I've had this weird ambition to implement violin plots in Excel natively without any plugins and I've finally figured out how to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you want to do this repetitively and easily I mean there are better options like R and GG plots that will do it and there are extensions for Excel that will do it I just didn't bother to download it so I thought okay let's figure out how to do it and learn a bit about how you would actually construct these from scratch so what is a violin plot anyway? Well let's start with some data we've got these random issue numbers between 0 and 100 our first protocol would be a box plot this tells us where the median is, it's this line and then the box represents half the data so 25% in this part of the box, 25% in that and the whiskers, all the error bar things that are pointing out here go to your maximum and minimum value or maximum and minimum value excluding some outliers as well so these plots in Excel they do exist as a default option they're not great in being super flexible in their formatting of that look but they do accept just the raw data and they calculate outliers for you so a pretty good starting point but if we look at this data that I've got well there seems to be actually two clusters somewhere around 75 and somewhere around 45 ish and you can see that from the violin plot because this line here kind of represents the local density of the data there's more data up here it's a bit wider there's not as much data down here so it's narrower and I've also plotted the data points with a bit of scatter so they're a bit more scattered where they are denser they're probably better way of doing that but that's just random for now so that's what a violin plot is it is showing you the kind of the distribution the probability distribution the density of the data on this plot and it's a way that the box plot itself wouldn't convey so how are we going to build this line how do we build this density well it's using something called KDE kernel density estimation where each data point kind of has something called a kernel attached to it it's basically a function of a particular shape I'm just going to use the normal distribution all the shapes are available normal distribution is probably fine though and what you can see is we just add all them together so where these dotted lines curve overlap for instance this bigger darker line is much higher so if we move the data around a bit maybe I'll bring 35 bring that up to about 80 you can see that line moves up to here it gets a bit thicker so this graph here is basically based on something on Wikipedia except this version is interactive and we can also change the width of each of those curves as well so it can get a bit spikier or it can get a bit broader so that's the main idea we need a normal distribution for each of these data points centred on each of these data points and we're going to add them all together to build this function here, the dark line so I'm going to do that I've got some data I think this is actually natural students survey data so it's real it has an actual distribution it's not necessarily normally distributed and we're going to see what it looks like the first thing is to make a defined range for this data so I'm going to use the oof the offset function and I want string $1 $1 for that I'm not going to offset it I'll move it around from that point so the next two things are 0, 0 and the height is count $1 A again so just the count of whatever is that column and then width so this now will get all the data and if I happen to put another number on the bottom it'll grab that number as well great fun so far so I'm going to copy that code come into my name manager define a new thing I'll just scope it to the workbook for now and I'm going to call it data paste the code in there so now if I'm referring to my data named range I've got all of these numbers I've added a new one it'll appear in this data set as well so delete that for now so what am I going to do I'm going to start building a normal distribution for these data fonts and then summing them up so I'm going to do sequence just at 100 rows now this is going up on the y axis so for every point here I'm going to calculate how wide this graph should be so I'm going to leave this on the right because it's eventually going to be a y axis but it is sort of our kind of dependent variable when we're plotting a normal distribution so I'm going to write norm.dist and our x it's the input of the distribution is going to be that sequence press hash to select all of it now the mean I want a piece of our data I'm just going to select one of the numbers for now standard deviation I'll look at this 5 doesn't really matter for now this is illustrative false because I want the probability distribution for the normal distribution not a cumulative thing so if I return that you can see the number is very low round 1 10 to the minus 16 in fact when we hit 40ish that is where that data point is centered gets much higher and then it's going to tail off to lower numbers again and we can see if we insert a graph of that I'm going to insert a scatter graph with a smooth line tidy it up a bit get rid of the chart title some of the all grid lines set the axis to just go between 0 and 100 to tidy that up to delete the x axis we can see there's a normal distribution a bump at about 40 something and if I change that to 70 it will redraw the normal distribution a bit higher so we now need one of these for every single data point and that's a bit trickier because we can't just substitute that for say data because a weird behaviour now starts happening it's kind of really jagged and if we scroll down we realise it stops so what this is doing is it's recalculating the normal distribution for each of these inputs but changing the mean each time we also can't simply just wrap it in a sum function to add them up because well let's put the data thing back in and you just get one number sometimes it doesn't even work properly because we are dealing with problems there so what are we going to do first of all I'm going to delete that and I'm going to introduce a function called by row so this is going to solve some of the summation problems that we might have because what we're going to do is calculate how big this density estimate is at every single point by summing things up so I'm going to do by row and the array that I'm doing in by is this input here I'll put it in column I so I1 and the functions are lambda functions so I need to define that as lambda first and then the parameter I'm going to say is x so this is like the lambda function becomes here so this becomes like the input here so now what is my function going to be well I'm going to do the sum of various normal distributions so the norm dist here well the input is going to be x and I want to figure out what the distribution is for that x point by summing up over all the data so my mean is in fact going to be data so for every single data point I'm going to calculate what the normal distribution would be at that point x add them all up and then it's going to do that for every row in my series so it's under deviation I'm just going to call that 4 false for now and make sure I can close enough brackets to end that and what we see is that we've got if I change my standard deviation to 2 it gets a bit spikier so I don't know what I can put over here I'll just put over here and I might define that name as smoothing I'll scope it to the worksheet I can replace 2 here with smoothing and here we are now I can just change the visual of it and broadening that out if I wanted to or that's the density I don't want to make that classic violin plot shape I'm going to make equals the negative of that actually each one I'm going to add new data so first of all I'm going to edit that series and just say call it line plus and then line minus our x values are that entire column and the y values are that entire column going up so what I'm seeing now is that kind of double sided violin plot format that to be blue make sure the blues match so there's my shape so how do you fill it in that's the question because I've filled it in it would be lovely if you want to do it the other way we do have area charts stick this in stick this in for a second if we looked at charts we might have things like where are the areas but unfortunately they only work horizontally so we're going to have to be a little bit more challenging so what I'm going to do is add two new things I'm going to do bar plus it doesn't matter what this is for now because I'm going to change it and then bar minus because what I'm going to do is hack it with a bar chart so chart design change chart type and what I want to go is combo and I need to make sure that the line is still that scatter with smooth lines and the bars need to be stacked bar charts I have to play with the axes setting to make it work because I can't put the stacked bar charts on the same axes so there we go there at least set to the right chart type so I'm now going to select my data and check what these bars are going to be or bar plus now when he needs a set of values I'm going to put in all my positives here ok that bar minus put the negative sides in and what you can see now is I'm starting to shade that in just to keep my y axis and if I format the data series drop that gap width to zero it applies to everything it's shape filled with a lighter blue ok so we're nearly there you can probably see if you zoom in the line and the bars are not quite aligned slightly so the easy hack for this one is to change your sequence and minus 0.5 off it because what we're going to do is that we'll shunt this line slightly almost imperceptively and put it on top of the bars instead if you zoom in really far you'll be able to see it so what we could also do is sequence 200 and divide it by 2 that means things become a little bit finer you could increase that to 1000 divided by 10 or something like that and it could become even finer it doesn't necessarily matter but we can leave it there for now so now there we have we want to start adding something else to it I can put let's put the average average of my data and I'm going to add a new thing here so if I put series name I'm going to call it average x value 0 the y value is that number there ok that and if I go back to my chart design change chart type I can make sure my average is now just a scatter and I've got myself a central point so let's do this movie let's do standard deviation I'll do this population of just data the difference between standard deviation population and sample will be bordering on negligible so let's add format the data series no that's not format data series plus some error bars more options for here custom the value I want y error bar specified value let's put the standard deviation in there and delete the horizontal because I don't really need it so what we've got there is our violin font natively built in a spreadsheet and if we start changing some of the data it will let's change some of these to random numbers they're quite small and we'll watch it start to build up some density at the bottom which you can then spot because of this it's a little bit more powerful that box plot let's get rid of those for a second send it back it's a nice old student survey data I'm pleased to see that not many are scoring below 20 so I can't remember what score this is but it is real data and that's how it's distributed


