Jamie Kidwell, the city’s sustainability associate, and Wayne Appleyard, chair of the Ann Arbor energy commission. (Photos by the writer.)

The action plan identifies steps to implement 16 broad goals in a sustainability framework that was added to the city’s master plan last year. The goals are organized into four categories – resource management; land use and access; climate and energy; and community – that were culled from existing city plans and reorganized into this new framework.

The intent is to track efforts toward achieving the 16 goals, which cover a wide range of issues – from increasing renewable energy use and developing a resilient local economy to eliminating pollutants and maintaining Ann Arbor’s unique sense of place. The action plan includes specific indicators that measure progress in each area.

Jamie Kidwell, the city’s sustainability associate, is taking the lead on this project, and fielded questions from commissioners. Part of the goal is for each of the city’s commissions to incorporate these sustainability efforts into their own work plans, she noted. But the action plan is primarily to guide staff efforts. The action plan is also coordinated with the city’s budget process, tying in to the city council’s budget priorities.

Commissioners expressed interest in more collaboration – both among the city’s various commissions, and with other jurisdictions. One start will be to share their work plans, though not all commissions have those.

Commissioners also discussed the idea of holding an annual joint meeting of multiple commissions, possibly in September. Planning manager Wendy Rampson noted that the kick-off for developing the sustainability framework had begun with a joint meeting – with the planning, energy and environmental commissions – in April 2010.

Sustainability Action Plan: Overview

Jamie Kidwell, the city’s sustainability associate, began her briefing by explaining how the action plan is tied to the city’s sustainability framework. Each of the framework’s 16 broad goals is tied to targets for achieving that goal, and concrete actions to hit those targets. “The intent of this document is to really help measure our progress towards our sustainability goals, and to really ground those big, lofty goals … to some of these more measurable actions.” [.pdf of draft sustainability action plan]

The action plan will be a living document, Kidwell said. Some new indicators are included in the plan, she noted. It will be a learning process for staff, and some of the indicators will work better than others, Kidwell said. That means there will be adjustments in the future.

Because the document is primarily for staff, Kidwell said, there have been conversations among staff about how the goals, targets and actions are already being worked on in the short term. The plan isn’t meant to be all-inclusive, she noted, so not everything that staff are working on will be included. She stressed that it’s not really a new plan, but rather a reorganization of some efforts that are already underway.

Jamie Kidwell, the city’s sustainability associate.

One key component of the action plan is that it brings in budget goals that are set by staff each year during the budget cycle. The benefit of that approach is that it allows staff to work with an existing mechanism, Kidwell said, capitalizing on the budget process to more clearly communicate the sustainability goals to other staff, city advisory commissions, the city council and the public.

For example, this year the planning unit’s budget goals are explicitly tied to sustainability goals, Kidwell noted. [Responding to a follow-up query from The Chronicle, Rampson stated that the budget goals are still in draft form and are being reviewed by the city administrator. They will become available to the public as part of the budget book when it is presented to the city council in late April or early May.]

The draft action plan also includes a chart that identifies which unit within the city will be responsible for each of the sustainability goals. For example, the sustainability goals for local food are the primary responsibility of the parks and recreation unit, which includes the farmers market and greenbelt program. Kidwell noted that this chart might change, based on feedback from staff.

Kidwell said she wanted to talk to the city’s advisory commissions about the action plan in part because there’s opportunity to help both staff and the commissions find areas that are of common interest. Most commissions develop a work plan for each fiscal year, she noted. How do those work plans feed into the sustainability process?

The intent is to update the action plan every two years, Kidwell said. She asked commissioners for feedback about whether they thought the document would be useful to them, and if it helped communicate the city’s targets and actions regarding sustainability. “Does it really help you get your arms around what city staff is working on, in terms of our sustainability goals?” she asked.

Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager, reported that she’d reviewed the action plan with planning commission chair Kirk Westphal and Ken Clein, the commission’s secretary. They’d compared it to the planning commission’s work plan, and had found that there was alignment. [The planning commission most recently reviewed its work plan in detail at a Jan. 7, 2014 working session. See Chronicle coverage: "Planning Commission Reviews 2014 Priorities."]

Sustainability Action Plan: Commission Discussion

Chuck Hookham of the energy commission reported that he’s involved with several national programs on sustainability and infrastructure, and he gives presentations on these topics. When talking to the public, one of the main questions that’s asked is “What are we getting out of this?” he said. If taxpayer money is being spent, where’s the return on investment? As professionals, he said, they need to be better at communicating that.

