by P.D. Lesko

Ann Arbor voters have been surly as of late. They want the potholes filled, their leaves collected, and their safety services funded. They don’t want their parkland used for parking. They don’t want to pay $45 million to build a train station. They don’t want Huron Hills Golf Course operations outsourced. They don’t want a convention center; they want open space or a downtown park. They don’t want to pay $500 million for county-wide transit. They’ve tossed out of office three long-term local incumbents, and long-time incumbent Ward 4 Council member Margie Teall held on to her seat by only 18 votes in August 2012. This past November, voters threw proposed millages to raze and rebuild the downtown library, and fund the politically toxic Percent for Art program back in the faces of the politicos who’d incautiously supported the tax hikes— cream pie messages in the stunned political kissers of people unaccustomed to being humiliated by the rabble whose wishes they routinely ignore, according to a recent study.

Julie Grand has pulled nominating petitions in order to run for City Council in the Third Ward. Grand chairs the Parks Advisory Commission and is term-limited. When asked why she was running, Grand, in essence, replied that it was the next logical step for her. She offered no reason for running other than she thought she could work better with Ward 3 Council member Christopher Taylor than incumbent Stephen Kunselman. Unlike Kunselman, Grand told a local blog, she was a consensus decision maker.

Grand didn’t point to any votes Kunselman had cast with which she disagreed. However, there are plenty of issues that Grand and Kunselman view differently. For starters, in August 2012 PAC Chair Grand shared her vision of what should go atop the library lot and it wasn’t a park. “My vision is to emerge from the library and have other moderately-sized buildings in that area, with a coffee shop and other retail.” Grand, who is supposed to be a champion of the city’s parks, added that “it’s also important to think about what problems a park there might cause for the library.” The self-proclaimed consensus decision maker went on to sharply criticize citizen activists: “Library Green advocates are lobbying for a park on the Library Lane site in particular because they’re angry about the potential of something larger being built there.”

Gwen Nysteun, a long-time Democratic political activist, and PAC member, is a fierce supporter of the city’s parks. It was Nysteun who spearheaded the push against using fragile riverfront parkland on Fuller Road for parking/transit. Doing so put her squarely at odds with John Hieftje, who wants to use parkland for transit. In September 2011, A2Politico revealed that Hieftje and his Hive Mind Collective on Council had targeted several popular parks for transit development:

Barton Pond, Bird Hills Nature Area, Barton Nature Area, Bandemer Park, Furstenberg Nature Area, Gallup Park, Huron Hills Golf Course, and Forest Park Nature Area all have one thing in common. Can you guess what it is?

In 2007, each of the parks above was evaluated for potential development and use for a so-called “intermodal” facility that would, so the story goes, eventually serve as a train station with bus stops and bike racks. A recent piece posted to AnnArbor.com points out that the “intermodal” project has turned out to be little more than a 900 car parking garage for the University of Michigan that is being financed, in part, with taxpayer money and being built on a parcel of river side land that belongs to the public, and is valued at somewhere between $4-$10 million dollars.

Nysteun and Grand worked to craft a resolution under the auspices of which PAC would have urged City Council to stop the Fuller Road project. Hieftje showed up at a PAC meeting in May of 2010, and urged “unity” on the Fuller Road project. Hieftje claimed “There’s no other location that offers the synergy and impact of the Fuller Road site.”

In response, Gwen Nystuen was blunt. She told Hieftje: “There hadn’t been any public input on deciding to locate the structure at the Fuller Road site. In addition, the large parking structure had nothing to do with a rail station. It’s commuter parking for the university,” she said, “and that’s not a parks use. ” She went on to point out that the choice of the parkland was Hieftje’s, and then the kicker. Gwen Nystuen played the “take it to the voters” card, Hieftje’s least favorite. She said, “if Fuller Road parkland is the best location, why not go through a public process to arrive at that conclusion? Then perhaps they’d decide to sell the land, or have people vote that they no longer want to use it as parkland.”

While Julie Grand assured PAC members “we don’t have to do what” Hieftje wants, Grand went on to vote to gut her own resolution, and came out in favor of using parkland for parking, provided some of the parking revenues were given over to the parks system. It was as close to parkland prostitution as you could get without having sex with a tree and taping a $100 bill to the trunk afterwards.

By summer 2012, Gwen Nysteun had been term-limited off of PAC (as is Julie Grand in 2013) and Independent Jane Lumm had been elected to Council from Ward 2. In July 2012, to continue the effort to protect parkland from development, Lumm, Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin proposed a Charter amendment that would have put new restrictions on repurposing parkland (tip o’ the keyboard to an anonymous reader). It would have forced a vote on using the Fuller Road parkland for transit. The Council members proposed putting the question of the Charter amendment to the voters in November 2012. Hieftje wanted the “advice” of Grand and PAC on the proposed Charter amendment to protect parkland from “repurposing” without a citizen vote.

On August 8, 2012, Julie Grand voted against Kunselman’s proposed Charter amendment that would have given citizens a vote on whether parkland can be repurposed for transit. Grand voted “against recommending to the city council that it place a ballot question before citizens in November that would amend the city charter’s language about protections for city parkland,” according to a snippet posted to the AnnArborChronicle.com.

