Episode 14: City Council Meeting: 15 March 2021


Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up March 15th. We touch on fair access to housing, the Trans Day of Visibility, and as we often do, defunding the police. 

Links from today’s episode: 


And, for our Beyond Council Advocacy Corner, 


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Transcript

NOTE: This version of the transcript was generated by an automated transcription tool and will contain (sometimes hilarious) errors. When we have time for human editing to clean this up we will update it, but we hope this imperfect version is better than nothing.

Jess (00:05):
Hi, and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor af, a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor. We discuss current events and local politics and policy governance and other civic good times. I’m Jess Leeta and my pronouns are she her.
Molly (00:20):
I’m Molly Kleinman and my pronouns are she her.
Michelle (00:23):
And I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she her.
Jess (00:26):
We’re your co-hosts to help you get informed and get involved. It’s your city. Let’s jump in. Today we’re talking about the next city council meeting. Coming up Monday, March 15th, we’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including fair ac, fair access to housing, the trans day of visibility. And as we often do, defunding the police and offer a lot of different ways for you to get involved. A quick process note, we record this a few days before the council meeting, which means there may be some changes to the agenda between now and then. Molly, you’re kicking us off.
Molly (01:05):
So just one quick thing from the consent agenda today, it’s actually three different street closures, so it’s CAS seven, eight, and nine. And I mostly wanted to come to these because there was, there were a lot of objections to the street closure for Conor O’Neill’s for St. Patrick’s Day. I believe that there are not going to be similar objections for these street closures and they are a sign of a little bit of nature healing. So the Ann Arbor Dexter run is going, is coming back this summer after being canceled last year. There’s going to be a take back the night march that was canceled last year. And we’re going to have the return of the outdoor restaurant space along many streets downtown. The number of streets it looks like has gone down a little bit. We don’t have quite as many. And that was due to requests of the Merchants Association.
Molly (01:57):
So those decisions came from the businesses themselves presumably, but this is mostly just like yay for more outdoor space for humans this summer. And maybe if we do it twice, we have to call it a tradition and then we can do it forever. And I’m handing off to myself. So moving on to the Orden ordinances. This is the second, a second reading and somehow this got by us I think on the first reading, but there’s this ordinance that’s called the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance that was brought forward by the Human Rights Commission. And this is the goal of this ordinance is to bar landlords from asking people about criminal record or previous incarceration on applications to rent housing. It’s rooted in the box movement, which was about banning those questions on hiring applications. There’s a lot of evidence that previously incarcerated people do not bring more danger to their neighborhoods. And in fact there’s, it’s very difficult for people who have been incarcerated to find housing and that can contribute to a whole cycle of returning to jail or to prison. And that really what’s important is to make housing available for people. And so that’s what this ordinance aims to do.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
Cause without that, every sentence is a life sentence,
Molly (03:25):
Right? It becomes once you get into the system, it becomes impossible to come out. And there are all of these other layers like housing and employment that contribute to keeping people in the carceral system. So this is great. We love this. Over the last few days there’s been some really loud fearmongering by a subset I think of landlords in the city on all the various social medias claiming that it’s going to be bad for their business, that it’s going to make neighborhoods unsafe. None of that is based in reality. They want to be able to continue to discriminate against people who have been incarcerated. And I’m hopeful that city council is going to pass this anyway, it’s made it to second reading up until this point, I think it wasn’t particularly controversial, but I did want to just call attention to that. And it’s something where if this is an issue that you care about around improving our criminal legal system, this is one piece of improving, creating real justice for people who have been caught up in that system. And this might be something that you would want to call counsel about. And so did you all have, and
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Also since, yeah, this is a second reading, I wanted to point out that there’s a public hearing on it, and so you don’t have to call in ahead of time to get a reserved slot to speak on it. If you listen up to the city council meeting, they’ll, there will be a time to call in. They’ll give all the phone numbers there, but make sure to call in ahead of time because if you’re watching the stream, they’re usually 30 seconds behind what’s going on Zoom. So make sure to be called into the Zoom so that they don’t go, okay, does anybody want to have want to talk about this? Then you’re dialing in and then they’re like, well, the meeting’s closed. So yeah,
Molly (05:17):
This would be a good thing to call in on because there may be some loud opposition this time. I hope there’s not. Jess, did you want to have anything to add about this one?
Jess (05:28):
I did one little one. So this is mostly about keeping the pipeline really open for formerly incarcerated people to access housing. But this is also an economic justice issue a lot of times application. In fact, I think every single time an application entails a fee and anyone is allowed to apply, but that becomes a sunk cost. And so if you have that box on there, have you been incarcerated for any reason? A lot of times you lose that fee. And that can be the difference between groceries and not groceries, between housing and not housing. That application fee matters a lot to a lot of people. So not charging that fee to people who wouldn’t be considered, but they wouldn’t know that it, it’s just important to move away from that practice.
