Archive for September, 2013

At its Sept. 3, 2013 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council was asked to confirm just three of the four nominations made at the council’s previous meeting on Aug. 19.

Leigh Greden’s nomination to the Ann Arbor housing commission had been withdrawn before the meeting. And one of the remaining three nominations was withdrawn during deliberations. Mayor John Hieftje withdrew Al McWilliams’ appointment to the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority during the meeting. But the dynamic of the meeting, which included the absence of two councilmembers, suggested that McWilliams’ appointment might be brought forward for a vote at a future session.

The two other nominations from Aug. 19 were confirmed: Devon Akmon’s appointment to fill a vacancy on the public art commission; and Logan … [Full Story]

The Ann Arbor city council has postponed a vote on changes to its internal rules until its Sept. 16 meeting. The council’s action came at its Sept. 3, 2013 meeting. However, as part of its decision to postpone the vote, the council indicated that it will in some sense enact one of the proposed rules changes in advance of a vote on all of them – by providing an opportunity for public comment at its Sept. 9 work session.

This revision to the set of council rules was first presented to the council on June 17, 2013. However, a vote was postponed at that meeting.

The revisions were prompted by a desire to allow for public commentary at council work sessions … [Full Story]

Only one of two resolutions sponsored by the city’s energy commission was given approval by the Ann Arbor city council at its Sept. 3, 2013 meeting. The first called on the city’s employee retirement system to divest from fossil fuel companies – but it failed on a 5-4 vote, with two councilmembers absent. The second directed city staff to work with DTE to create a community solar pilot project. That resolution was approved unanimously without discussion.

An energy commission resolution passed on July 9, 2013 recommended that the city council urge the city’s employee retirement system board to cease new investments in fossil fuel companies and to divest current investments in fossil fuel companies within five years. The resolution defined a “fossil … [Full Story]

A proposal to build a new Hampton Inn at 2910 Jackson Ave., across the street from Weber’s Inn, has received approval from the Ann Arbor city council.

The four-story hotel, located on an 8.8-acre site north of Jackson and south of I-94, will include 100 bedrooms and 51,608 usable square feet. A 163-room Clarion Hotel stands on the same site, east of the proposed new … [Full Story]

Two deals adding land to the city’s greenbelt program were approved by the Ann Arbor city council at its Sept. 3, 2013 meeting. The program is funded by the voter-approved open space and parkland preservation millage.

The Sheldon and Wolf property is indicated in red. The green highlighted area denotes area already protected as a part of Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program. The heavy green line is … [Full Story]

A drive-thru at the Shell station and Tim Hortons at the northeast corner of Ann Arbor-Saline Road and Eisenhower Parkway has been given initial approval by the Ann Arbor city council.

The initial approval to changes to the supplemental regulations for a PUD (planned unit development) came at the city council’s Sept. 3, 2013 meeting. The changes to the PUD regulations would allow for a drive-thru restaurant within the existing convenience store, where a Tim Hortons is already located. The businesses are located on a 1.44-acre site.

The project includes constructing a 109-square-foot drive-thru window addition and access driveway on the north side of the building. Access to the drive-thru lane would be off of the site’s existing entrance from Ann Arbor-Saline … [Full Story]

A final vote on a revision to the Ann Arbor city code regulating the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority’s tax increment finance (TIF) as been postponed again – until Sept. 16.  The postponing action was taken by the city council at its Sept. 3, 2013 meeting. At stake is around $1 million or more a year in tax revenue.

Ann Arbor DDA TIF revenue projections. The vertical line indicates the year when the clarified calculations would be implemented. The red line is the amount of TIF revenue assumed by the DDA in its FY 2014 and FY 2015 … [Full Story]

The council’s post-holiday meeting agenda signals the end of summer and a reminder of work the council left unfinished several weeks earlier. Two items on the agenda were postponed until the Sept. 3, 2013 meeting at least seven weeks ago. The first is a revision to the ordinance regulating the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. The second is a revision to the council’s own internal rules, which could have an immediate impact on the way conversations between the council and the DDA take place.

For both agenda items, the expectation was that council committees would work during the interim period to hammer out a clarified proposal and recommendation for the full council to consider on Sept. 3. In neither case was that committee work accomplished.