The “I’d Like to Run for Mayor” Curse 

In February 2012, Former Ward 2 Council member Tony Derezinski told AnnArbor.com that he was interested in running for mayor in 2014. He said, “I have been thinking of it. It’s certainly something I am considering, My immediate concern right now is getting re-elected to the City Council, but down the line it’s something I’m very interested in.”

Six months later, Derezinski’s constituents tossed him out of office in favor of a “fresh voice,” political newcomer Sally Hart-Petersen.

In January 2013, Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman announced in the Ann Arbor Observer that he was planning to run for Mayor in 2014. Kunselman, a Democrat who frequently votes in opposition to Hieftje and his Council cronies, was targeted for defeat by Hieftje and his Hive Mind supporters in 2008. The Hive Mind recruited Christopher Taylor. Kunselman was relentlessly attacked by challenger Christopher Taylor as a political light weight. Then someone at City Hall leaked to the Ann Arbor News information about a grievance a city union had filed against Kunselman. The paper’s editorial leaders chose to use the information to smear Kunselman in the paper’s 2008 glowing endorsement of Taylor:

However, Kunselman sometimes approaches his job in a way that we feel is inappropriate for a council member, tending toward micromanagement rather than policy-setting. If each council member second-guessed decisions made by staff on a regular basis, city operations could screech to a grinding halt – or professional staff would start looking for employment at places where they were treated with trust and respect.

As one example, earlier this year Kunselman met with some of the city’s unionized public services employees, where he used an expletive to criticize their performance in the winter’s snow removal. When asked by an employee about the automated compost pickup, Kunselman said, “You guys are getting lazy,” according to a letter of complaint from the union president to City Administrator Roger Fraser. That letter ultimately led to a formal apology from Kunselman.

The Ann Arbor News characterized Taylor as “professional” and “businesslike.” Their assessment turned out to be laughable. Ten months later, Taylor was lampooned as a baby in an editorial cartoon published by the newspaper in response to information that the new Council member (in fact every Council member the Ann Arbor News had endorsed in its 2008 primary election editorials) had been caught using email during Open Meetings in ways that were not only unprofessional, but which were allegedly illegal. The behavior forced the city to settle an Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit.

In 2009, Kunselman ran against one of the Hive Mind who had engineered his 2008 outster: Ward 3 Council member Leigh Greden. Greden, who had been snared in the same email scandal that snared Christopher Taylor, got the endorsements of Hieftje, Representative John Dingell and a host of local politicos in his effort to keep his Council seat. Kunselman played the “ethics” card in his campaign, and vowed to craft an ethics policy—a promise that, sadly, turned out to be empty. Kunselman beat Greden, who garnered just 36 percent of the vote in a three-way race, but went on to deliver a lackluster performance, partially due to the fact that Hieftje and his Council cronies made it virtually impossible for Kunselman to work with them by excluding him from the inner circle.

In 2011, the Hieftje crowd backed Ingrid Ault against Kunselman, who had begun to openly complain about the cronyism perpetuated by Hieftje with his appointments to boards and commissions, and in particular Hieftje’s appointments to the Downtown Development Authority Board. Kunselman coined the term “shadow government” when referring to the DDA Board’s and its unelected political insiders. DDA Board members Joan Lowenstein, Sandi Smith (then a City Council member) and County Commissioner Leah Gunn helped Ault and funded her campaign. Ault, who looked great on paper, proved a somewhat prickly candidate who openly attacked Kunselman in a League of Women Voters debate in July 2011. Ault complained: ”One of the things I find distressing is there have been a lot of promises made by Stephen Kunselman over the last two years, including an ethics policy that he championed the last time he ran for office, and he’s done no action.” Ault went on to use Christopher Taylor’s tactic that worked against Kunselman in 2008: ”Pretty much chickens is what Stephen is known for, and I don’t mean to be negative here, but it’s distressing to me that communication is a key that’s been ignored.”

While her observations about the ethics policy were true, her criticisms were just what AnnArbor.com political reporter Ryan Stanton likes to writes about in the .com’s quest for clicks. Stanton’s headline screamed: “Ault goes on attack against Kunselman….”

Can Julie Grand Succeed Where Ault Failed?

Julie Grand told AnnArbor.com that: ”I think the mayor has good ideas, I think he tends to be a little more visionary than I am perhaps about certain issues, but I don’t think I will always agree with the mayor. I will probably agree with the mayor more times than my opponent will, though.” Grand then said, “I think I do have the mayor’s support in this race, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m his lackey or his puppet.”

Grand is somewhat less concerned about the mayor’s “visionary” desire to repurpose the city’s river front parkland for transit, parking towers and train stations. Since 2010, Grand has used her position on PAC to help Hieftje avoid public votes and continue to target parkland for development. Her votes while the Chair of PAC betray a deep cynicism about whether parkland belongs to the people, and whether the public’s Charter-mandated control of the city’s 2,000 acres of parkland should be ceded without a vote in exchange for promises of money.