Chuck Hookham, an Ann Arbor energy commissioner.

Hookham speculated that if he were to ask people in the community to define sustainability, he’d probably get a hundred different answers. So the city needs to be more specific about its goals. “I think that’s how we’ll get to the end game, which is improving life in the future,” he said.

In terms of communicating with the public, Jamie Kidwell said the city plans to have a very robust online version of this action plan. Part of that includes transitioning the current State of Our Environment report to a State of Our Sustainability report, she said. The idea is to provide snapshots online of city projects, and a report of indicators in the action plan, so that the community has concrete evidence that the city is working toward these goals.

Mark Clevey, an energy commission member, wondered how specific the indicators will be. For example, for the indicator of renewable electricity generation, will it be broken down into the number of solar energy systems, or how much renewable power is purchased from utilities?

Kidwell said the level of specificity is still under discussion. The State of the Environment report has 60 indicators that include a very deep level of detail, she noted. “We might be taking a fresh look at how we tell that story.” She encouraged commissioners to give feedback.

Clevey told Kidwell that “more is better” in terms of detail. Wendy Rampson, the city’s planning manager, noted that the time that staff spends entering data is time that they won’t have to do other things. The city can use interns for some of that work, she said, but “we’re trying to balance what gives people a sense of information, without being a slave to updating the data constantly.”

Rampson said if commissioners know of websites that they think would be effective models for presenting this information, they should let Kidwell know. Hookham cited the Envision sustainable infrastructure rating system, created by the Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure. He described it as a program that’s similar to LEED, except that it deals with non-building facilities.

From left: Sabra Briere and Bonnie Bona of the planning commission. Briere also serves on the city council.

Bonnie Bona of the planning commission asked how the staff was dealing with creating indicators for targets that aren’t numerical. For example, the “engaged community” goal has this target: “Increase effectiveness of communication and service delivery.” How do you quantify that? she asked.

Kidwell noted that there are several areas – including community services, human services, and economic development – that are much harder to quantify. “I think we’re going to have to grow into some of these,” she said. One way to help make some of the indicators “less squishy,” Kidwell said, is to look at the targets and actions, and ask: What will these do, and what indicator follows from that?

Kidwell gave an example by looking at a human services goal: “Provide services that meet basic human needs of impoverished and disenfranchised residents to maximize the health and well-being of the community.” A target to achieve that goal is: “Increase housing stability of public housing residents.”

Within that target, several actions are identified:

• Create a Family Self Sufficiency Program for public housing and voucher residents to increase financial self-sufficiency.
• Increase employment of low-income households on housing commission projects.
• Create permanent supportive housing site with 24-hour front desk security.
• Increase supportive services to public housing units, including food, mental health, case management, and financial literacy.

For these actions, staff have identified the following indicators: (1) number of case managers for public housing sites; (2) percent of public housing residents employed; (3) percent of public housing units with supportive services; and (4) coordinated funding impact(s).

The idea is to find correlations between the indicators and targets/actions, Kidwell said. It’s more difficult for some of the goals, and the staff will be looking for feedback on whether they’ve identified the best indictors – especially as they start tracking the results, she said. “I think it’s going to be a learning process.”

The April 8 working session was the last meeting that Dina Kurz will attend as a member of the Ann Arbor energy commission. Her term ends on April 18, 2014 and she is not seeking reappointment. She was first appointed in April 2008.

Bona encouraged staff and commissions to think of these indicators in terms of “how they help us get the work done.” Then the indicators become something that’s needed, she said, rather than just a tracking of what has occurred.

Kidwell pointed out that the plan tries to capitalize on items that are already being tracked. That’s one reason why it’s being tied to the budget process. The staff goes through a process of identifying targets within each budget cycle, including what they hope to achieve during the fiscal year. As these things get pulled into the sustainability action plan, she said, the plan will evolve.

Kirk Westphal, chair of the planning commission, asked if it would be helpful for a smaller committee – with members from various commissions – to work on goals from the sustainability plan. Kidwell hoped that the action plan would help commissioners identify ways to work together. As an example, several different commissions have talked about incentives for sustainable “green” buildings. Westphal said he could envision how a committee with members from the planning, energy and environmental commissions could “really button down what the metrics are” for achieving that goal.

Mike Shriberg of the energy commission asked Kidwell to talk more about the intersection of the budget with the action plan. Kidwell replied that as part of the budget process, city staff are asked to identify what they’ll be working on in the short term, what they expect to achieve, and the metric for assessing their work. The hope is to coordinate that work with the sustainability action plan.