After voting at its May 6, 2013 session to postpone a final vote on DDA ordinance revisions until Sept. 3, the council attempted to ensure that the deliberations at the first meeting of the fall would be productive. The council voted on July 1, 2013 to establish a joint council-DDA committee to work out a recommendation on possible legislation. The main point of controversy involves the definition of the DDA’s tax increment finance (TIF) capture.

Already given initial approval by the council is a proposal that would essentially enforce the existing ordinance language. The revision to the ordinance would have an arguably inconsequential impact on TIF revenue received by the DDA – when compared to its most recent 10-year planning document. What makes that comparison controversial, and unwelcome to the DDA staff and board, is the fact that its most recent planning document doesn’t include tax revenue from very recent new downtown construction. The revised ordinance would have a roughly $1 million per year negative impact on DDA TIF revenues – when compared to the amount the DDA would receive if the DDA were allowed to give the existing ordinance language its preferred interpretation.

The charge to the joint committee on July 1 was to begin meeting immediately, but the group did not convene until eight weeks later, on Aug. 26 – after the Aug. 6 Democratic primary election. The outcome of that election left a key vote in place for an ordinance revision that doesn’t favor the DDA – that of Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who defeated challenger Julie Grand. Still, DDA board members at the Aug. 26 meeting seemed keen to continue a delaying gambit. That’s because a failure by Jane Lumm (Ward 2) to win re-election in November could tip the balance in the DDA’s favor – even factoring in the addition of Jack Eaton in Ward 4. Eaton, who prevailed on Aug. 6 over incumbent Marcia Higgins, supports the idea of constraining the DDA’s TIF capture.

At the one committee meeting held so far, the only substantive concept that was batted around briefly was the idea of defining some kind of fixed cap on TIF revenue. This approach would replace the existing ordinance language, which calibrates the DDA’s TIF capture with the projections in the TIF plan. But the discussion never went as far as to include dollar amounts for the fixed cap. After about an hour and a half of political squabbling and sometimes inaccurate recitation of historical facts, the general mood among councilmembers seemed to be reflected in a remark by Sally Petersen (Ward 2): “I don’t think we can be there by next week.” So the item looks likely be postponed on Sept. 3. However, the council is free to vote the proposal up or down at this meeting.

The one session of the joint DDA-council committee still exceeded, by one meeting, the council rules committee’s effort over the summer. The rules committee did not meet at all between July 15, 2013 and Sept. 3. On July 15, the council had postponed a vote on new rules, but not before rejecting one of the proposed rule changes, which the committee had first presented on June 17, 2013. The council as a whole was not keen to shorten public commentary speaking turns. So the proposal currently in front of the council would maintain the existing three-minute time limit.

But as the council’s July 15 deliberations on other proposed rules changes threatened to bog down that meeting, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), chair of the rules committee, encouraged a postponement until Sept. 3. In the interim, the committee – consisting of Higgins, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), and mayor John Hieftje – was supposed to meet to consolidate input from other councilmembers and perhaps present a clean slate of proposed revisions.

Even though the rules committee didn’t meet, based on comments by Briere and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) at the Sunday night caucus on Sept. 1, they might push to eliminate all proposed revisions to the rules except for the one that had prompted the rules committee to consider some changes in the first place. The rules changes were prompted by a desire to allow for public commentary at council work sessions – to eliminate any question about whether councilmembers were engaged in deliberative interactions at those sessions. By allowing for public commentary at work sessions, the council would ensure compliance with Michigan’s Open Meetings Act. By enacting that rule change on Sept. 3, the council would be set for a fully deliberative work session on Sept. 9 – which is scheduled to be a joint session with the board of the DDA.

Three other significant items on the Sept. 3 agenda are tied together with an environmental thread. The council will be considering a resolution directing city staff to explore options with the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality and with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help to set the clean-up requirements for 1,4-dioxane so that the Pall-Gelman plume is cleaned up to appropriate standards. The council will also be asked to act on a resolution urging the city’s employee retirement system to divest from fossil fuel companies. And finally, the council will consider a resolution directing staff to work with DTE on a pilot program for a “community solar” initiative.

