Center of the City - Council of the Commons Meeting 8/5/21

001uh and we'll do a roll call heather could you uh check us off here and um just a reminder to everybody to um say where you're calling in from thank you yes all right i'll get us kicked off with stephen hey steve burksdorff president ann arbor michigan great uh jennifer it's not here alan alan haber damn ray france sarah here from ann arbor jeffrey jeff henny i'm here from ann arbor and camilla doesn't look like she's here yet rita you're from ann arbor oh i see jennifer's joining us just a moment alice thomas ralph here in ann arbor frank um here in eastport michigan adam uh adam zumke present here in ann arbor and jennifer president from somerset kentucky wow lucky gotta be hot down there i bet you know what actually i'm sitting outside

002because it's really a pretty pleasant evening so but it was i learned that people don't work go for a run at like three o'clock in the afternoon here so you gotta get it done at like six o'clock in the morning if i were in high school we would be on the marching band practice field at seven in the morning what did you play alice flute and they put me at right guard which is the longest step and i really had to work on that like putting putting a i don't know most ridiculous thing i ever heard of you have to go so many feet per step you know yeah and when you're on the outsides of the swing you're you're taking the longest step you know inside in the middle you just do little baby

003steps but they put me on the outside anyway um you do the you do the hard things in the cool weather that's what you do well we'll go ahead and uh get get things rolling here um i'm just gonna sorry adam i'm just gonna i i think you all can see me but i didn't get called on i am here in ann arbor oh i'm so sorry it doesn't really matter just for the record i just wanted to say here and where i'm at she's rcm yeah there you go minor details minor details um so i think heather you should you should forget me next time take turns for getting each one of you uh so we'll go ahead and and uh we can do an approval of the agenda um heather do you want

004to highlight because we did have some some late pieces here a little bit i know you sent an email which we really appreciate um just any uh any additional items here you know there was something that jeffrey submitted which is a report by the initiating committee so i'll let him take that over when we get to or you can let him take that over when we get uh member news and updates and then the other item was something that councilmember briggs and adam put together regarding trying to move the food truck idea forward perfect um are there any amendments uh to um to the agenda as written or as posted all right could we get a motion to approve i'd move to approve the agenda second second couple seconds there um all right uh all

005in favor say aye or raise your hand all right all right any opposed all right um and uh approval of the minutes of the last meeting um do we want there there are two sets of minutes in there because the one from the previous meeting had been postponed to this meeting so i think you can do it as a package or you can take it separately if you'd like to any objections to doing the package no okay so approval of the minutes from the previous two meetings um could we get a motion to um approve so moved second second all right uh all in favor raise your hand or say hi he posed i meant stating because i missed both of them and so my apologies i'll do better next time that's all right um

006okay uh that takes us to public comment uh heather do we have any members of the public we have one member of the public that joined us that does have their hand up robert black um you should be able to talk now thank you heather um i'm robert black as you probably remember i'm working working with the initiating committee um i wish to speak to you tonight on two agenda items number seven and eight on your agenda um i'm going to try to keep this to two minutes so alan can get to bed i won't do the three whole minutes uh agenda item number seven congratulations to you on your good progress in the july 7th working session i watched and you are beginning to gel as a collaborative group the process toward alignment is

007challenging for a group as diverse as you are yet your ability to listen and speak with mutual respect is laudable i encourage you to continue to seek more and more alignment and trust that future working sessions will be scheduled to allow 100 of council members to participate and then concerning agenda item number eight as you consider tonight a future design process i encourage you to ensure that you have sufficiently prepared a foundation of material to stand on including such things as a a clear and concise summary of the most useful findings from the center of the city task force and b a structured outline of the desired physical elements you ultimately envision for the commons this will allow you to prepare a thoughtful and well-defined rfq rfp to secure the guidance of design professionals you

008may even desire to start with a preliminary schematic design phase with clear outcomes in a near-term schedule taking a small step like this would allow an important incremental step to optimize any monetary expenditures and at the same time invite and solicit input and participation from potential partners both within and around the commons block any one or more of these potential partners may bring insights ideas and resources that will effectively leverage your expenditures while at the same time living out the basic principles of the commons diversity participation and inclusion i wish you a productive meeting tonight thank you and we have one person that joined us on the phone if you would like to talk you can press star nine to raise your hand all right you should be able to talk breast star 9. now

009you should be able to unmute yourself and and talk hello jeff crockett can you hear me now we can yes okay um my wife christine and i have lived at 506 east kingsley since 1980 while a teacher for the plymouth canton's community schools i frequently drove by kellogg park a community center for recreation community events family and neighborhood gatherings kellogg park features a wonderful fountain we have nothing like it in ann arbor and this was a mistake made by early city planners we believe that with the passage of prop a we have the opportunity to correct this mistake that is why i'm speaking tonight i want to help i joined the initiating committee in april after attending a few meetings and becoming impressed with the vision and activism some amazing volunteers some of whom serve

010on this committee and are present tonight all of the flowers and vegetables for this garden have been donated we have documented this work with pictures taken of the various stages of the garden and created a log to count hours which at this point is eclipse 360. this total does not include time spent in zoo meetings email and phone calls the actual number is easily over 400 hours i created a powerpoint presentation which has been presented to you with the help of many in the initiating committee most of the planning occurred planting occurred in late may into mid-june we created the green team now consisting of 10 members who rotate maintenance duties we expect the green team to grow as the garden reaches its peak and we begin the planning for 2022. i encourage anyone who

011wants to join the fun to please contact me and we will add you to the team i am also giving guided tours of the garden which started with council member lisa dish and this invitation for a tour is extended to all of you i would be happy to meet you at the garden and tell you the story in person this project more than anything else is about building personal relationships i am pleased to share with you a proposed sign for the garden that i hope was posted that the green team would like to install in the west boundary it is 15 inches tall and 8 feet wide it will be visible from division the loco was created by robert black a qo qr code will direct the visitor to the initial initiating committee's website this

012sign has been approved by the initiating committee and by maura thompson of the dda it will be produced and donated by graffactory a local sign business please let us know what you think in closing i would like to thank all of you for your generous donation of time in serving in the council of the commons thanks also to maura thompson for moving parking on weekends and to ali ramlee for providing water for the garden we clearly need now to move forward with a short-term plan that includes single-day events such as the proposed market days bathroom facilities electrical upgrade wi-fi and most importantly seating for both event and recreational use just understand that the ann arbor city count commons is our field of dreams if we build it they will come thank you thanks jeff anyone

013else heather that is it all right wonderful uh so um with that uh we'll move on to member news and updates and um we we can do a couple of things here we could do the initiating committee uh report if you'd like jeff um you uh would like me to do that right now i can do sure yeah that sounds good can i share my screen heather or do you have you should be able to as a panelist host disabled participant screen sharing yeah can you un uns un disable that let's see are you able to do it now all right see yeah i think so okay so um [Music] this is a little report to you guys we're planning a fall food art and fun network we probably call it something else but that's

014what we've come up with so far i have to do with fan market it's three events uh on the ann arbor library lot in liberty plaza and it would start beginning september and go through mid-november three events um we decided that sorry to interrupt you but i'm not seeing your full screen is everybody else seeing it no you can't see it either it's just the ribbon in the top of your screen uh you you can't see my full screen [Music] nothing uh we can see just the uh it's basically the header of your web your web browser um just says heather can you put my presentation up i sent it to you just threesome see um unless i go down here can you see it now nope not yet supposed to be showing well anyway

015i can i can just talk through it i can try pulling it up just a moment it'll take me it's just three slides but while she's doing that so uh we decided that uh it would be great as you know non-profits the initiated community and library green if we could you know implement start implementing can you see it now yeah okay so um we could we could start uh implementing what was talked about before which is is getting some food activity going on the site and related um and so what we did was uh we put together we put together a plan and we're going to get permitting from the appropriate sources and and and do all the necessary you know requirements for a non-profit to use the site and the idea is for us

016to put this uh a a series a three a three um event series together starting uh the first or second sunday of september and it as i say we're calling it fall food art and fun and um let me see if i can so can you move to the next slide yeah thank you and uh here's a a kind of i don't know whether you can see this very well i sent a a report to each one of you through heather but it just shows where the stalls of the different vendors would be we're gonna have food vendors trucks um you know uh other kinds of vendors uh entertainment like singers and and music and and um and some non-profits and of course central will be the folks in the uh the block neighbors we