Rampson told commissioners that every city administrator has a different take on how they want the staff to develop the budget. City administrator Steve Powers, who started with the city in the latter part of 2011, has been working with the city council to identify budget priorities. Those priorities include fiscal discipline, public safety, infrastructure, economic health, affordable housing, and quality of life. Powers is trying to get the city staff to think about how their work fits within those priorities, Rampson said.

Rampson noted that she, Kidwell and other staff are advocating to incorporate the sustainability framework into this process as well, to see how work on a day-to-day basis fits within that framework. The planning commission’s work program fit really nicely, she said. For example, the planning commission’s work on downtown zoning – a project that the council had asked the commission to undertake – fits within the sustainability action plan under the category of integrated land use and following goal: “Encourage a compact pattern of diverse development that maintains our unique sense of place, preserves our natural systems, and strengthens our neighborhoods, corridors, and downtown.”

Mark Clevey of the Ann Arbor energy commission.

Within that goal, one of the targets states: “Encourage dense land use and development patterns which draw people downtown and foster an active street life, contribute to its function as an urban residential neighborhood and support a sustainable transportation system.” An action item to achieve that target is to implement the rezoning and code amendment recommendations of the downtown zoning evaluation. That’s part of the planning commission’s work program for this year, Rampson said.

“In the ideal world,” Rampson said, “you have that line-of-sight from what you’re doing on a day-to-day basis all the way through to the sustainability goal and on to council’s budget priorities.”

Kidwell said the draft action plan reorganizes some of the current budget goals from various city units, slotting them into sustainability goals. Going forward, the hope is that each unit, as they set budget goals, will have the sustainability plan in mind. That will make it easier to pull the budget goals into the plan, she said.

Sabra Briere, who serves as the city council representative on the planning commission, said the council will benefit from seeing the direction that everyone is heading. It’s really easy for councilmembers to lose sight of what’s happening in the whole organization, “because you’re dealing only with what’s right in front of you,” she said. The sustainability action plan is a working document that will help councilmembers see how the priorities they set in December are being implemented for the budget process in May, Briere said. [The city's fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. The budget is adopted no later than May for the coming fiscal year.]

Bona noted that the budget isn’t the only document that drives investments. The capital improvements plan (CIP) also addresses the city’s investments in infrastructure and assets. There’s a sophisticated matrix for developing priorities in the CIP, she said. But that matrix looks at “the act of building, not the use,” Bona said. [.pdf of CIP prioritization matrix]

Nate Geisler, energy programs analyst.

Kidwell replied that the sustainability goals are already part of the CIP prioritization process. Projects get points in the prioritization ranking if they further one or more of the sustainability goals. That’s not the perfect approach, she added, but it’s a start. Kidwell said she’s already had some conversations with Deb Gosselin, who oversees the CIP process, about whether changes should be made to the matrix in the upcoming CIP cycle. Again, it’s a learning process, Kidwell said.

​Energy commissioner Shoshannah Lenski praised the action plan. She suggested including some very broad indicator, possibly by category, that signals how much progress is being made. It might simply be a green, yellow or red circle next to each target, for example. It could be a qualitative assessment by staff, she said, about whether they think they’re on track with the targets.

Kidwell joked that there’s a blank page in the draft document titled “Plan Progress.” It’s blank because the staff are working on how to best represent the data. She noted that the State of Our Environment report uses green, yellow or red colors to indicate good, fair or poor progress toward the goals, and arrows to indicate whether the indicators are moving in the desired direction.

Dina Kurz of the energy commission asked about incorporating “the language of resilience.” Resilience is an important vocabulary word, she noted, adding that it would fit into one of the targets for a safe community: “Adapt to and effectively manage current hazards and emerging threats from climate impacts.” The word could even be included in targets for public health and disaster preparedness. “What we’re hoping for is that the community remains resilient,” Kurz said.

Kurz thought it would be an important descriptive term. The concept of resilience would be complicated to use as a measure, but it could be an umbrella measure for a lot of different goals. The energy commission, for example, has talked about the benefit of the city’s hydroelectric dam that produces electricity, she said. Local electrical production is a valuable resource, she noted, and there might be other opportunities along the Huron River to produce electricity. That’s a measure of resilience.

