Transcript
MK: Hi and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor as a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor we discuss current events in local politics and policy governance and other civic good times. I’m Molly Kleiman and my pronouns are she, her
JL: Jessica Letaw my pronouns are she, her
MH: I’m not muted. I’m Michele. Here’s my pronouns issue here.
MK: We’re your co hosts to help you get informed and get involved. It’s your city. Today we’re taking a deeper dive into city boards and commissions were interviewing Ann Arbor resident and former planning, Commissioner, Julie weatherby to help us understand more to help you and arbor follow along and get more involved. Let’s jump in. So first, welcome, Julie. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this with us today just to start out. I love it if you could just introduce yourself a little bit and tell us a little bit about how you got involved with City boards and commissions. All right.
JW: My name is Julie weatherby and I got involved in city boards and commissions in the way many people get involved in city issues which is I was objecting to something that was going on in my neighborhood and I objected to it so much that I went online to see all the other people who I knew were objecting to the same thing and I stumbled on some people who were not objecting to this, they actually thought it was good. I couldn’t imagine how that was going to
How that could be so what I did is I reached out to those people. So this was on a blog called arbor update, which actually the university or the ADL is going to is actually record holding it now. So it will be held in perpetuity.
MH: So than ever and ever library. Yep. The archive ever update
JW: Their archiving our update. So it’s, it’s going to be out there. It’s actually out there now. Anyway, so I went on and I was like, what, what, who are these who are these crazy kids who think this is a good development and I actually reached out to the people and said, Who are you, and why do you like this development because I live here and I don’t like it. Here’s the reasons why. And they were a little shocked that some lady in the neighborhood would reach out to them and one of them, Richard Murphy, who now is doing a lot of work in development and in Ypsilanti said, all right, I’ll meet with you to talk about this. And that was sort of the start of a beautiful friendship. We ended up not necessarily seeing eye to eye, but understanding the other issues. So they asked me to join arbor update and so this was quite some time ago. Wow. And I wrote for our update for about six years until we shut it down. I then it started at that point started tweeting and our city council meetings and between 2009 and 2010 so that’s actually been going on for over a decade now, which
MK: I remember that from like the early days of knowing you on social media that you would tweet it was one of my first introductions to like city politics was your tweets about those meetings.
JW: Which is funny. Yeah it. I’ve had a lot of people say that that my tweets have gotten them into city politics, which I think is kind of hilarious.
MH: You were you the one that started that tradition or
JW: There were a group of us because basically, it was kind of the, the people I had done the city council updates for arbor update. And so then just kind of segue it into a different media.
MH: So,
JW: So it was kind of a the same group of people who had done it in arbor update we kind of just moved it over to Twitter.
MH: Yeah that’s kind of the main thing I’ve been doing for engagement this writing on the NR for accounting. A to counsel hashtag. Yep.
JW: I mean, it has a lot of coverage. Now, I was at a doing a wine tasting up in northern Michigan in Traverse City, and somebody was like oh I follow your tweets on
MH: City Council so
JW: Yeah I was like, just I can be free wine. If
MH: You deserve it.
JW: Yeah. So, and then, because I got known kind of for being involved in things I got appointed to the citizens Advisory Committee for the our foresee are to a zoning district study that was supposed to be a short Committee or a short six months, maybe, I think, and it went for two years and we couldn’t agree on anything and it kind of ground to a halt about a year later, they re imagined it. I was the chair. So that was in 2013 they asked me to be the chair and then from there I was appointed to planning commission in 2016 and then was the planning commission liaison to the Zoning Board of appeals is EPA also in 2016 so it’s kind of the auick. But yeah, so basically it started from objecting to something talking about it on the internet and then eventually being a planning, Commissioner.
MH: Did the thing happen.
JW: It did happen.
MH: Are you happy about an hour.
JW: It is not terrible. It has had very little effect on my life, it’s not great. I mean, it’s uh you know it. I don’t know that it worked out terribly well for the developer either, you know, we had. I mean, the city has a lot of rules and regulations. It’s fine, it’s fine. They get maid service twice a month which the rest of us are a little disappointed about because we would like they’d service. Twice. But sure, y’all. Can you can track it also aeactly. Yeah. No, it’s fine. And I think, you know, part of part of my kind of changing ideas on this is these things that I was so adamant about that would ruin everything did not ruin everything. The parking is fine. The building’s fine, the people who live there are fine. It’s all fine.
