Capt. Brian Cech read aloud a list of Michigan servicemen and servicewomen who died this past year in non-combat incidents.

The parade itself – which winds through a northeastern Ann Arbor neighborhood – featured a squad car from the Ann Arbor police department, a fire truck, a bagpiper, several candidates for local political office, the drum line from Huron High School marching band, and a herd of neighborhood kids bringing up the rear on their decorated bicycles.

The parade ended as it does every year at Glacier Highlands Park – where free donuts, and for-sale hotdogs are on offer. But the focus immediately after the parade is always on the memorial service: “Lay off the donuts until after the ceremony!” came an admonishment over the PA system this year.

The memorial service is not complicated. The colors are presented, a bagpiper pipes Amazing Grace, a trumpeter blows Taps, and the names of Michigan servicemen and servicewomen who were killed in action over the last year are read aloud.

The ceremony was officiated by Capt. Brian Cech – commander of the 1776 Military Police Company out of Taylor, Mich. What was different this year was the lack of the customary list: No Michiganders were this year among those who fell in combat.

But Cech still read aloud a list of names – those Michigan citizens in uniform, who died of illness, accidents, or suicide in the past year. “As we have learned over time,” Cech said, “the toll of the war zone does not stop after our warriors have returned home.”

Here’s the list that Cech read aloud:

• Sgt. Maj. Eric C. Post
• Sgt. Thomas E. Radosevich
• Spc. Richard A. Bloomquist
• Sgt. Renita C. Stevens
• PV2 Brian J. Whitaker
• Sgt. Christopher T. Shenk
• Sgt. Robert M. Nanni
• Sgt. Desmond E. Davis
• Master Sgt. William R. Madden
• Staff Sgt. Patrick W. Wisniewski
• Hospital Corpsman Andrew Shipper

That might not be a complete list of all those in Michigan who wore the uniform and passed away during the last year. That’s according to Lt. Col. Kevin Bohnsack, who spoke with The Chronicle before the parade about preparing for the ceremony. Bohnsack, who lives about a block off the parade route, described how neighborhood resident Stephen Landes had previously prepared the name list – but Landes had passed away during the last year. And Landes’ methodology was not known. So Bohnsack had done the best he could.

Bohnsack had researched the background for some of those on the list, highlighting Davis, who died of ALS at age 41, and Nanni, who died in a car accident at age 29. Davis earned a Purple Heart and three bronze starts among other distinctions for his service in Iraq. Nanni earned a bronze star during his service over multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Walking along neighborhood streets with The Chronicle to the parade entrant staging area, Bohnsack pointed out an additional resource for information about the parade: “Ingrid, up there, she knows what’s going on.” It turns out that Bohnsack knew “Ingrid” as one of the parade organizers, not as Ingrid Sheldon the former mayor of Ann Arbor. Apprised of that fact, he allowed that politicians have a place in the parade, because that is “also a part of our democracy.”

But for his part, Bohnsack focused on the non-political aspect of the parade, stressing that as a member of the military, you swear to obey orders from the commander-in-chief, whoever that might be at the time. He’d spent some of his morning policing the placement of campaign signs in the park – so that they were confined to a designated area.

Here are a few highlights from this year’s parade.

Lt. Col. Kevin Bohnsack, left, and Capt. Brian Cech represented the military in the parade.

Bob Droppleman piped Amazing Grace for the memorial service.

Lorna Barron, who plays trumpet in the Huron High School band, performed Taps.

The Huron High School drumline marched in the parade.

Leslie Science and Nature Center staffers Francie Krawcke and Sarah Gilmore brought a few of the birds from the center’s raptor program, including this bald eagle.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of this community’s parade of civic affairs. 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!

Fourth & William parking structure viewed from the Fourth Avenue side, where Greyhound buses will likely be staging, when a lease of space in the structure is finalized. Currently that’s where AAATA buses stage, but they’ll be moving when the driveway is poured for the new Blake Transit Center in the next few weeks.

Though the board did not take action on adding circulator bus service to the downtown, the idea was brought up and referred to the operations committee. That was not unexpected, as the board had previously passed a resolution pledging possibly to increase the DDA’s support of transportation, if the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority’s new millage were to be approved. One specific idea mentioned at the May 7 meeting was to provide a shuttle on Saturdays between the Ann Ashley parking structure and the Ann Arbor farmers market.

The board did take action on two other transportation-related items: a lease to Greyhound for use of office space to be built out in the Fourth & William parking structure; and the setting of a $5 million project budget for  renovations at that same parking structure.

The Greyhound lease would provide a temporary location for Greyhound over the next two years as the bus company will not be able to remain in its Huron Street location – because the property owner, First Martin Corp., is planning a hotel at that spot. After assessment of operations at AAATA’s new Blake Transit Center (BTC), when construction is complete, Greyhound could eventually find a home at the BTC – if it turns out to be feasible.

Establishing a $5 million project budget for the Fourth & William parking structure renovations will allow the creation of construction drawings, and after that a request from the city council to approve the issuance of bonds to cover the cost of the project. The renovations are prompted by a need to replace the aging elevator in the southwest corner of the building, but will likely include improvements to facades and possibly a build-out of ground-floor area for use as retail space.

The Fourth & William parking structure was also part of the meeting’s energy theme. It already includes two parking spaces that are equipped with chargers for electric cars. During public commentary, the board heard from a monthly permit holder at Fourth & William, who wanted to transfer her monthly parking permit to the Library Lane structure. The two spaces at Fourth & William are often occupied, she reported, and she thinks she might have better luck at Library Lane, which offers six electric vehicle chargers.

In another energy-related action, the board delayed a decision on paying roughly $100,000 for the conversion of DTE-owned streetlights in the downtown area to LED technology. In delaying, board members cited the fact that the roughly $20,000 in energy savings would not be realized by the DDA, but rather by the city of Ann Arbor’s general fund. The resolution could be approved at the board’s June meeting and still meet a DTE deadline.

Among other information reported at the meeting, the DDA has decided that it will not lease the former Y lot back from Dennis Dahlmann so that it can continue to be used as part of the public parking system until Dahlmann develops the property. Under the terms of the purchase agreement between the city of Ann Arbor and Dahlmann a certificate of occupancy for a new building on that site is required by January 2018.

In other business, the board voted to deny an appeal made under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.

Transportation: $5M Budget for Fourth & William Renovation

The board considered a resolution establishing a $5 million project budget for renovations at the Fourth & William parking structure in downtown Ann Arbor.

Image from preliminary drawings by the Carl Walker Inc. design team for renovated southwest elevator and stair tower for the Fourth & William parking structure.

The renovations are prompted by a need to replace an aging elevator and stair tower at the southwest corner of the structure. The amount would be covered by issuing bonds, but approval of that step would come later, and would require approval from the city council – because the bonds used by the DDA have historically been issued by the city.

The Fourth & William structure, at 994 spaces, is one of the largest in Ann Arbor’s parking system – but has elevators that are more than 30 years old. [A recent trip from the ground floor to floor 7 was timed by The Chronicle at 45 seconds. The comparable trip at the newer Fourth & Washington parking structure took about 17 seconds.]

In addition to replacing the elevator and stairway tower, the DDA is considering some work on the south and east sides, using some surfaces that are more reflective and perhaps installing some awnings. The resolution also describes the possibility of expanding the pedestrian lobby area, updating parking equipment, adding electrical capacity and additional electric vehicle charging units, and building out some of the first floor area for active uses. The stairway and elevator towers would be glass-enclosed.

The stair tower and elevator portion of the project was estimated to cost on the order of $3 million. The first, very preliminary drawings were provided to the DDA’s operations committee at its Feb. 26 meeting. That preliminary work was authorized by the DDA board at its Jan. 8, 2014 meeting.

By way of background, at that Jan. 8 meeting, the DDA authorized up to $40,000 for Carl Walker Inc. to develop architectural renderings for renovations to the southwest stair tower and elevators of the Fourth & William parking structure.

The DDA was presented with two options for the renovations, based on either a two-phase or a three-phase approach. In both scenarios, the goal is to keep the parking structure open for business during construction.

The two-phase approach would last about a year – from August 2014 through July 2015. The three-phase approach would take five months longer – through about December 2015.

Chronicle chart of potential timeline for renovations to the southwest elevator at the Fourth & William parking structure.

The resolution considered by the board on May 7 authorizes the DDA’s executive director to oversee issuance of bid documents and to sign a contract with Carl Walker Inc. to prepare construction drawings for the project. Those construction drawings are to be limited initially to the stair tower and elevator replacement project. The selection of a contractor for the work would need separate approval by the DDA board.

Transportation: Fourth & William Renovation – Board Deliberations

John Splitt reviewed the content of the resolution. The staff of Carl Walker Inc. – Mike Ortlieb, Josh Rozeboom, and Carl Luckenbach – attended the most recent meeting of the operations committee, Splitt reported. The team had shown the committee renderings of the project, including a new rendering of the lobby. Splitt described the current lobby entry as dingy, small and congested. Committee members were pleased to see how that would look, he said.

The committee wanted to set a project budget of $5 million, before moving onto the next phase – which is the creation of construction drawings. This is a project that the DDA would most likely bond for, he said. Splitt reported that the DDA had met with the Main Street Area Association – and the consensus of that group was that something definitely needed to be done about the stair and elevator towers, even though construction would be disruptive and challenging. The Main Street Area Association also thinks it’s important for the project to be done, he said.

Splitt described how Carl Walker Inc. would also be exploring the feasibility of a first floor buildout onto Fourth Avenue – to be used, for example, as space for residential incubators, saying that a number of ideas have been floated for activating the sidewalk on Fourth Avenue. Discussion would continue about that, along with facade improvements on the south and east sides of the parking structure. The committee was still in the talking phase about those improvements, and those discussions would continue at the next meeting of the operations committee, Splitt concluded.

John Mouat sought some clarification about which aspects of the project the construction drawings would cover. His understanding, which Splitt confirmed was correct, was that the initial construction drawings to be prepared would be confined to the stair and elevator tower in the southwest corner and would not include the other aspects of a future project that Splitt had described.

Outcome: The resolution establishing a project budget of $5 million for renovations to the Fourth & William parking structure was unanimously approved.

Transportation: Greyhound Lease

The board considered a resolution authorizing its executive director to come to terms with Greyhound on a lease for space in the Fourth & William parking structure in downtown Ann Arbor. Greyhound needs to vacate its current facilities on Huron Street between Ashley and Main – because that location will become the site of a hotel when First Martin Corp. gets approval for a hotel project it plans to build there.

The term of the lease would be two years.

The lease would cost Greyhound $1,525 a month, which works out to $36,600 for the two-year period. Buses would not pull into the structure, but would stage on Fourth Avenue. Currently, Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority buses are using the west side of Fourth Avenue for staging. But in the next few weeks, when the new Blake Transit Center driveway is poured – which runs between Fourth and Fifth avenues – AAATA buses will no longer need the west side of Fourth Avenue for staging.

The lease by the DDA to Greyhound would include about 400 square feet of office space in the structure, which would be finished out by the DDA for Greyhound. The lease rate works out to about $40 per square foot. The first year of rent is anticipated to cover the cost of the build out. The space to be built out is located under a speed ramp for exiting the parking structure.

The DDA operates the public parking system on behalf of the city of Ann Arbor using city-owned structures, under a contract with the city of Ann Arbor. In order to lease the city-owned property to a third party, the clause in the contract on which the DDA will apparently rely is this one: “The DDA shall have the right to allocate portions of facilities to third party for long term parking usage and mutually agreed upon [by the city and the DDA] non-parking-related usage. The DDA shall provide an annual report to the City of any allocation identifying the specific facility and the size, nature and term of the allocation.” A traffic control order will need to be obtained from the city to allow the staging of buses in the public right-of-way.

The historic sign that is a feature of Greyhound’s current location will not be moved to the Fourth Avenue site.

Transportation: Greyhound Lease – Board Deliberations

Roger Hewitt noted that Greyhound bus operations are currently located on Huron Street. Greyhound is being “evicted” Hewitt said, because a new hotel is being built on the spot. Hewitt ventured that Greyhound would eventually like to relocate its operations to the AAATA’s Blake Transit Center, but it’s not clear at this time whether there will be space at that facility for Greyhound. So Greyhound is looking for a temporary situation, and perhaps in the longer term, in the general area of Fourth Avenue. The DDA has discussed with Greyhound the possibility of leasing a space along Fourth Avenue inside the Fourth & William parking structure. The office space would be underneath the speed ramp that exits onto Fourth Avenue, he said.

DDA board member Roger Hewitt.

The proposal from Greyhound included a two-year lease with an option to terminate the lease with a 90-day notice. The DDA was not comfortable with such short notice, given that there is a buildout expense for the DDA. So Greyhound has agreed to modify the proposal so that Greyhound would not give notice during the first year of the lease. But they could give a 90-day notice during the second year of the lease. Hewitt described the rate of the lease as “a substantial amount per square foot,” saying it was at the top of the market.

There would be a substantial buildout cost, but Hewitt felt that the two-year lease would exceed the amount of the buildout. He ventured that even just one year of the rental would probably cover the buildout cost. The main advantage, Hewitt said, was that it moved Greyhound bus operations onto Fourth Avenue – so that connections can be made immediately to the Blake Transit Center just across the street. It puts all of the bus operations in the downtown area onto the same block. It would also give some activation and use of the parking structure on the Fourth Avenue side, Hewitt said.

Russ Collins questioned why the phrasing in the resolution described a “temporary lease.” He ventured that it was simply a lease.

Hewitt indicated that the word “temporary” was included because Greyhound did not intend it to be a permanent location. But he allowed that yes, it was a two-year lease. The board agreed to strike the word “temporary.”

Responding to questions from board members, Hewitt indicated that the lease amount worked out to about $40 per square foot. That had been the Greyhound proposal, Hewitt said. Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, reported that she’d ask for some input from some local real estate brokers to get a sense of the market for ground-floor leases in that general area. She described it as “not a very lovely space,” so she felt that Greyhound was paying market rate or above for the space.

Hewitt described the lease rate as at the top end of the market. That prompted the response from city administrator Steve Powers: “Well done!” Powers asked about a reference in Greyhound’s request for assistance from the city’s building official. Pollay indicated that the DDA had not wanted to pursue the possibility of a lease, if it turned out that it was not possible to make the space meet the city’s building code. The city building official had spent some time looking at the space, and in his opinion it was possible to make the space meet city code, Pollay reported. Hewitt noted that the space was underneath a speed ramp for exiting the structure, so it’s “not the most wonderful space on the face of the earth.” He stated that he would personally not pay $40 a square foot for that space.

In response to a question about how the bus staging on the street would work, Pollay described how permission would be sought from the city for a traffic control order (TCO). The city’s public services area staff had already indicated that it would be possible for a TCO to be issued for this use. She noted that there is a TCO already in place for the AAATA buses to stage on the west side of Fourth Avenue during the Blake Transit Center construction. Once that traffic control order has ended, a new traffic control order for the Greyhound buses would be implemented, she said. Pollay indicated that the DDA had been asked to pursue this lease option with “all due haste,” so the idea would be that over the next few days the DDA would work with its legal counsel to review the lease, insurance issues, and the like.

Republic Parking, which is the DDA’s subcontractor for operating the city’s public parking system, had obtained several bids for the construction so the work could be pursued fairly quickly, Pollay said. The TCO processes were familiar to the DDA. She noted that Greyhound would not be bringing with it the sign that is affixed to its current facility.

John Splitt noted that the DDA would be spending money for the buildout – so he wondered if that needed explicit board approval. Pollay told him that if he felt that he wanted it to be included in the resolution, the amount would be “somewhere south of $30,000.” If the board wanted to add to the resolution that it was authorizing $30,000 to be spent, that could be added, she said.

Rishi Narayan asked if the built-out space would become wasted space, if Greyhound did not remain in the space: Could someone else use that space? Pollay told him that absolutely someone else could use it. As part of the renovations for the Fourth & William garage, Pollay continued, that could be something for the board to consider: What kind of use for that space would be a productive addition to the downtown? Hewitt noted that it could well be that Greyhound stays for longer than two years. Board chair Sandi Smith asked if Splitt wanted to add a second resolved clause, but Splitt indicated that if other board members were comfortable without specifying the dollar amount, he didn’t feel the need to add it. [Language to approve undertaking any necessary buildouts was added to the resolution, by the end of board deliberations – though not with a dollar amount attached.]

Hewitt indicated that the expenditure could be made within the existing budget, so no additional parking money would need to be allocated to cover the cost of the buildout. Collins felt that the resolution should be left as is, but asked the committee to keep the board informed. The buildout is implied with the lease, but if the lease did not come through for whatever reason, the board would be voting on something that might not even happen, Collins said.

Keith Orr got clarification that on-street parking spaces along Fourth Avenue were removed in order to accommodate the staging of AAATA buses during the Blake Transit Center construction. So the intention would be not to re-install those parking spaces.

Outcome: The resolution on the Greyhound lease was unanimously approved.

Transportation: Circulator, Shuttle

Board chair Sandi Smith noted that the kickoff to the farmers market season was that day. She described how crazy it gets in the neighborhood of Kerrytown where she and DDA board member Keith Orr own businesses. On Saturday mornings, the parking activity is well beyond capacity in that area, she said – and the farmers market is talking about adding even more vendors. It’s exciting, vibrant and fun to be there, but the most common complaint that Smith heard regularly is that people can’t find a place to park.

Smith noted that the large parking structure, at Ann Ashley Street, is very close to the farmers market – but it seems like it’s a ways away, particularly for people who are carrying bags of produce purchased at the market. She wondered if the DDA could undertake a pilot program to operate a shuttle. The shuttle could run between the Ann Ashley parking structure and a designated location at the farmers market. She described it as a “teeny little circulator,” saying that it could even be just a golf cart.

The goal of the circulator would be to begin to brand that parking structure so people realize it is really not all that far away. They might choose to walk, once they see that it is only two blocks away, she ventured. Smith said there’s difference between parking in a structure and street parking, venturing that people will park their car two blocks away, but they won’t park their car in a structure two blocks away.

Smith also suggested that the DDA could provide a reduced entry fee for the parking structure during the farmers market time – but she didn’t know if an additional incentive would be required, if the DDA was running a shuttle. She wanted the operations committee to take a look at it, even though by the time the operations committee reviewed it and any proposal came back to the board, it would already be June.

Roger Hewitt allowed that the topic could be placed on the agenda for the May committee meeting. He reiterated the point that the parking structure really is just two blocks away from the farmers market. He ventured that it might simply be a signage issue. He noted that based on his discussions with engineers, it would be possible to construct an entrance to the structure on Catherine Street. He was a little skeptical that a shuttle would be used, and doubted that a shuttle would be any quicker than just walking. But he allowed that something could be explored in terms of signage. He was not averse to exploring the signage issue.

Rishi Narayan also ventured that if good signage were in place, a shuttle might not be necessary. Keith Orr liked the idea a lot – because even with all the talk in the world about how near that structure is, there was still a psychological hurdle, due to the fact that it was on the other side of Main Street. He liked the golf cart idea.

In light of the previous day’s successful AAATA millage proposal, Smith said the board ought to be thoughtful about what that would mean in the context of the DDA’s budget – because it would increase the DDA’s tax capture. [The AAATA has estimated that about $119,000 of the 0.7 mill transit tax would be captured each year by the Ann Arbor DDA.] She thought it might be time to look at a small-scale circulator in the downtown. So Smith asked that the operations committee put consideration of such a proposal on its agenda.

Outcome: This was not a voting item.

Energy: LED Streetlight Conversion

The board considered paying $101,733 to DTE for converting 212 mercury vapor and high-pressure sodium streetlights in downtown Ann Arbor to LED technology.

Streetlight locations are mapped in the joint Washtenaw County and city of Ann Arbor GIS system. Data available by clicking on icons includes ownership as well as the lighting technology used. This one is a high pressure sodium light operating at 400 watts.

In 2007, the DDA had previously granted $630,000 for conversion of 1,400 other streetlights in the DDA tax capture district.

The 212 streetlights that haven’t yet been converted are owned by DTE, which would be undertaking the work. Currently, the city pays DTE $72,585 a year for the energy used by the 212 streetlights. After conversion, the annual cost for the 212 lights is expected to drop to $51,895, for an annual savings of $20,690.

After an EO (energy optimization) rebate of $10,224, the $91,509 cost would be recovered in just under 4.5 years.

The project would include converting 100 watt MV (mercury vapor), 175 watt MV and 100 watt HPS (high pressure sodium) lights to 65 watt LED (light emitting diode). Further, 400 watt MV and 250 watt HPS lights would be converted to 135 watt LED. Finally, 1000 watt MV and 400 watt HPS lights would be converted to 280 watt LED.

Energy: LED Streetlight Conversion: Board Discussion

Keith Orr reviewed how the effort dates back to 2007, to replace globe streetlights with LED fixtures. The resolution the board was considering would handle the remaining streetlights – the cobra-head fixtures. It was not optimal from the DDA’s point of view, he said, because the cobra-head streetlights are not at the pedestrian level. But it’s an upgrade that will help with the city’s and the DDA’s sustainability goals, Orr said. He noted that the payback would be just under four and a half years. It also supported the city’s budget, he said. The DDA would be paying for this out of its fiscal year 2015 TIF budget, Orr said.

Roger Hewitt responded to the proposal by saying that he was all in favor of LED lights, noting that he was on the board in 2007 when the DDA approved converting all of the pedestrian street lights to LED fixtures – and he recalled signing the check for $607,000 to do that. But he said he was a little disturbed by the fact that it was a grant to a private entity, when the savings and the financial benefit would then go to the city of Ann Arbor.

The DDA had spent many hours negotiating financial agreements with the city with respect to TIF capture and the parking agreement, Hewitt said. He called this resolution yet another transfer of funds from the DDA that eventually ends up in the city’s budget. It’s not that the amount is huge or is going to have an enormous impact, he allowed, but he’s becoming increasingly concerned as the downtown continues to grow, and there’s an increasing need for infrastructure to support that – whether it’s parking or transportation, or sidewalks. The improvements to be made as a result of implementing the streetscape framework plan would definitely have a big price tag on it, he said. And the parking system is continuing to show growth, and the system is already at a pretty high capacity, he said.

It’s not that this one thing is going to make a lot of difference, Hewitt allowed, but if the DDA continues to spend its money on a lot of small things, it would not have the funds that are necessary to do major infrastructure improvements. If the DDA did not have a fairly robust fund balance, it could not have built the new parking structure that was just built, Hewitt said. [He was referring to the Library Lane underground parking structure.] That had been critical to attracting Barracuda and Prime Research into the downtown and keeping those businesses there.

So Hewitt announced that he would be opposing this resolution. He allowed that LED streetlights are a great thing and he expected the resolution would pass, but he felt that more consideration needed to be given to a focus on major infrastructure costs, rather than the small transfers that ultimately sap the DDA’s fund balances.

John Mouat said he shared Hewitt’s concerns and observed that the letter from DTE had actually been sent to the city: “How did it wind up on our plate?” Susan Pollay, the DDA’s executive director, told Mouat that she worked continually to try to find areas of collaboration between the DDA and the city. In many ongoing conversations, she asks what the DDA can do to help be in alignment with the city. So this proposal had emerged from one of those conversations, she said.

City of Ann Arbor energy program analyst Nate Geisler.

Pollay invited Nate Geisler to the podium. He introduced himself as the energy programs analyst with the city of Ann Arbor. On behalf of the city’s energy commission and the city’s energy office, he acknowledged the past relationship between the DDA and the city on energy projects. He hoped it would continue. This proposal follows up on a project from the previous year, Geisler explained, which targeted high wattage fixtures. DTE can reserve about 200 lights for an energy optimization incentive rebate. Last year, about 200 lights had been identified throughout the city – in connection with a mercury vapor discontinuation campaign. Geisler noted that DTE is obliged to remove mercury vapor lights from its inventory.

This year, he said, in thinking about how to prioritize lights for conversion, the city had considered the DDA district. When an overlay of the streetlight inventory was done with the district, it was noted that it worked out to be about 200 lights. From year to year not much advance notice is given about whether the offering from DTE will happen – so the city doesn’t necessarily have money in its budget set aside for it. The idea was that because the city had worked with the DDA in the past on this type of issue, the city looked to the DDA as a possible source to help fund the conversion. That way, the entire inventory of streetlights within the DDA boundary would be done. That had been the approach the city had taken, Geisler said.

Mouat got confirmation from Geisler that the lights in question are in fact cobra-head lights, which are fairly tall. Mouat wondered if a shift would be made from overhead lights to more pedestrian lights as streetscape renovations are undertaken. He would hate to invest money in infrastructure that would be removed over the short term. Geisler indicated to Mouat that the city staff have been operating for a while under the assumption of the streetlight moratorium. So city staff was focused on the existing inventory and asking what it could do to reduce costs within the existing inventory.

By way of background, the “moratorium” dates from a 2005 city council budget resolution, which has been interpreted by city staff to allow increases in streetlights, if the increase in energy cost can be offset in some way. [.pdf of July 9, 2013 memo on the topic from city administrator Steve Powers.]

Rishi Narayan said his concern was based on the DDA’s long-term vision and the material discussed at the recent retreat. He asked what this project would be replacing. His understanding was that the DDA had a budget, and did not have a ton of excess cash. He felt that the LED conversion was a great idea, but he was operating on the assumption that it was replacing some ideas for projects that the board had previously discussed: “Or do we actually have an extra $100,000?”

Pollay responded by saying that there is never enough and the needs are always greater than resources. Pollay described the prioritization that the DDA did as involving the assignment of dollars so that they were available in particular areas. But this project had not been compared to other items on the project list, to see if there were other projects that the DDA wanted to do instead. The proposal had emerged from staff consultation, Pollay said. This had not been brought forward in the context of the other projects.

Narayan felt that if the DDA had spent a lot of time and energy on that list, and it should be used as a guide. This LED project was worthy of consideration, but it should be compared to other items on that list, he said. Al McWilliams noted that this allocation would be coming from the DDA, but the city would be realizing the savings from it.

DDA board member Al McWilliams.

He wanted to evaluate the $100,000 as an expense to the DDA. The DDA is not seeing the savings, so the DDA should be evaluating this proposal in terms of a $100,000 expense, not something on which the DDA would be realizing savings. He was more concerned about “getting our results that we want,” but he wondered if this project was really in the plan that the board had developed a couple of months ago. “Do we have that somewhere? Did somebody write that down?” McWilliams quipped.

Pollay suggested that the proposal could be reviewed by the operations committee later in May. Mouat commented on the city’s moratorium, saying that he did not think it was terribly well conceived when it was implemented seven years ago. He questioned whether the moratorium made sense in terms of the streetscape framework plan that the DDA was working on. He ventured that the DDA could ask the city to reconsider the moratorium. The DDA should be able to get at least something from the city in exchange for funding the LED conversion, and a revision to the moratorium might be that something.

Board chair Sandi Smith asked if a delay of one month would have an impact. Geisler explained that DTE is looking for a signed agreement by June 30. He pointed out that the actual cost to the DDA would be around $90,000, because the rebate would go to the DDA. Smith noted that the next board meeting would fall on June 4. Smith said that the DDA’s typical grant guidelines were to look for a match, and to ask in what way the DDA would be acknowledged for its contribution.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to postpone consideration of the DTE grant.

Energy: Charging Stations

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, Nancy Cavanaugh introduced herself as a seven-year Ann Arbor resident. A couple of years ago she purchased an electric car and she has been using the electric charging station at the Fourth & William parking structure. Recently she’s had the experience that both of the charging stations at that parking structure were occupied when she has arrived. She noted that there is a waiting list for monthly permits. She said that based on her research, one to two of the six charging stations at the Library Lane parking structure are not being used. She allowed that she had not done extensive historical research on the question. She told the board that she would like to have the opportunity to park at the Library Lane parking structure.

Board chair Sandi Smith asked that the operations committee put the issue on their agenda. She noted that parking patrons at the Forest parking structure had created a self-organized rotating schedule – so that when someone parks at a charging station, they charge for a while and when the charge is complete, they move their vehicle. They’ve established an email group for communicating information about the occupancy of spaces, Smith said.

Russ Collins said that as an electric car driver, he’d observed that the Library Lane charging stations were also full during the second semester of University of Michigan classes. After the semester ended, he continued, the spots were less full. Collins ventured that a whole management system would be required, pointing out that it only takes about four hours to charge a car that is completely depleted. And most of the cars, when they are parked at a spot with a charging station, are not completely depleted, so they are charged within an hour or so.

Outcome: This was not a voting item.

FOIA Appeal

Under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, appeals of denials or redaction of records that are produced in response to a FOIA request are properly made to the head of the body. The DDA considers its board to be the head of the DDA as a public body. [.pdf of text of appeal made for redaction of email addresses] The board handled an appeal made by The Ann Arbor Chronicle.

Image of redactions made for email addresses of DDA board members on the grounds that to disclose them would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy.

As she did at the board’s previous meeting, DDA executive director Susan Pollay presented to the board an appeal of a denial of records under Michigan’s FOIA. She told the board that it was her practice to redact email addresses that she understood to be personal email addresses to protect privacy. She noted that the appeal also asked that a felt tip pen not be used for redaction because that makes it difficult for OCR technology to process text. She asked the board for direction on the appeal.

Roger Hewitt moved that the appeal be denied. Al McWilliams asked if it was the same appeal as had been made at the previous meeting. Pollay explained that it was not the same appeal, though it dealt with a similar issue. Rishi Narayan noted that he had not attended the previous meeting, when the board had held had a closed session on the topic. He wondered if there was a need for a closed session.

Pollay explained to Narayan that the board had considered the written opinion of legal counsel, but not deliberated. Sandi Smith asked Pollay for clarification about the nature of the information that had been redacted, and Pollay contended that it’s personal information about people that is being redacted, not their names. Keith Orr implicitly rejected the argument in the language of the appeal that there was an interest on the part of a requestor in being able to contact individuals who sought to influence members of a public body – using in the same way those people were using to contact the members of the public body.

Orr contended that it’s not the DDA’s responsibility to provide contact information and there are other ways to find out how to contact people. Orr also contended that the DDA is not unlawfully redacting the information. Orr said that when he tries to do things in Adobe [as opposed to using a Sharpie] it takes longer, so the DDA would have to take a look at passing along additional costs to requestors.

Outcome: The board voted to deny the appeal.

Communications, Committee Reports

The board’s May 7 meeting included the usual range of reports from its standing committees and the downtown citizens advisory council.

Comm/Comm: Former Y Lot Lease

Roger Hewitt gave an update on the DDA’s response to Dennis Dahlmann, who has purchased the former Y site along William, between Fourth and Fifth avenues. Dahlmann has made a request from the DDA to continue to operate that site as a service parking lot as part of the public parking system for a period of two years. Dahlmann had offered to split the proceeds of the revenue, which he had estimated at about $90,000 apiece for the DDA and Dahlmann. Hewitt said he did not know how Dahlmann arrived at that estimate. [For additional background, see "Old Y Lot: 2 More Years of Surface Parking?"]

The question had been referred to Republic Parking, the DDA subcontractor for parking operations, and to DDA deputy director Joe Morehouse, to analyze whether there is a need in that area and whether it made financial sense for the DDA to continue to operate that lot. Republic had pointed out that the DDA has two parking structures near the surface lot – one on each side, with a combined total of over 1,700 spots. [Those are the Fourth & William structure and the Library Lane underground parking structure.]

Those are also the only two parking structures that generally are not at their highest capacity, whereas the rest of the system is essentially at capacity, Hewitt said. So Hewitt said there was excess capacity at those structures. The conclusion was that whatever revenue the DDA realized from continuing to operate the surface lot as part of the public parking system would reflect revenue the DDA would otherwise receive from people parking at other facilities. Hewitt said that the conclusion was that it did not make any sense financially or from the point of parking operations.

If Dahlmann wants to continue to pursue the option of using the lot for parking, he could ask for a special exception use to allow parking on that lot. In any case, there was a route the Dahlmann could take in order to operate a private lot at that location, Hewitt said. He added that the DDA had been operating the site as a surface parking lot only at the request of the city after the YMCA building had been demolished.

Responding to a question from board chair Sandi Smith, Hewitt said that excess capacity was determined by how often a parking structure hit 85%. Those two structures do occasionally hit 85%, he allowed, but rarely do they go above 90% or 95%. As far as the wait list goes, the DDA feels an obligation to reserve a significant portion in the structures for hourly users, Hewitt said. If the DDA sold additional monthly parking permits in those structures, it would impact the ability of hourly patrons to use the structures, Hewitt said. The DDA had been very clear about its intention – when it constructed the Library Lane parking structure – to maintain a certain number of spaces for hourly patrons so people would have spaces to park.

Comm/Comm: Third-Quarter Financial Statements

Roger Hewitt gave an update on DDA financial statements for the third quarter of the current fiscal year – the three months from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2014. TIF (tax increment finance) revenue is approximately $65,000 under budget, which is 1.44%, within an acceptable variance, Hewitt said. The reason operating system expenses are different for the year-to-date versus budgeted amount is that the DDA had a large bond payment that was due, he said. Capital expenses are a fair amount under budget, although it’s expected by the end of the fiscal year – on June 30 – that the capital expenses figure will be very close to what was budgeted or perhaps slightly under. Construction season is starting, so some work on capital repairs would be done before the end of the fiscal year. Parking income is right where it was projected, Hewitt said.

Operating expenses would be significantly higher, and a budget amendment would be required. So Hewitt reviewed the reason for that: In the previous fiscal year, the DDA had budgeted a payment for the First & Washington parking garage – which was constructed as part of Village Green’s City Apartments project. Payment was due from the DDA upon issuance of a certificate of occupancy by the city for the parking garage portion of the project. The payment would be about $1.3 million. The DDA could not make that payment until the garage received its certificate of occupancy. That didn’t happen by the end of the 2013 fiscal year, Hewitt explained, so that payment could not be made at that time. [Fiscal 2013 ended on June 30, 2013.] So that payment is being made this fiscal year, and that’s why operating expenses are $1.3 million over budget, he said. It’s basically spending money this year that had been budgeted in the previous fiscal year.

Direct parking expenses are a bit less than budgeted, Hewitt said – because Republic Parking manager Art Lowe had done a good job in controlling costs. Automation has increased and a very efficient system is being run. About the parking maintenance fund, Hewitt said that income to that fund is controlled, because it is simply transferred from the parking fund.

Even though the DDA spent under the budgeted amount for maintenance, by the end of the fiscal year that would be fairly close to the budgeted amount, Hewitt said, because construction season was starting up. Operating expenses out of the housing fund would be significant higher, Hewitt said, due to the $300,000 grant that the board had approved for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, which was not in the budget. A budget resolution would be needed at the DDA’s June meeting – for the First & Washington bond payment and for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission grant, Hewitt said.

