City treasurer Matt Horning. Chief financial officer Tom Crawford in background.

On Monday night, the council unanimously adopted its roughly $78 million general fund budget – as amended to reflect new revenue items. Those new revenue items allowed the council to eliminate five firefighter positions and no police jobs. As originally proposed, the budget would have eliminated 35 fire and police positions combined.

Next year’s work will not be any easier. CFO Tom Crawford said at the meeting that he’s projecting a $5 million deficit in FY 2012.

Deliberations on the budget did not begin until late in the evening. Occupying more of the council’s time than the city’s FY 2011 budget were two issues related to the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. One of those issues was a sidewalk occupancy ordinance applicable only within the DDA district. The ordinance, which legalizes the use of sandwich board signs, passed after a failed attempt by Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) to get it postponed.

The second DDA issue on the agenda involved a $2 million payment from the DDA to the city, which helped the council to amend its budget to reduce layoffs of fire and police. In approving the $2 million payment, the DDA board had included in its resolution a requirement to have a future public process for continued conversations between the city and the DDA about renegotiating a parking agreement between the two entities. From January through April of this year, conversations on that topic between the city and the DDA took place out of public view.

On Monday, the council considered a resolution thanking the DDA for the money and providing a commitment to public process for conversations about the parking agreement – parallel to the public process explicated in the DDA’s resolution. The council resolution passed – stripped of its language about open and transparent process on the grounds that it was redundant – after a brief attempt by Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) to get the resolution tabled.

In other significant business, mayor John Hieftje nominated a replacement for Ted Annis on the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board: Roger Kerson, who in 2008 contemplated a run for a Ward 5 council seat, but decided against it.

Anya Dale had been nominated by the mayor to replace Paul Ajegba on the AATA board at the council’s previous meeting. On Monday, confirmation of her appointment included one hitch – Sabra Briere (Ward 1) cast a vote against it.

Sandwich Board Signs

Before the council was a revision to the city’s sidewalk occupancy permit system that would allow the use of sandwich board signs in the DDA district. It was the second reading of the ordinance change – the first reading had been approved at the council’s previous meeting on May 3. All ordinances must be approved at two readings at a meeting of council before they’re officially passed. [Additional Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor, Give Me a Sign"]

Sandwich Board Signs: Public Hearing

DDA executive director Susan Pollay addressed the council, speaking at the request of the downtown merchant associations. She thanked the council for their work on the ordinance.

Michael Slaughter, who had addressed the council at its previous meeting during public commentary on the same subject, reviewed with the council why he felt the case for sandwich board signs was so strong. He pointed out that there would be some additional dollars for the city that they could collect right away for the sidewalk occupancy fees that would be charged. He also pointed to the higher rents that would result from the additional business that could be done on the second floor of buildings, due to increased traffic they would enjoy from the sandwich board signs. Pointing to the use of sandwich board signs in other college towns, he noted that it was not “some far-out practice.” He also raised the legal issue of commercial free speech.

Sandwich Board Signs: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said it was fortunate that the public hearing on the ordinance change had not lasted too long. She stated that the sandwich board signs are, in fact, vital to downtown. She characterized the ordinance as a “simple change” that would allow people to continue to use sandwich board signs. She asked her colleagues on the council to join her in supporting it.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) echoed Briere’s sentiments, and thanked the downtown merchants for their patience. He noted that two areas of concern had been raised. One was about accessibility for the handicapped community and the other concerned the possible proliferation of such signs. However, he concluded, the language of the proposed ordinance change had addressed both concerns.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) focused on changes that had been made to the ordinance between its approval by the council on first reading and the second reading, which they were approving that night. He noted that the first reading version had stipulated a limit of two signs per building, whereas the version they were considering that night had increased the allowable number of signs to two per entrance. Between William Street and Nickels Arcade along State Street, he observed, there were seven doors, which meant 14 potential sandwich board signs, not to mention the numerous bike racks, parking meters, and street signs along that stretch.

Kunselman stated that the change from two signs per building to two per entrance was a substantial one. He wondered if it was a substantial enough change that it would need to be considered as an additional first reading. He said he did not feel the change had been thought through very well. He was concerned that the result would be too many signs and that it would result in a pedestrian-unfriendly environment.

Kunselman also expressed specific concerns about spring-loaded, wind-resistant signs, drawing an analogy between them and branches along a trail in the woods – when the person in front of you walks ahead and pulls back branches so that they snap back.

Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city, took the podium to answer questions from Kunselman. The change from two signs per building to two per entrance, she said, had emerged as the result of a public meeting held the previous week. She gave the example of Kerrytown, which was a very large building with multiple entrances. It did not seem reasonable to limit the entire building to just two signs. She noted that there was also a limitation of one sign per business.

Speaking specifically to Kunselman’s example of State Street between William and Nickels Arcade, she noted that Bivouac has three entrances and could not – because of the limit of one per business – put a sign at each of those doors. She also pointed out that some of those doors are not primary entrances. She indicated that they had not provided updated information about the situation in other cities with respect to sandwich board signs, because they had been responding to a sense of urgency that the ordinance revision be considered in time for the summer commercial season.

When asked if the staff had met with the Center for Independent Living, Rampson indicated that they had not – meetings the previous week had been limited to stakeholders within the downtown area.

Kunselman then raised a question he’d also asked at the previous meeting of the council, about the businesses outside the DDA district contracting with a business inside the DDA district. Could an outside-the-district business place a sign using a permit obtained by an inside-the-district business? Responding to Kunselman’s question, city attorney Stephen Postema allowed that the ordinance would create “a market” for businesses to do that. He said that would have to be addressed if and when it came up.

Kunselman expressed concern about the fact that the ordinance was designed just for the DDA district and cautioned that businesses like the Pastry Peddler or Blimpie Burger would not be able to use such signs, as they are located outside the district boundary. He cautioned that the city needed to be careful with “how we play favorites.”

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) indicated that he was generally supportive of the ordinance revision, but that he had concerns. He was not so much concerned about the number of signs in and of itself, he said, but rather about the signs in conjunction with tables and chairs for sidewalk dining areas, and their location adjacent to handicapped parking spots. He did not feel that the proposed ordinance had received enough deliberation and consultation with the disability community.

He asked what the minimum regulation was for clearance as stipulated by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Rampson told him it was 6 feet. Asked by Rapundalo how that requirement was policed, Rampson said it would be accomplished similarly to the way that sidewalk occupancy permits are already enforced, namely by regular walk-throughs by community standards officers. She noted that the signs are supposed to be removed from the sidewalk every day.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) noted that when the ordinance had been approved at its first reading, the council had asked specifically that the disability community be engaged and she wondered why it was being brought back before that had happened. Rampson answered that staff had felt the ADA issue had been addressed through two requirements: (i) a 6-foot clearance from the building face, and (ii) an 18-inch clearance from the curb.

Higgins indicated that she was hoping for a postponement, and Rapundalo actually moved for the postponement, saying that time should be taken to sit down with the Center for Independent Living. He asked that photographs be taken, preferably from above, and that images be superimposed with sandwich signs,  people, and tables and chairs to test out if it actually works.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) indicated that he did not feel it was necessary to postpone consideration of the ordinance. He noted that it had been subject to considerable public discussion, and suggested that the Center for Independent Living might be consulted in a way that would “ratify” the ordinance. It was not a fresh subject, he said, and there had been opportunity for input. He observed that post-passage modification could be undertaken if the ordinance was determined to be deficient.

Hohnke stated that he felt the council had some responsibility to move things along at a reasonable pace. He noted that the ordinance as written is compliant with the ADA. He also observed that there are already sandwich boards in use [counter to existing ordinances]. He said he thought it was unlikely that they would see a significant proliferation of signs.

Like Taylor, Hohnke said they could make adjustments as necessary. He observed that any ordinance can pose potential problems, but that did not mean those problems would actually materialize. He noted that when the backyard chicken ordinance was considered, people feared that everyone would have backyard chickens, but that did not happen.

City of Ann Arbor CFO Tom Crawford confers with Marcia Higgins (Ward 2).

Higgins countered that the Center for Independent Living had addressed the council and asked to be involved. The council had given clear direction, Higgins said, that the CIL would be involved and that had not happened. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) agreed with Taylor and Hohnke, saying that there had been adequate time for public discussion. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) said he agreed with Higgins and that the council should take two weeks as a postponement, saying that he was concerned about the process. His concerns were not just on behalf of the mobility-impaired community, but also about the site- and hearing-impaired communities.

Responding to the concerns of Higgins, Rapundalo and Derezinski about the involvement of the disability community, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that when the task force had been formed to address a revision to the sign ordinance, a member of the accessibility commission had participated with that body. Although the original ordinance had been crafted to address signs, and the current ordinance was instead a revision to the sidewalk occupancy ordinance, she said, the ordinance before the council that night thoughtfully included the consideration from the sign ordinance. She offered that the sight-impaired community had not been unheard.

Rapundalo, responding to Briere, said he appreciated that kind of input, but that had been a single representative on a task force and not the Center for Independent Living or the commission on disability issues as a body.

Hohnke, responding to Derezinki’s remark about taking two weeks for a postponement, noted that the next council meeting is actually in three weeks, and that factoring in the 10-day requirement stipulated by the city charter before the ordinance could take effect, he cautioned that the summer season would be well underway.

Mayor John Hieftje agreed with Hohnke on that point, saying that they were imagining the “worst that can happen.” He indicated he was willing to let the ordinance be enacted, and was against postponement. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) also argued against postponing the ordinance, saying that the merchants had been pleading with the council for quite some time.

Outcome: The motion to postpone the sidewalk occupancy ordinance revision that would allow the use of sandwich board signs failed, with support only from Derezinski, Rapundalo, Kunselman, and Higgins. Council then continued deliberations on the ordinance.

Deliberating again on the ordinance itself, Higgins came back to the issue of enforceability. She contended that everybody knows there is not 6 feet of walkable space on the sidewalks, and she indicated she did not have a lot of confidence that the city’s handicapped citizens were going to be well served by the ordinance.

Smith said that addressing the “pinching down” of the sidewalk would be complaint driven. She then suggested that a little crowdedness might not be a bad thing, citing the wisdom of Yogi Berra, who said “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.” Derezinski said he agreed with Smith, saying that he had wanted to delay the ordinance, but did not want to hold it up permanently. However he admonished his colleagues to “remember your arguments. If it goes south, we’ll get the complaints.”

Outcome: The resolution to approve the sidewalk occupancy ordinance revision that would allow the use of sandwich board signs passed, with dissent from Rapundalo and Higgins.

Mutually Beneficial Committee

Before the council was a resolution initiated by Sabra Briere (Ward 1) that acknowledged the DDA’s resolution on May 5, 2010 to pay the city $2 million. The DDA’s resolution had been the result of a term sheet that a “working group” of councilmembers and DDA board members had created to serve as a basis for the renegotiation of a parking agreement between the city and the DDA.

The “working group” approach, which began out of public view in January 2010, reflected a departure from the publicly declared mechanism that the two bodies had enacted to discuss the parking agreement – the appointment of two “mutually beneficial” committees. The fact that the discussions took place out of public view, and in a way that was inaccessible to all members of the DDA board, had sparked dissent at the DDA board meeting when the $2 million was authorized.

In the course of council deliberations on Monday, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) posed the question of whether the council even needed a DDA resolution in order to move the money to the city.

Mutually Beneficial Committee: Public Comment

Ann Arbor DDA board member Jennifer S. Hall addressed the council during public commentary time to clarify the comments she had made recently at the DDA board meeting when that body had authorized a $2 million payment to the city. [Hall voted against the payment.] Hall said she was sorry if the anger and emotion of her remarks at the DDA board meeting had obscured the reasons why she had voted against the payment. She stated that she was not opposed to the $2 million transfer. She had always contended, she said, that the payment should be made in exchange for some specific benefit to the downtown area. In addition, she said, it was important that the reason for the transfer arise out of a public discussion between the city and the DDA.

Up to this point, she said, she did not feel that either of those requirements have been met, and that was the reason she voted against the $2 million payment. Hall pointed to the framework for the public discussions that had been in place between the city and the DDA for over a year. She said that it was her expectation both as a board member and as a citizen that the city-DDA discussions would take place publicly, and that her expectations were based on specific reasons she had given at the DDA board meeting. She indicated that the response to her concerns about public process had been to place on her the burden of finding out when the meetings were to be held. [At the board meeting, fellow board member Roger Hewitt had asked Hall if she had inquired about when the meetings were to take place or had indicated any interest in participating.]

Hall continued, saying that in her view, she should not have to ask for the information but rather that the information should have been there for the taking for anyone who wanted it. She commended Briere and Taylor for bringing forward the council resolution that night, specifying that the meetings of the city council’s mutually beneficial committee would be officially noticed for the public and that meeting reports would be provided to the council.

Hall told the council that she had tried to convince the DDA’s partnerships committee to bring a resolution to the full board making more clear that the mutually beneficial committee of the DDA was a standing committee of the board, with the expectation that its activities would conform to the standard of openness enjoyed by other standing committees.

Hall’s attempt to define the DDA’s mutually beneficial committee clearly as a standing committee, she said, was intended to prevent a redefinition of what the committee actually is – it had recently been recast from a committee to a “working group.” She encouraged councilmembers to support Briere and Taylor’s resolution and said that it would help restore her trust that the city and the DDA would be able to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Part of the term sheet that the city and the DDA will discuss includes a proposal for the DDA to assume responsibility for enforcement of parking codes. Currently the parking codes are enforced by community standards officers, who are members of the city’s AFSCME union.

Nicholas Nightwine, spoke on behalf of the Local 369 AFSCME union on the issue of privatization and the contracting out of work in violation of their union contract. Specifically, he addressed the possibility that parking code enforcement would become the responsibility of Ann Arbor’s DDA. It is community standards officers’ job to provide that enforcement, he said. He questioned why the council would give away union work. He cited the collective bargaining agreement for AFSCME, Article 13, which specifies that no work will be contracted out when union workers are able to perform the tasks. He stated that the possible deal with the DDA on parking enforcement is a violation of the bargaining agreement and said that the AFSCME union would fight it with all legal means. He admonished the council to respect the hard work of the community standards officers.

Mutually Beneficial Committee: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1), who sponsored the original resolution – and who was subsequently joined by Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) in crafting the language in the resolution – led off deliberations by summarizing some of the history involved.

Over the last year, she said, the city council and the DDA had agreed it would be valuable to discuss the future of parking revenues. The city and the DDA had a contract, she reminded everyone, and that contract specified that $10 million would be paid by the DDA to the city over the course of 10 years, starting in 2005. The city had an option to withdraw up to $2 million in any given year. Over the first five years, she said, the city had withdrawn all of the money.

