Ann Arbor City Council 7/1/24: Funds Earmarked For Unarmed Crisis Response Poised To Be Reallocated To Other Uses
Council also poised to move forward with search for developer for the Kline’s Lot
Hello all, before I get into the 7/1/24 city council meeting materials, I want to note that we haven’t stopped work on the FOIA documents for the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office [WCSO]/ the conundrum of a millage renewal that will extend the pair of funding for mental health with funding for police. We are still plowing through the 330 documents received back on June 11, 2024. I’ll be writing more about it in upcoming posts this summer and into the fall.
But for now, let’s shift our attention to what is going on with Ann Arbor City Council this week on 7/1/24.
Ann Arbor Staff and CMs Pause On Moving Forward With Unarmed Crisis Response Pilot
In the spring of 2021, Ann Arbor City Council approved a resolution directing the city administrator to develop an unarmed crisis, non-police response program [UCRP]. The resolution was sponsored by Mayor Taylor and Council Members [CMs] Linh Song [Ward 2], Erica Briggs [Ward 5], Travis Radina [Ward 3], Jen Eyer [Ward 4]. Also sponsoring was former CM Kathy Griswold [Ward 2].
In April of 2022, council voted to set aside $3.5M from federal APRA [American Rescue Plan Act 2021] funds to support a pilot program of unarmed, non-police crisis response. An RFP was finally issued August of 2023 and only one agency, a community-based organization called Care-Based Safety [CBS] applied for the funding to implement this pilot program. In December 2023, City Administrator Dohoney issued a statement stating that the CBS proposal was not able meet the requirements of the RFP.
The ARPA proposal for the meeting on 7/1/24 would have the $3.5M reallocated for the Barton Dam embankment project, an emergency operations center, an ambulance, and Bicentennial Park improvements, and $100K for SafeHouse Center. The majority of the funds [$2.4M] will be going to non-public health/ safety purposes [the Barton Dam and Bicentennial Park improvements].
While Dohoney and council have “reaffirmed support” for an unarmed, non-police crisis response program, there are currently zero proposals to replace the $3.5M previously allocated for this purpose. However, in a City Council meeting this year Mayor Taylor stated the city will potentially reallocate the funding they receive through the Washtenaw County Mental Health and Public Safety Millage [2017] toward a UCRP. That resolution has not yet been put forward.
City staff have also been exploring funding from the Michigan State Police [$483K] to support a UCRP. Staff, in response memo to council questions about the 7/1/24 meeting agenda, state unequivocally that police will have no role in administering any unarmed crisis response program. Staff also state that the city is still in a “study phase“ vis a vis implementation of a UCRP. See the questions and responses regarding the 7/1/24 council meeting agenda here.
While the city currently has no funding allocated for a UCRP, the city’s general fund budget for FY2025 includes ~$33.5M for police or 25% of the general fund.
You can go here to read a much more detailed explainer of city progress on the UCRP and options moving forward from the current pause on funding for this much-needed public health and safety intervention.
What can you do to support funding for a UCRP before/ during the 7/1/24 meeting?
The search for a developer for the Kline’s Lot
A few months back I wrote about the controversy surrounding a proposal from Sports Illustrated Resorts to purchase and develop a hotel and housing on the Kline’s Lot [309 S. Ashley St]. That proposal was withdrawn by the developers after losing support from a majority of city council.
There is a new proposal on the 7/1/24 council agenda to enlist a broker to seek a company to purchase and develop market rate housing on the Kline’s Lot. As noted in the memo for the resolution linked-to above, the site has a nearly 40-year history of development attempts that have been thwarted for various reasons. See image below for details:
Current appraised value of the lot is $13.69M. This city-owned property was part of the Analysis of the Financial Feasibility of Developing Affordable Housing on Under-utilized City-owned Property. The feasibility analysis was conducted 2019-2020 leading up to A2 voters approving a 20-year affordable millage in November 2020 with nearly 3/4 of the votes cast in favor of it.
There are still some former CMs on social media making claims that this move [like the SI proposal referred to above] reverses the city’s commitment to using this lot for affordable housing. While there have been resolutions to assess the *feasibility* of such development and also community engagement resulting in community support for affordable housing on this site, that doesn’t mean the city and its mission-driven partners will be able to move forward with a project with the scope of the Kline’s Lot. Additionally, the claim that promises were made in regard to this site are at minimum hyperbolic.
Moreover, in the response memo to CM questions about the 7/1/24 council agenda, the director of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission [AAHC] stated in part that the AAHC would not be able to focus on affordable housing development of this site for at least two years:
“The AAHC’s 2019 evaluation of 12 City owned sites includes several components: financial feasibility, complexity, zoning, and potential negative site issues. In 2019, the Kline’s lot was identified as a high priority because it has D1 zoning and is in a financially competitive location to secure financing. The property is also large and complex. Developing it will have a significant impact on downtown businesses, so we felt that it requires a broader community discussion about parking, residential development and commercial development in the downtown before it is developed to ensure community support. The AAHC is currently developing multiple sites that are a higher priority for a variety of reasons. The AAHC does not currently have the time and resources to conduct or lead those community discussions, so the AAHC has not prioritized this site for development at this time.If the AAHC were to develop the property, it would partner with a private developer that has the financial and technical capacity to develop a large urban in-fill mixed-use, mixed income site. The AAHC would not develop the site with 100% of the units affordable to households at 60% AMI or less but it would include units affordable to households at 60% AMI or less. The AAHC would work with City Administration, the DDA, and local businesses to evaluate options, address concerns, and ensure that there is broader community support for the development vision. The pros are the cons depending on one’s perspective. The AAHC is a governmental entity subject to the OMA and FOIA. The AAHC is local, and are City employees, so are more accountable to the public than private developers. The AAHC would not be able to focus on this site for development purposes for about two years [emphasis mine]. If the property were sold to a private developer and the site is developed without any housing that is affordable to households at 60% AMI or less, then it would make sense for the developer to contribute funding to the City’s affordable housing fund and/or the City to contribute sales proceeds to the affordable housing fund to meet the City’s affordable housing goals. The pros are the cons depending on one’s perspective.”
You can see this response and more Q/A’s about the current proposal for this site here.
Below is an image of the results of the feasibility analysis for this site:
I think it would be great to have housing affordable to people making ~$50K/year and less [like all the other sites already in development processes for affordable housing] on the Kline’s Lot. However, it appears that we would have to wait an at least two years before any preliminary work on development proposals could take place here. Additionally, I have noted in a previous post that we need both market rate and subsidized housing to address our housing crisis. BOTH/AND, not either/or.
If the site is developed as market rate housing owned by a private entity, there would be more dollars coming to our housing commission-managed affordable housing fund via property tax revenue. We don’t have to use all of our affordable housing funds for high rises in the downtown. We can and should also be developing affordable housing elsewhere in the city in smaller developments. Though we will certainly find plenty of new residents for the pending downtown affordable housing developments at 121 N Catherine St and 350 S Fifth Ave, there will be others who‘d rather live outside of downtown.
What do you think?