Molly (06:14):
Yep, that’s exactly right. So that’s what we had to say about that. Moving on to new business that came from staff. Jess, this is a fun thing to talk about,
Jess (06:25):
A fun thing and close to my heart, I want to give big ups to staff for changing the city code on dog licenses. The way that the process ran before was a little inefficient and a little frustrating, and I suspect for you too. So thank you for making that easier. Much appreciated. Moving on, doing differently. What are they doing differently? So the way that it used to be was you could submit an application. Basically all applications for dog licenses were processed once a year, which meant that staff constantly had a backlog. And if you’re managing your rabies vaccination and your dog license in tandem one another, a lot of times they get out of sync really quickly. So the way that it used to be licenses, license applications were processed once a year. Staff is now moving to processing those applications multiple times a year and tying it to your dog’s vaccination, rabies vaccination expiration date.
Jess (07:20):
So now you can consider those two things in tandem and not have to remember when does your rabies vaccination expire? When does your license expire? Because the rabies VAX is required for dogs to have an Ann Arbor license. We just generally believe in vaccination here. So thanks staff. Moving us into the bulk of the council agenda, I wanted to talk about DC one, which is a resolution in support of the University of Michigan’s P C C N, which is the President’s Commission on Carbon neutrality recommendations. The first thing that I wanted to say is that this resolution is just the tiniest bit premature because the President’s Commission has not actually issued the final report. They were scheduled to do that at the end of February, this support, whatever it is, they say that’s right. And for various reasons it’s been delayed. It is expected to be issued this month.
Jess (08:13):
But given that this is going to be among the most ambitious climate statements from a higher education institution, go giving it that rubber stamp seal of approval feels comfortable. Also, I see in the report that Ann Arbor sustainability and Innovation manager, Missy Stoltz, is on the commission, which gives me added confidence in its recommendations. I have one comment to make, but I have to teach you a little bit before I make that comment. So what you need to know is that the recommended strategies are organized into scope one, scope two, and scope three. Those are categories with commonly accepted definitions. According to the epa, they define scope one as direct from sources that are owned or controlled by the institution. Scope two as indirect emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by the institution. And scope three as those emissions from sources not owned are directly controlled, but related to the institution’s activities, the U OFM report further clarifies, or the draft, I should say further clarifies that its scope three emissions are someone else’s scope one and scope two emissions. So eliminating these requires concurrent action by many individuals and organizations. Basically what they’re saying is they have to make these changes, but those changes are not under their control. So coordinated action will be required. And that would be with,
Molly (09:39):
Oh, sorry. And because the University of Michigan is located in the city of Ann Arbor, the there’s a lot of scope one in one place in scope two or three in a different place, right,
Jess (09:51):
Exactly. So we’ll expect to see the university coordinating with the city of Ann Arbor, with the county of Washington, with the mdot, the Michigan Department of Transportation and the state of Michigan probably as well as under other agencies like Eagle, the thing that used to be the D E Q, the Department of Environmental Quality, but have updated since Governor Whitmer and similar agencies. So that makes sense. That’s what we expect to see. So what we’ll be expecting to see from the U is coordination on their scope three admissions scope three admissions. So we can use the report and of course we’ll link it in the show notes. You can skip to page 46 to start with scope three or if like us you eat dense and dry reports for breakfast, you can start at the beginning, but we can use scope three as a crystal ball because nearly half of the use identified Scope three emissions fall under commuting.
Jess (10:45):
So we can expect that the U will probably come to the city to partner with us in ways to reduce single occupancy vehicle commuting, whether it’s using other commuting modes like transit or by reducing the distance between the U and employee homes by building more housing closer to campus. So if you look at scope three, what we actually see is a ticket to buy some time. The report, which again is supposed to be finalized this month, recommends defining and committing to scope three goals by 2025. So they’re super granular on their scope one and their scope two, the things that are under their direct control, but they’re buying themselves some time for that kind of institutional and community collaboration to get really specific on what those scope three goals are. And those goals are expected to go into full effect by 2040 partly. This is w W and partly this is great because it means that the community has another four years to think about how we can thoughtfully and ambitiously commit to partnering with the U to fulfill those scope three goals.
Molly (11:49):
So one thing that I’m thinking about here is the overlaps between the university’s plan and the city’s carbon neutrality plan. The primary author of which was Dr. Stilts, right? Missy Stilts.
Jess (12:03):
Correct.
Molly (12:03):
Coordinated that plan. And so she’s on the university committee and that seems like a good thing because their scope three is our scope one and two, although my recollection because when we heard about the carbon neutrality plan at Transportation Commission, we obviously focused very heavily on commuting and travel modes and the city doesn’t think of commuting as a scope one or scope two problem either because it doesn’t own the vehicles. And so I’m a little concerned that everyone is going to put commuting in the third bucket and never address it or apply the resources that are necessary to really do things differently in terms of how we get people to work.
