Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up Monday, August 16th. We touch on a bunch of interesting agenda items including conversion therapy bans, fur bans, and broadband, ending on the infamous COTC (Circus of the City).
Links from today’s show:
– this week’s agenda
– Michelle’s WCBN radio show recapping Council meetings: Tuesday mornings, 6-9am
– Molly‘s Green Room interview
– A2 resident Scott Trudeau’s blog post on the current COTC resolution, “A Solution In Search Of A Problem”
Transcript
NOTE: This version of the transcript was generated by an automated transcription tool and will contain (sometimes hilarious) errors. When we have time for human editing to clean this up we will update it, but we hope this imperfect version is better than nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
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 and local politics and policy governance and other civic good times. I’m Molly Kleinman and my pronouns are she her.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I’m Michelle Hughes and my pronouns are she her.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And I’m Jess Lita and my pronouns are she her. We are your co-hosts to help you get informed and get involved. It’s your city. Let’s jump in.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
Before we get started, Michelle and I both have some stuff out in the world recently that we thought our listeners might be interested in. Michelle is back to hosting a music radio show on WCBN on Tuesday mornings from 6:00 AM to 9:00 AM You can stream it@wcbn.org. Since it’s the morning after the city council meeting, she’ll also let you know how the city council votes went. And I, Molly did an interview with local TV show at the Green Room about transportation and sustainability and a fair bit about the new Ann Arbor transportation plan, which we’ve talked about here on the show. Links to both of these things are in the show notes, which you can find on our website, ann arbor af.com. Today we’re talking about the next city council meeting. Coming up Monday, August 16th, we’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items including fur bands, conversion bands and broadband and offer some ways for you to get involved. A quick process note, we record this a few days before the council meeting, which means there will likely be some changes to the agenda between now and then. One update on the council cast of characters since our last episode, former city administrator Tom Crawford’s, employment with the city has officially concluded. And John Fourier, a assistant city administrator, is currently temporarily serving as acting city administrator. And now with all of those updates, it’s time to turn to the agenda. And we are starting with Michelle and ca three.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
So we have a couple of consent agenda items that I wanted to mention. One was the resolution to close the streets for the mayor’s Green Fair. That’s, that’s always a fun event. It happens on Main Street. They close the streets down and have some tables where environmental organizations can present about their organizations and they have bands play and people serve food and it’s a good time. And the main reason that I’m bringing it up is that I’m trying to foreshadow DC four, which we’re going to talk about later. And that’s because the last couple years when the mayor’s green fairs come up, some city council member or other has suggested that instead of having it on Main Street, we have it on the center of the city and
Speaker 3 (02:55):
A K a the parking lot by the parking
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Lot next to the library. And to me that seems like a much less vibrant and active location. It’s not on the intersection of anything. There’s a two-lane road that goes nearby and the mayor’s Green Fair is a fun event with lots of things happening and no one really wants to do it at the center of the city. And it just seems like this is city council members trying to browbeat organizations to do things that they don’t want to do. Just be, just to justify the fact that we created the center of the city. And that is mainly some foreshadowing for what we’re going to hear when we talk about the center of the city proposal DC four later on. But first we’re going to go in agenda order. Next is Molly.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
So this is another consent agenda item, which is to approve some grant matching funds to install a fiber fiber network down Washtenaw, basically connecting the city of Ann Arbor and the city of Ypsilanti and a few different sort of innovation zone technology, technology smart something organizations at both ends. And I wanted to mention this just because I think the gaps we still have in internet service throughout Washtenaw County are pretty egregious. They’ve been really highlighted over during the pandemic. And so I’m excited to see that we got this CARES Act money and that the city is contributing to help improve the broadband infrastructure, not just in Ann Arbor, but extending all the way to Ypsilanti. That feels really important to me. And that’s really all I wanted to say about that. One more consent agenda. Oh,
