Ward 5 Ann Arbor city council candidates Chuck Warpehoski and Vivienne Armentrout. (Photos by the writer.)

The Ward 5 seat will be open this year, because incumbent Carsten Hohnke chose not to seek a third two-year term on the 11-member council – which includes the mayor and two representatives from each of the city’s five wards. Democratic primaries are contested this year in just four of the five wards, as Christopher Taylor is unchallenged in Ward 3.

Hohnke was first elected to the council in 2008, winning the general election against Republican John Floyd. In the August primary that year, Hohnke won a very close race against Armentrout, who is competing for a Ward 5 seat again this year.

Armentrout said she’s running based on her experience – and her involvement in the civic life of Ann Arbor. She cited her involvement with organizations like the Ecology Center, Project Grow, and the League of Women Voters. She also cited her service on public bodies like the city’s solid waste commission, the city budget review committee, as well as the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, an elected position that she held for eight years.

After she left the board of commissioners, she worked as a journalist, she said, focusing primarily on city issues for the Ann Arbor Observer. And she’s been writing a local issues blog since 2009 – Local in Ann Arbor. She wants to apply her experience to represent the residents of Ward 5.

Warpehoski told the forum attendees that he is running because he wants to serve the community. He stressed his strong Democratic values – like environmental protection, and a commitment to a strong social safety net. In his day job as executive director of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, he is already serving the community, he said, but service on the city council is another way to serve the community. He stressed the importance of the mix that Ann Arbor offers – of a vibrant downtown and great neighborhoods.

Warpehoski noted that elections end up being a discussion about candidates. But fundamentally, he said, he does not believe that public service and elected office is about the candidate – rather, it’s about the community. That’s why the center of his campaign has been knocking on doors all across Ward 5, he said. And when he approaches the door, he said he’s not starting with a commercial for himself. Instead, he begins with a question: What’s on your mind about what’s going on in the city?

The single main policy issue that candidates were asked to address was a possible new train station at the Fuller Road site – and transportation is an issue on which Armentrout and Warpehoski have the most different perspectives. But the Fuller Road Station was touched on just briefly. Armentrout listed several reasons why she’s opposed to a rail station at Fuller Road, while Warpehoski is supportive of the idea. But he indicated that if the ultimate recommendation of a current study that’s being conducted is to locate a new facility at Fuller Road, he thinks it deserves a public referendum, because it is public land.

Aside from opening and closing statements, not a lot of specific local policy ground was covered by questions put to the candidates – due in part to a time constraint of about an hour for eight candidates. But the candidates did talk a great deal about issues of transparency and group dynamics on the city council – in response to the leadoff question from forum moderator Mike Henry, co-chair (with Anne Bannister) of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

Responding to the question of working as a group, Warpehoski described the techniques of “deep listening,” and stressed the importance of assuming good intent. For her part, Armentrout stressed the importance of  expressing mutual respect and in making decisions based on data and on the merits of the case, and “arguing politely,” whatever the case is.

Broadcast live earlier in the week on the Community Television Network was a League of Women Voters candidate forum that included Armentrout and Warpehoski, which is available online.

The deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 7 primary has passed. Oct. 9 is the last day to register to vote for the Tuesday, Nov. 6 general election. Information on voter registration can be found on the Washtenaw County clerk’s elections division website. To see a sample ballot for your precinct, visit the Secretary of State’s website. The League of Women Voters also has an online voter information site – Vote411.org – which includes biographical information on some candidates, stances on issues, and a “build my ballot” feature.

Opening Statements

Warpehoski: He led off by saying that voters could find out more about him by visiting his website: voteforchuck.org.

As he goes door-to-door, he reported, people ask him why he is running for city council. His answer, he said, might sound almost anachronistic, but the reason he’s running is because he wants to serve the community. He loves Ann Arbor, and in his day job as executive director of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, he sees an opportunity to serve the community. And service on the city council is another way to serve the community, he said.

Part of what makes Ann Arbor so unique, and so great, is that it has a really unique mix, Warpehoski said. The library is sited downtown, and people come from all over the state to experience what Ann Arbor’s downtown offers. And right next to the downtown, there’s a transition to great neighborhoods – he noted that the location of the candidate forum’s venue, at the Ann Arbor Community Center on North Main, is an example. The council needs to preserve both of those areas, he said.

As a Democrat, the values of environmental protection and human services funding are near and dear to his heart. That needs to be well-represented on the city council. The other thing he’s committed to, he said, is responsive government – whether that’s customer service trying to get a permit to build a deck or to get a pothole filled. It also means listening to and involving citizens in decision-making. From his work at the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, he’s learned that people can get across their differences by listening and engaging – and that’s what he hopes to bring to the city council.

Armentrout: She also gave the URL of her campaign website – viviennearmentrout.com.

She is running on her experience, Armentrout said. She represents all of the progressive ideas that she also thinks probably all the other candidates have. What she’s especially emphasizing, she said, is her past involvement in the civic life of Ann Arbor. When she arrived in Ann Arbor 26 years ago, the first thing she did was to get involved in the Democratic Party. The next thing she did was to volunteer at the Ecology Center. She got involved with Project Grow, and the League of Women Voters. She was appointed to the solid waste commission, and she served on the city budget review committee for over a year.

Then she was elected to the Washtenaw County board of commissioners and served eight years on the board. After she left the board of commissioners, she worked as a journalist, focusing primarily on city issues for the Ann Arbor Observer. Since 2009 she has written a local issues blog – Local in Ann Arbor. That’s experience, she concluded, but it also shows she has a real concern for this community and she hope she can apply her experience to represent the residents of Ward 5.

Working as a Group

Question: As a member of a legislative body, one of the things you’ll be judged by is what you can accomplish as a group. There’ll be group dynamics and differences of opinion. Mike Henry’s question invited candidates to talk about how they would approach finding solutions amid that difference of opinion.

Background: Henry’s question implicitly recalled  the sentiments of Democratic county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who wrote as a citizen to the entire city council in the fall of last year, roundly castigating councilmembers for decisions that resulted in the demolition of seven houses on South Fifth Avenue, to be replaced by two large apartment buildings (City Place). Kestenbaum had stressed the importance of working as a group: “A city council is not judged by the good intentions of its members. It is judged by what it accomplishes, or fails to accomplish, as a body.”

Warpehoski: As the question states, he began, the city council is a group that needs to work together. Right now, he said, there tend to be factions, and the city council doesn’t always move together.

In his experience with the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, he said, they often have differences of opinion around the table – about which issues they should address and how they should address those issues. What he’s found in his service is two parts to making it work. First, it’s important to engage in “deep listening.” When a concern comes up, he explained, if you’re able to take the time to listen – not just to the palpable concern, but also to what lies beneath it – you can find a workable solution that can move the group forward together. That takes work, and it takes time, and it takes attending to a culture of trust and openness, he suggested.

Second, when he does work around tense issues – like racial justice work or things like that – one of the ground rules you have to set is you have to assume good intent. All the candidates at the table, himself included, are there because they want to serve Ann Arbor. A seat on the Ann Arbor city council is not a position of power and glory, he ventured, but rather a position of service. It means recognizing that even though they might disagree, he said, they are all working for the benefit of the community. And assuming good intent helps to establish a culture of trust. He’s seen that work at the ICPJ, and he feels like that’s something that he can bring to the council.

Armentrout: She explained that she has served on many committees, some as chair, and she believes in expressing mutual respect to all members. She believes in making decisions based on data and on the merits of the case. She believes in arguing politely, whatever the case is. She described herself as very process-oriented. She has also participated in putting bylaws together for committees, she said, and she practices good parliamentary procedure. She does not believe in block voting, she said. When she served on the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, she was sometimes in a coalition with others whose viewpoints she opposed on other issues. She hoped that we would not see factional voting on the city council. She would work to see that that does not happen, she said.

Transparency

Moderator Mike Henry then picked up on the mention of transparency by Ward 2 candidate Sally Petersen and Ward 1 candidate Sumi Kailasapathy. Henry asked those who are currently on the city council – Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – how they felt about the current level of transparency. Eric Sturgis made clear that he, and perhaps Armentrout, also wanted to respond to that question. So several of the other candidates had a go at the question.

Armentrout: She noted that she had once edited a book on planning techniques – it was called “The Planner’s Use of Information.” It had an excellent chapter by an author who specializes in the whole issue of public involvement, she explained. One of the things the author had written, which had made an impression on Armentrout, was that if you choose to involve the public in the process, you have to take into account what the public has to say.

She felt that the city council has moved in recent years really quite commendably toward the appearance of transparency – by making information much more freely available, which she really appreciates. In the case of the possible conference center on top of the South Fifth Avenue underground parking structure, it was really nice that a website had been established that included all of the responses to the RFP (request for proposals). And there were open meetings of the RFP committee. However, she said, the opinions of the public were not ever actually solicited. And there was no public comment opportunity made available at any of the RFP review committee meetings.

[By way of background on the conference center to which Armentrout alluded, the council had voted on April 4, 2011 to end the RFP review process for the top of the new underground parking garage. That decision came after a committee had selected a proposal for a hotel/conference center by Valiant Partners as the preferred proposal among six that had been submitted. The lack of an opportunity for public comment at the RFP review committee meetings was documented as part of The Chronicle's coverage of the final meeting of that committee, in the form of a column.]

Warpehoski: He began by taking the advice of someone in the audience – that the candidates should stand up so that their voices would project better throughout the room. He quipped that, “Part of transparency is for everybody to be able to hear …”

He noted that several candidates had addressed the issue of transparency in terms of whether the information is out there and whether it’s available. One of the challenges we have today in the information age, he cautioned, is the “drinking from a fire hose effect.” There’s a tremendous amount of information on the city website and elsewhere, he noted. What he had found from his service on the countywide transportation district advisory committee was that very few people are up for reading all 180 pages in a document. So part of that process has to be making that information more accessible – so people don’t have to spend four hours reading it, but can identify what is involved.

He noted that some conversations are public – like when we have public hearings. But some of the conversations are one-on-one – like the conversations he’s had about the 4-3 lane conversion on Jackson Road as he’s gone door-to-door campaigning. Those are important conversations, too. He also pointed out that making decisions involves using multiple sources of information – public input and public perceptions being one source. Those types of information are actually vital, he said. But it’s also important to have expert opinion and expert analysis and really look at data.

Top Issue (Fuller Road Station)

Question: Is there one overriding issue that you would like to work on? [Vivienne Armentrout was the first respondent to the question, and she identified the proposed Fuller Road Station as one reason she'd been prompted to run for city council. So moderator Mike Henry asked the other candidates to try to share their thoughts on the Fuller Road Station as well.]  

Background: At its June 4, 2012 meeting, the city council accepted the award of a roughly $2.8 million federal grant to help fund a site-alternatives analysis for possible construction of a new train station. The Amtrak station is currently located on Depot Street, near the Broadway bridges. The site-alternatives analysis is meant to result in the confirmation of a locally-preferred alternative to be reviewed by the Federal Rail Administration. The preliminary locally-preferred alternative is a site on Fuller Road near the University of Michigan medical complex. That site preference is based on previous planning work, as well as work for which the city has already expended roughly $700,000 (which satisfies the 20% local match requirement of the FRA grant).

Previously, the University of Michigan and the city had a memorandum of understanding that would have led to the construction of a 1,000-space parking structure at the Fuller Road site, in conjunction with the train station. However, on Feb. 10, 2012, UM withdrew, for now, from a partnership on the project. The Fuller Road Station project has been controversial in part because the site is on land that’s part of the city’s Fuller Park. The area proposed for the train station has been a surface parking lot for many years.

By way of additional background on a specific issue Armentrout raised in her response, Amtrak has three routes in Michigan – the Pere Marquette, the Blue Water and the Wolverine. Ann Arbor residents will most likely be familiar with the Wolverine, which runs between Pontiac and Chicago via Detroit and makes a stop in Ann Arbor. Currently, the state of Michigan absorbs the operating subsidy (the difference between passenger fare revenues and costs) for the Pere Marquette and the Blue Water, while the Wolverine is subsidized on the federal level. The effect of the federal legislation to which Armentrout referred will be to transition the Wolverine to a state subsidy.

Michigan Dept. of Transportation communications officer Janet Foran responded to a Chronicle query by email as follows:

Section 209 of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) of 2008 requires the states to agree on a costing methodology for all Amtrak trains running less than 750 miles in trip length.  Under PRIIA, states will be required to pay these costs and for Michigan that would include the cost of the Wolverine service beginning in FY 2014 (we already provide state support for the Blue Water and Pere Marquette).

If we do nothing, based on current estimates from Amtrak, our subsidy for the Wolverine service would be $14.2M (includes operating and capital charge) and $6.1M for the Blue Water and $3.5M for Pere Marquette services (both those numbers include operating and capital charge). Total cost to Michigan is $23.8M.  If we are able to make the improvements that enhance the service, our market analysis indicates there will be increases in both ridership and revenue, which will lower our subsidy.

Armentrout: There are broad issues, but as far as specific issues one of the things that motivated her to run for a seat on the city council is the proposal to build a new train station at the Fuller Road site. There are multiple reasons why she thinks that is very bad public policy: economic reasons; concerns about precedents that it sets for use of park property; a questionable need for such a station; the possibility it would actually diminish ridership (because it wouldn’t be convenient for people who are currently using the train to travel to Chicago); the lack of money to build it.

Further, she said, she does not believe that there will be trains running. She pointed to Section 209 of the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act (PRIIA) of 2008, which will change the way that Amtrak will be funded. In the year 2014, the state of Michigan will need to absorb the cost of subsidizing the Wolverine Line – from Detroit to Chicago. There will not be federal funds anymore. We’re not currently working on a reality-based solution, she contended.

Warpehoski: In terms of his number one issue, he said, customer service is one thing he would like to see the city do a better job on.

He said he’s talked to a lot of people who’ve been trying to figure out how to solve some problem – get a pothole fixed or dealing with traffic on a residential street. And they don’t know how to get that information from the city. His own experience is that if you can find the right person, they will get things done – because we have a high-quality city staff. Out volunteering in his neighborhood park, people will ask him, for example, about a broken bench in a park on the north side of town.

If you know to talk to Amy Kuras, he said, she will make sure that it gets addressed by the right person. [Kuras is the city's park planner.] But if you don’t know to talk to Amy, he allowed, it can be a maddening experience. He noted that some of the people who are best in the world at customer service are in Ann Arbor – Zingerman’s [a collection of businesses, most famously a deli, which focuses heavily on the quality of its customer service]. And he thinks the city could do better. Though it’s not a flashy process, he feels that it’s an important one.

As far as the train station goes, he thinks the train station is important. He disagreed with Armentrout’s implication that the current station is very accessible. It’s actually difficult to get bus service to the station – to complete the last mile of the journey, he contended. Right now, there is a site selection process in place, and if the site that’s selected is the Fuller Road site, he feels it deserves a public vote – because it’s parkland, it’s a public good, and it deserves a public decision.

Closing Statements

Armentrout: She reiterated that she is running on her experience – but she is also looking to the future, she said. She felt the decisions will be made in the next few years that will affect the future of Ann Arbor. The name of her campaign blog, she said, is “Ann Arbor – It’s Where We Live.” She’d named it that, she explained, because she is trying to focus on a city government’s first job: To serve the residents and local businesses of Ann Arbor.

Armentrout wants to preserve the city as a place where we can live and have a good quality of life. That does not mean that she’s against change, she said. As Ward 2 incumbent Tony Derezinski had said (earlier in the forum), she pointed out that we have to “manage change.”

