Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up Tuesday, September 7th. We’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including Dark Sky, DEI, and our forever fave, sidewalks.
Here are the links we mentioned, to Scott Trudeau’s blog post on the home occupations ordinance, and the MLive article on the equity-driven pay moves the City is making.
Come check out our episodes and transcripts at our website, annarboraf.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AFers on Twitter and Facebook, or catch cohost Michelle with music by women (and the occasional Council recap) on wcbn.org Tuesdays 6am-9am. And hey, if you wanted to ko-fi us a few dollars to help us with hosting, we wouldn’t say no.
Transcript
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!
JL: Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up Tuesday September 7.
will be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including dark sky di and our forever fav sidewalks 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.
jumping right in to the consent agenda, I saw an opportunity to do a little civic education, training, CA 13 is a resolution to approve certain amount of money that in.
Even today’s consent agenda is, by far, not the greatest amount of dollars.
But it does require eight votes and I just wanted to name why this particular consent agenda item request the ability to draw funds from the water supply system fund balance.
Now, for those of you who are geeks who were paying attention to the budget episode, all the way back in I don’t know February, I think.
It feels like five years ago, at this point, but when we did the budget episode, we talked about fund balances and essentially those are savings account.
For those specific funds, so the water supply system has its own fund it’s fun balance is a savings account and so eight votes are required because.
we’re pulling from a different essentially line item in the budget than we normally do, and then you have been civically educated, I also wanted to talk.
MH: but are they pulling the money out of the savings account for.
JL: I didn’t even pay attention to that part.
It was just in a bunch of in the middle of a bunch of construction contracts, and that was the only one that required eight votes, so I did I don’t know Michelle good question.
MH: CA 13 that is.
It says it’s a.
Services Agreement with a PC group services llc for environmental services at 2000 South industrial highway that’s probably all we need to know for Nada no.
JL: that’s right.
that’s right.
MH: It seems pretty routine.
JL: It is fairly routine and even those $60,000 is a lot of dollars when it comes to the city that that’s a fairly routine amount of money to spend and.
MH: Spending it from money that we were supposed to spend it miss sort of thing and we’re spending it on that sort of thing so everything’s normal.
JL: Exactly exactly it’s east coast right now i’m interested if the new.
city charter amendment proposal passes.
The one that says no contract amounts below I think they said $75,000 will come to counsel i’m curious if that’s also true for fund balances My guess is that it’s not.
Because the fund balance request is actually technically a different kind of budget request, but that will be again a civic education tidbit for us when we get to that point.
Speaking of civic education CA 14 all right, this one, I will read the full title, because it gets really fun really quickly.
This is the resolution to endorse the reallocation of funds within the general fund to support a much more robust diverse diversity equity and inclusion program in the city of Ann arbor.
so important to note in this right off the BAT is that there, this is not requesting new dollars and that this resolution comes from staff in fact i’ll read it off because I thought it was cute.
This was prepared by john 14 acting city administrator reviewed by john forney acting city administrator and approved by john 14 acting city administrator, so this is stamp originated it’s not a Council resolution.
And the reason that I find that interesting is because this means that this is an expression of work that has already had Council support.
Council, if you remember did a budget budget resolution in I think it’s June this theory of values that supported the creation of a dei office and position.
MH: Diversity equity and inclusion Thank you john I appreciate that.
JL: And I don’t actually remember if it was dei or if it was specific to racial equity that’s how the Washington county offices setup.
And I don’t die this one see ya Okay, thank you.
So uh yeah I, this is just this is also a much better way of getting it this work, there was a really problematic resolution pertaining to di earlier this year.
And it was a Council originated resolution requesting a dni diversity equity and inclusion specialist within the Community engagement office.
The problem was the language was so problematic that it felt deeply uninformed by actual dei work.
And even the goals of that resolution were fairly unclear so having this position come out.
Of a di office and, as I said, policy supported di policy that’s already been supported by Council this feels like an expression of an a continuation of work rather than kind of starting something from scratch.
MH: Yes, and the thing that happened in June was that they put up they put it in the budget to hire a person whose job.
was to specifically focus on di and they would work directly under the city administrator and that’s how the org chart worked and then this thing on the budget, this thing today.
It doesn’t change the budget but it moves.
A Community engagement specialist out from deep in the bowels of the city’s org chart to work directly with the office and so it’s like.
You know kind of an acknowledgement, I think that.
The city needs to win it does its Community engagement it can’t just like be like.
You know, put out a put out a thing on the city website that only the uber nerds look at, and then only the like you know.
Only the same people come to talk about the city all the time that it needs to that Community engagement really needs to be more about outreach and really needs to be more about including people that you know are that need to be included, including everybody that needs to be included.
