Today we are talking about the first City Council meeting of 2021. We touch on township island annexations (here’s the city’s description we mentioned and the policy memo we referenced); the police budget (yes, again), including whether facial recognition technology is coming to Ann Arbor; the Moving Together initiative (the overall plan and its latest report), Vision Zero and A2Zero, and how transportation and master planning work together; and a little big dreaming about future Council work. A quick process note: we recorded this the Thursday before the Council meeting, which means there’s always a chance something new will make it to the agenda between the time of recording and the actual meeting.
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.
Michelle (00:00:01):
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.
Michelle (00:00:14):
I’m Michelle Hughes. My pronouns are she her.
Molly (00:00:17):
I’m Molly Kleinman, and my pronouns are she her. 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. Today we’re talking about the first city council meeting of 2021. Coming up Monday, January 4th, we’ll be touching on solid waste management parcel, annexation, the police budget, and a few other fun things. We’re just here to reflect on the things that intersect with our interests in case they interest you too and offer some ways to get involved. A quick process note, we’re recording this the Thursday before the council meeting. There’s always a chance something new will make it to the agenda between now and the meeting next week. Let’s jump in.
Molly (00:01:00):
Okay, so I think I’m first up with this agenda. We took a look at the consent agenda and for the first time we decided that there wasn’t anything that we wanted to pick up on in there. If you’re wondering what the consent agenda is for, I encourage folks to go back into our deeper dive on how to read an agenda. I don’t know about you guys. I found that episode very helpful. Yes, I learned a lot. So we’re going right into the ordinances and the thing that caught my eye was B one, the ordinance on town township parcel annexations. I have heard so much gossip on this and almost no information. So I decided to take this opportunity to read up a little bit on township parcel annexations, and now I am our friendly neighborhood, but I have read two policy memos and so I feel a audacious and ready.
Michelle (00:01:52):
So is this, yes, is this ordinance, this is to annex particular parcels, or is this something that changes the way we’re annexing parcels?
Molly (00:02:04):
That’s a good question. So this is specific to annexing the parcels. Going back into the history of the town of the township parcel annexation, which I’ll talk about a little bit in a moment. There were 580, what’s called township islands within the physical boundaries of the city and city staff.
Michelle (00:02:26):
So that would be something where even though the completely surrounded by the city of Ann Arbor, they’re actually, their house is considered to be part of Ann Arbor Township instead of the city of Ann Arbor.
Molly (00:02:38):
Ann Arbor Town City or Pittsfield Township. Oh, okay. ORs Township. Those were the three affected municipalities, and again, in a second I’ll get into why, but they city staff and those three township staffs decided in conjunction with one another that the best way to proceed would be to annex kind of a chunk at a time. It allows for a certain economy of scale for staff in processing these changes in communicating with the owners of those particular parcels, but also doesn’t trigger certain state regulatory requirements. Basically, we’re not colonizing those townships by doing it hundreds at a time. They do it a few dozen at a time in order to make it both easy and a little bit less bureaucratic overhead. So getting into what township parcel annexations are, I will say that all of this information is available in one document, which will link in the show notes today.
Molly (00:03:39):
So if you read this, you will know literally everything that I know. The city also has a very helpful page on township parcel annexations. And so if this is something that like me, you’d like to know a little bit more about, the city actually has a fair amount of information on it. So I’m going to read the original policy memos history and background, the first couple of sentences of it, because A, it’s really concise and does a better job than I could if I just summarized it. And b, I deeply love policy memos in a very ironic way. I love that they’re historical, they’re thoughtful, and for whatever reason I find them really funny, not because they’re trying to be, and not to make light of the voluminous time that staff puts into preparing these, but they’re so dry, they’re such dry recitations of things that really have a lot of life and vibrancy and often conflict in the city consciousness.
Molly (00:04:38):
And so in that sense, I really find them funny, but I love them very much. So in the policy memo kicking off Township Island annexation work, the history and background section starts, the city of Ann Arbor became incorporated as a village in 1824. I mean, honestly, how do you beat that? Over the past 184 years, this policy memo was issued in 2011. The city has grown and expanded into areas surrounding it. In the later parts of the 19th century, the city began providing municipal water and sanitary sewer service to city parcels. Paved streets became increasingly common in the city of Ann Arbor. After the introduction of motor vehicles development pressures after World War II resulted in the city expanding its jurisdiction into surrounding areas and providing water and sewer services to newly developing neighborhoods and commercial districts. Most annexations occurred after owners requested annexation and the city services that accompanied it. This expansion resulted in a number of islands of township parcels whose owners did not request annexation. So that’s the general background. The memo goes on to say that there are approximately 580 of these township islands within the city boundaries of Ann Arbor. The vast majority of them, I think I saw around 550, are single family homes or vacant parcels within single family neighborhoods. So
Jess (00:06:14):
I have a quick question.
Molly (00:06:15):
Great. Now’s a good time.
Jess (00:06:16):
Great. So when you talk about, so 580 islands, each of those islands is an individual parcel. They may be a bunch of them all to all near each other. Is that right? Or is that island each cluster?
Molly (00:06:33):
That’s a good question. So an island refers to the individual parcel. Some people own multiple islands. So for example, if a person bought three adjacent plots of land that were all township islands, then they may own that. Some of them are clustered in neighborhoods. For example, on Hamstead Road is One Bird Road, Newport Roads are all roads that have clusters of township island. But an island refers not to the cluster but the individual parcel.
