AATA board member Roger Kerson at the board's Aug. 24, 2011 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

At the board meeting, CEO Michael Ford announced that McKinley Inc. CEO Albert Berriz and Bob Guenzel, retired Washtenaw County administrator, will be co-chairing a panel of financial and funding experts who will review various funding options for a possible expanded, countywide transportation system.

The board voted to release a funding report to the panel – the third volume of its transit master plan (TMP). [.pdf of Part 1 of Vol. 3 Transit Master Plan Funding Options] [.pdf of Part 2 of Vol. 3 Transit Master Plan Funding Options]. The first two volumes were released previously.

The report describes a range of funding options, which would likely be used in some combination of strategies: fare revenues, advertising, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, parking taxes, stakeholder contributions, fuel taxes and vehicle license fees.

In anticipation that the panel could recommend funding options that would require voter approval, the board also approved the selection of CJI Research Corp. as the vendor for survey work over the next three years. That survey work can include on-board surveys of bus riders as well as telephone surveys of Washtenaw County voters.

At the Aug. 24 meeting, the board also approved implementation of a new website, which will provide greater flexibility for AATA staff who aren’t computer programmers to push information to the public. The new site is also intended to make it easier for the public to track the real-time locations of their bus.

The board also changed its pricing policy for the go!pass, a bus pass offered to downtown Ann Arbor employees that allows them to board AATA buses on an unlimited basis without paying a fare. The cost of the fares has historically been paid by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority using public parking system revenues, plus a nominal fee per card paid by downtown employers. The revised policy breaks with AATA’s past practice of charging costs for go!pass rides based on its cheapest full-fare alternative. Those costs per ride will now be lower, based on the DDA’s ability to pay and the AATA’s estimate of what employers would be willing to pay.

In other business, the board approved a revision to its contract with the Select Ride company, which provides AATA’s on-demand paratransit service (A-Ride) for those who are not able to ride the fixed-route regularly-scheduled bus system. The upward adjustment was driven by a recent increase in maximum taxicab fares implemented by the city of Ann Arbor.

The board also approved a master agreement that will apply to all of its contracts with the Michigan Dept. of Transportation, and adjusted its capital plan to accommodate changes in three projects: the Blake Transit Center, the bus storage facility, and the bus maintenance facility.

Transit Master Plan Funding Report

The board was asked to authorize the release of “Volume 3: Funding Options Report” of its transit master plan (TMP). The TMP is part of the AATA’s effort to fulfill a countywide transportation mission.

The resolution specified that Volume 3 of the TMP was authorized for release to “a panel of financial and public funding experts to review, refine, and adjust the document.” The first two volumes were released to the public earlier this year. [.pdf of draft "Volume 1: A Transit Vision for Washtenaw County"] [.pdf of draft "Volume 2: Transit Master Plan Implementation Strategy"]

During the Aug. 24 meeting, CEO Michael Ford announced that co-chairing the panel will be Albert Berriz, CEO of McKinley Inc., and Bob Guenzel, retired Washtenaw County administrator.

Funding recommendations made by the panel of experts are to be forwarded to a fully constituted but unincorporated Act 196 board (U196) for further consideration and action. The transition of transportation service from the AATA to an authority formed under Act 196 of 1986 is the most likely scenario under which transit funding would be established on a countywide basis.

At its July 19, 2011 meeting, the board authorized the board chair to appoint three of its members to the U196 board, and authorized the AATA’s CEO to use AATA resources in support of the U196.

Immediately following the Aug. 24 meeting, the AATA made the funding report available in digital form: [.pdf of Part 1 of the Vol. 3 Funding Report] [.pdf of Part 2 of the Vol. 3 Funding Report]

In reporting out from the AATA planning and development committee’s regular monthly meeting, Rich Robben – the committee’s chair – said the committee had expected to vote on the release of the TMP funding report, but it was not finalized at the time of the meeting. Committee members had received it by email and recommended via email that the report come forward to the full board.

During board comment on the funding report, board chair Jesse Bernstein said the third volume of the TMP was the most difficult section to write. He said the AATA staff had made a heroic effort. The report would be helpful in understanding where the AATA is and where it wants to go, he said.

The report describes funding options, he continued, which will need to be developed in conjunction with a service delivery model. He described the collection of people on the funding task force, which will study the report and make recommendations based on it, as an “excellent group of folks.”

Among the funding options described in the report are: fare revenues, advertising, property taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, parking taxes, stakeholder contributions, fuel taxes and vehicle license fees.

Charles Griffith called the report valuable, because it lays out how transit funding works generally. He allowed that at certain points, his eyes glazed over trying to get through it, but he did find it illuminating for at least thinking about how to fund different elements of the transit master plan. He said he looked forward to the feedback the board received on the report.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the release of the funding report.

Voter/Rider Survey Vendor

Before the board for its consideration was authorization of a three-year contract with CJI Research Corp. to conduct survey research. The contract has two additional one-year options.

Of the three respondents to the AATA’s request for proposals (RFP), the one from CJI was the top-rated proposal with respect to the criteria: price, experience, and technical approach. CJI was the firm that conducted the AATA’s most recent on-board and telephone surveys in 2009.

CJI has experience with polling for ballot initiatives. That experience is significant, because at some point it’s expected that a proposal will be put before voters across Washtenaw County that would levy a transit tax, if approved. The draft fiscal year 2012 budget for AATA includes $75,000 for an on-board survey of riders and a telephone survey of Washtenaw County voters.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the selection of CJI as the vendor for the survey work.

New Website

A resolution on the agenda called for approving the use of $140,000 in federal funds to implement the redesign of AATA’s website. The bid for the redesign had already been awarded to the Michigan firm Artemis Solutions Group Inc.

Among the improvements desired by the AATA is a way for staff – who do not have programming skills – to update the website. AATA also wants its new website to be a tool that staff can use to broadcast information to AATA riders via email, text-messaging, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Among the enhanced information the AATA wants available on its website is real-time bus location information that includes a way for third-party developers to create and distribute smart phone applications using AATA’s real-time data.

AATA board member Anya Dale had some questions about the new website.

The new website will also allow the AATA to provide a “performance scorecard” to display metrics that include finances, operations, ridership, environmental impact, maintenance and safety performance. The website is supposed to allow AATA to comply with section 508 ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) standards, and provide translation into multiple languages.

During board deliberations, Anya Dale asked if anything would be changed to the way that routes and schedules are looked up. She noted that when she first started riding the bus, she found some parts difficult to navigate. Board chair Jesse Bernstein asked John Gilkey of Artemis Solutions if he could provide a presentation and if so, how long that might last. Gilkey said his last presentation had lasted 45 minutes. Bernstein wondered if it might not be possible to get a five-minute version.

After some back and forth, board members seemed content not to receive a presentation at the board meeting, but they wanted to see a demonstration of some of the working functionality before the new website goes live. Roger Kerson, in particular, was keen to establish that some kind of usability testing would be done before launch. He asked specifically if the budget included a usability study. Gilkey said it was not planned – Artemis had done data collection and collected input in advance of design.

John Gilkey, of Artemis Solutions, was prepared to give a presentation on the AATA's new website that his company will implement. The board blanched at the 45-minute estimated time it would take, and decided to forgo the presentation for that meeting.

Kerson responded to Gilkey saying that he felt strongly that usability testing should be included and that it needn’t be expensive. Gilkey then said that Artemis does a lot of usability testing and would be testing out the implementation with users – he’d understood Kerson’s original question to be whether Artemis would be undertaking a full-blown scientific study, using something like Michigan State University’s usability lab.

Kerson noted that users “always find stuff we don’t find.” Kerson stressed that he’d like to see what’s included in the new website, before AATA rolls it out, so that they can find what the bugs are. Bernstein asked Mary Stasiak, AATA’s community relations manager, to keep the board posted as progress is made on the implementation.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the implementation of the new website.

Go!pass Rides

The board was asked to vote on a change to the price AATA charges for rides taken under the go!pass program. The go!pass can be purchased by downtown Ann Arbor employers for their employees at a cost of $5 per pass annually.

AATA board member Rich Robben. In the background is Nancy Shore, director of the getDowntown program.

The change authorized by the board might go unnoticed for holders of the passes, who do not pay fares to board the bus. But the change will include an increase from $5 to $10 for the annual fee paid by employers per pass. That’s an increase that will be implemented by the getDowntown program, which administers the go!pass. However, in the action the board was asked to approve on Aug. 24, the AATA was actually in effect lowering the price per go!pass ride.

Here’s why. Holders of the go!pass card can board the bus without paying a fare, and there are no limits on the number of rides that can be taken with the card. The number of those rides is counted as they’re swiped at the fare box. [Before the fare boxes were converted to swipe-able technology, drivers recorded such rides with a button press].

The cost of such rides is funded in small part by the $5/card fee paid by employers, but in largest part by revenues from the city’s public parking system provided through the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. At its June 2, 2010 meeting, the DDA authorized three years worth of funding for the go!pass program. For the second two fiscal years of that funding, approval amounted to $438,565 (FY 2012) and $475,571 (FY 2013).

The number of rides taken using the go!pass has increased each year for the last decade, but has jumped significantly during the last year. In the past, the AATA has priced go!pass rides in a way that matches the revenue per go!pass ride to the amount that bus riders would pay if they paid the full fare under a regular 30-day pass – the cheapest full-fare option. So, as go!pass ridership has increased, the total amount charged to getDowntown by the AATA for the rides has also increased.

In the past, the DDA has increased its level of support to match what the AATA has charged. As the DDA is under increasing financial pressure due to the new public parking system management contract recently signed with the city of Ann Arbor, as well as a possible need to return excess tax increment finance (TIF) revenues that have been collected, it’s not anticipated that the DDA will be able to increase the amount it contributes to the go!pass program.

Given the levels of funding now pledged by the DDA, the price that employers would need to be charged per go!pass per year would be $26 – if the same policy is maintained of charging for go!pass rides so that their cost matches what the cheapest full-fare option would be.

In recent presentations to the DDA, Nancy Shore, director of the getDowntown program, has recommended an increase from $5 to $10, not to $26. The advisory board of getDowntown has approved the increase to $10.

The action the AATA board was asked to take on Aug. 24 essentially sets the charge for go!pass rides at a flat rate – equal to the DDA’s current level of pledged support, plus an estimate that the total employer contribution (at $10/pass/year) would be $71,000 per year, based on the roughly 7,100 go!passes sold to employers so far this year. That is, the price charged for go!pass rides for the next two fiscal years will be $509,565 and $546,571, respectively – independently of the number of rides taken by go!pass holders.

The board’s action translates to a decision to accept a $16/pass/year shortfall in revenues from go!pass rides, compared to what the previous pricing policy has been, or a shortfall of roughly $113,600 (16*7,100).

In introducing the background of the go!pass issue for board members, Chris White, manager of service development for AATA, described how the proposed pricing change was really only an interim solution, for the next two years. Three years from now, he said, the DDA may not have funds to support the program at all.

Shore, who attended the board meeting, noted that in the last 10 years, fares have gone up, gas prices have gone up, and an increase from $5 to $10 per year per pass for the employer contribution seemed feasible. She noted that it’s a “universal pass,” which means that employers must purchase the passes for all their employees, whether employees use the passes or not. It’s not an option to purchase passes for just a subset of employees.

Shore said that very few employers she’d talked with had much of a problem with the increased $10 cost. She compared it to a health care benefit – some employees would use it more and some would use it less. She noted that there’s been a huge uptick in use of the pass and it was important to maintain that benefit to everyone.

Go!pass rides by month, charted year by year. (Links to higher resolution image.)

Charles Griffith wondered if the resolution was worded properly – was the board being asked to approve the increase from $5 to $10? White clarified that the board was being asked to approve the cost for the go!pass program as a whole. That would then be conveyed to the getDowntown advisory board, which sets the cost for employers. White described the situation as one where the AATA essentially sells the go!passes to the getDowntown program.

The proposal before the board would establish a fixed cost for each pass instead of linking the cost to the number of rides that are taken, White explained. White allowed that it’s a bit of a strange relationship, because the getDowntown program is currently part of the AATA – its two staff members are compensated as employees of the AATA. [Discussions are currently taking place about the future of the program, and whether the getDowntown program will become part of the DDA. For recent coverage, see "DDA Board Mulls Absorbing getDowntown Staff into DDA"]

Rich Robben noted that when board members had questioned the issue at the planning and development committee meeting, from the AATA’s perspective, if there’s a dramatic increase in ridership, then the AATA recovers less per ride. Historically, Robben said, the go!pass program has panned out nicely for the AATA.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the change in price structure for the go!pass.

Amendment to Capital Plan

Before the board for its consideration was approval of a revision to AATA’s capital and categorical grant program to accommodate three projects: the Blake Transit Center (BTC) reconstruction in downtown Ann Arbor, the bus storage facility expansion, and the bus maintenance facility upgrade.

The scope of the BTC project has expanded, with a total estimated cost of $5.5 million. The estimate is based on a schematic design that is not yet complete. Already secured is $4.195 million in grant funds, which leaves a balance of $1.044 million.

At the Aug. 24 meeting, CEO Michael Ford said that AATA is looking to finalize design of a newly reconstructed Blake Transit Center in the next month. The AATA is still working with the city to obtain the use of a six-foot strip of land on the southwest edge of the AATA parcel, between Fourth and Fifth avenues. The AATA is planning to issue construction bids in October or November 2011 with the hope that construction work can start in the spring of 2012.

The bus storage expansion was AATA’s final project approved for federal stimulus funds – $1.01 million in stimulus funds were allocated to the project. With a current cost estimate of $2.404 million, there is a balance of $1.394 million.

The bus maintenance facility upgrade includes the addition of a urea filling station. Already approved in grants for that work is $0.598 million. The total cost will be $1.244 million, leaving a balance of $0.647 million.

The board’s action on Aug. 24 revised the AATA’s capital and categorical grant program to provide a total of $2,676,678 for the three projects from the AATA’s federal formula funds.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the adjustment of its capital plan.

A-Ride Deal

The board was asked to consider an increase in AATA’s contract with Select Ride, to provide service for the AATA’s A-Ride – an on-demand program offered to those with disabilities preventing them from riding the regularly scheduled AATA fixed-route service. The increase in the contract authorized by the board is 2.9% – from $2,793,481 to $2,873,481.

The increase reflects the recent increases in taxicab rates, authorized by the Ann Arbor city council at its May 16, 2011 meeting. The increase authorized by the council was from $2.25/mile to $2.50/mile, which had been requested by several taxicab companies in light of rising fuel prices.

The contract with Select Ride is structured so that the company is paid based upon the distance that passengers are transported, together with the fare structure for the taxicab rides. The contract increase reflects a compromise under which the AATA is shouldering only part of the increased cost due to the taxicab fare increase.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the change in the A-Ride deal.

MDOT Master Agreement

A resolution on the agenda called for authorizing standard terms and conditions for a five-year master agreement with the Michigan Dept. of Transportation. The master agreement will facilitate future contracts with MDOT for state funding, as well as to pass through federal funding to the AATA. The standard terms and conditions are established as part of a master agreement so that they don’t have to be spelled out in every future contract individually.

The current five-year master agreement expires on Sept. 30, 2011. The board’s action authorized a new agreement that reflected only minor changes from the current one: third-party contracting procedures are updated, and reference to a regional program was eliminated because it no longer exists.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the five-year master agreement.

Commuter Rail Communications: WALLY

During his communications to the board, CEO Michael Ford noted that the last planning and development committee meeting had included discussion of the Washtenaw and Livingston Line (WALLY) project. AATA continues to look at the project and evaluate it, Ford said. He’d come back to the board in September on the issue, Ford told the board, but there would be additional discussion by the planning and development committee to focus on the status of the project, the money that’s been spent so far, investments in the WALLY corridor, and a description of the project’s major issues.

Ford said an “analysis paper” would be created to describe the WALLY project’s status and an action plan going forward, which would clarify the role of the state (via MDOT). Work would include talking to Livingston County and other community partners, as well at to Ann Arbor Railroad.

In reporting out from the planning and development committee, Rich Robben, chair of that committee, characterized the committee’s conversation about WALLY as “quite a discussion.”

In relevant part, the minutes of the planning and development committee meeting read as follows:

David Nacht stated that he was opposed to any further spending of funds at this time on architectural services for WALLY noting that these funds have been provided by AATA’s WALLY partners, and suggesting that at this point it is very unlikely that the project will go forward. He suggested that an offer be extended to the WALLY partners to return the funds, or ask for permission to spend the funds on other projects that will benefit transit. Michael Benham explained that the completion of station design would aid with qualifying for additional federal grant funds and added that the WALLY project was rated the top project by the State of Michigan to receive funding to improve signals and ongoing development of the project.

