001could you help us through the role and don't forget to uh say where you're calling it from yeah say the jurisdiction that you're calling in from so city township or village and then also as you may notice we have dr missy stoltz here with us tonight as our special guest so if you want to say a little bit something more than your name and where you're calling in from like perhaps if you're representing an organization here and then maybe a little fun trivia thing about yourself like um i don't know what pets you have running around right now maybe your favorite fictional character or i don't know any any sort of interesting tidbit about yourself so go ahead i'll start with steven hey president uh salt lake city utah and that's the tidbit also [Laughter]
002all right um jennifer hi jennifer present um i'm here in ann arbor and [Music] um i know missy because i get to be an a20 collaborator i'm super thrilled that you're here to talk to us tonight um i am betting that i am the only one of this group that has been certified to coach olympic weightlifting wow right wow all right allen you followed that up i'm alan haber in the enchanted forest on third street on the old west side ann arbor michigan bamboo it is and i just came from the uh the uh ambassador's uh program in uh gala park so i galloped over along with missy so it's been a busy day and right before that the powwow had its debriefing so i'm catching my breath between here there and whatever is next
003all right thank you all right sarah oh sarah's not here today sarah is officiating a wedding so that's right interesting tidbit of the day all right um jeffrey i'm jeff heny uh from ann arbor and uh i'm a professor of sustainability and economics so that might be of some interest at clear university thank you all right camilo hi i'm camilla i'm calling from the city of ann arbor um i am a urban planning graduate student and my fun fact is i'm graduating in 23 days congratulations nice all right rita i'm rita mitchell from speaking from ann arbor and i am a member of the environmental commission and the um recently named a2 pollinator network and um i give points to anyone who can name the flower that's behind me is it trillium no i won't
004do it for too long this is called dutchman's breeches it's a very early spring ephemeral and look at that big bumble bee it's one of the um early blooming plants and and queen bumble bees need early pollen and that's one of the plants they go for and they shake it out of the flower it's very cool wow called buzz pollination very nice all right alice well i can't beat that but i'm alice ralph i'm attending here in ann arbor on east stadium boulevard i have five lanes of traffic in front of me um but um i am i guess i'm an archetype and i've been involved with many civic issues for some time including most notably the tree line as originally called the ann arbor greenway and also um the city of the center of
005the city since you know 15 years ago um so um looking forward to having an ev vehicle sometimes thanks alright we've got frank up next uh frank wilhelm from the fifth ward uh many uninteresting things that i've done i um on the historic district commission most of these things were half a century ago i got busy with my career at the university the ross school of business um still playing hockey i think i'm wavering now whether i'm going to continue that but we can go offline later if you want to know anything else missing actually missy called me out at a at a initiating committee meeting i i was valley healing my age and she said she doesn't cut any any any of the older folks any slack so i have to i have to
006really step up from here on in that that gave me some backbone thank you nice all right adam uh adam zemke calling in uh from the fifth ward as well although probably a different precinct than frank um and uh missy it's good to see you again and um engage in a different role so thanks for being here and then we've got mr dahony who i know you know missy but we're doing roll call mr de honey so you need to say that you're here and where you're calling in from uh milton dehoney i'm here in ann arbor thank you and councilmember briggs yep erica briggs here in city of ann arbor um the fun fact i guess for me today was that i was working to overcome my fear of riding with clipless pedals as
007much as i like to bike um i generally do not clip in um and so that's what i was working on because i'm doing a bike trip from grand junction to moab in late may and i probably will need them so wow yeah that's quite a ride did you flip on over or did i'll report on that next month cool all right lisa i'm lisa dish of ward 1 representative ann arbor i am in my basement with my dried hydrangeas which were a gift from my mother in a 125 year old croc wow very cool all right and that's everybody thank you all right thanks heather you want to state a fun fact about yourself since uh we all uh had the opportunity oh gosh i forget that this is a group that turns my
008icebreakers back around and i never prepare for it um i don't know fun fact for me um gosh i don't know i just took a trip to new orleans how about that that's that's still on my mind i've still got a little bit of afterglow happening with that one that was a i had never been to that city and it was really it's really a great experience well i i think you'll have to learn how to say new orleans yeah we're working on that still yes yeah i should have said it's my birthday today that's probably the most trivial thing i can think of were we supposed to give a fun fact about ourselves is that what the question was yeah it's so nice to get to know members but yes i'd love to hear
009a fun fact from you if you've got one you asked i did ask um probably right around um 1999 when i was deputy mayor of louisville kentucky i got to have dinner with muhammad ali and three or four other people when we were planning the creation of the muhammad ali center which is now open in louisville if you you ever go there and for for me um a kid that grew up in louisville and saw him uh you know through the years it was a thrill of my life to sit beside him i have a picture of the two of us and it's just fantastic yeah that's great that's amazing yeah wow cool well uh with that uh can we have we have a very busy agenda tonight uh so if we could move through
010these things as quick as possible that would be uh really good first thing up is the approval of the of the agenda uh heather sent out a link to the agenda on legistar earlier today are there any questions or could we have a motion to approve the agenda did did we receive it earlier um i i have it but i i'm surprised that we would only have seen it today it was posted it was posted on legislator last week but i thought i should send out another link today so that people know where to find it okay any questions at all about the items for tonight i greatly appreciate that it was sent out is is item uh 11 recommendations report we were to have on the agenda our annual advice to the city council
011that is coming up is that what that item is yes that's correct there's uh there's a couple of items we're going to take uh really do some deeper work on tonight in addition to hearing from dr stoltz and others but there's uh the parks advisory commission report that we're going to provide to parks i'm going to start talking about that tonight and we are going to talk about what we want to report on to city council tonight as well thank you erica yeah i just um was hoping that maybe we could just move um dr stoltz's update before member news and updates just to respect your time tonight i have no objection to that [Music] could we get a motion to amend the or to adopt the agenda as i move to adopt the agenda
012as amended all right all right we got a motion second uh all in favor say aye all right opposed all right excellent uh so we have the agenda as amended um let's go ahead and move on to uh approval of the minutes from last meeting they are in the agenda any questions at all about the minutes and if not can we have a motion motion to approve the minutes all right second seconded by frank uh excellent all in favor say aye all right hi can you pose saying all right motion carries um with that we have public comment uh heather do we have any members of the public we do and we have a hand raised at some phone number ending with three to six so i'm allowing you to talk right now if you'd
013like to go ahead hello this is jeff crocker can you all hear me you can yeah great okay my fun fact is i started uh playing in uh recreational softball starting in 1975 uh in the city leagues and morphed over playing at leslie park for many years with the same group of guys and as a result of that i have no ego left so i just want you to know that that's where i'm at which which prepares me greatly for this statement tonight and i sent this statement to heather and you may or may not have gotten it because i sent it late but my name is jeff crockett and i am calling from 506 east kingsley and i'm a member of the initiating committee and i'm the leader of the green team which has
014been developing a community garden on plot b3 it has been there at three and it's been three and a half years since voters passed proposition a and in late december city council passed resolution r dash 19-569 a resolution of support the city center of the city interim use and long-term planning for the center of the city library lot property one of the resolved clauses of that was resolve that the city and the downtown development authority will coordinate to implement the center of the city charter amendment with a focus on interim changes to the use of the street level surface of the library lane parking structure and liberty plaza to occur beginning july the 1st 2020 that's quite a long time ago and in my opinion there's really no excuse for delaying the removal of parking
015one day longer one of the most curious aspects though the activation of the commons is the absence of data about parking vacancy rates at the library lot parking structure so last friday i said okay i'm going to go ahead and start to collect some so i started to collect some data and as it turns out it's fairly easy because there's an lcd screen on a post-it library lane indicates the vacancies so today for example the parking lot vacancy was 581 yeah got that right 581 there are 744 parking spots in the entire complex that meant that there were 163 cars parked in the lot today except for april the 2nd during the hash bash the parking vacancy rates varied from 575 to 595. i was very surprised and you may be too i had no
016idea that the vacancy rates were so high and on april 1st i went down to the different levels and found that level 3 3 and 4 for example were completely vacant i was really surprised so it seems pretty clear that the dda needs to be asked to provide longer term data and to learn when the last time was that the library lot parking structure was filled with capacity the bottom line is this clearly the removal of 32 parking spots on ground level can easily be accommodated by vacant underground parking spots and it should be easily it should easily accommodate a common common storage facility on level four and it is worth noting that the library square already has a storage facility in place on level four please work with the dda to remove parking as
017soon as possible the voters have waited long enough thank you for your consideration chef any other members of the public wishing to speak heather yep uh robert black go ahead you hear me heather yeah yes all right thank you very much uh just a fun fact for you guys too as a principal of sun structures architects on the corner of forth and liberty for 30 years one of the early early 1980s art fair meetings is we ventured out onto the street on a friday with a bunch of sidewalk chalk and began what i believe is the very first chalk the park experience that happened in liberty plaza and around the downtown anyway that's a piece of history i can't go back as far as frank does but that's a good one so um a couple
018of comments about the past progress on the center of the city is growing well your work this past year is showing great results you are building alignment together fueling common purpose your working groups are effective especially the comparable communities results you are beginning the block partners outreach and it's very good but two key players need to be engaged as soon as possible in our district library and first martin corporation they will change the vector of this project dramatically their involvement is critical the rfi that you sent out although you got only two responses has given you a broad spectrum of ideas to consider as you advise the city on sending out an rfp for professional services and i really appreciate the public feedback that's forming both from mr crockett and from letters like kitty khan
