I really appreciate your efforts on this and my question was in no way related to the speed of at which the story was unfolding.

“The Ann Arbor News had an long understanding that such material was inappropriate for publication and that The Chronicle should follow the example of The Ann Arbor News.”

While I appreciate the Sunday Ann Arbor News articles on this issue, it’s interesting all of a sudden they are doing ‘investigative reporting’ as the Newhouse owned publications enters its final hours. Where have they been the last ten to twenty years? Your quote about the ‘long understanding’ between council and the newspaper should be repulsive to anyone who appreciates real journalism. As usual, the News got the focus all wrong. While the comments about the Firth Ward might be true (lol, just kidding) the fact the newspaper focused on the ‘cute’ interchanges and the insults, while valid, wasn’t as important as the possible violations of the Open Meetings Act and one member emailing about possible election foes.

Good luck on your FOIA requests and I’m looking forward to your continued coverage.

Thanks.

Alan,

Scanning and optical character recognition of the initial corpus of electronic records has been completed. Our approach to this story was to look at three perspectives: (i) ethical questions of the appropriateness of the communication (ii) legal issues related to open meetings laws — which go deeper than merely the calculus of the “To: and From:” lines of emails (iii) information policies related to FOIA and the city’s ability to respond adequately to those requests in an electronic age.

Of those perspectives, we’ve so far gotten comment on (i) and (iii) and are working on (ii). Laying out the issues in (ii) has been slow-going.

Part of “following up as appropriate” has included a request for additional electronic records from the city of Ann Arbor, which we think could illuminate a variety of decisions made over the last
several months by the city council. Government bodies are entitled to an extension of the FOIA deadline by 10 business days, which in this case results in a final deadline of June 15.

The Chronicle has a record of publication calling for city councilmembers to move their work more squarely into public view, and those record requests are consistent with that history of publication.

We think there are issues here that are more substantive than whether some members of council behave in an ill-mannered way on their government email accounts. The separate Ann Arbor News piece written by Judy McGovern, which addresses some of the legal issues, is a good start in the direction of exploring those issues.

It is somewhat ironic that one of the ways that The Chronicle has been lobbied against publication of the emails exchanged by councilmembers during council meetings was based on the idea that The Ann Arbor News had an long understanding that such material was inappropriate for publication and that The Chronicle should follow the example of The Ann Arbor News.

On publication of our story, whatever form that might take, we’ll provide an electronic archive of all the material.

My apologies for not being able to work faster on this — part of our difficulty could be that The Chronicle is headquartered in the Fifth Ward, which might mean that we are among the “dim lights” known by some councilmembers to densely populate our section of the city.

After the Ann Arbor News coverage this morning, any word on this?

I think Mr. Lewis meant to refer to the 4th and Washington structure that was recently torn down and replaced.

The DDA stands to lose 112 spaces at William and 1st when that parking lot converts to a park. They just got some federal “earmark” $$ the mayor requested to start cleaning up the pollution under the lot so it can become a park eventually.

The DDA leases the “Brown Block” between Washington, Huron, Ashley and First and the owner has it listed as “build to suit,” that would mean another 170 spaces lost. At some point it seems like this will be built on, in any event the DDA does not control it.

The DDA has lost 175 metered spaces since 2002 due to UM projects, street changes downtown, etc.

They lost 133 when two floors of the Washington and 1st structure were torn down. They will get some of those back when the residential project is built. That structure was 60 years old.

As Sabra said, there are two others at Maynard and 4th and William that are almost as old. Taking those down in a few years would mean a loss of another 1,700 spaces. The one that was replaced a few years ago at 4th and William was only 30 years old. These are close to 60.

I think it is easy to see that what has been said about the new structure being “replacement” parking is true, if not today then in a few years. It seems wise to plan for this.

I am still researching what the city is doing for alternative transportation, from what I have seen so far it is a lot but I will get back here with some of that soon.

Two of our parking structures (4th & William and Maynard)are about 60 years old. They were built in the early 1950s. No matter how much we decorate them (I’m thinking of Mary Thiefal’s proposed mural, here, or the earlier proposal for a ‘lightfall’) these are buildings that are aging, exposed to the elements, and have been repaired at expense several times. In the early 90s, these parking structures were falling apart — one could see through the floors, in some spots.

The City spent resources on these structures, and maintains them in part by turning the management over to the DDA. But still, these two are OLD. The most recently built structures — well, rebuilt — are 4th and Washington (1998) and Forest (2000). Before that, the City built the one at 1st and Ashley, nearly 20 years ago.

Parking structures in this climate don’t generally age well. The oldest one was 60 when we tore it down (1st and Washington). We need to think about the fact that we’ve two others nearly that age. I’ve thought about it a lot. I certainly don’t want to authorize replacing or rebuilding them.

Sabra, that’s news to me. Which ones and when?

But if one or more of the existing structures will need to be demolished, that’s good news. I agree with everyone who said we need to maintain the amount of parking we have, and parking structures are much more aesthetically appealing when they’re not visible at all.

Mr/Ms Cents is right that we can’t make everyone take the bus, and of course we shouldn’t try. But there are quite a few things that *can* be done to make public transportation more appealing. This isn’t the place to discuss that, but I do want to assure Mr/Ms Cents that I almost always ride the bus to get downtown, either from my home in Ypsi Township or from WCC. It’s true that a coat and umbrella are necessary sometimes, and boots in snowy weather. But none of that would deter a true Michigander – would it? ;-)

I can go into a lengthy monologue about my logic; I cannot tell you anyone else’s or the level of research conducted on the issue. There are some really good books on parking structure design and the high cost of storing cars.

That’s another example of the all-or-nothing thinking that Jim demonstrated in #3. We only need to get a small percentage of the existing and anticipated demand to shift, not all of it. It’s already happening, through all those ways that Joan mentioned. The go!pass use has greatly increased in the last year. ZipCar is planning to add more downtown vehicles, just a few months after opening operations in that area. By the time the structure could be built, where do we think parking demand will be, given the shifting picture? The city hasn’t answered that question (if they ever asked it.)