Hi, everybody. I'm Peter. I want to talk about Istio and why do we actually need it. I want to start with some motivation here. Because speaking DevOps, there are so many things everybody says you shouldn't do when you're in DevOps team or where you're doing Agile. And I want to say one thing that when you're doing Agile and when you're doing DevOps, you're basically looking for cooperation with cross-functional teams, which means cross-functional team is a team of people which can cooperate together, but they are still specialized. So they can use the same tooling across a team, which is a really hard challenge because there are times when new tooling comes into the team and you see those two people just clashing together, saying, all right, we want this new tooling. And there's a group of people which are saying, well, this is too hard. We can't do that. I don't feel the value and all this stuff. And so the thing that's happening here is basically the barrier for the entry to these new technologies is too high for everybody else, so they won't accept it. And the way we do this or the way we deal with this is basically by creating APIs. And APIs, as you may know, basically abstract what's under the hood. So developers can actually just concentrate on what steps do I need to take to create my solution or to come to a final state. But if all you could look at is even further, and that's what Kubernetes and Istio does, is they actually create declarative APIs. So what you can do with APIs, they're abstract, implementation, but you still need to know the steps. With declarative APIs, you don't actually need these steps. All you need is that you want some final state. And it's then on the system to actually determine what steps to take to get to your final state. We'll see this in a couple of seconds. And the system has one property. And the system is easy to start with, but it's really hard to master. And that's because we just created two levels of abstraction so people can actually come in and say, all right, I want to deploy this. The system will basically say how to do that or do it under the hood. But then if we want to optimize these things or try something like a different deployment, we just need to drill down to the technology and there's a lot of things that we must work on and that's why we have the specialized roles in the teams. But it's good for everybody else to just understand what the final state is and what the technologies can do. But we need to start with Kubernetes first. And that's because Istio actually builds on Kubernetes, which means we still need some Kubernetes infrastructure built in to then enhance it with Istio. And I want to start with a really simple examples here. You don't need to focus on the world code, you just need to focus on that red rectangle. But this is our fully runnable configuration. And so what you're doing here is basically you're saying just run NGINX 1.14 and I don't care how you do it. Under the hood, it pulls the image, it stores it somewhere and so on and so on. So the system basically determined what steps to take to create this configuration. What more? You can say something like this. You can just edit the same configuration and just say, oh, all right, I don't want just one replica, I want three of them. Now what happens here is systems like Kubernetes and Istio, they see a conflict because you want just one replica and it sees one replica that's running, but suddenly you want three. So it will again determine the steps that it needs to take to get three of your replicas up and running. And the last thing that I want to talk with Istio and what do we need to actually build Istio into talk about Kubernetes is we want to expose these services. So we can do scheduling, we can do scaling. We can also expose services which gives us a service discovery capabilities. What this means is you can see the first example is the same deployment, but it has labels and you'll see labels everywhere in the Kubernetes world because they're kind of a way that we describe any workload or any resource in the cluster. So what we're doing is every resource that you label is then queryable by you or by other resources in the cluster. And what we see is in the first rectangle, there's a label called that app is Engines. So all the blue rectangles there are the labeled app Engines. And the service then basically just queries the cluster and says, all right, give me all workloads that are app Engines. So this way it basically connects. One disclaimer, there's no limit to how you actually label things. So you can just deploy Apache and then label it Engines and nothing happens. It will just work, but you may be really surprised what happens if you do something like that. So there are no limits to this. And so there are more things. I don't wanna give examples of these because they are just too complicated for this session, but you can also mount volumes, mount configuration, certificates and all this stuff. And there's one more feature that's really cool at these things. And that's what happens when node fails or when the pod's deleted or something. But we got our configuration that says, hey, we want free replicas and we only have two. Well Kubernetes again determines there's this state and then tries to make steps to repair this. What it does is basically it replaces the pod for you. So you don't need to worry that you are not running the configuration that you want because if you have a good state in the cluster and if it's healthy, then you'll always be running what you want in your declarative configurations. But there's one thing. And what we modeled is a really basic scenario, basically exposing free workloads of engines. It's nothing hard. But what about the things that are advanced, like A-B testing or policy enforcement if you want enforced TLS between like neural communications or if you want to load balance in a different style than your Outdoor Bin, which Kubernetes does. It's kind of a hard topic and that's where you don't really see this in many starting projects because you don't need it. But when you start needing these things, Kubernetes really starts to fall short on these and you need to think about how you actually want to implement these. So this example that we'll have right now, we'll use the same infrastructure that we built just now with Kubernetes with one change. It's a really simple change and that's that we have two versions instead of one. Another goal is right now to split the traffic, to create A-B testing, to actually use HTTP headers to split the traffic in a different versions. So what you can see is we have two versions and these have also one new label and the label is below the rectangles and its version. So we have app engines on all of them so the service can see them but we also have labeled them as versions. What we can do right now is we can walk through all these free components of Istio that will enable us to do this and the first component is called destination rule. What destination rule does is it creates a policies that should be applied to a traffic that comes to a service which means the traffic is already there, it came to our service which means it was already handled by something but now you need to basically say what should you do with the traffic? And what you can do here is you can define load balancing policies or load balancing strategies which can be around robin or based on some cookies and so on. And also there's one more feature which is what we will be looking at and it's called subsets. This is within destination rules and what subsets do is they actually create a sets within the global subset of the service where we can define what labels to use to distinguish between these versions. So now here we say we know that we have two versions two different versions running but we wanna tag them so we can then direct traffic to this version or this version instead of just saying where it goes we're okay with that. And it is with the simple configuration you just say all right these labels are those which are used to determine if it's version one or version two. Now what we need to do next is this is a core feature of Istio and it's a kind of big example. So what you need to focus on right now is on the right hand or on the right side which is the example where we actually have an example traffic that's containing HTTP header service version one. What we want to do with this traffic is we wanna direct this traffic to the service and then the service must recognize this traffic and put it into or redirect it into workloads they are labeled with version one. So it feels like an easy job and it also is virtual services where there are two rules or virtual services are basically routers and they work in a way that you define rules under which must match or which must be true if we wanna direct traffic that way. We have two rules here the one is the big rectangle and the second one is below it and the first rule basically says match everything that has headers with service