She wants to see city resources used for the benefit of those who live here. One example that illustrates her view would be the proposed conference center on the Library Lot – which was proposed as a broader economic development objective, not just for the benefit of local Ann Arbor residents and local businesses. That idea of a conference center was killed last year – but it has come up again, she said. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority had commissioned a consultant study for its Connecting William Street project – and “just suddenly” a little report had been “spun off” about why we should have a conference center: “I’ve seen this movie before,” she quipped.

She said she’d been described as independent, and she felt that’s a pretty accurate description. Anybody who knows her knows that she’s pretty confident of her understanding of things, she said. Armentrout promised to be respectful and to judge issues on their merits.

Warpehoski: He thanked everyone for attending and for making an informed choice in the election. The way elections work out, he said, is that they end up being a discussion about candidates. He’s tried to share a little bit about himself with people – his strong Democratic values, environmental protection, commitment to a strong social safety net, his commitment to community service and to listening, as well as his experience in the neighborhood and community.

But fundamentally, he said, he does not believe that public service and elected office is about the candidate – rather, it’s about the community. That’s why the center of his campaign has been knocking on doors all across Ward 5, he said. And when he approaches the door he’s not starting with a commercial for himself. Instead he begins with a question: What’s on your mind about what’s going on in the city?

It’s been an education, he said, that he could not get any other way – listening to people at the doorstep about what is on their minds. For this election, people need to know that he has the values and skills to serve on the council, but fundamentally it’s about respecting the community and serving the community, he concluded.

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Ward 4 Ann Arbor city council candidates Jack Eaton and Margie Teall. (Photos by the writer.)

This year’s Ward 4 race reprises the 2010 contest that Teall won over Eaton with 69% of the vote. Teall has served on the council since 2002 and is seeking her sixth two-year term on the 11-member council – which includes the mayor and two representatives from each of the city’s five wards. Democratic primaries are contested this year in just four of the five wards, as Christopher Taylor is unchallenged in Ward 3. The winner of the Ward 4 Democratic primary will likely not face an on-the-ballot opponent in November – because no Republican has filed and the deadline for independent candidates to file is July 19.

In his remarks on local policy issues, Eaton stressed what he called sensible spending priorities – support for fire and police protection. He framed his thoughts on local issues by pointedly listing out those things he supports, not things he opposes.

Among those things he supports: city parkland – and specifically a possible charter amendment that would require a public referendum on the long-term leasing of parkland (not just sale, as the charter currently reads). He also supports the idea of a park on top of the new underground parking garage. He supports rebuilding the police and fire departments, and spending the city’s street reconstruction tax to repair roads in a timely fashion. If elected, he said he’d support neighborhoods by being a voice for their concerns.

Eaton also stressed some beliefs that could be characterized as classic Democratic Party values – support for labor. He cited his profession as a union-side labor lawyer and indicated that he’d fight against the tools that Republican “bullies” in the state legislature are giving local municipalities to reduce benefits to their union workers.

For her part, Teall cited her own labor credentials by saying she had support from several local unions. She gave an implicit response to Eaton’s focus on fire and police protection by saying that public safety had been a priority since 2002 when she first was elected to council. She indicated that residents could expect to see a greater police presence downtown, as the city has implemented a police recruit program. She identified flooding as currently a top issue for Ward 4, but pointed to the reconstruction of the East Stadium bridges and securing funding for future demolition of the Georgetown Mall as points of progress.

Teall said the city budget is in the best shape it’s been in the time she has served on the city council. The overall theme Teall stressed was a desire to keep Ann Arbor on the track that it started down 10 years ago.

Tracks were part of the one main policy question candidates were asked to comment on – the idea of a new rail station possibly to be constructed at the Fuller Road site. Briefly, Teall thinks it’s an ideal location for a rail station, proximate to the University of Michigan medical center, while Eaton feels it reflects inappropriate spending priorities.

Aside from opening and closing statements, not a lot of specific local policy ground was covered by questions put to the candidates – due in part to a time constraint of about an hour for eight candidates. But the candidates did talk a great deal about issues of transparency and group dynamics on the city council – in response to the leadoff question from forum moderator Mike Henry, co-chair (with Anne Bannister) of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

Broadcast live earlier in the week on the Community Television Network was a local League of Women Voters candidate forum that included Eaton and Teall, which is available online.

The deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 7 primary has passed. Oct. 9 is the last day to register to vote for the Tuesday, Nov. 6 general election. Information on voter registration can be found on the Washtenaw County clerk’s elections division website. To see a sample ballot for your precinct, visit the Secretary of State’s website. The League of Women Voters also has an online voter information site – Vote411.org – which includes biographical information on some candidates, stances on issues, and a “build my ballot” feature.

Opening Statements

Teall: As she had said at the League of Women Voters forum earlier in the week, she is running for reelection in order to keep Ann Arbor on the track that it started down 10 years ago. She does believe that Ann Arbor is doing remarkably well. The city budget is in the best shape it’s been in the time she has served on the council, she said. The city is hiring firefighters and police again, she pointed out. And she contended that residents would see a greater presence of police downtown – because the bicycle patrols are starting up again.

A police recruit program has also been implemented, so we will see more police downtown, she said. At the same time, crime is at its lowest rate in 30 years. Some people have asked if we need more police, she said. It is a matter of perception, and it is important that Ann Arbor is perceived as a safe city. Over the years she has worked hard on many committees, she noted, including the environmental commission and the housing and human services advisory board, and the urban county board.

She’s also worked to address the many issues that Ward 4 faces, Teall said. One of those was the crumbling East Stadium bridges. That project is ahead of schedule, she said, and she was glad to see that State Street has been reopened. It’s great to see it, and she described it as a beautiful bridge. She also worked with state and county officials to secure a $1 million dollar grant for the Georgetown Mall demolition.

Eaton: He began by thanking the Democratic Party for holding the forum. He also thanked everyone in attendance for coming. He introduced himself as a union-side labor lawyer, a lifelong Democrat and a neighborhood activist. He’s running for city council to restore sensible priorities for the city budget. He brings a neighborhood point of view, he said.

He received the endorsement of the Sierra Club Huron Valley Group and the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter – the only environment organizations to make endorsements in city council races, he pointed out. He felt that the endorsement was based on his support for public parks. He supports the proposed amendment to the city charter that will require approval from voters before parkland is repurposed. He supports placing a park on top of the new underground parking garage on South Fifth Avenue.

Ward 4 residents tell him, he said, that city hall needs to focus on sensible priorities – like safety services, infrastructure, and public services. He supports rebuilding the police and fire staff, and using the accumulated street millage funds for the prompt repair of the city’s roads. He said he is a voice for sensible priorities. He’ll represent the neighborhoods and he will provide responsive leadership, he concluded.

Working as a Group

Question: As a member of a legislative body, one of the things you’ll be judged by is what you can accomplish as a group. There’ll be group dynamics and differences of opinion. Mike Henry’s question invited candidates to talk about how they would approach finding solutions amid that difference of opinion.

Background: Henry’s question implicitly recalled the sentiments of Democratic county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who wrote as a citizen to the entire city council in the fall of 2011, roundly castigating councilmembers for decisions that resulted in the demolition of seven houses on South Fifth Avenue, to be replaced by two large apartment buildings (City Place). Kestenbaum had stressed the importance of working as a group: “A city council is not judged by the good intentions of its members. It is judged by what it accomplishes, or fails to accomplish, as a body.”

Teall: She said she appreciated what Ward 5 candidate Chuck Warpehoski had just said about the importance of assuming good intent. [Coverage of other candidate responses is included in separate reports.] It’s something that they should work toward as an organization, she said. She thinks the current city council actually does move things forward – though it takes time and a lot of patience. It also takes listening, she said.

Councilmembers do not stop people from speaking to them, and anyone is welcome to get in touch with them, Teall pointed out. Councilmembers themselves often do have phone conversations about issues and express their intent on issues. On the whole, she felt the council works things through pretty well. She gave credit to mayor John Hieftje for facilitating issues on the council.

There is a perception of a lot of bickering, she allowed, but she felt that councilmembers don’t bicker as much as what might be portrayed in the media – which trades on bickering, she said.

Moderator Mike Henry followed up by asking Teall if she felt that the city council always comes up with the best solution as a group. Teall said that it’s not always been the perfect solution, but yes. The city council represents a very diverse community, she said, and by going through a lot of public process – public hearings and community meetings – the council tries to move forward in the best direction for the whole city.

Eaton: Earlier, candidate for Ward 5 Chuck Warpehoski had suggested that an essential premise for working effectively as a group is to assume good intent. So Eaton suggested that we should also start with the premise that mostly the city council does work together – as most votes are unanimous or nearly unanimous.

However, it’s important that the council have a robust discussion in front of the public about those things that are of great importance, Eaton said. Examples of things of great importance are spending priorities: Should we spend our money on police and fire protection or on something else? Those kinds of issues require good and robust public discussion, he said. He pointed out that in the past, there was some snarkiness behind-the-scenes in e-mails, and that had been destructive to the overall relationship on the council. But public disagreement among councilmembers shouldn’t be characterized as bickering, he suggested.

Eaton noted that he is a labor lawyer by trade, and works in adversarial contexts. His talent, he said, is to work with people who don’t agree, to try to find common ground and to mediate things, and to build a lasting relationship. It’s not whether you win this argument or lose that argument, he explained, but rather about building a relationship that will last over time. It’s not bickering, but rather a negotiation in a search for common ground.

Moderator Mike Henry ventured that Eaton agreed with Teall, that the council is moving forward in an orderly fashion. Eaton cheerfully objected to having words put in his mouth. Eaton clarified that he believes there is a majority on the council that comes to meetings with a predetermined outcome. And that meant that the discussion that happens is too late, and the public hearing that happens is too late – because the decision has already been made.

Eaton said that on those matters where there is not unanimous agreement on the council, councilmembers need to drag that discussion out into the public, and that discussion needs to take place after the public expresses its feelings at the podium. So he did not agree with Teall on that issue, he concluded.

Transparency

In their responses to the question about working as a group, moderator Mike Henry picked up on the mention of transparency by Ward 2 candidate Sally Petersen and Ward 1 candidate Sumi Kailasapathy. Henry asked those who are currently on the city council – Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – how they felt about the current level of transparency. Ward 1 candidate Eric Sturgis made clear that he, and perhaps Vivienne Armentrout (Ward 5 candidate), also wanted to respond to that question. So some other candidates had a go at the question, too – but it didn’t come back around to Eaton.

Teall: She feels there is a great deal of transparency on the city council. We live in a society that includes not just men and women but also rules and regulations – and part of that in a representative democracy is that representatives are elected to the city council. [Teall used the phrase "men and women" because Ward 1 candidate Sumi Kailasapathy had suggested – in support of the idea of creating an ethics policy for the city council – that democracy is "not about men and women," but rather about rules and regulations.]

The RFP (request for proposals) review process for the Library Lot, Teall said, was very open and transparent: “I don’t know how many times I can say that, and people will still say that it wasn’t.” There were public meetings throughout, and there were no closed meetings – it was all open. She feels that the council does a pretty good job. It is much more transparent now, she allowed, than when she began her service on the city council. The neighborhood meetings that developers are now required to conduct is an example of that, and those meetings have been very successful. The public participation meeting is a required part of the development process now, she pointed out.

Teall felt that people often have issues with the fact that properties are owned by people, and we can’t tell the owners of the property what to do with their property. Moderator Mike Henry followed up by asking Teall why she thinks people say they still perceive that there’s a lack of transparency. Her answer: “I think it serves their interests.”

Top Issue (Fuller Road Station)

Question: Is there one overriding issue that you would like to work on? [Ward 5 candidate Vivienne Armentrout was the first respondent to the question, and she identified the proposed Fuller Road Station as one reason she'd been prompted to run for city council. So moderator Mike Henry asked the other candidates to try to share their thoughts on the Fuller Road Station as well.]

Background: At its June 4, 2012 meeting, the city council accepted the award of a roughly $2.8 million federal grant to help fund a site-alternatives analysis for possible construction of a new train station. The Amtrak station is currently located on Depot Street, near the Broadway bridges. The site-alternatives analysis is meant to result in the confirmation of a locally-preferred alternative to be reviewed by the Federal Rail Administration. The preliminary locally-preferred alternative is a site on Fuller Road near the University of Michigan medical complex. That site preference is based on previous planning work, as well as work for which the city has already expended roughly $700,000 (which satisfies the 20% local match requirement of the FRA grant).

Previously, the University of Michigan and the city had a memorandum of understanding that would have led to the construction of a 1,000-space parking structure at the Fuller Road site, in conjunction with the train station. However, on Feb. 10, 2012, UM withdrew, for now, from a partnership on the project. The Fuller Road Station project has been controversial in part because the site is on land that’s part of the city’s Fuller Park. The area proposed for the train station has been a surface parking lot for many years.

Teall: She said she could not identify only one issue citywide, but for Ward 4 it would be to try to solve the flooding problems. She said she did not realize until recently that the footing drain disconnect program actually goes back to the 1990s, when there were hundreds of houses and people who were affected. That’s been significantly reduced due to the footing drain disconnect program, she said. But there is still a lot of work to do. She has learned about the extraordinary expense to actually replace all the infrastructure.

[The footing drain disconnect program aims to ensure that stormwater flow does not enter the city's sanitary system unnecessarily. In the course of developing some areas of the city, the footing drains of buildings were connected to the city's sanitary sewer system. That led to backups of raw sewage into some people's basements. The disconnection program aims to sever the connection between footing drains and the sanitary sewer system, and to connect the drains instead to the city's stormwater system. Chronicle coverage of the footing drain disconnect program is included in a May 2011 report on downtown planning.

This spring, the Ann Arbor city council has heard public commentary during its meetings on overland stormwater flow problems in the Churchill Downs neighborhood, which is part of Ward 4 – the ward that Teall and Eaton are competing to represent.]

As far as the train station goes, Teall supports an effort to relocate and build a new transit station in Ann Arbor. She feels that the current Amtrak station is not adequate – because she doesn’t feel that parking is adequate there. She does not support putting a new train station on the MichCon site [near the current location of the Amtrak site on Depot Street near the Broadway bridges], because she wants to see a beautiful park there on the riverfront. She thinks that the Fuller Road site is a perfect spot for a rail station.

Teall stated that 24,000 people a day come into work at the University of Michigan hospitals, so to help accommodate that and to take cars off the highway would be a very good thing, she said. She thinks that the funding will eventually be there for the station construction. She felt that it would not cost the city much to have what she thinks will be a world-class train station.

Eaton: He began by saying that he did not feel that any of the candidates had run on a single issue. But if he had to pick his top issue, then it would be the city’s spending priorities. That’s a very broad-based issue, he noted. When you have a $79 million general fund budget, you have to allocate that money based on priorities.

Eaton’s priority is public safety. This year, the city has started to rebuild its police and fire departments – partly through a SAFER grant, which came, he believed, from the state. The SAFER grant will allow more firefighters to be hired, Eaton said, but the city had not received the COPS grant it had applied for.

[The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) program is a federally funded program. The announcement of Ann Arbor's grant came on May 30, 2012. The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program is also a federal program. Both grant applications factored into deliberations by the city council on the FY 2013 budget.]

So we’re back to having to make hard decisions in the budget, Eaton concluded. He does not believe that closing fire stations will remedy the fire department’s response time issue.

