The fencing is meant to improve safety. According to the staff memo accompanying the council’s resolution, three incursions (someone getting in a restricted area of the airfield) took place in 2012. Before those three incursions, none had taken place since 2009.

The second vote was on a $32,000 contract with URS Corp. for engineering services related to the gate and fencing project. Funding for the contract is covered in the grant accepted by a vote of the council at the same meeting. The scope of the project includes installation of two new gate locations, the replacement of two existing gates, the upgrade of an existing gate location, upgrade of existing security fencing and the installation of new security fencing in the three hangar areas of the airport.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The move is effective July 1, 2013, which is the start of the 2014 fiscal year, and will satisfy the need to have a deficit reduction plan for the golf enterprise fund. The condition of the separate golf enterprise fund had caught the attention of the state treasurer’s office in 2008, which had led the council to adopt the deficit reduction plan. That plan included a restructuring of the fee schedule to increase the number of rounds played, and the issuance of a liquor license to boost the sales of food and drink at the Leslie Golf course. [.pdf of golf fund deficit elimination plan]

The plan had a clear positive impact on the number of rounds played at the city’s two courses, bringing the total rounds played from a low in 2007 of 35,856 up to 54,500 in 2010. That outpaced the number of rounds projected in the 2008 deficit elimination plan. A slight dip in 2011 to 49,203 rounds has been followed by stronger numbers again in 2012, with 55,135 rounds through Nov. 12. But that compares with 58,571 rounds played back in 2003. [.jpg of chart showing rounds played 2003-2012] Leslie is now closed for the season, but Huron Hills will stay open in the winter as weather permits.

On the metrics used by the state treasurer’s office to evaluate a municipality’s funds, however, the golf enterprise fund is still in a negative position. Those metrics are: loss with depreciation, working capital, and unrestricted net deficit. [.pdf of golf enterprise fund data from pages extracted from the comprehensive annual financial report from 2007-2011] The city’s figures for the golf fund’s performance on a purely revenue and expense basis show that it’s improved from the 2008 fiscal year – when it needed a $507,000 subsidy from the general fund – compared to 2012, when that amount was reduced to $271,000. [.jpg of chart showing revenues and expenses] By moving the golf fund back into the general fund, the city expects to save on an accounting basis about $20,000 a year for the general fund, with that amount increasing to $120,000 when the golf fund’s debt is paid off, starting in fiscal year 2016.

The council’s decision to move the golf fund back into the general fund, made at its Dec. 3, 2012 meeting, was supported by Jane Lumm (Ward 2), who highlighted the increasingly positive performance of the golf fund. Before Lumm was most recently elected to the city council in 2011, after having served in the mid-1990s, she was active in opposing a proposal that might have led to the operation of Huron Hills golf course by a private company – Miles of Golf. As a citizen, she addressed the city council about the proposal on June 7, 2010.

The council’s support of moving the golf fund back into the general fund was based in part on the idea that the golf courses should be evaluated on the same basis as other recreational facilities.

The council’s Dec. 3 resolution about the golf enterprise fund included a similar action about the airport enterprise fund, which also shows a deficit, due to the classification of internal loans as unrestricted instead of restricted. The city’s plan for eliminating the deficit for the airport enterprise fund is simply to continue to make payments toward the outstanding balance, which is currently $943,659. Added after initial publication: The airport fund will remain a separate enterprise fund.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

A section of a partially complete mural at Allmendinger Park, funded through Ann Arbor’s existing Percent for Art program. (Photos by the writer.)

The public art millage would be levied at a rate of 0.1 mill, which would raise around $450,000 from Ann Arbor taxpayers annually. Passage of the public art millage would, according to the corresponding charter amendment, suspend the city’s public art funding mechanism embedded in the Percent for Art ordinance – but only for the duration of the four-year millage.

A selling point of the millage, compared to the current Percent for Art program, is that millage money could be used more flexibly than money set aside under the Percent for Art program. The Percent for Art ordinance requires that 1% of all city capital projects be set aside for art. But this funding mechanism carries with it a legal requirement that art paid for through the program be in some sense “monumental” art that is permanent. Performance art or temporary installations would not qualify under the current program.

Even though a millage offers more flexibility, leaders in the arts community are concerned about a possible perception that it would be completely flexible – which led the council to change the ballot language and charter amendment from “public art” to “art in public places.”

A proposal from Jane Lumm (Ward 2) to begin the process of revising the Percent for Art ordinance in advance of the millage vote got little traction from the council. Lumm indicated that she wanted to offer voters a clear choice – that unless the millage were approved, public funding for art would disappear. But her resolution was voted down, with additional support only from Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5).

The majority of councilmembers felt that such a move was “premature.” Mayor John Hieftje indicated that he was open to a scenario in which the millage passed, the tax was levied for four years (which would generate roughly $1.8 million in money that could be spent flexibly), but then was not offered to voters for renewal after four years, which would mean an automatic reversion to the current Percent for Art program.

In other business, the council declined to take action on two pieces of land at opposite ends of the downtown – 414 N. Main St. (site of the old St. Nicholas Church), and 350 S. Fifth Ave. (the former YMCA lot). The council rejected a proposal to begin the rezoning process for the St. Nicholas Church property – in advance of a public auction of the land starting Sept. 6. The council also declined to support a directive to the city administrator to prepare for disposition of the old Y lot, citing an ongoing planning process for the area of downtown Ann Arbor that includes the city-owned parcel. That process – Connecting William Street – is being led by the Ann Arbor DDA under direction from the city council.

The council transacted a mixed bag of other business, including approval of a collaborative effort with Washtenaw County to handle towing. The council also approved the final grant contract necessary for completing an environmental study in connection with a runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport.

The council rejected a proposal from Comcast for a new franchise agreement, opting instead to allow the current arrangement to stay in place at least through the end of its term in 2017.

The meeting ended around midnight with jostling among councilmembers on the issue of mayoral appointments. Prompting the discussion was the reappointment of Sandi Smith (Ward 1) to the board of the Ann Arbor DDA. Kunselman and Lumm voted against the reappointment, objecting to Smith’s dual service on the city council and the DDA board. Smith was originally appointed to the board before her election to the council in 2008 and is not seeking re-election this term. Other councilmembers defended Smith’s selection.

Less controversial was the appointment of Michael Benson to the taxicab board. That body had been unable to meet because it had only two voting members out of five, and could not achieve a quorum. If all three members show up now, that body can hold its meeting.

Public Art Millage

The Aug. 20 council agenda included a resolution to place a public art millage on the Nov. 6 ballot for Ann Arbor voters. A second related resolution dealt with the existing Percent for Art program.

Public Art Millage: Background

The possibility of placing a ballot question in front of voters this November had first been revealed at the council’s Aug. 9, 2012 meeting, when Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) added the item to the agenda at the start of that meeting. The millage that voters will be asked to approve will be levied at a rate of 0.1 mills, which will generate around $450,000 annually. For the owner of a house worth $200,000 the tax will cost around $10 a year.

Approval by voters on Nov. 6 would mean that the funding mechanism already provided by Ann Arbor’s Percent for Art ordinance would be suspended for a period of four years – the duration of the millage. That program, in place since 2007, requires that 1% of all city capital projects be set aside for public art, up to a limit of $250,000 per capital project.

The source of funding – city capital projects – has legal implications, requiring that the funded artwork be “monumental” or permanent-type works. The public art funds from a millage would not necessarily be restricted to such permanent art, as the current Percent for Art funds are. The additional flexibility afforded by a millage-based public art program might include the ability to fund performance art, for example.

The arts community and others voiced several concerns about placing the item on the Nov. 6 ballot. Those concerns include a lack of clarity for voters about how yes or no votes would impact public funding for art, the short timeframe during which a millage campaign could be mounted, and the fact that Ann Arbor voters will already be asked to vote for two other millages on the Nov. 6 ballot. Those two millages are: (1) a renewal of a 1.1 mill tax to pay for park capital improvements and maintenance; and (2) a library millage to support construction of a new downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library – expected to cost 0.56 mills in its first of 30 years, but averaging 0.47 mills.

As altered slightly by the council on Aug. 20, the ballot question reads:

Shall the Charter be amended to limit sources of funding for art in public places and to authorize a new tax of up to one-tenth (0.10) of a mill for 2013 through 2016 to fund art in public places, which 0.10 mill will raise in the first year of levy the estimated revenue of $459,273?

The corresponding charter language would be [emphasis added]:

Funds for Public Art
SECTION 8.24. In addition to any other amount which the City is authorized to raise by general tax upon the real and personal property by this Charter or any other provision of law, the City shall, in 2013 through 2016, annually levy a tax of up to one-tenth (0.10) of a mill on all taxable real and personal property situated within the City for the purpose of providing funds for art in public places, including but not limited to the permanent and temporary acquisition, maintenance and repair of works of art for display in or on public structures or sites and/or as part of or adjacent to public streets and sidewalks, and performance art on city streets, sidewalks or sites. Except for funds previously raised, set aside, allocated or otherwise designated to be used for public art, including such funds in the July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013 fiscal year budget, and except for funds that are received by grant, gift, bequest or other donation to the City for public art, for the duration of this millage, the City shall not raise, set aside or designate funds for public art in any other manner. This millage also shall not preclude the grant, gift, bequest or other donation to the City of works of art.

A separate resolution concerning the existing Percent for Art program was also on the council’s agenda. It was meant, according to its sponsor Jane Lumm (Ward 2), to provide clarity to voters about what their vote on a public art millage would mean for the future funding of public art. Lumm’s resolution directed city staff to prepare an ordinance revision to the Percent for Art program, with the idea of repealing the current funding program before the millage vote. The idea is that voters would understand clearly that unless the public art millage is approved, no public funding for art would remain.

Public Art Millage: Public Commentary

Eight people spoke on the topic during public commentary.

Thomas Partridge introduced himself as a Democrat from the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County – an advocate for public transportation and access to health care, including free health care for middle class and low-income people to be provided by the University of Michigan hospital. It’s important to take a universal and integrated approach to funding public art and affordable housing and truly affordable transportation. On the subject of public art, he said, in a city known for its prominent educational institutions – like the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University and Concordia University – we need to have public art education instead of extraordinary amounts spent on public art.

Russ Collins introduced himself as the executive director of the Michigan Theater. He followed Dennis Brewer (owner of Brewer’s Towing) during the public commentary, who was there to object to the council’s resolution on public towing. Collins got a laugh when he said, “When I was in college, that was the guy who towed my car!” Settling in to the topic of public art, Collins began by thanking councilmembers for serving on the council, calling it a thankless job. He told them they had at least one deeply appreciative citizen. He grew up in Ann Arbor and had long admired what the city council has done to keep the city vital. He thanked Christopher Taylor for bringing the subject into a public discussion. Collins said he’s always happy when residents talk about the arts. He wanted to make clear to everybody that it’s not a broad-based public arts funding program – but rather, it’s a narrow program for art in public places. He suggested that people refer to it as an “art in public places millage.”

A lot of people will think that the millage could benefit the Michigan Theater, or the University Musical Society, or other cultural institutions like the Hands On Museum, Collins said. Such organizations would not get funding through such a millage, he contended, saying that they could in fact be damaged by that assumption – because when governmental funding comes, sometimes the private sector reduces its funding. So it’s important, Collins said, to be clear that the millage would be for “art in public places.”

Collins reported that his colleague Ken Fischer, president of the University Musical Society, is actually quite opposed to the millage for that reason. Collins told the council that he felt the Percent for Art is a good way to fund this type of program – art in public places funded with public money. A lot of communities support that approach and make it work, Collins said, and it could be made to work in Ann Arbor too. If the council chooses to put this on the ballot as a millage, Collins said, it’s very important to the Michigan Theater and every institution that doesn’t provide art in public places, that the millage is very narrow.

Meg Crawley told the council that she’d never spoken to them before but she was there to advocate for public funding for public art – because she thinks it’s important. She’s lived in Ann Arbor for 40 years. She’s the neighborhood representative for a mural project at Allmendinger Park, she said, which would be completed in the next few weeks. The mural is being constructed by Ann Arbor artist Mary Thiefels, and she’s including artifacts from the community in her mural. Crawley has volunteered to help by collecting the items and logging them into a spreadsheet. Over 50 families had participated, she said. The process has brought home to her how much the community treasures art and its connection to parks.

Allmendinger Park is showcased each fall when the University of Michigan football fans park in the neighborhood. The art project will draw people to it, and show them the true heart of Ann Arbor. The project has had an energizing effect on the neighborhood, she said. It’ll be free for anyone who wants to see it, she noted. The mural would facilitate pride in our community. She asked the council to find any way they can to keep public funding for art in the future.

Margaret Parker told the council she’d served on the Ann Arbor public art commission for many years. She helped bring about the Percent for Art program. She reviewed the program since its existence over the last five years. She told the council that three works had been completed, with 12 more on the way. [The Herbert Dreiseitl water sculpture in front of city hall and a metal tree sculpture in West Park are completed, but it's unclear what third work Parker was referring to that's been funded by the program. Artists are working on two other projects that were approved earlier this year, but aren't yet complete: A glass hanging sculpture in the Justice Center lobby, and the Allmendinger Park mural.]

Parker noted that the Percent for Art program works with one part-time administrator and a revolving band of nine volunteers who serve on the commission. Before the program, there was no permanent art being made in the city, she said.

If the council wants to change the funding mechanism, Parker said, it’s important to be sure to use what we’ve learned over the last five years: how to work with city departments; how to connect with the long-term city planning system; how to use the city information and communication technology; how to work with the art administrator; how to keep the city council informed; and how to keep public informed. She allowed that the public art commission might not be successful at all those things, but one thing is sure, she contended: Before the Percent for Art program, no one knew how public art was done. It’s true that the Percent for Art funding mechanism is complex, and can be restrictive. But learning how to work with the city was by far the hardest part of the start-up, she said.

She invited people to stand in front of the mosaic wall on Washington Street, or the Plymouth Road water tower or the new city hall, and then to shut their eyes, and to imagine the scene without any art. She asked them to then open their eyes and to contemplate whether those scenes were better with or without art.

Marsha Chamberlin addressed the council as chair of Ann Arbor’s public art commission (AAPAC). She said that one thing the group does not want is for funding for art to disappear. The resolution as proposed gives more flexibility in the implementation of the public art program, she said, and gives some real opportunity for “rapid innovation,” which she felt would be a positive thing for Ann Arbor citizens.

Marsha Chamberlin, chair of the Ann Arbor public art commission, sat in the audience before the Aug. 20 city council meeting started. Chamberlin also serves as president of the nonprofit Ann Arbor Art Center.

The funding for public art – art performed or temporarily installed in public places – will expand what AAPAC can do as a commission, Chamberlin said. When the Dreiseitl sculpture was dedicated, she said, the international quality of the city was talked about – the thousands and thousands of visitors who come to Ann Arbor. Public art is part of what makes the city a great place and lends a quality of life that she wanted to make sure is sustained in the city. At the end of September, she said, the mural in Allmendinger Park – which Meg Crawley had described – will be celebrated. It will be another great example of a completed piece, she said. She invited the council to join that celebration and to celebrate another victory for the city of Ann Arbor.

Debra Polich introduced herself as a resident, a 30-year arts administration veteran, and director of the Arts Alliance. The alliance advocates for the creative sector of Washtenaw County, she said. The alliance facilitates the Cultural Leaders Forum, which monthly brings together leaders from Ann Arbor’s largest cultural institutions. Over the last 10 days, more than 50 of them have expressed their opinion about the millage. Almost all of them are supportive of the concept, but greatly concerned about the timing. Based on surveys, Ann Arbor places a high value on arts and culture. Public funding approved in a millage would reflect the high value that residents put on arts and cultural offerings – in a way that public funding for parks and libraries and transportation reflect the high value that residents place on those services.

Polich told the council that experienced advisors had suggested to the arts alliance that in order to do any arts millage properly, it would take 12-18 months of due diligence. It might be expedited to a minimum of six months, she said. [It's roughly a three-month span from the time that Christopher Taylor first unveiled the proposal publicly (Aug. 9) until the Nov. 6 vote.] That time can be used to engage the community, and build consensus. Work should include polling the community, and if favorable, setting the millage at the right level, she said.

The advisors to the Arts Alliance had also recommended talking to community leaders, in order to expose support and opposition. The Arts Alliance absolutely supports the public funding of art, Polich said, and appreciates Taylor’s millage proposal. But as appreciative as the Arts Alliance is of the suggestion, she added, the short timeframe is of concern. She called Jane Lumm’s resolution that would lead to the elimination of Percent for Art funding prior to a millage equally premature. The alliance recommends not approving either proposal now. Instead, she said, she would ask that the Arts Alliance, the public art commission and others work together to improve the functioning of the Percent for Art program.

John Kotarski introduced himself as a member of the public art commission. He supported placing the millage on the ballot on Nov. 6. He said he’d served on the commission just since January 2012, but that he could already say that the restrictions imposed by the current funding arrangement have been a major roadblock to funding the types of projects that are near and dear to Ann Arbor. Delaying the millage vote would confuse voters, he cautioned. A millage-funded program would make the program stronger and more accountable.

Kotarski said that those who fear that the millage won’t pass are underestimating the leadership ability of councilmembers. If every councilmember wants the millage to pass, he contended, then it will pass.

Kotarski then stressed the symbolic value of art. He related a story of how Dolly Madison had elected to save a portrait of George Washington instead of her personal belongings back in 1814, when the British army was approaching Washington D.C. The British had planned to burn the portrait in London. He told councilmembers that Dolly Madison would be proud of them, “even though she was a Republican.”

John Carver told the council he was there to support the Percent for Art ordinance. He’s involved with several groups of private entrepreneurial types, who are trying to do some things that could make Ann Arbor more vital and interesting. The Percent for Art had gotten the ball rolling, he contended. There’s a group that is trying to bring more live music to Ann Arbor, patterned after a program in Austin, Texas. Another group is trying to enhance the architectural lighting in the theater district – and they’ve had meetings with representatives of McKinley Inc. and the Michigan Theater. Carver also told the council that he’s involved in a group called the Wolfpack on the RiverUp! project. That project involves upgrading amenities along the Huron River – and Carver reported that the Superior Portage is completed. Gallup Pond and Island Park will also be a part of the project. He stressed that the effort involved only private funds.

