001david esau here sarah fuller here sophie gray yeah john catarsky here peggy leonard juan santa young peggy is here she was just muted yes i understood uh council members you have a quorum thank you [Music] next on our agenda is the approval of the agenda do i have a motion to approve don't move thank you john do i have a second one thank you david any discussion [Music] all in favor aye aye any opposed great agenda passes um are we doing approval of minutes next i don't see it on my agenda but my agenda also says draft at the top so i'm not sure uh i guess approval oh i'm seeing public comment approval of minutes that's what it says so that's probably two separate things let's do the approval of the minutes from last
002meeting david was that a motion to approve sure do i have a second thank you sophie um any discussion of the minutes that was a pretty interesting meeting i had just a couple really really minor things on the second page under design area one there is a random a at the end of that uh bullet i don't think that i can just strike that and then i noticed sophie's last name was spelled wrong at the bottom of page five um when she's talking about the ann arbor woman artist changing over to the huron river art collective so just two minor things two else one t [Applause] i see venina's thumbs up does anyone have any other comments about the minutes no all right david and john or david and sophie would say those are okay
003changes to move forward yes all right um all approval all in favor of the movement and it's as they are all right great any opposed all right the minutes are approved um i'm going to assume that public comment comes now and i'm also going to assume unless bonita tells me otherwise that we don't have anyone from the public here no one from the public allison okay um and we don't have any special presentations tonight either is that correct no okay um i know at the last meeting it was mentioned that potentially first martin was going to come tonight so that well first martin has made a submittal um but it was more engineering changes in the right-of-way than it was art so we are we have run it through engineering first it's in engineering getting
004reviewed uh for acceptance before we bring it back to the art folks to you folks okay great um so the next thing on the agenda is old business with the pickle street murals art proposal um so i know i saw as an attachment a couple different proposals from them um specifically it looks like they are running with the um walkway that comes up by the broadway bridge and under there um they have a new budget of it looks like three thousand dollars they were going to be raising on their own um are we just looking at that and as a group discussing it and then approving it is that yes sophie um i happened to walk through there once today and once a few days ago because the weather was nice and i must say
005that anti-graffiti stuff is really really depressing it's prison like it's it's just upsetting really and um it would be nice if we i know we we do to some extent but if we could have before they put all that stuff on which must cost quite a bit that we have a decision about how we can prepare for the fact that we would like murals and that we would like people to be able to paint those walls and actually i find personally i find that anti-graffiti stuff actually more upsetting than graffiti of which there is some on the other side of the river and it's i mean it's slightly messy but it's not upsetting i don't think anyway that's just my thoughts on the subject sophie i haven't been through the area is the anti-graffiti i
006was understanding it was just like a primer is it not just a primer or what does it look like um well it's deeply grooved so that it would be hard to paint it's it's very textured and deeply grooved and then it's got this kind of um very flat gray sticky looking kind of paint stuff on it and it's i mean i think they included a picture of it in one of their presentations the uh pickle guys little guys but um yeah it's it's it's just miserable really it was also extremely wet down there um i saw that there was a teeny tiny drain actually under the bridge but the rest didn't have any water management which was considering how much snow was melting and turning into ice was a little bit hazardous in the first
007trip but that's not connected with us necessarily so can you scroll back up vinnie it looks like are they doing what's the plan so there's going up the walkway with a highlighted walkway it looks like and then are they going under the bridge with their painting or just up the sides where that yellow is do we know because it looks like the path goes under the ridge right uh is that the right way around i don't know that's not the right location they were interested in doing it there but i think their proposal was for the other tunnel wasn't it but this is a new proposal that uh benita sent us like 20 minutes ago they say as well as under the bridge right yeah okay but the proposal you the venita just sent was
008the new tunnel and path between main street and depot street i'm assuming that's the new underpass below the train tracks you might be looking so not the one are you seeing the one that she's got on the screen right now no i'm looking at the 2021 art proposal yeah this is something she said at seven o'clock today the very last attachment um and so vanita since this is the most recent one that we've received i'm assuming this is the one they are most interested in moving forward with yes so i i guess banana are we supposed to review this and say give it our blessing basically and then i then it goes to city council or what's the um i guess i'm not familiar with the process we would be looking for your comments on
009it and ultimately a recommendation to go forward or go forward with changes or not go forward we would then uh take their proposal and i want to say enter into negotiations it's really not negotiations we would enter into an agreement as to the terms as basically what insurances they need when they could do it what they would have to provide in the way of safety precautions permits etc did i get that right vanita yes and in all actuality i i did get this update about three o'clock this afternoon so it is probably different from that initial one that i attached to the packet but i did add this one i don't know that we're expecting you all to make a decision today we could do a few other meetings or if you've got some questions
010about it we can certainly do it at a later time or you can send me your additional comments and we can go back to them with some additional information if you you if you're needing that as well and just one follow-up question so if we say yeah we love it we want to move forward does it have to go through city council before you do all that um stuff you were talking about craig or not no uh technically not because it's under 25 right uh i i the thing that i think we are missing which you folks may want to weigh in on and have some comment is you don't know what the actual art is they are proposing you know a location you have samples of what they have proposed but you don't have
011the actual proposal and i thought i saw in the proposal where they said they would come back with designs for our review at some point if we wanted that yeah because it was part of a community process yeah yes i i would i have no problem with that but the final go-ahead would be contingence on your approval agreed i like that it seems reasonable to to encourage them to move forward with that public process and provide whatever support we could in terms of promoting it i i would think we should encourage them to answer any questions you have we enter into an agreement for the the art the process and as part of that agreement we outline what their public process will be and when when you get to approve it so they know what