[The city has six stations, one of which was closed several years ago – Station #2. The proposal to which Eaton was referring is a plan to re-open Station #2, but to close Stations #4 and #6, using just Stations #1, #2, and #5. For Chronicle coverage of the proposal, including maps of how the coverage is proposed to work, see "A Closer Look at Ann Arbor's Fire Station Plan." The city is currently accepting feedback on the proposal. Emailed comments can be sent to feedback@a2gov.org with the subject line "Fire Proposal."]

Budget priorities have to accommodate the fact that we have a very tight budget, Eaton said. We shouldn’t be spending millions of dollars on an Amtrak station when we believe we can’t afford to re-fund our police and fire departments, he concluded.

Closing Statements

Eaton: He began his closing statement by saying, “I’m a Democrat.” He feels that if someone runs or serves in local office as a Democrat, they should be active in the local Democratic Party [an implicit contrast between himself and Teall, who by many accounts is not active in the local organization.]. He said he had been active and would continue to be active in the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

He’s a labor lawyer, and he believes that the labor movement is at the front line of the “war that the Republicans are waging on the middle class.” As a councilmember, Eaton would not accept the help that the bullies in the Republican legislature are giving local municipalities. We have to recognize the value of our employees, he said. [Among that "help" is legislation limiting the amount that public employers can contribute to their employees' health care. The sentiment expressed by Eaton was echoed at a recent board meeting of the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, as some board members were reluctant to pass a resolution that reduced the AATA contributions to employee health care costs – arguing that just because the state had given them a hammer, that did not mean they had to use it against their employees.]

He’s a neighborhood activist, Eaton continued. Residents in Ward 4 neighborhoods want sensible priorities, he said – public safety, infrastructure and public services. Ann Arbor is a special town, he said. It’s the city council’s obligation to protect and preserve what’s great about the town while we address the fiscal problems that are upon us. It’s time to rebuild our city services – police and fire protection. He would fight to keep all the fire stations open, he said. We need to pay more prompt attention to repairing our roads. We need to develop a plan to address neighborhood flooding, he said. We’ve known since 1997 that the Lawton neighborhood needs relief from the flooding problem.

Teall: She thanked the Ann Arbor Democratic Party for hosting the event, and her supporters. She also appreciated the support of several local unions. She felt that the city needs to address both change and how to move forward. In supporting both businesses and neighborhoods, part of that is certainly economic development, she said. It’s important to have density downtown, to support businesses downtown. She said that all of the merchants are very appreciative of what the city is trying to do for business.

[Teall's remarks about the importance of economic development came after Ward 5 candidate Vivienne Armentrout had just previously criticized a proposal for a conference center on top of the Library Lot as responding to broader economic development objectives, instead of the needs of local Ann Arbor residents and local businesses. The council had voted on April 4, 2011 to end the RFP review process for the top of the new underground parking garage on South Fifth Avenue. That decision came after a committee had selected a proposal for a hotel/conference center by Valiant Partners as the preferred proposal among six that had been submitted. Teall voted against the termination of the review process.]

As far as the city’s budget priorities, safety services were prioritized starting in 2002 when Teall first was elected to the city council, she said. It’s always been a priority, but it hasn’t been easy – it hasn’t been easy in a time of recession to build safety services, she said. But the city has managed to do that, she contended. The fact that the city is hiring in both the police and fire departments is reflective of how strong the city’s budget actually is. She wants to keep the city moving forward in a collaborative manner with all city councilmembers.

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Ward 2 Ann Arbor city council candidates Sally Petersen and Tony Derezinski. (Photos by the writer.)

Derezinski has served on the council since winning election in 2008 and is seeking a third two-year term on the 11-member council – which includes the mayor and two representatives from each of the city’s five wards. Democratic primaries are contested this year in just four of the five wards, as Christopher Taylor is unchallenged in Ward 3. The winner of the Democratic primary in Ward 2 will likely not face an on-the-ballot opponent in November, because no Republican has filed and the deadline for independent candidates to file is July 19.

Contested Ward 2 Democratic primaries are somewhat of a rarity in Ann Arbor. When Derezinski won the primary against Stew Nelson in 2008 with 60% of the vote, the seat was coming open – because Ward 2 incumbent Democrat Joan Lowenstein opted to run for judge of the 15th District Court (a race won by Chris Easthope, a former city councilmember). Derezinski was not challenged in the 2010 Democratic primary, but faced Libertarian Emily Salvette in the November general election that year, winning with 79% of the vote.

In her remarks about herself, Petersen stressed her significant business experience, and mentioned her MBA degree. Locally, she’s worked in senior marketing positions in the private sector for companies like CFI Group and ABN AMRO Mortgage Group. That experience led her to take customer-satisfaction as a principle that could be applied to local government – but she assured attendees at the forum that she did not want to try to run government like a business.

Petersen described her family upbringing as civic-minded, and cited her volunteer experience in Ann Arbor – as board member at the Neutral Zone, president of the Tappan Middle School PTSO, and secretary of the Huron High School Athletic Booster Club. She said she would bring a fresh voice and a fresh agenda to the council.

Derezinski appeared to chafe at Petersen’s description of herself as a fresh voice – raising the possibility that she’s alluding to his age. He ventured that the contrast he offered to a fresh voice was one of “seasoning.” He cited 40 years of experience in municipal law, an area he feels is relevant to city council service. He pointed to his service on the city council as the council’s representative to the city planning commission. He also serves on the public art commission.  When he first ran for office, his slogan was: “Let’s make our great community even better,” and he said he wanted to continue his service, to make the community even better.

Aside from opening and closing statements, not a lot of specific local policy ground was covered by questions put to the candidates – due in part to a time constraint of about an hour for eight candidates. But the candidates did talk a great deal about issues of transparency and group dynamics on the city council – in response to the leadoff question from forum moderator Mike Henry, co-chair (with Anne Bannister) of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

For Petersen and Derezinski, the evolution of candidate remarks moderated by Henry revealed a difference of opinion between the two about inclusiveness and the adequacy of outward- and inward-bound communication. Derezinski was keen to stress the importance of being active in the local Democratic Party (to contrast himself with Petersen who has not been active in the local party) and the importance of electing Democratic candidates to the city council. That view appeared inconsistent with the one Derezinski had expressed at a local League of Women Voters forum held earlier in the week. At the LWV forum, he’d said that he’d be in favor of getting rid of the partisan aspect of Ann Arbor city elections – and conduct local elections in a non-partisan way like the vast majority of other Michigan cities do.

The deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 7 primary has passed. Oct. 9 is the last day to register to vote for the Tuesday, Nov. 6 general election. Information on voter registration can be found on the Washtenaw County clerk’s elections division website. To see a sample ballot for your precinct, visit the Secretary of State’s website. The League of Women Voters also has an online voter information site – Vote411.org – which includes biographical information on some candidates, stances on issues, and a “build my ballot” feature.

Opening Statements

Derezinski: He pointed attendees to the campaign literature table at the back of the room where his pamphlet was available. What he is stressing in his campaign, he said, is his experience. What is the experience that is relevant to serving on the city council? Frankly, he said from his point of view, he practiced law for 40 years and his specialty was municipal law. He completed courses in municipal law at the University of Michigan law school, and then when he returned from service in Vietnam, he went back to school and got a master of laws degree in municipal government.

After that Derezinski practiced law in Muskegon and Grand Rapids, and then in Ann Arbor. He represented local municipalities in his practice, he said. When he first ran for office, his slogan was: “Let’s make our great community even better.” The last four years he has served on the city planning commission and the public art commission. He’s been very active in trying to plan for the future. He feels the city is at a “threshold point,” and said he would like to continue his service to make our great community even better.

Petersen: She offered her thanks to the Democratic Party for hosting the event and to her supporters in the audience. She thinks it’s time for a fresh voice in a fresh agenda that resonates with Ward 2 residents. She said she’s a lifelong Democrat, with significant business experience and an MBA. She has skills that are not currently represented on the city council, she said.

She comes from a very civic-minded family, she said, growing up in Massachusetts – so she’s a “Massachusetts Democrat.” Her father was an Episcopal priest and a civil rights activist, and he demonstrated the value of living a life dedicated to community service. She’s carried on that commitment throughout her life, she said, including the last 16 years she’s been in Ann Arbor. During that time she spent about eight years in the private sector working in senior marketing positions for companies like CFI Group and ABN AMRO Mortgage Group. She also has volunteered significantly in the community throughout her time in Ann Arbor, Petersen said. She is currently a board member at the Neutral Zone, president of the Tappan Middle School PTSO, and secretary of the Huron High School Athletic Booster Club.

A major focus of her career has been customer satisfaction, and that translates to her desire to be a great representative and responsive voice for Ward 2 residents, Petersen said. The more satisfied our residents are, the more likely they are to invest their time and resources in our city. She wants to bring her community experience to the city council table.

Working as a Group

Question: As a member of a legislative body, one of the things you’ll be judged by is what you can accomplish as a group. There’ll be group dynamics and differences of opinion. Mike Henry’s question invited candidates to talk about how they would approach finding solutions amid that difference of opinion.

Background: Henry’s question implicitly recalled  the sentiments of Democratic county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who wrote as a citizen to the entire city council in the fall of 2011, roundly castigating councilmembers for decisions that resulted in the demolition of seven houses on South Fifth Avenue, to be replaced by two large apartment buildings (City Place). Kestenbaum had stressed the importance of working as a group: “A city council is not judged by the good intentions of its members. It is judged by what it accomplishes, or fails to accomplish, as a body.”

Derezinski: He noted that he’d recently discussed with Mike Anglin – a Ward 5 councilmember who was also in attendance at the forum – the idea of bringing civility to the council. Civility is what makes the council function, he said – respecting each other and never taking away someone’s dignity. Every point of view has to be considered, he said. He believes in compromise, because too often things become competitive. Too often it is “I win and you lose.” We have to get away from that in politics and get back to the idea of working together, he said.

When he served in the state legislature, Derezinski recalled, both houses were controlled by the Democrats, but the governor was Republican William Milliken. Still, they had done a lot of good work at that time, he said, passing the Freedom of Information Act and the Open Meetings Act. They had also passed a consumer protection act. They had done that through compromise, he said, and it had worked.

As a local example, Derezinski gave the example of Argo Cascades, which he characterized as a great success. Do you keep the river open, or do you close it and use it for recreation? The compromise was that the city found a way to do both. Other examples he gave of local collaboration included the cooperation among four communities along Washtenaw Avenue for the Reimagining Washtenaw Project. He reiterated that what he brings is collaboration – to make our great community even better.

Petersen: She wanted to expand on the theme of collaboration, having listened to the remarks from the other seven candidates. She cautioned that there are risks to collaboration – and one of those risks is communication that is not transparent. The other risk to successful collaboration is a lack of trust.

Petersen then introduced the idea of an ethics policy. She had been asked recently whether she thought the city needed an ethics policy. At first, she wondered why we would need a policy on the local level. If you simply know who has high standards for personal conduct, you elect them to office, she ventured. You shouldn’t have to worry about ethics at the local level, she said. However, good people who are elected to office have to deal with complex issues, she noted. Sometimes, conflicts of interests come up requiring recusal and disclosure, and that’s the reality of the city council.

Having an ethics policy would give clarity and guidance about how to make those tough decisions – and those tough decisions will need to be made, she said. It’s easy to say that we will all just collaborate and get along together. But the reality is a lot more difficult than that. Having guidelines, she felt, would instill trust in government among all stakeholders.

Transparency

Moderator Mike Henry then picked up on the mention of transparency by Petersen and Ward 1 candidate Sumi Kailasapathy. Henry asked those who are currently on the city council – Derezinski and Margie Teall (Ward 4) – how they felt about the current level of transparency. Eric Sturgis, a Ward 1 candidate, made clear that he and perhaps Vivienne Armentrout, a candidate for Ward 5, also wanted to respond to that question. Several of the candidates had a go at the question.

Derezinski: Transparency is important, he said. He noted that he was involved with the passing of the state’s Open Meetings Act and the Freedom of Information Act back in the 1970s. Beyond those legal requirements, he said, there is an additional good-faith requirement to the community. He described the city’s website as tremendous. He noted that it is possible to track every project that comes before the city planning commission. Using websites is the new way to get information, he said.

In addition to that, he said, just about every councilmember has a website that tries to convey information. [Elected in 2008, Derezinski's website was launched just this year, on Feb. 19, 2012. Petersen had taken out nominating petitions on Feb. 2. When asked by The Chronicle in a telephone interview, Petersen recalled that she had discussed her intention to seek a seat on the council with Ward 3 councilmember Christopher Taylor in late December or January. Derezinski's inaugural post reads in part: "Look for lots of new content in the coming weeks! ... The City Council section will include matters that are being discussed and decided in the various Commissions and Committees and other entities I serve on ..." As of July 18, that section as well as a section on Ward 2 includes only placeholders: "More information coming soon."]

Derezinski also said councilmembers need to have ward meetings. He said he’d had four or five of these meetings already – one at Paesano’s restaurant and one at his house. When there are issues coming up, it’s very important to go out into the neighborhoods and to talk to people about those issues, he said. It’s also important to work with the neighborhood associations, he said. That’s important for government, and that’s what gives you faith in government.

Petersen: She asked moderator Mike Henry for an opportunity to address the issue of transparency as well: “With all due respect, Tony … I’ve never been invited to a ward event …” The message is not getting out, she said. Transparency really is a two-way street, she cautioned. We need to think about how information gets from constituents back to the city, not just from the city out to residents. She wants to make sure that the city council is cognizant of being good representatives of the voices of the people they are representing.

Derezinski: Invited to respond to Petersen by moderator Mike Henry, Derezinski seemed irritated. He contended that “My ward meetings are advertised, including on Democratic Party things – so if you’ve been an active Democrat, you would know about it.” [Anne Bannister, co-chair of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party, indicated to The Chronicle in a telephone interview that she had included notices of some of Derezinski's meetings in an email blast that she sends out.]

In addition, Derezinski continued, he saw some people in the audience who have been to his home more than once, giving Harvey and Nancy Kaplan as examples. Transparency is incredibly important, he said. He’d had a lot of meetings with groups, he said – at Thurston Elementary school for example. Besides him, who’d been there? he asked rhetorically. “A lot of Democrats” was his answer. If someone went to those meetings, he said, they would have seen him there talking about issues.

When the non-motorized path was put in alongside Washtenaw Avenue, he said, he held a meeting at someone’s home, because that was a controversial issue. You have to be available and work on those issues, he said, and he loves doing that. They had a lot of meetings for the Re-Imagining Washtenaw Avenue project, and those are all noticed to the public. If you’re watching public issues and if you’re really attuned to what’s going on in Ann Arbor, you would have known about his meetings, he concluded.

Top Issue

Question: Is there one overriding issue that you would like to work on? [Ward 5 candidate Vivienne Armentrout was the first respondent to the question, and she identified the proposed Fuller Road Station as one reason she'd been prompted to run for city council. So moderator Mike Henry asked the other candidates to try to share their thoughts on the Fuller Road station as well.]

Background: At its June 4, 2012 meeting, the city council accepted the award of a roughly $2.8 million federal grant to help fund a site-alternatives analysis for possible construction of a new train station. The Amtrak station is currently located on Depot Street, near the Broadway bridges. The site-alternatives analysis is meant to result in the confirmation of a locally-preferred alternative to be reviewed by the Federal Rail Administration. The preliminary locally-preferred alternative is a site on Fuller Road near the University of Michigan medical complex. That site preference is based on previous planning work, as well as work for which the city has already expended roughly $700,000 (which satisfies the 20% local match requirement of the FRA grant).

