Ann Arbor Center of the City - Council of the Commons

001oh deal was asking so where are your ancestors from are you irish and irish you kind of bracket england that's right sorry if i seem distracted i'm just making sure that everybody is getting into the meeting okay just as so far hopefully the others weren't scared away well it took me looking back to find where you had posted this on the calendar and then everything was simple but i'm a little uh challenged on all these cyber connections i'll keep it posted on the website as well so that's another place you can go to look for it but i'll also fill out the calendar with invites that contain the passcode and the website is what it is uh do you have your agenda in front of you it should be at the top of the agenda

002the shortened url let me pull that up it is a2gov.org forward slash council commons council commons yeah no all but no that's right just to make it short and simple i think i can handle it needing to order here uh we'll let alan there we go uh call the meeting to order um and i think we start off with a roll call i think we all need to um state our names and the municipality we're located in is that right heather that's correct yeah where you physically are right now yeah you don't need to provide any more detail than that so don't give your address out or anything like that just kind of hi my name is such and such i'm here in ann arbor assuming that's where you're at fourth ward right yeah i

003guess you could get that detail but you don't need to um heather could you do the roll call for us sure stephen ford store uh present here in ann arbor great jennifer cornell here in ann arbor alan haber i am here in ann arbor jeffrey henney president and ann arbor camila lazundia here in ann arbor rita mitchell here in ann arbor ellis ralph here on mute alice you have to unmute there you go there i had to try it about four times here in ann arbor wonderful frank wilhelm here in ward 5 ann arbor adam semke uh here and in ann arbor tom crawford here uh in ann arbor jeff hayner uh here and also ann arbor erica briggs present and in north port florida nice weather all right um with that i think we

004move on to the next item on the agenda which is the approval of the agenda um also wanted to offer up this would be a time if anyone wanted to offer amendments to the agenda that we would need to do that can can i get a motion for uh approval of the agenda as oh britain rita has her hand up um calling rita thank you um i would like to make an amendment to the agenda um and uh for would be in item 8c i'd like to include a discussion of gardening preparation and early planting and beautification of the library lot area okay um and i think we need a second on rita's amendment um i'll second that second all right second from jeff um i think we need to ask for a vote for

005the um uh amendment to be added to the agenda um can we can we all do this at once or can we do it by hand i think we're allowed to do it by voice in hand so yeah you can do that and just ask if anybody doesn't you know yeah objects just to make sure that there isn't outstanding um all in favor of uh amending the agenda to include the item that rita enumerated say aye aye any nays okay all right that uh i meant that uh agenda uh item is added uh councilmember briggs did you have your hand up as well i was just gonna move or second or step uh any other amendments to the agenda all right in that case uh we have an amended agenda do we need a motion

006a separate motion for the amended agenda or are we um i think we can move we can move that directly if i recall correctly we can move to approve the amended as the agenda is amended as amended that's correct yep um sorry you can take my motion if you want thank you very much we'll we'll accept that uh can we uh have a vote on the approval of the amended agenda um all in favor say aye all right uh any opposed okay all right uh so we have an amended agenda we have the next item on the uh for business is the approval of the minutes from last week do we want to pull those up at all heather do we have that ability since this is a remote it might be easier i think

007since that's attached to not pull stuff up unless we need it would be my recommendation that's that's fine by me if it's fine by everybody else um it was linked in the agenda um right um just a pause it appears that i miss sarah on roll call i'm so sorry sarah hammerschmidt are you sorry i am here from ann arbor i didn't want to stop the meeting for that i just didn't know community in the minutes no that's okay thank you for calling it out and i apologize for missing you no worries um could i get a uh um uh a motion uh for approval of the minutes i'll move to approve the minutes as written okay uh rita you have your hand raised oh sorry um i just wanted to call out this isn't

008a big deal but um there was an item about the proposed bylaws and it wasn't commented and we didn't we did have some discussion it just seems like we should note that that we had some discussion we didn't approve them in that first meeting if these these minutes are pretty bare bone they'll reflect any decisions that are made but not really go into any details of the discussion okay um so if it's blank what is the understanding of that that's the topic was discussed but that there was no no decision maybe there no motion made all right no problem okay um any uh other discussion on uh the minutes approval of the minutes um so there's a second on the floor uh if uh all in favor of approving the minutes as written say aye

009okay hi any opposed okay all right so that uh we are uh accepted through that um now i think we are a public comment um the uh the um we have a lot of two minutes per speaker um are there any uh members of the public who have indicated um a desire to speak okay seen two participants um i am having trouble seeing whose hand is raised um heather is that something you can see i can't i'm sorry i was talking and i was muted um the person with phone number three four zero you should be able to talk yes uh greetings you all can hear me i'm sure yes i can okay uh thank you my name is luis vasquez i live at 1442 pontiac trail in ann arbor michigan and i my comments

010include the following um i'm going to ask you the question why do you not have a representative of aadl on this committee aren't they a major stakeholder on this block um my second comment has to do with uh funding for this any of these any of these projects going forward this project was sold to ann arbor voters as uh being funded privately um with alan haber will hathaway and frank wilhelm promising to raise funds uh in fact in november of 2018 um in a m-live article uh i'm going to quote it after november 6 if prop a passes frank wilhelm hopes to put his energy into raising community donations to fund the central park and he could they quote him as saying i only wish i had this kind of setup to raise serious money

011for a community benefit it's going to happen uh in december of 2019 in another m live article frank wilm will come um vowed last year to put his energy into raising community donations to fund the park slash commons if voters approved it he said recently he still wants to do so once there's a concept to present to donors but in today's uh m live wilhelm argued the center of the city initiative should be a public-private partnership and the city should put a substantial amount of money behind it it has to be substantial enough to attract private support he said encouraging the city to be bold well um i'm of the opinion that not one cent of taxpayer money should go towards any of this and if you want funding you guys need to get a

012petition and a referendum together to ask taxpayers to fund anything moving forward or um you know take a look at selling off maybe the huron hills golf course to to pay for anything that's likely to cost i would estimate i would guesstimate in the tens of millions of dollars at the least and additionally you should start with improving uh liberty plaza first before any money is put onto the library live thank you very much for your time thank you mr vasquez for your comment um heather um could you answer the next person yes it's the person was with four six four as the last three digits in your phone number you should be able to talk you mean six four four i had four six oh four six four years old yes oh thank you

013my name is linda burauer i live at 421 third street um i was really disappointed to hear that last speaker i i hope you don't get too much of that as you go forward i'm so happy you guys are meeting i know it's only your second meeting and my specific question and i hope you can answer it before you move forward even though i know you're going to be talking about the budget later i read the ann arbor the m live article that came out today with all of your bios it was really exciting to see everybody who's on it and um the article mentioned that the city you have twenty thousand dollars from the city budget for this fiscal year which ends june 30th and seeing how we've only got three months left for

014this next fiscal year i'm wondering how the rules work for that kind of city budget is it a use it or lose it type thing i sure don't want you to lose that 20 000 and i would encourage you to come up with ways to spend it um to make something happen there to beautify it first of all get rid of the parking and secondly do some you know relatively relatively inexpensive things to beautify it and make it welcoming so that we could start using it this summer you know in a basic modest way with social distancing and everything so um my concern is that you don't leave the front that you have and that you spend them appropriately and then hopefully i'm i'm a big supporter of um having this city especially the dda

015and possibly even the parks commission contribute money i'm not of the opinion that it has to only be extended um thank you very much thank you and then odile is next hello hello everyone i hope you have a great meeting and a good commenting i wanted to tell you that spring is coming i have seen the first daffodils so the garden committee met on the site last week and we're going to meet again this week and we are going to try to proceed to do start envisioning the gardening and the beautifying i think it's important because now is time and the earth is still soft and we are we are watering the christmas trees that we have put in december but anyway we want a good flower and beautiful butterfly garden and we would like

016to let you know that the more we do things the more people are likely to fund us so it's a direct relation to what we do to get funded anyway that's all i have to say i wish you a good meeting bye-bye thank you a deal heather do we have other commenters i don't send any others at this time okay all right um uh in that case uh we will uh close uh public comment um do we need we don't need emotion to close public comment do we no okay um in that case uh we'll move on to the uh next item on the agenda uh the bylaws there are uh three documents listed i'm sorry five documents listed in the agenda with uh some revisions um we did just receive the bylaws uh today

017um so um uh i would like to offer up a discussion around the bylaws given that there are a number of responses if it would be okay with everybody maybe we can have uh staff comment on some of the feedback does that seem like a good way to start out silence makes sense to me okay i i i do uh feel at a deficit because i only found out that the bylaws were available somewhere um this afternoon when i was uh working on another meeting so i haven't had a chance to look at them i think i'm in the same boat uh alice as well they did just get uh sent back to us uh today and um it's unfortunate i think you know things are just going slower slowly um but um but i

018think uh good heather uh or why don't we go to allen first so yeah the question right uh his hand up and then we'll uh we'll open it up to to staff to talk about some of the uh comments that were made well i had the same feeling that that this came late again as it did last time and i would prefer that we have some general discussion but actually put it off to the next meeting and not get into the uh short hairs of the various uh uh questions here that's my that is my feeling i think that things that have some substance too that we should have a little more ahead of time but if people want to proceed with it that's okay they're just a lot of things there and i would

019rather that people really have a time to look at them and think about them are there uh alice you have your hand up yeah i i i sense that we will have time to uh review uh that we probably can't come to a point where we can approve what's written when we don't know what it is um but i hope that there's been been some uh sorting out of what actually should be in the bylaws and what can be in rules i think that that's where we will find the flexibility and the individualization of the bylaws to our commission that's all i would say right now uh council member riggs i'd just like to note and i think maybe heather might be able to speak more to this but in terms of reviewing some of

