Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up April 5th. 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:
- This week’s Council agenda
- The Ann Arbor Tenants Union is re-forming, and we should also have a Renters Commission
- The sidewalk gap prioritization framework
- The CAHOOTS program in Denver as a model for an unarmed responder program
If you write to Council in support of the unarmed-responder resolution (and we hope you do), here are some points you can make:
- This model has the potential to operate with a vision of helping communities resolve problems internally without the justice system. Public safety is about more than just policing; when residents experience crime or disorder, they should have tools beyond the police at their disposal.
- By adopting an alternate model, we have an opportunity to reduce the volume of calls to which police must respond, mitigating the negative impacts that can result from an overreliance on policing.
- Our local public and nonprofit housing providers have all dealt with police engagement where an unarmed/non police response would have been a more appropriate fit for the circumstance.
- The funding for this should come from the police budget, not elsewhere.
Finally, we didn’t get to mention this last resolution on the podcast, but we wanted to thank Council for bringing forward resolution DC-4 “Condemning Hate Crimes, Hateful Rhetoric, and Hateful Acts against Asians and Asian Americans, Encouraging Ann Arbor Residents to Report Hate Crimes and Harassment to the Proper Authorities.”
Thanks to the generosity of our listeners, we have launched a website! Come find episodes, show notes, and transcripts over at www.annarboraf.com. For our ko-fi donors, thank you for making this possible. And thank you to each one of our listeners. If you’d like to find and talk to each other, come check out the thread for each episode in Ann Arbor Humans Who Wonk.
Transcript
JL: 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 in local politics and policy, governance, and other civic good times. I’m Jess Letaw and my pronouns are she/her, I’m Molly Kleinman and my pronouns are she/her, and I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she/her. We’re your cohosts to help you get informed, and get involved. It’s your city! Before we get started… we have a website! annarboraf.com! You’ll find all the episodes, show notes, and transcripts. Thanks again to all of our supporters who donated to help pay for hosting and other costs. If you’d like to give us a few dollars, you can find us at ko-fi.com/annarboraf. Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up Monday April 5. We will be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including renter lisa’s sidewalks and alternatives to traditional policing and offer some ways for you to get involved a quick process note we record this a few days before the Council meeting, which means there will likely be some changes to the agenda between now and then first up is the consent agenda, and I believe molly has some thoughts.
MK: yeah I have a couple things on the consent consent agenda this week, the first one is CA five which is South industrial repaving it’s on there, mostly just as a construction contract and i’m hopeful that this will not be in any way controversial but i’m excited about it because, in addition to the the Concrete repair we’re going to see a lot of cool reconfigurations to improve the experience for everyone, outside of cars pedestrians and bikes there’s going to be bike lanes installed the sort of mid block crossings along that corridor, I think, are all going to be improved and then there’s going to be some substantial reconfigurations at the big intersections at either end so Eisenhower on the South end Simpson and stadium at the north end those are really messy intersections right now, and so i’m excited about the ways that they’re going to get improved, and so I just wanted to call that out, but hopefully by the end of the summer it’s going to be a very different experience over there. The other thing on the consent agenda that is again transportation related is CA seven, which is a sidewalk APP project. And this is on here in this way because of the stuff we’ve talked about earlier about the there’s a new millage to cover sidewalk Apps but that money hasn’t really started coming in, yet, and so starting more or less now sidewalk APP projects that were already planned for are basically borrowing from different city funds until the millage money comes in and so that’s what this is again i’m hopeful that it will not be controversial. Now that Jason property owners don’t have to pay for these sidewalks i’m hopeful that they will not object, sometimes people object to sidewalks for other reasons, but fingers crossed that this won’t be controversial it’s the sidewalk APP program has this whole prioritization system, and this Newport sunset one is considered really high priority, it has a lot of points and all the different ways that something becomes a priority for sidewalk Apps, so this is another one I think that’ll make people happy to have filled this year.
MH: I think people a lot of times are confused about sidewalk prioritization and like what. You know what gets the higher priorities of when we’re going to do the sidewalks and stuff like that, so I wanted to mention that we put some links in the show description about how they choose which sidewalks to do when.
MK: yeah there’s a lot of different factors that go into that prioritization and different things get different amounts of points so there’s different waiting like some things are more important in the prioritization than other things. But they consider a lot of factors I think it’s a pretty good process, it was I don’t remember when exactly, but my understanding is that this is a process that’s been refined and improved. Over the last few years and then next up we’ve got a couple of public hearings we wanted to talk about, and the first one is yours, yes.
