by P.D. Lesko

“We keep seeing the same names.”

“It’s like there is some ‘professional class’ of board appointees.”

“We need to draw from a larger group of citizens.”

“I want to open the door for a closer examination of the appointment and confirmation process.”

So the debate went on at Ann Arbor City Council’s May 13th meeting over John Hieftje’s proposed appointment of former Ann Arbor Planning Commission member Eric Mahler to a five year appointment on the Board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority. Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere (left) repeatedly chastised her Council colleagues for engaging in debate; the first time she was visibly embarrassed after realizing that it was, indeed, the appropriate moment for a discussion. Briere has earned the nickname “Hieftje-lite” among several of her Council colleagues, and has lost the confidence and support of many of the city’s neighborhood activists on whose financial support she could once count.

The debate marked a sharp turn away from what has been over a decade of Council’s rubber stamping of John Hieftje’s proposed political appointees without discussion.

In an April 2013 post A2Politico wrote:

That Hieftje wants to replace Nacht with Eric Mahler should come as no surprise. Mahler, it could be argued, has done enough for Ann Arbor having played his part in crafting the seriously flawed A2D2 Design Guidelines/Zoning against which the public is now railing. At the end of March 2013, in response to public backlash aimed at a parcel which Mahler (among others) voted to zone D1 (for dense development), City Council decided to conduct a review of the D1 zoning guidelines. Mahler and the Planning Commission, in essence, were asked to review their own work—work which they believed had been done correctly in the first place.

There are about 400 Ann Arbor citizens who serve on boards and commissions, according to city records. About one-fifth of those citizens serve on more than one board or commission. Below, you’ll find a list of several of Ann Arbor’s busiest citizens, each of whom have been appointed to serve on multiple city boards and commissions:

Bonnie Bona: City Panning Commission, Downtown Zoning Steering Committee, Ad Hoc, North Huron Vision Task Force, Street Art Fairs, Mayor’s Committee on

Roger Hewitt: Community Security & Public Space Task Force, Downtown Development Authority, Downtown Zoning Steering Committee, Ad Hoc, Local Officers’ Compensation Commission, Local Officers’ Compensation Commission

Anthony Ramirez: Building Authority, Cable Communications Commission, Housing and Human Services Advisory Board

Kirk Westphal: City Panning Commission, Design Guidelines Taskforce, Environmental Commission (Planning Commission Rep.)

Ironically, in 2004 after Democrats had won all of the seats on City Council, then Ward 2 Council member Joan Lowenstein assured the media that a Democratic super majority would in no way squelch robust debate. The next nine years showed her to be flat out wrong. Not only were political appointees confirmed without discussion, but the same political appointees often played musical chairs, moving from one board or commission to another. The shallow gene pool from which Hieftje has repeatedly drawn has made for some Deliverance quality drama.

David Nacht and Jesse Bernstein are being allowed to quietly “retire” from the AATA Board after a costly debacle in which the two men tried to shove a $500 million dollar county-wide transit scheme dreamed up by Hieftje down the throats of unwilling county residents and pols. Almost as soon as the AATA Board launched the boondoggle, which would have required communities to tax themselves in order to pay for things like the Canton Flyer and bus service between Ann Arbor Detroit Metropolitian Airport, elected officials of surrounding cities and townships opted out of the plan. The result was a humiliating October 2012 vote by the Ann Arbor City Council in which Hieftje was forced to watch Ann Arbor opt out of AATA’s county-wide transit plan.

In January 2012, Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman (right), while speaking about the transit scheme to the Ypsilanti City Council, called Hieftje’s ideas “a little beyond reality. Kunselman included in the category of transit ideas that are unrealistic, “commuter rail to Brighton and Dearborn.”

Last night, as Hieftje argued AATA Board members had asked for a lawyer to be appointed, Kunselman had a similarly direct comment: “I don’t know why the AATA Board needs a lawyer. After the fiasco in December—having a lawyer (Nacht) on the Board didn’t help with that.”

Kunselman, who is opposed in the August Democratic primary election by Hieftje-backed candidate Julie Grand, former Chair of the Park Advisory Commission, has been a vocal supporter of closer Council oversight of the Board of the Downtown Development Authority. In addition, as a member of the Council’s Audit Committee, he has supported closer scrutiny of the DDA’s finances. These are both actions for which he has been relentlessly attacked by Hieftje and his fellow members of the DDA Board. They have accused Kunselman of playing politics.