020the staff comment the attorney comments back to us around the bylaws um it seemed to be repeated sort of recommendations that the bylaws are our rules and there's really shouldn't be a separate set of rules that we operate by um in terms of how commissions usually work so that was one of the pieces of feedback that was kind of throughout the the the um throughout the bylaws in terms of comments um i think we have a couple more uh questions here i think steven you may be next uh just a short comment i did have a chance to look at the bylaws uh as revised this afternoon they looked good to me uh in terms of the the types of edits that that came back so i encourage others to have a look but i

021just wanted to put that out there that i did have a chance to look at them so very good alice you have your handout too uh yes now what was it i'm sorry i i'll come back if someone else wants to talk that's okay um well uh given given the the like the time heather would you like to make any comments on some of the um the legal um uh review um as you can see yeah i have to admit that i haven't had a chance to really read through them either since i did come in a bit late and our attorney apologizes he was working from the old schedule which would put it out a week and it would have been you would have had a week to review it so sorry about that

022um so i do think it's good that this group is taking some time to to read through that and make sure that you feel comfortable with the bylaws and come back to it at the next meeting uh alice you have your hand up yeah i i i got got it back um it was i know the by laws do address the opportunity to establish standing committees and working groups and that's where i found rules might be more important because if we put if we develop standing committees that might go in the bylaws but working groups are pretty temporary and it would not seem to be useful or workable to have the formation of working groups have to go through this long amendment to the bylaws that kind of thing so that's that's my concern uh

023councilman brahan thanks i'm sorry to jump off the topic i i i'm getting some text from people who are saying they're trying to get in on zoom and they're being bumped and they're getting a message saying you're unable to rejoin this meeting because you were previously removed by the host ron suarez is one i don't know if his name is id'd out there but i just wanted to share that with you i didn't know what was the best way sorry to okay off the track here but people are texting me so it's like it's not letting zoom members in somehow okay no they can't join our actual meeting but right yeah i'm not saying any other participants shouldn't they yeah they should okay thank you yeah i'll i'll keep looking at that let's see if

024i can come back in all right i'm not going to add council member zinke if if someone uh wants to participate they could call in to that phone number and i think if the computer version of the video isn't working at least they can can use the phone number that's that's part of the media notice yeah what what number is that so that somebody can hear if they're listening that is there's a series of them yeah there's a oh go ahead well whatever the first one on my list is uh that's iphone one tap but telephone dial is uh there's an 888 number which is eight 888-788-0099 also 877-853-5247 if you dial in that way you should be able to get in also and you may have to enter the webinar id which is 933

025one one three hopefully that's correct listen if if those number if if those and those numbers are on the agenda which if isn't if it isn't accessed yet it's uh on legistar under our council meeting listing all right thanks um councilmember briggs has their hand up to you thanks i was just going to comment on the working committees and kind of relationship to the bylaws and maybe perhaps that staff can correct me but my um understanding is that um generally commissions and committees you know it's pretty typical to have have working groups i know serving on the transportation commission that's often something that um working groups do come up um they are uh they operate a little less formally obviously than sort of the commissions um one of the notes in the um in the

026attorney's comments to the bylaws was that whether or not they need to be noticed or not just really depends on how many people are participating in them in terms of the open meetings act and pieces like that i think typically they're you know sometimes they're noticed sometimes they're not um but we can kind of work through that as as we as we go with with staff and attorney guidance but um oftentimes having served on planning commission transportation commission there aren't necessarily a separate set of uh rules or bylaws to guide them they don't have to necessarily have to be identified within within the bylaws they're um just um sort of permitted by the um by the the commission as a whole very good thank you councilmember um it appears that there is uh there are

027a number of uh folks who are interested in postponing uh this agenda item um we probably need to make a formal motion to do that would somebody like to make a motion to postpone the adoption of bylaws oh i'll move second this looks like second ballon is that right i'll be happy a second um uh all those in favor of postponing the adaption of uh bylaws for the council of the commons center of the city say hi all right all right any objections okay not an objection just uh can we we sometimes we do a date certainly can we make sure that it's on the next agenda we'll deal with it okay yes is it is it acceptable to uh i think we could probably amend the um the motion to the next agenda that

028was good point councilman um next item on the agenda is review the center city center of the city task force um report um and there there are two items that are part of this agenda item uh heather um you know that there were we received some questions from uh some council members uh when you sent these out um would you like to uh talk a little bit about the difference between the the items and start off the presentation sure um just a moment let me get the screen shared sorry if you can just bear with me in just a moment okay so the first item is um the center of the city task force presentation to city council last march on march 16th which was actually the first day that there was the lockdown at

029city hall so this was the last live council meeting i believe i'm actually just going to play play you a clip from that meeting which is the center of the city task force chair and the vice chair presenting this information and it's a summary of the task force report so i thought we'd start with that and then just open it up to conversation and questions about the work of the task force so can everybody see the video that's paused currently okay i'm gonna start playing it we'll turn it then hi good evening hi everyone i am megan mussoff i am chair of the center city task force and miles i don't know if you want to introduce yourself and thank you for the opportunity to come and give you a little bit of an overview

030of our report and what we sort of come to as a group so let me make sure i can do that yay okay so as a reminder uh this is the task force there was a group of people nine of us community members and then two liaisons from city council one is uh council member hayner and other uh representative was council member smith and we represented a lot of different um i think experiences and expertise we had some urban planning we had some architects we had some students i'm a librarian right so we had a lot of people come together um to sort of work on this work together and you know there are just three of us here today but i just really want to really drive home that the work that we're presenting

031today was a group effort we never would have gotten this far without this amazing group of people to sort of steward this work and work together looking at miles to make sure i'm like saying everything uh as a reminder this is the the task that was given to the task force so we were asked to one engage citizens envisioning long-term planning and immediate and intermittent uses building toward the final vision for the center of the city on the library block and second to develop recommendations to help determine the next steps to advance the development of the central park and civic center commons known as the center of the city commons and this is just a little bit of an overview of the process that we went through so step one was to really think about

032all the information and all the work that had gone into thinking about what to have what to do with those spaces what to do with that land we had one round of soliciting ideas from the community and we'll talk about a little bit more about this as we go on today um then we sort of came back together as a task force to sort of review what we heard and develop some preliminary recommendations think about what opportunities we had to go back to the community to ask for information we again brought that back together and then used that information use what we heard from the community to develop a final set of recommendations i'm kind of talking fast because i know we have a short amount of time all right i'm going to give it

033to miles to talk about notification i want to use them well since you all have the powerpoint i won't go through reading word for word from it um but i will say that um thanks especially to heather we were able to use um really all of the city's abilities the contact um we used um digital contact email social media we physically mailed about i believe 6 500 um copies of a flyer that you'll see later on and then a big part of our contact was actually person to person and hearing people's ideas um and soliciting their feedback um we had a number of input opportunities as well um both at both of our open houses at our task force meetings and through our use of our ideapod on both library lot and on liberty plaza

034um and throughout our process we were but we were both pleasantly surprised and very happy to see the i've lost the audio is that just yeah no i think that's me as well i i had i don't have audio all right let me see what i can do this is all covered in the task force report is it not yeah this is a summary of the task force report this was the the presentation that was given to city council um i i can stop it if people feel like they know enough or have heard enough but this was really meant to give you some grounding for those of you who are not that familiar with the work of the task force to hear what what the work was well i recently read the test first

035horse report including its own summary so i just wondered if that was uh what if this was the same uh heather how long how long was the recording you're planning on playing i think that the total is 10 10 minutes but why don't we see if we can get the audio working all right let's see what i can do to sort of get people to have an organization engage in issues that were surrounding like what do we as a community do with this space and just a shout out to alan who is here uh and then also our colleague john who spent a lot of time um talking to community members during these two engagements and i think we actually have um two pictures here so you can see like it was an amazing opportunity

036to like really engage at sort of a deeper level with people from the community about what we might do with this space uh the other thing we did to gather community input is that we held two open houses so the first one was in november and we had about 150 people would come from the community and engage with us around a number of issues about uh you know who's the audience for this space ideally what kind of activities happen there um other sort of questions that we pose to the the groups and we try to have a very interactive open house style to try to get as many perspectives and many viewpoints as we possibly can to sort of help inform our recommendations and there's another picture from that open house the other thing we

037did is that we worked together as a group to design a targeted mailing one of the things that was really important to to the group as we did our work and and you will see that it's uh one of our recommendations for the work moving forward so we wanted to try to make sure that we invited the entire community into this process making sure that we heard um diverse perspectives made sure that we heard from um not the typical voices that sort of come to you know city open houses like how do we uh engage with the entire community so we worked together to send out this targeted mailing i believe we sent it to 6 500 people i'm looking at heather and we printed another thousand just to sort of hand out so this

038was another way that we tried to pull people into to the conversation and then we held a second open house in january and this one had about 75 people and i think originally as we were planning towards this open house we thought we would uh list some preliminary recommendations and get feedback from the community but actually what happened is that we found out there was just some open-ended questions some conversations some points of tension really in the community about what we do with this space so we use the second open house to really try to dive deeper into this like okay we're hearing this this need for housing can the space um move towards that uh what other sorts of things can we really talk about as a community to try to move this conversation

039forward feel free to jump in at any moment and then this is just another picture from that open house oh and then another picture from that open house all right uh i'm just gonna keep on talking let me know if you want to jump in okay all right so uh one of the things that was asked of us as a task force was to create a vision for the space and just as a reminder this is the space that is bounded by fifth and william and division and liberty and this is our vision for that space our vision is to create a space that is inclusive and welcome to everyone that is safe active and fosters a culture of peace and non-violence is easy to see easy to get to and easy to get through

