Ann Arbor Center of the City - Council of the Commons Meeting 7/7/2022

001what we'll do is go ahead and call the meeting to order then and get things going um could you help us with a roll call vote and just a reminder that everyone should say where they are municipality of their current location that's right all right stephen whoa uh present at southeast area park in ann arbor michigan all right jennifer ellen yes i am here from a damn ray france in burgundy at one in the morning all right sarah here from ann arbor okay jeffrey here from ann arbor camilla alice uh frank uh president from eastport michigan adam all right here in glen arbor mission mr dahony erica briggs aaron ann arbor lisa dish all right and that is roll call wait a minute i'm here i'd like to say that i'm here oh i'm so

002sorry i am so sorry i skipped over you i apologize rita mitchell is here thank you right um okay in that case we will go on to approval of the agenda i know alan you did send some emails earlier today about agenda items to be added i i wanted to learn a little bit more about where you wanted to go with this and uh then see what folks want to do yes well i yeah i wanted that in the report of the working group there'd be a report on the working group on the uh move from the report request for information to the request for proposals and i was hoping that there would be a report from the staff on the progress and possibly a draft of the current state of the actual request for

003proposal since it is being developed uh alan i can provide an update on the rfp um in one of the update one of the working group updates and uh i hope will that be sufficient okay are there any other items uh in that case then that folks like to add the agenda uh that heather put on the registrar is there is there going to be any report on the uh status of the request for proposals i'm going to provide one think it's uh covered under the uh you know it's not actually maybe that's no recommendations it is under working groups the agenda was revised ah okay update yeah the one on the internet by the way i don't think has that on that so that's the one i have pulled up right now um okay

004i will double check that it should be on there okay all right perfect well we'll go ahead ellen you will get an update for sure uh i was planning on doing that uh in that case then unless there are any other items uh to be added could we have an approval of the agenda as it is uh provided frank um just a point of clarification um i think heather asked rita earlier this afternoon whether we wanted a link on the agenda to the worksheet on the comparable communities working group and i don't know i kind of responded for the both of us rita saying that we we did want that and i don't know if that got to you heather or not it did yeah it did get to me just now i it just

005before this meeting so it is it should be up there now okay sometimes sometimes it takes a little while to upload again but um but that is on there so if you go back to the agenda okay it should be on there and the rfp is also on there under working group updates perfect thank you all right uh any other questions then or could we have a motion to approve the agenda so move all right frank seconded by erica uh all in favor of approving the agenda um as online say aye all right are you opposed okay motion carries um next item of business is the approval of the minutes uh if we could uh have folks make sure that they take a look at the minutes from the last meeting uh those are also

006posted uh on the agenda any questions around those minutes yeah well i i thought that what we had decided was that we were going to communicate to the city council about opening parking and i see that i perhaps misunderstood that but i guess i i in terms of also report did you have a conversation with uh jeff watson and how did that turn out or maybe there could be an added report on that if there was such a conversation because i've had core correspondence which i shared perhaps inappropriately but that's an ongoing question uh to answer your question i have not i had a conversation with jeff watson he did return an email to me today and we're trying to get together and then not next week the week after or the week after that

007um so that is the that is the update i've got from jeff thank you of course any other questions if you don't mind me pausing that there's a person um on the phone with their hand up i'm just gonna make sure that it's not one of our commission members sure all right i'm allowing the person with the number ending in 326 to talk because this is one of our commission members i just want to make sure no this is jeff crockett i'm waiting for citizen comment okay all right we'll get to that shortly then thanks jeff all right any other questions on the minutes then all right in that case we have a motion to prove the minutes directed by allen seconded by erica uh all in favor say aye hi all right hi any

008opposed all right motion carries uh in that case we are on the public comment uh heather uh is there anybody besides jeff there is no one else aside from jeff chef you can go ahead and speak hello um am i okay to speak you are thanks okay i'm jeff crockett head of the green team and i have some very very good news we have expanded the number of gardens we are managing this year from two to four thanks to rita mitchell we have a new community partner the ann arbor wild ones with over 90 members who support the expanded use of native plants and plants that attract pollinators last year i gave guided tours to erica briggsley's edition adam zemke and this year i would like to extend this tour invitation to all members of

009the council of commons at this time i would like to recognize individuals and groups that have donated plants bonnie pierce odile and allen haber kathy griswald argus farm stop on liberty marcus margolis nursery rhea mitchell sherry thompson the tongue coo foundation elizabeth smith mark lee abbott nursery english gardens feral flora side oats farms susan beecher lawrence famiro janet osborne jenny weingate brooks curtis debiary kathy susan dorothy hastings sarah haynes cara gagliardi and nancy whitelaw i would also like to recognize robert griezy former director of the massive botanical gardens who created the design for area c2 and is advising us on signage thanks go to erica briggs and lisa dish who contacted dda director jeff watson which resulted in the installation of a water spigot that has significantly made watering faster and more efficient and encouraged

010and also encouraged the dda to weed their garden plots which for the most part have been unattended a side comment to eric and lisa i was at the commons as am and saw a dda contractor pulling leads i believe your input has made a difference hooray i would also like to recognize three new volunteers the first is beth smith who in spite of a recent knee replacement designed garden plots mostly the different types of native grasses reached out to donors secured plants and then helped with the installation the second is brooks curtis a retired ford engineer who's a volunteer at several city parks and has been very helpful with planting and maintenance this year the third is richard corson a former administrator in the u.s department of commerce former director of the u.s export assistance

011center and much much more his expertise is in project planning and consensus building he retired in 2019 and since that time has been providing assistance to non-profits across the country he now would like to find out if there's a role for him to help with the activation of the commons thank you richard i haven't greatly enjoyed our conversation as for the future we believe that our gardens are jump starting the short-term activation of the garments which we hope will include sheltered seating near the garden areas a drinking fountain and wi-fi that activation could include community partners taking over all the garden areas surrounding the library lot similar to what has been done in plymouth kellogg park in exchange the community partners could install signage to promote their organizations a win-win finally a start let's start

012small and remove parking from the northwest corner of the library lot and assess the results that assessment should help us in planning an expanded activation thank you so much for your consideration thank you jeff we appreciate the update and glad to hear about all the good progress we've made with the green team any other public comment there is not but um alice is joining us excellent wait till alice hops on here and then keep going with our agenda hi alice hello i am finally i was in ann arbor but i was at the observatory at a another public meeting the that is the detroit upward observatory we uh we started but uh we just got through public comment on the agenda so um i heard something that sounded good about the green team yeah jeff

013crockett just provided an update about the uh additional plantings and partnership uh with uh wild ones and then also uh an update around the spicket that erica and lisa helped work with the dda on to aid in watering so all good news in that case since there is no more public comment we'll close that go into member news and updates and see if there are any uh updates that are not specific to the working group updates so if there are folks who would like to to comment or add anything that we would not cover in the working groups please feel free to raise your hand alice yeah i can't find the raise your hand button oh um i uh saw i got an email from parks about all kinds of updates from them as i

014might usually get and i happened to scroll all the way down to a thing that said consider liberty plaza as a venue for public events or i guess even private events i don't know it's a little unclear why this was all of a sudden um a statement to facilitate or make the permitting of event rentals easier the quote entire site so um i just wanted to mention that because there's obviously a few parallel tracks going on and it'd be nice to kind of help them reinforce each other so that was one thing i had on my mind and i think i'll leave it for someone else to add something else [Music] uh erica you got your hand up feel free yeah um so i just wanted to provide an update on that or answer that

015question so um administrator dahony has um kind of made it a priority to focus in on liberty plaza this year that came out of um i think prior to a number of different conversations partly out of this group in terms of um need for short-term activation and thinking about where on the block most desperately needed that attention partly from you know demands around concerns from neighboring businesses around activity there that's been dangerous and so that has been something that i've been reporting on in terms of ongoing stakeholder groups as has um has has adam um and so the city is working to make it um easy promoting liberty plaza for events another update on that is that there's i don't know if they've closed yet or not but if the city has posted positions for

