Rapundalo was absent, as well. Oh, and a majority of those on Council voted against refunding Project Grow. So let’s look to Ward 5′s other representative, Carsten Hohnke (who explained his no vote with an absurd vision of “larger-scale community gardening”) and all of the others who refused to find money to fund Project Grow, or to Leigh Greden who is under the megalomaniacal delusion that city services are some kind of citizen entitlement.

I’ve watched Leigh Greden and his colleagues on City Council vote to fritter away $200 million in tax money in less than six months (Court House $90 million over 30 years and parking garage $110 million over 30 years). The DDA just voted to spend almost $1 million dollars on a way finding system for the DDA area. Raise parking rates; spend almost $1 million on extraneous signs.

Project Grow is the least of our worries.

Had Council Member Anglin been there to do what he said he supported, Project Grow would have been funded.

There’s a couple of informational issues identified in this comment.

One is what the actual vote was. Like the previous commenters, I had it scored as 5 for, 4 against. But based on my notes, I was not able to reconcile that tally against the name-by-name tally — thus did not include it in the report.

Part of my thought in not tracking it down was to consciously resist the hard-wired human tendency identified in previous comments to lavish excessive focus on the matter.

Aside from this specific Project Grow vote, though, there are at least two ways to find out what the outcome of an Ann Arbor city council vote was — both of which are in principle accessible from the computer a typical Chronicle reader uses to read this publication. [The fact that I haven't tracked it down, either, I hope suffices to blunt any implicit criticism of others for not doing so.]

(1) The city council online agenda gets updated with a breakdown of any roll call votes.

(2) CTN’s video on demand

For (1), this hasn’t been done for the May 18 meeting. For (2) however, the online streaming video is available.

If someone eventually tracks that down (using either of those sources, or even some other resource), I think it’d be a community benefit to provide information more precise than what I’ve done. So if you use (1), include the direct link to the vote outcome [just paste it into the comment field ... until we add some additional bells and whistles to the comment field, we just link-ify them on our end.] Or if you use (2), note the time code where the vote takes place.

And generally, when folks contribute information via comments — like what campaign contributions a candidate has received and from whom — the public benefit is maximized, I think, when its source is cited. Sure, it adds credibility, but more than that, it might introduce other readers to the fact that the information is actually fairly easy to get if you want it, requiring no real “reporter superpowers.” It’s just a matter of investing some time pointed in the right direction. For the campaign finance information, one public source is the county’s website.

The second informational issue is the 7-vote requirement versus the 6-vote regular requirement. Does the 7-vote majority apply to amendments as well as the vote on the whole budget? This same issue arose at Tuesday’s planning commission meeting (a nine-member body). They needed 6 votes on the adoption of the whole resolution adopting the downtown plan — because it was a recommendation for council — but only 5 votes to pass an amendment to the plan. Maybe that’s not an analogous situation?

In any case, if someone looks that up, kindly cite the source, please.

It’s easy to get caught up in local politics and specific local issues, but there are a lot of good things happening in Ann Arbor, too. It’s programs like Project Grow that help me remember why I’ve stayed put for over 30 years.

I supported Project Grow funding too and I was disappointed by the way the vote went down. Mike Anglin told people he was for it, that he was going to introduce the resolution to restore the funding. But then he wasn’t even there. It lost by one vote.

My check won’t be as big as yours but I will send it.

If you use the online donation service, please add the 4.75% during the checkout process to cover the handling costs.

This donation is in loving memory of my mom, Ruth T. Whitaker, who was a prolific gardener and a dedicated community activist during her 20 years in Ann Arbor.

I hope others will accept this challenge and support community gardens and local, urban food production. There are so many good reasons to do so.

Thanks!