001oh um i will go ahead and call the meeting uh to order at 703 pm um on january 5th um and uh veneta could you please determine um if there's a quorum with a roll call we'll start with that you're on mute venita do you want to do the roll call craig or can i can do it okay um sarah fuller uh here in ann arbor uh jamal buffer here in superior township all right david esau hearing ann arbor allison barr president ann arbor john catharston here in ann arbor becky leonard uh marietta porter here in ann arbor hearing another all right so i didn't i forgot that uh peggy wasn't here so we will has anyone heard from peggy if she would attend or not tonight no okay um well i guess we will
002continue on and i will try and email her and see um if uh if she can attend um for part of this um so uh we want to go ahead and set a motion to approve the agenda do i have uh an approval of the agenda so move john thank you in a second david david and marionetta thank you both um all right so uh we're gonna move on to approval of the minutes and our december uh retreat 2021 minutes um we'll we will go over those at the next uh meeting so we are going to delay the approval of the december minutes don't we need to vote on the agenda we do need to vote on the agenda let's go ahead and vote on the agenda so um everyone that would like to move
003forward please raise your hand thank you for bearing with me as i get used to used to running these meetings um and thank you to john for the robert's rules um because that is helping quite a bit um all right so uh we will move on to old business i'll make a motion to approve the minutes from the december meeting okay meeting yep um so old business we wanted to formally announce the uh golden paintbrush award winners i'm sure all of you have seen the wonderful work venita and the communications department has done on putting the web page together for the golden paintbrush award winners but i will also list them here so that is the ann arbor arts center for the ann arbor arts center mural projects and the art box program so they
004were um awarded for two amazing projects they completed this year um david zinn's lovely singing in the rain mural um the youth art month installations with accordance with the ann arbor public schools some wonderful work there and then the city of ann arbor's i voted stickers so those are our golden paintbrush 2021 winners and i think then we are ready to move on to um new business can i ask a quick question before we do that um the next step with the golden paintbrush is for it to go to city council for them to like do the give get the awards do we have any everything that's happening thank you oh and yes craig i'll jump in um council has gone back to in-person meetings so we have reached out to sarah higgins to see
005how council will do that because it's going to have to be a no contact uh type of event right now the meetings are titled uh council's in the chamber staff is online some residents are in the chamber some residents are online so we quite haven't figured out the mechanics of how you're going to do the introduction and presentation thank you so much craig and sophie sophie you're on mute okay um yes i was going to say we have one more award to come as well which will be the people's choice award so um hopefully that's going to be up on the the same page with the announcements inviting people to choose their their favorite and so we have a little time before the council will be asked to to make those awards um so that's
006coming very soon and will be will be in addition an additional award and we're excited to be able to do an on-site presentation um of the awards and uh thank you veneta for coordinating that our tile awards are ready to go and so we just await a date to present them at this point um does anyone else have any questions uh regarding the golden paintbrush award before moving on all right fantastic then uh we can move on to um new business uh which is um congratulations to uh jamal as our new vice chair and i'm moving into the chair role um and i just want to say a huge thank you to allison um for her service as chair she is um just wonderful to work with um so organized and has really uh on
007the time i've been on this commission been such a wonderful leader and very generous with your advice and resources john as well thank you so much for for your work on the leadership nominations committee um and jamal if you would like to say anything please uh please take the floor sure thanks sarah um yeah i'm excited to get acquainted with this role and learn a lot john did a great job of explaining a lot of the uh responsibilities to me and uh yeah thank you allison for helping us get the annual plan together super helpful with that so just excited and thank you for the opportunity allison if you would like to say anything um their role as as well i'm not going anywhere i'll still be around um you know i'm really excited about
008the new leadership though i think you guys are going to be phenomenal um and just thanks for all the support all you have given me over the past couple years while i've been chair and looking forward to what you guys can accomplish as leaders john uh i would just like to also thank allison uh she's been on this uh board uh she's been in the position of chair for three years and under her tenure uh uh the commission has moved forward in uh very positive dramatic ways uh we really have diversified under her tenure uh we've also sought out and received some some money a grant um and i think it's due to her leadership um and uh and i appreciate it and i think that um we've talked about uh something official kind of
009a letter of appreciation coming from the entire uh commission and uh if that's at all possible uh i think this would be an excellent time to uh to move that forward uh that to recognize uh allison's leadership uh formally so uh thank you very much allison i'm glad you're still with us and gonna stay hopefully for several years but uh so i i defer to our chair and vice chair we've talked about it uh if there's a way that that i could help in any way i'm more than happy to uh but i think we should uh formalize this uh this change of leadership in a way that shows our appreciation for for allison's hard work i think that is a fabulous idea john and that is definitely something that we will discuss in uh