Sabra Briere, in emails to the DDA’s Director Susan Pollay, emails which turned up in the local news blog AnnArbor.com, accused Kunselman of playing politics, as well. Briere who supported Kunselman’s efforts in public by voting in favor of a proposed resolution to rein in the DDA Board, was caught by AnnArbor.com counseling Pollay via email on how best to neutralize Kunselman’s efforts.

In emails turned over to A2Politico in response to a recent Freedom of Information Act request, Kunselman was clearly irked at Briere. Kunselman retorted via email that he found Briere’s behind-the-back attacks “unethical” and mean-spirited. He writes, “Why should anyone trust you when your sincerity is questionable?”

Briere writes to him via email: “Um…Not certain what you mean. The tone is unfortunate, but also pretty certain I didn’t say anything you haven’t said.”

As the debate on Eric Mahler’s appointment progressed Hieftje became visibly uncomfortable, as did Hieftje Hive Mind drone Sabra Briere. In a tone that vacillated between preachy and exasperated, Briere lectured her Council colleagues on their need to vote on the qualifications of the candidate presented to them. Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin kicked off the debate by questioning why Hieftje had bypassed the application of a very qualified member of the disabled community, an individual with ample board experience, as well as experience advising AATA.

“This is an opportunity to appoint someone who will bring a different perspective to the discussion,” said Anglin. “The handicapped are a group of people who use the bus.”

Ward 1 Council member Sumi Kailasapthy (right), whose name, incredibly, Hieftje and city staff member Craig Hupy still can’t pronounce correctly, either because of sheer ignorance, or perhaps because it has too many vowels, spoke about her disabled son’s use of AATA, and agreed with Anglin. She went on to point out that Hieftje was playing a game of musical chairs in moving certain people from one city board to another.

“We’re seeing the same names over and over,” said Kailsapathy.

Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen rapped Hieftje over the knuckles at one point in the debate for his use of the word “handicapped.” Hieftje, in turn, blamed Council member Mike Anglin—whose use of the word, Hieftje explained, had preceded his own. Petersen, undeterred, corrected him again. It was a welcome effort to be respectful of a community against which Hieftje has waged a political war for over a decade. He has done so through his “repurposing” of AATA’s resources away from local transit, and through a refusal to replace 100 units of affordable, supportive housing which were lost when the old YMCA was torn down years ago.

Then, when Hieftje claimed that Eric Mahler “represented” a particular minority community, Ward 5 Council member Chuck Wapehoski pointed out that no one individual could represent an entire community.

Kailasapthy, Petersen, Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm, Kunselman and Anglin pressed Hieftje to withdraw Mahler’s name and appoint, instead, the other applicant whose materials they had been given. Hieftje, with help from Sabra Briere, repeatedly argued that Mahler’s was the only name before Council.

In response, Sally Petersen went a step further by making it clear to Hieftje that the debate concerning the appointment of Eric Mahler should be taken to mean that “we’re not comfortable with the appointment and confirmation process as it stands. I want to open the door to that discussion. We need to examine this process.”

In an effort to draw attention to the fact that David Nacht, so some critics claim, had outstayed his welcome on the AATA Board with a 10 year term of appointment, Mike Anglin grilled Hieftje on whether Mahler would serve “a five year term.” Hieftje, shocked, was speechless for a moment and then assured Anglin that Mahler’s appointment was, indeed, for a single five year term. Hieftje was also asked if there would be other openings on the AATA Board in the near future.

These kinds of questions suggest, perhaps, that more “retirements” are going to be demanded by Council members from the city’s boards and commissions.

Hieftje was similarly flummoxed when Stephen Kunselman suggested that there would be room on the AATA Board for Mahler and the other applicant. All that needed to be done was to remove city staffer Eli Cooper whose presence on the AATA Board has been questioned by many as inappropriate staff control of a citizen board.

“We have a member of the AATA Board who doesn’t even live in Ann Arbor,” said Kunselman. “This person could be asked to step down to make room for both Mr. Mahler and the other applicant,” reasoned Kunselman.

Hieftje, tight-lipped, was literally speechless. It was Sabra Briere who came to Hizzoner’s rescue suggesting that Kunselman was over-reaching in his efforts to do anything except vote on the name before him.

“I thought Kunselman’s was a perfectly acceptable compromise,” said an AATA staffer who asked not to be named. “Eli Cooper has no business serving on the AATA Board. Neither did (Sue) McCormick. Cooper should be removed regardless.”

