Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up on Monday, December 6th. We’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including sidewalks, dollars for climate, and justice, 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.
Links we referenced:
– Sidewalk snow removal report
– September 2021 Transportation Commission meeting video, discussion of sidewalk snow removal
– Annual Council legislative policy agenda
– Politico article about police reform in Washtenaw County
– Coalition for Re-envisioning Our Safety (CROS) Petition
– A2Zero plan and A2Zero investment plan
– Independent HR investigation
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. And hey, if you wanted to ko-fi us a few dollars to help us with hosting, we wouldn’t say no.
Transcript
NOTE: This version of the transcript was generated by an automated transcription tool and will contain (sometimes hilarious) errors. When we have time for human editing to clean this up we will update it, but we hope this imperfect version is better than nothing.
Speaker 1 (00:00:11):
Hi, and welcome to this episode of Ann Arbor af, a podcast for folks trying to figure out what’s going on in Ann Arbor. We discuss current events and local politics and policy governance and other civic good times. I’m Jess Leet and I’m here with my co-host Molly Kleinman. We both use she her pronouns we’re your co-hosts to help you get informed and get involved. It’s your city. Let’s jump in.
Speaker 1 (00:00:41):
Today we’re talking about the next city council meeting. Coming up on Monday, December 6th, we’ll be touching on a few interesting agenda items, including sidewalks dollars for climate and justice, 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 and a new quick process. Note today we’re trying something a little new with this episode, instead of going in strict agenda order because there is so much to talk about. Molly and I have grouped council business into sections this time that includes transportation, equity and justice, sustainability and governance. Let us know what you think about the change on Twitter or over email at ann arbor af pod gmail.com. I also want to say happy birthday to us. Yay.
Speaker 2 (00:01:30):
Yes,
Speaker 1 (00:01:31):
Yay. We published our first episode the first week of December, 2020. At the time, I had no idea where this was going. That’s probably still true, but I have enormously enjoyed the process and I’ve definitely gotten more informed and involved myself.
Speaker 2 (00:01:45):
Yeah, I can’t believe we’ve been doing this for a whole year
Speaker 1 (00:01:47):
All year.
Speaker 2 (00:01:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:01:51):
All right, Molly, want to kick us off with some transportation stuff?
Speaker 2 (00:01:54):
Yes, so the first thing we’re going to talk about is not on the agenda. It’s in the response to a resolution to improve winter sidewalk maintenance. So this was an instruction from council at some point last winter towards the end of the winter, asking the city administrator to figure out what it might look like for the city of Ann Arbor to have municipal sidewalk snow removal. This is something that some other cities do. It’s not super common, but Ann Arbor sidewalks have a tendency to be pretty terrible in terms of snow removal. It’s really patchwork, and so this is sort of potentially a first step towards getting to municipal sidewalks, no removal. The current state is that property owners are responsible for clearing their own sidewalks. If they don’t do it, the city enfor, there’s an enforcement mechanism where the city can sort of leave a note and say, you have to clear a sidewalk, or we’re going to fine you, and then they can come back and find property owners.
Speaker 2 (00:02:51):
In practice, that doesn’t happen very often. It’s really complaint driven and anytime you’re focusing on enforcement fines, it’s probably an inequitable approach to dealing with whatever the thing is in this case, clearing sidewalks. So we saw an earlier version of this report at the transportation Commission meeting back in September, and I think it is potentially worth going back and watching that discussion because there were a lot of questions that came out in that meeting that the report kind of answers, but it’s some gaps there that I think Jess and I are both a little bit disappointed in as well as some things that sort of stood out to me that the report doesn’t really get into. I think overarching thing to note all every po, so the report lays out like six possible approaches to doing this from they ordered from the least expensive to the most expensive, but they note that first of all, no matter what, it’s going to require funds that are either going to have to be redirected from other operations or additional revenue.
Speaker 2 (00:04:05):
So there’s no way to do it with the resources that we currently have. The other piece is that it’s all of these approaches are going to require more staff. Some versions have those being full-time city staff. Some versions have those being mostly temps or contractors, but regardless, humans that we don’t currently have in our employee are going to have to do this work, and especially right now with the way the labor force is looking, it’s likely to be difficult to get enough people to do this work. Leaving aside which one we choose, I thought that those were worth noting about all of these options. So I think thing that’s one thing that stood out. I’m trying to figure out where to start here because there’s just really so much. So I think one thing that really frustrated me about this report is that it doesn’t include a pilot.
Speaker 2 (00:04:58):
So the city council resolution said, figure out how we can do this long term short term. We want to pilot next winter. We want to try this out somewhere, and there is no pilot in here and I don’t quite know why, and I’m disappointed because we need to start figuring this out. It’s the system that we have is inequitable. It’s dangerous. It doesn’t treat sidewalks like transportation infrastructure. So I’m not really sure why we’re not trying something. I think the report is basically like, well, it would cost money even to do a pilot and we don’t have that money and I’m just, well, so a ask for that money like allocated, so there’s no pilot in there. Another detail that’s really stood out to me is that currently the city, I didn’t know this, they’re reassigning parks staff to road clearing and they don’t put those park staff onto clearing the sidewalks adjacent to parks until the roads are cleared. This feels like a real obvious thing that the city could change right now and instead direct those staff to clear the sidewalks first because anytime you’re putting sidewalks behind roads, you are prioritizing cars over humans, which is not great. Jess, I’m going to invite you at this point to jump in on any of this. I know you also had a lot of reactions and feelings.
Speaker 1 (00:06:27):
I did. I have a whole spreadsheet worth of numbers and feelings or numbers about which I have feelings. So I wanted to back up to the report for just a second. Molly noted that there are essentially six possible approaches laid out from least to most intensive and least to most expensive, and that in itself is important. The only two metrics that we get are the number of miles and the number of dollars, the number of miles that would be addressed and the number of dollars it would take to do it. I find this distressing because there’s no evaluation analysis or even acknowledgement of differential impacts. We’re not talking about density, we’re not talking about owners versus renters. We’re not talking about poorer neighborhoods. We’re not talking about serving our affordable housing neighbors. We’re not talking about justice, and if all we’re doing is asking the community how many dollars can we spend without understanding who those dollars benefit, we’re not having the right conversation and we’re not having a good conversation.
