Outreach Notebook April 3, 2022: ACTION ALERT

For those of you who may have missed this, last year Ann Arbor received notice we were getting about $24M in ARPA funds from a state allocation. After several months of community engagement including an extensive, weighted survey sent out to residents, staff and council drafted a plan for the funds which included $1.6M for a pilot UBI project targeted at low income families to help offset the loss of the federal child care tax credit that expired last year.

In this pilot plan, council will work with community partners to identify 100 families who would receive $500/mth for 1-2 years. Social scientists will be involved for baselining and studying outcomes for the families to inform an expanded UBI program in its wake with an as yet unidentified funding source.

This week, CMs Radina, Griswold, Briggs and Disch submitted an amendment that would take those dollars and instead use them for road repairs:

When asked why they proposed to take these dollars from the UBI pilot, some CMs say they have constituents who are asking for more roads to be fixed and the latest “pavement report” has us not meeting our stated goals for road conditions.

We already pay a lot in road millage money. Shouldn’t we prioritize people living from crisis to crisis and little to no personal economic safety net in the wake of this pandemic over road repairs?

Not only do residents already pay for roads in our general operating millage, we also have a separate street and sidewalk repair millage. We also get state revenue sharing which gets allocated through some portions of the General Fund budget for roads.

When all is said and done we pay millions of dollars for roads in millages baked into our budget. In addition, we use some of the dollars that come back to us from our state income taxes in general fund expenditures.

We are quite disappointed that some members of council apparently are willing to prioritize pavement over the needs of families in our community who are still struggling to make ends meet in the wake of this pandemic.

If we say we are working on equity measures in our city, this amendment is a step backwards on that commitment.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

You can write council an email at citycouncil@a2gov.org. You can sign up for public reserved comment time for Monday April 4. You do this by calling the clerk’s office right at 8am. Some even line up in front of the clerk’s office [2nd floor at city hall on Huron] before they open at 8, cellphone in hand to start calling right away if not first in line. Clerk’s office phone: 734.794.6140. Here are some more specific instructions for getting on the public comment reserved time list. You can also share this post.

There are also two public hearings during the council meeting on 4/4 on rezoning ordinances. One would rezone 68 parcels near briarwood mall and the other will rezone 350 S Fifth as a PUD to build a 14 story and a 20 story building mixed income with at least 100 units at $0-$43K/yr income. We wrote about these, with most of the focus on the former, in an essay posted to Damn Arbor Friday April 1. We will cross post this essay to #eastannarbor later today Sunday April 3. But for now you can read it over on the Damn Arbor site

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We wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t been there. See everyone next week!