016temporary positions for folks that would actually be staffed to to do programming there so this is a big change for the city the parks department has for a long time um noted kind of as we've found in our research on public spaces that they often require dedicated staffing to help with program activation and so the city that's um council had allocated in the last budget a hundred thousand dollars specifically for liberty plaza um and a bunch of you know a lot of that money is being used to fund um these positions that we'll work on on programming hopefully through the end of the year um perhaps a little perhaps a little longer we'll see see how how far that those dollars can stretch and what erica says right in line with the uh the latest

017information that i had from um mr tahoni as well regarding uh the plan um and um you know so i think that i think the the goal of this at least as i understood it last was to try and provide some additional uh catalyst around liberty plaza um and uh and then to um you know really have a discussion uh you know not being simply uh simply specific to liberty plaza but have the initial work being done around liberty plaza and epic you know use it as sort of a case study um around what we can do so i thought it was a very positive conversation that came out of that and it's good to hear that the positions have been posted uh rita you've got your hand up thank you um i guess my

018question is uh i couldn't hear any of out of uh adam's um [Music] is it just alice who were okay yeah you were fine for me yeah okay okay should i continue it's a really simple question i want to know the definition of through the end of the year erica yeah i think it's it's a little unknown right now uh how long i mean when those positions when people get into place um i the thought had been that there would be enough funding for three positions through summer and fall when the group got together there was certainly a encouragement to try to at least fund through the end of the calendar year through the holidays um so kind of through um and i don't know that i don't think that i don't anticipate we would

019you know there's a sense that in january february you know march time frame that that's um unlikely to um you know need much programming during the cold winter months um certainly i indicated in those times that that's oftentimes when you start doing you're doing event planning those are the months that you are planning really for the next season so um you know we obviously could could use folks doing this year-round um but this is sort of a pilot project so okay and will there be a plan to have some kind of uh an assessment of it you know so i know it's kind of like a cold startup but but it seems like that that's something that we need to have in order to support where we're going absolutely i mean i think that at

020least that's something that we we call forth that it you know this one it needs to be evaluated but obviously that also needs to be it also just needs to be successful sure and another question i have is what's the relationship between this activity and uh here at the council of the commons well i think it relates in the sense that this is part of part of our charge in the areas within is part of the property that we're talking about but um the funding does not extend to the entire entire center of the city and the entire block all the public spaces on the block really this city's administrator is really focusing um and the city staff is really focusing in on their big plaza this year so i guess let me ask it

021a different way is the council of the commons responsible in any way for this particular project um not i mean i guess indirectly so um i think that some of these discussions came out of this but really it hasn't we haven't been leading it so um i would really i would really credit you know administrator dahony for taking the lead on this not so much us right but i do think that we had the conversations and i think he was part of those conversations as well so i think indirectly there's been a part to play for council of commons if that makes sense yeah i would second that too i think that uh that mr tahoni is i think he is trying to navigate a difficult situation in liberty plaza and also utilize it as

022a way to um informed based on our previous discussions you know utilize as a way to move forward on um on some of these things and had the opportunity to to uh influence the city's budget and put in a placeholder with some arpa funds and uh so you know i uh i thought that uh his effort was with good intention and um you know is a uh is one that is meant to be constructive at initially focused on liberty plaza but you know utilize just as we informed that effort utilizing it to inform efforts that are larger than that so right okay i guess in the end my wish is for this to have a um what would feel to me like greater communication than we've had so we understand what's going on and what

023implications are and what we might use as as road maps for the future of the whole site i think that's a fair request we can make sure heather if you can make a note maybe on our next meeting agenda and make sure we have a discussion specifically about the city's progress around liberty plaza is that okay with you rita thank you yes any other member news and updates okay alan yeah well i want to uh report in our in my travel odile and i were in istanbul which is an amazing city full of little parks and commons and uh public areas uh with music with people bringing food with their volunteer art being their sculpture being there contributed it was an amazing place and as a cat lover also the most friendly place for cats

024i've ever been in and um we were on a ferry boat istanbul connects both europe and asia across the uh phosphorus uh and in the ferry boat it was very crowded and there was in the waiting area 12 seats along the wall and 11 of them were occupied by people and one was occupied by a sleeping calf and no one disturbed the cat except for an occasional pet or two cats actually had citizenship and so it was lovely to see but it was a thing it was a very very sociable place like i like i wish ann arbor was more so the people were all over and the park areas were very populated and amazingly diverse so it was a place for aspiration though amazingly a big city big big big year five times bigger

025than new york city population of 15 and a half million i just looked up so that is pretty big it's one and a half times the state of michigan oh that's very cool um any other members more news and updates all right in that case we'll go on to uh the next agenda item which i think is developing recommendations and i know we started talking about this uh at the last meeting i have to admit i'm at a bit of a disadvantage with uh some of the last feeding given um my inability to really participate very well so i'd like to open it up to see where folks wanted to go on this line item i know we had talked about um originally uh moving um you know what we had to recommend the city

026council um now i know we had talked about moving potential moving some other items uh around city council around the city council around short-term activation you know i don't think we've taken action on those items uh yet but i wanted to make sure that we were capturing where folks are at right now around any recommendations to counsel else um i don't really know how to approach this i i keep running into little tidbits of articles in local news that make me that sort of in stimulate or inspire my thinking about the relationship of the cedar city of the center to i mean center of the city to the rest of the block into the rest of the city um such as the you know the effort to facilitate programming through parks for liberty plaza which

027is a park and it is you know contiguous to all what we're doing for the city of this center center of the city so it's beginning to be a little hard to imagine why we have such a segregation of the issues around say liberty plaza or the adjacency of the transit system or the library libraries problems with accommodating all kinds of segments of the public and liberty plaza and the surface of the parking structure so um i think we still could solve a lot i think two things come to mind that would cover some of this not just that permitting process but other things like the scheduling of events for for not necessarily in liberty plaza but like main street events in the adjacency of main street and uh you know just just how how

028segregated do we have to be about about things including like our so-called partner in the dda owning the structure but uh using the contract with the parking or the contract with the contractors who built this structure um using it as a reference to dissuade us from moving forwards with some of the recommendations we would make by primarily getting the parking off the room um we have not we've never been provided with the specific clauses or the specific restrictions about weight-bearing loads or about revenues or about recently i was made aware of issues with the i don't know maybe jeff crockett mentioned something about the issues with republic parking's workforce and the relationship of volunteers uh gardening on the that you know you know republic doesn't it's something that the new dda director was saying that

029there's with the um treatment of the union workers versus the volunteers which seemed really odd because we use volunteers all the time in city projects um so i don't even know where to start now because it seems like everywhere we turn with a recommendation there's a reason that someone brings up without clear reference to the reasons why we can't even recommend to the council if we recommended to the council could we not get the council's evaluation of that recommendation at least and then go from there i mean what is how do we go forward if we can't recommend like we're supposed to recommend how do we go forward rita you just uh unmuted yourself would you like to add anything um just i agree with what alice has said it's um it feels like we're

030in a continuous spiral and not coming to a point of of action that is confusing and so uh where do we go and we get for instance can we get the parking of the i mean what are the barriers we haven't they haven't been specifically if we could have specifics of their [Music] and we could address specifically i think we'd make some progress but we just don't get any of that feedback um that is it comes it goes with food trucks too or or gardening or you know everything that we want to recommend including designation as a park which i think would make the whole enterprise a little more integrated because of things that we do for liberty plaza or might as well be done for this the center of the city and for the

031library's problems and for you know all of this so i don't get it error code you get your hand up did you want to uh speak to any of that yeah i was trying to make some notes um try to address some of those pieces so i heard a few things in that um one specific information i think if there's i think early on in the commission um we had some questions and um heather arranged for some different presentations i think if there are different questions that we believe that we still have that that might be useful to identify specifically what those questions are and that some of those questions might be able to we might be able to get some staff feedback i didn't you know i heard okay so i think that's that's

