Center of the City-Council of the Commons Meeting 5/6/21

001since we're all here um and um why don't we do a call to uh order um uh well i guess before we get into the roll call um we do have in the agenda that we intend to end the meeting by nine o'clock we came close last time um but uh not quite there but i think uh it's our intention to to get there tonight so um uh with that uh heather can you do a roll call sure uh stephen borgster uh here from ann arbor michigan thank you oh yes thank you i do need to remind you to say state where you're from or where you're at right now not where you're from you don't have to give us your life history but where are you physically at right now all right jennifer cornell

002here ann arbor michigan thank you alan haber here from ann arbor sarah hammerschmidt here from ann arbor jeffrey henney you're from ann arbor camila lazandia here from ann arbor rita mitchell you're from ann arbor alice ralph you're muted there we go here from ann arbor michigan washington county michigan thank you frank wilhelm here from the west side of ann arbor ward 5. frank wilhelm oh oh sorry i just said you i'm adam zemke here but uh in port huron this evening oh great tom crawford here from ann arbor and erica briggs here in ann arbor right wonderful full house um so uh with that uh we move on to approval of the agenda are there any amendments to the agenda this evening okay uh hearing none uh can i get a motion to approve the

003agenda second second second all right uh all in favor of approval of the agenda as written say aye all right motion passes um approval of the minutes from the prior meeting uh they are posted on legistar um are there any uh any comments um on uh the minutes from last week the last month rather yeah i i'd like to comment that there there are they're too sketchy i think in somehow we do need some a secretary or some note-taker for instance then there is the the protocol for the agenda one of the items i think when there's something there it isn't reflected in emotion but it should be reflected in what is that protocol and when there are public comments i think the people who make the public comment at least their names should be

004uh recorded i don't want to make any objection to it but i think we should improve the agenda uh process the new minutes process and it may be that we need to appoint among ourselves perhaps as a rotating position a secretary or a note taker to fill in some of the topics that don't actually produce a a resolution that would be recorded in the formal way but looking back at these minutes over time i don't think we will learn enough or somebody looking at it and we'll learn enough so that might be a later question on our agenda somewhere down the road as to how to improve the content of the minutes or the notation of the meeting content can i can i ask a question related to that please are are the recordings of

005the meetings archived somewhere i mean those are available for anyone who wants to deep dive and really get into the substance of the meeting at a later date is that correct that's correct yeah they are recorded ctn records them so they are playing on the government channel live right now and then they are replayed again um and you can just access them by looking them up on ctn thank you any other comments on the minutes from last meeting yeah frank just one other uh maybe a clarification for example when when tom gives uh his report is the administrator is is that a is that a written report that could be included or referenced in the minutes you know a link to them um because i i agree with alan that you know a month even

006a month later maybe it's an age thing uh you you look back and you you want kind of something more to to reference uh to sort of bring back the the conversation i realized that you know the the video and the tape is there but that that's pretty arduous to find things and especially if you go over two hours but anyhow they're just kind of figuring a way to have a little more uh something to prompt us on what did transpire we don't actually have a an administrator's report on each agenda that was something that we did last time so it's not a standing item that's something we could consider doing uh what we did do you'll see on this agenda is attached the issues exploration document is what we're calling it and that's meant

007to track some of that and that's going to be a document that i continuously update based on how things evolve so that might be helpful that'd be very helpful yeah good thanks uh alice you have your hand up i think yeah all right i'd just like to um say that the um streamlined version of the minutes i think are the preferred by legal terms showing mostly actions or or facts related to those actions but and i do appreciate that ctn is recording them i have in the past tried to use that resource it is a little clunky but it's all there including the expressions on people's faces and everything like that well they're not video it's not video for this meeting but um i think it's uh i think it's too much to go through

008even if you had had to print out all these uh notes and everything um that might be a little bit of a quagmire as well i i would be in favor of keeping the minutes as as they are recommended to be very brief and action-oriented uh we have a note taker and we can and we can take our own notes and that's my opinion of how we should handle the content of the meeting or reference uh rita um i'll just agree with alice for the most part um we did discuss this in our in one of our prior meetings um and and the potential for um kind of introducing some bias and so i think as as long as we can capture for sure the decisions um i think that that's good um and i

009understand the wish to have more more detail but i can tell you that from taking some minutes recently myself and trying to my notes and transforming them into minutes when they were more detailed it was more difficult to um write them and write them in a way that i felt was accurate so um i'm i'm gonna vote on the bare bones oops all right well it sounds like we have a little bit of uh um difference there on an opinion if we want to appoint uh an official notetaker at least um i guess hearing that um seems like we don't want to take any more action to do that do we want to um do we have a motion on approval of the minutes yeah i i heard a good discussion i didn't hear any

010specific changes to the minutes of the last meeting um i would move the approval of the minutes as presented in the packet i'll second all right wonderful all in favor of the motion um at hand say hi any opposed okay motion carries uh i think with that we're on to uh public comment uh heather could you help us with that there any members of the place yes i can let's see who we've got i don't see anybody with um hands great yes i do okay robert i'm going to allow you to talk you should be able to talk now can you hear me okay i can thank you this is robert black i'm a member of the initiating committee and i just want to let you know that you do have an interested audience here

011and that your work is very important and i'd like to applaud you for that i just wanted to say a special kudos to the initiating committee of which i am a member and it's a very diverse committee and who's actually very much action oriented you talked about tracking actions in your meeting minutes and i'd like to just underscore the efforts of the initiating committee from the end of the task force report to the the beginning of your work they've done a lot to do working with education and outreach to the community about commons and commoning in the world they've done a lot with gardening currency and there are other different committees that are all working in a very broad effort to move this forward so i'd like to just encourage you to keep that support

012from the initiating committee as you move forward and then also to keep a perspective on the whole project such that ann arbor is a is a wonderful model for this as we're seeing with the covid pandemic it's a world community and so that ann arbor can be an example for others in the world of how to practice commonings to get diversity equity inclusion and those kind of things really living from all constituents of the community i just encourage you to move forward with some kind of intention and action to really make this happen you will of course run into difficulties but i'd like to applaud you for the way that you have worked together thus far and encourage you to continue including as many people as possible in this process thank you thank you robert

013and i i don't see any other hands raised right now but we do have two people on the phone so i'm gonna say um star nine if you want to raise your hand and there's somebody that just raised your hand so i'm allowing you to talk it's the phone number that ends with 464. oh hello can you hear me we can thank you um linda burauer i just want to say as you know that city council will be voting on the budget at their next meeting and the draft budget right now doesn't allocate any funds at all to the center of the city and i would encourage you any council member can bring an amendment at the next meeting before the final budget is passed so i would um ask that you send a recommendation

014to city council asking for that kind of amendment and specify a specific dollar amount that you think is reasonable to allocate for this fiscal year i think it's really important and i think um for the successive eventual success of the center of the city i think we need a modest amount to get things going this summer um now that some pandemic restrictions are lifted i i think it would be perfectly safe and reasonable to put some outdoor furniture and spruce things up a bit and make it more inviting so people can start using it you know socially distanced is necessary but i think it's really important you show some progress um this summer and without a little bit of a budget that probably won't happen so i'm hoping that you will do that also i

015want to remind you this is a charter amendment and it's been almost two years now since it was put in the charter and i it doesn't seem right at all that um you know there's nothing visible on the site yet so this i think i'm hoping this is your opportunity to get something going by getting a modest um cash infusion as soon as possible thank you thank you was there one other hand raised heather or is that it's not another hand raised um but there's somebody else um on the on the phone so i just want to remind you that if you hit star nine if you did want to comment you can do that [Music] okay and then there is another opportunity for public comment at the end wonderful all right with that we

016will move on to the next item on the agenda which is uh the budget discussion now i i think there's a this uh could pertain to a couple of things uh depending on on where folks wanted to go i know that there were some questions that were written in uh to staff regarding the budget uh of uh our council and so um you know heather as you fielded some of those questions um could you uh fill us in uh on on or or tom uh on um where we're at with the uh twenty thousand dollars and all of that so i think uh heather if you would like to uh you you're more than one to we do have both tom and councilmember briggs have raised their hands too so um however you'd like to

017handle it i i say let tom and councilmember briggs go first and then i can fill in any gaps if there are any left okay very good uh can uh can you hear me um heather okay thanks yeah i'll do this by my phone so it's a little different sorry uh councilmember briggs do you mind if i start out go for it okay um uh thank you you know there are there were a number of questions about the budget i know we talked about last time and i was hoping to take a couple minutes today to um to share with you kind of the calculation i made and what is what is in the budget and what is not in the budget and why so so um mrs brauer linda linda i can't remember her

018last name exactly wrong um had called in and asked um wasn't there 20 000 in the budget and how much of that has been spent and you know what's left over and what happens if it doesn't get uh spent and there was twenty thousand dollars uh budgeted twelve and a half thousand dollars was spent and what is unspent uh and that twelve and a half thousand is is primarily for staff time so um uh our budgeting process is kind of complicated because most of our funds are restricted so heather for example if she's going to spend time working on this she she she charges to this and then so to the extent that people are working on something affiliated with this they can they can charge to the project and and uh had it could

019correct with them wrong but i believe that was the major expenditure but um she's the one actually looked at that what i was would share is that um uh at the end of the year um when we allocate funds at the end of the year if they're unspent then they just like it's your home checkbook it's just stays in your checking account for the next year if we're not going to do that if we're saving for a big project there's a different way that we would budget for it so right now whatever is unspent at the end of the year would go to go go back to fund balance now for for me and i i don't want people to think that um that i'm unsupportive uh or the city's not supporting this effort um

020let me take a step back for a moment and explain just briefly where the budget was as i was preparing the budget about a month ago you know we're still not sure how quickly we're going to come out of this thing the covid and um the city's recommended budget shows that we're we have more more expenditures than we have revenue to the tune of about two million dollars a year and so we're already spinning out a savings just to basically you know do the things that that are in there and um so as i looked at the different things that were in the recommended budget you know i looked at the ones that had plans and um uh approved plans or or plans well developed and funded those prior to the ones that did not

021have plans um the main thing of course we find is is a lot of the work we're already doing in in supporting the council of commons one thing i did do is add what we call an fte or an employee the an equivalent of an employee which allows um heather and others to charge to support whatever the commons uh needs um so so for their time this is personnel time so there is an fte in there that is available to support the the council of commons and we haven't had that before um i also uh checked with our broadcasting group and i don't think they're going to charge us but i i um i made sure that they're able to handle the media the normal media coverage that we would have for our board meetings

