This brief was filed from the boardroom of the county administration building at 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

Behind the county clerk's counter on election night, inspecting poll books from the city of Ann Arbor. Only Ann Arbor uses pink paper – all others are white. No one at the clerk's office knows why. From left: Ward Beauchamp, Jason Brooks, Jen Beauchamp, Janna Parmeter. (Photo by the writer.)

It’s a few minutes after 8 p.m. on Nov. 3, and polls throughout Washtenaw County have just closed. At this point it’s fairly quiet in the offices of the county clerk, where about a half dozen people are preparing for what could be a long night of processing election returns.

Matt Yankee, the deputy clerk in charge of elections, is drinking a Diet Coke and fielding questions about what needs to be done. Jason Brooks, another deputy clerk, asks how he can help. “Why don’t you do the phones and be an Ann Arbor runner?” Yankee suggests. Brooks gives a mock salute, and almost on cue, the phone rings.

The premiere of the ABC series “V” is playing on a large screen TV in the office – a ticker of election results from metro Detroit is running along the bottom of the screen – but nobody is watching.

The Chronicle spent several hours on election night shadowing this crew, getting a glimpse of what it takes to handle the returns from 116 precincts in Washtenaw County. Though there were a few glitches – mostly problems stemming from the printing company hired to make the ballots – the evening is remarkable for its organized, systematic execution of tasks. Elections are events in which the uneventful is desired.

That’s not to say that nothing happened.

Hour One: 8-9 p.m.

The entrance to the county building in downtown Ann Arbor, at the corner of Main and Ann streets, is locked when The Chronicle arrives – later, the doors will be opened so that township clerks can get in to deliver election materials. County clerk Larry Kestenbaum lets us in, and escorts us back to the office area where results will be processed.

Deputy Jerry Flowers. (Photo by the writer.)

One of the first people we meet is Deputy Jerry Flowers, who’s sitting in the small waiting area in the clerk’s office. He tells us that for every election, there’s a security detail from the county sheriff’s department – a deputy who stays there until the county election workers are ready to go home, just in case there’s trouble.

Has there ever been any trouble? “Not really,” Flowers says. “It’s usually pretty quiet in Ann Arbor.” Frankly, it seems like a mind-numbing job, but Flowers says he volunteers for the duty and has done it for several years. For the record, we don’t observe him eating any of the Washtenaw Dairy donuts that someone brought in earlier in the day.

Early in the evening, the office hears from someone else in the sheriff’s department: Derrick Jackson, former deputy clerk in charge of elections. He calls in to ask if they’ve heard any results from the Ypsilanti Township millage vote. Jackson now works for Sheriff Jerry Clayton as director of community engagement – he’s interested in the millage because it would be used to pay for sheriff deputy patrols. [The millage fails by a narrow margin, rejected by 51.42% of voters.]

Yankee reports that in the Washtenaw County portion of Milan Township, the countywide school millage has “failed major-ly,” by a vote of 40 to 188. This will prove to be a bellwether for the evening.

Around 8:40 p.m. Conan Smith and Rebekah Warren drop by, looking for an update on results. [Smith is a county commissioner representing District 10 in Ann Arbor; Warren is a state representative for Ann Arbor's District 53, and is running for the state senate seat in District 18. That election will be held a year from now – they had no direct skin in the game for the current election.]

A scan of two ballot stubs, showing how the perforation between the main ballot and the stub was not made in a straight line. Because the stubs tore off at an angle, the voting machines had a difficult time reading the main ballot. (Photo links to larger image.)

Brooks tells them that Ann Arbor won’t be finished for a while, because of some ballot issues. County staff has been hearing all day from city and township clerks, who’ve reported that some ballots aren’t feeding into voting machines property, or aren’t being read. In Ann Arbor, for example, in several precincts there’s a one-ballot discrepancy between the machine count and the actual number of ballots. That count has to be resolved before delivering results to the county.

Brooks describes how the printer misaligned the perforation between the main ballots and the ballot stubs, which are torn off before the ballots are fed into the voting machine. “It looks like a six-year-old cut it with scissors,” he quips.

Smith, who’s executive director at the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, checks his Blackberry to see if results are in for one of his staff members, who’s running for city council in Ferndale. Kestenbaum ambles out and chats for a while, telling them that the printer will be fired. Later, he tells The Chronicle that the county might dispute the bill as well, given the problems they encountered.

