Center of the City - Council of the Commons Meeting 6/3/21

001we do a roll call vote and heather could you help us out with that and just a reminder that everybody needs to recording in progress perfect sorry just got the recording going yeah it's also being recorded on ctn this is the zoom recording that i just started excellent so uh just uh heather if you could help us out with the roll call and then just a reminder to everybody that you need to state where you're calling from um as long as your virtual the jurisdiction that you're calling from correct sorry yes all right so stephen is not here jennifer is not here alan yes allen is here and i'm a right on 531 third street ann arbor and sarah is not here jeffrey henney uh i'm here jeff heny and i'm from ward 4 1402

002henry street you don't actually need to give your addresses i mean you can if you feel like it but really just the jurisdiction so you can just say that you're in ann arbor yeah all right camila lasagna i'm here i'm calling from san carlos california rita mitchell i'm here calling in from ann arbor okay and then alice i don't think she's joined us yet uh frank wilhelm i'm here in ann arbor adam zmkay uh here but uh in port huron tonight tom crawford uh here in from ann arbor and erica brings oh and alice just is joining you know it's excellent hi ellis we're just doing roll call so if you can just say that you're here and where you're calling in from yeah i'm i'm here i'm in ann arbor i'm um is that

003enough i'm still trying to get my picture on i i did i couldn't get on uh for the past five minutes so not a problem uh take your time and i think that takes care of roll call um you all uh should have seen the agenda uh heather posted it up on lechester um can we have an approval a motion to approve the agenda motion uh to approve the agenda uh second well second okay uh all in favor say aye are we all right any opposed all right um approval of last meetings minutes um there is an attachment in the agenda uh can we have a motion to approve um could i ask a question please um i noticed that the agenda just listed a couple of items and one of them in particular we

004didn't talk about it all but there's no note that we didn't talk about it it's one of the items that we're on have on our agenda tonight so i'm just questioning how we're i know we talked about not having detailed minutes but this one didn't seem to help me you know if i were to look at this in the future i wouldn't know what was going on in the meeting is the item that you're referencing the exploration yeah yeah um i i guess this is a a good a good point when it comes to the you know the skeleton uh meeting minutes um certainly we can maybe um i don't believe we had to take action to continue that item if i recall correctly uh right that was right we didn't have to take it

005didn't address it yeah but that's that's easy enough to know it i'll note that in the future if we if it's just not talked about i'll put a note in the minutes i think that would be very helpful excellent any other questions on la the minutes from last meeting well i would i would add a a a comment we we dealt with the bylaws and we kind of had a motion to approve them in their in their fullness though i was proposing in some of the particulars that the public comment be not two minutes but be longer and as the actual public comments that we had at the beginning and the end they were all longer than two minutes and i would hope that we could maybe put on to some agenda extending that time

006and in the meantime have the chair be very flexible in how you read two minutes yeah i didn't time them last time so i apologize for that i am going to time them tonight but you do have the right if you do want to extend um the ability for people to talk longer you you can you can do them as the chair you can allow for that ellen i don't see any reason why we can't uh you know try and be fair uh with folks so i you know i i don't know if do we need to make it a formal adjustment to anything i i don't know that we need to um just be flexible for sure it's just important to be consistent i think so if you do allow for one you should

007allow it for others so um you might want to try two minutes and see how it goes and if it's not working then officially change it i hate to create paperwork but i do think it's important to set consistent expectations for people that's a fair point tom well why don't we time it tonight at two minutes and we'll see if there's uh a desire to contin to continue beyond that by several uh folks and we can adjust um any other questions about the minutes from last week or last month rather sorry all right can we have a motion to approve the minute son all right second all right sorry who moved it sorry to say again i really did yes that's okay yep um and uh all in favor of approval of the minutes uh

008say aye or raise your hand uh any opposed okay motion carries um uh who was the official person that seconded it i didn't kept i think allen maybe ellen the hand i saw okay there were like three for the initial motion i appreciate the enthusiasm but i do need to get a name down um and then uh public comment uh is the next item on our agenda uh heather do we have any folks on the phone i know there were two written uh pieces of uh statements that were sent in as well we do have people one person has just raised their hand so that's robert black so i'll let you speak in just a moment i am timing for two minutes so let me get that up and running did my time going okay

009all right robert you should be able to talk good evening robert black i'm working with and advising the initiating committee this is a written statement time for one minute and 57 seconds thank you for your willingness to listen to comments from the public this is an important process that will inform your work in shaping the commons an essential part of ann arbor's future the written communication that i submitted that was part of your information packet for this meeting has three components an overview memo suggestions for specific next steps and an example of how to structure a discussion of the physical elements of the commons the cover memo advocates for the importance of process before product this necessary groundwork the idea of a good process as in preparing the soil and gardening will lead to better

010results in the growth of the commons idea over time the second part of the submitted material suggests and acting on the recommendations of the center of the city task force recommendation number one is already underway recommendation number two meeting with a block partners group and recommendation number three action steps to create an active ground level public space will show progress on the comments to ann arbor voters and more importantly expand your constituency with willing partners to assist you in moving forward i spoke of the third item in your packet previously this is an example prepared by the initiating committee from findings of the task force showing one way to organize the desired physical elements of the commons this is only a place to start you have an experienced professional among your members in alice ralph

011who can help you with this your work tonight in defining a critical timeline of short medium and long-term goals will create a structure to build on i trust that you will discover many commonalities as you each speak your vision for the comments whatever differences may arise will provide opportunities for greater understandings and stronger alignments and form the necessary groundwork for next steps in engaging professionals in the wider ann arbor community in this exciting process best of luck and your endeavors thank you thank you robert right that was timed very well okay we have another person on the phone i'm allowing you to talk the person with the phone number three two six that ends in three two seven so you should be able to do your loops yep yeah okay if you can hear me

012this is jeff crockett i live at 506 east kingsley and i am here very excited about the progress on the garden which is just uh community garden which is just north of the elevator and i'm hoping that you will all come and stop by and not just look and appreciate the garden but pitch in and help with the weeding from time to time it's been a lot of work uh so one of the one of the items is just trying to water the garden and i bring from home sort of a water reel attachment and then bring it to the um commons garden and thank you uh to um council member ram lawy for providing water because we've gone about four or five times and we're doing this but we're hoping that we can get

013the sprinkler system from through the dda activated so we don't have to go through the effort of watering so i appreciate all the work of the other people who are working in the garden and i hope to see you out there sometime soon thank you very much thank you and that is it okay um with that we'll close out uh public comment uh start a meeting and go into any member news and updates we don't have to have updates unless we want alan and rita ellen go ahead yeah yes i've been as i think i've er said in working to uh help envision a vision of the uh what this could become uh a designer stefan trendoff had done a earlier version of the uh sense of the elements of this possibility and he has

014been working on a refinement of that in terms of what he's heard so far uh and i would like to see an opportunity for this uh visual uh stimulation to be presented and i have the sense that if we could have a special meeting that would help us with a kind of facilitated discussion of our various views trying to see some coherence and also an opportunity for stefan trendoff's uh visual representation to be presented so people can see it it takes about probably 10 minutes or something for him to uh explain just what is there on the on the poster with a central image and by the surrounding images so it's very interesting work he's done he's very competent inspired person so that's a new contribution to our effort and i hope we'll have the

015opportunity as we look ourselves to see more how will our views kind of cohere and converge that that image can be part of a special meeting that maybe we will see how do we do that probably after we look at all our individual statements which are down the agenda we'll see well we barely got started and how do we really begin to see a merger and i think that's also the kind of process that robert black was suggesting we go through with some facilitated discussion to bring us to a higher understanding of one another thank you thank you alan um rita and then frank this may be a little preemptive but i just wanted to thank councilmember briggs for her work on getting the budget funding for forty thousand dollars to get us started on

016some design uh planning that that we have yet to do but but it's it's a good start and it's much appreciated to show the the support of the city for this project thank you birds frank just uh to echo rita's uh thanks to to erica uh i i think uh having uh the anticipation of uh uh funding for a design and planning study sometime in the coming year in my mind underscores robert black's recommendation and echoing allen i would like to have us consider action at some point in the meeting perhaps later on the establishment of a subcommittee to bring forward a proposal for a what i'll call a work a facilitated working session program it may be one working session it may be a couple but i think with the individual inputs that we've

017had uh nicely capped with adam's uh late but very welcome arrival of your comments uh i think we're at a point where we do have to have facilitation and and uh work towards an alignment of our thinking uh so we can inform of the rfp that will be going out at some point to attract uh professional consultation on how we're going to develop the center of the city so um i'm proposing a the practical step of uh creating um a subcommittee that in the next month could bring forward uh a a proposal for the establishment of a facilitated working uh session program thank you frank and i know that there there is a uh an item later on the agenda around the um the formation of subcommittees and i know that several folks are interested

