A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

September 30, 2009

WHISPER: City Attorney’s Gambling Problem

Filed under: Whisper, city council — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 2:30 am
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WHISPER: A legal source very close to the action says that City Attorney Stephen Postema is taking a gamble. First, let’s dispel any notion that the Ann Arbor City Attorney works for the citizens of Ann Arbor. He doesn’t. He works for the Ann Arbor City Council, and we taxpayers simply pay him $200,000 a year to do it. He’s supposed to serve as legal counsel to City Council members in the course of their jobs crafting legislation, and of course, the city of Ann Arbor when those pesky lawsuits arise—such as the one filed by Herb David Guitar Studio; Kiki Properties, LLC; Jerusalem Garden; and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center.

You’ll remember that A2Politico wrote about the defeat of Mike Anglin and Sabra Briere’s September 21st resolution to release the City Council’s emails and have them archived on the City’s web site in the post titled “Council’s Henchman to A2 F-You.” The office of the City Attorney helped prepare the language of Anglin’s September 21st resolution, evidently not without first making the process difficult for Council member Anglin. The eventual resolution prepared by the Attorney’s office for Anglin was peppered with spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Now comes the plot twist. It was generally supposed that the City Attorney’s office was being difficult with Mike Anglin in order to protect Council members who do not want those emails released. As much as there were protestations by Council members (Smith and Rapundalo) at the September 21st meeting that they have nothing to hide, those protestations did not, you’ll note, come from Fourth Ward Council members Margie Teall and Marcia Higgins, Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden or Mayor Hieftje.

So was the City Attorney’s office protecting those Council members who didn’t want the emails released free of charge to citizens? No, according to our source close to the action.

Remember the lawsuit filed by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center  (referred to above) to halt the construction of the new underground parking garage/conference center next to the Main Library on Fifth? Instead, the City Attorney is said to have wanted to preserve the emails as a bargaining chip in the gamble that is a settlement of Great Lakes Environmental Law Center’s litigation.  

The word from our source is that the parking lot litigation will be settled with dismissal of the action and release of all Council emails to the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. What officials from the Great Lake Evironmental Law Center would do with the Council emails remains to be seen.

Have a “whisper” to share? Click here to send it along to me. I’ll keep the sources of all “whispers” confidential, naturally. To send a whisper anonymously, click this link to use an email remailer that will hide your identity.

Send Whispers to: umgrad1234 AT yahoo.com.

Popularity: 4% [?]

September 29, 2009

Roger Fraser (Right Hand) Should Talk to Dan Rainey (Left Hand)

Filed under: city council, political reporting — Tags: , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 8:55 pm
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On the AnnArbor.com site today, it was reported that City Administrator Roger Fraser told reporter Ryan Stanton that it would cost the city between $35,000-$45,000 to retrieve the emails sent by City Council during public meeting over the past seven years. That would be email messages sent during 172 meetings. This comes from Stanton’s piece:

Dan Rainey, the city’s information technology officer, estimated it would take 172 hours of IT staff time to scan e-mails dating back to September 2002, when council members first started using computers during meetings. At $45 an hour, that would cost $7,740 in staff time, Rainey estimated, and it would take another $8,000 to purchase software. The total IT expense was listed at $15,740.

Stephen Postema, the city’s attorney, said additional expenses include examining, sorting and redacting the contents of e-mails before they’re released to the public. To that end, he suggested the city bring Laurie Foondle out of retirement to handle that task at a cost of $30 an hour.

Postema guessed it could take 600 to 1,000 hours to review e-mails from all 172 meetings – nearly six hours per meeting – and create a separate sheet for each meeting, explaining which information was blacked out and why. All total, that was estimated to cost $18,000 to $30,000.

Add the city’s review costs to the IT expenses and you get the $33,000 to $45,000 estimate, Fraser said.

A2Politico readers will remember yesterday that I posted a Whisper about A2 CIO and IT Director Dan Rainey. Rainey’s pals at his professional association needed a new web page, and Dan Rainey volunteered his IT department to get the job done. Rainey, a clever one, put out a call on the City’s human resources web site to hire an unpaid intern to work on the redesign of the association’s web site. 

So, I have to ask: If Dan Rainey can hire an unpaid intern to do IT work totally unrelated to the IT needs of the City of Ann Arbor, why can’t Roger Fraser and Dan Rainey put their heads together and hire an unpaid intern to pull the Council emails from the server? Hiring an unpaid intern would save $15,740.When not supervising the intern who’s going to do web design work on the city’s dime for Rainey’s pals at MIX, Dan Rainey could supervise the email intern—who Rainey estimates would to spend 172 hours pressing a button to download the Council emails from the server onto a Zip disk. You have to think a guy with Rainey’s penchant for creative problem-solving, and who pulls down $160K a year in salary and benefits, can do a little multi-tasking, right?

While we’re at it, why couldn’t City Attorney Stephen Postema hire a third year law student from the University of Michigan to review/redact the emails? The going rate for law student interns is, well, next to nothing. That would knock off the another $15,000 to $20,000 from the quoted costs. Now we’re down to $10,000 to pull the emails off the server and archive them. I bet Ann Arbor CFO Tom Crawford could find $10,000. Heck, sell five of the seven 40″ plasma screen televisions purchased on the sly by staff of the Wheeler Center last year. The unauthorized purchase was flagged in an audit and written up here. Those sweet little plasma babies would net at least $10K. 

It has been estimated that it would cost the public about $14,000 to FOIA the emails. If the public FOIA’s the emails and more violations of the Open Meetings Act, more vote-rigging, more deceitful emails to constituents and more “scripting” of debates come to light, I imagine those involved will kiss their Council seats so long.