MK: Like it’s really helpful to have some of that long view perspective.
JW: Yes. I mean, it does because you know it’s it’s hard when you see change changes not easy. And in a neighborhood. It’s not easy and but when you have the long term. I’ve been in my house now for 24 years and a lot of things have changed. And so I’ve been good. And so I’m in bed, but I still have a really nice life here and you know there’s a new building going in. I’m pretty excited about it. So that’s
MK: Very cool. I always like to think about. Like, imagine that you were someone who moved into the neighborhood. After the thing happened. Would you just take it for granted, or would you be like, you know, Oh, this is terrible like
JW: Yeah, I think.
MH: A lot of times that I think that gets you out away from that fear of change type of mindset to just imagine that it had already happened, you know,
JW: Yep. Yeah.
MK: So I’m going to lupus back to specifically boards and commissions. And Julie, you’re a part of my origin story with with City boards and commissions, which I think is another maybe common way that people start getting involved in in city, city government city governance work is that they know someone who’s involved and they sort of get get pulled in. So I wanted to give a little bit of an overview of boards and commissions. Which I’ve done some cramming for this episode, I didn’t know a lot outside of the Commission that I serve on which is Transportation Commission. But the city actually has over 200 volunteer Commissioners across all of the boards and commissions in the city. And there are over 500 meetings a year. So pretty much any day of the year. If you want to go see something happening in city government. There’s probably a commission meeting somewhere that you can listen in on some of the, the, when we were prepping for this. We were talking about what’s the difference between a board and a commission and nobody knows they they get constituted in different ways. So some many of the city Commission’s are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by city council, is that how we would say it. I think are nominated by the nominated by the man. Right nominated by the mayor and then confirmed by city council. So there has to be some degree of consensus on appointments to boards and commissions. Historically, they have been a political although there’s been some shenanigans will say about that that we’re not going to dive into today. So tempting. I know it’s very tempting. We’re not going to do it. Today we’re going to cover the real, the real history of it. And the way these boards and commissions operate. They’re all volunteers everyone on these Commission’s except for the people who are have been appointed out of because of their jobs because they work for triple a TA, or because they work for this, the school district, but for the most part, these are volunteers. But there’s a lot of there’s still a lot of rules on them. It’s part of the government, the boards and commissions are constituted in many cases because of state laws. Sometimes it’s a city, city resolution. Sometimes it’s both. There are legal obligations that we talked about, including foil off. So the materials that come out of commission meetings are flexible and they’re all governed by the Open Meetings Act.
JL: So just a reminder. So FOIA is the Freedom of Information Act, which is how the public and journalists go about requesting information from public bodies.
MK: Right and but because of the Open Meetings Act. Most of the work of these boards and commissions is already happening, mostly in public. A lot of them are broadcast on our community. Television Network, which you can also stream on YouTube and they’re recorded so you can watch them later. All of the documentation from each meeting is posted to the city website. We talked about legend star and our agenda meeting. That’s where you can getiIt’s just so much stuff in terms of reports and meeting minutes and questions that people are asking. So a lot of the sort of Resident engagement with the city. Is formalized through these boards and commissions, I think, is probably the way I would, I would say it and I’m just a lot of them just meet once a month, and they serve in an advisory capacity, but some of them have real decision making authority. And one of the reasons we wanted to bring Julian is to talk about planning Commission and the Zoning Board of appeals, which do have actual legal decision making authority around some really important aspects of the city. So Julie, I’d love it if you could tell us a little bit about the planning commission and CVA. However, it makes sense for you to explain those things. Okay.
JW: So planning commission is one of those Commissions I think people know a little bit more about in part because it’s one that people get a notice for if something’s happening in their neighborhood. You for a big project. It’s a place, it’s a it’s a time where you can come and speak and people hear about that a lot. It’s still not as well known as city council, but a lot of decisions are made in planning commission and for some of them like medical marijuana. The final decisions actually do lie in plant in the planning commission rather than city council.
MK: So what was, what was it the planning. Got to do about medical marijuana
JW: So we got to to approve locations for medical marijuana dispensaries dispensaries or whatever they were the terminology kept changing as we were going through and and so those those things did end up at at Planning Commission, which was a little bit of a surprise for people who had followed Planning Commission and city council, a long time because you kind of, at some point, start to discount planning commission and just go to city council, because everything is going to end up at City Council anyway, but the special exception uses for the medical marijuana ended at planning commission. So there are a few special exception uses I think are one of those things that is a planning commission
MH: And that’s because they are actually like planning Commission’s are enabled by state law, and yet specified to have that power.
