Anglin doesn’t seem to be….Anglin is not alone on the council, however, in not fully appreciating….

Making assumptions about what Mike Anglin knows or doesn’t know isn’t journalism. It’s speculation. How’s about you ask Anglin and Hieftje and get back to us? I’ll be really interested to see if Hieftje admits to what you imply is his ignorance about how the database could be used to track appointments, or blame the problem on someone else. As for Mike Anglin, I’m confident he’ll tell you the truth; he poked fun at himself for not using Facebook at the candidate forum.

Legistar is a great database resource when the City Clerk updates it in a timely manner and updates it correctly. She hadn’t done this with the CDAC appointments, which prompted a lot of questions from me in my A2Politico piece about Ray Detter’s “reports” to the DDA and your “chronicling” of his “reports,” when records showed his appointment had expired in 2012 — not to mention the fact that the Charter defines CDAC appointment terms as 3 years.

Ray shouldn’t feel singled out. Legistar shows many other irregularities with respect to the Mayor’s appointees.

It’s a crappy answer to say, “Oh, they’re on the city website.” But they are. And still it’s a crappy answer.

Whenever I hear a staff member say, “It’s on the city website,” I stop listening to whatever description they give for how to navigate to the information on the city website. Because it’s way easier, and you get excellent results, by using Google’s site-specific search syntax. Type this into the Google search bar: “site:a2gov.org searchterm1 searchterm2 searchterm3 etc”

Here’s what you get when you type in “council rules” using that technique: [link]

I’d like to note that Robert’s Rules of Order are guidelines, not a legal requirement. The only time they become required is when the body’s own rules call for their use. Typically, the bylaws or published rules call for Robert’s Rules of Order, but may also institute some exceptions. If you have ever followed the US Congress in its deliberations, you’ll note many, many exceptions to RROO. One of the elements of RROO that is often not followed on the Council is dividing the question. I recall that this was not permitted by the Mayor on at least one occasion, when attempted by Jane Lumm.

I have not seen the Council rules. Are they published somewhere? Those rules should also clarify when a call for ayes and nays, vs. a roll call vote, is appropriate. Assuming (and I will) that the moderator (the mayor) is fair, this should not be a problem. As described above, any councilmember may request a roll-call vote, so momentous votes will be thus recorded.

As Jack Eaton pointed out at the forum, the vast majority of council votes are actually unanimous. And I would reiterate that when a voice vote is not unanimous, it’s Hieftje’s practice to just automatically tell the clerk to call the roll (typically when it’s enough voices for and against that it’s not totally clear what the outcome was), or else ask if the dissenting councilmember(s) would like the vote recorded as a roll call (typically when it’s a lone vote of dissent). And by rule, any councilmember can force a roll call vote on any question when they deem it important enough to want their vote recorded. Similarly, if a councilmember on the prevailing side wants to ensure that the dissenter has to live with that vote with their record, they’re free to demand a roll call.

So I just don’t see that there’s a significant problem here that requires a solution.

Forced to identify some problem with city council voting procedures, I’d say: Literally calling the roll with the clerk keeping a tally on a sheet of paper is pretty inefficient, don’t you think? Why not acquire the hardware to allow councilmembers to vote on every question electronically, with a display of how they’re voting, and the software to integrate the results directly into Legistar? Then every vote would be recorded by name, and it would go way faster. Why not? Well that stuff costs money, and there’s way lower-hanging fruit if the goal is to increase the proportion of time spent at a council meeting on productive deliberations.

On the other hand, if you want to know how a council member voted on a “voice vote”, the names are not reported.

I don’t recall if important votes are taken by voice. If that does happen, it would be useful if the minutes showed each member’s vote.

Because many votes are taken by voice, and often these are not unanimous, there is no official record of how members voted on a large number of resolutions.

Roll call votes are sometimes required for a statutory reason (e.g., the vote to go into closed session). In other cases, the council’s rules already provide a general guideline [emphasis added]:

RULE 5- Voting
In all cases where a vote is taken, the Chair shall decide that result. Any member may call for a division. A roll call vote shall be called upon the request of any member of the Council. The roll call voting order shall rotate around the council table with the Mayor voting in the rotation.

And whatever you think of John Hieftje, when there is a dissenting vote or votes cast on a voice vote, he is systematic in his role as presiding officer in taking one of two actions: (1) simply asking for a roll call himself (2) querying the councilmember(s) who cast a dissenting vote to see if they want a roll call. In the case of (2) sometimes the roll call is requested, sometimes not. And by rule, if Hieftje were to fail to implement (1) or (2), any councilmember who wanted a record of the vote could request it and one would have to be provided.