He told the council that he owns the building downtown at 500 E. Liberty, which he said is in the theater district. He had commissioned an artist to do a sculpture on the building. It would be called the Spirit of Ann Arbor and would be created by the artist Charles McGee, a World War II veteran.

Public Art Millage: Council Deliberations

Sandi Smith (Ward 1), who serves on the board of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority with Russ Collins, led off the city council deliberations with an amendment that took a suggestion made by Collins during public commentary: to change “public art” to “art in public places” throughout the ballot question and charter amendment. She wanted to make sure that people did not mistakenly think that passage of the millage meant that they no longer needed to make their membership payments to The Ark or the Michigan Theater or other similar organizations.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) greeted meeting attendees, assuring them that she was certain the council would definitely take the action of approving the minutes of the previous meeting.

Smith’s wardmate Sabra Briere floated the idea that the change be considered “friendly” and could be adopted without a vote. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) was himself amenable to the idea, but worried that the language of the existing proposal had already been reviewed by the state attorney general on a preliminary basis. City attorney Stephen Postema ventured that he did not think the attorney general would have a problem with the change. So the “friendly” amendment was adopted.

Taylor noted that the purpose of offering the resolution at the council’s previous meeting was to initiate public conversation. That mission has been accomplished, he declared. The public art commission has met [in a special session on Aug. 15, due to the unexpected nature of Taylor's proposal] and other arts groups have met and discussed the issue. Taylor said he’d received a tremendous amount of feedback.

It’s clear that Ann Arbor really values art in public places, he contended, and they see it as something that warrants government support. In his view, a millage is the best way for that government support to be realized, so he’s eager to have that question put to voters. Those in the arts community have questioned whether it’s an opportune time for the millage, and he shares that concern. There are a number of particularities about why this is not the best time for a millage. He is not yet convinced, so he’s eager to hear what his colleagues think. He then ticked through the specific concerns: whether it’s the proper cycle; the lack of polling; the inchoate nature of funding; high costs of promotional materials; potential for misunderstanding as to scope.

Many of those things are true, Taylor admitted, but he was not sure they pushed him over the edge. He felt that the benefits and detriments are a “gut check” for people. He stated that “we all want it to succeed,” and stated that he is confident it will succeed in any election – so he’s not certain it wouldn’t be best to ask the most people about it. [This was an allusion to the fact that it falls in a presidential election cycle.] He felt that Ann Arbor at its core is a community that will support art in public places.

However, he stated that he was “still up in the air” and was eager to hear the thoughts of his colleagues.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he had “jumped on this” as soon as Taylor had initiated it. [He asked to have his name added as a sponsor.] He ventured that everyone knows he’s been very vocal in criticizing the existing funding mechanism. The community has been debating the funding ordinance, and no other community in Michigan has adopted the same kind of ordinance. That indicated to him that no other city is willing to stick its neck out and take money out of utilities and special millages to pay for art in public places. “A millage is the only way to go,” Kunselman said. He appreciated the comments from people in the arts community who were hesitant to see the millage placed on this November’s ballot.

But he felt that in a presidential election, it would get out the greatest number of voters – many of whom are just going to love art, regardless of whether they’re paying for it. And that could tip the balance in getting the millage passed. Kunselman claimed that the library board is moving forward with a millage without waiting to do a big review of community sentiment. Kunselman implied that the library’s millage would pass because everybody likes books and that Ann Arbor is a well-read community. [In fact, the Ann Arbor District Library has undertaken a systematic effort to measure community sentiment. That effort has included a scientific survey of voters, the results of which were released four months ago. The AADL subsequently conducted public forums on their plan to construct a new building, before the board voted to put the bond proposal on the ballot. An informal campaign committee started its work several months ago.]

Kunselman looked at art as being something that needs to get out in front of the most voters, in order to give it a chance of passing.

From left: Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) chats with Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Ann Arbor art commission chair Marsha Chamberlin after the vote to put a public art millage on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Kunselman liked the idea that it will “unchain the restrictions” so that not just monumental art but also cultural arts can be supported. He said he came from a cultural arts family – pointing out that he’d at one time worked as a projectionist at Michigan Theater.

Responding to the short timeframe for mounting a millage campaign, Smith noted that she’d twice been involved in bringing forward a proposal to roll back the Percent for Art program to a half percent. That was not because she’s not a fan of art, she said. On both occasions, in a very short period of time, the arts community and the broader community had come out and convinced her that’s reducing the percentage to a half percent is not the way to go. So she was not concerned about the arts community not having that kind of energy when it comes to voting in November. She felt that “we’re a passionate and creative bunch and recognize a good thing.” She said she’s looking forward to living in a city that has parks and a new library when a lot of cities are still struggling. In contrast, Ann Arbor is not just moving forward, but rather “surging” forward. Now is as good a time as any to do it, and she would do her part to make sure people know that they should vote yes on the millage.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) distinguished between the politics and substance of the issue. The substance has been discussed frequently, and frequently it’s been upheld, he said. The community has supported the Percent for Art ordinance, even with its imperfections, he contended. The millage proposal is better, he said, because it eliminates some of those restrictions associated with the Percent for Art program. It’s a pleasure to agree with Kunselman on something, Derezinski said. On the issue of the timing, he said “we don’t live in an ideal world.” He felt it was important to go ahead and put in on the ballot. He thinks the community support is there, and he would vote to put it on the ballot right away.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) said he’s always supported the Percent for Art program. He’s had problems with how it was funded, he allowed. But he thanked the members of the public art commission for their service. He said that this change to a millage-based proposal would allow performance art on city streets and sidewalks. He felt that a millage would be a fair way to approach it – given that it was for a relatively short period and could be evaluated at the end of four years.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) indicated that based on what she was hearing at that point, it didn’t sound like the council was inclined to postpone. She reviewed the various concerns that had been aired at a cultural leaders forum held by the Arts Alliance earlier that day – a gathering that she, Derezinski, Taylor and Hieftje had attended. She noted that there were basic questions – about the amount of the millage, for example. She lamented the fact that Taylor’s proposal does not offer residents a clear choice about whether to use public money to pay for art. She felt there should be a clear choice. She indicated she would support placing the question on the ballot, based on her commitment to offer voters a clear choice – with her subsequent proposal to prepare to eliminate the Percent for Art funding mechanism prior to the millage.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) allowed that she’d been more of a critic of the Percent for Art program than a supporter. But unlike Kunselman, she did not oppose it on the grounds that it involves capital improvement dollars. She thinks that the program has started out with a lot of money and with no guidance about how to spend that money. Based on her own observations at AAPAC meetings, it continues to be a struggle to spend the money. She said the amount Ann Arbor sets aside is inordinately large – based on conversations she’s had with art administrators in other cities.

Briere said her issue is the definition of capital improvements. She viewed the ballot proposal with favor. She felt that the inherent restrictions in the existing Percent for Art program have been more onerous than effective. The fact that the amount to be generated by the millage is more than the money already being set aside bothers her. If the commission is given more dollars to spend, it’ll be difficult to balance all the demand – but at least the commission will have the ability to spend some of it on things other than monumental art.

She’s not concerned about the short timeframe of the next two months, saying that the conversation has been going on for the last five years. Respondents to her informal poll over the weekend were as likely to say they support the current Percent for Art program as they were to say they oppose all dollars going to a millage. If councilmembers are going to do this, she said, they have sell it. They have to be confident as they communicate to the public that the council is not trying to hedge its bets too much. That is, if the public goes ahead with the millage, it means that the council needs to re-examine the Percent for Art program and change the way it reads on the books.

Public Art Millage: Council Deliberations – Amendment

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked for some confirmation about the impact of the millage passage: If the millage passes, then the funding specified in the city’s Percent for Art ordinance would be suspended. Assistant city attorney Abigail Elias pointed Hohnke to the language of the charter amendment, which prohibits using city funds from any other means than the millage for the duration of the four-year period.

Left to right: Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) chats with Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) during a recess in the meeting. In the foreground is Jane Lumm (Ward 2).

Hohnke offered a different perspective. He contended it was his experience that the majority of people in Ward 5 and throughout the city think that “Percent for Art is great!” He claimed that it’s been solidly supported by a vast majority of constituents, when revisions have come before the council. He thinks that additional funding for arts that addresses constraints of the Percent for Art program is a great thing. He appreciated the effort to find a way to support other types of art. His view is that the folks in the city would support both. He is a little concerned that people want to see the funding mechanism replaced. He then proposed an amendment to the ballot proposal that would eliminate the part that suspends the Percent for Art funding for the duration of the millage.

Hohnke thinks both funding mechanisms should be available, and he’s concerned about constraining future councils. If the public wants to pass this millage, then the council could also modify the Percent for Art ordinance at the council table. He felt there are two separate questions: Percent for Art funding, and millage funding for a set of art that is less constrained by the current program. It’s not just different funding mechanisms, Hohnke said. The Percent for Art program involves the way the city impacts the built environment. When we choose, as a community, to make capital expenditures, we’re saying that we want art to be a part of how we’re impacting our built environment, he said. He felt that’s important and that it has been effective in many communities around the country.

Briere called Hohnke’s idea “an interesting approach.” Her perception is that it’s been difficult to spend the money that’s already been allocated. She ventured that if both propositions went forward, the public art commission would suddenly have $860,000 to spend, which is quite a lot – especially because it’s not been easy to deal with half that amount. So Briere asked Hohnke if that’s what he intended.

Hohnke confirmed that was his intent, and allowed that she’d made a good point. He called the challenge one of process. And he contended that process challenges are not beyond our means to address, because we have energetic, smart people working on it.

Derezinski feared that Hohnke’s proposal “might very well kill it.” Given the short timeframe, you have to be careful about how to sell it, and be careful not to ask for too much, he said. He couldn’t go along with Hohnke’s idea.

Smith respected Hohnke’s feeling behind the amendment. But she’d rather vote down the proposal and come back with more tightly crafted language and wait for next ballot than to pursue Hohnke’s amendment. She felt that it risked losing it all.

Anglin was not in favor of the amendment, and indicated he was inclined to see how well the millage proposal worked out.

Kunselman said he couldn’t support Hohnke’s amendment, but picked up on a reference Hohnke had made to Percent for Art-type programs outside the state of Michigan. He felt that in Michigan, the Percent for Art approach doesn’t have a legal basis. Kunselman pointed out that the council had voted down directing the city attorney to produce an opinion. Kunselman felt a lawsuit could strike down the city’s ordinance.

Hohnke allowed that he could not give a specific example of another city in Michigan that had a Percent for Art program. But he argued that other Michigan cities also don’t fund human services in the same way that Ann Arbor does. Hohnke doesn’t see any problem with Ann Arbor “taking leadership.” Despite Kunselman’s concerns about a lawsuit, Hohnke pointed out that no lawsuit had yet been filed. He claimed that the city council had an assurance from the city attorney that the city’s Percent for Art program is a perfectly appropriate way to fund public art.

Mayor John Hieftje said he wouldn’t support Hohnke’s amendment, but appreciated how zealous Hohnke was.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) also said she wouldn’t support it. She felt it would be hard to sell. She echoed Briere’s concerns about the sheer amount of money that would be involved. She described being lost in Philadelphia recently, which has a Percent for Art program. She described a long stretch of blight, but then in the downtown you see some nice pieces of art, she said. She referred to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs [the implication being that basic needs like food, water and shelter should be satisfied before higher needs, like self-actualization.] She responded to the several claims around the table that the Percent for Art program is solidly supported, but noted that residents have not had a chance to vote on it.

Outcome on Hohnke’s amendment: Hohnke was the only voice of support. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) appeared only inadvertently to vote for it.

Public Art Millage: Council Deliberations – Finale

Mayor John Hieftje said he’d support putting the proposal on the ballot. He was happy it’ll have widespread support. He felt that it’s rightly a four-year millage. Next time around, the council would be able to reduce the amount of the millage or add more to the amount that is put before voters. Hieftje made a standard economic development argument for public art, saying that having public art in your city creates excitement and that excitement can cause people to want to be in the place and make people think that this is a great place to be.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) indicated he’d support the proposal, despite the failure of his amendment.

With respect to “performance art,” Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked if the Ann Arbor Summer Festival could be supported by the millage. Assistant city attorney Abigail Elias indicated that “performance art” is a well-known term of art in the arts community. She said it’s pretty flexible, but excludes something like a theater performance. A performance at a venue like a theater isn’t performance art. She was not able to say whether something like a performance in an outdoor setting like the Summer Festival would be performance art or not.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to place a public art millage on the Nov. 6 ballot.

Public Art Millage: Beginning Ordinance Repeal?

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) pitched her proposal later in the meeting. It would direct the city’s legal staff to prepare of a repeal to the existing funding mechanism of the Percent for Art program. She related to her council colleagues how she’d told the meeting of cultural leaders earlier in the day, that she would withdraw the proposal, if the millage proposal were postponed [as president of the Arts Alliance, Deb Polich, had asked the council to do]. Lumm said the ordinance has been controversial from the beginning, and she felt the time to reexamine it is now – by asking voters the fundamental question of whether they support public funding of art, rather than simply which method.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Christopher Taylor (Ward 3).

The approach of asking voters to support a millage, with the existing program as a default, says to voters: We’re going to use public funds for art regardless, but we’d sure like your input about what method. She felt that it’s important to ask the basic question of whether citizens support public funding of art. By repealing the existing Percent for Art ordinance before the November election, voters would get that clear choice. She said she trusts the voters, regardless of the outcome. She did not want to set up a “have your cake and eat it, too” situation where voters are given a Hobson’s Choice.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said the first time she read through Lumm’s resolution, she got out her virtual red pen because she wanted to cross out various “whereas” clauses, saying that they were “unnecessarily inflammatory” about a program that is just finding its legs and “demeaning” to volunteers on the public art commission who’ve spent a significant amount of time of this program. She called the “whereas” clauses “judgmental” with respect to the commission’s progress.

Smith felt the choice offered to voters will be clear in that there will be no funds other than this millage available for funding public art. [If the millage passes, it will be the only source of funding; but if the millage fails, the Percent for Art program will continue as before.] Smith felt it’s a yes or no question that is delivered to the voters. She said she’s received such overwhelming support for arts in Ann Arbor that she feels, “People know exactly what they want, and they want art.”

Rather than trying to revise the “whereas” clauses, she said she’d simply opt to reject it.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated he’d support the resolution, noting it just directs staff to prepare a resolution to change an ordinance – something for the council to digest at a later meeting. He doesn’t want to terminate the entire ordinance, but rather some of the funding mechanisms for it. The charter millage language only suspends the funding mechanism, but doesn’t resolve it. He ventured that the council would be dancing around the issue for a time – until we get greater community consensus about funding of public art. He also wants to see language prepared in case the millage does fail. The resolution would get the council to start thinking.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) respected the idea of the proposed resolution and the intent that councilmembers Lumm and Kunselman brought to it. If the Percent for Art funding mechanism is repealed, then if the millage were to fail, there would be no public funding for art. Even though the council had reviewed the possibility of reducing the funding for the existing Percent for Art program on several occasions before, she noted that no one had ever proposed to eliminate it altogether. Briere said that if the council weren’t putting a millage on the ballot, she would not even flirt with the idea of Lumm’s resolution. She’s happy to wait, she said, and see where we are after the millage vote. The idea of being prepared for the millage to be defeated and the need to address the Percent for Art program is one she thinks is worth remembering. But she didn’t think she could support this resolution.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) agreed with Smith, saying that some of the language demeans some of the people who’ve worked hard on the public art commission. He said that as a member of the public art commission, he’s seen how the members have worked. It’s not necessary to try to demean the efforts of those who’ve been trying to work through the operational details of a new program, he said. He felt that it should be “toned down.”

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) viewed Lumm’s resolution as supportive of the millage. He didn’t read it as negative, but rather as going through the pitfalls of the current program, which the public art commission itself has brought to the council. The resolution simply says that the city is going to put aside what they’ve used before.

Responding to the characterization by Smith and Derezinski of the “whereas” clauses as demeaning to the members of the art commission, Lumm simply read the clauses aloud:

Whereas, In November of 2007, City Council approved an amendment to the City Charter creating the “percent for art” program that funds public art through the allocation of funds from capital improvement projects;

Whereas, Allocating funds to the “percent for art” program results in reduced funding for much-needed capital infrastructure improvements and many Ann Arbor residents believe the allocation of capital project funds to public art represents an inappropriate and unrelated use of dollars raised through tax millages and water and sewer system funds that they believe should be fully dedicated to their primary streets, parks, water/sewer, and solid waste purposes;

Whereas, Voters were never provided the opportunity to have their voices heard on either the “percent for art” program specifically or more importantly, on the fundamental question of whether public art should be supported by public/taxpayer funding, regardless of its form;

Whereas, It is expected that City Council will place on the November ballot a proposal to amend the city charter to authorize a new, four-year millage of 0.10 mill to fund public art which if approved by voters, suspends the “percent for art” program funding only for the duration of the millage (the “percent for art” program funding would be re-instated if the millage were not renewed). If not passed by the voters, the “percent for art” program and funding continue in their present form;

Whereas, To truly enfranchise residents, voters should be offered a clear, yes/no choice on public funding for public art rather than an either/or choice of the mechanism used to fund public art;

Whereas, City Council action to repeal the funding provisions of the current “percent for art” program prior to the November ballot question would offer voters a clear, simple “yes/no” choice – an affirmative vote results in public funding for public art, a negative vote does not;

Whereas, A July 1, 2013 effective date for repeal of the “percent for art” program maintains the funding commitments for public art previously made to the program;

By way of additional background, it’s likely that Smith and Derezinski were not reacting specifically to the “whereas” clauses, which are difficult to see as demeaning to the public art commission. Instead, they were likely reacting to the memo attached to the resolution, which refers to “The slow launch of the program, accumulated, unused surpluses at a challenging fiscal time for the city, and projects not universally accepted” – statements that might be seen as laying blame on the public art commission.

Lumm rounded out her remarks by ticking through the various interpretations that yes and no votes for the millage might have. She reported that other councilmembers at the meeting earlier in the day with cultural arts leaders had acknowledged that voter sentiment would be difficult to read.

Left to right: Sandi Smith (Ward 1) tells Sabra Briere (Ward 1) how many minutes Jane Lumm had been speaking – five. Councilmembers are supposed to be limited to two speaking turns on any given question, the first of which has a limit of five minutes and the second three minutes.

