 to call the 22nd regular meeting of the 2017-2018 Common Council to order. Please stand and join me. First of all, let's have the roll call. There are 15 present. And all the person Lee Wendowski is excused. Next, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Mr. Clerk, please read the quote for the day. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure. Thank you. Next, we'll move on to approval of the minutes from our last city council meeting, Alderperson Wolff. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to approve. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on those minutes? Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by seeing I. Opposed? Motion passes. Next is a confirmation of Mayor's appointments, city attorney. We have one. The mayor hereby submits the following appointments for your confirmation to the mayor's neighborhood leadership cabinet, Abraham Loya, representing the Gateway Neighborhood Association as an alternate. Alderperson Wolff. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to confirm appointment. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Declare, please call the roll and passage. 15 ayes. Motion passes. Next, we'll move on to public forum, city clerk. There are five people tonight. The first one is Dana Elmsen. Dana, could you please state your name and address for us, please? Dana Elmsen, 1501 South 22nd Street. OK, you'll have five minutes. All right. Good evening. My name is Dana Elmsen. I am the director of marketing and community relations at Sheboygan Senior Community. In the interest of time, I'll keep these remarks pretty brief by the expanded copy of this will be distributed. Thank you for allowing me to address the city council. One of tonight's agenda items is that the request Sheboygan Senior Community has made regarding the tax incremental financing allocation that was used to assist in the development of the landmark square condominiums. We requested that the TIFP expanded by an additional year because the project was delayed by the infamous fire that burned the structure to the ground six weeks before it was due to open. For surreal as the set of circumstances leading up to all of this are, the facts are pretty straightforward. As a part of the development of the landmark square condos, the city agreed to a 10-year $2.5 million TIF arrangement. The fire on March 19, 2007, left the building a total loss. It took a full year to rebuild. Non-elected officials in the city hall were aware that the TIF was still set to expire on the original date. We have the memo that confirms this awareness. The final year's payment is estimated to be over $186,000 or $15,000 per month. Had anyone from the city bothered to pick up the phone or send an email, we would have requested that the TIF be extended. Or, and this is important, we could have simply filed a claim for lost business income. One phone call, one email would not have cost anyone anything. While the contract language is clearly not in our favor, the spirit and the intent were clear. We were supposed to get the money. Our request to extend the TIF was rejected by finance committee on January 23rd, without so much as a follow-up question from anyone on the committee. I did come up with an alternate way for the city to provide some relief that would have granted us less than a third of the money over 10 years that too was dismissed without so much as an inquiry from non-elected officials making the decision. To say the entire situation has been disappointing, time-consuming and frustrating would be an understatement. I do think it's important to give credit where credit is due, so I do want to mention that Mayor Banderstein has been very supportive and helpful through this process. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you for your service and to the citizens of Sheboygan. Speaking of the citizens of Sheboygan, if you lived here, you can bet I would want an answer to this question, where did the money go? When the TIF agreement was written, it was clear that SSE was to receive 10 years equaling 2.5 million. Since this whole thing came up in September, I have been told several times, our executive director has been told several times off the record with people who would know that the money is already spent, which is one of the reasons that no one is lifting a finger to do the right thing. It seems to me that for the last several years, the people who look at the tax rules and project the city income might have been banking on this money and knew that we would be severely impacted and didn't say a word. So if any of those folks would like an opinion on whether they serve Sheboygan citizens and landmark residents in particular by their actions or inactions, we would be happy to share it. All this being said, while it's a lot of money, it is not the end of the world for us at Sheboygan Senior Community. We have explored legal remedies and other options to compel the city to right this wrong. That is over a decade old now, but we have opted instead to focus on the future. We are well into a strategic planning process that will help define the vision for our 40 acre campus and continue to get overwhelmingly positive feedback from our residents and their families. But $15,000 a month, that kind of hit would be a lot for any organization not to mention a 91 bed senior care campus. So we will be calling on the generous support of the Sheboygan community to help close the gap but the city's callousness to help close the gap, excuse me. But to also support the future growth and development. When all is said and done, SSC is your community asset. The leadership team here and I are nearly the trustees. So for all of our successes over the years, we have not done a great job of tapping into that well of philanthropic support in this community, but our board of directors have directed us to go out and do a better job and asking for our fair share. So we look forward to partnering with other visionary organizations to continue caring for Sheboygan seniors for years to come. Thank you for your time and attention. Thank you. I'm sorry, but applause is not allowed or any signs. Please observe that in the chambers. Next up is Dane Schaefer, please. Hey, Dane, can you state your name and address? Dane Schaefer, 3728 South 13th Street, Sheboygan. You'll have five minutes. Good evening and thank you for your time. I got involved with this because the Armory was once a great community space and I believe that it could be an excellent asset for Sheboygan moving forward and there's a need for an accessible civic center in our community. With the goal of restoring and retaining that community space, I quickly found myself as a representative of a group of people. Well, that is something I am truly proud of. It is also hard for me as an outspoken person to realize that in many ways that I have relinquished my personal voice. So I wanna make it clear that tonight the thoughts that I am sharing with you are my own and not necessarily the views of the group that I have come to represent. The resolution authorizing city staff to negotiate with the Armory community project was completely unexpected and I was excited by it. However, the related agenda items as well as the resolution in full brought me quickly down to earth. The motion to discharge the committee of the whole from resolution 134-17-18 would fast track the decision on the Armory property. It would also render last Monday's meeting and the motion to explore a referendum that was passed by roughly 75% of the committee meaningless. I think that many of you believe the fate of the Armory requires extremely careful consideration. I truly hope that you will allow this to