Johnny Carson would have been proud.

Premonition #1

At tonight’s Ypsilanti City Council meeting, whether or not to provide a 45 day extension to a temporary traffic control order to close eastbound traffic on East Cross Street between North River and Park Streets will be discussed. I’m sure in typical City Council fashion, we will beat this one to death, but before we do, let’s recap.

The notion that this topic was beaten to death is an understatement. After two hours and fifteen minutes, everyone was exhausted. Luckily we only had another two and a half hours to go.

Premonition #2

One of two things is going to happen:

2) We are going to table this resolution for an extension until early next week giving us time to negotiate in private issues like liability, securing some kind of assurances (like a performace bond) that the work will be completed by a specific date, and some kind of recovery of miscellaneous costs like restriping.

Negotiating and tabling took place. The atmosphere was surreal and apparently very, very confusing.

The Ypsilanti Citizen ran the headline today
FATE OF THOMPSON BLOCK POSTPONED

That was a little bit of hyperbole.

The issue at hand is a traffic control order. Either Council extends (with additional requirements) the current order set to expire on December 23rd or Council doesn’t. The fate of the building is not an issue here. Whether you love it, hate it, are committed to it, or think that it belongs to the community, no action is going to be taken at the December 22nd meeting that will determine the building’s fate.

The Beal organization presented a plan to re-open westbound traffic on East Cross Street. This is what most people in the community have been waiting for these past 90 days. At the time the engineering drawings were handed out to Council, no one on City Staff had even seen the proposal. Council member Bill Nickels said he would approve the resolution as written and cautioned that if we did not like how things went after than, we could always rescind the traffic control order. I repsectfully disagreed with my colleague saying that we should take the time to ensure the plan is successful. The idea that we could simply revoke the plan on Council’s whim was planning to fail.

I moved to table the resolution until a special 7:30AM meeting on December 22nd. My reasoning was the Beal organization could meet with City Staff the following morning (today) and come to an agreement on whether or not the plan was acceptable to City Staff and what assets (i.e. street lanes and sidewalks) would continue to be required of the Beal organization to reconfigure their stabilization plan for the building over the next 45 days. Once that agreement was in place, Council action was not required to proceed. Council would reconvene on the 22nd and approve the extension with the traffic control order being much tighter in scope because we knew what these assets were.

That’s when things went awry.

Stewart Beal stated that the street could be open within 15 days if the traffic control order extension were approved last night, but if we delayed approval until next week, he would not meet with City Staff.

Call me stubborn, but I think it’s irresponsible to approve a plan that both City Staff and our engineers have not seen.

The postponement passed 4-3 with Mayor Schrieber, Mayor Pro-Tem Swanson-Winston, and Council member Nickels voting against.

All that’s left to do is point fingers.