Committee members and staff engaged in a lengthy discussion regarding WALLY. It was suggested that absent the political will in Washtenaw and Livingston County, it is unlikely that trains will run. In contrast, it was noted that even if WALLY does not go forward, the tracks (which have already been improved) can still be used by freight cars.

Michael Ford was requested to contact the Governor’s office and the head of the Michigan Department ofTransportation (MDOT) to ascertain whether the project is a priority of the current administration, and if so, will that support lead to the needed capital and operating support for WALLY. Michael Ford indicated that he recently met with Kirk Steudle (the Director of MDOT). They discussed the idea of identifying more incentives to develop and urge collaboration between communities.

Rich Robben suggested tabling the WALLY discussion with a caveat that the funding not be spent without specific authorization from the board. Mr. Robben requested the opportunity for more discussion on operating funds. Michael Ford requested confirmation (which he received) that the funds for WALLY will remain in the draft budget, but will not be spent without specific action from the Board.

Communications, Committees, CEO, Commentary

At its Aug. 24, 2011 meeting, the board entertained other various communications, including its usual reports from the performance monitoring and external relations committee, the planning and development committee, as well as from CEO Michael Ford. The board also heard commentary from the public. Here are some highlights.

Comm/Comm: Shorter-Term Service Improvements

In addition to the work on the transit master plan (TMP) and the governing body that would be the countywide authority, CEO Michael Ford mentioned shorter-term initiatives that the AATA is working on to enhance service: Ypsi-to-Ann Arbor service, van pool service, extension of A-Ride (paratransit) service to the East Ann Arbor Health Center, and airport service.

Ford reported that because the AATA had received more than one response to the request for proposals (RFP) it had issued for the airport service contract, the project would be delayed by six to eight weeks, but the AATA was still moving forward with that, he said. AATA is collaborating on funding issues with private and public partners, which includes talks with the University of Michigan and the Ann Arbor Convention and Visitors Bureau. He reported that AATA would be meeting with the Wayne County Airport Authority, as well as with Wayne County EDGE to discuss how the AATA might operate out of the airport.

The A-Ride service was extended on July 1 to the East Ann Arbor Health Center. Ford reported that training was held for employees on the details of the new service.

An RFP was issued for van pool service in late June, Ford reported, and a recommendation could be ready for the planning and development committee to review at its meeting in September.

In the area of improving the Ann Arbor-to-Ypsilanti workforce transportation service, Ford said that Night Ride would be expanded to Ypsilanti in the fall. AATA is also looking at doubling the number of weekday trips on Route #4, which would begin in January 2012. That’s already included in the 2012 budget, Ford said.

The AATA continues to work with community partners to support service, Ford said

Comm/Comm: Landscaping

Ford reported on the in-progress landscaping project at the AATA headquarters facility.

Landscaping work underway at the AATA headquarters facility on South Industrial Highway.

He noted that the ivy, dead trees and rocks were gone and they’d be replaced with low-maintenance plants. Accessible concrete ramps are also being installed.

Comm/Comm: CTN Viewership

Reporting out from the performance monitoring and external relations committee, Charles Griffith told his board colleagues that board meeting online viewership on Community Television Nework was included in the board information packet. Counts reflect the number of views, not necessarily the number of unique IP addresses, and do not include views of the regular cable broadcast, which CTN does not track.

Sep. 16, 2010: 27
Oct. 21, 2010: 44
Nov. 18, 2010:  2
Dec. 16, 2010: 50
Jan. 20, 2011:  9
Mar. 17, 2011: 23
Apr. 21, 2011: 21
May  19, 2011: 12
Jun. 16, 2011:  9

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Comm/Comm: Performance Update

Charles Griffith, chair of the board’s performance monitoring and external relations committee, characterized the financial operating data as “in good shape.” He allowed that expenses have started to go up on a per-service-hour basis, but are still under the target amount. The AATA continues to see an uptick in ridership.

Ridership numbers on fixed-route service through July 2011. (Links to higher resolution image.)

It’s now possible to compare on an apples-to-apples basis, he said, because it’s been over a year since the last fare increase was implemented. Ridership in July 2011 was up 6.2%, he said, adding that they can only speculate why.

Griffith said it might be possible for the October 2011 on-board survey to help shed some light on that. He noted that ridership for the demand response component of the AATA’s service is down 3.5%, which is a continuation of the downward trend since the fare increase.

Comm/Comm: Information on Intermediate Stops

During public commentary at the conclusion of the meeting, Vivienne Armentrout told the board that she had a suggestion for a service improvement: The stops that are intermediate to those listed in the schedule are not listed anywhere that she could find.

That had caused her some confusion at times, Armentrout said, though overall she was delighted with her Route #13 service. The drivers are considerate and courteous, she reported. But sometimes she thinks there’s going to be a stop and then there’s not. She ventured that one reason it might not be possible to put those intermediate stops into the schedule is that it would take away some flexibility. But she wished for a list or some way that information could be accessed.

Comm/Comm: Wake Up, Washtenaw!

Larry Krieg spoke during both times available for public commentary. He called the board’s attention to several recent developments indicating the role of transit in growing the economies in the regions it serves. He noted that the American Society of Civil Engineers had released a study recently concluding that by 2021, the average American household will lose $7,000 in spending power, unless additional funds are spent on roads, bridges and transit.

He noted that the Michigan State Police had released a report stating that the direct cost of car crashes in 2009 was $4.9 billion, with indirect costs in pain and suffering of $4.0 billion. And Orlando, Florida has begun work on SunRail, a 39-mile commuter line, using existing rail right of way, despite initial objections from Florida Gov. Rick Scott. There’s no doubt that operation costs for SunRail will be fully covered by public and private sources in addition to farebox revenue, he said.

Larry Krieg of Wake Up, Washtenaw! addressed the board.

Transit has an important role to play in the economic development of the community, Krieg said. Now is no time to hang back. In the time allotted for public commentary at the end of the meeting, Krieg returned to the podium to describe some steps that his group – Wake Up, Washtenaw! – is taking to promote economic development through transit.

Krieg said he felt that opposition to investment in transit is generally based on a lack of information. There needs to be a strong voice for each transit project. So Wake Up, Washtenaw! proposes to continue support for Partners for Transit, a citizen group promoting the transit master plan. The group will also engage civic and business leaders in Washtenaw County and surrounding counties. He also suggested convening a roundtable discussion of transportation funding alternatives, that would involve business leaders, transit officials and the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI). He suggested that the discussion should include alternative legal and financial structures that could bring public transit closer to being self-sustaining. Krieg concluded by inviting people to email him at wakeupwashtenaw at gmail dot com.

Comm/Comm: Paratransit, Human Rights

Thomas Partridge complained about the time for public commentary at AATA board meetings, which is limited to two minutes (at the start and the end of the meeting), calling it undemocratic censorship. He called on the board to give priority to monitoring the AATA’s paratransit service performance. He contended that he’d be victimized, even though he’d taken a limited number of taxi rides through the service. He contended that some of the taxicabs have more than 250,000 miles on them and don’t ride well or drive well and have non-functioning air conditioning. Partridge contended that the AATA board members are not performing their functions well, because they don’t take ride themselves and inspect buses themselves. They don’t know what’s going on in the streets, he said.

Partridge also spoke at the conclusion of the meeting during public commentary. He lamented the fact that public meetings have become “routine” for participants and for board members and employees. What the public needs to understand, he said, is that public transit is a primary human rights and civil rights issue. Support for transit should be garnered on this basis, he said. Partridge contended that transportation services are being rationed out on a discriminatory basis. Drivers and other personnel are stressed, and service is strained too far, he contended. Vehicles are assigned to drivers in a racist and discriminatory manner, he claimed.

Present: Charles Griffith, David Nacht, Jesse Bernstein,  Rich Robben, Roger Kerson, Anya Dale

Absent: David Nacht, Sue McCormick

Next regular meeting: Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave., Ann Arbor [confirm date]

Last Thursday, news of a breach in the earth-retention system of a downtown Ann Arbor construction site had reached all the way to Detroit’s Channel 4 News. Channel 4 sent a crew Friday evening to file a report. It was tagged on the Channel 4 website with the summary: “An Ann Arbor construction project is sinking, literally.” Chalk that up to the hyperbole of television news.

Top: View to the northeast along Fifth Avenue from Valiant Partners' concept for a conference center and hotel, proposed for the top of the Library Lot underground parking garage. Bottom: Breach in the earth retention system for the underground parking garage currently under construction on the Library Lot.

While the roughly 640-space underground parking garage, being built by Ann Arbor’s Downtown Development Authority, is not sinking in any way, a conference center and hotel proposal for the top of the underground structure might be sinking.

At first glance, the 190,000-square-foot project proposed by Valiant Partners Inc. seems like it’s on a path to approval by the city council. In November 2010, an advisory committee – charged with evaluating responses to a city of Ann Arbor request for proposals issued in late 2009 – finally settled on the Valiant proposal as the best of the six the city had received.

That decision came with the aid of Roxbury Group, a consultant hired to help evaluate the proposals and to negotiate an agreement with a developer. At an early March meeting of the advisory committee, a Roxbury representative presented a draft letter of intent, which had been worked out by Valiant and Roxbury, to be signed by the city of Ann Arbor and Valiant. The committee voted unanimously to recommend that the city council consider the letter of intent.

Then, on March 14, the city council held a work session on the proposed conference center. The council heard essentially the same presentation about the letter of intent that Roxbury had made to the advisory committee. The council is scheduled to consider the letter formally at its second meeting in April, which is now scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, to accommodate the first night of Passover. The letter of intent calls for a development agreement to be presented to the city council within four months of signing the letter of intent – which would mean sometime near the end of August 2011.

But I think it’s clear at this point that a development agreement between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor to develop the Library Lot would not achieve the necessary eight-vote majority for an actual real estate deal. That’s why I think the city council might vote down the letter of intent – even if there are at least six councilmembers who would support going forward with the letter, which is all it would take for the letter’s approval.

I base that conclusion on remarks made by councilmembers at the March 14 work session, and regular politics as reflected in the council’s history – both recent and ancient. But before considering politics, let’s dig into some really ancient history – the kind measured in geological time – to gain some additional insight into why a pile of dirt spilled unintentionally into the underground parking garage construction pit.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach

On Thursday afternoon, March 24, a sinkhole appeared behind the Jerusalem Garden and Earthen Jar restaurants, on the north side of the underground garage construction site. Where did that dirt go? It had poured through a small breach in the earth-retention wall about 30-feet below grade.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Jerusalem Garden

When I visited Jerusalem Garden on Friday morning, owner Ali Ramlawi was preparing for regular business after the sinkhole had forced the evacuation of his restaurant the day before.

That morning, he seemed even a little more exasperated than he did in October 2010, when he’d addressed a meeting of the DDA board during the time reserved for public comment. On that occasion he’d ticked through a variety of concerns, including the underground parking garage, which he called the DDA’s “civil engineering project.” Ramlawi was also one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in August 2009 over the construction of the garage.

On Friday, Ramwali told me how one of his employees had driven over the spot where the sinkhole opened up, just 10 minutes before the earth gave way. He considered it just lucky that nobody got hurt.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Geology – It’s Sand, Man

So how exactly does dirt that far down pour through a gap that appears to be just a few feet wide?

To get a better idea of why that might happen, I talked to Kevin Foye. Foye is a Ph.D who works as a project engineer with CTI & Associates, a civil engineering firm in Wixom, Mich. How earth settles and moves is part of Foye’s specific area of expertise – he recently gave a lecture as part of the University of Michigan’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering Geotechnical Engineering Seminar Series, called “Differential Settlement of Landfill Foundations Modeled Using Random Fields.”

As it happens, Foye had taken photos of the construction site a few weeks earlier, and was somewhat familiar with the site. He described how not all soil is the same – it’s some combination of sand, silt and clay. The Library Lot site in Ann Arbor, he continued, is a little different – it’s predominantly sand. So it’s going to be more apt to move through a slot like the one that opened up in the retention wall.

The make-up of the soil at the site as predominantly sand was also reported by then-library board member, and geologist, Carola Stearns in a presentation she gave to the board back in September 2010. She described the site as 55 feet of coarse, well-bedded, well-sorted sand and gravel – the product of glacial activity.

And at the end of the day Friday, I spoke with Pat Podges, the Christman Company’s construction manager on site; he also described how the dirt on the site would just run through your fingers when you pick up a handful.

Earth-Retention Wall Breach: Don’t Tear Down that Wall

On Friday, Podges also confirmed that the earth-retention system used at Ann Arbor’s Library Lot site is the same one the Christman Company had previously used in building an underground parking garage in Grand Rapids, as part of the Michigan Street Improvement project. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority awarded the pre-construction services contract to Christman back in August 2009, partly based on the strength of that experience.

Site of the breach in the earth-retention wall at the site of the Library Lot construction. The view is to the north.

The earth-retention system was also familiar to Foye, who described what he’d seen when he’d visited the site a few weeks ago. Visitors to downtown Ann Arbor last summer will likely remember seeing the tall drill operating on the site and the vertical pieces of steel that were then pounded into the holes – down to the silt layer that the water table sits on. Those vertical pieces of steel were subsequently encased in concrete.

Between each pair of steel-beam reinforced concrete columns, additional inner columns were poured – but not reinforced with steel beams. Podges described how for most of the steel-reinforced pairs, two additional columns were poured between them, but for some pairs, three additional columns were poured. The idea is that the columns between the steel beams interlock with each other, wedging against the steel beams.

This specific earth-retention system, called a “tangent wall” system, is used on the north face of the site, but not everywhere. Podges explained it’s used there because it’s better at preventing water from entering the pit than an alternative wood lagging system, which is used in some other locations. In the wood lagging system, heavy timbers span the vertical steel beams.

Chronicle readers might remember that outgoing DDA chair John Splitt received a memento of appreciation for his service, which was fashioned from a piece of timber left over from the wood lagging system.

A bucket is filled with gravel before getting hoisted over to back-fill the sinkhole.

In addition to the structural elements of the basic earth-retention wall, additional supporting elements include: (1) “whalers” – steel beams that are bolted horizontally across vertical members; and (2) “tie-backs,” which are essentially guy wires installed into the face of the wall.

To install tie-backs, Foye explained that a small-diameter hole is drilled from the face of the wall on the pit side, around 30-50 horizontal feet into the surrounding soil. That hole is filled with high-strength grout. A steel rod is inserted into the hole and bolted to a bearing plate on the face of the wall. That rod is then tensioned with a hydraulic jack to the pressure that’s been calculated to be appropriate for that specific location, then locked off at that specified pressure. Foye said in these kinds of applications, the pressure would be in the tens of thousands of pounds.

When construction of the parking garage is complete, the retention wall elements will remain in place, even though they won’t actually be needed to hold back the earth, Podges told me. The floors of the deck, which are braced against each opposing wall, will provide adequate opposing force. The tensioned tie-backs nearer to the surface will likely be de-tensioned, Podges said, because if someone were excavating years from now and hit one of the rods, it would be best for it not to be under tension.

A construction worker prepares to release the load of gravel into the sinkhole. Note the safety tether attached to his harness. In the background is the Ann Arbor District Library building, to the south of the construction site.

It’s apparent, from looking at photos as well as at the site itself, that the element that failed was part of one of the inner columns in the tangent wall system. And it failed at a point just below a horizontal reinforcement (a “whaler”) that was bolted onto the face of the retention system. That whaler spans six of the steel-beam reinforced columns. Foye said that based on photos he’d seen, it appeared that for some reason, there was a loss of the interlock between the inner columns – it would take further investigation to figure out what was different on Thursday from all the days before, during the time the pit has been open.

Podges said that the analysis of why the breach occurred is being done by Soil and Materials Engineers Inc., the company that designed the retention system. But they’ve determined that the problem was isolated. They’ve checked all the motion monitors that are attached to various points of the earth-retention wall, as well as the surrounding buildings – and everything is still in the same place, Podges said. Visual inspection of the perimeter has revealed no obvious other problems.

By Friday morning, a Christman crew had begun filling in the sinkhole with coarse gravel. The night before, a concrete cap had been poured over bags of gravel that had been dropped in to plug the breach from the sinkhole side. Additional repairs will need to be undertaken to the pit side of the wall – they appeared to be partly underway on Saturday morning, when I passed by the construction area. A team of workers on a platform had been lowered by crane to the breach point.