040is flexible adaptable and sustainable and is inspiring and promotes lifelong learning and so definitely this vision has been informed not only by the work of the task force but everything we've heard from the community and i think one of the things we definitely want to drive home is that you know we didn't solve all the problems and in some ways we just started this work and so it's really important as this work moves forward that we continue to engage with the community to get further input to sort of bring them into the conversation one other thing you'll notice is that we've in our report we don't have any designs or anything of that nature any um very specific and concrete steps as to what should happen in the future um instead this is more of

041as was already said it's a step forward in a process that's going to be longer but it's also going to be very much community focused and community driven so even though we are not coming here with the answers we're still very proud to say that we took a step that we think is going to put us in the right direction for a somewhat novel idea on how to design public spaces awesome okay so that's our vision and then the other ask of us was to do recommendations and we have made six recommendations about uh the the future of these spaces so i'm going to read them number one is facilitate the formation of the ann arbor council of the commons this group will be uh formed to sort of think about programming and other activities

042for the space number two is schedule regular meetings of a center of the city block partners group as we did our work we found it is very very crucial to the success of the space that we pull in all partners that uh surround the space including business owners including residents including the library and other important uh partners number three is remove ground level parking on the library lot parking structure and begin efforts to redesign as an active public space it was very evident from our community engagements that having some sort of active space for discourse was really important to the to the community number four is authorized initial planning for the long-term development of the center of the city block as a priority under the city's master plan number five is authorized initial planning for

043the development of the public spaces on the center of the city block so a reminder those public spaces are the top of the parking structure but also liberty plaza so giving both of those spaces some attention and love and care and then number six is negotiate potential agreements or easements that allow the future expansion and connections of the public spaces on the center of the city block and so this is just an example of what comes out of our report so for each recommendation so this is the first one facilitate the formation of the ann arbor council of the commons included in our report is who we think is the responsible party for moving that recommendation forward and then a list of goals and action items to sort of help move forward that recommendation due

044to time i'm not gonna go through all of these but just to give you an idea of what's included in the report we wanted to spend a little bit of time and we've talked about this a lot but i want to drive it home that you know what informed this recommendation really was the community input that we've received and so you know like miles said we had a number of different ways to to gather that input and in some ways like we had over 500 people like uh respond to our survey right so we had a lot of information from the community which i think really shows an investment in this space there's there's a real desire to sort of uh form the future of what happens um we are also really informed by the

045past work that has gone into thinking about this space so this space has been a point of conversation in our community for a very long time now and so we really wanted to honor that past work honor those conversations honor the work that got us to this point in time and to build off of that not start from scratch and then the other thing that really i think informed us is that you know one of the things that is included in the resolution in our charge was to think about commons and commenting and i think i speak personally for myself that through this engagement through the people who have come and shared their time with us shared their expertise and their experience we've really learned about you know what is a commons what does commoning

046mean and how we might do something like this in in our community last thing so the last thing we did we sort of informed our recommendations was also thinking about you know how do we create sustainable and amazing public spaces and so there's a lot of research out there and so using that research using that work to help inform what we recommended to you today um the other thing that we wanted just to end with is that you know we were charged with a specific task and we had a certain scope but we wanted to make sure that we talked about things that came up during our conversations and definitely something that came up was affordable housing the need for more affordable housing in our downtown space not necessarily in scope for what our work

047is but we want to make sure that we let that voice be heard it's really important it's a strong voice in our community so we just want to like recognize that and then another additional consideration is that you know we tried really hard i think to try and reach a diverse audience or diverse perspective in our work but i'm not sure if we actually hit the mark so as this work moves forward how do we bring in more members of this community more diverse perspectives into the conversation about the future of the space and with that we're going to wrap up with thank you so uh i'm personally going to thank the task force members like we were charged uh with a very difficult task and we did it in about eight months in 15

048meetings so i can't say enough about how that group came together and i'm so proud of our work together i want to thank heather we would not have been here without heather's expertise and guidance and and counseling sort of steer us in the right directions as we plan these community engagements as we wrote our recommendations i want to thank council members smith and haner for your guidance and for helping us uh move this work forward and then really thank the community members for engaging in this for participating sometimes it got a little heated but i think it's a that shows the the care and the love that the support has the community has for that space all right that's all we okay all right uh do we want to um just move into discussion around

049the the task force report um given that the presentation was more of a highlight of the of the report um or what folks like to talk about um the presentation of all council member briggs i thought i would make a brief comment one of our callers asked why we didn't have a stakeholder from the universe district library here and just wanted to kind of highlight from the presentation um one of the reasons is because this task force report recommends that we have that um that that engagement is happening but it's happening separately from this group um that there's regularly scheduled meetings and that's something that um should be happening and and interaction between um certainly our group and and and stakeholders around that block as well thank you council member any reflections on on the

050uh the presentation or report uh sarah i think do you have your hand up next thanks this actually goes along with um what councilman breaks was just saying when i was going through the report and then just now but i think six recommendations that they made i don't even know who this would be directed to but i was curious like what the status was i think we know some of those was obviously formed with the council of the commons um and i think one was about the master plan and that's still on hold but this the partners group is that something that's happening and then i was curious about like our interaction with that group or i think just like any updates that anyone has i don't know how they're um that would be you

051on some of those recommendations might be helpful or yeah the partners group has not been formed yet this is the start this group right here you you are you are the beginning of all of this so the council of the commons which is you has been created it's a little bit different um than what was envisioned originally the council of the commons was envisioned to be an outside group to be an independent um either non-profit or some sort of entity that was helping move things forward it's now been brought into the city and created as a as a commission essentially but you are tasked so so i think things are going to be a little bit different for this group than what was originally portrayed and the the original recommendations but you were the beginning

052uh frank i'm sorry uh yeah frank and then then we'll have councilmember hannah uh i guess we're sort of moving into these specific six recommendations and uh the one i was going to comments already been alluded to that the partners uh the block partners i think this is a critical group um uh and it should it should fan out from there you know in the adjoining blocks and so on but i think that the property owners and the major stakeholders on that block and clearly including the ann arbor public library uh district library needs to be you know in informed and heard from and uh i think uh key to the you know the long-term development of this block as as a public park in the commons is going to rely on uh the involvement

053and participation i i see jennifer smiling there uh with spark uh overlooking the park in the plaza uh really uh and i encouraged tom to get that group organized and it wouldn't would include i i assume representation from the council of the commons uh to participate in that in that deliberation i've had informal conversations over the weeks and months and years and i'm confident that uh uh property owners uh and and uh groups on the block are are interested in the success of this and they're gonna be key to access and easements and so this is a a key linchpin uh of our activity going forward thank you thanks tom those are great comments um councilmember hayner and then we'll get jennifer yeah just i'll be brief um so a couple things one on the

054library and they are you know those folks are going to be part of this black partners group and allen can maybe speak to this more but because he he he went around and did a lot of outreach when he was on the task force and and we had kind of a weird relationship with the library like they didn't really necessarily want to engage initially and i don't know how it all ended up working out um but yeah it was kind of a weird dynamic with the library it was um uh how to best best describe it but it was like they didn't seem that interested in helping out initially and then they realized well one of these black partners we're all in on the same same block here so hopefully that has been been better

055and then number six we talked about negotiating potential agreements easements and so on uh during the task force it was i got i'm trying to dig it up in my email even as we're speaking i i sent a request way back when to our legal staff to create a folder or a virtual folder or however they do it to start pulling together all of the information about that block and it was you know any kind of easements any kind of deeds risk deed restrictions the lot lines the public utility ways everything and we just wanted to create a you know a resource it was all in one place so if things do start plans do start when plans do start coming together and things start moving around shuffling around we get a better sense of

056what's where what can be done who owns what wha how access can be granted and so on and so i think that maybe that's something i need to refresh again and just send that off uh mr crawford and our legal folks and say hey can we can we get a note there in your in in your uh in your department that at some point we need to aggregate all the information about all these parcels on this lot in a very physical way in a in a legal way so that we can see exactly what's going on over there and we had we haven't we had it generally with the task force but um i don't think we ever had the specific documents to pour through and i know they must exist and it's another another

057opportunity to use gis and so on that the city has to look at some of this stuff but i think it as we move further along in this process uh you know four and five especially we're going to want to see that so mr crawford i'm not sure how we how we'd even get that going but it maybe it's a task that one of us can take on or a small group can take on or maybe it's something that that has to come from from from legal or from planning and building services i'm not clear on that but yeah i can check and see where your prior requests uh you know if there's any opportunity that they did you know i think what happened a year ago you know a lot of things got diverted

058but but um i mean the city through its regular permitting process uh for any development um knows a lot about what's underground there's a lot there's some we don't know obviously when the underground deck was built they actually uh did learn a lot there as well so i um i'm happy to raise that i will raise the topic i suspect that until their people are ready to put in like monies to like do ground truthing or checking uh things more precisely um our records that we have already um are probably the ones that we could utilize so all right all right i think we've got jennifer and then alice my question is around the presentation and the report in terms of data collection and the fact that you know the the video itself said you

059know we had 500 responses that's terrific that to me represents less than one half of the percent of the population of the city if i did my math correctly so i'm just wondering is there i guess i feel like we would be doing our neighbors into service if we took one half of one percent of input and built plans and made plans around that and i wondered if if it's the charge of this commission or whose responsibility it is to solicit more feedback to be a fairly more representative group you know not only geographically um speaking if that was a metric that we used in terms of making sure all the words were represented obviously from a diversity standpoint but i would love to see us get to what as a marketing person i would

