Ann Arbor Environmental Commission Meeting 3-24-22

001so um let's see i would like to call this meeting uh to order at 7 00 p.m on march 24th uh welcome to the march 24th 2022 electronic meeting of the environmental commission this meeting is in accordance with executive orders from the governor to affect social distancing and mitigate the spread of the covet 19 virus we intend to conduct this meeting similarly to an in-person meeting however please be patient if there are technical issues public comment will be via telephone only to speak during any of the public comment opportunities please call 877-853-5247 and enter meeting id 989-2851-1637 again this is meeting id number nine eight nine two eight five one one six three seven this information is also available on the published agenda and the public notices section of the city website and on the

002broadcast of this meeting on ctn channel 16 18 t channel 999 and online at www.a2gov.org watch ctn so um galen would you please uh read the land heritage statement and then do the roll call sure all right um i acknowledge that the land the city of ann arbor occupies is the ancestral traditional and contemporary lands of the anishinabe including ottawa ojibwe bordeaux and wyandotte peoples i further acknowledge that our city stands like almost all property in the united states on lands obtained generally and unconscionable ways from indigenous peoples the taking of this land was formalized by the treaty of detroit in 1807. knowing where we work well excuse me knowing where we live work study and recreate does not change the past but a thorough understanding of the ongoing consequences of this past can empower

003us in our work to create a future that supports human flourishing and justice for all individuals that's the land um thanks caitlin would you like to initiate the roll call sure uh commissioner needham commissioner needham uh councilmember dish president commissioner graham i'm here sorry councilmember griswold here commissioner kylie work here chairperson brown president indiana harbor vice chairperson mitchell president in ann arbor commissioner vandenbroe here commissioner oriol commissioner oreo commissioner zane here in the number [Music] commissioner gibb randall erin ann arbor commissioner marston i'm here in another commissioner gruber commissioner nedrich president commissioner juneau here in ann arbor all right we have a quorum all right thank you galen um so the next item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda are there any um let's see other um is there a motion to

004accept it um kathy um is there a second shannon um or uh or chris um um any any discussion the floor is open for discussion uh here at cnn no request for discussion so all who approve the agenda as submitted please raise your hand or say hi hi hi um any um any uh um any no votes i see and hear none any abstentions i see and hear none so the agenda as as submitted is approved unanimously but we'll follow well next item on the agenda is approval of the minutes of our february meeting um let's see uh um do i have a motion to um rita um do i have a second um um oh we're open for discussion just a quick correction um in our last minutes and i apologize for um not

005noting this earlier but um commissioner juno was not present so we should just add that to the to the minutes minor modification say that again commissioner who commissioner juno okay and i think it's just not noted she wasn't on the legend star for last month right well sorry about that um so that's a minor that seems like a friendly amendment uh minor modification um um while he are with all who approve of the minutes as amended uh raise your hands or say aye aye um any um any no votes any abstentions uh the minutes of february meeting are approved with um with that one modification that either juno will be uh will be registered as uh absent from a meeting so um okay the next item on the agenda is public commentary this is an

006opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-00 or [Music] 877-853-53 i mean 5247 and enter meeting id five 989-2851 one six three seven this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and video feed city staff will select callers that will raise their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and meet any television and or background sounds so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of

007up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so while we're waiting i guess um michael cost has his presentation and he can control it um so we should probably give him i'll allow him to share his screen during his presentation on gail would you like me to do that now um let's wait until the public commentary period is finished but you will need to you will need to submit a pdf copy of your presentation um to galen hardy after the meeting as soon after the meeting is possible so we can post it on legistar so a brief introduction of michael if i can do that while we're waiting uh well let's see uh 30 seconds we're almost up here so let's uh conclude the public commentary period galen is anybody on the line okay

008well that's this ends the first public commentary period the next next period will be near the end of the meeting so uh the next opportunity to give public commentary so um yes um okay let's uh okay go ahead chris so michael cost is a botanist and um a long time employee of one of my favorite organizations in michigan called the michigan natural features inventory was begun in the 1970s to been initially funded by the nature conservancy although housed in the department of natural resources in lansing to do inventory work of the natural features of michigan and um they have been extraordinarily successful among the many things they had to figure out were the natural or native plant communities of the state from top to bottom michael you'll have to tell us how many there are

009but dozens and some of them are quite rare he co-authored this book a guide to the natural communities of michigan along with a couple of other members of the natural features inventory and [Music] he currently serves as a a curator of the native plants of the matthy botanical gardens and nichols arboretum he's a consultant in private business and i invited him to come speak to you about native forest fragments which is something called out 20 years ago and our um [Music] natural features amendments to our city code but with which we've done very little since um it's high priority of the natural features committee to do a lot more about them in our city michael okay so um thanks for that introduction chris can everybody hear me okay says okay the host has disabled screen

010sharing so um so i just need to share my screen so if you can give me uh make me a co-host that's usually how it works so that i can share my screen there we go thank you okay so um so yes i serve as an associate curator at the botanical gardens and nicholas arboretum and uh i teach in the school of environment and sustainability of course on ecology and botany and um as chris mentioned a lot of the work i'll be talking about today a lot of the stuff is is in a series of publications i've got uh 80 some odd publications uh five books on the natural communities of michigan with my co-authors um this in the upper i think it's your upper left hand corner you'll see this is a 300 page

011publication that's downloadable describing the the net each of the natural communities and um one of the other key things that i've done in my career is i've done a lot of workshops professional for professionals so contracted with the dnr for about 15 years running workshops for them on biodiversity and various aspects of land management so we work my office for 15 years was housed in the wildlife department working for the nature conservancy and tnc i mean and msu but housed uh with the biologists in the dnr the other agency we worked really close with again doing workshops with for their staff was the department of environmental quality um and also doing workshops for wetland consultants so that's what i my career has been essentially advising on land management and biodiversity conservation trying to understand what

012we have out there what's important to protect of everything that's out there where do we focus so that's what michigan natural features does that's what i did for many years and i continue to do that work today as well as teach so so uh let me move on so to start with i want to take a look at the state of michigan at least at lower peninsula and focus your attention on a couple different things one is that these lighter colored areas in the north are savannah types or barons types mixed with pine and oak and this line between the dark the greek various colors of green which are uh mainly sugar maple and sometimes mixed with hemlock and white pine that this is a shifting shifting mosaic depending on the fire frequency uh historically

013and in southern michigan we have these oak hickory forests in the brighter pink and oak savannahs in several shades of this this tan color along with mixed oak forest and this darker green so and that line between savannah and prairie was constantly shifting depending on the abundant how frequent fire was and fire really was dependent on the abundance of you know the populations of native americans certainly there were lots of lightning strikes and obviously there were no roads to put them out no plowed field to put them out so when the fires moved then with the wind they moved for a long long distances but um as we all know there was a 95 reduction in the population of native americans following de soto entering florida in the 1500s and swept across both the north

014america and south america um and so the population's fluctuating with that this shifting mosaic this line of forest versus prairie or savannah as we zoom into washington county this is that same map and what this is ann arbor and what you see is the mixed oak forest a white oak black oak forest predominantly surrounded by an oak hickory forest but bordered again by this oak barons these are oak barons these are oak openings so um historically documented in the uh about 18 18 maybe 30s to 1857 um and during that time 1837 day about 1857 the state was laid out so populations of native americans were much reduced and there was probably an over representation of forest as compared to what it would have been even a hundred years earlier um and certainly several hundred

015years earlier because the the uh diseases and then the wars um and persecution that a native american suffered under during this time so i wanted to read you a couple of historical quotes that are taken out of kim chapman's thesis um one of the early ecologists at a michigan natural features inventory where i served as an ecologist and the lead ecologist for uh for 15 years so the road in the roads and the openings and planes offer offer to the traveler a variety of routes with the choice of diverging at pleasure the scattered oak oaks leave leaving sufficient space between for the passage of horses and carriages while the prairie is one of wide unbounded highway where no obstacle is present for pursuing whichever course curiosity may direct written in 1840 in july of the

016same year and um i think that says 1831 or 51 i can't i have a little my screen sharing is in front of that simon mills made the journey in a lumber wagon drawn by horses through the unbroken wilderness from ann arbor to gull prairie near richmond kalamazoo going this journey was through the oak openings they did not find one half mile of timbered land on the whole route so this term oak openings was used in place of we typically use the word oak savannah today scattered grassland with scattered oaks or uh small groves of oak trees and scattered oaks in a grassland opening in a prairie opening um but historically that term oak openings was used in the surveyor notes and um in the past and that's what we've chosen to call it in

017our classification of natural communities so here's another one that's where the conversion of open prayer of open prairie to forest was well underway by when hubbard described the landscape near pontiac as it as it appeared during his earlier 1837 expedition with douglas houghton through michigan through michigan's new territory the surrounding country seemed to our eyes far enough removed from the gloomy morass surrounding detroit which while the imagination had depicted it 20 years before it appeared to me the most beautiful sun ever shone upon it was of the character then beginning to be classed as openings characterized by gravelly soil and a sparse growth of oaks and hickories i speak in the past tense because though the rural beauty of the country is still unrivaled little remains of the original character of the openings this is

