The Ann Arbor City Council met at Larcom City Hall Monday evening to pass a contract with Bell Equipment Company about purchasing electric snow sweepers for the city’s bike lanes. The council also discussed ways to advance energy equity and hold DTE, the main energy provider for Ann Arbor and much of southeastern Michigan, accountable for the massive outage following the two winter storms that took place in late February and last week. The council included specific concerns residents raised around the outages, including DTE rate hikes and inaccurate representation of the extent of the outage.

During the public commentary section, multiple residents expressed disappointment regarding DTE’s handling of the power outages, both historically and presently. 

Ann Arbor resident Rachel Pooley said she was astonished to find out how heavily DTE has donated to Michigan politicians and lawmakers, saying the company should have invested more in its utility infrastructure to prevent the hundreds of thousands of outages that occurred. Pooley said the council should exclude DTE from the Energy Commission, a group advising the City on energy-related issues, as the city examines ways to implement its own energy utility through an ongoing study into the feasibility of a public power utility for the city.

“One hundred and two of 148 Michigan lawmakers accepted campaign donations from DTE, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer accepted more (donations) than any other state elected officials,” Pooley said. “We should bypass the state and work at (the) city level when we have the opportunity to do that. I really liked to see the feasibility study to show us what options we have, but I would like to see DTE removed (from this process). I don’t think they have acted in good faith with our state.”

Councilmember Dharma Akmon, D-Ward 4, responded to public comments for DTE to be removed from the Energy Commission. Akmon said she thought asking DTE to attend regular commission meetings would provide the community an opportunity to hold DTE accountable.

“They’re spending tons of money on propaganda through advertising,” Akmon said. “On the (Energy) Commission, they wouldn’t be allowed to do advertising and could be held accountable and had to be responsive.”

Ann Arbor resident Derrick Miller is the executive director of Community Action Network, a community service organization for under-resourced families in Washtenaw County. Miller said he witnessed firsthand the disproportionate impact of massive outages on marginalized communities and he urged the city to aim for utility resilience.

“There has been a widespread disruption to services for under-resourced families with pockets of outages still persisting,” Miller said. “With expectations that severe weather will only become more volatile, we need to tackle climate change, and we also need to ensure top levels of accountability from our utility providers as well as explore options in which to build community resilience.”

The council then discussed resolution DC-5, which requests the city to engage with the state legislature and the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), which oversees utility providers in the state, to hold DTE accountable for damages from the outage. The resolution also calls for MPSC to reject the nearly 14% residential rate hikes DTE proposed early February and for the state legislature to take steps to make community solar more accessible, which would give local communities more autonomy over their energy source. Under DC-5, the city would also adopt an energy equity framework in light of inequities  in DTE’s energy service.

Councilmember Ayesha Ghazi Edwin, D-Ward 3, who authored the resolution, said hearing her constituents’ personal experiences throughout the storms motivated her to write the resolution. The agenda was co-sponsored by Councilmember Linh Song, D-Ward 2 and Councilmember Cynthia Harrison, D-Ward 1.

“During the last 12 days, we have heard from so many constituents about lives being upended,” Ghazi Edwin said. “I have heard from a neighbor who has lost power for six days, and due to having to care for ailing family members, they are forced to stay while their thermostat hovered at 40 degrees. My colleague and I have heard from a neighbor who is 89 years old and has been without power for nine days, with another winter storm on its way. The elderly neighbor was lucky enough to stay with the family member, but not everyone has that luxury.”

Councilmember Erica Briggs, D-Ward 5, said she agreed with the resolution but motioned to postpone voting so the council can ask for input from the Energy Commission. The motion for postponement was approved unanimously.

The council also voted unanimously to authorize a contract to purchase new sweeping equipment for bike lanes in the city. 

Ann Arbor currently has more than 90 miles of bike lanes and 11.4 miles of buffered bike lanes, but only 1.8 miles of protected bike lanes separated from drive lines by physical barriers, all of which are located downtown. Ann Arbor cyclists have been calling for better protected bike lanes in the city for years. The city has also identified its lack of adequate maintenance equipment as a barrier to creating more protected bike lanes.

In an email to The Michigan Daily, Akmon, who is also the city’s liaison to Ann Arbor Transportation Commission, wrote that the size of the city’s current sweeping equipment could only fit into the double-way protected bike lanes downtown. By purchasing smaller equipment, she wrote that the city would be able to effectively sweep one-way bike lanes. Akmon wrote that she anticipated the contract would allow the city to upgrade the buffered single-way bike lanes to protected bike lanes.

“What we envision for most of the city’s all ages and all abilities bike network, is buffered single lanes with vertical delineators,” Akmon wrote. “The purchase of a new small sweeper (will mean we can) upgrade buffered bike lanes into protected bike lanes by installing the several hundred vertical delineators we already have in inventory and ready for deployment. We will have a much bigger bike network that meets the needs of a broader range of people on bikes.”

Akmon also wrote about how she heard complaints from her constituents about vehicles illegally parking in bike lanes. She wrote that she thought more protected bike lanes could tackle vehicle encroachment of bike lanes at the root.

“I get many resident complaints about this (illegal parking),” Akmon wrote. “ … a big part of the solution is engineering them so it’s not so easy to do this.”

The city appropriates $129,223 to complete the purchase. In an email to The Daily, Robert Kellar, communication specialist of Ann Arbor Public Service Administration, wrote that the city staff are currently collecting materials in order to expand the protected bike lanes this year.

Correction 3/8: the small sweeper that was approved to maintain bike lanes Monday night was not related to clearing snow.

Daily Staff Reporter Chen Lyu can be reached at lyuch@umich.edu.