018in doing that so i think certainly however we want to structure that works as long as one of the words you said was working subcommittees you know can be really uh beneficial to this process i i would echo that uh councilman briggs providing some feedback on the is it not no okay good i think it takes a little bit of delay on this one sorry um i want thanks to um to all of you for providing some feedback last month on the resolution to counsel um and um particularly thanks to rita and frank for working with me and helping to to think through that a little bit as well as adam and um i interfaced a fair amount with heather as well so many thanks to everybody for for working to try to find put

019something like that forward and um i'm glad i got approved and we have some money to um hopefully work to find matching funds and um start a sort of a physical planning process thank you erica any other member updates or comments tom um yeah i had a couple people ask about where we were on um trying to clear the the the top part of the deck and as we talked previously you know one of the things we need to work through is is how the maintenance of any activity there and the liability uh if there's damage would be handled so i just want to let you know i started kind of drafting uh something so that once we work out our roles and responsibilities we uh rather than waiting for that to happen we're going

020ahead and drafting a a concept kind of mou that might be able to be used working with the dda on that so just be i wanted you to be aware of that you camilla would like to say something yeah no one please thank you um i realized this is all preemptive but i just wanted to volunteer my expertise in facilitating workshops it's something that we learn in planning school and it's something that i personally enjoy um so i'm very interested in in this idea of having regular facilitated um working group sessions as opposed to just one one-off um sessions and um i think that the opportunity to move away from this rigid type of schedule will be helpful for us to just spend a little bit more time thinking about ideas excellent that's very good

021to know too yeah super any other updates heather just a question to camilla's comment um if we were to do working working groups um that you know may or may not include additional members outside of the the council you know tbd what is the process around the public notification how how much in advance do we need to give and what are what are um you know how much of a rigid schedule do we need to adhere to ideally i like to give at least two weeks notice for people to you know if people want to come and put it on their schedule um technically it doesn't have to be that long i think it's actually only 48 hours something like that for a special meeting um but you know the longer the better okay all

022right um unless there are further comments we'll move on to the item that we didn't get a chance to get to uh last meeting which was the exploration of issues and solutions and i think uh it's maybe going to be a tag team of heather and tom or mostly uh tom potentially um i was not planning on speaking to to to to this i mean we provided it as a i'm happy to but um i provided a little bit of an update on on the first item which is the the deck i can provide one other update on there but this is kind of a live document that we are intending to kind of provide you for reading purposes and if you have questions we can respond to um i forgot to mention earlier the

023wi-fi um the city is i understand from allen that the wi-fi reach from the library was a little challenging uh the city's doing a build over the next 12 15 months or so and as we in the downtown as we do that i've asked him to incorporate uh coverage from the city through there so that's also kind of in the works are there any questions specific questions about any other aspect of that document all right council member ranks can you hear me okay um so i i had one question around um sort of the the use of the deck and um particularly wrap around the issue of the warranty um if the deck surface is um i guess some there has been some sort of damage the deck surface in any sort of way it

024sounds like it seems like we as a commission probably uh need pretty detailed information about exactly how the debt can be used how the structure is built in ways to help really understand how what sort of short-term and long-term um uh actions can happen on the deck so you know specifically i mean i would love to hear a presentation or have more detailed documents that we might be able to peruse that inform all of us about how exactly what the deck is built for and can be used for because i i don't want to start visioning around something like a fountain um for example and find out that's just structurally impossible or you know i want to really understand how that space can be used and i think we need more than sort of high

025level information to do some of this work so those are i guess some of my thoughts on that um and i it's some of the financing i guess around the um you provided some information around um the dollar amounts that of revenue um that the the service level parking is the revenue that that's bringing in and sort of the debt that that surface level parking provides i'm kind of curious we might need some more information on what that looked like in terms of revenue during covid versus you know outside of covid um you know would are there sort of mentioned that you're working with the gda about thinking about those issues but i think maybe some more specifics around around some of the revenue issues might be helpful for this group as well okay the

026um yeah on the revenue side um they um they'd have to speak that i remember talking to them and i i and we may want to invite them to to come and and talk um that they have i believe trying to remember whether they can identify whether what the activity is on the surface versus subsurface and uh i anyway i'll let them address that um on i'm i'm not quite sure how to how they could speak to um the use of the site i mean it really does depend on what you want to do the structure obviously was well it was built to hold in certain parts um a lot of weight um but uh understanding the potential like piercing the deck is a problem right that's that's definitely an issue um for the warranty

027and i think they could speak to the warranty but as far as potential uses i don't know that they'd be able to address it without an engineer kind of taking the idea back looking at it the id um you know putting soil or moisture on the deck in a permanent way that cannot that inhibits their ability to main to maintain the concrete uh coatings and things um those are things that uh would have to be explored as you come up with ideas i think so we can try to get them to respond and i think it's a good idea to invite them to give us the information that they have but it might be that we might find that we take some ideas and see if they can be vetted by an engineer it's not

028going to be it's going to cost some money it's going to take some time to sort through some of those let's say so adam if you'd like i uh you or i rather heather and i can work on seeing if somebody can come at the next meeting to discuss that i think that would be good um or maybe in one of these working group sessions uh too depending on how how those shakeout does seem like time there's kind of two two layers of questions if you others the things that maybe the dea can certainly answer related revenue potentially the city fans are related to what we do know about the warranty limitations but then certainly i think you've identified the the bucket of questions that we need to have uh engineering support on you know

029based on hypothetical situations so maybe we'll we can start a collection of those ideas from members here tonight and uh and and pull those together uh to get some engineering advice okay um there are there are several folks with hands i think it's frank then alan then alice um i i wonder if the uh of the document from which we're selecting items to talk about uh that was on the agenda last time which is on the agenda this time can that be put up so we can see that you um i used to have a photographic memory but either if you like i can try to do that if your hands are you got it okay i got it there we go all right can everybody see that yep well so i think the first

030item was the parking deck uh surface and the second item was the water and restrooms yeah water and restrooms is next i guess my one question about that first item was the figure of 132 000 dollar debt associated with with the surface parking um i'm under the impression that the debt is a general debt maybe this is just a mathematical calculation based on parking spaces but that there's no specific debt attached to the surface of the lot as opposed to all the parking um you know in the various levels the debt in a city issuance um is really kind of of a bond and in doing the bond analysis here um i can double check where the dd how the dda got that but i um it's important to note that the purpose of what

031is built is really relevant to the way that it's accounted for and managed so the item that's come up between the dda what the dda has raised with me on this is if we're changing this from the deck from parking which is that this has been paid by the parking fund and parking system pays the debt service if it's removed from that then it would need to be covered by another source if it's the dda you know is that what is that is it their tiff fund where some pedestrian improvements have been made in roads uh work was done or is it uh the city um i mean those are the questions that they have and they um we'll have some opinions as they work through their uh committees and discussing that that they're gonna

032get back to me on okay thank you alan i think you're up next yeah on the surface parking that was never intended as a long-term parking lot if we hadn't had the commons the parking would have been gone long ago and something else would be there but i i did request at some point uh that we have uh the detail of the construction uh of the surface as to what a weight bearing can handle in what places and so on it would be excellent if in a subsequent meeting we could have a city engineer or the building contractor actually interpret the drawings the detail of the construction so that we all know exactly what is the structure with which we are dealing so you seem to be moving in that direction tom i i encourage

033that to get us the drawings that we can see and somebody who can interpret them so that if it's a question of how we protect what how the warranty functions how we could protect the lower structure how we can protect the cement uh the cement surface was never intended to be a permanent surface it would have been penetrated by whatever would be built above it in some way so how is that going to be done and what are the uh the options that we have for trees and for building a weight in terms of where the pillars are on the support structure underneath my preliminary inquiry from jill o'neal looking at those the drawings that we had is that the perimeter of the structure can support quite a more quite a deal more weight than

034is on it and so i think we should be great if we had a construction engineer who could actually tell us the limits and the capacity of various parts of the structure to support whatever might be called for and with different views of how it could develop well i'm not quite sure um i mean the concrete was put there as a base of a building as well i mean it was not intended to be temporary that is permanent permanent uh uh concrete but um where i'm struggling with your request and i'm trying to i'm trying to help but um when i think of how engineers respond to questions about what can go where it tends to be not if but how like like they they um for example one of the proposals for one of

035the buildings um if you have a building that is an office building the weight bearing is a certain sequence in a structure like that very different than a weight bearing of a more dense wall building like a residential but both can go on there with one base and they do it through engineering and transfer of weight from one location to another and so that's why i i don't know what you're looking for it's not like someone can say in this corner you can put so much weight and over here another weight if you have a solution that you're looking for a fountain or something like that they can tell you what it takes to put it there i mean engineers can figure it out generally so that's why i'm struggling with how to actually answer