So if the complaint is that Hieftje is presiding over council meetings in a manner that prevents councilmembers’ votes on specific items from being recorded by name, then I don’t think that complaint is well founded. Anglin’s complaint at the June 8 forum was not, however, about whether roll call votes were taken, but rather specifically about the lack of a resource where residents could go look up how a councilmember voted on a particular issue. And that resource already exists. If you want to complain about the user-interface for Legistar, I’m not going to defend it as the very best design work ever. But I use it successfully all the time to look things up.

My sense is that the source of actual complaint here is that “peg dash fab” hasn’t been particularly generous in pointing out that it’s a bit surprising that Anglin as an experienced councilmember doesn’t seem to be aware of what Legistar offers as a resource, and drawing the worst possible conclusion from that. Anglin is not alone on the council, however, in not fully appreciating the valuable resource Legistar can be. For example, John Hieftje seems unaware of how easy it is to track committee, board and commission membership terms using that piece of software. For example, it’s possible to look up the composition of the council’s rules committee, which other three members – besides Briere and Higgins – are Kunselman, Hieftje and Taylor.

I think that councilmembers would gain a better appreciation for what information is and isn’t available to the public, and how well or poorly it works, if they had to use exactly the same system the public does in accessing all their agenda information. Instead, the information is pushed to them in a separate .pdf that’s custom crafted out of Legistar in an extra step – from what I’ve heard described. The council’s version sometimes includes items not available to the public, most commonly the application materials for board and commission nominees. In any case, it’s emailed to them – and they don’t have to go retrieve it from Legistar.

Incidentally, planning commission and AATA board are two bodies that use a combination of voice vote and rising vote (show of hands). I don’t recall ever having witnessed a rising vote used at a city council meeting (that is, a count taken by show of hands, asking people to stand and be counted etc.) Perhaps there’s been one, or I’m deficient in my understanding of what qualifies as a rising vote.

Are you referring to the comment Mike made about the importance of people knowing who voted which way?

If so, the issue is not Mike’s ignorance, but rather Hieftje’s ignorance of the use of Robert’s Rules of Order. Council uses an unrecognized combination of Voice Vote and Rising Vote, and rarely uses the Roll-Call Vote. Marcia Higgins, Sabra Briere and other members of the Council Rules Committee are expected under the auspices of Robert’s Rules to come up with guidelines about how and when roll-call votes are used.

Voice Votes don’t include a roll of who voted which way. Sometimes those covering the meetings record that information, and sometimes they don’t. Mike’s concerns highlight the Mayor’s ignorance of Robert’s Rules.

Obviously I disagree, because late 2007 is the composition of the council I chose to present. And the basis for that choice is that it’s the specific year and council composition that both Mike Anglin and Sabra Briere cited at the forum, drawing upon their own experience when first elected to the council – in 2007. And because that was the context for the forum’s discussion, that made it the best year to present to readers as a reference point, if a choice had to be made.

To fill in the unrecalled history, Kunselman won election in 2006 in a three-way race that included Jeff Meyers and Alice Ralph, to fill the open seat left by Jean Carlberg.

As far as Hieftje appointing people to fill vacancies, that’s the duty of the council not the mayor. From the city charter [emphasis added].

Filling Vacancies
SECTION 12.14.
(a) If a vacancy occurs in an elective office, the Council shall, within thirty days thereafter, fill the vacancy for the balance of the unexpired term thereof: Provided that, if the vacancy occurs on the Council within forty days prior to a regular city election, it shall not be filled until after the next organization of the Council.

And Roberts was not even Hieftje’s preferred choice to fill Groome’s vacancy, as the Sept. 6, 2005 council minutes record that he voted with a three-member minority to appoint Tim Colenback instead of Roberts. The three voting for Colenback were Carlberg, Johnson, and Hieftje.

“I don’t recall who Kunselman replaced….”

In 2009 Kunselman defeated Leigh Greden by six votes.

Tim Colenback, former AADP chairman called it the biggest electoral upset in the last 30 years in Ann Arbor.

Both Dave Cahill and Pat Lesko predicted the upset win and Cahill correctly chose Kunselman as the primary winner due to name recognition as he held office previously in the Third Ward. It was the year of E-Mailgate. Kunselman had been knocked off City Council in 2008 by Christopher Taylor by a 26% margin of defeat.

I do not believe John Roberts was an incumbent when he was defeated by Briere in 2007 as he as previously beaten by Ron Suarez – who coined the term “Gang of Seven” on City Council.