Her attacks on parkland protections via her votes on PAC suggest Julie Grand’s motives are mainly political. One wonders whether there was a political deal struck between Grand and Hieftje in August of 2012 when Grand voted against the proposed charter amendment to expand protections of parkland. Regardless, her claim that “there’s not one particular issue on which she’s running” is utterly disingenuous. Since 2010, Julie Grand has voted on PAC in support of John Hieftje’s desire to prostitute the city’s parkland. Grand said of the incumbent, ”I think we have a different approach to government. I’m concerned about the divisiveness on Council.” She’s right. Lumm, Anglin and Kunselman have consistently worked to protect our parkland against Hieftje’s efforts to prostitute it—an effort shored up by the votes, alas, of Julie Grand, Chair of the Parks Advisory Commission.

A2PNotes: This is filed under “Scoops & Scores” because you read it here first

by P.D. Lesko

Collectively, Ann Arbor residents own about 2,000 acres of parkland. A conservative estimate of the value of the land, according to city officials, is anywhere from $600 million to $1.5 billion dollars.

Now a question.

Barton Pond, Bird Hills Nature Area, Barton Nature Area, Bandemer Park, Furstenberg Nature Area, Gallup Park, Huron Hills Golf Course, and Forest Park Nature Area all have one thing in common. Can you guess what it is?

In 2007, each of the parks above was evaluated for potential development and use for a so-called “intermodal” facility that would, so the story goes, eventually serve as a train station with bus stops and bike racks. A recent piece posted to AnnArbor.com points out that the “intermodal” project has turned out to be little more than a 900 car parking garage for the University of Michigan that is being financed, in part, with taxpayer money and being built on a parcel of river side land that belongs to the public, and is valued at somewhere between $4-$10 million dollars.

The eight parkland parcels mentioned above, all three acres or larger and adjacent to Fuller Road were targeted, according to documents, because “public ownership [was] an advantage to facilitate a change in use [rezoning] and to avoid acquisition cost.”

The targeting of the parkland for development in 2007, revealed in a recent cache of documents recently released to A2Politico in response to a FOIA of materials, including emails and communications between Council members, city staffers and Amtrak officials, is directly related to the U of M parking garage/Ann Arbor parkland lease project proposed on Fuller Road.

Not just the small Fuller Road park parcel was targeted. So were Gallup Park and the Huron Hills Golf Course.

A piece posted to AnnArbor.com refutes claims contained in an open letter posted to AnnArbor.com by John Hieftje that no taxpayer money has been used on the parking garage project. As it turns out, millions of dollars in taxpayer money have already been diverted from services to fund the as-yet-to-be-approved parking garage project. Several funding requests made by staff for the Fuller Road project have been presented without mention that the money is for the Fuller Road project.

Under the long-term (disguised sale) lease scheme cooked up by John Hieftje, former Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden and U of M officials, city officials could, in theory, lease a slice of Allmendinger Park to a company that wanted to put up a parking garage for use during U of M sporting events.

FOIAed documents revealed that officials targeted eight major parks for possible development, and that the Fuller Road parkland/U of M parking garage machinations began in earnest in 2007. In March of 2007, according to documents, “City officials completed an analysis of public lands adjacent to the Norfolk Southern Railroad corridor with access to the existing  road system.”

Perhaps in response to that analysis, in August of that same year former First Ward Council member Bob Johnson put forward a resolution to amend Ann Arbor’s Charter to require a citywide vote on the sale of any parkland. According to the Ann Arbor News, Johnson’s “proposal was a response to a decision in Novi Township to sell park property in that nearby community. State law prevents communities from selling parkland that’s so designated in master plans, but Novi skirted the law by first revising its master plan.”

Johnson’s proposed resolution to put an amendment of the Charter to a public vote was defeated by the City Council 7-2. According to a 2008 piece published in the Ann Arbor News, “Johnson had proposed a charter amendment that would have required voter approval to sell parkland, regardless of the property’s status under the city’s master plan.

Hieftje was absent for the vote but made a point to tell the reporter, “He’s more than ready to block future city councils where park property is concerned.”

Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo, who is being opposed by former Council member Jane Lumm in this November’s election, told a reporter in 2008, “True parks are encumbered now, and while it’s true that we can change that, there’d be hell to pay – and rightly so. Novi’s an extreme example,” he said. “Ann Arbor would be highly unlikely to do that [sell parkland].”

Two months later, according to an October 2007 piece published in the Ann Arbor News:

Trying to squash rumors by citizens afraid the city may sell parkland, the Ann Arbor City Council unanimously approved a resolution Monday that the city’s two golf courses can’t be sold for private development and will remain in the parks system as open space even if they are closed down.

Council Member Stephen Rapundalo, D-2nd Ward, facing a write-in candidate this November over parks issues, brought forward the resolution during a special session.

“This was meant to be an emphatic statement that we will not be contemplating selling these municipal golf courses for private development,” Rapundalo said after the meeting.

Rapundalo’s resolution stated “… Some residents continue to misrepresent the facts and insist that a sale of golf course properties is imminent, and whose sale proceeds would be used to fund other city capital improvement projects such as a new courts/police building.”

In 2008, Ann Arbor’s “Green Mayor” and his City Council pals sponsored a different kind of Charter amendment to “protect” parkland in the city from being sold without a vote of the people who own it. Hieftje told the local paper that, “he didn’t have concerns about the council selling land, but wanted to close a loophole that could allow such sales.” What Hieftje’s Charter amendment proceeded to do, of course, was to appear to protect parks, but in reality opened a loophole (leasing) a mile wide Hieftje and his Council supporters could subsequently exploit to develop parkland all over the city.

