Mike Anglin « A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

August 27, 2010

The Politics of Culture: Ann Arbor Launches the National Pilot Fish Fry Festival

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I like Constance Crump’s thoughtful writing. I particularly like writers who, with a simple question, can get me all tangled up in trying to figure out the answer. I first read Crump’s blog post a few days ago. Initially, I didn’t get hooked. Who cares if Austin has music, Sundance has film, Aspen has comedy and the Bay Area has, well, I don’t know how Crump zeroed in on the single festival she chose? Then, Connie Crump Cicked the ball through the uprights when she wrote, “Ann Arbor has football as our signature event, culture-vulture yearnings to the contrary…what brings most people here on a most consistent basis is football.”

Football is our signature event? Our. Signature. Event. Football is the signature event of the University of Michigan. To say football is our signature event is, well, some very co-dependent reasoning. It’s kind of like saying: My neighbor’s a doctor, so medicine is my forte. Before you slacker profs. employed to teach 9 hours per week, 8 months per year—when you’re not on sabbatical or spring break—get your leather briefcases in a bunch, I’ll make sure to give lip service and say what Crump didn’t. Graduation, not sports, is the signature event at colleges and universities. Allegedly.

Now, I’m going to let those of you who aren’t among the inside Scrabble players in higher education in on a dirty little secret: fewer and fewer colleges students are graduating. That’s right, after spending an average of $11,000 per year on tuition, room and board, close to half of America’s 18,000,000 undergraduate college students never reach the promised land. If you really want to ferret out a possible explanation for why Americans ages 15-24 read, on average, one book per year, or seven minutes per day, look at graduation rates. Then, consider student-athletes. At some schools, non-white athletes have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than earning an undergraduate degree. Before you feel smug, because, obviously, those colleges are all nestled in states that backed coach Jefferson Davis, hold on to your maize and blue butt-warmer. At the University of Michigan, 83 percent of students graduate, and on average, 73 percent of athletes do. A look at the school’s football program should sober you right up. In that program, 58 percent of the white student-athletes graduate, but just 38 percent of the black players do, according to data from Black Issues in Higher Education.

So it is a big deal that only 38 percent of black football players at U of M graduate? Hell yes it is. According to data from the 2000 Census, someone with a bachelor’s degree earns nearly $1 million more over his or her lifetime than a high school graduate. Census Bureau data show a college graduate can expect to earn $2.1 million working full-time between ages 25 and 64, which demographers call a typical work-life period. A master’s degree-holder is projected to earn $2.5 million, while someone with a professional degree, such as a doctor or lawyer, could make even more — $4.4 million. In contrast, a high school graduate can expect to make $1.2 million during the working years.

Could it be different? You bet. At Boise State University, 24 percent of students graduate, and 54 percent of student athletes graduate. In that school’s football program, 57 of black athletes graduate, and 47 percent of white football players do.

In the higher ed biz, that’s called the “graduation gap,” and excepting Boise State’s record, black student-athletes generally graduate less often than their white teammates. Every time the geeky editors The Chronicle of Higher Education or, (please, God, no) Black Issues in Education feel the need to kick-up some sand at the beach, they publish features about athlete graduation rates in higher education.

Those of you wearing your rose-colored glasses, and who are under the impression that many of the student-athletes who don’t graduate end up turning pro, here’s what The Christian Science Monitor has to say about that:

21% of Division I male athletes want to turn pro.

1% of college athletes go on to play at the professional level.

Football at the University of Michigan, Crump’s so-called “signature event” of Ann Arbor, is about exploitation and big money for the patricians who can afford the tickets, transportation, housing, and who make money off of the people who come to town for the football games, etc.., and not the Saturday afternoon gladiators who play the game. The next time you get invited by Dr. Coleman to one of her comfy lairs at the various stadia, where she hosts donors, politicos and other bigwigs like you, casually bring up the subject of graduation rates of the black athletes. Then run. Fast. Because the burly, yet erudite Deans of the School of Student-Athlete Tutoring will be chasing you. You see, U of M football generates piles of cash for the university and the town on the backs of oodles of black athletes, 62 percent of whom will never enjoy the lifetime earnings income boost an undergraduate degree provides. In her piece, Crump quotes Mary A. Kerr, president of the Ann Arbor Area Convention and Visitors Bureau: ”It [U of M football] brings in $80 million for eight home games a year. 60 percent (of people who attend) come from outside of Washtenaw County.”

So why doesn’t Ann Arbor have a nationally-recognized festival all its own? Partially, I think, it has to do with this mentality that the University of Michigan is us. And the fact that there are way too many politicos in office who would kill to get an invite to Coleman’s private viewing box, blaxploitation be damned. The University has never been us, and never will be. The University is the shark, circling, swimming, feeding, hunting for great land deals, like our parkland for U of M’s Fuller Road parking garage. Thus, Ann Arbor serves as a Pilot fish of a town, swimming into the shark’s mouth to clean the predator’s teeth. The Stadium bridges fiasco rests squarely on the shoulders of the current mayor and Council as they approved staff-generated Capital Improvement Plans that did not include the replacement of the crumbling bridge. When City Administrator Roger Fraser went to our university neighbor to ask if, perhaps, U of M could chip in on the Stadium Bridge replacement tab—after all tens of thousands visitors travel over the bridge on their way to football and basketball games—the answer was a resounding “No.” Pilot fish, you see, get little in return for their efforts. Pilot fish should be happy they don’t get eaten, right?

Outside Magazine did a feature recently about the 25 best cities to live in, and in Michigan the magazine editors chose Grand Rapids. The editors wrote: “Where do you end up when you want a community with incredible access to the outdoors, affordable homes, and solid jobs?” Here’s how they described GR:

Michigan’s second-largest city will surprise you. For starters, the regional economy is both more diverse and more robust than Detroit’s—and includes everything from furniture (Herman Miller and Steelcase) to health and beauty (Amway) to footwear (Wolverine Worldwide). Plus, despite the state’s overall woes and high unemployment, G.R. is, dare we say, thriving. In the past few years, it’s gained a riverfront luxury hotel, a medical school, and the world’s first LEED-certified museum. What’s more, the county recently set aside 1,500 acres for a downtown park, and Grand Rapids’ newly established ArtPrize competition—the largest art contest in the world by prize money—resulted in 1,200 works of public art on display throughout downtown.

Connie Crump recognizes that Grand Rapids hit gold with ArtPrize:

Sadly, Hash Bash and the Naked Mile compete with Tree Town athletics and arts events for regional and national attention. Thankfully, both are endangered or extinct. Plenty of other local festivals fill the calendar but none have taken the crown as ArtPrize has done for Grand Rapids. After only one year, ArtPrize has established an indelible community identity for the city.

Compare how GR put together its ArtPrize competition with how Ann Arbor launched its Percent for the Arts Program, and chose its first project and artist. About GR Crump writes, “Total community involvement was the key to success for ArtPrize in Grand Rapids last year, says the program’s executive director, Bill Holsinger-Robinson. Having a $250,000 first prize and a total $449,000 purse doesn’t hurt, either, he adds.” At just about the same time GR was putting together its ArtPrize competition, Ann Arbor was appointing a group of insiders to the Public Art Commission, people who would have no problem with a Task Force comprised of hand-picked Municipal Center “stakeholders,” recommending the first project be awarded to a German artist. The city’s web site explains away the hiring of the German artist this way:

Because the water-related project had to be designed in time to be incorporated into the basic infrastructure of the building, the Public Art Task Force decided to commission one artist to begin working on a design immediately. It recommended Herbert Dreiseitl.

Thus, Ann Arbor used a selection process that enraged local artists and shut out, rather than encouraged the participation of large numbers of artists and citizens. Meanwhile, Grand Rapids devised ArtPrize with a process that was described by the program’s executive director, Bill Holsinger-Robinson thusly, “A lot of what we did last year was based upon one-on-one outreach, really — and a lot of trying to stay out of the public’s way and (let them) determine how they were going to participate. Even though art was the focus of the event, the community played on the main stage. We make everything as accessible to participate in as many ways as possible.”

Grand Rapids is becoming a cutting edge community, and Ann Arbor is becoming Little Southfield, a bugie bedroom berg.

Yet, here in A2, our Pilot fish Mayor and Council act as though they could show those Grand Rapids Gramublicans a thing or two about how a cool, cutting edge city works. [Please note: Versions of this same clever strategy are currently being used to try to privatize Huron Hills Golf Course, and to dispose of public land next to the Library downtown.]

First, John Hieftje creates and hand picks a National Festival Task Force from among Hizzoner’s political pals, donors, present political appointees or, better still, his basketball buddies.

Next, Council quickly rubber stamps all of the appointments.

Second Ward Council member, Stephen Rapundalo, when running for re-election in 2011, will refer to the rubber-stamping of mayoral appointments as an example of “efficiency in city government” which he “spearheaded.” Ann Arbor CFO Tom Crawford will be quoted by Rapundalo as swearing to Zeus that rubber stamping board and commission appointments saves someone, anyone, everyone, really, $15 million dollars. Rapunds will boast (modestly) that the $15 million in savings is, well, “a conservative estimate. It’s probably more, like a brazilian million.” Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins, in her campaign for re-election, will claim to have spearheaded the same rubber stamping initiative, and to have saved the same brazilian million dollars. For good measure, she’ll claim to be safeguarding the money by keeping it in her purse. Third Ward Councilman Steve Kunselman, in his bid for re-election in 2011, will rail ad infinitum against rubber stamping and promise to end it. Someday. Soon. Really. Fifth Ward Councilman, Mike Anglin, will present a resolution to end rubber stamping—only to lack a second. First Ward Council member Sabra Briere will explain in such a way that only the reporter from the AnnArborChronicle.com can understand, why she couldn’t second Anglin’s resolution to end rubber stamping of mayoral appointments. “I was possibly, probably, rarely in favor of Anglin’s proposal,” Briere will email later to confused constituents to whom she’d spoken in support of the resolution.