JL: Right and is this good.
MK: um I think one way to think about this so Council decided to create this sort of high level di coordinator role and, but it was just one person, and so this essentially.
doubled the size of that you can think of it as doubling the size of the D office, because now that.
That person who we still have not hired and my understanding is that I think that role was actually being rewritten.
So there had it had been posted at a lower level than people were expecting with a lower salary and that’s being revised, to be a higher level role and then this.
This role will go under it so again yeah moving things around but moving things in a way that gives more resources explicitly to the work of diversity, equity and inclusion in the city, which I think is great.
JL: And analog to this is under osi, which is the office of sustainability and innovation director missy stoltz recently hired somebody to be a liaison to the building department.
So, instead of having somebody whose sole expertise is sustainable buildings under the building department and therefore kind of siloed we have a buildings person within the sustainability office.
Who can be a liaison to Community engagement to public safety to climate justice to the other kinds of work that osi is doing and I have to say in.
Not my Ann arbor af role, but it wearing a different hat i’ve had the opportunity to interact with this liaison person.
It is profoundly effective and super helpful to have somebody whose whole job is to talk to multiple departments, the city staff from what I gather, have a generally pretty congenial.
relationships with each other, but there’s still silos right like their departments, and it can be easy to not look beyond your desk or the desk of the person next to you, euphemistically speaking in a pandemic.
But having somebody whose job is liaison but with an anchor in that goal that we’re trying to reach whether it’s sustainability or diversity equity inclusion feels like an extra powerful way to leverage these dollars.
MH: like it.
I like it.
JL: And one other thing that I wanted to say that isn’t in the resolution, but that we saw on the news this last week.
Is that interim city administrator john 48 also has done an analysis of staff pay.
And is taking the initiative to increase the pay not give raises but increase the pay to equitable levels for a number of staff who are either women people of color or both.
So it’s really nice to see this kind of work being proactively adopted by staff and really gone after so yay CD me and are very good job.
MH: I like it.
JL: And those are a lot of can use.
MK: Those phrases are going to people who were who salaries were below market rate for their roles right so it’s very specifically in equity review of salaries and.
Yes.
increases.
JL: yeah thanks for clarifying.
Think that’s everything that I had to say about this for right now, although I don’t promise that something won’t come to me later we get to talk about sky next yes.
There is.
MH: A this the second reading so there’s a public hearing about it and there’s a new ordinance coming out.
That is about outdoor lighting and so there’s a public hearing pH one.
and
This is an ordinance that would affect what people are allowed to install on their own property when they’re installing outdoor lighting.
And it requires it requires it, the lighting that they install to be dark sky friendly so it’s supposed to not be just like barfing light up into the sky.
Where it stops us from seeing the stars and you know does what we call light pollution, where the light, you know the sky gets brighter in the nighttime this apparently has bad effects for the environment, I was just thinking of it in terms of like.
JL: That I like.
MH: The idea of having a dark sky just so I can look at the stars and we can you know people can do astronomy and stuff like that, but like that, apparently, is also good for habitats and the environment and animals in some way just I think you know more about that.
JL: Just a tidbit yeah so I love thinking about our non human neighbors and how we can be nice neighbors to them.
And birds bugs BATs those are the first three that I can think of really rely on patterns of elimination to kind of dictate their behavior.
birds BATs In particular, I think, more than any of them get really confused by nighttime elimination and they’re kind of interaction with bugs and what they do to keep our ecosystem, safe and healthy.
really gets kind of disrupted with nighttime illumination the same thing for birds birds are.
made to fly the ones that fly in the dark, or may define the dark and having that nighttime elimination again really disrupts their ability to keep themselves safe.
same for like big windows in glass buildings but that’s a separate thing so dark skies help our bird BAT and bug neighbors to.
Another thing I wanted to say about this is.
MH: That like we can achieve a dark sky without having a dark environment that we walk in like we’re not asking that people don’t install outdoor lighting we’re asking that people install outdoor lighting that faces downward instead of upward and.
As long as you like put a little hot on the light, you know that kind of thing it’s like we used to have this.
Some of our oldest.
street lights in the city, are these globes and it’s just like 50% of that light is just going straight up into the sky, for no reason other than to make the sky, you know it’s not doing anything to help anyone it’s just producing light pollution.
JL: And that’s true I am curious about those fixtures if it’s possible so first of all, Michelle I want you to come to all architecture review meetings with me from now on, because I need us to be able to talk about barfing light and hats on sconces like this is awesome.
So i’m curious can we take those fixtures and just put hat so not only do we have to do a wholesale replacement or can we just you know put little ads on the pictures.
i’m curious and I don’t know.