version two exactly not a prefix nothing else it's like exactly version two and then wrote this traffic to a destination which is our service but to a subset called version two and we also have the second rule and this rule has no matches which is like a default case so if no rule is matched then the default case is used and in this example what we do is for the traffic on the right side what happens is it goes to the first rule and it says no because it doesn't match it but it then goes to the second rule which is basically default case so it wrote the traffic to the version one what would happen if you just switched it to the version three or version four or version five they would still be all wrote it to the version one because that's the default case we have right now but if you would create more subsets for these versions then you could actually create these rules in virtual services so you could direct the traffic there and there are more features like this in virtual services you can do HTTP failovers or recoveries but it's kind of out of scope right now and there's one more last thing one more last component and it's called gateway and this is really I'd say the easiest component because it's a component that runs on the edge of your service mesh and it's basically entry point and point where every traffic goes in and out and what gateways do is you basically define on what port they should listen what protocol they should accept or what host they should accept and these gateways are then used to direct traffic to virtual services where all the rules are defined and one thing I forgot to say is virtual services can be bound to gateways so in this example you see gateway and if we go back you can actually see the first rectangle and the first rectangle says bound these virtual services to the gateway so it's like virtual services basically component that's bounds to gateways and then to subsets to direct traffic all right so going up I just want to take a quick look at how the what's the life of the request I'd say so the traffic goes into gateways and gateways basically are either open or closed for the traffic which means we need to have HTTP traffic on port 80 from the domain example com to actually be able to pass through the gateway and then we go to the virtual service and the virtual service what it does it takes the traffic or the request and it goes from top to bottom of all the rules that we added there and basically matches these so if it doesn't match it goes further if it matches it basically stops and says all right this is where the traffic will go and tags the traffic with subset if you're using subsets on where the traffic should be directed next and then then goes to the service and what service does is basically just accepts these policies on load balancing or TLS which will just which basically just helps you tweak tweak the infrastructure on traffic routing so the summarizes I know these are that may be a lot of things but there are three main components of FISTO one of them is gateway the second one is virtual service and a destination rule gateways are just entry points virtual services are basically routers where you just say all right so these are my rules and if it accepts any of these rules and then get a traffic somewhere else and you also do things like failovers or timeouts and then we have destination rules which are basically policies on how to divert traffic further and as you could see what we did was we basically took a Kubernetes infrastructure and just adopted Istio on that and it's what you can do in any of your projects so if you think you don't actually need Istio right now you don't need to use it right now what you can do is you can just use Kubernetes and then when you feel like you actually need more of these things like the traffic routing policies and stuff then you can just add up Istio there and it provides a declarative networking API which basically means that anybody should be able to understand what's happening and any member of the team should be able to actually just read if not right then just read the configurations and say all right this is what's happening there. One last thing it's kind of easy to read when it's written but it's not really easy to write the code and one must really look at these pitfalls such as labels because if the traffic is not going where you want you may actually have just a problem with destination rules or labels and that's it from me. If you want to learn more about this topic you can just go here or look at this presentation. These documentations are basically technical or they really go deep into the technical stuff and you can see all the references there so they may really help you there. Thank you. Any questions? We have a lot of time. Inside the service mesh, service to service track but that's my understanding that's sort of the class of these pitfalls for Istio. Yep. Could you expand on that or talk? With the service mesh or why do you? Is Istio within not just as an ingress controller? Yep. There's other ones for there's ambassador OpenShift has HAProxy and stuff like that so I'm more interested in how Istio operates. I think it's a sidecar, is that correct? Yep, yeah.  So yeah, it operates with a lot of on voice. Is it good? How do you, but I'm sorry. What types of, is it JWT or what type of authentication is there from service to service that's supported by? Well, so there's TLS. There are certificates everywhere. But if you wanna just implement like a user to service authorization you can actually use JWT as well on virtual service. So how does the tendency look like Istio will every development team have their own Istio in an accredited cluster you will have one service mesh which is shared among different developers? Right now, what we do right now is we have one service mesh but you can have multiple. There's a lot of isolation that comes with Istio. So it seems you kind of like at start you always need just one Istio but if you have like a really great, like really large teams then maybe like creating multiple clusters and so on makes sense here. Anybody else? Yep. When building the application and using service mesh I will kind of troubleshoot where it goes and just for testing and development is it easy to find out the things? Yep. Yeah it is. I think that was actually one talk today about Istio and observability. So one of the main features of Istio like with traffic management is basically observability and because all the traffic flows through these sidecars although like you can see all the traces, you can see all the metrics and all the stuff in Istio as well. So it's really easier to debug than Kubernetes, yeah. One more question. What happens if you find multiple virtual services to a single gateway? What happens with the traffic? Multiple virtual services to a single gateway. What if you want one? No it's not. What happens is basically all these virtual services are merged together. So there's, I think there's also like a merge algorithm for virtual services and as well for gateways. Any other question? Yeah. It would be a good question please. Sorry? Yeah, so if a URL or traffic content-based routing is based in a virtual service, yes it is. You can basically, what I did with headers, you can do the same thing with URLs. So we can just say every URL that has prefix of this or that is exact, exactly this. Yeah? In this example, what setting the header that you're filtering based on? What setting the header? Client, basically. Just basically you, we accept traffic from the internet, from some client and then we sort of like filter on that. So your client would need to know that they want to do your... Yeah, you can do multiple things here. You don't need to really, you can do things like set cookies instead of headers. So these will travel with the clients all the time. Yep? How about using SSL? Because you would be unable to match headers. Yeah. So TLS can be basically implementing the gateway where you just say, this is where the certificates are and it will mount it. All right, any other question? The company has already provided what to do with the scan or authentication with the scan? 50 questions, please. So what happens if I have multiple types of sidecars and they comply with Istio? I mean, if they comply with the configuration, I don't see a problem, but... So you can define what IPK registers or IPKs can pass and what not and also the designers and monitor. Yeah. If there are multiple sidecars with a similar functionality in one book. Okay, so if you can filter based on IPs. Yes, you can. Yes, what it can do is basically you can say, also for like incoming and outgoing requests, where they can go or which addresses should be accepted. So you can basically whitelist block list things. All right, last question? All right, Nad. Oh, yep. When explosion gateway, basically it's a bot that's acting as a proxy. Is it possible to have that bot placed in a specific host assuming I put the product type? How things... Is it a virtual service or is there early up? I'm assuming in this case it's a bot that actually terminates the CLS and stuff. Is it possible to have been on the node or the node selector or the code nodes? Do you mean like a demon or? Well, it's a bot. I mean, can we have a second passive Y-way where I would like this in my post? So what happens here in Istio is basically gateways are also just configurations and these are configurations for ingress. So gateways are bound to ingress, ingress gateways, which are physical proxies. Does it answer your question or? How is the gateways implemented in the generator's role? The gateway. Well, the gateway only bounds to a, like it creates a configuration for the ingress controller. So it configures a physical proxy. But it runs as a... Sorry. Do you get a part where it's implemented gateway? Oh, no. Do you mean like if you just release free gateways, if you have free different pods or no, you shouldn't have? I believe, well, we can just discuss it later, but I think you shouldn't have these. You should have just one pod, which is an ingress controller and then the gateway just configurates. Well, you get just a single pod, right, for which is a ingress controller. Yep. All right. Thank you, everybody.


