we have three items that will be on our agenda REE notice of sign ordinance amendments for city council approval proposed amendments to chapter 55 unified development code section 5.2 for signs to update to update and modernize requirements for signage a25 north maple road rezoning area plan for city council approval a request to rezone this point nine acre site from our 1c single-family residential to our to a two family residential and item number three to two six zero traver Road annexation and zoning for city council approval a request to annex this three point five six acre parcel with single family with a single family home and zone at our 1b single-family dwelling we now come to our regular business in the first item before us is the MSG Cu credit union site plan partial rezoning for City Council approval and a special exemption use for City Planning Commission approval our procedure for this evening is we will begin with a petitioner presentation the petitioner will have up to ten minutes to present before the Planning Commission will then get a staff report and then we'll have a public hearing and then discussion and a vote so I will let the petitioners step forward and start their presentation oh I'll introduce myself first I'm John Vitale with the firm stuck in Vitali architects and we're here this evening Jay introduced a project of Michigan schools and government credit union so we're proposing approximately a 3,800 square foot credit union with three drive-throughs on this site we're we've worked very closely with the the planning department with a number of iterations on plans and revise them and I I think we've evolved into a satisfactory plan that promotes the pedestrian access as well as the via killer access that we're looking for so we're here to answer any questions that you might have on on the plan and also like to introduce Steve brewer and Mike planning from our firm Steve is with Michigan schools and government credit union and I'm Steve roar the chief financial officer for Michigan schools and government credit union we don't have any branches in your area so you may not be wondering who we are we're at two point three billion dollar state chartered credit union based in Macomb County we're the largest credit union headquartered in Macomb County we have 16 branches we have 350 employees we are we've been recognized for the last seven years as a top workplace and all the communities that we do business in we're a good partner to the communities and we glad to answer any questions about specifically about Michigan schools government credit yen thank you my name is Mike blanik and with the firm Stuckey vitality architects to 7 172 Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak as John had mentioned this would be a new 3800 square foot Credit Union we worked extensively with the Planning Commission department to work this plan out we've even moved the building around the site a couple times the drive-thru component the first Lane is an ATM lane next to the building so that's a 24 access Lane typical you see and financial institutions and then we have to drive through lanes that would be operated during business hours for the convenience of the members the materials that are on the exterior of the building I brought a little sample board there it's brick and stone also we have some trim and some accent colors that go with it as you can see on the site plan the site you know because the site was a former gas station car wash there are some environmental x' that we are dealing with with the site so we worked extensively with the engineering department to try to work out all the retention and everything in the plan to see is if the evolution of all that work because of that issues with the former uses of the site we have to be cautious about how we drain are proposed to drain the stormwater and management so this site plan that we've evolved to has taken advantage of some of the opportunities to keep the stormwater management above-ground with that detention area in the back of the site also we have a significant jazz you go back to the site so the development really needs to stay close to the frontage because of that great change in the back makes it difficult to develop anything back there we also had the community meeting we had 417 cards that we sent out we had two comments one was why the building was so close to the road which is your ordinance so we explained that to them and they were gonna call the city I don't know if they ever did and the other gentleman was in favor of was fine with the project we are proposing an access Drive to the adjacent property to the south for convenience we have reached out to them to try to work that out I mean we are still talking so maybe that can evolve but right now the Planning Department asked us to show it which we are and we're all certainly open to that cross access to the adjacent properties if that can evolve in the future we'd be more than happy to accommodate that requirement you know that the department wanted us to try to to meet so with that I can certainly you know we can answer any question you have about the development we also have our engineering team here so we're able they answer anything that you might have thank you right thank you this time we'll head over to miss Thatcher for the staff report just a couple of things to add there's a nice rendering in here I think that's also in your packet but there are three components to this we have the site plan zoning of half of the parcel and the special exception use photo of the site you may know it to the left is Arbor farms and the ACE Plaza to the right is Belle's diner and in between is nothing right now it's if you look way off in the distance here you can see a high very high sloped retaining wall and the property line actually probably includes that car right there is on this parcel so if you look at the site plan and you see that there's nothing going on back there that's what's back there it takes at up home have to understand that the here's the site again it's been completely cleared it previously had two buildings on it the zoning request is for the back half of the parcel to be rezone from C to B which is this squarish rectangular area you see here to c3 which is the larger area surrounding it that area on three sides why they ran it on the middle of the parcel no one will ever know over time we'll probably do the same thing with these two parcels should they come in for site plans but planning did request that the applicants request the rezoning so we appreciate that they did that because the site plan has gone through a couple of other iterations without doing that and it's never good to have a split toning district on a site so that's going from C to B to C 3 the special exception use is for the three drive-thru lanes and I want you to know that that originally it came in with the drive-through lane circling the building and parallel to stadium Boulevard and then coming back into the driveway here and exiting back out onto stadium and staff did not recommend that the that the driveway go all the way around the building because of potential pedestrian conflicts they'd have to have a raised walkway and and things like that and I do want to compliment the petitioners I'm being very accommodating for that it wasn't their first choice but they were happy to work with us on something that that the Planning Commission might be more amenable to I know that that's been a problem on past site so staff does recommend approval of all three proposed motions thank you thank you at this time I'd like to open up the public hearing if anybody's in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission you may step up to the podium state your name and address for the record and you'll have up to three minutes to address the Planning Commission in regards to this petition seeing no one I will close the public hearing and I will read the three motions unless there's an objection I'd like to take all three of them up together see no objections I will read them a motion correct okay so we will would you like that to be first or second how about we do it first yeah let's do that first all right so the motion reads as follows the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission after hearing all interested persons and reviewing all relevant informations information finds the petition substantially meets the standards in chapter 55 zoning ordinance section 5 : 104 special exemption exemptions and therefore approves the Michigan schools and government credit union special exemption use for a maximum of three drive-through lanes as part of financial services use move by Commissioner woods seconded by Commissioner gear and all the master Ackerman Thank You mr.
chair generally supportive of the project credit unions are a social good cooperative financial institutions are important they protect consumers and public servants in your case so appreciate the business model I think you'd be a welcome neighbor a few very specific concerns around traffic safety so I want to look first to and I'm not sure if these are questions for staff or the petitioner either welcome to answer as I look to your site plan up I was curious about so it looks as though you have easement to the alley behind this room all to your south is that correct does that easement been secured so your your exit for the drive-throughs empties out into the alley of the neighbor we have proposed it to the adjacent landowner and we've talked to them but it's not secured things that there may be open to it right now I would say they're not but we are not giving up on the Opera okay so his staff wanted us to show it for the middle tonight which is our desire to try to make that happen I know their concern was the way they bring truck traffic through that side they were concerned about mixing cars with trucks and we understand that but so but we're still open to trying to maybe work somehow if you're not able to stay the easement what do you plan to resubmit with a different design no we would keep the traffic goes around the building so it doesn't nest it would just be a curb there we wouldn't be able to put that in soon be one entrance and exit matter at the stadium yes correct in your consideration so knowing that it's challenging to this to this next question but generally as a community we're trying to reduce the number of curb cuts it's safer for pedestrians and cyclists and while stadium is mostly car friendly today our hope is that in the future it'll be more pedestrian and cyclist friendly any consideration or thought into eliminating the stadium side curb cut and having all your entrance exit traffic come through the alley I'll note that Fifth Third Bank and CVS across the street have that arrangement which i think is probably beneficial to the two west stadium as a whole and he was there consideration given to that planning staff didn't discuss it but that was because with the petitioners of the property owner but that was because the adjacent property owners were not amenable to that open area so it didn't seem like that was gonna go anywhere if they weren't happy with the exit they probably weren't happy with the entrance and exit yeah fair enough fair enough all right that's all for now thanks commissioner Briggs so I concur that we're happy to see you know credit union coming another Credit Union coming to Ann Arbor and generally have a few concerns about the proposal but I do have concerns about the special exception yes they are we do have drive-throughs as a special exception you so I think for good reasons and it's notable to see a trend national trend now of cities prohibiting drive-throughs Minneapolis being the most recent one of banning drive-throughs in the entire city and that was due to our climate crisis and so you know other places have done it for public health reasons in the past but increasingly there's a move towards you know rethinking how we get around and I think we're gonna have to be more aggressive than just limiting drive-throughs this is a pretty baby step for folks to think about parking their cars and walking into an establishment but I think we're gonna have to ask folks in our community to to think about making small shifts in their behavior so I don't think I'll be approving any drive-throughs that come in front of us ever so it's nothing about your project specifically but I do have one question specifically about the one drive-through lane if you don't mind you mentioned it being a drive-through lane for atm is there another ATM that is on sort of the sidewalk face of the business or is that the only ATM currently that's the only one so I would hope that that could be corrected even regardless of whether or not the special exception use gets approved or not tonight I would think that we wouldn't there are gonna be people who are gonna be visiting this on foot and on bike regardless and so you'd really not want them to have to walk through a drive-through ATM to be able to access funds and non-business hours so I would hope that something could be placed more straight front on that respect I don't know if others I'll just share where I'm thinking on this the other piece that I think that's important we've been talking about t1 transit friendly development obviously we have nothing in the plans right now for stadium but I think that we could all imagine what we would hope Stadium Boulevard might look like 20 years from now which is likely to have more housing more foot traffic in this building hopefully is going to be coming in to Ann Arbor and the banks can be well used for generations to come and so I think that we're not planning just for today but for tomorrow so I see no reason for joiners Sherwood's just a point of clarification perhaps because of our numbers this evening miss Thatcher do what how many votes in favor of this special exception use are required in order for this to pass we only have six here this evening but no we have seven yeah I think we need sex yeah we could if we could check on that we'll get back to you shortly okay and then I guess related to the special exception use can you explain to us does that go with the property the way a PUD would would go with the property yes the special exception use stays with the land it does not it's not tied to this project though the way that the motion is proposed it does say that it would be used for financial services mm-hmm so if another Bank came along and wanted to occupy that building they could in the future say it was built they could potentially occupy it using the exception use but if a fast-food place came in they could not use drive-thru lanes for a restaurant use does that make sense yes yeah and did you oh you're still looking it up I guess only six affirmative notes okay thank you and that particular vote goes with that's the Planning Commission that makes the says up or down on that it doesn't not go to City Council it's all right okay so it's a pretty important vote I have also of course concerns about how pedestrians are able to get around and I and I live in this area so I'm really familiar with how CVS works and Fifth Third Bank and the others as well but I guess my thought at this point is I would not say no to a to a drive-thru I'd have more concern about approving it if the adjacent land owner is not yet amenable to to this situation and so I guess I would ask the petitioner how close are you in terms of talks with the adjacent landowner in that case we have presented it to them in a couple because we've changed this plan so it's been a couple of gyrations that we presented the last conversation was maybe there's an opportunity in the future but I mean I can't speak on a percent for them but mm-hmm we were were open to it so if let's say they came to the Planning Commission for a reason some project then we could obviously you could get it in there for us but their concern is the traffic of the trucks that deliver to that side of the building that's been always the discussion they have semis and smaller trucks to come through there I don't know what the hours you know when they come in and all that so they they look at as a safety issue mixing cars coming through with their traffic for the loading zone because their loading zones on that side of the belly right so that's the challenge with this parcel is and also they have people who are just come in to that establishment using that entryway as well sometimes that's the way we go in there as well so what is your alternative if you cannot use that can you just maybe use the arrow - yeah you Lu continue around the site around the island there's the green at the island there you would LA you would you know make a turn coming now and come back out where you came through come back out okay so we only have one access onto the road okay now does anyone know whether or not there was any kind of traffic count that went along with this no traffic impact study was required because it doesn't generate enough traffic didn't exceed the threshold okay could I clarify one thing back on circulation again yes I want you to know that it was planning that requested that a connection be shown to that south to the side that side to the south because if it's shown on their plan even if they're not allowed to build it right now mm-hmm when the plaza to the south comes in for something some day we can say look it's already ready and waiting we'd like you guys to make the connection now you've got no more excuses at that point but if it's not showing on their plan then we might have to potentially drag them back in too so it's it's more of a looking ahead thing than anything we also requested on the on the on the north side but that didn't work as well because they needed they needed space there for trash truck access and turnaround and stuff so at this point it's not shown there at all and the parking set up a little bit differently there's not a drive aisle right there the plaza to the north has just a bunch of parking spaces that might be a similar situation it would be a little bit more cumbersome to go back in the future if the properties to the north come in for something and we want them all hooked up but at least this one to the south made a lot of sense because it's opening on to that alley there and if we can get in the future great if we can't they're their site is set up to be self-contained anyway okay thank you thank you for that explanation have you shown your site or on any of your other credit union sites do you not have drive-through know all the sites that we've developed I'll have a drive-thru component mm-hmm sometimes it has a few more layer like an additional lane that was shown here but the staff when we first came in they said no you know we don't we want to minimize that so we did take a lane out in in you know it through the staffs recommendation okay so we have two lanes that are active if one of those goes down you still have one available the ATM usually that's that's a 24-hour type situation thank you I will listen to more discussion among the commissioners thanks Commissioner Mills thank you I really appreciate that staff is requested that connection to the south and I think that that's really important for us going forward in part 2 in terms of pedestrian friendliness maybe when the shopping mall or what's to the south is redeveloped it'll move you know our code requires that it would move closer to the road or at least portion of it would move closer to the road but right now all of that development is farther back and realistically pedestrians are not going to walk to the road to get on the sidewalk to then walk back like that's that's a a path that pedestrians I think will actually use that actually raises a safety concern because there's no accommodation right now for pedestrians I mean I I have been a pedestrian in that shopping mall to get my kids haircuts right like that I think that that's realistic and there there are people I'm I am happily surprised pleasantly surprised by how many people I do see on foot on this corridor already and I think that we're only moving in a direction to have more people that way and so I'm worried about the drive-through posing a pedestrian safety risk there because I think that there will be pedestrian crossings there and that's not accommodated for in in the arrangement that we've seen the other concern that I have is that assuming as I hope someday there is this connection to the south it bothers me that at least as striped and and the best I can see from this plan that it would only be one way in it's not you can't go from the bank to the shopping mall you can only go from the shopping mall to the bank because of because there's all of the and it's actually not because of where the building is it's because of where the drive-throughs are and so I I think after the last time we saw a drive-through I did a lot of soul-searching like how does this fit with our goals to be carbon neutral and I I think I have a perhaps a softer approach than what Commissioner Briggs has and though I absolutely respect it I think that there are places particularly at our interchanges our interstate interchanges where there might it might be appropriate but generally speaking a bank drive-through is not a destination at an interchange like this neither of those two things fit here and so I this is one where it just seems superfluous to park your car and go in that and you know like that it's not totally needed so I I wouldn't put the hard line on the and the no Drive thrus personally but in this one I'm I'm concerned that it does pose a risk to