Jess (00:07:04):
Got it. Thank you.
Molly (00:07:05):
Yeah, I know I learned so much I couldn’t have answered that question three hours ago, but now I know the power of policy memos. So I’ll stop there and just see if you guys have any questions and then I’ll talk about this resolution and then I’ll talk about a more generic feeling that I have.
Jess (00:07:24):
I have many questions. So awesome. Why does the city want to annex these parcels and why would the owners want or not want annexation?
Molly (00:07:38):
Those are great questions and all of my answers are going to come not just from the policy memos that I read, but also from transcripts of public meetings and public comments given at those meetings by par parcel owners and neighbors. So annexation is a really exciting word for a fundamentally very paperwork thing. The paperwork is that the zoning for that parcel is changed, that their utility and emergency service assignments are changed and their voting voting assignment is changed. So they no longer vote within the township, whether it’s s o Pittsfield or Ann Arbor Township. They would now vote within the city of Ann Arbor why a person would want, and they would vote for the city councils, the That’s right. They’d vote for the city council. They’d be subject to city millages, and I’ll get into that in a moment. So why someone would be interested in annexation comes down to a few different things, all of which have to do with public service providing when a town, when a parcel is owned is, excuse me, located within a township, when you call for emergency services, who responds to you depends on your jurisdiction.
Molly (00:09:00):
So if you’re in a township and you call for the police, it’s the was sheriff that responds to you. If you’re in a township and you call for fire, it’s the township fire that responds to you. Whereas with, if you’re within city boundaries, it would be Ann Arbor City in the first case and Ann Arbor fire in the second. If you’re in one of these islands and the status of your jurisdiction is unclear, often both are dispatched. So you may have Washington on Sheriff and Ann Arbor City and let’s say S Fire and Ann Arbor fire all show up for a single call. That’s pricey. And so the idea is that would a person gets
Michelle (00:09:44):
Charged for that or is
Molly (00:09:45):
That That’s right. I’m conflating a couple of different things. So that’s pricey on the city side, not for the person side, no, A person would never get charged for that. The other services that are provided are city water and city sanitary sewer and excuse me, and city solid waste. I think water and sewer are not super convincing to people because a lot of folks are on their own well or septic. And if you’re not in one of those locations where you have either a potentially contaminated or contaminated well or septic system, if your system is working fine, then the connecting to city water and sewer is not necessarily of interest to you. I think the two biggest things of interest and what may trigger people’s interest in changing is access to solid waste services, which is garbage composting and potentially leaf pickup or compost pickup.
Michelle (00:10:40):
And that’s something that like the township people would have to have their own contracts with solid waste pickup people to
Molly (00:10:48):
Do. Exactly. And that’s exactly what happens is the people, rather than signing up for a township waste, they would have their own individual contracts. And then the other thing is road management and sidewalks. So if a city parcel goes from township dur jurisdiction to city jurisdiction, then their road goes from the Wasaw County Road Commission jurisdiction to Ann Arbor roads jurisdiction. And typically that has implications for snow clearing and for maintenance in between snow seasons. There is, I’m drawing a deep breath because the next part is complicated and for some reason the policy memo doesn’t address it. There is an implication for sidewalks if you join a city from a township, but annexation actually doesn’t touch it. So even if you are required to provide a sidewalk, you don’t currently have one and you’re annexed by the city, it may trigger you to, it may trigger a review by the city in a determination that you are required, and Molly knows the words for this better than I do, but it may trigger a requirement for you to pay into the city’s sidewalk budget basically.
Molly (00:12:06):
And while that’s related to the annexation, it’s not directly a part of it. So unfortunately, I think that that’s an area where the homeowners get subject to a complicated and a challenging and complicated process why people would not want to be a part of that. First of all, we’re Americans, and we still have a very wild west mentality when it comes to property ownership. If we own it, we feel like we’re the boss of it. And for somebody to come in and say, you’re in X jurisdiction, not Y jurisdiction, runs counter to our expectations of what we feel like we’re entitled to as property owners. That in my opinion, is the biggest crux of it. What it practically comes down to is going from a township to a city is a not small increase in taxes and often a one-time fee payable over 15 years, but still not small to hook up to city services.
Molly (00:13:03):
The estimates that I saw ranged from $7,000 on the low end to $83,000 on the high end. And yeah, there’s a lot of properties that fall on every part of that spectrum. The good news is there’s state assistance for people who are on fixed incomes, either as retirees or with disabilities. So not the people are ever stuck. And like I said, the city’s also willing to finance over 15 years. And if you’re annexed, they don’t require those fees to be paid immediately. They’re in certain cases, the fees aren’t required to start being paid for the first 10 years. So there’s a lot of room in there, but those are not small numbers. And your taxes, although they’re capped at the state level, your taxes may go up a little bit. That I think is a cause for hesitation or not being interested by some owners of township parcels. Most people I
Michelle (00:13:58):
Kind of like to see sometimes because people talk a lot about the difference in taxes between Ann Arbor and a township, and I’d kind of like to see when you factor in all the services that the township doesn’t provide that the city does. And so it’s like, okay, yeah, your taxes are lower, but you got to contract for your own solid waste pickup. You got to do your own septic system. I’ve never seen that break. How that breaks down quite,
Molly (00:14:24):
And that was a part of staff’s argument, is that the township parcels, these islands are benefiting from city services even if they’re not paying into it. So township islands get to participate even if they’re particular segment of the street isn’t maintained by Ann Arbor roads, everything around them in is the parks around them are the streetlights around them are, and often even if their individual parcel isn’t hooked up to city water, everything around them is, and a fire is called the fire would plug into city water. So there’s a pretty compelling argument on the part of staff that there is an equity issue at play for township residents consuming but not paying for services.