The 8 Democrats (tip o’ the keyboard to David Cahill) on Council may have just slit their collective political throats for the sake of sending a big F-you to Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin, and the people in the city who want to see the emails released and archived on the City’s web site. It was a short-sighted move, and after the taxpayers pay to FOIA the emails, those on Council caught up in this scandal will pay even more dearly.

Popularity: 6% [?]

September 28, 2009

Council Gets Back to the "Real" Business of Governing: Banning Toy Guns

Filed under: city council, crime, police — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 11:47 pm
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On September 21, 2009 when Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin and First Ward Council member Sabra Briere introduced a resolution to release all of Council’s emails sent during public meetings over the past six years, their colleagues became, suddenly, forward-thinking. It was time, the email nay sayers said, to move forward and get back to the important business at hand. Like crafting ordinances to ban plastic bags and toy guns. I shudder to think how many thousands of dollars of staff hours have been spent on these two legislative efforts.

Yet, on August 6, 2009, at the behest of the Ann Arbor Police Department (tip o’ the keyboard to David Cahill) asked that Council introduce “An Ordinance to Amend Sections 9:260, 9:261, 9:262 and 9:263 of Chapter 115, Weapons and Explosives (Replica/Toy Guns), of Title IX of the Code of the City of Ann Arbor (Ordinance No. ORD-09-26).” The ordinance is scheduled to go back to Council on October 5th. 

This is yet another example of Ann Arbor’s City Council members reinventing the wheel, as it were, and comes close to political grandstanding. You see, in January of 2009, the Michigan legislature took up the question of banning replica guns. State law would, of course, apply in Ann Arbor. Unless we have some secret Southern Nullifiers in our midst.

Perhaps an hors d’oeuvre? We’ll begin with a little history on replica guns.  

The concern of law enforcement officials, of course, has to do with the use of these replica guns to commit crimes. In the United States since 1992, toy guns have been required to have an orange plug, or be entirely brightly colored to signify them as toys. In the 1950s, sales of toy guns topped $30 million dollars per year. In 1968, toy guns were removed from the Sears Roebuck Christmas catalog after the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and U.S. Senator, former  United States Attorney General, and presidential candidate Robert Francis Kennedy. They were eventually returned to the catalog, and nation-wide toys guns sold an estimated 300,000 units per year.

Replica guns are manufactured to look like real firearms. Due to an increase in crimes committed with replica guns, in 2002, Los Angeles banned the sale of replica guns, and in 2003 the city of New York followed suit. Ann Arbor, of course, had nowhere near the 1,400 crimes per year committed with replica guns that New York had prior to its ban of the imitation firearms. In 2003 the state of California sued Wal-Marts there to stop the sale of toy guns, and K-Mart has stopped selling replica toy guns.

In 2003, Rick Locker, a spokesman for the Toy Industry of America, likened the proposed New York ban to “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas.” ”To blame toys when the real issue is criminal intent is a red herring.  It’s a quick fix,” he said.  “Police officers don’t react to a toy, they react to the situation.  And you could easily create out of wood or a flashlight something that could fool them just as easily as a toy gun.” 

This is a very important argument, particularly in light of the reductions in the number of police officers employed by the City of Ann Arbor. First, cut the number of police in in a decade of “streamlining,” then ban toy guns. How’s about we have enough police on the streets to deter crime? The most recent round of cuts meant that Main Street lost its beat cops. Main Street merchants complained in July 2009 that, as a result, aggressive panhandling was up. Police Chief Barnett Jones and Mayor Hieftje recently told neighbors that the answer to a sharp rise in crime in Ann Arbor is for the folks to lock their doors and windows. Rich Kinsey, the Semper Cop blogger at Ann Arbor.com, suggested more military junta-like tactics. He wrote in a September 23rd piece:

Many people in Ann Arbor have told me over the years that they hate to call the police about a suspicious person because they fear being labeled a racist, sexist or elitist for calling about a subject “who doesn’t belong” in their neighborhood. If that worried citizen does not recognize the person they are calling about, that means that the person is at least a stranger in the neighborhood. Why not find out what brings this person to the neighborhood? Yes, people have a right to be almost anywhere they want, but there should be a reason they are there. People with legitimate reasons for being in the area will tell the cops or neighbors if asked.

What a relief: I don’t even have to travel to South America to have my civil rights violated.

Alright, back to toy guns. There were problems with crime and replica guns prior to Mayor and Council’s Great Streamlining of our Emergency Services. In 2002, an 8-year-old Whitmore Lake boy faced criminal charges for pointing a toy gun at three other kids and threatening to kill them. He was brought up on three charges of felonious assault in Washtenaw County Juvenile Court, according to this piece in the Ann Arbor News. On April 10, 2008, a fourth-grader was suspended from a Van Buren Township school for bringing a toy gun (a real toy gun with a orange plug in the barrel) to school. The Ann Arbor News reported that, “Possession of a toy gun at school does not violate state law.”

That changed on January 27, 2009, when the Michigan Senate Bill 40 was introduced by Democrat Bill Basham. The bill bans the brandishing of an object that appears to be a firearm, and imposes punishment of a $100 fine and/or 93 days in jail. The Bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Ann Arbor State Representative Rebekah Warren sits on the House Judiciary Committee, as does Representative Pam Byrnes. State Senator Liz Brater sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In May 2009, in order to balance the City’s listing budget, Council members voted to allow two dozen of Ann Arbor’s most experienced police officers to retire early, reducing the number of sworn officers in Ann Arbor to 125, down from 200, when Mayor Hieftje took office in 2000. Two months later, we have Council aiding and abetting the Ann Arbor Police Department by introducing a resolution to ban toy guns.