019and libby brooks i would hope that more and more people get engaged to comment on this process the initiating committee has is which i'm a part of with uh mr crockett and others has been a great ally in supporting the center of the city work especially as a driving force to plan prepare and carry out activating events like the fun art and food art and nutrition event last year to activate the kind of recommendations it's creating a dynamic public spirit capturing public sentiment and feedback and kudos to mr crockett to odile and alan and others for the green team uh rita and others chad monfreda for growing the garden in there as a metaphor for the commons it's really working people are becoming engaged and that blossoming garden will be a an example for you
020in the future the initiating committee's plans for earth day you should check out i know leslie science center has some amazing events i was one of the architects that created the science center out there the lab you know the broader engagement of the city government will happen at the earth day event including dr stoltz will be speaking about 8-2-0 and osi um you'll hear from city council candidates the public conversation is growing uh there are important diverse speakers on key topics like the green brick road indigenous peoples public power climate lobby student actions and much more but my favorite thing is matt altruda coming in from sonic lunches and his backing by the bank of ann arbor to bring more music beyond liberty plaza and out into the heart of the city the drumming that
021will come that i've worked with this person drumming and matt's work with the bands he's bringing together are going to really create a beautiful spirit that will drive other events this year so you have an ambitious agenda tonight i wish you respectful and attentive dialogues with each other geared toward aligned and purposeful actions as a new spring starts to blossom in ann arbor and especially in its center of the city heart good luck and have fun you robert anyone else no one else with their hand raised all right in that case we will close public comment uh and move into uh the update uh from the office of sustainability and innovations uh and turn the floor over to uh dr staltz dr stultz thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me
022it is so delightful to be with you all tonight in this virtual space that we are sharing i appreciate a little bit of your time i'm gonna take you on a whirlwind adventure so get excited strap in or flail the hands whatever you need to do because here we go just uh to kind of start us off how many of you via show of hands have heard of something called a sustainable energy utility anyone well we're gonna talk about it uh so let me let me take you back in time in january city council adopted a resolution that asked the city to look at a lot of different options to meet our a20 carbon neutrality and equity goals and uh some of those pathways include looking at traditional municipalization looking at things like virtual power
023purchase agreements i could throw accurate inside you all day there's a lot of acronyms in the energy system but one of the things that we proposed was exploring a sustainable energy utility and council directed the city to move forward with getting public feedback on this concept and you are the first that we are coming to out of the lineup to start talking about this so i just want to take a few minutes and tell you a little bit about the sustainable energy utility in the hopes uh as leaders of our community you feel comfortable talking to your friends and neighbors so we can start registering much more public feedback is this a good idea what do we like what do we not like should we pursue it should we not pursue it so no obligation
024to move forward but i'm hoping by the end of this conversation you are so jazzed any way you need to be jazzed that you're ready to talk to people uh about a sustainable energy utility so i'm going to take you through a very short presentation you ready for a journey here we go let's go all right i just forgive me i'm not i'm going to go off camera because i'm looking at a different screen and this is going to be bonkers for all of us so i am with you here we go can you see the slides first yep okay great still see them in full screen which screen is sharing you can't because it's sharing in the wrong side well that's painful we're gonna fix this do you love technology it's really delightful when
025it works and it's painful and it doesn't all right let's try again [Music] it has been hard to check well monkey this is not going to work for me here we go we're just going to do it can you see now yep all right i'm dead in the water so i can't see it so i'm gonna hope that i'm up uh just for funsies are you seeing the introductory side are you seeing emissions my source we're seeing them oh go ahead i was just we're seeing michigan energy contacts third slide down you're not saying no i'm sorry it's uh yeah third no right now we're on the front yep we're in there okay great and are you seeing it in side view this is painful y'all i really am not this tragic normally uh are
026you seeing notes uh yes we are yeah this is tragedy my boss is on the line and it's just not looking good here so melt and close your eyes we're going to try this again all right that's my view here we go friends promise not to read the notes if that's how you have to go yeah it's any calculation they're too small to read yeah yeah but that's just like silly all right we're gonna blow it up and we'll just play here we go we'll make it we'll make it look like it's real all right so i am super excited to be here to tell you a little bit about the proposed sustainable energy utility which is uh modeled to be 100 clean reliable locally built and community owned power so just to lay a
027little bit of context about uh why this is important we have as i heard i i know almost all of you so i know that you know we have a goal in our community of being carbon neutral in a just an equitable way by the year 2030 known as a20 and guiding that work is uh an understanding of what our emissions profile actually looks like and here locally 40 of our emissions come from our built uh the electricity used in our built environment we also know that our buildings when you look at the energy we use to heat and cool them use two-thirds of the emissions or emit two-thirds of the emissions that come from our community we're also working to electrify and so uh whether that's our vehicles or whether that's our building stock
028and so doing what we can to make sure the electricity that actually flows and powers our life is clean reliable and and resilient is really really important it's a key part of the work that we're doing as is working towards this idea of a just transition i just want to share a little bit about michigan's energy context with you because i think this is important to understanding uh what we can and cannot oh that's funsies what we can and cannot do uh locally just one second you may know uh this is a little bit wonky uh but you may know that michigan has what uh is called the foot act and for the purposes of the city of ann arbor we signed a franchise agreement to provide power provided to our community in 1902 and
029that predates the foot act what there's a lot of history here and i'm not going to belabor it i can direct you to more information if you'd like to dive in but basically what ended up happening this has been tested in in the courts is that uh our franchise pre-foot act is in perpetuity so we can't you sometimes hear stories uh of minneapolis how they negotiated a franchise agreement they got better terms and conditions we can't negotiate our franchise dte its predecessor but now dt has the right to serve our community in perpetuity there's the news uh here's the positive the michigan constitution protects the rights of cities and villages to create their own municipal utility and this can be done by either a taking uh aka condemnation and a buyout of an incumbent utility
030in their infrastructure or via the creation of a supplemental utility now today every community that has started their own municipal electric utility within michigan with the last being zealand which formed in 1902 has done so through uh initial startup they didn't have to take because they started it themselves and that sort of makes sense because you can imagine it's really expensive to buy out and incumbent utilities infrastructure it's also really expensive to stand up parallel poles and wires that run adjacent and that's what you would traditionally have had to do if you created a supplemental utility so what do we do well what if what if we created that supplemental or complementary utility that was community owned that provides electricity from local solar and battery storage systems installed in homes and businesses in our community
031and what if that community owned utility provided 100 clean reliable locally built and affordable electricity built right here in our community by our community this utility would give residents a choice for where they procure their energy a choice that we don't have today and this parallel utility would not duplicate the traditional grid with all of its vulnerabilities but focus on generating new clean reliable power now and that is a vision of a sustainable energy utility as envisioned as sustainable energy utility would focus we call it an sau for short so hence the acronym you'll see a lot would focus on generating local clean energy energy that would feed directly into our homes businesses places of worship community centers and this clean energy would be paired with storage to help improve improve energy reliability and offered
032in conjunction with things like deep energy waste reduction programs to help our residents lower their energy costs and usage all while improving comfort the concept of an seo is grounded in choice providing all of us in ann arbor another way to procure a large portion of our energy one that's coming again from clean local reliable and resilient power sources y'all are doing great you're about halfway done already uh as we uh designed and conceptualized seu what is important is it would enable a lot more people to get the benefit of things like solar and it would do this by directly paying for the installation of solar systems on residential and business roofs carports ground-mounted systems uh you know open space where it makes sense and is viable for one reason or another and what's important
033in this model is residents wouldn't be the owners an individual resident wouldn't be the owner of that solar system the public or the sustainable energy utility would residents would then subscribe to purchase their energy at a rate that's based on the cost of installing that system and the su's operational needs they would pay a cost from that system or from their neighbors system that's installed on their road for their neighbor's roof if all the residents power needs are met the excess generation from that solar system flows into a battery this means that residents could still have power if the big traditional grid goes down so this is supplemental this means you could actually have two providers of power with the seo providing the vast majority of the power to our community through clean reliable sources
034here's the good news what i just said it's already possible today i already do it today at my house right i already have a solar and storage system i just happen to own that system but in this model the sustainable energy utility or the public would own that system additionally the seo would not be limited by current utility restrictions that constrain solar system sizes or the amount of solar that's allowed on the grid you may know this as the one percent cap which is something that we're working hard to push to push against ideally make completely and totally go away instead the seo would seek to maximize the amount of solar that we have using all the viable sunny roof space and over time we are working to figure out how we would connect all
035these solar systems into microgrids meaning that we really literally are sharing power with each other the su could also offer robust energy waste reduction programs thereby helping people lower demand and improve their comfort these services would be available to anyone that participates in the seo that you don't have to get solar to participate in those kinds of programs uh we could have lots of opt out in services and ultimately the goal here we all know the the goal is to have improved comfort to reduce our bills to save energy to adjust the climate crisis to make sure equity is centered in this work and what's super neat is that the seo allows us to offer those programs through something called on bill finance onboard finance is exactly what it says uh the sau through that
