Episode 19: City Council Meeting: 19 April 2021


We discuss the next City Council meeting, coming up Monday, April 19th. We’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including lots of housing, a little bike stuff, and shenanigans.

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Links from today’s episode: 


We have zero chill about Councilmember Jeff Hayner’s use of a homophobic slur. Read about his initial comment; statements by Ann Arbor’s out electeds, Councilmember Travis Radina and County Commissioner Katie Scott; and a statement from the Jim Toy Center.

In the “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.

Michelle (00:00:05):
Hi. 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 and governance and other civic good times. I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she her.
Jess (00:00:21):
I’m Jess Leet, and my pronouns are she her.
Molly (00:00:24):
And I’m Molly Kleinman, and my pronouns are she her.
Michelle (00:00:27):
We’re your co-hosts to help you get informed and get involved. It’s your city. Let’s jump in.
Molly (00:00:38):
Today we’re talking about the next city council meeting. Coming up on Monday, April 19th, we’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including lots of housing, a little bike stuff, and shenanigans in the agenda. And we’re also going to 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 may be some changes to the agenda between now and then. And Jess, you’re going to get us started way at the top of the agenda this week, right? With the city administrator communications.
Jess (00:01:07):
I am we. I
Michelle (00:01:07):
Also wanted to point out that this is an action packed agenda and we would normally like to give each of these items a lot of room to breathe, but we’re not going to be able to do that this time.
Jess (00:01:18):
That’s true. So we have spoken into the ether, our frustration with anemic agendas. This one fixes all of it. So buckle up folks. We got some civics coming straight at you, starting with the city administrator communications, which is not a section we normally spend time on, but there’s a lot in this one. There’s the equity inclu and inclusion report, which is a quarterly report from staff up to the city administrator. There’s a report and two reports from the Ann Arbor Housing Commission that I wanted to touch on the equity and inclusion report. I am using this opportunity as I did the last time that it came up a quarter ago to call in because this one really frustrates me. I appreciate that an equity and inclusion report exists, but there is no documentation of goals. There’s no documentation of benchmarks, there’s no clear delineation between internal d e I work and external d e I work that pertains to community members and how services are delivered in the community.
(00:02:25):
There’s inconsistent reporting from departments. It’s just really kind of all over the place. So again, I appreciate that it exists, but I feel like we are really going to need to take this up a notch if we’re taking our d e I work seriously. To that end, I want to reiterate my hope that our city develops racial equity office sooner rather than later. The county has had one for a few years at this point and she’s expanding her staff right now. Ann Arbor as the largest municipality in the county, absolutely needs to step up and be a part of that work.
Michelle (00:02:58):
We also resolution declaring racism a public health crisis and then we did nothing about it.
Jess (00:03:04):
That’s right. There’s been no money put towards it, and I’m not going to say no staff time, but the staff time that has been put towards it is really fractured across city units. And so I think if we’re again going to make meaningful systemic change, we need a meaningful systemic framework against which we’re working. And right now we don’t have that. I also wanted to talk about the two, just the two. Yes. The two housing commission reports. One is on community engagement for downtown city owned properties and 10 other city owned properties. And the other one is a brief comment on staffing. Listeners may remember that in November of 2020, in addition to changing who is in the Oval Office, Ann Arbor also voted in approval of Prop C, which was a 20 year millage for affordable housing. The housing commission is getting ready to gear up to create a lot of new affordable housing, which is awesome. It does mean that there’s a lot to change as far as staff and as far as their process. So the memo regarding their staffing increase, I tell you what, if you want a peak at what the next 5, 6, 7 years are going to look like,
Michelle (00:04:22):
I do. I watch that.
Jess (00:04:23):
I know, right?
Michelle (00:04:24):
I didn’t have time to read it yet, but I’m going to read it. I’m going to read it after this podcast.
Jess (00:04:28):
It’s really exciting. And I’ll drop a link specifically to this one in the show notes because understanding how they’re staffing for the changes really is a little bit of a crystal ball into those changes. So that’s fun. And then the last one that I wanted to mention in this section is the community engagement around the affordable housing prop or around, excuse me, city-owned housing prop. Excuse me. I’m just going to slow down. Community engagement around properties that the city owns that the housing commission has been exploring using for affordable housing. And so this document is pretty clear. It’s lists when the city council directed the housing commission to explore community engagement approximately when that occurred and what the next steps are for each property. There’s 10 properties listed in the text of the communication. There’s more in the attachments, but again, if you’re looking for that crystal ball into the future of what Ann Arbor affordable housing is going to look like, this gives specific properties, estimates of the number of units that can be delivered on the different properties.
(00:05:36):
It really does go into a nice but manageable amount of detail. The last thing that I’ll say on this in particular is we know from the 2015 housing accessibility and community affordability report that the Washington County commissioned that we need approximately 3,500 units over the next 15 years to satisfy just our most basic, very, very lowest unit of affordability. And this plan doesn’t get to get us to that 3,500, and that’s discounting other levels of affordability and other levels of income for residents in the community. So this is awesome. It’s great. It’s so much more than we’ve had and we as a community need to understand that this is not enough and we’re going to need to do more.
Michelle (00:06:26):
Even when we approved the millage, we knew that it was only going to get us halfway there.