Jess (00:15:08):
So there’s sort of this concern that residents of township islands are freeloading on some chunk of city services. And so bringing them into the city means then they’re actually paying for into these systems the same way that all other Ann Arbor residents are. And also they would then get to vote in the elections that govern the decisions that get made that would affect their neighborhoods. So I looked at this, proposed this resolution, so it looks like there’s this, what they’re voting on this week is going to be a batch of islands that the city has proposed to annex. And this is the second batch,
Molly (00:15:51):
I think this is the third
Jess (00:15:53):
Batch?
Molly (00:15:54):
I think so,
Jess (00:15:56):
And this is a process that started in 2011.
Molly (00:15:59):
Well, the city and the townships started looking this in the nineties and early two thousands, and then it came to city council for a decision in 2011, and that’s when the policy memo was written. So they’d been doing a lot of research talking to the parcel owners to see what they might want. Part of this was triggered by the fact that so many people were asking to be annexed that the city was looking for a way to manage this at scale rather than by individual request response.
Jess (00:16:29):
That makes a lot of sense.
Michelle (00:16:30):
That to be annexed, that’s not something I expected to hear.
Molly (00:16:35):
And it’s the sense that I get that the majority of the parcel owners do want to be annexed. They actually see a lot of benefit in getting a part, being a part of city services. And I don’t think anybody’s dismissing the connect fees or the increase in taxes, but they see it as worth it. It’s value not dollars for them.
Michelle (00:16:54):
I certainly did move to Ann Arbor,
Jess (00:16:59):
So then that’s interesting. So there are all of these people who actually want to be annexed, and it seems as though to the extent that Township Island annexation is in the public conversation that we hear about it in the news, we’re hearing about resistance to annexation. Is that right? So then is there something that these resistant people share? Do they all have the same objections going on with the resistance?
Molly (00:17:29):
That’s a good question, and if you read the public comments, what I see is a lot of confusion about what’s actually at stake. People see, the city was fairly transparent about the hookup fees, which are by far the largest fees that are going to be owed by these parcel owners. And they were fairly transparent about the 7,000 to $83,000 spectrum. That’s terrifying. And so there was a lot of confusion about what’s owed, when by whom to whom, how frequently is there any resource available for me on a fixed income? So people brought a lot of uncertainty and fear and anger to the conversations about that. Beyond that, there was some question about timeline. There was some confusion between state enabling language around jurisdiction management and city enabling language around jurisdiction that folks had some questions about, which was, I think, reasonable and good to clarify, I think that for the most part, what’s actually happening is people want annexation. They want to know what to budget for. They just see it as this is a part of being a homeowner. There are a small number of people who feel very strongly that they should not be forced into this. And so they’re highly resistant to the process.
Jess (00:18:56):
And then in general, these property owners are long longtime owners of the property. Is that right? There’s some sort of trigger mechanism where when a township island is sold, it has to be annexed at that time. Is that right?
Molly (00:19:14):
That’s my understanding.
Jess (00:19:16):
Okay. So we’re really dealing with probably a kind of narrow subset of people who live in Ann Arbor owned their properties for a long time. And you said these are mostly single family home properties,
Molly (00:19:32):
Right? Correct.
Michelle (00:19:35):
And it seems like,
Jess (00:19:37):
Oh, go ahead, Michelle.
Michelle (00:19:37):
Oh, no, yeah, I was just going to say, it seems like most of the time when these come up on the agenda, they pass without comment. No one comes to object to them.
Molly (00:19:47):
Yeah, I mean it’s really, this is not really a larger policy question. The larger policy question was settled almost a decade ago. At this point, the conversation is between the city and the individual parcel owners and every time that happens, so again, this is to my understanding, the third cluster that they’ve been, they’ve annexed that cluster of homeowners kind of get together and talk about how do we feel about this? Are we on board? Are we not on board? There are some people who not are board in each segment as far as I can tell. And so they organize resistance and they organize comments saying that we shouldn’t be subject to this, but given state and local policy and law, this is just how it’s moving forward.
Michelle (00:20:34):
Okay, I see. So when I’ve seen stuff come up and people don’t object to it, it’s usually one parcel at a time. So that’s probably a situation where the property got sold. And so that’s why it’s getting annexed these, this is a larger batch than that, is that what you’re saying? Yes.
Molly (00:20:51):
Okay. Yes, exactly. This one I think is 55 properties, if I’m remembering correctly. Okay. So it’s another chunk, 26 26 properties.