Hewitt gave a quick rundown of the fund balances for the four funds that the DDA maintains. The housing fund has approximately $700,000 – although most of that is already committed. In the parking fund, the balance is about $3.6 million. The parking maintenance fund has a balance of about $800,000 and the TIF fund balance is about $450,000.

Comm/Comm: Parking Report

In reporting out the parking numbers for the third quarter and the fiscal year to date, Roger Hewitt noted that weather information was included in the reports, saying that anyone who has a business in the downtown has experienced some drop-off during the last quarter – January, February, and March – which had the worst weather in memory. The average temperature was below the previous year’s average and more snow fell then in the previous year.

Hewitt complimented Republic Parking manager Art Lowe for doing a good job in keeping the system operating, moving the snow and keeping the sidewalks clear. Even with the bad weather, revenue was still up by about $7,500, Hewitt said. There are a number of hourly patron drops in some of the structures, but overall revenue still was up. That speaks well to the healthiness of downtown, Hewitt said.

In the Forest parking structure, activity had dropped because a University of Michigan construction project had ended – and construction workers who previously used the structure for parking were no longer using it. For the first three quarters of the fiscal year, Hewitt noted that total revenues were up about $400,000, while hourly patrons were flat. Hewitt stated that this “generally indicates that the people who are coming down and paying by the hour are staying longer.”

John Mouat asked if construction of the new dormitory by the University of Michigan at Packard and Division had caused a bump in parking activity anywhere in the system. Hewitt did not think so. The closest structure to that site is Maynard – and Maynard is pretty full anyway, Hewitt said. Sandi Smith asked that the number of spaces per structure be included in the reports as they had previously been.

Deputy DDA director Joe Morehouse explained that the number of spaces had previously been included in monthly reports, but the DDA was no longer generating monthly reports. He said he could add them into the quarterly reports.

Overall Parking System Revenue: Revenue has actually been essentially flat – compared to the same period in the previous year – for the most recent six-month period. (Chart by The Chronicle with data from the Ann Arbor DDA.)

For several years, the number of hourly patrons has been flat or slightly lower than the previous year. (Chart by The Chronicle with data from the Ann Arbor DDA.)

Comm/Comm: Downtown Ambassadors

Roger Hewitt described how a request for qualifications (RFQ) had been issued for the downtown ambassador program. Three separate responses to that request had been received, he reported. Those had been reviewed, and one of those appeared to be non-qualifying. The other two, Hewitt said, were very strong responses from very qualified operations.

The next step would be to have discussions with appropriate people in the community who would be interacting with ambassadors – the chief of police, the head of Project Outreach Team (PORT), the Ann Arbor Convention and Visitors Bureau and people who deal with social services in the area – to discuss with them how an ambassador program would integrate with the services they currently provide. That meeting will be scheduled for about two or three weeks from now, Hewitt said. After that, interviews with the two qualifying respondents would be held.

After that, the DDA would decide whether it wanted to proceed with a request for proposals. The request for qualifications, Hewitt explained, was really an educational process for the DDA.

Comm/Comm: Bike Racks

Keith Orr noted that a sign of spring is that the in-street bike racks are being placed. Amber Miller told Orr that about three quarters of the racks have been placed this year.

Comm/Comm: TiniLite

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, Changming Fan introduced himself as the inventor of TiniLite. His company was formed in Ann Arbor in 1996, he said: TiniLite World. The whole world should be using this kind of lighting technology to benefit society, he said. Ann Arbor was the first city to install LED streetlights, starting in 2007. Since then, however, he said he’d seen little market utilization of LED technology, for display. Lighting for illumination is different from lighting for display, he continued.

Applications for LED lighting technology for use in display includes messages, advertising, and public safety announcements. His company had never stopped pursuing scientific advancements in the field, he said, even during the economic downturn, during which he lost his house, he told the board. He hoped that his company could contribute its technology to the city of Ann Arbor. He had attended the previous evening’s meeting of the city planning commission, he said, and had suggested that the city’s master plan be revised. The master plan should incorporate intangible infrastructure, he said – which includes public communication. He hoped that he would have a chance to present his company’s technology.

Comm/Comm: Spring Party

Ray Detter invited everyone to the annual downtown neighbors spring party, which is taking place on Thursday, June 5 starting at 6:40 p.m. Those who attended previously, he ventured, knew that it was a great party. There would be tents out in back with “lots of food and lots of booze,” he said. People are welcome to bring a dish but are not required to and they can stay as long as they like – and sometimes people do that, he added. [The party is held at Detter's home on North Division.]

Comm/Comm: Streetscape Framework

Ray Detter reported that at the downtown area citizens advisory council meeting the previous evening, Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, had given the group an update on the streetscape framework plan. He described it as a comprehensive effort to coordinate all city planning in the DDA district in the right-of-way – from one building face on one side of the street to the building face on the opposite side of the street. Sustainability of the streetscape and the stewardship of the streetscape affects everyone, Detter said.

Comm/Comm: Historical Street Exhibit

As a part of his report from the downtown area citizens advisory council, Ray Detter recounted how 20 years ago the historical street exhibit program had been started. That had been assisted by the DDA, he said. He said it was important to bring young people, adults and visitors to the downtown area to make people aware of the historical identity of the community.

Ray Detter passed out invitations to his annual spring party.

For the last four years, the program has been bringing hundreds of high school students to the downtown area to share that experience, he said. Tours would be taking place the following Monday, May 12, Detter continued. Two different sets of tours will be taking place, he said, and 160 high school students would be participating in 13 different tours of the downtown. The students are enrolled at Community High School, and they would be accompanied by “little buddies” from elementary schools – which is a feature of the CHS educational program, Detter explained.

Every year, Detter continued, an attempt is made to increase the number of resource people on the tours. The 90-year-old Rosemarion Blake is one example, Detter said. [The Blake Transit Center is named for her husband, Richard D. Blake.] She helps out on the tour by sitting at the corner at Detroit and Fifth streets. She is there to talk about her role growing up black in the Kerrytown area in Ann Arbor. The kids love her, Detter said.

Alan Haber is another resource person, Detter said. He would be on the corner of South University and East University talking about his role in the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s. Karl Pohrt had served as a resource person on that topic in previous years, Detter said. [Pohrt, who owned Shaman Drum Bookshop on South State, died in 2013.] Other resource people included: former Ann Arbor mayor Ingrid Sheldon, former Washtenaw County water resources commissioner Janis Bobrin and county clerk Larry Kestenbaum.

Detter invited the public, as they saw the tours moving around downtown Ann Arbor, to join in on the tours.

Comm/Comm: City Budget

City administrator Steve Powers updated the board on the status of the city budget process. Fiscal year 2015 starts July 1, he noted. Powers reported that he’d already presented his recommended budget to the city council. The council will be considering the adoption of that budget on May 19. The city’s financial condition is improving, Powers said, and the overall economy of the city is improving. Property tax revenues are up about 2.4%.

City administrator Steve Powers.

The state economy is also improving, and the city is seeing more state shared revenue. That has allowed for a recommendation that includes additional city staff positions, Powers said. Those include three additional police officers, two of which would be assigned to the community engagement unit – a new unit that engages the neighborhoods and communities within the city, including the downtown. An additional officer would be assigned to traffic enforcement. Along with that, Powers continued, an additional firefighter position is being recommended. Because of the additional rental units that have been constructed in the city, he said, an additional rental housing inspector was being recommended. That would help with tenant safety and monitoring of those additional rental units.

There’s also a recommendation to use $1 million from the fund balance to get caught up on some much needed maintenance of the city’s street trees, Powers said. Street trees are very important for helping to manage the city stormwater, Powers pointed out, as well as for improving the aesthetics of the community.

There’s also funding in the recommended budget for additional zoning work in the downtown, as well as money for a sign inventory.

Board chair Sandi Smith asked Powers if the street tree work was prioritized in any way by geographic considerations. She wondered what percentage of the work would be done inside the DDA district. Powers told Smith that he did not have that level of detail, but the funding amount was consistent with the final draft of the urban forestry management plan. Powers told Smith he would look into that to see what specifically the impact would be for the DDA area. The prioritization, he continued, is based on the condition of the trees: The highest need would be done first. If there was a safety risk associated with the tree, those trees would be prioritized for first removal.

Present: Al McWilliams, Bob Guenzel, Roger Hewitt, Steve Powers, John Splitt, Sandi Smith, Rishi Narayan, Russ Collins, Keith Orr, Joan Lowenstein, John Mouat.

Absent: Cyndi Clark.

Next board meeting: Noon on Wednesday, June 4, 2014, at the DDA offices, 150 S. Fifth Ave., Suite 301. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. 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!

Exactly one week before the vote, Ward 2 Ann Arbor city councilmembers Jane Lumm and Sally Petersen hosted a resident meeting on the topic.

This AAATA route map shows the current configuration of fixed-route buses. Label and icon for Earhart Village added by The Chronicle.

Invited were all residents of Ward 2, city residents at large, as well as representatives of the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority. The AAATA board voted in February to place the millage on the May 6 ballot.

About 50 people attended. Among others, the meeting drew Ward 2 city council candidate Nancy Kaplan, former Ward 1 council candidate Jeff Hayner, former mayor Ingrid Sheldon, Ward 3 council candidate Julie Grand, and state rep Jeff Irwin (D-53).

This is a report of that meeting.

Lumm and Petersen had previously co-hosted a half dozen similar meetings for their constituents on a variety of topics. The April 29 event had a potentially broader impact: At a candidate forum held on April 16, 2014, mayoral hopeful Petersen had stated that she was planning to wait until after the April 29 ward meeting to decide on a possible endorsement of the millage.

At that time, Petersen was still a little bit on the fence – but leaning toward supporting it. By then, the three other candidates in the Democratic mayoral primary – Sabra Briere, Christopher Taylor and Stephen Kunselman – had already indicated support for the additional tax.

The April 29 evening meeting was held at Earhart Village – a 174-unit condominium community just off the north-south Earhart Road, between Plymouth and Geddes. The Route #2 bus line runs from downtown to the northeast up Plymouth – with a relatively infrequent variant, Route #2C, that offers service down from Plymouth to the Earhart Village area. Accessing Route #3 to the south, on Geddes, would mean about a 1-mile walk up Earhart for an Earhart Village resident.

Frequency of service to the Earhart Village area was among the complaints of some attendees. Many in the room were negatively inclined toward the millage, as one woman announced she’d already voted no, using an absentee ballot. But there were some voices in the room that backed the proposal. Responding to criticism that the AAATA was not a “lean-and-mean” organization, a teacher in the audience made a comparison to cuts by the school district: “Lean-and-mean is not serving our students.”

AAATA staff Chris White, Michael Benham, and Mary Stasiak gave a presentation to the group before fielding questions. Lumm and Petersen structured the interaction by reading questions that attendees had written on index cards, but people were also free to ask direct questions. Some questions were pointedly critical in tone: “Does the millage money cover the additional wear and tear on the roads due to the additional buses?” And some were softballs: “Do Ward 2 constituents understand the benefit of bus expansion for low-income people and people with disabilities?”

At the conclusion of the meeting, Petersen quipped: “We had loaded questions, we had loaded answers. Hopefully one way or another we’ll have loaded buses sometime soon!” And Petersen announced her support for the millage two days later at a May 1 morning meeting of the Main Street Area Association.

However loaded the questions might have been, they elicited some useful information about how public transportation works. This report is organized along three broad themes reflected in the questions and comments from residents: overall efficiency of the AAATA as an organization; the nature of transportation funding; and some basics of public transportation service. The report is supplemented with charts generated from a national transit database.

AAATA Efficiency

A number of questions from the audience – either written on cards and handed to Lumm and Petersen or asked directly – dealt with a perception that the AAATA is not operationally efficient.

AAATA Efficiency: Staffing

Question: If the millage passes, how many new jobs will be created in total at the AAATA, and how many of those will be new drivers? [Background to the question is a claim by opponents of the millage that the AAATA has 52 management staff.]

CHRIS WHITE: We expect over the five-year period about 60 new drivers. And there will be a couple of mechanics because we’ll have a larger fleet of buses. There might be a supervisor or two related to mechanics or facilities – but so far it looks like we can handle this with the staff we’ve got.

Question: Cutting administrative staff could offset increased costs – why isn’t that being pursued?

CHRIS WHITE: Right. That assumes that those administrative staff are not being productive and are not doing tasks that are worthwhile. That’s a judgment for the AAATA board to look at and see what our plans are and what we need to do to carry that out. Administrative staff includes our mechanics supervisors, the transportation supervisors, the people who are dispatching buses, the people investigating accidents, human resources, finance, IT, planning, the people who sell tickets, the people at the front desk, at the Blake Transit Center – it’s a wide range. Our judgment is that the staff that is there is needed in order to provide the level of service that we provide.

MICHAEL BENHAM: There are a number of folks at the office who were amazed to learn that they were “managers.” We have 11 managers. There are 52 non-union employees. That’s a big difference. There’s some messages out there that are a little bit misleading. Take our IT staff – they’re working on the overhead signs on the buses, they work to maintain those, they maintain the fare boxes. The system is very electronic these days. So our IT staff is part of those so-called “managers,” but without them we would not know where our buses are, we would not be able to provide messages to people as the bus arrives at the stop.

[Later in the meeting, Benham stressed the importance of IT staff in some of the shorter-term research and development initiatives.]

The other thing I think we should point out in terms of research and development, some of it is looking fairly far down the road. But some of it is looking at short-range issues. One of those is transit signal priority, where buses can communicate with the traffic signals and a little extra green time or gain a little extra time on that left turn – and that will speed up our operations quite a bit. With more traffic out there, we are concerned that our operations might slow down and we want to make sure that we can keep up with it.

Also, fare box technology is another big thing. Right now, if you ride our service, you see people get on the bus and people unroll their dollar bill and it takes a while at each stop. Obviously you want to collect those dollars, but it slows down our operation to do that. There are technologies out there that are being used by other systems, where you buy your ticket on your phone and you show it to your driver or you have a smart card that you don’t have to put into the farebox, you can just bring it close to the farebox. Those technologies are here, but it takes work to figure out how to apply these technologies in the system. But that’s going to speed up service. We’re looking long-term, but we’re also looking at very near-term possibilities.

Question: Does the AAATA conduct salary surveys and keep its salary levels commensurate with the corporate world?

CHRIS WHITE: We have a salary administration program that we’ve had in place for a number of years. It compares our administrative wages by position with similar positions in southeast Michigan. We benchmark those positions that are relatively simple to compare: Manager of human resources is pretty much the same at a transit agency as it is at a lot of other places … finance manager and that kind of thing. And so those are benchmarked. We keep our salaries in line with those in southeast Michigan.

AAATA Efficiency: Expenditures on Marketing, Campaign

Question:What about all the marketing staff and consultants on marketing?

MICHAEL BENHAM: As far as marketing, we have 50% more riders per service hour than our peers. In part that is because of our marketing. That’s because we offer innovative programs. We go to schools and we talk with kids early on to see if we can introduce them to transit and make them lifelong transit riders. We go to the University of Michigan and we offer options to them for getting to their workplace without bringing their car into Ann Arbor. We go to companies and talk to them about how they can get downtown without bringing their car into the downtown, and on and on.

You know, transit is not necessarily something that people know about or think about. Some people do, but we need to work hard to get people onto the system. We have a big chunk of ridership that we call “transit dependent” – they don’t have cars and they don’t have any other choice. But the big and growing part of our system is what we call “choice riders.” Those are people who have a car, or maybe have one car at home and there are two wage earners. But they have a choice whether to take that bus to work, or to the theater, or what have you. Maybe they do it to save money – which they do – or maybe because they are environmentally conscious. So the marketing we do – we call it outreach – it is our way of talking to the community and getting people interested in the service and getting people onto the bus and making that productivity 50% higher than our peers. That’s what that’s all about.

RESIDENT A: You said that the marketing campaign is designed to go to schools to urge students to use the bus more. I’ve watched the campaign over the last two years, and much of it has nothing to do with urging people to ride the bus. “TheRide, your way, vote on Tuesday.” “TheRide gets people to jobs for a healthy economy. Vote May 6.” “TheRide is essential for independent living. Vote May 6.” It’s all feel-good stuff to make people feel good about the AAATA – and damn little of it is the kind of thing the Ann Arbor District Library has, which is: We have a program here and we have a program here – Ya’ll come.

MICHAEL BENHAM: The Ride Guide is something we publish three times a year that has all information about how to ride the bus, the different kinds of tickets that are available, how to use the Blake Transit Center – so this is a central book. This is our bread and butter.

RESIDENT A: I’ve lived here 45 years, and I’ve never seen a more expensive taxpayer-funded millage campaign than the one I’m experiencing right now.

RESIDENT B: You think there’s something wrong with the AAATA telling you that there is a millage vote going on?!

MARY STASIAK: It would be completely inappropriate for the agency not to tell people that there was a vote coming up. And it’s really important that we tell people that there is a vote so that they can have a choice and they can decide for themselves what it is and how they want to vote. And you learn about it. It’s our job to tell you that this is what would be included and what you would be paying for. If we did not do that, then I would say shame on us.

SALLY PETERSEN: The sentiment I’m hearing is that some of the informational literature – knowing that you’re not a campaign organization – it feels like it’s going right up on the edge of being campaign propaganda. You say to vote, but you don’t say how to vote.

RESIDENT C: If you say you want as many people to know about it as possible, why are you having it in May instead of voting when we’re voting for governor [in November]?

MARY STASIAK: We did that on purpose so that we would not be competing with all the other issues, so that people have a clear understanding of what they were voting on.

RESIDENT C: You’d have another three months to learn about it.

AAATA Efficiency: Overall Perception

Question: I just want to say that the city, the schools and all of us workers have had to become more lean-and-mean. And I have not seen that from this presentation. We feel like [the marketing campaign] is more grandiose spending of money. We want to see you be lean-and-mean like we’ve all had to – in our jobs and our schools, and our state government. We feel like you could be a little more lean-and-mean on things.

MICHAEL BENHAM: There’s two ways to succeed in business. One is to slash and cut – bring out the meat cleaver, slash costs to the bone to the point where it really hurts your product. The other way to do it is to do what we’ve been doing – which is to build up our customer base, build our customers so we have that 50% more than our peers. We are a lean-and-mean organization. We keep a constant eye on costs and we are always looking at ways to save a few dollars here and there. But by the same token, we pay attention to our customers, both our existing customers and the many people out there who would be our customers in the future. It’s really about how to succeed in business, and I think that’s what we’re doing.

RESIDENT D: Being a teacher, lean-and-mean is not serving our students.

AAATA Efficiency: Comparative National Stats

When Benham referred to the AAATA’s 50% greater ridership per service hour than its peer group, he was citing the result of a peer-group comparison analysis from a tool that is available through the Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) based on recommendations from the Transit Cooperative Research Program.

To determine a peer group, the tool relies on the following criteria to establish a “likeness” index between a transit agency and other transit agencies nationwide:

• urban area population
• total annual vehicle miles operated
• annual operating budget
• population density
• percent of college students
• population growth rate
• percent service purchased
• percent low-income population
• annual delay (hours) per traveler
• freeway lane miles (thousands) per capita
• percent service demand-responsive
• distance between agencies

Based on the “likeness” index, it’s possible to select the top 20 (or any number) of other transit agencies to analyze in comparison to the AAATA. Measured on the above criteria, using 2010 demographic survey information, the most similar 20 organizations to the AAATA are transit agencies in these peer communities: Peoria, IL; Lexington, KY; Moline, IL; Lansing, MI; Syracuse, NY; Savannah, GA; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Roanoke, VA; Concord, CA; Erie, PA; Kalamazoo, MI; Harrisburg, PA; Fort Wayne, IN; Rockford, IL; Shreveport, LA; Hartford, CT; Fort Collins, CO; Scranton, PA; Gainesville, FL; and South Bend, IN.

The peer group scoring based on the following year’s data resulted in a group of peers that overlapped in 19 out of 20 cases, with some minor shuffling of “likeness” scores.

Using the same tool, The Chronicle was able to replicate the AAATA’s conclusions in determining the peer group, as well as the comparative analysis for three metrics. For its fixed-route service, the AAATA’s cost per service hour is higher than its peer group average. But the AAATA’s number of riders per service hour is higher than its peer group. The number of riders per service hour is sufficiently higher that it pushes the AAATA’s cost per ride lower than its peer group.

In the charts below, the AAATA is always presented in the leftmost bar, and the other transit agencies are presented from left to right in their rank order of “likeness.” The peer group median is shown in a horizontal red line.

AAATA Operating Expense per Revenue Hour compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA are based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) analysis. Data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University, http://www.ftis.org/intdas.html, accessed Nov. 22, 2013.

AAATA Passenger Trips per Revenue Hour compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) analysis. Data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University, http://www.ftis.org/intdas.html, accessed Nov. 22, 2013.

AAATA Operating Expense per Trip compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) analysis. Data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University, http://www.ftis.org/intdas.html, accessed Nov. 22, 2013.

While there’s been considerable public back and forth between opponents of the millage and the AAATA about the number of managers employed at the authority, the National Transit Database includes administrative employees and total employees (as well as other categories of employees) as variables. For 2012, the database shows 26.5 FTE in administration and 181 total employees. If administrative FTEs are computed as a percent of the total and that statistic is compared to the AAATA’s peer group, the AAATA’s percentage is higher than the peer group median:

AAATA Administrative Employees as a Percentage compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS)

Historically, the number of administrative employees at the AAATA has trended higher over the last three years, as the organization has added capacity for planning and development of service expansion alternatives and public engagement. At the April 29 meeting, AAATA representatives indicated that if the millage passes, the service improvements would result in 60 additional bus driver positions, but not add administrative positions. That mix (shown in the red bar) would bring AAATA’s administrative staff ratio back in line with the percentage the AAATA has had historically:

AAATA Historical Employees as a Percentage charted with data from the Florida Transit Information System (FTIS)

The AAATA’s higher ridership also means that the number of rides provided per employee is higher than its peer group:

AAATA Trips per FTE compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) analysis. Data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University, http://www.ftis.org/intdas.html, accessed Nov. 22, 2013.

Funding Sources for Public Transportation

In addition to questions about millage mechanics, several of the questions from residents touched on various funding sources and why they are not being used instead of a millage.

Funding Sources: AAATA Millage – We Already Pay

Question: The $70 that this millage would cost the owner of a $200,000 house is on top of the city millage of 2 mills that we are paying already – so you’re not just paying $70, you’re paying $270.

MICHAEL BENHAM: That’s a good point, and we have balanced the service with the revenues. While Ann Arbor is paying more for the service – because of these stacked millages – Ann Arbor is getting the overwhelming majority of the service. Ypsilanti is putting 0.7 mills on top of their roughly 1 mill and they’re getting that level of service.

Funding Sources: AAATA Millage – After Five Years?

Question: If this is a five-year plan, does this imply no request for an increased millage for the next five years?

MICHAEL BENHAM: We haven’t really looked that far, to be honest. There’s more need for service out there, there’s no question about it, but we have not made any plans to expand the system beyond five years. You have seen our 30-year plan. We need to be flexible in response to changes: A new employer coming into town, or a new large set of apartments can change a lot of our plans. As long as growth continues, I think it is safe to say there will be more services needed out there. We are aware already that our proposed services won’t serve all of the needs. But we are also aware that the public appetite for providing transit on every street is not there.

CHRIS WHITE: I think an important point of this is that we have tried to be careful in planning the funding so that the 0.7 mills is sufficient to fund the service plan in place. And at the end of that five-year period, that same millage rate would be sufficient to carry it forward. We are not going to wind up in a position at the end of five years where we say that we can’t continue the service after five years unless we get a higher millage. So we tried to be careful in planning. That has been the intention to make sure that 0.7 mills is sufficient pay the service now, and into the future after five years.

Question: If the millage passes – which is 35% more than what we’re paying now – and we’re not happy with it, can we vote it down or do we have it forever?

CHRIS WHITE: At the end of five years, this millage would come up for renewal. [Yes, it could be voted down.]

Funding Sources: RTA Millage?

By way of background, the southeast Michigan Regional Transit Authority was established in a lame duck session of the Michigan legislature in late 2012, and includes a four-county region – Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw and Wayne – with each county making two appointments to the board, and the city of Detroit making one.

Question: What about concurrent millages? If the AAATA millage passes, and in 2016 when the regional transit authority (RTA) asks for one, is there any guarantee that there can’t be any concurrent millages that will be added on top of this?

CHRIS WHITE: It’s really hard to say what the RTA is going to do. They’ve been working really hard to get their act together. But it is going very slowly. If there’s anything from the RTA, it will be for the region and for regional service, not for local service within Washtenaw County. If there’s going to be regional service, that will be the RTA’s role and they would have to seek funding from that four-county region.

MICHAEL BENHAM: One of the things that we are concerned about is that the RTA is out there, but we don’t know when they are going to be able to take care of the needs that are out there. The needs are here today. At the earliest, it would be two years before they’re even prepared to request funding. We felt like the needs were pretty urgent.

Funding Sources: State, Federal

Question: How long are the matching funds that you are requesting supposed to last? Are you counting on those funds to remain in place in perpetuity?

CHRIS WHITE: It’s something we worry about a fair amount. It’s one of the reasons we have always had a reserve account – to try to make sure that something doesn’t happen. The state funding mechanism has been in place since 1974, and since that time the state has funded public transit pretty much the same way. Funding as a percentage of operations has been declining over a long period time – but at a very gradual rate, and we’ve been able to manage. The state provides a match for federal capital funds – and that is the first priority for funds that come from what is called the state’s Comprehensive Transportation Fund. So from the state, you have a long history but that doesn’t mean it can’t change.

RESIDENT E: So does the millage increase take that into account or not?

CHRIS WHITE: The budgeting for the millage increase includes a continuation of that state funding that has been in place for 30 years. The second part of it is federal funding – and we also count on federal funding. Similar to state funding, the basic formula for federal funding has been in place for 30 years. The difference with federal funding is that we have seen very steady increases in the level of funding. Part of that funding is based on the population of our urbanized area.

Part of it is based on the amount of service we provide and the amount of service that gets used. That funding has been increasing. We are not counting on further increases, but we are counting on the continuation of that funding source that has been in place for 30 years. So yes, that is something that we worry about in terms of what we could do in the future. But there’s also some pretty significant planning in place. Unlike most places, we don’t spend all of the federal money in the year that we receive it. The feds are nice, they give us money, and they actually let us plan how to use it. The money we get this year we can use over the next three years.

What we do is put together a five-year plan. We bank some of that money, partly for that eventuality that if something happens, we make sure that we can smooth out any change.

RESIDENT E: So you’re asking for more money than you really need?

CHRIS WHITE: No.

RESIDENT E: But if you have money in reserves, you are asking for more money than what you need for operating.

CHRIS WHITE: It is wise and prudent for any organization to have some level of reserves to make sure that they can weather unforeseen circumstances. With transit service, if something happens, we’re not going to just shut the doors. We’re going to be able to do a plan to change. But reserves are something we actually have to have.

MICHAEL BENHAM: Remember the federal shutdown. We need to be prepared if there is a temporary problem. If there is a longer-term problem, this is not entirely out of our control. We do work very closely with our congressional delegation, we work with our local delegation in Lansing, and with the other transit agencies to really push for these funding programs. It’s not that we’re sitting back waiting for something to happen. We work hard to influence those programs. Keep in mind that there are 450 other transit agencies in this country and we work together to push hard for that funding and we have been successful for 30 years.

Funding Sources: Purchase of Service Agreements (POSAs)

Question: What aren’t increases to POSAs being considered as a way to offset increasing costs?

MICHAEL BENHAM: POSAs cost what the service is worth – what it costs the AAATA. If we increase the cost of the POSA, that would not be fair: We would be getting more for the service than what it costs us. We take the number of service hours we are providing and multiply that by the fully-allocated cost for service – that’s the cost. Then we give the POSA community credit for: (1) the fares that are collected; (2) the state share (the state provides 30% of the cost); and (3) the federal share – because some of that is earned for their operation for their riders. The difference between the cost and those three revenue sources is the amount that a POSA community is required to pay to get their service.

Funding Sources: Fares

Question: Why aren’t fare increases being pursued as an option for funding increased costs?

[In response to a different question, AAATA staff explained that $3.36 is the AAATA's cost per rider on the fixed-route system. The full cash fare is $1.50. The average fare paid by passengers is about $0.80. That lower average is due to a variety of factors: transfers are free; and discount fares are provided for seniors and people with disabilities, low-income people and students.]

CHRIS WHITE: We increased the fare 50% in the last five years. There was a 25% increase in 2010 and another 25% increase in 2011. [These two increases lifted the full cash fare from $1 to $1.50.] So that’s a substantial increase. That fare increase is passed through to everybody who pays fares, including the third-party fares that we get from a lot of organizations [such as the University of Michigan and go!pass program].

Funding Source: Fares from Third Parties

Question: Why does the University of Michigan pay only $1.25 million per year for 2.5 million rides. That’s $0.50 a ride.

[The key fact is that UM's reimbursement to the AAATA is made partly in cash, and partly through federal funds. The question assumes that the cash portion is the only reimbursement.]

MICHAEL BENHAM: The university reimburses us $1 for every single ride – we get reimbursed at a rate that’s slightly higher than the average fare.

CHRIS WHITE: For 2.4 million rides, the amount that we see from the university is about $1.2 million in cash. It’s a little complex. Part of the federal formula for determining funding allocations is based on riders, passenger miles, and vehicle miles. The University of Michigan provides a public transit service [through its blue bus system.] One of the things the AAATA did 15 years ago was convince the university to start filing a report with the feds – an actual transit database report – which brings in the federal funds for the University of Michigan’s bus operation.

The agreement we have with university for their faculty, staff, and students – which allows them to board AAATA buses without paying the fare to get on – turns over to us the federal funds that are earned by the University of Michigan bus system. We got $1.35 million in federal funds last year from that, and every year it’s going up. And if the ridership goes up, they will pay more. But for every university rider, we get a dollar.

It sounds like something is wrong there because the full cash fare is $1.50. But the AAATA board of directors looks at two things. First, university employees live in this community, and they pay taxes in this community, and they are entitled to public transit services as well. That’s one thing that gets lost. The second thing is that we do sell passes to anyone at a volume discount. You can buy a monthly pass and it costs $58. When people use those monthly passes, we count how many times they use it.

It works out on average to about 90-91 cents per boarding. We charge the University of Michigan $1 per boarding. So we’re actually charging them more – about 10% more – than the least expensive fare that anybody in the public can get. We don’t give away service to people. We have partnerships and we use them. One of the advantages is that it gives us the fare revenue and also gives us the productivity to allow us to look at expanding services. We feel pretty strongly that we have an obligation to provide comprehensive transit service to allow people who live in this community who do not drive – a lot of them choose not to drive. So having a public transit system is an important thing that we feel are required to try and do. The nice thing is that we can add ridership from some of these riders of choice, and that helps us to expand service that benefits the entire community.

Funding Sources: Fares – National Stats

The farebox recovery ratio is the percentage of costs covered by passenger fares. Using the same kind of peer group comparison as above, it’s possible to analyze AAATA’s farebox recovery ratio with its national peers. The AAATA has about the same farebox recovery ratio as the average of its peer group:

AAATA Farebox Recovery compared against FTIS Top 20 peers. Top 20 peers to AAATA based on Florida Transit Information System (FTIS) analysis. Data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University, http://www.ftis.org/intdas.html, accessed Nov. 22, 2013.

The AAATA’s farebox recovery ratio has trended upward in recent years, attributable to fare increases implemented in 2010 and 2011 ($0.25 both years for a total increase from $1 to $1.50).

AAATA Farebox Recovery Historical Trend with data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University.

Farebox recovery is also influenced by ridership. All other things being equal, more riders means a higher farebox recovery ratio, because more riders generate more fares. Ridership on AAATA fixed-route buses has trended upward:

Fixed-route AAATA ridership by year. (Data from AAATA, charted by The Chronicle.)

All other things being equal, increasing ridership also pushes the cost per ride downward:

AAATA Farebox Operating Expense Per Passenger Trip with data from Integrated National Transit Database Analysis System (INTDAS), developed for Florida Department of Transportation by Lehman Center for Transportation Research, Florida International University.

Funding Sources: Restricted – BTC Construction

Question: The AAATA spent a great deal of money on a new transit center. Why? Why was that money not spent on moving people?

CHRIS WHITE: The money we spent on that was 80% federal funds and 20% state funds – that we received by making a competitive application for it. Those are federal funds that were brought into the community that would not otherwise have come, in order to improve that transit center. The old transit center was for a variety of reasons undersized and was 25 years old, so it was time for a new facility.

That new facility provides a much better waiting area for riders. But it also allows us to provide information to those riders so that they can see what buses have arrived. If you’re familiar with the arrangement we have downtown, we have a transit mall where we have six buses, and we have the east side of Fourth Avenue where we have eight buses. The farthest buses towards Liberty Street are out of sight, and it’s a little hard to see when the buses arrive. So part of the idea is to provide a new facility that allows us to provide electronic information, much as you would see at transit centers in other cities.

Funding Sources: Restricted – Planning

Question: I’ve heard that in the 2014 AAATA budget that there is a planning category that includes $2 million just for three things – WALLY [north-south commuter rail], the Connector [a high-capacity link from US-23 and Plymouth down through UM campus, downtown southward to State and I-94], and something called “urban core” planning. Now if this is true, why shouldn’t that $2 million be used for improving services rather than expanding into newfangled, improbable, grandiose schemes? You’re talking about service and the need for service for handicapped people, etc. In the budget apparently is WALLY – to subsidize people who live in Ann Arbor and work here to move to low-tax Livingston County so they can get the best of all worlds. Or the Connector, that largely benefits the university but won’t pay for it.

CHRIS WHITE: The budget figure is correct but your observation does not reflect the revenue sources that support it. The Connector is an initiative that came out of the city’s transportation plan. The AAATA is the lead agency for that, and we have a $1.2 million grant from the federal government for that specific purpose. So we made a competitive application and we got money for that. There’s another $300,000 that has to come from partners. The University of Michigan is paying half of that $300,000. The AAATA is paying $60,000 and the city and the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority are splitting the remainder. The amount the AAATA is paying is $60,000.

MICHAEL BENHAM: WALLY is a joint project with the state. The state got $650,000 to study WALLY and it is a research and development project. There’s also some local money, but it is not our money – those are contributions by other organizations within the county and from Livingston County to pay for the local match.

Transit Service

The evening led off with a presentation from AAATA staff describing the historical background of governance changes to the AAATA over the last year, and a description of the 5-year service plan the new millage is supposed to pay for. A number of questions dealt with operational aspects of specific types of service.

