Ann Arbor planning commissioners Eleanore Adenekan and Jeremy Peters at a Feb. 4, 2014 working session in the basement of city hall. (Photos by the writer.)

Most of their discussion at the Feb. 4 working session focused on how the city council interacts with the commission. The issue stems from an episode last year when councilmember Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) began to speak during a public hearing on a project in his neighborhood. He hadn’t been aware of the bylaws governing whether councilmembers can formally address the commission.

A similar situation occurred at an ordinance revisions committee meeting later in the year, when councilmember Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) started to address the commissioners during public commentary. In both cases, the councilmembers were told that the commission’s bylaws prevented them from speaking.

The current bylaws state: “A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission as a petitioner, representative of a petitioner or as a party interested in a petition during the Council member’s term of office.”

Jack Eaton (Ward 4) weighed in during the council’s Feb. 3 meeting, stating his view that if councilmembers are involved in a petition that would prevent them from voting on the item at the council meeting, they should be allowed to address the planning commission. “When we get elected, I don’t think we give up our right to petition government,” he said. Eaton asked Sabra Briere (Ward 1), who serves on the planning commission, to convey his point to commissioners as part of their discussion.

During the working session on Feb. 4, some commissioners expressed concern that any time a councilmember addresses the commission, it can be an undue influence on the process. Another concern is whether councilmembers, by forecasting their view in advance of a council vote, could put the city at legal risk. But at least one commissioner had a different view on the issue of constraining councilmembers from addressing the commission. Eleanore Adenekan told commissioners: “It’s like somebody telling me that ‘You can’t walk into this room because you’re black.’”

There seemed to be general consensus that the current bylaws are unclear, and a proposed revision is intended to simplify the issue: “A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission during the Councilmember’s term in office.”

Briere advocated for additional training of councilmembers, regarding what’s appropriate in these contexts. When the council takes up ethics issues later this year, she said, the issue of communicating with city boards and commissions will be one of the topics. “I call it How to Behave in Public,” Briere said.

Commissioners also discussed revisions to the bylaws related to public hearings. Some of the changes relate to whether someone can speak more than once at the same public hearing, when it is continued over multiple meetings. This situation arose last year during a public hearing on the downtown zoning review. Bonnie Bona cautioned other commissioners against changing the bylaws in ways that are “just making ourselves look more closed.” Some commissioners countered that the bylaws also allow for a majority vote to modify or waive the limitations, if necessary. [.pdf of current planning commission bylaws] [.pdf of Feb. 20 staff memo and proposed revisions]

The commission’s Feb. 20 meeting – held on a Thursday, rather than the typical Tuesday, because of scheduling due to the Presidents Day holiday – has a light agenda. In addition to the bylaws, the only other action item is a proposed rezoning of 2.02 acres at 2225 Traverwood Drive, adjacent to the Stapp Nature Area. Developer Bill Martin is donating the land to the city, and the proposal would rezone it to public land.

Planning Commission Bylaws: Background

The planning commission has been working on revisions to its bylaws for several months. At its July 16, 2013 meeting, the commission approved changes related to the order of agenda items, and the length of time required for special accommodations, such as sign language interpreters. [.pdf of planning commission bylaws]

Other revisions that are being discussed could prove more controversial, and stem from situations that arose at planning commission meetings in 2013.

One possible revision relates to the following clause from the planning commission bylaws, which imposes a limitation on the ability of a councilmember to address the city planning commission:

Section 9. A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission as a petitioner, representative of a petitioner or as a party interested in a petition during the Council member’s term of office.

That part of the bylaws surfaced when councilmembers Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) on separate occasions sought to address the planning commission – Warpehoski, during a public hearing at the commission’s July 16, 2013 meeting, and Kailasapathy on Aug. 13, 2013 during public commentary at an ordinance revisions committee meeting.

An analysis in the Michigan Municipal League’s “Handbook for Municipal Officials” indicates that it be problematic for a city councilmember to address a body like the planning commission. That’s not based on having a property interest in a matter, but rather because the council is the appointing body for the commission. The handbook presents the following scenario as an ethical exercise – using the zoning board of appeals (ZBA). From the MML Handbook:

Situation #2 Before you were elected to the city council you served on your city’s zoning board of appeals (ZBA), so you know the ZBA procedures very well. A few months after your election to council, your neighbor and campaign manager files a petition with the ZBA seeking a variance. Since you know how the ZBA works, he asks you to accompany him to the ZBA and to speak on his behalf. Should you do it?

The analysis offered by the handbook is the following:

No. The Michigan Court of Appeals has labeled this situation as “patently improper” and an abuse of public trust for the reason that the person making the argument to the ZBA is also one of the people charged with appointing the ZBA. This creates duress on the ZBA, raising doubt about the impartiality of the ZBA’s decision. Any decision made by the ZBA under these circumstances is void. See Barkey v. Nick, 11 Mich App 361 (1968).

The implication of the Ann Arbor city planning commission bylaw is that it’s permissible for a city councilmember to address the commission exactly when the councilmember is not the petitioner or does not have an interest in the matter. That situation appears to be explicitly deemed unethical by the MML Handbook, if the handbook’s analysis is extended from the ZBA to the planning commission.

So commissioners are contemplating revisions to the section of its bylaws that address interactions with the city council.

In addition, commissioners are weighing another revision to their bylaws for speaking turns at public hearings. The intent is to clarify how many turns the same person can speak at a public hearing, and how public hearings are continued.

The revisions would clarify a process that was debated by commissioners on Oct. 15, 2013, during the middle of a public hearing on downtown zoning changes. Before that hearing began, planning commission chair Kirk Westphal stated that the hearing would likely continue at a future meeting, but that speakers would be allowed only one turn during the entire hearing – either that night, or at a subsequent meeting. Midway through the hearing, commissioner Sabra Briere raised an objection to Westphal’s ruling, and commissioners spent about 20 minutes debating the issue.

During that debate, planning manager Wendy Rampson reported that the commission’s bylaws are silent on this issue. The commission ultimately voted to allow for people to speak more than once when the public hearing is continued, over the objection of Westphal, Diane Giannola and Wendy Woods.

A proposed revision related to this issue in the bylaws was brought forward by commissioner Jeremy Peters on Nov. 6, 2013, but no vote was taken.

The revisions for both issues – public hearings, and councilmember interactions – were subsequently discussed at a planning commission work session on Jan. 7, 2014. That session was attended by only four of the nine commissioners, however, so the item was put on the agenda again for the Feb. 4 working session.

Interactions with City Council

The discussion of bylaws began on Feb. 4 with a report from Sabra Briere, a Ward 1 councilmember who also serves on the planning commission, regarding issues raised at the previous night’s council meeting on Feb. 3. Jack Eaton (Ward 4) had expressed concerned about whether a councilmember could speak to the planning commission as a whole, Briere said – either on an issue that affects the councilmember directly, or on some general principle.

Specifically, his comments were directed at Article V, Section 9 of the commission’s bylaws:

Section 9. A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission as a petitioner, representative of a petitioner or as a party interested in a petition during the Council member’s term of office.

It was Eaton’s assertion, she said, that councilmembers should be able to address the commission on issues that affect them directly, because they’d need to recuse themselves from voting on the item at council.

Sabra Briere, who serves on both the city council and planning commission.

[Eaton's remarks at the council table included this statement: "I think that this [Section 9] actually is backwards. I think that if a councilmember has a petition, they should be allowed to speak to the planning commission, just as anybody. When we get elected, I don’t think we give up our right to petition government. And it’s especially true because if we have an interest in a petition, we won’t be able to vote for or against it here at this table. And so there’s no conflict of interest in representing ourselves in front of the planning commission. Conversely, I think that it might be wise to not allow city councilmembers to talk at a commission meeting on a matter that they’ll later have a vote at this table in review of. So I think that Section 9 is exactly opposite. If you have a financial interest in something, you should be able to talk to the planning commission about that matter, because you won’t have a voice here. But if you’re going to vote here [at a council meeting] in review of the planning commission, you probably shouldn’t talk there [before the planning commission].”