In that context, she said, the two bodies – the city council and the DDA – had considered it a good idea to start renegotiating the contract. The council had appointed a mutually beneficial committee and the DDA board had done the same, she said. “For reasons that escape me,” she said, “they did not meet.” And so, she continued, the contract was not renegotiated. Instead, she said, individual members from each body felt that it was imperative that the situation be addressed, and so a “working group” had come out with some talking points [the term sheet]. That had resulted in a vote at the DDA for a $2 million transfer payment.

However, the DDA’s resolution did not revise the contract into the future, which left the question open of what happens next year. That’s why the council needed to pass this resolution, she said, to re-create the mutually beneficial committee of the city council and to express the council’s desire that the committee should meet to discuss the terms of the parking agreement and that the details be worked out. It was important that the details be worked out in a timely fashion – by Oct. 31, 2010, if not by the end of the fiscal year. It was also important, she said, that the details be worked out as openly as possible. She noted that this was also what the DDA was asking for.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked Briere if she intended the resolution to appoint members of the committee. Briere indicated she felt it was the mayor’s purview to make the appointments. Taylor, for his part, said that he was pleased to bring the resolution to the council, and that he wished to emphasize the part of the resolution expressing thanks to the DDA.

Taylor characterized the term sheet as something that would be tested “through the crucible of conversation” over the rest of the year. If the provisions of the term sheet proved wise, he said, they’ll be adopted and if not, then not. The parts of the resolution that addressed open meetings and transparency, he said, were consistent with something that a constituent had told him and that had stuck with him regarding the expertise and knowledge that existed in the community. There’s so much creativity and skill in the community at large, he said, and it was unwise to leave that “on the table.”

Mutually Beneficial Committee: Redaction of Transparency

Yet Taylor expressed his view that the openness and transparency was bundled into the fact that it would be a committee and the explicit reference to openness and transparency was redundant. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), followed up by thanking Taylor for the last point about redundancy. He indicated he was generally supportive of the resolution but was concerned that the language about open and transparent meetings was redundant. He felt that it implied some kind of less-than-transparent conduct has already occurred. [Editor's note: The Chronicle has thoroughly documented that less-than-transparent conduct, in fact, did occur.] He proposed an amendment striking that language.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) asked the city’s attorney, Stephen Postema, if a council committee could be subject to the Open Meetings Act (OMA). Postema indicated to Derezinski that it was not the OMA, but rather a council resolution [from 1991] that was the “operative document.” [It requires city committees to adhere to the OMA to the best of their abilities.]

Higgins indicated that this led her to several questions, among them: What is the purpose of the committee? Was it to negotiate a contract? What was the charge to the committee? She indicated she did not see how those questions were addressed in the resolution.

Mayor John Hieftje brought the conversation back to the issue of the amendments proposed by Rapundalo that stripped out the explicit references to open meetings and transparency. Hieftje indicated he would support those amendments.

Outcome: The amendments to the mutually beneficial committee resolution that removed language referring to openness and transparency were approved, with dissent from Briere, Kunselman, and Anglin.

Mutually Beneficial Committee: Appointment of Committee, Tabling Motion

Stephen Kunselman indicated that he felt he was perhaps the most confused person of all at the table. Given the prior existence of the council’s mutually beneficial committee, he said, he wondered why Hieftje did not simply appoint the third committee member. [The council's committee consisted of Carsten Hohnke, Margie Teall, and Leigh Greden, but Kunselman defeated Greden in the August 2009 Democratic primary election.]

Stephen Rapundalo then offered his view that the council had not actually created or appointed a committee, citing some “due diligence” work he’d done examining the council’s history from January 2009. He concluded that the only action that the council had taken with respect to the negotiations with the DDA was to pass a resolution in January 2009 calling on the DDA to begin a conversation.

Sandi Smith advised Rapundalo that there had, in fact, been a committee created with Carsten Hohnke, Margie Teall, and Leigh Greden. The city clerk, Jackie Beaudry, confirmed that Smith was correct. [Screenshot of publicly accessible Legistar search of council records that citizens can perform themselves via the web.]

Conferring before the meeting were (at right) city clerk Jackie Beaudry, accounting services manager Karen Lancaster, and Mary Fales from the city attorney’s office.

Marcia Higgins pointed to the fact that the mutually beneficial committee had not been included on a list of council committee appointments [handled in November 2009 by Rapundalo] for that council year. But she characterized the failure to include the mutually beneficial committee on the council’s list of committee assignments as an “oversight.”

Based on that new understanding of the historical facts, Rapundalo offered the view that the council did not then need to create a committee if one already existed. Taylor offered his opinion that the November listing of committee assignments amounted to an “exclusive articulation” of committees. If the list didn’t include the committee, he claimed, the committee ceased to exist.

Taylor allowed that he had no problem with using language in the resolution that would indicate the council was now “re-creating” the committee. However, the language of the resolution was not altered to reflect a re-creation of the committee.

A motion was brought and passed to add the committee appointments to the language of the resolution: Hohnke, Teall and Taylor.

Having been appointed to the committee, Hohnke indicated that he was unclear about its function. Taylor said he felt that the charge to the committee was sufficiently clear, namely that it would use the term sheet as a basis for the conversations that would unfold over the next several months. Sabra Briere highlighted the next-to last resolved clause, which stressed the need for staff involvement, saying that would be important to the committee in meeting its charge.

Hohnke then made a motion to table, citing his unclarity about the specific task of the committee on which he was to serve.

Hohnke reiterated his concern that the charge to the committee was not specified in enough detail, but stressed that he also understood the importance of beginning discussions with the DDA. Taylor reiterated his view that the resolution did specify the committee’s task with sufficient clarity, pointing out that the resolution indicated there would be reports back to the council on a monthly basis as to what is going on.

Outcome: Only Kunselman and Anglin supported the motion to table the mutually beneficial resolution, and so the council returned to deliberations on the resolution. [.txt file of resolution as passed]

Mutually Beneficial Committee: The Committee’s Charge

Hieftje then sketched out the concept behind the DDA’s idea of parking enforcement. He described it as a concept akin to an “ambassador.” He offered his view, however, that he felt it would be easier to train the existing community standards officers to enforce parking codes in an ambassador-like fashion as opposed to assigning responsibility for the DDA to contract with a third party to do so.

Hieftje also expressed some concerns about expectations created by the resolution that might not be met. With regard to the monthly meetings, he noted that the DDA board does not typically meet in August. He suggested that it might be worth contemplating the substitution of the word “regular” for “monthly.” Briere responded to Hieftje by saying that the reference to “monthly” is from the DDA’s own resolution.

Higgins asked who the members of the DDA’s mutually beneficial committee were. Smith ticked off the membership: Russ Collins, Roger Hewitt, Gary Boren, and herself. Higgins then expressed concern about Smith sitting on another body’s committee that was having discussions with the city council.

Smith was quick to respond to Higgins’ remarks by indicating that if there was a strong feeling on the part of the city council, then she would resign her committee membership on the DDA’s mutually beneficial committee. However, she told Higgins that she’d thought about the issue a lot. Smith said she felt she had an opportunity to provide insight into both organizations. She also said that up to that point, she had helped the two organizations get past some historical hard feelings – she characterized it as a “clash of cultures.”

Smith said the DDA may or may not be interested in doing any of the items listed on the term sheet. Smith then floated the idea that both the city council and the DDA board would meet together as entire bodies.

Higgins picked up on Smith’s offer to resign from the committee by indicating she wanted to request that Smith not be a member of the DDA’s mutually beneficial committee. Rapundalo echoed Higgins’ request, saying he meant no disrespect to Smith. However, he said that if she were removed from that committee, he would be more comfortable.

Hieftje noted that Smith brought a great deal of knowledge to the work. And Teall echoed Hieftje’s sentiments that Smith’s skills and knowledge would be useful. Hieftje also suggested that the work going forward should not be thought of as a negotiation but rather a conversation.

Hieftje then alluded to the recent history of how the term sheet had been brought forward – first introduced at the DDA’s operations committee, and then to the full DDA board. At those meetings, he said that comments have been made about the history of the parking agreement that were not consistent with the “recollections of councilmembers” who had participated in the negotiations in 2005. Hieftje said he just wanted to get that on the record. He characterized some of the statements made during public commentary about the history of the parking negotiations as bearing “little relationship with the truth.” [He was apparently alluding to the comments of former DDA board member Rene Greff, but did not name her. She was the public speaker at the meeting who discussed the history of the 2005 parking agreement.]

Kunselman came back to his point about the basic framework as expressed in the term sheet. In particular, he was concerned about the language referring to the DDA being given primary responsibility for enforcement of parking codes. “It creates a shadow government,” he warned. He contended that community standards officers are meeting the needs of the community.

Teall countered that it was not necessary to agree with all of the language expressed in the framework. There are details that have to be worked out yet, she said.

Kunselman clarified that it was the entire purpose of the framework that he took issue with, saying it took the city in the direction of transferring responsibility for parking enforcement throughout the city to the DDA. Kunselman declared, “I will not abdicate my responsibility to a third-party contractor for the health, safety and welfare [of our community].” The council would not be doing that on his vote, he declared.

Higgins then offered her perspective that it was not necessary to agree with everything in the term sheet. She indicated that Smith had told her that not everyone on the DDA agreed with everything in the term sheet, either. Higgins seemed to indicate that this was a natural consequence of the fact that the conversations of the working group had not been “sanctioned” by either the city council or the DDA. She indicated that she would be supporting the resolution.

Taylor, arguing for the resolution, noted that the term sheet speaks in generalities and that the specifics would get “whacked out” in the course of conversation. On Hieftje’s suggestion, the word “discussion” was inserted in place of “agreement” to indicate what the term sheet would underpin. That suggestion was accepted as a “friendly” amendment by Briere and Taylor.

Outcome: The resolution on the council’s mutually beneficial committee was unanimously approved.

Mutually Beneficial Committee: DDA as Organ of the City

While the council spends its time focus almost exclusively on the general fund budget, all of the various funds included in the whole of the city budget – from the city’s solid waste fund, to the DDA funds, to the AATA funds – total around $342 million. And when the council votes each year on the budget, it’s voting to approve that entire amount of expenditures.

During the deliberations on tabling the resolution on the mutually beneficial committee, Stephen Kunselman departed from the issue of the tabling motion that was under discussion and posed a fairly dramatic question, which can be paraphrased:

Does the city council have the authority to move money from the DDA’s parking fund to the city’s general fund, without consulting the DDA?

During deliberations, Kunselman indicated that he did not feel the DDA had a position of strength from which to tell the city what they would like to do. He stressed the fact that the city owned the parking system. He weighed in against the idea that there would be a “shadow government” run by the DDA.

Sandi Smith responded to Kunselman by indicating that the original 2002 parking agreement between the city and the DDA did, in fact, grant to the DDA the authority to manage the parking system and that there were currently five years left in the contract. [It was subsequently modified in 2005.] Marcia Higgins then wondered aloud, asking if Kunselman and Smith’s conversation really related to the tabling motion. And the council returned to the issue at hand.

While the topic of the city’s authority with respect to the DDA budget was not explored further at the council meeting, it’s worth reviewing a piece of history from 2007, when the council passed its FY 2008 budget. That year, one of the budget resolutions approved by the council reached into the DDA’s budget and reduced an allocation for capital expenditures within the DDA’s TIF (tax-increment financing) fund. [The city calls this fund 0003.] From the May 21, 2007 city council minutes:

[FY 2008 budget] Amendment 11
Resolved, that the Downtown Development Authority fund (0003) expenditure budget be decreased by $1,600,000 to reduce the appropriated reserves for future capital construction projects.

On a voice vote, the Mayor [John Hieftje] declared the motion carried with one dissenting vote made by Councilmember [Joan] Lowenstein.

Based on that vote, it appears that the city council has in the past asserted some direct control over the DDA’s budget.

FY 2011 Budget

In addition to eight separate budget amendments to the main budget resolution, the council entertained an independent resolution that replaced a previous council resolution governing how the park maintenance and improvements millage was allocated, as well as one that increased the parking fine rate schedule.

FY 2011 Budget: Parks Maintenance Millage

Added the same day as the council meeting was a resolution to replace a previous council resolution, plus several amendments that address the administration of the park maintenance and capital improvements millage.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) explained the rationale behind rescinding and replacing the entire resolution – to clean it up so that it’s more readable. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) questioned why it had not appeared on the agenda until that day. Higgins indicated that she had not yet been supplied with a software patch that would allow her to open certain documents on her computer and that the discussion had unfolded over the course of 10 days and they simply wanted to make sure they had got it exactly right. She apologized for the fact that it had appeared late on the agenda.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) asked what the budget impact would be of postponing the resolution for two weeks. City administrator Roger Fraser indicated that the effect is in the recommended budget. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) assured his colleagues that the park advisory commission –  on which he serves as a city council ex officio member without voting privileges – had had a full discussion of the matter.

Higgins indicated that part of the reason for considering it separately from the budget was so that people could more easily find it. Summarizing what the effect of the resolution was, Fraser indicated that the previous resolution had entailed that the natural area preservation (NAP) program would automatically be given a 3% increase in its budget each year.

The resolution before the council that night, Fraser said, removes that provision – they don’t get an increase, he said. Taylor cautioned that his understanding was that the revenue to NAP in this first year was more in the vein of a rollback and would not remain simply flat.

The text of the new resolution indicates that the 3% increases NAP has enjoyed would be eliminated, going back to the first year of the millage.

3. The Natural Area Preservation Program budget be established at a minimum of $700,000 for first year of the millage budget, and that its budget be reflective of its proportionate share of the increase or decrease in revenue recognized from the Park Maintenance and Capital Improvements Millage proceeds;

Discussion at the city’s park advisory commission meeting of April 20, 2010 also supports Taylor’s contention. From The Chronicle’s report of that meeting:

Scott Rosencrans asked how the cuts to the Natural Area Preservation program (NAP) would affect its work. When Tim Berla commented that it wasn’t really a cut – it was simply not an increase – Sam Offen clarified that it was, in fact, a cut of more than 3%. The proposal called for rolling back the 3% increases NAP has received each year since the parks maintenance and capital improvements millage was passed, so it’s actually a 12% budget reduction, he said, taking them back to their 2007 budget level of about $695,000

Outcome: The elimination of the automatic 3% increase for the natural area preservation program was unanimously approved.

FY 2011 Budget: Parking Fine Schedule

Before the council was a resolution on the parking fine schedule that had previously been postponed from the Jan. 19 and April 19 council meetings. The resolution increased the schedule of parking fines for the city. Last week, Carsten Hohnke had suggested a further revision that addressed how loading zones were handled.

