Ann Arbor City Council Preview: January 21, 2019

Gentle readers, tonight is a special Tuesday edition of #a2council. Here's the agenda for your perusal.

The evening kicks off with a moderate, 19 item consent agenda. It's street closing season: CA-2 through CA-6 are all street closings for various races and festivals.

There are no public hearings tonight. There are several pieces of old business. C-1 is the historic entertainment sound district. My understanding is that this is like a noise overlay for most of downtown in order to ensure music venues and clubs can avoid noise complaints. C-2 would create two youth voting members (aged 14 to 25) for the environment commission. It would be cool to see this on all commissions. DC-1 is a resolution form last October that supporting the EPA's active intent to make the Gelman Plume a Superfund Site.

A particularly spicy chili on tonight's agenda is DS-1, a resolution to eliminate on-street parking on Barton Drive from Longshore to Pontiac Trail. The pavement on the road is in poor condition and the city is going to be resurfacing the street and installing larger water mains. The street is currently too narrow to support parking, vehicular traffic, and dedicated bike lane. There is little street parking on Barton between the 14 onramp and Pontiac Trail. This resolution would eliminate a few on street parking spaces and allow for dedicated bike lanes on a fairly popular bike route, at least based on the Strava Heat Map. In the picture below Barton is the most popular east-west path for cyclists between the Border to Border trail and Joy Road.

Given, the city's vision zero goals and the recent decoration of a climate emergency, you would think that eliminating a few on street parking spaces in order to improve the ease and safeness of cycling would be a no brainer. Nevertheless, there is some opposition from the people that oppose the loss of parking spaces. 20 people from 17 addresses, mostly along the 600 and 700 blocks of Barton, have signed a petition opposing the loss of on street parking. In contrast, 56% of 32 participants at a city sponsored meeting for residents supported losing the parking spots to make bike lanes as well as 75% of the 204 respondents to a city wide survey. Finally, nearly 150 people signed a change.org petition supporting the construction of the bike lanes. The scuttlenbut from Council Caucus on Sunday is that this might not have the votes needed to pass.

And there you have it gentle readers. Make sure you tune into CTN tonight at 7pm to check out the action.

Ypsilanti is Getting a Film Festival

Exciting news this morning. Ypsi is getting its own film fest. Independent Film Festival Ypsilanti (IFFY) will be at the Riverside Arts Center April 16 through April 18th. Local filmmakers Donald Harrison, and Martin Thoburn are co-founding/co-directing IFFY. They are teaming up with Juliet Hinely and Hafsah Mijinyawa who will each curate a program of short films and artists. The festival will announce its schedule in March and will feature local filmmakers. When asked about why they were starting the festival, Harrison had this to say "Ypsi's a dynamic city with a strong cultural tradition. We're starting IFFY to reflect that, respond to it, and we're excited to see how it might grow in our community."

Personally, I am very excited about IFFY. Stay tuned for more updates.

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: January 6, 2020

Gentle readers, tonight is the first #a2council of the new decade. Yay. Here's the agenda. The evening kicks off with a respectable 20 item consent agenda. CA-16 is a contract to purchase multi-factor authentication software from local software firm Duo Security. CA-20 would add a police lutienient to the Ann Arbor Police Department's roster.

Diving further in, there are, gasp, no public hearings on the docket tonight. DC-1 is a resolution supporting the EPA becoming involved with the Gelman Plume and encouraging its designation as a Superfund site. DC-2 authorizes appeals of the city's denied petitions for township island annexation.

I think that's mostly it, a relatively light agenda to ease us into the decade. Gentle readers, what agenda items are you most interested in? Make sure you tune in to the action tonight 7:00 on CTN and follow along with the #a2council hashtag on twitter.