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)

Searching and seizing for fun and profit

Recently, Madison's mayor, Dave Cieslewicz, issued a three-page proposal of ways in which to combat rising gun violence in certain of the city's neighborhoods. It's good that these problems are being more directly addressed, but I can't help but have some serious concerns about one of the major points in his plan:

Madison police would enlist parental permission to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms...

Utilizing parental consent to a search instead of a search warrant approved by a judge is a way to move quickly — before the guns can do damage — when police are tipped off to the location of a weapon in the hands of a juvenile.

I understand the desire to move as quickly as possible when there's strong evidence indicating that someone is in possession of an illegal firearm. I understand that police and city officials are frustrated by the continued spike in crime in Madison. But is this really the best way to go about combating the problem? By circumventing, as far as I can tell anyway, one of the central tenants of the Constitution?

Not only would this plan potentially be a major violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, but it strikes me that it would only serve to foster greater mistrust between parents and their children, and/or children and their community.

I'm not saying we should never call out our young people on their more ridiculous or dangerous behavior. In fact, I suspect that a lack of good parental and community involvement is one of the key factors that leads some children to act out so rashly.

But is it going to help the situation to give police the power to rifle through a kids belongings without first obtaining a warrant? What happens when what they find is enough for them to level charges? Does the search just get thrown out for the lack of warrant?

What's more, when you really think about how such a policy would play out, you immediately run into hazards. How will police know/decide which kids to target? Do parents, friends, and other peers need to first come to the cops with information? Another option is one that The Sconz recently suggested:

Theoretically, the introduction of this plan suggests there is a group of cops who are keeping up with “gang politics,” per se. They are tuned into teen rivalries, they analyze youth arrests and try to figure out who is at risk to commit a crime with a firearm.

But like Sconz there, I'm a bit dubious that such a program exists, or that if it does, it's that sophisticated. Which leads one to wonder if this new policy wouldn't be ripe for abuse. Would there be a system of checks in place to look into the reliability of sources and make sure the searches weren't disproportionately (and unjustly) targeting kids from certain neighborhoods? That they wouldn't just be the result of petty vendettas?

I recognize that this is a terrible situation to be in, when things have gotten so bad that such ideas are being floated. And there are no easy solutions. But I can't help but cringe when yet another policy is invented that aims to take away the essential rights of minors. There's no better way to further piss off and disenfranchise them, which is precisely what we ought to be working to prevent.

So I have some questions, and until such time as those questions are satisfactorily answered, I have to object to this particular facet of Mayor Dave's new plan. I'm pleased that he and other city officials appear to be taking seriously the problem, but I worry that they're falling into knee-jerk reactions and scare mongering to address it.

The newspaper is dead, long live the newspaper

Anyone paying an iota of attention to the current media situation knows that things are looking dire. We're talking Fall of the Roman Empire dire. The rebels at the end of "The Empire Strikes Back" dire. Y'know, bad. Major news organizations across the nation are folding, shuttering their offices, laying off workers, slimming down, cutting back, and desperately trying to find ways to keep afloat.

Charge for online content. Employ fewer journalists. Combine operations when a city has more than one newspaper. Shrink the actual size of the paper. And the list goes on.

What few of the major media conglomerates who run many of these operations seem to realize, however, is that the old, profit-driven, mega-consolidated way of doing things is coming to an end. And, I'd say, it's about damn time.

I'm a writer who sometimes moonlights as an actual journalist, so I certainly have a vested interest in finding ways for folks like me to get paid for their work. I think it's important to have a healthy balance (operative word being "healthy" here) between the so-called "citizen journalism" of blogs, etc., and the professional, comprehensive news gathering of honest-to-goodness trained journalists.

Things are fast becoming unbalanced, though, and we need to act very quickly to see that our country, our world, does not lose one of the most vital elements of any democracy: The free press.

Madison's Mayor Dave Cieslewicz yesterday penned a post wherein he called for newspapers to begin charging for online content:

Charge me. Please charge me. Why is it that I should expect to pay for news delivered on paper, but not expect to pay for the same story I read online? It costs something to hire reporters and editors and why shouldn't I, as a consumer of the news, pay for some of that cost?