022i have not put anything else in the recommended budget for any any you know picnic tables or um you know running plumbing lines or anything like that because as i was saying earlier um you know uh you know so so well let me say this uh i was sharing a name in an email that i wrote mr haber earlier i shared i said mr haber i think we're looking in the same direction we're just coming from different vantage points and that is truly the case um as a person who's very advanced and moving the commons forward you know it's very creative and you know really i think mr haber's really you know moving quickly and wanting to do different things from my vantage point as we look forward it's not just throwing a picnic table

023up there out there right i'm a steward of the public resources and as a steward of public resources we have to be once the rules the road are set up the creativity can come but for example if there's a table out there or there's going to be a congregating you know who's who's responsible for cleaning it what happens if there's damage what happens if somebody gets hurt these things actually have to be worked out um for us to be comfortable in the activities and once that framework is set up then uh you know what you want to do there becomes very creative and you know within the limitations that are there so so um we are looking the same direction um and it's a creative direction i i just um wanted to say that you

024know from the recommended budget perspective you know having a plan having some sense of what we're going to do really helps me put something in and the other aspect of this was if i put money in for the commons i'm taking it away from somebody else and so you know i had to balance uh where that would go so it's a trade-off it's i realize everybody comes to different conclusions on this but that's how we got to to where we are on the budget as the as we talk about budget for for this activity it we don't really as i think about it i don't really think of advisory councils as having a budget themselves so i want to draw a distinction as you consider and think about how funding works i want you to

025consider the difference between having a budget yourself that you have a checkbook that you're writing and basically doing and having the checkbook at the city so when funding is established at the city it has to go through the city's procurement process we have as public funds where where we just have a lot of rules and policies and they aren't really super fast um but they are effective at ensuring that uh taxpayers are getting um an appropriate uh uh service for their dollars and so when we do that you know you should think about the funds being held at the city and having um if if something's going to be done the city would be a part of that process with you we need to do this together we really do need to do this together

026and um i want you all to know that the city is absolutely willing to do that and is happy and excited about doing it it's just we need to get some of this framework in place so that's where my head was at when uh the budget was being developed um i i think that addressed most of the questions that i saw if i missed some happy to take any additional ones heather did you have anything else or councilmember breaks um i just kind of add on too to what you said um so i appreciate that i think i and that's i have completely understood kind of how the city was developing its budget and understanding the all the different things that would come at you with so many different priorities and um the challenge of

027being able to craft a budget that addresses all of them um you know as i look um as i've sort of debated how the the next coming budget should look and and think about what it should include and um how we can kind of advance our priorities particularly as it is practicing in background if you can hear it um you know look at um how we advance the priorities of this commission um obviously we've got the structural budget deficit that um that makes finding funds challenging um and i think the charge of this commission is obviously to figure out um we're gonna we're gonna be thinking about this sort of short term uh guided by the the chartered amendment and thinking about sort of short-term what we can do um in this public space as

028well as sort of long-term um as i've been kind of coming back and thinking about the budget i think um there may be uh based on previous discussions i think there's maybe not a solid vision about what the short the short-term work might look like on um in this public space but i actually think there's a fair amount of um uh coalescing around the long term vision that we you know the goal is to advance the um making sure that we move towards park and civic space on on this land and so um to do that it seems like we're going to need some money um to be able to work towards public engagement building and design work so i know that um the conservancy has been busy fundraising over the last couple of years

029and has certainly acquired um a nice um set of funds that i'm hoping might be able to be used as matching funds towards um with city funds to be able to to do this work so i'm still trying to figure out exactly the dollar amount um that i can um sort of put forward a budget amendment for to be able to do this work um but based on sort of discussions with heather and also reaching out to jennifer hall who's been doing work at you know the um division and william um in terms of the affordable housing there you know i i think that i'm hoping that that uh work around sort of planning design might be around 70 or 80 000 kind of at the at the low end of low low end but

030that's those are sort of the numbers that i keep hearing over and over again so i'm going to do my best to be able to put forward a budget amendment for forty thousand dollars um for this for this next um budget cycle so still working with um uh folks to to make sure that that's possible but i i i think that it is based on on some of the the answers that i'm getting so that's where my personal thought is and i i think that they're i'm happy to take questions around that and also i'd love to hear sort of feedback from from folks here any uh any questions stephen i think you had your hand was that your hand up no that was me just trying to operate the mutant functions so any any

031questions at all for councilman briggs or uh administrator crawford jeff can you hear me can you hear me yes yeah uh i just wanted to uh say uh thank you to uh to to tom crawford and to uh council member briggs uh for being so thoughtful about this and uh and i'm very impressed with the the seriousness of which you're uh you know attempting to do a positive um initiative here for everybody and uh i think your points are well taken and i appreciate very much the council member briggs that you that you're willing to consider seriously putting forward an amendment and i think we have actually quite a few ideas that are coalescing even short term that uh myself and others would be happy to share with you and others at your convenience obviously

032the the whole process with the covet and all the rest of it has made it a little bit difficult to kind of disseminate clearly what what our coalescing thinking is on the short medium and long term we took seriously what what um uh tom crawford proposed to us last time which is that to start thinking in those sort of that tripartite terms and uh so uh you know be very happy to uh to talk about that with anybody that that would like to discuss it thank you thanks jeff um i think alice is up next um first of all thanks jeff um i i i just listening to all this i get a few things in my head that i wonder how we can turn them into less less barriers and more avenues i guess

033and uh because what i hear is if we don't have plans we don't get money but we can't get plans without money it's we're stuck in a kind of a conundrum here and i'm i'm not sure what to think about that but that's that's what two meetings i've heard that you know kind of have to have already get a budget line item but we can't get a sub shovel ready without money to hack to uh fund planning and maybe the word planning or plans are different means different things but we need to need to understand what we're talking about um and the other other thing is well just erica said something about the work at division and william and i'd like for all of us to be aware of what that is referring to um

034i if i said division i i believe i met fifth um fifth and william in terms of the the affordable the old y lot with the affordable housing there okay and and and i think that basically highlights uh the need to to have uh interaction with all of these things there's at least some kind of way to knit all these things together just like we're beginning to use sustainability and climate response as the first priority in anything that we do well maybe we should start getting information from all of the organizations who are doing work like the dda with the street uh the two-way streets we need a lot of information from that we need to know if we can tie in to those projects to enhance them and to enhance our work because apparently

035we have no plans and we have no budget so i don't i'd like to know how we can move forward with recommendations as an advisory board if we don't have the information that we need can i just respond to that real quickly and i think that's why i'm trying to [Music] based on sort of the feedback we've um i've been hearing and you know hearing from members of this group as well is that we should be we should be working very tangibly to um invest in in making that that plan um and and having real designs for that that the public can react to for for what will actually be built on this site that we can go through a public engagement process and come up with some different pieces and i would hope that

036this group would be able to inform that process moving forward so that's really trying to take away that barrier that kind of plan that you're speaking of requires money to hire a consultant to do the planning and the public engagement but we have no money so so you this is the conundrum i'm seeing i don't hear any alternative point of view that sounds like forward moving uh mr alpha or adam you don't mind if i jump in no that's fine um uh mr off i think what uh councilmember briggs is uh indicating is that she's pursuing a strategy to get funding to do that so my recommended budget doesn't have it but my budget goes to council a week from monday and at that meeting um council members consider it and then make amendments that's

037what happens is a bunch of amendments that night and so she's telling you now that she is looking for funding to to do just that planning that you're talking about yeah i i would like to have more antecedents to pronouns like to do that what is that you know the planning the planning the plenty of effort that you referenced as far as having uh developing some kind of plan and you said you wanted a plan but there's no money and so she's trying to get the money so that we'd have a contractor that could actually lead the development um and engagement of a plan with this group and the community all of that i appreciate all of that i think there is uh some thought we have in common about who does the planning um

038and i think this is really based on community involvement and so when you say to get someone to do plans for us we don't want them to do plans for us we want to be part of the creation of the plan sure sure yeah and actually heather um who is professionally a planner might want to take a second to uh just describe a little bit of how that process might work yeah how what i would imagine happening is um going to a consultant hiring a consultant to lead us through a process that would get to the physical design of the space at least that's what i'm imagining because we have a general idea based on all the work that the task force said about what people want there it's just a matter of how we

039can figure that and what the priorities are because there's a lot of things that people are imagining for that space um to how we physically do that and how we work with the structure that's underneath the space um and so going through that process and it definitely being a highly involved process with the public uh to get to that so that people have agreement on how to move forward with the space that really serves the community does that help answer your question alice i think we're getting somewhere but we'll see how things move from here okay we've got a few more a few more folks that have the had their hands raised jennifer's up next and then frank and then rita i believe i just wanted clarification or to confirm um when tom said that

040you know any any money from the city budget that he was able to allocate toward this project when council member briggs mentioned that you know she was also seeking additional funding i assume that any funding that would be allocated towards this project from council sort of follows along what tom said in terms of um if we don't use it it kind of ends up in a piggy bank um you know it's not a user situation regardless of how the allocation is um awarded for lack of a better way to phrase that yes not not to over overcomplicate because i could spend all night talking about budget but but there are there are two broad uh ways that we budget one is an operating budget which means it's like um you know what we get in

041in a year we spend in a year it's our activities the other one is a capital project type thing where the dollars are bigger and the effort takes more than a year those we we would so if you're going to build something let's say that's a million dollars then that would go in a different kind of budget it's called a capital budget and it it it lasts beyond a year but um almost all the activities in our general fund which is where this um asset lives is um uh is is an operating type thing so we can we will manage with whatever your don't let the budget structure be an impediment right figure out what you want to do we'll get the budget to work that out um now finding the funds we'll need some

042help on but we'll make the structure work for you we're back to figuring out what we want to do without any money to figure it out we'll keep going here uh frank i i want to first uh thank uh erica for for this effort this this is uh this is this is an important move i think the the the symbolic nature of this with the city stepping forward hopefully with a budget amendment is very very important um i think we i've been saying from the beginning the beginning being i guess the approval of proposal a that we need a strong public-private partnership and uh i think this is the the public part of it uh the private part at the moment is partnership between the initiating committee and the library green conservancy to raise private

043money and we are uh currently at uh forty thousand dollars in in uh commitments and actual deposits and i'm i'm hopeful and i'm i'm confident that if we can bring the public part of the equation forward in this way that this will stimulate uh additional private giving uh in my conversations with people um in organizations uh people are uh really looking for a signal and i i'm hopeful that this is going to be an important part of that signal that we that we can move forward uh in important ways here so thank you very much erica thanks frank uh rita i think you're muted rita i needed um i i want to thank erica as well um and i have to say that i think i have my nearsighted vision on um in asking for