JL: yeah so there’s a public hearing for the ordinance on that’s called fair chance access to housing. This is the ordinance that’s making a little bit easier for formerly incarcerated people to obtain housing in the city of Vancouver we’ve talked about this one before we’re a big fan it passed easily first reading and is expected to pass easily second reading. We spend a lot of time yelling and politics, so if you want to spend too happy moments email your Council members and or the mayor and tell them, yes, we are fan of the fair chance access to housing, its pH for public hearing for in today’s agenda.
MH: We actually this actually is the second time it’s a second reading, I believe there was it was it was that second reading last time and there was a public hearing about it, people talk about it, but the City Council had noticed that there was something left out of there. And so it’s coming back to a new second reading because whenever they amend something after the public hearing people need to have a chance to have a public hearing about the newly amended thing so.
JL: That reminds me of oceans 12 when Julia Roberts character keeps talking about her second, third anniversary that’s what this feels like a second second reading. So we’ll put will put contact information for that in the show notes, but essentially check out the agenda it’ll tell you how to contact and well, you have one.
MK: Yet another public hearing this isn’t I think we’ve seen this before as well. This is about lowering the fines when people fail to shuffle their sidewalks, so this is public hearing six also be six because it will get voted on it’s a pretty minor adjustment and the I think the thing to know about this is that the big. Like comprehensive municipal sidewalk snow removal resolution that passed a few weeks ago that instructed city staff to really think comprehensively about all of the aspects of how we deal with sidewalks know. Looking at fines and how we handle fines is going to be a piece of that process, so the fact that we’re changing the spine right now. There may be additional changes later, so I don’t think this is something to get particularly worked up about in one direction or another. There were a lot of questions so they’re you know they’re these agenda questions or Council members can ask staff questions and councilmember breaks had a lot of questions about this. They seem to be really looking ahead to the larger process about things like you know we don’t currently differentiate between. A single homeowner property and a large commercial landlord and would there be possibilities for differentiating fees based on.
You know if it’s on a transit court or not all these kinds of things so that’ll be stuff to look for when this gets talked about again, but for this again for this particular one it’s a I think a $40 or $60 reduction in the $40 reduction in the total cost of the fine if you fail to shovel your sidewalk.
MH: I hope that, eventually, the city will just take over the entire process of shoveling and no one will have to pay any fines at all.
JL: that’s right municipal snow removal for everyone.
MH: Yes, that’s and but yeah I think what what what what came out of the transportation Commission and was passed by City Council was a resolution to kind of pilot that next year and hopefully we’ll have something after next year.
MK: Right right, this is it’s going to be a little while till we get to hopefully something better than what we have now yeah so moving on to some first readings jess you had something you wanted to talk about.
JL: Thank you and I haven’t been this excited since we got to talk about dog licenses so the there’s a first reading ordinance and this one see one called an ordinance to amend section eight 530 of Chapter 105 of Title seven so essentially it is.
MH: As excited already. I know.
JL: Like aren’t you just salivating. So it’s requiring landlords to amend a specific part of the lease and what it’s saying is that. Right now landlords have a minimum of 70 days between the time they leave they begin to lease with the tenant to the time that they can chart start showing that unit to new prospective tenants. So if you’re running on a lease, for example, that starts Sep tember one your landlord can start showing as early as December and for those of us who have come from leases or who, like me, are still on leases. Most of our leases have some kind of language in there saying a landlord has 24 or 48 hours notice that they have to give you before showing. So that is a long time to have to be on point for somebody that you know and people that you don’t potentially entering your home. This ordinance is extending that minimum time from 70 to 240 days so on that same September lease. Instead of a December entry, the very earliest possible showing that your landlord could do if your unit, it would be the end of April, which feels much more humane. As somebody who’s rented for the whole time that i’ve lived in in order i’m really glad to see this it’s really unsettling to constantly be on guard for the possibility that people will be tripping through your apartment.
MK: Well there’s also there’s also the piece to write that you have to know, in December, if you want to renew the lease the following September, you have to write it, you have to.
MH: You know yeah yeah and you don’t know yet if you’re looking to be reliable and they’re going to pay the rent if they don’t know if they’re going to be good people to live with next year.