018a result partly of the progress of cultivation and partly of the thick growth of small timber that has covered all the uncultivated portions since the annual fires have ceased which kept down the underbrush crush so by 1837 uh the land had changed uh quite a bit to be dominated by trees there's another one we left detroit on a railroad our road lay among the openings much of the way and we found them undergoing the changes which are in incident of the passage of civilized man as the periodical fires had ceased had now ceased for many years underbrush was growing in lieu of the natural grass and insomnia much as these groves are less attractive than formerly but one easily comprehends the reason and i'm going to show you in the next couple uh what he's

019talking about what cooper in 1884 is talking about in 1881 while recalling prairie ronde and gordnet both in southwest kalamazoo county brown utilizes early in march the rank growth of last year's grass dried by the sun and wind was set on fire and the whole prairie burned over leaving it bare and black as midnight then in a few days came the beautiful flowers covering the whole prairie is one uniform color first the blue violet then purple flocks and this succeeded by some other color and in july and august a tall yellow flower the name of which i do not know mixed profusely with the tall grass gave yellow as the predominating color there's another one 1884 describing the openings of kalamazoo county the annual fires burnt up the underground underwood decayed trees vegetation and debris

020in the openings leaving them clear of obstructions you could see through the trees in any direction save where the irregularity of the surface intervened for miles around you and you could walk ride or horseback or drive in a wagon wherever you pleased in this woods as freely as you could in a neat and beautiful park here in 1892 glidden describes southern michigan's oak forest in the following passage or the origin of uh these forests after the best job of breaking plowing a live grub or okra with an an okra a live oak rub would be left upon every square rod of ground there is nothing to compare with this pioneer grub for 50 years or more its yearly growth had been burned off and had sprouted again in the spring the enlargement at the surface

021about the tap root increased with each year's growth of sprouts until the cap was formed a foot or more in width like an underground toadstool although not so regular in shape the whole under surface of this cap was filled with dormant buds that awoke in activity at once when the standing ones were cut or were burned away nature reasserted itself when the annual burning had ceased and the fittest stem survived and became the tree or young oak and as we see them today while the cap has rotted away so those are you can see especially in those last four or so quotes you can really get a sense of the importance of fire and shaping the landscape here is a map i produced uh back uh or many years ago now looking at the fire

022dependent ecosystems grouping all those savannahs and prairies and all the associated open wetlands where fires moved across those and kept them open as well grouping those all together to get a look at like how much land was fire dependent and what you can see is a big portion of southern michigan where fires moved this was the prairie peninsula moving in from across illinois indiana into michigan moving across uh these these fire dependent this fire dependent landscape into these oak systems and oak grubs some of you you know these but um i've had the pleasure of trying to remove some of those some of these and they're tough this is a a grub that re-sprouted following burning so you can see the blackened soil and the small little leaves these are shoots that were burned burned

023off um and they could be massive but so but they re-sprout uh when when released from fire um they just re-sprout and that's a lot of what our forests are today our force uh today many of those these forests were historically oak savannahs of some form uh that quickly converted to prairie by the 1880s uh where were prairie and fires fire um and we use fire uh for many reasons land managers use fire to maintain biodiversity because it contributes at multiple levels so fire was historically critically important it still is critically important that hasn't changed so it's it's one of the tools we really uh that's you know land managers have to rely on and it does amazing things because it releases the nutrients that are stored in the dried plant materials nitrogen phosphorus potassium

024calcium magnesium these are all key nutrients that plants need to grow and as it releases those it increases the uh and studies have been shown that the plants and burned areas contain more of those nutrients and in doing so they end up with higher rates of uh we have higher seedling establishment because the duff has been cleared off and there's not competition greater seedling establishment greater sea germination establishment greater flowering greater seed set greater biomass and these openings create habitat for species that need opening so the savannah is the prairie so the fire certainly does that and helps structure the ecosystems in ways that shapes their pattern on your shapes their arrangement on a landscape in other words you have a series of open wetlands typically next to uh these oak systems these oak barons

025oak forest um and in northern michigan it's the same thing but with poor friends and bogs next to pine barrens and oak pine barrens and pine forests so one of the so you've heard me mention oaks several times and their importance and they are they're critically important there's no doubt that they are keystone species in other words species that have a dish disproportionately greater effect on the abundance and distribution and diversity of other species so oaks are just critically important they support more caterpillar species than any other plants be than any other genus in north america the genus quercus and in ann arbor oaks support over 450 species of caterpillars at least that's what we've counted so far i have a feeling it's gonna it's it'll it that'll increase over time as we learn more

026so it's more than any other species in the mid-atlantic region they've documented on white oak over 550 caterpillar species that's why i'm thinking it's probably even greater than 450. so um acorns also provide critical food sources for over 100 vertebrate species and thousands of species utilize oak tree the oak uh you know like the stems of the oak trees the leaves the snags the course woody debris the wood cavities litter and oaks are critical so oaks are critical for maintaining biodiversity uh here you see a chickadee and to like many songbirds about 95 percent of birds are insectivorous they require um in north america i think it's 96 percent of birds are insectivorous except for the um if you exclude the uh seabirds then then 96 of the remaining birds are insectivorous and they require

027they require insects to raise their young and the majority of what they feed their young are these caterpillars from butterfly and moths so uh just to raise uh a clutch of eggs can require require six hundred six thousand to nine thousand caterpillars over that 21 day period and they continue to feed their young caterpillars for 21 days following fledging when they leave the nest so i'm going to be using the term biodiversity quite a bit i just want to make sure we're we're all um we all understand what that term means so it's refers to the variety of life on earth at all its levels from genes to ecosystems as well as the ecological processes that support it so i know a lot of times we use the term biodiversity you mean species diversity and

028that's fine it does mean species diversity but it also means ecosystem diversity it means the different types and arrangements of ecosystems the ecological processes that support that as well as the life within those those communities within those natural communities within those ecosystems the uh quote one of my favorite quotes in ecology is by aldo leopold and he he said the first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts and that's that's as true then as when he wrote it as it is today and i think we'll always be in ecology if we're going to manage land if we're going to take responsibility for a set of lands um be it a city a state or the nation we really need to keep all the parts so here you see a kestrel feeding its

029young a hawk moth and below is a hawk moth uh pollinating or drawing nectar from a a thistle a native thistle cerseum discolor that grows in our prairies and savannas in the ecosystem we need all of this we cannot have these kestrels if they don't have food and in this case hawk moths need plants so they're all critical we can't have any one of those and just like most systems uh whether it's your body or um ecosystems it's often the smallest things the littlest critters like eo wilson said you know it's that that beware of these little guys because they the insects because they really run the show at the end of the day if you have a dysfunction in yourself your mitochondria don't don't work you're you're in big big trouble right the smaller

030the equals the smaller the critter when that goes out it affects everything up up the trophic level so the insects are critically important uh not just to the birds but to the rest of the rest of the ecosystem and where the insects get their food from the plants so so while it all matters each one of these clogs of the wheel each one of these pieces is critically important to keep okay so the earth is experiencing massive losses in biodiversity as you're well aware uh there's been precipitous declines across taxa from vertebrates and invertebrates uh at durzo coin defaulination meaning uh and he and the term anthropocene is widely used today so in other words worked presently in the geologic uh period of the holocene but it's been reclassified renamed by many people as anthropocene

031in other words human beings are having the biggest effect on the planet right now uh and the defaultizations meaning we're losing species uh like crazy plants there's many citations i could listed insects birds mammals fish amphibians reptiles all suffering great declines right now and what you're looking at this this cool picture here is a various species of goldenrod and many insects uh goldenrod support 135 species of caterpillars uh in other words from moths and butterflies and hundreds of pollinators in the ann arbor area including many specialists that are entirely dependent on goldenrod pollen and nectar so the causes of biodiversity loss the primary cause is habitat loss for example michigan we've lost over 50 percent of our wetlands that's on average you can see it very statewide um invasive species are another uh major reason

032for habitat loss over exploitation disease pollution pesticides overpopulation which obviously relates to habitat loss and some of these others and um probably more recently maybe going back even a hundred years now but um is climate change and certainly coming to our head uh and uh speeding up so so biodiversity loss is a front and center and those who manage the lands are responsible for that have to keep this in mind because you're stewarding so many species and it's so critically important here we look at forest change in michigan and you can see from acres from that that circa 1800 vegetation map to uh current and this this is about 10 years old now actually it's more about 20 years old to be honest with you so then there has been a continuous loss during that

033time but we've lost about 68 of our upland forest historically in southern michigan over 75 percent of our beet sugar maple forest about 66 percent of our oak hickory forest and when we get into the the savannahs in grasslands we've lost uh over 99 percent of those so uh from historic levels so we've we've seen a lot of change and that change comes with some serious costs and some serious responsibilities force fragmentation is is something i want to talk a little bit about so what this refers to and it could be habitat for so fragmentation is often phrased as habitat fragmentation and in forest systems we call it forest fragmentation and what it involves is breaking a contiguous block of forest into smaller parcels or contiguous block of natural habitat into small parcels and this