032one piece um i think we have gotten some feedback on on some what some of the challenges are and um for example um you know if picnic tables you know if the parking is removed and picnic tables are going to be put there who is going to maintain them um who's what is the operational model for that and so that is one of the questions that um staff has identified um is a question and i think that council would continue to would have those those questions as well i think that's one of the things that um we could um either as a commission make some recommendations around um and then um you know either that that gets moved on to council um certainly one of the so that's that's one piece um i think we

033really need a non-profit that's willing to to step forward and and and do that work um as we've seen in some of these other public spaces that we've talked about um you know when with regards to certainly the the commission could make a recommendation around removal of parking you know one of the questions that i would have as a council member taking this to council is we know that all of our work from comparable communities has shown that successful public spaces have programming um and so i would be a little reluctant to you know suggest the removal to kind of just an open parking lot if we didn't have a programming model so i think there are some there are some sticky questions that were in the of um and we can either figure out

034how to answer them or we can just make recommendations for it and and asks you know you know council can determine whether or not his body we want to we would want to recommend staff work on them um designation as a park um is certainly something we've never talked about as a as a commission that might be something that we want to work through what the implications are of that we certainly have not ever received a you know communications or discussions with that um so that's one topic that we haven't actually discussed as a commission explicitly that's those are some initial thoughts that i have i think this is some good questions uh rita you've got your hand up feel free okay thanks um well i would like to suggest that we make a recommendation

035that um we assess the potential of designating the top of the parking structure area and library lane as a park management as a park we can look at costs we can look at staffing we can look at whatever all those issues are um from a cost benefits perspective because if we're going to have programming there the one of the areas that does in the city that is set up to manage some programming is parks they have staff that have done that for many types of things for a long time and so that seems to me one potential option that that could be considered so i'm just offering it so let's talk about it we haven't gotten anything else um so i'm just gonna go for it so i uh alan and then i'd like to

036add something to that one please feel free you're muted ellen sorry so my view is that the uh the the operative word in this proposal in the city charter is this is a commons and that has a particular meaning that the users have a role in the management it is not delegated to a governmental or a private authority but is essentially self-managed and that has been demonstrated all over the world as a most effective way and productive way of managing commonly pooled resources and that includes both the sense of the central park and also a civic center with uh four season functions so i want to that we keep in our mind that there is the potential to be explored and hopefully in the request for proposals elaborated of a civic center building with multiple

037functions that parallel what goes on in the park and that the management of this is not delegated as rita suggested to the park department which over the time of this whole campaign has indicated no particular interest in the management of this kind of programming but that we see some form of uh conservancy land trust the library green conservancy is discussed at some point whether it wants to be the kind of 501 c manager and basically has declined for the moment that role but some kind of land trust that involves the users to be self-managing and allowing other properties to be aggregated in particular i think it is desirable to review the noble house as a potential aggregation into the commons and particularly the ground floor which could serve as a social center benefiting for the

038users of liberty plaza but i think that we need to look at a model around a conservancy or a land trust that allows the users to uh and the diversity of users to have a role in the management of the uh aggregated space both of the park and of a future civic center building and its functions therein and possibly other properties as well um so i want to add that and maybe we need clearly more discussion of that and the sense of a commons is something that has not been adequately explored among ourselves and i think one recommendation to the city would be to encourage the city itself to look at that literature and to encourage the library and the public school system to advance the education on what is the commons which is a

039form of organization all over the world uh but not so common in america as some people and the uh founding fathers said the purpose of our constitution is to privatize the commons and this is an effort to publicize the commons so i add those thoughts into our conversation so frank you've got your hand up and then i'd like to add the suggestion from hearing at least what i've heard thus far but uh could change after you talk i think this this is a very important element the the future management and organization of these spaces and i would include liberty plaza um i wonder if this shouldn't be a a major component of uh requests for uh proposals uh that that this element he looked at and integrated into all the planning and design and development

040of the site is is this management piece it's clearly uh critical that in our comparable studies working group uh the communities that have been successful plymouth royal oak and detroit especially plymouth royal oak is so new but plymouth and detroit they have very different approaches but successful um and so this really needs to be uh i think addressed with the the rfp and maybe that's a kind of a formal mechanism just to see that we will make you know tangible progress along this and many other lines frank i'm glad you said that because that as a good uh segway and uh one of the aspects i was going to say so i noted several questions that erica referenced and as well as alan um and i do feel like there is a uh you know

041given the um importance of in particular what i would characterize the shorter term goals that we want to achieve with the space and several questions regarding how those goals are achieved um and when i say goals i mean the ability for us to make recommendations to counsel to do things to take action and so i feel like one of the things that we can do that would be productive in in our wheelhouse is to try and to do two things one uh we do have an upcoming presentation to the parks advisory committee we ended up pushing that from uh ju we were originally gonna go in june uh ended up um ended up because of some scheduling issues pushing that to july but we are planning on doing that i think it's the 20th of

042july or something like that stephen can correct me if i'm wrong but 18th maybe um and uh but i'd like to like to see if there's a way that we could um that we could uh both between now and then uh within our own working group structure uh form some shorter term ways of of making of developing those recommendations around the shorter term things the the ease of permitting process assistance for special event planning the removal of vehicles from removal parking from the lot on a more regular basis in concert with uh increased programming um and uh and then how that could be uh done based on the same line of thought as to what is happening uh with liberty plaza around around the activation of uh liberty plaza for special events so so uh

043i feel like some of those things can be done um by us um you know with uh working with uh heather and and other members of uh city staff but also i am hopeful that this discussion with the parks advisory committee uh is productive and good and based on conversations that erica and steven and i have had i expect that that'll be the case and then we can we can work together more um and that that's part of my goal there and so uh i feel like that is i feel like there's sort of two time periods that we're talking about here we're talking about what i heard that i perceived to be a lot of shorter term uh things meaning pre-development pre-planning and then there are certainly things that as frank referenced that are

044more part of the formal planning process and input gathering processes that would be handled as part of a a paid for rfp or a paid for plan that comes out of an rfp and so i'd like to suggest that maybe we on the longer term in particular the designation as a park because i think that has some very significant implications for um our ability to influence this process i'd like to see if we can table that part we could certainly investigate it but i would hate to make a recommendation this premature uh planning process around the designation of something um but on the other items i think it is very much in our wheelhouse to start those actions and then also hopefully we can have some joint efforts with parks and pack and park staff

045following that discussion and so um later this month so i'd like to make that suggestion i know alice has her hand up so we can get to alice first and then maybe have some discussion alice feel free uh you're muted i'm um it's getting up it seems to be getting foggier and foggier and i think when rita's suggested designation as a park that's one way of starting the conversation pack um but we do have special properties that the parks have that they don't call parks and i think this fits very closely with those the idea of a special property which is still under some degree of park management yet also some degree of public management uh in general such as with private foundations and uh organizations of government um such as it's different with farmer

046farmers market and cobblestone farm and kent house and all of these quote special properties and i see no limitation on that kind of designation for the center of the city because it doesn't require uh i mean it just builds on what we already have available and i don't know whether you know the there i think we would have to create a specific structure of management even as a special property so i think there's some things we can do concretely which we know will have to be done no matter what like removal of cars from the top of the parking structure and that is a different discussion with different people and so in order to make these discussions more uh productive i think we have to start really including inviting and including and listening to the

047larger public institutional um partners in the on the block such as the library the dda and parks included and whether we in consider representation of those entities on our commission so we have direct communication at least once a month um because we're you know i still don't know what you mean by a presentation by parks and who's doing that presentation or two parts you know it's not clear to me what's happening there shouldn't we know a little bit about that um and be able to attend at least yeah so the the uh and i was planning on giving this update during the the later in the agenda um and uh but but i can give it now um you know the the plan is uh stephen is our liaison to uh pack and uh erica

