by George Zens
How the City of Middleton fails its business community
When it comes to supporting Middleton's local businesses during the coronavirus pandemic, the City of Middleton's approach can most charitably be described as one of creative inertia.
While City staff have presented a number of good ideas to help the business community over the course of the past few months, the city's political leadership - the mayor as well as the Common Council - have failed to even have substantive discussions about them. Middleton's elected officials are currently missing in action.
As for the two entities specifically created to help economic development and to support local businesses, the Community Development Authority (CDA) and the Middleton Area Development Corporation (MADC), they are showing themselves to be irrelevant to the point where one wonders why they exist at all.
It is a well established fact that mayor Gurdip Brar appoints people to committees for political reasons rather than for expertise and competence. The drawbacks to this approach have become painfully clear during the two recent CDA meetings. Its mostly new citizen-members, new to the CDA and new to Middleton, while obviously well intentioned and enthusiastic, are evidently not equipped to deal with a challenge of the magnitude of the covid-19 pandemic. It doesn't help that the CDA is chaired by the mayor himself, and that the local business community is not represented at all, not even in an advisory roll.
On June 11 of this year, the CDA discussed several ideas proposed by the City's Director of Planning and Community Development, Abby Attoun, for supporting downtown businesses during the pandemic (it should be added that the CDA was created specifically to support the redevelopment of downtown; businesses located elsewhere in the city have even less support, such as it is, from the City), including helping pay for a part-time communications coordinator whom the Downtown Middleton Business Association (DMBA) wants to hire, setting up picnic tables on the site of the downtown plaza, on the green space next to City Hall and at the Terrace Avenue Pavilion (the odd, mostly unused, roof structure in front of the Capital Brewery parking lot), renting hand-sanitizing stations for those spaces, painting circles on the grass for 'physical distancing', buying and setting up yard signs to encourage people to use the picnic tables, and having a $5,000 mural painted on the Roman Candle building to draw people downtown (half of the cost would be covered by the Arts Committee's budget).
They delved quite deep into the subject, discussing such details as putting signs on each picnic table limiting occupancy to six people. They abandoned the idea of renting a tent for the plaza site because it would cost $5,000 per month to rent. (Canopy tents can actually be bought for much less than that, but that did not seem to occur to anyone.)
The CDA expressed some support for the idea of closing the western end of Hubbard Avenue to traffic in order to facilitate outdoor bar and restaurant seating, and create a more pleasant shopping atmosphere. The businesses seem to disagree on closing the street. Longtable, for instance, has gone on record as opposed to the idea (they want their customers to be able to drive up to their patio), while the Village Green is in favor of it.
At a second meeting on July 1, the CDA members went into more details, such as trash collecting around the plaza site. It also emerged that the City's own recreation department uses the green space next to City Hall for outdoor activities, and is not thrilled about having picnic tables there. District 1 alderwoman Kathy Olson (district 1 includes downtown) still wants tables there.
The possible closure of the western end of Hubbard Avenue was discussed only briefly, although several CDA members expressed their support again. According to Abby Attoun, "somebody needs to champion it", and she did not mean herself. She acknowledged that every time she or another City staff member brought it up, "we have been shot down". It seems that powerful forces inside City Hall are against it. It also doesn't help that the DMBA's leadership (Andrea Van Nest of Longtable is the president) wants downtown to remain car-friendly rather than become pedestrian-friendly.
Meanwhile, one wonders whether the CDA would not do better to spend $2,500 on parasols or a tent to provide shade at the plaza and other sites, rather than on a mural that is of little value, except to the person getting paid to paint it. In order to attract people to downtown, it might also be more useful to put up signs directing people to the generally empty City parking lots between Elmwood Avenue and Terrace Avenue.
While the CDA has the authority to draw colorful circles on the grass at the plaza (and, unfortunately, to spend money on that mural - the otherworldliness of this idea is mind-boggling, considering the real existential struggle that local businesses have; it shows how out of touch the CDA is with the real needs of the community) it does not have the authority to close a street.
That needs to be done by the Common Council. And although two alderpersons are on the CDA (besides Kathy Olson, also district 3 alderwoman Katy Nelson), and every Council member has the right to have an item put on the agenda, there are no indications so far that anybody is inclined to take the initiative. As mentioned earlier, the mayor chairs the CDA, and he could also have the Council discuss closing the street, but he is has not made a move in that direction yet, either.