According to a briefing email sent out early Sunday morning by Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, among other measures, ground-penetrating radar will also be used to check for any other voids that might have developed.

What Is the City Council Thinking?

The closest thing we have to ground-penetrating radar to detect any voids in the heads of city councilmembers is simply to pay attention to what they say, when they do their work in public view. And based on that kind of radar, I don’t detect any voids on the conference center issue – but it does look to me like there could be sufficiently solid opposition to doing a real estate deal, that the council could vote down the letter of intent before even getting to that point.

City Council: Work Session – Background

At the city council’s March 14 work session about the conference center proposal, the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita walked the council through the draft letter of intent. He’d done the same thing for the RFP review committee at its March 8, 2011 meeting. Here’s how the 190,000-square-foot project breaks down, as described in the draft letter of intent:

(i) Core elements:

• 150 hotels units – 87,000 sq. ft.
• Conference center – 26,000 sq. ft.
• Restaurant/Retail – 6,000 sq. ft.
• Public space/Plaza

(ii) Additional elements

• Office space – up to 48,000 sq. ft.
• Residential condos – up to 22,000 sq. ft.

That square footage breakdown is slightly different from Valiant’s original proposal, which included 12 condo units compared to the six in its revised proposal. More significantly, the size of the conference center in Valiant’s revised proposal is 6,000 square feet smaller than the 32,000-square-foot facility in the original proposal.

At the March 14 city council work session about the proposed Valiant conference center: (left to right) Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2).

The reduction in condo units and the size of the conference center is offset by the possible addition of up to 48,000 square feet of office space. [See page 27 of the .pdf for Roxbury Group's report, submitted in November 2010, for a breakdown of the contrast between Valiant's original and revised proposals.]

DDA board member Newcombe Clark has expressed some skepticism to The Chronicle that prevailing rental rates for office space in downtown Ann Arbor would be adequate to support new construction of office space. [Clark has worked in real estate, most recently with Jones Lang LaSalle, but is no longer with that firm.]

But it’s the revised configuration of the square footage that has allowed Valiant to eliminate from its proposal a request that the city of Ann Arbor issue bonds to fund the project’s construction. The use of public bonds as a financing tool has been described as a deal-breaker, even by the chair of the RFP review committee, Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the city council. And Rapundalo is widely perceived as one of the strongest supporters of a conference center at the Library Lot location.

Remaining in the letter of intent, however, is a requirement that the city of Ann Arbor would own the conference center. Valiant has pitched this as a benefit to the city, but it carries with it potential for liability as well.

City Council: Work Session Views – Legal Ownership

It was the conference center ownership question that drew the specific attention of Sabra Briere (Ward 1) during the work session. She told the Roxbury Group’s David Di Rita that the whole proposal seemed to be predicated on a belief that the city of Ann Arbor wants to own a conference center. Di Rita responded in a way that suggested that the ownership question is not a closed issue and could be subject to further discussion.

Briere’s reply was fairly sharp. She told Di Rita that maybe there is stuff in the letter of intent that doesn’t need to be in there.

The city’s relationship to the conference center, as described in the draft letter of intent, is one of ownership. The city would have an agreement with the developer whereby the developer would manage the center. And just as long as the developer holds that management agreement, the city would not be liable for costs related to operation and maintenance.

The draft letter of intent also describes how the developer could itself use the money being paid to the city for development rights, to develop the conference center. That strategy only makes sense in a scenario where the city owns the center. It reduces to this: At least part of the compensation the city would get for allowing the developer to build the project – instead of a lease payment or property taxes – is ownership of the conference center.

But ownership does not translate directly to a financial benefit to the city, any more than ownership of additional parkland does. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) has frequently pointed out that continued acquisition of additional parkland, without an adequate revenue source for maintenance, has led Ann Arbor to a situation where it can maintain the parkland it has only with great difficulty. And the same principle applies to ownership of a conference center.

So far, Valiant has tried to make its financial offer more attractive to the city by eliminating the need for the city to issue bonds. It’s conceivable that the letter of intent the council considers on April 19 will continue that trend by eliminating the requirement that the city own the center, and that Valiant will find some other way to pay for that part of the deal.

But right now, we’re presented with a tale of a profitable project that even the teller of the tale apparently doesn’t believe. Frankly, I believe that a place where you can host a 1,200-person conference in downtown Ann Arbor without breaking a sweat would be a well-used and welcome facility. You could imagine some kind of center of intellectual inquiry – that’s not necessarily a university – sprouting up in concert with the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location. Indeed, Valiant representatives have talked a lot about their desire to partner with the library.

But I don’t think Valiant really trusts their own narrative. If they did, we would not see a proposal for the city to issue bonds, or for the city to own the conference center, or any other creative approach to financing. Instead, we’d see a straight-up offer to lease or purchase development rights for some dollar figure.

What should that dollar figure be? Before the work session began, local developer Peter Allen told The Chronicle that a rule of thumb for land value would be 10-20% of the total value of the planned development. So if you’re planning to build a $54 million project, then $5.4 million would be a low-end ballpark number for the land value.

You might make a case that the city should accept a somewhat lower offer than Allen’s rule of thumb. An outline of that case might go something like this: (1) Look, this conference center of intellectual inquiry that we’re going to build is not going to be as profitable as, say, a project consisting of mostly residential units, and here’s why; (2) A conference center is going to have a greater positive economic impact to the downtown than just residential units would have, and here’s why; (3) You should be willing to accept a slightly lower direct financial return to the city of Ann Arbor’s general fund, in exchange for a greater positive economic impact overall, and here’s what that impact looks like.

If Valiant were inclined to make that kind of offer, however, I think they’d already have done that – between November 2010 and March 2011, when they negotiated the draft letter of intent with the Roxbury Group. But a simple, straightforward lease or purchase of development rights did not emerge from that negotiation.

The letter of intent is to be considered by the council at its April 19 meeting. Among the revisions to be added to the final draft of a letter of intent is language that makes clear that the city of Ann Arbor will not bear any risk. It’s not yet clear what linguistic form those revisions would take.

Work Session: Work Session Views – Ownership of Advocacy

Near the conclusion of the March 14 work session, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who was chairing the session in mayor John Hieftje’s absence, floated a question about who would take responsibility for making revisions to the letter of intent. Here’s how she put it: “Who owns those revisions now?” City administrator Roger Fraser indicated that he felt revisions fell now into the category of “staff work” – the RFP committee’s work was done, he said.

Higgins question about “ownership” of a specific task – like revising a document – could just as well be asked about the entire conference center proposal. Up to now, the project seems to have been owned by Roger Fraser. He first introduced the council to the existence of Valiant’s proposal at the 2009 budget retreat.

Chronicle file photo from the January 2009 Ann Arbor city council budget retreat. City administrator Roger Fraser, left, talks with Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). They're looking at conceptual drawings for a possible conference center on top of the underground parking garage now being built at the Library Lot between Fifth and Division streets.

On that occasion, he’d announced the existence of a proposal for a conference center, and told councilmembers they could look at the conceptual drawings. But he would not disseminate the proposal publicly – at the request of the proposers.

Later, it was revealed he’d done that against the explicit advice of the council.

With Fraser’s departure at the end of April to become a deputy treasurer for the state of Michigan, it’s not clear who might take ownership of Valiant’s proposal on the city’s side to make sure that an acceptable development agreement is struck, based on a letter of intent. Even if Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, might seem a logical candidate to champion the project through to completion, her remarks at the work session suggest she’s not necessarily publicly embracing that kind of role.

Pollay began the work session by telling the council that she was there as a city staffer. The RFP had been issued through the city’s community services area, and only a few months after the RFP was issued, the community services area administrator, Jayne Miller, left the city to take a different position. Because the project was of interest to her, Pollay said, she’d volunteered to help out as needed. But she stressed that the project is not a DDA project – she’s just assisting.

Before the March 14 work session: Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, and David Di Rita of The Roxbury Group, which acted as a consultant for the RFP review committee.

On the council itself, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) might be a logical choice to champion the project through to final approval. In fact, at least as far back as March 2009, Smith has pushed specifically for planning some kind of use on the top of the underground parking structure. On that occasion, she introduced a successful resolution at the DDA’s March 2009 board meeting that articulated the DDA’s readiness to support the planning process for the top of the structure.

But as recently as the March 21, 2011 city council meeting, Smith has demonstrated that she can be a fiscal hard-ass, who might give priority to the city’s near-term bottom line over long-term overall economic impact. At that meeting, she was the sole voice of dissent in voting against an amendment to a state grant application that prioritized support for a skatepark over improvements to the Gallup canoe livery. She had established during deliberations that the canoe livery improvements would necessarily add revenue, whereas the skatepark was a question mark.

With the current murky level of detail available, use of the top of the parking garage as additional surface parking might actually mean more for the city’s bottom line than striking a deal with Valiant. And at the March 14 work session, Smith described the conference center proposal as “one of the largest decisions that I will have had to make in my brief tenure here.”

So I don’t think Smith is likely to pursue the conference center with the single-minded bull-doggedness of purpose that would likely be required for its eventual approval. The project needs someone to champion it who is absolutely dedicated and practically blind to all other options, if it’s to win ultimate approval from the council, and I don’t think Smith is that person.

As chair of the RFP committee, Stephen Rapundalo would also be a logical candidate to take ownership of the project – even if the committee’s work is over. But to be successful, whoever takes ownership of the project will need to enjoy a certain amount of deference from the council as a whole. And based on deliberations at the March 7, 2011 council meeting, his fellow councilmembers aren’t willing to give Rapundalo that deference, even when he clearly has earned it.

On that occasion, the council voted, over his objections as chair of the council’s liquor license review committee, to allow the appointment of a single hearing officer for liquor license non-renewal hearings – Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – instead of appointing the entire committee as the hearing board. Any councilmember who voted with Derezinski on that – which was everyone except for Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – gave little weight to Rapundalo’s record of service on the council’s liquor committee since its very creation back in 2007. So I think the council is unlikely to show Rapundalo any deference when it comes to the conference center development agreement.

Work Session Views: Decision Time?

Historically, the Ann Arbor city council’s inclination has been, whenever possible, not to make a decision at all. The current status of the city’s Argo Dam is a good example of that. In early 2009, the city embarked on a public engagement process about the Argo Dam, which led the community to believe that the city council would be making a major policy decision that summer about leaving the dam in place or removing it.

But the council has never voted on the issue, which formally leaves the question open, though from a practical point of view, the dam is still in place. Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) have remained vigilant in making sure that subsequent decisions made the council – like approving construction of a portage-free bypass around the dam – don’t necessarily preclude the dam’s eventual removal.

From the time of the Library Lot RFP issuance, councilmembers were eager to stress that the issuance of the RFP did not represent a decision to develop any of the proposals that might be submitted. After receiving proposals, it was again stressed that the city was under no obligation to accept any of them. And after identifying Valiant as the best of the six proposals received, the RFP review committee stressed that there was no obligation to do a deal with Valiant.

At the work session, councilmembers again appeared eager to downplay the significance of approving a letter of intent. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) characterized it as a “going steady” phase, with a prenuptial agreement to be possibly realized in the form of a development agreement. Margie Teall (Ward 4) indicated she was satisfied with David Di Rita’s characterization of the letter of intent as an outline to get to a final deal, but not the deal itself.

But at the RFP committee meeting in early March, Eric Mahler indicated his skepticism that the letter of intent did not place an obligation on the city to see the negotiations through to the proposal of an actual real estate deal. Mahler, an attorney, represented the city’s planning commission on the committee.

And at the council’s work session, the same concern about the contractual nature of the letter of intent was expressed by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who did little at the session to hide his overall displeasure with the whole proposal. He stated flatly that he felt the arrangement being proposed was “very squirrelly,” and offered up his assessment that when the city went fishing for development proposals, “we catch nothing but leeches that want to suck on the public dollar.”

Even if Kunselman’s colleagues on the council may have rolled their eyes at his rhetorical flourish, they likely took to heart his point about the contractual nature of the letter of intent. It’s not “just another step” in the process where the city can take any action, or no action, for any reason at all. This is, in fact, a decision point of some kind that requires a proposal to come before the council.

What kind of decision point does the letter of intent represent? I think it’s somewhat similar to appointing a study committee to make a recommendation on establishing a historic district in a particular area. The council has a recent record to show that appointing a committee does not necessarily result in establishing such a district. At its July 6, 2010 meeting, the council rejected a study committee’s recommendation that a historic district be established along Fourth and Fifth Avenues, just south of the Library Lot. I can imagine that some councilmembers might even draw upon that episode as an analogy: Just as appointing a committee did not obligate us to vote for a historic district, we are not obligated to approve the development agreement that emerges in four months time after the letter of intent is signed.

But I think that for any councilmembers who appeal to that analogy, there will be others who are persuaded by a different historical episode involving the non-appointment of a historic district study committee – at the council’s Oct. 20, 2008 meeting. The committee in question would have studied an existing district, the Old Fourth Ward, to consider removing one property from the district. Then representing Ward 3, Leigh Greden argued against even appointing a committee, independent of what recommendation the committee might eventually make. Here’s how The Chronicle reported Greden’s sentiments:

Councilmember Leigh Greden suggested that if a recommendation came back from the committee to remove the property, he still did not imagine he could vote for its removal – acknowledging that he’d perhaps made that conclusion too soon.

Put coarsely, if you’re going to vote no later, you might as well vote no now.

At the March 14 city council work session: Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5).

I think some councilmembers might follow that same logic in weighing their vote on the letter of intent between Valiant and the city of Ann Arbor – a letter that is supposed to lead to a development agreement. An additional factor playing into that logic is that the real estate deal associated with the development agreement will need eight votes for approval by the city council.

So even if the letter of intent might have sufficient votes for approval, the real estate deal already looks like it will fall short of the eight-vote requirement.

Based on their remarks at the work session, Briere and Kunselman are likely no votes, as is Mike Anglin (Ward 5). At the work session, Anglin recited a laundry list of criticism of the project, from insufficient public process to the project’s lack of viability.

Anglin’s Ward 5 colleague, Carsten Hohnke, expressed his view at a 2010 Democratic primary election forum that the conversation about what should go on top of the library should start fresh, with a clean slate:

Hohnke said he is not convinced that any of the proposals that had been submitted are good ones, and it’s important to remember that a request for proposals does not need to be acted on by the city. If none of them meet the satisfaction of the community, there’s no need to accept one, he stressed.

Hohnke continued that he would like to see a renewed effort of community conversation – starting from a blank slate, with no preconceptions. What is the best solution for this vital parcel right in the center of our community?

Hohnke’s contribution to the March 14 work session conversation hinted that he was still thinking along the lines of starting fresh. He asked Rapundalo to review for the council how the RFP committee had winnowed down the six proposals to the final two proposals, both of which called for some kind of hotel and conference center. Among the six proposals that did not make the final cut was one for a community commons put forward by Alan Haber and Alice Ralph – who both attended the work session. [Chronicle coverage from January 2010: "Hotel/Conference Center Ideas Go Forward"]

Mayor John Hieftje’s vote could be purely political. It was Hieftje’s penchant for using the privilege of voting last in any roll call vote, to cast such purely political votes, that finally led the council in 2006 to change its rules for roll calls. The start of a roll call vote now rotates among councilmembers.

With four likely votes against the letter of intent – Anglin, Briere, Kunselman, Hohnke – there’s sufficient safety in those numbers that Hieftje could join them. With potentially five votes against the letter of intent, it’s hard to see how Valiant or other councilmembers would want to invest time and energy in putting together a development agreement that’s not going to meet the eight-vote minimum.

Certainly in the past, the council has been reluctant to proceed with only thin majorities. In early 2005, DDA board members were told that there were at least six votes in support of the 3-Site Plan to develop city-owned downtown properties – all the plan needed to go forward. But then councilmembers Leigh Greden and Chris Easthope counseled against placing the 3-Site Plan on the council’s agenda, in order to generate additional support on the city council. By late in 2005, the public engagement process had actually seemed to diminish rather than increase council support, and the 3-Site Plan never made it to the council’s agenda.

Conclusion: Get the Dirt out of the Hole

Besides offering a rule of thumb for calculating land value, at the March 14 work session Peter Allen also told me he thinks the entire Library Lot block needs to be master planned, before trying to develop that individual parcel. For a course he teaches at the University of Michigan, Allen assigned his students in 2009 to complete an exercise like that. [Chronicle coverage: "Column: Visions for the Library Lot"]

Restarting the conversation about the Library Lot – as Hohnke suggested back during his 2010 Democratic primary campaign – is a process that would be consistent with Allen’s suggestion to master plan the whole block. That conversation could take place in the context of a proposal currently being worked out by the DDA and the city that would assign the DDA responsibility to facilitate the development of other uses for downtown city-owned surface parking lots. That proposal, however, is currently stalled.