036mechanism is able to pay the upfront cost of these improvements energy efficiency or even electrification upgrades and residents pay those costs back through their utility bill over time and this allows the cost of the improvements to stay with the home as opposed to the resident right so that helps reduce the upfront costs to make these kinds of improvements and because this is a public utility we can amortize those costs over longer periods of time working to get as close to parity and ideally savings through these kinds of improvements and what i mean by that is if adam invests five thousand dollars in a new system and we can work with him to pay that back over seven years and make sure that the payment is equivalent to his savings so that he has no change
037in bill or ideally the payment is less than the savings he's actually gonna get therefore he actually reduces his bill makes an improvement gets more comfortable uh and is oh by the way helping to address the climate crisis so that's one of the really powerful things about this tool is it opens up opportunity to a lot more people uh that can traditionally invest in some of the more costly upfront kinds of things many of us uh are doing to address climate change this is also true for beneficial electrification which is here just want to flag that same mechanism i just talked about for energy efficiency it applies there so why um i know that i just give you a lot to digest but i just want to reiterate the core concept that we're unpacking uh
038through an su which is the creation of a community owned utility that focuses on generating local clean reliable energy fast it's about leveraging existing technologies and practices solar and storage to reduce emissions quickly while improving reliability it's about ensuring all anarbrites have access to solutions to improve comfort reduce their bills and reap the benefits of the clean energy economy that is the core and i just want to end by sharing a few examples of what this could look like in practice just to kind of help uh drive well drive is a bad word bike this home ha ha so first example this would be a homeowner or a business that has good solar potential but doesn't have the capital ability interest whatever it might be to install solar on the roof in this case the
039individual would subscribe or enroll in the seu as a supplemental utility to dte the scu would work with that homeowner or business to conduct a needs assessment identifying potential energy waste reduction opportunities electrification opportunities really maximize the solar design on their so their system that homeowner or business identifies what opportunities they want to move forward with they have the option of financing them through the onboard finance program and then we work with them to try to create the right financing package to make sure that it is really really viable for them to make those payments and of course once those payments are paid off the resident gets the full benefit of all of the improvements right so while that's also happening we're installing solar on the roof the seo is the residents continue to pay
040their bill as they always have they pay per usage kilowatt hour of usage and they're paying per kilowatt of our usage they draw from that solar system if that solar system produces more power than they draw then that is feeding into a battery that they're pulling energy from if the power goes down and eventually that excess power is moving into the microgrid helping power their neighbors home who may not be able to have solar because they have glorious glorious trees that we want to protect in the system if the solar system doesn't produce enough energy they're drawing from dte because that is still a power supply that they have so in this way they have two bills they're paying ideally the majority of their bill from the seu and the renewable energy power that's coming
041from their roof and whatever else they might need is being pulled from dt so that's one example second example uh a resident or business wants to to move forward but that roof for any number of reasons just cannot handle solar so we work with them to understand what energy waste reduction and beneficial uh electrification opportunities make sense the individual we do that same assessment they customize that assessment figure out what improvements they want to make we make those improvements they amortize them and pay them back over a period of time have they having the option of going to the private market or using on bill finance to make that a little bit more digestible and they could register to join the micro or nano grid as soon as uh deadly people in their neighborhood sign
042up for the seo so as soon as we have enough energy in that system in that region we can we can have them be connected to the seo and actually procure literal electrons to power their home this individual also received two bills but the difference is the one bill from the seu is for the on bill finance should they choose to use it the other is from dte for the actual electrons that they're pulling until the se microgrid gets stood up you're doing great almost done a third example is a resident who already has solar on their home or business in this case the resident would still be able to take advantage of all that energy waste reduction and benefit beneficial electrification programming i talked about before and the seo could still enroll in the
043seo for a battery if they currently don't have one but they can also enroll in the seo to sell their excess power to the utility we are working on the modeling right now the goal is to get as close as possible to net metering right the true value of that energy getting that individual compensated at that that rate because that energy is going to flow to their neighbor right and it's going to be shared throughout the system and that's how we make sure that everyone to the extent that we can can have access to this renewable energy system two more examples to finish out a fourth is a multi-family rental in this case the seou would work closely with the landlord property owner as well as the tenants to customize solutions that meet the individual
044needs different units might have very different needs the entire building might have similar needs so we've got to really do everything we did before just at a different scale rentals are eligible for every single offering that we have through the program and what's sort of neat is we've been working on green leases in our office but when you pair uh that or just by itself on bill financing we address a lot of the uh the tension in the landscape that exists between who makes the improvements and who reaps the benefits of the improvements in rental units and that's really powerful and a way to kind of address that disincentive and we've been talking to various landlords and property owners about this and what we can do uh to make sure that the seo really supports
045them in this landscape so this is all viable within the rental market and actually helps correct some of the problems that we're facing now with uh the disconnect between renters and women's and then the last example is of community solar it the truth is in some cases individuals are not going to have access to on-site renewable energy generation in these cases we would be working on off-site solar in common areas very close to a region that just doesn't have good solar potential for whatever the reason might be that could be the common areas could be things like parking lots school rooftops parks uh shared places it could be a community center and in that case the individual subscribes to take a portion of their energy to help power their life their business whatever it might
046be from that community solar asset in this way anyone in the community can participate in the seo even if they don't own their own home they don't have great solar potential they're here for just a blink of an eye but they can still be part of this movement and in this way individuals that subscribe uh for whatever amount they subscribe to to the system how many other kilowatts they get the benefit of those kilowatts and they pay for those kilowatts so that's how we sort of slice and dice uh this example so those are just a few um i am at the end examples of how the sau could work i know this was really fast and furious just want to share if you'd like to learn more there are videos there's really detailed fact
047sheets there's uh really detailed trainings there's a lot of information on our website including the report that we drafted uh it's super simple a2gov.org backslash a2seu but if you are so kind you personally we would love you to go to the second bullet point and register your interest do you like it do you not like it what are you looking for in your energy system what don't you want in your energy system tell us if this is bonkers or if this lands for you and it's something you want to see your community invest in the survey launched today and we are excited to get feedback we would also appreciate as leaders in our community if you could share that this is now open and direct people to the website uh if you feel comfortable talking
048to them please do and if you don't and they have questions please send them to our send them to the email address in the third bullet point because we want to make sure that every resident has a chance to give us their opinion on whether or not this is a viable pathway that the city should be pursuing you made it uh so i guess i'll just say thank you for letting me take a little bit of time to tell you about the ant the proposed ann arbor sustainable energy utility which we envision as a clean reliable locally built and affordable way to power our community thank you [Music] thank you very much dr stultz is there uh are there any questions at all for missy uh alice i saw your hand up first can well
049before there's not a question i'm sorry heather um steven got kicked out and he's waiting in the waiting room [Music] he pinged me and asked me if i would let you know that he's uh caller o204 with his hand raised okay okay thank you sorry to interrupt nope you're fine uh alice you want to go yes i will um i take note of the fact that our meeting is now more than three quarters of an hour through our period of time um and i appreciate missy's uh rapid fire presentation uh however um the main question i have is um that i would like to know now that we've heard so much about the seuss um how missy might see the relationship between the make between making a place at the center of our city and
050achieving the goals of e20 or maybe more specifically the establishment of a supplemental community utility and uh establishing a place at the center of the city um i you know i appreciate your compliment to us those leaders among those in the city but um you're here at our meeting and i would like to know um how uh an seo might benefit our processor how it is related to what we are doing here at this committee yeah well so intentionally i mean we are going to every boarding commission because you are leaders in the community so i want to name that that is part of the objective right that you are a voice that people listen to and an opportunity just to share these are ways to get involved and share your opinion within the community
051in terms of your specific question uh there are limitless ways that we could talk about activating the comments to align with sustainability which i i think and i hope is one of the core values of our community it could be as simple as a kiosk that demonstrates all of the renewable energy that we are generating in our community and the value and the benefit that that has for all of us in the shared space it could be demonstrations of renewable energy in that space so people can interact with it and feel it and see it and understand how it actually functions and benefits us it could be a physical manifestation of the sustainability that we want to see throughout the rest of our community i think that there's no limit to what's possible i think
052without without making it sound uh too fluffy i've been talking to lots of people that want to have this conversation about what's the limit of our imagination of what we want this to be i have too many ideas that you don't want to hear about how we could activate that space but i would love to have a sidebar conversation with you anytime you would like to have one about what's possible in that space i think the limit is what we can imagine thank you are any other questions at all from for missy jeff oh yes first of all wonderful presentation and i'm really excited about this uh that you're doing this i think it's really important to do it i've always been very uncomfortable about our being so dependent on dte and uh um just
053a a very brief technical question do we have the battery technology currently to be able to actually do this because it's my you know i know that elon musk and all the rest of them are building all these wonderful systems and what have you but battery is still a problem i mean it's expensive still and there's there's a ways to go as far as i can see uh to to make it really you know sustainable and reliable maybe i'm not up to date but can you just speak to that the answer is the word storage rather than that yep yep good question so the the answer is yes and no that battery technology has and is changing so fast we're seeing alternative forms of storage you know there's lithium ion we're testing lots of other
