city council « A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

September 1, 2010

The Politics of Twins: Separated at Birth?

Filed under: city council, politicians — Tags: A2Politico, Ann Arbor City Council, Ben Quayle, Christopher Taylor — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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Ben Quayle, a 33-year-old lawyer who is running for Congress in Arizona, has revealed that he used to contribute to a website about nightlife in the Arizona city of Scottsdale. Quayle’s comments are said to have included lines such as “My moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot.”

Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor, an entertainment lawyer who was just re-elected to his second term on Ann Arbor City Council, also wrote a couple of “fictional pieces”—though not for a satirical web site, and had a bit of trouble with the needle on his moral compass. In 2009, Taylor sent an email to Third Ward constituents which consisted of a glowing self-evaluation of his work-to-date. Needless to say, he found his performance on Council a spectacular success. Interestingly, First Ward Council member Sandi Smith bragged to voters during her recent bid for re-election that, “I’ve sponsored a lot of legislation. If you go to Legistar, you can search by name and see how many different things I’ve done. I’ve noticed that there are people who have less than I have.” Slamming her colleagues on Council and her opponent, Smith demonstrated that she’s prepared to hold on to that Council seat by trashing anyone.

Taylor’s penchant for writing emails during meetings, and his faulty moral compass were commented upon in an editorial by the local press. To make up for goofing around on the job, literally, Taylor has been working on building a moral compass for everyone on City Council since shortly after he was discovered wandering around town searching for a parking lot. To read about Taylor’s not-so-Herculean efforts to craft an ethics policy, click here, and here. To vote in a poll on whether our Council members have what it takes to craft an ethics policy for themselves, click here.

Ben Quayle, a Republican, and Chris Taylor a Democrat, may not be from the same political party—though there are some in Ann Arbor who have openly suggested several of the “Democrats” on Council are DOCs (Dems of Convenience), but there are some striking similarities between Quayle and Taylor.

I’ll leave it to you to decide. Ben Quayle. Christopher Taylor. Political twins separated at birth?

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August 23, 2010

The Politics of Backdoor Privatization: Ann Arbor Residents To Pay $100,000 Each to Serve On All Volunteer Fire/Police Departments

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, city council, city services, infrastructure — Tags: A2Politico, Alaric, Ann Arbor, AnnArbor.com, Downtown Development Authority, Herbert Dreiseitl, John Hieftje, Katherine Talcott, Percent for the Art Program, Roger Fraser, services, taxes — A2 Politico @ 11:18 am

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This piece, below my comments, comes from Salon. I thought Alyssa Battistoni’s perspective was refreshing, and her look at backdoor privatization captures exactly what is going on in Ann Arbor. Here, in Lake Woebegone-on-the-Huron, where all the men have Ph.D.s, all the woman have Ph.D.s, but are doing “research” on their books at home while raising their children, all of whom are above average, backdoor taxation and backdoor privatization of services are on the rise. Of course, AnnArbor.com’s Simple Simon reporting of Hizzoner’s wild logic that fewer police and firefighters are needed because our city’s “crime rate” has dropped, and firefighters need to hook up to a hydrant less and less has done wonders to assure the plebes that Rome will never burn, or that Alaric will never breach the 100 percent organic, free range city walls and sack the Temple of the Three Judicial Dieties.

As we all know, those foolish enough to question the fairytales about police and fire safety told by the elected leaders of our city are misleading the public shamelessly, and looking to spark needless alarm amongst the oldsters who, yes, might need to dial 911—if they could find the eleven on their phones, that is. Here’s what we might overhear in the Executive Wash Room at City Hall: the reporters and editors at the New York Times and WSJ are all Tea-Baggers who’ve never even done a shred of work at a single quality news publication!

Heck, John Hieftje and Roger Fraser are just a single AnnArbor.com government news story away from being able to claim that their systematic decimation of our police and fire coverage has actually resulted in less crime and fewer fires. Yes, fair people of Ann Arbor, if we got rid of our police and fire departments, Ann Arbor, could be just a heartbeat away from winning awards as the only town in the entire United States where there are absolutely no reports of crime made to sworn officers, or reports of fire emergencies made to trained firefighters. As the Police-Court Tin Can goes further and further over-budget with more and more 10-0 votes to allocate General Fund money to the Black Hole of a project by elected leaders, look for City Council to propose the Ann Arbor all volunteer police and fire departments.

A “study” on the switch to all-volunteer police and fire departments prepared by city staff, and given three thumbs up by Roger Fraser, will provide the usual quality research to Council and the public. The report will outline that in Madison, Seattle, Portland, Oz and Wonderland, volunteer police and fire fighters are required to buy their own fire trucks and police cruisers, and volunteers pay their respective cities $100,000 per year each. Volunteer police and firefighters will be appointed by Mayor and Council from among members of PAC, the Housing, Planning and Environmental Commissions. Katherine Talcott, who was hired part-time to administer the Percent for the Art Program, then hired full-time to administer the same program—with her salary being paid from the city’s water-sewer slush fund, will be appointed the Police/Fire Chief. Her appointment will be made just as soon as German (con) artist Herbert Dreiseitl gets an installation for a new fountain for anyone, anywhere completed.

The Downtown Development Authority (DDA) will be tapped for $2 million dollars per year to pay for the extra management of the Ann Arbor all volunteer police and fire departments.

Former members of the Downtown Development Authority will go before Council seated in shopping carts, talk about their objections to the back-room dealings that resulted in, well, things they can’t really elaborate on because, well, they might like to be appointed to another board or committee in the future.

Enjoy the Salon piece. I did.

It has come to this: Parents are now being asked to send their children to school with their own toilet paper. And not just toilet paper, but all sorts of basic items that schools themselves used to provide for kids. It’s all part of a disturbing trend, highlighted by the New York Times last week, of cash-strapped public schools — their budgets eviscerated by state cutbacks — shifting more and more financial responsibility onto parents.

Privatization meant transferring responsibility for entire programs or functions to the private sector. But with the drastic budget cuts that states have been forced to make, responsibility for public services and programs is literally being forced into private hands one roll of toilet paper at a time. We’ve entered the era of backdoor privatization.

On the surface, these stop-gap measures don’t seem unreasonable. After all, it’s hardly new for parents in well-off school districts to chip in for supplies, music classes and even teacher’s salaries in an effort to minimize the effect of school budget cuts on their children. What is new, though, is the extent to which families are being asked to contribute basic items. This may be too much to ask of parents who are struggling to pay their own bills — especially since they’ve already paid taxes that are supposed to support the public school system.

Nor is backdoor privatization a phenomenon limited to local schools.

Public university systems are increasingly emulating private universities by turning to wealthy alumni for donations — even as tuition rises because some legislators see hiking it as a way to raise money for their fungible state budget items.

Missouri, Georgia, and Arizona have been forced to slash their transit budgets and services, leaving hundreds of thousands without a way to get to their jobs, or to a doctor, or school. This has forced thousands of people to revert to private modes of transportation.

Many states have also cut funding for fire and police departments, resulting in slower emergency response times and diminished crime investigation. Fire department cuts have exacerbated the trend in wildfire-prone areas (among those who can afford it) of hiring private firefighting companies to protect homes, heralding a return to the 19th-century practice in which private firefighting companies raced each other to put out blazes and collect their reward.

Some towns have even started to shut off street lights to save money on electricity bills.

This backdoor privatization diminishes the quantity and quality of the services available to the general public while nurturing the growth of a parallel profit-making infrastructure for those who can afford supplementary services.

Presumably, such budget cuts are temporary, a product of the recession. But it’s not hard to imagine a future in which, say, ever-strapped state and local governments decide to follow the private sector’s lead in taking advantage of new “efficiencies.” In fact, some schools are already refraining from hiring needed teachers despite receiving federal dollars to help tide them over for the year. And even temporary cuts can do a lot of damage: Public transportation reductions, for example, can force people to give up jobs that require them to commute to work.

Certainly, some budget cuts are necessary in difficult economic times. But when we decide it’s better to turn off street lights and shut down bus lines than to raise taxes on the rich, reduce charitable tax deductions, or create a value-added tax, we are deciding that the quality and availability of the public goods should be determined by the amount individuals can pay — and not the amount a rich nation can afford. It’s a choice that undermines not only our claim that we value “ordinary Americans” as equals but also our ability to produce the healthy, educated, productive population on which our future prosperity depends.

The best-case scenario is that the impact of these cuts will help people understand just what their tax dollars are paying for and spur greater consciousness about the relationship between public spending and public goods. Now that shortages of teachers and books are spreading to suburbia, we’ll decide that shortfalls in education funding are unacceptable after all.

The worst-case scenario, though, is that reduced public spending on essential goods and services will continue to hollow out our infrastructure and reduce our capacity to meet the needs of most Americans. And that rather than have a real conversation about which public goods we consider essential and what we’re willing to do to pay for them, we’ll gradually starve core programs until working- and middle-class Americans grow accustomed to a lower standard of living while better-off Americans pay out of pocket for benefits that everyone once enjoyed.

Here’s hoping for a wake-up call.