I think any use of the space above the underground parking garage needs to be considered as a coherent part of the city’s thinking, not just with respect to that entire block, but also in connection with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s countywide transportation plan, the possible construction of a new downtown library – which has been put on hold, but might re-emerge – and even the current discussion of a corridor improvement authority along Washtenaw Avenue.

The sooner the city council votes down Valiant’s specific proposal for its conference center, the sooner we can settle into a process that might well produce a community consensus for a different kind of conference center – one that includes a real vision for the kind of inquiry and collaboration that might take place at the conferences such a center might host.

Valiant’s proposal is, I think, like the pile of dirt that poured through the breach in the retaining wall, piling at the bottom of the underground parking garage site. As a guy in a hardhat told me Thursday morning, the pile of dirt wasn’t hurting anything, but it was in the way. Valiant’s current proposal is like that pile of dirt, because it just needs to be cleaned out of the hole for now. If we need more dirt, there’s plenty more where that came from.

We shouldn’t adopt the attitude that if we let Valiant’s conference center proposal sink out of view, we’ll lose forever the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that a conference facility in downtown Ann Arbor might bring.

Why do I think that? It’s because I believe in second-hand learning. At the DDA’s January 2011 board meeting, management assistant Joan Lyke’s last one before her retirement, she addressed a few remarks to the board, summarizing what she’d learned working at the DDA.

On Lyke’s bulleted list was this: “If an idea is good, it will always resurface.”

In Part 2, we wrap up other topics of the meeting. One common theme was capital investments in the community’s physical infrastructure of various kinds.

Michael Nearing, city of Ann Arbor engineer, was available for any city council questions on the East Stadium bridge project. (Photo by the writer.)

The council allocated a total of $313,000 for three different permanent affordable housing projects in Ann Arbor.

The city’s East Stadium bridge replacement project received discussion in the form of a resolution that authorized the city to go after state funding for the third time in the last three years. The anticipated construction start for fall of this year has been postponed until spring 2011 – the earlier date had been tied to the city’s application for federal funding, which was rejected this February.

The ongoing construction of the police/courts building, directly adjacent to city hall (the Larcom Building), received some tangential discussion in the form of an explanation from Roger Fraser about the recent closure of city hall due to elevated carbon monoxide levels. The police/courts building was also the subject of public commentary that prompted some extended remarks from the mayor – which were covered in Part 1 of this report.

Another construction project that will likely factor into the upcoming primary election campaigns is Fuller Road Station. The city-university collaboration to build a combined parking deck and bus station, which might eventually serve as a commuter rail station, was taken up during the council’s communications time. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and mayor John Hieftje both responded to some cautionary remarks made by Mike Anglin (Ward 5), which he made based on a recent park advisory commission meeting.

In business related to ethics and rules, the council voted on two occasions to excuse the participation of Taylor in a vote, because of a conflict of interest posed by his employment with the law firm Butzel Long. They also satisfied the requirement of a recent lawsuit settlement that they formally consider a rule about their use of government email accounts – by voting to remand consideration of the issue to council’s rules committee.

Housing

The issue of affordable housing was addressed during public commentary as well as in specific items of council business. One item considered by the council bundled $313,000 of support for three different initiatives: support for the recently re-organized Ann Arbor Housing Commission ($138,000); one to support the efforts of the nonprofit Avalon Housing in connection with its merger with the Washtenaw Affordable Housing Corp. ($50,000); and a foreclosure prevention initiative involving the county treasurer’s office, the Michigan State University Extension, Housing Bureau for Seniors, and Legal Services of South Central Michigan ($125,000).

The council also voted to swap out a previously approved allocation for emergency shelter that had been drawn from an inappropriate fund.

In its final item of business related to housing, the council appointed a resident member of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission (AAHC). That comes the wake of the council’s recent decision to replace the entire commission.

Housing: Public Commentary

Speaking as a member of the city’s housing and human services advisory board, Barbara Eichmuller asked the council to pass their resolution that allocated $313,000 to maintain existing affordable housing in Ann Arbor, as well as to prevent tax foreclosures. It’s costly and time consuming to replace units, she said. She urged the council to support the Ann Arbor Housing Commission as it transitions to a new business model. As a Realtor, she said, she sees every day how painful foreclosure can be. She concluded that it was a wise use of the money.

The vice chair of the housing and human services board, David Blanchard, also addressed the council on the issue of the $313,000 proposed as a housing trust fund expenditure. He described the programs as really important and salient. The funds need to be released now, he said. The AAHC has come and asked for the money – it’s essential for them to be able to retool. Avalon had come and explained that the Washtenaw Affordable Housing Corp. merger has produced a real strain on them.

Preserving basic housing stock is part of a basic strategy, Blanchard said, and foreclosure prevention needs to take place now. The county’s blueprint to end homelessness has been around for years, and looking back, there hasn’t been an increase in actual affordable units, he cautioned. What we have, he said, is “a band-aid” – there’s no other way to get around it. He spoke of the need to weather this crisis and cautioned that there won’t be a great explosion in funding in the next few years.

By way of background, Blanchard recently served as legal counsel for the case of Caleb Poirier, a resident of Camp Take Notice, a self-governed encampment of homeless people. Poirier was charged with trespassing as a result of the tent encampment’s location. The charges were eventually dropped. Poirier was in the city council audience Monday night to hear Blanchard and Lily Au – who’s an advocate for the camp – deliver their remarks to the council.

Delivering a monologue during public commentary, with herself in the role of a homeless person, Lily Au began: “I’m homeless, I have a mental illness.” In that role she described how a volunteer had driven her to Ypsilanti, she had little money left on her Bridge card, and the Delonis center serves only one meal on Saturdays and Sundays. The contents of her backpack, she said, included a Bible, which she read to sustain herself, plus her medication. She reported that Camp Take Notice had accumulated $200, but it can’t be spent, because that’s money set aside for moving, in case the Michigan State Police raid the camp. The camp is located near the interchange at I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road. Referring to the parking issues on the council’s agenda, Au said that she would like to become a car, because at least then she’d have a good parking structure to live in.

By way of historical background, the rhetorical device relying on the idea that Ann Arbor has better housing for cars than for people can be traced back at least as far as Tim Colenback’s public comments at the council’s Sept. 21, 2009 meeting:

Colenback went on to enumerate some of the city’s parking structures, saying how pleased he was to have so many great places in the city where he could “house his car.” He asked that the city think of making the same commitment to housing people as it does to housing cars.

Housing: Funding Allocation

The item before the council bundled $313,000 of support for three different initiatives. At a January 2010 meeting devoted to the subject, the city council council was made aware that they’d possibly be asked to support a re-organization of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission (AAHC) with an allocation of up to $138,000, which they approved on Monday night. From Chronicle coverage of the Jan. 11 meeting: “Housing Commission Reorganizes“]:

The options for addressing the $138,163 difference, [consultant Kerry] Laycock said, included using AAHC reserves, looking at funds held by affiliated nonprofits, using in-kind services from the city of Ann Arbor, and the sale/lease of maintenance vehicles as a part of the outsourcing contract. But Laycock gave city councilmembers a heads-up on Monday night that the AAHC could be asking them for money from the Ann Arbor general fund as well.

The second item bundled into Monday’s council resolution went to support the efforts of Avalon Housing in merging with the Washtenaw Affordable Housing Corp. – that support was a housing trust fund allocation of $50,000. The merger of Avalon with WAHC was planned originally to take place during 2008-2009, but as the staff cover memo to the resolution describes, one of the major players’ support, which had been assumed, has not materialized:

[...] Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA), which was a key partner in the commencement of this merger, has taken increasingly conservative underwriting standards and is unwilling to invest in projects that they previously would have funded.

The 114 units of affordable housing maintained by WAHC, and now absorbed by Avalon, are distributed among three locations: Gateway Apartments – a 43-unit complex located on West Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti – and two Ann Arbor locations, at 1500 Pauline and 701 Miller.

Although the Washtenaw Urban County has continued to support other Avalon-administered properties, at a recent meeting the Urban County executive committee reallocated $740,000 in funds previously designated for Gateway – moving $640,000 to Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley for housing purchases and rehabilitation, and $100,000 to the Ypsilanti Housing Commission for Parkview Apartments, a 144-unit complex. [Chronicle coverage: "Urban County Allocates Housing Funds"]

The third program bundled into the city council’s resolution was $125,000 of support for a foreclosure prevention initiative involving the county treasurer’s office, the MSU Extension, Housing Bureau for Seniors, and Legal Services of South Central Michigan. According to the cover memo accompanying the resolution, the city’s contribution of $160,000 to the program in FY 2009 served 410 mortgage and tax foreclosure clients for a cost of an average $390 per household. Preventing foreclosure is analyzed as more cost effective than providing housing and human services to people after they are forced to leave foreclosed properties.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1), who sponsored the resolution, pointed out that the trust fund was being tapped to support permanent housing, not for human services. The money was all going to maintain currently existing permanent affordable housing, she said, urging her colleagues on the city council to support it.

An attempt by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) to separate out the three projects for separate votes got no traction from his council colleagues. His motion to amend the resolution in a way that would separate them out failed, because no one seconded the motion.

Kunselman indicated that he thought it was the first time the city council had ever given support to Avalon for its merger activities with WAHC. Mary Jo Callan, who heads the joint city/county office of community development, clarified that 18 month ago when the merger began, the council had authorized $195,000 for merger activities. That evening’s resolution brought the total to $245,000, she said. Kunselman asked if this was all that would be expected. Callan indicated that for these particular activities, yes.

Kunselman observed that the council was making an investment in low-income housing where Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) had not been willing to re-invest and that it was past the date when they thought it would be wrapped up. Kunselman noted that according to a staff report, there would be $95,000 of unobligated funds in the housing trust fund. He wanted to know if that projection for the unobligated portion included the interest-only payment from the purchase on the YMCA lot. If so, Kunselman wondered if at some point the interest-only payment would come from the city’s general fund.

Kunselman allowed that the Burton Road project, which had previously been forecast to eat up a lot of the housing trust fund, will probably be unobligated. But Kunselman said it still made him “queasy,” because the general fund is supporting it. He expressed concern that there seemed to be no long-term plan and that the city was filling in gaps where the “heavy-hitters” are backing off. [By "heavy-hitters," he was referring to MSHDA]. Kunselman said that he was not sure he saw this as a good plan. He also wondered about the $130,000 for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, indicating to city administrator Roger Fraser that he thought Fraser planned to put the amount into the budget. Fraser responded by saying he’d have to look at the issue.

Outcome: The resolution to allocate $313,000 to the three affordable housing initiatives was unanimously approved.

Housing: Funding Allocation Swap

An item that received no discussion – but served as a reminder of the allocation for emergency shelter that the council had approved at its Nov. 6, 2009 meeting – amounted to a book-keeping adjustment. The city council had appropriated a total of $159,500 in Ann Arbor Housing Trust Funds (AAHTF) for that purpose. However, a city attorney review determined that provision of an emergency rotating shelter is not an eligible AAHTF activity.

So the part of those funds designated for that purpose – a $30,500 contract with the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County – was swapped out Monday night for Ann Arbor city general funds.

Outcome: The re-allocation of the funds for the rotating shelter was unanimously approved.

Housing: Appointment of Housing Commissioner

As part of the city council’s decision on March 15, 2010 to replace the city’s housing commission board, the council restored two of the commissioners to the five-member body, one of whom was the commissioner who satisfied the legal requirement that one member be a resident of the housing stock administered by the commission – Deborah Gibson. However, Gibson, who’d been re-appointed to the board for only a one-month term, resigned in light of the council’s action, which forced the city to find a replacement for her on an accelerated schedule.

Mayor John Hieftje said at Monday’s meeting that 1,500 letters had been sent out, and that they’d received 18 applications. After winnowing through them, Sasha Wombley Womble had been nominated. Ordinarily, appointments are made in a two-step process, with the first step being the nomination, and the second step the confirmation at a subsequent meeting. Hieftje asked that the council confirm Womble’s appointment in a one-step process, because the housing commission board was to meet on that Wednesday.

Outcome: The council confirmed Sasha Wombley’s appointment to the housing commission board in a one-step process.

Construction Projects

The city council entertained discussion of a major construction project by approving a third attempt to secure funding from the state of Michigan for replacing the East Stadium bridges. The bridges span the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks and South State Street. Another planned major construction project – Fuller Road Station – received some discussion during council communications, hinting that the primary election campaign season could be starting to warm up. Reduction of warming was a benefit touted during public comment in support of porous pavement to be used in a Sylvan Avenue project. And the council received awards for two construction projects already completed.

Construction: East Stadium Bridges

The item before the council was an authorization to apply for funding from the state of Michigan’s local bridge program, administered by the local bridge advisory board (LBAB). The application is based on the understanding that the LBAB may have up to $6 million to award for FY 2013 for projects across the state. The city intends to apply for $3 million to support the East Stadium bridge replacement project, which carries a price tag of $23 million.

A timeline overview of some of the bridge’s history:

• 1917: Bridge is built.
• 1973: Voters approve a millage to fund a bond to repair the East Stadium bridge. The proposed bond sale on the ballot included $800,000 for creation of a citywide bicycle system using existing streets and new pathways, and $360,000 designated for repair of the Stadium bridges. At the time the debate centered on whether the new bridge design should accommodate a wider roadway for State Street. On the same ballot was a transit millage, which passed as well – the same millage that supports today’s AATA.
• 2006: City of Ann Arbor is awarded $766,000 from Michigan’s local bridge program, but the city allowed the award to expire a year later, because the amount did not go far enough towards funding the project – the alternative to expiration would have been to spend the MLBP money towards bridge reconstruction.
• 2006: The city pays $1,249,467 to Northwest Consultants Inc. (NCI) for preliminary design engineering for the comprehensive bridge project that included bridge replacement, a transmission water main, storm sewer, and a South Main non-motorized path.
• 2007: After a biannual inspection of the bridge, weight limits were reduced on the span. The limits were set as follows: 31 tons (reduced from 38 tons) for one-unit trucks (e.g., school or AATA buses); 39 tons (reduced from 48 tons) for two-unit trucks (e.g., a single-trailer semi); 44 tons (reduced from 54 tons) for three-unit trucks (e.g., a semi with two trailers)
• 2007: On Sept. 18, 2007 and Oct. 2, 2007 at Pioneer High School’s cafeteria, informational workshops are held on a comprehensive project to address replacement of the span over State Street as well as the one over the railroad, including non-motorized improvements (i.e., sidewalks) extending along Stadium Boulevard to Main Street and south along Main to Scio Church road. Those workshops  are well attended, especially by members of the Ann Arbor Golf and Outing Club, which is located near the bridges.
• 2007: On Dec. 29, 2007 there are reports of “medium-sized pieces of concrete” falling off one of the 16 pre-stressed concrete box beams supporting the roadway.
• 2008: Early January re-inspection by city staff and bridge engineering consultants leads to the short-term recommendation of a traffic control order further reducing weight limits: 19 tons for one-unit trucks (e.g., school or AATA buses); 24 tons for two-unit trucks (e.g., a single-trailer semi); 26 tons for three-unit trucks (e.g., a semi with two trailers).
• 2008: In March, the vision for a comprehensive renovation of the bridges meets with a funding setback. The Michigan Department of Transportation awards only $760,000 for the project, though the total cost was estimated at that time at around $35 million.
• 2008: On Oct. 22, 2008 Northwest Consultants Inc. performs biennial inspection.
• 2009: In early February, the engineering consultant for the bridge, Northwest Consultants Inc., is called back to re-examine the bridge. A 7/8 inch deflection of the beam is found. [Chronicle coverage: "Discontent Emerges at Caucus" and "Building Bridges"] Bridge safety rating has dropped to 2 on a scale of 100.
• 2009: In March, traffic is rerouted so that it’s limited to the northern lanes, and does not pass over the beams showing deflection. [Chronicle coverage: "How the E. Stadium Bridge Gets Monitored" and "Council Gets Update on Stadium Bridges"]
• 2009: On Sept. 15, 2009 the bridge inspection consultant, Northwest Consultants Inc., inspects the East Stadium bridge over South State Street, and recommends removing the five southernmost beams.
• 2009: On Oct. 5, 2009 the city council authorizes expenditure to remove five beams.
• 2009: On Oct. 28, 2009 and again on Dec. 1, 2009, public meetings are held to discuss design.
• 2009: In November, five beams are removed from the bridge.
• 2009: In November, the state’s local bridge advisory board awards no funds for the Ann Arbor bridge project, citing the lack of any other non-city funding available for the project. [Chronicle coverage: "State Board: No Funding for State Bridges "]
• 2010: In February, the US-DOT announces the final recipients of the federal TIGER grant – they do not include the city of Ann Arbor.