JW: And one thing that people should know is that Ann Arbor. Does this in its own way and many places don’t have a development go through both planning and city council, it would end up planning it would go through planning staff and then Planning Commission because of the planning commission is the state body for this and arbor takes that extra step. We could go through that for a long time, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but most development does go through both planning and city council in Ann Arbor, but that is not a given
JL: And I just want to throw out a call back to the fact we’ve been saying ever since we started the podcast. If you’re interested in city work Council is often not the right place to engage it because that’s where work begins at it’s very like inception. And where it ends. If you really want to get into the meat of stuff that you’re interested in boards and commissions is almost always a place to do it. So when what Julie’s talking about folks being surprised. That something shows up a planning that that’s something that actually happens on a regular basis. Folks are like, wait, I thought that this was a council thing when actually it’s a different body. Yeah.
JW: And so, you know, Planning Commission is planning commission works, mostly on the sort of details of projects. You know where the driveways are what the materials are everything to try to make a project as good as it can be within the legal parameters. And I think that’s something that people also are surprised at is, I don’t like it is not sufficient for something to not go through planning. Planning Commissioner has to look and say, I might hate this building, but legally it fits the legal parameters and so I might approve it. And so there you know I know when I first started, I was like, all these people are saying they hate it but they approve this building. What, what, you know, but that is actually how that works is when you’re on any of these boards and commissions. It’s not just about you having your say like a work meeting. It is there are legal parameters and a lot of times you end up approving or not approving something based on the legal or what you’re you’ve been tasked with not your own personal beliefs on it, Sony board of appeals is very much that way. And a call forward to an episode that we haven’t recorded yet. We will be doing one on master Planning and Zoning next month. So what Julie’s talking about the legal framework by which development decisions are made, will be getting into that soon. Perfect. And so as a planning, Commissioner, you, my understanding is the planning commission is a lot more involved than what I’ve experienced on transportation. So you actually go to on site visits and the meetings are really frequent it’s it’s a quite a lot of work. Yep. So there are meetings, three times a month and those meetings can to have the meetings are open public meetings. One is a working session and which is also open to the public, but is is not there’s there’s like public commentary time at the end, but it’s really a working meeting. And so, those that to a month are similar to city council, they can go till the wee hours of the morning
And then the working meeting is usually, you know, seven to nine on the off. So it’s like it’s the first and third Tuesdays of the month. And then the second Tuesday is the working meeting.
For Planning Commission, but then there’s also subcommittees a planning commission. So there’s the ordinance review committee and and you also have other In my case, I was also appointed to the Zoning Board of appeals as the planning commission liaison. So you also would go to those meetings which were also twice twice a month, once a month, once a month.
MK: So tell us about the Zoning Board of appeals
JW: So I really like the Zoning Board of appeals although it is frustrating. Because it is one of those ones where, you know, I don’t care if your wall goes six inches over where your wall is supposed to go. It makes the most sense. Sure great. Do it.
MH: But that’s your job to care, right. You have to, you know, you have to
JW: Look at it, is this. Does this make sense? You know, people have a lot of hardships going into zoning board of appeals or stated hardships and you know, just because you have a different living situation or whatever, doesn’t mean I’m going to approve this you know this whatever you’re asking for which which can literally come down to three or four inches or a foot of does this go over too far. Is this the right material. Can I do a second floor addition. Can I put in a ramp. Can I do you know there’s a lot of picky details. The thing I liked about the NBA was nobody came in with preconceived notions and it is you everyone comes into city council Planning Commission transportation with their own body of experience, their knowledge. preconceived notions, whatever you want to call it, you come in with a certain understanding and that’s great because we want everyone to come in with their knowledge but CVA most people don’t come in with any sort of preconceived notions of a driveway or a material or. And so it’s really
JL: So existential
JW: I love it. Yeah, it’s, it’s very collegial like it it you really, you know, when somebody talks you really are listening because it helps to see what somebody else says about this and and your opinions change as you listen and I found that kind of a, an interesting it is a little bit scary because you’re sort of just plunked into you might not know anything about construction or and you have to make these decisions but signage is another one. But it’s, it’s very interesting. And the people on the CVA tend to be people who you might not have heard of in other boards and commissions or it’s it’s not sort of a politically motivated one. So it’s, it’s interesting. I mean, I, I definitely recommend it if you like kind of the nuts and bolts of Development, but iIt is very specific it’s a, it’s not
JL: Good. I have a quick question for you. So what is one thing that people have rabidly strong opinions about that you didn’t expect let’s see.