017i've already started talking to them about having a presence there if they want to if the and uh we would like them to to to have a presence and um if you could go to the next uh slide or just if you can move the slide up so um we're also we also have entertainers uh and kids fun area we hope we're trying hoping to have puppet shows games and clowns and stuff like that if we can get them organized uh we're going to have an information booth which would be over on the uh you can kind of see it there if you can see it would be the the information booth on the uh the whole project on the on the city park and civic center commons initiative would be there and um uh

018so that would be the first one and then we would have two more probably the first or second sunday of october and first or second sunday of november and probably have some sustainability projects included in collaboration with the department of sustainability at the city who are big supporters of us and we are a collaborator with them on their website they have the commons up there and uh also we want to do a future of ann arbor visioning game which we're organizing that allows people to be creative and imaginative about the future of ann arbor and of course we'd work with the planners in the city and so forth and the dda and so forth to talk about that um part of the exercise is really to run what i would call a clinical trial or

019an experiment to do these three things um and that is because uh it was quite rightly pointed out that although the task force had done great things about getting input from the community and as was said earlier we need to look at that carefully and we have looked at it uh we want to elicit more feedback from the community more diverse feedback and this series of experiments is one way of doing it to figure out what people how people feel about use of the site what their interests are and whether these kind of activities are enjoyable and interesting to them and of course we will have in the information booth the opportunity for people to express those uh those thoughts and ideas it's uh it was properly marketed and signed signed and all the rest

020of it um part of the exercise will involve intensive data collection images and feedback collection the way we uh did it in the task force and in particular jeff crockett who talked earlier who did the the green team uh garden uh is very good at collecting data and uh and you know and processing and so forth and analyzing it so we will work with him on that and of course uh everything will be properly permitted and insured and safety health and sanitary requirements will be in place you can go to the next slide so funding from from um for this will come from via from private donations through the library green conservancy and we already have commitments to fund this and um also um the series itself will be these series of events will be

021organized and professionally managed on behalf of the initiated committee and library green conservancy by dana queen with a support of volunteer team dana is currently the saline farmers market manager she previously successfully launched the dexter farmers market and advises and assists the manchester acorn farmers market so she has a great deal of experience in running and organizing and marketing these events she knows the vendors she can pull in the entertainers she puts these things together very professionally and very quickly and she has committed some time to do this and uh both the library green and the initiating committee have been very comfortable and happy with uh what they've heard from her uh full disclosure she is my step and uh so just so people know that um we welcome please close the door sorry about

022that close the door please yeah and i understand closely sorry that's my my little grandson um so sorry about that he's seven years old he doesn't quite understand adult zooms quite yet uh anyway um we welcome all advice counsel and support from the council of the commons and as i said i've sent a little document that reflects mostly this a few little odds and bits added to it but that's not what i wanted to report to the council about this thank you i think it looks really exciting jeff um i think uh i think it's uh it's very cool looks like you've got it well planned out too well i felt that it was extremely important to do this if if we're going to you know launch an experiment and we're going to you know

023this is our public face we need to do it thoroughly professionally and so we've all devoted a lot of time and put some money into this to really you know put a good face on on what we're doing and so it reflects well hopefully on the council of the commons because at the end of the day you're the public face uh you know to the the city government and so forth but i welcome any input advice ideas participation from any member of the council of commons we we we do have some members that are already engaged and but anybody who wants to participate be delighted to have them adam if you want to have your business uh featured there that would be great you know for example we also will be getting sponsorships uh for

024example the uh uh the university of michigan credit union has indicated they are inclined to sponsor this and put some money behind it and there's a couple of others um that have said the same thing i talked to ali ramali and others and they're all very positive about this so uh erica you've got is that up to you heather to ask or what's up to adam oh yeah please feel free there's i think there's four people that have their hands up yes i think i'm third in line i think alice was first i i apologize i actually cannot see anybody's hands done all right let's just go on first adam we're just taking over yeah sounds good alice go first have at it now i can i i don't know what happened well first of

025all jeff a very impressive uh program you have outlined um uh the the one thing that gave me pause was who the we are especially when it comes to the gathering of data and the information booth um we've already run into this problem with the representation of of this commission as being conflated somehow with the initiating committee and they are very different things as someone has mentioned or several have mentioned the difference between a public process and a public public commission and and a volunteer non-profit you know who who is speaking for whom is just one consideration that i'd like like to point out um before you get too deep into all of this uh free labor that you're putting into this but um that's just what i wanted to bring up it is really

026much more um your your program is very much more uh better thought out than anything we've seen or had the opportunity to put together otherwise um but i wouldn't want it to kind of be cornered by a technicality i guess do you want to respond to that or i i don't require responsibility okay sure um stephen um yeah no thanks uh thanks for sending it around and thanks for sort of talking us through it i thought it looked fantastic um i thought i was the only thing i wanted to offer by way of thought was uh in terms of like the data that that's being collected i saw a lot of ideas around like making sure you know kind of use it as a chance to find out what people want are they using the

027site but also maybe ask questions about what they want to see but also make sure to collect information about what you want when you're running an event there you know so we have more hard data about that as far as like facilities wise and things that are obstacles in terms of either in any kind of way and bringing it off or you know executing it planning it uh whatever the the things you wish you would have had or that would have been easier this is another good opportunity to learn more about that so but kudos all around for putting it together and it sounds like it's going to be happening in the near term like starting off so that was great as well so thank you uh stephen i absolutely concur with you and that

028will be part of the process we will iteratively learn what we need to do to make these events successful so each event will teach you something new and we will obviously report back that information not only will we analyze it ourselves for making things better as we go along but also report it back right now and like with a view towards like the prior public comment talking about some of the facilities that they that folks already kind of wish were there more electrical wi-fi right bathrooms you know these kind of facilities and just kind of be thinking about that as these events are going forward um i concur with what's been said so far um basically looks like a great um great plan and it's nice to have some um kind of official events already

029in the works for the fall and i very much kind of in line with what alice mentioned um i think it's it's wonderful that um michigan and community is coming and gathering some input about what we'd like to see but i i definitely see it as this is a non-profit led event and i think it should be pretty clear from um the promotion and from um kind of how the event would be perceived on site that that's the you know two non-profits in in the community have have worked hard to to to launch this event series um and so when it comes to the data collection piece um there is certainly given the rules of these nonprofits interested in understanding how the space is used but i do worry a little bit without kind of

030alice's concern about how people can get weary about sharing their views about a site and we the task forces has collected data um i anticipate that we're going to be um hopefully in the rfp process getting people's thoughts in um in the design phase and so the more information that it's always great to ask people's opinions and things like that we have to be careful about we want to make sure that we can use that information in meaningful ways um or that you can use that information in meaningful ways um but i guess be cognizant that the people may when the next time we're asking for their information they may say well i've already provided information twice why should i why should i give more thoughts on this so um maybe just connect more with

031heather as this is going forward just to get some sort of staff feedback on this as well i absolutely agree with that and the the reason i presented it in the way that i did it was not to preempt what the task force did or what um what the initiate what the sorry what the council of the commons is going to do it was simply i wanted to be helpful because some members of the council of the commons had been concerned that we hadn't cast wide enough a net earlier on and so that's an issue for the council of commerce but i just wanted to be helpful in the process and you know mainly this is about trying to figure out how to do these events well as you know has been mentioned earlier and

032learn how to do it better i'm not trying to interject something into the into the decisions of the council the comments and the recommendations of the council comes we're just trying to be helpful and we're just trying to to keep things moving along and and giving the community something to to to relate to on the site as a you know that that things are happening but certainly i'm going to consult with heather and anybody else uh and i should say we it's not just me um and and will not impinge on any of the issues you've raised thank you yeah no it seems great i mean it's a big thing just to get that site activated and adam if i can just jump in for a second i just wanted to say i love the

033idea of testing it you know so i think the feedback that you get about how people feel about the event that's taking place you know as a use for the space i think that's that's going to be valuable input that we haven't really received before you know about an event that's actually occurring there yeah it's action research basically right right yeah heather um could i ask how what the relationship of the data that jeff's when the initiating committee uh what they collect it i think you kind of said this that it would be for initiating committee's use and not necessarily become part of our public process is that correct it's it's up to you i mean it's up to the city it's up to you guys if you want it to be part of the

034public process fine if you don't that's fine too i mean i'm you know we're we're certainly we're trying to be cl we want to be collaborative and and do what people what what the council would like in that respect in that regard yeah i don't see any issue with the initiating committee sharing the information that they've received you know data that they've collected with this group that's certainly fair we just need to be clear about where it comes from you know and and that it wasn't necessarily like a city-sponsored event right not going to say it's a city-sponsored event or that's a the council of the commons sponsored event okay we're just simply saying that there are council of the commons members involved and we're we're we're letting you know about it because we're we