play out as it is intended and vote against this resolution so a referendum may be properly explored as it was decided by the committee of the whole last week. I am hopeful for the failure of the motion to discharge. However, I still wanna talk briefly about the resolution to allow the city to negotiate with Scott Crawford, Inc. It is my belief that if this resolution is passed, regardless of the success of negotiations or any other motion or resolution currently on the table, the Armory will be very quickly demolished. If you believe that this decision needs to be carefully considered, this resolution must not pass. Finally, the resolution authorizing city staff to negotiate an agreement with the Armory community project is truly an exciting concept. Unfortunately, I believe this resolution is made in bad faith. Unlike the clear and concise resolution regarding Scott Crawford, Inc., this resolution covers nearly three pages with a long list of conditions. I'm not sure what the point of negotiation would be since it seems the terms of an agreement are predetermined and could only get more restrictive. Some of the conditions, I believe, we will easily and happily oblige. But there are some that may not even be possible because of the rules surrounding how historic tax credits, which as I'm working on this, that we may be able to still make that work. There is at least one condition whose satisfaction is subject to the opinion of a person rather than a measurable benchmark which could easily lead to us chasing moving goal posts. There are also a few that I believe could considerably raise the expense of the project. These items do not look to me like an attempt to protect the city and ensure our success, but rather to add unnecessary obstacles in an already ambitious project. If this resolution is passed, as is, I personally would not participate in the negotiations. I believe the city would be left in extremely capable hands with the rest of the group, but I haven't worked this hard to be part of what I believe is essentially theatrics for political posture and the ability to say we tried, but it just didn't work out. I hope you will consider heavily altering this resolution before voting on it or voting against it and introducing a resolution that attempts to work with the Armory Community Project in Good Faith. Unfortunately, through the series of events that brings me here, my confidence that we will get to a place where the city will work with the Armory Community Project in Good Faith has been slowly eroded. I hope you will help to restore that confidence as I will continue to try as hard as I can to work with the city and see that the community's vision is realized. With that said, I must urge you to continue to seek a referendum. In my personal opinion, it is the most fair way to resolve the seemingly endless issue and ensure the community is heard. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Mike Burnett. Mike Burnett, 1925, South 26th Street. And no applause. But basically, I liked everything I just heard from a previous speaker and I take up a notch. Welcome to my world. We went through a couple of years of this. I mean, I'm Chappliver Johnson here. And it's like, but when it comes to the Armory, I still get poked into reds when I go to the Y by city workers telling me their kids are playing basketball up there to this day. And it's kind of like, I go back, I see the hazard tape on all your windows. When the only people that were allowed into it were the city. And it's like, what did the city do to it? Other than the fire drill stuff that they had in there where I heard their smashing crap and other things. But you go on this, we went on the whole thing and we won the history. That was quick, easy. It's a no brainer. Everybody loves the Armory. Then you went on it for tax credits. Who's holding all that up? And this is what you guys are going for. And it's quite easily. I mean, and the tax credits, you fly for them, the building will get them. But the city owns it. As long as the city says we don't want it, it's not a historic building. That's how it works. Would the money be freed? Yeah, but on the same time, we went through it with contractors and everybody went through it with Bernie on the thing. And a lot of people lost heart when they heard very authoritative people on the subject say, this building's in his good or better shape than the day it was built. And there's really not a construction project here. We had people who wanted to join our group at the time and turned it into construction projects. And we're like, this is ridiculous. If you didn't notice the makeup of our group, it was primarily shop teachers. We had people who wanted to go in there, elbow grease, clean it up, get that building going. It didn't need a daying thing. And it's quite honestly, to this day, I'm pretty sure none of you have been in there to look at this building. And sure, there's damage now, but it's self-inflicted wounds. This is three foot thick poured concrete. All the, and I'll skip a gear here, but all these plans you have going forward and it's like the apartments and that stuff, it's all the presentations I've heard are ludicrous. The one that you're gonna come up for the city one. Sure, you got a little PowerPoint, you say stuff, but your numbers are meaningless. You got a little slide in there that says something about how many people live here. Woo, that has nothing to do with the needing apartments or not needing apartments. And as far as groups going in there and taking over the venue, the original goal of the Armory Foundation was to prove that the building's available and open it up to discussion of what the city wants it to become. We spent so much time just arguing with people, never ever being asked an opinion or anything, even though we have the whole history numbers and everything, and we honestly do, and they're all online, you can go look online at just look up the Cheboygan Armory online and you will find numerous sites, including my Chevega site that I used to do, and they have all this material. Even the breakdown of what your proposal, I literally stole it from Alderman Boren's interview on my Cheboygan of what the breakdown was for the voting. And one of my things is like, needs to reflect downtown Cheboygan? What does that even mean? And it's kind of like, it's like, really, you have these things. This is what we need, this and that. And then when you see the makeup of the list of who the committee is, it's like, God, talk about inside death jobs. And it's like nothing personable to anybody, but as a team, you had our city administrator, you had our mayor, you had a finance person, and you had a couple of people who were beholden to them, quite honestly, as the citizens. Even Grand Polly on there, he got given the bleachers when I pointed out to Lakeland College that they could still play games in there and they go, the bleachers aren't there. So when we're in there, the bleachers are all in there. What's the next move? The city gives them to them at Three Sheeps, so they could cut them up to preserve history. Woo-hoo, we preserved history. He was one of the people that got to sign the death by saying that insane apartment proposal. And quite honestly, we had quite more as far as presentation and proposal and everything along the wrong line. And we were just shit on at every minute. And we tried working with people and we did and we put a lot of time into it. And the bottom line is our group fell apart because of world movements. And that's a whole new story, but people did gain. People did gain from our movement. And as one of those, it's sad. We were so close to getting something accomplished. And now you have groups out of here and it's kind of like, oh, well, it'll be hard for us if we do it this way, da-da-da-da, and we're like glad we're at the table, but it's like, why are you at the table as far as taking over the armory? I haven't seen anything in the presentation. I haven't seen anything at all that says that you're going to make that a great venue. And it's like, we're at the same point as we were. You are no further. You're actually behind where you were as a council, a city and everything, where you were when this started. Right, your time's up. Thank you. Yeah? We don't have the extra minute thing anymore? No. Ah. Bill Thiel? Good evening. Name and address, please. 