Michelle (00:21:04):
And so you’re saying you saw some public meeting minutes and stuff like that, and that there is an organized resistance
Molly (00:21:14):
To this one? I don’t know that there’s organized resistance, haven’t been tracking this particular resolution. Like I said, I just use this as an excuse to research it a little bit. I will say, so in the agenda, there are linked some past policy memos and some of the work leading up to this. I really wish that staff had also linked, just linked their page on township annexations because even before getting into the policy memos, that page is short and super helpful. So I just wish that they linked it in the agenda, but it’s really easy to find on Google. And like I said, we’ll link it in the show notes. So the one thing that I wanted to say about this is that I feel like there’s a few different equity conversations going on here, and I’m not sure I agree with any of them. So I’m going to throw my own into the mix
Molly (00:22:04):
Because everybody loves another voice in the peanut gallery. So the homeowners that have resisted annexation feel like it’s not equitable to be asked to pay more than what they signed up to pay for when they bought their home. City staff seem to feel pretty strongly based on how many times they said it in the policy memo that it’s not equitable for homeowners to consume services that they’re not paying taxes for. I kind of question whether this, the system, the man, whoever the man is in this case is not setting us up to argue with each other because we are not, I think fairly reckoning with the city’s legacy of car-centric development for the greater part of its 180 year history. And I don’t think it’s fair to homeowners or city staff that we’re kind of being asked to come at each other’s throats without honestly reckoning with that history. I don’t know what that would look like in terms of doing this process differently, but until we define equity, the window of equity as something besides just my experience with this thing, I don’t actually think we’re getting at equity.
Jess (00:23:26):
And Jess, you mentioned another lens on this question too that has an even longer historical perspective that I think
Molly (00:23:34):
Mean if we’re going to talk about Ann Arbor incorporating as a village in 1824, then we need to reckon with Ann Arbor’s legacy as a land speculation project that started with two white men and the power dynamic of all of us living on native land. So if we want to really talk about equity, I want us to talk about the fact that we’re living on three fires land and how I don’t think we’ve done any kind of historical reckoning with that. So that that’s my window for equity is to extend it far beyond whiteness.
Jess (00:24:12):
Thank you. This, I know so much more about Township Island and the annexation than I did the day ago.
Michelle (00:24:19):
Welcome.
Molly (00:24:20):
Me too.
Jess (00:24:20):
And it looks like the next thing on our list is another police budget expenditure that Michelle, I think you want we were going to talk about.
Michelle (00:24:30):
Yeah, this was actually on the agenda previously. It was on the consent agenda at the last meeting and it passed, but then we heard from Lynn Song Council member Co Councilmember Lynn song from the Second Ward. She said that she actually had intended to take it off of the consent agenda and discuss it, and she just didn’t. So yeah, she was bringing it back for reconsideration this time. And now that’s the thing that a person can do if they are a city council member, can bring something back to reco for reconsideration if it’s something that they voted on the prevailing side of and then change their mind. They can be like, Ooh, actually, can we talk about that again? And they can do that only at the next meeting. So she’s bringing it back. I’m curious to talk about, again,
Molly (00:25:28):
I’m curious practically what this means. Does this mean that it’s coming back for another vote?
Michelle (00:25:34):
If so, first they have to vote on whether to do the reconsideration, and if they vote yes, then they’ll discuss it and vote on it again right then and there, which they already did, but only as part of the consent agenda. And I don’t think anyone said a word about it. And
Jess (00:25:52):
This was something that we actually did talk about in our episode about the last meeting. This is a pretty large police purchase of dash cams and software and storage for patrol vehicles
Michelle (00:26:08):
And apparently body cams. I think also, and one of the things that I was worried about was that, so this is a, okay, this is a six year contract, this one, we’re going to spend $70,000 right away and then $350,000 over the total six years. And for one thing, that’s a lot of money to spend on police. And I don’t know, it’s always, when you talk about police and trying to end police brutality, a lot of people have ideas about reforming the police and getting them new training and new equipment that’s going to hopefully cut down on police brutality. And it always ends up being stuff like this where we we’re going to spend $350,000 over six years, and it’s like, what if instead we had spent $350,000 on affordable housing over six years? I don’t know.
Jess (00:27:15):
And wasn’t there also some concern? I think there was even a public comment or last time about whether or not this included facial recognition,
Michelle (00:27:22):
Right? Yeah. Because this is going to be cloud storage of the CAM footage. I talked with someone on Twitter about it from the crypto party, the A cyber privacy organization in town, and they pointed me at the Electronic Frontier Foundation has a petition going around called about face asking for Congress to pass laws against facial recognition because facial recognition is one of those things that puts people under constant surveillance. It’s usually, it’s sometimes wrong against people, so it’ll give people false convictions for things. And that’s
Jess (00:28:16):
Particularly our neighbor neighbor Detroit, I think had the sort of OMI honor of being the first arrest that was due to aero an erroneous facial recognition identification by police. And there have since been others, but Detroit got to do it first.
Michelle (00:28:35):
And another thing is that the facial recognition stuff is particularly bad at identifying black people because it’s programmed by racist programmers and trained on racist data
Jess (00:28:47):
Sets. Right? So I think, right, we could maybe even do a lot more about facial recognition because I would love to see this council ban facial recognition.
Michelle (00:28:55):
Yes, I would love
Jess (00:28:56):
That too, by the police, by schools, that’d be terrific, but we’re still not sure if facial recognition is actually a part of this purchase. Is that right?