In 2010 elected officials changed allowed uses of parkland to include transit-oriented development. This was a crucial step in allowing parkland to be leased for periods long enough to qualify, the local chapter of the Sierra Club has argued, as de facto sales—without having to bring the question to the voters.

In 2009, two years after the staff-generated analysis that concluded the Fuller Road park parcel was “identified as the preferred site that best met the evaluation criteria,” Ann Arbor’s Transportation Manager, Eli Cooper, told AnnArborChronicle.com, “this [the idea to use the Fuller Road parcel for an intermodal facility] is all still in the very, very preliminary stages.”

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

A 2009 “feasibility study” produced by city staff which addressed the question of whether the Fuller Road park parcel could accommodate a parking garage  report states, “Preliminary investigations confirm that a variety of deck configurations, accommodating from 875 to 1,500 parking spaces can be accommodated on the eastern end of the site (Fig. 2). However, the relocation of a portion of an existing sanitary line (to the perimeter of the parking deck/transit center footprint), or other protection strategy, will be required.”

The feasibility study was put together by some of the same city staff who had assembled the environmental analysis in 2007 that had targeted the eight park parcels for development, and zeroed in on the Fuller Road parcel. What were termed “preliminary investigations” by Eli Cooper in 2009 were, in fact, part of a foregone conclusion that had been decided some 24 months earlier, in a document that was never disclosed to the public.

As Rapundalo pointed out in 2008, if the public were aware that parkland was being targeted for sale, there would be hell to pay. Would the public be smart enough to rise up en masse in response to a leasing scheme? Perhaps no one wanted to take any chances. The 2009 feasibility study, initiated by staff at the request of John Hieftje, never mentions that eight park parcels had been targeted for development, nor did the 2009 study mention the 2007 analysis document shared by city staff with officials from Amtrak.

Emails provided in response to A2Politico’s FOIA request show that like the public, Amtrak officials have been led to believe that there would be high-speed rail funded with state and federal dollars, buses, bikes, and a brand new station built for Amtrak with taxpayer money. One email has Amtrak officials asking Hieftje to keep them up to date on his discussions with Governor Rick Snyder concerning funding and plans—plans for a non-existent trains and an unfunded station.

A May 26, 2011 email from an Amtrak official goes on to congratulate Hieftje on how “well-prepared the city is for high-speed rail.”

The tone of the email leaves one wondering just what, exactly, Hieftje, Cooper and other city staffers have led Amtrak officials to believe concerning the city’s preparedness.

In May of 2010, in an interview with a freelance reporter for AnnArbor.com that included Representative John Dingell, Hieftje told that reporter: “The high-speed isn’t going to happen without federal government help, and the commuter rail’s not going to happen without their help, either. The MDOT has been as helpful as they can be in a state that is really running out of money, but in order for this to happen, it’ll take federal involvement. What we’re hearing from the Deputy Secretary of Transportation is that they are very much involved in this and they really want to make it happen.”

Between May 2010 (the interview) and May 2011 (the email from the Amtrak official), Ann Arbor received no state or federal funding to support Hiefje’s rail project. In September of 2011, Representative Dingell announced $2.8 million in federal funding for an environmental study of the Fuller Road site. Transportation Manager Eli Cooper recently told Council members that no National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) study was necessary for the Fuller Road parking garage to proceed, so it’s unclear why Ann Arbor needs money from the federal government for a study that city officials claim is not necessary.

Then again, Eli Cooper writes in an email to an Amtrak official dated June 7, 2011 that, “I just met with the Mayor and he thought it would be useful if he could review a draft of your proposed statement [letter of support]. As you can imagine he is sensitive to the issues and might be able to offer some feedback to sharpen the focus and value of the statement. Am curious if you are open to sharing a draft with us prior to formally issuing a statement.”

The letter of support Hieftje helped write was then mailed to Hieftje and City Council members, according to an email between Cooper and Amtrak officials dated June 14, 2011.

A student journalist from Eastern Michigan University explains the situation in simple terms. On September 11, 2011, The Eastern Echo published a piece titled, “Something smells fishy by UofM.” The piece, written by Eastern Michigan University student Chris Hoitash, goes on to opine on the use of parkland on Fuller Road in Ann Arbor for a parking garage for the University of Michigan. Hoitash writes:

So the city is circumventing the law by giving the University of Michigan a new parking garage for the sake of a new commuter rail line. As a proponent for public transportation, you might expect me to praise the new line and berate people for trying to stop my grand vision of state and national transit.

However, this seems a bit fishy to me.

Using loopholes to appropriate parkland is not a good thing in my book. It looks bad, and might make other people think, “What’s going on here?”

Hoitash goes on to write:

The land’s acquisition is also questionable. The charter states a public vote must take place to sell parkland. However, it appears Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje and some council members found a way to circumvent the law. If the law says a vote needs to be held, either change the law or have the blasted vote.

Don’t skirt it just because the land is “technically” a park.

Out of the mouthes of babes.

