UM leases space for its Survival Flight unit at the Livingston County Spencer J. Hardy Airport, in space that’s considered inadequate, according to a staff memo. The airport plans to make a range of improvements, including the construction of a new 66,500-square-foot, three-story building which will incorporate a helicopter hanger, office space, emergency vehicle garage space and common areas adjacent to Hardy Airport. Improvements to the hangar are estimated to cost $2.599 million. When the project is finished, UM will lease hanger space and office space for a total of 12,369 square feet. The lease agreement will be with the Livingston County Emergency Medical Services Department

To pay for the improvements, UM will make a down payment of $500,000, plus $12,915 per month for the duration of the lease. In addition, UM will pay a base rent – which includes operating costs – of $4,332 per month, with an increase of 2% every five years. Funding will be provided from UM Hospitals and Health Centers’ resources.

This brief was filed from the Fairlane Center at UM’s Dearborn campus, where regents are holding their May meeting.

This brief was filed from the Fairlane Center at UM’s Dearborn campus, where regents are holding their May meeting.

The AATA's Blake Transit Center Fourth Avenue entry.

The latter item – authorizing AATA resources to support formation of an unincorporated Act 196 board (U196) – was approved without discussion. The resolution also authorized the board chair, Jesse Bernstein, to appoint three members to the U196 board.

In a related item, board members approved a $193,317 extension of AATA’s contract with Steer Davies Gleave (SDG), the London-based consultant hired last year to work on developing AATA’s transit master plan. SDG will work on implementing the plan – some board members indicated they’d like to see the consultant include more local resources as the process moves forward. The original contract with SDG was for $399,805. It was previously extended and increased at the AATA board’s Nov. 18, 2010 meeting by an amount not to exceed $32,500.

The infrastructure projects approved at the July 19 meeting include an expansion of AATA’s bus storage facility – in part to accommodate growth if a countywide transit entity is formed. Other projects entail replacement of bus hoists, a blanket contract for concrete work, and detention pond and landscaping improvements.

AATA board meetings are typically held on the third Thursday of the month, starting at 6:30 p.m. at the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown boardroom, where the meetings are televised by Community Television Network (CTN). Tuesday’s special meeting, called in order to move ahead on some of these projects, began at 1 p.m. at the AATA headquarters on South Industrial, and was not videotaped. It was attended by more than a half-dozen AATA staff members, but not by CEO Michael Ford. Only four of the board’s seven members attended – it takes four members to make a quorum.

Steps toward Countywide Transit Authority

Board members took two actions in support of a countywide plan for transportation services that’s been in the works for more than a year.

The first resolution they considered authorized the AATA board chair to appoint three board members to serve on an unincorporated Act 196 board (U196), with the direction to move towards forming an active Act 196 transit authority for countywide transportation. The same resolution authorized the AATA’s CEO to use AATA resources to support an unincorporated Act 196 board. There was no discussion among board members on this item prior to their vote. [.pdf of U196 resolution]

Act 196 of 1986 is a state statute that provides for forming transit authorities that encompass wider geographic areas than just cities. It’s the legislation on which a countywide transit authority for Washtenaw County would likely be based. Under one proposal that has been presented by the AATA to various public bodies, a fully incorporated Act 196 board would have 15 members countywide, with seven of them coming from Ann Arbor.

Concerns about governance and funding have been raised by some government leaders outside of Ann Arbor. County commissioners were briefed about the countywide transit plan at an April 2011 working session of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, and some of them objected to the weight that Ann Arbor representatives would be given under the proposal, relative to other parts of the county. AATA Michael Ford and board chair Jesse Bernstein attended another county board working session in June, where similar issues were raised again. From The Chronicle’s report of that meeting:

Bernstein said [county commissioner Wes] Prater had raised some core questions that will have to be answered. The board of the unincorporated Act 196 entity will be the people who decide how the transit authority will be governed, he added – it isn’t set in stone. The issue of how many representatives from Ann Arbor serve on the unincorporated board is wide open, he said.

The AATA is suggesting this as a point to start the discussion, Bernstein told commissioners, but there’s plenty of room for modifications and adjustments. They’re not ready to propose something definitive.

Prater again cited concerns over creating a transit authority that doesn’t report to any government entity. He said he’s very cautious about supporting an authority that might put a countywide tax on the ballot. Prater expressed support for the model used in Grand Rapids, in which a smaller number of jurisdictions form the transit authority. He guessed that most areas in Washtenaw County, outside of the urban areas, don’t have the population to support a countywide transit system.

Bernstein reported that in talking with people in the county’s rural townships, they are concerned over the ability of residents to age in place – that is, to continue to live in their homes, even if they can no longer drive. Elected officials in those areas, he said, want transit services for residents to get to their medical care, for example.

The other issue is land use, Bernstein said. Townships don’t want dense developments in their communities – they’d rather see transit corridors, he said, so that their tax base can grow while they preserve farmland and open space at the same time.

Bernstein said it’s true that there’s not yet a funding plan, though organizers assume it will be a millage of some sort. There’s still a long way to go, he said.

Prater noted that five townships and two cities account for about 75% of the population in this county – those are areas where he supports public transportation. [He was referring to the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and the townships of Ypsilanti, Scio, Superior, Pittsfield and Augusta.] Prater said he’s not convinced that the approach being pursued is the right one, adding that he’s very critical of it. If the governance isn’t fair, the initiative is already in trouble, he said.

Leah Gunn clarified that each jurisdiction involved in the transit authority would vote separately on a transit tax. She noted that Ann Arbor residents have been paying 2 mills for transit for many years – it was voted in as a permanent millage in the 1970s, and funds the AATA. Will that millage be retained, even if there’s an additional millage?

That’s one of the suggestions, Bernstein said, adding that he’s open to whatever makes sense. Some have said that every jurisdiction should pay the same amount. All of these things are decisions that need to be made. ”I have no idea what that [funding mechanism] is going to look like,” he said.

Gunn said she feels strongly that Ann Arbor should keep its 2-mill transit tax. She elicited from Ford that Ann Arbor has invested nearly $180 million in its transit system over the years. In addition, they’ve leveraged those dollars for millions more in federal funding, she noted. Ann Arbor has been very generous, she said – without that investment, AATA wouldn’t be able to provide transit services to other communities, like Ypsilanti.

Yousef Rabhi clarified that whatever future millage might be voted on would be on the ballot only in jurisdictions that wanted to be part of the new transit authority – it wouldn’t necessarily be countywide. He also pointed out that based on having one-third of the county’s population, Ann Arbor would be entitled to five seats in a 15-member transit authority board. But if the city also contributed an additional 2 mills in funding, that could justify an additional two seats on the board, he said.

Rabhi said he’d like to keep the 2-mill transit tax, noting that he uses the AATA bus system frequently. With a larger system, it’s an opportunity for more routes, more services – more of a good thing, he said.

Ronnie Peterson weighed in, telling Ford and Bernstein that a countywide system has been a long time coming. He had urged AATA’s previous two CEOs to take on this project, but they hadn’t, he said. He wished it had been undertaken when the economy was better. “Keep your foot to the pedal,” he told them.

Peterson urged Ford to bring communities to the table that already buy transit services from AATA, like Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township – communities which Peterson represents on the county board. That should happen even before a formal entity is created, he said.

Bernstein concluded the discussion by noting that the next major step will be to pull together representatives into an unincorporated entity, and to develop articles of incorporation for an Act 196. Meanwhile, AATA will continue to operate its current system, he said, and they’ll work to get answers to the questions that commissioners have raised. Where they wind up must be inclusive of everyone who wants to participate, Bernstein added – they won’t return to the county board until everything is in order.

Though it wasn’t discussed at the AATA board’s July 19 special meeting, the rationale for appointing only three members of the current AATA board to the U196 board is to avoid the possibility that the actions of four or more members of the AATA board (a quorum of its members) as a part of the U196 would be understood as an action of the AATA board. That was the concern expressed at a June 3 retreat held by the board at Weber’s Inn.

The same resolution authorized the AATA’s CEO – Michael Ford, who did not attend the July 19 meeting – to use AATA resources to support an unincorporated Act 196 board. The language of the resolution differed in a subtle but significant way from a draft resolution considered but not voted on by the AATA board at a meeting held on June 3 in a retreat-style format at Weber’s Inn. The draft language from that meeting stated [emphasis added]: “… the AATA Chief Executive Officer shall use the resources of the Authority as needed and as appropriate …” The version of the resolution approved by the board at its July 19 meeting read: “… the AATA Chief Executive Officer shall use the resources of the Authority as budgeted by the AATA Board.”

Outcome: Without discussion, board members voted unanimously to authorize the board chair to appoint three board members to serve on an unincorporated Act 196 (U196) board, and to authorize the AATA CEO to use AATA resources in support of a U196 board.

Countywide Transit Authority: Consulting Contract

Also related to countywide transit, board members were asked to authorize a $193,317 extension of AATA’s contract with Steer Davies Gleave (SDG), a consultant hired last year to work on developing AATA’s transit master plan. The contract extension would provide for services from SDG through December 2012.

The original contract with SDG was for $399,805. It was previously extended and increased at the AATA board’s Nov. 18, 2010 meeting by an amount not to exceed $32,500.

The contract is intended to allow SDG to start implementing the transit master plan. The extended contract is expected to cover a range of services: (1) providing support to an ad hoc countywide transit funding task force; (2) developing “district recommendations” for services; (3) creating “service development plans” for specific services; (4) creating a fares and ticketing plan with two components: a near‐term component aimed at rationalizing the current AATA fare structure, and a longer‐term component designed to create a countywide fare policy and structure; and (5) doing other studies and planning activities to support ongoing countywide transit development efforts. [.pdf file of SDG proposal]

During his report of the AATA board’s July 12 planning and development committee meeting, Rich Robben mentioned that committee members had discussed the need for SDG to work with local companies as it implements the countywide plan. From the minutes of that PDC meeting:

It was acknowledged that SDG has institutional knowledge, but PDC members suggested that local talent be sought solely or jointly with SDG, to help achieve at a lower cost and support the local Michigan economy.

Michael Benham responded to questions regarding the possible costs of extending the SDG contract. Absent a specific proposal, it is estimated the figure would be about $40,000 in FY 2011, and approximately $160,000 in FY 2012.

The Committee concurred that they would withhold a decision on extending SDG’s contract until such time as a specific proposal was presented. The committee also concurred that a portion of the work should be completed in partnership with local consultants. Michael Ford agreed to share SDG’s proposal with Committee members and would seek to move the question of extending the contract with SDG to the full Board for consideration at its special meeting on July 19, 2011.

Countywide Transit Authority: Consulting Contract – Board Discussion

Jesse Bernstein began by saying he wanted to echo Robben’s comment about local involvement – it’s absolutely essential at this point in the process, he said. He planned to talk with CEO Michael Ford about how to make that happen. The board also needs to be closely engaged, not just the staff, he said.

From left: AATA board members Roger Kerson and Jesse Bernstein.

Roger Kerson said that the work up until this point has taken a big effort by AATA staff as well as SDG. But this is a 30-year plan, he noted, and it’s important to build staff capacity so that they could take on future work, after the consultants are gone. “The more we can do on our own, the better all around,” he said.

Bernstein spoke up again, saying the board can’t keep asking the current AATA staff to take on more work. At some point, additional resources will be needed – either employees, or contractors. The board is aware of that, he said. It’s difficult to manage an operation as extensive as AATA, at a high level of quality, while at the same time asking staff to plan for an even larger organization down the road. He hoped that in the future, the transportation authority would have money to take on more work, but they needed to be flexible.

Saying she supported the contract, Sue McCormick had a question about the contract language. AATA appears to be entering into a contract that obligates funds not yet approved or allocated by the board, she noted. Typically, the contract would explicitly indicate that the funding is subject to the availability of funds, she said, so that AATA has the ability to terminate the contract if necessary. Dawn Gabay, AATA’s deputy CEO, told the board she’d make sure the contract includes such language.

Outcome: Board members voted unanimously to authorize the contract extension with Steer Davies Gleave.

After the vote, Bernstein thanked AATA staff for their “extraordinary” work on the project. Earlier in the meeting, he had also commended staff for the thoroughness and clarity of their staff memos that accompany board resolutions.

Countywide Transit Authority: Consulting Contract – Public Commentary

At the end of the meeting, Vivienne Armentrout spoke during the time set aside for public commentary. She said she echoed Bernstein’s comments – the AATA’s staff is exceptional.

Armentrout reported that she had attended the most recent planning and development committee meeting, where she said there had been a vigorous discussion about the SDG contract. At the time, the actual proposal hadn’t been available for committee members to review, she noted. Was that made available later?

Rich Robben clarified that committee members had received a copy of the proposal after the meeting, and had been polled individually via email about it.

Based on discussion at the committee meeting, Armentrout said, she felt that the item would have been more controversial than it seemed to be at the board meeting. Robben replied that committee members had unanimously supported the proposal, and felt that their concerns would be addressed. Bernstein reiterated his concern that SDG include quality local input as the process moves forward, saying he wanted to be sure that happened.

Infrastructure Projects

In a series of unanimous votes on separate resolutions, the board authorized expenditures for a range of different infrastructure projects at the site of its headquarters on South Industrial Highway. Projects included an expansion of the bus storage facility, replacement of bus hoists, a blanket contract for concrete work, and detention pond and landscaping improvements.

Infrastructure Projects: Bus Storage Facility

On the agenda was a resolution to expand the bus storage facility at AATA’s headquarters on South Industrial Highway. The current facility was built in the 1980s, when AATA transported about half the number of people that it does today, according to a staff memo. It was designed to handle up to 100 vehicles, but is now at capacity at about 90, because buses now are longer and wider than in the ’80s.

Expanding the storage facility on the west side of the current building would allow for capacity of up to 120 of the larger buses. If operations were to expand into countywide services, this additional bus storage capacity would be needed, according to the staff memo.

The $2.4 million project will be financed using a combination of roughly $1 million in federal America Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds and $1.4 million in existing federal formula funds.

Infrastructure Projects: Bus Storage Facility – Board Discussion

Sue McCormick clarified the number of vehicles that this expansion would accommodate – 120. Terry Black, AATA’s maintenance manager, said the footprint of the current site allows for this additional expansion. However, if even more storage space is eventually required, AATA would need to build it at another location.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the bus storage facility project.

Infrastructure Projects: Bus Hoist Replacement

A resolution to award a $980,500 contract to Spence Brothers for replacement of bus hoists was considered by the AATA board. The project will be financed by a combination of existing grants and from federal formula funds. [.pdf of bus hoist resolution and staff memo]

The AATA headquarters on South Industrial Highway includes an area for maintenance of the bus fleet. There are 10 in-floor hydraulic bus lifts, including eight that are original to the building when it was constructed in 1983. The maintenance costs for those original eight hoists is around $50,000 per year, according to a staff report.

Infrastructure Projects: Bus Hoist Replacement – Board Discussion

Sue McCormick noted that the hoists allow mechanics to work under the bus. What mechanisms are in place to allow them safely to work on top of a bus? she asked. Terry Black, AATA’s maintenance manager, described an overhead cable system with harnesses that was installed about four years ago.

AATA board member Sue McCormick, who also is the city of Ann Arbor's public services area administrator.

In response to another question from McCormick, Black said that although the staff isn’t requesting an increase in the number of hoists, they are proposing a redesign that will improve efficiencies and reduce maintenance costs. For example, the wash bay will be redesigned so that hoists will lift buses from the side, not from below – that means the hoists won’t be flushed with contaminants during the wash cycle, which will reduce maintenance costs for the hoists. He also noted that the new design will accommodate articulated buses – longer buses that bend in the middle. This type of bus has been discussed as a possibility in expanded transit plans. Black said the staff is trying to anticipate possible longer-term changes.

McCormick wondered if AATA would have enough capacity with the same number of hoists, given that the possibility of expanded transit service is being considered. Black reported that there’s currently a fair amount of dead time when the hoists aren’t being used, and that the existing number of hoists could accommodate projected increases in use.

Jesse Bernstein noted that the hoists had a projected life span of 20 years – he was glad they were finally being replaced after 28 years.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved awarding Spence Brothers a $980,500 contract to replace AATA’s bus hoists.

Infrastructure Projects: Concrete Contract

A resolution on the July 19 agenda asked the board to award Doan Construction a “blanket” contract for concrete work for a period not to exceed 5 years, and for an amount not to exceed $250,000.

A staff memo accompanying the resolution describes the type of work that might be done, including shelter pads, bus stop waiting areas, curb cuts and driveway entrances. The memo states that AATA vehicles weigh as much as 18-20 tons, and that the weight causes pavement to deteriorate or crumble, requiring repair.

Outcome: Without discussion, board members unanimously approved awarding Doan Construction the “blanket” contract for concrete work.

Infrastructure Projects: Detention Pond & Landscaping

The board was asked to approve a $98,500 contract with Erie Construction for detention pond and landscaping improvements at AATA’s headquarters on South Industrial Highway.

The detention pond at AATA headquarters on South Industrial Highway, north of Eisenhower Boulevard.

The detention pond work will be financed through a combination of Federal Transit Authority funds and federal formula funds. According to a staff memo, the FTA requires that AATA apply 1% of the total capital funds it receives toward facility enhancements. The detention pond and landscaping improvements will enable AATA to meet that requirement.

The project will include removing the existing evergreen trees around the pond and replacing them with younger arbor vitae plants; re-sculpturing the pond banks; stabilizing the eroding banks; removing rocks that currently line the pond’s bank; putting in low-maintenance xeriscaping plantings around the pond; making improvements to the flagpole terrace and retaining wall; and installing low-maintenance “garden-style” plantings at the entrance to the building.

Infrastructure Projects: Detention Pond & Landscaping – Board Discussion

Sue McCormick asked whether the work would be done in accordance with current best practices regarding stormwater management. Terry Black, AATA’s maintenance manager, said it would.

Jesse Bernstein hoped the new plantings would be heat and drought resistant – a reference to this week’s blistering temperatures.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve a $98,500 contract with Erie Construction for detention pond and landscaping improvements.

Disadvantaged Business Policy

The board was asked to authorize a policy establishing a goal that 3.4% of U.S. Dept. of Transportation contracting opportunities be given to disadvantaged businesses in fiscal years 2012-2014. That status is designated for firms that have 51% ownership by an individual or individuals who are considered socially and economically disadvantaged – a category including women, black Americans, Hispanic Americans, native Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans, and other minorities found to be disadvantaged by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The U.S. DOT requires that entities receiving federal funds, like AATA, have a Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program. The program must include the kind of goals that the board approved. The AATA policy approved at the July 19 meeting specifies that of the 3.4%, 2% is to be achieved through “race conscious” methods and the remaining 1.4% through “race neutral” methods. [.pdf of DBE resolution and staff memo]

Disadvantaged Business Policy: Board Discussion

Jesse Bernstein began by asking for clarification of the terms “race neutral” and “race conscious.”

Ed Robertson, AATA’s human resources manager, explained that race neutral meant that bids didn’t take race into consideration – if a DBE firm happened to win the bid, that would count toward the race neutral goal. “Race conscious” means that a request for proposals (RFP) would stipulate that the bid must include a percentage of DBE participation. Robertson emphasized that these are goals, not quotas. If a contractor for a particular project can’t achieve the percentage goal cited in the RFP, the contractor must at least show evidence of a good faith effort to do so.

Sue McCormick wanted to know how this will influence the selection process. Robertson again stressed that these were goals, not quotas. If a contractor submits a bid and is qualified for the work, and also demonstrates participation by a DBE, then AATA has some leeway on the price structure, Robertson said.  That is, AATA wouldn’t have to award the contract to the lowest bidder, if a contractor with a higher bid can show that DBEs are participating in the work.

Roger Kerson observed that in the past few years, AATA hasn’t been meeting its DBE goals. What’s being done to improve that?