The category of local food is another good fit for resilience, Kurz said. Having local food production and promoting that – through farmers markets, for example – is a way to provide resilience if there are disruptions in transportation from outside sources. All of these things interweave, she noted. Local food and markets, she said, also provide a center for community and neighborhood development.

Noting that this was her last meeting as an energy commissioner, Kurz encouraged other commissioners and staff to continue working hard to understand what’s going on in various parts of the community, and to bring those things together “under one tent.”

From left: Energy commissioners Erik Eibert and Mike Shriberg.

Brigit Macomber reported that the energy commission is starting to look at the issue of “time of marketing,” which she said seems to dovetail with green housing. That seems like a topic that lends itself to working with other commissions, she said. How could they make that happen?

Wayne Appleyard, chair of the energy commission, explained that this concept would require a homeowner to disclose energy usage when selling a house, and it might include an energy audit. The “time of marketing” refers to the fact that the disclosure would occur when a property is marketed, as opposed to the “time of sale.” It would allow a homebuyer to make a more informed choice, he said, and it could allow them to secure a mortgage that might include funding for energy efficiency improvements.

Kidwell noted that the action plan includes targets for energy efficiency. Responding to Macomber’s query about collaboration among commissions, Kidwell said the best way to involve multiple commissions on a topic would be to talk to the staff who support the commissions’ work.

Rampson said the key is to find the best fit for overlapping issues. The planning commission isn’t involved directly when single-family residential properties are sold. It might be a better fit for planning commissioners to work with the energy commission on the commercial energy disclosure project, she said, as part of the site plan review that the planning commission undertakes. Even when something isn’t required by city code, Rampson said, the planning commission can introduce the concept to people as they come through the site plan review process.

Macomber explained that she’d been asking a process question. There are rules about how many people can meet, and at what point it becomes a public meeting, she noted – referring to requirements of the Michigan Open Meetings Act. It would be helpful to get staff direction about how to approach joint commission work. “I think it’s great to have the commissions working together. I see a lot of potential in that,” she said.

As a starting point, Kidwell suggested that each commission could begin sharing their work plans with other commissions, and flag a few areas where there might be mutual interest. Westphal asked if each commission’s work plan is posted. It varies, Kidwell said. Westphal suggested emailing work plans for each commission to members of all the commissions.

David Wright of the energy commission.

Briere highlighted topics she’d like to discuss with the energy commission, such as solar shading. She indicated that she wasn’t sure of the mechanism for holding such discussions. She’s also interested in the fact that if you invest in a solar roof, the assessment of your property increases. “So not only do you not get a tax break anymore, but you get a penalty,” she said. As the city promotes installing solar roofs, how do they deal with that?

Appleyard replied that the city council, on which Briere serves, probably has the ability to create a policy. He reported that when energy commissioners met with the city assessor, the assessor had said he’d been told by state officials “that he had the ability to interpret things,” Appleyard said.

David Wright of the energy commission said his understanding is that the city has some discretion regarding assessments, “and we need to further understand what that discretion exists.” Is it with the state tax commission? Or is there some discretion that falls to the city?

Briere said the council has been told that they can’t set policy related to assessments, so she was trying to figure out what can be done in other ways. Wright replied: “We want to help figure that out.”

Appleyard noted that recently, three commissions – planning, energy and environmental – had passed similar resolutions recommending to council that sufficient staff be hired to implement the city’s climate action plan. “I think there was some real power in having more than one commission pass resolutions,” he said, “so I think we need to make use of that, when possible.”

Macomber asked if commissioners would be having regular joint sessions. Kidwell said it’s up to commissioners, and noted that the precedent is there. If there’s interest from multiple commissions, the staff can figure out how to schedule it.

Shriberg noted that the sustainability plan is a great forum for bringing commissions together, because the plan’s indicators touch on the interests of many commissions. Kidwell suggested an annual meeting to talk about progress toward the plan’s goals. Commissions could also present their work plans to each other at that time.

Planning commissioner Jeremy Peters said that one of the planning commission’s jobs is to look far into the future. Having a process like the one Kidwell described would help with that.

Ken Clein of the planning commission wondered if there’d been any thought to coordinating with Washtenaw County government as well. It’s important to realize that Ann Arbor doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Kidwell said staff had struggled with that question in developing the sustainability plan. As a starting point, the plan makes the city’s work more transparent, she noted. Another step would be incorporating partners, she said – for example, she’s already been talking with the county’s office of community & economic development about their work.

From right: Planning commissioners Kirk Westphal, Diane Giannola and Paras Parekh.

