🍸Ahan owners open cocktail bar

🎒 International Grad Students Concerned About Fluency Tests

• With their UW-Madison departments facing federal funding cuts, some international graduate students allege that departments are using fluency tests as a backdoor method of forcing them out.
• All international students with full or partial teaching assistant jobs must take what’s known as a SPEAK test online to prove that they are fluent in English. But students say the departments have been applying the test inconsistently, with different standards and consequences across the university.
• Those consequences have become increasingly harsh, students say, including not supporting some students who show improvement, or pressuring students to do more work. [Daily Cardinal]

🏗️ 113-Unit Apartment Building Could Replace Hong Kong Cafe

• A week after longtime Madison restaurant Porta Bella announced it was closing to make way for a student apartment building, developers proposed a 113-unit apartment building on the site of Hong Kong Cafe on Regent Street.
• Owner Terry Leung put the building up for sale in 2024, which includes the neighboring Choles Floral. Hong Kong Cafe has been in operation for over 30 years, popular for its weekend dim sum brunch.
• Peerless Development has not formally submitted plans to the city yet. But a city staffer told District 13 Ald. Tag Evers that the proposed building would include a mix of apartment sizes and 1,300 square feet of commercial space.
• 🎧 Big changes are in store for Regent Street. Sam Brown, who owns three businesses on the near-campus street, including Leopold’s Book Bar Caffè and the Greenbush Bar, talked about the past, present, and future of Regent Street on the podcast recently. [Isthmus, 🎧 City Cast Madison]

🚨 School Board Member Charged With Misdemeanor Assault

• Madison School Board Vice Chair Maia Pearson has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and resisting an officer in connection with a December arrest. The charges stem from an incident involving Urban Triage CEO Brandi Grayson, who was also arrested and is also pleading not guilty.
• Aeiramique Glass, the interim head of the city’s Office of the Independent Police Monitor opened an investigation of the arrest “due to the role of the complainant and the proximity of that role to the police oversight system itself.” Glass said the initial review of video evidence and preliminary materials raised “serious questions that required thorough and careful review.” [Cap Times, City of Madison]

The Madison City Council has 20 members, all part-time and elected to their seats. Is that too many? Too little? Just right, Goldilocks style?

It’s been up for debate in the city for years. While a city task force recommended reducing the size from 20 to 10 council members and making them full-time positions, voters said in a 2021 advisory referendum that they liked the makeup of the council the way it was.

Earlier this month, Council President Regina Vidaver revived the debate in the city’s Executive Committee, floating the idea of reducing the size to 15 members. On the City Cast Madison podcast today, executive producer Hayley Sperling and producer Jade Iseri-Ramos hash out the pros and the cons of each side, and whether anything is ever really going to change.

I put the call out to newsletter readers for your thoughts on city council size, and you responded! It’s clearly an issue that sparks a lot of different perspectives. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and drop me a line with your thoughts at [email protected].

“We should have less. 20 is too many.” – Brenda F.

“Wisely, Madison voters rejected the idea of full-time alder positions in 2021, the last time the idea was floated.There are already too many special interest groups meddling in the alder election process: developers, realtors, and partisan political parties to name a few. Career alder positions would offer more incentives for individuals and groups to try to capture and hold them.

We saw what happened to the State Legislature when the positions became full time with a generous benefits package. Elected officials and political parties became entrenched and the legislature became more dysfunctional. Being an alder should remain a side gig, not a path to full-time employment.” – Ginny W.

“I like the idea of an odd number to avoid ties, and redistributing salaries is appealing (how much do alders make, anyways?) but generally speaking, more representatives translates to better representation. Maybe cut it to 19 for now? Ideally there would be rules in place scaling the number of alders to the population of the city.” – Cole S.