Monday, January 3, 2022

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: January 3, 2022


Holy cow, it's 2022. Tonight is the first #a2Council meeting of the new year and the first in person council meeting in a while. Here's the agenda, and here's the A2AF episode about the meeting. 

Even before we get to the consent agenda, there are two important reports coming to council tonight. AC-1 is Resolution Directing the City Administrator to Develop an Unarmed Public Safety Response Program. Molly covers this well in the A2AF episode, you should listen to it. AC-2 is a report on pedestrian safety improvements around schools. Again, you should check out Molly's thoughts on this. 

Moving on to the sparse consent agenda. There are only three items. The first two items are for dental and health insurance. 

There are three public hearings on the agenda tonight. PH-1/B-1 is on changes to the storm water management and soil erosion ordinance. One change this would make is that by-right projects that pass Planning Commission would no longer come to council for votes. This is a good change because 1) having to go to more meetings for approval increases the cost of projects, and thus the cost of new housing. And 2) it gives the false idea that council has some say in these projects (see for example, the todo about the recent Earhart Road Development). PH-2/B-2 is on the new purchasing, contracting, and selling rules. PH-3 is on the consideration of developing an industrial district on Research Park Drive on land owned by Sartorius IDD. 

C-1 is on the first reading of an ordinance updating city laws on disorderly conduct including sex work. It is good that Ann Arbor is adding gender neutral language to our ordinances, but a missed opportunity to decriminalize things. Specifically, there is a missed opportunity to make prostitution a civil infraction rather than a misdemeanor. Crowd surfing and aiding and abetting crowd surfing probably don't need to be misdemeanors either. One positive change to the ordinances it is no longer a crime to transport someone to do sex work. 

DC-1 is resolution that asks DTE to be better about fixing streetlights near crosswalks.  DTE owns about 2/3 of Ann Arbor's streetlights but I don't know how much power council has to compel action from DTE.

And that's it. A pretty sparse agenda. What items are you most looking forward to seeing? 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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