-kai

Here are the public thoughts I had towards council at the end of the meeting. This isn’t what I said word-for-word, but it gives the idea of what I said.

1. The AAFD was never thanked publicly for the work that they did on the spill. It was a large spill for the Ann Arbor area, and they should have been thanked. A lot of work went into that spill and I doubt the city was compensated for it.

2. The spill was unsolved, so we don’t even know if it was a midnight dumper. In a perfect world we’d solve the spill, charge whomever did it and give the money to the AAFD, but since we can’t do that, we need to know what steps to take next. I’d like to know, what did Ann Arbor city hall learn from that experience? What did the University of Michigan learn from that experience? What did the AAFD learn from that experience? This was a huge learning opportunity for the city, and I hope that people were able to learn something from it.

3. The environmental report of the fuller station included small leaks in the UofM area. However, it does not include this particular spill. Any environmental report of the new station should include the spill that I saw and steps that the UofM/City have taken to protect/prevent one in that area in the future. It’s a big spill and it should not be ignored. And although the new station might not be directly beside the river, it will be within some proximity to that spill and it should be noted in the report (and how big it was and how it was unsolved).

4. When the spill happened, the UofM police had jurisdiction over the river. Although the spill covered the river and ran for hours (i witnessed this) from an outfall (a boom was placed there) at the UofM hospitals to Gallup Park (a boom was placed there), the EPA, DNR, state police and the city police did not investigate. When another spill happens in the future — better oversight should be provided as the river is not UofM property (or is it?). If a spill happens in the river, an outside agency must be brought in.

5. Thank you for the skate park.

6. I spoke about the $2 million work and how the sidewalk sucks. Thanks for letting me know that it will be fixed in November. Thank you.

The local share of the Blake Center comes from AATA’s transit millage. Dedicated transit funds being used for transit facilities.

The Fuller Park Amtrak station will require at least another $6 million in local funds to actually build it after all this preliminary work is done. We will spend about $9 million for the local share of the cost of a new Amtrak station if this project is completed.

That $9 million will have come from our utility and general fund accounts. Money that could have been spent addressing neighborhood flooding was spent replacing 20 year old (not very old for plumbing) utilities that needed to be relocated to make the station possible. While there is some magical thinking out there that believes that part of the $6 million local share for building the station will be provided by some one other than our general fund, that source has not stepped forward.

When the Fuller Park Amtrak station is placed on the ballot two groups will oppose it. Those opposed to re-purposing park land will reject the ballot proposal. Those who object to spending $6 million of general funds on a train station instead of public safety will similarly vote no. I believe that combination will defeat the proposal.

The City budget for the current fiscal year now includes about $850,000 for the local share of preliminary efforts for a project that will eventually be rejected by voters. The waste in this project is so very much like the money spent planning the “county-wide” transit system that the county did not want. The City should have sought voter approval before spending this money.