really happy with the way the guys bounce back obviously Lance Lynn huge pick me up he was terrific so a good way to kick off this series for us what made Lynn so good I thought both his fastballs the two seamer and his foreseeing fastball so the ability to pitch at the top of the zone we saw a lot of elevated fastballs from him that was effective but also that two seamer that sinkery works down at the bottom of the zone I thought those you know he mixed in enough off speed but I thought it was about the the two planes with the fastball just you out it's free you guys turn 11 and two-thirds scoreless innings I believe what were your expectations when you originally acquired him he's been a consistent worker or son his career and we thought he had pitch better than his numbers had indicated so far this year with the twins we definitely thought he was coming on and starting to pitch even better you know the month or two before we got him much more resembling the guy we've seen throughout his career and you know we feel like we got a guy that can a capable guy capable of giving us a lot of innings look it's it's it was a you know a tough day coming in here just just with the travel I think and you know for the guys to come out and play well I thought our energy was good and we got to keep that going tomorrow so it was a good start to this series and and and and hopefully see see can take it from here tomorrow you said there was you were waiting for that one game the things can turn around at a time for you it's just the kind of game that can do that I hope so look we know we're really good and the guys I don't think have any doubt in there and I think to a man they understand that what we're capable of and when you get strong starting pitching like that you know and also a day to kind of reset our pen right right there that's huge you know to give some guys down there that could use a day down was big so hopefully this gets us wrong a little bit how much did you see a limb in St. Louis and was tonight warm this love yeah good time there yeah I saw him a ton actually over the years and he's a guy that pitches with his heater you know he is he's kind of fearless out on the mound the ability to fill up the strike zone but again I think using a little more foreseamer and and again mixing in enough secondary to really keep those hitters honest and obviously it's against the White Sox who haven't had a good season but are you surprised by Lance Lance performance no no no I've seen this guy pitch like this for most of his career and when he came here I felt like you know we were getting a guy that's very capable of of this and and like I said he's been pitching a lot better the last couple of months and and hopefully this is what we can expect to see routinely not bad I mean levels spinning that breaking ball up there popping the low 90s like I think that's a little bit of an asset you know to have that and preserve people and you know you know he made it tough on our guys you're trying to fix I mean he always bugs me but I don't think that's happening


If you go to a black magic artist, he will just ask for a picture. Somebody can do negative things with the image of a person. You try at home yourself, download an image of some serial killer, you see how it happens. You know, people are sending pictures of their parents or grandparents or the children just born for blessings and you know, for various things. So if we can do positive things with the image of a person, you must know we can also do negative things. In India, if you go to a black magic artist, he will just ask for a picture because picture is a certain geometry. If you understand the geometry of a person's picture, you can create a geometry which will freak him. Now you can create a geometry which will enhance him or you can create a geometry which is going to destroy him in some way. So, because of this, those cultures wherever this is there, people don't want pictures to be taken. People who are in certain types of sadhana, even in India, many of sadhus and sanyasis, they don't want that picture to be taken. But these days they cannot avoid, but unknowingly they take selfies. So, people are asking me, said, Guru, are you okay for a selfie? I said, no selfie. Because these silly trends will come and go. Life goes on beyond that. These trends are… the thing is nobody is willing to take a picture of you.  People took pictures and they want to put it because they value it for something, all right? Because an image has a geometry of its own. We could have actually demonstrated if we had an image here, or you try at home yourself. Just for example, I'm saying take a picture of me, a proper photo would be better, not a reprinted photo. It would be good, but even a book cover. Just hold your rudrax, see how it goes. Download an image of some serial killer. I'm sure you are in touch with them on the internet. And check the rudrax, you see how it happens. It'll happen very differently. And if you bring certain image, fold it, okay? Not my regular picture, there are certain pictures where I'm in a certain state when pictures have been taken. Folded picture, you don't know what is there.  Placebo pictures, all right? An empty page, something else, a grasshopper flying, a tree, this, that, everything. If you have been meditating for a certain point of time, mix them all up so that you can't see on the surface what it is. Touch each one of them, probably many who have been initiated by me will immediately recognize which is the picture. If they're not too confused and this, that, simply if they touch it, they will know. Because just a two-dimensional or a flat surface of the picture has a geometry and a unique geometry and it's exuding that. If somebody knows how to read this geometry, he can create geometry either to enhance you or to create trouble for you. So wherever such arts were popular, people said, I don't want my picture anywhere because I don't want to become vulnerable to somebody else. My enemy wants to come and take a picture. I don't want that my picture in his house because we don't know how he will use it. So out of this concern, people would not allow pictures to be taken.


Step to the side, lift up. When I lift up, I convey a sense of movement. It's like using the rain. I want my halter rope here on the ground to simulate what will happen riding under saddle. I'm even using the coils near the saddle. This is looking just fine. He's starting to get to the point where he wants to stop. He's settled in. So I have an idea as he has the same idea I do.


I think Alderman Vander will you have documents yet bill has Okay Well a little Cleanup work here before we get started then this evening. We're waiting for a couple of documents I don't know how many of you are aware of or if you got a call from the governor's office today Did everyone get a call that he'll be in town tomorrow? 245 to land park Community Center. He will be signing some bills. I would hope everyone can make it 245 he'll be down there Hopefully everyone can make it. He will be signing bills some legislation that Senator light Pam did and I believe some that represent Ben Akron had So and I'm not sure about representative Costell if he had any in there either, but You'll be saying and that goes for a new alderman sitting out here, too you're more than welcome to come down tomorrow and Join us the other thing I'd like to say congratulations to well welcome to the new alderman we have one with us this evening and Congratulations to the alderman who got back in Congratulations all you guys and come on. It's good. Good job And I'd like to thank all the men moody and the other all of Alderman Doyle's not here this evening And Alderman winning girls not here this evening, but thank you for the time you spent on the council office. It's been a pleasure Okay, what's that now? Are we ready? Does anyone have any questions or anything they like discussed before we get moving? All of them on to me Thank You. Mr. Mayor a bit Steve can answer this question right away We all have this invitation from Mark Sinema Can we go to that? I mean we're getting free tickets and food she Steve doesn't have that See what I mean Only we all German are getting this free movie Mark Sinema sent a letter out to all the alderman If they would like to come to a free movie To see their big-screen TV that the right one and what else is on there? Well, and we get popcorn and a soft drink If it isn't over a dollar, you're safe, right, but but of course the ticket is I don't know what the practice of alderman has been over the years. I know at one time The theater used to provide movie passes to the alderman on an annual basis. I don't know if they still do that I can say that when I started I was offered one and I declined it. I guess I Can't give you You know, I can say what I would do would be not to accept it Unless they're making that offer to the public as a whole, you know, but if they're providing this to alderman Separate from the general public. I guess I would err on the side of Avoiding any potential conflict to the event that Marcus cable were to come for some, you know applying for some conditional use permit that you know, arguably This could influence you perhaps in your decision. I guess that's that's all I can say on the spur of the moment I don't know what the monetary value is but It's probably not real great, but I would caution against accepting free tickets to the local theater Thank you. Thank you very much All my prayers Thank you, your honor just for the benefit of the 3d u alderman that we're elected 1 being here in 2 Which I think we'll probably be watching TV If you would announce when they get sworn in. Oh, yes Good point April 20th, you'll be sworn in is new alderman that it's Tuesday evening April 19th Two weeks from tonight is our last council meeting of the old council. Go ahead Their agendas will be ready to Friday before Come to my office and get them, but I need to see all the other persons elect before the new ones Prior to the first meeting so I can give you certain instructions that I give everybody and they're not bad Okay All right We'll call the 25th regular meeting to come a council to order Pat. Would you call the roll Bowman? Bird Excuse I couldn't hear those Excuse Pledge allegiance minutes of the previous common council meeting has entered on the record. Move to second that to minutes of the previous council meeting we stand approved on your discussion. Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Alderman Berg is going to lead us, or Bowman? Leading us on a pledge. 