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I was going to add that I hope that the city decides on to have a broader policy at some point of building out its municipal fiber optic infrastructure and creating a public utility of fiber optics. Because even if we lay the cable, we would still have to provide the actual service to people. But I think that if we did that, then people would get more for their money.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
I mean municipal u municipalization, that’s a tough word of all kinds of utilities, I think has been on a lot of people’s minds this week as some of us are still suffering through power outages. And I certainly agree that internet is one of those things that we should think of as a public good. So I agree that would be a great thing to see in the future. And the more network that we have in place, the more possible I think that might be down the road. But certainly, I mean that’s not what this is about. This is really just about laying the cable and spending mostly the government’s money and a little bit of Ann Arbor’s money, the federal government’s money.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And I wanted to jump in for a second because I talked about the Mayor’s Green Fair, and I forgot to mention when it is. It’s Friday, October 1st from 3:00 PM to 11:00 PM
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Awesome. And it really is fun. I remember one year they had the bike racks that go on the front of the buses and you could practice loading your bike onto that front bus rack, which I really appreciated because I’ve always been afraid to try that for the first time it live with a bus that people are trying to get somewhere on.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
So my favorite one was the year that the Williams Street Bikeway was under construction and getting ready to be implemented, the D D A had put out a striped potential bike lane and a tricycle and kids could give it a go and see this is what a two-way bike lane feels like. It was super helpful, but so cute.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
That sounds amazing. So moving on to CA 17, which is a resolution to extend the approval of downtown street closures for restaurant and retail use. We’ve talked a lot about the various street closures that are not just like for events, but this is the ongoing weekend street closures. They’ve been so popular that there’s been a request to extend them through November and this is City Council saying yes to that. There’s ongoing debate about whether it should be Friday through Sunday or Thursday through Sunday. And I’m not actually totally clear on where that’s going to land currently. The resolution resolution says Friday through Sunday
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And I saw in the agenda questions somebody asked why Friday instead of Thursday? And the agenda questions that said the business associations asked for it that way. I don’t know why they would do that, but
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I think a specific association asked for it that way. And I think others have been asking for Thursday and that’s why it’s not clear to me there. We may see some amending to this happening at the meeting. That’s part of why I wanted to get this one onto our agenda because it may end up coming up for discussion and it’s just this debate about how many days of the weekend. I think everyone agrees that these closures have been wonderful and making space for people on our streets. And it’s has been a big success.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I’d like it to be all seven days of the weekend.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
That’s right. And I would also like a seven day weekend, please, we talk about these street closures in terms of street activation and in general that’s how they’re used. But I also want us to be conscious that this also impacts the labor force too. The people that work downtown in these businesses that are using the street closures, they need to know what their access to work is going to be. So expanding the street closures also expands their ability to work really. So for that reason alone, I’m in favor of it.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
That’s a great point. So another thing related to downtown spaces is ca 18, which Michelle you were going to talk
Speaker 2 (08:38):
About. Yeah. So yeah, that dovetails nicely into 18, the creation of a social district in the Main Street area. And so it’s kind of a lot of the same areas that we were talking about most of downtown, much a lot of downtown. It’s got to be Main Street, fourth Ave, Washington Liberty, Ashley. And it would create a social district between Thursday through Sunday, four to 10, 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM And during that time people would be allowed to actually drink alcohol outdoors and carry their alcohol from one place to another and kind of create a more fluid social atmosphere there. And it seems like a good idea to me. I mean, I don’t drink alcohol, but people seem to like it. And I think that anything that gets people that activates it, that helps activate a space I think would be good. And as good as these outdoor dining things have been, I think that they kind of lack some fluidity that having an outdoor social space would create. And I think that these social spaces, if I’m not wrong about that, there’s some new special state law that allows the creation of these things more about that.