1703 North 37th Street. Thank you, five minutes. Thanks. It's more than the other night. Good evening, guys. Thanks for letting me speak in front of you guys again. This is becoming the sort of habit for me, I guess. It's good to see you all again. Since the committee of the whole meeting, I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past week about what all transpired, all the different proposals and all these things and trying to put a wrap on which way things were trying to go. And then I was sitting here this weekend watching TV and one of my favorite movies comes on. Grumpy Old Men, anybody seen it? Hilarious movie. And they show the part where Max throws that fish in the back of the truck. And you know, just to get, I think his name was John, to go traveling down and try to figure out what the smell in the back was. And that got me thinking of some of the things that were going on with this whole project. And I think it goes back to the, when the historical committee put the 90 day hold on. Which I think, Attorney Adams, for getting back to me, where it really didn't mean anything. It just put a hold on it for the time being, for the 90 days. It doesn't mean it has a historically significant building, but it really didn't do anything. After 90 days done, it doesn't mean anything. I think it does. It gave two groups that come forward to preserve the armory, which I think are both very good options. And I still believe that those two should be the only options that come forward. And then I looked at the committee of the historical society, and did some investigating on how that committee's supposed to be set up. And it's supposed to be set up of seven members. One, an architect, a historian, real estate broker, a council member, and three citizen members. Today, there's only four members on there. Two historians, a citizen member and an attorney, and a council member member got an appointment this year to it. To me, it sounds like we really don't want to preserve any of the city's history. Seems a little fishy. Then we get to the committee of the whole, heard all the proposals, which I thought was really good. What was her name, who did the presentation? Roberta, she did an awesome job. First question after she was done with all the presentations was, how'd the scoring go? And we had no scoring. That was the biggest thing. All these topics, all the scoring, we get to it, we have no scoring. Seems a little fishy. Then we get to the referendum. Thank you, Oliver and Sorenson. I thought that was a good idea. Bring forward a referendum. Unfortunately, you look at the agenda and you see nothing on there about a referendum. They did put a lot of work into writing up two other referendums that are on there, but nothing about the one for the referendum. So that seemed a little fishy to me. So now we got two different resolutions, one with Scott Crawford and one with the Armory Project. And now we're gonna put that in the hands of our city administrator, according to the resolutions. So now we're throwing it out of everybody else's hands. We're gonna throw it in the one person's hands to negotiate it with these two. I don't know, that just seems really fishy to me also. I noticed that there's certain speculations that they pointed out for the Armory Community Project that they have to meet with really short terms, which you really didn't see any speculations put into the Scott Crawford deal that they had to reach, which seemed a little fishy. Like I said, to me, I believe that it's down to two projects and it really should be based off of what the Historical Committee said. It's a historical building. It gave 90 days for two proposals that come forward, two did. I really think those should be the only two that should be on the table. I think some of you are starting to find out or find the sticky fish in this whole thing. Hopefully we can put it all out and be transparent on what's really going on tonight and we can get some answers and save the Armory. Thank you. Thank you. Paul Trefford? Paul Trefford? Is Paul Trefford still in the chambers? If Paul's not here, then we'll bring the public forum to a close. Next we'll go on to Mayor's announcements. First of all, we just want to give everybody a little reminder about tomorrow being primary election day. We've got primaries in district two and 10 for Alderperson and also Wisconsin State Supreme Court. Our landlord training program is coming up. It's scheduled to take place on Tuesday, April 24th. It'll be from 5.30 to 9.00 p.m. at the Sheboygan Police Department. Registration deadline is April 10th and the cost is $10 and it's limited to 80 participants. And next, we want to remind everybody that the Sheboygan Community Survey is out. We want you to consider taking this survey. The survey will be available online until Sunday, March 11th. If you go to the city website, there'll be a banner ad that you can click on. It'll take you to the website to take the online survey. We'll also have paper copies available at several locations in the city, the clerk's office, the Mead Public Library, and the Senior Activity Center. The survey will help us to put together the action plan for 2019 and 2020 in the revised strategic plan. And I want to wish everybody a happy Presidents' Day. Next, we'll go on with the Consent Agenda. That'll include items 2.1 through 2.13. All in person, Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to accept and file all our O's, accept and adopt all our C's and pass all resolutions and ordinances. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on any of the items in the Consent Agenda? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Motion passes. Moving on to communications, item 3.1 will be referred to the Public Works Committee under reports of officers. Items 4.1 through 4.8 will be referred to various committees under resolutions. Items 5.1 through 5.8 will be referred to various committees under reports of committees. Item 6.1 is RC number 236 of 1718 by the Public Safety Committee to whom is referred resolution number 131 of 1718 by elder person drawn authorizing the purchasing agent to enter to a contract to complete replacement of the Roof at fire station number one and recommends passing the resolution. Elder person drawn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I make a motion to accept and adopt and pass the resolution. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? 