both pedestrians and that it limits those vehicular that movement that could happen between sites which is what we ultimately want to see I know that we often get pushback from some landowners but that's what we want to see here and this arraignment doesn't allow for that so I look forward to the conversation but this is something that I don't think I can support either that particular element the rest of it like moving the bank up I think that's great I think that this is a use that we need here I honestly wish that there had been put like push to have a connection shown to the north but that I think is not about the drive through so much as like I'll talk about that more in the site plan discussion what I guess I'll I'll ask a question at this point since nobody's jumping up so my office is located next to a traditional bank as well as a credit union as well and I've been in that office building for almost five years at this point and the one thing that I've noticed is that first I've noticed that there's not many people going into the bank these days but mostly what I've also noticed is the drive-through sit pretty much empty without too many people coming through them and I guess this is more for the bank why why Drive thrus today and I guess if you can talk a little bit about the usage of drive throughs and what you're experiencing these days our experience is that we will provide as much convenience to the members that want to come into business with us and they're asking for not only for activity in transaction through internet through mobile apps but also through brick-and-mortar and through drive-thru they don't want anyone over the other they want all and so for our business model to work and be successful the drive-through is this thing to become part of that just as much as the app or the internet or the brick-and-mortar can you talk a little bit about the usage how it's changed in the last five years I've throughs all the branches that we currently have our drive-thru activity has grown over the last over the last ten years and if you I don't know how you base it but you know percentage of how your how your members interact with you what percentage of the members interact through a drive-thru and if you don't know the answer that's totally fine this is no I don't know the answer to that I would say approximately anywhere from five to eight thousand transactions per month at the ATM that can give you that statistic but we do have we have we have enough activity in the drive-through to have a permanent employee of the credit union that is did a kid in full-time to serving that that source of transaction okay thank you certainly further discussion can I get Brandel I'm feeling mixed about the drive-thru thing I feel like it's the way I would like our future to go but I do have somebody who submits plans and we have nothing that really says to these people who came through this thing you're six months ago saying you know what this isn't the way to go and I feel like there's been a lot of for things I just feel like we need to give people a clear expectation and I feel like this is changing it at the very end of the game for these people and I am completely at peace with moving forward with saying we are not about drive-throughs but I feel really I do not feel good about people that are already in the pipeline without us giving a clear expectation that this is what we're about now and I think that it's I think it's unfair to people that have come through the process this far again I'm totally fine with moving forward that way but I just don't think it's fair to a petitioner to just change it at the very end because it's a lot of time and money and energy and I know it's not our job to think about that but as somebody who's on the other side that sometimes I think that we do have to think about that and I think that we just I again I'm all about changing it because I think that that's the right thing to do I think there's also a whole lot of other things we can do as a city to try to encourage people to not idle because it is happening all over the place you go to any school our police cars sitting outside of our city hall we have so much work to do on that in general that I feel like we could be doing things as a city that that are much more comprehensive and this is a piece of it that I feel like it's like a little piece of it and that we could be much more have much more effect on it then then this one thing so you know I I just feel funny about rejecting something that I feel like these people have been working on and been getting you know the staff hasn't told them anything otherwise it's not like they have another plan up their sleeve so that's how I feel I feel like I I would feel strange about voting against it given it's just strange that we've had two in the last months because we have had so few of them which I'm glad you know because I kind of feel like you do it like it at the interchanges I feel like it makes sense and in places like this if you'd had an my plans had by side that had another version of it that didn't have it that I'd be like let's go for it but I just feel funny about doing it so that's kind of where I am with that so well catch up in a second but I would at this point because we have were short two commissioners and taking your comment commissioned Gabrielle it might be worth us to table this or postpone it so that the staff and the petitioner can work further on this I understand Commission Berg's your standpoint and they I'm pretty sure they've got you understand where some of us and so I think it'd be worth worth it to table let them work with city staff to come up with something that we might be able to approve so I I will eventually ask for that in motion Commissioner breaks hey I understand what you're saying however it is a special exception yes and so it's not a guarantee and I think that they heard when they were coming through the pipeline from staff that there is concerns and I really respect how much you were willing to work with staff to try to make it accommodations on the drive through I can see that that was happening and I appreciate all the revisions that that happened but we have as a city declared you know that we want to reach quiet you know carbon neutrality by 2030 and that's a recent policy thing but we've been working in that direction regardless I know it's a change for them but honestly citizens of our community are going to have to make shifts in their behavior businesses that operate in our community are going to have to make shifts it's this is a movement for all of us and I don't think that honestly I understand that it is part of their business model in terms of how you kind of operate right now but I don't think that denying a drive-through is it's gonna fundamentally be detrimental to the business their business operations otherwise I would have to think a little more deeply about it but I appreciate what your thoughts are commish Rackham Thank You mr.
chair and I appreciate the conversation I think if part of the modern reality of running a retail bank is that you need to meet the consumer you know in every scenario online on their phone through drive-thru through a walk-up ATM through a teller then and we've been offering you know drive throughs to commercial banking institutions for decades we're kind of at for this case picking a loser and picking a non-profit cooperative owned banking institution as the loser against for-profit major commercial banking institutions and that doesn't sit right with me on the other hand at some point if we have a value as a city to move to reduce our carbon emissions and cars are a big part of that at some point we have to you know draw a line in the sand and say no more so I appreciate both sides of the angle I'll just say whether we vote to recommend approval denial or we do postpone it which I hope we do just by the count I'd say I'm meeting with the city administrator the week of December 16th to discuss how to kind of kick start taking care of some of the low-hanging fruit and our zoning codes with respect to sustainability and I'm happy to add this one to the list and so that we can kind of more formally draw that line in the sand if that gives people any reassurance Fisher woods I'm going to certainly be supportive of postponement and just in terms of our discussion in terms of if we're going to have a moratorium or just say no to drive-throughs I think that certainly is a discussion that will need a lot more input from our citizens to see if they're actually on board with that as well for many of the drive throughs that I've seen recently including the credit union where I think many of us around the table belong you know they're out in the townships and I don't know what the discussion is about their drive through lanes but I know that they're well used and I have to raise my hand as someone who uses them as well but I do think that we have to be careful about I guess we're not really making policy here at this table per se but we're you know indicating the City Council and letting them know what our best judgment is but I I just think we have to be careful if we have not had enough citizen input to to make certain decisions and in this case I think the gentleman said that you had two people that maybe came to your citizens participation meeting and believe me we have a lot of people in Ann Arbor who come out to citizen participation meetings and so I want to also think that this postponement might allow us to even hear from from a few more people out there but I appreciate what you said commissioner Ackerman about I hadn't really thought about it in terms of choosing winners and losers and that kind of thing but a lot of times there are some social justice issues attached to some of these decisions that we're looking at and in this case I'm willing to vote for the postponement so I can really consider a few more of those things so I'm supportive of it as well mr.
söze whoa so but when looking at this portion of the criteria a couple things I looked at were kind of vicinity for Vic Euler we had transit corridors as a discussion point of rezoning and what that looks like - and kind of postponed that for a lot more public input and what a transit corridor and transit oriented zoning would look like and so I think when we talk about transit it is multimodal and so thinking about those sorts of modes as it relates to this plan and looking at drive throughs and other drive throughs especially 24 hours I have seen site conditions where they have to safely accommodate for a pedestrian and a bike so thinking about sight lines and turn lines with that landscaping and area between the parking spaces and then the Iowa for the drive through I'd be interested to see blind spots right somebody turning to approach that aisle way to come to the ATM and somebody's standing there what are those sight lines that there's a biker a person actually standing at the ATM and what sort of curb cuts are paintings and signage can you accommodate if this goes forward looking at the previously approved but expired site plan for the building prior to this the amount of paved area so you talked about stormwater so I would actually like to see what what is the condition with a special exception and I would ask for a postponement in this additional information how much more surface area is required to have a drive-thru versus if this building exists is just with the required parking and I always so all of a sudden we're not just getting into idling cars we're also talking about paving more areas and access and flow and safety in those regards as well so those are like how these things converge to the idling car as an environmental condition I don't think we're picking winners and losers in terms of banks we're talking about highest and best use and our ability with a special exception to decide if this is the right place to allow a certain use to happen and so if we don't think that this is the place in the city for drive-throughs then maybe there's a better use and building and site plan that will come forward that will build on this site that doesn't require such convenience to the automobile and I think that is actually where I'm landing at this moment convenience to customer is not the reason to approve on this side of the table for me and so we need to look at convenience of land use for the city at large and that land use kind of quality and so it comes back to the vehicle versus all the transit uses I live along this corridor I walk to Arbor Farms I walk to bells like I am on this sidewalk and so it's not me in a car a lot of the time so though that's just kind of my approach to evaluating it so if we postpone and you can give us more information about those trade-offs that we're looking at when we're looking at the drive through in terms of the multimodal safety the amount of paved area that would help me resolve some of those details a bit better to know if we're actually providing a very special exception use or we're gonna get more of a similar footprint and idling cars and some other circumstance so that's where I sit right now mr.
Mill's first chair a point of clarification are we if we move to postpone this item will we still be discussing separately the site plan so my plan is that I will that will come up so we'll move those and then we'll discuss the site plan and then I'm assuming you'll also be postponed great okay because I do have things that are inside plan and that would improve through postponement but I'll hold those so the only thing that I would reiterate and I think that this is great because this is one where right now the criteria the we have right to evaluate whether or not this meets the special exception use is about the cry the via hick Euler circulation to enter and exit the facility and may not impair the general vehicular circulation on this site which that's where I'm talking about the the people who are not in the drive-thru being able to get to the south or the pedestrian circulation on and off the site and so in coming back I think my decision about about the special exception use will hinge very heavily on that those particular criteria because those are the criteria they're in the code and I believe that right now this what we've seen do not pass that do not meet those criteria like I'm worried about this the particularly the pedestrian access that could come and and as somebody no one noted the the sight lines like if someone's walking through from one market or whatever no it's not pull market performs thank you in my mind of the Zoe and Joey from there if they're walking through they're gonna walk effectively probably of the ATM lane and so like that's that's what I'm worried about so I would welcome a postponement you know I think that's a good all right any further discussion so my comments on it are so I really think you know one of the biggest offenders is the ATM because that's where chances are someone is gonna be idling most likely they're not gonna char off their engine it's fast move around I would hope that when this does come back to us that the ATM is sitting inside the building or at the front of the building also just you know long term wise for pedestrian access I'm not a hundred percent opposed to drive-throughs but why do you need three three lanes worth of Directors I don't really see the need for it maybe if you have one and there's too many cars parked you know like when I run into a scenario where as the Starbucks line is too long I park and get go inside and grab my coffee so maybe that would be my hope is that someone will walk inside if there are too many cars parked but at the same time when the time comes that we are no longer driving cars which we knows when that will be you don't have to then convert three lanes worth of a drive-thru it's only one lane so those are my thoughts um do you have a motion to postpone move back mr.
Mill's seconded by Commissioner woods any discussion on postponement Fisher woods yes are we postponing to a date certain or just leaving it open so that the petitioner can work with staff I think two for the petitioner to work with staff and then for the staff to bring it up on our agenda you okay thank you any other discussion on postponement all those in favor please say aye opposed so that motion is postponed and reverts to the special exemption use I will take the next two motions together if that's okay all right so this the Ann Arbor city planning Commissioner hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approved the Michigan schools and government credit union rezoning petition to see three French commercial district based on the proposed zoning and recommended commercial land use designation motion number two the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and the City Council approved the Michigan schools and government credit union site plan moved by commissioner surveys seconded by Commissioner Mills and we are in discussion Commissioner Mills so I think with regards to the rezoning that this is staffs recommendation and to be consistent and to not have the zoning district line run through the center of the property makes tons of sense and choosing C 3 over C 2 B I think I defer to staff on this I think both because there's adjacency of both of them that seems fine to me my and I she ate this is one word like I appreciate that you worked with staff to bring the building up to the sidewalk as you can tell like that's something that we're driving like going for along particularly along this quarter and really throughout the city and so I I like the location of the building I know what from when we had seen this building in or this a site plan for this site previously like better challenges in the back half anyway so that makes a lot of sense given given what you had said before about the use like the balance of people using a drive-thru versus coming in it's a bit surprising to me to max out the parking here so this isn't this is one of the districts where we do have a parking maximum rather than a parking minimum and I do you have any data or anything to show that you would need 21 parking spots so the basis of the parking the so the branch will be staffed with eight to ten people on a regular basis plus they also will do closings here you know for mortgages and such so if you take away 21 take ten that leaves 11 available for if you have a closing you might have to two or three people coming in for the closing depending on the property is being sold because this is kind of like a farther reach for this for the credit union coming into this area so they're gonna do the closings here they're not gonna do it another another County or something like that so they're gonna need those extra spaces to accommodate all the services they can provide and you know they're also do financial planning and such so if you're giving up ten spaces eight to ten for staff that only leaves you eleven for the public to you know the members to use on a regular basis so that was reason behind though the parking okay I mean that's one of the things that we often ask for right is just being able to defer some parking so that's something again I expect that we would defer yeah I mean we could certainly work with staff down that and we talked through that process as well so we can look at you know something to that effect as well yeah so I think that plus you know the Hat were there not imperviousness associated with the drive-thru lanes there you know there's just a whole lot more imperviousness here then then what 21 parking spots would imply because of all of the you know the traffic link whatever I don't know the right lingo but the traffic lanes to the circulation patterns throughout here so perhaps in thinking through what the drive-through facility looks like you might have some flexibility you know I mean effectively the way your drive-thru is right now that's six vehicle parking spots right and so I think that there's as you go back in this time that's something that I would think about yeah we will and I know part of the study we had to do a to have the refuge trucks coming in out of the site we did a traffic study for that that drove some of the dimensions that we had to to accommodate that traffic pattern of those trucks coming in out to the trash container but we can certainly look at tightening it up in to your point and try to reduce that down we had some other plans that had less but this is the one that everybody kind of thought this was the best solution at this time from through all the staff meetings in size so got it thank you we'll take a look at it this is fine the and this is a question I think maybe more first staff um that there is a huge area there that's striped in the north west corner and that's associated with the trash trucks is that yeah it's there I mean that doesn't that doesn't happen all that often how often do you have any idea how often you have trash pickup twice a week right um I'm just wondering if that's not a place I don't know what our requirements are but well that would be fantastic and I think in addition to that conversation if there's any way that that might be the place to put a connection to the north to at least put it on a site plan because in my mind again if it's just twice a week that it may be blocked by a trash truck there's another way out right anyway but but to provide a place that there could be some connection between these sites I think as we were talking about earlier is really important for the future so I don't you know that maybe that's this bad but I don't know what the rules are thank you mr.