036your question i mean we could give you some engineering drawings but um there are specialties with an engineer uh you know a structural engineer would be appropriate for one part of this discussion as with a different kind of engineer for another part so um i'm not quite sure i think i was i was thinking that the best way to address your question is to to get some ideas some general sizing and then see if we can get feedback on how to make that work how difficult that is does that make sense yeah that makes sense in terms of the longer term view of what structure and building might be on any part of that you know i appreciate the sense we just gotta ask the engineer and they'll tell us how to do it yeah

037rather than whether it can be done or not anything can be done and how to do it is the question and the costs and so on yeah then it becomes whether it's feasible or not um based on what efforts it would take yeah i think alice is up next okay um i'd like to be brief on this and i have to because i that's the point of not lack of information and to look back i as i recall the bonding analysis and the bonding requirements for the debt uh were challenged a bit by the amount of parking which was available to the public for public use and there as i recall there were one or two lawsuits that proceeded for some time and having it's so long ago that i would just like to make

038sure that there are not also um issues with the bonding that we could that we would be limited by or that there are some that we should be aware of so maybe i'm kind of lost track of where that history went but it was like so many such some percentage of the parking spaces were required to be available for public use and there was some question as to whether monthly permits for instance were included in public use and so forth so if if there's some way to kind of look back and make sure that all those kinds of issues were resolved and that we know what they were and how how it came out we would then know the financial impact on some of the changes or proposals that we might have yeah that's a

039good memory alice there was a lot of discussion about that i don't remember uh lawsuits but that there's just so much discussion i'm not saying there wasn't um the allocation is you know affirmed we went through a lot of discussion i think there was an audit with there's even a discussion i think with the irs about it just to make sure um and uh so so i mean we're all set there we would not the city would not allow a change of use to occur without revisiting the implications of it so for example if if the outcome of your conversation says well we'd like a cafe here or you know this over there those things will as a matter of city business be be run through all the things that we have to look at

040to make sure we stay legal one of the um but but i do not anticipate a change in usage based on my conversation so far with our bond attorney i do not anticipate a change of usage from parking to non-parking in and of itself to have a negative consequence to this commission moving forward it would still be public use in that respect okay yeah um can i clarify what your last statement uh was real quick and i know we have another number of other folks but when you said that you do not anticipate a change of usage to be a negative consequence to this commission you mean and you previously said you're gonna weigh the obviously the city would weigh the the revenue considerations and analyze those did you mean could you expand a little

041bit on your last sentence what i was trying what i was trying to say is um it does not appear that the fact that there's a bond against this is going to affect the repurposing from a use of parking to a non-parking use as long as it's public purpose okay sounds good thank you for clarifying that um i think uh rita is next thank you um well i have to say just looking over this list and thinking of our short-term discussion which is to come it feels like um each of the categories has a barrier to use for short term and so i would like us to come to an understanding about how we will deal with things like access to drinking water and restrooms if we're going to be using um the surface of

042the lot for short-term kinds of things the activities that we've considered or we are considering um and or it does all of what i'm pointing to in this document get addressed by the section let me see if i can get to it um the last section that is um not in the last activate the space in the near term um so if it feels like each of these items have certainly a revenue or a cost associated with them um and so that my question is because um i feel like i've been confronted many times with my own concerns and those that i've talked within the community that there's a wish to move forward with some activation and so i would like to have a solid way for us to proceed to address those short-term things

043that we all agree with and so so sorry uh from from my from my seat um the the biggest or the most challenging the first thing i should say i don't know whether it's big or not is really figuring out the roles of who's going to be responsible for what like once that's sorted out um a lot of this starts to become a lot easier um to figure out where we're going and if you're talking about picnic tables and benches versus um you know maybe booths and other things like that um uh i think we just start working through it right i mean it's just uh the way to solve these things is to take an idea and go at it and and and uh happy to do that um it's just the the most

044challenging one for me is this figuring out um the maintenance and the liability and could you amplify on the liability issue well i mean let's say um let's say someone is putting a tent up uh you know vendor tent or something up and they try to secure it somehow and it damages the surface of the deck or um you know some other damage is done um you know establishing responsibility for that is is important to do up front those are not things you want to solve later on um but and so um how would you suggest that we proceed with things that are you know they're they're on the list as as being kind of more in the future but they are things that are um requested now like the wi-fi like access to water

045where we've had trouble in in our garden event days using restrooms getting access to water uh well we can run down those i mean where we can you know trying not to nickel and dime this group so where we can for example we're going to put in wi-fi that's just going to take some time you've got a sub-optimal solution until then with the library uh the restrooms um i know this and i have forgotten it when the library is thinking about opening uh um but uh i thought we resolved that the blake center did have restrooms and water i i've got confirmed uh matt carpenter that they they are open and available to the public and for a short-term solution uh that strikes me as a the most viable at least until the library is

046open okay i just know that we had an experience where that where it was not available so at one point of time during the day during like what we consider normal hours between say nine and noon um and uh that was on a saturday so what happened up here what's interesting yeah i'm curious what happened because i'm curious what happened because uh and we can take that offline if you'd like because uh matt had said that they they were open um yeah okay well let's take it offline i'll get the details sure thanks and uh camilla thank you all thank you um i was planning on bringing this up as an idea when we talk about subcommittees but i feel like it's relevant now um so if i had to describe the main issue that

047our group has been facing recently it's one like how do we get started and um two also documenting all of our ideas and issues that need to be addressed you know in response to rita's concerns we spit ball a lot of ideas but we don't have a central location to put those ideas like a google drive it's all on our own uh notebooks so uh my proposal um which i'm happy to hear feedback about is to make a giant to-do list um and to rank specific tasks based on priority and um who it's assigned to such as a subcommittee the city planning office um the public et cetera and um i think moving forward in our agenda would we get to the part about roles or subcommittees it might be helpful for someone like adam

048to pull up a word document and just make a table with writing down our ideas first um different subcommittees and then our ideas for tasks and go from there i think that's a good idea i agree i think it's a good idea are there any more questions and i know that uh kind of per come on camilla's suggestion we're gonna you know have some items for tom to take back i'm sure we'll add to that uh here shortly are there other things right now that that you know were directly related to this document um that we didn't that we didn't get any feedback on or the folks feel is outstanding still you can always add to these things right and we'll capture that on a task list to reiterate that this is meant to be

049a living document just to have it on paper somewhere as a reference for the issues that we're exploring and how we're working out resolving them ellen you have your hand up yeah well uh i appreciate camilla's thought of a uh massive to-do list uh my uh effort towards short medium and long term uh was quite a bit of a to-do list yeah but in in particular i uh in the in that document or in one of those such issues and solutions i think that we need the block group of all the partners on the block to be convened because we really need to see what is the plans of the library what are the plans of the martin people how do they mesh with our own thinking and i would extend to that also that

050we have some liaison with the site development for the y lot across the street while that's not on our block it definitely impinges will impinge our our block as well as the uh connection with the credit union and uh that we'll probably be seeing some you know development in their own thinking and uh [Music] and likewise uh yeah the uh the uh co-op federation so i i just i know whatever the the holdups has been i think that we need to begin to invite to and convene and have a presence together of the people who are our partners on the block and uh so i hope that can move forward you know more quickly than it has and i can speak to that just a moment i've been thinking about uh trying to get that

051group together um i i feel like we've got a little bit more work to do here understanding the roles and responsibilities of each group will help drive you need to be able to go into a meeting like that in my view and being able to say here's how decisions are going to be made and and here are some of our priorities here's an agenda that we have that we'd like to know now if we want to just go in and ask you know what's going on with you all um you know each each group um we can do that um i don't know that everybody will be able to be um forthright with what their individual plans are given when i'm aware of some of the planning stages or thoughts that they're in but we

052can always do it um and that that could be a way to start uh if if that's what you're getting at that's sort of what i'm getting at that just to start and as much as we can for the people who are sharing this block with us or with whom we are sharing this block to see that we are kind of all in this mixed together and uh our plans will in some way will develop in relation to one another i think there's definitely uh certainly uh as we decide how we're gonna form and do our our work certainly i think that both points that alan and tom have made around you know the incorporation of people into that working process uh will need to identify uh erica you had your hand up too you

053know further on the agenda we're gonna be talking about sort of our short-term um vision for the space and hopefully coming to some some level of consensus around that um but um to mr crawford's point that it's it's sometimes helpful to have something that we're asking people to react to i do think that that is that's useful i'd also like to point out that the center of the city task force report um calls that that group is the compilation the meeting of that group um is sort of under the auspice of the city administrator bringing that group together and it's maybe one liaison from this group going and and meeting and with that body and so it's not necessarily us as a body meeting um with that group i think we have to be very