Speaker 1 (00:07:32):
I also wanted to be a little bit clearer about what those options are. So essentially the two criteria that they’re overlaying are do we hire or do we contract and what level of service do we give sidewalks? And they have three levels of service. One is major thoroughfares, which are essentially our transit corridors. One are what they call major streets, and then one is neighbor neighborhood streets. Then neighborhood streets one is the most intensive. There’s the most miles. There’s something like 385 miles of neighborhood streets where there’s I think less than 50 miles of thoroughfare. The problem is people start any trip from home most trips, and I get the desire or the value of looking at thoroughfares, right? Because we do have a lot of transit riders and they do need to be able to get from the stop to wherever it is that they’re going. That is absolutely important and should be a priority. My concern with saying one street is more important than another street. I’ve said this before, I will say this a million times again, is that we shouldn’t be treating sidewalks as an amenity. We should be treating it as infrastructure. And the minute that we say this kind of street is less important than that kind of street, we are saying that kind of street is an amenity, right? Where for users,
Speaker 2 (00:08:56):
I want to jump in on the residential streets piece for on a couple of things. First is that apparently no, no city does municipal sidewalks, no removal in residential streets of all of the cities that do this kind of work that they reached out to learn from how they do it. Residential streets are not on the list. It would be unprecedented to do that level of snow clearance. I’m not saying we shouldn’t consider it, but putting that,
Speaker 1 (00:09:24):
So was the menstrual products ordinance, let’s do it. We could do tampons, we could do sidewalks, right? Ann
Speaker 2 (00:09:29):
Arbor, I mean, right? So that’s one piece of it. Another piece is that I just want to bring up, I don’t think in this report, but people will may say, well, what about snow? Snow is the volunteer program in a neighborhood on the northwest, the west side side of Ann Arbor, where neighbors donated to buy a sidewalk clearing little mini plow thing and other neighbors volunteer to operate the plow to clear all of the sidewalks. And I believe curb cuts in the neighborhood in a timely manner, and it’s lovely. And the snow buddy people have put together a report with recommendations to the city about how it could be done, which seems like if residential streets are such a big lift, why not do it that way? And city theft did look into it, but again, to the equity concerns that you mentioned, Jess, anytime you’re relying on volunteers in a neighborhood that’s going to work out in a really inequitable way and there was just no version of that, that can be done equitably. And so volunteer, that volunteer model is off of the table. And I think that, which
Speaker 1 (00:10:45):
By the way, the snowy people say every single report they’ve written for the city, every time they present, they say, this is not a scalable, sustainable model. They’re so clear about
Speaker 2 (00:10:54):
That, right? And so it’s not on the table. I think that that’s the very much the right call, which is for anyone out there who’s thinking, but what about snow Buddy? That it doesn’t scale. It’s nice that they have that, but it doesn’t scale.
Speaker 1 (00:11:09):
I do want to acknowledge Molly said there’s no pilot and she’s right as usual, and she’s also wrong in that there’s a section called Pilot solutions. And I just wanted to give credit because staff are really thoughtful and they do what they can, especially when they are given impossible requests. And I don’t think that this was impossible at the outset, but upon analysis, I think what they’ve determined is that given dollars. But even more than that, as Molly said, given labor conditions, there’s very little that we can implement in the window of this winter. So what they put in the imed, immediate actions and pilot, so solutions section were two things. One, having to do with better snow clearing options in the downtown district, and two is to work with the police department and community standards to build a more robust education and enforcement campaign for snow clearing in our residential neighborhoods.
Speaker 1 (00:12:01):
My criticism of this is twofold. One, these, they did this a disservice to call it a pilot solution, and they’re the people who are already doing good work, especially in the downtown. The businesses and the business districts are really mindful about prompt, attentive, complete snow clearing. Nothing is ever perfect, but if there’s anything that’s consistent and not patchwork, it’s in the downtown. And so this is I think saying, let’s quote unquote do this because it’s already being done and we can point to it as a success story. That’s fine, but that’s not a pilot. Also, working with the police department and community standards, as Molly noted, is problematic. And if we’re so anxious to defund the police, why is it the police department? Why can’t we put it under community engagement or a different area of the city? And also can it not be enforcement? And also can it not be kind of hat in hand? Please sir, and ma’am, will you cle clear your sidewalk, which is the heart of the problem, but essentially what they’re saying is they already have education and enforcement, so please keep doing what you’re doing. So these are immediate actions, not pilot solutions.
Speaker 2 (00:13:16):
And another, there’s another piece of this too, which is in the downtown area especially, I think there was some interest in focusing on specifically curb cuts, which are frequently where things break down. So the plows clear the roads, the property owners clear the sidewalks, the plows push the snow into the curb cut, it doesn’t get dug out, and then it becomes really hazardous. And the very tragic death that we had a couple of years ago was right in Kerrytown and the man who died slipped on ice that had been piled up in the curb cut. So something that came out of the original pedestrian safety and access task force years ago and also came out of transportation commission more recently was this question about curb cuts and how can we, especially looking at the downtown where they do a good job on the sidewalks, can we do something extra to focus on that, that particular pain point? And I appreciated that the city staff did actually go and figure out what it would look like to do a curb cuts only approach with the understanding that plows are contributing to those problems. And it is often difficult to get that stuff cleared out of a curb cut, even if a single human is trying to do it. But they found that in terms of how much it would cost, it didn’t really, it wasn’t going to be all that much cheaper than just doing the sidewalks also.
Speaker 1 (00:14:38):
So a couple more things that I wanted to say. The staff made four recommendations for following steps to continue to work on the project. I agree with three out of the four, and unfortunately the one that I disagree with was directed in the original resolution. So I’m not saying don’t do it, but I think it’s premature. What staff is recommending is as directed in resolution, blah, blah, blah. We’ll drop a link to it in the show notes, carry out a public engagement process to determine community interest in a municipals snow clearing operation for pedestrian infrastructure and determine community opinions of acceptable costs. My issue with this is that, or rather, instead of that, I think the next step would be to, for example, coordinate with the county’s racial equity office and ask for advice on how to do an equity audit of this report. I don’t know that the county can help the city with its homework, but we need to do something because to me, this report is missing so much in that area that to take a quote public next step on it would be premature at best and irresponsible at worst. We are not giving people enough information to make an informed just decision. I think public engagement is absolutely premature here.
