The Ann Arbor City Council is meeting tonight at 7 p.m. on the second floor of Ann Arbor City Hall. Here's a look at the council's agenda, as well as the tools that are used by the city to publish it.

Council tonight will discuss matters as essential to the conduct of a city as beer, furniture, parking, street lights, apartments and spending money. It also plans to go into closed session, but the agenda description of why it plans to do so is not precise about why.

Here's a roundup of some of the agenda items that I found most interesting, along with some other notes about the meeting. 

The Legistar system

Council uses a system from Legistar to track meeting agenda items and attachments. As of 9:16 a.m. on Monday, there were 45 items on the agenda. As is typical, not all of the agenda items are completely ready to view; staff and council are still working on assembling all of the presentations up until seemingly the last moment.

If you have the right browser, you can also look at the agenda as an RSS feed. RSS is an easy to parse format which lets you subscribe to a page of news. I tried to read the council's agenda in Google Reader, the news reader that Google provides, but it kicked back an error. It did load neatly in my Safari browser.

Each agenda item in turn has a set of files attached to it. I was unable to find a way to do a batch download of every single attachment of every file on the entire agenda. I know that sounds like it might mean hundreds and hundreds of pages of text, but yes, that is exactly what I am looking to do. In the absence of that, you have to go incrementally page-by-page to look at the individual attachments.

Links

• Legistar is a product of Daystar Computer Systems Inc.
• Council agenda for Oct. 4, 2010 and meeting details.
• The Legislative information help center gives more detail about how to read the Legistar system, including how to get history of a given item.
• An RSS feed of the current council calendar may be useful for you for automated post-processing of the agenda, or to notice changes.
• The Stadium Bridges update is File # 10-1019, and is agenda item INT-2. As of this morning, there is no text available for that item.

The agenda itself

There are 45 agenda items currently on the city council's agenda. The pattern of council behavior is that agenda items can and will show up at the last moment, so this is preliminary; but if you are part of the long list of topics that are on the agenda, it's time to think about what council is looking for.

Council will be looking at the alarm ordinance, annexations, appointments, area height & placement, Community Television Network, co-op month, delinquent fees, emergency purchasing of office furniture, general obligation bonds in the amount of $9 million, Glen Ann Place, guest houses, human services funding, liquor licenses, meeting rooms, minutes, the Stadium bridges, Summer Festival, University of Michigan soccer fields, Village Green, and zoning.

Village Green

DS-4: "Recommended to Council is a Resolution approving the issuance by the City of Ann Arbor of its Parking Facility Capital Improvement Bonds (General Obligation Capital Improvement Bonds) in the maximum principal amount of $9,000,000 (the "Bonds"), for the purpose of financing a substantial portion of the costs of acquiring and constructing a multi-level public parking structure in the City in conjunction with the development project known as Village Green at First & Washington Streets. The Bonds are to be sold through competitive bidding."

Wolverine State Brewing Co.

DC-1: RESOLVED, That the request from The Wolverine State Brewing Company, LLC for a new Micro Brewer Liquor License, located at 2019 W. Stadium Boulevard, d/b/a Wolverine State Brewing Co. be approved.

Links

• The Wolverine State Brewing Co. home page has details straight from the company.
• Our January 2010 story about Wolverine State predicted an opening by April 2010. A subsequent July 2010 story predicted a fall opening.

Glen Ann Place

"Whereas, the City Council, Historic District Commission and the Petitioner, Glen Ann Place, LLC and Joseph Freed and Associates, entered into a Consent Judgment to settle the subsequent lawsuit regarding the Glen Ann Place development (Circuit Court Case No. 07-295-AA); and Whereas, the Petitioner has now requested that the Consent Judgment be modified to allow additional time for the development to be completed. RESOLVED, That City Council approve the amendment of the Consent Judgment to extend the termination of approval of the Glen Ann Place Site Plan and construction of the project from November 30, 2010 to November 30, 2012.

DC-5: RESOLVED, That City Council approve the amendment of the Consent Judgment to extend the termination of approval of the Glen Ann Place Site Plan and construction of the project from November 30, 2010 to November 30, 2012; and RESOLVED, That approval of the amendment be conditioned upon the Historic District Commission also approving the extension."

The Glen Ann Place project was originally approved by the Planning Commission and City Council but rejected by the Historic District Commission in September 2005. A State Historic Preservation Office administrative judge ruled in favor of the developer in September 2006. The city settled a lawsuit with the developer in 2007, and homes on the site were demolished; those lots are empty now.

Site developer Joseph Freed and Associates has had troubles with its portfolio in Chicago, and also owns the troubled Ashley Terrace.

Streetlights

"DC-6: RESOLVED, That the Ann Arbor City Council directs the City Administrator to re-energize the street lights in the pilot area, suspend the further implementation of the de-lighting program in FY 2011 and consider a new plan that would involve a more comprehensive look at street lighting throughout the City of Ann Arbor as well as other cost saving measures that would reduce or eliminate the need to de-energize streetlights until such time as more lights can be replaced with LED's."

Emergency furniture

"CA-2: RESOLVED, That the purchase order to Trendway Corporation, not to exceed the amount of $50,000.00, for the emergency purchase and installation of Trendway Choice office equipment be ratified and authorized."

Authority for emergency purchasing is in Ann Arbor City Code 1:317(1): "In case of emergency, any service area administrator, with the approval of the City Administrator, may purchase directly any supplies, materials or equipment, the immediate procurement of which is necessary to the continuation of the work of his/her service area. Such purchases and the emergency causing them shall be reported in detail to the Purchasing Agent within a week from the time when made and such reports shall be preserved by the Purchasing Agent for a period of 2 years."

A profile of Bill Bundy from Trendway describes the strategy of focusing on service over price as a key to winning business.

Closed session

"Council may enter closed session under the Michigan Open Meetings Act, including but not limited to, labor negotiations strategy, pending litigation, and attorney/client privileged communications set forth or incorporated in MCLA 15.268 (c), (e), and (h), if approved."

Links

• The City of Ann Arbor has been sued by the Ann Arbor Chronicle due to allegations of violations of the Open Meetings Act.
• My FOIA Friday column last week addressed some of the issues surrounding open meetings, and describes some of the legitimate exemptions for public bodies to meet in closed session.

Edward Vielmetti writes a daily Links column for AnnArbor.com. Contact him at edwardvielmetti@annarbor.com.