Michelle (00:29:05):
And my understanding, I read through the contract. At first it looked like, yes, it was, but then I realized that I totally missed the part where it said not because it has, it does say that, well, at least it’s not going to be aggregated data. That’s the data that’s taken by the company that’s providing the storage stuff, which is called evidence.com. They are not going to be aggregating it with their other data in such a way that identifiable information is stuck in there. So I don’t know, they might use it to train facial recognition data or whatever, but I don’t think this contract allows it to be used for facial recognition, although I don’t think that it particularly prohibits the city from doing it with the data that it controls. But we would probably have to see another contract to actually provide that, unless the city was going to have their in-house IT staff work on it, but they’re not.
Molly (00:30:21):
So I’m curious to see, I know Council member song is one of the liaisons to the Independent Citizens Police Oversight Commission. And did I say that right? No, independent
Michelle (00:30:31):
ICP C Community, independent Community Community
Molly (00:30:34):
Police Oversight Commission. Thank you. I know that she’s one of the liaisons, and I’m wondering if it’s in that role that she’s bringing this back for conversation, but I’ll I’ll be curious to see.
Michelle (00:30:45):
Yeah, and I’m not, yeah, and I don’t know what it is that she wants to talk about. If it’s the facial recognition, if it’s it’s body cams, because there’s also some issues with the body cams because we spend all this money on body cams and it’s supposed to provide additional accountability for the police, but we’re not really seeing that payoff because for one thing, the police themselves control when the cameras are recording. And so a lot of times they’ll approach a situation thinking, oh, this is going to be peaceful and fine, and then the police will go ahead and escalate the situation. And then only once the situation’s escalated do they turn on the camera. So then their footage shows, oh yeah, I approached this belligerent individual. And it doesn’t show that it was actually the police’s fault that the conflict that escalated. But then also, even if we only get, if we get to see it, which it’s really hard to obtain this footage, and it’s been hard for the oversight commission to obtain this footage. And so we wanted the reform agenda was to get this type of thing in there for accountability, but it’s not being used so much for accountability. And so I’m concerned that it’s being used for evidence collection instead, what with the storage stuff being collected@evidence.com.
Molly (00:32:23):
So of one of the things that we want to do with this podcast is help people understand how they can get involved. So I’ll propose a couple of things and see what you guys think. Yeah, the first one is just a reminder that even though this is a purchase order for over $400,000 for the police budget, it’s actually not up for discussion. This is kind of a rubber stamp thing for city Council because this is a part of the police’s budget. It’s just because it’s over a certain dollar amount. It’s required to come to council for approval. One of the things that we said in the last episode, and I’d like to reiterate in this one, is that the time to go after the budget is not for the individual purchase orders. It’s a budget season, which is upon us starting next month. So we are going to do an episode on budget season and how to advocate for the things that you care about. And I’m looking forward to the folks that we’re going to interview for that episode. That’ll be coming up in a couple of weeks. The other thing, I’m
Michelle (00:33:18):
Not entirely sure that’s entirely accurate the way you said it, I think Sure. The way I think of it is it’s like if your goal is to defund the police, going after the individual purchase orders isn’t necessarily the way to do it. But if your concerns are with this particular contract, this particular contract is definitely still up for discussion and the city has control over it.
Molly (00:33:42):
That’s a much more accurate way to put it. Thank you. The other thing that I wanted to encourage is for folks to reach out to the co-chairs of the I C P O C and ask them what they’d like to see. What do they want to see from this contract? What are they hoping for in the next budget season? Because really what we’re here to do is not just advance our own agendas, but to understand what the community’s values are and uplift those. And I C P O C does a great job at representing those, at researching those, and then advocating for those. So that’s something that’s a note to myself as well, to reach out for the chairs and ask what they’re hoping for from budget season.
Michelle (00:34:19):
Yeah. Oh,
Michelle (00:34:22):
Let me see. I have a business card here. You can reach Lisa Jackson from the I C P O C. She’s got this business card. Awesome. And it’s, her email address is l jackson CPOC gmail.com,
Molly (00:34:41):
And we can also put that in the show notes.
Michelle (00:34:43):
Excellent. Yeah, she’s the chair. You can also hit up Councilmember song. Lynn Song is the council member who’s bringing this back for reconsideration, and she’s, as I said, the council member liaison, one of the council member liaisons too, the I C P O C, the other one being Ali Abraham Lai. So you can hit up one of them too. Another thing to talk about too, I think, is to talk to Crypto Party. They’re a local group that, they’re a local chapter. Ann Arbor Crypto Party is a local chapter of an organization that deals with electronic privacy. And then they told me to plug the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s about face program. So you can go sign that petition like I did, and then you can be cool, and you can tell everyone that facial recognition is a bad technology and we shouldn’t do it. Agree. Or you can do whatever your opinion is, but I think my opinion is the best opinion for some reason.
Michelle (00:35:55):
Speaking of your opinions, what else did you have an opinion on in this agenda? Michelle? Yes. I had another opinion about another thing. Let me click on my notes. Oh, okay. This is the washau Regional Resource Management Authority, and it is an effort that’s been going on for a year or two, probably a couple years, to consolidate our solid waste management. So like trash pickup, recycling, pickup with all of the municipalities in the area in Washington County, and to try to get better economies of scale and that sort of thing, rather than having, Ann Arbor does their own solid waste, and then S Township does their own solid waste and so forth. And so they cooked this up a couple years ago where they were going to put some of the authority of doing the solid waste stuff into the hands of this newly formed resource management authority instead into the individual cities, or somehow kind of overlaying the authority of this, or somehow kind of overlaying the authority of the cities with the authority of this created newly created body. I’m a little unclear on exactly how decisions are going to be made in this context. And so is the labor movement in town. Last time this came up was last year or so, and a whole bunch of union members came out to object to it. The people who work for our solid waste here in the city are members of afscme. The, I don’t remember what that stands for. The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. Boom. Got it. Ask me.