The de facto sale through the decades-long lease of the Fuller Road parkland isn’t just about a gateway into Ann Arbor, it’s about a quagmire of smarmy back room dealing, and underhanded politics played by women and men who believe the people who pay the bills aren’t the “decision-makers.” It’s about how to foster future development along the Huron River on land that belongs to the public.

In the 80s, the Fuller Road parkland parcel was valued between $4-$10 million dollars. It seems fair to ask a final question: Why are John Hieftje and City Council, who are never afraid to cry poor, so very afraid to ask voters if they can sell the Fuller Road parkland to U of M for a parking garage?

by Chris Savage

Unknown to many Americans outside of Michigan, our state is hardly one of just auto manufacturing, Motown, snow, and sports. In addition to these things, we have some of the most beautiful natural places in all of America. This summer, one place in particular has been highlighted nationally for its beauty. The Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in the “pinky” of Michigan’s lower peninsula earned two awards. In July, Dr. Beach (“America’s Foremost Beach Expert”) quit ignoring the Great Lakes and named the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore the most beautiful beach on the Great Lakes. Then, this past month, ABC’s “Good Morning, America” viewers voted the park “The Most Beautiful Place in America.”

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, tucked away in the northwest corner of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, won the title of “Good Morning America’s” Most Beautiful Place in America.

Tens of thousands of viewers voted online for this Michigan park, which is one of the nation’s best-kept secrets. The hidden gem boasts 64 miles of beaches along Lake Michigan, two islands, 26 inland lakes, more than 50,000 acres of land, and the monumental sand dunes from which it gets its name.

Ron Dzwonkowski of the Detroit Free Press immediately pounced on the news with a front page editorial titled “Sleeping Bear Dunes the most beautiful place in America?” In his piece, he makes an argument against the choice: “Sleeping Bear is truly awe-inspiring, so good for us, good for tourism, and good for Pure Michigan. But the most beautiful place in America? Why, it may not even be the most beautiful place in our state.” No news is too good for Michigan that Dzwonkowski can’t find a reason to shoot it down, I guess.

Celebrichef Mario Batali has been blabbing since 2007 about Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula and the area’s burgeoning food and wine scenes, as well as his not-so-humble lakeside “1920s fish camp” that rests on the shore of Lake Michigan.  In the August 17, 2007 issue of the New York Times, there is a piece titled, “For Mario Batali, It’s Molto Michigan.” In the July 2011 issue of Bon Appetit, readers learn in a first person piece penned by Batali himself,  “How Mario Batali Escapes New York Summers.” “While New York City sweats, Mario Batali rides out the summer at his fish camp near Traverse City, Michigan. The chef gives us his lowdown on the coolest, snark-free lakeside food scene in America.”

While the Sleeping Bear Dunes area may be one of our best-kept secrets, it’s no secret to me. My mother honeymooned there when she was 18, and I’ve been camping and skiing in the area since my college days. Seven years ago, I married my wife in the park, on Sunset Beach under the watchful eyes of the Sleeping Bear (the largest dune in the park) and her two cubs (North and South Manitou Islands.) The area was named for an Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indian legend which tells of a great conflagration in Wisconsin that forced a mother bear and her two cubs to swim across Lake Michigan. The mother bear reached the shore first and waited atop a tall bluff for her cubs. They didn’t make it, forming the two sandy, forested islands which are part of the National Lakeshore. When you view the islands from the water, their profile looks like a bear lying on its tummy in the in the lake.

South Manitou Island, click for larger version

The process of creating this national park was a contentious one. It began in the early sixties and didn’t conclude until the park was authorized in the fall of 1970. The story of the park’s formation is told in great and well-researched detail in Brian C. Kalt’s excellent book Sixties Sandstorm: The Fight over Establishment of a Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, 1961-1970. It was championed in large part by two people. The first was a feisty woman named E. Genevieve Gillette who was the president of the Michigan Parks Association. Historian Claire Korn described her this way:

[She] donned her hat and, with a stack of copies of Our Fourth Shore in hand, drove to Lansing…Gillette dropped stacks of reading material on legislators’ desks and chastised them for not doing their homework; she tackled elected officials as they entered or left their chambers; then she went to Washington, D.C. to educate politicians there about parks in general and Sleeping Bear in particular.

In stake contrast to Gillette’s impolitic approach was Philip A. Hart, Michigan’s Democratic senator from 1958 to 1976 and former Lt. Governor under G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams. Hart was generally a quiet, reasonable man. From the online book about the formation of the Lakeshore, A Nationalized Lakeshore:
The Creation and Administration of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, comes this description:

Naturally quiet, reserved in manner, he was anything but a typical politician. His experience in World War II as an officer in the D-Day invasion left him severely wounded, and after a long recovery, anxious to do something positive with his life…He was unphotogenic, modest to the point of being apologetic about running, scrupulous about campaign contributions, and intellectual in appearance and actual behavior. He was neither eloquent on the campaign trail or decisive in office. “He debated every possible angle to the solution before he would tell you his decision,” recalled a former aide…Yet as deliberate as Hart was about taking a stand he was dogged in maintaining his position, regardless of the pressure. “Once he made up his mind,” a supporter recalled, “nothing could get him to change it.”

Philip Hart most definitely had “made up his mind” about the creation of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and spent nine years of his life making it happen. The Philip A. Hart Visitor Center in Empire is named after this staunch proponent.