010in the coming months to um celebrate uh allison and her amazing stewardship um as chair and craig if the commission comes up with the verbiage they desire i will speak on behalf of anita that we can put it on city letterhead and make it official fantastic thank you craig and thank you veneta um all right does anyone have um anything else they would like to add to new business tonight all right then i think we are ready to move on to a report from staff which i believe we we do not have a report from staff tonight so unless that's changed what is the annual plan review under new business um the annual plan uh we completed um earlier this afternoon and we will be sending that out um to review so i will be
011adding um everyone on the commission your email addresses to review what uh jamal and i put together with the help of allison and in a conversation with vanita as well earlier this afternoon we will be looking to present that in our february meeting to council sophie hey um yeah does the annual plan include the suggestions we were all asked to come up with for ideas for the future or is that a separate thing um we have added um most of our goals um put together during our retreat um allison took some great notes that we've been working off of um some of our goals um were you know agreed upon by multiple commission members um other goals were you know given by individuals so at this point um and something once we you know move
012that uh forward most likely tomorrow you will all get um you know access to edit that document um we want to really look forward uh to those goals and make sure that um you know it's more than just um one person on a working group that has set that goal that that's something that you know we agree upon um as a group so uh you know once once we have that editing power which will be given to you tomorrow um then we will be able to move forward and uh you know narrow or expand upon those goals okay uh any other questions um about the annual plan allison i think i failed to mention to you guys uh when we talked about the plan that as part of the plan uh the cip list is
013supposed to go with it i know that linkedin is our last cip list that got approved um but david and i met today as a cip group and so there's going to be new things that will go on that and so that should be part of this uh report [Music] absolutely i put in a placeholder um uh you know of what we'd like to do for uh 2022 so once we have that document we will certainly link to that and i think um you know having this ready to present to counsel um you know in february that gives us a little more time to make sure that we've put everything together um including that cip plan which is a very important part of the entire plan and certainly of that working group all right anything
014else regarding annual plan questions comments concerns all right then i think we are ready to move on to the report from committees and we will continue with our cip working group capital improvement project working group um david do you have david or allison anything to add um about the cip work this uh this year um sure uh we got a new cip in mid-december um the committee met which is sarah and allison and myself uh talked about some options with it uh set up a meeting with deb which occurred today because she was on a pretty extended vacation because she had vacation time she needed to use up by the end of the year so um deb gosselin is the person who runs the cip with the the city so it has been very helpful
015in all these things so we met with her today we have a better sense of what we need to do we just need to get the three of us back together again and make a final plan to put together put in front of the commission thank you david i get his hand up i don't know i think there was a report from staff about this wtp project it looked like from the agenda i was just gonna say it stands as written so oh okay don't have to add anything thank you craig and allison um so we will move on to our outreach working group uh which includes sophie peggy and marionetta um anything to report sorry so if i think you're on mute sorry i always do that backwards speak first press the button afterwards
016um yes i think it's a little early but i i would like to to arrange a meeting with other members of the group or whoever would like to arrange a meeting because um i'm eager to get started with it anyone else marionetta or well peggy's not here marionetta did you have any thoughts about that no um i think uh some ideas came up at our last meeting kind of collectively um that i think uh would be good for for our outreach reach committee to talk about a little bit more we haven't met yet but i'm looking forward to working with peggy and so sophie i know um part of what had been what discussed was monument lab as an example um and i don't know if you saw sophie but the penny stamps lecture series
017just was present or their calendar was just put out and uh monument lab is supposed to be coming in march as part of their lecture series so maybe we can all go or virtually go or however they're doing it that'd be great an in-person or virtual field trip i like that well wonderful and um you know looking at the annual plan you know we've put some of those those goals that we discussed at the retreat for the outreach uh working group so it'll be great for marionetta peggy and sophie for for you to take a look at that and you know give us any edits on that that you think should be you know included in that plan for this working group which is new this year because it has absorbed a few of our
018other working groups so um you know there is uh onwards and upwards wonderful places to go with that all right so um i will move on then to the special projects working group uh which includes sophie peggy jamal and myself um i do believe you know most of what what we're doing right now is just completing the golden paintbrush award from 2021 which we've you know discussed a bit before um so you know vanita is working on getting our people's choice uh linked up on our webpage our observer ad is running um and we're working on getting those on-site award presentations together um and then of course we will move on to 2022's golden paintbrush award i think we've learned a lot over the past year of how to facilitate this award so i look
