Today we talk about the next City Council meeting, coming up Monday, May 17th. We touch on a few interesting agenda items, including policy, PILOTs, and big budget feelings.
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Links:
– this week’s agenda
– the proposed FY2021-2022 budget
– February city budget presentation (attachment #2), and check out the Deeper Dive episode on the budget for more information on specific line items
Email your city councilmembers if you have any questions about the budget, as it will be approved Monday!
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Transcript
JL: Hi, Ann Arbor AFers. This is cohost Jess Letaw with
one more thing. We’ve been talking at you for months – now we’d like to hear
from you! What do you like about the pod? What do you wish we were doing more
of, or better? What ideas do you have for future episodes? We’ve put up a
survey for you to fill out. There’s a link to it in the show notes, or go to
annarboraf.com/survey. That’s annarboraf.com/survey. Send us your thoughts,
questions, feels and feedback on the pod so far; we want to hear it all. And
as always, get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!
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!
MK: Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up on Monday may 17.
we’ll be talking about the policy agenda pilots, but not in the way that you think and our feelings about the budget process.
This week we’re actually doing a double header with two separate episodes so we’re doing a standard episode which is this one about what’s on the City Council agenda this week.
And then, a whole other episode, just for the budget, which is also on the agenda this week, but which is so enormous we felt like it needed its own episode.
As usual, a quick process note we’re recording this a few days before the Council meeting, which means that there may be some changes to the agenda between now and then.
MH: Also, there will, yes, be lots of.
Changes to the budget.
or.
MK: Any many changes so we’re going to dive right in with the consent agenda, and I think Jesse you’re going to talk about this one.
JL: And there’s one that I expect to get pulled CA five is a resolution to approve a payment in lieu of taxes for lockwood and arbor, which is the site at 2195 East ellsworth.
Based on questions that I see in both the agenda and the budget around the pilot process of the pilot benefit i’m anticipating this to get pulled from the consent agenda that’s really only wanted to say about it i’m going to be coming back to pilot a little bit later this episode.
MH: Okay, what what they’re going to talk about with when they pull it from the comfort zone, though.
JL: that’s a good question i’m not totally sure My guess is again based on the feeling that I have from the questions.
there’s a question about if we could be gaining greater benefit from the pilot program I don’t know if that means more money.
leveraging it in a more effective way i’m really not sure what the goal of this is, but given that there are some questions about the pilot program i’m I would be surprised if this one State and consent My guess is they’re going to want to talk about it.
Did we.
MH: Did we also say what pilot stands for.
JL: Yes, payment in taxes, no oh good.
And then I think Michelle you’re taking us into the public hearings.
MH: Right let’s see okay.
Yes, there is the first public hearing is about the.
The Temporary emergency ordinance for about third party delivery services, this is things like door dash and.
Things like.
All those other brand names that I forget.
But it’s things like that, so they during the pandemic these services have kind of exploded since people haven’t been able to do dine in at restaurants and so places that didn’t previously have delivery are now.
kind of utilizing these gig economy.
Things and they’ve been charging prices that are local restaurants, are not happy, paying sometimes in on the order of 30% and they’ve also been publishing inaccurate menus because what they’ll do is they’ll kind of.
scrape that like they they’ll sometimes work without the.
Businesses consent for a while and then like scrape their menu off of the web page serve it up and then people will like you know the door dash call centers will like call in and be like Hello i’d like to place the order that someone just put on our APP.
And then you know if they’re if their menu is an accurate than a customer gets really mad because you’re like what I put I put my order in an APP what are you telling me you don’t even have this thing.
So they’ll do they’ll do that for a while and then they’ll suddenly stop the service and then say Oh, if you want to continue the service you’re going to have to continue getting door dash service you’re going to have to pay a lot of money so that’s that’s the problem that this is.
designed to.
That this ordinance is designed to solve, and what it’s going to do is limit.
it’s going to limit these third party services, so they can only charge up to 15% of us have an order.
As a cost for their service but i’m a little concerned about whether it’ll actually have an effect because it also says Oh well, also you can.
A business could sign a contract with a third party delivery service that says that they’re going to you know pay more than 15% of deliveries cost.
As long as the company is offering some special services which the company basically always offers, so I just kind of feel like it’s like.
it’s not going to have a lot of effect because it’s going to say Oh well, you can’t charge more than this, unless you sign a contract that says so, and then the companies are just going to ask you to sign a contract that says so, although we’ve seen in other cities where.
What happens is.
Companies the the the third party delivery service companies will.