The formation of the park was controversial because it involved transferring private property into federal government hands. The scars from the long battle to create the Lakeshore are still tender for many in the area, particularly those whose families were forced to give up their property. When I attended a public meeting in Empire ten years ago to give input into the management of the Lakeshore, much of the bitterness bubbled to the surface again and, as you read through the history of its creation, many familiar themes from today’s headlines of “big government” and “socialism” can be found.

Now, over forty years since the Lakeshore’s creation, things have calmed down considerably on the political front. The three main villages in the area, Leland on the north, Empire on the south and Glen Arbor in the center, are reasonably prosperous relative to other northern Lower Peninsula villages of similar sizes. With beautiful lakes like Glen and Crystal nearby, a burgeoning wine industry across the peninsula, and the nearby Traverse City, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore seems to have settled into a comfortable, if not somewhat obscure existence on the Leelanau Peninsula.

I was wondering what the impact would be on the area in and around the Lakeshore after I heard about it being named “The Most Beautiful Place in America.” During our annual trip there last week, I asked folks if they had noticed an increase in the number of visitors and if they thought this was a good thing or a bad thing for the area. I expected to be told that it would be a great boon to local businesses and that most people would be excited about it. What I found was not so clear cut.

The one phrase I heard repeatedly was that the new designation was a “double-edged sword.” For example, a park ranger at the D.H. Day Campground just outside of Glen Arbor told me that they were at full-capacity throughout the week much later in the season than usual.

“We love that people are coming to see us, but it’s a double-edged sword. More people means more congestion and more wear and tear,” she said, referring to the sensitive dunes inside the park.

In nearby Glen Arbor, a waitress at the Good Harbor Grill nodded wearily when I asked if business was up.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, rolling her eyes, before hustling off to deliver more food to customers in the crowded restaurant.

Outside the window, M-109, the main thoroughfare through town, was uncharacteristically congested with RVs, SUVs and minivans.

Farther north in Leland, I talked to a woman at the Fish Hook, a retail store selling t-shirts, moccasins and other clothing items in the heart of historic Fishtown.

“We all sort of groaned when we heard about [being picked as The Most Beautiful Place in America],” she told me. “It’s great for business, of course, and some places like Manitou Island Transit [who run ferries to North and South Manitou Islands] are probably really happy about it. But, you have to wonder if it’s not a double-edged sword. Last weekend, there was a traffic jam waiting to turn left onto M-22. That almost never happens. Too much traffic could ruin what makes this ‘the most beautiful place.’ This area can only handle so many people.”

What she described was apparent as we drove into town and walked around. Both in Leland and in Glen Arbor, cars were backed up at intersections, the roads were lined with vehicles, finding a parking spot was a challenge and the sidewalks and stores were jammed with people. While the increased business was surely a boon to the local economy, the lazy, quiet nature of the area was gone, replaced by a far more tourist-y feel.

However, outside of the villages with their shops, restaurants and other amenities, things were a bit different. As I considered the park and what it has to offer, I realized that what makes the Dunes area so beautiful aren’t the tourist areas or the towns. While Glen Arbor, Empire and Leland are quaint and very enjoyable, the true beauty of the Leelanau Peninsula is the natural beauty, the wildlife, and, of course, the unique perched dune ecosystem.

The park itself was designated by Congress to be managed as a wilderness area though this has not entirely been the case with some homes and other structures maintained for historical purposes and some trails maintained and well-signed. However, there are still many areas of the Sleeping Bear Dunes that are almost unknown to all but locals and the most inquisitive visitors. For example, despite my many years of vacationing there, my wife and I discovered a “new” beach on our most recent visit. With no parking lot and a trail marked only with a park boundary sign, a short 10-minute walk found us on a secluded beach in view of the Empire Bluffs and the Sleeping Bear with nobody near us for a mile on either side. Where else can you swim and sunbathe on a perfect sandy beach with 3-foot waves without having to share it with anyone else?

Our “new” beach near Empire Bluffs, click for larger version

The designated hiking trails take you to some of the most beautiful parts in the park like Pyramid Point, the Sleeping Bear, Empire Bluffs, and Alligator Hill. However, these are generally strenuous hikes that require time and effort to enjoy. With a few exceptions such as the Pierce Stocking Drive and the Dune Climb, you cannot simply drive up to the these wonderful views.

There is abundant wildlife in the area as well. During our 5-day visit we saw bald eagles, mink, river otters, osprey, loons, pileated woodpecker and other unusual animals. However, most of these were seen by floating down the Platte River, the Crystal River or Cedar Creek in our kayaks.

Click images for larger version

In other words, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is not Disney World. Experiencing the things that make it The Most Beautiful Place in America requires you seek it out, to work for it and to explore. If you are willing to do this, as many are, you will be handsomely rewarded. But, it’s not ever going to be place that’s overrun by tourists — it’s simply not that type of vacation spot. And that’s very good news.

The villages within the Lakeshore area appear to understand this and realize that, while development might enhance the local economy in the short term, it would destroy what makes the area unique. This is why you will likely never see a marina in Glen Arbor or a Red Roof Inn in Leland. Local residents, by and large, and despite initial resistance to the park, have come value what they have and to be protective of it.