Briere said that she’d told Eaton she would bring these issues forward for commissioners to mull over.

In addition, Briere reported that she’d spoken about these issues with Kevin McDonald of the city attorney’s office. “He’s very concerned that councilmembers should never be put in a position of asserting implicitly or explicitly their preconceived idea of how something ought to be that will come in front of them,” she said. If there’s a legal question about whether a vote at council was taken appropriately, she continued, according to McDonald “councilmembers need not to have left a trail of making assertions about what the outcome of the vote ought to be.”

Briere said McDonald’s real concern is if councilmembers were to come before the commission as a petitioner. If they did that, they wouldn’t be able to vote on the issue when it came before council. Briere said that McDonald cited a case involving a councilmember coming before a zoning board of appeals. It’s easy to imagine that a zoning board of appeals or planning commission wouldn’t feel they were making a decision based on the merits, but rather based on the councilmember, she said.

Briere said she’d requested that the council postpone action on the planning commission’s bylaws until its second meeting in March, to give commissioners ample time to discuss these issues.

Interactions with City Council: Having an “Interest”

Briere observed that the issue comes down to the definition of “having an interest.” The situation that precipitated some of this discussion, Briere said, was when Ward 5 councilmember Chuck Warpehoski wanted to address the planning commission about an issue in his neighborhood, which did not affect him directly.

Planning commissioner Diane Giannola.

By way of background, both Ward 5 councilmembers – Warpehoski and Mike Anglin – had attended the commission’s July 16, 2013 meeting, which included a site plan for the proposed Glendale Condominiums, to be located at a former orchard south of Jackson Avenue next to the Hillside Terrace retirement community. During a public hearing on the item, Warpehoski began to speak but was cut off by commissioner Diane Giannola, who cited the commission’s bylaws. Warpehoski, who had been unaware of that rule, stepped away from the podium but stayed for the remainder of the public hearing and the commission’s deliberations on this item. He lives in the neighborhood, but did not have a financial interest in the project.

On Feb. 4, Briere said the question was whether it was appropriate for Warpehoski to speak. “Our bylaws suggest he has an interest.”

She added that McDonald was concerned that councilmembers would be influencing the outcome of a decision by another public body.

Giannola advocated for separating whether the councilmember is the petitioner, or just an interested party. “Those are completely different things,” she said.

The real issue is whether a councilmember can speak to the planning commission as a concerned citizen, Giannola said. She felt it was an ethical issue. While it’s not illegal to have a councilmember speak to the planning commission, she added, there are multiple problems with that.

One of the biggest problems is undue influence, Giannola said. The council appoints the planning commission, which in turn makes recommendations to the council. What’s the benefit of councilmembers speaking to commissioners? “Are they intimidating us? Do we have to follow through on what they’re saying? It’s kind of like your boss telling you what you should recommend.”

Giannola said the issue of undue influence is even greater now than it’s been in past years. “Will you be publicly put on the spot or shamed at council,” she asked, “because you disagree with a project that they wanted you to vote a certain way on?”

Another issue is whether planning commissioners should be getting input from councilmembers on a recommendation that the commission is making to council, Giannola said, adding that “it circumvents the process.” The council should wait for the recommendation, she said. Then at the council meeting, they have a “bigger and better platform” to make their views known. The council’s decision “trumps” the planning commission, she added, so there’s no benefit for councilmembers to speak earlier in the process.

Jeremy Peters also raised the issue of process. There’s a standardized process that’s known to the community, he said, with a set role for council. The council takes the recommendation from planning commission, and acts upon it. “To jump in front of that process is arguably a violation of due process,” he said. If someone has a negative response to council’s decision, that could be a legal angle that could be used against the city.

Giannola agreed, saying it was a situation in which the personal desire of a single councilmember could put the city at risk for a lawsuit. There’s no benefit, she added. The only reason for a councilmember to speak to the planning commission early in the process is to try to influence it, or to grandstand, she said.

Eleanore Adenekan was skeptical that anyone on the council could intimidate commissioners – she didn’t view the council that way. A councilmember’s job is to advocate for constituents, she said.

Planning commissioner Wendy Woods, a former city councilmember.

Commissioners then returned to the time when Warpehoski came to the July 2013 commission meeting to speak about the project in his neighborhood. His home wasn’t affected by the development, Briere noted, but he was there “to speak in support of a neighborhood viewpoint.” A councilmember can’t recuse themselves from voting on an item, just because they live in that neighborhood, she added. The only situation in which council rules allow a councilmember to ask for recusal is if they have a direct financial stake in the item, she said.

Wendy Woods, a former councilmember, disputed that characterization. She noted that when she served on council, she recused herself from voting on an African American history museum item because her husband, Ronald Woods, served on the board.

Briere cited a counter-example, when the council wouldn’t agree to let Warpehoski recuse himself from a vote related to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, even though his wife – Nancy Shore, director of the getDowntown program – was officially an employee of the AATA. [The meeting that Briere was referring to took place on April 15, 2013. The issue emerged that night during deliberations on revisions to the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, which helps fund the getDowntown program. Warpehoski had read aloud the relevant city charter passage regarding recusal, but no councilmember responded to Warpehoski’s disclosure and no vote was taken to settle the issue.]

Briere noted that attorneys on council don’t vote on items that involve the firms where they work, and she’s been told that she can’t vote on items when her husband, local attorney David Cahill, represents one of the interested parties. But she added that the times when councilmembers can recuse themselves “is really very tight.”

Peters thought that it’s an issue the council needs to take up in a discussion of ethics. It shouldn’t be something the commission deals with in its bylaws. “That debate probably should happen in the open at council – and not here,” he said. If the commission tries to address it in their bylaws, “whatever we end up doing might get misconstrued in the wider community as having some sort of reasoning behind it, other than trying to sort out these legal issues,” he added. The city has previously been threatened with lawsuits surrounding development, Peters observed, and so it should be a wider discussion.

Giannola argued that it should be up to the planning commission to protect its own integrity.

Ken Clein wondered if the constraints on councilmembers would include other forms of communication too, like email or letter. Noting that the council as a whole appoints one of the councilmembers to the planning commission, he also asked why there would be a need for councilmembers to communicate in other ways – given that they had a liaison to the commission already.

Giannola framed the question as one of influence. The form of communication doesn’t matter, she said; “It’s really the influence that’s the problem. It’s not public input, in my mind.”

Bonnie Bona agreed with Peters, saying this isn’t an issue that planning commissioners should be spending their time on.

Planning commissioner Jeremy Peters.

Woods noted that these bylaws have been in place for years, and if a councilmember comes before the commission to speak, commissioners have the prerogative to point to the bylaws for guidance. The problem is how to interpret the phrase “a party interested in a petition,” she said. To her, that’s something the city’s attorney’s office should decide.

Giannola replied that according to McDonald, it’s up to the planning commission to decide.

Briere noted that prior to 2008, the bylaws of various city commissions, boards and committees did not come to the council for review. In 2008, council passed a resolution requiring that the council see and approve all bylaws. According to Briere, McDonald told her that no one expected the council would edit the bylaws. “It was considered pro forma at the time,” she said, to ensure that all boards and commissions actually had bylaws, and that the bylaws were uniform and consistent. McDonald had told her that the planning commission bylaws were used as a model.

She noted that it’s clear when a councilmember is the petitioner. But “having an interest” is vague – does it mean a financial interest? Is it a political interest?