Michelle (00:38:18):
So yeah, those people came out and the Huron Valley area, labor Federation, AFL Ccio, they and convinced, convinced the city even after the city had gone to the trouble of helping draft the bylaws and articles of incorporation for the new authority that convinced them the city not to join the authority. And that was kind of a strange step for the authority because they left them in a strange place because they were really counting on Ann Arbor, because Ann Arbor has the largest amount of solid waste among all the rest of them. And so they were like, oh, we were counting on you guys. And it’s like, but the objections of labor were that, so the authority might end up being in a position of signing new contracts, and how are we going to make sure that they are prioritizing the needs of labor, making sure that their contracts go to union employees or they go to people that are making a living wage.
Michelle (00:39:35):
Because here in the city, so we have a whole bunch of different overlapping ways that we pick up solid waste. And the most common one is the people are probably most familiar with is the city’s solid waste where they’ll come pick up your residential solid waste, put out your bin, truck comes, picks it up. And those are city AFSCME employees that do that. And they’re employed by the city. They’re members of the AFSCME Union. But when it comes to our commercial waste, so the restaurants in town and so forth, the city actually outsources that to the giant mega conglomerate Waste management. And they’re a huge company that does this. So the, the members of the employees of Waste Management are not in a union, but the city has a ordinance called the Living Wage Ordinance, where it says that everyone, every company that we contract with has to guarantee that their employees are making a living wage. How did they define a living wage in that, in the ordinance, it is defined by some sort of calculation involving, I don’t know, rent and food and stuff like that. Okay. I’m not sure what it is, but they said it’s about, it’s up to about $15 an hour now. So it’s something, I think 1581, I think 1581 is the base pay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So it’s something that automatically changes, unlike the federal minimum wage where it’s been a decade since, never changed since that’s changed.
Michelle (00:41:33):
But the thing is, so if we end up delegating contracting authority to the regional management, the regional Waste Management Authority, then does that mean that they could kind of circumvent our living wage ordinance by, it’s like, well, we’re not, Ann Arbor’s not the one making the contract, it’s the management authority that’s making the contract, and they don’t have a living wage ordinance kind of thing. Another concern is that under the original bylaws, the city of Ann Arbor would be one member, and so we’d get one vote. And so while we might trust the electorate of Ann Arbor to provide, insist that we back up labor and support doing not outsourcing our solid waste and any more than we have, and if the city people of Ann Arbor might support a living wage type ordinance, but if we’re just one vote out of many, maybe we might get outvoted in that, and SIO Township wouldn’t want to pay the extra money or something. Not to single out SIO Township, but we’re just worried about that sort of thing. And
Molly (00:43:06):
So isn’t that something, as I hear what you’re saying about Aunt one Ann Arbor one vote, isn’t that something that we could potentially negotiate as part of our membership, that either the living wage element be a part of it, or that union or that labor be some kind of a part of the conversation? Is it necessarily true that if we join this authority that we are forsaking all of our ability to negotiate on behalf of labor?
Michelle (00:43:36):
For one thing, it’s a little unclear about what we would be giving up if we join it, because I dunno, the resolution that’s on the table here, it says that the, oh, no, no, everyone who works for Ann Arbor is still going to keep working for Ann Arbor. They’re not going to, it’s be something like where all the employees of Ann Arbor are now suddenly employees of the authority instead of Ann Arbor. But it’s also the whole point of, but all on the other hand, the whole point of this authority is to consolidate things and find ways to do economies of scale. And so if we’re not giving up anything, and if we’re not negotiating, we’re not negotiating as a group and we’re not negotiating group rates, then what are we even doing there?
Michelle (00:44:34):
But in terms of can we negotiate putting that type of thing in, that’s what we’re trying to do. And that’s what the unions were saying was like, before we join, before we sign up for this, we want some guarantees that unions are going to be respected. We want some guarantees that we’re going to be able to have more of a vote. And they were saying that this is the time in which we have the most power because if we join, then we only have one vote. But if we haven’t joined, then they want to please us. And it’s like, well, if you want us to join, we got to have some stuff about labor and we got to have some stuff about our votes. And it looks like according to the resolution that’s on the table today, some of those things have sort of been addressed, but not in a way that’s satisfactory to labor.
Michelle (00:45:31):
It said that the authority has passed a resolution saying that they would consider the terms of contracts of the local authorities and of the local municipalities select implying that maybe Ann Arbor’s unions wouldn’t be broken, implying that maybe they wouldn’t outsource it and imply, but I don’t know, it seems the wording on it is super weak to me. It I, because I would want to make sure that no union jobs are lost, and I would want to make sure that the living wage ordinance is upheld and I would want to make that kind of thing. And the other thing was the authority said that they would consider switching from a one municipality, one vote scheme to a tonnage type of scheme so that if we are the biggest users of solid waste, then we would get the most votes kind of situation. But that hasn’t actually been passed yet. So if we’ve joined now, and that’s
Molly (00:46:49):
A super weird incentivization scheme there where it’s like if we just throw away more.
