Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up Tuesday, July 6th. We’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including transit-oriented zoning, rentals, municipal solar, and a couple of city commissions.
Transcript
JL: hi and welcome back to Ann arbor as a podcaster books trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann arbor we discussed current events and local politics and policy governance and other sort of good times i’m just leto and my pronouns are cheaper.
MK: And i’m molly climate and my pronouns are she her.
JL: Our fellow co host Michelle Hughes is taking a hiatus to focus our energy on the JET skiing or recall effort, but the two of us are back to help you get informed and get involved it’s your city.
MK: Before we get started, we have a website and arbor APP COM you’ll find all the episodes show notes and transcripts.
thanks again to all our supporters who donated to help pay for hosting and other costs if you’d like to give us a few dollars, you can find us at K oh dash fit comm slash Ann arbor af.
Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up Tuesday July 6 we’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including transit oriented zoning Rentals municipal solar and I CPC the.
independent Commission.
Independent Community police oversight Commission there we go.
JL: You got it.
MK: off and offer some ways for you to get involved a quick process note we record this a few days before the Council meeting, which means that there may be changes to the agenda between now and then.
JL: So we took June off, and it was a nice to have a break even though Council stayed really busy So if you weren’t following along you missed a lot.
We decided we wanted to give you a snapshot of what happened before going into the next Council meeting, so it was housing palooza, especially at the first meeting in June, it was so awesome so first of all, a $1.5 million were appropriated from the affordable housing millage.
Funds to affordable housing projects so that’s exciting.
The ad ordinance has been updated and modestly expanded to make it easier faster and cheaper to create accessory dwelling units in the city of Ann arbor.
People who know me know that I have been thinking about at us to an inappropriate extent for years.
to finally get these models changes past is deeply exciting and also hey, how can we continue to make it easy fast and cheap to develop new modest.
By the way, adorable housing, we also had valhalla, which is a prospective apartment complex at South main inside the church they had their site plan approved, meaning that these units are pretty likely to move all the way forward.
pivoting from housing, there was a resolution establishing a new Council subcommittee intended to just study the pilot program pilot being payment and low taxes.
folks who have been listening to the podcast for a little while, or at least since May may remember that I was pretty critical of the Subcommittee, I feel like it’s a waste of time.
And there’s not a whole lot that they’re going to be able to come out of this with in terms of actionable policy and it’s not even consistent with the city’s self stated policy agenda but they passed it and.
We also updated our service contract, excuse me with recycle Ann arbor for municipal resource recovery services, essentially, it was clarifying who owns what equipment.
In terms of the city and recycle and arbor and the trucks and making some modest changes to if i’m remembering correctly how multifamily.
complexes are serviced.
MK: A few other things, one that i’m very excited about the comprehensive transportation plan update was officially adopted by the.
JL: city imagine more than me it’s just hearing.
MK: It so that’s very exciting one.
There was a resolution to request that Council member Jeff hainer resigned from the inner city council.
That was in response to the ongoing discussions that have been happening around the homophobic and racist slurs that he used.
We passed to the Crown Act, which was an ordinance to amend the code of the city of Ann arbor to add a definition of to add to the definition of race that includes a prohibition against.
race based hair discrimination, so this is something that’s been passing in municipalities and states around the country and in arbor has gotten on board.
And then healthy streets is happening so you may remember that healthy streets.
The budget allocation for healthy streets did not pass that was when it was a sort of off cycle allocation back in May.
But then it was included in the annual budget allocation and it didn’t need a supermajority so healthy streets did pass.
And then the there was a contract to approve the work, and that also passed and so now we’re in July and any day now.
We should start to see installations, of the neighborhoods illustrates the the changes on major quarters will will probably take a little bit longer because those are going to be permanent.
JL: So molly can I can I pop a really random question on you, I have seen on social media a little bit of kerfuffle around streets being close to through traffic but it doesn’t feel related to healthy streets is there anything you can tell me about that because I really don’t understand.
MK: I also have questions about that, because it seems that those are not related to help the streets it’s not clear to me if it’s related to nearby construction that’s happening if there’s construction that sort of.
prompting people to use neighborhoods as customers that aren’t normally used as cut through the the signs blocking them off, I saw one posted to Twitter.
They look similar to the to what will see for the neighborhood slow streets, but they don’t have any of the additional like this is a neighborhood slow street happy pictures of people walking and biking.
it’s just you know road close to through traffic and furthermore.
What I saw was a tweet from the and our police department about enforcing like monitoring and enforcing these roads.
Which is not the approach that the city is taking to the neighborhood so streets, in fact, that was an explicit concern was that we didn’t want to.