15 ayes. Motion passes. Items 6.2 and 6.3, let's see, let's read 6.2. It's RC number, it's 237 of 1718 by the Law and Licensing Committee whom is referred general ordinance number 37 of 1718 by all the person wolf drawn and Donahue repealing and recreating various sections of the municipal code as to further implement the provisions of resolution number 141 of 1617, implementing the changes in the municipal code as to further implement the provisions of resolution number 141 of 1617, implemented changes of the Sheboygan Committee, Commission and Board structure effective April of 2017 and April of 2018 and recommends passing the ordinance. And this is supposed to be taken together with 6.3 and that's RC number 238 of 1718 by the Public Safety Committee to whom is referred a copy of general ordinance number 37 of 1718 by all the persons wolf drawn and Donahue repealing and recreating various sections of the municipal code as to further implement the provisions of resolutions 141 of 1617 and implementing the changes to the city of Sheboygan Committee, Commission and Board structure effective April 2017 and April 2018 recommends passing the ordinance. Alderperson Donahue. With respect to both 6.2 and 6.3, I move to accept, adopt and pass the ordinance. Second. Thank you for that motion and support. Under discussion, Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. When I read over the document, I recall something from last year that I don't think was carried over to the new document and that was, I believe the council last year voted unanimously as part of the setup of the committees, standing committees that the president of the common council shall not be the chairperson of the Finance and Personnel Committee. And I believe that passed unanimously last year just to review my reasoning for bringing that forward last year and passed history over the last few years that I've been on the council. There were a number of times when the president of the council was also chairman of that time, the finance committee. And I felt that there really wasn't enough communication between the rest of the council and now this past year, I think it's worked out well. Mary Lynn has done a good job as chairman of the Finance and Personnel Committee and even though President Wolf is still on the finance committee, I think it's good when the city administrator and the mayor have discussions with the older persons, I think an extra voice in there is good besides the president and the vice president. So I'm gonna remake that motion to include that in either 6.2 or 6.3 that for the new council year and the years forward that the president of the common council shall not be chairperson of the Finance or Personnel Committee. Thank you for that motion. I'd just like the city attorney to tell us how that might fit in. You've already approved that and this document has nothing to do with that so it's not really germane to this particular document. This document only deals with the merger of law and licensing and public safety and you've already approved that provision as far as the finance committee last year. So it does carry over then. It's already in effect. All right, thank you. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll for passage on both documents? 15 ayes. Motion passes. Under general ordinances, item 7.1, 7.2 will be referred to the city planning commission. Under matters laid over, 8.1 is RC number 224, 1718 by the Finance and Personnel Committee. To whom is referred, our own number 253 of 1718 by the city clerk submitting a communication from the Sheboygan senior community to request relief and assistance from the city of Sheboygan with respect to an issue arising out of a development agreement between the Sheboygan senior community and the city which was dated April 27th of 2006 and recommends filing the document. All the person down here. Thank you, Mayor. I move to accept and file the document. Second. Thank you for your motion and support. Is there any discussion on the motion? Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. I'm gonna have to abstain from voting on this. Attorney Gass has represented me personally in a number of matters and his law firm, Rodey Deals continues to represent my wife and I in various matters. So I feel it necessary to abstain on this final vote. Thank you. Thank you. Alderperson Holschew. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I wonder if the city attorney could explain what happened here. Certainly, so this relates to a agreement that was contracted between the city of Sheboygan and the Sheboygan senior community. Sheboygan senior community is now urging that we basically, you know, not enforce the contract and change the terms. What happened here was that there was a TIF district that was set up and funds from that TIF district were to go to the Sheboygan senior community. The way that works, and as all of you Alderman know, but for the public, the tax incremental financing district, the way that it works is you take the increment between the value of the property on day one of the district and the value that's added to it each year and that those funds then go to help pay for various projects during the term of the TIF. Because of the fire, there was no increment. There was no money to actually give to the Sheboygan senior community. And there was a calculation in the document that described each year how you would determine how much money would go to the Sheboygan senior community. Unfortunately, it sounds like the senior community did not pursue this with their insurance carrier, which would have been the proper place to do it, nor did they review the contract. The question of where did the money go? Money never existed because there wasn't that increment that year. There was no money to be given to the senior community that year. Additionally, additional funding that may have been available from that TIF district because it did make some money was spent by this council. And it's basically been expended for the project. What's the name of the project in the building across the street? You know, the one I'm talking about. The Founders Club. And in doing that, even the extra dollars that would have been available because the district did perform well has now been spent as well. So there are no dollars in the TIF district, in essence, to give away to the senior community. There are some other reasons that were talked about in closed session that we can't really talk about in open session, but needless to say, our advice is because of additional legal issues and potential litigation, my office is recommending that you not, in essence, change the contract now to give money to the Sheboygan senior community. Under further discussion, all the person's Sarnson. Just another quick question. So when did the Sheboygan senior community come forward, come towards the city and ask that the TIF be extended? Was it right after the fire or was it just recently? It's just recently. Okay, and the city always kind of knew that the sunset date was approaching. The city has known it for a long time. There was a memo from my predecessor when there was a question about it internally right after the fire or shortly after the fire occurred, indicating that you pay based on the increment and the increment that year was in essence, zero. Okay, thank you. Any other discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll? Just one point of order, please. By accepting and filing document, what is that saying? Accepting and filing the document means that things will remain as is and the city isn't going to give money to the Sheboygan senior community. 13 ayes, one no, and one person abstaining. Motion passes. Next, we move on to notice to discharge from the committee of the whole. Item 9.1 is a motion to discharge from the committee of the whole regarding resolution number 134 of 1718 by all the person, Donahue, born authorizing city staffs and negotiated developers agreement between the city of Sheboygan and Scott Crawford, Inc. for the redevelopment of the former Armory site, Alderperson Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to discharge a resolution, number 134, 1718, and I would also ask that city attorney would kind of explain what's going on. Seconders, we have a second. City attorney. So my understanding of sort of the intent behind this is because we have an additional resolution, 9.3. 