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Jess, I saw you not much more. Just that there was enabling legislation at the state level allowing for the creation of social districts, which essentially like you’re saying, allows patrons to carry alcohol across essentially business lines. And so if you are familiar with the art centers like Arti event, our St. Patrick’s Day when a lot of the businesses on Main Street closed are octoberfest in September and October, essentially it allows for mingling across a wider space. And I think one of the things, positive things that we’ve seen with the street closures is that people are using the space. They go from one place to another, they’re socializing with their friends, they’re bringing the dog across the street. We’re not seeing, I go to one chair and I sit there for three hours and then I leave. People come and they stay. And so this is in my mind kind of a sign of success that we’re responding to how people are actually using the space.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah, I think it’s
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Worth, I was just going to say, I think it’s worth pointing out what concerns might come up around the, the creation of a social district. I’m not saying that these are my concerns, but especially in a college town, the regulations we have around open containers and moving around publicly with alcohol are especially used or theoretically used at least to control the sort of student drinking culture and student socializing that happens with lots of public consumption of alcohol. And there’s concern about how a social district ordinance might limit the ability to basically punish students for drinking outside my understanding of what concerns might look like, the social district is pretty, this is a pretty constrained resolution. It applies just to a pretty narrow geographic area downtown. And I don’t see how in practice this is going to get confused with the fraternities onset, like south of campus as
Speaker 4 (12:11):
An example. I think it’s telling that this one shows up on the consent agenda. I’ll be really curious to see if the South U district, which also exists, if they bring one forward A and B, if it showed up on the consent agenda or if it showed up as a full agenda item.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
And I think also it concerns me that we would make that kind of distinction. And I think there’s a lot of people who get their lives messed up because they go from one party to another and a police officer stops them and then they get in all sorts of trouble just because they were engaging in what I find to be a relatively harmless activity. And maybe you find it annoying, but I don’t think that’s the sort of thing that you should be messing people’s lives up over. So I would be interested in just removing the laws against open containers. That’s how my understanding is, that’s how it is in European cities. And the world doesn’t end over there for that reason. And I just think that it’s worried that we would be privileging the people who can drink outdoors in one way, but not in another way. Because we also like to crack down on people drinking alcohol in public in the parks if they’re homeless people, for example. And then it’s like, oh, but if you can afford to go to a Main Street bar, then you can drink outdoors. It’s no problem. And I’d like to see us be more consistent about that. Do we outdoor drinking or not?
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Well that’s a good point. And while this resolution really speaks to enabling a certain behavior, what you’re speaking to is enforcement. And like I said, I see this conversation as kind of a non-starter. If South U comes in with something like that, I think the conversation becomes much more interesting. So I appreciate that you’re kind of introducing these complications. I, I’ll just be curious to see how it evolves.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Michelle, I think you’ve got them. Okay, who’s next?
Speaker 2 (14:39):
I can’t find the window anymore. Oh, there, it’s okay. Oh, the Fur Ban ordinance is back for its second reading today around Monday with a public hearing. And I think last time we saw this, we were pretty down on it because it looked like it came up nowhere. Having had no conversations inside the community. There was one city council member who was sponsoring it who was not a city council member who’s known for working well with other people. And so it kind of seemed like, it seemed suspicious to me. It seemed like it was something that had been put together with insufficient thought. But just from seeing people call in that night, it seemed like there actually was several organizations that had been involved in the creation of this thing. There was the Huron Valley Humane Society and some other ones that I forgot to write down. And it looked like I had also said I would be happier with this if it had been one implementation of a model legislation that had already been written. And it seemed like that kind of did happen. The conversations that needed to have happened had already happened. So I was pleased to see how that turned out. It was not necessarily evident from just reading the resolution.