Lumm’s turn ended when Smith raised a point of order – that Lumm had exceeded the time limit on her speaking turn.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) came back to the issue of the “whereas” clauses, saying he felt the clauses make bold assertions that he claimed are only weakly supported. As an example, he gave ” … many Ann Arbor residents believe the allocation of capital project funds to public art represents an inappropriate and unrelated use of dollars.” He dismissed that assertion by saying, “Many Ann Arbor residents believe yada yada yada. Many Ann Arbor residents believe a whole bunch of things and you can insert whatever you want.” He contended that the evidence is to the contrary. In the repeated conversations the council has had, he continued, the council had heard overwhelming support for the public art program. So he felt the statement was not an accurate reflection of the facts.

Hohnke then took up the statement in the “whereas” clauses that “Voters were never provided the opportunity to have their voices heard …” Hohnke ventured that what that statement meant was that voters had not had a chance to vote directly on the issue, and he admitted that was true. But he claimed that it’s inappropriate to say that their voices haven’t been heard. It had been thoroughly debated when the ordinance was enacted, he contended, and people’s voices were heard. The Arts Alliance was very rigorous in seeking out the opinions of councilmembers and making them widely known, he said, so that people had a clear understanding of where their councilmembers stood on the Percent for Art program.

Ultimately, though, Hohnke felt that the resolution was unnecessary. He noted that councilmembers can simply ask staff to prepare a resolution. He claimed that the controversy that Lumm and Kunselman talk about surrounding the program is one that they and a small number of folks are manufacturing. There are significant and honest questions about the funding mechanism, he said, not the existence of support for public art.

Public art is something that we don’t want to leave unsupported, Hohnke said.

Mayor John Hieftje said he’d have a hard time supporting the resolution. He described the “preamble” as resembling more a political document than a resolution.

If the millage fails, then it’d be appropriate to review the Percent for Art program, Hieftje said. He felt there’d be plenty of time to do that in November, with three new councilmembers coming on board. It just seems premature to take a look at it now. It might be the case that four years from now the city council says, “Great, the millage gave us a real boost, let’s see what we can do back with Percent for Art.”

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) introduced some confusion by appearing to indicate that Lumm’s resolution would continue the Percent for Art funding, even if the millage failed. Briere indicated that her expectation would be that Lumm’s resolution was meant to revoke the Percent for Art funding mechanism before hearing from voters.

Kunselman suggested striking all but the final “whereas” clause so that the council would not have to “dicker” about it. Lumm was fine with that.

The deletion of the “whereas” clauses did not change anyone’s mind.

Outcome: The resolution to prepare for the repeal of the Percent for Art funding mechanism failed, with support only from Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3).

St. Nicholas Auction, Rezoning

In front of the council was a resolution to start a process to change the current PUD (planned unit development) zoning on the former St. Nicholas Church property on North Main Street. The land is being put up for public auction on Sept. 6, 2012. The resolution indicated that the proposed new zoning would match the surrounding land, which is D2 (downtown interface).

The property is being offered at auction by the Washtenaw County treasurer at a cost of $365,051, which covers back taxes and demolition costs. Demolition is expected to begin in the coming weeks. [See also Chronicle coverage: "Rezoning Process for North Main Site on Agenda."]

Downtown Ann Arbor zoning designations. Color key: blue, D1 (downtown); green, D2 (downtown interface), red, PUD (planned unit development). Kunselman’s Aug. 20 resolution would direct city staff to begin a process for rezoning The Gallery PUD to D2 (downtown interface), to be consistent with surrounding properties.

The property has an easement on it held by its neighbor to the south, McKinley Inc., for 57 parking spaces, which poses a challenge for future development.

Authorized by the city council in 2006, the PUD zoning was intended to allow construction of The Gallery, an 11-story building (158 feet tall) that would include 224 parking spaces and 123 units of residential housing. Of those units, 18 would have met the definition of affordable housing derived by a formula based on area median incomes. In contrast, the D2 zoning has a height limit of 60 feet.

If the property does not sell at the Sept. 6 auction (which concludes on Sept. 11), the property will be offered again for auction in October. If it does not sell after the second auction, it will revert to the city.

Assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald explained at the Aug. 20 council meeting that in any case it would not be possible to complete the rezoning process before the first or the second auctions – due to the noticing requirement for all the relevant public hearings.

St. Nicholas Auction, Rezoning: Council Deliberations

The sponsor of the resolution, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), reviewed the basic history of the four parcels in question. Because the property is currently in public hands, he felt there was very low risk that the downzoning from PUD to D2 could be analyzed as a “taking.” In his conversations with Washtenaw County treasurer Catherine McClary, who’s technically the current owner, she had indicated to him that she didn’t have a problem with the rezoning.

When The Gallery had come through the pipeline, Kunselman recalled that he’d served on the city planning commission at the time. He reviewed the details of that project, including the easement of 57 parking spaces that is now permanently attached to the land.

The D2 zoning, which was put in place after The Gallery was approved, Kunselman said, is a fair statement of how the character of the Kerrytown neighborhood should move forward. Kunselman felt that the city is going to end up owning the land unwillingly.

Assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald arrives at the meeting.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked assistant city attorney Kevin McDonald to the podium to talk about the timetable for rezoning compared to the planned auction on Sept. 6 and the possible second auction in October. McDonald told the council that the city wouldn’t be able to rezone the property before the first or the second auction, given the amount of public notice that is required: “There is simply not time to do it,” McDonald explained. Briere wanted to know what the effect of the resolution would be on the ability of the county treasurer to sell the land. McDonald said that any answer he gave would be speculation.

McDonald noted that the county treasurer has a view and staff has a view. One of the constraints on the property is the 57 parking spaces that have to be provided to the neighbor. And any project has to incorporate those 57 spaces. So if you don’t have a project of some density, there’d probably be no way to recoup the costs of building it, he ventured. The 57 spaces were built into The Gallery project, he pointed out. He felt there was some belief that if somebody bid at first auction, that might allow the prospect of building The Gallery. But anecdotally, he reported hearing from developers that the numbers just don’t work. There’s also an affordable housing component to the PUD zoning, so 15% of the units would have to be affordable, he pointed out. It’s hard to predict, and everyone has a different view on this, McDonald concluded.

Briere was concerned that some prospective buyer might feel the city had changed the rules by discussing rezoning. So she wanted to hear from McDonald what his interpretation was of the effect of the resolution. McDonald reported that in his conversations with the county treasurer, she’d been very helpful. For the first auction, she felt that keeping the zoning in place would enhance the value of the property. If the council decides to pass the resolution at whatever time, what’s really important is simply that the city gives notice to any buyer that the rezoning process is in place, so that it could be put into someone’s evaluation of the property.

The treasurer is willing to take whatever action and attach it to the due diligence documents for the auction. For example, the easement is already included. If the rezoning process were to begin, then a prospective buyer would have notice of that, if that’s what the council decided to do. It could affect someone’s view of the land’s value, he allowed, but the important thing is to clearly communicate council’s intention and desire.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) characterized the 57 parking spaces as running with the land without regard to the zoning. He wondered if a rezoning, given the 57-parking space easement, would render it functionally un-developable. McDonald didn’t know that he’d say that. It’s a complex easement, he noted. The holder of the easement currently has no cost, and if construction of The Gallery takes place, then that’s when the payment for the parking begins. He said there’s no way to tell what’s going to happen at these auctions. If it doesn’t go at the first auction, there might be more speculative bids at the second auction.

Kunselman observed that the 57 parking spaces would need to be provided, even if city ends up with the land. McDonald confirmed that, but said that the city could choose not to accept the land, in which case, it would go back to the county.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) felt that the timing was off. She wanted to see how the process unfolds at the auction. It’s in the city’s best interest to see someone purchase the land, she said. She did not want to add to the already existing challenge of disposing city-owned land. She felt that “getting out of the way” is the best approach.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) agreed with Smith, and described the resolution as premature.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) wondered if the process of rezoning would perhaps give the city additional flexibility. It wasn’t totally clear what Derezinski meant, and McDonald noted that the proposed D2 rezoning was more restrictive. At the end of the day, he said, it depends on whether you want to see something like The Gallery built there or not.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) felt the resolution was a little bit premature at this point.

Outcome: The council voted down Kunselman’s resolution to initiate the rezoning of the North Main Street property.

Old Y Lot (350 S. Fifth Ave.)

The council considered a resolution that directed the city administrator to prepare options for the disposition of the city-owned land at the corner of Fifth and William – 350 S. Fifth Ave., known as the former YMCA lot. The resolution was explicitly worded so that the city administrator was to proceed independently of a planning effort by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority called Connecting William Street. [See also Chronicle coverage: "Planning Group Briefed on William Street Project."]

The resolution would have directed city administrator Steve Powers to evaluate the parcel at 350 S. Fifth for possible public or corporate use. If no such use were found, the resolution directed Powers to report back to the council with a timeline for the disposition of the property – based on state and city laws and policies. That parcel is also known as the Fifth and William parking lot, because it’s currently used as a surface parking lot in the city’s public parking system, or the old Y lot, because it’s the location of the former YMCA building.

Left to right: City CFO Tom Crawford chats with Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) during a recess of the Aug. 20 meeting.

The resolution’s sponsor, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), has frequently raised the issue of ongoing interest payments associated with a loan used by the city to purchase the property from the YMCA for $3.5 million in 2003. The council voted in 2008 to extend the five-year loan with the Bank of Ann Arbor for another five years, through the end of 2013. The interest rate is 3.89%. The interest-only payments work out to roughly $140,000 a year.

By 2013, the total interest paid will be around $1.4 million. When it was condemned, the cost of demolishing the old YMCA building and abating asbestos was around $1.5 million. The DDA covered the demolition costs and has covered half the interest payments. So the total amount of Ann Arbor governmental investment in the property is at least $6.4 million.

The Connecting William Street project was undertaken by the DDA based on a directive from the city council, on a unanimous vote, given at its April 4, 2011 meeting. Kunselman voted for that planning effort to take place – but was also vocal at the time, as well as before, about his view that the old Y lot should simply be put up for sale one way or another.

Old Y Lot: Council Deliberations

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), who sponsored the resolution, said it was intended to get the council to start thinking about what to do with the land. It addresses the $3.5 million balloon payment that’s due in December 2013. The interest-only payments will have accumulated to $1.36 million, he noted, which means that the city has $4.86 million in a piece of land that’s not worth it, he said.

Kunselman said he knows that the Connecting William Street process includes the old Y lot, but pointed out that the planning effort is supposed to result in a presentation of a recommendation to the city council in late October. His resolution doesn’t have a timeframe per se, he noted, but just directs the city administrator to provide a timeline for disposition. He pointed out that the city hasn’t sold any land recently, and ventured that not many people on the city council had any idea of what the process for that is: Do we put a notice on the city website, saying “For Sale”? How would we get the best value, he wondered. Given that December 2013 is going to come up pretty quick, he felt that it’s important to start thinking about that now.

Kunselman stated that the city had not had a lot of success with issuing RFPs (requests for proposals) in the past. And this particular property is costing the city a lot of money over time, Kunselman pointed out, while the other surface parking lots within the scope of the Connecting William Street study are not costing the city money.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) called the resolution premature and unnecessary. More than a year remains before the balloon payment is due, she pointed out, and there’s no reason, she felt, that the city would not be able to do another 5-year loan arrangement. She allowed that the city has not done the RFP process well in the past. That’s part of the Connecting William Street mission – to prepare the lots in a way that has full public buy-in and that is economically feasible for sale. It’s a matter of hitting that special target of what the citizens need and will demand out of the sale of public land, and what is actually sustainable and economically feasible to be built.

Smith felt Kunselman’s resolution is unnecessary and sends a clear message that there’s no faith in the Connecting William Street process. She pointed out that half of the interest payments are being borne by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. She also pointed out that the city receives 17% gross revenues from the surface parking spaces now located on the old Y lot [as well as the rest of the public parking system].

By way of background, the Fifth & William parking lot generated $199,839 in revenues in fiscal year 2011. And 17% of that works out to $34,000, which is 25% of the total interest payment on the loan, or half of the city’s share of that payment.

Smith allowed that lumped together, the total cost seems traumatic – and she said she’s not sure she’d have supported the purchase of the land in 2003. But she fully supports the process underway.

Mayor John Hieftje described the group of citizens who are working hard on the Connecting William Street project, who will come back to the council with a report. Yet he appreciated Kunselman’s direction for action. Responding to Kunselman’s contention that the old Y lot is not worth as much as the city has invested in it, Hieftje ventured that if you look at recent comparables – like the property at South University and Forrest – the old Y lot has a lot of value. He acknowledged that the city might well just say here’s the zoning on the property, and just sell it. The city might turn to that approach, he said. His issue right now is the timing of the resolution. He was content to wait, but might support the resolution after the Connecting William Street report came back.

Spotting an opportunity to win Hieftje’s support for the resolution, Kunselman asked him if he was suggesting a postponement until the council’s second meeting in October. Then the council could have both items on the agenda at the same time. Hieftje declined the gambit, by saying he felt it would take time to digest the DDA’s report, and he did not see a reason to postpone it for future consideration. He did respect the concept of just putting a property on the market.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) highlighted the fact that the resolution focuses on the administrator’s recommendation. She felt the intent is quite reasonable. She described it as “kickstarting” the process of thinking about the site. The property has been off the tax rolls for a decade, she noted. Lumm did not feel the resolution presupposes any outcome of the Connecting William Street process, and it’s not about excluding the DDA. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) also expressed his support of the resolution.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) indicated he felt the resolution was premature, so he couldn’t support it.

Smith stressed that the goal of selling the property should not be simply to avoid paying interest on the loan. There’s a larger public policy issue at stake, she said. There’s a “juicier conversation” to be had than one about directing the city administrator – and she’d appreciate people raising the level of the conversation around the table.

Lumm read aloud the resolved clause, saying she thought it was reasonable.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) felt that the council should allow the Connecting William Street process to play out without “shadowing” it. She appreciated Kunselman’s constant concern about the interest payments and the looming balloon payment. But she wanted to be able to dissect the DDA’s proposal without comparing it to the city administrator’s efforts.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) noted that the city council had asked the DDA to take a good long look at the property. And in his view it would be “proper, prudent and polite” to wait for the DDA to conclude its work.

Outcome: The resolution on the old Y lot failed, with support only from Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3).

Public Towing

A goal for the city’s financial services unit, which is listed out in the fiscal year 2013 budget book, is collaboration with Washtenaw County to centralize the administration of public towing. Parking on someone’s private property or having as excessive number of parking tickets are examples of this kind of situation.

Left to right: City administrator Steve Powers, Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Dennis Brewer, who owns two local towing companies.

Currently, the city contracts with three different companies, in three districts of the city: Brewer’s Towing Inc., Sakstrup’s Towing, and Triangle Towing. But those contracts expire at the end of 2012.

In front of the council was a resolution authorizing the city to contract with Washtenaw County, which will administer the towing under a single contract. The city will share responsibility for various aspects of the towing administration. On the city’s side, the existing manual, paper-based system will be replaced with one that uses CLEMIS (Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System) and e-impound.

The new approach is also supposed to reduce costs to those who have their cars towed – because outside storage fees of $20/day would no longer be assessed immediately when a vehicle arrives at the storage lot. Instead, the new city/county fee structure would not permit a storage fee to be applied until a vehicle has been stored for at least eight hours. [.pdf of fee schedule]

The city will point to this collaboration with the county as part of the state’s economic vitality incentive program (EVIP), which encourages municipalities to demonstrate efforts at collaboration with each other.

Public Towing: Public Comment

Dennis Brewer told the council that he and his wife own both Brewer’s Towing and Sakstrup’s Towing. He started Brewer’s back in 1963, he said. He’s opposed to the “suggestive language” in the resolution. He questioned how the first 8 hours of storage could be free? He ventured that this would be a real problem for customer relations. What if it turns out to be 8 hours 5 minutes – then people will object to paying, just because they were 5 minutes too late. He predicted it would be a real headache.

When would the clock start ticking, Brewer wondered: When the tow company gets the call? When the tow company arrives on the scene? When the car reaches the storage facility? Brewer also told the council that his company’s computer system is based on calendar days for storage. The storage changes at 12:01 every day. Their current practice is that vehicles must be in storage at least 8 hours before a second day of storage can be charged. He reminded the council that it’s necessary to carry insurance to cover the cars in storage, and that the storage lots need personnel on duty 24/7 to release the vehicles.

Public Towing: Council Deliberations

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) stressed that the primary issue is that it makes things more efficient as the two governmental units cooperate. He encouraged everyone’s support.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) asked the city CFO Tom Crawford to approach the podium. She called it a good collaborative effort, but noted that it differs from the previous approach in some details. She asked about “custom criteria” that could be applied – involving grace periods and the like. She noted that the council had heard from Brewer about the economic difficulty involved.

Crawford explained that the two objectives were to reduce costs and improve service. The city and county are reducing their administrative fee from $60 to $45 – and the county will be sharing a portion of that $45 with the city. The city and the county also looked to the towing companies to help with those objectives. Some towing companies had a practice of starting the clock for the storage fee as soon as the car hit the lot. And at midnight, no matter what time the car hit the lot, the timer would click to a new day.

Crawford allowed that some of the towing companies never had that custom. [Dennis Brewer, during his public commentary, explained that for his companies, the timer would not click to a new day unless the car had been on the lot for at least eight hours.] What the city wants to do for people who are quickly in and out, is to reduce the cost for those people. That might mean that the costs for those people who don’t pick up their cars within the first eight hours could increase. As it’s currently written, there’d be no fee for the first eight hours, Crawford explained.

Washtenaw County sheriff Jerry Clayton was on hand at the Aug. 20 city council meeting to answer questions about the public towing contract.

Lumm expressed concern that the towing companies have been doing this for a number of years – operating under a certain number of assumptions. She saw the attempts to make things more user-friendly as a good thing. She noted that some other councilmembers had questions about towing distance. She asked if the council would be able to weigh in. Crawford explained that the request for proposals (RFP) from the county would be going out soon, and he could take input from them that night. One of the criteria that they’ve received input on is one that measures the distance of a storage facility from the center of the city, defined as the intersection of Main and Huron streets, with additional consideration given to a facility’s location on a mass transportation line.

