The Ann Arbor City Council will
vote on the proposed city budget
for fiscal year 2022 at the council
meeting on Monday night. A meeting
was held on May 3 for residents to
express thoughts and concerns about
the roughly $470 million proposed
budget. Covering issues ranging from
policing to deer population control,
the proposed budget contains many
hotly contested items.
Police
The budget includes $155,000
for the Ann Arbor Independent
Community
Police
Oversight
Commission (ICPOC), which serves
as a bridge between residents and the
Police Department.
The ICPOC was established in 2019,
partly in response to the fatal shooting
of Aura Rosser, a Black woman with
mental illness, by Ann Arbor police.
At the May 3 meeting, Ward 5
resident Ralph McKee urged the
council to follow recommendations
from the ICPOC as well as Dr. Lisa
Jackson, chair of the ICPOC, who also
spoke at the beginning of the council
meeting.
“I would really urge you to really
engage (Dr. Jackson) in depth on
(police funding),” McKee said. “She
has really studied that. Many of the
rest of us are what I would call part-
timers on that issue. We’re interested
in it, but we really haven’t studied it to
the level she and other activists have.”
Many Ann Arbor residents want
to see mental health professionals,
not police, respond to emergency
calls when appropriate. City Council
passed a resolution in April asking the
City Administrator to create plans for
an unarmed first responder program
for mental health crises in Ann Arbor.
At the meeting, Ward 2 resident
Jeremiah Simon said he wants to see
police funding redirected to mental
health professionals.
“The current budget proposal
increases the police budget from
$30.7 million to $31.4 million from
2021 to 2022,” Simon said. “The city
should shift responsibility for mental
health and substance use crisis
response away from the police, and
therefore should shift money to a new,
autonomous, unarmed crisis response
program.”
City
Councilmember
Kathy
Griswold, D-Ward 2, told The
Michigan Daily she supports having
unarmed mental health professionals
with proper oversight and training
respond to appropriate emergency
calls.
“The county is responsible for the
911 Dispatch… (if we) say we want
to be treated differently you have to
have the dispatcher know when to
send out a police officer and when to
send out an unarmed mental health
professional,” Griswold said. “That’s
going to be difficult, but it’s going to
be possible. We have to have a lot of
training and a very clearly defined
implementation plan.”
Ann Arbor resident Michelle
Hughes called in to the Council
meeting to show her support of
increasing the amount of money
for unarmed responders which is
currently at $234,000.
“We should have more money spent
on unarmed responders this year,
shifting the enforcement of traffic
things away from the police,” Hughes
said. “The amount that we have on our
budget for the new unarmed response
program is not zero, and I very much
2
Thursday, May 20, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS
A preview of the 2022 Ann
Arbor City Budget
Leaders
of
the
University
of
Michigan
Central
Student
Government (CSG), including its
president and vice president, issued a
statement via the CSG Instagram page
on Monday condemning Israel’s recent
actions in the ongoing Palestine-Israel
conflict.
The statement was released after
reports of the deaths of over 30
Palestinians, including ten children,
due to Israeli airstrikes in Gaza
City. The attack came after rockets
launched from the Gaza Strip reached
the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
The statement was signed by
CSG President Nithya Arun, CSG
Vice President Carla Voigt, CSG DEI
Coordinator Zaynab Elkolaly, CSG
Cabinet Member Eman Naga, LSA
Student Government Vice President
Zackariah Farah, SAFE, the Arab
Student Association (ASA) and the
Muslim Student Association (MSA). It
was not approved as a resolution by the
CSG Assembly.
In the statement, the CSG leaders
said Israel is responsible for the death
and destruction of the Palestinian
people and property since the state of
Israel was established by the United
Nations in 1948.
“For the past 73 years, this
violence
has
displaced,
harmed,
and killed indigenous Palestinians,”
the statement reads. “This is not a
‘conflict,’ but emblematic of Israeli
settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing,
and apartheid.”
The CSG leaders went on to
claim that anti-Palestinian and pro-
Israel sentiments were rampant
in our campus community. The
statement acknowledges that CSG has
participated in pro-Israel events, such
as funding yearly trips to Israel for
Jewish students.
“We also must recognize CSG’s
prior complicity with Israel’s violence
through participation in events such
as yearly trips to Israel that supported
the settler-state in its apartheid and
occupation,” the statement reads.
The CSG leaders ended their
statement by calling on the University
to divest from Israeli companies and
by vowing to use their platform to
uplift and represent Palestinian voices
and work with Palestinian student
groups, such as Students Allied For
Freedom and Equality (SAFE).
“The
University
of
Michigan
remains complicit by choosing not
to divest from Israeli companies
profiting
off
the
settler
state’s
occupation,” the statement reads. “As
such, CSG is determined to correct
these wrongs by working with SAFE
and other organizations advocating
for Palestinian liberation to curate
actionable steps that will be released at
a later date.”
The statement comes less than
five years after CSG voted against
calling on the University to divest their
investments from Israeli companies
in 2016. CSG passed a resolution in
2017 calling on the University to form
a committee to look into divesting
from said Israeli companies, but that
resolution was ultimately rejected by
the Board of Regents.
Student reactions
The
statement
drew
mixed
reactions
from
the
campus
community, with some believing that
the statement was biased and one-
sided, and others believing that CSG
did what was necessary to support
CSG response to the Israel-Palestine
conflict draws mixed reactions from
U-M community
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DOMINICK SOKOTOFF/Daily
The Ann Arbor City Council is set to vote on a proposed $470 million budget Monday
night.
applaud that, (but it) is much closer to
zero than I would like it to be.”
Pedestrian Safety
Ann
Arbor’s
Healthy
Streets
program which aims to provide safe
options for pedestrians and bikers in
the city was of particular concern to
residents.
The program, which was designed
to allow for proper social distancing
during the COVID-19 pandemic,
was first passed by City Council
in July of 2020. The city employed
several methods to increase outdoor
recreational space for pedestrians,
including street closures, sidewalk
space expansion, new bike lanes and
reducing vehicle lanes.
At the Council meeting, Ann
Arbor resident Shannon Hautamaki
said paying for the Healthy Streets
initiative is vital for the wellbeing of
children in Ann Arbor.
“For
families
with
young
children, I don’t see a return to
normalcy happening that quickly.
Vaccines for young children are still
several months, if not a year away,”
Houtamaki said. “Children will have
to do most of their socializing outside
where transmission of COVID is
Read more at michigandaily.com