A2Politico: Ann Arbor Politics Grilled To Perfection

May 7, 2010

The Politics of Poultry: Some Thoughts On Chickens Roosting

Filed under: DDA, developers, taxes — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 12:35 pm
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The developer of Ashley Terrace, Joseph Freed & Associates, just defaulted on $18 million dollars owed to its lender. The lender is doing what lenders are wont to do when borrowers get neck deep in missed payments—they’re foreclosing. Joseph Freed & Associates also operates 4 Eleven Lofts, student housing that opened for business in the Fall of 2009. During 2009-2010, 4 Eleven Lofts were leased at 45 percent occupancy, according to a January 2010 piece titled “Ann Arbor rental vacancies up, officials say,”  published in the Michigan Daily. In that piece, Stacy Greggorio, general manager of 4 Eleven Lofts, was quoted as saying she expects occupancy to increase…..“As of the end of 2008, we had leased 4 Eleven Lofts to approximately 45 percent for the 2009-10 term, but by the end of 2009 we have already reached 65 percent occupancy for 2010-11.” 

In January 2010, U.S. office vacancy rates hit a five-year high of 16.5 percent according to reporting from Bloomberg, and according to a piece posted to AnnArbor.com in January of 2010, local office vacancy rates were 17.62 percent. Meanwhile, the developer who brought us the still unbuilt 690,000 square foot Broadway Village PUD fantasyland whose site plan has been given seven years worth of extensions from the city, told readers of that January 2010 Michigan Daily piece that “he expect[ed] the market to turn around in the near future and that [r]etail, office and residential vacancies downtown or near downtown [were] basically near normal and the healthiest in the state.” 

Another local developer offered a more realistic perspective. According to a May 2010 AnnArbor.com post, “Ed Shaffran was among those who cautioned against overbuilding. He said…that the Ashley Terrace foreclosure appears to signal what he warned against: New construction downtown could only be built at a price that would effectively price a typical unit out of the range of most buyers.”

A cluster bomb has exploded and the pieces are strewn far and wide.

In 1990, downtown Ann Arbor experienced a rash of foreclosures on major properties, and it took a decade for the downtown real estate market to rebound. Then, came the misguided and clearly failed notion that downtown density should be created by subsidizing private development with public tax dollars—all in the name of New Urbanism and density. New Urbanism in Ann Arbor has been nothing but an excuse to repeat urban planning mistakes, subject our town to another rash of overbuilding, with the added twist of saddling taxpayers with debt from tax increment financing (TIF) schemes (such as the TIF capture districts created just for the Broadway Village and the Georgetown Commons sites).  It was the same cycle that we saw in the 80s—minus the gift of public money to private developers.

The foreclosure of Ashley Terrace is a potential gut punch for the Downtown Development Authority. Why? Because the DDA’s rakes in 28 percent of all of its projected property tax capture at the moment from just four properties, Zaragon Place, 4 Eleven Lofts, Liberty Lofts and, yes, Ashley Terrace. If Ashley Terrace is sold at a loss by the lender, a distinct possibility given the present real estate market, Ann Arbor’s DDA will capture less tax revenue. However, in its most recent budget, the DDA projected tax captures of $3.8 million, an increase from $3.54 million. The DDA’s budget is already stretched thin, what with the $2 million recently extorted by the city to shore up Ann Arbor’s tottering budget, $500,000 payments promised to the Police-Court facility bond payments, and projected payments on $47 million in bonds for the underground parking garage being built next to the downtown library.

On top of that, the Board of the DDA got what could only be described as a some electro-shock therapy when they were told recently that parking revenues for the month of March 2010 were down 45 percent over the same period during the previous fiscal year. As a result, the DDA dropped its parking revenue estimate by 10 percent for the current year. With another scheduled rate increase in July, the DDA’s budget for 2010-11 predicts parking revenues will increase to $16.17 million. In 2008, the DDA brought in $14 million parking revenues.

Various politicos have assured Ann Arbor taxpayers that those bonds for the new parking garage will be made from parking revenues. In fact, there’s even a banner across the front fence of the project that proclaims that the underground garage is “your parking dollars at work.”  Should the above mentioned downward spiral in parking and tax revenue continue, the people of Ann Arbor can count on repaying the underground parking garage bonds, plus interest, from our property tax revenues. The bonds for the new parking garage are backed by the full faith and credit of the taxpayers, not parking revenues. If the DDA can’t manage to chip in the promised $500,000 to repay the bonds for the Police-Court building for any reason, taxpayers will be on the hook for that money, as well. 

So where are all the people who were supposed to flock to downtown Ann Arbor, snap up the new condos, pay $1,000 per bedroom in the new student housing projects, and, generally, turn our downtown into a bustling mini-tropolis? Evidently, someone forgot to tell the folks on Council, who’ve spent the past half a dozen years cramming projects such as Ashley Terrace down the throat of the local housing market, that “If you build it, they will come,” was a line from a Hollywood movie.

The U.S. apartment vacancy rate is 7.8 percent. Thus, the stagnant growth of our population, as well as the current 10-12 percent vacancy rate in Ann Arbor should give us all a very good reason to reconsider the New Urban “vision” that brought us student housing paraded through Planning Commission as “work-force housing,” and “affordable” housing that isn’t affordable by any stretch of the imagination to workers grossing $35-$40K per year. According to the Michigan Daily,  Mary Jo Callan, director of Washtenaw County’s Office of Community Development, said even as tenancy remained high in affordable housing units, the rental vacancies in Ann Arbor rose to notable heights in 2009. “Rental vacancy was way up, extremely uncharacteristic of a town near several universities,” Callahan said, referencing how those communities are sometimes shielded, in part, from troubles in the state or national economies.

The vacancy rate information Ms. Callahan shared with the Michigan Daily bodes ill, of course, for the remaining three student housing developments on which the DDA is banking to bring in about one-third of its tax capture revenues. The tax capture money is used to provide services, such as association grants, to the business taxpayers within the DDA area. 

While my son was participating in a cooking competition at synagogue recently, a resident of the Georgetown Mall area asked me what can be done to resolve the current mess created by the failure of the 2007 proposed Georgetown Commons development. Not unexpectedly, residents of the area are steamed that Council members didn’t learn from their earlier mistakes with the Broadway Village PUD that resulted in the failure of that TIF capture project. Politicos plowed right ahead, rezoned the area, and turned the convenient, neighborhood retail/office Georgetown Mall area into six acres of blight.

First, we need to stop site TIFs and taxpayer subsidies of private development.

