From: Alex de Parry Date: Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 8:32 AM Subject: Notice of Hearing To: CHohnke@a2gov.org, MAnglin@a2gov.org, MHiggins@a2gov.org, MTeall@a2gov.org, Sbriere@a2gov.org, SKunselman@a2gov.org, ssmith@a2gov.org, TDerezinski@a2gov.org, "Hieftje, John" , "Rapundalo, Stephen" , "Taylor, Christopher (Council)" Dear Mayor Heiftje and Council Members, On Friday, June 4, I was notified by the city that the required notice of hearing for site plan approval for Heritage Row had not been placed in the Detroit News and that the hearing scheduled for June 7 would thus likely be postponed. As you know, the City Clerk is required to place these notices. On its webpage, the City Clerk states the following under "Notices and Publications:" "The City of Ann Arbor's legal notices, including public hearing notices and notices of newly approved ordinances, are now published in the Washtenaw Legal News. This change was made following the close of the Ann Arbor News in order for the City to comply with State publication requirement for 'a newspaper of general circulation.'" Although it is questionable how the Washtenaw Legal News is "a newspaper of general circulation," the website does not alert readers to publication in the Detroit News. Nonetheless, the city clerk's office apparently attempted to place a notice in both publications, but failed to make sure that it would be published at least one week prior to the hearing, as required by law. An article in the Ann Arbor Chronicle on June 4 states, "In a phone interview on Friday, city clerk Jackie Beaudry confirmed for The Chronicle that an email sent by the city clerk's office to The Detroit News – requesting publication of the notices for Sunday, May 30 – was not received by the News. Due to the Memorial Day holiday, the city clerk's office did not learn of the communication snafu until Tuesday. That was not in time to meet the publication requirement for the June 7 public hearings." The article also states that Beaudry stated that notices of the June 7 hearing were also published on June 3 in the Washtenaw Legal News. If indeed the City Clerk was aware of this on Tuesday, why was I not informed until three days later? But there is a bigger problem: two apparent attempts to correctly notice the public hearings failed. Such failure could easily have been avoided if the city clerk had taken one or both of two actions when emailing the Detroit News. First, a return receipt could have been applied to the email requesting publication, and second, a followup phone call should have been made. The same procedure should have occurred for the Washtenaw Legal News. The city clerk's office routinely places notices and should be aware of deadlines that are set by publications in which they place such notices. Clearly, no one was paying attention. The result of this failure is that a vote on rezoning to PUD and the site plan will not occur on June 7. While I am not aware of any legal requirement to vote on a PUD rezoning and site plan on the same evening, both have historically occurred on the same evening, and those who want to speak either for or against Heritage Row on the evening that council votes now face a dilemma because different scenarios could occur. Council could hold the public hearing on the PUD rezoning, but unless council announces postponement of the vote prior to the public hearing, speakers will not know whether council will vote on it or vote to postpone it. Therefore, anyone who wishes to speak during a public hearing on the night of the vote runs the risk that it could be postponed, and they could not speak again for or against the same project. Yet if they don't speak, they run the risk of the voices not being heard. Additionally, the delay results in incurring additional expenses for our partnership – unnecessary expenses which could well have been avoided had the city clerk's office done its job. Furthermore, while the vote on rezoning to PUD could occur or it could be postponed even if the public hearing is allowed to proceed, vote on the site plan will have to be postponed in order to comply with proper notice – and the next possible date for a vote is June 21, the same night council votes on first reading of the proposed historic district. This situation is reminiscent of last year, when the city failed to display the correct plans of a previous iteration of our project in the lobby of the City Hall so that they could be available 24 hours a day for 7 days prior to the hearing which was scheduled for June 1, 2009 – and Council received in its package one elevation sheet that showed chimneys on the buildings but Planning Commission had approved the buildings without the chimneys. We could neither have prevented nor foreseen these two mistakes, but they resulted in a postponement until June 15 at which time the project was sent back to Planning Commission and we were forced to start over, at significant and additional cost. No doubt, each of you would have preferred to avoid this latest failure, but the fact is that simple, clerical errors have long-reaching and expensive consequences, not to mention embarrassment for the city. Alex de Parry