Briere also reported that she’d raised this issue at the council’s recent administration committee meeting. The message from that committee had been that the planning commission should decide what should be in its bylaws. She noted that bylaws for other commissions and boards have come to council and been approved. “It’s only planning commission where council has balked,” Briere said. [The council has postponed action on the planning commission's bylaws multiple times, because the council wants to delay until the commission votes on its revisions.]

Kirk Westphal described the question as whether to make the language clearer, or to leave it as is.

Briere said it’s the planning commission’s purview to determine its bylaws. She noted that Warpehoski has never asked for a change in the commission’s bylaws, but she added that Jack Eaton (Ward 4) and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) think it’s an issue that needs to be addressed.

Westphal clarified with Briere that, based on her conversations with McDonald, the usual interpretation of “interest” is financial. Westphal asked whether the existing language helps protect the city, by directing councilmembers not to address the commission.

Giannola contended that in the bylaws, “interest” refers to any interest – not just financial.

Woods suggested language that would make it broader: “A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission during the Councilmember’s term in office.”

Kirk Westphal, chair of the planning commission.

Giannola said that’s similar to language in the Ann Arbor historic district commission’s bylaws. City planning manager Wendy Rampson clarified that the HDC bylaws, in fact, state: “Members of the City Council are discouraged from appearing before the Commission as a petitioner, representative of a petitioner or as a party interested in a petition during the Councilmember’s term of office.” [.pdf of full HDC bylaws] Giannola indicated that the bylaws must have been changed since she served on the HDC.

Briere said that as a councilmember, she never felt that she could speak during a meeting of the HDC. She also said she didn’t feel she had the right to address the park advisory commission, even though she might attend meetings and talk to individual PAC members. The same is true for other city boards and commissions, she said. “I never felt that I had an automatic right to address them, even if they were having a lot of public input, because I was not there as a member of the public. I was there as a member of the council – and that means I keep my mouth shut.” [The PAC bylaws do not address the issue of communicating with councilmembers.]

Westphal wondered if the bylaws should be even broader, prohibiting councilmembers from communicating with commissioners. Briere pushed back on that, asking what “communicate” would mean in this context. She said she could imagine a councilmember wanting to ask a question or raise an issue with the commission. It might make sense for a councilmember to meet with the commission’s chair, she said, and in a sense petition the commission to take up an issue.

Giannola argued that it came back to the issue of influence: Should a councilmember be trying to influence the commission in any way?

Clein thought Briere had a point. The commission shouldn’t be building a firewall between the commission and city council. On the other hand, he said, the thing he’d be most concerned about is a councilmember appearing before the commission at a public meeting, as an attempt to influence not just the commission but also the community.

Bona was concerned about councilmembers speaking to commissioners individually. She recalled talking to mayor John Hieftje and telling him that a councilmember had encountered her on the street and talked to her about an issue facing the commission, Hieftje had indicated to her that the councilmember shouldn’t have done that, Bona reported. She thought it was appropriate for Briere, as the city council’s representative on the planning commission, to bring forward any concerns, questions or issues that other councilmembers might have. That approach, coupled with resolutions that the council can pass to communicate with the commission, seemed sufficient, Bona said. “What other communications channels do we need?”

Planning commissioner Ken Clein.

Briere said she wanted to tease apart these issues. If a councilmember addresses the commission at a public meeting regarding a specific action item that the commission will be voting on, “it seems to me that actually is a problem,” Briere said, because councilmembers will be voting on that issue later. She thought it would be difficult to separate the role of the councilmember from the individual person – even if the councilmember stated that he or she was speaking as a private citizen.

The other issue, Briere said, is when councilmembers attend committee meetings of the commission, and speak out on matters that the committee is addressing. She said that when she was first elected, she was told that she shouldn’t forecast how she would be voting on an issue “to the point where my mind is so closed that I can’t accept new information.” Eleanore Adenekan asked if all councilmembers got this same advice. “I can only tell you what I heard,” Briere replied. “I can’t tell you, even if the words were uttered, whether other people heard that. But I did hear it, and understood the rationale behind it.”

Briere said it concerned her that a councilmember could put the city in jeopardy, if someone decides to sue based on a council decision. “They will be able to see that that councilmember’s mind was made up well before … they saw what they were voting on.”

Interactions with City Council: Training

When the council takes up ethics issues later this year, Briere said, the issue of communicating with city boards and commissions will be one of the topics. “I call it How to Behave in Public,” she said.

Bona asked Briere whether she thought the commission should take up the issue of interactions with councilmembers. Briere said her personal feeling is that the current bylaws are fine, “except that we haven’t defined what ‘interest’ is.” Briere said she could tell that some councilmembers would be confused about that. “I got it when I read [the bylaws],” she said. “But I can tell that other councilmembers feel they are being told they are not as able to influence outcomes as they’d like.”

That’s the whole point, Giannola replied. She and Clein both emphasized that in this context, “interest” includes more than just financial interest. It includes influence as well.

Adenekan took a different view: “It’s like somebody telling me that ‘You can’t walk into this room because you’re black.’”

Woods thought the current bylaws are clear to commissioners. But it would be unfortunate to have another situation with a councilmember in front of them wanting to speak, she said. Her recommendation was to use the language she had proposed earlier in the session: “A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission during the Councilmember’s term in office.” Woods noted that this approach doesn’t prevent communication from councilmembers.

Briere said perhaps it’s a matter of training councilmembers about how to interact. “A new councilmember simply isn’t going to have read the bylaws.”

Rampson said she’d make sure to add it to her list of topics to cover when she meets with councilmembers for orientation. She noted that the issue hadn’t previously come up, in her experience.

Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager.

Giannola then brought up another issue. She recalled an experience she had when she attended a meeting of the park advisory commission, to speak out about an issue that PAC was considering. Councilmember Jane Lumm was at the same meeting, Giannola said, and also addressed PAC – but with a position on the opposite side of the issue. “That would have been fine,” Giannola said, except that Lumm sat behind her, talking with another person about the topic. “It made me really uncomfortable,” she added, and she imagined that someone who wasn’t familiar with the city government would be intimidated. She suggested that councilmembers be told that they can be heard even when they’re in the audience. “They should just sit there and listen,” Giannola said.

Adenekan said she couldn’t imagine being intimidated by a councilmember. Someone jokingly pointed out that it’s because Adenekan is from New York.

Peters said that in the past he’d been scared to speak out at city council meetings. The proceedings are televised and the council chambers are often crowded.

Bona pointed out that when there’s an issue that people feel passionate about, “those who don’t agree feel like they don’t want to speak.”

Adenekan said it’s not like Detroit city council, where someone might try to physically harm you if they don’t agree. In Ann Arbor, “what will they do? Will they throw a knife at you? Will they shoot you?”

Giannola replied that people are scared about being judged, to which Adenekan responded: “Who cares!”

In wrapping up the discussion on this issue, Rampson confirmed with commissioners that she’d include the language that Woods had proposed as a starting point for their Feb. 20 discussion. The change would amend the bylaws to state:

Section 9. A member of the City Council shall not be heard before the Commission during the Councilmember’s term in office.

Bylaws: Public Hearings

The proposed revisions to the bylaws regarding public hearings had been drafted by Jeremy Peters. [.pdf of proposed revisions]

Most of the discussion on Feb. 4 related to these proposed sections:

Section 3. An individual wishing to address the Planning Commission during a public hearings may speak for up to three (3) minutes in total. The first person identifying him/herself as the petitioner, or as a person representing the petitioner, or representing an organized neighborhood group registered with the City of Ann Arbor, may speak for five (5) minutes in total. Subsequent speakers identifying themselves as the petitioner, or as a person representing the petitioner or representing an organized neighborhood group, may speak for three (3) minutes in total. The commission may, by majority vote, modify or waive the limitations made within this section.
…
Section 5. At the discretion of the Chair, or by vote of a majority of the members present, public hearings may be continued to another meeting, but will not be deemed to be a new hearing but a continuation of the original.

