If you live in District 11, listen up. In just a few weeks, the City Council will be deciding who your Alder is until next Spring!
Apparently, Chris Schmidt told Denise DeMarb he was resigning while she was proofing the council agenda for January 5th (likely on December 30th or 31st, so it could be out on January 1st) that he would be resigning. He waited a week to resign. Why . . . well, because that way they could avoid public input through the ballot in April. The filing deadline was January 5th and if he resigned before that, they could extend the filing deadline a few days and still have an advisory election. I find the whole thing suspicious for someone with so much “political savvy” as Clear points out. He clearly read the statute and knew what he was doing.
Colleagues,
I am hereby giving notice to the Common Council that I am resigning my seat as District 11 Alder effective January 31, 2016 (Wis Stats 17.01(8), 17.01(13)). A signed copy of this letter will be delivered to the City Clerk (Wis Stats 17.01(13)(b)).
It has been an honor and a privilege to serve as District 11 Alder for nearly seven years. Circumstances in my professional life have changed since I filed for re-election last fall, and my career in satellite meteorology requires my full attention. Serving the City as Alder, itself a full-time job, has been very important to me, but being Alder is not my livelihood, and my livelihood must come first.
As this resignation is occurring after December 1 and 2016 is the final full year of the current term, the Council will have the opportunity to appoint my replacement per Wis Stats 17.23(1)(a) following the procedure outlined in MGO 2.03. I have full confidence in this process for replacing an Alder. I recognize that there are some who would prefer an election as soon as possible, but state law does not allow for that.
I am sorry for the disruption this will cause for the City and my district. However, both will be better served by someone who can give the job the attention that it requires.
Sincerely,
Chris Schmidt
Yeah. Here’s the ordinance that explains how vacancies are filled.
2.03 PROCEDURE TO FILL VACANCIES ON THE COMMON COUNCIL.
(1) The Common Council President shall oversee the application process to fill aldermanic vacancies.
(2) Applications to fill any aldermanic vacancy shall include information on: (a) Name, (b) Address, (c) Home telephone number, (d) Work telephone number, (e) E-mail address, (f) Biographical resume including education, work, neighborhood, and civic experience, (g) A statement on why the applicant wishes to serve. (h) A statement of what the applicant wants to accomplish, (i) If the applicant plans to run for office during the next special or regular election, and, (j) Such other information as the Common Council President in consultation with the Common Council Organizational Committee may request.
(3) The Common Council Organizational Committee shall review the applications and, following opportunities for personal candidate interviews, shall recommend to the Common Council a candidate selected for confirmation to fill the vacancy. If the Common Council Organizational Committee is unable to agree on a candidate to recommend, it may recommend more than one candidate, or it may reopen the application process to seek additional applicants.
(4) The Common Council shall appoint and confirm the recommended candidate, or appoint and confirm another candidate from among the applicants.
(5) The appointed and confirmed candidate shall serve until an alderperson is elected pursuant to sec. 17.23(1), Wis. Stats. and is qualified
Here’s the discussion with the CCOC (Common Council Organizational Committee or their version of an executive committee) about what they will consider when filling the seat. A good discussion, with Mark Clear shilling for Chris Schmidt (his good friend, along with Tim Bruer as his mentor), who purposely did not attend the meeting according to comments by members after the meeting.
Denise DeMarb asks Lisa Veldran (City Council staff) to review the process outlined in the ordinance above. She says they will send out a press release and post on the website tomorrow (meaning today) that resumes will be accepted to fill the 11th district vacancy. Right now they are looking at Feb 22nd for a special CCOC meeting, Ledell Zellers can’t make it, but DeMarb says everyone else had it open. Clear checks to make sure Verveer (being appointed as the alternate to take Chris Schmidt’s seat on CCOC) can make it since Zellers will be gone. (He counting the votes . . . ). Veldran says the press release will go out tomorrow, resumes and applications will be accepted until 4:30 on Wednesday, February 17th. CCOC would meet at 6:30 on the 22nd to review the applications and interview people and make a recommendation to the council meeting on March 1st. Rebecca Kemble asks to clarify that the review and the interviews are all on the same night. They tell them they will get the packet the day after the 17th. Clear asks about an application form, there is none, its just resume and there are things that are required by ordinance (above).
Shiva Bidar says she has been getting questions about this because her district is next to the district, so is Mo Cheeks. The bigger discussion last time around was whether we would have an expectation about if the person will or will not run for office. Last time around Michael May (city attorney) pointed out that we can’t prevent them from running, but their statement on the record that they won’t run is asked for. Is that something we discuss today, we should know that in advance.
