The morning after the Ann Arbor City Council meeting on , I wrote some notes to myself to organize my thoughts while I talked on my radio show about what happened at the meeting. The notes were extensive enough that I thought to myself “I should start writing these up for real and making them into blog posts.” I didn’t fix this one up, though. These are the just the notes to myself. For future meetings, I hope to have more detailed information, but I figured it’d be more helpful than not to put these notes up as is.
See also, the voting chart for this meeting.
Storm Damage
The city will have spent $750k removing all the tree debris taken down by the storms. Give ‘em another month.
Some 100 adults and more than that kids are still homeless from the storms.
Totally routine stuff that’s been #A2Qouncil’ed.
B-2: Risk fund will be managed by staff, not city council members. A report will be provided to council and the public. There was some online conspiracy theorizing, but literally everybody else does it this way. Akmon said this should be an administrative function, not a political one.
Mobility
CA-17: That Damn Bridge. The die is cast. We will be getting an additional lane for cars on That Damn Bridge, and your life is in danger. There will be five lanes for cars. They’ll choke off one of those lanes at the intersection, with concrete. There will be a 10.5’ sidewalk on one side and a 13’ sidewalk on the other. When the university re-does the road, they’ll make it five lanes instead of four, adding “just one more lane”.
CA-18: Spin dockless E-bikes. 100, to start with. Public housing residents get a discount. There’s also a SpinCash card so you can use it without a bank account, credit card, or smartphone.
Affordable Housing
CA-7 - AAHC to buy townhouses using ARP money. 8 duplexes. $5.5m, of which $3.5m comes from ARPA. The rest may come from other loans or grants, including the affordable housing millage. It’s on Liberty, Virginia, and Siller Terrace.
CA-8 and CA-9 - Transfer 121 E Catherine to AAHC. 63 apartments. Half of apartments will be “supportive housing”. Avalon will be onsite to provide services. Next to farmer’s market. 6 stories.
(First reading) C-1 - 415 W Washington. Abandoned city fleet warehouse, below flood plain, contaminated soil. Can’t build subsidized housing there because proximity to trains and flood plain. So, sell it to developer! Make a brownfield plan to remediate the soil. For flood: Build it up, make it not 100% impervious, build it to current flood standards. This pre-approved a PUD zoning and a concept plan, so it’ll be easier for developers to build. CM Briggs tried at the last second to ram in more restrictions for the prospective developer, that the building has to be NetZero, to some annoyance. But it might come back as an amendment at second reading.
C-2 - Carbon Monoxide Detectors. If passed at 2nd reading, CO detectors will be required in old apts, not just new.
Energy
CA-20 Renegotiating Natural Gas Franchise. The city realized it has the opportunity to strong-arm DTE, and pursue more sustainable options for heating. Air source heat pumps? Ground source heat pumps (geothermal)? Get sustainability concessions from DTE? The franchise runs til 2027, but can be cancelled at any time by the city. Start negotiating now!
DB-1 - hold DTE accountable for their crummy power outage stuff. Resolution mostly asks the state to do stuff. Last meeting, it was referred to Energy Commission for input. This meeting, there’s a proposed substitute, which doesn’t give DTE a seat on Energy Commission, but says Energy Commission can summon them. I don’t know what other changes were proposed, but Legal didn’t have a time to look it over, so it’s postponed another meeting.
Feel-Good Stuff
DC-2 - Design a new city flag, in a process designed by public art commission. Follow the 5 principles of “vexillology”. Probably will involve public participation, and proposals for flags. Come up with ideas!
INT-1 - It’s Social Work Month!
PTO Council is doing a fundraiser to make up the funding gap between PTOs at the different schools. https://a2schools.org/ptoc