Have these slow streets programs produce increased in our interactions with police so police law at least last year, where I sort of actively not i’m not ticketing the neighborhoods lowest rates so I.
I really I have the same questions that you do about what’s going on with this, I haven’t had a chance to dig into it, to try and figure it out.
JL: For listeners, I just want to let you know if there’s ever something I don’t know and molly or Michelle don’t know it, I always feel really reassured i’m like okay if those two don’t know it it’s okay to be confused.
MK: I somebody probably know something but.
I haven’t heard anything about it.
Alright, thanks yeah sure, so it looks like we are ready to get into what’s coming up this week and we’re starting with you jess.
JL: Yes, so it’s an interesting set of consent agenda things, but the only thing that I wanted to pick up as a grant application.
To dnr the Department of national natural resources for the acquisition of a piece of property along broadway the the address given.
Is 841 broadway typically in Ann arbor when we talk about this, we usually call it the dte site.
This the grant application is for up to $7 million, so the two reasons that I wanted to call this out is one we rarely see anything on the consent agenda that has this hefty of a price tag on it and to clarify to repeat.
The city council is not being asked to make a $7 million decision we are applying for $7 million in grant funds to be able to purchase this land.
And I also wanted to note it as another milestone in the evolution of this site in this area.
The hope when I was reading through this particular resolution The hope is that purchasing it and the city owning it.
will create better connectivity in the elements of the B2B between the B2B and the city between residents of the city and the riverfront in that.
Specific area, so it makes a ton of sense and consistent with all of our planning documents, but that part of the city has been the subject of pretty intensive planning and development activity in the last few years, and so I just wanted to note that.
The next thing I want to talk about is.
it’s so exciting like I just I need to take a breath for a second to.
Something myself, so this is the public hearing and second reading of transit oriented zoning.
there’s a lot in here, and I think what i’ll do is drop a link in the show notes to directly to this resolution, so that anybody who’d like to kind of get into the weeds of it, the nice thing is the resolution is really in English.
So if you’d like to understand everything that the transit oriented district is attempting to do reading through this resolution will give you a pretty good sense.
The couple of things, a couple of things that I wanted to call out one this district eliminates parking minimums and begins to institute parking maximums we have not yet had our war on cars episode on this podcast.
it’s scheduled we’re all excited to get to it, but one of the things that we can’t wait to yell at clouds about is eliminating minimum parking requirements.
And this district does, that is the first district to do that so that’s super exciting another thing that’s worth calling out is that this district is not intensive intended currently.
To be implemented across the city its designated as only four areas, one is a specific stretch of South South state street one is along Washington avenue.
One is West stadium, and part of maple road and one is Plymouth road, so the idea of behind kind of constraining where this gets implemented is.
This is a relatively new kind of zoning district for Ann arbor and the idea is let’s see what this does let’s see if there are any unintended consequences.
From the different definitions that we have in terms of distance from residential zones in terms of maximum height in terms of building use in terms of the form based code that we’re that they’re implementing.
let’s try it out and see what happens before we kind of blanket implement this across the city by only was there anything that you wanted to say or ask about this.
MK: couple things first I wanted to just really briefly define parking minimums.
Which are the idea that.
The city requires a builder.
To include a certain number of parking spaces per unit of housing.
JL: and her square footage of officer retail.
MK: Yes or per square footage so it’s this idea that.
The city knows better than the developer, how much parking they need and.
The developer can’t go below a certain amount, even if they don’t think that that parking is needed, and so what parking eliminating parking minimums does is says, if you think you can build a thing, and you will need.
More than 10 parking spots, you only have to build 10 parking spots and it makes housing and other kinds of building a lot cheaper and it frees up land, so that we can have more space for people and other uses and less space for storing cars.
JL: And through I know you have another thing to say about that, I just want to throw in that non not mandating parking does not mean parking will be built.
Typically lenders and insurers require parking as part of the process of accessing funding.
So there will always probably always be parking literally built into most developments what we’re saying is we’re not adding in another layer of requirement and bureaucracy to getting through development.
MK: Yes.
So just this is a question that I have about transit oriented zoning in general, something that i’ve been sort of seeing float around is this concern that.
Transit oriented zoning essentially concentrates higher density and therefore cheaper housing along these high traffic corridors that are less safe for kids to play and that are higher like.
have higher emissions, and so the air quality is also worse and i’m curious what you think about that sort of general complaint around transit oriented oriented zoning and the specific way that Ann arbor is trying to do it.
JL: that’s a good question and I think a reasonable question to ask, but I want us to look kind of closely at our specific situation when we talk about the concentration of particulate matter you know pollutants in the air.