Previously, the University of Michigan and the city had a memorandum of understanding that would have led to the construction of a 1,000-space parking structure at the Fuller Road site, in conjunction with the train station. However, on Feb. 10, 2012, UM withdrew, for now, from a partnership on the project. The Fuller Road Station project has been controversial in part because the site is on land that’s part of the city’s Fuller Park. The area proposed for the train station has been a surface parking lot for many years.

Derezinski: The main issue, he contended, is how to manage change. Change is inevitable. We are at a real threshold in Ann Arbor right now, he said, about what kind of community we want to be. What is the shared vision of the community? We’re making decisions right now that will affect us for generations to come – and our children are going to benefit, as will our grandchildren. That’s a tough thing that the city council faces, he said. There are differences of opinion on where we are going, but you can’t deny the forces of change. The community’s demographics are changing, he said. By the year 2014, one third of residents will be over 65 years old, he noted. At the same time, we are trying to attract young people to keep the downtown vibrant. The question is how we do that in a reasonable way.

As far as the rail station, he agreed with Margie Teall, the Ward 4 incumbent who had suggested locating it near the University of Michigan hospital, which is a major employer for the city of Ann Arbor. It makes sense to have a train station near there, he said, so that people can walk from the station right across a pedestrian bridge to work. He had asked the mayor of Dearborn, when he attended a groundbreaking ceremony for that city’s new train station, how long it took to get to that point. And the mayor had told him: 12 years. Those are the kinds of decisions that Ann Arbor needs to start making now, Derezinski concluded.

Petersen: Her top issue, she said, is going to be defined by the residents of Ward 2. As she has been knocking on doors, she’s been asking everyone what their top three issues are. The top issue – though it changes on a day-to-day basis – has been fiscal sustainability. That means looking at the budget, she said, and really trying to make sure that it is rigorous and that it serves us well in the short term and the long term.

The second thing is schools – improving collaboration with the University Michigan and the Ann Arbor public schools. Ward 2 has a lot of families with young children, mostly in middle school and high school, she explained. Third is improving the delivery of constituent services – roads and all the other things that she and other candidates have been talking about. So, as far as her top issue is concerned, her goal is to be the voice of her constituents. One brief example of an idea she gave was to look at city of Ann Arbor parks and recreation and the public school system’s Rec & Ed. She felt that the recreation portion of those programs could be combined, and economies of scale could be found.

[Petersen did not address the issue of a rail station at Fuller Road within the time limit allotted. However, at the League of Women Voters forum earlier in the week, she'd indicated that if federal money were to become available, she felt that an expansion of the existing station at its current location would be preferable.]

Closing Statements

Petersen: A key component of her campaign, she said, is to differentiate herself based on her business expertise. But she wanted to be clear that it’s not her intention to try to run the city government like you run a business. If you disconnect constituents from the government, they would be disenfranchised, she cautioned.

Instead, Petersen said she would use her business skills to ensure that our local government delivers services equitably and fairly – in two ways. The first way is with respect to budgets. She has served on several boards and committees, she said. She has had responsibility for building budgets and she feels very comfortable in dealing with budgets. She’s currently serving on the Neutral Zone’s board, she said. And she’d identified an accounting irregularity – “board giving” had been double-counted. So the Neutral Zone had to restate its financial statements for the prior year, and they’d reshaped how they report that in the future. With the Tappan PTSO, she had freed up about $20,000 in unallocated capital reserves, she said.

Besides her business experience, the other common thread, Petersen said, is customer service. She wants to be the voice of constituents. What people could expect from her, if elected, is that she would be a trustworthy and responsible steward of tax dollars. She’d bring a strong work ethic, and she’d be someone who would respond to their phone calls and e-mails. She would be a positive and energetic collaborator.

Derezinski: He noted that Petersen had emphasized that she is a “fresh voice.” What does the word “fresh” connote on the other side? he asked. It could be age, he ventured, but it could also be “seasoning.” Or it could be “experience.” That’s what he thinks he is bringing to the table. He is seasoned and he has a lot of experience in government, he said – both at the state and the local levels. Some of the legislation he helped pass as a state legislator is very relevant to the work of a local government.

He said he has represented a number of municipal governments across the state. That’s what he brings to the table – a specific education in municipal government in 40 years of experience practicing in that area of law. In addition, he said he comes to voters as a Democrat – and “Democrats are family.” He was one of eight children, he said, and at the age of seven he became the man of the family when his father died. They were a family that had “joyful fights,” he said, just like the Democrats do. They disagree with each other, but they never lose that abiding faith with each other.

There’s a need to see dignity in everyone, and that’s why he’s been a Democrat all his life, he said. When he arrived in Ann Arbor he got involved in the party right away. He said he’s gone door-to-door with people on campaigns, and he needs people’s help now. He’d like to run as a Democrat, to keep the Democratic Party in office, he said.

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Ward 1 Ann Arbor city council candidates Sumi Kailasapathy and Eric Sturgis. (Photos by the writer.)

This is the second time that Kailasapathy has run for city council. In 2010 she challenged incumbent Sandi Smith, and received 45% of the vote – the best  showing of any challenger to an incumbent that year. This year, Smith chose not to seek a third two-year term on the 11-member council – which includes the mayor and two representatives from each of the city’s five wards. Democratic primaries are contested this year in just four of the five wards, as Christopher Taylor is unchallenged in  Ward 3.

The winner of the Democratic primary in Ward 1 will likely not face an on-the-ballot opponent in November. No Republican is running, and the deadline for independent candidates to file is July 19.

In remarks about himself, Sturgis stressed his continued connection to the Ann Arbor public school system, having grown up in Ann Arbor attending public schools. He emphasized that he has a positive attitude about Ann Arbor, which is appropriate, he says, because Ann Arbor has been rated as one of the best places to live in the country. He stressed the importance of having a positive vision.

Sturgis also highlighted his endorsements, which include three former Ward 1 councilmembers, as well as outgoing Ward 1 councilmember Sandi Smith. But he highlighted the fact that mayor John Hieftje has not endorsed him, analyzing that as a positive – because that means he wouldn’t be indebted to Hieftje. Sturgis is relatively sanguine about the condition of the city’s budget – to the point that he dismissed Kailasapathy’s concerns about debt and unfunded liabilities by pointing to the slight surplus the city enjoyed in the most recent fiscal year.

Kailasapathy took Sturgis’ remark on debt as an opportunity to draw on her professional experience – as a college educator – to give a short lesson on the difference between income/revenue statements (which Sturgis was talking about) and balance sheets (which show the city’s debt). In her opening remarks, she also stressed her education and her professional training as a certified public account.

Kailasapathy told the audience that she wants to focus on core services and the preservation of neighborhoods and parks. She allowed that she brings a skepticism to government and she would be asking lots of questions.

Candidates were asked to comment on one main policy issue – the idea of a new rail station possibly to be constructed at a site on Fuller Road. Sturgis held in abeyance his view about the proper location of a new rail station, pending the outcome of a site alternatives analysis that is currently being conducted. Kailasapathy’s view, expressed at an earlier forum, is that a voter referendum should be held if the Fuller Road site is used for a train station – because the site is designated as city parkland.

Aside from opening and closing statements, not a lot of specific local policy ground was covered by questions put to the candidates – due in part to a time constraint of about an hour for all eight candidates. But the candidates did talk a great deal about issues of transparency and group dynamics on the city council, in response to the leadoff question from forum moderator Mike Henry, co-chair (with Anne Bannister) of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party.

Broadcast live earlier in the week on the Community Television Network was a local League of Women Voters candidate forum that included Kailasapathy and Sturgis, which is available online.

The deadline to register to vote in the Aug. 7 primary has passed. Oct. 9 is the last day to register to vote for the Tuesday, Nov. 6 general election. Information on voter registration can be found on the Washtenaw County clerk’s elections division website. To see a sample ballot for your precinct, visit the Secretary of State’s website. The League of Women Voters also has an online voter information site – Vote411.org – which includes biographical information on some candidates, stances on issues, and a “build my ballot” feature.

Opening Statements

Kailasapathy: She introduced herself as a CPA who works downtown. She taught at Eastern Michigan University before embarking on her current career, she said. Her main priority is to focus on core services – to ensure that they are funded. She also stressed the preservation of neighborhoods and parks. That is a recurrent theme that she hears as she goes door-to-door, she reported – that people keep saying Ann Arbor’s quality of life is not measured just by how high we can build, but also by how well our parks and neighborhoods are preserved.

Another issue she’s focusing on – as a CPA, and as an economist – is the ballooning unfunded liability of retirement benefits and the city’s debt. Debt service has increased about 50% in the last five years, she said. She said she wanted to respond to the idea that she would be asking questions as a councilmember. Yes, she said, she would be asking questions. That is her professional and academic training. She brings a healthy sense of skepticism to government, she said. And that is the reason we have three branches of government, she said. If we don’t want to ask questions, we can just have the city administration as our government.

Sturgis: He offered his thanks to the organizers and to everyone for coming out. He told attendees that he attended Northside Elementary School, Clague Middle School, and Ann Arbor Huron High School, concluding with “Go Rats!” [Huron High athletic teams are known as the River Rats.] He noted that he continues to be active in the school system and gives money to Huron High school athletics to help kids who cannot afford the pay-to-play fees or the equipment – that’s something that’s near and dear to his heart.

Sturgis grew up with a single mother with his grandparents in the house that his grandfather built. That’s where he is living now, he said. He wants to bring a positive vision to the city. Something he recently read is that Ann Arbor is rated one of the best places to retire in the nation and one of the best places to live in the nation. To him, he said, Ann Arbor is doing something right, if it is receiving all of these accolades. So the city needs a positive vision. We need to support maintenance of our parks, our neighborhoods and we also need to support our police and fire departments.

What is important in the Ward 1 race, Sturgis said, is that he’s the only candidate who has the endorsement of three former Ward 1 city councilmembers and the current city councilmember representing Ward 1 [Sandi Smith]. He said he has also been endorsed by the Washtenaw County Building Trades Labor Organization. His roots are here in Ann Arbor, he said, and he wants to bring a positive vision to the city and to Ward 1.

Working as a Group

Question: As a member of a legislative body, one of the things you’ll be judged by is what you can accomplish as a group. There’ll be group dynamics and differences of opinion. Mike Henry’s question invited candidates to talk about how they would approach finding solutions amid that difference of opinion.

Background: Henry’s question implicitly recalled  the sentiments of Democratic county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who wrote as a citizen to the entire city council in the fall of last year, roundly castigating councilmembers for decisions that resulted in the demolition of seven houses on South Fifth Avenue, to be replaced by two large apartment buildings (City Place). Kestenbaum had stressed the importance of working as a group: “A city council is not judged by the good intentions of its members. It is judged by what it accomplishes, or fails to accomplish, as a body.”

Sturgis: He feels that listening is very important. It’s also important to be open-minded and not have your mind made up or to be “indebted to people” for their views. If you come into a decision indebted to people or with your mind made up, then you’re not going to listen to what others say, he explained. He said he is open-minded and does not have his mind made up. He wants to listen to what people say on every issue. He said he would hold community meetings once a month. He would reach out and bring in those people who are involved.

He’s done a lot of work in adversarial contexts, Sturgis said. When he was at Oakland University, he worked on the Rochester Historical Commission – six Republicans and himself, the one lone Democrat. He was elected treasurer of the commission over a Republican, and on that commission he brought two sides together, he said. When he coached high school tennis and had to cut kids from the team, he tried to work with parents on those issues.

He characterized himself as independent-minded and open-minded, as someone who will listen to people. He would not come in with an attitude of “This is what has to be done.” He’s not indebted to anybody, he said, noting that mayor John Hieftje has not endorsed him. It’s important to have somebody who is open-minded and willing to listen to the people, he said.

Kailasapathy: She indicated agreement with the response from Sally Petersen, a Ward 2 candidate, which included support for an ethics policy. Democracy is not about men and women, Kailasapathy said, but rather about rules and regulations. The more we have rules and regulations to guide us, the less chance there is to make mistakes or take the wrong turn, she said.

Transparency is a big issue for her, too, she said. How much information are we willing to put out before a decision is made? She really felt that a couple of years ago, decisions were made behind the scenes about whether there was going to be a conference center on top of the South Fifth Avenue underground parking garage. And then a proposal for a conference center was brought forward, and people were asked: Would you like a conference center there? That’s not transparency, she contended.

People should not be given choices, she said, but rather the choices themselves should be generated by the public. It’s important to listen carefully and not make a mockery out of public debate, she said: Public debate should be public. From her professional background, she said, she brings a concept of “drilling down.” If you don’t have enough information and it doesn’t make any sense, then drill down. That itself will bring people together, she said.

[By way of brief background on the conference center to which Kailasapathy alluded, the council had voted on April 4, 2011 to end the RFP (request for proposals) review process for the top of the new underground parking garage. That decision came after a committee had selected a proposal for a hotel/conference center by Valiant Partners as the preferred proposal among six that had been submitted to the city.]

Transparency

Moderator Mike Henry then picked up on the mention of transparency by Kailasapathy and Ward 2 candidate Sally Petersen. Henry asked those who are currently on the city council – Margie Teall (Ward 4) and Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) – how they felt about the current level of transparency. Sturgis made clear that he, and perhaps Ward 5 candidate Vivienne Armentrout, also wanted to respond to that question. Several of the candidates had a go at the question.

Sturgis: He gave the example of the 618 S. Main project, which he described as including a total of eight public and community meetings. There were many opportunities for the public to give their opinion, and to meet councilmembers. And there was overwhelming support for the project, he said. He also noted that every council meeting is televised and replayed. There’s easy access to the city budget, he said – electronically and in physical form. It is also important to have ward meetings.

But when you’re financially supported by people who try to “pay the city off” to just have a park on the Library Lot, that isn’t transparent, he contended. That stifles competition, he said.

[By way of background, one of the six proposals that came in response to the city's RFP for the top of the underground parking garage was from Dahlmann Apartments Ltd. for a project called Ann Arbor Town Square, which would have consisted of a park-like amenity. Part of the proposal was a $2.5 million payment to the city.]

Sturgis returned to the point that typically numerous meetings are held about projects and input is solicited from the public. He agreed with remarks from Chuck Warpehoski (a Ward 5 candidate) and Margie Teall (the incumbent Ward 4 candidate) when they said that a basic premise is that everybody here is doing this for the right reason. He feels that Ann Arbor’s city government is one of the most transparent governments in Michigan.

Top Issue (Fuller Road Station)

Question: Is there one overriding issue that you would like to work on? [Ward 5 candidate Vivienne Armentrout was the first respondent to the question, and she identified the proposed Fuller Road Station as one reason she'd been prompted to run for city council. So moderator Mike Henry asked the other candidates to try to share their thoughts on the Fuller Road station as well.]

Background: At its June 4, 2012 meeting, the city council accepted the award of a roughly $2.8 million federal grant to help fund a site-alternatives analysis for possible construction of a new train station. The Amtrak station is currently located on Depot Street, near the Broadway bridges. The site-alternatives analysis is meant to result in the confirmation of a locally-preferred alternative to be reviewed by the Federal Rail Administration. The preliminary locally-preferred alternative is a site on Fuller Road near the University of Michigan medical complex. That site preference is based on previous planning work, as well as work for which the city has already expended roughly $700,000 (which satisfies the 20% local match requirement of the FRA grant).