Will just charge the customer, rather than charging the restaurant and maybe that’s Okay, because then the customer is.
asking for extra service, and they should know what that costs.
Rather than making the delivery pay for making restaurant pay for it, the other thing is this will go away this this entire ordinance will go away after coven restrictions are.
are gone so maybe not too long.
MK: Apparently, this is a second reading so there’s a public hearing on the agenda, which means people are going to be able to call in about this so i’m going to be pretty interested to see if we’re hearing from a lot of restaurants.
either in favor or oppose or if they’re things they want to see different about it so but it’s the second reading, which means there will be a public hearing and then it will be voted.
MH: On and.
MK: It will be, it will be done.
MH: yeah I certainly expect to hear for some from some restaurants, because this was you know pitch to as a thing to help restaurants so.
yeah I expect to hear from them, and I hope to hear from them.
MK: So next up we’ve got we’re skipping ahead a little bit we’re up to DC five, which is the resolution to adopt the.
City Council legislative policy agenda, this is a pretty interesting document, I think.
These are the kinds of these are the things that city council is articulating that they want to be lobbying for advocating for largely at the state level it’s not so much about the policy agenda within the city it’s about the policy agenda that we’re asking for beyond the city.
The part of there’s a committee that does this, there is the Council Policy Committee.
I know at least the transportation Commission has a standing item agenda item every year to come up with our own policy items that we then asked to be put into the larger agenda, I am assuming that other.
commissions have similar a similar process so that we’ve got probably policy agenda items from.
that are relevant to this to sustainability, to housing it’s all in there, I think it’s an interesting read.
The some highlights that I think are relevant to specifically in our brain and the kinds of things that we talked about, first of all there’s a lot of really good stuff in there, that is, like for the gay agenda.
MH: Basically, so we will.
JL: not be hidden.
MK: Like it’s great gender inclusive.
bathrooms Bam conversion therapy expand the Civil Rights Act.
make it easier to change the sex identifier, on your birth certificate lots of really good stuff in there on this um you know it’s funny it’s, these are the moments when.
The reputation that are in our perhaps for being really progressive we see where it’s coming from because when we get to these bigger state level national level policy items.
that’s where we start to see this like a coherence of the progressiveness we think we have and the policies that we asked for, but it’s notable that none of these are policies that actually can get an active at the city level.
So another big one is they’re asking for a reform around headley and propping to improve the way we collect and get access to property taxes, and then there are a whole bunch of things on there around safer streets not surprising.
We want to see cities being able to make safety improvements on m dot roads, this is a huge issue here and elsewhere where m dot any road that controls, they basically don’t want you to make it safer for people, because they want it to be fast.
we’re asking for a good uniform crosswalk law.
MH: Those those goals are opposed.
Right um.
MK: So the there’s been issues where.
there’s been folks working at the State level, to create a statewide crosswalk law that would basically invalidate our city crosswalk law, so this agenda is saying hey a uniform crosswalk law would be great, but it should be a good one.
We want to be able to lower speed limits, one of my favorite ones is just asking me to follow their own complete streets policy, so they.
JL: could be my favorite one in there.
MK: yeah yeah they’re like hey i’m not you know you have a complete streets policy you don’t follow it could you, maybe, just like it, this isn’t even asking for a policy change right the policies in place it’s just about following the policy.
And then also stuff around the are improving the RTA and processes around RTA.
JL: Which is the original transit authority, just as a reminder.
MK: Yes, thank you just there was something you wanted to add about this too.
JL: I did I.
This meeting is what you know what i’m going to start over i’m 20 years old, when it Ann arbor even has a policy agenda, I am delighted to see that it’s so gay that’s great.
But I am i’m a little bit surprised at my surprise, like, why are we not using this as a guiding document for more of the policy work that we’re always doing.
You guys have heard me pretty much anybody who’s ever heard me talk about politics.
here’s me banging the drum about I want whatever we’re working on to roll up to our larger goals if we’re doing something and sustainability.
It should be in the service of at zero if we’re doing something in the service of equity, we need a larger guiding equity document and when it comes to our policies are resolutions.
I don’t think i’ve seen a single resolution reference this document and I think that we’re poor for it, so I, I just wanted to take this moment to put my flag in the sand.
and say I wish that resolutions that are working towards larger policy goals with reference back to this document.
So we, as citizens and constituents Community members have a better idea of the larger things that we’re trying to work towards because with the resolutions it feels like we’re so deeply in.