054conscious of they're obviously very can all the stakeholders i assume are very concerned about are interested in what it in how this space proceeds um but they are also focused on their own efforts and endeavors um so we have to be careful about how to use their time and to use it wisely um to return to um rita's point about how to sort of move forward with short-term you know the activation of the space um mr crawford you mentioned about sort of maintenance liability who's going to be responsible being the primary issue i do think that's a it's a challenging issue for us to resolve because we're kind of working outside of the models of who might traditionally be responsible for something like this and so you know this is not there is part of

055the space that um is park space and we need to be conscientious i think that we're gonna have to interface with with pack on on as we discuss that so we have one potential responsible party for thinking about what happens there but um top of the parking lot is obviously that's traditionally republic parking but that's we're talking about efforts that would not be within their purview of activities so and um you know the dda is not thinking about this necessarily as is their responsibility so i don't that that sort of leaves us with this city organization broadly as a responsible party and yet the traditional departments that might handle this are not um would not be engaged so i don't i don't know how we exactly resolve that if we're talking about activating the space

056um in the short term with as we move into this discussion i guess we can have a discussion around what we think about that short term vision might be and then maybe that leads us to thinking about the responsible parties but it does seem like we're we're stuck a little bit in a circle on this one um it is it's a bit difficult for us to resolve maybe with the traditional operating parties so i don't know we may have i'm not sure how maybe you can provide a greater guidance to us on that later in the discussion i think i definitely think uh one part you just identified erica around maybe creating a vision and then having that lead us to who the stakeholders may be um seems to make a lot of sense to

057me i think we've got frank then alan i i just wanted to support the notion i guess of bringing the block partners together uh because we we're sort of circling in different orbits uh they don't they're not informed where we are in the process and we have other than you know two year ago conversations with the martins and um the uh credit union and so on uh and a few other uh uh land landlords on the block i think would just be uh useful to engage them we may we may find uh some advice and some uh insights that they have that uh will really inform us and and vice versa um so i would encourage uh at least an initial meeting and um i think one idea that has been floating around is maybe

058not regular meetings of all the block partners but find ways to integrate black partners based on their interest into some of the subcommittees that we're going to be forming so that they're attached and feeling uh part of the part of the conversation as as things begin to emerge that's just my thinking at this point sure definitely um and i know those conversations you just alluded to certainly have been you know popping up i think of interest uh alan yeah as this endeavor evolved with the resolution to recognize the initiating committee as doers in this situation i have presumed that when we actually are permitted to be doing that the initiating committee will be the assume the responsibility for the clean up maintenance whatever it is that now would be assumed by republic parking or by

059the dda or that we would share that in some cooperative way as we are undertaking to do the gardening in those areas where we are so and i think that's in the short term and longer term i think that we will be creating some management uh group that undertakes the integration of all this space and joins together what now is the dda republic parking park commission and initiating committee in some new conservancy that actually is managing this but in the short run i'm assuming that there yeah when when the initiating committee is permitted to do stuff on the lot that we will be uh assuming that responsibility and we need to see exactly how that is to be specified that is different from assuming the liability insurance or whatever which i would assume would be

060under the city of blanket insurance or we have to figure out how that is done when there's some special program in the past rather than just passive use of a park space then there needs to be or has been required to be a insurance for that particular program but anyhow the i think the initiating committee has a job to take care of things when other elements are withdrawing from their supervision but such as the dda and republic parking i uh ellen i'm not so sure i totally agree with uh where you're where you're going on the initiating committee assuming a lot of the responsibility is a city-owned property and i think the city probably has a little bit more of a coordinating role in my in my view at least um but um but you

061know i think we can we can get into that and tom tom raised his hand too yeah i mean um so i mean allen's been been mr aber's been saying this for a while uh you know his view and i think he's familiar with how the city um uh allows people to use the space in an organized way with permits and insurance and all that and um you know i think that you know as as into what councilmember briggs was bringing up earlier you know i think i think it's useful to to really this is the hard part in my view because it uh we have to be careful about not getting into a situation i think of of where there are perverse incentives if say for example the city or the dda were responsible

062for for cleaning or liability or whatever just for purposes of this discussion and yet there was a a a commoning effort of just people being able to use the space in some creative way something fun and then something happens you actually have the the the the user not have any accountability for their actions and and and transferring a pr uh i'm saying a private use but a a group's use to the public and that is a little bit different than we might do with the um that seems very different to me than the way that we're handling parks even in parks if you're wanting to organize something or do something there we have all these things to go through so i think you know i don't have the answer here i think it's this is

063a good discussion to have um and this may be one we want to take offline because it's one of the harder nuts to crack fair enough are there uh are there other items specifically related to this agenda item uh because i do want to i want to be conscious it's 8 o'clock right now um i think this next agenda item around the individual visioning is going to take some time here but it seems like what we're doing right now is kind of going into role definition and things and certainly the visioning can inform some of that but also this conversation clearly can inform some of that too so i'd like to make a suggestion that maybe what we try and do is limit our explanation to a short period of time shorter period of time

064we set a time around our visioning and then we can continue that that way we make sure that we cover a discussion around roles and next agenda items in the formation of subcommittees because i feels like from the the momentum that those items have from folks here that's really important to get started uh on and so i would like to suggest that we we try and be conscious of a shorter period of time around the next agenda item that's okay okay um so without any more discussion on on the previous uh item we can move into a discussion around individual visions um maybe if uh if we wanna everybody has the documentation um and so so certainly can reference it in the future but it probably would be helpful for each author to provide a

065little context so maybe if we want to try and take a couple of minutes a piece um that you know that could get us to uh some explanation does that sound fair okay uh who would like to go first we can go in the order they're listed on the agenda too alice you had your hand up i think we need to have you unmute i'll start i'll start because uh i'll i'll admit that i had quite a bit of trouble deciding how i viewed the whole short-term intermediate and long-term things but i realized that one reason i was having trouble is that i didn't have the information the kind of information that we're talking about right now but what do we know about our opportunities and limitations and so forth so i i think i

066i did get a look at adams at the last minute i had a week um and um but i did look at that and i i think there may be other similar threads um among our visions and all of them i suspect may depend on the kind of information we can gather as sort of our our sounding board you know okay this is a good idea because we have this information that shows that we don't have far to go to get that done that's a short term and and so forth with the intermediate and long term so that's my my uh my version of the vision was very um skeletal but based on the information that we need and that we have both so that's what i have to say thanks girls i'll go if

067you like real quick so you know there's kind of a connection between what i'd like to see in the process that we need to go through because as alice pointed out there's information that we need and we need also to have a process of working together but i'm most concerned about uh well my first point was that we should engage right away with the liberty plaza community because i think we tend to forget about liberty plaza in focusing on the library a lot and there's a lot of issues there and it it's also important to to engage with the people who uh are involved with that area um not only the the the inhabitants if we can use that term but also the people that service them so that was an important consideration and we

068um also i think we've got to get these working groups moving quickly because otherwise it'll just be months and months and months because we only have a meeting once a month uh in our group and it's going to be another month before we have another one if we don't have these working groups working during this month you know the summer will be gone before we know it and nothing really will have happened so i think working groups um need to be in place and working you know within the next 30 days um also i think the facilitation we need that facilitator uh getting everybody's vision sort of integrated as robert pointed out you know there's probably a lot of overlap i mean i know there's a lot of overlap because i looked at other people's

069work and mine and and there's an enormous amount of overlap and i think that um camilla was very generous in offering her her skills to maybe work with us on that maybe she could work with also maybe robert might be useful or somebody else um but appreciate very much camilla uh offering this and i think she recognized probably having looked at that stuff very much why she brought it up that there's this commonality there the patterns if you like that we need to put in place um so the facilitation needs to happen also very quickly otherwise it'll be forever before we get our common direction going um the uh we've already talked about convening meetings of of the uh uh library lot and liberty plaza partners and that needs to happen you know at least

070a preliminary in a preliminary way again in within the next 30 days from my perspective and then we need to start deploying some removable resources um you know um hopefully in line with what comes from the facilitation and the initial meeting with you know block partners uh that can show that activity is happening you know that the the booths the maybe a a temporary fountain that can be moved around that can be fed by water from a from a hose or something like that and some chairs and tables and you know maybe chess boards you know like a lot of european cities they have that kind of thing a lot of people have spoken to me about this and said get out there and get us engaged allow us to come and mingle with each

071other doing stuff and you know it's it's not rocket science or that difficult to do these temporary structures and get them and put them in place so people can mingle and do things but again it comes back to this let's have a facilitated meeting to agree you know the sort of things that we want to have in place uh you know a lot of people have offered stuff alan actually has a very detailed uh outline i think that that's one that could be our starting point to speak to camilla's you know big list i think alan's item is good i'll i'll finish by just saying that um you know because i put a bunch of things down here but um and over the medium term you know i put some dollar amounts too i mean