Previously, the University of Michigan and the city had a memorandum of understanding that would have led to the construction of a 1,000-space parking structure at the Fuller Road site, in conjunction with the train station. However, on Feb. 10, 2012, UM withdrew, for now, from a partnership on the project. The Fuller Road Station project has been controversial in part because the site is on land that’s part of the city’s Fuller Park. The area proposed for the train station has been a surface parking lot for many years.

Sturgis: He feels there are three kind of issues all kind of lumped together. He liked what Ward 5 candidate Chuck Warpehoski had said previously about the importance of customer service. He reported that he’d e-mailed Ward 1 councilmember Sabra Briere on different issues, and she had been very responsive about telling him who to talk to at the city. Having councilmembers who can do that is important, he said.

On the train station, Sturgis said he is not sold on the idea that the Fuller Road site is the best spot. He wants to hear what the Federal Rail Administration says. He wants to hear what the FRA’s recommendation is, because they are doing a comprehensive study, and they are using trained people with degrees, and they’ve done it on numerous occasions. He wants to hear why the FRA wants to put a station on Fuller Road or on the MichCon site. He would respect what the FRA said. He would also not be opposed to putting it on the ballot to talk about. But we should respect the people who work for the FRA, he said, because they have done this before, and they know what they’re doing.

Another issue he cited: Neighborhood concerns in the ward. For example, there are kids in the neighborhoods – kids who live at Arrowwood – who walk a mile to school in the dark without lights. It’s important to be able to work with the school board. Coming back to the rail station, he said we need to hold off on our opposition to the railway and hear what the FRA says.

Kailasapathy: She identified as a top issue the need to look at the issue of debt and the unfunded liability of retirement benefits. Being in a predominately Democratic city, we “kick the proverbial can down the road,” she said, and don’t want to address this issue. Most of those in attendance are for unions and are strongly committed to unions, she ventured. And she understands that we need to have a strong and vibrant middle class, which is what the unions had fought for and had given us. So what are we going to do with this issue of unfunded liabilities?

Pensions are about 88% funded, but retiree health benefits are only 33% funded, she stated. [For some background on recent changes in the way the city is allocating retiree health care costs to different units in the city, see Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor Budget Outlook Okay, CFO Cautious"] These are huge issues, she stressed, and local governments don’t have the fiscal tools of the federal government – that is, we cannot print money. So we need to negotiate with the unions and be honest with them, she said. One idea she floated is to increase the retirement age to 60. This is a Democratic issue, she said, because when these pension plans were set up decades ago, people’s life spans were much shorter – but people live longer now, she concluded.

[Kailasapathy did not address the Fuller Road Station question at the Ann Arbor Democratic Party forum. But at the League of Women Voters forum earlier in the week, she indicated that she felt a public referendum should be held on the question of building a train station on city parkland like the Fuller Road site.]

Closing Statements

Sturgis: Going door-to-door, he hears a lot of different things, Sturgis reported. One of the underlying themes he hears is that people want someone who is positive and not opposing everything. People want to hear solutions – how are you going to help the transit? How are you going to better maintain our parks? What do you want to do on top of the Library Lot? They don’t want to hear that everything is wrong. They want to hear something positive.

Secondly, he said, there’s a notion that we are in debt, when he said in fact the city had enjoyed a surplus for its most recent year. Apparently attempting a sardonic quip, Sturgis said “usually” you’re not in debt if you have a surplus. The other thing is we can’t micromanage city staff, he said. We have to trust city staff, the people who have degrees, who’ve been hired to make those decisions. We need an open-minded, independent candidate who is not affiliated with any particular group, who’s going to vote based on the issues for the voters of Ward 1 and the residents of Ann Arbor. He concluded by ticking through a list of his endorsements.

Kailasapathy: She noted that she had been an active member of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party. She served as treasurer of that organization until the beginning of this year, when she stepped down from that post in order to run for city council. She told Mike Henry and the rest of the Ann Arbor city Democrats that they were doing a good job.

She then said she wanted to make a correction to a statement that Sturgis had just made in his closing statement. He had contended that the city did not have debt – because the city had just shown a surplus in it most recent year. That’s where having a CPA and a political economist on the city council is helpful, she said. There was a slight surplus in the general fund, she allowed. But he was wrong about the debt – because they were talking about two different things. He was talking about the financial statements for income and revenue.

But debt is about the balance sheet, she said. And on the balance sheet for fiscal year 2011, if you include the bonded debt, and the potential unfunded liability for the VEBA [the Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association plan], it came to $457 million. For the next fiscal year, she expected it would be half a billion dollars. And that’s where it’s important to know the difference between income statements and balance sheets, she said. These are huge issues, she said, and we don’t want the city to tumble into debt, not knowing the difference between an income statement and a balance sheet. That ultimately determines how much money the city can borrow. She concluded by saying that she was happy to have the endorsement of the Sierra Club.

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Sabra Briere (Ward 1) at the June 11 forum hosted by the Ann Arbor Democratic Party. (Photos by the writer.)

But unless an independent candidate files by Aug. 15, Briere’s path to re-election is completely free of opponents.

Still, the Ann Arbor Democratic Party invited all Democratic candidates to a forum on Saturday morning, June 11. Unlike primary elections themselves, which cost the city about $7,000 per ward to administer, the only additional cost to the extra invitations was two minutes of the public’s time.

The forum was held in the context of the Ann Arbor Democratic Party’s regular monthly meeting at its usual location in the Ann Arbor Community Center on North Main Street.

At the forum, the seven Democratic candidates in those wards with contested primary races were asked to respond to a series of questions from party co-chair Mike Henry. Briere and Higgins were also invited to deliver some remarks at the conclusion of the event. Higgins was not able to attend, but Briere accepted the invitation.

After the break, we summarize what Briere had to say in her allotted two minutes, after she listened to the other candidates respond to questions posed by Henry. We also provide a sampling of photos from Saturday’s event. Summaries of responses made by candidates for seats in Ward 2, Ward 3 and Ward 5 are presented in separate articles.

It’s also worth noting that the last day to register to vote for the Aug. 2, 2011 primary is July 5.

Sabra Briere’s Remarks

Briere said she was honored to be asked to speak, because she does not have a contested primary. And unless something happens between now and August, she won’t have a challenger in November, either.

There are good things about not having a challenger, but there are bad things as well, she cautioned. One of the bad things is that as a candidate you don’t get as many opportunities to express your views. You don’t get an opportunity to go out and meet people and have them happy to see you at the door – because really, all you are doing is interrupting them.

She’d listened to all the other candidates speak about how to set priorities for the budget. The council has wrangled with that, she said, since she’s served on the council. [Briere was first elected in 2007.] She said she didn’t think the council has a good prioritization system: We want everything; you want everything, she told the audience. The result is a little nibbling away at everything, she said – it’s never because we’ve all decided this is the direction we want to go in.

On the topic of agreements and disagreements, she said that councilmembers don’t all agree. But she said that Mike Anglin, in his remarks, was right in pointing out that 99% of the council votes are unanimous – those are the votes where there’s no controversy. When there is controversy, she said, there’s disagreement. It depends on councilmembers’ ability to reflect their constituents’ needs. Some will fall on one side and some on the other.

The good news is that councilmembers are all colleagues, she said. They collaborate when they need to. It’s that collaboration that allows the council to do its work, Briere concluded, and it’s the controversy that makes things interesting.

Ann Arbor Democratic Party Candidate Forum: Photos

Mike Henry, Ann Arbor Democratic Party co-chair, moderated the June 11 forum.

Anne Bannister, Ann Arbor Democratic Party co-chair, handled some regular routine business at the start of the meeting.

Susan Baskett was not swearing to keep time with the clock in her hand, but the Ann Arbor Public Schools board member was in fact recruited to handle timekeeping chores.

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The forum was hosted by the Ann Arbor Democratic Party for all city council candidates in contested wards for the Aug. 2 primary election. The event was held in the context of the Democratic Party’s regular monthly meeting at its usual location in the Ann Arbor Community Center on North Main Street.

Ann Arbor's Ward 5 is the yellow highlighted wedge on this city map. The image links to the city of Ann Arbor's My Property page. Type in your address for definitive information about which ward and precinct you live in, along with other information.

The winner of the Ward 5 primary will face Republican Stuart Berry in the general election on Nov. 8. Currently, only Democrats serve on Ann Arbor’s city council.

Republicans have also filed in Ward 4 (Eric Scheie) and Ward 3 (David Parker). In Ward 2, the lack of a Republican challenger means that spot is almost sure to be decided in the Aug. 2 Democratic primary. For the open Ward 1 seat, currently held by Sabra Briere, no partisan challenger filed. Independent candidates have until Aug. 15, 2011 at 5 p.m. to file petitions to run in November.

The last day to register to vote for the Aug. 2, 2011 primary is July 5, 2011.

In this report, we give paraphrased summaries of responses from the Ward 5 candidates. Summarized remarks made by candidates for seats in Ward 2 and Ward 3 are presented in separate articles.

Other Attendees, Logistics

Before getting into the candidate responses, we’ll briefly describe the June 11 gathering. By way of background, the Ann Arbor city council consists of the mayor plus two representatives from each of five wards, who serve for two years each. That means each year, one of the two representative seats for each ward is up for election.

Saturday’s Democratic Party forum was attended by five out of 11 current councilmembers: Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) all participated in the candidate forum. Sabra Briere (Ward 1), whose Democratic primary race this year is uncontested, was invited to make remarks at the end of the forum, which she did. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, but who faces a Republican challenge in the fall – was extended the same invitation as Briere, but could not attend due to a family commitment.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), who was first elected in November 2008, was re-elected last year. His seat is not up for election again until 2012, but he attended the forum.

Party co-chair Anne Bannister called attendees’ attention to other elected officials in the audience as well. They included county commissioner Yousef Rabhi and state representative for District 53 Jeff Irwin – both Irwin and Rabhi are Ann Arbor residents. As the room was surveyed for other elected officials, attendees got a reminder that the boards of the Ann Arbor District Library and Ann Arbor Public Schools are also elected positions. So Nancy Kaplan (AADL board) and Susan Baskett (AAPS board) were also recognized.

Baskett was recruited to keep time – it was rarely an issue for candidates. Party co-chair Mike Henry moderated.

The Chronicle counted around 50 people in the audience.

Opening Statements

Candidates were given two minutes to make an opening statement. We present candidate responses in the order they were given. First chance to respond rotated down the table of the seven participants in the forum.

Opening Statement: Mike Anglin

Anglin thanked those who organized the forum, and as well as those who are supporting the candidates. Grass roots is fundamental to good government, he said. There are so many people in the room, he said, that it’s indicative of the Democratic umbrella. We’re all here with different ideas, where we discuss things, and the more of that we have, the better off we are as a community, he said. We need this discourse.

He said he would speak to just a single aspect of being an elected official due to the time constraints: Why did he enter politics?

He said he had a masters degree in American history and a masters degree in special education. He’d always had a service component to his life, he said. During college he worked in the D.C. public schools teaching kids to read as a volunteer. Later he worked at Boys’ Village in Cheltenham, Maryland. He began teaching in New York at junior high schools. He finished his career in Montgomery County in a special school for handicapped, emotionally disturbed children.

When Anglin came to Ann Arbor, he got involved in politics because he realized there were issues he wanted to be involved with, like the environment. So he’d started working with the Allen Creek greenway. He’d joined the Kiwanis Club – he schedules Route #9 for Meals on Wheels for that organization. He said he is very heavily involved in the community, and he likes to listen to people, because the first job of government is to provide services to the community.

Opening Statement: Neal Elyakin

Elyakin thanked the Democratic Party for bringing everyone together. These kinds of forums are very important, he said, for the democratic process. Why am I here? he asked rhetorically. First, because of civic responsibility, and also because of the expertise he can bring to the city council.

He noted that he and Anglin had a lot in common. They’re both New Yorkers, both from Brooklyn. He’d grown up there riding the trains and the subway. He said he’d become a special education teacher and had been in teaching administration for many years.

His expertise, he said, is in visioning and futuring and looking at process – making sure we’re looking in the same direction and staying in that direction once a decision has been made. He’s experienced in nonprofits and civic organizations, locally, statewide and nationally, which will help him bring people together who are diverse, to build consensus.

He’s served on Ann Arbor’s human rights commission, and with that work has learned about city government and the importance of building consensus, so that you can make a decision, debate the issues, and move things forward. “I am here to help government, I am here to help you be a part of the government.”

Question: Budget – Public Art

The state and the city face budget challenges and constraints. Many governments are going through a cost-cutting process. How would you prioritize cutting items from the budget? Please speak specifically to the question of whether public art in buildings should be prioritized at times when we are cutting police and firefighters.

Mike Anglin: Budget – Public Art

Mike Anglin said if you look at growth areas of the city budget, in just the general fund, which pays for public safety, it’s based on property taxes. There’s a continual drain on that fund, he said. We need to find a way to push more money in that direction. One area he’d identified that needs to be decreased is the amount of “administration” in the city. Administration seems to be growing, he said, but delivery of services is not. We’re getting a higher, broader, and deeper administration, but fewer services coming into the community, he said. So we see police layoffs, when we should instead look at other staff besides safety services, who should be reduced.

Neal Elyakin: Budget – Public Art

Neal Elyakin said the issue concerns decision-making, and he does have experience looking at the macro issues and looking at the process by which we make decisions. Decisions need to be made based on a “futures orientation” – based on what we want our city to be and to look like for all of its citizens 10-20-30 years from now. We need to “stay on those decisions.”

Whether to make decisions based on art or parks should be built into that vision you have of the city, Elyakin said, and how you’re going to get there. We need to list the priorities clearly and stay on message, and on target. That’s part of the process. “How are we going to fix it right now, this second? I don’t know.” But he said he did know that moving forward, the process by which we make decisions will affect the future of the city.

Question: Budget – Areas to Cut

In his response to the first question about the budget, Anglin identified “administration” as an area that he thought could be reduced. Moderator Mike Henry followed up by asking candidates to name one or two areas that they think are prime for cutting.

Mike Anglin: Budget – Areas to Cut

Anglin said we need to watch the IT (information technology) fund. Though it’s important to have an IT department, as it gets larger, it’s important to keep an eye on it. The other area Anglin would look at would be the city attorney’s office. There are 10 attorneys on staff and he felt that we could take a look at that to see if they are all necessary. [The city attorney's office employs eight attorneys, an office manager and  four legal assistants.]

Neal Elyakin: Budget – Areas to Cut

Elyakin came back to the idea of process: The city needs a process to figure out where and what they should look at with respect to city services. Where are the extra people? He said he did not believe that there were that many “extra” people at the city. He said city employees do a fabulous job to help make the city the best it can be. But there needs to be a regular process, he said, that is followed by the city and by the citizens to help develop those priorities.

Question: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Who is supporting you and why do they have confidence in you? Why do you think you’re a better than those running against you?

Mike Anglin: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Anglin said since he’s been on the city council, he’s tried to listen attentively to the public. They are the ones who are paying the bills and who want to make this town their home. So they are the ones who’ll give direction to the government, he said.

Ward 5 is diverse – there are a lot of different income levels. The people who support him are those he responds to “at the lower level of things” – people who are on a fixed income, people who cannot continue to live in the city if we add more and more burdens to them. The city sometimes pushes things that look small to us but are large to the people they affect, he said – for example, the $45/month garbage cart collection that was added to the set of fees approved by the council this year. All these little expenses add up, he said. As for the people who are supporting him, they’re listed on his website – some are county representatives and people he supported in their elections. He said his support was citywide.

Neal Elyakin: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Elyakin said he is new to the process of running for office. There are a number of people listed on his website as supporting him. He said he’s been knocking on doors of his neighbors and others who live in Ward 5, he’d eventually get to all of the doors in Ward 5.