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April 14, 2010

The Politics of Parking: Revenue Enhancement Versus Turnover, the Cage Match

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, city council, city services, money, taxes — Tags: A2Politico, AnnArbor.com, AnnArborChronicle.com, Bureau of Labor Statistics, David Jesse, Downtown Development Authority, John Mouat, John Splitt, Main Street Area Association, Matt Horning, Newcombe Clark, Northside Community Center, parking, parking enforcement, parking fines, Rich Rodriguez, Roger Fraser, Sandi Smith, Tina Reed, Tony Lupo, Wines School — A2 Politico @ 5:56 am

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At the Ward 1 meeting, the room at the Northside Community Center was bright, cheery and not nearly filled to the capacity it is when needly neighborhood residents come out twice weekly to pick up food from the pantry located there. On AnnArbor.com, reporters David Jesse and Tina Reed continued on with what I consider some of the most important reporting being done locally. It’s a series titled: “Ann Arbor’s Hidden Poor.” Jesse and Reed have been reporting on the “hidden poor” in Ann Arbor intermittently for several months now. As a rule, their pieces don’t attract the number of comments say, a piece about the real estate woes of U of M coach Rich Rodriguez would, but that could be because people are simply at a loss for words when it comes to realizing that there are, yes, poor people struggling to feed their children, keep their homes, jobs and dignity in one of the most prosperous cities in Michigan.

In the course of walking door-to-door over the past few days in the modest neighborhoods around Wines School, I saw empty houses and talked with residents who were struggling to pay their property taxes thanks to lost jobs. There was an AAPS teacher unsure whether she and her son would be in Ann Arbor next year thanks to cuts proposed in the upcoming AAPS budget. She pieces together a full-time salary from several part-time jobs. The modest neighborhood through which I walked is beloved by its residents, but the edges of the cohesion are beginning to fray.

According to Money Magazine, between 2000-2008, our city lost almost 9.25 percent of its total jobs. Unemployment rose from 7.4 percent in February of 2009, to 8.9 percent in February of 2010, according to labor force data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In February of 2007, there were 8,847 people unemployed in Ann Arbor. By February of 2010, that number rose to 16,202 individuals, again according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are thousands and thousands of Ann Arbor residents struggling with job loss, job retraining, family income declines, and holding on to their dignity by a thread.

In the 2009 Money Magazine list of the top 100 places to live in the United States, Ann Arbor didn’t crack the top 100. Interestingly, Saline (68), Tecumseh (93) and Plymouth Township (28) did. Compared to the top 10 cities that Money Magazine selected as the best places to live, Ann Arbor fell short in several categories. The median price of a house in Ann Arbor was pegged at $206,707 and the average property tax bill totaled $4,641, a full $1,000 per year higher than in number 1, 2 & 3 cities on the list. Both property crime and personal crime rates were well above those reported, on average, in the top 100 cities that made the list. Ann Arbor has significantly fewer restaurants, bars, movie theaters, libraries than the average reported by the top 100 cities. This last statistic was the most interesting. The median age of a resident in Ann Arbor was listed as 29.2 years old. Within the top 10 towns singled out by the magazine as the best places to live, the media age of residents was between 34.9 years old and 40.9 years old.

All this being said, and with the caveat that I am a data junkie in my day job (higher education policy and publishing), it’s good to remember that magazines publish features such as these to sell advertising, single copies and subscriptions. Issues such as this 2009 list of the top 100 best places to live is meant to appeal to those looking to relocate obviously (in truth, a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans than ever before, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau).

At an early-April meeting of the First Ward Democrats, I listened as First Ward Council member and Downtown Development Authority Board member Sandi Smith told neighbors in attendance that the proposed extension of downtown parking meter enforcement until 9 p.m. had nothing to do with revenue enhancement; it was all about increasing “turnover” at downtown parking meters. The politically damaging discussion initiated in December of 2009 based squarely on the idea that extending meter enforcement hours was necessary to generate more money, has morphed into a parking “plan” that revolves around seven “strategies” not a single one of which, by some miracle, mentions increasing revenues.

The first stated “strategy”: Downtown curbside public parking should be managed to create turnover at the most convenient, commercial locations so these spaces can be more easily used by a large pool of downtown users.

Just in case you temporarily lost your ability to see through a blizzard of a snow job, increased turnover is meant to lead to enhanced revenue generation. Furthermore, City Council foisted off the dirty job of coming up with the brightly packaged gift of increased turnover to benefit Ann Arborites who want to park at a meter, on the Downtown Development Authority, a Board of political appointees, along with Sandi Smith and Mayor Hieftje (elected officials). Keep in mind that those same two elected officials, as members of the DDA, voted to approve the DDA’s new parking plan that calls for extending parking meter enforcement hours until 9 p.m. to increase “turnover.” On April 19th, Smith and Hieftje will walk into City Hall, and on behalf of the citizens who elected them, evaluate the merits of their own plan which they already approved over at the DDA.

Feeling taken for a ride? You should, but for heaven’s sake don’t park in downtown Ann Arbor. Several of the “strategies” put forth in the DDA’s new report focused on “managing parking” revolve around making it ever so much easier to pay the parking tickets you’ll get. How about paying right at any of the snazzy $15,000 solar-powered parking kiosks where you put your money in to park? In 2008, the city of Baltimore bought 280 of the same kiosks, but paid $8,600 per kiosk.

In December of 2009, Smith brought forth a resolution to City Council to keep the City from dealing parking on the DDA’s turf, as it were. City Administrator Roger Fraser had proposed installing meters in city neighborhoods in the First, Fifth and Third Wards to generate revenues. Smith’s resolution proposed extending downtown meter enforcement from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., and giving the revenues from the old YMCA lot (Fifth and William) to the city. In exchange, the DDA’s monopolistic control over parking would remain intact.

I wrote about the resolution proposed by Smith in December of 2009 here. On December 21, 2009 I wrote:

There are 1,750 curbside meters. Click here to see a map of DDA meter coverage that includes the Council/DDA fantasy projection (in green) of extending parking meters outside of the DDA area into our neighborhoods. In May of 2009, when Council members and Roger Fraser came up with the bright idea to proliferate parking meters, the Ann Arbor News editorialized that the move “smacked of desperation and poor public policy.” On January 3, 2010, AnnArbor.com editorialized that, “…expanding metered parking hours into the evening to bring in $380,000 a year (and even the DDA is skeptical that much money would be generated) is a risky proposition that could backfire. It could ultimately cost the city more in lost tax revenue if it pushes even just a few more merchants to shut down because of lost business.”

On April 19th, the DDA’s parking report (parking hikes dressed up as a favor to Ann Arbor residents tired of having low-paid restaurant workers, bartenders and diswashers take up the city’s 1,700 parking meters) will be presented to Council for its approval. The AnnArborChronicle.com reports that,

“At the DDA board’s joint transportation and operations committee meeting the previous Wednesday, March 31, 2010, committee members hashed through a number of issues related to the parking report. Those ranged from presentational issues to more substantive questions. Among the presentational issues was the question of whether to include parking rates in the body of the report or put them in an appendix. Putting actual numbers in the body of the report, suggested Newcombe Clark, would make the report immediately dated. Transportation committee chair John Mouat suggested putting the numbers in an appendix. Board chair John Splitt feared that if they did not include the numbers for rates, they would lose control of the discussion: ‘They’re real numbers, why not put them in there?’ The rates will be included in an appendix.”

Is it any wonder the parking rate information is being stashed in the index? Talk of parking rates and money, you see, is so far removed from the DDA’s report on parking so as to make the report appear innocuous, at worst.

In talking with Main Street merchants, it’s pretty clear that they see this proposed meter enforcement extension as an attack on the viability of their businesses. Commenting on behalf of the Main Street Area Association (MSAA) Tony Lupo told the DDA Board that the MSAA had participated in the DDA’s process for soliciting feedback on the parking report. Lupo said that there was overwhelming opposition to extending the meter enforcement hours. However, he allowed that the MSAA understood the context under which extended hours were being considered—the city’s need for revenue.

On April 12th, city staff member Sue McCormick, the city’s public services area administrator, stood before Council and advised them to raise water and sewer rates because Ann Arbor’s $1.40 cost per 1,000 gallons of water and $4.02 cost per 1,000 gallons of wastewater placed the city at second lowest in the state, according to a report McCormick prepared. No matter that Ms. McCormick’s Water and Sewer Fund is already sitting on a multi-million dollar surplus, and that the current budget as proposed has multi-million dollar surpluses built into the allocations proposed for several departments under her direct control:

Stormwater Sewer System — $400,000 budgeted surplus (proposed)
Water Supply System — $2.52 million dollar budgeted surplus (proposed)
Sewage Disposal System — $2.9 million dollar budgeted surplus (proposed)

Our water rates are low, the logic goes among Ann Arbor city staff, so they need to be raised. Our parking fine structure hasn’t been revisited in five years, so went the logic of Roger Fraser and City Treasurer Matt Horning, in November of 2009, so we needed to “revisit” and raise the parking fines (after I questioned in an A2Politico entry the logic behind the need to “revisit” parking fines and the validity of the data in Fraser and Horning’s “study” presented to support their proposal, the idea was dropped). Now, parking “turnover” has suddenly become a problem, so we need to revisit the enforcement hours of metered parking. This kind of logic employed by city staff, and the DDA Board members, unchecked and unquestioned by City Council, simply leads to public policy decisions formulated and based on the supposition that the taxpayers exist to support city government above all else.

Some city has to have low parking fine rates and water charges, right? Evidently, according to our city staff, it sure as heck can’t be Ann Arbor. They need their accumulated and budgeted surpluses and additional revenue from parking.

The DDA’s sham report should be recognized for what it is: a power grab and snow job based on the purely anecdotal stories of DDA Board members like Smith who tell us because the mix of businesses as changed over the past 25 years from retail to restaurant, more blue collar workers are parking at the meters long-term for “free.” Purportedly, the idea behind extended enforcement hours is to move more people who are parking at meters long-term after 6 p.m. into the structures.

It won’t happen. Why?