Briggs so I was wondering about the landscaping that is along the street front which I appreciate that there is landscaping there but I was wondering about sight lines it looks like there trees but could you describe them a little bit better so that I can understand if that would I'm sure they'll smart start out as small trees but I'm wondering what those trunks might look like in terms of scurrying to use in the future just introduce myself Eric Williams with stone field engineering designs so we are the civil engineers on the project the tree species that I believe we're looking at there is gonna be a Red Baron crabapple so I think everybody's probably really familiar with the size of those they don't get the extremely thick trunks they stay a little more they're a little broad and fairly short so what we'll do is we'll make sure that they're cut above what your typical site level would be which i think is plus or minus five feet okay so that when people are exiting or entering the site they can clearly see if there's cars also exiting so they can safely cross the one that I'm most concerned about is on the sorry I can't do my directions upper right-hand corner of the the picture that we're looking at right now that one just looks like it's particularly close in terms of being able to you know look left absolutely and I think that's one of those I went could that be pulled back a parking space there okay full disclosure so I think what we can do is we can move it back and make sure it's still within that landscape okay that's that's the only one that seemed and I'll leave this stuff down the way for more detailed questions around so and then the other piece that I've been struggling with but I this is not a landscaping question is just thinking about pedestrian connectivity now and and between the two sites you know I don't anticipate the cars are going away anytime soon and I'm not trying to I'm just thinking about how we want ideally we want our city to operate but for folks ideally at some point the you know the Arbor Farms complex will be pulled close to the street front but that'll be a long time in the future looking at folks kind of going between the two sites I'm sure that Miss Petra I'm sure that you you guys thought about this a lot in terms of what the good pedestrian patterns are there it's in some ways I want to see that sidewalk like but I'm just skeptical of folks kind of going out to the main sidewalk and then going back in but just talk me through maybe why that is the best pedestrian pattern and I'm sure you've you've thought through it mr.
Briggs are you concerned about a particular area well how people are gonna disarm your arms oh yeah I'm just kind of from that direction from folks kind of coming that way that are kind of parking and trying to run over there ideally yeah you know yeah I just kind of see a V pattern I don't know I may be overthinking this in terms of thinking about the connectivity between those two sites but I understand exactly what you're saying people are going to do that there is a walkway on the south side of the building because there's a back door there so if if it were convenient a reason for them to get up to the front door they could at least get off of the parking lot surface there to get around the building we didn't consider pedestrian walkways near the drive-thru lanes because you don't want to encourage interactions so that may be something that we should talk about with the location of the ATM this comes back to my shrink your Brandel another landscaping question so I think the code is actually that when you have Street trees that are close to the drive like that they need to be free of branches up to eight feet and so it may be that you want to add one of your red oaks down there instead of one of the smaller crabs because I think you might have a hard time finding something absolutely that would that would have that kind of clearance underneath it but I think that the idea of bringing up so it's the the sight distance is important and on the one side on the north side your shrubs are pulled back but on the south side they're right up next to the sidewalk and you might consider pulling some of those back just to have the cone be more open it's I mean I know you all are from out of town but it's traffic is just super dense and tough and through there and it's often kind of like well we're see if I can you know pull out in the middle of a big sea of cars and so I think just giving people every advantage I do like it that you've got all the landscaping in front so thank you for doing that because I know the that's not required but if you could just think about pulling back and making sure that your site cone according to whatever the speed limit is on the street I think that would be great if you could tweak a little bit in that way so be sure so they so the point of the building hits the ten-foot minimum of the front sight back I'm trying to figure it like what's the average of that front facade as a setback or that next parallel plane to the setback line how what's our distance I couldn't find dimensionally in kind of about where we're at is that at the 25 feet if we because yeah so just that point of that kind of protruding piece is 10 feet or is it 25 yeah is that 15 and 10 are we right at 25 I'm just curious do you guys have any dimensions so you can provide additional okay I think if I understand you correctly so obviously the point of the buildings at 10v and that's where we set it um where it steps back and then kind of flattens out there I believe that's gonna fall between 18 and 20 feet 18 22 okay like I don't want it like that were just hitting a set Peck requirement and then backing off you know to a point that we're really not actually approaching the sidewalk you know if in the Atlantis Lane I'd rather let Mike talk about it the way the entry is set to the road front is one of the things that they really yeah the design as you enter the facility you come into the main lobby it's coming off where there's you know if you look at the frame oh there's a floor plan there yep in the packet and that also gives us a little more opportunity to do some landscaping in front to soften that you know so it's not just a square building right up against the sub bank it's kind of cut in and out and so it softens the whole appearance to the building and your entrance there so you can see you're entering at an angle into the building from the industrial sidewalk and then I guess it gives us more opportunity for landscape beings in that zone that's beyond mm-hmm as opposed to just having 10 feet you'd be limited on what you could do there and it'd be kind of yeah you know is it like there were no demand it was like 10 feet and then nothing so I'm like okay are we just making the mark and then backing off from it or within the margin so that yep for our brand the branches and we can give you other examples of where this is this is that's good as long as kind of all of it is around the 25 foot part mark and we're avoiding that other question architectual e that rear door that was kind of brought up as an alternative entry is that going to be unlocked or is that just going to be a panic door egress know it so it's available for entry members to come in that side entrance those six are parking in that back area and the employees to it goes right into a hallway goes right into the main part there's a couple toilet rooms off of that little corridor okay I would like to rewrite the large patch to the north I see that there is a snow storage zone that takes up about half of that hatch when I look at the garbage traffic path it doesn't intersect that hatch at all so I'm not I don't know what the eastern side of that hatch is a placeholder for so I would ask you and staff to like really look at it and decide and determine if you need more paving there or you know we can bring that back to grass connections or connection but you know right now it says it's needed for proposed loading right can you also clarify why we need a vehicle turnaround area for those back for spots with the 22-foot aisle I think this all plays into the site circulation can you put us back this yeah so if we again it's not zoomed in so it's a little hard to see from here but all currently all of the drive-thru traffic if we assume that we don't have cross access to the property to the side right everybody's gonna be forced to take a right-hand turn out of there right so there's not gonna be any two-way traffic so if for some reason I believe and I can't see but I think it's three or four parking spaces if all of those parking spaces are full we're gonna need to provide an area for people to turn around because there's not two-way traffic got it back through the drive-thru so again it's one of the challenges you know it's a narrow deep site so it's trying to make this site function for you know what were you know what obviously like we've talked about the business model and kind of the bank has had success with similar styles of layout and I can say this one's by far I guess it's different because we haven't pushed so close to the roadway so it has presented its own challenges but I think the biggest thing is that were forced to have one-way circulation on the drive through we can't provide two-way access unfortunately got it okay uh-huh I mean it just reiterates why the drive-through is the puzzle piece that's causing some conditions that aren't working so smoothly um I think those are my questions for now thank you I have a quick question for Miss Thatcher and that is in regards to so currently the way the potential easement down the road easement is set up is for one-way access is that correct that was not my impression okay that it was ever intended to be one way there's there should be enough width there that it could be a regular two-way access yeah so okay to be to wait okay the width you can see it's okay we have the arrows there because we don't have the conditions to connect but we've anticipated it would be too late okay we drive out or you can drive in ain't coming around okay sounds good the reason I ask that is it sounded like it was a one-way access and I'd want to make sure if down the road the site to the south here comes to us that we can open it up in two ways right further discussion Commissioner Gabe Randall just one thing I noticed in your rendering that there's up lighting in the building and just in terms of our direction we're actually trying to get rid of up lighting and just only down lighting to be able to encourage dark skies I don't think we've actually officially passed it yet well we're so close so it would be great if you all could um comply with that okay that's exactly what I was gonna say - yeah just look for dark skies compliant lighting and not up lighting please if it's possible further discussion do I see a motion to postpone move back missioner or yeah move back mr.
Mill's seconded by Commissioner get Brandel any discussion on postponement all those in favor please say aye aye opposed it is postponed moving on to the next item at a regular business oak wood nature area Edition and rezoning 3,200 Green Road we will begin with a staff report a whole lot on this one for you it's a 25 acre parcel that was acquired by the city as part of the Owl Creek Development nextdoor this is the piece that is being annexed onto oak woods nature area which is these these two southern sorry my mouse is slow this is the existing oak woods nature area this is the piece that's being added this is the future Owl Creek development I think it was called the annex when it came through a couple of years ago so this is just a proposal to rezone it from its existing residential zoning designation to public land thank you is there anyone in the audience who wishes to address the Planning Commission and regards this item seeing no one I will close the public hearing and I will read the motion the Ann Arbor City Planning Commission hereby recommends that the mayor and city council approved the oakwoods nature area addition rezoning from our for a multiple family dwelling to pl public land move the high commissioner survey seconded by Commissioner Mills do we have discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed thank you it has approved we are now in audience participation this is the time that anybody in the audience can address the Planning Commission about anything at all so if anyone would like to address the Planning Commission please step up to the podium seat your name and address for the record and you'll have up to three minutes to address the Planning Commission anyone seeing no one we are at Commission proposed business mr.
Mill's I appreciate Commissioner Ackerman taking this to the city administrator the drivers but I think as a backup it doesn't hurt to miss patcher you could ask mr. Lerner to add this to our list of potential things to change particularly looking at what districts we allow drive-throughs in and even as special exceptions and so yeah I think that that makes sense for the future thank you mr. Ackerman no matter what conversations that I have with the City Administrator it has to be routed through the normal process to update the zoning ordinance so we all will see it one way or another so stated on the short story not actively yeah mr. woods not Commission proposed business but I'm curious about the many younger members of our audience this evening and I'm just wondering whether or not you happen to be from high school or college or if you could maybe have someone it's extra credit if you step forward and speak and so don't she's professor Wayne use policy class ii environmental studies class at the university and a meeting okay dr.
Norton's class this you have lots of good things to write about in your write-up i teach i GS ID that class before welcome please come visit us anytime yes please consider serving first second and third Tuesday of the month at seven o'clock there you go all right any other commission proposed business alright do you have a motion to adjourn moved by Commissioner survey seconded by Commissioner Gabrielle all those in favor we are adjourned thank you
good morning there power today and December 6 2009 - it's from the first day of school this is whe news I'm Katie and I'm Cora today for lunch at OB chicken strips tater tots slice red peppers the blueberries cookie and milk tomorrow for breakfast there will be mini waffles sausage patty fresh apples orange juice and milk laughs I'm French celebrating birthdays early and celebrating birthdays this weekend Haley Kenji please go toxic to picked out that's right spoon fat questions was a tabari use another name for what's not join the answer is ace one the winner is Ryan and to actually come to doctors to pick out your prize today some Cardinal birds that are bright red are they male or female remember to try a range immediately and include your name in class and now we will observe a brief here - stylist to reflect upon the anticipated activities of the day I love flag of United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all I pledge to be a big star I am let GB mph star whether I'm at school or travel fine rather a school or travel far I pledge to be safe in every way my GB stays in every way take responsibility during work and play take responsibility during work and play I will be respectful and all I do I will be respectful in all I do and be a star the whole day through and be a star the whole way through have a happy Friday remember it's cool to be thanks for watching
um let's see Oh so what'd you do roll call that's right a Commissioner Graham absent Commissioner Hutton absent Commissioner Skinner absent Commissioner Needham your Commissioner Slavic Commissioner up he'll absent Commissioner give Randall she's here yeah she's here commissioner at callewaert him chair Brown here commissioner over Peck absent Commissioner Mirsky here councilmember Bannister she's here she's here and Commission canceled member Smith so you don't have a quorum at this moment but you will okay all right thanks Emily so the next item is the approval of the agenda is there any are there any comments or requests or additions to the agenda I hear no response the agenda do I have a motion to approve the agenda so second no passes unanimously the next item is the approval of the minutes for last meeting which was October 24th I believe are there any suggested additions to the minutes or Corrections aye I move that they be approved as submitted all who approve the minutes as they stand say aye aye nay okay this also passed unanimously so now we're at the point where public commentary please approach the microphone and just state your name and let us know what's on your mind okay I guess I guess that ends the public commentary portion so we'll go on to unfinished business the first item on the agenda was documents submitted by Crescent I believe a while back commission participation and RFP processes so we haven't really had a discussion about this so he wasn't clear where it came from and under whose authority and what what and what was it what the expectations of city staff were I'm not sure myself chair Brown because it was an internal document that we were working on to try to develop some guidance for participation in interviews because we were looking at actually invite participation with the interview on the Murph RFP so we were looking to have that for the representative for that so it was a working draft document so I don't know how and I apologize I think you might have sent it to me and I assumed it was well that's that so do you know when the city staff would be present that their policy suggestions well again it was an internal working document I guess just a quick background this was an item that I received from our procurement manager who actually got it from the earlier staff actually met nod when he was organ system that's been just around tried to lend some internal guidance and just with the project we were working on and that opportunity I got shared with me and so I just kind of took it the next step move forward for review so it's it's an internal working and and really for just those instances when that was gonna come into play so it's got to be a helpful guidance informal document not meant to be anything of any sort of policy or any really just kind of okay but it sounds like if mad nod was involved it's been bouncing around some time yeah so I think I think I really think this would be a good thing to resolve quickly just as a point of policy for all the Commission's cheer thanks for the feedback I think it's good for Commission's that have specific expertise to participate in procurements particularly when there's the best value aspect to it it's one of the Charter the administrator has the ability to set the processes for a procedure for procurement so I think what we can do is take what the working document is bring it to a final form to address all Commission's which will establish kind of the rules as an administrative procedure for the participation of appointed commissioners okay when do you think that might be ready no no I haven't seen the document your finalized so I can only give you assurance that I'll use my best efforts to get it done okay well thanks Howard thank you okay so that will remain is unfinished business until further notice from the city administrator so the next item on the agenda is the integrated pest management where we have a presentation by the city's Parks Commission not the parks Commerce Department sorry five bucks to parks recreation services I'm Dave ornament I run the city's Natural Area preservation program here with me is Mike Michael Hahn who is also an app staff member and Scott Spooner who's the deputy manager charge of maintenance Colin Smith is hiding there in the second row as well he's our manager of parks and recreation services Victor Morales helped put this presentation together but he's not with us here tonight but any super question thank you any questions about the golf courses Scott can certainly answer we have not familiar about 163 parks in the city 20 188 acres those cover a wide range of different things parks recreation service unit provides a balanced network of formalized landscapes play structures outdoor recreation opportunities open lands natural areas wildlife corridors few corridors and greenways that preserve the city's natural aesthetic and community character maintaining these parks in a manner consistent with the environmental ethic that is prevalent among the citizens of Ann Arbor is a high priority for us by reducing reliance on pesticides and incorporating low-risk control options integrated pest management or IPM reduces both pests and pesticide risks that's why we've made it our policy to incorporate IPM procedures into the maintenance of our parks that's a 1 talked a little bit about tonight is IPM and how we use it in the parks both of them Natural Area preservation or nap as well as the golf courses and other general park maintenance pests in our parks and the noxious or invasive plant problem insect plant disease rodent nematode or microorganism that is detrimental to the environment or the management plan for the selected park or facility as how would you find pests proper identification of those is critical as is an accurate assessment of the threat that it poses so we can help you determine the correct management strategy to pursue in addition many pest problems are associated with the particular site conditions often the pest appears as a symptom of underlying cause eliminating the past without directing the condition that allows the pest to become a problem only leads to recurring pest problems so what is IPM I will read this rather long definition just so we everybody can hear it out there IPM is a long term pest management system that uses all sustainable all suitable techniques for the prevention or suppression of pests that are harmful to the health function or aesthetic value of city-owned landscapes buildings and facilities in an efficient effective and environmentally responsible manner we can often accomplished this through accurate pass identification frequent monitoring for pests presence and impact applying appropriate action thresholds and by making the habitat less conducive to pests using mechanical cultural physical and biological controls if none of these control methods are effective only then might we consider using an appropriate pesticide of some sort so broken down into different parts I p.m.