072people are scared of putting numbers down i think we ought to start thinking in terms of what are we really talking about and i'm thinking that we need to have from our you know from private sources about four hundred thousand dollars by the end of the year and hopefully some matching money with that maybe five million dollars over the next couple of years and 20 million by five years that's the kind of order of magnitude that you see happening in other cities around the country and and that's a minimum we could we could probably spend a lot more than that and get a lot more than that because this is going to be the heart of our heart of our city and it's going to be telling the world a lot about what our city

073is all about and i'll end by just saying that um there's some examples in other cities around the world and in the tradition of commoning and the tradition of eco villages and urban eco-cooperatives that we can get information from that way that's my my quick vision thanks thanks jeff uh erica and then frank i think both had their hands up um yeah i appreciated reading everybody's um sort of different visions for the space and got me thinking about a lot of different pieces i appreciated um heather seeing you kind of put that together kind of in a in a timeline of of of phases that we might go through um it seems pretty clear that we've you know there's there's this desire for us to to learn um and and and also to activate the

074space um i think uh in the short term um for my from my part i um hearing as much as we want to activate the space there actually are a number of challenges that we have to work our way through to make to make that happen on their they're simply this issue of maintenance and liability is is pretty large from the city's eye and so as much as folks want to get the space activated our responsibilities as as a group is to figure out how to make that happen in a way that is um is responsible um and so it may not as much as folks want to see things happen immediately i think we have to to work within those work with that when it comes to the library lot the space that we

075do have and available um immediately is liberty square plaza um the challenge that we have as more as a commission is that's not there's actually another commission that's set up to to oversee that space um and that's pac and so um i do think that we we need to figure out how we're we're interfacing with them um because we can come up dream up a lot of different ideas but we're we're dealing with you know limited resources and we have to figure out how we how we integrate that um from i also think i as much as i appreciate hearing everybody's visions and views on this um i i want to make sure that we're building upon the work that's already been done from the task force before us and so i i don't know

076that it is necessarily that helpful to have us spend lots of time figuring out what our vision is for the space because we've already gone out to the community and asked them what their vision is for the space and we have that we've done a couple of we've done quite a bit of work on that and so what i'd like to do is utilize that to be able to move us forward towards solving some of these short-term issues and really utilizing some of the money that we have available to us and figuring out how we we complement that um to start working towards a physical plan so that we have some you know we know what our long-term plan is for the space um so i had a hard time figuring out what short-term midterm

077and long-term is i think folks had different you know different um different buckets but that might be something we we might at least want to know what we're what time frame we're all thinking about in the short term um that might be a nice thing that work comes out of at least tonight's meeting frank do you want to go you're muted frank you're needed yep sorry um just uh following on from what erica just said i i think we did try to reach back to the task force and uh was my first journey through the appendices my god there's a lot of information there and we we pulled out you know a selection of quotes to from people who responded to the various questionnaires what they're what they were looking for and then there was

078an interesting uh ranking of activities um that people wanted to see uh on the uh on the site and i think those informed us as we and we thought probably as much about short term because it it seems more definable than intermediate and long term and in the midst of this we went from hope of very little hope of any funding to having resources that we can begin to deploy on some planning and design work into the next fiscal year and so i i don't want to speak for rita but i think we saw uh the immediate activation of what might be possible let's say in the next six months the balance of uh 2021 is kind of our a place to experiment a bit which will inform the intermediate planning and the longer term

079planning we might get some some interesting notions as we attempt to deploy some activities and events in these locations i think one thing we need to do is be sure that all the public land on the block are part of the the park's next five-year study because one of my hopes i don't know if i'm smoking the legal stuff now but my hope is that um this all will be viewed as parkland at some point it's it's really uh uh not i think not a productive planning device to have this land divided into a couple different categories as we as we think about a unified plan and that was we really i think reed and i both emphasized to each other we need to think about liberty plaza the top of the parking structure in

080library lane is a unified uh parcel in terms of planning over the intermediate and longer term um on fundraising uh i i was rocked a bit jeff by your numbers uh my experience is you you you build numbers based on uh the vision and the elements of the vision that come into into shape over time and so i can't relate to the the 5 million the 20 million because i don't know what they attach themselves to but we can work that all through over time rita i don't want to deny you the microphone here well um no i think that was a good summary um i just would say that i do feel it's essential to link up with what i'm what i call the block partners um in what i've read of other cities

081the community as represented by the businesses and and other organizations around these kinds of things do participate in some way and i think that we'll find some strength in that and and some ideas that could be really fun um that's what i'm hoping for um so i think i'll stop at that so we don't i might i might just comment uh i i think in sarah hammersmith was helpful to us and and understanding something that should be obvious that the business partners the block partners uh really want to draw economic benefit from whatever happens here and so all the more reason we we need to begin to have conversations to understand what what their vision and what they potentially see as a benefit to what we're attempting to do here it seems like we're kind

082of operating a bit in a vacuum um maybe they're listening in tonight one could hope but i think we need to actively pursue the conversations with the business community and the block partners specifically and i'd like to just add one thing um i i do want to have a good conversation um with well with everybody um but i think that parks provides us with a certain kind of structure and set of existing rules i'll call them that may be useful to us at least as a model if we are not you know i don't know where we'll end up in our association with parks but but there are structures in that system that are recognized by the community that we can rely on and i think consistency is a good thing camilla would you like

083to go or would you like me to go i'll go um so i just want to highlight my concerns about equity and justice in this visioning process uh one of my greatest fears is creating a space for your stereotypical ann arbor white county and to exclude uh racially diverse communities in particular and i um i want to amplify the difference between equality and equity quality being trading on treating everyone the same and equity being fairness and access um for instance like even putting out an open call for public comment is flawed and doesn't reach um every community equally um so just i think that goes back to erica's point about it's not really it doesn't really matter what our individual visions are for this space um we've been brought to this committee to focus on

084the vision um the greater vision of the ann arbor community definitely um and so i'll uh i'll wrap things up by just saying i think that um i think that in the in the short and intermediate terms um we need to understand what while while we are working through what this is going to be and who is going to manage it long term um and and really you know what the spaces are i agree with some of the sediments that have been previously shared around linking liberty plaza and the the common space much more directly on a long-term basis but certainly in the short and intermediate term uh coming to an understanding of what the the coordinated who's going to coordinate use um what the management of that space is uh from some of the

085uh points that tom has previously brought up um but also then how the how the public is engaged and how we let the public know how to engage in in the use of the space uh during that time period i feel like that's very important that we have a planning portion of that i do think for the activation in the short and intermediate term phases it's really important that be much more planned than left to be organic i fear that that allowing the space to simply be open um uh without any sort of coordinated uh reach out effort um is is going to lead to it being vacant quite uh and so i feel like a lot of the ideas around activating on a very deliberate basis are are things that drew me to the

086short and intermediate um ideas i think from a long-term standpoint um i think a master plan really needs to be developed um and maybe some of that couldn't be started with this group but certainly uh shouldn't include the block partners and really that is sort of the basis for i think the the long-term planning period um and so um you know i think we should start that process now frankly um and that will lead us to uh the ability to select a design partner uh at some time in a not too distant future who really you know can professionally do this in least ways better than i can um and so i feel like it's a it's an all overlapping process um we start with that long-term vision that's really what brought this council uh

087to creation to begin with and the rest of the the things in the short and intermediate terms are more to show the community what could what can happen make sure they're engaged in providing feedback and creating a process so that the space is utilized for something other than what it's used for right now uh and also utilized for something such that it's not just left uh to be to be potentially um not used for anything i think that would be the ultimate um failure frankly if we locked it off and and uh and then it wasn't used for anything so i feel like planned activation is important really important in the short and intermediate phase but then certainly all of this goes into the the long-term vision and um i agree with i think it

088was erica that brought up that we cannot we there's already been a ton of work in my in my brief uh review of of how long it took other communities to plan parks i felt like we already had a jump on some of that with all of the work that the task force had done and that community outreach envisioning and i think it would we really uh need to honor that and make sure that that's part of this time period otherwise it's going to take a long time to reinvent the wheel on it and frankly i think it's it does a disservice to all of that work and so so that's that's what i would say i would say we need to set up a management process a coordinated use process a way to engage

089the community in the short immediate term me short and intermediate term uh usage and then simultaneously we need to start planning this this long-term path to a design firm right away well i want to uh move in i've i've listened to this and i have a lots of agreement though my main observation is this is a urban central park and civic center commons and except for you adam one time saying common space commons was not mentioned by anyone my uh uh document began with education what is the commons and it is something about which most of us know very little the task force by the time they were done with seven months had enough understanding to say yes we are for the commons and included in the task force report was some reference to the