Since Smith brings up parking meter use from 25 years ago (1984), I thought I might dig up a little data from the era. Data from a 1987 (Ann Arbor had 102,000 residents then) multi-day, observational study done by a University of Michigan researcher found that street occupancy hovered between 95-98 percent day and night. Furthermore, (and interestingly) the study concluded that metered parking was not impacted by the availability of off-street (garage) parking. The average stay was 42 minutes at a 2-hour meter. In 1987, the researcher concludes that:

“One of the major goals of on-street parking meters is to provide short-term parking at a short walking distance close to the final trip destination (i.e., for shopping, personal errand, etc.). As the length of stay becomes shorter, more drivers can utilize this premium limited space, which is so vital to bringing patrons to downtown. Tables 5 and 6 indicate that the average stay was of 41.5 minutes (standard diviation. Also, the median of 40.0 minutes was close in magnitude to the mean. Based on this measure, one has to conclude that the meters seem to do what they were designed for, to provide curb, short-term.”

Translation: People will circle like vultures for on street parking even if there are 5,000,000 open spaces in the parking garages. It’s the animal instinct— flight, flight or circle for parking. Garage parking signifies a long-term commitment, like an engagement ring. People don’t use meters long-term. They park near their destination for short term periods. At least they did in 1987. Have 25 years, a different mix of businesses, and 10,000 more residents completely changed the parking behavior of people in A2?

It’s time to stop treating Ann Arbor residents like their cash cows, and accepting city staff/DDA proposed fee increases on the flawed logic that Ann Arbor simply can’t have lower charges for services, hourly parking, parking fines, and fees for services and facilities than other communities. Why can’t we? Evidently, because the City Administrator believes, and City Council supports the policy that the DDA, Sue McCormick and other city staff need not only money for operating expenses, but mad money budget surpluses—tens of millions of tax dollars stuffed into the mattresses that are the DDA, Fleet, Water & Sewer and Solid Waste Funds.

Oh, and can I please see a show of hands from those who have little trouble finding a place to park downtown at meters after 6 p.m., and who are tired of being treated like golden geese?

Mine’s up.

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April 6, 2010

The Politics of Development: If You Think It’s About Urban Density and Affordable Living, Think Again

Filed under: boards and commissions, city council, developers — Tags: American Federation of Teachers, Avalon Housing, Concentrate Media, Germantown Historic District Committee, Issue Media Group, Jeff Helminski, Jeff Myers, Joan Lowenstein, Kelly McBride, Main Street Area Association, Mayor Hieftje, Near North, Newcombe Clark, Rebecca Lopez Kriss, Stephen J. A. Ward, The Moravian, Tracy Gosson — A2 Politico @ 2:10 pm

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There have been political battles involving The Moravian since B.C. 60. Seriously. Hapsburgs figure prominently in this history, as does Milan Kundera.

Here in Ann Arbor, The Moravian PUD went down in flames early this morning with very few of the young professionals (YPs) and students in attendance whom developers Jeff Helminski and Newcombe Clark had rallied together in a pre-Council meeting Happy Hour. Evidently, when it was time for their flash mob politicos to speak in support of The Moravian they got email alerts so that they didn’t have to sit around listening to other people blather on. Concentrate Media’s editor Jeff Myers spoke passionately in favor of the project. Developer Newcombe Clark, until recently, was Myers’s colleague at Concentrate Media. Myers cajoled Council members to realize that the development would bring mixed-use development to a neighborhood that desperately needed a shot of development botox. Concentrate Media, of course, is owned by Issue Media Group. IMG’s business model, according to Tracy Gosson, who works for IMG is to feed at the public trough then cover “local” government. Gosson is quoted in a piece published in Janaury 2010 in the Baltimore City Paper as saying, “…[P]artnering with government—or any other organization that wants to help fund IMG e-zines…—is her media outlet’s business model. ‘Government, a lot of the time, are partners of ours,’ Gosson explains in a Jan. 18 phone conversation, referring to Detroit-based Issue Media Group (IMG).”

Of course, IMG’s business model, and Concentrate Media’s coverage of “local” Ann Arbor issues, such as development projects like The Moravian, present potential conflicts of interest. Stephen J. A. Ward, founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was recently quoted in the Baltimore City Paper as explaining that IMG’s public-financing model “is a problem if the publication is pretending to do journalism….And it’s a problem for the writers—they have to ask themselves ‘How independent can we be?’”

Kelly McBride, the Poynter Institute’s Ethics Group Leader, says of the IMG/Concentrate business model “…Simply going to a government official and saying, ‘Hey, we need money,’ that creates a quid pro quo. Who knows what the unspoken expectations are?”

Rebecca Lopez Kriss spoke in favor of the project. If you don’t know who she is, you’re over 25, and not a member of the Chamber of Commerce. You’re also not in the loop about the Germantown Historic District Committee. Kriss was appointed to that group by the Mayor and Council. In her comments in favor of the Moravian, she suggested that Council members who voted against the project could proudly call themselves political creationists, for surely a vote against the Moravian was a vote against the inevitable evolution of the New Order of things as determined by those 25-30 year olds who earn $35,000-$50,000 per year, who want “affordable” 1-2 bedroom housing to fall from the sky like manna and, statistically, are the least reliable voters in local elections. Turns out Kriss bit the hand of the creationist who appointed her to the Germantown Historic District Commission. Mayor Hieftje voted against awarding the Moravian the PUD status the project needed to move forward.

Gen Y political flash mobs, and politically connected developers be damned. The Boomers and the Germantown residents had the final say: No PUD.

If the above description paints an ugly picture, it’s meant to. It was an ugly, adversarial confrontation stoked by the developers who used naive young professionals (YPs), drunk on their own importance to the economic development and economic success of our city, to stand up in public and make fools of themselves for the most part through sheer ignorance of the facts regarding the development in favor of which they spoke so passionately. They wanted Council to approve the PUD for the Moravian because YPs need “affordable” 1-bedroom housing. Alas, The Moravian offers, primarily, 3-4 bedroom apartments with shared common areas (i.e. student housing). The developers and Planning Commission members refused to release to the public the exact rents that would be charged. However, the YPs came one after the other, something like a scene from a George Romero movie, and swore the project was the Holy Grail of “affordable housing.” The YPs were fed up with “shitty” housing stock (to quote a lithe, blonde, young woman who forgot, momentarily, that she wasn’t in Cafe Habana with her cuddies sipping margaritas). There were those who lectured Council on how much the Moravian would contribute to the property tax base. No matter that the last several similar developments, including Zaragon Place, received tax assessment reductions from the city after the completion of their projects. The Near North project got a $500,000 present of tax dollars from the Downtown Development Authority after the project’s approval just because, well, Avalon Housing and the private developer went to the DDA and asked for money. The Near North project sits outside the DDA’s area of operation.

Where does that line for free money start?

I can tell you that I will work to end such tax dollar giveaways. Avalon Housing and the Near North private developer should expect their $500,000 DDA taxpayer-funded gift re-examined for its legality and, if found to be made illegally, revoked, should I be elected.

These YPs, evidently, had no idea that The Moravian project is not about urban density or lofty ideals. The development is about the dirty, pretty money that Newcombe Clark and Jeff Helminski have spent, and stand to gain from their “clever” (to quote the President of a local bank who spoke in favor of the project) accumulation of several small parcels. No matter that Ann Arbor zoning ordinances expressly forbid the accumulation of multiple smaller parcels, combined, then used to build apartment buildings 38 times larger than the nearest single family house. For over three hours, those in Council chambers listened as many impassioned people (several of whom had never set foot in Council chambers before) said the same thing over and over: Ann Arbor needs much more affordable housing stock. Many of those YPers and students who spoke on the subject mistakenly said that The Moravian was a project that would have expanded the affordable housing stock. In truth, by knocking down the existing houses, The Moravian project would result in a net loss of affordable housing stock rather than a net gain.

Go figure. Please.

The YPers had anecdotes: Their friends, they said, are leaving Ann Arbor. Their friends, they said, would love to live in Ann Arbor, but have to live in Ypsi because they just can’t find places to live in like, yep, The Moravian. Long-time Main Street business owners (Newcombe Clark served on the Board of the Main Street Area Association) came forward to support the Moravian. Over and again employers told stories about how their employees needed “affordable housing.” It was the largest single dose of paternalism I’ve swallowed in quite some time. If these Main Street employers want their employees to be able to live in Ann Arbor, perhaps the employers should pay a wage commensurate with the cost of living in Ann Arbor. Then again, paying a 25-year-old bartender $65,000 per year is not a business model that would work for our local Main Street eateries.

A U of M Professor, snugly tucked away in her Burns Park house, far from the proposed development, talked about the housing needs of her post-docs with a level of concern that I can only hope gets a write up in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Post-doc, for those who’ve never been one, or known one, is the academic equivalent of an indentured servant. Our pro-Moravian Prof., told Council she has a tough time recruiting post-docs because of (if you work in Academe try not to guffaw, please) the housing situation in Ann Arbor. For those who don’t work in Academe, let me explain. There are exponentially more students with doctorates (post-docs) than post-doc positions; it’s a research prof’s market. That’s why post-docs get paid peanuts and work like beasts of burden. Lack of affordable housing is not the main concern of, say, officials at the American Federation of Teachers, who are working to improve the lives of the several hundred thousand post-docs in the United States, including those who work for our pro-Moravian prof. Low pay and outlandish professional exploitation are the main concerns, and have been for the past 30 years as the number of post-docs has proliferated.

Joan Lowenstein, former Second Ward Council member and Newcombe Clark’s colleague on the Board of the Downtown Development Authority, stepped forward to urge Council not to give in to the “sulkers” who just want their own way, and who would stand between The Moravian and its PUD. It was a masterful performance full of contempt for those who are just, plain, spoiled sports about behemoth developments plopped down in the middle of quiet neighborhoods not zoned for behemoth developments. I have a feeling that had The Moravian been slated to go up next to Lowenstein’s house and on her block, we would have been treated to an armed insurrection in addition to plenty of sulking.