Ann Arbor is a very desirable development destination. The problem is that while Ann Arbor is an extremely desirable and developer-friendly location for multiple types of development, it’s a city led by politicos with a penchant for back-room planning (library lot RFP), sweetheart deals (PUDs), a taste for giving out taxpayer dollars as subsidies under the auspices of programs such as the DDA’s Partnership Program (Near North development), and little overall development vision. As a result, we have political leadership that has forced residents and developers to become adversaries, and suffer through a decade-long inability to bring financially sound, and neighborhood friendly developments to fruition. 

What else can we do to right the redevelopment wrongs at Georgetown Mall? We have to significantly improve the city’s vetting process whereby proposed developments are judged fiscally sound by planning staff and the Planning Commission. Developers with established paper trails of financial failures and bankruptcies have been granted site permissions without any additional required guarantees from their lenders.

In addition, site plan extensions are going to have to be granted more frugally. Squatting on prize parcels for years in Ann Arbor, such as the Lower Town parcel, needs to be halted. There are cities in which developers have six months to break ground, or risk losing their site plan permissions altogether. I’m ready for a more common sense approach to development, such as that of Ed Shaffran, and his desire to see over-development discouraged. 

Finally, I want to point you to what I consider another important aspect of any solution to development messes such as the Georgetown Commons: imagination and vision. On January 27, 2010, food writer Constance Crump penned a blog entry for Concentrate Media in which she posited that we need to “dream big” when contemplating the next incarnation of the Georgetown Mall parcel. I agree. This doesn’t necessarily mean big in the sense of tall or dense, but rather to look at what the Fourth Ward Georgetown Mall neighborhood would not just welcome, but embrace. In my vision, Ann Arbor will encourage future development of which we can be extraordinarily pleased and proud—single and mixed use development that will complement the personality and character of our 186-year-old downtown and surrounding neighborhoods.

Right now, there’s a Georgetown Mall citizen’s committee formed to address some of the serious problems, such as rising neighborhood crime, that have resulted from the 2007 Georgetown Mall redevelopment fiasco. However, without studying, analyzing and understanding what went wrong, the establishment of this citizens committee is little more than busy work for dedicated neighborhood activists who deserve much, much better treatment than to be pandered to during an election year.

Popularity: 52% [?]

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.

Popularity: 44% [?]

April 5, 2010

The Politics of Perks: Residency Must Have Its Privileges

Filed under: best of A2Politico, boards and commissions, city services, taxes — Tags: , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 12:28 pm
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When I was a kid, at the beginning of every summer vacation kids in Dearborn, Michigan got a free pool pass, a tag that was sewn on to the proud owner’s swimsuit. Today, Dearborn (population 97,700) has eight outdoor pools and a summer family pool pass costs $90 for residents. Ann Arbor has four public pools (one of which was targeted for closure), and a family pass for residents this year will cost $250. Dearborn has a single public golf course, and on a weekend 18 holes with a cart will cost a resident $28.00. At the Leslie Golf Course in Ann Arbor, 18 holes and a cart cost $38.00, with no break for residents. Dearborn is the 10th largest city in Michigan, and Ann Arbor is the 5th largest. Dearborn has 37,000 residences, and that’s pretty darn close to Ann Arbor’s 45,000 residences. Finally, both Ann Arbor and Dearborn host the University of Michigan and other non-profits (in Dearborn it’s the gigantic Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village). 

Why does it cost 2.5 times more for Ann Arbor residents to buy a summer pool pass than it does for Dearborn residents? Why, for that matter, does the 10th largest city in Michigan have twice as many public pools as the fifth largest city, with its substantially higher per capita property taxes? The answer, of course, is that in Dearborn services and recreational facilities for residents are a major spending priority, and have been for the last 50 years. While Ann Arbor taxpayers are forced to fund a new $47 million dollar Police-Court building, in 1996 Dearborn taxpayers were asked at the polls and agreed overwhelmingly to float a bond to finance a $46 million dollar Cultural Center  for the residents of that city. The Cultural Center includes a 1,200 seat theater, two indoor pools, a climbing wall, a senior center, fitness center and an art gallery among other amenities. It costs a resident family $564 per year to use the Cultural Center.

Being a resident of Dearborn has its privileges. Being a resident of Ann Arbor should have similar privileges, as well. To get there, it will mean changing the direction city staff want to take when spending our tax dollars. Should we follow the staff suggestions in the Capital Improvement Plan and drop $800,000 to update the terminal at ARB (Ann Arbor City Airport) so rich folks can jet in for the football games at U of M, or should we build a new public swimming pool on the south side of Ann Arbor, where there isn’t one? To me, that choice is clear: a new public pool for the residents on the south side of town. Should we pave our roads and rebuild our bridges, or follow the pie-in-the-sky, big buck-little benefit “vision” of city staff planning manager Wendy Rampson, and the misguided members of the city’s Planning Commission, who were quoted in the Press as wringing their hands because “all the entrances to town are ugly?”

The choice is clear to me: we pave our roads and rebuild our bridges. In Rome, there are triumphal arches that mark the entrances to the Eternal City. When our City Administrator conquers the budget and stops over-funding the various intra-governmental city-states, such as Solid Waste, Legal, Water & Sewer and IT, and budgets resident services first and fully, we’ll broach the subject of putting up triumphal arches at the entrances to Ann Arbor. 

Outside of City Hall last week, I ran into a city employee whom I’ve known for several years. This woman is a dynamo and incredibly bright. Standing on that corner, she threw out half a dozen fantastic ideas about how to get more use out of the city facilities we have. The encouragement of healthy living is her passion. Working for the City is her job. The whole time she was talking, I couldn’t help but think of her boss, whom I’d run into just a few moments earlier. Why on earth did this woman answer to someone as unenthusiastic and just plain off-putting as that person? I tried to imagine what it must be like for someone with as much drive and passion as she has working for someone who, it is quite clear, simply collects a paycheck. 

It should come as no surprise to anyone that morale at our City Hall is at the bottom of the fish tank. Employee morale was surveyed not once but twice several years ago (by the local Dension company), and both times the results were abysmal: people who work for the City of Ann Arbor (with the exception of those who work in the City Attorney’s Office and the Downtown Development Authority) indicated on their surveys that they were just plain demoralized. While it’s easy to shrug off the results of two city-wide employee surveys which revealed mass discontent, people who are unhappy in their jobs cost their employers money. In this case, those several hundred city employees who’d rather walk over hot coals than go to work every morning, cost taxpayers millions of dollars each year. How? Employee turnover is the first expense that results from low morale. It can cost up to 30 percent of the employee’s total base salary and benefits to conduct a hiring. Employees with low morale are prone to higher absenteeism, and have little desire to go the extra mile. Studies show that low employee morale comes out in all manner of ways, including outright theft and destruction of property; employees who are demoralized can develop drug and alcohol problems. I’m not writing these things to question the character or work ethic of Ann Arbor’s over 700 city employees. I’m writing this to acknowledge the obvious: the employee morale of those who work for the City has no where to go but up.