034occurs incrementally typically in other words just like you see in that first picture up on top you know it doesn't happen uh overnight it usually happens slow and steadily and the losses uh the impacts are cumulative you might start with a subdivision and then you know build another segment to the subdivision then another one pretty soon we have a vast area with just these fragments of forest so this is a forest fragment here's a forest fragment here's another forest fragment and then this picture the forest are gone uh you have grasslands or lawns uh where what's what's left of that of the of once was forest so the the uh so before i address the downside of forest fragmentation i want to want to talk about why there's a few reasons why they're important first

035of all they provide ecosystem services for example they produce oxygen they reduce air pollution and greenhouse gases they sequester carbon slow global warming reduce urban temperatures prevent soil erosion reduce runoff and water pollution promote water infiltration recharge groundwater stores and i could go on so all of these things are critically important and we we take every one of these for granted you know the her urban heat island effect well um in other words it's warmer if you go to the countryside you put a temperature probe in a city and one at the same latitude in a rural area well it's always warmer in the city because there's the urban heat island effect right well guess what your forest fragments help reduce that and they generate oxygen and reduce air pollution and sequester carbon in other

036words when they take in through photosynthesis they take in those carbon atoms and put them into the trunk and there's this there was this um when i went to school and i'm guessing it's probably still taught today but it's false the idea that small trees uh sequester more carbon they take up more carbon they grow quicker well that's been debunked uh it's been pretty bunked uh in medici meta-analysis it's been debunked in individual studies by people who engineers who know how to measure using very accurate measurements of tree rings and um the bigger trees actually grow faster in terms of the amount of wood they put on they they um well a small tree might grow from one inch to 10 inches in a short period of time the big tree it doesn't it just

037takes us a millimeter of growth or so and you write up all those millimeters over a meter wide tree over a 40 inch diameter tree you've got a lot more area than small trees so large trees are critically important so even though they might be perceived as not growing quickly they're actually they're actually growing they're actually they're actually putting on more bulk each year more bulk than smoke trees so they're critically important to protect um and i know uh many of you are like me when you see an oak go down you know it just feels so bad when you see one of these big old trees and we just have to remember that just because you're 80 doesn't mean and the tree's 80 doesn't mean the tree is old just because you might be

038feeling old the tree isn't old trees are indeterminate growth as long as they don't get knocked down by wind or some disease they can live they can live they can live hundreds of years and that's really exciting for us because it means the trees so that's great news because it means the trees are for us today they're going to be doing their job if they're protected they're going to continue to do the job of sequestering carbon reducing producing oxygen which we breathe reducing air pollution and those forests allow those roots allow that water to go back into the ground and not run off and pollute our waterways but allow it to infiltrate so another benefit of force fragments uh these forest fragments uh which uh ann arbor has uh so blessed with are is increased

039human human well-being so they reduce stress they reduce our heart rate our blood pressure they bolster mental health reduce crime rates and violence they promote healing promote physical activity promote social interaction make cities more livable and um that makes cities more beautiful and it was interesting that day chris called me to ask if i would be willing to to come and talk to you guys um i was driving back from the arboretum to the botanical gardens and as i'm taking the route you know for uh it's kind of back way around to get across the city i was i was as i often am marveling and just amazed at how beautiful ann arbor is and how the forests really make the city like was thinking god these forests this is amazing what a place and

040in my thinking that it was i knew i made the logical jump to you know this isn't by accident this wasn't by accident that you have these forests here today i lived in lansing uh area before coming here and before that chicago and milwaukee so i know what it's like to live in large urban areas that lack forests and it's a whole different feel i hardly ever came to ann arbor until i started working at the uh botanical gardens and arboretum in in 2014. and uh and i was i just was amazed then and i continue to be amazed at the amount of forest the feel of the city is completely different than an urban area even though you know there's a lot of people living in ann arbor it's a small city but it's

041it's lots of people it doesn't feel like it feels it's just fantastic and all of these aspects here are what uh these forest fragments are promoting they're promoting human well-being the connections that we have you go for a hike you're more likely to say hi to someone during the hike than you are walking down a city street for sure right um so so they're critically important and they serve as reservoirs of biodiversity so so they provide habitat for plants fungi like in mosses animals soil microbes and many others and this is a picture of the nichols arboretum in 2009 now i know exactly where this picture was taken and it doesn't look anything like this today the trees are still there but the trilliums are gone and i never would believe in a million years

042that this is nichols arboretum if i didn't know the person who took this i've worked with that guy uh it's the whole time i've been here jeff blocky and uh you know there's no way i would like you would have to really convince me like this this is the real deal yes this believe it or not this is the uh this was the arboretum it just blows me away because it's all it's really hard to find a trillium uh an adult trollium and flower uh today in that same forest so forest fragmentation so what does this mean again breaking contiguous lots of forest forest into small parcels and again that the impacts are cumulative in other words it's one at a time but to add up to something bigger one plus one plus one plus

043one you know it really impacts and it's actually kind of exponential in its impacts so forest fragments uh result in increased what ecologists call edge effects so along the edges of these forests are really different environments than in the interior of the forest and if it's a really small forest block it's all edge it doesn't have any interior so there's differences in climatic differences from the edge to the interior uh increased invasive species increased edge numbers like edge species like deer increase rates of songbird nest parasitism like cow birds increased levels of measle predators and other like raccoons increased songbird nest failure due due to egg and nestling predation by mesopredators and other edge species increased wind throw and and all a lot of this results in loss species loss so just loss of a

044species from a woodlot dude possibly because it's the species home range is bigger than the woodlot or because a habitat specific habitat requirements let's say a salamander that requires a vernal pool or or a coarse frog that requires a vernal pool and let's say that forest has one but that portion of the vernal pool is lost well then those species can't exist there and as i'm as at this time of year as i move around my neighborhood and elsewhere and i hear these frogs calling from these little little ponds you know i just hope and pray that those those ponds those vernal pools will still be there in the future and somebody won't come build a house on it or or do or build a garage or expand or whatever it might be uh and

045those those vernal pools will still be able to be maintained um the other fact the other loss of species is just simply these at the edge species as illustrated up above all right mentioned up above with nest parasitism deer and raccoons and other species they just they impact they detrimentally impact species and cause uh species lost in these remaining in these remaining forest fragments so they're it's critically important to protect them and when possible to create ways or our connections between them so in um eo wilson and macarthur's uh island biogeography theory they published this in 67 and it really really kind of launched a huge area of research and the forest fragmentation was part of that all of that stuff i mentioned there's lots of studies on each of that and um it was

046really spurred originally by by macarthur and wilson in their island biogeography paper so so the take home message here is that these isolated forest fragments or any habitat fragment if they're not connected through to a bigger core area if they're not connected to a big area through a corridor or something they will lose species so the more isolated they are the more species they'll just simply lose species in other words something will happen to that sound that that species of salamander over time and boom it's gone if it can't replace itself the corridors allow them to be replaced so and this was looking at islands and then in other words islands next to a mainland are farther apart of really isolated islands and that's where the theory was developed it's been tested and tested both

047in islands and still being tested on islands i just went to a talk last week about it in the islands off of greece but it's also looked at as forest fragments so the smaller isolated preserves will lose species over time and it's not because somebody did something or well maybe but it just this is the process it was predicted and it's what we see it's what we see based on observations um some hurricane comes through and that species and you know species is lost and if it's isolated and can't colonize no one brings it there then it's lost and the reason i bring this up is this is critically important just understand there's a theory when you're managing force fragments so there's a series of conservation design principles conservation reserve design principles that's well established

048in the field of conservation biology and and i just want to highlight a couple of them one is the bigger preserves the bigger the better it's better to have a bigger preserve than a bunch of small preserves and if you're going to have a sponge bunch of small preserves it's better that they're closer together so that species can move between them and if possible it's even better if you can have some type of greenway some type of connectivity between these preserves that makes a huge difference in build a species ability to migrate and it and it helps then if a species does blink out in one preserve it helps a nut that same species from another preserve recolonized the other thing is reserve shape areas that long linear corridors are fine when they're connecting larger

049core preserves but as a preserve itself it tends to be all edge and so those edge effects tend to be more pronounced in long linear strips than in strips that are uh round in shape would be the best square but a bigger with they have some core areas and lastly but not least buffer zones in other words having some type of natural area got a forest if it's got some natural land next to it it's much better than if it's just a hard edge of a subdivision or worse you know shopping center or something where there's just no uh habitat parking lots so um at least most uh at least in ann arbor the you've got so many trees that uh that the suburb the uh you know residential where there's a high amount of

050trees at least better better certainly much better than um you know some big shopping mall next to next to one of these natural areas so one of the things we deal with is invasive plants and i'm sure you know many of you or all of you know lots about invasive plants and the detrimental impact on ecosystems but what you might not be quite aware of or maybe not as processed and thought long and hard about is native plants and why they're so critical well native plants co-evolve with native animal with a native animal species with fungi and other taxa and this process happened over millions of years and so they provide these species with the critical food and habitat consequently most species rely on native plants for their survival and that native plants make up