Hour Two: 9-10 p.m.

Matt Yankee reports that Sylvan Township’s clerk was the first to deliver results at the front counter, beating out a disappointed Freedom Township by just a couple of minutes. Both of these townships have only one precinct each – Sylvan in particular is always “super fast,” Yankee says. And yes, it’s competitive.

Calls start coming in more frequently from random citizens and people affiliated with different campaigns. These are always answered politely, no matter how harried Brooks and Yankee are. They give the results from the county’s election website, and tell people that the best thing to do is to check that site throughout the evening. They also caution that at this point, results are preliminary, with only a small percentage of precincts reporting so far.

Brooks tells The Chronicle that he got his first call at 6:15 a.m. that morning, from someone wanting to know where to vote.

“Dancing with the Stars” is now on TV – still, no one is watching.

Matt Yankee fishes out a memory card from an official blue Washtenaw County bag. To upload election results, he'll insert the card into the machine on the desk next to him. Data is managed by the GEMS (Global Election Management System) software program. (Photo by the writer.)

Deputy clerk Jen Beauchamp is supervising the front counter, where the clerks deliver their materials. By 9:15 p.m., Bridgewater Township clerk Cindy Carver and Ann Becktel, Manchester Township’s clerk, have arrived with their ballot packets. They joke that they’re disappointed they aren’t first.

Like the other clerks, they hand over several items: Computer memory cards from each precinct, containing results from the voting machines; a report tape – a paper receipt of results printed by the voting machine; a statement of votes; and a poll book, which includes most of the information from the day, including signatures verifying the results.

The memory cards are delivered in blue nylon bags with the Washtenaw County seal printed in white. Other materials arrive in one of two envelopes, marked for the county clerk or the county board of canvassers, which will review the results on Thursday, handle any outstanding issues, and validate the results.

Throughout the evening, Yankee processes memory cards, uploading the information on them into the software program GEMS (Global Election Management System). A couple of times, Yankee encounters memory cards that have been wiped clean. This requires that he get the poll book and enter the results manually.

The Ann Arbor city clerk’s office reports that they’ve finished up several precincts, so Brooks heads over to pick up whatever is ready. Since city hall is just a couple of blocks away, the county staff is willing to make several of these runs so that they can process the results incrementally throughout the night. Ann Arbor, with nearly 50 precincts, is by far the largest in the county.

Hour Three: 10-11 p.m.

It’s 10:15 p.m. and about 20% of the precincts have reported in. The margin against the countywide school millage is widening – nearly 58% have voted against it, but Yankee notes that they haven’t yet tallied all of Ann Arbor, and haven’t heard from Pittsfield or Scio townships.

Several other townships trickle in. Brooks has been trying to reach the clerk in London Township with a question about some information they need – no one is answering the phone, and he figures they’ve already gone home. London Township is located in Monroe County, but some residents there live in the Milan school district and were voting on the Washtenaw school millage. Brooks can’t reach anyone in the Monroe County clerk’s office either. They’ll have to wait until Wednesday morning, Yankee says.

At 10:50 p.m., Ypsilanti Township clerk Karen Lovejoy Roe – a former county commissioner – is at the counter, looking tired. It’s been a long day.

Near 11 p.m., Kestenbaum observes that with 45% of the precincts now in, the school millage is down by more than 4,000 votes. “I can’t see how it can make it now,” he says.

Hour Four: 11 p.m.-midnight

Outside calls are now brisk, from people wanting to know results. Pittsfield Township has reported in, and Ann Arbor has finished up most of its precincts. That leaves Scio Township as the largest municipality that hasn’t yet reported in.

This will be an early night, relatively speaking. A year ago, heavy turnout for the presidential race meant that the county elections staff worked through the night – Brooks said he was there until 4 a.m.

Matt Yankee, at the computer, shows Jason Brooks how to enter data into the election software program. Both are deputy clerks with Washtenaw County.

But by 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, things have slowed down considerably. Brooks goes into the office where Yankee is uploading memory cards. “Jen told me to bounce,” Brooks says, referring to Jen Beauchamp, the deputy clerk who’s been staffing the front counter where clerks are dropping off results.