And up it must go.

Just to be clear, employee morale is not the purview of either the Mayor or City Council. The City Administrator sees to the day-to-day management of the City, and the day-to-day supervision of city staff. However, the ramifications of low morale appear on the agenda of Council meetings with alarming regularity. Let’s start with early retirement. I’m expecting to retire sometime after the age of 70. You probably have the same plan. The Social Security Administration would, I’m sure, like us to work until well past the age of 75. The enticement to do so is a higher monthly benefit offered albeit for the statistically shorter number of years we’ll live past the age of 75. In the City of Ann Arbor, employees with the requisite number of years worked can retire well before the age of 55. 

In talking to a union representative who bargains on the behalf of city employees, the individual told me quite frankly that members of that union are looking to get out as quickly as possible. I asked why. The answer was what I expected. Thanks to the virtually constant and unchecked threats of layoff made by the City Administrator (unchecked and uncommented upon by our elected officials), Ann Arbor’s city employees look to retire from city service as quickly as possible.  

In 2007 and 2008, Ann Arbor did citizen surveys. The results should give us hope as to what the future could hold for all of us with a focus on good management, accountability and resident services. Despite the fact that our city staff are demoralized and could use prescriptions for anti-depressants, they received high marks from citizens for their professionalism in the course of their duties. This is remarkable when you stop to think about it. They don’t like working for our city government, in general, perhaps even detest the management strategies that have been used over the past half a dozen years, but they push themselves to serve the public. They’re working for us through the pain of demoralization. 

In those same citizen surveys, only 13 percent of residents responded that the level of services they received in exchange for the taxes they paid qualified as an excellent value. That means, in essence, a huge percentage of residents feel that they’re being cheated (tip o’ the keyboard to Angel Morn)  every year out of the services they deserve in exchange for the amount in taxes they pay. 

It doesn’t take very much to imagine the performance and productivity our city staff would deliver if their morale were significantly improved. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that improved employee morale will directly impact the percentage of citizens who feel that the level and quality of services they receive is commensurate with the amount of taxes they are expected to pay.

At the moment, city government is run and tax dollars are allocated as if it is a privilege to live in Ann Arbor.

This mindset has led to the deterioration of our infrastructure, and a multi-million dollar unhealthy reliance on additional taxation (millages) to pay for a bloated managerial bureaucracy addicted to cash surplus mad money, expensive no-bid sweetheart deals, contracts for city work given to political friends, subsidies for developers, and consultants. All the while our city budgets have been balanced on backs of hard-working city staff, by hiking fees for services exponentially, and by small but steady service reductions. 

Why does it cost 2.5 times more for Ann Arbor residents to buy a summer pool pass than it does for Dearborn residents? Why, for that matter, does the 10th largest city in Michigan have twice as many public pools as the fifth largest city, with its substantially higher per capita property taxes? It’s time to ask these questions (among many others), get answers, and shape public policy that revolves around the premise that residency in Ann Arbor must have its privileges as opposed to the current mindset that merely living here is privilege enough.

Popularity: 46% [?]

March 15, 2010

The Politics of Garbage: Single-Stream Recycling Stinks For More Reasons Than You Think

Filed under: environment, money, recycling — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 12:19 pm
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A2P Notes: Looking for the back story? I wrote about single stream recycling first on January 28, 2010. To read that entry titled “The Politics of Unscrambling Eggs: Hieftje, Hohnke and Teall Push $6.4  Million For Environmentally Regressive Single Stream Recycling,” click here. 

 

It has often been disturbing to follow the money, connections and political threads that run through our city, and from city government out into the larger community. We live in a small town, and it’s sometimes too easy to justify ethically questionable contracts, relationships, and reciprocities. I wrote here on February 18th that businesses owned by a current member of the Planning Commission and a current member of the Downtown Development Authority were awarded contracts for city work, and then the initial contract was amended by Council on February 16th to increase the original allocation by $100,000.

In the Council resolution, the names of the businesses never appeared anywhere, neither was it made public that the city was awarding contracts to members of the boards. If this information had been made clear to Council and the public, it might have raised questions (at least for me it would have). Furthermore, nowhere in the Council Board packet did information about the bidding process, or whether or not the work had been bid out competitively appear, either. The several hundred thousand dollar prize was quietly awarded to the companies of two politically-connected individuals (or so it appears). 

With the details not disclosed when staff requested the funds from Council, the transparency of the bidding, awarding and allocation processes skirt dangerously close to cronyism—much too close for my tastes. 

Then we have single-stream recycling. It’s an absolutely ecologically regressive move as documented by numerous studies, including a 35 page 2009 survey (tip o’ the keyboard to Steve Bean) by the Container Recycling Institute. The survey concludes: “In summary, with increased processing costs and lost revenues in total far exceeding collection savings in most instances (and zero under alternating-week collection), overall single-stream recycling does not show the cost advantage that was originally anticipated. As well, the expected increases in capture rate are also not apparent. Overall, dual-stream recycling still appears to be more advantageous.”

The presentation to Council in support of the resolution put forth by Mayor Hieftje, Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Hohnke and Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall to allocate funds for the $6.5 million dollar move to single-stream recycling was prepared for city staff by a consultant who will receive a $100,000 sole source contract to help in the transition to the single stream program. Here’s another fact you may not know: At present only about 35 percent of the material processed at the Ann Arbor Materials Recovery Facility (MRF) is actually collected in Ann Arbor. The remaining 65 percent of materials come from the rest of Washtenaw County, Windsor, Toledo, Livingston, Oakland, and Wayne Counties. However, Ann Arbor taxpayers bear the sole tax burden for the entire proposed expansion of the facility to allow single-stream recycling. 

The push to move to single-stream recycling isn’t just coming from outside consultants who stand to gain six-figure sole source contracts. It’s being pushed by politicians up for re-election who stand to gain politically. It’s also being pushed by city staff members under the misconception that recycling success is measured simply by increasing the percentage of materials diverted from our own landfill. This is from the Container Recycling Institute 2009 survey: “It is important to understand that diversion from disposal is not recycling. Collection is not recycling. A product is not recycled until it is made into another product.”

Pressure to make the switch to single-stream recycling is also coming from the Ann Arbor Ecology Center and the center’s Executive Director, Michael Garfield.

I last wrote about Garfield here.

Is there a problem with Garfield and the Ecology Center lobbying for the switch to single-stream recycling, and for Council to award the contract for the work to Recycle Ann Arbor? Other than the fact that he is lobbying for an ecologically regressive multi-million dollar expenditure? There are several reasons, not the least among which is that Garfield has a conflict of interest and stands to gain financially from the arrangement. 