Speaker 2 (00:15:56):
Yeah, I think that that’s totally right. I will note this is there’s no vote happening on this at this council meeting. This is purely just, it’s just a communicational. It was attached to this agenda, and so this is when we read it and are talking about it, but an actual vote will happen down the line. So this is an opportunity if you wanted to reach out to your council members and say, Hey, I really care about sidewalk snow removal. I also care that it’s done equitably. Please do something about that some time for you to do that.
Speaker 1 (00:16:24):
Another thing that you can advocate around the report makes very good points around the challenge of funding this. The very lowest cost scenario is looked at as, I think 1.2, close to 1.3 million over the first two years. There’s a more conservative estimate of that or a slightly smaller estimate of that. But realistically, 1.3 million, that is the lowest possible estimate. Scenario six has a two year cost of 21 million, and as a reminder, our general fund is around 105 million. So this is absolutely not nothing. I will make the regular point that the Ann Arbor Police Department budget is over 31 million and approximately a third of our annual general fund. So I’m just going to say that and leave that there. I also want to note that Ann Arbor every year sets a legislative agenda, things that they want to get done policy-wise locally, but at the state, and there’s a few things that they can do to move the needle on funding from the state that would significantly help something like this.
Speaker 1 (00:17:38):
One is municipal revenue sharing, which we’ve talked about on the pod before. Restoring that to its previous level probably wouldn’t fund this entire program, but it would come pretty close. Also on the legislative agenda is to advocate for efforts to reform the Headley amendment and proposal A, which would allow a reasonable and sustainable level of prop property tax revenue growth, just allowing for more natural property tax revenue collection. Municipally would go such a long way towards being able to fund this and do it in a way that’s appropriate from property taxes back to the properties that it benefits. And then the last thing is on the legislative agenda. It’s called monitor funding provided from the distribution of fuel taxes and other revenues from the state and actively support increases in the distribution to local government. I can think of nothing finer than robbing the gas fund to pay for sidewalks. Let’s do it.
Speaker 2 (00:18:35):
Yes, please. That sounds terrific.
Speaker 1 (00:18:39):
Did we say everything about this thing? That isn’t even the thing yet.
Speaker 2 (00:18:42):
We pretty much did the, my last note you mentioned the police budget. One question that came from former transportation commissioner Brad Parsons, who has moved to Alaska and we already miss him very much, was to ask what the current budget is for road clearing, like road snow removal, what are we spending on that? And the city staff basically said it was too complicated to figure out Nellis, but I can promise you that we are already spending more money on clearing the roads for cars than probably what many of these proposals would cost for the sidewalks. So again, when we talk about who we prioritize and when we talk about transportation infrastructure, there’s money there. It’s just how we’re choosing to spend it.
Speaker 1 (00:19:24):
That’s right. And be wary too of any time something is proposed as a zero sum game, municipal funds are not unlimited, but there are ways to be creative about revenue. So
Speaker 2 (00:19:34):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (00:19:35):
Cool.
Speaker 2 (00:19:36):
So I have another very minor transportation thing to bring up and then we can move on to justice and equity, which of course we were already talking about
Speaker 1 (00:19:44):
With some, sorry,
Speaker 2 (00:19:45):
Funny how that works. So ca six, this is on the consent agenda. It’s a resolution to prohibit on street parking on the north side of windshield drive from Brockman Boulevard to near Hall Avenue. This is a stretch of road where there’s going to be a major water main project next year. And so they’re looking at some road confi reconfigurations and they’re looking at adding a sidewalk to the section of Winchell. But in order to do it, they would either have to cut down a bunch of mature trees or take away street parking on that side of the street. They did some community engagement. Nobody wants them to take out the trees, but also not that many people want them to take out parking. Most of the property owners don’t want anything to happen. They don’t want anything to change. But this is another situation where it would not cost them anything to put in a sidewalk because we have this millage now and yet surprise property owners are still objecting to the new sidewalk. And so my hope is that this will pass in the consent agenda and it’ll not be an issue. But if it gets pulled and if this sidewalk gets voted down, that’s a bad decision. And it also tells us that we have this millage that we are taxing people to put in sidewalks that we are unable to spend because we don’t have the political will to put in these sidewalks. I would argue that it was always a question of political will. It was not a question of money.
Speaker 1 (00:21:14):
Molly, can you remind me? My Ann Arbor geography is failing me a little bit. Brockman, is that ward three?
Speaker 2 (00:21:20):
It is, yeah. It starts at Packard. So it’s sort of right at that ward three, ward four border. It’s right up. It leads up past St. Francis, and there’s a little park up there, which is actually the next agenda item. But yeah, so it’s ward three on the south side, south the stadium.
Speaker 1 (00:21:45):
So if you have feelings about sidewalks being infrastructure and more sidewalks being a good thing, maybe drop a little note to Travis Rodina and Julie Grand Ward three council members and let them know you’re in support. Plus support letters are always nice. Speaking of Winchell, there is another thing on the consent agenda about renaming Winchell Park. There is a n note about the derivation of this park’s name. This person was a noted racist even for the time. There’s no level setting that you have to do. Even folks at the time were like, this is a bit on the sketch side. So the parks has an equity initiative. They’re looking at the names of all of their assets and reevaluating what is appropriate and what isn’t. This very rightly came up. There was community engagement around renaming that’s moving forward. I encourage folks to take a look at it.
Speaker 1 (00:22:37):
All the people that were nominated were super interesting. There were no bad options. I’m excited about the person that they chose. But my issue with this is not the renaming itself, but in the absence of more systemic work, this is quintessential performative justice. It’s not nothing, right? We have to eradicate all pieces of white supremacy where we find it. But until our equity and justice work is systematic and comprehensive, it’s evidence of our city’s uneven commitment or more accurately our unwillingness to fully commit to systemic equity and justice. And so I just want to call that out. It’s necessary but not sufficient.