090commons and commoning and the commons does not exist without commenting commoning is the relationship that produces a space that is self-managed self-governing and it is as tom and i had a little exchange maybe in a previous meeting different from the way the city normally operates which is a top-down direction whereas the commons is creating a social organization of people who find needs for mutual benefit except mutual responsibility and have a mutual respect uh camilla's statement very important is this is about equity how do we really include the community of ann arbor in the design and feeling of possession of the potential of this space and participation in its creation and the outreach to the community to have engagement and opportunity to put vision into it is very important but the first part is really what

091is getting ourselves some sense of what is this commoning all about and it is not the usual way of doing things now beyond that in the uh multi-element effort i made of short medium and long term and i tried to lay out the elements that were addressed in the task force and then subsequent work looking towards this as potentially some kind of eco village that really had a vision of how a community more broadly is developed in a way that is beneficial and relating to the world as a whole and heather today which i appreciate sent out a report from the network for the culture of peace that the culture of peace is essential in what we are doing and we need to have that sense of what is the culture we are trying to

092create that is different from how the lawn chairs are arranged that is very important and we need a plan of how actually to do this doing but the social organization and how we are creating a culture in the center of the city that is really a inspiration for the community that people's best ideals can go into that's what seems very essential and i hope that a facilitated discussion could help bring out that element of our various thinkings to see what is the substance that we are endeavoring to bring forward apart from this physical elements and uh i hope that you will uh take the the time and focus to look through those uh that outline and the many elements that i tried to identify as part of how this might develop and i would say

093that in my picture we are creating a surface level park area including liberty plaza and the surface of the parking lot we are seeking to to subordinate the automobile and elevate the people of increased public uh space build some sort of balcony terrace over where the cars are create a civic center building that could connect with the future library or the present library and and some passageway between the liberty plaza and the uh library lot that involves uh the martin either initially some uh oh look at that puppy yes initially some bridge over their parking lot but ideally through their building a arcade like the nichols arcade of commercial space they would integrate the two elements of our space that's a long-term vision and it is a multi-million dollar vision but it could be developed

094with a sense of the culture and the participation something that would be very attractive to the richness of this community and there's a lot of money in ann arbor i don't think the money is as much the problem whether it's five twenty or or a hundred million dollars it is what is the vision and how do we make it something that really has a participation in a culture that is elevating so that's what i want to put into this and i hope that people will see as part of our task on this council of the commons to educate ourselves and me is more as much as everyone else what really is the commons what is this about is a movement all over the world of cities trying to have a different sense of their municipal

095organization the donor economy that's been developed out of england and now spreading all over the world the sense of eco villages of how a community is resonant with the needs of the transformation of the whole culture of of quran's society if we are to survive these times of their massive transformation anyhow that's where i just want to put in and i hope that facilitated discussion could really bring that more to the surface and see that the physical elements that we are working with are really derivative from the participation of commoning and the creation of the cultural uh cohesion in the in the town that's that's a high ideal that's higher than the high rise all right thank you alan uh frank you had your hand up here oh thank you alan uh i uh i'm

096looking at the clock and now we've got more uh important things to do before we before we end tonight so i um i don't know if it's moving on to subcommittees or exactly what but um think i'd like to if it's if it's fine uh with the group we do we sort of uh separated out roles and subcommittees but it seems like frankly um maybe some of that should be talked about together um do we want to combine a discussion around roles in subcommittees about how we're going to move forward and who needs to be involved i i like that idea okay i don't know about everybody else but i agree we do i agree with that okay okay so it seems like you know we've had an opportunity to share uh visions obviously they're

097all documented we can come back and reference them why don't we do an organic discussion around how we take these first steps and then how they lead into the next steps the next steps um you know we sort of centered around this we need immediate things and then we have longer term things uh as well and it does appear that they are quite different given the the way the space is set up right now so you know what what are some ideas and then how do how do we as a body do actually take that work alan you your hand was up first go ahead well i i hope that we can continue with the gardening and get more people involved i think we need to have some specific activities it would be excellent if

098we could have something on june 18th which is now a city holiday if we could have the end of the fourth of july parade and on the commons and see that as a gathering point with the junior chamber of commerce that we could see the art fair which is now back online to have some presentation some engagement of the commons as part of the art fair rather than as a parking lot for the fans and so on and uh looking forward to seeing september 21 as peace day is an activity so looking at some public activities there that people could participate in and activate the space then in in addition i'd like to see you know the cars off however we can do that and some chairs and tables and so on but i think

099some activities that begin to draw people there and invite the different elements of the community to do do formal activities the way that's been done before a lot more but that's that is one start of some something the program committee to look at those possibilities uh frank let's see yeah um i agree with alan i i think maybe the way to to activate the site in the next whatever it is six months to a year maybe around activities as opposed to you know passive benches and and tables uh i think those can be there when there are elem events being sponsored we need a way to introduce community groups the art fair the end of the parade juneteenth whatever it is and we need a small sales force to begin to really uh engage community

100groups that will then begin to think about this as a site um because when you have organized activities you have a protocol you have a process and allen's familiar with it but we we need to spread that out among other groups um i i keep coming back to i guess the vehicle that i think will help move us forward is this facilitated uh working session program where uh and i i on the screen here i looked at camilla and i looked to heather as people who i'm assuming camilla says she has and i i've been told that heather has has this background as well um we need this facilitated process to take all the input that we have from the task force our impressions um from the assignment that heather gave us i think we're

101ready for this facilitation um and you know over the over the next few months and what what what is the vehicle to get us there i i don't know if my idea of a a subcommittee that would bring bring together a proposal for this or whether we should turn this over to heather and camilla to um you're the experts uh or maybe it's a combination uh maybe heather and camilla co-chairing and getting a few more of us involved to flesh this thing out i'm getting excited here as we as we uh as i talk about it uh but um i see where on the i feel like we're on the cusp of of grabbing hold of this idea and having this facilitated process be the vehicle that kind of drives us to the next stage

102here uh before uh i turn it over to jeff just to clarify frank when you say this process this uh a lot are you referring to basically an uh uh the this first phase is phases uh well um i think it's more than that i i i've been following robert black's uh descriptions of of this process and i think in his community written communication tonight he goes into some considerable detail so that that's my my reference point it it would be more than uh looking at short-term uh activation i think would be uh looking to at least informing uh how we approach professional uh consultants about the planning that i think erica has been been referring to and is so wonderfully uh led the led the charge to get some funding available so i i

103don't want to limit it to the uh for the short term at all okay uh jeff yeah i i i agree with what you're saying um but i'm still concerned about the this drifting over a long period of time and i would like to see perhaps camilla and and and heather actually put their heads together with whoever else and within this next 30 days between this meeting or 28 or whatever is between this meeting and next that that facilitation takes place the actual facilitation meeting takes place and we come to some you know we establish as a result of that facilitation exercise some working groups and some direction and we not just you know plan to think about when we're going to do this facilitation down the road it needs to happen immediately or very

104quickly otherwise we're going to be drifting all summer in my opinion i apologize for being a little bit of assertive here but and i do agree with most of the comments that were made earlier thank you alan yeah echo i would like to see us and put forward before the that we have before the end of the month a facilitated discussion to bring our various views together i'd be glad if camilla wants to be part of that if heather wants to be part of that i would urge that robert black be you engaged in that yeah and uh he is a pro in this uh kind of work for a lifetime and that we need to do exactly what jeffrey just said get us together and get some focus in how we are moving forward

105and that should be done sooner rather than later we have if we could give a two-week lead for a meeting we could have a meeting on the 20-something of the of june and uh and take to see that is to take the next step and probably it will lead to the central we need another facilitated discussion who else could be brought in begin to look at the other talent that is in town that could help in this and that's what i uh there's any room when we for a motion i would say that out of this discussion should be a call for a special meeting within the next two weeks before the end of the month to uh have a facilitated discussion and that heather and camilla and robert should consult on how best to

106do that and if there's somebody else that should be drawn in as a facilitator uh that would all be to the good and that we should get ourselves together to the next step and see the big picture as it develops out of the immediate steps so i'm all in favor of a facilitated discussion i do think that it would probably be a good idea to and certainly camilla and heather leading it i i think i concur with the sentiments there if they're uh willing and but i do think it would be helpful if we identified sort of what the obviously if it's going to be facilitated you know part of the goals come out of that facilitated discussion but you know some idea of what we want to to come out of that i i

107i fear if we go in completely blank slate that we're going to create another meeting that's facilitated but uh it's going to be another meeting and i don't want to see us you know drift like that with just more meetings well i think we go in with the documents that we've put together so far is certainly one point and what are the one two three steps that you see need to be to follow from this and perhaps that will help form what is the next agenda for our july first meeting camilla you've got your hand up please feel free thank you yeah i think um i propose that heather and i chat offline to figure out next steps um i agree that there should be um some working group session before our july meeting and