044some input on how we deal with this short term this summer i absolutely want to have a plan that we can move forward on and recognize the need for money but in the short term the very minor things we have planned um are improving the the look of the site with plantings and and the question is just how do we get beyond you know how how do we manage um kind of the the pent-up demand um during this short-term time phase okay so i'm trying to respect what what you said tom in terms of that short medium and long-term view of things and and asking for how do we show that that there's still um interest action um and momentum of some sort on this project in this short term time thank you rita um

045i think we'll go to allen next and then stephen good you know there are a couple things on my mind i think there there are other sources of funds that we should at least have in our uh perspective that i don't i don't think the coming money from the government to deal with uh civic support and con the consequence of the pandemic has really been allocated and there's money coming in some share of which could go into the a fund for the development of the commons however it is identified for consultants or whatever also as i understand the green belt fund as it was passed as a bond issue is both for acquisition and maintenance and it's only a city council resolution that has restricted that multi-million dollars now only to acquisition and the city

046council could just as well say in this case some of that green belt fund could be used for the development of the commons and in addition that would take a a city council resolution to free that money which now isn't even considered in the budget and part of the commons is within the framework of the parks department that has its own budget and we should know you know what a plan or funds the parks has in terms of commons development so those are three areas and then we do have neighbors particularly the first martin company that has a considerable investment in in the liberty plaza they pay somebody to take looks at that and in some way that output into the uh the multiple private parts of the public private should be seen into our

047picture i think it would be very helpful if we would get the block group together so that we could see what all the neighbors have in mind and i think many people could participate in the getting the resources needed to develop their things so that they are well planned and i appreciate tom's vantage point uh you know but we need to see who are who are all the players here and what everybody can contribute together as a collective effort um adam may respond to a couple of those things now or would you um uh uh a couple things if i could just describe and and um heather mitt perhaps you and i should actually uh have a faq thing we start doing so that we don't we get these answers out there to people as

048we do this on the stimulus funds uh or the funds from the the federal government i'm expecting to hear from the about those next week but i'll have to tell you because of the deficit that we have and the projections that it's actually not expected to improve um over the next five years in fact it might get worse we i'm if it's in the neighborhood of what i'm thinking which is 10 to 13 million um i've indicated to council there's a good chance that i'm going to be recommending that we keep that in the bank so that we spend it through the five years and try to grow back into grow out of our structural deficit it would not be monies we'd be able to have if it's more than that um then it becomes

049a conversation that i i feel like that we could have with council that's just my thought on that there's nothing beneficial officially given to council but i wanted to share that with you since you raised it in relation to the green belt uh um funds that was a voter approved millage and so the restriction is on by the voters the the council um it would not be appropriate for council to um change that from acquisition to maintenance in fact i think um i would certainly run it through legal but but um historically they hew pretty closely to what the language language was and it was really intended for acquisition and then on the park side this may not make a lot of sense to people but i was referencing earlier about how we work with

050restricted funds a lot and this parcel is actually not a city park and and if it were a city park there are millages and there are things that can be done to support it this is this is uh open space and that's that's i mean where you're there's a difference for us between public open space and parks you're in what we call the pros plan if you're a park uh you're subject to uh pac oversight our parks acquisition a parks advisory commission things like that so it's um there's just a distinction there that's really relevant for us for funding and um i just want to highlight that and as far as the uh private parties uh working with the block group um you know what i can say since the time i've i've been in

051this role is um you know that is on the list to advance um there's just um a limited amount of of of management's uh capacity for focus and and uh that one is coming but it's not yet here we're still working on our other issues so thank you all right thank you tom and i think there are there's a lot of uh a lot of um good commentary i think that there's also some commentary that we're going to want to bring up and make sure we tackle and tom hit on some of those things as did alan around uh different uh potential budget sources uh for funding sorry uh and certainly engagement of outside groups i think that's another item on our agenda here i do want to just be conscious of time because it's

0527 48 right now um and we've got a few hands raised stephen's been waiting patiently and then sarah and then alan um and um so steven take it away uh my remarks are just from the perspective of the parks advisory commission um at least they're my remarks in terms of how i i see it from that position as well um kind of echoing and following along other sources of funding if this were a park this is one of the kind of the theoretical questions i've been pondering if this were a park if we're talking about you know picnic table funding we can make that happen i mean the park's budget is as stressed as any of the other budgets that we're discussing but i would certainly advocate for that i anticipate that the parks commission

053would advocate for that and we could probably convince city council we don't spend money we try to convince city council to spend money but so far what i've heard doesn't suggest to me that there is immediate needs in the city budget right now for this parcel beyond what i've already heard described for maybe some planning money the other topics that we've talked about so far involve like discussions with the dda about that surface space i don't assume that they would think that there's a money transaction coming their way sometime this year with regard to that uh if there was such a transaction again if this were a park we would look at that from the perspective of probably the land acquisition committee is that some sort of easement or other thing that we're obtaining similar

054to kind of with these adjacent parcels and we're talking about connectivity and other issues the land acquisition committee recommends purchases to city council for parkland or for you know space adjacent to parkland and so forth for those kind of purposes and so i don't i didn't see some reason to be baking in that kind of money uh into the the city budget for this year i would certainly encourage council member briggs to pursue whatever funding uh is appropriate uh in the circumstances but just from the view of the parks commission hey if this was a park we could we could get a picnic table in there i think we could make that happen and if we're talking about trying to access other other uses of the property from some of the other land owners or

055interest holders in it then that seems like a land acquisition committee topic uh thank you for that stephen i definitely appreciate the uh filling around the uh parks uh commission perspective too um sarah thank you um okay so i might say something potentially unpopular so i want to preface this by saying that i'm very supportive of this i think there's a tremendous opportunity on this side i think that it could be really cool if we really get you know especially connections to liberty plaza someone say that so one thing that's been kind of like nagging me at the back of my mind and maybe mr crawford you have an answer for this for me but when prop a was approved there was no money tied to it so i struggle with i i i do

056think that the city should be showing like good faith and putting money in but like i struggle with like what is that coming at the expense of if we put any money towards this that wasn't approved by the voters i don't know if there's an opportunity you know you said this wasn't a part we can't do a millage i don't know if there's another opportunity to put this to voters to get more of like a steady funding stream or maybe you can assure me that like this forty thousand dollars that commissioner briggs is is going to pitch there's there's flexibility to do that this is just something that's been nagging me a little bit that i don't know like this was not approved with funding i think we have a lot of opportunities i would

057love to get this blog group going i think that we can show surrounding businesses that there's value in this there might be opportunities to have naming rights to things et cetera but it just this this tension between we have a deficit so what is this money coming at the expense of is something that's like been bothering me a little bit so i don't know if that's something you can respond to or well i'll just say councilmember briggs and she's communicated with me some started to communicate with me some of her thoughts but this is the hard part of budgeting is where do we take it from right but you know i think you know she's indicating the desire to find an answer to that and uh you know it's a week or so i wouldn't

058spend i would not suggest you spend too much time on that you have a council member working on it uh let's see where it goes this is part of the process it's a hundred million the general fund is a hundred million dollar fund and that sounds like it's easy to find forty thousand dollars until you have to take it away from somebody to your point um everybody needs more than they have um but uh i would say we should have this conversation next month perhaps and save some time okay thanks maybe just real quickly to respond to you sarah i think one of the things that we're struggling on is um in terms of what would be the cost to build on a you know kind of the park or the civic center you know

059what this ultimately what the space is going to look like we really don't understand what the full cost associated with that are and so um to get past um to have a productive conversation in our community i think we just we need to do the work of doing the public engagement planning design understanding what the public wants and then we can understand what does that cost and where does how do we fund that and so those conversations going to happen next but at least at least we can have forward momentum of you know getting past this sort of this problem that alice is talking about okay that's good thank you this kind of switches my concerns thanks thanks sarah alan yeah that's my last comment this is both the library uh lane parking lot and

060liberty plaza and so the liberty plaza park does is part of the park system so uh that is part part of our our picture i just wanted to keep that we keep both of these elements of the comments together in our mind and that's just i wanted to add that in thank you uh alan and i just wanted to add one thing too i want to echo something that frank said and just say thank you to councilmember briggs i do think you know when when uh we looked at the state budget always we talked about how a budget was a reflection of your values and i do think that the the action that uh councilman briggs is is uh thinking about putting forward forward here is a reflection of some of the values uh that

061that she has on this uh issue and um so you know if there is anything that that folks can do you know um in terms of the the city council meeting or things like that i think uh any uh anything to support council member briggs in in the uh the effort would be helpful um the other thing i think you know one thing that was talked about at the last meeting a lot was around the vision and creating something that was exciting and that would help build momentum and that's definitely something that i agree with as well is that you can catalyze forward movement on this uh by uh by uh really outlining that vision and getting the community excited uh uh to share in it mutually and i think that the planning uh that

062council member briggs is referencing and that the funding that would be uh could be used for really is a critical part uh to uh enacting that vision and so i appreciate that she's thinking along those lines in terms of the funny news um because i think that'll help us get us to that long-term goal unless there is any discussion more on on the budget item i'd like to be able to move on to uh bylaws discussion there are three uh documents that we did receive um uh very very uh much immediately before the last meeting so i think we did the right thing by postponing this a little bit um i did want to ask heather if if she wanted to highlight anything new or additional on this and then open it up for any

063questions it would be nice to to adopt some bylaws this evening so we have some rules to do our business by no i don't have anything new or additional to speak to nothing has changed since they were presented at the last meeting any any questions at all i i see allen's hand raised or anna alice i'm not sure i i glanced away who had their hand up first alice why don't you go ahead just briefly um by this time i'm rather seems like an avalanche of revisions of agendas and and bylaws and i i know that i got responses that weren't clear and i don't believe i've seen a document that actually i think maybe i have but i think it's buried among some other things of of the second draft rather than the first

064draft there there were a number of conflicts in this in the bylaws that still hadn't been resolved so i wonder where we really are with this and i got a lot of i saw a lot of responses that there are no rules and we will have no rules and so all of it has to be in the bylaws but that leaves us with a very inflexible document by which we can but we have very little chance to adapt it to our our particular prop um area of our purpose um so that's kind of a concern i have that generalizes my my concerns about the whole document actually to alice's point um what is the uh can we clarify what the specified title of the revised bylaws are the ones that incorporated uh responses i think

065that would be helpful all right sure it is um it is the one that is the council of the commons bylaws draft for 121. so the other two documents um the one that says ajr that's the one that alice marked up so that was her um her suggestions that and that was passed along to the attorney and then the other one was a compilation of suggestions that i received through email and so those two documents those last two documents were passed along to the attorney and those were turned into the draft bylaws that's labeled 4-1-21 thank you alan well i do have some changes but actually i just like to postpone this again because i think we have a fun we are functioning okay i'd like to see the time is three minutes rather than