Jess (12:52):
That’s reasonable. I think that’s a reasonable concern and I think that that’s one of the things that as folks who kind of pay attention to civics with longevity, paying attention to the city’s scope one and scope two with respect to commuting and the university’s university’s scope three with respect to commu commuting and making sure that they are making commitments that we’re asking them to make commitments. A part of what getting involved looks like is making sure we’re making those requests.
Molly (13:21):
2040 is also really, that’s a really far away goal.
Jess (13:25):
It is really far away. If we’re asking for serious infrastructure commitments like bus rapid transit lanes or any light rail, we’re going to need that time to be able to make those investments. Yes. So I think it’s reasonable. One of the things that I thought was interesting in the P C C N draft report was part of the metric that they used to evaluate each strategy was the culture shift that was needed. Was it low, medium or high? And every commuting shift that was recommended was a high culture shift. So there’s going to need to be some education.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
I’ve seen that on Facebook.
Jess (14:00):
We’ve seen that happen on Facebook, and we’ve seen that happen in labor negotiations. When university and Michigan medicine employee unions come to the table, a lot of times what they’re talking about is parking. So we’re definitely going to need to have partly some education, but partly some better, more productive dialogue around what commuting means and how to make it truly less painful because parking closer to your door is not the only strategy. All right, so that’s carbon neutrality for a Saturday. Michelle, I think you had some thoughts on pot dollars.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Yes. So we have DC three, and that is a resolution on what to do with the marijuana tax money we get. So as you know, in 2018, the state approved proposal one which made marijuana legal, and we opened some marijuana dispensaries and we are just getting some tax money out of that. So this year the city is going to get $476,000. What are we going to do with it? This resolution here says that it ought to be that the money ought to be spent to kind of undo the damage that’s been done by the war on drugs. And it says specifically that the money should be spent that in this next upcoming budget, that the money should be spent on such things as emergency services that include mental health and substance and substance use disorder, pro professionals programs for substance abuse intervention, treatment and recovery support services, education and enrichment programs for at-risk youth and innovation grants towards promoting and promoting criminal diversion, expungement support for the formerly incarcerated members of our community and other criminal justice reform initiatives. So I read this and I was like, what’s the catch? And I just talked, I was just at a protest on the DIA the survivor’s speak was putting on, and I saw that Dr. Lisa Jackson was there, she’s the chair of the Independent Community Police Oversight Commission. And I was like, did you take a look at this thing yet? And she was like, yeah, I was just reading that. And I was like, what’s the catch? And there might not be a catch. This might just be good stuff.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
I think if you combine this with the thing that we saw from the recent budget discussion, the work session on, was it the eighth February? It was either February 8th or the 22nd where the Ann Arbor Housing Commission found $230,000 in their budget and they wanted to put that towards unarmed responders to take care of calls instead of the police.
Jess (17:09):
Actually, $234,000 was the savings. They had instituted a program to dispatch unarmed responders instead of police in certain situations and had a saving or had money left over to the tune of $234,000. They didn’t use everything that they’d budgeted.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Okay. But yeah, I mean think we’re going to see if we can just bolster that kind of program with this marijuana money. That would be amazing. The closest thing I could think of to a catch is that I remember in it was either 2018 or 2019 where the city council was still really mad about the rebate money that we were getting from that millage about, it was called the Mental Health and Public Safety millage. The city was getting it back and they were going to spend it on affordable housing, climate action and pedestrian safety. And people were mad. Some of the city council members were mad that we weren’t spending it on things that were called mental health and public safety because the millage was called Mental Health and Public Safety. And they thought that the rebate should also be spent in that genre. And they didn’t think that affordable housing was mental health expenditure and they didn’t think that pedestrian safety was public safety.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
They didn’t think that we were unsafe from the climate change. But anyway, they managed to that city council, there was a bunch of wrangling and people being mad at each other and vetoes and failed veto overrides. And I remember that that ended up with a thing to spend something like two or 300,000 thousand dollars on mental health, but they didn’t give any further guidance to the city, the city administrator on what they wanted that mental health money to be spent on. It ended up going to the police and it ended up going to the police to fund some sort of training for officers to deal with mental health situations. And they made the training optional. And so I’m worried that if we don’t have sufficient guidance to the city administrator, that they’re going to find some path of least resistance ways to spend this money on that sort of thing administered by that sort of program administered by the police.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
And I want to make sure that doesn’t happen, but that’s close as I can find to a catch, is that this might happen. So I wrote to the City council, city council@a2gov.org, I told them to make sure to pass, to put an amendment in there to make sure that this money doesn’t go to the police or to spend it on programs that will be administered by the police. Because since the police were in charge of running the war on drugs, I don’t think they’re the right people to be cleaning up the mess. And it doesn’t look like the intent of this resolution is spended on the police, but I
Jess (20:19):
I’m, but it is left,
Speaker 4 (20:21):
Right. It doesn’t say do it doesn’t say do it, and it doesn’t say don’t do it. So I say, make sure not to do it.