Ledell Zellers asks about structuring the questions so that each individual gets asked the same things. There might be other follow up. Clear says that is his recollection of what happened last time. DeMarb says she has a copy of the questions and she is going through them, and going through them with “some other people” and they will change some of them. There are like 8 or 9 questions and that is probably too many.
HOLD THE PHONE . . . what . . . shouldn’t CCOC be determining what the questions are?! Who are “some other people” that get input here? Clearly not the public or the alders on CCOC . . . that’s bogus. Why did none of the alders question that?!
She expects that they will get quite a few people interested in this seat, she has gotten several inquiries and she sends everyone to Chris Schmidt to talk to him about the position since they are coming into it mid-term, that is not easy to do and the time commitment. He’s been great, he will continue to talk to people about what he does, issues in the district and the time he is spending and the role of the alder. She hopes everyone else does the same. There are some things that we will need to be working out, as far as questions, but the questions need to be the same to each candidate. She says she is interested in people’s opinions on if they should be considering if people are running in a year, she has her own opinion, but they should talk about why that is important.
Mark Clear jumps right in and “his thinking has evolved on that” (i.e. he flip flopped). He used to be a firm believer that he wanted someone that said they would not run because of the advantage of the incumbency in the next election, but he says (no slight on Sue Ellingson, Lucas Dailey or Sarah Eskrich) but the 13th district was poorly served by having 3 alders in one year. He says the three of them did everything they could to mitigate that, the three of them did everything that they could, but there is so much you can do. He would not necessarily prefer someone who says they would run, but his attitude about their answers to that question are different than they were 2 years ago.
Bidar says that regardless of the decision, it is very critical that we say this in advance because the applicant pool will be dramatically different depending upon which of the three options they choose (we care and we don’t want them to be thinking already about running for that seat, we care and we want them to be thinking about running for the seat or we don’t care either way and we will just look at who is best.) To be fair, we need to declare in advance which one we want as a body. She has mixed feelings because of what Mark pointed out, but at the same time there is principles of democracy and handpicking an incumbent – she has a hard time being in that position – because that is what they are doing. She is still more leaning toward preferring someone who is not using this as a way to get into an incumbent position to run. Thank you for saying that so plainly! The world will not end, she just has a hard time from a democracy perspective putting that person in that position.
DeMarb says that they would only be doing that if they knew what their intentions were. Clear says we know what they say. DeMarb says only if they ask them. Kemble has to point out to DeMarb that they have to by ordinance, as does Clear. Clear points out that they don’t have to answer. Whoa. That exchange said ALOT!
Rebecca Kemble says her position is similar to Shiva and that perhaps the situation in the 13th may be that we had a person that had no experience. We should telegraph our intentions and hope people who have prior experience, or committee experience or experience in city government step up.
Mo Cheeks says that he doesn’t know where he is at, its a tough situation, he shares the sentiment that we need to be clear, given that it is in the ordinance we have to make our intentions clear because it will impact the applicant pool. He thinks that in regards to experience, unless we bring in a former alder or county board supervisor, he doesn’t think there is any experience that can prepare you for this. There is no amount of committee experience that can prepare you for being an alder. Mark Clear asks, “what about a few years at Gitmo?” He says Kemble made a strong transition and represent your district well but there is no information you could give people to help them fully wrap their head around what it takes to be an alder. He doesn’t know what experience should be a factor, strong ties or responsibility to the neighbors is a factor. Alder Dailey was fairly new to that district and he thinks he Daily would argue from a technocrat perspective he was well prepared, but not having clear ties to the district was clearly disadvantageous to him. He says he is just thinking out loud.
Marsha Rummel (not on the committee, can’t vote, but can participate as an alder), says that she was on the committee 2 years ago and there were many candidates that could have been selected. Lucas did have city experience, but no neighborhood association experience. They don’t necessarily need that, but they need to be a leader, attended meeting, participated in a development review process, that neighborhood has so much going on, that you would think that at least some of the people who show up have been to some of the meetings and have a sensibility about learning that part of the job. You can learn the process of being on a committee, and you can get up to speed, but if you don’t know how to have a neighborhood meeting or respond to constituents, that constituent service is what we really need if we are going to tell the person they can’t run again. You can come in to it, she was in her neighborhood association for years, and she didn’t know everything when she came in, but it wasn’t so hard to have that public part of the job. She goes both ways about if they should run or not, but if we choose someone that won’t run, we need someone with the skills to help them move forward.