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. Resonation, Steve? Sletter to the mayor from Monroe-Gerkey, advising that due to ill health, it's with deep regret that he submits his resignation as a member of the Board of Review. Thanks to the mayor, thanks to the council for their friendship and assistance over the years. Signed by Monroe-Gerkey. That can be accepted and filed. And also a letter from Thomas Marini Jr. to the mayor advising that of his intent to resign from the city Board of Appeals and Board of Housing Appeals effective April 1, 2004 because he's accepted a job promotion within US Bank which requires a move to Cincinnati, Ohio. That can be placed on file. Public form? No way. Okay. All in the graph. Thank you, Your Honor. On the consent agenda, items 25-1 through 25-8, I would move that all ROs and communications be accepted and filed. All ROCs be accepted and adopted. We pass all resolutions and general ordinances. It's been moved and seconded that all ROs from documents 25-1 through 25-28, correct? Okay. All ROs be accepted and filed. All ROCs be accepted and adopted. Resolutions and ordinance be put upon their passage. Alderman Manning. Thank you, Your Honor. I'd like to pull out 25-10 and ask our finance director, Steve Gebhardt, to speak to that. And to District 12 and let us know how that district's been doing. District 12 is located in the general area of Niagara and 8th Street. The district was formed in the year 2000 the reason for the audit at this time is that the majority of the expenditures have been completed by 2002 and under the state regulations that is required to have an audit at that time. You'll see in there that there is some deficit in the capital project fund at that time because of the initial expenditures being required. The city did make an advance in the general fund that is what there is a liability to be paid back in the future. So it shows a deficit in the fund balance at that point in time. But the district, as of this year, it tax increment over $94,000 and it had principal and interest payments on the debt service of $59,000. So there is an excess of $34,000 of difference that would be able to pay back the advance in the future years, of course, to be able to pay the remaining advance. So at this point in time, you know, we're looking like within a couple of years that the advance will be fully repaid. Anything else? If there's no other questions. Pat, would you call the roll? Perg, Pone, Gough, Manning, Montemayor, Moody, Perez, Rinflaich, Steffen, Van Akron, Vanderweel, Wongaman, Warner, Bauman, 14-9. Motion carried, 25-29 through 31 to be referred. 25-32 by the city clerk submitting the special audit committee report to the Common Council assisting the results of their investigation into the financing of Blue Harbor. Alderman Warner. Well, thank you, Your Honor. I believe the correct motion on this document is to accept and file the report of officer. Move to second, accept and file the report of officer. Under discussion. Under discussion, Your Honor. I think there's been a lot of public interest in the financing of the Blue Harbor project and this report clearly details to the extent that it's possible under current laws and that we could work out in a good contract that the project is very well protected. Perhaps if the council doesn't mind, there's some, I could read the high points of this and I think that would address possibly some of the public's concern. You have it, of course. So on that first, I'd like to read the report in its entirety, but think of, if I start with the introduction that came from a special audit committee. And this is it. It says, this report constitutes the results of our investigation into the financing of Blue Harbor as it relates to the city of Sheboygan's portion of the investment in the project. We were asked by the mayor and the common council to address various concerns. This committee reviewed the development agreement and summaries of other pertinent documents prepared. And the summaries of other pertinent documents prepared by city of Sheboygan's staff. We also interviewed persons with relevant information in compiling this report, all as related in the printed minutes, which I believe everyone did receive on a regular basis. The findings of the committee, the city of Sheboygan's obligation on the convention center and parking lot is not to exceed $8.2 million. Sheboygan will own this portion of the Blue Harbor development. That means the citizens and the city of Sheboygan will own it. Thus, the facilities themselves are collateral against any default and the guarantees of the developer. Number two, Sheboygan has put in place cost controls such that the obligations will not exceed $8.2 million and less requested by Sheboygan. All of the construction contracts were described to us as fixed price contracts. There is no indication at this time that Sheboygan will require or request additional spending on the convention center and parking lot. Item three, Sheboygan has implemented a payment system which requires that all requests for payment must be within the budget guidelines. Further, the construction budget categories are closed, meaning that any savings and construction costs in category A cannot then be shifted to cover overages in category B. Item four, the developer has leased the convention center for 15 years under an operating agreement which also has five-year options. The developer has guaranteed projected room tax payments totally or actually project room tax payments totally of $25,944,247 through 20,028, which amount is about 9 million more than the debt cost including interest. Item five, there are a series of guarantee devices including a one million guarantee deposit, a $500,000 reserve fund, along with a series of personal and corporate guarantees. These devices can be released upon meeting certain performance requirements. Sheboygan agreed to loan four million to the developer for the resort project. There is no provision which would require additional lending by Sheboygan. There are private lenders in place for the resort project and the related condominium project. The developer has an equity interest in the development of $7.6 million. The developer entered into a reimbursement agreement for the full amount of the city loan and a portion of the public improvements. There are guaranteed property tax payments through 2018 of $16,419,000. TIF funds will be used to repay the loan and for 50% of the infrastructure improvements, which include parking lots and sidewalks. The remaining 50% is paid for by the balance of the development project. An additional 20 million of phase two development is needed within the TIF district to meet debt service obligations related to all TIF expenditures. That's in the future. A change in ownership does not remove the tax payments obligation nor the personal guarantees. At this point, infrastructure costs are below projections. The assumptions upon which the repayment to Sheboygan are based are that the room tax will be generated and collected and that the property taxes will be paid. Any failure in the realization of these assumptions is covered by the personal and corporate guarantees. Sheboygan officials represented to us that the business model assumptions and projections are conservative and while no project of this magnitude is risk free, the risks attendant to this project are well accounted for in the business model developed by the city finance director. In closing, it's the conclusions. Number one, based on Sheboygan's business model for Blue Harbor, Sheboygan's taxpayers are protected from unanticipated losses as much that as possible given the inherent risks with the development project of this type. The model developed by the finance director who has over 20 years of experience in public financing is based on reasonable assumptions. The private lenders, which have a much larger financial exposure are paid after the city receives its property tax payments. There are reasonable protections against unanticipated losses in the form of various guarantees described above. An audit would cost an arrange of 10,000 to $20,000 given the nature of the project performance to date. That everything is coming in at or under projected costs and given the nature of the payment request budget format, the cost of an audit is not necessary nor would it be a worthwhile investment of tax dollars and that is the conclusion of the special audit committee. I guess what I'd like to do is first thank Attorney William P. Winkle, Attorney Robert Wells, James Graven, Alan Rudnick, and of course the Reverend Greg Welton for their service to the city of Sheboygan in this endeavor they spent close to four months working on their own time without pay for this. And I think these individuals have done an exceptional job in reviewing the financial aspects of the Blue Harbor Project and I thank them. Thank you. Thank you. Alderman Rainflesch. Thank you, Your Honor. We have the opportunity to take several tours of the project going up down there and ask questions about the other investments that we have going on down there, the interest in there. I understand there's several parties interested in the Rice Building now. We have a lot of proposals for the rest of the undeveloped land right now, none of which would have been occurring right now if it were not for the initial investment of the Blue Harbor Project. Clearly the money the taxpayers spent, we're gonna get back in time. It's like any other project infrastructure. It does cost so we're not gonna get directly back, but over time we're gonna get it back in other ways. So I'm very proud of the project and very happy to see it going on right now. I do, however, still object to the language that we use on line six. Sheboygan agreed to a loan of four million dollars. I still think this is our investment in that and I think we need to make it clear to the public that that is our partnership with the project. Nothing that would be going on down there would be occurring if it wasn't for the four million dollars that we gave them. Now they do agree to pay it back by, as it says in number 12, repayment to Sheboygan are based that the room tax will be generated and collected and the property taxes will be paid. That would occur anyway. We're gonna get that, we're gonna get what they said, the $5 million through 2028. We have guarantees there so that they do not pay that. They'll give us a personal guarantees. I'm proud of the project. I think what we need to explain to the public though is that still is our investment. We are gonna get that back long-term. I'm very proud of the project and I'm proud to see that it's already generated income to the city and we'll continue to do so as well. Thank you. And you are right. That is for future investment in our community, long-range planning and it will generate a lot more than 25 million back by the time we're done with that area. Okay, if there's no other discussion, all in favor of the motion? