This bonus episode is dedicated entirely to the prospective budget that will be passed at the next City Council meeting. We cover the budget, proposed amendments as we know them, and address some CM questions to staff as well.
If you haven’t already, please fill out our listener survey!
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
– as of recording, the amendments hadn’t been linked to Legistar, so you can find them in a PDF on this episode’s page
Email your city councilmembers if you have any questions about the budget, as it will be approved Monday!
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, 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!
MK: 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 Molly Kleinman and my pronouns are she/her, I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she/her, and I’m Jess Letaw and my pronouns are she/her. We’re your cohosts to help you get informed, and get involved. It’s your city!
MH: Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up Monday may 17 2021, but this is a bonus episode devoted solely tanner’s 20 fiscal year 22 budget that’s and that’s going to be passed at this upcoming Council meeting.
This week we’re doing a double header with two separate episodes.
A standard episode about what’s going on in the City Council agenda this week and then this one, a whole episode, just for the budget, which is also on the City Council agenda this week.
we’ll be talking finance projects and amendments, the amendments that we know are coming and some that we expect to come at the last minute.
And a quick process note we record this a few days before the City Council meeting, which means that there will likely, and in this case, that means definitely will be some changes to the agenda, amendments and the amendments, between now and then so yeah.
Both alone up.
JL: Yes, so what we’re going to do in this episode is we’re going to go a little bit in outside order of what you might expect, for budget so we’re going to start with the amendments.
For the rate some range reasons that you may have heard in the last episode, and that is that the amendments are actually much easier to understand, than the budget so we’re going to start with the amendments.
we’re going to go into the overall budget, and then address in a small way, some of the questions that the Council members have posed between.
The draft agenda getting posted and the one that’s in legislature, right now, so we’re going to start with the agenda amendments go into the full budget and then address questions and first up on the amendments.
Is me i’m going to be talking about three at once, Amendment one, five and seven, the first one is an amendment to reduce dear call funding and increase funding for the Center of the city brought by Council member one lolly.
amendment number five is an amendment to reduce dear call funding and increase funding for Center of the city brought my Council member hanger Amendment seven is an amendment to reduce funding for single families owning and increased funding for Center of the city.
So, since the first two are functionally identical.
i’m going to leave those alone, I will note that it does look like, there is little to no coordination on amendments.
In some ways, I think that’s good, I think that what we’re not seeing is a new budget being written in a back room, I actually kind of left.
Like the car crashing nature of these, but it does mean that there’s some redundancy so i’m going to leave alone hater i’m lollies amendments.
Partly because the deer call dollars are going to come up a few more times in this conversation i’ll leave further discussion of that to malia Michelle in a moment.
And i’ll focus on Council member brings resolution which still wants to dedicate funding to Center of the city drawing from single family zoning.
I want to preface this by saying that the request is to take a Stat and existing staff budget recommendation.
For a conversation around single families zoning as it pertains to racial equity currently there’s a proposal in the budget for 2122 conversation at $100,000 this amendment reduces that allocation to $60,000.
and request that the balance 40,000 be reallocated to the development of the Center of the city which depending on how you define it is either.
The block bounded by William fifth liberty and division, specifically the public land on that block or it’s the surface parking lot right next to the downtown library on fifth avenue.
So I have a couple of things to say about this, but I just wanted to pass it over to Michelle and molly if there was anything that you wanted to say before I really got into the weeds on this.
MH: I was really excited about this discussion about single families zoning because that is the big question right now in in.
In City policy like basically like everyone who’s mad at each other mad at each other about zoning issues and mad at each other about how we’re going to.
achieve a more equitable city and one that’s more inclusive one that people can afford to live in and it’s a really big question and I think it’s one that we, as a city need to and deserve to and.
absolutely have to tackle head on, and so the plan was that you know we’ve been we’ve been planning on having a.
A big discussion.
about our master plan that’s our master plan for zoning of the city.
And it’s been put off i’ve been putting it off and putting it off we’re going to have that discussion next year and we’re going to.
And we’re going to spend some like $700,000 on.
Public engagement about it so that we can make sure that it has that we’re you know doing outreach and that we’re getting the voices that we don’t normally hear.
and
that’s good, but I think I you know the plan was that this year we would specifically talk about single family zoning then next year, we would talk about.
