City officials voted down two proposed amendments to the 2010 capital budget Monday night that would have removed $8 million in Tax Incremental Funding money allocated for the Edgewater Hotel project.

With three votes in favor and three in opposition to an amendment by Ald. Satya Rhodes-Conway, District 12, which proposed taking out the TIF money but leaving $300,000 in Small Cap Loan funding, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz broke the tie and killed the amendment.

In a similar amendment, Ald. Jed Sanborn, District 1, proposed removing all funding for the project. This too failed, only receiving a vote of approval from Sanborn.

Rhodes-Conway introduced her amendment as a response to the uncertainty currently surrounding the Edgewater project.

“We don’t even know if we have a project that is eligible for TIF funding,” Rhodes-Conway said. “We don’t know what the budget looks like. We don’t know if the project will be supported by the neighborhood. We don’t actually know anything about this project for certain.”

With all the unanswered questions, Rhodes-Conway said she feels it is not appropriate to commit the TIF funds to the project.

Rhodes-Conway does not want her amendment to be seen as a statement against Edgewater, however, saying she would “be happy to vote ‘yes’ on a renovated Edgewater.”

According to city Comptroller Dean Brasser, if the amendment were to have passed, approval for the TIF funding would have required a 15-vote super-majority, as opposed to 11.

If it were a quality project, Rhodes-Conway said, 15 votes would not be difficult to win.

The mayor, however, disagreed, saying 15 votes creates an unnecessary “higher bar” and he was skeptical as to whether or not the project could receive 15 votes.

Although the amendments did not receive enough votes, several community members voiced their support for the proposals, or, at least, opposition to current Edgewater plans.

With ongoing fluctuations in Edgewater plans, some argued the project is not ready and therefore should not be funded using taxpayers’ dollars.

“This project is being changed so the TIF application is for a project not being built,” said Fred Mohs, a member of the Mansion Hill Steering Committee on Edgewater.

Additionally, Mohs raised concerns with the Edgewater project’s non-compliance with historic district codes. Mohs said the original plans threaten the preservation of historic district character, a major concern among Mansion Hill residents.

“We want a good design,” Mohs said. “We don’t want to regret this.”

Speaking in opposition to the amendment, Mark Hoffmann, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the project was essential to job creation. He said it would create not only construction jobs but permanent jobs.

Madison Concourse Hotel manager Stephen Zanoni, however, said the estimate of 500 new jobs, to which Hoffmann was referring, is an “unrealistic” projection.

Furthermore, the project would adversely affect the downtown hotel industry, Zanoni argued, especially during these “unprecedented times.”

“The downtown hotel community is very concerned about the proposed Edgewater project,” Zanoni said. “We feel [it] will put some severe hardships on the downtown hotel community.”

Because the amendments were similar in nature, Sanborn’s amendment did not initiate any additional debate among alders.