035want you know that that's our obligation to let you know it's because i sit on all three i feel the obligation anyway to report this and let people know and get get feedback from you and get advice and help i mean this is a community event and you're you you guys represent the community in many ways and your input is is essential uh jennifer's had her hand up for a while thanks adam um i wanted to say first of all i think that this is such awesome news and i was really excited to read through your proposal um i would love for other nonprofit or community organizations to for you to be the um example the leader you know from which they follow or to which they follow um in terms of envisioning use of

036the space um i don't think it's any secret that i've been very excited to see the space activated for something to benefit the community um and i believe you know we need to take baby steps and so that's i just i was very excited to see your proposal um i had one i think this dovetails with what's some of the other feedback but i would love to get um or just suggest as part of your data collection to consider asking how did they hear about the event how did they hear about what you're doing because i think that would be really good information and intelligence to collect about the audience and you know to your point about casting a wide net how how well you know that's being achieved and if it's generating any buzz

037and we could use it as a benchmark as well um for future iterations in terms of how did you feel about or how did you hear excuse me how did you hear about this event in this space but overall i i am hugely supportive of what you're doing and i think it's just great so thank you thank you could i could i just ask you jennifer would it would spark be interested in in participating in some way because you're you're a block partner so it would be great if you were involved you know yeah so i'm gonna be i think this is something that needs to be like i bring my experience and my professional um activity from spark to the table here but i am not a representative of spark on the sport on

038this commission i'm a private citizen who loves ann arbor and loves green space um so i i would not commit to that in this setting and in fact i would probably repease myself from any conversations that spark regarding you know our involvement support etc etc um because obviously i'm quite biased so i'd ask a you know one of my colleagues to to step in should that happen okay thank you yeah uh we'll do allen and then sarah next good uh well i've been involved in the thinking through of this with the initiating committee and with the library at green conservancy the commons is really a bottom-up process and this is uh how does community people get together to try and do something on this space because there's no one else to do it the city

039council isn't doing it in our group as the council of the commons is basically advisory so we need someone in the community and that's what the initiating committee was recognized by the city council as being sort of the on-the-ground group to get stuff going and i hope that we can do that as widely as possible i think there is a problem that the block group has never really been convened and that is i hope this process will begin to get all the partners on the block uh together to begin to see how everyone can benefit from this beginning action research is a good way of describing it so it is the initiating committee trying to do something in behalf of the community and everybody is welcome to join in however and however the data is

040to be collected and made available i think that we could benefit from suggestions of what data people actually you know want but seems like a good step to go forward i hope there can be more of it and we'll see how it all goes i have some other comments about in our this agenda item but on this report i think that the library green and the initiating committee has done a good job in getting something to move forward following the discussion from the yeah july 7th that uh what's the first thing to do we'll get something going and do it around food so bring food to the commons and this is trying to carry that forward thanks helen um sarah's next thanks um oh similar to everyone else i think this is really exciting that

041this is being put together and it's happening so quickly i have a two quick questions maybe i think it's food awesome food trucks where are you envisioning that they will go are they going to take and they're big so are they going to be actually on the site or are they going to be more like food stalls well it will mainly be fruit stalls we are still working out the details on the food truck dana is taking over responsibility for for doing all that as i said she's done this many times uh in many venues in this area uh and and and by the way on as far as you know knowing where where people find out about this one of her great strengths is being able to use social media to market throughout the

042you know the the area and that was my second question yeah and she's she's a master at it and she she always gets crowds at every one of her events and that's why all the other groups outside ann arbor have been using her so we will get some great data from social media and we'll use it any way that people would like us to use it she sounds excellent um because i was just sort of thinking through like how are people going to find out about this and what sort of marketing plan and we do at work like a lot of like sponsored posts so they come up on your facebook feed like whether or not you like any sort of page i'm assuming that data knows all about that stuff more than i do

043but that's awesome that was my second question how are you going to get the word out because to get good data we want you know as many people to come as possible and enjoy the event thank you this looks like a lot of work i'm excited yeah and also the reason why we were going to go and try and do it a little earlier but we thought we'd better have the students back before we do this yeah anyway uh jennifer i don't know if you have your hands still up or did you raise it again okay no sorry about that i just didn't take it down no worries no worries um okay uh so uh are there any other member updates before we move move on to the next item in the agenda uh alan

044yeah well uh another activity that's in the uh works i've been involved since uh 2014 with other organizations to uh have program on peace day and on earth day and other times and so during the week of peace week which should be from sunday the 19th of uh september through that week and an international day of peace is tuesday the 21st we'll be uh having activities around uh what is this uh uh park and how the culture of peace and non-violence is a municipal endeavor as well as a global endeavor and we'll get application all that through the community services and you'll all be given some uh opportunity to participate and suggest how peace can the culture of peace and foster can best be done on this this place i bring to attention and maybe

045it got circulated that the conference of of mayors mayors for peace which involves 8038 different cities around the world has issued a statement suggesting urging that the local groups see that the culture of peace and non-violence is an essential sense in local municipal development as well as in global development so we're trying to put that forward during peace week any help and suggestion greatly appreciated thank you very much ellen um in uh unless there are any other member updates we'll move on to the next item on the agenda um so why don't we go ahead and do that and um so this is a follow-up from the july 7th meeting and um invite erica to comment here a little bit as well um you know we one of the one of the items um as

046i recall coming out of the the july 7th meeting was to to bring something forward you know as promptly as possible to counsel and um so uh you know keep in mind that we are an advisory uh a body that is uh designated to make recommendations uh eric and i had a conversation uh to try and actually put some some pen to paper um and so you know what uh feel free uh heather if you have the ability to to share some of this i can um walk a lot of folks through and erica uh can you feel free to interrupt me as well and you know if we think this is um is a good bad or indifferent we can you know revise or throw it out or uh do whatever uh it does

047not matter to me but i think our our goal was to honor um the intent of uh what came out of that uh july 7th meeting um in trying to make a formal recommendation to council and get city staff uh moving uh ideally um on some of our recommendations erica did you want to add anything before we uh went through yeah um i guess uh just a little bit i've talked since our last meeting um i've heather and i have chatted about this um and also um frank and rita and i have chatted a little bit um and most recently adam and i did so one of the pieces that i was struggling with a little bit um i also talked to john fournier about it as well um but really just kind of trying

048to think through exactly what um um council might be approving and so i appreciate adam really did a lot of work putting this this um this handout together um i think that's a it's a good framework for thinking through maybe what we what we might be um asking um sort of staff to start considering um i think adam i'll let you kind of walk through the bullet points in the document but um it provides a nice framework for thinking about how the city might start exploring um opportunities for immediate activation with food trucks and other potential vendors um and then and developing a model for that and then you know if for some reason that that the financial model for that doesn't work because obviously one of the challenges that we have right now as

049a as a community is that you know outside of the farmers market we don't really have we don't we don't have staff that does programming um for for public spaces and so there's nobody really to tap into for this and this is obviously not um at least the we often talk a lot about the top of the library lot obviously we're also talking about the um the uh liberty plaza as well but i um the library lot is not yet designated as a park space and so um it becomes a little challenging to think about we've as a group certainly gone through the you know who's going to manage and do the maintenance of this um who will actually spend their time um during the week if this was staff doing um figuring you know

050doing the programming so this this creates a little bit of a framework for that and actually when i talked to john fournier about this this week he had some interesting uh ideas about um looking to some other communities about how that might how that might work as well and if that doesn't work then also just providing some some staff feedback around what the costs about this what the limitations might be and really starting to actively partner more towards with nonprofits in the community but adam i'll let you speak more in more detail to the bullet points sure uh thank you eric and you know i i think um you know part of this really came from the fact that um that we it's a city-owned property and uh we need to figure out uh how

051how the city is going to interface with it one way or another in order to to make some things happen and certainly i think jeff uh your report is showing uh that you can do uh you know great things with with uh well-meaning people who are driven to do it um and i think what our thought process um in in the july 7th meeting was we need to get the city to help uh create a uh you know an effort to support uh the organic efforts like yours so uh frankly it's great segue um so uh you know as as uh we kind of came out of that july 7th meeting um you know we made a recommendation and this is paraphrased uh so uh you know feel free to to wordsmith as folks would