good mornin dick hallo today is December 929 so anything in baseball this is whe news I'm Cora and int it today for lunch there will be Chicago style hot dog baked fries bacon fresh grapes tomorrow for breakfast there'll be dr.
starts with prevention a healthy natural area or healthy turf it's a good way to keep pests out they can better resist the encroachment of the invasion of those pests if not then we can turn to mechanical methods that might include prescribed burning like here as well as mowing cutting hand pulling or aerating turf other methods might be control or cultural controls that could include selecting native plants which are better adapted to michigan's climate and are the most imperative against the invasive species in turf areas we can utilize proper irrigation techniques and monitoring the weather forecasts to avoid over watering and also attracting beneficial insects to reduce pest populations physical controls might be fencing like this to keep out deer or other browsers or just to maintain a dense turf or a thick stand of native prairie grass or other native vegetation that will help prevent many weeds from getting established their thin areas with verus I'll often allow weeds to germinate there are biological controls that are often used if they're available that's a way of introducing a control organism or a natural enemy of the pests that we're trying to control a classic example is the introduction of Galla Rossella beetles to control the highly invasive purple loosestrife in our native wetlands you we're all another example might be the BT or bacillus thuringiensis that's used your control gypsy moth caterpillars we've tried some other innovative sorts of things you probably heard about the goats that we tried a Gala Park this year there's lots of discussion about using goats we brought in several and they worked on the islands out there goats are great at eating some invasive shrubs we have and poison ivy is well unfortunately that might eat other desirable things as well there's also a fencing issue gallup was a great spot because we could put them on the islands there and try them on they couldn't go anywhere so that was a fun and very popular highly visible approach we tried we've also experimented with some vinegar spray it's actually not just vinegar a combination of vinegar table salt and detergent we tried that in three parks this summer and had some success with that especially in the playgrounds where we wouldn't ever use any herbicides but we could put it there in the fire bar it would kill the plants doesn't it's not a systemic thing it doesn't kill the roots so anything with a bigger root would come back but it was a good way to burn it down in the short-term we plan to expand that in the future too most if not all of our 81 playgrounds and one of the things that we'd battle with and nap is buckthorn shrubs and we tried something called buckthorn baggies which is a non chemical way to control them involve simply putting a little plastic baggie over the cut stump we tried this with somewhere between 200 and 400 baggies and a couple parks putting them on the spring of 2018 and collected them a year and half later this past November they were about 75% effective it's a great solution for people and in their backyards and things a little bit harder when we're dealing with several thousand acres of parkland we're always looking for different innovative sorts of techniques and if none of those work then we look at potential chemical controls chemical controls should be used only when other pest prevention and non chemical control measures have failed to reduce pests beyond tolerance threshold when a pesticide must be used we use the smallest amount of the weakest solution of the least toxic product that will meet pest management goals apply to the most targeted method at the most effective time of year chemical controls begin with spot treatments sometimes apply to individual stems of pest plants to avoid any collateral damage to non target plants broadcast spraying to large areas would only be a last resort when chemical chemical controls argue occations are conducted only by trained and state licensed personnel methods employed conform to all recognized industry standards which are regulated and endorsed by state and federal regulatory agencies and university research institutions furthermore we're here to all product labels which are enforceable legal documents regulated by the EPA so I want to talk a little bit about oh and then finally evaluation it's important that we monitor these areas to make sure that we're being effective we aren't having any unacceptable negative consequences to any non-target organisms and to see if our control efforts are should we continue there or not so IPM takes on some different forms both an app in the golf courses and I'm not an expert on those other areas so as questions come up we'll we'll call other people offer to answer those but in recent years golfers have developed playability expectations related to all areas of a golf course mainly on greens tees and fairways they expect these areas to meet certain conditions normally these areas have to be filled with dense turf low-cut weed free with a nice color if these expectations are not met golfers leave and find a different venue that meets their criteria of what a golf course should play and look like that Leslie Park and here in Hills golf courses we follow a meticulous IPM and drift management program that combined allow us to meet these standards while maintaining the expectations of the golfers there are six hundred and fifty golf courses in Michigan Leslie Park Golf Course is one of only 11 of those 650 to be certified by both Audubon International and Michigan turf grass environmental stewardship program here in Hills Golf Course is one of only 25 of those 650 that participate in the Monarchs in the rough program our golf course superintendent Victor Morales tells the story of being called up by other golf courses in the area and asked about this program because some of our an arbor golfers went to their golf courses and S&Y they weren't involved in the monarchs in the rough so we're helping to take this program to other area golf courses as well maybe the best way to kind of explain our approach to IPM is taking through a case study this is one that we've used here at Knapp maybe you've heard about it we deal with lots of invasive species we're always trying to catch them early on with the arrive here and one of the ones that just made an appearance within the last couple years is still grass it's highly aggressive invasive species it's very problematic in the southeastern part of the US we first had documented occurrence of it just west of town in 2016 it can take over areas and displace native vegetation it finally reached the edge of Ann Arbor and two years later in 2018 so we had a chance to try to jump on it before it got too well-established before it got looking like this these are luckily not local pictures but this is what we're trying to avoid what did we do well first you formed a silk grass working group with some area agencies fortuitously the area where it showed up is right were some different property owners such as County Parks and the legacy Land Conservancy all have land so we were all very concerned about this and we formed a working group we started trying different different things we've tried burning it first trying with the propane torches that's a good way to kill young plants early in July but it's a very slow and inefficient method we tried our prescribed burning we do a lot of the problem is Spring burn season is too early for the plant in its site and its life cycle fall is too late it's an annual so it just grows and does its whole thing and one season and then dies in the fall and spring and fall we're not well suited to that that's why we were trying the propane torches soot and pulling proved to be very slow and inefficient mowing is also not good in fact it spreads plant around spreads of seeds so that's probably how it got to the area in the first place perhaps through mowers more index we thought about bringing goats out there but there's no assurance that they will eat this plant goats tend to browse a little bit higher and this is a fairly low growing plant there's also concerned the goats might spread the seeds as deer are known to do we considered then different herbicides there's are some grass specific herbicides and this being a grass maybe it could work with that but it's too slow acting and that doesn't mean that we're just too impatient the plant grows so quickly and set seed and is done it takes the plant takes herbicide the grass specific herbicides too long to be effective the plant by the time it kills a plant it's already produced the seeds that are viable so with Emma considered maybe using some glyphosate and especially a weaker solution of that that we thought might might just be effective at killing that but not hurting other things the problem with there's still issues with non-target species with something like glyphosate and a issue of potentially developing resistance in the plant itself so that it wouldn't be effective in the future that led us to looking at protocols called scythe which is a contact herbicide much like that vinegar we talked about earlier it's not systemic it doesn't kill the whole plant it just burns it out and and and kills a registration that screen above we ground then but this being an annual and short-lived it's seems to be effective at that so it's much more effective and efficient than any of the other non herbicide methods that we've used and that's what end up end up using after this long process to come up with this one product we've also used this other examples of times we've gone had to use herbicides we know what the controls work such as on Phragmites and reed canarygrass case study from outside of ab nap in other parks like if you just be poison ivy we get lots of calls from the public about poison ivy if it's in the middle of a natural area we let it grow but if it's along a trail or on playground or something we get lots of calls from the public about the need to control it hand pulling is not a very effective method especially if you're sensitive like I am you can get a serious rash from it not just in the summer in the winter as well that was not my arm but it could have been you can still get of her action in the winter so pulling is not a very effective method especially with volunteers and workdays and things we considered goats but again some of the same issues about giving them to eat just what you want them to eat they're enough not other things so we've you end up using glyphosate in these cases the best is it's translocated to the roots that kills the entire plant most of the spots were used in this are areas that we can just target the poison ivy and not I get other things around there as well so whatever sides do we use we can give you it we've done an inventory of all the products that we use in our parks and so we can run through some of those without going into too much detail the sharing with the golf course is they have been using a product called Miramichi which is organically a Granik product listed there by the what's just called the organic materials review Institute and award you'll see on these words in italics towards the top either warning danger or caution just tell you what those are those are tough or those are the toxicity ratings that are on the the labels for the herbicides dangers the most toxic then warning and then caution is the least toxic so that's just what the what that word means are and these slides will tell you when we what time you reply them what we use them for golf courses also use club pyro lid where the product is LAN trail they especially exist on white clover and dandelions and mainly in the high quality areas such as the greens the T's and the fairways they wouldn't be using this out in the rough of some place other IPM approaches they could use they might look at plugging or coring which is removing the tap root of those plants but we don't have a nursery large enough to to have enough of these plugs to put in and some of these large clover patches might require 40 or 50 plugs of to replace those but what we like about long trial is that it uses it's a low dose of the product and it's one a few herbicides that we can use that will not damage the bent grass which is a turf grass that we use in the golf courses there those are the only herbicides that they used in the golf courses within the other parks one of the things we use is a three product combination of two 4 d acid clip I roll it again and die Campbell this is used in in turf grass and not all the turf grass but just in some of the higher the rental fields that we use we have about we'd get my numbers right here we have we treat about we mow probably six hundred and seven I have acres of turf in the parks of those about 25 of them 25 acres which is about 3.7 percent of everything that we mo are the ones that are our fields that are rented out and where there's a expectation of higher quality turf therefore for baseball softball and soccer fields so those 65 fields are the ones that get treated with this combination there are other the vast majority of the motor isn't treated at all at nap one of the things we use is a glyphosate that you've probably all heard about we use a water-based version of that some of the concerns that you read about glyphosate or from the the what's the word I'm looking for Mike the formulation it so it's a water-based formation it's the carriers know what's the word on one the didn't roundup in rodeo surfactant that's where I'm looking for our friend a surfactant so we use a water-based one that doesn't carry that surfactant if we need it we can add a surfactant into it you'll see a picture there were somebody with a yellow glove on we call this a bloody glove method we actually will use this there's a chemical resistant glove on their hand covered by a cotton yellow glove they'll spray the glove and swipe it up individual stems of loosestrife or or Teasle or something like that so we're actually treating individual stems with that and glyphosate or roundup is a caution so that's the lowest toxicity sometimes you hear about is if you that this is is bad we should use something else I'll show you in a minute some other ones that we use carry higher getting higher taxes to you ratings I mentioned scythe which we use on on the still Chris trek up here is another one that's used instead of glyphosate that carries a danger warning we use that mainly on cut stumps you can see the blue dye there we don't paint the whole stem on a plant on a woody shrub it's just a topside cambium layer that is alive it carries the the nutrients and wood translocate there aside down to the roots so we just paint the perimeter I finally am as appear we use on Japanese knotweed one of our other problematic or besides the literature suggests as and our own experience shows us that not one herbicide works the same on all different plants different species are best controlled by different different herbicides so we do a lot of literature review literature research to try to identify which chemicals are going to work the best and apply it in which manner in closing IPM keeps our natural areas beautiful and neck illogically functional and if you'd have told me 25 years ago that we'd be using herbicides Atta said oh you're crazy but as I've been in this field for a while I recognize that we really can't do what we do without careful use of herbicides as part of a broader IPM system and with that I and my colleagues were happy to answer questions how did the goats work out I think they worked out great in a place that Gallup where the big issues there that's not an area with known for a lot of high-quality native vegetation but we're trying to clear out the brush so canoe us could see the island park users could see the water so we wanted them to eat everything there and they work great for that we'll see they had to come back in the fall for a little bit of follow-up and I think we'll wait and see maybe their plans to come back in the future to bring them back for some maintenance level we've talked about if we could use them in any of our natural areas and the issue is in a high quality site we only want certain individual plants targeted and we can't get the ghost trained to do that I'm just wondering if we can share some of these techniques like the bag around the buckthorn would have fraud sure public applicable ities since you talking about hey it's tough to do on 600 acres but everybody can do this in their backyard yeah we could easily share those and some of these techniques yeah do you think that would work with the Amur honey suckle honey sample as well I would think so yeah I think any of those woody shrubs would work could you just put a cut down the shore Mike up here in a plastic bag over it I think the buckthorn baggies themselves are a high higher thickness plastic and they need to sit outside for I think we've let our sit for 18 months or something like that so they marinate for a while a thinner plastic could work is there's a good chance that it would break down and then and not do anything so right but they're not translucent they're not they're they're black bags yeah and I think the labels say that they they're good for two seasons after that they just break down from the sun's rays yeah thank you that was wonderful and I assume you put out signs of some sort when you apply oh yeah we do both because state law but the city regulations are higher in stricter than that we're required by council action to put out there are large yellow signs like this big signs are required to be bright yellow ten inches by 14 inches at a minimum they have to talk about the product that we applied the toxicity rating the date in the there's one other thing that escaping me or yes and then what we're treating yep and then those per resolution have to be posted for 48 hours yeah even though any of these products that we use are once they're dry in the plant they're considered safe so that toxicity rating basically goes away once the materials are dry but we still require to keep out for 48 hours any questions just yes well I just wanted to tie in that this thank you Dave for this great presentation and Elena de Ricky and some of our members are preparing a resolution urging council to ask staff to compile and disseminate proposed promotional materials to the residents related to all your these great techniques and signage that you all do yep we're looking forward happy to share that information and people are welcome to contact our office and we can share whatever we we know about the these products so this committee was gonna is going to address it again in January with Elena de Riggi and that was my understanding is that your understanding yeah I would second that as well or third it I guess um the question that I had though is um did I hear only Leslie is certified or is also here on hills certified I think you only said Leslie right Leslie certified and here on hills as a member of both the the programs there's a here on we just haven't gotten all of everything together so the intent is to get there that is the intent okay good I think it's just a matter of documenting documenting all those things so it isn't