I'd like to thank the Academy

Actually, I'd like to thank, very sincerely, everyone who voted for little ol' me in the annual Isthmus Favorites Readers Poll - somehow, some way, me and this here blog managed to tie for third place in the Favorite Local Blogger category, which is beyond lovely.

I had to chuckle, though, that I'm sharing the slot with none other than Dave Blaska, Daily Page blogger extraordinaire and one of my favorite targets for criticism. He also seems to be laboring under the delusion that I think he's my father, perhaps lending credence to a theory I've been working on wherein Blaska believes he and I have a Luke/Darth Vader type of relationship. Either that, or the guy never saw an oft-satirized anti-drug ad from the '90s.

Many congratulations to Nichole and JM of Eating in Madison A to Z for taking a well-deserved first place in the poll, and also to Greg at Caffeinated Politics for coming in second.

I have to say that I was also tickled beyond all get out that my band, Little Red Wolf, was voted the #1 Favorite New Local Band in the poll. We were all pretty flabbergasted by the result. My sincere gratitude to everyone who voted for us, and to everyone who has been supporting this new musical venture. We're having a blast and hope to continue for a long time to come.

Edgewater plans in hot water

I'm a little late to the game here, but I've been in the wild throes of moving to a new homestead in the last week, so I have an excuse.

Anyway, the game I'm a little late to is the debate over the planning process for the proposed Edgewater Hotel expansion and development. It has been fascinating, if somewhat confusing, to watch the slings and arrows being launched back and forth across the ol' interwebs between some of Madison's heaviest hitters.

Isthmus. Brenda Konkel. Paul Soglin. Mayor Dave. All of them have weighed in via the binary to express their concerns and dismissals of others' protestations. It's been a bit like watching a political game of pong.

Isthmus:

The Madison Trust for Historic Preservation is gravely concerned about a proposed $107 million expansion of the Edgewater Hotel. And not just about preservation....There may be reasons that the project developer, Hammes Company of Brookfield, is being secretive. It's engaged in what appears to be unreported lobbying. It's created a lobby group to back the project and what seems to be a dummy-front neighborhood organization. It's built questionable alliances with the mayor and Downtown Madison Inc.

Cieslewicz:

So, let's recap. A developer has an idea that will reinvigorate a landmark hotel, add needed rooms to help our tourism and convention industry and bring more resources into the community, add value to bolster city tax rolls, dramatically increase public access to the lake and create lots of jobs. And he had the gall to ask to meet with the mayor to talk about it… several times. Isthmus portrays this as the crime of the century. I guess I was supposed to tell him to take a hike.

Konkel:

Is that a joke? Do people believe that is 225 public meetings about the project? Or is that what they are supposed to believe? Is that how that is going to be spun? I mean, who took the time to count those meetings and for what purpose? I'd be interested in finding out how many of those 225 meetings were with Capital Neighborhoods or the Mansion Hill Neighborhood Association or public meetings.

Soglin:

Opponents to projects are not required to post every meeting and invite the developer. The opponents are not required to open up the discussion every time they meet or place a phone call to an alder.

WSJ:

Hammes spent months quietly seeking support from political and business leaders in the neighborhood, adjusting and refining plans along the way.

But the approach has disturbed some, who say Hammes selectively shared information and hasn’t resolved concerns about the height of the proposed tower, the effect on the nearby Mansion Hill Historic District, the view of Lake Mendota — protected by city ordinance — and traffic, noise and parking concerns.

I'm certainly of the opinion that a lot of transparency is needed when discussing major developments such as this - especially when we're talking about lakeside property. Issues such as erosion and run-off need to be taken into greater consideration when construction is being done right along the water. And I'd hate to see yet another tall building put up along the shore, further obstructing public views and access to the lake that are already severely limited.

Just as troubling, however, are those 225 meetings Konkel mentioned in her post and further scrutinized by Isthmus. Mayor Dave did little to directly address the concerns that were raised about alleged unregistered lobbying time, opting instead to simply brush off all concerns with a casual dismissal.

I honestly couldn't tell you what the truth is or whether or not anything truly nefarious is going on behind closed doors. What I can say is that the various parties involved in the process are handling things pretty poorly. Urban infill projects like the Edgewater have a great deal of potential in helping to cut down on sprawl, provide mixed-use space, and bring in more jobs and revenue. I'm all for that. But you can't just throw those words out into the aether and hope they'll stick without doing due diligence.