All in all, thanks to city planning staff, not to mention the members of the Planning Commission who recommended the PUD be approved, but who clearly didn’t read the city’s own PUD rules carefully enough, hours and hours of precious time were wasted on pleading the merits of a meritless PUD petition. Second Ward Council member Tony Derezinski voted in favor of the PUD based on the fact that the “professionals” had approved it. It should be noted that the work of those same professionals was methodically decimated by neighbors with city maps, planning experts, lawyers, and engineers employed by the Germantown Neighborhood Association.

I would argue that The Moravian debacle is proof positive that the “professionals” on the city staff and Planning Commission are few and far between. The Moravian Mess demonstrates quite clearly that a decade of giving away board and commission appointments at cocktail parties, and as plums to political supporters and donors, is wrecking havoc on the landscape of Ann Arbor. The seven members of the Planning Commission who voted to recommend that Council approve The Moravian PUD caused hours of Council’s time to be wasted in a fruitless public hearing, and on political posturing.

Ann Arbor needs more affordable housing stock. Absolutely. Does Ann Arbor “need” to do whatever it can to retain young professionals? Yes and no. It’s Gen X and Boomer employers who need to pay their Gen Y workers $35,000-$45,000 per year. These business owners want to push Ann Arbor into planning and public policy decisions that will benefit their businesses need to hire young workers, and pay them wages that result in a growing population that desperately needs “affordable” housing. Michigan is a “sticky state,” as I wrote in a previous entry titled “The Politics of Demographics: Why All the Hand-Wringing and Fuss Over Gen Y?”:

67.5 percent of people born in Michigan who are 18 years or older have stayed in Michigan. Conversely, only 22 percent of the people currently living in Michigan who are 18 years or older were born in another state. Sticky is where it’s at for demographers. According to the study, “In the Midwest, nearly half of adult residents say they have spent their entire lives in their hometown.” That, my fellow native Michiganians, is a huge home court advantage that local, not to mention state-wide politicians overlook in favor of attracting new people to Michigan, particularly Gen Yers. It’s a losing battle. That demographic is moving South and West, not into the heartland. Gen Xers will relocate to the Midwest for jobs, and do. Make Ann Arbor dual career couple heaven and the Gen Xers will come.

I almost went before the City Council at the public hearing last night and announced that I support the fantasy Moravian as talked about by those many young professionals who came before Council. That’s The Moravian with “affordable” rents around $800 for a 1-bedroom (at Zaragon Place, the rent per bedroom is $1,100) that really is a development aimed at young professionals.

However, the truth isn’t so pretty. This April 6, 2010 piece in The Michigan Daily throws down with the recent developments, including 4 Eleven Lofts, Zaragon Place and The Courtyards, purportedly built for “young professionals” as “over-priced luxury student housing.” The Manager of 4 Eleven Lofts was quoted in another Michigan Daily piece about the saturated rental market as saying, “As of the end of 2008, we had leased 4 Eleven Lofts to approximately 45 percent for the 2009-10 term, but by the end of 2009 we have already reached 65 percent occupancy for 2010-11.”

This May 2009 piece posted to the Concentrate Media web site, in fact, makes the absurd claim that Zaragon Place is for both students and young professionals. In April of 2010, Rick Pearlman, president of Zaragon Incorporated made clear the building’s target audience in an interview with The Daily: “It’s obvious. When you go around you see that most of (the student housing) is very old, very tried.” Local developer Peter Allen concurred, “The developers of these two developments know the campus. And they think they know the student values. So it was not a big leap of feasibility to think Zaragon and 4 Eleven Lofts would work here,” Allen said of the Chicago-based developers Zaragon Incorporated and Joseph Freed and Associates, who built Zaragon Place and 4 Eleven Lofts, respectively.

And The Moravian? More student housing. Glorified and expensive dorm rooms for students whose parents will pay the rents demanded of them for as long as their kids are enrolled at U of M. These developments are not about a vision of downtown density, or a vision for the landscape of the City of Ann Arbor. They are private dorms built in the middle of our downtown for a transient population. The Moravian is a private dorm whose developers want built in the middle of an established neighborhood for the simple reason that they bought up the parcels and want to recoup their investments.

It’s time for us all to have honest discussions about a long-term vision for the development of our downtown areas.

What I will never support is the use of PUDs to build high-rise student housing in our neighborhoods, or vote for a PUD to allow out-sized developments to “leak” outside the established boundaries of our downtown.

I fully support downtown development and density coupled with truly affordable housing—the need that was presented by those dozens of 25-35 year-old women and men who want to live within walking distance of jobs, restaurants and (some day) shopping. I wish they would run for office and vote with the same dedication they post to Facebook and Twitter. If they did, they might be better able to see through snow jobs like The Moravian, and into a future where our elected officials aren’t constantly seduced by the quick development buck, and who will demand professional work from both city planning staff, and appoint professionals to the Planning Commission who will never send clearly flawed planning decisions to Council to waste the time of elected officials and citizens, alike.

Popularity: 66% [?]

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March 26, 2010

The Politics of The Party Line: Out With The Old. In With The True.

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, city council, city services, money, parks, police, taxes — Tags: Leigh Greden, Plum Market, Roger Fraser, Tom Crawford, Whole Foods — A2 Politico @ 8:12 am

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Be prepared to hear this mantra from certain candidates over the next four months: “We [the city of Ann Arbor] have lost millions of dollars in revenue due to state cuts, the university’s purchase of the Pfizer facility, and massive local property devaluations. As a result, the city must reduce services.”

As I wrote on January 26, 2010, in “The Politics of Cooking the Books: Ann Arbor as a French Restaurant,” Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden ran his unsuccessful re-election campaign based on the premise presented above. Without talking about the actual numbers, though, it’s easy to hear that explanation of why “the city must reduce services,” and simply accept the inevitable: paying more and getting less is just what happens when Pfizer up and closes, and the city loses “millions of dollars in revenue due to state cuts.”

The city’s General Fund is a train wreck.

Property tax revenues are tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.

Housing prices are falling.

Ok. That last one is true. However, overall city revenues are up, up, up. Take a look at the chart below. All the information is from CAFR statements posted to the city’s web site:

Year	Property Tax Revenue	State Shared Revenues	Business-type Activities	Total Revenue	Total Expenses	Total Debt Service
2002	58,095,088	21,877,296	46,978,051	155,479,402	135,016,056	1,029,598
2006	62,017,866	12,604,477	73,539,483	176,649,150	144,522,183	1,539,263
2009	69,994,107	11,102,183	68,882,686	190,244,281	184,811,290	3,229,523

You’ll note that between 2002 and 2009 property tax revenues rose. Now, look right to the “Business-type activites” column. First, you’re thinking, “what are ‘business type activities’ that bring revenue to the city?” Good question, I’m glad you asked. Those activities include: water, sewer, parking, Farmer’s Market, golf courses, airport, stormwater management. and solid waste (i.e. trash and recycling) removal.

As I wrote in the January 26th entry:

Now, those of you who are on a tight budget, perhaps, Krogering more often than you used to, and bypassing Plum Market and Whole Foods, look at the total expenses line. As revenues rose, expenses rose, as well, despite the drop in state revenue sharing. In other words, those in charge of the city’s budget, City Administrator Roger Fraser, City CFO Tom Crawford, not to mention Mayor and City Council who are supposed to oversee the work of city staff, went merrily along and lived large, larger and, by 2009, largest. In other words, the more revenues that could be squeezed out of taxpayers through back-door taxation (raising the rates for those business-type activities), the more Mayor and Council allowed city staff to spend.

It’s really that simple. In business terms, under the current Mayor and City Council’s direction, they allowed the city staff to take the city backwards financially, to raise revenues significantly, and to spend, spend, spend.

Now, let’s throw in the debt service, which has more than tripled, since 2002. It’s clear that by allowing expenses to rise at the same pace as revenues, (referred to as “spending every dime you earn and then some,”) our city had no real money to make debt payments out of revenues.

What would you do at your house? Would you build an underground parking garage and incur more debt? Would you build a new city hall and incur more debt? Would you rein in expenses related to running government, and defer non-essential capital improvements?

Voters have a choice this election season, and it’s a simple one: voters can choose to elect candidates with the education, decades of real-world experience in financial management, and the skills to rein in spending, reduce debt and the back-bone to ask staff to budget so that services are funded first, or accept the political fairytale that the Stadium Bridges were allowed to deteriorate and fall down because Pfizer moved, and the State of Michigan gave Ann Arbor $1.5 million dollars less in revenue sharing between 2006 and 2009.

Our elected leaders are choosing to reduce services at the urging of city staff, as opposed to urging city staff to rein in spending on the cost of operating our city government. In just 4 years, operating expenses in our city rose by $34 million dollars, or 35 percent. At a recent neighborhood gathering, I asked if anyone owned a business, and one woman raised her hand. I asked her what would happen to a business whose overhead rose 5 percent in one year. The woman, a long-time owner of a downtown landmark eatery, replied that such a rise would be cause for immediate action. I then asked what would happen to a business whose overhead rose 35 percent in four years. She answered without hesitation: the business would be at significant risk of going under.

In this election season, we’re going to hear that our city is facing a crisis, that Ann Arbor stands at the edge of a precipice into which many cities in our state have fallen. Our city is facing a crisis, a fiscal and management crisis created over the past decade by elected officials who neglected to apply even the most basic fiscal controls, or adhere to even most basic principals of sound management as they went about shaping policies and spending the billions in tax revenues generated by charging us some of the highest per capita property taxes in our state, then by hiking our fees for services such as solid waste, sewer and water. Ann Arbor isn’t experiencing serial budget “gaps” because we’ve lost less than 1 percent from our annual revenues from reduced state profit sharing, or even because Pfizer left town and took its tax revenues with it.