Speaker 2 (00:23:19):
And then in that same vein, there are a couple of updates. This is another consent agenda item. There were some updates to police regulations, most of which were not talking about there. Things like glue, like glue regulations, which when Jess texted me, I was like, is glue a typo?
Speaker 1 (00:23:39):
And I said, her model glues, and I’m pretty sure you thought, I thought I meant model guns.
Speaker 2 (00:23:43):
I couldn’t even begin to guess what glues was an auto correct of originally. And it turns out it’s glue. We’re not going to go there today. However, also in there is that they’ve updated the list of fireworks holidays to include Indigenous People’s Day and Juneteenth. You may recall that last year the city passed a resolution to recognize Juneteenth as a holiday, which is great, but again, not deep in some of the ways that we’re looking for. But I thought it was worth noting only because I can imagine myself hearing fireworks in mid-June and being like, are we doing this already? Isn’t it a little bit early? But no, we’ve added fireworks holidays, which I think is appropriate. If we’re having fireworks on July 4th, we can also have them on Juneteenth. Leaving aside my feelings about fireworks in general,
Speaker 1 (00:24:33):
I know please, for the sake of dogs, please know fireworks. I know I love leave them to other people’s cities. Go on your bike or something. Use transit, get there. But oh, no, no more fireworks.
Speaker 2 (00:24:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:24:47):
Anyway, that’s absolutely not a justice point. Another justice point, however, something that I was excited to see on the agenda, this is CC one, which is council communications. We don’t often see something in the section, so it was cool to see it and it was cool to see this particular thing. It’s a resolution appointing among other people. Cynthia Harrison to the Molly, I’m blanking on what a buck stands for.
Speaker 2 (00:25:12):
Independent Community Police Oversight Commission.
Speaker 1 (00:25:16):
Thank you. I was starting to get it twisted with the voters, not politicians thing. So thank you for helping me with that. Cynthia Harrison and her story rose to prominence a little bit earlier this year through a political article, excuse me, a political article that will link in the show notes on police reform in Washtenaw County with mental health, both as its thrust and its Achilles heel. And the reporter told a really sensitive and heart wrenching story about Cynthia’s family, her son who got tangled up with the law really, really early in his early teens and has had a hard time extricating himself from that system. And just the grind and the black hole and the kind of sucky down swamp that it is, the quicksand that it is. So Cynthia Harrison getting appointed to pac, I really can’t think of anyone more apt for this specific appointment. And also I absolutely hate that it takes trauma to get folks involved in the civic process, but if this is a means of healing and of harm reduction for her to take agency over that and really big ups to Cynthia for putting the pieces together on how local systems are intersecting to harm her family and acting to take agency over that, I celebrate that so much, even though my heart hurts for how it happened. So welcome Cynthia Harrison Pac. I hope your term of service is a good one.
Speaker 2 (00:26:56):
And the last thing in this section is something that’s also not on the agenda this week, but that we expected on the agenda, which was a report about an unarmed responder program. So back in April, city council passed a resolution asking for a plan to create an unarmed crisis response program for the city of Ann Arbor. We expected this plan this month. It’s still expected later this month, so this is not a humongous delay, but it’s not on this agenda. In the meantime, if you haven’t already checked out the coalition for re-envisioning our safety or crows, I encourage you to do that. This is a really spectacular coalition of folks across the city and the county working to create a vision for an armed response and for community safety that goes well beyond the sort of narrow mental health response focus that I think the city was originally looking at.
Speaker 2 (00:27:52):
We’ll have the link in the show notes and in the meantime, if you have direct experience with police responding to a crisis when another kind of response would have been better, we would love it if you would consider making a short video or comment for crows for them to share online and share with city council. I think these kinds of personal testimonials are really powerful. As j Jess was talking about this article about Cynthia Har Harrison and her son, those kinds of specific stories can really help change the way people think about these issues around safety and police. And so that would be terrific. So that’ll be in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (00:28:35):
All right, we’re never done with justice, but we’re going to transition to talking about sustainability with a side of justice.
Speaker 1 (00:28:43):
And I’m going to start with a couple of items on the consent agenda. The first one is 13, which is lease between the city of Ann Arbor or from the city of Ann Arbor to the University of Michigan. I mostly noted this because I just wanted to take a look at it. I know that these leases happen. I don’t know a whole lot about it. And the price $4,500 for a year seemed really low and I wanted to know what that was about. So it is a surface parking lot between 12 and 15 spaces, depending on, I don’t know the size of your car maybe. But the thing that kind of caught my notice about this besides the low dollar amount, is that it really doesn’t seem compatible with our sustainability goals, our climate action plan, the A two zero. It doesn’t seem compatible with any of those goals.
Speaker 1 (00:29:32):
It’s also incompatible with what we know about the high cost of free parking. And that’s a shout out to Donald Chu’s book. But there are so many ways that we subsidize car ownership and car use and parking lots are one of the biggest ones. And I say that as somebody who sits on the D D A and manages our system of downtown parking lots, which is partly why I’m really sensitive to it, is we’re making parking cheaper than it actually is, which makes owning a car feel cheaper than it actually is. We need to make these costs explicit because that’s how we’ll understand better the impact on the environment. So I was curious if they charged prices more in line with the D D A, if that $45 annual fee would be appropriate. So I did a quick calculation based on if they charged for hourly fees versus if they charged this as permit parking.
Speaker 1 (00:30:29):
And either way, it would be between 20 and 30, $30,000 in revenue. So I am not sure that this is a great price. The resolution notes that this agreement has been in place since 1979, and I would argue that it has not been keeping up with inflation. So that’s one of my issues. But more than that, it’s the fact that we are continuing to subsidize parking. I was also curious about whether given that this is leased, the U includes this in their own inventory of parking spaces, which currently stands around or a little over 30,000. I hope it does, given that this resolution notes that this is typical of other city agreements. So I want to be clear. I’m not saying don’t pass this. Absolutely do. This is nothing burger of a thing, but I just wonder if there’s an opportunity to be a little bit more thoughtful, not just about this decision, but the decisions like it.