Bonnie Bona said she was struggling with it. “This comes up so seldom that I think we’re just making ourselves look more closed.” She understood that the current language isn’t entirely clear, “but I don’t think it matters.” The commission seldom has issues that draw huge crowds over multiple meetings, she noted.

Bona pointed out that the commission had held public hearings over multiple meetings for downtown zoning revisions. At the final meeting on that issue – on Dec. 3, 2013 – few people spoke during the public hearing. “It just proves that we don’t need this,” Bona said.

Peters said the only reason he’d written the revisions this way was to provide clarity, and to be consistent with the city council rules regarding public hearings. It was important for the bylaws to be clear and easy to understand, he added, but it’s a discussion that should happen at one of their regular meetings.

Ken Clein suggested including some explanation – perhaps in a staff memo – to show why the commission is considering these changes. Peters replied that he had proposed a new section with the intent of providing that explanation:

Section 6. The interpretations of the above will be guided by the most recent interpretation of rules for Public Hearings by the Ann Arbor City Council as it pertains to their Rules of the Council, and may from time to time be edited so as to mimic the interpretation and process for Public Hearings in place at meetings of the Ann Arbor City Council.

However, consensus from a previous working session – attended by only four commissioners, on Jan. 7 – was to strike that from the proposed amendments that would be brought forward on Feb. 20.

Planning commissioner Bonnie Bona.

Kirk Westphal said there was some merit in being more restrictive but clear in the bylaws, and knowing that commissioners have the option of being less restrictive if the situation calls for it. A proposed addition to the bylaws would address this: “The commission may, by majority vote, modify or waive the limitations made within this section.”

Sabra Briere reported that she’s heard from people in the community who believe that the commission had wanted to limit public input. She noted that at the city council, there’s an ongoing record of who has spoken during public hearings. The goal is that no one person should come back three or four times to say the same thing on the same issue. “Not only does that feel like it’s a waste of time,” she said, “but it feels as if that person’s individual voice may sound more powerful than someone else who’s only spoken once.”

Briere noted that some people do speak multiple times, and they think that it’s standard practice. She wondered if there would be a way to keep track of the speakers at the commission’s public hearings.

Briere also highlighted the proposed revisions that state: “An individual wishing to address the Planning Commission during a public hearings may speak for up to three (3) minutes in total.” Does that mean that someone could speak for a minute, then come back later in the same hearing and speak for another two minutes? Planning manager Wendy Rampson noted that the council rules use the same language, and no one tries to break up their speaking turn in that way.

Rampson also pointed out that in the past, the planning commission has allowed people to speak again at a public hearing if the item is postponed. The rationale is that if an item is postponed, it’s for a reason, she said – and that when it comes back to the commission, changes might have been made.

She said that if the commission approves these changes to its bylaws, there are several administrative things that can be done to make it clear that people can only speak once per hearing. She suggested adding a sentence to the text that the chair typically reads before a public hearing, laying the ground rules.

Next Steps

The proposed revisions to the planning commission’s bylaws will be on the agenda for the Feb. 20 meeting. [.pdf of staff memo and proposed revisions] The meeting is being held on a Thursday because of scheduling changes related to the Presidents Day holiday.

If approved by commissioners, the bylaws revisions will be forwarded to the city council for approval.

Present: Eleanore Adenekan, Bonnie Bona, Sabra Briere, Diane Giannola, Ken Clein, Jeremy Peters, Kirk Westphal, Wendy Woods. Also: City planning manager Wendy Rampson.

Absent: Paras Parekh.

Next meeting: Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014 at 7 p.m. in the second floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

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The resolution directs an educational effort on Public Act 317 of 1968, which is the state’s conflict-of-interest statute.

A final “resolved” clause directs the council’s rules committee to draft standards of conduct for local officials based on Public Act 196 of 1973, which applies to state employees of the executive branch and appointees of the governor. The final resolved clause – if the council adopts a standard that’s recommended by the council rules committee and it’s strictly followed – would end any unauthorized leaks of information from the city government.

The item had been postponed from Nov. 7, when its sponsor, Sally Petersen (Ward 2), moved immediately to postpone consideration of the resolution, due to the very heavy agenda that night.

The resolution was modified during the Nov. 18 meeting  at the suggestion of Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) so that the rules committee could draw upon not just PA 196 of 1973 but other sources as well to craft standards for councilmember behavior. [.pdf of Warpehoski's ethics amendments]

The vote was taken following input during public commentary from representatives of A2 Ethics and the local League of Women Voters, who supported the resolution.

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 final “resolved” clause of the resolution would direct the council’s rules committee to draft standards of conduct for local officials based on Public Act 196 of 1973, which applies to state employees of the executive branch and appointees of the governor.

The final resolved clause – if it’s approved, and if the council adopts a standard for itself (the legislative branch) that’s recommended by the council rules committee, and it’s strictly followed – could lead to an end to any unauthorized leaks of information from the city government. That’s based on the statutory language: “A public officer or employee shall not divulge to an unauthorized person, confidential information acquired in the course of employment in advance of the time prescribed for its authorized release to the public.”

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.

David Erik Nelson

Come November, Ann Arbor’s own Backyard Brains will be shipping their educational RoboRoach kits. In just a few E-Z steps you (yes, you!) will upgrade a standard issue Blaberus discoidalis cockroach into your very own iPhone-controlled insectoid robo-slave – and just in time for the Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday Season!

I know, I know, you have questions – and almost certainly some objections – when it comes to icing a live cockroach, mutilating its antennae, drilling a hole in its back, and taking control of its brain – with a goddamn phone. [1]

Readers, I share your moral panic. But I have walked in the Valley of Death, have been prodded with the SpikerBox, have bought coffee and a cookie for the lead roach-roboticisizer, have met their techno-insectoid minions, and here, on the far side of the vale, I want to tell you this:

I am not worried about the kids who unwrap a Backyard Brains RoboRoach kit sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of the year; I’m worried about the kids who don’t.

Meet Backyard Brains

How did we arrive at this dystopian sci-fi future, where any person with a phone and a strong stomach might harnesses the cockroach as his or her unwilling beast of tiny burdens? It began with a pair of University of Michigan researchers (a neuroscientist and an engineer, Greg Gage and Tim Marzullo) who wanted an affordable, portable way to demonstrate to school children how neurons work.

Their solution was the SpikerBox, a bioamplifier that allows you to hear and see action potentials (i.e., “spikes”) moving across living neurons. Predictably, the first demo subjects were cockroaches – which are cheap, readily available, and not covered by restrictive research protocols.

Here’s a little video of the basic SpikerBox in action:

By 2013 Backyard Brains had released the EMG SpikerBox and opened the door to hearing your own neurons firing without having to shove needles in your arm.

As luck would have it, I’ve inadvertently been following along with Backyard Brains since their early days: I saw them showing off the SpikerBox at the first Detroit Maker Faire in 2010, where they were making discorporated roach legs dance by directly applying music to the nerves. I experienced the EMG SpikeBox first-hand at this year’s Maker Faire, where I also met my first RoboRoach in person.

But that wasn’t my first brush with the roach. Like a lot of folks, I was introduced to this new and exciting ethical dilemma in June, with Backyard Brains’s Kickstarter campaign to fund the most recent iteration of the RoboRoach [2].

Here’s the surgery instructions from an earlier version of the RoboRoach. (The hardware and software have changed significantly, but the roach surgery largely has not.)

If this video seems long, maybe just skip to around 3:25 and see how you feel about RoboRoach [3]. If you feel sorta-kinda like the girl in the center of the frame at 2:34 in the SpikerBox talk video, you are not alone. Lots and lots and lots of folks feel that way. And even if I didn’t precisely share the apparent sentiments of many of the kids in the SpikerBox audience, I’m going to be honest: I definitely didn’t feel right about RoboRoach.