066two minutes i'd like to see the role of the initiating committee having regular reports i'd like to see us adding to the membership to have a tribal person part of this a number of those questions that i had raised but i think it would we're functioning okay and i maybe we should have an informal working committee that's one of the uh elements there who put forward a integrated thing with what are exactly the amendments that might be uh still pending but i don't know if this is the with other things on our agenda this is really what we need to spend our next uh bit of time on okay stephen uh earlier i had a question but adam you asked the question and now i have the clarification so now i have a proposal uh

067that this the draft for 121. as i understand it that's a red line uh and then if those changes were accepted that would reflect the bylaws i would move the approval of those bylaws as reflected in that document okay so you have uh you're making a motion to approve the redline version as heather outlined its document number 21-0657 correct okay um so we have a motion on the floor yep and we can have debate on that motion now um and so uh alice you had your hand up well i guess i just wanted a second but um but i do i do think that we have received our red lines in and the responses to my my uh suggested revisions were mostly adequate i i just um it's sort of disappointing when you realize what

068the bylaws are supposed to do and supposed to not do the the um my understanding is bylaws are are they broad picture in that the the group whether it's a committee or commission or whatever develops rules that fit their purpose and activity but it seems like the responses in general said you ain't have no rules you're gonna keep you're gonna obey these bylaws and and i understand too that these are quote standard as the legal advice says and that there really is no not much room to wiggle from the standard thank you uh any other uh questions comments on the motion that stephen put forward i guess i'd just like to add you know this is sort of reflective of many of the other commissions that you know the city has they're very um similar

069to these with you know slight division differences in terms of how many members and things like that but um yes it's relatively standard across the city organization i have i have to go back with one thing that it got kind of confusing as to how many members we have and and whether we can add members or not because the ordinance original ordinances said we could add members but the bylaws say we cannot because we are formed as such a group and then if we want to add more people to the conversation we establish committees and those can work more flexibly that's where i started to say okay we can probably work with these all right allen or heather did you want to have any response to that um i think that's based on the last

070resolution that is resolution 210214 that is the resolute resolution to restate the purpose and membership of the council of the commons and in that resolution it defines the number of people and uh right so that's defined by council yeah that's the reason i bring it up is that was the legal opinion at least as i understood it written that we can as a commit committee or commission we cannot change the membership it would have to go through council to change the membership and so we form it as it is as as the bylaws as the as the resolution said to form it the bylaws support that and erica's uh uh amendment is a third part of it where it started with the number of people that we now have except we are missing one so

071we might have to replace that i i haven't heard whether we have another council member joining us or not we're not really fully performed i haven't heard if if anybody has has put their name forward for that or not um but to your point earlier around committees um sort of on transportation commission for example there are um subcommittees get formed and then members of public get brought into that process so there is a way to include more voices around our table as we start our maybe our work forward yes thank you all right uh alan well again i wish that we would postpone this but short of that or am i making a motion to that i'd like to amend uh for now at a 4 9 that the council of the commons may have

072additional voting numbers subject to the disapproval of the city council particularly a member of the ann arbor area indigenous tribal community and a member of the african-american community and three others that the council of the commons may determine would add special quality or competence in its functioning so i i want to do a procedural check here i don't actually know that we can we have a motion on the floor right now and i don't know that we can make a motion to amend um while i'm not embracing it as a friendly amendment i guess if that's some sort of procedural thing it seems that changes the meaning of the motion that i've put forward so whether it's vote mine up or down and then we can consider amendments or other things this may help in

073the conversation i i do believe that uh this group is allowed to create um uh i'm sorry it's late i'm trying to think of the name kind of ex-officio or non-voting members committees not committees uh they can actually i think you can have um um non-voting members added for your advisory purposes so if you have an expert on something you could have them added on to attend your meeting be part of the board get the materials but not be a voting member i think that is you that's you i think that's permissive in council's typical um uh bylaws and that may help mr haber on his amendment yeah i i think that's where committees come in you can have anybody on a committee and they can report out to the to the body but i

074don't think you can make them members of the body okay so we do have a motion made by uh stephen on the floor um we should take a uh sorry that could not be amended i think we have to do something about this motion before we um before we uh can uh amend the document because stephen's made up prior to your comment ellen stephen made a motion to approve the document and so the the debate is limited to that motion right now adam if i may this is obviously the prerogative uh your prerogative but um uh under the rules that the council works on once in a resolution is on the floor proposals on the floor um you can have a series of amendments each voted up or down prior to the then amended version

075um being concluded okay all right and that's that's good as long as we're procedurally correct then we're good uh council member briggs yeah i think um my only concern with um allen's proposed amendment is just that i i don't think that it's permissible i mean the the the members are set um by counsel as a body council body and so the numbers and that that this voting membership has been defined by council and so um simply adding it to the bylaws isn't going to i mean i i'm happy to take the advice of the staff on this one but i don't believe that that can override the views of you know the what the the council resolution and so um certainly that could be something that um this group as a whole could could go

076back and make a recommendation to counsel for at some point um to to change this but i think for right now we're we're at this voting membership that is my understanding as well based on feedback from the attorney yeah so what would happen procedurally is if you passed it with a different level of membership for it to then come to council it would have to come from council for consideration and the legal would not let that likely let that pass where it would come with the recommendation that is inconsistent with the guidance provided by council does that do anything to the rest of the bylaws my recollection is that the bylaws uh once you're adopted here have to go to council for approval and so none of them will be um none of it is

077valid until it is approved in total okay so um so just to make sure that i'm clear on this if we accept uh mr haber's amendment and um then the document would go to and and we pass stephen's motion then the document would go to counsel or go to legal and say it's not in alignment with the resolution passed by council and they can if they want make a motion to uh change the the uh resolution that they passed to reflect the bylaws in which case and then approve the bylaws if they wanted to um or if we uh pass the bylaws uh that are in alignment with the resolution uh for for this council as passed by city council then um city council just has to accept the bylaws is that correct that is

078what i expect yes okay okay one of the legal comments that i i received was that uh adoption is approval or approval is the adoption there's it's as far as we're concerned we've adopted them once we vote yes um so but they do have to go to council for final right i think that uh i think that the distinction is definitely that um council will have to take another action uh to um approve not only the bylaws that we've passed but also approve changing their resolution yeah or or disapprove or not doing so yes correct uh frank i hope this is an appropriate comment i i'm looking at the clock uh there are a couple of more really important agenda items uh i don't know how we can expedite this uh at some one point

079allen seemed to think this we didn't from his perspective we didn't have to act on this now but i also see the importance of moving the bylaws forward but uh i'm concerned that all of a sudden it's going to be june here uh yeah can can can the can the vote be called yep uh definitely can since you called it um so i guess we have to do you have to have a second uh for stevens we have a second that's right councilman briggs the second i apologize and the vote has been called so why don't we take a uh a vote in that particular case heather could you do uh um we probably should make sure that everybody raises their hand party voting on allen's amendment first or we so technically we i i

080think if somebody wanted to comment what's that sorry stephen there's no i was just saying for tom's comment uh if we wanted to vote up or down to have alan's amendment uh join in just to be clear i i'm not against the spirit behind allen's amendment um i just don't think it's within our purview to change the composition of the council for reasons already described i think once we get the bylaws behind us we'll be able to then move forward with the inclusive conversation that we're envisioning um but so i think the motion before us is alan's amendment but i'm not oh i thought it was for i thought it was yours because all right well to clarify do you think the motion on the floor is uh stephen's uh motion uh per what already

081got a motion on the t on the floor alan uh now i do want to ask i think uh mr crawford uh given this uh this uh rule that you outlined does uh mr haber need a second for his amendment to steven's motion um he should have a second for the amendment yes for you to consider it okay does somebody want to make a second to mr haber's amendment i'll second it okay okay so in that case um we are there is a motion on the floor the question has been called um uh to uh uh the bylaws that are outlined uh in uh item number 21-0657 um but with the amendment uh alan could you read your amendment just so we have an accurate reflection of this actually i don't approve of this process

082i think we should table until the next meeting call calling the questions and it should not terminate debate or other amendments that are appropriate uh that i said at the outset i would i moved to table this to the next meeting so uh alan the the issue is we do have a motion on the floor so we have to take a vote on this procedurally now that you have a second on your amendment i would like to clarify that amendment so that we have an understanding by all members as to what they're voting on alternatively he could withdraw it we only have those those two options i think allen yeah i withdraw it but i disapprove of the process okay so withdraw the amendment so we are back to the original motion um 0621-0657 as

083written in the agenda and we should do uh a vote of hands uh if you are in favor please raise your hand uh any opposed we will get get to that after we do the hands right so all in favor raise your hand any opposed raise your hand okay motion passes all right okay so other other amendments of this are no longer in order we just go on to the next order of business that's the way i understand it yes we could approve the bylaws per the amendment of bylaws provisions stated in the bylaws if it comes to that you can do future amendments uh with the with a proved and approved set of bylaws there's a process yeah it's it's not like it's totally overwhelming it's just that we do have we have approved

084a set of bylaws to recommend a council now okay with that we will go on to member news and updates i guess i'll start off i just have a question at the last meeting we talked about some of the planting going forward i was kind of curious uh if i recall correctly rita and tom were gonna have a conversation about that um whatever happened um well i'll speak um we have initiated some work uh in the large garden bed near the elevators we cleared some weeds from the space and it is nearly ready for planting and i want to thank um members of the dda and forestry and um heather for helping um get set up to um allow us some wood chips to be used for mulch that will be delivered tomorrow so um

085we are also in process of of planning for planting and so you won't see a lot of color just yet but watch this space we're still sort of in the the preparation phase um and um i could say that again this is an issue where it's sort of like uh we're planning we don't exactly have funding ready but but we will move forward in some way or another thank you that's good to hear uh jeff yeah so at the initiating committee we have been uh working diligently to uh respond uh to tom crawford's uh as i said earlier um suggestion that we start looking at short medium and long-term thinking and planning now obviously we are going to be involving obviously lots of other people and perhaps a consultant but i've always found in my

086experience as a project manager and administrator that over the years that it's useful to have a straw man as we call it uh or some kind of a starting point a model or or or some ideas that are that are you know carefully articulated that people can tear apart or throw away or it stimulates thought and and helps people to uh to consolidate their thinking so we're we're thinking of putting something together as a starting point that people can work with that is much more detailed and much more responsive to what tom was looking for than perhaps has been out there um in particular there's one area which we found uh might be of great interest and that is there is sort of a a coalescence a coalescing of of of important items of concern

087to the city right now one of them of course is is net zero that you know the whole big initiative there um the other one is uh affordable housing which is extremely important and um the third one of course is is is the whole idea of you know using the space in a way that um you know it's conducive to creating a kind of heart of the city uh giving people uh a reason to interact with each other more and and be be more uh you know engaged in understanding each other and so one of the items that we we've been looking at is the possibility of using some of the space temporarily and maybe goes to a more permanent idea of showing how there are new kinds of affordable housing new kinds of construction