048uh is uh i think you are a sitting member pack am i correct i'm am i off off on that um yes i'm i'm the council liaison uh yeah and just just just you know um here i'm a voting member on pac i'm not a voting member it depends on which commission you're if council members have voting rights or not and so erica stephen and i discussed back in may what a presentation could look like and uh agreed that i would provide the presentation to uh to pack and i would be the primary speaker and then steven you know a member of pac and would be there as our liaison to the council or i'm sorry the liaison from pact the council of the commons um and uh erica is a member from city council

049and uh it is public meeting i believe it's uh zoom based um and we were originally planning on doing it in june on the 20th uh the media ended up getting moved i believe uh and uh then we ended up having some scheduling issues so we agreed that we were gonna move it to the july meeting and stephen confirmed that and uh so we are on the agenda for the july i think it's july 18th if i recall correctly yeah i think it's like tuesday july 19th yeah there you go 19 exactly and so you know that uh the uh the the meeting um certainly is you know you're able to attend if you'd like alice for sure um it's not of in person meeting uh so it's um you know it's probably gonna be

050a little less personal um but um but you're more than welcome to attend well it would probably be um as a member of the public it sounds like that the three of you would be participating in the meeting and any of the rest of us would be these names in black squares or not even unlike the members of the public who attend our meetings here um is that correct yeah i don't even think i'd be participating outside of just making a presentation i think i i would just be there uh you know presenting on one topic on their agenda when it comes up and you know stephen is a member of pack and so is erica and so they would obviously be participating in the entire meeting what time is this on june on july

05119. i think you're muted steven it's at four four o'clock yeah and this isn't a joint yeah the idea was not to have a joint meeting between the commissions just to do a presentation and so it makes sense i just want to be clear about what what we're going to get and what we're not going to get so and i still think that i'm glad sorry let me catch up oh go ahead i was just going to say i'm happy to share the presentation i'm working on um you know for that meeting with everyone here and um you know with the the goal at least personal goal out of this uh is is not to necessarily just provide a um you know an update to pac it's uh more to really try and build a

052stronger working relationship as i understand it there's been um a lot of new members of pac and certainly we've had shifting within city staff and uh and you know strong desire for us to have a joint working relationship around the rfp and so um you know my goal is to try and um is to try and convey that message that there is a desire by the council of the commons to have an inclusive relationship with pac around the uh you know the use of the spaces as a as a joint property for the for in particular for the uh planning phase vr you know that would come from the rfp and um then but you know certainly can weave in elements around the shorter term as well but it's but it's predominantly focused to try

053and build that relationship so that we can we can improve communication uh not to say it's been bad it's just you know we're two separate commissions so and could i could i rotate this back to what we're supposed to be talking about is developing recommendations are you proposing that the presentation to pack replaces our advisory activity is making recommendations to council say that again i'm sorry does the presentation is that an example of replacing our our ordinance are ordained if you will um mission to make recommendations advisory recommendations to council are you substituting a presentation to pack for some of that no no not at all i think we had talked about um providing an update to pat i think that had been a suggestion of uh made at a previous council of the commons

054meeting and so this was our our way of of fulfilling that request and um and we sort of weaved in the idea that it would be a very good idea as part of the rfp to try and work together more and so um you know that was that was sort of the direction that we we took it but not a substance okay so okay so this so this whole discussion that has moved toward the presentation pack started out with designating the center of the city site as a potential park and i think that's loosely um a direction that we could go in is as i said in special properties area but we do need to make recommendations to counsel we don't just make presentations to ancillary groups and so if we don't if we don't

055address counsel as we are addressing pac we are diminishing our chances of making removing some of the near-term action activation move forward yeah i i don't disagree with that i was just i think you or somebody had brought up a question around parks and so i was trying to address that uh you know even though it's on the agenda later um we've been doing one to the library i met i met to the uh i met with the library director i don't think there's a reason to do a presentation a library director right now um uh and i'm happy to share all the updates around block partners conversations as ken sarah as well uh when we get to that working group so so do we have for instance i i think one of the recommendations

056that's been talked about in various informal conversations um is to include someone like eli newberg from the library on our commission here because we don't have an actual limitation on how many members we can have but even if we do consider we have a limitation we could reassign some of the redundancies so this is part of what i would call developing recommendations we may not get what we propose but we need to bring up a recommendation so that we can move forward with the information that we get in response so i i guess taking it back to the recommendations and because i i feel like we're having a conversation here i know frank's got some input i would like to bring it back to the suggestion i made though i feel like there are two

057types of of time periods we're talking about here one is in terms of making a recommendation city council on one is definitively associated with the planning for the longer term uh that that uh you know would be part of an rfp a form or a recipe a proposal that we accepted as part of the rfp and then there is one that is before that time period and i guess what i'm trying to indicate is i feel like i feel like there's a lot of interest in uh in making sure that we we do both and i think that makes sense i feel like that's the longer term is we just need it's going to be our job to influence the planning process after we finish fundraising for the rfp and select the city selects a

058um a uh a firm after receiving responses from that but then in addition to that there is this whole time period beforehand and it sounded like to me that there were a number of things that were brought up and then a whole series of questions that were associated with those things what i'm suggesting trying to suggest is that maybe there is a way that we can do some of that work in concert and then bring parks in hopefully after this conversation uh with them uh in july later later this month um you know but i'd like to suggest sounds like there is a strong interest in doing some um crafting of recommendations around shorter term activities shorter term meaning pre-planning and i'd like to see where folks are at on that and i'll let that

059stew for a second colin frank go ahead um i i adam i like the approach of you know the shorter term issues and then the longer term planning you know what i'm observing and the pack and parks department as an example i wasn't clear in the early months of our deliberation what the level of interest was on the part of the the parks people pac and staff i now feel that that they are interested they want to be a part of this i'm encouraged by that and i i think we're all observing from various vantage points uh new people coming uh into this whole process of i i won't i'll just mention caitlin phillips for example who i think that has become a familiar name with most of us uh the granddaughter of uh freddie

060law olmsted and she's been in ann arbor forever and within the last few months she's shown an interest so i i'm encouraged by people wanting to sort of find their footing and how they can participate in it the more that organizations within city government want to engage and want to be part of this process i i take as encouraging so i guess that's my my comment so i'd like to make a suggestion then because i think there is you know we we have these working groups and they are doing certain things right now is there a um maybe pertaining to this shorter term activation maybe there is a uh additional charge that we provide there and really focus in on what our recommendations to council will be around pre-planning the pre-planning stage is there an

061interest in doing that and if so who wants to be part of that i guess i have a comment on that i mean the the short-term activity that we had a short-term activation committee still do um the you know some of the conversations that i thought kind of came out of that to some degree were but you know certainly i need to focus in on on existing parcels um you know i think i i guess i would say putting that within that the committee structure that is already already existing would make sense as opposed to starting something new yeah i i don't disagree with that allen helen you're muted i'm sorry you muted alan oh sorry again yes yeah i'm most interested in the shorter term activation that is basically the function that for which

062the initiating committee for the commons was organized to bring forward the recommendations out of the center of the city task force and see how those can best be carried forward so i want to participate in that in the shorter term i've made a number of suggestions of how i think between active programming and passive allowing the space to be used and various ways of supervision and maintenance can be done so i have a lot of ideas in that area and if we are thinking about putting forward a series of proposals or recommendations to the city to basically carry forward and do what the city council has already said should be done but with more specificity to it i'd be very pleased to be part of that i thought i was part of this activation committee

063but i never saw that it actually functioned yeah alan i'll take the action item i just wrote a note to myself uh around not only the the questions that were asked and also the items that rita identified you know to check in and see where we're at on the shorter term activation uh work group and then also uh to uh include you in it and i know rita has a lot of questions around this and so i'm gonna make sure she's also part of that as well so i will take this action item and follow up uh jen and see where we're at and then we can start moving this forward based on today's discussion if that's okay with folks alice you've got your hand up yeah um i i think i would be pleased