What’s the real reason our “city must reduce services?” Quite simply, our elected officials have not fulfilled the single most important task charged them by our city’s Charter: they have not held the City Administrator Roger Fraser accountable. Instead, at the urging of a small group consisting of the Mayor and four Council members, year-after-year they voted to reward our City Administrator with generous salary and benefit increases even as he allowed overhead costs to skyrocket out of control. Between 2004 and 2009, Roger Fraser was given a total 35 percent increase in his compensation package. In 2009, the City Administrator was rewarded with the option of cashing out 150 hours of vacation time worth around $7,500. Mayor and Council have rewarded our City Administrator as if the name of our town were AIG instead of Ann Arbor. Now, they are choosing to bridge budget “gaps” by “reducing” city services and rationalizing the cuts as necessity born of a “revenue shortage.”

I’m sure we’ll hear some candidates this election season tell us Ann Arbor is at the edge of a precipice, and that politicos with “experience” can keep Ann Arbor from falling over the edge like Flint, Troy, Kalamazoo and (the perennial scare-fest favorite) Detroit. Audited financial statements linked to above show quite clearly to those with the skill to read and understand them that Ann Arbor is not at the edge of a precipice, but rather that our city has more than enough money to fund services—more than enough money to support our parks, pools, and senior centers, and fill our numerous potholes. Ann Arbor has more than enough money to provide citizens with the services which we should be able to expect in exchange for the taxes we are asked to pay.

Our city is not at the edge of a precipice; we’re at the end of an era. Come August we’ll have a chance to vote to end out-of-control staff spending that has gone virtually unquestioned and unmonitored by Mayor and Council. We’ll have an opportunity to begin a new era in which Mayor and Council perform the single most important and the most basic task the Charter requires them to do: hold the City Administrator accountable for the performance of his job as the chief executive of our town.

Popularity: 47% [?]

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March 24, 2010

The Politics of Singing and Dancing: Eli Cooper’s $14 Million Dollar Variety Show

Filed under: city council, taxes, transportation — Tags: A2Politico, AATA, Amtrak, AnnArborChronicle.com, Eli Cooper, Henry Ford Museum, Jayne Miller, Jim Kosteva, John Hieftje, Leigh Greden, Park Advisory Commission, Roger W. Fraser, SEMCOG, Stephen Rapundalo, Sue F. McCormick, trains, Wolverine Service — A2 Politico @ 11:56 am

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By now, if you haven’t already read it, SEMCOG announced that there is no money for commuter train service between Ann Arbor and Detroit. The transportation cognoscenti around town have been saying this for the past 16 months. So why no cash for the commuter line? According to a March 19, 2010 piece in Crain’s Business Weekly, “A $100 million federal transportation funding earmark for the project was made in 2005, but studies show the route’s cost-per-rider ratio of more than $70 remains too high for SEMCOG to qualify for the money.”

Read that last sentence again. The cost-per-rider ratio of a commuter train between Ann Arbor and Detroit is more than $70. Put another way, it would be cheaper to hop on a Southwest Air flight, to well, any one of a dozen destinations. There are just not enough people who would ride a commuter to make the cost-per-rider costs reasonable enough for the project to qualify for available federal funding.

According to Crain’s, “The hope has been that the demonstration line would encourage additional ridership, and linking the route to a proposed regional mass transit system of bus and train routes would boost usage and bring down the cost so that SEMCOG can get the federal funding.”

The result? No new target date for the daily service has been set.

The only trains that will run will be operated by the company that has been running an east-west train service between Ann Arbor and Detroit for 40 years: Amtrak. Heck, you can hop on the Ann Arbor-Detroit Amtrak train today, if you like. It will take about an hour to get to the Detroit train station, located at 11 West Baltimore Avenue, near the Cass Corridor, and about a mile from the Wayne State University campus and the DIA.

Since the demise of commuter rail, the new idea is “special” trains. For instance, there will be a special train between Ann Arbor and Detroit for the Thanksgiving Day Parade. If you’ve never been, go, but drive your car, because the train station is, literally, miles from the parade route. There’s always loads of free on-street parking within one block of the parade. Hit Lucy & Ethels diner, located at 400 Bagley Street, for lunch after the festivities.

We’ll see you there.

There will also be “special” trains for University of Michigan football games. In other words, Amtrak will schedule service to coincide with Michigan’s home football games. We need a new train station for that? I think not. We need to be exponentially more concerned with how AATA is going to haul the people who take the trains to the games to Michigan Stadium from the Amtrak station. At the moment, Michigan Stadium is not a choice on the AATA Trip Planner page, and “Stadiums” is not an option in the drop down menu. Those are easily remedied issues, of course.

However, there are other more complicated issues associated with “special” trains bringing people to U of M football games: AATA. Buses in our city currently run infrequently on the weekends, and Saturday service ends early. Unless every Michigan fan who takes the “special” train to Ann Arbor and then takes an AATA bus to the Stadium is charged enough to cover the actual operating expenses incurred by AATA for the service, Ann Arbor taxpayers who pay the AATA’s millage, will be subsidizing the University of Michigan as it earns tens of million of dollars in football revenues each Saturday.

One solution would be for U of M to assess a transportation fee on the tickets it sells to football games and give that money to AATA. It’s either that, or the University of Michigan should use its own buses to transport its football fans to and from its stadium and the train station on Depot Street. I would argue that it’s a stretch to ask taxpayers to provide train service to the football games of one university in the entire state of Michigan.

At the March 16th Park Advisory Commission (PAC) meeting, a commission member asked the city’s Transportation Program Director, Eli Cooper, a very important question: Is the Fuller Transportation Station a transportation center or a parking structure? “I believe it’s a little of both,” Cooper said. Cooper went on to explain that “the project began as a transportation center then turned into a parking structure to meet the short-term need—while at the same time proving to potential partners, such as the federal government, that Ann Arbor is serious about commuter rail.”

Seriously? Public servants serious about representing the best interests of their constituents don’t allow city staff to throw away tax money, give away parkland, or cut police and fire service to build the University of Michigan a parking garage for its “short-term need.” Because that’s the “short-term need” to which Cooper is referring—the University of Michigan’s growing need for more parking for its employees.

So, why are our elected officials still allowing city staff to steam down the tracks and spend money on the “multi-phase” Fuller Transportation Station? The “joint” venture with the University of Michigan looks suspiciously like the scrawny kid (Ann Arbor) being taken for $14 million dollars in lunch money by the neighborhood smooth talker (U of M). The latest plans for the transportation station shown at the PAC meeting include exactly one edifice: a parking garage to be used by the University of Michigan.

At the March 16th PAC meeting, Eli Cooper explained exactly why he needs $14 million dollars the city doesn’t have to build a train station that we don’t need, and for which SEMCOG has made clear commuter trains will never stop. Cooper was quoted in the AnnArborChronicle.com as telling the city’s PAC members that:

…Amtrak anticipates doubling its ridership in the next 25 years. That’s not including potential commuter or high-speed rail. Right now, the Ann Arbor station, located on Depot Street, has 75 long-term parking spots. Their current location won’t accommodate future growth, Cooper said. He noted that the Ann Arbor station is the second busiest one on the Chicago-Detroit route – only downtown Chicago is busier. The Fuller Road Station is also intended to be an alternative for driving to the Detroit Metro airport, Cooper said. And though the Fuller Road Station didn’t get chosen in the latest round of federal funding, the project was approved, he noted – the feds just ran out of money.

First of all, Cooper’s explanation directly contradicts the March 19, 2010 Crain’s Business Weekly coverage that cited the cost-per-rider ratio as the reason the Ann Arbor to Detroit commuter project was turned down for federal funds. Next, in January 2010, the federal government awarded $40 million dollars to Amtrak to renovate two of their stations on the Detroit-Chicago route. Read about the allocations here. The Ann Arbor station was not selected; stations in Battle Creek, Dearborn and Troy will get money for the kind of expansions that Eli Cooper, Mayor and City Council are demanding that Ann Arbor taxpayers foot the bill for. The $40 million dollar federal allocation includes building a new train station, as well—just not in Ann Arbor, but rather near the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.

Evidently, the federal government is not prepared to spend money for a new train station in Ann Arbor despite Cooper’s assertion that Amtrak needs one “because Amtrak anticipates doubling ridership in the next 25 years.” Perhaps this is because there are people in the federal government who are perfectly aware that Cooper’s assertions are patently absurd. In Michigan, specifically, on the Detroit-Chicago route, Amtrak officials do not expect ridership will double. Amtrak has not experienced ridership growth over the past three years. In fact, between 2007 and 2009, ridership of the Wolverine Service route between Detroit and Chicago dropped by 7.1 percent, according to ridership and revenue data from Amtrak provided to Trains Magazine and which the magazine published on November 20, 2009. Revenues on the Wolverine route dropped 7.8 percent ($1.4 million dollars) during the same period. Between 2008-2009, Amtrak lost 1.6 million riders costing the company a total of $140,000,000 in revenue.

So I ask, once again, why are Ann Arbor taxpayers being asked to pay the University of Michigan to build a parking garage on public-owned land that overlooks the Huron River? According to Eli Cooper it’s a multi-million dollar gamble to prove we’re “serious” about a commuter line between Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Let me tell you what I’m serious about: holding city staff accountable for their work and the taxpayer money they want to spend. The city needs to withdraw from the “joint” partnership immediately, and refund all of the money taken from the General Fund for the Phase I concept plan. I’m serious about putting an immediate stop to the use of any more taxpayer money for the construction of a 1,020 car parking garage for the University of Michigan on valuable river-front property owned by the people of Ann Arbor.

