"Please do not leave engines idling. Exhaust damages historic properties." A private property owner has placed this sign in a downtown Ann Arbor alley to discourage delivery drivers from leaving their trucks running. It's advisory only. If an ordinance were enacted by Ann Arbor's city council, the city would post signs alerting drivers to the local law. (Photos by the writer.)

The council got a more detailed briefing on Tuesday, when the city’s environmental coordinator, Matt Naud, and two members of the city’s environmental commission addressed the council. The draft ordinance covers all engines, from heavy-duty trucks to passenger vehicles to generators. It would limit idling to 5 minutes in any given one-hour period. The draft ordinance includes a number of exceptions – for public safety vehicles and for cold weather, for example.

The goal of the ordinance is not to improve overall air quality in Ann Arbor, but rather to improve conditions in very specific localized contexts – school drop-off zones, for example. And the idea is not to create legislation that would then be aggressively enforced. Naud drew an analogy to the city’s ordinance regulating phosphorus-based fertilizers – no citations have ever been issued for ordinance violations, yet the city has achieved a measurable reduction in phosphorus loading in the Huron River since enactment of that ordinance.

Reaction from councilmembers was mixed. Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) seemed more interested in exploring the possibility of changing drivers’ behavior through educational outreach than through enacting an ordinance.

Responding to the presentation and summarizing council commentary, mayor John Hieftje ventured that the council was interested in hearing about an educational program. He described that approach as a wiser course than talking about enforcement. Margie Teall (Ward 4), who until recently served as one of two city council representatives to the environmental commission, was more supportive of at least enacting an ordinance, in order to give the educational effort some “backbone.”

Any councilmember could choose to place the ordinance on a future meeting agenda. The council would then need to vote to give it initial approval, and a public hearing would be held, before a final council vote enacting a new ordinance.

Background on Development of Idling Ordinance

City environmental coordinator Matt Naud led off the presentation by saying that “many moons ago” the city’s environmental commission had made a recommendation to the city council that an ordinance should be developed to address unnecessary idling. The council had given city staff the direction to “go forth and do so.” Naud allowed that it had taken a little while, but the idling ordinance had been developed and was being provided back to the council for its consideration.

Mayor John Hieftje asked for clarification about the scope of the council directive – was it for all vehicles or just heavy trucks? [As expressed in the 2004 resolution, the directive with respect to the ordinance was restricted to heavy-duty trucks. The resolution also directs the identification of ways to reduce idling by other vehicles.] Sabra Briere (Ward 1) remarked that it had been in the works for nearly a decade – the environmental commission’s work pre-dated the 2004 city council resolution.

Naud described how in Ann Arbor, the focus on unnecessary idling had started with a number of complaints that had come to him and other staff – such complaints are received on a regular basis. Residents at the Armory – a condo building located kitty corner from city hall at Fifth Avenue and Ann Street – complained when buses delivering children to the nearby Hands-On Museum would park immediately adjacent to the Armory. In the summertime, the windows would be open in those apartments.

Naud ventured that other examples are well known in the community – from delivery trucks to parents dropping off kids at elementary schools – of vehicles idling when they don’t need to. To address that issue, Naud said, a draft ordinance has been developed.

The draft idling ordinance is included in a 2008 white paper that was developed by the environmental commission. [.pdf of 2008 idling white paper]

Draft Idling Ordinance

Naud summarized the draft ordinance by saying that it recommends covering all internal combustion engines – heavy-duty vehicles (large trucks), light-duty vehicles, passenger vehicles, and also small engines (for example, lawn mowers, or generators at construction sites). Generators at construction sites had also generated a lot of complaints, Naud said, when workers go off to lunch, and leave a construction site with a generator running.

The ordinance limits idling to 5 minutes in any 60-minute period, Naud said. Other communities that regulate idling have used 1 minute, 3, 5 or 10 minutes. That’s a policy choice the council can make, Naud said. A number of exemptions are provided – for public safety vehicles and cold temperatures, for example. [.pdf of draft idling ordinance]

Councilmembers were concerned about the enforcement of the ordinance. Given that one of the localized areas where unnecessary idling has been identified as a problem is school drop-off and pick-up zones, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) wanted to know if the city’s community standards officers could go onto school property to enforce the ordinance. From the city’s staff attorney on hand came the answer – as a general rule, yes.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) was concerned about the list of exceptions, and the list of city staff who are authorized to enforce the ordinance: “That scares the hell out of me!” Naud noted that in the list, the only applicable city staff are indicated where Chapter 71 is underlined. It’s not as long a list as it appears.

Other Idling Legislation

Naud noted that many communities have developed ordinances that address vehicle idling – as a tool to deal with unnecessary idling in their community. The list of communities from the 2008 white paper hasn’t been updated, he said, but he had an updated version, which he could pass around. [.pdf of American Transportation Research Institute list]

The Michigan legislature also has a bill in process that addresses idling, but it’s unclear where that’s going to go, Naud said. [.pdf of HIB 4899] [.pdf of SIB 0819]

Two members of the environmental commission – John Koupal and John German – then addressed the city council. Naud described them as having real expertise in air quality and air monitoring.

When Is Idling Necessary? Advances in Technology

John German described his background in the automotive field – with Chrysler, the Environmental Protection Agency and Honda. He ventured that he might be better known in Europe and China than he is here. For the last three years, he said, he’s worked for the International Council for Clean Transportation – he’s the council’s technology expert and works with government regulators worldwide.

Idling has come up recently as an issue, he said. It has not been an issue before because of the huge benefits that society gets from mobility. Because of those benefits, people have been willing to put up with impacts on safety, congestion, air pollution. There’s a tension between the benefits and the negative impacts, he said, and you always want to minimize the negative impacts. Idling, however, has nothing to do with mobility, he said. The situation being addressed in the ordinance is one where the vehicle is not moving. He stressed that the area of focus does not include when a car is in traffic, stopped with the engine running.

A lot of things have changed, German said. It used to be that vehicles were not all that easy to restart. Gasoline engines would start with a richer fuel mixture, and sometimes it would entail a fair amount of cranking where raw fuel goes to the engine. So it was previously the case that a certain amount of idling was better than shutting the engine off and restarting it. That same principle previously applied to the initial starting of an engine. In the “old days” if you started a cold engine and immediately drove off, you did damage to the engine.

When it comes to diesel engines, German continued, Detroit Diesel made a two-stroke engine for a while that was almost impossible to restart. So when you see diesel truck operators who never shut their engines off – even if it means idling for an hour or two – it’s really a legacy mindset from that one engine. Engines today are very different, he said. Computer controls and the sensors on them allow engines to restart almost instantly, burning no additional fuel. If you shut the engine off for 10-15 seconds you will actually save fuel, he said. The amount you consume during 10-15 seconds of idling is more fuel than it takes to restart the engine.

With respect to the perceived need to let an engine have an “initial idle” when it’s first started, German said that motor oils are better now, even than just 10 years ago. And engine tolerances and assembly are better. On a cold day and cold engine, you can start it up and drive off, with no impact on the durability of the engine. So there are a lot of legacy reasons for why people think they need to idle, but none of them are really valid anymore, he said.

The emission impacts of idling, German explained, include benzene for gasoline engines. If you have a cold engine, on initial start, you can get a fair amount of particulate emissions from a gasoline engine. You also have a certain amount of CO emissions. In general, in a gasoline engine that is properly operating, there’s not a lot of emissions at idle. But there are situations where it can be a problem, such as people waiting to drop off children at schools. Plus, he said, you save money by shutting the engine off.

Naud added to German’s remarks by saying that he’d always thought light-duty vehicles were as clean as they’d ever been. But the worst emissions for a regular passenger car come when it’s under 50 F and it’s idling after the initial start. It adds up to an enormous amount of emissions, Naud said. German noted that what’s really important with today’s vehicles is to get the mechanisms for complete, clean combustion of the fuel engaged quickly. And on a cold day, you do that much faster if you drive off, instead of letting the engine idle.

Health Impacts: Representing Breathers

John Koupal introduced himself as a member of the city’s environmental commission. He told the council that German was his boss for a while at the EPA. He’s also worked for Nissan – so he’s worked on the government and the industry side of things.

Koupal told the council he was not representing the EPA, but rather the “breathers of our community and also the parents of breathers.” His work has been on vehicle regulations, vehicle technology and vehicle control. He’s been looking at emission impacts and health impacts from vehicle emissions. Fundamentally, he said, it’s a health issue. There are a lot of benefits to reducing unnecessary idling. There’s a distinction between saying, “Don’t idle at a traffic light!” – which he said would be ridiculous – and “Don’t idle when you’re dropping your kids off at school or picking them up.”

You’re not only wasting fuel and increasing damage to the engine over time, but you’re putting harmful pollutants into the environment that are damaging to everyone’s lungs, but particularly to young lungs, Koupal said. There are a number of things that come out of tailpipes when vehicles are idling.

It’s easy to look at trucks and see the soot coming out and say, “That’s really bad, I don’t want to breathe that,” Koupal said. But passenger vehicles are also a major part of the problem through their contribution to air toxins. He described a study done by USA Today in December 2008, where they looked at air quality monitoring at 95 different schools. They found elevated levels of benzene, he said, which primarily comes from gasoline car exhaust.

Benzene is a carcinogen, Koupal said, regulated by the EPA. Benzene is being found near schools because you see a lot of cars stacked up dropping off and picking up kids. In addition to benzene, he said, carbon monoxide is generated by vehicles. By one estimate, he said, one minute of exposure to engine exhaust is the same carbon monoxide exposure as smoking three packs of cigarettes. When you don’t see soot coming out of the tailpipe, it’s easy to think, “Oh, cars are much cleaner, it can’t be that unhealthy!” But the stuff that’s being put into our lungs and our kids’ lungs is really a health issue, he said. And that’s what the ordinance is meant to address. He encouraged the councilmembers to read the section of the white paper describing the health impacts.

Impact of Passenger Vehicles

Koupal said that Naud had asked him to look at the impact of passenger vehicles. Some idling ordinances in other communities look at trucks only, he said. The whole analysis is in the white paper that was provided to councilmembers.

The estimate from the Washtenaw County Transportation Study (WATS) is that on an average day in Ann Arbor, there are 440,000 passenger vehicle trips. Koupal said they estimated about 2,000 bus trips and 22,000 heavy truck trips (based on heavy trucks accounting for 5% of all vehicle miles traveled).

Proportion of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from light-duty vehicles, heavy-duty vehicles, and buses – assuming 10% of vehicles idling for 10 minutes per trip. (Image links to .pdf of 2008 white paper.)

We don’t know how much they idle unnecessarily, Koupal said. But he called it a conservative estimate to assume that 10% of trips would include 10 minutes of unnecessary idling. In terms of the amount per day, it’s a not large contribution.

But it’s not a matter of overall ambient air quality, he said. The ordinance is meant to address the localized health impact – direct exposure at schools or for pedestrians downtown.

It’s also a matter of the relative contribution – close to half of overall pollution is attributable to passenger vehicles. Restricting focus to volatile organic compounds (e.g. benzene), passenger cars account for 2/3 of overall emissions. For carbon monoxide, cars account for around 90% of that gas. So it’s important to address passenger cars as well as trucks and buses, he said.

During council deliberations, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) questioned the assumption that 10% of trips including 10 minutes of unnecessary idling – which had been characterized as “conservative.” He said he wouldn’t imagine 10% of his trips include 10 minutes of unnecessary idling time.

Naud responded by saying it was an attempt get a rough idea. Naud felt there’s a lot of idling in winter in driveways, for example. Koupal noted that even if you cut the assumption in half, passenger cars still make a significant relative contribution to air toxins compared to heavy-duty trucks. The question that the 10%, 10-minute assumption tries to address is whether to regulate only heavy-duty engines, he said.

Localized Impact – Outreach to AAPS

At one point, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) summarized the goal of enacting an ordinance as not being about improving overall air quality – it’s more tactical. The idea is to focus on areas where large numbers of vehicles gather. Koupal responded by saying that he did not want to dismiss overall quality, but allowed that improving overall air quality is not the driver for the ordinance – most emissions come in non-idling contexts, he said.

The goal of the proposed idling ordinance is not to improve overall air quality. This map shows that July 1, 2011 was not a good day for air quality in the Ann Arbor area. (Image links to AirNow.gov, which provides an archive of air historical air quality maps, and includes animations depicting the changes in air quality through the day.)

An often-mentioned localized context targeted by the ordinance was school drop-off and pick-up zones. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked Naud how much outreach had been done to the Ann Arbor Public Schools.

Naud reported that initially there’d been a lot of talks, but recently not a lot of conversation. The person he’d spoken with previously had been the district’s executive director of physical properties, Randy Trent. Naud characterized AAPS as supportive – the district had its own policy but found it difficult to enforce. The district had done some of its own research and didn’t think a 3-5 minute timeframe would be a problem. But Naud allowed that no official conversation had taken place in a few years.

Queried by email about the current status of the district’s attitude toward the issue, AAPS director of communications Liz Margolis wrote to The Chronicle that the district had not continued conversations internally since the initial dialogue took place. She indicated that it would likely be referred to the district’s transportation safety committee, chaired by Brad Mellor.

This is a view from south to north of an alley connecting the Klines lot with West Liberty Street. It's part of the Main Street historic district. A sign affixed to the east wall of the alley, about eight feet off the ground, is easily visible from the cab of a large delivery truck. The text of the sign asks drivers not to leave their engines idling – the exhaust damages historic properties. (Image links to larger resolution file.)

At the Jan. 17 working session, Briere pressed for more examples of the localized contexts the ordinance was meant to target – beyond people idling in driveways and school zones. Picking up on the mention during Koupal’s remarks of pedestrians in the downtown area, she asked if that is really an issue?

Naud responded by saying that it can be an issue downtown in loading and unloading zones. If an ordinance were to be enacted, Naud said, the city would need to buy signs. He has a rough estimate of how many zones there are. He noted that he knew of one case where someone had posted their own sign.

By way of additional background, the sign in question is located in an alley that connects West Liberty Street to the Klines Lot, on the downtown’s west side.

Does the sign work? Newcombe Clark, an Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board member, lives in an apartment overlooking the alley. He responded to an email query by saying the “sign works with more veteran drivers. Newer drivers or drivers not on their normal route tend to ignore it.”

Responding to a question from Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), Naud said that it would be very expensive to undertake studies of air quality in the micro-environments where the city is trying to improve conditions.

Education versus Enforcement, Enactment

Responding to questions from councilmembers, Naud said he assumed public education would be a part of the enactment of the ordinance. He alluded to the city’s ordinance regulating phosphorus fertilizer.

By way of background, a key section of the city’s ordinance reads:

6:404. – Regulation of the use and application of manufactured fertilizer containing phosphorus.
(1) Manufactured fertilizer that contains any amount of phosphorus or a compound containing phosphorus, such as phosphate, shall not be applied to general turf within the City, except under 1 or both of the following conditions:
a. Application of manufactured fertilizer to an area where general turf is being established from seed or sod, during the first growing season of the seed or sod.
b. Application of manufactured fertilizer that is exempt under section 6:405 of this chapter.

For a more detailed discussion of phosphorus loading on the Huron River, see “Environmental Indicators: Phosphorus.”

Naud explained that the city was not interested in creating ordinances that are difficult to enforce. However, an ordinance provides a tool, when education and signs don’t work. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that in connection with the city’s experience with the pedestrian crosswalk ordinance, outreach had been stressed before enforcement. But in connection with that ordinance, the council hadn’t really talked about the impact on the city’s budget – how the city would implement the ordinance, and educate people on the meaning of the ordinance.

In that context, Briere wondered what the impact would be on staff and budget line items. If the city enacts this ordinance and chooses to engage in an educational program, it might mean the city can’t do something else. So she wanted more information on the budget impact.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) also wanted to know what the budget impact would be. Lumm expressed the view that education is fine, but enforcement is an entirely different matter. She wondered if an ordinance is an appropriate way to educate people. She asked how many fines had been issued for violations of the city’s phosphorus fertilizer ordinance – not a one, replied Naud.

Lumm ventured that the phosphorus example provided evidence that education is more helpful than penalizing people. Naud countered by saying literally millions of dollars had been spent on education about phosphorus fertilizers. Only when an ordinance was enacted, he said, were measurable reductions achieved in phosphorus loading on the Huron River. The ordinance got people paying attention and that changed the market. Ann Arbor is the only city in the country that has seen measurable reductions in phosphorus, Naud said.

For her part, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who has served on the city council for a decade, said she’d been listening to this discussion as long as she’s served on the council. To her, it’s an educational issue – drivers need to understand the improvements in engine technology that German had described.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) summed it up by saying that part of the educational effort is teaching people that the engine they have in their car now is not the one they grew up with. Higgins ventured that part of the educational impact would be to have “all those little people in your home [children]” chastise you. She said that if there were a child who’d learned in school that you should shut your car off, those children would be sitting in the back seat telling their parents: You should shut the car off!

Toward the end of the session on the idling ordinance, mayor John Hieftje told Naud that the council appeared interested in education. He described education as a wiser course than talking about enforcement. Hieftje wondered if there might be grant programs that could fund educational efforts. Hiefjte said he felt that the council had advanced the conversation already.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) got the last word. She said the city is fortunate to have two experts, like German and Koupal. She pointed to the list of other communities that have ordinances, saying that education is a great thing to get people to reduce idling – school kids and drivers education could help. But she added that an ordinance is a great tool to give a backbone to the concept itself.

Sometimes you need a threat in the back of your mind, Teall said. To pass an ordinance would say that the city thinks it’s important. She drew a comparison to the city’s graffiti ordinance, which was not enforced immediately on enactment. The idea is to work towards compliance, not enforcement. But when the educational efforts are disregarded, there needs to be a way to bring people into line, she concluded.

Next Steps

Based on the council’s deliberations, some kind of funding proposal for the educational component of any ordinance would likely be needed to get the council’s support for enacting an ordinance. Any councilmember could choose to place the ordinance on a future council agenda.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Ann Arbor city council. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Matt Naud, Ann Arbor's environmental coordinator, moderated a panel discussion on resource management – the topic of the first in a series of four sustainability forums, all to be held at the Ann Arbor District Library. (Photos by the writer.)