088methods new kinds of structures that you can work with that are a lot cheaper and a lot more robust and a lot more energy efficient a combination of new materials showing some examples of structures and how a real housing unit would look like with alternative energy and some new ideas about how you know it might be self-sustaining in in various ways so we're trying to put up together a little model of that and we've talked to a number of of organizations and companies that are very excited about that kind of idea and so that's just one example of sort of things we're working on that would be more short-term but you know as i say we want to put out a straw man and that that's what we've been working on thanks uh thank you

089jeff that's a great update any other uh updates from members alan yeah well we did a couple things we took the initiating committee took an initiative and planted a holiday tree opposite the elevator and it prospered there for christmas uh hanukkah tree of life the solstice and then it outgrew its space and it has been nicely moved by city forestry to the leslie golf course there by a t-17 so the tree is in good health and that red planter is now available for planting and uh we did a earth day gathering uh from the from thursday april 22 to as through sunday to 25 and in conjunction with that they have put together a slideshow on the commons that became part of the a20 several hour program on the restoring the earth for earth day

090we had a number of very interesting discussions on economic development and on energy uh solar energy and wind energy that we had a a rig come that demonstrated a lot of interesting stuff it was a night a nice time and now yeah we put put up a uh a decadome and you've seen pictures of it and are seeking to have that as a regular information idea pod a ranger station for the park rangers and so a base for information around what's happening with the commons and are trying to figure out how with the dda and other interested parties that could be a regular feature on the on the watch thank you alan and thank you for having uh heather send over some photographs too uh of that event frank um again i guess i'm a

091clock watcher but um i'm anticipating we may not get into the final item on the agenda that i assume tom and heather helped frame some issues going forward and how to move things pieces of the planning effort forward i don't know if there's a way to authorize our council leadership to be able to work on those assuming we can't wrestle all this to the ground tonight in between meetings there's been discussion about forming some working groups or subcommittees to focus on specific uh challenges uh security and safety in at liberty plaza and on the library lot and you know other other important issues is i just wonder if there's a way to create a mechanism uh to have progress go forward on uh forming some of these subcommittees which would allow other people other expertise

092in the community to begin to weigh in on some of these important issues that will be key planning elements as we go forward and separate from that is the idea that i'll just surface again without discussion of the the council of the comments itself having one or a series of working sessions to begin coalescing around a vision and a plan and i know we're gonna hopefully with funding from private and public sources have have uh real revenues to put into that facilitation but i don't know if there's some things between now and the june meeting we should be doing to help that whole process along thank you just a question for heather what is the process in terms of if we were to bring up i was hoping as well to have a conversation around

093subcommittees what is the process by which those are actually formed logistically um i don't know specifically to be honest i think you can just form them um you know that's kind of what the task force did the center of the city task force did um so i think you know if you want to identify the groups and and identify what the purpose is of the groups too you know one thing to keep in mind is the function of this body is meant to be advisory the city council and so i think you know i would just ask you to think about like the function of these um subcommittees and what what role that they play and developing recommendations that ultimately go to council okay maybe maybe tommy has more insight on i think i think

094your answer is spot on and uh it would be by resolution by this board you can just create subcommittees and it's recommended that as heather said that you have a purpose and there's a difference between a task force and a subcommittee like you know as far as their life or expected life and membership and purpose is is really what you need and leadership okay stephen you've got your hand up and then jennifer just a quick remember update between the last meeting and this meeting uh took a walk through the site together with uh frank and rita we just kind of walked through and talked and thought about ideas and things and it was a very valuable experience so i encourage as we talked about last time all of the council members to get out there

095early and often and just think about the space and how how best we can activate it just in that in that vein before we get to jennifer here is there an interest in in all getting together in a socially distant fashion uh at the site sometime before the next meeting next meeting of this body raise your hands yeah we will have to notice that yeah that meeting because um we can't violate the open meetings act um and make it um an opportunity for for the public to join if they wanted to so there's like logistical things that we would need to work out that might not if we we'll have to see if we can fit it within the timing before next meeting but we could have we could eventually do it that reminds me

096as a new committee we should probably have the oma uh briefing for the full group just so everybody understands how the city views oma open meetings act and and the obligations responsibilities that you have we do have a program that i think we can provide to the group okay yeah i think good yeah i think there may be uh other things related to our to the status of the pandemic um not only would we have to be socially distanced but we would as an as a city-sponsored group we might have to uh make sure that we are presenting our purpose and our activities in a way that's coherent with current policy about um covert restrictions and and uh math squaring and stuff like that but frankly i'm pretty pretty conservative about that i'm not i'm

097still wearing a mask a lot almost always except in my mother's house and what i would worry about in relation to the open meetings act so even if we noticed uh the group is going to be out there on a at a day or time if you're kind of roaming around the space it makes it a little bit difficult to to communicate to the public with certainty where you'll be so they can join but but maybe i don't know we'll just have to think through that it's not that big of a space i suppose people would just see where you're at have we have we ever had information about like there is a sign uh on the first martin property that basically says don't go here unless you have permission and that's the way you

098get from liberty plaza to the rest of the site and back i mean you can't get there unless you go around the block to do it if you're going to avoid their property but it says get permission first but i i don't think anybody ever does and i i wonder what uh you know what the owners feel about changing that sign or you know is it are we trespassing if we walk through there um you know that's something that i think it's a beginning of the complications that we have to resolve as we move forward and i wouldn't want to exacerbate them before we have an idea of where we're going with that i have some history on that at the appropriate time to share yeah so i think that that gets into another item

099here uh in a bit and the issues of an exploration i do want to be very conscious jennifer's been very patient uh jennifer uh hopefully we can wrap up the uh the um uh news and updates with yours yeah thank you i i just wanted to i think have a offer a suggestion in terms of there's been a lot of chatter about um having sub-committees or working groups that support um this this group here and maybe for our next meeting i feel like i'm jumping the gun in terms of next meeting agenda items but maybe we could come forward or um i don't know in terms of open meeting act or whatever if we're allowed to have a google doc or something where we just put forward what do we think these committees might be

100so for instance fundraising um you know pulling together a block party for you know you know the the the neighbors for the the commons area um i think that if we started to think about that now and maybe came forward with some ideas we might we would have a little bit of productivity around that discussion in the next meeting so that was it thank you yeah i'd like to support jennifer's idea um in in part my reading and trying to revise the bylaws it's that committees are usually sort of time limited they're not standing committees they're they're project committees so that allows you to bring in specified i mean people who are specifically addressing one question rather than being fundraising which is a long which is a big long-standing question so i just want to

101mention that as as the original intention of having committees is to be a little more flexible and focused so i think we've got a few items that seems like uh we're thinking about for the next agenda which is great um do we want to get into the initiating committee role line item um heather did you want to uh talk about this a little bit sorry i was muted i'll just turn it over to tom i think he wanted well yeah heather and i heather and i have been thinking about this and and to be honest it's been kind of confusing about um who's making decisions for what right and if they're are the advisory or are they you know directive um the city itself is is is uh typically interfaces with uh councils boards and

102commissions by um with their their actions right coming through and then this you know maybe just uh the chair working with the staff liaison or any of the board members could say something liaison um this is is kind of one of those weird ones right i mean it has it has this resolution that was created um that says initiating committee should get things going and uh and accelerate it that to me to me you know wasn't super clear um i i had interpreted that to be to get until the council of commons got going the initiating committee was like it now that we have it i'm really kind of confused because mr haber you know and the initiating committee uh they have he's got a lot of passion around this and has continued to push

103it which is great but i'm just kind of confused on where the decisions are made so i'm going to say that from the city perspective one of the most productive things that we could do is to identify and maybe i'm going to say recommend a resolution to counsel on how you'd like to how you'd like to have decisions made and how you want guidance provided to staff it's just it's just confusing to me concur i that was not emotion but i second that i think there's also uh something else i'd like to bring up that are that is involved in this too i think i definitely think clarity around around this but i also think there's also some points have been brought up by by both alan uh and then i think frank and rita

104uh as well um you know around the library green conservancy and i i would like to establish some type of process by which we have uh some engagement with external groups you know i do think the clarity is going to be really important as i understand the intent and certainly the resolution around creating this council this is the advisory uh body that the city is looking to to provide for recommendations around this site and correct me if i'm wrong on that at all tom uh or heather but i i do think that given the passion that uh we have heard and we heard from jeff today about the initiating committee too it seems like it would be prudent to make sure that we're having those connections and we have a process by integrating them into

105this work into this council to some degree if it's a report out or or whatever well what i find challenging is is um you know so i think it's really exciting the common common commenting um you know philosophy is really interesting and and can be very creative and i want you know i assume you all want to have space for that and yet i sit in a world with structure that um requires you know kind of accountability and direction that's kind of clear and the initiating committee as i understand it and alec correct me if i'm i'm mistaken i don't even know who's on it right there's not an official membership it's maybe email lists it's not a non-profit or an entity of itself which makes it challenging for me to understand that uh um

106and then the library green conservancy i get that one right i don't know how it's going to fit in all the pieces but it's a thing um so i don't know where i'm going with that but i'm just going to say that's where the source of my confusion is understood uh we've got a few people on deck here camilla you're up first thanks adam um yeah so my question was kind of covered by tom but um i'll ask it um i'd love to know who are the members of the ini initiating committee um because i agree it's extremely nebulous and um secondly um i just want some clarification is it true that alan and jeff were the official initiating committee representatives of the council of the commons yeah yes to the last part okay um

107did we get an answer for you sufficiently on the uh uh i think you're you had a second question camilla and i want to be respectful of that yes yes can someone please answer uh who are the members of the initiating committee alan or jeff feel free if you're the as a designee yeah uh so um we provided a document uh i made a brief presentation you'll recall the first meeting that we had and then that was submitted uh the powerpoint and then we sent a supplemental and you can find both of these on the council of the commons website um and in the supplemental you will see the names and a brief description of each member of the initiating committee as currently constituted the objective is to expand that but essentially we see the

108at least from my perspective the initiating committee really tried to kind of keep the flame alive after the task force ended and to uh be the transition point to a much larger involvement in the community and to stimulate that and to in some ways kind of execute on what the community would like and also the council of the commons and so we we we've kind of tried to represent the interests of the community and to encourage and stimulate the community um we're a very diverse group we want to be even more diverse um we you know we put our own resources behind this we we've worked very hard to make things happen uh against great odds of you know the pandemic and other things and uh i think you know it's all very well to