The appointment of Eric Mahler was not the only one that prompted questions. When Hieftje informed Council that he proposed to reappoint all of the members of the Downtown Citizens Advisory Council (CAC) Board, some of whose appointments had expired in 2008, Sally Hart Petersen asked why there were “so many couples” being proposed.

Hieftje feigned ignorance about his own appointments. ”I really don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been to a meeting of this group.”

Sabra Briere offered up the ludicrous explanation that appointing couples to a group that advises the Downtown Development Authority on downtown development and TIF plans is an opportunity for the couples to spend time together.

“Well, I think it’s a ‘If you go, I go,’ sort of thing,” suggested Briere, seriously. “It an opportunity for the couples to spend time together.”

The CAC has no student, minority, or young professional members and has had none since 2001. All of the appointments to the CAC expired in October 2012, but the former Chair appeared in public on numerous occasions between November 2012 and May 2013 claiming to speak on behalf of the “CAC Board,” “downtown residents” and “the members of the CAC.”

The lengthy, frank debate about the appointment of Eric Mahler ended in a 6-5 vote in favor of seating Mahler with Briere, Taylor, Teall, Higgins, Warpehoski and Hieftje voting in favor of playing Hieftje’s game of musical chairs.

John Hieftje won the battle, but he may be six months away from completely losing the war.

Unpopular Ward 4 Council member Marcia Higgins is being challenged by labor lawyer Jack Eaton, who came just 20 votes shy of unseating Ward 4 5-term incumbent Margie Teall in August 2012. Sabra Briere, meanwhile, in a March 2013 email exchange with Stephen Kunselman writes, “And I’ve never been concerned about a primary opponent.” In fact, at one point in the meeting last night Briere, who wants to run for mayor when Hieftje steps down, insinuated that she’d still be on City Council five years down the road.

Next November, should Eaton win, John Hieftje would lose face more 5-6/4-7 votes and find his board and commission appointments voted down on a regular basis. Such a scenario would mean that the pervasive cronyism in local government could begin to be curtailed (or even reversed) for the first time since John Hieftje took office in 2000 and in 2003 put his political pal David DeVarti on the Local Officers Compensation Committee. In 2003, DeVarti voted to increase the salary for the mayor’s part-time job from $28,000 per year to $40,000 per year. In 2004, Hieftje reappointed DeVarti to sit on the Board of the DDA.

by P.D. Lesko

There are five solid votes on City Council to bring to heel the members of the Downtown Development Authority Board of Directors. Those are the votes of Sumi Kailsapathy, Jane Lumm, Sally Hart-Petersen, Stephen Kunselman and Mike Anglin. The resolution needs six votes to pass, however. The DDA Board, comprised of a bushel of appointed Hieftje cronies who control over $20 million dollars in parking fees and money captured through a tax increment financing scheme, is facing a resolution that would remove the mayor from the DDA Board (or require Council’s written permission for the mayor to serve) impose term limits on DDA Board members, and slow down the DDA’s capture of tax money. If passed, the resolution would return $931,000 per year in tax dollars to various jurisdictions including the city’s parks ($53,000), Street Repair Fund ($72,000), Solid Waste Fund ($83,000), as well as money to the Ann Arbor District Library ($52,000) and Washtenaw Community College ($124,000).

Needless to say, the DDA is in panic mode. DDA Board member Sandi Smith hinted at a March meeting that the DDA would be unable to give money in support of affordable housing should the proposed resolution pass.

DDA Board member John Hieftje decried term limits, saying that they were “ineffective” and lead to “inexperience.” At the April 15, 2013 City Council meeting, he proposed an amendment to the ordinance which would have stripped out term limits. Voting in support of the proposal was Ward 5′s new Council member Chuck Warpehoski (pictured right, with wife Nancy Shore). It’s no surprise that Warpehoski voted with Hieftje. On April 2, 2013, Wapehoski slammed term limits as “mandatory inexperience law.” Evidently, neither man has a clue that there are dozens of city boards and commissions with term limits, including the Park Advisory Commission.

What may come as news is that Warpehoski spoke out against term limits and the resolution to assert Council’s authority over the DDA the day after DDA Executive Director Susan Pollay sent an email to City Council members in which she announced that should the proposed resolution pass, the DDA would be forced to cut funding to the getDowntown program by some 85 percent. Chuck Warpehoski’s wife, Nancy Shore, has directed the getDowntown program since 2007, and the DDA Board provides the bulk of the funding for the getDowntown program. A2Politico filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails sent between January and April 2013 between Council members, DDA Board members and Pollay that referred to the Kunselman/Kailasapathy DDA resolution. Pollay’s email with the threat to castrate the getDowntown program was included in the emails turned over by the DDA.