Kidwell reported that she’s working on a countywide housing project, too – that’s just one example of work that’s being done with other partners, she said.

Briere gave several examples of areas where there are commissions in multiple jurisdictions that do similar work – Ann Arbor has a park advisory commission, and Washtenaw County has a parks & recreation commission. Many jurisdictions have housing-related commissions. She said she didn’t know all of the commissions that existed countywide. She wondered if the staff saw any opportunity to bring together commissions outside of Ann Arbor with Ann Arbor commissions, “to really talk through the next set of ideas, whatever they may be.” It would be great to see regional planning, Briere said.

Kidwell agreed that it’s something to support. She gave the example of the Reimagine Washtenaw project, which involved several jurisdictions – Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township and Pittsfield Township – to improve the Washtenaw Avenue corridor between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

Rampson noted that the Reimagine Washtenaw project is at a critical point, because the federal grant that’s paid for staff is ending in the next year. Now, each community must decide whether it wants to continue paying for that staff work, she said. The challenge is how to keep a project like this moving ahead.

There’s benefit in not reinventing the wheel, Rampson said – that’s a reason to collaborate with other communities.

Commissioners wrapped up by discussing the timing of an annual meeting of multiple commissions, possibly in September. Rampson noted that the kick-off for developing the sustainability framework had begun with a joint meeting – between the planning, energy and environmental commissions – in April 2010. [See Chronicle coverage: "Building a Sustainable Ann Arbor."]

Rampson suggested that the chairs of these three commission meet to do some planning, and to include the housing and human services advisory board too, and possibly the park advisory commission. Another possibility is to create a committee focused on the CIP.

As a follow-up to sharing work plans, Kurz asked that the planning commission’s work plan be shared with other commissions, so that it could be used as a template. [.pdf of planning commission's work plan] The environmental commission also has an active work plan, which was adopted in September 2013. [.pdf of environmental commission's work plan] The energy commission doesn’t have a current work plan. Nor does the housing & human services advisory commission, but Briere indicated that she would bring up the issue at the HHSAB’s next meeting.

Planning commissioners present: Bonnie Bona, Sabra Briere, Ken Clein, Diane Giannola, Paras Parekh, Jeremy Peters, Kirk Westphal.

Energy commissioners present: Wayne Appleyard, Mark Clevey, Erik Eibert, Chuck Hookham, Dina Kurz, ​Shoshannah Lenski, Brigit Macomber, Mike Shriberg, Ken Wadland, David Wright.

Staff present: Planning manager Wendy Rampson; Nate Geisler, energy programs analyst; Jamie Kidwell, sustainability associate.

Next planning commission meeting: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 at 7 p.m. in the second floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor.

Next energy commission meeting: Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 6 p.m. in the second floor council chambers at city hall, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of publicly-funded entities like the city’s planning commission. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

AATA board member Roger Kerson argues against immediate action on Act 152, which limits the amount that public employers can contribute to employee health care. (Photos by the writer.)

That action meets the requirements of last year’s state Act 152, signed into law in September 2011, which limits employer contributions to a fixed dollar amount. But Act 152 also allows for the governing body of a public entity – in this case, the AATA board – to vote to cap the employer contribution at 80%, leaving 20% to be covered by employees. And that’s what the AATA board did at its June 21 meeting. Dissenting on the vote were Charles Griffith and Roger Kerson, who felt that the timing was perhaps too early – because the contract for AATA’s unionized workforce goes through the end of the year.

Based on the way that some other transit agencies in Michigan had handled their Act 152 compliance, Griffith and Kerson felt it might be possible to delay action for its non-union staff until AATA was required to act on its union workers’ health care costs. That approach is based on the idea that all employees participate in the same health care plan. However, the advice of the AATA’s own legal counsel was that Act 152 doesn’t explicitly provide for that uniform treatment of employees, just because they participate in the same health care plan.

Kerson urged that the board consider taking the AATA’s “windfall” from its compliance with the state law and reinvesting in non-health care compensation. Just because the state had given public entities a hammer, Kerson said, did not mean that they had to use it against their employees.

In other board action, the expenditure of funds for planning a north-south commuter rail project – from Howell to Ann Arbor, known as WALLY – was authorized. The money had previously been included in the AATA’s approved budget for fiscal year 2012, which ends Sept. 30, 2012. But the board had passed a resolution that requires explicit board approval before the money in the budget could be expended. AATA’s portion of the $230,000 in planning costs is $45,000, with the remainder contributed by a range of other public entities – the federal government, the city of Howell, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, and Washtenaw County.

