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.


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