A lot of times what we’re talking about are hugely dense cities or, for example, oakland, which is a port city and sees thousands of.
container ships and semis container semis coming in and out of the city, every day, and of course those emissions are much less tightly regulated.
Then, are you know residential or even typically commercial vehicles that we see in and around Ann arbor we’re also not going to see a huge amount of density there is what I was looking at the ordinance the very tallest.
Building that’s permitted is a 300 feet, but most buildings would be between 55 and 75 feet, which is approximately five to seven or five to eight stories.
And that’s just not going to be that dense, especially because people who live along transit corridors are often going to be car lighter.
than the rest of the city, because they can’t be there it’s transit oriented development right so they’re there because it’s easier to not own a car, something that a lot of us, I think, are trying to get to anyway.
So that addresses I hope it addresses the concern that we’re locating cheaper housing in an area that’s riskier in terms of public health, I just don’t think.
We have the kind of concentration that’s going to make that a problem, the point and part of the reason that i’m saying that is that there are currently apartments being developed.
That will go over blake transit Center what’s called the y lot, which is 353 50 South avenue, I think, or South fifth seating.
And even there the and they’ve they’ve done air quality tests over there even there with all the buses going in and out every day.
Thousands of people riding the bus every day, the air quality over there is no not distinguish distinguish ugly worse than any other residential neighborhood in the city.
So, in terms of air quality Ann arbor is really fine fine like I said a question worth asking, but not a critique I think that needs to be living in this case.
In terms of it being safer for kids to be able to play around that’s again I think a reasonable question to ask.
But I don’t think it’s a reason to not build housing I think it’s a reason to look closely more closely at how we’re designing our streets.
and making sure that even our transit court or is our slow and safe and we can do that with bustling means we can do that with healthier.
pedestrian crossing more bump out more frequent pedestrian crossings and and and.
just making sure that when we’re designing a city we’re designing it for everyone and not just for the most expedient way to get around I think that’s one of the things.
That now i’m going to go off on one of my favorite brands, but just for a second I think that’s one of the things that really kind of gets me.
confused about a lot of planning processes and a lot of planning conversations we talk so much about how to accommodate cars, and we really seem to abandon pretty quickly what it means to design for people.
So I just wanted to say that, like let’s have transit oriented housing and let’s continue to think about streets for people even transit streets.
MK: I mean you know i’m on board.
With slower say from everyone everywhere.
Right.
awesome.
So the next The next item is another public hearing, and this is an ordinance to amend Chapter eight which specifically governs the independent Community police oversight Commission.
And these are some pretty some minor changes, overall, I would say to the ordinance that the governance that o’clock but.
Important and things that the members of the Commission have been asking for pretty much since it was created, so one of them is that it changes how appointments are made to the Commission to require input from the Commission in appointing new members, the the way.
JL: it’s really interesting.
MK: Though yeah so the way Commissioners are appointed is they’re selected by the Council members who are liaisons to a pocket, and also to the Human Rights Commission and then they go to Council and they get approved by Council and a process that’s similar to other commissions but.
The argument is that Members of the Commission.
They come from the Community they’re sort of experts in various ways, on issues around policing in the city and they are going to have some valuable contributions in recommending and recruiting new Commission members.
So that’s one change another one is so there’s currently a rule that it pocket can’t review cases concurrently with the police department.
And this adds an exception that says, the chief can make an exception in cases that have quote generated public interest.
So I think the goal with this is to sort of speed up the timeframe in which.
We can have some Community oversight for situations where the police, something has happened with the police, that the Community is aware of and concerned about and we can have we can have some of that oversight happening, even as the case is still being investigated within the department.
So i’m really.
JL: glad to see this, I think, having blocking a park from being able to review concurrently with the police poses some challenges so i’m glad to see this being relaxed.
A my initial haven’t talked to anyone about this to have a more informed outlook knee jerk response to this is i’m worried because.
For the same reason that I hate gofundme as medical insurance, because what generates public interest, like who gets to be the one that people care about and and is that enough is that OK so again i’m glad to see this relaxation.
i’d like to talk to people more and understand it a little bit better but, honestly i’d like to see that expanded.
MK: yeah and I also think it’s concerning that it’s up to the chief to make the exception that.
There have been concerned, since it pop was created that it does not have.
Sufficient teeth and these changes don’t don’t give it don’t get much to fear there but they are, as I understand that these are improvements that were requested by the Commission, and so I think these we can think of these as a step in the right direction.
JL: Nice it’s nice when you can support the work of the people doing work so.
that’s why i’m glad to see him forward.
yeah I also wanted to clarify it, so the what I said about transit oriented zoning and what you’re saying about these amendments pertaining to.