JW: I think it really -I think what I’ll say about that is that everyone has a rapidly strong opinion about something and it may be something you have never in your wildest dreams thought someone would have a rabidly strong opinion about it.
JL: FEELING VERY seen right now, Julie. Thank you.
JW: You know window wells or overhangs or greenery, or how big a closet should be or what constitutes a reasonable use of something versus not a reasonable use you know, some people think the minimum size for a house should be 3000 square feet and they feel very strongly that the minimum size for a useful house should be 3000 square feet. That’s not my feeling because I live in a house that is much smaller than that but you know, people have very strong opinions and when they go to the NBA. They’re paying about $1,000 to appear in front of the BA and argue their case. So let’s read it. I think it just went up to 1000
MK: So for the NBA. These are all sort of renovation kinds of things where there’s already or or does the Zoning Board of appeals also deal with zoning request zoning changes for things that haven’t been built yet.
JW: Yep, it’s, it’s sort of zoning related if they were ruled against or the city has said, No, that doesn’t fit within our zoning scheme, you can’t do x or y. Then you can appeal to the Zoning Board of appeals and it is a quasi judicial board. So the next step is you would go before a judge.
MK: Oh, wow.
JW: So you don’t go before city council. You don’t go before you go before a judge, one of the ones that I was involved in was parking minimums. So if you don’t you know if you think that you don’t, you shouldn’t be required to do as much parking or as little parking maybe in the future we’ll have as little parking you can go before the CPA and say, I don’t think we should be required to do as much parking here and the Zb a will rule on that so that can be a big deal.
MK: Yeah, that’s, I mean we’ve talked about parking minimums at least twice before I think on this podcast. So I hadn’t thought about the, the role of planning and CPA in in that process of getting more or less parking. So I also wanted to talk a little bit about how people get on to committees or onto commissions and boards and how how appointments work so you know, I can my origin story starts with you, Julie, because we knew each other from work, many, many, many years ago now and you’re involved with the city with the planning and then I guess you heard about an opening on Transportation Commission. And you reached out to me and at that point we hadn’t worked together for a few years. We hadn’t seen each other. But we had stayed social media friends and I think I had helped start common cycle, which is an harbors sort of bike nonprofit that helps people fix their bikes and so my social media was often full of bikes and I think that you. I think that’s how you thought Oh Molly could do. Transportation Commission.
I didn’t even know Transportation Commission existed when you reached out to me about it.But I was very excited about it because I would ride my bike all around town, and I would think about all the ways I would want to make our streets better if it was up to me. And I was like, well, there’s a there’s a commission, I can, it can be kind of up to me and it turns out it’s not really up to me still, and I’m the chair now but that was, that was how I how I got there. So you there’s an application process on the website. It’s sort of one apple on the city website. It’s one application for all of the boards and commissions and the there’s a review process that I’m going to admit is still a little bit murky to me. I don’t know if any of you have more details about how those reviews happen and then eventually the mayor nominates and people city council appoints them and then people get to be on boards and commissions. And as I said, these are all volunteer. So in terms of relevant experience. It doesn’t necessarily have to be relevant professional experience. The goal, the way I think of boards and commissions, is that there are many different kinds of expertise and the public has meant public’s have many different kinds of expertise and so that expertise as a disabled person using the buses as a parent of children, trying to bike your kids around whatever those experiences are those can qualify you to serve on these different boards and commissions outside of whatever your professional work is. Um, but yeah. So, do you know how the review process happens. Any of you.
JL: I was just going to weigh in and say it is murky to me as well.
MK: Okay.
MH: I think in a lot of play a lot of points for a lot of the Commission’s it’s not specified. And I think it’s just like the mayor will look through it and then make some nominations. There was a resolution last year to have Commissions themselves be able to like give their suggestions to the mayor and there’s a couple of conditions that have their own special processes like I think when the well, there’s the right now there’s a thing going on with the Council of the commons has a special process where it’s not mayor nominates and City Council approves when they were instituting the Independent community police oversight commission, they task force that was tasked with designing for Commission, they wanted to have a process, they didn’t really trust for mayor at the time and so they wanted a process that was like that the Human Rights Commission was gonna nominate people and then the city council would vote on them and I’m not sure about the degree to which that actually got implemented, I think, I think now, it ended up just being the standard process for the mayor dominates and the City Council approves but I think that’s right but but why don’t we talk for a couple minutes about the specifically the ICP OC, the independent community police oversight mission.