Kunselman followed up on the question of how to ensure that a storage yard is on a mass transit line – he didn’t suppose the council would see the RFP before it went out. Crawford indicated that Washtenaw County would be issuing the RFP, but councilmembers could certainly see it if they wanted. Kunselman wanted to make sure that the city’s needs are being met with respect to the location of vehicle storage yards.

Sheriff Jerry Clayton was on hand to explain that some criteria could be added to the evaluation process that relates to being located on a mass transit line. He didn’t see that as an obstacle that can’t be overcome.

Lumm expressed appreciation for the hard work of staff, and said she felt that people who have their cars towed should pay the full cost of the service, but she appreciated efforts to lower the costs. Crawford stressed that the city and the county were working really well on this project.

Outcome: The council unanimously authorized contracting with Washtenaw County for public towing.

Ann Arbor Municipal Airport Study

Ann Arbor’s municipal airport was back on the city council’s Aug. 20 agenda, possibly the last time for a long while to come. That was expected, based on action taken earlier this year in April. The first of two agenda items on Aug. 20 related to the fifth of five different grant contracts for the completion of an environmental assessment (EA) for a possible 800-foot extension of the runway. The $42,500 in the grant consists of $40,375 in federal funds, $1,062 in state funds and a local match of $1,063.

A second airport-related item on the council’s agenda involved the use of those funds in the grant item to study the need to relocate federally owned navigational aids (ODAL lighting system) for the EA.

The city council had initially authorized funding for the first of the grant contracts related to the environmental assessment project at its Feb. 2, 2009 meeting. The assessment began on May 4, 2009. The process appeared to culminate in a public hearing in April 2010. [See Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Airport Study Gets Public Hearing."] In the interim, city councilmembers have removed the runway extension from the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP) each year they’ve been asked to give the CIP its annual approval.

However, when the Federal Aviation Administration responded to the EA draft report, that prompted communication between the city of Ann Arbor and the FAA in late 2011. And that back-and-forth has resulted in FAA requests for more work, which is meant to wrap up the environmental assessment.

The most recent previous council action occurred on April 16, 2012, when the council considered several resolutions in connection with the airport, including the fourth EA grant contract.

Ann Arbor Municipal Airport Study: Public Comment

Andrew McGill addressed the council on behalf of a grass roots citizens group – on the topic of the environmental assessment (EA) study for the airport runway extension. If approved, he said, it would bring the total price of the EA to $400,000 – $100,000 more than what the council had been told 3.5 years ago, when it approved the original EA grant. The EA has become a “money pit,” for taxpayers – federal, state and local, he said. Part of the measure would pay the FAA to review the final EA, and his group did not have a problem with that.

What McGill was concerned about was a provision in the grant regarding the navigational aids – or the approach lighting. He contended that this is not just a series in a long series of grants. Part the navigational aids study, he contended, would give the FAA a blank check from the city of Ann Arbor. A condition of that grant contract, he explained, is that Ann Arbor taxpayers must pay to move or replace the runway approach lighting, long into the future. Right now, he said, there’s no federal money for that, and he feared it could cost Ann Arbor taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. That’s different from all the previous airport grants, he told the council.

Ann Arbor Municipal Airport Study: Council Deliberations

In light of McGill’s public commentary, councilmembers had a number of questions for Matt Kulhanek, the Ann Arbor municipal airport manager. They were essentially trying to get an assurance from Kulhanek that their vote for the two items would not expose the city to financial risk.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) gets a briefing from Andrew McGill before the Aug. 20 council meeting.

Their questions drew out several salient points from Kulhanek. He stressed that the city was under no obligation to move the navigational lights. City attorney Stephen Postema added his view that there’s no additional obligation to the city other than what is specified in the grant agreement related to the study.

But Kulhanek did say, in response to a question from Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), that with each grant agreement the city approved, came with it an obligation to operate the airport for another 20 years.

Kulhanek explained the relationship between the two items on the agenda. One was a grant agreement. The second was the expenditure of the grant funds received under the first item.

Mayor John Hieftje was keen to get some kind of assurance that this would be the end of the EA grant process.

Responding to a question from Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Kulhanek indicated that the federal dollars derived from fees applied by the FAA to airline ticket prices. The local money derived from fuel fees and hanger rentals. He concluded that there were no general taxpayer dollars involved.

Responding to a question from Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Kulhanek estimated that there are a total of 75-100 jobs at the Ann Arbor municipal airport.

Responding to a question from Jane Lumm (Ward 2), Kulhanek estimate there are about 170 aircraft at the airport.

Outcome: On the resolution for the grant contract, the council approved it, with dissent from Jane Lumm (Ward 2), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1). The resolution to expend the grant funds was also approved, with Briere dropping from the dissenters.

Comcast Franchise Proposal

Comcast asked that the city council approve its application for a franchise within the city. An existing franchise agreement with the cable company runs through 2017.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) explained the implications of the vote on the Comcast franchise application.

It was important that the council act at its Aug. 20 meeting, because Comcast had sent an application dated July 17, which the city and Comcast agreed should count as “submitted” on July 23. And based on a recent ruling in the U.S. District Court on a matter involving the city of Detroit, the city needed to make a decision within 30 days of July 23.

A staff cover memo recommended rejecting the applications. Reasons include the fact that the existing franchise will remain in place through 2017. In addition, Comcast was taking the position that under a new agreement, it no longer had the obligation to allow the city to use parts of the firm’s institutional network that are essential to ensure public health and safety and other public services.

A third reason given for rejecting the application is that the new franchise agreement would grant use of the city right-of-way, and it’s not clear that continued public access to all public, educational, and governmental (PEG) channels would be ensured. And finally, according to the staff memo, Comcast’s application is not consistent with a formal renewal process – because it did not reasonably purport to meet local needs; and the application is not consistent with an informal process that would require the public to have an opportunity to comment.

Comcast Franchise Proposal: Council Deliberations

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) led off deliberations by urging support of the resolution to deny the application. He wanted to make clear that by voting for the resolution, the council would be voting to deny Comcast’s application. He noted that the resolution had the support of the city’s cable commission. He said the resolution would give the city greater bargaining power.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) stressed that voting to deny the application would preserve the city’s CTN (Community Television Network) channels – for the duration of the existing contract, which is 2017. She said those channels are very important in the city’s communication system.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) ventured that there’s a complicated governmental relationship. It’s under the current state act, assistant city attorney Abigail Elias explained, that Comcast has submitted its application. She stressed that the city’s contract continues for another five years, according to its term, so the application by Comcast is premature, she said.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to deny Comcast’s franchise application.

Bluffs Nature Area Rezoning

The council was asked to give final approval for the rezoning of two parcels acquired by the city of Ann Arbor to add to the Bluffs Nature Area at 1099 N. Main St., north of Sunset Road. The council had given its initial approval on July 16.

The steep slope of the Bluffs Nature Area as it rises from North Main Street is easy to discern in the two-foot counter topographic map.

The city planning commission had recommended the rezoning at its June 5, 2012 meeting.

A 1.12-acre parcel to the north of the Bluffs – connecting the existing parkland to Huron View Boulevard – is currently zoned O (office), and had been donated to the city by a nursing home near that site.

A 0.57-acre addition to the south connects the existing parkland to Sunset Road and is currently zoned R4C (multiple-family dwelling). It had been purchased by the city from the Elks lodge, using funds from the open space and parkland preservation millage. Both parcels were given approval to be rezoned as PL (public land).

The addition of the parcels will make entrance to the nature area easier. The current entrance off North Main Street is a challenge to pedestrians and cyclists, the road bears heavy traffic, and no sidewalks exist on the west side of the street where the nature area is located.

Bluffs Nature Area Rezoning: Public Hearing

Thomas Partridge described himself as a progressive Democrat. He criticized a lack of public access to facilities, buildings and land sites as required under the Americans with Disabilities Act. He called for using vacant land for affordable housing. He told the council that the rezoning should go back to the planning commission for further review.

Bluffs Nature Area Rezoning: Council Deliberations

During deliberations, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said it’s worth noting that Bluffs Nature area is peculiar in its terrain – it would be difficult to build on, which is partly why it’s a park and not a building site. It’s used heavily by people who navigate by foot or bicycle, and that’s part of its charm, she said.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to finalize the rezoning of the parcels being added to the Bluffs Nature Area.

Eden Court Rezoning

Nearly a year ago, at its Sept. 6, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council voted to appropriate $82,500 from its open space and parkland preservation millage to acquire the property at 5 W. Eden Court. The Eden Court property is immediately adjacent to the city’s Bryant Community Center.

At its Aug. 20 meeting, the council was asked to take another step toward conversion of the land to city property – by giving initial approval to zone the property as PL (public land). Because a rezoning is a change to the city’s ordinances, the change will require a second council vote after a public hearing at a future meeting.

The 2011 taxes on the property were estimated at $1,400, which will be eliminated from the city’s tax base. The parcel is expected to be used to expand the community center’s programming services. It could also be used in other ways in support of the city’s parks and recreation system.

During her staff report given to the city planning commission on June 5, 2012, city planner Alexis DiLeo said the property contains a single-family home that will be used by the community center to expand its operations. Eventually, the center would like to renovate the interior and build an addition to connect the two buildings, she said. The center is managed under contract with the nonprofit Community Action Network.

The planning commission had voted unanimously to recommend the rezoning at its June 5 meeting.

Outcome: Without discussion, the city council voted to give initial approval to the Eden Court rezoning.

Appointments: City Boards, Commissions

Nominations and appointments to city boards and commissions come at the end of every council meeting.

Appointments: DDA

Nominated at the previous council meeting for a renewal of their appointments to the board of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority were Roger Hewitt, Keith Orr and Sandi Smith. Smith also serves on the city council, representing Ward 1.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) pulled out Smith’s nomination for a separate vote so that he could vote against it. He felt it’s inappropriate to appoint a city councilmember to the DDA, referring to the situation as having a “double-agent” on the council. He objected to the idea that someone with dual service on the DDA and the council could vote on a contract between the DDA and the city – because they’d get to vote twice. He called the two offices incompatible and said it was unethical for someone to serve in both positions.

By way of background, the question of whether it’s possible to hold simultaneously the office of councilmember and DDA board member is addressed in Michigan’s Act 566 of 1978. At first glance, the state statute appears to rule it out. The kind of incompatibility of office that is not allowed is expressed in the definition of “incompatible office”:

(b) “Incompatible offices” means public offices held by a public official which, when the official is performing the duties of any of the public offices held by the official, results in any of the following with respect to those offices held:
(i) The subordination of 1 public office to another.
(ii) The supervision of 1 public office by another.
(iii) A breach of duty of public office.

A city councilmember “supervises” the office of a DDA board member in the sense that city councilmembers must confirm the appointments of DDA board members. However, there’s an explicit exception in the statute for a DDA [emphasis added]:

(3) Section 2 does not prohibit a public officer or public employee of a city, village, township, school district, community college district, or county from being appointed to and serving as a member of the board of a downtown development authority under 1975 PA 197, MCL 125.1651 to 125.1681;

As for Kunselman’s point about contracts, the state statute on conflict of interest plays out somewhat counterintuitively – explicitly providing an exemption for contracts that are between governmental entities.

This issue arose at a May 5, 2010 DDA board meeting, when Smith and mayor John Hieftje, who also serves on the DDA board, were set to vote on a revision to a contract between the DDA and the city. In analyzing their ability to vote, the DDA’s legal counsel, Jerry Lax, viewed it in terms of Act 317 of 1968 “Contracts of Public Servants with Public Entities.”

The statute prohibits public servants from soliciting contracts with entities by whom they are employed:

(2) Except as provided in section 3, a public servant shall not directly or indirectly solicit any contract between the public entity of which he or she is an officer or employee and any of the following: (a) Him or herself. (b) Any firm, meaning a co-partnership or other unincorporated association, of which he or she is a partner, member, or employee. [...]

However, Lax pointed out that there was a specific exemption for contracts between two public entities [emphasis added]:

15.324 Public servants; contracts excepted; violation as felony. Sec. 4. (1) The prohibitions of section 2 shall not apply to any of the following: (a) Contracts between public entities.

Later at the same May 5, 2010 DDA board meeting, the issue considered by the board was analyzed not as a contract, but as a grant, and Lax asked Hieftje and Smith to recuse themselves from the vote.

At the Aug. 20, 2012 city council meeting, when the council voted on Smith’s reappointment to the DDA, Jane Lumm (Ward 2) joined Kunselman in objecting. However, Lumm went to considerable lengths to stress that her vote was not about Smith individually. She noted she’d had the pleasure of serving on the DDA partnerships committee with Smith and she respected and admired Smith’s work. Her objection was about the philosophy of appointing a councilmember to the DDA board.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that when Smith ran for city council in 2008 for the first time, she was already serving on the DDA board. Smith has chosen not to run for re-election to the city council this year. Her appointment to the DDA board, Briere concluded, is independent of Smith’s position on council.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) ventured that perhaps the council could have a larger discussion at a different time. He described Smith as having been very fair about things, so he supported Smith’s appointment.

Hieftje indicated that he understood the argument that some were making, but felt it’s important to have someone on the DDA board who understands the big picture. He pointed out that Smith has just five more voting sessions as a city councilmember.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) noted that there are sitting city councilmembers on other boards and commissions, like the LDFA, which is a similar authority to the DDA. [The local development finance authority, however, has explicitly in its bylaws an appointment for an Ann Arbor city councilmember, so the two boards are not comparable in the way that Taylor was suggesting.]

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) pointed out that he also serves on the city planning commission as a voting member. [The slot filled by Derezinski is specifically designated for a city councilmember, so when Derezinski leaves office in November, having tallied fewer votes than Sally Petersen in the Aug. 7 Democratic primary, he will no longer be able to serve in that capacity on the planning commission. Derezinski's spot on the public art commission, however, is not a council-designated position, so he'd be able to continue to serve as a public art commissioner.]

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) felt that it’s good in general to have members of the city council as members of a larger board. It was not clear to him why the DDA board is different.

Kunselman pointed out that none of the other positions that people had mentioned would typically engage in contract negations with the city council. The mayor is authorized to sit on the DDA board under the enabling legislation for downtown development authorities, he allowed. But even there, it would be possible for the city administrator to fill that slot instead of the mayor.

Smith, for her part, took the comments from Kunselman with apparent good humor, telling him that if he’d like to change who sits on the DDA board, he should run for mayor.

Outcome: The council voted to reappoint Sandi Smith (Ward 1) to the DDA board, over the dissent of Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3). Other appointments were approved unanimously, without comment.

Appointments: Taxicab Board

Without discussion, an additional member was added to the Ann Arbor taxicab board – Michael Benson. The addition will allow the body to achieve a quorum of three out of five voting members for its meetings. It has not been able to do that since July 2012, when Tim Hull resigned after taking a job on the west coast.

Benson was added to the board in a one-step confirmation process. Ordinarily, nominations to a board or a commission are first announced at a city council meeting, then confirmed by a council vote at a subsequent meeting.

The taxicab board will now consist of Benson, city councilmember Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Tom Oldakowski, Tom Crawford (a non-voting ex officio member, as the city’s CFO) and Bill Clock (a non-voting ex officio member, as representative of the Ann Arbor police department).

The taxicab board is responsible for administering the city’s taxicab board ordinance. [.pdf of taxicab ordinance] Application forms to be appointed to city boards and commissions can be downloaded and returned to the mayor’s office for consideration.

Outcome: Michael Benson was unanimously appointed to the taxicab board.

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 council. And every meeting typically includes public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the agenda.

Comm/Comm: Pedestrian, Non-Motorized Issue

During the public commentary at the conclusion of the meeting, Kathy Griswold told the council she was there to address the most important activity for elected officials: the safety of citizens, especially children. She contended that the city was confusing an engineering problem with social policy. There are effective public policies like “share the road” or “complete streets,” but what we need is traffic engineering, she said. She called for the issue to be reviewed by independent engineers with the state. She asked the city attorney to consider the risk that’s being created when the city tells pedestrians that “they rule.” She warned against putting up posters telling children they have the right-of-way as pedestrians. She called that crazy, and called for an independent traffic engineer to evaluate the situation.

After thanking the council for his appointment to the taxicab board, Michael Benson related what he’d seen while attending a recent academic conference in Munich – bike lanes separated from the right-of-way. It was amazing to see the number of bicycles there, he said. Relating his experience in Ann Arbor – trying to cross Huron Street near the University of Michigan campus – he’d witnessed three near accidents, both as pedestrians and as a driver. He suggested looking into driver education.

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

Absent: Margie Teall.

Next council meeting: Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 301 E. Huron. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

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That item was approved by the council with dissent from Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1).

A second airport-related item on the council’s agenda involved the use of those funds in the grant item for study of the need to relocate federally owned navigational aids (ODAL lighting system) for the EA.

On April 16, 2012 the council had considered several resolutions in connection with Ann Arbor’s municipal airport, including the fourth grant contract.

The city council had initially authorized funding for the first of the grant contracts related to the environmental assessment project at its Feb. 2, 2009 meeting. The assessment began on May 4, 2009. The process appeared to culminate in a public hearing in April 2010. [See Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Airport Study Gets Public Hearing."] In the interim, city councilmembers have removed the runway extension from the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP) each year they’ve been asked to give the CIP its annual approval.

However, when the Federal Aviation Administration responded to the draft report, that prompted communication between the city of Ann Arbor and the FAA in late 2011. And that back-and-forth has resulted in FAA requests for more work, which is meant to wrap up the environmental assessment.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The original contract was approved by the city council on May 5, 2008 for $2.390 million, of which $1.101 million was for the local share. Because CMA failed to complete the project, Ann Arbor terminated the contract and CMA’s bonding company, North American Specialty Insurance Co., finished up the work. CMA filed suit against the city; and one of CMA’s subcontractors filed suit against CMA. Claims by CMA involved costs it incurred due to stop work orders issued by Pittsfield Township (where the airport is located) over jurisdictional questions between the city and the township.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Included in this year’s proposed CIP was a plan for a runway extension at the city’s municipal airport, an item that the council had voted to remove last year before last year’s CIP was finally adopted. This year, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) raised the same objection about the runway that he had voiced the previous year, and the council again removed the item by a narrow 6-5 vote.