Police oversight and eight o’clock they are public hearings, these are also second ordinance readings so Council will be voting on these on Tuesday.
MK: Correct so this there’ll be an opportunity to call in where you don’t have to sign up ahead of time, so you can call in and supportive either or both of these.
you’ll have to speak separately to each one it’s not like general public comment time and then these will there’ll be up for for vote so hopefully we’ll see them both pass yeah.
JL: Speaking of things we want to see pass, there is an ordinance to amend.
A little bit about how Rentals are governed.
So this has been discussed a few times at the counsel table the last few months and it keeps getting pulled for amendments and further discussion.
Quite frankly, i’ve been a fan of it, this whole time and i’m pleased with the amendment as it’s coming forward I do anticipate it.
To come forward for a vote in the next couple of Council meetings, so this is likely to be a first reading and and I don’t see any more amendments coming through maybe there will I don’t know.
But that means that it would be up for a second really later this month, so this particular amendment requires landlords to communicate the terms of a subsequent lease no later than 180 days.
and gives tenants overnight right to renew their leases within 210 days.
And, basically, I Oh, and it also defines reasons and exceptions for just cause for not renewing lease and prohibits a landlord from entering the premises, to show them.
To prospective tenants until 208 210 days has passed essentially what this is doing is saying that.
tenants have a little bit of time to live in there, you know apartment their house, you know, whatever it is.
Before they have to decide, am I going to reset my lease or lot or not and landlords are not allowed to show the property.
Before the tech or while the tenant is making that determination that’s not currently the case, right now, right now, they can you know if you move in in August, a landlord could potentially start showing it in October, and this pushes it.
Back to I forget what imaginary timeline I came up with, but I think it pushes it back to February or March, so it just gives you a little as a renter a little bit more breathing room, which is nice.
MK: It was December with is the current because there was.
There was already an income be.
JL: Right.
MK: I think it’s December, and that that was the first attempt by city council to to give renders a little bit more time because it used to be basically yeah you had to sign almost immediately December was an improvement, but it sounds like a lot of especially like the.
Union the graduate student union has been pushing for some of these renter protections and so that’s where this came from to find and there’s been so much i’m to find a middle ground right there was the original version of this push to even farther in the future.
JL: Something like that yeah, but I am glad to see that tenants have really been heard in this process.
And if anybody from GEO is out there listening, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for participating in city politics and for making this better from one renter to many more, I really appreciate your work.
MK: So this next resolution is to set an ethics, so this is DC one and it’s the resolution to set an ethics rule 12 hearing regarding a complaint for reprimand, and so this is basically a process step regarding the ongoing issues with councilmember hainer.
The administration committee reviewed a complaint against councilmember hainer for using racist and homophobic slurs and this.
resolution will say that now the full Council is going to hold a hearing about the complaint, so this isn’t making any sort of decisions about the merit of the complaint it’s just saying okay now we’re going to have a hearing about it.
And then next up is DC to which is huge, yes.
JL: that’s me yeah I was just I was thinking a little bit about the hearing and the the process.
One of the things that surprised me about governance, when I started paying more attention to it was how slow, everything was, and I remember thinking, I still think that sometimes I remember thinking God, this is so stupid everything could.
Go so much faster and that’s true kind of but also.
I do appreciate the diligence that a real that a good process requires.
That you have to talk to a group a and group B before making a decision with group see so I was, I was just reflecting on that real time, which is not super fun for you guys podcast listener sorry but I was just.
ruminating on that and glad to have come to a slightly more patient place about it.
MK: yeah this is.
A drawn out it’s a drawn out process, but I do think that it seems that there’s really some care is being taken around.
making sure that all the steps are followed.
JL: that’s right, and in this case, in particular where there’s a danger of politicizing a reprimand against a fellow elected official.
being cautious but also listening to the people in our Community, who had been harmed by this language and and.
Responding to that harm I just I really appreciate how this process is moving forward, even though it feels glacial confusing feel that way about a lot of governance stuff actually.
What doesn’t feel glacial and confusing.
Is is DC to which is a resolution to approve essentially a solar array in conjunction with pittsfield township on the wheeler centre, which is our landfill and I just i’m excited that we get trashed solar like yay good for us that’s my whole comment about this resolution yeah.
MK: Yes, yay solar power.
I feel like this week and all weeks it it feels good to see the city moving in the direction of sustainable energy sources.
JL: Yes, it does.
MK: Moving on to db one, the resolution to approve bylaws of the Council of the comments as a reminder, the Council of the commons is.
intended to be a sort of Commission type body dedicated specifically to the parking lot next to the downtown library, the famous library lot.