109say well let's let's have an advisory committee and the council but if you want the community engagement you got to have some group of people that fires up that community engagement and channels it and that's essentially what we see our role as being and being able to execute on some of the things that this this uh council would recommend to the council this is the city council um you have to have you know in a democracy in a community that there needs to be some kind of organizing force and you know none of us are getting paid to do this we we love what we're doing we're trying to make this happen we're trying to uh you know implement as best we can what you know what the voters voted for and you know we

110don't have all the answers it's great the council of the commons is here and uh you know we're we're we're very cognizant of of our need to respect uh you know everybody's point of view but that's really how how i see it uh allen may have a different view and i would i would request that maybe he could follow up from what i just said well i'd be glad to i got my hand up you know the the commons is not the traditional city government so i can appreciate that tom finds himself in a confused unclear or new situation and all over the world communities are finding ways that various local groups get together to do things that are needed in partnership with the government in partnership with corporations but as a third force in

111the development of community creativity and initiative and that's what we began with as the commons and the view was that out of community assemblies and working groups in the garden group and the children's group and all those things there would come together groups of people from the community who would coalesce as the working council of the commons the when the resolution for the uh accelerating the development after things had stayed uh inactive for quite a while uh the uh the last whereas of that resolution added the council of the commons that the initiating committee was in the process of seeing how do we bring all these factors of the community together the city council decided that we're going to appoint some people who are sort of supervising this or advising the city council as though

112the city council is is responsible for creating this uh new endeavor in the center of the city and the commons view is that the new endeavor in the center of the city will be created by the people who create it who actually do it and the the supervision or the advisory to the city council is there that the city council knows what's going on but the initiative is coming from below so there is a mix from that which is directed from above and that's which is coming from below and somewhere in the middle there is a mix and that is a new new thing that is being done and it is not uh fleshed out but in the uh in the uh council of the in the initiating committee website we have a a a

113model of what is the the various elements that are coming together to create the council of the commons and in the initial uh initiating committee accelerating development resolution that was the sense that we are helping form the council of the commons it was not pre-formed uh and that the supplement resolution that added another person seems to have preempted [Music] or ignored that fact that the council of the commons is something that is developing in process not fixed in membership and coming out of the activities that are actually going on and many of those activities haven't started because as long as the cars are there there's no way that that's going to be a place where kids are playing or parents are bringing their families or so on and so it is an unclear situation because

114we are still creating it call it co-creation co-production cooperation collaboration there are many factors working together between advisors between what we learn from other parts of the world that are doing commoning and between what the city council sees is important and what you all who are now uh brought into this process uh you're from your own creativity you see how do we really make this uh beautiful and something to fly and and how do we put it into a timeline looking until 2024 in the the bicentennial of ann arbor and between the operating funds and the future capital development these are all things that are kind of out there that we are to create all right well thank you uh jeff and alan um councilmember briggs yeah um to kind of get back to your

115question tom in terms of how i see this um i can understand kind of the confusion from the city side because there's been a variety of different iterations of resolutions um but i think the the final one sort of clarifies that in terms of who the body that's advising council on what happens around um this public space is this body um this membership here and that doesn't mean that other folks will not have an interest in the community but this is the body that is um that is advising council council on that respect um to make sure that you know some of those key voices that have been engaged in the process from the beginning beyond my cat apparently um is that uh you know there's there's different seats on this um commission we've got

116two members of the initiating committee two members from the library green conservancy and so from from with my perspective those voices are always at this table and helping to inform and um i'm not sure that we would necessarily need additional time on the agenda to make sure that we hear from those those bodies because they're they're integrated into this group already um in terms of making sure that those voices are heard um i would equate this oh my background is not to ramble on too long but my background obviously before coming to council part of it was my transportation advocacy at one point in time the city um developed a transportation commission now that transportation commission has representatives from a variety of different organizations and and those organizations help to provide feedback on the transportation

117commission there are members from the advocacy committee on the transportation commission um the washington vice milwaukee coalition has a few members um and even a board member from that group um that helped to provide that voice um but when the transportation commission provides advice to to city council it's it's the advice of the transportation commission it's not the advice of ata or wbwc or any of those other organizations and so um i think for as this body moves forward you know we need to realize we're bringing a lot of different voices and helping to move this forward um and that doesn't mean that all this other advocacy work that's happening in the community that's so vitally important to move this project forward isn't gonna continue to happen and to continue to help activate and energize

118and and fundraise and do programming and and all the other great things that we need to have happen but i think to keep this group focused a little bit um it's important to think about be very clear about what our scope and purpose is around this table so that we are moving forward on sort of um the objectives that we just adopted in the bylaws which were obviously relatively broad but i think for me i look towards the charter amendment as that fundamental guide so tom hearing council member briggs explanation i feel like that's reflective of um what i was thinking as well but this really is the advisory body this is the one that city council and city staff look to around the advise advice it certainly could be that we have a time

119obviously for any membership to come and discuss and we certainly can invite in other groups if there were like a block partners group too um is there further clarification needed from you uh from your perspective on this um you know listen to what everybody has said um i guess i've been formulating maybe a structure in my own mind that um uh the way that it's described and what makes this challenging for me is there's an operating element to this committee like a real world that's not like this it's decision making right that that is not going to be conducive to a monthly meeting and yet there's an oversight role uh or guiding role as well which is more structural so i wonder if um the council of the commons this body is kind of the

120more um oversight board which is advisory gets its guidance from council and provides recommendations but then on a in if i understand the initiating committee and the library green conservancy uh efforts if they're looking to have activities occur um if the rule if this body could decide um what the rules of the road are around that perhaps that maybe that body is the one that is uh the gateway for residents to go through in order to um to have activities so i could see for example the initiating committee or this body saying um uh well we have rules of the road let's say for parks for example liberty plaza you can't do anything in liberty plaza there are rules there are park rules those rules because we're an arbor are pretty expressive they're pretty progressive

121um but but you do have first amendment rights but then there are some some rules so let's say that that got adopted for this area this body could look at those rules and say this is how we want it run council buys off on that maybe the initiating committee then um is the source that enforces that a group wants to do something they go through initiating committee the initiating committee's got to work with any logistics uh you know with the dda or with anybody they make sure rules are in place it's just an idea i'm trying to figure out how to bring to life what the initiating committee um seems to have the most passion about which is working with the people to do things and yet respect the fact that this commission this council

122really has the authority to say on a broadway what that is okay that's an interesting idea for sure uh we've got a few folks sarah than alice and frank so i'm listening to all this because i believe that i was and still maybe i'm a little bit confused about the different us the initial the initiating committee the library conservancy i'm like equating this to my experience on planning commission where like we don't you know we are also a recommending body for most things to city council and i guess you know what like you know the this 40 000 recommendation like are we the right body then to be going and hiring consultants should we be working and not really this is really a question this is just like thoughts like should we should we be

123working with the initiating committee sort of like as a partner that's doing these things like in collaboration like i heard jeff saying earlier that they're already working on short-term plans like i want to make sure that whatever we're doing is is not in silos and i know it really isn't because jeff and alan are here with us but you know i don't want us to be going off and hiring a consultant and then they're already working on plans with the initiating committee i just wonder like if our role is just as a recommending is as a recommending body you know maybe we can designate funds but like we don't necessarily do the work i don't know mr crawford if that's sort of i i was following what you were saying and i think i generally

124agree with it well as as in regards to it to a consultant i would imagine the city would engage the consultant right the directions done and then yes uh the the city is in the business of engaging people and decisions and so this body would be you know maybe helping select who is the consultant um participating in being having members participate in the administration of it as it goes along you know at all the meetings for example that's really kind of flexible and up to you guys but it would be run by the city and that's what uh some of the staff monies that that i put in the budget would help cover okay this is helping me clarify i think our role i think it would be good to maybe try to clarify for

125everybody sort of writ large like what these different groups are sort of doing and i don't know that we would come to a consensus about that tonight like you know i'm thinking like you know is it this group's purview to recommend to the parks commission that they look at allocating funding for liberty plaza i don't know if that's something the parks commission has preview over but like can we recommend those types of things to like is that the type of like a recommending thing that you're thinking that we do i'm hearing i'm seeing a nod for america well i think it would go up i mean this this group's role is to make recommendations to city administrator and city council so that i mean that would be the channels that any recognitions would go through

126and then they would go back down to yeah i think that's how that would work and i think you're on the right track for me you know it's been this confusion about how the parties fit together so how did the initiating committee how does the library green city conservancy how do those two even fit together much less all three of us you know fitting together so i think we do need to carry on this conversation and as far as engagement uh is concerned you know i do want to say a note about that because that is something that is part of my role at the city is to engage the community and i do want to emphasize that it is really important i believe that we follow city standards with that because we have standards

127about notification um and we have channels of you know outreach um and then of course recording what has been said on that feedback so i don't i don't want that to get lost in any of this i want us to uphold those standards as much as possible when we do so when when i envision us creating a that physical design plan which is what i think where we think i think we're headed next you know that would go through that that process where things are really transparent and recorded in a certain way and having the consultant to lead that work the initiating committee could obviously go to them with their ideas to be integrated in along with the other regular community outreach process right right yeah all right alice i think you're up next uh

128you're muted sorry um there have been a lot of interesting threats that i'm trying to keep track of but i think we we might do well to go back to camilla's question about who's who and what are the roles um the the main distinction i see is between advocacy and advisory um we cannot as a body advocate um our job is to advise and the initiating committee on their own uh apart from us is advocacy uh and they can they have latitude oh my battery's going down um they have latitude can you hear me yeah i'll go plug in this is going to be interesting um they have latitude that the advisory committee does not as tom crawford had point pointed out with the open meetings act and so forth um however i think that

129also brings up the important point that any member of this body needs to be the very we're all passionate we all want things to happen but we have to be very clear when we speak in public uh as we begin to make it clear to everyone even members of this body for whom we are speaking or from what platform we are speaking so that when we say i'm alice ralph i'm with the advisory committee they know that's where i'm coming from but i also have to say sometimes especially when advocating i am speaking as an individual and not on behalf of an organization so it's i've heard people say this a lot when they speak to city council but i think we should practice that a little bit more carefully than i think has been

130done so far uh thank you alice uh frank uh tom i i think was very helpful how you how you framed that because i think it led to some some good conversation here um i'm i'm looking at the clock again uh i don't know uh we we have another public comment uh period here before we wrap up and there's that item 10. i'm just looking for a way to bridge ourselves to the next meeting is there some way i guess this is directed uh to at adam and alice is there some way we can facilitate thinking about uh the formation uh at the next meeting i guess of some some working groups and how that might play out is there is this a moment for some kind of bridging resolution to get us uh started