It was the first of four public forums, and part of a broader sustainability initiative that started informally nearly two years ago, with a joint meeting of the city’s planning, environmental and energy commissions. The idea is to help shape decisions by looking at a triple bottom line: environmental quality, economic vitality, and social equity.

In early 2011, the city received a $95,000 grant from the Home Depot Foundation to fund a formal sustainability project. The project’s main goal is to review the city’s existing plans and organize them into a framework of goals, objectives and indicators that can guide future planning and policy. Other goals include improving access to the city’s plans and to the sustainability components of each plan, and to incorporate the concept of sustainability into city planning and future city plans.

In addition to city staff, this work has been guided by volunteers who serve on four city advisory commissions: Park, planning, energy and environmental. Many of those members attended the Jan. 12 forum, which was held at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library.

The topics of the forums reflect four general themes that have been identified to shape the sustainability framework: Resource management; land use and access; climate and energy; and community. The Jan. 12 panel on resource management was moderated by Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator. Panelists included Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council (and a member of the city’s greenbelt advisory commission); Kerry Gray, the city’s urban forest and natural resource planning coordinator; Jason Tallant of the city’s natural area preservation program; Tom McMurtrie, Ann Arbor’s solid waste coordinator, who oversees the city’s recycling program; and Chris Graham, chair of the city’s environmental commission.

Dick Norton, chair of the University of Michigan urban and regional planning program, also participated by giving an overview of sustainability issues and challenges that local governments face. [The university has its own sustainability initiative, including broad goals announced by president Mary Sue Coleman last fall.]

The Jan. 12 forum also included opportunities for questions and comments from the audience. That commentary covered a wide range of topics, from concerns over Fuller Road Station and potential uses for the Library Lot, to suggestions for improving the city’s recycling and composting programs. Even the issue of Argo Dam was raised. The controversy over whether to remove the dam spiked in 2010, but abated after the city council didn’t vote on the question, thereby making a de facto decision to keep the dam in place.

Naud said he’s often joked that the only sure way to get 100 people to come to a meeting is to say the topic is a dam – but this forum had proven him wrong. The city is interested in hearing from residents, he said: What sustainability issues are important? How would people like to be engaged in these community discussions?

The forum was videotaped by AADL staff and will be posted on the library’s website. Additional background on the Ann Arbor sustainability initiative is on the city’s website. See also Chronicle coverage: “Building a Sustainable Ann Arbor,” and an update on the project given at the November 2011 park advisory commission meeting.

Sustainability & Resource Management: Setting the Stage

Dick Norton, chair of the University of Michigan urban and regional planning program, began the panel presentation by saying that he’d been asked to talk about the big picture concepts related to these themes, and challenges that local governments face in dealing with them. He emphasized that the concept of sustainability encompasses more than just the environment, but that this first forum would focus on environmental issues.

Dick Norton, chair of the University of Michigan urban and regional planning program, and a member of the Huron River Watershed Council executive committee.

Norton gave a brief overview of possible ways to think about attributes of a clean environment, related to topics that would be discussed by panelists. For air and water quality, it’s important that those resources are unpolluted, available in sufficient quantity, and that residents have adequate access. Viable ecosystems are one way to provide clean air and water, he said. Ecosystems provide filtering functions, and are a source of biodiversity – we suffer if we homogenize our environmental base, he said. Ecosystems also provide an aesthetic quality, making places pleasant to live.

Regarding responsible resource use, Norton pointed to the three Rs: Reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycling is good, he said, but reuse is better and reducing is the best approach to responsible resource use. It’s also important to think about the waste stream, and how waste can be used as input for new systems. Composting is one example of that.

Norton then outlined four challenges that local governments face when dealing with these issues. The first is factual uncertainty. The world is complex, and there is a great amount of scientific uncertainty. That gives people ammunition to argue against environmental protection, he said. There’s uncertainty over when a substance becomes pollution, for example. Carbon dioxide or arsenic are common elements – at what amounts do those elements become pollutants? Another uncertainty relates to resource depletion. The environment is a resilient receptor, Norton said – it can take a lot of shock to its system. But at what point does disruption and depletion of resources become too great? That uncertainty makes it difficult for government to act, he said.

Moral disagreements are another challenge for governments, Norton said. Is nature a form of sacred life, or just toilet paper on a stump? Should nature be preserved at the expense of jobs? And who gets to decide? Norton said he tells his students that if you have a collaborative planning process, you’ll encounter a plurality of values. That’s a challenge.

Capacity problems – both legal and financial – are also an issue, Norton said. Local governments are creatures of the state, he said, and can only do what the state enables them to do by law. A lot of local officials are reticent to undertake proactive environmental protection, but they have a lot more capacity to act than they think, he contended.

Regarding fiscal capacity, Norton noted that financial resources are highly strained, and there’s a sentiment that local governments can’t afford this “sustainability stuff.” But Norton argued that energy efficiency, for example, is often less expensive in the long term, though it usually requires a higher upfront investment. He encouraged officials to make decisions based on a longer timeframe.

The final challenge Norton cited is a category he called “unhappy propensities” – localism, parochialism and inertia. Localism is the attitude that “we get to decide,” he said. Parochialism is the belief that if something is happening outside of our borders, we don’t need to worry about it. That works if the problems are downstream, but not so much if it’s an upstream problem headed our way.

Then there’s the challenge of inertia: We’ve always done it this way, so why change? Norton noted that sustainability is a different way of looking at things, and that means change. Ann Arbor is stepping out in front of other communities, Norton said, and is pushing these boundaries. He encouraged a broader perspective, looking at decisions as they fit into a bigger system.

Water Resources: Protecting the Huron River

Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, began by describing the history of HRWC. The nonprofit was founded in 1965 by 17 communities along the Huron River who were concerned about protecting this water resource. They knew they couldn’t just look at it from the perspective of where the river flowed through their individual jurisdictions.

Sometimes people overlook the value of the watershed, Rubin said. In addition to providing drinking water, the river also is an asset for recreation, property values, wildlife habitat and stormwater control. The watershed – including the Huron River and its tributaries – is arguably the region’s largest natural feature.

Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council.

The Huron River is the only river in southeast Michigan that’s a state-designated “natural river.” The designation affords the river special protections, she said, related to development and vegetation. The watershed also is protected by strong local and regional regulations and partnerships, Rubin said, citing the Huron Clinton Metropolitan Authority as one example.

The watershed offers a wealth of recreational and fishing opportunities, Rubin said, and provides a habitat to threatened and endangered wildlife, including the northern madtom, the snuffbox mussel, the prairie fringed orchid, the least shrew, and the massasauga rattlesnake.

But although the Huron River is the cleanest urban river in Michigan, she said, there are also problems. Many sections are classified as “impaired,” based on the inability to meet certain uses, like swimming or fishing, as laid out in the federal Clean Water Act. Two major problems are excess levels of phosphorus and E. coli – a problem that’s especially common in urban areas, Rubin said. Sources for E. coli include animal and human feces, which can be discharged into the river from wastewater or sewer overflow during storms.

Other problems causing the impaired classification relate to sediment, erratic flows, low dissolved oxygen, mercury and PCBs.

Rubin outlined several broader threats to the area’s water resources. The region, sandwiched between the urban areas of Detroit and Lansing, has lost many of its natural areas, she said. Ann Arbor itself has become more urbanized, which has contributed to the loss of habitat, as well as to pollution, warmer temperatures and erratic flows.

Hydrologic changes are another threat. The river has 97 documented dams, Rubin said, and this changes flow patterns tremendously. It leads to the loss of wetlands, causes sedimentation, and alters the way that the ecosystem functions.

Rubin also identified “non-point” source pollution as a threat to the watershed. As rain falls onto roofs, into gutters, and onto roads, it collects pollutants that eventually flow into the river. That’s the No. 1 cause of water pollution in the U.S., she said.

A variety of tools are used to address these issues, Rubin said, including watershed-wide partnerships, data that’s collected and analyzed, advocacy and education. Due to efforts by the watershed council and the University of Michigan, the Huron is one of the best studied rivers in Michigan, she said.

The watershed council pushes people to do more to protect the river, Rubin said. Staff and volunteers work on water-quality monitoring, for example, as well as an adopt-a-stream program, which includes data collection and experiential learning.

There’s value in having “eyes on the river,” Rubin concluded. Among other things, it enables the long-term tracking of trends, and provides a scientific basis to advocate for local and state protection policies.

Following Rubin’s presentation, Matt Naud asked the audience a trivia question: How many cities use the Huron River for their drinking water? Just one – Ann Arbor, he said. That’s why the city cares about its upstream partners.

Solid Waste: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Tom McMurtrie, the city’s solid waste coordinator, began by saying that recycling is one of the most effective things that people can do to reduce their carbon footprint. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has identified Ann Arbor as one of the nation’s top recycling communities, he said. So how did the city get to this point?

From left: Kerry Gray, Ann Arbor's urban forest & natural resource planning coordinator; Jason Tallant of the city's natural area preservation program; and Tom McMurtrie, solid waste coordinator.

In the 1970s, the city brought curbside recycling to every home in the city, McMurtrie said. Back then, recycling required more work – residents had to separate green glass from brown glass, cardboard from newspapers. It reminded him of a favorite New Yorker cartoon: “Recycling in Hell.”

In 1991 the city introduced two-stream recycling. And every multi-family building was added, which doubled participation. The city built a sorting facility at the location of the current drop-off site.

Then in 2010, McMurtrie said, the city moved to another level of recycling: single stream. New plastics were added to the list of recyclables, and new carts with radio-frequency tags were deployed, which allowed single-family homes to record their recycling and be eligible for a rewards program.

In mid-2010, a $3.5 million overhaul was completed to the city’s materials recovery facility – known as the MRF (pronounced “murf”)– at 4150 Platt Road. Overall tonnages of recyclables have tripled, he said, with materials coming from as far away as Toledo and Lansing. Four new hybrid recycling trucks were purchased, which use less fuel.  Four more hybrid trucks will likely be added in 2012, he said.

McMurtrie also pointed to the concepts of “reduce” and “reuse.” His suggestions included shopping for fresh food at the farmers market, where less packaging is used, and using reusable bags whenever possible. About two years ago, the city also added the option of including food waste in its composting program, he noted. Every pound of food or yard waste that’s composted greatly reduces the burden on landfills, he said.

Showing images extracted from a core boring taken at the closed Ann Arbor landfill, McMurtrie noted that most materials in the landfill haven’t decomposed.

McMurtrie concluded by saying that the city is working on an update of its five-year solid waste plan, and he encouraged residents to participate by giving their input. The first meeting will be held on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012 from 4-6 p.m. in the 4th floor conference room in Larcom City Hall, 301 E. Huron. The meeting is open to the public.

Urban Forest Management

Kerry Gray, the city’s urban forest and natural resource planning coordinator, said that until recently, the city didn’t have a comprehensive understanding of its urban forest resources. In 2009, city staff finished an updated tree inventory, cataloging location and maintenance needs, among other things. The city has 42,776 street trees, 6,923 park trees (in mowed areas), and 7,269 potential street planting locations, she said.

Maintenance needs were also inventoried, with 1,642 trees identified as priority removals and 3,424 trees that needed priority pruning. An additional 43,271 trees needed routine pruning, and 1,362 stumps needed to be removed.

In 2010, the city completed an evaluation of its urban tree canopy, Gray reported. The canopy covers nearly 33% of the city. Of that, 46% is located in residential areas, 23.7% is in the city-owned right-of-way, and 22% is in recreational areas, such as parks. Compared to other cities, Ann Arbor’s tree canopy is average, she said.

Chart of tree diversity in Ann Arbor. (Links to larger image)

Gray addressed the issue of tree diversity, and said the city discourages the planting of maple trees, which account for 37% of the public tree population. ”Plant something other than a maple – that’s my take-away message,” she said.

Ann Arbor’s urban forest is a tremendous asset, Gray said. Public trees provide an estimated annual $2.8 million in benefits related to energy, property values, stormwater control, air quality and other benefits.

But in the past, there hasn’t been a management plan for the urban forest, unlike the city’s other assets, Gray said. So in 2010, city staff began developing an asset management plan, with the goal of maintaining the urban forest and maximizing its benefits. The city is doing a lot of public engagement related to this plan, she said – more information is online at a2.gov/urbanforestry.

Matt Naud added a coda to Gray’s presentation, noting that the city lost about 10,000 city street trees that were attacked by the emerald ash borer several years ago. The city spent over $2 million just to remove the trees, he said, and that doesn’t count what it cost residents for tree removal on private property. That’s why tree diversity is important – you don’t know what’s coming next, he said.

Natural Area Preservation

Jason Tallant of the city’s natural area preservation program (NAP) began his comments by showing a slide of the Furstenberg Nature Area – it’s the image he sees when he closes his eyes to think about the topic of sustainability, because it integrates the built environment with the native landscape.

NAP straddles the line between providing services for people, he said, and empowering them to preserve natural features in the city’s parkland and on their own property. He read NAP’s mission statement: “To protect and restore Ann Arbor’s natural areas and foster an environmental ethic among its citizens.”

Ann Arbor resident David Diephuis, center, talks with urban forester Kerry Gray, left, and Jason Tallant of the city's natural area preservation program.

A lot of sustainability practices are based on history, Tallant said, specifically what occurred prior to European settlement. He quoted from the 1836 land survey notes of John M. Gordon, who described the land between Ann Arbor and Dixboro: “Oaks of the circumference of 9-15 feet abound in the forests… White Oak and Burr Oak at intervals of 30-40 feet with an undergrowth 5-6’ high which has the appearance of being annually burnt down as I am informed it is.”

The history of the land is really important when thinking about how to move into the future, Tallant said. He showed a slide of the types of vegetation on land in the Ann Arbor area prior to settlement, and noted that much of the area had been covered by a mixed-oak or oak-hickory forests, with wetlands along the river. It wasn’t a monoculture, he noted, but rather a mixed environment, depending on topography, hydrology, soil type and other factors.

NAP facilitates restoration work in all of the city parks and natural areas, Tallant said. Their work includes conducting controlled burns, taking detailed inventories of the plants and animals within the city, and knowing what’s occurring in the landscape. They also do invasive species control, he said – when you see someone walking along with an orange-colored bag full of garlic mustard, they’re restoring the land so that its biodiversity isn’t diminished. That work helps create a resilient ecosystem, he said.

Outreach, Education

Chris Graham, chair of the city’s environmental commission, said he hoped that the previous speakers had given the audience an idea of the extraordinary things that Ann Arbor is doing related to sustainability. Residents should be very proud, he said.

Graham explained that the original “Ann’s arbor” was a grove of large burr oak trees – the “children” of those early oaks are obvious in the area near St. Andrew’s Church, he said, north of city hall. Underneath those oaks were roughly 300 species of plants that the native Indians burned every year.

Just a few decades ago, there were no regulations related to landmark trees, Graham noted. Controversies in the 1970s and ’80s, when development resulted in the removal of many of those trees, led to changes in Chapter 62 of the city code – what’s known as the natural features ordinance, Graham said. Ann Arbor stepped up courageously, he said, and added a natural features standard that must be met in order to gain site plan approval for any development.

What are natural features? Graham asked. His list includes woodlands, native forest fragments, some wetlands, waterways, and floodplains. Related to native forest fragments, Graham said there’s an idea hatching to develop a stewardship program, similar to the city’s natural area preservation program. The new program would look at native forest fragments in all parts of the city, including the University of Michigan and private land – the fabric of natural features knits itself across the city, he said. The plan would be to do outreach and education, so that property owners would know what’s in their back yards.

The children of trees that existed in the 1820s won’t last without help, Graham said. “Come join us in this endeavor.”

Questions & Comments

During the last portion of the forum, panelists fielded questions and commentary from the audience. This report summarizes the questions and presents them thematically.

Questions & Comments: Recycling

Question: Why doesn’t the city’s recycling program accept No. 3 plastics or biodegradable materials?

Tom McMurtrie noted that No. 3 plastics – made from polyvinyl chloride – are a significant contaminant if mixed with other plastics. The city needed to be responsible, he said, and fortunately there aren’t a lot of No. 3 products in the waste stream.

As for biodegradables, McMurtrie said that’s been a challenging issue. On the surface, it looks like a good idea, he said. However, research shows that biodegradable products break down into very small particulates that aren’t necessarily good for the environment. Most of the particulates are petroleum-based, he said, and end up staying in the environment in that form. The other issue is that if those particulates end up in the recycling stream, they act as contaminants.

Question: Are there plans to eventually accept post-consumer food waste? And how much contamination ends up in the compost stream?

McMurtrie fielded this question too, inviting the speaker to participate in the city’s solid waste plan update. This issue of post-consumer food waste will be explored, although there are some repercussions around that issue, he said. Regarding contamination in the compost stream, that hasn’t been a problem, McMurtrie said. The city switched to a private operator about a year ago, and it’s worked out well, he said. [At its Dec. 6, 2010 meeting, the city council approved contracting with WeCare Organics to operate the city's composting facility.]

Question: If reducing waste is really the goal, how will incentives be built into the program to achieve that goal? There are incentives to recycle, but how can the city encourage reduction?

McMurtrie called this a great question, and said that a simplistic approach might be to use a graduated fee system for trash collection – to charge more for large trash containers, and less for smaller ones. The city is already doing that to some extent, he said. Households that use 96-gallon trash containers pay a fee each year – $38 – while there’s no fee for 64-gallon or 32-gallon containers. Perhaps the city could incentivize more in that area.

Jeanine Palms asked city staff about whether there are plans to give incentives to residents for reducing their waste, not simply for recycling it.

Jeanine Palms, who had asked the original question, wondered if there was any way to charge for the actual amount of waste that a household produced. McMurtrie replied that it’s an option, but that city council has been hesitant to take that approach. It risks becoming a kind of regressive tax on low-income people with large families, he said.

Dick Norton weighed in, saying that the answer depends on what you want to reduce. Palms’ question and McMurtrie’s answer had focused on trash, he said, but there are other things that people consume, like energy, water and land. Urban planners try to design cities to create greater density and transportation systems so that people can live more compactly. The ways that cities are built out impacts how much people consume, he said.

Norton also pointed to research on the impact of monetizing behavior. One study looked at a daycare center, which started charging parents who showed up late to pick up their kids. The intent was to create a disincentive for people, and to eliminate the late pick-ups. But instead, more people started showing up late, Norton said. When a monetary amount was attached to that behavior, people decided it was worth the amount charged. So incentives can result in perverse outcomes, he noted.

