Outreach Notebook for May 29, 2022

Welcome back to the outreach notebook [ON] for Sunday May 29, 2022. Today the primary focus is to make sure our county fills the current $1.2M gap for safety net housing support services. We also share a new ON feature “EAA Viewpoint” regarding the movement for public power in A2 and council candidate responses to that. We finish today with a photo log from one of the live local music events featured last week and, finally, just a reminder about the free guided nature walk at Scarlett Mitchell Woods from 1-2pm today Sunday May 29, 2022. We sent out this post yesterday afternoon with more details.

ACTION ALERT: County Safety Net Funding

For at least a decade a county community collaborative called Washtenaw “Coordinated Funding” [CoFu] provided dollars in the form of competitive grants for critical housing support and mental health services among other resources to low-income, housing insecure or recently-housed residents. The partnership ceased operations in July 2021.

Since that time, County and City leaders have provided two cycles of 6-month grants as a temporary replacement for CoFu while the county and remaining partners figured out next steps for funding these critical preventative and life-saving services. It’s also worth noting here that prior to using this funding model to address social services needs in Washtenaw County, we were seeing a lot more people on the streets, living in tent encampments and other settings not meant for long-term/ permanent human habitation.

This Wednesday June 1, the Washtenaw Board of Commissioners [BoC] will vote on the first round of the newly forming New Human Services Partnership [CoFu safety net replacement]. While not posted there as of this writing, the agendas and packets for the 6/1 meetings will be posted here.

We knew already that the pot of money shrank significantly after St Joe/ Trinity Health pulled out of the partnership. And the reasons Ypsi, Ypsi Twp and Superior Twp-based properties were prioritized were based on metrics using the opportunity index.

On top of fundamentally restructuring how we fund these services, which we argue keeps people in housing and out of sleeping rough, housing insecure couch surfing and other ways of making shelter like camping in cars and in tents. On top of that restructuring, we are also implementing new metrics to address racial/class and spatial inequities.

We still need those dollars for the Ann Arbor side of things, however, we’re glad the county prioritized this piece *before moving forward* with the rest of it.

It is an example of how our new Racial Equity Office, headed by Alize Asberry-Payne, will influence policy decisions at the BoC table.

The question we as a county have to ask ourselves: Do we want to leave these services unfunded and risk more people living outside? In parks, under bridges, along biking and walking trails, highway off ramps and rest stops, Meijer parking lots and so on?

See WHA and Avalon, CAN etc for details on how best to support filling the remaining gap of $1.2M in social safety net funding for Washtenaw County.

NEW Feature: EAA Viewpoint: Public Power and Public Goods in Ann Arbor

Want public power? Vote for council members who are good stewards of our public resources.

What gives us pause about the movement for public power in Ann Arbor are the politicians who claim they are for public goods and their maintenance [Bannister, Nelson, Ramlawi] have stalled and voted against adequate rate increases and fair water rate structure setting.

What makes electricity any different? If we cannot sustain the grid then we should not have a public electric utility. Sorry Ann Arbor, but there are too many people who have unrealistic expectations and will elect people like Anne Bannister who say they value things like basic services and infrastructure and then vote *against* measures that put those values to work.

Yours truly knows Anne Bannister and worked with her on the Housing and Human Services Advisory Board [Was on for 6 years total, chair for the last two: May 2019-May 2021]. Anne is a very nice person and her pup is a sweetheart. But in terms of policy-making, voting record*** v. rhetoric and spin coming from her and some small portion of the 32% of ward 1 voters that supported her in 2020... the rhetoric is incongruent with the voting records of Anne especially, but to a lesser extent Nelson and Ramlawi.

Looking at the voting records of all recent council members [CMs] tells us two things:

1) a need to support CMs who vote for responsible maintenance of our public goods like water infrastructure.

2) we are against a muni electric company if CMs are directly involved in the decision making over rates and maintenance etc.

Why is that you might ask? See #1

Good luck to all the candidates. Even the ones with whom we often disagree.

Read about a recent public power fair held by members of Ann Arbor for Public Power here

Here is a link to the AAPP website for more information about the campaign and how you can get involved to support the formation of a municipal electric company.

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***REFERENCES on voting record [see attached images as well, these are old enough that they should not be behind paywall]:

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2020/12/ann-arbor-council-oks-two-rounds-of-water-rate-increases-in-8-3-vote.html

https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2019/05/ann-arbor-council-oks-water-rate-increases-in-8-3-vote.html

First Days of Summer 2022 Reprise

Last week we ran through a series of live local music events and wanted to follow up on the only one we were able to make it to this week. If you went to other shows featured here, feel free to send photos, reviews, synopses and we will add to this section, giving you credit of course for content created!

Also, btw we plan to run a live music calendar edition of ON once a month. Send us your events and if you have any sense you would…

That’s it for ON this week! Thanks for reading sharing and for commenting/ sending feedback. We value your opinions and input. Thanks for being a community partner. See below the sign-off here for photos from the Bubak/ Towner show at Ziggy’s. A great time was had by all present :)

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