Next, the National Festival Task Force will meet monthly, and the city staff assigned to “help” the group will decide exactly what kind of festival Ann Arbor should have. This will be done without ever having to bother with a single public hearing. Yet evidence of more efficiency in government, Stephen Rapundalo/Marcia Higgins will claim on their campaign literature. CFO Crawford will tell the eager local press that public hearings cost the city exactly $15 million dollars per year, or at least he thinks they do. Could be more. Could be less. “I’m just not sure I understand the definition of the word ‘cost,’” Crawford will explain.

Then, once festival plans have been finalized, the National Festival Task Force will be replaced by the Ann Arbor National Festival Commission. (For an appointment to this commission, please see above and start practicing your jump shot or starting saving your money). A National Festival Administrator will be hired full-time, and the Administrator’s salary, benefits, private school tuition for up to three children, retirement, vacation, car and clothing allowances would be paid out of the Economic Development Fund, Water and Sewer Fund, with a dash of cash from the Fleet Fund.

Four years later, the Ann Arbor National Festival Commission will announce to a stunned public who’d forgotten there was a National Festival Commission, that the first annual Ann Arbor National Pilot Fish Fry Festival is scheduled to be held on Whitsuntide in the spacious party room at Arbor Brewing Company, with entertainment provided by the members of the Downtown Development Authority, who are renowned for their ability to tell stories, sing, dance and play jokes on taxpayers.

Connie Crump may wonder why Ann Arbor has no national festival to call its own, but in reality the answer is as plain as the fried Pilot fish on her plate.

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April 25, 2010

The Politics of Propositions: When Every Scheme Sounds Like a Winner

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When Google rode into town promising to create 1,000 jobs by 2011, Mayor and Council responded to the racy proposition by taking over $2 million dollars from the city’s already stretched General Fund and creating a new fund called the Economic Development Fund. It should have been called the Rob Peter to Give Away Money to Paul Fund. With the magical appearance of money in the Economic Development Fund, Council took taxpayer money and paid to give Google 400 parking spaces. That crazy arrangement is due to expire in December 2010. I call it crazy for any number of reasons not the least among which is that Google created about 20 percent of the total jobs the company promised, yet still took (and was given) 100 percent of the free parking spaces promised. For every one job created by Google, Ann Arbor taxpayers funded two (yes, two) parking spaces.

Now, money from the Economic Development Fund aka the General Fund is being used on the Fuller Parking Garage project. Our tax dollars are being used to pay a consultant to design a parking garage for the University of Michigan.

In Ann Arbor, our current Mayor and Council simply don’t evaluate business propositions with any modicum of business sense. They will entertain just about any proposition, and give away more money than is practicable in order to smooth the way for the smooth-talking types who come before Council and want their way with the group. The current rumor that it’s tough for those Willy Loman types, developers who ride into town, architectural plans in their travel bags, is pure nonsense and bunkum—developers Newcombe Clark and Jeff Helminski included. Clark recently launched a bid to unseat Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke because Hohnke sent a note to be read by Fifth Ward Council colleague Mike Anglin that made it clear that Hohnke did not favor Clark’s Moravian project.

One has to wonder why Newcombe didn’t run for Mayor. It was Mayor Hieftje, after all, who sank any chance Clark and partner Jeff Helminski had for their Planned Unit Development (PUD) petition to be approved. Hieftje voted against the PUD petition, while Carsten merely sent a note to the meeting and missed the vote. For that matter, why doesn’t Clark move to Ward Three and take on Council member Chris Taylor? Taylor voted for the PUD, but in taking out Taylor, Clark could live la vida loca and spend his days making the life of the other Third Ward Council member, Steve Kunselman, a towering inferno.

It’s my supposition that sometime during the years when Helminski and Clark accumulated their multiple small parcels in the Germantown neighborhood, someone, somewhere, led the two to believe that the P.U.D. was in the B.A.G. All they would have to do was jump through a few hoops at the Planning Commission (which eventually recommended that the Moravian PUD be approved) then, on the Commission’s recommendation, Council would approve the PUD, just as they did for the Near North project. It’s no secret that there are those on Council who believe that the neighborhoods adjoining downtown are fair game for denser development, despite what the residents, zoning laws and various city master plans might say. However, there arose a Third Ward Council member in August of 2009 who knew not Joseph, Jeff or Newcombe. Steve Kunselman voted against the PUD. I can only venture a guess and that former Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden would have heeded the advice of former Second Ward Council member Joan Lowenstein, when she stood before Council and told members not to give in to the “sulkers,” and approve the Moravian PUD.

Since 2000, some 41 development projects have been approved by City Council, developments totaling close to 4,000,000 square feet of new development in our city. Those projects include the 2003 City Council approval of a 633,000 square foot fantasy-land at the corner of Broadway and Wall Street, called the Broadway Village PUD Site Plan. The Broadway Village was supposed to include 7 buildings, 196 units of residential space, and over 760 parking spaces. It’s currently a 7.3 acre eyesore that has enjoyed seven years worth of site plan extensions thanks, one imagines, to the political donations and connections of developer Peter Allen. There are other communities that pull site plan permissions after six months if the developer hasn’t secured funding and broken ground. I have to imagine that Allen, the Broadway Village developer, will petition Council in October of 2010 for another extension. I also have to imagine that funding for the project will not be any more forthcoming in October of 2010 than it was in 2003, when the project was first approved.

It makes no sense to allow Peter Allen to squat at the corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane as he waits for the banks to see the light and finance his development, or at least make sure he gets his developer’s fees before the project goes belly-up, and Ann Arbor is left holding the bag.

So, why can’t developers get their projects built in Ann Arbor? Well, for starters, since 2000 our Mayor and City Council have fallen over and again for the same story: nice project, grandiose financing scheme. Over and again, planning staff have advised the Planning Commission that the individual projects were viable, and Planning Commission has advised Council to say yes to the proposition. Over and again, the developers were unable to begin construction. Not once, not twice, but 40 times since 2000. In fact, the number of development projects that have been approved since 2000 exponentially outnumbers the number of projects turned down by City Council, including as the Moravian.

In going door-to-door, I’ve heard over and again from voters that they want to see the zoning laws applied fairly and uniformly. They want to see PUD projects in near downtown neighborhoods discouraged, and density concentrated within the boundaries of the Downtown Development Authority. After all, one voter pointed out, that’s how the Greenbelt millage was sold.

Well, no. That’s not how the Greenbelt millage was sold.

In 2003, not a single piece of Greenbelt millage campaign literature linked the Greenbelt campaign to increasing density within the city of Ann Arbor. Chapter 42 of the City Charter that deals with the implementation of the Greenbelt millage says nothing about downtown density as a reason to repurpose the then land acquisition millage money. Elected officials, Greenbelt Advisory Committee members and city staff have “repurposed” the intention behind the Greenbelt millage passage to suit their political belief that we must increase density in downtown Ann Arbor. However, the Greenbelt millage was sold and presented to voters this way:

From Chapter 42 of the Charter: Uncoordinated development in the areas around Ann Arbor has affected and may continue to adversely affect the quality of life in Ann Arbor leading to fragmented open space and wildlife habitat; loss of productive farmland and forestland; destruction of rural beauty which is part of the natural historic character of the Ann Arbor community; decline in water quality and the loss of wetlands; increased auto dependency, fuel consumption, traffic congestion and air pollution; relocation of jobs to peripheral area; excessive public costs for roads and utility infrastructure, new and extensions, to dispersed development.

Now, almost 10 years and $22 million dollars later, a map of the Greenbelt millage purchases shows 1,782 acres “saved” from development.

Greenbelt

What should be obvious from the map is that the total amount of land acquired within the boundary is miniscule. The 30 year 0.5 mill tax for and acquisition is anticipated to raise between $80 million and $100 million dollars from Ann Arbor taxpayers. Even doubling or tripling the number of acres will not substantially increase the total land mass, or create anything close to a “green belt” around Ann Arbor. What we will have done is to have preserved multiple small parcels of open space and farmland in outlying townships. Meanwhile, the opportunity for a Greenway languishes, brought back from the dead every two years, like Lazarus, by politicos who pledge to support a Greenway for the city.

While the Mayor claimed in a January 2010 AnnArbor.com post this is a “golden” time to swoop in and pay less than the $12,000 per acre on average that has been paid for the rights purchased, Ginny Trocchio one of two people who manage the Greenbelt millage program, was quoted in an April 14, 2010 AnnArborChronicle.com post as refuting the notion. Trocchio is quoted thusly, “The market has changed dramatically since the millage passed. Land values have dropped sharply, but landowner expectations remain higher than the actual market price— that’s an issue in trying to negotiate deals.” The dilemma makes sense, in fact. Chances are good that land rich, cash poor landowners need money now more than ever.

The most recent example of this propensity to accept propositions sits at 2502-2568 Packard. The 91,700 fantasy-land was to be called Georgetown Commons. Even with the TIF (tax increment financing) sweetheart deal from Council that would have given tax dollars to the developer, the Titanic development scheme sank after hitting the icebergs of financing, debt and unpaid taxes. The property is valued at $4.6 million, based on its 2010 state equalized value. Developer Craig Schubiner paid $6.1 million for it in 2001, according to city documents.

After creating a 6.4 acre disaster by letting Craig Schubiner talk them into a TIF financing package, City Council created the Georgetown Mall Citizen’s Committee which held a meeting at 6 p.m. April 22nd in a 6th floor conference room at City Hall. Citizens will come together and figure out how to clean up the mess created by Council’s short-lived love affair with the Georgetown Commons developer.

So what’s the answer to this decade-long string of failed development? It’s simple: no more tax increment financing (TIF) giveaways to private developers, no more public-private partnerships where our tax money is used to subsidize private development projects, or mitigate the risks, as First Ward Council member Sandi Smith once said, of private development in Ann Arbor. Those public-private partnerships are breeding grounds for what President Obama’s chief economic advisor Dr. Lawrence Summers, referred to as “crony capitalism.” The public good is subverted for the sake of private gain. Public policy is replaced with back room dealing. An excellent example of crony capitalism is the convention center RFP process, a sham procedure designed to give us a predetermined outcome. A few politicos, including the Mayor, City Administrator and former Chamber of Commerce leader decided quietly among themselves as early as 2008 that Ann Arbor’s downtown needed a convention center.