060consider a bare minimum which would be like five percent of a response rate um in terms of overall citizens opinions represented adam can i make a comment on that yeah please please mr property uh you know so so i mean that's a good point statistically as as uh the city developers plans one of the benefits of having this meeting in the public uh process that we have is that over time you have we advertise this stuff we make it available we have copies of it the videos so whether people are contacting us or we actually touch them we're actually providing an opportunity for people to give input whether they choose to we can't control um i uh you know the the commission can obviously decide whether they would like to do additional public engagement it

061would i think we would typically and heather is one of our experts in this area um i think we would typically actually have developed something and and get uh some reaction to it to really garner some input appreciate that thank you for clarifying tom that's i think my concern is just inclusivity you know the additional public engagement that's typically done by commissions is through these type of meetings and having people have the opportunity to do input to actually formulate you know public engagement a public engagement plan and to do open houses or gatherings or something like that that would require um you know additional work and time and resources to do that so we would have to talk about that in relation to the budget i think um and you know it might be a

062scenario where if you want to go forward and make recommendations about a physical design or something or have a consultant come in to start designing a physical design for the space and that would be a public process that would be the next i would see that as the next stage of getting that input saying this is what we heard generally what people are interested in for the space now we're really going to start designing it please please come tell us what you think on these design options good concern uh that uh you raised jennifer i've got alice and then you allen ellis okay um just to connect with what heather just said we're a long way from that um but also to go back for a minute to jeff's comments about the physical aspects of

063the space i think it's very important in fact it's critical to be aware of all those constraints and opportunities before we quote design something and we also need to understand what is at least mostly realistic that we can achieve um i had a conversation with another architect and uh it came up about these flying bridges and stuff like that we don't even know what we're bridging over and uh so my i've been thinking a lot about having a what a three three-dimensional digital archive of all of these things so that we can have layers about electrical access water movement of water the uh what the there i looked at an old structural drawing before they had built the uh underground parking structure and it showed places where the walls were to be prepared for entrances

064to the underground parking lot from various of the perimeter participants such as the credit union and the library and the first martin properties and all that well do we know anything about that at this point you know 10 years later so it could be very handy because if we have a question you know if we have it's like a digital folder as jeff was talking about a folder it's it's something we use in architecture and construction uh all the time to get started you've got to you've got to fill in the blanks and um i think that that i would like to see if we could have that done it requires a fair amount of skill and understanding of systems but um i'm not sure where that would come from whether it would be within

065the city or we would have to have someone on the outside um be paid to do it so that's a maybe we'll start getting to the idea of where money would come from for that um and then i wanted to comment on the not just on the um the uh summary recommendations although when i read the task force report itself um there were six of them and i felt that two recommendations two through six seem to be in our our uh area of um um discussion i guess uh and whereas the the one that doesn't seem to be very concrete is the commoning part which i think comes from the community rather than from a commission so maybe we should look at sort of a division of labor where that commenting part is a contributing

066is contributed or from the community that might refer back to the issue of public participation um i think that that really meshes together with uh those two things meshed together when you're looking for more public representation and and you want to start doing commenting i think that might be coming directly from the community rather than coming then taken down out from us to the community that might be a way to do it take a different approach and maybe get somewhere slightly different um but they also had action steps for these things and it sort of fell into that same situation there were four action steps and of those i could see how we could do two three and four which were the partnerships that we were just talking about and the um the the parts

067that early on were different of from what they are now in that we are including the whole block which includes the library lot so-called in the plaza and liberty um is it liberty plaza and um and library lane which you know kind of very different ideas have have passed through on that um and then also one action step addressed play structures and that that seems to be so much in an area of maybe community interest um i don't i i really don't see how a commission is going to get to that very soon so i wouldn't want to raise expectat expectations on it and i'm not sure that's as popular as as like the partners in the around the block i don't know but we don't know that yet it just seems like it's we

068need to find out a lot about the space itself before we start um booting pasting things on onto the drawings which doesn't satisfy very many people when you put a post-it note on a drawing but um so that's that's kind of a bunch of things i wanted to respond to what's already been said and what i've been thinking about as well uh we i don't think we can do everything as the uh as from from our our body out i think we do need somehow to not not really offload but to realize where the best efforts can come from for certain of these objectives and recommendations thank you else i think i think actually that um share some of my thoughts too um i think uh alan you're up next and then we have frank

069yeah well i quite follow along with what alice is saying i think the uh the activist element is the initiating committee that's really designated by the city council to do this stuff set up a playground whatever whatever is needed in some way of engagement with the community the uh the task force to comment on a couple of these things the task force had before it the opportunity to make a broad outreach to everyone in ann arbor on all available media uh including a direct mail to the 72 144 separate addresses and the task force decided not to do that until there was some real commitment to actually go forward with this and so that is after the agreement to go forward then that wide outreach to the 72 144 mailboxes in the internet facebook and

070twitter and so on it goes forward to actually engage the people in what do we really want here we have a place and let's do it and the task force was seeing the uh initiating committee following from the task force was seen as trying to find that energy and direct it toward the playground or the kids or the garden or the whatever it is and get it done and i think it is appropriate to send out that notice and the uh the city council said there should be a notice to everyone who was involved in the task force activities to follow up and seek to engage their continuing participation or renewed participation and that is an outstanding task between the initiating committee and heather representing the city the outreach and how we do that is

071still we've got to figure it out but that outreach is very much part of the task ahead but it's also to see that there are things that are going on right now that people are are doing and is not exactly at the extent to the unless people want to set up and work in committees to look at kids and look at gardening and so on but there is a gardening group there is all this stuff happening and we need to keep in touch with what is happening what are the broader concerns that the council is looking at thank you alan um frank uh i guess i'm commenting uh responding to a comment earlier uh you know you always want more participation more involvement i start with the more than 26 000 people who who voted

072in november of 2018 that they wanted this park in civic commons and granted that's one one data point but it it's a critical one um here we are how many months out uh 28 months out from that and we we really haven't begun to transform uh this directive from the public into a a working uh space that benefits the community uh i i participated in um both of the open houses the task force had i attended not every meeting of the task force but several um i was impressed uh by the turnout at those meetings they were during the winter months i recall or november and i don't know sometime in in the winter um i i i i felt there was a robust response and and granted it doesn't represent five percent of the

073population um that number rings up albeit i think that's what we had to get in terms of petition signatures before we even got on the ballot and that was a heavy lift um and we we want to we both have to show movement and action and things are happening i think that'll draw more people uh into back into the conversation but you know if we don't show uh progress uh why would people uh carve out time for something that they're not sure is going to happen i i think we have to demonstrate with the help of tom and the city council etc that this thing is going to happen and i think we're going to get serious attention going forward uh thank you frank i think uh i think i could i can see see

074uh why you would say those things too um stephen and then councilmember briggs thanks adam i guess my my question is with regard to the physical space we talked a little bit about this at the last meeting but in because i've read the task force report and i'm familiar with some of the the concepts that are there but it's a little murky to me specifically what space we're talking about because i see conversation about easements discussions around the whole block discussions around library plaza but when i walk through the site if i'm understanding it correctly and sort of the use of the whole space the parking structure remains library lane still remains as a vehicle path for people to get their vehicles into the structure there's the surface lot is the most obvious space that

075something could be done on right but beyond it seems that the discussions certainly with the task force were much broader than that um but the physical space that we're dealing with i think is much more constricted than that so that i don't want to get too far down these discussions or even in the discussion of engaging the community again unless we have clarity about what we're engaging them about right what specific space are we talking about and so i guess i guess i'll phrase that as a question what space are we talking about where are the boundaries if it helps the center of the study task force was tasked with looking at all the public spaces on the block so that included liberty plaza library lane and uh kempf house and the surface lot this

076group i believe my reading of the resolution is that you're focused on the surface slot correct no consequent i would suggest that we are bound by um the city charter in terms of thinking about you know what the charter amendment um um what what voters passed in terms of looking at the public spaces on that block but i think to your point stephen that that's that's some of those spaces you know like library lane is is clearly a um there's some there are some real constraints that um as alice pointed to earlier around this space um that we need to be aware of and we do need to very clearly define what that space is uh councilman briggs you had your hand up too did you want to add any other questions or comments i

077did um and i've probably lost a few of my thoughts at this point um in terms of so i i think that building off of um we clearly want to build off of the work that's come before us when there's been a fair amount of visioning work that has happened to this point um and that's it's a good starting point it got people excited there's some good um work that we can build on i think more the more that we can be brought to this commission in terms of any supporting documents or anything like that that we should be reading through before the next meeting just to make sure that we have as much of that information to really build off of is important um i think our task is to take this from um

078vision to really tangible um to steven's point around very starting what's our what's our what's exactly our physical space that we're working with and um start putting into um working towards the reality of of building a successful space here um perhaps because so much of my activism has been done in transportation i have a very long vision and timeline that is often in my head so um when i look at what's been done over the past couple of years i see that as progress we have had um this is the second group that's working on that we've had you know a task force that that went out and did really robust community engagement really i mean quite robust community engagement when you look at um the sort of feedback that we often get around development

079projects or different things like that and so i think we have a good starting place to be working from obviously we have a lot of really difficult um issues that we're going to have to wrestle with in terms of how do we actually build out this space both in the short term and the long term where does that funding come from um you know we're working through all those questions and figuring out how we how we make this happen um but we'll probably just have to um i think that's that's gonna be our challenge of of figuring out you know what the what are those concrete steps that we can be taking each meeting to be moving forward but um from i hope that the community sees faith that we are we are moving forward