The city’s planning commission recommended adoption of the CIP at its Jan. 4, 2011 meeting, when commissioners discussed in detail how the plan was developed and how public input was sought. [Previous Chronicle coverage of the possible airport runway extension: "Ann Arbor Airport Study Gets Public Hearing"]

This brief was filed from the boardroom in the Washtenaw County administration building, where the council is meeting due to renovations in the city hall building. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) listen to a presentation from the Committee for the Preservation of Community Quality at the city council's Sunday night caucus. (Photo by the writer.)

The Committee for the Preservation of Community Quality gave a presentation of their response to the recently conducted environmental assessment of a possible runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. And residents expressed concerns about the proposed Fuller Road Station and its location on city-owned land designated as a park in the city’s PROS (Parks and Recreation Open Space) Plan.

By the time questions about the possible upcoming budget amendments were raised, the number of councilmembers attending the caucus had dwindled from four to two. Mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) were there through most of the meeting, but it concluded with just Briere and Anglin.

And at the tail end of the gathering, the residents who attended weighed in on the nature of caucus itself. They offered their perceptions of the value of discussions among councilmembers at the caucus versus their own remarks. They’d prefer to see councilmembers in action and would be willing to trade some of their own time for watching the work of council.

The Nature of the Sunday Night Caucus

The relatively brief discussion of the function of caucus evolved from a conversation about possible amendments to the city’s budget that might be undertaken before it’s adopted. The public hearing on the budget is May 3, but it won’t be adopted until the council’s May 17 meeting. Asked if the council would be circulating proposed budget amendments beforehand – as they’d done with the A2D2 downtown rezoning project – Sabra Briere (Ward 1) replied that she did not foresee that happening.

There was, said Briere, no “leader of the Senate” for the council, so it was unlikely that the wisdom of the council would be pooled together beforehand for presentation at the May 17 meeting. And if the council were to do that, she cautioned, there would be a perception that they’d held closed meetings.

Asked if some of the discussion of amendments could be undertaken at a council working session, Briere noted that the topic of the working sessions is typically set by the city administrator. The next available slot for a working session is May 10. “What about the caucus itself?” Briere was asked. Briere observed that the open discussion among councilmembers at a caucus was limited by the number of councilmembers who attended. [Attendance by councilmembers other than Hieftje, Kunselman, Briere, and Anglin is a relative rarity. Some councilmembers have enjoyed perfect non-attendance at the caucus for nearly a year.]

Resident Ethel Potts observed that for councilmembers to have a discussion amongst themselves at the caucus on their upcoming business would be a challenge, because “we take up most of your time.” [The caucus has evolved to be, practically speaking, an additional opportunity for public commentary by residents, not the kind of event described on the city's website:  "... meetings of the mayor and members of council to discuss and gather information on issues that are or will be coming before them for consideration." Chronicle commentary: "Column on Caucus: Make It a Real Event"]

Asked if she’d be willing to trade some of the opportunity for the public to comment at the caucus for watching the council engage in discussion amongst themselves, Potts allowed that she would. The same three-minute time limit that is enforced for public commentary at regular council meetings would be fine, she said.

Budget Amendments, Cash from the DDA

As The Chronicle reported last week, the operations committee of the Downtown Development Authority will be bringing forward a resolution to the full DDA board at its Wednesday, May 5 meeting, calling for the DDA to pay the city $2 million. [Chronicle coverage: "DDA to Tie $2 million to Public Process"]

Up to now, there has been no formal request from the city council to the DDA for a payment in a specific dollar amount. There is also not a way to enforce, from the city’s side, the commitment to a future public process for negotiations between the city and the DDA, which the DDA’s draft resolution calls for. The last opportunity before the DDA’s May 5 meeting  for the council to pass a resolution of its own addressing the $2 million question would be at the council’s May 3 meeting.

Although there is currently one DDA-related item on the council’s May 3 agenda, it does not concern the $2 million payment, but rather the approval of the revised DDA bylaws, which the DDA board adopted at its Feb. 3, 2010 meeting.

Asked if they foresaw the possible $2 million from the DDA being used to avert layoffs in safety services – police and firefighters – both Briere and Anglin indicated they felt that was likely. Anglin said that cuts to police would make it a reactive rather than a proactive force. Briere noted that the city is not a business, but rather a service organization. The city employs people to provide services, she said. And because of that, to reduce costs meant looking at cutting people. But she said if police and firefighters were cut, residents would find that they were not happy with the level of service they were being provided.

So if the DDA board approves the $2 million payment, it appears there is at least some support on the council for using it to avert safety services layoffs.

Fuller Road Station

[For The Chronicle's most recent coverage of Fuller Road Station: "AATA Gets Its Fill of Fuller Road Station"]

Resident Nancy Kaplan expressed two points on the proposed Fuller Road Station. First, she contended that it’s “for sure city parkland.” To say that it’s already used for a parking lot because of a mistake in the past does not mean, she said, that the city should continue with that mistake. Second, she pointed out that the University of Michigan had not promised not to build the two parking structures on Wall Street in exchange for construction of the Fuller Road Station. Rather, she pointed to the memorandum of understanding, which says that the university will suspend those plans “at this time.”

Regarding the status of the land, the city’s transportation program manager, Eli Cooper, had pointed out at his recent presentation to the AATA board that the public land zoning designation has many possible uses, according to city code:

5:10.13. PL public land district.
(1) Intent. This district is designed to classify publicly-owned uses and land and permit the normal principal and incidental uses required to carry out governmental functions and services.
(2) Permitted principal uses.
(a) Outdoor public recreational uses, such as: playgrounds, playfields, golf courses, boating areas, fishing sites, camping sites, parkways and parks. No structure shall be erected or maintained upon dedicated park land which is not customarily incidental to the principal use of the land.
(b) Natural open space, such as: conservation lands, wildlife sanctuaries, forest preserves.
(c) Developed open space, such as: arboreta, botanical and zoological gardens.
(d) Educational services, such as: public primary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education.
(e) Cultural services, such as: museums and art galleries.
(f) Public-service institutions, such as: hospitals, sanatoria, homes for the elderly, children’s homes and correctional institutions.
(g) Essential services, buildings containing essential services and electrical substations.
(h) Municipal airports.
(i) Civic center.
(j) Government offices and courts.

The list of possible uses does not currently specify a transportation facility like the Fuller Road Station. However, at its May 4 meeting, the city’s planning commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on a text amendment to that section of the city code that would replace “municipal airports” with “transportation facilities.”

At the caucus, Kaplan went on to say that there were other ways for UM to address its parking needs. She pointed to the fact that the facility had been divided into two components – the train station and the parking deck with bus bays. The project currently has nothing to do with rail transportation, she said. [The project has been divided into those two components and staged chronologically, with the train station in a later phase.]

Briere told Kaplan that whatever happened with Fuller Road Station – whether it’s built or not – she hoped Kaplan would remember her passion. She said she wanted Kaplan to remember how she feels now, and that in case UM in the future decided to build parking decks on Wall Street, Kaplan would let her voice be heard. When UM wanted to build parking decks on Wall Street earlier, Briere said, Kaplan’s voice was silent.

Kaplan countered that just because she’d not spoken up against the proposed Wall Street parking decks did not mean that she could not speak up now. Briere clarified that she did not mean that Kaplan should be silent now, but that if UM resurrects its plans to build Wall Street parking structures, she hoped Kaplan would weigh in.

Kaplan then noted that the situation felt as if one part of the community was being pitted against another and that she felt like this happened fairly often. Briere allowed that Kaplan was “quite right” about that.

Mayor John Hieftje weighed by ticking through the standard talking points on the rationale for locating Fuller Road Station where it’s proposed: east-west rail is key to the region’s future success; the UM hospital employs 20,000 employees and has 2 million visitors per year; the site is consistent with a possible north-south intra-city connector being studied for the Plymouth-State corridor.

Hieftje indicated that Obama’s University of Michigan commencement address the previous day had provided an occasion for him to talk to U.S. Sen. Carl Levin and Congressman Sandy Levin about possible federal support for the Fuller Road Station. [The Levins were among a slew of dignitaries in attendance at UM commencement.]

Hieftje asked Kaplan where she would put parking for the university. She responded by saying that just because she objected to a parking deck at one location did not obligate her to provide the solution. Briere then drew out from Kaplan that Kaplan objected to a parking deck at the Fuller Road location, and also objected to a train station there, though Kaplan said she supported the idea of rail transportation.

In light of Kaplan’s objections to a train station at that location, Briere encouraged Kaplan to think about where she would put a train station, working under the relevant constraints. Specifically, it would need to be next to the railroad track, and the land would need to be already city-owned or else acquired. Briere told Kaplan she was not asking her to solve the problem, but rather just asking her to think about it.

Asked if there was some possibility of putting a ballot question before voters in November on the sale of the land where the Fuller Road Station is proposed, Briere figured that would not happen. Once a proposal to sell land was put on the ballot, she said, that would be seen as a step away from the assurances that many councilmembers have given over the years that they were not thinking of selling parkland.

Briere then recounted some to the history of the charter amendment passed in 2008 requiring a vote of residents before any parkland could be sold. She noted that former councilmember Bob Johnson, who “sat in this chair before me” representing Ward 1, had been the father of the “we-will-not-sell amendment.” And Johnson – who was no longer on the city council, but provided advice to Briere on the wording of the amendment – had said that it should not include leasing. That is, leasing without a voter referendum would be allowed.

Airport Runway Extension

The caucus was led off by a multi-person presentation by the Committee for the Preservation of Community Quality. The committee gave their response to the environmental assessment (EA) recently completed on a proposed runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. [Chronicle coverage of the public hearing on the EA: "Ann Arbor Airport Study Gets Public Hearing"] Kathe Wunderlich introduced the group.

Barbara Perkins led off by saying that she hadn’t attended a caucus in a long time, but she’d been active in local politics 40 years ago, when she first moved to Ann Arbor and when the airport runway was an issue. She said she never thought she’d have to be back in the 21st century to argue against the extension again.

Perkins called the airport layout plan a “disaster” and criticized the EA for failure to address issues like the potential impact on the city’s water supply. She said that after passage of the airport layout plan in 2007, the city staff had been called upon to gather public input, but that had not happened. She said that she’d requested to meet with her Ward 4 city council representatives [Marcia Higgins and Margie Teall] on the issue and that they’d arranged to meet, but the chair and the vice-chair of the city’s airport advisory committee had attended, and her city council representatives had left, saying,”These gentlemen will answer your questions.”

The bulk of the presentation was delivered by Andrew McGill, based on a spiral-bound 60-page document that was the group’s formal response to the Michigan Dept. of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration on the EA.

Key points presented by McGill from the report:

I. The project’s stated purpose and need is unsupported by the evidence.
A. The EA supports neither the problem it aims to solve nor its purported solution.
B. The EA incorrectly relies on total annual operations to support the proposed runway extension.
C. Shifting Runway 6/24 150 feet to the southwest will not achieve an additional margin of safety.
D. The EA falsely intends to convey rural setting in a densely populated area.

II. The EA does not consider all reasonable alternatives.

III. The EA fails to adequately analyze or disclose the project’s air quality impacts where it fails to address or determine the project’s Clean Air Act conformity.
A. The EA fails to establish that the project is exempt.
B. The EA fails to establish that the project is presumed to conform.
C. The EA fails to establish the project’s conformity status.

IV. The EA fails to account for wells on airport property.

V. The EA fails to analyze the presence of hazardous wildlife near the airport and fails to present any mandatory mitigation measures.

VI. The EA does not acknowledge or analyze the project’s manifest growth-inducing impacts.

VII. Political jurisdictions that proposed action or alternatives would impact.

VIII. Noise modeling for the project failed to include increased jet aircraft and nighttime operations in developing noise contours.

IX. Procedural justice

Key among the many conclusions presented by McGill was that there is a habitat at the airport  conducive to Canada geese – which are numerous enough to warrant goose-crossing signs on nearby roads. The FAA requires appropriate mitigating measures if a habitat that could cause movements of hazardous wildlife (Canada geese) into the approach and departure airspace is located within five miles of the airport. The cost of those mitigating measures, McGill felt, would be prohibitive.

Sol Castell, a commercial airline pilot, addressed the issue of whether a longer runway would mean that heavier aircraft could take off and land there. For him as a pilot, he said, it was clear: a longer runway allows heavier aircraft. He then cited a landing-distance chart showing that prescribed landing distances increase with increased weight.

As a part of his recurrent pilot training, Castell said, they distiguish between managing threats and managing errors. Managing errors, he said, is managing the past. You manage the future by managing threats. The threat of heavier aircraft flying at low altitudes over residential areas, he said, could be eliminated by not extending the runway. The idea that runway overruns could be addressed by a runway extension was, said Castell, “managing the past.” The accident reports for the runway overruns, said Castell, showed that the incidents were attributable to pilot error in failing to control the direction of the aircraft.

There is no action currently before the city council – or scheduled to come before the council – regarding the proposed runway extension. The Committee for the Preservation of Community Quality does not expect any action to be brought to the council, because they see the EA as flawed in so many ways.

Jon Von Duinen, of the consulting firm URS, points to the "run up" area which would be located at the spot where the existing runway ends. Under the recommended option in the environmental assessment, this would put the "run up" area 950 feet from the end of the extended runway. The "run up" area is where aircraft bring their engines up to full power to test that everything is in working order. (Photos by the writer.)

And on Wednesday evening, from 4-7 p.m. at Cobblestone Farm, a combination of a dozen government officials and consultants held an open-house style public hearing on the draft report of that environmental assessment.

At any given time, during the hour The Chronicle spent at the public hearing, the hosts outnumbered visitors. In a phone interview the following day, Molly Lamrouex – with the aeronautics division of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) – told The Chronicle that around 20 people had filtered through Cobblestone Farm over the three-hour period.

The time for submission of written comments on the environmental assessment has been extended from April 12 to April 19 at 5 p.m. Emails can be sent to lamrouexm@michigan.gov.

In the context of the controversy about the runway extension – which has played out at Ann Arbor city council meetings over the course of the last year – the public hearing was somewhat subdued.

Who We Met

On arrival outside the barn, The Chronicle met Rick Olson, who had already touched base inside at the open house and was heading for the parking lot where his pickup truck was parked. The truck had a large campaign sign in the bed – Olson is a Republican candidate for state representative in the 55th district.

Olson stopped to chat with Andrew McGill, who was also headed to the public hearing. McGill has spoken against the proposed runway extension at multiple city council meetings over the last year.

After spending a bit over an hour at the open house, The Chronicle left to find a small cluster of people mingling outside in the warm breezy evening air. Among them was Kathe Wunderlich, with the Committee for Preserving Community Quality, which can be considered organized opposition to the runway extension. She was talking with Barbara Perkins, who served three three-year terms on the city’s airport advisory committee – she was first appointed by Mayor Albert H. Wheeler, who served from 1975-78.

Perkins told The Chronicle that she lived in the Georgetown area, which meant that the flight path for aircraft using the Ann Arbor municipal airport went right over her neighborhood. She recalled how the proposed airport runway extension had been a controversial issue dating back to the 1970s.

Perkins said she didn’t consider the open house format to be a proper public hearing – there was no opportunity to hold forth publicly. [Verbal comments were taken in a 1-1 session with a court reporter.] In past decades, Perkins said, over a hundred people had shown up and spoken about the runway extension at public hearings in the city hall chambers.

Who We Missed

Perkins and Wunderlich both had words of praise for current county commissioner and Ann Arbor resident Leah Gunn, who has opposed the possible airport extension over the decades. Email exchanges between Margie Teall (Ward 4) and then councilmember Leigh Greden at the city council’s March 16, 2009 meeting show that Gunn’s current opposition to the proposed runway extension is considered significant by Teall:

——————–
From: Leah Gunn
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 3:31 PM
To: Hieftje, John; Briere, Sabra; Smith, Sandi; Rapundalo, Stephen; Derezinski, Tony; Greden, Leigh; Taylor, Christopher; Teall, Margie; Higgins, Marcia; Higgins, Marcia; Anglin, Mike; Hohnke, Carsten
Subject: airport expansion

I have placed in your mailboxes a memo from me concerning airport expansion. I have also attached it here for your convenience, without the supporting newspaper articles.
You need to look VERY carefully at what you are doing, or you may be stuck paying for something for the next twenty years that you will have trouble justifying. There has never been a good time to lengthen the runway, and I believe that you have been given misleading information by certain advocates.

…

Leah

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:26 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: FW: airport expansion

What do you think? She is going to be very upset with Marcia and me. (She already is.)

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:28 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject: RE: airport expansion

I sent it to Mark. I think the bottom line is bigger planes: can they come or not? If so, we’ve got a problem. If not, this entire organized opposition campaign is nothing but hot air.

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:37 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: RE: airport expansion

And I would say nothing but hot air, except for Leah and Bob Gunn…that worries me more.

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:47 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject: RE: airport expansion

Leah’s email contained the boilerplate language. If she’s right, they’re all right. If she’s wrong, they’re all wrong.

——————–
From: Teall, Margie
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:56 PM
To: Greden, Leigh
Subject: RE: airport expansion

I don’t think it will matter to her.

——————–
From: Greden, Leigh
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2009 7:58 PM
To: Teall, Margie
Subject:RE: airport expansion

Probably right, but at least we can look consistent and appropriate.

It turns out that Gunn also attended the March 31, 2010 open house – The Chronicle left just before she arrived. In a follow-up email, Gunn concurred with Perkins’ view of the public hearing’s open house format, calling it a “sham.”

Open House Format for Public Hearing

The open house format at Cobblestone Farm consisted of a series of posters on easels positioned on the perimeter of the room, with government officials and consultants scattered throughout, available to introduce the content of the posters to visitors and to answer questions. Comment boxes were available for written statements. A court reporter was available to take down spoken comments. The criticism  about the format was based on the idea that there was not an opportunity for people to deliver remarks to an assembled public audience.

Comment box at the March 31 open house at Cobblestone Farm.

Molly Lamrouex, with the aeronautics division of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), told The Chronicle that the format was a standard one, which had been used for the six years she’d been at that job. The Federal Aviation Administration had concurred with the open house format for that public hearing, she said. She added that the citizens advisory committee (CAC), which was formed as part of the process for the environmental assessment, had not raised objections to that format.