that we're doing different practices there no the practices are all the same it's just the documentation and actually going through the certification okay Audubon international certification for the Michigan turfgrass so most of the products that you were talking about where herbicides so I think there's a large there's a more of a concern about insecticides so do you all what insecticides do you use for DS any chlorpyrifos or other neonicotinoids um when I came to the golf courses in 2009 we had some left over neo nicotine you a negative yeah Marit and I sprayed it because we had it I so since that point I had not bought any and I don't think Victor's had any either it wasn't it was just kind of a on my part it was kind of a decision not to just looking at the research I decided not to do that and try other methods for dealing with grubs basically sure yeah and you don't use chlorpyrifos no because of human toxicity so in the United States its controversial okay any other questions what do you see the future but what are you what are you what is keeping you up at night I think one of the things you know we're trying to we hear the same news as everybody else does about lawsuits about glyphosate and things so we are monitoring those situations and trying to be current with what the science is and looking and whatever looking at whatever other options that might be out there the fact remains that glyphosate is still we think the best product for what we what we need to for a lot of the concerns I think I have to say issue gets confusing with food issues and GMO and aerial spraying on crops and things which is a very different application and what we're doing with it so we're trying to just not be knee-jerk have any reaction to what what we might hear in the media but really try to follow the science of it and we've we've hosted a roundtable discussion at a local stewardship Network conference up in Lansing last year Mike and I and some others from the ecology Center talking about these issues just have an open upfront discussion about it I think that's best thing we can do is to is to have open discussions about it and hear the concerns and make make sure that we're current with our decisions about them I don't know if you can even speak to this but do you know if nan parks properties that are city-owned or following IPM I don't know if they have I'm not sure if they have an IPM policy like us yet we have started we have a quarterly meeting with everybody in the city that we have identified to date who uses our sites so besides parks there are folks in public services who might use them on streets and things and we've started there probably a little bit behind where we are in terms of documenting inventory what all the products are I do know actually I forgot that you're sitting back there so in the past we have used small amounts of glyphosate along bridge decks and in certain areas to treat you know the shrubby material that comes up between cracks this year we have not used any we've tried the vinegar solution but we don't have a formalized IPM so just because we almost never use it because we I have not had any communication with with any of those companies I can wait and say you know a couple years ago when Matt nod was still here we were approaching that issue it I think the council ordinances that anybody in any chemicals applied on city of parkland by staff or contractors they fall that same signage so I know we were asking the questions back then I communicated that with them I don't know if we've closed the loop on that it's something that we've been aware of if they aren't following those guidelines they should be but we'll look into it yeah do you see that as part of your role or is that another city department that should be doing that doing what specifically Oh monitoring the parks that are being maintained by not ever this always fall under my jurisdiction so alright anybody else okay well thank you guys thank you thank you thank you so the next item on the agenda is the solid waste resource management plan good evening commissioners Creston Sutton public services with me tonight my Chesky already stepped up part of our team on the solid waste resource management plan and City Administrator Lazarus as well and passing on regards from Eileen Naples our new resource recovery manager who had hoped to be here but had a another commitment that she couldn't make it so we passing the baton to her because this will probably be my last meeting and she'll be more the regular provider of content around solid waste to you folks moving forward so tonight pretty straightforward want to come back to you folks update you and fill you in on where we left off and what's transpired since our sod waste resources management plan team came to you folks in August so as a quick refresher August 22nd converted your typical work session thank you very much into an actual full session so that our team could come and present to you on our process that we had completed to develop the draft solid waste resources management plan went through the process that was involved culminated in the recommendations that were coming out of that and shortly after that and was even acknowledged after the discussion with the Commission that we were going to the city council work session very shortly thereafter in September 9th to also present the plan as well as some other solid waste updates and so we had both of those sessions sharing the process the plan and its initial complete draft form to both you folks and the council and sought input from that over following the council work session in the September October time frame team we received a set of questions from from various council members wasn't everyone but certainly a full set which for the record that's what that blue underlined is a link there but it's also listed in the packet was the set of questions and the responses that were developed afford those and then around that same time frame administrator Lazarus certainly a staff input but administrator laid out the memo titled the solid waste roadmap really culminated with the various discussions large part being the plan well we had heard where we were headed to put it to a final draft form but also other areas regionalization that folks have certainly been talking about a topic of interest contracts and the like and so feeding all those items in the presentations the discussion at those sessions file questions the administrators solid waste roadmap over the late October to November timeframe revisions were made to that initial complete draft from August to develop the November update which was attached to the packet tonight for your review both clean and a red line version so to identify for the audience at home and folks that may not have gone through the red line or the clean version changes that were made the very beginning actually at the very front of the document even ahead of the table of contents administrator Lazarus was very kind and really appreciate him taking the time and the effort to develop a cover statement for the plan as he sees this and the program moving forward there was also an addition of a forward section to the beginning of the document ahead of the executive summary that was included in the initial draft incorporating the current solid waste goals and discussions regarding measures and metrics so that those could be brought in and again some discussion and we can answer questions if you do but another aspect that the plan really didn't hit because we were looking at our programs and service delivery and then specifically to those service delivery and the recommendations from the plan there were revisions made particularly to the recommendation around residential recycling that in the initial draft that was framed around a consolidation of dental collections to bring that fully in house salad ways trash recycling and compost to city the delivered services and that that was modified to now be titled improved residential recycling collection that there's we are certainly looking to improve that getting more efficiencies and cost effectiveness but now through a competitive procurement process to evaluate how to do that so that audition was there and actually a slate but not insignificant item where we did have a literally a typo and a number that did not get carried forward correctly and got corrected in a couple spots in the document around the recommendation for consolidated commercial collection that if the recommendation were implemented with the city basically getting out of the front load business of dumpster collections the savings that could be realized was 1.3 million rather than 660,000 that was in the body of the document it was correct in the cost analysis at the back of the document but just wasn't in the tables correctly excuse me and so that revised items put together and put out to you folks with the agenda and reviewed in internally and so really the steps to complete this process from this plan to put the pin in it so to speak to move things forward is have tonight for your consideration the resolution that was drafted by staff by myself folks helped me with it through reviewing it but asking for your consideration tonight to recommend that City Council accept this plan and move forward with its recommendations and at the time putting the presentation together was my hope and target I've got a data in there of December 16th which I had the item in legislating on it didn't get through its review process so it's not on the initial draft agenda for the 16th and so is likely to be scheduled for the first meeting of January because it just hasn't gone through the internal review process and then after that it'll be up to staff to undertake the steps to implement the recommendations of the plan but realize in the recognizing and it's mentioned in the document that there's still recommendations or approvals even that need to come through whether it's this body but certainly City Council at any contracting ordinances whole myriad of things that will still be going through that will need approvals along the way but this leaves the the roadmap and the strategy for us going forward for these programs okay well thank you Creston so um I just had one comment or one question actually on it's a four hundred and thirty-eight page document so is the document that was presented to us or all the changes in red font yes so the there's two documents that were in the packet one was clean and the other included the red lines and the bulk of the 432 not to say the front part of this plan isn't large really kind of text if you will is ninety nine pages what's in a fourth of it page 100 in back is the background information so the material from the Public Engagement this is in survey that cost the service analysis those items did not change because it wasn't anything that affected that so the red lines would have just been in that so just just so that we understand that all of it was changed from the August 22nd document is in red is redlined yes other than the fact I didn't do an entire red line of the administrators statement document in the forward section so those are all brand-new that's rather than have it all red and underlined that's all very clear yeah there was over dinner the modifications within the body are the red lines okay great thank you yeah it's all hard going through 432 yes as you're putting that together - okay I won't think so any questions I think I have won another one and that is you know you mentioned on page three of the first I want to thank you for this for this whole process I know it's been a long one and and we're reaching close we're close to reaching closure here for sure so you mentioned on page three that the collection of residential recyclables that the city will compare whatever cost estimates there are in the RFPs to the city's cost so will the city formally submit an RFP it's comparable to what's been asked to that up and outside speak to that that concern yes we have the cost of service analysis as the basis for our expected cost but okay that hasn't been my direction that we do have the cost of service analysis no serve a basis so I think we've done a good job of identifying direct and indirect costs for our finding of the service that document is public so any potential interested parties can see how we put it together what if we did a proposal that wouldn't be public so I think it serves the interest of the city of the potential field of the offers better to have that out there so they can see how we came up with the cost of service that allows them to sharpen their pencils and to look and see where they can be competitive and I just want to add it's not necessarily a direct cost issue it's a value issue when we look and see when we get back in and those are things well we'll bring back and we'll have a discussion on because what drives our ability to do there things in the solid waste resource management plan is adopting the whole suite of recommendations to free up resources in one place so we can apply them elsewhere while being ever mindful of the fact that the solid waste millage is one thing that impacts the general affordability of our community so I think what we provided gives more than enough information to those who would be interested to submit a really sound proposal great okay so I have a question in looking at this document and and knowing that there's been discussion of creating a solid waste district downtown to try and address the alley issue if this body is to recommend acceptance of the plan how does that recommendation guide potential direction for exploring the opportunity for a solid waste district downtown it's if you bear with me it gets in there we were careful though to not with our language that we didn't want to imply AB is for sure ever Creason because so so we were careful with the word about what we definitely tried to describe was just that a district service just wanted to make sure that any action that this body took in recommending something to Council didn't necessarily preclude that from happening so I've had discussions with mr.
Stangel yogurt fresh grapes few tables and we don't have anyone celebrating birthdays yours help me Brittany if he's gonna be office to think I ever yesterday's don't that question was Cardinal birds that are bright red are they male or female the answer is fail the winner is Jelani to Smith come to the office if a guy Jason that question is trip what is the name of Manny's daughter I'm not going to write your Internet you name a class we have a special announcement the winner of the picnic table dry for this week our second thanks to axel like Alex cat two cats that are too busy too anyhow third grade chase me here's simply what Tatom course emergency and now the observe please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will now say the pilot I plan to be a be a star I pledge to be a be a star whether I'm at school or travel fine whether I'm at school or traveled far I pledge to be safe in every way I pledge to be safe in every way take responsibility during work and play I will be respectful and I like you I will be respectful in all I do and you start the holding and be a star the whole day through have a merry Monday remember everywhere you leave a trail you thanks for watching bye
Poli over at EPA and trying to use their contacts and network to pull together the downtown stakeholder to talk about what a solid waste district in downtown would look like you know the main street this would be one the State Street Merchants Association to try and provide a better level of service some things we have done is we have increased this past year with Council's approval we put another FTE in the budget for enforcement of alleyways and there's been really positive feedback from those efforts particularly in the near downtown areas as well where we have should always say fraternal organizations and so we've seen some immediate success but we're gonna continue to pursue it we want to do it in a way that's engaging of all downtown stakeholders yeah I think from from our perspective and from my perspective is you know trying to solve the would I consider geometry problem in the alleys downtown and figuring out a way more importantly to add organics collection into that you know perhaps you know we are not the entity best suited to have that discussion with downtown businesses and I think maybe that's just a function of of how we are and I just want to make sure that in endorsing the acceptance of this plan we still have the leeway to to do that and go that direction if that's how we might go we do and you'll note in the comments I provided putting in food waste collection organics collection essentially is a pretty big savings from greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of the same amount of people who drive around the city every day so there's some compelling reasons to do it yes exactly and the elements are here to get us there great perfect okay any other questions so I'm kind of late to this debate and I really process and I really appreciate what you guys are doing save money and the greenhouse gas comment you just made I thought was good I'm just wondering with the city committed now to a carbon neutrality what would it take to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions to zero in our solid waste management plan that's a pretty tall order I mean what do you mean there must be some method to find the boundary of the problem to understand I think we're always we until we can get something other than a CNG or or other fossil fuel powered truck we're gonna be challenged to do that I think so generating less waste is a big part of that generating less waste means we can have less frequent collections and some of the cards so that'll reduce emissions as well but unless we have some offsets I don't think we're not going to put the current technologies we're not going to be able to not admit anything so we're gonna have to find other ways to offset what we do but being more efficient in generating less waste that needs to be collected is part of that it sound so like transportations the big issue it is transportation is the two things that will drive us give me any wider transportation home heating and there are some things which is a great conversation for another meeting but there are some things that you know I think you're well where we're trying to put 23 megawatts of power on the landfill as a way to solar energy there's a way to offset some of the city's use and as we come back and talk about things we'll talk about the city as an entity we'll talk about those things the city influences through the unified development code and other aspects and then they'll talk about things that we can help encourage our community members to do but home heating is the biggest source of emissions followed closely by transportation and those are things that are weaving their way not only to this plan but to the master plan the driven transportation plan they are the carbon neutrality commitment is sort of the unifying thread that's woven through every one of the governing documents that we're putting together right now and this is pretty reasonable in the sense that you're not investing in anything like a new vehicle that would be have to be replaced in order to meet our carbon neutrality goals I will share something that dr.