019forward to working with all of you um on you know making 2022's award uh you know submissions um you know call to the public all of that um you know the award presentation will make that really nice and smooth does anyone else have anything to add yeah not about the golden paintbrush but there was some talk about a city flag design being uh proposed and we might at some point perhaps ask glenn if she can ask the mayor if he still has that in mind i know he's a very busy man and um so probably it doesn't reach the top of his his agenda but uh if he's still interested then he doesn't have to say much just to kick start it i would say uh craig the the resolution has been drafted and presented
020to the mayor um we did send a reminder and i'm going to struggle as to how long ago it was done and have not heard so yes didn't count those hands the last i chatted he went uh getting ready for this meeting he said it's still on his mind so i can follow up and see when we might schedule having that come to vote thank you and i believe we had that um last year um under our youth outreach working group which again has been absorbed into the outreach working group but might be better suited to be under our special projects working group um so that's something we will definitely add to our annual plan goals under that specific group so we can move on to our communications working group which includes um alison marionetta
021david and myself um we have not met yet this year as it is still early um but uh you know we will review obviously our goals from the annual plan and move forward with that you know we just used some funds from our endowment to fund the ann arbor observer ad for the golden paintbrush award which is something that we talked about using those funds for last year we've done so successfully now um so we hope to see more of that type of action being taken in 2022 and if anyone else um has anything to add for the communications work group um that would be great no just similar to sophie i think we need to get a date on our calendar and meet and get some stuff rolling yep all right so um and
022we have our leadership working group uh which includes jamal and myself uh so you know our first act in our leadership working group has been to put together the annual plan again with a wonderful help from allison um which will be shared uh editing um powers um to everyone on the on the commission so we can take a look at that make sure we're all on the same page and uh you know forged forward in 2022 i do believe we still have an open spot um on our commission um to replace with santa young um who uh you know gave wonderful service um last year to the commission um so that is you know definitely something on our agenda um that we want to accomplish sooner rather than later for 2022. um so if everyone
023uh you know kind of keeps that on their mind if there's anyone that uh in your networks that you think would be a great fit um you know just keep us in the loop um and we'll continue to review um submissions uh with vanita and craig as well and the mayor um to fill that spot uh jamal do you have anything uh to add for leadership no i don't think so um just got my feet wet with this annual plan um it was good times so yeah nothing else to add it's a good one to get your feet wet you get real entrenched in those bylaws and all your charges and really we cannot thank you enough allison for your help absolutely all right so thank you both um and we will move on then
024to our fundraising and development working group which includes alison david and myself we have not yet met um this year again still early um so we have the whole year to do that and uh you know i don't have too much to add to fundraising at this moment uh david or allison do you have anything to add we look forward to meeting soon at lynn can you explain to me uh who holds the endowment and um how or where the endowment is held and how it's dispersed i i will take a stab and i'll screw up part of it and allison and danita can correct me where i'm wrong it is held in the ann arbor area community foundation and they contact us twice a year once a year with available with funding or with
025disbursement available funds and the [Music] commission itself makes a determination whether they're going to take the money out or not and what they use it for did i essentially get it right allison yeah that's all right um you know as endowments works we the interest rolls over and that's what we can take the money off of um we got a large donation last year which pretty much doubled our endowment which is why there was more activity this year around with a better understanding of it and you may have seen that last year we also reevaluated what those funds could be used for when the endowment was set up there was no maintenance process within the city to maintain public art so that was predominantly what the endowment funds were for but now we have maintenance
026of the public art pieces within each of the departments within the city so we wanted to kind of open up the doors to potentially facilitate purchasing public art or like we've done most recently communicating or acknowledging public art works um with the advertisement about the paintbrush award so we most recently took out 2500 full from our endowment and used about 600 on the observer ad so there's a little bit of money that's sitting at the city that we can still use this year from the endowment before we have to take out more before we take more funds next year if we decide to the past several years we've just let it roll over and haven't used it and put it back into the endowment and also um how should i say this their return on
027the investments over some of the years were not very well not didn't do well so we didn't have much uh interest to take out but with recent improvement in the markets there's a little bit more money to be to be allowed to come up thank you i i was curious about that because i was involved in the skate park effort and there was an endowment established at the community foundation in a similar fashion and making sure that the city was able to be able to access maintenance funds for the park and then i think there's an effort to add lights for skinny at night too so um i'm glad that it's a it's a similar and familiar setup and how thank you craig allison and lynn um yes and something else with our you know
