DDA Acts on Sidewalk, Housing Study
Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board meeting (June 4, 2014): At its final meeting of the fiscal year, the board acted on two items with implications for this year’s budget.
Mary Jo Callan, director of Washtenaw County’s office of community and economic development, explained to the DDA board what the affordable housing needs assessment would entail. The board voted to approve $37,500 for the study. (Photos by the writer.)
One was a $37,500 grant from the DDA’s housing fund to help pay for an affordable housing needs assessment to be conducted by Washtenaw County’s office of community and economic development. The other was a routine end-of-year budget adjustment that included the $37,000 grant as well as $500,000 of previous allocations made to the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, and a $1.6 million payment for the First & Washington parking garage that was made out of this year’s budget instead of the previous year’s budget.
In other voting business, the board approved up to $125,000 for the redesign and reconstruction of the public sidewalk in front of the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown location on Fifth Avenue. That money will come from next year’s (FY 2015) budget, starting July 1. The project will eliminate the step up immediately adjacent from the curb, which was installed as a result of the streetscape changes the DDA undertook during construction of the Library Lane underground parking garage in 2012. The sidewalk project will be incorporated into an AADL project that will substantially renovate the front entrance to the building.
The final item of voting business considered by the board was adoption of a policy for DDA grants to private developments. The policy establishes criteria for eligibility – which include public benefit to property outside the development. The policy also covers limits on the amount of funding, which is a portion of the additional TIF revenue generated by a project.
A resolution that had been postponed at the board’s May 7, 2014 meeting until the June 4 meeting did not receive any board action – a request to pay about $100,000 for the conversion of streetlights in the DDA district to LED technology. The board did not vote on the item. It did not appear on the board’s agenda as a resolution, but only as an update. That update consisted of remarks from executive director of the DDA Susan Pollay. She informed board members that as a result of conversations she’d had with city staff, they should consider the item tabled, but that the request might be brought back in the future.
The board also received its usual range of updates and reports from committees. [Full Story]