131on thinking and planning uh around some of the the issues articulated in item 10 which we're probably not going to get to unless we're going to go over time and i'm not opposed to that but i'm just trying to think of how do we productively uh transition ourselves on on working groups and subcommittees to the next meeting well i i think we could uh could we table an item that is on the agenda um until the next meeting if we wanted to yes of course well you haven't taken an action on it so you you really can just discuss it at this meeting and you you have the ability to put it on for the next meeting it doesn't if there's no action no motion on the table it doesn't have to be tabled so

132i if it's the will of the group we can certainly skip to sort of next agenda items i know at the last meeting it was uh expressed that folks would like to make sure that we have a discussion around where we're going to go and that certainly is reflected in the development of agendas so if we'd like to move forward on to that discussion item i think that that would be totally fine is is that the desire of where folks would like to spend the next uh little bit here before we do get into public comment and and wrap up just a nod of heads okay okay that sounds good so um i guess with that we've had a discussion around the role of the initiating committee it seems like we've gotten some clarification um

133uh i guess uh unless there is any further discussion on that item um why don't we move on to development of the next agenda so uh i took some notes uh today uh based on conversation uh and certainly there are some things that folks would like to do in the in the interim for the next agenda um i would just like to before we get into suggestions around the next next month's agenda i would just like to say if there's a way that we can really start to take this steps that we talked about last time building um a short an intermediate and a and really that large vision i think that will really help us that will help us gather our thoughts and it will help us with the community move forward so uh

134with that in terms of next month's agenda where uh where do we want to where do we want to go and then certainly we can do things in the interim as well as time allows especially if it's a public thing there might be some constraints that's how they're outlined eric has had her hand up she might have something she wants to say about that oh yes sorry erica quinn that's okay just um with regards to the next um agenda items i guess i heard a lot of discussion today about interest in in subcommittees and working committees and i guess for my part i would hope that before we um rush to develop those that we um i think that there may be i definitely want to have some of those discussions you just suggested around

135kind of short term midterm long term envisioning that we have as a as a group um because i i think that um i think there's a lot of different perspectives in the community about what those what those might look like and i just want to make sure that before we um before we sort of move forward that we're we're all in agreement or you know we have a as a body determine what direction we should we should go in terms of focusing the energy of this committee and making progress on items this next year um so you know i've heard in earlier meetings we should focus on liberty square plaza first i've heard and i've i've heard we should focus on activating the the parking lot space first and so i think we need to

136come to a little bit more clarity around um around some of that because i think it there's a lot of ripple effects from from those decisions um i'm also hoping by next time that we have um you know money in the budget that is moving towards um long-term um you know moving towards planning and design and so i think there's a really active role for this group in that and so we think we need to discuss that um and um trying to think that's it for now uh so council member briggs if i could sum up uh maybe an item for the next agenda based on what you just said um maybe it's a proposal that we uh all come with some uh ideas that we that we feel would fall into in each of

137those three uh bucketed areas uh what our visions are individually for uh the short-term use of the space the intermediate and then how we transition to a long-term mission is that an accurate reflection okay definitely add that on are there other items that folks would like to have on the agenda certainly subcommittee development we can put on on the agenda as an item thank you um jeff just to clarify um so i i would think it would be helpful if we all sent in sent to through heather to to each other you know our perspective on these three items in advance of that meeting so that people have had a chance to digest them and then we could have a fruitful conversation this straw man concept everybody could put up a straw man or what

138have you i think that gets sent to a deliberation though um so i so i would be able to send that out uh you know which is a violation of the open meetings act to kind of deliberate not in front of the public so i could send that i could compile it and then attach it to the agenda beforehand so you'd maybe not get it necessarily in real time when people are sending it out but once i get you know we could maybe set a deadline when people can get it to me and i can compile that and attach it to the agenda so the public's getting it at the same time you are sure but i just want to make sure there's enough time for people to digest everybody's ideas so that we can

139have a really fruitful and focused discussion because otherwise we might be you know run out of time and and people are not prepared so if we could do like a week before or you know people would will get something that they can they can have time to absorb is that fair yeah and and jeff i think that's actually quite reasonable i think we can we can shoot for uh at least a week before um and heather to her point we can um that's when we were trying to post the agendas anyways and so uh to heather's old maypoint that would that would certainly keep us in compliance right if we just shoot to get the agenda out early we might be able to get it out earlier than that um and and attach all those

140documents that way the public has at the same time that we do so i think that's reasonable so our next meeting is june 3rd so that means that people need to get their comments in by the week of what may 24th at the latest when you tell me heather what's the most reasonable deadline if they're into you by by may 21st yeah i mean i would say let's shoot a little bit earlier so we can get the agenda out and so that you you all will have time to look all of this over so the 21st if everybody's okay with that that gives you a couple of weeks to thoughts together so friday may 21st may 21st yep so short middle and long-term visions or goals for the space okay cool and i would also

141add you know please do go back if you haven't already and look look at everything all the comments that were received during the task force effort you know we don't want to really start from scratch we did get a lot of feedback during that process so please please go back and look at those documents if you haven't had a chance to definitely you indicate where the where those are accessible all those amazing questionnaires that were put in i i've seen them in your office but are they all is that all uh scanned and on an internet site yeah it's all compiled yeah as part of the task force report and the appendices so but i can send a link out again to that thank you thank you i actually think that was in uh in

142our agenda packet from last time too in the task force report if i recall correctly um sarah thanks first alice i think dropped off because she's now in the that for some reason have the attendees panel up oh no oh thank you for catching that thank you um so i don't know if my brain quite works right yet with this in like a short medium and long term and i really like the issues document that i know we did not get to discuss tonight so i wonder if there's you know maybe like a couple different approaches like if people feel like they're comfortable thinking like short medium long or like i think i would be more comfortable sort of taking that issues document and like responding to it or redlining it or like there's some

143things that i think are missing so i don't know if folks would be open to that or you could do both um but i think it would be really good to keep that issues document um up for discussion next time as well and then i don't want to put extra work on you heather but i wonder if we're sending it by may 21st like maybe you're thinking of doing this anyway like trying to bucket or like theme what we've said you know rather than just like here's what sarah submitted here's what frank submitted like try to i don't know like group them so that we have like different topics of discussion otherwise i feel like it could be all over the place yeah my hope is that everybody does organize it in short medium and

144long term um and then i could do subcategories based on that i'll try i mean what do we mean by short term like a year yeah two years interpretation of that frankly um not to throw another wrench into it but but i think maybe maybe that could be a request you know if there is some definition that each member applies to yeah that would i think that would be helpful put a time yeah um let's see here uh and and uh sarah to your point around the document i do think we should put that back on the agenda there is some important information in there that that we should just be conscious of as we as we talk about this um and um and i know that uh that came up previously too if adam

145if i could just uh okay seconds probably the wrong word but um uh while you're when you all are thinking about the activities and what you want to do to sarah's point the importance of that document is is is going to be the framework in creating allowing us to do them and we have to have that whole stream of work going that's like really important work if you want to see progress like that's where my brain has been with it's like i just keep thinking like what is the path forward and like what are the obstacles in our way and like how do we solve those obstacles rather than just like i want to see a picnic table on the side that's what gets the obstacles out of the way is that is that track

146yeah so i think i think this is actually uh frankly these are good ideas to correlate into one meeting um and if we focus our next agenda uh our next meeting on identifying those obstacles and then talking about visioning those actually seem very linked doesn't mean that we're we're going to then arrive at a conclusion right at the end of that meeting but certainly they are they're connected and i'll i'll see what i can do about tying the two documents together the two documents being that issues document and then what i compile from what you send me um i'll see if it can fit right but i think that i think that's a great point because it is it is about trying to like figure out the logistics basically of how we make things happen

147definitely um and we have the doc do we have the uh the uh the one uh document already uh because we've got it for this meeting uh i do want to recognize alan um and um then i did want to ask about how we wanted to fit subcommittees into that next agenda but ellen go ahead well i guess i just want to underscore that this uh center of the city issues exploration that tom did i think that should really be our kickoff point looking at looking at all that and maybe that's the the initiate the the first part of the meeting and then we uh share what our uh long short and medium range views are you know but i think those really look at the short range how do we get this thing in

148motion on the various fronts and how is it how are we working together so i don't want us to lose lose track of the work that went into that and the problems that it identifies unless we deal with them we won't get to the next stage i would agree with that thinking totally um you know i we have had this discussion on the creation of subcommittees it seems like uh frankly that is a good ending of next week's meeting is to get if we talk about the sort of things that are that we have to deal with in in the present document we talk about the visioning that we have individually and then we can identify where we need to go on the committees does that sound that seems logical to me um in terms

149of it seems like a lot for one meeting but uh it does seem logical um so maybe we can try and shoot for doing that next next month um that sounds like a pretty good agenda to me um we ask you in the meantime as well to investigate what uh we need to do um to actually physically get together and obviously be prudent around safety and also public notice jeff you had your uh you had your uh unmute there for a second go ahead no i just said i agree with you i thought you're right okay um okay um frank i i i sense we're about to move to other public comment but i just wanted to come back to uh you know acknowledging uh erica and and what she's prepared to do in my

150mind that is uh a really important step that's going to facilitate all of what we're going to bring forward at the next meeting in meetings beyond uh that that's going to give us the ability to move beyond conversation to actual planning and uh my my hats off uh to erica for stepping forward in such a important way um thank you definitely um in that case then um why don't we move on to public comment and see if there are any uh folks that would like to say anything we do have somebody with their hand raised that's on the phone so i'm gonna unmute you or allow you to talk uh the person whose phone number ends with six four four all right you should be able to talk can you hear me thank you my

151name is kathy boris and i'm speaking only for myself and thank you for allowing me to speak and i want to talk about the short term like this summer when it will probably be very hot and people will need some place to go especially downtown among all the cement and there's a very nice area by kerrytown and the farmers market and it has tables and chairs and string lights above and it's very popular and it's very attractive and it's very simple and i wonder if that area could be used as a model for funding i wonder who's funding those tables and chairs and string lights and who's funding the cleanup of that little area and who handles misbehavior if it goes on all those little things but i wonder if we could use that very

152nice area near kerrytown and the farmers market as a model for setting some setting up something very simple for the center of the city so that the public can start to use to enjoy the center of the city just as soon as possible and that's all i wanted to say thank you thank you kathy thank you for your suggestion as well heather do we have any any other folks we do um all right so the person with the phone number three four five uh you should be able to talk now hi um can you hear me yes hi this is kitty khan and i'm kind of disappointed that you skipped over item 10 because the whole short term things are so important right now and i can see where long-term planning is important but we

153just have to get those cars off the parking lot and it seems like there's been a lot of talk around and around and around and i know how bureaucracy works but just get those cars off the lot and as the previous caller said there must how expensive can it be to string up lights put some you know just like the farmer's market just like she said let's just do that and also i want to thank erica very much as well for agreeing to bring some funding issues before city council i had one question though when erica was talking about that she mentioned the expenses of the construction on the y lot somehow related to the funding for the center of the city but i thought the y lot was being funded by proposal c and