The weeds on you know I want to get this one tiny thing done, but it can be hard to see what is intended to roll up to this apparently so like, how can we use this more effectively that’s what I wanted to say.
MK: Thank you.
So the next thing is also me DC six, which is the resolution to approve the city of Ann arbor is operational adoption of juneteenth as a recognized and commemorated annual holiday so cities and states around the country are starting to recognize juneteenth.
This has I think there’s like it’s been around obviously for a very long time, but the push across the country has been pretty recent.
It would create the third Saturday in June, it would designate the third Saturday in June as a city holiday beginning this year June 19.
city leadership and employees would observe the juneteenth celebration, the Friday before as a city holiday so City Hall buildings would be closed.
Due to observance of the holiday, so it would be a real city holiday, one thing that was surprising to me, looking at this was that it would there is actually an estimated cost of $85,266 so this resolution is going to require eight votes to pass because of the budget impact.
And then I liked there are there are a whole lot of warehouses, you know we love our whereas clauses, I think one in particular does a pretty good job of explaining briefly what why we’re doing this, so, whereas.
As the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of institutional slavery in America.
The celebration of juneteenth has persisted into the 21st century and has come to honor the strength endurance and dignity of the African Americans subjected to the atrocity of American slavery.
to celebrate the unknowable joy of their liberation and to highlight the centuries long and incomplete struggle to redeem the American creed of equality for all.
So I think this is pretty great I hope it passes and I know that there are already plans underway for a big juneteenth celebration, this year, I think, whether or not it becomes a city holiday, there will be ways to observe and celebrate.
MH: Double ACP has been doing a juneteenth celebration at wheeler park every year.
JL: For a long time.
MK: And then next up we’ve got jess.
Oh, right now, we talked about the pilots.
JL: Yes, pilots and some more warehouses so Dec seven is a resolution establishing a Council subcommittee for the purpose of studying and setting parameters for a pilot program for the city of Ann arbor.
Pilot again being payment in lieu of taxes and the idea behind pilots, is that in a development or some kind of property change or building change.
That instead of property owner paying ongoing taxes that they pay a single lump sum often into a particular fund, the most recent example I saw this was.
bright don I think on Packard had proposed a pilot into the parks fund i’m, so I think on its face i’m curious and supportive and interested in this resolution, so I got into it and the closer I looked the more concerns I had so there were a couple of problematic where as as in here.
Not problematic, but that raise my curiosity was whereas approximately 38% of the land area of the city of Ann arbor is owned by non taxable entities 38% not being like roads and other rights of way but parkland publicly and and, most notably the you.
And then, so this to me, this is a flag that says i’m interested in saying something about you properties and then the two warehouses that really.
Universal.
MH: Thank you.
very much thank you, Michelle.
JL: The two warehouses that really gave me.
pause whereas some services and programs in the city of Ann arbor have been set as priorities through Community input yet those services and programs generate no revenue.
And, whereas it is fair to expect that anyone who uses city services programs and infrastructure play some part and paying for those services programs and infrastructure.
I gotta say those feel like dog whistles to me they they they make my blood pressure spike just to hear them.
And here’s why the first one that delineates the fact that we have services that don’t have revenue to me feels like a fundamental misreading of what government is is and is expected to do.
And then the second one it’s fair to expect that anyone who uses city services programs and infrastructure plays a part in paying for those services, I mean.
I feel like we started solving this with a revolutionary war and we’ve been talking about this ever since like Do we really need to be landed people to be considered valuable citizens and Community contributors, so I I have real concerns about this language.
All of that aside what this is intended to do is establish the subcommittee to evaluate the city’s existing pilot Program.
And I think what it’s asking for is an opportunity for pilots to a generate more revenue and be be more effective.
which I mostly on board with, but then this gets back to the original whereas that caused me some concern, which was 38% of the land area is a cdn and river is not taxable.
If what we’re looking at is a pilot program that more effectively leverage his funds from the EU.
This ain’t it, this is not going to be the thing this mechanism is not how we generate additional revenue from the you as a landowning entity.
In Ann arbor I think a more effective use of this energy and i’m really on board with how can we, how can we be more effective.
In leveraging land for taxes, I absolutely think that that’s a valuable aim, I think, and based on the policy agenda that we just talked about it would be a lot more valuable use of time.
If we asked a subcommittee to really dig deep into Michigan prop a and headley amendment issues.
and come up with like really meaty policy changes that would make a difference for Ann arbor in terms of the amount of taxes that we’re paying and the amount of benefit that we’re getting out of it, we are giving away.
i’m not remembering what it is right now but it’s at least 10s of millions of dollars, every year, if not hundreds of millions of dollars, based on those two amendments.