Robertson said that in the past few years, the AATA hasn’t undertaken federally funded projects that would be conducive for DBEs to bid on. Most of the projects using federal dollars have related to vehicle purchases, planning or maintenance, he said. But now, AATA is embarking on several construction projects that will likely be more accessible to DBEs, he said. In addition, the process of getting certified as a DBE is somewhat burdensome, Robertson said, especially for small businesses, which DBEs tend to be. AATA has taken the stand that they’ll continue to do business with firms that would qualify for DBE status, even if those firms aren’t officially certified as DBEs.

Dawn Gabay, AATA’s deputy CEO, told board members that AATA staff was working to increase DBE participation, in part by possibly partnering with the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County.

Kerson asked for regular reports to the board about progress toward the DBE goals.

Sue McCormick wondered what the consequences would be if AATA didn’t meet these goals. If AATA can show a good faith effort toward reaching the goals, Robertson said, then there are no consequences if the goals aren’t achieved. However, if the organization can’t demonstrate that they’ve tried to attain the goals, then AATA’s federal funding would be jeopardized, he said.

Outcome: Board members unanimously approved the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise policy.

Present: Jesse Bernstein, Sue McCormick, Rich Robben, Roger Kerson

Absent: Charles Griffith, David Nacht, Anya Dale

Next regular meeting: Thursday, Aug. 18, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave., Ann Arbor [confirm date]

Washtenaw County clerk Larry Kestenbaum was on hand to distribute a written statement encouraging the Ann Arbor city council to wait until after the general election to change the city's ward boundaries. (Photos by the writer.)

It began with public commentary on the topic of a proposed redrawing of the boundaries for the city’s five wards. The city charter requires the wards to be pie-shaped wedges. The redrawing of the lines themselves was not thought to be particularly controversial. But the timing of the redistricting stirred a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union to appear before the council to address councilmembers. Attorney John Shea, speaking for the ACLU, told them they shouldn’t enact boundary changes between the primary and the general elections. Ultimately, the council kneaded the advice into their thinking, and voted to postpone the whole question of redistricting.

The meeting ended with a voting snafu, when the council tried to convene a closed session to discuss land acquisition. So even though the vote was 6-3 in favor of entering into a closed session, a 2/3 majority of members present did not satisfy the statutory requirement of a 2/3 majority of the council’s 11 members. The vote was eventually recognized as only half-baked, and the council came out of their workroom, revoted 8-1 to re-enter the closed session, and completed the meeting without further complications.

Part of the meeting’s creamy dessert filling also depended on a somewhat infrequent parliamentary exercise that resulted in revoting an item that the council had approved two weeks earlier. That vote was on a contract for the reconstruction and relocation of water, sanitary sewer and stormwater lines in the vicinity of the proposed site for the Fuller Road Station. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) brought the resolution back for reconsideration, and council members voted unanimously to roll out the dough again by rediscussing and revoting the issue. The outcome was the same – it was approved – but Anglin registered his dissent this time by voting against it. He told his colleagues that when they’d voted two weeks ago, he had not realized that the project was related to the Fuller Road Station site.

Also part of the council’s meeting was a significant vote that received no discussion by the council. A proposal to voluntarily increase an already-approved contract with Recycle Ann Arbor was voted down 5-4, thus failing by one vote to achieve the six-vote majority it required.

The council also wrapped up a loose end from its previous approval of ordinances related to zoning and licensing of medical marijuana, by approving a non-disclosure policy. The policy ensures that private information of patients and caregivers is not divulged.

In an item added late to the agenda, councilmembers also approved a one-year contract with the city’s deputy police chiefs union.

In other business, the council set a new design review board fee at $500. It also approved three water-related projects: a porous pavement project in the Burns Park neighborhood, a rain garden on Kingsley Street, and a level-of-service study of the city’s water system.

The council also received a presentation from the director of the Ann Arbor District Library, Josie Parker. Highlights included data on the more than 600,000 annual visitors to the library’s downtown location.

Ward Boundary Changes

The council was asked to consider a proposal to redraw the boundaries of the city’s five wards and to make the new ward boundaries effective after the Aug. 2 city council primary elections, but before the Nov. 8 general election. Most of the boundary changes involved reassigning Ward 1 areas to other wards to balance out the population among the city’s five wards.

At left, councilmember Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) talks with city clerk Jackie Beaudry before the start of the July 5 meeting.

By the numbers, if the 2010 census population were distributed perfectly evenly across the city’s five wards (pie-shaped, per the city charter), they would each have a population of 22,787 – the “ideal” number in redistricting terms. Without any redistricting, the imbalance among wards, due to relative population growth in Ward 1 since 2000, breaks down as follows: Ward 1 [24,616 population, +1,829 whole number deviation from ideal (+8.03%)]; Ward 2 [22,419, -368 (-1.61%)]; Ward 3 [22,206, -581 (-2.55%)]; Ward 4 [22,585, -202 (-0.89%)]; Ward 5 [22,108, -679 (-2.98%)].

In 2000, the variance from the ideal for each ward ranged between +1.5% and -1.5%.

As proposed, the city’s redistricting plan would yield the following breakdown: Ward 1 [22,795, +8 (+0.04%)]; Ward 2 [22,739, -48, (-0.21%)]; Ward 3 [22,919, +132 (+0.58%)]; Ward 4 [22,760, -27 (-0.12%)]; Ward 5 [22,721, -66 (-0.29%)]. To restore the balance in the wards, the redistricting proposal focuses on reassignment where the five wedges of ward pie meet, in the center of the city near the downtown. [.pdf of city of Ann Arbor proposed ward boundary changes ] [.pdf of ward boundary changes proposed by councilmember Sabra Briere]

As far as the timing of the boundary change goes, the apparent thinking on the part of the city attorney’s office, which led to the proposal before the council, was that unless this change were made before the general election, the city would be in violation of the state of Michigan’s Home Rule Cities Act 279 of 1908 [emphasis added]:

117.27a Apportionment of wards; definitions.
…
(4) In each such city subject to the provisions of this section the local legislative body, not later than December 1, 1967, shall apportion the wards of the city in accord with this section. In subsequent years, the local legislative body, prior to the next general municipal election occurring not earlier than 4 months following the date of the official release of the census figures of each United States decennial census, shall apportion the wards of the city in accord with this section.

[Previous Chronicle coverage: "Column: Ann Arbor Ward Shifts Should Wait"]

Ward Boundary Changes: Public Commentary

Public commentary included remarks from John Shea – a representative of the Washtenaw branch of the lawyer’s committee for the American Civil Liberties Union – and local attorney Tom Wieder. County clerk Larry Kestenbaum attended the meeting, but did not sign up in time to be included among the first 10 reserved speaker slots. Reserved commentary slots are assigned on a first-come-first-served basis.

Wieder told the council that it’s not always the case that common sense and legal analysis lead to the same place, but they do in the case of the proposal before the council: The council should not change the boundaries between the primary and the general election. It’s a matter of basic fairness that every person should be treated the same. The courts understand that idea and so do the councilmembers’ constituents, Wieder said. Changing the boundaries in the middle of the process is not in the interest of fairness.

Wieder summarized some of the case law on the issue by saying that orderly election processes are not to be disrupted – the courts have said that common sense must apply. From a practical view, he said, if the council does not change the boundaries between the primary and the general election, the city will likely not be sued. And if the city were sued [based on the idea that the city did not adhere to the Home Rule Cities Act and that it left the wards in a disproportionate state for an election cycle], it’s unlikely that the suit would be successful.

But if the council did change the boundaries between the primary and the general elections, it was likely a lawsuit would be filed and it would likely be successful, and that would cost money, Wieder cautioned. Changing boundaries between the primary and the general election would make the city of Ann Arbor’s elections be seen as less legitimate, Wieder said. The common sense solution would be to adopt new boundaries before Nov. 8, but not put them into effect until after the election. That way, the council would meet the strict letter of the statute, but avoid disruption of the process and preserve respect for city elections.

Speaking on behalf of the Washtenaw branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, Shea told the council he’d sent them a letter detailing the ACLU’s opposition to the boundary changes. He made clear that it’s the effective date, not the lines on the map, to which the ACLU objected.

The first objection was based on the idea that when candidates file petitions, they do so with a clear electorate in mind. Changing boundaries could skew who wants to be a candidate in an election. A second consideration is that if a councilmember or a challenger had barely enough signatures on a nominating petition, if some of those signatures were from residents of a different new ward, that could invite challenges. A third consideration is that it would disenfranchise hundreds of voters.

Given the political realities of Ann Arbor’s heavily Democratic electorate, the primary election practically equates to the general election, Shea said. So for people who are redistricted from a ward without a primary into a ward that had a primary but no contested general election, they’ll have no choice in their city council representation. Shea said he had no doubt the proposal had been put forward in good faith. Although everyone knows that redistricting processes can be used for partisan purpose, he didn’t think that was the case here. Still, 10-20 years from now that might become the case. And in the interim, it sets a bad precedent, and that ought to be avoided. The guiding principle of equal protection is rationality. He concluded by encouraging the council to do what is rational.

Kestenbaum handed out copies of a statement to councilmembers. It was made also on behalf of the state elections director Chris Thomas and the county election director Matt Yankee. It urged the council to delay the boundary changes until after the general election:

The proposed boundary changes are minor, but what if they weren’t? There is no bright line between minor changes and changes which have a political impact. And even minor changes will have an impact on the affected voters.

Ward Boundary Changes: Council Deliberations

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) got things started by offering an amendment to the resolution stating that the ordinance would take effect on Nov. 9, 2011, the day following the general election.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said she was happy to support the amendment but would be willing to make the effective date the start of a month, to make it nice and round. Higgins said her point was to make it after the general election, so she did not have problem with Dec. 1.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he was happy to support the amendment. He understood the concern that prompted the original proposal to change the boundaries prior to the general election. But he felt it’s fairly clear that if the boundaries were changed before the general election, “we miss the forest for the trees.” He said it’s important to make sure voters are enfranchised and felt that there is greater risk in moving forward with new boundaries before the general election than in waiting. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) also indicated his support and appreciated the way the people who brought the issue forward had done so.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) ventured that his ward would probably be one of those that would would be most affected, so he supported the amendment. [Kunselman faces two challengers in the Ward 3 Democratic primary.]

Outcome on the amendment changing the effective date to Dec. 1: The council voted unanimously to approve the Dec. 1 effective date.

Higgins then noted her disappointment at not being able to attend the June 13 city council working session about how the wards were proposed to be reapportioned. She still had some questions about how the process was working. Noting the city charter requirement that wards be roughly the shape of wedges in a pie, she said that Ward 4 [the one she represents] couldn’t be any more of a “log jam.” She said she’d worked on reapportionment 10 years ago with four other councilmembers. [At that time, Higgins was a Republican – she now is a Democrat.]

At that time, the group had wondered when the city would ever do what the charter states, Higgins said. She was disappointed that the council still hasn’t done that. The new township islands that are likely to be annexed will also be a factor. She said she’d like to see the city staff take a stab at making wards more pie-shaped, given that there was now some additional time to work on it.

Higgins moved for a postponement of four weeks until Aug. 4.  Mayor John Hieftje confirmed with assistant attorney Abigail Elias that this would not cause any problems.

In a back-and-forth between Briere and Higgins, it was confirmed that councilmembers could be consulted in some fashion by the staff, as the proposed ward boundaries are developed.

Taylor said he was unclear about the direction to be given to the staff and wondered what Higgins’ view was of “pie-shaped.” Higgins restated that the charter says the wards should be pie-shaped and the direction to the staff is to ask them to look at the charter. Taylor indicated that he felt the proposed redrawing satisfies the charter, so he would vote against a postponement. Hohnke said he’d be happy to support postponement, because no harm results from it.

Outcome: The council voted to postpone the boundary changes. Dissent came from Taylor. Before the postponement vote, the council had amended the ordinance to make the changes that they eventually agree on effective on Dec. 1, after the Nov. 8 election.

Revote on Sewer Project

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) made a motion to reconsider a June 20, 2011 vote that the council took in awarding a $1,216,100 construction contract to Hoffman Brothers Inc. The project involves relocating a sanitary sewer south of Fuller Road, and east of the Maiden Lane and East Medical Center Drive intersection.

The project includes moving and replacing an 825-foot, 30-year-old section of 60-inch sanitary sewer pipe. It also includes construction of 525 feet of 24-inch stormwater pipe, as well as construction of 925 feet of a new 12-inch water main for service to Fuller Pool. The water main portion of the project will be completed in two phases, the second of which is planned for 2013.

Anglin’s effort to reconsider the motion was based on criticism that the work is being undertaken only because of the planned Fuller Road Station (FRS) in the area – a project  to which he has expressed opposition. Proposed in partnership between the city and the University of Michigan, it calls for construction of a large parking structure, bus depot and possibly an eventual train station. [Recent Chronicle coverage of that project: "PAC Gets Update on Fuller Road Station"]

The motion to reconsider came in the context of a memo written to the council by Dietrich Bergmann, a transportation planning engineer who participated in a 2008 University of Michigan Sustainable Mobility & Accessibility Research & Transformation (SMART) conference on the transportation economy. The memo is critical of several aspects of the proposed sewer work, including the idea that 30 years is old for a sanitary sewer: “The city staff has not provided any evidence that the sanitary drain at the site should be moved, absent going forward with the FRS project. The 30-year age issue makes little sense. I suspect that most sanitary sewers in Ann Arbor are older.” [.pdf of Dietrich Bergmann memo]

Revote on Sewer Project: Public Commentary

In addition to sending an emailed message, Dietrich Bergmann also spoke during public commentary to address councilmembers about the issue.

The reason he was asking the council to reconsider their previous vote is that the fundamental project has not yet been approved by the city council, Bergmann said.

Project schematic for sewer and water lines. The pink line indicates sanitary sewer, green is storm sewer and blue is a water main. (Image links to higher resolution .pdf file)

If the council did not know if the city is going to proceed with Fuller Road Station and the parking structure, then it did not make sense to do the work now. He summarized the significance of the schematic he’d provided as an attachment to the letter. On the schematic, pink is sanitary sewer, green is storm sewer, and blue is the water main. Neither the green nor the blue lines are usable until additional work is done, he said. So there’s no point in doing it now – it should be done later.

George Gaston told the council he would spare them his prepared remarks. He wanted to simply stress that there is now a website that details what is going on with the Fuller Road Station project and he would like people to have a chance to see it: protecta2parks.org Other people will talk about the sewer relocations – he hoped the issue will be reconsidered.

James D’Amour told councilmembers that he was once again before them to speak. He said he had a swim meet the next day in Detroit and had not practiced, so he was a little cranky. About Fuller Road Station, he said, ”Let’s call it what it is.” He characterized Fuller Road Station as a parking structure for the University of Michigan hospital expansion. He’d read that 500 new jobs are coming to Mott Children’s Hospital, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. As the council looks at the reconsideration, he suggested looking at it in the full context. He allowed that the council was probably favorably disposed to the project, but it needs to be discussed in all its dimensions. The council needs to take a step back, he said. “You’re voting on something before you know what you want to do,” D’Amour cautioned.

Ann Larimore expressed her deep concern about spending $1.2 million on the utilities relocation. Her concern about the expenditure led to looking at the project in context of the city’s stated goals of increasing sustainability and the environment. A 1,000-space, 5-story parking structure will bring thousands of cars into Ann Arbor, she said. The option of using shuttle vans plus peripheral parking lots should be explored instead. Building the parking structure is not in keeping with sustainability, she said. She noted that the mayor annually hosts a green fair, the city is proud of its urban forest and its parks, and the university has launched a campaign for sustainability. In that context, she wondered if building a 1,000-car parking lot could be justified

Revote on Sewer Project: Deliberations – Reconsideration

From a parliamentary point of view, what Anglin was requesting was a reconsideration of a previous vote. Only those who voted on the prevailing side of a vote may make such a motion.

Anglin told his colleagues that he was bringing forward the reconsideration in order discuss with councilmembers what he’s heard from the community about questions to which he doesn’t have answers. He said he’d voted for the contract on June 20, thinking it was related to flooding conditions on the city’s northside. Now he realized the project is for water utilities at the Fuller Road Station site. And in light of an upcoming July 11 work session on that topic, he was hoping other councilmembers would join him to postpone the utilities work. He noted that the city’s park advisory commission had been updated, but the infrastructure project was not discussed by that body.

In response, mayor John Hieftje rejected the idea that there was a work session scheduled on Fuller Road Station, and confirmed with interim city administrator Tom Crawford that there was no new information about Fuller Road Station to provide at such a session.

The issue with the work session stems from an expectation that the council’s addition to its calendar of the July 11 work session would include a presentation on the Fuller Road Station. From previous Chronicle reporting:

At its June 20, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council revised its calendar for the year to include a work session scheduled for July 11. While the staff memo accompanying the resolution indicates only that the additional session is due to “numerous activities developing in the city,” a likely topic to be addressed at the July 11 session is the city’s proposed Fuller Road Station.

…

At the council’s June 6 meeting, the Fuller Road Station had received extensive public commentary, despite the lack of any item on the agenda related directly to the project.

Partly in response to that commentary and to remarks from Mike Anglin (Ward 5), at that meeting Sabra Briere (Ward 1) pushed for a city council working session on the project. From The Chronicle’s report of that meeting: “Sabra Briere (Ward 1) anticipated mayor John Hieftje’s reaction to Anglin’s comments [Hieftje has pushed hard for the project] by telling the mayor that she knew he had a lot of thoughts about Fuller Road Station. But she thought the council should have a working session, so that councilmembers can become more knowledgable about the issue. Hieftje indicated that he would look into adding something to the calendar.”

When the work session was added, many people, including some councilmembers, concluded that the work session would include Fuller Road Station. As of July 10, no agenda had been posted for the July 11 working session.

The council then considered the motion that the previous vote be reconsidered. Before the meeting there was some speculation that the motion would not receive a seconding motion and would die for lack of a second. But Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) offered a second.

Outcome on the motion to reconsider: The council voted unanimously to reconsider the motion to approve the contract.

Revote on Sewer Project: Deliberations – Substance

Anglin led off the discussion by saying he realized it’s out of the ordinary to reconsider the vote. However, on the previous June 20 vote, he thought the resolution to award the contract concerned an area of the city that had experienced mudslides and water damage. The item had inadvertently slid through, he said. If he had known at the time what the resolution was about, he said he would have raised questions.

By way of background, the second line of the staff memo on the resolution states:

The Northside Interceptor Sanitary Sewer Relocation Project is located south of Fuller Road and east of the intersection with Maiden Lane and East Medical Center Drive.

From The Chronicle’s summary of the park advisory commission meeting of May 17, 2011, which Anglin attended as a council representative to PAC:

After the council gives approval, the city would start immediately with work to relocate utilities on the site – bids have already been secured, [city transportation manager Eli Cooper] said. That might start in June or July, although there’s no firm date for council approval.

At the council’s July 5 meeting, Anglin characterized the sewer relocation as putting infrastructure repairs into the future site of the proposed Fuller Road Station. He expressed concern about moving forward on a project that the council has not agreed to. He said the work sessions have been informative on phase one – the parking structure – but not on phase two, which would include a train station.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) told the council she wanted to to address some details and provide some information based on answers to a set of questions she’d sent to city staff.

Some key points from those answers: (1) the 60-inch pipe is a sanitary sewer and deals with human waste; (2) the sanitary sewer portion of the project serves nearly all residents on the city’s north side; (3) city staff acknowledges that if the Fuller Road Station were not being built, the relocation of utilities would not be as high a priority as it is; (4) starting work now would allow the work to be completed by mid-November 2011, which would allow the replacement of the adjacent soccer field next year, instead of delaying another year; and (5) the pipe, which leads under the river, has greater potential for problems due to the high volume of the flow and the turbulent nature of that flow.

In subsequent deliberations, Cresson Slotten – unit manager for the city of Ann Arbor’s systems planning unit – noted that it’s “not a nice, pretty flow, either.” He clarified that the issue is the potential for “scouring” along the bottom of the pipe and that it would gradually be eroded. Part of the project involves installing access panels so that the condition of this critical pipe can be monitored.