012the steps are and so you folks know what the steps are and a quick question craig on regarding that um just as you're saying some of that would actually be reviewed by the city attorney's office and blessed through them as well yes even even before yes the agreement would have to go through them oh yeah john um well from my point of view one i think they're qualified and i think we should let them know that second i really like the concept they're coming with a budget and uh they have an idea of where they want to do it i'm not completely clear exactly where they want to do it the one the pickle street mural co-op pdf shows three design areas my question would be and is that consistent with the same document that
013venita shared with us so one uh i think i would like to know exactly what walls they're going to plan to paint uh yeah johnny what that venita is showing it's called ann arbor public art commission application aaron lakeland julian hanson and that's specifically the the route under the broadway bridge and connecting over to um [Music] the pathway by the river yes this is one of the three from their original presentation so that's narrowed it down that's their design area three is that correct is design area one i believe design area one because that's broadway street is what the proposal okay in the one that was sent today it says proposed location under concrete underbridge concrete area under broadway street near huron river okay so we've we've got the lo we've got the location and
014they have in design area one identify specifically six areas six different uh sites so if that's correct i would just like to confirm that uh i think there are six sites or just examples of places that could be painted well then i guess my question is exactly where they're going to plant it i mean tell us precisely the wall and precisely what artwork they're going to put on the wall i think for us to make uh any kind of an evaluation one we like we think they're qualified you know we like their work uh and we like the project idea that you know i would just like to know specifically exactly what law and specifically exactly what art works well that will come with a design that we would get at the second approval yes
015okay well that that's all i that's all i'm saying i mean if we can give them the feedback it's positive you know we feel they're qualified we we'd like it to go forward but this is what they would need at least that's what i'm saying um sophie and i can't see all of you at one time right now because you're on the side small so if you if i don't see you raising your hand please feel free to speak up oh there's the little thing yeah um i i was under the impression that they were aiming first for the pathways in towards the the new tunnel but i could be mistaken the one that we've just been looking at is the one which is already graffitied and and um which i mentioned earlier um not
016the bit on well i can't remember with a bit under the bridges but certainly the lead up of those two lines showing the pathway that is graffitied right now um uh with some black lives matter graffiti and things like that uh mostly but uh yeah the the tunnel was the thing i thought they were aiming at first but i could be mistaken and they might change their mind anyway so yeah it's a good idea as john says to ask them where they plan to start and what they plan to do there uh as soon as they have a better idea themselves great and and let me explain to that to you all how this original proposal was submitted it was submitted through the public art web page so the initial attachment was what they submitted
017through the public art web page when he sent this one today um i i believe he wanted to put more detail than was allowed through the middle on the web page and if i'm correct in reading what he said to me this is their current proposal to us right now with this location no other locations are being considered at this time and then if you're asking also about the uh what type of art will be placed and where we can certainly clarify all of that after we get more information and detail from them i would assume that they're going to do like any other folks are going to give us some ideas of what they may want to have on some of these areas and but again you would have the opportunity to revisit all
018of that if i can jump in the purpose of the agreement would be to nail down and describe in more detail the locations for the art installation and the process they would have for proposing the art whatever engagement process they are proposing after they have perspective art chosen they would be coming back to you folks for the approval of the art that would be we haven't gone through this process with a donation like this before but that would be my expectations for the process so craig i i think my expectation would be more in line with what you were saying before um so at this point it sounds like we're all saying we like them we like their enthusiasm we like their their previous work we think this is a good location for art we
019would like at some point before it moves forward more details about exactly which walls would be covered and i think we'd also like to review their public review process for the selection of the art prior to selecting the piece um and then also at the end once the piece is selected then review the work yes that can be done in the agreement the agreement can cover that great um that not only the location but uh approval of the public art selection process just if they can't start their public process until after our next meeting they're starting that in may and then trying to get the design and all the details approved through the city um you know sometime this fall i'm not going to be able to paint it until next year i i am
020chuckling internally as you say that like in the city that's that's light speed at city range i i see trying to get this through the attorney's office so my goal would be to get it through the get the agreement drafted with them as soon as we can get review from the attorney and maybe share it back to the art commission in an email format if we should be so lucky to get it done ahead of your next meeting so um do you need us to formally say go forward with doing that chris okay so can i have a motion to let craig and me to move forward with an agreement with these folks thank you john do i have a second second thank you sophie all in favor aye aye i i i would like
021to comment now that you voted on it if this is successful i think we have a model or we could extend other areas in the cities to this to these folks so i am excited about it and i really want to make it successful yeah i mean we could model other projects or other people who are interested in doing stuff this kind of stuff too yes so all in favor say everyone's all in favor any a post great okay if i can find my agenda i've been moving all my papers around okay new business so um the new business stuff is all related to our fundraising committee which i think we had originally thought we would talk about in the working group but we can talk about it here if you want deb you want
022to talk about it here um do you want me to introduce it or would you like to okay so um the fundraising committee working group met and we were discussing one of our goals is to figure out how we're going to be using the um interest from the endowment um the community foundation has encouraged us to use it on an annual basis however we don't have to we can let it roll over from year to year and grow and use as needed or we can kind of decide no we want to take it out every year and spend it on x or you know we want to form a working group every year that's going to decide exactly what we're going to spend it on so we didn't feel like we should tell you how