Are toy guns (replicas) a problem from a law enforcement point of view? Absolutely. Is the Michigan legislature on the job? Absolutely. Might our Council members stop trying to act as though they are the Michigan legislature’s superego? Please. Eight of Ann Arbor’s City Council members were outed by the media as a virtually Id controlled group. According to Council emails printed in the Ann Arbor News, one could, perhaps, replace Id with Leigh Greden. Council members Greden, Fourth Ward Council members Margie Teall and Marcia Higgins’s grandstanding resolution to oppose the state budget is a perfect example of Ann Arbor’s Council confusing their modest chambers with the Capitol Building in Lansing. Without a doubt, such resolutions brought forth by certain Council members (the banning of plastic bags is another perfect example) strike me as advanced political grandstanding. Such grandstanding political “activism” shows a singular ability to be blind to the critical problems that face our city and its citizens.

We can’t have plastic bags, but we can have 800 homeless people, (with only 50 available beds for them years running). I’m sure there are loads of plastic bags in use at Ann Arbor’s Tent City, a Hieftjeville where dozens of homeless people call home in a bag (sleeping bags, that is). Heck, ban plastic shopping bags and what will the homeless people carry their belongings around in? The plastic bags keep their possessions dry. The current Council majority can pass a toy gun ban, and issue an RFP to find developers to build atop the as-yet-unbuilt underground parking lot next to the main library with the speed of a locomotive. Yet, they’ve taken, literally, years to mull over finding a spot to replace  a mere 100 units of affordable housing lost when the Old Ann Arbor Y Building was torn down. Dave DeVarti (tip o’ the keyboard to S. Bean), a local affordable housing advocate was exiled by the Mayor from the Downtown Development Authority Board in favor of Keith Orr, a political FOSS (Friend of First Ward Council member and long-time DDA Board member Sandi Smith). Orr, who owns a local gay bar has little cred when it comes to standing up for the homeless and speaking out in support of affordable housing. 

Plastic bags from Stephen Rapundalo: Maybe next we can have a resolution banning the placement of said bags over the heads of Ann Arbor residents? Toy guns from the AAPD. Resolutions opposing the Michigan state budget from Greden, Teall and Higgins. Resolutions to kiss Representative John Dingell’s ruby ring. What’s next? Will our City Council tackle Ann Arbor’s almost epidemic hunger? Nah. Hunger’s not on the Council agenda, nor is increasing funding to the human service agencies that do deal with it.

I predict the next resolution to come from a Council majority member will tackle that blight on our city that is the athlete’s foot crisis. What with kids back at school, and gym classes in full swing, it will be only a matter of time before Greden, Rapundalo, Hohnke, Teall, Smith (only if it has to do with development of a “workforce” housing development project to house the suffers), Higgins, Derezinski and Hieftje craft a resolution of cooperation between the fungus among us, and the stricken feet of Ann Arbor’s sports community.

Since toy guns may be outlawed soon, it looks like the only way Ann Arbor residents are going to get our Council members to craft some meaningful legislation will be to use the toy voting booth this November and next August.

Popularity: 25% [?]

WHISPER: A2 CIO Dan Rainey Seeks to "Donate" City IT Resources to Business Associate

Filed under: Whisper, best of A2Politico, crime, money — Tags: , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am
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Just because I think you might get a hankering to write: (JHieftje@a2gov.org;ssmith@a2gov.org; Sbriere@a2gov.org; SRapundalo@a2gov.org; TDerezinski@a2gov.org; CTaylor@a2gov.org; LGreden@a2gov.org; MHiggins@a2gov.org; MTeall@a2gov.org; CHohnke@a2gov.org; MAnglin@a2gov.org).

WHISPER:  Looking though the City’s web site where recruitment listings are posted, evidently, has the draw of a great garage sale to some people. You never know when you’re going to find something fascinating. According to someone who regularly enjoys a good rummage through the City’s online resources, on August 28th, the City of Ann Arbor posted a job for an unpaid intern to work on the redevelopment and launch of a new web site. The unpaid intern would report directly to the City of Ann Arbor’s Chief Information Officer and IT Director Dan Rainey. 

No news scoop there. Unpaid internships are de riguer in this economic climate. Heck, AnnArbor.com relies on loads of unpaid “contributors” to produce their editorial content. Unpaid workers are in, Sweetie. 

Back to the City’s unpaid internship. The job advertisement begins innocently enough:

“The City of Ann Arbor is committed to providing excellent municipal services that enhance the quality of life for all through the intelligent use of resources while valuing an open environment that fosters fair, sensitive, and respectful treatment of all employees and the community served.” 

So far so good. Then the intelligent use of resources hits the fan, as it were.

The August 28th job description continues: ”We currently have a great opportunity for an Information Technology Intern for fall semester 2009. This is an unpaid internship. The primary project will involve redevelopment and launch of a new website for the Metropolitan Information Exchange (MIX) organization (www.mixnet.org), a national group of public sector Chief Information Officers. Reporting directly to the City of Ann Arbor’s CIO, You will be given lots of support and direction with this highly visible project. This is a great way for you to showcase your talents and get some great exposure to various public and private sector organizations.”