Instead of pursuing an option that had been suggested by city staff to create a loading zone permitting system, the fine for improper loading zone parking would simply be increased from $35 to $45. Hohnke characterized it as a way to avoid disrupting a system that was working okay.

A discussion unfolded based on a statement by Hohnke, pointed out by Stephen Kunselman, about the difference between a discounted rate for early payment versus the end result of applying the discount. For example, if the fine is $45 with a $10 discount, that results in a discounted rate of $35. The chart used by the city includes a column head that simply indicates “discount,” which is properly interpreted as “discounted rate” not “discount.”

Outcome: The parking fine schedule was unanimously approved.

FY 2011 Budget: Amendment on Safety Services

Margie Teall (Ward 4) read the first budget amendment – it identified three major new revenue items – a $2 million payment from Ann Arbor DDA, $952,000 of state shared revenue that the city administrator’s budget did not project, and $625,000 in increased parking fine revenues. A $62,000 reduction in the fire department capital expense budget brought the total of extra money in the budget due to that amendment to $3.639 million. The first budget amendment used $1,585,783 to pay for 15 police positions that the originally proposed budget had eliminated. The amendment also used $1,509,620 to pay for 15 firefighter positions that were to be eliminated. That left five firefighter positions still to be cut.

Mayor John Hieftje called the two chiefs of the safety services departments – Barnett Jones (police) and Dominick Lanza (fire) to the podium. Hieftje elicited from Jones confirmation that the impact of the budget amendment would leave current staffing levels unchanged.

The conversation with the fire chief was somewhat less straightforward, given that the amendment still left five positions in the department that would be eliminated. However, the mayor was able to get the fire chief to confirm that even with the reduced staffing, the fire department would still be able to provide four firefighters on the scene in rapid response and could later provide 18 to the scene.

Hieftje then said that he would ideally like to see the situation worked out so that there are no actual layoffs. The fire chief indicated that with the reorganization he had in mind – he started on the job around two months ago – there would be a net loss of three positions and there were six or seven retirements that could factor into the equation. Credit for military service time was an issue that would also factor in, he said.

Rapid response standards for firefighting include putting four firefighters on the scene in four minutes – like these four Ann Arbor firefighters, who were among several attending the city council meeting. The yellow sheets are council meeting agendas. Right to left: Mark Hanselman, Rob Porter, Tilvis Bolen, and Matt Gaken.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) called the expenditure for the police and fire positions a “right and proper” use of funds that had resulted from the transfer from the DDA. He offered thanks to the council’s DDA colleagues. He said he appreciated the added flexibility that the council had, which the city administrator did not have when he prepared his budget.

Hieftje followed up on Hohnke’s comment about the lack of flexibility that the city administrator had, contending that Fraser had no way of knowing that the $2 million would be forthcoming, or that the city council would approve the parking fine increase.

With respect to the changes in state shared revenue projections that the council was using, Hieftje said the current state budget proposal in the state Senate calls for only a slight decrease in state shared revenue and the House version calls for a slight increase. Based on conversations he’s had with the city’s lobbyist, Kirk Profit, over the last few weeks, Hieftje said the council is optimistic that state shared revenues will remain constant instead of getting cut in half as assumed in the administrator’s budget. Hieftje contended that it is “with more than hope” that state shared revenue projections are thought to remain the same.

Picking up on the theme of hope, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) indicated that she was “not a big fan of speculative budgeting.” However, she allowed that there is no other way to do a budget – you have to imagine what the revenue will be and you have to imagine what the expenditures will. It’s the same situation the council is always in, she said: Many of the revenue streams are tentative. She noted that the the budget looks better than it looked two months ago. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) said she was pleased with the amendment.

Outcome: The amendment was unanimously approved.

FY 2011 Budget: Amendment on Human Services

The expenditure on police and fire positions dropped the amount of extra money identified in the budget to $543,587.

In the second budget amendment, also read aloud by Margie Teall (Ward 4), another $260,000 of that was expended in order to add to the human services budget. That brought human services spending in the city back to the same levels as the previous year.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) indicated that she had co-sponsored the amendment, because the two things she had heard from constituents that cause them the most concern were safety and human services issues. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) also indicated strong support for the amendment. Mayor John Hieftje pointed out that Ann Arbor is one of only two cities in the state that funds human services.

Outcome: The amendment was unanimously approved.

FY 2011 Budget: Amendment on Parks Mowing/Parking

The third budget amendment finished off all but around $500 of the extra money identified in the first budget amendment. It called for increased mowing ($138,000) and trimming ($120,000) in parks, and eliminated the possibility of football parking at Allmendinger and Frisinger parks, which reduced projected revenues by $25,000.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) was not convinced that mowing and trimming in parks was the best use of the money. She was looking ahead to another amendment that proposed to undo the proposed de-energizing of some streetlights. She said she saw it as a safety versus shagginess-in-the-parks issue. She proposed altering the amendment to eliminate the mowing and trimming expenditures, but left the idea of no parking in the parks intact. Her motion was seconded by Sabra Briere (Ward 1).

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) indicated that he would not support that amendment. He said he had heard  from a lot his constituents about parks. He also pointed to the fact that he coaches a kids soccer team and quipped that there were “dandelions on the pitch!” Briere confirmed that the city was already on a 19-day cycle, which Sue McCormick, the city’s public services area administrator, said was the city’s first experience in a spring season with that long a mowing cycle.

McCormick also said that the weather this year had meant a very early spring – the city was currently already engaged in its third cycle of mowing. Smith’s proposed alteration of the amendment failed.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated that he had a vague memory about proposals for parking cars in the parks on football Saturdays and said he wanted to eliminate the idea for all future consideration. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) indicated that it had been discussed in the past but that this year was the first time it’s actually appeared in a proposed budget. Mayor John Hieftje then contended that the city’s park advisory commission had recommended it.

In fact, the idea of football parking in Frisinger had some city council history last fall. From The Chronicle’s Oct. 5, 2009 meeting report:

Placed on the agenda on Oct. 2, with sponsorship from Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), and Mike Anglin (Ward 5), was a resolution that would have allowed the city to generate revenue from parking cars in Frisinger Park on home football Saturdays. Frisinger Park is just south of East Stadium Boulevard between Woodbury and Iroquois. It was pulled off the agenda on Oct. 5.

Here’s how the resolution read:

Whereas, Frisinger Park is well situated to provide special event parking, in particular for University of Michigan home football games; and

Whereas, The City is providing home football game parking at other City-owned facilities, including its facility on S. Industrial and these parking revenues are a new source of funds for the City which is striving to maintain high quality level of service for its citizens;

Resolved, That the City Administrator establish a parking program for University of Michigan home football days at Frisinger Park, including the option for pre-game/post-game tailgating.

The football parking proposal was an idea that came in the “turning over every stone” approach that Sandi Smith (Ward 1) has been taking to find a way to generate the revenue that would go missing if parking meters are not installed in certain neighborhoods near downtown, which is an assumption currently built into the budget for FY 2010 passed by city council.

In deliberations about the extension of the moratorium on installation of parking meters in neighborhoods near downtown – which came later in the meeting – Margie Teall (Ward 4) gave perhaps some insight into why the Frisinger Park parking resolution had been pulled from the agenda. She said she would simply not support football parking in Frisinger Park. The park is located in Ward 4, which she represents.

Kunselman asked if the amendment could be altered to explicitly direct the city administrator to forgo any further future contemplation of parking cars in the parks. The city attorney’s opinion on the matter was that such an amendment would seek effectively to bind the hands of future councils. Picking up on Hieftje’s comment about the park advisory commission, Higgins asked how the commission had the ability to change the use of a park.

Addressing Kunselman’s question about the future of proposals for football parking in the city’s parks, Hieftje said he thought that Fraser had gotten the message. Taylor then repeated a defense of the park advisory commission that he had given at a previous meeting – the commission had had a difficult task and they had suggested that the football parking be only on a pilot basis. He said he did not think that a single one of the commissioners was enthusiastic about the idea – it had been the result of the severe budgetary constraints. [Taylor serves, along with Mike Anglin, on the park advisory commission as an ex officio non-voting member.]

Outcome: The amendment was approved, with dissent from Smith.

FY 2011 Budget: Construction Contractor Fees

The fourth budget amendment addressed fee increases, with proceeds going into the construction code fund. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) had proposed the amendment. She said the test for fee increases was whether they provided an increased benefit. She’d been told the fee increases provide increased revenues, but that all by itself she didn’t feel this was a worthy enough reason. She indicated that the construction fund balance was not high due to a lack of construction activity. The fee increases wouldn’t result in improving things for contractors, she said.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) asked Sumedh Bahl, the interim community services area administrator, about the history of the fund balance in the construction code fund was and what it paid for. Bahl clarified that it pays for construction inspections.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) would later elicit the history of the construction code fund. It had been established in the wake of a lawsuit filed by the Home Builders Association. The outcome of that lawsuit was that the city isolated all the costs and expenses for construction activity services. It was established in 2005 and in that year a $650,000 transfer was made into the fund. The fund balance that year was $1.1 million.

In 2006, a $260,000 transfer was made and the fund balance was $1.3 million. Thereafter, $100,000 transfers from the general fund have been made. The $100,000 transfers will continue at least through 2014. In 2007, the fund balance was $1.6 million and in 2008 it was $1.875 million. From this, Sabra Briere concluded that the code fund did not “stand alone.” The fact that the construction code fund balance stood at $0.8 million at the end of 2009 indicated to her that it’s a fund that fluctuates.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5)  indicated that he would not support the amendment because he felt it was “not burdensome” to contractors. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) agreed, pointing to the current rate of $1 per year paid by plumbing contractors.

Outcome: The amendment failed, with support only from Briere, Kunselman, Anglin.

FY 2011 Budget: Rental Housing Inspection Fees

The fifth budget amendment proposed would have eliminated increases in rental housing inspection fees. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) offered the amendment, saying she took to heart the idea of not using prior year’s fund balances to offset increases, which the amendment would do. But she noted that planning services did not intend to invest the additional revenues from the proposed increases in increased levels of service for rental housing inspection.

Briere noted that fees had been increased last year as well as the year before. She observed that rental housing inspections are required by law on a 30-month cycle and she indicated that the quality and the number of the inspections would not be affected by the increases. The purpose of the increases as they had been explained to her, she said, was simply to generate additional revenue. She indicated that the fees are meant to reflect the cost of doing business.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said she had spoken with representatives from the Home Builders Association and said they were actually quite pleased with the level of service for rental housing inspection, which had been increased. Mayor John Hieftje suggested that the idea was perhaps not to add to the level of service but simply to maintain it. The city administrator, Roger Fraser, said that in general the city took the position that the fees needed to recover the cost of providing service, and that historically the general fund had been subsidizing rental housing inspection activities.

Outcome: The amendment failed, with support only from Briere and Kunselman.

FY 2011 Budget: Tax Administration Fee

An amendment proposed by Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) would have changed the rate at which the tax administration fee for the city is assessed. He reviewed the history of an increase made in 2007 for the FY 2008 budget from 0.81% to a full 1%.

He noted that a request had not been made by the city administrator in the proposed budget for that year. He observed that property owners would benefit. He suggested that the council send a few dollars back to the taxpayers, allowing that the average amount worked out to something like $9 per parcel, which he characterized as “not big bucks.”

As far as the principle of finding revenue to take up the resulting shortfall from the decrease in the administration fee, Kunselman observed that the city administrator had proposed a budget that already dipped into the city’s general fund reserve for $1.5 million.

Kunselman pointed out that the increase made for the FY 2008 budget was not designed to fill holes in the financial services unit budget. In fact, he said, there had been no changes in staffing levels in that unit from 2008 to now – eight FTEs in the assessor’s office and 5.3 FTEs in the treasurer’s office in 2008, compared to eight FTEs in the assessor’s office today and 4.7 FTEs in the treasurer’s office. Now, Kunselman contended, was an appropriate time to send a few dollars back to the taxpayers.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) indicated agreement with Kunselman in general terms, saying he thought it would be a good, albeit symbolic gesture. However, he said he would argue that the level of activities in the financial services office had, in fact, increased due to increased numbers of reviews and appeals. He said he was worried that reducing the fee would not account for the true cost of administering the property tax collections. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) got confirmation from city administrator Roger Fraser that of the cities statewide that assess the fee, without exception they assess at the 1% level.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated that he would be willing to let his $9 sit there – he compared the amount to three ice cream cones at the Washtenaw Dairy.

Outcome: The amendment failed, with support only from Briere, Kunselman, and Anglin.

FY 2011 Budget: Parking Fine Schedule

The basis for one of the budget amendments had been created when council approved the parking fine schedule earlier in the evening. It had provided for an increased fine for improper parking in a loading zone, instead of implementing a new loading zone permitting system.

The amendment eliminated the loading zone permitting program and increased the projected revenue budget line for parking fines by $25,700. City treasurer Matthew Horning confirmed that he was quite confident in the projected additional revenues of $25,700 – it was based on FY 2008 and the actual number of tickets written.

Outcome: The amendment was unanimously approved.

FY 2011 Budget: Streetlights

An amendment proposed by Sandi Smith (Ward 1) called for the city to abandon its plan to de-energize some of the city’s streetlights. The move to turn off some of the lights is intended to save $120,000. Smith said she talked to a DTE representative who had said they would tag every pole and put a sign on it saying that it had been de-energized by order of the city council.

She said she had tried to find savings in the budget. Her attempt earlier in the meeting to swap trimming/mowing in the parks for streetlight funding was not supported by the majority of her colleagues.  She suggested that one place savings might be found would be in the LED streetlights the council had authorized for purchase earlier in the evening. Multiplied by 800 lights, $107 per light resulted in more than $80,000 savings, she said.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) worried about the possibility of de-energizing streetlights. He thought it was perhaps a highway exception to general governmental immunity. Public services area administrator Sue McCormick noted that there was variability in lighting already – some residential areas have no lighting, some of them had lighting just at the street corners. She also noted that the areas where the de-energized lights were proposed were already lighted at twice the standard. Mayor John Hieftje asked if it was possible to get a demo.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he was apprehensive about the designation of certain areas as “overlit.” He indicated that there were certain areas of the city classified as overlit that he did not find to be overlit. Hieftje indicated he would not support the amendment but would support a demonstration. He said he was concerned about the $120,000 that would need to come out of the city’s reserve, if the city did not go through with turning off some of the streetlights.

Outcome: The amendment to keep all the streetlights on failed, with support only from Briere, Derezinski, Kunselman, and Smith.

FY 2011 Budget: Coda – What About FY 2012?