Jess (00:06:31):
That’s right. That’s right. And then we need it. It wasn’t about not doing the millage, that it just needs to be a both end mindset. So that’s what I wanted to start off with on communications. Molly has some thoughts about the budget. Actually, we all have thoughts about the budget. Yes,
Molly (00:06:46):
We do all have thoughts about the budget. And this is, I want to be very clear, this is not the final vote on the budget. This is on the agenda. It’s I n T two. So these are things being introduced. This is a presentation on the budget. It’s a very useful slide deck. The actual budget vote is not until May 17th and May 3rd is when there will be a public hearing about the budget. So we keep talking about get ready to pay attention to the budget and talk about things. We have now reached that moment. This is the proposed budget. We made it. Overall, the projected concern in the budget is about declining revenues and not increasing expenses. So we knew the pandemic pandemic was going to change a lot of things for the city. B City budgets all over the country. This particular budget includes the CARES Act money, but does not include the American Rescue Act money. So there may yet be more money coming to the city that might a address some of the deficits that we have
Michelle (00:07:49):
Here. Fingers crossed,
Molly (00:07:50):
Fingers crossed. Because there is still a deficit. One of the things that I thought was really useful in the presentation is there are these nice little line graphs showing the shifting budget priorities broken out in different categories. So you can see that spending on pedestrians is going down, which is less than ideal, but spending and some other areas that we also care about, diversity, equity, and inclusion has been going up. You know, can take a look at this. And if you can see, for example, concerns that you might have about how much we’re spending on the police budget, this is now the chance to communicate to the city in a way that might actually make a difference on this year’s budget that we wanted to change. Michelle, you had a couple things you wanted to call out in the budget too, right?
Michelle (00:08:39):
Well, yeah, I was. So, okay. So when I look at this budget, what I’m thinking is these are the questions that I have because this is the time to look at the budget presentation and have questions and then talk about your, your questions to your city council members and get ready to talk about this. And so these are the things that stuck out in my mind that I want to get more clarity on. It says that we have, it says that this budget includes a 2.1 million deficit because of the covid thing, but I was like, I thought the state law didn’t allow us to have to run a budget deficit. I thought municipalities had to keep a balanced budget. So I’m not sure how we’re doing that.
Jess (00:09:18):
And that’s a good question. I don’t specifically know the answer to that, but I can speak from my perspective, going through the d d a budget process and having similar issues, our revenue has been just torpedoes this last year. We have the city an extremely healthy fund balance, and so we essentially have reservoirs that we can draw from. Even when our expenses exceed our revenues, we’ve got really healthy fund balances to be able to pull from. We have to manage that as the city does over multiple years because there are certain governmental, both basic and best practice levels under which we don’t want to draw those fund balances. So if the city is like the D D A, they’re allowed to run at a deficit. If the fund balance covers the balance without having them drop below that level, I don’t know.
Molly (00:10:09):
That is indeed the case. It’s actually in the presentation that the city is very well managed financially and is,
Jess (00:10:14):
You can’t see it, but I’m high fiving myself there. Its,
Molly (00:10:19):
There’s a solid, solid reserves that cover the deficit. The deficit that we’re looking at for this year. Well,
Michelle (00:10:27):
Good. I asked a question, got an answer. So that’s
Jess (00:10:32):
How you do it,
Michelle (00:10:32):
Folks. Yes. Got to ask these questions. Another thing was, I noticed on page 10 of the budget presentation, it said, let’s see, it said excludes 3.5 million of requests needed to achieve a 20. So I’m wondering, does that mean that there are requests that are now deferred? Or does that mean that there’s three point, there’s also 3.5 million of stuff, but it didn’t make it onto that page.
Jess (00:11:02):
So if I were to guess, the office of sustainability and innovation is a pretty unique entity in that they can pull funding sources from a lot of different places. They can pull it not only from federal and state monies, but also from foundations, from nonprofits, from, I don’t want to say private philanthropy, but there are other sectors beyond federal dollars that they can use as grants for this utilities we consistently see. And there’s one later on in the budget grants from D T E for different works. So my guess is that the work is staying in the budget pending funding source identification. Okay.
Michelle (00:11:40):
Guess actually. Yeah. And that’s the thing that excludes 3.5 million of requests. That’s the fiscal year. That’s in the fiscal year 23 column. So Gotcha. Right now we’re making a fiscal year 22 and 23 budget, and we’re probably going to redo the 23 when we actually get there. Yeah, maybe this is just, we’re going to try and spend 3.5 million in fiscal year 23, but we’re going to figure out how by then
Jess (00:12:08):
Problems.
Michelle (00:12:11):
And then, oh, the other thing I was excited about was the master planning that. So the planning department is looking to spend a hundred thousand dollars in this budget and then $700,000 in fiscal year 23 on single family zoning, public outreach and master planning process. Master planning process is, we talked about that at our wait, have we heard that episode yet?
Jess (00:12:38):
It comes next week. The timing is so great.
Michelle (00:12:42):
We’re going to have an episode about what the master planning process is, and it’s something that we need to do and it’s something we’ve been kind of putting off and it’s going to let us get in. I get a sense of what we as a community currently want from our zoning laws. And our current zoning laws do not reflect what we as a community want and value. And I like that we’re going to spend a lot of money talking about it because that means that we’re taking public outreach seriously. And I like that we’re going to be trying to hear from the people that are hard to reach and that we’re taking seriously the fact that we need to do the hard work of outreach to people in order to find out what we need. Because otherwise, if all we hear from is the people who are already being served well by our laws, they’ll say, Hey, things are great. And then we’ll go, oh, things are great, but clearly things are not great. We’re the eighth most segregated metropolitan area in the country, so we need to be hearing from some different people. And I’m glad that master planning process is going to kick off. And I’m glad that we are taking seriously the public outreach. I wish we didn’t have to wait until fiscal year 23 to do that,
Jess (00:13:58):
But that’s true. I similarly feel a sense of urgency. And by fiscal year 23, our current master plan, the backbone of it is going to be 25 years old, which is like, that’s a lot. Having a laptop that’s 25 years old, good luck getting it to work consistently. And we see that with our master plan as well. Honestly, although it’s long overdue, I’m delighted to see the order of operations here cause of the size of Ann Arbor as a city. We didn’t qualify for redline maps, which means that how we incorporated racism into our housing and development policies is largely unknown, but it’s absolutely there. We just can’t point to redline insurance maps and say this is what it was. What we need is a genuine review of how Ann Arbor developed its policy over the really the 20th century. And again, we’ll touch on this a little bit in next week’s episode on master planning and zoning, but we need that historical reckoning before we look towards the future. We genuinely do. So. I hear you on the impatience. I feel it, but I do feel like that this is an appropriate order,
Michelle (00:15:07):
But yeah. Yeah, that’s great. Cool.
Molly (00:15:10):
So that’s the budget. Michelle, I think we got through all of your questions, right?