He said he has friends in the city who’ve told him they believe in him and his ideas and priorities. He’s having conversations with residents of Ward 5, regional leaders, councilmembers, state representatives, county commissioners and others who have leadership roles in the community. He invited people to look at his website and learn who’s supporting him as well as his priorities for the city.

Question: Disagreement

Who would you say you disagree with most often on the city council – please be specific. How would you work to bring yourselves to agreement?

Neal Elyakin: Disagreement

Elyakin said that this may depend on the particular issue. He said he could not be specific about who he might disagree with. As you look at the process of decision-making, you may disagree on a piece of legislation, but on another piece of legislation you might be right on board with that person. The beauty of the process is working together to one end, he said.

Consensus is a way to say, once all the information is gathered, and all the input has been collected, that you make a decision, stick with that decision and live with that decision, Elyakin said. Building a consensus in a political environment is just as important as in the private world, he said.

Pressed by the moderator to talk more about disagreement, Elyakin said he would bring up the Library Lot as an issue. [The city issued an RFP (request for proposals) for development atop the city-owned Library Lot, where an underground parking structure is being built. A conference center/hotel project was initially identified as the preferred proposal, but city council called off the process this spring.] It was a process disagreement, he said, as opposed to a disagreement with a person or a group of people. He said he disagreed that the process followed was an effective process. Moving forward, when making decisions like that, we have to make them more intentionally, with a clearer view of what the future will be, he said.

Mike Anglin: Disagreement

Anglin said the city council agrees on 99% of everything it votes on. Where they disagree are projects that start and still have a life after two or three years. If the city has a good IT department, he said, the city could move towards transparency by posting drafts of documents. If a committee is working on something, the committee should post a draft. It would not be the final resolution, and we wouldn’t hold people’s feet to that draft in February if by October the committee has changed its mind, he said.

An intelligent man changes his mind, but a fool does not, Anglin said. He thanked Stephen Rapundalo – a Ward 2 councilmember – for his cooperation on the budget votes. He noted that he and Rapundalo agreed on many things – they worked together on the liquor license review committee. On the budget this year, there was a $90,000 amendment in support of the parks budget. The amendment needed Rapundalo’s vote and he gave it, so he was very appreciative of that, Anglin concluded.

Question: Library Lot

What would you like to see on the Library Lot? [The Ann Arbor DDA is moving forward with a process that would essentially restart a look at alternate uses of several downtown city-owned lots, including the Library Lot on South Fifth Avenue, where a 640-space underground parking structure is being built. See Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor DDA Continues Planning Prep." An RFP process for development atop the Library Lot site was terminated this spring, after a conference center/hotel project was initially identified as the preferred alternative among the six proposals submitted.]

Mike Anglin: Library Lot

Anglin said he would like to see the number of stakeholders increase and wanted to see that the public occupied at least “40% of the voting seats.” A community commons and the library could exist together, he said. People volunteer in massive numbers in the community, he said, giving the Water Hill Music Fest as an example.

Any time there’s an event, people will be drawn to it and that will develop economic strength, Anglin said. They’ll love the downtown and want to come downtown. Don’t put up a big building that will isolate people, he cautioned. We need to get the library to buy in – they’re part of the public. [The Ann Arbor District Library's downtown building is located adjacent to the city-owned Library Lot, immediately south of that South Fifth Avenue site.] The library board needs to weigh in. Individuals from the library have spoken, but the board has not, he contended. It’s important to understand who is speaking for whom. The University of Michigan has no interest in a hotel or conference center on the Library Lot, Anglin said.

Neal Elyakin: Library Lot

Elyakin said it goes back to a process issue. When you think about the process by which we got to where we are today, it was a flawed process, he said. His reading of this over a period of time in the media was that it was a flawed process. We didn’t take into account all the necessary stakeholders in thinking about how we could use that property and the property around it. Entering in partnerships to create an event around what is now a “big hole” – that’s the beauty and power of visioning. You come up with something that the entire community can get behind.

Question: Conference Center

Do you think Ann Arbor needs a conference center anywhere? If so, should public dollars be used to support it?

Mike Anglin: Conference Center

Anglin said he didn’t see the need for a conference center. While the community discussion about the Library Lot was going on, he said, he’d met with the owners of some of the local hotels. Weber’s Inn and the Four Points Sheraton are both offering conference facilities, he said. Between them they had $13 million invested, so the city needed to be very careful in how it invested public money.

For the project at the First and Washington site, he said, the city had started in 2005 working to get the site developed, but if you go by the site, it’s still just a place to park a car. There would be a huge discussion on that site as well, he said, because it’s an environmental issue. [The planned development by Village Green on that city-owned site has already received approval by city council. Called City Apartments, the project is a 156-unit residential planned unit development with a 244-space parking deck as the first two stories of a 9-story, 99-foot-tall building. At its most recent meeting, on June 6, the city council unanimously approved a reduction in the purchase price from $3.3 million to $3.2 million, for the deal that is supposed to finally go through sometime in August.]

Neal Elyakin: Conference Center

Elyakin said whether public money gets used is a decision that comes out of the process of determining what our vision is for what we want our community to look like. Looking at partnerships and how we develop partnerships, there could be validity in coming up with a public-private partnership, but it needs to be wrapped around a vision and the potential for revenue back to the city.

Question: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

How would you characterize the relationship between the city and the University of Michigan? How would you characterize the relationship between the city and Washtenaw County?

Mike Anglin: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Anglin led off his response with an apparent allusion to the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority’s current effort to expand its transit service countywide. He said as services are needed by surrounding municipalities, and as gasoline is getting more expensive, the AATA is expanding into the county because people in the rest of the county also want the AATA’s services. Cooperation is also happening in Ypsilanti with Ann Arbor SPARK, he said, referring to the area’s economic development agency.

All this would ultimately lead to an income tax, Anglin contended, which he would not support, because it would not help the community. But what the county could do is pass a millage on their residents and then they would have that money to pay for services that originate in Ann Arbor. Anglin criticized the fact that water rates charged by the city of Ann Arbor for some of the townships is only 3% more than the cost charged within the city of Ann Arbor.

We need more cooperation, but we’ll get it only if people see a need for it, he said. For the university, he said, a PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes] program should be in place. He felt that the city would probably finally get to that point. He said he was disappointed that the university didn’t help with the East Stadium bridges replacement. It really helps the university to have that bridge there in the middle of the campus, he said. The university should have simply stepped forward, but the city didn’t push very much, he concluded.

Neal Elyakin: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Relationship building is a skill he could bring to the city council, Elyakin said. His conversations with city leaders and state-level leaders showed him that building bridges between entities on the city level and the state level and the regional level will help our city revenue streams. It will help eliminate redundancies, and these things are all mutually beneficial. Part of regional leadership is that this city can become a regional leader in working collaboratively with communities around us, he said.

Question: Economic Development

Describe the Ann Arbor that you would help to create if you’re elected. What are your priorities for economic development?

Mike Anglin: Economic Development

Anglin asked how Ann Arbor is different from other towns – other towns also have small shops and coffee shops, too. What we have that makes us different, he said, is the values of the community that are expressed in the priorities that we’re willing to spend money on. To date, we’ve done a good job, but we’re starting to lose some traction on that. We can bring it back, he said. We have a can-do attitude about this, he said.

Anglin said he agreed that service delivery is very important. You like to live in a town because you like the way you were treated the one time you called city hall. When you call city hall and all you get is transfered around, people hear about that – one bad thing goes around 100 times. When that happens, you have a festering and a discontent in the town. He said he felt like we’re now on a better track.

Neal Elyakin: Economic Development

Elyakin said he felt like he probably sounded like a broken record, but visioning for the city is very important. A multi-year budget process is something we could engage in with citizens in a real sense. We could get more direct input from citizens not just to the city council, he said, but to other city leaders. He’d like to see more permanent solutions – dumping loose asphalt into a hole doesn’t necessarily create a permanent solution, he said. He said he loved the idea of more green development and converting city buildings to be more green. He wanted more accountability in our governance as well.

Closing Statements

Each candidate was given two minutes for a closing statement.

Mike Anglin: Closing Statement

Anglin said he didn’t think the council went for consensus. That a misconception, he said. A consensus is one opinion. And one opinion wouldn’t go very far. We all have something to bring to democracy and the more voices we have, the better the solution will be. He’s a hard worker, he said, and tries to build relationships.

Over the course of four years of service he’s established valuable relationships, Anglin said. Some of those are not in his own ward but apply to the whole city. Working to save Huron Hills golf course, he said one of the most important things that was said was by a little man who never even played golf, but who said that one of the most tranquil times of the day is driving past the course in the morning and at night. We all get something different from this town, Anglin continued. Have your voice heard, because that’s what it’s all about. An example of that was preserving Argo Dam for the rowers. He said he’s always on board to vote for infrastructure.

He likes the idea of a community commons [on the Library Lot site] because it will promote democracy. If you see someone sitting there you could go up and talk to them and find out that they have very different views. That avoids a situation where the same discourse goes around and around like a washing machine. We don’t have a community commons that is the center of the city. With three minutes during public commentary at the city council, you don’t feel you’ve been heard, Anglin said.

Neal Elyakin: Closing Statement

Elyakin said he grew up in New York in a big family and learned early the importance of democratic values living with his relatives. He understood the value of how a city can take care of its less able folks. His family was not wealthy by any means, he said, and they relied on public assistance to make ends meet. So he understood clearly the democracy of the country we live in. It’s there to help all the citizens, no matter what they are or who they are or how they behave or what their needs are.

That came with him to Ann Arbor, he said, after living overseas and learning that some democracies are different from U.S. democracy. He learned the importance of listening to everyone and to what people say. He does believe that consensus can work, because it’s a way of building relationships with people so that we can all move forward in a comfortable way. He’s learned that through his work with nonprofits, through his work as an administrator with the Washtenaw intermediate school district (WISD), with civic organizations in the city, at the state and with international nonprofits.

In his job, he works enormously hard building consensus with families and school districts, employers and neighborhoods, Elyakin said, to move forward with a vision for a particular young man or woman with a developmental disability so that they can be all they can be in their community. He feels he can bring that skill to city council that is good for all the citizens.

Elyakin concluded by thanking the audience for their time and the Ann Arbor Democratic Party for creating the forum. He invited the audience to learn more about all of the candidates before making a decision on Aug. 2.

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The event was a combined forum for all Ann Arbor city council candidates in contested wards for the Aug. 2 primary election. The forum was held in the context of the Democratic Party’s regular monthly meeting at its usual location in the Ann Arbor Community Center on North Main Street.

Ann Arbor Ward 2 is the highlighted magenta wedge. The image links to the city of Ann Arbor's My Property page. Type in your address for definitive information about which ward and precinct you live in, along with scads of other information.

The winner of the Ward 2 Democratic primary will almost certainly be the winner of the general election on Nov. 8. No Republican filed nominating petitions, and no independent candidate has yet filed. Independent candidates have until Aug. 15, 2011 at 5 p.m. to file petitions to run in November.

Currently, only Democrats serve on Ann Arbor’s city council. Republicans have filed in Ward 3 (David Parker), Ward 4 (Eric Scheie) and Ward 5 (Stuart Berry). For the open Ward 1 seat, currently held by Sabra Briere, no partisan challenger filed.

The last day to register to vote for the Aug. 2, 2011 primary is July 5, 2011.

After the break, we report in paraphrase form what the Ward 2 candidates had to say. Summaries of remarks made by candidates for seats in Ward 3 and Ward 5 are presented in separate articles.

Other Attendees, Logistics

We’ll start with this report with a partial picture of what the June 11 gathering was like. By way of brief background, the Ann Arbor city council consists of the mayor plus two representatives from each of five wards, who serve for two years each. That means each year, one of the two representative seats for each ward is up for election.

Saturday’s Democratic Party forum was attended by five out of 11 current councilmembers: Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) all participated in the candidate forum. Sabra Briere (Ward 1), whose Democratic primary race this year is uncontested, was invited to make remarks at the end of the forum, which she did. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, but who faces a Republican challenge in the fall – was extended the same invitation as Briere, but could not attend due to a family commitment.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), who was first elected in November 2008, was re-elected last year. His seat is not up for election again until 2012, but he attended the forum.

Party co-chair Anne Bannister called attendees’ attention to other elected officials in the audience as well. They included county commissioner Yousef Rabhi and state representative for District 53 Jeff Irwin – both Irwin and Rabhi are Ann Arbor residents. As the room was surveyed for other elected officials, attendees got a reminder that the boards of the Ann Arbor District Library and Ann Arbor Public Schools are also elected positions. So Nancy Kaplan (AADL board) and Susan Baskett (AAPS board) were also recognized.

Baskett was recruited to keep time – it was rarely an issue for candidates. Party co-chair Mike Henry moderated.

The Chronicle counted around 50 people in the audience.

Opening Statements

Candidates were given two minutes to make an opening statement. We present candidate responses in the order they were given. First chance to respond rotated down the table of the seven participants in the forum.

Opening Statement: Stephen Rapundalo

Rapundalo opened by noting that he’d represented Ward 2 since 2005. He is seeking his fourth term on the city council for two reasons. First, he said, the ward needs continued strong, pragmatic representation. He offered his service on key council committees in support of his candidacy. [Rapundalo serves on the budget committee, the administration and labor committee, and the liquor license review committee. He is also the city council representative to the board of the local district finance authority (LDFA)]. Rapundalo said, “I am the clear choice of the two of us.” There is also some unfinished business left to do, Rapundalo continued.

Like many other communities, Ann Arbor has tried to grapple with financial challenges. As much as the city has tried to trim away the meat, he said, the fact of the matter is that it hasn’t solved the entire problem. That means the city needs to look for other solutions.

Labor concessions are important, he said, and as chair of the labor committee that’s been a goal of his. Also, the city hasn’t really begun to talk about restructuring revenue. [Presumably Rapundalo was referring to the idea of imposing a city income tax on employees who work in Ann Arbor.] He also said he thought the city is losing its touch on customer service and levels of customer service. Lastly, Rapundalo said, we need to focus on revenue and for that reason the city needs to focus on economic development.

Opening Statement: Tim Hull

Hull thanked the Ann Arbor Democratic Party for hosting the event. Ann Arbor is a great place to live, he began. Since his time here as a student at the University of Michigan, he’s appreciated the unique sense of community he’s had here.

But Hull said that Ann Arbor can’t rest on its laurels if it’s going to remain the great city it currently is. We need to provide the level of services that residents need. In difficult economic circumstances, when difficult decisions must be made, fire and police services should be the last to be cut, he said. If elected, he would make sure that the city is fiscally responsible and sets budget priorities based on community needs. It’s vital to preserve the unique character of Ann Arbor – neighborhoods, parks, natural beauty and a sense of community. As a member of the council, he would work to preserve these parks and neighborhoods, pursuing responsible development that respects the wishes of the community.

It’s important to hear residents’ voices, Hull said. Sometimes it seems like the city council is too caught up in politics to respond to community issues. He promised to be responsive to residents’ concerns, and  said he would make addressing their needs his top priority.

Question: Budget – Public Art

The state and the city face budget challenges and constraints. Many communities are going through a cost-cutting process. How would you prioritize cutting items from the budget? Please speak specifically to the question of whether public art in buildings should be prioritized at times when we are cutting police and firefighters.