MK: Right like if you have roommates you, you and the roommates have to make that commitment to live together after potentially you have only lived together for three to 470 days um and so right so there’s there’s a lot of pieces to this if you end up meeting to rent an apartment in June or July there’s not there’s very little available because so many of the leases are on the schedule or things are committed, starting in December, for the following fall yeah.
JL: Absolutely and it’s worth noting, I took a look at the language of the ordinance This does not apply to subletting. So the requirements change, and that makes sense right like typically the leases are much shorter typically The turnaround is shorter, so if your landlord is asking to enter, on behalf of a sub lessee or whatever the noun is there. The requirements are different, so this is just about a standard lease what i’m saying is, I think this is a positive move, I don’t feel like renters get enough attention or protection really anywhere but, including Ann arbor. So now’s a good time to mention that the Ann arbor tenants Union which has been defunct since the early 2000s is in the process of being revived will drop contact information for that in the show notes.
And I also since we’re here, I want to use this opportunity to bang the drum for a renters Commission. Like a to zero, and a number of other frameworks, but the city uses to evaluate policies like the prioritization scheme that molly was talking about for sidewalks. It would be really helpful to have a framework or a body of people through which policies and practices can be worked renters constitute 55% of an arborist population, but of the hundreds of people serving on city boards and commissions, including city council. I’m aware of for renters there may be more but it wouldn’t be a lot so it’s, a fact that renters are drastically underrepresented in local government and a renters Commission would be a way of would be one step towards remediating that so I love this ordinance in our renters condition let’s go.
MH: When I was in school, it was like before they even passed the 70 days thing, and you know we were trying to like rent. With people you know and then and then immediately, they could show they could show it and immediately you had to make a decision about what you were doing the next year, so even the 70 days that’s not enough, you know yeah. But yeah so yeah i’m excited about this year.
JL: Very good, speaking of things that we’re excited about Michelle, what are we talking about.
MH: Who is it time.
JL: To time for that time.
MK: This is our big one today every.
JL: Settling because we’re here for a while.
MH: DC to Resolution directing the city administrator to develop an unarmed public safety response program, so this is a resolution coming before the city and i’m excited about that, because I think we need an anon response program we need there needs to be people who you can call where if if if someone is having a mental health crisis if someone just needs some kind of intervention, I would like to be able to call 911 and know that they’re not gonna i’m not getting them shot and there’s a lot of problems that could that you don’t need a full a fully armed officers to come and help as a lot of situations where a fully armed officer escalates the situation and causes a problem where there wasn’t a problem. And i’ve heard it for straight from the police, they say that the overwhelming majority of the calls are just disputes between neighbors things that in my mind could easily be resolved by or you know, maybe not not usually because you need. Things that could be resolved by an unarmed response, rather than an armed like police response like.
JL: resume the situation where it’s easy to not have a gun.
MH: Right and it’s like it’s like you know the police should be there if there’s a crime being committed if there’s some you know somebody to catch, but like if you hear. You know if you hear your neighbors downstairs arguing a whole lot and you hear you know, like that’s not necessarily a situation where you want you want to send someone to jail, but you want someone to go check it out and see what the situation is and yeah so that’s. Something that we’d like to do and how are we going to do it it’s it’s that’s The big question and so that this resolution puts together, you know. A kind of it kind of has a long timeline in which, how are we going to do it it’s going to be discussed, because, like there’s a lot of different questions in the air right now. Most of the mental health expertise is with the county’s Community mental health Program. They you know have case numbers for people they like you know there’s certain people that are in the Community mental health Program. And you know if a lot of the calls that people are getting are about people with mental health crises, then they’re the they’re the ones that I would that I would want responding but I think. So you know it’s it. we’re going to need to have them at the table when we discuss how exactly to build this program another another group we’re going to need at the table is the sheriff’s office, because they run the 911 Program. And so, if we’re going to have somebody that you know if we’re going to create a new program to dispatch to. The people who run 911 are going to have to be in the room, when we discuss it, because they’re going to need to know what situations we need to call them the unarmed responders. And you know, everybody needs to be on the same page about that.
JL: And we’ll talk about this a little bit more in a few minutes but it’s worth noting, now that the sheriff’s office and the 911 dispatch both of those are run at the county level.
