Ald. Denise DeMarb wasn’t at all surprised to learn that her colleague on the Madison Common Council, Chris Schmidt, is resigning.
The job, she says, is simply a ton of work.
“It takes a lot of time, and Chris did a very good job. He has a full-time career that he needs to be attentive to,” DeMarb says. “He needed to make a choice. And he decided on something that paid his bills. We can’t really fault him for that, but we can miss him.”
Schmidt, who represents west-side neighborhoods between Old Middleton and Mineral Point roads, announced his resignation on his official city blog, writing: “Circumstances in my professional life have changed since I filed for re-election last fall, and my career in satellite meteorology requires my full attention. Serving the city as alder, itself a full-time job, has been very important to me, but being alder is not my livelihood, and my livelihood must come first.”
In a phone interview on Wednesday, Schmidt says he contemplated filling out his current term, which ends on April 18, 2017, but decided against it. “As a practical matter, [resigning] seemed like a better choice for my district and my career.”
It’s the second time in two years that an alder has resigned from the 20-member council. In March 2014, Sue Ellingson resigned from her seat, citing family matters that needed her attention. She represented the near-west-side neighborhoods of Greenbush, Vilas and Monroe. In that case, the council invited people to apply for the seat and appointed Lucas Dailey to fill out the remainder of Ellingson’s term. Dailey had promised not to run for the seat when it was up for election last spring. Sara Eskrich won that election.
DeMarb, who is the current council president, says she expects the council will follow a similar appointment process in finding someone to fill out the remainder of Schmidt’s term.
She says two resignations in two years underscore how time-consuming it is to do the job well and says the city needs to look at ways to make it easier.
“You can’t work full time and do this job and have any kind of a life. You can’t,” she says, adding that Schmidt served two years as council president. “They say it’s supposed to be 20 hours a week for alder work — that’s ridiculous.”
Ideas that have been floated in the past include increasing the pay for alders, hiring more support staff, creating a smaller, full-time council, and making the council larger in order to decrease workloads.
“We need to start taking an earnest look at what this really means, and we owe it to the residents of this city,” DeMarb says. “This is a city with complex issues, and we need to have people who can really concentrate on their jobs and not balance so many things. What that looks like, I don’t know.”