054things things are already at market other materials that are fabulous you know conductors and stores of energy sources uh in the residential market that we have we have really good options around storage so thinking about an individual home the first phase of the su that solar and storage we have no concerns whatsoever commercial batteries are being deployed in a lot of other areas like in the southwest in california at scale we're not quite i would say ready to deploy a large number of commercial batteries yet we're still doing our learnings in that landscape but that's okay because that we can do a whole lot with that first system of residential batteries before we have to get to a commercial system that sort of allows for for that microgriding phase so yes and no if that
055makes sense sure thank you good question uh rita you're up next you're on me arena sorry um thanks missy um i'm interested in knowing the proportion that you anticipate the seu to provide of the energy total in the community and i realize that the total is a variable kind of thing and could expand over time so but if you can give some sense of what the expectations are for this i'd appreciate it yeah thank you it's an excellent question so we worked with google to do some analysis of the viability of ann arbor only looking at rooftop so we never looked at any ground-mounted spaces because it was just easier to to kind of take roofs from that uh initial assessment right now our community uses 400 roughly 440 megawatts on average of energy our
056rooftop assessment showed if we maximized those roofs we're at 400 megawatts so uh we can actually go much further than we thought no i want to name we're talking about electrification too right so demand will change so we'll we'll be increasing load we'll be doing hopefully much more energy efficiency which will bring that down a little bit um and this doesn't include geothermal which is something we're also piloting so the goal is to make solar which is what i primarily talked about because that's what we are ready to run at uh the first phase and then district geothermal where we share geothermal systems within neighborhoods handle the the heating and cooling load primarily which then lessens the demand we have to have on those solar systems being dispatched great is the proportion are you saying
057it's near 100 you're making me do math on the spot i feel like it's close well you said you said four we're we're using we're 440 and we have estimated 400. yeah so that's pretty close it's not terrible uh but it is marginal you know like it the way i think about that is it's using all of the viable solar that we have adam's roof or rita your roof maybe your roof is glorious and you could do 120 but uh jeffrey's roof really has some shade and it's like marginal whether it would be a payback if he did it by himself in the seo model we would do it because we would need it does that make sense so that's in the 400 you're saying that the the scu would purchase the panels and place
058them and go for the electricity it could i mean that's i wouldn't say i'm not going to say we would do it because we don't have a utility we haven't set policy i can't tell you we would do that what i can say is in the 400 modeling we modeled that 30 and the last thing i wanted to share is that's assuming the technology we have of panels today and what they produce right panels are getting much much more efficient and so it is likely that that number i gave you will only be better as panels are capable of turning more solar into actual energy production over time thank you i'm sorry i got technical i'm sorry that's all right uh alan you're up next yes great great report yeah i love to see the
059center of the city be a model for all these designs particularly though you made a brief mention of geothermal when the development of the center of the city was first put out as an rfp they asked proposed developers are you interested in geothermal because they're they're digging down there 300 feet or something and so is that existing big hole in the ground a potential for geothermal development that could be economically useful for the library for the building that has been created next door as well as for the commons area itself has that been examined in your plans at all yet not yet and i'll say that is an excellent question that i don't know the answer to and i'm gonna i'm gonna stick to i don't know because i want to try to answer it
060but i don't know thank you i don't see any other hands raised um so in that case uh missy we really appreciate you being here i appreciate the presentation i assume we can uh i don't know if the slides are actually i don't think they are on the agenda so we can get a copy of this website right now excellent thank you so much thank you everyone have a great night thank you for your service nice evening yep bye-bye thank you all right um and in that case we'll move into uh member updates i would just ask because we are at 7 56 if there's any way we can forego any member updates if they if they're covered in other items on the agenda that would be to our benefit there any other member updates
061knowing that okay um in that case um oh alan sorry i didn't see your hand raised go ahead yeah well i do want to update that we're continuing to work on the earth days beginning now in two weeks i'll send out the current program to everyone but i had i spoke at the dda yesterday and i raised what is i think an important question for us the dda parking contract is expiring and they're making a new contract we were told that the difficulty of getting cars off was because there's an existing contract with republic parking for the cars that contract is actually contrary to the proposal a that says this land should be developed as a central park and civic center commons and the new contract that is being negotiated what state it is in
062i don't know should not have to not be contrary to the city code and i think we should be attentive somehow that the new contract does not reproduce a appropriation of the surface for parking that is part of the old contract that should not be in the new contract and i hope that we can find some way to uh highlight to insist to ring the bell or whatever my correspondence isn't speaking at the dda has not raised any response to that but it seems a very relevant question in terms of making this space accessible for activation all right excellent um if there's nothing else we'll move out of member updates and move into some of the work group updates the first is comparable communities and i don't know if frank or rita would like to
063talk uh about the plymouth uh description that was put forward peter i think you're muted i am i am enough now uh we did talk about this last time but i will just uh say that plymouth was a very positive discussion with paul sincock who has been the city manager for oh my gosh maybe 30 years um and he is very proud of the um kellogg park that's in the center of of plymouth it has a brand new fountain that was funded by a local philanthropic group it is booked almost constantly and has he and his staff work constantly to book and cover the you know charge for the expenses of use of the space for those that use it uh it does have an on-site bathroom that has some uh management it has hours
064it has external cameras for safety etc but in general when he um reported a survey that was done by eastern michigan university recently the um community assessment of this space was astoundingly positive and i think that the percentage was 60 and plus so that's that's what i recall so that's the fastest i think i can do but they do have their busy busy busy all the time and they even have remote display of their activities so that people could be at home and check out what's going on downtown sounds kind of fun thank you rita excellent summary frank you want to add something to it uh just uh to echo uh read his comments and uh to mention uh i think many of us uh know that we've had an additional engagement and conversation with
065folks in royal oak uh about a wonderful new central park uh as we get multiple conversations under our belt we we start to see some commonalities and one that jumped out early on and continues three for three plymouth detroit and royal oak is the active and very positive involvement of the dda in each of those communities and i'm still personally baffled a bit why we don't have uh more common purpose with the dda on on this project but we we don't but i'm i continue to be hopeful um and it it's uh it's just in these other communities it's it's it's a checkbook time too uh the dda in royal oak uh you know uh contributed uh around a million dollars check me on that number uh adam but for a a new front to
066the library uh coincidentally the library fronts right onto this park park in royal oak and you know our dda i think i reported months ago about this when you look at the early planning documents of our dda in ann arbor there is very positive comment about the priority for open space and and park space in the downtown as a priority so i'm hopeful that with new leadership at the dda and growing interest throughout the community uh in this project which we can talk about as as the agenda moves on that we'll uh we'll see more commonality and more uh shared purpose here to get get this firmly established it being the center of the city thank you thanks frank uh alice yeah and just um just to reinforce what frank was saying um our the
067resolution of 2019 which um lays out some of the basic purposes of our group as well as the goals um specifically mentions the dda and a couple of other important relationships and it seems like we have a great deal of interest in developing that relationship in almost an essential one as well as fulfilling the results of that resolution passed in 2019 unanimously by the by that city council so i just wanted to mention that thank you thanks ellis um with that we'll move into the the next update i think that is from the block partners um and i know that uh i actually missed this meeting this morning uh but jen i think was on if i recall correctly jen do you want to uh highlight a little bit about this discussion i volunteered as
068tribute and but i'll make it really fast because i can do black partners and short-term activation at the same time um jeff was on the meeting this morning on um the black partners group and i think we sort of have a sense that the original survey that was you know circulated and you know discussed previously and you know parks raised some objections too and um sort of this the start and then stop of the short-term activation group a lot of it um hinged on um discussions that were going on led by mr dehone around issues at liberty plaza challenges and opportunities um so i think that what we really realized was that there's probably an opportunity for short-term activation and black partners to work together and to really think of ways that we can engage
069the community including state street association main street association etcetera and revising basically revising the survey that we had asked about you know who would have interest in doing activation specifically at liberty plaza you know would they need the whole footprint then we would bring in the library lot but you know immediately what could we do at liberty plaza who would have interest in activating that space um and really engaging them in the process that way um and getting their ideas so that we could sort of present as part of recommendations that we would make to counsel um you know these various stakeholders these various block partners are interested in being part of this here are some ideas that they have generated around making the space activated useful and um a place where people want to
070come and and actually enjoy the center of the city um so i think our recommendation would be to work more closely together but really to sort of follow the lead of the group that mr tohone had had brought together in order to um address some of the challenges that are happening there and what opportunities might lie and the reason one of the reasons why we talked about liberty plaza specifically is that you know there's like electricity there it's easier to pull a permit for the park versus to clear parking there were there were several things that we discussed but to really get a read on that from the black partners and community stakeholders as to um how that space might fit what they envision as being a lively place for um you know activation and