MH: I think all the ones that are left that are like that aren’t actually city wants to university ones i’m not sure about that.
JL: Main Street has full globes I know.
MH: Okay okay.
Well, anyway, and this.
I think it doesn’t affect.
Was there already a city policy about replacing city old ones, because, like this, this is about on this affects private lighting.
JL: I think, so I guess I can’t speak for the city, but I know the DDA has a practice in our new projects of making sure that all our fixtures are.
dark sky friendly universally and to the extent that they can be there pedestrian scale so we’re not trying to light the landscape we’re trying to light the area that people on the street need to move.
MH: So anyway, this public hearing, I might call in and encourage them to pass it, although I don’t think that’s going to be an issue.
let’s move on to oh me okay there’s another public hearing going on, but the catering, to which is the same as on the agenda be too and it’s about home occupations and we have an ordinance that so.
When when we do zoning we say what.
uses.
A parcel can be put towards, and when we say that something is residential zone, that means you can’t you know do commercial operation out of there and.
They want to be, but they want people to be able to use.
You know their home as a business within reason and then, so we have this thing that says home occupations that.
Even if you’re even if your parcel is so and residential and commercial you can still do some commercial occupations in there.
Under certain circumstances, and this is an attempt to liberalize that and make it, you know, there was previously some a bunch of restrictions on what you could do as a home occupation and.
This adds more things you can do, but I think it doesn’t go far quite far enough in liberalizing it.
and
You know it.
Like there’s some real, specific things in it that are troubling like it asks that.
Things that you are storing on your property for your business, you have to store it like out of sight it can’t be outside of the building, it has to be inside your garage or whatever, and that doesn’t seem like a particularly reasonable thing to me.
there’s.
there’s limitations on the number of visitors, you can have at like the total number of visitors, you can have with, but then there’s also a limit on the number of visitors, you can have at any given time.
And those don’t seem entirely reasonable and then there’s some like nuisance ordinance type stuff that like we already have noise ordinances and like.
You know other other types of nuisance ordinances but then, for some reason this adds additional restrictions if you’re doing the same thing you can’t be quite as loud you can’t be quite as like.
You know smelly or whatever if you’re making money doing the thing and I don’t see why we would have to you know if if we don’t think that if we don’t like these nuances I don’t see why we’re.
Why we’re making that distinction between something that’s being done for money and something that’s being done.
As a hobby you know.
So yeah and then I also wanted to call out Scott troodos blog, which is where I read.
his analysis on this stuff he’s somebody that was on the planning Commission for a bunch of years but he’s not anymore, but now he writes a little blog about things like this one, they turn up and we’re going to have a link to that in the description.
JL: He does a nice job in his analysis of calling out how a lot of his criticisms about the ordinances have been as it’s being brought forward is that it’s classist and that really breeds.
So his argument is interesting and as Michelle said there’ll be a link in the show notes, if you want to check now.
MH: And I mean, I think.
You know I like the idea of of liberalizing it i’m not going to say don’t pass this one i’m going to say pass this one, and then continue to figure out more ways to liberalize it and.
In the future.
i’m gonna kick it over to molly now.
MK: yeah so.
we’re going to do i’m going to talk about.
scene, one which was it’s an ordinance to amend the traffic code and specifically it’s about personal mobility vehicles, so this is the very long awaited update.
To the traffic code to include East scooters and other.
People call them personal mobility vehicles or micro mobility, but whatever we want to call those things include them in the road rules of the city they’re already on our streets they’re already being used.
This is to codify that and make it clear, so everyone knows what we’re doing I was on the committee that worked on.
This that.
It, this is a three year old, this is a three year old thing at this point, it took you know, there was a pandemic in the middle, the legal department had some higher priorities than this one.
MH: The first time I ever met molly was when I actually just randomly showed up at this meeting now it’s a boy back then that’s how long this has been a.
MK: long time.
yeah, and so the Committee included myself a member of the city’s disability Commission Jim summers who’s on the transportation Commission, although he was.
I don’t think you it’s so long ago that he was not on the Commission when we started working on this, but he was then, and is still the owner of the local bike shop.
and has a lot of experience with the sort of technical specifications around the bikes which was really valuable as we were doing this work.
And Scott Trudeau, who was formerly on both the planning and transportation commissions and then also city staff.
Including a representative from the police department, because there were questions about enforceability around some of these things we talked about regulating so.
The the key the key things to know about this revision is that it permits personal mobility vehicles in both bike lanes and on sidewalks.
Which is what our current regulations do for bikes so in Ann arbor bikes are allowed in the street and on the sidewalk.
that’s not true everywhere in this country but it’s true in Ann arbor and so rather than change that in any way we just bundled in these other kinds of vehicles, as also being allowed in both places we essentially.