And we would make up our entire shortfall on affordable housing on mental health on public safety that isn’t law enforcement.
Really, all of our wishlist items would be accomplished if we could get headley and proper into a healthy place for our Community so DC seven subcommittee for a pilot program i’m on board with what I think are the goals but i’d like to see it be a little bit different.
MH: To me, that sounds like.
To me.
Like it yeah to me it looks like it’s a.
they’re saying hey has anyone thought of shaking down the university for more money it’s like yeah we thought of that.
JL: Right and I play.
I mean if.
MH: A task force to try and shake the university down for money and the task force is going to fail because the University has no obligation to give us money.
That.
JL: That, not through this mechanism.
that’s the problem like because the and I think i’m getting this right, if not, we will be recording on the next episode listen to Christian.
But I think i’m right in saying that, because the university is a state owned entity, there is no way for us to leverage.
Tax let any kind of tax power against the you we really can’t unless it’s leased land, but if it’s owned we don’t have that power so investigating it isn’t going to really get us anything.
MH: What we really need to do again is.
JL: handling and prepping but yes.
MH: Right and so yeah it’s like they’re like Oh, we can’t tax the university, well, we could ask them to pay voluntary taxes and then they’ll just say no.
JL: Yes.
MH: I asked about this once in 2018 at a region.
Open house candidate candidate, a form, and it was it was being moderated by Yusuf Robbie who’s our who’s one of our State Representatives.
From Ann arbor here and.
You know I asked like hey what either, if you region candidates be interested in, you know, contributing to.
This you know, to the city is in a pilot program and the the region candidates for like.
And Yousef jumped in and he said well.
I think if the city wants more money from the State University isn’t the best isn’t the most efficient way to advocate for what we need to do is that the state has been lowering and lowering their.
Their, what do you call that the.
JL: it’s the.
MH: Revenue sharing.
yeah the revenue sharing.
That they do with from sales taxes income taxes and stuff like that.
And so, you said you know if if you want more money from the State.
advocate for.
Increasing the state’s revenue sharing don’t try and shake down the university because you’re gonna have more luck doing you know, trying to try to increase revenue share.
JL: And as a way of agreeing with you, Michelle the policy agenda that they are just getting ready to pass has nothing about extracting additional revenues from the EU and does have specifically called out increase revenue sharing from the state so look when when when.
hmm.
JL: Speaking of revenue sharing it ready to talk about the budget a little.
MK: yeah so let’s clarify first that we’re not talking about the budget itself right now we’re talking about our feelings about the budget process right.
MH: Great stuff is going to be our second episode.
JL: It is.
MK: So for the budget.
JL: So I want to do a one word round Robin with you guys.
When you started working on the budget for today’s episode what’s your feelings word.
MH: Over well.
MK: yeah That was good, one by word to or like daunted.
JL: Okay i’m just gonna go ahead and say it rage yeah.
MK: About.
JL: Your friend yeah alright so.
You guys know that we’ve been trying really hard to pay attention to the budget as a way of being able to talk about it to you guys to our listeners.
And to understand it for ourselves we’ve been paying I would argue, pretty close attention for almost the last six months.
we’ve attended multiple work sessions I, I think that you guys have had conversations with your and other Council members, I know I have asking questions when I opened today’s agenda to look at the budget.
The two things that weren’t linked, where the budget and the amendments.
So when it comes to making sure that people are as informed as they can be to get involved in effective ways that’s deeply disappointing.
The budget is an obvious oversight, the amendments, I understand, are a little bit more complicated with any kind of legislation.
Especially big pieces they’re always going to be 11th hour changes and that’s true with this as well.
But the amendments aren’t in legislator, we had to email our Council members, not all of whom had seen him as of the time of this recording.
This morning and they’re not posted to lead to start they’re not referenced in legit start there’s no information that they exist or that they will be forthcoming.
I think that is hugely hugely problematic I have more issues but i’m just going to sit with my rage for a minute that’s that’s where it started.
MK: Well, you know we say that we started doing this podcast out of a mixture of love and rage and you know episodes are more love and maybe this episode is going to be more rage and that’s okay.
MH: Another thing here it’s like.
So, like the the amendments that that we’re seeing, are you know, are a big a big mess.
there’s people submit like individual Council members submitted contradictory amendments and then multiple Council members submitted concurring amendments what they don’t seem to have talk to each other.
everyone’s after the pile of deer money and that’s.
