Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up Monday, February 1st. We discuss sidewalks, well-intentioned white people, and whether Council shenanigans may be going extinct.
References:
– this week’s agenda, including items DC-3 (snow removal), DC-4 (community engagement equity policy), and DC-5 (Council rules)
– Ann Arbor’s snow and ice removal rules
– Washtenaw County’s One Community initiative
– Ann Arbor’s Community Academy is accepting applications now through February 19th for this year’s (virtual) cohort. A2AF listeners should definitely apply!
We’ve launched a ko-fi! If you’d like to support the podcast beyond listening, you can now send a few bucks our way. The pod will always be free! This just helps defray our own costs.
Special thanks to Juliet the Greyhound for her brief audio cameo.
Transcript
JL: hi and welcome to this episode of Ann arbor as 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 just Lee talk and my pronouns if she her.
MH: i’m Michele here’s my pronouns are she her.
MK: And i’m molly kleinman and my pronouns are she her.
JL: We are your co host to help you get informed and get involved it’s your city. Today we’re talking about the next City Council meeting coming up Monday February 1 we’ll be touching on a few agenda items that intersect with our interests in case the interest YouTube and offer some ways to get involved. A quick process note we’re recording this the Thursday before the Council meeting, so the agenda will likely evolve a bit between now and the meeting next week. And even before we get into the agenda, we wanted to take a minute and just be human with you guys, it is day 3,000,005 of the pandemic and I think a lot of folks are hitting the wall, I will speak for myself. I was talking to my lovely co host earlier this evening and saying I hit an eight hour rage spiral today. And I put about 95% of that down to the pandemic not proud of it and I didn’t yell at anybody I didn’t take it out on anyone but it’s rough so for folks out there who are struggling with the pandemic we’re with you, where your masks were to masks and co host molly had surgery today so extra props to her for showing up thanks.
MK: I am not going to stay for the whole episode we’re going to rearrange the agenda a little bit we’re going to talk first about the thing that I wanted to talk about so that I can peace out afterwards and crash pretty hard. Before we get to that, I just wanted to share really quickly that we have set up a little little bit of fundraising for the podcast on I think we’re going to pronounce it coffee, it might be KoFi.
MK: let’s go KoFi.
JL: Coffee is right.
MH: So K oh dash f.com.
MK: that’s right, so you can find us at
and what we liked about coffee is that it’s really just asking for five bucks and if a few of our listeners chip in $5. That will cover our hosting fees for the podcast So if you want to give and you’re able to give we welcome it and thank you, but it’s just a really low key ask.
JL: don’t you want to give but aren’t able to give We thank you too, yes.
MK: That is also true. So now we’re gonna we’re gonna skip the consent agenda for now and we’re going to dive right into DC three. Which is the resolution requesting the city administrator determine the cost and feasibility of supplemental snow and ice removal of our pedestrian infrastructure to improve pedestrian safety. there’s been a lot of talk about pedestrians no could not pedestrian snow removal sidewalks snow removal around the city we’ve i’ve been hearing a lot more about it, and more and more cities around the country are trying to do a better job they recognize that sidewalks are transportation infrastructure and that perhaps delegating sidewalks to each individual property owner is not the best way to ensure that our sidewalks are clear and accessible for everyone who needs to use them during the winter, this is Michigan it’s it snows a lot here. So, this resolution is is talking about real problems that have bothered me for as long as I have lived in Ann arbor when I was moving to Michigan from Philadelphia people were like oh it’ll be fine they know how to deal with the snow in Michigan Michigan. And that might be true in other parts of Michigan, but it has not been my experience in Ann arbor. And um you know the problems with this, with no on the sidewalks it can be deadly We actually had last year in February of 2020 and 88 year old man named Richard Derek died after slipping and falling on snow and ice that were left in a curb ramp in cary town. And it’s a it’s a challenging problem I didn’t fully understand why the sidewalk snow removal was so challenging. Until I spoke to some city staff about it but sidewalks are a lot of different departments touch them, but nobody owns them, so the parks department deals with sidewalks that are adjacent to parks and the streets department deals with some areas of sidewalks and crosswalks and engineering deals with them and transportation deals with them, and so, with with that sort of this aggregated approach, it can be hard to do something that is going to be useful citywide.
MH: Can I talk about another problem, you talked about the person who slipped and died.
MK: Please yeah.
MH: I want to talk about another problem that really highlights the good need for municipal sidewalk removal for me is that I have a friend who uses a wheelchair or Walker and they live just just three houses, down from a bus stop but then, if any of those three people like go to work later than my friend, or like you know, like if they get up later than my friend, or if they just decide not to do the sidewalk like, then, my friend is trapped. In the House they, like all winter they can’t get anywhere, because the sidewalk hasn’t been cleared by those people and that’s why we need to not rely on amateurs for this thing, this is a serious thing. Right trapping people in the House, we, we need to have people need to have it done consistently, and that means we need it done by professionals need to pay them for their work that’s what.
JL: i’m curious a quick question to you guys if sidewalks doesn’t belong it silence don’t belong to anyone who who should they belong to, like who should who should have sidewalks we’ll just.