There are some revisions to the code, but essentially anywhere that used to say bicycle now says personal mobility vehicle.
The definition of what a personal mobility vehicle is took a lot of care and consideration we went through a lot of iterations of this definition, because we wanted to be really sure that we weren’t unintentionally, excluding vehicles that we meant to include.
We wanted it to be really inclusive so i’m going to read you the new definition.
Any vehicle intended to carry no more than two persons abreast that is not a motor vehicle or trailer required to be licensed or registered by the state of Michigan that is propelled either by the power of a person writing.
or by the power of a person writing in combination with a single or multiple electric motors.
Some things that we talked about that did not end up in this definition we’re regulating the size or power of the motors, we decided not to do that regulating the speed that it could go, we decided not to do that.
The whole thing about no more than two persons abreast is is in there, because at first, the city came to us with one person abreast and I was like well, does that mean.
Cargo bikes that put two kids next to each other in the lane or not allowed does, are we trying to make sure that those little petty cabs that we see on game days are we saying those aren’t allowed so.
I think when this is when someone is looking at this, for the first time there’s a lot of like well, what about this and did you think about engine size and it’s like we did.
We thought about all those things, and we really wanted to to be as inclusive as possible so that technologies that don’t exist yet.
will also be included in this we didn’t want to have to rewrite this every time some new invention comes along that allows people to move.
Through space in a way that’s kind of like a bike allows them to move through space.
So I feel really good about this revision, as its come forward, I think it should probably be an easy unanimous vote.
But I also think it’s very likely that Council members are going to start out by asking or suggesting some of these things that we already went through in.
The committee, so if you are watching the meeting and they say, well, did they think about this, and why doesn’t didn’t mention that, like I promised we thought about it.
Like, at least at least once and possibly three times but it’s like this what’s coming forward is really intentional about.
not creating major people, this is really not a big change to any of our rules it’s just trying to expand the way we define things that are allowed in bike lanes.
JL: So my I have a question and I get that this work for you is a little bit stale so.
MK: Oh no it’s fine.
JL: If you haven’t prepared for this quiz that’s fine.
But I remember when when birds landed at the the rental scooters for the first time in Ann arbor a few.
Years ago, one of the things that was bandied about at the time was the State law regarding where scooters were allowed to be and i’m just curious how this ordinance interacts with or doesn’t interact with the State Law.
MK: So my my recollection is that the State law was specifically and exclusively about electric skateboards.
And the and it wasn’t it didn’t it didn’t cover these scooters and so that was part of the challenge and electric and they were the State Law is very clear that electric skateboards are allowed in the road.
So this This includes electric skateboards in the definition of a personal mobility device so it’s not in conflict with the State law it permits skateboard escape words in the same places the state permits them.
JL: Basically that’s helpful thanks yeah.
MK: I don’t know why the state like.
took it upon themselves to legal like specifically legalize electric skateboards i’m really curious about.
How like who brought that forward how it like usually Michigan is not known for considering alternative transportation modes that are not cars and so i’d love to know how that how that happened.
Ah, so yeah that’s that’s the personal mobility vehicle ordinance and next i’m going to hand it back to Michelle.
MH: And i’m going to talk about public power.
utility.
That.
is something that i’m excited about it and excited about that for a while and I think it used to be people who are excited about it were people who were like in the democratic socialists and people who like.
figured that taking over dte was the only way to ensure that they would do things that.
were in line with our climate goals things like that.
But now that we’ve had some big power disruptions in the last in the storms in in the last month or so I think there’s now a broader appeal to the.
Public Utility thing and so basically like.
The idea of the public utility is that, rather than having.
dte provide power and the city.
legislates that they are a monopoly, and if you want to buy electricity, you have to buy it from dte that the city would then become the provider of that power, just like how you have.
When you when you buy water you’re buying it from the city’s public utility rather than from a private company that’s bringing the water and.
So in places like lansing.
They have.
They have a municipal authority, called the board of water and light that provides power and and water and they but the thing is they’ve had it since power was invented.
And so it’s a little bit of a different process to kind of take the infrastructure that is already owned by a private utility and make it public and.
But it’s something that state laws allow in some states it’s harder to do, but in Michigan it’s not hard to do and the city could just could make these utility public if we wanted to, and it would.
It would involve things like buying up the utility Poles, the city would have to buy up the utility Poles and take responsibility for maintaining the power lines things like that and.
The.
It doesn’t especially.
have to involve us actually buying the means to generate power because.
I think you know there’s a there’s a big power grid and our utility could just buy power from the power grid that’s put on there by whoever so the power plants may still be owned by DC but even if we bought up the utility Poles and things like that.