As elected officials, and as a community, we’re going to have to apply significantly more business acumen, vision and skepticism when developers come forward with plans such as the Broadway Village and Georgetown Commons. Yes, it’s a great bullet point for a political résumé to bring in and break ground at such a project, but when the projects fail, as those two have, our community as a whole suffers tremendously. The closed Georgetown Mall has spurred an increase in crime in the neighborhood around the area.

If Ann Arbor is to become a community in which development investments are approved, financed and built (a critical three-step process), we’re going to have to reshape the way in which projects are taken through the planning process, and by whom. We’ll have to carefully analyze and study the successes and the failures of the past decade to identify patterns, people and issues where Ann Arbor’s staff, appointed and elected officials can do a better job helping those who want to invest in our community do so equitably and, ultimately, in the best interests of the taxpayers.

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February 15, 2010

The Politics of Grandstanding: The Three Percent Solution Resolution

Filed under: city council, money, politics — Tags: Budget and Labor Committee, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Mike Anglin, Roger Fraser, Stephen Kunselman, Stephen Postema, Stephen Rapundalo — A2 Politico @ 3:30 pm

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Between 2004 and 2009, Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins, Mayor Hieftje, Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall, and Second Ward’s Stephen Rapundalo voted, as Chair and members, respectively, of the City Council’s Budget and Labor Committee to give City Administrator Roger Fraser the following salary increases, lump sum payments and cash-outs:

In December 2004, Fraser received a 3 percent raise of his $133,000 salary retroactive to July 2004. ($3,990)

In December 2005, he received a 3 percent raise retroactive to July 2005 and 10 extra vacation days, which can be exchanged for cash. ($4,109)

In February 2007, he received a one-time payment of $8,479, plus a life insurance policy worth twice his salary.

In November 2007, the City Council approved a lump sum payment of $4,361 and five extra vacation days.

In October 2008, the council approved giving Fraser another lump sum payment of $3,634 and the ability to cash out 150 hours of vacation, sick or personal time.

This past November 2009, Fraser’s contract was revised again to include a clause that allows him to cash out an additional 120 hours of paid time off before June 30, 2010.

Since 2004, Council members Higgins and Rapundalo have voted to raise Mr. Fraser’s salary by $8,099 dollars, and given him lump sum payments equal to $16,744 dollars. That’s a total of $24,843 in cash. They then added the option for Mr. Fraser to cash-out 275 hours (6.8 weeks) of paid vacation, sick and personal time, worth over $18,800. In total, then, Mayor Hieftje and Council members Teall, Higgins and Rapundalo voted to give our City Administrator raises, lump sum payments and cash-outs equal to $43,643. This amounts to a 35 percent increase in his initial $133,000 salary. Ironically, this is exactly the same percentage that overhead has grown in our city’s budget since 2006. In my experience, outside of Wall Street, an employee under whose management overhead costs increase by 35 percent ($34 million dollars) does not get rewarded with a pay package increase equal to 35 percent of her/his starting base salary.

Council members Rapundalo and Higgins are now co-sponsoring a resolution that, according to a piece posted to AnnArbor.com, “…asks that the base salary of both Fraser and City Attorney Stephen Postema be reduced by 3 percent, starting July 1. It also asks that the base salaries of all other non-union employees be reduced by 3 percent.” A draft of the resolution also asks that the remaining two council members who did not voluntarily reduce their own pay by three percent this year do so—Fifth Ward’s Mike Anglin, and third Ward’s Stephen Kunselman.

On the surface, their resolution appears sensible and equitable, even responsible. However, upon closer scrutiny it is quite the opposite. It is neither a resolution worth supporting, nor a resolution that treats the city’s 765 employees equitably. The proposed three percent reduction in Mr. Fraser’s salary leaves him with a net 32 percent increase in his pay since 2004. Further the Higgins-Rapundalo resolution links their proposed three percent reduction to the proposal that all of the city’s non-unionized employees to accept a lifetime three percent pay reduction. The Higgins-Rapundalo resolution penalizes the lowest paid city employees and protects pay gains given to the highest paid city employees over the course of the past five years.

Council members Higgins and Rapundalo agreed to a voluntary three percent pay reduction. However, Council members Higgins and Rapundalo would do well to remember that they were caught via FOIAed emails published in a piece in the Ann Arbor News rigging the vote for the three percent pay raise they voted to accept in 2007. Mayor Hieftje and Council would do well to remember that their voluntary pay cut is, in essence, a one-time give back. The give back being asked of current unionized, as well as non-unionized employees is for the rest of their tenure as employees of the City of Ann Arbor.

It’s time to stop political grandstanding that accomplishes little than further angering already demoralized city staff and union members. It’s time to get down to the hard work of rolling back the $34 million dollars in overhead increases that Council members Higgins and Rapundalo allowed to slip past them unquestioned, over the past four years. Council needs to direct the City Administrator and CFO to devise a plan to reduce staffing costs that is truly equitable and reflects a commitment to tie compensation directly to performance and the fiscal health of the City.

The current Higgins-Rapundalo proposed resolution reflects precious little understanding of pay equity, and sends the message that our City Council cares little about the lowest paid city employees, and instead intends to protect tens of thousands of dollars in raises they’ve awarded to those highest paid city managers.

It’s good politics and terribly regressive leadership. In short, once again, it’s business as usual.

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February 4, 2010

The Politics of Financial Football: Throwing The Hail Mary Pass in the First Quarter

Filed under: campaigns, money — Tags: AnnArbor.com, Christopher Taylor, Leigh Greden, Marcia Higgins, Mayor Hieftje, Mike Anglin, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Stephen Rapundalo, Steve Kunselman, Tom Crawford — A2 Politico @ 11:55 am

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On February 2, 2010, the day I declared to run for mayor, AnnArbor.com posted this piece: “Roger Fraser tells Ann Arbor City Council to set aside politics to make budget decisions.” The City Administrator is quoted in the piece as saying to Mayor and Council:

“I understand that these are politically difficult things to talk about,” Fraser said. “I understand that we have elections every year. I understand that six of you are up for election this year. But I also understand that we’ve got some major issues that need to be resolved in terms of our budget, and something’s got to give.”

Well, yes. Something’s got to give. Rather, someone’s got to give: the taxpayer. Roger Fraser is pushing to have Council members put a city income tax on the ballot. At the January 19, 2010 Budget Committee meeting, Fraser suggested to the members of the Committee, First Ward’s Sabra Briere, Fifth Ward’s Mike Anglin, Second Ward’s Stephen Rapundalo, Fourth Ward’s Marcia Higgins and Third Ward’s Christopher Taylor, that they had an obligation to float the question of a city income tax.

The Mayor, in attendance, thus making the meeting a quorum, and subject to Open Meetings Act requirements, had this interesting tidbit to add. Whether the question was floated on the August primary ballot or on the November general election ballot would have little impact on how soon any city income tax could be implemented. Well, yes. That’s true. However, we know that in Ann Arbor, mayor and council races are decided in August, in the primary, not in the November general election.

Former Third Ward council member Leigh Greden, who ran opposed, and Second Ward’s Stephen Rapundalo who ran unopposed, tempted the tax gods by coming out in favor of a city income tax during the 2009 primary season. This video comes from AnnArbor.com, and was shot before the August 4, 2009 primary. Note that Roger Fraser says there are 75,000 people who commute into Ann Arbor daily. On January 31, 2010, the Mayor was quoted in AnnArbor.com as saying, “…Ann Arbor has an estimated 70,000 daily commuters.” These numbers come from the July 2009 Plante Moran Income Tx Feasibility Study. In that study, on page 26, the authors document that there are 20,000 commuters who come to work at U of M. The study then concludes there are 54,000 additional people who commute into the City. There is, however, no source for where that number comes from. Furthermore, the study concludes between 2011 and 2015, Ann Arbor will add 4,000 jobs for people to commute to. Between 2006 and 2009, Ann Arbor added a total of 600 jobs.

Roger Fraser estimates that a city income tax could “could raise $7.6 million a year in additional revenue for the city,” according to AnnArbor.com. Of course, there was a July 2009 study to support the idea of putting a city income tax to a vote. In that study by Plante & Moran, the authors write, “Using growth rate assumptions made by City personnel, we projected revenue that would be generated from the current property tax system over the next five years….The analysis has been developed using the best available information concerning financial and demographic trends and conditions. As mentioned above, each model was developed using certain key assumptions and should not be evaluated without a thorough understanding of those assumptions. The assumptions and the accompanying rationale are documented in later sections of this report….”

Here’s where we all need to sit up and pay very close attention: “All assumptions are the responsibility of the City of Ann Arbors’ management based on their best judgment at the time of the study. It is possible that the forecasted results may not be achieved because events and circumstances frequently do not occur as expected.”

In other words, Roger Fraser’s revenue estimate is not even an estimate. It’s a prognostication in the grand tradition of prognosticators. Plante and Moran predict that the assumptions of growth made by city staff, and on which the study is based, “frequently do not occur as predicted.”

If that doesn’t give you a cold grue, it should. The Plante and Moran study begins with a caveat that explains, quite clearly, that a city income tax is not the panacea for the budget woes of Ann Arbor. In fact, the move to a city income tax could end up providing Ann Arbor less revenue than the current property tax model. And there we’d be, still, facing the alternatives the City Administrator often presents to the people of Ann Arbor through City Council: freeze to death or burn to death. Sell parkland, raise taxes, cut services, or increase water and sewer fees.

Mayor Hieftje took himself off of the Budget Committee. Margie Teall stepped down, as well. However, their decision to try to distance themselves from the disaster that it the city’s fiscal situation is a day late and several million dollars short.

It’s quite clear that for the past several years, the Budget Committee on which they sat, and Council, simply followed the direction of the City Administrator and CFO without question and without performing the due diligence required. For instance, the City Charter mandates monthly statements be delivered to the Budget Committee that summarize the City’s financial position. They were never requested or delivered. Yet, the Mayor and his hand-picked Budget Committee crafted policy, recommended program and service cuts, and made recommendations for the expenditure of over $1.5 billion in tax dollars and fees over the past five years without ever knowing exactly how much money the City had in any given month.