MH: Outside and that’s who, it should be, maybe it’s you know just decide some department that’s what I think. Roads whatever whatever it’s going to go.
MK: You know I don’t I don’t know the answer at this point, but when you think about how many miles of sidewalks we have, if we truly were going to commit to the city clearing all of them and that’s not necessarily what i’m saying we should do sidewalks could very quickly become their own department because I it’s so important to me to think of sidewalks as transportation infrastructure, my first inclination is to put it in transportation, but that’s not I don’t know if that’s where it goes. I don’t know if there’s a department that sort of overseas, for example, the crews that plow the streets or the crews that deal with vegetation in the spring and summer. But I would say that, wherever it makes the most sense to oversee a crew of people that’s where I would put this and and that’s partly because this is another one of the big challenges about sidewalks and specifically about the approach that this resolution takes to sidewalks is that when you start getting into think clearing things like curb ramps and places where the plow has already been through and then there’s more snow that needs to get cleared that’s for the most part, what they call handwork in the city that is people jumping off of trucks getting into the street and using a shovel to clear the snow and when you multiply that by every curb ramp in the city you start to see that it’s, let alone driveways which we’re going to get to driveways in a second. But it you start to see what what the scale of the problem is so i’m gonna get i’m gonna get now to the actual resolution because this resolution does not actually offer real solutions to the problem of snow removal on sidewalks. Which is unfortunate because, as I said, we’ve been talking about this in the city for a while we had a tragedy, a year ago I would love to see us taking some real steps towards treating sidewalks like transportation infrastructure. But this it’s a pretty short resolution i’m going to skip the whereas is and i’m going to get to the rest of the resolved clauses, there are two. First, one resolved that city council requests that the city administrator determine the cost and feasibility of supplemental snow and ice removal of our pedestrian infrastructure to improve pedestrian safety. So far, so good, although I will note it doesn’t say sidewalks it says pedestrian infrastructure, and I think that that’s important when we get to cause to resolved that the supplemental snow and ice removal be identified as two projects for purposes of determining costs and visibility one removing snow and ice that city plows unavoidably dump on sidewalks driveway aprons bus stops and crosswalk ramps and to maintaining crosswalks to sidewalk winter maintenance standards there’s a bunch here. First of all, sidewalk winter maintenance standards, I don’t know entirely what that means I also know that many of our sidewalks are never at those standards this that second thing that second project, it says, maintaining crosswalks it doesn’t say maintaining the curb rob curb ramp that lead to crosswalks crosswalks are already in the roadway they are already getting plug. There are some definitions of crosswalk that include the curb ramp but curb ramps are called out earlier in this in this resolution, so I don’t necessarily trust that we mean excuse me, that we mean car brands.
MH: The first some this one says says something about her crosswalk ramps.
MK: Yes, yeah so one so that’s in there.
MH: But that doesn’t necessarily mean all curb ramps I don’t know.
JL: Right well and and the fact that we’re kind of quibbling about this feels a little bit inappropriate for Council work like this kind of thing is up to staff to define and I understand that sidewalks don’t belong to anyone. But they do belong to everyone so I just like there’s a lot of what does this mean that feels a little concerning to me.
MK: And currently curb ramps are actually included in the sidewalk clearing rules that we have for the city. So property owners are responsible for clearing their sidewalks and adjacent curb ramps and bus stops. That doesn’t happen and it doesn’t get enforced, and I want to talk a little bit more about enforcement in a minute, but it’s actually already in the rules that we have. And a city like St Paul Minnesota has that same rule but they enforce it, and they have much higher rates of actually clearing their programs, as I understand it. But so, then the other thing I really want to get to about this, these two projects, this first project removing snow and ice that city plows unavoidably dump on sidewalks etc, it is not saying anything about the snow and ice that fall from the sky it’s only talking about the snow and ice that the plows put in those places and.
JL: That feels like a really sick burn on this resolution.
MK: I don’t know if it is or not it doesn’t like it’s it’s, the devil is in the details right like oh great we’re going to talk about sidewalk snow removal, and we think that, like we think we need sidewalk snow removal, and so the city should pass this resolution, but this resolution doesn’t actually address the problems that we have at all.
MH: I’m said it’s instead it seems like it’s about you know just like people are annoyed that they shoveled a site that they shovel the driveway and then the plow jobs that dropped snow there so it’s like Oh, can we get the city to like shovel single family home owners driveway so that driving is easier for them right.
MK: Like the fact that driveways are in there is life isn’t.
MH: It makes it feel like not a pedestrian thing, but a driver can drive for convenience resolution.