052uh feel um necessary but you know recommend to the university council uh to direct city staff to plan and to activate the surface parking lot of the library structure for regular and recurring use by food trucks and carts and other light commercial vendors such as artisan pop-ups etc those are the two things i know that really were highlighted in the in the survey and in making this recommendation center of the city council the commons urges city council staff to these three sub points here uh make use of any and all existing use processes uh from like spaces and activities uh examples being farmers markets street fairs etc there are many other examples too um that could be could be utilized here to aid activation of the lot including but now limited to the application processes

053for vendors cleaning health and safety management marketing and external engagement uh i put a note in here that the our council urges the city to really not reinvent the wheel to the extent possible and use best practices it doesn't have to be ann arbor best practices but best practices in general associated with similar activities figure this is not really rocket science and there are a lot of good ideas out there and let's borrow them um second point work with the center of the city block partners including the library and private businesses to collectively ensure the activation is successful noting that some planned and recurring activities might not be and i described them as core competencies but you know essentially the the day-to-day activities of individual block partners um engage block partners to bring vendors to

054the space that supplement uh and complement uh their day-to-day activities and serve the community and then uh finally the finals uh i think it's the final sub bullet point here uh create an activation strategy that deliberately creates planned reoccurring activities and markets them in the community obviously something we talked about um with regard to uh the fan event and dude doing so the council of commons urges the city to put together particular emphasis uh on the attraction of minority and women-owned vendors as well as the creation of activities that attract diversity of participants as reflected in ann arbor's values um and then there are a couple of other points heather if you could scroll down can you see it uh and then finally you know if necessary and or helpful the council of commons can

055designate uh members uh to work with city staff to develop the activation plan uh having gone through the the vision session on 7-7 themselves and so um so we could certainly uh appoint folks who would uh like to take on that role uh and then uh finally and this speaks to the point that uh that uh erica brought to you know if ultimately the the um the city does not have the ability to or desire to dedicate staff to this effort then we really do need to figure out an alternative way to create these recurring activities um you know and uh and plan them out and so um you know the city should just make a create a process by which uh nonprofits and other external organizations can apply and market it and get it

056going uh in a very prompt fashion uh so i think that was that was sort of the the final point you know basically if we're gonna run into um just points where where we need staff time and it's just not going to happen within the city then we need to figure out another way to engage the short-term activity and so uh so that was what that final point is so i offered this uh you know we have this only for uh food for thought try and uh synthesize what came out of the seven seven meeting and um you know move something forward to city council to get a reaction frankly um one way or another and feel free if we want to keep it on the screen or go back to the full screen i

057don't have a preference and adam i don't know if you can see but there's i see three hands up jeff alice's and frank's and again if people want me to keep this up i can if not we can go back to looking at each other we can go back i think yeah why don't we go back and then jeff why don't you go ahead and we can always pull back up if we need you yeah i i just wanted to say this is great in general um i i i want to be as supportive as i can in any way i can be i think you you'll find some of the things helpful to whatever way it goes down you know from what we what we're going to do with fan uh certainly for example

058dana has a a rigorous and effective uh vendor selection process vendor application process she's used over and over again throughout the community which might be helpful or may not in this context so i would offer that as one example the other thing is she's been very focused on uh diversity and and inclusion and getting you know all all different kinds of people engaged with stuff and so she knows how to do that and wants to do that so uh we have some some ways of doing that uh that have been uh developed uh already and can be made available and marketing strategies and so forth so like i said we offer that uh we might be able to generate an infrastructure that could serve either purpose which whether it goes down the the city line

059or down a more you know private sector or non-profit line but but i think we we we're going to be able to put him put together something that might be useful to either either party and we do that in all humility not not trying to dominate the process or say we should be doing it or anything like that sure thank uh thanks jeff uh and definitely i think uh a lot of complimentary uh pieces here too um alice uh and then we'll do frank okay no i'm i'm i'm not muted okay um uh i i did send out i'll disclose that i did send um as soon as i saw a short email to erica and adam and heather with just a few tiny little little changes just to reinforce what i think the clarity

060that would be helpful but i noticed one more we ought to get the right name for this this the current name for this space i think is the library lane parking garage and we would have to say something like library link the surface parking on i don't know how we say it but we should call it the correct thing rather than the library lot because that sort of infringes on the library's actual surface parking which is behind the library so we want to make clear that we're not making assumptions about somebody else's property um but the other other things were pretty simple and i didn't say much about that last paragraph which i think is what is much more important than my first or second reading of it because uh i don't our two friends

061who were supposed to be here tonight who are not mara thompson and please remind me of our friend uh in the permitting process for events i don't remember her name deborah williams deborah williams yes i think some people may have the impression that she would be that person but that's obviously something entirely different from what's suggested uh in that last paragraph the fact that we don't have um a city employee that is dedicated to doing the things that for instance parks seems to do they have a program that they um i mean that's the closest thing i can think of is the programming that they do for the park system we don't have the one though for we have separate things going on for say the farmers market or the stone barn again the names

062of these things i just know where they are um but the the one on packard and um cobblestone farm is what i'm talking about so those special properties that parks has that i don't think they even do the programming for those they have other groups that do it so whether we're talking about um enhancing the relationship between the nonprofits or the ex-officio or whatever kind of group we're talking about that sort of um shepherds the programming for those special properties are we um trying to find yet another one for this space or you know we don't even know what the possibilities are uh or what we would recommend in terms of someone dedicated to programming for this particular um property so i'd like to find out i'd like us to find out who that how

063i you know make it make some kind of stab at identifying not necessarily an existing person but a structure for that process like cobblestone does its own programming farmers market does its own programming and a few others also do their own programming so that's something to think about excellent thanks alice uh and i do have a draft with um many of alice's comments uh reflected in them that i've just thrown together right before the meeting too frank and then stephen yes i'm glad we had a chance to walk through this point by point because my quick reading of this document earlier didn't really bring out its uh its full potential i think i guess where i i where it led me to focus uh granted the the our entire site is not parkland but liberty

064plaza is and it seems like we we have a reservoir of you know compatible uh related knowledge in the farmer's market area where there is a a staff and there's a history and it's just not market farm market vendors there are other events that take place there it just seems that there's a reservoir of expertise there that should be brought to bear in some creative way i i'm sure if we were to arrive on monday morning say can you layer this on to your already uh uh heavy workload that would not be welcomed but is there a way to it's sort of a interim way interim process of moving us to a final solution to really draw on that expertise at uh of the farmers market staff i don't know if they have a separate

065advisory board or anything like that the other thing that occurs to me is what is the relationship between farmers market and kerrytown and surrounding businesses there may be some important learnings there in terms of how the market relates to those uh business interests and resources so um i'm pretty excited all of a sudden about how to you know how to really uh use an existing resource to advance our knowledge and activity here and i will just jump in and add that we did reach out to the farmer's market manager and she's very helpful and she provided us the existing form that they have for food trucks to apply to their food truck rallies um so they they're i think they'll be a great resource to go forward um the deeper knowledge about how fairytown and

066the farmers market intersex we haven't asked that question but we can i'm sure find out more about that it might be to invite uh whoever is the person running on the farmers market to join one of our our meetings for a you know more iterative conversation okay steve steven i think you're up next uh thank you um and thank you for putting this together um i knew that somebody thank you alice for finding some improvements i looked for typos and things but i didn't find any i think i understood the sort of what was in the document and i think i agree with sort of what it put forward as i understood it it's basically i guess three parts in the first part has like three subparts you know make a plan and have the

067plan make use of existing processes in terms of how to actually activate the space and maybe in the near term some of that is the existing city staff um and maybe in the future you look towards making it into a park and so you know whatever whatever comes there but don't over complicate it um i think the actual words don't reinvent the wheel or in there the second part was engage with the black partner sort of you know create the i guess for this one i'm a little confused what we're asking the city to do um beyond sort of create the conditions for success or at least somehow we are signaling that we want to engage with the black partners but what i think i also read there was that we don't we don't want

068to confuse it for somehow like can some obligation of consensus with all of the black or that we have to go anyone has a veto or something like this but that we we welcome input and that where there's this sort of win-win for for individual black partners as to a certain topic that it makes sense then we should pursue that um and then planned recurring activities is another thing that is there that makes a lot of sense um and then the other two sort of big points where yes we could have a liaison to interact we don't need to you don't need to try to get the entire council of the commons in the room to do something and then this concept of i guess as i perceive it maybe more of a long-term arrangement