Another planning effort that’s moving forward did not appear as a voting item on the agenda, but was included in CEO Michael Ford’s written report to the board: continued study of a possible Ann Arbor transit connector for a corridor running from US-23 and Plymouth southward along Plymouth to State Street and further south to I-94.

The AATA received a $1.2 million federal grant for an alternatives analysis phase of the study – which will result in a preferred choice of technology (e.g., bus rapid transit, light rail, etc.) and identification of stations and stops. That federal grant comes with the requirement of a $300,000 local match, which now appears to have been secured in the form of $60,000 from the city of Ann Arbor; $150,000 from the University of Michigan; and $90,000 from the AATA itself. A feasibility study for the connector has already been completed.

In other action, the board authorized the purchase of five new lift-equipped vehicles for its paratransit service. The five vehicles will replace existing vehicles that have reached the end of their useful life.

Another non-voting item on the meeting agenda, but one that was included in the CEO’s written report, was news of a collaboration between AATA and the Ann Arbor Public Schools. Starting this fall, the AATA will provide transportation for three existing school bus routes – one for each of Ann Arbor’s comprehensive high schools – by extending existing AATA routes. AAPS will pay AATA $0.50 for each student who boards, which will be counted with a pass that can be swiped through the fare box.

80/20 Health Care

The board considered a resolution in order to comply with the Michigan legislature’s Act 152 for non-union employees, which was signed into law on Sept. 27, 2011.

The law limits the amount that a public employer like the AATA can make to its employee’s medical benefits plans – $5,500 for single-person coverage, $11,000 for two-person coverage, and $15,000 for family coverage. However, the act provides another option – under which a public employer can choose through a vote of its governing body (in this case, the AATA board) – to not apply the hard dollar cap. Instead, the employer can limit its contribution to 80% of the medical benefit, leaving the employee to cover the remaining 20%. It’s this 80/20 option that the AATA board exercised in its June 21 vote.

As part of its compliance with the 80/20 provision, AATA put together health plan options for non-union employees that would essentially make their health care costs roughly the same as current costs – if they choose to opt for higher co-pays.

The options outlined for the board by its legal counsel were as follows:

1. Ignore the statute, stand in violation of the law, and continue providing benefits to management employees on a status quo basis (AATA pays 90% of premium, employee pays 10% of premium). (This option is not recommended to the Board).

2. Take the “CATA” (Lansing) approach to the law which is to adopt an exemption for one year for both union and non-union employees based upon the fact that both groups utilize the same health insurance benefit. CATA’s health insurance plan is selfinsured. This benefit is mutually negotiated with the Union, and therefore is temporarily exempt from the effects of Act 152 until January 1, 2013 (this option effectively “kicks the can down the road”). (This option has not been tested, and is not recommended to the Board.)

3. Take “The Rapid” (Grand Rapids) approach to the law which is to go on record that AATA’s 13-C agreement with the Union and the US Department of Labor prevents it from unilaterally making any changes to its health benefits, and since both the union and non-union employees are covered by the same plan, changes cannot be made in it until a new contract is negotiated January 1, 2013. (This option “kicks the can down the road”). (This option has not been tested, and is not recommended to the Board). [Note: Subsequently, it was learned that Grand Rapids has costs that are low enough to meet the fixed-dollar amount cap in Act 152.]

4. Take “The Metro” (Kalamazoo) approach and comply with the law by allowing the “cap” to become effective. This would limit AATA’s annual contributions to employee benefits to $5,500 for single, $11,000 for two persons, and $15,000 for family. (This option would do great economic harm to employees and is not recommended to the Board)

5. Comply with the law, elect the percentage alternative by a majority vote of the Board, and provide the 80% contribution to the employees’ health benefit plan offered by the Authority. Under Act 152, the employee will be responsible for the balance. (This option is recommended to the Board).

Before the board reached the item on its meeting agenda, Charles Griffith had reported from the performance monitoring and external relations committee that the committee had had a long discussion about revisions to health benefits offered to salaried staff. He noted that as a result of Act 152, there’s a cap on the amount that public employers can contribute to employee health care. But there’s an option in Act 152, Griffith explained, to waive the fixed-dollar amount cap and make a 20% contribution to employee health plan coverage.

AATA board member Charles Griffith.