9.2 is the document that is currently in committee the whole. Those are two competing documents that in essence, you can't pass one and also pass the other. So they really need to be in the same committee for the discussion to occur on them. Additionally, there was an attempt by the committee the whole to forward some kind of document related to a referendum. There was no document to refer, but my understanding is that Finance and Personnel Committee is going to discuss the item as a discussion item on their agenda. And so my understanding is the thought was, let's put all of that on the Finance and Personnel agenda. It's my understanding then if the motion to discharge the committee the whole of 9.2 fails, then 9.3 would get referred. Instead of to Finance and Personnel Committee with 9.2, it would get referred to the Committee of the Whole so that the documents remain in the same location. Thank you for that explanation. Under discussion, Alderperson Bellinger. Thank you. I had a bunch of phone calls today regarding this issue and I spoke with the city clerk and I spoke with the city attorney on it as well. And the city attorney was nice enough to clarify things for me. And I find myself unable to support the discharge. I think that when it goes to the Finance Committee, I don't believe an issue like this in these two different proposals should be discussed and referred back to the entire council with only three to five Alderman on that committee. And I think it should remain in Committee of the Whole where the entire body can discuss the issues and hash them out. So I don't think that that is the appropriate place for that. And I'm curious as to why these two proposals were selected and why not all six were included in there. We still don't know what the scoring was. We know that allegedly that the Crawford group was the winner and we don't know how the rest of them all came out. But I mean, if we're gonna put everything back and discuss everything, I would think all of the proposals would be put back there. But I can't support doing this and for the reasons I've stated and that the confusion with the referendum and the meeting that we had, it was like the Committee of the Whole meeting and the two and a half hours it took or whatever, how long it took. I mean, it's like it never really happened because there was never a document that was forwarded to the Finance Committee as it relates to the referendum or anything. So that's unfortunate, but it is what it is. And again, I cannot support discharging this. Thank you for those comments. All the person holds you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A little bit confused. The comments I wish to make are about the Crawford, Scott Crawford Inc. Company. And I'm not certain as to which of these, nine one or nine two it would be applicable for. But I want to make it known that I did my own research and I do understand that the committee that was set forth was set forth just to review the RPs that came into them and not to pursue each of the companies. But I did my own review and I've come to find a number of things that I find very disconcerting. First of all, I spoke, there's three different projects that this Crawford Company has worked on. And I talked to the Villard Avenue Apartments that they were going to be building. And a permit was pulled in October of 2016 that permit was pulled only to do plans. Nothing else has been done. There has been no approval that they are getting that particular project. The second one was the Glendale Senior Citizens Center. Now that phase one of that project completed in the year 2000, 2001. And I spoke in Milwaukee as well as the city of Glendale to the development people there. The senior housing project that he wants to, what he said is gonna, it's part of his portfolio. The senior housing was completed, as I said, and this would be phase two. They only entered into discussions about it. The Crawford Company wanted to wait until they could get weed of financing. So nothing more has gone on about that either. Then the podiatry clinic with apartments proposed north of downtown on Martin Luther King. The statement here says that Wauwatosa podiatrists could build. It doesn't say that he has. So this company, from my understanding, was established in 2006. It's now 2018 and nothing's been built. Also went on to look at the personal financial record. And there's a lot of judgments and two that are still outstanding that are over $200,000. So my request upon finding this information is to file any document that has anything to do with Scott Crawford, Inc. From the selection for the Armory Project. City Attorney, could you please tell her how she would accomplish that? But currently the document is in the committee of the whole. So you would need to discharge it to the council and then not send it to finance and personnel in order to act on it. If you wanna act on it tonight to defeat it, you'd have to discharge it from the committee of the whole. So we would discharge in 9-1 and ask to file in 9-2? But 9-1 is the motion to discharge, okay? And that would bring the resolution in front of you. 9-2 is the resolution, which the current plan is to refer it to finance and personnel if it's discharged. But you can make a different motion if you so choose to just simply file if that's what you wanted to do. I got it, thank you. I wasn't quite sure on that. Thank you for those comments. Then under further discussion, all the person down to you. I know this is kind of a confusing situation. Here's where I come from on it. Normally I would have given great deference to our staff and citizen members with respect to the Scott Crawford proposal. I'm interested because I did my own CCAP research and Scott Crawford, Inc. at least, has no judgments against it. And is that the individual? This is primary. There are at least three individuals in that CCAP record and they are for things like there's a paternity action, there's a, I'm not sure there is a Scott Crawford, there's a Scott Crawford company, but we don't see Scott Crawford here. We see Q. L. Amin, who is the principal and there are no judgments against his company. At least according to CCAP, just for the record, but in any event. I agree. So, but when I looked at the armory project proposal, in a way I wish it had been as cursory as the other armory preservation proposal because then I could have just easily dismissed it out of hand and that's not the case. I mean, it's clear to me that a fair amount of work went into visioning how this building is going to be repurposed or rehabbed and it will be in the range of five to $7 million. And then there was the bare-bones skeleton of the business plan using it as a convention center, as a concert venue. There's gonna be a pub in the basement and a full service restaurant open seven days a week on the second floor. There are going to be business incubators and then a commercial kitchen and that is going to be used as a kitchen incubator. The bare-bones, so the proposal is really interesting but it is a, to my view, a bare-bones skeleton upon which we need to hang a whole lot of detail and a whole lot of information before we can wholeheartedly support it. Now I've had calls, both pro and con, about saving the armory and I just feel that we should give the armory project people a chance to flesh out what, to put some need on the bones of their proposal. Now there are both state and federal historic tax credits and from what I understand, guaranteed is not a word you ever wanna use with government but those are pretty much set. A big chunk of the financing, I