Secretive governance. This meeting provided two examples of the city administration’s continuing effort to keep important information from the public.

First, the Mayor and the current Police Chief/psuedo-Fire Chief engaged in a clumsy rebuttal of the recent news coverage of fire fighter staff cuts. Reporter Ryan Stanton was required to file a freedom of information act (FOIA) request just to get data about fire services. Then the acting Fire Chief claimed that Stanton’s article was inaccurate and offers to meet with the reporter after the acting chief has a chance to review the records. Why did it take a FOIA request to get information from our city government? Because the administration has a policy of denying access to information. The conversation the Chief now wants to have should have occurred when Stanton first inquired about the fire data.

As an aside, in response to the acting Chief’s claim that there was no record of anyone jumping from a roof of a burning building (as reported by Stanton), former Fire Chief Dominick Lanza commented on the Firefighters’ FaceBook page: “I was at that fire, they jumped.”

The second example of secretive government is found in Council Member Stephen Kunselman’s request for a written legal opinion from the City Attorney on the diversion of dedicated millage funds to the percent for arts program. Apparently, the City is operating under legal advice that this diversion of restricted funds is proper, but citizens and certain Council Members are not allowed to see the basis of that advice.

We are so often told that money cannot be taken from one “bucket” to be put in another “bucket”. Yet, the City allows street millage money and water millage money to be diverted to purposes unrelated to streets or water. We should at least have access to the legal advice on which this action is based. If there is legal justification for these transfers of restricted funds, maybe we can have a percent for safety program, too.

If you belong to FaceBook, “Friend” the Support the Firefighters page: [link]

And change the batteries in your smoke detectors!

In the “government activities” portion of the financial statements, what we call the general fund, there is actually $164.75 million in cash and short term investments available to the city. NONE of that money is set aside for the waste water treatment plant, so when the Mayor states that the reason for the accumulation of cash in the general fund is to pay for the waste water treatment plant, as he did at this meeting, he is being economical with the truth.

I also note that the CAFR report has a footnote 17 on page 81 which purports to list ALL externally restricted funds held by the city. That total is just $68.718 million:
Highways and streets $40.584 million
Culture and recreation $23.093 million
All other $5,041 million

The footnote reads:
“A portion of the city’s net assets are presented as restricted, due to external requirements either by the source of the funding (i.e., state or federal funding) or by the nature of the funding (i.e. millage funding) to indicate they are not available to meet the City’s ongoing needs. The purpose of these restrictions is evident from the Statement of Net Assets [page 21] except for the following:”

The list and amounts summarized above then follows. It is important to note that the footnote clearly implies that ALL OTHER RESTRICTIONS on the money are not imposed by the source of the funds or by the legal text of a millage, but by the POLICIES of the city council or terms of the City Charter. Policies of city council can change if they have the will. The City Charter can change if we the citizens find it inconvenient. The only items noted on page 21 are the funds in the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, Smart Zone and the Downtown Development Authority, whose total cash and short term investments are listed on page 21 as just $13.6 million.

Do the financial statements lie, or do the people who claim the money is in buckets and cannot be accessed? Persisting with the fiction of the various “buckets” enables claims of poverty which are easily seen through by those with financial budgeting experience. Let’s drain the buckets!