My prediction is that the Sleeping Bear Dunes area will see a spike in visitors over the next year or so but will, eventually, slip back into relative obscurity. Even during our short stay, we saw people leaving the campground earlier than they had planned despite nearly perfect weather. All of those who left early were camping in RVs. My suspicion is that these visitors didn’t see it as The Most Beautiful Place in America. They may, in fact, have found it boring. No shopping malls. No casinos. No water parks. None of the typical amenities of the common tourist trap. About the only “sanitized” way to experience the park is to stay at the very expensive and mostly self-contained Homestead resort.

Cedar Creek, click for larger version

To experience the true beauty and richness of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, you have to be willing to hike or float down a river or drive down unmarked two-track roads into forest. Those that do will be abundantly rewarded with the beauty that earned the area its award.

The cashier at the Fish Hook told us, “Someone came in last weekend and asked, ‘what do you do around here?’ All I could think was, if you have to ask that question, this area is probably not for you.”

She was entirely correct.

Most photos by Anne C. Savage. Please do not use without permission. See more of her photography including photos from the Dunes area at Anne Savage Photography.

For more of Chris Savage’s writing, visit Eclectablog.

Residents of Ann Arbor have twice defeated attempts to dispose of Huron Hills Golf Course. A2Politico reported on the efforts here, where residents retained a lawyer and alleged that Mayor and Council were breaking the law in attempts to outsource course operations. A2Politico also interviewed a member of the A2P2 neighborhood group formed to combat the efforts of politicos such as Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo and John Hieftje who were trying to use bogus accounting methods to convince the public that Huron Hills Golf Course was losing money hand-over-fist (the course turned a modest 3 percent profit last year).

The fear among those who’ve been fighting this battle since 2006-2007, is that Hieftje wants to sell Huron Hills for development, or so alleges Ted Annis, a former mayoral appointee to the Board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. Annis told A2Politico in a January 2011 interview:

Having talked about this issue [repurposing of Huron Hills Golf Course] on January 22, 2011 with a member of City Council, I gained the impression that the Mayor, not Roger Fraser, is the person behind the scenes driving and orchestrating both the current attempts at “repurposing” Huron Hills and the previous attempts to sell it and that the members of the Council Majority are supportive because they have been so instructed.

Public golf courses, whose audience has gone the way of plaid slacks, are being remade by more cities into parks and other more in-demand amenities. Peter Harnik and Ryan Donahue report in Landscape Architecture Magazine that idle fairways are increasingly attractive to urban planners, asking, “What is the future of golf in crowded, park-hungry cities?”:

The game of golf has never been an efficient use of space (hence the development of mini golf) but in the past it could be argued that it was still worthwhile public investment that subsidized a system’s other parks through green fees. No longer. Golf’s popularity is not keeping up with population growth nor the explosion in the number of private golf venues; it’s also losing out to other self-directed activities like running and cycling.

The repurposing of golf courses has been happening for a few years, but the trend shows no signs of waning. According to the November 2009 issue of Governing magazine:

Not that golf is going away. But in many American communities, it is being viewed more as a luxury than as a public service. The Parks Board in Richmond, Indiana, recently voted to turn the 85-year-old Glen Miller links from a nine-hole course into a three-hole practice facility, with the rest of the space given over to general recreation. In North Las Vegas, Nevada, golfers played their last round at the Craig Ranch municipal course in May. The site is to become a 135-acre regional park, with a children’s play area, a dog park, picnic grounds and trails set to open next summer.

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans repurposed some of the land that formerly held four golf courses covering 520 acres. The area now features a boardwalk, a dock, a meadow concert venue, a nature trail, and a very popular walking and jogging trail. National City, California, is considering turning a golf course into a park that has a soccer field, a restored creek, a community farm, and biking and walking paths. And in San Francisco, one landscape architecture instructor at the University of California at Berkeley assigns his students to remake the city’s Lincoln Park Golf Course for other public uses that include a profit-generating feature: “Among the proposals that have emerged,” Landscape Architecture Magazinereports, “are urban farms, bamboo forests, green cemeteries, aquifer recharge facilities, abalone farms, and municipal-scale composting facilities.”

It’s not always about ripping up the greens, though, according to Harnik and Donahue, whose research was supported by the Trust for Public Land’s Center for City Park Excellence. Pressure for other uses has led some golf courses to incorporate features that appeal to the non-golfing public. In Houston, runners advocated for and got a trail around a city course. In a Washington, D.C., suburb, golfers under fire for a driving-range expansion responded by agreeing to make the facility more friendly to the environment and to wildlife.

And some cities are simply letting ordinary people, those common folk who know nothing about bogies or mulligans, use the greens at certain times. This is anything but a new idea in the golf world, LAM reminds us:

The idea has an eminent precedent—St. Andrews in Scotland, hallowed ground for golfers everywhere, has traditionally opened up as a regular park for the townspeople on Sundays.

The cash cows who live in Ann Arbor have a record of voting to nickel and dime themselves to death, literally. The city’s property tax bill, thanks to “supplemental” millages, has come to resemble a check in a French restaurant where everything is ala carte. The nickels and dimes have, over the past decade, added up to one of the highest property tax assessments in Michigan for some of the most paltry police and fire coverage, and the third worst roads in the state.