The master plan in general and I thought that was a great idea and I do not like the idea of skimping on that.
and
Especially yeah for the like this just doesn’t seem like this doesn’t seem like it advances any equity goals in the same way.
JL: I think that’s a good point Michelle and i’m gonna agree with you, using more words a.
minute part of what I wanted to say in this is that I wanted to say, full disclosure I was active in a campaign against.
propping property was essentially the Center of the city proposal which we won’t go into the language or we litigate any of that right now but.
That proposal is the one that led to this Commission and this body of work, I was against it, then i’m against it now my feelings have remained consistent on that, but I just wanted to clarify that I I my disagreement with it is.
MK: Not new as of these amendments.
JL: part of what I wanted to address with this is that I really can’t think of a much more egregious or irresponsible request than this amendment makes.
it’s asking to take a long overdue conversation on radio show reckoning and redistribute 40% of the requested funds to one specific site.
Whose purview remains unclear it doesn’t belong to parks it doesn’t belong to housing, the city is not a developer, we really don’t know what we’re doing here.
I understand that the goal is to get clear about what this site is intended to do what goals it’s intended to accomplish what function, it could serve.
But we’ve already had, for two years, a task force and a Commission trying to decide what to do with this lot and this funding request looks a lot more like let’s throw money in the hole and hope something happens, this time and not like we’re working towards a specific goal.
i’ll be clear, I never going to support additional resources for this lot until it has a clear remit, no matter what, but I find this amendment in particular offensive tone deaf and regressive and I hope that Council doesn’t approve it.
And those are some of my feelings molly you have some amendment feelings.
MK: I do well this and then who y’all heard me ramble at some length and it on our.
I guess now it’s two episodes ago about the.
Healthy streets plans for this year.
They were terrific the plans are great they address a lot of the feedback from last year, both in terms of things that didn’t work so well, to make them better and things that did work well, but we made even better.
At the last Council meeting healthy streets failed, it did not pass it needed eight votes because it would have required a big budget like a mid year budget allocation and it got seven.
But there was a big outcry because healthy streets is actually super popular and a lot of people love it it’s not just me um and so some folks it looks like.
mayor Taylor and councilmember briggs are amending the new budget to bring to bring back healthy streets, and the reason, this makes sense, is that a meteor budget.
amendment requires eight votes, which is way more than a majority.
Amendments to the new budget only require a simple majority so with the same number of votes that it got last time, which was seven healthy streets with them pass as an amendment to this new budget.
And it would it would be late because we wouldn’t be able to start it until the new fiscal year begins, which is July 1.
But it would give us, you know, probably three to four good months of healthy streets deployments and two of the things on there are permanent and so we would get those permanent changes, and then we would have them forever.
There was some discussion about maybe separating the pieces out and bringing them all back on the regular Council agenda to vote on.
But it looked like that was not going to get that they weren’t gonna be able to get any new votes for any of the individual pieces, and so this is.
This is a way to still get healthy streets, and I expect that, while there may be some debate about this, I do expect that this will pass and that we will end up with healthy streets just later than we might have hoped.
MH: I heard about the if if they were to because, like some of the Council members.
When they voted down healthy streets this year they expressed like well I would I like this part and I like this part but I don’t like that part and.
But we were we had been negotiating it as like a single contract, and so we would have had to like renegotiate that contract in order to do those separate pieces.
And I heard that it would have been a lot more expensive if we had come at it piecemeal and say hey can you do this, and this and then later on come and said, by the way, can you also do this, you know when the new budget passes.
MK: yeah there were there were two issues.
MH: For at all.
MK: And we were charged once there were two issues with breaking it apart, one is that yeah it would have been more expensive.
To do to do it piecemeal, but also, it became clear that those Council members who said Oh well, I would vote for just this piece, or I would vote for just that piece when given the opportunity to support just the p those pieces.
They were not, they did not indicate any willingness to ship their boat, so it was.
I believe that that was mostly just an attempt to pretend.
Like they care when they don’t so i’m going to move i’m going to move on from there, those are my feelings two Amendments three and 11 and Michelle.