Speaker 4 (16:08):
And we’ll have that come up again a little bit later in this agenda where it would be nice to have more information inside the resolution. Talking about the business of the business. I’m glad to know that there was more work behind it than was evident in the agenda.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Another public hearing that we’re going to have is the conversion therapy ban ordinance. And I’ve definitely heard about the work that went into this one. The city attorneys were working long and hard. There were L G B T groups consulted. And so the conversion for therapy ban ordinance is legislation that would ban licensed therapeutic professionals. They would no longer be able to perform alleged therapy on minors that is intended to change their sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s a thing that people do. Sometimes they’ll send their kids to someone who can be like, oh, well this person is going to stop, is going to make it so you’re not gay. And that is a harmful thing to do to people. And I’m glad that we’re banning that here in Ann Arbor for licensed professionals. I kind of wish that we could make a broader ban about it, but my understanding is that the lawyers combed through and this was the best they could do because a lot of these people that perform this conversion therapy are not licensed therapists or anything. They’re like church people or they’re just friends. You like people who just offer this service. I’m no one in particular, but it’s good to have something on the books. And so I’m going to be happy to see this pass cause I don’t think there’s any opposition to it.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Okay. Speaking of opposition,
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Yes, let’s
Speaker 4 (18:09):
Talk about DC four.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Let’s do it. Alright,
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So DC four, let me see if I’ve got the title handy is the Resolution to approve c o c recommendation where C O C stands for Council of the Commons. I believe it’s not even center of City
Speaker 2 (18:28):
City, it was, oh my goodness. It’s
Speaker 4 (18:29):
Not Center of the City anymore, it’s the Council of the Commons, which I think is a really interesting kind of, oh, how do I want to say this? Morphing away from where all of this issue started out to where the folks who are working on it want to see it end up. And that kind of illusion, that kind of slow creepy glide is not great to see, especially in the public arena, especially when public resources are at stake. So I have a couple things to say about this, but I don’t want to suck up all the air. So Michelle or Molly, was there anything that you kind of wanted to say on this resolution? Before I start pounding on my soapbox,
Speaker 3 (19:14):
I’m just going to say that Council of the Commons is an incredibly grandiose way to refer to the parking lot next to the library. I feel like we’ve gone through all of these names and I just want to be very clear that we’re still talking about a parking lot
Speaker 4 (19:29):
On top of a parking lot,
Speaker 3 (19:30):
On top of a parking structure.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
And I think that’s kind of the main thing that disappoints me about this is that so much time at the city council is going to be spent talking about this very small piece of land when we have so many parks. The city council has not once discussed during its time at the table how we’re going to fix the West Park Band Shell or anything really very many other park activities or programs. But because of the strange way that this particular area got designated as a park or whatever, and it has this active social group behind it, which has now become a city Council Advisory Commission, we’re going to have discuss this proposal on what to do about this very small piece of land at a city council meeting. And it just seems strange to me.
Speaker 4 (20:38):
So the busi Michelle is spot on with everything. It’s the strangeness only amplifies the closer that you look at this particular lot, this particular group, this particular piece of work, no matter what the work is. So this specific resolution is asking for city council to adopt a recommendation from the Council of the Commons. The Council of the Commons is a group of people dedicated to thinking about the pieces of land formerly known as the center of the city. The center of the city, depending on who you are, is either the library li, which is the parking lot on top of a parking lot next to the downtown library or legally it’s all public land on the lot bounded by, let me see if I can do this by memory, fifth Liberty Division and William Streets. So really when we talk about the center of the city, we should be talking about all public land on that block.
Speaker 4 (21:39):
In actual fact, what we typically end up talking about is that one parking lot like Michelle, I wish we didn’t have to waste city council time talking about this piece of land, but I wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about why we’re talking about it. So I can just reference why it’s frustrating this, sorry, I’m, I’m a little bit lost in my own thoughts. So there’s a question about why is this commission even working on this piece of property at all? And typically what we hear from people on the committee, including council liaisons, city council liaisons, is that it’s the will of the voters, right? So according to Michigan or Ann Arbor 2018 Proposition A, the voters asked the city to do, excuse me, to do something with this site, but calling programming here, the will of the voters, it’s just flat and accurate.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
So that ballot proposal in 2018, first of all, it’s really debatable that voters knew what they were getting the language on the proposal itself was confusing and proponents when they were kind of advocating for this proposal, they sold this as a park. But what the proposal actually said was, and I’ll just read out the language, shall the city owned public land? Ooh, I got the streets right, bounded by Fifth Avenue and William Division and Liberty St. Streets be retained in public ownership in perpetuity and developed as an urban park and civic center commons known as the center of the city by adding a new section for the purpose as explained above. So adding a new section is a ref reference to language. Earlier in the proposal, this whole thing was a city charter amendment to preserve land that was currently public. Public at the time, public at 2018, public and perpetuity.