Jess (20:29):
Yeah, that was my criticism as well. Well, I had to be careful about what budget the money is going into because while it’s s aside, the source, it doesn’t set aside the destination. And I’d like to understand what fund it’s going into before I totally commit emotionally to supporting this one. My other issue with it is that I think the scope of spending is too narrow. Evanston is implementing,
Speaker 4 (20:56):
That’s Evanston, Illinois.
Jess (20:57):
Evanston, Illinois thank you is implementing a reparations commission and 100% funding that through their marijuana tax revenues. And that is both on the staff and the commission side. So they’re funded to do their work. I don’t know that they’re actually reimbursing the volunteers atypical, but what I’m saying is they’re not looking at the tax funds as one particular kind of equity. They’re looking at it as, can we use this for intergenerational transformative justice? And so I’m fine with this. I mean, we need to commit the funds one way or another this year, but I’d prefer for the commitment to only be one year and for us to consider if there are higher and better uses for these funds.
Molly (21:45):
This does
Speaker 4 (21:45):
Commit it, this does commit it for year after year, but it’s something that can be voted on and changed every year at city council.
Jess (21:51):
Yeah, for sure.
Molly (21:55):
My first thought when I heard about this money was reparations because I was familiar with the Evanston plan, another college town. I think it’s one of those places we have some things in common with the other thing, reading the Wear ASEs, we get excited about the wear ASEs and I feel like the wear ASEs in this are really spot on. I was really pleased to see the way that it laid out the structural damage of the drug war and that the goal is to address that structural damage, I think is wonderful in the resolved pieces, I feel, yeah, I’m concerned about some of the lack of specificity in particular. There’s only, there’s sort of one clause that talks about the way we would work with the county on this. That to me, and half of that clause is ask the county for matching funds. But the, first of all, I think the county has its own things to do with whatever.
Molly (22:51):
I don’t know if Washau is getting cannabis money this year or not. I think I haven’t been following that I haven’t heard are so right. So asking for matching funds, what the county has is expertise. And a lot of the kinds of services that we’re talking about are currently, are coordinated only at the county level. And so it says collaborate with the county, but it’s not very specific about what that would look like. And to me, I want to see a lot more detail about how we’re going to work with the county and how we’re going to draw on the expertise that’s there, how we’re going to contribute, how we’re going to contribute to that as opposed to how we’re going to try and get things from the county. But was, it’s a quibble really. I’m excited about being a city that gets this pot of money and wants to put it towards addressing the damage of the drug war. That feels like the right choice to me.
Jess (23:56):
And to your point, Molly, asking the county for matching funds, it’s not uncommon for the city and the county to partner on work. And a lot of times you’ll see resolutions brought in tandem between one body and the other county commissioners and city council members work together on a regular basis. Not seeing one of these come forward at the county at the same time feels a bit like that collaboration either isn’t happening or is happening out of step. I almost wonder if our dollars would end up going to the county anyway, our community mental health, which is managed at the county level and not the city has been just anemically underfunded for a really long time now. And if our marijuana revenues could be a way of helping to bridge that gap, especially for services that we’re using, that feels kind of like a win-win. So rather than asking the county for resources saying, oh, we can actually help fill this in for you. So this is us just ad hoc rewriting the resolution on the podcast. You’re welcome Ann Arbor. Okay. But as we said, we are really supportive of this and it’s just kind of nitpicks about the details.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Right? Yeah. I can’t find the catch. It still looks good and I’m excited. Yeah. Now I’d like to talk about DC five. A thing that I have some of the feelings about, this is a resolution recognizing the transgender day of visibility. And because I’m a prominent transgender activist, Travis Ena sent me his early draft of the resolution to get my thoughts on it. And I told him that really early draft was, I don’t know, I was real disappointed in it because it was a laundry list of reasons why it sucks to be a trans person. And then it was like, well hopely, well we’ll try and do something about that at some point. And so I told him, we need really specific things to happen in this resolution. The city can do things to advance trans rights, and it should absolutely do this at this time in this budget, make promises to do things during this year. And if we’re talking about trans rights, let’s fucking talk about trans rights. So I gave him this big long list that I call the trans Agenda.