Michelle (00:15:15):
Yep, we did.
Molly (00:15:15):
Yep. So the dates to mark down on your calendar May 3rd council meeting is the public hearing on the budget and May 17th is where it’s actually going to get approved. And now we’re moving on to the consent agenda.
Michelle (00:15:27):
Oh, I guess I should at least mention the police. I don’t think I’ve talked about that because the bud this budget does. This isn’t a question, it’s just a thumbs up. This budget includes $250,000 of thinking about how to do unarmed responders, and I’m happy to see us thinking about that. And it includes reducing the police budget by seven employees. And that’s a good start because I’d like to see us transition over to an unarmed responders situation. So those are some good priorities there.
Molly (00:16:09):
Yes.
Michelle (00:16:10):
Okay. Sorry.
Molly (00:16:11):
Okay, consent agenda,
Michelle (00:16:12):
Consent agenda.
Molly (00:16:14):
Jessica, do you want to call some things out?
Jess (00:16:16):
I do. We can’t do visuals, so I’m just telling you that I have a smiley face around most of the consent agenda, especially 2, 3, 4, and five, all of which we’ll talk about briefly, but I’m just really happy about them.
Michelle (00:16:28):
I’m looking at Jess’s actual face and it is smiley.
Molly (00:16:33):
So two is for bike lane maintenance. My prediction is that this is going to get pulled from the consent agenda based on the many questions that were in the agenda question document, questioning this priority. So this is to move a hundred thousand dollars from the Major Streets fund, which is funded by gas tax money. This is not general fund money to expand maintenance of mostly of the protected bike lanes in the city. There’s maintaining the protected bike lanes is more expensive. It requires special equipment, more frequent, sweeping, proactive snow removal. And the city wants to maintain a higher level of service for these bike lanes than we have historically maintained for bike lanes. And it’s going to cost more money, not a lot more money. And so that’s what this is. Maybe it will just go through in the consent agenda. I’m thrilled that the city is investing in proactively doing a better job of maintaining these bike lanes so that they can really function as year round transportation infrastructure. So stay tuned. I guess we’ll see what happens on Monday.
Michelle (00:17:43):
I sure hope this thing passes because it’ll be great. Oh, okay. Now I would like to talk about three affordable housing, public housing things that are on the agenda. And that is CA three, CA four, ca five. These are all places where we’re going to build, where the Ann Arbor Housing Commission is going to build publicly owned housing to house people who are making 60% of the area median income or less. So it’s like you, no one who lives here is going to be required to pay more than 30% of their current income. No. Even if their in current income is zero, as long as the way they get it, they get in people by a lottery, there’s like 4,000 people waiting on the lottery to get these housing. You have to qualify by having a low income. But yeah, this is stuff that we desperately need to help people out. Although I, okay, new speculation just strapped. I kind of wonder these things are, this public housing stuff is great in terms of H actually getting people housed who wouldn’t be able to live here otherwise. But because it’s so niche and you have to meet all these requirements, I kind of suspect that it doesn’t actually affect the housing market for the rest of people like it would if we built market rate. Yeah, that’s
Jess (00:19:19):
Absolutely correct. One of the things that I was really heartened to see in the housing communications that I mentioned a little bit earlier is how much more money the housing commission is expecting to get from HUD relating to Biden administration decisions. So in addition to development of new housing, it’s looking like the signs are optimistic. We’re going to be able to support more vouchers in the city, more section eight vouchers, which means people can live in more places around the city and there’s fewer income restrictions around that. You still have to qualify, obviously. But Michelle, what you’re saying about this not really impacting the market. You’re absolutely right.
Michelle (00:19:59):
You’re absolutely right because this is just going to house people who were weren’t going to live in an apartment anyway, they were going to have to live out of town and now they’re going to live in town. So, which is a great thing. It’s great. Yeah, it’s great. Yeah, I love it. I love that we’re going to have that. We’re going to be able to welcome these people into our community. But yeah, it’s like this can’t be our only thing. Building public housing be our only thing that we do.
Molly (00:20:24):
We’ve talked about this before, the both and approach to addressing our crisis. We need a lot more new market rate housing and we need a lot more affordable housing. We need both of those things. This is all aggressive, the affordable housing side of the
Michelle (00:20:41):
Location, right? So this is the afford the public housing and it’s going to be great. So these three properties, 7 21 North Maine, that’s a abandoned fleet services building that the city used to use. And another one is 3 53 South Maine. That’s the paleo lot. It’s a tiny, tiny parking lot right next to the restaurant called Paleo. And I would much rather have that be a 50 to 90 unit affordable housing thing than have it be like the four parking spaces that it is now.
Jess (00:21:22):
And I got to say, let’s just imagine for two seconds, that’s going to be affordable housing, hopefully across the street where the DTE building used to be. There’s new apartments going up and right over on the other side of that parking structure, three 50 South fifth across the street from the library is also probably going to be a mixed income project of affordable and market rate housing. We are about to have so many new neighbors, you guys. Yeah, so
Michelle (00:21:49):
Many. That’d be great.
Molly (00:21:52):
And then think about the kinds of businesses that will support downtown when we have that many more people living there. Exactly. That’s right. The evergreen complaint about the lack of a grocery store downtown, that’s a lot more people to help support that kind of operation.
Michelle (00:22:08):
I shop at the food co-op, which I consider to be downtown, but yeah,
Molly (00:22:12):
That’s downtown. I don’t know why people don’t, well, whatever. That’s a whole other thing we don’t know.
Michelle (00:22:18):
Anyway. And then, so there’s three of these 7 21 North Maine, the abandoned fleet services, 3 53 South Maine Poly lot. And then the other one is 1510 East Stadium, which is a firehouse. So of these, the poly lot is kind of, that’s been the easiest one to get built. It’s qualifies for the federal funding from the low income housing tax credits, which is usually how the Ann Amber Housing Commission has liked to build housing. So yeah, they’re talking about building a six to 10 story building with, that’ll be 50 to 90 units of affordable and of Ann Arbor Housing Commission affordable housing. And I put it in my bullet points here for notes. I put a separate bullet point to say 90 please. Cause I want to squeeze as much housing onto these lots as we can because we need it. So yeah, that’s the poly lot.