After laying out the additional information she’d received from staff, Briere then contrasted her position with Anglin’s. Two weeks ago, she said, she knew what she was voting on. She’d read her packet of background materials provided for that meeting and knew the pipes ran across the Fuller Road Station site. The fact that staff was recommending moving and beefing up the utilities shouldn’t be surprising. She was less inclined to change her vote, she said, because at the previous meeting, “I knew what I was doing.”

Rapundalo, too, said he was happy to have the discussion, but it had been very clear at the previous meeting what was being proposed. He characterized it as an infrastructure improvement that would benefit the new University of Michigan children’s hospital. It was first and foremost an infrastructure in the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP) that the council had previously approved, he said, so he couldn’t support changing his vote.

Hieftje reiterated Briere’s information that completing the work this year means the soccer field replacement can be done in 2013. The utilities work was going to be done anyway, he said, and would benefit 40,000 residents. He also reiterated Rapundalo’s point about the children’s hospital coming online.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) said he wanted to compliment Anglin on his candor – it took a lot to say, “Gulp, I missed it.” He acknowledged the question about whether the utilities relocation is really only about the Fuller Road Station and whether the utilities work is just the beginning of “a rear guard action.” He said he was not at the council meeting when the first vote was taken, but said the staff information was good. He noted that he was getting a chance to vote on it in a roundabout way.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he was happy to support the discussion for the sake of understanding the item. He said that on the previous vote, he, too, felt comfortable about what the council was acting on. Early in the text of the staff memo, he noted, was a specific reference to the location of the project along Fuller Road. It’s a mild shift in priority, he said, whether it happens this year or next. It seems like a no-cost option for the ability to consider FRS down the line, and he would not support the postponement, he said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) pointed to the staff’s acknowledgment that the utilities relocation project had been moved up in priority. So he wanted to know what got moved down. Slotten allowed that off the top of his head none came to mind. The project went through prioritization last fall and winter, he said. Kunselman pressed for any projects that were being deprioritized as a result of this project. Slotten indicated that he couldn’t say for sure if other projects were deprioritized.

Kunselman asked Slotten to describe the infrastructure project’s basic design. The items that are included in the project are in there because of their relationship to one another, Slotten said: a single contractor with the same equipment can more easily work on stormwater, drinking water and sanitary sewer in the same general vicinity. As for the sanitary sewer specifically, it’s been laid out to take Fuller Road Station into consideration. To put it in one location and then move it – that’s not doing a good job of management, Slotten said.

Kunselman drew out the fact that the stormwater aspect of the project would serve the surface parking lot currently at the site, but only later would add flow. His concern was that the project would to some degree make infrastructure improvements that would sit idle. [Essentially, Kunselman was pressing the same kind of issue that Bergmann had raised during public commentary.] Slotten told him that the sanitary sewer part of the project would be active immediately on completion.

Kunselman said he understood Anglin’s issue, because there was not a direct communication in the packet about the project’s connection to preparation for the Fuller Road Station.

Anglin wondered what the risk would be to allowing the utilities to remain in place as they are – right now, those utilities are operating efficiently, he contended. He wondered if the council was now starting a project that the entire council hadn’t agreed to, referring to Fuller Road Station. He called it a “wading in” approach.

Responding to Anglin, Slotten said that the project would extend fire hydrant coverage down the roadway on Fuller Road – there’s currently a gap in fire hydrant coverage with respect to car fires. On the sanitary sewer side, the 30-year age of the pipe had to be put in the context of the amount of flow through the pipe. It’s at a high volume and it’s very turbulent. The pipe can thus be susceptible to scouring and would be worn out from the inside out. By having access panels in the new pipe, the city will be able to monitor that better, he said.

Briere drew out from Slotten why simply lining the sanitary sewer pipe, instead of replacing it, was not a feasible option.

Anglin reiterated his objections, saying that the council was dealing with a park, which is a sensitive area. To him, he said, it seems to be site preparation for the Fuller Road Station. As far as the access panels for monitoring, he said, the city has cameras for doing those kinds of inspections, so he was “not buying that argument at all.”

Outcome: The council voted again to approve the contract for the utilities work, but this time with dissent from Anglin.

Contract Increase for Recycle Ann Arbor

On the July 5 city council agenda was a proposal to increase the payment that the city makes to Recycle Ann Arbor (RAA) for curbside collection of the city’s single-stream recycling carts – from $3.25 to $3.55 per month per cart.

The city council had voted on March 15, 2010 to adopt the single-stream recycling program, which began exactly one year ago, on July 5, 2010.

At that time, the city approved a contract with RAA that called for a payment of $3.25 per month per cart that RAA empties, plus a per-ton payment of between $18.74 and $30.00. The amount of revenue RAA has received through these two kinds of revenue was less than projected last fiscal year. Specifically, the tonnage payments received by RAA for fiscal year 2011 (which ended June 30, 2011) for recyclable material were projected to be $406,332. In fact, tonnage payments only generated $187,560 for RAA – 46% of what was expected. The shortfall was $218,772.

Also, the city expected to distribute 32,779 carts, but only 29,734 carts were deployed, or 9.3% fewer than planned. The staff memo accompanying the resolution explained the reduced number this way: “… many of the smaller multi-family residential units that were previously using the 11-gallon recycling ‘totes’ are able to share recycle carts, resulting in a smaller number of deployed carts.” In terms of revenue, the reduced number of carts meant that RAA received only $1,159,626 compared to the projected $1,278,381 – for a shortfall of $118,755.

Summing the shortfalls in the two kinds of revenue ($118,755 + $218,772), RAA received $337,527 less than it expected for FY 2011. The increase in the monthly per-cart service fee requested (but rejected by the council) – for all five years of the five-year contract – would have worked out to nearly cover the annual shortfall that was due only to the decreased number of carts: $107,042 versus $118,755.

The overly-optimistic projections were made by the city’s recycling consultant – Resource Recycling Systems – and RecycleBank, a company that administers a coupon-based incentive program to encourage residents to recycle. When the council approved the single-stream recycling contract with RAA last year, it also struck a 10-year deal with RecycleBank, at roughly $200,000 per year, to administer their coupon-based incentive program to help boost recycling rates in conjunction with the single-stream rollout.

At the time, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) questioned the length of the RecycleBank contract, and established in the course of deliberations that the city’s opt-out clause would be less costly than the cost of the contract. He was concerned that the city had options in the event that RecycleBank’s incentives did not boost recycling tonnage to the levels that were forecast. [Chronicle coverage: "Council Banks on Single-Stream Recycling"]

As of May 2011, roughly 10,000 out of 23,600 (42%) households have signed up for the RecycleBank program. The city is nine months into the contract, which started September 2010. The termination clause allows the city to end the contract with 30 days notice if funds are not appropriated. However, the contract was presumably funded through FY 2012 as a part of the budget the council adopted in May this year.

Outcome: The council voted 5-4 to increase the amount of the contract, which meant it fell short of the six votes it needed to pass. The vote was made without any deliberations. Voting against it were Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1).

Non-Disclosure on Medical Marijuana

Before the council for consideration was approval of a non-disclosure policy on information that the city might collect as part of its medical marijuana licensing and zoning ordinances. The council approved those ordinances at its June 20, 2011 meeting. In relevant part, the resolution states that a long list of various kinds of information “shall be protected against public disclosure in the course of the zoning and licensing process …”

The resolution was also amended to read: “Ann Arbor city staff shall treat the foregoing information as exempted from disclosure …”

A similar non-disclosure policy had been discussed, but postponed, at the council’s March 7, 2011 meeting. When the matter was before the council again, at its March 21, 2011 meeting, the council chose not to pursue that non-disclosure policy. That’s because the amendments to the medical marijuana legislation it approved on March 21 did not include the collection of personal information. So the resolution had been withdrawn by its sponsor, Sabra Briere (Ward 1).

Non-Disclosure on Medical Marijuana: Public Commentary

Not all of the public commentary regarding medical marijuana related specifically to the non-disclosure policy on the agenda, but it fits most naturally into this section of the meeting report.

Gersh Avery said he wanted to let the council know he understands there are supporters among them. He has a sense that people are concerned about the increase in marijuana use in the community. He said he doesn’t believe anyone is trying to attack patients. With respect to the confidentiality section of the ordinance, he noted that former attorney general for the state of Michigan, Mike Cox, had issued an opinion when he was still AG, because he was concerned about farming out the printing of patient and caregiver registry cards. The new attorney general, Bill Schuette, has expressed a similar concern. He cautioned councilmembers that they were essentially asking people to photocopy their information and hand it over.

Charles Ream – alluding to his frequent appearances before them to speak on issues related to medical marijuana – quipped that perhaps soon they’d have a meeting where councilmembers didn’t get to see him. Describing Briere’s proposed non-disclosure policy, Ream said it’s really important: “Let’s do it.” He noted that the policy is what the law says already. He contended there was a discrepancy between the licensing and the zoning: home occupations do not require licenses, but they require zoning compliance permits. People won’t participate in the program if the requirement for zoning compliance permits remains part of the code, he said.

Matthew Abel told the council that he was there as legal counsel on behalf of Rhory Gould with Arborside Health and Wellness. He said he supported the non-disclosure policy, but wanted to speak about the number of licenses allowed by the city’s ordinance. He cited the ordinance language on the cap to the number of licenses:

7.502 (4) The first year’s licenses shall be capped at a number 10% higher than the number of complete applications for licenses submitted to the City in the first 60 days after the effective date of this chapter, but not more than 20 medical marijuana dispensary licenses shall be issued in the first year. Any license terminated during the license year returns to the City for possible reissuance.

He asked if 10% of 15 or 18 would be considered one or two? When the language goes on to say “not more than 20,” it seems that it rewards the “cowboys” who went ahead and started businesses, and penalizes those who waited, Abel said.

He also pointed to the language about the issuance of licenses [emphasis added]:

7:505. Issuance of License. If the applicant has successfully demonstrated compliance with all requirements for issuance of a license within 10 weeks (70 calendar days) after the date of City staff’s official confirmation that the application for a license was complete, the city administrator or designee shall grant renewal of an existing license or issue a new license for a medical marijuana dispensary to the applicant if a license is available.

That sounds like a first-come-first-served approach, he said, and that’s why there’s someone standing in line outside city hall waiting for a license. A different mechanism needs to be created for that, he said. Otherwise, he’d have to advise his client to stand in line.

Non-Disclosure on Medical Marijuana: Council Deliberations

Briere led off the discussion by saying that during the last three weeks, since the council had approved the zoning and licensing ordinances, they’d heard from many people about the requirement of a zoning compliance permit. She stressed that this requirement in the zoning regulations is what is required of all home occupations. The council was careful, she said, not to make the requirements any different for medical marijuana home occupations. Still, she said, there was concern about the compiling of lists and making them available. She said she thought the exemptions in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were sufficient to give direction. But she said she also believed in a “belt and suspenders.”

Briere reminded her colleagues that a similar proposal was before them at the March 7 meeting, but she had eventually withdrawn it.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) wanted to know how the resolution overrides the law. Assistant city attorney Abigail Elias indicated that the way she read the resolution was for the city to treat the information consistent with state law. There’s no overriding, said Elias.

Briere offered as a point of clarity that the city would indeed continue to require zoning compliance permits of medical marijuana-based home occupations, but the information wouldn’t be subject to required disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act unless the state law changed. Under the proposed resolution, the information on zoning compliance permits remains private, Briere concluded.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) indicated he understood the intent of the resolution: The city will treat the information as exempt. The way it’s drafted is that it’s already the law, and he didn’t mind it being restated. But he asked for additional clarification. Elias indicated that the resolution can’t create a privacy protection, but gives direction to city staff to consider it in connection with the request for documents.

Taylor observed that as drafted, the resolution is not a direction to the city’s FOIA officer, which seems like what the council is trying to do. Taylor said that’s all well and good, and he agreed that it should be so, but he wanted to amend the language “on the fly.” He offered first something along the lines of: “Ann Arbor’s Freedom of Information Act officer shall treat the foregoing information as exempted from disclosure …”

Briere responded by agreeing that the FOIA officer should be directed, but she wondered about including other city staff. The final version of the amendment was: “Ann Arbor city staff shall treat the foregoing information as exempted from disclosure …”

Outcome: The non-disclosure policy passed on a 6-3 vote. Dissenting were Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2).

It’s worth noting that withholding information under the Freedom of Information Act is optional. The resolution approved by the council appears to confirm only that the information meets the criteria for exempting it from disclosure, but does not establish an administrative policy that states the city will not disclose that information.

In broad strokes, the FOIA says that public bodies must produce information upon request. But certain exemptions apply. The two FOIA exemptions relevant to the council’s discussion include one that allows a public body to withhold information that would represent an unwarranted intrusion on someone’s privacy, and another that allows a public body to withhold information if an exemption is provided by some other statute [emphasis added]:

15.243 Exemptions from disclosure …
Sec. 13. (1) A public body may exempt from disclosure as a public record under this act any of the following:
(a) Information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual’s privacy. …
(d) Records or information specifically described and exempted from disclosure by statute.

The operative verb is “may,” which means that while a public body can choose to withhold certain information, it is not required by the FOIA to withhold it. The attorney general’s outline of the FOIA statute affirms the withholding of information as optional: “A public body may (but is not required to) withhold from public disclosure certain categories of public records under the Freedom of Information Act.” The attorney general’s outline was last updated a decade ago, but the AG’s office has confirmed for The Chronicle that the document is still accurate – in the intervening period, no changes have taken place in the statute or with case law.

Deputy Police Chiefs Labor Agreement

Before the council for consideration was authorization of a collective bargaining agreement with its deputy police chiefs. It’s a one-year deal, expiring June 30, 2012. As part of the deal, the deputy chiefs are exempt as employees under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which means they are not eligible for overtime. The deputy chiefs will also continue on the same health care plan as non-union employees, which requires a contribution by the employee.

In adding the item to the agenda that night, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), who is chair of the council’s labor committee, lamented the fact that the much larger police officers union had voted down a contract with similar provisions to those accepted by other bargaining units and the city’s non-union staff.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the deputy chiefs collective bargaining agreement.

Water-Related Projects

Councilmembers were asked to approve several water-related items.

Water-Related Projects: Permeable Surface Alley

On the agenda was a permeable surface alley project in the Burns Park neighborhood – the alley connects Wells Street and Scott Court, running parallel to and between Lincoln Avenue and Martin Place. The porous pavement will allow rainwater to soak through the surface, reducing runoff. Money for the $121,139 contract with Audia Concrete Construction Inc. on the $200,000 project will come from the city’s stormwater capital budget. But that will be repaid as a loan from the State Revolving Fund (SRF) and will include 50% loan forgiveness. The use of stormwater funds on road construction was a practice that was criticized during the public hearing held at the council’s June 20, 2011 meeting, on the increase in stormwater rates.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the Audia Concrete contract.

Water-Related Projects: Rain Garden

The council also approved a $25,440 contract with Conservation Design Forum to design and construct a rain garden on the property at 215-219 W. Kingsley St. The rain garden is meant to alleviate some of the flooding that occurs there during heavy rains. The parcel has drawn the curiosity of Chronicle readers due to its boarded-up house and the prodigious amounts of water that accumulate there during heavy rains. At its Nov. 15, 2010 meeting, the council accepted a FEMA grant that will help pay for the demolition of the structure to aid stormwater remediation efforts.

Originally part of the consent agenda (a set of items that are moved and voted on as a group), the rain garden was pulled out for separate consideration by Sabra Briere (Ward 1). Conversation between Briere and Jerry Hancock, the city’s stormwater and floodplain programs coordinator, revealed that the land parcel would be back before the council for actual purchase. Currently the house is not habitable. FEMA is paying 75% of the cost for demolition.

The idea is that instead of filling the hole back in, the city will use the space to alleviate the flooding, Hancock said. The scale of flooding in the area is greater than the area of the house, but the rain garden should provide some relief for some of it, he said. The timing was such that the grading plan for the rain garden would be provided to the demolition contractor. Hancock said he hoped the demolition would take place this fall.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the contract with Conservation Design Forum.

Water-Related Projects: Level-of-Service Study

The council also approved a level-of-service study for its drinking water distribution system with AECOM. The outcome of the study will be a recommendation for a sustainable level of service for the city’s water distribution system, and determination of how much investment it would take to achieve that level. The study would also help the city decide, for example, which water mains should be replaced first.

The council had tabled the resolution at its May 16, 2011 meeting after amending out a $10,550 contingency in the $208,984 contract. Later in that same meeting, at a session reconvened on May 31, the council took the item up off the table and postponed it until July 5.

In support of the study, city staff prepared additional documentation for the July 5 vote.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the contract with AECOM.

Design Board Review Fee

The council was asked to consider approval of a fee for the city’s new design review process, which is now part of the city code. Projects in Ann Arbor’s downtown area, zoned D-1 and D-2, are now subject to a mandatory process of design review, but compliance with the board’s recommendations is voluntary.

The application fee was proposed at $1,000 – to cover estimated mailing costs of $500 and about five hours of city staff time.

The vote on the fee had been postponed at the council’s June 20 meeting. At that same meeting, the council also had confirmed the nominations for initial membership of the design review board: Tamara Burns, Paul Fontaine, Chester B. Hill, Mary Jukari, Bill Kinley, Richard Mitchell, and Geoffrey M. Perkins.

On July 5, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) led off discussion by saying she wanted to reduce the fee to $500. It’s a new processs, she said, and most of the review is done by the board, not by staff.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city, how the $1,000 cost was determined. Rampson explained that part of the cost arose from mailings to people to invite them to the meeting. She estimated it took an hour of staff time to put together the mailing list. For the first meeting that the board had convened, the staff spent a couple of hours at the meeting, plus subsequent time putting together the design review board’s report and posting it on the web.

Rampson concluded that five hours is fairly realistic. She offered that staff could track that time for the next year. She noted that the fee [having been postponed by the council at its previous meeting] wasn’t passed in time to capture any of the costs associated with the board’s review of The Varsity at Ann Arbor.

Outcome: The design board review fee was set at $500. On the voice voice, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) dissented, but did not offer any comment at the council table.

Retirement Benefit Technical Changes

Before the council for consideration was final approval to purely technical changes to its ordinance on retiree benefits for non-union employees. For example, the phrase “three years” was revised to read “36 consecutive months.”

During the public hearing on the issue, Thomas Partridge voiced his opposition to the changes, characterizing them as the downgrading of Ann Arbor retiree benefits. He admonished mayor John Hieftje that Hieftje, as a teacher at the University of Michigan, should understand the connection between political and social issues.

Outcome: The council approved the changes without discussion.

Parks Renovation Projects

On the agenda were two items that had been discussed and recommended by the city’s park advisory commission at that body’s June 21, 2011 meeting.

One was a $166,331 contract with ABC Paving Company to renovate the tennis courts at West Park. The second was a $119,700 contract with Construction Solutions Inc. to renovate locker rooms at Veterans Memorial Park pool.

The council did not deliberate on the items, but at the PAC committee meeting, commissioners had questions about the lack of additional bidders on the tennis court project. Only one firm had responded to the city’s request for proposals.

Outcome: The council approved both parks renovation projects.

Closed Session: Land Acquisition

Near the conclusion of the meeting, some confusion unfolded about whether there would be a closed session.

The council had reportedly planned to convene a closed session on the subject of the ward redistricting, citing attorney-client privileged communication. It did not follow through on that possibility. If the council had convened such a closed session, it would have been the first such session convened since being sued by The Chronicle over a similar session in early September 2010.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) indicated she did not see any closed session listed on the agenda. It was established that a closed session did, in fact, appear on the agenda. However, mayor John Hieftje told assistant city attorney Abigail Elias that he’d received communication from city attorney Stephen Postema (who did not attend the council meeting), to the effect that no closed session would be necessary. But Elias told the mayor that the session was in fact necessary, and that it involved land acquisition.