080with this this is this is how progress happens it's it's not always it's not it's always quick but um as long as we're moving forward um i think i think we're delivering on the promise uh thank you customer briggs and alex you had your hand up then you may put it down yeah i i did i guess i just briefly didn't want to answer the question about what space we're dealing with having drafted the uh the language of proposal a it says we're dealing with all the public lands city-owned land on the library block and that is the surface of the library parking lot the library lane the air rights above it and liberty plaza and the kemp house that is the boundary of the commons how we knit that together as a urban central

081park and as a civic center presuming some kind of indoor facility as well as outdoor that's the area that's the task and how we do it best is there there's some different drawings different ideas and all the particulars that we need to know from the engineers about the constraints on the space and uh i did have some consultation on that that suggests we could actually build over library lane and so that is uh another possibility and the interest that the martin people have and possibly the city taking over or the commons acquiring the noble house is part of the picture that is including the area and the carriage house and so those are all questions that we need substantial new information from the city but the space is everything that is there owned by the

082city or under city authority in some way or that might be acquired and that also raises the question of easements so there could be entry ways into the common area from william street and some [Music] easements and having to get agreement with the other property owners there thank you thank you for that uh clarification ellen um definitely else i do want to go back to you to make sure that you uh have an opportunity to oh um every time someone says something i think of two more things but then by the time i get there i don't have them on my head again um but to in order i like i was looking at the agenda and i was seeing that we have an item coming up the removal of parking and it and i

083know that there are issues with that as well as others that we don't have all the information yet and i would like to say that that parking and the access to the underground is now have some new uh information sort of impinging on that because of the plans of the dda and to deal with fourth ave and and uh fifth two well fifth and division i guess and they have you know those ramps are are involved in the turning turning patterns if they go two way with the street and everything that really is going to impinge on on getting to the parking lot and also underground you know that kind of thing we're going to have to really immediately start dealing with because we may decide we're going to do one thing and then these

084these street projects come up and uh whoops we have to completely do a little spin and adjust to the impact of that and that brings up partnerships too you know the library and the dda are the big big um definite partners we have to have a very strong relationship that benefits all sides in that case but um we don't know enough about it right now we do need to get more specifics about timing about engineering about availability of electricity and water and all that stuff so kind of go back to the the physical program as robert black would say we need to somehow get a handle on that so we may be getting to some of that when tom helps us out with the removal of parking very good points uh els i think we've

085got frank and then um tom this is an interesting discussion it's easy to get weighed down by the complexity of all the issues on this block and i'd be the first to admit that this is this is complicated i'm continually trying to make it a little more simple and look at it in a linear fashion i'm interested in what i call establishing a beachhead on the surface of the parking structure and to begin to convert that into a welcoming space that begins to look and act like a park in commons i'm not suggesting it's the permanent solution um but until we demonstrate to the community that we're willing and able to move forward on a directive that the the public gave us 28 months ago um you know we just need to begin to take

086visible steps uh it's not the final solution uh but we have to we have to act and along with that we have to do all the other things have been alluded to here careful planning you know there's a the complexity is amazing but the surface of that lot electrical connections adding wi-fi putting some park benches uh welcoming people i think these are things that can be done in the next uh you know six to eight or nine months and and i'm encouraging that we uh we find a way to move forward while we do the the deep longer term uh planning and execution uh tom thank you um i find myself like alice i i've got like a ton of ideas written on a sheet of paper that i probably want to follow up from

087earlier here but let me make a few comments and see if uh i can help uh us get some traction um so starting with maybe the most detailed there's some questions about what the site is and what's there and what's capable let me just say so um the the there is wi-fi already present from the library and they are have agreed to uh maintain that for the intermediate time frame so uh the city and the library can coordinate on that but uh that is already present um electricity is already present um on the uh stairwell that is in the middle of the uh surface lot it's a little bit high up if if i understand it correctly but there is access there there's also access at the street lights up on uh along the way

088but you need advanced requests for us to turn those things on the only source of water it is on the division side below grounds it is i've got to understand it still there's a meeting tomorrow to look at that a little bit the question is is what do you what do you want to do right i mean i think we're getting i think we should stay away from the engineering myself for a little bit we need a goal we need to know where we're headed and then we can work with the site on how to execute a goal but but is the water that you need drinking water clean is it gray water um you know one issue you will have just to make you aware is the surface of the structure um is warrant

089warrant warrant has a guarantee on it warranty on it we cannot pierce that without jeopardizing that warranty so we you know the engineering or expense or whatever may be a little challenging to figure out but though you can solve engineering problems right it's just more engineering so um i don't think we should um overly concern ourselves with that at this time um i would suggest for us to get some some uh uh that what might be helpful for us is to break this into pieces um maybe have give some direction on the short term like and i say short term i mean like plantings i hear i hear interest in plantings the intermediate term that's a whole separate kind of effort that requires a separate stream of thought and analysis the longer term which is

090probably involving more of the block i don't see the uh i think we need that stream we need to work on that i might not launch that next month because i think we need to be focused on on the things we can execute right at this moment so i think there's an opportunity to maybe break ourselves up or at least organize the agenda or something like that in order to break these into streams but overall for the city to help you facilitate achieving something you want to achieve i would recommend clarity on where those decisions are going to come from i am a little um it is not clear to me uh this is an advisory body um to counsel so ultimately i think decisions rest with council especially when it comes to funds um

091i i uh you know i would say that um i'm sorry i have a distraction here at the home life in just a second that got me off track so on the decision making i've heard a couple of um this is a big deal right i mean there's not clear i hear one group say that uh the initiating committee is in charge of programming i see the presentation tonight that says the council of the commons is responsible for programming um it was my understanding when the resolution passed in october i don't know if that was the true intent but my understanding was that initiating there had not been progress from march to october and uh a council member hainer particularly i believe as a sponsor said let's get this going and the initiating committee was

092to do to fulfill an immediate step to get the ball rolling but now that the the commission uh is set um what those roles are i'm not clear on so one thing that i think that would be most helpful for progress is clarity on where those decision points are going to come from that we should look for action from um and then i guess one one last thing on well i'm sure you're going to want to talk about budget and the surface light so i'll get back to service london we can do that on your agenda on the budget you know the city's budget is going to come out in the next couple of weeks it'll be public i want to temper your expectations um it is a very challenging time for the city i

093think it's important for you to recognize that uh when you think about a city budget there's revenues and there's expenditures loss of revenues is a hit to the city it doesn't help you right fulfill your goal but it is an economic reality and then on the expenditure side because we expend public funds we have processes we go through um and rules we follow in doing that and so commissions don't actually get budgets um they like the only commission i can think of as a budget is our police commission and that's a little bit of a unique situation however you know what i've heard you say is you want to be um be able to be publicized to have live meetings to have city staff support those are things that do not require your active approval

094for expenditure but are things the city can do to facilitate your productive uh movement forward and so you know i've heard those things uh and i just wanted to highlight that on the budget side so i think thank you for uh uh for all that time and i know that there's going to be some other items here too that will keep going uh that you can speak to additionally um we have rita and then alan thanks um i just want to say that back to the the issue of some of the activity of the dda and the streets i actually see that as a potential plus because my understanding although i did not attend the workshops they had recently um my understanding is that their goal is to make things more pedestrian friendly and i

095think that will be a benefit to this particular project so i think that i would welcome being um working with them in some way so that we can incorporate some of those changes or give feedback on how those changes might affect this location um and i guess that's all i want to say right now thank you rita uh alan and then frank well i i appreciate your comments uh tom especially what's gotten done and that wi-fi is hooked up but basically the the the initiating committee or those people who are trying to get stuff together are blocked because the cars are there and we can have program and we're trying to do this earth day thing or but we could just like any other place of a park we could just get the cars off

096so that people can set up some chairs and begin to hang out and be like any other public place and the uh fittings i'm sure will come will come together because people want something like that and it's really somehow taking from you directed by the city council to the dda and get the dda to revise their uh contract that they say until for the management of the surface and to get the cars off and let the people who want to do the garden and play with the kids and so on be able to do it the cars are in the way and it doesn't take the council of the commons to say it the city council has already said it twice get the cars off so what what is blocking it that's really and whether

097it's who's a business it is is less to the point then it should really be getting done and it's kind of directed to you to move that and i will just wonder what what is needed to move it i think that's going to be answered in the administrator's report section yeah that was in your report and so i i'm just impatient you know that's about me that that's okay so i think there are i think there's actually there's a number of items here that are that are coming up in these questions that are um that i'd like to um that are related to the administrator's report and so i think if we can hold items there uh we can ask tom and bombard him with a number of questions um related to uh the agenda

098item at hand though um i think frank and then councilman breaks um what i might do is wait because i was going to bring up the budget since tom had done that but if i should wait until his report then i'll just uh hold my comments until then what's your advice adam yeah why don't we do that i feel like i feel like we've had a lot of really great dialogue on on the um the actual task force report and review um and the presentation it feels like there are there's a strong desire amongst uh folks to figure out how we want to plan out our next steps right um and that does feel like it's a little more beyond the um the agenda item that we're on right now um i agree uh council

099member brings did you want to add anything before i was just gonna urge us to move on on the agenda i know we had stated a goal at the last meeting to to try to wrap up meetings by nine o'clock and um i think we probably should move on i i would agree with that sentiment all right um so uh there's no action required on this uh this item i don't think so um why don't we advance to the next item the administrator's report there are uh three items uh noted and actually a fourth um with rita's amended uh agenda uh item uh related gardening and so we can go in order we can also be a little more fluid too tom why don't you kick us off as you see fit so uh i'm