023we're going to use it we thought it would be better to discuss as a group and kind of um weigh the ideas i think internally we kind of discussed saying there isn't anything specific we want to spend the funds on at the moment um and don't want to just take the funds out and let them sit at the city so unless there were specific ideas people had or projects they had their heart set on blessing i mean certainly if this project we just discussed needed some money for permitting or things like that we could look at those as options as well so kind of open up the floor for conversation and discussion about those funds deb is there anything else i needed to cover before i opened up a floor um no i think opening
024it up to the floor is fine um i was one of the concerns that i've had is that by bringing monies into the city um uh into the city uh system while we may actually be able to say those are funds for these purposes any monies that come into the city may actually indeed be just encumbered later by the city and so i do have some trepidations about pulling money into a city fund if we aren't immediately ready to use it and i just had a question what are we talking about in terms of the funds the amount the large amount about five thousand dollars okay right now that's the fund total or that's interest that's the interest that's what we can spend even though the and it's not certain what amount we would add
025to that every year they estimated it to be currently with the current return of about 1700 added to that every year so we haven't taken it out for several years which is why it's at the number it's at right now sophie i'd just like to ask a question because um i was discussing with with somebody else uh recently the idea for projects where citizens would have some of their own things painted or businesses would have some of their own things painted so like whether it be the dumpsters behind a restaurant or whether it would be someone's own garage door or building like there's a beautiful one on i remember the fifth street or somewhere where they painted the whole house and it looks great um [Music] uh there i mean there are other things you
026could maybe paint like that but i'm just wondering whether it would be um possible to offer subsidies to people to cover materials and maybe something towards the artists as well if they wanted to you know like a matching amount or something if people wanted to do something in their own home and we thought it was a good project in a good place yeah i mean along those lines we've also we've talked about you know wanting there to be more public art within the neighborhoods sort of along those lines you know um because a lot of our funding and a lot of our projects are kind of within the dga footprint so we don't really get in like the cip projects don't normally hit neighborhoods so this could be some of the funding that we could
027you know suggest neighborhoods apply for or individuals apply for matching funds or things like that uh travis and when the fund was initially set up was there an express purpose for why it was being set up that we should try to honor as well yeah you missed all this fun stuff so we just a couple months ago um originally the fund was set up for maintenance and repair um and we recently updated the um bylaws or whatever that's called the agreement so that we could expand that to inclusion of marketing and purchase of art so and specifically we did that because in recent years the city has taken on the maintenance and repair and put those into the departments that hold the works so ideally there wouldn't be a need for funding for maintenance and
028repair that's still left in the agreement so if we wanted to use it for maintenance repair we certainly can but we thought that it was much more exciting and a lot more there was a lot more opportunities with the expanded language so the community foundation um board actually voted on that a couple months ago and made that change good question sarah um i was wondering if uh part of that budget might be well used for the pickle street art project for marketing in order to get uh the word out because the whole idea is that this is the community coming together painting together and you know in that proposal i don't think that it included a budget for marketing and i know that last meeting we had talked about ways to utilize you know potential
029press um and things like that but that is not guaranteed so um you know maybe putting a portion towards uh towards marketing would be a good thing especially if this is going to act as a template that could be repeated and a community event that could be repeated in the future sophie yeah on those lines i'm wondering whether we might need something for the golden paintbrush project because um the publicity department i guess was going to put it in various places but i feel like an extra boost to make sure that especially since it's been dormant for a while so that people would hear about it and you know i'm not even sure how people hear about stuff these days so um but it might need an extra little push to make sure we do
030get some some nominations and we should all be nominating i mean we should all be telling our friends and relations and everybody neighbors about it so how is that i guess we'll get an update a little bit later about how that's going i don't want to derail our conversations but yeah so definitely marketing of whatever specific projects are happening within the year could be something that we say we're going to take a certain amount out each year to put towards marketing david one thing for a longer term consideration there are a couple of things in the cip none of them imminent but you know relatively small projects but we're ones just because of the type where it would be a shame not to have some art but we can't probably justify enough money for the
031full public process with the harvard arts center and all of that that we've done on some of the other big ones so having this available to fund an art selection with a much less rigorous or elaborate process would be really valuable potentially just to keep it in our back of our mind yeah i mean that's one of the reasons why it might it might behoove us to leave the funding there and have it grow and grow and grow because you know there we'd be able to have um more of an impact with the more money we have you know and actually like purchase or a piece of art you know if we had enough money in there so travis i saw your hand go up no okay go ahead sophie yeah there's something to be
032said for that but on the other side it's also possible that if you do things with it then people hear about the fact that you're doing things with it and it then breeds you know more activity on that front whether making more things suggesting more things or raising more cash so um there's something to be said for spending it as well definitely sarah uh picking back piggybacking a little bit off of what david was saying it uh reminded me of our conversation with the parks department actually and there are some small uh you know kind of repair budgets that the parks department has for playgrounds and if we could contribute even a small portion because they're small already um to maybe make those into artistic projects or to kind of help push that idea that