In some concluding remarks about the budget, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said the council would probably feel pretty good about what they’ve done, having saved jobs. But he wondered what the projected deficit might be for FY 2012. Responding to the question, chief financial officer Tom Crawford put that number at $5 million. After the meeting, Crawford clarified for The Chronicle that the projected deficit of $5 million for FY 2012 includes as assumptions: (i) an additional $2 million from the Ann Arbor DDA, and (ii) reductions in the state shared revenue for FY 2011 and FY 2012 of $1 million each year.

Tom Crawford, the city’s CFO, sits at the ready for council questions.

If the city council’s optimism on state shared revenues are borne out, and those revenues from the state stay at the FY 2010 level, that would translate into just a $3 million deficit for FY 2012, all other things being equal.

Kunselman confirmed with city administrator Roger Fraser that the city’s capital improvements plan did not include a runway extension of the Ann Arbor municipal airport.

Kunselman expressed his thanks to Fraser, city attorney Stephen Postema, and all the staff still in the room, who he said had worked hard to make the budget happen.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he felt the budget as amended was healthy and fiscally responsible. He thanked citizens for their help in particular with the task forces that had kept the Ann Arbor Senior Center and Mack Pool open.

Ann Arbor Transportation Authority Board

Terms of two AATA board members expired on May 1, 2010 – Paul Ajegba and Ted Annis. At the council’s previous meeting, mayor John Hieftje had nominated a replacement for Ajegba: Anya Dale, a Washtenaw County planner who also serves on the city’s environmental commission.

AATA Board: Public Commentary

Speaking to many of the same themes that he had addressed at the most recent meeting of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s board, Tim Hull stated that the AATA did an overall decent job operating the bus system. But he criticized the AATA for having few avenues for public input beyond what is required by law. He called for the creation of a public advisory body for the fixed route system, analogous to the advisory body that advocates for handicapped people – the local advisory commission (LAC).

Hull noted that there is not a single bus that runs after 6:45 p.m. on weekends. He suggested that candidates for the AATA board should answer three questions: (i) Are you committed to expanding input from the community with an advisory board? (ii) Are you committed to using taxpayer funds, paid by Ann Arbor property taxpayers, for transportation services for Ann Arbor taxpayers, not commuters? (iii) Are you in favor of exploring the expansion of night and weekend service? Hull told the council members that they needed to ask these questions.

AATA Board: Council Deliberations

In a final business of the evening, mayor John Hieftje asked for confirmation of Anya Dale to replace Paul Ajegba on the AATA board. Ajegba did not seek re-appointment. Hieftje had nominated Dale at the previous council’s meeting. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) indicated that Dale’s position with the county as a planner creates a possible conflict. Mike Anglin (Ward 5) said that he had received emails on Dale’s nomination with concerns about the number of different commissions on which Dale serves. He added that he felt the process for the nomination should become more transparent.

Chronicle file photo from a recent city council public hearing on The Moravian: Anya Dale

Hieftje indicated that he hoped that Dale would use her position on the environmental commission to create a synergy. Anglin agreed that having expertise and experience with two different bodies would be useful, and gave the example of Sandi Smith (Ward 1) wearing “two hats,” serving on both the city council and the DDA board.

Anglin said he would support this specific nomination, but said he would like to see the council ask in a more effective way: Who would like to serve? Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) weighed in with his support for Dale as a nominee based on his experience when he’d crossed paths with the city council’s liaison to the Washtenaw Area Transportation Study (WATS).

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked when the next AATA board meeting was – it’s not until towards the end of June. He asked if it was not possible to postpone the confirmation and have both Dale and Roger Kerson, who was also being nominated that night, come to the council and introduce themselves. [Kerson, who was nominated to replace Ted Annis, is public relations director with the United Auto Workers (UAW). He'd entertained a run for a Ward 5 city council seat in 2008, but ultimately decided not to run.]

Responding to Kunselman on the suggestion to delay, Hieftje conveyed some irritation and said that he would like to see the nomination of Dale confirmed that evening and have a process followed that the council had used for years. He added that Dale rides the bus.

Outcome: Dale was confirmed, with dissent from Briere. Rapundalo left before voting. The nomination for Kerson will come for confirmation at the council’s next meeting.

Liquor Licenses

Before the council was a resolution to approve issuance of a downtown development district liquor license to the New York Pizza Depot. It came before the council on a 2-1 vote from the council’s liquor license review committee. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), who chairs that council committee, indicated that he had been the dissenting vote and would not be supporting the issuance of the license. He noted that such licenses are meant to be an economic development tool and that he had tried to make his decisions on such licenses consistent across applications.

Specifically, such licenses are meant to provide a benefit to the community. In the case of the New York Pizza Depot, he contended, the petitioner could not show any anticipated growth in employment due to the issuance of the license. In addition, Rapundalo said, a consideration for issuance was the location – is it unique? The existing density of licenses in the area, he said, did not indicate to him a dire need for an establishment of that kind.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), who also serves on the council’s liquor committee, said that Rapundalo had accurately depicted what he’d said at the committee’s meeting. However, he and the council’s other committee member, Mike Anglin (Ward 5), saw the situation differently. Having the license would allow the business to grow, he said, and the applicant had said they did not know if it would result in an increase in the number of employees. He characterized the applicant statement as “candid.”

Derezinski said one reason to grant a license was so as not to disadvantage their establishment in contrast to others. He adduced the analogy of a small town with one lawyer, who starves, but with two lawyers, they both get rich.

Anglin said the applicant had met the criteria for issuance of the license, by making a $75,000 investment in their establishment. Rapundalo allowed that no doubt a license would benefit their business, but reiterated the basis of his concerns, which had to do with consistency in application of the standards. The criteria that Anglin referenced, he said, was for minimum requirements – just because they meet the minimum requirement does not mean they get a license. Rapundalo contrasted New York Pizza Depot with other applicants, who had been able to demonstrate an increase in estimated employment.

Outcome: The issuance of a downtown development district liquor license to New York Pizza Depot was approved, with dissent from Rapundalo.

Water Fund

Funding for maintenance of Argo Dam is paid for out of the city’s drinking water fund. Councilmembers, including the mayor, and city staff have indicated over the course of the last several months that the issue of  dam maintenance funding would be addressed during the normal budgeting process. [Chronicle coverage of  dam maintenance funding was included in the report from the May 16, 2010 Sunday night caucus.]

But the city administrator’s proposed budget kept the funding of dam maintenance in the drinking water fund. Asked by The Chronicle via email to clarify what had happened with the intention to shift the funding of recreational dams out of the drinking water fund, Hieftje wrote in reply:

I have been busy working on solving the Safety Services issues and I am probably not alone on council in having expected the suggestion to move the funding out of water would come from staff. I can think of two reasons it did not.

The departure of Jane [sic] Miller and the settlement with the DNRE that has set discussion of Argo Dam issues on their own timetable. I expect funding sources will be coming up when the issue comes back to council.

Miscellaneous

Typical for any city council meeting are a range of public commentary and communications from councilmembers that do not fit into a neat category.

National Guard and Reserve

For the second successive council meeting, an item has appeared on the council’s agenda that affirms the city’s support of the Michigan Committee for Employer Support of the National Guard and Reserve. And for the second successive meeting there was no representative to receive the proclamation. Hieftje elected to go ahead and read the statement of support. It included a recognition of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

Uniting Michigan

During his public commentary, Thomas Partridge introduced himself as a Washtenaw County Democrat residing in the 18th state senate district, who had formally filed as a candidate for that seat. He described the 18th district as including the city of Ann Arbor and more than half of Washtenaw County. He stressed the importance of uniting the city itself as well as other cities in Washtenaw County and the entire state of Michigan. He said we must join together to protect society’s most vulnerable populations – senior citizens and the handicapped. He called on the city council to work cooperatively with each other and with other municipalities – not in competition – to bring about true progress by providing jobs and economic development. He stressed the goals of transportation, afffordable housing, healthcare, and education.

Legitimacy of Israel

Henry Herskovitz spoke on the issue of the legitimacy of the state of Israel. He cited remarks made by Rabbi Robert Dobrusin of Ann Arbor’s Beth Israel congregation in 2003 about the right to reject conversation from those who were not willing to predicate discussions on an assumption that the state of Israel was legitimate. Herskovitz also cited a 2007 op-ed piece by Dobrusin published in the Ann Arbor News, that made a similar point. He posed the question of why the rabbi would want to make that question of Israel’s legitimacy off limits. Herskovitz contended that the rabbi could not defend it, and he therefore chose to take it off the table. Herskovitz encouraged people to attend the presentation by BBC correspondent Alan Hunt Hart the following evening at the first United Methodist Church at 7 p.m. and to read Hunt’s book, “Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews.”

Future of Library Lot

Alan Haber told the council that the Community Commons was still on his mind. [Haber, with Alice Ralph, helped co-author a proposal for the future of the Library Lot downtown, called the Community Commons.] He noted that the “heart of Ann Arbor” remains undeveloped. He wondered why the committee charged with the task of overseeing the site’s future had not met recently, and he wondered if the consultant – which the DDA had allocated money for – had been hired.

Parks and Volunteers

During her communications from council, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) recognized all the people who had helped out on the previous Saturday’s Adopt-a-Park program. She indicated that she had participated at Allmendinger Park hauling mulch. She thanked all the volunteers who had helped. Mayor John Hieftje noted that there had been a record turnout.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) alerted the public to the fact that the park advisory commission had been brought up to date about some art to be installed in the Huron River. [Recent Chronicle coverage of William Dennisuk's project and installation.] Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) complimented the residents along Iroquois for being creative in taking it upon themselves to take over trash removal and mowing for a summer for one of their neighborhood parks. She thanked them for their efforts.

In news from the parks and recreation programs, city administrator Roger Fraser told the council that the three city pools were set to open on Saturday, May 29, and at that season passes could be purchased before the opening date at a special rate. On May 12, he reported, the stop log had been removed from the Argo Dam headrace, and it was being gradually refilled.

Local Food

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) noted that Gov. Jennifer Granholm had declared that week “local food week” and she asked the city to challenge itself to have a look at its procurement processes to see if there were opportunities to source food locally.

Bridges, Trains, Streets

Mayor John Hieftje reported that the deputy U.S. Secretary of Transportation and Congressman John Dingell had paid a visit to Ann Arbor. During a morning meeting, local officials and city staff had shared information with the deputy secretary about the Stadium Boulevard bridges and had made a field trip to the bridges. He noted that the deputy secretary had remarked that there were bridges like that all over the United States, highlighting the fact that federal funding in the form of TIGER 2 grants was extremely competitive.

Nevertheless, Hieftje said, he felt the city had made a strong presentation. Hieftje also reported that at an afternoon meeting they had been joined by Congressman Mark Schauer, representatives of Amtrak and Norfolk Southern railroad as well as the mayor of Dearborn to discuss commuter rail and high-speed rail. Congressman Schauer, Hieftje noted, is on the House transportation committee. Improvements to the railroad tracks that would facilitate high-speed rail, Hieftje pointed out, would also benefit commuter rail.

City administrator Roger Fraser, during his communications to the council, ticked through a number of street resurfacing projects that would be starting soon.

Fraser also called the public’s attention to the meeting on June 8, 2010, on the connector feasibility study. There would be an additional meeting on the Fuller Road Station, with its date not yet certain, he said.

In his progress report on the construction of the new municipal center, Fraser noted that most of the exterior work is done and that radon abatement equipment has been deployed.

Free Speech Not Abridged

In his communications, Hieftje passed along a compliment from the American Civil Liberties Union about the way the city had handled free speech and expression during the May 2 visit to Ann Arbor by President Obama, for the University of Michigan commencement exercises. The ACLU, he said, had had 11 legal observers on site and had complimented the Ann Arbor police department and the Ann Arbor city attorney’s office for ensuring the safety of the 500 demonstrators at Frisinger Park, as well as those at other locations.

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

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

Firefighters held an informational demonstration Monday afternoon before the city council's meeting at Station 1, which is located across the street from city hall. Firefighters from Flint, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Ann Arbor Township, Ypsilanti, Battle Creek and Ann Arbor took part in the demonstration. (Photos by the writer.)

And Margie Teall (Ward 4), who faces two challengers in the August Democratic primary, announced a planned amendment to the city’s proposed budget that would maintain human services funding at FY 2010 levels. The amendment, which will be brought forward at the council’s May 17 meeting, would also avert as many layoffs in the police and fire departments as possible, she said.

The previous evening at the council’s Sunday night caucus, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) had already indicated they would support using part of a possible $2 million payment from the Downtown Development Authority to avoid police and firefighter layoffs.

The council’s plan for funding the amendment, reported Teall, is to use a $2 million payment from the Downtown Development Authority that it hopes the DDA board will approve at its May 5 board meeting. Even if the DDA board approves the payment, which is very likely but not certain, not all safety services layoffs in the city administrator’s proposed budget could be covered. Averting the elimination of 35 positions across police and fire departments combined would require $3.6 million. The restoration of human services funding would require another $260,000. And that would still result in the city tapping its general fund reserves for $1.5 million.

In its business for the evening, the council passed a resolution added late Monday to the council agenda, which strikes an agreement between the city and the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources and Environment for the future of the embankment along Argo Dam. It will allow the headrace to be re-opened by the end of this week.

The council also approved on first reading a revision to the city’s sidewalk occupancy permit system to include sandwich board signs. And the residential development now called Heritage Row – proposed along Fifth Avenue south of William Street – was approved at the council’s first reading with no discussion, but with dissent from Mike Anglin. Both of those measures will need to come back before the council for a second reading to gain approval.

The council also approved received the mayor’s nomination of the appointment of Anya Dale to the AATA board, replacing Paul Ajegba, whose term expired on May 1. Ajegba had been elected by his colleagues last fall to chair the board. Dale is a Washtenaw County planner. Her appointment will be presented for confirmation at the council’s May 17, 2010 meeting.

The council also approved some additional road closures for the June 6 Dexter-Ann Arbor Run.

FY 2011 Budget

The city council received a formal presentation of the proposed city budget from city administrator Roger Fraser on April 19, 2010. It will be formally adopted, with any amendments made by the city council, on May 17.

FY 2011 Budget: Council Discussion

Margie Teall (Ward 4) began the city council’s communications time by reading some prepared remarks on budget amendments:

Saturday was a great day for Ann Arbor and our nation’s democracy. At the beginning of his speech, President Obama spoke of the country being in the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, something that all of us in Michigan are familiar with. Cities in Michigan have been hit especially hard by state revenue-sharing cuts and other declining revenues, while expenses continue to rise, especially for health care. To cope with a long downturn, many Michigan cities are facing cuts in core services. Several cities have initiatives on the ballot tomorrow in an effort to avoid closing city facilities along with layoffs in safety services and other areas of city government.