In fact, in multiple messages to Council members Pollay writes that should the DDA’s capture of tax money be slowed, the organization will “cut funding to the getDowntown program by 85 percent.” Funding to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority for its go!pass program would go from $479,000 to $69,642. Such a cut would cripple the getDowntown program which exists, primarily, to provide subsidized go!passes (monthly bus passes) to employees of businesses in the DDA district. Since 2010, the DDA Board members have graciously granted the getDowntown program over $1.473 million dollars in taxpayer money captured by the DDA to subsidize $10 annual bus passes for 4,130 (Susan Pollay March 2013 email to City Council members), 6,500 (AnnArborChronicle.com, March 2013), 5,739 (city of Ann Arbor website: 2008 data) active go!pass users.

In comparison, monthly AATA bus passes for K-12 students are $29 per month, or $348 per year. A monthly bus pass for an adult is $58 per month. A monthly bus pass in San Francisco costs $45 for adults and $10 for students. In Rome, Italy, a monthly bus pass for K-12 students costs 18 Euros ($23).

John Hieftje has never seen a conflict of interest that he couldn’t rationalize. In 2006, Mr. B.A. from Eastern Michigan University was hired to teach graduate school by Paul Courant, then a dean at the Gerald M. Ford School of Public Policy. Courant set Hieftje’s per course pay higher than any other lecturer in his class, topping out at $15,000 per course. If that wasn’t enough, Courant, whose expertise is in library science and Dewey decimals, gave Hieftje a glowing endorsement which Hizzoner plastered all over his web site and literature in which Dr. C. complimented Hieftje’s stellar finance skills.

Ward 5 Council member Chuck Wapehoski hasn’t been hired to teach by the University of Michigan. He is, however, a walking conflict of interest in a much more serious way, and has turned out to be someone over whom it is relatively easy to exert pressure—such as threatening his wife’s job. However, the Hive Mind Collective does not exert subtle pressure, as evidenced by John Hieftje’s bullying public attacks on Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman as of late.

Warpehoski is the Executive Director of a tiny non-profit that advocates for peace, social justice and, as of late, county-wide and regional transportation. The Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice “inspires, educates, and mobilizes people to unite across differences and to act from their shared ethical and spiritual values in pursuit of peace with social and environmental justice,” according to its website.

According to tax returns, in 2010 the organization netted $119,117, or about $40,000 less than the City of Ann Arbor pays its city attorney each year, Stephen Postema. Warpehoski on the other hand, was paid $38,801 in 2010, again according to tax documents. His take home pay would be just north of $26,000 per year. Thus his $15,000 salary as a City Council member, then, bumps up his annual income significanty. Warpehoski’s wife’s employer, the getDowntown Program, is funded by the Boards of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority and the Downtown Development Authority, appointments to which Warpehoski now votes on in his role as a City Council member. The getDowntown program is also funded by the City of Ann Arbor. Eli Cooper, the Transportation Program Manager for the City of Ann Arbor, sits of Shore’s Advisory Board. Chuck Warpehoski, as a City Council member, votes on recommendations and schemes Cooper brings before City Council. Susan Pollay, the Executive Director of the DDA is one of the getDowntown program’s four Advisory Board members. It was, in fact, Susan Pollay who provided Council members with the information, in March and April 2013 that, should the proposed resolution pass to impose term limits on DDA Board members, and slow the DDA’s capture of tax dollars, that the DDA would be “forced” to cut funding to Shore’s program by 85 percent.

Thus, Pollay’s threat that the DDA will defund the getDowntown program is not subtle pressure; it is a gun aimed directly at Chuck Warpehoski and his wife. The threat is also more evidence that the DDA and its Board members need to be brought sharply to heel. The pervasive lack of discipline and accountability expected from the DDA by City Council over the entire Hieftje era has resulted in a group of appointed officials arrogant enough to threaten a sitting Council member. Then again, Warpehoski laid with the same dogs when he ran for City Council in 2012. He accepted endorsements and large campaign donations from several of the same DDA Board members who, through Susan Pollay, have told Council members that the getDowntown program will be gutted should term limits be imposed and the TIF capture slowed. Did Warpehoski’s wife know he was playing with fire in accepting money and endorsements from the people who fund her job and feed their family? Nancy Shore was her husband’s campaign treasurer and signed the campaign finance forms.