MK: it’s a real tell dry yeah driveways or a real tell for me on this one bus stops are super important crosswalk ramps are super important sidewalks are super important and what I would love to see. If we’re going to have a resolution. First of all, Okay, the city just looked into this a few years ago there was a big feasibility study that estimated the cost in the millions, to do not even citywide sidewalk snow removal, I think it was just sort of like a smaller chunk of the city. I could be wrong about that, though, but there was definitely a feasibility study in the last few years, so that exists. Step one I would think would be checking out that feasibility study and seeing. Seeing what the findings were but off the top of my adult and exhausted mind I immediately thought of three things that Council could be doing that would move us towards pedestrian oriented solutions toward the problem of snow and ice on sidewalks. The first would be some kind of pilot sidewalk end curb ramp clearing project that I would want to see ideally on major pedestrian routes. Glen corridors on bus routes and or rats routes to school is for some some combination of those three major pedestrian quarters bus routes and end common walking paths to schools and try like try it out budget some amount of money to do a pilot and see how it works, because there’s going to be in addition to the financial stuff there are real logistical challenges to doing snow removal at scale. So that’s thing one thing to stronger enforcement of the rules we already have that property owners have to clear not just their sidewalks but also Jason curb ramps and bus stops pausing for a moment, because anytime i’m calling for enforcement, I want to acknowledge all of the ways in which enforcement is often applied on equally and often in ways that are racially biased i’m class biased and so I would want to think hard about how we do that enforcement and where we do that enforcement, but the rules are already there.
MH: yeah and currently it’s like the the way it’s enforced is reactive, and so you know what happens is if somebody if somebody calls in and says oh my neighbor hasn’t shoveled then they’ll get to it when they get to it, but by the time they get to it, the snow will have either melted or fallen again and then we’ll get around and say oh look it’s you know either melted so no problem or oh there’s new snow and they’re not responsible for shoveling it yet, because it hasn’t been 24 hours, so no problem and you know, but then also like yeah the reactive enforcement is always the best way to encourage it to be biased and unequally enforced because yeah it’s so you know if we were going to do if we were going to do with the enforcement way.I probably should do some kind of proactive enforcement, but like even that is yeah it’s problematic it’s gonna it’s gonna be biased enforcement and then. You know, but then also like that doesn’t get the that doesn’t get the sidewalks shoveled it gets someone find for not shoveling the sidewalk you know done consistently by professionals, so we can count on it, you know. mm hmm.
MK: yeah and this so this year, the city, send out postcards to I think 5000 households sort of as a gentle reminder at the start of the winter saying hey did you know it’s your responsibility to clear the sidewalks I don’t know if that happens every winter, I know they did it this winter, I also am not sure if we know what they’re doing, but before we keep going, I want to get to my third thing that Council could be doing instead of making a plan to clear driveway brands, so I hear a lot about you know municipal sidewalk snow removal requires specialized equipment. And we don’t have that equipment well, the solution to that problem is to buy the equipment or at the very least to price it out do a little research figure out what we would need where we would keep it how we could deploy it the city has gone from zero to one, we now have one of those little machines that’s like really cute on the sidewalks that has like the spinning brush because we have one for the William street bike way.
JL: They are really cute yes.
MK: But I could not, I did some googling and I still don’t know what they’re called but their little MIC on the sidewalk and they move this know out of the way and we have one now and it’s for William street and presumably now also first street first street.
JL: artist yes.
MH: But presumably that came about the protected bike lanes that are there right.
MK: Yes, so we have the little we have this little plow, that is the right size to plow the bike lane, so that those bike lanes are going to stay operational all winter, this resolution I planes were in were intentionally protected bike lanes are intentionally designed to have both directions of bike lane on the same side of the street, so that it would be easier to plow is that right.
JL: yep That was a pun not intended, but totally intended that was a driver of the design guess right.
MK: This resolution doesn’t even talk about all this know that are in the non protected bike lanes, there was no that is in the non protected bike lanes because there’s snow in those bike lanes a lot and that’s another mobility problem.
MH: during the winter I ride in the whole lane I don’t go on the bike lanes at all right too often snow and ice.
MK: Right so these are some things that we could be asking the city administrator to look into and things that we could be considering to in the budget that would, I think, move us towards real solutions, because this is a problem and it’s not an easy problem um but I thought.
JL: Go ahead sorry I cut you off nope my God.
MK: I don’t think this resolution is the thing that’s going to do it.
JL: So I appreciate you kind of coming with alternative solutions, even more than that, I just appreciate this conversation so i’m going to tell on myself as the origin my origin story is in the south i’m from Georgia, and I assume that any difficulty that I have with snow is because i’m somehow doing it wrong. I didn’t have a car for my first four or five years living in Ann arbor so I was walking to and from school and then to and from work. And anytime I had trouble negotiating I was like Oh, I have the wrong shoes, or I haven’t mastered the Michigan walk or you know, whatever it is. Even though here, you talk what i’m understanding is actually I was on sidewalks that didn’t really belong to anyone so i’m feeling a little bit confident that i’m not bad at it, that it’s the infrastructure it’s not me so thanks.
MK: you’re not bad at it, we as a city are bad at it.
MH: And that, because there shouldn’t.
MH: Be things that you have to be good at.
JL: really not falling on my laptop thanks and.
MH: But yeah like there’s people who you know there’s people you, you have to acknowledge that there’s always gonna be people who aren’t good at things like if we just say, well, those people have to be stuck in the House all winter like because they have mobility problems because they have balanced problems, you know, like that’s just not an acceptable solution.