Land acquisition is within a narrow range of reasons for which a public body may hold part of a meeting out of public view, according to the Michigan Open Meetings Act (OMA). The OMA stipulates that a public body must vote to go into a closed session and that the vote be done in a roll call fashion – i.e. not as a voice vote as one group.

On the roll call vote, Higgins expressed her dissatisfaction by voting against the session, and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) joined her. When Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) added his no vote, the final tally was 6-3, which appeared just barely to satisfy the majority required for action. The council then retreated to their work room.

A few minutes later, a somewhat sheepish group emerged for a revote. The OMA requires that the vote to enter a closed session be at least a 2/3 majority of the members of the entire body, not just a 2/3 majority of those who are present. Although there are certain exceptions to the 2/3 rule for some closed session topics, land acquisition is not one of them.

On the second try, all councilmembers voted to go into the closed session on land acquisition, except for Higgins, who again dissented.

Ann Arbor District Library Update

As part of the scheduled introductions at the start of the council meeting, councilmembers received an update from Josie Parker, director of the Ann Arbor District Library.

Several representatives of the library attended the meeting in addition to Parker. Eli Neiburger, AADL’s associate director for IT and production, was in the audience, as were current board members Nancy Kaplan, Barbara Murphy, Prue Rosenthal, and Jan Barney Newman. Parker also pointed out to councilmembers Don Axon, who was one of the original AADL board members in 1996.

Parker told the council that the information in the presentation was “as upbeat and as positive as it can get.” She began by countering the idea that the Internet had eliminated the need and demand for libraries. Parker said that Ann Arbor proves that claim is patently false. She pointed to Ann Arbor’s recent ranking as the community with the highest per capita circulation: 59 items per capita. The listing was compiled from a 2008 national study by selecting the 549 libraries from that study that serve a population of over 100,000. Ann Arbor also ranked fourth on an Amazon list of most well-read cities. Ann Arbor was one of only two cities on both lists, Parker said. Portland, Ore. was the other one.

Parker emphasized the high number of active library card holders, compared with the total number of households in the community. In the 48103 area code, there are roughly 20,000 active card holders and around 23,000 households. That’s significant, she said, in the context of a system that requires a person to affirmatively obtain at library card – that is, they’re not automatically issued to everyone in the community.

Parker’s update included data on the impact of the library’s Fifth Avenue location on the downtown.

Other highlights of the presentation included the organization’s funding stream, which comes not just from the city of Ann Arbor property taxes. In fiscal year 2010, in addition to the $7,344,364 that the AADL received from Ann Arbor property owners, it also received taxes from Pittsfield Township ($1,849,036), Scio Township ($1,252,179), and Ann Arbor Township ($804,236), as well as other surrounding municipalities.

In 2010, 1,792,526 visits were made to the library’s five branches – 627,196 of them to the downtown location. In 2010, a total of 62,696 visitors attended library events – 23,612 of them at the downtown location. For those downtown events, 79% of attendees arrived to the event by car, compared with 7% by bus, 2% by bicycle and 12% by walking. Of those who drove a car to the event, half parked either at an adjacent surface lot or at the Fourth and William Street structure, and 31% used street parking.

If one-third of all 627,196 visits to the downtown library location are assumed to be made by people who pay to park downtown, then visitors to the downtown library in 2010 generated at least $200,000 in public parking revenue.

The presentation came in the general context of an effort by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, at the direction of the Ann Arbor city council, to start leading a public process to evaluate alternative uses for city-owned surface lots in the downtown area. Immediately to the north of the downtown library location is the construction site of an underground parking garage, expected to offer around 640 spaces. Known as the Library Lot, though not owned by the library, the top of the underground parking garage is one of the pieces of land that the public process is meant to address. [Recent Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor DDA Continues Planning Prep"]

Responding to Parker’s presentation, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) noted that she’d mentioned the Internet won’t result in the death of the library. He asked Parker to share with the council what the current mission of the library is, if it’s beyond books. Parker told Hohnke that the mission of the library is to guarantee public access to facilities for life-long learning, and that hasn’t changed. From the AADL website:

Vision Statement

The Ann Arbor District Library provides collections, programs, and leadership to promote the development of literate and informed citizens through open and equal access to cultural, intellectual, recreational, and information resources.

Mission Statement

The existence of the Ann Arbor District Library assures public ownership of print collections, digital resources, and gathering spaces for the citizens of the library district. We are committed to sustaining the value of public library services for the greater Ann Arbor community through the use of traditional and innovative technologies.

Parker pointed to two significant projects the library had undertaken in the past couple of years that have served that mission. First, AADL had agreed to absorb responsibility for the library for the blind to keep it from being eliminated by the county, which previously supported it. The library had also agreed to preserve the old Ann Arbor News archive to preserve the history of the community as reflected in the newspaper. If the library had not done that, she said, the material would be sitting in a warehouse somewhere.

The library’s commitment requires and uses technology, Parker said. The mission is still about literacy and learning – it’s just that there’s another way to achieve those goals. Hohnke asked if there was any discussion between the library and city about opportunities for consolidating services and for providing greater impact for tax dollars. Parker told Hohnke that this is something that former city administrator Roger Fraser was good about – making sure the Ann Arbor District Library was part of those opportunities. That will continue, she said. Parker pointed to some money saved for the city through the library’s collaboration with the city clerk’s office – the library provides space to test voting machines, and serves as a polling place. No one is reading about those kinds of things, she said, but the library does them.

Parker alluded to other services that libraries in other areas provide to their communities, which the AADL might also explore, but said she was not prepared to name them at that time. [.pdf of AADL slide presentation to the Ann Arbor city council]

Communications and Comment

Every city council agenda contains multiple slots for city councilmembers and the city administrator to give updates or make announcements about important issues that are coming before the city council. And every meeting typically includes public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the agenda.

Comm/Comm: DDA – Outside the District Investment

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) expressed his satisfaction that TIF (tax increment finance) reports from the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority had been located and submitted to the city clerk’s office. He’d previously complained that the Ann Arbor DDA had not complied with certain reporting requirements of the state’s DDA statute.

But another issue he’d identified, said Kunselman, was a statement on the state tax commission website, a substantial portion of which he then read aloud. From the statement:

Question: Can a DDA or TIFA plan spend revenue outside of its development area?

Answer: According to state law, the plan may spend revenue only for projects described in the development plan and/or tax increment financing plan, and the projects must be allowable under the law. The revenue must be spent for the benefit of the development area. Revenue of one plan may not be used to pay an obligation or expense of another plan. The State Tax Commission’s policy is that revenue must also be spent on improvements or properties located in the plan’s development area. …

The State Tax Commission may waive this requirement for certain infrastructure improvements made in the development plan that must extend outside the development area’s boundaries.

Kunselman said he was interested in finding out whether the Near North affordable housing project has such a waiver. He alerted his council colleagues that he had requested information on that issue.

Left to right: councilmembers Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) before the start of the July 5 meeting.

By way of background, the question of spending TIF dollars outside the DDA district is not novel. The Ann Arbor DDA has its own explicit policy on affordable housing that allows for investment outside the DDA district. A resolution establishing the policy of investing in projects up to 1/4 mile outside the district was approved at the board’s March 4, 2009 board meeting.

When the question of outside-the-boundary investment has been posed at DDA board meetings, the legal position of the board’s legal counsel, Jerry Lax, has been characterized by staff and board members as essentially this: It’s not explicitly proscribed by the state statute. That’s reflected in the DDA renewal plan, which includes explicit reference to spending outside the district in at least two places.

In an effort to accomplish its mission, it is understood that the DDA may elect to participate in important projects outside the DDA District.
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The funds allocated by the DDA are intended to strengthen the downtown area and attract new private investments. This Plan recognizes that solutions to downtown problems (for example, traffic, access, and parking problems) may best be developed by spending funds outside the DDA district.

Comm/Comm: Society in Peril

In the final turn at public commentary, held at the end of the meeting, Thomas Partidge told the council that society is in peril – the mayor and the council have not taken up the question of the immediate danger if Congress fails to come to an agreement on the budget by Aug. 7. Failure by the Congress to adopt a budget would leave a large cross-section of society in peril and at risk for robberies, holdups and murders, he said. Alluding to the city council’s recent approval of licensing and zoning ordinances for medical marijuana, Partridge contended that the city has taken on a campaign to increase drug use. When 911 is called, he claimed, people are too often met with a surly, dismissive response. It leaves the impression that the city does not have a working police department patroling the city.

Comm/Comm: General Disconent

In an earlier turn at public commentary, Thomas Partridge introduced himself as a Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor resident who is an advocate for those being left behind. He said he’s a Democrat dedicated to significant reforms. He supports the recall movement of Gov. Rick Snyder and other members of Snyder’s administration. We should not sit back and go backward in time, he said. The city had suffered undue losses, he said, including in the fire department, the police department, and the civilian work force. As part of the reapportionment of wards, Partridge contended that access to polls for seniors or disabled persons is not taken into consideration.

Comm/Comm: Huron River Day

The mayor handed out a proclamation recognizing Huron River Day on July 17, 2011.

Comm/Comm: Volunteer of the Month

Paul and Tyler Clark were recognized for their efforts in volunteering for the mayor’s annual green fair.

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

Absent: Margie Teall, Sandi Smith.

Next regular city council meeting: Monday, July 18, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the city hall’s second-floor council chambers at 301 E. Huron. [confirm date]

Al Taubman, who recently donated $56 million to fund medical research at UM, is flanked by his wife Judy Taubman, right, and Eva Feldman, a UM neurology professor and director of the Taubman Medical Research Institute. Seated behind them is Kellen Russell, who won a national championship in wrestling and was also recognized by regents at their April 21, 2011 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

The donation – to fund work at UM’s Taubman Medical Research Institute – brought his total gifts for that institute to $100 million, and his total overall UM contributions to more than $141 million. He is the largest individual donor to the university.

In conjunction with this latest gift, regents approved the renaming of the Biomedical Science Research Building – where the institute is housed – in honor of Taubman.

In thanking Taubman, board chair Julia Darlow called his gift transformative, and noted that his name has been “stamped” on the university in many ways – at the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning, the Taubman Gallery at the UM Museum of Art, Taubman Health Care Center, Taubman Health Sciences Library, and the Taubman Scholars program, among others. Though he did not complete a degree, Taubman did study architecture at UM and has been involved with the institution for decades.

The real estate developer, who’s widely credited with popularizing the modern shopping mall, is not without controversy. Taubman maintains his innocence, but the former owner of Sotheby’s auction house served about nine months in federal prison in 2002 for an anti-trust conviction related to a price-fixing scheme with Christie’s, a major competitor. At the time, university officials stood by him in the face of calls to remove his name from UM buildings.

In addition to announcing Taubman’s most recent gift, the regents handled a variety of other items during their April meeting. They unanimously approved an extension of the maximum allowable tenure probationary period to 10 years, and before voting heard from several UM faculty members on both sides of the issue. Regents also approved several million dollars in infrastructure projects, as well as a new degree program in health informatics.

Chris Armstrong, who made national news after being harrassed by a former state assistant attorney general, gave his last report as outgoing student government president and was thanked by university executives for his leadership. Regent Libby Maynard told Armstrong he’d helped all of them grow during the year.

And during the time set aside for public commentary, students and staff raised several issues, including negotiations with the nurses union, campus sustainability efforts, and a proposal to partner with an Israeli university for study abroad.

Agenda Addition: Al Taubman

Media had been alerted earlier in the week that an agenda item would be added at the start of the April 21 regents meeting, featuring news that involved a prominent individual – no additional details were provided. That individual turned out to be Al Taubman, a familiar name to the university because of major donations he’s made in the past.

Taubman, his wife Judy Taubman and Eva Feldman – a UM neurology professor, director of the Taubman Medical Research Institute, and Taubman’s personal physician – were among those on hand when UM president Mary Sue Coleman called Thursday’s meeting to order.

Speaking with difficulty through a hoarse voice, Coleman began by describing Taubman as a thoughtful, dedicated and driven supporter of the university for many years, always wanting his alma mater to excel. [Taubman received an honorary doctorate of law degree from UM in 1991.] She cited several UM units that have benefited from his support, including the UM health system, the museum of art, the College of Literature, Science & the Arts, and the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning.

“Today he is once again moving Michigan forward,” Coleman said, extending his long-standing support with an additional gift of $56 million. At that, the regents and others attending the meeting gave Taubman a standing ovation.

Coleman continued, saying the gift brings his total donation for the Taubman Medical Research Institute to $100 million. The funds will allow UM’s scientists to conduct high risk research, with potentially high rewards, into some of the most terrible diseases that anyone has experienced, she said, like Lou Gehrig’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. As a university president, a scientist, and someone whose family has been affected by such a disease, Coleman said Taubman’s gift will make a tremendous difference, and she expressed deep gratitude to him for making it.

Six of the eight regents made additional remarks. Julia Darlow, the board’s chair, called Taubman a true Michigan man, noting that he grew up in Michigan, studied at the university, and based his business in this state. She thanked him for his “life-changing gift,” saying “your generosity will save lives – we are certain of that.” Darlow also thanked Taubman for sharing his time, advice, energy and leadership with the university, citing many of the other UM programs and institutions he has supported over the year. The Taubman name “has been stamped on this university,” she concluded, saying that they are forever grateful for that.

Al Taubman and Eva Feldman in the lobby of the regents boardroom prior to the start of the April 21, 2011 meeting. In the background is a photo of regent Andrea Fischer Newman.

Denise Ilitch noted that she’s known Taubman for a long time, and said she was thrilled by his gift. In particular, she expressed excitement for the potential that the institute’s stem cell research promises, noting that her family has also been affected by the diseases that the research hopes to cure. “You are a rock star!” she said, adding that her family – which owns the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers – typically celebrates by doing a cheer: “Wooo!”

Saying he’d recently met one of his boyhood heroes, Larry Deitch said it was great to honor one of his adult heroes as well. Taubman’s gifts have enriched the life of this state, Deitch said. He highlighted Taubman’s previous gifts to support stem cell research at the university, saying it was something an entrepreneur would do.

Andrea Fischer Newman told Taubman that he’d put the university on the map with this gift, making them a power to be reckoned with. Because of it, they’ll be able to retain the scientists they have, and attract new ones for generations to come. He’s done more for this institution than anything they could ask for or hope for, she said, “and we appreciate it.”

Andrew Richner also thanked Taubman, saying that as a lifelong Michigander, “I can’t imagine the state of Michigan without the Taubman family.”

Martin Taylor thanked Taubman for stepping in to support a critical area of research at a time when there are so many forces working against it.

Coleman told Taubman that Ora Pescovitz, who leads the University of Michigan Health System, was unable to attend the meeting, but had videotaped some remarks, which were then played.

Taubman came to the podium and thanked the regents and Coleman for their kind words and recognition, saying it was his honor to support the university. He thanked the people who had encouraged him to donate, including Bob Kelch, the former UM executive vice president for medical affairs.

He recalled that 35 years ago, then-governor Bill Milliken had asked him to serve on a committee for building a new hospital at UM. He said Milliken had asked him because he’d complained about their plans to tear down the old hospital, which had been designed by the renowned architect Albert Kahn. Milliken had told him to figure out a way to save the old building, or help build a new one. Taubman said they’d ultimately chosen the latter course, and that the last time he’d attended a regents meeting it was to plead the case for an accelerated construction schedule for that hospital – it had been completed on time and under budget, he noted.

Taubman also recalled meeting Eva Feldman, who years ago had agreed to be his personal physician and more recently had sold him on the idea of new research using embryonic stem cell therapy. At the time, it was illegal to conduct such research in Michigan, he said, so they opened a lab in La Hoya, California. About three years ago, he said he also spent several million dollars to fund a campaign to change Michigan’s restrictive laws regarding stem cell research. After Michigan voters approved a 2008 referendum to legalize embryonic stem cell research, Taubman said they moved the lab back to UM. The research holds potential for curing some of the most devastating diseases, he said, “and that’s what today’s announcement is all about.”

Members of The Friars, a student a cappella men's group, delivered a rendition of "The Victors."

Taubman received another standing ovation after concluding his remarks. Coleman then introduced a supplemental agenda item to rename UM’s Biomedical Science Research Building in honor of Taubman. The building, which opened in 2006, houses the Taubman Medical Research Institute and is located at 109 Zina Pitcher Place, off East Huron just before it curves into Washtenaw Avenue. With no discussion, the regents unanimously approved the name change.

Capping off this portion of the meeting, the eight betuxed members of The Friars, a student a cappella men’s group, entered the room and delivered a full rendition of “The Victors,” UM’s fight song. They were joined during the chorus by most of the people in the boardroom.

The board then took a recess, and Taubman was escorted to another room in the building for additional media interviews. The meeting reconvened after a roughly five minute break.

President’s Opening Remarks

Because UM president Mary Sue Coleman was hoarse and had difficulty speaking, Sally Churchill – vice president and secretary to the university – delivered Coleman’s prepared opening remarks. She highlighted several recent achievements by UM athletes. The men’s and women’s gymnastics programs each won NCAA championship all-around titles – Kylee Botterman took the women’s title, and Sam Mikulak won the men’s. Botterman attended the regents meeting with her coach. Also attending Thursday’s meeting was Kellen Russell, who won an NCAA national championship in wrestling. His coach, as well as athletic director David Brandon, came to the meeting as well. Regents gave the student athletes a round of applause.

Continuing Coleman’s prepared remarks, Churchill also noted that commencement ceremonies would be held in less than two weeks, and they welcomed Gov. Rick Snyder as the keynote speaker. [The choice of Snyder has been criticized by some students, including three who spoke at the regents March 17 meeting in Detroit. One of those students, Richard Durrance, presented regents with a petition with more than 4,000 student signatures, protesting Snyder’s selection as commencement speaker in part because of budget cuts he has proposed to K-12 and higher education. A rally against those cuts is planned for the morning of commencement, on Saturday, April 30, starting at 8 a.m. at Pioneer High School.]

Students with Disabilities

Regents heard a presentation about the Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) program, part of the UM division of student affairs. The program’s director, Stuart Segal, attended the meeting, but the presentation was given by three students who’ve taken advantage of those services.

Carrie Lofgren, a freshman, told regents that when she was searching for a university to attend, she looked for two things: (1) a rowing team; and (2) support services. Lofgren said she’s been diagnosed with dyslexia, and the other institutions she looked at – the University of Virginia and Brown University – lacked the support she needed. She was impressed with the Ross Academic Center, which provides academic support for student athletes, and since arriving at UM, the SSD staff has been there to help her manage her studies with a variety of resources. She’s used them to her fullest advantage, Lofgren said.

Brian Rappaport, a senior in public policy, said he found out about SSD services a bit late – when he was a freshman, he had to leave the university after one semester, because of issues related to his attention deficit disorder. Since returning, the SSD staff has been instrumental in his success, Rappaport said, primarily helping with time management. He said he hoped SSD could expand its peer mentorship program – that would have been valuable to him. Reflecting on this freshman year and his upcoming graduation, Rappaport thanked SSD staff for helping him reach his goal. “I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Edward Timke, a doctoral student in the department of communications, told regents that he’d just passed his preliminary exam – a milestone he wouldn’t have been able to reach without SSD. He was born without ear canals, and though they’ve been reconstructed, he is hearing disabled. Before he enrolled in UM’s doctoral program, he was concerned about how he’d be received, given his need for aid.

But Timke reported that his department has been willing to make accommodations, including services provided through SSD. He pointed out that during the regents meeting, he’d been able to follow the discussion because someone was there providing real-time captioning for him. Timke also said that thanks to GradCare, a medical insurance program for graduate students, he’d been able to receive a Phonak hearing aid implanted in his skull – without that insurance, he wouldn’t have been able to afford the device. He said he’s worried that with budget cuts, that insurance might not be available in the future.

Timke also noted that more can be done. He knows students who’ve faced both overt and covert discrimination on campus because of their disabilities, and some departments or faculty are reluctant to make accommodations. Some people also feel that disabled students get preferential treatment, he said – much more needs to be done to ensure there’s greater sensitivity to the needs of disabled students. They aren’t asking for a free ride, he said. Timke urged regents to support positive programs like GradCare and SSD, and to springboard off that to create an even better environment for students with disabilities.