Michelle (00:47:02):
Yeah. So I don’t think that this is going to be satisfactory to labor right now. And
Molly (00:47:09):
Where is this process wise? Is this a first reading, second reading thing, or is this, once it happens, we’re done,
Michelle (00:47:16):
Vote this. Yeah, once it happens, it’s done vote. I think because see, it’s a council resolution and it kind of delegates some of the, it says that the city administrator is allowed to our entry into this authority. Although at this point, that doesn’t say anything about any contracts that we have. It doesn’t, it doesn’t outsource anything. It just puts us in the authority. And that doesn’t do anything yet. But I think that we were to, if it does remove a couple of roadblocks, if we were going to get into a county outsourcing situation want, I want as many roadblocks between us and that as possible. And so not joining this authority as under the roadblock, I’d like to keep in place.
Molly (00:48:08):
So if we were going to offer our listeners an action, what would you invite them to do?
Michelle (00:48:15):
Call your city council member. Talk about what this is going to mean. Call the mayor. Ask him what this is going to mean and say that you want to support labor, and that we need to make sure that before we enter the authority, that the demands of labor are met and that that’s something that we value as a community.
Molly (00:48:45):
That sounds good. All right. What else do we have on the agenda?
Jess (00:48:51):
I think the next thing is the Ann Arbor moving together towards Vision Zero City of Ann Arbor, comprehensive Transportation Plan. And the specific agenda item relevant to what we’re just going to call the transportation plan is this is sort of just a procedural piece. So this new transportation plan is one piece of the larger city master planning process. And I understand very little about the master planning process, and I’m going to ask Jess a bunch of questions about it in a minute. But I’m first just going to briefly explain what this plan is and where we are in the process. So as a part of the master plan update, we specifically have a transportation plan update. And I think one piece that’s slightly different about this one is that it’s one single comprehensive transportation plan as opposed to a transportation plan and non-motorized transportation plan, which sort of treats cars as the default and everybody else as weird.
Jess (00:49:50):
This treats everyone together. And it’s very explicitly trying to create a plan that will allow Ann Arbor to meet the goals of these two different sort of value systems, I guess. So one of them is Vision Zero, which some of you may have heard of. It’s a approach that began in Europe where the goal is that there should be zero road deaths and that we should be designing our roads with the understanding that humans make errors and crashes are not accidents, crashes are failures, fatal crashes, especially in injury crashes are failures of design. And that we can be designing our roads to minimize the risk of serious harm to anyone, people in cars, people out of cars. And so Ann Arbor has said, yes, we want Vision Zero, and this plan is going to be one of the ways that we really move towards Vision Zero. There’s another thing which is a two zero, which is not about traffic deaths at all, but it’s about our goal to get to zero carbon, to get to a place of carbon neutrality. It’s a super ambitious plan. It’s really cool, and it has a lot of implications for our transportation system because one of the ways that we’re going to get there, or that we can get there is to reduce car trips by 50%, which is really great. And
Molly (00:51:16):
A quick interjection on both of those plans. They both have goal dates, vision Vision Zero, which is zero fatalities due to traffic, is 2025 and a two zero, which is our carbon neutrality plan is 2030. So those are really tight timelines for very ambitious goals, and it means that the behavior changes asked by both plans are really not small.
Jess (00:51:42):
And so this new transportation plan is designed around those two goals and with the intention of helping the city meet those goals. What we have right now is a draft of the plan. It’s not the final version, but it’s a version that’s already been through several rounds of feedback before, even before we’re working with a, we’ve contracted with an agency to create this plan for us. And before they even started writing, they did a lot of public engagement in different ways. And before times, there were in-person events where people could come in and sort of mark places on maps where they felt safe or unsafe on the road, and talk about what their priorities were for how people should be able to get around in the city. And they continued to do that online. The Transportation Commission saw an early draft. I think the DDA saw an early draft and gave feedback.
Jess (00:52:34):
Oh, the Planning Commission also saw it, and all of the, so this early stage process, there was a lot of flexibility, but because the transportation plan is a part of the master plan, there are state mandates about how it goes and what the process it has to follow looks like. And so this particular thing that City Council is voting on is a process piece where we have a really nice draft. It’s not super rough, it’s not totally final. And now we have to share it with all of these stakeholders, which include neighboring municipalities and the school district and the railroad and D T E, and get all of their feedback and incorporate their feedback and then produce yet another version of the plan. And that’s the point at which city council will consider adopting the plan. And first it will get reviewed by planning commission again and transportation commission again. So that’s now literally all I know about the master planning process, but I thought this would be an opportunity in talking about this one piece to sort of understand what the planning process is and why we’ve taken transportation out of it. And so I think, Jess, you’re our resident expert on the master planning, and I know we’re going to do a bigger episode about this, but maybe you could just sort of briefly answer for us what is the master plan and why is the master plan?
Molly (00:54:03):
I love that. The what and the why of things are always the biggest questions, but in some ways that makes them maybe easier to summarize. So the transportation plan is an element of our city’s overall master plan. The master plan is typically comprised of two sets of elements. One set are the maps and the other set are the legal descriptions. Both taken together are legal documents that essentially describe our community as we want it to be as it is right now, and B, as we’d like it to be in the near future master plans. And part of the reason that we’re going to do a whole episode on this is that they’re so dense and affect every single person that lives in a community. Master plans, in my opinion, are a lovely tool for a community to acknowledge change. They are a way for us to plan for changing demographics, changing ways of mobility, changing, understanding of who’s vulnerable in our community and who’s not.