(00:23:22):
But then both of the other ones, 7 21 North Maine and 1510 East Stadium were places that the Housing Commission had when they first looked at their thing in 2019, they were given the charge to look at all of our underutilized lots and determine what should be done with them in the service of affordable housing. And when they looked at 7 21 North, when I looked at both of these places, they said, well, there’s not a whole lot we can do here. Maybe we should just sell them to a developer and then use that to build market rate housing and then we’ll be able to take that money and use it elsewhere, T B D. But because of, and they said that because both of those lots are not that good for getting this federal low income housing tax credits money. But boom, boom, boom, there’s a new source of funding in town new, and that is the affordable housing millage that we approved in the 2020 ballot.
(00:24:29):
And so suddenly we are actually going to be able to build publicly owned housing on those lots. And I thumbs up to that 7 21 North Maine still has some challenges because a lot of that land is on the flood plain or the floodway and has to remain open because of deed restrictions and restrictions on the use of the funds. But so 7 21 North Maine is a large lot, but we’re on the best case scenario is to get a 19 unit apartment complex there and the rest of that land has to remain open. Now, one thing that I find interesting is that I was at a protest the other day from Wash Now Camp Outreach. And that is a group of homeless people and they’re people who like to help them out. And it’s specifically people who camp outdoors. They, people who have, they’re people for whatever reason, don’t stay in the homeless shelter, don’t get, are unable to, they either don’t get or are unable to get into some of the affordable housing programs that we have.
(00:25:50):
So these people have an interesting and unique perspective. One of their demands, so among their demands of the protest was that 7 21 North Maine be made available for as a campground and an emergency. They actually, they wanted the Fleet services building to be an emergency shelter. And they also wanted to make the city to commit to not disrupting people who are camping outdoors on publicly owned land. They wanted the people who, if the police have to disrupt people who are camping on private land, they wanted that to, they wanted more process around that. So, so that the people get 10 days notice before they’re evicted from their campground. They want neutral observers to make sure that the city isn’t just taking all their stuff and throwing it in the trash they do in a lot of other cities. So I hope that some of that stuff comes to pass. But yeah, 7 21 North Maine, they had a particular interest in being able to camp there. They were even talking about doing an occupation that very day at the protest, but decided not to because the police were following them.
Jess (00:27:14):
I think it’s an interesting idea to ask that land be set aside for camping, especially if that land can’t be used for development. Exactly. I am mindful that 7 21 North Maine is one of our most toxic sites in the city, and I am wondering if there’s any, even just very top level remediation that needs to be done in order for that to be safe for people just to be able to sleep rough. So that’s a question that I don’t have an answer to, but it is a question that I have. I’m really interested in the idea. I am anxious that it be a safe one.
Michelle (00:27:48):
I was not aware of the toxicity of that place.
Jess (00:27:52):
At some point when you’re looking for a new 350 page report to read, I’ll send you gruesome stories about leaking underground gas tanks.
Michelle (00:28:02):
Oh, those things.
(00:28:07):
Yeah, because that was a fleet services building for the city’s stuff. But yeah, and that’s kind of the problem with these camp things is that the city wants to, the Wasaw camp Outreach wanted to make these things, wanted to make these things, wanted the city to commit to these things. But then I’m sure the city is worried about, well, if we let people camp on toxic grounds and camp in unsafe ways, then they’re going to be liable. So that’s probably why they don’t, but there should be something we can do. And one of another demand was to, they wanted sanitation. They wanted toilets and dumpsters there and stuff like that. But these
Jess (00:28:49):
Are really humane requests and I’m hoping that the city finds ways to have these conversations again in humane ways.
Michelle (00:28:56):
Exactly. Yeah. Oh, the one more thing about 7 21 North Maine was that one of the demands of Wasaw Camp Outreach was to have that put into a community land trust. And I think it sounds like with the deed restrictions that a lot of that land can’t, can’t have anything done with it. And then as far as the other one, I don’t know, is it better to have it in a community land trust or to have it be a 19 unit department complex? I don’t really understand their community land trust argument. And I think, so coming from that, the perspective of not understanding that I would rather have a 19 unit apartment complex with safe, affordable housing there, but I’d be interested to hear more. But for now, put me down for that apartment complex. Oh, briefly, 1510 East Stadium, the firehouse. Oh yeah. No, I said that already. It didn’t score well, but we can use millage money. It didn’t score well for federal money, but we can use millage money. Okay, great.
Jess (00:30:12):
And that’s the consent agenda. That’s what we’re talking about you guys. This is so packed. We’re talking about stuff that they’re not even probably going to talk about it. Counsel.
Molly (00:30:19):
Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. Crossed. It just
Michelle (00:30:22):
Passes. I dunno how many questions about this. Were there on the consent agenda or on the agenda questions? Yeah, there were
Molly (00:30:28):
A bunch of questions.
Michelle (00:30:29):
Yeah. Sounds like all these things are probably going to get pulled in discussed.
Molly (00:30:34):
Yes. It looks like there’s one more housing ish thing, Michelle, that you were going to talk about this.
Michelle (00:30:38):
Oh yeah.
Molly (00:30:39):
It’s now an ordinance. We we’re now getting out of the consent agenda,
Michelle (00:30:42):
And I think these are actually second reading with a public hearing on at least some of these. It’s 700 North Maine over by the Summit party store. There used to be like three or four. There used to be three or four single family homes there. And then if they were going to get turned into a planned unit development by Avalon Housing, and then some things happened, I think there was floodplain law changes and stuff like that. So that development never actually came to pass. And so those buildings fell into disrepair and they got torn down and now there’s just a bunch of empty land there and it looks like somebody’s got a plan to start building there again. So I’m excited to see something get built there. And that’s going to be some townhouses. I forget what number. It’s some
Jess (00:31:40):
Number 22 or 23.
Michelle (00:31:41):
Yeah, 22 or 23 townhouses. Hell yeah. So yeah, the rezoning and a site plan are both on the agenda, and I’m excited about that.