051the foundation of local food webs and structural structure local ecosystems and many pollinators evolve to specialize on a single plant genus or family it's bumble bee pollinating hera uh a zigzag golden rodgers a forest very common forest herb um in in our natural areas in ann arbor a forest in an arbor and golden they support over 135 caterpillar species and hundreds of pollinators in ann arbor including many specialists that that are dependent entirely on goldenrod pollen and nectar so they're they're uh this is just one goldenrod is a genus gina saladegal there's you know maybe maybe about eight to a dozen species of saladago in the ann arbor area and they uh they're just so important these native plants the invasive plants so for example purple loose stripe purple loose stripes invaded in an invasive

052plant uh came over in 1800s it's a wetland plant and they've documented in europe and asia about 114 different species and that's from the 1980s it's probably more now that that uh that live on the planet that use the plant and 14 of those are host specific in other words they live their whole life on that purple loose stripe we've only found three species in north america that feed on three species so consequently um that species invades wetlands it grows really fast and it just takes over wetlands luckily luckily for us there's some long-term research and they found some some um brought over in they tested insects from europe and asia and found three beetles that are host specific that don't migrate to other plants and uh so they're european species insects but they don't

053move on to our to our native species they specialize and spend their time on purple new strength and that has been a successful uh introduction of those species as a biological control agent but if you look at native plants you'll see there if you look closely their leaves are often full of full of holes or they have some fungus on them you look at a native a non-native plant a honeysuckle a buckthorn and they're like perfect like nobody's touching it no wonder so they've left these invasive plants they've left their predators they left their their pathogens at home they came here they're happy as all get out and they grow like crazy and expand like crazy and while the native plants are dealing with this burden this burden of 135 different species of caterpillars that

054are feeding on it my god how does it exist at all well it it's this is a a battle that's been going on evolutionarily from literally millions of years and and it results in the insects changing their body shape to fit the flowers and the flowers trying to attract different species or protect themselves through chemical means but it's a battle that's going to continue going on it really has created this diversity where the invasive plants are it's like they can go hog wild here and at the expense of our natives another keystone species that's impacting our our woodlands are deer so deer in high numbers really act as keystone species in that they disproportionately impact other species and they do this through competition for limited resources like acorns nuts and wildflowers they are alt and

055altering habitat features that determine the distribution of other other species so they really can change a forest uh by eliminating seedlings of some species opening up completely changing the understory yeah i'm sure you've all seen these browse lines reducing or eliminating our basis plants and these have cascading effects in other words it propagates through the ecosystems it propagates through the soils plants insects birds amphibians mammals and other other organisms ground nesting species uh this is i mentioned i showed you this forest this is a another picture from the same spot back in 2009 and this is that forest today you can see a few trilliums here at the base of this tree this one here there's a couple here and there's a log here with a few of them and uh other than that this

056is one of jacqueline corteau's uh deer exclosures that she installed it's one meter square deer exclosures so a huge difference uh just massive crazy difference in in the forest like i said i would not ever think that that was uh from the same site so deer are browsing common trillium at levels that prevent it from reproducing and uh that prevent it from being able to support pollinators and what's really fascinating is if you look at this plot you can see a couple trillions like here's one here's one here's one they're not in flower but there's a few there but what you don't see are all these little stems and jacqueline is an expert on looking at dear brothers because she did her dissertation her phd dissertation uh on this in the at the george yes

057george reserve in washington county and um so she's really been doing this for 20 some or more years looking at uh dear brows versus small mammal brows and so on and so forth and uh i just think it's crazy that that all of these trilliums are here but they're not here in other words they can't support pollinators they're not going to live forever you can't keep taking off the leaves of a plant and expect its roots to live forever right the roots are recharged through the fakes through the folded process of photosynthesis generating those those sugars that then feed the roots so um so uh this could it recover probably over time but over a long period of time it can recover and uh this this was amazing to me so this is jacqueline's work

058at the arboretum and she's looking at fencing trillium versus unfenced trillium and in three years in three years it went from two percent to forty five percent and there's this cutoff of thirty percent that's been used in the literature if it if a species flowering is browsed to a level that's less than 30 percent it really starts to decline it's not sustainable and if it's over 30 it's sustainable so that's what's been postulated in several studies so um you can see that in three years it was able to rebound which is super super encouraging that uh there's the if if we could reduce deer densities if the land managers in ann arbor i think that's you guys those who are responsible for the health of our forests whoever that is who's responsible for the health

059of our forest if we can reduce deer densities we may be able to recover the wildflowers and uh chris introduced me as a botanist and and i thank him for that because i i don't think of myself as a botanist i think of myself as an ecologist and uh who would love to be a good botanist and um and uh but i know that i am a good botanist because that when i'm out with others you know i typically know more plants than than most people because that that's what i've used to interpret the landscape it's how how i if i see a plant i can tell you what the soil type is often i can tell you the ph of the soil if i see particular groups of plants i know what the soil

060is doing and that's what i mean when i say ecology my focus is on ecology the plants are indicator species to me and so i move around in the ann arbor area and what i see and it's not just ann arbor you know i don't mean to single out an arbor it's much of southern michigan is force that are just decimated just decimated by over browsing and if i you know i did surveys for rare plants for 15 years and i know right where to find if i see a big pile brush pile blow down a tree fall over that's where i know i could find uh certain rare species because that's the only place they're left because they're browsed out everywhere and it's just amazing it's not just in our deer abundance is just

061rocketed it over the last couple decades so the case of the missing oak seedlings so browse levels on oak seedlings over 10 to 15 percent uh result in reproductive failure for oaks in other words the oaks can't regenerate uh when there's a certain level of brows and this is this is uh this is data collected by jacqueline corteau again and you can see that 15 line there the 10 to 15 uh line of deer brows and look at the levels of deer brows it's it's unsustainable and what does that mean well it means some songbirds like the eastern bluebird that rely on caterpillars to raise their youngs well where do they get those caterpillars oaks support the most caterpillars of any other species and high deer densities inhibit oak regeneration through repeated and concentrated browsing

062she was looking at oaks that the seedlings could browse over and over again over a four or five year period and eventually they just they just died they just couldn't handle that uh the case of the missing wildflowers songbirds like the great crested flycatcher depend on being able to afford six thousand to nine thousand caterpillars to raise their young as adults as adults moths and butterflies feed on the nectar of wildflowers and high deer densities drastically reduce the number of native wildflowers negatively impacting insects and birds so here you see number of zigzag golden rod i showed you goldenrod support 135 species of the the critters that this guy this great crested flycatcher and 96 percent of the other birds in north america require look at this offense versus unfriends yes we can yes we

063can yes we can recover our force yes we can but we can't do it without reducing dirt instances because look at look at this like there's wiped out so so if you're responsible for managing block of forest if you're a habitat then you need to take into consideration all the species i love deer don't get me wrong i love deer i mean my heart smiles when i see deer but i my heart also smiles when i see butterflies and caterpillars and birds and mammals and we need we need all these critters we just can't have one dominating the whole sh whole um the whole forest so willow flycatcher is another species look at this pollinators again fenced versus unfenced this is incredibly good news this is incredibly good news if we can reduce deer densities

064we can increase the number of wildflowers we can increase the number of wildflowers and in doing so we can provide habitat for the insects and food for the insects and thereby provide food for the birds who require them so the case of the missing pollinators and the case of the missing songbirds so i mentioned earlier we've had precipitous declines in insects precipitous declines in birds amphibians reptiles mammals across the globe we're in an area a time that's called the sixth greatest extinction the sixth greatest mass extinction event uh on earth so so i know that's a huge issue and you know tropical rainforest and everywhere comes into play but we can do it we can in our own backyard and the case of the missing songbirds well we have about 95 percent of north american

065birds rely on a diet of insects to feed their young insects feed and shelter on native herbaceous woody plants only the native plants can provide insects with the food and habitat they need to survive the invasive plants cannot do that only the native plants do that high deer densities reduce the abundance and diversity of flowering plants and thereby reduce populations of insects and bird populations decline as their insect prey becomes scarce so in concluding force fragments in an arbor uh in force fragments in an arbor forest are an invaluable resource for all of life preventing further forest fragmentation and forest loss will reap dividends for generations to come maintaining biodiversity and forest fragments requires active management we cannot be passive because if we're passive the island uh the island biogeography theory predicts and is borne

066out through through lots and lots of research that will lose species which is simply if we just put a fence around it we'll lose species so it requires active management invasive species control it requires uh prescribed fire it requires uh managing our deer herd and maintaining oaks is critically important because they sustain wildlife and to do so will require reducing deer densities to allow the oak seedlings to grow above the reach of the deer so reducing dirt densities also is also required to allow populations of native plants to rebound and re resume their functional role of providing critical food and habitat resources to the animal community so i want to thank you for your time and i'm happy to engage in conversation if anybody would like to well thank you mr cost um we only

067have about four minutes for questions um to keep on schedule so um um please um okay so chris your hand up is and then lisa dish okay i i'm curious uh if the speaker ever had a chance to uh have a conversation with tanya hilgendorff who's the ceo of the local humane society and if you haven't i wonder what we'd have to do to get the two of you together because she has mounted a huge campaign against any kind of durer management uh i do not know who she is um this first time i've heard her name i'd be happy to engage in a conversation with her it might be interesting thank you thanks chris lisa uh thank you so much for this excellent excellent presentation so um i think you do a wonderful job