MK: Exactly exactly I I have been baffled by this for as long as i’ve lived here about why we don’t do better at any kind of snow removal, I also think the snow removal on our on our roads on our current infrastructure is surprisingly bad. You know the this click this resolution was clearly born out of the specific frustration with with plows going by and. Throwing snow back up onto sidewalks and driveways and curb ramps I don’t experience that problem very much because where I live, the plows almost never come. And so it’s again when we think about equity, who would this serve it’s going to serve someone who lives in a part of the of the city where the plows come regularly.
MH: And who drives and owns a single family home right and.
MK: All of those things this is the point at which i’m going to peace out. Thank you friends. I can’t wait to listen to everything else you have to say later.
JL: Thanks for coming on thanks.
MH: Man I just I feel like it was just offensive that this resolution came instead of one of the.
JL: One of the good possible alternatives that molly mentioned, you know well, hopefully, in the future.
MH: yeah hopefully, in the very.
JL: very near future.
MH: Okay. Anyway, how you doing um. So there’s a couple of things that I wanted to mention just real briefly that are on the City Council agenda, one is something that’s in the consent agenda. There are two green belt purchases green belt is a millage that we passed about 15 years ago trying to purchase the development rights and sometimes purchase property around, but not in the city of Ann arbor to preserve like farmland and open spaces. And you know the conservation easements they call it. You know, to preserve that kind of thing. So there are a couple of resolutions. Supporting buying conservation easements outside of the city of Ann arbor. And then there’s another one that’s so when we pass the green belt millage 15 years ago, it also included that some of that money would go towards a certain percent a specific percentage of that money would go towards the city outright purchasing parkland and so there’s as of like last year there was like $6 million in that fund waiting to purchase some parkland and I know, there was some people on City Council at the time were saying Oh, you know, we should buy this piece of property in order to preempt the development in the city, oh no, we should buy that piece of property in order to preempted development in that city, and the answer was always. You know the answer from staff and stuff was always like well you know the the parks people haven’t forgotten that they have that money they just don’t think that that would be a good purchase. And they’re saving the money for things that are good purchase well, apparently, the people who are in charge of this have found a piece of parkland that they would consider to be a good purchase, so it is a CA tennis to buy the price of one and a half million dollars a piece of land that would. Basically, just increase the size of Mary beth Doyle park.
And just add a little bit extra land to the to the park but I just thought i’d mentioned that and another thing to briefly mention is that we’ve had on the last couple of meeting agendas.
There have been a couple of developments that we’re excited about and this is, I think the final vote on them site plan the zoning and there’s going to be a public hearing, where you can talk about these things and those two developments are of lockwood, which is a it’s a senior apartment complex there’s going to be I forgot the exact numbers, but something like 95 units of senior apartments 45 of which are going to be subsidized affordable to anyone who makes 60% of the area median income or less, I think. And so that’s the sort of thing that I am I get that sort of thing that gets me excited it was previously proposed at a different site, it was turned down they came back. At this new site and it looks like it’s going to pass, but you know it never hurts to call into these public meetings and tell them you’re excited about something because. A lot of the times, the public meetings I just parades of knows so. A lot of people who like things aren’t often motivated to call him so if you call in.
JL: For these public hearings, if you like, affordable senior housing tell your city council members.
MH: Exactly. And then the other development is Packard.
JL: and
MH: there’s a spot that’s a mini mall with a huge sea of parking next to it, which is almost always empty and it’s at an exciting location, because it’s right near Morgan and York the the fancy wine and cheese store.
JL: Think it’s just York now but yeah.
MH: My goodness it’s right next to fraser’s pub like there’s this exciting and vibrant things going on around there and so an underutilized mini mall parking lot is not the most exciting use that so this development would propose a apartment building a three story apartment building. And the first floor is new retail so i’m excited about that it will make the neighborhood more exciting, it should make it a more of a destination and i’m going to call in at that public hearing and save that and say that i’m excited about it, and if you do that, then you can be cool like me.
JL: And i’ll call out to the in addition to New York there’s the food truck race one bracelet bbq behind there as well as bell boys, so we should totally get more apartments over there, because we need more folks supporting good food in the city. So switching over to DC for a resolution in support of an equitable Community engagement policy, this one piqued my interest and I kind of had to stick with why because I enjoy Community engagement and I believe in equity and I love me some good policy so on its face everything about this resolution should be exciting to me, but I felt.