MK: Michelle I think you maybe had a couple of things you wanted to say about that, but that’s one of our cities newest commissions and that’s one where there. It’s there was a lot more strife around its creation, then something like the Transportation Commission.
MH: Right, that’s basically what I wanted to say that is that you know, they wanted a process that was more open and involved than just having the mayor look through the things and nominate things because the people who were on the so that that task force or they had a
I see PFC was designed by the police Task Force, which was convened over the summer of 2018 to design it and you know, they didn’t. The people on that committee and the people end up and the members of the public who showed up to talk about it didn’t trust the mayor’s record.
On police oversight.
JL: And I think it’s true not just have this mayor. I think they didn’t want the, the mayor, the person have the right to be a bottleneck to the process. Yeah.
MH: And feel more open
JL: Yeah, like a more community lead process. And I think part of the tension was that this was I, in my opinion, a reasonable and valid desire on the part of the committee the challenge came my understanding, Michelle, and maybe you have different information is that the city charter actually prescribes the appointment process and so short of amending the city charter. They actually couldn’t they actually couldn’t change that nomination process.
MH: I think that’s actually not the case.
JL: Okay.
MH: The Charter specifies the nomination process for some of the conditions. But I think it was just general plain old fashioned inertia, they thought it would be too complicated, too. I think you know they they have all this infrastructure around, you know, submitting applications to the central application bank, you know, and they just didn’t want a different type of process when so when they ended up passing the resolution you know when they have a passing the ordinance that defines I see PLC. They just stuck with the normal process because that was easier. I guess you know and and the people who were on the task force and the mayors and the, the people who are on the task force and the advocates who showed up to like talk about it. They were, they were pretty upset with the ordinance that actually ended up creating the ICP OC because it wasn’t nearly as strong and you know it didn’t get it didn’t give them as many powers and as much as much of an active role as they’d hoped and it didn’t leave them as independent as they had hoped.
MK: Yeah, I think the goal. I think the goal from the task force. So, the police Task Force, which sort of recommended the creation of the ICP se um there are cities where the there’s some kind of independent civilian oversight that that really has teeth. They can get access to personnel records when there are complaints about specific officers or specific incidents, they can see the full details of those complaints and make determinations about them. And there was a desire to create some kind of oversight like that in Ann Arbor, and that that’s not what we got In the ICP OC that we have. They aren’t able to get police records.
MH: Yeah, it ended up being just another advisory board.
MK: It came up much more of an advisory kind of commission that was desired
MH: They don’t have any additional power is to get information than any member of the public does they can file a FOIA just like anyone else but. All right.
MK: And so this I see this is still really in in progress. I think there’s still hope for more rigorous public oversight of the police. My understanding is that the reason we got what we got is because of limitations in the contract with the police union.
MH: Yeah, the union contract. And then there were there were some concerns about the city charter which specifies that the you know that the chief of police reports to the city attorney to the city called like a City administrator Australia. Yeah, so um, and that sort of thing. But it’s all things that could be resolved with, you know, some series of charter amendments and things like that, if we were so inclined to do so.
JL: One thing that gives me hope is that Lisa Jackson, who’s the current Chair of the ICP OC was recently I think appointed to a state level Commission can chartered I think by Governor Whitmer, and I co le S which is Michigan commission on law enforcement standards, I believe and Dr. Jackson was one of three community members statewide invited to be a part of this Commission and essentially contribute to how citizen how residents and I say it that way. How residents contribute to the oversight of law enforcement. So while I think our local Commission is still in some tension about how it can do what it needs to do fairly and objectively I’m I have hope that Dr. Jackson has information and support both within and beyond our community.
MK: That’s really good to hear. So I want to move on to a board where we another board where we have some expertise here with us today. And that’s the DDA which is the downtown Development Authority, you are the chair of the DGA board. Is that right,
JL: I am this here I am.
