Last Tuesday's Meeting

Another long meeting (including workshops and an executive session we were not out of city hall until 1:45 a.m.) which would have been even longer had we had enough votes to do the right thing and reconsider the Akcess term sheet. If in addition we'd had more people come to speak about the smoking resolution (I was expecting 10-20 but I think we only had 4 or 5) we could have conceivably been there until 3 a.m. Oh well, at least we have air conditioning and a vending machine (though the latter broke down on Tuesday night!).

Some high and low lights of the evening:

*Some gentlemen came forward to say that they had been treated unfairly in a competitive bidding process. There seemed to be enough confusion as to how the bid was awarded so that the council felt comfortable asking administration to start the bidding process over again. I suspect that at some point we will have to take a closer look at the competitive bidding process--some controversial waiving of bids and confusion like we saw on Tuesday night suggests that it might be time to [at the very least] educate the council and the public about the law regarding bids.
*I was the only councilor to vote against an intergovernmental agreement with the town of Nekimi. Nothing against the town and city officials that negotiated the agreement, but it didn't set well as I read it. Such agreements always seem to be developer driven, and while they come with the rhetoric of "managing sprawl," they are in fact blueprints for how to engage in sprawl development with as little citizen complaint as possible.

I also find it odd that we would sign an intergovernmental agreement only between the city and town, when the last few years have shown us that county and school district are implicated in virtually everything we do. Yes, I know that the law does not require school district and county participation, but given the nature of the modern interaction between city, town, county, and school district(s) it would seem sensible to expand our understanding of "intergovernmental." I didn't say this at the meeting, but it occurred to me later that we really ought to be calling on urban planning specialists from UW Oshkosh or the UW Exension to serve at least in advisory roles as these deals are being hammered out.

I also cannot understand why the city would sign a 40-year agreement with a town when our own city comprehensive plan is reviewed every 10 years. County-town agreements are extremely difficult to change once they are signed, and so if in the next review of the comprehensive plan we come to the conclusion that the town agreement is not working, we are stuck. I think provisions should be placed in town/city agreements that make them subject to renegotiation at the time the comprehensive plan comes up for review. That way we we are not locking two generations of citizens and government officials into something that may not turn out to be helpful.

Finally, I cited Dr. Kevin McGee's 2000 paper on "County spending and the implicit subsidy to 'urban sprawl'" to suggest that the issue of "double whammy" taxation (i.e. city residents paying for town services that city dwellers themselves do not receive to the level that their rate of taxation would seem to require) needs to be dealt with in town/city agreements.

I thought other councilors seemed interested in what I had to say, but no one else offered any opposition or verbal support for the agreement and so it passed easily. Sprawl on, Wayne.

Smoking Ordinance Revision: I ended up voting against amending the ordinance. I said that the issue provided us with a conflict between the needs of small business and the needs of small-d democracy. As regards small business, there is no doubt that after 90 days "Joe's Dry Dock" (the establishment asking for the revision) will be able to allow smoking. However, in his first 90 days Joe is effectively at a competitive disadvantage with every other bar and tavern that allows smoking. I think everyone can sympathize with his predicament.

For better or worse, however, the smoking ordinance was put in place by a vote of the people in a referendum and I think it has to be something truly extraordinary and urgent for the council to amend it. A tavern owner having to wait 90 days before allowing smoking does not, in my judgement, provide enough strong rationale to amend an ordinance put in place by referendum.
The council voted against amending the smoking ordinance and so it will remain as is until the legislature and governor decide to pass a state wide ban.

Cottonwood Tree Ban: Mr. McHugh's ordinance failed by a 1-6 vote and received further trashing in today's Northwestern.

Roundabouts. Oshkosh News has a good summary of the discussion that led to the passing of this resolution. One thing the summary does not say is that I said that one of the possible benefits of the roundabout (though not the main reason I voted for it) is that we can get some public art placed in the circle. I think that might do much to enhance the aesthetics of the Jackson/Murdock area which is currently not the most attractive place in town.

Chamber of Commerce Building. I called this a "defining vote" for this council, as in my view most prior city councils would have had at least 4 and possibly as many as 6 votes to purchase the chamber of commerce building. On this council, the purchase failed by a vote of 0-7, though some of the councilors seem to think that we might purchase the building in the future. In voting against such measures, is this council "anti-progress?" Nope, we just seem more willing to be skeptical of the Department of Community Development's definition of progress.

Akcess Reconsideration. The vote to reconsider failed on a 3-4 vote (Esslinger, McHugh, Palmeri voting to reconsider), meaning that McHugh could not engage in a public discussion of the Akcess term sheet and its possible similarities to the disastrous 100 north Main St. project. I found this vote disappointing and I do believe the council will live to regret it when it becomes clear (perhaps years from now) that there are problems in the term sheet that could have and should have been discovered before a shovel breaks ground. I hope I'm wrong.

On the convention center workshop, my entire purpose in asking for a second workshop was to allow for more citizen input. Because the workshop started so late, we did not get much input. Still, I was encouraged to see that just about every councilor expressed discomfort with TIF financing of the project. I don't think in the history of Oshkosh politics since the 1970s has there ever been a council as suspicious of TIFs as this one. Hopefully by early next year we will have some quality information on how our existing TIFs are actually performing.

The Oshkosh Northwestern has a summary of where we are as regards meeting in closed session to discuss the city manager's performance.