More detail on other meeting agenda items is available on the city’s Legistar system. Readers can also follow the live meeting proceedings on Channel 16, streamed online by Community Television Network. The Chronicle will be filing live updates from city council chambers during the meeting, published in this article “below the fold.” The meeting is scheduled to start at 7 p.m. [Full Story]

A range of public forums and focus group meetings have been scheduled in September for the ongoing review of downtown Ann Arbor zoning.

• Friday, Sept 6: Downtown zoning evaluation community coffee, 8-10 a.m. at Espresso Royale Cafe, 324 S. State St.
• Monday, Sept. 9: Downtown zoning evaluation brown bag lunch, noon-1 p.m., at the A2Y chamber boardroom, 115 W. Huron St.
• Monday, Sept. 9: Downtown zoning evaluation public focus group, 5-6 p.m. at the Traverwood Library multipurpose room, 3333 Traverwood Dr.
• Monday, Sept. 9: Ann Arbor planning commission’s ordinance revisions committee, 6:30 p.m. in the basement conference room of city hall, 301 E. Huron.
• Tuesday, Sept. 10: Downtown zoning evaluation public focus group, 5-6 p.m. at Pizza House, 618 Church St.
• Tuesday, Sept. 10: Downtown citizens … [Full Story]
  

An email sent to media by Mixed Use Party co-chair Will Leaf late Sept. 2, 2013 indicates that University of Michigan student Jaclyn Vresics has announced she won’t be contesting the Ward 1 Ann Arbor city council race this fall. Reached by text message Vresics confirmed her intention to withdraw from the race.

Vresics had qualified for the ballot by submitting more than the 100 required nominating signatures by the Aug. 7 deadline. However, the deadline for withdrawing formally from the race has passed, according to city clerk Jackie Beaudry.

According to Secretary of State documents the deadline to withdraw is Aug. 12, 2013, or three business days after the Aug. 7 filing deadline. So her name will still appear on … [Full Story]

A 9-minute video of the University of Michigan Marching Band performance at the Aug. 31, 2013 football game. The James Bond theme – “From Ann Arbor with Love” – features a jet-pack flight out of Michigan Stadium, and a cameo by UM president Mary Sue Coleman. [Source]

Since we launched The Chronicle in 2008, we’ve met many remarkable people.

And for the past three years, we’ve thanked a few of them with our annual Bezonki awards.

This year’s winners are an extraordinary group: Derrick Jackson of the Washtenaw County sheriff’s office; community activist Lisa Dengiz; teacher and environmentalist Dan Ezekiel; the nonprofit Ann Arbor Active Against ALS; Paul Courant of the University of Michigan; and Linda Diane Feldt, an author and holistic health practitioner who’s one of The Chronicle’s most prolific and poetic Stopped.Watched contributors. I’ll tell you more about them in a bit.

We honored these folks at a reception on Aug. 9, when they received the physical Bezonki awards. Each of the six Bezonkis is unique, made in part with bits salvaged from equipment at the former Ann Arbor News – a totem of our profession’s past. They were crafted by local artist Alvey Jones, whose Bezonki cartoons are published monthly in The Chronicle.

The awards are unique in another way. Each winner of a Bezonki is a steward of the physical award for a year. Winners in the past year hand it off to the next year’s winners. This year the hand-off took place at the Aug. 9 reception held at Zingerman’s Events on Fourth. Our hope is that the awards create connections year after year between people in the community – people who might not otherwise have crossed paths.

At our annual receptions, we also hope to introduce attendees to new experiences. And we try to have some fun. We’re an online publication, but this year we tipped our hat to journalism’s heritage by making “pressman’s caps” out of newsprint. So in the photos below, you’ll see many of our guests wearing their own. [If you'd like to make one yourself, you can download the instructions here.]

This year we also invited local artist/inventor Michael Flynn to display his “cooperative phonograph” to our event – a four-foot stainless steel spinning disk that’s truly a work of art. Using a card as the “needle,” you can pick up sounds from the ridges that he’s cut into the disk’s edge. One of the tracks was a repetition of the phrase “Love is all you need.” That’s fitting, because as we celebrate five years of Chronicling, Dave Askins and I are also celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary today. It’s getting better all the time.

But on Aug. 9, the main point of our reception was to honor a few of the many people who help make this community a special place. So please join me in celebrating the 2013 Bezonki winners! [Full Story]

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