Residents Say “No Go” to Mayor’s Plan To Pay For County-Wide & Regional Transit With City Millage
by P.D. Lesko
The public speaker, an older woman who rides the bus regularly, recounted a conversation with a friend who lives outside of Ann Arbor: “My friend said to me that she wished the AATA buses would run near her house so she could take them. I said to her, ‘Well then, you should pay for a bus system like I do.’”
Her sentiment was a common thread during many comments by 40 people who came to speak before City Council last night during a scheduled Public Hearing about whether Ann Arbor should fund county-wide transportation with $8-$10 million in millage money paid by the city’s residents.
Another speaker, an Ann Arbor resident, was mindful of the fact that Ann Arbor faces “tough economic times,” and that perhaps now was not the best time to try to implement a pie-in-the-sky “half a billion dollar” transit plan. The speaker also reminded the City Council that the AATA Board member in charge of rustling up funding for the plan was cavalier about the possible costs. Jesse Bernstein, when asked in August 2011 what level of millage it would take to fund the first five years of AATA’s transit master plan vision, replied: “I don’t know and I don’t care.”
Bernstein the former CEO of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, has a Master’s degree in Social Work and was appointed to the AATA Board by John Hieftje in 2008. In a January 16, 2012 piece A2Politico revealed information that might explain Bernstein’s cavalier attitude toward finance and taxpayer costs:
Anyone who has studied the tax returns of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce—which Bernstein headed—may wonder what exactly qualifies him as a funding “expert.” Bernstein spent years losing money at the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, according to
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Short URL: http://www.a2politico.com/?p=12896
Thanks for the blow-by-blow. How many people did the E-Center and ICPJ bring in? Were Garfield and Chuckie W left carrying their versions of enlightenment all by themselves? Where were the enlightened minions of these two warriors for Hieftje’s brand of Democracy-lite?
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@lulugee you’re welcome. The Ecology Center sent a staffer, and Chuck W. was somewhat vague about his connection to the ICPJ. He forgot to mention his wife is employed by AATA, and it’s pretty interesting that he sent out a mass email from the ICPJ urging people to go to a political public hearing. I wonder if he’d send out an email for A2Politico.
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Chuck W. has also contributed to campaigns, well, one that I
know of – Carsten H.
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