071activities within the community and jeff if i missed anything please let me know or you know adam yesterday from our conversation if there's anything i left out well you did very well thank you good that's excellent thank you um and i'll give a little bit of an update around the rfp and if other folks who are uh part of that uh process please feel free to chime in we did have just a first discussion of the rfp working group um yesterday and uh i think that uh we you know heather had outlined in her email to everyone um on the council around sort of what the standard process is for an rfp for the city we're going to follow that process we're going to utilize the uh the uh engagement of the working group potentially
072some additional outside stakeholders as well as a feedback tool uh and so we we kicked off and heather is going to start working with the parks department staff uh given that the uh overlapping jurisdiction uh including liberty plaza and the uh library lot as one uh redevelopment um plan and so uh she's gonna work on those things and uh then we're gonna get back together after she's got a first draft um she's gonna utilize a lot of the um center of the city task force work to guide uh the scope of that first draft uh and offered up any other uh the opportunity to supply additional comments to her that we may that we may do and so i think it's going to be a good process you know as i mentioned in my previous
073email this committee is going to have some opportunity to put some eyes on as well afterwards but the working group process is working well uh in the other spots and so we thought it would be the most timely way to engage this so i'd say it's a good first discussion and we look forward to the work that heather and the park staff is putting forward all right um that concludes our uh standing uh working group updates um uh or the next agenda item is the arpa funding for liberty plaza and i think we can uh probably give a thanks to uh council member dish and briggs uh i didn't look at the vote count but i'm gonna go out on a limb on that one uh and uh and i talked a little bit about
074that and i'll certainly open up the floor to mr dahony as well if you'd like to comment i just wanted to make some comments uh as well i did have the opportunity to participate in the first working group meeting that mr dahony put together and around improving situations at liberty plaza and making sure that safety is paramount there and i think it was a really constructive dis discussion and in that discussion uh the uh this hundred thousand dollars uh that that was approved by council uh of upper funding was brought up as a as a way of paying for a number of uh ideas that i think really have uh are are going to be developed i would say it didn't feel like things were finalized there but it was all addressing public safety and
075encouraging positive interaction in the in uh liberty plaza and uh and not pushing folks out uh who are there but but being welcoming and constructive um and uh dealing with um any uh uh trash or uh things that are that are left in the park making sure that it's clean making sure that there is an opportunity to positively program uh the park um making sure that uh that programming is community-wide you know engages non-profits like avalon housing or um or governmental entities like dhhs also uh could include things um regarding expungement or opportunities um uh if there are minor um minor uh offenses where folks uh could come and engage the mobile courtroom through the prosecutor's office so there's there's a lot of ideas being floated i didn't get the impression that anything was off
076the table but i think it was a really good first discussion from my perspective and i'm pleased to be part of it i know that mr dahony was going to work on scheduling another one but wanted to make sure that council was supportive of uh putting forward the arpa funding request i was glad to see that that happened and um and so i i'm looking forward to to future discussions and so that's the one thing i just want to add about the arpa funding and certainly happy to take any questions i'm sure that our two council members may have quite uh uh may want to say anything too they mean they probably know far more about this than i do frankly but um but um you know i i i'm i'm pleased with our direction
077here and i'm happy to open the floor if i see alice has her hand up um there might be others alice go ahead once again um i i do appreciate the the efforts to address the issues at liberty plaza because they are that is a very important component the center of the city and i'm just not that clear as to how the the intersectionality and the application of funds to liberty plaza might be also beneficial to the overall project i'd like that not to be uh carried in isolation i think we should really be looking at integrating the and what we learned from that at least in in other projects and not just leave them hanging as one isolated part of the development of the center city definitely i i think that there's an overall
078thought process with insuring although i don't think that the arpa funding is really um thought to be you know planning uh resources but i think that the overall thought is to try and uh um you know as we build out this long-term plan make sure that we're working together so i i would say certainly the immediate thoughts are more on dealing with some of the issues that could cause safety um that are predominantly in liberty plaza almost exclusively in liberty plaza um but i i hear you on that and i think that i'll continue to beat that drum too uh as we have these discussions but i i didn't feel like that was uh either or sort of a philosophy by any means alan alan go ahead yeah you should be able to uh you're
079not muted i don't think at least thank you yeah i'm interested in this uh liberty positive focus group it has been uh much on my mind having spent a lot of time there alan you need to turn up your sound a bit yeah i'll get i'll get closer i got an old computer uh the element of development there that i consider most important is to give respect to the people who are the regular users and see a user's uh management group of some sort that involves the people who are sort of the regulars there as well as the immediate neighbors from first martin and also to find some uh support uh arrangement once the dda talked about downtown ambassadors i see the potential of interns from the school of social work people who are there
080to keep their eyes on what needs are and to actually engage that their population in in positive ways and to encourage their own self-management of the group i think that is the most important way to see that as a really vibrant place that is as it were self-managed by the users and i haven't seen that element of development discussed and it seems a most important element besides looking at the uh the police supervision there's a lot of when i am there many people tell me that that is a place where the police look where there is problems and also where the police overlook where there is problems you know i think that the giving some uh initiative and self-respect and management authority to the people who are regular users needs to be part of the
081stance of how do we develop that as a place that is uh wholesome and exciting i just want to keep putting that pebble in our ponds thank you for doing that alan appreciate it uh frank i guess i just want to piggyback on what alan said uh this the issues of liberty plaza uh are not unique to ann arbor i i'm aware of this these kinds of situations in other communities and i would hope that i don't know whose responsibilities it would be but i would hope that we would look at look at the best practices as a uh as it applies to this kind of situation and back to our comparable communities group we we did see especially on our site visit to detroit um would look like some very thoughtful effective management of
082of urban downtown uh parks and public spaces and so um i think there's probably some excellent templates out there for us to be aware of thank you definitely frank and i i appreciate the uh the reference too because i know that was a big part of the conversation detroit and um i'll take i'll definitely uh surface that in these discussions too uh councilman briggs i think had her hand up erica may have put her hand up first i think oh it's okay go ahead okay i was just gonna briefly say i think one of the big pieces that you know in response to comparable communities in detroit that city staff has been saying for quite some time and it has come up within um those earlier sort of meetings around liberty plazas is the need
083for for programming um successful urban spaces require programming to um to be healthy often when they're especially when they're having issues like this so this is something that parks staff has has noted for a long time in the pro's plan and something that i think mr tahoni has mentioned as well thank you erica um and rita thanks this is just another way to say kind of the same thing i do agree that programming is needed but i would really not want programming to be something that ends up pushing out people that are currently there so i do think that it's really something to be addressed carefully um and i think alan has mentioned some of the important points which i won't repeat so um that's my my concern is like we have people there let's
084take care of of each other there thanks thank you rita um unless there any other questions we can move on to the next agenda item and get into discussion around the parks advisory commission and so you know we received a request from uh park staff to present to a future parks advisory commission um meeting and uh not to put stephen on the uh oh actually we lost steven again yeah we lost him he was here by phone for a little while but now i'm not seeing him um i saw i think i saw him fall off rita you put your hand up i don't know if you wanted to you're muted uh yeah sorry um i did i just wanted to call out since we're in a sort of intermediate place um that one of
085the items was on our prior section was fundraising and we didn't touch that in our discussion oh you know what we did we didn't um we have not met again on that yet uh rita so i apologize all right thanks uh we did just add somebody is that stephen i think it's stephen stephen are you here hey it's please all right excellent yes i don't have anything to contribute at the moment i just i am in fact here excellent that's all right we didn't what we were just starting to talk about uh a report to the parks advisory commission and we noticed that you were you were absent and i didn't want to continue uh if we could grab you back on here so um you know i i this was uh this was done
086i think we had a very good discussion with park staff um and uh i think that the their request was that we come in and uh provide a uh an update on our work uh to the uh parks advisory commission and i think also talk about how we can work together um it seemed to be a very positive symbiotic approach is what i took away from that discussion and uh certainly i think from uh what heather's begun to indicate in the rfp development there's a strong desire to work together uh around that so i've uh you know i wanted to start the discussion i'd like to be able to get into the parks advisory commission and sometime in uh the next 30 to 60 days and so we wanted to check in here and and
087gather thoughts on strategy and then we can even uh even have an offline discussion or form a small working group of folks who would like to get together and and put together that presentation uh for the parks advisory committee i don't want to necessarily get into the actual meet of the presentation but ideas on what we should be talking about and strategy i think would be helpful and since i am not familiar with a pac meeting i'd like to have steven and i know we have a number of hands that just shot up here uh be able to comment uh on on next steps so eric i think you had stephen go first if you like and then we can have councilman briggs in the now on uh yeah great um and councilmember briggs is
088uh also familiar with the typical process i mean pac meets monthly um uh four o'clock in the in the afternoons at uh city hall or other you know online uh presence over the last couple of years but yeah i mean the pump is primed i mean the the committee is ready to hear more details about specifics and like what specific action items it should take up um and in the liaison role i do report back and have over the last several months to try to just give an overview as to what this group is doing uh in terms of then how we're breaking ourselves up into subcommittees and kind of tackling the the approach uh from that perspective so the the parks advisory commission is as it says in the title it's advisory we go
089tell city council what we think city council should do with regard to the expenditure of funds in the parks acquisition of lands to be used as parks or other natural areas we work closely with the super awesome parks staff to sort of who makes all those all those dreams come true uh but there's something whatever 160 parks uh in the city and they're all unique and awesome uh and programming those and kind of keeping that going is the that's the sort of the task of the parks advisory commission so for things like this it seems maybe most analogous to the um the skate park in vets park which all which should involve like a a non-profit that was focused on the success of this particular idea and having it go from an idea to reality