Bidar agrees with Cheeks, when you said there is no amount of experience can prepare you for what it takes to be an alder. That solidifies her thinking about incumbency and giving someone a year of experience, how would you expect someone who has not been an alder to run against them, we are giving them that advantage. You understand the ins and outs and you understand it better than anyone who hasn’t had the position. So, it solidifies it the other way for her which wasn’t your intent. She says especially in the district, there are solid neighborhood associations and the ability to be involved in some way in that arena to understand the neighborhood associations would be important. She says they only had that one experience (sigh, I feel old, I remember several others – district 1 – Bellman resigned, Ferrell took spot, 5 – Tolkien didn’t live in district, county board supervisor Powell was apointed, 13 – Slaon moved out of state, former alder Heidt filled in and 15 – Palmer? resigned and county board sup Andy Olsen filled in, and I might be forgetting a few.) and it was a challenge for anyone to walk into district 13, a million things have gone on. Alder Eskrich who is the alder now, did apply, and again, that also solidifies her thinking about democracy, her time came, she ran a spirited campaign and was elected a year later, she is pretty sure if they had selected her she would have won without a spirited campaign.
Clear says they are thinking internally instead of externally. Would district 13 have been better off in retrospect if Sarah Eskrich was appointed a year earlier and they had continuous representation if she won election again, presuming she did. She says there is a similar thing going on in district 11. Clear says there is another experience he and Rummel remember, when Zach Brandon resigned and former alder Libby Monson was appointed. (Damn, I totally forgot about that one! How’d that happen?!!) Now alder King applied and was not selected based on that criteria. He won election the next time and there wasn’t that many issues going on there so it didn’t matter as much. We should think about how much of an advantage we give them in a year, really, and what is best for the district.
Bidar says its not the person, its the process. She feels that would not be being true to her own personal feeling about democracy and process by just selecting someone. She agrees that potentially our pick may serve the district better, but I can pick a lot of people I think could serve better, especially up the street, but its a dictatorship, a benevolent dictatorship, but its a dictatorship. That is her struggle, she feels they are intervening in that process. Eskrich was a strong candidate and that is why people helped her run, but do I play that intervening hand or do we let democracy work itself.
Cheeks says to round out the conversation, Alder Rummel’s point that neighborhood experience is most beneficial, but Eskrich was new to the community too. And if we looked at the RESJI (equity) tool, we would realize that there are structural flaws to looking at neighborhood associations for the pool of applicants. If you are privileging that, you are coming down on a thin sliver of the Madison population. For better or worse. He doesn’t know what an ideal criteria would be, but neighborhood associations is hardly representative of the city’s population. Clear says “or even the neighborhood”. Cheeks says “right”.
Rummel says engagement in neighborhood development process, it could be public engagement experience, you know how to run a meeting and communicate. She got tired of her friends telling her in district 13 that “I don’t have an alder” – “yeah you do”, but they didn’t feel like they did. The alder never responded in a timely way. I don’t know if its true, but I want a person who will be there to do the constituent service, not whether they dig deep into Judge Doyle Square or equity, I want them to do the basics. You can’t pace yourself on constituent contact.
Ledell Zellers says her hand has been up several times, most of her thoughts have been expressed, but she doesn’t come down as strongly on the side of Bidar or Clear, but leans toward having a level of discomfort of selecting someone who we know wants to run, it gives them a STRONG leg up in the process, that doesn’t feel quite right to her, but she understands what Clear is saying about continuity. There is no easy answer, but she comes down slightly towards referencing those who indicate they are not running.
Cheeks says that Clear talked about us thinking about it internally, and Bidar says there is a strong advantage to incumbency, but he is wondering if that is wishful thinking. He doesn’t know how strong of a benefit it is, just last year we had a really successfully run campaign in Strasser taking down and incumbent and then lost the next year. Most seats go unchallenged most years. Including in the 11th says Clear.
Bidar says its not instrumental, but there is an advantage. Statistically that is true. In a situation like this, when you have an incumbent that ran for office and was challenged it is different than someone who is appointed. The incumbent has run for office for 2 years and the people of the district decided they didn’t like the performance of the elected official. A group of influential alders hand selecting someone sends a very different message, consciously or unconsciously. De facto, you are endorsing that individual outside of a campaign process, where people can’t vote. She says that becasue she knows alot about the district, she thinks who she endorses has some weight, that is what happens in her mind, she thinks she might be sharing too much of her personal thoughts, but that is her ethics and it makes her head explode when she feels like ???.
Rummel asks how they will apply the equity lens to this. She didn’t vote for Lucas even tho he was her friend, she voted for a woman, replacing a woman who was leaving who had experience helping constituents and had neighborhood experience, but that didn’t prevail at CCOC and when Lucas came before the council she voted for him because it was the will of the body. You need to figure out how to way some of that stuff – the gender and racial balance of the council is not as bad as it has been, but it is not what it could be.