MH: yep um alright So these are.
Okay, so.
there’s a lot of talk in these amendments about the deer call funding.
We were so the deer code is a program that.
is quite dismissive a lot of people love the deer call and a lot of people.
He ate the deer call.
JL: and
So.
MH: When when the pandemic happened, and we had to like cut our budget last year, they said Oh, I know let’s let’s cut the deer call.
and
That was an easy place to cut money from so that we could like balance our budget well they put the Dir call back on the budget this year for $120,000 and.
So there are two separate amendments, one for mayor Taylor and one from councilmember hainer and both of them just say hey how about we don’t do the deer call how about we spend zero dollars, instead of $120,000 on that and.
I.
I just found that interesting because both Taylor and hainer have each submitted money have you submitted resolution saying oh wait actually instead of just instead of just cutting the deer call money could you spend it on this, instead, can you spend it on that instead.
And so that’s funny that they had contradictory ideas about what to do about the deer called funding and they both got on there on on the list of amendments.
JL: wanted to say something about that.
Too so.
The amendment document that we’re referencing as of the recording of this episode is not on.
Legislators so we’re going to be putting a link to this on our episode page at Ann arbor af.com if you go to latest episode it’ll be on there.
We understand that it’s not on register, because this is an incomplete document I still wish that it had been referenced but anyway, the things that you’re hearing us talk about you can find a link to will drop a link in the show notes.
But this is partly why it’s incomplete and contradictory is even for staff and Council, this is not a finished thing.
MH: yeah We talked to Council members who hadn’t even seen these.
Amendments yet.
But.
yeah anyway um the deer call funding let’s let’s not do the deer call and let’s instead do either nothing else, or something else, or something else else um.
The point.
The point is that this hundred and $20,000 is going to fund all of our dreams.
Next.
JL: transitions to Michelle.
MH: I do, that a lot.
So.
Okay, we have an amendment from councilmember hainer to.
Remove to fts from the office of sustainability so.
We may remember in about 2018 City Council passed a resolution.
Asking for carbon carbon neutrality by 2030.
that’s nine years from now, or we carbon neutral Yet are we getting posted to carbon neutrality, well, I hope so, because we have we’ve.
MK: we’ve designed.
MH: we’ve spent a lot of money to design this plan called a to zero plan and.
it’s how we’re going to get to carbon neutrality by 2020 and.
And there’s a lot of money in the budget that will get us towards getting to that plan.
and part of that involves hiring people.
it’s difficult to do things if we don’t have anybody working on them.
and
Since the City Council they played a climate emergency, it seems appropriate that we should work on the things.
and
Yet councilmember hainer here, he says hey why don’t we remove to two of these full time employees, so that.
The proposed budget.
As is would ask us to hire three new full time employees to work in the office of sustainability.
Wait did I get that right yeah um and so hainer says actually let’s let’s only hire one of them instead of three.
that’s what that’s what amendment number four is on this list, and he doesn’t really have any plan to reallocate that money he just kind of wants it to go towards.
balancing the budget and, indeed, there is a budget shortfall this year because of coven.
we’re expecting to pull money from our fund balance it’s funny we have in the bank and.
But yeah it doesn’t seem like this is a good place to cut since the city council’s declared that this is an emergency.
And he doesn’t really have any like particular plans for just It just seems to not want to spend that money he says in one of the whereas clauses, it says.
office of sustainability funding has tripled over the past couple years and it’s like Oh, I wonder why that is maybe because it was like.
Maybe because Council said that this was a big emergency and we ought to get to work on it.
So anyway that’s that’s that’s that i’m.
i’m gonna.
i’m going to talk about some oh i’m going to transition to myself again i’m.
Okay.
MH: i’m going to talk about amendment number six on our list.
amendment to reduce the deer call funding.
You sustain sustainability and innovations funding an ad a diversity equity and inclusion and inclusion position so.
This amendment.
Trying to.
look at it, I put it.
yeah so another.
um emergency that the City Council has declared is that in 2019 they passed a or maybe 2020 they passed a resolution declaring racism, a public health crisis and it made no promises or offered no ideas about how to deal with this public health crisis that’s face.
JL: No actions defined no funding allocated exactly.
MH: And so.