On November 5, 2009, former Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden, Mayor John Hieftje and Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo presented Council with the Resolution to Approve Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the City of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan for the Development of the Fuller Road Station. See a video of the Council’s discussion of the MOU here. You will hear U of M’s spokesman Jim Kosteva tell Council that the parking garage for the University of Michigan is a “city-owned project.” The one-sided MOU was prepared by Eli Cooper, reviewed by Sue F. McCormick, Public Services Administrator and Jayne Miller, Community Services Administrator, and approved by Roger W. Fraser, City Administrator.

Our city officials landed none of the money they went before Council and said could be landed for commuter rail. Michigan received none of the $8 billion dollars in federal stimulus money for high speed rail between Detroit and Chicago. Does that mean we never will? Of course not. Does it mean we should give away parkland and spend millions to build U of M a parking garage to “prove” we’re “serious” about commuter rail? Wisconsin was awarded $810 million to upgrade and refurbish train stations and install safety equipment on the Madison-to-Milwaukee leg of a line that stretches from Minneapolis to Chicago. Elected officials in neither Madison nor Milwaukee spent a dime proving that their cities were “serious,” about rail prior to receiving the federal funds.

The Fuller Transportation is not a collaboration between Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan; it’s a giveaway of public land and public money to an entity that has already amassed over 1,700 acres of land in our city, and pays just a fraction of what it should for the city services it receives now. The MOU is a poorly negotiated, one-sided agreement supported by Greden, Hieftje and Rapundalo, and then unanimously approved by Council.

The MOU should have never been approved at all. Now that it’s clear that those citizen activists who said many months ago that there was no money to operate a commuter train were absolutely correct, it’s time for Council to step up and represent the best interests of the people of Ann Arbor. Those interests are in no way best represented by participating in a one-sided arrangement that seeks to give away our prime river front land and our money to our university neighbor.

If this is a “city-owned” project, as U of M’s Jim Kosteva said at the November 5, 2009 City Council meeting, City Council, by refusing to approve further funding and construction will, effectively, kill it.

Popularity: 49% [?]

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March 18, 2010

The Politics of Outsourcing: Why Pay More to Recycle Ann Arbor? Good Question.

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, city council, environment, recycling — Tags: Ann Arbor City Council, Carsten Hohnke, Container Recycling Institute, Ecology Center, Environmental Commission, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Recycle Ann Arbor, recycling, Ryan Stanton, Sue McCormick — A2 Politico @ 6:41 pm

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In response to my entry about the City Council move to switch Ann Arbor over to single stream recycling, I had a conversation with a former worker at the city’s material collections facility who pointed out something very important to me: the ideal recycling program contracts and, eventually, becomes unnecessary. Why? Because the ultimate goal is to reduce use of materials.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

In that Holy Trio (at least in my house), it’s pretty easy to forget that “recycle” comes last, not first. Recycling is, for all intents, the last option those committed to environmentalism choose. The first move is to reduce one’s use of materials that can’t be reused. Then, and only then, do we move to the last resort of recycling. It’s a lofty ideal. At our house, we certainly don’t meet the goal of 100 percent diversion of consumed materials from the landfill. We try our best. We have a compost tumbler in the backyard. When they first debuted, we bought one of those nifty City of Ann Arbor compost bins for $25. Those are the same bins that everyone is now going to be required to drop $50 bucks on in order to get leaves picked up. If our neighborhood is any indication, I have to imagine that city staff member Sue McCormick is still sitting on several thousand of the original 10,000 compost bins she spent several million dollars on not too long ago. We’re the only family with one within a two block radius.

As I’ve written before, at our house reduce, reuse, recycle is the religion. Thus, my curiosity was piqued when Fifth Ward’s Carsten Hohnke, one of the sponsors of the resolution to move Ann Arbor to single stream recycling, along with Ward Four’s Margie Teall and Mayor Hieftje, was quoted in a November 6, 2009 post to AnnArbor.com written by Ryan Stanton as saying:

This is a smart step forward for us and for our solid waste program. I feel convinced that we’ll see a significant increase in the amount of waste that we’re diverting from landfills and therefore the cost that we incur in taking waste to landfills.

The other exciting part of this is that we’ll have an opportunity to generate additional revenue from a greater volume in the recycling stream and to provide additional services to neighboring municipalities and help spread recycling beyond Ann Arbor.

Increasing the amount of waste diverted from the landfill, however, does not qualify as an increase in recycling. According to the Container Recycling Institute’s 2009 survey which examines single stream recycling: “It is important to understand that diversion from disposal is not recycling. Collection is not recycling. A product is not recycled until it is made into another product.”

Thus, expanding our recycling program on the basis that the investment will result in more materials simply being diverted from the landfill is actually no environmental gain, according to researchers at the Container Recycling Institute. So why the frenzy to throw away millions to divert more tons from the landfill? A look at the following chart from the City’s web site will provide you with an easy explanation as to why city staff pushed single stream recycling, and one of the several reasons why the city’s members of the Environmental Commission, City Council, Recycle Ann Arbor and the director of the Ecology Center pushed the single stream change-over.

Compost

According to the chart above, the total number of tons of material put into our landfill has actually risen since 2004, and total number of tons recycled has stagnated since 2002. Let me put this another way, the total number of tons hauled by Recycle Ann Arbor hasn’t increased substantially since 1998.

However, there is one area where we have seen a dramatic increase with respect to recycling: the amount of money taxpayers are spending to pay Recycle Ann Arbor to haul our recyclables has skyrocked since 2004, when the City of Ann Arbor granted the non-profit a 10-year contract to haul our materials. That merit-based contract called for the City to pay Recycle Ann Arbor $766,000, according to minutes from the December 15, 2003 City Council meeting.

This interesting pitch for the use of Recycle Ann Arbor versus our city’s own staff, or a for profit hauling service, to collect our recycling comes from the Recycle Ann Arbor 2005 Annual Report:

Ann Arbor can take pride in its approach to recycling – nonprofit Recycle Ann Arbor started its curbside recycling program 28 years ago and still operates the program today under contract to the City of Ann Arbor. In 2004, the City of Ann Arbor granted Recycle Ann Arbor a ten-year contract that will enable Recycle Ann Arbor to continue providing quality recycling services to the Ann Arbor community.

Many communities hope to save money and streamline the collection process by bundling waste collection and recycling services. Instead, they create a monopoly situation where waste haulers control not only the collection of waste and recyclables, but also the material recycling facilities, allowing them to dramatically increase their rates.

Recycle Ann Arbor realizes that waste hauling companies see little difference between fees for trash services andfees for recycling services. In addition to increased fees, recycling efforts suffer. Waste hauling companies are profit driven, and more concerned with their bottom line and keeping their investors happy, than with the quality of their recycling efforts. The typical profit margin for land filling is ten times more than for recycling, making it in the best interest of any commercial waste hauler not to concentrate on recycling efforts.

Ann Arbor taxpayers foot the bill for the trucks, fuel, and repairs of Recycle Ann’s Arbor’s collection vehicles, purchased for $225,000 each in 2004. Despite the eloquent argument made above against bidding out the contract to for profit hauling companies, or the City of Ann Arbor using its own city-owned recycling vehicles and city staff to haul recycling, Recycle Ann Arbor’s Annual Report pegs for profit hauling companies as “profit driven.” What’s clear from the information that follows is that recycling in Ann Arbor and Recycle Ann Arbor have become equally “profit driven” and the same kind of hauling monopoly the Recycle Ann Arbor Annual Report referenced above urges Ann Arbor citizens to avoid.

Look again at the chart above at the number of tons recycled.

By 2008, the cost to taxpayers to have Recycle Ann Arbor haul virtually the same number of tons of material to the MRF that the company hauled in 2003, had risen from $766,000 to a whopping $1.6 million dollars. City Council approved the payment of $1.8 million dollars to Recycle Ann Arbor for fiscal year 2010. The November 2009 resolution to move to single-stream recycling includes the following information from city staff to justify the expenditure and support the resolution by the politicos:

Whereas, Implementation of upgrades to the Material Recovery Facility (MRF) to accept single stream recycling provides a number of benefits to the City, including a cleaner community, greater operating efficiencies, overall increases in recycling and rewards to City’s residents for recycling

The following net savings are anticipated as a result of these changes in the recycling program.

·       $30,000.00 annual savings in recycling dumpster collection

·      $450,000.00 annual savings in curbside recycling (RAA contract)

·      $450,000.00 annual revenues from merchant MRF users

The 2010 $1.8 million dollar allocation to Recycle Ann Arbor obviously doesn’t support the alleged $450,000 savings touted by the three city staff who prepared (Tom McMurtrie, Systems Planning Unit), reviewed (Sue McCormick, Public Services Administrator) and approved (City Administrator Roger Fraser) the resolution presented to Council at the November 2009 meeting at which Council member Carsten Hohnke touted the “savings” taxpayers would realize by switching to single stream recycling.

Here’s the real kicker. It costs less to pay city workers to pick up the garbage, even with the generous pay and benefit packages provided to them, than it costs to contract with Recycle Ann Arbor to drive the city-owned and maintained trucks to pick up our recycling. This is the same pay and benefit package lamented by the City Administrator, Mayor and Council members as a major source of the city’s financial problems. In fiscal year 2009, actual salary and benefits to city employees for residential garbage collection was $738,093. In 2011, budgeted salary and benefits for city employees for residential garbage pick-up is $789,271.