The connection between the Ecology Center and Recycle Ann Arbor is revealed in tax documents, in specific Schedule O of the Recycle Ann Arbor’s 2008 990 tax return. In that schedule, we read the following disclosures:

Classes of members of stockholders: “The Ecology Center, a nonprofit corporation is the sole member of Recycle Ann Arbor and, as outlined in RAA bylaws, has the right to appoint a majority of the members of RAA’s Board of Directors.”

Election of Officers and their Rights: “Ecology Center has the right to appoint a majority of the members of the RAA’s Board of Directors.”

Decisions Subject to Board Approval: “Decisions made by the RAA Board are subject to approval by the Board of the Ecology Center.”

Michael Garfield is the Vice Chair of Recycle Ann Arbor’s Board of Directors, and the 2008 income tax return filed by Recycle Ann Arbor indicates that he was paid $67,986 by the Ecology Center for his work there, as well as for an average of 5 hours of work per week on behalf of Recycle Ann Arbor. 

In 2007, Recycle Ann Arbor, under the de facto control of the Ecology Center, lost $54,016 dollars. In 2008, Recycle Ann Arbor lost $468,911 dollars, almost entirely on loses associated with the operation of the Reuse Center. Despite the financial loses, the CEO of Recycle Ann Arbor, Melinda (tip o’ the keyboard to Steve Bean) Uerling, received a 20 percent raise in her compensation in 2007 and again in 2008 to bring her total yearly compensation up to $98,377 per year. In 2008, Garfield received a 21 percent increase in his pay from the Ecology Center, despite the fact that Recycle Ann Arbor lost close to half a million dollars.

It is quite clear that Recycle Ann Arbor needs to land the contract from the city, and quite clear that the Ecology Center stands to gain from an expansion of the city’s recycling program. 

On March 13th, Garfield blasted out an email titled: “Take Action: Support Single Stream Recycling!” In his email Garfield writes:

Some of you have been recycling in Ann Arbor for almost 40 years, and after sorting one recyclable from another all this time, it might seem wrong to put it all in one cart. After all, we’ve been telling you how important it is to sort your papers separately from your containers. (Some of you may even remember when we sorted green glass from brown glass from tin cans, and so on!) Less than ten years ago, the Ecology Center opposed single-stream collection programs.

But times have changed, and new sorting technology at the materials recovery facility —what we call Single Stream 2.0—makes the extra sorting at the household unnecessary, without compromising the quality of the recyclables.

He is, in essence, lobbying for a contract to be awarded to a company under his control (Recycle Ann Arbor), but making it appear in his email that the Ecology Center simply favors single stream recycling. Garfield does not support his heralding of what he refers to as “Single Stream 2.0″ with any objective studies or data. Furthermore, Garfield does not make clear that the Ecology Center stands to gain financially from the city’s move to single-stream recycling. His claim that the quality of the recyclables is not compromised by the move from dual to single-stream recycling is in direct conflict with the findings of the Container Recycling Institute’s 2009 study, among many others. 

The Council resolution in favor of amending the existing contract with Recycle Ann Arbor to be voted on tonight doesn’t include the actual contract. It includes a summary. This is a glaring omission, because the city’s check register shows that payments  to Recycle Ann Arbor have risen steadily. According to the city check registers, the city wrote $1,483,381.14 in checks to Recycle Ann Arbor in fiscal year 2008.  The total for fiscal year 2009 was $1,866,777.79.  For the first seven months of this fiscal year the city has paid Recycle Ann Arbor $1,028,660.80.

In his email to Ecology Center members, Michael Garfield is trying to sell single-stream recycling as a benefit to Ann Arbor, its environment and its people. This is misleading, 65 percent of the materials processed in our city’s Materials Recovery Facility come from outside our own city. How does it benefit Ann Arbor taxpayers to expand our recycling facility to suit the needs of, say, Saline? 

Unfortunately, the change over to single-stream recycling looks more like a move to continue to over-pay for services, such as those provided by Calvert’s Roll-off Container Services, a company purchased by Recycle Ann Arbor is 2007. It is a move that will suit the political aspirations of those involved, rather than an objectively studied and well-researched policy decision. It’s the work of a Green Machine interested in financial and political gain, rather than sound environmental stewardship.

The switch-over should be halted.

Popularity: 68% [?]

February 2, 2010

The Politics of Falling From Grace: An Interview With DDA Board Member Jennifer Santi Hall

Filed under: boards and commissions — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 9:59 am
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Jennifer Santi Hall was never convinced Ann Arbor needed an underground parking garage and more parking. As a board member of the current Downtown Development Authority, her opinion is akin to heresy. 

 

Santi Hall has spent the past seven years serving on various city boards and commissions. After Mayor Hieftje’s 2008 re-election, she wrote a glowing blog entry about Mayor Hieftje’s work as an environmentalist. The post appears on the Great Lakes Law blog, authored by Hall’s husband, Noah Hall. Detractors, in fact, refer to Jennifer Hall as John Hieftje in a skirt for her perceived unquestioning support of his initiatives. Hall writes in the August 2008 blog entry, “In 2003, he led a successful campaign for a dedicated millage to create a greenbelt of farmland and open space around Ann Arbor, including significant portions of the Huron River watershed. Leader of the Huron Valley Chapter of the Sierra Club, Doug Cowherd, will tell you he easily spent 1,000 hours crafting the greenbelt resolution and championed the cause well before Hieftje came on board.

 

Then, came the February 2009 letter of intent to file suit against the city. The  lawsuit aimed at derailing the Library Lot underground parking lot project was filed by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center. The Law Center is headed by Jennifer Santi Hall’s husband, Noah. According to an entry about the lawsuit posted to the AnnArborChronicle.com, on August 13, 2009, “the complaint alleges violations of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, the Michigan Open Meetings Act, as well as nuisance and trespass violations.”

 

Then came a public accusation made by Mayor Hieftje at the May 2009 DDA Board retreat that Jennifer Santi Hall had “a cloud hanging over her head” thanks to the lawsuit. The cloud over her head was interfering with the ability of a joint City Council-DDA committee moving forward with negotiations between the DDA and the city. City Council members refused to work with Hall, and the Mayor was disinclined to force the issue.

 

In an October 2009 A2Politico interview with former DDA Board member Rene Greff, Greff said, “At our annual Board retreat, I pressed the Mayor until he finally admitted publically what I had been saying for months, that the reason they were stalling on putting together their committee was that “some members of Council”  didn’t want to negotiate with Jennifer and me.”

 

There are some who are betting that Jennifer Santi Hall’s political career in Ann Arbor is over so long as Mayor Hieftje remains in office. A2Poltico caught up with Jennifer Santi Hall and asked her about her time on the DDA Board, the pending lawsuit, why she doesn’t support the Library Lot underground parking garage, and whether she will lose her seat on the Board of the Downtown Development Authority this summer, when her term ends.