MH: Right yeah, and this is, and this ordinance is going on at the city level, so I think we’re trying to be a leader here in kind of creating this demand for this program. And I hope that we’re able to follow up that leadership with. You know, putting putting some of our money where our mouth is, because if our entire plan is. A Community mental health how about you take the 911 calls and how about you don’t respond to it with the police like. I think i’d like us to provide more leadership than that.
MK: And there, I mean there are models for this out in the world it’s not like this. Coming out of left field, the cahoots program, which is based in Denver, I think, is sort of the thing that people hold up as the gold standard at this point it’s been very successful in creating an alternate response program centered around around mental illness. i’ve heard about this from a lot of local social justice advocates that creating an unarmed responder program is a is a big priority it’s a priority for the black lives matter movement nationally. And so, this this feels like something where, if we do it right and we do it. i’d like you know if we go big enough, we can potentially have a really material impact on the lives and the safety of people in definitely in Ann arbor potentially even in all of washing our county.
MH: yeah because see I you know right now it’s kind of like I feel like when it’s. We talked about the police like I have such I have such a hesitancy against calling 911 that even if I knew someone was in danger i’m not sure i’d want to do it because you know, we had. You know back so you know back in 2014 we had or a roster was shot and killed after someone called 911 because she was having mental health problems.
JL: And she was known to Community mental health like she had a case worker and.
MH: Writing exactly and yet the police were the ones who came up and responded and the first thing they did was shooter and I think it’s because you know, and you know I just think that that’s not the appropriate response we want people who aren’t going to do that. yeah.
MK: that’s and that’s one of the whereas clauses to in the so the one of the I like this resolution um there’s a lot of really good meat in those warehouses, you know we love to read the whereas. So one of them says in America 22% of civilian fatalities since 2015 and a substantial portion of injuries arising from police engagements involve people who suffer from mental illness, with some of those fatalities and injuries occurring during calls for service, where the deployment of police officers was not necessary. This is something that feels really personal for me, I have, there are people in my life, who I love dearly who have serious mental illnesses and. God forbid, we end up in a situation it’s an emergency situation, we need we need help, or they need help. I don’t want them to get shot by a cop in that moment, and this is the thing that happened, this is the thing that.
JL: would even be afraid of it.
MK: Exactly I want them to be able to get the help that they need without the risk of of being killed um and so it’s like it’s something that I think about on a personal level, but I think this is personal for a lot of people. We hear I hear about this most in the context of racial justice conversations, but the mental illness piece really it’s it’s intersection all this is true for people of all races with mental illnesses that the risk of injury or death by COP is higher.
MH: So autism, I hear a lot about this from autism activists. yeah um that you know that the police don’t expect people to to respond, the way that appeals to people sometimes do, and so they end up getting shot.
MK: But there are other kinds of physical disabilities as well this happens. A lot of deaf people don’t write. To police instructions, because they can’t hear them. um there, there are so many people put at risk by the presence of police with guns um so yeah.
MH: yeah see i’m good so what this resolution does is just kind of get the conversation rolling this doesn’t like actually start a program. It doesn’t actually like. You know, create you know this doesn’t direct to the city administrator to hire people it doesn’t it doesn’t you know we don’t we’re not buying any new vehicles with this we’re not carving a whole lot of money out of the budget it’s just kind of to get us figuring out how we’re going to do it and so by. What is it December 31 2021 will either facilitate or establish a program of subject matter expert response in collaboration with the county or we’re going to write a report about what the problems are. And so there is some the. This resolution does call for some money to be spent on this, but only in so far as like if we’re going to like hire a consultant to come and help us design the program the.
JL: way, it is in pursuit of the idea, not in pursuit of the Program.
MH: Right, so I wish we were starting a program faster, but I guess i’m i’m told that these matters are quite complex. A great deal of negotiation. But uh Oh, I wanted to tell a story oh i’m sorry.
JL: I just wanted to say one thing because I i’m in the impatient camp much more often than not, when it comes to me this book can change you guys know this um and and I had an opportunity to talk with a woman who’s been an activist, for decades, and I was sharing this and feeling a little bit proud about it. And she said Okay, but the speed that you’re so proud of often disenfranchises people from a robust process, so you may mean well. But you could be cutting people out, and so we had a fantastic conversation about speed, the speed of activism, and the speed of change, and she said. What you need to be mindful of is changing the process and the outcome, who is an in service of. And so, if you are changing the process to be more inclusive and not more exclusive if that means that the outcome will be more inclusive the network and then more exclusive. Then it’s not about the speed of the change it’s about the inclusive it of the dialogue, and so I that doesn’t change me out of the impatient camp, I think I will always be there, but she she taught me a little bit of humility, which I appreciate it.