After first watching that surgery video I waited two months to write about it, until I saw the RoboRoach in person at Maker Faire Detroit. And then I waited two-and-a-half more months, until I could actually talk to some folks at Backyard Brains.

After some wrangling (these roach wranglers are in high demand) I finally wound up having coffee and cookies with Backyard Brains engineer Bill Reith in early October. Bill has a biomedical engineering degree from the University of Michigan, has logged countless lab hours working with animals and their neurons, and has been with the RoboRoach project from the very beginning. He’s also a Michigander (both by birth and rearing), is taller than me, slimmer than me, has longer hair than me, and a better beard than me – in short, by every metric I use, he is absolutely unimpeachable [4].

As a group, the Backyard Brainers are pretty inured to the ethical debate associated with their work. When Bill took me to the Backyard Brains lab – a cramped second-floor suite on State Street, with a lovely view of tarpapered roofs – one of the techs, upon hearing I was a reporter [5], rolled her eyes as she sighed “ethical concerns, again?”

Pretty early in our conversation back at the coffee shop, Bill had quite gladly addressed this head-on:

When this ethical question comes up, I understand it. I mean, when I first worked in a neuroengineering lab I wasn’t, like, Alright! Roll up my sleeves; let’s work with some rats! I had questions as well. And that’s, I think, totally natural, especially when you see something like this in, you know, like a Maker Faire or on the streets of Ann Arbor. … Part of it, it’s kind of a good thing, because we want to have people ask questions, we want to have people curious about it, and then we want to have people understand afterward, and educate themselves about what’s going on here and the reality of this type of technology in the world today.

Talking to Bill I got the sense that there are three broad categories of ethical discomfort [6] on display when folks first meet a SpikerBox of RoboRoach:

1. “Holy Crap, Don’t Do That to Me!” 
2. Pain versus Dread
3. Hurt No Beings

“Holy Crap, Don’t Do That to Me!”

This entire school of ethical complaint took me by surprise, because it had never, ever dawned on me to take personally what was being done to the cockroach [7]. But according to Bill, that’s a notably high percentage of the reaction they get: Folks see the cockroach, imagine their own antennae (or whatever) getting hacked off, their own carapace being pierced with a hypodermic needle, their own movements controlled via telephone – and then their logical faculties pretty much flee in revulsion. No one wants to be hacked up by school children; no one wants to live life as a robo-zombie.

The problem here is one of anthropomorphization and, subsequently, false analogy.

First and foremost there’s almost no analogy between a human and a cockroach. There’s a lot going on there physiologically (which we’ll deal with below), but just to take a really super clear example: There are tons of situations humans quite enjoy (for example, lying on a warm, sunny beach, or spending an evening reading in solitude in front of a roaring fire) that a cockroach would actively flee. Likewise, while you likely would hate wallowing in a vast sea of rotting bok-choy and rancid frier grease or wedging yourself in a dude’s ear, cockroaches seem to love it. To start by saying “a cockroach is a being very much like me, with a life defined by hopes, dreams, and fears very similar to mine” is folly; building an ethical scaffolding on that foundation is an invitation to a quick fall and broken back.

That aside, anthropomorphization is, by definition, entirely self-centered. I’m not objecting to what is being done to the cockroach, per se, or to any idea of cockroach quality-of-life; I’m objecting to what I imagine might be done to me. It is likely an outgrowth of our inclination toward sympathy (the acknowledgment of another’s apparent pain) – but it falls short of empathy (vicariously experiencing the other’s perspective). It falls short because it totally ignores the complicated grey zone of what it means to be a cockroach, instead substituting a tiny me in that same place.

A cockroach is not a tiny me; it is a cockroach. How would I feel if someone pulled back my wing cover and poked a hole in my nerveless carapace? Dude, that question makes no sense. There’s no meaningful analog between a chitinous exoskeleton and skin, and I don’t have a frikkin wing to pull back. It’s like asking a paramecium how it would feel if someone put a Yellen clamp on its penis and cut away its foreskin.

If we want to show true empathy for the cockroach – which I applaud – then it’s probably best to keep in mind that these cockroaches are bred as feeder animals. Their options are: (1) being subjects of experiments, regardless how amoral; or (2) grub for bearded dragons and tarantulas. In terms of quality-of-life, the RoboRoach spends the rest of its days safe in a terrarium, eating old produce, making babies, and hiding in toilet paper tubes. His or her brothers and sisters don’t enjoy so nearly long a life, and their third act is spent fleeing from a brutal predator with no chance of escape.

Mind Control And The Slippery Slope

Another branch of the “Don’t stick that thing in me!” school of ethical revulsion are concerns about mind control, and the RoboRoach representing our baby step towards universal human robo-zombie enslavement.

Let’s just say that these concerns are misplaced.

First off, you and me and everyone we know are a lot more complicated than a roach (which will be covered in just a minute). This product demonstrates neural stimulation, and that’s a far cry from mind control.

Having directly observed several cyborg roaches, I’ve got to say that Bill’s reassurances are pretty reassuring: Even post-op and hooked to a “controller,” these are still cockroaches, and a cockroach often makes for a pretty recalcitrant steed. Even though they are receiving direct electrical neural stimulation, the effect is more analogous to a bridled horse than a brainwashed Frank Sinatra [8].

Pain Versus Dread

What about pain? Watch the video of that surgery. Even if the cockroach is just fine with its ultimate fate as a cyborg monstrosity, it’s obviously distressed during the process, obviously in pain.

But, minus our bias as sympathetic observers, this isn’t obvious at all. The roach is reacting to its situation, and I’m interpreting that as pain and distress, but I also mourn the Pencil Named Steve and cringe at the curb-stomping scene in “American History X” and every single aspect of the trailer for “The Human Centipede” – all of which are verifiably fictitious. Humans regularly attribute non-existent emotional states to inanimate objects, words on a page, flickering LCD displays, internal combustion engines, weather patterns, sex workers. We are absolutely abysmal at objectively evaluating possible internal states, and easily fooled by artists, conmen, and our own expectations.

What do we know about a cockroach’s experience of pain and its similarity to ours?

Frankly, we seem to know that it probably isn’t similar at all. To begin with, we (like most any vertebrates) sense pain via specialized sensory neurons called nociceptors, which these roaches lack. The facile conclusion, then, is that they don’t feel pain – or certainly don’t feel it by the same mechanism as we do. (In the same way, several of my in-laws, who are colorblind, don’t see red as I do; they simply lack the proper receptors.)

But framing the issue in terms of the physical sensation of pain is a red herring. As Bill so aptly put it, “pain isn’t just some chemical in your brain.” It doesn’t really matter if cockroaches have the same sort of pain receptors we do, or some other kind of pain receptors, or no pain receptors at all, because the thing we call “pain” has so little to do with the simple impulse running along that chain of neurons to our brains, and so much to do with our expectations and values.

I have a tattoo. I got this by paying a nice man $60 to inject ink into my skin with a needle thousands of times. It took a long while, it hurt like the dickens during the process – an ever-increasing burn that somehow managed to get hotter and hotter without ever cresting into open flame – and was sore for a good while after. Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking about a new tattoo since summer, researching design elements, deciding how I’d budget for it. I’m excited by the prospect.

Meanwhile, it took me five months to “make time” to get a routine blood draw my doctor had ordered, a procedure that took all of 10 minutes. I “accidentally” lost the paperwork three times, and invented literally scores of excuses for why today was a bad day for that cholesterol check. The tattoo hurt – and, objectively, hurt a lot more than the blood draw – but I dreaded that blood draw, wrapped up as it was in a complex quilt of anxiety and apprehension and shame.

Pain is just pain.

We regularly and gladly inflict pain on ourselves and our loved ones because medical science demands it, or our notion of the God Thing demands it, or nature demands it, or just plain old practicality demands it.