Ann Arbor’s CIO Dan Rainey, who oversees an IT department that is budgeted to cost taxpayers $7.4  million dollars in 2009, is seeking to hire an intern to redevelop a web site for the Metropolitan Information Exchange. There are several obvious problems with Rainey’s scheme, not the least among which is that employing an IT intern under the auspices of the City of Ann Arbor to do work wholly unrelated to the city’s IT needs amounts to cheating the taxpayers. The intern will use city resources (office, computer, software, phone, office supplies, etc….) to do the work and CIO Rainey, who earns $160,000 in salary and benefits, will supervise the intern’s work on behalf of MIX.  

I can see why officials at the Metropolitan Information Exchange jumped onto the bandwagon that is potential municipal fraud. Rainey’s “donation” of the taxpayer’s IT resources will save his pals at the Metropolitan Information Exchange a bundle. According to a January 2009 piece in Forbes magazine,  ”An established interactive-design firm like Razorfish or Critical Mass might demand a $5,000 retainer to take on a [web site redesign] project.” A total web page redesign can cost a company anywhere from $15,000-$40,000 dollars.

A quick look at the Metropolitan Information Exchange’s web site, and one sees that Rainey’s membership in the Association includes, “…participating in the annual survey, joining the listerv discussion group, contributing to the biannual newsletter, and attending the annual conference.” An email to Steve Reneker, President of the Metropolitan Information Exchange, was answered quickly.

“Is MIX compensating Mr. Rainey for this web site redesign work?” A2Politico wanted to know.

Mr. Reneker’s answer: “Mr. Rainey is volunteering his resources for the job.”  Reneker went on to write,  ”If he [Rainey] is unable to volunteer his resources, the MIX organization will seek other City’s and County’s [resources] for assistance. No funds exist for that effort [the redesign of the Association's web site].”

As I’m sure we all understand, the millions of dollars of “resources” to which Mr. Reneker refers are those of the Ann Arbor IT department, and they are not Dan Rainey’s to offer to his friends like so many petit fours.

A September 24th email to Dan Rainey about the MIX web site redesign project went unanswered.

Rainey’s scheme is a clear attempt to misuse city property and taxpayer resources. The posted IT internship is an attempt to foist the costs of redeveloping the Metropolitan Information Exchange’s web site onto Ann Arbor’s taxpayers. The City of Ann Arbor’s IT Department is not Rainey’s personal fiefdom, and those hired to work within the department are not his serfs to be loaned out to fellow IT boyars. One has to wonder if CIO Dan Rainey has a track record of “donating” city resources to his friends and/or business associates, or using Ann Arbor city employees to work on his pet projects unrelated to the City’s IT needs.

City Administrator Roger Fraser should, first, immediately stop Rainey from attempting to donate taxpayer “resources” to the Metropolitan Information Exchange. He should then investigate to determine if Dan Rainey has a track record of “donating resources.” At the very least, CIO Dan Rainey should reimburse taxpayers for all human resource department expenses incurred in posting the internship, and for the time spent (if any) by human resource staff sorting through any applicant materials that may have been submitted. 

If Roger Fraser knew about, and approved of, Dan Rainey’s move to hire the intern and donate City IT resources to MIX, the taxpayers of Ann Arbor, unfortunately, will have an even more serious problem on their hands.

Have a “whisper” to share? Click here to send it along to me. I’ll keep the sources of all “whispers” confidential, naturally. To send a whisper anonymously, click this link to use an email remailer that will hide your identity.

Send Whispers to: umgrad1234 AT yahoo.com.

Popularity: 5% [?]

September 26, 2009

Mayor Streamlines His Way to an FBI Investigation and Arrest

Filed under: city council, crime, money, political reporting — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 10:51 am
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Ecorse and Ann Arbor. Twin cities separated by little more than an investigation by the FBI? There are some striking similarities between machinations that led to the arrest and arraignment of Mayor Worthy of Ecorse, and recent “streamlining” of waste management services in Ann Arbor.

The Detroit News is reporting today that the Mayor of Ecorse and the City Contoller were arrested and arraigned on charges of bribery. It was the culmination of a nearly two-year FBI investigation. This comes from The Detroit News article:  ”In July 2009, Ecorse’s Mayor Worthy told The Detroit News that eliminating the city workers and hiring Michigan Municipal Services had saved the city money and streamlined public works operations.“

According to the FBI’s affidavit, Businessmen Stacey Tarockoff and Sheldon Divers are at the heart of the Ecorse bribery investigation. It is alleged that the men spent $40,000 to support Worthy’s 2007 mayoral campaign, and formed Michigan Municipal Services LLC (MMS) two days after Worthy was elected. After Mayor Worthy eliminated the city’s public works department, MMS was then awarded contracts that amounted to more than $3.1 million in, what prosecutors say, were often inflated billings.

Meanwhile, back at the eco-ranch in A2….

In April of 2009, City Council, after changing city ordinances to allow for franchising the refuse side of waste management, voted to approve an exclusive agreement with Waste Management (WM) to the tune of $900,000 per year. The reason for the $900,000 per year expenditure? Bryan Weinert, the city’s solid-waste coordinator, told Council “that to combine the recycling into a single stream where paper and other material was mixed together (for commercial or residential) would require upgrades to the materials recovery center….”

Let’s see…we already have the trucks to collect the refuse. So, should we make a capital investment in our materials recovery center and use the trucks we already own, or should we pay a contractor $900,000 per year to do the work? This is Ann Arbor. The Big Spenders at City Hall think we’ve got money to burn. The “sale” of the refuse portion of our city’s recycling program to a single contractor was Fourth Ward Council member’s Margie Teall’s big accomplishment. Council member Teall worked with city staff and guided the project through all of the tough questions and objections thrown up by her pals on the Council Majority—those ever-vigilant watchdogs of the public purse. At the March 6, 2009 meeting Teall’s Big Idea passed. Unanimously. 