MH: But I don’t know man, I mean boy like if we want, if we want to have an exclusive conversation that results in US shooting fewer minorities. I would be happy with that and then, and then we can talk about why we’re shooting why we’re shooting for black people, later on, you know.
JL: yeah, but I just want to call out there were three White ladies and technically, the global minority, I just wanted to say that.
MK: I think I mean thinking about the, the issue of speed, so this resolution, the risk at like, so I think we need to pass this resolution um but I do think there’s a real risk if we if we speed through this too fast that it’s going to the funding is going to come from the easiest place and.
JL: That might not be what we’re looking at all the way up in there.
MK: yeah i’m sort of foreshadowing a little bit.
JL: Where.
MK: To go um that the the people like the people who are viewed as the beneficiaries of this might might not it might not be a broad enough group for what we think should be included so there’s yeah I want us to do this with all deliberate speed, but the deliberate part is important too, and maybe now is the time to jump into the funding question a little bit.
JL: I just want to make sure i’m not bulldozing over Michelle and anything that she wanted to say.
MH: No, I think I think yeah let’s talk about let’s talk about funding because yeah We talked we mentioned that funding for the program isn’t discussed in this resolution because there’s no program to fund yet. But we have some thoughts about where the funding for this program I should come.
JL: So we will be dropping in a call to action in the show notes about if you’d like to contact Council in favor of this resolution, and we would love it if you did. Please do so please understand that this is not about getting into the weeds of what the program is or isn’t how it is or isn’t funded that decision is not being made on Monday. The question is, can we talk about this and I think everybody at the decision table is going to say yes. But we wanted on this podcast to kickstart some important parts of that conversation, and for me. i’ve said before i’ll say again if you’re not talking about the dollars you’re not serious, and so i’m really intensely interested in how this program is going to be funded. The relevant clause of this specific ordinance isn’t aware as it’s one of the results, so the decision that this ordinance is being asked to make one of the three decisions is the City Council directs the city administration to include in fiscal. Year 22 budget. Funds necessary. To achieve the goals of the resolution. That means since we’re more than halfway through budget season, this is going to be pulled from some departments funds not a new funding source that hasn’t yet been identified. That, including the marijuana sales tax or federal or state stimulus funds, since those will likely be set, after the fiscal year 22 budget is finalized and. This is me speaking a little bit out of pocket but looking closely at the resolution from the last City Council meeting about how Council is deciding how to spend the marijuana sales tax. If we attach this resolution to that one we’re really doing both a disservice, because that one is focusing super heavily on substance use and abuse. And those are absolutely not the only calls where an unarmed responder would be appropriate, so. We can absolutely look at entailing some maybe of the marijuana money to this, but I feel like if we’re going to set restrictions on how the money is sourced and on how it’s spent we’re kind of shooting ourselves in the foot and that’s exactly what we’re trying to avoid. Okay, so summarizing what we know about the dollar part of this resolution, so far. The Ann arbor housing Commission has already been directed by city administration to allocate over a quarter of a million dollars towards a program like this, which means that city administration has been anticipating this creation. That speaks to what malia Michelle said that this is a conversation that’s really a long time coming. The housing commission’s general fund budget is around $6 million, so that is not a small amount of money, especially for a program that doesn’t yet exist and that’s really taking from, services and capital that already need funding so that’s a bit of a hit. On the other hand, if you look at how the rest of the general fund dollars are spent. And if you remember from our team listeners who listened to the municipal budgeting podcast which I know, everybody did, because how fun was that. The biggest chunk of that pie goes into the Ann arbor police department of around 105 million dollar general fund budget, but the inner city of Ann arbor has every year, the police, get $31 million for approximately a third. On top of which, in their budget presentation earlier this year. All departments had been asked to make 5% cuts, with the understanding that with the pandemic spanning at least two fiscal years everybody was going to need to tighten their belts, a little bit the police did not make the full 5% cut.
MH: So i’m just saying.
JL: yeah.