The Hive Mind Collective’s choice, funding, and endorsement of Chuck Warpehoski was no accident. They choose candidates whom they expect to control. The question of whether Warpehoski is the independent-minded representative he promised to be when he ran was answered when he voted in favor of stripping term-limits from the Kunselman/Kailasapathy DDA resolution on April 15th. His conflict of interest is voting on anything to do with the AATA or DDA is immense in light of how his wife’s job is funded, and that he voted on the DDA resolution after Pollay’s direct threat speaks volumes.

In November 2012, Wapehoski’s opponent, Vivienne Armentrout, wrote this to response to a piece posted to AnnArbor.com: “Mr. Warpehoski will face a number of challenges in reconciling his role as an advocate for causes with his role as a representative. He is a thoughtful person who places a high value on ethics, and I wish him well as he threads his way through this and other such issues.”

Chuck’s going to need more than luck on May 6th.

by P.D. Lesko

At the moment, Ann Arbor City Council members are trying to assert their Charter-mandated authority over the Board of the Downtown Development Authority like a parent trying to discipline a hopelessly out-of-control toddler in the midst of an epic temper tantrum. John Hieftje stars in this drama as the ineffectual parent, the one who stands by and undermines all efforts to impose discipline—the parent at whom people in grocery stores stare, shake their heads and roll their eyes. Members of City Council want term limits for DDA Board members—one particularly troublesome member was appointed when Barbara Bush was First Lady—and want to slow down the DDA’s capture of tax dollars.

This effort to clean up the DDA Board  comes on the heels of the “retirement” of two members of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority Board of Directors. Local politicos argue that David Nacht, who does not live in Ann Arbor, had no business serving on the Board of AATA and making decisions about the disposition of millage dollars. Likewise, Jesse Bernstein, so say disgruntled members of the now defunct Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce, had no business cross-dressing as the AATA’s “finance” guru during the group’s failed efforts to sell a $500 million dollar county-wide transit boondoggle to residents. Under Bernstein, the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce lost revenues, members, and ultimately after Bernstein left his job there, was forced to merge with the Ypsilanti Chamber of Commerce.

At his last meeting, David Nacht was quoted by AnnArborChronicle.com as saying “I encourage all my fellow citizens to serve on a board.” The comment is somewhat pretentious coming from the township resident who soaked up a decade on the AATA Board. In addition, while Nacht’s encouragement of his “fellow citizens” in general may appear laudatory, it’s absurd in the face of John Hieftje’s determination to choose candidates for the city’s most powerful boards and commissions from among a gene pool the size of a thimble, primarily from among his political donors and cronies (Nacht included). Nacht’s “fellow citizens” have a snow ball’s chance in hell of being appointed to the AATA Board based on Hieftje’s track record of making such appointments.

However, the DDA Board battle, along with the “retirements” of Nacht and Bernstein, suggest John Hieftje’s ability to stack the city’s boards and commissions could be at an end thanks to a group of citizens and City Council members concerned with transparency and fiscal accountability in local government. These Council members include Ward 1 Council member Sumi Kailasapathy, Ward 2 Council members Jane Lumm and Sally Hart Petersen, Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman and Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin. All are inclined to question board appointments, and all have spoken in favor of making board and commission appointments more prudently. Several favor term limits on board and commission appointments, and several have concerns about city contracts that have been awarded to Hieftje’s board and commission appointees and their employers, including Environmental Commission member David Stead, whose company is up to its neck in city contracts awarded during the move to single-stream recycling.

Hieftje’s efforts to put long-time Planning Commission member Eric Mahler on the AATA Board to replace Nacht may prove to the a turning point in the battle against rampant and unchecked cronyism in local government.

In addition to appointing political donors to boards and commissions, Hieftje has repeatedly appointed to important boards and commissions as “citizen” members City Council members whose constituents have booted them from office. Leigh Greden was tossed from office in 2009 after the Ann Arbor News revealed Greden was playing on Facebook and sending rude and unprofessional emails during open City Council meetings. Hieftje subsequently appointed Greden to the city’s Housing Commission. In 2012, Ward 2 voters chose to vote Tony Derezinski out of office. Shortly thereafter, Hieftje appointed Derezinski to the the city’s Planning Commission. Likewise, Ward 2 voters tossed Stephen Rapundalo from office, and Hieftje appointed Rapundalo as a “citizen” member of the LDFA—a board on which Rapundalo sat as a Council member. The LDFA was used to funnel tax dollars to Ann Arbor SPARK.