Speaker 4 (23:34):
So the two voter directed actions by this proposal are number one, that public land is retained in public ownership. And number two, that it’s developed as an urban park. And civic center commons programming is directing what activity happens on a site. And it’s not the same as development, which is determining the physical form of the site. Voters didn’t ask for programming. So the Council of the Commons, the center of the city, the initiating committee, whatever this group wants call, wants to call themselves deciding to take on programming, is consistent with their own self-authored recommendation report, but far exceeds their actual mandate within the language of the resolution itself. They’re also inappropriately requesting resources from other service areas in the city. So there’s one piece of language that says it solicits involvement from center of the city block participants, including the Downtown Development Authority, the Ann Arbor District Library, private businesses and others to collectively ensure this activation is successful.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
So the two public bodies in there of the D D A and the district library, the ADLs staff and resources are already appropriately directed towards programming their own facility. They don’t have resources and it’s not really appropriate to ask them to program site, land and space that isn’t theirs. And the D D A is an infrastructure agency. It deals with parking structures and road and sidewalk rights of way. It does not do event planning. And why an environment where the D D A has already predicted an approximately 50% revenue drop due to the pandemic and the coming fiscal year are requests to that agency greater and not at least hold the same, especially unfunded requests like this. So it’s not really inappropriate ask. It’s making inappropriate asks to other bodies. And speaking of requesting resources, this commission successfully requested 10 tens of thousands of dollars from the 2122 city budget, but this resolution makes no mention of those funds.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
Are those dollars being appropriated for this work that they’re asking people to do? And speaking of what voters want, do constituents know that the developer who’d contracted to purchase the space before the 2018 proposal had committed a hundred thousand dollars annually and programming for the site, which is something that this budget, which again isn’t mentioned or accounted for, doesn’t touch. So we’ve really got a mismatch of resources and requests going on. And the last thing going back to what both Michelle and Molly said is that it really boggles mind that so much time and energy is being spent on a parking lot on top of a parking lot when the city has actual problems to solve. If this committee wanted to, wanted to prove its commitment to a community that already exists, why aren’t we talking more about Liberty Plaza? It also is public land on this block, the center of the city block defined by the proposal.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
But any talk about activating that site is conspicuously absent first. Martin dedicates over a hundred thousand dollars every year of programming towards that space in the forms of Sonic Lunch free music every Thursdays, please end pandemic so we can get back to it. But there could also be food. It’s happening. I know, I know it’s coming back, but I want a whole summer’s worth. But we could have food trucks, we could have sanitary stations. There are a lot of other means of serving a site that already seals a great, sees a great deal of use every day. And I definitely don’t want to say that the difference between the parking lot on top of a parking lot and Liberty Plaza, definitely not that White Eco Boomers have a utopian vision of what the parking lot on top of the parking lot could be and are actively leveraging the resources that they accumulate for their committee by actively steering them away from and ignoring a site that’s largely occupied by black and or poor folks. That’s totally certainly not what’s happening here.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
That’s totally what’s happening here. So all in all DC four, no thank you.
Speaker 3 (27:42):
And I want to make sure, I don’t know that we said exactly what DC four is. I guess Nicole started to explain it earlier in the episode, but Jess, did you want to
Speaker 4 (27:51):
Yeah, so it it’s asking for the city to program the site, by which I mean they’re asking for city staff to create and manage activities on the site.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
And as a part of that, right, they want to encourage existing events run by community organizations throughout the city to relocate to the parking lot that
Speaker 4 (28:13):
That’s
Speaker 3 (28:13):
Right. And they had a list of existing events, many of them with really rich histories in other locations that would be targets for relocation to the parking lot.