The residents of Ann Arbor should know that the mayor and members of city council and city staff have been working hard to ensure that core city services are not cut and that city facilities remain open. As my colleagues here know, I have been working with councilmember Taylor, Hohnke, and Smith on the city council-DDA working group that has been discussing mutually beneficial solutions. We presented a plan at the DDA operations meeting last week that will continue the $2 million transfer of parking revenues to the city for the 2010-2011 budget. I’ve also been working with the mayor and councilmember Higgins on the city budget.

While we still have some work to do, in refining the numbers between now and the next meeting on May 17, I want to let my city council colleagues know that we will be submitting an amendment to the administrator’s budget that will eliminate, or at least minimize, layoffs in the police and fire department. I want to keep our fire stations open and make sure that firefighters are prepared and ready to fight fires, and that response times are not compromised.

The mayor and I will also be bringing an amendment that will fully fund human services at the 2010 budget level. I know that other councilmembers feel the same way, and may want to co-sponsor this amendment. Councilmember Higgins and I have been working with neighbors in the Fourth Ward, and we will be bringing an amendment that will eliminate the need for football parking at Allmendinger and Frisinger parks. Of course, there is still a lot of work to do. Compromises and some sacrifices will be necessary, but I’m hopeful  councilmembers will support these amendments on May 17.

Mayor John Hieftje emphasized that he had been working together with Teall on the proposed budget amendment that would eliminate or at least minimize any layoffs in the safety services area. He said that some might wonder why the city administrator has even proposed so many layoffs in that area. He attributed that to the uncertainty of the outcome of the conversation that had been going on with the working group between the city council and the DDA, which has resulted in an additional $2 million for the city to work with. Hieftje noted that the DDA vote still needed to be taken.

In her communications time, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) said she was pleased to hear of the planned amendments to the budget. She reported that she and her Ward 1 colleague, Sabra Briere, had conducted a town hall meeting in their ward. What attendees were most interested in was the retention of safety services and human services. So she would be happy to be a cosponsor of the amendment.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) also indicated that he was pleased to hear of the planned amendments to the budget, in their general form. He said he had received a great number of e-mails about the smallest of the items in the amendment, namely the provision to eliminate a proposal for football Saturday parking in Frisinger and Allmendinger parks. He praised the city’s park advisory commission (PAC) for putting the proposal for football parking in the parks into their budget recommendation.

Taylor allowed that it seemed like a funny thing to praise them for putting that proposal in the budget. However, PAC had a responsibility, he said, and that was to deal with a very limited budget. They needed to figure out how to make that parks budget work, he said, with material and substantial reductions. The challenge was made more difficult, he added, by the fact that they were trying to make the budget work even while adding back in two items that had previously been slated for removal – the Ann Arbor Senior Center and Mack Pool. Taylor concluded by saying he thought that PAC had done an honorable and diligent job.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) thanked Teall for bringing forward news of the budget amendments sooner than the meeting when the council would actually vote on the budget. He said that in years past, amendments were always kind of a surprise, with very little opportunity for review for councilmembers like himself. He described her action as a “shining moment” in governmental transparency.

FY 2011 Budget: Public Hearing, Commentary on Human Services

Thomas Partridge told the council that they need increased funding for the city, for the county, for southeastern Michigan and for the entire state. He called for tax reforms on all levels. He contrasted the size of the University of Michigan football program budget with that of the Ann Arbor city budget and questioned whether our priorities were in order.

Paul Lambert encouraged the council to maintain a basic commitment to human equality.

Caleb Poirier told the council he was grateful to them for doing a tough job. He thanked Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, and John Hieftje for preserving the human services funding in the budget amendment that’s coming up. He wanted to draw the council’s attention to a metaphor. He said he saw the world partly through a job that he used to hold as emergency room technician. When you have a whole bunch of folks who come into the ER, he said, and they get put on stretchers after their workup is done, the ER would get clogged, because they could not send them upstairs, because the upstairs was full.

We have a similar situation, Poirier said, with the homeless population. There’s a lot of folks, he told the council, whose “workup” is complete, and who are awaiting housing options. But the city doesn’t have those options and they are still in the system. He asked the council to consider the continued funding of the affordable housing trust fund.

Lily Au cited the Biblical passage from Isaiah 58:7, which calls on people to feed the hungry and house the homeless. She reported that a homeless camp, Camp Take Notice, had been forced to move last Wednesday before President Obama’s Saturday visit. She said she was not claiming that there was any connection.

But she noted that if Obama’s family visited the camp, they would have a new experience. She said that Michelle Obama would have to hold her kids tight, lest they be hit by a car, and that she would have to take off her high-heel shoes in order to navigate the steep path down to the camp. They would also need flashlights, she said, because it is really dark. Obama would have the experience of a “pain in his butt,” she said, because the campers had not yet set up their public bathrooms. She had peed there last week, but had not been able to stand back up because her butt was stuck on a thorn bush. It really hurt, she said.

Last Friday, she reported, the Vineyard Church had donated five boxes of food. She said she had parked near the camp and that several police cars had arrived, along with a fire truck and one ambulance. One of the officers, she reported, had told the campers that if they did this again, the officers would drive them to Lansing or drive them up north. No matter where they go, she said, they cannot run away from the authorities. She praised the efforts of the city councilmembers, the county, and state officials to find a solution to the problem of just pushing the homeless from one place to another.

Au also was against any cuts in human services, noting that the level of civil society is judged by how well we treat those who are most in need.

Ned Staebler introduced himself as chair of the housing and human services advisory board. He said he’d been encouraged to hear that a budget amendment would be coming forward to restore human services funding and avert safety services layoffs. He noted, however, that he’d not heard anything about the affordable housing trust fund in the budget amendments that might be coming forward. So he reminded the council that in past years there had been a $100,000 contribution every year to the trust fund. This year that money had been used to increase the number of affordable housing units, to increase the number of beds in the shelter system, as well as to fund foreclosure prevention programs.

The proposed amount that was to be cut from human services, Staebler said, was $260,000, which represents more than a 20% cut – more than the 8% applied to the rest of the budget. That showed the wrong priorities, he said. One of the reasons he was proud to live in Ann Arbor was that the city made it a priority to take care of the least fortunate. He asked the council what good a social safety net was if you pull it out from under people when they need it most. He noted that human services agencies are also an economic engine in that they leverage other funds. More than $10 comes into our community, he said, for every dollar that we fund to one of these agencies.

Katie Doyle introduced herself as executive director of the Ozone House, telling council that Ozone House was celebrating its 41st anniversary, largely because of support from the city of Ann Arbor. Ozone House works with young people who are homeless and runaways, and tries to prevent them from entering costlier systems. She pointed to the leveraging effect of dollars allocated locally. For Ozone House, it’s even higher than the $10 that Ned Staebler mentioned, she said.

Lori Bush introduced herself as the director of family support programs for Child Care Network. She said she wanted to echo the comments of the many speakers who had come before her. The city had funded the child care network for over 25 years, she noted. The organization gives childcare scholarships to low-income families, so that they can continue to work in the community.

Michael Appel, executive director of Avalon Housing, a local nonprofit that provides affordable housing throughout the city, addressed the council on the topic of human services funding. He urged councilmembers to try to avoid thinking of the budget picture as completely either-or: We can fund human services, we can fund public safety, we can fund parks, but we can’t find everything. He urged them to resist that kind of thinking, even though it was a time when the budget choices tended to move a person in that direction. For example, the city council had given Avalon Housing support for starting a community center program. One of the effects of starting a community center, Appel said, was to reduce police calls to the area. It was a more appropriate use of public spending to put human service dollars towards a human services goal. It was a more appropriate use of police time, responding to police issues rather than what were essentially management and tenant problems that could be better resolved without the use of police time. He encouraged the council to apply that kind of logic to other areas of the budget.

Julie Steiner introduced herself as the executive director of the Interfaith Hospitality Network Alpha House, one of the community’s three homeless shelters for families. She thanked the council for all the support that they had given to the IHN and other human services agencies that they worked with. She thanked the council in particular for the emergency support that the council had approved for last winter.

Steiner said her daughter had in the past encouraged her to get on city council and that the reason she didn’t want to is that she could not imagine being in their position, with the choices that they had to make. She reminded the council that human services are their safety net for the entire community. Two years ago, she said, 50% of the people who came to the shelter had a job when they came. Now less than 1% have a job. She said they had the help of a full-time job developer, who works with all of the housing agencies, with the support of the Michigan Rehabilitation Services and the county’s Employment Training and Community Services (ETCS).

The job developer says she’s never before seen the kind of trouble people are having finding jobs, Steiner reported. Even people who come to the shelter with a job can’t make ends meet. She reported the case of a woman who had a full-time job at Arby’s but whose husband had lost his job at a construction site. They could no longer support their babies in housing.

If the council eliminates affordable housing in the budget, Steiner warned, the community is really going to be in bigger trouble. She reminded the council that there are three things that human services partners do for IHN: (i) they make it possible to bring in $32 million of other funding; (ii) they volunteer – at IHN 2,000 people volunteer every year; and (iii) they provide the shelter with $1.5 million worth of in-kind support.

Ellen Schulmeister introduced herself as the executive director of the Washtenaw Housing Alliance and of the Shelter Association of Washington County at the Delonis Center. She thanked the council for its past support on issues regarding housing and homelessness. She also thanked the council for the work on the budget during a very difficult time. There were 4,212 homeless people in the county in 2008. Of those, 1,494 were children, she said. That’s a 20% increase from 2007 levels. The increase came mostly in families and unaccompanied youth. There’s been a 138% increase in requests for food since 2006, she reported, which is one of the highest increases in the country. She noted that there is some stimulus money coming to the community that’s been allocated to prevent people from becoming homeless. They’ve interviewed over 600 families and given 232 of those families some help. They’ve spent over $.5 million. But she cautioned that the stimulus money will run out soon. When it does, she warned that some of those folks may end up homeless. She concluded by saying, “We can’t really take a cut at this time.”

Jim Mogensen began with his trademark, “So, here we are again!” He noted that as everyone knows, all cities are struggling. Ann Arbor has had a structural issue with its budget for a very long time, he said. So, Mogensen said, some of the issues faced by the city are “enhanced” by the financial crisis, but there are still some basic structural issues. One of the themes in the current budget cycle, said Mogensen, is: When in doubt, outsource everything.

Mogensen said that 20 years ago he worked in Washington D.C. as a consultant for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) working on regulatory analysis. They had a company that wanted them to conduct a mock inspection like OSHA would do it, and so they did. And he said he remembered the phone calls he got from the corporate legal department, asking him to please modify his report. He quipped, “I used to work in West Virginia doing mine inspections.” As they relate to planning, the conflicts of interests are like Goldman Sachs, he warned.

Looking at the two-year cycle for the budget, he asked: What will happen next year? The city has already outsourced its social safety net to local nonprofits. And the nonprofits, in turn, have to make contingency plans for what’s going to happen. He cited Michael Apple’s comments about how if you make cuts in human services, you end up spending those dollars on police instead. He warned that it would eventually cause a situation where they would not be able to respond. If all of a sudden there is a tipping point, there will be no mechanism to respond.

For example, Mogensen said, think about the affordable housing trust fund – you have the Avalon Housing and Washtenaw Affordable Housing Corporation issue, plus the Housing Commission. The city would need money in the housing trust fund if they wanted to do something with those areas. He asked that the affordable housing trust fund also be incorporated in possible budget amendment resolutions. Those are immediate issues that could have an impact next year, he cautioned.

David Blanchard, who also serves on the city’s housing and human services advisory board, said he wanted to echo a lot of the comments that had already been made. He noted that there are dozens of agencies that are funded in part with the city’s dollars. He asked the council to not pull the safety net out from under people when it is needed most. If the $100,000 cut to the affordable housing trust fund were included in the cut to human services, he said it would reflect a 30% cut. He pointed to the documented increase in need, with several agencies reporting their needs had become 30-50% greater. There is no way that need is going to be served, he warned, if there is a cut now when those services are needed most.

Budget FY 2011: Public Hearing, Commentary on Safety Services

Doug Warsinski, representing the Walden Hills Condominium Association, said that before 2007 there was virtually no problem with crime in his neighborhood. Then they were suddenly faced with a series of auto thefts and auto break-ins over the span of only a few months. There had also been isolated incidents, he said, of burglaries, attempted sexual assault, and robbery. He said that while the community had returned to a relatively normal, quiet state, the board of directors had taken some costly steps to improve their own security.

Locations of Ann Arbor's five current fire stations. Colored shading correspond to wards. The circle with the slash is the location of former Station 2. (Image links to higher resolution file.)

Taxpayers have reasonable expectations of levels of service from their police department, Warsinski said. A national survey that he cited showed what citizens expect as reasonable response times: 5 minutes or less for a crime that’s in progress or if the suspected criminal is still at the scene; 15 minutes, in a case where a suspected criminal has left; 30 minutes for nuisance calls. A performance metric should be established for the city that is in line with these national expectations, he said.

With respect to fire safety,Warsinski reported that neighboring condominiums had had a serious fire with a trapped occupant, who was rescued by the Ann Arbor fire department. They themselves had experienced several small arson fires and a roof fire that had been caused by a contractor. As multi-family structures with a significant number of older residents, he said, the potential for catastrophic fire is great.

As one of 50 National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) certified fire protection specialists in the state of Michigan, Warsinski said, he wanted to point out that their condominiums, along with apartments, offices, mercantile, and industrial occupancies – and generally any other building except single family dwellings – are classified by the NFPA as “medium hazard occupancies.” Such structures had a recommended minimum initial response as follows: three pumpers, one ladder truck, staffed by 16 firefighters, a chief officer, plus a safety officer and a rapid intervention team. As far as regionalization went, he said, surrounding fire departments had too few personnel and equipment, and were too far away to effectively protect the residents of Ann Arbor.

John Maguire told the council that he was born and raised in this town and that his parents live in this town. Some of his reasons for choosing to raise his family in Ann Arbor, he said, included the things the town had to offer – parks, sporting events, art fairs, Top of the Park, museums, as well as other activities. But the most important reason he had decided to raise his family here, he said, was the ability to enjoy all those activities and also feel safe. He asked the council to not make any more cuts to public safety. He noted that the city had already closed a fire station and closed police substations. He contrasted nice-to-have items with need-to-have items. Parks, art, and a transit center are nice to have, while police and fire protection we need to have, he concluded.

Jamie Adkins introduced herself as a police officer with the city of Ann Arbor, speaking on behalf of the Ann Arbor Police Officers Association. She noted that the city council has a lot of hard decisions that are coming up and told them that she had attended all of the work sessions on the budget. She told mayor John Hieftje that he had been quoted in the local media as saying that Ann Arbor had never laid off a police officer.