JL: The title of the resolution everything about the resolution, thank you for that clarification because you’re totally right once I got into the language I kind of started unpacking. What made me uneasy about it, so the first thing that I want to do is define Community engagement, the city of Durham defines it as any process that seeks the community’s input. To ensure that the city’s decision making, as well informed. For the city of Durham Community engagement creates opportunities for people to contribute to city decision making, so you don’t have to serve on a board or Commission you don’t have to be an elected official you just have to care about the issue at hand and show up and answer questions and offer your experience as a response to a sidewalk project or new development or whatever it is that the city is seeking a resident opinion on. So that’s what Community engagement is, and I am interested in what equitable Community engagement is and looks like. Before I go into what’s an issue with this resolution, I kind of wanted to delve really quickly into the anatomy of a resolution for anyone that’s never read one closely. So there’s three real parts to any resolution there’s the title there’s the whereas clauses and then there’s the resolved. The whereas clauses lay the foundation for why this resolution exists, they say, given this particular piece of information or given this part of the city’s overall plan. Whatever it is, that is the basis for the resolution and then the resolved clause or clauses are the actions that Council is directing. So in this case, the resolution and supportive and equitable Community engagement policy there 23456 whereas us and to resolve, so the two resolutions are two directions to the city administrator which is appropriate, the city council essentially manages the city administrator to recommend a comprehensive equitable Community engagement policy by March 120 21. And that the city administrator build on existing Community engagement practices and the ongoing Ward work of boards commissions and volunteers. So it wasn’t actually the resolves that make me made me so concerned, it was the warehouses so i’ll start with some of the language. There are words like disadvantage under represented no not under represented unrepresented exclusion and even the word equity when I see terms like that my antenna always go up, especially when those words are being entered by a white person which the sponsors of this resolution are well intentioned white people and I count myself in that group but well intentioned white people can cause more damage than help if the effort is either uninformed by real racial equity work or by not working in solidarity with people of color in the area of concern, and I think that one of the things that kind of triggered my concern with this resolution is that neither of those seem to be true. None of the whereas is in this resolution reference larger equity goals in the city or objective equity benchmarking within the field of Community engagement or at the bare minimum, the actual equity framework that Ann arbor city Community engagement staff already use to guide their work currently and they do have one. So, this resolution is asking for new work without referencing any of the old work kind of like molly was saying, with the sidewalk resolution and that’s worrisome. Also worrisome is this whereas. And i’m just going to read the whole thing. Whereas, wherever possible, the city shall encourage individuals to speak for themselves and not rely on academic studies and stereotypical generalizations. I had a big pause on this one, because this feels like a nudge towards getting folks to talk about particular things or in a particular way and before I go into like my deepest concerned about this, I just wanted to kind of went over to Michelle for a minute, because she did such an awesome job. On the first amendment review of our last City Council podcast or less City Council edge episode i’m curious like I sure that this doesn’t cross any lines in terms of first amendment and appropriate this but is this a concern like his counsel telling people what to say with this.
MH: I mean it definitely like yeah definitely like to have stay away from City Council telling people what to say or how to say it, or who you know who should be talking, because you know it’s like um yeah it definitely feels like the city council should be governing its own speech shouldn’t be covering other people’s speech so i’m worried that if if someone you know. But it kind of doesn’t really, this is about encouraging people to talk about this it kind of seems like it’s more about like what the city is going to pay attention to. Then telling people what to say I don’t know I guess it’s kind of phrased as of what telling people what to say kind of situation, but like the thing that I think worries me the most about this is is talking about not relying on academic studies so.
JL: Like I didn’t get to that.
MH: yeah because yeah it just feels like someone comes up there makes a really good point and then someone else comes up there with some uninformed thing that’s about that’s about. Their feelings and it’s like this directive tells the city to pay attention to the feelings more than the facts and yeah I don’t know I mean.
JL: It feels to me it’s troublesome that I mean, in particular in a university town that we’re asking people not to rely on academic or reference academic studies. But even more than that, and in a country and at a time when we are struggling with miss and disinformation asking people like right out loud to engage in anti intellectual ISM like it just this one kind of really punches me in the gut so I feel like a charitable reading of this language is a request that staff evaluate lived experience over facts and science, but even then again going back to the sidewalk resolution, the language feels really clumsy and again this feels pretty micromanaging of staff. Like molly I have a I have a wish list thing so. What i’d rather see instead of this specific resolution is a larger strategic focus on equity and racial justice which the city does not have the city doesn’t have a racial equity ordinance. Like the county does. So right now it’s being left to individual departments to define and then pursue equity within their particular professions, the city’s HR department has a D program environmental justice as a key.
MH: component as any equity and inclusion.
JL: Thank you, Michelle yes dei being diversity equity and inclusion environmental justice is a key component of the city’s carbon neutrality plan and many of the individual departments, including Community engagement have their own definitions of equity and how to pursue it, but until all of that is pulled together in service of larger common goals for the Community. Each program is going to be vulnerable to that departments interpretation which is unfair, both to staff and the constituencies that they serve so I am I would rather see this resolution in supportive and equitable Community engagement policy scrapped in favor of a larger push towards true racial justice and equity. As its defined in many areas, not just race, we need to look at income equity, we need to look at ability equity, we need to look at LGBT Q equity. And again that’s being left up to individual departments to define so i’d like to see a broader focus on equity in the Community we’ve already talked about that in the last episode boards and commissions, we had a wish list of boards and commissions and, for me, one of them wasequity and justice, I would love to see a volunteer Commission staffed by the city specifically working on this that’s me so that is mine Michelle I think oh.
MH: i’m sorry, you were saying oh yeah I guess like I I remember like.
JL: I forget exactly when it happened, but.
MH: There was at one point, this the county passed a resolution declaring racism, to be a public health emergency. mm hmm and it came bundled with a whole bunch of promises like here’s what we’re going to do about.
JL: That ran then.
