City Council Meeting: 5 April 2021

Ann Arbor AF

Today we are talking about the next City Council meeting, coming up April 5th. We touch on fair access to housing, the Trans Day of Visibility, and as we often do, defunding the police.
Links from today's episode:

• This week's Council agenda
• The Ann Arbor Tenants Union is re-forming, and we should also have a Renters Commission
• The sidewalk gap prioritization framework
• The CAHOOTS program in Denver as a model for an unarmed responder program

If you write to Council in support of the unarmed-responder resolution (and we hope you do), here are some points you can make:

• This model has the potential to operate with a vision of helping communities resolve problems internally without the justice system. Public safety is about more than just policing; when residents experience crime or disorder, they should have tools beyond the police at their disposal.
• By adopting an alternate model, we have an opportunity to reduce the volume of calls to which police must respond, mitigating the negative impacts that can result from an overreliance on policing.
• Our local public and nonprofit housing providers have all dealt with police engagement where an unarmed/non police response would have been a more appropriate fit for the circumstance.
• The funding for this should come from the police budget, not elsewhere.

Finally, we didn't get to mention this last resolution on the podcast, but we wanted to thank Council for bringing forward resolution DC-4 "Condemning Hate Crimes, Hateful Rhetoric, and Hateful Acts against Asians and Asian Americans, Encouraging Ann Arbor Residents to Report Hate Crimes and Harassment to the Proper Authorities."
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