While that might be true, Adkins allowed, what has not been discussed was the staggering reduction in personnel over the last nine years. In 2001, she said, the police department employed 191 sworn officers. Currently, that number is 124. One way services had been reduced, she said, was that patrol response times had increased. Other ways: the city has eliminated downtown beat officers; response to private property crashes has been eliminated; the animal control officer has been eliminated; public housing dedicated patrols have been eliminated; the domestic violence advocate has been eliminated; fingerprint services has been eliminated; detective bureau case follow-up has been reduced; and gun registration services have been reduced.

While addressing the city council during a public hearing on the budget, Jamie Adkins asked everyone on the police layoff list to stand. In the foreground is Tom Fegan, former planning director with Washtenaw County. (Image links to photo of Fegan when The Chronicle encountered him the previous Saturday when he was ushering at Michigan Stadium for Obama's commencement address.)

With the proposed layoffs currently in the budget, Adkins said, on July 1, 2010 the total number of sworn officers would be reduced to 111. That reflects a reduction of 42% over the last nine years, she said.

She told the council that many of the officers who were on the layoff list were not there at night, due to their lower seniority – they were out on patrol. She ran out of time to introduce each officer individually as she’d planned, but did note that the first person on the layoff list had been hired on Oct. 23, 2000. That’s 10 years, she said, that they had served the city. The least senior person on the layoff list, she reported, was hired on Jan. 30, 2006.

She finished her remarks with an invitation: “All those on the layoff list, please stand up!”

It earned them a round of applause, which was met with Hieftje’s standard admonishment that applause was not encouraged during public hearings.

Patrick Maguire introduced himself as one of the police officers who was due to be laid off, and asked the council to seriously reconsider the idea of laying off police and firefighters in Ann Arbor. He told the council that he been born and raised in Ann Arbor and gone on to earn a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice. When considering his career choices, he said, he considered federal law enforcement jobs, jobs in other states, and police jobs in cities around the state of Michigan.

But Maguire said he felt a special connection to the city of Ann Arbor and eventually decided that because he was from Ann Arbor, and knew Ann Arbor, he wanted to come back to Ann Arbor to work and give back to the community that had raised him. He was hired in 2000. He’s currently one of the city’s two K-9 handlers.

While people are attracted to Ann Arbor for a variety of reasons, Maguire said, one of the main things that makes Ann Arbor a great city is its overall relative safety. He attributed its safety to the hard-working dedication of those police officers who come to work every day to protect the citizens of Ann Arbor. He called the Ann Arbor police department one of the highest educated and best trained police departments of any city around.

Maguire described police officers in Ann Arbor as smart, compassionate and willing to invest themselves with those with whom they come into contact. He described the detectives as highly trained who are able to solve a high percentage of their cases. What it comes down to, he said, is that Ann Arbor has a great proactive police department that is able to address the specific needs of the city.

With the proposed cuts, Maguire warned, the city’s department would be transformed from a proactive department to a reactive one, providing levels of service that would be unlikely to satisfy anyone. In his 10 years as a police officer in Ann Arbor, he reported, someone had tried to run him over with a car, and he’d been hit, kicked, punched, sat on, attacked by pit bulls, and so on.

Keith Harr weighed in against the proposed police and fire cuts. He said his neighborhood was between two stations that were being considered for closure and that it would affect his neighborhood a great deal.

FY 2011 Budget: Public Hearing, Commentary on Other Fiscal Issues

During the public hearing on community services fee increases, Karen Sidney warned that the city kept raising prices, apparently thinking that the increased prices would have no effect on people’s behavior. She recalled that a few years ago the city staff had recommended that the parks fees all be raised, and in fact the fees were raised. The next year, she said, less revenue was actually generated, despite the higher rates. That was because people stopped using the parks. For example, people stopped going to Vets Ice Arena and started using The Cube. Once those customers are lost, she cautioned, you don’t get them back right away. “Use some business sense, for god’s sake!” she admonished the council.

Sidney also spoke during the public hearing on the budget. She told the council there were so many things wrong in the spending priorities for the proposed budget that it was hard to choose what to talk about: reducing police and fire positions to below the minimum levels recommended by former chief of police Dan Oates in a February 2005 press release; spending over $330,000 to redo the city’s development rules, while turning off 2,000 streetlights to help pay for it; water and sewer capital spending that meets the needs of new developments but ignores the needs of people who are living here.

The item that stood out for Sidney this year, she said, was over $1.3 million in the general fund budget for three items that should be covered by the $47.4 million police/courts building project budget. The general fund reserve, she warned, is already below the level recommended by the city’s outside auditor.

The public was told, Sidney said, that the police/courts project would cost $47.4 million and that that amount would cover all costs. Now, she contended, the city is redefining “all.” After it finished redefining “all,” she quipped, it could tell us what the meaning of “is” is. The items Sidney ticked through totaling the $1.3 million were: $165,000 to fix the sixth floor Larcom Building roof; $185,000 in moving costs; $975,000 for audiovisual and security equipment.

Sidney suggested that if the $47.4 million was not sufficient to cover the entire “wish list,” then the solution should be to cut costs out of the police/courts construction budget, not to use the general fund. A start, she said, would be to eliminate the conference center and the gym in the basement of the Larcom Building. She suggested that a security system could be achieved for less than $975,000 – the county had achieved that, she contended.

Sidney addressed mayor John Hieftje directly, saying that he had said the project was within budget. She asked the mayor to share with the rest of the community the data he’d used to reach that conclusion.

Libby Hunter again rendered her public commentary in the form of a song. This time the melody was from “Help Me, Rhonda” – the Beach Boys tune from the year 1965. Lyrical highlights included “Help us, Roger, help us get out of this mess.”

Lou Glorie, a candidate for a Ward 5 council seat in the Democratic primary, said she thought there were some things in the budget that could probably be trimmed a bit. She wondered about the $6.299 million in IT charges and figured that a couple million could be cut out of that part of the budget. In fleet services, she suggested that a couple of new garbage trucks could wait a bit. She also pointed to the Smart Zone and LDFA (Local Development Finance Authority), and wondered if the city was getting enough “bang for the buck” out of that. As for alternative transportation, she said, she wondered what kind of improvements they would get. She said she really hoped they were not going to be laying off police and firefighters.

Argo Earthen Embankment: Consent Agreement

During her communications, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) introduced the topic of the earthen embankment along Argo Dam by reporting on her activities the previous weekend – not the weekend of the University of Michigan commencement, but the one prior to that. She’d had the pleasure of helping clean up the Argo Dam earthen embankment, she said.

Briere described how she had worked with volunteers from the high school rowing teams and their adult mentors, helping to clear underbrush off the embankment. She noted that it was now possible to actually glimpse the river from the path that runs along the earthen berm. The volunteer efforts are part of the city’s strategy to put a woody vegetation management plan in place for the earthen berm in response to directives from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment (MDNRE).

Before the council on Monday was a resolution that charts out a plan resolving the up-to-now ongoing conflict between the city and MDNRE, which resulted in the closure of the headrace along the earthen embankment in the fall of 2009. The headrace is used by canoeists and kayakers to circumnavigate the Argo Dam, which requires a short portage at the end of the headrace. With canoeing season starting, the city would stand to lose a significant part of the revenue from the Argo canoe livery with the headrace closed.

Briere also led off deliberations on the resolution before the council by saying that she was really happy to see the resolution, even though it came too late to be published on the agenda. She said it’s the kind of item that is worth doing at the last minute and she was delighted to see it.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) also indicated that she was excited to see the item on the agenda. Sue McCormick, public services area administrator for the city, was asked to come to the podium. Mayor John Hieftje asked her about Section 10 of the agreement, which covers reconstruction and repair of the embankment. He asked for clarification on that section. McCormick said that as the city looked at its options, they have looked at primarily two approaches.

The first would be essentially a maintenance project whereby toe drains in the earthen embankment would be daylighted and extended so that they would be more efficient and meet the minimum standards. The city had previously gone out for bids on a similar kind of project, she said. The city have delayed moving forward with that project the last time.

The second approach involved the creation of a different kind of amenity, she said – that had come from the community and had evolved through the Huron River and Impoundment Management Plan (HRIMP) Committee  process. Instead of retaining the existing headrace, a different amenity would be created that might remove the need to portage at the bottom of the headrace. That might make it more amenable to canoeists.

The consent agreement allows the city to consider both kinds of options. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) said he had had an opportunity to look at one of the proposals about a year ago, which involved a series of ponds. He thought it might work around some of the problems that the current headrace has, and expected that it could benefit a lot of people. He asked McCormick to outline the timetable in the consent agreement.

McCormick explicated the following milestones:

• Oct. 1, 2010: Send out a request for proposals (RFP) for one of the two options.
• Feb. 1, 2011: Select a construction option.
• May 15, 2011: Obtain MDRNE permits for the construction.
• June 1, 2011: Start construction of the selected option. But McCormick cautioned that it is contingent on receipt of the MDNRE permits.
• Nov. 15, 2011: Construction will be complete

Between now and the request for proposals, she said, there would be a lot of community discussion about that process. The city would be requesting that the MDRNE also hold a public hearing in connection with the permitting process, McCormick indicated. That meant there would be plenty of opportunity for public input all along the way, she said.

As Briere had noted, the resolution had been added late the same day to the council’s agenda.

City administrator Roger Fraser reported that McCormick and Sumedh Bahl, who’s unit manager of the water treatment plant and interim community services area administrator, had met with the “folks in Lansing” on a conference call that morning. That had been a follow-up to a series of meetings that they’ve had trying to hammer out an agreement. He contended that it had been recognized early on that the original approach being taken by the regulatory offices was more extreme than the city of Ann Arbor thought was justified.

That morning, he said, when they got to a point where they had something they felt they could recommend, they recognized that the council would probably like to see it as soon as possible. So they parked in the office of Abigail Elias – who’s on the city attorney’s staff – and spent the better part of Monday working on the details. That was how they got the document to the council as early as they did, Fraser said.

Bascially, he said, it was all done that day. McCormick indicated that the city hopes to be able to remove the stop log that closes off the water to the headrace and to have the headrace restored to operation as soon as the end of the week. The consent agreement, however, specifies that the stop log must be re-installed on or before Oct. 15, 2010, but may be removed again after May 1, 2011.

After Fraser and McCormick had sketched out the main points of the consent agreement, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) asked for a short recess to evaluate the proposal, saying he had not had a chance to do so, because he’d received it so late in the afternoon.

In regard to the recess requested by Hohnke, the proceedings mirrored a previous council resolution brought on Oct. 19, 2009 that sought to effect the repairs that the MDNRE (then called the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality, or MDEQ) had required the city to undertake. Hohnke asked for a recess on that occasion as well, due to the late hour at which the resolution had been brought before the council.

The October 2009  resolution was tabled, with the council unable to reach an agreement amid confusion about the significance of the resolution regarding a commitment to keeping the dam or eventually remove it completely.

During Monday’s recess, Hohnke and Margie Teall, both of whom have advocated for a dam-out option for Argo, retreated to the council workroom to discuss the resolution. On returning from the recess, Hohnke said that the piece he had not had a chance to absorb was the question of whether the resolution opened the city up to significant costs. For example, if the city issued an RFP, did that mean they had to accept whatever came back. He’d satisfied himself, he reported, that this was not the case.

Outcome: The city council unanimously approved the resolution to accept the consent agreement on repair or reconstruction of the earthen berm at Argo.

Sandwich Board Sign Sidewalk Occupancy

The city council had considered a revision to its sign ordinance at its Feb. 16, 2010 meeting, that was ultimately defeated. The task force that had been established at the council’s Oct. 5, 2009 meeting and then appointed on Oct. 19 had brought that resolution forward.

The goal was to find a way to make legal the fairly common practice of using portable sandwich board signs. The revised strategy was to look at the city’s sidewalk occupancy permitting system as a mechanism to allow sandwich board signs – within the area of the city’s Downtown Development Authority. [Recent Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor, Give Me a Sign"]

Before the council was the first reading of a revision to the city’s sidewalk occupancy permitting system.

Sandwich Sign Boards: Public Commentary

James Agnew addressed the city council on the topic of sandwich signboards. He introduced himself as co-owner of Aunt Agatha’s mystery bookshop at 213 S. Fourth Ave. On Fourth Avenue, he said, very often on a Saturday night he would leave the store and there would be maybe two or three people. Walking up to Liberty Street, there’d be a stream of people, and up on Main Street there typically is a stream of people. That’s one argument, he said, for sandwich boards – increased visibility of places that are not among the spots most often thought of as retail.

People often think of the retail areas just as State Street, Main Street and Liberty, Agnew said. A sandwich sign board, he said, gives you some visibility to people who are passing by, who might not otherwise be aware that you are there. He reported that his bookstore used sandwich boards mostly for special occasions like book signings. It’s helpful for people who don’t know where the store is, who read about the event in the newspaper or online.

The larger context, Agnew said, is retail. It’s not a dirty word – rather, it’s very helpful to the city. People who come in on a Saturday night are not coming here for the university, but rather for the stores and the restaurants. These stores and restaurants are unique – Aunt Agatha’s is the only mystery bookstore in Michigan, he said.

Agnew said the store often sells books off of carts in front of the store and that they would be willing to pay the same amount for a sandwich sign as they do for the book carts. Small unique stores like his, he said, did not typically have the kind of advertising budget that would allow planes towing banners at football games, so they had to do what they could – a sandwich sign board.

Nina Juergens introduced herself as owner of Acme Mercantile at 111 W. Liberty and Salon Vertigo at 212 S. Fourth Ave. She said she felt a big part of the charm of the Main Street area was the eclectic variety of businesses that you don’t find in other places. Sandwich sign boards, she said, allow businesses to express their unique character. She noted that sidewalk permits can’t really be used most of the year due to the weather, so she relied on signboards to announce sales and highlight products, or whatever is happening in the store.

Juergens said that recently they had not been putting their signboard out, because right now it’s being refurbished. As a result, sales had been about half of what they normally are when the sign is out. That’s because no one can see the store, she said. At the salon, she said, it’s hard for staff to build a clientele when nobody knows that salon is there – it’s located in a hallway.

Dawn Nelson introduced herself as a salon owner in the Washington Building. She told the council that her salon is on the third floor, so without a sandwich signboard, no one would know that she was there. She had signed a five-year lease there, but probably would not have if she knew that she would not be allowed to advertise on the street. She said she believed in regulation, but sandwich boards were an option, whereas it was not an option to put signs on the building itself – it’s in an historic district.

Vicki Honeyman introduced herself as a 26-year tenant on East Ann Street, operating a small retail and haircutting business – Heavenly Metal and Vicki’s Wash-and-Wear Haircuts. It’s right across the street from the Hands-On Museum, she said. She described her situation as unique. Her operation is the only retail on the block, so there’s very little foot traffic on the street, except for people from city hall who are going to get lunch and come back to work. The building and entrance, she said, is set so far back from the street that there’s literally no visibility at the corner of Ann & Fourth.