Jess (26:33):
And before you get into it, I just want just a tiny bit of context for our listeners. So Travis Rodina, council member for Ward three, and the sponsor of this resolution
Speaker 4 (26:42):
And the
Molly (26:43):
Former L G B T Q
Speaker 4 (26:46):
Liaison Liaison,
Molly (26:47):
That was word liaison to the mayor
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Prior
Molly (26:50):
Election.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
The new one is, her name is Naomi Goldberg. So the original resolution just had a resolve clause saying, Hey, we’re going to work on this. We’re going to recommit to working on this and we’re going to raise the flag. It was the two things. We’re going to raise the flag and we’ll do something. Yeah, yeah. I came back and I was like, well, why don’t you do these things? Pressure the city and the, or pressure the county and the state to put people in when they put people in jail. Make sure it’s the jail that corresponds with their gender identity and not their genitals and don’t require bottom surgery in order to get to the jail that matches your gender identity. Cause I know that a lot of people, a lot of trans people, they end up in the wrong gender’s jail where they’re harassed, then they’re put in protective custody, which is the same thing as solitary confinement, which is what they use as a punishment. And amnesty International calls it torture. And so you’re just signing up people to be tortured in prison. And I don’t think that’s what I would like us to do. And it certainly makes me scared whenever I go around and do anything that I’m going to end up in boy jail, another thing. But that’s not something the city can do.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
That’s just some what we can, we can pressure the city, the county, and the state to do those things that we can get that on our legislative agenda. Another thing we can get on our legislative agenda is that we can pressure the state not to require surgery in order to change your birth certificate. My birth certificate is going to say male forever until I get Bo get bottom surgery. And a lot of people can’t afford bottom surgery. Some people don’t want bottom surgery or I guess in the F to M case it would be top surgery. But that’s another thing. The state can do that and the city should pressure the state to do that. What can the city do itself? Well, we have a non-discrimination ordinance and it explicitly protects people on the basis of gender identity and gender expression in the areas of housing, public accommodations and employment in ways that the state and federal laws don’t protect people explicitly. There there’s some interpretations of that. Sex discrimination includes these things. Those are currently enforced. Some of them were not enforced President Trump, but at least we have that at the city. At least people are protected in the city. Well, most people don’t even know that that law exists. And most people don’t know, don’t have any idea how to enforce that or what to do about it. I know someone who was fired from their job for being trans in a really cut and dry way in 2018.
Speaker 4 (30:09):
They had no idea what to do. Fortunately, they knew me and I was like, oh, you got to call the Human Rights Commission. And then they met the human rights because they’re the people in charge of enforcing this stuff. The Human Rights Commission said, oh, well, we can go and have a moderation meeting with ’em and talk or some kind of moderation between the you two parties. And my friend is, I don’t want to do that. They just fired me for being trans. Do something about that. Don’t make, don’t force me into a room to talk to them and see if we can convince them to change their ways. The problem is the Human Rights Commission is untrained volunteers. Maybe they have a little training, I don’t know, but it’s certainly not what we really need to enforce this. And they’re what? They’re supposed to forward complaints like this onto the city attorney to enforce, but they didn’t in that case. And I haven’t actually heard of them doing that.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
And also, the Human Rights Commission has other things to do besides hear complaints. They, they set policy, they do other things. And so I’m worried that if someone, because people don’t know that they can make a complaint to the Human Rights Commission, the rare times in which they do it, the commission’s going to go, oh, the commission’s going to feel like, oh, this is a distraction from our real work. And so I want there to be a system that people can come to make a complaint where that’s the primary work. And even if the Human Rights Commission forwards a complaint onto the city attorney, well, this is also not the city attorney’s main work. So I’m worried that they’re going to feel like it’s a distraction from their main work. So I want us to have civil rights attorneys on call, on tap. I want us to have a contract with a firm that does this, or if we finally do enough education to make sure that people know that the human rights ordinance can be, that the non-discrimination ordinance can be enforced.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
Maybe we’ll have enough work to hire a person, but at least there should be some trained professional working that phone number and ready and willing to enforce the non-discrimination ordinance, which says that there should be a $500 fine for every day in which the discrimination is not addressed. But I don’t know. And I was just, the other day, I drove a transgender friend of mine to a urgent care where they were turned away because their documentation didn’t match between their driver’s license and their insurance. And so my friend left in pain, we just went down to a pharmacy and grabbed whatever we thought might help. And we need that enforced. There needs to be a number that you can call. And so, okay, so better enforcement of the non-discrimination ordinance, more education about that non-discrimination ordinance. I would like to see an ordinance pass saying that every business has to display both the customers and employees a summary of a non-discrimination ordinance and the phone number to call. I want to see it in the packet that we require landlords to give to tenants. Here’s the number to call.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Speaking of landlords and tenants, I would like to promise funding for the Ann Arbor Tenants Union that might help people who aren’t trans as well. But since trans people are often discriminated against in housing, I think that it would be appropriate to pass. I think it would’ve been appropriate to pass that in the transgender day of visibility resolution. I would, another thing is that, okay, there are a lot of trans people. So trans people are kind of overrepresented when it comes to sex work because they’re discriminated against in other avenues. This is a job that is not going to discriminate against them. And so you see us overrepresented in that work. And so one thing we could do to support trans people is decriminalize sex work. I know that the prosecutor has already said that he’s not going to prosecute anyone for doing sex work.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
County prosecutor, the county. Yeah, that’s right. The county prosecutor. I want to make sure that the city isn’t even going to harass sex workers. And I, Naomi Goldberg, the L G B T liaison, when I was talking about this to her, she pointed out that the city actually has its own law against sex work. I thought it was just the state laws, but apparently the city has its own laws. So we need to get that off of our books and we need to pressure the state to get it off of their books. And until that’s done, we do the thing I want us to do. The thing that we did with, I want us to do the thing that we did with mushrooms where we say, dear the police department, this is your lowest priority of enforcement. Don’t do this until you’ve solved all other crimes. Other things that I would like to do, oh, there is Travis, Travis or Dina told me that there is work going on to pass an ordinance banning conversion therapy. That’s the thing where a parent might force their child to go to a thing that try that tries to stop them from being gay. And it’s
Molly (36:04):
Widely understood to be child abuse.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Exactly. And I hope that when we pass that ordinance, it will contain things about trans people saying that if you have a trans child and don’t allow them to transition that, that is also considered conversion therapy. And it’s also considered child abuse. And it’s also illegal. He couldn’t tell me if it was in the current resolution. And he told me that the thing that they’re working on is going through a million lawyers because there’s a lot of people out there hot to hot to hurt L G B T people, and they’ll try to stop these laws from being passed and they’ll give them legal challenges. So there’s
Molly (36:50):
Been this big wave recently of rules specifically banning trans kids from sports. And the one I think in Mississippi just, no, I think Miss Alabama, Alabama is the one that just passed it. And it was just signed into law requiring physical inspections of kids’ bodies to determine which sports team they should play on these. They’ve been waving across the country. And the Michigan G O P just introduced a similar ban on trans kids in sports in Mich for Michigan
Speaker 4 (37:29):
Gross.