We have to start changing our cultural expectations, Norton continued. We have to stop thinking about living the big life, then throwing it away later. And that’s a tougher nut to crack, he said.

Chris Graham pointed to another thing that could be reduced: Turf grass. The amount of energy, pollutants, time and effort that’s spent on maintaining lawns in the city is counterproductive when trying to achieve sustainability, he said.

Laura Rubin addressed the question from the perspective of water resources. She noted that the city has a graduated water rate structure, so that heavier users pay more. The Huron River Watershed Council have been holding focus groups on the issue of water conservation. Because water is plentiful in the Great Lakes region, the issue of saving water isn’t always compelling. It’s better to tie the issue to energy conservation, she said.

When people talk about reasons why they might want to save water, the knee-jerk answer is to save money, Rubin noted. But when asked, no one in the focus groups could report what their water bill is, she said. Rubin concluded by noting that while our culture seems to be driven by money and economics, other motivations are often at play.

Matt Naud pointed out that information on water consumption per household is available on the city’s website. Residents can get a lot of data about their water usage by typing in their address and water bill account number, he said.

Comment: Portland, Oregon, has mandated that residents compost their food waste – that’s a direction that Ann Arbor should be headed. Currently, compost pick-up in Ann Arbor runs from April through December. I still eat fruits and vegetables in the winter – compost pick-up should be year-round.

Matt Naud encouraged the speaker to participate in the city’s solid waste plan update, saying that this type of feedback is exactly the kind of thing the city needs to hear.

Question: I live in an apartment in order to be environmentally sound. When will food compost pick-up be available for multiple family dwellings? I now take my food scraps to friends who live outside the city and raise chickens. So there’s no lack of motivation.

Matt Naud again suggested that this kind of feedback would be useful for the city’s solid waste plan update. Tom McMurtrie said that most multi-family buildings can get compost carts. Requests can be made by calling 99-GREEN.

Questions & Comment: Air Quality – Fuller Road Station

Question: The proposed Fuller Road Station will be a parking structure with almost 1,000 spaces that will bring 1,o00 cars into an area near Fuller Pool and Fuller Park. It seems like this will affect the air quality along the Fuller Road corridor and the Huron River. It’s already a heavily used traffic corridor with a lot of emissions, and it seems like Fuller Road Station would really change the quality of air.

Matt Naud said he wasn’t sure if a formal air-quality study has been completed for the Fuller Road Station project. He offered to contact Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, and find out what’s being done or what the plan is.

Questions & Comment: Water Quality – Argo Dam

Comment: I was really surprised to see the number of dams along the Huron River. Fred Pearce wrote a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry.” He has almost nothing good to say about dams.

Laura Rubin noted that there are 97 documented dams along the Huron River – until recently there were 98, but one was removed in Dexter. Beyond that, there are at least 50 other dams that the Huron River Watershed Council has discovered while taking inventory for a new dam management tool it’s developing. A lot of the dams are connected to aging infrastructure, she noted – used at former wastewater treatment plants, or to generate electricity. Some dams have been retired from their original uses. Some are just piles of rubble.

Dams are very detrimental from an environmental point of view, Rubin said, but socially they can be very successful. They can have recreational value. For the Huron River, flood control isn’t a problem, so dams aren’t generally needed for that purpose, she said. A lot of river systems and social systems have been engineered, she noted, and it’s hard to change that mentality.

Dick Norton said the issue highlights the fact that “green” and “nature” don’t have the same meaning for everyone. Norton, who’s on the executive committee of the Huron River Watershed Council, noted that the council was involved in discussions about whether to remove Argo Dam, and it had been painful. [The watershed council advocated for dam removal.] A lot of people who would typically be on the same side of an environmental issue were on different sides of the Argo Dam issue, because they valued natural resources in different ways, he said. The debate was emblematic of issues that society struggles with, he added. Norton said he sympathizes with local officials, who get hammered by people on various sides of an issue.

Questions & Comment: Public Outreach

Comment: I’ve been a townie since 1967 – and have been to a lot of the concerts that are in the posters hanging around the room. [The concert posters were part of a retrospective organized by the Ann Arbor District Library called "Freeing John Sinclair."] Outreach needs to go much further.

My neighborhood is concerned about the Gelman 1,4 dioxane plume, and about property values. Very few of my neighbors are paying attention to other issues that were mentioned tonight. They don’t want taxes to go up, or property values to do down, and they don’t want to pay more for a trash cart. They need to understand sustainability issues in ways that make sense to them. I’d like to see more outreach.

Matt Naud acknowledged that outreach is a challenge. Funding for this kind of effort is one issue – many people who work on sustainability issues are funded by grants, and “that’s not sustainable,” he said.

Questions & Comment: Land Use, Natural Areas – Library Lot

Question: Will the city have a public conversation about the future use for the top of the new underground parking structure – the Library Lot? A lot of people would like to see a park or green space there. Is the city going to ask for ideas from the public?

Sabra Briere, Ward 1 city councilmember.

Matt Naud asked city councilmember Sabra Briere – the only elected city official who attended the forum – to comment.

Briere noted that early last fall, at the city council’s direction, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority began to explore alternate uses of  the five city-owned parcels in downtown Ann Arbor. Those parcels include the Library Lot on South Fifth Avenue north of William; the former YMCA lot north of William between Fourth and Fifth avenues; the Palio lot at the northeast corner of Main and William; the Kline lot on Ashley north of William; and the bottom floor of the parking structure at Fourth and William.

This is a plan that hasn’t been developed yet, so no one can say what will happen, she said, but part of the plan will be to solicit public input. In the near term, she said, the Library Lot will be a surface parking lot, with trees planted. That’s not the long-term plan, she said. However, Briere added, no one knows how long the near-term will last.

Dick Norton commented that there’s a need to see how to make urban environments more green, but it’s also important to worry about maintaining farmland outside of the city. Development should go into already developed cities – it’s important to think about how to accommodate more people in urban areas so that large tracts of farmland and forest can be preserved outside of cities. It’s a difficult trade-off, he noted, especially because different jurisdictions are involved, and different perspectives. Residents of the city don’t want it to change and grow bigger, while farmers don’t want to be told that they can’t sell their land for development – in many cases, that’s their retirement plan.

But if the city wants to reduce energy and preserve farmland, turning the Library Lot into open space probably isn’t the best use for it. The site should probably be put to a more urban use, Norton said. It’s something to think about.

Matt Naud noted that at one of the future sustainability sessions, the city’s greenbelt program will likely be included. [Laura Rubin of the Huron River Watershed Council is a member of the city's greenbelt advisory commission, which oversees the greenbelt program. The program, funded by a 30-year millage, preserves farmland and open space outside of the city by acquiring property development rights.]

Comment: Some years ago, we dug out the grass on our lawn extension and replanted it with native plants – and we were ticketed by the city. The city needs to straighten out that disconnect.

Jason Tallant of the city’s natural areas preservation program applauded the planting of native plants in the easement. Some residents are putting in rain gardens or bioswales, which is great, he said. But the key point, he said, relates to public safety. If the plantings obstruct the view – of pedestrians using a crosswalk, for example – that’s a problem. That’s why the city enforces height restrictions on plants in the easement, he said. The thing to remember is “the right plant for the right place.” [The height restriction limits vegetation to an average height of 36 inches above the road surface.]

Questions & Comments: Future Forums

Question: It was interesting to hear about what the city is doing, but this forum didn’t match my expectations. I thought you’d have more opportunities for asking questions and engaging in dialogue. As I decide whether to attend future sessions, I wonder if the format will be the same?

This is an experiment, Matt Naud said. The first forum was intended to give people a taste of what the city is doing toward sustainability in different areas – city staff are never quite sure how much information is getting out, he said. The question is whether to hold longer sessions, to give the public more time to ask questions and give commentary, or to hold smaller focus sessions that take a deeper dive into these issues.

Naud said the city staff would like to hear what kind of format would be most effective – feedback forms were provided at the forum. Basically, if people want a certain kind of meeting and will attend it, the city will hold it, he said.

Naud said he’s held public meetings about the Gelman 1,4 dioxane issue and only a dozen people would come. It’s hard to know what issues will draw a turnout. He said he’s often joked that the only sure way to get 100 people to come to a meeting is to say the topic is a dam – but this forum has proven him wrong, he said. The city wants to know how people prefer to give feedback, and how this discussion should move forward, Naud said.

Future Forums

Three more forums in this sustainability series are planned. All forums will be held at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library building, 343 S. Fifth Ave. starting at 7 p.m.

• Feb. 9, 2012: Land Use and Access – including transportation designs, infrastructure, land uses, built environment, and public spaces.
• March 8, 2012: Climate and Energy – including an overview of Ann Arbor’s climate action plan, climate impacts, renewable and alternative energy, energy efficiency and conservation.
• April 12, 2012: Community – including housing, public safety, public art, recreation, outreach, civic engagement, and stewardship of community resources.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public entities like the city of Ann Arbor. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

From left: Greenbelt advisory commissioners Catherine Riseng and Liz Rother. (Photo by the writer.)

The greenbelt advisory commission (GAC) voted unanimously to recommend Brines for the appointment, which would fill the one open position, an at-large seat. Brines owns Brines Farm in Dexter but lives in Ann Arbor’s Fifth Ward – which GAC member Carsten Hohnke represents on city council. Hohnke, who did not attend Wednesday’s meeting, will likely be the councilmember to put forward Brines’ nomination to council.

Brines also works for the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), as does GAC vice chair Catherine Riseng. At Wednesday’s meeting, Riseng told commissioners that she’s been appointed to an advisory committee for the county’s natural areas preservation program, and hopes to serve as a liaison between the two groups.

In other action, the commission voted to write a letter of support for continued funding of a federal program for farmland preservation. As Congress hammers out the 2012 farm bill, funds for the program could be at risk. The city received nearly $2.8 million in federal dollars for greenbelt properties during the last fiscal year.

At Wednesday’s meeting the commission also discussed forming a committee to develop a communications plan for the greenbelt program. The intent is to get the word out about the program’s achievements in a consistent, coordinated way.

One of the program’s ongoing efforts at communication is coming up later this month. On Saturday, Oct. 22, a two-hour bus tour will highlight some of the farmland and other properties that are being preserved by the greenbelt program. The tour runs from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. and starts from the Ann Arbor farmers market. Boxed lunches are included in the $15 fee.

Recommendation to Appoint Brines

Two former commissioners – Jennifer Santi Hall and Gil Omenn – were term-limited earlier this year and left the advisory group at the end of June. Liz Rother was appointed by the city council in June to replace Hall, but Omenn’s at-large position remains unfilled.

Shannon Brines has previously expressed interest in the appointment, and had attended GAC’s August meeting. On Wednesday, the commission discussed recommending him formally for appointment by the city council. For most city commissions, members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council. However, greenbelt commissioners are both nominated and confirmed by the city council.

Brines is an Ann Arbor resident and owner of Brines Farm in Dexter – located outside of the city’s greenbelt boundary. He is active in the local food movement, as a board member for Slow Food Huron Valley, and a steering committee member for the annual HomeGrown Festival and Local Food Summit. In a cover letter applying for the GAC appointment, Brines said he’s also assisting with a farming business incubator project in Ann Arbor Township called the Tilian Farm Development Center. Brines serves on its steering committee.

Brines is also a lecturer at the University of Michigan and manager of the environmental spatial analysis (ESA) lab at UM’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. Since 2007 he has served on the city’s public market advisory commission, which handles issues related to the farmers market. His current term on that commission ends in 2014.

During a brief discussion of Brines’ appointment, Peter Allen praised UM’s recent efforts to use more locally-produced food at its campus dining halls, and noted that Brines is part of the local food network. Dan Ezekiel added that there were several promising announcements recently about UM’s sustainability efforts. [UM president Mary Sue Coleman announced a range of new sustainability goals for the Ann Arbor campus last month.] It puts the university more in step with the city, he said, noting that’s not always the case.

Mike Garfield asked if the commission typically makes recommendations for appointments. No, Ezekiel said, but in this case, Carsten Hohnke specifically asked for it.

Hohnke – a city councilmember representing Ward 5, where Brines lives – also serves on GAC. It’s likely that Hohnke will put forward the nomination for Brines at an upcoming council meeting. Hohnke did not attend Wednesday’s GAC meeting.

Ginny Trocchio, support staff for the greenbelt program, noted that more seats will be opening next year on the commission, so it’s good to continue to look for possible candidates.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to recommend that city council appoint Shannon Brines to the greenbelt advisory commission.

Greenbelt Communications Committee

At the commission’s Sept. 14 meeting, Ginny Trocchio had presented an annual report on the greenbelt program for fiscal 2011, which ended June 30. In discussing the report, Carsten Hohnke had asked about the program’s communications strategy, and indicated that he’d like to identify goals for communicating to the public about the greenbelt program and its successes.

On Wednesday, Trocchio reported that she discussed with GAC’s executive committee – chair Dan Ezekiel and vice chair Catherine Rising – the idea of creating a communications committee to develop a plan for those goals. Committee members could work with the city’s communications staff to design branding for the greenbelt, and a logo. Another possibility is to create an impact report about the greenbelt, to distribute to residents. She passed out some examples of brochures and reports that other land preservation groups have developed.

Ezekiel said that this first effort would be important, because it could serve as a template that would just be tweaked in future years. The program is moving from an acquisition mode to a maintenance and publicity mode, he said, so communications will be increasingly important.

Liz Rother, GAC’s newest commissioner, volunteered to on the committee. Other commissioners indicated that they’d think about it.

Support for Federal Funding

The greenbelt program has been successful in tapping matching funds from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranchland Protection Program, or FRPP. In fiscal 2011, the greenbelt program, which is funded through a 30-year millage, also received nearly $2.8 million in FRPP funding. Those funds are used to offset costs of the purchase of development rights (PDR) – the primary mechanism that the greenbelt program uses to preserve farmland and open space. To date, the greenbelt has protected more than 3,200 acres.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Ginny Trocchio reported that as part of negotiations in Congress over the 2012 federal farm bill, FRPP funding might be at risk. The Michigan Dept. of Agriculture is asking land preservation programs in the state to submit statements of support for the FRPP. Trocchio said she’s working with local landowners to get letters from individuals who are part of the greenbelt, but she hoped that GAC could also submit a letter.

FRPP funds have helped the greenbelt program achieve its goals, Trocchio said, by leveraging local dollars for federal funds. Without that federal support, Ann Arbor wouldn’t have been able to preserve as much land as it has, she said.

If commissioners agreed, Trocchio said she’d draft a letter for review by GAC’s chair or vice chair before submitting it.

Mike Garfield asked if there seemed to be an immediate threat to FRPP funding. Trocchio replied that everything is on the table. Dan Ezekiel felt the threat was imminent. The so-called “super committee” of Congress that’s working on a proposal to address the budget deficit hasn’t released much information about potential cuts, he noted. “I think when they strike, they’re going to strike fast,” he said.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously voted to approve writing a letter of support for the FRPP program.

Misc. Communications

There were several updates from commissioners and staff during Wednesday’s meeting.

Misc. Communications: Greenbelt Boundary Changes

Dan Ezekiel reported that he and Ginny Trocchio had attended a recent Lodi Township board meeting, where township trustees approved a resolution encouraging Ann Arbor city council to expand the greenbelt boundaries. The city council is expected to vote on those changes at its second meeting in November.

GAC had voted to recommend the changes at its Sept. 14 meeting. If approved by the council, the greenbelt boundaries would expand in Lodi and Salem townships. The recommendation also calls for allowing the city to acquire development rights on property adjacent to (but outside of) the greenbelt boundary, if it’s under the same ownership as an inside-the-boundary property that’s being considered for the program.

Ezekiel indicated that Salem Township’s board will also be weighing in with a recommendation to approve the boundary changes.

Trocchio noted that the the changes would require votes by council at two consecutive meetings, but there would still be time to solicit applications from landowners in the newly added areas before February 2012. That’s the deadline to apply for matching funds from the federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program, which helps offset the cost of the city’s greenbelt acquisitions.

Misc. Communications: Riseng on NATAC

Catherine Rising informed her colleagues that she’s been appointed to Washtenaw County’s natural areas technical advisory committee (NATAC). The county board of commissioners approved her appointment at their Oct. 5 meeting.

NATAC advises the county parks & recreation commission regarding its natural areas preservation program. Like the city’s greenbelt program, NAPP is funded by a millage and works to preserve natural areas and farmland throughout the county.

Riseng – an aquatic ecologist researcher at the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment – said she hopes to serve as a liaison between the two advisory groups.

Misc. Communications: Meeting Times

As they had at last month’s meeting, commissioners again discussed possible new dates for their monthly meetings, which now fall on the second Wednesday of each month at 4:30 p.m. For Dan Ezekiel and Catherine Rising – the commission’s chair and vice chair – the current time requires them to leave faculty meetings related to their jobs.

After additional discussion of possible alternative dates, Ezekiel suggested deferring the decision. He noted that two current commissioners – Carsten Hohnke and Laura Rubin – weren’t there to weigh in. Nor was the potential new commissioner, Shannon Brines.

Closed Session

Commissioners spent the last 40 minutes of their meeting in closed session to discuss possible land acquisitions. They did not take any additional action when they emerged from closed session.

Present: Peter Allen, Tom Bloomer, Dan Ezekiel, Mike Garfield, Catherine Riseng, Liz Rother. Also: Ginny Trocchio.

Absent: Carsten Hohnke, Laura Rubin.

Next regular meeting: Wednesday, Nov. 9 at 4:30 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s greenbelt program. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund, which has a contract with the city to manage the greenbelt program. She's showing the greenbelt advisory commission a map of proposed boundary changes. (Photos by the writer.)

The recommendation also calls for allowing the city to acquire development rights on property adjacent to (but outside of) the greenbelt boundary, if it’s under the same ownership as an inside-the-boundary property that’s being considered for the program.

The recommended “bump-outs” in Lodi and Salem townships – in the southwest and northeast corners of the greenbelt, respectively – reflect increased support for the program from those townships. The Salem Township board, for example, recently voted to earmark $200,000 annually for land preservation.

A separate resolution was voted down, with support only from the commission’s chair, Dan Ezekiel. It would have recommended that the council consider properties adjacent to the greenbelt for acquisition, and create a one-mile buffer surrounding the current boundary. Properties within that buffer would have been considered for acquisition with greenbelt funds, but with stricter selection criteria.