Honeyman asked the council for a reasonable and local-business-friendly ordinance for signage, but also asked for consideration to be made to allow her to place her sandwich sign boards on her landlord’s private property next to her neighbor’s sign. She also asked to be able to place her Heavenly Metal sign at the end of her walk. When shoppers see the signboard at the corner of Fourth & Ann, she said shoppers would realize that there was actually a business down the block. She reported that 90% of her new customers tell her that it was the signs that drew them to her store. Without the signs, she feared, she really could not make it. She encouraged the council to allow for atypical situations.

After the council deliberations at the very end of the meeting during public commentary unreserved time, Jim Mogensen urged the council to get some input from the Center for Independent Living before the ordinance comes before them for its second reading. [At the council's February 2010 meeting, when an earlier ordinance had been voted down, speakers during public comment had addressed the issue of sandwich signs obstructing accessibility for handicapped people.]

Also addressing the council at the end of the meeting was Michael Slaughter, who weighed in for tasteful sandwich board signs, saying that they were allowed in other Big Ten college towns as well as in other Michigan cities. He also raised the issue of commercial-free speech in the context of the First Amendment.

Sandwich Sign Boards: Council Deliberations

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) led off discussion of the sandwich signboard ordinance by asking why the resolution was coming back to the council outside of the context of the signboard review task force that had been assigned to take up the matter.

In February, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said, they been assured that the referral to the task force would result in follow-up within four months. Since then, she reported, the task force had not met. To wait through the summer until the sandwich signboard task force meets or is reconstituted, she said, would be a burden to the council and also to the merchants involved.

Higgins said she had heard very compelling arguments during the public commentary for the sandwich boards, in particular for businesses that are not in the city’s most walked-about streets. She had some concerns, however, in locations where there was sidewalk dining, bicycle hoops, and also sandwich boards. Just how pedestrian friendly are we making that area, she wondered. She asked if that issue was addressed in the ordinance revision.

Briere noted that she had not designed the ordinance. But on reading it, she said there was a certain amount of sidewalk available in front of the business. There is only a certain amount of sidewalk available as a maximum amount. It’s limited because it’s part of the sidewalk occupancy ordinance.

Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city, was called to the podium by Higgins. Rampson explained that the way the ordinance is drafted, if the sidewalk is reserved for dining, a sandwich board sign would have to be inside the dining occupancy area.

Businesses that front onto the sidewalk would have first priority. After that, Rampson said, other businesses would have the opportunity to bid and put in a permit request. The other piece includes a limit of two signs. There could be multiple businesses on those signs, but it would preclude five or six different signs being lined up on the sidewalk. The third piece that’s addressed, said Rampson, is that many of the signs get placed right next to the entrance of the building, which causes pedestrians to have to jog back and forth on the sidewalk. For that reason, that ordinance was drafted to require at least a 6-foot path from the “right-of-way edge,” which is essentially the building face.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) asked if there was a process to allow a variance that would accommodate the kind of situation that Vicki Honeyman had explained for her business. Rampson clarified that as drafted, there’s no opportunity for a variance. However, there is a possibility for a variance under the sign ordinance, as opposed to the sidewalk occupancy ordinance – something that was drawn out also by mayor John Hieftje. Smith said she supported the ordinance and suggested that the council revisit the issue in November and evaluate how things are working.

Hieftje asked how the sign that Honeyman wanted to place on her landlord’s private property would be viewed in the meantime. Rampson explained that it would not be allowed.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) drew out the fact from Rampson that the usual sidewalk occupancy season lasted from April to November, but for the sandwich board permits, it would be an annual system. It would run from July 1 through June 30. That offsets it from the application process for other sidewalk occupancy, which will allow the city staff to process both kinds of permits efficiently.

Rampson explained that in contrast to the regular sidewalk occupancy system, permission would be required for a sandwich board to be placed in front of a neighbor’s property, as opposed to a simple notification. Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked if a business outside the DDA could ask permission from a business inside the DDA to place sign on a neighboring property. Rampson explained that the draft specified that it’s a business inside the DDA area that can seek such an occupancy permit.

Kunselman had questions for the city attorney about whether it was possible to have an adjacent property owner provide permission to use a public right of way – he was a little concerned about the legalities. City attorney Stephen Postema said that Kristen Larcom, a senior assistant city attorney, had looked at the issue but that he would discuss it further with her.

Focusing on the language “as is available,” Kunselman wanted know who would make the determination about what is available on the public right-of-way. Rampson clarified that the applicants are supposed to provide a diagram, which would allow the determination to take place. Based on observations of current usage, she said, when there are conflicts, they are worked out among co-tenants in the building.

As an example, Kunselman noted that he’d seen a sandwich board sign recently advertising for one of the businesses inside Nickels Arcade. He asked what would happen if all the businesses wanted to have a sign and they could not all fit on one board – who would pick and choose? The property owner? Would it be the person who processed the permits? Rampson indicated that the staff would not be mediating among tenants of a property.

Rampson clarified that the permits would be issued to business owners, but they provide a place on the application for the property owner to acknowledge the application. If there are two signs that can be issued at a given location and they are already taken, Rampson said, it was up to a business owner who did not have a sign to work it out with those who did. Kunselman concluded that “not everybody will be happy.” Rampson deadpanned back: “That’s rarely the case.”

Briere brought up the fact that the ordinance had been drafted in a way to require signs to be placed at least 18 inches from the curb, with the idea that this would help mitigate against blockage of car doors opening and wheelchair access to the curb.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) noted that the size of allowable signs is specified in the ordinance. He wanted to know how that compared with what’s currently used in actual practice. Rampson said that it would likely cover 80% of existing signs. Those that are larger, she said, were actually obstructions and probably should be ruled out.

Taylor also drew out from Rampson the clarification that permits are parcel-based, as opposed to street-frontage-based because it was specifically businesses located on upper stories who might be most interested in having sidewalk sign boards, but they have no street frontage.

Taylor said that he thought the ordinance should read “building-side edge” instead the “right-of-way edge,” because the right-of-way had two edges. Rampson replied that staff who dealt with it on a day-to-day basis understood that the edge of the right-of-way is the edge of the right-of-way, but assured Taylor that they would try to find some language that was more descriptive.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) said he’d been receiving indications from people outside the downtown, who had been asked to take down their sandwich board signs. He asked if the city staff might not be a little bit more “negotiable” on the issue. Anglin was specifically concerned about Dragon’s Lair Futons.

Rampson noted that Dragon’s Lair had no frontage on Liberty Street. She also noted that the staff can’t negotiate what the code says. A directional sign in the case of Dragon’s Lair was okay, Rampson said. But for portable signs throughout the entire Liberty Street corridor, the city has been asking others to take them down and not use them. They had to be fair to everyone.

Outcome: The sidewalk occupancy ordinance designed to accommodate sandwich board signs passed unanimously on first reading.

Fuller Road Station

The topic of Fuller Road Station arose during council communications as well as during the budget hearing and general public commentary time.

Fuller Road Station: Council Communications

During her communications time, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) acknowledged that the Ann Arbor planning commission would be considering an amendment to the city’s zoning code that would revise the definition of public land (PL). The proposal was to broaden a use currently specified as a “municipal airport,” changing it to a “transportation facility.” The change would rule in the Fuller Road Station as a possible use for public land. [At its May 4 meeting, the planning commission voted unanimously to recommend the change. The topic was also discussed at the council's Sunday night caucus.]

Mike Anglin (Ward 5), during his communications time, said he wanted to give some updates on the Fuller Road Station project. He reminded the council that the University of Michigan board of regents had been presented with a plan in January 2010 totaling $46,000,550. Of that, he continued, the university had agreed to pay $36,000,309.

That meant, said Anglin, that the city would be putting up around $10 million. He said when he first voted in agreement with the intermodal transportation center, it was after it had first been presented to him at the city’s park advisory commission (PAC) meeting. [Anglin serves as an ex-officio member of PAC, along with councilmember Christopher Taylor (Ward 3).]

The PAC discussion, Anglin said, went on and on and included the potential of having things like a bar where people could go after they had played soccer. The whole thing had become a “tremendously glorified project,” Anglin said. There was a long-range plan, Anglin stressed, even though it appeared right at this moment that it was simply a parking deck. He stressed that the meeting on Thursday, May 6 on the Fuller Road Station should be a public hearing and that the public should be heard from.

Anglin said he did not believe that there had been a public hearing on the topic, yet. He said he did not want the city staff to come and explain what was going on, because people already know what is going on. What the staff should do, Anglin said, was listen to the public’s concerns. There’s a lot of disappointment, Anglin cautioned, that the city had moved so quickly ahead with something involving the parks, that could perhaps set something in motion that they don’t really fully understand yet. And for that reason, he said, it was important to have that discussion.

At first, Anglin said PAC thought it was a great idea. But now, he said, PAC is wondering if Ann Arbor is giving up a park.

During the budget hearing, Ann Arbor resident Rita Mitchell told the council that at a time when all of these budget cuts are proposed for essential services – police and fire and human services – she was concerned. She asked the council to direct its attention to funding those kinds of things and not undertake something like a parking structure on Fuller Road.

It’s been proposed that the city would contribute $10 million to the project, Mitchell said, which would primarily benefit the University of Michigan to address its parking needs for its commuters. But it would not provide a benefit to citizen taxpayers, who would be providing that funding, she contended. She asked the council to consider dropping that project. The project also represented a giving away of parkland to the university, she said.

John Satarino led off his comments during general public commentary by saying that he was a bit depressed. He had not thought of coming to address the council that night, but he’d been reading up on municipal immunity. He said he was a supporter of Fuller Park, and that he was against an eight-story, 1,600-car parking structure that was planned to be built there by the University of Michigan, with the city’s help.

Satarino noted that the next evening, on May 4, there would be a meeting of the planning commission where they would change a few words to make it possible to build a transportation center there. He told the council that he did not think that was a good way to go. He contended that there was a deed with a restriction on it, and that the parcel was designated in the master plan for the area as a park. [City staff have stated that a title search did not show any deed restrictions on the property.]

DDA Bylaws Revisions

Before the city council was a resolution that approved changes to the bylaws of the Downtown Development Authority, which the DDA board had itself approved back in February 2010.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, to the podium to clarify what was meant by “financial systems.” Pollay explained that the DDA runs its checkbook out of her office, and that the financial systems consisted of a method for separating out the three main funds of the DDA – the TIF (tax increment financing) fund, the parking fund, and housing fund. Higgins also asked about the preparation of the annual financial report by the “treasurer or their designee.” She wanted to know who the designee could be.

Pollay indicated that what the phrasing was meant to suggest is that the staff does the work and the board treasurer ensures that it gets done. Higgins confirmed with Pollay that the revised bylaws reflect what the practice already is. Hearing Pollay’s confirmation of that resulted in Higgins’ conclusion: “Perfect, thank you.” Sandi Smith (Ward 1) – who also serves on the DDA board in addition to the city council – said that in general, all of the changes to the bylaws reflected the practice that had been in place for several years.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) asked Pollay what the current bylaws required of her. Pollay explained that in the previous bylaws, her role as executive director is not designated. The executive committee of the DDA board, she said, had brought to the full board the idea that it probably made sense to actually state what the role of the executive director is.

Kunselman inquired whether the issue was addressed in the enabling legislation. Pollay said that the executive director is certainly mentioned in that legislation in the context of the DDA hiring for itself an executive director and explaining what retirement and benefits director might be entitled to. But she said it’s not specific about what the person does.

Kunselman asked Pollay if she was a city of Ann Arbor employee. Pollay allowed that it was an interesting question but said she did not believe so. She indicated that she was an employee of the DDA, but all of the DDA staff follow all of the city rules and the paychecks come through the city finance office. She said they actually did not take a lot of time reflecting on the question. They function as if they were a part of one whole organization.

Pollay indicated, however, that she worked at the pleasure of the DDA board. Her job, then, was to make sure that she met their expectations and goals, as expressed in their resolutions. Mayor John Hieftje added that the board of the DDA in a very real way serves at the pleasure of the city council – given that the city council appoints DDA board members. “So you can feel better about that,” he told Kunselman. Quipped Pollay, “I’m not sure I do!”

Outcome: The revised bylaws of the DDA were unanimously approved.

Dexter-Ann Arbor Run Road Closures

At the previous city council meeting, Hal Wolfe, race director of the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run, had appeared to ask for the street closures necessary for the race, which will be held on June 6, 2010. At Monday’s meeting, he reminded councilmembers of that previous appearance before them. He was there this week, he said, to discuss additional requested road closures.

He quipped that he was not going to stop until he achieved the closure of every road in the county. Returning to a more serious demeanor, he told the council that the road closure in question involved the exit ramp from M-14 to Main Street. He reported that they had been working on a plan to get the ramp closed for the race for the last six months. He noted that it is a hospital exit as well as a major interchange, so they were taking it very seriously.

The stretch along Main Street, he explained, is about 1.1 miles of the race course. Along 0.9 of those 1.1 Main Street miles, he said, there are runners, cones and cars. In particular, where the off-ramp comes off of Huron River Drive there’s a lane of runners and a lane of cars going at close-to-freeway speeds getting bottlenecked before they can get over to the other side of Main Street.

Wolfe reported that he had been working with the Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT) and the Ann Arbor police department over the last six months to develop a successful plan to get the closure accomplished properly. The difference between two weeks ago and tonight, he said, was that the University of Michigan Hospital had given their consent to allow the approval, based on the plans they been shown.

MDOT had provided the requirements for the closure sign designs, and there would be a police officer stationed at the off-ramp, he said. The approval that night, he said, would be an authorization to go back to MDOT to finalize plans to make sure that everything was done properly. He thanked Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) for helping him get the item onto the council’s agenda. He told the council that he would stay until the vote in order to answer any questions they might have.

Later towards the end of the meeting, councilmembers had several clarificational questions, but ultimately approved the road closures.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the M-14 exit ramp closure for the Dexter-Ann Arbor Run.

Delinquent Charges Added to Tax Rolls

Before the council was a resolution to move a total of $204,821 in delinquent fees to the July 2010 tax rolls. Residents with charges on the list for water utility, alarm, board up, clean up, vacant property inspection and housing inspection fees would have 30 days to pay the delinquent fees or face having the charges added to their tax bills with a 10% penalty fee. With the penalty, that translates to a total of $225,303.

City treasurer Matthew Horning explained that a letter would be sent out the following day to everyone who has a “receivable” with the city, and from that point they will have 30 days until it goes onto the tax rolls with a 10% penalty.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) asked what the vacant property inspection meant. He noted that there were more buildings in town that seemed vacant, and it could become a concern. Horning allowed that it was a concern – it’s part of the planning and development services area. On a monthly basis, vacant property is inspected to make sure there are no fire hazards and that everything is still safe. There is an inspection fee associated with that service, he explained.