Transit Service: Description of Improvements: Fixed Route

Chris White gave a description of the fixed-route service improvements the millage would pay for.

CHRIS WHITE: One of the points I want to make up front is that the proposed millage is to fund additional service. We provide a pretty extensive suite of services now. Our fixed-route service, A-Ride (for people with disabilities), Good as Gold (for seniors) – those will continue regardless of what happens with the millage. The vote is to provide additional service.

There is a schedule book that we put together that we call the Ride Guide of the future that we brought to all the public meetings – specific schedules for all the routes that we are proposing, so that people could know what we’re proposing to do, so that you can give us input on and make comments on it, and we could go back and make revisions to that plan and respond to that. A number of revisions got made that way. Overall, what we’re proposing to do is about a 44% increase in our fixed-route service hours. There also increases in our A-Ride service – the service for people with disabilities and seniors.

The first element of that we would do in August 2014 – a few months from now, if the vote is successful – is to extend the end time of our service on weekdays on most of the routes. Most of the routes would go from 10:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. There are a couple of routes where we don’t have evening service on now that we would extend into the evening, and one of them is the route that serves this area – Route #2C that comes down Green and goes to Glacier Hills. Another one is the Route #14 route that serves Arbor Hills. Those routes would be extended to between 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m.

The second element of the plan is later evening service on weekends. It’s one of the very specific requests we get – to have Saturday evening service. Service currently ends between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. on most routes on Saturday. Service would be extended about an hour on all the routes in the first year if the millage passes, starting in August 2014. And then in August 2015, service would be extended essentially on all routes to between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m. on Saturdays.

That would also lead to an extension of our A-Ride and Good as Gold services. So if someone is out for a play, a concert, or on campus, they would be able to get home easily.

There’s variety of routes where we’re extending service by adding more frequent trips. A lot of people know that on Route #4, which is our Washtenaw Avenue route, our busiest ridership, we doubled the weekly frequency in January 2012 as kind of an advance implementation of this plan. That service was acutely successful and a year later we added more frequency on our Route #5, because we were having problems with capacity and on-time performance on that route.

As part of the service plan that we’re proposing, we’ve increased frequency and capacity on a number of routes in Ann Arbor. Route #2 is the route that serves the Plymouth Road area and north of Plymouth Road. We’re adding a bus midday to take care of problems we’re having with crowded buses on that route. We’re not able to accommodate the loads on that route at that time. We have service on a route that goes down to Briarwood and then out Ellsworth. That service is going to be doubled in frequency in 2017 in the plan. And we have a number of routes on the west side of Ann Arbor, where we’re redoing those routes. [White also described the reconfiguration of routes – converting some loops to out-and-back routes, which allows flexibility to extend service farther out in the future.]

Transit Service: Description of Improvements: Paratransit

Question: How are the paratransit and dial-a-ride services [A-Ride for people with disabilities and Good as Gold for seniors] being improved and how do people request this?

CHRIS WHITE: Every place we are increasing service hours, those service hour extensions apply to our door-to-door, paratransit services as well. It applies to new destinations as well. Our coverage in Ann Arbor is already such that the fixed-route improvements don’t mean a lot of new areas are served within Ann Arbor – improvements inside Ann Arbor are mostly in terms of frequency and time of day. But some locations have been added – the Pittsfield branch of the Ann Arbor District Library, the Costco on Ellsworth, the Quality 16 movie theater and the Meijer on Jackson Road. The AAATA is a little hesitant to talk about the Jackson Road locations, as an agreement would still need to be worked out with Scio Township on that. In Ypsilanti, the Ypsilanti District Library and the District Court are actually important destinations even for a lot of people from Ann Arbor.

MICHAEL BENHAM: The weekend and night service expands for paratransit service whenever we extend fixed-route service. That’s a huge expansion of service, if you don’t have to be in by 6:30 p.m. and can actually take in a movie and dinner.

CHRIS WHITE: Another thing that a lot of people don’t know about is that we have a tentative arrangement with the University Michigan so that the A-Ride service and the Good as Gold service goes to the East Ann Arbor Medical Center and Domino’s Farms. The University Michigan is actually paying for the additional cost of those trips. We have not been able to get an agreement to do fixed-route service yet.

Question: Can you talk about the LAC?

CHRIS WHITE: For a long time, we have established a group called the local advisory council (LAC) – a group of people with disabilities and seniors that is an advisory committee to our board, which meets monthly. A number of years ago we had a number of people who were agency reps on that. But we found that it’s actually much more effective to have people who are actually using the service. It’s been a very, very important group to us, because in essence there is mutual group training going on. We’re learning more about how they use the service and they are learning more about how transit operates and what some of our limitations are. So we get a group of people who have some expertise to give us really quality advice about what we can do to improve the service – door-to-door services, as well as how we can provide our fixed-route service. The LAC has been a real benefit to us over the years.

Transit Service: Why Large Buses?

Question: Why do you run such large buses, and why do you use such large buses all the time?

MICHAEL BENHAM: The peak hours do tend to be the busiest, but even off-peak tends to be pretty busy, particularly on certain routes. It’s only in the very off-peak routes that we have the less-used buses. We could switch to smaller buses during those off-peak hours, but then we would have two separate, duplicative fleets of buses to maintain. We’d need a larger bus garage. And we would have to maintain a whole different fleet and would have to buy that fleet. It is a trade-off. We do have a van ride program – that’s a fleet of small vehicles, 6-8 passengers, where the driver is actually one of the users of the bus. That is one of our answers to what we call low-density transportation, where you don’t have a lot of people traveling down a specific corridor. Demand-response service is another way we do that. And we’re also thinking about the possibility of smaller vehicles in some of the starter services on new routes where we would not expect to fill up a large bus on day one.

CHRIS WHITE: It’s particularly pertinent in this neighborhood. If you live on Earhart and Green road in this area, the bus that you can see most of the time is going to be empty: It’s near the end of the route. That bus may have been very full and probably was very full during other parts of the route. But as it gets to the end of the route, it’s emptying and emptying.

RESIDENT F: I was on the Route 2C six weeks ago, and there were five people when I got on, and there were 60 by the time I got off on campus.

Transit Service: Ward 2 Service

Question: Are there any plans to increase the frequency of buses for Route #2B on the weekends? Why are there no new bus routes in the northeast corner? What are my taxes going for? Will you consider route reorganization to improve crosstown transit time, if you are not heading in and out of downtown?

CHRIS WHITE: It’s about balancing demand and the level of services. The Saturday morning service on Route #2 is once per hour. But it increases to every half hour on Saturday afternoon. There are quite a few routes in the system that are just hourly service all day on Saturday. One of the things that we’ve seen some change in over the last few years is ridership during the off-peak hours. That’s what this service plan is supposed to address – some of that demand.

We’re seeing an increase in demand in the evenings and on Saturdays. Route #2 is not scheduled for an increase except for the fact that we’re going to do one earlier trip – that’s the only increase on Saturdays for Route #2. This area of town has changed significantly. Historically, this is a pretty low ridership area. But demand has grown significantly and we have seen a lot of increase in demand for service in this area. We provide service every 15 minutes all day on the trunk of the route, and then it divides into three alternatives that provide service less frequently in this area.

Question: Route 2 has three variants right now. Can’t that be split up and have a separate loop? I can speak from experience that part of the problem with lower rider volume is that people had taken the bus, but now they can’t depend on being able to go back out on the route they came in on in a timely manner – especially if they’re under a time constraint or they got delayed at their appointment or something. It can be an hour between buses – and for me that’s not acceptable. You can’t wait at a school or library for that period of time.

CHRIS WHITE: Yes. And part of this five-year service plan is to try to reduce those places where we just do hourly service. But there’s a limit to how much we can do. One of the things that we try to balance is that demand for service and the quality of service that we’re providing. On a fairly regular basis we look at low productivity service. There’ve been high levels of service provided in an area, and we have reduced it some if we did not generate the ridership to justify it.

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

Ruth Kraut

One thing that has come up in discussions at some schools is the possibility of school closings. This is a natural outgrowth of the fact that in the AAPS district, the prospect of school closings was raised explicitly by the school board in the spring, and by the fact that the Ann Arbor schools have been under financial pressure for several years. (As has every school district in Michigan. You can visit Michigan Parents for Schools to find out more about why that is.)

In fact, in the spring of 2013 the district issued requests for proposals for consultants to help on redistricting. Eventually, they began discussions with the University of Michigan to help the district decide what schools, if any, should be closed. Since nothing has been fully negotiated, I can’t say whether the University of Michigan’s proposal is a good plan or not. They may have a role to play. But I can say this: parents and community members have “skin in the game” when it comes to discussing redistricting schools, and I believe there is an effective way to make these decisions.

As it happens, shortly before I moved to town in 1985, Ann Arbor went through a redistricting process. It was thoughtful, involved a broad sector of the community, and resulted in significant realignments and school closings – with long-lasting benefits. It’s worth taking a look at what happened then. If redistricting is in Ann Arbor’s future, this process may be worth copying and updating.

The Committee on Excellence of Education

There were 20 members of the Committee on Excellence of Education – including many who are still active in the community today: Mary Austin, Ronald Bishop, Vincent Carillot, Patricia Chapman, Susan Doud, Cheryl Garnett, Leonard Gay, George Goodman, Charles Kieffer, Norma McCuiston, R. Griffith McDonald, Bettye McDonald, Melinda Morris, Merrill Nemiroff, Duane Renken, Ingrid Sheldon, Joann Sims, Estelle Titiev, James Wanty, and Ronald Woods.

This was the their charge [emphasis added]:

The Committee on Excellence of Education in the Ann Arbor Public Schools was created by the Board of Education to address several long and short-term issues facing the system during the 1980′s and beyond. The explicit charge to the Committee from the Board of Education was:

1. Do sufficient futuring to provide guidance to timely decisions concerning: a. a long range plan (August, 1985); b. a five-year financial plan; c. school grade reorganization

2. Recommend what quality education should look like in Ann Arbor in 1990 and beyond.

3. Address the issues associated with and make recommendations regarding: a. boundary changes; b. declining enrollment (numbers and implications); c. grade reorganizations; d. building usage; e. school closings; f. definition of what an ideal elementary, intermediate and high school should look like in terms of physical space, number of students, and curriculum; g. desegregation; h. minority/majority performance gap; i. special programs and services; j. school hours; and k. current goals and policies

4. Develop a process to fulfill the charge to the committee, such process to include formal solicitation of input from every employee group, PTO and other interested parties. Twenty-one citizens were appointed by the Trustees of the Board of Education to serve on the Committee. Three alternates were also selected in the event that vacancies should occur.

Just like today, at the time the Ann Arbor school district was trying to solve multiple problems: financial problems and declining enrollment; racial issues (segregation and achievement gap); balancing the needs of special programs; and creating consistent school hours, goals and policies. Part of the committee’s charge involved “formal solicitation of input” from all interested parties.

Let’s look at what the school district did right in 1985.

The school board appointed a group of citizens, plus alternates, and that tells you they really expected people to be committed to the committee. And the citizens were! The committee had subcommittees that sifted through data and met with the community. The district also funded a consultant to provide technical support in developing three redistricting plans based on data and guidelines that the committee provided. The public expressed concern about the input they were having (or weren’t having) as the decision was being made, and ultimately the committee put forward its own plan, not the consultant’s. That plan was then vetted by the public, and several changes to it were made.

I moved to town shortly after all of the work was done, but the decisions were still being discussed and implemented. That is not surprising, because desegregation/equity issues and school closings were a very large part of the discussion.

The redistricting decisions were essentially based on two primary issues: (1) improving racial balance; and (2) reducing the “underutilization” of schools. Although some of the school buildings were sold, the financial implications of that decision were not primary. Today, though, that might be an important consideration.

Updated Issues

If we were to modernize/adapt these almost-30-year-old guidelines, what issues would surface?

Updated Issues: Desegregation

In 1984-1985, the district was 17% African American, and that population was distributed unevenly throughout the district, with 19 out of 26 elementary schools having a building population that was either less than 12% or more than 27% African American. The Asian population was highly concentrated near the University of Michigan’s north campus. White students were a much greater percentage of the school population than today.

The committee wanted to address the problem of segregation. Past attempts had ended in failure. For instance, in 1979 the school board agreed on a desegregation plan, and shortly after found themselves ousted in an election. The committee decided that all schools should have an African American population of between 12% to 27%, and they tried to distribute the Asian population among several schools so as not to create a “third world ghetto.”

Today, the district is less segregated, but there is still wide variation. During the 2011-2012 school year, the district was 14.3% African American, 14.8% Asian, 9% multi-racial, 6.5% Hispanic/Latino, and 55.4% white. So now, there are more Asian students than African American students, many more students who identify as multi-racial, and many fewer white students compared to 1984.

Today, we are looking at different definitions of diversity. Yet just as was true then, racial/ethnic populations in the district are not evenly distributed. [.xls file with detailed AAPS student demographics for 2012-13 school year.]

Here’s a general look at some of the current racial/ethnic distributions, compared to the district average:

• Schools with approximately double or more the Asian population include: Angell, King, Logan, Thurston, Lawton, and Clague. Schools with proportionately half as many Asian students (or fewer!) include Abbot, Community, Eberwhite, and Ann Arbor Open.
• Schools with approximately double or more the Hispanic/Latino population include: Bryant, Lakewood, Mitchell, Pittsfield, and Scarlett. Schools with a very small Hispanic/Latino population include King, Lawton, and Clague.
• Schools with approximately double or more the African American population include: Bryant, Northside, and Scarlett, as well as Ann Arbor Tech and Roberto Clemente. Schools where less than 10% of the student body is African American include Bach, Eberwhite, Lakewood, King, Wines, Ann Arbor Open, and Community.
• Schools where over two-thirds of the school population is white include: Bach, Burns Park, Eberwhite, Wines, Ann Arbor Open, and Community. Schools where fewer than 40% of the students are white include: Mitchell, Northside, Scarlett, Ann Arbor Tech, and Roberto Clemente.

In addition, a much higher proportion of the African American population is low-income, compared to other racial and ethnic groups, and so schools that are more than 20% African American generally match the Title 1 schools. (Title 1 schools are schools that get additional federal funding because they have a high proportion of low-income students.) Schools that are more than 20% Asian are heavily concentrated on the north side of town.

Other schools have a higher-than-average percentage of students with special education designations. Most notable are Ann Arbor Tech and Roberto Clemente, at 29% and 42% of the student body, respectively. And while nearly a quarter of Mitchell’s students qualify as English Language Learners, there are several schools where almost no one does.

District-wide, 25% of the students qualify for the free and reduced price lunch program. Yet at Mitchell, Pittsfield, Scarlett, Ann Arbor Tech, and Roberto Clemente, over half of the students qualify for free and reduced price lunch. At King and Wines, less than 10% of the students qualify.

Updated Issues: Underutilization of Schools

In 1984, there were 13,772 students in Ann Arbor public schools; today there are over 16,500. There were 26 elementary schools in 1984, and some of them were small. The committee decided that a goal of “two classrooms per grade” was reasonable. For a K-5 school, two classrooms per grade would mean a school building with a little more than 300 students in it. (The committee also recommended reconfiguring the grade levels – at the time, the elementary schools were K-6.) If a grade 6-8 school were to have eight classrooms per grade, the school would have between 600 and 650 students in it.

If we had the same goals today, we would be looking at the following elementary schools with significantly fewer than 300 students: Mitchell, Northside and Pittsfield. (Angell has consistently been just under 300.) It’s also worth noting that Mitchell, Northside, and Pittsfield have been losing students since at least the late 1990s. Northside’s population count is now down to 189, and the school has lost more than two classrooms’ worth of students since 2010! (I’m not going to speculate on why, but obviously that is worth investigating.)

Similarly, Scarlett Middle School’s population has declined by over 100 students in the last 15 years, and is now under 500 students – while every other middle school in the district has seen increases. Ann Arbor Tech and Roberto Clemente have both seen shrinkage, while Ann Arbor Open and Community High have both seen increases.

In 1985, the elementary schools averaged 260 students; a year later, after the redistricting took place, they averaged 380 students. Since 2005, the elementary schools have had average head counts in the 330s. If we were to aim for elementary schools with an average of 370 students, we’d probably close three elementary schools, and perhaps close a middle school or turn it into a K-8 school.

Map showing the location of current AAPS schools: elementary (red), middle (green) and high schools (blue). The orange icons are administrative buildings. (Image links to interactive Google map – click on a school icon for more information about that location.)

Updated Issues: Magnet and Specialty Programs

In 1985, the committee recommended combining the various open classrooms around the district into an Open School, then housed at Bach. So too, a new look at redistricting could imagine some other types of magnets. Ideas that I’ve heard mentioned include another K-8 school on the east side of the school district; another Open-type school; a K-5 or K-8 language immersion program (Spanish, Mandarin, and/or Arabic); a STEM (science and technology) K-5 or K-8 program; a Montessori school; and a school, or two, with an arts/theater/music focus.

I’m sure I’m missing a few of the ideas that are out there! Obviously, redistricting offers opportunities to create other magnet or specialty programs.

Updated Issues: School Closings

In the 1980s, the district closed six schools, selling or leasing several of the buildings. One school building – Lakewood Elementary, on the city’s far west side – was reserved by the district and eventually reopened. But Clinton School’s building was sold to the Jewish Community Center, which also houses the Hebrew Day School; the former Bader School building now houses a preschool/early elementary center; Freeman School’s building was leased to Go Like the Wind Christian Montessori School; and the building for Newport School now belongs to the Rudolph Steiner School.

And those private schools have grown, at least in part because they were able to move into nice buildings.

As I wrote in the blog post, “Unintended Consequences” [1]:

So, for instance, the Rudolph Steiner School started in 1980 with a handful of students, and grew slowly until 1986, when it was able to occupy Newport School. By 1999, the Steiner School had 298 students – the vast majority in their K-8 lower school (313 students K-12, 2009).

In 1985, the Hebrew Day School was in very inadequate space, and had under 50 students. By 1999, the Hebrew Day School had over 100 students (87 students K-5, 2009).

Go Like the Wind Christian Montessori school, which only opened in 1987, had over 100 students by 1999 (101 students K-8, 2009).

And Ann Arbor Hills Child Development Center goes through age 8, with a K-2 primary school program that in 1999 had 35 students (33 students K-2, 2009).

As we look to the future, I would hope that we consider how to reduce the competition that AAPS faces from private or charter schools. From that point of view, ideal school buildings to consider for sale are buildings that will have resale value to organizations that are not private or charter schools. In that sense, a neighborhood school building like Pittsfield or Mitchell – under-enrolled though they may be – is much less attractive to sell than a building like Angell, Bach, or Community, all of which are downtown or near downtown. Also more desirable to sell would be the building for A2 Tech (formerly Stone School), which is near Packard, a major thoroughfare. Not only would the district probably get less money for a Pittsfield over a Bach, but a Pittsfield would be much more likely to be turned into another – and competing – school.

Other things that are worth putting on the metaphorical table:

• Geographic distribution. In the 1985 plan, the committee recommended closing Forsythe Middle School as they felt it was too close to Slauson. That didn’t happen because the public didn’t like it. Today, Scarlett is the most underenrolled middle school, but closing Scarlett would leave no middle school in the southeast quadrant of the district.
• Transportation and walkability. Burns Park, Mitchell and Tappan are examples of schools that draw a lot of walkers, and that’s a good thing – although it may sometimes conflict with concerns about racial balance. Transportation and walkability are huge issues for parents, at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

Two other issues are the expected growth and movement of student populations, and of course the next moves of the state legislature.

The Doover: Looking Ahead, Looking Behind

As you can see, there’s a lot to think about. Change can be hard. Even mini-reorganizations – such as the restructurings that occurred when Lakewood Elementary reopened, when Skyline High opened, and when Ann Arbor Open moved to Mack and the Mack school catchment area students moved to Bach – were vociferously debated. But as a parent whose children experienced two of those changes, I feel comfortable saying that it didn’t end up being all that big of a deal.

Some homework with the “Doover” stamp. (Photo by Ko Shih.)

As I look back at the process the school district used in 1985, I’m proud of it. I think it’s an excellent model, and it’s one reason that the reorganization was successful for as long as it was.

Yet the committee didn’t do all of this alone. Not only did the administration provide key support, the feedback loop from the broader community was quite strong. In fact, quite a few of the initial committee recommendations never came to pass, because of community feedback. (Also, the committee made a lot of recommendations that were not related directly to redistricting, but rather were related to the other committee goals.)

At Ann Arbor Open, in fifth and sixth grade, my younger two children had teachers Rick Hall and Ko Shih. Rick and Ko don’t generally tolerate messy or sub-par work. Turning that in earns students the special “Doover” stamp. (Get it? Do Over.)

In this case, I want to turn the Doover on its head. I want us to Doover the redistricting process using the same method that was used in 1985. I want a Doover, not because the work was so bad, but because the work was so good.

Notes

[1] “Unintended Consequences” was the last in a series of posts that I wrote on the 1985 reorganization. The others, in sequence, are: “But Was It Worth It?“; “A Little History“; “Desegregation Outcomes“; and “Privatization History.”

Ruth Kraut is an Ann Arbor resident and parent of three children who have all attended the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She writes at Ann Arbor Schools Musings (a2schoolsmuse.blogspot.com) about education issues in Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and Michigan.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our local reporting and columnists. Check out 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!

Architect and Ann Arbor planning commissioner Ken Clein shows evidence of his non-motorized transportation – his bicycle helmet. In the background is commissioner Diane Giannola. (Photos by the writer.)

Items in the city’s master plan must receive approval from both the planning commission and the council, so councilmembers will be asked to vote on the update as well. [.pdf of draft 2013 non-motorized transportation plan update]

The 79-page document includes sections on planning and policy, as well as recommendations for short-term and long-term projects, such as bike boulevards, crosswalks, sidewalks and larger efforts like the Allen Creek greenway and Border-to-Border Trail. An additional document – over 100 pages – outlines the update’s public participation process, including emails and comments received during public meetings.

Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, briefed commissioners on this update, and much of their discussion centered on how to prioritize and implement the items in the plan – especially the funding for sidewalk “gaps.”

Cooper pointed out that implementation relies on including these projects in the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP), which the planning commission reviews and recommends for approval each year. City planning manager Wendy Rampson suggested that the commission could reconvene its CIP committee to talk about these issues.

In its other item of business, commissioners unanimously recommended approval of a proposed expansion to the U-Haul business at 3655 S. State St., south of the I-94 interchange. It will be forwarded to the city council for consideration.

The relatively short meeting – lasting about 90 minutes – was followed by a working session focused on Michigan’s “Redevelopment Ready Communities” program, in which the city of Ann Arbor is participating. [.pdf of program overview]

Rampson described the program as a tool to help communities put in place elements that would allow redevelopment to happen. Those things include master plans that are clear about what community expectations are for new developments, and zoning needs to reflect those expectations in a very specific way. It means that when developers look at a specific property, they’ll be able to know exactly what they can do.

If the city completes the state’s evaluation successfully, Rampson said, then it would be certified as a “Redevelopment Ready” community. This is a relatively new program, but the state has indicated that communities with this certification could receive priority points on grants from the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA).

Before the staff can proceed, Rampson explained, the city council must pass a resolution stating that the city can participate. On Oct. 14, the issue will be on the agenda for a joint city council and planning commission working session, although the main topics will be the current downtown zoning review and R4C/R2A zoning revisions.

Commissioners discussed how this program might be received by the community, with Sabra Briere – who also serves on the city council – pointing out that for some people “redevelopment ready” sounds like “tear down all the old stuff.” She noted that development is a very sensitive topic right now.

The issue of development also arose during a brief update from Rampson about the ongoing downtown zoning review. The consultants who are leading this effort – Erin Perdu and Megan Masson-Minock – have put together a workbook that they’ve been presenting at public forums. [.pdf of workbook] The same information is part of an online survey that’s underway through Sept. 17. A final public forum to review all of the feedback gathered so far will be held on Thursday, Sept. 19 starting at 7 p.m. at Workantile, 118 S. Main in downtown Ann Arbor.

The goal is to review the consultants’ recommendations at an Oct. 8 planning commission working session, and then take action on those recommendations at the commission’s Oct. 15 regular meeting. At that point, the recommendations will be transmitted to the council, Rampson said.

Non-Motorized Transportation Update

An update to the city of Ann Arbor’s non-motorized transportation plan, which is part of the city’s master plan, was on the Sept. 10 for approval by the planning commission. The commission was also asked to recommend that the plan be approved by the city council. Items in the city’s master plan must receive approval from both the planning commission and the council. [.pdf of draft 2013 non-motorized transportation plan update]

Map identifying geographic areas for improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists, as noted in the 2013 non-motorized transportation plan update.

The update will be an amendment to the main non-motorized transportation plan, which was adopted in 2007. The new document is organized into three sections: (1) planning and policy updates; (2) updates to near-term recommendations; and (3) long-term recommendations.

Examples of planning and policy issues include design guidelines, recommendations for approaches like bike boulevards and bike share programs, and planning practices that cover education campaigns, maintenance, crosswalks and other non-motorized elements for pedestrians and bicyclists.

For example, the update recommends that the city begin developing a planning process for bike boulevards, which are described as “a low-traffic, low-speed road where bicycle interests are prioritized.” Sections of West Washington (from Revena to First), Elmwood (from Platt to Canterbury) and Broadway (from its southern intersection with Plymouth to where it rejoins Plymouth about a mile to the northeast are suggested for potential bike boulevards.

Near-term recommendations include lower-cost efforts like re-striping roads to install bike lanes and adding crossing islands. Longer-term projects that were included in the 2007 plan are re-emphasized: the Allen Creek Greenway, Border-to-Border Trail, Gallup Park & Fuller Road paths, and and a Briarwood-Pittsfield pedestrian bridge.

Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, was on hand to review the update and answer questions. He noted that the update had been in the works for two years. Even so, that process was still about 18 months faster than when the original plan was adopted, he noted.

It’s important to evaluate individual projects regularly as well as the city’s overall strategy, Cooper said. The update also records the progress of the original plan, identifies challenges and outlines philosophies that have “come into vogue” since the 2007 report, he said.

Eli Cooper, the city of Ann Arbor’s transportation program manager.

For example, Cooper noted that funding for a new bicycle sharing program was recently approved by the city council. Such a concept hadn’t even been discussed when the 2007 plan was adopted. “Green” bike lanes is another approach that’s catching on – using painted green pavement to highlight the location of bike lanes.

Cooper also described the public outreach that had been conducted, including focus groups, public forums and surveys. The update document includes about 100 pages that outline the public process, as well as written communications and comments received during public meetings. [.pdf of public process section]

He reported that Ann Arbor’s bicycling community favors pavement markings compared to roadside signs to indicate bike lanes, so the city will be emphasizing that approach in the future.

Cooper also highlighted the plan’s recommendations – both near term and long term – for taking action in certain geographic areas. Locations for nearer-term improvements include Main Street, Jackson Avenue, South State, Washtenaw Avenue, and the University of Michigan campus-to-campus link. Longer term areas include the Allen Creek greenway and Border-to-Border Trail.

The key thing that Cooper said he wanted to share with commissioners is that this is more than just a plan. “We have a great plan, but we’ve been doing it,” he said. The city has gone from having about six miles of bike lanes scattered across the city to now having a network of about 40 miles of bike lanes, he reported.

Residents have told him that they are encouraged by what the city is doing, Cooper concluded, and are encouraging the city to do even more.

Non-Motorized Transportation Update: Commission Discussion

Bonnie Bona wondered how many people participated in the update. Eli Cooper replied that if he discounted the thousands of people who passed by the table that was staffed at the annual green fair for the past two years, there were a couple hundred who attended workshops, and about 90 who attended focus groups. Including survey respondents, Cooper estimated 300-500 people were involved in giving formal input.

Bona asked about the history of getting input for the 2007 plan. Cooper, who joined the city in 2005, said the public participation element of that initial plan was nearly done when he was hired. He deferred the question to planning manager Wendy Rampson. She reported that the 2007 plan had emerged from the previous northeast area transportation plan, and that’s where a lot of ideas about on-road bike lanes had been vetted. In the early 2000s, “there were some pretty lively debates about whether bikes belonged on roads,” Rampson said. That interest carried over into development of the plan adopted in 2007.

Bona also asked Cooper to explain why the city has a non-motorized transportation plan, and not just an integrated transportation plan. She cited the concept of “Complete Streets” as an example of an integrated approach.

From left: Planning commissioners Diane Giannola and Bonnie Bona.

Cooper reported that in 2009, the city adopted its first comprehensive transportation plan update since the 1990s. As part of that update, the plan incorporated the entire non-motorized transportation plan, he noted.

He encouraged keeping a separate non-motorized plan. Noting that he facilitates the city’s alternative transportation committee, Cooper said non-motorized transportation is considered the alternative to this country’s primary means of transportation. “Ann Arborites are not that different than the rest of the country, where the overwhelming majority of travel is by motor vehicles,” he added. As a separate policy document that brings attention to these alternative options, the non-motorized transportation plan allows the community to acknowledge those options and work them into city projects.

Sabra Briere brought up the issue of sidewalks. She reported that she’d met with a former planning commissioner [Evan Pratt], who asked about how the city would ensure sufficient funding for sidewalks. She pointed out that this year, the city council approved a budget line item of $75,000 for sidewalk gap elimination planning, but there’s no money allocated to implementation. She wondered what the implementation and funding plan are for the items in the non-motorized transportation plan.

The plan sets aspirational goals, Cooper replied. Implementation relies on including these projects in the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP), which the planning commission reviews and recommends for approval each year. As an example, Cooper noted that there are two miles of bicycle lanes on East Stadium Boulevard – because when the city was ready to make improvements to the road, the recommendation for bike lanes was in the non-motorized transportation plan.

Rampson reported that she’d received a letter late in the day from Pratt, who made two recommendations to add to the plan and the CIP: (1) to prepare a sidewalk/pathway gap analysis and prioritization system, similar to the one used to rank CIP projects; and (2) to consider a policy annually to fund high-priority gaps in the sidewalk system.

Briere noted that the council action taken earlier this year relates to planning, not implementation. Pratt’s view is to include sidewalk gaps in the CIP as an implementation action. Rampson explained that after something is added to the master plan, the process is for city staff to add it to the CIP. She didn’t think a statement regarding implementation needed to be added to the non-motorized transportation plan update.

Bona noted that she had served on the planning commission with Pratt for eight years, and he had talked about this prioritization the entire time. The prioritization process used for the CIP is sophisticated, she said, but that complexity also results in some holes. She wondered whether the sidewalk gap planning study that’s been approved by the council will create a “top-to-bottom” prioritization of the 80 sidewalk gaps that have been identified. It would be enlightening to know whether the CIP prioritizes those gaps in the same way as the planning study does. She felt that sidewalk gaps should be a higher priority, and thought that Pratt was trying to make that point.

Cooper replied with an explanation of how the sidewalk projects fit into other projects that are prioritized in the CIP, like road improvements. Sidewalk projects don’t necessarily get higher priorities, but “what happens is they begin to get placed, relative to other projects, using the matrices that are part of the prioritization process.” He joked: “I’m sure the folks at home are like, ‘My god – what’s he talking about?’” So the simple answer, he said, is that sidewalk projects aren’t rising to the top because the impact of a specific sidewalk is relatively minor, compared to larger improvements. And until sidewalk projects have a dedicated funding source, they remain priorities but are on the unfunded list. [The city's dedicate sidewalk millage is for repair of existing sidewalks, not construction of new sidewalks.]

Bona noted the irony – because relative to other capital projects, sidewalks don’t cost that much. Cooper encouraged commissioners, in their role of evaluating the CIP, to address that issue. It’s a healthy discussion to have, he said, saying he was glad that the council had funded a “deep dive” into the planning process that he hopes will result in strong recommendations.

Briere pointed out that one of the funding criteria for the CIP is whether a project has uncertain funding sources, such as special assessments. Because sidewalk gaps are typically funded through special assessments, those projects get lower priority “because it’s more difficult to get the funding.” That’s something the community should look at, she said.

Rampson noted that the criteria used for the CIP have been “blessed” by previous planning commissions. As a reviewing body, the commission can suggest that different criteria should be used. The commission could reconvene its CIP committee to talk about these issues, she said. Rampson also reported that the non-motorized transportation plan update does address sidewalk funding, on pages 34-35. [.pdf of extract from NTP update related to sidewalk funding]

Planning commissioner Jeremy Peters.

Ken Clein thanked Cooper, saying it’s a great testament to the city that there are documents like the non-motorized transportation plan in place “so that there’s a roadmap – pun intended.” Pointing to his bike helmet, Clein said that as someone who likes to bike, it’s great to see more people on the streets, making a more sustainable community.

Jeremy Peters wondered what opportunities there might be in the future to add amendments, if warranted. Cooper reported that there’s an ongoing dialogue through the alternative transportation committee, which includes city staff and external stakeholders like the University of Michigan, Washtenaw Area Transportation Study (WATS), and the Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition (WBWC). If something arises that needs to be included in the plan, the staff would evaluate it.

Peters said he brought it up because a community member talked to him about safe routes to schools. He thought it might be too late for the current update, but he wanted to bring up the possibility of coordinating with Ann Arbor Public Schools to do a citywide review of all the routes to schools. It’s important as public schools move away from busing, Peters noted.

Cooper explained that the name “Safe Routes to Schools” is actually the name of a federal program, administered through the Michigan Dept. of Transportation, that has a specific definition. Regarding the broader concept, Cooper reported that the non-motorized transportation plan acknowledges the importance of safe access to all of the city’s schools. So there are policies and provisions to address that issue.

Under the federal program, the city doesn’t have the authority to actually do the work, he said, although city staff can provide support and facilitate discussions.

To elaborate, Rampson read from the plan update: “The 2007 NTP sidewalk recommendations focused on major facilities and those that served pedestrian access to schools, therefore this inventory illustrates the progress made in those areas only.” She offered to scan sections of the update that highlight recommendations related to schools.

Briere said that many people are concerned about changes in transportation policy at the Ann Arbor Public Schools. She noted that city staff, representatives from the school system and the Ann Arbor Area Transportation Authority have been meeting routinely since last year. Out of those meetings emerged the list of sidewalk gaps that need to be filled, she said, and it’s those gaps that the council’s $75,000 in planning funds are meant to address.

The city and school system have jointly received several grants through Safe Routes to Schools, but other gaps are being addressed by residents, Briere said. Residents petition to have a sidewalk gap filled, then work with the city to find a funding mechanism. That approach doesn’t necessarily result in the highest priority or most dangerous sections being addressed first, she noted. Rather, it results in the highest priority “for the most vocal residents.” The same is true for the Safe Routes to Schools, she added. Parents or schools have to initiate a proposal. The city is supporting rather than leading, she said.