064if each work group would it would um put forward from their findings and work each work group might put forward a recommendation or two as something that they feel would be useful for the pre-planning and um perhaps with the goal type recommendation for planning do this first so we can do this next kind of thing or just the first one would be fine for now i'm just anxious to actually be an advisory commission to put forth some needed recommendations to see if we can get the help of council to at least authorize that either a volunteer group or a funded group or some modest city funds which i mean those of us who've thought about it don't think it's a big expenditure easily covered by donations or voluntary work we're pretty sure but if we

065don't make a regular recommendation and get the authorization to go ahead we can't do anything what let's uh alice i made a note to talk with you about how we could do exactly we just said in terms of having each working group so let's make let's have that conversation offline here that's fine with me that sounds good i i think i know where you're going with it so i think uh let's include that in our discussion okay so i'll check in with jen after this uh discussion and see uh how things are going in terms of the existing work working group figure out how we can reconfigure this agenda turn into more of a developing recommendations around the pre-planning phase for now certainly we can table things that are part of the planning and then

066alice brought up a good point around each of the working groups being able to make some recommendations to be included in that planning process planning initial planning so we can uh we can we can make sure all those things happen so we'll we'll go ahead and does that feel good for in terms of the next step for developing recommendations to city council can we put a date on that like next meeting have those recommendations ready for next meeting all right when you say recommendations which one you mean the shorter term the proposed recommendations for the near-term activation which would include um for instance um an active dda representative um a cars off the surface of the roof of the parking lot um some of them some of the ones that have been mentioned over and

067over again that the public does desire um i i think we need to be responsible to our public that voters is to into this job and also to our ordinance that says we should make annual recommendations and so far we haven't made any i think that's i think uh let's let's say we'll try to get them done by the next meeting uh at least we can show progress is that okay it would only be it would only be five recommendations isn't that how many work groups we have well i think that some of these recommendations frankly are gonna lead ourselves down a series of um additional questions so i i'm not so sure that one minute was five yeah frankly yeah three would be fine two just some and i and if you have to

068evaluate them as being quote safe for early early introduction that's fine but i think that cars off the top of the roof it's it's very important it's very symbolic and very engaging of the dda and you know other people who desire to have a place to be casual use i think that's fair i do think that erica had brought up a concern that she had that i think is justified um and so i think it's a matter of navigating those things so but i hear you and i uh and i uh i think there's probably a way we can we leave this make it work so i i think that's a very valid point uh rita you got the last last word on this one and then we'll move on the agenda right as a

069proponent of casual use um i'd really like to see that move forward because we are continually continuing in this chicken and egg kind of thing that we can't activate it because we can't get the cars off the part the top we can't get the cars off the top because we can't activate it so let's break the cycle please hear you on that okay uh we'll go ahead and uh move on to the working group updates um frank or rita uh reader frank would you like to give an update around alice well else but did you select no i'm sorry okay that's okay all right rank rita or frank uh sorry uh would you like to give an update on my comparable communities i know you've got an attachment agenda here too well i'll i'll jump

070in but frank please uh continue um we sent out and uh i'm sorry that i didn't go to the whole group it did go to the members of the comparable community uh work group um a summary comparing across the three communities that we've reached out to to date um and i'll just say as uh as to me the key element of what we found was that each of the cities detroit plymouth and royal oak were had an actively engaged supportive dda for their existing parks the newest one being royal oak and there was uh there is a sense of pride um and commitment and a sense of benefit to the community for these central parks that are used a lot so um i think that rather than march through um each of the elements of

071the document that we gave you all i ask that you look at it um and i think that um in particular well all of them are really good i think um royal oak has a very interesting link in its document and it's part of the document that goes through its engagement process that might be something that would be useful for us to look at in terms of the rfp so i'll stop there frank if you want to add anything please do you're muted frank you're muted i don't have much to add obviously we we sought out uh communities that were successful and um it it it just demonstrates that this can be done ann arbor clearly has the potential of success in this area and uh it's uh heartening to see how successful over extended

072periods of time again royal oak is just a brand new park as of december but it was a very involved process that brought them to that opening of that park in december i mean they literally moved mountains uh in the form of buildings that were in the way uh but uh i i just think there's uh there's great role models right in our own backyard and uh there's it continues to be puzzling to me that we can't make more progress uh more rapidly um and that but as i said earlier i do i do sense that uh people who who were earlier opposed to this uh have have come around and have been actively supporting now um matt eltruda is a case in point the gentleman who um organized a sonic lunch and works for

073bank of ann arbor he went from voting against prop a to now enthusiastically participating so i'm encouraged and these comparable community studies uh just gives me more encouragement of the ultimate success and i'll just add one point in there too i at the during the the last meeting we had i mentioned i was at the mackinac policy conference and i ended up running into one of the um oakland county commission members you know from around the royal oak community and uh he mentioned about all the strife that was associated when they uh initially proposed that park um and it was certainly not something that was a a process that uh that had um initial um homogenous support from the community and uh so they went through their own process as well and it as frank

074mentioned and certainly as we learned from speaking with people in royal oak it has been really widely uh accepted in the community and then a real positive gem now i think that it's complete so um sort of reminded me as to some of the history around this space and hopefully a positive step forward um next item uh our next uh working group is the blog partners uh sarah did you wanna provide some update i know you've been working on things yeah so i actually have a survey of a survey ready to go um so heather i think you said you can send that out if i send you all the stuff to send um we haven't talked about how long to leave it open but since it's summer i figure we should just leave it

075open for a couple of months um alan you had asked who gets the responses and i didn't respond to your email so i set it up on google it's a google form um so i will the responses will come to me but i think i can share i'm going to look into i think i can share it with other people so you'll be able to see i think you can see when responses come in if i share it so i'm going to work on that um so we have a good list of um block partners to send it to so hopefully we'll get some good responses so heather i'll send it to you tomorrow or monday maybe we send it out early next week this is a probably a bad week to do it and

076uh sarah just so you know too on this space uh if there are some names in particular uh around certain institutions or anything like that i have i've uh as i mentioned previously i spoke with the uh new director newspaper to leave some of those like heavy hitters off that you guys some of you have been having um you know more personal conversations with so yeah i think like anything that you have to share from any of those that have happened over the past month for sure yeah so certainly um i think that sounds good i just make sure that if you are contacting them then we get their names included the the right people um you know so there's good communication um so i you know i we've i think we've had good conversation

077with the new library director uh eli he's uh i think that was uh excellent conversation prior to earth day and then we had some additional conversation around earth day and i certainly have had ongoing conversation with mike martin from first martin corporation um jeff watson and i traded emails today we're working on getting something set up there and i did meet um with um a gentleman um the cfo of the university of michigan federal credit union that been connected with me uh through uh the the michigan credit union league which is an association in lansing that i worked with when i was a member of the legislature um we had coffee a couple of weeks ago talked about the space and just sort of you know talked about how uh you know their corporate branch

078is actually not um the one on william um but uh you know he mentioned that he is the person point of contact uh for uh sort of community engagement around this type of thing and um you know i provided uh to him i told him i'd send him the the rfi information that we'd received back from some of our potential interested uh planning partners and i had a i think it was very open-ended it really wasn't a goal out of it except to uh let him know what was going on and ask that at some point uh as a block partner university of michigan or michigan university of michigan credit union you know participate in some advisory work uh you know as we move forward in the planning and i think there was a very

079good conversation he was very open to that and um so uh you know i i feel like there is um there is certainly uh a i think a pretty consistent interest from at least the the uh folks that i have talked with uh about trying to make this move forward in a productive fashion and certainly a lot of the comparable communities work uh has allowed those conversations to have a vision that i think people didn't really see before and i think that's been really really positive so um that would be the only other update and i'm certainly i'm certain uh sir sir if you'd like to include any of those folks you know let me know and i'll provide emails or however the next working group is fundraising uh so um on the fundraiser we