That is, make the process open to public input from the start. No quiet deals. Adhere to well-established and beneficial statutes that regulate the height of downtown buildings, greener building techniques, and public access to the lake shore. Madison has a pretty decent history of doing just that, and it's made this the city that I fell in love with after just 5 minutes of my first visit back in '99. I'd hate to see that ethic chipped away at.

And for heaven's sake, regardless of how you feel about people's opinions on the matter, don't simply toss their concerns aside without adequately explaining yourself. I suspect that most of the involved players want what's best for the neighborhood and the city. We can only get that by being more honest with one another.


(photo by readerwalker on Flickr)

Progressively wearing myself out

My weekend started last night, when I took my handy dandy press pass and headed out for the big Progressive Magazine 100th anniversary concert at the Orpheum Theatre. Getting to see a fantastic line-up of some of your favorite folk artists for free is definitely a huge perk of being a member of the unwashed press masses.

It was, unsurprisingly, a fantastic show, and you can check out my write-up of the event over at Dane101.com and/or my set of photos at my Flickr site. Basically, it was Catie Curtis, Melissa Ferrick, Peter Mulvey, Dar Williams, the Indigo Girls, and Ani DiFranco--all in one place, and often sharing the stage to sing together. Imagine me getting the vapors and fanning myself, because I totally am.

I also had the distinct honor of writing an opinion piece that was printed in this weeks' edition of Isthmus, and you should absolutely pick up a copy and give it a read. And not just for my amazing, cutting, super intelligent discussion of the torture memos, but because it's a fine publication in general (or you can cheat and read my article online).

Today and some of tomorrow, I'll be/have been covering the actual Progressive Magazine conference. So far I've seen more heavy-hitting progressive speakers than you could shake a stick at, if you cared to do such a thing, including Wisconsin's dreamiest Senator, Russ Feingold. Look for more photos and articles about the conference, from both myself and fellow correspondent Steve Furay, over at Dane101 throughout the next few days.

In the meantime, I'm taking a nap.

Unacceptable

UPDATE (1:59PM):

Isthmus is reporting on a press release received from the Madison Police Department with some very interesting information, namely that "there is evidence contained in the call which should have resulted in a Madison Police officer being dispatched."

(older updates at bottom of post)

---------

There's a part of me that hopes this isn't true, that it's all just some weird misunderstanding or miscommunication, and not our city's 911 service fucking up so royally. From Isthmus:

Madison police believe Brittany Zimmermann called 911 before she was stabbed and beaten to death inside her Doty Street apartment, but the 911 Center failed to send help after erroneously concluding the call was a mistake.

...

The most significant is that the 911 Center received a call from Zimmermann before she was killed, did not dispatch police, and then did not immediately or accurately inform the Police Department about the call after cops found her body, law enforcement officials tell Isthmus.

Sources suggest the center may have made a call-back to a wrong number, where the person who answered assured that no crisis was occurring. One source says cops might have been better situated to make a quick arrest had mistakes not been made by the 911 Center.

Over the past two and a half weeks, the 911 Center has refused requests for basic information about the calls. This week, Joe Norwick, director of the Dane County 911 Center since July, declined further opportunities to comment after being provided with a written summary of parts of this story.

In an email, Norwick said he was basing his refusal on a request from the Madison Police Department to withhold all information "pertaining to this matter" because release would "seriously impair" the murder investigation.

Madison police officials vigorously dispute this. While declining to call the 911 Center's action a cover-up, they suggested that Norwick is improperly using the department as an excuse not to own up to his agency's mistakes.

There's been a lot of talk about who's to blame for the recent run of as-of-yet unsolved murders, with a lot of blame being placed on the area's homeless population. Frankly, a lot of it sounds like a lame excuse to bash the transient population as entirely made up of shiftless, violent crazy people, which we really ought to know better than. But beyond the debate about the homeless, and separate (if not more important) from the question of who committed these terrible crimes, there is also a debate about the effectiveness of our local police and emergency services.

I've bitched and moaned in private about why it might be taking so long for these cases to be investigated, why certain leads seem to have been nearly ignored, why the public has been privy to so little information about certain cases, etc. But in the end, it's mostly just speculation on my part. I don't know anything about the inner workings of these investigations, or indeed any kind of investigation.

What I do know is that, if true, the mishandling of a 911 call made by Zimmerman and the seeming dismissal of a good lead brought to the detective in charge of the Marino case should raise some serious alarm bells.

That the director of the Dane County 911 Center, Joe Norwick, has so far refused to comment at all about this incident, falsely blaming it on a request from the MPD, should cause the community to seriously question who we've placed in charge of such a vital service.