This amendment would actually do something, it would hire an officer.
Would hire a diversity equity inclusion officer to figure things out and the county has had Idi officer for a couple years now.
it’s they have a racial equity office and it’s a racial equity officer, the city of Jackson has.
has an officer doing these things, and some of the things they do are to kind of like when this when the city or the county is.
Considering legislation and considering policies this person can.
Can can like spend the time to look into what the.
What the racial impact would be about that, if they can look into the situation you know just the broadly and suggest new policies and legislation.
And right now we don’t have anyone focused on that work and it’s just kind of like.
You know, Council, like his city staff is like expected to take this work on in individual departments, but.
You know they don’t necessarily have the expertise on that and so they’re not necessarily they’re not like talking to the communities necessarily they like doing their normal job but.
You know they don’t they don’t since they’re being asked to do their normal job and not being asked to do this other work, we need to ask someone to do that on the work.
JL: I mean di is into an expertise and Michelle I think your description of how we’re asking staff to.
conduct it was, which is.
Essentially piecemeal by department and service area we’re asking everybody to be experts in their own areas.
I I don’t have as much of an argument with that, although I don’t think it’s fair that we’re asking people to do their jobs and do it, I think that we need to acknowledge that this is a genuine area of expertise and some urgency.
part of my issue that we don’t have an overriding a racial equity framework in the city or be somebody who is responsible for attending to it, making sure that we’re hitting our goals there.
Is when departments have conflicting interpretations of dei or conflicting priorities and ways that they’re trying to deliver services.
there’s no way to resolve those conflicts and usually where it ends up happening is in the budget, and so they end up doing whatever is less expensive and that is often not what is more equitable.
So one of the reasons that I see this position as deeply urgently needed is for the city to be much more cohesive consistent cogent.
In how it is thinking about diversity equity and inclusion, specifically with regard to racial equity and how it’s delivering those services to us of Community members.
yeah.
MH: I guess one you know one thing i’m not a little fat about is that, like the Council members had to.
In this resolution, they had to live in this amendment, they had to like name sources of the funding I kind of wish that this that they had been resolution asking for this, you know, a long time ago, when the when the staff was preparing the budget so that they could like.
You know, make the determination of where the money should come from, but I kind of don’t care where the money comes from this is too important to thing take the money from anywhere.
This is this is job number one.
Okay molly your next.
MK: Yes, so i’m once again talking about transportation amendments i’ve got to hear that i’m sort of.
going to mesh together, because I think they’re related so Amendment eight and Amendment 10.
eight is the amended it’s called amendment to reallocate streetlight replacement funds but it’s it’s actually more comprehensive than that.
And then the other one is amendment to amend the major street fund budget for transportation plan implementation and three quick build safety projects so both of these amendments are about.
Shifting this year’s budget towards addressing priorities that were outlined in the new comprehensive transportation plan so we’ve just spent a couple of years.
Putting together this really incredible transportation plan for the city, one of the many things I love about it is that it doesn’t separate out like.
Normal transportation i’m making air quotes that you can see aka cars versus alternative transportation, which is everything else.
And instead, it is a comprehensive transportation plan and thinks about the whole network holistically and when the budget actually came down in terms of how we were going to like what we were going to spend money on for pedestrians and cyclists and other you know non car transportation.
It those choices did not reflect the priorities that we had that have come out of the comprehensive transportation plan.
And so, this is councilmember briggs who is she she’s the City Council represent.
representative on the transportation Commission but she also as a former member or like Chair of the Washington or biking and walking coalition and she’s a longtime advocate and so she sort of took on let’s.
Try to spend this money in ways that are more in line with our priorities so Amendment eight.
Would rearrange the whole $500,000 of spending that’s the the chunk of our county mental health millage rebate that goes to quote unquote pedestrian safety.
rearranging that towards higher priorities so some of that is about streetlight replacement funds but there’s also other things in there as well, so the thing specifically about the streetlights is that.
it’s replacing existing light so it’s, not even a question of like putting new lights in places where there aren’t any The other thing about streetlights when we talk about.
pedestrian safety is that the majority of pedestrian and bike crashes in Ann arbor happened during daylight hours, so if we’re talking about an investment that’s going to have the biggest impact on safety on our roads.