090and then the ongoing sort of maintenance and programming around that space we recently just um appropriate or asked for city to to go forward with funding for lighting uh for that space uh for the skate park which is the kind of thing that kind of goes you know goes forward from on the commission's perspective so with regard to this space obviously we're continuing to be in discussions with regard to library plaza i mean kemp's house is on the list of things that parks commission is sort of on the table but i don't recall it having specific discussions about programming there or expenditures there or other activities there for good or bad or one way or the other in the time that i've been on the commission the commission's got a lot of long timers on
091it it's not necessa the hotbed of revolution but it's uh you know going to be a positive um and certainly receptive organization to good ideas for what to do with this space sort of in the how can we help spirit so that's how i would see it and when and like they're certainly ready within the next month or two i anticipate there's room on the agenda uh to come in or whoever however however it's to be done to present the to present the ideas and what we but this group sees as the as the next part of that conversation so that's what i would say about it i know council member briggs probably has more additional points to bring to the to the discussion but that's yeah i hope it's helpful yeah i think that
092was a great overview of how of pac and i'm just a couple months into the into the commission as a council member liaison kind of what i heard from park staff was really wanting to get pac's insight into the rfp process and so steven's been doing a good job updating on kind of how what the commission is doing month by month but i think it might be important for that presentation to really focus in on where we're at in terms of getting information back from the rfi and then discussing the next steps in terms of fundraising and specifically what's envisioned to potentially go into that rfp and get some feedback on that and under understand how pac would like to be engaged in that process moving forward and what type of check-ins they believe that
093they would need you know um need to be need to see would it need to be more staff would it need to be more pack um and so part of that i would assume that you know heather might be discussing a little bit but um obviously you know park staff really wanted to get pac's um feedback and in terms of working group i could imagine adam i would assume that you might be making that presentation everything i don't know how that would be there as well but um you know that between you know stephen and and you and me that would be a nice small working group to um to be you know thinking about how to what exactly to present to pack thank you erica uh and thank you steven both uh helpful feedback
094i'm gonna go in i think the order i saw here um was alan alice and then frank um alan you go ahead thank you i'm glad to hear there's uh interest in receptivity in the many times back in the old days when i tried to propose these ideas parks was much less receptive to any sense of the development of this overall area you know i think it would be useful if we had indeed a regular report to the parks advisory commission about what is happening in this central park and civic center commons and well it is not explicitly directed as within the domain of the park administration well some of it is yeah it's definitely the city central park we should have a regular communication to it the one point i want to raise is
095[Music] that in the bond issue that created the green belt that was created for both acquisition and management of parkland in the city and around the city a city council resolution subsequently restricted the in the city used to air only acquisition that is a city council resolution and i think that we in our group and the parks commission itself should uh seek to uh overturn or revise or alter that old city council resolution so that the bond money that is for bonded for acquisition and management could actually be used for acquisition and management within the city and that would be beneficial in the development of the area the center of the city area that we are working for so i want that question to be begin to be discussed again to reconsider the conditions of
096that old city council restriction on how the people voted for the bond issue to be both for acquisition and management we could definitely use it for management and there's some land that could also be well acquisitioned thank you thanks alan alice you're up next and then frank i think frank was up first oh all right frank feel free you're muted i think one of the uh complicating factors uh is the multiple jurisdictions i'll call it uh of the public land on on the block with liberty part liberty plaza being part of parks i don't know i should know this if the kemp house is under the parks department as well and then there's this everything else is sort of public land it almost seems like we need to look at some you know hybrid management
097system for all of this public land in its various categories uh because it uh it it seems a little awkward to say the least at this point the other thing i i want to point out is that there seems to be you know a lot of change of leadership uh the district library um the dda uh and i guess parks is is in the process of um maybe that's already happened a new director of the parks department but you know there's going to be fresh thinking and i think there's a kind of a magic moment here when we can really begin to get people looking uh towards the possibilities of this and i've been hearing encouraging things uh kind of secondhand that that the library will be open to more creative conversations and collaboration going
098forward some just want to mention those items and and maybe this does uh speak to a working group i didn't quite catch erica's the did you have three people in mind for a working group erica i was just thinking that um since that adam i and and um steven might be able to work on the presentation to pack i just didn't hear the names yeah thanks uh alice and then erica yeah um sort of in support of what frank's saying and also erica um i i do want to recall that in the current prose plan and hopefully in the future we'll have a prose plan that still includes the special properties that parks uh co-manages with other governance bodies and i think kemp house is one of those that we have a model it's not
099really a one-size-fits-all model but we do have a precedent in within the parks within the pros plan uh that encompasses the quote it's called special properties like farmers market quite different from cobblestone farm quite different from temp house and at the moment i forget the other two but um this is something that is not um suddenly being considered this is something that has a history of working and of benefiting all those properties and for the use of the citizens of the area and visitors as well so i just wanted to mention that that isn't pro's when it's another one of those things that is happening now is the revision of that prose plan i think we should be very aware of the timeliness of several of the things we've discussed this evening thank you erica
100or alice rather sorry erica um and i just wanted to i don't want to go down this rabbit hole but i just wanted to just as the point of clarifications got brought up at the last meeting and um since alan just kind of brought it up around greenbelt funds heather had nicely looked at after the last meeting and sent out a little information um on this it's um the city's legal opinion has been that management um with regards to how that the ballot initiative is around the greenbelt management is associated with perpetual monitoring and enforcement of the city's land rights that have been acquired so um not not physical improvement and maintenance just a point of clarification so there has legal staff has looked at this earlier and i'm not sure that it's necessarily um
101there's some difference of opinion on that just as a point of clarification all right thank you erica um so i will suggest a uh a working group we'll we'll uh we'll take uh take that offline a little bit after this meeting i mean if you really want to be a part of it please shoot me a quick email and uh then we will do that it will just be like an ad hoc working group to try and move this forward uh and get the presentation ready we'll also work on scheduling a time with parks and we will just let folks know about that time more than welcome to attend uh the uh the meeting uh if you would like and support we will do that communication try not to uh reply so that we don't
102get in violation of the open meetings act but but just a as a heads up that's the way we'll go about it and then we'll uh that was good i consent sorry i'm gonna say i consent with erica volunteering me for the committee it's excellent i was i was uh going to the channel as a default i second it okay all right that sounds good excellent thank you very much i took a bunch of notes for this um and we will work on creating presentation uh for that uh off off of this so it's excellent um the next item on our agenda is the uh exploit the issues exploration uh heather did you want to start do you want to hit on this a little bit i know there's an attachment here yeah that attachment
103um so that's that was revived from um from almost a year ago so this is uh a document that started just really just documenting the discussion and some of some of the issues concerns and possibilities with with many of the things that were brought up in the resolution um at the resolution from 2019 that was brought up at the last meeting and has been brought up again tonight so i thought it would be good to bring this forward again just so we have a starting point to talk about our discussion and then mr de honey is here today obviously in that resolution that directs the city administrator to do a number of things i do want people to keep in mind you know that mr dahony is new on the scene and is still getting
104up to speed especially on this project which is um complicated has a lot of history and a lot of emotions and politics behind it um so it's a lot to sort through so i just want you to have compassion towards him you know as we go into this discussion that he is still getting update on on this project um but with that i think you know maybe we just open the floor and you know people want to put out questions or ideas suggestions anything that would help move uh some of these things forward because uh you know i guess i will also note that a lot of these um the results in that in that uh resolution are easier said than done you know there are you know we have to find funding we have
105to find staffing we have to logistically figure it out so and that's part of the charge of this group is figuring out how how we move things forward so with that i open it up especially to any ideas um i think that would be welcome rita has ran it rita please well i haven't studied it really in depth but i do think that it reflects a lot of the 2019 resolution and i think that since it is parsed in the sections that you've placed it heather that we should prioritize it and focus on elements of it and develop work groups that address them so i don't know if that is appropriate for us to do tonight but i do think that that's a way to approach them um if there are things that are more
106directed toward the pac process let's do that um but but i think that it has to be broken down i'm a little confused which document we're actually working on right now is this the resolution or is it that may 6 2021 yeah i'm referencing the may 6 2021 document which actually addresses a lot of what was in that resolution it's a document that mr crawford and i started putting together back then just to start tracking our conversations about these items and really just looking at it from from almost like a swot analysis like what what what are the potential um solutions to things but then what are also the issues that we need to overcome i did look at it prior to the meeting but would it be helpful to place that document up so
107that we could look at it or is that yeah if you don't mind bearing with me as i pull that up i will pull that up but please continue the conversation while i do that right uh alice you've got your hand up why don't we go to you while uh um i i don't i i wanna i'm not quite sure where to start and i think that's part of the problem is uh that when you have this document unnamed and unauthored uh really and then you have the resolution i think we should have a clear correlation between the relevant sections of the resolution and the resolution relevant issues in the document which doesn't have a name and doesn't have an author at this point and i think i'd also like to um invite mr tahani