Kirk Westphal, who chairs the Ann Arbor planning commission.

Cooper acknowledged that much more attention has been paid to sidewalk gaps in recent years because of changes in the school transportation philosophy. Resources are allocated through the CIP, and high-priority sidewalk gaps are included – though they have typically remained unfunded, he said.

Briere also noted that Cooper had referred to the alternative transportation committee a couple of times. She said she’d heard it exists, but it’s not listed on the city’s website as a meeting that anyone can attend. It would be helpful to post the meeting times and dates. Cooper replied that he’d work with the city’s communications unit to make sure the meetings are publicized. Typically, the group meets on the second Thursday of each month at 1:30 p.m. in the Ann Arbor DDA offices at 150 S. Fifth Ave. Cooper said anyone is welcome to attend.

Paras Parekh noted that he and some other commissioners on the master plan review committee had sent Cooper feedback on the draft plan, and he wondered where that stood. Cooper replied that each comment had been incorporated into the plan.

Kirk Westphal said he echoed Clein’s praise, particularly related to public input. He reported that there’s been an amazing increase in non-motorized use of roads that have adopted the “Complete Streets” approach, citing sections of Platt and Green roads that have been re-striped from two lanes to one lane in each direction. He cited safety benefits of making these changes.

Cooper replied that “road diets” aren’t actually implemented to improve non-motorized transportation. Rather, the implementation is in response to high crash rates, he said, and improves safety by adding a turn lane. Pedestrian crossings that are installed are also much more effective in roads that have a decreased number of lanes for motorists, he said.

Cooper reported that when the city was implementing the road diet on Platt, he was given a nickname – “Menace to Motorists” – because some people thought the road would be less safe with fewer lanes. But in fact, accidents have decreased. He said he’d provide that data to commissioners.

Westphal also raised the issue of enforcement, saying he’d gotten some feedback from residents who’ve asked about it. Vehicle speed is critical, he noted, as is compliance with crosswalk regulations. Cooper said there’s been a lot of “lawyering and engineering” about the city being ahead of the state in terms of its crosswalk ordinance. “I just think it’s bad practice to run somebody over in the street,” Cooper said. So the city is creating an environment that makes it possible for someone to walk across the street and not be a target.

City councilmember and planning commissioner Sabra Briere and Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager.

Cooper noted that a few years ago, the police did a targeted enforcement of the crosswalk ordinance in a couple of locations. Enforcement is intended to bring attention to the fact that there are rules, he said, and that the local government is enforcing those rules. There will always be people who say that more can be done, he added, and the staff continues to reflect on the city’s internal policies and processes, which includes outreach and communication, engineering and police enforcement. Enforcement takes resources, Cooper said, but he felt confident that in three or four years, the city would be able to say that enforcement has been stepped up.

Diane Giannola noted that in the past, someone had spoken to the commission during public commentary about the need to incorporate this update into the original 2007 plan, rather than have the update as a standalone document. She asked Cooper to address that issue.

Cooper responded to Giannola saying that when the update is adopted, each word will carry the same policy weight as the original plan – so in that sense, the documents are incorporated. About 60-70% of the 2007 plan remains valid, he said, and the update is meant to “freshen it up” with some new policy issues and recommendations. It’s more administratively efficient to use this approach, he said, noting that the update will cross-reference the original plan.

Westphal asked for Cooper’s insight into the use of the plan as it relates to bike parking for new developments. The city code requirements for bike parking are reviewed during the site plan process for new developments, Cooper noted, and that’s appropriate. The feedback he’s heard is that the city is doing a good job with new development, but there’s more concern about how existing developments can be retrofitted to provide more bicycle parking.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to add the non-motorized transportation plan update to the city’s master plan. The group also recommended that the city council take the same action.

Non-Motorized Transportation Update: Public Commentary

No one spoke at a public hearing on the plan update, held prior to the commission’s discussion and vote. However, during public commentary at the end of the meeting, Kathy Griswold addressed the commission. She said she’s been advocating for non-motorized transportation improvements and sidewalks for 20 years. Her first project was in the mid-1990s to push for constructing a sidewalk so that school children wouldn’t have to walk in the road along Penberton. It had been a simple process, she said. She’d gone to then-mayor Ingrid Sheldon, who talked to city staff and homeowners. The sidewalk was then constructed, Griswold said. “It hasn’t been that easy since then.”

Griswold said that city staff have been meeting with councilmembers from each ward, providing maps that show sidewalk gaps, although there are a few errors in the maps, she noted. Griswold said that until recently, she had served on the transportation safety committee for 15 years. There had been a process to identify sidewalks that were needed, she said. A member of the city’s engineering staff also serves on that committee, as well as staff from the public schools. However, the recommendations from that committee had been overruled by former city administrator Roger Fraser, she said. “Roger Fraser was not a supporter of sidewalks.” She reported that she had requested information under the state’s Freedom of Information Act and contended that she has more than 150 emails explaining why Fraser thought that no more sidewalks were needed in Ann Arbor.

In 2009, the transportation safety committee had recommended a sidewalk on Waldenwood. It has not been put in. A letter to current city administrator Steve Powers from Dave Comsa, the previous interim superintendent of Ann Arbor Public Schools, was written on July 23, 2013, asking that the city construct that sidewalk, Griswold said. A midblock crossing that’s used now requires a crossing guard at taxpayer expense, she noted. A new sidewalk would allow for a safer crossing at the nearby four-way stop. It’s despicable that the city isn’t committed to getting children to school safely when they walk, Griswold said, “and that needs to be done immediately.”

U-Haul Expansion

A proposed expansion to the U-Haul business at 3655 S. State St., south of the I-94 interchange, was on the planning commission’s Sept. 10 agenda. The project previously had been reviewed by commissioners on July 2, 2013, when they ultimately voted to postpone a vote so that the owner could address outstanding issues that had been raised by planning and engineering staff members.

Aerial view of U-Haul site on South State Street, indicated with crosshatches.

The project calls for building a 1,246-square-foot addition to the front of the existing retail building. The expansion includes a new 4,994-square-foot, one-story warehouse and an 11,696-square-foot, one-story self-storage building. Both of the new buildings would be at the rear of the site and not visible from South State Street. The project is estimated to cost $1.2 million.

This site is part of the area covered in the South State Street corridor plan, which the planning commission had voted to add to the city’s master plan at its May 21, 2013 meeting. That plan calls for office uses at that U-Haul location in the future. The plan also recommends “enhanced non-motorized access to buildings, and aesthetic improvements recognizing State Street as a gateway corridor to the City,” according to the memo. The city council, which also is required to approve anything that’s added to the city’s master plan, had postponed action on the South State corridor plan at its July 1, 2013 meeting. That postponement came after Marcia Higgins said she had some concerns. The council subsequently approved the corridor plan on July 15, 2013.

On July 2, planning commissioners had spent about an hour raising concerns and asking questions about the U-Haul project. Many of the issues related to landscaping, site visibility, and how the site will look from South State Street after the changes are made.

On Sept. 10, Matt Kowalski of the city’s planning staff reviewed the changes that had been made since July 2, noting that the owner had responded to the issues that were raised. A pedestrian connection to South State was moved from the north side of the building to the south side, and landscaping was revised to comply with the city’s right-of-way landscaping buffer.

Computer-generated image of U-Haul property as seen from South State Street, with the proposed landscaping. (Image included in the planning commission’s meeting packet.)

At the request of commissioners, the owner provided a computer-generated image of how the property would look from South State Street, after the landscaping is in place.

There had been concerns about lighting, so the owner had provided a revised photometric plan that staff has reviewed and accepted, Kowalski reported. An interior lighting plan was also submitted.

No changes will be made to the permanent signs, Kowalski said, although he noted that temporary signs that were illegally in the right-of-way have been removed.

Otherwise, there were no significant changes to the proposal, Kowalski said. He added that a development agreement is included in the meeting packet, which hadn’t been completed at the July 2 meeting. [.pdf of development agreement]

Staff recommended approval of the plan.

U-Haul Expansion: Public Hearing

Samantha Keating, principal planner in the construction department of Amerco Real Estate Co. of Phoenix, Arizona,  told commissioners that U-Haul has looked at all issues raised by the planning commission and had tried to address those. She said she was on hand to answer any further questions.

U-Haul Expansion: Commission Discussion

Sabra Briere asked if there was any marking or grade change to indicate where the crosswalk is.

Samantha Keating, a representative for the U-Haul expansion project.

Matt Kowalski replied that the current proposal calls for painting stripes on the asphalt to indicate the crosswalk’s location. If “sufficient” pedestrian use of that crosswalk is anticipated, Briere said, it would be desirable to have a “stronger visual cue” than paint, which wears off. “That’s just a future reference comment, I guess,” she said.

Bonnie Bona asked whether the sidewalk that runs along the building is barrier-free. Samantha Keating, who represented U-Haul, replied that the sidewalk is flush with the pavement.

Bona also noted that the July 2 discussion had included the “oddness” of having the building expansion jut out toward South State, closer to the driveway traffic. The addition has nothing around it to protect it, she said. “The whole thing still feels like it’s vulnerable.” People who aren’t accustomed to handling large vehicles will be going in and out of the driveway, she noted, so there’s potential to hit the building.

Keating indicated that the design team had looked carefully at the location of the building addition, and they don’t anticipate any problem. There have been no problems with people driving onto the current section of the land where the addition will be located.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously recommended approval of this proposal. It will be forwarded to the city council for action. The project is also subject to approval by the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner.

Redevelopment Ready Communities Program

Following adjournment of the Sept. 10 regular meeting, planning commissioners relocated to city hall’s basement conference room for a 30-minute working session. The topic was a briefing on Michigan’s “Redevelopment Ready Communities” program, in which the city of Ann Arbor is participating. [.pdf of program overview]

Wendy Rampson, the city of Ann Arbor’s planning manager.

Planning manager Wendy Rampson said that staff didn’t have the chance to consult with planning commissioners before applying to the new state program earlier this year. The application had been made on the heels of the city council and planning commission approving a new sustainability framework, she noted, and soon after the council had determined that economic development was a priority for the city. [.pdf of Ann Arbor application to the RRC]

The program was originally developed by the nonprofit Michigan Suburbs Alliance, she said, and later acquired by the state through the Michigan Economic Development Corp. [Both organizations have local connections. The suburbs alliance is led by Conan Smith, an Ann Arbor resident who also is an elected official serving on the Washtenaw County board of commissioners. MEDC's CEO is Michael Finney, former head of Ann Arbor SPARK.]

Rampson described the program as a tool to help communities put in place elements that would allow redevelopment to happen. Those things include master plans that are clear about what community expectations are for new developments, and zoning that reflects those expectations in a very specific way. It means that when developers look at a specific property, they’ll be able to know exactly what they can do. Processes are documented and streamlined, so a developer doesn’t get “hung up in areas where time is money,” she said.

The program includes a list of best practices focused on six categories: (1) community plans and public outreach; (2) zoning policy and regulations; (3) development review process; (4) education and training; (5) redevelopment ready sites; and (6) community prosperity (economic strategies, marketing and promotion). [.pdf of best practices document]

Regarding zoning policy and regulations, Rampson referred to the city’s ZORO (zoning ordinance reorganization) project, “if we can ever get it back on track. The idea of having ordinances that are easily understood is very, very important.”

The ZORO project, which started in 2009, is a comprehensive zoning code review aimed at streamlining the development-related city code, clarifying terminology, and eliminating inconsistencies and outdated material. It was last discussed in detail by planning commissioners at their April 23, 2013 retreat, when several commissioners expressed frustration that ZORO seemed to be languishing in the city attorney’s office. On Sept. 10, Rampson characterized the length of the project by noting that one of the city planners has had two children since ZORO was launched.

In March of 2013, the MEDC announced that 8 communities – including Ann Arbor – had been selected for the program’s first round to receive a formal Redevelopment Ready Communities evaluation. If the city completes this evaluation successfully, Rampson said, then it would be certified as a “Redevelopment Ready” community. The state has indicated that communities with this certification could receive priority points on grants from MEDC and the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA). There isn’t a track record yet for what that really means, Rampson said, but staff felt it was worth pursuing.

Before the staff can proceed, Rampson explained, the city council must pass a resolution stating that the city can participate. On Oct. 14, the issue will be on the agenda for a joint city council and planning commission working session – although the main topics will be the current downtown zoning review and R4C/R2A zoning revisions.

Planning commissioner Paras Parekh.

Rampson said she and Sumedh Bahl, the city’s community services area administrator, attended the program’s first training session about a month ago on master planning, taught by Andrea Brown, executive director of the Michigan Association of Planning. Rampson offered to share the PowerPoint presentation with commissioners.

The MEDC is also pulling together planning tools that communities can use, even if they’re not getting certified, Rampson said. She highlighted a 30-page reference guide for techniques to solicit public participation, which the city of Ann Arbor plans to incorporate into its public processes.

As the city is evaluated, Rampson said she thinks Ann Arbor will get high scores for the accessibility of planning and development documents online. An area where the city might not score well is the clarity of its ordinances, she added – and that’s why the ZORO project is so important.

Rampson also noted that right now, even some relatively minor projects require city council approval. As an example, she cited the recent expansion of Allen Creek Preschool. Does that really need city council approval, just because the addition was more than 10% of the structure’s floor area? “Those are the types of discussions that I welcome, because the time that we’re not spending on unnecessary process can be used on other things.”

To receive certification, the city also has to show commitment to following up on recommendations from the program evaluation, Rampson said.

Redevelopment Ready Communities Program: Commission Discussion

Ken Clein asked if Rampson anticipated any opposition from city council to this program. It depends, Rampson replied. “I think people sometimes worry that by focusing on processes and improving opportunities for developers, that it throws open the door for developers to come in and do things that the community doesn’t want.” Coming fresh off the 413 E. Huron project, there might be some hesitation on the part of councilmembers, she said.

But in the context of the whole city and the corridor efforts, “I hope that people will see that there’s an overall benefit,” Rampson added. If the process isn’t working as the community wants, it should be fixed. But it shouldn’t be made onerous for everyone, simply because one project came through that people didn’t like.

Sabra Briere, who serves on the Ann Arbor city council and planning commission.

Sabra Briere, who also serves on the city council, said one of the problems is the concept of “redevelopment ready.” For some people, she said, “that sounds like ‘Tear down all the old stuff.’” She indicated that it might mean there needs to be an educational process.

Briere also pointed to the goal of making it simpler for new developers to come in and know – in a predictable fashion – how they can take advantage of development opportunities. Although that predictability might be desirable in many situations, “for quite a significant portion of the population that deeply cares about not seeing Ann Arbor change, that [predictability] is just enabling more development than Ann Arbor can stand.” Every time there’s a change downtown or in a neighborhood, people get more polarized, she said.

Finally, Briere addressed the idea of whether the planning commission should be able to approve anything without it being decided by the city council. “For many people, council is the last line of defense, as it were,” she said. That attitude is true for some councilmembers as well as for the public, she added. The 30-day gap between a vote by the planning commission and a vote by the city council is a gap that “people embrace, if they’re objecting to a proposed development.”

These are issues that might cause some problems at the council, Briere said. “I’m just predicting – I have no idea how any one person would feel, but right now development’s a very sensitive subject. And for some people, no development is the goal.” There are even people who think the city is going in the wrong direction when it spends money and staff time on corridor improvement projects, she noted. Briere said she personally would want to plan for the future, and decide on a set of goals for development on any particular piece of property. “But I have observed that there are people who think we shouldn’t even try.”

Clein replied, saying it’s ironic that a lot of times the people who object to projects are “a real small, vocal minority.” For most people, he said, development doesn’t rise to be an issue that compels them to get involved. So this small vocal minority in some cases is directing development or non-development in this town, he said.

Briere responded that she would “never discount the possibility that while we may have a vocal group of people who want to give input, that they are only representing themselves and not the tip of the pyramid.” People rarely communicate with members of council, or come to planning commission, because they’re not passionately engaged at that moment. That doesn’t mean they don’t care, Briere said. As the city saw with 413 E. Huron, even a tree can become a passionate rallying point for a lot of people, she noted, who otherwise wouldn’t have thought to voice an opinion to the council or the planning commission.

Referring to a “vocal minority” implies that those voices aren’t as significant as the voices that aren’t being heard, she said. “All we know is that we’re not hearing those other voices – we don’t know why.”

Diane Giannola noted that you can’t assume the majority of people who aren’t expressing an opinion agree or disagree with the people who are more vocal.

Jeremy Peters pointed out that redevelopment inevitably will occur – because property will change hands. The access to grant funding to accomplish goals and community benefits that the city wants is important. That’s why participating in this Redevelopment Ready Communities program is important, he added, “irrespective of what the trademarked name was.”

Briere said there are some things in the program that are virtues to be working toward, like increased community participation, as well as clearer and better-organized ordinances. She thought those two areas should be the focus when presenting the program to the council.

Communications & Commentary

During the meeting there were several opportunities for communications from staff and commissioners, as well as two general public commentary times. Here are some highlights.

Communications & Commentary: D1 Zoning Review

Planning manager Wendy Rampson gave a brief update on the current slate of public forums held by consultants who are developing recommendations as part of a downtown zoning review. The consultants – Erin Perdu and Megan Masson-Minock – have put together a workbook for presenting at these forums. [.pdf of workbook] [.pdf of slides from forum presentations] The same information is part of an online survey that’s underway through Sept. 17. The intent, Rampson said, is to get as much feedback as possible before the consultants make their recommendations.

Consultant Megan Masson-Minock, far left, leads a public forum on Sept. 11 at Bill’s Beer Garden to get feedback on the ongoing downtown zoning review. Four people attended.

The work is the result of a city council resolution passed on April 1, 2013. It directed the planning commission to address three specific questions: (1) whether D1 zoning is appropriately located on the north side of Huron Street between Division and South State (the location of the 413 E. Huron project, Sloan Plaza and Campus Inn) and the south side of William Street between South Main and Fourth Avenue (where a parking lot and DTE offices are located); (2) whether the D1 residential FAR [floor area ratio] premiums effectively encourage a diverse downtown population; and (3) whether a parcel on the south side of Ann Street adjacent to city hall should be rezoned “to the appropriate zoning for this neighborhood.” That parcel, currently a surface parking lot, is now zoned D1, which allows for the highest density development.

The council’s resolution set a deadline of Oct. 1 for the planning commission to deliver recommendations to the council.

However, Rampson reported that the schedule has changed slightly. Sabra Briere, the city council’s representative on the planning commission, has informed the council that the work will take a couple of additional weeks to complete. The goal is to review the consultants’ report at an Oct. 8 planning commission working session, and then take action on those recommendations at the Oct. 15 regular meeting of the commission. At that point it will be transmitted to the council, she said.

A final public forum to review all of the feedback gathered so far will be held on Thursday, Sept. 19 starting at 7 p.m. at the Workantile, 118 S. Main.

For more background, see Chronicle coverage: “Priorities Emerge in Downtown Zoning Review” and ”Downtown Zoning Review Moves Forward.”

Communications & Commentary: R4C/R2A Advisory Committee

Bonnie Bona reported that the reconstituted R4C/R2A advisory committee had asked her to attend a Sept. 11 meeting to help them understand the planning commission’s discussions about the residential zoning revisions that were recommended to city council earlier this year. Bona said she’d do her best to represent the commission’s views, “but I will take full responsibility for everything I say.”

The Chronicle attended that meeting, which will be covered in a separate report. For additional background, see Chronicle coverage: “R4C/R2A Committee Focuses Its Work” and “Planning Commission Signs Off on R4C Draft.”

Communications & Commentary: Public Hearing

A public hearing is scheduled for the planning commission’s Sept 17 meeting on a rezoning request, site plan and wetland use permit for the proposed Traverwood Apartments at 2025 Traverwood. The plan calls for building 255 one- and two-bedroom apartments in 14 buildings, accessed by two new driveways from Traverwood Drive.

Communications & Commentary: Michigan Association of Planning Conference

Wendy Rampson reported that six people – staff and two commissioners – will be attending the Michigan Association of Planning annual conference on Oct. 2-4 in Kalamazoo. [.pdf of conference schedule] She plans to bring a resolution to the Sept. 17 meeting to authorize the attendance of the two planning commissioners, Paras Parekh and Sabra Briere.

By way of additional background, two city of Ann Arbor staff – Matt Naud, the city’s environmental coordinator, and Jamie Kidwell, who worked on the city’s sustainability framework – will be panelists at one of the sessions on Thursday, Oct. 3. The session is titled “Michigan Green Communities: Increasing Innovation through Peer Learning”

Present: Bonnie Bona, Sabra Briere, Ken Clein, Diane Giannola, Jeremy Peters, Kirk Westphal, Wendy Woods, Paras Parekh. Also: City planning manager Wendy Rampson.

Absent: Eleanore Adenekan.

Next regular meeting: Tuesday, Sept. 17, 2013 at 7 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s planning commission. 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.

Mayor John Hieftje at the April 15 Ann Arbor city council meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Conversation amongst audience members at the meeting – as well as subsequently in the community – described the effort as a “citizens filibuster.” The result of all the commentary: Two significant items on the agenda were postponed until the council’s May 6 meeting.

One of those items was the site plan approval for 413 E. Huron. Postponement of a decision on that project was lumped in with the general motion to postpone all remaining action items on the agenda until May 6. It was not necessarily expected that the council would postpone the 413 E. Huron site plan that evening, even if it was hoped by opponents that councilmembers would put off the decision – for a third time.

But there was a reasonable expectation that another significant item would be postponed – the council’s final action on a proposed revision to the city ordinance governing the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. It was during the often acrimonious debate on that decision that the council ultimately opted to postpone all of its remaining action items until May 6.

The acrimony stemmed in part from the fact that the stated intention of Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) at the start of the meeting was to postpone a final decision – and that was the expected outcome. The fact that this expected outcome was called into question heightened the tension in an already emotional debate. The tension was heightened by the fact that deviation from the anticipated postponement was made possible mainly by the absence of two councilmembers – Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1).

By the time the council reached the DDA ordinance on its agenda, the hour was approaching 2 a.m. And by then Higgins and Kailasapathy had needed to leave the council meeting. Both of them had supported the ordinance changes in the 7-3 vote taken at the council’s April 1, 2013 meeting. But for the final reading on April 15, neither of them were at the table when the debate on the DDA ordinance began.

Kailasapathy described herself to The Chronicle as on the verge of physical exhaustion when she left – having had little sleep over the several days leading up to the meeting. She earns her livelihood as a certified public accountant, and tax season is a time of peak workload.

So apparently recognizing that the absence of Kailasapathy and Higgins would mean defeat for the ordinance change – if it were voted up or down, instead of being postponed – mayor John Hieftje led an effort to force an up-or-down vote on the issue. And councilmembers who were willing to put off the issue were not unified in their view about the parliamentary procedure to use to achieve that delay. So the council voted on two different options – postponing until a date certain (June 17) or tabling the issue. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) provided a crucial vote against postponement, but voted in favor of tabling.

Kunselman argued for the postponement by pointing out that because the sequence of the roll-call vote that evening allowed him to vote last, he could simply assess how the tally stood, and vote accordingly with the prevailing side. That would give him the right to bring back the vote for reconsideration at the council’s subsequent meeting. But Kunselman’s argument was not persuasive to a six-vote majority.

Without a six-vote majority in favor of either tabling or postponing, the council was left to deliberate on the actual ordinance amendments. As some attempted amendments failed – clearly due to the dynamic that had resulted from the absence of two councilmembers – Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) eventually proposed adjourning the meeting until the following Monday, when the meeting could continue. However, after a brief recess it was decided that the council would simply postpone all remaining voting items until its May 6 meeting, and put an end to the April 15 meeting.

After approving the motion to postpone the action items, councilmembers ticked through the remaining “housekeeping” items on the agenda, which largely included various reports and communications. Of those, one highlight worth noting was the nomination by Hieftje of Eric Mahler to replace David Nacht on the board of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

The public commentary at the April 15 meeting exceeds The Chronicle’s capacity to report in its customary way. Still, some accounting of the meeting is important for the archives.

This report provides: (1) a summary of votes taken; and (2) a summary of actions that will now appear on the May 6 agenda as a result of the April 15 postponement. In addition, this report begins with details of the deliberations on the proposed DDA ordinance revisions.

DDA Ordinance Revisions

During the April 15 meeting, the council undertook some amendments to the proposed ordinance revisions governing the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority. [.pdf of DDA ordinance as it will appear on the council's May 6, 2013 agenda] Background is presented first, followed by details of the deliberations.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Background

Several revisions to Chapter 7, a city ordinance governing the Ann Arbor DDA, had received an initial approval by the city council at its April 1, 2013 meeting. The revisions would result in roughly $500,000 in additional annual revenue for the city of Ann Arbor – compared to what it would receive under the DDA’s current interpretation of the ordinance.

The revisions ultimately postponed by the council on April 15 fell roughly into two categories: (1) those involving board composition and policies; and (2) calculation of tax increment finance (TIF) capture in the DDA district.

In the first category, the revisions to Chapter 7 that have received initial approval by the council included: a new prohibition against non-mayoral elected officials serving on the DDA board except by agreement with the other taxing jurisdictions; term limits on DDA board members; and a new requirement that the DDA submit its annual report to the city in early January.

More significantly, the changes include revisions to Chapter 7 that would clarify how the DDA’s TIF tax capture is calculated. While the interpretation of the language is disputed, it’s generally acknowledged that the ordinance language doesn’t provide explicit and clear guidance on the calculations.

The “increment” in a tax increment finance district refers to the difference between the initial value of a property and the value of a property after development. The Ann Arbor DDA captures the taxes – just on that initial increment – of some other taxing authorities in the district. Those are the city of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Washtenaw Community College and the Ann Arbor District Library. For FY 2013, the DDA will capture roughly $3.9 million in taxes.

The ordinance revisions clarify existing ordinance language, which includes a paragraph that appears to limit the amount of TIF that can be captured. The limit is defined relative to projections for the valuation of the increment in the TIF plan, which is a foundational document for the DDA. The result of the clarification to the Chapter 7 language would mean in the neighborhood of $300,000 less TIF revenue for the DDA in FY 2014 – compared to the $3.933 million shown in the DDA’s adopted budget for that year. For FY 2015, the gap between the DDA’s budget and the projected TIF revenue – using the proposed clarifying change to Chapter 7 – would be around $70,000 according to one projection.

However, the total increment in the district on which TIF is computed has shown significant growth. And under the proposed clarification of Chapter 7, that growth would result in a return of TIF money to other taxing jurisdictions (that would otherwise be captured by the DDA) totaling $931,000 each year for FY 2014-15. The city of Ann Arbor’s share of that would be roughly $500,000, of which about $300,000 would go into the general fund. The city’s general fund includes the transit millage, so about $60,000 of that would be passed through to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

The amount of TIF capture that’s returned to the other taxing jurisdictions is tied to growth in the valuation by the Chapter 7 language. Under Chapter 7, if the actual rate of growth outpaces the growth rate that’s anticipated in the TIF plan, then at least half the excess amount is supposed to be redistributed to the other taxing authorities in the DDA district. In 2011, the DDA for the first time returned excess TIF capture to other authorities, when the existence of the Chapter 7 language was reportedly first noticed. At that time, the DDA made repayments of TIF monies to other authorities of around $400,000, which covered what was owed going back to 2003. When the DDA calculated the amounts owed in 2011, the city of Ann Arbor waived its roughly $700,000 share.

In 2011, the DDA used a year-to-year interpretation of the Chapter 7 language instead of computing rate of growth against the base year in a cumulative fashion. That is a point that the Chapter 7 revisions would clarify.

Before giving initial approval on April 1, but postponing its vote on April 15, the council had previously postponed voting at its March 18, 2013 and March 4, 2013 meetings.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Financial Impact

Some of the discussion has focused on what the impact of the ordinance clarifications would be on the DDA’s finances. Chart 1 below summarizes the impact. As amended at the April 15, 2013 meeting, the impact of the clarification would not be felt until FY 2015. From FY 2015 forward, the difference between the revenue planned for by the DDA (red) and that provided by the calculations made explicit in the ordinance revisions (blue) is minimal. What’s at stake is the TIF revenue level for which the DDA has not been planning – shown by the yellow line. That level of revenue has resulted from recent new construction in the downtown area.

Chart 1: Impact on DDA finances compared to DDA 10-year planning document. Data from city and DDA sources, chart by The Chronicle.

[.pdf of DDA 10-year planning document]

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Initial Communications

During the initial slot on the agenda set aside for communications from councilmembers, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated he would be asking his colleagues for postponement of the vote regarding changes to the DDA ordinance. His remarks came about an hour into the meeting. He said the reason he was asking for the postponement was that after the council’s initial approval of the ordinance changes on April 1, there had been a lot of misrepresentation about what the changes meant.

There had also been political intimidation, Kunselman said, and “outright character assassination” of those councilmembers who had been trying to work hard to bring clarity to the DDA TIF calculation process. “I’ve always intended that the DDA budget be maintained whole,” he said, so that the DDA could still meet existing obligations. During the deliberations on that initial vote, he pointed out, the threat had been heard that the DDA board might rescind its resolution that granted $8 million to the city of Ann Arbor – paid in installments of roughly a half million dollars each year – for the new police courts building/Justice Center.

There had also been reports in the press, Kunselman stated, that DDA board treasurer Roger Hewitt had indicated there would be no “sacred cows” when it came to the DDA’s reevaluation of its budget. Kunselman said he had interpreted Hewitt’s remarks as a threat. Kunselman then implicitly introduced the issue of a possible conflict of interest on the part of Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5), whose wife Nancy Shore is director of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s getDowntown program.

Because the DDA funds the getDowntown program, the last thing Kunselman would want to have on his hands, he contended, was cutting that program – when a council colleague’s spouse could lose her job. And he knew that would happen if funding from the DDA to the getDowntown program were cut off – because he had spoken with Michael Ford, CEO of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, about that. According to Kunselman, Ford had assured him that if the DDA funding were to be cut, then Shore’s position would have to be cut as well. That had never been Kunselman’s intent, he said.

By way of background, The Chronicle had previously inquired about the getDowntown program budget and its funding sources. Based on information provided by AATA to The Chronicle, it appears that the federal funding component of the getDowntown budget exceeds the salary and benefits paid to Shore. [.pdf of 5-year getDowntown budget numbers] Based on Kunselman’s remarks, The Chronicle emailed Ford during the April 15 meeting and received a reply:

I recall the question being the funding for the program [federal] CMAQ funding which supports elements of the program and funding for employee positions – I don’t recall the specific question of just DDA funding impacting employee positions.

AATA director of communications Mary Stasiak had previously told The Chronicle in a phone interview that the existence of Shore’s position was not contingent on the existence of getDowntown’s go!pass program – which is where the bulk of the roughly $600,000 worth of funding from the DDA goes. And she’d explicitly said that Shore’s position was not contingent on the DDA’s funding of the getDowntown program.

From left: Councilmembers Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3).

Kunselman said he had also heard a lot of talk about a desire for collaboration. “I am willing to try to collaborate,” he stated. And that is why he wanted the postponement, he said. He wanted a chance to reach out to the DDA’s treasurer and to the mayor to find out if there’s something that could be done to address the TIF capture methodology. On Jan. 27, 2012 – over a year ago – Kunselman continued, mayor John Hieftje had received from the executive director the Ann Arbor District Library, Josie Parker, a letter that as far as Kunselman knew had never received a written response from Hieftje.

Kunselman read aloud the closing paragraph from the letter: “Based on the city’s recognition that its own ordinance requires excess TIF to be distributed to the taxing authorities, the library fully expects that it will continue to receive TIF refunds in the future. From this point forward, however, the library would ask for consultation with the city so that a calculation method can be agreed upon before any refund checks are issued.”

The purpose of this exercise, Kunselman said, was to bring some responsibility back. So he would be asking for a postponement when the council reached that item on the agenda, he concluded.

Five and a half hours later the council reached the DDA ordinance on its agenda.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Deliberations – Postponement

Kunselman led off discussion by re-iterating his desire to see the second and final vote on the question postponed. He asked that the postponement be until the council’s second meeting in June, which falls on June 17. Kunselman indicated that he had already spoken with DDA board treasurer Roger Hewitt about meeting and discussing with him some of the issues that had been raised by the DDA and the community. “I hope that you can indulge… the fact that we are looking for a postponement,” he said. Kunselman’s motion to postpone was seconded by Sally Petersen (Ward 2).

Margie Teall (Ward 4) indicated that she would not be supporting a postponement that evening – because she did not support the ordinance revision as it was brought forward. She appreciated that Kunselman would like time to work on the question, and to start in a more collaborative manner. But she felt that the current draft before the council needed to be voted down. She pointed out that around 50 people had appeared before the council that evening to speak.

Teall allowed that there was concern and confusion about the nature of the TIF calculation, which she allowed probably does need to be examined, to clarify it. She felt that it would best be addressed, however, by the city administrator, the chief financial officer, and the DDA staff working together to bring recommendations forward to the council. She had an alternative resolution prepared, which she indicated she was prepared to pass around. But she would not support a postponement because she wanted the question to be voted on that night.

Sally Petersen (Ward 2) indicated she would support the postponement. She liked the spirit of collaboration that Kunselman was bringing forward in connection with the postponement. The council had heard a lot about the value that the DDA offers to the downtown area, she said, and about the DDA’s contribution to the support of affordable housing. She did not feel that any of that was in question in connection with the changes to the ordinance.

In the short term, Petersen allowed that there was “a little bit of a hit” to the DDA. But in the long term, she said, there would be an uptick in the DDA’s fund balance as a result of the ordinance amendments. She noted that there have been a lot of spreadsheets floating around in the last several weeks, and lots of versions of the DDA’s 10-year planning document that she has seen. The postponement would give everyone a chance to really take a look at the numbers, and what it means to the bottom line for the DDA. She was not convinced that there was a uniform understanding across the council of the impact of the ordinance changes on the DDA’s budget planning. That really needs to be clearly understood, she stressed. So for that reason she supported the postponement.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) indicated that she would support the postponement as well. She thanked the city’s chief financial officer Tom Crawford, who had provided some very helpful spreadsheets, she said. She described one of the pages that had been provided as particularly helpful – which lays out the impacts on the DDA’s revenues over the next 10 years. She felt there had been a lot of confusion about the actual financial impact of the ordinance changes on the DDA. The community, she felt, needed some time to absorb the same information the city council had been provided. She felt the added time would be helpful in that regard.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated he would not support the postponement. “I think this was bad legislation from the day it was proposed,” he stated. He reiterated his view that he thinks that the ordinance amendments represent a threat to the city’s general fund. He claimed that he could show that over and over again. The work that the DDA does is very vital, he said. He added that “we have caught the DDA with this at exactly the wrong time,” and contended that the DDA had anticipated an increase in TIF revenue.