Speaker 2 (00:31:23):
Yeah, I had a whole little moment with this one because $4,500 a year for any plot of land that could be built, could be built on, that’s nowhere near the value of this land to potential value of this land to the city then seeing that it’s actually for parking. And there was a note about how much the university is charging for these parking spots, and it usually they charge $300 a year for a permit to park in one of these spots. Currently, probably because of covid, they’re only charging $167 a year, which means the university is making it incredibly cheap to park on campus, which defies all logic because there’s a constant parking crunch. We think this is maybe student parking and not like commuter students. If it was commuter students, I would maybe understand because they have a lot of barriers and challenges to deal with. You want to make it possible for them to park near campus fine. But if this is for students living in the dorms, what are we even doing? And I guess we as, I don’t know, Ann Arbor University, everyone, so, so this is going
Speaker 1 (00:32:31):
To pass no action, just general outrage.
Speaker 2 (00:32:33):
It’s fine. But yeah, we have to complain about parking for a minute, although on this next one we’re going to not complain about.
Speaker 1 (00:32:39):
That’s right. That’s right. A nice thing happened to you guys and I wanted to tell you. All right, so there’s a cost share agreement coming between the city and the downtown Development authority, the D D A initiated by the Office of Sustainability and Innovation. And honestly, I just had a crush on the office, not the people, also the people, but just the office. I love them. I love the work that comes out of there. It feels like it makes so much sense to me. I want to do it all. Please remember this later when I criticize the millage, but there is a cashier agreement coming that is going to use a D T E grant to subsidize 80 new electric vehicle parking spots in the city. And after asking some questions about this at the last board meeting, it sounds like these are all going to be structure parking, which takes advantage of conduit and electric electrical infrastructure that we already have. So that money is coming very little, if any, is actually coming from either the D D A or the city budgets. Most of this is grant dollars, and it’s just cool that the city approached us for this. So yay 80 new electrified parking spots.
Speaker 2 (00:33:43):
And I will say, I think that this is probably the ideal way to be doing electric vehicle parking infrastructure. There are other cities where this is becoming more of an issue, but places are starting to consider curbside electric vehicle charging stations. There’s a pretty high cost to installing EV parking high to get it started. And anytime we are syncing lots of costs into curbside parking, it makes it a lot harder to take away that parking from cars and give it to all the other road users. Parking cars on streets is intensely inefficient use of city space. So this is great. More EV parking in the structures is terrific, but I just sort of wanted to put it on everyone’s radar to keep an eye out because curbside EV parking is a different thing and I will be much crankier about it. And when we start to see that here,
Speaker 1 (00:34:38):
You are already a wee bit cranky about it. Anytime the word car comes, I see you twitch.
Speaker 2 (00:34:43):
It’s fine. I mean, the structures are going to be here and that’s great. It’s good. Okay. The thing about my crankiness with electric vehicle, any time we’re talking about spending money on infrastructure for electric vehicles is that it means we’re spending money to perpetuate our intensely broken transportation system. Cars will never solve the problem of cars, and electric vehicles are never going to get us out of our climate crisis. They’re never going to get us out of our pedestrian safety crisis. And so I want people to be thinking and dreaming and imagining so much bigger when we talk about what transportation could look like. And it’s especially living in Michigan, because in Michigan as a state, we have just tripled down on electric vehicles, are it? It’s the only thing we’re going to do to address the climate, and that’s not actually even going to the climate crisis, and it’s going to cause other environmental problems that are also really bad and making the earth less inhabitable. So that’s really what’s happening when I get cringy about any time we spend money on EVs is I’m pissy about EVs full stop.
Speaker 1 (00:35:52):
And I don’t want to minimize that. One of the challenges, and I’ll get into this again when I talk a little bit more about the climate action millage that comes later in the agenda, is the way that we treat sustainability right now, it doesn’t even rise to the level of amenity. We create these highly specialized buckets and we put money in those buckets. And then we say, you can only spend money for things that are friendly on the planet for any further the planet on these things. So for example, I note that the cost of these 80 spots is the same as a quarter of the cost of the lowest intensity municipal sidewalk clearing thing over two years. I get that, but that bucket of money is absolutely not transferable. We cannot use EV dollars for sidewalks, no clearing. That’s a really frustrating thing. And I think indicative and indictment, indictment of a larger problem of how we think about funding these things. I just want to call it out as a, it’s not a glitch in the matrix designed to work this way.
Speaker 2 (00:36:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:36:57):
All right. So that was a positive thing with some crankiness on the side, but that’s all right. Reality is complicated and so are humans. The next thing that I wanted to talk about also started as a unilateral excitement thing that, so DC five is a resolution to encourage and accelerate the use of low embodied carbon building materials in construction. Embodied carbon is a building industry term to talk about how much carbon is represented in the manufacturer, use transportation and operation of any given building material or set of building materials. It’s a helpful way of understanding life cycle impact of a material over any one particular element of its use. Something can be really high carbon intensive in its manufacturer, but carbon neutral or even carbon positive in its implementation. And if you’re only looking at one or the other, you’re not getting a full picture. So talking about embodied carbon helps you have a fuller version of the picture. So resolution to encourage and accelerate use of low embodied carbon building materials and construction. I was and Ambivalently excited about this. This is one of the thousand steps that we need to take to carbon neutrality.
Speaker 2 (00:38:15):
Jeff, can you give us some examples of what a low embodied carbon building material is?
Speaker 1 (00:38:20):
Would?
Speaker 2 (00:38:21):
Oh, that’s easy.
Speaker 1 (00:38:24):
And a high one is metal or concrete.
Speaker 2 (00:38:28):
Cool. Thank you. Yep.
Speaker 1 (00:38:30):
Yeah, for sure. That’s a great question. And I feel a little bit like that was a grad school pop quiz, so for that too, did I pass systems? Teachers don’t answer that.
