At its weekly meeting last night, the Michigan Student Assembly discussed strengthening relations with the Ann Arbor City Council, following the council’s decision Monday night to pass a ban on upholstered furniture on porches.

Though City Council unanimously passed the resolution at its meeting Monday, MSA officials said at last night's meeting that they believe the student body wasn’t consulted in the process. MSA representatives added that they are determined to fortify a stronger relationship with the council by creating more open dialogue with council members.

City Council's ban was proposed in light of a State Street house fire last April that killed Eastern Michigan student Renden LeMasters. Authorities believe an upholstered couch that was on the house’s porch fueled the fire.

After last night's meeting, MSA Vice President Jason Raymond described the assembly’s relationship with City Council as being off-and-on in the past, but said that it was also filled with obvious successes, like a city-assembly partnership to address tailgates on State Street on Football Saturdays.

“When it came to noise and trash violations we worked with the city handily on that,” Raymond said in an interview last night. “But (the relationship) ebbs and flows.”

“Although the couch ban was in some ways a disappointment, we’re hoping that we can still find some degree of consensus on a number of issues in the future,” Raymond added.

Campus Safety Chair and External Relations Vice Chair Josh Buoy has been especially active in establishing a more open relationship with City Council following the porch couch ban.

“It would have been so beneficial to be notified…and to collaborate with (City Council) to come to a consensus of what is best to promote fire safety,” Buoy said in an interview last night. “Especially if this is for the students, the students should be involved.”

Much of the work on the ordinance was done over the summer, Raymond said, which meant that the student body and MSA weren’t given enough time to have an adequate say on the ban.

A vote on the ban was scheduled for Sept. 8, but the council decided to postpone the vote until Monday night to give students a chance to voice their concerns.

“This could have been done much more easily,” Raymond said. “It’s really a shame that we weren’t able to come to a consensus on an issue as uncontroversial as fire safety.”

While MSA and City Council were not able to have a stronger dialogue about the issue of the ban, collaboration regarding fire safety and prevention at the University “should be a great start for collaboration between City Council and MSA,” Buoy said.

“We hope to carry out from here and have that be the case, but it’s disappointing that that’s yet to be proven,” he said.

To build this relationship, MSA will hold a Campus Neighbors Meeting open forum in October to provide information to students, and will include students, landlords, tenants, City Council members and people from the Ann Arbor Fire and Police Departments and the Department of Public Safety.

The specific date of the forum is yet to be determined by MSA.

“Between all of these different bodies…we’re going to work together to come up with the best way to really enact widespread fire safety awareness on the off-campus level,” Buoy said. “This section of the student body is really being neglected because they aren’t on campus.”

Raymond said that MSA is also in the process of establishing the City Council Relations Committee, which will consist of representatives from the City Council and representatives of MSA, who hopefully can meet at least once a month to discuss new ideas and ongoing issues like the couch ban.

“We are more prepared to take a proactive role in reaching out to City Council,” Buoy said.