But I think that there is some hope among people in town that a public utility that’s interested in serving the public, rather than making a profit.
might be more interested in.
Proactive maintenance and fixing problems when they happen and people who have just spent you know week without power and.
going to emergency state emergency cooling stations that pioneer high school and things like that or are thinking, maybe somebody could do this better and maybe that’s us.
So.
This would obviously be a big step, and it would be a lot to do, and it would cost a lot of money for us to buy these utility Poles and things like that, and so.
that’s not what’s on the agenda on Tuesday instead what’s on the agenda on Tuesday is.
About a question about creating a feasibility study to consider the feasibility of.
doing a public power utility and.
The energy Commission has previously heard presentation about this from.
A local organization called the the Ann arbor for public power.
And it seems like the feasibility study would cost $120,000 and this resolution that’s on the agenda here as DC one.
It doesn’t even ask this the city to spend $120,000 on a feasibility study it’s kind of round about and.
I kind of don’t understand why the resolution is written in this way, but it asks the this resolution asks the energy Commission to please consider at.
feasibility study out there at their September 14 meeting and then please give a recommendation that yes, the city should pursue a feasibility study.
So that the city can get it on the Sep tember 20th agenda so that then the city can consider whether to have a.
feasibility study and I kind of wonder like if if we already forgot, you know if we already have a foregone conclusion about what the answer should be, why are we even asking the energy Commission, why not just have the city put it on staffs agenda.
MK: I mean this is oh sorry good.
MH: Like we’re asking them to do this on their September 14 agenda it’s not like they have a whole lot of like leg work that they can do, between now and then.
To like make a more robust resolution but say what are you saying why.
MK: So there’s this there’s this history of referring things to commissions, in order to give them more legitimacy before they come back to Council for vote like something that will originate with Council but they sort of.
sending it to a Commission is sort of a way of getting some quote unquote public input to sort of validate whatever the thing is that they want to do so, we had some issues on transportation commission of things getting referred to transportation.
And then the city and then want them sort of like wanting a quick response and it didn’t always work with our schedule or our agendas and so, then.
There were some there were some issues around that I think that happened at some point with the snow removal stuff.
And there have been some some other ones as well, so i’m sort of assuming that this is about like.
This you know this came from a Council member in response to.
Like current events, basically, but they want to get that legitimate like the legitimacy of having it go through a Commission but they want it to happen quickly and so they’re trying to make it happen really fast.
I don’t even know I don’t know how energy Commission works, but like once the agenda is like we can’t usually add things by close to a meeting for a transportation Commission agenda that’s like it’s it’s too disruptive we have everything planned out.
These are all volunteers.
So I yeah I don’t know if that will actually play out with the timing, that this requests.
MH: yeah so I, and I kind of don’t know like if that timeline like what could what meaningful things could they could the energy Commission do it’s not like they’re going to like.
You know, go and do a whole bunch of research, between now and September 14 if they hadn’t been doing it beforehand, you know.
MK: it’s about it’s about conferring legitimacy, rather than about like actual like I just.
MH: asked my guests anyway yeah that’s what it seems like.
And I just feel like you know if Council you know and it’s an this resolution actually already presupposes that the answer will be yes, we should do the legitimate, we should do the feasibility study so.
If Council wants to do a feasibility study just do the feasibility study.
that’s what I think like because you could you know Council can say like hey staff we want this to happen, make it happen, and you know, even if it’s not fully baked I definitely like when things are fully baked, but I also appreciate the urgency of this and, like you know I.
This is something that i’ve been wanting to happen since it, you know.
Since back when it seems like a dsa daydream but, like you know, so I appreciate going forward with this fast and I just I just wish we could just go forward with him.
JL: I do like that we are responding in a timely manner to urgent events.
I will say with this one, the same thing that i’ve said a million times and will say a million times more I want to know what this is rolling up to, we have a citywide policy agenda.
And while this ordinance the resolution language does a good job of laying out the the problems, especially the recent problems, the last couple months.
With our energy utility grid it doesn’t site at zero it doesn’t stay at our sustainability plan it doesn’t site how this interacts with our state policy agenda.
which this would have something to do with so you know, instead of the conferring legitimacy.
You know method that molly’s talking about in terms of let’s go to a Commission.
confirm legitimacy by telling us what you’ve already said, you want from the policy agenda and and how this accomplishes it i’m not even saying this doesn’t i’m just saying like we have a vacuum of that information, and it would be nice to see it in this language.
MH: So yeah I don’t know I I hope this passes and I and but like I might suggest just going straight to the staff, instead of going to energy Commission but that’s just because i’m real excited about it.