Tim Hull: Budget – Public Art

Hull acknowledged that Michigan and Ann Arbor are facing a difficult budget situation. When cuts have to be made, the community’s needs should be the focus, he said. We should ask what do we need and what don’t we need, then go from there. Police and fire services need to be protected. It’s important to protect parks, because they make Ann Arbor an attractive place, he said. He said he understands the importance of public art, but feels like it’s more important to keep sufficient funds in our utilities budgets, instead of reserving a certain percent for public art.

Stephen Rapundalo: Budget – Public Art

Rapundalo said that everything should be on the table, and everything should be on the table at all times – it’s an iterative process. But the biggest cost is personnel and that’s mostly in public safety. He did not want to see public safety numbers diminish, or safety and security compromised, but the fact is that the health care and pension plans for public safety employees are totally out of synch with the rest of the public sector and the private sector, he said. Those costs need to be reined in, and the city is on a path to do that, he said.

Rapundalo also said that “revenue restructuring” had not been looked at, and the community needs to have an open debate about that. With respect to public art and parks, those are quality of life issues, but we certainly need to look at putting everything on the table.

Question: Budget – Areas to Cut

In his response to the first question about the budget, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) identified “administration” as an area that he thought could be reduced. Moderator Mike Henry followed up by asking candidates to name one or two areas that they think are prime for cutting.

Tim Hull: Budget – Areas to Cut

Hull said we need to engage constituents in the process in looking at what we really need and where cuts could be made. Some areas that might be good to look at would be various administrative roles, including the city attorney. It would also be worth looking at how the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority fits into the picture.

Stephen Rapundalo: Budget – Areas to Cut

Rapundalo said it’s easy to pinpoint things, but we need to take a more “macro look” and examine return on investment in functional areas. In the areas that Mike Anglin had highlighted – IT (information technology) and the city attorney’s office – the city is getting a good return on those investments, Rapundalo said. IT also helps move the city as a whole in a direction of efficiency. We have to be careful as we look at everything, he concluded.

Question: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Who is supporting you and why do they have confidence in you? Why do you think you’re a better than those running against you?

Tim Hull: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Hull said he was new to the process, but he is going door-to-door in Ward 2. He’s been talking with people of different orientations – students, young and old. Basically his goal is to talk to as many people in the community as possible, he said. He’s talked to people who are currently in office and wants to build a good constituency around his campaign.

Stephen Rapundalo: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Rapundalo said his support is broad – from elected officials past and present, across multiple jurisdictions. A lot of his support comes from people in the neighborhoods – people he’s helped with their end-of-the-driveway type of issues. As for why he’s a better choice of the two candidates, it boils down to two things, he said: leadership and breadth of experience.

Question: Disagreement

Who would you say you disagree with most often on the city council – please be specific. How would you work to bring yourselves to agreement?

Tim Hull: Disagreement

Hull said it really depends on the issue. He said he could agree with councilmembers on some issues, but disagree on others. It depends on what they’re considering. As an example, for public art he might disagree with some members, but agree with the same people on the DDA parking contract. With respect to the DDA contract, he was concerned about giving too much power to a non-elected body. [The contract recently ratified unanimously by the city council and the DDA board assigns full responsibility for setting public parking rates to the DDA.]

Pressed by the moderator to talk about how he would bring himself closer to agreement – in terms of techniques and strategies – Hull said they could have a discussion and come up with compromise ideas.

Stephen Rapundalo: Disagreement

Rapundalo said there’s not any one person he can pinpoint as someone he disagrees with most. Sometimes you’ll have agreement and sometimes you’ll have differences, he said. At the end of the day, there’s always some measure of compromise. There’s always common interest and common goals. The DDA is one area where he’s taken issue with other councilmembers, he said.

Question: Library Lot

What would you like to see on the Library Lot? [The Ann Arbor DDA is moving forward with a process that would essentially restart a look at alternate uses of several downtown city-owned lots, including the Library Lot on South Fifth Avenue, where a 640-space underground parking structure is being built. See Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor DDA Continues Planning Prep." An RFP process for development atop the Library Lot site was terminated this spring, after a conference center/hotel project was initially identified as the preferred alternative among the six proposals submitted.]

Tim Hull: Library Lot

Hull said it’s not what he wants to see there, but rather what the community wants to see there. We need to have a process where the community is engaged in deciding what it wants there, whether that is a park or a conference center, or something else altogether. The previously terminated RFP process was far from ideal, he said. He felt that the public was not as engaged as it should have been. That could be seen from the objections that were voiced up to the time that the council terminated the process, he said.

Stephen Rapundalo: Library Lot

Rapundalo noted that he was intimately involved in that particular issue. [Rapundalo chaired the RFP review committee for the Library Lot proposals.] For at least four years now, the community has been clear that we want to see dense development on that property, he said.

It’s a very valuable piece of property and needs to be developed so that the tax revenues can be realized, Rapundalo stated. What that development should be, he said, he did not know. The RFP put out by the city was completely wide open and did not have preconceived notions. Rapundalo concluded by saying he was quite dissatisfied that the process was prematurely terminated.

Question: Conference Center

Do you think Ann Arbor needs a conference center anywhere? If so, should public dollars be used to support it?

Tim Hull: Conference Center

Hull said the city shouldn’t be picking winners or losers and that whether we need a conference center is up to the private sector. The city shouldn’t be subsidizing it with public money, given that we’re cash-strapped as it is, he said.

Stephen Rapundalo: Conference Center

Rapundalo said the very essence in a public-private partnership is that there’s some contribution from the public sector into it. What that should be depends on the specifics of whatever project is presented. However, the city should always minimize risk going into a project. He said he had some qualification to assess the need, and that there is some unmet need. People want to be able to step outside their meeting door and enjoy the downtown. [In contending he had some qualification to assess conference center need, Rapundalo was alluding to his capacity as executive director of MichBio, a biosciences industry trade association.]

Question: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

How would you characterize the relationship between the city and the University of Michigan? How would you characterize the relationship between the city and Washtenaw County?

Tim Hull: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Hull said collaboration between the city, county and the university is important because they’re all interconnected. Obviously the county and the city coexist with each other, and the university is located in the city, he said. Many Ann Arbor residents have a stake in the university. He himself is a university employee, he said. We should cooperate to reach common goals, but keep in mind our separate interests. We need to open more dialogue. The city should engage the university more in city affairs, in particular students, who feel alienated from the political process. Sometimes the main contact a student has with the city is getting an MIP [minor in possession of alcohol] citation, which shouldn’t be the case, he said.

Stephen Rapundalo: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Rapundalo had to depart shortly before the forum concluded in order to attend high school graduation ceremonies for two of his daughters. He was not present for this question.

Question: Economic Development

Describe the Ann Arbor that you would help to create if you’re elected. What are your priorities for economic development?

Tim Hull: Economic Development

Hull said that what makes Ann Arbor really unique is its neighborhoods and its sense of community, its parks and its services. He wondered who would want to invest in a community with potholes all over their roads. It might not be glamourous, but making sure fundamentals are in order is something we should prioritize. We need to make sure that developers know what the community wants, and we need to work together to build something that’s equitable to all parties, he concluded.

Stephen Rapundalo: Economic Development

Rapundalo had to depart shortly before the forum concluded in order to attend high school graduation ceremonies for two of his daughters. He was not present for this question.

Closing Statements

Each candidate was given two minutes for a closing statement. Because Rapundalo had to leave the forum early, he did not give a closing statement.

Tim Hull: Closing Statement

Hull thanked the Ann Arbor Democratic Party again for putting on the forum. He appreciated what all the candidates said.

Times may be tough, given the state of the economy, but we’ll weather the storm together, he said. We might have to make difficult decisions at budget time, but it will be less painful if we prioritize based on what’s best for the community. As a councilmember, he’ll work diligently to represent citizens interests.

He’ll fight to protect those things that make Ann Arbor unique, Hull said. He specifically wants to see Huron Hills golf course protected. He allowed that he might be young, but he has the resolve and dedication to fight for the issues that matter to voters.

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City of Ann Arbor Ward 3 is the highlighted blue wedge. Image links to the city of Ann Arbor's My Property page. Type in your address for definitive information about which ward and precinct you live in, along with scads of other information.

Candidates for Ward 3 could not exactly square off – there are three of them. Plus, the linear seating configuration (determined by drawing playing cards) separated Ward 3 incumbent Stephen Kunselman from challengers Ingrid Ault and Marwan Issa with a buffer zone consisting of the two Ward 5 candidates.

The winner of the Ward 3 primary will face Republican David Parker on Nov. 8 in the general election. Currently, only Democrats serve on Ann Arbor’s city council. Republicans have also filed in Ward 4 (Eric Scheie) and Ward 5 (Stuart Berry). But in Ward 2, the lack of a Republican challenger means that spot is almost sure to be decided in the Aug. 2 Democratic primary. For the open Ward 1 seat, currently held by Sabra Briere, no partisan challenger filed. Independent candidates have until Aug. 15, 2011 at 5 p.m. to file petitions to run in November. The last day to register to vote for the Aug. 2, 2011 primary is July 5, 2011.

After the break, we lay out in paraphrase form what the Ward 3 candidates had to say. Summaries of remarks made by candidates for seats in Ward 2 and Ward 5 are presented in separate articles.

Other Attendees, Logistics

Before diving into candidate responses, we’ll sketch a partial picture of what the June 11 gathering was like. By way of brief background, the Ann Arbor city council consists of the mayor plus two representatives from each of five wards, who serve for two years each. That means each year, one of the two representative seats for each ward is up for election.

Saturday’s Democratic Party forum was attended by five out of 11 current councilmembers: Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) all participated in the candidate forum. Sabra Briere (Ward 1), whose Democratic primary race this year is uncontested, was invited to make remarks at the end of the forum, which she did. Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) – who is running unopposed in the Democratic primary, but who faces a Republican challenge in the fall – was extended the same invitation as Briere, but could not attend due to a family commitment.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), who was first elected in November 2008, was re-elected last year. His seat is not up for election again until 2012, but he attended the forum.

Party co-chair Anne Bannister called attendees’ attention to other elected officials in the audience as well. They included county commissioner Yousef Rabhi and state representative for District 53 Jeff Irwin – both Irwin and Rabhi are Ann Arbor residents. As the room was surveyed for other elected officials, attendees got a reminder that the boards of the Ann Arbor District Library and Ann Arbor Public Schools are also elected positions. So Nancy Kaplan (AADL board) and Susan Baskett (AAPS board) were also recognized.

Baskett was recruited to keep time – it was rarely an issue for candidates. Party co-chair Mike Henry moderated.

The Chronicle counted around 50 people in the audience.

Opening Statements

Candidates were given two minutes to make an opening statement. We present candidate responses in the order they were given. First chance to respond rotated down the table of the seven participants in the forum.

Opening Statement: Stephen Kunselman

Kunselman began by saying that he was serving the second of two terms to which he’d been elected, with a year off between terms.

[When he was first elected to the council in 2006, Kunselman won a three-way Democratic primary among Jeff Meyers, Alice Ralph and himself  – the seat had been empty due to Jean Carlberg's retirement from the council. In his reelection bid in 2008, he was defeated by Christopher Taylor in the Democratic primary. Then in 2009, Kunselman returned to defeat incumbent Leigh Greden and LuAnne Bullington in the Democratic primary. The general election was uncontested in Ward 3 for all those years.]

Kunselman said he was looking for a third term to represent Ward 3, because there’s a lot of work still to be done. He thanked his challengers for making it a race. There’s a lot for residents of Ann Arbor to be concerned about, he said. He’d recently been focused on the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority and its finances, he said. Why is there so much debt associated with the DDA? This is debt that the city owns, he said. The annual report of the DDA – which he said the city council had yet to receive from the DDA, despite its publication in the newspaper in March – shows $140 million worth of debt (when principle and interest is added together).

Kunselman said he wanted to focus on general governmental accountability: Why is the city staff not preparing reports with good information that would allow the council to make good decisions? With respect to the planned Fuller Road Station, he said, the council has been told that the city will be contributing $10 million to the project. And the council has been assured it would not come from the city’s general fund, but no other fund had been identified. If it’s not the general fund, that left only one other avenue, Kunselman said – utilities. He stated that he did not think that the city should be paying for Fuller Road Station out of utility funds.

Kunselman said he’d campaigned last time on the idea of representing a strong voice, a bold vision, an honest ethic and a new direction, and said he felt that he’d lived up to that. He would continue to hold to that.

Opening Statement: Ingrid Ault

Ault introduced herself as a lifelong resident of Ann Arbor – she’s lived in Ward 3 for about 30 years. She grew up in this community – almost all of it in Ward 3 – and she knows it well, she said. She has a long record of civic activity, she said. The reason she decided to take on this challenge, is that there are some areas where the community is not as well represented as it should be.

Ault is the executive director of Think Local First, a nonprofit that supports locally-owned independent businesses. One thing she does every day, she said, is talk to people. She hears their stories and hears what’s working and what’s not working so well. She catalogs that and looks at ways to build partnerships with small businesses. Communication is key. She said that if you talk to members of Think Local First, they will say she’s reactive and proactive. It’s important to support small businesses, she said – it’s one way we can raise revenue in the community. It’s important that we don’t continue to see the erosion of our city services and in particular our safety services.

She said she also brings experience in government, though she’s never run for office. She did work for the Ypsilanti Downtown Development Authority and said she took on some major projects during the time she served as the DDA’s executive director.

Opening Statement: Marwan Issa

Issa said he’d lived in Ann Arbor all his life. He attended the University of Michigan, and just finished his PhD at Eastern Michigan University. He said he’s not planning to go anywhere else – he’s planning to stay and work in Ann Arbor. His grandfather came to the U.S. in 1970, Issa said, so he’s the first generation in this country.

Issa would like to see a fresh perspective on the city council, a way to look at things from a different view. Those views come partly from his work experience, he said. He’s worked in an educational startup, so he understands how important education and economic development are to the city.

Question: Budget – Public Art

The state and the city face budget challenges and constraints. Many governments are going through a cost-cutting process. How would you prioritize cutting items from the budget? Please speak specifically to the question of whether public art in buildings should be prioritized at times when we are cutting police and firefighters.

Stephen Kunselman: Budget – Public Art

Kunselman said fiscal challenges can’t be handled very well in sound bites. But he felt that the public art program is taking too much money from utility funds, when the city’s infrastructure needs are great. There was an attempt at the council’s budget meeting [on May 31, 2011] to decrease the amount of public art and put that money back into the funds they were taken from. [Kunselman had supported that resolution, but it failed.]

Taking care of infrastructure is a budget priority, Kunselman said. There have been four water main breaks on his street in the last year, he said. One of the repaired mains has broken again – that makes five. But he concluded that the budget process is a cooperative effort among all councilmembers, so no one councilmember would be able to say what’s going to happen.

Ingrid Ault: Budget – Public Art

With respect to budget cuts, Ault said, everything needs to be on the table. Nothing is exempt. Everybody needs to give and take. If it’s not a community effort, it’s not going to work. We need to talk to the unions about making concessions on health care, she said. Ault added that she’s not anti-union, but everybody needs to participate in the process.

Ault said she’s a proponent of public art. There are 3,000 people in Washtenaw County that define themselves as working artists, she said. It’s unfortunate that the first project to be funded through the public art program was not a local artist, she said. [Herbert Dreiseitl, a German artist, was commissioned to design a fountain for the city's new municipal center.] She said that one of the points she talks about all the time is the importance of spending money in the community – it can “reverberate” in the community as much as seven times over. She added that there are 168 parks in the community and we need to continue to support them.