So first and foremost, charge me. Second, charge me twice. Competition is a good thing. The blending of our two daily newspapers into one is not a healthy thing. When I see a Cap Times byline in the State Journal I wonder what that means. I know who wrote it, but who edited it? And what does it mean for competition between the papers? Are reporters tripping over one another to break a story or are they sleepily cooperating?

His concerns are not misplaced, but his solution, I believe, is. Jesse Russell, writing at Dane101, makes a counter offer and points out Maryland Senator Benjamin Cardin's current proposal to allow newspapers to reorganize under non-profit status. They would then enjoy benefits typically only previously given to educational entities. They could claim circulation revenue and advertising as tax exempt. The caveat, however, would be that those newspapers could not "make political endorsements."

That's where you lose me. John Nichols and Robert McChesney of The Nation have another idea (and it's a fantastic article, so please do give the whole thing a read): Government intervention.

My hackles raised almost immediately upon reading that. Letting the government have any say over how a newspaper runs its operations is a recipe for disaster, 1984 style. But wait! they say, that's not what we mean:

Only government can implement policies and subsidies to provide an institutional framework for quality journalism. We understand that this is a controversial position. When French President Nicolas Sarkozy recently engineered a $765 million bailout of French newspapers, free marketeers rushed to the barricades to declare, "No, no, not in the land of the free press." Conventional wisdom says that the founders intended the press to be entirely independent of the state, to preserve the integrity of the press...

...We are sympathetic to that position. As writers, we have been routinely critical of government--Democratic and Republican--over the past three decades and antagonistic to those in power. Policies that would allow politicians to exercise even the slightest control over the news are, in our view, not only frightening but unacceptable. Fortunately, the rude calculus that says government intervention equals government control is inaccurate and does not reflect our past or present, or what enlightened policies and subsidies could entail.

Our founders never thought that freedom of the press would belong only to those who could afford a press. They would have been horrified at the notion that journalism should be regarded as the private preserve of the Rupert Murdochs and John Malones. The founders would not have entertained, let alone accepted, the current equation that seems to say that if rich people determine there is no good money to be made in the news, then society cannot have news.

They go on to explain that, during the early decades of the country, the Founders worked with government to create and implement "extraordinary postal subsidies for the distribution of newspapers. It also instituted massive newspaper subsidies through printing contracts and the paid publication of government notices, all with the intent of expanding the number and variety of newspapers."

The trick in this scenario, of course, is making sure that the policies and regulation remain "enlightened" - that is, the government provides money and subsidies, with pretty much the only thing it gets in return being a vibrant, independent press. So beyond funding, they lay off--no editorial control, not even a tiny bit of leaning.

Honestly, that may well be what it takes. Or maybe a combination of the non-profit and government subsidy models. Because newspapers should be freely able to editorialize and endorse. That's part of being a free press, after all. But they should also be recognized as a vital part of our society, one worth funding so that they're not run according to what might bring the most profit to their owners.

Newspapers, indeed all news organizations, should be run according to news. And it should be readily available to everyone, regardless of the size of their pocketbook. That's the great thing about the internet, and the sooner everyone recognizes this major, fundamental shift in how things are done, the better off everyone will be. Including our dying newspapers.


(photo by jamesjyu on Flickr)

Which is it, Mayor Dave?

I'm trying to parse the various possible results of different bus fare increases (or lack thereof) being put out by a whole cadre of city officials.

Last night, the Transit & Parking Commission voted to increase the current fare from $1.50 to $1.75, a "compromise" over the increase to $2.00 that the Mayor and others wanted. According to Alder Brenda Konkel, the discussion and voting process seemed a little confused and muddled, and no one appeared to be terribly happy with how things went down.

Mayor Dave, in his blog post today regarding the vote, expressed his concerns with the decision. What he said, though, seemed to contradict itself:

My conclusion was (and still is) that the bigger increase was better because the smaller increase is the worst of both worlds: higher fares for, at best, the same service. By going to $2.00 we could actually increase service for the first time in years and provide a lot of other improvements. A smaller increase doesn't get us much; it's just running in place. And it sets us up for the possibility of another fare increase pretty soon with, again, no service expansions.