080have any questions about these uh yeah sorry ellen i didn't see your handout my apologies my hand up what's up yeah the yellow background on alice's uh uh screen is anyways my apologies all right alice go ahead first and then allen well i want to be brief but you mentioned a lot of what i what might be called behaviors by some people um but there are smaller say property owners on the block and also tenants on a block and i would say we need to include the people who are across the streets that bind this that are the boundaries of this block um and maybe i don't know maybe even somebody at the federal building somebody transit somebody um you know on the other side of liberty the other side of division the package store

081the i don't know i it seems like that there are a number of people who feel that you don't benefit from um you benefit from expanding the people who participate rather than limiting these people to participate in a serving like that so a lot of those people are just our on our surveillance we sort of started that way we have a database that i think erica started for us um so we have a lot of those people and i think if there's anyone we leave off i think we can probably circulate the database maybe i don't know um but i think they started to be a living guy like you know we can yeah you don't need my approval i just want to make sure that we were we have the same yeah we definitely

082looked beyond like the actual block itself sort of the adjacencies and who else might have a vested interest in such as the restaurant owners on main street for instance i don't think they're on there why not so they were that you know there's some of the objectors that i think the main area association is on but not beautiful restaurants okay okay sounds good excellent alan you had your hand up next yeah well i was uh particularly interested in the quality the the sense of conversation with eli from the library because josie previously had been very cool on this whole endeavor and i was hoping that eli was more friendly and saw the potential of a partnership between the library and the commons so i was wondering about that conversation and then also in the conversation

083with the martin people in my conversations with them they were interested in the commons assuming the noble house and the potential of moving the carriage house that their space might be able to expand all the way to library lane and whether your conversations touch any of those questions as well as the notion of some kind of uh bridge or commercial arcade through a potential new building did they express any were they ready to talk at all with you about their views toward what their new building might uh look like in terms of it's his scale and how it would be a very it could be a bridge between the two ends of our barbell so to speak of liberty plaza and the library lane so i'll i'll just speak to both of them uh as

084like what you know both this has been the case of of all of the uh the individuals i've spoken with um there is a strong desire by all three entities that i've spoken with who have you know major stakeholders stakes in that block uh to be intimately involved in the planning process that goes along after we successfully complete an rfp and select a and the city selects a vendor for that plan and i think that is a really important uh characteristic you know i i don't think that there is anything in concrete uh in terms of plans around uh anything from what i understand but i think there is a lot of interest in do in creating something that works for um for the public first and foremost and also works for the surrounding property

085owners and and that that there is mutual benefit from that and so um what that looks like i think is very wide open at this point but i think certainly you met you mentioned the library and first martin corporation i think that there is interest from the two principles of those entities to uh to be strongly engaged in in that formal planning process to ensure that there is mutual benefit so alan i wish i could be a little more specific but i don't think that is the case at this point it's just too early did the uh credit union expressed any thought of altering their structure any infill construction any change of what they were doing on their williams street which has been most reduced in its service it's a uh no they haven't they

086didn't express any of that um we really didn't get into that but i i expressed that during that conversation i expressed that you know the footprint that we were looking at was that it you know all the publicly owned spaces the block and you know that if there was a way that you know i know i certainly have cut through the credit union parking lot and walked into the the uh commons area and into liberty plaza and certain others have as well and uh you know if there's a way to um you know work together um with both publicly owned spaces and privately owned spaces to for access and use um that would be um that would be a something we would be interested in i think that the credit union was very much interested

087in that as well um i felt it was a very warm reception and i did but we did not get into any sort of their planned uses of their of their current william street branch or anything like that that was it was really not the purpose of meeting it um and i think that would if they were thinking of things uh you know that would come up during that planning process and i that's why i do really you know a personal level i think it's very important that there be a very strong advisory uh committee that's part of the that's made up of you know not just the block partners but but you know other entities as well that is goes along with that planning process um and and certainly this could be this committee

088could have a role in that but but also um it provides a vehicle to bring in some other folks who have a vested interest in making the entire block successful and i think that's going to be really important so i'll just put a pin in that i want to go down that route too early but i think this planning process is going to have to be really important and it's going to have to be real inclusive so um but i feel like the conversations we've had thus far have been warmly received thank you yeah of course good questions um in that case uh we can wrap up the blog partners um going to fundraising a little bit um you know we've had a good discussion good couple of discussions between um erica heather frank and

089myself most recently around um some fundraising uh efforts um you know they've been mostly focused on where we could look for um public or nonprofit funding opportunities um uh where what foundations might be interested uh in in uh that type of work you know i think that we've at this point in time we've uh started to look into those uh different um where we've left off as we started to look into those different opportunities um and you know we're gonna meet again offline to uh to do some additional work around you know who could be uh a good financial partner uh with this and so you know the goal will be to continue to move that effort forward um and so i i can provide an update again at the next meeting after we meet

090um you know in between but i would say we are looking at all sources there's been and we have a list going of public and private uh potential contributors and we're starting to break that list up um we talked about the near-term activation already if that's okay with folks we could skip that part that working group especially some gen side here and then the rfp um and so i'll provide an update on the rfp uh process as i mentioned earlier you know there is a strong desire to work with parks and we had originally at this command at this council i requested that heather and park staff work together um and we discussed that in our rfp working group and um so one of the the best recommendations i think that came of that was

091to really try and engage directly with parks advisory committee and to form a a positive working relationship with them in order to move that effort forward and so that's what we've done so that's what the part of the goal that's why our presentation um with parks with with pac rather is focused on that effort to create this strong working relationship so that we can then advance the rfp so that process has been you know a little bit slower than i think most of us would like but i think we're doing the right thing with trying to set up this constructive working relationship with pac in order to move the rfp forward as joint relationship um i think you know the thing that one of the things that i've taken away from all of this has

092been that uh this the way this charter charters written with overlapping jurisdictions um has caused a lot of um uh confusion or or um easiness around who's doing what and uh i uh so that is what it is and i think that's why it's very important it's become very important to me that um that we have a strong working relationship with you know both the council of commons and pac because there is this cross-jurisdictional um overlap and uh and that's gonna be important to move things forward uh you know in a way that is constructive and so that's that is what i've got in his terms of an update on around the rfp alan you got your hand up yeah well as you describe it across the cross jurisdictional uh situation i want you please

093to add the uh trans-jurisdictional uh situation that there needs to be a mechanism like a conservancy or a land trust or something that bridges the various jurisdictions and includes a public participation independence of the uh parks or any of the governmental organizations so that this is a new form of organization and now so that different uh groups are now uh have uh sovereignty as it were in parts of it needs to be uh embraced in some form that includes all of them and includes the users and the public and its uh organization for sure uh erica yeah i just i wanted to agree with you alan i think that um you're right about the need for conservancy i think that's been shown pretty clearly in some of the best practices um about around research of

094these public spaces and how they work um i just would like to not set up the expectation that that the conservancy will um be organized likely out of this group or out of city functioning those are sort of private endeavor non-profit endeavors but that you know that is something that is is going to be ramen and by the community i think um to make that model work so i just um certainly i think you're right that there's going to need that be that public private partnership but um how that actually gets formed is is is something that well it seems like it's one of one of one of the elements in the request for proposals that the proposal you know envision how that form of management actually is brought into being i think it's going

095to be an important certainly to speak to what erica said i think the entity um i mean i personally from these these uh working groups around comparable communities this has been a very consistent key element um you know that allows for some uh different different forms of management um you know i think it's gonna be important for us to spec that out to what erica uh was speaking to but um you know we may not be ultimately the ones deciding around you know who it is or what it looks like and so i think it's going to be important that we that we um you know influence but um but you know the the entity itself may be something that is set up as some type of joint relationship i really don't know at this

096point i mean i think there's a lot of ways to to do this so frank you got your hand up and i know you know a little something about this too so very little i'd like to say that my crystal ball just became very clear on this issue but i i can't say that i i'm just going to add you know clearly uh working our group working with parks the dda has to be uh front and center as as a very active partner and i think uh the block partners and then i i've heard you describe uh an advisory group of probably a law a larger footprint of organizations uh is going to be key as as those groups get engaged they're going to have i think a very positive influence on all these questions