And I see I want i’d like a strike while the iron is hot.
But there’s other things, to talk about and i’d like just to do that.
JL: Other things to talk about like food procurement.
I love when stuff shows up on the agenda and I had no idea that it was coming like the first one that was one had no idea that one was coming.
And then we’ve got food procurement, so this resolution DC to ask staff to check out if the city can buy food from the farmers market and other local growers.
The language of the resolution puts forward this one actually does roll up to a larger policy agenda it sites at zero it starts at sites our carbon neutrality plan and the fact that at scale a society can only be truly sustainable if it moves on us towards a plant based diet all true.
My concern with this.
resolution is that antivirus food procurement is actually.
fairly tiny, and so the actual carbon footprint of this action is going to be so small as to be negligible, in fact, I would argue that the greater impact of this resolution.
is more the fact that Ann arbor would be a role model in saying this is what we’re doing, then that we’re actually doing this, so much.
My bigger criticism of this is that it feels really micromanaging, as I said it cites a to zero.
But it’s really up to staff and the whole office of sustainability and innovation to implement at zero and only bring back actions to staff as it needs.
Approval so i’m curious why we’re going after this it feels having asked, no one any questions about this this feels like performance over substance, this feels like I want to be able to talk about local food systems.
In a way that makes us all look and feel good but that actually doesn’t have it like the numbers don’t bear out.
That this is going to make a significant difference and it because it’s not inconsistent with our plan, because this is a part of the plan we’re already executing like we’re just.
we’re asking to go faster on something that just doesn’t have a lot of impact, so I just wanted to bring up that I see this it’s good practice but questionable execution in my, in my opinion.
MH: that’s kind of rude about like.
I don’t think that the city has.
JL: anywhere like a chef.
MH: That prepares food from.
JL: scratch like.
Like.
MH: You know, like I don’t think that even at.
JL: Like.
MH: I think it mentions parks facilities or something like that, but like I don’t think there’s a you know, maybe they’re selling like popsicles or something like that, but I don’t think there’s.
anywhere like a chef prepares things from scratch, so I don’t think they could be buying things from the farmers market.
JL: Right right, so this may be.
MH: Even more about.
JL: How we make decisions about how we’re.
Making catering decisions.
than it is about local.
Food procurement, which again.
makes me feel like this is more about how I want to talk about food, then how food actually works also if our city cook is not remy from ratatouille then i’m just not interested.
Speaking of things that are interesting let’s talk about the racquet club.
MK: close friends alright So here we go this is DS one, the resolution to wave sidewalks at the racquet club of Ann arbor 3010 hickory lane, which also it also front getty’s so there’s a rule, but when certain kinds of major work or what is happening on a property.
there’s a requirement to bring certain things up to code which can include adding sidewalks where they’re missing, it can include.
Bringing things up to Ada compliance Americans with Disabilities Act, and so the racquet club of Ann arbor is asking for that rule to be waived, so that they don’t have to install a sidewalk along getty’s.
And this was a bit of a journey, for me, as I was learning about this resolution and i’m going to bring you all along on my journey so.
MH: My friend second sorry I wanted to add like that it’s triggered by like the reason that the reason that that there’s even a question that they might have to add sidewalks is because they’re doing some.
MK: they’re doing some work.
MH: renovation so doing renovation on their property.
MK: So they’re doing some renovations on the property, which is the thing they’ve done several times before, and i’ll get to that part in a second.
And so it would trigger this requirement to put in a sidewalk and they’re asking for a waiver so.
My first response to a country club asking for a waiver to not put in a sidewalk was absolutely the Fuck not.
they’re lucky that we’re not experts operating their tennis courts to build housing, there is no way on earth we should let them get away with not installing a sidewalk like this is very obvious to me.
Country club.
versus sidewalk like sidewalk should win always but.
I took the time to actually read there.
And it comes off as mostly reasonable, so this section of getty’s where they would need to be putting in a sidewalk it would be particularly complicated and expensive to install.
So they’d have to cut down something like 19 trees and, in general, i’m not someone who’s going to prioritize a tree over a sidewalk but 19 trees, is a lot of trees to cut down, just like logistically speaking again we’re starting we’re talking about expense.
They would have to move utilities and the in this case the work that they’re doing that is triggering this requirement is like some relatively minor pool upgrades so.
it’s entirely possible that the sidewalk would end up costing more than the improvements that they’re trying to make to the property.
Furthermore.
they’ve done a lot of other work over the years and every time they’ve asked for this sidewalk waiver.
previous Councils have given it to them, and some of those councils were majorities that I think of is reasonable.
And so you know i’m inclined to trust their judgment, so you know, maybe, maybe this is okay like, even though it feels wrong to me, maybe we should.