In 2009, Recycle Ann Arbor spent $809,090 on salaries and benefits for its collection workers, and has budgeted $865,682 for the 2011 fiscal year. In 2009, for the City of Ann Arbor to contract with Recycle Ann Arbor to provide drivers to collect multi- and single-family recycling, the contract labor was $1,580,794 to run eight recycling trucks. The City of Ann Arbor spent $1,171,020 to run 10 city trucks to collect multi- and single-family solid waste.

Now, with the blessing, backing, pushing and shoving of the Environmental Commission, Mayor and Council, we’ve entered into a contract that will require taxpayers to continue to overpay for recycling services. To add insult to injury, Mayor and Council just voted to waste millions to implement single stream recycling in the hopes that it will become the fantasy savings/profit center as pitched by staff to Council, then by Carsten Hohnke to the public through the Press in November 2009.

The solution to this financial and managerial mess is obvious.

We need elected officials who are absolutely intolerant of conflicts of interest, who read the contracts they vote to approve, and who are prepared to closely question the financial information and pie-in-the-sky promises pitched to them by city staff. The Recycle Ann Arbor contract amended by City Council on March 15, 2010 was not attached to the Council agenda, or provided in the Council packet. Recycling services provided to our city by Recycle Ann Arbor need to be bid out to for profit haulers, or brought in-house, where taxpayers will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Recycle Ann Arbor drivers could, in theory, apply for the city jobs that would be created.

Is there any way to get out of the ill-advised Recycle Ann Arbor contract Council just entered into? There may be. I’ll write about how and why in my next entry.

Popularity: 52% [?]

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March 7, 2010

The Politics of Negotiating: You Never Get What You Deserve

Filed under: city council, city services, fire, police, unions — Tags: Administration and Labor Committee, Budget and Labor Committee, Carsten Hohnke, Christopher Taylor, Ed Pierce, firefighters, Jerry Jernigan, Lou Belcher, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Al Wheeler, Mayor John Hieftje, Nicholas Nightwine, police, Sandi Smith, Stephen Rapundalo, Tony Derezinski — A2 Politico @ 6:50 am

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The following was posted to AnnArbor.com on February 28, 2010:

City officials say it’s been a challenge getting the needed concessions from labor unions, specifically with the police and firefighters unions, whose members enjoy premium-free health insurance.

“We are still struggling with labor contracts that were heavily one-sided that were decided back in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Mayor John Hieftje. “We’ve been working very hard to try to do more. Employees are contributing more to their health benefits, but not nearly what they need to be.”

So, the current serious problems between the current City Council, Mayor and City Administrator and our unions are really the responsibility of Mayor Al Wheeler—D (1975-1978), Lou Belcher—R (1978-1985), Ed Pierce—D (1985-1987) and last but certainly not least, Jerry Jernigan—R (1987-1991)?

Bollocks.

Fantasies come in all shapes and sizes, and some are more elaborate than others. Mayor Hieftje’s latest fantasy is that our city “is still struggling with labor contracts that were heavily one-sided that were decided back in the ’70s and ’80s” and that he’s been “working very hard to try to do more.”

Let’s make something very clear: The longest serving members of Council, Mayor Hieftje, Fourth Ward’s Marcia Higgins and Margie Teall, along with Ward Two’s Stephen Rapundalo, have among them a collective 30+ years sitting on the former City Council Budget and Labor Committee. In case you’re wondering, that’s the committee that, until this year, oversaw negotiations with the city’s unions. Oh, those elected officials didn’t position themselves across from the union representatives and hammer out agreements. That’s the responsibility of the City Administrator. So, naturally, he relies on a lawyer to do the actual negotiating. A lawyer from the City Attorney’s office? Nope. Ann Arbor’s Mayor and City Council have approved hundreds of thousands of dollars over the past decade to hire consultants to negotiate with the unionized employees.

We’ve certainly gotten what we paid for, if the Mayor is to be believed: one-sided labor agreements. You know why? For starters, until recently the city’s labor union PACs could be counted on for political donations. In summer of 2008, First Ward’s Sandi Smith, Second Ward’s Tony Derezinski, Third Ward’s Christopher Taylor and Fifth Ward’s Carsten Hohnke, all put their hands out and took, collectively, thousands from the firefighter’s PAC. Taking money from a local union group with which you’re expected to negotiate and vote on contracts is a conflict of interest. The donations were perfectly legal, mind you. However, the Council members should have exercised better judgement, propriety and common sense.

The other reason that we’ve ended up with one-sided labor agreements is that the Mayor, City Council, the City Administrator and the contractors hired to “negotiate” our union labor agreements have negotiated one-sided contracts, and voted to approve one-sided contracts. This comes from a piece about the city’s union woe’s posted to AnnArbor.com on February 28, 2010:

AFSCME President Nicholas Nightwine, who heads up the city’s largest labor union, acknowledged his bargaining unit historically has shared little of the cost of health benefits. For instance, AFSCME employees never paid deductibles for their health insurance until their last contract—and they still don’t pay premiums.

“But when we negotiate a contract, both sides sign off on the agreement,” Nightwine said. “So the city has not given us anything that they have not signed off on giving us. We don’t make our own wages or benefits.”

Nightwine is absolutely right: it’s a well-established rule in business that you never get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate, and our city’s unions have negotiated our City Administrator, Mayor, City Council, and their highly-paid hired negotiating guns right under the bargaining table. In turn, the results of those “negotiations” have been approved by the City Council’s Budget and Labor Committee members above, then by the other City Council members.

At any time in the process, any of our elected officials could have spoken up and asked why the contracts on which they were voting to approve allowed AFSCME employees to skip making contributions to their health care premiums. Of course, that would’ve required studying the contracts to understand them. It might take a law degree to write a labor contract, but it doesn’t take a law degree to read and understand a labor contract. It takes a command of English, patience, and the ability to use a table of contents to get to the juicy parts, such as wages and benefits.

Yes, it would have caused a ruckus to have pointed out problems in the proposed final versions of the contracts brought to Council for approval, and it certainly would have left the City Administrator red-faced, but what’s more important than negotiating an equitable contract on behalf of the taxpayers? For some, it’s more important to try to sell the public a bill of goods that the problem with union contracts reaches back to the days of platform shoes, Casey and the Sunshine Band, and President Ford.

Is the cause of the city’s financial mess the result of the pay and benefit packages of some current unionized employees? No, of course not. Overhead unrelated to those salaries and benefits has risen 35 percent ($34 million dollars) since 2006. Annual debt payments have ballooned from $950,000 per year in 2005 to $3.9 million dollars per year in 2010.

Are the city’s unionized employees a bunch of spoiled brats with outsized pay and benefit packages? As someone with extensive experience analyzing labor agreements for both employers and employees, I can tell you the responsibility for the final version of any contract between our city and its unions rests with Mayor, Council and the City Administrator. Nick Nightwine is absolutely right that AFSCME doesn’t make its own wages and benefits. The union negotiated them. AFSCME officials negotiated the pants off of Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Stephen Rapundalo and Roger Fraser. Not a single other Council member over the past decade has been willing to say that the members of the City Council’s Budget and Labor Committee had no clothes.

The Budget and Labor Committee was recently split into two entities. Mayor Hieftje took himself off the Budget Committee, but remains a member of the newly created Administration and Labor Committee, along with Tony Derezinski, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall and Stephen Rapundalo. And now we have the absurd assertion from the five of them that they have “been trying to do more” to bring down costs of unionized labor. Four of them couldn’t do it as long-time members on the Budget and Labor Committee, and Council member Derezinski has the worst attendance record of any member of City Council; he can’t be counted on to show up to meetings, or important votes.

The firefighters recently gave voluntary salary concessions, and then woke up to read in the newspapers that the deal was for six months, and that there are still layoffs planned to close the ever-present “budget gap.” Negotiating in bad faith, and with more hubris than verifiable factual data, will do little than destroy any hope of working with our city’s organized labor. I expect the City Administrator and current lot of Council members to have little luck winning voluntary concessions from any of the city’s other unions.

Why should we care if our unionized employees are utterly disgruntled? The Dickensian model of employee management went out with the Triangle Factory Fire, and management science studies from the 1920s that first definitely linked employee morale with productivity. Put simply, low employee morale costs our city millions every year in decreased productivity. The damaged relationships with our unionized employees cost additional millions, because those employees are disinclined to give salary and benefit concessions voluntarily, or to open their contracts in times of serious and real fiscal emergency.

Since 2003, (with the exception of 2009) city staff has sent budgets to Mayor and Council, and our elected officials have approved budgets year after year which have had projected inflated deficits in the General Fund. When the actual numbers came in, there were General Fund surpluses. The inconceivable consistency in miscalculating General Fund revenues aside, unionized employees are asked to rely on this data during negotiations. It should come as no surprise that they are increasingly disinclined to do, and suspect they are being deliberately fed inaccurate financial information.

There is binding arbitration in the case of police and fire union negotiation impasses, but in reality Act 312 is a dangerous spin of the Roulette Wheel for any Michigan city. Act 312 does not allow the units to strike. Instead, there is a legally-mandated arbitration procedure. In 2009, Ann Arbor’s patrol officers union went to binding arbitration and won $673,000 in pay raises.

So what’s the solution? It’s going to take some significant changes in how our city approaches labor negotiations. It’s going to take hard work to repair the severe damage done to the relationships between Ann Arbor and its labor unions. On the up side, there’s a pretty simple formula to ending up with equitable union contracts: first, City Council members must make sure that the City Administrator negotiates equitable labor agreements, then Council members will have to read the agreements carefully before voting in favor of them.

Instead of doing the Hustle, it’s time for elected officials and city staff to take responsibility for the labor agreements they negotiated then voted in favor of supporting.

Popularity: 35% [?]