Molly (00:55:13):
This. Most municipalities across the country are required to go through a master planning process every so often. In Michigan, that window is every five years. What the master plan process includes can include a lot of different things from an entire soup to nuts master plan process to updating certain elements. Ann Arbor has not done a soup to nuts master plan since 1998. So in my opinion, our master plan is pretty stale. It’s not at all static. We’ve been working on it constantly since then. The first non-motorized transportation plan that I’m aware of is in 2014 that’s been updated multiple times, and now we have this kind of more comprehensive transportation plan coming forward. The treeline plan, the non-motorized trail was approved in 2017. There’s a number of elements in our master plan that are more updated than 1998, and there was, I would say, maybe a half process around 2008 and 2009.
Molly (00:56:17):
Our city has changed a lot in 22 years. Our understanding of what a city is and could changed it a lot in 22 years. Ann Arbor’s long overdue for a master planning process, and our staff know that. A couple years ago, they actually began the process requested by city council to request proposals for a new master plan process. The last council paused it like they award awarded a contract and then put the project on pause, and then the pandemic hit and rendered all of it moot. Anyway. So Molly, did that answer your question about what and why?
Jess (00:56:53):
Yeah, I think so. And so this piece that’s on the agenda this week, that is a step forward for the comprehensive transportation plan. It’s a great opportunity when we talk about action items, go read this report, think about what you would like to see changed, or if you think it’s really great because it is really, it’s really great. There’s a lot of really good stuff in this proposal, and I would be thrilled to live in the city that this plan envisions, but nothing is perfect. And so if there are things that you think could be better, this is a perfect opportunity to read the report and provide feedback. And lots and lots of different organizations and agencies will also be doing that right now. And then don’t some mandated timeline. I don’t remember what it is for when the feedback has to be in. And then there will be another round of revisions. And then after that, I believe is when we get to the step that is actually adopting this plan and saying, yes, this is our transportation plan for the next 10 years.
Molly (00:58:03):
And there’s been some community conversation about whether it was appropriate to move forward with a transportation plan in the absence of a more current master plan. And in my mind, that’s a bit of a chicken and egg question. We’re always going to need updated versions of both Transportation plan as a subset of the master plan is inherently less complicated to finish. And given our changes in our understanding in mobility, it’s changed radically in the last few years with micro mobility, electric scooters, electric bikes, a distributed bike network, that those things have been changing relatively rapidly. So in my personal opinion, I think it’s appropriate that we’ve gone after this smaller chunk and can incorporate it into the larger master plan when we move that process forward.
Jess (00:58:50):
Cool. And so now I’m looking, I think this was the last agenda item that we wanted to talk about today. This agenda was pretty light again, and as we talked about last time, we are very for this council to take on the heavy stuff and start doing more. And when we last spoke, we wanted to give them a little time, but it’s 2021 now, or it will be by the time you’re listening to this and w we’re ready.
Michelle (00:59:25):
Got to move on. Yeah. A lot of this stuff is just advancing things along a tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. And I want to see the fireworks. I want to see this have these radical changes that we’re going to need to have if we’re going to become carbon neutral by 2030. And if we’re going to have no traffic fatalities by 2025, that’s, you’re not going to do that by just advancing town, by just approving township annexations and going home.
Molly (01:00:02):
Yeah. Our last couple of episodes we finished off with fill in the blank. What would you like to see on the agenda? I got the sense in preparing for this episode that all three of our answer was something,
Michelle (01:00:14):
Yeah,
Molly (01:00:15):
I would like to see something,
Michelle (01:00:17):
Yes, something advancing, a vision of people, of living together, working together and being able to walk to work, walk to all your shopping and taking transit. We need a, I’d like to make the city more sustainable.
Molly (01:00:38):
So for any council members who are listening to this, I’d like to invite you to help us and your constituents understand as we move into budget season, how can we advocate for a more progressive, more inclusive, more exciting city? One, I just think easier and more comfortable for all of us to live in. So help us understand how we can help you do the big work that you’re here to do.
Molly (01:01:06):
I think what we’d like to close on is we are getting ready for some pretty fun episodes coming up, and we’d like to invite your questions and feedback. So our podcast email is ann arbor af pod gmail.com. That’s Ann Arbor, a n n a r b o r a as in Ann, F as in Forsyth, middle School pod, p o d, at gmail.com. We’re interested to know what you’d like to hear about what questions you have about the city and about politics in particular. We’re getting ready to do a deeper dive on Council dynamics. And if you have questions about, oh, I’ve seen my council member in the news, I’m not sure I understand what’s going on. We’d like to get a little bit more into the weeds on what it means to sit at the council table. So if you have any questions about that, feel free to shoot us our way. That’s ann arbor gmail.com. And with that, would like to thank you for listening to this episode of Ann Arbor af. Thanks as always to Molly Kleinman, Michelle Hughes, myself, Jess Leeta, and to our producer Jared Malist Stein. For questions about this podcast or ideas about Petra episodes, you can email us at ann arbor af pod gmail.com. Get informed, then get involved. It’s your city.