Clear asks if they might have a second date for interviews if they have a large amount of people or someone who can’t attend? They haven’t because they don’t know if they need to consider that. They could get 20 people or get 4 and 2 can’t make it. Veldran says they should keep one date and not set the expectation. They have people drop out the closer they get to the interview date they drop out. They have to live in the district. Even after people are on the agenda, people don’t show up or decide they are not interested. DeMarb says she knows of people who apply but when they see other good candidates they back off. Veldran says if they set a schedule in a press release they should be committed to the process.
Clear asks if there is any screening criteria before the interviews besides eligibility to serve (in district, felony issues).
Heather Allen (council staff) has ideas about how to have the questions reflect the equity tool, DeMarb says they will do that.
DeMarb says that they need to decide tonight, she thinks people should be elected, she likes that and she resignates over the fact about what best serves the district and she would hate to have people passed over if they are clearly superior candidates if they intend to run for office in the future. She is split, this is not an easy answer.
Kemble says that the issue of what best serves the district is that the people get to choose who they think best serves the district in a fair election. We would be making it an unfair election the next time around. If there are 10 or 12 months where the district doesn’t have the best candidate possible it might serve the greater good of the people of the district getting to select their representative in a fair election that is not weighted by what people sitting around this table think is best for that district. Clearly, she’s one of MY FAVORITE alders!
DeMarb agrees and she has heard form more than one person, that whomever is selected, if they want to run, their incumbency will assist them. If they do a bad job, their incumbency will also assist them in not getting elected. In that case it would just be name recognition. Several people say at once that name recognition is “huge”.
Bidar says that if you are thinking about running for office, and get the home court advantage, chances are you would be running an underground campaign for 9 months, you would be remiss not to do a good job. That is part of her problem. She is not sure if that is how people would be if they won fair and square. That is what she would do. If you are applying for a position and you can get an advantage, you will respond as quickly as possible for to the people who are going to hire you, its human nature. Fortunately it is a busy district, but it doesn’t have an enormous amount of challenges that are not first world challenges that won’t make the district fall apart if they don’t have the best person that they would elect for 10 months. That situation is different in each district. If she resigns, you can select someone, the district will not fall apart. Rummel jokes that some districts can run without their alder.
DeMarb tries to move them along and do a straw poll on Shiva’s three choices. Bidar says that we said “preference” last time. Veldran says that they said it at the meeting, not in the press release. DeMarb says if they care about this, they need to be clear and “preference” is not clear. Clear says that this is all they can do. DeMarb asks Michael May to weigh in. He says different people have different opinions, do you want to say it is the Council preference, the CCOC preference or do you want to say that people have different views. Rummel says then it should say CCOC preference since they will do the heavy lifting and the council will rely on that.
Zellers says that they could say “the interview panel will give preference to”. As Clear points out, we can makes someone run, or not run.
Cheeks says that we can’t control how life evolves for someone. They may say they are going to run and they may wisen up and decide not to, or they may decide they love it, their constituents want them to stay and they pull a Barrack Obama in 2006/2007 and change their mind. I think I’m going to run.
DeMarb says that is kind of a black cloud, if they say they are not going to run and change their mind and run.
Veldran says it has happened. Cheeks says it happens at every level.
Bidar makes a motion “We will state in the process in the press release that CCOC will give a strong preference to those candidates who state that they are not interested in running for the office in spring 2017”. Her strongest preference is, no matter the vote, that they state it one way or the other. We each have our feelings about it, but we need direction for people, this is the question people have been asking her.
Clear doesn’t support the motion, as he listened to the discussion, he says that as he listens to the candidates he will not give any preference either way, but will vote based on who will best serve.
Cheeks says the only way the intention can be stated is if there is a unanimous vote, if we say we are giving a preference and one member isn’t going to follow it, that is a problem. DeMarb says it says “strong” preference. Bidar says it wasn’t unanimous last time, that is why we have Robert’s Rules and have to vote and she has lived with the majority vote and supports it moving forward, even when she is on the losing end of it.
Rummel wants them to think about if there are several alders who want to run and you pick one and not the other, you are definitely privileging someone who is intending to run vs someone else. There could be 5 awesome people, and then people would have an advantage.
They vote with only Clear voting no.
There are several comments after the vote. They are glad they had the discussion now instead of in front of the candidates that night. Shiva thanks them for putting up with her political science background and wanting to debate it all.
The vote on the resolution authorizing the filling of the vacant seat through an appointment through 2017 vs having a special election (in November).