This comes from a FAQ posted in May 2009 to the City of Ann Arbor’s website:

In April of 2009, the City of Ann Arbor’s City Council approved the franchise agreement between the City of Ann Arbor and Waste Management (WM) via an ordinance change (Chapter 26) to franchise the commercial dumpster services throughout the city. The new franchise agreement will reduce truck traffic/emissions in the city, help businesses stabilize their waste disposal costs, increase recycling participation, and further streamline the rubbish and recycling collection service.

This also comes from the same FAQ:

Currently the city has its own fleet of commercial vehicles and provides refuse collection services to 290 nonresidential businesses and schools. WM and competitors also provide commercial dumpster services to many businesses. Effective July 1, 2009 WM (under the city contract) will provide the dumpsters to all commercial businesses, non profit organizations, churches, and schools within the city limits of Ann Arbor that are currently serviced by the city.

Gotta wonder if the Feds have an eye on the “streamlining” that has been going on in true blue A2.

Popularity: 4% [?]

September 25, 2009

Telling Whoppers 101: Hohnke and Hieftje Show A2 How It's Done

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, money, transportation — Tags: , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 2:11 pm
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Sometimes politicians get confused about the facts. It’s bound to happen.

Other times, politicos just tell whoppers. Most do it because the local media don’t bother to check out the facts. Often, politicos get their political friends to corroborate their whoppers. I think the idea is that the more politicos who repeat a whopper as fact, then, by golly, the more like fact the whopper becomes. Our local politicos in A2 use this strategy regularly. Why not tell whoppers? Thanks to years of fanzine-like government reporting by the Ann Arbor News, who ever challenged local politicos for telling whoppers? As far as A2Politico is concerned, if our local politicos want continued fanzine coverage, they should have their publicists ring up the publisher of the A2Journal, or hop on Homeless Dave’s Teeter Totter. 

Get the charcoal ready. We’re grilling two local politicos to perfection.

Ann Arbor’s Mayor is very sensitive about his political reputation, particularly his  ”green” reputation. It’s his political dog and pony show, as it were. His meal ticket.  Thus, the Mayor’s most recent whopper involves what I like to call his propensity to dish up Greenwash Hogwash. On September 14th, I wrote about the pitifully low number of actual miles of on-road bike lanes in Ann Arbor after the Mayor bragged to the press about the city being “well on its way” to increasing on-road bike lane mileage by “300 percent.” Percentage-speak is a sure sign that Mayor Hieftje is spewing Greenwash Hogwash. 

At the September 21st City Council meeting, Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke (Hieftje endorsed Hohnke in 2008) helped Hizzoner dish up some tasty Greenwash Hogwash. The scene was touching. During the time set aside for communications from Council, Fifth Ward City Council member Carsten Hohnke asked for permission to speak. He then spent the next few minutes gently kissing the political back bumper of Mayor Hieftje. He congratulated the Mayor on increasing the number of on-road bikes lanes 300 percent over the past five years. Hohnke, with his Ph.D. from MIT,  walked everyone through the math. When Hieftje took office in 2000, Hohnke told us, there were 8 miles of in-road bike lanes. Now there are 48. That’s a 300 percent increase.

Professor Carsten Hohnke leaned back in his chair and smiled at the Mayor. Next slide, please.

There’s just one small problem, the claims of Mayor Hieftje—corroborated at the Council meeting by Carsten Hohnke—are contradicted by city staff and the city’s own web site. On the City’s web site, the total system mileage of on-road bike lanes is tallied at 23.7 miles. On May 10, 2009, the Michigan Daily told readers that, “Ann Arbor is pedaling forward with a plan to improve its bike-lane system by adding eight miles of additional lanes and improving the 23.7 miles of existing lanes.” Concentrate published a story about the addition of bike lanes using exactly the same numbers as the Michigan Daily: ”Federal stimulus funds are going to be making it safer for cyclists in Ann Arbor. The city plans to utilize these funds to add 8 miles of bike lanes….” 

I don’t know how they do addition at MIT, but at Michigan if you add 8 miles to 23.7 miles, you get 31.7 miles of on-road bike lanes. You don ‘t get the 48 miles of in-road bike lanes that Carsten thanked the Mayor for so graciously giving unto his people. A quick call to City Hall confirmed that between June and September 21st 2009, Ann Arbor did not add an additional 16.3 miles of on-road bike lanes anywhere in the city. (Tip o’ the keyboard to S. Bean)

Furthermore, even with the increase in miles of on-road bike lanes, after a decade of  Mayoral platitudes about a commitment to funding and improving the city’s non-motorized transportation infrastructure in Ann Arbor, our city has a mere 1/10th of the miles of on-road bike lanes that they have in Boulder, Colorado. In Boulder, an extraordinary 10 percent of all resident trips are made by bike. In Ann Arbor, 3.4 percent of all resident trips are made by bike. The Jolly Green Mayor, who has people fooled into thinking that he bikes to the U of M golf course with his clubs on his front bike rack and his caddy on his back bike rack, has added more miles of concrete parking garage ramps over his tenure than miles of bike lanes.