The subject to of prop a several years ago there was going to be a big building there instead there was this resolute or this some proposal to.
require the city to keep it as a quote unquote park forever, but so far several years later it’s still a parking lot and the this is supposed to be a step in the direction of.
Making a park happen, I would say that we’re in agreement over here that this is all just a big politicized waste of time and resources and having city staff.
support it, so at the same time.
we’re feeling like you know this really should not be a thing that exists, it does exist and also there, I think that there are some issues with how it’s being composed, so this resolution creates the Council of the commons we can think of it like a Commission and.
It like all their commission’s that sort of lays out who the membership should be, and there are Member either or representatives from the parks Commission and from planning Commission.
for members of the Members at large, members of the public, and then the thing that is really bothering me about this is that there are four seats.
That are to be appointed by these two small insular groups that basically promoted prop eight from the beginning they’re pretty much the same set of people, one of them is like the library commons Council and.
JL: library green conservancy.
MK: Let us leverage green conservancy and what’s the other one.
JL: The initial I can’t get all of the words in the right order but it’s the initiating committee of the Council of the comments or something like that.
MK: Right neither one of these are official city bodies in any way these are both small private organizations, the Members are mostly old white and rich i’m saying it and.
They get to choose for of the people who sit on this Commission that is not how other city commission’s work at all.
The transportation Commission has seven members at large we’ve got a couple of REPS from different relevant commissions disability and planning.
We have one seat that’s held for an owner of a transportation related business, which is still pretty broad and still ultimately determined by the city, who gets to be in that seat, and then a bunch of people representing different.
Relevant city entities like AAA ta and the schools, but these two organizations are not represented not city entities they’re not representative of the city as a whole.
There and it’s just guaranteeing basically that this city Commission supported with city resources is going to be the same small insular group of people with a very, very narrow view of what could potentially happen on this parking lot.
JL: And I think part of my criticism molly and I are deeply critical of this.
condition for mostly distinct reasons, one of the reasons that.
I don’t I don’t approve of this committee, I just really don’t think that it should exist is because this is an enormous intensity of resources to sink into a single site.
When molly’s talking about the transportation Commission she is talking about a network of infrastructure that covers the entire city.
same for parks same for planning the DDA covers the downtown district, which is you know our greatest intensity of residents and businesses in the whole city.
In general, with a few very small exceptions, the the committees and commissions that we have the energy Commission the i’m just trying to go through in my mind.
The ones that we have housing and human services, these are intended to serve the Community to have an entire committee based on one specific piece of land.
Is not just insular its myopic its myopic because you cannot plan for a single site without planning for its context.
So we have an incredibly insular group of people working on an incredibly myopic charter, you can see why we’re just like we took this one thing, which is the approval of the bylaws and we were like nope we want to say something about it.
We just don’t feel like this intensity of resources should be suck sunk into this one particular issue it’s not even an issue this one particular piece of land.
MK: This one location, that is.
location, a parking lot it’s the it’s the roof of an underground parking garage that’s right working on it.
um yeah so it’s what I I Apparently, this is not a joke that everyone knows, but the thing I was saying about this, this resolution, the food was terrible and the portions were so small it’s this idea that like it’s bad.
But also there’s not enough of it, so in this case there shouldn’t be there shouldn’t be this and what they’re doing is wrong.
So that’s how we feel about about this particular resolution but probably it will pass is my guest um.
JL: So, now that we’ve got that off our chest.
That that’s really it for this Council agenda there’s a few more things on there feel free to take a look at it.
But it’s it’s not nearly as intensive is the two meetings in June were so it’s a nice way to kind of get back on the horse, both for Council and for us getting back into the podcast.
I did want to take a moment to thank everybody who gave us feedback in our first ever survey, we had it open for a little bit over a month and we heard from a bunch of you Thank you so much.
we’re still going through the responses, but I just wanted to really appreciate every single listener.
Who took time to let us know what you’re liking, and what you think we can do better.
We agree with you on pretty much everything and it was also fun to hear which episodes have been your favorite and what you’d like to hear more so just really Thank you so much for that.
And thank you, as always, to those of us, those of you who have supported us on our coffee if you’d like to shoot us a few dollars to cover our podcast and web hosting you can find us at www dot K oh dash F I COM slash Ann arbor as.
MK: And that’s it for this episode of Ann arbor area where your co host just lita and myself molly kleinman.
holding down the fort and Michelle hughes’s absence and thanks this month to producer jack Jennings for questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes you can email us at Ann arbor a pod at gmail COM get informed and get involved it’s your city.