Stoltz probably get mad over since we only talked about it this afternoon but one of the things we had mentioned is in addition to giving a monetary budget to Council in April give them a carbon budget as well and while one of them will go up one of them should go down and you can figure out which is which okay so there's a strong commitment we're gonna and I think personally is the operating officer for the city we're gonna set an example and we're gonna push hard to meet carbon neutrality deadlines well ahead of 2030 and we'll continue to squeeze as much as we can that's great can I ask another question yeah I like to brag about where I live it makes me feel good or something how does our recycling rate I came around the term you used in here how does that compare to other communities out there are we like in the top 1% are we in the top 20% that kind of thing you have a way of estimating that so I think we're closer to the top in the middle but remember guessing that it's hard because the number there is 29 30 % you'll see other communities that have 40% but you have to really dig in to how they calculate so first of all we don't have beverage cans and bottles in the waste stream those because of you know if you're like me you've collected nothing taken back to Kroger's so that's part of the value that comes out other communities include things like organics and we don't include the compost in the video that we do we do there are other aspects so we don't include wastewater sludge and which other communities do that we do recycle so do we don't we don't we don't calculation but it's a recycle product but other communities include that so it's a very Apple store enjoy into what makes up the numbers we could probably we could run a calculation but the further you get away from what you measure the more it becomes a swag and the less credible if it comes but what you can measure is tonnage and the amount of tonnage that we're disposing of has decreased and the amount that we're recycling has increased maybe just to characterize it a little bit and speak up if you think anything I state is incorrect I'm the residential side we're really good especially taking into consideration the bottle law here and things like that where we really fall short is in the commercial sector and I think our diversion rate there is around 12% um so commercials I mean the residential side were in the high 50s if I'm not mistaken commercial were in the low teens and as was mentioned overall we're about 29% so that's the big opportunity for improvement and one of the things you'll you'll know too is that we are highly cost efficient compared to other pier in leading cities and that's buried deep within the bowels of the report if you dig out the chart so regionalization helps us with a couple in a couple ways it to be successful at operating a merlot cailli we have to have certain volume of waste so we'll only get there if we have or I should say ways but recyclables will only get there if we can have more than the city produces particularly if our focus is on reducing resource consumption as a whole to be successful in the market today with very tight restrictions on contamination working through a regional management Authority helps us to set standards before it goes into the blue card so that we are then able to through the partnerships that exist make sure that the materials get recycled and not just dumped somewhere else so I think that's really important there are other benefits to potential contracting where we can get some volume but I think really the big thing is to exert an influence regionally on encouraging everybody you know without within the county area to recycle more so and having that dialogue as always it was always helpful I think I think we'll get there I think will become a member have some issues that you know council is justifiably raised that I'm going to address with long with kresson at their next meeting and then we'll report back to Council on the results of that but there's no doubt that we will always have a good and strong influence because we are the biggest entity within the region so even after going through the planning process going to which process oh absolutely absolutely I think it's an important part of the strategy okay any other questions or comments I just have a couple of brief comments first of all I support the resolution and I'll be voting for it be happy to also introduce it but I have a couple of just brief comments and that is I hope that as we implement some of the recommendations that we look at some of them carefully for example organics collection year-round whether that really needs to be every other week or whether monthly suffices I think it's gonna be easier for people to remember that my organics are picked up on the first Monday then on what is it in the middle of the month and I don't think there's a whole lot of organics that are accumulating during the wintertime so we also say the greenhouse gas emissions from I'm having you know a whole extra route and then we're also talking about textile collections and bulky holes household waste those will impact nonprofits in the community that currently provide those kind of services so I would hope that the city looks at how we can partner with them as opposed to undercut them in those kinds of activities but in principle we want to increase the diversion of any of those things and I think that's captured in the plan and so hopefully we can come up with a win-win as opposed to a win-lose solution and one other thing I would add about the regional authority we talked about that at the last meeting I had direct questions to the two council members here and I don't know if we need to have a lengthy discussion on this but we've been talking about this before meeting after meeting we know what the the couple issues are I sent an email out to a few people today I think maybe was even the entire Commission highlighting what we had addressed in the resolution that we passed I don't remember the date now in April I think it was and it seems we keep on dancing around the same issues and nothing really has changed in terms of what we know we know that other authorities have various voting rights or they can change when an investment is made we know that we have the ability to not have imposed on us anything rude of her labor issues and we also know that if we don't like the way that the authority is going that we can step out and so I really don't understand why we just simply all don't come to the dance and make decision and move on with it so that's a personal opinion well here here yeah I think most of the people on the Commission here are we agree without so any other comments or questions oh yeah well I just for folks who weren't copied on the email that's that some of us were sharing today about this issue and while mr.
Lazarus is still with us I think what we're looking into if I understand mr. what we agreed to correctly is that mr. Lazarus is going to bring up with the warm up board at their December meeting the couple two two three sticking points that we've identified which is as the Commissioner mirskiy mentioned the weighted representation issue and to see if they would secure a commitment to fixing that before we join the waited representation and then also there's some discrepancy still and I hope that mr.
Lazarus can make progress on the issue of a responsible contractor because there's some people and that we discussed before this meeting that it's illegal for us to suggest that the other communities have be required to use a responsible contractor but nonetheless that sort of sets a tone that we like well-trained well paid workers in how we how we do awarding of our own contracts so those two things to take to the warm aboard for further discussion in December was what we were looking what I think we were looking for and then there was just a last third question about if the communities in the county can contract with our MuRF and still have standards and enforcement without actually having the my type entity is the third issue that you know you have to have a warmer entity in order to have the enforcement and the standards of the materials coming into the MuRF George responds yes [Laughter] those so weight a representation I think is something that the the authority will have to decide whether they want to address now or into the future I think our conversation about that has been the city of Ann Arbor will always have a disproportionate influence because warmer won't get the benefit of scale of the farm materials are not included in the contract so whether it's a formal or informal waiting there's always that that power of of quantity but that's something that's of interesting and important to counsel I'm going to bring it up with authority when we talk about contracting responsibilities deals with the ability of the contractor to meet the requirements of the agreement we always agree we include living wage requirements in our contracts and we require certain fiscal guarantees as well so there is the count that the city is not obligated to enter into any contract where the requirements we have or the values we possess are not reflected in that contract and we can do that without ceding our membership and the authority and because again we are the bulk of the material that will be processed you have we have a strong voice in that as well and then in terms of enforcement particularly weather and there may be non warmer members who bring materials to the to the MuRF as well and there has to be some sort of inspection protocol the advantage of being part of the warmers that can be done throughout the member communities and you can nip that at the point of origin if you will when you're accepting other materials from outside the warmer where the regional authority you probably have to inspect truckloads as they come up and turn things away which is more labor-intensive and more problematic so if we can meet the capacity needs of the MuRF through the region for the regional authority and all the regional members are educating the public to the same standards it makes it a lot easier to ensure that the materials are not contaminated you know I think I would also add as we're looking at the the warm issue is is we've known for 15 years that we need to replace the drop-off station and we're totally on the hook for the entire cost of that if we're not part of more my I think that that's a significant part of why this is such a strong recommendation is we need the financial help to do this because a lot of that that drop-off stuff comes from outside of Ann Arbor I think that that's really important but I think you know what what Howard said about being able to work with our partners in the authority potentially to identify what's appropriate materials is is really important I think that making the taking the step that Council took last Monday night to authorize you know reopening the MuRF you know I think that that being very proactive in working with warmoth to say here our materials here's what our what our standards are I think that that is only in our benefit I just don't see any downside to it at this point of course I haven't seen a downside to it in a long time but I think really makes a lot more sense now I just you know Crescent in particular thank you you've put up with me dousing with you now for I don't know three and a half years and and I appreciate that you guys have worked tirelessly and I do really appreciate the effort and the integrity that you've brought to this and even though we don't always reach the same conclusion I really appreciate your dedication and your service and the work that you put into this so thank you very much any other comments no okay so I guess the next item on the agenda is the resolution that was submitted by city staff are there any suggested I almost have a discussion on it are there any suggested changes the resolution the City Star resolution I second okay all you agree see I well now discuss discussion any any nays who would like to start I'm fine with it as is I'm fine with it okay all right then let's move forward to a vote let's see it is our motion to accept the resolution as written by city staff moved second all who agree say aye aye any any nays no so it passes unanimously so thank you again crescent and Molly and our go drink a beer he stuff yeah it's worse or champagne or whatever new business so and the first item here is the 2020 meeting dates that Emily circulated we're gonna keep the meeting dates to the fourth Thursday of every month however I would like to suggest that we change the times from 7 o'clock to 6 o'clock what's everybody's feeling about that sorry Oh at 6:00 it's hard okay can you say why you're thinking that just two just so that we would finish off earlier I think that's hard for us with those of us who have office jobs it starts just in terms of the time I don't know if we've yet decided and formally have Council's approval to add to youth members did that go through yet Energy Commission it did but I can't remember if it has been finalized here as well I can speak to that so it was waiting on Energy Commission to approve its new bylaws which we did okay fantastic so after that I think it is on a faster track okay so it'll go together with the the tool will go together to Council is that that's right okay okay so it's waiting on council final approval but the intention is to do that yes and so hopefully the relevance of my question is does that have any implications on our start time yeah it could be easier for the for the youth members once they come on board but having had two teenagers nothing starts before 7:00 it all depends on what else are involved in yeah they have all their sports and and dinner and then right okay well forget about that for now I might say that keeping our current time and just trying to manage the agenda so we don't have these eleven o'clock meetings might be a better approach but here that also helped to keep the community engaged in what we're trying to do as well it's a little bit easier to look through a two-hour meeting the archive yeah I agree okay all right then we'll forget about that for now motion to approve the meeting dates for 2020 so move all agree say aye hi no passes unanimously the next item is discussion on the 2020 work plans and workgroups emily's submitted a few handouts before the meeting and she's gonna be leading this discussion so I give you the floor okay sounds good so as you might remember from February when we did this last it's gonna be a lot more informal and a lot fewer papers on the wall but I'm thinking that a good way to start the conversation about what you all want to accomplish in 2020 is to review what the workgroups accomplished in 2019 and to see if and to hear from the workgroups about their plans for 2020 and then we can make a decision if the workgroups are good all the workgroups are gonna continue and then offer people can offer ideas about new projects and we can see if that fits into existing work structure or if we need to look at something different so I'm wondering if so Chris Graham isn't here is anybody else from the natural features working here willing to commit council member Bannister I guess you'd be talking about the features yes where are your slides so just talk about what you worked on this year and then what your plans are for 2020 if you have any yes oh well it sort of matches what you've got on the chart here we covered a few things having mainly to do with heritage trees and tree protection and gee I see maps and and then so everything everything about the trees which are coming along we had the two resolutions pending one for further staff assistance at work and then also as a 1/4 ultimately a tree protection program and we're looking at Austin Texas and Rochester Hills and Novi and so that and we're meeting tomorrow from noon to 2 so we'll expect to make a bunch more progress tomorrow but natural features we focused everything on trees ok fantastic I'm gonna make a controversial comment here and it's something I shared with Steve beforehand and I've shared it I think with the Commission in the past and that is I'm concerned that in our working groups and here in this forum that we talk a lot we passed resolutions but we frankly don't get much done that leads to positive outcomes for the city where we can say we did a B and C and because of that there was an increase in the tree canopy or we did X Y & Z and because of that that our Wadud water quality or we recommended you know whatever we did and there was an improvement in the water quality or in the watershed health related to that in February I recommended that we have regular reviews of metrics that are linked to outcomes and that as we review those we target specific actions that will then lead to improvements of those outcomes and I just don't see that happening and in the natural features committee I agree with everything that councilmember banister said but we've done a lot of talking but we really have not done anything yet we do not even have as we've done with multiple ordinances in the Energy Commission we don't have a skeleton ordinance that we've looked at where we started commenting and say what can we cut and paste from other ordinances that we think are a good practice so that we start to build something that works for the city of Ann Arbor we hope maybe to start that process tomorrow but we are just I mean if if I apply this to some of the things related to carbon neutrality we will be carbon neutral by 2060 and we you know we we need to we need to be more outcome focus and outcome oriented I just don't see that so I'd agree with absolutely everything that John just said you know I think councilmember Bannister and I were given some homework for the council work session meeting of Monday night a lot of which was give us performance standards that we can use to define success and as we look at metrics and and you know certainly councilmember Bannister and I can throw some things down on paper but you know we look to experts like this body to tell us what are some very specific things that we can identify that we should be measuring we just had a discussion of the solid waste plan so much of what we need to be doing with solid waste is is evaluating you know we just don't have any data like what roots are collecting the most trash would have the highest diversion rates where is the highest participation in in composting you know we don't have that information and that's the information that we need I think the the second part of what John said is exactly right is staff we cannot look to staff to write ordinances for us we have to take the lead on that the working groups need to take the lead on that you know that's the way it's always been with with boards and commissions is that if we're gonna have a heritage trees ordinance you know let's have some language and let's talk about it the language the specific language I think we're all on board with the idea of protecting heritage trees let's let's have that group bring us something and instead of meeting and talking about who we need to look at let's bring some stuff forward I think our big accomplishment in 2019 was getting city council to approve getting the Murphree operational you know that was the focus of I would say 75% of our discussion at this table and I think there is you know we can show that there was a deliverable there but I think as we go forward everything should be placed in the lens of the 2030 carbon neutrality resolution the council passed and everything that we need to do is focused on producing something that has an outcome as commissioner mirskiy said if it is an ordinance we need to then talk about how we measure whether it's successful or not if it is a policy it needs to have parameters by which we we measure the effectiveness of that and all of our subcommittees need to be operating in a very specific mechanism like that and if we're not we're not doing very much if I make play catch ball briefly with you on that what I mean by outcome is that we actually see a positive result I'll take diversion rate so diversion rate when the last solid waste resource management plan was adopted we had a tart we had a diversion rate of 29% six years later we stand at a diversion rate of 29% we had a local MuRF through the summer of 2016 we did not make any improvement in the diversion rate so you can do 50 things and say I finished 50 things but if the diversion rate didn't improve the 50 things weren't the right things or they weren't good enough and we need to be focused on things that improve the diversion rate or improve or reduce the pounds per resident to landfill or that reduce for example or improve the watershed health we had a metric that we reviewed over a year ago here we haven't reviewed again you know these are the things that are the bottom line and I just give one more example you know the city can say we did ten road projects and if those ten row projects were completed that's great but