Two days after the September 21st meeting where Hohnke helped the Mayor dish up a heaping portion of Greenwash Hogwash, Hizzoner sent out a press release replete with BIG percentages based, as always, on small total miles of on-road bike paths. The press release touted the Mayor’s plan to double the miles of  existing bike lanes in the next five years. Percentages. Sniff deeply. It’s a sure sign of more Hieftje Greenwash Hogwash. Under Hieftje’s new “plan” Ann Arbor will achieve little but fall further behind communities like Madison, Boulder and Portland that have truly progressive plans in the works to expand their non-motorized transportation infrastructures. 

Just as when our Mayor preferred to tell whoppers rather than honestly report a sharp rise in crime in Ann Arbor—he prefers to tell whoppers and launch grandiose “plans” to “double the percentage of on-road bike lanes” via press release. His plan is the equivalent of bringing our non-motorized transportation infrastructure from the Lower Paleolithic to the Middle Paleolithic, then calling himself the Green Hosanna. Mayor Hieftje and Carsten Hohnke are playing political games with the public who care about expanding non-motorized transportation options in Ann Arbor and, sadder still, with the devoted activists in the Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition.

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Politics of Food: A2's Culinary Cred

Filed under: food, money — Tags: , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 11:00 am
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From June-November a couple of years ago, my family and I embarked on an journey to eat locally grown or produced food. If six months seems a short time compared to, say, Barbara Kingsolver’s year-long extravaganza, believe me when I say sometime around the middle of October there were murmurs of mutiny from the tots. We had each chosen an exception—mine was olive oil—and we eventually branched out to the Great Lakes region. Despite these adjustments, weeks of late-Fall apples and pears took their toll. Bananas were forbidden fruit, along with oranges and any but Concord grapes (which I love but the tots loathe). 

The end product from that adventure was that we still try to purchase foods produced in the Great Lakes region—cheese from Wisconsin, tomato products from Ontario, steel-cut oats from Michigan, pasta from just north of town in Whitmore Lake, and corn chips from Ann Arbor. We don’t shop as much at the Ann Arbor Farmer’s Market as we used to. Instead, we put in a large garden and did careful successive plantings. We don’t eat out as much as we used to, either. I suppose we belong to the class of Americans the press refer to as frugalistas. Though we’ve always had the propensity, the last year or so has seen our spending for meals out plummet from $4,800 per year to a third of that—still more than the yearly income in some Third World countries, but a significant reduction nonetheless. 

We’re not locavores by any means. Truthfully, sometimes I feel like locavores are the Jehovah’s Witnesses of the food scene. If I get the religion of food, it will be because I had my own revelation. There’s nothing quite so tedious as hearing about someone else’s moment of ascension to the higher plane that is raw milk and locally grown greens that cost more per pound than cocaine. Eating locally and organically in Ann Arbor costs a bundle, and has the faintest aroma of food privilege.  

Once sandwiches at Zingerman’s broke the sound barrier ($12), we crossed the threshold of Ari and Paul’s fine establishment only to buy bread. My favorite burger is at Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger —oh so close to the Cardiac Care Unit at U of M. Red Hot Lovers is open again—even closer still to immediate medical attention in case of heart failure due to gorging on cheesy fries. I think you get the idea. I’ve become a cheap date. I’ve been a cheap date ever since I went with friends to Chez Panisse, in Berkeley. Since then, I’ve been unable to pay Chez Panisse prices for Chez Ann Arbor food. The Panisse experience ruined me for life. Truly. As much as it’s a pain in the potato ricer when people from bigger cities complain about how few really spectacular restaurants there are in Ann Arbor, the truth is that, well, there aren’t spectacular restaurants in Ann Arbor. There are several reasonably good restaurants—eateries with creative menus based on fresh local produce, locally prepared meats, cheeses and breads. Eve comes to mind. The tots and I recently watched Chef Eve Aronoff get her butter bell kicked on Top Chef. Eve’s dressing down by Wolfgang Puck (tip o’ the keyboard x2 to Ed Vielmetti) was somehow symbolic of the state of the local food scene. Ann Arbor got called to the Show (points for that), and got its culinary clock cleaned (ouch).

Well, in the most recent issue of Bon Appétit magazine editors did a feature on the “foodiest towns” (population 250,000 and under) in America. Portland, Maine topped the list. Ann Arbor was first runner up. I felt somewhat vindicated reading the description of Ann Arbor’s food scene from the magazine: “Not a fine-dining town, but one that knows real comfort food.”

Release your inner food critic. Let me know what you think about Ann Arbor’s culinary cred and the local food scene.

Popularity: 6% [?]

September 23, 2009

The Politics of Reading: WFB, Jr.

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, books, city council, politicians, politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 10:38 am
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Yes. Those initials stand for William F. Buckley, Jr. Bill to his wife Pat. Pup to his son Christopher. I recently read a book about William F. Buckley, Jr. Well, it was the book Losing Mum and Pup, a memoir by Christopher Buckley. The memoir was funny, touching and made me stop and remember that neocons are people, too. Needless to say, Chris had a complicated relationship with both of his parents, but particularly his father, whom the right lionizes, and to whom his son frequently wrote, in his own words, “blistering” letters.

Stop with the dry heaving. Neocons are neolibs in sheep’s clothing. 

The fact that the Conservative and Liberal politics in the United States have devolved into a cage match between masked wrestlers hulking in their own political corners, has given us the current A2 Dem mafia. It’s why Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins and Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo transitioned to the Democratic party. Why the local Democratic party ever accepted the two as members is a puzzle worthy of the Sybil of Cumae. It was suggested to me recently that the A2 Dems need to man up and toss the two of them out on their ears.  