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. 2533 will hold for 2542. 2534 through 41 to be referred. 2542 along with 2533 by Alderman Bauman, authorizing entering to contract for the proposed parking lots of South Pure Development, Alderman Bauman. Thank you. I pushed my button a little sooner. I apologize. I'd like to ask for suspension of the rules, please. Second. Moving to second for suspension. Is there any objections? Okay, Your Honor, the reason for the suspension, of course, is so that we can get these parking lots started already because of the fact that spring has sprung and we really need the things to get moving. So I then would like to accept and file the report of officer and then move that to resolution be put upon this passage. Alderman Bauman, just to clarify for the public, we have parking lot, South Pure. You or Tom want to tell them which parking lots we're talking about so they don't think we're paving the whole South Pure. Or, you know, go down, go ahead, be specific here. It includes the cul-de-sac off the east end of South Pure Drive. It's about 74 stalls, I believe. It includes 33 stalls that would be near the slips on South Pure Marina and also for improvements to the parking lot at the Rice Building, which that one we're going to hold off on that till we get through the RFPs, but we will tackle the other two. We need to be done by June 1st for the opening. Tom, as long as you're up there, can you tell them a little bit about the concrete that's going in that we started? They started Tuesday with a stamped concrete in the plaza areas. It's a colored concrete to look like slate it's a greenish color. They'll throw up black powder secondary color over it and they have forms that they lay over the concrete work in there that looks beautiful. It's just like someone spent hundreds of thousand dollars cutting a lane slate in there. If you have time, stop down and take a look just off the promenade on the south plaza. It looks great. It's a very nice detail that it does. Looked at it today. Thank you. We have a motion before us. Just another discussion. Pat, would you call the roll please? Mooney? Aye. Graf? Aye. Manny? Aye. Montmare? Aye. Moody? Aye. Perez? Aye. Greenfield? Aye. Stephan? Aye. Van Akron? Aye. Vanderweel? Aye. Longerman? Aye. Warner? Aye. Bauman? Aye. Berg? Aye. 14 Ayes. Motion carried. 2543 through 45 will lie over. 2546 by Alderman Bauman authorizing your honor. I'd like to ask for suspension one more time please. Second. Second. Go ahead. Moved in second for suspension. Is there any objections? Okay. If there isn't Alderman Bauman would you explain why? Yes, sir. Again, spring has sprung. I'm gonna say that one more time. And the reason being is that we need to get our concrete sidewalk construction projects under actually rolling. So needless to say the contractors are more than willing to get out there and get this going so we'd like to get this going as soon as possible. We'll also need, there's a resume of bids, isn't there? I'm looking for it. You're 2541. That'll have to be acted on also. Okay, separately? No, with it. You can file it at the same time. Well then with that then I would like to make the motion into accept and file the report of officer and pass the attached resolution 2546 for the concrete construction sidewalks. The motion has been made in second to pass the resolution and file the report of office. If there's another discussion, Pat would you call the roll please? Graf, Manny, Montemayor, Moody, Perez, Rinflaesh, Steffen, Van Agren, Van Der Wiel, Wongamon, Warner, Bauman, Berg, Bonet, 14 eyes. Motion carried. The rest 2547 through 52 to be referred, 2553 will lie over, 2554 by protection safety recommending denying beverage license, 6319 based on her voluntary withdrawal from the application process and denying beverage operation license 6360 based on his voluntary withdrawal of his application, his lack of candor on the application and his non-cooperation with the committee. Alderman Van Der Wiel. Thank you, Your Honor. I'd like to make a motion to accept and adopt the report of committee and to deny the two licenses. Also I'd ask if the applicants are here. They're not, Your Honor. We have a motion before us to accept and deny on 2554. Is there any other discussion? Hearing none, would you call the roll please? Manny, Montemayor, Moody, Perez, Rinflaesh, Steffen, Van Agren, Van Der Wiel, Wongamon, Warner, Bauman, Berg, Bonet, Graf, 14 eyes. Motion carried. 2555 will be referred, 2556 to be referred. Can I, go ahead. Forgot to mention any of these referrals. If you're not meeting anymore this council year, you have to tell me that they're going to the next council year. So right now, there's only one document that's going to the new council that was 2555. So if you want any other ones going to the new council, you have to let me know which ones they are. Okay. Done on 2556, there's some language that has to be changed on that one. Very correct. Yeah, in many of ours, we only approved one officer to be hired, and the other two to be looked at when the budget time comes up. They're not already saying three officers that could be hired by 204. I believe that doesn't say that. It does not say that. So that's. You want to approve one officer now? One officer, if finance can find the money, is what we send it to finance for, and two officers are going to be looked at at the time of budget time. I need a second on that. Second. Okay. We have a motion before us, or you need amendment first. This, I vote on the amendment. All, everybody understand the amendment? All in favor of the amendment? Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. And then it can just be referred. Okay. Then it will be referred as amended to finance. 2459 matters laid over by public protection of safety. Recommending filing documents submitting a communication from bare essential skin care, requesting a tour parking sign in front of the business. Alderman Warner. I thank your honor. I would make a motion to accept and adopt the report of committee and pass the attached ordinance. Do you want to take the next document too? Sure on that, I would make a motion the general ordinance be put upon its passage. And that ordinance is to add to the west side of South 11th street from Virginia Avenue to New Jersey Avenue to the no parking period regulations. Correct? Correct. We have motion before us, Alderman Warner. Yes, under discussion, your honor, on the first document, 2459. This is bare essentials on eighth street and with the entourage moving in and he added people in the area for parking in that area. Bare essentials, notice that it was harder for some of their elderly patrons to park in front of the building and get in and out. And so we're going to add that area to the tour parking for daytime only work, business all over so that bare essentials can, their elderly customers can get in there. And the committee thought it was a good idea. It only impacts about two parking spaces right in front of their place. And on the other one, that is an ordinance as you said, that adds the west side of South 11th street from Virginia to New Jersey Avenue to the no parking regulations. And in that instance, a police officer, Melanie Schmidt, has been working with Sheboygan Paper Box to address the problem that's been created when rock line employees park across from their loading docks. When the semis come in, they can't get in. And in working with rock line, they can't force their employees to use their parking lots. So they park on the street and keeps creating these problems rather than giving them tickets or asking them to move all the time by adding this to that area. The trucks will be able to get in for Sheboygan Paper Box and the employees of rock line have enough room in their parking lot to park. You may have to walk a little bit further but they have park adequate parking lots built for them. So this will add that to the no parking regulations. Thank you. Thank you. If there's no other discussion, what do you call it with that? Amanda Mayer, Moody, Perez, Rinfleisch, Steffen, Ben Akron, Vanderwheel, Wangeman, Warner, Bowman, Byrd, Bonet, Rob, Manny, 14 eyes. Motion carried. 2557 can be accepted and adopted. And that's... I need a motion. For me. I'm sorry. All in favor? I need a second. Oh, we have the second. Second. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. 2558, Resolution by Alderman Bauman, amending a lease agreement with the Sheboygan Kennel Club for 2004 through 2008. Alderman Bauman. Thank you, Your Honor. I promise this would be my last asking for suspension this evening. Sure. Is there any objections to suspension? Okay, Your Honor. The reason for suspension on this one is the fact that the Sheboygan Kennel Club will be holding their annual dog show at the Municipal Service Building the end of this month. Their contract has been worked out so that we can actually give them a contract this year. And from this point on, then they will be holding their shows the end of September rather than the end of April. So needless to say, that's why the reason was for suspension. So I then moved that the resolution be put upon its passage. Moved in second to resolution be put upon its passage under discussion. Alderman Bauman, one question, maybe you can't answer it. I see Dave, it's here in time. Have we worked out the parking situation since we moved the recycling center over there? I think Dave can answer that. Yeah, we met with representatives of the Kennel Club and we're gonna have some area on the backside that we'll be able to move some of our equipment around and provide the parking form since the drop-off site is now in the East Side building, so we've been working with them to accommodate that. Thank you, Dave. Okay, do you know their discussion? Pat, what'd you call the roll? Moody, Perez, Rindfeisch, Steffen, Van Akron, Vanderweel, Longerman, Warner, Bauman, Berg, Pune, Graf, Manny, Montemayor, 14 eyes. Motion carried. Resolution 2559, resolution by Alderman