033would be you know a way in a small way to get more art in neighborhoods as well deb i saw your hand go up for a second did you i just wanted to pull us back around to all these are really good ideas um and we could decide that we're going to have a homeowner's uh program for beautifying you know the garage doors or the or we could decide that we're going to have a uh a public park initiative although that seems like we might again so something that was more overarching that we could actually solicit and uh gain some in you know ideas for and then say okay that's a 500 idea we're going to take the monies out um in terms of marketing i think that we could probably do a both and
034where we may want to remove 500 every year for the express purpose of marketing whatever our our uh um programs might be and expect to spend that amount so we take a small amount out and plan to expend it in that amount of time while letting the uh other principals sort of gather up for these special projects i think what keeps bringing this up to us is the fact that the foundation would very much like to just give us the money once a year and that's easy bookkeeping for them and it's an easy regular thing i'm just not sure that it suits our needs at this point unless we're doing it for a very small targeted amount that we're sure we're going to spend every year like on a market i like on marketing efforts
035john i really like the idea of marketing um because we've done very little of it uh i would i think we have a marketing group i don't know if it's called marketing it may be something else i would like to hear i don't know what we would get for 500 i guess uh that uh but the point is i think i think that i uh i i like uh deb and sarah's idea of marketing that we that's really something that we haven't done well enough i think so if we could and that money is seems to be uh identified or clarified that we could use it that way and i think it would be difficult to get money elsewhere um but the city has a you know has a marketing arm that i think in
036the past have been very open to helping us so um i like the idea uh that uh that sarah and deb suggested yeah i think that um taking a small portion out for marketing we've got a couple projects already on here that we could spend the money on makes sense the marketing committee could look our work group could look at what a normal amount makes sense and come back to us with that number as far as the other special projects you know i think that this pickle project could be a great example for how someone comes to us with an application with an idea how we kind of work with them to formulate the idea come up with an agreement get our work installed and then once we've done this that one time around we
037can probably model a process for people to individuals or neighborhoods or businesses to apply to us with their ideas and as those come up we could look at this as a way of helping them and supporting them either through marketing which is what it seems like the pickle street guys might need or um in other ways you know was matching funds or whatever does that sound like kind of what our discussion has been been okay cool um so not groundbreaking anytime you know this year but i think it's important to us for us to do some marketing and you know we've been wanting to get the communication out there so that'll be great deb i think maybe the group that this falls under would be the communications group and so they're about to meet i
038believe um in the next little while and so we can bring that um to that group to talk about and then we can probably think about when it makes sense to have that draw for marketing it might be right in january as we head into uh the uh golden paintbrush nominations for instance or we might think about a regular one-page ad in the observer for instance because that's such a community and locally based um uh enterprise um and so i think that there's an opportunity to to figure out when we would take an amount and how much that might be and bring it back to the group benita i saw you come off mute did you want to jump in you did see that thank you i wanted to say something about the golden paintbrush
039awards right now we've received a total of seven proposals right now and as you're talking about marketing i'm wondering if in there if we could look at local vendors do some street walking and ask folks to put up flyers we could use the the flyer that is already part of the page and share that out with other people um and just as deb said uh perhaps an uh an ad in a local i'm not sure when i say paper anymore of what we actually really have anymore um but we are here early and we actually only have um seven right now okay um i'm happy to take pliers around if you are ever in the office and able to print them i can come pick them up okay i'm gonna i'm gonna look to craig
040to see if it's okay for me to hand okay i can certainly get some packets ready for folks i can send them out um and and and i'll let you know when those are ready awesome perhaps a communication group could come up with a list and everyone is very welcome to suggest places where those flyers might go i mean it used to it used to be and hopefully it will be that people would seal us arts flyers at sweet waters and places like that and uh obviously downtown home and garden is always welcome welcoming to things like that too and some other places so we should probably just put together a list and figure out how we would get the flyers to them and i'm impressed that we have seven nominations i think that's terrific
041i wouldn't say only i think yeah okay yeah i i think that when sophie and i started on this we knew that with the pandemic and everything else going on we weren't we were kind of thinking people might be distracted and that maybe it wouldn't be right on their radar so i feel pretty good that we have 7-2 so yeah they all kind of came in at they all kind of came in at one time um and initially i was worried that um even with within the city of ann arbor website um it's hidden just a bit so i might try reaching out to communications a little bit more to see if they can be um more visible and more prominent in a different location did they post about it on facebook i'm not i'm
042not a facebook so i'm not and i'm not familiar with the city facebook so i have not checked that i know we've got some other um community uh community venues that go out to multiple residents we were also supposed to have it within the newsletter and the i think it's called the wastewater for residents as well i haven't seen those things so i will probably reach back out to robert and ask those questions if that's okay okay great great as a as i'm thinking about the the pickle street mural company folks too um do you do you know if there was a concerted effort at all to communicate with like the campus art community and um are have we i know that i'm not all the students are here but have we um also shared
043with them these not that they might be participating in public art well honestly travis i'm gonna have to say no um so i would look for other folks to help me do some of that i would think the penny stamps gallery and or penny stamps um what's it called dab i'm gonna throw that out to get in touch with but we'll put that on our list if we have something that we want to go out to the student body at u of m uh there are several newsletters that um could pick that up and send it out and so um if if we have something prepared to go to the campus body either asking for rfp or for participation perhaps in pickle mural painting when the time comes we should be able to get that
044out to multiple thousand students i think i think we're we're thinking of pickle shape because they're students but i think that what we're hoping would go out in those newsletter is the um paintbrush golden paintbrush so there's that flyer i don't know if that's something that you could send out to those groups for their newsletter the flyer we should be able to email with that worked up um i think if we're asking for nominations from that group um we can certainly uh look to add that into some of the announcement areas um of the newsletters sure okay sarah um i was wondering if we could do a digital version of the golden paintbrush flyer as well and basically put together an email that we could send to business owners as well as you know dropping