108because we have to notify the public sooner rather than later it might make sense to just decide now the time and date um so we don't have to go through long email chains definitely heather there are just a couple thoughts that i have on this um one thing to that i think we need to keep focused on is that this group is an advisory body so this work would be focused on how you get to the end point of developing a set of recommendations to city council um so the starting point i i think is about learning this uh this graphic that i put up earlier and i'll share it again this was my attempt to consolidate everything that was put in your visioning exercise um which was incredibly hard to do which is kind

109of a good problem to have because all of you were so thoughtful and had a lot to say and you had a lot of ideas going on so this is a very very generalized overview but i think if we can find agreement on these common threads about this is generally the direction that we go in then we can get to the details and i see it starting with learning there's a lot of unanswered questions and things that i i feel like this group really wants to know so that might be a place where we um really have a discussion around and see what we can do to bring everybody to the place where they feel like they have enough information to start making recommendations um and then getting into this activation of space that seemed

110to be the number two item on the agenda is really really you know getting the space moving but again it would be you providing recommendations on how to activate the space to city council so i just want to keep that in mind i know that's a little bit of a debbie downer message because everybody's so energized and wants to actually get out there and start doing things and putting things out there but it's really developing a set of recommendations to city council the other thing i just want to just um bring up as a word of caution with camilla camilla i want you to have this experience with facilitating as an up-and-coming planning planner but i don't want your voice to be overshadowed sometimes it's hard to facilitate and be a member of the group

111as well so i think you and i just need to work out finding that balance so when there's times where you really want to participate as a group then i can take over with facilitation but anyway we'll just we can talk about that later all right uh jeff had your hand up you muted yourself i think actually commuted yes if you're muted yeah can you hear me now yep yeah so from my perspective i agree with what's just been said i think that's great and heather's diagram is is super and i agree that the the the task force recommendations are kind of a core and you know i was involved you know as an advisor in the task force so i you know i totally agree with that um whatever other ideas have been brought

112to the party that's great from everybody else here uh but at the end of the day from my perspective what i'd like to see come out of this facilitated meeting is um working groups on specific items in other words we we identify those working groups in this facilitated process and then recommend that they be established and then we we vote to have them established or we we cut some of them or we add some but let's let's have that so that people can other people can be brought in from the outside like we've said we need a more representative or that we need you know more community input as camilla said you know the task force recommendations were great but that wasn't necessarily the whole community it was a significant part of the community what

113wasn't the whole community so that's a way of doing it getting these working groups going and bringing people in from the outside as i was in the task force uh even though i'm a you know an older white guy unfortunately um and um the second thing is i i think what we need that needs to come out of this uh facilitated meeting is recommendations on what specifically um is going to happen in the short term uh that you know some very specific things and ways to that we feel to overcome the issues that are still out there so those two things i think would be oh sorry and the third thing is that facilitated process should also uh result in a recommendation about where and when and with who these block partners are going to

114come together so that's my 10 cents worth thanks okay so uh erica yeah please concur that if we're going to have a facilitated process and we definitely definitely want to make sure we understand what we want to get out of that i think part of the goal of this meeting was to try to come to it and bring our visions and and have some consensus around what our short-term midterm and long-term vision was and i i don't know i don't see us getting there i think we've each put a little something on the table and um we're it's just sitting there and it's not coming together as a recommendation about how we should move forward um so that that might be helpful if we are getting together to really just focus very much on the

115on the short term um and then um sorry i have oh for the july meeting what i would recommend um out of that bubble of learning i think while i think it's great that we're having a lot of discussions i think it might be helpful to just have us presented to for a meeting with information from partners that have more information than we do um so if we could get information from parks if we get information from the dda you know and that's we just learn for a meeting um some um from my perspective that would be helpful to move us forward especially um and maybe maybe voting on exactly what we're going to do for um out of that if if we've been able to achieve a facilitated session before the next one that

116does seem ambitious to me in the next month even though we want to do it but if we if we are able to get there then um maybe we can take some action on that quickly so i definitely like the idea that you just presented erica about a learning session certainly we've put a lot of questions to tom um that are gonna require additional um feedback and certainly we could utilize that july meeting to to help do what you just said um you know with regard to some of those questions probably plus more that could come up during a facilitated discussion um i think uh camilla's point around setting a date on this now is a good one if we're serious about doing this as you know within the next 30 days uh and so

117the thing that obviously uh does limit us is i think we want to be cognizant of the fact that we're going to ask heather and potentially camilla to help go through that process and i think we want to be cognizant of if they have the time to do that in you know two weeks or so is that something that is possible because we're going to base what our july meeting agenda looks like on this in part which we would uh i would imagine is are we setting ourselves up for something that can't be achieved so all right heather camilla please feel free yeah i have the capacity um also when we're voting we just need to remember that we're missing three um members of our committee today definitely i think it really depends on everybody's

118schedule because i do have some i assume this would need to be an evening meeting and so i do have a number of nights that are filled up with other evening meetings so it's just a matter of if we can get everybody's schedules aligned ella i propose thursday september june 24th for a facilitated discussion and that we ask if he is available robert black to help in that with hender with camilla with other suggestions but that is a possible date and that people can check their calendars whether that can possibly work that date works for me um works for me can i can i ask um yeah can i ask uh how how how that works i mean that leaves us a weak or agenda formation i mean is that correct i mean can we

119do this uh by i mean can we do this by july 24 june 24th but before june 24th i mean it seems like there's not enough time i i would uh alice the the one thing about this that i would think is that um if i i would think that we probably need to allow heather and camilla a little more time absolutely yeah and that is is there that time is is it there this is uh what is this date this is the third yeah it's like three weeks basically yeah and we usually publish our agenda but by the way before i mean the the one thing that could come of this though is that you know we adopted a process at the last meeting that we're gonna uh publish the agenda we're gonna build

120the agenda out based on the previous meeting if we're having an interim discussion that is a public meeting and um and so we could utilize that opportunity to to finalize the agenda for the july 1 meeting okay good idea so that way we don't have to do it tonight we have an item that council member briggs proposed that does make sense regardless of what comes out of facility discussion action items um that we can put on for the july one right now but then we can build out the rest based on that facilitated discussion all right like just so you know i have a meeting conflict that night okay um what if we tried the previous thursday the 17th looks like it's sort of a catch 22. you know yeah so earlier you got a

121problem go later you got a problem yeah i think that would frankly i do think that would be difficult to give us time to prepare for that because i do want to put some real thought into how we would facilitate to get to the goals that you have for the meeting um and my schedule is you know fairly booked over the next week or so that so that would only give me you know a few days to do it so i'm i'm starting to think you know i wonder if it would be helpful for you so this next meeting in july july 1st having the informational stuff so if we can get the dda if we can get somebody from parks to come speak and then maybe we talk a little bit more about what

122what you really want out of this facilitated session and what maybe we have planned for it you know we could kind of come with you with a proposal basically and then shape it a little bit more with the discussion that we have on the july 1st meeting and i know that's not meeting your goal jeff of trying to get something done in the next 30 days but it might actually be better if we did hold it off a little bit longer to be able to give it some more thought i think jeff and frank and then erica yeah i mean i i certainly respect the views of of heather and others uh about the timing uh obviously i i feel a great adventure maybe than some others i'm not saying other everybody doesn't feel a

123sense of urgency i i do think we have the ability to do it within the next 30 days i think robert black is somebody who's offered pro bono to help be a support so he can take some of the load in terms of providing support off of heather and and camilla and i i would just ask the question is there any reason why we couldn't have this on a weekend i mean i'm happy to do it on a weekend i know where other people have family obligations or they need you know relief from the from the week and so forth but is there any reason why we couldn't do it on a weekend i think heather may be the one that has i would prefer not to do it on a weekend yeah i i

124i i i don't mind meeting on weekends but i i do want to be uh you know heather is here as a as a paid employee of the city and i think we need to be a little uh respectful of her um fact that she that we don't want to ask her to take up a lot of personal time although if you're in meetings every night uh you're pretty much doing that already so and i mean if i it's not that i've never done it before it's my preference now if we need to do it you know it's something that we do i think we did it for the past saturday meetings oh frank um two points uh i i don't know if there's any reticence to engage with robert black he doesn't have to

125be part of the actual facilitation but i think he's a tremendous resource to help camilla and and heather uh frame this out uh i know there's issues about if you start getting outside people involved it might involve an rfp i want to avoid that for this this activity um but just to look at robert as a ready willing and able volunteer resource and if involving him actually in the facilitation it becomes an issue then just use them as a resource the second thing i is there any reason we couldn't have the facilitated session on the first i know and i agree with erica we do want to hear from these other parties um what my sense is that this facilitation is is the important thing to move forward on and maybe have that be the