Back to Bill. He was anti-integration and anti-choice. Some say he was anti-semitic and a homophobe. A man of his times, to be sure. (Note: this also describes more than just a few of the people in my little slice of Ann Arbor paradise that is called my neighborhood.) Those were Buckley’s political opinions, his personal beliefs based in part on his brand of Catholicism. Be that as it may, Buckley’s National Review took neocons from the ingrained strategy of atavistic pummeling of the left to intellectual dissection of the ideas of the left. It is infinitely easier to fire someone for being gay than to debate gay rights in the United States seen through the lens of, oh, the suffrage movement. (Note: NR senior editor Jay Nordlinger is a native Ann Arbor boy, and he still sometimes writes about hometown politics in the NR.) Who can be anti-integration? Well, Buckley was a product of his time, right. Right. However, right now, right here in deep-blue A2? In Ann Arbor, kids from the northside Arrowwood Co-op are bussed to Angell Elementary, in the Hill Street area. Ditto with kids from the southside University Townhouses Co-op.They get bussed to Allen Elementary. Maybe Ann Arbor isn’t filled with people whom we might impolitely refer to as crackers, but we’ve got the same socio-economic segregation that keeps North and South St. Louis, Missouri looking like a tale of two cities (and not in that good, April in Paris way). The Ann Arbor Public Schools busses low-income and minority kids around to schools in neighborhoods where their fathers might get stopped and shaken down by the cops for looking too interested in someone’s garden sculpture. Here in A2, we’ve got socio-economic segregation and, I would venture to say, social segregation, as well. 

So what is it that makes Ann Arbor a Democratic haven filled with people who would give WFB, Jr. a run for his neocon money? To be sure, we’re in the Middle West, Dorothy. According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are still more farmers than civil and mechanical engineers in the United States. After all, isn’t rablib (rabid liberalism) the flip side of the neocon nation? WFB, Jr. was, of course, never a centrist, and he is considered to have birthed the bulk and movement that is Rush Limbaugh and his Dittoheads. However, according to his son, some of his father’s closest friends were those political opponents with whom he fought a bloody 100 Years War across the pages of newspapers nation-wide.

How many of us can honestly say that some of our best friends are those against whose political ideas we have done combat? I think the issue is that in the United States the political has come to be a part of what defines us personally. Thus, there’s no psychic room for any real dissent among our friends or our neighbors. This is why on our City Council, dissenters have been flogged for being “out of touch” and “difficult.” They have been derided and ostracized by their colleagues in an effort to bring the Council’s “dissenters” to heel, much like recalcitrant dogs. The political in Ann Arbor with the Dem mafia has become personal. Scott Rosencrans ran an entire City Council campaign against incumbent Mike Anglin on a platform of being able to “get along” with people and, as such, get his ideas a fair hearing.

John Adams was one of the most personally unpopular men in the Continental Congress, yet his political ideas were given fair hearing (mostly) and his commitment to public service respected absolutely. Oddly enough, I think if John Adams were on Ann Arbor City Council, he would surely find himself  ”Groomed,” (ostracized) by our current City Council members, as were First Ward Council member Sabra Briere and Mike Anglin. The Ann Arbor City Council majority has  shown again and again that dissent among the ranks cannot be tolerated. 

Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke, Mayor Hieftje and Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden got caught plotting, via email, in the middle of a City Council meeting, to get rid of Fifth Ward Council member and dissenter Mike Anglin. They were planning a political hit to take out the fly in their ointment. That happens all the time, of course, but usually when the hit would make a difference to the bottom line, politically. Take out three Dems in the Senate, gain control of the Senate. Take out Mike Anglin and replace him with a different Dem., what’s the end gain? Harmony? More lapdogs? 

Christopher Buckley’s book is a tribute to his father’s life, achievements, and work, despite the fact that the two men had to navigate significant political and religious differences for decades. But more than a testament of the love of a child for his parent, Losing Mum and Pup is also, ironically, a roadmap to political tolerance. A manifesto that argues for centrism. WFB, Jr. moved conservative politics out of the realm of the personal and back into the realm of the intellectual and political.

If you’ve read the book, I be interested to know what you thought about it. If you haven’t, I’m returning my copy to the library today.

Popularity: 2% [?]

September 22, 2009

Council's Henchman To A2: "F-You"

Filed under: DDA, city council, money — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 9:34 pm
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Ann Arbor City Council members knew Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin’s resolution to release the emails was coming. They faced a collective test of character. True to what we learned about their characters from their private emails in which they mocked each other, mocked their jobs and constituents, and lied to constituents about plans to build a convention center, they failed the test. No big shocker there. Dog bites man. The man bites dog part of the meeting came when Council’s Henchman went to work.

Anglin’s resolution was always going to be voted down. No question.

Which, the politico in me wanted to know, of Hieftje’s Gang of Eight caught using the city’s email resources and laptops to play on Facebook, award each other Golden Pandys for pandering, rig votes, campaign for office, or have private email discussions about resolutions before Council, would come out and break the kneecaps of Mike Anglin and Sabra Briere’s resolution that called for the release of six previous years of Council emails sent during Council meetings. Would it be Leigh “Luca Brasi“ Greden, who’d lost his Council seat thanks to the emails? No. Greden’s swimming with the fishes. Would they choose Ward Five’s Carsten “Hyman Roth“ Hohnke? It was double-crosser  Hohnke, after all, who got caught when a FOIA turned up an email from him asking Leigh Greden when they would get together to plan a strategy to get rid of Mike Anglin. Would the Gang turn to Ward Three’s Christopher “Tom Hagen” Taylor? Maybe, the next time, but consigliere Taylor barely talked his way out of the political debacle of calling his Ward Three constituents “dim lights.”