Thanks to the urging of Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman, city staff will be producing monthly reports. According to the AnnArborchronicle.com, this is what long-time Budget Committee Chair, Fourth Ward’s Marcia Higgins, had to say when it was suggested that the monthly reports be delivered directly to all Council members.

“In discussing how the monthly report should be disseminated, Roger Fraser suggested that it be sent directly to all councilmembers. However, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) weighed in in favor of first having the budget committee review it before disseminating it to other councilmembers. She reasoned that the rest of the council might not understand what they were looking at, and that budget committee members would then be in a position to help others on council.”

Is it any wonder Roger Fraser is pushing, shoving and trying to drop-kick a city income tax? At this same meeting, he suggested that City Council survey voter attitudes – such as the survey conducted by AATA concerning that group’s fantasy of a county-wide millage. The City Administrator called allocating money for such a survey “due diligence.”

Due diligence? I call it a waste of time and taxpayer money. Those are marketing surveys designed to find out how to best phrase the ballot question so that the voters will support the measure.

There are three steps that must be taken before we can ever entertain the notion of a city income tax:

1. As I wrote in an earlier entry (“The Politics of Cooking the Books: Ann Arbor as a French Restaurant”), total city revenues are up significantly since 2006. So are total expenses. It’s time to examine every possible opportunity for savings. Overhead is the place to begin. The cost of running City Hall has risen 35 percent since 2006. That is a rate of increase that far outpaces both inflation and the cost of living combined. Over-spending must be checked immediately. There is no moratorium, for instance, on meals out and travel for city staff, while at the same time those same staff bring scenarios to Council and the public to raise revenue by selling parkland and cutting services.

2. All City Council members must be given extensive training in reading and understanding financial statements. It’s no sin to be incapable of understanding a cash flow analysis, and such training would benefit not only the Council members, but the public they serve, as well. It is a sin to vote on the allocation of funds without having first examined and understood the financial situation of the City. All Council members have to know the right questions to ask in order to have the ability to oversee city staff in their use of the tax dollars given them.

3. It’s time for a Mayor who will send Ann Arbor City Administrator Roger Fraser, and CFO Tom Crawford back to sharpen their pencils and to prepare two scenarios: under the auspices of the first, they cut 10 percent of the city’s expenses. Under the second, they cut 20 percent of the city’s expenses.

There’s only one rule: not a single city service may be impacted adversely by the cuts.

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January 25, 2010

The Politics Of Email “Revelations”: Taking A MacBook To A Knife Fight

Filed under: Sabra Briere, city council, developers, politicians — Tags: A2Politico, AnnArborChronicle.com, Jesse Bernstein, Karen Sidney, Lady Gaga, LocalAnnArbor, Marcia Higgins, Mayor Hieftje, Michigan Open Meetings Act, Mike Anglin, Pam Byrnes, Rene Greff, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Stephen Postema, Stephen Rapundalo, Steve Kunselman, Vivienne Armentrout — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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Ann Arbor is bleeding money.

Since 2006, the cost of running our city government has increased $33 million dollars, or 35 percent. We have fewer police and firefighters than we did in 2005, but pay $13 million dollars per year more than we did in 2005 for the dregs of the emergency services Mayor Hieftje and Roger Fraser haven’t “streamlined” yet. We’re stocking up on water buckets at our house. We’ll toss water at the fire until the two fire boys in the truck get here.

There are some people who have been trying to get this message out to the general public for several years now. Want some insider baseball? Of course you do. Why else are you frittering away time on this blog, right?

The once-derided political “conspiracy theorists” in Ann Arbor have the cred now, and the politicians are scrambling to pick up the broken shards of their integrity before the summer campaigning season is upon us. The AnnArborChronicle.com photo of political activist Karen Sidney chatting it up with State Senate wanna-be Pam Byrnes says it all. In a May of 2009 piece, the Ann Arbor News political writer Judy McGovern described Sydney as “a regular critic of City Council.” Read: crackpot complainer.

Sydney

Photo by David Askins, AnnArborChronicle.com

One short month later, in June 2009, thanks to a FOIA of Council emails, readers of the Ann Arbor News discovered that there was a conspiracy. There were vote-rigging, scripted debates, time spent on Facebook and planning judicial campaigns in the middle of City Council meetings.

Unfortunately some people never learn. Our local politicos are trying to defend their integrity by using the same old strategies they used before Ann Arborites read in June and July 2009 in front page stories in the Ann Arbor News about emails between Council members during open meetings that were, well, less than professional and, a pending lawsuit alleges, illegal under the auspices of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. Our Mayor and Council members are rationalizing, dissembling, and ignoring mounting citizen concerns and criticisms of the process under the auspices of which the Library Lot RFP proposals have been evaluated. That’s always the best way to inspire confidence. Even the newspaper weighed in with an editorial in which the writer hoped the RFP process would be “open and honest.”

It is a serious allegation to say that city officials colluded with a developer. It is equally serious to allege that city officials conducted a sham RFP process to develop the Library Lot parcel in order to cover up the collusion. First Ward Council member Sabra Briere recently circulated an email containing “clarifying information” to a select group of people hoping, of course, the email would be forwarded. In that email, she makes allegations that well before there was talk of issuing an RFP to solicit proposals to built atop the 1.2 acre Library Lot parcel, Mayor Hieftje, former Chamber of Commerce Jesse Bernstein and City Administrator Roger Fraser, settled on the idea that Ann Arbor needed a convention center.

Here’s a sad truth: she compounded the problem for citizens concerned about the transparency and honesty of the RFP process, not to mention the propensity of our elected officials to sneak around. Briere chose the worst possible medium for disseminating her allegations—an email sent to 120 people. There are 96,000 registered voters in Ann Arbor. She disseminated her “clarifying” information in such a way that allows those whose actions and motives she questions, to continue on, unfettered. The email leaves Briere free to throw up her hands and say, “But I told everyone what I knew!”

Feeling used and manipulated yet?

Briere did little except launch an email shitzu storm. Elected officials with integrity, and who believe they have allegations of wrong-doing, launch investigations. Yes, it would have been Briere’s word against the words of the Mayor, Bernstein and Fraser. However, that’s why the FBI has been showing up in towns across the U.S. (including cities in Michigan) to objectively investigate allegations of corruption in local government. This is from the FBI web site:

Does the FBI investigate graft and corruption in local government and in state and local police departments?

Yes. The FBI uses applicable federal laws, including the Hobbs Act, to investigate violations by public officials in federal, state, and local governments. A public official is any person elected, appointed, employed, or otherwise has a duty to maintain honest and faithful public service. Most violations occur when the official asks, demands, solicits, accepts, receives, or agrees to receive something of value in return for influence in the performance of an official act. The categories of public corruption investigated by the FBI include legislative, judicial, regulatory, contractual, and law enforcement.

There’s even a list of hotlines on the FBI web site that citizens can call to discuss their concerns about allegations of corruption on the part of local politicos.

People who have commented on the post in which I simply reproduced Briere’s email seem to have taken exception to the fact that I couldn’t seem to find the good in Briere’s release of the “information.”

Is it me? What information?

You can read Briere’s email here. She also shared it with AnnArbor.com. So far, none of those whom Briere fingers in her email have come forward to refute her claims. My guess is that none of them will. Why should they? They don’t have to say a word, and the train will just steam on down the track.

It would have been infinitely better for everyone if City Council member Sabra Briere had brought up her issues at a public City Council meeting. Those about whom she writes in her email would have, I’m sure, had something to say about the allegations had they been made during an open meeting. Then, the public and law enforcement agencies would have had a videotaped record.

Right now, what we have is an email from Briere sent to a limited group of about 120 people on her email list alleging, well, that Chamber of Commerce President Jesse Bernstein was upset because he thought the Valiant Group’s proposal should be fast-tracked. Briere writes, “At our meeting, Bernstein said he felt betrayed. He said that Valiant’s proposal for a conference center was a consensus project, and that it was not fair that Valiant should have to jump through all of these hoops.” Jesse Bernstein is free to feel betrayed about anything. Heck, he can feel betrayed because Lady Gaga won’t write a song for him and perform at his next birthday party, or because the democratic process slows down those with the belief that they know what’s best for everyone else. I think the term for people who find the democratic process way too inconvenient is “French aristocrat,” but I’ll have to check with one of my therapist friends. The real term may be something like “delusions of grandeur.”

Briere then alleges a June 14th meeting with Mayor Hieftje about which she writes, the Mayor “…loaned me a copy of a proposal titled ‘Ann Arbor Town Center’ from Valiant Partners LLD, dated May, 2009. On its cover was a green and white sticky note stating ‘Thanks, John. This is pretty interesting. Sandi.’”

Well, boychics, Briere ain’t got bubkas, so say the nice ladies at the Maj games going on around town. How my mother phrased it was slightly more prosaic: “She ain’t got diddly squat.” What we have, again, is Council member Briere’s word in an email against the Mayor’s, and no green and white sticky note, or copy of the proposal he gave to her.

Had she kept the proposal the Mayor gave her, and gone to the Press with it, or showed up at the next City Council meeting with it and asked just what in the name of Boss Tweed was going on with circulating such a proposal to City Council members from a group for a development project two months before the actual RFP was issued, we would be having a much different discussion in our city at this moment. One comment from my original post on the subject of Briere’s “clarifying” email was: “While I wish Council Member Briere had disclosed this information sooner, I believe the article focuses too much attention on that delay rather than on the content of her message. While it is perplexing why she might have held this information so long, it is wildly outrageous that others may have engaged in assisting one of the RFP developers over the last couple of years….Please provide more coverage of the misdeeds of those who seem to have made up their minds on building a conference center before releasing the RFP.”

Alas, timing is everything in this situation. It’s Briere’s delay that is the issue because the delay allowed those who were sneaking around behind the public’s back to keep doing so without being exposed or challenged by a member of the governing body on which they all sit. The public can come and speak before Council until we’re blue in the face (and regularly do), but it’s another matter entirely to have a member of City Council go on the record, in public, with the concerns that Briere chose to circulate via email to the people who will donate to her next campaign, or potentially vote for her in her next election.