069but have some sort of non-profit uh as i'm understanding it maybe that's sort of managing the space or helping to deal with the programming the scheduling coordination with other nonprofits about how they'll use the space whatever that is what i raised my hand for was the part that i'm not sure that i did see in there like i'm curious about uh this mou with the dda and if this is a document we're gonna go ask the city to do something i think we should encourage them to finalize an mou with the dda for the use of the space and i don't know and maybe this is a question as to what the status of that is and if that's already moving along we don't need to say it here then fine but that's something that

070i think maybe even comes before these talks about sort of how you know okay how do we get people activating the space first let's make sure we button up that point with uh some sort of mou about using the space and i i'm going to jump in here i please correct me if heather if you if i've got this wrong i my sense is that the dda doesn't necessarily need to authorize the city using the space but if there was for example the the mou that's sort of being considered the partners are being still being worked out whether it's the dda or city or both that might be involved the last bullet point was really focused in on you know if there is not if right now for maybe budgetary reasons um it doesn't seem

071feasible to do ongoing programming for this space that we need to try to develop an alternative non-profit model and so that's where the mou would come into would would be utilized so um it's kind of suggesting an either or proposition ideally that the city is uh utilizing its current resources to um figure out a model for kind of financing and program you know doing some short-term activation the space but if that is doesn't seem feasible um we determine that that is a lot larger cost than we realize it comes back to city council for a vote there's not support there for doing that that there is interest in the commission to say okay well then let's let's create another alternative model that has a viable path forward i think uh i think erica hit the

072nail on the head basically uh in terms of the intent stephen to your point though uh regarding the mlu the dda to to um you know keep cars off the space uh in general do we have an update on the status of that heather do you know where that's at i don't know completely where that's at right now um you know that was a process that was occurring between um the city administrator and the dda and the attorneys needed to be involved because it's a parking agreement that already exists that needs to be modified that deals with the revenue that's generated from the parking that's there so the details of that were being hashed out i haven't had a chance to talk to maura um in recent days to just to get a status but

073i will reach out to her to find out more and then i think when we have a permanent city manager in place again then um we'll be able to move that forward again beat my curiosity mou what's happening with that right well i think there's two separate and correct me if i'm wrong um i think there might be two separate mousse that we're talking about so one is the parking agreement if we want to permanently remove parking from the top of the structure then that needs to be worked out between the city and the dda as far as then the second mou would be defining that relationship that we enter into with a non-profit to manage events occurring at the space so i guess my comment to clarify is directed towards that first mou towards

074the the first step of just kind of getting clarifying with with dda about getting parking off the top um and using you know what whatever that would entail yeah so that yeah and that would be the permanent removal right now you know there's a process in place that we can have temporary removal you know that's been happening on weekends to to allow for the gardening um it can happen really at any time if a group applies so so to do a you know a night of food trucks or something like that should be no problem yeah understood thank you thanks steven that's great feedback uh rita you're up next thanks um i just want to add some um real specifics as suggestions to include in terms of potential recurring events and those are events like

075festivals taste of ann arbor the green fair fourth of july that could use some additional physical space to have some really good events so i don't know if those necessarily need to be in the document that you created which i think is great but just if we have those in mind to encourage them i think that would be really great that's it rita i'm all i'm all for uh giving more ideas um because i find that's always helpful uh to uh to the conversation so i did throw those just now in in this revised document right uh we've got uh alan and then alice yeah thank you uh this is a a good summary and a good start in getting the city involved in this there were a couple point i do think we need

076to er yes there's a block group together begin to so that people on the block that can begin to see one another and see how the whole block can find benefit in these initial and ongoing activities i heard from steve uh i think in the last meeting from parks that there were actually facilities that might be available this is going to need tables are there tables and chairs available in city facilities that could be used for these events rather than the uh you know non-profits having to locate those or buy them or something separately and other uh resources from the uh city and that could be uh made available we need storage space for stuff between events and it has been a long need call for as part of this that wi-fi be made available

077on this and this sense of the city resources being directed to make to facilitate the activation and see how the wi-fi storage and existing tables and chairs be available thank you for sure i think i think uh you know to the point that you just made ellen um you know our thought process in in um putting this up for consideration uh was really to test the water and get things uh going with uh with the city to um to really see if we're going to be able to you know have the city manage uh these planned type of recurring events um and if that's not the case then the point you just made around the um around the use of uh other city-owned property like tables and chairs and things like that you know becomes

078a very relevant point if we if it's offloaded to a non-profit so i really see that the management of this is going to be in the world of voluntary non-profit as that is much more the model of the commons and seeing the city to set up some management program and we just have to figure that out over time initially we got a group that's ready to uh you know begin and everybody that can cooperate in that city and the non-profits will just see how it works out long term is another question alice and then sarah yeah i just had a a brief uh reference to rita's comment about other other events you it would be nice if we perhaps if attached to this you know there could be an asterisk in the paragraph from the

079recommendation but put an addendum of as many of those kinds of events as we can think of instead of putting them in the body of the recommendation that would be one way to is just attach a list of examples rather than leave out you know because so many that might be useful including the two that i thought of just now as alan talked about tables and chairs huron river days uh sponsored by the parks i think in green fair sponsored by the city um that i don't know if they will continue after this disruption of events that we've had but they all they did did have tables and chairs which i don't think were provided by each um each group representing something to do at a table or or a booth so um i think

080alan is right and so are you adam that this can come along later but as far as the events that are used as examples we could attach a list that's more extensive if we wish um i think that would be one way to to cover the territory absolutely thanks sarah you're up thanks uh well first of all thanks adam and heather and erica for putting this together i think this is a really good summary um from that july 7th meeting which feels like way more than a month ago for some reason it's been a really long month um i'm curious if does this in your mind does this come with any sort of funding ask and i think either way it should sort of be clear you know it says it directs do we think

081this is within the scope of you know what we already had like heather's time funded to do and are there any other like funding asks that would be part of this or is this more just like these are things that we can do within the scope of what we've been given and would not require additional funding just knowing that we don't have a lot and i think the funding that we just got is earmarked for this design process if the answer is no that's awesome but i think we should sort of say somewhere that like this does not require this is not an ask for funding it's like ask for it's within the bounds of whatever we kind of assumed that staff would already be working on with this group maybe i don't really know

082how to say that but i don't know if that came up at all together what i would hope honestly is that this is not a funding ask i think that um i think city council has allocated funding for for this initiative this year and the focus has been on the design um long-term design um when i talked to mr fournier about this he suggested that there might be some opportunities to um through sort of the permitting fees or something like that um for for ongoing events to um especially if this to then fund maybe the the um a part-time you know some part-time work um from the city because you know i don't think we're talking about um especially if we keep this really simple um and it's not different types of events you know

083if we're just let's keep it simple and it's food trucks it's maybe it's a food truck area for the next bed and that happens um that provides an opportunity for um but there's still there's still work that's needed even if it's really simple right there's still maintenance and monitoring and cleanup and there's there's there's costs associated with that and there's cost of coordinating and and working with those vendors and different things like that and so this is not you know everybody at the city um is working hard and probably already has too many things on there on their plate to do and so um but there is interest in trying to figure out how this works and so this i think the hope of this is that it's it's broad enough that um maybe there

084can be a few internal meetings to think about how this might play out and if this is realistic if there's an opportunity and maybe the maybe the timeline isn't quite as quick as everybody at this table might hope but maybe it gets things in um really going um and um and getting something happening on a regular basis there so i don't think we know yet how this is going to play out and the alternative is also no this is you know this is really a budgetary ask and council can consider that um or you know we say okay let's move to the non-profit model yeah i'll leave it to you guys as to whether or not you think it's even worth bringing back funding within this i just like it on it on like a

085first reading and i appreciate going through it step by step because i think similar to frank i read through it just initially and read it a little bit differently i was kind of like how do we pay for this but i think the ask really is more like these are the directions we want to go i think this group if council wanted could you know potentially assist in some of these activities um but i think you're right it's sort of up to council it's like what the directions need to be but funding came up immediately in my mind so it may be worth thinking about how to address it within this document do you think that councils will have that question so if they're if this group is wants to provide direction on that that

086is certainly fine but if if you want to keep it loot you know broad um that's okay too i mean i don't i don't i personally don't necessarily think it should be a fun thing ask at this point um because i think some of these things can be done like look very low like potentially just staff time costs that we already hopefully have allocated through other um or no cost but i i think we won't really know until you know some of the stuff is approved and we get going yeah i i would just say you know certainly um certainly thinking about um i would say just allowing creativity right i think the goal as we originally wrote it was basically to try and tell city council this is what our recommendation is and so

