I misspoke on the amount of rain a Porous Street can handle: it can handle up to 200 inches an hour!

Also US EPA now recommends Porous Pavement for streets a a major technique communities can use to help meet Clean Water Act standards.

A much better spot for a “central” park/plaza space, albeit not public property, would be the Brown block.

In the DDA 10-year plan, adjusted after their January Board Retreat, page 5 lists a number of bonds being paid for with TIF or parking revenue. Among these is the notation, “Library Lot Future Development” (as separated from “Library Lot Underground”), for $4,922,232.

I don’t agree with Mr. Haber’s description of “the public” conducting “its process”. It would be more accurate to say that he is a member of a group who are working through a strategy to promote a “central park” for Ann Arbor. The public at large need to be brought into the discussion as part of the DDA planning process. I hope that the DDA process is open enough to allow for a possible open space use for downtown parcels, including the Library Lot. There appears to be a strong bias among some DDA members against such a thing, as ironically presented in my blog post [link].

I don’t like the “Central Park West” idea either.

The article states that this was planned as part of the 2012 budget process. Does this mean that all this extra general fund money was considered, yet it still resulted in all the firefighter/police officer layoffs?

I wonder exactly what the money from the ED fund was spent on over the past several years? Did the City really pay the DDA for parking for Google? What else did the money get spent on? I thought I heard some was spent on the Fuller Road Parking Structure, too.