Several commissioners were reluctant to increase the boundaries with a mile-wide buffer zone, citing concerns that land in that area is too far from Ann Arbor, and noting that opportunities for land preservation are still available within the existing greenbelt boundaries.

In other business, the commission got a review of the greenbelt program’s finances and activities for the 2011 fiscal year. A 30-year open space and parkland preservation millage, which voters approved in 2003, funds both the greenbelt program as well as land acquisition for parks. During the year, the greenbelt program spent $8.3 million on 12 deals – by far the most transactions since the greenbelt’s inception.

Those 12 deals protect 1,472 acres of farmland from future development. In total, more than 3,200 acres are now part of the greenbelt. To put that into perspective, Ezekiel noted that those 3,200 acres are roughly equivalent to 80 parks the size of Veterans Memorial Park in Ann Arbor.

Three more greenbelt acquisitions were recommended by commissioners at the end of their meeting. The properties were identified only by application number  – the location of the properties and their owners aren’t revealed until the resolutions are voted on by the city council.

Greenbelt Boundary Changes

The greenbelt advisory commission has been looking at possible expansion of boundaries for about a year. At their Nov. 10, 2010 meeting, commissioners voted to form a subcommittee – chaired by Dan Ezekiel – to explore the issue. At the time, a main reason to consider expansion was a opportunity to protect important parcels of land that fall just outside of the existing greenbelt boundary. [.pdf map of existing greenbelt district]

By way of background, in August 2007 the Ann Arbor city council expanded the greenbelt’s boundaries for the first time since the open space and parkland preservation millage was approved by voters in 2003. A summary of the ordinance for that expansion reads as follows:

Ordinance No. 26-07 amends Section 3:62(13) of Chapter 42, Open Space and Parkland Preservation of the City Code enlarging the boundaries of the Greenbelt District one mile to the west in both Webster and Scio Townships, one mile to the south in Pittsfield Township and one mile to the east in Superior Township and incorporates a new map of the boundaries, as revised, as part of Chapter 42.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Ezekiel – who now chairs the commission – introduced the topic by saying it had been kicked around for a while, and he hoped they could reach some closure. He reviewed some history of the program, including the 2007 boundary change. He noted that two people instrumental in drawing the original greenbelt boundaries – Mike Garfield, who still serves on the commission, and former city councilmember Bob Johnson – had also been part of that 2007 boundary committee.

In considering these new boundary changes, Ezekiel said, the focus should be on what would make the best possible greenbelt, and how the city can give taxpayers the kind of program they thought they were voting for back in 2003.

Map of the Ann Arbor greenbelt. The solid green line indicates the current boundary. The dotted green lines in the lower left (Lodi Township) and upper right (Salem Township) indicate proposed "bump outs." The black line indicates a one-mile buffer zone, which was rejected by the greenbelt advisory commission. (Links to larger image.)

Ginny Trocchio, a Conservation Fund staff member who helps administer the greenbelt program, brought out a large map that showed the existing boundary and proposed changes. The committee suggested that the advisory commission consider two separate resolutions.

The first resolution would expand the boundaries in Salem Township and Lodi Township to “square” off the greenbelt boundaries. The Salem Township boundary would be extended 1 mile to the east so the eastern greenbelt boundary would align with Superior Township to the south. The Lodi Township boundary would be extended 1 mile to the west and 1 mile to the south so the boundaries would align with the borders of Scio Township to the north and Pittsfield Township to the east.

That same resolution recommended allowing the program to acquire property that’s outside the greenbelt but adjacent to the boundary, if it is under the same ownership as an inside-the-boundary property that’s being considered for the program. This change addresses the situation of a property owner holding land on both sides of a road – one parcel within the greenbelt boundary, the other outside of it.

The formal resolution, read aloud by Catherine Riseng, states:

To recommend to City Council to expand the Greenbelt boundaries in Lodi Township and Salem Township to be consistent with the adjacent townships’ Greenbelt boundaries. In addition, to recommend to City Council to amend the Chapter 42 Ordinance to allow properties adjacent to the Greenbelt boundary, that are under the same ownership as property located immediately adjacent within the Greenbelt boundary to be considered for acquisition.

Riseng noted that now, unlike in the past, officials in Lodi and Salem townships are supportive of the greenbelt. Salem Township has committed $200,000 annually from the township’s landfill revenue for the next five years for land preservation. There are some wonderful properties in those townships, she noted, and the land is still reasonably close to the city.

Ezekiel described the second part of the resolution, which addresses the issue of adjacency, as “a technical patch on a problem that we found.” A situation had arisen in which a landowner wanted his entire farm protected, but two parcels were separated by a road – one side was within the greenbelt, the other wasn’t. So the city was constrained from acquiring development rights on the entire farm, even though the landowner was willing.

Peter Allen asked why there were two resolutions. Ezekiel said the resolutions were presented in a hierarchy of “no-brainerness” – the first one proposed changes that the committee felt were easier to swallow.

Carsten Hohnke said the logic behind the initial resolution was strong. While some people might say there’s still plenty of land to be preserved within the existing boundary, he could see the point about a hierarchy – the logic of this first resolution is easy to understand.

Ezekiel noted that because of boundary changes in 2007, the greenbelt was able to acquire development rights to the Nixon farm in Webster Township, which had been targeted for development as a mobile home park. It’s one of the most significant acquisitions the program has made, he said. Another example is the Meyer Preserve in Superior Township, which before 2007 had fallen outside of the greenbelt boundary.

Hohnke countered that it will always be true that opportunities will exist outside the boundary, regardless of where they draw the line. That said, he acknowledged that the Nixon farm anchored one of the greenbelt’s largest successes – establishing a 1,000-acre block of protected land in Webster Township.

Riseng said that Hohnke was right, but she noted that the current proposed changes are also being driven by the opportunity for additional financial support from partnering with the townships. That’s in addition to the fact that there are some beautiful properties in Lodi and Salem townships that fall outside of the existing boundary, she added.

Ezekiel reported that earlier this month, several commissioners – himself, Riseng, Liz Rother and Tom Bloomer – had taken a drive with Trocchio to the bump-out in Lodi Township, and walked through some of the properties there that might be considered for the greenbelt. They were only about five miles from the Meijer store on Ann Arbor-Saline Road, he noted – it’s still close to the city, even though it felt like they were far out in the country. He said his rule of thumb is that the property should be within an easy hour bike ride of the city. Voters wanted to preserve land that was relatively close to Ann Arbor, he said.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the first resolution, bumping out the greenbelt boundaries in Lodi and Salem townships, and addressing the issue of adjacent properties. It will be forwarded to the city council for consideration.

Riseng then read the second resolution, noting that there would likely be some concerns about it:

To recommend to City Council to amend the Chapter 42 Ordinance to allow properties adjacent to the Greenbelt boundary to be considered for acquisition, and to recommend to City Council to amend Chapter 42 Ordinance to create a 1 mile buffer surrounding the Greenbelt boundary to allow properties that meet stricter criteria located within the buffer to be considered for acquisition.

Riseng said that there were properties within the proposed buffer that the Huron River Watershed Council had identified as high-priority bioreserves for the Huron River.

Peter Allen asked what might qualify as “stricter criteria.” Riseng replied that the committee didn’t believe they should be the ones to set the criteria, but that examples might include a requirement for higher financial contributions from the landowner, or a stipulation that buffer properties that have a higher value in some way, like a bioreserve.

Allen noted that on the plus side, this kind of expansion could allow the program to acquire land that was less expensive, because it was located farther from Ann Arbor. On the other hand, it could dilute attention to the core greenbelt area.

Bloomer said he didn’t think the distance they were talking about would make much difference in land value. ”We’re still well within the development pressure area,” he said. When asked by Allen if the farmland was better quality in the proposed buffer zone, Bloomer replied that he didn’t know if it was better – there was just more of it.

Dan Ezekiel, chair of the greenbelt advisory commission. He is also a science teacher at Forsythe Middle School.

Trocchio said she hadn’t observed a substantial price difference in the proposed buffer area. A bigger factor is whether the land is located within the Ann Arbor Public Schools district – that tends to increase value.

Hohnke said that for the changes proposed in this second resolution, he didn’t think the benefits outweighed the costs. There was a lot of clarity in the first proposal, he said. There are partners in Lodi and Salem townships who are willing to participate, and it fixes the parcel-cut-in-half problem.

But this second set of changes would set up a second tier of scoring criteria, Hohnke said, and that becomes harder to communicate. It starts diluting the program’s efforts, he added, especially now that there are additional areas in Lodi and Salem that have rich opportunities. He said he was not inclined to support this resolution.

Bloomer said he agreed with Hohnke’s assessment.

Allen asked whether it would be possible to return to this proposal in the future, if they didn’t recommend it now. It’s possible, Ezekiel said, but he wasn’t sure how enthusiastic the city council would be if the commission “came back to the well” for a third time.

Riseng asked Trocchio whether there’s a lot of opportunity for land preservation within the existing greenbelt boundaries. “Absolutely,” Trocchio replied, especially with the inclusion of Lodi and Salem townships.

Outcome: On a 1-5 vote, the resolution – recommending a buffer zone and allowing the program to consider properties adjacent to the greenbelt for acquisition – failed, with support only from Dan Ezekiel. Mike Garfield and Laura Rubin were absent.

At the end of the meeting during his communications to commissioners, Ezekiel reported that a message had been received from Lodi Township’s treasurer, indicating that the township board had talked about the boundary change at their meeting earlier this month. The consensus was that township officials are not opposed the the change, he said. The township had “jumped the gun” a bit, Ezekiel said, noting the changes still need to be approved by the city council. But he reported that he had responded to the message by saying he hoped the township would actually support the greenbelt program, not simply “not oppose” it.

Ezekiel said he planned to contact officials in Lodi and Salem, to report on the commission’s recommendation. He hopes to secure letters of support from the townships by the time the resolution is on the council’s agenda.

Greenbelt Program Finances

A member of the city’s finance staff typically comes to the commission’s meeting once a year to give an annual financial report on the greenbelt program. On Wednesday, Kelli Martin, financial manager for the city’s community services unit, reviewed the program’s unaudited financials for FY 2011, from July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. The 30-year open space and parkland preservation millage, which voters approved in 2003, funds both the greenbelt program as well as land acquisition for parks. Martin’s presentation covered the overall millage-funded budget, while highlighting parts that related to the greenbelt. [.pdf file of complete finance report]

Revenues from the millage were $2.164 million in fiscal 2011, down slightly from $2.262 million the previous year. [Two-thirds of the millage proceeds fund the greenbelt program, with the remaining third allotted to parks. The parks funding is overseen by the city's park advisory commission.]

In addition, the greenbelt program brought in nearly $2.8 million in federal grants during the year – the highest amount it has ever received. Those grants are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranchland Protection Program, or FRPP. Investment income was $233,614 for the year, down from $492,576 in FY 2010.

In total, $5.185 million in revenues came in for the combined greenbelt and parks acquisitions programs in FY 2011.

On the expense side, items included $1.2 million in debt service on the $20 million bond that the city issued in FY 2006. Those bond proceeds have now been spent, Martin noted.

The major expenses for the greenbelt program – $8.3 million during the year – related to land preservation projects. Martin noted that over the life of the greenbelt program to date, $24.288 million has been spent directly on land preservation projects.

In FY 2011, $120,338 was paid to The Conservation Fund, which manages the greenbelt and park acquisition programs. Total administrative costs – including items like information technology (IT) and bond insurance – were $161,195. Administrative expenses accounted for 1.5% of the $10.672 million in total expenditures.

The fund balance stands at $10.3 million, down from $15.79 million a year ago. Of that, the greenbelt program’s share is $6.06 million, Martin said. An endowment to fund future maintenance and enforcement of greenbelt deals stands at $442,274.

Greenbelt Program Finances: Commissioner Comments, Questions

Peter Allen asked for more detail about the investment income. Martin reported that the lower amount in FY 2011 reflects a lower fund balance – there was less money to invest, she said. She offered to ask Matt Horning, the city’s treasurer, to attend a future meeting with more detail about the city’s investment strategy, if commissioners were interested.

Allen also asked for background on the FRPP grants. Ginny Trocchio, a Conservation Fund staff member who oversees the greenbelt program, reported that the grants helped fund the purchase of development rights for several properties. Those include the Braun, Gould, Whitney, Honke and Maulbetsch properties. It was by far the greenbelt program’s busiest year, she said.

Commissioner Tom Bloomer, who also owns Bur Oaks Farm in Webster Township.

Commenting on the visual presentation, Allen suggested showing the data in chart format, so that it would be easier for people to see the trend lines. Specifically, he suggested charting the major revenue and expense trends, which he noted would show clearly how much activity is handled with relatively low administrative costs.

Carsten Hohnke, who also represents Ward 5 on city council, said one operations metric that might be useful to the public would be to identify the cost per protected acre. That information would reflect that the greenbelt program is taking advantage of the relatively lower property values to buy development rights, he noted.

Tom Bloomer asked for an explanation of how the endowment amount is calculated for each property. Trocchio said there’s a formula that’s used to project future expenses that might be incurred. Those might include legal expenses and costs for monitoring compliance with the land deals.

Hohnke noted that the city hasn’t had to incur any legal expenses so far, but there has been several years of monitoring. He wondered if there’d been any useful data that could be used to refine or validate the estimated monitoring costs. Trocchio indicated that the staff could revisit those calculations.

Dan Ezekiel observed that literature about land conservancies stresses the importance of setting aside funds for monitoring compliance and protecting conservation easements. Setting up an endowment for that purpose is one of the most important things a land preservation program can do, he said, and it’s a point of pride that Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program has done that since its inception.

Greenbelt Annual Report

Ginny Trocchio presented an activity report for fiscal year 2011, which ended June 30. [.pdf of draft activity report for FY 2011]

The greenbelt program completed 12 transactions during the year, protecting 1,472 acres of farmland, Trocchio reported. Deals included nearly 680 acres of farmland along Whitmore Lake Road, which serves as a gateway into Ann Arbor.

Examples of FY 2011 greenbelt deals include:

• $1 million for the 146-acre Whitney farm in Webster Township, plus a $23,867 endowment.
• $2.5 million for the 286-acre Braun farm in Ann Arbor Township, plus a $25,000 endowment.
• $438,936 for the 51-acre Gould property, also in Ann Arbor Township, plus a $24,000 endowment.
• $683,459 for the 96-acre Honke property in Northfield Township, plus a $23,867 endowment.
• $734,067 for the 128-acre Maulbetsch property in Northfield Township, plus a $23,867 endowment.

Since the greenbelt program began, 3,214 acres have been preserved, Trocchio said.

Trocchio also reviewed the program’s goals for the past year, noting that most were exceeded:

• Goal: Apply for grant funds on two properties. Result: One grant was applied for, but a second application was withdrawn by the property owner.
• Goal: Close on four properties. Result: The city closed on 12 properties.
• Goal: Complete a 1,000-acre block of preserved land in Webster Township. Result: 1,200 acres are now protected there by the greenbelt program.
• Goal: Complete the first greenbelt bus tour. Result: A bus tour was held in July 2010. Additional tours will be organized for the current fiscal year.
• Goal: Obtain at least 20% matching funds on all transactions. Result: This was achieved. The overall average was 52% matching funds for completed transactions.

Three goals are identified for the current fiscal year: (1) Apply for grant funds on two properties; (2) close on three properties; and (3) obtain at least 20% matching funds on all transactions.

In noting the lower goal of closing on three properties, Trocchio said she didn’t think they could keep up with the pace of this year’s acquisitions.

Greenbelt Annual Report: Commissioner Discussion

Carsten Hohnke asked Trocchio to review the program’s communications strategy. He said he didn’t see any goals about this for the current year, and wondered what the staff planned to do, other than the bus tour and general media coverage.

Trocchio said she could certainly add communications goals to the list. She noted that she and Dan Ezekiel, the commission’s chair, had an information booth in the Homegrown Festival earlier this month. She also had a display about Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program at a conference hosted by the Heart of the Lakes Center for Land Conservation Policy earlier this year. More of that kind of outreach is planned, she said.

Commissioner Catherine Riseng, an aquatic ecologist and researcher at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment.

In reviewing the year’s overall activities, Ezekiel said it was a banner year for the program, and the excellence of the staff has really shined through. Ann Arbor taxpayers have protected 3,200 acres, he noted. To put it in perspective, he said, it’s the equivalent of 80 parks the size of Veterans Memorial Park in Ann Arbor, or about 5 square miles. “And we’re nowhere near finished,” he said.

It’s a credit to Ann Arbor voters and taxpayers that they’re willing to tax themselves in order to preserve land near the periphery of the city, he said. No one anticipated the crash in land values and the lull in development because of the economy, and the program has been able to take advantage of that.

Ezekiel observed that the greenbelt program is under the radar – if the program does its job, nothing changes, because the land is preserved as it is. The program’s charge is to protect some of the best land in the area forever. If and when development pressure returns, that’s when people will notice what’s been done, he said. Many years from now, he added, people will be happy with what the city has been able to do during this time.

Peter Allen observed that they haven’t created a greenbelt as much as they’ve protected the foodshed. He wondered how many farms were represented in the 3,200 protected acres. Ezekiel said that of the 27 total properties, 24 of them are farms and three are open space. Allen then queried Tom Bloomer – who also owns Bur Oaks Farm in Webster Township, which is part of the greenbelt program – to comment on the economic value of goods produced on these farms.

Bloomer was hesitant to speculate, saying the answer would be complicated. He did venture that in general, the economic value of farming is consistently underestimated.

Outcome: The commission voted unanimously to accept the activity report for fiscal 2011.

Greenbelt Acquisitions

At the end of their meeting, commissioners entered into a closed session to discuss potential land acquisitions.

Land acquisition is one of the few exceptions under the Open Meetings Act that allow for discussion out of public view. When they emerged after about 40 minutes in closed session, commissioners voted on three resolutions.

Properties are identified only by application number at this stage. The location of the properties and their owners aren’t revealed until the resolutions are voted on by the city council.

• Recommending approval of the purchase of development rights for the parcel in application 2011-04, if at least 20% matching funds are received.
• Recommending approval of the purchase of development rights for the parcel in application 2011-01, if at least 20% matching funds are received.
• Recommending that the city partner with the nonprofit Legacy Land Conservancy on the purchase of development rights for the parcel in application 2005-24, and contribute up to $15,000 dollars toward that purchase.