108to ask the questions that seem needing to be asked if there are empty spaces where there should be some information in either of the documents for instance some of the things in the resolution are sort of um [Music] related more to past history and some of them have never been really fully addressed and i think that discord between the two documents is where we get confused as a as a body trying to be advisory to city council it is city council's direction that was expressed in the 2019 resolution and it's not clear where we are now with the document that is supposedly linked in most ways or maybe some ways on to that resolution so i just want to i want to go toward clarification and clear vision in this situation rather than trying to
109mash things together just to get them covered so i just want to be efficient and clear about where we're going and also i think we should be more public about it i think we should have that that resolution in front of us maybe a link to it in all of our agendas and also some reference point like is the document we're working with that relates to tom crawford's times with working with hebert heather under our um the input that we've had as a body i i think we should kind of clean that up and so that so that we don't find ourselves sort of um heading down paths that we've either been down before or that we haven't found or that we haven't explored before and somewhere in between there we get lost so um
110i just i would like like first to try to think clearly about what's being accomplished by having these two things which are very closely related being elaborated on in different ways it's kind of just kind of advisory maybe even as being part of an advisory body but i hope we see clear direction in progress because it has been three years since the resolution was passed almost three years i'm muted erica sorry my dog is barking in the background so um yeah i guess um one point i would note i think this is helpful to have kind of these different points i think it's um you know we obviously did discuss this last year but you know these are items that have been discussed in the past but they haven't is to your point they haven't
111really been prioritized by this group in terms of the importance of how this group views them um and since these were the recommendations of a previous council i don't know that they um you know that's just should maybe be taken into account as well um that there may need to be some advice from from council of commons on sort of prioritization of these elements other thoughts or comments on this now we got a few folks here um frank um other than attending uh numerous council meetings i i really don't know how to evaluate a resolution like this it seems like if a resolution is passed and granted councils are changing with every every election but uh unless there's some revision that's documented in a future resolution um it seems like a resolution passed in december
112of 2019 that has not been revised by the current city council would still stand and be uh something that should be true there should be serious attempts to implement am i being naive about city government i don't know no that's correct i mean it's the policy that we have on the books that we're working with that staff is meant to work with um where you know things got stalled out is with covid you know for you know it being one of the issues and then um just the turnover in in city administrators as well um in the budget we were kind of in a budget crisis for a while too so there was a lot of attention that was being paid to that um so it just i would say that it was stalled out
113and again a lot of these these items um are a little bit easier it's said than done so it's it's really you know we need to figure out how it can you know where the funding would come to implement some of these things um how exactly to implement some of these things or some of them you know make decisions maybe some of them are kind of taken care of um or not you know because there are for example there's restrooms available at the library and that at the ride you know is that good enough or do we want to think about something more so um so that's what i think the work of this group is is to really provide some sound advice to city council about how some of these things move forward or
114some of them don't seem you know as meaningful or relevant anymore maybe you know we ask that um attention priorities put towards something else related to center of the city um just a quick response wow is that me um i was reminded that a discussion well over well over well at least a year ago about how to assign the debt that reflects the the 36 surface parking places and i i was puzzled by how how the the overall debt service on the structure is determined and i recall and having conversations with people i felt would know the answer that question local attorneys who've been involved in city government et cetera and i i came away pretty well convinced that there there isn't a a parking spot by parking space a calculation of debt it's an
115overall debt um and it just seems like we haven't made any headway on that first whole section of uh the economic consequences of of uh eliminating the parking my understanding i think your understanding is correct that it's an overall debt and i think that was broken down to determine you know what maybe the service lot contributed to helping pay back that overall debt um and i know at one point there were negotiations going on between the pda's attorney and our attorney's office um regarding because there's it's tied to the parking agreement i think also that got a little bit stalled out but with um the new dda director on board aware of this and the recent discussions that we've had or you know come up again regarding the items in the in the resolution so
116he's well versed on that and um potentially we will be coming to the next meeting or a meeting after that start um addressing that topic but again he's you know have compassion because he is anyone on board and is also trying to figure all of this out among all the many other things that he's getting up to speed on right boy really really uh doing a deep dive on that question and getting resolution would really i think help uh move things along if that if that is in some people's minds uh you know a point we're stuck on let's get that resolved yeah and i would also ask this group and this is my thinking as an urban planner that i'll just interject that um if we are to remove the parking there permanently um
117there is some danger and just leaving it as a blank open space because then it becomes dead space so i would just kind of ask us to think more and more about if if we are removing the park the parking immediately what is it that we can do to activate and i know we're talking about activation um you know there's something that's not gonna allow it to just sit there as a dead space some of the ideas that i've heard talked about is not necessarily going from 36 to zero but to in stages of remove parking over a period of time so that we can demonstrate uh the successful use of a portion of that space for example the west standard that the area that goes a bit north by the the elevator shaft the
118wide part um anyhow it doesn't have to you know for discussion and conceptual purposes doesn't have to be all of it at once but i think we and the general public that we talk to you know want to see progress and we want to do it in a responsible way where you know the where's you know that would be productive and positive i'm gonna note that down as an idea potential solution um i don't know who is next alan or alice uh so i will uh just alice why don't you go ahead and then we can have alan okay um i still would like to emphasize that i think when there's uh doubt as to what uh what to tackle first that we could stick to the 2019 resolution and i think this this uh
119momentary discussion of resolving and parking is a good point as an exam as an example i think we would get further on some things by sticking to the ones that are in the 2019 resolution because they're all related but i think that those are the things that are these these resolutions resolves in that resolution um really are out there as a standing request from the public through their city council at the time and um i just don't want us to get distracted by things that aren't mentioned in the resolution um because i think all of those will come along with the major resolves in that resolution i just i think like for instance addressing restrooms first is probably not the way to go because it will be distraction from um just having this space available
120for whatever happens um and another you know here and there there are other things that may be on that document if if we are going to focus on the document i think it should be part of the agenda every month but i think it's more important to have that resolution in front of us at all times so that we don't get distracted by the smaller issues which will be resolved through future action that's that's my opinion and i really i'm sticking to it all right thank you alice uh ellen well yeah barely hear yeah i feel i feel some deja vu here there's these questions of getting rid of the parking activating the space uh wi-fi staging furniture play area this has been out there and one way or another it has not been discussed
121it has not been dealt with it has been postponed it is all very simple if there was a commitment actually to follow the people's people's vote to develop this as a central park as a civic center commons and the resistance to that the dda in 44 meetings has not put this on the agenda the library has not put this on the agenda the city administrator has not done all these things in that exploration that are identified for the city administrator to pursue getting the block group together getting people actually together to see what can be done it is very it is very frustrating i think the city council resolution from a while ago that says we'll get internet connectivity there there is a city program toward internet connectivity the center of the city is way
122down from what i heard way down on the priorities after everything else is done why is that getting the utilities it is not such a big deal if people who are responsible in the city would actually do what has been directed by the city council and i hope that mr dahoney that you will take some initiative in actually pursuing what has been the direction of the city council would have been the questions put forward as orienting questions and begin to get this done it is not it is not rocket science it is just doing what the people voted to have done and what the city councils at various times is also the resolution of october 5 2020 it specifies work to be done on this if this if would be if what would be said
123to be done would be done would be much further ahead it is not a dead space in the space that if it were identified as a usable space and get the cars off and let the furniture be on there that there be some chalking and some painting and some play going on that would begin to be a live space it's a dead space because it's dedicated to cars and do a contract an antiquated contract that keeps cars there and makes it exceedingly difficult for anybody to do anything else there but i do hope that you all come to the earth days and see that it can be activated on the library lot and that with the liberty plaza this can be a living place a kona white light in the center of the city that
124gathers people and can be a real downtown destination but there is an inertia a static inertia that says don't let it happen one way or another there's a reason why not why not why not there are more reasons why and i hope that we will do it all right thank you [Music] ellen rita you're up and then i'm gonna make a suggestion for this because we're getting pretty close to nine o'clock all right that was not an intentional andreas oh okay all right so i i'm going to suggest that we we resurfaced this again uh it seems like uh folks are starting to take a look at it again it has been a long time is how they're uh indicated so why don't we keep this as an agenda item for the next meeting and
125in between now and then we can have a chance to take a look at it more um and uh you can send any additions heather as you noted was taking some notes in there we can send any additions we want to have to heather and we can bring this back up again um so i i think that uh we should make sure that mr dahony did not have an unintentional hand up and if he's still would like to we don't skip that i think thank you um i did put my hand up just and i don't want to belabor it because i know we're near the end of the meeting but if you sort of step back and look at where we are and i don't offer this as an excuse but i think a