045off flyers that would include a graphic or some type of image and suggested copy that uh you know just asking you know this is a great award that we're bringing back after you know however many years and would you mind posting this on your social media uh we know you're a business that supports the arts and we would you know greatly appreciate that i know sophie mentioned you were at york uh uh off of packard um with an art show that they had so there's so many businesses that you know i think would would definitely love to put that on their own social media feed uh with a link and um that might be a good way to do that digitally as well yeah another another group who i would very much like to advertise
046this or share it on their facebook page would be council members i mean how nice for them to have a lovely piece of news to to put with a picture on their uh on their own facebook pages so i think we should try and get them to do that too as well i shared on my personal pages and i announced it at council meetings but i don't know how many of my colleagues shared it so mentally exhausted we probably have to ask them once or twice i can easily send out another email to them with the information thank you travis all right um so we got derailed a little bit there but that was all good discussion and i'm glad we had it um we can jump back to that conversation if we want to
047during the special projects um the one other item and within the new business that the fundraising committee wanted to bring up was we are tasked with writing a grant well we test ourselves um with potentially writing one grant this year um and began the discussion of well how are we going to find that grant opportunity and we're kind of wondering if the city itself was enrolled or subscribed to any of those grant forums or online communities that had all the grant opportunities that we could search through um like there's one called flux that you can do and if not if there was specific ones that either council commissioners that we should potentially get a subscription to to find grants i can't answer which ones we belong to um i i guess in my section of
048the world yeah they're they're pretty much federal and state funds we are chasing and we're chasing them for infrastructure we get those notices from semcog and from eagle and from other parts of the state that's a question i would have to ask some others in the city to find out which ones we belong to i would also ask which ones you would like us to belong to if you had to pick one what would it be and what it's what's its cost so that if we aren't there we can figure out how to get you there i only know of a couple but i know them from non-profit work i don't know if they would be ideal for city applications so i would have to do a little digging on that side yeah as i
049say i have to dig to find out who we most of the grants that i work with we have channels for those but i will admit that art is not my everyday grant chasing with um americans for the arts and culture source have lists somewhere um i know that culture source has a list of current grant opportunities they're all really coveted related at this point um americans for the arts does have a couple grant opportunities um on their website yes um i guess our hope was that we would subscribe to one that would have a much more extensive pool than going to much a bunch of individual sites and and trying to find the best opportunity well no i was thinking they would have a list rather than you know going to yeah they i
050mean they don't have a list of like all the grant opportunities for art they have a pretty narrow list um on each of those sites there are forums that they pool and collect that information and that are much more comprehensive but they have like monthly subscriptions to or annual subscriptions to participate in those and that's the fee that i would be interested in knowing what it cost and just for example when we looked at the flux one it was didn't i say did i say fifty dollars a month and they would be like so it'll be like 500 for the year and that's i i would believe that's pretty doable if you end up getting a grant it's fine but if you don't it's painful city's definition of painful is different than yourself thank you
051david well we wrote a grant that we didn't get so we've we've gotten over that hump at least all right so i guess we'll touch base on that again at our next meeting or in the interim we can email about what we figure out um in regards to that please let us know please let me know what you find that i can desire because i don't necessarily want to wait to the next meeting okay and also you know of course we're all kind of embedded in the arts community if you see specific opportunities that arise um send them our way um i know like last year there was a bloomberg one that came up and it was like this is doing a week okay so those come up and we can consider those as opportunities
052as well um so next on our agenda is the report from staff um we already talked about the proposal from first martin for their art and that it was more engineering than art at this point uh the we still have the wall that on the the railroad side of the tunnel available for art right now the city is not committing that project because we're still trying to close the whole allen creek firm opening project and find out how far upside down we're going to be on it but that may be a location for pickle street in the next round if they need to help me what am i missing i think we were going to we we had the information about expanding the portfolio in general as it relates to the initiative that mayor taylor
053wanted to move forward reaching out to the art commission on the possibility of looking at black lives matter and lgbtq opportunities for art throughout the city it sounds like it's an initiative that the mayor is very interested in um and and possibly um sharing some funding and not really completely thought through totally um and i think we need some additional conversations with the mayor i know that travis was working on some pieces of that with mayor taylor um so we tossed that out just to let you know that there are some conversations about that that are happening hi sophie yeah um in terms of black lives matter and artwork as i was saying the the location that we saw in the picture that you had your screen share of as to where the pickle street
054guys would be putting their painting is currently graffitied with black lives matter and say her name and things like that so if it comes along and get some festive colors which look great it would nonetheless not look great to the people who put the stuff there that's there now or people who might have appreciated having that stuff there so i think that has to be taken into account when we're making new artwork that um where it goes and what was there and who else might or might not be involved in the new work and things like that because um you know the the there isn't a topic as as such in the stuff that the pickles treat um i keep forgetting what they are collective group whoever they are um there isn't a subject matter
