A couple of comments to the coverage of the Council's swearing in/out today. Dean Moisman with the Wisconsin State Journal gave a nice, straightforward summary of the day.
Joe Tarr took a couple of low shots on the The Daily Page write up, writing of Shiva's term as president that she "was honored for completing the largely honorific one-year term as council president." I'm sorry, but president and pro-tem are hardly "honorific' especially in this mayoral administration. They're the ones who consistently (and sometime solely) get a seat at the table to advocate on behalf of alders and issues from the council body. Shiva and Chris have spent hundreds of hours this last year negotiating with the Mayor's staff on behalf of their colleagues. Leadership is a big deal in the day-to-day AND the long-term visioning of the council.
Congrats to Chris & Scott on their elections to leadership. They'll do exceptionally well. Congrats to the history of D8 to have another fine Alder in the leadership chair. Not since Austin King has the 8th had a rep in leadership.
If you'd like to see the speeches for yourself, check out City Channel.
Thanks to Scott @sjresnick for the SO and pic tweet while I was up there.
Alder @bridgetmaniaci delivering her final remarks on council twitter.com/sjresnick/stat…Needless to say, the whole day was a trip through memories and emotions. A friend texted me on the floor to say nice job on my speech, but ribbed me for not shedding some tears. I texted back "there's no crying in baseball. Also, I have no regrets"
— Scott Resnick (@sjresnick) April 16, 2013
And I don't. The last four years have been amazing. I'm so excited to transition to the next phase. I'm 29, time to start putting the pieces together for the next decade of my life. Compared to where I was four years ago on this blog, I've found my voice, I know where my passions are. I hope to use this rebooted page in somewhat of an Ombudsman role on the current events of the city and to just discuss pressing urban issues. I'd like to keep it Madison-focused. Once I get to Pittsburgh for school, I may blog on observations there (with all my free time as a grad student, right?!). Their urban landscape is fascinating and has interesting similarities to Madison and Milwaukee, but also is very different.
The regularity of this blog will inevitably vary. I (most probably) will not be stalking city hall committee meetings. I will however be stalking good books and drinks and the sailing club and farmer's market in the coming months. I have a stack of textbooks on urban planning checked out from Memorial's stacks to work through. I plan to run the Madison half-marathon again this year. I'm looking at a Warrior Dash with friends in August. I'd like to be stalking a good round-up of articles and commentary on urban issues, local and elsewhere, to share here. So it will be an active 4 months before I depart for school, and I plan to enjoy it.
And perhaps if I'm writing, it will help Alder Bruer with his "twatting" ... Being the king of 2 hour coffees/lunches/phone calls, I'm interested to see his take on the world in 144 characters. He always had great, zinging one-liners.. something tells me him and twitter will get along just fine, and it's a brave new world.