126reasoned look at why we might have some level of struggling um [Music] what i've been told is there's a certain curiosity within the parks advisory group because they're not really clear on exactly what this group is doing and where it's going uh we've had a brand new dda director we've got a brand new city law director we've got a parks uh director job that has not yet been filled we've got a brand new library director you've got a city administrator that's in the process of becoming permanent but that's not done yet you've got documents that were if i understand it correctly one issued by a previous city administrator and a doc resolution passed by prior city council you've got an election coming where we will have at least some new council members and the document
127that we were just looking at a few minutes ago if you didn't know anything about it to the naked eye it appears to be a series of tasks that's being called for to be done and i think we may be making an assumption that all this new leadership knows for what are the tasks for work what what are you really asking me to do why am i doing that to assume that all the people in new leadership knows what's going on i don't think they do because when i talk to people i don't get they don't have the institutional knowledge i certainly don't have it and the priority uh of a prior council in terms of issuing a resolution what we lose as seats change and people change is there's 50 things to be done
128in running a city where does this fall and i think some of us are struggling with that because we either haven't been asked to make that a top 10 thing or even have enough clarity around you know what exactly are you asking me to do uh so i'm not trying to speak for all of the new leaders i just in conversations i'm doing a lot of listening to people because i'm still learning the city and i think we need clarity between the documents i think we need some kind of a refresher for all of us that are new on exactly what is the priority and what should we be trying to accomplish in the near term i'm going to present a budget to city council on the 18th and i don't know ultimately what they
129will pass but resolving some of these issues is not really part of what i'm going to be talking about um it just isn't uh and i won't get into liberty plaza i'll save that until next time but i think the bottom line point i'm trying to convey to our group which i'm happy to be a member of is there is some level of confusion amongst several people on just where this is where it should be and what are the top priority things that are expected to be accomplished in order to make the commons be consistent with the vision that people had when they passed the ballot initiative i just think that's a real thing that's there and it's got to be addressed thank you mr hunt i'll second that thank you as well and i
130will say as somebody who has uh had more of a crash course in this over the last year uh i appreciate the um statement around confusion because there's a lot of history here and it's uh it's definitely not definitely definitely not clear yeah i turned 71 today happy birthday again i'm in my 70s now congratulations welcome hey may i just interject that that that's that's why i was looking at going back to the 2019 resolution because it is much more much skinnier much more lean whereas a list of 50 tasks is not lean and it does sound like mr tommy has hinted at an approach which might be uh to recognize these new uh leaders in our city and uh find a way to succinctly uh project what they might need to know if they're
131to help us move this forward um we we don't have much time it feels it feels like we don't have much time to catch up but we might have a way to um put this on the table so that it does not get forgotten but is learn we listen and learn we listen what needs to be heard or learned and we do our best to help help the new leaders understand what we're about which i could sum up for myself as making a place that's really important to the character and continuance of good citizen good civic life in this town so that's kind of high-minded maybe but there are specific issues that we need to address that i think the resolution reflects where we have been and we were still heading but new leaders are
132not aware of that as mr tohoni says so i think that's probably a project we should undertake quite soon i think that's a fair point else why don't we why don't we uh have uh uh just maybe a joint discussion at the next meeting around both this revisit this and revisit the resolution too we'll pull that up as well um we have one other item on the agenda tonight and that's to talk about what we want to talk about city council i'm gonna i'm going to suggest a few things that we do rather than really have that discussion right now because i think what mr dahoney said i took some notes durian and i i think it provides a good degree of reflection for us to consider before we before we bring this up um
133and i think what the the the three main areas that i i noted that i think we'll want to ponder before we go into actually describing that presentation or creating it are you know um what has been done not just by this group but all of the other stuff that has come before us to try and create some clarity um what are we doing right now and then where do we want to go and what are our asks of counsel and i feel like those are the the three buckets uh if you will that uh that um you know we're gonna want to think about uh and and get ready for a council presentation and i know if others have other things just briefly but i feel like if we're going to present city council
134these are these are the things that we need to make sure that our if our goal is a clear message and a series of next steps we're going to have to answer those questions so i would just like us to all think about those things and i could send them out in an email after this and for folks to think about and certainly if there are other questions that folks believe need to be thought of in prep for that city council discussion you know please feel free to service them too are are folks okay with tabling that a little bit then until next time and think about those questions yes but to think about them yes i will say an email uh to everybody here with those items um so that was the development development
135recommendations report uh that brings us to next agenda items so i think we've got um a re-review of the um of the center of the city center of the sea exploration issues as well as the city council resolution those are two agenda items we talked about we're gonna um we're going to have [Music] a discussion around what we report to city council and then we may or may not depending on timing have a few other items related to the rfp and or um and or parks advisory committee updates so we'll uh those are those are at least some action items are there other items on the agenda that are that folks would like to have on the agenda at least as of right now all right and unless there are any other items [Music] oh
136sorry alan go ahead i said if we could deal with those we would be well ahead unless there are other items where uh we're back at public comma and we have robert black [Music] thank you heather can you hear me we can yes thank you um nice job you guys i'm a little bit hopeful tonight and especially happy birthday to alice not only is my birthday in 11 days and i am also an architect and we have a mutual friend who did a lot to shape ann arbor peter pollock who has passed away but his spirit lives as a planner and i just want to say thank you alice for bringing forward the thing that's needed here which you said clarification and clear vision keep the resolution visible if i was facilitating this with you
137guys and i'm pretty damn good at this or there's a handful of other world-class facilitators that would drive you into this bigger picture so that these little petty concerns will get solved along the way very easily you'll be surprised what help shows up when you have a clarity of vision and mr dehoni thank you you said step back and take a look at where we're at and then he said it's not clear what the council is doing where are you going i agree i've said this i have been to every single one of your meetings and spoken at beginning and end public comment nobody else has done that i'm the only person that's done it that cares enough to help you get this thing right and so as he said that list of issues appears
138to be tasks it's just it wastes your time to talk about those right now so he said where this is and where it should be going is what you need to figure out and what are the top level things that need to be accomplished to make the vision consistent with the voters intentions let's keep that front and center develop a vision create a master a plan to a schedule to achievable goals in the short term and get yourself a vision for the longer term the bicentennial of ann arbor is in 2024 you have great missy stoltz here tonight was a helpful process to bring you forward into the next step use her use a osi an a20 go to leslie science center that's an example of a project that was done when ron olson was
139head of parks amy curus was out there and we worked in a partnership with parks to create that learning center for sustainability and before that dave conkel the city energy coordinator myself as energy commission chair and my partner wayne appleyard at sun structures architects who designed that building with partnership of mayor john hefcha who stopped the neighborhood from building this extravagant project to create the leslie science center lab it is a sustainable four kilowatt solar electric captures rain water this is integrated with community project we also set up a very simple demonstration building out there which is what missy stoltz was talking about to do on the commons that little learning center helped people understand the power of what leslie science center is today so there's an example i could go on and on but
140i want to end with one thing just very quickly about um you know energy food water waste all these things are important but it's the people that matter and it's the relationship of the people it's the personal and the political disalignments that need to be brought into alignment very quickly here because we do not have time given our global and local paradigm shifts that are happening as we speak so i'll close with this last june june 25th rita and frank and i were going to meet on the fourth and liberty at the lovely little restaurant we were waiting for our table so we took a walk down liberty street and looked at all the connections from liberty street between the buildings the christian science store jerusalem garden and others down to the liberty plaza sitting
141there was a man named kenneth who had lived six months in la and he sleeps under the canopy of the spark building and the first martin building we had a lovely chat i know rita maybe you remember this and frank we had a lovely chat with kenneth he moved to ann arbor he used he's you wouldn't know it looking at him but he used to play four people in chess all at the same time and he takes care of that building we said kenneth what do you like about this park he said well i like the atmosphere and he likes this the sonic lunches that are there and he likes the church that brings pizza on friday night there's a guy who can tell you how this comments could work he also knows the people
142that get in trouble there so let's talk about connecting the whole community with a much broader vision and a much deeper vision here and let's get this sucker moving forward because i just i don't want to waste my breath i'm going to be 70 i'm 72 i'm going to be 73 alice so let's stay around here and get this thing done and i applaud you guys for working on this but let's get some professional help to facilitate this group and get you set to a vision so you can move forward and then you'll have actually something to tell city council what has been done what are we doing and where are we going and what are the asks for city council former mayor lou belcher would say give them no more than five questions and
143maybe three and keep it simple and just go with some direction that will help move this thing forward by god it's time we don't have time to do anything else in the world right now so you are the leaders let's go do it thank you thanks robert anybody else uh heather um no i don't see anybody else well in that case uh we're at uh the motion is always an order adjournment but i do just want to say again happy birthday to alice and thank you for spending your evening with us congratulations you found the best party ever for your birthday we're your gifts all right well every everybody have a wonderful evening and absolutely i will send out this email tomorrow happy birthday to all yeah all right good night everybody thank you