068um explaining to us how jacqueline corteau's studies help us understand the damage that deer are doing and the and the effects that exclosure have on forest health and biodiversity you so you've given us lots of evidence that deer are clearly dense deer populations are clearly a causal factor but is it possible to quantify what counts as high levels yeah yeah you know um a lot of studies it's it's actually really a low number of deer like seven per square mile i mean it's really it's really small anything over that i'm not an expert on and i used to have those numbers better at my fingertips and i i should have considered looking that up again but my memory was seven to f less than 15 number 15 deer per square ml and so they that

069was in the literature it was like seven and then the dnr was like no it's got to be higher uh so it's it's really a small number and you think about what if we were all like trying to live off the land all you and me and all the rest of us on this call and you know like deer would be great right you'd love to have a uh have some deer or meat right there wouldn't be a lot of deer and there were a lot of people here the populations of north america were like excuse me really really high uh native before desoto and 95 imagine being in new york city and reducing the population by 95 percent that's that's what we saw that's what we saw when when you know these indian wars

070were happening there were way more people previously if you have sites for any of the research that offers those numbers um i'd be interested and numbers of the deer density yeah because yeah that's one thing that we debate and we're hopeful to have scholarly sites for that thank you so much okay thanks rita you're up next thank you um michael i just want to say that i appreciate very much your description of the carbon sequestration of large trees that was probably the best description i've heard of of what that means how how it happens um so just thanks oh good good yeah there's a great podcast on that with with the guy who's an engineer he goes through like really detailed how he figured it out it was really amazing yeah okay right are there

071any more questions well chris graham has his hand up it's hiding behind a flower thank you michael uh it's not just about deer though our native forest fragments are a um spectacular um component let's call them or um our good fortune is that we had some steep slopes in ann arbor we had places that were wet we we had a lot of microclimates and some of those were fairly large areas we had farmers who left their back five or ten acres on plowed and on change to farms we have a collection of native forest fragments in ann arbor that are really extensive and really quite special but they're still fragments and as michael says we really have to manage them we have been managing the best ones on our parks we've paid precious little attention

072to the rest of them and i hope our committee can be bringing to you some changes to the code of the city to do a better job thank you chris um any other comments questions all right well thank you again mr costa this is very enlightening it's going to be a great help to us as we you know try to make try to improve the natural features in town and try to connect uh you know wildlife corridors as well right and do proper deer management great do i have galen's i don't know if i have galen's email address he wanted me to send the talk to him i'll give it to you michael say that again i'll get it to you oh craig great thank you chris all right thank you chris and thank you

073all for the opportunity to speak with you and uh wish you all the best of luck uh our force depend on on your your ability to to manage them so thank you for doing what you do it's it's a pleasure to be associated with you guys and uh ann arbor it's just an incredibly beautiful city and it's it's not by accident uh it's it's by direct thoughtful people like yourselves taking time to to do what you do so thank you thank you for all your hard work all right take care bye-bye okay uh so let's move on the next item on the agenda is unfinished business so there's the resolution to begin discussion of the um housing resolution that was discussed last month um let's see kathy would you like to lead this discussion uh

074yes thank you um the resolution that posted to the agenda was approved by the energy commission on march 8th and i would just like to um introduce this that even though there are quite a few whereas clauses the resolution seems to have grown considerably as more people look at it the purpose of the resolution is really just to provide a policy direction and to ask elected leaders to provide some direction really to provide policy leadership to staff members who have been discussing these topics with very limited results for many years when i talked to a planning staff they have many ideas of where housing could be located on transit corridors in northeast ann arbor but even though the university of michigan staff and the ann arbor city staff meet quarterly there there hasn't been um

075really direction or incentive to do this and so i believe there's considerable frustration among city staff uh frustration among the students at the university of michigan um and i can give you a couple of personal examples um i'm chair of the friends of the michigan league and the custodians that are full-time that work at the michigan league some of them drive in from detroit and that is a major hardship in my opinion uh and it's it's actually a social justice issue um that that people have to drive that far and the other thing is i was in the hospital for a just a minor procedure a couple of weeks ago and so i was asking the staff and the nurses where they live and then one of them said well where do you live and

076i said oh i live about two miles away and she looked at me and she said you must be very rich so i thought that statement sort of summed up how many of the staff at the university of michigan feel that you'd have to be very rich to live here and so how can we change that dynamic and provide more housing and the i can repeat some of what's in the resolution but if you've looked at it it's pretty obvious that this is consistent with our a20 goals it's consistent with the university of michigan sustainability goals and so i would appreciate support for this and i understand if um commissioners who are employed at the university of michigan if they feel some hesitancy to move forward because of a conflict with their employment um that's

077fine um i i know that this is going to be a difficult ask but i think that it is the right direction to take and i believe that it will be possible in the long run ufm is entering a new land planning phase uh one of the regents ron weiser is the owner of mckinley property mckinley provides affordable housing in other communities and so this this is something that mckinley is already familiar with um and i i think that's about it for right now if if other people want to comment i'll try to summarize at the end oh other than i would like to remove the fifth whereas clause which men mentions 118 private companies have been launched by u of m uh we don't know how many jobs have been created and this resolution

078is scheduled to go to the economic development corporation and so if they want to add back some information about that that would be fine and also the fourth resolve clause uh which mentions our lobbyists we just need to strike the name of the lobbyist as we change lobbyists and it's probably better not to have a specific company reference in this document anyway okay um thank you kathy um a few things there are two resolutions actually posted here for our consideration there's the workforce housing resolution that we discussed last month but there's another one which is environmental commission endorsement um i'm not sure um i'm not sure uh how well you would like to proceed on this because one refers to the other um oh galen could you um allow me to share my screen and

079i can put up the uh i can put up the resolution for for people to look at while we're having a discussion okay and then the second resolution i would defer to rita mitchell to to lead any discussion on that that's really a formality and an option if we want to be that formal to have a resolution in support of the environmental commissions i mean the energy commissions version of the resolution okay um let's see um john well let's um john you have your hand up and then rita sure thanks i appreciate all the work that's gone into this i know several folks have been working hard on this um as i kind of read through where this is at right now a couple of things kind of stand out to me that i would

080find it difficult to support that moving this forward um but perhaps you know if we can make if it's there's a possibility to make some you know revisions to it i'll just share my ideas i find the the res the resolved clauses to be very the ones about workforce housing to be very clear so those i'm fine with those i'm struggling with the title where we say 2000 units based on what data what analysis i know it's aspirational but i i think that is problematic so if it's possible to rename it that we're going to be to match the the resolve clauses that we're going to resolve to begin discussions with u of m for net zero affordable sustainable workforce housing i think that's great just for clarification so just strike the 2 000 units

081it's just to to match what's in the resolve causes is the recommendation we're we're going to start a conversation with u of m we're asking you know like you have in the the resolve clauses asking the city administrator to move it forward i to me that's how i i i would approach this and then the the question i have about the resolve clauses though is the adding in of the student issue to me that's that's an important issue too but it's it's i don't really see it connected to the workforce housing and i think that maybe you know adds more to you know what we're trying to accomplish here um then you know then then would be helpful so my suggestion would be just to focus on starting the conversation with work on workforce housing

082between you know the university and the city um i think that would be fine i i definitely agree that the scope of this resolution has grown and it needs to be pulled back um and i wasn't thinking so much about dorms i was thinking about housing for graduate students many of them are also already employees of the university and then would qualify for this workforce housing due to their employment so uh that would be fine with me i don't know how other people feel um arita you have your hand up yes sorry um i just wanted to explain the second resolution i put it together just to give us something for process because it seemed to me that the main resolution stands on its own and this gave us an opportunity to excuse me to

083either support it or not so it's just there as a possible administrative process thing we don't have to use it depends on how the group wants to go okay um let's see um anne marson you have your hand up hey yes um in reading through this i'm not i'm not um terribly familiar with the issue however it wasn't clear to me what exactly it is we're asking of the university other than entering into discussions uh i'm wondering like when you say you know you know 2 000 units of housing here um and i know we're maybe perhaps uncomfortable with that precise of a number um but i i mean are we asking the university to develop this themselves or to provide land or like what's the scope of what we're asking the university it would

084be all of those options and in this resolution even though it has become it's grown to become quite prescriptive the purpose of the resolution was to simply start a discussion among elected leaders at the university of michigan the regions and the city council as well as county elected officials our state leaders and our federal leaders as interested um does that answer the question i mean it was really to provide policy direction because the feedback that i've had from staff is is that they meet they they know of many uh areas of land that that would be ideal for workforce housing but it's i don't want to say anything negative about the university of michigan but the university of michigan is a huge organization that is very protective of its um its traditions and it's very