MH: You know, coming on the heels of that the city passed a resolution declaring racism, a public health emergency and make no promises right but raises that that felt very glaring to me because it’s like yeah we acknowledge this is a huge problem and we’re not going to do anything about it.
JL: Right so that’s another example of well intentioned mostly white work our Council is mostly white well intentioned white white folks, in my opinion, causing more harm than good, so this example is kind of a microcosm of it.
MH: And yeah like it’s not like there hasn’t been some work to do that, that could it be done like there was you know just that the last meeting we had a report about diversity equity and inclusion. And I know that there’s been some engagement with the what was it called one Community initiative or something like that.
JL: Right that’s what it’s called yeah we’ll drop a link to it in the show notes you guys.
MH: Okay, and yeah that was, you know that one Community initiative was part of what happened with ending up getting the if I recall this correctly, it was part of. You know, part of what came out of that was the county deciding to create a racial equity office with staff whose job it was to evaluate racial equity. In you know the in the functioning of the county government and the city never got that but, like you know again These are points of you know, these are pieces of work that could have been re engaged and reactivated that could have been referenced at least and instead it was just kind of this half assed like hey Can somebody solve racism for us okay.
JL: I think I mean just to get into another one of the whereas is the very first one says all humans have value, but some residents suffer from disadvantage and exclusion from public process, I really. The nice way of saying that is that I struggle with this language, the real way real talk way of saying this is that I hate this language. Residents suffer from disadvantage and exclusion, because privileged people exclude them like we don’t need to put this in the passive voice, we should put this in the active voice and not work on fixing by putting a bandaid on the broken leg right, we need to set the broken leg so so the whole language there’s there’s a whereas closing here that talks about unrepresented people unrepresented is not a thing under represented could be, and so the fact that the language at this resolution feels deeply uninformed by real race equity work also feels like it’s not informed by current Staff work. I’m not saying don’t direct staff to do things but i’m saying know where they are right now before you try to build on something know where you are and know where you’re trying to go. Before, just like you said, Michelle put out a piece of paper that says hey could you fix racism for us.
MH: Oh, and one other thing I wanted to get back to for a second was the not relying on academic studies and I guess like one other charitable interpretation of that that I wanted to put forward is you know talking about how I think that some sometimes academic studies do not engage in equity as much as they could they leave out people they leave out people’s lived experiences. And so you know it makes sense to kind of it could make sense to kind of take them with a grain of salt and to seek out some people’s lived experience but yeah this this.
JL: This is not that.
MH: I am.
JL: Not as it’s not it’s.
MH: Not that.
JL: And I think you had something of interest about Council rules.
MH: Right okay so um I am miss information your your City Council shenanigans correspondent there’s been there’s been a lot of. So you know I I consider myself the shenanigans correspondent because the i’m one of few people in the city, who stays up and watches all of every city council meeting.
JL: You so do like you should get him at all, or something like it’s amazing how much you watch.
MH: They gave me a metal once. I went to the I attended the citizens Academy, which is now called the harbor Community academy and what everyone everyone who attended the citizens academy that you’ve got a challenge coin.For excellence in Community engagement or something like that I can’t remember because I lost it. Yes I lost it at the pto thrift shop that’s where I lost it in the changing room Anyway, what was I talking about the city.
JL: Right.
MH: City Council yes okay um so there’s been a lot of shenanigans that we largely shields you from here when we talk about policy and issues but there’s a lot of like at the City Council meetings there’s a lot of egos there’s a lot of accusations there’s a lot of wasting time there’s a lot of accusations of wasting time there’s a lot of back and forth and I think that it’s spilled over so much by this point that the the heat is really on and and the residents of Ann arbor are getting fed up with the shenanigans and you know they’re calling in to the City Council meeting to comment on the shenanigans instead of talking about the policy and so forth, and. So there is a resolution that aims to lower the temperature a little bit on the city council. And it’s aimed at kind of moderating the speech of city council members at the City Council meeting and hoping that that lowers the temperature of these meetings, allowing them to progress more smoothly and be more focused on issues, and I think this this resolution resolution to amend the Council rules, and it has it seems to have broad support from city council members who are often at odds with one another, and I think that’s a good sign that it’s been thoroughly discussed by the people who need to discuss it so um and I I looked it over and everything seems like a step in the right direction to me and
JL: There are a couple of things that I like like if this is successful, there are a couple of things that I like about this and it’s only tangentially specifically related to counsel, something that I care about is civics in general being really easy for normal people, and when I say normal people I mean ones who have grocery lists and jobs and things to do, besides pay attention to what’s going on with city staff and city politics. I want it to be really easy for people to get involved, and when City Council meetings are five or six or eight hours long I again I applaud you for your stamina that’s hard for a lot of people to get involved. And whether.
MH: To stay up till two o’clock in the morning.
JL: You shouldn’t have to including our Council members, like, I appreciate the hard work, but it’s a.
MH: bath but they have to make up the next.
