Housing policy: Discriminating discriminately
Middleton's elected officials have discovered that their workforce-housing rules discriminate against full-time students, including working students.
They made this discovery during the meetings of the Finance Committee and Common Council yesterday, Tuesday, August 4, when they discussed the final TIF agreement between the City and the developer of the Trotta apartment building on Parmenter Street. The developer had requested several last-minute changes to the agreement, including the possibility to rent affordable housing units to full-time students working at least thirty hours a week.
But as City staff pointed out, full-time (post-secondary) students were specifically excluded from access to affordable housing as per Workforce Housing Committee policy. It seems that this is not so much the case because Workforce Housing Committee members don't like students, but because full-time students are also excluded from workforce housing under the Low Income Housing Tax Credit rules applied by the Wisconsin Housing & Economic Development Authority (WHEDA), and Middleton's Workforce Housing Committee and City staff simply copy-pasted the WHEDA criteria into the Middleton rulebook.
In most cases this even makes sense, because most affordable housing units in Middleton benefit from WHEDA tax credits, and therefore have to abide by its rules. The Trotta, however, is different. It does not receive WHEDA tax credits, allowing the developer to set their own rules. But because their wish to allow students to benefit from workforce housing units ran counter to City policy, albeit policy that had apparently never been approved by elected officials, City staff flagged it.
District 8 alderman and Finance Committee chairman Mark Sullivan was first to point out the discriminatory nature of the ban against working students. It amounts to punishing people for working hard and wanting to improve their lives. District 1 alderwoman Kathy Olson was in favor of removing the ban, although it should not only apply to one development, but to all that want to allow students. District 6 alderwoman Susan West, while in favor of getting rid of the ban, did not like the developer's condition of students working thirty hours a week: Reminiscing about her own experiences as a student, she feared that it would exclude graduate students who have fellowship obligations to work for the university, and no time left for an outside job.
Quick research done by City Attorney Larry Bechler revealed that Wisconsin's fair housing law does not include students on its list of protected species - discriminating against students, or any other occupation for that matter, is therefore allowed under State law. This could become very interesting if the student denied subsidized housing is also black or transgender or part of any other protected category on the list.
The Council finally decided with 6 votes to 2 (Mark Sullivan and Susan West opposed) to approve the new developer agreement, minus the part about allowing students into workforce housing. That was referred to the Workforce Housing Committee in view of maybe changing the student-banning policy.
As Director of Planning and Community Development Abby Attoun pointed out, nothing prevents the student-friendly clause from being reinserted into the agreement at a later date, once, and if, City policy has been made less discriminatory
But then again, the whole concept of subsidized housing rests on the presumption of discrimination - discrimination on the basis of income.
The mayor withdraws his Airport Commission pick
The Council unanimously approved several mayoral committee appointments: Molly McDermott to the Arts Committee; Julia Vondrak to the Workforce Housing Committee; Joanna Roldan, Jayden Lee and Eric Engel to the Commission on Youth.
Mayor Gurdip Brar withdrew the controversial nomination of Steve Sperling for the Airport Commission before it could come to a vote. When I asked Gurdip Brar (via email) why he had removed Steve Sperling's appointment from the agenda, his response was as profound, well reasoned, and enlightening as one could expect from a man of his caliber: "I used the mayors [sic!] authority to remove this item from the agenda." Since a common mortal such as I has trouble keeping up with the dizzying intellectual heights of the mayor's thought processes, I sent him a follow-up email, asking him again to explain why he had removed his pick from consideration. But he must have been busy doing important mayor stuff, because I didn't hear back from him.
City finances: From more worse to maybe a bit less worse
On Tuesday, August 4, the City's Finance Committee got updates from Finance Director Bill Burns about the state of the General Fund's revenues and expenditures, and use of the Route to Recovery grant funds.
The General Fund's prospects have improved slightly since the last update: "The 2020 projections have been updated to include an estimated $300,000 in Route to Recovery funds received in the General Fund along with $15,000 in CARES [Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security] funds from the Wisconsin Election Commission. With these additions there is a projected deficit in 2020 of approximately $341,000." Earlier, the projected deficit had been closer to $500,000.
The Route to Recovery grant money can be used to cover pandemic-related expenses by the City, although what is and what is not eligible can be up to interpretation: "Total costs of $54,210 have been accepted from the City’s first submission. The draft allocation plan includes full utilization of the City’s $336,742 allocation [see table]. This includes an estimated $130,000 in public safety payroll expenses for Police and EMS staff time devoted substantially to covid-19 response activities." The Finance Committee will have a more in-depth discussion about this at its next meeting.
The BOE struggles with public input
The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District's Board of Education (BOE) is having a hard time making its virtual meetings open to the public, and making the public comments it receives open to the public.
As opposed to the City of Middleton's Council and committees meetings, the BOE 's Zoom video stream is not accessible to the public. Citizens who wanted to attend the virtual BOE meetings had to call in, and could thus only get the audio feed. But, as the District's Communications Director Perry Hibner explained in an email, "that bridge call conference system is limited to 125 participants, so we are now streaming them via Facebook Live."
That includes tonight's (August 5) special meeting, which will start at 6:00 p.m., and be accessible on Facebook Live. Besides some administrative staff-policy matters, the agenda also includes a discussion on whether or not to publish "citizen comments from the July 13 and 20 School Board meetings". The BOE and the District administration have been reluctant to publish them because the majority of them oppose the 'school resource officer' program, while the BOE and the District administration refuse to engage in a public discussion about it.