085difficult for uh the university to change direction in any way and so just the uh the concept of providing workforce housing in itself is is significant so i think we should ask for the the least amount but it is about having a discussion i yeah i just i guess what it wasn't clear about that was that the city staff feels like they they've they see potential except that what is it the university owns that land that they feel like would be ideal for workforce housing um some of it is owned by the university and so it would require cooperation with the university there is other land along plymouth road that will probably be developed you know private land once we have a transit corridor along plymouth road that would provide that type of of housing

086i see i see thank you okay um any other questions at this point then i think would be proper for us to entertain friendly amendments or suggested amendments and uh but i'm i'm unclear about how to proceed with which uh with which resolution i think uh it's important that uh we've already discussed this one that i have displayed and the energy commission has already discussed it and approved it and i understand that the planning commission has discussed it but that they have not uh they have chosen not to endorse it um they have mostly because it's not um it's not part of their um not card and it's not on their plate right now and they have many other issues to deal with so my impression and let me know if i'm wrong shannon is

087that the planning commission will get engaged as soon as like there's some kind of uh rubric or framework that's ongoing um uh that presents something tangible that you can deal with i'm shannon hear the floor yeah and and lisa please feel free to jump into here because you were part of that discussion as well um shannon you're super hard to hear for me okay sorry is this any better let me check my audio settings is this better yes okay sorry about that um so lisa please feel free to jump into because you were part of this discussion as well um uh we we have a very ambitious set of uh a work plan in front of us that i think that we were hesitant to because we really kind of taking this apart and um

088and and looking at it deeply we know would take several iterations of like meetings and things like that and we're kind of moving on some other things right now that we didn't want to derail for things that we felt like we actually have um we we are certain that we have influence over like parking standards and and tc1 zoning and things like that that we absolutely have jurisdiction over and this is something that i though i personally feel like it would be awesome if this this were to to happen um there's a certain amount we just don't know you know if if they'll engage it takes two to tango right um and so i don't think it was born out of we don't support this as much as we're already trucking in a different direction

089where we know we have influence and we didn't want to kind of get off of that of that train to be able to take this on um so that that's more i would say my impression of kind of where the group was going with it um and there certainly has been a lot of um work i think that energy commission especially has really poured a lot into this and this has morphed significantly you know since when it first came out so i think that there's been and they've incorporated you know the feedback that we had our who whoever it was you know from the the times that we've had before so it really is i feel like great that it's getting close for sure um i i am i i hope it goes somewhere excuses

090what i would say but you have to try right you know i mean so just kind of ringing our hands and saying you know it's never going to work is i think it's important that that um that we try um but uh so and and it could be that there are other influences and that there's just kind of a tipping point for all kinds of things that may make this um have a more receptive time than other times you know in the past and it is just astounding how much the university owns in our city right you know along some of these very important um corridors so um yeah so i don't i don't think it's like this is a bad idea as much as for planning commission as much as that we feel like

091we have a slam dunk on some of the things that we have in front of us where we know we have jurisdiction that this one is uh it's it's totally supported in in the comprehensive plan like almost all the things that are in here are just you know you're referencing the a20 plan and all these other things but it is all through the comprehensive plan too in terms of the different things that you're talking about here so it's absolutely supported by many planning documents that we already have too you know so that also is important i think as well so lisa anything from you that you remember beyond that okay okay kathy you have your hand up um yes i i have mentioned this to a a few regents and maybe they were just being

092polite but no one has said this is a bad idea this is not workable uh there are ways to do this where there would be no uh cash flow impact for the university of michigan initially and there might actually be a positive cash flow uh over time if this is if the development is done uh by private companies on a 99 year lease of university land then we would get property taxes from the building just not from the land um i did mention it to the former president i realized he's not here right now but his comment back was sounds like a win-win-win so um i know that's not communicated down to staff at this point but if we could continue those conversations and we used to have annual dinners with the regions and because

093of kobit we haven't done that and hopefully we will be able to uh spring or summer and at that point this resolution then could uh be shared with them uh lunia is not here tonight but she has been working on a press release showing uh support from the graduate students and central student government i know that john mursky also is talking to um some other leaders at the university of michigan so um i know this is being televised but i i want to say this is definitely a hard sell i realize that uh but i think it will if we can get enough people moving in the same direction the university of michigan is entering their planning process uh we just have to remove as many obstacles as possible and make this sort of the

094easiest road to walk down um yeah that seems hopeful to me and then the other thing i think that is also important is some of their north campus housing is really starting to age out at this moment you know and so they have to make decisions about things and yeah who knows this could be coming at a good time that may have been different ten years ago or something like that too so okay yeah i agree and there is a statement in here about protecting the uh the trees i don't know what exactly what the term was um something recommended by rita you know so that yes it's that high quality natural features if you could go up just a an inch or so so we would take that into consideration another thing that um

095that was brought to my attention is we really need a statement about ada compliant buildings as a whereas clause and so i was going to ask the um that that goes without saying kathy that's just like you can't build anything without that anyway so you think so oh no i know single yeah there's no way i'll get me that's your job oh okay it was it was just a feeling that with all these whereas clauses maybe that should be mentioned but if it's it's bound by law you know there's you have to do it anyway it can't hurt just to have you know more people as part of it but yeah that has to be done no matter what okay and does that law require a certain percentage of units um it's more getting being

096able to get to places and things like that but certain percentage that's a good question i'm not sure and that it may be worth asking um you know that that group to see i don't know again i feel like what this probably should be is more about beginning the dialogue than getting too prescriptive you know about things okay um thanks okay i mean my take on this is that the whereas clauses are good and that they outline different discussion points that are worth consideration on when these discussions begin to happen and um you know and uh i think that we're in the in the uh as well the resolve clauses here um seem to be compatible with everything that's been discussed so i don't have any personal problem with this myself so rita you have

097your hand up i just want to point out that with respect to the natural features it fits really well with what michael coast told us today about the um the edges the forest fragments it's like those are the kind of places that i had in mind when we were um discussing this last time that to preserve those components yeah that should also be a discussion point you know um as this says this conversation involves you know with the university um and wetlands is another area that we really don't need to mention because it is a state law okay all right kathy um so let's see um please raise your hand now if you'd like to have any more preliminary preliminary discussion about this resolution um i don't see any right now so um i think

098we should all remind ourselves that we shouldn't let the uh the perfect be the enemy of the good and uh it's a very timely uh it's very timely for us to be presenting this resolution to council because um of course the university leadership is not in place yet the new university leadership and this is an opportunity to to get get this on the ground floor for consideration especially because this is a long time social problem here in ann arbor uh social and infrastructure problem with all the new jobs that were created by the university principally and all the people that have to commute long distances in here and and and this could only help uh both the city's some carbon neutrality goals and universities as well so i think this is something this is a

099long-standing problem that's been recognized by many people in the community that we need to do whatever we can to make sure that debbie dingle doesn't have to get involved eventually like she had to for the yellow and plume so um so that's what i have to say right now and i guess um what we need what we should do is um entertain motions for friendly amendments um john keller just mentioned a few so if he would just repeat those and we can get those written down do you have a floor yep so sure uh let me just pull it back up so what i'm suggesting is the title uh just say resolution to begin discussions with the university of michigan for net zero affordable sustainable workforce housing okay um uh do i have uh what

100do you have any other amendments to propose john well i'm kind of deferring a bit to kathy here because i don't want to okay i think the student piece is is kind of beyond scope yeah yeah okay well let's um well yes exactly so we were discussing that as well so do i have a motion to accept that for a moment uh john's already do i have a second cat kathy our sec has seconded um if you accept this amendment raise your hand or say aye hi are there any uh no's i hear and see none any abstentions i hear in cnn so those amendments are passed unanimously are there any other friendly amendments that are proposed john do you want to remove on additional student and so it's just employee residential units yes in

101the title okay so we we'd be striking additional student and yeah i think it should just end at sustainable workforce housing whether it's on campus or not i mean that's again i'll i don't want to take it too far afield but that that's my opinion okay i'm not capable of modifying this copy but i have displayed so galen would you keep track of that um young women you have your hand up yeah yeah i just have a question uh what's the reason for striking out the additional student part again sorry i missed it i just think for me the topic of workforce housing is is kind of big enough is is focused enough and that when we bring in student housing that's a whole other issue in terms of student enrollment and and i don't

102think talking about workforce housing and addressing student housing and enrollment at the university it's to me it's it's gonna pull the it's gonna dilute the conversation yeah but like i think like below in the body paragraphs you talk about how like another campus enrollment has increased a lot over the past and that just means like brought in the student conversation here though how what's the connection to workforce housing though from that no i'm just talking about like um somewhere else in body paragraph yeah it's the third one down yeah it's on the screen now i mean are we saying that increasing student enrollment is pushing workers out of because students can um are willing to pay more for off-campus housing and that would then create more competition and possibly push lower paid staff out but

103i'm i'm willing to to have this resolution focus on employees given that many grad students are also employees do you agree with that yep yes okay does that clarify for you young young man yeah i guess so okay i just want to say we can always come back and address that issue and i really think that having that uh student initiated resolution that we then support would make more sense you know if we just focus on workforce at this point all righty because as a student like over the past couple of months it was a bit challenging for me to find affordable housing too for next year so like looking at this i think like building affordable housing for students will be also really important that was a point oh okay i i totally agree