Like give them their waiver, however, we come to my third response, which is that they also say that there’s no point to putting a sidewalk on getty’s here because there’s no pedestrians here and it’s like well.
Well, maybe there’s no pedestrians because getty’s is a pretty busy road and there’s no.
MH: Fine, and you will die.
MK: yeah there’s no safe place for them to be so like of course there’s a good reason to put a sidewalk on getting like that is is actually a pretty clear example of a road that should have sidewalks on both sides.
there’s a sidewalk, on the other side, and they think that’s enough but crossing getting.
MH: Hot enough.
it’s never enough everyone always thinks it’s enough it’s never enough.
MK: Right crossing getty’s is not that safe.
Furthermore, the club did a bunch of major work they talk about on their website they’re very proud of all their brand new buildings that they built in 2017.
And that is probably the point at which they should have done this sidewalk that’s the point at which Council should have required them to they were doing a lot of work, replacing buildings.
that’s when they should have done it but Council, let them get away with it and so now they have this minor pool work they want to do, and it feels a little extreme to make them do this humongous sidewalk project.
But the thing is like eventually we need a sidewalk here so it’s like I don’t is the plan, just to never put a sidewalk here ever, because if so that’s not a good plan, in my opinion and it’s one of these things.
Where every exception that we make.
feels specific and individual in the moment, but if you add up all of those exceptions together they become a total failure to meet our safety and climate goals, and so in this case I feel like.
The question is starting to become which is it Vision Zero or eternal country club exceptionalism and i’m inclined to come down on the side of Vision Zero.
I also would understand if given the specifics of this instance Council ends up giving them another waiver, but I would sincerely hope that they would push the club pretty hard to say.
like this can’t keep happening that we need a sidewalk there.
And yeah there are a bunch of trees, but maybe you put the sidewalk, on the other side of the trees like there they have enough land there for a whole bunch of tennis courts and, like all kinds of stuff they can figure out where to put a sidewalk so I.
This is one of those situations that’s maybe a little bit more complicated than it looked to me at first, but ultimately i’m i’m coming down on the side of sidewalks.
MH: And this.
JL: Resolution, it is yes, this resolution, I think, touches on two key tensions that keep coming up every time we talk about sidewalks which is, are we treating sidewalks as amenities or infrastructure.
and whose responsibility are they we keep making sidewalks the responsibility of individuals and individuals are like hey this is infrastructure expensive I don’t want to do it like it’s it’s.
And i’m not gonna say enlightened but it’s rational self interest to not want to do this, but we keep giving people the option over and over and over and they opt in to know.
So my question and I don’t know if anybody here knows the answer to this i’m just curious why the sidewalk millage isn’t covering this I thought that that’s, this is the kind of thing that that was intended to solve.
MK: Right and my understanding is that it’s because of the kind of work that they’re doing it’s similar to a developer, putting in some new something new in a location and.
In Ann arbor when a developer put something new and there’s no sidewalk there they’re required to put in a sidewalk at that time, and I think the same is true for these certain kinds of.
Property improvements and so that standing as to why it’s not a part of the.
This new sidewalk millage and maybe that’s maybe that’s a negotiation that happens, maybe that’s a deal that ends up getting struck, where some of the money for this work comes from the millage.
I like i’m i’m open to some kind of flexibility, but but an end result, where we never get a sidewalk on that side of getty’s is unacceptable to me.
MH: I think that if they.
If the if it ever got to the point where this particular is just a sidewalk got to the top of the sidewalk gap project, then the millage would cover it.
MK: um but no prioritization that might also be.
MH: yeah but like yeah so like if if they want it just never make this pool.
You know this pool renovation and they want to never make any other renovations then they can continue waiting until the sidewalk millage covers this, but if they want to, if they want to make these improvements, now they got to pay for the whole improvement, and that means the sidewalks.
MK: Right, but, of course, given the expensive this sidewalk if if that comes to the millage that’s a bunch of other sidewalk the city can’t install somewhere else.
And so I don’t I don’t love that that plan, but if if we if the city says no, you can’t have a waiver, and then they.
They decide not to do these cool improvements, then we still end up with no sidewalk, and so I would rather see the city and the country club come to the table and figure figure out a solution that ends in.
A sidewalk and it might not be the perfect like you know sticking it to the country club man, but like I I don’t care about that as much as I care about the sidewalk.
JL: And I also wanted to make the point you know, Michelle said sidewalks on both sides, always true.
I also want to make the point that this particular location is directly across the street from a pretty active pedestrian feeder into galette park like there.