At Monday’s council meeting, Margie Teall (Ward 4) asked Homayoon Pirooz to take the podium – he’s head of project management for the city. She led off by asking him to explain what the local bridge program is.

The Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT) makes funds available to cities every so often through the local bridge program, not every year, explained Pirooz. The city’s application last year was for the FY 2012 budget, and the city did not receive approval, he reminded councilmembers. Since that time, he said, the city of Ann Arbor has been in constant communication with MDOT, and MDOT has encouraged Ann Arbor to apply again – for FY 2013. So Ann Ann Arbor is applying for $3 million from the local bridge program.

The city has been working on additional funding strategies, Pirooz reported, and since June of last year there have been some successes and some disappointments. The major disappointment was Ann Arbor not being selected for the federal TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) grant, which would have paid for almost all of the project.

Among the successes that Pirooz reported was $8 million that the city could “almost count on” as part of an earmark in the federal surface transportation fund. There’s also an MDOT transportation enhancement grant, which could mean as much as $1.5 million to fund the non-motorized improvements that are part of the project. That would bring the non-city share of the $23 million project to $12.5 million. The design is expected to be complete this summer.

The construction, which had originally been announced to start in the fall of 2010, said Pirooz, had been tied to the application requirements of the TIGER grant.

Teall asked if the city was still going after some other federal grants. Pirooz said that there had been some talk of a “mini-TIGER grant” and the city would apply for that if it becomes available.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated that a formal announcement hasn’t been made of the second round of TIGER funding, but that Congressman John Dingell believes a second round of funding will happen.

If the construction starts in March of 2011, Teall wanted to know how long it would last. Pirooz indicated that it would depend on whether the bridge was completely closed to traffic during the construction period. If the bridge is completely closed to traffic, he said, the construction would take around 18 months. If one lane is left open, that would add six months to the schedule, he said. Teall confirmed with Pirooz that the longer the project takes, the more it will cost.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) confirmed that this would represent the third attempt to get funding from the state’s local bridge program. Kunselman also confirmed that the letter from MDOT indicates that the reason the city did not receive money during the most recent round of funding was that the city had no outside funding for the project.

Kunselman wanted to know why the city’s position was any different now than before, with respect to outside funding that had actually been secured. Pirooz indicated that the city was in the process of securing it, citing the $8 million in surface transportation funds. Kunselman confirmed with Pirooz that the $8 million was not “for sure.” Pirooz allowed that “nothing is for sure.”

Kunselman wanted to know what the city’s chances are. “Better than last time,” said Pirooz. Last time, he added, the city had ideas about sources, and the city told MDOT that, but the city couldn’t say how much from each source it could expect. Someone has to offer part of the funding and then the city can go after the other parts. Last time, the state’s local bridge program didn’t want to be the first award of money. This time, explained Pirooz, the city can tell the state that $8 million in federal surface transportation funding is in the works and that a $1.5 million transportation enhancement grant is in the works.

The tone of the conversation has changed, said Pirooz. Asked by Kunselman if the money had been promised, Pirooz said that no, it would not be wise for anyone to make that assumption. He estimated that the chances for getting funding from the state’s local bridge program was 70-80% this time, when last time it had been perhaps 30-40%.

Kunselman asked about the plan for the city to use two years worth of its street repair millage. City administrator Roger Fraser explained that the use of the street repair millage to fund the entire project had been the “fall-back plan.” Fraser said the city staff is trying to do “anything but that.” If the city was forced to do that, Fraser said, then “we’ll have a serious conversation with you.” That conversation would come as early as this fall, if the city can’t obtain the dollars.

When asked by Kunselman if the project would start this fall if the local street repair millage had to pay for all of it, Fraser stressed that the fall 2010 construction start had been based on a requirement of the TIGER grant application. It will now be a spring 2011 construction start, but funding needs to be in place by the end of the year.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) asked at what point the $8 million of federal surface transportation funding becomes certain. Pirooz indicated that in the process, the first step was WATS (Washtenaw Area Transportation Study) approval, and that’s been done. The next step, said Pirooz, is for SEMCOG (Southeast Michigan Council of Governments) to approve it, which the city believed it would. Once that happens, said Pirooz, the city had a promise that the surface transportation program would pay the $8 million. The one last piece is the federal highway bill – the surface transportation program is part of that, and it’s still in the Congressional approval process. As long as there’s a highway bill, said Pirooz, the $8 million will happen. There’s a “slim to none” chance that the highway bill won’t happen, he said.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the authorization to apply for funding from the state’s local bridge program to help pay for the replacement of the East Stadium bridges.

Construction: Fuller Road Station

Eli Cooper has presented the Fuller Road Station project on several occasions to different public bodies, most recently at an Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board meeting [Chronicle coverage: "AATA Gets Its Fill of Fuller Road Station"] Cooper also presented an update on the project to the city’s park advisory committee (PAC) at its March 16, 2010 meeting.

The city council appoints two of its own members as non-voting ex officio members of PAC: Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Christopher Taylor (Ward 3).

At Monday’s city council meeting, during his communications time, Anglin reported that when Cooper had made his presentation at the March 16 PAC meeting, a lot of concerns were raised – noting that it is the park advisory commission, and that naturally they’re passionate about the parks – “as they should be,” he said. The city/university were working together, said Anglin, to build what most people see as a parking structure. Anglin said he shared some of their concerns, but also sees the larger vision [of a train station for commuter service] that could take place. The fact that there’s no guarantee that the train will become a reality is a concern to many people, he noted, especially at a time when the city is cutting expenses.

Taylor indicated that compared to Anglin, he had a somewhat different take on the PAC meeting, as far as the nature of the concerns that were expressed there. He suggested that among PAC members the main focus of concern was whether the city was getting a “sufficient deal” as expressed in the memorandum of understanding. The equity of the deal between the city and university was something that everyone would need to keep an eye on, Taylor said.

Mayor John Hieftje took up the issue of Fuller Road Station, saying that a question from the previous night’s caucus about when a specific set of information would be posted on the city’s website had been looked at by city staff. He also took the opportunity to respond to Anglin’s remarks on Fuller Road Station, pointing out that the last time the council had voted on it, Anglin had supported it.

Construction: Plymouth Green Crossings

The item that came before the council was a request for a change in the PUD agreement for the Plymouth Green Crossings project. What the change did was swap out a proposed restaurant for 26 temporary parking spaces plus 11 motorcycle spaces. At a planning commission meeting in February, the change received support of all five commissioners who were present, but fell short of the six votes needed to win an official “recommendation” from that body. [Chronicle coverage: "Plymouth Green Crossings Gets Every Vote, Still One Short"]

During public commentary at the city council’s Monday night meeting, Jim Mogensen told the council that the project had an interesting history. He said he first learned about it from a clerk’s report and he noticed that the project was going to need a water permit from the MDEQ. Mogensen said he just happened to be in the city hall building, and he asked Jerry Hancock about it, who said, What project?  [Hancock is Ann Arbor's stormwater and floodplain programs coordinator.]

Any citizen can call for a public hearing, Mogensen said, which he did. And that caused a delay, which gave Hancock some additional time to review the plan. Now there’s a bunch of underground detention tanks – which were required of the developer – that would not have otherwise been required. He asked the council to think about the tanks – whether it’s a parking lot or a restaurant, eventually the tanks will fail. If it’s a substantial building on top of the tanks, what do you do?

The other part of the project involves payments into the affordable housing fund by the developer, which the developer has experienced difficulty making, Mogensen noted. When a developer of a property has a problem, Mogensen observed, society will sort out the solution for the developer. What happens, though, when a tenant has a similar problem?

Outcome: The city council voted unanimously without discussion to approve the amended Plymouth Green Crossings PUD agreement.

Construction: Porous Pavement on Sylvan Avenue

Sylvan is a short one-block-long street running east-west, nestled into the upside down”V” formed by State and Packard streets, near Yost Ice Arena. At the city council’s Oct. 5, 2009 meeting, the city council had already approved an expenditure for $54,271 to pay for engineering services (from Fishbeck, Thompson, Carr & Huber, Inc.) for the Sylvan Avenue porous pavement project.

At that meeting, Margie Teall (Ward 4) had requested that it be pulled out of the consent agenda for individual consideration. Nick Hutchinson, a civil engineer with the city, fielded questions from Teall, in whose ward Sylvan Avenue is located. At that time Hutchinson indicated that the project should be finished in the spring of 2010.

At that October 2009 meeting, several benefits of porous pavement were drawn out. Many of them were the same as those mentioned at Monday’s meeting by Vince Caruso during public commentary. He noted that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considered it best practice: it reduces heat in the summer, it’s quieter under traffic load, requires less salt and plowing during the winter, because as the snow and ice melt, the water drains straight through.

The project’s budget is $481,245, drawing funding from the street reconstruction millage ($159,983) and the stormwater maintenance fund ($321,442). The stormwater funding portion of the project will be repaid as a loan secured by the office of the Water Resources Commissioner [formerly called the Drain Commissioner].

Before the council on Monday night was the approval of a construction contract with ABC Paving Co. for $343,875.

Outcome: The council approved the construction contract with ABC Paving Co. for $343,875.

Construction: Awards

The city council bore witness to the presentation of two awards from the Michigan chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA). As part of their Project of the Year Awards, the city of Ann Arbor had won an award for the Huron Parkway-Nixon Road intersection improvements. The project won in the category of transportation projects under $2 million. The city also won an APWA award for the Harvard Drain and Nichols Arboretum stormwater enhancement project. The arboretum project won in the the environment category for projects under $2 million.

Making the award on behalf of the APWA was Evan Pratt, who is familiar to the city council as a member of the city’s planning commission. Pratt stressed that he was not part of the awards committee for the APWA. The APWA’s 29,000 national members, Pratt told the council, includes 800 members of the Michigan chapter.

Construction: Carbon Monoxide Levels

As a part of his city administrator’s report, Roger Fraser told the council that on the previous Wednesday afternoon [April 14], the carbon monoxide (CO) monitors in the building had started to ring shortly after 1 p.m., and that city hall – the Larcom Building – had quickly been cleared. They asked the fire department to come measure with their more sensitive equipment and firefighters had confirmed elevated CO readings in Larcom and the adjacent police/courts building currently under construction.

Speculation on Wednesday afternoon was that those CO emissions had come from several factors. There were strong winds out of south, and at the base of a hole where an excavator was working there were 8-inch uncapped wire feeds. Also, while work is being done in the basement, there is an opening in the south side of the building. The working theory was that diesel fumes were being sucked into the building through the wire feeds and the opening in the basement via the stair towers that have their base in the basement.

Overnight, there were clear CO levels, said Fraser. And the 6 a.m. test indicated clear readings. Staff had been told the day before that unless they heard otherwise, the plan was for everyone to come in to work as usual. After 7 a.m., the CO alarm went off again. “We were dumbfounded,” said Fraser. It turned out that a propane-operated skid loader working in the basement was emitting high levels of CO and was probably causing previous CO readings, not the excavator. Propane-operated equipment is not supposed to emit CO, said Fraser. The city has done additional sealing work and has looking into the issue of the skid loader, Fraser said.

City Charter and Council Rules

The city council considered a rule on email, and demonstrated in actual practice how a charter provision governs council conduct.

Charter and Rules: Email Rule Consideration

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who chairs the city council’s rules committee, asked that a resolution be added to the agenda that would formally direct the council’s rules committee to take up the issue of a rule on the councilmembers’ use of government email account to do its city business.

Whereas, The Council has agreed to consider the following amendment to the Council Rules: “City Council members will use their City e-mail accounts when sending e-mail communications about substantive City business, to the extent feasible. This rule does not cover communication to constituents or residents or communications regarding political activity.”

Whereas The Council considers it appropriate to have the Council Rules Committee review this Rule further;

RESOLVED, The Council formally considers this Rule and directs the Council Rules Committee to review the Rule further.

The consideration of the rule stemmed from a requirement in the terms of recent lawsuit that the city settled. [Chronicle coverage: "City Settles Lawsuit, Must Conduct Study"] The settlement agreement specified that:

21. As the City Council has previously been reviewing e-mail usage policies, the City Council will further consider the following amendment at the April, 2010 Council meeting(s), “City Council members will use their City e-mail accounts when sending e-mail communications about substantive City business, to the extent feasible. This rule does not cover communication to constituents or residents or communication regarding political activity.”
22. The Plaintiffs recognize that the City Council will address this through the council process and that this Agreement is not dependent on any particular result, other than the Council formally considering this possible amendment in some manner in April, 2010. The parties recognize that such a rule, even if adopted, is not binding on any subsequent Council and each new City Council enacts new rules after each general election.

There was no consideration by the council at Monday’s meeting in terms of a debate or discussion of the merits of amending their set of rules in the manner so specified. The scant discussion centered on an explanation from city attorney Stephen Postema that there was no requirement under the settlement terms that the council do anything with the rule. But Postema asserted that it was appropriate for the council to look at the rule. Postema did not repeat a previous statement he’d made to the media that to his knowledge the council used the government email system for their city business. Instead, he said he knew that councilmembers generally used the system, but allowed that there are difficulties in using it.

One of the issues that such a rule might address is the city of Ann Arbor’s failure under Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to produce electronic communications by city councilmembers or other public officials that are sent using non-government email accounts. In The Chronicle’s most recent experience on April 13, 2010, the city failed to produce such records at least in part because the city does not consistently request of public officials that they produce writings from their non-government email accounts, which could be responsive to FOIA requests.

Despite a lack of discussion, by using the statement, “The Council formally considers this Rule …” the council can rely on the statement as a performative utterance to satisfy the requirement of the settlement agreement. Performative utterances, as explicated by J.L. Austin in his seminal work “How to Do Things With Words,” are sentences that are neither true nor false, but which are used to perform some act upon the world. Standard examples of these kinds of sentences include:

1. ‘I do’ in a marriage ceremony.
2. ‘I name this ship the “Queen Elizabeth.”‘
3. ‘I give and bequeath my watch to my brother’ as in a will.
4. ‘I bet you sixpence it will rain tomorrow.’

Some things are not achievable with a performative utterance, of course. For example, “I hereby lift this piano” does not effect a piano lifting.

Mayor John Hieftje was keen to emphasize that the settlement agreement would not cost the city anything, because the environmental study, which is also a requirement of the settlement, was being performed in-house.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the remand of the email rule to its rules committee.

The council’s rules committee will be adding the consideration of an email rule to its current work plan of developing an ethics policy for the council.

Charter and Rules:  Glacier Hills and Jolly Pumpkin

Some of the ethical considerations under which the council does its work are prescribed not by council rule or by an ethics policy, but by the city charter. Applied on two occasions Monday night was the following charter provision:

4.4 (f)  Except as otherwise provided in this charter, each member of the Council present shall cast a “yes” or “no” vote on each question before the Council, unless excused therefrom by a vote of at least six members.

The reason for excusing Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) from voting on those two occasions was also charter-based:

4.4 (i) A member of the Council shall not vote on a question in which the member has a financial interest, other than the general public interest, or on any question involving the member’s own conduct. If a question is raised under this section at any Council meeting concerning the eligibility of a member of the Council to vote on any matter, such question shall be finally determined by the concurring vote of at least six members of the Council, not including such member.

Specifically, Taylor explained to his council colleagues, his law firm Butzel Long represented a potential beneficiary of the council’s action in two cases.

First, Butzel Long represents Jolly Pumpkin. So the council voted to excuse Taylor from the discussion on a resolution that allowed for a new outdoor service area for the Main Street bar.

Outcome: The new outdoor service area for Jolly Pumpkin was unanimously approved.

Second, Butzel Long provided the bond counsel for the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC) in connection with an EDC project that Glacier Hills had applied for – it includes $23 million in bonds. So the council voted to excuse Taylor from the discussion of that project, which was approved. As part of the resolution, two people were added to the EDC board: Dan Slee and John A. Rasmussen, who are representative of neighborhood residents and business interests likely to be affected by the project.

Outcome: The resolution to approve the EDC Glacier Hills project was unanimously approved.