087please take action on it you know direct staff to take action on it and and then that will help us flush out exactly where the hurdles are and maybe we can try and create some creative solutions and you know that's part of the reason um you know we put the the option of having some members of this council uh serve alongside to try and basically provide for that create creative insight as well um so that i that's the only thing that i was um thinking of i i certainly wouldn't want to put up any walls um before we necessarily um you know before we necessarily get there especially given you know maybe there's an option of some of the fee money or something they could they could pay for limited uh limited uh costs uh

088that could that would be incurred so that's one thing uh jeff you mean frank i mean frank not me i didn't have my hand up oh i'm sorry i thought you did i apologize uh frank i shaved my beard off right frank's hand is up uh i think we have the right team working on this uh adam erica and and alice uh i think you're you're the right trio to sort of broach this and and kind of navigate to the halls of the you know city hall the halls of city hall my other comment is uh and i don't want to uh put steve on the spot but if he if he thinks there's a an opportunity to uh access tables chairs benches that might be in storage that could be used for this series

089of events that are being planned for the fall number one is that a possibility number two how do we how do we get to the key to the storage locker i i um happy to be put on the spot i have no idea the answer to that question uh but i'm happy to try to find out uh and see if if the park staff has some sort of the answer you know what that is where that is yeah if it exists how we might get our hands on it so okay thank you very much excellent um we'll see another know their hands up i'm um i'm happy to uh you know i i do have a draft that i've incorporated alice's comments into um you know knowing knowing the um desire at least expressed by

090uh folks participating in the 7-7 meeting of moving you know as quickly as possible on and getting to council um i'd like to see how folks feel about sort of approving at least in concept this statement you know with some with some of the the feedback um you know and so that we can take it to council um you know i feel like that we're at a point now we've had a couple of meetings um is that something that people feel comfortable with um do they feel like this document in general surmises the summarizes the um recommendation as agreed upon by the group in july do we need a straw poll or something like that just um i mean i don't think uh i don't think we have to do it i think i mean

091how do you ask for a vote on sentiment you know i would love to see i would love if the um commission tonight would would vote um to recommend this um to council with incorporating the comments that that came from the table tonight around um sort of alice's um input and i think there are other kind of few other little small bullet points that got incorporated in as well um if there's if there's agreement on that then i can make sure it gets on the august um 16th council agenda and it would be nice to have that come with you know a vote of so erica that almost sounded like a motion do you want to make a motion i think it's a great idea are we are we seeking the sentiment of the group

092almost on the process point like should we take a thing to council and say here's what we think you ought to do or how you should be thinking about this i fully totally agree erica i'm sorry it sounds like you're volunteering to speak in in you know positive tones about this at the meeting where it comes up um yeah fully agree i don't know if it's a straw poll time or if i'm seconding something but yeah count me before we get into an actual motion since it hasn't been since we don't have one on the floor is there are there any concerns with doing it i certainly don't want to rush anybody but obviously uh there does appear to be a lot of angst to get get going well if you just want a vocal

093opinion i think this is pretty close as close to uh well polished as it can will be once you incorporate what you heard tonight and uh what is the harm i mean i think it's a good move to really inspire all the things that are going on at city council i think it's a good move to send them something that this more concrete than please let us do these things for sure ellen you've got your hand up i don't know if jeff wants to go after allen yeah well i basically go along with this i made a few comments i'd like to see incorporated i when we have a document that's given to us uh on the day we're supposed to be reflecting on it it's uh i don't want to postpone it but in

094general uh it would have been nicer if we had seen this a week ago and i hope that the thoughts that i added on can get put into it and maybe there should just be a day that people who want to make sure they have their nuance included can give them to you or whoever is a drafter that goes to the city council it's not asking for any money it's basically asking that they move forward with getting this activated i would hope it's not a big problem if there's any money involved in it of course going to be a problem but that's not what we're asking for and i think the emphasis that at this point we're looking to see the financing through the private fundraising and the non-profits and that's from the beginning been

095my sense of how this actually the commons is actually financed by the people who are of the community that people will find the benefit from this so yeah yes let's go forward you know with it for the next council meeting all right thanks alan uh erica you got your hand up yeah um i would hope that um just kind of i'd actually be rather not bring forward kind of additional i appreciate ellen your sort of thoughts around the the wi-fi and and different in storage and stuff like that i think that's come in the form of another resolution to counsel previously and so i'd rather keep this limited to um short-term activation of the space or specifically around what came out of the um our our working meeting in early july because i think there

096was pretty strong consensus around sort of the food truck activation and so that that feels like that has there was um you know kind of unanimous um sentiment around that um and so i'd love to be able to take that to councils and get staff you know brainstorming on on that idea and moving it forward because i think some of the other ideas we've we've gotten some feedback around some of the you know some of the challenges that the city's struggling with on those but this one is uh hopefully one that's um we already have that there's already some resolutions in the past addressing those issues this would be kind of a new a new request to staff and so um and i'd also rather not honestly have a whole lot of feedback coming in

097if there's on this document i'd love that the group to be voting on what is um being agreed upon tonight based on the document that you've seen and all received scene feedback on and that that's what i'm taking and getting attached to legistar have attached to legislar so so knowing that um i've got a um i've got a revised version uh with a lot of the comments that were incorporated tonight uh heather do you wanna uh allow me to share my screen and i can uh just pull it up and um and then we can take a look and then hopefully we can just excellent okay can you see uh can you see the document okay perfect um okay so um but what i have here uh i'll just try and summarize the uh the

098changes that i made not not the full thing again um so i added uh from some of uh alice's uh comments um you know some and many uh examples that were created here i did put them in here i did also uh add an asterisk at the bottom we can we can make an amendment here but uh you know we have street fairs the taste of ann arbor independence day here in river days green fair festival sonic lunch uh at l and uh and the uh the asterix um i did clean up this uh naming of the lot uh to what i believe is uh accurate here please correct me if i'm wrong on this but paid activation of uh the uh library surface parking lot um library capital link capital all right library land

099surface parking lot we'll uh have this reference oh also at the top yeah exactly uh okay the so library land service parking lot okay um i don't think anything else was cleaned up in uh this first bullet point um black partners i did enumerate the ann arbor district library so that we just have that in there for point clarification um i did amend the language i had originally core competencies i changed that to not be within the expertise of individual block partners in these last two sentences here and change the word urges to encourages and i also eliminated the subset from this bullet point right here to just designate members and uh i think that's it could you change it seems awkward to say particular emphasis on the attraction of minority i think on attracting

100minority would be more direct because we want to who's who are we attracting we're attracting the minorities so we want to attract and be it's engaged it encourages the city urges at attracting how did i have that down um [Music] encourages emphasis on attracting minority and i think we're we are talking to the city um encourages attracting minority and women leave out the city you know they know who we're talking we're talking to them encouraging and we also say that that we're referring to diverse participants as reflected in ann arbor's values a diverse is there such a thing as a diversity it would seem appropriate given that the city just established a 30-person steering committee on equitability the equitability steering committee oh i think that i think that burdens it a little bit too much

101but because the city knows who they have to unlock that that they've just done that right i think i think that last bullet point makes sense before we move on for that both way i'm not sure minority is really the best term to be using i think we might want to spell out what exactly we mean like are we talking black owned i think it's called color yeah um encourages the city to work to attract diverse vendors as well as the creation of activities that attract diverse participants well that might confuse it a little bit because like are we like diversity and like what they're offering which i also think is important but i think that's what are we talking about both as reflected in ann arbor's values assuredly gets us to all of that

102because as just mentioned we've got a 30 person commission on diversity the city is very out front on this topic so they'll know what we mean i think when we say do it in the way that you need to be doing it so maybe we say reflected in ann arbor's values of like social equity and racial justice or something like that like because we have values about all kinds of things so if we're talking about specifically like equity and things like that like in equity in all and all forms then maybe we can just add that and i think you then you maybe could say like a diversity of vendors and then we could sort of take that as whatever it is be like all-inclusive maybe i like it in the in the prior bullet

103point can we include it says work with coc block partners including the aadl and private businesses can we put the dda in there can we put antibiotic library comma dda and private businesses is that too much to put them on the spot like this no those are they blocked but that's the thing so i raised my hand a minute ago to ask like when we see when we say the coc black partners who are we talking about we don't currently have any partnerships right so i i'm not i'm that to me felt really ambiguous if we're going to take this to city council if i was if i was being asked that question or asked to vote on that i think i would consider that as like well who are your partners that's a logical