Running for City Council and losing also has its perks. After Hive Mind candidate Ingrid Ault challenged Ward 3 Council member Stephen Kunselman in 2011, Hieftje appointed Ault to the Park Advisory Commission. Needless to say, a decade of fostering group think and appointing political yes men (and women) to boards and commissions has resulted in some spectacularly expensive mistakes and poor stewardship of the city’s resources, such as a Park Advisory Commission member who voted in support of developing parkland and using it for parking.

In an effort to better understand why a wider variety of the city’s residents are not participating in boards and commissions, A2Politico filed a FOIA seeking all of the applications submitted for the openings on city boards and commissions over the past four months. It’s not clear whether Mahler filled out an application to sit on the AATA Board, or whether he needed to do so in order to be considered for the opening.

Ann Arbor Transportation Authority Board member David Nacht’s departure marks not only the end of a decade of public service, but also marks a turning point. John Hieftje appointed Nacht to the Board for a 10 year term. Over the course of those ten years there has been sharp criticism leveled that AATA’s Board members have neglected bettering service within the city of Ann Arbor. Many of those criticisms came from former AATA Treasurer Ted Annis. Annis, in fact, is still an outspoken critic of AATA’s finances (Annis contends AATA is run inefficiently) and the bus provider’s inability to get a rider from one side of the city to the other in less than one hour.

That AATA Board members David Nacht and Jesse Bernstein are “retiring,” in the light of the county-wide transit debacle that cost taxpayers millions, is great news. That Hieftje wants to replace Nacht with Eric Mahler should come as no surprise. Mahler, it could be argued, has done enough for Ann Arbor having played his part in crafting the seriously flawed A2D2 Design Guidelines/Zoning against which the public is now railing. At the end of March 2013, in response to public backlash aimed at a parcel which Mahler (among others) voted to zone D1 (for dense development), City Council decided to conduct a review of the D1 zoning guidelines. Mahler and the Planning Commission, in essence, were asked to review their own work—work which they believed had been done correctly in the first place.

There are about 400 Ann Arbor citizens who serve on boards and commissions, according to city records. About one-fifth of those citizens serve on more than one board or commission. Below, you’ll find a list of several of Ann Arbor’s busiest citizens, each of whom have been appointed to serve on multiple city boards and commissions:

Bonnie Bona: City Panning Commission, Downtown Zoning Steering Committee, Ad Hoc, North Huron Vision Task Force, Street Art Fairs, Mayor’s Committee on

Roger Hewitt: Community Security & Public Space Task Force, Downtown Development Authority, Downtown Zoning Steering Committee, Ad Hoc, Local Officers’ Compensation Commission, Local Officers’ Compensation Commission

Anthony Ramirez: Building Authority, Cable Communications Commission, Housing and Human Services Advisory Board

Kirk Westphal: City Panning Commission, Design Guidelines Taskforce, Environmental Commission (Planning Commission Rep.)

Westphal, of course, has recently stepped up to challenge Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm, who recently called out Hieftje for launching personal attacks and bullying those who, as Lumm put it, “may occasionally” disgaree with him. The question, of course, is whether there are six votes on Council to break John Hieftje of his nasty habit of appointing his cronies to the city’s most powerful boards and commissions. If there were six votes to put Mahler out to pasture, it would force Hieftje to appoint one of David Nacht’s “fellow citizens” to the AATA Board. That would be a huge step in the right direction.

by P.D. Lesko

Today, Jack Eaton announced his candidacy first via email to a loosely-organized group of neighborhood activists, city and county politicians. He wrote, “I wanted all of you to hear it from me, because so many of you have encouraged me to do this.” The email listserv came alive with electronic cheers. One of the group’s participants wrote in response to Eaton’s announcement: “YAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!!! You might as well be official, since you’re doing all the work anyway.” Another chimed in quickly: “Bravo!”

Eaton discusses his desire to run on what he called a pro-neighborhood agenda. “I don’t think a neighborhood should have to submit a petition to the City Council just to get their elected representatives interested in resolving neighborhood problems. Elected officials need to be responsive to the interests of City residents.”