055or topic in it currently it's more decorative so if you're going to erase something which does have some social significance then we should either have something somewhere else that that counteracts that or we should try and get them to incorporate it in some way or something because otherwise you're just going to annoy people i think john as i understand it from veneta that the mayor has expressed an interest in public art that in some way connects with black black lives matter and lbgtq issues so much so that he might find some money but he certainly supports it so my what i'm understanding what vanita is saying is this an initiative that we might want to take on as a creative group it strikes me that it might be best um we might best ask the
056special projects group to consider it and think of some ways in which we could do it if in fact we wanted to do it and bring it back to the uh to the whole body so is is that thought that we would commission art that would be themed in this manner travis go ahead so i um i don't know if this is the exact proposal that vanita is talking about but i know that i had and venita i think this may have been sent to you as well um survivors speak reached out to me um they're a local organization that um and they specifically actually have the beginning of a proposal that they wanted to bring forward um i have actually i'm i'm trying to set up a time when i can speak with trishay
057duckworth who is their um one of their leaders i guess i i would say um and she the last i heard from her on this i believe she said that some of the details of that were changing um i do know that what i saw was at least a draft of a proposal so i know that they're putting something together for us to consider um and so before we go too far down the path i think maybe i should check in with the mayor and make sure that either this is the same thing or if he's thinking about different things how we might be able to kind of work within the framework of both of them um and then and then also um make sure that this group is included particularly since they're going through
058the process of of reaching out to us and trying to submit a proposal i would hate for us to move forward without including their voice in the conversation travis i didn't receive that could you send that to me again i will yeah i will forward that to you okay so should we be having discussions or too early for like special projects to to have a beginning exploratory discussion with the survivor speaks people wait until we hear back from travis is what i i sort of understand so that we could get him yeah i have not other than getting this email that she forwarded to me i have not had a chance to speak with her about it and and when we when we exchanged i think uh i don't remember if it was by email
059or if she she messaged me on facebook or something like that um it sounded like maybe some of the details had already changed from the initial proposal she sent so um let me touch base with a few folks and hopefully we can have them submit something more formal that could be on a future agenda and vanita is this just kind of like an fyi this is in the works or did you need us to move anything on this no it's just an fyi and um just an fyi great sounds exciting all righty anything else from staff before we move on to our working groups no okay um our first working group is our business owners and developers work group which i believe john you are the lead of that group nothing to report okay uh
060our capital improvement project working group not much new to report i did have a discussion with um jennifer hall from the the housing commission about their items you may remember at the last meeting last month we approved the the cip recommendations um with kind of a caveat that i hadn't had a chance to talk with her about some things that we had recommended for her for their projects which was a big piece of the new new stuff that was in the cip this year um she was fine with moving forward with it a little concerned about where the money will come from for the artwork and you know i i don't really have a good sense of that myself i you know it gets added into their project total in the cip so it doesn't
061reduce what they're getting um for the projects that that are planned but i don't know where that money comes from obviously so it needs to come from somewhere so we'll have to see how that goes but um but she was fine moving forward so i believe benitez said that it's going to be at city council on the 15th craig you have your hand up yeah uh as part of that conversation i would cc'd on it and the thread that i took off of it was that jennifer hall is very supportive of it but it's likely the art will be incorporated into the structure in details of the structure so that it's not discrete separate art if i am saying that correctly um it would be more like railing details or details in in brickwork or
062something like that yeah i don't know that i had that impression necessarily and they're obviously not even in design yet on anything no exactly they're not so it's still to be determined she did it she had been thinking about they have one project on the the parking lot at catherine and fourth ave um which is the historic um black neighborhood of ann arbor and i believe they have the african-american festival in that neighborhood every year or um back when we had festivals um and so she was interested in doing something art related that would relate to that location in the city but that was just a thought that she had had and expressed and not no no idea how it might be incorporated into the building or even what the building is to incorporate it
063in and david yes i have sent your recommendations forward as they were i didn't make any changes to your document that you sent to me so i sent that to city council great um travis do you feel comfortable with the cip document and representing it at that meeting on the 15th um i think so let me review it and if i have any additional questions i'll reach out to you for sure okay david's the guru of all that and give you can give you all the ins and outs of that i'm planning on attending the meeting like calling in or whatever but um i don't know how that works as far as on a zoom meeting if they have questions answering them or whatnot so and and and also remember that this goes on as
064a communications item so travis if you um have the opportunity to i i think you all get time for yourselves to talk about things so if you could bring it up there otherwise it's embedded a little further into their um agenda for that evening as a communication item it's not an action item for councils yeah it's it's an action item correct it is not and so to to that to that point allison like they're there probably wouldn't be an opportunity for you to kind of jump in either so yeah i'm just the last time i went forward it got pulled out of the and was like a conversation at council so that's where i say do you have all the information you need to to be at that table having um representing us at that
065point if it gets pulled on off of you know at the previous time that this happened it was on the consent agenda for approval it does need to have a vote by city council so that that funding gets added into the cip formally yeah so if it's if it's only a discussion item this time then it would need to come back to the leader for a vote okay i believe the vote comes when the capital budget is established okay oh okay so we would be veneto we need to flag that with marty to make sure the cip art enhanced pieces go with the capital budget thank you okay anything else david before we move on i don't think so thank you okay thank you david um communications and art placement work group we don't have
066um anything specific to report out other than we are meeting soon and we will talk about marketing like we talked about earlier in today's meeting and other things of course um the fundraising work group um our update and our conversations relate back to what we just talked about in new business so we met and that was our conversation um leadership forum work group met yesterday and deb has a little report for us yes it's a very brief report um so um as you all may recall we are looking to create a leadership forum around public art that would serve both as a key communicators group so that when we want to communicate things about public art such as the golden paintbrush we have networks of people that are willing to distribute to their networks sort