Outcome: In separate votes, commissioners unanimously approved resolutions for all three greenbelt acquisitions. The recommendations will be considered by the city council for approval.

Misc. Communications

There were several opportunities for updates from commissioners and staff.

Misc. Communications: New Meeting Time?

Dan Ezekiel told commissioners that he hoped they could alter their meeting time in order to accommodate a potential new commissioner. [Shannon Brines, who attended last month's greenbelt advisory commission, is expected to be nominated for the position vacated this summer by Gil Omenn, who was term limited. For most city commissions, members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council. However, greenbelt commissioners are both nominated and confirmed by the city council.]

Commissioners will complete a survey about possible meeting times. Any changes wouldn’t take effect until 2012. Currently, the commission meets on the second Wednesday of each month at 4:30 p.m. Other commissioners indicated that the current meeting time is difficult for them, too.

Misc. Communications: Executive Committee

Ezekiel expressed interest in expanding the commission’s executive committee. Now, it consists of the chair (Ezekiel), vice chair (Catherine Riseng), city council representative (Carsten Hohnke) and staff (Ginny Trocchio). Ezekiel noted that in the coming years there will be considerable turnover on the commission, as members are term limited.

Bringing another member into the executive committee would help future leadership get up to speed, Ezekiel said, and help keep the group’s institutional memory strong. He said it was an open invitation to commissioners, and that they should contact Trocchio if they’re interested.

Misc. Communications: Bus Tour

Trocchio reported that she’d like to schedule another greenbelt bus tour sometime this fall. She’s looking at Saturdays when there’s not a University of Michigan home football game: Oct. 8, 15 or Nov. 5. The tour would last about two hours and include stops to see land that’s been protected by the greenbelt program.

Present: Peter Allen, Tom Bloomer, Dan Ezekiel, Carsten Hohnke, Catherine Riseng, Liz Rother. Also: Ginny Trocchio.

Absent: Mike Garfield, Laura Rubin.

Next regular meeting: Wednesday, Oct. 12 at 4:30 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s greenbelt program. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Ann Arbor park planner Amy Kuras, right, shows maps of Riverside Park to neighbors who came to an information meeting on Tuesday evening at the nearby Island Park. Sitting next to her is Eliana Moya-Raggio, a resident of Wall Street. The smaller map is an overlay showing how a lot of the park, which is located next to the Huron River, is in a floodplain. (Photos by the writer.)

Park planner Amy Kuras described the park’s entrance off of Wall Street as “falling apart,” and talked through some of the proposed changes of the project. The two main changes involve relocating a parking lot and repaving Canal Street, a narrow lane that runs parallel to the park and leads to the back of the University of Michigan’s new Kellogg Eye Center building.

The project is one of many slated for fiscal year 2012 and outlined in the recently updated Parks & Recreation Open Space (PROS) plan.

Residents generally expressed support for the project, and gave suggestions for improvements. During the hour-long discussion they also raised other concerns not directly tied to the park, including increased traffic along Wall Street, additional parking lots planned by UM, and noise from delivery trucks traveling along Canal Street to Kellogg Eye Center. Similar concerns had been raised by some of these residents nearly three years ago, at a December 2008 meeting with university officials regarding planned parking along Wall Street.

Tuesday’s conversation also touched on topics that affect the surrounding area, including the need for better connections to the Border-to-Border trail system, and the status of changes planned at the Argo headrace. The city had expected to receive a state permit earlier in the day so that work could begin on the headrace, but Kuras reported that by late afternoon, it still hadn’t arrived. [Responding to a follow-up email from The Chronicle, parks & rec manager Colin Smith reported that the permit has now been received, and work on the headrace will begin on Thursday, Aug. 25. For details of that work, see Chronicle coverage: "Action on Argo Headrace, Trails Near Fuller" ]

The Riverside changes are among several slated for the city’s current fiscal year, paid for out of the parks millage and outlined in the PROS plan. Another forum is planned for Tuesday, Aug. 30 at Cobblestone Farm to talk about proposed improvements at Buhr Park.

Riverside Park: Proposed Changes

Riverside is one of the city’s oldest parks, acquired in the early 1900s and located in the Lower Town district, fronting a section of the Huron River. It includes a playground area, softball diamond and a field used by several rugby teams.

Map showing Riverside Park. (Links to Google Map)

Nearly all of the 15-acre park is located in the river’s floodplain, and flooding is frequent. Eliana Moya-Raggio, who lives next to the park at the Riverside Park Place condominiums, reported that it’s been worse over the past two years because of heavier-than-usual rains.

In particular, the gravel parking lot near the park’s entrance is often covered with water, Kuras noted. On Tuesday evening, large puddles were still visible from recent rains.

The PROs plan listed the Riverside parking lot as an infrastructure need, and parks staff included it in the action plan for fiscal year 2012, which began July 1, 2011. The plan called for: (1) repaving the path and drive entry to create a separation between the path and road; (2) paving the parking lot; and (3) creating a rain garden.

However, rather than keeping the lot where it’s currently located, Kuras suggested moving it to slightly higher ground at the opposite end of Canal Street, on the west side of the softball diamond. That would likely mean a rain garden wouldn’t be necessary. Feedback from residents indicated support for that move, and a preference for making the new lot parallel to Canal Street – rather than an elongated lot jutting into the park. [.pdf of map showing proposed changes]

Kuras noted that the existing lot is used by UM employees, and she’s exploring the possibility of negotiating for the university to lease the new lot during the day. Currently, there’s no lease arrangement for the Riverside parking lot, though UM does lease other lots from the city – most notably a surface lot at Fuller Road, where the proposed Fuller Road Station parking structure is planned.

Stephanie Munz recommended keeping a few spaces at the location of the current lot, for fly fishermen who use that nearby portion of the Huron River. It would be less of a walk for them, she noted. Kuras said another option would be to put a couple of spots along Canal Street.

In addition to moving and paving the parking lot, other proposed changes at the park include:

• Removing and/or relocating the lights at the current parking lot.
• Moving the park’s sign to the opposite (east) side of the entry drive, for better visibility.
• Adding curbs along the entrance and possibly extending the curbs along Canal Street. There are no curbs now on Canal or the entrance.
• Requesting that trees at the entrance be trimmed. Residents have planted a garden on the west side of the entrance, but overgrown trees and bushes have prevented it from getting sufficient light.

Kuras added the caveat that the amount of work will depend on costs and available funding. She said there’s a $175,000 budget for Riverside improvements, funded by city’s park maintenance and capital improvements millage. Canal Street repaving will be paid for by the city’s street millage.

A redbud grove at Riverside Park. The plaque in the foreground notes that the grove was planted in memory of World War I veterans from Ann Arbor, paid for by the Elizabeth R. Dean Fund and other contributions. On the left is a path running through the park next to the Huron River.

Other Issues: Argo, Trails

At Tuesday’s meeting, several questions were raised that were unrelated to the Riverside improvement project. In response to one question, Kuras clarified that a temporary canoe launch at the park will be removed as soon as work on the Argo headrace is completed, likely by the 2012 season.

Currently, because of a state-mandated reconstruction of the headrace, there’s no access between the city’s Argo canoe livery and the downstream section of the Huron River. A temporary launch at Riverside allows canoeists to put in to the river below Argo dam. The Argo livery is available for canoeing and kayaking on Argo Pond and upstream. [The park advisory commission was updated on the Argo headrace work at their Aug. 16 meeting. See Chronicle coverage: "Action on Argo Headrace, Trails Near Fuller" ]

At one point in the meeting, Kuras expressed dismay that whenever she had visited Riverside Park, she rarely saw it being used by people other than teams that played on the fields. Residents assured her that the park was well-used by walkers, joggers and bicyclists. UM employees also use it during the day on breaks and during their lunch hours, Kuras was told. And many people are just passing through the park, on their way to other destinations.

That final observation led to a discussion about how the Riverside Park path fits in to a broader trail network throughout the city’s park system.

By way of background, access to Riverside Park is addressed in the city’s master plan, in a section on the Lower Town district:

Access to Riverside Park: Riverside Park was acquired by the City of Ann Arbor in the late 1920’s. Public pedestrian and bicycle access points to Riverside Park should be provided from at least the following places: a) the future pedestrian bridge over the Huron River near Broadway Bridge connecting to Broadway Park [that pedestrian bridge is now completed], b) from the Huron River Trail under Broadway Bridge, c) through the Detroit Edison site where Canal Street turns toward Wall Street, d) from the University District at two access points, and e) from the Huron River Trail near Wall Street. Access points should be clearly identified, well landscaped, properly lighted, and designed to encourage pedestrian access to the Riverside Park. Canoe/kayak access should be provided along the Huron River near the Detroit Edison Building to encourage marine access to Lower Town.

Kuras pointed out that when Maiden Lane bridge was built, the design included room for future trails to go under the bridge. It has never been fully developed, however, and the walkway is overgrown with plants and is a hangout for the homeless, she said.

The entire intersection at Maiden Lane, Fuller Road and East Medical Center drive is a “conundrum,” Kuras said, and parks staff are exploring ways to improve the area for pedestrians and bicyclists.

Tim Mortimer said he hoped to see a pedestrian bridge over the Huron River at the east side of Riverside Park, similar to the one at Broadway. When he noted that in the past there was a bridge crossing the river at Wall Street, Stephanie Munz pulled out her iPhone and produced a picture of it – there’s a photo of the old Wall Street bridge hanging at the Potbelly sandwich shop in downtown Ann Arbor, and she’d taken a picture of that photo.

Other Projects: Buhr Park

Changes are also in the works at Buhr Park, and a public input meeting for that project will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 30 at 7 p.m. at the Cobblestone Farm barn, 2751 Packard Road. A needs assessment listed in the PROS plan calls for several changes to Buhr Park, including:

• Provide inter-connecting pathway system to provide pedestrian access from the surrounding neighborhoods.
• Light the tennis courts.
• Construct new picnic pavilion with added picnic opportunities.
• Provide new wayfinding signage.
• Continue implementation of the goals and elements as identified in the Buhr Park stormwater management plan.
• Renovate entry road and parking lots.

For fiscal year 2012, a total of $250,000 is earmarked for the Buhr Park entry drive and pool/arena parking lot, and the Riverside Park entry drive and parking lot. [.pdf of FY 2011-2015 parks project list from the updated PROS plan]

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of local government and civic affairs, including the Ann Arbor parks. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

Pittsfield Township planner Paul Montagno helps Anissa Bowden of the Ann Arbor city clerk's staff set up his presentation for the greenbelt advisory commission at its Aug. 10, 2011 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Township planner Paul Montagno briefed commissioners on Pittsfield Township’s updated master plan, which the township board approved late last month. Specifically, he focused on the section concerning open space, natural features and agricultural land use. He described efforts to balance denser development along corridors like State Road and Michigan Avenue while protecting more rural land, especially in the central and southern parts of the township.

Pittsfield Township has partnered with Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program on just one property – the Hilton farm, near the township’s large Pittsfield Preserve nature area. However, Montagno indicated that township officials are open to future land preservation deals with the greenbelt.

Also during the Aug. 10 meeting, Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund, which manages Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program, reported that the previous day, the Salem Township board had approved an ordinance that created a purchase of development rights (PDR) program, and allocated $200,000 annually for land preservation. GAC is considering possible expansion of the greenbelt boundaries, including an expansion in Salem Township. The boundary proposal was discussed at the commission’s July meeting, and will be on the agenda again in September.

The commission took one formal vote on Wednesday, after emerging from a closed session to discuss land acquisition. Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution recommending that city council move forward with application 2010-09 if at least 50% matching funds are secured. Properties are identified only by application number at this stage, and the resolution did not indicate what type of land acquisition this would entail. Typically, greenbelt monies are spent on the purchase of development rights (PDR).

There is currently one vacancy on GAC. Shannon Brines, owner of Brines Farm and a member of the city’s public market advisory commission, attended Wednesday’s meeting and expressed interest in applying for the seat. Nominations to GAC are made and approved by the city council.

Pittsfield Township Land Preservation

Paul Montagno, a planner for Pittsfield Township, gave a brief presentation about land preservation efforts in the township, primarily as reflected in its recently updated 2010 master plan. Township supervisor Mandy Grewal had been scheduled to attend, but could not because of an unexpected conflict, he said.

The township’s final plan was adopted by the township board at its July 27, 2011 meeting. Among several components is a category for open space, natural features and agriculture. [.pdf of master plan section on open space, natural features and agriculture]

The township has its feet in many worlds, Montagno said. It’s near urban areas like Ann Arbor to the north, Saline to the southwest, and Ypsilanti to the east. But in many areas, Pittsfield Township is a rural community, and shares borders with other rural townships. There are a variety of land uses in the township – areas of density along corridors like State Road, Carpenter Road and Michigan Avenue, as well as rural areas that should be preserved. “Ultimately, what we’re looking at is a balance,” he said.

A "heat map" of development in Pittsfield Township – red and orange areas indicate denser commercial and residential development. Areas in the center and southern parts of the township include more open space, natural features and agricultural land. (Links to larger image)

The goal is to alleviate pressure on rural areas by focusing development along existing commercial and residential corridors – areas that already have water/sewer access and transportation, or that would be logical extensions of those existing corridors. The inverse of that is to look at agricultural and natural areas – primarily in the center and southern parts of the township – and find ways to preserve that land.

For each of the master plan’s key concepts, the plan identifies specific goals and then more detailed objectives to achieve those goals, Montagna said. Now that the plan has been officially adopted, he added, “the real work begins.”

Montagna reviewed the goals for the key concept of open space, natural features and agriculture:

• Encourage the protection of agricultural lands that are most productive and suited to agricultural operations, and implement policies that provide additional protection.
• Create connections between natural areas and protect significant viewsheds.
• Promote natural resources protection on a local and regional level in a planned and strategic manner.
• Ensure that development decisions support, protect and enhance the natural environments and ecosystems in the township.

As part of the plan’s implementation, updating the township’s zoning ordinances is a major project. The township will be looking for ways to support and promote agriculture, Montagno said. That might include things like allowing for a greater number of farm stands or activities like corn mazes. While not directly agricultural land use, he said, these uses would help make farming more economically viable.

Montagno concluded his presentation by noting that the final version of the master plan would be posted on the township’s website later in the week.

Pittsfield Township: Commissioner Discussion

Peter Allen asked if the Ann Arbor greenbelt program had partnered with Pittsfield on any land preservation efforts. Just one, Montagno said – the Hilton farm, about 90 acres at the corner of Morgan and Platt roads, near the township’s large Pittsfield Preserve. Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund, which manages the greenbelt program, confirmed that there are no other potential deals in the pipeline.

Mike Garfield asked whether the township envisioned having funds for a purchase of development rights (PDR) program in the future. Montagno said the township would look at possible tools, like the PDR, to pursue land preservation. They had no specific plans now, he said, but those are among the implementation goals of the township’s master plan.

Garfield followed up by asking whether the township would consider making a financial contribution to a deal, if a project were presented. Montagno indicated that budgets are tight, but said he didn’t want to say no. As a policy, the township would work with programs like the greenbelt or Legacy Land Conservancy on land preservation projects, he said.

Saying he’d heard rumors that some people in the township want to see currently protected property open for development, Garfield also wanted to know if there was any truth to that. Montagno said he wasn’t aware of that, although during the process of updating the master plan, he said township officials felt pressure to change some areas that were zoned for lower density uses – some people wanted areas rezoned for more commercial uses.

Garfield praised the township for its land preservation work over the last 10-20 years, especially in the center of the township. The township has created a remarkable buffer between the rural areas and the cities of Ann Arbor, Saline and Ypsilanti, he said. The greenbelt commissioners had been happy to partner on the Hilton property, Garfield said, and if there are other opportunities, GAC would like to participate.

Montagno responded by saying that a major part of the master plan had been an emphasis on connectivity. While Garfield had characterized it as a buffer, the township doesn’t want to create barriers, Montagno said. So township officials are also looking for ways to connect residents to the preserved land – things like low-intensity roads through some of the preserves and gravel parking lots with bioswales for stormwater management. Providing a certain amount of access will enhance the popularity of land preservation, he said.

Tom Bloomer, a GAC member and Webster Township farmer, noted that one of the objectives listed under the goal of protecting agricultural lands is to balance the rights of farmers and adjacent residential property owners. What did that mean? Bloomer asked.

Montagno said the township wants to make sure that property uses next to agricultural lands are appropriate. There can be tensions between residential developments and farms, he said. A farm’s dust, odors and hours of operation might conflict with residents of a housing development, for example, and whenever possible there should be a natural buffer between the two types of land uses.

With no further questions from commissioners, Montagno wrapped up by saying the township definitely wanted to partner with Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program in the future.

Misc. Communications

Ginny Trocchio told commissioners that Shannon Brines, an Ann Arbor resident and owner of Brines Farm in Dexter, had come to the meeting after expressing interest in a vacancy that’s available on the commission.

Shannon Brines, owner of Brines Farm, is interested in the vacancy on the greenbelt advisory commission, and attended its Aug. 10 meeting.

Brines came to the podium and spoke briefly, telling commissioners that he kept up with their work by reading minutes as well as Ann Arbor Chronicle meeting reports. The commission’s work is important, he said: “You have followers.”

Brines said he started working at the University of Michigan in 1998 – he is manager of the environmental spatial analysis (ESA) lab at the School of Natural Resources and Environment. He does a lot of work with GIS mapping, helping researchers and students on land use and other issues. Brines also is a lecturer at UM, and said there might be some occasions when his courses conflicted with GAC meetings.

Brines started his farm in 2004. It’s located outside the greenbelt boundary, he noted, and also would fall outside of the proposed expansion of its boundaries. Though he sells produce year-round at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Brines said he’s best known for his hoop house produce, selling greens from November through May.

This was not mentioned at the meeting, but since 2007 Brines also has served on the city’s public market advisory commission, which handles issues related to the farmers market. His current term on that commission ends in 2014.

Peter Allen encouraged Brines to apply for a position on GAC, saying his point of view and background would be a valuable addition.

Two vacancies opened on GAC earlier this year. Liz Rother was appointed by the city council in June to replace term-limited Jennifer Santi Hall. The remaining vacancy is an at-large slot, held by former GAC member Gil Omenn. For most city commissions, members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the council. However, greenbelt commissioners are both nominated and confirmed by the city council.