Warner, Doyle, Moody, Longerman, and Vanderweel, authorizing hiring outside legal counsel relative to the revocation of Tavern license, 2199 and 2181, Alderman Warner. I thank your honor. I make a motion. The resolution be put upon its passage. Suspension. Suspension. Oh, that one I need? I thought it was the next one. Okay, on that, first I would ask for suspension. Is there any objections to suspension? I'm surprised nobody's questioning this tonight with all the suspension, go ahead, proceed. You always have us in your counsel, you. Proceed. All right, thank you, your honor. This is a resolution that will authorize the city attorney to engage the services of special outside counsel for the common counsel and its committee on public protection and safety. In the matter of the hearing on the issue of revocation of the Tavern license of Cesar Lozano, license number 2199 and 2181, and authorizing payment for said services, goes on to say be it further resolved that the city finance director treasurer is hereby authorized and directed to draw on the city attorney's court legal judgment and settlements account number and payment for said services. And I guess I would just ask Steve if he could explain the reason behind why we have to go to outside legal counsel for situations like this. So those of you that've been on the council a while, I think are aware when we hold the license revocation or license suspension proceedings, their adversarial proceedings, our office generally prosecutes the case. And there's case law that says our office can't both prosecute the case and also advise the council who would in fact is the jury or the decision maker in the case. So what we've done in these circumstances the last few years is hired Joe Volkner from the Olsen-Cloet firm who participates and during the proceeding and advises the council in the event that any legal issues come up for the council. That avoids any due process problems in the license revocation proceedings. And there are cases that were, I know a village ran into problems there where city attorney tried to do both and they raised the due process objection and struck down the proceeding. So they had to do it over again. If I could, your honor, also this really ties into the next document. What we have typically done in the past with councils done is hold the hearings before the entire council and hold them here at the council meeting during the council meeting with the council, Alderman present as part of the regular council meeting. The statutes and our ordinances allow an alternative that a lot of municipalities utilize and that is for committee of the council to hold the hearing. And this was discussed at Public Protection and Safety Committee and they're recommending to the council that this revocation proceeding be heard by the committee in lieu of having the whole testimony in front of the whole council during the council meeting. It's thought that it'd be more efficient. It would be done, you'd have five Alderman instead of 16 going through all this. It wouldn't be on a council night so it wouldn't take up an order in an amount of time. And this particular proceeding is gonna involve potentially five police officers witnesses and I'm not sure if the defendant will have witnesses as well but it could be fairly involved. There's 11 or 13 counts in the complaint. So it could be fairly lengthy in time. So the committee is recommending that the hearing be held in the committee. Now what the statutes and the ordinance provide for is the council is still the final decision maker so the committee after the hearing prepares a report with the findings and conclusions, submits that to the council, also submits that to the complainant that's the person who has the license that is being requested to be revoked. And that individual has an opportunity to file objections with the report that's submitted by the committee to the council. But then that report gets submitted to the council and the council has an opportunity to hear any objections that there might be and then issued its determination based on the report. It's felt be more efficient process and I think the committee is recommending trying it and see how it works in relation relative to the full quasi judicial hearing before the whole council. The timing of this is such that complaint went out and complainant or the license holder was notified that the hearing would be held at the public protection and safety committee meeting next Tuesday, I believe the 14th. Wednesday. Wednesday. Wednesday the 14th. So if the council doesn't wanna go that route we can undo that but the way it's currently scheduled is that the license committee would hold a hearing next Wednesday and submit their report then to the council at the next council meeting on the 19th which would be the last council meeting to hear. So if there are any questions about the process or about anything else in that regard. Alderman Stephan has one. What adds Steve that on that hearing part is gonna be taped and that tape then is gonna be given to the county and they're gonna transcribe it. That's something they do to make sure that everything is perfect. So just a little added thing. Alderman Stephan. I guess that was part of my concern was if I can see the logic in it but knowing how the court system works once the person appeals then we're all gonna hear it again anyways and I don't know if we've saved anything. I mean do you anticipate that if the person appeals that it'll be much shorter than it would be the first time? It's not an appeal Alderman Stephan. It's just they're allowed to make an objection to any of the findings, specific findings that are in there and you can then those findings or objections can either be in written form or verbal. So if they're in written form then you could just look at them and render your decision. Even if they're verbal it'd be a lot shorter than going through the whole hearing. They would be objecting to specific portions of the findings. Okay and actually that is the next document but that also when the law and licensing committee comes online that this function would be done by them not public protective safety but in order to meet the term to have this done by the 14th that's why it's happening in our committee. So it was something we did talk about in committee and thought would be useful because those people that are on that committee are trained through the licensing clerk in the specifics of the licensing function. There are probably no little more unless the rest of the council wants to attend those licensing meetings to learn everything there is about the licensing function than the general council. That was the thought of that. But I guess first we have this one to vote on then the second one. Can you restate your motion to pass? You can do the second one too. Okay my first motion on 2559 is a motion that the resolution be put upon its passage and on 2560. No let's do one at a time it'll be cleaner in my minutes. Sure. Okay we have motion before us in seconded. Now I'll still have a discussion. Hang on Alderman Warder. Alderman Lee has a question. Thank you Your Honor. I probably should have asked this in committee. Oftentimes we call people in and they don't show up if the parties involved here don't show up then it would have to go to the new council wouldn't it? Actually I think you have a lot of leniency. I shouldn't say leniency you have a lot of authority I guess you would say and the committee would probably feel if they don't show up unless there was a proper legal appeal made for some reason they actually have held off already from appearing in our committee. So we can make a decision whether they're there or not is that what you're saying? That we would find out from the attorneys at the time but I think it's possible. Okay. Thank you. Okay. If there's no other questions or discussion. Pat would you call. Alderman Warder do you have something else you want to say? Otherwise we'll call him. He's away from the next talk. Okay next talk. Okay. Would you call the roll please? Perez. Aye. Ruinfleisch. Aye. Stefan. Aye. Vanakren. Aye. Vanderwil. Aye. Wangaman. Aye. Warner. Bowman. Aye. Berg. Aye. Bonet. Motion carried. 2560. On this your honor I would make a motion to accept and adopt the report of committee. Second. Move to second to accept and adopt the report of committee on 2560 under discussion. Under discussion your honor this will allow the hearing to be held in front of public protection safety next week. Thank you. If there's no other discussion all in favor. Aye. Opposed? Motion carried. Other matters Steve. 2561 is a communication from Dave Cooke environmental park director of Maywood requesting to hire temporary staff.  That will go to special committee on risk. I see another one of our new alderman walked in Bonnie Serdas here this evening with us also. Welcome Bonnie. And if anyone looks at the business journal in the March issue, Weiskerber's plans, Weiskerber's plans, Sheboygan restaurant in March, a nice article in it. If anybody would want a copy of it, very nice. It tells all about the Harbor Center restaurant down there so. Move to second to adjourn under discussion. Hearing none all in favor. Both.