067of as a word of mouth kind of network for the kinds of programs that we want to do it also will start building some interest groups such as i'm just going to pick on peggy here k-12 teachers who might be interested in being notified of things like youth art month and things like that and so kind of thinking about who those interest groups are that might actually be more especially interested in public art and so what we need to do next is to for each of you and i will reach out to each and every one of you but you can also just proactively reach toward us we're looking to um you thinking about your networks of the three to five people that you would like to propose that we might tap into first now
068we don't need 400 names but we're thinking about getting a list together if each of us do three to five we're going to end up with you know 40 or 50 people who come from your various networks and who might be good in terms of this key communication group it also will serve as a pipeline for creating opportunities for those of us who are leaving the public art commission to go on to this leadership group and become part of that key communicators network and also a place to draw from when we're looking for new commissioners um when we have spots opening up so the plan is for in the next week or so for you to come up with three to five individuals that you think we should consider for uh initial invitation to this
069group we have in our work plan over the next um few months to get together small informational groups to kind of pitch the idea uh to this group that we've identified and to start to get them to name other people who they think would be good to invite to this kind of a interest group and then we're hoping in the late summer or fall to actually meet in person because the idea was to sort of that this group to make them feel good about public art to invite them to an event or two every year that we would host or that they would host on our behalf and so to start create that community connection when we are actually past the pandemic so that's the plan that we have we need some input from y'all
070to get started and we are going to be starting to put together these initial interest lists over the next month and start inviting people to come and speak with us um as a group to learn more about public art in ann arbor so are there any questions um deb and allison could i also as a reminder send you the link to the um city clerk's page for commissioners on where they would have to go for information and filling out applications should they be interested i'll share that with you if that's okay of course yes um so if you have specific people who you think would be good for this type of group if you want to share their names and contact information phone and or email with us we can add them to a spreadsheet
071we have going or if you would prefer i can share a link to that google sheet and you can put it directly on there whatever is easiest for you we would ask that once we have a communication that you reach out to those people specifically as they are your contacts and it likely would be have more impact coming directly from you so at this point we're looking to create a list of names um and that will be our starting point and then also remember to we'll have to use that in coordination with the current list within the um city clerk's office as well this is not talking about commissioners this isn't for commissioners this is for the leadership forum commissioners to add to this group is a different uh working group that's the dominant okay
072okay i'm ahead okay sorry thanks no worries those names actually though might be good people for us to look at for the leadership forum um so it's a good good list for us to look at regardless and i just had a clarifying question did you want us to reach out to those people first and then put them on the list or we can just add them to your list okay add them to the list and we'll come back around to coordinate the efforts and the information that we would like to get out to them yeah we'll have kind of like a forum letter for you to pop into your email and send out to people so you don't have to do all that work perfect okay that's the report all right the um next working
073group we have is the nominations and leadership review work group john yes um well just to remind everyone we're supposed to have an election have a new uh leadership team elected every year by january so what we're doing tonight should have been done last december uh and my apologies uh that uh i've agreed to uh to sort of chair this uh this work group in part because i have no i've been uh on a chair for three years i have no interest in being a chair uh and everyone else sort of is in the game so to speak um so part of what we have been doing we've been doing this for about four five six years maybe uh that we have surveyed um all of the art commissioners and asked them to um to
074give us their feedback on our current leadership on sort of what they would like to see the art commission do and then this work group kind of synthesizes that creates report and one was sent to you so to summarize uh that um that that survey is our current leaders get high marks kudos um and um that this group uh is charged with creating a uh nominations a slate from all of that information and present it to you uh and nominate them of course anyone else can nominate from the floor uh it's not closed but it was thought that this would be a thoughtful way of getting everybody's opinions together and then sharing with everyone so you know now who is interested in being uh considered to be a leader and what the group thinks of
075their current leaders um so the good news is uh is allison and deb get great high marks unfortunately deb is going to be leaving in may which means she wouldn't be able to complete a full 12-month term uh that's unfortunate but fortunately that sarah fuller is interested in being a vice chair so um that and she has gotten she was considered to be um by four commissioners a a real good choice for leadership and i agree um so the um our work group uh would like to nominate allison buck for chair and sarah fuller for vice chair um that i'm not sure how we do that i defer to um allison buck our current chair um do you want me to to nominate someone and then see if someone will second it and then we
076vote i guess my only question is usually we write names on little pieces of paper and we have that really nice counting thing i don't know how we would do that in today's meeting um we could just do it like an i thing or an a thing if there's not more than one nomination uh i think because of uh the pandemic uh this is kind of the going to be the exception but we normally make that private um and uh unfortunately uh what we could do we could each send an email to veneta uh of our choice i'm sorry uh travis i was i was just going to say i mean this is a public meeting and so so even if you already email it they're not really private votes they they could be fired
077things like that and so um i think for the for the sake of this being a public meeting a public vote is probably the most appropriate course anyway okay uh david i'm sorry allison if there are any other nominations if there are not there's not much point in a private vote anyways yeah so i guess we could put it out to see if there are further nominations for chair or vice chair so before we let me formally nominate allison buck for chair of the art commission i'll need a second sarah i'm sorry alison do you want me why don't i chair this because you're going to be well so uh there is a second sarah fuller seconds it are there any other nominations for chair i see none so i will close the nominations for