After the presentation, board chair Julia Darlow thanked the students, and also highlighted the work of UM’s Council for Disability Concerns. She said she’d never seen a group so dedicated, and praised the local residents and faculty who served on it. Darlow introduced two members who attended the regents meeting – Anna Ercoli Schnitzer and Jack Bernard – and they received a round of applause. The amount that they contribute is truly unbelievable, Darlow said.

Tenure Extension

The board was asked to approve a change to Regents Bylaw 5.09 that would extend the maximum allowable tenure probationary period to 10 years. It has been set at eight years since 1944. The change does not impose the longer period, but allows faculty governing groups at UM’s various schools and colleges to extend it, if they choose.

From a memo accompanying the proposed revision:

The changing nature of scholarship, with its emphasis on interdisciplinary projects, more complex research models requiring the setting up of sophisticated equipment and laboratories, and increased regulatory and compliance requirements, increases the time necessary for completion and evaluation of initial research results. These factors, combined with the fact that many faculty members, especially those from two-career and single-parent households, find it increasingly difficult to balance their teaching and research commitments with family obligations, have led to the conclusion that a more flexible tenure probationary period is warranted.

Tenure Extension: Public Commentary

Seven faculty spoke during the meeting’s public commentary, most of them in support of the change. Regents had previously heard from faculty – most of them from the UM Medical School – at their Feb. 17, 2011 meeting.

Ed Rothman, chair of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA), urged regents to postpone a decision on extending the tenure timeline.

Ed Rothman – chair of the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA), the faculty governance body – began by saying that this is a difficult issue, and people on both sides are well-intentioned. He cited several concerns with the change, including the likelihood that allowing a longer time to make a decision on tenure will result in taking longer to make a decision, adding the stress of an increased wait. It’s also unclear if they’re treating the problem or a symptom, he said. If the workload is too heavy, should the answer be to lengthen the time to achieve tenure, or lighten the workload? The university can’t afford to be divided on this issue, he said, and SACUA opposes the change, as does the majority of the Senate Faculty. He requested that regents hold off on a vote until a more agreeable solution can be found.

Ben Allen also urged regents to postpone their vote. He is an assistant professor in the medical school – he noted that he works in the building that’s being renamed in Taubman’s honor – and his initial reaction was to see the change as positive. As the father of two little girls, he appreciated the concern for balancing work and personal life. However, he’s come to believe that the change will in fact hinder the success of junior faculty. One concern is that faculty seeking tenure would be held to higher standards if they take longer. And simply providing more time to achieve tenure isn’t helpful without also providing resources to support achieving it, such as increased startup funds for research and opportunities for promotion. Allen said he believes the changes are being proposed sincerely as being in the best interest of junior faculty, but he urged regents to postpone action until other measures are taken as well.

Abby Stewart, a professor of psychology and women’s studies, spoke in favor of the extended tenure. She cited the diversity of family circumstances as a reason for adding flexibility to the process. Over the past 25 years, she said, people have come to her for advice about how to pursue their academic careers in the wake of complex demands in their personal lives. Stewart gave examples of people dealing with special needs children, care for elderly parents, and long-term illnesses. Other problems relate to challenges at the university – for example, when renovations at a lab prevented a researcher from using that space for an extended period. Fifty years ago, Stewart said, the current tenure timeline was adequate. But now, flexibility is needed. She said it’s unlikely most schools and colleges will change their policies, but for those that need it – like the medical school – they should have that option.

Three faculty from the medical school – David Bloom, chair of the medical school’s department of urology; Kathleen Cooney, chief of the division of hematology/oncology; and Chris Dickinson, chief of pediatric gastroenterology – also spoke in support of the change.

Rob Salmond, an assistant professor of political science, gave a poignant description of the medical challenges faced by his daughter, who was born with birth defects requiring five open heart surgeries. He and his wife, who is also in UM’s political science department, split their time staying by her bedside in the hospital, he said, but despite the efforts of the medical staff, their daughter died two months ago. Salmond said he had selfish reasons for asking regents to extend the tenure timeline, but that it would benefit many more untenured faculty as well. He urged them to approve the change.

Tenure Extension: Staff and Regents

Sally Churchill, vice president and secretary to the university, described the various ways that this proposal has been publicized, and how feedback had been solicited from faculty groups. The proposal was posted in The University Record, and more than 100 comments in response to that posting were overwhelmingly in support of it, she said.

Provost Phil Hanlon told regents that their vote would itself not change the tenure process, nor would it affect the university’s strong commitment to tenure. All that’s being requested is a change in the upper limit of time allowed to complete tenure – a timeline that’s set by the governing faculty at each academic unit. The need has arisen from people’s experiences on campus, he said, including the increasing complexity and nature of their scholarship, and the need to balance work and family.

This change was first proposed in 2006, Hanon said, and there’s been vigorous debate about it. He noted the concerns raised by Ben Allen about unintended consequences, and said he plans to convene a committee to advise him on how to monitor and provide oversight if a college or school decides to extend their tenure timeline.

Regent Kathy White clarified that the change merely increases the maximum number of years that schools and colleges can set for their tenure timeline. She confirmed with Hanlon that the decisionmakers would be faculty or members of committees elected by the faculty, and that the administration would not be picking faculty of their choosing to make these decisions.

Regent Julia Darlow, the board’s chair, said there’s been some misunderstanding on this issue, but that there had been an excellent and thorough discussion. “I do think the time has come,” she said.

Outcome: Regents voted unanimously to extend the maximum allowable tenure probationary period to 10 years. Regent Larry Deitch left the meeting before this vote.

Michigan Student Assembly: Changing of Guard

This was the last regents meeting for Chris Armstrong, outgoing president of the Michigan Student Assembly, UM’s student government group. Royster Harper, vice president for student affairs, thanked Armstrong for his leadership during a challenging year. He represented himself and the university well, she said, and persisted when everyone else would have understood if he did not. He has a “teachable spirit,” Harper said, noting there were many occasions to see that in evidence.

Chris Armstrong, outgoing president of the Michigan Student Assembly.

[Harper was alluding to the fact that Armstrong was the subject of attacks last year by former state assistant attorney general Andrew Shirvell. Shirvell kept a blog – the “Chris Armstrong Watch” – which criticized Armstrong for his openly gay lifestyle and “radical homosexual agenda.” The situation received national media attention, and Armstrong ultimately filed a lawsuit against Shirvell earlier this month, accusing him of stalking and inflicting emotional distress.]

Armstrong received a round of applause from regents before giving his final report to the board. “It has certainly been quite a year,” he said. He highlighted several MSA accomplishments during his tenure, including renewing a car service for student service groups, starting an online forum for students to petition the university, changing the housing policy for transgender students, and hosting a concert for students, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps. “It’s been an honor for me to represent that work to you all,” he told the regents.

Regent Libby Maynard told Armstrong he’d helped all of them grow during the year. He’s been instrumental in making them better people, she said.

Armstrong then introduced the new MSA president, DeAndree Watson. Watson, a junior, said that Armstrong’s work has set a foundation for the coming year. He outlined several goals for his administration, including the desire to increase interactions with local, state and national officials. Noting that UM has a history of being a hub for student activism, Watson said he hoped to make MSA more of a resource for student activists by creating a fund to support those efforts, as well as an online database to share information and help student groups collaborate.

Infrastructure Projects

Regents approved several infrastructure projects at Thursday’s meeting, totaling more than $21 million.

Infrastructure Projects: Information Technology

Two items related to information technology (IT) infrastructure, totaling $8.9 million. Regents authorized a $2.7 million annual maintenance and replacement program for information and technology services in fiscal 2012. The program includes three major projects: (1) replacing the networking infrastructure for UM’s data network in campus buildings; (2) replacing the Northwood Housing network infrastructure; and (3) making upgrades to campus voice systems.

Regents also approved construction of a $6.2 million data center on the north campus, located near the UM Transportation Research Institute. The facility – which UM’s chief financial officer, Tim Slottow, described as an “ecopod” – is being built in response to increased demand for research computing and data storage capacity.

Laura Patterson, UM’s associate vice president and chief information officer, spoke briefly about the project, saying it’s part of an effort to consolidate the university’s 180 server rooms into a much smaller number of data centers, which would save about $1.3 million in annual operating costs. It will be a pre-manufactured facility, she said, delivered by semi-trailer truck and placed on a concrete slab. Smaller than the size of the regents boardroom, it will be much more efficient than a traditional data center, Patterson said.

Integrated Design Solutions LLC is the project’s designer. Construction is expected to be finished by the spring of 2012.

Infrastructure Projects: Michigan Memorial Phoenix Lab

Regents also authorized staff to issue bids and award construction contracts for an $11 million renovation and addition at the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Laboratory, which houses the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute. The project includes renovating about 10,000 square feet of lab space for energy-related research, and building a 10,000-square-foot addition for administrative functions. Regents approved the schematic design at their September 2010 meeting.

Infrastructure Projects: Orthotics & Prosthetics Center

Finally, regents approved a $1.3 million renovation to the UM Orthotics and Prosthetics Center, located at the Eisenhower Corporate Park West facility. The project will renovate roughly 12,500 square feet, resulting in a higher-capacity clinic space and expanded laboratory area with accommodations for new programs. Ann Arbor-based A3C Collaborative Architecture will design the project, which is expected to be complete by the spring of 2012.

Conflict-of-Interest Disclosures

Without comment, regents authorized 12 items that required disclosure under the state’s Conflict of Interest statute. The law requires that regents vote on potential conflict-of-interest disclosures related to university staff, faculty or students. The items often involve technology licensing agreements or leases.

An item involving a lease agreement with Lycera Corp. was withdrawn. Sally Churchill, vice president and secretary of the university, indicated that the agreement wasn’t yet completed. The company is planning to occupy 14,134 square feet of laboratory and office space in Building 26 at the North Campus Research Complex (NCRC) – the former Pfizer site on Plymouth Road.

Items approved were related to the following companies, organizations and individuals: (1) InSight Photography; (2) Camp Doc; (3) ElectroDynamic Application Inc.; (4) Holbrook Design; (5) Jeannette Routhier; (6) Baker-Calling Inc.; (7) Cytopherx; (8) MEMSTim; (9) NextGen Metabolomics Inc.; (10) Silicon Kidney; (11) Soar Technology Inc.; and (12) Vortex Hydro Energy LLC.

Academic Items: Courant Reappointed, New Degree OK’d

Provost Phil Hanlon highlighted the reappointment of Paul Courant as university librarian and dean of libraries, from Feb. 29, 2012 through Aug. 31, 2013. He said he wanted to get more time from Courant, but that’s all he would agree to. Courant is nationally recognized as a thought leader, Hanlon said, especially in the field of digitization. [As an example, Courant is among the leadership of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) effort, which also includes Ann Arbor District Library director Josie Parker.]

Later in the meeting, regents were asked to approve a new joint master’s degree and graduate certificate program in health informatics. The degree, to be offered at UM’s Ann Arbor campus, is a two-year program of the School of Information and the School of Public Health. Hanlon told regents that there’s a need for training in health care technologies, and that students have expressed interest in pursuing this course of study. The target date to enroll the first graduate certificate students is the fall of 2011, with enrollment of the first master’s degree students in the fall of 2012.

Regental, Academic Calendars

Regents approved two calendars during their meeting: (1) their meeting schedule for 2012; and (2) the university’s calendar for the 2013-14 academic year.

Regarding the academic calendar, it appears that the 2014 spring break might not coincide with the break for Ann Arbor Public Schools. A memo provided to the regents stated that the university’s spring break in 2014 will run from March 1 through March 9. From the memo: “We have communicated with the Ann Arbor Public School District, which in the past often tried to schedule a winter break that coincides with the UM academic calendar. We have been informed that new state requirements will mean that AAPS is unlikely to have much flexibility about when its breaks are set.”

Washtenaw Community Health Organization

Regents took two actions related to the Washtenaw Community Health Organization (WCHO), a partnership between Washtenaw County and the UM Health Systems. The partnership focuses on providing services to children and adults with mental or emotional health disorders, substance abuse problems or developmental disabilities.

Each institution appoints six members to the board. In action taken on Thursday, regents reappointed two members to WCHO’s board of directors, to represent the university: (1) Martha Bloom, vice president of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation; and (2) Jerry Walden, who founded and directed Packard Clinic until his retirement in 2007. Both members will serve terms from April 1, 2011 through March 31, 2014.

Also at the April 21 meeting, regents approved several changes to the WCHO bylaws. Among the changes include: (1) removing language for the UMHS to provide money for physical health services; (2) providing for the executive committee to act on behalf of the board and for actions to be reported to the full board at its next meeting; and (3) removing Washtenaw County as the fiscal agent for the WCHO. UM’s Hospitals and Health Centers executive board approved these revisions at its March 28, 2011 board meeting. The county board of commissioners approved the bylaws without discussion at its March 2, 2011 meeting.

Public Commentary

Five people spoke at the end of Thursday’s meeting on items not related to the agenda.

Public Commentary: Family Housing Language Program

Debbie Green, an Ann Arbor resident, talked about the decision to eliminate the family housing language program, which provided English classes and community support to families of international students living at Northwood Community Apartments, on UM’s north campus. Green said she taught with the program for five years in the 1980s, and found it to be popular and effective. The other main English as a Second Language program in Ann Arbor is located 40 minutes away by bus from Northwood and doesn’t offer the range of classes that were previously offered at UM, Green said. She noted that the university has stated that it wants to provide more opportunities for American students to interact with the foreign community at Northwood, but the needs of foreign families are being ignored. If the university is less welcoming to foreign students, they risk losing the tuition, diversity and expertise of that group, she said.

Regent Andy Richner asked for an explanation about the decision. Royster Harper, UM’s vice president for student affairs, said she’d follow up.

This message is posted on the program’s website:

The Northwood Community English Language Program is not offering English classes during the Winter 2011 semester.

We are currently refocusing our resources to provide programming that will serve a larger number of University Housing residents. Instead of our traditional English language classes, over the next several months, we will develop programs that serve the interests of Northwood’s international population as well as U-M student and faculty interest in international cultures and studies. The new programs may include collaborations with University academic units and cultural organizations to develop language mentorship opportunities for Northwood residents and their dependents. They will also engage Housing residents in global learning and cross-cultural initiatives.

Katie Oppenheim, chair of the University of Michigan Professional Nurse Council, spoke during public commentary at the April 21, 2011 regents meeting.

Public Commentary: Nurses Union

Katie Oppenheim, chair of the UM Professional Nurse Council, told regents that the union started contract negotiations with the university last week. The union’s roughly 4,000 members are fortunate to be working at an institution that’s prospering, she said, and the university is well-positioned so that the union’s members can provide the highest quality patient care. Part of that means that nurses need control over their nursing practice, and all that it entails, Oppenheim said. Nurses must have the resources they need to provide excellent patient care, and she hoped they could count on the regents’ full support.

After the commentary, regent Andrea Fischer Newman noted that Oppenheim had been her nurse when she delivered her son 15 years ago.

Public Commentary: Sustainability

Devi Glick spoke about the university’s sustainability efforts. Despite some positive steps, such as creating the Office of Campus Sustainability, she said UM is not a leader in pushing for environmental and social sustainability. She cited several examples where UM fell short, such as valuing aesthetics more than recycling efforts when asked to place recycling bins on the Diag, and in its drive for growth. “The university can become better without becoming bigger,” she said. Glick said she wasn’t encouraging unrealistic goals, but she urged regents to be bold. Achieving 90% of an ambitious goal is far better than attaining 100% of an unambitious goal, she said.

Public Commentary: Studying in Israel

Two students – Julie Sherbill and Laura Katsnelson – talked about why UM should establish a partnership with an Israeli university, allowing students to study abroad in that country. UM has a policy against setting up university-supported study abroad programs in any country with a travel warning – such a warning for Israel was issued by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

Sherbill told regents that they’ve collected over 1,000 student signatures in support of establishing a partnership with an Israeli university, proving that it’s a student-driven initiative. Resolutions in support were also passed unanimously by the Michigan Student Assembly and the student governing group for the College of Literature, Science & the Arts (LSA). Further, the action is also supported by U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, Sherbill said, as well as Deborah Dash Moore, director of the UM Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, and Liz Barry, managing director of the UM Life Sciences Institute.

Regent Andrea Fischer Newman noted that the regents addressed this issue at their Feb. 17, 2011 meeting. She asked provost Phil Hanlon for an update.

Hanlon reported that he’d met with the people responsible for UM’s study abroad programs, to better understand why the current policy is in place. It’s a risk issue, he said. For most countries on the list – including Israel, Kenya and Mexico – there are only certain parts of the country that are deemed dangerous. However, UM staff didn’t feel they had the in-house expertise to know which parts of each country would be safe. Hanlon said his staff has also contacted others in the Association of American Universities to see what their policies are, and have talked to representatives from Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin, which both allow study in Israel, to see how they assess risk.

Mark Tessler, vice provost for international affairs, has set up a small group to look into this issue, Hanlon said, adding that he strongly urged Tessler to provide a recommendation to regents in May.

Newman said she understood UM’s policy, but suggested that they consider looking at countries individually, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach. She said she’s very familiar with travel warnings issued by the State Department – Newman is senior vice president-government affairs for Delta Airlines. The government can only pay for dependents of federal employees to leave the country if a travel warning is in effect, she noted, so that should be taken into account. There’s also a difference between travel warnings and travel advisories, she said – that should be looked at as well.

Newman asked how long it would take to put the policy into effect, assuming it were changed to allow study in Israel. Hanlon replied it depends on the type of mechanism they use to assess risk.

Regent Andrew Richner asked whether they would look at all countries with travel warnings, not just Israel. Hanlon said he expected any change would apply to all countries in that category.

Katsnelson then described what a partnership with Hebrew University in Jerusalem might look like. Specifically, the university’s Rothberg International School is experienced in partnering with American universities, she said. The director of academic affairs there, Janet Alperstein, has expressed interest in working with UM to establish a partnership. If liability and safety are concerns, UM can ask students to sign a waiver, Katsnelson said – a packet provided to the regents included a sample waiver used by Harvard University.

Present: Mary Sue Coleman (ex officio), Julia Darlow, Larry Deitch, Denise Ilitch, Olivia (Libby) Maynard, Andrea Fischer Newman, Andrew Richner, Martin Taylor, Kathy White.

Next board meeting: Thursday, May 19, 2011 at 3 p.m. at the Fairlane Center on UM’s Dearborn campus, 19000 Hubbard Drive. [confirm date]

Regents also approved construction of a $6.2 million data center on the north campus, located near the UM Transportation Research Institute. The facility, which will be designed by Integrated Design Solutions LLC, is being built in response to increased demand for research computing and data storage capacity. Construction is expected to be finished by the spring of 2012.

Regents authorized staff to issue bids and award construction contracts for an $11 million renovation and addition at the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Laboratory, which houses the Michigan Memorial Phoenix Energy Institute. The project includes renovating about 10,000 square feet of lab space for energy-related research, and building a 10,000-square-foot addition for administrative functions. Regents approved the schematic design at their September 2010 meeting.

Finally, regents approved a $1.3 million renovation to the UM Orthotics and Prosthetics Center, located at the Eisenhower Corporate Park West facility. The project will renovate roughly 12,500 square feet, resulting in a higher-capacity clinic space and expanded laboratory area with accommodations for new programs. A3C Collaborative Architecture will design the project, which is expected to be complete by the spring of 2012.

This brief was filed just after the meeting’s adjournment from the regents boardroom in the Fleming administration building. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Top: File photo from March 2009 of city engineer Mike Nearing as he gives the East Stadium bridge a hammer sounding test. Bottom: At a March 16, 2011 special meeting, Nearing and other city staff were on hand to answer questions. To Nearing's left is Sue McCormick, public services area administrator. Standing is Homayoon Pirooz, head of project management. (Photos by the writer.)

