Plan Commission Hostility to Hearing from the Public?!

So, long story short. The city wants to put a bike path through the back of the Tiny House Village, removing 6 of the 9 houses. There could possibly be some additional land given to the village – and we could put 6 houses there – but that a crap ton of work for a volunteer group of people to do just to come out even. We’ve been talking to the city, nothing has been settled on and yesterday, this issue popped up on the plan commission agenda, much to our surprise! What happened next was even more surprising.

Remember, this starts the action where the city can just take our property.

This is the item.Determining a Public Purpose and Necessity and adopting a Relocation Order for the acquisition of land interests required for the construction and maintenance of the Demetral Park Path, a new shared-use (bicycle and pedestrian) path completing a route from E. Johnson Street at Pennsylvania Avenue to Commercial Avenue at Packers Avenue. Located in part of the NW ¼ of the SW ¼ and the NE ¼ of the SW ¼ of Section 6, T7N, R10E. (12th AD) We are lot 14 and 15 here and where they are taking the land at the back of the lot is where we have 6 tiny houses.

First of all, when we came in, it was written on the agenda that this was being referred. No one had communicated that to us in advance, except that a few people had written to some alders and plan commission members and they told members of the public who told us. We hadn’t heard directly from the alder or the city staff or any plan commission members. Tim Parks, a city staff person came up to us and immediately told us that this was going to be referred. We said we knew and we had one speaker because we felt there was information that we had that might make a difference during the referral and it might help work something out. He did seem perturbed. But seriously, we had one person who wanted to talk for 3 minutes to explain why we had issues.

Ken Opin, the chair of the Plan Commission announces the item. It’s the first item on the agenda, but they took item 2 first, because no one was there on that item. (that makes no sense) He says we have a number of registrants. As he’s shuffling his papers getting ready to call on them, Mike Rewey interrupts and moves referral to the Feb. 8th meeting. Opin says “We need to have the . . . ” he is interrupted again, Rewey says “It’s not a public hearing”. Open says, “Ok, I still want to allow people to testify”. Rewey says “Well, they are going to be testifying on something that is probably going to be changed by that time.” (Really, what does he know that we don’t know?) Alder Steve King asks for a clarification, he says its not a public hearing, so if they . . . what are the rules on testifying on the same item twice. (OH MY GOD, invoking the county board rules? This is a bad trend of shutting the public out.) If we do it tonight, and we change it and they come back, they can’t testify again, right? (WHO THINKS THAT IS A GOOD POLICY, why would they even have a rule that would allow that to happen? Why would anyone think that rule exists?) They tell him that they can testify again. King seems miffed, and says “so we’re gonna hear it twice.” He seems miffed and says “alright.” Rewey says he still makes the motion. Opin asks for a second. He asks if they Rewey intends to still let people speak. Rewey says he is aware there are going to be some changes made and some of what I’m going to hear is not exactly true, based on what I stated at the meeting where we approved what they did.” (Oh really, how the hell does he know what we’re going to say, no one has talked to us in months?!) Opin says he hates to be in a position to tell people who have come here that they can’t speak. Rewey says they were aware before they came here that it was on the agenda for referral. (Again, I have no clue how he thinks he knows what we know, 3 of us were aware, one was not. Our board president didn’t know, no one communicated to him. I just knew through facebook of all places and I called the person who spoke so he knew.) Opin says at least some of them, I’m not sure all of them. Opin says there is only one person registered to speak, the others are registered in other ways. Rewey says, “ok, thank you. Alright.” (And with that I think he gives up his battle to prevent us from speaking.)

Bruce Wallbaum speaks on Occupy Madison’s behalf. He is the treasurer on the Board of Directors. He knows the information may change slightly, but everything he has heard about the project is a about feet, not the larger picture. He wants to talk to impacts this will have, he offers to show people around the village to see how it will change it dramatically. He says every plan we have seen so far, removes all our houses back here, there are 6, and 2 are already located. 2 people need to be relocated to we don’t know where and then 2/3s of our village is gone if the bike path comes through. It also takes our fire access road and it could jeopardize the remaining three houses. We are an all volunteer, 100% donations organization who spent 1000s and 1000s of hours of planning and labor to pull this thing off. It was only a year and a half ago we were before these same committees approving a document. He just spoke at a building officials meeting in Minneapolis because these villages are starting to crop up all over and when they looked at our PUD, they said it was the most comprehensive PUD they had ever seen in their entire careers. And now we are sitting here today wiping out that whole PUD and starting from scratch again. He hopes people take a minute to think about what that means. There were some informal discussions with the city about potentially swapping a piece of land, we have never been formally told how that would work. We had our architect draw it up and it really doesn’t work, if the houses get moved over here – the whole village was set up to have the bathrooms close to the houses, but if we were granted the land, when its -7 degrees people have to walk all the way around to get to the bathrooms. We had 9 neighborhood meetings and the neighbors worked hard with us to make it beautiful. From a personal stand point he hopes there is some way to rethink this. Currently we are spending most of our time in a sustainable mode, we built our store up. (Buzzer goes off. He’s ask to sum up) We are building products for our store and if we have to go back to square one, that wipes that out and we’re back to building, planning and in these meetings again recreating the village from square one. Opin asks for questions. Wallbaum invites them to come see the village.

Opin says “The next registrant is Brenda Konkel, 30 N. Hancock, opposed, available to answer questions, representing Occupy Madison, any questions for Ms. Konkel.”

Crickets.

Opin announces Allen Barkoff also in opposition. Ed Kuharski, neither supporting or opposing, available to answer questions.

Rewy jumps in again, says he didn’t mean to be so abrupt but he thinks there is a lot of negotiation going on and it will turn out well for you. (Ok, then tell us just how the hell that’s going to happen?!?!?!?! Why are we being kept in the dark?) He says back when they approved this he specifically asked Brenda Konkel about this potential issue and she said she would work with the city to make sure the bike path came through. At the PUD hearing, I addressed it to her specifically and she responded back directly to me.

(Yes, I did. But at what cost? Wiping out 2/3 of our village, and spending 1000s of volunteer hours to get back to even was NOT what I had in mind, if the city wants to figure out the people living in the houses are going to live while all this happens and we can come up with an acceptable design, then great, but there are limits here. We promised the neighbors we wouldn’t park the houses on the street and there just isn’t enough space to do everything that is being suggested. And they took way more of the land for sight lines so we couldn’t add extra houses to make it worth our efforts. Clearly, he has some idea about what is going on that we have no clue about. The last I heard from the city was 11/23 when they asked for surveyors to come to the property. Before that, we met and on October 13th the city sent a email summarizing the meeting. That’s the last communication I had with them. There was a neighborhood meeting, but I was unable to attend. No communications since then, and I just happened to notice this on the plan commission agenda on Monday morning when I was blogging.)

Rewey also says, I think it is very important, with the types of people that live there, they need good transportation and this is key component for people to go in both directions without a motor vehicle, so you have to look at how it works for you also. He believes that by the time they get around to it, we will have something that works out for you and the city and lets have a little patience.

Opin asks Rewey to make his motion, he moves referral, its seconded and passes without discussion.

I’m not sure what the initial hostility was about – this didn’t seem to harm anyone. Clearly Rewey has access to some information we are unaware of, because all of our conversations end the same way, the city doing exactly what they proposed in the beginning. And I’m not even sure they have heard our concerns or understand the impact on a volunteer organization or realize that we have more houses there since October.

Gah, another time suck I don’t have time for.