Monday, June 21, 2021

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: June 21, 2021

 


Gentle reader, it's #a2Council Night in Ann Arbor. Here's the meeting agenda.


The evening kicks off with a substantial, 24-item consent agenda. CA-10 is a resolution for Healthy Streets. This includes some great things including reconfiguring some major streets for safety. I am personally excited for the permanent bike lanes this would add to Packard between Carpenter to Eisenhower. CA-20 is the contract for AAPD sergeants and lieutenants. I really wish council would facilitate a public discussion about police contracts before they end up on the consent agenda. CA-23 is a resolution to increase the DDA budget. The DDA had asked for this previously, but it was left out of the FY 22 budget. I would not be surprised if this got pulled. 

There is one public hearing on the agenda tonight. PH-1/B-1 updates the non-discrimination ordinance to ban discrimination based on race-based hair discrimination. Glad to see this going forward. 

Elsewhere on the agenda we have C-1 an ordinance to amend the rules governing the ICPOC.  DC-4 is a resolution to amend and extend the recycling contract with Recycle Ann Arbor. Gentle reader, I am going to be honest with you, I remember this being sticky in the past, but I forget why. 

As always, gentle reader, I am probably forgetting some very important items here. What agenda items are you most looking forward to seeing. I am guessing that tonight will be another late night around the virtual council table. Hopefully we will see you there. The CTN stream starts at 7 pm. Make sure you follow the action on the #a2council hashtag.

Monday, June 7, 2021

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: June 6, 2021


 Gentle readers, it's Council Night in Ann Arbor. Here's the agenda. Excitingly, there is a ton of housing on the agenda. Make sure you read this deep dive on the housing agenda items by Scott Trudeau. On to the agenda.

The evening kicks off with a deep, 29-item consent agenda. CA-26 and CA-29 are both allocations from the affordable housing millage. It's nice to see these start to get used. 

There are 4 public hearings on the agenda tonight. They are all on important agenda items. PH-1/B-1 is on the update to the ADU ordinance. This would allow AUDs in many more areas. You can read more about my ADU thoughts here, but the TL;DR here is that ADUs are good. PH-2/B-2 is the conditional rezoning for the Valhalla project. Again, I think this is a good projet. It would put 485 mid-rise apartments and townhouses on a lot at the corner of South Main and Scio Church. Expect to hear a lot of ridiculous opposition to this (e.g. does DTE have enough electrons to power the development). PH-3/DB-1 is the Valhalla site plan. And PH-4/DB-2 is on adopting the Towards Vision Zero transportation plan. Again, this is good. 

Further down the agenda we get to the ordinance first readings starting off C-1, which would amend the rental ordinance and increase the amount of time before a landlord can pressure tenants to renew their leases. Seems good. C-2 is an amendment to the anti-discrimination ordinance to prevent race-based hair discrimination. Definitely good. C-3 is super exciting. It's the first reading of an ordinance to have a new TC1 Transit Corridor district. It would allow more density along transit corridors. And finally C-4 would amend the Unified Development Code. 

Finally we get to the resolutions. DC-2 is a resolution to establish a PILOT study committee. DC-6 is one of the spicy chilies on the agenda. It is a resolution asking CM Hayner resign. I don't really have time to go into this one. But here's a (paywalled) Mlive article that covers some of the issues. 

As always, gentle reader, I am probably forgetting some very important items here. What agenda items are you most looking forward to seeing. I am guessing that tonight will be another late night around the virtual council table. Hopefully we will see you there. The CTN stream starts at 7 pm. Make sure you follow the action on the #a2council hashtag.