Announcement of the grant’s award to the city for the reconstruction of the East Stadium Boulevard bridges had come in October 2010. The bridge over State Street is in such poor condition that its southern two lanes were intentionally demolished in November 2009.

The council’s special session reflected an urgency to complete the contract. The council has a regular meeting scheduled next Monday, March 21 – just five calendar days after the special session – when the council could also have taken the necessary vote on the contract.

The urgency stemmed from the March 18 expiration of a continuing resolution (CR) passed by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 2. A CR is a mechanism for keeping the federal government operating, based on the previous fiscal year’s budget assumptions, until formal appropriations bills are passed by Congress. The federal budget procedure is essentially a two-step process in which the budget levels for each department are first set and signed into law, followed by appropriations bills that authorize spending the budgeted amounts.

Based on proposals brought forward in February by U.S. House Republicans, but ultimately not enacted, the current two-week CR would have eliminated TIGER II grants. And based on the political posturing that took place over the current CR, the Ann Arbor city council was taking the step of signing the contract as soon as it could, to allow the U.S. Federal Highway Administration to “obligate” the TIGER II grant funds for the bridges project under the current CR – as a hedge against the possibility that a subsequent CR might cut TIGER II funding.

Although the grant had previously been awarded, the funds are not secured until they are actually obligated, a process that includes various requirements – among them, signing the contract that the council authorized at its special session.

The council’s action enabled obligation of TIGER II funds only for the right-of-way phase of the project – which amounts to around $800,000. According to Congressman John Dingell’s office staff, they’d been informed by the Dept. of Transportation on March 15 that the $800,000 for the initial phase had just been obligated.

Based on the city of Ann Arbor’s timeline, obligation of the $13.1 million in TIGER II funds for the construction phase is expected in May. Construction on the project, which is estimated to cost a total of $23 million, is tentatively scheduled for October 2011.

A public information meeting on the status of the project is scheduled for Wednesday, March 23 from 6:30-8 p.m. at the Pioneer High School cafeteria. Pioneer is located at 601 W. Stadium – just down the street from the bridges.

Council Deliberations

Given the single item on the agenda, the special meeting was brief, but councilmembers still had substantive questions. Three city staff members were on hand to answer them: Sue McCormick, public services area administrator; Homayoon Pirooz, the city’s head of project management; and Mike Nearing, the city engineer who’s directly responsible for managing the bridge reconstruction project. This report begins with the council questions and answers, and continues with additional background detail organized roughly based on councilmember questions.

Council Deliberations: Right-of-Way

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) wanted to know if the city was confident that the University of Michigan is a willing partner in providing to the city the rights-of-way that it needs in order to complete the project.

Pirooz told Kunselman that the city had been talking with the university staff since October of 2010, and that the university has seen all the pieces of property, and descriptions for them, that the city is requesting.

Next week the city will be making a good faith offer, Pirooz said, and then the ball will be in the university’s court. Pirooz said he hoped that the university would accept the offer.

Council Deliberations: Obligation of Funds

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) wanted to know if the signing of the contract, which the council was approving that night, would actually “obligate” the funds from the TIGER II grant. Pirooz explained that the $13.9 million from the grant would be obligated in two steps, corresponding to the two phases of the project: (1) the right-of-way phase, and (2) the construction phase.

Homayoon Pirooz shows mayor John Hieftje the documents he needs to sign. At left are Sandi Smith (Ward 1) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4).

When the contract is signed, Pirooz said, the first $800,000 of the grant would be obligated – “locked in.” After that, the city can make an offer to the UM for the rights-of-way needed for the project. On acceptance by the university, the city can then, under the same contract, lock in the remaining $13.1 million for the construction phase of the project.

Council Deliberations: Timeline

Tony Derezisnki (Ward 2) wanted to know how things stood on the overall timeline for the project. Pirooz told him that the Michigan Dept. of Transportation will be advertising the construction jobs to solicit bids in the summer and that they will be awarded in September. Construction is expected to start in October 2011.

Right-of-Way (ROW) Acquisition

The action taken on Wednesday by the Ann Arbor city council to approve the U.S. Dept. of Transportation contract will allow the obligation – “the locking in” – of the initial right-of-way acquisition phase of the project. From the contract:

Phase 1 – Right-of-Way Acquisition

This phase of the project consists of acquiring five, small, irregularly-shaped parcels of land that are needed for permanent right-of-way; and, three, small, irregularly-shaped parcels of land that are needed for underground utility easements for the subject project. Also to be acquired for the subject project are seven, temporary grading permit areas, that are needed for the purposes of constructing the project and will be restored to their original condition upon completion of the project.

The Federal funds for phase 1 may only be used on the costs associated with the purchase of the permanent right-of-way needed and the acquisition of the seven, temporary grading permit areas. No Federal funds, including TIGER II grant funds, will be used to reimburse the cost of ROW acquisition activities that were incurred prior to the date of obligation of the Federal funds.

Based on an October 2009 project design, a total of around half an acre of UM property would need to be acquired by the city in order to complete the bridge reconstruction project. The parcels in question are part of the Crisler Arena parking lot, the UM golf course, the field hockey facility, and the Red Lot (a parking lot).

The contract calls for the city to make a “good faith offer” to the university for the parcels, which are needed either as permanent conveyance or as utility easements. The city and the university have a history of conveying right-of-way to each other, either permanently or for temporary use.

In response to a query from The Chronicle, Jim Kosteva – UM’s director of community relations of community relations – gave examples of past projects that involved the university’s permanent conveyance of right-of-way to the city without a cash transaction: (1) expansion of Main Street at the intersection of Main and Stadium Boulevard to add a turn lane; (2) reconfiguration of Fuller Road around the VA hospital area to connect at Glazier Way; and (3) reconfiguration of Huron Parkway.

On the flip side, with the city permanently donating land to the university, Kosteva also gave examples: (1) the section of East University Avenue between North University and South University; (2) Monroe Street between Tappan and East University. [The university has also expressed interest in the last few years in acquiring the right-of-way between South State and Tappan on Monroe Street, but has up to this point received an unenthusiastic response from the city.]

In the category of temporary use of right-of-way, Kosteva offered various university construction projects that have required lane closures, most notably the football stadium renovation project, the construction of the North Quad dorm at State and Huron, and the law school project currently underway at State and Monroe. The city charges 1.5 cents per square foot per day for temporary use of the right-of-way. While the amount sounds trivial, Kosteva said that it has added up to several hundred thousand dollars over the last few years.

[To illustrate how the 1.5 cents can add up, consider a 12-foot-wide lane, and the 1,570-foot distance for one block of Main Street from Stadium Boulevard to Pauline Boulevard, for a closure of, say, 100 days. That works out to 12*1,570*.015*100 = $28,260]

Why Call a Special Meeting?

By way of background, the federal budget procedure is based on a fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30. The budget for the state of Michigan is aligned to that fiscal schedule, as are those of some other local units of government – like the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, for example. In contrast, the city of Ann Arbor’s budget year begins July 1 and ends June 30.

Once the city’s budget is approved each May by the city council, that money can be spent. However, throughout the year, the city council will vote on myriad contracts, because the power to make contracts on the city’s behalf is, per the city charter, vested in the council. Some dollar figure is associated with those contracts. A typical question asked by a councilmember of the city administrator on a night when the council is asked to vote to authorize a contract is: Where is this money coming from? A typical part of the answer is: This money has been authorized as part of the budget you approved last May.

On the federal level, once Congress approves the budget – which sets the dollar figures for all the departments – an additional step is required in order to allow any money to be spent. That additional step is the passage of various appropriations bills that specify with greater precision how the money in each department is to be allocated.

To gain time to consider and debate appropriations bills, Congress can use a continuing resolution (CR) to extend the habit and practice of spending from the previous year’s budget, to keep the federal government running. In December 2010, Congress passed, and President Obama signed into law, a CR that extended funding through March 4, 2011. In mid-February, as the expiration of that CR loomed, House Republicans announced a plan to pass a new CR, but with $100 billion in cuts, which would have also cut the TIGER II grant program. Though approved by the House, the Senate balked, and Republicans settled for a two-week CR with $4 billion in cuts – which spared TIGER II funding.

With the two-week CR set to expire on March 18, the Ann Arbor city council scheduled a March 16 special session, so it could authorize the agreement with the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (USDOT), which would allow the USDOT to obligate the TIGER II funds for the $800,000 phase 1 part of the East Stadium bridges project. The initial phase of the project involves acquisition of right-of-way from the University of Michigan – a disjoint mix of small, irregularly shaped parcels. According to Congressman John Dingell’s office staff, they received word from USDOT on March 15 that the phase 1 funds had, in fact, already been obligated.

Also on March 15, the House passed another three-week CR, which also maintained the TIGER II grant funding, extending governmental operation funds through April 8.

In that context, the special city council meeting may not have been necessary; however, the obligation of those funds was not known when the special council meeting was announced by Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) at the March 14 city council work session. In addition to clearing the logistical hurdles of identifying a venue and coordinating with councilmember schedules, the council needed to meet the Michigan Open Meetings Act requirement that special meetings are given a minimum 18-hour public notice before the meeting.

The Ann Arbor city charter provides a specific procedure for calling a special meeting:

Special meetings of the Council shall be held at the regular meeting place thereof and shall be called by the Clerk on written request of the Mayor or any three members of the Council. Written notice stating the time and purpose of a special meeting shall be delivered to each member of the Council or left at the member’s usual place of residence at least three hours prior to the time set for the meeting. The Clerk shall record a certificate of service of notice in the journal of such meeting. A special meeting may be held notwithstanding lack of notice if all members are present, or if a quorum is present and each absent member has filed with the Clerk a written waiver of notice. A vote taken by the Council at a prior meeting shall not be reconsidered at a special meeting, unless as many members are present as were present when the original vote was taken. Except by unanimous consent of all members of the Council, a matter shall not be acted upon at any special meeting unless it has been included in the notice of the meeting.

Due to ongoing renovations at city hall, since January the “regular meeting” place of the city council has been either at the Washtenaw County boardroom or the Community Television Network (CTN) studios. The Washtenaw County board of commissioners were holding their regular meeting in their boardroom on Wednesday evening, which left the CTN studios as an option.

East Stadium Bridge Construction Timeline

The timeline the city is using includes a construction start in October 2011. The contract authorized by the council on Wednesday night includes a target completion date in June 2013, with the bridges open to traffic again eight months before that, in November 2012.

Tentative
Date        Task
March 2011  Complete appraisals of UM properties
March 2011  City Council approval of TIGER II Grant Agreement
March 2011  Execute TIGER II Grant Agreement by US-DOT
March 2011  FHWA Authorization of TIGER II Funds
            (for ROW Phase only)
March 2011  Prepare and submit "Good Faith Offer" to UM for ROW
April 2011  City Council approval/acceptance of ROW from UM
April 2011  Execute and record all permanent ROW instruments
May   2011  Certification of all ROW to MDOT
May   2011  MDOT/FHWA Authorization of TIGER II Funds
            (for Construction Contract)
June  2011  MDOT Advertises the Construction Contract
July  2011  City Council Approval of City/State Agreement
Sept  2011  MDOT receive bids from the contractors
Oct   2011  MDOT issues "Notice to Proceed"
            to Bridge Construction Contractor
Nov   2012  Bridge open to traffic again
June  2013  Project complete

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Timeline of East Stadium Bridge History

The East Stadium Boulevard bridges – one over State Street and the other over the railroad tracks – have a long history. Here’s an overview focused on the last five years.

• 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 East Stadium bridge. 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 Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.
• 2006: The city of Ann Arbor is awarded $766,000 from Michigan’s local bridge program (MLBP), 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 of 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 plus the corridor from Main to White streets meets with a funding setback. The Michigan Dept. 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. – the engineering consultant for the bridge – performs biennial inspection.
• 2009: In early February, Northwest Consultants 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"] The 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 bridge’s 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"] The project scope is reduced from the more ambitious work on the corridor to just replacement of the two bridges.
• 2009: On Sept. 15, 2009 the bridge inspection consultant, Northwest Consultants, 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 Stadium Bridges "]
• 2010: In February, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation announces the final recipients of the federal TIGER grant – they do not include the city of Ann Arbor.
• 2010: In October, the U.S. Dept. of Transportation announces recipients of TIGER II grants – Ann Arbor is included on the list with a $13.9 million grant award.
• 2010: In November, the state of Michigan announces an award of $1.67 million from its local bridge program and $1.2 million from its transportation enhancement funds, bringing the total of grants supporting the project to around $16.8 million, or about 73% of the total $23 million estimated cost of the project.

Communications and Comment

Every city council agenda contains an opportunity for the public to address the meeting. On Wednesday, no one spoke.

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

Absent: Christopher Taylor

Next regular council meeting: March 21, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the Washtenaw County administration building, 220 N. Main St. [confirm date]

A report from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, drafted by a task force on infrastructure led by county board chair Rolland Sizemore Jr., laid out steps that SEMCOG hopes to take to address the situation – including, most immediately, lobbying Lansing lawmakers to raise the state’s gas tax, which funds road construction and upkeep. The briefing prompted commissioner Jeff Irwin to express frustration at SEMCOG’s approach, which he indicated wasn’t bold enough to tackle the underlying problems that have fostered sprawl.

At their May 20 session, commissioners also got an update on what’s known as the Chevron project – a multi-year, multimillion-dollar effort to cut energy usage in county facilities. And staff of the county’s energy and economic development office asked for feedback from commissioners about what type of pilot project the county should pursue, as part of a recent federal energy grant. Some commissioners are leaning toward a solar photovoltaic installation.

The meeting also included a presentation by county administrator Verna McDaniel on a request for more funds to complete the county jail expansion and new 14A-1 District Court facility. The Chronicle covered that topic in a previous report.

SEMCOG: Regional Infrastructure Needs

Paul Tait, SEMCOG’s executive director, began the presentation with a grim statement about the region’s infrastructure: “We’re really headed for a train wreck.” The goal of SEMCOG’s infrastructure task force was to try to get ahead of the challenges, he said, and to figure out potential solutions.

Chuck Hersey, manager of SEMCOG’s environment department, described their first step, which was to assess the current situation, and it didn’t look good. The revenue base is declining on several fronts: Gasoline sales, which provide gas tax revenues, are falling. Travel is decreasing, and with new fuel economy standards, gasoline sales are expected to decline even more, Hersey said. Property values – and thus taxable values – are also falling, which impacts revenues for local governments. Water usage is down as well, which means revenues from water usage fees are also falling.

Bottom line: Current revenues are insufficient to maintain the infrastructure that’s in place – as revenues fall, investment in infrastructure is cut. Hersey noted that some believe cutting investments in infrastructure saves money. But underinvestment doesn’t save in the long-term, he said – it actually leads to increased costs, especially in the case of infrastructure like roads, and water and sewer systems.

Another problem: funding formulas and policies are outdated, he said, inasmuch as they depend on increased consumption. Yet increased consumption conflicts with newer “green” policy goals that push for less use of gasoline, water and electricity. These conflicting approaches are on a collision course, Hersey said.

The region’s shrinking population is another challenge, and it’s expected to drop even more in the coming years. As a result, the region has more capacity than it needs – and though it might offend some people to say this, Hersey added, the region needs to “right-size.” These changes aren’t something that are going to blow over in six months or a year, he said.

There are also fewer jobs, and per-capita income is falling – which means people’s ability to pay is falling, too, Hersey said.

He discussed how a consumer’s needs and expectations of service drive costs. Under the current paradigm, consumers expect a full level of service at all times. Service providers, like water plants, design systems that can deliver that expectation. This results in high fixed costs, Hersey said. For example, when people turn on their faucet to water the lawn, they expect water to flow at the same level of pressure – even if it’s been dry and hot for several days or weeks. So water systems are designed to meet that expectation. For roads, the expectation is that there will be little or no congestion at any time – so roads are designed to meet peak rush-hour needs.

The model is unsustainable, Hersey said.

There are several components to a solution, he said: 1) restructuring revenue-collection systems, 2) taking a holistic view of needs and outcomes, rather than just looking at silos of interest, like transportation or water, 3) pushing for service providers to collaborate, 4) reducing costs, 5) strategically investing funds, focused on where infrastructure currently exists, and 6) developing a legislative strategy.

Hersey passed out a nine-page draft of action steps in these categories, developed by SEMCOG’s infrastructure task force but not yet approved by its executive committee. When approval is given, they’ll start working to implement these steps, he said. [.pdf of draft action steps]

SEMCOG: Commissioner Questions, Comments

Rolland Sizemore Jr. said he’d like to see Washtenaw County become a pilot program for implementing some of these changes. He said he thought that Janis Bobrin, the county’s water resources commissioner, would be willing to help (she attended the May 20 working session, but did not address the board), as would the road commission and the board of commissioners. If they’re successful, they might be able to leverage their work to get more funding from the state, he said.

Leah Gunn pointed out that the county has a patchwork of delivery for infrastructure services, which makes it difficult to coordinate. There are 28 jurisdictions in the county, and many of those local governments deliver services. There are also privately owned utilities for electricity and natural gas. As for the tension between relying on gas tax revenues while at the same time discouraging consumption, she wondered what SEMCOG would advise the state legislature to do.

SEMCOG’s Paul Tait said a gas tax increase is needed in the short term, but ultimately there needs to be a different mechanism for raising revenue, such as a tax on vehicle miles driven. Chuck Hersey said that utilities like DTE Energy are willing to work with the public sector – in many cases, better communication is a place to start. For example, DTE officials aren’t always aware of road projects undertaken by state or local governments. That would be one place to start collaborating for efficiency and reduced costs, so that DTE could do utility upgrades and repairs while the roads are already torn up for construction.

Ultimately, Gunn noted, the government needs more revenues for infrastructure projects. Citing an anti-tax sentiment in Michigan, she said, “I wish you well!”

Wes Prater said he didn’t see anything about performance or management in the SEMCOG report – that’s a key factor in reducing costs, he noted. He hoped the information they were compiling would be distributed to people who could make a difference.

Barbara Bergman said she worried about taxes that were regressive, putting an unfair burden on the poorest residents. Raising the sales tax would be “grossly unfair,” she said. Bergman hoped the current situation hurt enough so that state legislators would risk their careers to set things right. She also expressed concern for the environment, noting that the funding priorities needed to be the basics of food, clothing and shelter – making environmentalism “a luxury.”

Mark Ouimet pointed out that the data were snapshots, and they really needed something more like a movie – especially projecting into the future as much as possible. He said that because the revenue pressures and needs are so great, he imagined it would prompt entities like DTE to recognize the need to partner.

Kristin Judge commented that SEMCOG could serve an important role, as a place for entities in the region to work together. She suggested that SEMCOG make sure to coordinate its efforts with the Michigan Association of Counties and Governmental Consultant Services Inc., the Lansing-based firm led by Kirk Profit that Washtenaw County and other local governments pay to lobby for their interests at the state level.

Tait replied that their biggest effort at the moment was working to increase the gas tax, and that they “haven’t been able to turn the corner” on that.

Ken Schwartz noted that the economy has been declining for a decade, and that governments need to control their costs. He also spoke about the need to find small things that people can do to help the situation. Almost every storm drain is clogged, he said – somehow, they need to find ways to urge people to get out and take care of things like that in front of their own house. He cited the example of how putting a sign on the storm drains – stating that the drains lead directly to the river – dramatically reduced the amount of motor oil that people dumped. It takes political leadership, he said. They need to look at their history – when they’d been in economic difficulty before, what did they do? How can they learn from the past?

Jeff Irwin raised the issue of “right-sizing,” which Hersey had mentioned in his presentation. Irwin said it was unfortunate that Hersey backed off his statement, because the region does need to face reality. Thirty to forty years ago, the population was roughly the same, Irwin said, but now it’s spread out over a vast area of sprawl. “It’s just insane,” he said, destroying our communities and leading to financial and environmental disaster. How is the region going to focus the investment of transportation dollars on its core communities? Irwin asked.