097about longer term management and so on i know there's been an effort down on the heron river um by i guess i don't know if the dte is developing or some developers developing the dte property along the river there's been attempts to create a conservancy with the help of the community foundation i don't know much about it um but it uh there's even you know efforts in our own community to develop some kind of public space with a conservancy overseeing it down there so um we may want to look under the hood of that process absolutely i think that is as on the list in fact okay is there a chance we could get a report on what's going on there i've heard of similar uh you know rumblings yeah i think we can do

098that in fact i've got a uh it's on my list to have a conversation with those folks so i could certainly provide a reporter on xp great all right i'm just going to make a note here to check on this other questions at all around the rfp okay uh in that case um we've already covered the next agenda item on our agenda was the update on the report to parks or to pack we've talked about that extensively this evening already are there any other questions around that item or points that people feel um are still outstanding okay um in that case um we can talk about next agenda items we do have a few that we've added tonight wanted to see if there are other ones the ones i noted uh i'm gonna provide that

099update around um what's going on down by the river uh that alan just uh suggested we're also gonna try and do whatever we can um to uh create some short-term recommendations to city council at least show progress i have some items to check with jen on to make that happen uh within the uh the confines of our working group structure um and also to add in alan and rita to those discussions um are there other items outside of what we've talked about sort of in the last short bit here that we want to add into our agenda we know that we want to have on our august agenda obviously we'll have a response back from part or pack you know we can bring that up again as well post our discussion with them on the

10018th got a couple hands up allen i think was first then heather and then frank well i shared perhaps inappropriately 11 points that i thought were proper in the request for proposals and i want to know how do we have some discussion here not only of those particular points but of others is our input into the request for proposals is that can that conversation be in our next agenda um and uh similarly i outlined the uh a summary of the elements described both for the civic center building and for the central park as they evolved since the first discussion of this in there now almost 10 years ago when the first imagine a park program was held two days after the dedication of the underground parking structure that on the 14th of july and 2012.

101so i would like to see that material somehow on our table for [Music] reflection addition improvement conversation okay do that uh heather uh yeah so um in august our meeting conflicts with the city council meeting the city council meeting was moved to the night that we typically have meetings so we need to either cancel our meeting or move our meeting so one suggestion is to move it to the 11th the following thursday so just wanted to put that out to the group that maybe doesn't have to be decided right now but if you want to look at your schedules we could go ahead and move the meeting heather could we take a poll uh sir a poll uh doodle offline to see about potentially the 11th or um what is the date that we're scheduled

102for right now it is the fourth cool yeah i have a conflict on the 11th i can tell you that i have a meeting um but why don't we do it because it's not just me so why don't we do a poll um and uh it shouldn't be just about me obviously so let's do a poll offline and see maybe we can check the uh the 11th we can check the 18th we could check some other days as well so how about maybe you and i can put together some dates um and then we'll send that out is that okay yeah okay thanks for raising that i know you put that in an email um as well so i forgot uh frank you've got your hand up you're muted frank by saying that the 18th

103is the 48th anniversary of my 30th birthday i'll probably hopefully i'll still be here the the other thing i should have probably in this i'll make this brief but because i think i've talked about it before um i really want us to take a look at a a kind of a two-phased rfp uh the first phase is uh you know really looking at the data that already exists from the task force uh engaging um in what some depth with the dda about the structural issues and basically how we can work better to get together um and you know they're just i think some things that could be accomplished engaging the block partners and the wider advisory committee um i think we're close to having enough money if we define a phase one around gathering and

104analyzing data as opposed to getting into development and design of the site and uh that we could i think by engaging the community in meaningful ways in phase one will facilitate our ability to raise additional money to complete phase two of an rfp so i'll just stop there because i think i've talked about this earlier i just want to bring that back as a as a concept to think about i think those are good suggestions other agenda items that we would like to have on for august all right we and we do have a pretty good standing agenda you know obviously this meeting was formed out of a standing agenda and so we'll utilize that as a baseline adam will you be considering asking each we've often done we've often intended to do this to

105have some kind of product from each within each report from the working groups individual working groups should we maybe ask for consideration by each group of what they would ask for or advise to accomplish some goal um that we could consider at next meeting and and pass on to city council i mean it couldn't be any more than five if we ask for one we have we are in fact that's going to be the basis of uh conversation i have with you as to how i can help advance that yes absolutely thank you yeah of course putting our great minds together there right alice the the a team and i'd just like to chime in i just remember that every commission has as their mission being an advisory body to council so it's um i

106know that there's a feeling that um want to get we we want to make make progress on this but you know some of that progress may um may be appearing in ways that don't necessarily have to send something to council for for additional work for example i see the work on the developing funding and actually getting to the rfp process that is the most tangible progress we could possibly make on this is getting to a long-term design and cost for this this is that is that would be a major accomplishment um so i just if you take frank's if you take frank's suggestion design is not the first thing the data is there certainly could be it could certainly could be broken up in multiple different ways just wanted to not make people feel like

107you have to come up with a list of but i think it's good to have a goal i think instead of just having a report i think it needs to have a little bit of umph to it you know like we could do some of this if maybe we did this little thing you know um just something for near-term to give us all encouragement i i think that there's certainly ways you know as i have found a lot of things um you know momentum gets more momentum and so you know taking action moving some things forward certainly i agree with erica's sentiments that the the real major step will be the the uh points around being able to go out for that rfp and start that process i think that will be a very significant

108step forward for the community and so but i hear also that a strong will to um make some tangible action steps um before then and we talked about that several times here and so uh you know we're going to try and do you know create some some ideas in between now and our next meeting and uh so when we have any progress on the rfp you know like a draft uh at all when do we have an idea of when that will no the rfp the rfp won't be written until we have the funding in place so that's been stated before and that will continue to be the case i'm particularly aware of that condition yeah that's we we've talked about that before i think that uh the um yeah there are two things related

109to the rfp um you know there are really important considerations one we do have a strong interest in working with parks department uh to have a joint writing of that rfp and uh and two funding really does matter and i think that you know there certainly are things that uh maybe advance uh you know in terms of frank's suggestion but we need to make a little more progress in the money um before we uh before we go forward i think we've got a good start and that's been helpful um and we're making uh some effort to try and increase that funding and i feel like you know we will get but we do have an idea of what the rfp is going to cost that's what our five process informed uh for us and uh

110you know if we can make a little more progress towards that then i think we would be able to justify getting things going but heather is right you know we do need more funding before we can start start that formal process before we have the money in a hand i heard they won't be circulated but if it won't even be written we don't have any opportunity actually to have them within deal with it nope now that's not what that's not what was said it's not going to be sent out before the funding is in place because we're not going to prom we're not going to ask vendors to respond to something that we don't have funding for them i think i think also staff is not going to be spending time writing it until we

111have more funding in place as well right yeah i just wanted to clarify i guess i'm piggybacking on alan uh it seems we have a chicken and an egg here uh from my spanish point i can't quite imagine why we couldn't have the rfp written and ready to go i mean it has to happen sometime i i guess i don't understand the what's on the inner workings of city hall in these on that issue we don't even have grant applications and there's not i mean this is at this point there needs to be serious efforts to provide additional funding to this endeavor that's the major reason why i want to split this into two phases because we're a lot closer to in my judgment of the funds we would need for a phase one that

112needs to be looked at in some detail but um and i think doing it that way gives us a better chance of raising money for phase two when when people see the tangible project progress and they're involved in that phase one process but i don't want to start sounding like a broken record here yeah i don't want to sound like a broken record either except that there are previous resolutions passed by previous city councils already demonstrating that there were ideas of where some public funding was available um and this you know times have changed but i mean the kind of thinking that was going on earlier was more encouraging and and still not still including private uh sources of funding and grants such as we're talking about now i mean where there's the will we