Speaker 4 (28:26):
So a couple of the most troubling on that list were Martin Luther King Day. And help me remember, I think Juneteenth Juneteenth, which currently occurs at Wheeler Park, which is a park named for Ann Arbor’s. So far only African-American mayor is richly programmed, has been attended for decades, talking about moving this site is so culturally and racially tone deaf, but also not surprising from the group who requested that their funds come from the equity push on single family zoning in the same budget. So what I would recommend to you respectfully, council of the Commons or Center of the City or who you are this year, is that you redirect your funds from trying to activate the site to doing a deep and drastic equity analysis of yourself and your charter and your members and the activities that you’re trying to do because you are consistently coming up against really problematic racial lines and it’s super consistent. So I think you need to take a long hard look, not at that pavement, but at yourselves, your motives and your goals
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Here. Here, I remember. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I would really like to see the thing. The thing that I specifically want to see is bathrooms, power and wifi at Liberty Plaza because there’s people at Liberty Plaza constantly and they need those things. They That’s right. I think it’s just kind of assumed that they’re going to go to the food or the library if they need to use the bathroom. But I remember that during the time when proposal A was coming up, Liberty Plaza was always brought up. They were like, oh, we need a good park, not a failed park like Liberty Plaza. And I’m like, failed park, because when I remember every time I go there, that place is, there’s tons of people hanging out there that seems like the people like it and it’s in constant use. And then I heard people complaining about, oh, the people from Liberty Plaza, they’ll go and urinate all over the place and all these alleyways and stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
And I’m like, so put a bathroom there so they don’t have to do that. And there was briefly a porta potty up there at Liberty Plaza and then it got taken away and I asked around and I’m like, why did that get taken away? And the mayor told me it was because people were throwing needles in there. And so I was like, well, why didn’t you put a needle bin there? And apparently the Housing and Human Services advisory board was telling the city the same thing. So the Porta potty came back with a needle bin in it, and that was awesome. But I was just there, not there. So there should be a bathroom, there should be a needle bin there. And instead we have people trying to make this thing happen, which is just on the other side of the same block. And it’s like, why don’t you just hang out at Liberty Plaza if you want to hang out downtown so bad.
Speaker 4 (31:34):
Right? So in the same spirit of stop trying to make fetch happen, stop trying to make the library lot happen. There is an active, well used public site on that block. Let’s invest resources in that really and truly, let’s sync all the dollars into how can we make that more welcoming, more safer, and more functional for the folks that are using it. I love your idea about making sure that it’s power and wifi. I know that A E D L does 24 wifi around their buildings, but I’m not clear how far that extends. And that is a bit of ways from the building. So just making sure that it’s got it.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
I know at many of the branches during the pandemic, the A E D L expanded the coverage of their wifi network to include the parking lots that were a part of those branches so that people could access the internet and stay warm in their cars during the winter. I don’t know, in the case of the downtown branch, how far that extends. The thing that I just feel like is always so important to point out about all of this is that it is just a recon is I learned recon recently and it feels useful in so many contexts. So it stands for retroactive continuity and it comes out of fandoms and comic books that have been around for decades and decades. And you’ll, they’ll make some story decision and then they’ll have to do all this work to make it make sense with everything that came before.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
All of this work that’s happening is trying to make it make sense that we didn’t build a big building there with housing and a public plaza and a splash pad. That was the thing that made sense. And all of this council of the comments, blah, blah, blah, is really just about defending the fact that there were people who did not want more housing downtown, and this was how they could block it, why it was by pretending that there would be a park there eventually. And all of this work is just to validate that and to create this continuity that should not exist. And so I just think every reminder that we can have that this is all built on a lie, I think is really important.
Speaker 4 (33:40):
The fewer resources we sink into this, the less we’ll have to fight the Sun Cross fallacy later of, we tried to make a purse out of a so year, which always sounded like an interesting intellectual activity, but let’s not do it here. I also want to point out Ward one resident, Scott Trudeau wrote a lovely article called A Solution in Search of a Problem about this specific resolution. And in it he does a beautiful job through photos pointing out what this site has done in terms of its own programming and what’s already going on around the city. And uses as a recent example, earth Day as organized by, I think the initiating committee of the Council of the Commons, which is distinct from the Council of the Commons anyway, their Earth Day as opposed to the Leslie Science Nature Center Earth Day in a recent year. And you can see what it looks like when an org, a resourced organization with adequate facilities, what they can do and the kind of rich cultural experience they can bring to the community versus when you’re trying to sink square peg into a round hole. So all of that to say, DC four counsel, please say, no, this is work and these are resources that we don’t need to expend in this particular place. We can put them to much better use in other ways.
Speaker 4 (35:01):
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
That’s actually a pretty light agenda this week. So I think that’s all we had to say about everything.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks to all, all of you who have supported us on our cofi. If you’d like to send us a few dollars to cover hosting, you can find us at www.ko-fi.com/ann Arbor. And that’s it for this episode. We’re co-hosts Molly Kleinman, Jess Lita, and myself Michelle Hughes. And thanks to our producer Jack Jennings. Our theme music is IDA Know by Grapes. And for questions about this podcast or ideas for future episodes, you can email us at ann arbor af pod gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city. I.