Irwin noted that there was no mention of public transportation in the SEMCOG presentation, but it needs to be discussed. He described the public transportation network as a joke – other regions are ahead in that regard, and they’re “eating our lunch.” He cited his frustration at the delay in the commuter rail project between Ann Arbor and Detroit, which SEMCOG is spearheading. He asked whether they were going to talk about actually reducing infrastructure.

Hersey pointed to an editorial in the May 9, 2010 Detroit Free Press with the headline “Too Much Stuff, Too Few Dollars,” which he indicated was prompted by SEMCOG. It made the same point, he said – the region can’t support, and doesn’t need, the infrastructure that’s currently in place. He said SEMCOG talks about the need to invest strategically, and to collaborate.

Irwin asked whether it was reasonable for SEMCOG to draw circles around the region’s six largest urban cores, and to say that they’ll focus their efforts only on those areas. Or will the organization continue down the same path, he wondered, trying to make everyone happy, which he said ends in failure. [Irwin had earlier noted that SEMCOG is a member-organization, getting its financial support primarily from the local governments that join.]

When Irwin said he didn’t feel that these issues were being addressed seriously, Tait said, “We hear you.”

Wes Prater questioned how collaboration can be accomplished when the state constitution requires home rule. It’s impossible, he said, unless the constitution changes and you can form a continuous district, rather than having so many government jurisdictions.

Jessica Ping asked how SEMCOG was spreading the word about this infrastructure report. Tait replied that the task force had just signed off on it earlier that week, and the next step was to have it approved by SEMCOG’s executive committee in July. After that, they could start working to implement it – including reaching out to government leaders as well as getting a grassroots effort to push for these changes.

County Energy Use & Investment

Later in the meeting, staff from the county’s energy and economic development office gave an update on what’s known as the Chevron project – a multi-year, multimillion-dollar effort to cut energy usage in county facilities. They also asked for feedback from commissioners about what type of pilot project the county should pursue, as part of a recent federal energy grant.

Chevron Project Results

In the summer of 2004, the county board authorized a $6.088 million long-term contract with Chevron Energy Solutions. The company’s efforts under the contract, financed by a 20-year bond, consisted of 26 energy-efficiency projects at 18 county facilities. The projects included replacing boilers and chillers, installing new controls for HVAC equipment, replacing air handlers and rooftop units, upgrading lighting and adding insulation, among other things. They also agreed to track energy usage for four years after their work was completed – that tracking period ends this July.

At the board’s May 20, 2010 working session, Anya Dale – a specialist with the county’s office of economic development and energy – described the impact of the Chevron project.

Chart showing financial impact of Chevron project in Washtenaw County since 2006 for five county-owned facilities. (Links to larger image)

Energy savings were tracked by Chevron at only five of the 18 buildings where improvements were made, Dale noted – the five buildings where the most extensive work was done. Tracking began in August 2006, with the first year running through July 2007. In that period, Chevron had guaranteed $215,158 worth of total savings, and reported that actual savings reached $265,114 for the five buildings they tracked. Of that, $144,187 was in energy savings and $120,927 was an estimate of avoided maintenance or replacement costs, Dale said.

For the following years, Chevron said savings reached $264,290 in 2007-08, $416,974 in 2008-09, and $73,380 through February of this year.

Actual reductions in electricity and natural gas usage were also tracked for the five buildings: the administration building at 220 N. Main and the courthouse building at 101 E. Huron (both in downtown Ann Arbor), the Eastern County Government Center at 415 W. Michigan Ave. in Ypsilanti, the Dept. of Human Services building at 22 Center St. in Ypsilanti, and the county building on Towner Street in Ypsilanti.

Using data collected by the county between 2003 and 2007, Dale said, all but the administration building saw double-digit reductions in electricity usage. For natural gas usage, three of the buildings saw double-digit reductions in usage. An increase in natural gas usage at the Eastern County Government Center is possibly due to poor insulation, she said.

Energy Usage 2003-2007
Building         % change       % change
                 electricity    natural gas
Admin                0            -57
Courthouse         -14            -23
Eastern County     -32             +9
Human Services     -14            -20
Towner             -35            -26

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Dale said there hasn’t been consistent data collection for other buildings that aren’t being tracked by the Chevron contract. She presented a general snapshot from 2007 to 2009, looking at electricity usage in 28 buildings and natural gas usage in 22 buildings. (The Washtenaw County Parks Commission covers utility bills in its facilities, and those figures weren’t included in the analysis.)

Chart showing energy usage and utilities costs in county facilities from 2007-2009. (Links to larger image.)

Of those county buildings examined between 2007 and 2009, overall energy usage appears to have declined, Dale said – though she cautioned that incomplete data in 2009 for natural gas likely means that the usage was likely higher. The staff estimates that from 2007 to 2009, the number of kilowatt hours used has dropped 15%, while therms (natural gas) have declined 26%.

The county needs to do a better job of tracking this data, Dale said. To do that, they plan to streamline the utility-tracking process and gather data in a more consistent format. After initially focusing on quantitative data, they’ll then focus on gathering qualitative data – like outside temperatures and space usage – with help from a new Southeast Michigan Regional Energy Office, which the county is paying $76,690 to help fund.

Chevron Project: Commissioner Questions, Comments

Some commissioners questioned the data provided by Chevron. Wes Prater said he’d like more information about how Chevron arrived at its amounts in the “other savings” category – he wanted to pin them down on that data. The company made over $1 million in profits off this job, Prater said, and part of it was a guarantee of savings. The county should make sure those savings are real. [In a follow-up conversation with The Chronicle, Dale said that Chevron made a $450,000 profit on the project, or a 7.4% profit margin. She said Prater's reference to a $1 million profit might have included the firm's charges for general administrative overhead.]

Ken Schwartz asked whether the staff was auditing the numbers that Chevron provided, or whether that data was simply being accepted at face value. Dale reported that the staff tracked utility bills, and those direct savings as stated by Chevron are accurate. Schwartz followed up, asking if weather conditions had been factored in. If it was a particularly warm winter, then energy usage would be lower anyway and wouldn’t necessary reflect energy efficiency efforts. Dale said that temperatures hadn’t been tracked.

Schwartz noted that the county was paying $420,000 a year for the project – those costs needed to be part of the calculation of savings. After those payments are made, is the county still saving money? he asked. Brett Lenart – also on the staff of the county’s office of energy and economic development – pointed out that new equipment had been put in place that the county would have needed to buy anyway. He also reminded commissioners that the data from Chevron included just five buildings, but that many more facilities had been part of the project.

Energy Efficiency and Conservation Project

Brett Lenart made a presentation describing efforts that are funded by a $766,900 three-year Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy. There are four projects, including retrofitting county facilities and upgrading energy efficiency, developing energy policies for the county, and establishing a revolving loan fund for energy-related efforts. But Lenart’s presentation on May 20 focused on the fourth effort: developing a renewable energy demonstration project.

He told commissioners that the staff was looking for feedback on what type of project they should pursue. He laid out four options to consider:

1. A rebate program for solar hot water systems. Lenart said the advantages to this project include dispersing grant dollars into the community, creating jobs for the workers who install these systems, and making the systems more competitive with solar photovoltaic systems that are currently cheaper because of available incentives. Disadvantages, he said, would be that it wouldn’t directly benefit the county government, and would require more overhead to administer the program, process applications and gather data.
2. A grant to one or more nonprofit housing organizations for solar hot water installation. Lenart described several advantages to this project: It would provide grant dollars to local nonprofits, create jobs, and result in energy savings for the county’s low-income residents. However, there would be no direct energy savings to county government facilities, and it would require a certain amount of administrative overhead to select the nonprofit for the project.
3. A solar hot water system on a county facility. This project would provide a direct energy savings benefit to the county, Lenert said. It also presents an educational opportunity, showing the payback for using a solar hot water system. The county would have direct access to data to track these savings. On the downside, there would be less job creation than in the first two options, Lenart said.
4. A solar photovoltaic demo on a county facility. Currently, financial incentives are available (through DTE Energy’s Solar Currents program) for photovoltaic systems that generate electricity – having a demo project with this technology would highlight the availability of those incentives for local residents. There are also federal tax incentives available as well. Without incentives, he noted, the payback period for solar photovoltaic is much longer than for solar hot water systems. This project would also yield direct energy savings to the county, Lenart said. [The county has already installed a photovoltaic demo system at its Zeeb Road facility.]

In rating these projects, staff saw more advantages in installing a solar hot water system or solar photovoltaic system on a county facility, Lenart said. But they were hoping for feedback and direction from the board.

Energy Projects: Commissioner Questions, Comments

Leah Gunn said that given the county’s financial situation, she thought they should look at their own costs first when considering which option to pursue.

Wes Prater supported the solar hot water project, saying it fit well with the county’s existing weatherization program for low-income residents. He noted that the plumbers and pipefitters union Local 190 is interested in solar hot water systems, and has built a model in their training facility on Jackson Road. It was important to provide savings to the area’s residents who need it most, he said.

Ken Schwartz suggested that residents should provide the direction – if solar photovoltaic systems are more popular, then perhaps that should guide the county. Tony VanDerworp, who leads the county’s office of energy and economic development, pointed out that solar photovoltaic systems are more popular now because there are financial incentives to install them. It’s not clear how long those incentives will last. [The incentives are designed to help DTE reach its mandated Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which requires that utilities get 10% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015.]

There was no clear concensus from the board – Barbara Bergman asked whether commissioners could email the staff with their thoughts. VanDerworp urged commissioners to provide feedback as soon as they can, and Lenart noted that the staff is under a fall deadline to submit its proposal to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, as part of the grant funding.

The East Stadium bridges, looking west along Stadium Boulevard. (Photo by the writer.)

The city of Ann Arbor’s attempt to start accumulating cash to replace the East Stadium Boulevard bridges failed on Thursday when a statewide board appropriating money for large bridges declined to give the city a share of the available dollars.

City officials had hoped to secure a portion of the $5.7 million in federal and state dollars awarded by the Local Bridges Advisory Board on Thursday at a meeting in Lansing.

But with a limited pot of money, and applications for projects totaling tens of millions of dollars, the eight-member board opted to put the resources behind smaller-ticket bridges.

“Throwing a little bit at that big a problem isn’t going to get people anywhere,” said board chairman Robert Clegg, the city engineer in Port Huron.

Why Ann Arbor Didn’t Win State Funding

A share of the available dollars would have provided just a fraction of the $23 million that Ann Arbor officials estimate it will take to replace the bridges, which lead over the railroad tracks and State Street just east of the University of Michigan’s football stadium and Crisler Arena.

In contrast, significant portions of the three bridges that were funded on Thursday will be covered by the money approved by the board. The money will pay for projects in Kalamazoo County and in the cities of Hastings and Manistee.

Ann Arbor’s proposal was, in fact, the most costly of the 10 projects before the bridge board. And board member Wayne Harrall, of the Kent County Road Commission, also commented on the minimal impact an appropriation would have on the second largest project – a bridge in the City of Sterling Heights. That request also went unfunded.

Other concerns weakened Ann Arbor’s funding request as well.

Clegg, in particular, faulted the city’s application for the absence of any financial commitment from the University of Michigan.

“You’ve got a large partner next to the road that’s generating traffic impact,” he told Ann Arbor city engineers who were in Lansing to address the board, which is made up of representatives from county and local governments. “I don’t understand why the university hasn’t stepped up or used its influence to get federal dollars, and it’s disheartening.”

City of Ann Arbor engineers Mike Nearing, left, and Homayoon Pirooz responded to questions at the state Local Bridges Advisory Board meeting on Thursday in Lansing. (Photo by the writer.)

Ann Arbor engineer Homayoon Pirooz responded that it was unfair to punish the city for UM’s decision.

“Yes, the university benefits (from the bridges) like everyone else does,” he said. “We wish the university would contribute, but it’s not and the city can’t change that.”

Pirooz told the state board that the city was prepared to take on the lion’s share of the cost, if necessary.

That would mean using local street millage dollars normally dedicated to paving and maintenance. If Ann Arbor needed to use those locally-generated dollars on the bridges, most other maintenance work would be suspended for 3-4 years, he said. “It would have a significant impact on streets and roads.”

City officials have also contemplated the prospect of something like a 50-50 split between local and other funding sources, and of course still hope for a larger state and federal contribution, Priooz said.

The city is seeking federal funds either from a pending transportation bill or an economic-recovery program, known by the acronym TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.)

It’s possible that yet another federal program could provide a low-interest loan to pay for sidewalks and bike lanes, Pirooz told The Chronicle. “If we get a little here and a little there, hopefully it will add up,” he said.

Clegg would have been happier to see more of that “adding up” done before an application for assistance reached the board.

“I’ve seen communities work and work and get [congressional] earmarks and then come in and tell us how much more they needed,” he told The Chronicle after the board meeting. “That gives you something to work with. This is a really big project and Ann Arbor’s asking ‘What can you do for us?’”

Short-Term Work to Address Safety Issues

Built before 1930, the bridges carry traffic over State Street and Ann Arbor Railroad tracks. They’ve been subject to weight limits for some time. Two of the four lanes were closed to take the load off a weakened beam on the State Street bridge earlier this year.

City officials last month decided to remove the sagging beam as well as several others alongside it, based on the advice of an outside consultant.

That will eliminate the risk of concrete dropping on to State Street. It will also leave “a big hole in the bridge,” said Pirooz, who heads the city’s project management office.

The beams would need to be removed anyway, as part of an eventual bridge replacement.

Concrete barriers and fencing will be put in place as part of the work scheduled to take place Nov. 15-18.

Statewide, Condition of Bridges a Concern

A federal bridge engineer attending the five-hour session in Lansing expressed concern about the condition of the state’s bridges in general and the East Stadium bridge over State Street in particular.

Jon Nekritz, Federal Highway Administration division bridge engineer for Michigan, said he was relieved to hear that a crumbling concrete beam will be removed later this month.

“I’m real concerned about this and other bridges I’ve seen recently,” he said. “We need to take this much more seriously than we are.”

He voiced similar worries about an Oakland County bridge that was also reviewed for potential funding.

Mark Harrison, bridge program manager for the Michigan Dept. of Transportation, at Thursday's meeting of the Local Bridges Advisory Board in Lansing. (Photo by the writer.)

Michigan Department of Transportation’s Mark Harrison, an engineer and the bridge program manager, said he’s seen a marked increase in bridges in poor condition – but no additional money.

Clegg also pointed to the lack of funding. “It’s a little bit daunting to have tens of millions of dollars in projects and less than $6 million to award,” he said.

Despite that, there was no objective set of criteria or any real system used to make the decisions.

A rating system is used in decisions made at the regional level, said Harrison. But members of the state-level board use their own discretion.

For Clegg, that included the view that the East Stadium plan is simply overlarge.

“They’ve got two bridges connecting, sidewalks and bicycle lanes. They’re going to raise them from where they are now… If you need more clearance, that’s what you do. It’s just too much,” he told The Chronicle.

The planned replacement bridges will be higher to meet current design standards. Like the old structures, they will have two lanes in each direction. Unlike the old structures, they will have sidewalks on both sides and bicycle lanes.

Federal authorities require both, said Nekritz, the federal bridge engineer.

Only one Ann Arbor resident – Arnold Goetzke – attended the session. But rather than call for support, Goetzke spoke against funding for new bridges and instead favored at-grade crossings. Goetze also addressed the Ann Arbor city council at the conclusion of their Thursday meeting during public commentary. He reiterating the view that he’s expressed before to them: The no-bridge option should be given formal study.

What About Bridge Replacement?

However, the preliminary design for the new bridges is done. Pirooz said work has begun on construction plans. “We hope to have the blueprints by midsummer.”

Work to replace the bridges is expected to begin next October, Pirooz told The Chronicle. The new bridges would be completed in the fall of 2012, he said. If neither the earmarks on the transportation bill nor the TIGER grant application are successful, they may well use up the majority of Ann Arbor’s street repair millage funds.

A yet-to-be-made decision about whether to close traffic completely or allow one-way traffic during construction would affect the duration of construction. That decision will fall to the city council.

The bridges carry an average of 25,000 plus cars a day.

About the writer: Judy McGovern lives in Ann Arbor. She has worked as a journalist here, and in Ohio, New York and several other states.

Jim Kosteva, UM director of community relations, and Sue McCormick, director of public services for the city of Ann Arbor. Council agendas like the one Kosteva is holding are always printed that color – i.e., there was no pandering to the university reflected in the use of maize-colored paper. (Photo by the writer.)

Ann Arbor City Council meeting (Aug. 17, 2009): When Jim Kosteva appears at an Ann Arbor city council meeting, it usually means that there’s a city-university issue before the body – Kosteva is the university’s director of community relations.

Was it the report from city staff on the status of the East Stadium Boulevard Bridge replacement that had brought Kosteva to council’s chambers? There’ll be easements required from the university to complete that $22 million project.

But no, Kosteva was not there to hand over a giant fake check symbolizing a university contribution to reconstruction of the bridges.

However, he was there to affirm the university’s support for a different project – called FITS. University support will come to the tune of $327,733 out of a total project budget of $541,717 – for the site investigation, project definition and development of conceptual plans for the Fuller Intermodal Transportation Station (FITS). The station will be nestled between Fuller Road and East Medical Center Drive, just east of Fuller & Maiden Lane, near the university’s massive medical campus.

In other business, the city council put a charter amendment on the November ballot that would relax current charter requirements regarding publication of ordinances passed by the council. The Chronicle’s coverage of that charter amendment takes the form of a column published earlier this week.

The council also revisited a resolution it had passed at its previous meeting to establish a historic district study committee, along with a moratorium on demolition within the district. That moratorium was expanded Monday night to include all “work.”

And finally, as had been suggested at the council’s Aug. 16 Sunday caucus, councilmembers indicated that they’d be considering rules changes at their Sept. 8 meeting. In connection with that discussion, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) indicated he’d be calling for the city to make available all city council emails dating back to the year 2000.

East Stadium Bridges

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Bridge Background

Homayoon Pirooz, project management manager with the city of Ann Arbor, gave city councilmembers an update on the status of the bridges over East Stadium Boulevard. [Additional background in previous coverage by The Chronicle on the East Stadium bridges.]

Pirooz began with some background. The 13 bridges in Ann Arbor get biannual inspections and are given a Federal Sufficiency Rating (FSR), which is a 1-100 scale. There are two bridges at State & Stadium – one that spans State Street and one that spans the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks just to the west of State Street. The bridge over the railroad tracks was built in 1928 and is considered functionally obsolete. Its FSR is 61.5.

The bridge over State Street was built in 1917. In addition to being functionally obsolete, it currently has an FSR of 2 out of 100 after holding steady at 21-22 for a number of years. The deterioration, Pirooz said, had been rapid and had dropped to 2 six or seven months ago.

Funding for such bridge reconstruction projects, Pirooz explained, is typically accomplished through a combination of state, federal and local funds. To illustrate how a funding mix can work, Pirooz broke down the Broadway bridges project this way: Out of a total project budget of $31 million, $18 million had come from a combination of state and federal grants, while $13 million had come from Ann Arbor funds.

For the Stadium bridges, the cost of the basic bridge construction project is around $22 million, Pirooz said. The current plan is focused on bridge reconstruction, as contrasted with what had been a more ambitious road construction project explored two years ago, which would have included non-motorized amenities along the Main Street corridor to the west of the Stadium bridges.

In 2006, the city had applied for and been awarded $766,000 from the Michigan 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.

In 2006 the city also paid $1,249,467 to Northwest Consultants Inc. (NCI) for preliminary design engineering for the bigger bridge project that included bridge replacement, a transmission water main, storm sewer, and a South Main non-motorized path.

In September and October of 2007, two public meetings were held on the topic of the larger-scope project, and there was considerable resistance from members of the Ann Arbor Golf and Outing Club to the installation of the non-motorized path along the club’s property – it was not clear that there was room to install the paths without jeopardizing a row of trees, among other concerns. Asked to comment later in the meeting by Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), Sue McCormick, the city’s director of public services, explained that no consensus had been reached as a result of those public engagement meetings.