Ward 4 Council members Marcia Higgins and Margie Teall take regular and brutal electronic drubbings in AnnArbor.com’s comment sections. Both of the women are mocked, characterized as out-of-touch, and taken to task for their poor attendance records at Council meetings. Marcia Higgins, like Margie Teall, is known to have a poor track record in returning constituent email messages and phone calls. When she ran for re-election in 2011, Higgins did not  put up a web site and, unlike most of her Council colleagues, has no web site. She does not send out any regular constituent communications, unlike other Council members, including Ward 5 Council member Mike Anglin and Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere. Her 2009 campaign website, HigginsforCouncil.com, is offline.

The question, of course, is whether Jack Eaton (right) can muster enough votes to unseat the city’s Mayor Pro Tempore. In November 2009 Higgins was opposed by a young University of Michigan graduate Hatim A. Elhady in the November general election. Elhady, a political newbie, captured almost 40 percent of the vote, 1,299 of the 3,482 ballots cast. In the 2012 primary election another political newbie, Tim Hull, captured 40 percent of the vote against long-time Ward 2 incumbent Stephen Rapundalo. It was, in part, this strong showing by Hull that led political insiders to believe that Rapundalo could be unseated. He went on to be trounced by Independent Jane Lumm in the November 2012 election. Lumm drew on a city-wide coalition of supporters and donors; Eaton will, no doubt, have the support of many of the same politicos and donors who help put Lumm in office.

In 2012, Democrat Eaton captured 49.42 percent of the vote against Margie Teall; he came 20 votes from knocking off long-time Ward 4 incumbent City Council member. Teall, a loyal drone in Borg Queen John Hieftje’s shrinking Hive Mind Collective, had been unenthusiastic about running for re-election, but had done so nonetheless. That Eaton came so close to unseating her came as a nasty shock, no doubt. After Teall’s close call, Council member Marcia Higgins told several City Council colleagues that she would not run for re-election in 2013. Then, Higgins began cozying up to Eaton, chatting him up during breaks at Council meetings he attended. It was an obvious and ham-handed ploy to neutralize an increasingly powerful political opponent. In early 2013, Higgins pulled petitions to run as a Democrat in the August 2013 primary election. She was first elected to Ann Arbor City Council in 1999 as a Republican and re-elected in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2011 as a Democrat.

In 2002, Republican Marcia Higgins ran against John Hieftje for mayor. In fact, the last time a Republican won a city office in Ann Arbor was when Marcia Higgins won as a Republican in the 2003 Ward 4 City Council race. In 2005, she switched parties, and Council became dominated by Democrats. Former Ward 2 Council member and current DDA Board member Joan Lowenstein told the Ann Arbor News an all-Democratic council would still have “differing views.”

“I don’t think it is a concern,” Lowenstein told reporter Tom Gantert in 2005. “When you have everybody with one party, it is almost like having it nonpartisan. We don’t always agree on everything. There are a lot of differing points of view, even among people of the same party.”

What happened, instead, is that City Council became a Hive Mind Collective of drones who voted in virtual lock-step, and who recruited candidates for Council who would also vote in lock-step with the Hive Mind Collective.

While Marcia Higgins (left) has voted a little less in lock-step with John Hieftje as of late, she has, like Margie Teall, voted repeatedly to slash police and fire, and other city services. In fact, in 2009 Marcia Higgins chaired the Council’s Budget and Labor Committee that pushed for cuts to services in order to squirrel away money from the General Fund to finance capital projects such as the new city hall. Like Teall, Higgins was caught up in the 2009 email scandal that led to the ouster of powerful Ward 3 Council member Leigh Greden. The scandal resulted in the city being forced to settle an Open Meetings Act violation lawsuit. The local media caught Higgins and Greden vote-rigging. In response to a 2009 Freedom of Information Act request, it was revealed that Marcia Higgins and Leigh Greden had exchanged emails during an open meeting in which they discussed how they planned to vote on a site plan. Similarly, Higgins participated in email deliberations concerning how to best script the vote on raising salaries for Council members. Unlike her Ward 4 Council colleague, Marcia Higgins never apologized. Instead, she told those present at a 2009 candidate forum that “the voters will decide.”

As for the issues, Higgins’s has an interesting relationship with the city’s unpopular Percent for Art program. She has been frequently critical of the program and its funding. In 2011, her efforts to reduce the percent for art to a half a percent for art were shot down by her Council colleagues. In 2012, after the city’s voters—including those in Ward 4—turned back a proposal to tax themselves in order to fund the Percent for Art program, Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm proposed a resolution to repeal the Percent for Art ordinance. Higgins refused to support Lumm’s resolution, and instead pushed to establish a committee of Council members to further examine the Percent for Art program.