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February 25, 2010

The Politics of Management: Paying More For Less

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, city council, money — Tags: City of Ann Arbor Employees' Retirement System, Mayor Hieftje, Roger Fraser — A2 Politico @ 10:38 pm

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Most people who live in Ann Arbor don’t have the time or the inclination to get overly involved in the minutia of city government. People are busy spending their days getting done what they need to get done to get the bills paid. Politics isn’t a passion for many, and the thought of running for an elected office probably never crosses the minds of most folks. After all, there are about 10 million people in Michigan, but only about 1,500 mayors. There are just 40 Michigan state senators.

I was at synagogue last Friday and overheard the spouse of a candidate for County Commissioner ask my partner why on earth I wanted to run for mayor. Good question. Why, indeed? Our roads are some of the worst in the entire state. The Stadium bridges are, literally, falling down. The budget is a constant source of heartburn to anyone with the time to read through the behemoth (a tip: you’ll get more information by studying the city’s audited financial statements). Who wants to work to clean up that kind of a mess? Me. Why? Because while there is a mess to clean up, I see that there is also incredible potential and opportunity to make Ann Arbor an even better place for all of us to call home. I am committed to living, working and raising a family here. What better reason to share my decades of management, marketing and finance experience, step up, and accept the challenge of public service?

A police officer whom I spoke with recently made a point of telling me about the two surveys of staff morale that found our 750 city employees in desperate need of some serious pep talks, and maybe even a few anti-depressants. We have employees who feel under-appreciated, and are inclined to jump ship. They work under constant threat of layoff. Studies make clear that layoffs do not actually save money, because overall productivity decreases. The top performers who survive a layoff won’t necessarily feel obligated to soldier on. A 2000 study by Roderick Iverson and Jacqueline Pullman from the University of Melbourne, and a 2003 study by Sarah Moore, Leon Grunberg, and Edward Greenberg from the University of Colorado at Boulder, both confirmed that employees were far more likely to quit jobs in environments of repeated downsizing. The likelihood that an employee will quit actually increases the more layoffs he or she “survives,” the CU-Boulder study found.

The City Administrator Roger Fraser recently gave a presentation to Mayor and Council members in which he presented the following graph:

Layoffs

Between 2002 and 2010, Ann Arbor has reduced its work force through layoff, early retirement and attrition by about 30 people per year. This graph purports two facts.

First, that the overall reduction has resulted in $25 million dollars in “savings.”

The second fact is that the number of consultants (contracted services) and temps has remained “flat.”

No one on Council asked to have the terms “savings” and “flat” defined. Should they have? The City Administrator’s financial data should be presumed to be accurate. However, we have to remember that since 2003, Roger Fraser has inflated General Fund deficits in every budget. With the exception of 2009, when the actual numbers have come in, our General Fund has actually finished with modest surpluses. This is a very important fact that would give anyone with experience in budgeting and finance ample reason to question Mr. Fraser very closely when presented with financial data such as the data in the graph above.

How would one go about verifying Fraser’s data? The City files income tax returns just as you and I do. In those returns, are several bits of information that allow us to check Mr. Fraser’s work.

Here’s a graph with information from the City’s income tax returns filed between 2000 and 2009:

Fiscal Year	Number of FTE and Contract Employees Claimed	Wages Claimed
2000	1,230	$49.6 million dollars
2001	# of employees not recorded on tax return	$58.7 million dollars
2002	1,149	$55.9 million dollars
2003	1,102	$54.7 million dollars
2004	1,079	$54.2 million dollars
2005	1,128	$57.5 million dollars
2006	1,104	$60.3 million dollars
2007	1,069	$57.2 million dollars
2008	1,018	$55.3 million dollars
2009	1,029	$54.7 million dollars

You should, of course, have an immediate question: Where’s the purported $25 million dollar “savings” Mr. Fraser told Council has been realized by the “streamlining” of those 239 employees? The next question is why the total number of employees declared to the IRS doesn’t match information presented to the public by Mayor Hieftje and Mr. Fraser. In December of 2009, Mr. Fraser, in a presentation to Council, told the group that as of December 2009 Ann Arbor employes 756 people.

According to the City’s IRS tax returns, Ann Arbor employs 201 fewer people than in 2000, but spending on wages has increased. In fact, in 2009 we paid about the same to employ 1,029 people as we did to employ 1,159 people in 2002.

We’re paying more for less. We’re getting less for more.

The City Administrator’s data raise many more questions than they answer, and the data are certainly not of the quality necessary to make informed decisions concerning closing projected budget gaps. Mayor and Council have a legal and fiduciary obligation to hold the City Administrator accountable in the performance of his job. Repeatedly presenting incomplete and contradicting financial data to bolster claims of savings that are suspect, at best, is cause for serious concern, close questioning and, potentially, some very frank discussions between Mayor, Council and the City Administrator.

It is clear to me that, as any good manager knows, profitability is not achieved through a long-term strategy of layoffs. Why not? Employee morale and productivity drop, as documented in many studies, including the two I referred to above. Over the last decade, Council members and Mayor have run for re-election based on their support of a fiscal strategy that encompassed the systematic decimation of Ann Arbor’s human capital—our police, firefighters, customer service workers, foresters, planners, even our dog catcher is gone. It’s clear from the IRS data that the cost of government has not been reduced by the layoffs, nor has there been any marked increase in the efficiency of city government; we’ve paid millions for consultants and contract workers to supplement the work of our remaining city staff.

It should be clear that further layoffs are not the answer to the fiscal problems facing our city. The answer is to reverse the damage done and rebuild our human capital.

The City’s department managers must be forced to cut out the junk food from the City’s fiscal diet. This means sharply reducing the amounts approved for contract labor and consultants. For instance, Ann Arbor employs both a landscape architect and a forester, yet Council recently approved several hundred thousand dollars worth of contracts for companies to do landscape architecture and forestry work for the City. Our City Attorney’s office has eight full-time attorneys (tip o’ the keyboard to Rick) on staff, yet that office has asked Council to approve close to $400,000 in contracts for outsourced legal work over the past 18 months. In 2009, Ann Arbor spent over $1 million dollars on consultants.

There’s much more we can do to sort out the fiscal mess that has been created over the past half a dozen years.

The real work will start, and the real savings will be realized, when we reconfigure the City of Ann Arbor Employees’ Retirement System for future retirees—a crucial task put off for a decade, much like the reconstruction of the Stadium bridges, and a good part of the reason our city budget is crumbling, much like our streets.

So what’s it going to take to get our labor unions and non-unionized employees to buy into a complete restructuring of their retiree benefit programs? How are we going to get retirees to pay, for instance, 10 percent of their yearly $7 million dollar health insurance premiums, and to implement a change in benefits to those who retire before 65? How will we ask for an even larger contribution for health insurance premiums from early retired city employees who’re employed full-time elsewhere? How are we going to get employees to agree to accept a change to the age at which they may retire?

For starters, it’s going to new elected leadership at City Hall who is prepared to ask them to do it.

Popularity: 37% [?]

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February 16, 2010

The Politics of Governing: Should City Council Draft Resolutions That Address International Political Issues?

Filed under: city council, politics, weekend poll — Tags: A2Politico, Ann Arbor City Council, poll, U.S. foreign policy — A2 Politico @ 5:01 pm

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I was walking Flash (the family’s new Jack Russell pooch) in the woods this afternoon, and ran into a neighbor who’s quite an active local politico. During the course of our conversation about my run for office, she wanted to know where I stand on City Council drafting resolutions at the prompting of citizen groups that comment on international policy issues. We ended our conversation with a promise to get together to discuss the topic further. She’s not the first person to have asked me this question, or to have expressed an opinion about Ann Arbor City Council responding to international policy via Council resolution. Thus far, opinion among those whom I discussed the issue with has been pretty evenly split between those opposed and those in favor of the practice.

Those opposed object to local political issues taking a back seat to international politics. City Council and Mayor, so say those on this side of the debate, have an obligation to tend to local issues, concerns and challenges. They see devoting time to international politics as a form of political grandstanding. “People in Ann Arbor,” one politico snapped, “may think the town is the center of the universe, but it’s not.” Local people who want to impact foreign policy, so say these politicos, need to write to their congressional leaders. On the other side of the aisle are Ann Arbor politicos who see city government as a way to move federal foreign policy issues one way or the other. They see City Council as a “voice of the people” who bring the issues to the forefront.

I’ve decided to put up a poll. As always, one vote per customer. If you’re inclined to leave comments, I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the subject in more detail. What do you think? Should Ann Arbor City Council draft resolutions that address international political issues, or should Council keep its nose our of other people’s political business and tend to its local political issues?

Popularity: 32% [?]

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Older Posts »

A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

September 1, 2010

The Politics of Twins: Separated at Birth?

August 23, 2010

The Politics of Backdoor Privatization: Ann Arbor Residents To Pay $100,000 Each to Serve On All Volunteer Fire/Police Departments

April 14, 2010

The Politics of Parking: Revenue Enhancement Versus Turnover, the Cage Match

April 6, 2010

The Politics of Development: If You Think It’s About Urban Density and Affordable Living, Think Again

March 26, 2010

The Politics of The Party Line: Out With The Old. In With The True.

March 24, 2010

The Politics of Singing and Dancing: Eli Cooper’s $14 Million Dollar Variety Show

March 18, 2010

The Politics of Outsourcing: Why Pay More to Recycle Ann Arbor? Good Question.

March 7, 2010

The Politics of Negotiating: You Never Get What You Deserve

February 25, 2010

The Politics of Management: Paying More For Less

February 16, 2010

The Politics of Governing: Should City Council Draft Resolutions That Address International Political Issues?

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