104question we call them neighbors property and business owners uh say sarah what did you just say property and business owners or block participants like uh a lot that's i like participating because this it it allows folks the opportunity to to participate at an engagement which is comfortable for them it doesn't make assumptions i guess and maybe yeah i really do like adding the downtown development authority because they are in charge of in are responsible for the the space itself you know even though it's um i agree with alice could we even say and others tbd or others private businesses comma and others i think would be great i guess yeah i guess what's giving me pauses it almost seems as though we have a coalition of partners who are either supportive or who have and

105somehow you know have somehow raised their hand or are engaged in this process when that necessarily isn't the case for all of whom might come underneath this umbrella at a later date and i want to make sure that we aren't exclusive or you know i guess giving the perception as though we haven't had those conversations and and welcomed that dialogue in a way that would be meaningful and helpful to what we're trying to accomplish good good points yeah i think we're getting there instead of working with it's like initiate conversations with or something because we really haven't started this right that's been part of the sticking point correct hmm that's not bad that's not bad about what what if it isn't even something like solicit involvement from you know something that creates it as a

106we are welcoming we are we are a body that is welcoming and inclusive and wants to you know as as we talk through what that means but welcoming and inclusive of um support right because we we can't do this on our own and i think to that's that's a great acknowledgement of is a community space that we're trying to activate with community support and involvement i totally love it we could also say engage the black participants and but social involvement is great we are hoping for block partners for the recommendations of the center of the city task force it was to create a block group of all the people who are on the block to see how they relate to this and make this an open proposition that is what needs to be convened that

107should have been convened in march of uh 2020 and is still waiting yeah and this is this is a way to get the city to maybe help us solicit that involvement yeah i think this is a perfect place just to kind of put a nudge in the middle of it right there and would i would suggest that that our block partners have probably been focused a lot on on pandemic needs and maybe this is their of their own so we're entering a time that maybe they have a little bit of space to start thinking about some some other issues i agree any other uh you know final um uh wordsmith in here um are we feeling proud well i guess i would when we add on other endeavors like sonic lunch and independence day uh

108i would be happy since we have been doing earth day and peace day uh to uh just put those in as community events to honor appropriate days each day is coming up um yeah um i think we're gonna really get lost in this if we if we keep putting them in that paragraph and and we don't have a long list to add at the end you know unless we repeat those we can we can uh we can yeah we've got one i do have a footnote down here how about this why don't we uh you know we can if folks are amenable um if we if we agree to this language tonight with the one asterix that we uh we can create a list of uh suggestions and submit that along with this as the

109asterisks uh and then we'll we'll take that that piece out uh of that of that sentence that way we've got a little bit of you know a couple days or something like that to throw on suggestions to to a an addendum um that heather can collect and attach to this does that sound fair yeah and that way we don't even have to put any we can say instead of giving those examples we can just say see additional lists yep exactly with the asterisk and then just a small edit adam just making um block participants consistent in that paragraph there's a couple other references to block partners ah yes okay good good catch and we may just want to change the date up at the top to include reference today's meeting as well or not you

110know or not include the date whichever i one suggestion would would be to include two or three uh standing activities like taste of ann arbor etc but only two or three and then go then direct them to the longer list because i don't want to miss the category of existing programming right that could be shared on that space we can do that we'll we'll leave a couple in there and then direct them to a longer list that folks help compile thank you frank any other changes do not let perfect be the enemy of good amen my favorite phrase alice what any policymaker would take uh should take seriously i am really impressed this is great thank you adam you did a lot of work on this i was creating the framework and thank you adam

111during the text great i i love it it's great problem all right you type and and you type really fast i i hear you don't have a ton of time so this is a necessity um so uh so how about this uh can we get a motion on this language with with that one asterisk list okay move some move by jeff in a second all right second by rita i'm gonna stop sharing so that we can all see one another all in favor say or raise your hand all right bye bye me oppose all right motion carries heather i will send this over to you okay i have the motion what i wrote down is motion to send recommendation on food direct activation to counsel with changes proposed by group at eight five meeting included

112if that works for everyone it's perfect okay and then wow look at us look at you i should say so we should so so heather if folks would like to add examples um why don't we get those together try and get them maybe by the end of the day tomorrow to heather um and and uh we we can uh you know she can take out the majority of the examples out of that sentence and put them in an addendum um as a complete and send it out to everybody and then uh we'll rely on erica to wield her uh political gamble at uh the next council meeting so all right to get this into council's agenda it would be needed by the end of tomorrow right um no it because next next meeting is a

113is a working session so it's really wednesday after that and so okay um heather i don't know if there's a way for you to we can talk i don't know if there's a way for you to kind of move this forward if i because of the time frame it may be necessary for for me to just put kind of sponsor it but yeah if there's if there's time i can move it in but if it's kind of late coming in then you'll need to sponsor it to get it faster okay sounds good good i'm muted um all right in that case um i think that takes care of the follow-up um we have a 7a reflections updates i think that pretty much covers it um do we want to talk about the next two items

114considerations for a future design process and then also potential subcommittees i know we've had a uh the subcommittee's discussion has come come up several times um i think we did a great job at sort of activating a working session which sort of serves as a temporary subcommittee um but uh does seem like as we go forward with the future design process subcommittees could be very helpful um and we could you know to the extent folks would like to talk about them tonight we could do that we could also submit recommendations to heather to be distributed to the group around subcommittee ideas um and then try and make those official or at least organize between now and the next meeting we've got at least one person their hand up jennifer i i think i just need

115a bit of clarification in terms of subcommittees is it smaller groups of us or is it inviting community partners etc to be part of a subcommittee process i think that would largely be up to the group i'm not sure what the semantics are other are there uh differences here um as far as allowing other community participants i think that can be you can do that if you wanted to do that um i think the initial drive my impression was that the initial drive to to to have subcommittees was to get some stuff done and so i think the question is is is right now are you feeling like you need to um divide into subcommittees or are you feeling like you know maybe that would you can hold that off to maybe for another topic

116or another time so i guess that's just like the question to answer i could that was just but just to clarify the question i think to put a finer point on it is that is there a way for this group to divide and conquer and come back like can we be productive in off times um you know in between meetings or is this something where the intention is to bring in others for a voice and that that's what i think tripped me up a bit so i think just to that point i mean subcommittees to at least from my experience with other commissions there they are publicly noticed there's usually a staff person that's staffing them so i personally am a little i i know there's desire to to get things going i would hate

117to see like a list of you know seven subcommittees formed with lots just because i think it's really um it's time intensive um particularly for heather um and but i think it seems like there's need for focus on short-term and there's need for focus on long term um rita and then alan and frank uh mine is really a question it's like when we thought about subcommittees in the past or even just now it's like what are the kinds of things that we had in mind i think that would help us you know it feels to my reaction right now is like i'd like to sort of brainstorm the kind of things that that we want to have um different groups address and um [Music] that seems that's just i'll just leave it that simple like

118what are those things that we need um and if there's a time frame related to them it would be nice to have that in mind as well uh ellen well frank had his hand up first but if you're calling on me i would like to see uh this eight and nine put off to our next meeting we have a one hour meeting and we're 51 minutes past that and now i appreciate your smile there adam we've had a good good discussion but i think both of these questions about future design and how and our working groups on more specific questions need more attention it would seem a good idea somebody said to have us each or those who wish put in suggestions to heather who could distribute those significantly before our next meeting so that

119we could have a discussion based on some uh formulated ideas right uh frank yeah um i just want to draw us back for a moment to the to the working sessions and we've had one and and i i in my mind anticipated there might be additional ones and i think this iterative process of you know short-term intermediate and long-term planning need probably needs the focus of a working session facilitated and maybe the question of subcommittees could be addressed in that i i don't know but i just didn't want us to forget about the working session model that we started last month definitely uh jeff yeah i i want to support frank on that i think it's important to have those a few more of those facilitated working sessions maybe not these individual working groups right

120now i think allen's right about that and others who said that but um i think we do it would be good to have well let's say i would like to have maybe one or two more facilitated sessions um so that we can get uh you know this the the the brain power of the group working together you know in a less formal setting and you know in a more creative uh circumstance so i agree with frank on that if we could if we could plan that fairly soon another working session that facilitated working session that would be great from my perspective okay uh else i think you're muted alice the picture jumped over to another part of the screen and i couldn't get unmuted um i i i don't want to miss out an opportunity