During public commentary at the end of the meeting, Stephen Ranzini, a member of the city’s EDC, thanked the council for passing the resolution and reminded the council to use their leverage with business owners, because the EDC had been allocated $17 million in tax-free bonding authority as part of the federal stimulus package. The Washtenaw County EDC, for which Ranzini also serves as vice chair, had been awarded another $33 million in tax-free bonding authority, said Ranzini. He noted that neither the city nor the county EDC had received any applications for funds – despite Ranzini’s attempts to to communicate through Ann Arbor SPARK, and through personal meetings. [See Chronicle coverage of Ranzini making the same point to the Ann Arbor DDA and of a recent Washtenaw County Economic Development Corporation meeting.]

Street Lights

Pulled out of the consent agenda for specific consideration was an item that approved a contract with DTE to convert 58 conventional streetlights to LED  fixtures. The location of the lights is the Hill-Packard-East University neighborhood, which was chosen in part in response to concerns about safety raised by some University of Michigan students in 2008.

As part of the contract, DTE is dropping the annual charges for the streetlights from $11,887 to $6,293.  The annual savings of $5,594 would result in a four-year payback on the city’s share of the $22,288 conversion cost. The city and DTE are splitting the conversion costs 50-50.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) called that kind of collaboration “exciting” and asked Andrew Brix to take the podium. Brix is the city’s energy programs manager.

Brix said that the city had been at the forefront in moving towards LED back in 2005. They’d been working with DTE on the issue. The state Public Service Commission had ordered DTE to produce a proposal for a uniform tariff for LED lights, Brix said, but they were “not there yet” based on what they submitted.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked about the safety issue and how the LED bulbs addressed it. Brix explained that the LEDs would produce “whiter” light and better color conditions. “You’ll be able to make out color,” he explained.

Asked by Margie Teall (Ward 4) what kind of fixtures were chosen, Brix said it was the same fixture used on Nixon Road – it was DTE’s choice, but the city was happy with it, he said.

Mayor John Hieftje noted that it’s difficult to work on something owned by someone else and that the city had to win DTE’s cooperation.

Brix broke down the statistics for streetlights: The city owns 800 streetlights outside the downtown. The other 5,500 are owned by DTE.

Christoper Taylor (Ward 3) said he wanted to “pile on the praise” for DTE taking the step. He also noted that in connection with the A2Fiber response to Google’s request for information, DTE had been a “100-percent partner” on the project.

Hieftje allowed that he’d been impatient at the pace that the LED conversion has been moving forward, but that from DTE’s point of view, they are setting a precedent, so DTE is reluctant to go too fast.

Crosswalks

Resident Kathy Griswold addressed the council once again on the topic of moving the mid-block crosswalk at King Elementary School from its mid-block location to a four-way stop intersection about 300 feet away. She reported that she’d sent an email that day to Todd Roberts, the superintendent of the Ann Arbor Public School system, asking him to email city administrator Roger Fraser stating his support for the move.

Griswold noted that the parents of children attending the school are instructing their kids to cross at the intersection, but that the school crossing guards can’t guard that crosswalk – they can only serve at the mid-block location. A request made under the Freedom of Information Act, said Griswold, had revealed over 50 emails, but the project had come to a halt in the fall of 2009. It seemed mysterious, she said. She expressed the hope that she’d only be at council a few more times talking about the crosswalk.

How many times has Griswold addressed the council on the King School crosswalk issue? Here’s a (possibly incomplete) chronology:

• 2009 Aug. 16 city council caucus [link]
• 2009 Nov. 5 city council meeting [link]
• 2009 Dec. 21 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Jan. 4 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Feb. 1 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Feb. 16 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 March 15 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 April 5 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 April 18 city council caucus [link]

Also crosswalk related, during his communications time Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) reported out from the WATS policy committee that there would be a presentation on HAWK (High Intensity Activated Crosswalk) signals at the next meeting. The city is looking at the possibility of a HAWK signal for the crossing at Third & Huron, near the Ann Arbor YMCA.

Other Commentary

Appearing briefly during public commentary to thank the council was the new executive director of the Leslie Science Center, Greta Brunschwyler. She thanked city administrator Roger Fraser and said she look forwarded to continued partnership.

Present: Stephen Rapundalo, Mike Anglin, Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Stephen Kunselman, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Next council meeting: May 3, 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Glenn Nelson addresses his fellow AAPS board members during last Wednesday's meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Also mentioned was the possibility that layoff notices could be issued – and, in fact, about 190 teachers have received letters stating that they might receive such notices. If approved by the board at its meeting on Wednesday, notices could go out later this week.

The board also swore in its newest member, Christine Stead, as treasurer, replacing long-time board member Randy Friedman, who resigned earlier this month. His resignation adds a fifth seat to the election slate this fall.

Updates were given to the budget plan, and a bid for summer construction projects at Pioneer High School was given a first briefing by the board. That marked the final phase of the comprehensive capital improvements program approved by the community with the passage of the bond and sinking fund millages in 2004.

Peer mentoring was applauded as part of middle school programming, and a personal curriculum option and additional facilities projects were also discussed at first briefing.

AAPS Recommendation: Privatize Custodial, Maintenance Services

Bids to privatize AAPS custodial and maintenance services were brought as a first briefing item by executive director of physical properties Randy Trent. If approved, the bids would award a $5.3 million contract to GCA Service Group for the district’s custodial services, and a $1.3 million contract to Great Lakes Environmental Services (GLES) for the district’s maintenance services. Overall, this would save the district $2.4 million next school year, with additional savings accumulating, as four remaining supervisory positions are phased out by the 2012-13 school year. Details of the bids were included in a memo to superintendent Todd Roberts provided in the board’s information packet, and additional details were added during Wednesday’s meeting.

Privatization: Description of Custodial Bid

The district currently employs 139 custodial workers and six custodial supervisors. Custodians work 260 days a year, and are allowed paid time off ranging from 4-10 weeks per year. Current wages are broken into two tiers – the higher wage range is $14.26 to $18.11 per hour, and the lower wage range is $9.85 to $10.97 per hour. A Blue Preferred PPO family health insurance plan is offered to all custodial services staff for $560 per year, and custodians are part of the state retirement system.

Under the GCA bid, custodians would work only 240 days a year, and receive no paid time off. Higher-paid workers would receive $12.12 an hour, and lower-paid workers’ wages would remain the same. An HMO family health insurance plan would be offered to all custodians for $1,000 per year, and they would no longer accrue a retirement pension through the state system.

GCA would also plan to hire two of the six AAPS custodial supervisors, if they meet certain requirements. If the transition to privatization is successful, AAPS would eliminate two more of the supervisory positions in 2011-12, and the last two in 2012-13.

Privatization: Description of Maintenance Bid

The district currently employs 25 maintenance workers and one maintenance supervisor. Maintenance workers currently work 260 days per year, and higher-paid workers average seven weeks of paid time off per year. Wages for maintenance workers range from $16.35 to $21.90 per hour. They receive the same health insurance benefit as custodians, a PPO plan with coverage for their entire family for $560 per year, and accrue retirement savings through the state pension system.

Under the GLES bid, maintenance workers would become part of a different local labor union. They would work nine-hour days for four days a week, totaling 1,800 hours over the year. All employees would make $17 per hour, and would have no paid time off. GLES would offer a similar health care package as GCA, for which an HMO family health insurance plan would cost each worker $1,000 per year. Workers would also stop accruing retirement savings in the state retirement system.

If the bid to privatize maintenance services is approved, GLES would also plan to hire the AAPS maintenance supervisor, as long as that person meets certain conditions of hiring.

Privatization: Board Questions and Discussion on Bid Package

Randy Trent, AAPS executive director of physical properties, argued that the combination of hiring GCA for custodial services and GLES for maintenance services would be the best option for the district. He explained the reasoning behind his recommendation, touting GCA’s extensive experience in over 1,400 schools across the country, and mentioning the “outstanding” reference GLES received from the University of Michigan. Trent said that GLES had responded to the custodial services RFP (request for proposals) as well, but that he believed GCA’s use of newer technology, as well as the positive local history GLES had in environmental services,  meant that the two companies could best meet the district’s needs as recommended: GCA for custodial work, and GLES for maintenance.

Simone Lightfoot questioned the scope of work outlined by the contracts, asking, “What costs will we incur when we need them to do work that was not in the RFP? … They’re only going to do what we’ve ‘RFPd’ them to do.” Trent assured the board that both companies will do whatever needs to be done during standard work hours, and that they have an overtime rate for any coverage needed outside the work day. He gave the example that both companies have new ideas they would bring to the district to increase efficiency, and that those procedures were not delineated in the RFP.

Glenn Nelson asked Trent if he was correct in interpreting that the bid has built-in increases in savings over time, as AAPS would eliminate the remaining four custodial supervisory positions over three years. Susan Baskett asked about the rationale of retaining these four supervisors at all: “Would we really still need six – four of ours and two of theirs?” Conversely, Lightfoot questioned, “What might we face as a backlash of ‘brain drain?’”

Trent explained that the four custodial supervisors remaining on the AAPS payroll, as well as the two who would move to GCA, would all be necessary during the transition to privatization in order to “train the new folks.” Nelson added that temporarily retaining the supervisors was “a form of insurance,” and that removing them all from the AAPS payroll on day one “would make [AAPS] very vulnerable if this didn’t work out for some reason.”

Deb Mexicotte asked for clarification on the effects to retirement earnings. Lightfoot and Baskett asked clarifying questions regarding the wages and benefits that would be offered to workers if they were hired by the contractors. They pointed  out that workers would be asked to pay almost double in health insurance costs, while receiving significantly lower wages, no paid time off, and no state retirement pension.

Trent countered that with each company, the benefits are automatically offered, and not tied to hours worked. He also mentioned that the workers would not lose the state retirement savings they had already accrued, but that their “years of service” – a multiplier in the formula for calculating a worker’s pension – would be frozen (meaning they could not accrue any additional savings). Trent also said that he believed GCA would likely offer a 403b retirement savings plan, with some employer matching of employee contributions.

Christine Stead pointed out that conversations with labor unions are still ongoing, and she and Mexicotte both asked for clarification on the timing involved in outsourcing versus reaching a negotiated settlement with current AAPS custodial and maintenance staff.

Trent answered that an April 28 deadline has been set for negotiations to conclude, and that if an agreement with the union has not been reached by then, the district would hope to move forward with outsourcing. Approval of these bids would then be slated for second briefing and a definitive vote at the April 28 board meeting. In part, Trent explained, the April 28 date was set to ensure a smooth transition if privatization does occur, so that the companies have sufficient time to interview and hire a full staff to be able to begin work on July 1.

Baskett asked whether all AAPS employees would be able to transfer directly to the new companies if they chose to do so. Trent clarified that AAPS workers would need to interview, but that they would be hired as long as they passed a drug test (which the district does not currently require of all employees), and as long as they had maintained a good attendance record during their tenure in the district.

Lightfoot expressed concern that not enough staff would transfer to meet the district’s needs, given that the wages and benefits that would be offered are “not attractive.” Trent assured the board that choosing which direction to move by April 28 would allow the companies to fill their staffs “even if they have to hire all new workers.” He also mentioned that the district would cooperate with each company to get all employees trained, and that each contractor has a training plan ready to go.

Baskett asked Trent why GLES was chosen over Aramark, when Aramark came in with a lower bid. Trent explained that Aramark’s bid was misleading and incomplete, since it did not include payment for substitute costs while the other bids did. Baskett also questioned, “Is there any relationship between a member of your staff and the president of GLES?” Trent said no, and denied that there were any conflicts of interest in the decision-making process he and his staff had used.

Outcome: Both Roberts and Trent stressed that this bid would only be acted on if negotiations with the local custodial and maintenance workers union could not reach a settlement before the April 28 board meeting.

Privatization: Public Commentary

Two speakers offered opposition to privatization at Wednesday’s meeting during public commentary.

Percy Brown, president of the Ann Arbor Education Association of Paraeducators (AAEA/P), argued that the district’s overall mission was to improve student achievement, and that this could not be done without paraeducators. He added that paraeducators are “ambassadors” and that they are assuming increasingly greater responsibility as teachers’ focus is being pulled toward standardized testing.

Chai Montgomery, an AAPS bus driver, also argued that privatization was a “misguided” solution to the district’s financial problems. He mentioned that there are other ways to cut costs, and that the threat of privatization is ongoing. Montgomery asserted, “We have to change the status quo and make education freer … I don’t like privatization – I don’t think it’s fair.”

Friedman’s Resignation

Directly after public commentary, board president Deb Mexicotte announced that the board had accepted the resignation of long-time board member Randy Friedman. Saying she would speak later to his service, Mexicotte said simply that Friedman had resigned, and gave no further details.

Stead Installed as Board Treasurer

Without missing a beat after announcing Friedman’s resignation, Mexicotte facilitated the selection and swearing-in of Christine Stead as a board officer. Stead had nominated herself to be considered for the board treasurer position that Friedman had held.

Outcome: Stead’s appointment to the treasurer position was unanimously approved by a roll call vote of all board members present, and she was installed by board secretary Amy Osinski.

Five of Seven Board Seats to Be Open in November’s Election

Friedman’s departure from the board marks the third change in the makeup of the board this school year – Simone Lightfoot and Christine Stead were chosen to replace resigning board members in December and March, respectively. Lightfoot and Stead will join whoever replaces Friedman in running for re-election this November, along with Mexicotte and Baskett, whose terms expire at the end of the calendar year.

Later in the meeting as part of his report for the PTO Council, Andy Thomas said he believed having five of the seven board of education seats open at once was unprecedented, and mentioned that the PTOC would be inviting all those running for board positions to attend a candidate forum in the fall.

The AAPS has posted information on its website on how to apply for the seat vacated by Friedman. During agenda planning at the close of Wednesday’s meeting, Mexicotte announced that candidate interviews will take place on Thursday, May 6 at 6:30 p.m. at the Balas Administration Building, 2555 S. State St. Candidate presentations and selection will take place at the regular May 12 board meeting.

The Budget Plan: A Second Briefing

Based on board response to the budget plan as presented in March, superintendent Todd Roberts reviewed the proposal as a second briefing item, highlighting the few updates made to the original budget proposal. [Previous Chronicle coverage: AAPS Budget Would Cut Positions, Add Fees]

At Wednesday’s board meeting, Roberts essentially repeated the presentation he had made at the community meetings held the two previous evenings, pointing out the few changes made since the board last met. The very newest change – the elimination of middle school planning centers – had not been mentioned at the budget meetings.

Roberts’ revised presentation also included more details on the impact of the proposed cuts on students, highlighting the increases in class sizes, and elementary-level split classes that would be necessary, depending on how negotiations with the teachers’ union conclude. Roberts has placed the bulk of a remaining $4.4 million shortfall not addressed by “part one” of his proposed budget on the shoulders of the teachers to absorb. “Part two” could include layoffs of teachers, with an impact on class sizes, depending on how negotiations unfold.

Both Roberts and teachers’ union president Brit Satchwell, who attended the April 12 community budget meeting, have reported that negotiations are proceeding amicably, but that some number of teachers will likely need to be “pink-slipped” in case layoffs turn out to be necessary. AAPS is required to issue layoff notices to any teacher who might not be returning the following year by 60 days before the end of the current school year.

Late last week, about 190 teachers were notified that they are on a list to receive layoff notices. The board meets on Wednesday, April 21, and will vote on whether to issue those notices – if approved, the notices will likely be sent out later this week. Speaking to The Chronicle on Monday, AAPS spokewoman Liz Margolis said the hope is that the majority of those notices, if not all, will ultimately be rescinded.

The budget amendments made since the last board meeting are as follows, along with any additional cost savings brought by each:

• In middle school programming, the middle school planning centers were replaced with a positive behavioral support model, eliminating an additional 1.6 teaching positions, and saving an additional $10,000;
• In elementary programming, more detail was given on the nine planned staff reductions – they would be 4.6 media specialists, 2 computer lab teachers, and 2.4 music or physical education teachers; and
• In district instructional support, summer school would be funded through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding instead of charging tuition.

As he stepped through the budget again, Roberts highlighted schools of choice, and cooperative agreements with other districts and the county as possible sources of new revenue and savings. He also stressed how much uncertainty there still was in many directions. At the state level, retirement reform and health care legislation could still add mandates that would have a large impact on the district, such as requiring outsourcing or consolidation. Roberts noted that 51 teachers have currently applied to retire this year, but that the number could be significantly impacted depending on what happens to the pending legislation.

