Can we be more specific than less specific? Can we say you need to say this, this, this, and this before you can have this meeting. [About to explode here] – square feet, etc. Some agreement on the committee this is a good idea.
Selkowe sees that I’m in disagreement, and the chair allows me to chime in. I encourage the committee to remember that different projects come in at different stages, and too much structure discourages early interaction with the neighborhood on broad concept. The example I used was the project on the parking ramp at E Mifflin, where the concepts were incredibly varied. By frontloading the registration system with a bunch of requirements before a developer can register with the city is actually discouraging dialogue with the city and with the neighborhoods on projects, which is exactly the opposite of this whole process.
Skidmore: Uncomfortable with this idea of a developer lobbing ideas out there –is this project going to be 5 stories? 7? 13? I’d rather have something that is more structured – OK, I’ve got an idea, I want to do this.
Zimmerman: I think they do need to come with a little more structured, I’m coming at this from a different perspective, an industrial based investment or a grocery store. There should be some minimum – it could be just simply a sketch.
Cooley – Is this something we should ask the neighborhoods to get together to figure out what they would like to see at this first meeting? [Yes, great point Tim!]
Clear: I hear you here, but I’ve seen this go horribly wrong where the developer appears clueless, or the developer appears to be hiding something, when neither of these are true.
Selkowe: I can’t see that developers would like this, where they have to have a set of checkboxes before they can go forward with the meeting.
Mikolajewski: There’s a real problem where someone comes in and says I want to do X,Y,Z and staff says “Nope, never happen” and we never hear from it again, or this happens with the Alder – and it turns out they neighborhood would have liked it. This things get nipped in the bud, but we need to have some way for people to bring ideas forward, even if they don’t have so much as a sketch – thinking more of unique, out of the box things, not just regular apartment buildings in usual place. Software could help us here- there will always be a continuum of information for the project as it develops – for some projects, it could be as simple as some contact information and a brief description.
Cooley: We’d really like to go into an area where someone has an option on some land, and be able to figure out is mixed use going to fly there, or is a car wash going to fly there or run into pushback. If you’re saying “We want to do a carwash here” we don’t need a full set of drawing right away, might just need some descriptions and some massing. Having this process be too descriptive at the beginning might just end up hurting us in the long run. [Yes!]
[Skidmore leaves, has a neighborhood meeting to attend]
Her: Neighborhoods can be leery of developers who show up with no ideas, but there’s a neighborhood plan that sets some expectations. This first meeting is sort of a first date, between community and the developer. Neighborhood has their plan, developer has their business plan, start working to see if these are compatible. This is where the facilitators could be useful.
ACTION: Clear is going to take a shot at redrafting this section based on this discussion. 2.a and 2.b are two strategies to bring about section 2.
Bert Stitt: Points out that on page 13, there’s a definition of neighborhood associations, that lumps residents and businesses together. Then, on page 18, there are references to “neighborhood assocations” and “neighborhood business associations” – in one part they were the same thing, later they are distinct.
Cooley: That becomes a fundamental question. What should be in a neighborhood association?
[It’s sort of a long discussion that we’ve repeated a million times before, and as usual it comes down to CNI voting membership being restricted to downtown residents, but the rub of the matter comes down to a fundamental misunderstanding between “being involved in the issues” and “being involved in the business of the organization.” CNI doesn’t disallow business owners from participating in the process, nor should neighborhood associations be made to speak for all stakeholders, but CNI has decided that as an organization that represents residents that for organizational business, only residents can vote. That organizational business extends beyond reviewing development proposals]
Cooley: Should we just take the description of the neighborhood association from page 13 out?
Her: Since neighborhood associations are a formal city body, lets take the definition out.
Selkowe: For the requirement, we need to make sure it’s not a roadblock if people blow off the meeting. It’s not that they have to attend, but there has to be an effort to hold the meeting.
Cooley: The goal is to make it easier to for this meeting to happen. Some of that may include a new email information system, or increasing the Alder’s budget for notifications, or have some city facilitator.
The committee is now realizing that its on page 21 of 88, and its at the 2 hour mark. Cooley things that the remaining sections will move faster.
Selkowe: For facilitators, we should come back, if we think it will help, it’s expensive so we’ve been hesitant.
Cooley: We do have it in there, the question is going to pay for it? Should the developer pay for it? The City can’t pay for a facilitator for every meeting.
Zimmerman: There is a level of impartiality that is required, not all facilitators hired by developers have been good for the process.
I bring up that we need facilitators who are skilled in the planning process and speak the language.
Cooley: We may be hiring some more people to act as project managers, perhaps we could do some cross training here in some facilitation.
Zimmerman: Homework assignment – go through the rest of the report, also go through additional comments from Ed Clarke, DMI, the Chamber, Smart Growth, CNI, etc from the November draft. Plan on the next meeting going for 3 hours.
Kevin Little: Can we get copies of the updated text before the next meeting?
Cooley is going to go through and boost up weak language before the next meeting. Clear says look for active language – if we say someone is going to do something, say who it is that is going to do it. We may not know yet who that person is, but we need the framework, as well as thinking about metrics.
And that was the end!
Erik,
I love that you included the recordings of the meeting!