Anglin asked if there was any consequence to the inspection. Horning explained that the “consequence” was the fee, which ranged from $40-$50. Anglin described a particular building that he found to be an eyesore. Horning indicated that once the building became categorized as a nuisance, then it became the city attorney’s responsibility.

Anglin said he felt that the $40 fee was perhaps not adequate to convey that the city took the issue seriously. At a time when more houses are becoming vacant, he said, it was not appropriate to relay a message that it was okay to simply walk away from a property and that the city would look after it for a $40 fee per month. He said he was not satisfied with the situation and would be willing to increase the fees quite dramatically.

Horning clarified that the inspection fee was exactly that, namely, an inspection fee. If there’s something about any property or a structure that is lacking, then the owner of the property is given a time frame in which to rectify the situation. If the property owner does not do so, continued Horning, the city has the right to cause improvements to be made.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) noted that with many people struggling with foreclosure situations, she would not want to have the city be the one to tip the balance by applying these fees. She advised to proceed with caution.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) clarified with Horning that water utility delinquencies were quarterly water bills that were not paid as of Jan. 1 of this year. Higgins asked if water had been shut off. Horning said that the shut-off process is one method to get payment. He deferred the specifics of the water shut-off program to the public services department. He said that shared meters for multiple dwellings in many buildings in the city made it impossible to shut off water, because it would mean shutting off water to a large number of dwelling units.

Sue McCormick, the public services area administrative for the city, came to the podium to explain that the addresses on the delinquency list were probably a result of a variety of different circumstances. Some could be residential or small commercial, she said. Nothing goes to the tax roll if it is not aged over six months, she explained. Addresses on the list are past due and owing for more than six months.

Outcome: The resolution to move delinquent charges to the tax rolls passed unanimously.

Greenbelt Advisory Commission Re-Appointments

Before the council was a resolution to re-appoint four members of the greenbelt advisory commission (GAC). Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), who serves as the city council’s representative to GAC, noted that the city was fortunate that all four had agreed to devote their time and specific domain knowledge on the commission.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) asked if anyone else had expressed interest in the positions, noting that these are city council appointments. That contrasts with most other appointments, which are nominated by the mayor and then confirmed by the council. Hohnke said that the openings on the commission had been communicated at the last city council meeting during his communications time. The terms are posted on the city website and the application materials are available on city website.

Higgins asked if any other applications had been received. The city clerk, Jackie Beaudry, confirmed that no others had been received. With that, Higgins was content.

By ordinance, Hohnke said the positions are specified to be a real estate development professional (Peter Allen), an environmental organization representative (Laura Rubin of the Huron River Watershed Council), an agriculture landowner representative (Tom Bloomer), and a public-at-large representative (Dan Ezekiel).

Outcome: The council unanimously approved all four GAC re-appointments.

Other Public Commentary

Kathy Griswold reported that a site visit had been made to the crosswalk at King Elementary School, which is at a mid-block location. Griswold has addressed the council on the following previous occasions, encouraging the city to move the crosswalk to an intersection in the interest of safety:

• 2009 Aug. 16 city council caucus [link]
• 2009 Nov. 5 city council meeting [link]
• 2009 Dec. 21 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Jan. 4 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Feb. 1 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 Feb. 16 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 March 15 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 April 5 city council meeting [link]
• 2010 April 18 city council caucus [link]
• 2010 April 19 city council meeting [link]

Present at the site visit on April 23, 2010, reported Griswold, were the mayor, as well as Ward 2 councilmembers Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski, plus six parents of King School students, the principal, as well as local media.

It was her understanding, based on communication with Rapundalo, Griswold said, that more background was needed. She offered that the transportation safety committee, which had recommended moving the crosswalk to the intersection from its mid-block location, had been created in the 1960s and she’d served on it since 1994. She’d been hired by the Ann Arbor Public Schools system in 2000 as a safety consultant. She told the council that she hoped they would respect the process established by the committee.

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

Absent: Stephen Rapundalo.

Next council meeting: May 17, 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Vicki Honeyman gives Doug Wathen a haircut in her shop, Heavenly Metal, which shares space with her other business, Vicki’s Wash & Wear Haircuts. In the background to the left is a sandwich board sign for Heavenly Metal, tucked into the corner since Honeyman was notified that it's illegal to put it outside the store.

Vicki Honeyman’s Heavenly Metal is easy to miss. Not only is it the sole retail shop on East Ann, but the business is also set back from the street. Until recently, Honeyman relied on a portable sign she set up on the northeast corner of East Ann and Fourth Avenue to bring in business. But earlier this month, a city official told her she had to take her sign down. In Ann Arbor, it’s illegal.

Honeyman says that since the city made her take her sign down, she’s seen a significant drop in the number of customers coming into Heavenly Metal. Without the sign, people don’t know her business is there.

“It’s completely affected my business,” Honeyman said, describing it as “devastating” to her income.

The Ann Arbor city council considered a measure in February that would have amended the sign ordinance to make portable signs legal, allowing businesses to buy annual permits to use them. But when that resolution was voted down, city officials decided to step up enforcement of the existing sign ordinance. Business groups and retailers have protested – it’s likely that city staff will propose a new permitting system for council to consider next month, one that’s based on sidewalk occupancy permits.

Sign Ordinance: Some Background

Honeyman’s sign was in violation of Chapter 61, Section 5:508 of the city code, which prohibits a variety of signs: exterior banners, pennants, spinners and streamers; portable exterior signs; and signs erected in the public right-of-way (excluding portable “open house” signs).

The ordinance hasn’t been strenuously enforced – in fact, the chair of the city’s sign board of appeals quit out of frustration about the issue.

There have also been efforts – so far unsuccessful – to change the ordinance. At its Feb. 16, 2010 meeting, Ann Arbor city council discussed a measure brought forward by councilmember Sabra Briere (Ward 1) to amend the sign ordinance. It would have regulated, through a permitting system, the placement of portable “sandwich board” signs, which are widely used.

During a public hearing that night, council heard from people on both sides of the issue. From Chronicle coverage:

Kathy Griswold raised concerns about possible interference of such signs with sight distances. If the system were to be complaint-driven, she warned, there could be delays in getting signs removed that obscured sight lines.

Also during the public hearing, Susan Pollay, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, read a brief statement on behalf of the DDA, saying that sandwich board signs are part of what makes for a vibrant downtown experience. She suggested that the system be adopted without permits and then reviewed after one year to determine if there was adequate compliance.

Carolyn Grawi of the Center for Independent Living pointed out that sandwich board signs can pose a problem for people with disabilities – for the blind, the signs are in unexpected places, and for those who use wheelchairs, the signs can pose access issues. Grawi cautioned that vibrancy did not necessarily mean cluttering.

During deliberations, several councilmembers – including Briere – said they felt the ordinance needed more work. It was unanimously defeated, and an increase of enforcement was foreshadowed:

What would the effect of defeating the measure be on those who were already using such signs? The city attorney’s office is recommending that the ordinance – which does not allow use of such signs – be enforced. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) expressed her concern that business owners be made aware that there would be enforcement efforts starting.

The issue was also discussed at a March 30, 2010 retreat of the Ann Arbor planning commission. From Chronicle coverage:

Commissioner Jean Carlberg questioned plans to dissolve the current Sign Board of Appeals and move their work to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Chris Cheng, project manager for efforts to amend Chapter 61 of the city code on sign and outdoor advertising, said one goal was to reduce the number of committees and boards. [...]

Wendy Rampson reported that the former chair of the [Sign Board of Appeals], Steve Schweer, had quit because he was unhappy over a lack of enforcement of the sign ordinances. That’s about to change, she added – Cheng would be starting to ramp up enforcement in April. Looking somewhat glum about that prospect, Cheng said, “There are a lot of illegal signs out there.”

Enforcement Picks Up, Businesses Protest

The city’s Community Standards Unit and Planning Division began issuing written warnings concerning portable signs on April 1. Business owners in violation were told to remove the illegal sign within 24 hours. The warning informed them that if they failed to do so, city staff would remove the sign and the offending individual would receive a citation and face a fine ranging from $100 to $500. City officials would also confiscate the sign in question without notifying the business owner if the warning wasn’t heeded. The code violation would qualify as a misdemeanor.

Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager, told The Chronicle that at this point no tickets have been issued, just warning letters. She said several people have contacted her to say they feel the timing of the enforcement is less than ideal, given recent economic conditions. Those who have voiced complaints have said businesses are doing everything they can to bring in customers right now, and making them take down their signs isn’t helping.

Rampson explained that the city decided to start enforcing the ordinance in part because members of the public – including people with disabilities – have complained about signs obstructing the pedestrians’ right of way in the downtown area. Another factor, she said, was the city council’s unanimous rejection during its Feb. 16 meeting of the proposed ordinance amendment that would have made sandwich board signs legal.

“We felt we needed to move forward with a comprehensive enforcement,” Rampson said.

Separately, the city’s planning and development staff has been working for the past year to amend the sign ordinance in order to remedy inconsistencies, unrelated to the portable sign prohibition.

Businesses Weigh In

Honeyman said her sign was in a garden off the sidewalk, so it didn’t create an obstacle for pedestrians or create a hazard for handicapped individuals. The city’s actions in enforcing the sign ordinance are hurting small businesses, she said, and by extension the local economy and even the city’s personality. She accused the city of shirking responsibility for shops like Heavenly Metal in favor of big corporate entities like Google.

“The city of Ann Arbor needs us,” Honeyman said. “We’re the people who add color to the town.”

On the same day that she was issued the warning because of her sign, Honeyman said she sent letters of complaint to mayor John Hieftje, city council and Susan Pollay, executive director of the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. She has not received a response.

“Now I just have to wait and see what’s going to happen,” Honeyman said. “I’m not doing anything bad. I’m just trying to make a living. I’m not trying to be a rebel. Please, city of Ann Arbor, support me.”

Jeff Pickell, outside of Kaleidoscope Books and Collectibles, his shop at the corner of North Fourth and East Ann.

Jeff Pickell, who owns Kaleidoscope Books and Collectibles on the northeast corner of North Fourth and Ann, just down the street from Honeyman’s Heavenly Metal, also received a warning about his sign usage. Pickell expressed confusion at the city’s action, saying that his sign had been on private – not city – property, and didn’t pose a threat to pedestrians.

“It’s not part of the traffic process,” Pickell said of his sign. “It’s not a danger or impediment. It’s off the sidewalk area. What’s the city trying to say?”

Pickell said he had contacted the city about the issue but also has not received a response. He said that taking down his sign likely won’t have a major impact on his business, since his store is more visible than Honeyman’s. However, he understands how the prohibition on signs hurts those whose shops have less of an obvious presence. Like Honeyman, he said the city doesn’t treat small businesses as kindly as it should.

“People are drawn to the city in part by the differences of the stores that are downtown,” Pickell said. “Small businesses should be protected. Not harassed. Not fined. It’s not only unnecessary. It’s stupid.”

City Backs Off, New Sidewalk Permitting System Possible

In light of the conflict surrounding the sign ordinance issue, Rampson said the city administration, planning staff and police department agreed to hold off on issuing any tickets or giving out any more warnings in order to discuss new approaches to portable signs. She said the Main Street and State Street area associations and the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce have shown interest in finding a way to make portable signs legal in the downtown area.

Members of the downtown merchants associations have suggested adding portable signs to the city’s current sidewalk occupancy permit system, Rampson said. Businesses currently file for sidewalk occupancy permits to reserve space in front of their establishment for dining or outdoor sales.

City officials are considering allowing business owners to use the same system, which would allow them to pay a fee for an annual or temporary permit to place portable signs on the sidewalk (with certain restrictions on, for example, the size of the sign). [.pdf file of current sidewalk occupancy permit application] A daily permit for sidewalk occupancy costs 5 cents for every square foot of sidewalk space. An annual permit costs $1 per square foot.

Although that’s the only solution to the portable sign issue being considered at this point, Rampson said other ideas might come up. In any case, city officials are looking to take action in the next couple of weeks.

“There is an interest in moving quickly,” Rampson said.

Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said she has drafted an ordinance that uses the same concept: changing the language of the sidewalk occupancy law to allow for portable signs. Briere said she sent the draft to city administrator Roger Fraser last week. Subsequently, she was notified that city staff will present the council with a memo on May 3 outlining a permit system that would make portable signs legal.

This week Fraser confirmed that his staff is working on a draft of an ordinance that would address the sign issue by modifying the rules for sidewalk occupancy permits, similar to the proposal that Briere has drafted. He also confirmed that city staff hope to present the ordinance draft to the city council for action at council’s May 3 meeting.

A Sense of Urgency

Briere said the legality of portable signs has been an issue for a long time. Not long after Briere first became a councilmember in 2007, Honeyman contacted her about finding a solution to the sign problem. In the summer and fall of 2009, Briere chaired a committee to come up with a way to make portable signs legal. The committee included Honeyman, South University Area Association director Maggie Ladd, Linda Briggs from the Ann Arbor Commission on Disability Issues, members of other merchants associations and the city’s planning department.

They concluded their meetings in November 2009. The proposal they drafted – which focused on changing the language of the city’s existing sign ordinance, rather than altering rules for sidewalk occupancy permits – was the one the city council voted down during its Feb. 16 meeting. Briere said the city attorney’s office and city staff had objections to the draft.

After voting down the proposed amendment, councilmembers asked city staff to continue working on the issue. Originally, Briere said, Rampson told the council that staff could have a revised ordinance ready in four months. Briere and other councilmembers, along with Ann Arbor business owners, felt that wasn’t fast enough. Though Briere said she understands that staff has a lot to do, she feels the city needs to take action soon.

“It’s getting to be warm weather,” Briere said. “People are walking around a lot. The city has a need to enforce the law. So, we should make it clear what the law is. Right now, we have not been enforcing the law for a number of years, so people believed what they were doing was legal. Now, people feel like we’re taking their rights away.”

And what about Honeyman and Heavenly Metal? Briere said including portable signs in the sidewalk occupancy permit system might allow Honeyman to place her sign on the corner of Fourth and Ann (something that the sign ordinance would not permit, since business owners are not allowed to place a sign on someone else’s property or on a street where they don’t have frontage).

Under the sidewalk occupancy permit rules, however, businesses that have frontage and/or a street-level presence on a certain street simply have first dibs on the sidewalk space. It’s possible for others to obtain permits for the space – this happens most prominently during the annual Art Fairs.

“[Honeyman] could get permission from the people on Fourth,” Briere said. “So, in theory, this could work for her. But whether people would allow it to happen, I just don’t know.”