Molly (37:30):
We’re lucky that we have a governor who would never sign such a thing. But it’s, these aren’t just theoretical threats. These are very real threats to the safety of trans kids. And so that a conversion therapy ban would be meaningful here.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
But yeah, Travis was unable to tell me if the thing that’s being worked on is going to include, include the idea that not allowing your kid to transition is conversion therapy because it’s being worked on by the lawyers. They’re working on something that has to be ironclad because it has to be defended against all these people who are hot to hurt people. So anyway, that’s something that I’d like to have in there. So if it doesn’t, I would say if it doesn’t make it, if trans people don’t make it into that conversion therapy bill, let’s pass a different one after that. And the final thing that I would had on my trans agenda is to defund the police. It even says in the whereases this thing, and I made a couple of other ones, that the police have hunted trans people. That trans people are right to be afraid of the police. That this isn’t a historic injustice. This is something that’s happening to this day. And it’s so to support trans people, we ought to have an alternative to policing, such as the thing that we mentioned before, unarm, unarmed responders. And so that’s the answer to an awful lot of things, but this is just one area in which it would help. So anyway, this was my trans agenda that I sent to Travis Orna and he came back at me with, wow, that’s a lot of stuff. We only have a week. We don’t know.
Speaker 4 (39:39):
He didn’t think it was was the responsible thing to do to throw in, to just copy paste my entire legislative agenda verbatim into this agenda. He wants to check with other commissions and do a little bit of legwork to do a little bit of homework to make sure that these things are solid and can be passed and can be implemented. And because I talk, he trapped me with, trapped me with that logic, because I always talk about that on this show. I’m always mad at the council members who passed these things without doing their homework, but he promised to work with me later on in consultation with Naomi Goldberg, the L G B T liaison to get this stuff passed later on. And I just got to cross my fingers and hope that we can get this working. I wish we could have gotten it in to the transgender day of visibility resolution because this is when we have the highest moral authority. I don’t think anyone’s going to want to get up there and vote against transgender day of visibility. And I wish it could be. I kind of wanted the, but I don’t want it to be something that just sails through with everyone being like, yeah, I want to feel good about this. I wanted this to be something that had enough hard asks that it was uncomfortable to talk about at the table. Because if we’re not getting uncomfortable, are we really doing enough or are we just honestly recommitting a it to our work?
Jess (41:27):
I see this partly as the process working the way that it should. When you showed me the original, I think I said this to you as well, it read a catalog of trauma. It was like you said, these are all the reasons that it sucks to be trans or that it’s difficult to be trans. And as a result, we’re going to wave a flag. Absolutely wave the flag. But first of all, some of those whereases, like there’s plenty of reasons to celebrate during being trans, and there’s not a single celebration in there, which I think is regrettable. And if you’re going to come at us with a catalog of trauma, come at us with some actions. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with committing to a position. In the last year, we saw both the city and the county pass resolutions declaring racism, a public health crisis. I think that’s appropriate. And they only committed to very limited action in the city’s case, absolutely no action. But those resolutions have since served as foundations for other action. So I do think that there’s room for position statements, but I don’t think that’s all this should be. I’m really proud to know you and kind of amazed at how you kind of crusade for the things that are important to you.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
I don’t like the word crusade. I don’t want to That’s
Jess (42:48):
Fair. That’s fair. How you advocate, how you
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Advocate, advocate, advocate
Jess (42:51):
For the things that are important to you. And you do it as a trans person, but you do it for the community. Every single example that you give is on behalf of a friend or a neighbor or somebody. And I just think that’s really magnificent. So all of that to say, I think that this is going exactly the way that it should. I agree with you that it could and should be more ambitious, but I also don’t see all of this work stopping with this resolution. So no transgender day of visibility every day.