Misc. Communications: Salem Township

Trocchio reported that on Tuesday, the Salem Township board had approved an ordinance that created a purchase of development rights (PDR) program, and allocated $200,000 annually for land preservation. She said she looked forward to partnering with the township in the future.

GAC is considering possible expansion of the greenbelt boundaries, including an expansion in Salem Township. The proposal was discussed at the commission’s July meeting, and will be on the agenda again in September. Any changes recommended by GAC would need approval by the Ann Arbor city council before taking effect. Since the Open Space and Parkland Preservation millage was approved by voters in 2003, the council has expanded the boundaries once, in August 2007, by bumping out the boundary by a mile.

Closed Session: Land Acquisition

Commissioners voted to enter into closed session to discuss land acquisitions, and emerged after about 40 minutes. Land acquisition is one of the few exceptions under the Open Meetings Act that allow for discussion out of public view. Commissioners then voted on a resolution to recommend that the city council move forward with application 2010-09 if at least 50% matching funds are secured. The resolution did not indicate what type of land acquisition this would entail. Typically, greenbelt monies are spent on the purchase of development rights (PDR).

Properties are identified only by application number at this stage. The location of the properties and their owners aren’t revealed until the resolutions are voted on by the city council.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved the land acquisition recommendation.

Present: Peter Allen, Tom Bloomer, Mike Garfield, Catherine Riseng, Liz Rother, Laura Rubin. Also: Ginny Trocchio.

Absent: Dan Ezekiel, Carsten Hohnke.

Next regular meeting: Wednesday, Sept. 14 at 4:30 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s greenbelt program. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Liz Rother attended her first meeting as an Ann Arbor greenbelt advisory commissioner on July 13. Her appointment was approved by the city council in June – she replaced Jennifer S. Hall, whose term had expired and who was term limited.

A subcommittee of GAC has been evaluating a potential greenbelt boundary change since November 2010. Options included expanding in Salem Township and Lodi Township to “square” off the boundaries, and allowing properties adjacent to the greenbelt to be eligible for the program. Another option would be to create a one-mile “buffer” around the existing boundaries, and include properties within that buffer if they met stricter criteria. Whatever recommendation GAC eventually makes would require Ann Arbor city council approval.

Also at July’s meeting, commissioners got an update on Scio Township’s land preservation efforts from Barry Lonik (a consultant who works with the township) and Bruce Manny (a member of the township’s land preservation commission). Lonik noted that the township’s 10-year, half-mill land preservation millage expires in 2014. The land preservation commission would like to get a renewal on the November 2012 ballot, to coincide with higher voter turnout for the presidential election.

It was the first meeting for GAC’s newest commissioner, Liz Rother, who was appointed by the city council in June to replace term-limited Jennifer Santi Hall. Another position, held by former GAC member Gil Omenn, remains vacant. Dan Ezekiel – who was elected GAC’s chair at the meeting – urged anyone who’s interested in serving on the commission to contact their city councilmember.

During his communications to fellow commissioners, Ezekiel noted the recent death of “Grandpa” Don Botsford, calling him a real pioneer and champion of land preservation in this area. Botsford was man who lived in poverty rather than sell his land to developers, Ezekiel said. He eventually sold part of his property’s development rights to Scio Township, in partnership with Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program – it’s now known as the Botsford Recreational Preserve, near M-14 and Miller Road. Botsford introduced thousands of people to the natural environment, Ezekiel said, so it was fitting to note his contribution and his passing.

Scio Township Land Preservation

Barry Lonik and Bruce Manny of the Scio Township land preservation commission had been invited to give GAC members an update on land preservation efforts in the township. They were asked specifically to update GAC about how Scio Township is prioritizing its acquisitions to preserve land. Lonik – of Treemore Ecology and Land Services – is a consultant for Scio Township, working on land preservation issues.

The prioritizing process took about a year and was just recently completed, Lonik said. The commission had reviewed applications they’d previously received but hadn’t acted on. Since Scio Township voters had approved a land preservation millage in 2004, the township had completed nine projects, he said, but there are about two dozen others that the commission hasn’t acted on. These applications hadn’t received high scores on the scoring system that the township uses to rate potential acquisitions. For some of them, Scio Township had approached potential funding partners, he said, but no one had been interested, and the applications languished.

In taking a closer look, Lonik said he realized that the applications weren’t the greatest properties. It seemed the land preservation program wasn’t attracting higher priority properties in the township. So at that point, the commission started a process of prioritizing. Lonik referenced a May 2010 memo he’d written to the township land preservation commission, recommending critical factors to consider in the three land categories allowed by the land preservation ordinance: farmland, open space, and potential park properties. From the memo:

Farmland critical factors

• proximity to protected land: properties in the vicinity of protected agricultural properties, including areas in adjacent townships.
• viable agricultural operation: properties where a functional agricultural business is located or is integral to a business.
• blocks of farmland: located along the northern, southern and western boundaries, including areas in adjacent townships.
• scenic: visible from publicly accessible areas (roads primarily).
• soils: highest quality soils for agricultural production.
• size: properties large enough to utilize modern farm equipment.

Open space critical factors

• Huron River Watershed Council bioreserve area: high or medium priority.
• water quality protection: containing a seasonal or perennial stream, or wetlands that provide stream buffers and/or serve as headwater areas.
• corridors and blocks: properties that could add to existing blocks or provide links for wildlife and/or people.
• public access: properties that could be purchased and made available to the public.
• scenic: visible from publicly accessible areas (roads primarily).
• parcel size: properties of a sufficient size that important features could be protected.
• development potential: properties on which structures could be built, which would diminish open space values.

Park critical factors

• size: a regional park large enough to accommodate developed recreational activities.
• location: a more central location to provide easy access to the greatest number of residents.
• visibility: to provide a feeling of safety and for easy way-finding.
• topographic features: a sizable number of acres must be fairly flat to develop sports fields.
• surrounding land use: proximity to higher density residential was a positive, while either entirely rural surroundings or scattered large lot residential was not.
• features diversity: having features such as forest fragments, streams and ponds as well as large open space for active recreation.
• access: properties along major corridors were given a higher rating than property along gravel raods and along minor, less traveled roadways.

Lonik said he’s tromped around Scio Township for about 15 years, and has a good sense for where higher priority properties are located. He developed the list of critical factors – outlined in the May 2010 memo – by using his own knowledge of the area, the ordinance requirements, and the scoring system that’s been used by the township land preservation commission.

Barry Lonik, a consultant for Scio Township, talks about land preservation priorities for the township.

He said he then listed each property that had any natural resource value in the township, and assigned each property a high, medium or low priority in each category of land (open space, farmland or parkland). Lonik said he didn’t want to publicize the list of landlowners at this point, even though the township isn’t actively trying to acquire these properties.

The township also hired Carlisle/Wortman Associates, an Ann Arbor-based planning firm, to develop a series of maps, which show where the priority properties are located in relation to: (1) bioreserve areas in the township; and (2) the township’s master plan designations. Another map shows the high priority properties in relation to areas that are already protected – either by the township’s programs or others. One map shows only the high priority properties in each category, and another map indicates the location of all priority properties – high, medium and low.

Some applications are already in hand for properties that have been identified as high priority, Lonik said. In addition, the township has sent letters and applications to landowners of all high, medium and low priority properties, asking them to apply to the land preservation program. Finally, Lonik said he’ll be personally contacting the owners of all land designated as high priority, to encourage them to apply. Often, people are reluctant to apply to a program blindly, without first establishing a relationship and getting more information, Lonik said.

He thanked GAC members for the partnerships the greenbelt program has already done with Scio Township, and said he looked forward to many more. Lonik noted that the township’s 10-year, half-mill land preservation millage expires in 2014. The land preservation commission would like to get a renewal on the November 2012 ballot, to coincide with higher voter turnout for the presidential election. It’s likely a renewal will pass, Lonik said, given the history of support for land preservation by township residents. The original millage passed with 76% of the vote, and the more recent countywide millage for the Washtenaw County natural areas preservation program was supported by 63% of voters in Scio Township.

Scio Township Land Preservation: Commissioner Discussion

In response to a question from Catherine Riseng, Lonik said that of all the high priority properties, only four are for possible parks – most are open space parcels. The township doesn’t own any park properties, Lonik noted, but that’s of interest in the future, assuming that township officials can find land with the right qualities – located with easy access to the township’s population centers, with a mix of open land for fields as well as natural areas. Not many properties meet those criteria, Lonik noted. Of the roughly 100 priority properties he’s identified through this process, about two-thirds of them are open space, as opposed to farmland or potential parkland.

In response to a query from Dan Ezekiel, Lonik told commissioners that about 8,400 acres of farmland have been preserved countywide in the past 15 years or so. That amount includes land protected by a variety of programs, including township preservation millages, Ann Arbor’s greenbelt program, Washtenaw County parks & recreation, the county’s natural areas preservation program, state easements and land conservancies. By next year, that number will likely push past 10,000 acres, Lonik said. It’s really extraordinary, he said, considering that the first deal occurred just recently, in 1997, when the Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy protected property at the corner of Prospect and Geddes roads. He noted that Manny’s farm on Parker Road in Scio Township was among the first farms to be preserved.

Ezekiel observed that the greenbelt program had participated in protecting 3,200 acres. He then asked whether Lonik knew if Saginaw Forest – a property in Scio Township that’s owned by the University of Michigan – is protected through a conservation easement. It’s not, Lonik said, nor have township officials approached the university about that possibility. In Michigan, state law requires that public entities like UM dispose of their assets at market value, he said – UM couldn’t just donate the property. However, it’s possible that the township or city could buy a conservation easement, if they wanted to, he said.

Ezekiel thanked Lonik for coming, and said it would be great if other townships within the greenbelt did this kind of work. GAC was open to suggestions for partnering on properties in Scio Township, he said, adding that the city was very proud of the properties it had already partnered on with the township: the Fox Science Preserve, Scio Woods Preserve, and the Botsford Recreational Preserve.

Ezekiel also wished Lonik a happy 50th birthday.

Greenbelt Boundaries

At GAC’s November 2010 meeting, commissioners formed a subcommittee to explore possible changes to the existing boundary of the greenbelt district. The intent would be to give the program greater flexibility in protecting desirable properties that fall just outside the current boundaries. [.pdf map of existing greenbelt district] Any changes recommended by GAC would need approval by the Ann Arbor city council before taking effect. Since the Open Space and Parkland Preservation millage passed in 2003, the council has expanded the boundaries once, in August 2007, by bumping out the boundary by a mile.

In introducing the topic at GAC’s July 13 meeting, Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund – which has a contract with the city to manage the greenbelt program – explained the rationale for the subcommittee’s recommendations. She said the subcommittee looked at maps of larger properties inside and outside of the greenbelt, reviewing what’s already been protected and identifying other potential greenbelt property that’s in the Huron River watershed and that contains other natural features.

Trocchio reviewed the subcommittee’s two recommended options:

Option 1:

1. Expand the boundaries in Salem Township and Lodi Township to “square” off the boundaries. The Salem Township boundary would be extended 1 mile to the east so the eastern Greenbelt boundary would be consistent with Superior Township. The Lodi Township boundary would be extended 1 mile to the west and 1 mile to the south so the boundaries would be consistent with Scio Township and Pittsfield Township.

2) Additionally, to allow one of the following: a) Greenbelt’s participation on any property that is adjacent to the Greenbelt boundary, or b) Greenbelt’s participation on any property that is adjacent to the Greenbelt boundary, or extends a contiguous block of contiguous protected land, that is within the Greenbelt boundary.

Option 2:

1) Expand the boundaries in Lodi Township and Salem Township as described above.

2) Create a 1-mile buffer area surrounding the Greenbelt boundary to allow the Greenbelt’s participation, for exceptional properties or if stricter criteria are met. The specific criteria are still to be determined, but examples included: a) if there is a local partner willing to take the lead; b) if it extends a block of protected properties that originates in the Greenbelt boundary; c) significant for protection of Huron River Watershed; d) higher percentage of matching funds; e) or limiting the percentage of funds expended in “buffer” area.

Lodi Township has expressed more of a willingness to work with the greenbelt program in recent years, Trocchio said, even though that township doesn’t have a dedicated millage for land preservation. There are also some great, large farmland parcels in Lodi, she noted. Salem Township is also considering more financial contributions to land preservation, possibly by earmarking $200,000 annually from the township’s landfill revenue for that purpose, she said.

Greenbelt Expansion: Commissioner Discussion

Peter Allen began by saying he didn’t see any downside to Option 2 – were there any? Trocchio said the one possible objection would be that an expanded boundary would push protected land farther away from the city.

Map of Ann Arbor greenbelt with potential expanded boundaries. The solid green line indicates the current boundary. The dotted green lines in the lower left (Lodi Township) and upper right (Salem Township) indicate proposed "bump outs." The black line indicates a potential one-mile buffer zone. (Links to larger image.)

Dan Ezekiel, who chaired the boundary subcommittee, noted that distance from the city was a matter of degree. Everything within the expanded boundary would still be within an easy hour bike ride from downtown Ann Arbor – that’s his rule of thumb. He also noted the greenbelt program had vastly more partnership opportunities now than when the program started with the original boundaries. For example, Washtenaw County’s natural areas preservation program (NAPP) was modified last year to allow the county to spend up to 25% of its millage on the purchase of development rights for farmland. [See Chronicle coverage of a presentation on the county's efforts at GAC's March 2011 meeting.]

Laura Rubin asked whether there’s been a decrease in applications to the program from landowners within the existing greenbelt boundaries. No, Trocchio said – the program completed an unprecedented number of deals last year.

In that case, Rubin said, one of the cons to expanding the boundaries might be that there are still opportunities for protecting land closer to the city, closer to Ann Arbor taxpayers who are paying for the program.

Mike Garfield said that one issue is interpreting the intent of Ann Arbor voters who approved the millage. The original boundaries were set more by art than science, he noted. Garfield said he didn’t have a strong opinion about it, but that it made sense to take advantage of opportunities – when valuable properties become available, it’s beneficial to be able to act, as long as the properties aren’t too far from the city. He pointed out that the last time GAC considered expansion, he resisted expanding the boundaries in Lodi Township, because township officials hadn’t been receptive to the program. That’s now changed, he said. It looks like there are a lot of properties worth protecting in the expanded areas. While the program needs boundaries, it hurts not to be able to protect land that’s close, but not within the borders.

Allen suggested supporting Option 2. Tom Bloomer then weighed in, saying he wasn’t necessarily opposed to the expansion, but he wanted more time to think about it. He was particularly interested in flexibility for properties adjacent to the greenbelt, owned by the same person. Bloomer, a Webster Township farmer, was less certain about a general geographic expansion of the boundaries – he said he didn’t want to just keep expanding, because it runs the risk of diluting the program’s efforts.

Ezekiel pointed to one example of a property owner holding land on both sides of a road – one parcel was within the greenbelt boundary, the other was not. The greenbelt program was able to secure matching federal funds for the portion within the greenbelt, but not for the adjacent land that fell outside the boundary.

Carsten Hohnke, a commissioner who also represents Ward 5 on Ann Arbor city council, supported Bloomer’s desire to postpone action. He cited concerns he’s heard expressed by people who feel there’s still land that can be preserved within the existing boundaries, closer to the city. Though it isn’t explicit in the ordinance, he said, there was a good community discussion before the 2003 vote about where the boundaries would be, and that needs to be taken into account. He thought the notion of loosening language to allow for protecting properties contiguous to the greenbelt made sense, in that it would eliminate the “across the street” issue.

Ezekiel clarified that whatever recommendation is made by GAC would be forwarded to the Ann Arbor city council for approval. He noted that when the original greenbelt boundaries were set, GAC almost immediately found the boundaries too constraining. He wished that Lodi and Salem townships had been included in the 2007 expansion, but the thinking at that time was to expand into areas where townships were willing to partner.

Allen asked Trocchio to estimate how much land within the existing greenbelt boundary has already been protected – 50%? 80%? Trocchio guessed it was probably closer to 20%. Garfield noted that the intent was never to get conservation easements on 100% of farmland and open space. The original idea was to stop sprawl, he said, to help farmers stay on their land and make their operations viable. If there are large blocks of protected farmland, he said, the thought was that it would have a ripple effect that would prevent development.

Bloomer observed that identifying a percentage is a moving target, because the program is voluntary. Land is only “available” for protection if the landowner is interested in being part of the greenbelt program. In the greenbelt’s early days, almost no land was available, he said, because people weren’t familiar with the program. It would be hard to measure a percentage, even now.

Trocchio offered to organize a field trip for commissioners, taking them out to see the proposed expansion and the land that might be available if the boundaries are changed. Ezekiel supported that idea, and said he sensed that commissioners were reluctant to proceed at this meeting. Hohnke then made a motion to postpone, which was seconded by Allen.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to postpone a vote on the greenbelt boundary expansion until GAC’s next meeting. A meeting is scheduled for Aug. 10, but might be cancelled if a quorum can’t be achieved.

Election of Officers, Seeking Another Member

Dan Ezekiel, who has served as GAC’s vice chair for the past year, chaired the July meeting and was nominated as chair. Catherine Riseng was nominated vice chair, after Laura Rubin confirmed that Riseng was willing to do it. Riseng said that although she had concerns about the time commitment, she’d be willing to give it a try – unless any of the other commissioners were “gung-ho” to do it. (Apparently they were not.)

Outcome: Dan Ezekiel and Catherine Riseng were unanimously elected chair and vice chair, respectively.

Ezekiel welcomed Liz Rother to GAC, replacing Jennifer Santi Hall, whose term expired on June 30 and who was prevented by the ordinance that established the greenbelt program from seeking additional terms. Both she and Gil Omenn, who also stepped down from GAC as of June 30, had been term limited. Ezekiel noted that Rother was an accomplished gardener and beekeeper, and had been attending GAC meetings for several months before her appointment was approved by city council at their June 20 meeting.

Three seats on GAC are open to the general public, Ezekiel said – he and Rother now fill two of those seats. But a third general public seat – previously held by Omenn – remains open. The commission’s work is nowhere near completion, he said, and it’s important work. The term runs for three years, and members can serve two consecutive terms. Anyone who’s interested in volunteering can contact their Ann Arbor city councilmember. Unlike most other city commissions, in which members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by council, greenbelt commissioners are both nominated and confirmed by the city council.