 

1.  When Kim Groome left Ann Arbor, and the First Ward City Council seat became open, you were in the running for appointment to that seat. After all, you had been Chair of the Planning Commission, a Board Mayor Hieftje uses as a stepping stone for those whom he’d like to see on City Council. I’ve heard Groome’s vacant First Ward Council seat was promised to you, and that at the last moment, a friend of Council member Christopher Easthope’s was appointed instead. A very short time later, Mayor Hieftje appointed you to the Greenbelt Advisory Commission and then, almost a year to the day after you were passed over for that First Ward Council seat appointment, you were appointed by the Mayor to the DDA. Forgive me, but it looks suspiciously as if those two Board appointments were rewards for you having taken “one for the team,” when Chris Easthope’s college friend was appointed to the City Council seat promised you. Comments? 

 

First, a couple of clarifications to your statement above.  I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say that the Planning Commission has been used by Mayor Hieftje as a “stepping stone for those he’s like to see on City Council.”  In the 7 years I’ve been serving on city boards and commission, I can only recall two planning commissioners who have run for Council – Eric Lipson (ran against Marcia Higgins in 4th Ward, not endorsed by Mayor Hieftje) and Steve Kunselman (don’t recall if he was endorsed by the Mayor in 2006, not endorsed in 2009).    

 

Another clarification, I was appointed to the Greenbelt Advisory Commission upon its creation in May of 2004; Kim Groome left Council sometime in July or August of 2005. 


If the Mayor thought he was giving me a seat on the DDA board as a reward for “taking one for the team,”  he certainly didn’t let me in on his thought process.

 

As the end of my 3 year term on Planning Commission approached in spring of 2006, I scheduled a meeting with Mayor Heiftje.  I told him that I didn’t want to be presumptuous in thinking he would offer me a second term on Planning Commission, but in case he was thinking of reappointing me, I wanted to let him know that I wasn’t interested.  I was pregnant and then later a nursing mom during my term on Planning Commission and my husband and I were thinking about another child for our family, and I just couldn’t envision surviving the late night meetings during another pregnancy and infancy.  I was quite surprised when the Mayor asked if I would be interested in a citizen seat on the DDA.  He told me my background and also my experience on Planning Commission would make me a good fit for that board.

 

I don’t believe that I was ever “promised” the seat vacated by Kim Groome, but it is true that Leigh Greden (former Third Ward Council member) encouraged me to put my name in the running for the vacant seat and then gave me some advice about how to prepare and present myself during the process. Up to a point, I believe he was actively lobbying his colleagues to appoint me.  I don’t know all of what happened behind the scenes except that there were some on Council who didn’t want to see Tim Colenback appointed (who was really the Ward 1 favorite).  I had never met Tim and knew little of his background and involvement in city issues. Thanks to our mutual friend Jeff Irwin, Tim and I got to know each other better during the appointment process.  I wish that I had been introduced to Tim before I put my name forward for the seat —I certainly would have made a different decision.  I think Tim would have made (or someday will be) a great Councilperson.

 

I am actually quite happy that I was not appointed to that seat.  My time serving on city boards gave me great experience with policy issues, but I wasn’t as involved in the city politics.  Looking back, it’s clear that the council majority wanted someone that would simply go along with their agenda, and that’s not what the voters of the 1st ward wanted and not what I would have done.

 

2. You were appointed to the DDA in 2006, and former Board member Rene Greff told A2Politico that she holds great stock in your abilities as a Board member. One of the reasons Greff got booted was her outspoken defense of the DDA as an independent Board, both procedurally and financially. Some say the DDA Board must submit to the will of City Council. Others disagree because the DDA is an entity established and supported by City Charter, just as is the City Council. What is your view of the relationship between Council and the DDA? Who’s the alpha dog, as it were, or are there two packs at work here?


The Ann Arbor DDA was created in 1982, under the authority of the State of Michigan Act 197 (passed in 1975).  The State wanted to give municipalities a tool for downtown urban renewal—a way to combat the economic decline and structural demise that was affecting downtowns all across America. In creating the DDA in Ann Arbor, the City Council recognized the extreme importance that a downtown district has to the whole city’s vitality.  The downtown belongs to the entire Ann Arbor community and as such would benefit from a designated stream of resources to protect and nurture it. I was excited by an opportunity to serve on the DDA because I fundamentally believe in the general purpose of DDAs and the mission of the Ann Arbor DDA.  I am a true lover of downtown urban areas.  I like the excitement, the crowd of people, the entertainment, and cultural offerings.  Having all these things located close together means that they are very accessible to everyone. Vibrant downtowns are an important component to my environmental ethic —I believe a density of residents, employment, and activity is the only sustainable way to construct a city and to make transportation between work, home and play not dependent on an automobile.

 

I totally agree with Rene that the DDA should be an independent authority.  City Councils must make decisions about many areas of the city and appropriate resources across all types of competing community interests.  The DDA exists with a board independent from City Council expressly to protect the DDA area from having to compete with the rest of those interests.  That being said, I don’t believe the DDA has unchecked authority.  It is created by the City, overseen by the City, and can be dissolved if the City Council so desires.

 

The DDA has money (from the tax capture and from parking revenues) and the Council has the statutory oversight of our appointments, changes to our bylaws, approval of our budget.  Further, any infrastructure work we want to do in the downtown requires their approval because the city owns all the property (roads, parking structures, alleys, etc).  So the politics begins.  Some politics have a purpose, those games I understand.  Some other politics make no sense.

 

I wish Council provided the kind of oversight, check and balance that an independent agency such as the DDA (or AATA or any other authority) should have.  But they don’t always do that.  They don’t really look into our bylaws and make sure that we aren’t abusing our power.  They just won’t approve them (DDA sent bylaw changes to Council about 2 years ago and they were never placed on a Council agenda for approval) because some board members want them changed and certain council members don’t want those board members to have something they want. 


If the City Council wants unquestioned access to the DDAs resources, then it should disband the DDA.  It has the ability to do so, but if you were to look closely at the numbers, you would see that it would not make financial sense for the city to do so.  The DDA’s TIF capture comes from not only the City but also the County, AAPS, AADL, and WCC.  The DDA has given the City more than its share of TIF capture back in grants and other expenditures (like rent for the parking meters – the original source of the $2million question). 