Infrastructure that’s only in use for eight to 12 hours of the day is not going to have the same kind of impact and so that’s where this shift is coming from.
And it’s moving us towards spending on a few different things so i’m trying to an analysis for traffic calming on major streets, which is something we really desperately need so.
For many, many years anytime someone says, you know we really could use some calming on these roads that aren’t neighborhood streets, but like seventh seventh is the big example seven street.
Oh well, we can’t do traffic calming on major roads, because reasons, so, then this would be about figuring out how we can do chat becoming on major roads.
hundred and 50,000 for curb extensions and Center line hardening.
And flow turn what these are all things specifically to make intersections safer for pedestrians and cyclists intersections are where most of the crashes with pedestrians and bikes happen and there’s a lot that can be done to improve safety editor sections, and that was a big emphasis.
In.
The transportation plan, and then there and then yet we’re still gonna spend some money on street lights on and some other stuff, but I think the The key thing here is that this is an attempt to relate to redirect towards priorities, and so, then amendment 10 is similar.
So the comprehensive transportation plan in terms of short term strategy, it recommends developing a quick build improvement program so.
There are improvements that we know will take many years to bring to fruition and there are improvements that we can do.
Really fast and one of the recommendations is a target of installing at least three quick build safety projects per year.
prioritizing focus corridors and again intersections So this amendment is about three quick build safety projects, and I was like ooh which three and which three isn’t in here.
it’s just this idea that we should be doing three a year if we want to meet our goals, we have to be doing three a year and we need to start now, and so this will move us in that direction did either of you have anything you wanted to add about either of these ones.
JL: Not to add, but I have a question is quick built the same as pilot.
MK: know my understanding of quick build another way that you could talk about it is paint and.
MK: post or.
JL: got it.
MK: tactical urbanism things that can happen without a total rebuild of the road, so you change the way the paint is on the street and.
That makes things safer, or you put in some planters or bollards or divert errors and it’s sort of a quick and dirty but not actually dirty just quick um way to improve safety.
JL: But intended to be permanent.
MK: intended to be permanent, yes okay.
JL: gotcha thanks for the clarification.
MH: thumbs up I like this amendment, a lot.
JL: same.
um.
MK: Oh look it’s me again um so we’re moving on to amendment 13.
Which is the amendment to remove one full time or one F T chief strategy executive position from the fiscal year safety services police budget, this is brought by a Council members Regina and briggs and.
The main reason I wanted to point this out is that this is the extent of the defunding of police that we’re seeing this year is removing this one F T so.
MH: Well there’s six six officers aren’t being replaced him in the typical in the regular budget.
MK: right but.
JL: During right.
MK: total budget still going up it’s like give the others like there will be some empty positions.
That aren’t going to be filled so yeah I mean, yes, there, there were things all of the departments were asked to model, a 5% cut um, but when we look at the total of the totals the police budget doesn’t hasn’t gone down.
At all thought about this more in a little bit.
um so.
As I was looking through for trying to figure out what what’s going on with policing there’s a lot of discussion about it.
This this amendment is to sort of cut this one, this one position and it’s a high level position so it’s a chunk of money, and this is an amendment to remove that from the police budget um and it just it stood out to me in its solitariness that’s pretty much all I want.
MH: let’s do this and then another one, and another one that’s what we ought to do.
MK: Right um and then.
MH: And we have we’ve been in, there is the you know the city has been talking a little bit about doing.
On armed responders and but they’ve only allocated $230,000 for that, for this year, and you know i’ve.
JL: 76 but that’s not different.
MH: Right right.
And I would not it’s it seems like it’s money to.
MK: figure it out.
Right right money to actually do it.
MH: I definitely would prefer.
That we take some of this $30 million dollars from the police and.
MK: rate and we’re going to we’re going to dive more into police budget in just a minute so hold that thought.
We have one amendment.
I know we’re getting there we got one more amendment before we get to them.
Like sections of budget which is amendment.
question mark and that’s you Michelle.
yeah.
MH: So you know we.