Communications: Remembering Don Botsford

During the July 13 meeting, Dan Ezekiel noted the recent death of “Grandpa” Don Botsford, calling him a real pioneer and champion of land preservation in this area.

By way of additional background, Botsford, 82, died on June 27. He was known for generations for the Ann Arbor Gymkana, which closed in 1986, and for his enthusiasm for spaceball – a game combining elements of basketball and volleyball, played on a trampoline. The Chronicle visited Botsford two years ago: “Back to the Future with Spaceball.” The article quotes Washtenaw County prosecuting attorney Brian Mackie, who played competitive spaceball under Botsford’s tutelage in the 1960s.

Botsford was man who lived in poverty rather than sell his land to developers, Ezekiel said. He eventually sold development rights to part of his property in Scio Township – it’s now known as the Botsford Recreational Preserve, near M-14 and Miller Road. Botsford introduced thousands of people to the natural environment, Ezekiel said, so it was fitting to note his contribution and his passing.

Communications: More Notes from the Chair

Ezekiel also noted that GAC’s June 16 open house at the Braun farm went well – certificates were presented to several landowners who had participated in the greenbelt program. The Braun farm in Ann Arbor Township is one of the greenbelt’s more recent protected properties.

Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund, which manages Ann Arbor's greenbelt program, talks with Dan Ezekiel, who was elected chair of the greenbelt advisory commission at the July 13 meeting.

Ezekiel commended the work of Lisa Gottlieb and Jeff McCabe, who recently completed their “20 hoops in 20 days” effort to build hoop houses at local farms – including some located within the greenbelt. Ezekiel reminded commissioners that the couple, who also run the Friday breakfast salon Selma Cafe, had made a presentation about the hoop house project at GAC’s November 2010 meeting. It was a tremendous achievement, Ezekiel said.

Later in the meeting, Ezekiel noted that Bob Sutherland, owner of Cherry Republic – which recently opened a downtown Ann Arbor story at the corner of Main and Liberty – wants to contribute $2,500 toward land preservation in the greenbelt. The city welcomes these kinds of contributions from private businesses, he said.

Communications: Staff Report

Ginny Trocchio reported that the greenbelt program had received $312,620 from the federal Farm and Ranchland Protection Program (FRPP) to help pay for the purchase of development rights on the 110-acre Lindemann-Weidmayer farm in Lodi Township. That deal will be going to the city council soon, she said. [The council approved the deal at its July 18, 2011 meeting.]

Trocchio also told commissioners that Gov. Rick Snyder has signed the farmland preservation bill (Public Act 79). The law provides incentives to farmers to pay back defaulted Public Act 116 agreements. Farmers who enroll in Michigan’s Farmland and Open Space Protection Program (PA 116) get tax incentives. However, if they quit the program they must repay the state – if not, the state puts a lien against their property, Trocchio explained. Until now, there hasn’t been a way for the state to collect those funds. Payments would be added to the state’s Agriculture Preservation Fund, which is used to make grants to local communities for the purchase of farmland conservation easements.

Proposed Greenbelt Acquisitions

Near the end of the meeting, commissioners went into a closed session to discuss land acquisitions. They emerged after about 45 minutes and voted on two resolutions:

1. a resolution recommending that the city council approve spending up to $121,365 in partnership with Webster Township for the purchase of development rights (PDR) on a property that’s in close proximity to other greenbelt parcels.
2. a resolution recommending that the city council approve spending up to $49,500 in partnership with Ann Arbor Township for the purchase of development rights (PDR) on a property in that township.

The properties were identified only by application number – 2011-03 and 2011-02, respectively. The location of the properties and their owners aren’t revealed until the resolutions are voted on by the city council.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved the two land acquisition recommendations.

Present: Peter Allen, Tom Bloomer, Dan Ezekiel, Mike Garfield, Carsten Hohnke, Catherine Riseng, Liz Rother, Laura Rubin. Also: Ginny Trocchio.

Next regular meeting: Wednesday, Aug. 10 at 4:30 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s greenbelt program. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

From left: Peter Allen, Julie Grand, Ella and Jennifer Santi Hall, Dan Ezekiel. Grand is chair of the park advisory commission. Allen, Hall and Ezekiel are greenbelt advisory commissioners. Jennifer Hall has served as GAC chair, but her term is ending on the commission – this was her last meeting. Ella Hall also had attended the first GAC meeting with her mother seven years ago – she was three weeks old at the time. (Photo by the writer.)

They covered many of the same topics that they’d discussed at their first joint meeting in April 2010 – funding issues, land preservation and acquisition strategies, as well as specific projects like the Allen Creek greenway and support for small farms.

Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund, which has a contract to manage the greenbelt and park land acquisition programs, gave commissioners an overview of finances, projects and goals. Both programs are funded by a 30-year, 0.5 mill tax for land acquisition, called the open space and parkland preservation millage, which Ann Arbor voters approved in 2003. Two-thirds of the millage proceeds are used for the greenbelt program, and one-third is allotted to park land acquisition. To get money upfront for land acquisition, the city took out a $20 million bond in fiscal 2006 that’s being paid back with revenue from the millage. Current combined fund balances for the two programs total nearly $9 million.

Trocchio also highlighted an upcoming event to celebrate the greenbelt program. On Thursday, June 16, an open house will be hosted at the Braun farm – one of the program’s protected properties in Ann Arbor Township. The event is free and open to the public, and starts at 5:30 p.m. – parking is available at 4175 Whitmore Lake Road.

At the end of the June 7 meeting, commissioners congratulated two GAC members for their service – it was the final meeting for Gil Omenn and Jennifer Santi Hall, who has served as chair. Their terms expire June 30, and it’s not clear when appointments to replace them will be made.

Greenbelt Program: Overview

Trocchio began with an update on the greenbelt program. To date, $17.86 million has been spent on the program – she noted that three greenbelt deals have closed in the last few weeks. [The deals are for the Lee and Lori Maulbetsch property in Northfield Township, and two properties – in Northfield Township and Salem Township – owned by Nancy and Rose Geiger.] Subtracting $769,580 that’s been earmarked for pending projects, that leaves an unallocated fund balance of $4,826,465.

Trocchio reviewed the greenbelt program’s strategic plan, which provides a framework for reviewing applications. [.pdf of strategic plan] Key elements include:

• Targeting properties that: (1) help form 1,000-acre blocks of protected land; (2) work with partners whenever possible; (3) protect land along the Huron River; and (4) support local foods.
• Leveraging the city’s greenbelt funds by partnering with other governments or land preservation groups. Trocchio noted that the city is part of Preserve Washtenaw, a consortium of land preservation groups that meets monthly.
• Focusing on the purchase of development rights (PDR). The millage funds can only be used for acquisition, not land management or development. By buying development rights, the city doesn’t own the land itself, but prevents it from being developed.
• Partnering with Washtenaw County. The city has done three deals with the county, via the Washtenaw County natural areas preservation program (NAPP): the Fox Science Preserve, Meyer Preserve and Scio Woods Preserve. It’s a good partnership, Trocchio said, because the county takes on the role of managing the land, and provides public access to the properties. The greenbelt program contributes funds for acquisition.

In outlining the program’s accomplishments, Trocchio said that they’ve achieved a 1,000-acre block of protected land in two locations: Webster and Ann Arbor townships. Each deal has included contributions from partners or grant funding – amounting to at least 20% of the PDR price. And while so far, none of the greenbelt properties are along the Huron River, land protected under the program does include tributaries of the river, she said.

Since the program started, 27 transactions have been completed and 3,200 acres have protected under the program, Trocchio reported.

Pointing to the fact that about 3,200 acres of land is now protected, Dan Ezekiel, GAC’s vice chair, put the size of these greenbelt properties into perspective, noting that not everyone has an intuitive feel for the amount of acreage being described. One square mile equals 640 acres, he said, so 3,200 acres would be five square miles. Burns Park and Veterans Memorial Park are each about 40 acres – the greenbelt has protected the equivalent of about 80 such places, he said.

The city has spent $17.86 million, but leveraged an additional $18.59 million, Trocchio reported – including $9.38 million in grant funding, $4.1 million in township funds, $2.76 million from Washtenaw County and $2.2 million in landowner contributions.

Now is a great time for farmland preservation, Trocchio said, because land values have dropped, allowing the city to stretch its greenbelt dollars. Because of the economic downturn, there’s also less competition from developers vying for the same properties, which contributes to lower land costs.

There are also increased partnership opportunities with Washtenaw County, Trocchio said. Last year, the county board of commissioners amended its NAPP ordinance to include a stronger emphasis on agricultural land – now, up to 25% of the NAPP millage can be spent on the purchase of development rights on agricultural properties. [For more background, see Chronicle coverage: "Greenbelt, County Look to Partner on Farms"]

In addition, several townships also have land preservation millages, including Webster, Scio and Ann Arbor townships. While much of that funding is already used, it’s likely the township millages be on the ballot for renewal in 2012 or 2013, Trocchio said.

Greenbelt: Commissioner Discussion – Acquisitions

Referring to a map from Trocchio’s presentation, John Lawter of PAC wondered why the greenbelt hadn’t focused on acquisitions on the west side of the county. The map had highlighted areas that GAC views as priorities, and included Webster and northern Scio townships, Northfield and Ann Arbor townships, Salem and Superior townships, a portion of Pittsfield Township, and Lodi Township.

This map shows boundaries of the Ann Arbor greenbelt program, in green. The city of Ann Arbor boundaries are in yellow. Sections outlined in pink are viewed as priority locations for land preservation.

GAC chair Jennifer Santi Hall said that some of the townships that were highlighted as a focus were those that had passed land preservation millages – those funds helped leverage greenbelt money in buying development rights. The prioritized areas also reflected interest on the part of landowners, she said.

Peg Kohring of The Conservation Fund noted another factor – the size of properties available for the greenbelt. The greenbelt program tries to tap federal funding when possible, and those funds have been limited to deals on property that was a minimum of 40 acres. The focus areas are also in portions of the county that are not densely developed, where it’s feasible to build 1,000-acre blocks.

Dan Ezekiel of GAC pointed out that the greenbelt program has contributed to deals in building a 1,000-acre block of protected land in Salem and Superior townships, in partnership with others. He also noted that Pittsfield Township has protected a significant block of land on its own – known as the Pittsfield Preserve.

Lawter wanted clarification that properties in the west could be considered for the greenbelt program – it’s just that the area isn’t a priority. GAC commissioners assured him that this was the case.

Greenbelt: Commissioner Discussion – Property Values

Sam Offen of PAC wondered what happens to township taxes when properties are added to the greenbelt – do the townships get less tax revenue? Kohring said that in most cases, conservation easements haven’t affected taxable value.

Kohring said the land’s market value does take a dip when a landowner sells the property’s development rights. With development rights, farmland or open space might be valued on the market at $8,000 per acre – that value might drop to $5,000 per acre after development rights are transferred.

Offen wondered if the taxable value increases when property changes hands, even if the development rights have been sold. Peter Allen, a local developer and member of GAC, said that depends on the underlying value of the land itself, which can’t be developed. In general, Allen observed that the value of developable farmland has dropped significantly in recent years, from around $16,000 per acre. He believes some land that was intended for subdivisions might actually revert to farmland, because of market forces. Tim Berla of PAC noted that the land might be more valuable if it’s located next to protected land.

Kohring observed that development values continue to fall: “We have not hit bottom yet.” Allen agreed, citing the oversupply of housing that was built in the boom years. In Superior Township, for example, there’s at least a 15-year supply of housing, he said. That’s coupled with a cultural shift away from home ownership, and excitement about living in an urban area. “I think the American Dream has fundamentally change,” Allen said.

Tim Doyle of PAC said some people might view this situation and say there’s no need for land preservation – it’s being taken care of by market forces. That’s a challenge of perception, he said. Ezekiel noted that the best time to do this kind of preservation work is when land values are low.

Offen asked if there was any financial value to the development rights that the city owns. No, Trocchio said – it’s considered a liability, in part because it requires a certain amount of enforcement by the city.

Greenbelt: Commissioner Discussion – Publicizing the Greenbelt

Doyle asked how property is identified for inclusion in the greenbelt – do property owners approach the city, or does the city staff solicit property owners? Both, Trocchio said. Doyle indicated that it might be time to revitalize public awareness about the greenbelt. Since the millage was passed, there’s been some population turnover, and others who were here at the time might have forgotten about the program, he said.

At the start of the greenbelt program, the farming community wasn’t aware of it, Trocchio said. Now, she’s seen an increase in applications from landowners.

Hall felt there’s a greater awareness of the greenbelt program outside of Ann Arbor, especially since some townships also have land preservation programs now. To raise awareness among Ann Arbor residents, the city held a bus tour of greenbelt properties last summer, and will hold an open house on June 16 at the Braun farm in Ann Arbor Township.

They’re also trying to make the connection between Ann Arbor taxpayers and their local food supply, Hall said. [See Chronicle coverage: "Leveling the Field for Small Farms"] Offen asked if farmers whose land is part of the greenbelt program sell food at the Ann Arbor farmers market. At this point, most of the farmers market vendors own farms outside of the greenbelt boundaries, Hall said. Trocchio added that land values closer to the city are higher, so it’s harder for small farms to make a financially viable business. Some farmers also prefer to sell wholesale to restaurants and groceries. And larger farms typically produce crops like grains and soybeans, which aren’t sold at farmers markets.

Ezekiel pointed to another issue with publicizing the program: Its name. People often confuse “greenbelt” and “greenway,” he said, or they think the “belt” implies a no-development zone encircling the city. He would have preferred the term “emerald necklace.”

There’s also an existential problem, Ezekiel noted. The greenbelt already exists – the program is simply trying to protect it. “When we do our work well, nothing changes, that anyone can see,” he said. “Our work by its nature is under the radar.”

Parkland Acquisition: Overview

In her update to commissioners on the parkland portion of the millage, Trocchio reported that $8,538,304 has been spent as of Dec. 31, 2010, leaving a $4,369,415 fund balance. Of that, $246,000 is set aside for pending projects.

Trocchio highlighted changes related to land acquisition in the city’s Parks & Recreation Open Space (PROS) plan, which was updated earlier this year. Priorities include identifying underserved neighborhoods, where residents aren’t within a quarter-mile walk to a park. After using GIS data to find geographic locations that fit this description, PAC members went out and researched these areas to assess the need, Trocchio said. For example, although Dolph Park is located on the city’s far west side, it doesn’t include a playground area – that’s a need for residents in that part of town. “But for the most part,” Trocchio said, “the city is being very well-served.”

Conversations about parkland acquisition tend to revolve around enhancing what the city already owns, she said – enhancing access, linkages between parks, and greenways. One example is the recent acquisition of a lot on Chapin Street, adjacent to West Park. The house on that property was removed, and now there’s much more visibility of the park from that street.

Another goal is to protect the Huron River and other natural features, Trocchio said. Proposed acquisitions and improvements outlined in the PROS plan show plans for a Huron River greenway, for example.

The parks portion of the shared millage is focused on land within the city limits, Trocchio said. She also outlined several issues that factor into land acquisition decisions, including budget constraints for development and long-term maintenance of parkland, and concerns over taking city property off the tax rolls.

Parkland: Commissioner Discussion – Allen Creek Greenway

Peter Allen asked PAC members what it would take to make the Allen Creek greenway happen. Gwen Nystuen said that as a start, the city needs to designate three parcels that it owns – at 415 W. Washington, First & William, and 721 N. Main – to be part of the greenway. That hasn’t been authorized, she said.

Sam Offen observed that with those anchor properties established as part of a greenway, it would be easier to get momentum for other properties that would connect them. Julie Grand, PAC’s chair, said they’ve prioritized properties for a possible greenway, including some along the river. But until the city decides what to do with the properties it already owns, there’s no point in talking with landowners about a possible sale, she said.

Jennifer Hall asked what it would take procedurally to get things moving. When Nystuen said it would take the city designating its three properties for a greenway, Hall noted that the city council has already done that for the parcel at First and William. [In July 2009, council passed a resolution designating the city-owned parcel at the northeast corner of First and William as open space. And in February 2010, the council passed a resolution to explore a "greenway park and arts center" at 415 W. Washington. Council received an update on that effort at its April 4, 2011 meeting.]

Grand observed that the First and William parcel would require a lot of remediation. [It's now used as a surface parking lot. The 2009 resolution called for the city to seek additional funds for environmental remediation.]

John Lawter said that nothing has emerged as an opportunity for the greenway, but it’s still a priority.

Later in the meeting, Allen returned to the topic. He outlined how easements might be acquired from property owners between 415 W. Washington and the Huron River – he felt that the YMCA, located across the street from 415 W. Washington, would sell an easement to the city for land it owns next to the railroad. Another property owner, who Allen said owns unbuildable land along the railroad from Miller to Felch, might be convinced to sell an easement – just dangle a big check in front of the man, Allen advised.

Hall asked whether the city had ever done PDRs or conservation easements. That’s not an approach they use, Kohring said – landowners in the city don’t want the liability. For city parkland, the city purchases the property outright, she said.

Parkland: Commissioner Discussion – Border-to-Border Trail

The conversation segued into a discussion of the border-to-border trail, an effort to create a contiguous east/west path for bikes and pedestrians across the county. Nystuen said the path still needs work, especially along the Huron River section. Allen asked if anyone had spoken with MichCon about the riverfront property it owns near Argo, which is now vacant. There’s been no movement on that, Nystuen said, noting that it was the most polluted site in the county.

Hall asked whether there was any legal crossing of the railroad tracks in that area for parks users. This has been an ongoing concern, and is highlighted in the PROS plan:

Throughout the City, the railroad tracks cut off access to the river parks. At two locations, Gallup Park and Argo Pond, the City has procured easements from the railroad to construct non-motorized trails; however, access to these trails is limited as the railroad will not allow additional at-grade crossings. Challenges associated with accessing the river and parkland safely are ongoing as the desire to connect trails along greenways adjacent to the railroads and the popularity of these trails continues to increase. As discussion of a high speed rail gains momentum, safe railroad crossings will become more important for park access.