At the local level, Roberts said, given that it is anticipated that the districts will incur another $265 per-pupil cut, “we’ve had to go ahead and plan for the worst-case scenario.”

Budget Plan: Educational Impact

Roberts highlighted the impact that the two parts of the budget would have on class sizes and the number of split classes. Here’s how the numbers compare.

Currently, elementary class sizes average 24 at the K-2 level, and 26 at the 3-5 level. Part one of the budget plan keeps those numbers the same, but adding part two as well would bump them up to 26 and 28, respectively. Also, at the elementary level, there are currently three split classes, that is, classes with more than one grade level represented. If part one of the budget is approved, the number of split classes will rise to eight, and if part two is also necessary, the number could reach 13.

At the middle school level, current class sizes average 26. They would increase to 28 with part one, and to 30 if parts one and two of the budget are necessary.

High school level class sizes would sustain the most dramatic increase if this budget passes. Core high school classes currently average 28 students in all grades. With part one of the budget, ninth grade class sizes stay the same, but tenth through twelfth grade class sizes would rise to an average of 31. If part two of the plan is also enacted, all high school class sizes would move from an average of 28 to an average of 33.

Budget Plan: Contract Lengths

Stead pointed out how the biggest difference in impact has to do with whether or not part two of the budget plan will need to be enacted, which would eliminate an additional 36 teaching positions. She argued that the district would hardly be able to measure the effect of the increased class sizes and split classes for years, and that she hoped the teachers’ union and administration were able to achieve a 4% across-the-board reduction of teachers’ salaries. Stead then asked Roberts about the duration of the contract under negotiation.

Roberts clarified that the $4.5 million in savings brought by part two of the budget plan includes all employee groups, and that in these “uncertain times … it’s unlikely that either party would want to commit to more than a two-year contract.”

Budget Plan: Planning Centers Out – Behavior Model In

Lightfoot mentioned that she was pleased to see the middle school planning centers being recommended for elimination, which had been suggested at the last board meeting. She asked whether or not community assistants had been considered for use in the middle schools, as had also been mentioned earlier.

Roberts confirmed that using community assistants had been part of the conversation, but that nothing has been decided yet. He pointed out that some money was left in the budget in order to effectively implement a positive behavior support (PBS) model in the middle schools, which may need to include hiring some staff, such as community assistants or “someone like that.” Roberts said a plan would be coming back to the board once developed.

Mexicotte expressed her pleasure at the administration’s response to the concerns stated at the last meeting: “Positive behavior support is fabulous – thank you so much! Moving toward a PBS model is absolutely where we should be headed. It’s a distributed model – everyone is responsible.”

Budget Plan: Musical Instrument Fee

Mexicotte repeated her concern from the last meeting regarding musical instrument rental fees: “I’m still not sure we can charge for musical instruments without violating board policy.” Roberts then countered that it depends how AAPS board policy is interpreted, and that “we would have to look at our own board policy closely.” Roberts also mentioned that some other nearby districts do charge such a fee.

Nelson pointed out that state law says, “if it’s part of the curriculum, as we are proud to say our fifth grade instrument program is, than I don’t think we can charge.” But Nelson was quick to add that he is not a lawyer, and that this policy should be reviewed by the district’s legal counsel.

Mexicotte referenced a court case involving a graphing calculator as the impetus for “why this came up,” and pointed out that the board has a policy on equity as well as materials that would be implicated. She asked Baskett to lead the performance committee in reviewing these policies along with administration, to see if “there is a change or adjustment we need to make to the budget.”

Nelson agreed that it warrants a closer look, and thanked Mexicotte for the “heads up.”

Budget Plan: Board Concerns

Stead and Mexicotte made brief comments concerning the impact they feared this budget could have on students. Stead stated, “We’re almost underestimating the possible impact this could have. We’re constantly being asked to do more with less.” Mexicotte added, “These are uncertain times. The numbers are still surprising, even though we’ve seen them a lot. There is no doubt these changes will impact students, staff, and the community.”

But the most detailed concerns came from the longest-serving board member, Glenn Nelson, who worried if the administration was doing such a good job at figuring out what to cut, it would lead the community to think “we’re coming through [this] relatively unscathed.” He gave three examples of why he was “very concerned with what’s happening to education in this community.”

First, he pointed out that the best-case scenario still raises class size by 8% in middle school, and by 15% more if part two becomes necessary. “These are real impacts on the climate in the middle school,” Nelson asserted, “that may or may not show up in the MEAP.”

Secondly, he argued that split classes were not good for individualizing education, which is a goal in the district. Finally, Nelson cited concerns with requiring payment to participate in athletics, saying, “I know we’ll implement it the best way we can, but there will be some people who don’t apply, and we’re going to lose a few kids.”

Nelson closed with a plea for taking greater responsibility for education at the local level, while working for change at the state level, and claimed that education is at a “dangerous fork in the road” between lower quality and higher quality.

Budget Plan: Budget Approval Process

Mexicotte requested that the budget plan be removed from the consent agenda, saying that the board should only be suggesting to the administration whether or not they are “on track” for what may come next, “such as layoffs, TAs [tentative agreements with labor unions], or consolidation agreements.” She pointed out that there will be a public hearing on the budget on May 26, and that the board does not have to officially approve it until June 30.

Nelson said that his understanding, too, was that the board was to approve a guideline that night – not line items, but an overall plan. He asked Roberts, “Do you have any concerns if we remove this from the consent agenda? Do you feel you are lacking in any authority to move forward?”

Roberts answered that any items for which he would need specific approval he would bring back to the board individually, and confirmed that discretionary items in the budget were not “set in stone.” He also argued that the staffing process has to move forward, including making transfers – both voluntary and involuntary.

Mexicotte then wrapped up by saying that the board was now in the final “influence and suggestion stage” of developing this budget, and Nelson and Stead explicitly stated their support for this framework.

Mexicotte added, “You have my support, but I am dismayed.”

Outcome: Even though this was a second briefing item, there was not a formal vote. The board signaled its approval that AAPS administrators continue to move in the direction outlined by the budget plan as presented.

Peer Mentoring

Numerous references were made during the meeting to a peer mentoring program at Forsythe Middle School in which cognitively-impaired, physically-impaired, and/or hearing-impaired students are mentored by general education students in an adapted physical education class developed and taught by Kelli Bert. The peer mentoring program was started in 2004-05, and had been considered for reduction by Forsythe’s principal. But in response to a notable outcry of support for the program, it has been reinstated and will continue next year.

Two public commentary speakers – one parent and one student – spoke on behalf of the program. The parent noted that her son, who is hearing-impaired, had been helped tremendously by the program, which she also credits with stimulating age-appropriate social interactions, promoting self-esteem, and increasing empathy for and tolerance of special education students. She applauded the decision to continue supporting the program.

The student who spoke is currently a junior at Pioneer, and had been a peer mentor in the program during his seventh grade year. Calling it an experience he’d never forget, this student asserted that all the peer mentors he knew from that class have gone on to participate in social service projects, and that the program helps able-bodied students to overcome stereotypes.

Barb Byers, vice chair of the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee for Special Education (AAPAC), used her association report to express gratitude that Forsythe’s peer mentoring program had been preserved, and added that a similar program had been started at Clague this year. She credited Clague’s program with bringing special needs students into the school community, and argued that relationships developed during peer mentoring can be “life-changing for all involved.” Byers also advocated for including peer mentoring in a systematic and effective program to dealing with middle school bullying, including the bullying of special needs students.

Other First Briefing Items

In addition to the custodial/maintenance privatization bid, the board considered a number of other items at “first briefing,” at which no action is taken. Action is usually taken at “second briefing,” or the second time the board reviews an item.

Personal Curriculum

Superintendent Todd Roberts introduced the personal curriculum (PC) being presented to the board at this meeting as being a necessary option for AAPS to offer to be in accordance with state law. A personal curriculum allows students to deviate from state graduation requirements, known as the Michigan Merit Curriculum (MMC) if they meet certain parameters.

Joyce Hunter, administrator of middle/high schools and career and technology education, then came to the speaker’s podium. She explained that a personal curriculum can be requested on an individual basis by parents/guardians, school personnel, students over age 18, or emancipated minors. It leads to a regular high school diploma if successfully fulfilled. Hunter then reviewed the following allowable modifications to the MMC:

• After completing at least 1.5 mathematics credits, students can request to exchange one credit of Algebra II for .5 credit of Algebra II;
• After completing two social studies credits, including civics, students can request to exchange one credit of social studies for an additional language arts, math, science, or world language credit; and
• Students can request to exchange either or both of the required credits in physical education & health, and visual, performing, and applied arts for additional credits in language arts, math, science, or world language.

The parts of the MMC that cannot be modified, except for special education students or students who transfer to AAPS after attending two years of high school somewhere else, Hunter explained, are as follows. All students are required to complete:

• Four credits in English/language arts;
• Three credits in science, including biology and either chemistry or physics;
• At least 3.5 mathematics credits (four without a PC);
• At least two credits in social studies (three without a PC), including .5 credit in civics;
• An online learning experience, as incorporated into one or more required credits; and
• Two credits in world languages (beginning with the class of 2016).

One modification the district allows, which does not require a personal curriculum, is to spread algebra II over two years instead of the usual one year. This allows students to earn two math credits for Algebra II.

In addition, Hunter explained that the district is moving toward allowing students to take more advanced classes in high school by meeting some of the MMC requirements in middle school. Students who are ready can already take Algebra II in eighth grade, and Hunter is proposing that the district allow the same for world languages.

Hunter noted that Lisa Bares, the district’s world language coordinator, is  working on standardizing and creating common assessments for the first high-school level of each of the world languages offered by the AAPS – Spanish, French, German, Latin, and Mandarin Chinese. This standardization would allow AAPS to begin offering high-school level language classes to eighth graders as early as next fall.

Roberts added that next year’s sixth graders will be the first class to have to meet the MMC world languages requirements. So the district would like those students coming into middle school next year to have the option to build toward taking their first high-school level language class during eighth grade.

Glenn Nelson commented that it was “a credit to our system that we continue to look for ways to enrich the curriculum.” Simone Lightfoot added that, while she appreciated the increased curricular rigor, she was concerned about the social implications of having “smarter but less socially acclimated students.” As a parent, she said, she is trying to balance her child’s need to meet these requirements with helping her child to succeed in other aspects of life. “Good job to you, and more work for me,” she quipped.

Deb Mexicotte asked for clarification on whether or not having a personal curriculum would prevent a student from going on to play collegiate sports. She also questioned whether students with 504s – such as students with long-term illnesses – would be allowed to modify their MMC requirements like students with individualized education plans (IEPs) can. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires federally-funded schools to create a written plan to meet the needs of students who require extra accommodations, but who do not qualify for a special education IEP.

On both counts, Hunter said she would need to double-check, and that she would follow-up with the board. She did mention that the district “has been in close contact with the NCAA for a few weeks.”

Hunter also reviewed the state guidelines for school boards in developing a personal curriculum, and gave examples of how the district had met these guidelines. One of the elements of the district’s PC option that requires school board approval is how the content expectations within subject areas are met by specific classes. Hunter mentioned that a committee is working on identifying classes in career and technical education that the district could allow to meet certain MMC requirements. Roberts also mentioned that detail about the PC process will be included in the Student Services Guide, and emphasized that AAPS “need[s] to allow this to happen, based on state law.”

Pioneer Summer Construction: A Bond Comes to Fruition

Randy Trent then returned to the podium to present a set of bids for summer construction projects at Pioneer High School. Removing the portable classrooms and creating a student courtyard area are significant parts of this final project in the district’s five-year capital improvement program. In 2004, Ann Arbor voters approved two millages to fund a $255 million initiative to improve the facilities at every school, as well as build a preschool and a third high school. The money received by AAPS from these millages has been able to be used for capital improvements only. This is in contrast to the countywide millage which failed last November, which would have provided additional funding for operating expenses.

A view to the southwest of Pioneer High School temporary trailers. (Image courtesy of AAPS.)

Trent showed a current picture of the area Pioneer is currently using for its portable classrooms, and then contrasted it with a drawing of the renovated space. Trent referenced a memo included in the board packet and pointed out parts of the drawing as he outlined the project, which includes, “the removal of portable classrooms, the creation of a student courtyard area, tunnel improvements, including waterproofing, piping, and lighting replacement, creation of a culinary arts classroom space and renovation to create business and SISS spaces.”

Granger Construction would be coordinating the work, Trent explained, with bids going to nine separate companies responsible for different aspects of the project. In total, the project will cost $1.7 million. Trent indicated that Granger  recommends the following contractors (bid amounts in parentheses):

• Merlyn Contractors for site demolition & earthwork ($270,000);
• McCarthy Construction for site concrete and asphalt ($315,804);
• Mid-Michigan Turf Care for landscaping and irrigation ($71,900);
• Baker Construction for masonry ($58,950);
• Beal Inc. for general trades ($407,060);
• DRV Contractors for tunnel waterproofing ($38,335);
• Shock Brothers Floorcovering for resilient flooring ($22,000);
• Mills Mechanical for mechanical work ($370,000); and
• Huron Valley Electric for electrical work ($158,400).

Susan Baskett asked about the timing of the project, and Trent answered that the roadway would be done this summer, and that by next spring once the sod has been able to take root, students would be able to “play Frisbee or read” in their new courtyard.

Lightfoot asked if any of the contractors were recognized as “historically-underutilized businesses,” which could refer to being minority or woman-owned. Trent answered by enumerating the geographical coverage area of each contractor. Documents included in the bid don’t indicate any contractor as having “HUB” status, though Baker, Beal, DRV, Mills, Mid-Michigan, and McCarthy as listed as being “small businesses.”

Nelson stated, “It is exciting to see this come to fruition for those of us who put the bond together … It really is ‘last but certainly not least.’” Acknowledging that the portable classrooms did have their charm for some people, Nelson concluded, however, that the renovations would make Pioneer “much more attractive.” Nelson also thanked Trent for his orderly reports and leadership.

Trent insisted that the bond work had been a team effort, saying that “everyone from the superintendent to the teachers in the rooms” had participated to get the program this far. Trent suggested coordinating a photo shoot in the fall to showcase the bond’s improvements and, “to reminisce on all our work.”

Roofing Supplier Bid & DTE Energy Easement

Trent then went on to present the first briefing of a bid to approve MWA/ Firestone as the singular roofing vendor for roofing work to be done this summer at Pioneer, Huron, Forsythe, Slauson, Mitchell, Clague, and Northside schools. He explained that the 2010 sinking fund will pay for necessary roof repairs this summer, and mentioned that most roofs in the district have a 15- to 20-year lifespan. In a memo to the board, Trent explained that he would now be soliciting bids from installers, but that only contractors certified by MWA as qualified installers would be allowed to bid on the work.

The final first briefing facilities item discussed at this meeting was the approval of an easement to DTE Energy on the southeast corner of Seventh & Stadium, part of Pioneer’s property. Trent explained that the easement would be used by DTE Energy to service an existing power pole, and mentioned that it had been reviewed by legal counsel.

The only question asked by the board on these items was by Deb Mexicotte, who asked about the longevity of the easement, if approved. Trent answered that it would be permanent.

Policy Updates

Baskett listed a series of policy updates which had been reviewed by the board’s performance committee, which she chairs. Other than recommending policy #5720, Healthy Foods and Beverages, for deletion, the committee made no other changes to those policies they had reviewed. The policies will be coming back to the board for a second briefing and vote at the April 28 meeting. Baskett explained that the food policy was no longer necessary, as it is superseded by policy #5700, Local Wellness.

In response to questions she had received regarding policy #4700, Enrollment of Non-Resident Children of Employees, Baskett clarified that state law would not allow AAPS to retain students of non-resident employees if those employees’ positions were outsourced.

Stead asked how many students this would affect, and Mexicotte asked whether students could stay if their parents’ positions were outsourced to the county as part of a multi-district consolidation, which is being considered for transportation. No one at the meeting was able to answer either question with certainty.

Baskett said she had heard from the bargaining units that as many as 80 students would have to leave the district. Jane Landefeld, director of student accounting, came to the podium, and reported that the district as a whole currently has 130 non-resident students, but not all of them are children of non-resident employees; some are in AAPS for other reasons, such as receiving certain special education services. Landefeld said that she thought there were only seven students who were non-resident children of custodians, but she did not know how many non-resident children of bus drivers attended AAPS. Baksett repeated that she had heard it was 80 all together.

Nelson asserted, “I do think we want to know what that number is exactly by our next meeting.” Landefeld answered that she would go back and check, and Roberts assured the board that that number would be in the board packet.