Speaker 4 (43:23):
And there is some stuff in there that we managed to put in there. It’s really vague. It’s stuff like the city administrator is going to look at the complaints that we get through the Human Rights Commission. The city administrator’s going to examine how we deal with the complaints. And I’ve heard that he’s done some phone calls and gotten some people, he’s starting to get some, starting to do, do some of the legwork of getting people on board with having a more robust enforcement mechanism. It’s just not anything that’s, that could be put in here in a way that’s not really vague. So it says the city administrator will review how we enforce the non-discrimination ordinance. It doesn’t say they will do this, this, and this until that work gets done. But at least, so hopefully it’s not entirely devoid of things that are happening in this resolution.
Jess (44:20):
And maybe another thing that we could keep an eye on the city commit or hasn’t committed yet, but has recommended for inclusion in the fiscal year 21, 22 budget, a significant chunk of work towards diversity, equity, and inclusion work. I think that we absolutely should be mindful about how we’re reflecting our trans neighbors in that work as well. A lot of people tend to define diversity on either racial or gender lines, and we all know there’s a lot more than that. So multiple ways to advocate for Michelle and our other transgender friends,
Speaker 4 (44:55):
But there’s other things to advocate for. And on that note,
Jess (45:01):
So
Jess (45:02):
Got some things to say we’re going to do. Thank you. We are going to do a new section in this episode. We have some calls to action for our listeners that pertain to the city of Ann Arbor, but that aren’t managed by city council. I’m going to go first, and that is for the Planning Commission. The next planning commission meeting is this coming Tuesday, March 16th. They are working on accessory dwelling units or ADUs. What they’re working on is a set of policy changes to decide what and whether to recommend to city council. So for a little bit of background, I am a huge fan of almost anything that adds to housing in Ann Arbor. I think we need to advocate hardest for homes that aren’t prioriti prioritized by the market or the economy like those that are affordable and those that are sustainable. But I think we need to get more housing in every part of the city.
Jess (45:58):
Part of the reason I feel this way is because in non pandemic times around 90,000 people commute into Ann Arbor every day. I get that not everyone wants to live or they work, but I know that a lot of folks would shorten their commute if they could. In the us It is a fact that most housing is created privately and most of that is by professional developers, which means that there’s very little that a normal homeowner can do to contribute to Ann Arbor’s housing accessibility. Basically the one thing that they can do is an a d accessory dwelling unit, also called in-Law Suites, garden Apartments, granny Flats. These are small homes created in people’s basements, attics, garages, and other accessory buildings. The good news is Ann Arbor legalized ADUs back in 2016. The bad news is that ordinance had so many restrictions that almost none had been built back in 2018, I held a series of community meetings asking people who were interested in ADUs, why they hadn’t created one.
Jess (46:59):
And I took a summary of their comments and wrote a report. So I took their comments and summarized them in a report to city Council. Since then, f have taken a look at the ordinance and made their own recommendations. And planning commission is considering which of those recommendations to support and send a council for review and approval. I would always love to see more and more and more when it comes to housing. But even with that, I’m still enthusiastically supportive of the ordinance revisions the Planning Commission is considering. So if you are too, and of course we’ll drop a link to the proposed changes in the show notes. Please let planning commission know. You can email them at planning me too gov.org or follow the link in the show notes to call in after 7:00 PM on Tuesday, March 16th. A few years ago, Denver ran this awesome PR campaign in the vein of more Granny flats equals more grannys equals more cookies. I haven’t seen the data on this, but I support it. So that’s planning@a2gov.org or follow the link in the show notes to call in after 7:00 PM on Tuesday, March 16th. Anything from you guys on ADUs?
Speaker 4 (48:10):
Sounds like a good plan. Adu Yes, I’ll be, I’ll try. I’ll definitely try and make it to that meeting.
Jess (48:19):
All right. One other thing I wanted to say quickly is there is a move, excuse me, a policy move percolating in the Environmental Commission. It hasn’t gone anywhere yet, but they’re discussing it on reducing the frequency of trash pickup. There has already been some feelings in the community about this. And all I wanted to say is that maybe fewer feelings, more questions, people are, I think rightfully concerned about what the consequences would be for their household. But because there isn’t a decision on the table, now is the time to figure out do we need an extra recycling bin in our house? Is there another way to manage trash pickup that actually doesn’t impact our household? For example, neighborhood trash dumps. So there are different ways to answer this question. And the reason the Environmental Commission is considering this is because trash pickup is a significant contributor to our city’s greenhouse gas emissions. So reducing the frequency helps us reach our carbon neutrality goals. I think the question isn’t yes or no. Do we do it or do we not do it? I think the question is how do we make this goal possible? So we’ll drop a link there. There’ll be a lot of links in today’s show notes, but we’ll drop a link to the environmental commission’s work in the show notes. And I believe Molly is looking a little bit farther beyond Ann Arbor’s borders on her next bit.
