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Facilitating more development is focus of latest Ann Arbor budget proposals

Posted By: MLive on March 27, 2025.  For more information, please click here to read the source article.

Ann Arbor officials are aiming to increase city hall’s capacity to facilitate and accelerate new private development projects. The city already is building out a new economic development office and now city officials are proposing further increasing staff power in the planning, zoning and building areas. Derek Delacourt, the city’s community services administrator, made his recommendations for the 2025-26 budget year at a City Council work session Monday, March 24. That includes adding a new development site plan coordinator, a dedicated position to coordinate with multiple city departments and private developers to better facilitate projects.

“We feel like there is a massive need for this position and it will help people who are trying to get projects done get them done quicker with the city,” Delacourt said.

There are roadblocks right now with getting through the city’s process from plan approval to building, Delacourt said, saying the site plan coordinator can work with project owners and help track issues so there are no late surprises. He’s also proposing increasing a part-time zoning coordinator position to full-time.

“It does, for the first time since I’ve been in the city, give us two people working with the community on zoning compliance,” he said, suggesting it will improve capacity to handle small-scale projects and zoning permit followups and inspections.

He’s also proposing four new full-time development services inspectors.

“Those are rental inspectors,” he said, saying there are about 30,000 rental units in the city and the city is able to inspect about 3,000 to 5,000 of them per year.

“We’d like to get into every one of those units on a three-year cycle. We just can’t do it with the staff we have.”

He suggested the four new inspector positions, going from six to 10, could pay for themselves through inspection fees. City officials have expressed hopes of seeing tens of thousands of new housing units developed throughout the city in the coming years, which could include everything from apartment high-rises as tall as 300-plus feet in core areas and potentially four- to seven-story buildings in other areas. The city is entering the final months of a long process to update its comprehensive land-use plan, which is expected to serve as a blueprint for densifying the city.

Zoning changes to allow denser development are expected to follow to implement the plan and that’s going to be the hard part, Delacourt said, saying difficult decisions need to be made.

“We have had conversations about accelerating the implementation part,” he said, referring to rewriting the city’s zoning code and suggesting that could be done concurrently with the final portion of the comprehensive plan process.

City officials have been weighing the pros and cons of that and have not put money in the budget for it yet. But there’s a good chance a proposed consultant contract for it will be coming to council prior to budget adoption, Delacourt said.

“This is going to be the thing that planning has to deal with for the next 12 to 18 months — some combination of the comp plan adoption and then converting those recommendations into implementable zoning districts, not to mention the process potentially of rezoning properties to come into compliance with those new districts,” he said.

That is going to be a massive undertaking and there also will be public infrastructure considerations, as well as other future planning needs such as corridor studies, he said.

Whether that’s in the 2025-26 fiscal year starting July 1 or in 2026-27, council will see budget requests in the near future, Delacourt said. City Administrator Milton Dohoney is expected to present a proposed budget to council in April for adoption in May. Council Member Jenn Cornell, D-5th Ward, said she was pleased to see an attention to customer service and the new development site plan coordinator position in Delacourt’s presentation.

“Especially as we want more projects to come online, and we want to really focus on the experience of people doing business with the city, I think that’s going to help to move the needle,” she said.

Delacourt said the city also now has a building permit liaison who is getting up to speed and finding ways to be more helpful.

“It’s basically someone to hold your hand, regardless of who you are,” he said, saying that goes all the way from getting a building permit to a certificate of occupancy for a completed project. “In approving that position last year and getting it hired, we now have someone that greets people at the door.”