104with you and i'm willing to start working on that as soon as this one passes and again i really think it should be student initiated though yeah that seems prudent to me as well um and it and i think john had a very good idea to separate these two issues because it could just um they could just you could complicate the discussion of warfare workforce housing tremendously um so um any other comments on this shannon you have your hand up a ball back um okay i guess there's um no more comments so with those friendly amendments do i have a motion to to vote on this as uh as amended rita raised her hand um i guess that's a that's the motion do i have a second kathy seconded um all right well let's proceed

105to a vote um see i gotta stop sharing here so i can see everybody all right so um who uh let's see all those who agree with accepting this resolution as amended um uh please raise your hand or say i i don't see or hear any nays any abstentions i don't see any so that's it the resolution passes unanimously so thank you everybody i know it's a complicated issue but uh it's good to get this ball rolling as soon as possible um and um so what about the second resolution that was attached here entitled um environmental commission endorsement um that seems to be uh seems to be moved at this point i think it is yeah just an issue of my own thinking things through it's okay to set it aside so do you want

106to do you want to advance a motion to uh um to table it at least or wrong agenda i think i would just remove it from the agenda i don't feel i mean unless the group thinks that's necessary so okay i think we did what need we needed to okay we should still vote on it so do i have a second now kathy's seconding this um um all who agree to uh to eliminate consideration of this uh resolution raise your hand say hi any uh any uh nays here in cnn any abstentions here in c9 so that that passes unanimously we will not be considering this resolution at any time in the future then so the next item on the agenda is reports from committees other commissions council and chairs so let's start off with

107uh um with uh the natural features working through we meet tomorrow at noon uh anyone wants a zoom link that doesn't have one we can get you one among other things on the agenda are looking at some of the first sections of amendments to the code updating natural features um a key thing on in that group is a revised and updated landmark and heritage tree list much more comprehensive um we'll also be looking chapter 40 which um uh has been um kind of a muddled and old ordnance uh often amended um but a hot button at the moment because of people wanting to replace turf grass on their sidewalk buffer strips with other plantings and so what are the limits and guidelines for doing that so it's a it's a right-of-way ordinance and what can

108happen and what shouldn't happen there so there'll be discussion of that uh tomorrow as well twelve o'clock to two o'clock okay thank you uh thank you chris um it's about pollinators um thanks we um pollinator worker first off did review the chapter 40. and we also talked with a transportation engineer cynthia redinger of the city about the um height limits of plants and access to the right of way on sidewalks so um i feel that we are um up to date in terms of of her concerns um there may be some comments or or alterations of our recommendations based on transportation but i think that we have good guidelines that we can use as we move forward into the next thing that i want to talk about which is the webinar we had this tuesday

109evening on native plants and pollinators we had a great help from galen in getting this organized and getting it out to neighborhood associations and other groups our attendance our registration was something like 80 we had attendance of at least 40 i think close to that um live during the session um we had some great presenters um from the county master rain garden program katie whitachuck brad smith an art professor and dean from the art school presented about his prairie backyard that he had installed and it's beautiful we had a presentation from bob hauser of wild ones the national organization that supports native plants and one of our climate ambassadors matty reif presented on pollinators and the interactions of pollinators and native plants which you heard a lot of in michael koh's presentation tonight we are

110going to be offering some informal on-site consultations with people on doing some small plantings on their property which on their immediate property and on their lawn extension areas um if they want to we've had a few people respond already and we have provided a survey to those who attended the session and we're we're getting responses um so it was it was kind of fun uh and um yeah there's that's where we are okay thanks kathy you have your hand up um i want to thank rita and uh chapter 40 is something that i've been interested in for over two decades and i i feel that that rita is really changing it from enforcement to encouragement and education which is very important and one of my main issues is that is the sight distance triangle area

111so that's the the areata intersection and the reason is that people as are coming up to an intersection they tend to stop at the point where they can see down the street the street that's at 90 degrees and if they can't see until after the crosswalk or in the middle of the crosswalk that's where they stop and in some cases they haven't seen that pedestrian that's in the crosswalk or that's walking through there and so it's really important that we have good sight distance and we then enforce having people stop at the stop bar not halfway through the crosstalk so that's my soap box for tonight all right thanks kathy um so the next uh next up is the uh zero waste working group lisa i was looking at john okay okay john happy too

112yes um a lot of stuff going on and we're very fortunate to have a kind of uh excellent crew working with us on this so the core staff is myself lisa and jenny patoski of city staff but then we have two interns one working on metrics and another working on outreach they're doing excellent work uh already some interesting stuff coming out of the metrics literature review that the intern is doing there and helping us think about how to better capture things that we're already doing so thinking about just like recycling rather than just the metric tons or the pounds that we're collecting what is the value of the materials that we're collecting and how is that contributing more towards a circular economy than just how many pounds or how many tons of something and then

113we're also kind of really zeroing in on resiliency and equity as the other metrics that we really want to address and kind of approaching in this primarily through a municipal or a county level lens rather than what a lot of the metrics that companies are looking at so that's going well starting to capture some really neat stories from folks who are entrepreneurs and and kind of leading circular economy efforts and have been doing it kind of quietly on their own for decades and wanting to raise that up in the community and we're also working with ctn to produce some short videos about uh what's going on and then we've got a group of c students who really just kind of got through their first semester of putting their work together they'll really start more focused

114work later in the fall as a part of their year and a half project but we're hoping to keep a couple of them with us through the summer working on the liturgy review and maybe getting some publications or helping us kind of synthesize that work and also on the outreach efforts we also had our first meeting with the state through i2p3 the initiative that we were selected for um i think we're the only there's eight lisa eight ten different communities across the state that are involved in this we're the only one that's really focusing on circular economy but lots of folks are very interested in it so that'll be a platform for us to kind of share things and we've got our fingers crossed that monday we'll finally hear on the small met metrics grant

115that we submitted last fall it's been put forward for funding that would be ten thousand dollars uh to kind of add some more support to the work um but we don't know yet but we've been waiting since september for that so it's been a while um i think that's it lisa anything to add uh i guess the only thing that i would add is that um with input from numerous staff members um samuel mcmullen and i have decided that the zero waste definite you know the resolution to define zero waste and set goals etc etc will not go forward to city council we have heard loud and clear from staff that it's not helpful to have a resolution um directing them to do something that they're already doing and it's very much not helpful setting

116goals that they may not be able to make as most other cities have not been able to make their zero waste goals um so i know that a lot of time went into developing the white paper that supports that resolution and i hope that it doesn't feel like that time is wasted because i think people learn things from doing that no thank you it's uh it's remarkable progress thank you so much i'm looking forward to having you having this on the agenda for the main meeting when you're ready to present it to the full commission okay um so let's see and on my part i'll have to say um you know i haven't gotten anything done with the uh with construction and deconstruction uh um but i intend to get something started by may or

117june i want staff time when staff has more time to help out with it or to be engaged with it um but meanwhile i'm still recruiting people for the court core group and gathering some information and finding allies in other communities here in michigan um so let's see and um that's it for the communities and working groups so the next i'm on the agenda are other commissions on planning commission um update from shannon yeah we made some changes to the unified development code and some of which affected some landscaping things that have some some kind of indirect relationship to this one was on street trees actually and cleaning up some of that language in there and making it a little bit more realistic in terms of how how that's calculated and then also rejiggering how

118this street tree escrow fund works which was very complicated and sort of opaque and working that all into the into the unified development code in a more seamless way um so that was uh great to see some changes with that and making it easier um and uh we also focused a lot on what our coming work plan is and i kind of hinted at that before and the first thing we're really taking on um hard is uh is parking and um that relates to environmental commission too believe it or not because uh um we're hoping to transition from having parking minimums like you have to have this many parking spaces to parking maximums you can't do more than x amount of parking spaces and all of that um just gives people more it encourages people

119to have less parking less impervious surface um and to also encourage us to move forward towards um [Music] taking transit more you know getting out of our cars um and and biking and walking and taking transit more so um and then the tc1 zoning i think is going to continue to march down the line too um with uh and we don't know the order but the the zones on consideration are washenaw stadium and plymouth and then there's also talk of you know other potential areas but i would say that those are tc1 and [Music] and parking are the ones that are really coming down the pike and that we are very motivated to move on and we have been we've been doing we've been getting a lot of things um accomplished so i think we're

120on a roll with that stuff well that's great thank you shannon um so the next is parks advisory hi hey a lot of work been going on in the parks advisory commission um i think first and foremost we had two big retirements the director of parks and and natural areas very recently and so there's work going on to hire the replacements i know one appointment has been made already and that's remy long and i believe he's in the role of natural area preservation um there's going to be some work this summer on a park on the west side of ann arbor called churchill downs um it's partly kind of a natural it's a it's a city park but it's got um a lot of it's undeveloped currently there's going to be some work to accommodate