Considering the speed at which the Common Council works (its preferred strategy is to kick the can down the road), it is highly unlikely that anything meaningful will happen before the summer is over and any outdoor seating is a moot point.
Revealingly, the CDA decided at its July 1 meeting to have a brainstorming session about helping downtown businesses at its next meeting.
"Too little, too late", as one business owner put it.
But while the CDA's attempts at helping downtown businesses can be described as amateurish albeit well intentioned, the businesses themselves don't seem to be doing much to guide the CDA. The questions that CDA members have been asking during meetings show that they are mostly fishing in the dark when it comes to the needs of the businesses, and they would probably appreciate suggestions and feedback from the DMBA. To that end, the DMBA should participate in the meetings in order to provide guidance. No downtown business representative, however, has taken part in any recent CDA meeting.
The one time when a concrete suggestion to help local businesses did make it onto the Council's agenda was on May 5. At the initiative of senior City staff, foremost City Administrator Mike Davis and Finance Director Bill Burns, the alderpersons discussed the 'conceptual consideration' of a new Middleton Good Neighbor Loan Fund (and/or grant program) to be created in collaboration with the MADC. Its purpose would have been to provide loans or grants to local businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
At the meeting, Mike Davis acknowledged that the MADC was less than enthusiastic about its involvement, on the grounds that as an entity made up of volunteers, it did not have the resources to administer such a loan program. One wonders what the MADC's role is in the community. Its website was last updated in July 2019 to welcome a new Board member.
After a brief discussion the Council voted unanimously to defer the item. It hasn't been heard from since.
Other communities, meanwhile, have taken steps to help their local businesses.
The City of Verona, for example, enacted a business-support program early on that provided grants of $1,000 to $5,000 to qualifying local businesses. Its website also provides useful resources for businesses.
The City of Sun Prairie has introduced a tourism recovery grant program (for businesses and organizations hurt by event cancellations), and an emergency small-business loan fund (in cooperation with the local chamber of commerce, the Bank of Sun Prairie and the Downtown Sun Prairie business association). Its website also provides links and resources for small businesses.
The City of Fitchburg supports local businesses through its Forward Fitchburg Business Boost Loan Program. Its website also provides resources and links for businesses.
The cities of Monona and Stoughton, while not offering any financial assistance, provide useful resources and links on their official websites.
While it is unfair to compare Middleton to Madison, the latter has introduced its 'Streateries' initiative, which expands outdoor-dining possibilities for restaurants and bars.
Middleton has done none of the above.
Even the City's official website is out of date when it comes to covid-19 information. As of July 7, its 'latest update' was from May 21, announcing that City Hall would reopen after July 5 (that is not the case - City Hall remains closed indefinitely).
An internal search for 'covid-19' on the City of Middleton's website came up with "Oops an error occurred. Please try again later."
The only mention, indirect at that, of local businesses is a link at the bottom of the covid-19 page to the Middleton Chamber of Commerce's resources page.
Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Middleton's officials paint murals while its businesses struggle.
The Middleton Common Council rejects SRO agreement
For the first time since the program was created, the Middleton Common Council on Tuesday, July 7, rejected an agreement between the City and the Middleton Cross-Plains Area School District (MCPASD) to provide two 'school resource officers' for Kromrey Middle School and the High School.
'School resource officer' (SRO) is a euphemism for a police officer permanently stationed in a school. The officers for Kromrey and the High School are seconded from the Middleton Police Department, and the MCPASD reimburses the City for half the total personnel cost. In 2019, the City of Middleton received just over $83,400 from the School District for the SRO program. For 2020, the City had budgeted $87,000, but because of the school closures due to covid-19, that amount will not be reached.
In the past, the SRO program has been uncontroversial to the point where approval of the annual agreement was considered just a formality, and voted on as part of the consent agenda. (Items on the consent agenda are not debated, but voted on 'en bloc'. Every Council member, however, has the right to have one or more items removed from the consent agenda to be debated and voted on separately.)