The DDA had spent down its fund balances for the largest projects if it had ever undertaken, Hieftje continued, and he did not know why the council would continue down the road with something that could be harmful to the city’s general fund and to the city’s ability to put police officers on the street. He also contended that light posts on Main Street were falling over when the wind blows, and that the project to replace those light posts might be delayed if these ordinance amendments were undertaken. “It’s almost as if we’re trying to punish the DDA for excellence …, ” he contended.

Margie Teall (Ward 4). In the background is Marcia Higgins (Ward 4).

Teall expressed her view that she did not think that clarity of the ordinance language could be achieved within the timeframe of the postponement. CFO Crawford took the podium to respond to Teall’s questions. When the council’s audit committee had met, Teall said, committee members had discussed the TIF calculations. As Crawford stood at the podium, she told him that at the audit committee meeting he had expressed the view that there needed to be an overhaul, or a look at the TIF calculations.

Teall asked Crawford if there was any confusion about how the TIF is to be calculated. Crawford allowed that he did not actually remember the specific conversation to which Teall had alluded – because there had been so many conversations on the topic. He did feel that the existing ordinance language is not clear. He expressed the view that the DDA has the ability and the right to interpret the ordinance language. The fact that there are so many questions about it is something that staff and the DDA are trying to work through, he said. “I’m not sure what I can say to help.” Crawford alluded to the last spreadsheet that Lumm had mentioned, saying he felt it addressed some of the areas that had previously been confusing.

Crawford noted that there is an interest in trying to understand the impact to the DDA. But he stressed that it’s important to understand the basis from which that impact is measured. Is the impact measured against the DDA’s assumed 10-year planning document, or is it measured against the new projections that the city has now? Crawford indicated that he’d attempted to flesh all that out in the last spreadsheet, which was as close as it comes to achieving clarity, he said, based on the questions that staff had been hearing.

Teall asked Crawford if he thought it would help if there were more clarity in the language. Crawford hoped that regardless of what the council’s decision is, at some point some clarity in the language can be achieved. Teall indicated that she didn’t think if the question came back to the council in June that clarity would exist.

Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) asked Kunselman directly if Kunselman’s intention was to bring the ordinance back in substantially the same form, or if he imagined through the collaborative process that there would be significant revisions to the proposed ordinance. Kunselman indicated that he was open to significant revisions – whatever it took to make sure that clarity is achieved. Kunselman felt that everyone was trying to reach clarity, which he said had been his original intent from “the get-go.”

Kunselman found it interesting that there is now interest in clarity from those who had opposed the effort initially, and who had called it bad legislation. He’d been working with the city staff to provide clarity to the language on the TIF calculation. “Are there other ways of doing it? I’m sure there are. Am I open to them? I very much am so.”

If the collaborative effort – among Hieftje and the DDA board treasurer and the city staff – results in significant revisions to the ordinance language, then those would come back at the second meeting in June, Kunselman said. But if that can’t be achieved by the second meeting in June, then the intent would be to postpone again, he said. He wanted to get the clarity that’s necessary so that everyone can understand the TIF calculations. And he allowed that could result in a need to restart the ordinance amendment process by introducing the revisions at first reading.

If the result was a first reading at the second meeting in June, Warpehoski wondered what the advantage would be of doing that. Warpehoski’s implication seemed to be that the council could vote down the ordinance revisions that night and start from scratch with a new first reading at the second meeting in June – if sufficient clarity had been achieved at that point.

Kunselman responded by saying that it was possible that the proposed amendments as they currently stood already did a pretty good job of achieving the kind of clarity that was sought. Kunselman pointed out that of all the speakers during the public hearing, no one had actually talked about the language of the TIF calculation and the council’s effort to keep the DDA’s budget whole. “It’s like nobody actually read the draft language” that was given initial approval by the council, Kunselman said. For all we know, Kunselman ventured, that could be the clearest language available.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) asked Kunselman if he would consider a tabling instead of a postponement until a date certain. “It’s not that I don’t want this brought back up off the table,” she contended. She noted that she and Kunselman had talked about the need to achieve some clarity on the financial issues. She was not certain that clarity had yet been achieved. She had talked with city staff about some ideas to make her more secure in the clarity of the language. She did not feel she could even discuss it effectively that night.

From left: Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1), Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Sally Petersen (Ward 2). Kailasapathy had to leave the meeting before it concluded.

Briere ventured that it might not be useful to tie things to a tight timeline – saying that it might require six months. She told Kunselman she did not think that he would necessarily need six months, but that’s the maximum time for which an issue can be tabled, she pointed out. She wanted to see that the collaborative effort was not tied to a rigid timeline – especially during the month of May [when the council is focused on approving the budget for the next fiscal year]. She did not figure that people would have a lot of flexibility during the month of May. Kunselman told her that he was not interested in tabling for six months.

At that point Kunselman laid out the parliamentary options, in an effort to encourage his colleagues to postpone the question, as he had asked. He pointed out that he could simply vote with the affirmative side and bring the question back for reconsideration at the next meeting. He noted that the council was, at that point in the evening, missing a couple of councilmembers who would be likely to be supportive of the postponement. Kunselman characterized the choices as “playing games” or just postponing. He confirmed with city clerk Jackie Beaudry that Kunselman was last in the roll-call sequence that night. [The roll call starts with a different councilmember each meeting, rotating around the table.] “All’s I’m asking for is a postponement until the second meeting in June,” Kunselman concluded.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) indicated that in the brief conversations he’d had with members of the DDA board, they were willing to engage in further discussion. And that was exactly what Kunselman had been intending, Anglin said. He pointed out that the initial vote of the council on the question had been 7-3 in favor of having the matter go forward for discussion. He felt that postponing is exactly what the council should be doing. It was never a proposal that was meant to hurt the DDA, he said. Everyone at the table at the previous meeting had praised the work of the DDA, but they wanted further clarifications.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) noted that he hadn’t attended the previous council meeting. So he contented he was not fully apprised of what was said, or how it was said. But he ventured that, “If an earnest and polite conversation was intended, then that is what would have been requested.” He was happy that the council was moving in that direction. He allowed that Kunselman had raised a proper procedural point about voting last and being able to vote in the affirmative, putting Kunselman in a position to bring back the vote for reconsideration at the next meeting.

Still, Taylor felt that tabling was a more proper thing to do in this context. He agreed with Briere that the effort would require a conversation that would extend beyond the council’s second meeting in June. He felt the conversation should move the end result far away from the one that’s in the current resolution.

Taylor allowed that the resolution in front of the council would not be the “death knell of the DDA.” But he claimed it would “do harm and violence to the long-term plans of what I think has been demonstrated here to be a organization that is not broken and not in need of fixing.” He called the DDA an excellent steward of the downtown and the city’s collective resources. “They’re a credit to us all, and they do great work,” he said. On the postponement, he felt that a tabling would be best.

Warpehoski noted that Kunselman had expressed a desire not to play games. He hoped that what comes back in June would be significantly different from what is currently proposed and a fresh start can be achieved. He did not feel that arguing about tabling versus postponement was a good thing to be doing at 2 a.m. So Warpehoski supported a postponement to a date certain, to just keep it moving. He hoped that a different proposal would come back with language that did a better job with the governance and financing aspects. And if it did not, Warpehoski indicated he would be ready with amendments to try to put forward his vision.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Postponement – Politics

Hieftje weighed in again: “Frankly, and since we’re being frank, I think that this started out with a very large political component.” So Hieftje wanted to postpone the question out beyond the council primary election date. [This year, the primary will be held on Aug. 6.] That would remove some of the political component, Hieftje contended. That way, good policy to be made without individual councilmember’s political goals being included, he said.

Hieftje felt that a postponement leaves an organization hanging that has been a very strong partner to the city. The last 10 or 12 years had been the worst in history since the last Great Depression, Hieftje said. Many cities across the state and across the nation had raised taxes to cope with it, he said, but the city of Ann Arbor has a millage rate that today is slightly less than it was back in the year 2000. When the city went to the DDA and wanted to renegotiate the parking agreement, the DDA did not have to do that, Hieftje said.

The DDA is a freestanding organization, he said, quickly adding that he had always maintained that the DDA is an “arm of the city.”

The DDA had “stepped up to the table” and renegotiated the contract under which the DDA manages the public parking system, Hieftje said. Now there is over $3 million a year that comes back to the city under terms of the parking contract, he noted. When the city was told by the Washtenaw County government that the city needed to move the 15th District Court out of the county courthouse, the DDA was there, and had granted the city $508,000 a year.

Hieftje did not want to keep the DDA “on the hook and hanging.” He thinks the process should have started out with a conversation with the DDA. “How come we didn’t want to do that to begin with?” Hieftje characterized the proposed ordinance revision as a “command-and-control” approach that he wanted to get off the table. Hieftje said he wanted to go back and have a sober conversation with the DDA.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) then responded to Hieftje’s remarks:

I wasn’t going to go here but you sort of forced this issue, Mr. Mayor. Councilmember Kunselman has raised these issues for as long as I’ve been around. And you all know that. To suggest that they are simply politically motivated as you did at the last meeting, Mr. Mayor, does no credit to you or your role. You tried that with me once as well, and I think you would be better served to simply argue the merits of your position rather than attempt to personally discredit those who may occasionally disagree with you. I think it’s unfortunate that the rhetoric has risen to such an uncivil level, with personal insults and accusations. And frankly it appears that if any councilmember who has a view that may be different from the status quo, then it is either ‘politically motivated’ or ‘ill-informed.’ Perhaps there may be a different view, a different sense of priorities. I wish we could recognize and honor that reality in a much more civil manner on the council and as a community.

Lumm also pointed out that there were two councilmembers absent because they had to go to work in a few hours – so it was understandable why they needed to leave the meeting earlier. Lumm thought the council owed it to Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) to give them an opportunity to vote on this.

On the question of postponement versus tabling, Lumm didn’t support tabling. “That’s basically shelving it,” she said. She pointed to the stack of written materials in front of her, saying that half of the notebooks were Q&As the council has received back from the staff. “We have flogged this thing,” Lumm said. And there has been a lot of interaction with the DDA. Lumm said, “We all know that this is not the catastrophic neutering of the DDA that is being portrayed.”

Lumm called herself a staunch supporter of the DDA – but she stressed that what she supported was an independent DDA. The ordinance change would help clarify the question about the TIF refund, Lumm said. It clearly needs to be clarified. So she didn’t understand the logic behind tabling it. Lumm appreciated that the postponement had been proposed for the second meeting in June and she thought that was fair, and so she would be supporting it.

Kunselman noted that the council had received the city administrator’s budget presentation that evening. So the council would be adopting the city budget with the DDA’s budget as a component unit of that budget – without changing it. No one is talking about changing the DDA budget for fiscal year 2014, Kunselman said. The reason he wanted to try to pursue action by the second meeting in June is that it’s the end of the fiscal year and the tax bills start going out. It’s his hope that as the tax bills go out, there would be new language about the TIF capture methodology. But he stressed that the city council would not be amending the DDA budget, regardless of what the ordinance revisions might be. The intent has never been to cut the DDA’s budget or to put the DDA in a position where the DDA has to cut programs. Kunselman pointed out that what’s at stake are new additional tax dollars.

Kunselman agreed with Lumm that the “scare talk” that Hieftje had used was not well-founded. Kunselman was willing to put some of the other things aside – an apparent allusion to the governance issues in the ordinance – in order to focus on the TIF capture methodology.

Kunselman addressed Hieftje directly, telling him that the Ann Arbor District Library had sent a letter to Hieftje, but Kunselman had not heard that Hieftje ever responded to it. Kunselman said he’d been criticized because he was standing up and trying to help out the library – which has a budget of roughly $12 million compared to the DDA’s budget of over $20 million. Who cares about the library? he asked, adding that he did. The library is an institution of our community, he said, but he thought the library’s thoughts on the issue are being squashed.

The idea that the city and the DDA don’t care what the library thinks and that the TIF capture will be calculated in accordance with whatever is best in the judgment of the DDA and the mayor shows arrogance, Kunselman said.

Kunselman observed the late hour and pled for a postponement. “It’s not about playing politics,” he stated, but “we can make it that way, if you want to keep talking about it that way.” Kunselman noted that he’d explicitly asked for collaboration. Kunselman contended that the interest in collaboration now on the part of opponents of the ordinance revisions would not have been shown, if the council hadn’t actually voted for the ordinance changes at first reading. The reason it had reached this point, Kunselman said, is that Hieftje had not addressed the issue for over a year: “And now you’re complaining about the fact we got a first reading?”

Kunselman returned to the parliamentary point about being in a position to assess the vote tally and vote with the prevailing side, giving him the opportunity to bring back the question for reconsideration at the next council meeting: “I’m the last vote. If you want to play the game, we can do that. … Or we can be kind and considerate at two o’clock in the morning and just please vote unanimously, and we’ll postpone it until the second meeting in June.”

Kunselman continued by saying that he would not push for a vote up or down at the second meeting in June, if there was not sufficient clarity in the language. “And you have my word that if we don’t have the language, … [I won’t] force a vote up or down in order to score political points. That’s not my intent. That’s exactly why I didn’t want to force the vote tonight.” He didn’t want to force the vote before the filing deadline for council candidates, he said, because the potential existed to create candidates based on that vote. [The filing deadline for the primary election is May 14.]

Kunselman said he did not want political intimidation – because that doesn’t yield good public policy. This is about public policy, not about scoring points, he said. “If you want to make it that way, then that seems how you want it to be. I’m sitting here taking the heat, taking the character assassination … I’m not going to back down just because you don’t want to be nice.”

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Postponement – Calling the Question

Warpehoski appeared to attempt to strike balance by noting that there are both public policy and political issues at play. “Let’s be honest about that,” he said, “It’s being played on all sides.”

Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5).

Warpehoski believed that Kunselman had serious policy issues that he was pursuing honestly. But Kunselman had also had been quoted in the media as saying that it was 100% political and that councilmembers were all politicians and that people who supported his opponents need to understand that there are consequences for their actions.

But Warpehoski also noted that it was 2 a.m. He then “called the question” – a parliamentary move that is intended to end debate. Warpehoski pointed out that it was not a debatable motion and required a super-majority to pass. As some councilmembers sought clarification about the effect of Warpehoski’s motion, he said: “I’m saying let’s shut up and vote on … postponement.”

Outcome: The vote on calling the question was deemed to have failed, with Hieftje and Taylor voting against it. Higgins and Kailasapathy were absent.

The motion was deemed to have failed because it did not have eight votes, which is the number typically associated with a “super-majority” of the council. However, the council rules make a motion to call the question contingent on a 3/4 majority of those present, not of those members serving:

A motion to call the previous question (call for cloture) immediately ends all discussion and shall be out of order until all members have had an opportunity to speak twice to the question on the floor, and shall require a concurring vote of 3/4 of the members present.

On a vote of 7-2, Warpehoski’s motion to call to the question should have succeeded, and the council should have voted on the postponement at that point.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Postponement – More Deliberations

Discussion continued on the postponement of the question until June 17. Hieftje asked if the council would consider postponement until Sept. 30. Between tabling and a postponement until Sept. 30, Hieftje indicated he supported postponement until Sept. 30. He noted that the conversations between the city and the DDA about the new parking contract had taken a year.

Speaking to Kunselman, Hieftje began: “If you really want to have a conversation, if it’s genuine this time, if you want to actually collaborate with the DDA… ” then Hieftje felt that Sept. 30 was a date that would be appropriate. Kunselman responding by reiterating his desire to have clarity before the tax bills go out. The money will get dispersed, he said, and if the DDA receives it, then the city may never get it back. So the purpose is to try to get it done.

“We’re talking some very simple language from everything I understand,” Kunselman said. Given the two months he was asking for, Kunselman ventured that it would be possible to work something out. “You have my word: If we don’t have it worked out by the end of June, I will not request or force a vote on a second reading.”

Briere admitted that Kunselman’s idea about what happens at the beginning of the fiscal year and disbursement of taxes left her confused. She asked for some explanation of what exactly happens with the summer taxes. Crawford indicated that taxes are levied and collected – which means the treasurer collects all the money and settles with the county to make sure that everything is correct, and then the funds are distributed to the various entities. He confirmed for Briere that it’s the FY 2014 taxes that are being collected. The fiscal year begins July 1.

Some back-and-forth between Crawford and Briere established that the city’s role in dispersing TIF money to the DDA would stay the same, regardless of any ordinance change. An ordinance change could affect how the DDA calculates a possible refund, however. Crawford told Briere he would have to double-check to see if an August change in the ordinance could affect July distributions. He thought that as long as you stay within the fiscal year, a change can be made.

Outcome: The final tally on the postponement was 4-5 in favor. Voting no were Teall, Hieftje, Briere, and Taylor. Voting yes were Warpehoski, Anglin, Petersen and Lumm. Voting last was Kunselman, who counted the tally at 4-4 and voted no so that he would be on the prevailing side. This put him in a position to bring back the vote for reconsideration at the council’s next meeting, on May 6.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Tabling

With the motion to postpone having failed, Briere moved to table the item. And she asked the city administrator, the mayor, Kunselman, the city’s CFO, and the DDA representatives to begin meeting. It’s a double motion, she allowed, but she was doing it because it was in the interest of time.

Hieftje invited further discussion on the tabling. There was none. [Under Robert’s rules, a motion to table is in any case not supposed to be subject to debate.]

Outcome: The motion to table failed on a 5-4 vote – because it did not have a six-vote majority. Voting for tabling were Teall, Warpehoski, Hieftje, Briere and Taylor. Voting against tabling were: Anglin, Petersen, Lumm and Kunselman.

At that point Lumm got clarification that the council would in fact be voting on the issue that night.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Amendment – Delayed Enactment

Petersen then proposed a possible amendment to the ordinance. She proposed that the clarification of the calculations would be enacted starting in fiscal year 2015 instead of fiscal year 2014, as originally called for. The benefit, she said, is that it would be consistent with the other timing issues that are mentioned in connection with implementing the DDA board governance changes. From a financial perspective, it would also eliminate the impact of the ordinance clarification’s $363,000 shortfall to the DDA in FY 2014. After that, Petersen, said, the shortfalls were, in her mind, minimal and actually became windfalls.

Teall responded to Petersen’s proposed amendment by questioning why the postponement Petersen had voted for could not have been proposed for longer – past the second meeting in June. She wondered why the ordinance revision couldn’t be postponed until next fall. Petersen replied that the postponement had been voted down. Petersen also indicated that she would rather have postponed the issue – but given that a vote appeared imminent, she wanted to set about to amend the ordinance.

Petersen indicated that she would rather have used the postponement to allow Kunselman and the DDA to come up with something that was mutually agreeable. But because the postponement did not get approved, she was simply looking for a different option that might be agreeable to the DDA and might make everyone feel a little bit better that the DDA would not be taking a “hit” in fiscal year 2014. Petersen had been hoping that this was something that Kunselman could have led the DDA to agree to, but in the absence of that possibility, she was proposing it herself.

Hieftje asked for deputy director of the DDA Joe Morehouse to come forward and walk the council through a version of the DDA’s 10-year planning document. Hieftje got confirmation that in FY 2015 and FY 2016, the DDA’s TIF fund balance was planned to be $441,060 and $264,816. Hieftje questioned whether it would even be possible for the DDA to undertake TIF projects with fund balances that low. Susan Pollay, executive director of the DDA, indicated that the concern would be about leaving the DDA with a zero fund balance. Pollay indicated that in a previous year, the auditor had highlighted a deficit in the DDA’s parking fund. Hieftje pointed to streetlight replacements on Main Street and curb ramp replacements as projects that might not happen if the ordinance amendments were to be enacted.

At that point, Kunselman had gotten out of his seat and moved down the table to talk with Petersen. Hieftje objected, saying, “We don’t usually have side conversations during the debate.” Hieftje continued by saying that it was hard for him to understand how people could say that this was not going to harm the DDA or its ability to do projects.

Lumm countered by asking Crawford to confirm what the impacts are of the ordinance changes on the DDA. She felt that the rhetoric had escalated and that the council was now hearing how catastrophic an impact this is going to have on the DDA. Lumm began her recitation of the financial information. For FY 2013, Lumm noted, there is no TIF refund planned. For FY 2014 as a result of new developments, the gross TIF is projected to grow by $650,000 or 17%, to $4.5 million and then to grow by roughly $100,000 a year. “So far so good?” she asked Crawford. Yes, he replied.

But under the ordinance amendments, Lumm continued, in FY 2014 there would be a $930,000 refund to the various taxing entities, of which the city would receive $490,000. The DDA would retain $3.57 million, which represents a $280,000 reduction compared to the current year, she said. So what folks are characterizing as “the sky is falling” and dismantling the DDA is all about a $280,000 year-to-year reduction to the DDA’s revenues compared to this year, which is equivalent to a 1% reduction for a $25 million annual operation, she concluded. The city of Ann Arbor would receive $490,000 more, she continued. Under the ordinance revisions, she said, TIF revenue to the DDA is projected to reach $4.6 million by 2023. That’s 19% higher than the FY 2013 level, Lumm said.

Crawford had two comments on Lumm’s remarks. After FY 2014, he said, the city had used the standard DDA assumption for growth. [That means that those numbers don’t assume completion of major new construction like 624 Church St., which has been approved by the council, or 413 E. Huron, which might be approved.]

The numbers that have been discussed also don’t include the reduction due to the elimination of the personal property tax, Crawford noted. That amounts to about $175,000 a year, he said. Lumm countered by saying that the personal property tax would be eliminated regardless of the ordinance change.

Outcome: Petersen then asked if her amendment might be accepted as “friendly,” which meant that no vote would be needed. Petersen’s amendment was accepted as friendly.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Disclosure

Warpehoski at that point said he wanted to take the opportunity again to disclose that his wife, Nancy Shore, is the director of the getDowntown program, which is funded in part by DDA parking revenue funds. His understanding of Shore’s funding was that it was not the case that her job would be in jeopardy. He said if anybody had questions about the ethics of his voting on the item, they could excuse him from voting. He wanted to make sure that that was on the table.

Warpehoski read aloud the bulk of the relevant city charter passage.

The charter has two parts that address voting duty and recusal of councilmembers:

Except as otherwise provided in this charter, each member of the Council present shall cast a “yes” or “no” vote on each question before the Council, unless excused therefrom by a vote of at least six members.

A member of the Council shall not vote on a question in which the member has a financial interest, other than the general public interest, or on any question involving the member’s own conduct. If a question is raised under this section at any Council meeting concerning the eligibility of a member of the Council to vote on any matter, such question shall be finally determined by the concurring vote of at least six members of the Council, not including such member

No one responded to Warpehoski’s disclosure and no vote was taken to determine the issue.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Governance

Lumm continued by characterizing the impacts of the ordinance amendments on the DDA as “not that significant,” once you get past the hyperbole about dismantling the DDA. The goal is to define the funding formula for the DDA, which would result in improved fiscal discipline, accountability, and controls, she said. She did not think that could be inappropriate.

Lumm began to turn the conversation toward the governance aspects of the DDA ordinance amendments. She supported a strong and autonomous DDA, and contended that today Ann Arbor does not have an arm’s-length, independent DDA. Instead, Lumm continued, the DDA is currently an extension of the mayor and the city council. She felt the best interests of the DDA, the downtown, and the city would be better served by more independence and fresh eyes, so for those reasons she supported the governance aspects of the proposal.

Those governance issues include term limits and some guidelines with respect to appointing elected officials to the DDA board. The result was that significant funding decisions are made outside the regular budgeting process, Lumm said. With little or no accountability, the DDA awards around $2 million in grants annually. She wasn’t saying those grants have been inappropriate, but the decision about whether to use a half-million dollars a year to pay for debt on the new city hall/Justice Center (as the DDA does) or to fund public safety personnel should be a decision made inside the budget process, not outside, she said.

So Lumm supported the elements of the ordinance revisions that more clearly defined TIF capture and how much the DDA retains and how much is refunded to the original taxing entities. She did not feel it represented a hardship to the DDA. Clarifying the funding represents a positive step forward in terms of transparency, accountability, and control and ultimately results in an equitable sharing of revenues, she said. By passing the ordinance revisions, she felt that the council would be taking a step toward re-establishing a high-performing, autonomous DDA, coupled with the appropriate levels of controls and accountability. She concluded that she would be supporting the amendments.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Amendment – Capital Budget

Briere said she wished she felt as confident as Lumm did that the proposed language change provides the clarity that she seeks. So she offered an amendment that would add language:

The authority shall submit their capital budgets to incorporate them into the City’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). The authority shall at the time they submit their budget for Council approval identify that portion of the budget which is operating and that which is capital projects.

The purpose of the change, Briere said, was to reflect a concern she had heard over the years. The concern was that the city had repeatedly asked the DDA to undertake projects on behalf of the city, and that the DDA had always said yes. The DDA has allocated its funds to undertake those projects, but they are never in the city’s capital improvements plan, because the DDA is an independent organization, she said.

While the city council approves the DDA’s budget, the city council does not approve the DDA’s allocations. So by having the DDA provide the city with a list of proposed capital improvements at the same time that the city council looks at the capital improvement plan, and by breaking the budget into capital improvements versus operating funds, that would allow the council to ask questions about the DDA’s intended capital improvements. If some people felt that the DDA had spent its money carelessly without council approval, her goal was to begin to address that, Briere said.

Hieftje wondered what added clarity Briere’s amendment achieved. Briere noted that when a project springs forth as full-blown, people might have the impression that they’ve never heard of it before. This is an attempt to guard against that, she said.

Outcome: Briere’s proposed amendment passed on a unanimous vote.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Amendment – Term Limits

Hieftje then indicated that he had a particular point he wanted to make – but someone else would need to move the amendment, which related to the term limits set forth in the ordinance changes. He noted that the DDA works on long-term projects, saying that the South Fifth Avenue underground parking structure was in the making for about 10 years. He attributed the idea to former DDA board member Rob Aldrich.

Currently on the DDA board there are five members who are in their second term, Hieftje said. Three members are in their first term. One member is in his third term. And one member [Leah Gunn] has served many terms. Hieftje indicated she would be retiring from the board this year. He did not see a need for term limits on the DDA, saying that they had not turned out well for the state of Michigan in the legislature – something he felt was acknowledged by most people. He thought there could be at least two members who did not wish to be reappointed this year, which meant there would be two vacancies coming up. So he asked if there was someone who would be willing to offer an amendment to strike the term limits from the ordinance change. The proposal was moved by Teall and seconded by Warpehoski.

Lumm indicated that she would not support the elimination of term limits. She felt that most organizations have bylaws that cover term limits. She called term limits “a positive” and felt they were appropriate. She described the DDA board as composed of many current and former elected officials. Some have joked that the DDA board has become like a kind of “retirement home for former councilmembers,” Lumm said. It needs greater independence, she contended.

Under mayor Ingrid Sheldon, Lumm said, term limits for all boards were the norm. The expectation at the time – of both Democrats and Republicans who served with Sheldon – was that there would be term limits, and there was a lot of turnover. She felt there was little turnover on many of the city’s boards and commissions. She felt the term limits would help strengthen the DDA as an organization. She wanted the board composition to be more reflective of the downtown community. She did not want it to be an extension of the city council – which is what she felt like it was today.

Lumm questioned why the DDA had pledged $508,000 a year to pay for the new police/courts building. If she owned a downtown business, she would ask the question: How does that help my downtown business? Actions like that are taken by the DDA because the makeup of the board makes it an extension of “this group sitting here,” and that’s not healthy, Lumm contended.

Responding to Lumm’s question about the DDA’s support of the police/courts building, Hieftje noted that public buildings are one of the things that the DDA is enabled by state statute to spend money on. Hieftje also cited David DeVarti and Leah Gunn – long-time former and current members of the DDA board – as a counterexample to Lumm’s contention that there had been defacto term limits imposed under Sheldon.

Taylor noted that a broad base of business leaders in the downtown and in Ann Arbor had voiced their wholehearted support for the DDA, emphasizing the “it-ain’t-broke aspect of the organization.” So he supported the amendment to strip out the term limits.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3).

Kunselman told Hieftje that he was willing to support stripping out the term limits “if you’re going to tell us right now before we go too much further that you’re willing to support this ordinance amendment, if it contains the TIF capture methodology that has recently been amended [in a friendly way]…” Kunselman continued: “It’s three o’clock in the morning. If you give us your word that you’re going to vote on amending the ordinance with regards to the TIF capture, then we can get through this. Otherwise we’re going to go through all this …”

At that point, Hieftje interrupted Kunselman by saying “Absolutely not!” Kunselman sighed: “Well, then, here we go.”

Warpehoski supported the stripping out of term limits. He felt that boards need both renewal and historical memory. He felt that a small staff of four people, which the DDA has, is not adequate to provide the kind of living memory that a long-term board member can provide.

Warpehoski stressed that if the council did not want to re-appoint someone, it was a matter of lining up the votes to accomplish that. Petersen indicated she did not support stripping the term limits out, because she felt it’s helpful to have some planned turnover. Anglin felt like term limits might help reinvigorate some boards. Some people are intimidated from applying to boards because they feel like they would not fit in, he said.

Outcome: The vote on stripping out term limits failed on a 5-4 vote, because it did not get the needed six-vote majority. Voting against term limits were: Teall, Warpehoski, Hieftje, Briere, and Taylor. Voting for term limits were Anglin, Petersen, Lumm, and Kunselman. Higgins and Kailasapathy were absent.

DDA Ordinance Revisions: Denouement

After the failed outcome of the attempt to amend the ordinance revision, Warpehoski noted the dynamic that had evolved from the absence of two councilmembers. He also pointed out the lateness of the hour. “We’re not getting anything done. We’re not thinking straight.” He moved to adjourn the meeting until Monday, April 22, at which time it would continue.

After a brief recess, the council came back and Warpehoski’s motion was to postpone all remaining agenda items until May 6, the next regular meeting, thus ending the April 15 meeting.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to postpone all remaining items on its agenda until May 6. [.pdf of DDA ordinance as it will appear on the council's May 6, 2013 agenda]

April 15 Actions

The council did take action on a limited set of items at the April 15 meeting. Some of them were moved ahead on the agenda at the start of the meeting, because they were pressing matters or else needed eight votes to pass – like items involving land acquisition. The agenda changes reflected an implicit recognition that some councilmembers might need to leave before the meeting concluded.

Action: Wastewater Treatment Pumps

The council was asked to consider a $122,595 contract with Hubbell, Roth & Clark Inc. for replacement of “secondary effluent pumps” at the city’s wastewater treatment plan. One of the pumps had failed catastrophically. At the council meeting, wastewater treatment facility manager Earl Kenzie told the council that an assessment was made of the other five pumps to determine if the one pump should simply be replaced or if all of them should be replaced. That assessment, Kenzie said, showed that the other five pumps, which are over 30 years old, are in similar shape.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the contract with Hubbell, Roth & Clark Inc. for the pump replacement.

Action: Bridge Maintenance Program

On the council’s agenda was an application for funding under the state and federal local bridge program, which the city hopes will fund up to 95% of eligible construction costs. The remaining 5% would need to be paid by the city of Ann Arbor. The city is also responsible for design, construction engineering and testing costs.

The three city bridges that would have preventative maintenance done with funding from the program would be: the Fuller Road bridge over the Norfolk Southern Railroad tracks; the Maiden Lane Bridge over the Huron River; and the East Medical Center Drive bridge over the Norfolk Southern Railroad.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the funding application for the local bridge program.

Action: MDOT Application for 721 N. Main St.

The council was asked to approve an application to the Michigan Dept. of Transportation (MDOT) and the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments (SEMCOG) for funding through the transportation alternatives program (TAP) to support future city work on its property at 721 N. Main St.

During the brief discussion by the council, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted that the city had been awarded $150,000 by Washtenaw County parks & recreation for the 721 N. Main site, which is contingent on approval of a $300,000 grant that the city has requested from the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources Trust Fund. Briere expressed her hope that the TAP money could be another grant that will bring amenities to the city property, including pathways and a wetland.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the grant application to MDOT and SEMCOG for the 721 N. Main property.

Action: Land Purchase Near Ruthven Nature Area

The council considered a resolution to purchase another parcel within the city limits adjoining an existing nature area. The purchase price for the roughly 8-acre vacant parcel owned by Windy Crest Partnership – located just east of the Ruthven Nature Area – was $110,000. The parcel fronts on Meadowcreek Drive.

The parcel purchased by the city lies mostly within the floodplain or floodway as this image shows.

The city’s share of the purchase price is $82,500, with the remaining $27,500 contributed from Washtenaw County parks & recreation. Including the $13,000 in closing and due diligence costs, the city of Ann Arbor’s share amounted to $95,500, which will be paid from the city’s open space and parkland preservation millage proceeds.

The parcel is mostly in the floodway, as Millers Creek runs through it. Future costs associated with maintaining the site will include management by the city’s natural area preservation staff, who will conduct ecological burns and remove non-native species.

Purchase of the Meadowcreek Drive property marks the third similar acquisition by the city in about the last seven months, using funds from the open space and parkland preservation millage. At its Oct. 15, 2012 meeting, the council authorized the acquisition of a parcel on Hampstead Lane, adjoining the Kuebler Langford Nature Area. And at its March 4, 2013 meeting, the council authorized the acquisition of a roughly 0.357-acre piece of vacant land located on Orkney, adjoining the Bluffs Nature Area.

During the brief council deliberations, Jane Lumm (Ward 2) said she was pleased to see the item on the agenda. She ventured that sometimes people forget that the greenbelt and open space millage was conceived of having a two-thirds to one-third split between land purchased outside and inside the city. She noted that the parcel is in Ward 2, which she represents. She called the acquisition a high value investment of the millage proceeds.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to purchase the parcel.

Action: Riverside Easement for DTE

The council considered an easement between the city of Ann Arbor and DTE Energy – for land in Riverside Park where utility poles are located.

The easement had been recommended for approval by the Ann Arbor park advisory commission at its March 19, 2013 meeting. [.pdf of easement agreement]

DTE Energy Buckler substation site plan. (Links to larger image)

The easement agreement is needed so that DTE can remove old utility poles and install new poles and overhead lines – generally in the same location as existing poles and lines at Riverside Park. The easement allows DTE to provide maintenance on those poles and lines. DTE requested the easement in relation to an $8 million new electrical substation that the energy firm is building on land adjacent to the park. The Buckler substation’s site plan was approved last year by the city’s planning commission on June 5, 2012. It did not require city council approval.