Voices among members of the  public in support of the runway extension over the last year have been somewhat rare, but not completely absent. One possible explanation is that people who support the extension are not entirely comfortable speaking publicly in a room filled with organized opposition.

In that context, Andrew McGill – part of the organized opposition – discussed with The Chronicle the public hearing format. McGill allowed that it could be daunting to speak in a room filled with other speakers who mostly disagree with your position. This is part of the rationale for a format that allows people to convey their views essentially in private to a court reporter. He also agreed people should be able to express their point of view without any kind of harassment. He concluded that both alternatives should be offered – a chance to speak to a public audience, as well as an opportunity to convey a point of view more privately.

The written comment submission form offered at the Cobblestone Farm public hearing specifies that name and address are not required.

The Draft Report

Much of the basic material in the draft report was presented in poster format at the open house.

Build Alternatives: No Build

Jon Von Duinen, of the consulting firm URS, walked The Chronicle through the basics of the four “build alternatives,” displayed on two posters. The “no build” alternative is one that would not change anything. On that scenario, there’s no environmental impact to assess. However, leaving the runway at its current length of 3,500 feet – instead of lengthening it to 4,300 feet – would not meet the need that has been identified in the draft environmental assessment report:

The existing runway length does not allow for the critical aircraft (B-II) to operate at their design capabilities without weight restrictions.

Here, “critical aircraft” is a technical term, which does not mean, as the phrase might suggest, “most important airplane.” The term refers to the most demanding kind of aircraft that regularly uses the airport. And “regularly use” means that it’s a kind of aircraft that is expected to have at least 500 operations (takeoffs and landings) at the airport per year.

For the Ann Arbor airport, the “critical aircraft” was determined to be a B-II. From the draft environmental assessment report:

A recent Airport User Survey has confirmed that the critical aircraft classification for  ARB is “B-II Small Aircraft” (MDOT, 2009). Aircraft in this category have runway  approach speeds between 91 and 120 knots, wingspans between 49- and 79-feet, and  maximum certificated takeoff weights of 12,500 lbs or less.

In the appendices to the environmental assessment, the case is laid out for consideration of B-II as the critical aircraft for Ann Arbor’s airport. It’s based on data from 2007 that is a combination of FlightAware information, showing 507 total operations of B-II aircraft, plus information from other sources that brings the total to 760. Those other sources include AvFuel, an Ann Arbor company that bases a Citation 560 Excel jet at the airport, and reported 211 operations in 2007.

Screen shot of FlightAware realtime flight tracking. KARB is the Ann Arbor municipal airport. (Image links to live tracking site.)

Overall, the number of operations across all aircraft types at the Ann Arbor airport has shown a decline over the last two decades. [FAA operations data is available online.]

From 1991-2001, there were at least 100,000 operations at the airport in every year except for 1996, when the figure dipped to 99,590. Since 2001, the number has declined most years, and by 2007 the total number of operations had dropped to 72,853. By 2009 it had further dropped to 57,004, a 22% decrease over the most recent two-year span.

If the 22% decrease is applied to the 760 operations of B-II aircraft in 2007 and projected to 2009 data, it would translate to 585 operations, which still exceeds the minimum FAA threshold of 500 to consider B-II aircraft to be the “critical aircraft.”

The FAA circular on recommended runway lengths for different kind of aircraft provides guidance based on altitude of the airport and temperatures during the hottest period of the year. Ann Arbor is 829 feet above sea level and has average July temperature of  83 degrees.

According a FAQ provided on the city of Ann Arbor website, the increase in runway length to 4,300 feet would not allow larger kinds of aircraft to use the airport than already do – an increase to 5,000 feet would be necessary for that. But the increase to 4,300 feet would allow the kinds of aircraft currently using the Ann Arbor airport to operate without weight restrictions.

Allowing the current kinds of aircraft to operate there without weight restrictions would, according to the report, lead to an increase in the amount of interstate commerce to the Ann Arbor area.

Although improvements in safety are cited throughout the report as a benefit to the runway extension, there is not a safety finding that is driving a requirement that the runway be extended. From the report:

Although justification for the proposed project has been substantiated according to current MDOT and FAA standards associated with runway length recommendations, neither agency requires that the runway be extended. It is ultimately – and entirely – the decision of the city of Ann Arbor whether to not to proceed with the development of the project.

Build Alternative: Build 1, 2 and 3

The first alternative considered in the environmental assessment was one in which the runway was rotated 5 degrees counterclockwise, with an 800-foot extension to the southwest. The idea behind Build 1, explained Von Duinen, was to give as much consideration as aeronautically possible to the subdivision west of Lohr Road.

In terms of the environmental impact, that’s an alternative that would have required clearing 15 acres of trees, and the enclosure of 660 additional feet of a stream inside a pipe. It would have also had an impact on 1.3 acres of wetland, and required the removal of three buildings. Due to those impacts, that alternative was not recommended.

Jon Von Duinen, points out the location of the control tower at the Ann Arbor municipal airport.

Build 2, said Von Duinen, was the alternative that was the simplest to implement from a construction point of view. It entailed adding 800 feet to the southwest end of the runway, but leaving the angle of the runway the same. That alternative was rejected on the basis of its failure to meet the purpose and need of the project.

Build 2 left two issues unaddressed. One is the lack of a sightline between the control tower and the northeast end of the runway. The second unaddressed issue is the short distance between the northeast end of the runway and State Street [which becomes State Road], running north-south on the east side of the airport property. The current configuration meets requirements, but if State Road were to be widened, as suggested in a 2006 State Road corridor study, the end of the runway would be too close to the road to provide adequate height clearance between road traffic and aircraft.

Build 3, which is the preferred alternative in the report, would address the end-of-runway-control-tower sightline issue by moving the northeast end of the runway 150 feet to the southwest. This would also address the State Road issue.

However, Build 3 requires that the effective 150-foot shortening of the northeast end of the runway be compensated by adding 950 feet – not just 800 feet – to the southwest end of the runway.

If a “run up” area on the Build 3 scenario were built at the end of the newly extended runway, it would be that much closer to the residential subdivision on the west side of Lohr Road. [The "run up" area is where aircraft bring their engines up to full power to test that everything is in working order.] So the “run up” area in Build 3 is proposed not at the end of the new, extended runway, but rather at the spot where the existing runway ends – to reduce the potential impact of noise on the surrounding area.

Noise

The noise analysis for the study was performed by Daniel Botto of URS, who works out of Florida. Chatting with The Chronicle, he allowed that he enjoyed his four days in Ann Arbor working on the project, but that he was not tempted to relocate here from Tampa.

Botto said his work depends on computer modeling of noise data for a particular airport configuration.  The information loaded into the model includes recorded noise data from various kinds of aircraft, runway locations and angles, flight tracks of aircraft, and average daily use by different kinds of aircraft. Botto indicated that for busier airports, the flight track data would be drawn from radar records, but for the Ann Arbor study, the flight tracks were estimated and then confirmed for general accuracy by control tower staff in Ann Arbor.

The relevant statistic for noise modeling around airports is the day-night average sound level (DNL). It’s described this way in the draft environmental assessment:

DNL is a 24-hour time-weighted-average noise metric expressed in A-weighted decibels (dBA) that accounts for the noise levels of all individual aircraft events, the number of times those events occur, and the time of day which they occur. In order to represent the added intrusiveness of sounds occurring during nighttime hours (10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.), DNL penalizes, or weights, events occurring during the nighttime periods by 10 dBA. This is due to the increased sensitivity to noise during normal sleeping hours and because ambient (without aircraft) sound levels during nighttime are typically about 10 dB lower than during daytime hours.

The conclusion of the environmental assessment was that the Build 3 alternative would not cause the levels above the threshold of 65 DNL to extend beyond the airport property.

Birds

At its March 15, 2010 meeting, the city council authorized payment for the environmental assessment, and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked for clarification from Ann Arbor airport manager Andrew Kulhanek about the absence of Canadian Canada geese in the report – an issue that had been raised by Andrew McGill during public commentary. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) drew out the fact that the report does not seek to inventory all the birds in the vicinity of the airport, but rather to identify which, if any, endangered species of birds are in the vicinity of the airport.

At the Cobblestone Farm public hearing, MDOT’s Molly Lamrouex confirmed that understanding. The section of the report that addresses endangered species of birds identifies two species:

Henslow’s sparrow, state endangered, (Ammodramus henslowii) and Grasshopper sparrow, state special concern, (Ammodramus savannarum) are known to occur on or in the vicinity of the area. The presence of these species has been confirmed by the Audubon Society during their annual counts at ARB over the last three years.

The Build 3 alternative, recommended in the report, is not projected to have a negative impact on the two species:

ARB revises the boundaries of this mowing annually with the Audubon Society, based on their most current bird count data. There would be no grading within agreed upon restricted mowing areas during the breeding season for either species which extends through late August for Henslow’s sparrow and mid-July for Grasshopper sparrow.

However, there are other parts of the report that include field observations of various wildlife that are not endangered species. And it’s these field observations that McGill points to when questioning why Canada geese are not mentioned in the report, when they are prevalent enough to warrant goose-crossing signs on some of the roads surrounding the airport. From the report’s description of “Biotic Communities”:

Several examples of wildlife were observed, including robins (Turdus migratorius), goldfinch (Carduelis tistis), purple martins (Progyne subis), killdeer (Charadrius viciferus), and a mating pair of redtail hawks (Buteo jamaicensis). Other observations include evidence of rodent tunneling (field mice or voles) and pheasants (Phasianus colchicus) that were heard calling. Airport staff stated that coyote (Canis latrans) and white tail deer (Odocoileus virginianus) have been observed on the airport property as well as wild turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo). A comprehensive list of all the bird species observed by the Audubon Society at ARB is included in Appendix F.

The Audubon Society observed-species list in the appendix, which includes several common varieties of birds – like the American robin – does not include Canada geese.

Next Steps

Written comment on the draft environmental assessment can be submitted through April 19 to:

Molly Lamrouex
Airports Division
MDOT Bureau of Aeronautics and Freight Services
2700 Port Lansing Road
Lansing, MI 48906
lamrouexm@michigan.gov
FAX: 517-886-0366

Once all the comments from the public have been compiled, the issues raised in that commentary will be evaluated and a response to those issues will be prepared. After review of the response to comments and the draft report are evaluated by the FAA and MDOT, the final environmental assessment can be printed.

The final assessment will be distributed to all the various resource agencies like the state Department of Natural Resources and Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All the surrounding local municipalities will also receive a copy.

The creation of the final environmental assessment does not clear the actual project for takeoff. The project itself would be subject to authorization by the Ann Arbor city council, which just recently, at its Feb 1, 2010 meeting, struck the airport runway extension from the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP). The council adopted the CIP, without the runway extension, at its Feb. 16, 2010 meeting.

Sol Castell was asked to the podium by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) to give an alternate view on the need for a runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. The topic came up during discussion of the city's capital improvements plan, which wound up being postponed. (Photos by the writer.)

But trains weren’t the only transit-related thread. The city’s bicycle ordinances were updated after having been postponed for a couple of meetings, and a revision to the city’s bicycle registration procedure was tabled and now appears to be on indefinite hold.

The council also approved on first reading a revision to its taxicab ordinance, designed to enforce expectations of larger cab companies.

Also related to transportation was discussion of an item in the capital improvements plan (CIP) for a runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. After Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) got his colleagues’ support to amend the CIP to delete the item, the council then voted, with some grumbles of dissent, to postpone consideration of the CIP.

Times and dates for upcoming meetings on the budget were also reviewed, with city administrator Roger Fraser telling councilmembers that the list of possible areas for cuts that city staff had generated were not the only items that could be considered. He challenged councilmembers to come up with their own ideas as well. The council received specific recommendations for budget strategies for the senior center and Mack Pool.

In Part I of the report, we restrict our focus to transportation and budget issues. In Part II, we’ll cover land use issues – including the resolution on 415 W. Washington, which we previewed in our report on the Sunday night caucus, plus a postponement on a greenbelt acquisition.

We begin this portion of the report with some public commentary on Ann Arbor’s bus system.

Buses

Jim Mogensen: During public commentary reserved time at the beginning of the meeting, Jim Mogensen asked why we keep encouraging sprawl.

He alluded to a photo of Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber in the newspaper, standing in Depot Town next to the rail station. Mogensen contended that when the 21-month purchase-of-service agreement between the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority and Ypsilanti runs out, Ypsilanti would lose its bus service, despite the planned east-west commuter rail service. [See Chronicle coverage: "Buses for Ypsi and a budget for AATA"] Why? Because Ypsilanti is not a part of anybody’s plan, Mogensen contended. “Not even a lunch-counter moment would change it,” he said.

Mogensen noted that since the new park-and-ride lot at Plymouth Road and US-23 had opened, bus service on the Green-Baxter bus line had been reduced to once an hour. Further, he said there was an asterisk (*) indicating that it was only available when the University of Michigan was in session. What other urban service would need to be reallocated, Mogensen wondered, in order to make the Fuller Road transit station service work? The city is encouraging people to live in the suburbs, Mogensen said, and our community continues to chip away at the benefits that exist in urban areas. It’s going to cause us trouble, he concluded, and it’s wrong.

Tim Hull: During the time for public commentary at the end of the meeting, Tim Hull, a masters student at the University of Michigan, spoke on the issue of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. Hull said he hoped to stay in Ann Arbor after graduating, and described the AATA’s service as “pretty good, but falls short on weekends and at night.” He criticized service changes for the bus system as being made largely by bureaucrats. He asked that in future appointments to the AATA board, consideration be given to people who actually ride the bus. Currently AATA board members did not ride the bus – he compared it to executives at Ford Motor Co. driving Toyotas instead.

Bicycles

A substantial revision to the city’s bicycling ordinances had been postponed from the previous meeting amid concerns expressed by Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) that the relevant laws that would now apply from the Michigan Vehicle Code were not explicitly referenced in Ann Arbor’s city code. [See previous Chronicle coverage of the Jan. 19, 2010 city council meeting, and the Jan. 4, 2010 city council meeting.]

From left: Tom Crawford, the city's chief financial officer, and Eli Cooper, the city's transportation program manager.

At Monday’s meeting, city attorney Stephen Postema clarified that the best way to present the information was to link to the Michigan Vehicle Code, and in that way there would be no lag time between the updating of the city’s code, if the state statute were to be changed.

Also postponed from a previous meeting had been a revision to the city’s procedure for registering bicycles.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) reported that some additional data called the actual value of the registration program into some question, and he convinced his colleagues to table the measure. The additional information was this: From September of 2007 to the present, 39 stolen bikes had been recovered and returned to their owners – but in none of those cases had the bicycle registration program been instrumental. The return of those bicycles had been the result, Hohnke reported, of regular police work. There was also some question in the bicycling community, Hohnke said, of the perceived value of registering one’s bicycle. He wondered if it was not simply a holdover from years gone by.

Outcome: The revision to the bicycle ordinances (which repealed city ordinances in favor of allowing the prevailing Michigan Vehicle Code to apply) was approved on second reading. Bicycle registration procedures were tabled.

Taxicabs

The city revised its taxicab ordinance with an eye towards making sure that basic taxi service would continue to be provided. The city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, explained that the ordinance revision was meant to guard against the possibility that a large company could come in and provide service only on the most profitable routes – for example, from the city to the airport – and put smaller companies out of business that provided a full range of services within the city.

What the ordinance does, Crawford explained, was require that large companies – operating more than 10 cabs – be full-service. Here, “full service” means that service needs to be provided 24 hours round-the-clock, that a lost-and-found be available, and that it be possible to file a complaint with someone other than the driver during regular business hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Crawford said that the new ordinance would affect three or four companies.

Outcome: The taxicab ordinance was unanimously approved on its first reading.

East-West Commuter Rail

A presentation to the council at the start of the meeting on the east-west commuter rail project was followed up by discussion by councilmembers

East-West Commuter Rail: Presentation

Carmine Polombo, transportation planner with the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG), gave the council a presentation on proposed commuter rail service between Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Polombo pointed the council to SEMCOG’s website, where monthly updates on the east-west Detroit-to-Ann Arbor commuter rail project could be found. He described the project as a partnership among various government entities including SEMCOG, the Michigan Department of Transportation and the governor’s office. Certain elements of the project had started to become concrete, he reported, which include the leasing of locomotives and the award of a contract to refurbish nine train cars for the east-west project, plus an additional six cars for WALLY – a separate north-south commuter rail project. Refurbished cars, Polombo said, would start rolling off the line by June of this year: “That’s a go,” he said.

Two additional stations, he reported, would need to be constructed – one in Depot Town in Ypsilanti, and the other in Westland. Of the six environmental documents required by the Federal Railroad Administration, Polombo reported that four had been completed. He described how computer simulations that had been run – in order to minimize potential conflicts between the commuter service and other existing service – had shown that even a five-minute window adjusted in one direction or another could mean the difference between needing to add more track and not.

He stressed the importance of the need to coordinate with other transit agencies so that passengers could get access to the stations, and from the stations to their final destination. He described it as needing to make sure that we can “feed this beast.” The linchpin to the system, he said, is in Detroit – there is a section of track that goes from two tracks down to one track, and back to two tracks again – that would need around $12 million worth of improvements, he said.

As far as next steps, he said, finding more money to fund the project was crucial. The Federal Railroad Administration had awarded through the stimulus package some money to construct two new stations. But Polombo said that they were “sort of hoping for a few more dollars.” They would, therefore, be exploring plans B, C, D, and F. He alluded to the federal TIGER grants (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) that involved the awarding of $1.5 billion nationally – announcement of those grants is expected by Feb. 14. In addition, he said they were preparing for the possibility of yet another stimulus package being offered by the federal government.

They have secured a request for proposals to select an operator for the service – the contract cannot just be given to Amtrak, he said. Because of the federal dollars being used, a bidding process for the service was necessary. Later, in response to questions from council members, Polombo said that the Detroit railroads might have issues if anyone other than Amtrak were awarded the contract to operate the service.

East-West Commuter Rail: Deliberations

Mayor John Hieftje led off conversation among councilmembers by stating that he had been receiving regular updates from SEMCOG. Hieftje then prodded Polombo to express some confidence that the service would actually begin this year. Polombo confirmed that something would be rolling, but seemed interested in lowering expectations of what the early service might look like.