Speaker 1 (00:38:41):
So Molly occasionally describes learning journeys that she goes on with resolutions. I’m not sure that I went through a full journey on this, but I did have a little bit of learning. So this resolution wasn’t what I thought when I read the title. What I thought was this was going to be a revision to the building code. What this is, is a recommendation for the city to change its own standard on how it builds. That’s great. But the city itself actually doesn’t have a lot of building projects. The ones that it does, the most construction that it does is road construction and A, I think most of that is taken by the county. And b, I have a feeling that that’s not really covered. That’s not the intent of this resolution. The only body that’s getting ready to do construction at any kind of scale is the housing commission thanks to the affordable housing proposal in millage that was passed last year. So my ambivalence came in when I started to worry that this excellent and necessary instrument will become a tool for people to say no to housing projects. If they’re construction myth methods, don’t meet this asper aspirational standard
Speaker 2 (00:39:55):
Because this is a perfect, would be an incredibly Ann Arbor thing to have happen is to, of course I’m for affordable housing, but that affordable housing uses so much concrete, and so instead, it should be a parking lot forever.
Speaker 1 (00:40:10):
It’s tricky too because anytime you implement specifically a sustainability standard, you are typically adding cost and time right to a building’s construction. And time is just another word for cost. The longer it takes, the more expensive it is on a bunch of different levels. Sustainability standards, however, are really necessary. And it’s my hope that the city continues to attend to unintended consequences. So this is not, don’t do it. This is do it and keep paying attention. My hope is that the resolution sponsors who in this case are council members, Erica Briggs and Travis Rodina and the council members who vote for it are coordinating with housing commission director Jennifer Hall, on how this can be additive to the work that she’s undertaking and doesn’t add politicalness to future affordable housing creation. That’s my hope. Not don’t do it, but how are we making sure that this is both sustainable and just
Speaker 2 (00:41:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (00:41:10):
That’s a really good question on embodied carbon, Molly.
Speaker 2 (00:41:14):
Thanks.
Speaker 1 (00:41:15):
All right. I’m just taking a breath because we’re getting ready to head into a big one. And this is our last big push for this episode, although we have a couple of things to say about governance at the very end. All right, so DC three and DC four on this week’s agenda are de to determine a ballot question for a potential climate action millage and a resolution on intent. And essentially what that means is counsel is telling you that if you pass this millage, we are going to give you a heads up ahead of time how we plan to spend this money. It’s a two-sided coin. It’s this isn’t necessarily a commitment or it’s not a commitment that can’t be undone. It’s intended to be an instrument for voters to be more informed about what they’re voting on, not just do I pass this millage, but do I agree with what the money is going to be spent on? So these two resolutions are really talking to one another. The climate action millage is for a single mill. And Molly, for as often as I look at Millages, if you ask me for a definition on this, yeah,
Speaker 2 (00:42:25):
It’s some little piece of whatever your tax, your property value is, right? I don’t exactly know why.
Speaker 1 (00:42:34):
Yes,
Speaker 2 (00:42:34):
Apparently we have to do an episode on millages, but I don’t, yeah, we do
Speaker 1 (00:42:38):
Have to do it, but it’s like, yes,
Speaker 2 (00:42:40):
It’s voting to raise your own taxes for property owners in the city, they pay a little bit of
Speaker 1 (00:42:47):
More, and I think it’s something like a dollar for every thousand dollars of your home’s assessed value or something like that. So a $200,000 home would be a 200, $200 a year millage, essentially.
Speaker 2 (00:43:00):
That sounds approximately, you guys
Speaker 1 (00:43:03):
Don’t quote us on the math quote us on the logic.
Speaker 2 (00:43:06):
Yeah, don’t listen to us about the math. Tell us what we’re probably wrong. But that’s right. The principles are all sound
Speaker 1 (00:43:12):
Principles are all sound. And this would be a one mil millage, which would raise approximately six and a half million dollars a year. And I don’t remember the length of time, but my, I’m sure it’s between five and 20 years. It’s at least 10. My guess is because that’s what the climate action plan is. So my first concern is that this is a single sponsor resolution. I get really nervous anytime I see those because I can’t tell what kind of coalition building has gone in into this work. Now, the resolution and the attachment memo does a really nice job of documenting all of the community and city work that’s gone into a 20. I have no question about that, but there’s precious little in there about conversations around setting a foundation for a millage. So when I see a single sponsor resolution, and I do not see a lot of language in the resolution itself or any attachments or memos about how this came about, I just don’t have any information about what community work has been done around getting this ready.
Speaker 1 (00:44:15):
So that’s my first concern. My second concern is that this is a millage at all. This is coming at a time when we have a lot of uncertainty about the American Rescue Plan Act funds, their dispersal, where they’re going to, how they’re going to get used. There’s a ton of that uncertainty. Wasaw County for sure. And Ann Arbor in particular is looking at some serious millage fatigue just off the cuff, the sidewalks millage, the school’s 1 billion for a B dollar bond. The public safety and mental health millage, affordable housing prop C last year, and the AAA TAs millage. We keep funding things that we care about, which is awesome. But this is a lot. And the millage fatigue is real. And the last concern that I have is that this is being brought at a time where I don’t think we’ve had our interim city administrator for even two months. He hasn’t gone through a full budget process, and I don’t think that’s necessarily necessary in order to do this, but this just feels really premature for a lot of reasons. Molly, I’m just breathing in case you have thoughts, questions or switches. I
Speaker 2 (00:45:35):
Have thoughts that I think you’re going to get to, so I won’t go into them in too much detail except to say that Ann Arbor doesn’t always pass Millages. So I think we have this sort of general belief that Ann Arbor is so liberal and progressive. They’re always voting to raise their own taxes. And in fact, Ann Arbor rights routinely reject millages sometimes really important ones like the library millage, the downtown library building basement, like periodically filled with sewage. And we did not pass that millage. We did not pass a millage that would’ve done a lot of important stuff for the a ATA for public transit. It’s not a millage for, this is not a done deal. And so I think that’s worth also remembering in the context of the millage fatigue that Jess is talking about.