But to inflict dread, to purposefully cause that suffering – regardless of whether or not we do so with physical pain – is clearly beyond the pale.

So, can the cockroach feel dread? Highly unlikely. Dread requires a reflective capacity that the cockroach almost certainly lacks. A cockroach brain, such as it is, is a helluva lot more diffuse and compartmentalized than ours, with a lot of the heavy-lifting performed by ganglia distributed throughout their bodies. Much of their behavior – even relatively complex behavior, like scuttling around attempting to hide in the shadow of your shoe – is essential a reflex arc, with no intervening, centralized evaluation or decision making.

Heck, any species of cockroach can live without its head for a week or more – wandering around, hiding from stuff, making babies – because there just isn’t much going on upstairs. Again, this isn’t to say that the cockroach has no inner life, just that its inner life is not like yours, and so making decisions about what that life means based on your experiences is unfounded (at best).

Hurt No Beings

The core of this third – and often default – ethical objection: a complete rejection of the causing of any suffering.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to level with you: I don’t know what to do with this, because so often it is the result of stunning naiveté.

Quick personal anecdote: In my twenties I volunteered with my then girlfriend (now wife) at the migrant camps around Adrian, Mich. [9]. Many of these workers and their kids had never had a physical or dental check-up, so small medical teams from the University of Michigan would head out to the camps and provide basic preventative care, gynecological exams, perform school physicals, answer health and lifestyle questions, etc.

My girlfriend (now wife) and I both spoke Spanish. Sometimes we served as translators, helping laborers fill out their forms or communicate with the doctors. More often we hung out with the kids and kept them busy so their folks could receive medical services. Accommodations weren’t great for migrant workers in the camps, and neither was the pay – remember, we need to keep the price low on agricultural commodities. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there! In these conditions, the one affordable treat parents could offer their kids was Faygo. Consequently, lots of these kids we played catch and soccer with had visible black cavities pitting the outsides of their teeth.

Pro-tip: Cavities that bad are dangerous to children; you get an infection, it quickly spreads to the brain, you have swelling and seizures – it’s not awesome.

If you eat your half-plate of fruit and vegetables at every meal, and not every scrap is coming out of your yard, then part of the cost of your healthy diet is likely those Hispanic kids’ teeth – their health, their shortened lives, their bad backs and knees, and their constant objectification as a political football.

During this period I happened to go out to dinner with my sister and one of her childhood friends. That friend was on a vegan kick, and she declined the honey-mustard dressing. You shouldn’t eat honey, she explained, because of some insane bullshit she believed about bees being wantonly decapitated as a part of the honey harvesting process.

Instead, as I recall, she had vinaigrette on her salad. All those greens and walnuts and sliced apples and raisins – so cruelty free.

Cruelty free, provided you don’t count the suffering of Hispanic workers and their children.

Costs And Benefits

Does this seem like a straw man? After all, not to be emotionally cold, but we obviously have to accept some suffering. We need to eat; some cutworms and chickens and migrant farm worker kids are going to die in the process – cost of doing business, dog-eat-dog, yadda yadda blah-blah.

But Dave, this business with mangling the roaches is so needless. It’s a toy. No one is benefitting from this!

Except that we are, and we already have. This technology isn’t substantively different from the increasingly common cochlear implants restoring hearing to the deafened – and granting it to the congenitally deaf. Bill Reith – that Backyard Brains engineer who’s worked with the RoboRoach from the start – cut his teeth working in rat labs researching deep brain stimulation which, among other miracles, can bring relief to Parkinson’s sufferers, easing and even eliminating debilitating tremors.

The development of this technology is directly accelerated by things like the SpikerBox and RoboRoach. This project is Open Source, with the expectation that users and experiments will feed their innovations back into the code base. For example, one problem in any neural stimulation situation is habituation: The nerve becomes accustomed to this absolutely regular electrical stimulation. Noting this, some high schoolers using a beta RoboRoach tried feeding just noise, as opposed to regular pulses, into the electrodes. They succeeded in delaying the habituation, and that innovation is now part of the stock RoboRoach package.

In a similar way, another RoboRoacher has combined “insect” SpikerBox and “human” EMG SpikerBox functionality to read the signals going to his biceps and use them to actuate a severed cockroach leg. He can use a cockroach leg as a prosthetic limb. Nightmarish? Yes. But blood transfusion was once exclusively the domain of scifi-horror stories, as were organ transplants, skin grafts, and most of modern psychotropic medicine.

And beyond those direct benefits (which, granted, will be few – even if some are spectacular) is an indirect, but powerful one: More people will have some sort of meaningful grip on what neuroscience is. The technological revolution of my lifetime – the Information Age – wasn’t driven by poindexters creating small and faster computers; it was driven by Average Joes and Janes understanding what the hell computers were, and why it might be neat to buy them and use them, and insert them into every damn facet of our lives. Inventions with no market wither on the vine.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Roboroach

I’m going to level with you: My ick here wasn’t based on any of the Common Ethical Concerns above, and my approval isn’t based on science literacy and deep-brain stimulation. I don’t really care about the states of the lives of cockroaches, and I’m well aware of the fact that advances in quality-of-life are rarely evenly distributed. Or more bluntly: Five years from now every old dude is gonna have a bionic ear, but the kids picking your cukes are still gonna be enjoying all the benefits of mid-19th century dentistry.

What I care about is the states of the souls of the kids who get RoboRoach for Christmas, and likewise the states of the souls of those who do not.

I’ve met plenty of folks – like the no-honey-mustard-dressing gal – who refuse to be a party to any living being suffering harm. None of them have lived on farms where they grew their own food and cotton, wove their own cloth, brewed up their own biodiesel from peanut oil pressed from their own peanuts, then poured it into the tank of a tractor they forged from steel they smelted from ore they dug up on their own land, then drove it out into the fields on tires they vulcanized after long hours of tapping their rubber trees … You get the picture: They haven’t really removed themselves from the Economy of Pain; they’ve made some surface level changes, and chosen to remain ignorant of all of the deeper repercussions.

I’ve also spent some time with a variety of family farmers, hunters, fishermen, and some fairly off-grid hippies. They’re a helluva lot more realistic about the amount of suffering that goes in to their meals, their garments, their devices, their lifestyles. Mark Sponslor – my favorite hog breeder – doesn’t sympathize with his pigs; he empathizes with them.

More importantly, he is compassionate towards his charges. He understands his pigs and the lives they lead, and works to make sure those piggie lives are comfortable – not in human terms, but in pig terms. He would never inflict suffering on them, would never neglect them – and yet he knows that the vast majority of them and their descendants are bound to slaughter.

Similarly, no adult hunter or fisherman I have known shows glee at the death of an animal. At least one hunter I’m close with admits to saying his grace not over his dinner plate, but under the trees as he’s dressing out a caracas, because that’s clearly the moment for which he is grateful. Everything after that is a simple consequence of the primary sacrifice that deer has been party to.

I’ve met Bill and the other Backyard Brainiacs. Let me be clear: Legally and within their field, the standard is that there is no moral obligation toward invertebrates (such as cockroaches). They are well within their rights and the standard operating procedure to store their roaches in naked glass jars – without food, water, or anyplace to hide from the light – and flush them when they are done. And yet they take every measure to be sure that their roach collaborators live comfortable roach lives and die of natural causes. In no way is Bill callous toward his subjects; Hell, he’s clearly affectionate toward them. “They’re actually really fun little animals,” he noted absently as a post-op roach bigger than my thumb and not under phone-control climbed up his arm and toward his (OMFG-I’M-GONNA-FREAK!) face.

And Bill arrived at his compassion in the rat lab, where he implanted and maintained the neural stimulus shanks embedded in rats brains. And, just to head of any possible confusion, it is beyond dispute that rats are much more akin to humans than cockroaches are; there are protocols in place governing their use in labs, and by all accounts it is a much more emotionally fraught business.