Polombo described it as involving individual day trips – University of Michigan football games, events like Restaurant Week in Ann Arbor, Thanksgiving day, or trips to the Henry Ford Museum. Polombo also stressed that the Norfolk Southern part of the route needs track work. What is really important, Polombo said, is reliable, safe, on-time service.

Hieftje then stated that he had been part of those conversations for a long time, whereas some people have not. Hieftje said he appreciated the idea that the strategy would be to grow into the service, not start it all at once.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked about a $3.5 million federal earmark for the project, which required a 20% match. She asked where the match would come from. Polombo explained that one possibility would be that the Michigan Department of Transportation would provide cash for the match – that would be the best possible situation. However, another strategy would be to use a “soft match” – the construction of stations in Westland and Ypsilanti, which would not be done with federal funds, could be used as soft match money.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked about some preliminary awards for high-speed rail links that had recently gone to other parts of the country – were we now excluded? Polombo said no, there was still a possibility for that.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) asked if the proposed Fuller Road transit station would qualify as a soft match. Polombo’s answer was that the station had been submitted as part of a TIGER grant and that it would all depend on the timing. The point is, Polombo said, we have a station now [the Amtrak station], we can use it, and make it work. If the new station were to be built, he said, the service can be made to work there, too.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked Polombo about the challenge of getting people the last mile to their destination – Ann Arbor had a plan that involved construction of the Fuller Road station. What are other communities doing, wondered Hohnke. Polombo described how SMART, the metro Detroit transit agency, was mapping their services – in Dearborn for example.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) asked what discussions with Amtrak had been like. Polombo said that Amtrak had been a partner from the start of the project and that they would like to be a service provider for the project. But because the project was using a substantial number of federal dollars, the contract for operation of the service would need to be bid out. One potential problem, he said, was that the Detroit railroads say that if the service provider is not Amtrak, they might have a problem.

Airport Runway Extension and the CIP

Consideration of the city’s capital improvements plan (CIP) generated much discussion about one item in the plan – a project to extend the runway at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. Discussion of that project resulted in postponement of the plan, and elicited discussion among councilmembers about the role of the CIP.

Public Comment

Andrew McGill: During public commentary reserved time at the start of the meeting, Andrew McGill urged the council to act against the $37,250 item in the capital improvements plan (CIP), which represented the city’s portion for funding a runway extension at the Ann Arbor municipal airport. He told the council that they had previously said they had approved only an environmental assessment, and were not considering a runway extension.

McGill also reminded them that some of their recent election campaigns had relied on stated opposition to a runway extension. If they were neither considering such an extension and would oppose one if it were considered, McGill wondered why the money was included in the capital improvements plan to add 800 feet to the runway, making it 4,300 feet long.

Council Deliberations on CIP

The city’s capital improvements plan had been postponed from consideration at the council’s previous meeting. Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) led off deliberations on Monday by proposing an amendment that deleted the 800-foot runway extension project at the city’s municipal airport.

After Kunselman had made the proposal, mayor John Hieftje remarked that he had been planning to ask someone to move that amendment from the floor.

In response to a request from Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), Cresson Slotten, who’s a senior project manager with the city, described what had been approved and programmed with respect to the municipal airport runway.

In the last capital improvements plan, Slotten said, the environmental assessment had been included as part of an airport layout plan – which he described as similar to other master plans that the city used, like the central area plan. The environmental assessment, he reported, has begun. Part two of the program, he said, would be to move forward with the runway extension, if the environmental assessment indicated it would be appropriate. And that is why the project is in the 2011 CIP. Slotten clarified for Derezinski that the project was for implementation and not merely for a study.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) weighed in by saying that the capital improvements plan is a set of placeholders – it’s a needs analysis, and does not compel the city to follow through on anything in the plan. Slotten confirmed that Rapundalo’s understanding of the CIP was correct.

Mark Perry, chair of the airport advisory committee, was asked to explain what exactly had been approved to date. Perry said that in January of 2007, the city council adopted the airport layout plan. Perry described three problems that the airport layout plan was meant to correct: (i) problems with the “Obstacle Clearance Surface” [cf. FAA Part 77] associated with the possible widening of State Street, which runs north-south on the east side of the airport, (ii) line-of-sight issues between the control tower and one of the runways, and (iii) an abnormal number of runway overruns.

On the question of runway overruns, five had been identified in FAA records, Perry said, but further investigation had revealed that there had actually been 11. That compared with only one other such incident in all of the rest of Michigan. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) elicited the fact that the overrun incidents had happened over the period from 1998-2008.

Hieftje asked Slotten if there would be a problem to put the project back into the CIP after deleting it. Slotten said it be possible – it would depend on the proper needs assessment. Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) seemed somewhat surprised that the $37,000 would be able to address all three of the problems identified, saying “it seems like a bigger project.” It was clarified that this was only the city’s portion of the project, which amounted to 2.5% of the whole project. The rest would be funded by the state and the FAA.

In light of the complexity of the problem, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) suggested the possibility of postponing consideration of the CIP.

An Alternate View on Runway Overruns

Kunselman asked Sol Castell to the podium, who is a former member of airport advisory committee member of the citizens advisory committee to the environmental assessment process. Castell introduced himself as a pilot for a major airline and stated that none of the 11 incidents cited as runway overruns were in fact runway overruns. Instead, he said, they were simply pilot error. Four of the incidents, he said, were so blatantly pilot errors that they were not even reported to the FAA, because the pilots did not want the FAA to know about them. He said that there was plenty of runway for landing and taking off. He felt that the environmental assessment would pass as a rubber stamp, which was not a wise spending of $300,000. He said he was prepared to go through the incidents described as runway overruns one by one with the council.

In a  follow-up phone conversation with The Chronicle, Andrew McGill said that with respect to the “runway overruns” it was worth distinguishing between significant incidents and insignificant events. As insignificant, he described a situation where a student pilot and an instructor were in a plane unequipped with a set of brake pedals for the instructor. After the plane landed and slowed, the student did not brake properly, and the resulting tangle of legs trying for the brake pedal had resulted in a runway light getting hit.

An incident described as significant by McGill was one where a student pilot with less than 200 hours of flying time had made his first touchdown halfway down the runway and wound up going 20 feet off the end of the runway – he should have gone around and tried again, said McGill.

Even with the “significant” events, said McGill, the primary cause of overshooting the runway was not the length of the runway.

Preliminary outcome: The roll call vote on Kunselman’s amendment deleting the runway extension project was opposed by Smith, Derezinski and Rapundalo, but still passed.

What’s the Role of the CIP?

After Kunselman’s amendment passed, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) then suggested it might be time to look at each line in the CIP one by one if they were going to pull out the airport runway extension, and moved to postpone consideration of the CIP.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) supported Higgins’ motion, saying that he had voted no on Kunselman’s amendment, not as a matter of the commitment of dollars but rather on the point of process. The CIP items, he stressed, were meant simply to put items on the radar of the council. He echoed Higgins sentiment that if the council considered one item like the airport extension, then all items should be handled in the same way. He said he felt it set a bad precedent. He felt strongly enough about it, he said, that he would contemplate not voting for the entire CIP based on that principle.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) also objected to the idea of pulling out a single line item in the CIP. He used a similar analogy to the one he had adduced in describing his colleagues’ attempts to amend a recent major rezoning initiative: It’s like pulling strings off of a tightly wound ball, with the risk that it would all unravel.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he appreciated his colleagues’ concerns about process. He also said that based on his experience training and flying out of the Ann Arbor municipal airport, he felt that if pilots were going off the end of the runway, that truly meant they had simply been making bad decisions. He also pointed to the fact that the council had heard from significant parts of the community that there was a concern. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) then called the question on the vote of the postponement.

Outcome: The vote on the CIP was for postponement, with dissent from Derezinksi, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), and Margie Teall (Ward 4).

Budget

The looming budget was again front and center in council business on Monday. Councilmembers received an update from Colin Smith, the city’s parks and recreation manager, on two city task forces.

From left: Colin Smith, the city's manager of parks and recreation, and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) chat before the start of the meeting.

And city administrator Roger Fraser gave the council an update on the upcoming process.

Mack Pool and Ann Arbor Senior Center

The council heard presentations on the city’s park advisory commission recommendation about Mack Pool and the Ann Arbor Senior Center. The recommendations have grown out of work over the last six months by two task forces, one for each facility. The task forces had been established after the facilities closure had been called for in the fiscal year 2011 budget plan. Although budget plans are not the same as the adopted budget, it establishes a probability of what will likely happen, unless some other means of cost savings can be found. Hence, the establishment of the task forces. [See Chronicle coverage from the park advisory commission: "Also, proposals for Mack Pool, senior center approved"]

Budget Process

Roger Fraser made some extended remarks on the budget process for the year. He clarified a concept that he has introduced on a few occasions before – budget preparation would proceed along two tracks. The two tracks were: (i) consideration of big ideas, and (ii) the regular budget preparation.

Regular budget preparation was typically done, Fraser said, by specifying percentage targets to hit and simply trimming to hit those targets. The basic premise for that process is that the city would continue to do the same things but with less money. Considering the fact that the July 2012 budget was expected to be 30% less than the July 2009 budget, Fraser said that the typical process of trimming a few percent would not work.

Roger Fraser, city administrator.

The question the city needed to ask itself was this: “What services can we do without?” He told the council that he believed that voters valued everything that the city did, but that it was a matter of tolerance. He then challenged the council to do their part by saying that staff had come up with an extensive list of ideas, putting everything on the table. Now, he said, “We expect you to come up with other ideas.”

Fraser said he recognized that many of the decisions would be politically difficult and at that six councilmembers were up for reelection this year. However, he warned that the city could become so thin on certain services that they simply would not be able to do them well. He said he did not think they wanted the city to be an organization that provided half-baked services. Fraser warned that even with an anticipated recovery, there would be a 2-3 year lag before property values started to bounce back.

When he solicited questions, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) raised her hand, and Fraser indicated he’d expected a question from her. She wanted to know if budget impact sheets would be available before the Feb. 8 city council meeting on the budget. Fraser said they’d try to get them prepared as soon as possible.

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

Next regular council meeting: Tues., Feb. 16 , 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Left to right: Brian Nord and Caleb Poirier (back to camera), who are both advocates for Camp Take Notice, a self-governed encampment of homeless people. Also Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Mayor John Hieftje. (Photo by the writer.)

Ann Arbor City Council meeting (Nov. 5, 2009): Meeting on Thursday due to the elections, instead of in its usual Monday slot, Ann Arbor’s city council moved ahead on two major initiatives that will eventually have a significant impact on Ann Arbor residents.

The council approved a memorandum of understanding with the University of Michigan to move forward on joint development of the Fuller Road Station, which offers the university an alternative to construction of a parking deck on Wall Street. The first phase of the project is anticipated to be completed in mid-June 2012.

Also given a green light was a conversion to single-stream recycling – a single cart will be distributed to residents to replace the twin totes currently used for curbside pickup. The new carts will be rolled out in June 2010.

A more immediate impact will be made by a council decision to allocate a combined $159,500 to the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County and the Interfaith Hospitality Network – the funds will increase the sheltering capacity by 50 spots for individuals through the winter, starting Dec. 1, and provide housing vouchers for eight families for a year.

In other business, the council approved an agreement with Pittsfield Township and a deed restriction regarding the airport property, and approved the consolidation of the city of Ann Arbor’s master plans. In a special meeting held just before the regular meeting, the council went into closed session to review the performance of the city attorney and the city administrator. The outcome of that review was to accept the offer from both of them to maintain the same base salary they currently earn, without the one-time bonus they’ve been given the past few years.

Councilmembers also bid farewell to Leigh Greden (Ward 3), who was attending his final meeting after a narrow, 6-vote  defeat in the August Democratic primary by Stephen Kunselman. Kunselman was unopposed on the November ballot.

Support for the Homeless Shelter

The council considered a resolution that awarded a $30,500 contract with the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County and a $129,000 contract with Interfaith Hospitality Network. The money was to provide case management and staff support for 25 additional beds at the Delonis Center and 25 additional beds in the rotating shelter program, as well as housing vouchers for eight families.

The council had received a presentation on the homelessness crisis at its Oct. 19 meeting from Mary Jo Callan, who is head of the county/city community development department. She had alerted them to the likelihood that a funding request would be coming to them at a subsequent meeting. [Previous Chronicle coverage: "Increased homeless sheltering effort needs volunteers"]

The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, at its Nov. 4 meeting, had authorized $20,000 to cover the “hard costs” – i.e., the actual beds – in connection with this initiative, which is seen as a short-term solution in the face of approaching winter weather.

During public commentary reserved time at the start of city council’s meeting, two people spoke in support of the funding. Brian Nord, an advocate for a self-governed homeless encampment called Camp Take Notice, expressed his support for the short-term measure to be considered by the council, but asked, “What about the long-term tomorrow?” He indicated that he’d be working to help the people out there that he knew would still be out there – in tent communities or under bridges – to find a “warm, flat place to lie down.”

Seth Best introduced himself as a former resident of the Delonis Center for part of last year. With winter approaching, he said, the funding that council was being asked to authorize was important – he’d spent last winter in the cold because there was no room for him at the Delonis Center, he said.

Council deliberations

Council deliberations began with Sandi Smith (Ward 1), who co-sponsored the resolution with her Ward 1 colleague, Sabra Briere, and Mayor John Hiefte. She clarified the dollar amount, amending the language to reflect a total appropriation from the housing fund balance of $159,500 throughout the resolution.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) said that to her, the amount seemed like a drop in the bucket. “What else are we doing?” she wanted to know. Mary Jo Callan allowed that it was a drop, but pointed out that it was one piece of the whole strategy of intervention. She said that a large part of that strategy was preventing homelessness in the first place, through the mortgage foreclosure prevention program. She also said that there was around $800,000 available through the HPRR (Homelessness Prevention & Rapid Rehousing) program, which would be used to help keep people in their homes.

Higgins pressed Callan: “What about people who are already homeless?” Higgins suggested it was time to start looking at things differently. “It’s time to start to look outside the box.”  She suggested exploring partnerships that might not be “normal partnerships.”

Hieftje reiterated some of the background for the resolution that council was considering – it’d come about from a working group that had met several times beginning in August. That group included Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Ellen Schulmeister (director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County), Susan Pollay (executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority), Jennifer L. Hall (housing program coordinator in community development), Andrea Plevek (human services analyst), Deb Pippins (program administrator for the Homeless Project Outreach Team, or HPORT), and Hieftje.

Hieftje also drew the distinction between “affordable housing” (units that have low enough rents to make them accessible to low-income people) and “supportive housing” (units that come with case management services to support people who have more challenges, in addition to limited funds).

Briere observed that government is not here to solve all problems, but that it is able to focus on a crisis.  Briere’s remarks could be seen as a response to the frequent criticism that the city has yet to replace the 100 units of affordable housing that were lost when the old YMCA at Fifth and William streets was demolished.  It’s not good enough for many people, she said, that the city had maintained 219 units of affordable housing and constructed 60 additional units. But, she said, “It’s never good enough.” The council needed to find ways to diminish need, she said.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the emergency funding to increase sheltering capacity for individuals and provide housing vouchers for families.

Single-Stream Recycling

After hearing a presentation at a recent work session about single-stream recycling, the council considered a resolution that approved $3.25 million for an upgrade to the city’s material recovery facility (MRF) and  $102,950 in consulting fees for Resource Recycling Systems (RRS) to implement single-stream recycling. The program would provide residents with a single cart to replace the two totes currently used for curbside collection – one for paper goods and the other for containers. It also includes an incentive program that rewards people for putting out their recycling cart for pickup. [Previous Chronicle coverage: "Work Session: Trains, Trash, and Taxes"]

Public comment on single-stream recycling

Kevin Bolon: A Ph.D student at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, Bolon spoke against the move to single-stream recycling. He reported that he’d spoken with representatives of Westland, a community where single-stream recycling had been implemented, and had not been impressed with the technical capabilities. Ultimately, they have people who do the sorting, with the aid of magnets and electrical currents, he said. He expressed concern that the quality of the recycled goods would suffer and affect the price that the MRF could get for them, citing as an example that office paper from UM could be spoiled and degraded in value.

Bolon expressed skepticism that the barrier to Ann Arborites diverting more of their waste stream away from the landfill was really the need to put their recyclables into two different containers. He questioned whether the ability to implement a reward system was dependent on a single-stream approach. He suggested that a reward system could function based on alternating weekly pickups for containers and paper.

Council deliberations on single-stream recycling

During council deliberations, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked the city’s solid waste coordinator, Tom McMurtrie how confident he was that recycling rates would increase in a single-stream system. McMurtie said that moving to a single-stream system would be accompanied by the ability to process more kinds of materials – almost all types of plastics, with the exception of #3 tubs. What would really boost the recycling numbers, however, was the incentive program, McMurtrie said.

Jim Frey of RRS told the council that average annual weights were now around 400 pounds per household and that in 25 other communities where systems were in place that are similar to the one Ann Arbor was seeking to implement, the per-household figure ranged between 700-1,200 pounds. Hohnke noted that Ann Arbor had a “proud tradition” of being ahead of the curve in the area of recycling, so he asked if the 25 comparable communities included any that had a long tradition of recycling like Ann Arbor. Frey’s answer: Yes. Ann Arbor’s recycling rate was great, he said, but it could be higher.

Hohnke then asked if it was possible to achieve the increased recycling rates without investing in infrastructure upgrades at the MRF: Why can’t we just mix the streams and process the material with the current MRF capabilities? Answer: The anticipated increased volume, together with the mixed stream material, would require better automated sorting equipment. Frey also noted that no other communities are trying to implement a rewards program with a two-tote system.

Hohnke then declared his support for the program, saying it was a small step forward. He contended that it would make lives easier because it wouldn’t be necessary to separate the materials at the household level.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) reported over 100 emails on the topic from constituents with only about 5 of those against it. Those opposing the initiative, she said, were concerned about the degradation of paper quality that could result in diminished sale value of the paper. McMurtrie addressed Smith’s concern by saying that technology has evolved significantly in the last 10-15 years, which allowed the achievement of a 5% residual rate.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked about a concern that #7 plastics aren’t actually worth very much, and wasn’t it better to discourage the creation of them. She wanted to know what would happen to the new kind of  plastics that would now be accepted. McMurtrie explained that it was, of course, always their wish to reduce the amount of waste, but they needed to deal with it once it’s there. Frey reported that there is an emerging market for the material and that it was actually worth more per ton than paper.