Speaker 1 (00:46:18):
That’s important. And the reason that I’m talking about this is getting at climate action funding through a politically vulnerable funding mechanism is fraught. And with the risk involved in it, I definitely have feelings about this in my opinion. We should absolutely, and probably most people’s opinions, we should be committing to this in an operationalized way. And that means through our budget and through known funds. So I’m not saying that there’s no reason for this. If you go back into the original A two zero plan and what’s called the A two zero investment plan, of course both of those will link in the show notes. But the investment plan really gets into the nuts and bolts of what the dollar are required to enact the climate strategies that have been identified in the E two zero plan and where those dollars should come from. And the investment plan is super clear that a bunch of those should come from Millages.
Speaker 1 (00:47:15):
So that’s been identified, that’s been known for a couple of years in that sense. This is not a surprise, but again, a milage is politically vulnerable. And one of my concerns about the timing, so the resolution as it stands, excuse me, is that this would prompt a special election in May. All of the campaign work would be done this spring, Ann Arbor, and it is the city of Ann Arbor would vote in May, whether or not to approve this. My concern is that people would take the climate action millage and politicize pieces of it for the August Council primary in ways that are really counterproductive for both. And what I’m saying is, let’s get the council primary out of the way. Let’s know who our people are, and then let’s talk about climate action because otherwise this becomes a political football in a way that has no reason to be Ann Arbor. We’re so smart, we’re so educated. Let us not turn facts into feelings and feelings into reason too, or to not vote for people.
Speaker 1 (00:48:22):
So I mentioned there are a few different ways that we could get at funding, and I wanted to put these in here, and I will note that all of them are complicated. Most of them are longer timelines than a millage would be. So I it’s, it’s not that, oh, it’s so easy. I invented it. I can’t believe you’re so no, no, no, no. It’s staff has done the right work in recommending this. And a millage is the lowest hanging fruit. I think it’s a little bit toxic fruit. So some other options that we could go to are to go back to the state, and we already talked about this actually earlier in the episode, and fight for a rework of prop a headley and municipal revenue sharing that would take time. It’s doable. It’s a much larger conversation. But those dollars coming into the city would do a lot.
Speaker 1 (00:49:11):
We talked about it in the context of municipal sidewalk snow removal. It would make a difference here too. Also a two zero and its investment plan assumes zero or very little new development. But what if there was enough new development to subsidize a fair portion of this work? What if we allowed more apartments and houses that would actually fund what we’d like to see? And then we’re not asking, or not only asking Ann Arbor rights for yet another millage, we’re saying, Hey, let’s have new people help pay for this. And folks that have been here for a while pay a little bit less.
Speaker 2 (00:49:47):
This is one of the things that really gets to me is this, there are very concrete policy choices we could be making right now that would have tremendous climate impacts and would raise revenue to do stuff like this. And it’s pure, it’s, it’s increasing density. It’s increasing our support for transit and increasing our facilities for everyone that’s not in a car, basically. Those are things we could be doing so much more of. And again, we can choose to tax ourselves for new sidewalks, but if the political will isn’t there for the new sidewalks, the money doesn’t matter. And if the political will isn’t there for these really important things we need to do around climate, this millage is not going to help us. It’s going to be nibbling around the edges. And so I want to see us make those kinds of changes first. And then if we still need a millage, great.
Speaker 1 (00:50:42):
And I think we still will need a millage. I think regardless of what changes we make, my partner often says, okay, say you’re the queen of everything. What would you want to see happen? And it’s a really nice way of clearing my brain of constraints. And so if I’m a queen of everything, we’ve magically solved prope and Headley. I don’t even know what that means, but we’ve solved it. We’ve gotten all of our municipal revenue back from the state even. We have uncapped development. We have apartments all up and down our transit corridors, and we have quadplexes everywhere else. Even if we do all of that, we still don’t have enough dollars for a two zero. We need a millage regardless. But I don’t think the millage should, we should be asking the millage to do everything. We’re doing it because everything else is harder and longer. But I don’t think we should not do it.
Speaker 2 (00:51:28):
That’s useful. That’s helpful because I’ve been very skeptical of this millage. I am not going to lie. Especially seeing how things are going with the sidewalk millage, which I was also skeptical about. So I really appreciate hearing that you, Jess, who know way more about this stuff than I Do you think you believe we need a millage, so awesome. I believe. Yeah, I
Speaker 1 (00:51:48):
Do. I believe we need the millage. I we think we need this much, and I don’t think we need it at this moment.
Speaker 2 (00:51:54):
Yeah,
Speaker 1 (00:51:55):
Soon the planet is burning, but not this particular moment.
Speaker 1 (00:52:01):
Just throw out there police budget over 31 million feels relevant and put it there and move on. Except I will note that 75% of everything that’s needed over 10 years in one year for the police department. So there’s that. And then the last thing that I wanted to say about this, I referenced it before, but the interim city administrator, Milton, he’s a fresh eye on our civic budget. And what I was referring to earlier is that while I am calm and certain that steady hands and head have been preparing our city’s budget for a long time, I am also very calm and very certain that there are efficiencies that we can realize with a fresh pair of eyes on it. So I’m wondering what it would look like to get through that budget process and then do a round of community eng engagement and education around a knowledge.
Speaker 1 (00:52:51):
I just feel like we don’t have enough information and we haven’t, having been having enough conversation, community conversation before moving forward with this, I will say that I object to the timing and I object to the amount, but I very much appreciate the intent resolution, especially the point where it says it’s going to center justice and the strategies that themselves center justice first. That actually gives me a lot of reassurance that the dollars that this millage eventually does bring in are going to be used appropriately and equitably. Something that, as you’ve heard several times already in this episode alone, we question. So that’s nice to know.
Speaker 1 (00:53:35):
I have so many thoughts and feelings. I didn’t realize that this was just going to be, Jess has opinions for 45 minutes, and sometimes Molly does too. Sometimes Molly does too. Yes. So the last thing that we wanted, the last section that we wanted to talk about on the pod today is governance, which is the business of the business of council. We’ve talked before about being careful about not bringing council business into this pod. We want to make sure that we’re keeping the focus on the work of the work, but sometimes, as Michelle Hughes says, the shenanigans become the work of the work. And that was true this week. There was a report released, we’ll drop a link in the show notes of an independent investigation into allegations that former HR director Tom Gudo had made around unjust and discriminatory practices and behaviors on Behar on the part of then acting city administrator John Fourier.