100sorry i didn't have the agenda in front of me so i should have seen my prior comments perhaps for that um why don't you kick me off with the first topic and and i will go for sure so first one is removal parking so on removable parking this is um uh so i was looking at this it's it's a little more complex so the last i saw as i looked back into it was um mr ladder lazarus my predecessor in february of last year had done some work toward this and the conclusion after consulting with um if i remember correctly the dda library green conservancy and some others was that a shorter term what he called one modified option there were three options laid out and he recommended uh one modified which was have the

101deck open for parking during the week and have it closed on the weekends and um you know that that is something that um you know assuming i understand who's making the decision and if that's there's a body of mind on that um that's something we can pursue um that is separate i want to be clear something like like that is very separate than closing for an event right so you close for an event where you're going to have people aggregate with intentionality with programming or something that requires a permit and because we have to be concerned about certain things like access for fire vehicles or um you know whether if you've got a tent whether it's safe and things like that if it is just an open passive area like you'd have if it's cleared

102on the weekend a couple things that the city needs to understand you know i'm looking into right now so there's a part the way this works is the the deck is owned by the city the deck being the surface as well right but it is operated by the dda the dda has an agreement with the city in order to do that in that agreement and part of some other agreements with the city the dda pays all of the debt service on that structure they perform all of the maintenance they collect all the revenues and they do all that the bonds that were issued to construct that deck i'm checking to see if removal of this function or activity which has a removal of revenue stream is a permissible thing under that bond covenant so that's

103something i'm checking into but we would if that is permissible um then uh we also need to change the the parking agreement and the way that that would work is the city would issue notice to the dda saying we would like this cleared and in this case it might be we would like it cleared on weekends when there's not like a special event like an art fair or something like that i mean we would you have to qualify that stuff but we could issue that and then work with them on uh what would happen thereafter but um in order for us to close and one of my hesitations in doing that is from a public safety standpoint i need to understand what's going to be there you don't just throw benches or tables up right

104i mean um who's going to clean that right if it's dirty you know there's care there there's security and maintenance um and safety to have to be um understood in a plan before we do something from a public perspective um and those are all things that we can work through but we actually need to have that conversation and some work done in that regard um so i think clearing the structure in some form i go back to my prior comment i kind of need to be clear on who's looking to do it how long that kind of thing and i'm sorry i forgot to mention one other thing before as far as assets on the site there was also a comment about in prior readings about this about restrooms um and i would point out

105that while the library is not open now um and they have restrooms that would be available um the the blake center across the street is so there are waters water and restrooms available in the area that are publicly available at this time we can we can be a little more fluid or we could and do questions kind of throughout um why don't we go ahead and do that stephen you have your hand up and um we can also uh you know come back to things we're still on the same agenda that's fine i guess my typical question right where are we talking about are we just talking about this that surface lot with like it's got meters at it right now it's not you don't have to drive down into the structure we're just talking

106about it's like a dozen or so spaces adjacent to the library right on fifth there is that what we're talking about if the city were to close that area it would be just that enclosed parking area not the library lane because you need access as alice or either somebody was referring to with turn lanes and stuff so it would be just that uh metered area um if you wanted more area we can talk about it but that was my understanding in this conversation no that's that was mine too i just wanted to clarify thank you yeah um when we when we uh keep going here um because we do have some other items and to be conscious of time um do you want to touch more on the budget i know we got into this

107a little bit um but uh but it probably but it was a further conversation i don't have additional comments i can try to respond to questions it's just that that really comes out next week but i kind of shared what i had to share on that sorry okay frank yeah i remember you you had a question go ahead um well just just commenting on uh tom on your uh report on the surface area uh i know there's complexities everywhere but uh and i don't understand uh how the dda interacts with the city in a granular way but one would think that the downtown development would include open space and public space and welcoming space and it's it seems like uh the dda should be embracing this at some level and i don't see it uh

108they should be looking for ways to to help turn this into a productive public space um on the budget uh yeah you know i i get these wonderful shout outs and tonight was another one um of course you i i only get quoted on the portion that that people want to uh make about my uh utterances about fundraising from day one i've made it clear that for this to be successful the park and commons it has to be a partnership between public and private sources and so what i'm going to suggest is for for the budget and i'm going to ask council council persons haner and briggs to sort of take this on um we have raised 35 000 which doesn't sound like a lot of money but it it is 35 000 i have

109considerable hope that we can do uh better and much better than that i would i would like to see see the city anticipate further success and to allocate i don't know who whose budget it would land in it's obviously not the council for the commons budget because we don't have one but to match uh up to fifty thousand dollars in in private gifts uh in the next fiscal year for a total of a hundred thousand dollars that can be used to help activate this site in a uh an initial way and it's not the final solution here but let's really any if you want to pull in some dda money somehow through a magic wand i'll take that money as well and so will the citizens um but i think we we need to break

110the law jam and and see something uh substantive and creative and meaningful happen uh to form this public and private uh partnership i think that's what the block partners are all about those are businesses that have a stake in the future of this space and uh we have not in any way we the library green conservancy have not approached them um but they they should they need to be brought into the conversation and start to you don't you don't take a stake in in something unless you're asked for opinions and advice and and input and uh we we need to uh turn to these key block partners to begin to bring them into the conversation once they begin to see what's possible and that they are being heard and that they they have a an

111influence on the future of this project they're more than likely to support it in financial ways that we can't quite understand yet but i've seen it happen i'm actively working on fundraising uh but i didn't i didn't say i was gonna run to raise tens of millions of dollars you can you can quote me on that um so back to you adam thanks frank uh alan yeah well i've been the one that says this this is something beautiful in the center of the city money is no problem and there's lots of wealth in ann arbor that would finance it that it's a partnership with the city that's all well and good i basically support frank's notion about that but in terms of the full vision i think that there's probably there's private money who benefactors

112for ann arbor and that what we should be looking at is to make something beautiful that engages the community that really touches the heart of ann arbor uh i do though want to press forward on getting the making this space available so that it can be uh made nice and welcoming and have some tables there and have some people and if it needs that we need a maintenance committee to me with the police that meet with the dda that meet with you the city administrator so that we figure just how to do it we should do it because spring is coming and people would like it and you can certainly find chairs and so on and there's not a lot of cars that are on there ever so it isn't like in this day and

113age it's going to be a big loss of parking it just seems that it could be done and it's about time so i hope that in some way we can figure out how to move this forward i did get the word from community services that probably our earth day is yes it's going to be approved and the cars would be off for that and they should just stay off but they should be off sooner than that and i hope we can figure out how to do something that really brings a good energy into the spring in this place yes sir if i can make a couple comments on that um yeah i'm excited about the um the event you're you're planning um alan my understanding is the only thing left to do is just have

114the proof of insurance and then everything from the city is approved so that's great um as far as the um the a couple of comments as far as the dda um you know i uh i could uh work i've already had discussions with the dda on this i do think it's important for everyone to realize the situation we're in um economically and i i can't help where we were a year two years ago the dda has had a tremendous financial hit tremendous and if you want to learn more about it look at their presentation recently the city council or their recent board meetings um i mean their revenues are down huge so that is not a place that you we we just kind of go and grab money right i mean they they um they

115are challenged there's been a significant reduction in the support that they've contract their contractor republican parking to manage the structures they have shrunk that a lot there's a lot of concerns that they have with finances and they're having to be very careful on how they manage their monies as i do want to kind of separately from that uh caution us about parks the ballot language did not put this in the city's park system um this is a public open space and i just want to make sure we're all aware of what that means that means that i mean the city itself you know it doesn't matter what you are we're going to help uh move this forward but but um the park system is a body that has its has some dedicated funding to it

116that would not be available to this this effort because it's not in the system um so i just want to clarify that point we'd have to find other ways to do it and then lastly on the fundraising my experience i've been on some non-profit boards is the most successful fundraising uh happens when you really have the vision that you you know something people can buy into it's not just the reaching out and the conversation with the stakeholders but it's that compelling story on why it's right to be there and that's why i really want to focus everyone if i could um on what i think is most useful is to continue working on short medium and long term what it is you want this to be things will fall into place i think um as

117that kind of if we can make progress on those things i think you'll see things fall into place we all every the community the organizations of the community your neighbors in the site we all understand how things work and can work toward a direction but we need that direction uh thank you thank you for the the um comment tom uh as well as the answer those questions uh frank and then rita and then jennifer uh just a quick comment something that i'd like uh was to work on between now and the next meeting i i am hearing uh i think correctly we need a vision we need a process to begin to pull together and unify around a set of dimensions for for this uh park and commons and i think it's going to come

118in stages but i don't want to pre pre-guess or predetermine that uh but i think we need uh a facilitated working session of this council and a gentleman that whose name has come up before uh robert black who has been working with the initiating committee robert lives in vermont but he he's had 40 years of living in ann arbor he comes back a couple months a year to visit grandchildren and to work on elements he is he has volunteered pro bono uh to help us organize a system of working sessions he's not trying to determine how many there are to to move this along so we can build consensus around a vision and a plan and i really think we need to uh seriously engage this idea he says it doesn't have to be him

119he's willing to uh work with someone in the annaber community i know there was concern about going to someone outside well in our mind uh robert black is ann arbor uh he's had a long history here he continues to visit uh and spend a substantial amount of time he's very conversant uh with the issues on this uh and other projects that he's worked on in ann arbor so i just lay that out there and i think of uh adam and alice to work between now and when we have to set the agenda for the next meeting to try to create a mechanism and i think tom's absolutely right we have to we we need a process to uh solidify a vision and i see phase one that of that is what i call establishing the

120beachhead but there's there's more to it obviously down down the road and alan is more articulate than i am about that but i'll stop there but i put that issue on the table adam if i could comment on that real quick um uh from a process perspective frank um i would say the city um you know we would we take the effort to go through kind of an open procurement process to ensure that we have um you know independent uh yeah mr black no no comment on mr black but we usually go through a public process i mean i i i don't know him but he seemed very very um very an arbory to me so i get it my comment is that um we go through a public process so that we are completely