It’s Sabra Briere’s delay and the way in which she “leaked” out her “clarifying information” that weakens the effectiveness of any coverage of the misdeeds of those who seem to have their minds made up on building a conference center before releasing the RFP.

I pieced together chain of repeated contact between RFP Advisory Committee members and the Valiant Group’s partners from FOIAed emails. The post is circumstantial evidence that city officials worked diligently to help the Valiant Group prepare its proposal, because it was the Valiant Group’s proposal City Administrator Roger Fraser, Chamber of Commerce former president Jesse Bernstein and Mayor John Hieftje wanted to have built—perhaps the three even promised the partners of the Valiant Group that their proposal would be built. LocalAnnArbor blogger Vivienne Armentrout has written on the RFP subject, and has provided what amounts to more circumstantial evidence that the RFP process was rigged. Armentrout writes about the Valiant Group as having had the “inside track.”

Sabra Briere, as her email shows quite clearly, had access to the people involved, and information circulated, that no regular citizen had. She chose to keep quiet because, one might posit, in June she was concerned with protecting her own political hide. Why? Because the deadline for filing petitions to run in the August 2009 City Council race was June 22, 2009. Briere ran unopposed from the Mayor’s camp. He showed her the proposal she mentions in her email on June 14, 2009.

So why send her “clarifying information” email in January 2010, an email that hangs Hieftje, Smith, Fraser and Bernstein (currently on the AATA Board) out to dry? My guess is that either Briere is entertaining the notion of running for Mayor, or that it has finally become clear to her that playing along with the Council majority will get her little, politically. Perhaps she has realized that she has alienated a growing section of her political base. Thus, Sabra Briere has, once again, become the Council member “concerned” enough about possible collusion, and alleged back-room deals to “expose” them. Sabra Briere wants her peeps to know she is not a part of the “Council cabal,” as former DDA Board member Rene Greff described Mayor Hieftje, Margie Teall, Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins and Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo in an interview with A2Politico.

I have to wonder if Sabra Briere shared her the information in her “clarifying information” email with any Council members other than Stephen Rapundalo in January 2010, some seven months after she was shown the Valiant Group’s proposal with a note that, purportedly, shows that Sandi Smith had been shown the proposal, as well. Did she talk to Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman or Ward Five’s Mike Anglin about the information in her “clarifying information” email?

Did Sabra Briere take her concerns to City Attorney Stephen Postema and ask for a written opinion on the legality of the Mayor showing around the Valiant Group’s Proposal to Council members months prior to issuance of the public RFP, and months before she could, potentially, be expected to vote on a proposal from the same group?

Sabra Briere’s “clarifying information” email did little for me except bring up a slew of discomforting questions. Furthermore, unless those named in her email are challenged directly during an open Council meeting by Council members with the cajones to do it, we can all look forward to business as usual: Mayor and Council will continue to run hell bent for leather to commit taxpayers to several more major multi-million dollar construction projects our city call ill-afford before August comes and, perhaps, people go to the polls with a “throw the bums out” mentality.

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January 5, 2010

The Politics of Parking: Free Downtown Parking For Residents in Towns Large and Small Across the Country (Why Not In A2?)

Filed under: best of A2Politico, boards and commissions, city council, money, transportation — Tags: A2Politico, Ann Arbor City Council, AnnArbor.com, DDA, Downtown Development Authority, Fire Chief Sam Hopkins, Leigh Greden, Marcia Higgins, Mike Anglin, Paul Saginaw, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Stephen Rapundalo's, Steve Kunselman, Tom Crawford, Tony Derezinski — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am

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At the December 21st City Council meeting, First Ward Council member Sandi Smith introduced a resolution to extend parking meter enforcement to 10 p.m. M-Sa. in order to keep parking meters our of First and Fifth Ward neighborhoods.

Here’s the real question: Why are people people of Ann Arbor always given the option by our City Council members of burning to death or freezing to death? Extend parking meter enforcement or put meters in First and Fifth Ward neighborhoods. How about some creative leadership?

There are so many place for Council to look in the budget to find the $90,000. Heck, there are places to find $9 million dollars, if Council members would just stop eating the financial rice cereal fed to them by City Administrator Roger Fraser and City Financial Officer Tom Crawford. The last bowl of rice cereal for the Council babies came in the form of a list of 18 program and service cuts proposed by Fraser at the December budget retreat to close a $3 million dollar budget gap (interestingly almost exactly the amount over budget the new Police-Court facility happens to be at the moment). The list included the immediate layoff of 14 firefighters. You gotta ask. When it was time to trim the number of police down 175, Roger Fraser and Council members told the public early retirement was the way to go. In fact, Police Chief Barnett Jones was quoted in AnnArbor.com in July of 2009 as explaining that, ”the early retirement plan spared the police department from lay offs that would have been far more detrimental. Communities that lay off cops have problems recruiting experienced officers in the future….”

So firefighters looking for jobs must be addled from all the heat? Communities that lay off firefighters don’t have the same problem recruiting experienced firefighters in the future? Not a single soul elected to our City Council thought to ask that question, alas. Such a question would require putting two and two together and coming up with something rotten in the State of Denmark. Early retirements to the tune of $6 million for the police and pink slips for the firefighters? What’s it gonna take for Fifth Ward’s Mike Anglin, Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman and Chris Taylor, and Ward One’s Sabra Briere to wake up and smell the fiscal bullshit? Of course, maybe the firefighters got the bum’s rush because former Ann Arbor Fire Chief Sam Hopkins couldn’t be persuaded to tell reporters that without the 14 firefighters everything would be swell. At the time of the early retirements, Police Chief Jones was quoted in that same AnnArbor.com piece as saying, “Ann Arbor is just as safe as it was before. I am tired of people saying our community is not going to be safe. We’ve got police officers here that are stepping in and filling the gap. We’ve been cutting police officers since 2000, and has crime run amok because people are leaving? No.”

The early retirement of two dozen officers was followed by a sharp rise in crime in Ann Arbor, a wave of break-ins, and FBI crime statistics that showed a sharp rise in violent crime in our city.

With their bibs tied on firmly in place, Council members sat quietly and swallowed what they were fed. Roger Fraser even issued a dare: Unless they told Fraser otherwise at the following Council meeting, he was going to lay off firefighters. Only Third Ward’s Steve Kunselman tried to stray from Fraser’s list. Kunselman was re-strapped into his highchair by city CFO Tom Crawford and the feeding continued. The city’s $7 million dollar IT department couldn’t be cut because the department had won “awards,” Crawford said. Second Ward’s Tony Derezinski (who miraculously showed up for the budget meeting—Derezinski is quickly closing in on Marcia Higgins [her recent absences aside] for the prize of Council member with the worst attendance record at committee and Council meetings—said that outsourcing the City’s $2.5 million dollar legal department was “off the table.” Off whose table?

With the political implosion of Third Ward Council brat Leigh Greden, Ann Arbor ’s Mayor and City Council members are being exposed as terribly inept at crafting and implementing policy. Leigh Greden was their beard for half a dozen years, and now that he’s gone, the veteran Council member group (Teall, Higgins, Rapundalo and Hietje) is foundering badly. And thus we come to Sandi Smith’s resolution to extend parking enforcement until 10 p.m. I wrote about Smith’s resolution here on December 20th.

Several Council members claimed Smith had broadsided them with the resolution, and the ensuing discussion was comical in its sheer lack of, well, intelligence. One reporter at the Council meeting tweeted that Council members were attempting to craft a resolution “on the fly.” Those are always the best bits of legislation: the ones done with little forethought, planning, or research. At one point during the discussion of her resolution, Council member Smith railed against the “micromanging” of the City’s parking policies by City Council members. The micromanagement of parking, Smith claimed, was the sole discretion of the Downtown Development Authority (DDA), on which she sits. Smith’s comment showed her to have about as much understanding of the political chain of command as a Lance Corporal complaining about the “micro-management” of her superior officers. DDA members are appointed by our elected officials who, in turn, answer to voters.

City Council members do tend toward comical micromanagement, discussing the dimensions of trash carts and wasting the city’s time, money and staff resources on Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo’s grandstanding and useless “plastic bag ban” resolution, are classic examples. However, the oversight of boards, commissions and committees, such as the Downtown Development Authority, not to mention the questioning of resolutions brought to Council that address issues related to the DDA and parking, (particularly those sponsored or so-sponsored by Smith & Mayor Hieftje as both serve on the Board of the DDA as well as City Council) are not only appropriate, but crucial.

FOIAed emails revealed Sandi Smith called a secret meeting in January of 2009 at the DDA office and invited City Council and city staff. At that meeting, she wanted to discuss what was to the built atop the underground parking garage. A few months later, it was Sandi Smith (along with Fourth Ward’s Marcia Higgins) who brought us the famously “tailored” RFP for proposals to build atop the as-yet-unbuilt garage. Anything built on the Fifth Avenue parcel had to bring a financial return to the city, so demanded the RFP. That parking garage was never meant for the people of Ann Arbor; it’s for the use of the developer of the convention center or hotel that Council members want built atop that garage.

So, on the one hand, we have Paul Saginaw co-founder of Zingerman’s working himself silly on programs to rally support for local business. On the other hand, we have Sandi Smith trying to force people to get up in the middle of dinner at Zingerman’s to run outside to feed the meters until 10 p.m. I ask you: who’s the more committed individual to downtown business? If you answered Sandi Smith and the DDA Board, stay after class for some electroshock therapy. While our DDA Board members and City Council propose policies to bilk the parking system and local residents to get millions to support Roger Fraser and Mayor Hieftje’s out-of-control building and construction habit, other towns with more responsible and creative leadership are rallying behind local business with programs to get residents downtown and make shopping not predicated on feeding a meter. Other cities are crafting and implementing free parking downtown parking programs for residents.

What follows is an example of what a DDA can do to actually support downtown businesses. It comes from Sausalito, California, and programs like it are spreading across the United States—in cities of all sizes.