MK: So tell us about the DGA
JL: The downtown Development Authority. Like, I believe. Planning Commission is part of the city that is authorized by the state, and then renewed by the city. So we operate by state charter
as a department of the city. Functionally, so we have a budget that our revenue comes from two different things, a particular kind of ax levied in the downtown and then the revenues from the parking system, both the meters and the parking structures and then we use downtown dollars on downtown projects, whether it’s street resurfacing water main upsizing I know water mains. Are you know everybody’s constantly thinking about water means, but definitely are the new mingle bottom when they’re not working. Yes, you do. The new to a bike lanes on first and William and the next ones coming up this year, which I’m excited about. So that’s what the DDA does essentially we oversee the parking system we oversee what’s called right of way, which is sidewalk and street the, the improvements and just making sure that everything is safe and accessible. Another very important part of our mission is the twinkle lights in the trees downtown
And we also have a standing portion percentage of our budget that goes to affordable housing support in the downtown, whether that’s renovations we’re trying to support new housing in a couple of different lots in the downtown. We work very closely with the Housing Commission and with Avalon on those. But that is the DDA and our board is big because our budget is fairly large our oversight mechanism is fairly large as well. We have a 12 member Board. One of whom is the standing member is the city administrator who right now is Tom Crawford and then the other 11 members are chosen. From people who live in or have a property interest in the downtown I operate a non nonprofit that’s located in the downtown. So that’s my eligibility. Those 11 that are those 12 members, including the city administrator also have an additional five to six committees pertaining to the parking structure the housing economic development.
The capital improvements projects the street and sidewalk projects that we do things like that. So the PDA is fairly large when it comes to a board, but pretty pretty organized. I love our staff, they are they are incredible communicators, and they get a lot done
MK: And how did you get involved in the DDA board.
JL: Completely accidentally. I came in. I tripped and fell into the DDA um I asked for a meeting with Susan Polly, who is at the time the executive director, she just retired after 24 years heading up the organization. I had a question for her about housing in the downtown and I was a little terrified to meet her. She seemed like a really daunting woman I’ve seen her speak in public, a couple of times and she’s like so self assured. It was a little terrifying. But also, like, I love me a confident woman, SO I ASKED FOR A MEETING TO ASK HER SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT housing and she was so funny and accessible and her memory is just Elephantine like it’s amazing. So we had this amazing conversation where she answered, My two questions and then 17 more that I didn’t know I had. And at the end, she said. Why don’t you apply for a spot on the DDA board. We have an unexpected opening and I’d love to see you throw your hat in the ring and I had never seen myself in that kind of role, you know, I’m I see myself a little bit as like a part time troublemaker, not one that’s at the table saying grown up things about grown up ideas. But the minute that she planted the seed I I got interested. So I asked a lot of people about the DDA I looked at the application. It wasn’t terrifying. I talked to a couple of current and former board members to get a sense of what the time commitment was and I think for me the last question was like Planning Commission the DDA is fairly politicized which means people
The way that I think about that, where it is, people have really strong feelings about the decisions that you make, and I am not. By nature a conflict driven person I’m fairly conflict diverse, but at the same time the mission of the DDA to create a vibrant and thriving downtown and one that serves people as well as it can is really resonant with a lot of our values and I decided that to be on the sidelines, when I had the opportunity, not just to lead but to serve in a way that matter to me was worth trying for so I applied. I had an interview with the mayor and which I wasn’t totally klutzy and was appointed a couple months later.
MK: That’s really that’s really cool yeah i i. Similarly, hadn’t I hadn’t thought of myself as a someone like as a joiner um, you know, I never ran for like student council president or student council anything when I was younger and I came, I came to the Transportation Commission really without knowing very much. I was just kind of like, you know, yay bike lanes like this is so exciting. And then as I got like that was sort of the hook that has really pulled me. And that was sort of the gate, the gateway to to get more involved in city politics and try to understand more of what was going on. But I have this like very. For me, it’s this very transportation, the lens over everything, because that’s what I’m coming to it from and on the Transportation Commission.
It’s sort of interdisciplinary. The, the, so we have a lot of reps from other commissions. We have a disability Commission rap and we have a planning commission rap and we have someone from the public schools and we have someone from AAA TA, which is the the bus system because transportation intersects with all of these all of these other things. And so I think of it as a really a really fun commission to sort of get get a view on a lot of different of the different moving pieces in the city. Because it because there are all of these, all these connections, but I yeah the DDA is one of those things I really didn’t understand before I before I met you Jess and it’s a lot of the things that I think are really visibly beloved about our city are those are those are actually DDA things and I think a lot of people don’t don’t know that.