Which is it? The immediate increase to $2 equals expanded service "for the first time in years" and "a lot of other improvements"? Or will it result in "no service expansions" as he suggests would be the case if fares were upped to $2 in a slightly more incremental fashion?

Additionally, is the smaller increase "just running in place," as Mayor Dave suggests here, or will it result in the doomsday scenario recently laid out by Chuck Kamp, Transit General Manager.

Look, I don't doubt that Metro is hurting for funds, and I'm a huge proponent of substantial, efficient, and affordable public transportation. Given the historic upswing in ridership numbers, coupled with the shrinking of the average bus rider's pocketbook, shouldn't we be looking for ways to provide those services that don't place such a large burden on the people most in need?

I strongly suspect that the Mayor, Kamp, and most of the other people directly involved in the life and health of Metro have its best interests in mind, and are working hard on making the most of a pretty crappy situation. The public could stand for slightly more straight-forward answers and information on the subject, though.

We could also stand for a society that placed more emphasis on funding public, mass-transit solutions and less on building huge interstates and propping up those companies that stubbornly insisted on continuing to build gas-guzzling vehicles. Just a thought, anyway, but that's a whole other set of issues.

Temporary reprieve for WYOU

Good news out of the Mayor's office today: Cieslewicz has decided not to drop public access channel WYOU's funding for at least the next year, giving it some time to get its ducks in a row and plan for a more independent future.

Cieslewicz wanted to give the nearly $140,000 designated for WYOU to City Channel, which broadcasts government meetings and civic events. This would spare the city from having to use property tax dollars to help supplement funds for City Channel.

After a recent meeting with WYOU's board of directors, Cieslewicz called the station and said he would leave WYOU's budget alone for 2009, but warned that the station would only get half its current allocation the following year.

So it's not all roses and candy for WYOU, but it's better than nothing. I wrote about my feelings toward WYOU before, expressing that I think it's an important community resource and deserves funding, but that I also understand that the city (and the whole country) is up against pretty dire economic circumstances and needs to make tough decisions about where to put its money.

Fact is, this would have been less of an issue had we not passed that inferal Video Competition Act, which has allowed Charter to drop its local cable franchise agreement in favor of a statewide one, meaning that "all financing for public, educational and government channels, or PEG channels, is set to end by February 2011."

Basically, instead of the cable companies helping to provide funding for public stations through small fees charged to its subscribers (something they really ought to have to do, seeing as how the airwaves are public in the first place), we're to be left having to shift the burden to taxpayers/the city. And since the city can't really afford that, WYOU and other such channels will have to scramble to raise their own funds--which ain't exactly easy, but they're already planning for exactly that scenario.

The station will also do more outreach to let the public know its mission and explain its importance to the community.

"City Channel is the channel that uses actual tax dollars and not WYOU," Swansboro said. People need to start asking questions like, "Why is the government channel more important than the people's channel?"

Swansboro said Cieslewicz didn't know much about WYOU when they met.

"He didn't know that we taught classes. He didn't know that we had children's groups in here. He didn't even know that the executive director had been fired in April. I think he found out that he can't count on his people to give him information, at least about WYOU," Swansboro said.

Cieslewicz said he was happy to learn that the WYOU board is already planning for a day without PEG access fee support.

"I was very pleased that the board and I could agree on a phase-out of city cable fee backing and that WYOU -- like WORT on radio -- is likely to live on with broader community support," the mayor said.

Let's hope so, anyway.

Will hiking bus fares hurt more than help?

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz today announces his proposed 2009 city operating budget, calling it a "share the pain" plan, reflecting the increasingly difficult economic times we're all living in. It does look like he's honestly trying to make things work as best they can for everyone without dramatically cutting services, and I applaud him for being willing to make such tough decisions.

So far, most of the proposed budget looks fairly reasonable, though I've yet to see anything more detailed than a bullet pointed list of its features.