believe it's either $2.3 or $2.5 million is in new market historical tax credits. Unlike the regular tax credits, this is a competitive process and there is limited money available and there's no guarantee that the armory would be awarded this. Now if you look on the pro forma, it talks about the new market credits naming rights. Well, this gets to the other piece of this. Even with tax credits and so forth, there's gonna be a need to raise a tremendous amount of money in order to make the project work. Now this community has done this in the past. They did it with the Wild Center, they've done it with the YMCA. This is not an impossibility but we need to have some, we cannot enter into this project until we have some understanding about the depth of fundraising interest and how much this community really does want to support it. The developers agreement that when I was thinking about what I would need to do in order to support the armory project, I started thinking of all the things that I was gonna need to have in order to make an informed and comfortable decision that we were not gonna go with the Crawford project but rather go with the Armory project. While I think that money can be raised to renovate the building, I have very serious concerns about the operational plan. I do think that they can make money with concerts and weddings and such. There was a nice photograph of the tables and I think that can all happen but you'll know it in the proposal, we need to have some plan for parking. This is one of the things that doomed the Bucks proposal is because there just isn't a whole lot of parking there. Now, I know speaking with one of the principals, parking was never a problem. Well, 45 years ago, people didn't object to walking three quarters of a mile or a mile in order to get to a north-south game but I think those days have changed. I also have great concerns about what the neighbors are going to say because in order to make this business plan cash flow, they're gonna need to be a lot of events. It's going to be, if it works, a very, very busy place. So my sense is these folks have already given some thought to this. My sense is that they have probably already spoken in a very soft way with donors saying, hey, this is coming, how do you feel about this? Of course they can't get any firm commitments until they have ownership of the building and get the historical building designation but in the development world, you begin to work on those things as soon as the idea hatches. Like who's interested? Who's gonna do this? Who's gonna help us? So my view with that particular development agreement and why I would like it reviewed in finance is to say, is this reasonable? Is this onerous? Should we move the deadlines? What are the discussion points? It seems to me it's easier to do that in a finance committee meeting with five people and it comes back to the council anyway and by that time we will have determined that we really need to do this or this or this. The referendum was referred to finance committee. If you look at your committee of the whole minutes, we did make a general referral of the referendum idea to the finance committee. Now, until there's a resolution by an alder person, there's nothing we can vote on. And I don't have a clue what that referendum question would be. First of all, it can't happen until at least August. Are we willing to wait that long? Is it that the city should put to the citizens that the citizens are willing to fund it? They don't have to go to various companies and philanthropists in the community but everybody's going like we do with the school district. You know, the school district puts out referenda to build field houses to repair schools and taxpayers are willing to add 37 or 55 or $100 a year to their tax bill for 10 years in order to, is that what we want? I don't know. What is the referendum? And I can't figure it out. I don't know what the referendum question would be but we can still do that. We can take it to finance and whoever is interested in this can work with the city attorney to draft a resolution that would put the referendum question together and then we can do it if we all want to wait until August. I don't want to wait. I mean, that's part of the reason for the timeline. So my view is that discharging these two proposals to finance for a more detailed discussion we can hear what the Armory Project people have to say when you talk about negotiating an agreement that means you sit down and you negotiate. Now, we have been accused of acting in bad faith. I don't think that's true and I don't think it will be true as we go forward trying to negotiate an agreement. People can come to the table and be respectful of each other even if they don't agree with each other. So my hope is that we agreed to discharge that we refer both 9-2 and 9-3 to the finance committee for further discussion. Bring that back to council for another full discussion and take it from there. And I think this process works. I think committee of the whole meetings are terrific but by nature they're kind of loose. You know, it's really hard to get 16 people to agree to anything. So I think that this is a way after we started to plow the ground in the committee of the whole meeting and I think we did a really good job but we need to figure out if the land is good if I can just follow my metaphor. If the field is good enough to actually till the soil and plant the seeds and all that stuff. You know what I'm at. So I think, so that's why I would appreciate an affirmative vote on the discharge motion and referral of 9-2 and 9-3 to the finance committee and I will actually make those motions when appropriate. Thank you for those comments. Alderperson Trester. I personally have so many different questions about this whole thing. I would like to see it all referred back to the city of the whole so that we can have some answers and the whole council can get into the discussion and get the answers together and then make an informed decision. Thank you for those comments. Alderperson Sorenson. I guess I'm speaking in favor of discharging this from the committee of whole to the council. I think that this kind of really demonstrates why I'm so in favor of the referendum and moving forward. I think historically the council has been almost inept about moving forward and making a final decision about the armory for many, many years. I think if we don't discharge it, we're still gonna be stuck with our wheels spinning in the mud. This will be brought on the finance committee the same day that we have a discussion about the referendum possibility. So I think if we keep moving forward on this, I think that this will be a great benefit for hopefully everybody. I was kind of thinking in my head, what was that one Abbas on? If you change your mind, I'll be next in line. Honey, I'm still free. Take a chance on me. I think that we really do gotta take a chance and be creative about what the future of the armory looks like. Please. I think that we can't be sitting on our hands with this. I think we gotta kind of keep all this lumped together in some sense when we're discussing the referendum. Otherwise, what's it gonna look like in 10 years? Are we still gonna be debating, oh, who do we give this to? Is this a good company? Oh, should we save the armory? I think right now, let's keep it moving with this and hopefully we can make a good decision with the referendum. So I encourage other members of the council to vote in favor of discharging this. Other person drawn. I just wanna thank you, Maryland. I think that was right on the money that helped a lot of this good clarification. I like the proposal that Dane and his people are bringing together. I think the finance is the one thing that I have my questions about. So I think this is the right thing to do. You guys sift through it, get more details, bring it back and we'll still have full discussion where we can still go through it and talk as a group here once they come back. I think that's a good call. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Other person Wolfe. Thank you, Mayor. I guess I'm next in line. I just wanna also thank everybody because I think this has been a very passionate and a lot of very good decisions and discussions. I agree that we should also take 9.1 and we should discharge it. Let's get this into the committee's hands. All of the elders are always, you know, able to show up and ask questions and let's keep this moving as Ryan so poetically saying to us. Let's vote this so that we can continue to move on. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Seeing no other discussion with the person Bellinger. Thank you. I just have a question for the city attorney on this. We've put out RFPs, we've received them and now what we're contemplating doing is discharging this and then going back to committee and giving somebody more time to come up and refine something. Do we, are we legally obligated to give everybody top more time to refine their proposals or I mean, I'm just wondering what, you know, legally with this process, how we're going about this and if this is the way we should be doing it. So the RFP process basically was designed to allow you to choose who you felt was best able to do this project, but that doesn't prevent you from negotiating with that person or that company to do the work. So you're not legally obliged to anybody. You can do what you want with it. You can, if you had wanted to pick somebody else, you could have had three documents or six documents here today all authorizing negotiation with any of them. Okay, thank you. Alderperson Boren. Thank you, Mayor. I'm gonna keep an open mind on Mr. Schaefer's group proposal but I also want, I also want, I also, frankly, I like the Crawford project. My only concern with the Crawford project is going and after reading it in detail, my only concern is whether they're gonna be able to perform financially and get the loan that's gonna be necessary to do this. It's certainly, I think, gonna put a lot more on the property tax rules if it does come to fruition than the other project. But again, I want to keep an open mind on Mr. Schaefer's but I don't want to kill the Crawford project tonight. I'd like to also discuss that one further at finance. Thank you. Thank you for those comments. Any other discussion? I'll ask the clerk to call the roll to discharge the document to the council. Is this just one we're voting on? Yeah, we're voting to discharge the document from committee to the whole to the city council. 12 ayes, three noes. Motion passes. 9.2 is before us and I'll refer that to the finance and personnel committee. Alderperson Holschew. Yes, I don't want, I know Mary Lynn had some comments regarding this, the person that's with this company and I think I don't want the light taken away from the fact that Scott Crawford company on the three different projects, he said that he did, hasn't done any of them. So I would want to file this document 9.2. I don't hear a second. Alderperson Wolfe. Okay, we have a second. We're discussing the motion to file. I just have a question for city attorney, Chuck. On the Crawford RFP, are we able to just ask for additional information? I mean, again, it can be part of the agreement that he has to provide that information that, yeah, disclose the concerns that we have. Right, so at finance committee, if assuming this does get referred to finance, you could, you know, you could ask that, you could add that to the resolution before it comes back to add various conditions and that certainly could be one of those things that you direct. So we technically, we could, assuming that this would continue to survive and we would vote nay on the present one that's open, we could actually send this to finance and personnel and then continue to negotiate, assuming 9.3 would be the other side of the coin. Right, in essence, if you send both of these to finance, you at finance committee, you'd be choosing, likely be choosing one, but you would also have the opportunity to make amendments at that time to add additional conditions or reduce them or change them. Thank you. Thank you for those comments, older person, Donahue. I appreciate the investigative work that some of the folks, she was done and I think it's interesting and I think it's something that we should investigate, but I'm not willing at this point without the folks who were involved in reviewing the initial proposal to perhaps have an answer or an explanation and that's why I think it should be referred to finance. I just don't think that we are in a position to out of hand dismiss this particular project without looking at it in a little bit more detail and taking into consideration some of Alder Holshu's findings. Alder person Holshu. I would just like to add that I had that concern. So I did some checking with the people who were in the committee and they were only allowed to ask questions that were in that RFP. This checking into the company was not in that RFP. So they couldn't check in the company. So had they known that information, that's not what we had that committee do is to look at to each company. It's not in the RFP that they do that. So they don't know this additional information and that's why I chose to look this up and find out information and I in good conscious cannot support a company that's never built anything in 12 years. And I also came to understand that for this, for the armory group, that the other person that bid to save the armory, perhaps the two of them would work together to make, I chatted with them and they're open to that. So if we're, I guess I didn't know we needed to put all this together, I would be happy to substitute Crawford for the other company that wanted to save the armory. They felt that they didn't put their best foot forward is when they were explaining to me. But if we, you had said that they should, if I understand you correctly, with the committee that reviewed this, we shouldn't discharge this because they should have done this questioning, but they weren't allowed to. And they had the city attorney, they even called the city attorney to ask them what questions they could ask. And they could only ask questions that were on the RFP. Am I wrong in that attorney, city attorney? You're, are you wrong in that somebody called and asked me if- No, no, that people that did this committee that reviewed all these different RFP could only ask questions of the people submitting the RFPs that was information on the RFP. It didn't say investigate the company to see their financial validity or that. That is not correct, no. I think what happened is we asked them if we could negotiate with them. And he said, no, you need to have a developer's agreement first before you negotiate with them. And so the question you asked was never really technically asked by the committee. We read the document like everybody else did and we read the information about the projects they've been involved with in the past. But does anybody call for validity to see if those projects actually exist? That would have happened during that negotiation process as we continued to get to know them and become more familiar and talk to them. No, we didn't do that to the other parties that brought it either. We didn't do anything with the people that were part of the armor, saved the armory group either. We just took their proposals at face value. And the city attorney told us we had to pick one and then once you pick that person, have the council approve it, then you can begin to negotiate a developer's agreement with them. And that's what we recommended. Thank you. But I still, there's to file this document Crawford. I don't think it's the best choice for the city. We should listen to all of them, maybe again besides Crawford. Thank you. Moving on to Alderperson Boring. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question for city attorney. When I was going over this today and I was reading about the armory project and Mr. Schaefer referred to the, I guess, is that an initial agreement that we did with him or gave him, as he put it, some hoops to go through? But I didn't see anything up to this point with Scott Crawford incorporated. You know, there's no development agreement and that other thing that we had to read that was in our packet, was that some kind of a developer's agreement? No, that's the point of these documents is to negotiate a developer's agreement. So there is no developer's agreement yet. These documents are basically choosing which of these developers or organizations you're choosing to have a developer's agreement negotiated with. So what you're talking about, there was no agreement, but there was a request for proposals. And so the request for proposals was designed by our purchasing director with some basically saying, please provide us a proposal to either to redevelop that site, whether it's by preserving the armory or not, and provided some parameters for doing that. Now that they've provided their proposals, typically as part of a negotiation with an organization that's responded to the RFP, you're now going to ask additional questions. You're going to put additional requirements on them based on what they've provided you and based on what you've learned in order to come up with the best possible agreement and ensure that you're making wise use of taxpayer funds and time. Thank you. Thank you. Alderperson Damrell. I have two things, maybe three. So in the last four years I've been here. So when we have things brought to us, the downtown apartments, the apartments down by Blue Harbor, the new apartments going up on 8th Street, when you bring those to us, there's never a developer's agreement at all or you just bring them up without a developer's agreement? We approach you sometimes in closed session about a possible deal. We ask you for permission to approach them about a developer's agreement and then once we work out all the deals and the parameters that you wanted to see in the developer's agreement, then you vote on accepting it and then the project goes ahead. City Attorney, anything to add? Yeah, that's correct. We're following the same process here. The difference is that in certain situations there's not an RFP because what you're getting is a company that's coming to us and saying, hey, we wanna develop this area, can we do it? Here the city started the process and said let's look for people to develop that area and so let's send out an RFP to get as many people as possible to consider doing that redevelopment. Okay, so that being said, if you did that and you set up the quote unquote community, whatever you wanna call it with one community member on it and you scored it and you scored it to lose, we still wanna have the scores to prove that they lost. So when are we gonna get them as brought up with everybody? When are we gonna get the scores that the scores that you brought up yourself to score it on, even though it was not a true score system, maybe it's just me that thinks that, I don't know. But yeah, I'm just not an attorney or anything. But so anyways, I just wanna know the scores. So I mean, are we never gonna get those because you set it up with a scoring system and we still don't have the scores. Thank you for your question, Alderperson Trester. I have basically just two things. One is, I also did some research on the projects that Crawford has done and my research brought me to the same point that it did Alderman Holsthoots. And the second thing is that when I apply for a job, I always have a background check before I'm hired, before the negotiation goes on on what my salary is going to be. So why isn't the background done before the negotiation starts? And I think we've done this backwards. If we're gonna consider someone as a viable entity to do building in our city, I would wanna know what their background is and what their successes were and what they have to show for what they've done before I do any negotiating with them, not after or not during anyway. Thank you, Alderperson Reinfleisch. Thank you, Mayor. I'm anxious to see us, and I've been anxious since I've been on the council, seeing as we move forward on the army situation. I think we have a way there. We have two proposals in front of us, community proposal and the Crawford proposal. Some real questions have been raised about the Crawford proposal and I think it's one set of questions that we will address at the finance committee when it gets to us. I think we can go through all of the issues, taking into account things that other government have brought forward. We also have proposed negotiations starting point for the army community group. It's rather aggressive at this point in time and I agree to agree with the comments that they were made. But I think it's a starting point for us to sit down and know what we need to find out and work with them. So I think for both of the proposals, we should forward them onto the finance committee, let us keep moving down this process. We also already have forwarded the idea of the referendum so if somebody wants to put together about language we might use in referendum, we can do that too at the finance committee and then bring it back to the full council. Council's been talking about this for ages in a day and I think 16 of us, it's we're gonna keep on raising and going in circles. It would be good to start negotiations. I think we should get past what the RFP proposal was. Yeah, maybe that we should have had the scores kept. Maybe we shouldn't have overpass that point at this point now. I want us to move forward. I don't want us to go backward and keep on talking about this forever. So I hope we approve sending these both forward to finance and committee and we can get going on starting negotiations and finding out additional information about the Crawford. There are some real issues that you have, that Alderman have raised here and I think we can further get into that as part of that level. So that's all. Thank you for your comments. Is there any other discussion? Okay, the motion on the floor is to file item resolution number 134. The clerk, please call the roll. If we file it, that means it's not going to finance, right? Correct. It's a motion to file. No, this is the motion to file. I beg your pardon, nay. Four ayes, 11 noes. Motion is defeated. So then 9.2 will be referred to finance and personnel and 9.3 will also be referred to finance and personnel. Point of order. I have a question on when would be an appropriate time to add amendments to this? When it goes to finance and personnel committee meeting. Thank you. Okay, next we'll go on to other matters received after the agenda was posted. City attorney. 10.1 is an RO by the city clerk submitting various license applications for the period ending June 30, 2018. December 31, 2018 and June 30, 2019. That'll be referred to the law and licensing committee. All the person will. Thank you, Mayor. I make a motion to adjourn. Second. Thank you for that motion in support. All in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Nays, you stand adjourned. Thank you for your time tonight.