On the agenda for the July 7 Council meeting, the SRO agreement with the MCPASD was originally part of the consent agenda, but mayor Gurdip Brar had it removed. The surprise here was not so much that he had it taken off the consent agenda, but that it was listed there in the first place. SRO programs in cities across the country have been targets of the Black Lives Matter movement for quite some time, and the recent racial unrest has increased the pressure on school districts to abolish them. That in itself is of course no reason to get rid of them, but it is a reason to discuss and reevaluate them.
While the Board of Education (BOE), seemingly insensitive to the winds of change, managed to pass the SRO agreement under the radar as part of its consent agenda on June 22, the Council got caught in the gusts.
Over the July 4 weekend, SRO opponents - mostly recent MHS graduates, older alumni and parents of school-age children - began flooding the e-mail inboxes of Council members with form letters opposing the agreement.
More than a dozen people also spoke during the public comment period at the beginning of the Council meeting, unanimously opposing the SRO agreement. Their arguments ranged from the rational, data- and fact-based, to the hyperbolic imbued with the assurance and intolerance of youth, but their passion helped convince at least one alderman to vote against the agreement: District 2 alderman Robert Burck acknowledged that his first reaction to the e-mail form letter campaign had been to dismiss it, and to not want to interfere in what was essentially a School District matter. The public comments, however, changed his mind, and he made the motion, seconded by district 3 alderwoman Katy Nelson, to reject the agreement.
For most of the discussion, which, with the public comment period, lasted almost two hours, it looked like the Council would approve the agreement, if only narrowly. After all, the Finance Committee had unanimously recommended approval earlier in the evening.
During that meeting, BOE president Annette Ashley had declared that the School Board would reexamine the SRO program sometime in the near future, but that they wanted to keep it in place in the meantime.
When pressed during the Council meeting for a specific date at which the BOE would discuss the SRO program, or if a limited agreement (to the end of the current calendar year for instance) would be acceptable, or the commitment that the BOE would have the conversation about the SRO program sooner rather than later, she stonewalled, and instead of grabbing the lifeline that the Council members were throwing her, kept insisting that the discussion could not take place soon, and that it would take a long time to gather all the information needed to make a decision.
This perceived unwillingness on her part to show some flexibility was enough to persuade two other Council members to vote against the agreement: district 6 alderwoman Susan West, and district 8 alderman Mark Sullivan. The latter, incidentally, is also the chairman of the Finance Committee, and he had voted in favor of the agreement earlier during that committee's meeting. Annette Ashley's hard line probably contributed more to him changing his mind than the SRO opponents' arguments.
While Robert Burck and Katy Nelson mostly echoed the opponents' anti-SRO attitude in their vote, Susan West and Mark Sullivan wanted to force the BOE to take the issue up again, and have a meaningful, this time public, discussion about it. By voting to reject the agreement, they threw the ball back into the School District's court, and, as City Attorney Larry Bechler explained, nothing prevents the District to present a different (or indeed the same) agreement proposal to the Council at a later date.
District 1 alderwoman Kathy Olson, district 4 alderwoman Emily Kuhn, district 5 alderman Luke Fuszard and district 7 alderman Dan Ramsey voted against rejecting the agreement, some more reluctantly than others. Mayor Gurdip Brar broke the 4 to 4 tie in favor of the motion to reject.
While the rejection of the SRO agreement is a first in Middleton history, finding Susan West, Mark Sullivan and Gurdip Brar on the same side of a split vote is also a rare occurrence.
The Council defers Erdman Park items
Later in the same meeting, the Council, following a recommendation by the Finance Committee, voted to defer half a dozen items concerning the so-called Erdman Park development, a project for new recreational land, including cross-country ski trails, next to Pleasant View Golf Course. The area straddles the border between the city of Middleton and the town of Middleton, and a vindictive Cynthia Richson, who was recently rejected by the Common Council as a member of the City's Airport Commission, and who is also the chairwoman of the Middleton Town Board, is using political and legal means to torpedo the project.
More about this in an upcoming issue of the Middleton e-View newsletter.
Great job George
Keep the truth and facts coming
The downtown needs a champion and I think it's you. You would make a great new chair for the DMBA
Pronounced dumb.Ron Boyer owner. VILLAGE GREEN