If you make a mistake, especially one pertaining to such sensitive issues, you owe it to yourself and to your community to own up and make amends, working to see that such mistakes don't happen again in the future. There's no hyperbole involved when I say that people's lives are at stake here. We can't afford to fuck around.

Thankfully, reporters with Isthmus have been dogged in their determination to follow up on these cases, actually following leads and doing some hard-hitting reporting. It's reassuring to know that there are still journalists out there willing to ask the hard questions and write about stories that matter. I can only hope that further public pressure will bring some accountability to people like Joe Norwick, and help spur more vigorous investigation into these unsolved murders. We owe it to ourselves, but most of all, we owe it to the victims and their families.

Further info.

UPDATE (12:25PM):

The Capital Times is reporting that, in a press conference today, Joe Norwick has confirmed that Zimmermann made a 911 call the day she was murdered. Further, he explains that "Brittany Zimmermann made a 911 call on April 2, but the dispatcher taking the call immediately received another call that was a non-emergency call and did not immediately return the 911 call made by Zimmermann." She "apparently didn't answer a few minutes later when the dispatcher finally did call back. If a dispatcher takes a 911 call and doesn't hear anything, the policy is to call back."

This all smells pretty bad to me. First, why on earth did the dispatcher give precedence to a non-emergency call over hers? Second, the final sentence makes it sound as though she wasn't saying anything when she first called. This needs to be more clear. Regardless, if a 911 dispatcher gets a call and no one's talking, shouldn't they ask for a squad car to check out the situation? I'm not up on my dispatcher procedure, so if anyone can explain how this works to me, that'd be great. All in all, though, this whole thing is pretty infuriating, and we should be pressing Norwick to release the recordings of said calls. Then maybe we could make some sense of it all.

UPDATE (1:38PM):

Just noticed that the Cap Times updated their news story on this, which notes a few new details in Norwick's story about the call:

The Dane County 911 dispatch center director said a UW-Madison student slain in her campus area apartment April 2 made a 911 phone call on her cell phone, but dispatchers failed to call her back.

Director Joe Norwick said today that when Brittany Zimmermann made the call, the dispatcher, who was unnamed, had no way of knowing the call wasn't one of many non-emergency or misdialed phone calls that the center receives every day.

Norwick declined to say how long Zimmermann's phone call lasted, or whether there was any communication from Zimmermann. He said the dispatcher, after a time, discontinued the call to answer another 911 call, which turned out to be a non-emergency call.

The dispatcher then called back on the second 911 call, discovered it wasn't an emergency, then took another 911 call regarding an unwanted person in a residence. The dispatcher failed to get back to Zimmermann's call and never made a call back, even though 911 center policy dictates that return calls be made.

I'm still very curious to know if anything was said or could be heard during the first call Zimmermann made. Also of interest is how long the initial call lasted, how accurate GPS information from cell phones really is, and why in the hell the dispatcher failed to follow-up properly?

It might help if Norwick would actually release this information. Being that it's a vital public service, I think we have a right to know about procedure and potential mistakes so that the right people can be held accountable and the problems can be fixed.

Where's my tinfoil hat?

Isthmus letter to the editor (wait for the last bit, it's the punchline):

As a Ph.D. scientist well schooled in all aspects of thermodynamics, I take exception to Teresa Nyholt's letter on CO2 global warming (1/4/08). This hypothesis, extravagantly pitched by Al Gore for political reasons, is unsupported by peer-reviewed scientific publications.

In his infamous An Inconvenient Truth movie, Gore reported a global temperature increase, which when graphed was shaped like a hockey stick. The data used for this temperature graph were totally in error.

There was no exaggerated global temperature increase. His temperature levels were based on tree-ring growth data, which was invalid because of statistical errors and failure to correct for atmospheric changes.

Despite criticism from the scientific community, he continued to use fallacious data. His disdain for scientific truth qualified him more favorably as a politician than an aspiring scientist.

A simple graph of the gradual global temperature increase along with the vivid exponential increase of carbon dioxide since 1950 validates, beyond a shadow of doubt, that carbon dioxide has had no measurable effect on global warming.

The myth of human-caused global warming is the biggest public fraud since Franklin Roosevelt orchestrated the Pearl Harbor tragedy.

Remember folks, he's a Ph.D. SCIENTIST! Do you suppose that means he's got a doctorate in some branch of the sciences, or that he actually studies people with Ph.D.s? I can't tell.