The one thing that does have me concerned so far, though, is the proposal to raise bus fares by fifty cents, up to two dollars per ride. There is also mention of how the plan also "Doubles funding to $80,000 to help those with low-incomes" but I'm not entirely sure what that means. That's important, because while it's good that the plan calls for expanding service, the good that does may be offset by an increase in the base fare. People working with tight personal budgets often rely on the bus to get them to and from their jobs. Fifty cents may not seem like much to some of us lucky souls, but for someone who uses the bus on a regular basis just to get to work, it adds up right quickly.

I can't help but wonder if it shouldn't be possible to expand service without hiking rates, especially since ridership is at all-time highs. It's a trend we're seeing nationwide, largely due to the increased cost of gas, and most experts seem to agree that the trend will only continue in the long-run. Shouldn't this mean that Metro is taking in more revenue from riders? And shouldn't that help to offset some of the costs associated with the proposed rate hike? I'm asking this honestly, because I don't know the precise details of how things work at Metro and what everything costs.

I'm concerned, though, because if there does absolutely need to be a rate increase, it absolutely should be coupled with some sort of program to help lower income riders.

I drove for Women's Transit Authority for a year, shortly before it went under, and had the chance to get to know a number of hard working women who relied on our (free) service to get to and from (often several) jobs. They were also big bus riders, though had many seemingly legitimate complaints about route cuts and overall service. Many had been entirely left behind when Metro retooled how it ran a number of years ago (the switch from lettered to numbered routes). One woman who worked at St. Mary's Care Center out on Madison's west side had called Metro to see if they picked up anywhere nearby, only to be assured that there was a bus stop "just about a mile away" - a bus stop, it turned out, that was over a mile away over an unlit hill in the middle of the country, and one that didn't run late enough to pick her up from her second shift job.

I understand that the buses can't feasibly serve everyone all of the time, but it seems like there are currently holes that could be filled. And it seems reasonable that we should be putting some extra resources into helping expand and better the service of something that helps ease congestion on our roads, lower the amount of pollutants being spewed into the air, and provides a lower cost way for people on smaller incomes to get around.

Heck, maybe we could take some of the money from the proposed I-94 expansion and put it toward Metro service instead. It's an idea, anyway.

I'll be curious to read a more detailed report of the mayor's budget, and what exactly that money to "help those with low incomes" is for. I just want to make sure we keep in mind how difficult even a fifty cent increase in fares can be for a lot of the people who rely the most on the service.

UPDATE TO ADD: Brenda Konkel posted the slightly more specific ways in which the higher rates would be used (she's also pretty miffed about the budget cutting funding for Community Services agencies, and I don't blame her). I'm still trying to find out more information about this supposed "Transit for Jobs" program that's mentioned, and what exactly they're doing to defray costs for lower income riders. Plus, it's looking like higher fuel costs aren't really the main reason for the increase. Interesting.

***

On a somewhat related note, I was very excited to read this article in the Chicago Tribune. It notes how Congress recently passed, by a veto-proof margin, the Federal Railroad Safety Improvement Act, which, while spurred on by the recent tragic Amtrak accident in California, also includes some major provisions for expanding rail service nationwide:

The landmark legislation, which the White House said President George W. Bush will sign, calls for almost doubling the federal funding provided to Amtrak—about $13.1 billion over five years.

Among other precedents, it authorizes $3.4 billion to create high-speed passenger rail corridors and provide rail capital-improvement grants to states.

The ambitious project proposed for the Midwest would cover 3,000 miles in nine states. All lines would radiate from a hub in downtown Chicago. The cost of a fully completed Midwest network is estimated at almost $8 billion.

...

Planners envision the line running from Chicago up through Milwaukee, Madison, the Twin Cities and eventually Duluth, while separate routes from Chicago would extend east to Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati.

Can I just tell you how excited I am about that? I have been chomping at the bit for passenger rail service between Chicago and Madison, at the very least, ever since moving here. I would seriously use this about once a month, if not more, and I know a lot of other folks who feel the same way. It's good to see that lawmakers and others are finally sitting up and taking notice that we've become far too reliant on cars in this nation, and that good, reliable train and bus service should be just as, if not more so, funded as highway construction and the like. It's a shame that it's taken skyrocketing fuel costs for this to happen, but better late than never, I figure.

h/t Fearful Symmetries.

