Snow My God

City Administrator Roger Fraser acknowledged the city's shortcomings as he briefed the Ann Arbor City Council Tuesday night on the city's latest snow removal efforts. "We were not anticipating the event that we got," Fraser said of the winter storm that started Sunday and left more than 9 inches of snow on area roadways by Monday. Lack of an accurate forecast is part of the reason why the city wasn't fully prepared, Fraser said. He also acknowledged the city purposefully has avoided investing in more heavy duty plow equipment that could help the city respond more quickly to such a severe weather event. "They would allow faster progress on our majors if we had access to vehicles like that, but we don't. And we think it's an appropriate budgetary strategy to not gear up for this rather untypical event," Fraser said. Another 4 to 6 inches of snow is forecasted to hit the area by Friday. Read the story here.

Retreat Repeat

City Administrator Roger Fraser says it might be time for Ann Arbor to consider getting out of the business of providing some city services. But that will be for the City Council to decide. "We have sort of an interesting challenge that's still ahead of us," Fraser told council members and other high-ranking city officials during another all-day budget retreat on Saturday. "If we can't afford to do everything we have been doing, what is it we're willing to modify?" Read the story here.

Fire In The Hole

Ann Arbor officials say they're open to considering implementation of a new paid on-call firefighting system as an option for cutting costs at the Ann Arbor Fire Department. The idea emerged today during an all-day city budget retreat as city officials brainstormed ways to address future shortfalls in the city's budget. The city's general fund budget currently totals $81.45 million. The fire department, with 89 full-time employees budgeted this year, accounts for about $13.8 million of that. The city's administration revealed a new forecast showing a $2.4 million shortfall for fiscal year 2011-12. Read the stories here and here.

Roger Fraser And Tony Derezinski

Uno, Dos, Tres

Three of the top officials for the city of Ann Arbor happened to be standing near each other before a meeting I was at earlier today. From left to right are Jayne Miller, the city's community services administrator, City Administrator Roger Fraser, and City Council Member Stephen Rapundalo. All three have played key roles in the city's RFP process to solicit proposals for development on a 1.2-acre city-owned site downtown where the Downtown Development Authority is building an underground parking structure. A new development – possibly an urban park or a new hotel and conference center – will go on top.

City Council Retreat

I bunkered down in a small conference room with the Ann Arbor City Council for eight hours on Saturday and listened to City Administrator Roger Fraser offer a grim financial outlook for the city, which must trim its budget by 30 percent over three years – starting immediately – to confront falling property tax revenues and declines in state revenue sharing in Michigan. The words "reduced" and "impact" projected onto the city administrator's head in this first photo are indicative of what's ahead. The guys in the middle photo are firefighters who watched on as Fraser talked about the need to immediately lay off 14 firefighters. The last photo says it all.