There are people there all the time and there are people in the street there all the time and they’re constantly crossing, and it is horrendously unsafe because it’s at the foot of a blind curve on a hill.
coming down from I think you’re on parkway so cars are coming out of that thing at speed and we’re asking folks to cross in not a great spot to not a real sidewalk so I just want to affirm yes sidewalks both sides always also here for reasons yeah.
MK: exactly like to see us have a policy, but if there’s.
MH: If there’s not a sidewalk we we we don’t like vehicles drive on that street.
Austrians should have the right and like I particularly would like to see it in situations like when they’re doing utility work and the sidewalk gets closed and they say Oh well, this sidewalk is just closed go elsewhere.
But cars oh come right in, and I would I would, I would like to see those places just.
Okay, pedestrians you use the you use the road now in cars, you go elsewhere, because it’s so much easier for you, you just put your foot down a little bit and you’ve gone, you know, a mile and doesn’t even have to think about it.
MK: yeah I mean there are there are cities that have much better rules around maintaining pedestrian pathways during construction and I would love to see Ann arbor get more aggressive about that, but this is a thing.
JL: That says we’re banging the drum i’m going to do that too there’s a good stretch of West liberty that’s closed right now for.
Other infrastructure improvements I think this one is water and some street.
There is a car detour there is not a bike lane detour and there is not a sidewalk detour and that particular stretch.
The roadie to the car detour takes you into a weird not grid neighborhood.
So you can’t just take a right, left, right and then you’re on track for where you are like you get lost in the middle of trees and then you’re like there’s a few accounts.
Oh, where was I supposed to be going like it’s really confusing back there, and if you’re on a bike or on foot or other some personal mobility device.
Just forget it, so I would love to see way finding for detours for means of getting around other than cars just a standard part of our road construction projects in ways that they don’t seem to be right now.
Yes.
MK: More sidewalks more safe routes for people, even during construction yes to all of those things, and I think that wraps up the agenda for today and now i’m going to hand it back to just for a minute.
JL: yeah I wanted to do a little pod keeping I wanted to follow up with you listeners and thank everybody who filled out our survey that we had live the spring.
We read every single response, including the ones that told us the parts that we set up the form wrong, we went and fix it, so thank you.
But I just wanted to thank you, your feedback was so enormously useful and interesting.
One of the great parts about this podcast is that the three of us sit up here with our you know dogs and children and microphones and we just talk at each other and it’s great.
So, to have this survey as a way for you guys to talk back was super super interesting We liked hearing about your favorite parts of the pod a lot of you said.
These Council previews so thank you, we we put a lot of time into it and i’m glad that it’s useful for you.
We asked what we could be doing more of or, better, and you gave us some suggestions that some of them we’ve already implemented even before getting to this podcast to this episode, so thank you for that.
We asked if you’ve taken an action based on something that you’ve heard on the pod and if you did what you did.
a bunch of you are writing to your city council members or you’re talking about civics city civics on social media in ways that you hadn’t before so it’s nice to know.
That listening to this pod makes a difference, not just to what you know, but to what you do you’re getting informed and getting involved it’s like you’re listening it’s amazing.
We also asked what you wished we’d cover and you guys we wrote every single thing down in fact we’re hoping.
To get some to some of your ideas this fall, but we loved every single thing that you said, so thank you, thank you, thank you for your ideas.
We also asked you what’s been your favorite episodes and I gotta say I was really gratifying to hear it, you guys have loved the deeper dives you like the budget episode.
You like healthy streets and you liked master plan and zoning and there were a few others, that you said but.
Thanks we sink a lot of prep into the materials that we bring to you guys and the fact that it’s useful to you is super super gratified so thank you for that.
And I just wanted to kind of give closure to that survey, because it gave us a lot of really useful and fun information and we appreciate it every single compliment so thanks for that too.
MK: yeah thanks everyone so that’s it for this episode of Ann arbor af comm check out our episodes and transcripts at our website and arbor a f.com.
Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann arbor as listeners on Twitter at the a to counsel hashtag and on Facebook in the Ann arbor humans who walk group.
You can also catch co host Michelle with Council recaps and other civic goodies on wc bn.org tuesday’s 6am to 9am and that getting up at 6am after Council meetings on Monday night, I think, is a real like.
JL: I can’t even a real that’s it that’s a flat right that’s dedication let’s see.
MH: location i’m mostly playing music on that show.
MK: that’s what I was.
Thinking like those between time.
So anyway, if you want to send us a few dollars at.
K oh dash f.com slash Ann arbor af to help us with hosting costs, we would always welcome that.
And that’s it we are your co hosts MH Jesse Tom and myself molly climbing and thanks to producer jack Jennings the music I don’t know by grapes, you can reach us by email at Ann arbor af pod at gmail COM get informed then get involved it’s your city.