In the end, the Hieftje Eight chose perfectly. They chose the Council member whose need to be liked and fit in would trump her better political judgement. I’m referring to First Ward Council member Sandi “Fredo Corleone” Smith. The Ann Arbor News had fingered Smith in June 2009 as one of those eight Council members involved in the inappropriate emailing, though she was not included in the superb editorial cartoon depicting four Council members as babies with computers. Smith never apologized for her blunder, as did Fourth Ward’s Margie Teall and Third Ward’s Greden. She simply went forward, pretending that nothing amiss had ever happened. She’s s a realtor, after all, so disassociating from reality must come somewhat naturally to her. 

Smith played her part as Council’s henchman with Harry Bennett-like perfection. 

Smith made a point to say she hadn’t read the emails released to the public thanks to FOIAs made by news agencies. Then, she began her political beating of Anglin and Briere by saying that the resolution as offered was an attempt to shame Council. What, one wonders, do Council members have to be ashamed of regarding their emails sent during meetings over the past six years? Her logic was fuzzy. Then again, henchmen rely on truncheons and brass knuckles rather than higher reasoning. Smith went on to say that those who’d transgressed had been “punished” already. Punished by whom, one wonders? Finally, Sandi Smith told all present she was not going to be shamed into voting for Anglin’s resolution to release the emails. To her, it was clearly time to let bygones be bygones and move forward. 

I’ll let you in on a little secret: Sandi Smith is shameless. Don’t get me wrong. I love forward-thinking politicians—people who can play the game more than one move out a time. It’s why County Commish Kristin Judge is my kinda politico. Alas, forward thinking does not describe Sandi Smith. She’s a political linebacker, not a QB with slick moves who can scramble in the pocket. It’s why she was foolish enough to say “F*** you,” to the few, the proud, the SOBs who won’t let this email thing go, dammit.

At the September 21st Council meeting, Smith assured everyone she had nothing to hide, and that the people of Ann Arbor had the Freedom of Information Act if they wanted to double check her doublespeak. To Sandi Smith and her colleagues on Council, FOIA is the other white meat. There are several problems with her argument. First, to FOIA, you have to know what you’re looking for, but like most other such “tools” designed by politicians, it favors the home team. Big Time. Second, FOIA requests cost money. The emails sent by Council members during open meetings belong to the public. We already paid for them with our taxes. Only a politician would have the nerve to tell average citizens who can’t tell a FOIA from their elbow, that filing FOIA requests is the logical remedy to assure the general public that the long-time members of City Council and Mayor haven’t been breaking the law, scripting debates, cutting sweetheart deals, rigging votes and conducting the business of city government like the Five Families of New York.

 City Administrator Roger Fraser fell back on a classic argument to counter Anglin’s resolution. To pull the emails off the server would cost too much. Fraser, that paragon of fiscal responsibility and stewardship, was fretting like your old grandmother over the $45,000 (worst case scenario). Fraser’s  concern was touching. Of course, his annual expense account, car and travel allowances are twice that amount. Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo latched onto the $45,000 worst-case scenario cost like a baby to a nipple. Council member Rapundalo unlatched just long enough to proclaim he had nothing to hide. 

It was the grandest of grandstanding moments when Sandi Smith suggested that if Ann Arbor’s taxpayers wanted access to public information that would cost the city $45,000 to produce (suddenly that was the real cost, and not a worse-case scenario cost), citizens should take up a collection to pay for the FOIA costs. She then tossed a $20 bill at the City Clerk. Smith, obviously confused, thought she was at a strip club with a g-stringed beauty before her. 

Fellow politicos, I think Council member Smith is on to something. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Downtown Development Authority had  bake sales to raise the $55 million dollars they need for their new library lot underground parking garage? The DDA could have had a pancake dinner at the Michigan Theater to raise the $700,000 Smith and her profligate cronies spent on the city’s new “wayfinding” signs.

In the end, Sandi Smith gutted Anglin’s resolution, and her amended resolution was approved 8-3. Guess who felt like he needed a bit of political cover and voted with Anglin and Briere?

My lips are sealed. Kinda. It was Carsten “Hyman Roth” Hohnke.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Who'd Get Your Vote If The Election Were Today?

Filed under: elections, weekend poll — Tags: , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am
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POLL REOPENED. THIS WEEKEND POLL IS HANGING ON AS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR POSTS. SO, IF YOU DIDN’T GET A CHANCE TO VOTE, PULL THE LEVER. I’LL CLOSE THE POLL ON TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 22ND.

 

Pull the lever whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, Independent or Green. Poll closes at 7 p.m. on September 16th. For more information on the candidates, visit the tags at the right, as well as the A2Politico archives. You may only vote once (unless you are so desperate to cheat that you erase your cookies). Feel free to forward this link to fellow politicos.

Will there be voter fraud? Ballot box stuffing? Will the election be decided by just a smattering of voters, or will politicos come out in force to decide the race? Check back often, and I’ll post Tweets as the election progresses.

Oh, Don’t forget to leave a comment in support of your candidate. Could be you’ll be able to swing a few votes, yes? No lit drops (attachments).

RESULTS: 417 votes cast. Ned Staebler wins with 51 percent of the vote. County Commissioner Jeff Irwin captures 26 percent of the vote. Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje gets 0 percent of the vote. These are my only choices? “God Help Me!” party captures 23 percent of the vote.

Thanks to everyone who voted. Comments on the poll are welcome. 

Popularity: 2% [?]

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