028fundraising uh working group is you know we're always looking uh to to new grant opportunities um as well so a goal of ours is to apply to at least one grant this year vanita is great about keeping us up to date um on grant opportunities um and we're always looking for those as well um in addition to uh to our endowment and any other kind of fundraising efforts we can put together all right uh any uh anything else to add um for fundraising and development all right then i'm going to move on um to our annual uh chair and vice chair um review and election project so that is john and allison and um you have both clearly done your due diligence um we have new leadership this year and if john or allison if
029either one of you would like to add um add to that working group anything to report we have nothing to report at this time thank you [Music] thank you both um and before we adjourn um i apologize i wanted to give a former a formal uh welcome to lynn song um our new uh city council uh liaison and newest member to our our commission um we are so happy to have you lynn um and if you would like to say anything please take the floor great thank you thank you for having me um i'm eager to participate uh i myself am not an artist but i support artists uh and i appreciate the work that that uh that's involved in in making sure our community is beautiful um i'd love to see more public art
030especially as we start walking down this path of um committing federal relief funds you know seeing if we can build more affordable housing i see public art when i travel um recently in hawaii there's a you know there's an effort annually with graffiti work that adorns a one neighborhood a long affordable housing project same in there's a really amazing project in rome with four stories high murals and artists and residents in preparation for you know making sure um low-income neighborhoods are as beautiful and as attractive as every other neighborhood so uh there's an interest i'd love to see ann arbor actually invest its time and money towards that end and i i'd like to see what i can do on this commission so thank you for having me thank you lynn yes i think we
031have similar goals and uh i think we're going to uh to accomplish some great things in uh 2022 so again wonderful to have you here um and uh before we adjourn also um does anyone have anything to add any upcoming um events art related um anything anyone like would like to add before we adjourn for the evening i would like to applaud you you run a meeting 30 minutes this is a record i absolutely love it very well organized well done in your first meeting thank you very much john i have to thank you and benita and alison um really for you know great examples great agendas i can follow along so thank you very much john and i uh sophie i think i saw your hand uh yeah i have to remember what i
032was gonna ask um oh yeah one question and uh and then a comment after that uh probably john can help with this one i know the the capital improvement projects the cip thing is just for city projects right not for private projects but i'm thinking all the many buildings and things that are going up which are privately um being done is that would that all come under the the group that john kotowski is in with the planning permission type people um i forgot the name of it now the design review board exactly the design review board does every single one come up to the design review board and give the opportunity for input or is there some gaps anywhere let me just try to respond as best i understand it the cip is about municipal
033construction the city builds about 50 million dollars worth of stuff and this commission was set up through the percent for our program and that program was a set aside of one percent of all of that construction money that changed in 2013 and it became voluntary this commission was encouraged to identify potential for public art in the commission pro in the municipal construction projects the cip and that's what um um david and his committee has been doing over several years um it's more voluntary we we have to inspire uh the city to do this as far as private uh construction um it's somewhat similar we have to inspire we really can't order anybody to do anything just you know and i like that frankly if it's a good idea you know people will congregate around it
034the design review board um um uh reviews uh development within the um the dda kind of uh uh area so that if you want to build something within that area in other words the downtown that uh you have to present your plans to the to the design review board and they give you advice i am the art commission's leia so every project that comes up i let designers know that it was unanimous to appoint a liaison from the art commission to the design review board because the city council wants to see more public art done with private dollars they have invested millions of dollars in public money and they would like to encourage these developers to invest some of their money and that gets kind of a favorable response and then we suggest as a
035design review board some places in which these developers might consider public art that's been kind of successful um the new uh development that's happening on on william and maine that i forget what the name of that huge project is there's going to be a small piece of land that's set aside for a sculpture park it's a mini park it's right on packard in maine and the credit union the u of m credit union is going to develop redevelop or renovate part of their building that is an albert khan building that's on the corner of um i i think it is um division and in here on uh is that right craig and uh they're going to put an addition on the back of it and uh i was successful in recommending they put some way
036finding public car screening for their dumpsters that would give a map of all of the albert khan buildings that are on the campus i mean he's you know he's designed i think uh close to buildings i mean you know the the the the voice of albert khan is really dominant in the university of michigan there's no place that really showcases that they have really gotten excited about doing that so those are two projects that i think the art commission can take credit for um that i know of that they're going to do so those are two ways in addition to that the group with with david we've put together a public art idea book and that's open to anyone and it there's probably two or three hundred examples of public art around the world um