MH: And I don’t I don’t think what cuts the rainmaker ones that we can count on because the the cuts that they proposed were things that suppose that all 11 people who are going to be eligible for retirement are going to retire.
JL: that’s right, it was really it was really I hate to say this, but paper cuts it wasn’t most of them weren’t meaningful.
MH: cuts to the budget and, like you.
JL: said it assumes retirements and non replacement of those positions, so I just want to say now, at the very beginning of this conversation. I hope that not one single single dollar this comes from any part of any housing fund, and I do hope it comes from the police department police budget most if not all of it. And I also want to clarify that i’m not talking about administration of the program i’m not saying the police could or should administer it i’m a little bit more agnostic on that, but what i’m saying is that’s where I think the dollars should come from. As molly.
MH: should not be administering the Program.
JL: right as molly referred to earlier, there are a lot of people who are paying very close attention to this issue, who think that this should be administered and funded at the county level. there’s a lot of good reasons for that, and even if it’s funded in the cat at the county level. There are many ways for Ann arbor to contribute to that fund, and we can and absolutely should do it because we would be the ones, probably taking the most advantage of a program like that, so I just wanted to put $1 sign in the sand now no housing yes please.
MK: yeah and there’s been there been some calls to action circulating that some of our listeners may have seen that originated with the Washington housing alliance and avalon. Which is the big housing supportive housing nonprofit in the region, and both of those organizations have been putting out to you know to their lists basically saying. We 100% need an unarmed responder program these are organizations that see close up the kinds of calls that police are showing up to where police are not necessarily the best choice. But, but also, they are trying to protect housing housing funds and basically asking people to reach out to City Council and say yes please pass this resolution because, again, the resolution is written does not talk about funding source, we can pass this resolution, exactly as it is and that’s. A step in the direction we want, however, because we’re also working on the budget right now in that same email to Council they’re asking people to say, please don’t take this money from housing. And so we you know we can hold both of those ideas in our heads, at the same time. And that’s that’s the big call to action that that i’ve seen about this issue and that i’ve been pushing out to folks in the, but we are now sharing with you our listeners. This is an important one.
MH: What I would like to see is a situation where you know the we haven’t on our responders program and that and so many of the calls are diverted to them that our police are just sitting there, doing nothing and then it’s like. Well, why don’t we just take the money from the police and and not have so many police, I think we should create that situation where this occurs, I think we should create anticipate that happening, by taking the money from the police to fund this program.
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MK: yeah.
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MH: I would say that, and again it’s this it’s kind of too early to talk about funding the program because there’s no program yet.
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JL: But nobody.
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MH: Nobody is no funding Program.
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JL: Which means, now is the perfect time to advocate.
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MK: Exactly and i’m seeing their support for for for work like this across the spectrum of people who support i’m defending the police.
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MK: Abolishing the police reforming the police across that whole spectrum there’s there’s some consensus that we are asking too much of police in our communities in our society, and that this is a way to to move some of those responsibilities to a more.
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MH: Even the police will tell you that.
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JL: that’s right.
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MH: she’s rocks and he was like I would be I would love, if someone else were able to respond to this type of call, of course, he doesn’t support cutting their budget at all right right.
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MK: And, but this is, this is why it feels important to to really be clear that we’re separating these two things, the resolution itself is really not controversial, this is a really pop this would be an ocular step to take. The funding thing gets thornier.
JL: And that’s all I wanted to say about dollars, this time more to come. And Michelle I think you’ve got one more thing to say about policing.
MH: Oh yeah Okay, this is a resolution directing the city attorney to review city ordinances relating to police enforcement.
MK: But so just I just want to wrap we are. We have now officially wrapped up. The conversation and we’re moving on to a different policing topic.
MH: Right yeah that was that was DC three there’s another thing on the agenda DC five. And yeah DC five is the ordinance or that the ordinance review thing we’re asking we’re.
JL: directing the city.
MH: Oh, my God like a test that none of us have standing for.
JL: directing the city attorney to city ordinances relating to police enforcement, I know you did.
MH: I know you did you study too hard that’s I can’t remember. The problem with this, what is that. Okay, the problem with this one is I tried to study for it, the.
JL: information.
MH: was not available it’s basically, like the.