JL: Step exactly they have they have to be there to be able to answer questions and the other thing that I like about it again if it works is that count the heat at the Council table always without fail spills out into the Community and gets.It right so like something that could be just a little bit sharp between two Council members. Could devolve into like massive fights on an Ann arbor townie Facebook page or you know, one of the policy discussion pages.And I don’t think in a town like Ann arbor where we’re actually we’re inches we’re not yards away from each other and policy where inches.We mostly don’t need that level of aggravation like yes for sure let’s engage let’s talk about these things let’s disagree and and let’s have strong feelings about this disagreements. But we don’t need to be dragging each other, personally, because one Councils bookshop Council members book sharply to another, so those are my two hopes, is that it makes it easier and less a tacky for. Like involved.
MH: Being on a team, like you, don’t have to like.
JL: Yes, you know policy has not football.
MH: Yes, yeah right you don’t have to like always be cheering for your team you don’t have to always be you know strongly denouncing the other team in order to prove your loyalty Okay, we could be talking about policy but we’re not but um yeah so that’s I think the goals of these resolution of this of this resolution, and I wanted to call out a couple of the specifics, that you know because, like okay sure it’s great to have goals, how you gonna do it, and a lot of the stuff in here is like does seem like just a lot of words like Council members will like members shall practice civility and professionalism in discussions and debates when Members disagree, they still do so respectfully like that’s not that’s just some words you know, like it’s aspirational. You got to put it in there, I guess, but that’s not really a thing. But um and there is one, there is one actual just like aspirational goal, the type of statement that I that I do like, which is that it says that, in order to ensure accessibility of Council meetings to the general public Council aims to end meetings, no.
JL: No later than 11pm I think that’s friggin awesome.
MH: yeah yeah.
MH: And like you know it’s again it’s not like a that’s not a rule change that actually is going to change how the meetings work but it’s something that we’re going to keep in mind, and I think that’s that’s a good that’s a good thing to right there to keep it in mind.
JL: As we have learned for last four or five years norms are important, even setting a healthy norm is a good thing.
MH: And you know what actually Okay, I want to talk about a little bit. Like because a lot of the things in here that are just words.
JL: there’s.
MH: I think there was a time you know when you would go to like science fiction conferences or tech conferences and stuff like that you know, like you do.
JL: Like when does right.
MH: And like you know they always used to be like they didn’t they didn’t used to have like codes of conduct, and so, if there was like some inappropriate conduct at these meetings like there wasn’t really any thing you could do about it there wasn’t like a policy you could point to and some of them started have. Insufficient codes of conduct that are like code of conduct be could be good to each other. And then, but like that wasn’t sufficient because that was so vague and and provided such you know broad interpretation that it wasn’t really enforceable. And so I think like a lot of these are words that are about. You know kind of setting setting those norms like you’re saying and you know it’s it’s, it is the Members responsibility to prepare in advance for Council meetings, be familiar with the issues on the agenda and submit questions. To staff or colleagues, if any, before the meeting it’s the Members responsibility to be fully prepared before the meeting occurs like that sort of thing it’s like that’s not like a change it’s not like an actual change in the how the mechanics of how the meeting works, but it’s one of these norms setting things that. I think it has worked for making these you know, I think that type of thing has worked for making you know SCI fi conventions more accessible to people and I gotta say I have sat through a fair number of meetings where people are like.
JL: are learning as we’re going instead of obviously. You know, eating, whatever the report was ahead of time they’re like all right. Catch me up on these 45 pages and you’re like sn hour, so I again i’m i’m pleased to see some of these norms beings.
MH: Right right um, but there are a couple of things in here that actually changed the mechanics of how the meeting works so um I think the main thing is it used to be that each Council member got two separate sessions have three minutes to talk and that there was some. There was some questions about like you know, whenever a city council Member would have questions for staff or something like that.
JL: They would consider the clock stopped.
MH: And so, a Council member who hadn’t done their homework could come in there and just like spend half an hour being like wait, what is this thing again.
JL: Oh that’s interesting I don’t think I realized that okay.
MH: yeah but this one says it takes it down from three minutes to two minutes, so now, they only have now each Council member has two sessions two instances of two minutes to talk about on each agenda item and when they’re talking to staff, then their question and staffs answer accounts on that time awesome and But OK, but like don’t we need an informed Council well there are plenty of opportunities for them to ask questions ahead of time, one is as, of course, the agenda questions which are already. You know, written questions with written answers that are in the city council packets but this new one says that any Member may by by 9:30am on the day of a meeting flag, an agenda item for staff introduction, during which staff number will answer written questions delivered prior to the meeting and staff introduction time does not count towards speaking time so that’s what you do.
JL: Interesting okay.
MH: yeah I think that’s I think that’s a good way to do it like if there are.
JL: If there are serious questions that haven’t been answered in the packet.
MH: there’s a way to do it, and you know but it encourages like being prepared and doing your homework.
JL: Like I you know, on its surface this feels like it moves towards the city that i’d like to the city that I want to live in. You know the site and so i’m glad to see this on the agenda. And one of the things that I love really about any resolution but will say this one in particular is that nothing’s ever set in stone right like if. The two minutes twice doesn’t work, they can always go back to the three minutes I think it’s worth trying to change, you know what what is Google say fail quickly fail fast. Right. Like let’s let’s try it if it’s garbage we can fix it but let’s see if this can make things more accessible, both of the Council members themselves and for people who want to get involved, I think this is super interesting good job Council yep. And there is actually a rule that if.