Read about these programs and weep. Then wipe your tears and email your Council members and Mayor Hieftje. Ask why it costs more per hour to park on street in Ann Arbor, Michigan than it does in Los Angles, California. L.A. City Council recently rolled back parking to $1.00-$1.25 per hour to foster downtown business. People with hybrid cars park for free in cities across the country, as well. Here’s a link to an NPR program on the trend.

In towns large and small across the United States, DDAs and Urban Renewal Agencies are crafting and implementing free parking programs for residents to bolster local downtown businesses. Frederick, Maryland (pop. 59,000) has a free parking programs for residents, and Seattle is going to allow residents free parking near its light-rail stations for the next two years. In San Jose, California (pop. 948,000) residents get two hours of free parking through a downtown parking validation program. Medford Oregon’s (pop. 460,000) Urban Renewal Agency has a similar free parking program, as well.

We need to ask our elected officials (particularly Mayor Hieftje and Sandi Smith, who sit on the DDA and who led the way in raising parking rates by 40 percent this past August, and who are directly responsible for recommending parking policies to City Council—and then voting in favor of their own DDA recommendations) why Ann Arbor’s DDA doesn’t immediately craft a program for residents and downtown businesses similar to this one in Sausalito.

SUPPORT YOUR DOWNTOWN SAUSALITO BUSINESSES !!!

3 Hours FREE Parking Downtown with a Residential Proximity Card !!!

A Residential Proximity Card entitles you a total of three hours free parking in the Municipal Parking Lots #1 & #3 per calendar day between the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm, and unlimited parking from 6:00 pm from 8:00 am. Time accumulates for multiple visits, so be careful to park less than 3 hours total. (Please note that you will be charged at the regular hourly rate if you stay for more than 3 hours between the hours specified)

When you enter either of the parking lots, just waive your card in front of the sensor and the entrance gate will open. To exit, just waive your card again and the exit gate will open. It’s that easy. Just remember: Don’t take a ticket when you enter !!!

Cost: Free to residents of Sausalito !!! Cards may be obtained at Municipal Parking Lot #1 (next to the ferry landing) between the hours of 9am and 8 pm weekdays or between 9am and noon on weekends. A $10.00 non-refundable fee and valid ID showing your Sausalito address is required, along with your vehicle registration.

THIS RESIDENTIAL PROXIMITY CARD IS ONLY GOOD IN THE MUNICIPAL PARKING LOTS #1 and #3.

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December 20, 2009

The Politics of Parking Porn: Debbie Does Dallas and Sandi Smith Does Parking Data

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, Ann Arbor News, Downtown Development Authority, Matt Horning, Mike Anglin, Nelson/Nygaard, Roger Fraser, Sandi Smith — A2 Politico @ 10:35 am

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At least City Administrator Roger Fraser and the City Treasurer Matt Horning came to Council with a “study” to back up their “request” to hike parking fine fees and squeeze even more money out of Ann Arbor residents who live in a city with 14 percent unemployment, double digit foreclosure rates, and some of the highest per capita property taxes in the state. Of course the “study” to support the parking fine hikes consisted of the argument that it had been a “long time” since anyone had looked at the “fine structure.” The study, which I wrote about here (”Roger Fraser Wants Council To Scratch His Five-Year Itch”) and here (”City Staff Compare Apples to Oranges and Tell White Lies To Justify Jacking Up A2 Parking Fines“), was the sloppiest piece of research since, well, the city staff “study” that compared Ann Arbor park facility use fees with those in other cities as a justification to jack up the price of taking a swim, and renting a park shelter.

Kudos to First Ward Council member Sandi Smith, who has done away with the bogus study strategy, and gone straight into fantasy land, where her proposed resolution to extend the gaping maw of on street parking meters until 10 p.m. Monday-Saturday makes Alice in Wonderland read like the Wall Street Journal.

According to Smith’s proposed resolution,

“The Downtown has changed dramatically over the past 25 years, with much more evening commerce and activity due to a marked increase in the number of restaurants and entertainment opportunities. Yet, the hours of parking enforcement has not been changed to keep up with the change in customer needs, as vehicle turn-over at the parking meters is just as important to businesses operating after 6 p.m. as it is to businesses who operate only during daytime hours.”

But wait, Sandi Smith appears to be channeling Roger Fraser and Matt Horning. She says that hours of parking enforcement have not changed to “keep up with” the change in “customer needs.” How buzz-wordy of her. How clever to refer to rape as a parking policy. We asked for it. We must have wanted it. The proposed change is all about “customer needs.” In Ann Arbor, evidently, women and cars should stay home at night or prepare to pay the price.

Let’s start slowly, shall we?

One of the Downtown Development Authority’s guiding principles as put forth in the DDA’s own Nelson/Nygaard study is: “Public parking policies should be based on quantified data and analysis.” Let me digress for a moment and to say that the Nelson/Nygaard “study” was not a study. It was a mail-in survey left on the windshields of motorists parked downtown on a single day. Motorists filled it out and mailed it in. The study on which Smith bases her resolution was not a comprehensive, observational “study,” and to treat it as such shows either a lack of understanding of the principles of conducting real research, or a desire to misrepresent the reliability of the data gathered.

Smith’s resolution offers no quantified data or in-depth analysis. In fact, her resolution reads like something crafted by a 7th grader. “The downtown has changed dramatically.” Just a perceived dramatic change presented as fact.

We should be hearing dramatic chortling from Smith’s City Council colleagues, city staff and, especially, some seriously dramatic cackling from Ann Arbor residents who voted for Smith. The joke, of course, is that they put someone in office who takes her fellow Council members (at least the ones she didn’t tell about her little plan before she put it on the agenda at the last minute right before Christmas) and the people of Ann Arbor as a bunch of turnips who just fell off of a car parked at a 30 minute meter.

According to Smith’s resolution, “100% of on-street meters were filled during evening hours versus 68% during daytime hours, “demonstrating the need for evening parking enforcement as a tool to encourage parking turnover.”

I can close my eyes and hear my old statistics professor. He believed the use of calculators to divide decimals in statistics classes was for the weak-minded. He clears his throat, sniffs and begins slowly: ”Smith…..is it? Ms. Smith, as we say in the world of statistical data—in college, high school, middle school and in some of the better local elementary schools—could you please document your source for those statistics? Otherwise, Smith, we might just think you’re making up this crap.” Oh, Professor X was a sarcastic bastard, but I can divide decimals like nobody’s business, calculate a standard deviation, and spot bogus “statistical data” from 100 yards.

The Nelson/Nygaard “survey” focuses on how badly our system of parking meters is managed. Short-term meters in the wrong places, long-term meters underutilized.

Now, let’s continue slowly, because if Sandi Smith (or anyone else from City Council) reads this blog entry I don’t want them to be confused by the actual data and facts (some of which come from the DDA).

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.”

Rock on, Rocket Scientists. 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?

Ready to be dazzled with more facts and data?

We’ll move, still slowly, into the present, with information from that survey contracted by the DDA itself by Nelson/Nygaard Consulting. That survey concludes that, “Overall parking supply is sufficient to meet existing demand. Average daytime peaks of 83 percent are characteristic of a parking supply that is being optimally used. Off-street utilization is higher than on-street during weekdays. Policies aimed at preserving on-street spaces, including off-street discounts, monthly permits, and time limits at meters, appear to be effective.”

Any City Council member who supports this resolution by relying on Smith’s suspect data from a pseudo-study is simply guilty of supporting an effort to (yet again) squeeze more parking money out of Ann Arbor residents and visitors who are still suffering through the worst recession in 70 years. Roger Fraser tried it in November with his “Golly gee, we haven’t looked at the structure of parking fines in five years,” ploy, his “study” presented to Council filled with cherry-picked facts and data. Now, First Ward Council member and DDA Parking Diva Sandi Smith is back in December with her “Golly gee, we haven’t looked at ‘customer need’ of parking meters in 25 years” ploy, and her resolution supported by a mail-in survey of 490 people who responded to a survey left on their windshields on a single day in a single year (2007) to extend metered parking until 10 p.m.

Parking Diva Smith wants to jam through her resolution on Monday December 21st, right before Christmas with little notice to the public, and no data to support her allegations that evening businesses desperately “need” those meters to turnover more quickly because they’re not. The Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce has asked Council to postpone voting on Smith’s resolution. Council should do just that, and realize that “studies” such as Roger Fraser’s and “resolutions” such as Sandi Smith’s make them all look foolish and sorely unprepared to lead. I am positive Sandi Smith “shared” her plans for this ill-conceived resolution with several on Council. That no one offered to co-sponsor it, and that the City Attorney’s office (which must approve the language of all resolutions) let stand the mistakes in spelling and grammar in the resolution, leaves me not sure whether to laugh or cry at the sheer ineptitude.

Alas, some people never learn. Once again, the Council majority has stood back and let Sandi Smith to do their dirty work, as they did when they convinced her to attack Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin’s resolution to release all of the City Council emails sent during public meetings. I wrote about Smith’s performance at that City Council meeting here. It’s still one of the most popular posts on the site.

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.”

Sandi Smith’s current resolution is more poor public policy. Poorly thought out. Poorly documented. Poorly written.

Oh, one last thing Sandi Smith ain’t never gonna tell you, my fellow A2 politicos, but I will: In October of 2009, CBS News reported that the City of Oakland, California rolled back a parking meter enforcement proposal almost identical to Sandi Smith’s. “The city had extended the hours on July 1, 2009 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. to help close an $83 million budget deficit. Along with higher meter rates and aggressive ticketing, the city expected to bring in more than $1 million in extra revenue. Merchants quickly objected, saying their business has dropped 30 percent since the new hours were in place.”

Maybe you’d like to put another quarter in the meter (Sandi Smith voted to raise parking rates by 40 percent in August, remember?) and write Council about Smith’s proposed Christmas present to the people of Ann Arbor? To email Mayor and Council, click here. Want your Council member to read this blog entry before Monday evening’s Council meeting? Forward the link in your email.