MH: The State over the past little while has passed some criminal justice reform bills and they have set some new guidelines and actions like what should. What what. Like police response should be appropriate and certain laws and what punishments should be available for certain crimes and there’s been kind of the notion coming to us from the status that we should loosen some of these things up turn some of the things that were misdemeanors are now civil infractions involving a ticket. And things like that, and so this is just a thing coming from the city attorney’s office. Asking to take some time to make sure that our local laws are in compliance with the new directions from the State. So it’s not quite it’s not like a it’s not it’s not visionary leadership that’s happening here the visionary leadership has already occurred at the state level and this is just keeping us up with that and it’s kind of a long timeline they’re going to have a work session to describe the ordinance changes that are recommended they’re going to have that on November 15 and then they’re going to have the actual final amendments to review at by December 31 so it’s a long time and you know I kind of wish that if we found some egregious things in there that we could stream them through faster, you know and say like. Wait a minute we said that this is a misdemeanor no that should be that should be a ticket that shouldn’t even be a thing like but that doesn’t sound like that’s what anyone had in mind and instead we’re just going to get these things to come to us as a package. And I couldn’t get a whole lot of information about like what specific changes were expecting um but you know I guess that’s why they’re taking till November to do the work. Because they don’t know if they knew then they would have the answer already. But yeah and I said that some of the talked about a couple things um. There was, you know things that were. You know, things that were misdemeanors could become a civil infraction. But also things that situations where like a domestic violence situation where the police currently don’t have the power to intervene, because if they didn’t like specifically witness something. Some of these changes from the state level would allow police to intervene, even if they didn’t like witness a specific thing and I don’t know I mean I I don’t I definitely don’t like domestic violence, but I also don’t like police I don’t like them like. I don’t like giving them new powers to do things, but so we’ll see what these are maybe this you know I only heard a really vague description of it, trying to get scuttlebutt here. But we’ll see what those things are and comment on them sometime around November 15 I suppose.
JL: that’s one of the things that I kind of appreciate about being involved in this specific process. The way that we are right so for the podcast we see things that are interesting we do a little bit of research, and then we bring it to you the listener, for you to understand a little bit better. But paying attention in that way, like the what you’re talking about about the city ordinances related to police enforcement and the unarmed responder thing we’re really coming in. At a mature part of the Community conversation and an early part of the Senate conversations like now is a really good time to not know things. Because there’s a whole bunch of people who don’t know right, so you get through the not knowing and the learning together. So yeah it’s it’s complicated and there’s a lot of this it’s really unpleasant, but this this right now what we’re doing what we’re talking about this is how it gets better. Right.
MH: yeah so I kind of don’t know what to expect out of this. It reference some state laws, but they seemed like really large packages of bills and things like that, so I hope someone has time to read those. I don’t i’m just a person.
JL: that’s the one of the things that I enjoy about that, like there’s weird nouns that pop up all the time, but that’s often referred to as a raft of legislation like where did that come from, why is like why isn’t it a ballot of legislation rafters fine.
MH: anyway that’s that I hope it’s part of our kind of liberalizing things I would really like to see things like you know as we talked about in the last episode, I would like to see. Sex work be taken off of the city’s list of things that qualify as disorderly conduct apparently that’s not what’s going to happen from that’s we’re not expecting that to be a result of this review. So that just means i’m going to stay on it until that until we get a specific ordinance changed just for that yeah.
JL: Speaking of sex worker advocacy. i’m going to take us into pod keeping so listener not exactly correction, but a clarification, so in our last episode on sex worker advocacy and thank you again to the wonderful addy finch who joined us as our guest. I referenced an incident about a security worker hassling a public housing tenant because of what that security guard perceived as sex work on the part of the tenant. I wanted to clarify from a question that I got that that story came from the housing commission of another municipal another municipality. That that wasn’t an Ann arbor property that’s, not to say that it couldn’t or doesn’t happen here, but that particular story was not from here in Ann arbor. I also wanted to point out that I don’t think we’ve said this to our listeners yet, but we post. Every episode of Ann arbor as as its own thread in the Facebook group Ann arbor humans who want So if you ever want to have a conversation about this episode or anything else, relating to the pod come on over it’s Ann arbor humans who want. And we’ll drop a link to that in the show notes.
MK: And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor AF. We’re your cohosts Jess Letaw, Michelle Hughes, and myself, Molly Kleinman; and thanks as always to producer Jarod Malestein. For questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes, you can email us at annarborafpod@gmail.com. Theme music “I dunno” by grapes. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!
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