Molly (00:31:53):
Now we get to kick it over to Ms. Ad Universe herself.
Michelle (00:31:58):
Speaking
Jess (00:31:58):
Of being excited about housing, c1, C1 on the agenda. Oh my gosh, you guys, it is. I’m going to read out the whole title because I’m so excited about it. An ordinance to amend section 5.15, table five dash 15 dash two and section five point 16.6 of chapter 55 of the Unified Development code of Title five of the code of the city of Ann Arbor parentheses accessory dwelling units. Ugh, you guys, it are back 80 are back now. They’ve been percolating through the city for a while. Staff took them up, I think the end of last year or early this year. The Ordinance review committee has had a hack at this planning commission, has done multiple working sessions and decision sessions on this, and it has finally percolated up to city council for a first reading. I super excited to see this come around because there’s very little that individuals can do to affect housing accessibility and affordability in a community.
(00:33:05):
ADU are like it. That’s all we get. We need to talk quickly about what they are. Yes. The restrictions that we have on ADU have been so restrictive that we’ve seen almost none developed. So in adu, an accessory dwelling unit, a lot of folks think of it as a basement apartment, a garden apartment, a garage apartment, an attic apartment. Essentially it’s another living unit, a appended to a primary home on a given property. An ADU U is defined as a living unit with its own entrance, kitchen and bathroom. So if you’re just renting out a bedroom in your house, that’s not an adu. But if you’re renting out your finished basement that has its own entrance, then it is. So that’s what ADU are. They’re way of adding very incremental density into neighborhoods that are already typically well developed and well served by city municipal services.
(00:33:59):
So it’s exciting to see these come back. They were legalized in 2016. Extremely few were built. I did a round of community engagement on this in 2018 and made some proposals to change the ordinance based on the feedback that I got from the community. It basically died there, but staff picked it back up this past fall and some of those changes are moving forward. So I just wanted to list the documents can be a little bit confusing to read. So I just wanted to summarize the changes, the proposed changes in the ordinance. City council will either approve all of these, none of these, or some of these. Hard to know. Probably some of these will move forward, unclear whether it’ll go through unchanged. So right now, ADUs are permitted in all R one and R two a zones. That means all single family and some duplex zones.
(00:34:52):
The update provides for ADUs in all residential zones. Right now, there’s minimum square foot requirements for lots to be eligible for ADUs, which precludes a lot of central neighborhoods and ones that are well TR served by transit. The update eliminates the minimum square footage requirements right now, you can’t construct a detached A D U. So for example, in a free standing garage or other accessory building, if that building didn’t exist prior to December 31st, 2016, which was often referred to as the sunset clause, this update eliminates the sunset clause. Right now, the property owner is required to live in either the primary or the accessory accessory dwelling unit. The update eliminates the homeowner occupancy requirement. Right now, the homeowner is required to provide an additional parking space if their property is not within a quarter mile of transit service. Although this represents less than 5% of properties within Ann Arbor City limits, the update eliminates this requirement entirely.
(00:35:57):
Finally, right now, there are requirements about the A D U door has to be situated in relationship to the primary dwelling door. The update eliminates that requirement. So what these changes are doing is reflecting the feedback that planning staff building department staff have gotten from a number of people who wanted to develop ADU or couldn’t, but or did develop adu, but really struggled with it. These changes reflect the feedback that they’ve gotten. And the hope is that this would open the faucet up a bit on developing small modest housing in Ann Arbor that doesn’t require public dollars to do.
Molly (00:36:35):
And Jess, how many ADUs have been built so far in the city? Do we know that number?
Jess (00:36:42):
By the time I conducted my community engagement in 2018 after legalization in 2016, the answer was zero. Yes. Since then we’ve seen more permitted and a couple finished, but it’s still, it’s not even a fraction of a percent of what we’d expect to see with a healthy ordinance.
Molly (00:37:02):
And this other cities that have done this have had experienced a real A D U boom. It creates whole industries of companies that just are exclusively a D U builders and which makes it even easier to build an A D U because there’s someone who knows what they’re doing that you can just hire.
Jess (00:37:19):
That’s right. So Los Angeles approved their a d ordinance the same month that Ann Arbor did, but with a lot fewer restrictions. And one of the things that they saw almost immediately was the cottage industry in the building professions around ADUs. There were a D U designers, there were a D U builders, there were a D U permit expediters, which saves you a ton of time and money if you can get somebody moving your project more quickly through. So I love looking at LA as an example of a new kind of marketplace really that comes up in response to a healthy ordinance. Something that I’ve been excited to see in San Francisco, and I think there are a handful of other municipalities that have done the Seattle is one, Santa Cruz I believe is one, is they’ve partnered with their local architecture departments, academic architecture department students there to create possible designs, pre-approved designs by the city for ADUs. So if you homeowner A, were to go to the city planning department and say, I would like ADU design number two, you don’t have to get the site plan approved. You skip a lot of the permitting process because they’ve already reviewed and approved your building. So my hope is that the next thing we see is something that makes ADUs even cheaper and quicker to build something like that. But these are some awesome starts.
Michelle (00:38:44):
Yay.
Jess (00:38:45):
Yay.
Michelle (00:38:48):
I’m
Jess (00:38:48):
Excited. We did. We bid ADU to housing issues. That’s not true. We still have a lot of housing issues, but we’ve got one less. We’ve got 99 housing problems, but ADU aren’t one.
Michelle (00:38:58):
Yes. Yeah. In fact, there’s another housing thing on the agenda, and I would like Jess to talk about it.
Jess (00:39:06):
Jess will talk about it, but only at a really high level. So there is a bit of land on Main Street where SEO Church dumps into it across the street. You probably think of it as the golf course. Rightly so. There’s just a bit of land tucked back in there. There’s a, excuse me, a developer, an architect team who’s been working on developing these for, I believe, is it single family homes or apartments? Anyway, it’s going to go from nothing to something. And so the what’s on the agenda is a rezoning, because right now this land has one, two, at least three different zones, and they’re looking to rezone it to a single zone.