Because this at the time of recording of the these amendments we’re not on legislator, we just made a bunch of frantic phone calls to city council members to see what we could find out about amendments.
because some of them had announced, you know amendments that they were planning on doing, and we were like where are these so um.
councilmember dish told me that she was.
Planning on bringing an amendment which hasn’t even been didn’t even get into this document that they got emailed to us by councilmember briggs but.
it’s an amendment.
That she’s she wants to expand the composting program to include multi family homes and public schools, and I think she said that the.
It would involve buying a new truck hiring a new person so.
will be really interesting to see that can’t wait.
that’s all I got it I see it.
Just notice here.
JL: yeah I wanted to note as Michelle said a moment ago, the amendments are non legislator, we will link the document to our episode page on the website and our brand calm.
And my guess is that a document, well, I mean it has to be upon lead to start at some point on Mondays may 17, so it is coming.
But i’m I just I need this process critique and in the last episode, I want to say it again, I have a strong frustration that there was no disclosure about amendments.
In the legislature documents, referring to the budget it doesn’t refer to the fact that amendments exist.
That are forthcoming, that there is a document that is a working one, so if it comes to i’m not saying that there’s any kind of you know obfuscation or you know shading is going on, I think it’s just.
Like the madness at the 11th hour of a big piece of policy like this, but there could have been slightly better communication, so we will share the document that we have, there are rumors of other amendments we don’t know what they are about they’re coming so.
MK: Okay, so now we’re going to talk about the budget as a whole and the way we’ve decided to approach this and make it digestible both for you and for us is to focus in on the areas that are relevant to.
The things we talked about all the time on this podcast so we’re going to talk about the police budget we’re going to talk about sustainability and we’re going to talk about affordable housing.
And pretty much everything I wanted to say about transportation, I already covered in the amendment section so we’re not going to get into that any further, but that’s sort of the other.
Big theme right of the things that we’re always talking about so we’re going to start with police, which is me if you are reading along at home, what did you call it just.
MH: hold on hold on you are not the police just wanted to be clear about that.
MK: Ah, I am going to talk about the police section of the budget, which is page 123 of the giant budget document, the police, the total police budget for this year is $31.4 million.
it’s creeping upwards, this is nothing about this budget, this police budget is revolutionary or dramatic, there are no big shifts.
Maybe there’s some like nibbling around the edges, but the the total that we’re spending on police continues to go up and the most of the things we’ve we’ve talked about we’ve heard Community Members talking about in public comment.
In public conversations.
I don’t see that reflected in this budget, I will say you know we watched the.
Work session the the the budget work session about the public safety budget way back in March, I want to say, and there were some things that stood out to me.
As egregious as things they were asking for that I don’t see in here, so these were sort of new things they asked for like they wanted a new bomb sniffing dogs, with its own special bomb sniffing dog vehicle that’s not in here.
One of our listeners actually wrote into us he wrote into Council and then shared with us his concern with the contract around tasers and getting access to tasers are like you basically rent the tasers and it’s a pretty.
sketchy process and.
JL: He was like service as a subscription but for armed.
MK: Police for arms yeah so.
He encouraged Council not to.
do that and I I searched every way I could think of for this contract and this the contractor in this budget and didn’t see it so.
You know some of the, it is true that it seems like there were some things the police asked for that they’re not getting but that’s a really low bar in terms of the kinds of changes, we want to see in policing.
MH: But also like because the budget is so unclear i’m I I can’t guarantee that those things aren’t actually in there, like maybe it doesn’t say bomb sniffing dog maybe it says like services like.
MK: There is came out like canine is a line in there, but I think those were the canines as opposed to the new ones, but you’re you’re right it’s all.
it’s all very confusing and you know one one thing that we wanted to talk about with this is that it seems as though no one in city government feels like they can really cut the police budget and.
We don’t know why so there’s, we know that there there’s the Union contract which govern salaries and that that changing that is going to be a very heavy lift but there’s a lot of other stuff that the police are spending money on.
That it’s not clear why we can’t be pushing for bigger changes on that.
JL: we’re close to the one year anniversary of George floyd’s murder.
People in Ann arbor thousands of people have Ann arbor have raised the cry defund the police.
And many of them have been very specific about those requests let’s divert funding to mental health let’s divert funding to unarmed responders let’s divert funding.