121um runoff i think from and um wetlands there's going to be kind of a pond a potentially ephemeral pond that's going to be constructed in there to hold storm water runoff um so there'll be some activity in that park that um will affect the natural area of it um we've done uh the parks departments uh continuously uh recently repaved a big section of the border to border trail that runs through the city uh we just had a presentation on putting a little more attention into the gifts and memorials program that the park has and that the parks department has and how we can make it um a few more options for people and different price points to allow more people to be involved in making donations that are meaningful to the park system which i

122think will be a really nice um addition an opportunity for people to get involved in in parks in other ways um beyond just hanging out in our beautiful city parks um and also a new subcommittee has been formed also uh that's geared towards a bike recreation within the city and i you know from the parks department standpoint we're more focused on recreational aspects of bicycling but a number of our trails do get used for things like commuting and so i think that does have some bearing on the environmental commission and so we're worth keeping an eye on great well thank you man that sounds great so uh next up is energy commission um edie you have the floor thank you um last meeting we first had a presentation of um solar at city facilities and

123an overview of design and economics um and with a few minor amendments we wanted to pass a resolution in support of the use of arpa american rescue plan funds to support solar um study projects and move forward with that in alignment of k20 goals there was also another overview of the green rental housing program um which encompasses occupant weatherization appliance efficiency efficiency pathways and efficiency disclosure measures um and i believe this month there have been two public opportunities for comment as osi speaks feedback on that program there was a first reading of a resolution to support this program and that will be considered at a future meeting and we also adopted the workforce housing resolution okay all right thank you edie so um next up is council um anybody uh care to uh present a

124council update kathy i can say that the um council is gonna vote on the state and eisenhower tc1 rezoning on april 4th so that's exciting um and uh council will also vote on the plans the initial plans not a site plan yet but the pud rezoning for um the y lot and that too is of interest to all of you because it's a it's housing on top literally on top of transit so um and uh not i'm not remembering anything else that's huge of environmental commission interest i don't know kathy do you remember does anything stick out to you no and i apologize yes okay yeah yeah yeah we voted on we voted to approve the city moving forward with um five short term steps one of which is already in process and one long-term

125step to transition to more locally sourced and plant-based food options not to take options away from anybody but um to recognize that you know right now if you want a plant-based food option in a city vending machine you're probably going to end up with potato chips which i suppose are plant-based in some respect but so um we can do better and it will be cheaper especially if we locally source it and so um that's where we voted on that and there's a beautiful set of recommendations that missy stultz dr stultz wrote up in response to a resolution that elizabeth nelson brought to council in september so that's a terrific project and i'm really happy to see that come to fruition okay thank you kathy and lisa so well let's see the next is the chairs

126report um so um i want to acknowledge that john caliworks been suggested made some good suggestions to me about how to better manage our meetings so that you know we can get our business done to expedite getting our business done and uh have the meetings um last for two hours about two hours or so so um one is that i think um i'm proposing that you know we we reserve about one hour generally for presentations and new business and then one hour for our generic items on our agenda which so far we've managed to do this today so i'm hoping we can to continue this to to be able to close out around nine o'clock in respect to everybody else's time and um and we should i just want to remind everybody to be mindful

127during the comment periods that keep your comments brief and to the point as much as possible and that we always have the option to table or refer an item back to a working group you know if we need to have a more extended discussion and uh before bringing it up for a resolution or an ordinance draft or something like that for vote by the full commission um i also want to say uh on another topic um i'm reviving i'm been really very happy to be to tell you that i think the water quality work group is going to be revived and you know we've got a lot of energy behind that and i've recruited a fair number of people so i'm going to schedule a water quality working group meeting sometime before april mid-april and

128so i will be sending out an announcement when i'm ready when i have the external people that are interested as well people from staff on both the county and city level and with the huron river watershed council so i expect these organizations will be participating in this work group as well so look for my my invitation to a working group meeting for a kickoff for that one um and then also i'd like to remind people that i'm we i've been trying to keep action points but uh what i've decided to do is um move it to the action item tracker so there is an action action item tracker that we've been using sporadically for the last couple of years so i'm going to try to migrate that to a shared google site so it makes

129it easier to share documents because i personally and many other people on this commission do not have licenses for microsoft word and so um i think having a shared google file system would be very useful to get our work done so i'm going to migrate what i have including the uh um including the action item tracker to google web page that will be shared to all members of the commission for both you and editing privileges okay and then it should be open to the public for reviewing so i'm gonna set that all up myself in the next couple of days um and then um and then i recently a few days ago maybe it was yesterday i got an email from um from the city staff person about our policy agenda yeah um one of

130the one of the required one of the items that our bylaws is that annually annually we're supposed to be proposing policy agendas to counsel uh this regards um suggestions for how to use the uh the paid lobbyist for the city um to good effect and so the last time we submitted one was in december 2020 which was for the uh we did not get um we're a bit disorganized this year and we did not get this notice it's expected on by march 31st we're supposed to get something to council and uh i've reviewed the last submission and it seems like uh that we did for 2021 and it looks like it's uh you know still germaine for 2022. so i don't see anything novel to present there but what i will do and we don't

131have time to have a vote on this you know before march 31st but i'm going to send it out to all the commissioners so they can review it make some comments and we'll just stick with what's in the public record for uh 2021 unless there are some changes and then i'll see what i can do about uh getting those out at a later time okay i i don't see any other way of dealing with this so um are there any so let's see any questions or comments about the reports um then we'll move on to the report from staff gail and you have before all right thank you um i got two updates of the office of sustainability and innovations and u of m trees we are collaborating on the climate action movie night and

132this is going to be held on april 15th at 7 00 pm um at elbow field uh we'll have a performance by kai five then after that performance we'll jump into the movie and after the movie we'll have a panel discussion then also uh earth day this year we're working on that right now under leadership of susan westhoff and leslie science nature center um earth day is actually going to be celebrated uh by the city on april 24th at 1 pm at the leslie science in nature so this year it'll be in person those are my two updates okay and when was the date for the elbow field event uh april uh 15th that's a friday and um it'll be outdoors and then uh we're encouraging everybody to bring blankets you know you can do

133picnic style or whatnot but it'll be a good event and a good collaboration between the city and uofl well that's wonderful so oh the other thing i noticed galen is that the green fair has been scheduled i think the annual it used to be called the mayor's green field yes um i'm not sure that date off hand though i think it's in late april as well um but i will uh i will check with that um so i would encourage everybody to look at the uh at the city's website uh to find out when the green fair is coming on and i think um you know for the for the uh the last one was held in september i believe it was or it might have been around the first of october on main street

134and um we had a table for that event and um um commissioners a few of our commissioners i attended that and chris vandenbroeck uh luna oriole attended that as well and um i believe yong wen zhang as well and uh we had uh i think it's a good opportunity for the commission you know to uh you know to to be there to let residents give residents an opportunity to ask questions of us and to see what kind of work we're doing so i'm hoping to have a table for that but i may be out of town myself so i will um i will be circulating other emails to try to find volunteers and most of the the table itself was uh donated by uh you know by uh by osi but um um i'll keep

135you all posted on that um lisa you have your hand raised green fair is friday june 10th from 6 00 to 9 00 pm that's right it's june 10th that's good that gives us some more time so um [Music] okay so um [Music] so i got confused because i will be out of town then too and that's actually going on april 24th and i'll also be out of town on june 10th so um so there um right thank you again um so in terms of action items i don't think we have any to review at this time um so the next item are on our agendas items for the next agenda are there any topics people would like to discuss or put on the agenda um let's see hopefully we might get some so just

136email me your suggestions about uh what to schedule for our next meeting we have a few others uh that are involved but i think uh i think tiffany uh was was going to present this the city's um forestry plan but she had to postpone that until april so that's the only item i know of which is currently on the agenda okay for for our april meeting um the next scheduled meeting is april let's see here i think it is april 24th 28th i think oh you're right yep it's april 28th so the next scheduled meeting is april 28th at 7 00 pm um so the next item on our agenda is public commentary uh this is the second opportunity for persons to speak for up to three minutes please call 1-888-788-0099-477-853-5247 and enter meeting id

137989-285-11637 [Music] uh this is an opportunity for you to speak for up to three minutes so this information is also displayed on the meeting agenda and the video feed city staff will select callers that have raised their hand one by one using the last three digits of your phone number in order to electronically raise your hand to indicate your desire to speak please press star 9 on your phone you will hear an automated announcement that the host is allowing you to speak when speaking please move to a quiet area and mute any television or background sound so that we may hear you clearly please state your name and address at the beginning of your comments and be patient there is a delay of up to 30 seconds before a connection is established so um do

138we have anybody on the line as yet galen [Music] there's no one on the line okay well we'll wait 30 minutes and then um and then we will adjourn give me 30 seconds right i mean 30 seconds i've been on my computer i've been on my computer since six o'clock this morning i'm getting a little rattled so uh probably we just want to make a minor correction i technically didn't go to the mayor's fair last time so i couldn't take credit for that oh that's right i'm sorry yeah you're good hopefully i make it this time okay great that would be wonderful so um [Music] let's see i think 30 seconds have passed oh yeah is there anybody on the line there's no one on the line all right well thank you galen so i

139declare this meeting adjourned at um at 9 12. all right thank you everybody see you next month you