3.  Mayor and a group of Council members including Leigh Greden, Margie Teall, Marcia Higgins, as well as Ann Arbor’s CFO Tom Crawford, have been pressing the DDA over the past 24 months for larger financial contributions to the City’s sagging General Fund. The DDA Board agreed, for instance, to pay $500,000 per year toward the cost of the bonds issued to build the new Court house. A past DDA member described this to me as an outrageous misuse of DDA funds. You voted in favor of the DDA-city bond repayment obligation, but against the underground parking garage project. Why should taxpayers care if Council demands millions from the DDA to put into the General Fund? It’s the city’s money, anyway, right?


I truly believe in the purpose and mission of DDAs.  The DDA exists to protect and nurture a communal resource.  If the City continually uses politics to coerce resources out of the DDA, I think our whole community loses.  I believe there are 3 big reasons why our community should care how the DDA spends its resources (and why we should care if those resources are given to the City’s General Fund).  

 1.  TIF money doesn’t just come from the City of Ann Arbor;  

 2.  Parking system revenues should be used for transportation; and

3. It’s disingenuous to have a DDA and then take the resources for other purposes.

 

All DDAs across the state are structured and financed differently.  In the case of Ann Arbor’s DDA, some of the funds come from the TIF captured by the DDA and some (a much larger amount) of funds come from parking revenues.  The DDA has maintained separate purposes for these funds – parking revenues support transportation (including operation and maintenance of the parking system and support for alternative transportation efforts like getDowntown and goPasses) and TIF funds are used for other work of the DDA (alley improvements, Fifth/Division, LED lighting, energy grants, and projects like the municipal center).  


The question presents 3 different and distinct issues regarding the use of DDA funds.  First, there’s the financial support the DDA gave to the municipal center project came from TIF funds.  The DDA was asked by the City for a certain amount of money (something like $8 million) and we decided it would be easier for us to contribute the money on a yearly basis (rather than in a lump sum cash payment) and so it made sense for us to pay the yearly bond payments.  I supported the DDA’s contribution to this project because I felt that was a good investment in the downtown.  It was very important to me to keep City Hall and city workforce downtown.  And the urban streetscape improvement the building addition makes to Fifth Ave. was really important to me as well.  I think public investment in downtown municipal buildings (city halls, librarys, court buildings, etc) is incredibly important to a vibrant, functional downtown.  I also supported the green elements the City added to the building. 


The second issue is the parking garage.  The DDA is paying for most of this project out of parking revenues, although some of the aspects of the project are paid out of TIF funds.  I voted against the parking garage for a several reasons:  

1.  I don’t believe we need more parking at this time in downtown;

2.  I think we can create more parking supply by increasing our investment in alternatives and managing our parking supply differently (the DDA is already doing this and I argued that we should wait to see the results of these investments and operational changes BEFORE building more parking, especially with such a big price tag);

3. I felt that investing $50 million in more parking was a bad environmental choice – think of what $50 million could do to create modern efficient transit choices; and

4.  I didn’t support how the project was being financed.  I’m disappointed that there was not more vocal opposition to the parking structure during the year or more that the DDA was designing and discussing the options and project details.  

 

There were a few voices questioning the giant parking garage (Steve Bean, chair of the city’s environmental commission for one) but not as many as there are now that the giant hole is being dug.  The City is on the hook for the bonds—so if parking demand should change, and we rely on revenue from all these new spaces to pay for the bonds, and there’s no revenue because we have too much parking supply, then what?

 

The third issue has been dubbed the “$2 million question.”  I would call this a raid on DDA resources.  

 

A bit of abbreviated history —5 years ago the DDA took over management and operation of the on-street parking meters.  The city was looking for more money for the General Fund at this time, and negotiated a deal with the DDA (I was not on the DDA at that time) in which the DDA would operate/manage the meters (and take the revenues – coins, not fines) and pay the City a “rent” payment for the use of the meters and other parking facilities in the amount of $1 million per year for 10 years.  


 The City also negotiated an option to take $2 million per year for 5 years. It is my understanding that the City had proposed eliminating the downtown beat cops due to budget limitations and the DDA felt that this rent payment would ensure that those needed cops wouldn’t go away. Nothing about the cops was written into the agreement, however.  2009 was year five of this deal and the city took its last $2million and they are now left with five more years of a “rent” agreement with no more rent to be paid.  Rene Greff and I had been quite vocal in saying that it is unfair for the city to ask for more money for an agreement that has been fulfilled on our part. This rent money comes from parking revenues.  I am totally OK with beginning a new discussion with City Council about another mutually beneficial agreement that the city and DDA could make—something whereby the DDA pays the city money in exchange for something that benefits the downtown or DDA.   

 

This big, heated discussion of the $ 2 million has quieted down as of late and I think there are a couples of reasons for that. Leigh Greden is no longer on City Council and he was very interested in getting another $2 million yearly payment out of the DDA.  Also, I think that City Council is looking for smaller ways to find mutually beneficial agreements with the DDA (or raid the DDA bank, if you will).  For example, a month or so ago, the City directed the DDA to give them the revenue from the old Y lot.  And that’s what the DDA did (I was absent from that meeting so didn’t participate in the discussion).

 

So, getting back to your question: Why should taxpayers care if Council demands millions from the DDA to put into the General Fund? It’s the city’s money, anyway, right?  Taxpayers should care because not all the TIF money comes from the City. Some comes from the library, the schools, the county, the AATA.  These entities have given up some of their tax capture to support the DDA and are not demanding the DDA support their straining budgets.  The DDA has always maintained that parking revenues should support transportation purposes.  I have no problem with starting a new discussion about parking revenues supporting some other purpose in the city—but I absolutely do not think that parking revenues should be used to bridge a gap in the City of Ann Arbor’s General Fund.  Do people who park in Ann Arbor want to pay higher rates to support the city’s administration budget?  And lastly, if the City desperately needs the DDA’s money, then it should disband the DDA and take back the parking system and TIF capture and redistribute it as it best sees fit.  It’s disingenuous to create a DDA under State Law to do one thing, and then take the money for the City’s general fund.

 

4.  Let’s talk about the library lot underground parking garage. You voted against that project. However, it was the lawsuit filed by two downtown businesses and the Great Lake Environmental Law Center that has resulted in some intensive political backlash against you from City Council members, DDA Board members and the Mayor. Did you expect your political career to be hobbled? One would imagine you’d seen what happened to others who “dissented,” or rocked the boat.


First, let’s just be open and clear about this. My husband is currently serving as the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the City.  The bad feelings toward me started long before the lawsuit was filed.  I started “rocking the boat” not long after I joined the DDA board.  

 

From day one, I was skeptical of the need to build more parking, and continually pushed the DDA to invest more money into alternative transportation.  I was also a huge supporter of the DDA’s Fifth and Division improvement project (it was one of the projects I was most excited to join the DDA to work on).  For some reason, there was a lot of political maneuvering on Council about this project.  I don’t really know why some on Council didn’t support the project and why others on DDA who were supportive got cold feet.  When the first vote for the project came up at DDA (maybe only a few months after I started on the board), the Mayor called me before the meeting and asked if I would support a postponement of the project.  