JL: Yeah, a lot of tomorrow. And I’m looking forward to there being more we were part when coven hit of the response in the city of figuring out how can we make downtown safer. We worked a lot with small businesses to take away permit fees for you know, we had so many more delivery drivers running so many more delivery drivers that we took out a lot of the street parking downtown and just turned it over to delivery. And didn’t make the businesses pay for it because a lot of the, one of the things that I love about our downtown is that we are a lot of small businesses. But that means that it’s really hard to absorb a change, let alone something as monumental as the pandemic. So we did what we could to absorb fees to pay for the barricades and when we were closing down streets. One of my favorite responses was the art way finding that was used when there were street shut down. One of our concerns is that people on the margins were we’re going to have to leave Ann Arbor that they weren’t going to be able to stay. And so we wanted to be able to pay artists a living wage for a project that would help them be a little bit more secure. So the, the art projects as a response to the pandemic were one of my favorite things.
MK: I didn’t know that that
MH: I also wanted to call special attention to the DDS contribution to affordable housing, because the DDA has been for several years making very large contributions to affordable housing, whereas the city itself hasn’t and they’ve only they’ve only in the last couple of years started to actively make contributions to affordable housing and
JL: And
MH: And that’s right
JL: Yeah, and that’s more through taxpayers and less through the standing general budget, which we’ll get into our budgeting episode so i i agree with you that the city has is has incense very mixed messages on its housing commitment where the DDA has put millions into the downtown. I’m very proud that the DDA was one of the reasons that the city was able to buy lottery terrorists. As permanent affordable housing for seniors, it has been for decades since the 1960s, when it was developed, but it was about to go up to sale for a private purchase. Which meant that it wasn’t going to be affordable anymore. So the DDA put in almost a million dollars to help the city secure that sale. We’ve also put a stake in the ground, almost a million dollars for the former why lot which is 350 South Fifth Avenue. Which is currently the parking lot right across the street from the DOWNTOWN LIBRARY for the development of substantial number of substantially affordable units in the downtown. So we have that standing commitment we have a very strong relationship with the housing commitment, excuse me, with the Housing Commission and it’s one of our first and foremost schools to make sure that when Ann Arbor thrives all of our enable all of our neighbors thrive in are safe.
MK: There are a couple of more boards that I want to just touch on very briefly, because they they operate outside of this whole structure that we’ve been talking about, which is the school board and the library board. Those are both bodies that come from state law and they operate outside of city government. So the mayor has absolutely nothing to do with what the school board has control over and absolutely nothing to do with what the library has control over. And so the school board and the library board are elected elected positions.
MH: Somehow you are
JL: You in are
MK: You in and then I feel like we should disclose. Right. So, just as the chair of the DDA board. I’m the chair of the Transportation Commission. I’m also on the library board. I was just elected this year. And we are speaking only for ourselves and all of this. Yeah. Um, but so when we talk about boards and commissions. There are the city boards and commissions and then there were these two other boards that are completely outside of that. And so there’s a lot that’s confusing about all of this.
MH: Also, like, I guess. I wanted to mention to the that like DDA and then also the like Ann Arbor Area Transit Authority, the bus system are authorities with their own kind of like their own budget their own revenue stream that the city doesn’t especially have control over.
JL: I mean that. Well, I really want to push out because there’s a popular misconception that the budget is not managed by the city and it is we do have our own independent revenue stream, but ultimately the DDA budget is confirmed by city council, just like any other department. I know that’s not true of AAA TA, which
MH: Is the Arab Area Transit
JL: Authority, but the DDA budget actually is under the city.
MH: Okay, sorry, I misspoke.It’s clearing up misconceptions. Yes. Well, then it’s a good thing I mentioned that in our Area Transit Authority, though, is just like, they’ve got their own revenue stream they operate on their own in the city appoints like some number of members to it. But, um, other municipalities to participate in AAA TA you know they they put in their own people.