("ssshhh, baby listen, hear the train?")

Ridiculous

So let me get this straight: a woman gets a job working for the East Streets Division for the City of Madison, then gets sexually harassed on the job by a co-worker/superior. Woman gets fired by said co-worker, woman files suit, court finds that she was likely terminated because of sexual discrimination/harassment, city pays out $80,000 to her but also allows the offending co-worker to keep his job, while woman is barred from ever working for the city again.

How on earth does that even approach making sense?

Because that's exactly what happened to Michelle Heimann, and Mayor Dave himself has even stated that he thinks the settlement was fair. For now, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was only talking about the money and not the other circumstances surrounding the case. How is it fair for a guy guilty of sexual harassment to keep his job? How is it fair for the woman who fell victim to that crap to be banned from working for the city ever again? Heimann has even said that she would prefer just to get her job back rather than get the settlement money.

This is just ridiculous, and I'm ashamed that my city would handle the situation in such a way. I think more than a few phone calls and messages to the mayor are in order.

h/t Brenda Konkel

Do you need WYOU?

Mayor Dave would like to cut funding for Madison's public access television station, WYOU. As part of his proposed 2009 operating budget, the mayor would shift the money currently given to the station ($140,000) over to the Madison City Channel, which "broadcasts government meetings and civic events." This would apparently "spare the city from having to supplement City Channel's budget with property tax dollars" but, "The $140,000 makes up 80% of WYOU's budget, says Guy Swansbro, the station's interim director. Without it, 'It would all be over. It would certainly wipe us out.'"

Threats of having their budget axed come up quite often, so it's not entirely clear if this proposal will actually go through or not. But it brings up an interesting question: what value does a station like WYOU have? Is it worth continued public funding to maintain public stations? Especially in this era of cheaper and easier access to the internet, where anyone can upload videos and podcasts and the like, do communities still need public access television?

My initial response is yes, of course. The airwaves are publicly owned, and having at least one public access station is a vital part of maintaining locally oriented, non-commercial programming on the air. But the question of relevancy in the internet age got me to thinking a bit more about this. Couldn't WYOU just move online, offer its programming there? It might be cheaper, and have a wider reach.

But then, not everyone has internet access (or high-speed access). Heck, a lot of us are still trying to work out the switch from analogue to digital television receivers. Wouldn't it be a little presumptuous to assume that everyone could just log on for WYOU's local content? And beyond that, shouldn't we be fighting to maintain every scrap of public space that we can get?

WYOU has already been through the elimination of PEG funding from the Video Competition Act, and several channel moves courtesy of Charter. It's likely that, should this budget proposal pass, they'll be pretty much done for. They've started a petition drive to stop this from happening, and you can find it on their website if you're interested.

Little by little (and sometimes in big chunks), we seem to be losing the battle for non-commercial, public access media. Even when the economy isn't in the shitter, securing funding for public media is an uphill battle. For various reasons, it just doesn't seem to be a priority--or even a concern at all--for a lot of the folks who make those decisions. And cable companies often seem to be downright put out by their responsibility to make available those airwaves that have been entrusted to them.

I would argue that in spite of the hit-or-miss quality of programming, despite the internet, despite its overall viewership, public access does still matter. Perhaps WYOU and the budget would both be better served by having the station combine resources with the Madison City Channel, as Mayor Dave goes on to suggest, but that would need to be balanced by a much smaller cut to their budget than first proposed.

It might have also helped if legislators had taken out the part of the Video Competition Act that let cable companies off the hook from having to pay out fees to communities for use in supporting their public access channels. It's a little something called foresight. But then, this may also come down to people simply not giving a damn.

Which is a shame, because regardless of whether or not you make a regular habit of watching public access channels, I would argue that they're a vital part of any community. They're part of an essential, democratic net of public space, wherein everyday members of the community can air their opinions, their creative endeavors, their roasting meat, and more. Without them, those publicly owned airwaves become nothing more than corporate machines, with little hope of truly local content.