121um i i understand the conversation is currently about subcommittee's working sessions and all that i thought we did pretty good tonight with something tangible to work with them but where we get that from is possibly something to be considered um the but number eight consideration for future design process goes to a problem i had with the information we got back from mara thompson and it included a very microscopic plan drawing and things like that um uh the that's the kind of thing we need to really line up i mean robert black just mentioned it at the beginning of our meeting we need to have a clarity about what the parameters are about what exists about what we we really want to do physically what today we've worked with the programming i think it's wonderful because

122we've got it's it's a way to keep engaged with city council to whom we are responsible for our advisory activities um but if we're going to advise on how much money we need or how who how to when to do a an rfp or an rfq that's the process that we would need to start but we need more clarity on information that describes what we're working with and and then to sort out from that what we want to change or how we want to go about working with what we have to work with and so um [Music] so tonight i don't think there's enough time to go into and i can't find the docu the list that mara ran through of responses to questions i can't find it anywhere i had a print i printed

123it out and i can't find it anywhere but i did find this the drawing that i can barely read because it's so microscopic um but um those are those are questions that i think we do need to address if we're going to talk about the design process the the future design process which isn't possible tonight because we did a good job with what we did with um for tonight i think it was timely work that we did but we are really lagging behind and getting they feel pardoned the word concrete information about this place that is mostly made of concrete it's not that we're going to change the concrete it's the what can we do with it pretty much and that's that's where we need to have more information more specific technical information even though

124we're not going to do the design we do need to scope the work that's my concern we don't have enough information to scope the work that we're going to ask someone else to do and they the first thing they would do that we'd have to pay them for is to scope the work so so we want to do that because that determines what we end up with in in the end result that's what i wanted to say just now and you can go back to whatever bullet point we're at i don't know i just needed to get that said so it sounds like to me the overarching consensus is um that maybe more of these working sessions um full group working sessions uh to uh to uh you know uh do some deeper diving into

125a lot of what alex just said frankly get our questions answered understanding our parameters it seems like that's majority of the consensus rather than at least at this point in time breaking off into into two subgroups i am all for more uh less formal working sessions um you know and uh and would be happy to participate in that i think that if there's a way maybe we could alice heather and i and and maybe erica can sit down virtually you know in the next few days we can talk about what some of those questions could be and who we need to get in to answer and we can maybe provide a list to the uh council members here about who that could be initially for a working session um get some feedback and then um

126schedule one um based on that does that sound like a good plan of action for next steps yes yes i think so the uh you know i i made a i i was i guess i was surprised that it's been two months that we've tried to get colin to come and talk to us about parks and he made a very good point go to the pros plan and uh and that's readily available somebody has to do some homework and it's you know whoever can get to it um it's one of it's a one or more of us on this in this group that needs to research the questions rather than asking somebody else to go and look at things that they don't have time to look at um i get i guess um because most

127of the answers to our questions about the relationship between parks and this park um are probably in there i i haven't seen it for the past 10 years but it's been revised a number of times i'm sure so um it's a good good thing to go back to it's a document we haven't really talked about and it addresses some of the big questions we have about having liberty plaza on this block and how it's related to what we're doing so why don't we proceed with that it seems like we got a lot of head nods um and um we'll come back uh heather uh we'll if we could get a zoom scheduled for all of us uh in the next four of us in the next few days um and and talk about what those

128things are then we'll provide a list of items uh for at least a first working session uh to council members and uh if that list uh you know we solicit feedback that would get to a point where we feel it's acceptable schedule one and and keep the ball rolling here um you know looking at that uh at that um longer term you know vision as the scope of that and um so uh that sounds good to me um i think we can take that action i am back and and that point uh at this point i think we've got that covers our item number 10 next agenda items if we keep the focus on continuing to to drive that ball forward you know we will we have it it'll be very clear as to where

129our agenda looks like um are there any other items before we go into public comment that folks wanted to make sure we hit on i i do want to just uh add my uh repeated theme that there are certain principles of the development of a commons that we should refresh ourselves about and make sure are included in our thinking of how this process comes goes forward thank you allen all right uh hearing then uh nothing else then um heather do we have any members of the public we have two members of the public online and one with a raised hand robert go ahead and speak thank you heather this is one of your dedicated and loyal audience members i sat on every word you said and took notes literally of everything the last two hours

130it's fascinating to watch a group really work together and i'm proud of you and happy for you because i don't know many groups of the dozens i've worked with that have worked so equitably and live the principles of the commons together i think you are actually doing you just set aside a subcommittee to work on this thing about background information bravo you also have another opportunity for educating yourselves about the commons there's at least one subcommittee of one involved with that right now i heard so um please continue on with that i think this idea of activating the commons with the the beautiful work that jeffrey talked about jeff haney and also jeff crockett you have these opportunities the fall food and food art and fun thing picks up two of the key elements of

131the commons the food and the art but also the garden is a teaching metaphor so this whole idea of education and and getting data feedback from the public is really a huge opportunity in the next couple of months and i would like to to think that your data collection should be directed towards you know as alice talked about this foundational information and it should be driven towards the idea that you will have some kind of physical manifestation of the commons back in march there was a document prepared that showed a possibility of how to list the physical elements around several categories a park a playground food and a building so those are some key elements that you could think about and then there's the social element of the commons into future thinking about the stage

132and performance and education a watershed model all kinds of different things that could be sussed out in a working session as you move forward so i'd encourage you to have that facilitated work session there's a number of independent people who could help you get through that and make a really productive work session on myself included but there are many others in ann arbor too and the last thing i want to say is that um i think it should be clear that you have a clear intention and description of the sponsorship of these events so it is not to be confused you said it very well with the council of the commons because you're an advising group but i would suggest that you'd consider having a table a poster or a booth in the event that

133is the council of the commons so that people understand the distinctions and roles about this so um kudos bravo i just love watching you guys work together and uh i wish you good luck in your um action research as uh you know mr haber called it so thank you for a wonderful productive meeting thanks robert okay and we have a person on the phone i'm gonna press allow to talk so you should be able to talk now hello this is uh jeff crocker calling again i assume you can all hear me yes okay uh one suggestion for heather um when i looked at the agenda uh the meeting id is incorrect i had to i put in the meeting id when i tried to get into the meeting and it came back saying it was

134wrong so i i figured out that the meeting id was on the television screen which i copied down one beginning with 933 but that was not very visible if you're low vision that's going to be a problem so i would suggest that on the meeting agenda you have uh not just the correct meeting id but then uh indication that to get into the meeting at star nine and then to unmute yourself star six so it's written down so that people with limited vision aren't confused so that is sort of one suggestion i am very pleased with what i heard at the meeting adam you did a great job in the document you produced um i i'm hoping to get some feedback from you all on what you think of the garden i hope you stop

135by and take a look it's reaching its peak but i'd like to hear some feedback and also we're planning on putting up a sign and to sort of indicate that this is a volunteer community garden in the community commons but i noticed that there's virtually no other signage about the commons and typically when you have a situation where you have a a proposition that's passed i think it would be a good idea to have this is the future site of the the commons as passed by proposition a with a little explanation because part of the job that we're doing here is promotion and even though we're having activities uh there's still people are walking by without having a clear sense for what the space is expected to become so i'm hoping you'll consider some signage

136i really like what frank said about looking at other local resources and one person you should consider is grace singleton who's the head of the carrytown district association that we've worked with closely in the old fourth ward about planning events she could be of some help i think in in linking perhaps what they're doing with kerrytown with potential events on the on the commons the other thing is that this the commons the idea i mentioned plymouth uh plymouth is being facilitated i think the wilcox foundation so you have different towns particularly like plymouth who've had a lot of experience doing this with support from public foundations so i would strongly suggest that you contact the people in plymouth uh city planner administrator and non-profit to find out how they work together so you don't necessarily

137have to reinvent the wheel and the last thing about promotion is i think we should be actively promoting the library green conservancy there's been a lot of talk about well the city can match funds that are generated with you know a private foundation but i don't think we should just sit and wait for other people to donate i think all of us including all of you should and including me should be out there saying donate to the library green conservancy so we can activate the space i just think we have to be a lot more active thank you very much for your consideration good night thanks jeff um heather do we have any other members of the public we do not okay uh with that then alan i apologize we are nine minutes over our

138actual two-hour time but that means an hour and nine minutes um start so i apologize hope you get some good sleep um we have a motion to adjourn don't move all right seconded by several people uh including mr haber you all have a wonderful evening uh i think meetings adjourned thank you you