Association Reports

In addition to the AAPAC report described above, the board received reports from the Youth Senate, and the Parent-Teacher-Organization Council (PTOC).

The Ann Arbor Administrators Association (AAAA), Ann Arbor Education Association (AAEA), and the Black Parents Student Support Group (BPSSG) did not report at this meeting.

PTO Council Report

Andy Thomas reported for the PTOC, introducing it as having a “traditional mission,” to help local PTOs and serve as a liaison with AAPS administration. Thomas urged parents to get involved in local and state-level lobbying efforts, including a “massive letter-writing campaign,” and posted information about how citizens could contact their legislators about stabilizing school funding. He also mentioned that the PTOC will be holding officer training for local PTO officers in late April.

Youth Senate Report

The Youth Senate report was two-fold, and at first offered a bit of levity. The report blamed the district’s automated “phone home” system for causing “familial strife,” and suggested that the system call students’ homes only if they are habitually absent, rather than to notify parents of every unexcused tardy or absence. The suggestion elicited chuckles from many board members, administrators, and community members present.

The report then continued in a more serious tone, pointing out the significant difference in class failure rates among upperclassmen at Pioneer compared to Huron, and requesting administrative assistance in reviewing and interpreting the data they were given. The Youth Senate’s speaker described the motivation for looking at failure rates as wanting to make the best use of its Achievement Solutions Teams (AST), which offer academic peer support, and have shown to be successful in reducing failing grades.

Board Committee Reports

The board has two standing committees, through which many items on the board’s agenda get a first look – performance and planning. Each board member except for the president is assigned to one or the other – Baskett, and Nelson sit on the performance committee, and Irene Patalan, Stead, and Lightfoot sit on the planning committee. All performance and planning committee meetings are open to the public.

Performance Committee Activities

Baskett reported her committee to have focused on reviewing a “slew” of policies at its most recent meeting, as well as having been introduced to the personal curriculum presented by Hunter as a first briefing item at this meeting, as described above.

Planning Committee Activities

Stead reported for Patalan, who was not in attendance. She noted that the planning committee had also reviewed the personal curriculum brought by Hunter, as well as the series of items regarding facilities brought as first briefings to this meeting by Trent. Stead mentioned that Lightfoot had questioned Trent about process and due diligence at the committee meeting, and that the meeting had been attended by some students and community members as well.

Also in reference to previous planning committee discussions, Lightfoot announced later in the meeting that the district would be holding a “college and career-ready” review on April 29, at which AAPS will present achievement gap data to the public, and lead the analysis of such data.

Second Briefing Items Approved on Consent Agenda

With the budget plan removed, the consent agenda contained the second quarter financial report, 15 policy updates, and four sets of minutes. Aside from a reading of the list of policy titles by Stead, there were no questions or discussion on any of these items.

Outcome: Approved. Nelson, Mexicotte, Lightfoot, Baskett, and Stead voted yes.

Awards and Accolades

Tributes to Randy Friedman

Glenn Nelson started a string of tributes to Randy Friedman, saying he was missing the former board member of nine years, who stepped down from the board on April 12. Nelson commented that Friedman had played a very important role in helping the board to transition “between two different regimes,” putting the bond together, hiring Todd Roberts, and supporting the enhancement millage. On a personal note, he said, “Our relationship really evolved … He taught me a lot … I did not always agree, but I always learned from him. I, for one, am going to miss him very much.”

Christine Stead also thanked Friedman for his years of service, and reassured the public that “While we’ve had a lot of change, this board works well together.” She added that the longer-term trustees have devoted many hours to supporting her and trustee Simone Lightfoot, the board’s two newest members, and said she hoped more strong candidates would come forward.

Deb Mexicotte added her thank-you to Friedman for his years of service, and added some historical perspective: “My first interaction with [Friedman] was trying to get on to this board when he did … Randy never brought it up.” She reminisced that there were times she and Friedman were “responsible for keeping each other in our seats, [but that] he was very gracious when his voice was not the one that carried the day.” Mexicotte noted that when she had asked Friedman if he had wanted to say good bye, he declined, saying he had said what he’d needed to say. Still, she said, “I hope he hears these things.”

Lightfoot contributed her first impression of Friedman, “I understood very quickly the power that he wielded,” and that she thought Friedman had the “kind of personality where you never felt he was listening to you” but that’s because he could “split his brain.” She added, “I loved his smile. I loved that he could say he was wrong. I will miss the opportunity to know him better.”

Celebration of Excellence Awards

Two celebration of excellence awards were presented at Wednesday’s meeting. Molly Crankshaw, a veteran third grade teacher at Burns Park, was nominated for an Excellence in Customer Service award by a parent of two children she has taught. The nomination noted that children blossom as individuals under Crankshaw’s care, and provided many examples of how she excels in her role. Also honored was Robert Kokoszka, a special education teacher at Huron, who was lauded for always having faith in students, even when they don’t have faith in themselves.

Superintendent’s Report

Todd Roberts listed multiple high school, middle school, and elementary level awards and achievements, including those of staff, students, and schools as a whole. He thanked the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority for hosting student artwork, and University of Michigan Health System for partnering with AAPS around education about depression. Lastly, Roberts thanked all those who attended the recent budget meetings.

Deb Mexicotte suggested moving the superintendent’s report to earlier in the meeting. Susan Baskett and Christine Stead agreed, with Stead arguing that any one item from the report would be amazing, and that every single meeting there are many amazing items to share.

After confirming with Roberts, who consented, “I’ll do it anywhere,” Mexicotte said she would move the superintendent’s report higher up on the agenda, likely right after public commentary.

Items from the board

Glenn Nelson echoed Roberts’ mention of Youth Art Month in downtown Ann Arbor as “really wonderful.” He also praised AAPS parent booster club volunteers, as well as the AAPS Educational Foundation, for their fundraising efforts.

The meeting was adjourned by president Deb Mexicotte.

Present: President Deb Mexicotte, secretary Glenn Nelson, newly-installed treasurer Christine Stead, trustee Susan Baskett, and trustee Simone Lightfoot.

Absent: Vice president Irene Patalan.

Also present as a non-voting member was Todd Roberts, superintendent of AAPS.

Next regular meeting: April 21, 2010, 7 p.m., at the Downtown Ann Arbor District Library, 4th floor board room.

Josie Parker, Rebecca Head and Jan Barney Newman at Monday morning's special library board meeting.

A somber Ann Arbor District Library board voted unanimously this morning to suspend its ambitious project to build a new downtown library, though they held out the possibility of resuming the plan if and when the economy improves.

“I think we’re talking about a detour – at least I’m talking about a detour,” said board chair Rebecca Head.

The board called a special meeting for this morning which began in a closed session with the library’s real estate attorney, Jim Adams of Butzel Long. They reconvened for a public meeting at 10:15 a.m., and Head announced that Adams had delivered disturbing news about the bond market that was “very sobering.”

In addition to a nationwide crisis in the financial markets, board members cited reluctance to add to residents’ tax burden in such a difficult and uncertain economic climate, particularly in Michigan where the future of the auto industry hangs in the balance. Funding a new downtown library – the option that the board had been pursuing – would have required both a millage and the sale of bonds to cover the estimated $70 million cost.

For the past two years, AADL director Josie Parker and the library board have been exploring what to do with the downtown library building. Since 2006, the library has spent $900,000 on the project, an amount which includes consulting and architectural fees. The local firm Luckenbach Ziegelman Architects has been working on the building design, and Carl Luckenbach has made presentations at the board’s monthly meetings for the past several months.

Part of that work was evaluating the condition of the current downtown library. At the October board meeting, Luckenbach said that the decades-old building faced a laundry list of structural problems, including a failing sanitary system and outdated wiring.

Just last week at the Nov. 17 meeting, Luckenbach had led the board through a discussion of their vision for the new building, with the goal of bringing back a more concrete design to the board in December. Even then, however, the specter of the economy was raised when board member Carola Stearns urged price limitations to be set, given current economic conditions.

During Monday’s meeting, several board members noted that the work done up to this point won’t be wasted. “What we’ve paid for so far we can still use,” said Margaret Leary. The board now knows the extent of repairs and alternations the current building requires, Ed Surovell added.

After the meeting, Head told The Chronicle that the board doesn’t have a time frame for coming back to the project – that will depend on economic conditions, she said. Meanwhile, the board will do what’s necessary to keep the current downtown building up to standards, she said.

It isn’t clear what impact, if any, the library board’s decision will have on a separate, nearby parking project being undertaken by the city’s Downtown Development Authority.

Jennifer Hall, chair of the DDA board, voted against the underground garage project at the Sept. 3 DDA board meeting, along with then-board-member Dave DeVarti. Reached at home by phone a few minutes after the library board’s decision, she said she’d like to understand more fully what the library’s time frame was, if any, for the suspension.

But she also said that the library board’s decision to suspend their building project could be an occasion for the community to re-think the need for parking at this particular location. She said one of the reasons she had reluctantly voted against the project in September was that she felt it was important to be a good partner with the library. She said that the amount of parking required was in part driven by the discussion of the possibility of a 400-seat amphitheater planned for the new library.

Hall also recalled the overall context of the design for parking at the library lot location, which was a directive from city council for the DDA to provide various options for increasing parking capacity, and that the DDA had provided them – ranging from adding levels to the Ann-Ashley structure, to building additional parking on the Larcom Building site in connection with the new police-courts facility. The library lot had been identified by council as the location for which it wanted the DDA to design parking.

Another part of the context for the parking project was the Nelson-Nygaard parking study, which Hall said she read as a directive possibly to add additional parking capacity only after allowing various other strategies – like elimination of monthly parking permits, and parking demand management – to have an effect. Hall acknowleged, though, that her colleagues on the DDA board did not read the Nelson-Nygaard study in the same way.

Hall also noted that it would be important to determine if the library’s existing basement wall could accommodate structurally an entrance from the underground parking garage. The new library building was to have had a fairly grand “lower lobby” area designed to welcome library patrons in from the garage.

Reached by phone on Monday morning, Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, said it would be important for the DDA to sit down with the engineers and architects to determine how to address most flexibly the sheltered entrance to the library, as well as Library Lane (also a feature of the parking garage site plan that would presumably be retained even without construction of a new library building).

Pollay said the parking project “has a validity in its own right. The two projects are interconnected, but not dependent.”

“I’m grateful that they’re [the library board] doing their due diligence,” she said. “Projects can develop a momentum, but they are clearly checking at every point along the way.”

Pollay said benefits of the parking project, independent of the new library construction, include:

• upgrading utilities on the block (electricity, water, sewer)
• an increase in the downtown parking capacity
• the provision of a sheltered connection (underground) from parking to the library.

Also reached by phone Monday morning, Joan Lowenstein – who still serves on the DDA board and until two weeks ago served on the Ann Arbor city council – confirmed that the context for the underground parking garage historically was consideration of a range of locations to add existing parking capacity. The council and DDA had contemplated additional parking at the library lot well before the library had made its decision to build a new building downtown in the same location as the existing facility. As Lowenstein summarized it: “The library is still there.”

The site plan for the underground parking project will be coming before city council sometime in the near future, but the city clerk’s office has not yet received information that would allow reporting a precise date.

Present: Rebecca Head, Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy, Jan Barney Newman, Josie Parker, Carola Stearns, Ed Surovell.

Absent: Prue Rosenthal

"Butter," in a red shirt, is the driver of the cement mixer truck that spilled a bit of its load. He's assisted in his cleanup effort by two workers who were radioed to come lend a hand.

When Amy Whitesall filed a Stopped. Watched. item about a concrete spill downtown, The Chronicle wondered if it would still be there by the time we hoofed it over to Huron and Fifth where the spill had occurred.

Yep, still there, but three guys from Superior Materials were attacking the pile of wet cement in the pedestrian walkway with shovels and a broom. (Superior Materials of Farmington Hills bought out Killins Concrete on the west side of Ann Arbor at Liberty and Wagoner about a year ago, but the three-man crew work out of the old Killins location).

It was about an eighth of a cubic yard that spilled, or about two wheelbarrows’ full – not really all that much compared to a spill the driver’s colleagues recalled from the late ’90s that happened one block further down on Huron right next to the Ann Arbor News building. On that occasion a collision with an automobile caused an accidental pour that resulted in a concrete-filled car.

Hosing off of the concrete slurry commenced but was shut down by Mike Bergren from the city. They're working at the corner of Huron & Fifth – the Hands-On Museum is in the background.

Today, less than five minutes after The Chronicle arrived, the pile of concrete in the crosswalk had disappeared into the back of the truck. How did it get out of the mixing drum and onto the pavement in the first place? Did “Butter,” the driver of the mixer, accidentally hit the “pour” button sitting in the cab waiting for the light to change? Nope. “Butter” said that a driver in front of him had suddenly felt the urge to change lanes, and that he had to hit the brakes or else rear-end him. The momentum of the concrete mixture in the drum carried it right out the front chute and onto the pavement. It’s not like this happens all the time – less often that 1 in 100 trips, according to “Butter’s” co-workers – but it’s not unheard of either.

After the solid mass of concrete had been scraped out of the crosswalk with flat-nosed shovels, “Butter” began hosing the remaining slurry into the gutter with the water supply from his truck. Not so fast, said Mike Bergren, assistant field operations manager with the city of Ann Arbor. Bergren happened to be walking by on the way to a meeting. He explained to The Chronicle that “wash out” from hosing the chute isn’t allowed into the storm drains (on pain of a $500 fine), and for the same reason, he didn’t want to see the rest of the spill hosed down. So the spraying with the hose was shut down. Bergren said he didn’t see fit to fine these guys, because they were trying to do the right thing. So how were they supposed to finish their cleanup?

A quick phone call from Bergren summoned a street sweeper from the city. So the concrete mixer and its driver continued on their way to the job site at State and Washington (presumably North Quad, the UM dormitory currently under construction) while two guys stayed behind in their smaller truck to wait for the street sweeper.

A city street sweeper arrived to finished the cleanup of the concrete spill.

Waiting for the sweeper, The Chronicle learned a lot about the science of concrete. For example, there are over 2,000 different mixtures, with set-up times from a few minutes to over 24 hours. And one of the pieces of equipment they use to prepare the mixtures is a boiler for the water. Depending on the mixture, it needs to arrive at the job site at 65-70 degrees, something that gets measured before a load will be accepted for a pour.

About a half hour after Begren called in the sweeper, it arrived on the scene and did its work.

The ground cover along the shoulders of Huron River Drive is starting to sprout. The goal is that it will help stabilize the shoulders through the winter.

Today’s re-opening of HRD after a temporary closure marked the conclusion of the first phase of road reconstruction plus replacement of sanitary sewers. The remaining work will begin in spring 2009. The most recent of the email updates provided by Liz Rolla, a city planner, since the project was in its conceptual phase, indicates that the final layer of asphalt will be laid towards the end of next year (2009). That layer will erase the seams between the new asphalt already put down and the older sections.

The seams between the old and new asphalt sections will be smoothed over when the final layer of asphalt is laid in late 2009.

The re-construction techniques used on the road reflect the same concern for the natural habitat that led to the consideration of a permanent closure of HRD to motor vehicle traffic. In order to reconstruct the road properly and on a wider footprint to accommodate bicycle lanes, it was feared that the sensitive natural habitats on either side of the road would have to be compromised.

However, at a public meeting held at Forsythe Middle School in April of 2007, Connie Pulcipher of the consulting firm Beckett & Raeder Inc., fielded question after question from speakers objecting to the possible closure of HRD to motor vehicle traffic. [Pulcipher has since joined the city of Ann Arbor planning staff.] Lloyd Carr, then coach of the University of Michigan football team, was cited by one speaker as an example of someone who chose to motor along scenic HRD instead of taking faster, more direct routes.

The potential permanent closure of the road also raised concerns among neighbors about increased traffic along residential streets that would be used as alternate routes, like Warrington Drive and Lowell Road.

Turtles may get some extra consideration from drivers and cyclists on the reconstructed Huron River Drive.

The issue drew enough interest from one of those neighbors, Richard Wickboldt, that he was was prompted to participate on the study committee, and ran for city council in Ward 1 in the August 2007 Democratic primary.

In the end, the city opted to keep the road open to motor vehicular traffic, but sought to minimize the impact on the senstive habitats by making the roadbed as shallow as possible. This was achieved by what the city’s website calls a “burrito” cross section. The burrito shell consists of a geogrid and geofabrics, while the tasty meat filling is crushed rock.