if 20 roads fell into disrepair and the overall net Road quality drops the ten road projects were not good enough and we need to be looking at our work the same way anybody else have thoughts about metrics and how to frame the Commission the workgroups work together it's more of a question I think you know in the past we've talked about the sustainability dashboard and I think that is kind of the foundation of what we're talking about for this but I don't have a good understanding of where that is right now if that's still what we should turn to to build out towards the outcomes John is talking about her effect we need to revisit the little thing we had a subcommittee of the energy and environmental Commission's that came up with recommended updated metrics those metrics were presented to both groups as far as I'm aware they're not being used really by anybody that's that's not entirely fair I mean we you know diversion rate we're using we got updated statistics which we didn't have for a long time by the way so you know kudos to the city for at least providing them and knowing now we're really where we stand but generally speaking the work that was done in that subcommittee is gathering dust I mean Susan in the city's website the dashboard has been updated a very little bit for example greenhouse gas inventory has been updated other than that any of the other environmentally related sustainability metrics have not been to my knowledge I may be wrong but that's my understand and I feel like that's kind of a core of the problem I don't know that it's up to this body to be setting the metrics that we should be pursuing it seems like the metrics should be a citywide goal and we can come up with recommendations to get there but but we don't I don't I don't think it's our role to say we should be pursuing this or that and then go forward with it which I accept and it'd be fine if we developed the resolution and pass it on to Council and have counsel dictate that as policy the the metrics that are currently on the website the a to gov website were never formally adopted they were put together by Matt nod they were put out there but in Matt was in the subcommittee and he said you know these were normal never formally adopted by my council so we we have admittedly a gap there well it is our role to make recommendations and I think that's what we did what happens with those recommendations it's not and and I won't speak for council member Bannister but as I was filling out our homework for next Monday night you know there are a million metrics that I could throw out there I I want to know what this body thinks we should be measuring and how we determine what success is I you know I know the big picture which is are we reducing our emissions you know number but outside of that there are a million little things that go into that you know I want to know what those need to be so that I can then tell the city administrator in my homework assignment these are the things we need to be measuring this is the things that we need reports on every month this is how we're going to determine if our policies are successful or not it strikes me that this is sort of accountability 101 exactly and the public was going to especially with something and I'm sure everything on our list that we have public advocate's for but certainly I'll take climate change the public is going to want to see real progress so we need to be able to figure out what are the steps that we are going to take I don't know since I'm new to this game who it is that you know can make them be real we can recommend them to the council have to do it or do we you know whatever I'm sure we can work that out but we ought to every time we say here's a process that we want to put into place we should have metrics hopefully a very small number that give us a sense of how well it's working and greenhouse gas in your case your example just tracking green you know bulk greenhouse gas emissions might not be good enough we need to be able to diagnose not going down fast enough we need a diagnose why so we need to have metrics that are can get to the to the why and I just worry on the other side of it is that we could go crazy and have too many metrics which is what I think you're also want to avoid so I applaud this you know it's something that just should be part of what we do we better figure out real soon how to make sure it becomes practiced right you know and I think the dashboard idea is wonderful we got allow the public to see what we're doing so I I have to everybody knows is my my my big issue if we don't have reviews we won't have a discussion about are they too many or are they too few can we do a deep dive can we not do a deep dive are the targets realistic are the targets unrealistic do we have enough projects do we not have enough projects and without reviews we won't be focused and without reviews we won't be able to say this is what the problem is this is what we need to do this is the ordinance that we need to write and the ordinance isn't is it done by this date or not and if we don't have that drill down and then drill back up we're gonna talk and talk and talk and we won't be outcome focused exactly exactly so I'm thinking that it sounds like there are possibly two levels to this metrics conversation there's the level of citywide using metrics to track progress across many different disciplines and many departments including the sustainability office and then it sounds like there is also a discussion about using metrics in your sub-par your work groups not subcommittees but work groups so we could have a larger conversation about the citywide thing I think that might be a little hard given the time if we could focus perhaps I would suggest focusing perhaps on how the work groups could use metrics I think that would be a more viable item so a recommendation could be that the workgroups go and come back to us with proposed metrics that they feel comfortable with let me suggest something that that what's the new solid waste I mean suggested to us so that we focus on goals and outcomes and then all of these workgroups kind of say you know if there's a natural features workgroup you know what is the goal of that workgroup is it to make sure that the city achieves this percentage of tree canopy is it to you know eliminate this percentage of invasive species like let's each workgroup set goals that are measurable you know if it's a solid waste working group you know perhaps a goal is you know it is going to be you know hey we want to hit this target of organics collection and diversion but for you know that all of these workgroups of the over the next month to set those goals and to come back to this body and say this is what our goals are for 2020 and I think that would give us a good way to think about all right how does this fit together with that certainly could be something you guys could do the hard part might be that the workgroups are going to be relatively small and if you're setting targets it's gonna be hard for a small group of people to actually move the needle especially if there are you know staff and different departments working on it as well as like correlated directly I don't know necessarily that you have to move the needle I think that you have to define what you're trying to accomplish and I think we spin our wheels a little bit in talking about a lot of stuff in these work I mean just the whole idea of just a natural features workgroup I mean that's a pretty broad subject you know so let's figure out some short-term goals for each of these things that we hope to accomplish in 2020 you know maybe it is hey we we are concerned about tree canopy and heritage trees in Ann Arbor so our goal is to create a heritage tree preservation ordinance you know so that there is a we are going to do max yeah and I think you know in the in the whole time I've been on the environmental Commission is we do struggle a little bit to figure out Oh what should we be working on because there's so many different things that we can get sucked into I think I do think it's important for us to set a work plan that's based on a goal and and we haven't done that in a couple of years and and I think it's it's shown you know I mean I think we get sidetracked do you have I guess yeah no I agree I agree that I think we need to be goal-oriented and we need to set not just short-term goals for the year but say three years olds so that we have we're looking at three years I had every year and then we can you know better see what needs might need to be done this year in order to get to another goal four years from now I would also say that I think with this 2030 goal that as we meet in our small groups that we really think about that through that lens because I can think I mean I'm the natural features group but just something that's occurred to me is you know tree canopy but maybe it's tree canopy on the right side of the street so that we're actually getting more heat island effect out of it you know so that there's we're just this is not gonna happen without us all putting our brains on it and I think that the the 2030 goal has a certain sense of not just certainly it's a crazy amount of urgency in terms of us being eliminating progress in the time that we have and so it's certainly kind of a fire under me in terms of how I'm thinking about some of these things and so I would just like to encourage all of the subcommittee's when we do revisit our goals to really think about that in through that lens and see how we can be most effective because this is not just a general thing this is this is urgent chair Brown would you be willing to work with each of the working groups chairs to make sure that they can come back with measurable outcomes or goals in the next month no I will do that okay so does that sound like a plan for is everybody okay with that that the next month the workgroups will continue to meet and come up with some tangible goals for 2020 and come back and then the whole body can sort of approve that as a work plan and if there are suggestions for different workgroups or whatever we can maybe have that conversation in January after we hear the workgroups does that sound like a good plan forward yeah I just also want to say that this body is charged with making recommendations concerning the air the land and water and I believe we have three working groups there's a whole range of areas that we're not contributing to and so if that's part of our charge then I think we need to figure out how to address those areas that we're not currently addressing yeah and I'll note that from last year on one of the four items was Climate Action and clean air and that did not there was not a subgroup form right that's exactly what I mean it's hard for us to make recommendations about metrics we don't have anybody working on it yeah however I mean most of that under climate actually clean air what I read here is most of them were transportation options mm-hmm so maybe that's something that should be more pertinent to the transfer right or maybe we should be in communication with the Transportation Commission or something just to make sure all those areas are in that specific regard I'd like to point out that the Energy Commission is primarily focused on that and we just changed our bylaws to reflect that I mean I can read from from the resolution but my recommendation to this group would be let's not throw another fall into our court and try to juggle it let's do a good job on the things that we're doing and let the Energy Commission focus on that together with the a20 carbon neutrality activity where we have four technical advisory committee groups that are working on different projects trying to determine impacts and costs so that that will all feed into the budget process and I think my recommendation to this group would be let's focus on those other things again through the lens of contribution to carbon neutrality like sequestration and how that ties to some of the things that you talked about but let's not get into weatherization and transportation in EVs and things like that those are things are already being done elsewhere and I agree with that also but I still think we need to be putting all of that out in the public and the sustainability dashboard or some so visible area that people who are interested in these areas can see the progress the city is making and I'm not sure that if it's our charge to be coming up with those sorts of metrics it's not something we can do and I agree that the energy commissioners should be doing that but I think that we all need to make sure that we're communicating so that it's covered by somebody a good dashboard will define the goal it'll define the metrics it'll define the targets it'll define who is responsible and accountable including you know what the department is and what also what Commission is working on it so if we revamp the dashboard that should allow people then to zero in on that and then go to the right meeting and approach the right people it could be something that dashboard could be looked at from the carbon neutrality goal actually so I'm you know in our office things have kind of blown up because of the carbon neutrality 2030 goal I mean we had a five-year plan that was you know we put tons and tons of planning effort into it and now it's just a part of something that's gonna be much larger so if we can focus on the 2030 goal that would be great and have the metrics tie into that like Shannon was saying okay I want to remind everybody that our bylaws only require one commission member to be to chair working group we can recruit other people so I have a question I want to apologize for sort of commandeering this conversation so we started with natural features I would be interested in hearing from the other working groups if they did really let's put it this way accomplish something and I make the do a clear distinction between doing and accomplishing and I'd be really interested in hearing what what the other working groups potentially accomplished maybe I'm miss characterizing the work of the Commission by just a little bit that I know from what we've been doing in some of the working groups and not all of them I'll speak for the solid waste working group we've sets of a few metrics we've checked that was our major smart goal this year and we've checked a few of them however I noted that one of the features of this solid waste of this SWR repeat proposal on page 8 they pretty much copied and pasted some of the you know the other recommendations from the waste lists solid waste resource plan update from 2013 and the climate action plan of 2012 and these are not smart goals so those which relate to solid waste I think the solid waste working group will commit to creating smart goals out of these that are consistent with this the dashboard and also whatever council might might find useful information for example and then right here from 2012 our m14 from the climate action plan is implement a compostable recyclable to go packaging ordinance but that's also the thing is that this body can be like hey policy agenda committee you need to have your lobbyists working on this in Lansing and we can provide examples from other states so we had a waste resource management talk um Susan do you want to talk about water sure we could talk about water um we hit an obstacle that we didn't predict when we began we met with a staff person who came up with some ideas and then we were unsuccessful and getting any follow-up from that staff person so we were sort of floundering for a while we have reoriented and found guidance with a staff person and our priority right now is new piece of data that came out of the Huron River watershed Council which says that the Huron River has the highest level of microplastics among the 29 Great Lake tributaries we are interested in working with your honor for watershed Council and with the city to come up with an education program and particularly to we hope promote a device called a coral ball which you can put in the drum I'm sorry wish you can put in the drum of a washing machine which reduces the amount of microplastics that your load of laundry emits into the river we're interested in having an education campaign in coordination with the work that's being done with the parks having education at the Argo livery and at the gallop livery and hopefully being able to sell these core balls at each of these places and we don't have any metrics attached to it yet but we are reaching out to all parties and seeing if we can establish those and we can certainly aim to have those in January fantastic if I'm missing a working group no I think we covered it all okay so then I will add it to the January agenda a continuation of this item but more specifically that that all the current existing working group chairs will report on what their plan is for next year at the January 24th meeting okay and if you can perhaps get those get that information too to the chair maybe a week before our meeting then he can work with you so we're from Huron we're here for a government class but we need to get our agenda signed to like prove that we went and also thanks for coming just just pass one down and sign it with your name effect your Commissioner councilmember did everybody turn in your agenda signed agendas okay thank you for doing it for all everybody alright so the next item on the agenda is reports from committees oh the policy agenda items let's discuss that so with either the council members want to talk about how this fits into a larger process so I I will because I'm the chair of that fantastic committee the City Council has a policy agenda committee that recommends policy agenda that council adopts this directs our lobbyist in Lansing on how to work to further some of these interests that we have we are asking all of the boards and commissions to give us recommendations on policy agenda items I Eve state laws that that we are advocating for I think great examples of some of these things are the fact that we are preempted from banning plastic bags plant banning styrofoam takeout containers you know any of these things that if you know we look at some of the the pee fast issues and you know how can we advocate for good state law so this body needs to weigh in on that and I think by January we I mean ideally we'd like to have it quicker than that but I don't think that a policy agenda is going to come before council you know in January because we haven't gotten all of that feedback yet and we don't have a policy agenda meeting in December because that would fall on Christmas Eve so I think we are looking for from this body recommendations on policy positions to advocate for I mean there are a million but give us all of them because we talked about all of them thank you so much for doing that so you can see that there are policy agenda items listed staff came up with six staff being Missy mostly and then the current submissions were ones that your this body sent in 2019 so those that's what's considered the current submissions so and I would say we probably have the most of any board or Commission what do you think councilmember Smith uh yes I think different boards and commissions have different levels of participation in this but I think this has been the most active Commission if I can comment on that briefly and that all shorten my report later on the Energy Commission passed a resolution with recommendations of adding specific items to the policy agenda councilmember Eaton had provided us the fiscal year 19 list we looked at that list we didn't repeat any of those but we added several things and I have those in front of me and they tend to cover to one degree or another the staff recommendations I don't know if Josh shared those with either one of you I have the resolution in front of me but I would recommend that if we go through the process that doesn't mean the environmental Commission shouldn't be a second endorsing Commission for the ones that we've done but I would say that we should also focus on the things that maybe are not covered by what who the Energy Commission is already done so those are already passed in they're in the hands of councilmember Eaton and I think hangers on the group and you are I think the three of you correct so we've been given a deadline that it had to happen at this meeting but council member Smith you're saying we might have time to finish this in January I can tell you we don't have a meeting until the end of January the policy agenda committee it is good to have all of this compiled having a resolution I I don't necessarily like doing on the floor and perhaps I was not quite as organized as as council member eating and providing you the formal 2019 council policy document our full agenda which I think would be useful but I don't know that there is you know I think what I would like everybody on this commission to think about and I don't want to ask you to do it at this table because that's to you know short notice is to what else you know I think what we're