113have more chance when there's no will we can't even get started but i i don't i don't mean to say there's no will i just it it is sounding more like chicken and egg question as frank said well why is it gonna have that feeling before i think that there is a i think that the to to the point that uh erica made i think that uh moving making some progress around fundraising will help our ability to advance before we have all the cash on hand but we have uh not uh you know made tangible progress in terms of dollars in the door around fundraising yet and so um you know we need to we need to work on both of those things um and so i i hear you around the chicken and the

114egg scenario but i think what the the point that's being expressed is we don't want to uh spend uh you know valuable time uh that that the city is paying for around writing something if we're if we're not making progress on being able to pay for it and so i think i think that's a justifiable consideration another background question may be naive is what paid for the task force um and its report what money paid for that i have no idea that was city city i mean that was cities um resources paying for staff and then i think there was a large volunteer endeavor to actually produce that report is that correct heather um yeah with city funds that paid for that effort um i i did the work to put that document together uh

115wrote the draft of it and then it was edited by the task force so there's there's an inclination at this time not to use staff time but volunteer and private funding is that it well i think we're going to hire a professional planning firm to do the rfp that would be the process that we would want for professionals we would write city staff would rate the rfp but we would hire a firm an engineering and probably a multi-discipline firm to do the actual work uh behind the scenes right um city staff it would be um this would have to involve the parks department because of liberty plaza being involved so there's uh a question that's in the air about who who who on city staff would be writing the rfp and which group within city

116staff would be managing the process would it be parts or some other group yeah that's the same that's assuming we get to we get to pay the salaries of the internal people no pain pain for that no pain not paying the salaries of staff but paying for the professional team that would be doing the process the selected team from the arts right the design process okay so it's still it's very unclear what you're talking about we have to fundraise in order to have staff assigned the right theory now what all that's going on here is is that there is an interest in we all have an interest in moving this forward but there's also an interest in ensuring that we are fundraising to help move it forward and so i didn't want to dwell on

117this too much because i think it's i think i don't think these things are actually mutually exclusive by any means i think we need to show progress on fundraising and in concert with that we also need to build these relationships with parks to ensure that the process moves forward in a way that is constructive and that we are is supported by the fact that we're raising money that we're actually going to hit this goal so that when we uh so that not only are we not waiting once we have raised the money but also that that the rfp is not sitting there for six months on a shelf waiting for us to finish raising the money and so i i feel like this is a this is a just something that would be done anyways

118but i think the goal is because we have not been raising money for a long time that you know we show some progress to move forward with that before the rfp actually gets written and you know what we also need to work with parks to ensure that you know that was the the strong desire uh was to ensure there was a mutual relationship in writing that uh and you know we need to make that happen as well and that does take some time too but that starts with the pack discussion mark's got a hundred thousand dollars so that would be good for liberty plaza that that could be counted that yeah that's that's dedicated for the the issues that are happening in liberty plaza right and that's part of our block so some of that

119some percentage of that should be you know at least continuously connected to the money that's available when administrator dahony asked for that funding from council he was clear what that funding was going for and there's been a stakeholder group that has been working on that so i don't think we're i don't think that you know it's not to say that this is not an important project city council did put forward funding for this and so council has allocated funding for the design process as well as as for the work on liberty plaza so but um this has been throughout the process been um community you know is the sense there's gonna be this is gonna be a public private partnership yeah and this is this is um part of our difficulty that i think adam

120is trying to address with a presentation to hack to try to knit together some of the overlapping jurisdictions and authorities and so forth and this management structure and everything i mean parks does manage liberty plaza and we are trying to develop a management for the entire block um that would include be inclusive of liberty plaza and the other partners that's right rita you've got your hand up you are muted i think you are not appearing to be muted but we cannot hear you all right my earphones ran out of battery so i um feel like this is information that is somewhat new to me at least at this level of depth of discussion and um i am feeling disappointed to feel that way right now so i hope that we have some criteria that are

121clear in terms of the fundraising in terms of like specific amounts of money so that we know when we're moving forward um and i do feel like we do need to nip this project together um and i'm i'm going to keep my optimism uh light bulb going because um i think that you've got that started with the presentation to perks but i hope that there's more communication that comes through between between that presentation to parks the ultimate outcome that will flow to the rfp and the ultimate outcome that's going to be the work um of improving the liberty plaza which as alice said is part of our purview i thought if it's not then i'm really confused and i do think that my suggestion about looking at this as being a part of parks overall

122will help us in the end so i'm gonna remain asked to have that remain on the table thank you sure you end that rita thank you okay any other points that we'd like to add in uh around next agenda before we move into public comment well i'm very i'm i think this is handling undisturbed that there is going to be no public view of the development of this request for proposals until funds are raised for a request for proposals that is basically private and has no public input it seems that the request for proposals the ideas in it the emphasis of it the kind of group we are looking for should be part of our process beginning now with a draft of the staff within heather and their parks if they want to participate begin

123to formulate that we and the public can see and discuss as well as we are outraged seeking to raise funds to uh see how to uh find a qualified professional assistance in carrying forward the the intent of the proposals that that there is nothing that we see until the funds are done just seems very hard for me to comprehend yeah i heard you on this allen and that's what i'm trying to say is that i think that it's about progress and uh i think that is the name of the game here and certainly i am not interested in not doing anything until we have all the funding raised and you can bet i will push against any notion on that but well i hope we can see a draft and as it begins the frame

124of a draft or the the structure of the the how the city approaches a draft as soon [Music] yeah i think we're going to work on we're going to work on some fundraising as well and we're going to um uh we are going to work on developing a stronger relationship with parks so that we can do this mutually frank you've got your hand up yeah um um i'm sensing uh growing frustration among those who have been major contributors to library green and therefore to library green's commitment to fund the the rfp um and what keeps coming up to me in comment and these are these are important voices going forward uh that you know the city has in many cities in this country have had this windfall of funding from the federal government and you

125know it's in the hundreds of millions of dollars correct me eric if i'm wrong in total and um you know other studies uh like the tree line etc have have had funding generous funding from the city and it just seems that you know this has to be a public private partnership and there and there's there's a there's a significant level of frustration that the city is not doing more adam and i are going to meet with these people we're going to try to assure them that progress is being made but there is frustration um beyond those what's being expressed here in this meeting erica and then we'll try and wrap this issue up yeah i just wanted to say there were 24 million dollars that were we received in arpa funds um you can imagine

126the competing priorities within the city for using those funds um there are there were staff generated over 40 million dollars of potential projects um and we were not even close to being able to come towards that um it went out for significant public input and and that did end up shifting how we ended up allocating some of those fun those fun dollars um you know i think that i've heard from many different communities in the city about why didn't we use arpa funds for x why don't we use our funds for y um as much as it's wonderful to have had that funding we couldn't use it for every project but again this is you know i know that we want to see progress but this is going to be a this is going to

127need to be a public private partnership um and there's going to be need to be additional fundraising efforts we put out the rfi to get a better sense of of what this would cost i think we had hoped it was gonna be a little less than it was and um you know it's it's it's we've found that it's going to be around 120 000 and um that means you know more more fundraising needs to happen i would say that it is unusual to have fundraising even being discussed within a within a city commission um the fact that we would have a community group of volunteers kind of coming together typically in other projects this has happened outside of the city structure this type of fundraising effort so um just i guess i would leave us

128there i i i i've heard that there's a much larger amount of money that came from the federal government i i don't study these things uh in detail but um i'll say i can send a link out to our website and there's there's an accounting of it there was some reference a few months ago about the tree line uh in line for significant funding but i don't know where that went okay no that's not accurate the tree line has not received any money from arba or from the city recently so um in that case we're going to close that action right for that agenda item and move on to public comment either do we have any members of the public we do not okay excellent in that case the only agenda item left is adjournment

129we do have a number of action items uh we'll circle back finals action items um and so in that case we have a motion to adjourn made by erica second i'll second uh all in favor say aye all right hi any opposed all right sounds good thanks everybody have a wonderful evening good night bye