Monday, April 4, 2022

Ann Arbor City Council Preview: April 4, 2022

Gentle reader, tonight we have a big #a2Council meeting. Here's the agenda and here's the A2AF episode on the agenda. If I were you, I'd pause reading right here and listen to the A2AF episode. It's essential listening for the ARPA Funds agenda item. 

The evening kicks off with a modest, 11-item consent agenda.  CA-1 and CA-2 are street closings for a UMLaw School building naming, 25th Annual African American Downtown Festival, respectively. 

There are 5 public hearings on the agenda tonight. PH-1/B-1 is for the second reading of the PUD for the Y Lot. In short, this is an awesome project. It'll allow a 20 story building with a large portion of subsidized housing. PH-2/B-2 is the second reading for the TC1 rezoning for the State and Eisenhower area. This is also awesome. TC1 is a new zone that allows more density and less car dependence. For more on these, check out Greg's awesome article from last Friday

PH-3/C-1 is on an ordinance to issue Water Supply System Revenue Bonds. I'm assuming this is to fund water system improvements. PH-4 /DB-1 is on the brownfield plan for the Sartorius development at 3874 Research Park Drive. PH-5/DS-1 is on an Industrial Facilities Exemption Certificate for Sartorius. I think this is some sort of tax abatement. 

DC-1 is a resolution to support the No Mow Initiative. Personally, I love not maintaining my lawn, and I think the city should do more to legalize letting your lawn just go. 

DS-2 is a resolution to spend the ~$24 million Ann Arbor is getting in American Rescue Plan loot drops. The city put out a pretty good survey to gauge resident priorities and Administrator Dohoney put together a pretty good resolution on allocation. Though there may be some shenanigans in the form of amendments. If you haven't listened to A2AF yet, do so now please, because Molly and Jessica cover this is a lot more detail than I will. One amendment would take the money for the basic income pilot and put it towards fixing roads. This is regressive. It's taking money that would go to some of the poorest people and put it towards something that disproportionately benefits more wealthy people. People with higher incomes own more cars and drive more, on average. Also, the city is about to issue ~$15mil in bonds to fix the roads. So this would be a drop in the bucket compared to that. Another amendment would take money from the unarmed responder program and put it towards housing the homeless. Both of these are noble, but we shouldn't make it a zero sum game in terms of progressive programs. 

And that's it. 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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