The overall project entails building the substation in the utility company’s Ann Arbor service center – to provide a way to distribute an increase in electrical power to the downtown area due to increased demand for electricity. The project includes two 15.5-foot tall electrical transformers and related electrical equipment on raised concrete pads, and a new power delivery center (PDC) – a 630-square-foot, 12.5-foot tall steel structure. The source of power will be transmitted through underground sub-transmission cables in an existing manhole and conduit system.

The project also needed a variance to the 15-foot conflicting land use buffer requirements along the east side property line, adjacent Riverside Park. DTE requested a variance that would allow the firm to plant 23 trees along the far western side of Riverside Park instead of on DTE property. PAC recommended approval of that variance at its Feb. 28, 2012 meeting. It was subsequently authorized by the zoning board of appeals on June 27, 2012.

In addition to planting trees in the buffer, DTE plans to remove 15 trees along Canal Street, which will be replaced by 50 trees in other parts of the park. As stipulated by city ordinance, DTE also will be required to pay the city a “tree canopy loss” fee. According to the city’s urban forestry website, the current canopy loss rate is $186/inch for shade trees and $172/inch for ornamental trees. For this project, DTE will pay $23,800, which will be earmarked for future improvements to Riverside Park.

Construction on the substation will take place during the summer of 2013.

Outcome: Without discussion, the council unanimously approved the easement.

Action/Postponement: Summit Townhomes

The site plan and necessary zoning for the Summit Townhomes project both appeared separately on the council’s agenda. But the council reached only the zoning question before voting to postpone everything.

Both the site plan and zoning request previously had been postponed by the council at its March 18, 2013 meeting. The property is located at 2081 E. Ellsworth Road.

The parcel for the Summit Townhomes development (shaded yellow). The blue line is the boundary between the Malletts Creek and the Swift Run watersheds.

The developer plans to build 24 attached residential units in four separate buildings, with each building between 80 to 160 feet in length. Each of the 24 units would have a floor area of about 1,300 square feet, and an attached one-car garage. The plan includes two surface parking areas on the east and west sides of the site, each with 12 spaces. To do this, the property needs to be zoned as R3.

March 18 had been the first time the site plan had been before the council. But the R3 (townhouse district) zoning for the property, annexed from Pittsfield Township, had been previously considered by the council, and referred to the planning commission for re-review. The planning commission then confirmed its original recommendation for R3 zoning.

In more chronological detail, the zoning item had first appeared on the city council’s Jan. 7, 2013 agenda, when it received initial approval. However, at its Feb. 4, 2013 meeting, the council heard from about a half dozen people who spoke during the public hearing, in opposition to the zoning – citing concerns about congestion and overcrowding. So councilmembers voted unanimously to refer the zoning issue back to planning commissioners for another look. The council indicated interest in hearing more detail on drainage issues, and the level of recreational services offered in that general area of the city, as well as information about public safety issues.

At their Feb. 21, 2013 meeting, planning commissioners voted again to recommend that the site be zoned R3 (townhouse district) – the same zoning they had previously recommended at their Nov. 20, 2012 meeting.

The project has been working its way through the city’s approval process for several months. The site plan had been postponed by planning commissioners in June of 2012 and again on Nov. 20, 2012, but was ultimately recommended for approval at the commission’s meeting on Jan. 3, 2013.

Before recommending the site plan, planning commissioners had previously recommended approval of annexation and zoning of the site in 2012. At their June 19, 2012 meeting, commissioners had approved annexing the 2.95-acre site, just east of Stone School Road, from Pittsfield Township into the city of Ann Arbor. The annexation was subsequently authorized by the city council.

On the zoning question, council deliberations consisted of just some brief remarks by Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). He observed that the issue had been postponed on a number of occasions, and at this point he was willing to let it go forward. Residents in the area had spoken persuasively about a number of concerns involving density and traffic congestion. But Taylor felt that residents recognized that the differences between the various options were marginal – even though those differences had been large enough that the question had merited further inquiry.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to approve the R3 (townhouse) zoning, but did not reach the site plan approval before voting to postpone everything on its agenda. So the site plan will return to the council’s May 6 agenda.

Postponement: Theta Delta Chi Site Plan

On the council’s agenda was a site plan for the expansion of the Theta Delta Chi house at 700 S. State. The property is located at the southwest corner of State and Monroe streets.

Aerial view of Theta Delta Chi property, at Monroe and State streets.

The city planning commission had recommended the project for approval at its Feb. 21, 2013 meeting. Commissioners also granted a special exception use for the building.

The proposal includes expanding the square footage from 12,386 square feet to 14,752 square feet by making an addition at the rear of the fraternity house. The property is zoned R2B (two-family dwelling district and student dwelling district), and the size of the lot would allow for occupancy of up to 50 people. However, the fraternity is not proposing to increase its current occupancy of 33 residents.

The new addition will include an expanded restroom and shower facilities, common space, a resident manager’s apartment, and a bike room with nine bicycle spaces. According to a staff memo, the project entails moving the driveway, which is accessed off of Monroe Street, about five feet to the east. To do this, the fraternity will need to enter into an agreement with the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority and shift two on-street parking meters a few feet to the east.

The project also will require several variances from the city’s zoning board of appeals, including: (1) permission to alter a nonconforming structure (due to height and setbacks); (2) variances from Chapter 59 (off-street parking) to reduce the number of parking spaces required and allow one parking space in the front open space; (3) a variance from Chapter 47 (streets) to reduce the drive opening width; and (4) a variance from Chapter 62 (landscape and screening) to reduce the conflicting land use buffer width.

Other changes planned for this project include converting a yard on the south side of the house into a large patio. That area is currently used for parking. A new shed for a dumpster, recycling carts, and bike storage is proposed near the southwest corner of the site.

The fraternity is adjacent to apartment buildings and across the street from the University of Michigan law school.

Outcome: The council did not reach the Theta Delta Chi site plan on its agenda before deciding to postpone every item. It will appear on the council’s May 6 agenda.

Postponement: Privacy Law

The council was asked to consider a new ordinance regulating the use of public surveillance cameras. [.pdf of ordinance as presented to the council on April 15, 2013] This was to have been the first reading of the ordinance. All ordinances require readings at two separate meetings of the council before they can be enacted.

The proposed video privacy ordinance would not apply to CTN cameras like this one mounted in the Ann Arbor city council chambers.

The new ordinance would apply only to a limited range of cameras – those used by the city of Ann Arbor “to monitor human activity without the physical presence of an operator, including cameras on remotely operated aerial vehicles.” The ordinance would not apply to a range of city of Ann Arbor cameras, for example: cameras used to improve traffic design, security cameras operating in jails, prisons, water treatment facilities, public housing facilities, or the Ann Arbor Airport and other governmental facilities.

The new ordinance would allow for public surveillance cameras to be installed for 15 days or less at the discretion of the city administrator if the purpose is to address a specific criminal problem.

A period of longer than 15 days would require two-thirds of nearby residents to give written permission. Regardless of the period of the installation, on-site notice of the camera’s presence would be required. If a private residence is in the public surveillance camera’s range, then the residents of that property would have to give written permission for the installation.

A public surveillance camera could not be used for live-monitoring, except in emergencies, and audio recording would not be permitted. Access to the recorded images would be limited to “employees of the police department and attorneys involved in criminal proceedings.” After 90 days, surveillance recordings would be deleted unless they are part of an ongoing investigation. A report on the effectiveness of a camera would be published on a public website after its removal.

The council had been alerted to the forthcoming ordinance proposal nearly four months ago, when Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) told his colleagues at their Dec. 20, 2012 meeting that he and wardmate Mike Anglin would be bringing a proposal forward.

At that meeting, Warpehoski said the Ann Arbor police department doesn’t currently use that surveillance technique, but there had been some concerns in other communities.

By way of additional background, the ordinance has been long in the works but has been delayed. Former Ward 1 councilmember Sandi Smith had announced at a council meeting over a year ago, on Aug. 4, 2011, that she’d be bringing a video surveillance ordinance for consideration at the council’s Sept. 6, 2011 meeting. And a year before that she’d indicated the human rights commission would be working on the issue.

Outcome: The video privacy ordinance was not reached on the agenda before the council decided to postpone everything remaining on the agenda. The video privacy ordinance will be added to the council’s May 6 agenda.

Postponement: 413 E. Huron

One of the major agenda items of the April 15 meeting was the site plan application for 413 E. Huron – a proposed 14-story, 216-apartment building at the northeast corner of Huron and Division streets.

From the site plan application for 413 E. Huron. Critical root zones of landmark trees are shown by the dashed circles. The root zones were a focus of much of the questioning by councilmembers on March 18, and was a focus of public commentary on April 15.

The project was presented to the council as a “by right” project, which means that in the judgment of the city planning staff, it met all the zoning requirements.

The Chronicle counted 51 speakers during the public hearing on the 413 E. Huron site plan.

The council had previously postponed a site plan decision on April 1, 2013 and on March 18, 2013.

Consideration of the site plan came after the council had considered and postponed, then finally voted not to impose a possible moratorium on site plan applications in the D1 (core downtown) area.

Instead, the council voted on March 18 to give the planning commission direction to review the city’s D1 zoning. The scope of that review and a deadline of Oct. 1 was given at the council’s April 1 meeting.

A new public hearing on the project was started at the April 1 meeting, and held open so that it could resume on April 15. That public hearing will continue on May 6.

Images for the proposed 413 E. Huron project, at the northeast corner of Huron and Division. On the left is an early rendering provided by the developer. On the right is an updated version presented to the city council on March 18, 2013.

During council communications time, mayor John Hieftje took the opportunity to repeat a point that has been made during public commentary at previous meetings. The point was that the 2009 A2D2 rezoning, which designated as D1 (downtown core) the parcels where the 413 E. Huron is intended to be built, imposed a height limit of 150 feet, where no height limit had previously existed.

Hieftje continued by noting that the density allowed under the D1 zoning was only slightly higher than the previously-allowed density.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) thanked Hieftje for making the point. She also pointed out that the previous zoning would have allowed only for a single use. It could not have been built as a multi-use like the proposed 413 E. Huron project and still met the code. Whether anybody would have built a commercial building that tall is something that “we’ll hopefully never know,” she said.

Outcome: The council did not reach the 413 E. Huron site plan on its agenda before deciding to postpone everything remaining. The site plan will appear on the council’s May 6 agenda.

Postponement: Misc.

A number of other agenda items were subject to the wholesale postponement of everything remaining on the council’s April 15 agenda. Those included the following:

• The appointment of Stephanie Buttrey as a member of the greenbelt advisory commission (GAC). Nominations to GAC are somewhat different from most other boards and commissions, in that nominations are made by the council as a body, not the mayor. Buttrey is being nominated to serve out the remainder of Liz Rother’s term – through June 30, 2014. Rother resigned the position. The resolution to appoint Buttrey was slated to be effective May 6 – which reflects the council’s typical practice of placing the resolution on the agenda as a “nomination” but then postponing the vote until the next meeting. In that respect the pattern is consistent with appointments for which the mayor places nominations before the council at one meeting, with a council vote taking place the following meeting.
• Confirmation of nominations to boards and commission made at the council’s April 1 meeting. Those included Sheila Steinman to the commission on disability issues and a reappointment of Ingrid Ault to the housing and human services advisory board. On April 1, Nickolas Buonodono had been nominated to replace Leigh Greden on the Ann Arbor Housing Commission (AAHC) board, after Greden had reached the end of a term. However, that nomination was not on the council’s April 15 meeting agenda for confirmation. According to AAHC executive director Jennifer Hall, who spoke to The Chronicle in a telephone interview, Greden may seek reappointment for a second term if he can accommodate his schedule to the meeting times.
• An amendment to an emergency purchase order for $7,500 with Waste Management Inc. for the Dexter Avenue improvements project. The council had previously authorized an emergency purchase order for $45,000 to remove contaminated soil discovered during excavation. It turned out there was more contaminated soil than initially thought.
• Establishment of a contingency budget of roughly $10 million for the facilities renovations project at the wastewater treatment plant. The council had previously awarded a roughly $10.8 million contract with Malcolm Pirnie Inc. (MPI) for engineering services. And the council had approved the tentative award of a roughly $93 million construction contract with Walsh Construction Company II LLC.
• Approval of $262,000 in payments to Ultimate Software Group over the next two fiscal years. The city uses the software for human resources and payroll services.

Present: Jane Lumm, Mike Anglin, Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Sumi Kailasapathy, Sally Petersen, Stephen Kunselman, Christopher Taylor, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Chuck Warpehoski.

Next council meeting: Monday, May 6, 2013 at 7 p.m. in the second-floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

The Chronicle could not survive without 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!

Chart showing projected greenhouse gas emissions if the city of Ann Arbor does nothing, compared to enacting steps outlined in the climate action plan, which was adopted by the city council at its Dec. 17, 2012 meeting.

The council approved two grant applications for future development of at least part of the city-owned property at 721 N. Main St. as a park. It’s seen as an element of a future Allen Creek greenway that would arc northward along the railroad tracks, starting from the East Stadium bridges to the Huron River. The applications were for unspecified amounts from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund (MNRTF) and the Washtenaw County parks & recreation Connecting Communities program. Last year the city received two $300,000 grants from the MNRTF – for the future skatepark at Veterans Memorial Park, and for renovations to the boating facilities at Gallup Park.

The current grant applications came in the general context of an initial recommendation made by a council-appointed task force that has been meeting since the summer. That task force has a much broader geographic charge, which includes the North Main corridor, extending eastward to the Huron River and over to the MichCon property. The task force is due to make recommendations to the council on that broader area by the summer of 2013. However, the group was asked to weigh-in specifically on the 721 N. Main property by the end of this year – because of the grant application deadlines.

The North Main task force had been appointed at the same May 7, 2012 meeting when the council had heard from representatives of 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios on the physical survey work necessary for another city-owned property – at 415 W. Washington. At least part of that property is also envisioned as part of a future Allen Creek greenway. After appropriating $50,000 for physical testing at its July 16, 2012 meeting, the council on Dec. 17 allocated another $32,583 after bids came back.

In addition to green space, the council’s Dec. 17 agenda included two “green” resolutions – one that adopted a climate action plan and the other calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the Clean Air Act. Ann Arbor’s climate action plan calls for a reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 8% by 2015, 25% by 2025, and 90% by 2050. The reductions are compared to baseline levels measured in the year 2000. The action steps identified in the climate action plan are divided into four main categories: energy and buildings; land use and access; resource management; community and health. Those categories align with the city’s sustainability framework. The plan is also coordinated with a similar effort by the University of Michigan.

Other business handled by the council included another request to the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner’s office in connection with stormwater infrastructure for a street reconstruction project. The petition requested an application for $1.4 million in low-interest loans for a three-year project in the Platt-Packard neighborhood. Also connected to bricks-and-mortar infrastructure was an additional allocation of about $148,000 for the 2012 sidewalk repair and ramp installation program – the first year of a five-year cycle, corresponding to a millage approved by voters in 2011. The total mount of the 2012 sidewalk program was about $965,000.

The council also gave its recommendation to grant a micro brewer license to Biercamp Artisan Sausage & Jerky, a retail shop located at 1643 S. State St.

Initial approval was given by the council for a revision to the city’s ordinance regulating parking on front lawns. The change will make it easier to make arrangements for events other than University of Michigan football games.

And the council approved a $90,000 project budget that will allow for documents to be submitted digitally to the planning and development department. The project includes a public kiosk for reviewing plans.

The council also heard its typical range of public commentary, with topics including pedestrian safety, towing, and Palestinian rights.

721 N. Main Grants

The city-owned parcel at 721 N. Main was the subject of two grant applications the council was asked to consider. One application was for a Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund grant. The other was to the Washtenaw County parks and recreation commission’s Connecting Communities program.

The city considers its proposal for 721 N. Main to be a strong candidate for the Connecting Communities grant, because it incorporates paths and trails through the site that could potentially be extended to connect to the cross-county Border-to-Border Trail.

The conceptual site plan includes the following: (1) open space on the floodway portion of the site; (2) using the floodway portion of the site for stormwater management; (3) making a trail connection from Felch and Summit streets to encourage future connections to the Border‐to‐Border Trail, by looping a trail through the site; (4) areas not identified as lawn, stormwater management, or other use are assumed to be a native prairie-type landscape; (5) interpretive elements will be included; (6) parking is proposed to be provided off Summit, outside of the floodplain – parking is prohibited in the floodway; and (7) recommendations for future use of the existing building will be based on additional research.

A conceptual site plan for 721 N. Main St. The top of this image is oriented west.

The recommendation to apply for the grants stems from the work of a task force appointed by the city council at its May 7, 2012 meeting, to study an area much broader than just the 721 N. Main site. The larger area includes the North Main corridor, extending to the Huron River and including the MichCon property. The connections from 721 N. Main to the Border-to-Border Trail might be given a clearer vision when the task force delivers its recommendation to the city council in the summer of 2013. The task force was asked to provide a recommendation on the 721 N. Main site earlier than that, due to grant application deadlines.

The Connecting Communities grant application is due by the end of the year, while the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund Grant is due April 1, 2013. Historically, Ann Arbor has competed successfully for the statewide grants, last year receiving two MNRTF grants, each for $300,000. One was for renovations to the Gallup Park boating facilities, and the other was for the skatepark to be built in Veterans Memorial Park. Construction on the skatepark is expected to begin in the spring of 2013.

Since 1976, the MNRTF has awarded about $0.4 billion statewide. Of that, about $19 million (4.4%) has been awarded to projects in Washtenaw County. Of the projects in Washtenaw County, those in the city of Ann Arbor have received $6.4 million (32.3%). [.jpg of pie chart of statewide NRTF allocations by county] [.jpg of pie chart of countywide NRTF allocations by jurisdiction]

721 N. Main Grants: Public Comment

Bob Galardi thanked councilmembers for their service. He introduced himself as the president of Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy. He supported the grant applications. The grant money would enable transformation of the floodway portion of the 721 N. Main property into a segment of the Allen Creek greenway, he said. The conservancy considers the 721 N. Main project as a first step to create the greenway, he continued – from the newly reconstructed bridges at East Stadium and South State north to the Huron River. It’s consistent with a prior city council resolution [Aug. 15, 2012] indicating the floodway portions of the 721 N. Main site should be a part of a future greenway.

Alice Ralph and Bob Galardi sat in the audience before the city council’s Dec. 17 meeting started. Both addressed the council in support of the 721 N. Main resolutions. Ralph focused on the city’s climate action plan and also talked about the role of the city’s 415 W. Washington site. Both are board members of the Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy. (Photos by the writer.)

The development of the 721 N. Main site will be integral in connecting the existing Border-to-Border Trail to downtown Ann Arbor, Galardi said. The branch will be a key element in the development of the greenway’s master plan. After the work is done on the 721 N. Main property, he said, it would be a real and inspiring place for people to experience the greenway. And that experience people have will generate support for future greenway work. Among the benefits Galardi listed for the greenway were: space for safe, off-street non-motorized traffic; recreational space; a connector to great commercial and residential offerings; responsible floodway management; and economic benefits.

721 N. Main Grants: Council Deliberations

During communications time, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) began the deliberations on the resolutions concerning the grant applications. He traced people’s interest in the idea of a greenway back to the 1970s. It’s moving slowly, but it’s still moving forward and has momentum, he said.

When the council reached the items on the agenda, mayor John Hieftje added some background on the 415 W. Washington city-owned site, which had been the focus for a couple of years of work by the greenway and arts communities. Out of that work came the idea of trying to start with the city-owned 721 N. Main site. He said that the 721 N. Main site was more likely to win a grant from the Natural Resources Trust Fund.

Hieftje pointed out the connection to the rest of the county through the potential to Border-to-Border Trail. It’s an important step toward realizing the dream of the greenway, he said. He indicated that next year he hoped that 415 W. Washington would be the next candidate for development as part of the greenway.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) – who with Mike Anglin (Ward 5) represents the council on the park advisory commission (PAC) – noted that PAC had been fully briefed and is in support of the applications. [See Chronicle coverage: "Grant Applications Recommended for 721 N. Main."]

Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) asked how much money the city was applying for. Hieftje indicated that it would be $300,000 from the Natural Resources Trust Fund. Sumedh Bahl, the city’s community services area administrator, was less specific, saying that the budget for the project was still being estimated. He described how the Connecting Communities grant would be used to provide matching funds for the Natural Resources Trust Fund.

Outcome: The council approved the two grant applications on two separate unanimous votes.

415 W. Washington Study – More Funds

The council was asked to authorize an additional $32,583 for the study of the city-owned property at 415 W. Washington from the general fund balance reserve. The authorization included contracts with Tetra Tech Geo for $44,498 (environmental investigation) and Rueter & Associates for $26,935 (historic structure assessment).

The council had previously authorized $50,000 for physical testing of the property. That vote had come at the council’s July 16, 2012 meeting.

The 415 W. Washington property, with its three buildings, was previously used by the city as a vehicle maintenance facility, before the construction of the Wheeler Service Center south of town on Stone School Road.

The council received a presentation at its May 7, 2012 meeting from representatives of 555 Nonprofit Gallery and Studios on the physical survey work. The 555 group has assumed responsibility for the art community’s component of an initiative established by the city council on Feb. 1, 2010 to explore a collaboration between the greenway and art communities for adaptive reuse of the property. The 555 group stepped in when the Arts Alliance could no longer devote staff time to the project. Prior to that initiative, the city had gone through an RFP (request for proposals) process for the property that did not lead to the selection of any of the three proposals that were submitted.

415 W. Washington: Public Commentary

Alice Ralph introduced herself as a Ward 3 resident on East Stadium. She was speaking as an individual, but noted she serves on the Allen Creek Greenway Conservancy board of directors. She was there to support the two resolutions that she described as steps toward a more sustainable Ann Arbor: adoption of the climate action plan, and the additional expenditure of money to do testing on the 415 W. Washington site.

The climate action plan demonstrates community support for meeting the challenges of climate change, she said. It includes reducing energy consumption, diversifying our energy and transportation choices, and improving the performance of existing and new housing stock, among other goals.

The work on the 415 W. Washington site will complete work that’s preliminary to the development of the floodway portion of the site, she noted. The investigations will also facilitate the dispositions of the buildings, which are mostly on non-floodway properties.

Both are good steps for a sustainable Ann Arbor, Ralph said, and they fit nicely together with the grant applications for 721 N. Main.

415 W. Washington: Council Deliberations

Mayor John Hieftje noted that because the resolution altered the city budget, the vote required an eight-vote majority, and that’s how many councilmembers were present. [Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Margie Teall (Ward 4), and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) were absent.]

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) said she felt that taking funds from the general fund balance should be infrequent. However, she felt that in this case it was appropriate.

Hieftje concurred with Lumm, saying no matter what happens to the buildings [rehabbing or demolition] the information is needed.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the additional allocation for testing and study of the 415 W. Washington site.

Climate Action Plan, Clean Air Act

The council was asked to adopt a climate action plan for the city.

Also at the meeting, the council considered a separate resolution that urges the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the Clean Air Act. A 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case gave the EPA the authority to regulate emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) as pollutants – such as water vapor (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ozone (O3).

Ann Arbor’s climate action plan calls for a reduction in GHG emissions of 8% by 2015, 25% by 2025, and 90% by 2050. The reductions are compared to baseline levels measured in the year 2000. The action steps identified in the climate action plan are divided into four main categories: energy and buildings; land use and access; resource management; and community and health. Those categories align with the city’s sustainability framework. The plan is also coordinated with a similar effort by the University of Michigan.

Examples of the 84 separate individual actions include: weatherizing existing housing stock; creating a program that provides incentives to employees and residents who choose to live within two miles of their job; increasing residential and commercial greywater use; and implementing a community net-zero energy home building/renovation contest. According to the staff memo accompanying the resolution, adoption of the climate action plan does not commit the city to expenditures or other obligations.

The climate action plan was recommended for adoption by the city planning commission at its Nov. 20, 2012 meeting. It had also been recommended by the city’s energy and environmental commissions. The energy commission had initiated the project, forming a task force in August 2011 to develop the plan.

Climate Action, Clean Air: Public Comment

Susan Hutton spoke in support of adopting the climate action plan, noting that she serves on the city’s environmental commission. The city’s task is to lead by example, she said, providing residents and businesses with resources they need to achieve the city’s goals. She encouraged the council to adopt and implement the action steps in the plan. The city itself only generates 3% of the greenhouse gas emissions of the community, she said. The rest comes from residents, businesses and the University of Michigan.

So even if the city “knocks every one of its goals out of the park,” Hutton said, if the rest of us don’t do our share, the plan’s goals won’t be met. We need to understand what we ourselves need to do, she said. The plan indicates a 90% reduction by 2050, she noted. Hutton said she needs to know what she should do to help achieve that 90% goal. She asked if every resident adopting a home composting program would be enough, or if we’d need to put solar arrays on our roofs, or replace our cars with electric vehicles. She mentioned a report that suggested that global temperatures could rise by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. She raised the possibility that extreme weather events could become more frequent. She compared the cost of investments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the clean-up costs from a major storm.

Wayne Appleyard introduced himself as the current chair of the city’s energy commission. He urged councilmembers to vote for the adoption of the climate action plan – saying that he was hoping for a unanimous vote. He noted that the plan is a lengthy document, which includes 84 separate actions. Climate change is real and it’s happening now, he said, and we need to do what we can now to limit its impact. He quoted from David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College, in support of the idea that “climate change” isn’t a strong enough term, saying that “climate destabilization” is more appropriate:

The capacity and apparent willingness of humankind to destabilize the climate conditions that made civilization possible is the issue of our time; all others pale by comparison. Beyond some unknown threshold of irreversible and irrevocable changes driven by carbon cycle feedbacks, climate destabilization will lead to a war of all against all, a brutal scramble for food, water, dry land, and safety. Sheer survival will outweigh every other consideration of decency, order, and mutual sympathy. Climate destabilization will amplify other problems caused by population growth, global poverty, the spread of weapons of mass destruction…

Appleyard noted that approving the plan doesn’t commit the council to any expenditures.

Clean Air: Council Deliberations

Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) noted that the Clean Air Act resolution came from the environmental commission (EC). He and the resolution’s co-sponsor, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), serve as the city council’s representatives to that body. Warpehoski said the EC had been looking at the issue for quite some time. Ann Arbor would be joining communities across the county to ask the Obama administration to use the authority it has under the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases.

He characterized the resolution and the climate action plan, which the council had later on its agenda, as additional steps in a long history of actions that Ann Arbor is taking. But Ann Arbor recognizes that a global problem like climate change is more than the city can handle on its own. National and international leadership is required, he said, as well as local leadership.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) ventured that another “resolved” clause would be useful to direct the city administrator to forward the resolution to someone in the federal government. Warpehoski felt that the resolution didn’t necessarily need such a clause, but allowed that it’d be helpful to have one.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated that some standard language could be added on a friendly basis, without requiring a vote. Hieftje said he was happy to see the resolution and to vote for it. “Every little bit helps,” he said. He hoped that the elected representatives to Congress from this area would pay attention to the resolution, as would perhaps someone at the EPA.

Outcome: The resolution on the Clean Air Act was unanimously approved.

Climate Action: Council Deliberations

Mayor John Hieftje indicated that he felt the people who’d spoken during public commentary had explained it very well – representatives from the environmental commission and the energy commission. It’s been talked about by those commissions and it was now before the council, he said.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) expressed her support for the plan, which sets a lot of targets. She thought it’s appropriate to set those goals. But she cautioned that the challenge will be in the plan’s implementation, which will require balancing trade-offs of the multiple priorities of city government. She was encouraged to see the mid-range goal of 25% reduction, which was aligned with the University of Michigan’s goal. The aggressive target of 90% would require implementation of almost all of the more than 80 actions, she observed. That would require large investments from various organizations, including residents and taxpayers.

Sally Petersen (Ward 2) and Jane Lumm (Ward 2).

Lumm asked city environmental coordinator Matt Naud to answer some questions. She noted that after the council’s work session on the issue, she’d asked about the cost implications. She asked Naud to explain how the costs and benefits are calculated for the CO2 reductions – saying that some of the dollar amounts are negative. Naud explained that some of the actions can be implemented without spending any money, so that meant the carbon reduction cost is negative. If you invest in energy efficiency, it can pay for itself, he said. Certain items will cost something, he said.

The city will continue to evaluate where the opportunities are, Naud said. The city is in discussions with utility companies, which want to install solar photovoltaics, potentially on city property. That could generate cash for the city, which could be re-invested in additional installations that could be used for the city’s own energy needs. As the market changes, Naud said, the city would continue to monitor things so sensible investments could be made to meet the goals in the climate action plan.

Responding to another question from Lumm, Naud described the next step as going back to work with the energy commission and staff to talk about which steps will give the city “the biggest bang for the buck” in the immediate future. Whatever is developed as a proposal would be brought back for approval by the city council, he said.

Responding to further questions from Lumm, Naud explained that “no regrets” steps are “things we would do anyway,” which would have significant climate benefits. For example, Naud said, $250 million is spent citywide on natural gas electricity – and about 10% of that could be saved with caulk. If the University of Michigan is $110 million of that, that’s $140 million for businesses and residents. So saving 10% would translate into putting $14 million back into the local economy, Naud concluded. But that is also a huge greenhouse gas reduction, he said. So that’s a “no regrets” option, whether you believe in climate change or not, he said.

It’s also important to integrate the most recent climate science, Naud said. He mentioned the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments as having some of the smartest climate scientists in the country. But they don’t necessarily understand the questions a municipality might have. As an example, he said that the city builds the stormwater system to handle a 10-year storm. Or the floodplain is regulated to contend with a 100-year storm. The city needs to know what a 100-year storm looks like in 2025, Naud said. So it’s important to work with climate scientists to make clear those specific information needs.

Hieftje reminded the council that in 2005 he’d made a green energy challenge, which called for the city to achieve 15% renewable energy by 2010. The energy commission had increased that target to 20%, he said. That target had been missed by a bit, he said, but had been achieved by 2011. He noted that conservation was the city’s key strategy. The next challenge, he said, would be to get residents citywide involved in the effort.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the adoption of the climate action plan.

Stormwater Petition: Springwater

The council was asked to authorize a request of the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner to apply $1.45 million in state revolving fund loans. It’s part of a street reconstruction project in the Springwater subdivision – with an overall project cost of $5.17 million.

The general location of the area is Platt and Packard roads. Streets that are part of the project include Nordman Road, Butternut Street, Springbrook Avenue, and Redwood Avenue.

The street reconstruction will use a traditional asphalt surface, but the management of stormwater will be achieved through oversized stormwater pipes. Construction is expected to start in late 2013 and will last three years. Sanitary sewer issues will also be addressed as part of the project.

Reimbursement from the city’s stormwater fund to the office of the water resources commissioner will be in installments of $88,677 per year. This petition made by Ann Arbor to the water resources commissioner comes after the council’s approval of three similar petitions, for other areas of the city, at its Dec. 3, 2012 meeting.

Outcome: The council approved the petition without discussion.

More Money Approved for Sidewalk Repair

The council was asked to authorize another $147,962 for repair of sidewalks and construction of ramps in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The vote to approve the change order brought the total contract with Doan Construction Co. for the 2012 program to $964,991. [.pdf of map showing areas where work was done]

The funding source being tapped is the sidewalk repair millage, which was approved by voters in November 2011.

Outcome: The council approved the authorization without discussion.

Micro Brewer License for Biercamp

The council was asked to consider a recommendation that Biercamp Artisan Sausage & Jerky, a retail shop located at 1643 S. State St., be granted a micro brewer liquor license.

According to the staff memo accompanying the resolution, Biercamp intends to brew small batches of beer in growlers for off-site consumption to complement their artisan meats. A micro brewer license limits the amount of beer produced to no more than 30,000 barrels per year. A barrel is 31 gallons.

The owners of Biercamp had previously hoped for a rezoning of the parcel to allow for the sale of more products not manufactured on site. That rezoning request was ultimately denied by the city council at its Feb. 21, 2012 meeting.

Biercamp: Council Deliberations

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) noted at the council’s Dec. 10 planning session, the topic of increased economic development had been discussed. The recommendation of the micro brewer license was an example of facilitating economic development, he said. He observed that Biercamp was not asking for a subsidy.

Sally Petersen (Ward 2)

Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) said he’d support the recommendation for a micro brewer license, adding that if Biercamp’s beer is as good as their jerky and sausage, he couldn’t wait to try it. Jane Lumm (Ward 2), who serves on the council’s liquor license review committee, noted that the application indicates Biercamp will be brewing “small batches,” and ventured that it sounded like something everyone will want to check out.

Sally Petersen (Ward 2) asked if anyone knew what a “growler” is – it had been mentioned in the staff memo. Mayor John Hieftje explained that it’s a container for beer. [A standard size is a half-gallon.] Hieftje offered a description of Ann Arbor residents of German heritage, who in the past would order a pail of beer to take home.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to recommend Biercamp for the micro brewer license.

More Front Yard Parking

The council was asked to consider a more flexible local ordinance regulating the ability of residents to park cars in their front yards.

The change in local law, if given final approval at a future council meeting, would allow the city council to establish “special event dates” for temporary front open space parking. The current ordinance allows people to use their front yards for parking for University of Michigan football games. The ordinance change includes a provision explicitly to include “scrimmages,” which will accommodate the annual spring game.

The ordinance change was motivated part by the possibility that UM football stadium events might in the future not necessarily be restricted to football games. For example, a National Hockey League game, between the Detroit Red Wings and the Toronto Maple Leafs, had been scheduled for Jan. 1, 2013 at Michigan Stadium. It was canceled earlier this year due to ongoing labor disputes between the NHL and its players’ association.

The city planning commission recommended approval of the change at its Nov. 7, 2012 meeting.

Outcome: The council voted, without deliberations, to give the ordinance changes initial approval. Final approval will come at a future meeting after a public hearing.

Digital Plan Submission Software/Hardware

The council was asked to authorize a $61,000 contract with CRW Systems Inc. in a total project budget of $90,000 for implementing a digital system to submit plans to the city’s planning and development department. The budget includes a kiosk for public viewing of documents and large-screen monitors.

During deliberations, Jane Lumm (Ward 2) said she felt that the switch to digital plan submission made sense, but wondered if there’d been any resistance from those who have to submit plans. City planning manager Wendy Rampson described it as actually quite a “hassle” for people to put the plans in paper form. The city has heard from some people that they’d prefer the city not post AutoCAD files – out of concerns for proprietary information. Files in .pdf form should be adequate, she said, and that format also gives citizens better access.

Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) asked if there were specific cost savings associated with the change. Sumedh Bahl, community services area administrator, gave as an example that when the city planning staff makes comments on drawings, someone has to transcribe the comments onto another set of drawings – which is a manual process with paper drawings, he explained. If a project undergoes 2-3 reviews, someone has to do it over and over. With this software the council was authorizing, he explained, you type it once and it’s done. Another example he gave was that for commercial buildings, the drawings have to be available for the life of the structure. By changing to a digital format, much less space will be required for the physical storage of the drawings.

Outcome: The council approved the digital plan submission item on a unanimous vote.

Communications and Comment

Every city council agenda contains multiple slots for city councilmembers and the city administrator to give updates or make announcements about important issues that are coming before the city council. And every meeting typically includes public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the agenda.

Comm/Comm: Video Surveillance

During communications time at the end of the meeting, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) alerted other councilmembers to an ordinance that he and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) would be bringing forward to regulate the use of video surveillance.

Left to right: Mike Anglin (Ward 5) and city administrator Steve Powers share a laugh before the Dec. 17 meeting started.

Warpehoski said that the Ann Arbor police department doesn’t currently use that technique, but there’d been some concerns in other communities. So the city’s human rights commission had been working to craft a legal framework that respects privacy concerns. The city’s legal staff is still putting the final touches on the ordinance language, he said.

By way of additional background, former Ward 1 councilmember Sandi Smith had announced at a council meeting over a year ago, on Aug. 4, 2011, that she’d be bringing a video surveillance ordinance for consideration at the council’s Sept. 6, 2011 meeting. And a year before that she’d indicated the human rights commission would be working on the issue.

Comm/Comm: Towing

During communications time at the end of the meeting, Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5) said that after the council had enacted a revision to the city’s towing ordinance – which makes it more straightforward for cars to be towed that are being stored on city streets without being moved – he’d heard from constituents with a question: What happens when I go on vacation?

Warpehoski reported that Ann Arbor chief of police John Seto had advised him and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) that residents can contact the community standards department before leaving to alert the department of their planned vacation. Community standards employees would then either not ticket or delay the enforcement cycle. He compared it to asking the post office to hold your mail.

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, a different type of towing was discussed – when someone parks in a private lot that has a contract with a towing company. Lon Cooke told the council he’d built a house and moved into the area about a year and half ago. [After the meeting, Cooke told The Chronicle he'd moved from North Dakota, to be near family.] He lives on Scio Church Road, west of Zeeb Road, he said, and he often comes into town to go to the market and to shop. He described a recent visit to Kerrytown and to Treasure Mart, when he’d parked in a vacant lot.

After about 15 minutes, Cooke’s car was towed. He didn’t know who had towed the car or who to contact. Eventually they learned that Glen-Ann Towing had towed it. He had to go to the Glen-Ann office to pay the charges: $120 for the towing; $65 for the jacks; a $7 surcharge; a $40 release fee and $30 administrative fees; and $20 for storage. That was $282 that had to be paid in cash, he reported. So he had to go to an ATM. The driver of the wrecker, he said, told him there’s a “fleet of wreckers” from that firm and another firm that patrolled the area targeting potential cars that could be towed. He characterized it as a predatory situation. Cooke indicated he wouldn’t come downtown to Ann Arbor to shop until the situation is rectified.

Comm/Comm: Crosswalk Behavior

During communications time at the end of the meeting, Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1) said she was happy to receive an email from city administrator Steve Powers about enforcement of the crosswalk ordinance near schools. If a community can’t take care of its children, nothing really matters, she said.

During public commentary at the conclusion of the meeting, Michael Benson spoke about the issue of pedestrian behavior at crosswalks. Based on his observations at the rapid flashing beacons that the city has installed along Plymouth Road, when pedestrians activate the beacons, the signals immediately begin flashing – there’s no delay between activation and flashing, he said. That led to pedestrians entering the crosswalk immediately, assuming they could cross safely. He suggested that the blinking be delayed slightly after activation, which might cause pedestrians to pause before entering the cross walk.

And Kathy Griswold used the council’s agenda item on the approval of the $148,000 for the sidewalk program as an occasion to advocate for a range of pedestrian safety issues. She asked the council to balance out its funding for transit. Transit begins at the sidewalk, she said, not at the railroad tracks or the bus stop. If we want people to use transit, she said, then non-motorized transportation funding needs to be provided. She’d just attended a meeting about the non-motorized transportation plan review. She had reviewed the proposed update of the plan for 2012 and reported that “I have to say, I’m incensed. I’m so angry.” She was angry because the funding mechanism identified is Safe Routes to School, she said. Ann Arbor is a wealthy community – with money to plan for buses and trains. So she said “it’s time we thought about our children.” Some children are walking in the dark to school without sidewalks, she said.

She questioned the appropriateness of using “Pedestrians Rule” as a motto in educational material, because they don’t rule, she said. She felt the use of such material was a result of excluding traffic and transportation engineers from participation in the development of such material. She contended that signage at crosswalks is inconsistent with the crosswalk ordinance. [The signs admonish motorists to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. That's what Ann Arbor's ordinance requires. It also requires that motorists stop and "yield the right-of-way to any pedestrian stopped at the curb, curb line or ramp leading to a crosswalk."] Griswold also complained that the city is not enforcing sight-distance ordinances at crosswalks.

Comm/Comm: Palestinian Rights

Henry Herskovitz reported that he’d read in December’s Washtenaw Jewish News an article with the headline: “Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice condemns synagogue protests.” [.pdf of WJN article] [Herskovitz participates in the weekly demonstrations near the Beth Israel Congregation. Ward 5 councilmember Chuck Warpehoski is the executive director of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice.]

In a previous issue of the Jewish News, Henry Brysk had criticized Warpehoski, who was then a candidate for city council, calling him a “‘nuanced anti-Zionist’ as if that’s a bad thing,” Herskovitz said. Herskovitz quoted from the piece by Brysk: “The ICPJ has refused to condemn the Herskovite harassment of Beth Israel Congregation …” Herskovitz indicated that he felt there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between the Brysk’s criticism of Warpehoski and the ICPJ’s condemnation of the demonstrations. [.pdf of Brysk's letter in WJN, published in the summer 2012 issue]

Herskovitz stated that it was unfortunate that the Jewish community in Ann Arbor wielded more power than its relative percentage of the population. Herskovitz drew a comparison of cause-and-effect from eight years ago, when the council and the mayor received a letter from Barry Gross complaining about the council’s lack of action about the weekly demonstrations. Herskovitz quoted from the letter: “The time when your silence was acceptable is long past. The 470 family units in our congregation virtually all live in Ann Arbor. We are avid voters. We are watching closely for your response.” A short time later, the council passed a resolution condemning the weekly demonstrations, Herskovitz said.

Herskovitz noted that the previous month new councilmembers had been sworn into office. That oath includes a promise to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which includes the right of free speech. He indicated that he thought the council was abdicating its responsibility to uphold the Constitution, based on “bullying tactics of a small but powerful group.” He asked the council to remember its oath to uphold the Constitution.

Blaine Coleman began by stating, “Ann Arbor city council must boycott Israel at last.” Chuck Warpehoski had won election to the council, because he heads a well-known peace group [ICPJ], Coleman contended. The ICPJ had voted for a resolution urging the city to divest from the Israeli military. However, since being elected, Warpehoski has not abided by the ICPJ’s resolution, he said, and had instead become the “opposite of a peace activist.” Warpehoski has not said one word to defend the people of Gaza, Coleman said.

Chuck Warpehoski (Ward 5)

Since his election, Warpehoski has apparently forgotten how to pronounce the word “Palestine,” Coleman said. Coleman accused Warpehoski of joining the Israeli war effort against Palestine by denouncing the only Palestinian rights vigil in Ann Arbor. Since election to the council, Coleman contended, Warpehoski is “all over AnnArbor.com denouncing the Palestine vigils, and he won’t shut up about it.”

Coleman indicated that he felt Warpehoski is acting increasingly like a “racist coward.” He called on Warpehoski to change quickly or quit the council. Coleman described the demonstrators Warpehoski had condemned as “peaceful vigilers for Palestinian rights … silently holding signs against Israeli atrocities on Washtenaw Avenue.” He noted that the demonstrations are entering their 10th year. He described some of them as leaning on canes due to age and infirmity.

By way of additional background, over a year ago Coleman filed suit, represented by the ACLU, against the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority for rejecting a proposed anti-Israel advertisement for the sides of its buses. The court ruled in favor of Coleman’s request for a preliminary injunction, but the nature of the relief was not to force the AATA to place the ad. The AATA has revised its advertising policy, and the court has ordered the AATA to reconsider the original ad or a revised one. In an email sent to The Chronicle by Daniel Korobkin, the ACLU attorney on the case, he indicated that the ad to be re-submitted will be the same as the original ad.

Comm/Comm: Kuhnke Thanked

Carol Kuhnke, judge-elect of the 22nd circuit court, was presented with a proclamation honoring her 13 years of service to the city – on the zoning board of appeals.

Carol Kuhnke was honored for her service on the city’s zoning board of appeals.

The proclamation notes that she was first appointed to that body by then-mayor Ingrid Sheldon, and subsequently re-appointed by mayor John Hieftje. In the race against Jim Fink, Kuhnke won election on Nov. 6 to the open seat being left by retiring judge Melinda Morris.

The proclamation appoints her to the “honorary office of Retired Emeritus Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals.” In her brief remarks to the council, Kuhnke said she enjoyed her time on the ZBA and looked forward to serving justice and the citizens of Washtenaw County.

Comm/Comm: Greenbelt

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), in his role as the city council’s representative on the greenbelt advisory commission, reported on a successful closing of a conservation easement. It was on the Van Natter property, which is about 20 acres located along Joy Road, just west of Zeeb. He described it as contiguous with an existing block of about 1,100 protected acres in Webster Township. Sheep and chickens are raised on the farm, Taylor said.

Comm/Comm: Lame Duck – PPT

City administrator Steve Powers indicated that staff are still sorting through the items from the state legislature’s lame duck session. There’s not a full report yet, but the changes to the personal property tax law (on business equipment) were approved. Powers noted that the budget projections that the council had been shown at their Dec. 10 planning session had assumed those changes would be made to the personal property tax law, which decreases revenue to the city.

The city is projecting the following impacts to the general fund from the change to the PPT law: FY 2014 ($257,573); FY 2015 (257,598); FY 2016 ($422,068); FY 2017 ($471,409). However, the city expects to end this year (FY 2013) with a roughly $100,000 surplus to its general fund, on a budget of $79 million. The city currently projects a $1.2 million surplus for FY 2014, but after that a roughly break-even year in FY 2015 and a deficit of $800,000 and $1.5 million the following two years. The city’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30.

Comm/Comm: Newtown Shootings

As a part of his city administrator’s report, Steve Powers indicated that chief of police John Seto had reached out to the Ann Arbor Public Schools to offer any assistance and support that could be provided in the wake of the tragic shooting deaths of elementary school children in Newtown, Conn.

Comm/Comm: Solar Panels

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, Kermit Schlansker criticized Detroit Edison for building a power source using photo-voltaic cells. Solar installations on the roofs of large buildings are a far more effective way of spending money, because solar energy shouldn’t just be used for making power, but also for space heating, air conditioning, hot water, and alcohol distillation. He called on the city to demonstrate this idea by putting a power plant on the roof of the city hall building.

During public commentary at the conclusion of the meeting, Michael Benson lamented the aesthetics of the solar panels that the University of Michigan has installed along Stone Road, which obscure what he described as a lovely city street.

Comm/Comm: What Would Jesus Say?

During public commentary at the start of the meeting, Thomas Partridge noted that it was nearly Christmas Eve. He wondered what Jesus would say, if he were walking through the Middle East today, an area plagued with turmoil. “Would Jesus not advocate here tonight before this council budgeting … to protect America’s most vulnerable residents by expanding human rights?” Jesus would call for advancing the cause of access to affordable housing and transportation, he said. These issues should always be given priority on the council’s agenda, and in every courtroom, and every place of worship. He called on the council to put first human rights and to advance the cause of the most vulnerable. He characterized as “ironic” the name of the program to which Ann Arbor was applying for support for the 721 N. Main project – Connecting Communities. Ann Arbor had not yet achieved connections within its own community, he said.

During public commentary at the conclusion of the meeting, Partridge introduced himself as a recent candidate for the state senate and house. He called himself an advocate for all those who are not able to attend this and other public meetings. He told the council that he’d been informed that he was held in high regard by many people and is considered the alternate mayor of the city of Ann Arbor. He criticized mayor John Hieftje for disregarding the most significant issues of our time.

Present: Jane Lumm, Mike Anglin, Sumi Kailasapathy, Sally Petersen, Stephen Kunselman, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Chuck Warpehoski.

Absent: Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Marcia Higgins.

Next council meeting: Monday, Jan. 7, 2013 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 301 E. Huron. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

The Chronicle could not survive without 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!

Ingrid Sheldon, a member of the Our New Downtown Library campaign committee, reviews her notes before speaking during public commentary at the Nov. 19 meeting of the Ann Arbor District Library board. (Photos by the writer.)

Two people spoke during public commentary, directly addressing the issue of the downtown building at 343 S. Fifth Ave. Ingrid Sheldon – representing the Our New Downtown Library committee, which had campaigned in support of the bond proposal – told the board that committee members were disappointed but willing to continue supporting the library however they can. Other committee members in attendance included Betsy Jackson and Donald Harrison.

Also addressing the board was Lyn Davidge, who had run for a seat on the library board but had not been elected. During her campaign she had advocated for renovation of the downtown building, not new construction. She volunteered to serve on any citizen advisory group that she hoped the board would form soon, to give input on the building’s future. Davidge also urged the board to add a public commentary slot at the end of their monthly meetings – because she felt it would encourage more participation.

There was scant discussion among board members about the Nov. 6 outcome or next steps for dealing with the downtown building. In a brief report to the board, Prue Rosenthal – chair of the board’s special facilities committee – indicated that the committee members hadn’t yet made any decisions or had any substantive discussions about what to do next. There was no discussion about the possibility of forming an advisory committee.

In other action, the Nov. 19 meeting included an audit report by the accounting firm Rehmann for AADL’s 2011-2012 fiscal year, which ended June 30. The audit was clean, and included a recommendation to start conducting periodic inventories of “moveable capital assets” – items like furniture and fixtures.

During her director’s report, Josie Parker highlighted a financial concern that is outside of AADL’s control: The possible elimination of the state’s personal property tax. PPT legislation will likely be handled in the state legislature’s lame duck session. If the PPT is eliminated and no replacement revenue is provided, the library would lose about $630,000 annually in revenues, Parker said. The library’s annual budget is roughly $12 million.

Parker also related positive news. Again this year, AADL has been ranked with five stars by the Library Journal – the highest ranking awarded by the journal for library use in a community. AADL is the only library system in Michigan that achieved that level. In its category – libraries with budgets between $10 million to $29.99 million – AADL ranked fourth nationwide. 

Public Commentary

Two people spoke during public commentary at the start of the meeting.

Ingrid Sheldon told the board that she was representing Ellie Serras and the rest of the Our New Downtown Library committee, which had campaigned in support of the $65 million bond proposal – she noted that some of the other committee members were attending the AADL meeting too. The committee worked hard and was very disappointed that they weren’t able to convince the majority of voters to invest in a new library, she said. However, they were excited that so many people started talking about this core community asset. No one had negative things to say about the library – everyone loves it, Sheldon said. The Ann Arbor library system has a national reputation, Sheldon observed, but perhaps the community takes that for granted.

She reported on a recent visit she’d made to the Traverwood branch, and the activities she saw there. People were tutoring, working on computers, reading – “someone was even Skyping to China,” she said. The campaign committee had not been able to convey that this kind of demand for services exists at the downtown library too, she said. The downtown library is the “trunk from which the branches draw their nutrients.”

The infrastructure needs for the building haven’t gone away, Sheldon continued, and now the board has heard community input. She wanted the board to know that the committee is ready to help make the library become more than it already is. She thanked them for their vision of making the library an institution to enhance learning for all.

Lyn Davidge, who had run in the Nov. 6 general election for a seat on the library board but was not elected, began by saying “Sorry, ladies!” [The one male board member, Ed Surovell, was absent.] She said she was sure they thought they would be rid of her after the election, but she was back. She observed that her campaign to get people to attend AADL board meetings appeared to be working. She felt she needed to set an example by speaking during public commentary.

Even though she won’t have the opportunity to join the board, Davidge said, she thought her campaign message had resonated with a lot of voters and that she had something to contribute to the ongoing discussion. [Davidge had supported renovating the downtown building rather than constructing a new library.] She wanted to be one of the first people to volunteer to serve on one of the citizen advisory committees that she hoped the board would create soon. She noted that she and board member Nancy Kaplan – and possibly others – had advocated for such committees. As the board selects people to serve in an advisory role, she hoped they would include people from the business community, academia, and others with talent and experience who can provide new options for possible renovation. A lot of details about possible renovation were missing in the pre-election conversation, Davidge said, and she hoped the board and staff would seek advice from knowledgeable engineers, architects and others in the coming months.

Davidge also urged the board to seek more input from the library staff – not just the department heads, but the staff who run the day-to-day operations. She believed that these employees could provide important insights. Davidge concluded by requesting that the board add another opportunity for public commentary at the end of its meetings, so that people could give feedback about board decisions and discussions that had occurred during the meeting. If people could provide immediate feedback to the board, that might encourage more people to attend board meetings. “You never know until you try and I hope you’ll consider trying it.”

Facilities Committee Report

In her report as chair of the board’s special facilities committee, Prue Rosenthal noted that their work will continue to move forward, although she added that they were obviously disappointed in the outcome of the Nov. 6 election, when voters rejected the library’s bond proposal. The committee members are Rosenthal, Nancy Kaplan and Ed Surovell.

Board president Margaret Leary noted that the board had previously voted to amend its charge to the special facilities committee. That change – made at the board’s July 16, 2012 meeting – extended the committee’s work through 2012, and included the charge of recommending “measures needed to maintain the existing building should a bond to replace the downtown facility fail to pass.” The committee had originally been formed in April of 2012.

On Nov. 19, Rosenthal said the committee would be meeting with the “appropriate professionals” and library staff to figure out how best to use the available funding to ensure that the library works as well as it possibly can. The committee hasn’t made any decisions or had any substantive discussions about what to do next, she said.

Kaplan added that board appreciates the community’s input, including ideas and suggestions for how to move forward. The board is listening, she said. Leary echoed those sentiments.

Financial Report

Ken Nieman – AADL associate director of finance, HR and operations – gave a brief financial update to the board. [.pdf of finance report] He described October as a “pretty normal month, as most of them are here.” Through the end of October, the library has received 94.7% of its budgeted tax receipts – or $10.617 million. AADL’s fund balance stood at $7.937 million as of Oct. 31.

Five items were over budget, he said, but are expected to come back in line with budgeted amounts by the end of the fiscal year. Those line items are purchased services (related to an annual payment for Brainfuse, an online tutoring service), communications, software, supplies, and a line item for “other operating expenses.”

Board members had no questions for Nieman about the financial report.

Audit Report: It’s Clean

In reporting from the board’s budget and finance committee, Barbara Murphy said the committee had met earlier in the month with Dave Fisher of the accounting firm Rehmann to review AADL’s audit results. She described it as a very positive meeting.

From left: AADL board members Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy, and Rebecca Head. Barely visible behind Head is Prue Rosenthal.

Sherry Brubaker, an audit and assurance manager at Rehmann, gave the board an overview of the results later in the Nov. 19 meeting.

The audit gives a clean opinion of AADL’s financial statements for the fiscal year 2011-12, Brubaker said – the same as in recent prior years. The audit also looked at AADL’s internal controls for systems like payroll and cash receipts.

AADL’s fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. Total general fund revenues for the year were $11.94 million – about $300,000 less than the previous year. About 91% of revenues ($10.87 million) come from property taxes, Brubaker noted. Total general fund expenses for the year were $11.7 million, leaving a surplus of $236,793 for the year. Expenditures were under budget by about $373,000.

Out of the library’s $8.1 million in combined fund balances, $7.55 million is unassigned and available for spending at the library’s discretion. That amount equates to about 65% of general fund expenditures – representing several months of operating expenses.

The library has about $4.5 million in investments, Brubaker noted. Its cash is invested primarily in short-term certificates of deposit. AADL has no debt. Net assets total $30.96 million.

Brubaker said that during the audit, it was noted that a physical inventory of movable capital assets hadn’t been completed. The firm recommends that such an inventory be conducted every three or four years, she said. That recommendation was discussed with the finance committee, and Brubaker believed that the recommendation would be implemented.

Board president Margaret Leary asked for examples of moveable capital assets. Brubaker replied that it includes assets like furniture and fixtures – items that cost more than $1,000 with an expected life greater than two years.

Outcome: Without further discussion, the board unanimously voted to accept the 2011-12 audit.

Rehmann provided only print copies of its audit to AADL, which in turn provided print and scanned versions to The Chronicle. [.pdf of scanned audit] The Chronicle converted the document to a searchable text version using optical character recognition (OCR), though the process left the text with several scanos. [.pdf of OCR audit]

Director’s Report

AADL director Josie Parker reported that personal property tax (PPT) legislation is headed to the House Tax Policy Committee later this month and will likely be handled in the state legislature’s lame duck session. The Michigan Library Association will continue to lobby for a revenue replacement, she said.

If the PPT is eliminated, the library would lose about $630,000 annually in revenues, Parker said. Proposals to find replacement revenues currently would provide only a fraction of that amount, she added. [For more background on this issue, see Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Library Board Briefed on Tax Issue."]

Parker also reported that the library recently had received a $40,000 donation from the Friends of the Ann Arbor District Library, a nonprofit that runs the bookstore in the downtown library’s lower level. Parker read aloud a letter from FAADL treasurer Mary Borkowski, praising the library for its work.

In the final item of her report, Parker announced that AADL had again been ranked with five stars by the Library Journal – for the fifth year. It’s the highest ranking awarded, and AADL is the only library system in Michigan that achieved that level. In its category – libraries with budgets between $10 million to $29.99 million – AADL ranked fourth nationwide.

Parker also congratulated other Michigan libraries that were ranked: Kent District Library in Comstock Park, Bloomfield Township Public Library, and Plymouth District Library. Those libraries received three-star rankings.

These rankings aren’t about how much money is spent or how many people the library employs, Parker said – it’s about how well the libraries are utilized in the community. Per-capita metrics include circulation, visits, program attendance, and public Internet terminal use.

Parker told the board that the public wouldn’t use the library as much as they do unless there were mechanisms in place to facilitate it. She pointed to a combination of facilities and their design, hours of operation, and the opportunity for the public to give feedback in a variety of ways about the kinds of services and programs they want, such as self-checkout, online renewal, and no limits on the amount of items that can be checked out. Unlike many libraries, Parker said, AADL’s philosophy is that it’s a sign of success when a lot of the collection is being used. The goal is to make the library as easy to use as possible, and there are policies to encourage that.

For the 220 people who work at AADL, these policies and procedures are normal and often goes unremarked, Parker said. But in fact it is remarkable, and she wanted to thank all of the employees for everything they did.

Her remarks were followed by applause from the board and others attending the meeting. Board president Margaret Leary noted that Parker’s motto is “Be generous,” and that’s exemplified by AADL’s policies, Leary said. Users of the library can affect those policies in very direct ways by telling the library staff what they want, she said.

“And they do tell you in Ann Arbor,” Parker quipped.

Present: Rebecca Head, Nancy Kaplan, Margaret Leary, Barbara Murphy, Jan Barney Newman, Prue Rosenthal. Also AADL director Josie Parker.

Absent: Ed Surovell.

Next meeting: Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 at 7 p.m. in the fourth-floor conference room of the downtown library, 343 S. Fifth Ave. [Check Chronicle event listing to confirm date]

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Ann Arbor District Library board. Check out 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!

AAPS superintendent Patricia Green and deputy superintendent for operations Robert Allen.

Before receiving an “unqualified opinion” on the district’s 2011-12 audit and reviewing the first quarter financials from 2012-13, the board took a first pass at framing the discussion surrounding the development of the district’s budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year – a step the board has not typically taken as early as November.

Also at the meeting, the board approved the renaming of two facilities at Pioneer High School – the tennis courts and the planetarium. The tennis courts are being renamed for long-time tennis coach Tom “Brick” Pullen. And the planetarium is being co-named in regnition of a $100,000 gift from the IMRA America company.

The board also recognized Huron High School cross-country runner Allie Cell, for an extraordinary display of sportsmanship during a recent meet. 

Budget Discussion

Saying that November had been set as the target time for beginning budget discussions, board president Deb Mexicotte noted that the board had recently received information on budget considerations. The budget would be a main agenda item on next week’s board committee-of-the-whole meeting, she said. Superintendent Patricia Green noted that AAPS administration had taken the lead as requested by the board, and provided a three-year glance at upcoming budgets, saying, “There are big-ticket items that might be painful [to cut] out there. My preference is to try to preserve as much in the classroom as we possibly can. That’s where the very difficult decisions will have to be made down the road.”

Though this item was listed as an information item on the agenda, Mexicotte opened up essentially a free-flowing discussion about what trustees would like to see included in the district’s 2013-14 budget, and what process they would like to follow to set that budget. Trustees offered their thoughts on various aspects of the budget: long-term vision; possible spending cuts and revenue enhancements; political and legislative implications; and the timeline for budget development.

2013-14 Budget: Long-Term Vision

Trustee Christine Stead argued that, after making approximately $70 million of budget reductions from the general fund in the past five years, the district needs to create a longer-term vision for making bigger changes. She said necessary changes could involve large parts of the district and could require two or three years of planning.

Mexicotte said that the district’s transportation working group will make a report to the board in December, and noted that this group represents “one of those long-term planning pieces around sustainability” that will inform the conversation. She suggested that the board may want to consider creating similar working groups around other pieces of the budget that might need similar attention, such as redistricting. “It’s like trying to think about what those big items are, not that we will necessarily do anything with them, but we need to know what those could mean.”

Mexicotte also noted that the district is moving to a zero-based budgeting (ZBB) system. Green added that ZBB is a complex process involving linkages between all departments, including finance, instruction, operations, and human resources, and the reworking of existing budget items into line-by-line templates. She noted that the organizational shift to ZBB is a long-term process, and that it will not impact the 2013-14 budget.  But ZBB will be in place for the development of the 2014-15 budget.

2013-14 Budget: Possible Cuts/New Revenue

Trustee Irene Patalan said her “guiding light” is to keeps cuts away from the classroom, and that she is very interested in keeping the community in the conversation.

Trustee Andy Thomas said the budget reductions required to pass a balanced budget next year could range from $8 million to $20 million – and any way you look at it, it’s a big number. He reminded the public that the district used $4.5 million of fund equity last year to stave off deeper cuts. But it’s extremely unlikely the district would be able to do that again, he said. Thomas suggested looking at renegotiating employee contracts; reducing or eliminating transportation; closing buildings; enhancing marketing efforts; and revisiting the School of Choice option to determine net gain in enrollment.

Later in the meeting, during items from the board, Stead added that the WISD transportation review committee had also just met, and had enumerated the savings AAPS had gleaned from participating in the WISD transportation consortium. She reported that it was suggested at the review committee meeting that other districts may now be interested in joining the consortium, if the WISD continued to offer transportation services.

Mexicotte suggested that the board needs to focus more aggressively on increasing revenue as part of the budget process, giving examples such as: campaigning for a countywide educational enhancement millage in 2014; possibly selling or leasing real estate holdings; and lobbying the legislature to restore local levy authority.

2013-14 Budget: Political and Legislative Implications

Stead pointed out that the district’s 2013-14 budget could be impacted by a multitude of developments at the state and federal level, including the “lame duck” session currently playing out in the Michigan legislature. She is following HB 5923, which if passed “basically says ‘any entity can be a school,’” and said she is concerned that an active lame duck session could cause incremental financial obligations for which AAPS would need to put contingencies in place. Stead also noted that the FY 2014 budget put forth by Gov. Rick Snyder last year did not include a best practices incentive, which netted AAPS $4.4 million in 2012-13.

During items from the board, Stead complimented John Austin, president of the state board of education, for his advocacy against HB 5923 among other efforts, and said it’s been a privilege to work with him. She also noted that she, Green, and Nelson successfully worked with the finance committee of the Michigan Association of School Boards (MASB) at a recent meeting to add the the list of MASB’s legislative priorities by including the exploration of local levy authority and long-term changes to Proposal A.

As part of the budget discussion, trustee Glenn Nelson said the board should be prepared to pass a resolution as a special briefing item at their upcoming committee-of-the-whole meeting. If the board recommends a position on certain legislative issues, that would provide leadership to the community, so that citizens could contact their legislators quickly. Green stated that AAPS has to “keep an eye on Lansing,” and be willing to “get into vehicles and go to Lansing to be part of the conversations happening rapidly.”

Both Green and AAPS deputy superintendent of operations Robert Allen expressed concern about the possible reduction in grant funding at the federal level, as the nation approaches the “fiscal cliff” which will cause automatic reductions at significant levels unless a budget compromise is reached before the new year. “There are no sacred cows … We have already seen a reduction in Title I funding that we were not expecting,” Green said. Allen added that in some areas, “no increase” can add up to a decrease, for example with funds that have run out from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Nelson suggested that AAPS should “broaden the scope of its budgeting exercise” to include planning for changes to grant funding at the state and federal level. Usually, the main focus of the budget has been specifically the general fund, but Nelson argued that the board should adopt an approach that looks at a “combined general fund,” which would include grant funding.

Mexicotte indicated that some good might be fund in the prevailing negative climate, and suggested the board discuss contacting the two new state representatives representing portions of Washtenaw County – Gretchen Driskell (District 52) and Adam Zemke (District 55). Later in the meeting during the items from the board section of the agenda, Stead also congratulated the new representatives, saying she thought they would be receptive to working with the district.

Stead asserted that while people talk about keeping cuts out of the classroom, the situation has moved past that as a possible solution. “We need to change our funding situation, period,” she said. “That’s the only thing that will substantially change things. Communities in this state have to have a way to prioritize education in the democracy we think we live in. We will fight for a different answer for Ann Arbor, and we will get a different answer. Our students deserve better and we will get them better.”

2013-14 Budget: Timeline

Whatever decisions are made, Thomas said the district will require lead time and planning. For example, he said, the district had difficulty in the past communicating transportation changes over the summer – when cuts were made too late in the budget cycle. Thomas highlighted his hope that starting budget planning in November would not mean the board would be “arguing about the cuts for eight months rather than three months,” but rather that the decisions will be made earlier to allow for the development of a thoughtful implementation plan.

Mexicotte referred to a comment made by Thomas before the meeting started, saying that Thomas had suggested the budget be framed out by the end of January. At that point it could be brought to the public with answers about what the board plans to adjust or reduce. She suggested the trustees could go review a list of possible budget reductions and decide where they have agreement and what needs more conversation.

For example, Mexicotte said, if the board decides it does not want to touch transportation, transportation reductions would get “moved to the anathema page.” She described such an exercise as “triaging what’s on the list so we start to articulate to the public what our thinking is and how we go about prioritizing our pieces.”

Stead said that taking what the board knows now and going through that process today might not be as useful as doing so in January, when any substantive changes in funding at the state or federal level will have occurred. She asked administration to share any information they have about anticipated changes in revenue or expenses tonight.

2012-13 Fall Grant Awards

Linda Doernte, AAPS director of purchasing, walked the board through a brief review of 2012-13 grants awarded to the district, noting that grants brought in around the same amount of money as last year – roughly $4.8 million. She noted that the Head Start grant has not had any increase for two to three years, which means that rising retirement costs for the employees funded by that grant have been absorbed by the district. She also noted that Title 1 funding decreased by $300,000 because the state has the same amount budgeted for Title I, but charter schools are now requesting funding from that same “pot of money.” Allen added that the “flat grants” are causing decreased funding to other programs as salary and benefit costs rise.

The good news, Doernte said, comes at the local level, with the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation (AAPSEF) bringing in new grants totaling $115,000, and the Ann Arbor PTO thrift shop offering a total of more than $144,000 for transportation. Of the AAPSEF funding, $7,000 comes from the Greek Orthodox Women’s Philoptochos Society for the purchase of software to help autistic students.

Doertne also noted that the current grant totals do not include the Perkins grant, which will be presented in the spring.

Nelson noted the grassroots commitment evident in these grants, and urged national legislators to rationally resolve the budget crisis and avoid the “fiscal cliff,” as the federal funds represented by the largest of these grants re substantially at risk.

Thomas asked about the number of students served by Title I funding. AAPS deputy superintendent of instruction Alesia Flye responded that the number of students who are eligible to receive Title I services has increased, based on the rate of students eligible for free and reduced lunch. Thomas said he was upset by the fact that charter schools are partially to blame for there being less Title I money available to serve a growing number of eligible students.

Patalan said that while she knows federal funds are important, she wanted to acknowledge the modest but extremely appreciated grant made to AAPS by the Greek Orthodox women’s group. She suggested even more effort should be made to solicit local funding, saying, “It’s time to look everywhere.”

Stead said she looks forward to Allen being able to deliver the board positive information on the budget someday. Allen replied that nobody is looking more forward to that than he is.

Outcome: The 2012-13 fall grant awards will come back to the board at the next regular meeting for second briefing and approval.

2011-12 Audit Report

The district’s auditors, from Plante Moran, made a formal presentation to the board summarizing the 2011-12 audit results. The auditors noted that a set of audits on various aspects of the district’s finances is required by both state and federal law, and that the district has received an unqualified opinion on all fronts – that is “clean, without exception.” They compared the audits results to having attended class all year, done all the homework, and earning an “A” on the final exam. Noting that not every district receives an unqualified opinion, the auditors encouraged AAPS to take pride in these results.

Audit: Presentation

The auditors reviewed a summary of the highlights of the audit, noting that overall, the expenditures and revenue numbers were very close to what had been budgeted. They noted that the one-time use of the fund balance will need to be replaced as the district moves in to the future, and discussed that several school districts they work with have discussed ways to find new revenue sources. They listed increasing retirement costs, and other budget constraints as challenges, as well as future uncertainties regarding state and federal funding.

Thomas asked if the budget figures in the audit document were the numbers approved in June, 2011 or the numbers after amendments were made throughout the year. Auditors indicated the numbers were the amended figures. [.pdf of AAPS audit for FY 2012]

Audit: Board Discussion

Thomas pointed out that using the original budget – instead of the amended budget – in the audit would not result in a close a match between planned and actual performance. He said he understood why the budget had to be amended during the year, but said it would be much more valuable as a planning tool to know how closely the district had been able to adhere to its original budget. Mexicotte pointed out that that the comment applied more to AAPS administration than to the auditor.