Then in early 2009, increased degradation was observed in the fifth beam (counting from the south) of the 15 box beams that support the East Stadium bridge over State Street. Up to that point, the degraded state of the bridge had been addressed by a series of weight limit reductions. However, in early 2009, traffic was reduced to two lanes, in order to lead vehicles over the north lanes of the bridge, away from the fifth beam. The city also prepared an emergency traffic control plan as a contingency if the bridge needed to be closed. [At an early February Sunday night city council caucus meeting, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) had expressed frustration that no plan for traffic rerouting had been developed at that point.]

In March 2009, the scope of the project was reduced to just the bridge reconstruction, with a directive to NCI to expedite the design. That design process is nearly complete.

Key dates on the project schedule shown by Pirooz include:

• August 2009 – complete design
• September-November 2009 – public involvement on design
• September 2009-October 2010 – complete construction plans, acquire easements, put out bids, relocate DTE energy lines, preconstruction
• November 2010 – start construction
• July 2012 – finish construction

The $22 million cost has nearly $3 million of contingencies built in, as well as a total as $2.2 million for design.

Pirooz highlighted the fact that the construction costs for the bridges themselves – at $1.9 million for the State Street bridge and $2.7 million for the railroad bridge – were only slightly more than the $4 million that would need to be spent on retaining walls alone.

Funding Prospects Now

At the state level, the Michigan Local Bridge Program – which had in 2006 granted $766,000 for the project, and which the city allowed to expire – has $8 million to distribute across the state. There are eight different projects that already have their applications in.

On the federal level, there are two possibilities. One is the 2009 Federal Highway Re-authorization bill. Out of that money, it’s possible to gain earmarked funds, and according to Pirooz, there is support among Michigan’s U.S. House and Senate delegations – specifically from Congressman John Dingell – for earmarking funds for Ann Arbor’s bridge project. A second federal opportunity comes from the 2009 Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants. TIGER is funded with $1.5 billion for projects across the country. There’s a Sept. 15, 2009 deadline for application on the TIGER grant.

Assessing probabilities of getting funding from each of these three sources, Pirooz said that the TIGER grant offered only a small chance, because of the intense nationwide competition. The upside on TIGER, however, is that if that grant came through, it would pay for the whole project.

Pirooz said that he thought chances were good that Ann Arbor could receive something along the lines of the same $766,000 it had previously been awarded by the Michigan Local Bridge Program, but pointed out that “our bridge is not the only bad bridge in the state.” He also thought chances were good that Ann Arbor could receive some earmarked money through the Federal Highway Re-authorization bill – the question was when that money might be available.

The best case scenario, according to Pirooz, is that there’ll be $22 million in state and federal grants with $2 million in design work paid for out of the street reconstruction millage funds – Ann Arbor has a dedicated street repair millage. That would have no negative impact of the street reconstruction program, Pirooz said.

The worst case scenario would see no state or federal money at all. In that case, $22 million would be taken from the street millage. The negative impact would be felt in two ways, said Pirooz. From 2010 through 2012, 29 street resurfacing or reconstruction projects would be eliminated. It would also mean an additional $3.5 million loss in revenue due to the inability to provide local matches for various surface transportation grants. As for when the city would have enough money to get back to repairing its streets after paying for the bridge on the worst case scenario, Pirooz said that those projects could resume in 2013 – if the street millage is renewed in 2011.

Pirooz guessed the funding picture would fall “somewhere in the middle” between the best- and worst-case scenarios.

Comments on Bridges from Councilmembers

Both Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Margie Teall (Ward 4) had praise for staff’s work on the issue – the bridge is located in their ward.

Assuring the public that the bridge was currently safe for travel, Teall said, “I will continue to use the Stadium bridges a lot.”

Teall got confirmation that there’d been communication with the University of Michigan and that they’re on the same page with respect to the bridge design. An easement will be required from UM.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) asked Pirooz to speak to the at-grade or “no-bridge” option that has some advocates in the community. The idea would be to eliminate the bridges and create a State & Stadium intersection, along with an at-grade rail crossing. Pirooz said there were three main reasons why that option was not feasible. First, Ann Arbor Railroad must give permission for an at-grade crossing of the railroad tracks – but Ann Arbor Railroad is against such a crossing. Second, in the city’s opinion the impact on the overall traffic and signaling system within a half-mile of the crossing would be negative – around 20,000 vehicles cross the bridge every day. Finally, he said, safety was an issue – there’s not a high number of train-car crashes, but when they happen, they’re usually deadly.

Adding to Pirooz’s remarks, Michael Nearing – an engineer with the city – said that a no-bridge option is also complex and not cheap. “It’s more than just tearing down a bridge,” Nearing cautioned. He guessed it would be around a $10 million project, but had not run the numbers.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) asked why communication was not better with the railroad. Mayor John Hieftje said that when there’d been communication with them – in connection with the north-south commuter rail and the greenway – they seemed “cautious and wary.” McCormick said that the city did communicate with the railroad, but that they had categorically rejected the idea of an at-grade crossing.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) described a possible plan by the state legislature to change the way the gas tax was calculated to come up with additional money. [Currently, Michigan's gas tax is a per gallon rate, so revenues from it do not increase as gas prices increase. In fact, revenue tends to decrease as gas prices increase, if motorists drive less to save fuel costs. The proposal would tie the tax to the wholesale cost of gasoline.] Pirooz said that any additional funding would be helpful.

Higgins suggested constituents contact Congressman Dingell to encourage his support. Hieftje said that based on conversations he’d had with the congressman, Dingell was doing everything he could.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked for a clarification on what “somewhere in the middle” meant as far as funding scenarios. Based on the 42% of the Broadway bridges project that came from local funds, here’s how that math would work for the Stadium bridges project: .42 x $22 million = $9.2 million from local funds.

Anglin probably expressed the thoughts of many in the community on the funding prospects for the project when he said, “I hope the stars align.”

FITS (Fuller Intermodal Transit Station)

Before council began deliberations, Leigh Greden (Ward 3) acknowledged that the item considering an initial design and study phase for an intermodal transit station just south of Fuller Road and just north of East Medical Center Drive had been a last-minute addition to the agenda. He asked Sue McCormick, director of public services for the city, to give the council an overview. [A preliminary sketch of the station's concept was presented at a neighborhood meeting held in January 2009 at the Northside Grill.]

Eli Cooper, transportation manager with the city of Ann Arbor, pitches FITS (Fuller Intermodal Transit Station) to the city council. (Photo by the writer.)

McCormick described the collaboration between the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan over the last several months to partner on a multimodal transportation facility on Fuller Road. She put the transportation station in the context of an expected demonstration service for east-west rail to start in October of 2010. The parcel, at the foot of the university hospital, is currently used for parking, she said. The location was within the corridor of analysis for the north-south connector study, McCormick explained.

[The north-south connector study for the Plymouth Road and State Street corridors got approval from the AATA as the final partner at the AATA's July board meeting. The other three partners are the city of Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, and the University of Michigan. Both the north-south connector and FITS were discussed at the July 16, 2009 UM Board of Regents meeting, in the context of the university's overall transportation plan.]

The reason for the late notice of the agenda addition, said McCormick, was that only that afternoon had the city received a written commitment from the university to shoulder 75% of the cost of the project’s preliminary phase. The city’s 25% share would go towards the environmental impact assessment, which would position the project to eventually apply for federal funding.

Invited to comment, Jim Kosteva, UM’s director of community relations, affirmed that “We’re pleased to be engaged.”

Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, described how the intermodal station would have various platforms on different levels to accommodate buses and rail-based transportation of different types, including high-speed trains – those capable of traveling faster than 100 mph.

The location, said Cooper, was within walking distance of 10,000 to 15,000 workers. Employees of the hospital could walk off their train right into the University of Michigan medical campus. Cooper cautioned that he was not suggesting that all of those workers would necessarily use the station.

Cooper also pointed out that the station is located where the Border-to-Border Trail emerges from the west.

Council Deliberations on FITS

Mayor John Hieftje, in expressing his support for the project, said that he had been involved since day one in making it happen.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) asked how the public would be engaged. Sue McCormick advised that during the initial phase, for which the council was approving funding that night, work would focus on site assessment, inventory and surveying, as well as program definition and concept planning. They’d been looking for a footprint that would fit onto the site, she said.

The conceptual plans would be ready sometime in an October time frame, added Eli Cooper. The environmental analysis would require about a year, and that process stipulates that public input is required, Cooper said. With respect to the environmental assessment, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked what level of assessment would be performed. Cooper said it would be a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) category 4(F) determination. The findings could be either that there would be no significant impact or that there would be a significant impact. In the latter case, mitigation could be required. Higgins asked if the city’s environmental coordinator, Matt Naud, would be involved, and McCormick confirmed that he would be briefed.

Smith asked that the staff think broadly about the station’s design, given that it might be the first vision of Ann Arbor people see as they arrive in the city. Comparing the current Amtrak station and the old train station that currently houses the Gandy Dancer restaurant, Smith suggested that the new station should be “a significant building.”

From UM’s Jim Kosteva, Smith wanted to know how the FITS project affected the university’s plans to construct parking structures on Wall Street. Kosteva said that the university was “pausing” those plans, which had been explained by Tim Slottow, UM’s chief financial officer, at a regents meeting earlier this summer. Kosteva cautioned that the Motts Children’s Hospital expansion would require more parking, and that the Wall Street site was being prepared for surface parking. It was the plans to build structures, Kosteva said, that had been paused.

Smith offered the suggestion that the word “road” be included in the acronym (Fuller Road Intermodal Transit Station) to make it somewhat more appealing: FRITS.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) said he was excited to see the project moving forward and applauded UM for their participation. He noted that the city’s contribution was to come partly from the street fund operating budget and he wanted to know what the impact on that would be. McCormick reported that the major streets fund balance was around $5 million and the roughly $50,000 to be appropriated from that fund would come from what was considered to be winter contingencies.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) sought clarification on when construction would start. Citing an in-service date of June 2012, Cooper said construction would begin in 2011.

Cooper allowed that Briere’s description of the time frame as “a short window” was a fair assessment. She concluded that “we’ll need a lot of publicity” and commended Cooper and the staff for “being brave enough to take this on.”

Outcome: The funds to begin the initial study phase and site assessment for FITS passed unanimously.

Historic District Study Committee

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) brought back a resolution for reconsideration – which the council had passed at its Aug. 6 meeting – that established a historic district study committee for a two-block area along Fifth Avenue south of William Street. Along with the study committee, the resolution had established a moratorium on demolition in the area. The resolution had been brought forward by Higgins and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) as a late addition to the agenda on the day of the meeting. This resolution to reconsider was also placed on the Aug. 17 agenda on the same day as the council meeting.

The resolution was brought back to be amended to expand the range of activities to which the moratorium applies. In relevant part, with additions in blue, the resolution reads:

RESOLVED, That the City Council declares an emergency moratorium on all construction, addition, alteration, repair, moving, excavation or demolition in the proposed South Fourth and Fifth Avenue Historic District, consistent with Chapter 103 Section 8:411 of Ann Arbor City Code for six months from August 6, 2009.

The reason for the revision was to make the language expressing the moratorium mirror exactly what is allowed by the Michigan Local Historic Districts Act, which gives the city council the authority to establish a moratorium on all “work.” And “work” is defined as “construction, addition, alteration, repair, moving, excavation or demolition.”

In deliberations, Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) said that the need to bring back the resolution to correct the language underscored what he’d said at the last council meeting about the importance of process. He’d asked for a postponement of 12 days – the time between the last council meeting and this one – and he hadn’t been granted it. “Nonetheless,” he said, “we decided to ram it through.” In the future, Derezinski said that consideration of resolutions on such short notice should be a rare occurrence.

Higgins, for her part, emphasized that the resolution had been prepared by planning staff and the attorney’s office and that accounted for its late addition to the agenda.

Outcome: The resolution passed with dissent from Smith and Derezinski, who had both voted against the resolution at the previous council meeting as well.

Council Communications

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A2D2 and AHP

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) gave an update on the A2D2 rezoning project – the design guidelines had been given a new format, which would be shared sometime the first week of September. The issue could be coming before the city council at its second meeting in September or perhaps in October.

Higgins also updated other councilmembers on the Area Height and Placement project. She said that altogether over 100 people had attended the five meetings held in the different wards of the city. She reported that the AHP committee had decided there would be two additional community-wide meetings scheduled – one in small-group format and another in large-group format.

Leigh Greden (Ward 3) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1). Power supply issues for Ward 1 representatives forced Smith and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) to relocate to chairs that were vacant – due to absences by Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5). It's unlikely that Greden welcomed Smith as his neighbor for the evening by telling her the story of The Ward Three Bears. (Photo by the writer.)

Council Rules and Open Meetings

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) introduced the topic of transparency, although he said that he had withdrawn a resolution that he’d intended to bring forward that evening. Instead, he said he’ll be bringing it forward at the council’s Sept. 8 meeting. As a preview, he read aloud some of its text. It calls for all emails sent at city council meetings from the year 2000 to the present to be made available to the city. It also calls for emails sent during council meetings to be attached to the minutes of meetings going forward. Anglin acknowledged that what he was suggesting would cost some money. But he asked, “What is the cost of a good democracy?”

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) said he appreciated the intent of Anglin’s resolution and wanted to get the city attorney’s input on it. He was interested in knowing what the cost of the proposal would be, in particular with respect to the retroactive proposal. “I’d hate to see the city put at fiscal risk,” he said. He also raised the question of scope: Would the proposal include emails sent from any private email accounts? Rapundalo said he’d have no objection to that, as he had nothing to hide.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) informed her colleagues that the rules committee had been working on various changes and that Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) was putting the finishing touches on them. They would be available for perusal within the next couple of days, she said, and would come before council at its Sept. 8 meeting. Some of the issues that Anglin had raised, she said, would be addressed in the rules changes. Two readings at council would be required, she advised, because the changes could be substantive in nature.

Closed Session

At the conclusion of the meeting, the city council voted to go into closed session as required by the Open Meetings Act. They conducted the closed session in the usual location – the workroom adjoining council chambers. The workroom has two doors, one leading to council chambers and the other leading the outer hallway. At the conclusion of the closed session, the council is required to go back into open session to adjourn the council’s meeting.

What The Chronicle observed was that Mayor John Hieftje opened the door to the workroom, and – while standing in the doorframe with any councilmembers still in the workroom not visible to the public in council chambers – chaired the portion of the meeting that was meant to take the councilmembers out of closed session, through the motion to adjourn and the vote on adjournment.

When city attorney Stephen Postema emerged from the workroom and was asked by The Chronicle to account for how the council’s adjournment conformed with the Open Meetings Act, Postema seemed content that it was satisfied because the door to the workroom had been open.

Temporary Liquor Licenses

The council considered two temporary liquor licenses, one for the Kerrytown District for the Nash Bash Country Music Festival (Aug. 20, 2009), and a second one for the HomeGrown Festival (Sept. 12, 2009). Sandi Smith (Ward 1) offered the clarification that the HomeGrown Festival’s license was connected to a mayoral proclamation at the start of the meeting that recognized September as local food month.

Outcome: The liquor licenses were passed unanimously.

Rezoning to Parkland

The city has undertaken a systematic review of all parcels citywide that are used as parks and is formally designating their zoning as parkland. As city staff make their way through the process, periodically a raft of different parcels are brought before the city council to be rezoned all in one go.

Audience Member: Identifying himself as a longtime Ann Arbor resident, he said that he objected to tearing down nature areas for the sake of development and thus opposed the measure.

Thomas Partridge: Partridge suggested that a requirement of access to public transportation be a requirement in order to cement the status of the parcels as parkland. He also suggested a requirement that affordable housing be built adjacent to the land if not on the land.

Mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Leigh Greden (Ward 3) all commented at various points to clarify that the parcels were being rezoned to parkland. “To be very clear,” said Greden, “they’re being rezoned to parkland.” This was the exact opposite of development, Greden said.

Outcome: The parcels were unanimously rezoned to parkland.

Public Comment

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City Finances

Karen Sidney: Sidney criticized the city’s plan to rectify its budget situation by raising taxes and cutting fire and police staff. The focus, she said, needed to be on employee benefits like retirement and health care. She suggested bringing city benefits more in line with those of the University of Michigan. The cost of city benefits, she said, were currently around $25 million and would grow to $41.5 million in five years. She suggested a charter amendment needed to be placed before voters to change the membership of the retirement plan boards so that they would no longer be controlled by employees – a recommendation made by a 2005 blue ribbon committee that studied the issue. [Chapter 17 of the city's charter deals with the retirement system.]

Sightlines and Vegetation

Kathy Griswold: Griswold asked councilmembers for some specific revisions to Chapter 40 of the city code: “Trees and Other Vegetation.” She cited recommendations in “Roadway Safety and Tort Liability” from the Lawyers and Judges Publishing Company that stressed the need for adequate sightlines. She also warned councilmembers that once the city has been notified of a sightline issue, liability is attached. She said that she’d looked at the three cities that had achieved a Platinum designation from the League of American Bicyclists – Davis, Boulder, and Portland – and all had ordinances with well-defined regulations on sightlines. Among her specific recommendations for Ann Arbor: consolidate all ordinances related to sightlines, streamline the user-interface on the web for notifying the city of a complaint, launch an educational campaign and allow property owners to do trimming of lower branches of trees in the public right of way.

Musical Interlude on Bridges and Parking Garage

Libby Hunter: Hunter led off public commentary with a lyric sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Selected verses included: “Glory, glory, Hallelujah, Mayor Highrise wants to sock it to ya … He’s pouring $50 million down a big hole in the ground, while our bridge is falling down.” Her speaking turn is documented – in its full glory – here: link to YouTube.

Discrimination

Thomas Partridge: Partridge introduced himself as a Washtenaw County Democrat, who’d run for office in the last three years – to represent District 3 of Washtenaw County as a county commissioner, and to represent District 18 in the state Senate. He was there as a “uniter,” he said. He asked councilmembers to turn their backs on divisive voices that called on them to build walls between people. Instead, he said, they should back efforts to end discrimination in the area of housing, transportation, health care, and education. This, he said, goes to the core of who we are as Americans.

Palestine

Mozhgan Savabiesfahani: Savabiesfahani segued into her remarks by saying that Partridge had asked a great question: “Who are we?” We are a country, she said, that currently occupies two other countries: Iraq and Afghanistan. We also occupy Palestine, she continued. What the U.S. is good at, she said, was developing new weapons and selling them to other people so that that they can kill each other. The U.S. is not well-liked in other places, but not on account of our democracy – that, she said was a blessing. “I can speak my mind without fear of being shot,” she said. She told the city council that she was there again to talk about boycotting Israel – which she said had destroyed Lebanon and continued to “choke Gaza.” She asked for a city-wide discussion of the issue of a boycott against Israel.

Blaine Coleman: Coleman began by describing the sign he was holding, which depicted an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at children. He continued by criticizing the $300 billion of U.S. aid to Israel as supporting the killing of Palestinians and Lebanese. He told the city council that they had the ability to consider a resolution, hold a public hearing, and vote on a measure that would enact a boycott of Israeli goods. He characterized both the U.S. and Israel as built on robbing people of color, saying that black America has been robbed for centuries. The $300 billion of aid that has been spent historically on aid to Israel, he said, should be spent to rebuild Detroit and other inner cities.

Henry Herskovitz: Herskovitz laid out what he described as the meticulous planning that went into Plan Dalet, documented in “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” by Ilan Pappe. Herskovitz presented the analysis in Pappe’s book, which he said counters the received notion that it was a way to shore up a fledgling Jewish state from attack in 1947-48. He described how detailed files were prepared on each of around 1,200 villages in Palestine, which included topographical information, sources of revenue, and a list of men aged 16-50. These lists, he said, were used for search-and-arrest operations and resulted in the systematic expulsion of non-Jews from Palestine

Present: Stephen Rapundalo, Mike Anglin, Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Leigh Greden, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje.

Absent: Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Next council meeting: Tuesday, Sept. 8, 2009 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]