The committee had looked to some of its “sister agencies” for guidance. Because – like AATA – both union and non-union employees are part of the same plan, some “sister” agencies had delayed implementation, Griffith said. Based on that idea, it was felt they could delay until the unionized workforce adopted a new contract. For AATA, that would translate to Jan. 1, 2013 instead of Aug. 1, 2012.

Griffith also reported that the committee had looked at other public bodies in the Ann Arbor area. They’d concluded that the AATA board, as an appointed board, did not have the ability to waive Act 152 altogether under the statute – which could be done on a 2/3 majority vote. [There was some confusion on the board as to how the city of Ann Arbor had handled Act 152 compliance, but city CFO Tom Crawford confirmed via an email to The Chronicle sent subsequent to the meeting that the city's benefits plan met the hard-dollar cap requirements of Act 152. The city council did not act to waive the requirements of Act 152.]

Griffith indicated that he uncomfortable jumping to the conclusion that the AATA needed to implement the requirements of Act 152 – which reduced non-union employee health benefits by half – as early as Aug. 1.

When the board reached the item on its agenda, Ed Robertson, AATA’s human resources manager, was asked to read the entire resolution into the record, which essentially followed option (5) – the 80/20 option. An alternative resolution, which was not considered by the board, would have delayed compliance with Act 152 until Jan. 1, 2013.

Griffith thanked Robertson and the rest of the staff for helping to find a solution to a problem that the state legislature had imposed on the AATA. The solution put a limit on the disruption of benefits that AATA employees receive. “It’s going to be a hit,” Griffith said. If you took the same health plan they have today, it would mean a doubling of the premiums, he said. Right now, employees pay about 10% of coverage – and this action would raise it to 20%. So what Robertson had worked out was a health care plan that increases co-pays and provides a plan option that’s similar to what they pay today, Griffith explained [Essentially, it's a way for employees to continue to pay the same amount for their health care coverage plan, with the caveat that the coverage plan isn't as good – due in part to the increased co-pays.]

Griffith explained that if the automatic fixed-dollar cap were implemented, that would reflect a four-fold increase in the amount that AATA employees would have to pay. So it’s incumbent upon the board to prevent the automatic fixed, hard-dollar cap from applying, Griffith said. That could be done by implementing the 80/20 option.

The only question, Griffith said was whether to delay the implementation of the Act 152 requirement, until all employees are affected – including the union employees. He based that approach on the way that some “sister transit agencies” have handled the issue. The legal opinion of the AATA’s counsel, Griffith said, is that there’s nothing in Act 152 that would explicitly allow that approach. However, Griffith indicated they’d also heard there’s little evidence that there would be any compliance action taken in the near term. By not taking action that night, it would buy employees another several months of coverage under their current plan, before the board had to take action at the end of the year.

“We’re reluctant to force this on the employees any sooner than we have to,” Griffith concluded.

Roger Kerson noted that the resolution had come from the AATA’s governance committee. The alternative resolution, Kerson said, would have followed the example of the transit agencies in Grand Rapids and Lansing by waiting to implement action until all employees were affected. The thinking was, said Kerson, “If it’s good enough for those guys, why not good enough for us?” In the Grand Rapids case, Kerson allowed, it turned out that the hard cap on dollar amounts was already met. He wasn’t sure why Lansing had taken the action it did.

Basically, Kerson said, the state legislature has imposed a cut in compensation for every public employee in the state of Michigan. What the AATA was doing is offering employees at least a choice of continuing to receive the same health benefit and to pay more for it, or pay the same for the plan, but pay higher deductibles. That’s an approach that is based on the idea that public entities are in trouble because public employees get paid too much, Kerson said, which he characterized as a “blissfully fact-free analysis that’s especially absurd in the context of [the AATA] …”

Kerson noted that AATA had addressed pension liabilities by creating a situation where employees contribute, if the pension fund performs under market. Retiree health care has also been addressed, he said. He said he’s asked the AATA’s auditor if there is some kind of unfunded liability that is being overlooked and the answer has been no, Kerson said. So the state’s “cookie-cutter” imposition of cutting costs is, for the AATA, a solution in search of a problem, Kerson concluded.

What’s on the table, Kerson stated, is whether the “solution” is imposed in August or in January. In any case, Kerson wanted to put on the record that AATA will have a “windfall” as a result of implementing Act 152. There’s no law about what the AATA does with the money, he said. The AATA could put more bells and whistles on the website or more benches in the Blake Transit Center – or the AATA could put that extra money back into compensation for employees. If the AATA did not put the extra money back into compensation, he’d want to know why, said Kerson. He’s more conformable with implementing in January, Kerson said, because that’s more consistent with treating all AATA employees as a team in a fair manner.

