Tuesday's Meeting

Here's some highlights from last night's Common Council meeting.

*Before we got to citizen statements, Councilor Bain read this statement:

There has been a lot of discussion concerning my participation in the deliberations regarding the City Manager. Unfortunately, some issues have become unclear, and I would like to clarify some concerns that have been raised.

I want to make it clear that it was my decision to leave the July 30th closed session. My decision was based on the advice of the council’s attorney. I was advised not to participate due to public statements I made regarding city leadership. Given that advice, I felt at that time the best decision possible was to leave the meeting. I was not kicked out, and there are no laws that prevent me from attending and participating."

I will, however, be participating in tomorrow’s closed session, where I have been informed that the council will review a possible alternative resolution.

Hopefully Bryan's statement will put an end to the phone calls asking "why you kicked Mr. Bain out of the meeting."

*The Council was asked to approve the appointment of former Oshkosh B'Gosh Executive David Omachinski to serve on the Redevelopment Authority. Normally mayoral appointments in our form of government are rubber stamped by the council, but on this occasion Dennis McHugh, Paul Esslinger and I voted "No" and the resolution to appoint was thus defeated on a 3-3 tie (Jess King was not at the meeting.). Here is a draft of comments I made before voting no (some of my remarks were extemporaneous so this is not an exact transcript of what I said):

The resolution asks us to approve the appointment of David Omachinksi to the Redevelopment Authority. I do not know Mr. Omachinski, but in our packets we have his resume'; based on what I see in it I will have to vote no.

Mr. Omachinski served in a variety of Executive positions at Oshkosh B’gosh from 1993-2005. From 1993-2002 he was Vice-President of Finance, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of the company. On his resume he lists as one of his accomplishments: Successfully developed and carried out 5 year plan to migrate all domestic manufacturing to offshore sources. As a result, he improved gross profit margin over 800 basis points.” In 1996 Oshkosh B’Gosh was still the 3rd largest employer in the city of Oshkosh. By the time Mr. Omachinski was done with his 5 year plan we have lost every single manufacturing job. Every one. And where did those jobs go?

A report issued in late 2003 by the National Labor Committee detailed the horrors at a textile plant in El Salvador. Here’s what they found: "Each worker had to sew 34 pairs of Oshkosh children's pants a day, while being paid just 19 cents for each pair they sewed. Workers' wages come to less than 9/10ths of one percent of the retail price."

At the same plant, the NLC found: supervisors scream and curse at the workers; women not working fast enough are made to stand in the corner; workers needed permission to drink water or go to the bathroom; women had to submit to forced pregnancy tests when hired and three months later and if testing positive were immediately fired; limited access to health care; U.S. corporate codes of conduct were never explained and meaningless; workers constantly intimidated in an atmosphere of blatant repression of the legal rights to freedom of association and to organize. The management of the plant made a direct threat to the workers:
"If a union comes into the factory, it is going to die. If a union is ever organized here, we are going to leave the country and shut down the factory."

I understand that Mr. Omachinski was just doing his job. He did it, and we know that in the garment industry, it can be a very nasty world.

As a Common Council, we have the power to say no to this appointment. The state statutes governing redevelopment authorities says:

In making appointments of commissioners, the appointing power shall give due consideration to the general interest of the appointee in a redevelopment, slum clearance or urban renewal program and shall, insofar as is possible, designate representatives from the general public, labor, industry, finance or business group, and civic organizations.

Our current redevelopment authority is well represented by individuals from industry and business groups. We should have a representative from labor on the authority, and I think the mayor should appoint someone from that area.

Oshkosh News covers my comments here.

*A woman concerned about noise and lighting at Titan Stadium delivered a passionate presentation during citizen statements. Mr. Bain and Mayor Tower heard her concerns at the Fifth Tuesday Forum and are in the process of getting some answers for her.

*Mr. Esslinger asked the city manager some questions about the 100 block financing and how it might relate to the Akcess development in terms of guarantees provided to make up for shortfalls. The answers provided were vague and will have to be revisited.

*The Council approved recommendations by Mr. Bain to make motions to Table and motions to Suspend Rules debatable. The recommendations passed on a 4-2 vote (Palmeri and McHugh voting No). I voted no because (1) I think debating these motions will make our meetings even longer than is already the case; and (2) a councilor uncertain about why a motion to table or suspend rules was made should simply, in my opinion, vote no.

*We had a budget workshop after the meeting which was too long for me to summarize here. One thing I did point out which I think bears repeating here is that in an annual financial report that we were provided, pp. 108-109 break down employment in the city in terms of manufacturing, non-manufacturing, and government jobs. The source of the information is the Chamber of Commerce, which (I am not making this up) list the Miles Kimball Company as having 1,250 manufacturing jobs in the community. I imagine that some manufacturing might go on there, though would not know it from the company's recruitment language, which says: Employment opportunities may exist in the key areas of merchandising, creative, inventory planning, customer service, marketing, information systems, printing, finance, fulfillment and human resources.

We should be thankful that Miles Kimball employs over 1,200 people, but calling them all manufacturing jobs reminds me of the Bush Administration's attempt to call fast food workers "manufacturers" (they do, after all, "make" the burgers, right?).