Visitors to Halloween 2006 will probably still have to pay $5 to enter a fenced-off State Street, but Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has backed off several other key points of his controversial plan.
The City Council will likely approve a resolution tonight that establishes Cieslewicz's Halloween designs, including ticketed entry and live entertainment. However, the mayor's original plan to close the State Street gates at midnight and clear the street at 1 a.m. appears to be dead.
As of Monday night, alterations to Cieslewicz's plan included the following, according to a draft resolution supplied to The Daily Cardinal by Ald. Austin King, District 8:
The city will sell 80,000 tickets for the event, up from the 50,000 originally recommended by the Madison fire marshall. Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, had called the lower number ""stupid"" though Madison Alcohol Policy Coordinator Joel Plant had insisted Halloween 2006 would not attract more than 60,000 people.
Event security will open the gates blocking State Street at 7:30 p.m. Saturday to begin taking tickets and will close the gates at 1:30 a.m. The original plan called for a 6:30 p.m. start time and a midnight cutoff.
City staff will deliver tickets to residents of State Street free of charge. The original plan made no provision for State Street residents.
Last week Verveer and King organized a student town hall meeting to address concerns over the plan. King, an opponent of the mayor's plan, had promised to include student suggestions in the revised Halloween plan. However, student concerns over police presence and crowd-control measures remained unanswered as of Monday night.
Central District Police Commander Mary Schauf said police would still use the same measures employed in years past to disperse Halloween revelers. Among them, Schauf specifically mentioned pepper spray and widespread arrests to calm the ""heavily intoxicated crowd.""
""If any of you guys still want to misbehave, we've got ways of getting the situation under control,"" Schauf said to students last week. She added that police have been justified in every instance that they have used pepper spray, which can travel several hundred yards through the air.
Cieslewicz and Verveer were still working late Monday night on further alterations to the Halloween resolution, which has met with growing student opposition since it was announced in late July. The mayor's spokesperson, George Twigg, said changes to the plan could still be made before Tuesday's council meeting.
""There's still some flexibility there,"" Twigg said of the mayor's position Monday night. ""Even as we speak we're working on some language that might make some adjustments that make people happier with the event.""
