Here’s the list of community colleges and the links to their 5-year plans and capital priority requests:
Community Colleges: Internet Link:
The Michigan State Bidget Office today unveiled a new plan to allow the public to access community college and university annual 5-year plans and capital outlay priority requests. Architects, engineers and contractors seek these plans of proposed future projects and follow their development.
In past years, each publicly funded Michigan community college and university had to send hard copies of these plans to the Budget Office. There the plans would be categorized and sent to the legislature for possible funding. Then the plans would be boxed and stacked and kept on hand. Now the state has changed the rules and requires that each college and university post their plans on a publicly accessible website.
We thought you’d like to see that list so here is as of February 1, 2012. Listed below are the links to the state Universities. Please go to the following post to see the community college links.
Please note that if the links are broken or otherwise do not resolve, the problem is with the college or university, not the State Budget Office. Where it says “hardcopy submitted” we guess that institution of higher education didn’t read the directions.
FY 2013 FIVE-YEAR CAPITAL OUTLAY PLANS
Five-year capital outlay plans are required annually from universities and community colleges per the Management and Budget Act, Public Act 431 of 1984, Section 242, as amended. The FY 2013 plans cover the planning period of FY 2013 – FY 2017. Per State Budget Office instructions issued on September 1, 2011, institutions may now post their Five-Year capital outlay plans in a searchable electronic format on a publicly viewable location on their internet site. Institutions are to archive these plans on the site for a period of no less than three years. The link to the applicable internet site was provided to the State Budget Office by the institution and any technical questions regarding the link should be directed to the institution.
Universities: Internet Link:
Community Colleges: Internet Link:
Some zoning ordinances are subject to the rule of unintended consequences. The intent is often not codified in a way that anticipates every possible application of the ordinance requirements. An example is the Ann Arbor Off-street Parking ordinance intended to prevent parking between commercial buildings and adjacent rights-of-way.
Our client owns a shopping center in a C3/Commercial zoning district with frontage on three public streets. A remodeling project is proposed to construct entries on a blank face of the center and add parking between the building and the street.
City planning staff opposed parking in this location because the “intent” of Chapter 59 is to require buildings to be located close to front property lines with parking in side or rear yards. We argued that the “content” of the ordinance is the controlling factor and that the ordinance includes an exception for sites with multiple frontages. We submitted a Zoning Compliance Permit Application.
Chapter 59, Section 5:168, item (2) c, describes an exception to the prohibition of parking between the building and the street. “Sites with more than 1 front line; the requirements of paragraph (1) in this section shall apply to only 1 front lot line. For all other lot lines abutting streets, parking shall be located behind the minimum front setback requirement, per Chapter 55 (Zoning).”
That paragraph reads “Vehicular parking structures, lots and space shall not be located in the front open space. No space within a parking structure or lot may be closer to the street than the front face of a building.”
Item (2) c applies and requires that only 1 of the frontage cannot have parking between the building and the street.
The preliminary site concept showed proposed improvements including removal of all parking spaces between the building and one of the other two frontages, one that is functionally a rear yard. Removing that parking makes that frontage comply with paragraph (1). The front line adjacent to proposed parking no longer has to meet that requirement.
The Zoning Compliance Application was approved. The City immediately began the process of changing Chapter 59 to revise the ordinance to require a minimum 25 foot setback rather than the 10 minimum permitted in the C3 district.
We submitted a Site Plan that showed a minimum 25 foot parking setback and that was unanimously approved.
An engineering consultant once told me that signs, speed bumps, and retaining walls are examples of failures in design. If the design is right, those things are not needed.
The US-23/Lee Road round-about traffic controls are an example of design failure. Not only is there a mind bending number of directional signs and pavement markings, but the control devices are different in each of the round-abouts. To navigate them safely, the best path is to ignore the controls, slow down, and watch the other drivers. That is a mental speed bump.
David Engwicht, a “social inventor” in Australia, wrote Mental Speed Bumps. The Smarter Way to Tame Trafficin 2005, while Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer, was in the Netherlands discovering a radical new way to tame neighborhood traffic: don’t.
The basic idea is that removing all traffic signs, speed bumps, line markings and traffic lights results in reduced traffic speed and greater safety. The lack of traffic controls creates “mental speed bumps.”
“Shared roads” or “complete streets” are now mainstream applications of the social contract we already apply at places like four way stops. These purposely mix user types within the overall transportation system. Another example of shared use of space is the holiday shopping rush at the regional mall. A flood of vehicles shares an enormous parking area with hoards of shoppers rushing in and out of the mall. The traffic flow is managed by the interaction between the pedestrians and the drivers rather than by traffic cops or signals, or zillions of directional signs.
Engwicht’s small volume describes the safety paradox, the idea that creating intrigue and uncertainty makes streets safer. That flies in the face of the conventional idea that predictability increases safety. But predictability leads to increased speed and a lower level of concentration on the part of drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. Add that to distractions like talking on a cell phone, text messaging, listening to music on an iPod, etc. etc. and people are not in the moment, are not aware of or truly experiencing their environment, and are essentially on auto pilot, or as dad would say, “cruisin’ for a brusin’”!
This small volume is “a practical, down-to-earth guide for residents, parents, health professionals, city planners and anyone interested in creating more livable streets.”