Marwan Issa: Budget – Public Art

Issa said the city needs to be fiscally responsible. When you look at the police and fire departments, he said, it’s hard to cut them. People move to Ann Arbor because of its safety and security. After the cuts, he said, Ann Arbor will have only 0.72 firefighters per 1,000 residents. That’s well under the national average, he said, and that’s not fair to the citizens. Police and fire should be the last things to go. He said he appreciates parks and recreation, but would prefer to save a police officer or a firefighter job.

Question: Budget – Areas to Cut

In his response to the first question about the budget, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) identified “administration” as an area that he thought could be reduced. Moderator Mike Henry followed up by asking candidates to name one or two areas that they think are prime for cutting.

Ingrid Ault: Budget – Areas to Cut

Ault said that rather than talk about cutting jobs, what we need to look at is where duplicate work is being done. Washtenaw County is already doing this, she said, by consolidating the office of community development with the office of economic development. [The proposed consolidation also includes the employment training and community services (ETCS) department.] Thinking about how to be more efficient through collaboration is a better solution than thinking about who we are going to cut, she said.

Marwan Issa: Budget – Areas to Cut

Issa said that before cutting, we need to make sure the city is efficient and effective. Once we’ve done that, then we can look at what to cut. As an example, he gave people with desk jobs who get a gas mileage reimbursement.

Stephen Kunselman: Budget – Areas to Cut

Alluding to Ault’s call for eliminating duplicate work, Kunselman said there’s a lot of duplication at the DDA. The DDA has an attorney; the city has an attorney. The DDA has an accountant; the city has an accountant. The DDA has a planner; the city has a whole planning department. The DDA pays $50,000 for luxury office suites, Kunselman said; the mayor had asked the DDA to move to city hall, but they’d refused. That’s a lot of money that could be saved. Half of the $750,000 bureaucracy at the DDA is paid for by general fund parking revenues, Kunselman said, and it’s time to bring that money home.

Question: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Who is supporting you and why do they have confidence in you? Why do you think you’re a better than those running against you?

Ingrid Ault: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Ault named former city councilmember and current planning commissioner Jean Carlberg as an early supporter. She said she walks her dogs past Carlberg’s house, and would chat with her about things. Carlberg is one of the reasons that she decided to run. She also named Leah Gunn and Barbara Levin Bergman as supporters – both Gunn and Bergman serve on the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Ault said she’d also found that people whose doors she knocked on were very interested in what she had to say, and she was interested in what they had to say. She said she was excited to meet those she hasn’t met yet.

Marwan Issa: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Issa said he was new to the process. In talking to people in the ward, he said that many people had encouraged him to run for office. A lot of the support would come as time goes by, he said.

Stephen Kunselman: Campaign Support, Candidate Comparison

Kunselman said he’d not done endorsements in previous campaigns, but would drop a couple of names that day. One was county commissioner Yousef Rabhi – he’d know Rabhi since he was a little kid. And state representative Jeff Irwin was also supporting him, Kunselman said. He also counted Gwen Nysteun, who serves on the city’s park advisory commission, as a supporter.

Kunselman said he had a good strong constituency that represents all the Ward 3 neighborhoods: North Burns Park, Burns Park, Pittsfield Village, Forestbrooke, Turnberry, and even his own neighborhood. [Kunselman lives on Butternut Street, near Packard and Platt.] He noted that he’d served on the planning commission with Jean Carlberg and had run years ago with her tacit support. He said he was looking forward to getting out and talking to people about city services.

Question: Disagreement

Who would you say you disagree with most often on the city council – please be specific. How would you work to bring yourselves to agreement?

Ingrid Ault: Disagreement

Ault said she didn’t really pay attention to how she’s different from others. Rather, she looks for people who can be an ally for certain projects. She said that she and Kunselman had very different ideas about DDAs. Having worked on a DDA [in Ypsilanti] at a time when there was discussion about merging finances with the city, she said she’d done extensive research about what that would really mean. And what that would mean, she said, is you’d get fewer services.

The Ann Arbor DDA had four staff who did a great job managing the parking system, Ault said. We should rely on the DDA to make decisions about the parking system, she said, and the council should not make specific individual decisions about something that’s a user-based fee program.

Marwan Issa: Disagreement

Issa said he would not name specific names. He said he disagreed with the idea of reducing firefighters and police officers. With respect to the DDA, he suggested that the DDA board become an elected body. The DDA was becoming an entity that could do whatever it wanted, he said – it would be nice to reign it in, to make sure the DDA stays on focus.

Stephen Kunselman: Disagreement

Kunselman said he was not in a position to pick on other councilmembers, because they have to work together. But he joked that he would pick on Stephen Rapundalo a little bit, noting that he and Rapundalo were often on different sides. [Rapundalo was seated immediately to Kunselman's right at the candidate forum.]

On basic philosophy, Kunselman said, he had a different view of economic development. He did not think the city council’s focus should be on how to raise revenue through economic development. Instead, he said, the council’s priorities should be on health, safety and welfare. The city cannot do it all, he said. The DDA is set up to promote economic development and that’s what they should do. The DDA has a $3.5 million TIF (tax increment finance) fund they should be spending on economic development efforts. But taking $16 million in parking revenue and performing the same functions as the city, that’s an issue we need to discuss, he said. So he had a difference of opinion with some other councilmembers about the role of the DDA, Kunselman said.

Question: Library Lot

What would you like to see on the Library Lot? [The Ann Arbor DDA is moving forward with a process that would essentially restart a look at alternate uses of several downtown city-owned lots, including the Library Lot on South Fifth Avenue, where a 640-space underground parking structure is being built. See Chronicle coverage: "Ann Arbor DDA Continues Planning Prep." An RFP process for development atop the Library Lot site was terminated this spring, after a conference center/hotel project was initially identified as the preferred alternative among the six proposals submitted.]

Ingrid Ault: Library Lot

Ault said it’s an interesting piece of land, arguably the most valuable piece of land in Washtenaw County. Developing it in the best possible way makes sense. The ground floor should be mixed use, but she did not care what goes above it. You need to put greenspace in there, she added, but it doesn’t need to be a park. If we want a park, then we could simply reinvest in Liberty Plaza, she said. [Liberty Plaza is an urban park at the southwest corner of Liberty and Division.]

Now that the design review board has been established, Ault said, if we put together a good RFP, and are clear about our wants and needs, the city could receive responses to that RFP that include some great projects.

Marwan Issa: Library Lot

Issa said it would be good for a start-up hub. It could be used as office space for start-up companies – if the city provides a new start-up company with a facility to use, we will have more companies come to Ann Arbor and increase the economic development of the city.

Stephen Kunselman: Library Lot

Kunselman stressed that anything that’s developed on the lot should not have a public subsidy – that’s why he was against the hotel/conference center proposal that had made it to the end of the RFP process. His vision of that block is based on the idea that there is too much public land in the area. He would like to see the Ann Arbor District Library sell its land to a private party, and then build a new library building on top of the underground parking structure on the Library Lot. [The AADL's downtown building is at the northeast corner of Fifth and William, immediately south of the city-owned Library Lot.]

The city should sell the old Y Lot – that needs to get onto the tax rolls, Kunselman said. [The site is a surface parking lot, on the north side of William between Fifth and Fourth.] The idea of mixed-use retail in the middle of the block at the Library Lot he described as a “pipe dream.” The city council should not try to pick winners and losers in the private sector, he said. The community should help design it. Then the city should translate that design into deed restrictions, and sell the land with those restrictions in place, he said.

Question: Conference Center

Do you think Ann Arbor needs a conference center anywhere? If so, should public dollars be used to support it?

Stephen Kunselman: Conference Center

On the subject of public subsidies, Kunselman said that’s simple: No! The city should not be involved in public subsidies for private development. The city has not been successful to date on those efforts. That’s why when he campaigned two years ago, it was based on a new direction. There’s ways of accomplishing things besides going out and fishing with an RFP, he concluded.

He said he’s not qualified to determine the need for a conference center. The private sector can handle that, if there is a need.

Ingrid Ault: Conference Center

Ault said she thought the conference center was an interesting topic from the standpoint that there’s a need for conference space in the downtown – people don’t want to go out to Weber’s Inn. But she rejected the idea of funding it with city dollars. If a project is not viable on its own, then it shouldn’t go forward.

Marwan Issa: Conference Center

Issa said he thought that a conference center is a horrible plan. The University Michigan has a lot of places where people can hold conferences. As far as public funding goes, he said if there were a start-up company and it was a company that’s going to stay here, that’s where public funding could be useful.

Question: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

How would you characterize the relationship between the city and the University of Michigan? How would you characterize the relationship between the city and Washtenaw County?

Ingrid Ault: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Ault said one of the things she does as executive director of Think Local First is look for partnerships. There’s a study that indicates if you shifted 10% of your budget to local businesses, it would create 1,600 jobs and $53 million in wages. She said she’s been talking to city and county officials about supporting local businesses.

Ault said she could give many examples where the city is making short-sighted decisions and hundreds of thousands of dollars have left the community, because of maybe a $300 difference in a bid. The county is a good example of collaboration – it’s built partnerships with other entities, figuring out how to do more with less. We have a long way to go with the university, she added.

Marwan Issa: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Issa said that when you look at the relationships between the University of Michigan and the city of Ann Arbor, “it’s not there,” and needs to get better. It seems like it’s an us-versus-them attitude with the university. When we look at firefighters, the university owns a lot of land, he said, so why can’t we get them to help support the fire department, by funding some of the firefighters?

[Issa's point about university land is related to the fact that UM facilities built on university land receive fire protection from the city. The state of Michigan has deemed that it's not a university responsibility and has used a strategy for funding the university's fire protection through a state grant. But the city of Ann Arbor has long contended that the level of that grant funding is not adequate to cover the cost of the additional protection. UM contributes to the city's fire protection through the location of fire station Number 5 on university property.]

There are a lot of redundant jobs in the city and the county where there could be cost savings, Issa said, but the relationships aren’t there.

Stephen Kunselman: University of Michigan, Washtenaw County

Kunselman said it’s a tough issue, but he felt that the partnerships between the city and the university, and between the city and the county, are going as well as they can go, given the governmental autonomy that each entity has.

We can talk about cooperation and collaboration until we’re blue in the face, he said, but the fact is that UM is not going to contribute to the city’s basic services. The university works under the constraints of the state constitution and the state legislature, he said, and the moment the university starts doling money out to the city for whatever reason – for signals and signs for football games, for which the university has been billed but has not paid – the state legislature will send them a clear message. That message is that the university’s funding would be dialed back. So the university has a hammer over its head. We can’t just sit here and envision a great and wonderful cooperation with the university, he said. [Kunselman is a UM employee, working as an energy conservation liaison. Other councilmembers affiliated with UM include Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), who works as an administrative assistant, and mayor John Hieftje and councilmember Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), who both have served as lecturers.]

The situation with the county is different, he said. There are representatives to the county board of commissioners who live in the city. But for the townships there’s an inequality with respect to the tax base between the city and the townships. When we talk about mutual aid, he said, we look at who has more money in the game – typically it’s the city. So not all partnerships would be in the city’s best interest. It all sounds good, Kunselman concluded, but at the end of the day, we’re beholden to voters who expect us to watch their tax dollars.

Question: Economic Development

Describe the Ann Arbor that you would help to create if you’re elected. What are your priorities for economic development?

Marwan Isssa: Economic Development

Issa said the Ann Arbor he envisions is one where we don’t have to constantly discuss how we’re going to pay for services and what we are going to cut. He said he and his family had been in Ann Arbor for over 30 years and had started local businesses. They understood how that works and how economic development is important to the city. Another component is the University of Michigan, he said, which spends spending billions of dollars on scientific research. The city needs to work with the university, not in terms of asking the university to give the city money, but in terms of how to be a partner. He suggested an ambassador or a liaison to show companies what Ann Arbor has to offer.

Stephen Kunselman: Economic Development

Kunselman said the Ann Arbor he hopes to achieve is the one he grew up in – where everyone is treated equally, we have good roads, clean water, safe neighborhoods, maintained parks. If you have all that, then you get economic development, he said, because you get businesses that are interested in moving to your community. Those are businesses that want to invest because they can see where their money is going. They see the money going into roads to be fixed, they see water mains being repaired, they see police and firefighters present, then they feel like they’re getting a good return on their invested dollar.

Kunselman said he didn’t understand why anybody would want to relocate to Ann Arbor if they drive Packard, Jackson, Dexter, or Miller and have to handle those roads. He said he couldn’t understand – if we put all our money downtown instead of in neighborhoods – why employees would want to live here, where water mains are breaking and street trees aren’t being cared for. Public safety, health and welfare breeds economic development, he concluded.

Ingrid Ault: Economic Development

Ault said we need to remember that Ann Arbor is a living organism and we all need to work together. She said that what she does every day is economic development – she looks for ways to support businesses and to create new businesses. She supports nonprofits, she said, because they’re important to the fabric of the community.

Closing Statements

Each candidate was given two minutes for a closing statement.

Stephen Kunselman: Closing Statement

Kunselman thanked the hosts, the audience and the other candidates. He said he looked for their support on Aug. 2.

He’s a lifelong Ann Arborite. He pointed out that he and Ault had both graduated from Pioneer High School in 1981. His grandparents were founding members of St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church on Stadium Boulevard. His grandmother was a police dispatcher in the late 1950s for the East Ann Arbor police department. He lives near Packard and Platt, the “heart of Ward 3.”

Kunselman noted that he served as a planning commissioner from 2004-06 and served as a city councilmember from 2006-08 – he wanted to serve another term, from 2011-13. He ventured that perhaps people had read about him in the news, and he allowed that he did have a strong voice. He has a strong passion for his beliefs about what Ann Arbor is and what it should be, he said.

Kunselman didn’t want to say that his voice is the best, but he does think he’s made a difference. He said he helped defeat the conference center. He said he’d shown how the DDA had failed to be open and transparent with their budget. He’s been there for the city’s police and firefighters since day one and did not feel comfortable laying them off, even while the city allocates funds to public art and the Fuller Road parking structure. All of those things boil down to needing some independence on the city council, he said, which is what he offers.

Ingrid Ault: Closing Statement

Ault said she appreciated the opportunity to be heard – that’s all she wanted. She wanted the process to be clear and open to see where they are the same and different.

Ault wanted to emphasize that she is a very strong voice for this community – she’s immersed in every facet of it. She knows what is going on in the downtown, because she’s worked the majority of her life in the downtown and understands what challenges small business are facing. Her service record for nonprofits ranges from Meals on Wheels, to the Humane Society and 826 Michigan – she’s been there and done it, she said. She’s curious, she said, and she wants to know why people support who they support. A lot of time the people who have the biggest pocketbooks or the most time on their hands have more of an impact on the community, she cautioned. She wants to make sure that everyone has a voice.

Marwan Issa: Closing Statement

Issa thanked the hosts of the debate – it was his first debate, and the first time running for an elected position.

Ann Arbor is a gem, he said. We’re lucky and fortunate. In Ann Arbor, you can come as you are and you will be accepted. Electing him will help the community out, he said.

He’s from the area. He had a father who helped him go through with his education. With the opportunities he had, now he wants to be able to give back to the community. His optimism and experience will give him the ability to take on the many challenges the city has.

The city’s main important voice is that of the residents, Issa said. If they start to feel the city council is inadequate, or is not doing right by the people, we need to make sure people are happy with what’s going on with the city council. He said he’d been researching the city council, and they work hard. But the council’s hands are tied. There’s a reason why we can’t take public art money and pay for cops, he concluded.

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