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December 9, 2009

The Politics of Thuggery: City Administrator Negotiates With Firefighters’ Union Like Don Vito Corleone

Filed under: city council, fire, politics — Tags: Ann Arbor firefighters' union, Budget and Labor Committee, Fire Chief Sam Hopkins, Google, Leigh Greden, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Mike Anglin, Roger Fraser, Sabra Briere, Sergey Brin, Stephen Rapundalo, Steve Kunselman, Tom Crawford — A2 Politico @ 10:31 am

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“I’m gonna make him an offer he won’t refuse. Okay?”—Don Vito Corleone, “The Godfather,” 1972.

City Administrator Roger Fraser’s rattling war display was the December 5th City Council budget retreat. Technically, it was not a retreat, but rather an extended meeting of the Council’s Budget and Labor Committee. At the meeting, Mr. Fraser handed the 10 elected City Council members and Mayor Hieftje a menu of items from which to choose in order to cut $3 million dollars from the city’s budget in the next 30 days. Evidently, our elected officials thought they were in a four star French restaurant, because no one batted an eyelash at the menu that didn’t have prices affixed to all of the items (only to the items which Mr. Fraser would like to see cut). Furthermore, only Third Ward Council member Steve Kunselman was gauche enough to try to order off the menu and suggest that some of the money from the economic development wet kiss giveaway to Google be taken back and redistributed. After all, Kunselman pointed out, Google has not come through with the 1,000 jobs promised, and nonetheless the company is still being given the economic development money from the city’s coffers.

As if Sergey Brin needs the corporate welfare. Google’s co-founder is the 26th richest person in the world. I’m sure he would never have missed Kunselman’s suggested $1 million dollar take-back.

Nonetheless, Ann Arbor’s Chief Financial Officer, Tom Crawford, called Kunselman’s suggestion a bad idea, then quickly changed the subject to whether Tiger Woods had really been beaten with his own 3-iron. Mayor Hieftje moved the meeting along at a brisk pace that left no room for Council members to ask many questions or even speak. A public meeting about the city’s faltering budget, after all, is the last place where Council members might want to speak. They can always email or phone each other later. Maybe they use iChat. Or maybe they can just do what Roger Fraser tells them to do because, after all, it’s still 1954 and Father Knows Best.

One topic brought up at the retreat-a-palooza was what to do about those bad boys & girls of A2—the firefighters. Since water boarding the lot of them isn’t an option yet (Fraser’s equipment is on back-order), he recommended to Council to immediately lay-off 14 of the city’s firefighters. As I wrote in a Whisper posted on December 7th, those cuts pose a potential threat to life and property, according to former Ann Arbor Fire Chief Sam Hopkins. Hopkins told city officials in April 2009 that to axe any more firefighters would be to take our fire services below a level that Hopkins deemed capable of protecting life and property.

Fraser told Council those unionized brats have not been cooperating at the bargaining table, so what remains is the nuclear option, layoffs. Alas, I trust the President of Pakistan with the nuclear option more than I trust Roger Fraser. Here’s why.

The same day I posted the Whisper referred to above, AnnArbor.com kindly loaned their site to Fraser to propagandize about why the firefighters would have to be let go. Reporter Ryan Stanton writes: “Raising his voice several times, Fraser spoke bluntly and criticized the union’s leadership for refusing to realize the need for change in light of the current financial crisis facing the city.” The city’s hired hand then went on to tell the 11 people elected to oversee his work and represent the best interests of the taxpayers and citizens that, they (Council and Mayor) were being ….”naive if they…[put] off tough decisions about public safety.”

Naive is one word for balking at Fraser’s crazy advice. “Judicious” and “prudent” are a couple of synonyms I think work better. Know why?

‘Cause as usual, there’s a twist to this fractured fairytale from our City Administrator: The City Council’s Budget and Labor Committee, the committee tasked with the oversight of Roger Fraser and contract employees (lawyers) who negotiate contracts with our city’s unionized employees (i.e. the firefighters), hasn’t met in weeks. Maybe without the late-great spinmeister Leigh Greden and Fourth Ward’s Marvelous Margie Teall, the other members of the B & L Committee (Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins, Mayor Hieftje and Stephen Rapundalo) just don’t have the will to oversee the budget or the City Administrator and his negotiations with the firefighters’ union. The new members recently appointed to the Budget and Labor Committee, First Ward’s Sabra Briere and Fifth Ward’s Mike Anglin, are eager to meet, I’ve heard. In reality, the responsibility lies with Mayor Hieftje and with the Chair of Budget and Labor Committee, Marcia Higgins. Higgins is shirking her role as Chair of the committee. It’s her responsibility to call regular meetings so Council can be apprised of the negotiations with the firefighters’ union.

Let me flesh out a not-so-far-fetched theory: This past summer, the Ann Arbor Firefighters’ PAC stiffed Higgins in her run for Council. The last time she ran opposed, the PAC donated 40 percent of her campaign funding, over $2,000. The PAC also stiffed Higgins’s BFF Leigh Greden, during his primary bid in August, after donating a cool $1,000 to his 2007 campaign. Could Marcia Higgins have played a game of political retaliation with the firefighters and put payback ahead of the safety of Ann Arbor’s citizens? Did the Chair of the B & L Committee hang the firefighters out to dry because they didn’t give her money when she ran for Council this past November?

Without oversight, Roger Fraser is free to treat the firefighter’s union to negotiating tactics Don Vito Corleone would love. The City Administrator, who has had a raise every year for the past three, and who sweely volunteered to freeze (not cut) his own pay just this year, offered our firefighters a 25 percent pay cut. Sit quietly for a moment and imagine what you would do if you got “offered” a 25 percent pay cut. Then, Roger Fraser offered them another treat: that they should pay for more of their health insurance premiums.

Why not just deliver severed horse heads to all the fire stations around town?

“Fuck” is an acronym. It’s short for “Fornication Under Consent of the King.” That’s exactly what’s happening to our city’s firefighters. The City Council’s Budget and Labor Committee members represent the King, and by not holding meetings (or in the case of Anglin and Briere by not demanding that meetings be called regularly), they have given their tacit consent to Roger Fraser to F.U.C.K. the people who drive the trucks that begin with F and end with K—not to mention the people who live in the city and rely on emergency services.

A council member at the meeting suggested making cuts in the city’s IT department’s budget. CFO Tom Crawford thought that was a bad idea, too. After all, the IT department has recently won an award. Then, Crawford quickly changed the subject to whether Tiger Woods had really been beaten with his own putter.

The inmates, my fellow A2 politicos are running the asylum. Roger Fraser is being allowed to negotiate with our firefighters’ union in bad faith. The firefighters want buy-outs like the police got. They shouldn’t get them. The Police officers shouldn’t have gotten them. Buy-outs pay employees more not to work. Our city can’t afford to do that.

It’s time for us to force our Council members to stop rubber-stamping and start serving the public. It’s time for them all to quit with the resolutions that are little more than fauxgressive horse manure (Council member Rapundalo’s “plastic bag ordinance” comes to immediately to mind), study the budget as if their lives depended on it (and all of our lives do, really), and serve up Roger Fraser with a different list of items to cut to save $3 million dollars. If some of them, as I suspect, can’t read or understand the city’s budget (Mayor Hieftje, Teall and Higgins relied on Leigh Greden to do that for them), I’ll bet Council member Steve Kunselman would be delighted do a tutorial.

As for the negotiations with the firefighters’ union, Council members who continue to allow our City Administrator to negotiate like a mafia don must realize it makes the lot of our elected officials look as if they approve of thuggery as a method of management and negotiation.

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November 25, 2009

Sinatra, I Mean Taylor, Does The Ethics Policy His Way

Filed under: boards and commissions, city council, politicians, politics — Tags: Bonnie Bona, Carsten Hohnke, Christopher Taylor, DDA, Historical Commission, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall, Mayor Hieftje, Mike Anglin, PAC, Planning Commission, Ryan Stanton, Sabra Briere, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Sandi Smith, Stephen Kunselman, Stephen Postema, Stephen Rapundalo, Tony Derezinski, University of Michigan Musical Society, weekend poll — A2 Politico @ 9:52 am

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On October 20, 2009, I wrote about Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor’s ants-in-his-pants rush to start crafting an ethics policy prior to the return to City Council of third Ward’s Stephen Kunselman (Kunselman, you may remember (or not) ran on a platform of returning integrity, honesty and ethics to City Council.): “Why is Christo T. So Hot To Create A City Ethics Policy?” On October 25, 2009, I also posted a Weekend Poll which asked the question: Can Council Craft An Ethics Policy For Themselves? So far, the nays have it; A2 politicos don’t believe our Council members can craft an ethics policy for themselves. I can’t say the poll results are a great shock.

It has been suggested to Council member Taylor that he should include a citizen’s advisory committee in the process of crafting the ethics policy. I know! How about one of those famously stacked citizen advisory committees? Taylor is a lawyer who, according to his bio on the Butzel Long web site, “is a shareholder practicing in Butzel Long’s Ann Arbor office. He represents businesses, institutions and individuals that wish to exploit, defend and protect their intellectual property, including technology startups, Fortune 100 manufacturers, universities, application service providers, software developers, film producers, television and radio stations, record labels, and authors.” At the moment, it appears he also fancies himself the Saint Thomas Aquinas of Ann Arbor City Council.

For Mayor and Council to appoint a Committee to Advise on an Ethics Policy for Ann Arbor City Council would be as easy as rounding up nine of their friends, work colleagues and political donors. Hell, Mayor Hieftje has been appointing his BFFs and cuddies to the DDA, PAC, Planning Commission and Historical Commission for a decade. Why do it differently when appointing an advisory committee to look into creating an ethics policy? There’s something to be said for consistency in cronyism. If appointing political donors proved too blatant a move, Mayor and Council could simply appoint their business associates, siblings and spouses to the proposed advisory committee on ethics.

Alas, none of these trusted, tried and true methods of putting together an advisory committee appealed to Council’s Taylor, the newly ordained resident Dominican friar and expert on ethics. He has brushed off citizen suggestions for citizen input, and is doing the ethics policy his way. Sinatra would be proud. I’m sure the Council Rat Pack is relieved not to have meddling civvies involved in shaping and discussing Council ethics. That’s way too personal a topic to have civvies butting their long noses into.