078chair and ask for a vote all those in favor of allison buck for chair raise your hand you can't vote for yourself alison yes so it's unanimous that's right she she's been doing this got one year at left right so alison buck is now our new chair and uh her term runs until december and this will be your last year because in our bylaws uh no one can serve more than three consecutive years so uh allison would you like to take over the nominations for vice chair sure so john's group has nominated sarah fuller for vice chair um i will i know fuller ask if there's any more nominations oh i'm sorry are there any other nominations for vice chair and if there are none we close the nominations all right i'm closing the nominations
079because i do not see any others all in favor of sarah for vice chair [Music] yesterday passes so now at this meeting sarah is now the vice chair as i understand it so you can take charge sarah and kick us all out will do david can we thank deb for her service since yes absolutely thank you deb's not leaving quite yet but thank you david it's been a it's a privilege and a pleasure to work with this group and uh you know uh leaving the group is is very bittersweet it won't be until may but as i said in my uh in the the in saying that i was leaving in the survey is that i've got two weddings of daughters coming up and multiple things at work that need my attention as we move
080over and emerge from the pandemic so it's just a good time for me to step back from a couple of these kinds of service things but that doesn't mean i won't be back are you going to be uh here for the may meeting as well oh no um i think i'm still on in may i don't know exactly how the timing works i go off in may but i'll have to see i can always just come as a no as a member of the leadership forum yeah maybe that um so i would encourage everyone to be thinking about um potentially stepping into a leadership role at some point um as we will have an opening a year less than a year from now when we do this again um all right the next work group
081we have is the policy and governance work group um that work group we put forward the line item that is still pending to go to city council and then also working on how we're going to be using those endowment funds is part of what that group is working on as well um kind of in tangent with the fundraising work group since it's the same people um speaking of the fundraising work group as well as the policy and governance work group i believe is just myself and deb at this point um when deb leaves it'll just be me so if anyone is interested in those work groups i really don't like having meetings by myself so um if anyone wants to join those groups that would be great um the next work group is special projects
082oh that's us yep um well as you heard golden paintbrush is out there on the website um i'm hoping to get it more visible i think we already managed to get it bit more visible on our website but it'd be nice if it's on the city website more visibly um and we've had seven seven nominations i just learned so which is great uh so i don't know whether there's anything more to happen now except we need to figure out a bit more how to make sure it gets publicized so and could you remind us or the viewing public of when the deadline for those nominations uh closes i think it was april 30th but i might be mistaken i think it's april 30th yeah great seen a thumbs up from vanita so april 30th great
083um the next work group we have is the youth outreach work group oh just one other thing we also need to figure out who our judges will be [Music] do you need feedback from us for that or just sophie did you need feedback from us about the judges or is it oh well i mean if anyone wants to send me an an idea that would be great but uh and i don't know whether we need to discuss it here now but uh i thought i thought maybe if people have ideas let me know and then we can perhaps discuss it at the next meeting if we need to do that okay as my understanding is i'm supposed to oversee that process okay just putting that in my radar okay um and then the youth outreach
084work group last month i did talk to jonah about this and we were gonna get uh back in touch with each other and we have not done that so maybe before next meeting we can talk a little bit about that okay sounds good there was a project um well i'm going to talk about it later about the full full the full moon group they have an event coming up and they were hopefully going to reach out with the neutral zone so i'll talk later about that but that was what we talked about for our youth outreach connecting with the neutral zone um next on the agenda is special presentations is there special presentations no okay i'm sorry no okay i do have you have a update before you um and i want to just do
085a reminder that our next meeting is not until may the 5th oh yep back to the bi-month or by monthly meetings mm-hmm and then i'll go ahead and alex and that's my starters excuse me before we adjourn if anyone has anything they wanted to share um personally professionally arts related whatnot before we take off i just want to congratulate sarah on becoming vice chair i think it's going to be a great experience for you and i have really enjoyed it and i'm so excited to have you step up into leadership so i just wanted to congratulate you on that and i also wanted to congratulate allison on her next year as chair she has been amazing to work with and i do not think that this commission could be in better hands thank you thank
086you sarah i just wanted to say thank you so much um i'm really honored and i'm gonna try my best to be as helpful as possible and i'm really excited to uh to move forward uh in this role so thank you again so much [Music] peggy did you have more you wanted to share about full moon um yeah i just wanted to talk about the full moon group they are having an event just so the public knows on friday april 9th and you can go to www.wonderfulproductions.org to see a whole list of all of the events that are going to be happening um there's a lot of things happening that friday night the ninth but leading up to that there will be hopefully some public art making that will happen mary thiefels is working um
087with the ann arbor public schools art teachers and art students we're submitting designs and she's going to create these mandalas which right now are just going to be temporary art installations they'll be painted on the street but um i guess i should say um if we get city approval or they get city approval um but there'll be some community art making and we're really excited about it um our regular youth art month event is not happening like it typically does so this was a way for the students to partner with the community and also make public art so we're excited great any other announcements all right um i will just say one thing i'll be plugging that the guttman gallery is going to have an all media exhibition coming up in march um that we
088had wait the most applications we've ever had and it's a very very very high quality show we're very excited about it so now that we can have 25 people in our space we're going to have an opening so i'll send you all invitations um and hopefully see you in person at that event all right all if that is all for tonight uh i will make a motion to adjourn all in favor have a second sarah seconded it all in favor all right have a great evening everybody bye bye see ya bye