Briere asked McMurtrie to address complaints about the carts: (i) storage space is a problem, with some households now expected to make room for a garbage cart, a yard waste cart, and a recycling cart; and (ii) they’re too heavy and unwieldy for some people to manage. McMurtrie said he recognized that there could be space constraints.

Mayor John Hieftje got confirmation from McMurtrie that the blue automated carts that had been rolled out a few years ago for trash collection had, in fact, reduced costs. An apparent increase in cost was due to the increased capital expense incurred on initial investment in the program.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) asked how the proposed system would affect personnel. Answer: At the MRF, the increased volume would be handled through improvements in automated equipment, so that more material would be processed with about the same number of people. On the collection side, he said, there would be savings in the form of the elimination of one route out of seven.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked for clarification on the rewards program. McMurtrie compared it to a frequent-flyer program – people got points for putting out their carts and credit for the weight collected on the whole route. In other communities, the average annual reward was worth around $240, with a maximum of a little over $500.

The new carts will be available in June/July 2010. The old totes can be recycled.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the contracts necessary to implement a single-stream recycling program.

Fuller Road Station

The council considered two resolutions related to the Fuller Road Station, a project that was presented at its recent work session, and for which the council had already authorized a contract with the firm JJR for $541,717. Of that original contract, the University of Michigan’s share had been $327,733.   [Previous Chronicle coverage: "UM helps start analysis phase for Fuller Road transit station" and "Work Session: Trains, Trash, and Taxes"]. Formerly known as FITS (Fuller Intermodal Transit Station), the project has been divided into two phases.

Fuller Road Station Phase One (Image links to higher resolution .pdf file)

The first phase of the project will include a bus transit center with covered passenger boarding areas and an indoor waiting area, a parking structure for 1,020 vehicles, covered bicycle hoops and lockers. Phase One will also include on-grade parking for an additional 50 vehicles, and infrastructure to support a possible future bicycle station. If built, Phase Two would include a train station.

One council resolution added $111,228 to the professional services agreement with JJR, while the other was a memorandum of understanding with the University of Michigan outlining how the partnership would work.

Some key points from that memorandum:

• The funding burden will be proportionate to the allocation of spaces: 78% for UM, 22% for the city of Ann Arbor.
• The December 20, 1999 agreement between the city and the university on the Forest and Willard parking structure, which was a joint city-university project, will be a model for the yet-to-be negotiated parking agreement for Fuller Station.
• An agreement by UM to suspend Wall Street as presently authorized and programmed is baked into the memorandum.
• Phase One is intended to be ready for use by June 15, 2012.

Public comment reserved time included a rendition by Libby Hunter of lyrics set to the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” which was critical of the Fuller Road Station as merely a UM parking structure.

Council deliberations

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) described the memorandum as the next step moving forward, specifying “who brings what to the table.” Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said she supported the shared vision of the city and the university, and was pleased by the collaboration on solutions to traffic and congestion.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) wanted clarification on how much the memorandum bound the two parties. Specifically, she wanted to know whether it was the city’s or the university’s policies that would prevail with respect to issues like the required public participation, the living wage, and the Percent for Art program. Jim Kosteva, the university’s director of community relations, was on hand to give an unambiguous answer: “This is a city project on city-owned land.”

Fuller Road Station Phase Two (Image links to higher resolution .pdf file)

Smith also reiterated a concern she’d expressed previously that the design of the Fuller Road Station be “significant.”  Her remarks connected to a sentiment expressed by Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) that the station would be a new welcome center for the city.

Mayor John Hieftje elicited from Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, a description of a “bicycle station,” which could be a part of Phase Two, if it is built. Cooper explained that such a facility would include indoor, monitored storage, lockers, and showers.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) inquired of Cooper what his confidence level was about trains ever running along that route and the construction of Phase Two. She noted that he’d been hesitant to commit at the council’s work session. Was he just being careful, or was it something else, she wondered. Cooper allowed that he preferred to be careful.

He did note, however, that SEMCOG (the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments) still planned to have demonstration east-west rail service up and running by October 2010. Cooper also said that the level of excitement and enthusiasm at the federal level when Phase I is complete would likely increase. Ann Arbor, he reminded the council, was the second-busiest Amtrak station between Chicago and Detroit (after Chicago), but he didn’t want to oversell it.

Derezinksi alluded to the fact that the Fuller Road Station is part of the Michigan Department of Transportation’s application to the U.S. Department of Transportation for establishment of a high-speed rail corridor. If the Detroit-Chicago corridor is chosen as a high-speed rail corridor, Cooper said, then there would be federal dollars available for improvements needed for the dedicated track.

Derezinski  wanted to know how the station would connect to downtown. Cooper said that in the short term, there would be AATA buses available to provide the service. In the future, the Fuller Road Station reflected a possible opportunity to connect a regional system to a high-capacity local system – in the form of the north-south connector, which is currently being studied in a four-way collaboration among the city of Ann Arbor, UM, the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, and the Ann Arbor DDA.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Briere both expressed concern about automobile access to the station. Cooper assured Higgins that during construction and undertaking of the improvements to the Fuller-Maiden Lane intersection, traffic would continue to flow. It’s not clear that Higgins was completely convinced that access would be easy: “That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence,” she said. Cooper replied that he heard her concern “loud and clear.”

Briere’s worry was for the section of Fuller Road east of the VA hospital – it narrows from that point eastward. Cooper said that improvements at the Geddes-US-23 and Geddes-Earhardt intersections, as well as the synchronization of signals, should allow the existing system to accommodate demand.

Outcome: Both resolutions in support of the Fuller Road Station passed unanimously.

Argo Dam Attorney Fees

An item on the consent agenda authorized payment of $38,000 to pay the law firm Bodman LLP for representing the city in a contested case dispute with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. The item was separated out from the consent agenda at the request of Leigh Greden (Ward 3), on behalf of Margie Teall (Ward 4), who had not arrived to the meeting by the time the consent agenda was considered.  [Previous Chronicle coverage: "Still No Dam Decision" and "Finally a Dam Decision on Argo?"]

After brief discussion of when to slot it into the agenda so that Teall could address it when she arrived, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) suggested that the proper mechanism would be to lay the item on the table and then, at some point after Teall’s arrival, take it off the table and consider it. [Editorial note: From a parliamentary point of view, this is a classic application of a tabling motion – unlike the arguably inappropriate application of such a motion at the council's previous meeting. At that meeting, the motion to table the resolution to repair the Argo Dam toe drains stemmed not from a desire to deal with other matters first, but rather from a desire to avoid voting on the resolution.]

Later in the meeting after Teall arrived, she got clarification that the money for the attorney fees would be paid out of the fund that pays for maintenance and operation of the city’s dams – the water fund. Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked where the money in the fund came from. City administrator Roger Fraser explained that it came from the sale of water – that is, from residents’ water bills.

Fraser indicated that while there’d been discussion of putting the maintenance and operation of Geddes and Argo dams into the parks and recreation budget instead of the water fund, at this time it was the water fund that currently supported those dams. The maintenance and operation of those dams is built into the fee structure for water, he said. In response to a question from Higgins, he allowed that changing the funding to the parks and recreation budget should have an effect – how much was hard to say – on calculating the water rate structure.

Outcome: The resolution to spend $38,000 on legal fees related to the city’s dispute with the MDEQ over Argo Dam was unanimously approved.

Airport Wells and Layout Agreement

Also related to the city’s water system were two of three resolutions related to the Ann Arbor Municipal Airport. They related to the need to construct a new raw water transmission main from wells located on the airport property. One resolution authorized the contract for the existing water main’s repair – it was described as in danger of imminent failure. That contract was worth $1,087,393. The other resolution authorized deed restrictions required by the Federal Aviation Administration in connection with the work.

City administrator Roger Fraser explained that the wells were used for temperature modulation of the city’s main water source, which is the Huron River. The chemical processes work best within a specific temperature range, so the well water is used to raise the river water temperature in the winter and cool it during the summer to get the city’s drinking water to within the optimum range.

The third airport-related resolution approved an agreement with Pittsfield Township that resolved a years-long legal dispute over the application and enforcement of building codes and zoning ordinances on the property. The measure had appeared on the agenda earlier in the year, but was pulled without council consideration.

The earlier version of the agreement had been controversial, because of a clause governing notification of the township of pending airport activity. According to Kathe Wunderlich, who works with the Committee for Preserving Community Quality, the CPCQ had signed off on the final wording before the council on Thursday night:

4. If a modification of the Airport Layout Plan is proposed, Ann Arbor will give notice to Pittsfield’s Building Official or such other person as Pittsfield designates in writing, of the intent to modify the Airport Layout Plan at least 30 days before authorizing a professional services agreement for the modification. At least 30 days before submitting a modification of the Airport Layout Plan for approval by the Michigan Aeronautics Commission or the Federal Aviation Administration, Ann Arbor will provide Pittsfield’s Building Official with copies of the documents to be submitted to those bodies. After approval of a modified Airport Layout Plan by the Michigan Aeronautics Commission or the Federal Aviation Administration, Ann Arbor will provide Pittsfield’s Building Official with a copy of the proposed modification at least 30 days before the Ann Arbor City Council meeting at which it is to be submitted for approval.

In council deliberations, Leigh Greden (Ward 3) gave credit to Pittsfield Township supervisor Mandy Grewal and to Sue McCormick on the city’s side for getting some resolution to the dispute – McCormick is the city’s director of public services.

Outcome: All three resolutions related to the airport were unanimously approved by the council.

Planning: Master Plan Consolidation and CVS

The council considered a resolution that consolidated the city’s master planning documents into a single document. The consolidation was not meant to change the substance of any of the documents, with those kinds of changes intended for a subsequent phase of the process.

Former planning commissioner Ethel Potts expressed concerns during the public hearing on the matter, saying that some of the changes were in fact substantive. She challenged councilmembers to take one of the area plans and identify those elements they thought were most important and then to try to find those elements in the consolidated version.

Also during the public hearing, Karen Sidney expressed the concern that consolidation and simplification might become a one-size-fits-all strategy. What makes Ann Arbor strong, Sidney said, was the diversity of housing options.

During his turn at the public hearing, Thomas Partridge said that the city council should turn back  approval of the consolidation for the same reason that President Obama would have turned back a similar proposal back when he got his start as a political organizer in the disadvantaged areas of Chicago.

During council deliberations, city planner Jeff Kahan said that the integrity of the various area plans had been respected, with particular attention paid to the central area plan. He reported that Ray Detter, of the Downtown Area Citizens Advisory Council, had agreed that the consolidated document didn’t step on the toes of either the downtown plan or the central area plan.

An additional, but separate planning-related resolution considered by the council was the approval of the site plan for the new CVS pharmacy on State Street. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said she was pleased that the historical front of the building would be preserved. She said that the need for a downtown pharmacy was tremendous.

Outcome: The consolidation of the city’s master plans and the CVS site plan were unanimously approved by the council.

Attorney and Administrator Performance Review

The city council held a special meeting an hour before its regular meeting started in order to undertake a performance review of the city attorney, Stephen Postema, and the city administrator, Roger Fraser. The Open Meetings Act has a provision that can allow for that review to take place in a closed session. And in fact, the council undertook that review in a closed session – one at which Postema was told by Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) that they’d conduct without him to start.

While the council was in closed session discussing his performance review, city administrator Roger Fraser signed some forms for students in a government class to attest they'd been there. (Photo by the writer.)

The council went into another closed session towards the end of its regular meeting – this time to “discuss pending litigation and attorney/client privileged communication and/or land acquisition.” discuss the performance evaluations of the city attorney and the city administrator. After returning to open session, Leigh Greden (Ward 3) then introduced two resolutions from the floor, to approve the employment contract for Postema and Fraser, respectively.

According to Greden, both Postema and Fraser had volunteered to accept no increase in base salary and no one-time cash payment as they’ve been given in previous years when there’d been no increase in their base salary. The only revision to their contracts was a clause that allowed them to cash out an additional 120 hours of accumulated paid time off before June 30, 2010.

Last year, Fraser earned $145,354 and Postema made $142,000. They received lump-sum payments of $3,640 and $3,900, respectively.

In describing their compensation, Greden said that they hadn’t received an increase in four years. The city administrator made less that the superintendent of the Ann Arbor Public Schools, the CEO of the AATA, and the county administrator, Greden said. The city attorney, Greden contended, could make 2-3 times his salary as city attorney working in the private sector.

Greden’s Final Meeting

Having been defeated in the August Democratic primary by Stephen Kunselman, Leigh Greden attended his final city council meeting on Thursday – for at least another year, barring unforeseen circumstances – as a Ward 3 representative.

Leigh Greden (Ward 3) delivered farewell remarks at Thursday's council meeting. (Photo by the writer.)

Towards the end of the meeting, his council colleagues took turns summarizing his service to the city – a common theme was the hard work and energy he brought to the position. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) got a laugh out of Greden when he suggested that he figured he’d be seeing Greden around – in coffehouses and in church. Christopher Taylor, Greden’s Ward 3 colleague – who earned a seat at the council table by defeating Kunselman in the August 2008 Democratic primary – said that Greden had not shirked his duties to council after losing the primary, but rather had “sprinted to the finish and accelerated through the tape.”

Margie Teall (Ward 4) fought back tears in saying farewell to Greden: “You are smart, and smart enough to get us all in trouble.”

Neither Mike Anglin (Ward 5) nor Sabra Briere (Ward 1) made remarks during the round of farewells.

In giving his own farewell, Greden began by allowing that it had come too late, but that he owed an apology for the emails he’d sent during Ann Arbor city council meetings. “I owe you each an apology,” he said, continuing, “I owe a particular apology to Mike Anglin and Sabra Briere.” [Among the emails sent by several members of the council during city council meetings, some of Greden's were particularly disparaging of Anglin and Briere. See Chronicle column: "Email and Open Meetings"]

Greden thus became the first councilmember to give an apology in council chambers during a council meeting for emails sent during previous meetings. The city council emails are still the subject of pending litigation that alleges some of the exchanges violated the Open Meetings Act.

Stephen Kunselman will be formally installed as a councilmember at the council’s next meeting on Nov. 16, along with Anglin (Ward 5), Higgins (Ward 4), Rapundalo (Ward 2), and Briere (Ward 1). But he will likely appear in a council seat at a work session scheduled for Monday, Nov. 9 – the Ann Arbor city charter specifies that “Such term shall commence on the Monday next following the regular city election at which such officers are elected.”

Communications from Council

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) announced that the Malletts Creek coordinating committee had made a recommendation to increase stormwater control when adding more than 200 square feet to a building. There would be a public meeting to present and discuss a proposal to amend the city’s stormwater ordinance, Hohnke said. The meeting will take place Thursday, Nov. 19, from 7-9 p.m in council chambers.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) announced that a planting of 52 trees would take place at Virginia Park on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 7 at 9:15 a.m.  More information is online at the Ann Arbor Tree Conservancy.

Public Comment

Several speakers address the council on a range of topics. Among those not mentioned already in the report:

City Priorities: Global Warming

Kermit Schlansker began by saying that the city’s first job is to fight global warming and that three minutes was too short a time to describe everything the city needed to do. Yet he ticked through several suggestions, including the planting of 100,000 trees. He specifically suggested planting fruit and nut trees in parks – smaller, cheaper trees.

Pedestrian Safety

Kathy Griswold addressed the council during public commentary reserved time and again at the conclusion of the council’s meeting, when speakers can address the council without reserving time. She expressed disappointment that the council had undertaken no action during their meeting, which she’d asked for at the start of the meeting [as well as at several previous council meetings and caucuses.] The matter of concern to Griswold is a mid-block crosswalk across from King Elementary School that she contends should be moved from mid-block to the street intersection.

Affordable Housing and Economic Stimulus

Thomas Partridge called on the council to use all available funding to stimulate the economy of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and the entire region. He contended that funds should be spent not on buying land for the greenbelt but rather on people’s needs, like affordable housing in the city.

Library Lot

Alan Haber delivered remarks to the council that were similar to those he’d made the previous day at the meeting of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. He was speaking for the Ann Arbor Committee for the Commons, which was advocating for the space above the proposed underground parking structure to become open space, a focal point for community gathering. Haber invited anyone interested to come to a meeting at 310 S. Ashley starting at 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 8.

Palestine

Henry Herskovitz alluded to his remarks at the previous city council meeting in October, when he’d suggested that there was a fundamental difference between the U.S. and its ally Israel, and that this difference was rooted in the separation of church and state. The U.S. honored that separation, but Israel did not, he had said. He reported that his characterization of a fundamental difference between the U.S. and Israel had been met with the criticism that the two nations were not really all that different when considered in the context of the U.S. “ethnic cleansing” of native Americans. In response, Herskovitz said that he and others had come up with several reasons why this context did not warrant drawing a parallel between the two countries. Among them, he said, was the fact that Israel’s creation came after the U.N. declaration that no land should be taken from indigenous people. Another of the several reasons, he said, was that the U.S. Constitution provided justice for all, with no special privileges for any one particular ethnic group.

Ann Arbor Housing

Based on his remarks, Sacha Platt lives in an Avalon Housing unit. He said that he’d had his life threatened several times over the last three years by another tenant. He reported that a fellow tenant had called the police 32 times with a complain about noise, that this had resulted in a criminal conviction, and that this had wrecked his plans to attend law school. He had asked for mediation, but had not received any satisfaction.

Stadium Bridges

Arnold Goetzke spoke to the council, criticizing their failure to consider an at-grade crossing for the intersection between Stadium Boulevard and State Street, instead of replacing the bridges there. He told them he’d been to Lansing that day for the hearing by the Local Bridge Advisory Board, where Ann Arbor had been awarded no money for the Stadium bridges replacement. [See Chronicle coverage: "State Board: No Funding for Stadium Bridges"]

Present: Mike Anglin, Sabra Briere, Tony Derezinski, Leigh Greden, John Hieftje, Marcia Higgins, Carsten Hohnke, Stephen Rapundalo, Sandi Smith, Christopher Taylor, Margie Teall. [Teall and Derezinski arrived somewhat late and were not there for the initial roll call of council.]

Next council meeting: Monday, Nov. 16, 2009 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]