Yankee plans to stay a while longer, which means he won’t be there when Brooks returns in the morning. He asks Brooks to follow up on some outstanding issues on Wednesday – the information they need from London Township, for one thing – and shows him how to enter the data into the GEMS program, when he gets it.

With that, Brooks takes off. “See you, Matt,” he says, “but hopefully not tomorrow.” If they cross paths in the morning, it will mean that something unexpected happened.

At that point, Yankee and Kestenbaum were confident there’d be no 11th-hour surprises – there weren’t, Yankee told The Chronicle on Wednesday. At midnight, with about 75% of the precincts reporting, the results had solidified – including the defeat of the county school millage.

And in the Washtenaw Dairy box, six donuts remained.

From right: At the counter of the county clerk's office on Main Street, senior clerk Susan Bracken Case reviews documents from UM's purchase of the Pfizer property, while chief deputy clerk Jim Dries, Liberty Title co-president Tom Richardson and Liberty Title vice president Matt Keir look on.

The momentous mixed with the mundane on Tuesday, as a phalanx of attorneys and real estate professionals converged on the Washtenaw County Clerk/Register of Deeds office to file paperwork for Pfizer’s sale of its Ann Arbor property to the University of Michigan.

Because documents for the sale of Chrysler’s Chelsea Proving Grounds were also filed that day in a separate transaction – a coincidence of timing – it marked the largest amount of transfer tax ever recorded in a single day for the county. Neither the purchase prices nor the taxes paid for those deals were disclosed. (See the end of this article for more information about how the real estate transfer tax works.) But for the Pfizer sale, the check received by the county was enough to make senior clerk Susan Bracken Case gasp, then grin.

We initially heard that the UM/Pfizer documents would be filed at 10 a.m., so we headed over to the clerk/register of deeds office at 200 N. Main to observe the occasion. Turns out we were a little off on the timing – in fact, the final transaction with the county didn’t occur until around 2 p.m. But we were able to return and bear witness to the event, as did a guy who happened to walk in at the same time to ask about a tax lien – wearing shorts and a T-shirt amid a cluster of suits and ties, he seemed momentarily unsure if he was in the right place.

Much of the heavy lifting had been completed prior to Tuesday, but we asked John Cameron, an attorney with Dickinson Wright (and outside counsel for the university in this transaction) to fill us in on the final steps taken to close the deal that day.

A small group of attorneys had gathered at 9 a.m. in the Fleming Administration Building at the office of Ciara Comerford, who is UM assistant general counsel and the point person for the university on this deal. For about 90 minutes, they went over final details of the transaction – ensuring that no last-minute problems had arisen, making sure the university’s insurance on the property was in order, checking to see that the billing for gas, electricity and other utilities had been transferred to UM.

They then authorized the university treasurer’s office to wire funds for the purchase to First American Title in Chicago, which was the closing agent for this deal. Though the attorneys and staff at the clerk’s office would not disclose the purchase price, university officials previously have said they planned to pay $108 million for the 174-acre site on Plymouth Road, located near UM’s north campus and medical complex.

Liberty Title on Main Street, where some of the action took place Tuesday in closing the real estate deal between Pfizer and UM.

The attorneys waited until they’d received word that the transfer was verified – they’d been given a federal reference number as a way to track it in case problems arose, but none did – then they packed up their briefcases and headed over to Liberty Title, on Main Street just a block away from the county administration offices.

Liberty Title was the local agent for First American Title – Tom Richardson, Liberty Title’s co-president, said somewhat ruefully that they were not providing title insurance, which presumably would have meant a little more coin for his firm. Rather, they worked with the attorneys to review all the closing documents, a process which included making some minor changes and faxing papers back and forth between Liberty Title and First American Title, Cameron said. They checked to make sure each of the 20 or so documents were properly signed and notarized, and made a brief trip in the late morning to the clerk/register of deeds office to see if everything was in order from the county’s perspective.

At this point – and we’re not kidding – they called the university to send someone out to the property and verify that it was still standing and that all the property they’d agreed to purchase was there – including records and personal property, such as equipment. It was.

Back at the Liberty Title office, Cameron got on a conference call with the attorney representing Pfizer and the title insurance representative from First American Title. Each of them said something to the effect of “I’m authorizing you to close this transaction.”