Michelle (00:39:53):
All right, well, so yeah, it’s definitely something. It’s either detached single family homes or it’s real similar condos or something like that. And it’s not my most, it’s not the thing I’m most excited about, but that’s right. It is housing and I, it’s the
Jess (00:40:10):
New market rate housing. We
Michelle (00:40:11):
Were talking about 10 minutes. Exactly.
Jess (00:40:13):
And that’s one of the things that I’m so loving about this agenda. It is. So housing saturated, we get to talk about affordable housing, we get to talk about incremental housing and Aus, we get to talk about market rate housing. And while we don’t necessarily need to prioritize market rate housing and our advocacy, it’s important to note that the folks that live in here, and whoever the property owner ends up being, the taxes that they pay on that land is about to go way, way up. Which means we’re going to be able to afford more office of sustainability and innovation work, more affordable housing work, more equity work, and sustainable outreach with folks like wash not Camp outreach. So market rate housing, I don’t want to forefront it in the work that we do, but it does provide community benefit.
Michelle (00:40:59):
Did I tell yet on this podcast, the story about when somebody was talking about the development and they were like, we want to live near trees, not condos. And I said, well then why don’t you move to the country? You can buy, buy a cheap house there and live next to trees. And they were like, well, I want to live near my friends and loved ones and relatives. And I was like, well then it sounds like you want to live near condos. Don’t, unless your loved ones are squirrels, they’re not going to live in those trees
Jess (00:41:31):
And no judgment. But that’s a separate issue.
Molly (00:41:35):
Jess, are you going to talk briefly about DC four?
Jess (00:41:38):
I will. This is another smiley face one, so I’m going to read what it is and then just say, yay. So this is a resolution. It does a couple of things. It’s a subtle settlement agreement with something I think naughty that D T D D E E did around their pricing of green energy. So half of this is the settlement, and half of this is PR approving an agreement to partner with D T E to explore putting solar on our landfill. I’m just excited about that. It’s low hanging fruit. It’s typically, this is a very well understood model in terms of funding and construction would provide a boatload of energy back to the grid at basically nobody’s expense aesthetically and emotionally. So I’m just excited about land solar on our landfill.
Molly (00:42:25):
That’s awesome. All right. So now friends, the shenanigans are coming from inside the agenda.
Michelle (00:42:32):
Boy. Oh boy, Michelle. Oh my God. So it has been an emotional week for me. So Jeff ha and Jeff Haer is when Jeff Haner is causing me emotions, they never seem to be good ones.
(00:42:53):
So he posted a thing on Facebook where he was complaining about the press, and he doesn’t like the press, he doesn’t like the media, and he doesn’t have any qualms about sharing this opinion. And if he had just said that, we would all just rolled our eyes and gone, oh, Jeff Haner, he hates the first amendment he hates, he hates criticism, whatever. But instead, he posted a quote from Hunter s Thompson from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas that used the homophobic F slur. And people in the community are mad about this because there are L G B T people in our community, and we don’t like when our elected officials are using slurs about us. And the slur was in there. It was to say, oh, the press are a bunch of, and then what’s the worst possible thing you can think of to call someone? Oh, someone like me. So being like me is the worst possible thing you can think of to call someone. And so this is the quote that he put in there. And then when newspapers interviewed him about it, he never showed any contrition. He never showed any signs of understanding that what he had done was wrong. He always doubled down on it. He tried to weasel out of it by saying, oh, it’s just a quote, or things like that. It’s an archaic word. He said one at one point, he
Molly (00:44:40):
Said, nobody uses that word anymore. And I was like, really? Because I’ve heard that word. And many people in this community have heard that word directed at themselves Exactly. In their lifetimes.
Michelle (00:44:50):
Yeah. There’s like we have in our community, people who lived through the AIDS crisis. We have people in our community. Yeah. So I’ve been complaining about this and saying that Jeff Hanner needs to apologize. Well, he did give a perfunctory apology, which I couldn’t see because I was blocked by him, but it was repeated in the newspapers and stuff like that. But then he just went right back to saying, oh, and anyone who says that this is anyone who says that they’re mad about this is insincere and because there’s no way anyone could possibly be mad about this.
(00:45:30):
So I called into a couple of different committees this week. I called the Liquor License Review Committee because that’s a committee that Jeff Haner is on, because that was my first opportunity to give public comment complaining about this. And I called into the admin committee where they were actually considering taking action against Jeff Haner about this. And in my advocacy during the course of my advocacy, I was set. I was told by Kathy Griswold that I was in being in an opportunist by complaining about this. And it’s really, she thinks that this is why she can’t imagine any reason why a transgender lesbian might be legitimately upset that people are using slurs, that they’re elected officials are using slurs. And Jeff Haner said that same thing in the newspaper. And so we’ve had Travis Rodina and Katie Scott have both written open letters. Council member Travis publicly denouncing this. And I was just
Molly (00:46:41):
Going to identify them, Michelle. So council?
Michelle (00:46:43):
No, those two are actually, oh
Molly (00:46:48):
Yeah, sorry. I was just going to identify those two. So it’s council member Travis and county Commissioner Katie Scott. Oh, are we having technical difficulties
Jess (00:47:03):
While we’re waiting for Michelle to come back? This has been a big feelings moment. And we don’t typically talk about council issues away from the table. One of the reasons that we’re talking about this is because the council issues are making their way to the table. I do want to call out. It is extremely not okay for somebody in a position of power, like a city council member to name a constituent or any kind of community member. It’s not okay to label someone an insincere opportunist that’s punching down. So I really encourage our community leaders to be much more thoughtful about how they’re engaging people that they don’t agree with. We’re not asking for you to agree with everything, although not agreeing on this is a big problem. But don’t name call. Don’t name call. Right. Michelle, we lost you for a moment. So
Michelle (00:47:59):
Sorry, I’m back. Yeah, it’s
Jess (00:48:00):
Fine.