Speaker 1 (00:54:42):
John is our permanent deputy city administrator, but stepped up in the wake of Tom Crawford’s, should have been a firing, actually was. I think he retired. So John, for a hot second before Mil Deney came in as interim was city administrator and Tom Gudo was sharply critical of a few specific actions of John Fornier. So several months ago, an investigation was initiated by counsel by a third party legal office who spent two months conducting interviews, analyzing the evidence. And the report came out relatively recently, I think last week. But the meeting in question was actually to release the report to the public, which wouldn’t usually be true. This was a legal opinion, and B, it relates to an HR matter. And those two issues by themselves usually mean that something is not subject to the public record. But counsel voted to make this public, and it’s really interesting that they did.
Speaker 1 (00:55:44):
The two outcomes that are most important, in my opinion of this, are a unilateral exoneration of John Fornier. It was a careful review of every single behavior that was cited, and there were problems identified, but it was typically more with city processes than with John’s actions. I’ll note in particular, there was a background check conducted that Tom Gudo objected to, in my opinion, rightly. And actually the investigator said the same thing, that the grounds for the objection were absolutely sustainable, but that was the practice of the city at the time. It’s since been changed. The background check process has since been changed, but at the time, that’s what it was. So it was illegal, just not appropriate. So that I think was the greatest criticism. There were a lot of criticisms in there. The report exonerated John unilaterally, but that wasn’t the only outcome of the report.
Speaker 1 (00:56:44):
The last thing that it said was to note that two council members had, which the report did not name, had intervened in the process in a way that the investigator felt was harmful to the city, to the city’s workings, and to Tom Gudo and his working relationship with his department, with his supervisors. And what’s since come to Light is that it was Elizabeth Nelson and Ali Ra Lai, who they themselves disclosed. Elizabeth put it on her blog this week, and I don’t know if Ali put it in a Facebook post or how it came out, but anyway, it wasn’t Scooby-Doo. Who are those pesky kids? No. Elizabeth and Ali came forward and said we were the two council members. And one of the reasons that I’m bringing all of that up, besides I think that we should know all of those things, is that this meeting is the annual appointment of council members to committees, boards, and commissions all over the city and county. And that Ron Lai has been removed from the administration committee. Essentially, he has been said since you reported legally sensitive information in an inappropriate manner, you cannot be trusted to be in this room.
Speaker 2 (00:58:00):
It was content from a council closed session that they, oh, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:58:05):
Apparently
Speaker 2 (00:58:06):
Repeated to Tom Godo. And there are laws about what you can and can’t share from a closed session. Closed session exists for a reason there. It’s a piece of the Open Meetings Act. It’s this idea that in general, government has to be really transparent and visible. But there are these narrow cases, including human resources, situations where you can have a closed session, but then that stuff has to stay closed until such time as it’s shared publicly in a specific way. And they took stuff from that meeting and shared it with the person who was making accusations against the city, which I think is part of what makes it so egregious and alarming.
Speaker 1 (00:58:48):
Yeah, so the whole thing is unfortunate, and unfortunately the working relationship was so damaged that between the initiation at the investigation and now Tom has left the city and gone to work for the University of Michigan. So we are once again, I’m imagining in search of an HR director, but that was an outcome of that report and its findings. The other thing that I think is notable from the council committee appointments is that Jeff Haner, who used and very, very vigorously defended hate speech earlier this year, remains off of all of his committee appointments for the coming year and is up for election next August. So heads up ward one.
Speaker 1 (00:59:35):
All right. Failing any thoughts, questions, feelings, or twitches from Molly? Y’all were in the home stretch. The last thing that I wanted to talk about is DC six, which is a resolution requesting that the t d A extend curbside carryout program through May, 2022. Saying this as a reminder, I am a board member of the Downtown Development Authority. This pod is absolutely in no way an expression of that body’s thoughts, opinions, or feelings. It is only my own, but I just wanted to remind folks of that relationship. Ali is one of the city’s two liaisons to our affordable housing and Economic Development Committee. So I am a little surprised that he didn’t service this at the last meeting. If the timing didn’t work out for meetings, sometimes it doesn’t. I’m surprised that he didn’t reach out to the committee and to staff to ask whether this could be moved forward on our board.
Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
This is essentially bringing a knife to a knitting party. This is absolutely the wrong tool for this work. It could have been initiated through an email to staff saying, Hey, can you bring this to the board? The board would vote on it and move it forward from there. But having it come from the council table to the D D A board, first of all, it takes longer and second of all, it’s, it’s not evidence of a great working relationship. So the communication could have been better. Also, this is another single sponsor resolution, which I’ve already said I’m not a fan of. Case in point, this resolution is a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Absolutely, absolutely. It would’ve been much better for Ali to partner with his fellow D D A liaison, Lynn Song, or whoever represents economic development or fellow Ward five council member Erica Briggs, or literally anyone else to help develop this resolution to help reduce the appearance of conflict of interest. But Ali’s business that he owns, like he’s not a manager, he’s not an employee. He owns the business that directly benefits from this program. It’s not okay for him to bring this forward. So I hope, and I hope that this is work that ends up happening. There is community benefit to extending the curbside carryout program. It’s not okay how this came forward and when we make the process note at the top of the episode that the agenda changes and probably change between now and Monday. I hope this one does.
Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
And that’s it for this episode of Ann Arbor af. Come check out our episodes and transcripts at our website, ann arbor af.com. Keep the conversation going with fellow Ann Arbor AERs on Twitter at the two council hashtag and Facebook in the Ann Arbor Humans Who Wonk Group. And hey, if you want to send us a few dollars@kofi.com slash ann Arbor af to help us with hosting, we always appreciate it. We’re your co-hosts, Molly Kleinman and Jess Leeta. And thanks to producer Jack Jennings. The music is, I don’t know, by Grapes. You can reach us by email at ann arbor af pod@gmail.com. Get informed and get involved. It’s your city.