“Working in the lab made me more aware of the cost of [research], and more up front with myself about it. I ended up understanding the lives that they lead as lab animals.”

I want to stress that these working relationships with animals are fundamentally different from most pet ownership. We mostly anthropomorphize our pets: We pull them into our homes, assign them names, grant them personhood, and then make decisions for them based on our own internal states. Very often we work very hard to subvert or alter their fundamental natures.

But working with animals as animals demands that we understand them and their perspectives – which is why sportsmen and ranchers so often become some of the most powerful voices for protecting the animals they’re killing. Sportsmen are integral to ecological conservation movements. Mark Sponslor has been instrumental in returning the breed of pigs he raises (and eats) to viability. It’s not ironic; it’s entirely logical.

But here’s the rub: We aren’t a rural people any more. An ever dwindling number of us are hunters, farmers, or ranchers. But we still accept the bounty of the fields and forest, we just do so at second (and third and fourth) hand. And our technology is really no different: Someone suffered deplorable conditions to get the coal to generate your electricity, the tantalum for the capacitors in your microwave and oven and laptop, to build your iPad, Hell, to code your video games.

By the time the food (or laptop of medical devices) hits our table, the sacrifices have been made, whether we think to give thanks for it or not.

Let’s be realistic: If you are diagnosed with Parkinson’s and the doctor suggests a deep-brain stim implant, you are not going to say “I’m sorry; too many rats experienced pain stimuli in the making of that device.” You are going to say “Thank God! Thank you doctor! Thank you Obamacare and BCBS!”

Personally, I think you should also say, “Thank you, noble rats! Thank you, under-compensated grad students!” But that’s me. I also think our Thanksgiving grace should focus more on migrant workers than distant Gods. (I’m full up of notions.)

Giving Thanks

Repeatedly Bill reminded me that Backyard Brains, as a project “isn’t really about cockroaches.” It’s about neuroscience, about concretely demonstrating to regular folks that “we’re very electrical beings,” and that our brains can be just as immediately understood – in a functional sense – as our hearts and lungs and laptops.

But I don’t think it’s really about that, either.

RoboRoach isn’t about roaches, and isn’t about neurons: It’s about people living in Post-Industrial 21st Century America – people who will never have to slaughter their dinner or acknowledge the orphans of the garment factory worker who sewed their t-shirts. It’s about acknowledging and accepting the myriad sacrifices that are made to propitiate the Weird Gods of our Life, Liberty, and Property. And maybe, from there, we develop the compassion to acknowledge that sacrifice, feel it as it is felt, and do something to be sure that it is both proportionate and humane.

So, it’s especially apropos that the RoboRoach will be shipping in November, the month of our American Thanksgiving, because the core lesson this educational “toy” can teach our children is in the primacy of Giving Thanks when you live at the top of the food chain.

Notes

[1] Parents of teens: Please insert your own “a phone already has control of my kid’s brain” joke here.

[2] The first RoboRoach – now called “RoboRoach beta” – was a sort of clunky kittbashing kludge using a custom board to bridge a live roach and a toy remote control. This newest version is lighter, more flexible, and uses all-custom hardware controlled by a smartphone app. Ethics aside, it really is a slick product.

[3] This Engadget piece about the Kickstarter campaign was the first article I saw flagging the ethical squickiness of this situation, and the source for this video. Incidentally, if you are skipping out on all video links, then here’s a quick verbal description of the surgery: You take a honking huge-ass cockroach, soak it in ice water to anesthetize it, snip down its antennae (which have both olfactory and touch sensors, and are the primary instrument of roach navigation), run a hair-thin silver wire into each severed feeler, then poke a hole in the roach’s back and insert a third tiny wire. Glue all this down, connect a little Bluetooth comms board about the size of a dollar coin (but much lighter), and you’re good to go.

[4] If this seems out of place, consider how not out of place it would have been for me to drop in some physical description had I been meeting with a Betty Reith. Anyway, for reals though, he’s a handsome dude, very affable, and with good prospects. You can reach him through the Backyard Brains website.

[5] I was quick to correct Bill; I’m a columnist. Calling me a reporter is like calling a Miller High Life the “Champaign of Beers.”

[6] Fascinatingly absent among the ethical concerns, so far as I’ve been able to tell, are concerns about funding. Backyard Brains has been supported by DARPA grants – which always gets my black helicopters humming. Another major supporter is the government of Chile – which probably seems benign now, so I’ll take a sec to remind readers of Chile’s disturbing track record on the use of electrical stimulation to modify political opinions. Chile, always innovating with the biomedical application of a few volts.

[7] Or, quite obviously, to personally identify with the fate of the hog or cow or chicken or deer or lobster I might nosh.

[8] When it comes to “Manchurian Candidate” scenarios, I’d suppose folks are probably more worried about a murderously brainwashed Laurence Harvey, but what’s always creeped me out in that film are the endorsements of Staff Sargent Raymond Shaw – who, come to think of it, really is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.

[9] Lots of agriculture is still highly manual work. My wife grew up in rural West Michigan. Out there the prototypical first job was picking blueberries, and conditions for non-citizen workers there weren’t much different than what we saw in the apple orchards of Adrian, or what I later heard reported by folks who grew up picking cucumbers in California. In many regions detassling corn is likewise still migrant piecework. In other words, this isn’t an abstract story about Adrian, Mich, in 1990-something; this is a concrete story about agriculture in America today.

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The crosswalk on Liberty Street, looking west at Crest. (Photo by the writer.)

Ann Arbor City Council Sunday caucus (Aug. 16, 2009): Sunday evening’s lightly attended city council caucus reflected a light agenda for Monday. But light as that agenda is, it had not been published in the newspaper – as one caucus attendee pointed out to the three councilmembers present: Mayor John Hieftje, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5).

Even though the agenda itself is dominated with items like perfunctory rezoning – pedestrian in the sense of “ordinary” –  there’s a presentation to be made at the start of the meeting by Sue McCormick, director of public services for the city, that should draw some community interest. She’ll be giving council an update on the East Stadium Bridge situation. The bridge needs to be repaired or replaced.

At caucus, then, residents and councilmembers were free to focus on some items not on Monday’s schedule. And one common theme cutting across two different resident concerns as well as council discussion were pedestrian issues – pedestrian in the sense of folks on foot.

In other brief discussion, councilmembers indicated, in response to a question, that they had not contemplated re-voting the issuance of bonds that would fund the underground parking garage. The legality of the council’s February vote authorizing the bonds has been challenged by a lawsuit filed last week, which contends that the council violated Michigan’s Open Meetings Act on the evening it approved the bonds.

Also at caucus, councilmembers gave a public indication that they were contemplating possible council rules changes that would affect how email communications are handled during council meetings.

Pedestrian Issues

-

King Elementary School Crosswalk

One audience member asked for an update on the installation of a crosswalk at King Elementary School, which she’d inquired about at a previous caucus meeting. Hieftje indicated that he had no new information yet, but did not expect that anything would happen before school started in the fall.

The resident told the mayor that city staff, in conversation with her, had expressed an interest in seeing the Ann Arbor Public Schools take responsibility for shoveling snow off the sidewalk in the winter.

Pedestrian Right-of-Way Ordinance

Another audience member reported having attending a recent public meeting about installation of a pedestrian refuge island at 7th and Washington. He suggested that while refuge islands and roundabouts might help a particular intersection, it would be more effective to think about the broader educational goal of reminding motorists of the ordinance that gives pedestrians the right-of-way. Signs of the kind that Traverse City uses, he said, would be a step in the right direction.

By way of background, the pedestrian right-of-way ordinance in Ann Arbor reads as follows:

10:148. Pedestrians crossing streets.

(a) No pedestrian shall cross a street at a location other than at a crosswalk into which vehicle traffic is then restricted by a traffic control device unless such crossing may be done safely and without interfering with motor vehicle and bicycle traffic on that street.