Nelson also questioned where actual budget numbers show up in the audit, and the auditors pointed them out [on page 33]. The audit also shows the numbers as a combined general fund, which includes grants. Nelson contended that showing the general fund as combined with grants for the audit – when the general fund is presented to the public, as part of the district’s budgeting process, as separate from grants – makes the budget less transparent.

Allen responded that the budget book contains the general fund and the athletic fund, and that grants have typically been reported in the fall, as they were that evening. He said there is a good basis for making a grants estimate and including it in the budget book, along with the general and athletics funds, and agreed it would make it easier to “follow the numbers back when they are combined in audit reporting.”

Stead complimented the auditors for a fine job, and agreed with Nelson’s recommendation to administration that grants funding be estimated when setting the budget. “We definitely need to deal with the impact of grant funding shifts next time around. We need to understand this at a deeper level than we ever had before, because there is no room to make a mistake.” Patalan agreed, saying she would like to have administration help the board to understand all the money included.

The auditors said they appreciated the fervor with which the board examines these issues and commended them for making a strategy that allows them to manage better into the future.

Outcome: The audit report will come back to the board at the next regular meeting for second briefing and approval.

First Quarter Financial Report

AAPS director of finance Nancy Hoover briefly presented the financial report from the first quarter, noting that it was being brought to the board earlier than usual, and that it contained no adjustments to revenue or expenditures.

Stead questioned why the adjustments made to fund equity just mentioned in the audit report were not being corrected now, and suggested doing so before any budget numbers are shared with the public going forward.

Allen responded that there are a number of anticipated adjustments for the second quarter. Those included a seven FTE increase in staffing, primarily because of the reclassification of special education teachers – who had been funded with federal dollars – back to the general fund, and three teacher assistants who were hired to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Adjustments also included: a decrease in available fund equity; adjustments to the MPSERS retirement rate, which went from 27% to 24%, and then back up to 25%; an 80-count decrease in student enrollment; and an anticipated gain in special education funding.

Thomas said he was alarmed by what sounded like a set of negative adjustments totalling $1.5 million. Allen said some adjustments will be one-time, while others will be ongoing – but that adjustments are not made for non-recurring items. He also pointed out that the reduction in the MPSERS rate is roughly a $2 million positive adjustment, and that the additional special education reimbursement will also be positive.

Nelson reiterated the importance of keeping a comprehensive view of the general fund in mind, and not narrowly defining it. Stead agreed, saying that the board needed to see both a comprehensive view of the budget, including grants funding, but also needed to have the same level of detail as it currently had. Allen said the data can be presented in a format that can reflect both funds – separately, but also together.

Stead reflected on all the financial data presented at the meeting, saying that the net impact was worse than anticipated, even though the district thought it had budgeted conservatively. Saying the district needed an “all hands on deck” effort, she argued, “We need to do everything we can to increase enrollment, and improve our customer service, but also think differently about programs and services and budgeting moving forward.”

Green added that part of what is being developed as part of the ZBB, is the ability to better track spending from year to year within specific line items.

Outcome: The first quarter financial report will come back to the board at the next regular meeting for second briefing and approval.

Renaming of Facilties

The board considered renaming of two facilities at its Nov. 7 meeting, both at Pioneer High School – the tennis courts and the planetarium. Reasons for the naming of facilities were to honor service to the school district and monetary contributions, both of which are possible reasons for naming under the district’s policy. [.pdf of AAPS naming policy]

Renaming: Tennis Courts

The proposal considered for final approval by the board was to name the tennis courts after Tom “Brick” Pullen – who coached the boys’ and girls’ tennis teams at Pioneer High School for more than two decades. The district’s director of communications, Liz Margolis, reminded the trustees that they’d been briefed at the previous meeting on the item. She noted that previously, testimony had been provided that made clear that Pullen meets the extraordinary service criterion of the districts naming policy. She introduced a few additional people.

Sandy Lymburner, whose daughter Courtney Lymburner now plays tennis at the University of California Santa Cruz, was the one who had the idea to name the courts after Pullen, addressed the board. She read aloud part of an essay that Courtney wrote as part of a college application. “Today he [Pullen] is, second only to my parents, a major figure in my life … He taught me my forehand grip, a new serve, but he also taught me how to never give up on my dreams and to persevere.”

District parent Frank Rampton also spoke in support of naming of the tennis courts after Pullen. He told the board he had a who daughter played for Pullen for four years. Tennis had been her first love as a kid – but his own aspirations for her were to follow in her older sister’s footsteps with crew. But when his daughter was in 5th grade she would tell him about this coach would come around and say, Hey, Julia, if you keep out this up you might be on the varsity by the time you’re in 9th grade! The word Rampton gave to describe Pullen was “tireless.” Pullen wasn’t tireless just on the tennis court, but also in his attitude towards the kids – in-season and off-season. He drew a comparison between Pullen and Bo Schembechler – inasmuch as Schembechler was never gone from the players’ lives.  His daughter learned a lot of life lessons from Pullen, and considers him a second father, he concluded.

Trustees took turns offering their own praise of Pullen.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to name the Pioneer tennis courts after Pullen.

Renaming: Planetarium

In her introductory remarks Superintendent Patricia Green noted that the generous gift of $100,000 from IMRA America  had been made through the Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation. She stressed that the second briefing was an opportunity to acknowledge the generosity and the appreciation of the district for the gift. The planetarium would have closed eventually, she said, because the cost of keeping it operational was exorbitant.

The district had never expected that one generous donor would come forward. Because of that, the district felt that it deserved recognition of a co-naming of the planetarium. District director of communications Liz Margolis reviewed how the planetarium was originally gifted to the district by the Argus Camera Company back in 1956. The district now looks forward to students in the future also receiving the benefit of the continued existence of the planetarium, she said. The projector system would be upgraded, which would allow expansion of the curriculum.

Executive Vice President of IMRA America Makoto Yoshida and  board president Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation Omari Rush were on hand to deliver some remarks. Yoshida told the board he was grateful to the district for its support in the education of the children of the company’s employees. IMRA is a research company, he noted.  To recruit people to come work for the company, he always emphasizes that Ann Arbor is a really good place to live – because the education system is the best, with a reasonable cost. As a high-tech company, he said, IMRA recognizes the value in encouraging interest in science at an early age. This is where our future scientists are created, he noted. Science and technology is IMRA’s passion, he said, and they would continue funding through through the district’s educational foundation – as long as the company can still make a reasonable profit, he quipped. He called the donation an investment in the future for all of us.

Trustees in turn expressed their appreciation for the gift from IMRA.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approved the co-naming of the Pioneer High School planetarian in recognition of IMRA America’s gift.

Sportsmanship Recognized

Superintendent Patricia Green announced the special recognition. She said it was very important that students be commended for things that they do that are so noteworthy, and selfless in their contribution to others that it rises to the level that it needs to be brought before the public and the board of education.

She invited Huron High School athletic director Dottie Davis to come to the podium to recognize one of the district’s athletes – a student from Huron High School who excelled in making certain that she had given back to others – Allie Cell. She thanked Amy Cell, Allie’s mother, for raising a wonderful daughter and putting the values into her that the district so much appreciated. [Cell is granddaughter of Ingrid Sheldon, former mayor of the city of Ann Arbor, who was on hand for the recognition of Allie's sportsmanship.] Tony Mifsud, coach from the opposing team from Dearborn Divine Child High School was also on hand. Davis describe the athlete from Divine Child whom Cell had helped as having a body type more like that of Davis – like that of a discus thrower.  [Mariah Fuqua, the Divine Child athlete, is accomplished as a discus thrower and shot putter.]

Fuqua, had never run 5K [3.1 miles] in her life, Davis explained. Her coaches prepared her so that in the first couple of weeks of the season she was able to run a mile and then she would stop. The second couple of weeks she was able to run two miles. On that particular day in question, on an up-and-down winding course, Fuqua was about to quit at the halfway mark. Allie had already run the course, and finished the race among the top runners. As she saw Fuqua struggling up a hill, Cell went back and encouraged her and and wound up running step for step with her all the way to the finish line. When they crossed the finish line, Davis reported, “Tears just exploded from everybody’s face.”

Trustees in turn heaped praise on Cell and noted the importance of athletics in education.

Communication and Comment

Board meetings include a number of agenda slots when trustees can highlight issues they feel are important, including “items from the board” and “agenda planning.” Every meeting also invites public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the formal agenda or that are not covered elsewhere in The Chronicle’s meeting report.

Comm/Comm: Association and Student Reports

Five associations are invited to make regular reports to the school board: the Black Parents Student Support Group (BPSSG), the Ann Arbor Parent Advisory Committee for Special Education (AAPAC), the Parent Teacher Organization Council (PTOC), the Ann Arbor Administrators Association (AAAA), and the Ann Arbor Education Association (AAEA). The Youth Senate is also invited to speak once a month, as are representatives from each of the high schools.

At this meeting, the board heard from the Youth Senate, the AAPAC, and the AAEA.

Youth senators Xuerui Fa and Seunghyun Lee, both sophomores from Pioneer, asserted that the policy of having “split lunch,” or two lunch periods, should be abolished. They noted that the transfer of students from Pioneer to Skyline has reduced the number of Pioneer students sufficiently to allow for all students to have lunch at one time. Arguments the the two made for one common lunch included: access by students to all teachers during lunch time, and better access to more club and activity meetings, which often occur during lunch hours. Fa and Lee also noted that a large number of students support their recommendation to abolish the split lunch policy.

AAPAC’s Melanie Robault congratulated Mexicotte on her re-election, and noted that the AAPAC was looking forward to working with Mexicotte for years to come. She also thanked the administration for recently presenting information at AAPAC meetings. Robault also invited the public to a free workshop entitled “The Contents of an IEP [individualized education plan],” to be held on Nov. 27 at the Washtenaw Intermediate School District from 7-9 p.m.

The AAEA’s representative reported that she had attended a professional development session at Pioneer High School the previous day during which staff had created lists of things of which they were proud. The representative shared a sampling of the items she had seen on the lists, including: Special Olympics, peer mentoring, guest speakers, peer mediation, revamping of the media center web page, open communication with students, rising AP scores, and participation in the Midwest music conference.

Nelson also spoke as the board liaison to the developing Arab-American Parent Support Group (AAPSG), which he noted was formed approximately one year ago. He invited the public to the first community-wide meeting of the AAPSG, to be held on Sunday, Nov. 11 from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m. in the third floor meeting room, also called the “free space,” of the downtown branch of the Ann Arbor District Library.

Comm/Comm: Superintendent’s Report

Green enumerated recent awards and accolades received by the AAPS community, including: Community high school’s invitation to participate at a statewide conference to share strategies for improving student achievement for all students; the NAACP’s honoring of 112 students at its annual Freedom Fund dinner; Tappan music students’ invitation to perform on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as part of the commemoration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech; and the success of the Dicken Dash, a new PTO fundraiser in which 367 students raised over $15,000 to support field trips and develop an outdoor classroom.

Comm/Comm: Action Items

The board passed a consent agenda containing minutes approvals and gift offers, and also approved a motion to hold an executive session on Dec. 5 for the purpose of negotiations.

Comm/Comm: Items from the Board

Thomas noted he had the privilege of making a number of “great idea” grant awards on behalf of Ann Arbor Public Schools Educational Foundation’s (AAPSEF) Karen Thomas Memorial fund, which Thomas founded to honor his late wife. The grant awards were matched with PTO funds and used to purchase Nook e-Readers to promote reading and writing among fifth grader students. Thomas also noted that his monthly coffee would be held next Tues, Nov. 13 at 9a a.m. at the Sweetwaters on Washington.

Nelson reiterated his appreciation for the awards received by the AAPSEF and the PTO thrift store, and also expressed thanks to the Center for Independent Living and the NAACP for the their work in promoting the educational development of young people.

Patalan noted that this meeting highlighted both the successes in the district, and well as the challenges the district faces “with people who are not on the same page with funding public education.”

Mexicotte noted that trustee Susan Baskett was ill and that therefore Nelson would need to attend an upcoming meeting in her place, as was an alternate delegate for that meeting. She also offered encouragement to the boards in Ypsilanti and Willow Run, noting that both of their communities agreed to a consolidation plan and to add an operating millage to support the newly created district. Mexicotte said she wanted to congratulate them on these plans and extended the support of AAPS to help them during the transition. She also noted AAPS may partner with them on a possibly upcoming educational enhancement millage.

Comm/Comm: Re-election of Deb Mexicotte

Also during items from the board, each of the trustees congratulated Mexicotte on her successful bid to remain on the board of education for another term. [Mexicotte received 31,436 (63.19%) votes to 17,758 (35.69%) for Dale Leslie.] Thomas pointed out that Mexicotte had garnered over 31,000 votes, which he believed sets a record for the highest number of votes any AAPS school board member has ever received. Green also expressed congratulations to Mexicotte during her superintendent’s report.

Mexicotte began by acknowledging the passion and interest of her opponent, Dale Leslie, thanking him for putting himself out there to the community and being willing to serve on the board. She then thanked the her fellow board members for their support, and then closed the meeting with a statement acknowledging and thanking the community for their extensive support of AAPS students and of the board of education.

Mexicotte said running for re-election during a fall presidential race was more difficult than in June, noting it was more expensive, a little more partisan, and harder to reach voters. However, she said it was really gratifying and humbling to hear how much the community supports the work of the board. “Even when they disagreed,” she said, “they were still so positive about the district. The community respects our service.” She noted the support of many of the district’s community partners support students in a meaningful way, saying “This community serves our students – they give their time, their money, their volunteerism, their verbal support … Thank you to the community for all they do, and for returning me to do my very small piece.”

Present: President Deb Mexicotte, vice president Christine Stead, secretary Andy Thomas, treasurer Irene Patalan, and trustee Glenn Nelson.

Absent: Trustees Susan Baskett and Simone Lightfoot.

Next regular meeting: Wednesday, Dec. 5, 2012, at 7 p.m. at the fourth-floor boardroom of the Ann Arbor District Library’s downtown branch, 343 S. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

Names on the ballot for the non-incumbent position on the 22nd Circuit Court: Jim Fink and Carol Kuhnke. (Photos by the writer.)

At a candidate forum held in Ann Arbor’s Bach Elementary School cafeteria earlier this month, sponsored by the Washtenaw County Bar Association and the Old West Side Association, Kuhnke and Fink fielded questions on fairly standard topics: judicial temperament, experience, role models and the like.

In addition, Kuhnke and Fink have both provided written responses to questions on the League of Women Voters vote411.org website. And they previously participated in a June 23 forum for the primary race covered by The Chronicle, which included a total of four candidates.

Campaign finance statements filed with the state show that the cumulative total amounts raised by Kuhnke and Fink for their campaigns are $82,018 and $93,465 respectively.

Of her $82,018 total, Kuhnke has raised $46,738 since the primary election, and had spent just $13,892 between the primary and the close of books on Oct. 21. That left her with $34,405 to spend in the final two weeks of the general election campaign. Of his $93,465, Fink has raised $37,635 since the primary, and has spent $20,967 during the same period. He has $21,417 left to spend in the final two weeks.

Kuhnke has been practicing law for 18 years, longer than Fink’s 14 years, and is campaigning with the slogan, “The most experienced.” Fink is inclined to add to the mix his previous 20 years of experience working in law enforcement, starting in 1977 as a Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputy and moving up the ranks to commander.

Fink argued implicitly that the quality of the endorsements he’s received – from local judges – is better than some Kuhnke has received, from judges in other counties in southeastern Michigan where she’s argued cases. One local judge, Tim Connors – who is seeking re-election to the 22nd Circuit Court in a separate race against Mike Woodyard – is listed on websites for both Fink and Kuhnke among their endorsements. Connors and Woodyard participated in the Oct. 16 forum with Fink and Kuhnke – their responses are included in a separate Chronicle report.

Fink challenged any perception that he felt entitled to the judgeship based on the service of his father and older brother as judges, by stating it’s not the case that he felt entitled. He described how he’d always planned to practice law, even though he took a “side trip” to work in law enforcement.

Kuhnke described her vocation to the law as stemming in part from her undergrad studies in philosophy, and the impact that the meaning of words can have on people’s lives. She was matter of fact in drawing out one contrast between herself and Fink: “I’m a woman.” She thinks that having a woman’s voice on the court is important, but stated that she did not think she deserved a vote just because she is a woman.

An issue related to women’s health was highlighted in a question fielded from the audience. Fink is endorsed by Right to Life of Michigan – so the question related to whether Fink had pledged to rule against young women who were requesting a “judicial bypass” for permission to have an abortion. Fink was emphatic in stating that in order to receive that organization’s endorsement, he’d made no such pledge and that he hadn’t been asked such a question.

Even though the judicial bypass question came last at the forum, this detailed report of candidate responses begins there.

Judicial Bypass

The issue of judicial bypass came up during an audience Q&A at the end of the formal forum, as part of a question asked by local attorney Tom Wieder.

Judicial Bypass: Statutory Background

In the state of Michigan, the judicial bypass is an option for minors who are not able to obtain parental permission to have an abortion. From Act 211 of 1990, it’s the provision in 722.903 Section 3(2):

722.903 Consent to abortion on minor; petition for waiver of parental consent. Section 3.
(1) Except as otherwise provided in this act, a person shall not perform an abortion on a minor without first obtaining the written consent of the minor and 1 of the parents or the legal guardian of the minor.
(2) If a parent or the legal guardian is not available or refuses to give his or her consent, or if the minor elects not to seek consent of a parent or the legal guardian, the minor may petition the probate court pursuant to section 4 for a waiver of the parental consent requirement of this section.

For the 22nd Circuit Court, the probate court’s responsibility for such waivers is handled by the family division of the trial court. It’s chief judge Donald Shelton who hears petitions for waivers of the parental consent requirement, with judge Tim Connors serving as alternate. The statute sets forth two criteria for granting a waiver as follows:

722.904 … granting waiver of parental consent; … Section 4
(3) The probate court shall grant a waiver of parental consent if it finds either of the following:
(a) The minor is sufficiently mature and well-enough informed to make the decision regarding abortion independently of her parents or legal guardian.
(b) The waiver would be in the best interests of the minor.

Judicial Bypass: Right to Life of Michigan

Jim Fink is listed on the Right to Life of Michigan’s website as an endorsee, though his campaign website does not include the endorsement. The criteria for endorsement set forth on the RLM website include the following:

Prolife – First and foremost, a candidate must be prolife with no exceptions other than life of the mother. A candidate must also complete a Candidate Questionnaire and agree to a Human Life Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, effectively establishing personhood from the moment of conception.

In a phone interview with The Chronicle following the Oct. 16 candidate forum, Fink confirmed that he had completed a questionnaire for Right to Life of Michigan, and described his answers to the RLM questions as including the kind of statements he’s made during the campaign – that he’d have to set aside his personal opinion in applying the law. Fink indicated that the material provided with the questionnaire made clear that for judicial candidates, they were not being asked to commit to ruling in a particular way on certain types of cases – because that would be an ethical violation.

In a separate phone interview, David Malone – director of Right to Life of Michigan – indicated to The Chronicle that the endorsement questionnaire sent to judicial candidates was different from the one sent to non-judicial candidates. He described how it’s made clear in the questionnaire materials that candidates are not being asked to say how they’ll rule in a particular case. Malone declined to provide The Chronicle with a copy of the questionnaire, explaining that it’s not made available to non-candidates. Fink deferred to the RLM’s preference that the questionnaire not be disseminated.

Judicial Bypass: Question for Candidates

The WCBA had prepared questions for the candidates covering standard topics like judicial temperament, experience and what led the candidates to consider a career in law. But during the second part of the forum, questions from the audience were entertained as well. The requirement that all questions be suitable for all four candidates led to some grumbling – based in part on the fact that not all four candidates were running against each other.

Local attorney Peter Davis, who indicated he had a question just for Woodyard, responded to moderator Steve Borgsdorf’s enforcement of the rule by saying, “So you want softball questions?” Borgsdorf responded with, “No, they can be fastballs, but everyone’s got to get a chance to bat.” The analogy was apt, as at the time of the forum, the Detroit Tigers baseball team was handing the New York Yankees a 2-1 defeat in the American League Championship Series.

The judicial bypass question from the audience came from local attorney Tom Wieder. The question was pointedly for Fink, but the other three candidates weighed in on the topic of judicial bypasses as well.

Wieder’s windup noted that one of the matters that can come before the circuit court is a so-called “judicial bypass case.” Those are cases where a minor wants to have an abortion and cannot obtain the consent of a parent or guardian, he explained. There have been about 125 of those cases in the last four years, Wieder said, which were decided on the circuit bench. “Mr. Fink, you’ve been endorsed by Right to Life of Michigan, a condition of which is that you agree to oppose abortion except in cases where the life of the mother is at stake. Given that pledge, aren’t you effectively saying to any young woman who came before you in a judicial bypass case, unless her life were endangered, you would not grant a bypass?”

Jim Fink: Fink responded by saying, “Mr. Wieder, I was not asked to pledge anything, or to say what I would do in any particular case.” Fink went on to say that it would, in fact, be unethical for him to do so. “I wasn’t asked the question, sir.” But the statute is pretty clear, Fink stated – a judge has to consider two factors and then make a decision. “I’m going to apply the law and I’m going to follow the law,” he said. Fink noted that he had a lot of pro-choice supporters who trusted him to do just that. Wieder came back to the Right to Life of Michigan endorsement and cited the text on that organization’s website, which explains how a candidate would have to indicate that they wouldn’t support abortion except to save the life of the mother. Fink responded with: “I can tell you I was not asked that question.”

Carol Kuhnke: She described it as a difficult decision for a young woman to make. For a young woman who has the courage to file that kind of petition – to ask a judge’s permission to have an abortion – she hoped she would have a compassionate and sensitive ear. She said she does not believe in abortion for herself but is adamantly pro-choice.

Introductions

The forum began with the opportunity for each candidate to make some opening remarks.

Carol Kuhnke: She observed that she recognized many of the people in the audience. She began her introduction by reviewing her educational background – she graduated from Milan High School in 1986, making her 44 years old. As an undergrad at the University of Michigan she studied philosophy and the history of art, majoring in both. She obtained her law degree from the Chicago-Kent College of Law. After finishing law school she practiced in Chicago for a couple of years. She missed Michigan tremendously, she said, and was fortunate enough to talk Peter Davis into hiring her as an associate. Shortly after that they became law partners, and they have practiced together for 16 years. So she’s been practicing law for almost 20 years, she said. She has spent all that time trying cases. She enjoys working hard and she enjoys that work.

Carol Kuhnke. (Photo is from the Oct. 10 League of Women Voters candidate forum held in the studios of the Community Television Network.)

Kuhnke is running for judge because she knows that her experience has trained her well to do that job. She knows that judges touch people’s lives, she said – not in the way that the legislature or the executive branch does, but rather one person at a time.

Most people never have to go to court or deal with the judge, she allowed. But when they do, you want the best person as judge – someone who will handle the case with compassion and with respect for the law. She noted that she had been endorsed by a lot of judges – judges in whose courtrooms she’s tried cases. She then listed off several of the judges who had endorsed her. She described judges who had endorsed her as coming from several counties across southeast Michigan where she has tried cases.

Jim Fink: Looking around the room, he said, there are very few people he didn’t know. He described himself as a native of Washtenaw County, born in Beyer Hospital in Ypsilanti. He graduated from Eastern Michigan University and the Detroit College of Law. He attended law school while he was a police officer working full-time. He attended classes sometimes during the day and sometimes in the evening, and was able to do that and still graduate summa cum laude, he said.

Fink has been practicing law in private practice for about 14 years, he said. But he’d spent 20 years doing police work before that. In his legal practice, he said, he is in virtually all the courts throughout Washtenaw County. And the judges he appears in front of, and the lawyers that he practices with, have all rated his candidacy highly, he said. Of the 10 local judges who have endorsed in this race – and who will be affected by the outcome of this election – nine have endorsed him, Fink said. The Washtenaw County Bar Association poll, whose respondents are attorneys who will be affected by the result of the election, rated him the highest among the candidates, he noted. Fink was also rated outstanding by the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan, he added. “I like to make things better,” he said. He does that in his practice and he would do that as a judge, he said. He loves the community and he loves the law, he said. And that’s why he’s running for judge, he concluded.

Judicial Temperament

Question: What does judicial temperament mean to you? If elected, what type of judicial temperament would you most like to convey?

Jim Fink: When he considers judicial temperament, he thinks about the way judges treat people and make people feel, and how they manage the cases that are before them in the courtroom.

Jim Fink.

What he would like to convey is a sense that the court cares what’s going on, that every one will have his or her day in court and will be heard and treated fairly – and that the outcome of the case will be based on the facts and the law, and not on any inappropriate external factors. Because it was mostly a room full of lawyers at the forum, he felt like he could characterize it as one of those things where you know it when you see it.

Fink felt like everyone in the room knew when they were in the presence of a judge who didn’t have a good judicial temperament. He thought he would be the kind of judge where people left the courtroom believing they received justice and were treated fairly and kindly, regardless of the outcome of the case.

Carol Kuhnke: She felt that judicial temperament has a lot to do with being patient enough to hear what somebody thinks they need to tell you. Sometimes the judge doesn’t need to hear everything that a litigant wants to be heard – but knowing that the judge is going to listen and pay attention and take stock of what’s being said is important. It’s important to lend the right gravitas to the matter that is before the court, she said. Everything that comes before the circuit court is something that is very serious to the person who is there. It might be a matter of who gets custody of the children during holidays, or whether someone goes to prison. Or there might be some disaster in your life that is affecting your ability to earn a living and to feed your children. So lending the right gravitas to the process that is before you is critical to a judicial temperament, she concluded.

Budgetary Challenges

Question: How do you perceive your role as circuit court judge in addressing budgetary challenges?

Carol Kuhnke: Most lawyers in the room, she ventured, would know that Washtenaw County is one of the few counties that was determined to have fewer judges than are actually needed in the circuit court. The Michigan Supreme Court undertook a study of courts around the state and determined that Washtenaw County needed another judge – as opposed to having too many judges, as was the case with some of the other counties in the state. The understanding among the judges on the Washtenaw County circuit court is that the five of them could handle the workload, and they decided not to burden the county and the state with that added expense of adding another judge. So she thinks that the next judge needs to be ready to handle that workload – knowing that according to the state supreme court, five judges are not enough.

The civil docket of the court reflects about half of the cases that are filed, Kuhnke said, but because civil cases are more motion-intensive, they take longer to resolve – so she feels that her experience with civil cases is important. She knows how to move cases long. With 20 years of experience as a trial attorney, she knows that there are ways to manage the docket a little bit better, to help cases resolve earlier – for example, through a more focused discovery program. It might be worth taking another look at a case after three months or six months instead of waiting for a year, she suggested.

Jim Fink: He observed that there are five judges on the circuit court and two probate judges. They are a team, he said, and they work together. And they work out the distribution of the docket. The budgetary concerns are negotiated with the county and judges work as a team in those negotiations as well. As a member of that team, he would work with the other judges, and he would work with the court administrative staff to make the budget the best budget the court can get.

The other part is to do the best you can with what you have, Fink said. He mentioned that furlough days for the staff have helped to save money, but on those furlough days, no work gets done, he noted. So even if the judge is in the office working, the staff is not processing paperwork. Making sure that the workflow for people who are doing the everyday work is the best that it can be will help things be more efficient, he said. It’s important to streamline work for employees so that they’re not duplicating efforts. He mentioned electronic filing as a way to make things more efficient – both for the consumer and for the court staff.

Experience with Types of Law

Question: The current docket for judge Melinda Morris consists of criminal and civil cases, and judge Timothy Connors’ current docket consists of civil and family law matters. The chief judge could reassign those dockets based on the experience and expertise of the judges who are elected. Could each candidate please speak to their experience in each of those types of law and how you feel your experience would help you as a judge on the bench.

Jim Fink: He stated that he has experience in virtually every kind of matter that will come before the circuit court. He’s done civil litigation, and he has a lot of experience with criminal law, both as a police officer and as an attorney. He practices in probate court and in the juvenile court, representing children who have been charged with offenses. He handles injunctive relief for municipalities, when they’re trying to abate a nuisance or defend against municipalities who are trying to stop a client of his from doing something.

Fink practices family law and has experience in pursuing and defending against personal protection orders. While some candidates have more experience than others, he allowed, his is a balanced practice. And his experience goes back further than his 14 years in private practice, and includes the time that he was working for the county as a police officer. He feels that that experience will prepare him to handle anything. He said that someone once told him it’s not so important that someone has done a particular thing, but that they have been successful in the things that they have done.

Carol Kuhnke: Most of her work has been in civil law, she said, but she’s also handled some divorces and some criminal matters. She has done everything that comes before the circuit court, she said. She characterized her civil experience as very solid as far as knowing how to manage that docket. Sometimes the civil cases linger, she said, and take up a lot more time and resources of the court than they need to. She said some cases have been resolved only after 10 years. Moving those cases along faster would be good for the civil docket – and that would also benefit the criminal docket, because it would free up judges’ time.

Kuhnke said she has a lot of experience with land use, pointing out her experience serving for 12 years on the zoning board of appeals for the city of Ann Arbor. She was appointed to that position initially by then-mayor Ingrid Sheldon and made chair of the zoning board of appeals by mayor John Hieftje. She’s also worked in the probate court with minors and people who are not competent, and has worked in the probate courts to work out what needs to be done in order to allow the case to move forward in the circuit court.

Experience with Trials

Question: What is your experience as a trial attorney? What’s your experience in civil versus criminal trials and bench versus jury trials?

Carol Kuhnke: She indicated no experience in criminal trials, but said she’d tried civil cases since she was licensed to practice law. The first trial she had was in 1994 in Chicago. She was given a file and sent to court, she had to try the case on her own. She was representing a young man, an eight-year-old boy, who was injured on city of Chicago property. The last trial she’d had was last month in Hillsdale, where she defended a nurse who’d been accused of malpractice.

Kuhnke has been trying cases all of her career – and all of them have been jury trials, she said. But some had a bench trial aspect to them. When you sue an entity that’s part of the state of Michigan, the case goes to the Court of Claims – the judge will decide the case against the state and the jury will decide the case against any individuals. So sometimes she has tried cases that have a bench trial and jury trial going on at the same time. She has tried cases all over southeast Michigan, she said.

Jim Fink: Like Kuhnke, most of his trial work has been civil as well, he said. Most of them have been bench trials. He’s also had criminal trials. He’s handled matters that have not gone to trial – involving injunctions or restraining orders or appeals from the district court. He suggested that he has had a unique view of trials, as the officer in charge or a witness in dozens, if not hundreds, of felony and misdemeanor trials. As a police officer, he has watched trials unfold in a different way than most lawyers observe a trial.

Vocation to the Field of Law

Question: Why are you a lawyer? Why did you choose this profession? As part of your answer, identify a mentor or a role model who ought to be credited with where you are today.

Jim Fink: He began by identifying a role model: “My dad.” His father, Bob Fink, had been a lawyer and a judge in Washtenaw County, and his brother Karl also had been a judge, he said. He then addressed an issue that he’d been hearing, which was: “Fink thinks he’s entitled to this because his father and older brother were judges.” That’s not the case, Fink stated. He’s earned the support he has. Nobody earned the ratings from the Washtenaw County Bar Association except for him. No one got the endorsements of the other judges in the county, except for him. But he said that his father and his older brother were great influences on him.

His brother was a lot older than he is, Fink said, and as a little kid he grew up loving the idea of being a lawyer. “I became a cop, because I wasn’t going to class.” You don’t get to be a lawyer without a law degree, he noted, and you don’t get to go to law school without an undergraduate degree and he wasn’t doing those things. So he took a little side trip, and when he matured a little bit he went back to school and pursued his original dream. He loved police work and enjoyed it, but practicing law was the thing that he planned to do as a kid.

Carol Kuhnke: Her parents are not lawyers, she began, adding that she did not interpret the question as a slam against Fink. She became a lawyer as a natural progression from her study of philosophy as an undergrad, she said. She noted that some people feel like you have to do something else if you major in philosophy – but she found philosophy to be such an intriguing discipline, and she loved studying problems and solving problems and understanding how words work, and interpreting the law.

It was a philosophy professor of hers, Louis Loeb, who told her that she ought to be a lawyer. “It’s his fault that I became a lawyer!” she quipped. As far as someone who’s inspired her, or who has been a mentor, she identified Michigan Supreme Court justice Alton Thomas Davis. [Davis has endorsed Kuhnke.] She knew him as a circuit court judge, and knew him when he was a judge on the court of appeals, and as a supreme court justice. She found him to be an incredible scholar of the law. He’s someone who knows and understands people. He’s someone who understands the power and the obligation of the court and its effect on people’s lives. She called him a wonderful human being and she hoped that she could be like him.

Argument for Yourself, Against Opponent

Question: What do you see in yourself – in quality or experience – that you would bring to the bench that’s either absent in your opponent or that you’d be better at than your opponent. What’s unique to you that you would bring?

Carol Kuhnke: She said her experience is much deeper than Fink’s. Not every case goes to trial, she said, but you have to work every case as if it’s going to trial. Another key difference that she identified: “I’m a woman.” There’s been one woman to sit on the circuit court bench, she noted, and that’s Melinda Morris. Morris is retiring, and out of the five circuit court judges, Kuhnke feels that there is room for a woman as one of them. She would not ask anyone to vote for her just because she’s a woman, she said. She feels like her experience and her character justify a vote for her.

The Women Lawyers Association had rated her outstanding for the job, Kuhnke noted. If it’s a draw between the two candidates – and she doesn’t think it is – she still feels like there is room to vote for a woman, so that there will be a woman’s voice represented on the court. As a trial attorney, she’s spent many hours and days on end in court or in depositions where she is the only woman in the room except for the court reporter. A lot of times she is mistaken for the court reporter, she said. She ventured that judge Morris herself has probably had the same kind of experience when she attends judicial conferences. A woman’s voice is important in all matters of society, she said.

Jim Fink: He stated that he’s not interested in doing a comparison to say why somebody should not vote for Carol Kuhnke. But he said there are some things that he felt had generated such broad support for him. People trust him to follow the law, he said, and to put personal feelings aside, and to leave politics out of the courtroom, to work hard and to do the job. For people who’ve been following the race at all, he said they know that his support comes from across the political spectrum. He cited his support from public defender Lloyd Powell and county prosecutor Brian Mackie. He noted that he’d also been rated outstanding by the Women Lawyers Association of Michigan. He was gratified that they’d done that because the easy, default position would have been to say that the man rates lower than the woman, he said.

Election Information

These candidates will be on the ballot for the Nov. 6 general election. To see a sample ballot for your precinct, visit the Secretary of State’s website. Additional information about local candidates and other voter information is available on the Washtenaw county clerk’s elections division website.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of election campaigns. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. And if you’ve already ruled in favor of supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!