The move was derided in the comment section of AnnArbor.com, and Higgins, as well as Ward 1 Council member Sabra Briere were lambasted for ignoring the will of the voters.

In her 2009 campaign Marcia Higgins took credit for working with residents on the deteriorating Georgetown Mall,  leading the downtown rezoning process, and chairing the city’s A2D2 Steering Committee, which created what are now seen as seriously flawed design guidelines for downtown. Higgins, like defeated former Council members Leigh Greden, Tony Derezinski and Stephen Rapundalo, came out in favor of a city income tax and pushed to put the question of a city income tax to the voters between 2009-2011. After the November 2012 defeat of a bond to build a new downtown library and a tax to fund the Percent for Art program, Marcia Higgins might not be so keen on pushing for voters to decide whether to impose a city income tax.

The blighted Georgetown Mall, however, is Higgins’s Achilles tendon. The development mess, the long-term blight, the waste of tax dollars, rest squarely on her shoulders.

In 2001, Harbor Cos. developer Craig Schubiner paid $6.1 million for the aging mall. By Fall of 2007, Schubiner had devised a $30 million dollar scheme to demolish and redevelop the Georgetown Mall—to build 90,000 square feet of retail and residential space. Never ones to pass up the advances of a developer with kinky redevelopment ideas that involve financial S & M  (with taxpayers playing the role of the blind-folded and ball-gagged masochist), Council jumped into bed with Schubiner.

Schubiner’s $30 million dollar plan to redevelop the Georgetown Mall hinged on two details: First, the Kroger executives had to play ball and commit to leasing 45,000 square feet of space in the new development. They balked and left the site.

The other part of the Harbor Cos. plan revolved around persuading Marcia Higgins to have the Georgetown Mall site rezoned as a TIF ( tax increment financing) site. When done, Ann Arbor taxpayers would finance the debt for the redevelopment of his property. The TIF funding would go toward the private improvements. Improvements that Harbor Cos would profit from. The Ann Arbor public  would ‘invest’ in Schubiner’s redevelopment of the Georgetown Mall, and Schubiner would receive the financial return.

Why did Schubiner have to woo Marcia Higgins to get his parcel rezoned as a TIF site?

Marcia Higgins is the self-appointed zoning Czarina on Ann Arbor City Council. No one touches zoning issues without the permission of the Dowager Duchess of Ward Four.  How do I know this? Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden told me in an email that was coughed up in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Greden typed an email to a hapless newly-minted Council pup warning the newbie to stay away from zoning issues. Greden’s email turned up in a batch of those FOIAed by the Ann Arbor News.

Craig Schubiner of the Harbor Cos. got Czarina Marcia Higgins to propose a resolution to rezone the 6.5 acre Georgetown Mall site as a TIF district. Higgins got her colleagues on Council to vote for the resolution. The Ward 4 Georgetown Mall neighbors got years of blight and empty promises.

If this sad tale of the Georgetown Mall sounds familiar. It is. It is an example of history repeating itself.

I recently came across a story about the “groundbreaking” ceremony at the 7.9-acre Lower Town site. By 2007, when Craig Schubiner of the Harbor Cos. had come to Council to ask for his TIF, the Lower Town redevelopment project had been stalled for 18 months. Lower Town is still-undeveloped—a haven for Canadian geese at the corners of Wall Street and Plymouth Road. That property was rezoned as a TIF site in 2003 so that the developer, Strathmore, could give unto Ward 1 a 773,000 square foot “urban lifestyle” mixed use redevelopment of an old Kroger site. The delusions of development came complete with retail, residential and new urbanism chic.

Guess who represented the City of Ann Arbor at the Lower Town groundbreaking ceremony held years before Craig Schubiner of the Harbor Cos approached Council with his plan to “redevelop” the Georgetown Mall through a TIF site plan?

The Grand Duchess of Czoning herself: Czarina Marcia Higgins.

No doubt Jack Eaton will give Marcia Higgins credit for all of her  zoning “accomplishments,” including the loss of two neighborhood shopping centers, her leadership of the A2D2 Committee, and the resulting zoning mess that has Old Fourth Ward residents protesting a large proposed development on a small parcel at 413 East Huron. It remains to be seen whether Ward 4 voters will toss yet another long-term Council member out of office in favor of a candidate who favors funding services, police, fire and zoning regulations that protect the city’s neighborhoods, as well as its downtown from ill-conceived and poorly funded development schemes.

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.