Tom Richardson of Liberty Title, county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, attorney John Cameron and chief deputy clerk Jim Dries await the final document processing of UM's purchase of the Pfizer research campus.

With that, the escrow officer for First American Title broke the escrow account, which freed up funds to pay the deal’s broker their brokerage commission and to pay the transfer tax, among other fees. The official closing also meant that the group in Ann Arbor was now authorized to record the documents with the county, so they crossed the street to the county administration offices. They got a tax certificate from the treasurer’s office – verifying that there were no back taxes owed on the property – then brought all the documents to the clerk/register of deeds, where the paperwork was recorded. The attorneys received time-stamped copies of the documents – the originals will be scanned into the county’s database and returned to them in a few days.

When Cameron concluded his description of the day, he said: “And now we’re going out to lunch. We’re done.”

It was a bit anti-climactic, in fact. Comerford of UM’s general counsel said there’d likely be some kind of celebration at the Pfizer site later in the day by the staff of the Medical School, which is paying more than $60 million of the purchase price and is taking the lead in determining how to use the space.

Some staff from the office of Hank Baier, UM’s associate vice president for facilities and operations, would also be part of whatever celebration ensued – Baier’s staff was on hand Tuesday at the Pfizer site to take over the management of the buildings and property from local representatives of the drug company, Comerford said.

Coda: Real Estate Transfer Tax

While the county couldn’t disclose the purchase price or transfer tax paid on the Pfizer property, chief deputy clerk Jim Dries did give The Chronicle a mini-tutorial on how the tax is calculated, as well as some data about how much transfer tax the county has collected over the past 20 years.

The seller is responsible for paying the Michigan real estate transfer tax (RETT) for the sale of real property, such as land or buildings (as opposed to personal property, such as equipment, appliances, furniture or other items that can be moved). The county collects the tax when the property deeds are presented to the register of deeds office for recording after a sale has closed.

The state gets the largest portion of the RETT: For every $1,000 of a property’s sale price, the state gets $7.50 and the county gets $1.10. So if the $108 million cited by UM were the price only for real property (an unlikely but possible scenario), then the county would have received about $119,000 in RETT, with the state receiving $810,000.

Why wasn’t the purchase price disclosed? State law does require that the price for real property be disclosed to the government, but it can be done in one of two ways: 1) on the deed, which is a public record, or 2) on a real estate transfer valuation affidavit, which can be filed when the deed is presented for recording. If an affidavit is filed, that keeps the transaction price confidential. Often you’ll see a property’s purchase price recorded as $1 on official public documents – that means an affidavit has been filed. Both major deals on Tuesday filed affidavits, so no information on the purchase prices was disclosed to the public.

But here’s some context: On Tuesday, the county collected RETT on 19 real property transactions, including the Chrysler and Pfizer deals. Gross receipts for transfer taxes on those 19 transactions totaled $1,053,551, including $918,498 in state RETT and $135,053 in county RETT.

The previous day (Monday, July 15), the county collected just $39,367 total, including $30,202 in state RETT and $9,164 in county RETT.

Overall, a drop in real estate prices and a slowdown in sales have resulted in a sharp drop in RETT revenue for the county, which peaked in 2005 at $2.54 million. Last year, RETT revenues fell slightly below $1.4 million. So far in 2009 (through July 16) RETT revenues are $482,300.

Finally, for data geeks among our readers, here’s a listing of county RETT revenue from 1988 through 2008:

-
1988 = $793,920
1989 = $795,316
1990 = $717,684
1991 = $738,481
1992 = $799,184
1993 = $896,369
1994 = $1,106,343
1995 = $1,057,454
1996 = $1,205,976
1997 = $1,449,923
1998 = $1,741,230
1999 = $1,834,796
2000 = $1,888,762
2001 = $1,878,522
2002 = $2,119,614
2003 = $2,238,317
2004 = $2,539,692
2005 = $2,542,227
2006 = $2,203,118
2007  = $1,844,344
2008 = $1,397,368

The sale of Pfizer's property to UM wasn't the only major deal to pass through the county clerk's office on Tuesday. This 700-page document outlines details of Chrysler's transfer of its Chelsea Proving Grounds to New Carco Acquisition LLC – the company that's now holding some of Chrysler's former assets following the automaker's merger with Fiat.