To diversity equity inclusion officer and instead of any of those programs being chunked away from the police budget.
we’re borrowing a nickel, at a time from things like the deer call and when all three of us right have talked to our Council members about this, and they shrug.
They shrug they’re like yeah, what can you do well, I mean you guys are the grown ups in charge, why, why is this not changing and in the absence of change, why isn’t there a clear communication about why it’s not changing so that that’s that’s definitely something that is uncomfortable.
yeah yeah.
MH: One thing I wanted to talk about too is the police oversight Commission.
That in.
2018 that.
We convened a task force to decide to design what a police oversight Commission should look like and they’ve worked furiously at it and came up with some very specific and powerful recommendations of how to make.
Police oversight Commission with the powers that it needed and those recommendations were all ignored.
And one of those recommendations would have been that the police oversight commission be funded to the level of 1.17% 1.17% of the police’s budget that would be what is $370,000.
Just yeah and they’ve never been funded to that level.
You know that would have allowed them to.
retain lawyers, that would have allowed them to conduct investigations that would have allowed them to better liaise with other.
Police always say commissions and you know instead they have just barely enough funding to you know, have the administrative staff that can basic do the basic work of running the committee.
And that is shameful.
Now i’d like to talk about sustainability.
JL: that’s all right we’re hopeful.
yeah.
MH: So yeah.
This is an area where we are putting our money where our mouth is.
The city committed to that and we are doing it we’re putting we’re putting $3.5 million into the budget to try and try and get to our carbon neutrality goal by 2030.
got this a two zero plan we’re hiring three new full time employees as long as that amendment does not pass.
which I hope it doesn’t.
yeah it’s good to see this I hit I have every now and then I hear about programs that the office of sustainability is running things about getting people solar panels getting people heat pumps like.
And electrifying the city’s vehicle fleet and.
Things like that, and you know.
You can stay in touch with the with what they’re doing by looking at their departments.
You know, look look at the office of sustainability and innovation, the city council’s website and I.
I hope that.
yeah.
This is good to see it’s good to see that this is a priority and that we’re funding it.
JL: It is and we are seeing the dollars go up, I will say that the Director of that department who’s Dr missy stoltz.
seems to be a powerhouse when it comes to generating revenue out of her department she looks for grants she looks for.
incentive ization programs at the state and federal level she recently got a settlement, I think, from dte that brought dollars into her department so.
You know I made a comment on a recent episode about how you know at a fundamental level of government we’re not asking our programs to generate revenue.
This one, there are some dollars that come in so miss Ann arbor, even though we are increasing our own local commitment, and I think that that’s important and necessary and right.
Not all of the dollars that we’re using to do the work we want to do, are local and I think that’s pretty cool.
Speaking of doing cool things locally, I wanted to address affordable housing in the budget.
We are fresh off of the November 2020 ballot proposal see local proposal see which passed a millage in support of affordable housing development in Ann arbor.
For the next 20 years what we’re seeing in the budget is starting to play out in.
The anticipating that development, so this year we’re seeing some F T which, if we haven’t said it already is full time employee or full time equivalent excuse me.
Employee increases so essentially their staffing up what the housing Commission is doing right now is in the process of identifying those city owned properties.
That are easiest to develop, both in terms of what’s already on those properties and how likely they are to attract additional funding at the state and federal levels.
We probably won’t see a first shovel in the ground for the next two to three years, but the minute that starts we’re probably going to see regular new public housing coming out.
For at least the next 10 or 15 years and hopefully consistently from here on out because really what we need is.
Not one and done, we need consistent development of new quality public and affordable housing so that’s it there’s a bit in the budget about this, but I just wanted to call out that it’s happening and it’s a good thing.
MH: I also want to say, like even even though, where we have the policy of building these things, and even though we have the funding allocated to build these things, we still need to keep an eye on it, because.
Sometimes the projects happen and some city council members will who.
don’t seem to be who don’t seem to share my view about exactly how big of an emergency, it is to build.
To build subsidized housing they’ll say.
Oh well, you know we’ve heard some complaints from the neighbors Oh well, we’ve heard some complaints for some businesses Oh well, we need a parking lot somewhere and and Oh, we don’t want this to be too tall and.