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. As you know, banking sector has been recently in news, much in news, be it demonetization or the NPAs or the whole debate about privatization. Today we have with us in our studio Mr. Thomas Franco, General Secretary of IBOC, All India Bank Offices Confederation. Welcome to NewsClick, Mr. Thomas Franco. So let us begin with demonetization, which still may be not a fresh topic but still showing its impact. For example, the government made a lot of claims during demonetization. It said that three to four lakhs of black money will be exposed and that can be spent on people. But so far government has not come out with any accounts. It hasn't told us how much of the money has come back and how much of the money has been revealed to be black money. So what do you think of this whole thing? What do you think of the figures that are not being shown? What do you think of the impact of demonetization on the economy? First of all, as you rightly pointed out, there were projections saying that at least three to four lakh crores will not come back and that will become the money which can be used, the RBI can transfer it to the government of India and people were even talking about giving a credit of 15,000 rupees for every Jandan account which is 28 crore accounts. Even today, the Reserve Bank of India is not in a position to tell us the data. I don't know where is the difficulty for them. It is so unfortunate that the Reserve Bank governor tells a volume on committee that we are still counting the notes. We in the bank, we know what has happened. We have already collected, we have given the report on the 31st of December. RBI has the data on how much money has been collected. So ultimately what is going to come back as black money or tax income is questionable. There has been little more improvement in the income tax collection. More people have filed returns and more people have paid little more tax. It can be because of the natural growth also but to some extent tax collection has slightly improved. Counterfeit currency, people have now started printing 2000 rupees note. It is coming to the banks. Terrorism, it has increased. Nowhere it has stopped. Corruption, it is, corruption does not stop in one place in one day. The root cause of the corruption if it is not arrested. And in my assumption, the root cause of the corruption is the large corporates who bribe the people at the top. Finally, if we look at the balance sheet of demonetization, we do not see that any of the objectives have been achieved. Even in the longer run, it may not really help the economy. In the banking sector, there seem to be a crisis at the moment. The NPAs of the whole banking sector probably standard rupees 7.2 or 3 lakh crore. And out of which the NPAs of public sectors are the majority. About 5 lakh crores of the NPAs actually belong to the public sector. So, how did these NPAs accumulate because it is a huge amount and how is it going to affect the banking sector, particularly the public sector banks? Even today's public sector banks are dealing with 72% of the deposit and the advances. So, naturally the NPA in the public sector will be more than private sector when you compare the amount. Recently reports have come that ICICI, AXIS, Yes Bank, they have hidden their NPAs to show that they are getting more profit, they have been hiding and now investigations are going on. If you see the data after nationalization up to 91-92, banks were giving quite a number of small loans, medium sized loans. So, even if some of the accounts become non-performing assets, it was not affecting the balance sheet much. Earlier we had a norm of RBI called the Credit Authorization Scheme in which even a loan above 1 crore, you had to get an approval of Reserve Bank of India. All this was removed. So, there was no question of having even a maximum limit to a borrower or a corporate. So, this has led to a situation today. Only 0.5% of the loans given as on March 30, 2015 has gone to small people which is less than 25,000 loans. Naturally, more loans have been given to few individuals which are huge loans as per the data published by Business World. Reliance Group has an outstanding in all companies taken together. It comes to more than 175,000 crores. Out of that, Reliance has two groups. One is Mukesh and Anil Ambani's Group. Anil Ambani's Group now was to be declared as NPA. They are the banks, RBI, everybody is taking a different stand that you restructure it. Reliance's defense which is an NPA has been converted into a long-time finance, 20 years repayment so that it is not declared as NPA and he can compete in the defense deals. Similarly, they relate communications more than 40,000 crores. So, the norms which are there itself is not applied properly to all. Favoritism is visible. Parliamentary Standing Committee's recommendations have not been implemented. What was the role of the RBI director in the board? What was the role of the Finance Ministry's representatives in the board of these banks? What action has been taken against them? What actions have been taken against the board of directors and MDs who took these decisions? And why you cannot convert this long infrastructure loans into a long-term loan and give it to industrial finance corporation? Easily, these accounts will become performing assets. We have done an analysis. They called 10 banks as weak banks and they asked us to sign one memorandum of understanding to prepare a turnaround plan. We started an analysis. All these banks, it is all consortium-ledding and if we address just 20 to 30 corporate advances, we don't require additional capital and the NPA will come down. Parliament itself, they have said that 86% of the NPA is to the corporates. A firm himself has said that it is just 20 to 30 accounts, is in the hands of the government to take a decision. They are talking about people are not able to take decisions because they are afraid of CBA enquiry. They are afraid of vigilance enquiry. Our question is, what is wrong in the vigilance enquiry or CBA enquiry against people like Anjali Bhargava? Who was responsible for giving lot of loans to corporates in a short time frame in United Bank of India? Mr. Yogesh Agarwal in IDBI, he violated all the norms and gave money to Kingfisher Airlines when Kingfisher was already declared as an NPA. What is wrong in investigating? Other than that, we don't come across so many investigations against senior executives. The investigations are all at the lower level of people who give small loans. These big loans are handled by the EDs, the committees which are sitting at the top. So if the government and RBI are really serious, one, they have to implement these recommendations of the parliamentary standing committee. Two, they have to put a ceiling on credit limit to a corporate. And these groups like Kambani, Sadani, who are getting large loans at very cheap interest rates and not able to repair the loans. The reality is that some of these loans, if you declared as NPA, the banks themselves will collapse. Now if Kambani group you declare as such NPA, the entire banking sector which has financed through consortium advances, they will become a bank itself become non-performing. So this ceiling has to be brought in and the credit orientation has to change. We have to reorient the lending policies to help the larger majority of the country. The farmers you go and talk to them, they say that we are not getting adequate credit, especially small and marginal farmers. Traders, they are saying that we are not getting credit. Women, they are saying that we are not even getting loan under the SHG lending. Students are saying that we are not getting education loan. Entrepreneurs are saying that we are not getting cheap credit. So this dichotomy has to be addressed. Once you reorient the lending policies and lend to larger number of people and smaller advances, naturally the NPA will come down. And immediate steps are needed to get back what has been given to this large corporate. There is no way to say that the bankers have done something wrong. They have perfectly followed the policies of the government and RBA. In the background of these NPAs, there is a lot of talk of privatization. Deputy Governor, RBA's Deputy Governor Viral Lacharya has at times commented that the only way out is reprivatization of some of the banks and the divestment of stake in some of the bigger banks. With the Governor, Urjit Patel, at certain points they have indicated that privatization needs to be done. And again, France minister Arun Jaitley also has said that privatization of the banks is called for right now. So how does it impact the economy and the credit outflow to a lot of sectors that depend on public sector banks? The Prime Minister in an economy conclave made a statement very clearly that government has no business to be in business. He also made a statement that public sector was warned to die. The chief economic advisor to the government says that nationalization was a blunder. The RBI governor goes abroad and makes a speech in which he says that some of these banks will not survive. We should allow it to die. Now we have seen during the 2008 financial crisis that Indian banking system was not affected much because of the public sector banks. Why we ready has been appreciated that the central bank was playing a crucial role in safeguarding the banks. Now if you see the achievements of the public sector banks which people are not talking about. Between 69 and 1991 tremendous achievement has been done as per the goals given to them. And you should also recollect that before 1969 there were a lot of private sector banks which could not cater to the economy. The purpose of nationalization was not creating profit for the banks and giving to the government. It was a social objective of reaching credit to the common man, reaching banking services to the rural interiors. And enough of studies are there to show that all these goals have been achieved. Day by day the services were improving but then suddenly we decided to go on a different track. We had Narasimhamta committee, then we had Anil Kandelwal committee, we had Raghuram Rajan committee which all started talking about privatizing the public sector. The corporates were looking at it like this. Earlier we did not have that kind of an expertise to run banks. Today these public sector banks are doing well so let us start owning them. So we do not have to go and borrow. We can use the same money for our own industries. That is exactly what was happening before 1969 which has come out in very different studies. R.K. Ghazari report is there. All India rural credit survey report is there. How skewed growth in advances were taking place. Out of the 28 crore Jandan accounts were opened. 95% of the accounts are opened by public sector banks, not the private sector banks. Whereas private sector banks control 28% of the banking business. Will they give this loan called the Mudra loan or the Stand Up India loan or Start Up India loan, agriculture loan, education loan. They will give for corporates. They will give for education loan for going abroad where they can take security. So the access to credit will become a big question when privatization takes place. So time has come that we should bring people of the country. The farmers, the traders, the students, the youth, the women, the entrepreneurs, small manufacturers, small and tiny and micro enterprises. They should come together and demand that we require these public sector banks to be in public. Because if privatization takes place they all are going to be affected. Will ICICA access our standard charter or city bank, go and lend to these people who are marginalized. They will never do that. So privatization is not the solution. More of public services, more of public sector banks are the need of the other.