121transparent uh people understand there are no hidden agendas in this it's a it's a trust building effort that we go through as we go through that and i and i would welcome you know if we do that i would welcome his participation but i think it's important to follow those kind of processes as we move forward to ensure no one feels excluded for any reason that's fine and someone is going to have to help walk us through that process but uh you know i understand that and uh he doesn't feel it has to be him but he he's eager and willing to participate if that ends up being the the end product of the process um uh being cognizant of time we're 11 minutes to our uh desired uh end time here um i want

122to uh make sure we get jennifer then councilmember briggs and then i'd like to see if we can um move on to that we i know we added an item uh to talk about gardening too and i want to be uh congress of rita's request there jennifer i think my feedback will be really quick um i i'm a huge fan of crawl walk run and so i think when we look at the space that's available adjacent to it in terms of liberty plaza are there opportunities when we have things that we're sort of trying to pull people to engage in within the space can we use liberty plaza first and then show capacity to grow without because i feel like that would again in the vein of inclusivity maybe get support or additional buy-in or

123community recognition of the need for or inspiration around or creativity and creative thinking around what an adjacent space would be so we're really focused on i feel like this a big hot topic today has been moving the cars but there's an entire cement slab of equal space right there that's not being utilized so i'm just i would just encourage some thinking around that if if we're thinking about ways of activating the space as a way to get support for and buy in for what the vision for this commission is uh thank you jennifer um councilmember briggs i think that's a a great idea um jennifer had in terms of really trying to um do more with liberty square plaza i think the the community recognizes that there have been some real successes with that space

124in recent years and also some some challenges that we that we want to keep on working on and i think city and police have been very cognizant of some of the safety issues that are around liberty square plaza i think one of the big concerns of if i'm recollecting correctly around the amber district library's concern around an unprogrammed space was that adjacent to them was that we could see additional challenges happening in our community and i think what we want to see is building a really successful public space and demonstrating success as we move and um taking care as we go is important um going back to um mr crawford's comments kind of at the beginning around kind of different options for thinking about removing parking um i do have some concerns about thinking about

125if we're gonna remove parking just for the weekend in many ways that's actually much more challenging than removing parking um all of the time because if you think about putting up uh picnic tables or plantings as rita is about to talk to you speak to those are things that are more permanent in nature um and so i think there are some additional challenges to thinking about it um just on a weekend basis and it may just be being able to go through and understand um you know do we have the ability right now to to remove that parking and what what realistically does the space look like right now if we remove that parking um that may not be that maybe not be demonstrating the success that we want to um on day one um

126so to jennifer's point we may be able to demonstrate some of those successes um by initially focusing on another area of that of that space that um liberty square plaza initially as we work through and and really um develop those strong short-term and long-term plans thank you councilmember briggs frank just quickly i i i want to support jennifer's uh idea i think and jennifer and i have had an email exchange about this i think a working committee or subcommittee needs to be organized hopefully by the next meeting or on the next meeting agenda on security and public safety we need to to bring the the police department in bringing in interested parties i think of uh you know the homeless community organizations ground cover i'm sure i'm not thinking of them i i'm somewhat active

127in that community in various ways and i i think it's time that we develop uh you know a working code of behavior and contact to turn this into a more welcoming space for the entire community wouldn't that be a wonderful thing to achieve in the in the next period of time and i think that needs to be wrapped into the concerns and considerations for the library lot it's it's all one uh one topic and uh two spaces that will be linked in one way or another but that that's enough for now uh thank you frank uh rita you've had your hand uh on and off so i want to make sure you i changed my mind at one point um i i just wanted to ask a question um liberty plaza is a park right

128now correct so um just look so i just want to establish that and second of all i feel like we have the opportunity to keep the um the whole commons in in its structure but to use some of the policies and procedures that parks use on managing open space and so i feel like that would be something that we should look into um what is it that that parks do that that manage those spaces um and second of all with respect to liberty plaza it does need a major redo and it has for probably 20 years in my opinion um there's just too much cement there to make it a welcoming place and i i'd love to be involved with redesigning that where that stands in terms of our where we go right now i

129think we need to figure out thanks definitely adam yeah um uh thank you i was going to make the same comment parks has a um a well-vetted and experienced um set of guidelines and rules for parks as you can imagine in ann arbor um they've been tested along with the years first amendment rights and you know all that stuff and it's a when we when this develop when the development was going to be done in this site and this there was this open space planned along with the um the high-rise uh that was the uh negotiated conclusion was that they were going to use the park's rules even though it was going to be maintained by that developer so i would encourage you to actually start with the park's rules and you might find them

130very helpful thank you great um so uh tom you know the next sub item here interim activities and we sort of added a sub item to that uh with rita's uh if it's all right with you could we address uh the gardening um uh i am the gardening question that rita had posed sure so um i know it sounds easy just to plant some flowers uh uh however it is a little more complicated my couple complicating factors that i would think that we need to think about um the my understanding is you're talking about having flowers in the beds that are there not bringing on new things if if that's the case um that was my assumption um those beds have the irrigation system in there in them um if you're not aware of that

131and and so uh my suggestion on how to move that forward you know i think we can do it expeditiously but is to probably have an mou with maybe it's the lgc library agreement services or whomever and then waivers of release from any of the volunteers so when we run any city program and we have volunteers that work with us we have to worry about damage to a public asset whether that's uh you know concrete whether it's irrigation system plants whatever and we worry about the safety of the people we work with so for planting i would imag i would envision that we would probably close a lot we don't really want people um doing that activity while there are cars there we would uh probably we would want uh these these kind of forms

132signed by the volunteers which is i would imagine not problematic to people um and then and then uh you know i think ideally you know the mou could set a framework for how this and other activities going forward um would be handled um you know one of the key things being um really the safety and maintenance that we need to keep forefront of mind so okay thank you perfect tom uh just real quickly are there any other uh uh um not explicitly enumerated items you wanted to talk about as per your report um no i'll just mention kind of jumping back to a little bit on how the surface could be used um i i talked to the dda there was a question about is there's storage space there um so i don't know if

133that means tables or chairs but to the we you know it is we could look at some storage space uh in the structure um where a key could be provided to someone you know that's not something that the dda would probably move for you but as a commons group if that's what they wanted to do i think there's some opportunity for some solution there i think allen had asked about that earlier so good perfect thank you for uh bringing that up too um okay uh council member briggs uh yeah i just had a question around um gardening and kind of how that was going i mean obviously there's since one of the advantages to some degree on the space already is being managed by the dda obviously there's plantings and guards um that are around

134many of our surface lots downtown and um and thinking about what the dda was already planning for those spaces and how that could be accentuated because they're already maintaining garden beds in in other spaces and how that how that relates to the thoughts of the initiating committee i guess would be helpful um thank you alice really quick uh along with erica's comments uh you know cleaning and keeping upkeep i guess is what i'm really talking about talking about storage as well um but upkeep seems like it would be easier and republic has to clean the whole structure seems like cleaning that surface would be easier without cars when it's necessary to do something without the cars i mean you know they do they already do clean it so i it seems like that wouldn't be

135much of a change for them but maybe that's naive of me to think that it's a different kind of cleaning if you have people with food i mean it's not like a car driving through right you're talking about disposable stuff being yeah yeah i get it but still they they do they do have to do some cleaning so part of it you know may be shared uh alan i think you're muted allen how polite of me uh the comment about the dda having its uh plantings and plans and maintenance or otherwise that's just not so we tried to contact the dda in republic parking who were the people that actually were taking care of this and really echoing what tom said dda has cut back considerably republic parking is cut back considerably they can do

136nothing more than minimum maintenance and have no capacity nor actually apparently the human knowledge of what all these plants are we've asked what is everything what's their condition and we are here to help that they say they have maura thompson says they don't have any staff to do anything there so the gardening coming out of the community is really what is needed and we're trying to do so that they know exactly what is happening and can be in the process till we can figure out a better process so we are we're now at uh 902 so we're uh we're a little bit past i want to be conscious of uh trying to move forward are we are we satisfied uh at this point with uh administrator crawford's uh update there are obviously a lot of

137other questions and also some suggestions that came out of that too uh rita you have your hand up thanks um yeah my question is really um kind of the impatient one um and given the season where we are right now beginning of the growing season um and observing that the the beds that are there in that open surface lot um are look like they could use some maintenance some help some refreshing that would make it a very pleasant look even if we didn't even use it for for the um open spaces that we want it could look a lot better so i'm just asking how do we get to a point of making a decision on whether people can proceed and i understand that the dda wants to know what is planted and have a

138hand in it but i did get the impression that they were not available to provide us with help on it and as far as liberty plaza i guess we would have to work with parks and their plans for that tom i guess the question just to follow up with that is there um you had mentioned a few actions specifically about what you would wanted what the city would want to do is there a way that that um i mean i don't think necessarily you need a uh actual recommendation from this body on this is that the case or is that something the city would be looking for you know i ideally we would be maybe a meeting or two ahead here where your bylaws are passed and we understood how decisions are going to be

139made and all that so i don't know i it would be helpful to hear from the group uh if this uh if there's what the support is for an mou closing the deck you know to get some flowers in as a non-permanent thing but a temporary thing and then secondarily if there is still interest in opening up the the space um uh where is that interest is it uh weekends or more permanent than that it just it has a lot of ramifications we would have to kind of start sorting through okay and i don't know if you want to wait till the next meeting when we actually have those rules outlined um on the plantings is obviously time sensitive so you know unless someone has an issue you know it would be helpful to know