MK: Yes. So I have a question for all of you. Maybe we’ll start with Julie, but what what what do you want people to know if someone is thinking about applying to be on the border commission. What do you want them to know
JW: Do it. No one else is more grown up or knows more than you do. Yes, and I think that is it’s a it’s a big thing. And you see this sometimes in social media and I want to make sure that everyone knows that if they are appointed to a Board or Commission then they know enough to be on that board and Commission and some of the boards and commissions have some particular needs. Like, okay, we want someone who’s a landscape. Architect. Okay, great. If you’re not a landscape architect, you don’t apply for the position that requires a landscape architect, but a lot of like planning does not have specific, you know, it turns out that it’s great to have a landscape architect on planning and it’s great to have you know certain certain groups of people on planning. But, but unless it’s required. Absolutely. Feel free to apply to something that seems interesting to you because one of the problems we get is do you really want all urban planners on planning. Well, that would be like planning staff and planning staff has urban planners and they’re awesome but you don’t want only urban planners on the planet commission. And so I think people think that they have to have a specific understanding of something or they have to have a specific background, if you are, if it’s an open position and you’re interested in it, then you are sort of by default appropriate for that position. I mean and i think that that’s really it’s hard for people, you end up getting a lot of people who are the same. If you know if you look at the board and commission and you see okay, this is a whole board of middle aged white people or of men or women or whatever you know, oh well, those people don’t have kids. And so obviously I can’t do it. No, like that’s not how it should be. If you know if you’re interested in it. And it’s something that you think might you might be able to contribute. That’s what we want. I mean, we actually want people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences to be on the boards and commissions, because that’s what makes us stronger. That’s what makes those boards and commissions better and one of the, I mean, my background is in journalism and I work in it. So why was I on planning commission. Well, it turns out I grew up in an arbor. I’ve lived in other places. I lived in Boston. I lived in Colorado. And that, you know, I live. I now live downtown and that background. And a wide understanding of Ann Arbor and sort of the forces that have been in Ann Arbor for a long time, made me appropriate and good for planning commission not because I’m an urban planner. And so I just think that people need to not be scared of it and to not think that somebody else knows better or that they’re not appropriate for it. If you’re interested in it. And there’s an open position or even if you’re interested in it and there’s not an open position, put in an application. And you never know. I mean, people come these as we’ve said these boards and commissions are some of them can be kind of intense and you know lives change and and people drop on and off these boards and commissions, so you know absolutely apply because it’s important not from a political perspective, or from but just we want to have a lot of people with a lot of different backgrounds and experiences on these boards and commissions. That’s what makes them better.
MH: I forget if we talked about this on the on the show today, but the idea that we get a lot of the same type of people on the boards and that we want more diversity. I think there’s things that we could that the city could be doing to promote more diversity. Which they’re not doing like for example you you know you the number of hours you described to go you know that go into Planning Commission, it seems like a large number of hours and you know, if we want people who are parents are, you know, work full time jobs and you know work different hours or whatever, like that’s pretty difficult and all these positions that we’ve mentioned are 100% volunteer and you know, so I think if we want more diversity on these Commission’s there’s, you know, things we could be doing. We could be offering childcare, we could be offering transportation, we could be offering money. And so that might be something that we should think about in the future if we want to have more diversity on these boards, which I do want. Yeah.
MK: And that actually gets to a final question for us. That’s sort of a wish list for what the city can be doing to enable participation in boards and commissions, but we also I’m wondering if we have a wish list for boards and commissions that don’t exist, that we would like to see in our city, I think, Jess. I know you had a couple
JL: I do in the last episode I brought up that I’d love to see us have a racial equity commission. I think we need to be looking at just that one issue, not as a subset of anything else in terms of public health in terms of housing in terms of environment in terms of everything in terms of the budget and in terms of everything that the city does. I think we need to have an explicit Racial Justice lens and I think a commission would be one way to get that I’d also love to see a renters Commission many cities have that it’s it’s on the newer side I think Seattle just iplemented. There’s a couple of years ago, but it’s a great way to get renters involved, you know, to your question, a second ago. Molly about who should apply renters renters mentors mentors as a lifelong renter myself and probably will always be one almost nobody on commissions is is a renter, and it makes a big difference it makes a big difference.
JW: Planning Commission does not currently have a renter
JL: And, and, you know, this isn’t specific to a new Commission wish list, but I’d love to see a requirement on a lot of our Commission’s that one of the seats filled must be with the renter, I think that would be amazing. So that’s my wishlist racial equity Commission and our renters Commission.
MK: So I’m just going to wrap, wrap it up. Thanks for listening to Ann Arbor AF. As always, we’ll link to the resources we mentioned in this episode’s show notes. We’re your cohosts Molly Kleinman, Jess Letaw, and myself, Michelle Hughes; and big thanks to our guest Julie Weatherbee, and our producer Jarod Malestein. For questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes, you can email us at annarborafpod@gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!
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