Michelle (00:48:01):
Yeah. So did we talk about TRA city council member Travis Reina? He’s an L G B T council member. And Katie Scott county commissioner is also L G B T. And those two are 100% of the L G B T people who are elected to represent Ann Arbor,
Jess (00:48:22):
J Jason Morgan. But I actually don’t know what his constituency has.
Michelle (00:48:27):
Yeah, I think Ann Arbor isn’t actually in his district. He Recomme Got it. Got, he’s on the city county. He’s on the county commission, but I don’t think Ann Arbor’s in his
Jess (00:48:33):
District. Okay. Thank you.
Michelle (00:48:36):
I could be wrong about that. And they’ve each released statements condemning this. But yeah, the L G B T community is mad about this. And the Jim Toy Community Center has also released in a statement condemning Jeff ER’s actions. So the only reason I have to talk about all this is that I, I’m complaining about it and I’m not being an insincere opportunist. I feel really feel like I have to, ugh. And I’m so mad that I have to say that to people, but my anger about this is legitimate. And for 20 years I was in the closet because I was afraid to come out and be myself. And it was because of homophobia. I didn’t want to in transphobia, and I didn’t want to have to face that. And I thought, well, maybe if I just don’t transition, I can just not face this stuff.
(00:49:36):
And it didn’t work out for me. It was that nearly killed me. And I know lots of people who are currently facing things. They’ve people, I know people who have lost their jobs because of transphobia. I know people who quit their jobs because of transphobia harassment. I know people who have been denied healthcare because of transphobia. And these attitudes are allowed to persist because people don’t call them out when they see them. And so it’s one thing, this is why we have to take such a strong and immediate stand against this, because we have a town where I don’t think anyone would admit to being anti L G B T, and yet people face harassment and discrimination. And it’s because these attitudes are allowed to persist. So if you see it happening around you, you have to say something. You have to act. You have to let everyone know in the strongest possible terms that it is not okay. And it’s these things like they start from little comments, they start from little things, and then they move up to policy. Where we see in 31 states right now, there’s gender bills. And I think Michigan might even be one of ’em trying to, Michigan is trying to find some way to, they’re trying to find some way to get around the governor’s veto and put some transgender stuff in our laws. And so that’s why you have to call this stuff out immediately and strongly.
Jess (00:51:14):
Which brings us to council agenda.
Michelle (00:51:16):
Yes. This is what’s on the council agenda. Then the Council Administration Committee is kind of tasked with disciplining council members and talking about interpersonal discussions and things like that between them. And so they voted on a resolute. They voted to approve of resolution to remove Jeff Haner from all of his committee assignments until the committee assignments are reassigned in December. So Jeff Haner is an elected official. They can’t just remove him from office, but they felt the need to protect the community from him and to make it so that L G B T people might be more willing to feel that the government represents them. And to feel like, I would imagine that people would have a hard, that L G B T people would have a hard time approaching a committee that has, as its liaison, someone who they know uses slurs against them. It is daunting, even in the best possible case. It’s daunting to communicate with city council members and to get involved in city politics. And the last thing you need is someone making it more daunting. So they’re voting, they voted on the resolution to remove him from all of his committee assignments. And so
Jess (00:52:54):
They didn’t vote on that resolution. They voted to bring
Michelle (00:52:56):
That resolution council. Right. I’m sorry. Yes, that’s right. They voted to council. It’s all good. It’s all good. Yeah, they voted to bring it to council, so that’s why it’s on the council agenda. And there’s also been some questions of what gives them the power to do this, because there are some council rules involving censoring members of the council for this for X Y, Z offenses. And this was not an X Y, Z offense. This was an offense that they didn’t even think to put in there. No one thought that somebody would be using would be using homophobic bigoted language. But it turns out that the council does have the ability to do this because the council is the body that decides what committees people serve on. And so the council can just decide not to put him him on committees. And that’s on the agenda on Monday, but it’s up to voters to actually get rid of him. I’ve heard of some people talking about circulating a recall petition. I don’t know about that. We can vote him out in 2022, but the city council can’t actually remove him because he’s an elected official.
(00:54:12):
So yeah, removing him from committees is the best they can do. And that’s what they’re going to do. That’s what they’re, they’re on the agenda to vote on the now. Council member Griswold voted against bringing this forward to the coun city council. And then council member Rum Lai, who was on that administration committee vote, initially voted to bring it to the council. And now he’s trying to walk that back and say that he doesn’t want that to happen. And he’s made up some process concerns about why this is, oh, we shouldn’t move quickly, but we shouldn’t move quickly on this. He thinks. But in my opinion, yes, we absolutely need to move quickly because you can’t just let this stuff linger and hurt people in our community. And so we might see a situation where not all of the city council members vote to censure Jeff Haner. And I think that would be really awful because the signal that, because of the signal that it would send. Right now we have one council member who thinks that it’s okay for council members to use homophobic language, but once any council member who votes not to CSU him over this, well, they’re sending that same signal to the L G B T community as well.
(00:55:35):
And so we’re talking right now about DC five to remove Jeff Haner from these things. DC six is a resolution that was just dropped on there by Kathy Griswold, who has an alternative to punishing. Jeff Haner has an alternative. And another thing is, it’s not even just about punishment. The community needs to be protected from Jeff Haner. Like the city needs to show, the city needs to show that L G B T people are welcome and valued. The city needs to show that L G B LGBT people’s opinions are welcome and valid in communicating with the city. And they can’t do that as long as Jeff Haner is on these things. So it’s not just about punishing him, it’s about protecting the community. But Kathy Griswold’s idea is why don’t we have some sort of, don’t we put 20, she wants to put $20,000 towards some trainings. What’s that? I
Molly (00:56:39):
Think she wants to hire a consultant.
Michelle (00:56:41):
She wants to hire a consultant to make communication go better between city council members as if that was the problem. And she wants, I just
Molly (00:56:52):
Hold, go ahead.
Michelle (00:56:54):
And she wants council members to who do things like this, Jeff Haner, for example, to go to undergo some kind of training and correction at the city council meeting and at the admin committee meeting, which already have important things to do and can’t be, we can’t be giving D e I trainings to council members during the city council meetings that already go past midnight just to get their basic work done.