126southern substance of our april excuse me july 1st meeting um i don't know just an idea just a question to that point is there is there any reason uh from a structure standpoint we couldn't do the facilitated discussion on july 1st and take action on july 1st around the formation of the subcommittees is there are we prevented i don't think so okay yeah i don't think so but uh related to that time do you know if there's any issues with having an outside volunteer consultant help with facilitating i mean i mean i think it's up to you i think one of the things that that uh that we've talked about before from a public uh participation standpoint is um making sure everything is uh is open and and available to people mr black's very qualified

127is there someone else right i mean that's always the question so so i realize it slows things down but that is the way you typically work is to usually cast the net to be as inclusive as possible but i don't think it's prohibited no particular as a resource i think particularly as a resource i think you could do that if if you and camilla feel that way and and the council haircut yeah from my perspective i mean i if there's if there's desire to do a facilitated section um session on the first as opposed to um something else i you know during the learning session that's i don't have super strong opinions on this um i did think that heather had a good suggestion of spending this month um working with partners to figure out

128what exactly is what are specifically what do we want to get out of this how is it going to be framed how do we use this time productively present that to us um you know hopefully get something on the calendar so for then for july that we are already committed to and that we then have the time to kind of do this process properly and really get the most out of it i thought that was uh that that made sense we've also talked about wanting to all to get together at the space physically um and i don't know that that um needs to be facilitated um i do think there's some benefit in having us all there and walking around at the same time i don't um think that i think we could almost schedule

129that for some weekend and not have to have staff present to walk around with us if that seems fine but if not um you know we could schedule it for some for some evening when we know that there's um i can see you know who's on commissions here you know maybe that's something that could happen on the 23rd or something like that that we try to try to present an opportunity for us all to at least be at the space at the same time um to meet one of our goals and i did just get word back from the clerk's office that we have the green light to do that so there's some question about whether we can do that because of the open meetings act but it it sounds like we can so we

130i just need to notice it um so we're good to go and as long as we can find a time that everybody can go and do that yeah and uh i i guess i want to also support um um heather's suggestion i think i realize it feels a little bit slow but there's real um in working here on on a topic like this we tend to bounce the the the council's develop bouncing between high level vision stuff and detailed stuff and working through the methodology that she's describing i think will help you get there in a organized fashion and maybe just more efficiently also you may want to cons uh we can check with the dda if you're interested in the next meeting um having their discussion around the deck occur at the deck on

131site right maybe that's maybe we just do that that evening um if that's helpful because you you you well you could walk around on your own you could see what they mean on the water system for example it's a crazy system that happens to be installed and why it's challenging maybe seeing that may help you get a better understanding of why it's not a small feat to put water somewhere tom i think that's a really good point one thing i do think were feels like what we're we've got uh certainly a lot of interest in these learning discussions of which i would put you just what you just suggested in that category but then this facilitation it seems like this is going to take really our entire two hours if we're going to do it

132on july 1. um so we do need to figure out our priority here and i want to alan and then alice both have her hands up here that's well i want to i want to persevere that july 1 we have our we have a formal agenda structure i think a facilitated discussion is really some some way to go back and forth and have a conversation where we begin to have some sense of how we are working together and who we are in all this and i would like to see a a professional facilitator uh robert maybe somebody else who would do this as a contribution to our effort i would say the uh the day thursday the 24th but i would ask that heather put out a doodle to see whether there is a better

133date before the first of july or before that uh thursday so we would have a week before our july meeting to put anything on the agenda that would come out of that facilitation and uh that we not delay this further i think it's very good if we could have the dda give a uh discussion for us and other in the parks commission and learn from all those people but i think this is for among ourselves to see how we feel that we are joining one another that's what i see and that we each put out some kind of initial statement of our sense of priorities and that could be drawn more inclusively together for the benefit of everyone so that's what i see in a facilitated discussion uh rather than that we have a set

134of questions predetermined that we all we all have our questions that we have put out there already so yeah i could i that's that's the way i feel that we should do this sooner if there's a better date let's do a google google group or a doodle thing whatever that thing is to see if there's a better time that could include more people you know and not that not to delay it and not to confuse it or compromise it with the july meeting and it may be more than two hours i don't know alice you've had your hand up um this uh at the moment we're past our nine o'clock um time we have uh there have been people speaking multiple times for multiple lengths of minutes and i hesitate to even talk at this

135point because i cannot quite figure out where we're going at the moment because we have conflicting [Music] ideas of what we should do next and how we should do it i don't have much confidence at this point that a facilitated meeting would get us any further and or if we combined them in the next meetings agenda that we wouldn't have the same situation that we had from last agenda where we didn't have time for one of the major discussions which we have taken up tonight so i i don't have much to contribute here except to ask everybody to think about how we can conclude this meeting with something decided and save our comments perhaps for written thoughts or something that we can look at much like we had tonight where we if you know if

136i had been able to i would have looked at them ahead of time but uh so that's i have concern about our usage of time at the moment i think that's pretty fair um frank and i'm gonna make a suggestion after you speak frank um i i think there's a certain level of frustration this is our my accounting rights our fourth meeting um and i think we're getting to know each other we're we're making some progress but i i think there's a feeling that a facilitated process is i understand it i i will admit that most of my education and this has come from from robert but that uh i i think we we need to need to press forward with that and i i don't know if it would be appropriate to ask you

137adam and camilla and and heather whoever else to to you know offline wrestle with this and and decide what's going to work i mean when you when we look at heather's schedule and other considerations you know this has to be workable and that was part of my reason for suggesting you know july 1st for this but i understand other other things need to be done as well but i i'm just trying to figure out a way to how to move this forward uh from this from tonight to a decision that that could be relayed back to the to delegate to you and and well and heather to work this out and probably alice too of course so i'm gonna make a suggestion that uh what we do is we do an offline and we can

138do a doodle poll we can also uh you know reach out and check and see if there is a possibility of the last week of june doing something in terms of facilitated discussion if that doesn't work then i'd like to uh have uh the group buy into doing the facilitated discussion on july one and then subsequent to that in some time some period you know between the july and august meetings we do the learning session on site um and so that way we've got some flexibility it seems like the order of operations here that folks are coalescing around is we need to do the facilitated discussion in order to take steps forward learning session is also very important but but should come after that facilitated discussion um and so if if there's i'd like to

139see what folks feel about that type of um approach makes sense to me i agree good okay any objections okay okay okay so uh so with that then uh heather camilla and i will touch and alice will touch base offline we'll figure out schedules if something can be scheduled the only week we're going to try and target is that last week so that there's ample room for for heather and camilla to work on the facilitation piece um and if it doesn't work we'll publish the agenda for the facilitated discussion on july 1. and then we'll work on the uh the on-site learning session between the july and august meetings and uh and if if it does work to get it earlier then we'll we'll do the july 1 onsite learning session so and we'll let

140you know ahead of time as well thanks for taking that on what's that thanks for taking that on so i think that gets us to you know cup through a couple of agenda items uh and really the next agenda um are there any other items that i don't want to cut people off but uh being conscious of the time uh are there anything else that we want to bring up before we get into public comment well i do want to see in this facilitated discussion that the drawings that stefan has been working can be presented okay sorry what was what was that last request the drawings from who stefan trendoff yes and i think that uh alternatively uh things like that we that's one of the the kind of thing we need to make uh

141a place or a space for uh that is appropriately proportioned to the time and purpose of our situation and any one person who is not from the public we need to have clear what the relationship is that person to our our committee commission council whatever we are i think it's probably really best is i found facilitated discussions are really based around a trained process and so we really do need to in my opinion really empower camilla and heather to develop what this process is going to look like for this meeting um and and how the information is shared together i think we hear alan and alan you can send over those drawings but i do think we want to leave it up to uh heather and camilla to determine how that's going to work my

142opinion okay uh unless there is this note that i have a growing concern that people have different ideas of what they want out of this facilitated discussion so i'm a little bit worried that we're entering into the premise really without even well not i think not everyone can have their personal vision in applied to this so we have we'll be leaving some things out and sometime out but we will be able to have another one at another stage uh it's not a one-off kind of thing agreed okay great fair enough so we'll treat this as this is getting us started in some way somehow and kell and i and others will figure out how to do that thank you very much yes okay uh anything else uh or are we clear to move into public

143comment all right uh heather do we have anybody who would like to comment um no actually we don't have anybody in the queue at all okay um they didn't get mad and go home well we're actually we're improving slightly unless there's any other items i think we've got a good action item uh everybody here is clear we do have three people who are not here uh and that's very important um to remember so we're gonna have to keep them informed of uh this shuffling of the process a little bit here um so um unless there is uh anything else uh could we have a motion for german so moved exactly erica uh all in favor of a journey all right say hi bye all right any opposed okay motion carries thank you everyone yes thank

144you adam thank you