140if somebody has an issue a concern around that i guess i guess why don't we ask that why don't we ask a question you know without taking a formal recommendation uh rita i know you've expressed and i i have to apologize i'm not as much of a grower myself so i uh what what are the season that we're looking at here what's a wonderful time well this is still a little early but this could be a time where um some preparation um cleaning the surface and and preparing the soil for for um planting soon but it likely could be some things later in this month uh and it's also possible that may might be okay but but i i wouldn't want to go later than may the way our weather is changing um we probably

141would want to get things established as as soon as we could i guess so i'll just ask a question just does anyone have a concern with rita and mr crawford starting to talk more about what specifics would go into the the items that he described regarding planting the mou um you know between a potential third party and the city and also the liability um waivers things of that sort don't they don't we didn't we used to have uh annual volunteer plantings on main street i i don't see how much different that could be yeah i believe the main street is done by the main street district i don't think uh the the the business district i don't think that is a city managed event well they have girl scouts and stuff like that helping with

142that so you know and there has been planting in um liberty plaza as well some day is in may and that's a planting around that now this whole downtown area that's based from liberty plaza we tried to cooperate in that last year but everything got closed down for the uh health situation so i guess uh uh kind of going back to that question ahead is is there any concern with with uh that uh action proceeding by any member of the council of the commons so i guess i'm sorry i should probably raise my hand not just blur out questions um the idea would be to have an mou with the dda did i hear that right and to get some sort of closing of the surface lot organized and then have waivers i'm envisioning kind

143of similar to maybe the adopt-a-park volunteer kind of uh waivers that people sign those are the those are sort of the specific action steps we would want to have in place before we have people showing up doing plantings yeah i i those don't seem like high risk activities for us to do you know in terms of not having our bylaws in place and so forth it would seem that that's something we could probably pursue everything now in the next meeting so yeah so do we have a raise my hand um do we have do we have a uh like the who does what do i meet with do i draft something who who can i reach out to to get that process going i can i can reach out to you later uh great thank

144you okay excellent uh frank you have you had your hand raised patiently for a while yeah well gee i've been talking too much but i don't want to vote on that um back to the this idea of a working session of the council and and we're going to go through a process where there's a rfp or whatever uh whatever process that implies someone's going to get paid for something and we're back to you know the public private partnership i didn't get any response from erica or jeff whether they're willing to uh as as council people willing to uh bring forward uh a proposal for some additional funding beyond uh what what you know covers our administration of this council's activities and um i'd like to hear whether that's a possibility yeah so council member uh

145haner at his hand up first and we'll go to customer breaks thanks um well you know i i i put a request in when we put in our budget requests sort of generically with mr crawford about this and he and i spoke on and i think he spoke with you too councilwoman briggs uh about the the notion that um deferring revenue is similar to spending uh similar to an expense and so the way that and and the the numbers weren't put out there when mr crawford ably explained the relationship of the contract with the dda and the debt service that is bound to those bonds and so on and so um if if i if i recall our conversation i didn't take notes because i was at work but um the debt service on the

146that is bound to the revenue that that uh potential revenue for those surface lots over the course of the entire year that's a response which is about 270 thousand dollars something like that is if there's 130 000 worth of debt service bound to that if i if i recall right it's about 130 000 a debt service attributable to the surface lot we're referring to and so in a sense i mean that's very real money and in a sense if we're asking to remove the parking and we may be also asking to they may turn around and say okay who's going to pay that 130 000 or who's going to pay 270 000 or whatever that i don't recall other number and so in a way um you know by such means our budget is created

147i guess i'll say and so you know if i say hey i'd love 50 000 for the center of the city to have some some room there to do some benches and some uh you know minimal improvements to the space we're also saying removing the we also have to recognize that removing the cars ties into this agreement that the dda has for the bond issuance on those and and we're also asking them to forego 130 000 or 270 000 in revenue and and and so it's it's more of a challenge than just saying i need a little money for center of the city i guess is what i'll say although i think it's a perfectly legitimate idea to say we could put a placeholder in the budget to potentially match uh uh funds that are

148raised privately i don't have a problem with that i don't know what the mechanism would be though so i have to have that conversation offline with mr crawford i think it's interesting notion that we try and do that to not only spurn private fundraising but just sort of you know make that make that commitment um it's just a line item but i don't know the mechanism for that so can i just respond uh we've gone from uh the previous city administrator uh saying publicly through communications uh implying that we would aggregate the money that was being paid for those spots on the surface and that would in some port portion be contributed to the park and commons effort now now we've got it now we've got a debt situation uh implied here so no i

149i think that that i think it was just moving things around in the budget line items i i mean i won't obviously yeah he's not here to speak for himself but you know he was he was a supporter of this notion mr lazarus was and uh you know he was he was willing to shuffle those things around i think mr crawford is too but we have to recognize what's what's going on when we do that right right councilmember briggs thanks yeah i think um councilmember hayner spoke to a lot of a lot of the issues um that i wanted to raise i mean it it's the reason we should we should move cautious carefully and deliberately as we as we think about what happens on that space just so that we're um because there are

150some some real real cost and significant budget implications at a time when our budget is particularly tight i think i'm not concerned with moving to council to at some point ask for um matching funds i think i think we're a little ways away from that based on where we're at in the discussions right now um i sounded like in terms of what you were talking about with mr black being able to do some pro bono um work with us thinking about really moving past um visioning you know there's some there are some baby steps we need to take first before maybe we get to to get to a place um where we would be looking for additional funds i think obviously at some point we're going to be looking for some some some real funding

151to to move towards design work and things like that but um i think we have some work before we get there um we've got a couple folks on deck here uh jeff europe and then alice yeah i was wondering if uh tom you or anybody else could comment on the fact that i believe in the in the recent federal money that's been allocated to the cities and states uh there is some budget or there's there's some money that will come to ann arbor i i heard a figure of 12 million dollars for various purposes um is there any news about that is there any relevance of that to this issue um though i'll have comments on that within the next couple of weeks with the budget um recommendation i don't have anything tonight for that

152uh alice well it just seems like um i'm thinking of the cleaner fish in the uh in the in the ocean where they helped the whale get stuff off their skin it seems like we could use volunteer forces to start at the edges of the problem area and sort of at least clean up a little bit i think that's where rita's coming from perhaps um and i think we should make those little steps entirely possible and and supported in whatever way we can because otherwise we just won't have anything happening until we get over these larger issues and um it would be really refreshing and motivating i think if we just saw things like some flowers blooming when when we hadn't seen him for a while yep i would agree with that um so uh

153we are about 16 minutes past um i'd like to see if we can um take a look at uh uh how we want to build the next agenda um and uh and we can even um you know take requests that's what we did for this last one um we can abide by that process instead of more formal process as we adapt bylaws next time um jennifer i just want to be clear on the process should we if we have agenda items suggestions do they go to heather do they go to you adam can you just be clear on that so that we have a path forward to end the meeting yeah so i think that's a great question i would say that we should send everything to staff so send it to heather um i

154would also like to uh maybe not tonight because we're over but i'd like to try and structure our time so that we can discuss really what agenda items look like for the next agenda so that we know a month ahead of time um and uh so that would be my my preference if we can uh going forward and recognizing that we're a little late tonight maybe we just send items to heather and then heather ellis and i can get together and put together the agenda that's how we did this one but eventually um maybe after the next one we we really start a discussion during the prior meeting does that sound like a good idea to most folks yes okay all right um if that's okay then we'll move on to public comment you're muted

155heather yeah robert black uh you should be able to talk now good evening this is robert black i'm the stake in the ground guy for the the work session um thank you for talking about that again it's not about me it's about you and i don't know how many hundreds of hours i've sat through over the years with planning commission energy commission city council chamber of commerce everybody and you guys have done an amazing job tonight of respectful listening and beautiful process here and i just want to acknowledge you for that i love the idea of baby steps and i think that tom has suggested something very important to you which is short term intermediate term and long term and so my suggestion is if you can have a working session and you have i

156think it's article 9 in your bylaws you have some opportunities to create a working session that would be very helpful you were doing it here tonight but it didn't get grounded exactly in the kind of structure that you would have in a facilitated work session you would you would have a situation analysis or assessment right up front and begin to establish these background materials that could be presented to you you could study them first and then have a a systematic discussion about it and it may be through different working sessions one would certainly accomplish a lot with a single focus of the shorter term pieces but you need to get your roles and responsibilities clear and your decision structure clear first i applaud you for this work that you're doing it is not easy there

157are many complex factors in this but you have a host of people around ann arbor that can do this danny miller tyson is a senior partner as al blix that i've known for a long long time 30 seconds um carol anderson is is another one but the big thing i wanted to just to end with is that build your alliances now and reach out into the community we have a green up day here where we have everybody in town helps clean up the town we have a set of ladies that handle the flower baskets uh these planting planters that have flowers in seasonally and it's the more you can do to engage the conversation now from your group as a catalyst for this commenting that that ms ralph was talking about i think you could

158be the source of that public discussion going forward and just do it and i highly encourage you to try to find a date for your working session to do something whomever you use to facilitate that thank you mr black uh heather do we others i don't see anybody else with their hands raised okay excellent um uh well i think we can probably close uh public comments then and um the only thing left is if there's a motion for a german so moved move second by either all right a few folks all right so uh i apologize that uh we're 20 minutes over but um uh we will uh work harder the next time around i think it's been a really great discussion and uh look forward to hearing ideas around the um agenda and then

159we will work to incorporate a time into the next agenda for a future agenda building uh so that we have that uh as included here i think that's about it we can uh wrap up wonderful to see everybody's name thank you thank you you