Everyone wants to slash the deer call money and spend that same hundred and $20,000 on so many different things and it’s like all of our dreams are going to be funded by that same $120,000 but.
JL: Part of the frustration is that they don’t.
Either they’re not clear about the amendment process either or how they’ve been working on it is totally unclear to like outsiders like if you’re just.
JL: Reading the amendments and you guys we’re going to link those amendments as a PDF to the website so you’ll you’ll see that in the show notes for the next episode, but the the amendments read a little bit like what’s that piece of music de de de de de de de.
De de de.
Like it was a clown car of money and amendments, it was weird so yeah.
we’ll get to that in more detail.
MH: Even beyond just the amendments the budget document itself is like what 400 and how many pages.
99 yeah 409 pages and it’s um and like.
i’ve never seen it before and it’s got lots of stuff in it we’ve seen like we’ve seen PowerPoint presentations about this and that we’ve seen individual departments present about like here’s our ideas, but like I feel like the.
And and we’ve only seen those things because we’ve attended like we’ve been watching Council Council meetings and work sessions, I feel like the budget like.
This whole thing should have had like a bunch of like public meetings not especially not specifically addressed at Council, but like dear the public, please come talk about the budget.
And it should have had focus groups that were like specifically chosen with respect to diversity equity and inclusion.
Like we should be looking to get you know the budget, the budget shouldn’t be so hard to figure out that even dedicated activists can’t get to it, it should be so easy to figure out that even normal people can understand that you know.
Some effort has been playing.
JL: It doesn’t and it’s not to diminish, I know that staff and Council have sunk a huge amount of time into putting this budget together what I think is really lacking is the communication around it.
A couple of things that I wanted to see and didn’t were clear language.
about why this budget, the essentially the final budget is different from the draft budget that was presented from staff to counsel back in January, February, maybe February think.
So what changed and also clearer language about what’s changing in this budget over last year that if if prior year’s budgets are any indication that actually will be a part of the final draft.
But it’s not a part of what’s coming to counsel and that makes it really, really hard to read.
MH: And another thing about the budget process is that, like.
By like State law, the city, the City Council is required to pass a budget of some kind at this meeting, like they can’t just say like Oh well, we need to like go get more.
And it’s like we need to get these amendments in order Oh well, we need to do some more communication gets more public input like that it has to happen, whatever whatever they pass it has to be this budget, you know, whatever whatever they pass it has to be this meeting.
MK: Right and to certain my sort of.
it’s a little bit of a nitpick but not really so we said, this budget is 409 pages long.
It does not have a table of contents, it does not have an index, it is at least a PDF or you can do a command F and like look for stuff.
But if you want it to be able to focus in on the things that you care about by skipping to that section.
there’s no there’s no way for you to figure out where in the document it’s going to be, and in fact it’s probably going to be in like six different places in the document based on the experience that we’ve had going through it.
And that it’s just like another layer of impenetrability about this process and for people who want to understand and advocate around spending, because, as we love to say here, the budget is a moral document, and this, these are some very confusing morals, we have right now.
they’re hard to read and hard to parse.
JL: So, now that we’ve talked about our feelings.
We do hope that you pay attention to this coming Council meeting this is going to be an interesting conversation.
Probably along one rightfully along one, because this is a really important conversation and as Michelle said it can’t go past this Monday everything the document must be approved on my day, so why don’t we wrap up this episode and move into the second of our double header.
MH: I guess like one thing I one thing I want to say it’s like we usually talk about when we talk about things we usually talk about like what are our what our actions with what do we want.
people to talk about and since we haven’t really talked about which amendments people should call into support, I would just say like.
Like, I would like to see people support a like a better, more more diversity equity and inclusion style of participatory budgeting like so that we don’t know so that it’s not this confusing next time but we’re going to have more calls to action in our next episode that’s right.
JL: The current call to action is.
Just please ask your Council members and anybody who works on this document that communication be clearer and kinder oh my God okay.
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!
JL: Hi, Ann Arbor AFers. This is cohost Jess Letaw with
one more thing. We’ve been talking at you for months – now we’d like to hear
from you! What do you like about the pod? What do you wish we were doing more
of, or better? What ideas do you have for future episodes? We’ve put up a
survey for you to fill out. There’s a link to it in the show notes, or go to
annarboraf.com/survey. That’s annarboraf.com/survey. Send us your thoughts,
questions, feels and feedback on the pod so far; we want to hear it all. And
as always, get informed, then get involved. It’s your city!