I think that you know the the animal housing Commission is putting a lot of work they’ve done a lot of they’ve gotten a lot of public feedback and they’ve put in a lot of designs and.
But we still need to stay vigilant to make sure that those designs aren’t compromised by some other concerns that, in my view, are of lesser importance than getting.
High quality.
Affordable subsidized housing built quickly.
don’t worry listeners.
JL: We will always tell you, when you can call in and supportive housing we like our graph.
So.
that’s I think it from the budget itself, I did want to make a couple of notes about the questions, but I just wanted to open to Michelle and Melanie if there was anything else you wanted to say.
MK: No, but I want you to clarify what you mean when you say questions.
JL: Oh that’s a really good point, so the questions are in every city council agenda.
Council members have the ability and do avail themselves of the opportunity.
To ask questions of staff and the cat agenda response memo the air and the agenda response memo is a part of every Council agenda.
In this case, because the budget is such a substantive document, there are questions.
there’s an agenda response memo essentially just for the budget, it is 40 odd pages long 46 pages long.
And seems to have been done in batches like staff got seven questions, and you know work on seven answers, it is a little bit organized by service area but it’s it’s a lot it’s dense.
it’s helpful, one of the things when I was reading through it, then I started to get a sense of when I saw consistent questions or multiple questions in a single area.
that’s when it starts to feel like oh I bet there’s an agenda or excuse me an amendment coming in this area, like, for example, Michelle referenced a few minutes ago.
councilmember least addition Ward one is going to bring forward and amendment regarding composting at multifamily and public school facilities.
There she’s got questions about that in the in the agenda response memo so I wanted to pick up on two things that I saw in that document that I thought were interesting and.
If they are reflected in the budget, they may be, but as we’ve said exhaustively that is a tough document to read so picking up from the questions.
The first one is on page 21 there’s a question about the unarmed responder program and the dollars that are being used for it essentially what that is.
So the marijuana excise tax if i’m remembering that correctly, essentially the the local dollars, that we are receiving on marijuana sales taxes.
has been dedicated per resolution in the last couple of months to the development of an unarmed responder program in the questions, it becomes clear that 200,000 of.
That goes towards an expunged program if i’m remembering that correctly and that happens under the city attorney’s office, excuse me diversion and expunged and then 270 6000 is budgeted for an unarmed public safety responder.
MH: ma I don’t think that I don’t think the unarmed responders money is coming from the marijuana excise tax that’s a separate that they’re getting that from a separate source.
JL: That may be true, but that’s how it’s characterized in the questions, both from the Council member and staff interesting.
MK: Right and it’s okay.
Just to clarify that that 276 for the unarmed public safety response model it’s to do is to develop a model it’s not to actually implement it.
wrong and that was on a very recent agenda that was something that just came to counsel within the last few weeks that decision to to spend that money in that way.
JL: yep so I just wanted to call out that that was in the.
Questions The other thing that I wanted to note.
Is on page 20.
It has to do with dei we noted that one of the amendments is in service of a dei slash racial equity officer for the city.
There was a question from councilmember Regina about how dei is already being addressed inside the city.
Specifically, in terms of organizational training, so how is staff training itself on dei and and he explicitly called out anti racism training as well, which I appreciated that.
delineation the response from staff is that for a little over $43,000 is budgeted city wide for all training.
And that The hope is that ddi and anti racism is in there, but it’s not required there’s no definition around what that should attempt to accomplish.
If there should be any coordination across service areas or units or staff there’s just really no definition there so to me that question and the answer continue to bring home the urgently needed nature of a racial equity officer and an a focused and coordinated dei program and framework.
Anything else from you guys on the questions.
I think we have run this budget as dry, as we can.
MK: Who this.
We worked very hard today.
We still don’t really understand the budget.
But.
We you know we did what we could we encourage you our listeners to do what you can i’m going to thank all of you again, who have supported us on coffee if you’d like to send us a few dollars to cover our hosting fees, you can find us at K oh dash f.com slash Ann arbor a F.
JL: And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor AF. We’re your cohosts Molly Kleinman, Michelle Hughes, and myself, Jess Letaw; and thanks to producer Jack Jennings, stepping in for 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!