 

He said he supported the project, but the timing wasn’t right and that maybe we could do it cheaper.  I told him I couldn’t support a postponement.  The DDA had worked very hard on this project, it had very popular community support and if this wasn’t the right time to invest in downtown, then when would be the right time? Fortunately for the project, the move to postpone was defeated and the project moved forward at DDA. Only to be stalled for over a year at City Council.  

 

Council refused to put the project on an agenda, knowing that it had broad community support and not wanting to have to cast a vote against it at the Council table.  After some time, Rene and I strategized about how best to move this project forward.  We asked our staff to organize another public meeting to bring the project some current attention (the meeting was very well attended).  And we lobbied City Council, a lot, especially Rene.  She was great.  All this time, the DDA was working out options for building more parking and then designing plans for the library lot underground structure.  

 

So, I’m outspoken about Fifth and Division to Council and very vocal in my opposition to building more parking.  I’m already a dissenter.  The letter sent by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center (along with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and several local residents) to the city raising concerns about the environmental impacts of this project, the FOIA requests made by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center for council meeting emails, and the subsequent lawsuit filed by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and neighboring businesses was just the icing on the cake.  I don’t really think my political career has been hobbled.  I don’t really envision that I have a political career.  I don’t know what the next phase will be for me—but it can’t happen if I compromise my goals or my principles.

 

5. With Leigh Greden gone, do you think the relationship between the DDA and Council will change in any way? If so, how?


I think it’s fair to say that Leigh supported the basic premise behind having a DDA—invest in downtown and it will remain vital and prosperous.  Many people can support that general concept and all have a different set of priorities and a different way of implementing that agenda.  I believe that Leigh primarily saw the DDA as a big piggy bank for his priorities and did not respect the priorities or the autonomy of the DDA board. 


As a member of the Council budget committee, Leigh was the most vocal Councilmember in wanting to continue the $2 million payments from the DDA to the City (something I don’t support as a “blank check” payment).  He was very instrumental in getting the DDA to contribute to the Police/Courts building.  He even came to our board meeting the day we approved the contribution.  My most frustrating interaction with him during my time on DDA was his opposition to the 5th and Division streetscape improvements.  Of course, his opposition was never made public.  Instead, for over a year, he prevented the project from being placed on a Council agenda for consideration. 


So—yes, I think the relationship between DDA and Council will change now that Leigh is no longer in office. 


6.  Mayor Hieftje has been accused of stacking the DDA Board with appointees who will rubber stamp his ideas and simply do his bidding. In your opinion, who are the voices of dissent on the DDA Board. Is it necessary to have voices of dissent on the DDA Board do you think?


One of the powers given to Ann Arbor’s Mayor is his/her ability to make appointments to boards and commissions. Not all of them, however. City Council gets to make nominations to other boards, such as the Greenbelt Advisory Commission and Environmental Commission. Ever wonder about the politics involved in creating those boards and why that authority wasn’t given to the Mayor? The Mayor selects people that he thinks will be most sympathetic to his interests.  Even so, the vast majority of people that serve of city boards and commissions are independent minded, dedicated, and put a tremendous amount of work towards serving the city.  Even when I disagree with them on a specific issue, I respect their service and work.

 

Dissent, conflict, and differences of opinions are what lead to good public policy in my opinion.  The big questions are: how loud does it become, what are the politics involved, how personal does it get, and is it effective at serving a public good?  I have witnessed several situations which lead to dissent on city boards.  

 1.  The Mayor appoints new people to a board to replace those appointed by the previous Mayor.  That’s what happened when I was appointed to the Planning Commission almost 7 years ago.  I suspect that people are feeling more homogeneity of appointments of late because the Mayor has been in office for so long that ALL of the people serving on board and commissions have been appointed by him (or re-appointed in some cases).  

 2.  The Mayor misjudges a person’s goals and support for certain issues.  Or more significantly, the person has a stronger independent voice than thought.  It’s totally understandable.  You don’t take a test of loyalty or an oath to do whatever he says when you’re offered an appointment.  

 3.  The Mayor appoints someone he knows may be a voice of dissent, but does it as a token offering to a certain interest group he wants to make favor with.  (I think Dave DeVarti’s tenure on the DDA and Eppie Potts’s appointments to the Planning Commission illustrate this point)  

 4.  The Mayor actually changes his goals or maybe not his goals, but the priority of those goals, and his appointments no longer match those interests. (I think Fred Beal and Rob Aldrich are good examples here – they were good appointments when the primary issue of the day for the Mayor was downtown density, but not so much when the big issue of the day became getting another $2million from the DDA, so he didn’t reappoint them).

 

If it’s of interest to your readers, here’s a detailed sketch of my own relationship as an appointee with the Mayor to illustrate my points above.  I have spent 7 years on 4 different boards and commissions:  1 term on Planning Commission appointed my Mayor Hieftje (appointed in 2003, confirmed by City Council on a 6-5 vote); a year or so on the Environmental Commission (filling a spot designated for a planning commissioner, I was nominated by the Planning Commission and confirmed by City Council); in my 3rd term on the Greenbelt Advisory Commission (appointed in 2004, nominated by Council); and serving in my 4th year of my first term on DDA (appointed in 2006 by Mayor Hieftje and confirmed by City Council —not sure of the vote).

 

When I was first appointed to the Planning Commission in 2003, the Mayor was looking for someone who would sympathize with neighborhoods disgruntled with development, oppose tall buildings in the downtown, and someone who would be an environmental voice on the Planning Commission.  It was thought that I would do all these things (I was recruited for the position by Doug Cowherd and Bill Hanson, who were at the time close advisors of the Mayor, because of my background with conservation planning working for The Nature Conservancy.)  The vetting process for appointments is not all that rigorous (you don’t have to submit to any tests, go through days and days of Senate-like confirmation hearings or give over your first born child), and of course, it’s hard to know exactly how someone will think or grow as they get more knowledge and experience under their belt.  

 

I do have a strong environmental ethic, but as it turns out my self-defined environmental goals support some increased density in the downtown. Funny thing is, the Mayor changed his mind about density in the downtown. Downtown density (and some issues surrounding the formation of the Greenbelt Advisory Commission) fractured the relationship between Doug, Bill and the Mayor.  The Mayor later became more closely allied to Leigh Greden (who also was a proponent of downtown density).   