MH: If they’re being interesting and want to go over there two minutes, they can have a three quarters vote to extend. I was just thinking about like it would be hilarious because it would be like somebody would use up their entire two minutes and then they’d like spend two minutes taking no time. After which time the person would be like yeah so anyway, what I said before.
Okay, now I hope that doesn’t happen but uh anyway, yeah I like I like the mechanics change there’s another thing in here that says that Members Shell address all remarks to the presiding officer usually the mayor, even if you’re rebutting someone else’s statement I think that’s.
JL: I think that’s wise and I think that’s kind of where some Council members have gotten in the weeds in the past is that they address each other and even a civil tone can mask nasty words, so I again I kind of like this reset yeah and.
MH: there’s one more thing and that’s specifically, talking about personal privilege and character attacks that if if someone talk if a Council member talk smack about another Council member and you think it’s and that comes from everything since about what does it say. If you had a sales questions or in putin’s. The integrity character or motives of have a Council member, then they can say hey this is that they can ask to address that and the presiding officer can be can can say yeah you Okay, you can do that or no, no, this is not appropriate. And it says, if you have if you have a better you know, like a better way to do this, then, then, to bring it up at the meeting would be to bring it up with the Administration committee um and then there’s rules in the administration committee about how to you know formally reprimand a city council Member and stuff.
JL: So I appreciate the process, it reminds me a little bit a friend of mine used to run a Co housing community and she was assist female and there were no rules, but she tend to attract people across the gender spectrum either people who were trends or we’re in the process of transitioning or who were in a binary. And the great thing about that community is that everybody had to kind of learn really quickly how folks wanted to be addressed and address them with the pronouns and the name and the you know, however, it was they wanted to be used, and if they got it wrong they had to put $1 in the gender jerk jar. At the end of the week, they bought drinks for the House was it and so, this kind of makes me want to put like a character assassination jerk jar out and then they put $1 in it and, at the end of the week, they buy coffee for staff does not work, this is not illegal I just love the idea of a jerk jar like here’s $1 snack.
MH: um yeah oh Another thing I like about this is that it’s all about governing the way that the Council members talk to each other and it’s not about governing how the public addresses the City Council yes ahat was something that’s been you know talked about unless it’s but I like this is talking just about the Council member behavior so anyway, hopefully, this is the end of shenanigans and may run it my role may run as the shenanigans correspondent has come to an end, but.
JL: approach to retirement well thanks for bringing this to our attention, I know that. This tone has been a criticism of counsel for a really long time so i’m glad to see this Council kind of taking it head on and like you’re saying there’s 1234 or five sponsors of this resolution right now. And these are folks who are not necessarily known for working with one another, so to see this have kind of broad support feels pretty good, so thank you. Moving on, I think that’s everything from the agenda this week, we want to go back to our last episode, where we talked about boards and commissions and specifically the independent Community police oversight Commission we got a listener correction and thank you very much for that. We had talked about how folks were nominated into the ICP oC typically in the city, the way that nominations to boards and commissions work is that the mayor makes a nomination. And it’s confirmed by Council in the case of the ICP to say ICP oC that’s actually not true nominations are made by the two Council members who sit on the Commission. As well as the two Council members who sit on the Human Rights Commission so for folks who listened to the last episode and this one, first of all thank you for sticking with us, and second, of all, thank you to the listener, for that correction. Also, we’ll be recording upcoming episodes on city budgeting, as well as the master plan and zoning, so if you have questions about either of these two topics, shoot us an email at
. whoa hang on Oh yes, Michelle – my face.
MH: We wanted to plug the Ann arbor Community Academy.I talked about that that was where I got my challenge coin my metal for being a great a great Community Community person or civics person or whatever.
JL: yeah it’s.
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00:58:28.860 –> 00:58:31.530
MH: yeah it the the Community academy is a program that the city runs where you can find out about how the city works, the staff talks about what they do and you can learn about all the different departments and all the different budgeting processes and stuff like that and.
JL: That basically it’s like a real life deeper dive.
MH: yeah exactly and it’s over the course of several weeks we we wanted to plug it during our last deeper dive but we thought it wasn’t running during the pandemic, apparently, it is running during the pandemic.
JL: It is and it’s all virtual this time.
MH: Yes, and so the deadline to apply is Friday February 19 and we’re going to drop the link in the description.
JL: Okay, and we would love to have some listeners apply so yes, if listeners go make around on the Internet community coming.
MH: Hopefully you can get medals to.
JL: kind of want to do it just for the challenge coins so.
MH: Our listeners just.
JL: We should will need a few more coffee’s for that.
JL: All right, you guys Thank you so much for listening to Ann arbor if we are your co hosts molly kleinman Michelle Hughes and myself Jesse Tom and thanks to producer Jared Palestine and actually I just want to say an extra things to molly. She had surgery today, so thank you very much to her for showing up super appreciate that for questions about this podcast or ideas about future episodes you can email us at Ann arbor af pod at gmail COM get informed and get involved it’s your city.
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