154i don't think that has anything to do with monies for the center of the city so i'm kind of confused so maybe erica could send me an email and explain that and also i sent the resolution to erica and alice and adam that was passed by the city council in december of 2019 and i'm hoping that was shared with everybody i'm looking did you guys get that yes no i i'm looking at my screen i can't see any so i'm hoping that was shared with everybody because that resolution that was passed in december of 2019 by city council talks about funding and in fact there's one um resolved clause that says that the um parking revenue from the surface lot back to a date in 2018 a certain amount per diem six days a week

155would be used for funding the commons and i was hoping tonight to hear some discussion about that resolution because that would add up to quite a bit of money the revenue from the parking so anyway and then i had one more thing to say you were talking about trying to decide who could take some really good minutes so it would be easy to find things and i'm a little confused about heather's role i think you're part of the staff is that correct so why why can't heather take the minute so i can't help her be the one to take detailed minutes that just seems logical to me but maybe i'm not understanding her role correctly i think that's all i had to say get those cars off a lot thanks to erica because we really

156need the city council to keep their promise as was stated in the resolution that was passed by city council in december of 2019 and if you haven't all read that resolution i really hope you have i sent it to three people and asked that it be shared with the whole council on the commons so okay that's all i have to say thank you get the cars off a lot okay bye thank you kitty uh and and just for any callers if if you could send uh documentation to heather for the open meetings act she can distribute it amongst all members and i think that is an important uh important point to make uh given your request kitty other folks there are so robert black you are up next allowing you to talk thank you heather

157um and thank you all i just want to congratulate you and in two meetings you have made major accomplishments i watched from as in my work in facilitating groups i watched your first meeting and this one is qualitatively and quantitatively different and you guys are really on your way to doing something here uh more will be revealed right and i just want to underscore a couple things real quickly um i think rita said something about interest action momentum i turn him around into the word aim action interest and momentum and i really applaud tom crawford for setting the structure for you because it's really important that you understand even though alan's comments about people uh are the grassroots of this you know the commons is all about the people kind of leading things which is

158important but turn the model on its head put the people on the top and put the city underneath as the foundation of the structure for those people and you heard it tonight you heard it very well i worked a lot with financial officers and money and you heard the foundational framework that you need to adhere to for the city the council doesn't typically have a checkbook the city has the checkbook and there's other um this idea of steward of the public resources is a critical foundational piece to understand so you can write that down and stand on it next up is the city council which has authorized you as the council of commons to be the protectors of the common good and so you are the decision-making group each one of you is the salient

159and strong member that will speak that voice no one else will or can make that decision the initiating committee can't do it the dda can't do it for you um the library green conservancy can't do it for you you are it and i'm watching you start to gel as a group um i love the idea that you have a structure for next meeting that you work on issues first then you do three separate things short term medium term long term and don't i advise not to have heather collate those things or sort them in any way that you need to sort them together and you need to see everybody speaking as it was written and then there's a process in facilitation called commonalities and differences where you will see what works and what doesn't and

160you will know what is the short-term horizon you will decide very easily next time what that is is it december 31st calendar year 2021 what's medium term you know you will know that and you'll decide those things really really quickly and easily um there's a million other things i could get into but the last thing i wanted to say you were always talking about getting to a plan or having a a plan so that we could design something it's like no it's too soon for that it's like biodynamic gardening you don't grow the flowers that rita has without tending to the soil first you guys are making the soil of this thing and so um this idea of your homework to go back and review what was done before under you look on page 26

161of the center of the city task force and you'll find urban spaces preferences survey that talks about fountain sculpture grassy paved walking sitting areas look on page 27 of the activities preferences survey and you will find sit with friends visit library listen to live music public restroom you've got a lot of work that's already done and then if you want to talk about physical structure which i don't think you should until you talk to the partners in the block meeting you can look on pages 23 and 24 where there's a description of the civic commons building but i think that's even too premature for that until you have this larger meeting and uh and just to underscore what frank was saying um you create a vision for this this is what adam's term was to

162create a vision create a vision for this and the money will start to line up and the people will come in there so the last thing i want to end with is three three points make tangible small steps earth day was a shows progress you can build public awareness the initiating committee can help do that for you and i think you should put a report to council to show the things that you have done to say we are doing it second one is get that block partners meeting up this summer and three um have a working session amongst yourselves to really get this grounded and in your own framework because you are it and you're doing it and i really applaud you thank you thank you robert heather any other folks there is so the

163person with a phone number ending in 464. i'm gonna allow you to talk hello can you hear me thank you starting to feel like a groupie i spoke earlier this is lindsay hour i want to thank chair zemke and tom crawford and heather safart for their answers to my questions regarding the balance of the current fiscal year budget for staff and cts which they provided both via email and tonight thank you so much and i'm happy to know that there will now be a portion of an fte to support the council of the commons and that charges from ctn will be none or minimal that's good news i also very much appreciate council member briggs's commitment to bring a budget amendment to council to allocate a very modest amount to the council of the commons

164this year thank you council member briggs i very much support mr crawford's framework that he presented a couple meetings ago of short medium and long-term planning that's a very very helpful plan uh planning framework i understand that additional community engagement sessions that you guys have talked about in design work can be expensive and more than a modest amount will be needed for that i would hope that eventually the dda will commit to support this effort by contributing funding for the more expensive mid and long term goals i so much appreciate the member i didn't catch his name i think it was when i didn't catch his name jeff maybe who suggested that you all send your ideas for short mid and long term goals to heather to compile and send to you before the next

165meeting to make your discussion more productive it was a very very efficient suggestion now i really want to address the short term goals i think it's wonderful you're thinking about mid and long term but it's may you know and your next meeting is early june in my opinion and i don't think i'm alone in this the shortest term goal is what you need to focus on now and the shortest term goal should be having something happen this summer like basic furnishings and whatever is needed as com tom crawford questions to support that in terms of maintenance and security and some string lights to make it welcoming in the evening and i hope that if council member briggs's budget amendment is passed at council that that money can be used to implement some of those short-term

166goals this summer and i urge mr crawford to work with the dda to remove cars from the surface lots at least on weekends i believe the previous city administrator had a plan for that and that could be followed it's been about two years since the charter amendment has passed last summer can be given a pass since we were still learning how to function in a pandemic but the space needs to be made welcoming and some activity has to happen this summer or this project is going to lose all credibility if you all brainstorm short-term goals over the next couple weeks and send them to heather i hope at your next meeting in early june you can pass the resolution come to a consensus on some short-term goals and pass a resolution on what can be

167done immediately and hopefully by then because the council is going to vote on the final budget at their second meeting in may by your early june meeting if you pass a resolution on short-term goals the money will be there modest amount and use that to make something happen in june i really thank each and every one of you for your commitment and enthusiasm for the comments my only question is you you need to work on implementing some short-term goals and getting something happening this summer and after you do that next month you have the whole rest of the year to work on midterm and longer term goals thank you so much for all of your commitments to this thank you thank you for your comments anyone else other um uh the person with the phone

168number three four five raised their hand and i think that is kitty did you want to speak hi this is kitty khan again can you hear me yes okay good um i cannot find any contact information for heather i would like to send the in fact the council of the commons doesn't have um i couldn't find anything on the city website for council of the commons with any contact information for the group at all and i when i sent that email to adam and erica and alice nobody erica wrote back to me and said thank you but nobody told me that i had to send things to heather in order for them to distribute it to the meeting i don't really understand how that would be a violation of the open meetings act if i

169sent an email to three members and ask them to distribute it i don't get that but anyway i would gladly send to heather what i sent to those three members but i don't know where to find heather's contact information so my email is k.con kkahn at comcast.net and i would appreciate it if heather could please send me an email with her contact and you know so then i can reply and send that letter with the resolution and what i wanted distributed to the whole council sorry if i'm a little frustrated but it's hard when there's no contact information listed anywhere um and that should be no brainer any commission from the city should have contact information so that residents could contact you okay sorry i'm cranky sorry that's okay no my my information should be

170up there actually i'd thank you for pointing that out i actually thought it was up there so i'll get that up there uh tomorrow but i have your information for the time being that well actually there is if if you go to the ann arbor uh city website and you put in cancel the comments it'll it'll show up cancel the comments you click on that and there's a whole thing there with the members of the council of the commons your information heather is there as far as you know i'm looking at it right now in my information i think maybe in the last update of the web web page maybe my somehow my information got removed because i'm not seeing it up there right now so um i think it was an error that it

171was removed so we'll get it back up there any other commenters uh no i'm not seeing anybody else with their hands raised i think i accidentally lowered a hand um so if you did have something to say i don't know if it was somebody that had already spoken but please do raise your hand if you do have anything else to say i'm not seeing anybody else from the audience it looks like uh miss khan has has exited the meeting but i just want you all to know that um she's not subject to the open meetings act she does the residents don't have to send everything through heather um they can all email you um uh that would be quite a burden for heather to be in the middle of all you all of your emails

172um she is there she does you need to send to her but residents can are free to write you all right well i think uh since uh is there another hand raised now heather oh there is yes number 464 the number ending with 464. oh thank you this is linda again and i appreciate you letting me speak again and the reason i wanted to speak again is because um the previous speaker talked about issues and communicating with you i was able to find um well i know council member briggs's email and i was able to find toms and heather's so i was able to communicate via email but um i want to reiterate my suggestion tom thank you mr crawford for letting us know that you know we can we as individual citizens are free

173to communicate directly with anybody on the council of the commons that's important that we all realize that we don't have to go through heather although i think it's a good idea to copy her so she knows what's going on but to facilitate our communicating with the members of the council of the commons it would be really great if you guys could send up a set up a group email address like pac and planning commission all the commissions have a group email which makes it very very easy for us ordinary citizens to communicate with all of you so i know it's easy to do it's just probably something you know that you didn't think of so i i really hope that you'll do that to make it easier um for the public to communicate with you

174thank you well that's just something that i need to set up through it and just so everybody's aware that email anything that goes through that email would actually come to me and then i would print out or make pdfs of the communication that comes through that email and put it in the packet for the meeting so that that's when you'd be seeing those emails coming through all right any other uh public comment then um i think that's it the person with the number 464 has their hands raised but i think you just spoke did you have anything else that you wanted to add whether that was me and i spoke again thank you okay all right then i think that's it okay very good uh with that then can i get a motion uh for

175adjournment we'll move all right second second all right sounds good all in favor say hi yay hi hi we're getting close to the 9 30 or the 9 o'clock mark thanks everyone good job thank you good work tonight everybody god