looking for is a you know give us other guidance and and you might very well say this covers it and we'll keep advocating for these things you know I think the purpose thing for everybody in here to understand the purpose of the policy agenda committee is to not be so reactive to what happens in but to be a little bit proactive in trying to move legislation forward the one thing we were successful with this year was something we've been working on for two years which is the the solar taxation issue you know we were finally successful on that but that was that was a big lift you know our lobbyists spent a lot of time working on our behalf on that and I think this document provides once council endorses it this is what our lobbyists work on I've also been given direction from staff Kelly Bedi that we could also submit it through the chair the chair could collect this information so that might also be a possibility in terms of getting it to you in a more timely fashion so did the two of you possibly have a due date that you have in mind to get suggestions from commissioners well I I would think that if we can get some some suggestions from commissioners by the holidays by you know Christmas I think Steve and I can pull that all together this body if Steve can get something to me prior to an assuming that I am still on this committee which I don't know necessarily that I will be because we have new assignments but I it's my desire to remain on it meet on the 21st I believe so in January so if Steve and I can have this body's recommendations together by the holidays we can get together and have something formal for the council policy agenda committee meeting in January okay and I'd request any suggestions by December 20th so is it okay to be talking about this stuff on email well I thought we weren't supposed to do well if it's less than a quorum we can communicate about it because we're not making any decisions here well we're doing is well does that mean we're gonna just forward if every anyone send you something it will end up in the forehead list yeah okay because I think I would be very strongly in favor of those first six that Missy put in and we got to get moving on climate change of 2030s really a goal these things are critical I believe and I believe numbers three through six there are already through spells in the legislature yeah I wouldn't be surprised and the governor is really on board with this too so and these are all consistent with our current policy positions the council has adopted you know some of this is is a formality of let's make sure that this is all in our our policy agenda moving forward we have had a couple of issues that there isn't complete consensus on how we interpret that but generally the carbon neutrality and the energy and the environmental things there has been complete consensus on we just want to be able to codify it in our documents so that when a bill comes up and the whole purpose for this is we've been on the backfoot on everything in Lansing for 25 years and so when a bill comes up particularly in a lame-duck session which is when all the worst ideas come up and tend to pass our lobbyists nose to work against or what to work for in those sessions without us having to pass a formal Council resolution saying hey we endorse House bill 38 79 you know they know that hey we are really interested in adopting the zero energy code and they will work with somebody to try and get that through and they don't have to wait for a formal resolution saying we support this bill they know that we support it it's out there that the city of Ann Arbor's behind that that's the purpose of the policy of Jenica okay but sounds great but it still sounds like we all have to give you something yes and so could I move that we give you those first six and that way I don't have to break any FOIA rules and I've been totally involved in a lot of way crap through my life and I don't want to do that ever again so can I just do it here and the other fit because I suspect everyone we have a lot of support around them yes so I believe there's a motion to adopt first second change change we're just I'm just I'm just my motion is just the staff ones I think there are a number of other really valid ones I'm not saying anything negative about them I'm just saying the first six are the ones that I would give to Steve if that's the process and I'd rather do it here and have a vote or whatever it takes to just be done with it we have a motion I understand of the second two for the Commission to endorse yeah the staff recommendations in this document all agree say aye aye so just for to check the process so Steve you're gonna send out an email saying submit additional recommendations beyond these six to me I'd recommend that if you can't attach the the fiscal year 19 and also attach the resolution that was passed by the Energy Commission so at least people know what's been covered there that does again doesn't mean they can't be seconded but at least people have have those additions some of those addresses you know like a national carbon tax or carbon fee and dividend some type of legislation like that green new deal energy efficiency codes there's a lot of overlap with a lot of these things here energy freedom powering Michigan forward I think there's a whole set of bills under that title those those things were included so the next item on the agenda would be reports from committees other Commission's Council and chair I don't have anything additionally to report is the chair are there any reports from the committee's other than what's already been discussed in terms of the workgroups we're also interested in talking about how we could recognize the work that's being done in terms of development that's improving the watershed in terms of keeping water out of the stormwater system and quantifying that in some way so it's visible to residents anything from council you know I think you all know that we voted Monday night 9 to 2 to authorize the administrator to negotiate with recycle Ann Arbor to reopen the MuRF I just want to thank councilmember banister councilmember Eaton everybody for their support and for that resolution but this body for all of the work that everybody has put in over the last three and a half years to to get to this point I think it was very frustrating and demoralizing to a lot of the people in this room that it took this long but I think you know ultimately your voice was very important you served as a great voice for the community on this issue and I think ultimately you're consistent recommendations to reopen the MuRF were really important in convincing people to make this decision so I just want to thank everybody for all that all the work on that it felt really good to that fall forward a little bit so thanks okay anything else from Council I just wanted to circle back again to the warmer issue and so to just a realign that my understanding is that mr. Lazarus is going to go to their board meeting in December and discuss with them whether they would commit to a weighted system of voting within the body and what their thoughts were on the responsible contractor language in in their in their contracts and then thirdly whether we need whether you have to have a MuRF entity to really get the enhanced enforcement and standards amongst the different cities and municipalities that might want to use our MuRF so those three things are coming up then at the December board meeting so we can revisit this by email and at the January meeting and then just also at the January meeting will be hopefully Elena de Ricky will have her integrated pest management resolution ready for you all to review and prior to then we're still working on the food gatherers resolution that we approved that one is going to council it got I think tied up in the attorney's office and I think why we don't have our tree protection ordinance is that it was more difficult to cut and paste these different ordinances the more we got into the detail there was really a lot to it the the subcommittee has been working very hard and if anyone wants to join and help us on that we are accepting new members and then lastly um on me on the tree issue I know on November 4 you might have noticed that council declined purchasing of the 8 acre property over in wards and Packard Road with the green belt money or with yeah with the green belt money for use inside the city it declined to do that however it also that same evening it did approve of instructions for Howard Lazarus to collaborate with the Housing Commission to explore the feasibility of affordable housing on that location as one source of funding to try to piece together we were looking for a very high price of four million seven hundred and sixty but council did approve looking at affordable housing as a possible solution in the puzzle and so this was a witness mall win for the trees because it as you may know there's fifty seven burr oak trees and two hundred and eight woodland trees on that property that are going to be seventy percent of them removed to for the development so we're the developer has been approved to move forward with his project but parallel we are also still exploring the feasibility of other sources of funding so that was a partial win for the trees and thank you for all your different ones of you who helped with that a couple of things one is that we rezone several areas that were part of private property that we're donating to the city for for public land for parks there were probably five or six parcels around the city on different sensitive areas or areas that didn't make sense in terms of the development that may make sense systems and things like that the other piece is that there was a development over on Plymouth Road that was looking for some reasoning and it made us think a little harder about our we have a rather anemic solar ordinance in terms of what we consider what we consider kind of an advantage if you're looking for rezoning and we have kind of environmental considerations but we basically our ordinance says you have to be solar ready which is pretty weak you don't even have to provide plans you know so you just have to have the right solar orientation which so once we looked at that more carefully they were using that as their justification for and and there's just no way getting back to the whole metrics session to kind of really measure that and so something that the ordinance review committee is gonna be looking at and it would be great if there could be some partnership with the Energy Committee would be like what do we want to see when people submit these things to understand what they truly are what's the advantage to the city you know for how much how much energy they really producing to be able to justify using checking that box is one of the public benefits that they put forward so that I think that came right on the heels of the 2030 thing and so I think we're just it's making us focus more which i think is a really good thing actually so I think there's going to be some further exploration and drilling down of what it means to have a public benefit for some of these environmental considerations and that the solar you know we need to see like a real deal plan you know how much of that roof is covered how much energy are you really going to be producing what's what's the real effect of that so that's the direction that I think they're kind of head that relates this body and then the other trend that is happening is we've had to drive throughs comes through Planning Commission and there's been a lot of talk about saying it no to drive throughs so as a source of idling and emissions so it's a special exemption use right now and so it's not it's something that they have to ask for but I guess I just feel like this whole twenty thirty thing has really brought some things into focus which i think is good but it also brought up the larger issue we don't again have a subcommittee that's kind of on that air quality thing and I know we have an ordinance about that is it enforced are there plenty of opportunities for us to be able to do education around that seems like that's that's some an opportunity in terms of this twentieth or anything that really relates strongly so it just brought up that whole piece and I thought that it might be pertinent for us to think about how that could relate to some of our our work here because there's something on the books but how can we make it more effective I can imagine fifth graders out in front of schools as part of their Green Teams going up to people who are in their cars waiting for their kids who show up 20 minutes before anything would you consider turning off your card rings yeah I mean there could be so many ways that we could be engaging the community to be able to not just have it be a police officer writing your ticket but something that we could really think about how we are we can can you imagine like they would love that yeah so it just got me thinking about the whole kind of idling piece and I think that I just wanted to bring that up with you all because I feel like that's again with the 2030 goal that it's probably something that we need to revisit again to really think about how we can try to through behavior management basically figure out how we can set that expectation in a way for people so that it becomes something that people even think about because I think they just don't even think about it right now I have a comment I worked on that ordinance when we originally passed it and there is a toolkit and educational toolkit on the county website that I used I went to I think every PTO council in the every elementary school educating parents about it and it's it's a really it's complete and it's easy to use and you know I think that there are people that would be certainly able to go and do it and I think that that would be an easy thing to revive and execute again it's past right maybe there's a little bit more attention well yeah and in asthma and I mean you know we approached from all different angles but but there's a lot of material there that is ready for anybody to use that's great to know energy we as I mentioned approved updated bylaws we passed a resolution on adding things to the policy agenda and we reviewed and gave input on a solar access white paper looking at basically three different ways of treating solar access primarily with the concern if someone install solar makes $30,000 investment $10,000 investment whatever it is and then someone somehow blocks blocks that that there might be some type of compensation required so that's just the thinking but there's not a decision how to finally address that that's there's a whole committee working on that and then I've mentioned we're working on a number of ordinances and I only mention that when it gets to sausage-making these things they simply take time I mean every one of these ordinances lighting changes to the specifications for the orange book related to lighting Home Energy Audit disclosure and et readiness requiring Park evey percentage of spaces being dedicated to Eevee charging each one of these groups have probably met 15 times and looking at you know at an ordinance draft language what is modifying the language taking it to planning taking it to planning review committee this and that and the other and it just takes time and I'll just add to that we need to get better and faster if we have any chance at twenty thirty women it's gonna be extremely difficult anyhow but what I don't want to see is a twenty thirty target where we need it ninety percent by buying cheap Rex or offsets that's that's not a way of meeting a twenty thirty carbon neutrality will you just and I'm sure you're doing this but you go to a few cities in California and get their ordinance and just modify it in many cases yeah cuz I mean this has already been done in yeah or you know Tucson Arizona for lighting or for whatever yeah exactly it still takes not a dream yeah because there's different stakeholders here and this and that and the other but yeah that's exactly what we've been doing great and that's the what we want to do with with trees we have identified a few but we have yet to start to piece it together okay anything else John no okay parks ok nothing from parks I think that completes that section of the agenda on a report from staff sure I'll keep it nice and a short and sweet I'm in all about a20 for folks who are watching City Council unanimously passed a resolution that we should be carbon neutral by 2030 for the whole city to do that OSI offices sustainability innovations is sprinting as fast as we possibly can to come up with a plan by the 50th anniversary of Earth Day which is going to be in late March that plan will go come back through commissions as well before it goes to council so you will have a chance to comment on it we're doing hundreds like 100 hundred zuv people came to our first town hall that we had and we're looking for even more people to come to the full-day Town Hall that we're gonna be doing on February 22nd it's gonna be a Pioneer high school and it's gonna be open to the public so keep that date in mind we have about 54 community partners at this point everybody from the n-double-a-cp to United Way to the Sierra Club we have at U of M we also we have quite a few community partners and one of the requirements of being a community partner is that you will do at least one event that we will be with you for to reach your membership so an incredible amount of events happening there's a survey on a 2-0 org we encourage folks to take it by January 6 this is the first of three surveys but they're gonna go out to the public we have four areas of concern we're looking at mobility issues energy and buildings waste reduction and adaptation and so as it was mentioned earlier there are technical advisory committees for each of these and that is my staff update thanks Emily can I add one thing one minute on that University of Michigan had a really interesting board meeting the fact that this afternoon the fact that Ann Arbor passed the resolution I think had a positive impact there were probably I mean there was an overflow crowd I was there there were no seats left upstairs the entire downstairs was completely full when I left to come here at about quarter to 6:00 the students had blocked the exit of the golf place where they hold the meetings and we're not letting any of the regions or the president leave because they hadn't commented directly on any of the student demands not that they were asking that they accept all the demands but they hadn't even addressed many of them one positive thing was that there was a proposed 50 million dollar investment in a fossil fuel company and that got voted down but they still haven't taken action on divestment there was a number of different demands treating all three campuses the same carbon neutrality 2030 target things like that but I think we can definitely be synergistic and the students were great and there are a fair number of some faculty and staff people there as well so if you drive by Stadium maybe they'll still be the people standing in front of the exit tonight it was authorized endowment us to invest another 50 million in fossil fuels so it's essentially the first step in divestment on top of a billion that's already invested apparently and on top of what at least students claim was four hundred dollars four hundred million dollars in indicial investments since the carbon neutral the path to carbon neutrality was made but the main thing is something I want to convey to everyone what we're doing here has an impact on the university and vice versa Doug Kel vos also spoke to the agents today talking about the importance of climate change and really trumpeting the fact that the city has moved forward you know work with the city together oh yeah yeah so I don't necessarily think stuff like that falls on deaf ears with the region's several of the reasons we're outside talking to people afterwards I mean they just didn't jump in their car and sit there and okay alright so items for next agenda I have on my list here the workgroup plans for next year in the workgroup structure the wormo recommendations from Howard the integrated pest management resolution that's going to be submitted and something about the food gathers about the progress on the food gatherers requests are there any other suggested agenda items staff would like to add a budget discussion for the next upcoming fiscal year so it'll either be Howard Lazarus or Missy Stults coming to talk to you about the budget resolution date for the staff to assist the natural features subcommittee with the tree ordinance that resolution is pending to bring that to bring to you all then at the January meeting okay I missed that I thought I just thought about the integrated pest management resolution and and they're women one or two three protection drafts for for the agenda okay and there are any other suggestions for next month it seems pretty packed anyway so our next scheduled meeting is for 7:00 p.m.