 

And what happened to me?  I ended up on the Greden/Heiftje “team” partly because they saw me as an ally to their position and partly because I was “shunned” and “demonized” by others in this town for my position about downtown density and other development issues.  It’s important for me to emphasize here that I never chose any of these teams.  My beliefs have never changed—although they have grown and been refined by experience and knowledge.  And I don’t mean to say that I’ve only been a pawn in all of this political shifting.  I have strong opinions and I’m not shy about stating them and working the issues.  I’ve used and I’ve been used and that’s all part of the game.  


I believe the Mayor appointed me to the DDA because I was an advocate for downtown density, but also because I was a supporter of alternative transportation, something also promoted by the Mayor.  After a few months on the DDA, the Mayor called me and asked if I would support delaying the decision on the 5th and Division project.  He felt the timing was bad and the project cost too much money. I didn’t agree with him—5th and Division was one of the DDAs projects that I was most excited about joining the board to work on. This was a turning point in my relationship with the Mayor.  I also didn’t support the parking structure project, advocating for more than a year that we do more transit demand management and invest more in alternative transportation before we spend so much money to build more parking.  Then I vocally opposed the city taking $2 million from the DDA for no express purpose.  Then the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center and other environmental groups (with my husband as the lead attorney) started raising legal issues with the parking structure and that’s when things really changed and the true hostilities started.

 

I think all boards need different opinions.  A good fight makes sure that an issue is really thought about before it’s done.  Debate and conflict are what make good public policy.  Some on DDA recall a happier time when the DDA was a “consensus board.”  I don’t think that made for good public policy.  I’m glad that there are voices of dissent, on any issue, even ones I support.  But, I think the dissent needs to be philosophical or pragmatic in nature.  Arguing for politics sake just wastes everyone’s time.

 

7. Rene Greff assumes you will not be reappointed to the DDA Board when your term expires. Is her assumption correct, do you think? Have you spoken to the Mayor about this? Do you want to be reappointed to the DDA Board?


As I said above, it is really up to the Mayor to decide if he wants to reappoint me to the DDA Board.  Given the chilly feeling I get from him, it certainly seems that Rene’s assumption is a good one.  I have a seat on the DDA board that is reserved for a citizen representative (other seats are reserved for downtown business owners and employees and one seat for a downtown resident).  I think it’s important to fill the citizen seats with people who do not also have a business or residential interest in the downtown.  The DDA was created in recognition that vibrant, successful downtowns benefit the whole of Ann Arbor, and it’s funded using tax money that could otherwise have a different public purpose.   

 

It’s important to me that the citizen representatives on the DDA not only serve the mission of the DDA, but are mindful of the broader context for that mission. 

Popularity: 37% [?]

November 25, 2009

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

Filed under: boards and commissions, city council, politicians, politics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — 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.

Popularity: 27% [?]

October 2, 2009

Concentrate on AATA: Jon Zemke Gets Radical

Filed under: Mayor Hieftje, boards and commissions, journalism, political reporting, transportation — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — A2 Politico @ 8:00 am
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Concentrate’s Editor Jon Zemke wrote a great letter to Mayor Hieftje. Zemke had some spot on suggestions concerning two upcoming appointments Hieftje is set to make to the Ann Arbor Transit Authority Board (AATA). It is the first time I have read anything in the local media about how the Mayor ought to make his appointments to the city’s various boards and commissions. Zemke has this to say about Hieftje’s previous appointments to the AATA Board, and it sums up, really, Hieftje’s appointments to many of the city’s boards and commissions: “I’m not saying your previous appointments have been wrong per se, but they have been unimaginative….AATA’s board is made up with a majority of middle age-to-senior white males whose bank accounts are rivaled only by their degrees. These are the people who have the choice of whether to catch The Ride or cruise off in their own vehicle.”

You GO, Boy!

I have for quite some time shared Zemke’s opinion. On the one hand, Mayor Hieftje casts about for appointees like a blind man. At other times, his appointments have been made to simply gut the life of a particular Board or Commission so that His Will Shall Be Done. The Ann Arbor Planning Commission comes immediately to mind. Appointments to that Board have turned the group into a Mayoral rubber stamp. Ex-Council members Jean Carlberg and Wendy Woods help make sure that Hieftje’s peculiar brand of planning, which the Ann Arbor News in July of 2008 dubbed “without vision,” gets all the support it needs. Planning Commission appointments have long been used by the Mayor as a stepping stone for people whom Hieftje wants to groom to run for Council. Steve Kunselman was appointed to multiple terms on the Planning Commission before he ran in 2006 for the Third Ward City Council seat. 

The AATA Board is stacked, as well. Chair David Nacht is one of the Mayor’s most reliable individual political donors, according to campaign finance forms. Nacht’s $1,000 donations to Hieftje’s Mayoral campaigns are virtually unequalled. As Zemke astutely writes, “the AATA Board lacks diversity in its point of view.” It does not, Zemke points out lack cultural diversity. There are the token African-American and female AATA Board members.  

Zemke stumbles when he goes on to suggest candidates for the open AATA positions. He digs deep and comes up with….Rene Greff. Fresh off of more years on the Board of Downtown Development Authority than is decent to mention, Greff is a perfect example of the kind of usual suspect who gets appointed by Hieftje to the city’s boards and commissions. Zemke’s choice of Greff is interesting for another reason: she didn’t leave the DDA Board voluntarily. Hieftje gave her the heave-ho, after he described her (at at DDA Board retreat at which media were present) as being perceived by City Council members as “having a chip on her shoulder.” If Mayor Hieftje ordered a beer at Greff’s Arbor Brewing Company Rene Greff might just spit in it then serve it to him.

The best suggestion Zemke makes concerning whom Mayor Hieftje ought to appoint to the AATA Board is the simplest, yet most radical: One regular person who rides the bus, but doesn’t run in local political circles. Zemke writes, “AATA should find at least one of these people and give them a voice. Spend a little money advertising on buses and at bus stops asking for AATA board applicants.”

What Jon Zemke suggests is radical, simply because is hasn’t been done for appointments to high profile Ann Arbor boards and commissions such as the Planning Commission, AATA Board and Park Advisory Commission for, literally, most of the years Hieftje has been in office. Mayor Hieftje stacked city boards and commissions by mining the depths of his political cronies, campaign donors, political friends and people who not only run in local political circles, but run the local political circles. 

The recent appointment of Zemke’s boss, Concentrate’s publisher, Newcombe Clark to the DDA Board is a perfect example of the Hieftje “Think System” of Appointing Board and Commission Members. 

As well-written and well-reasoned as Zemke’s piece is, now that AATA has taken over the oversight of the WALLY project, Hieftje can have no dissenters. Look for the next appointments to the AATA Board to come from within the Mayor’s trusted political circle. Dissenters (one might call them voices of the people) who’ve recently gotten the bum’s rush from the Mayor including, Rene Greff (DDA), Eppie Potts (Planning Commission) and Dave DeVarti (DDA), need not apply.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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