037and so folks that want to get ideas can go there and um and and you know and it's eye candy for people that like public art you'd love it lynn and um in addition yes so go ahead david i'm just gonna say i don't know why you're giving me credit for the idea book you did the entire thing yourself it's wonderful too you deserve the credit well what david did by himself was a um a review process of how to think about public art within private construction so i mean if it's it's it's kind of a novice you know like i want to decorate the building well that's one way of looking at it but we would prefer not to decorate with public art public art really talks about we think an identifier a language
038it speaks something visually with coded um images uh so that uh one you need to find a place that's prominent who's going to see it how are they going to see it uh and then from that beginning to a location to a type of art i mean a mural is one thing but there are a lot of other ways reliefs and sculptures and all kinds of other approaches that developers can think about beyond murals and then how do you select it well as many folks that have been on the art commission for a long time know that the most important thing isn't picking the art it's getting the community to buy into it so you know i mean we revere a stone a rock on here on and paint it it's a piece of public
039art it is a rock uh so if we can love that you know we can learn to love other kinds of things but there really needs to be an engagement of the public they need to participate and they need to feel some ownership so that this group has suggested that you know get professionals to narrow it down to three home runs and then let the public kind of weigh in on one of those three that's our recommendation so so we kind of package that and we present it both to the city for their municipal construction and to private investors through the design review board and then just generally uh from these these projects that both david and i worked on i hope uh that answers it i'm sorry i didn't sophie yes yes that answers
040it uh that answers it very well thank you john um i'm wondering if if there might be a meeting or something or a subcommittee meeting at some point where we can dream up ways of of influencing also buildings which are outside of the downtown area because there are so many of them now and it would be very exciting if we could make some inroads there um so that was that part um the other i just wanted to tell everybody about something that happened in the world of monuments which is you probably remember when um the colston statue the slave trader colston statue was thrown into the into the water in bristol and today the some of the people who were most prominent in doing that had the trial for vandalism i think and they actually
041were let off and were not not indicted of anything at all so that was rather remarkable i thought indeed thank you sophie for sharing that um important piece of world news today um and definitely a reason to um to think about the role that public art really plays in our lives as john touched on um art is a form of communication right and public art of course is a form of communication with our community um that we are serving um and it is important to make sure that the messages that we are giving our community and that represent who we are as a community really speaks to um equality and justice uh in this world so thank you so much sophie um and sorry just to circle back real quick um to the uh the
042other question um you know i believe with um the leadership working group um that jamal and i um will try to make some inroads to the downtown uh development authority as well i know that's focused obviously more on downtown buildings but that is another way that we can make some inroads with private businesses right private businesses especially if they're in such a visible area always benefit from serving the public it gives them more visibility and also benefits uh benefits them um so that's one way that we can also make some inroads with private development um and you know we really hope to leverage um our uh our leadership forum uh list that we all created last year um you know with with our networks um uh names of people that are uh artists and uh
043influer influencers in uh the art world in our community here um as well as you know forging a stronger relationship with the you know more newly developed ypsilanti art commission um that were able to all collaborate um you know to bring um awareness of public art also to these private developments um lynn yes i'm actually a liaison for the dda partnerships i think it has a new name it's housing and dda something so if there's any way that i can help you that um i'm making and seeing if um uh we can get those conversations with them they'd be happy for it i think they've done some really great work and investing in the downtown infrastructure with the bike lanes um so i mean it looks beautiful so and they're also um pre-entitling and making
044getting ready for the affordable housing in that dda footprint too so there are opportunities to work more closely together i'd love to help that is exactly what we want to hear lynn that is fantastic um so we will certainly set up um you know a meeting in the future where you know we can uh uh kind of sit down and and discuss some of these opportunities and you know give you more background answer more questions you have um about the commission all right so um anything else um to add uh before we adjourn for the evening no all right then do i have i have a motion to adjourn john and do i have a sophie thank you so much um happy new year everyone uh again welcome lynn and uh thank you all for
045your time tonight and uh our next meeting uh will be uh wednesday uh february 2nd same time seven to nine is our allocated time so um sure i'll see some of you in between that time um but if i don't see you i look forward to seeing you in february thank you everyone good night you