Molly (49:36):
So this is something that affects Ann Arbor that is actually coming from the American Relief Plan. This is the huge relief bill that was just passed in Congress, 1.9 billion to for all kinds of different things related to relief across the country and through sort of a friend of the podcast let us know that through what we think is an error related to how Ann Arbor was classified, Ann Arbor got much, a much smaller amount of money than we should have. I think it was about not classifying Ann Arbor as a metropolitan area. It’s not clear to me, but you may have heard this was in the news. There were these spread spreadsheets shared that Ann Arbor is getting 12 million from the relief plan. But when you look at other cities in Michigan, Royal Oak got $30 million. They have a population of 60,000 people. So per person, that’s like $500 a person. Grand Rapids got $90 million, their population is 198,000. So per person, it’s like $450. Ann Arbor, as I said, 12 million. Our population is 130,000 people. So per person, we’re talking less than a hundred dollars. So just a huge, hugely different than what we should be getting.
Molly (51:00):
It’s people know it’s a problem, but it’s not clear to me if or how it will get fixed. And I was encouraged to encourage you, our listeners, to call our representatives. So Debbie Dingle is our representative in Congress, Debbie Stow and Gary Peters are our senators. We’ll have the information in the show notes, but just give them a call and say, Hey, Ann Arbor really needs relief just like everyone else in Michigan. Can you please make sure we get all the money? And there was one more small,
Speaker 4 (51:33):
Oh, one thing I wanted to add onto that is that a lot of city departments have been cutting their budgets because of the Covid shortfall and so forth. And it is my hope that when Ann ever gets some funding back from the state, even if it’s the reduced money that we don’t end up refunding the police. I want, if they can work at a reduced budget, let’s let,
Molly (52:01):
That’s an excellent point. We want that money. There’s a lot of other things we could be doing with that money. Right?
Speaker 4 (52:07):
Put that towards those unarmed responders we’ve been talking about, man.
Molly (52:10):
Yeah. So I think it’s, now it’s time for pod keeping and handing it over to Jess.
Speaker 4 (52:17):
All right. Oh wait, I did want to say something brief about, there’s an ordinance on here called C3 that’s changed to how we do these city sidewalk, the snow removal fines. If you’re, how much we’re fining people if they fail to remove their snow from their sidewalks. And we know we’ve been talking about snow removal and it’s been a big topic. And so it seemed really strange to me that since we’re moving towards a thing where the city is going to do all the sidewalk snow removal, why are we right now changing the fines? And they’re talking about changing the fine from a hundred dollars to $60? And it seems to me like, I don’t like the idea of enforcing this or really a whole lot of other things by fines. Because fines are a really unequitable way to enforce things. Like there’s people who just, there’s people for whom a hundred dollars fine is going to be a huge amount of money, and there’s people who, for whom it’s just not. And so if one who’s trying to get someone to shovel their sidewalk, you might get someone for whom a hundred dollars is like, oh sure, let me go grab that for you. And there’s some people for whom it’s going to be like, well, I guess I’m not going to be paying, I guess I’m not going to be buying food this week.
Speaker 4 (53:51):
And in either case, it’s not ideal. In either case, the ideal solution is to just have the city do the sidewalk snow removal. So I kind of don’t understand why this is coming. It reduces the fine, which doesn’t change. It doesn’t really change the structural inequalities there.
Molly (54:09):
And part of the snow removal resolution that did pass at the last meeting covered an investigation into all of the city’s policies around snow removal, including how we do enforcement and to come back with recommendations. And so we can expect some recommendations about fines, whether we should raise them or lower them or get rid of them. That work is about to happen. And so that adds to the question about why this is on here now.
Speaker 4 (54:39):
Okay, now I’m going to let Jess do about that pod keeping.
Jess (54:44):
So I’m pleased to say that nobody called in or wrote in with corrections this week. It’s not to say we got nothing wrong, but nothing nobody pointed out to us. So good for us. But
Speaker 4 (54:53):
I just, I’m just going to imagine we got it. All right, we
Jess (54:56):
Got it. All right. That’s a good, that’s right. We got it. All right. But I did want to thank those listeners who have either copied us on or forwarded letters you’ve written to council. It is really cool to see how you guys reach out. So we will be thinking about how to share those out in a civic hall of fame, both to celebrate the hard work that you do and to help give examples to other people who are considering writing in writing to council can be a really scary thing, especially when you’re doing it for the first time. So we’d like to continue to make it easier for you guys. So good job. Civic, everybody,
Speaker 4 (55:35):
And thanks to all of you who have supported us on Cofi or coffee or however you pronounce that. And if you’d like to send us a few dollars to cover our hosting, you can find us at K fi.com/ann Arbor.
Molly (55:53):
And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor af. We are your co-hosts Jess Lee, TA Michelle Hughes and Molly Kleinman. And thanks always to producer j Jared Stein. For questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes, you can email us at ann arbor af pod@gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city.