Later in the PROS plan, in the section outlining infrastructure needs, an item on trails and greenways cites a specific location as a priority:

At-grade crossings at railroads have been difficult to secure. A safe, legal, public crossing at Lakeshore Drive into Bandemer Park is a high priority. As discussions to turn the Norfolk Southern rail line into a high speed corridor continue, securing these public crossings is crucial and needs to be addressed in the short term.

At the June joint PAC/GAC meeting, Tim Berla said that various approaches had been explored, such as building a tunnel under the tracks. The pricetag for one crossing was $2 million, he recalled.

Hall expressed frustration that other communities are able to build overpasses or find other ways of traversing railroad tracks. Why does it seem impossible to do in Ann Arbor – is it just the money? That’s much of it, Berla replied. He felt it was possible that a crossing would be built within the next five years, but added that there’s a long list of other projects too, including a skatepark.

Offen noted that often, these kinds of projects get rolled into larger efforts, like road or bridge reconstruction. Tim Doyle observed that other communities might have been able to build their greenways with federal and state transportation funding. “That’s where the really big bucks are – moving cars.”

Allen speculated that the Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT) might acquire the Ann Arbor Railroad, which owns the tracks running through the city. He indicated that an ownership change might facilitate future projects.

Parkland: Commissioner Discussion – Stormwater Management

Dan Ezekiel noted that the city recently had a “good rain event.” He recalled that he’d been around in the 1960s when heavy rains burst the Dixboro dam. The rain had also caused flooding in the city’s Old West Side, along the Allen Creek floodway. It seemed there was less flooding this time, he said.

The water features in the newly renovated West Park seem to be working, he said, and the Argo dam held up. The rain has put some of their stormwater management ideas to the test, he said, but things seem to be working.

Parkland: Commissioner Discussion – Future Plans

In looking ahead, Nystuen characterized PAC’s priorities as “more green, and more trees.” She also cited the need for another dog park, completion of trails along the Huron River, and work on a greenway.

Grand noted that while they can’t create a whole swath of land running through the downtown, they might be able to do things to increase access to existing parkland, like building more and better trails between parcels.

Nystuen suggested that the next joint meeting include representatives from the county’s natural areas preservation program, because the city will likely be partnering more with them in the future.

Tenure Ending for Hall, Omenn

This was the last meeting for two greenbelt advisory commissioners – Gil Omenn, and Jennifer Santi Hall, who has served as chair.

At the end of the meeting, GAC vice chair Dan Ezekiel praised Hall and Omenn for their service – they received a round of applause from the group. Ezekiel noted that the commission needs members to take their place, as well as someone to serve as an officer. [GAC members will vote on a new chair at their July 13 meeting, and it's expected that Ezekiel will be elected to that role. That would leave a vacancy for vice chair.]

Hall noted that both she and Omenn are at-large members. Unlike some of the other GAC slots, which are designated for certain professions like a real estate developer or farmer, the at-large members are open to anyone. The term runs for three years, and members can serve two consecutive terms. Hall urged anyone who’s interested in volunteering to contact their Ann Arbor city councilmember. Unlike most other city commissions, in which members are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by council, greenbelt commissioners are nominated by city council. Hall said she hadn’t heard whether any nominations were in the works so far.

Hall’s daughter Ella attended the June 7 meeting as well, and earlier Hall noted that Ella had been in the same room seven years ago when GAC first convened. Ella had been three weeks old at the time, Hall said – she turned seven this month. “She was with me then,” Hall said, “and I’m glad she’s here with me today.”

Present – park advisory commission: Dave Barrett, Tim Berla, Doug Chapman, Tim Doyle, Julie Grand, John Lawter, Karen Levin, Gwen Nystuen, Sam Offen. Present – greenbelt advisory commission: Peter Allen, Dan Ezekiel, Jennifer Santi Hall, Gil Omenn, Catherine Riseng. Staff: Peg Kohring, Ginny Trocchio.

None of the city council representatives serving on these commissions – Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) on GAC, and PAC ex-officio members Christopher Tayler (Ward 3) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) – attended.

Purely a plug: The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s greenbelt program and parks system. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Scio Church Road: Two Barns (Images by Chuck Bultman, link to higher resolution file.)

Bultman also wrote that he’d noticed a hole in the roof of one of the barns: “So I tried to reach the owners to let them know that their asset is at risk. And so far, I have not heard back – maybe something is being planned and workers are lining up to repair it or salvage it, but I do not know, and it is not for me to decide.”

But over the spring, a decision was made – which a week ago led to a Friday evening gathering of Bultman’s friends and associates at the site of those barns. One of the barns stood with its siding removed, its frame laid bare. Wrote Bultman in an email to me: “It is our plan to toast this barn’s first life, and consider its second.”

Its second life will begin in the Pittsburgh area, where Bultman will help transform the re-assembled timbers into a home for one of his clients. The disassembly of the frame and restoration of the wood will be handled by Rudy Christian and his wife Laura, whose shop is in Burbank, Ohio.

Although Bultman had speculated that the two barns on the property were built at the same time, Christian estimated that the barn he’s dismantling dates to the 1830s, while the other one is post-Civil War.

Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan and I took a break from writing about local government to join Chuck on that Friday, and documented the occasion with some photos.

Barn Photos

-

Ladder in the Scio Church Road barn.

Scio Church Road barn.

Roof ribs of the Scio Church Road barn.

West face of the Scio Church Road barn.

Scio Church Road barn.

A dusty old dictionary abandoned in the basement of the Scio Church Road barn.

Even if you don't know me, this photo is a dead give-away that I am not a car guy. I deliberately shot that photo from an angle that would include Suburban Chevrolet's sign in the background, And I thought I'd nailed it – because the sign said "Suburban." (Photos by the writer.)

The sales consultant was keen to point out that Suburban Chevrolet was the first area dealership to have a vehicle available for test drives. But test-driving a car is pretty remote from The Chronicle’s mission, and even more remote from my personal transportation choice.

I share a membership in Zipcar with my wife, but don’t even remember the last time I’ve sat behind the wheel of a car myself. Zipcar, a car-sharing service, is like an insurance policy – a backup plan I never use. I get around by bicycle.

Still, in the Chevy Volt, I spotted a chance to write about a major public works construction project in downtown Ann Arbor – the Fifth Avenue underground parking structure, which will feature around 640 parking spaces on a lot that previously offered 192 spots.

Twenty-two of those new spots will be equipped with electric car charging stations. Dave Konkle, former energy coordinator for the city of Ann Arbor who now consults for the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority on its energy projects, identified the federal grant that’s helping to pay for the stations. The grant is worth $264,100 and will also pay for photovoltaic panels that will provide the energy for two of the spots – it was obtained through the Clean Energy Coalition’s Clean Cities Program.

That public project is closely tied to the assumption that visitors to downtown Ann Arbor will continue to make a personal choice for private transportation in the form of an automobile, and that some of those people will choose electric cars like the Volt.

The idea I want to think about in this column is that public choices depend on the sum of many private, independent choices made by actual people. It’s an idea that was driven home to me at a public transportation forum hosted earlier this week by the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority at SPARK East in Ypsilanti.

At that forum, Bob Van Bemmelen – recent Republican candidate for the Washtenaw County board of commissioners – had this advice for the AATA as it pitches to the public the idea of countywide public transit: You have to make it personal, he said.

So I’ll begin by telling you a little bit more about the Suburban Chevrolet sales guy who gave me a ride in the Chevy Volt – who is as much a car guy as I am a bicycle guy: Nic Allebrodt.

Test Riding the Volt with a German

On the phone with Nic, I pitched the idea that I did not want to drive the car myself. Rather, I wanted simply to ride along in the Chevy Volt with someone who is actually passionate about cars, really loves cars, lives cars, breathes cars, likes nothing better than to drive a car – a car guy. Nic did not hesitate in answering: “That’s me!”

If the name Allebrodt looks and sounds German to you, you’re right. Nic’s light accent signals his German origins, but does not betray that he moved to the U.S. just last year. I’ve written about my friends Hans and Walter before – two characters from my eighth grade German textbook who taught me various stereotypes of Germans, among them that Germans love cars. The first German dialogue I ever had to memorize concluded with Hans showing off his car to Walter: “Dort ist mein Wagen!” [There is my car!]

Nic lived up to that stereotype. He told me that in Germany, he’d worked for a rental car company, thus had a chance to drive a vast range of cars on a regular basis, including the Audi RS6. This meant nothing to me, of course, but a bit of rummaging on the Internet revealed that if you need to go 150 m.p.h., that’s the car for you.

The yellow ball on the righthand side of the dash display is an indicator of less efficient driving style.

As Nic put the Chevy Volt through its paces for me, and I rode along in the passenger seat, we didn’t come anywhere close to 150 m.p.h. But as he navigated onto I-94 west, using the entrance ramp at Zeeb Road, the acceleration pressed me back into the seat. The dashboard also knew we were accelerating – the green ball that provides feedback on driving style floated upwards and turned yellow. That indicated less efficient driving. But efficiency is not exactly a priority when entering the freeway.

I asked Nic to drive us through downtown Ann Arbor. I wanted to see if the car would draw stares – it didn’t. Nic’s colleague Michael Jackson, who rode along in the back seat, offered a theory that the Volt had been test driven during its development phase in this area, so people were familiar with it. Also, he said, it’s a fairly normal-looking car.

We got to downtown by getting off I-94 at the Weber’s Inn exit and heading east straight down Huron Street, south onto Fifth Avenue to Liberty, where we turned west towards Main Street.

Parking, Charging Underground

At Fifth and Liberty, we had no choice but to turn, because the construction site of the new underground parking garage blocks southbound traffic.

When I mentioned that the garage will offer some spots with electric vehicle charging stations, Nic pointed out a feature of the Volt that might allay concerns about drivers who use those public stations – what if someone comes along and unplugs the car while it’s parked?

The OnStar mobile app for iPhone or Android monitors charging, so a driver would be alerted if it got unplugged. Likewise, the mobile app lets a driver know when the battery is fully charged. So a driver who wanted to time their visit to the downtown just until the battery was topped off could do that pretty easily.

The Volt's navigation screen as we rolled into downtown Ann Arbor. I guess we could have been treated to the strains of "On the Road Again" if we had actually turned on the XM radio station displayed at the top of the screen.

According to Chevrolet’s standard data on the Volt, that topped-off battery would get you around 35 miles with no extra assist from the Volt’s gasoline engine. Even without charging during the day, based on a 2009 survey of downtown Ann Arbor workers, 35 miles of range would get 77% of them to and from work each day. [.pdf of getDowntown survey]

The gasoline engine would give you an additional 340 miles of range. During our test ride, we didn’t turn on the Volt’s gasoline engine. It’s not actually hooked to the drive train – it just works as a generator for the electric battery.

When I think about the Volt’s gasoline engine and its electric battery, I imagine that many drivers will treat the two options the same way I treat my Zipcar membership and my bicycle: The gasoline engine will work like an insurance policy that rarely, if ever, gets used.

Other drivers might build the Volt’s gasoline engine into their expected normal use of the car. That’s how my wife treats the Zipcar membership. If the trip would require her to navigate her scooter on roads she perceives as too dangerous, she reserves a Zipcar. We make different personal transportation choices within the same set of options.

The public parking system can also be seen as serving a variety of different personal choices. And I think our investment in that system should take the range of personal choices into account when we’re budgeting for its continued maintenance.

Even though the talks between the city of Ann Arbor and the Downtown Development Authority were supposed to have concluded by the end of October 2010, discussion continues about how much revenue the city of Ann Arbor should withdraw from the public parking system to shore up the general fund.

That conversation has not included the possibility that it’s not just basic maintenance activity that could be jeopardized by the city’s revenue expectations. What could also be threatened is the ability to meet possible future demands placed on the public parking system – not for more spaces, but for a different kind of space, one that allows you to charge your electric vehicle while it’s parked.

When the bonds for the Fifth Avenue parking garage were approved, part of the argument included rhetoric along the lines that this would be the last parking deck Ann Arbor would ever build, because the future belongs to public transportation – we won’t need more spaces. But what if we need different kinds of spaces – spaces that allow you to charge your personal electric vehicle? Where would the funding be sourced for the capital investment required to retrofit parking structures with charging stations? A natural place to look would be to fees paid by parkers – which would be unavailable if they’re allocated instead to the city’s general fund activities.

John Mouat, who chairs the DDA board’s transportation committee, has kept the issue of alternate vehicles in front of the DDA over the last several months at committee meetings and board meetings. His scope includes all manner of two-wheeled vehicles, very small four-wheeled vehicles, and electric cars as well. But Mouat’s perspective does not seem to have percolated up to the level of the Ann Arbor city council, which seems to see public parking system revenue as simply that – another revenue source that can be tapped.

Of course, it might be that massive investment in public infrastructure to support electric vehicles is not actually necessary – even if electric vehicles become a significant part of the U.S. automobile fleet. In a phone interview with Joe Malcoun, an associate with DTE Energy Resources, he offered the perspective that in largest part, the owners of electric vehicles will probably charge them at home. DTE offers a special program for electric vehicles that includes incentives for investing in a home charging station and a discounted rate, through separate metering, for the electricity used.

Malcoun did allow that the availability of at least some charging stations as part of public infrastructure might be driven by another factor: A psychological need for some drivers to have access to charging stations. But 22 stations in the new underground parking garage might be sufficient to address that need, he said.

As a side note, I had originally contacted Malcoun not for this column, but rather to track down some information about the charging stations in the Edison building parking lot at Main and William. Whether widespread availability of charging stations is a requirement to support a large U.S. electric vehicle fleet, will, I think, be a matter of how many actual individual people are willing to make a personal choice for an electric car in the absence of that infrastructure.

Public Transit: Making It Personal

The idea that individual, personal choices are at stake was a central theme that emerged at a sparsely-attended forum held on Tuesday, May 10 on the topic of countywide transit. The Ann Arbor Transportation Authority is hosting another series of meetings to get additional public input on its draft transportation master plan (TMP), which AATA has been developing over the last year. [Most recent Chronicle coverage: "AATA Speaks Volumes on Draft Transit Plan"]

The half-dozen attendees at Tuesday’s forum, held at SPARK East on Michigan Avenue in Ypsilanti, had ample opportunity to weigh in with their own reactions to the draft plan. The plan was presented by AATA’s Michael Benham, who’s leading the TMP project. Also on hand were AATA manager of community relations, Mary Stasiak, and AATA chief executive officer, Michael Ford.

The advice offered to the AATA by attendee Bob Van Bemmelen was to make it personal for people. [Van Bemmelen might be familiar to Chronicle readers as the Republican candidate in November 2o10 for the District 4 seat on the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, which was won by Wes Prater. Or they might remember him from his attendance at a forum hosted by Think Local First last year on local currencies. ]

Bob Van Bemmelen at the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority forum held on May 10 at SPARK East in Ypsilanti. Standing is Michael Ford, AATA's CEO.

At the transit forum, Van Bemmelen was encouraged to hear another attendee, Larry Krieg, make the same point that Krieg has made during public commentary at AATA board meetings: The American Public Transit Association (APTA) has calculated that a family using public transit would save around $10,000 per year, compared to owning a car. Van Bemmelen said you’d need to prove that number, but that was the kind of thing the AATA should be talking about, to bring the discussion down to a personal level of how much money residents might save.

Van Bemmelen also wanted a more persistent transit sales pitch on a personal level. He described how someone selling lawn service might send a mailing or put a flyer in the door, not just one time, but on a repeated basis. After a while, it might begin to stick. The lawn care guy might then pay a personal visit and say, “Look, I see you out struggling on that lawn trying to push the mower – I can do that for you and here’s my rate, you’ll see it’s competitive.” Van Bemmelen wanted to see the equivalent sales pitch for transit. He said that he does not use the bus now, but he might. [Given the job he took recently with the VA hospital in Ann Arbor, he might be able to commute from Ypsilanti by bus.]

Responding to Van Bemmelen, Stasiak said she agreed with him: You have to sell transit one person at a time – it requires a face-to-face conversation. Sometimes it takes holding someone’s hand to make them feel like it’s not difficult, she said.

One of those face-to-face conversations took place at the forum – with John Dawson, who in addition to advocating for a particular bus route, wanted to know how to get his ADA card for the AATA renewed. Stasiak took his information so that she could follow up. [As a side note, Dawson told The Chronicle that his grandfather previously owned the building where the meeting was held.]

My Personal View

Part of the reason that Van Bemmelen was interested in the idea of “selling” public transit is that he’s looking down the road to the point when county residents might be asked to support a countywide system with a countywide tax – public transit would require some kind of additional support beyond fares. A countywide transit tax is something that will likely not be put before voters for another year at least.

A first step would be to create a kind of placeholder organization that would serve as a countywide governing body, in the event that such a tax were approved by voters. The AATA itself is a local, Ann Arbor authority. At the forum, Michael Ford presented some of the alternatives, including what the countywide membership on a board might look like. [Previous Chronicle coverage: "Concerns Raised Over Transit Governance"]

You don’t have to sell me very hard on the importance of public transit. I’m willing to continue to pay at least the roughly 2 mill Ann Arbor tax that is passed through to the AATA and generates roughly $9 million in revenue for use on public transit. While I understand the public policy issues – like land use, environmental impact, access for seniors and the disabled – if I reduce it to a personal level, the reason I value public transit is that I want it as my backup plan.

That’s reflected in my transit choice for the evening of the transit forum – my bicycle. I did mull over the choice of a bus – it’s roughly a nine-mile trip each way from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti, and it was threatening rain. But I figured if was raining when it was time to return, or if I felt too tired to pedal back home, I could take the return trip by bus, and take advantage of the bike racks mounted on the front of every AATA bus.

The fact is, my current personal choice is for private transportation. I want the freedom to go exactly where I want to go – which in most cases is a bike rack or a vertical pole near the entrance of my destination – and I want the flexibility to travel when I like. I noted that Larry Krieg had to leave a few minutes before the meeting ended, because he had to catch a bus. I was able to stay until the end. Bicycles beat buses on that metric.

Even so, I’m willing to pay to support the public transit system. Not because Larry Krieg wants to ride the bus. Not because it’s better for the environment. Not because it will lead to better land use and reduce sprawl. Not because it provides mobility to seniors and disabled people.

For me, the public transit system is like the gasoline engine is for some drivers of the Chevy Volt: I’m willing to pay for it to be there, just in case I personally need it.

About the writer: Dave Askins is editor and co-founder of The Ann Arbor Chronicle.