Molly (00:57:23):
No amount of training is going to solve this problem
Michelle (00:57:25):
Either. Exactly. Exactly.
Molly (00:57:27):
No amount of training is going to convince Jeff Haner that he was wrong.
Michelle (00:57:34):
And also, no amount of training is going to make L G B. No amount of training. Jeff Haner is going to convince the L G B T community that it’s safe and well, that there’s safe to communicate with the city and that they’re welcome to do so.
Molly (00:57:45):
Right. Well, so one of the key features then about this resolution to spend money that the city, we just discussed, the budget, the city doesn’t have money to spare, but to spend $20,000 to hire a consultant to help with council communicating communication and that all outstanding and pending actions against council members be referred to this mediation process that doesn’t exist. So very, this resolution is very explicitly about delaying consequences for council member haner for his bigoted actions. To me, this is, how is this not just as bad as the bigoted action, working hard quietly to protect the bigots as opposed to protect the L G B T community in Ann Arbor?
Michelle (00:58:32):
Exactly. And I also, okay, I can’t not mention that this comes right on the heels of blast City council meeting where there was a resolution condemning hatred against and racist actions against Asian, Asian Americans and the Asians, Ann Arbor and the resolution condemned white supremacy and white terrorism and council member Haner and Rum Lai, both of them said, oh, well, they just couldn’t bring themselves to condemn white supremacy last week and now let’s, there’s some council members saying, oh, we should give Jeff Haner a break for L G B T community directly. This is just, it’s just wild. But they need to be, we need a community where everyone feels welcome to contribute and everyone feels welcome to communicate with the city and to get involved in politics. And it’s just and safe. It’s not going to happen
Molly (00:59:35):
Safe here.
Michelle (00:59:36):
And to feel safe.
Molly (00:59:37):
Yeah, safe full stop.
Michelle (00:59:39):
And Exactly.
Molly (00:59:40):
It’s becoming a real pattern among certain council members. We’re starting to see who they want to feel safe and who they don’t think should feel safe. And yeah, it’s very upsetting.
Jess (00:59:55):
So I think we all have issues with this resolution. DC six, I am going to read a couple of the warehouses. You guys know that I care a lot about those. Whereas council is at an impasse in our ability to self govern multiple interpersonal disagreements. And whereas council members have attempted without significant success to improve the effectiveness of deliberations at council meetings, I would want to see more meaningful connection happening interpersonally between the council members and, for example, a meaningful, effective apology AC company by a plan for action by somebody like council member Haner before committing public resources to this. Because otherwise, all we’re doing is a huge dog and pony show performance of Look, we’re really trying to get along without there being any real heart in that work or expecting genuine accountability among the different council members. We’ve had tone issues on council for a while where folks have not communicated respect respectfully or effectively with each other and often not respectfully out to their constituents. It does feel like it’s not just get, that noise isn’t just getting louder. It’s becoming a lot more harmful. So yes, we’ll vote them out. Yes, we will hold our elected account officials accountable by taking away responsibilities that they’ve demonstrated they’re, they’re not capable of fulfilling. But I also think we need to be asking more of them in working with each other than something like this does.
Michelle (01:01:39):
Yeah. I also wanted to talk about too, I think that in the thing about talking about the multiple disagreements that they’re having, I also hear Kathy Griswold in there talking, maybe this is just me, but there’s a big movement amongst some city council members and their supporters to shame Jen a or for being a victim of domestic violence. And they’re using this FOIA appeal thing as a thing because somebody tried to get, somebody tried to FOIA police reports that were filed by city council members. And the reason they did that was because council members were using, calling the police to complain about their constituents who were criticizing them. But in that response, they left out a police report, filed it from Jen Ayer’s house where she was being a victim of domestic violence.
(01:02:48):
And a bunch of people want to, a bunch of the council members want to want that report out there. They want want to allege some sort of corruption happened here. They want to shame her and spread her personal business around. And it’s just, it’s not, and that’s another thing that is going to make people feel unwelcome in our community because there are women, there are victims of domestic violence in this community who are not going to feel safe, and they’re not going to feel okay getting involved in politics if they think that their personal business is going to be spread around and used politically like that. And so I think Kathy Griswold is trying to say that that issue is the same as Jeff Haner doing a bigotry. And I think that, I don’t know, it’s, I’m too mad to be coherent. I’m sorry.
Jess (01:03:55):
I know it. It’s a lot. And one of the reasons that we’re talking about these shenanigans, which again, we mostly try to omit them from council conversations, but again, shenanigans have found their way into two council resolutions. So we felt the need to address it for a variety of personal and pod reasons. I will echo James Baldwin in saying that we can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. And I think that’s something that we’re dealing with on counsel is a tone deafness to the difference between disagreement and oppression. And I really need all of our leaders to become much more vigilant about listening for that.
Michelle (01:04:49):
Yeah. Well, I think that’s about it then.
Molly (01:04:52):
Yeah. So on that note, we are going to wrap up. This was a long episode today. Wanted to give a quick reminder to everyone that the, there’s a meeting this coming Tuesday, April 19th at seven o’clock. It’s a joint planning commission.
Jess (01:05:07):
Trans April 20th.
Molly (01:05:08):
April 20th, yes. Thank you. April 20th. Whatever Tuesday is, it’s a joint meeting between transportation and planning commissions to review the final version or the near final version of the Comprehensive Transportation Plan, moving together towards Vision Zero. This has been years in the making, and this will be the point at which these commissions review it and then recommend it to city Council at which point it would become, if council approves that, it would become a part of the city’s master plan and it would supersede a lot of much older transportation plan documents for the city. So if you want to come and hear about that, make public comment about it, there will be an opportunity at this Tuesday’s meeting, and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. As always, thank you to everyone who supported us on our coffee. If you’d like to send us a few dollars to cover our hosting fees, you can find us at ko fi.com/ann Arbor.
Jess (01:06:04):
That’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor af. We are your co-hosts, Molly Kleinman, Michelle Hughes, and myself, Jess Lita. And thanks always to our producer, Jared Malist. Theme music is, I Dunno, by Grapes. 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.