So, first you have to know how to figure out your property taxes. Homeowners multiply assessed value by the number of mills. So, if your assessed value is, say, $200,000, you multiply 200 by the total mills levied. If your assessed value is $125,000, you multiply 125 by the total mills levied. In 2009, Ann Arbor citizens who owned homes that were principal residences paid 45.1876 mills in taxes. Thus, the home with the $200,000 assessed value paid 200 x 45.1876=$9,000 in property taxes.

The voter approved millages for the Ann Arbor Public Library, AATA, Parks Maintenance & Repairs, Greenbelt, and (don’t laugh) Street Repairs add up to an additional $1,435 per year in property taxes for a homeowner with an assessed value of $200,000. In other words, out of that hypothetical $9,000 in property taxes above, $1,435 is for voter approved millages, two of which are up for renewal soon—the Parks and Road Repair.

The Ann Arbor budget book is a deliberately obtuse document. While Council is told it must close yet another “budget gap” by cutting citizen services, in interim City Administrator Tom Crawford and former City Administrator Roger Fraser’s proposed 2012 budget, city manager Sue McCormick is allowed yet another spending spree on behalf of her fiefdom:

The proposed budget includes over $2.2 million for new garbage trucks and over $1 million for new parks vehicles. Why we need to spend $2.2 million on new garbage trucks when we have already spent $4.5 million to purchase 19 new trucks since Jan 2004 is a puzzle. Most of the new trucks are for residential collection. Yet, Ms. McCormick has told Council she wants to privatize residential collection. Perhaps, like at the compost program, where new equipment purchased by taxpayers was off-loaded to WeCare Organics for a song, Ms. McCormick needs Ann Arbor taxpayers to pony up millions for new vehicles to sweeten the pot for the lucky garbage company who will get that sweetheart contract. That spending is in addition to the $3.2 million McCormick spent for new compost and garbage carts. McCormick and Fraser told Council and the public all of this spending would make waste collection more efficient.

The truth? Spending on garbage has doubled since 2004.

Ann Arbor is set to spend more than $69,000 per city employee on fleet charges. In the wacky world that is Ann Arbor city government, vehicle purchase and maintenance are funded while spending on citizen services, such as police and fire, curbside recycling collections, and park upkeep are cut.

So how have Tom Crawford and Roger Fraser come up with the money to give to Sue McCormick for her shopping sprees? In part from the parks millage that is supposed to pay to maintain and repair Ann Arbor’s parks.

Ann Arbor residents own 157 parks with over 2,000 acres of parkland and natural areas. In November of 2006, residents approved a 1.0969 mill parks millage for six years. Each year, that assessment raises about $5 million dollars which should, in theory, be spent on maintaining and repairing the city’s parks. However, a large percentage of the millage money is being diverted.

A Certified Public Accountant prepared a spreadsheet for A2Politico to analyze how park maintenance and repair millage money is being using to pay for everything except park repair and upkeep.

The collected data from the city’s audited financial statements above shows that between 2008 and 2012, internal service charges levied against the park millage increased more than 400 percent, while in the General Fund (where property tax revenues are allocated) the increase for the same line item was less than 10 percent. While charges for fleet costs (one of Sue McCormick’s departments) decreased in the General Fund, fleet costs charged to our parks fund went up 400 percent. Charges for IT services charged to the parks millage almost doubled between 2008 and 2012, and the total amount for internal charges levied against the park millage between 2008 and 2012 (proposed) has gone up almost 500 percent. Meanwhile, in the General Fund, internal charges as a percent of total revenue have decreased.

What becomes clear when looking at this data is that Ann Arbor’s City Council, Mayor and City Administrator have quietly bled money from the parks millage in the form of jacked up internal charges while at the same time reducing the total amount spent on parks to force citizens into the position of paying an additional tax for park repair and upkeep, as opposed to paying for maintenance and upkeep out of the General Fund, from property taxes collected. A2Politico asked a CPA to prepare three graphs. The first is a look at overall parks spending from data taken from the city’s audited financial statements:

The second graph is overall spending on police and fire. Note that spending has remained relatively constant:

In 2006, John Hieftje said during a mayoral debate that he supported the parks millage, and that it was needed in light of the Headlee rollback and the fact that the City has added more park land. What follows is a look at the property tax revenue paid by homeowners to the city between 2001 and 2010. Note that the steady increase in revenues contradicts Hieftje’s claims that there would be less overall tax money available:

Since 2006, Mayor and Council have skimmed $3.592 million dollars from the park millage fund, or about the equivalent of 9 months worth of millage money, for internal charges. The skimming from this fund should, obviously, be stopped and other funds examined for similar skimming via this internal charge extortion racket.

A member of the Park Advisory Commission expressed fear and frustration. The individual asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation on the part of Hieftje.

The PAC member said via email: “When people are lied to, it makes them less likely to trust government. These people who run for local office and say they are ‘green’ and ‘pro park,’ are attacking the very open space I believe voters want protected and were told their millage money was going to pay for. Who would vote for a millage that uses almost one-third of the money to fund ‘internal charges?’ No one! No one should. This is an under-handed attack on our parks that began as soon as the millage was passed and hasn’t stopped.”