Taylor is using as his launching pad an ethics policy drafted by the Michigan Attorney General’s office. Thus, it would appear as though Taylor’s policy were aimed at all city employees (when it rains ethics, it pours) and not just at himself and his ethically-challenged pals Fifth Ward’s Carsten Hohnke, Second Ward’s Stephen Rapundalo and Tony Derezinski, Fourth Ward’s Marcia Higgins and Margie Teall and First Ward’s Sandi Smith.

The ethics policy on which Taylor is hard at work in his monk’s cell goes on ad infinitum about gifts. It’s not clear whether the policy includes intellectual gifts. I’m going to inch out on a limb and say it’s safe to assume that Taylor’s constituency, the so-called “dim lights” who teach at U of M, and whom Taylor swears to the gods of the underworld he never meant to refer to as “dim lights” in that Council email that was published in the Ann Arbor News, have nothing to fear from the “gifts” clause of the ethics policy. Cash gifts to your Council member are out, Sweetie. I wonder if that includes the finder’s fees being collected by one of the real estate pros on Council from local developers? How about tickets to Michigan football games and University of Michigan Musical Society events, and the ever popular breakfast meetings at the Northside or Broken Egg?

The ethics policy also cracks down on leaks. Thank the artist formerly known as Prince (or whichever god you worship). I’m not talking about the roof of the Larcom Building that leaked for years, and was used as a pretense to spend $40 million on the new Temple to the Three judicial deities. I’m talking about disclosing information before disclosure is “authorized.” This seems particularly important to the current Council majority, the lot of whom were nabbed conducting business in secret via email, and whose penchant for withholding information that should have been made public has resulted in a lawsuit against the City for violating the Open Meetings Acts.

Thus, stopping up leaks is crucial to this City Council. First Ward City Council member Sabra Briere will, of course, be routinely subjected to interrogations using sodium pentathol, and chocolate truffles of her own creation. Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin will get the sodium pentathol treatment minus the truffles. Staff will simply be given routine lie detector tests (certain high-level staff will, however, be exempt, as it is written into their job descriptions to spin information to deceive the public, as well as withhold information from certain sodium pentatholized Council members ).

Yes, plugging “leaks” seems a crucial part of any ethics policy crafted by Taylor for use by our Ann Arbor City Council members.

Pay-to-play? In Illinois the pay-to-play game got Blago impeached. In Ann Arbor, the Mayor looks forward to collecting regular campaign “donations” from about 35 percent of the people he appoints to boards and commissions, from people to whom city contracts are awarded, and various “colleagues” at the University of Michigan, where he and is wife were given high-paying part-time jobs some years ago. Pay-to-play is not addressed in Council member Taylor’s ethics policy. Thank goodness, too. Mayor Hieftje would have to run his campaigns on 35 percent less money, and you know what that would mean, don’t you? He’d actually have to fundraise from the rabble.

Friar Christo’s ethics policy doesn’t touch on the issue of conflicts of interest, either. Again, this omission is for the best. Repeat after me slowly, while staring at a shiny object: “The are no conflicts of interest among the members of Ann Arbor City Council. The are no conflicts of interest among the members of Ann Arbor City Council. The are no conflicts of interest among the members of Ann Arbor City Council or city staff.”

It’s a coincidence that our Mayor, with a BA, is one of the highest paid lecturers at the University of Michigan School of Public Policy. That slacker in the department with the MacArthur Genius Award on his mantle can’t hold a candle to Mayor Johnny H. It’s a coincidence that Hieftje’s wife landed a part-time job at the University after her husband was elected to office. It was a coincidence that the most recent $36,000 consulting contract went to the law firm where City Attorney Stephen Postema once worked. It was a mere chance that Mayoral appointee Bonnie Bona’s design firm was awarded the 2005 contract to redesign the Argo Pond Park shelter, landscaping and building. I could go on, but that’s a whole different blog entry I’m saving for later.

Christopher Taylor is plowing ahead with his ethics policy like a pot-bellied ball hog paying the whole outfield at a Sunday afternoon softball game. His actions are a bush league attempt to have an issue to run on next summer when his constituents are reminded of his part in the City Council email scandal, and his part, perhaps, in giving one developer a huge leg up over five others in a supposedly “fair” bidding process to choose what get built atop the public land next to the library.

“But I crafted an ethics policy that was adopted by Council,” Taylor will repeat ad infinitum between the months of April and August 2010 as he runs for re-election. In reality, closing out the public demonstrates quite clearly that what he’s doing is simply using ethics for his own political gain. It’s an egregious ethical lapse, and it can still be remedied.

If Christopher Taylor is serious about breaking the pattern of deception and disdain for the public good that runs through our current Council Majority (and he may well be), he will ask the Mayor to appoint an advisory committee that does not include Hieftje’s or Council members’ political donors, political cronies, ex-lovers, and/or blood relations. Council member Taylor will turn to the public, as well as religious leaders and academic experts on ethics in public policy and public service for guidance, input and help.

If he doesn’t, he’ll have taken an opportunity for real change, put lipstick on it, and we’ll end up with a pig of a policy that won’t change anything. It will be enforced by the same Council Majority caught repeatedly in FOIAed emails during open meetings demonstrating the ethical depravity of Mao and his Gang.

Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that truth is known through reason. I can see no reason, to tell you the truth, for Council member Christopher Taylor to exclude the public from this important policy decision.

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November 20, 2009

WHISPER: Library Lot Proposals Leaked to A2P

Filed under: Whisper, city council, developers, money — Tags: A2Politico, Alison Heatley, Ann Arbor City Council, AnnArbor.com, Carsten Hohnke, Cresson Slotten, Downtown Development Authority, Jayne Miller, Jessica Black, John Splitt, Kevin McDonald, Leigh Greden, library lot, Marcia Higgins, Matt Kulhanek, Mayor Hieftje, Mike Anglin, Mike Pettigrew, Roger Fraser, Sandi Smith, Scott Rosencrans, Susan Pollay, Wendy Rampson — A2 Politico @ 12:30 pm

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In early-January 2009, at the Ann Arbor City Council retreat, City Administrator Roger Fraser presented Council members with plans for “a little conference center.” The plans were withheld from the public attending the Council’s retreat, and shortly thereafter when a citizen tried to FOIA the “little convention center” plans presented during the retreat, the FOIA was denied. In late-January 2009, First Ward Council member Sandi Smith sent an email invitation to the Mayor and her Council colleagues and city staff inviting them to the DDA to discuss plans for the library lot underground parking garage, and what Council would like to see built atop the garage.

There was no agenda for the January 2009 meeting Smith called and held at the DDA office, no public notice of the meeting was issued, and no notes from the meeting were kept. In short, it was a secret meeting that violated the Michigan Open Meetings Act.

As news about the possibility that a tall structure would be built atop the underground library lot leaked out, Council members and Mayor Hieftje responded to constituent emails with what can only be described as whoppers (and not the malted milk ball variety). In one February 2009 email, Mayor Hieftje reassures a constituent that it would probably be “years” before anything would be built atop the parking garage. To his constituents, Ex-third Ward Council member Leigh Greden dismissed the notion that Council had plans to build anything atop the library lot. Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke assured a constituent via email that nothing would be built atop the library lot without significant citizen input. Hohnke would “demand it,” he wrote.

Just a few short months after the January 2009 Council retreat, Ann Arbor’s own Bob the Builders, Fourth Ward Council member Marcia Higgins and First Ward Council member Sandi Smith co-sponsored a resolution to issue an Request For Proposals to build atop the yet unbuilt underground library lot. Carsten Hohnke voted against a resolution put forward by his Fifth Ward colleague Mike Anglin that would have called for public hearings to be held prior to the issuance of the RFP. So much for Hohnke’s promise that he would “demand” significant public input.

The RFP was issued, and the deadline for the proposals was November 13th. Ann Arbor received six proposals. AnnArbor.com FOIAed the proposals on November 13th, and a citizen FOIAed the proposals on November 18th. AnnArbor.com was told that the proposals were not going to be released until they were no longer under review. By delaying their response to the AnnArbor.com and citizen FOIA, city officials can put off releasing information about the proposals to the public for three weeks. There is a Technical Review Committee to evaluate the six proposals.

The members of the Technical Review Committee are:

Administrator Lead – Jayne Miller
Project lead – Matt Kulhanek
Attorney’s Office – Kevin McDonald
Planning & Development – Wendy Rampson
Systems Planning – Cresson Slotten
Project Management – Alison Heatley
Finance – Mike Pettigrew
Parks & Recreation – Jessica Black
DDA – Susan Pollay

The secrecy surrounding the proposals, and the foot-dragging, looks suspiciously like an attempt to predetermine the outcome, and create the spin before the information is released to the public and the citizen committee. The recommendation of the Technical Review Committee will go to a classic “citizen” RFP Advisory Committee put together by Mayor Hieftje:

Margie Teall – Council Member, Ward 4
Stephen Rapundalo – Council Member, Ward 2
Eric Mahler – Planning Commission
John Splitt – DDA
Sam Offen – Resident & PAC Member
Roger Fraser – City Administrator
Jayne Miller – City Staff
Matt Kulhanek – Manager, Ann Arbor Airport
Susan Pollay – DDA

A list of the proposals submitted was leaked to A2Politico. You’ll find the reading interesting, and the names familiar. Click here to download the RFP Proposal Summary list in PDF format.

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February 15, 2010

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February 4, 2010

The Politics of Financial Football: Throwing The Hail Mary Pass in the First Quarter

January 25, 2010

The Politics Of Email “Revelations”: Taking A MacBook To A Knife Fight

January 5, 2010

The Politics of Parking: Free Downtown Parking For Residents in Towns Large and Small Across the Country (Why Not In A2?)

December 20, 2009

The Politics of Parking Porn: Debbie Does Dallas and Sandi Smith Does Parking Data

December 9, 2009

The Politics of Thuggery: City Administrator Negotiates With Firefighters’ Union Like Don Vito Corleone

November 25, 2009

Sinatra, I Mean Taylor, Does The Ethics Policy His Way

November 20, 2009

WHISPER: Library Lot Proposals Leaked to A2P

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