(b) No operator of a motor vehicle or bicycle shall interfere with pedestrian or bicycle traffic in a crosswalk into which vehicle traffic is then restricted by a traffic control device.

(c) When traffic-control signals are not in place or are not in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right-of-way, slowing down or stopping if need be to so yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a crosswalk when the pedestrian is on the half of the roadway on which the vehicle is traveling or when the pedestrian is approaching so closely from the opposite half of the roadway as to be in danger, but a pedestrian shall not suddenly leave a curb or other place of safety and walk or run into a path of a vehicle that is so close that it is impossible for the driver to yield.

The ordinance itself has been criticized in recent months on the Washenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition Google Group for not providing right-of-way to pedestrians in the whole crosswalk. Wrote Matt G.:

Carsten Hohnke is working hard to have our pedestrian ordinance changed to provide right-of-way in the entire crosswalk (anything less is NOT actually a right-of-way). It’s a great place to start. We need to show him support by helping to educate other council members and city staff.

Hohnke is one of two representatives from Ward 5 to the city council.

At caucus, Hieftje said that the 7th and Washington intersection warranted specific attention, but that the broader educational angle was one that the city was also pursuing. He pointed out that the city had allocated $10,000 for non-motorized safety education. That funding was authorized at council’s June 15, 2009 meeting.

Hieftje reiterated what Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, had said at the June 1, 2009 council meeting about one fundamental challenge of motorist education in Ann Arbor:  Half of the drivers on the roads of Ann Arbor don’t live here.

Alley to the east of the McKinley Towne-Hall Centre, shown in an Ann Arbor city planning staff report. (Image links to larger version).

Mid-Block Cut-Through

During caucus discussion among councilmembers, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) reported to her colleagues that she’d had a meeting with Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Ray Detter, who’s president of the Downtown Citizens Advisory Council, and  Steve Kaplan about the alley to the west of the Liberty Square (Tally Hall).

Some background on the alley. At its Jan. 7, 2008 meeting, the city council approved a PUD rezoning for McKinley Towne Centre-Liberty at 515 E. Liberty St.

The planning commission deliberations on the issue included considerable discussion of closure of the alley on the west side of the parcel that was proposed for the PUD by the petitioner.

The planning staff report includes an analysis of the alley on the east side of the parcel as an alternative pedestrian path from Liberty to Washington:

Staff finds that this alley does offer pedestrians a mid-block passage between East Liberty and East Washington Streets, but only for those “in the know.” It does provide a useful function and makes closing the existing alley on the west side of the proposed PUD site less concerning. However, it is not an ideal space to safely convey pedestrians, mostly because of the portion that is the theater loading dock. Staff would be concerned about promoting its use for the general public.

Looking north from Liberty Street down the alley to Washington Street. The black posts at the alley's entrance are bollards. (Photo by the writer.)

Briere said there was concern that the bollards that had now been installed would cause people to perceive the alley as not public. She was also concerned that any delivery trucks entering the alley from Washington Street to service the new retail locations would have to back their way out onto Washington.

Briere also wondered if an alley that was lined its entire width with cafe tables – one possible use if the adjoining retail space just built by McKinley houses a restaurant – would be conducive to conveying pedestrians between Liberty and Washington.

The bollards that have been installed can be removed – there’s a bolt visible at the base – but are not the kind that can simply be run over by an emergency vehicle if that need should arise, Briere said.

Parking Garage Bonds

The recent lawsuit filed by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center against the city of Ann Arbor contends that the city council violated the Michigan Open Meetings Act when it authorized the issuance of general obligation bonds at its Feb. 17 meeting. The suit asks for declaratory relief that in part invalidates that council decision:

(c) Enter an order which invalidates City Council’s approval of the site plan for the Parking Garage and the bonding to fund the project which occurred at its meeting on February 17, 2009 ;

At its July 20, 2009 meeting, council authorized a change from tax-free municipal bonds to taxable bonds – the increased cost being more than offset by the Build America Bond Program. The Chronicle had inquired at the July 19 caucus whether that change would require an additional 45-day window, during which citizens would have the opportunity to circulate a petition that – if successful in achieving signatures from 10% of registered voters – would force a voter referendum on the bond issuance.

When the council considered the matter at its July 20 meeting, Briere explained that night that they’d learned no additional 45-day period would be required, because it had been satisfied with the Feb. 17 vote. But what if the council on July 20 had simply taken a new vote on the bond issuance? That vote would have taken out of play the contention in GLELC’s lawsuit that the Feb. 17 vote was not valid.

Council could conceivably re-vote the bond issue even now, as a strategy to take the financial piece of the equation out of jeopardy. So the question The Chronicle asked the three councilmembers present was: Has anyone given any consideration to undertaking such a re-vote?

They had not contemplated such a re-vote themselves, nor were they aware that anyone else had, either.

Possible Council Rule Changes

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said that Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who chairs the council’s rules committee, had asked Briere to request that a work session be held on the topic of council ethics and rules. Briere reported that she’d done that.  However, the next available work session would be in October. September’s work session is already committed to a joint meeting with planning commission on A2D2 zoning. October was a long time to wait, said Briere.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated his preference for just putting the rules changes on the agenda for the council’s Sept. 8 meeting and discussing them at the table. Briere said she’d like to get a draft of the proposed rules changes out and available for people to look at as soon as possible. Hieftje said he thought that should be possible as early as next Tuesday.

The rule changes, Briere indicated, would address email, as well as an issue with newspaper publication of notices and agendas. Council will likely eliminate its own rule that requires it to publish its agenda in the local newspaper.  The FY 2010 budget, which council adopted earlier this year, aimed to save $15,000 by no longer publishing the counci’s agenda in the newspaper.

Notices Published in Newspapers

One resident addressed councilmembers on the issue of publication of notices and agendas in the newspaper. She noted that public hearings for the planning commission and the historic district commission had been published in “the Sunday paper, such as we have now,” but that the city council agenda had not been published there.

She said  the public hearings for planning were required by the city code. She’s right – from Chapter 57 of the code for the city of Ann Arbor:

A written notice shall be sent to the petitioner and to the property owners and residents within 300 feet of the boundary of the property not less than 10 days before the Planning Commission hearing indicating the time, date and location of the hearing. A notice of the hearing shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation at least 7 days before the hearing. [emphasis added]

And council has a rule that requires the publication of its agenda:

The approved agenda for all meetings of Council, including Work Sessions, shall be published in a newspaper of general circulation in the City no later than the Sunday prior to each meeting, except those meetings called less than six days prior to a meeting.

The caucus attendee suggested that the reason council did not publish its agenda was because it cost a lot of money to publish it. Based on the budget discussions earlier in the year, that’s in fact the case.

The caucus attendee also pointed out that the definition of what counted as a newspaper required that it have been published at least a year, in order to qualify as “legitimate.” Here’s the state statue statute to which she was alluding – MCLA 691.1051:

The term “newspaper” as used in any statute of this state, except the revised judicature act of 1961 relative to the publication of a notice of any kind, shall be construed to refer only to a newspaper published in the English language for the dissemination of local or transmitted news and intelligence of a general character or for the dissemination of legal news, which

(a) has a bona fide list of paying subscribers or has been published at not less than weekly intervals in the same community without interruption for at least 2 years, and

(b) has been published and of general circulation at not less than weekly intervals without interruption for at least 1 year in the county, township, city, village or district where the notice is required to be published. A newspaper shall not lose eligibility for interruption of continuous publication because of acts of God, labor disputes or because of military service of the publisher for a period of not to exceed 2 years and provided publication is resumed within 6 months following the termination of such military service,

(c) annually averages at least 25% news and editorial content per issue. The term “news and editorial content” for the purpose of this section means any printed matter other than advertising.