Ed Robertson, AATA's head of human resources.

CEO Michael Ford and Robertson confirmed that Grand Rapids was initially planning to exempt the non-union contract from Act 152 until the union contract came up for renewal. But after further analysis, Robertson said, it turned out that Grand Rapids was under the dollar amount cap in Act 152.

Sue Gott wanted clarification about the advice of the AATA’s legal counsel. Is there a clear preference between the resolution on the table and the alternative?

Robertson indicated that the AATA’s legal counsel has not seen the alternative resolution, and has given advice based only on the interpretation of Act 152 itself. The AATA’s labor attorney, David Kempner, was out of town that week, but the AATA’s counsel for general issues, Jerry Lax, had gone through Act 152. Robertson reported that Lax felt there’s no legal interpretation that allows the non-union employees to be grouped together so that Act 152 applies to non-union health care benefits only at the point when it applies to union health care benefits.

Kerson returned to his earlier point – that while the AATA’s legal counsel had reached one conclusion, it was not clear why the transit agency in Lansing had reached a different conclusion.

Robertson noted that more information had been obtained from Lansing – that CATA (the Capital Area Transportation Authority) has a self-insured health plan. That meant it’d be difficult to determine if the state’s mandate had been exceeded until the end of the year – because the agency would have to wait until the year’s end, and then charge back to the employees.

Griffith indicated that he was uncomfortable “rushing” to action. He did not have as much information as he’d like about what other public employees in the community are doing.

The other piece of information that the committee had picked up in its discussion, Griffith said, is that there’s no enforcement action that the state has been taking on Act 152. So even though there’s not a special provision that allows AATA to lump all employees together, there’s not clear evidence that any action will be taken. It’d be a matter of accepting some risk to take the step.

Griffith contemplated a friendly amendment to the resolution: If there’s a determination that the AATA cannot consider a change to all employees at the same time, then this change will be imposed when and if that determination is made. Griffith wanted to be on record as supporting the 80/20 approach – when it’s required to do so.

Eli Cooper, an AATA board member and the city of Ann Arbor transportation program manager, asked for clarification about whose opinion it was that had been given to the board – not on letterhead, but entitled, “Compliance with Act 152.” [It included the five points presented above.] He felt that it speaks to options that are not recommended to the board. Robertson indicated to Cooper that he had actually authored the memo, but that he’d written it after consultation with legal counsel. Cooper concluded that he could interpret the memo as AATA staff’s “best understanding of what the authority’s attorney has recommended” – which Robertson said he could.

Gott picked up on Kerson’s idea that the board could take the approach of returning the “windfall” to employees in other compensation, if the board wanted to pursue that. Board chair Jesse Bernstein liked the idea of Griffith’s amendment because it eliminated the risk of being out of compliance resulting in some kind of punishment. He also liked the notion of making employees whole. He suggested that an amendment to the AATA’s resolution be made to use the 80/20 option but also to state that if an employee’s net compensation decreases due to that decreased heath care payment, the AATA would make that up to them.

Bernstein asked Robertson if that made sense from an operational point of view. Robertson called it an “unusual proposition” to be put forth. Robertson also called it possibly a slippery slope. He wondered when the provision about making employees whole would end – because benefits are renewed every year. Robertson ventured that Act 152 is not going away. How you calculate making an employee whole would depend on the level of coverage that an employee chose, he continued. If someone chose the “buy down” option, Robertson said, he wondered if the employee would be reimbursed for the co-pays.

Bernstein called those good questions that Robertson had raised. He suggested that the board should either have an amendment to ask staff to figure out a plan, or have that money set aside. Either way, the AATA needs to protect itself from the liability. He suggested an amendment with the direction to staff to come up with a plan to return the extra money to the employees. Gott called that “a reasonable amendment to put forward.”

Cooper said he found himself falling on the other side of issue. Legal counsel has said the law takes effect upon expiration of a plan, he noted. The law is effective and the legislature has acted, he said. Speaking to the commentary of the city of Ann Arbor’s health care program, he said the city’s program includes a “low” and a “high” benefit that’s similar to the new approach that the AATA is now taking.

As a public employee for over 30 years, Cooper said, the cost of his health care that he pays out of pocket and the amount of coverage he receives has changed annually. At this point, he said, he wanted to separate what the board had to do to be in compliance with the law, and what it chooses to do if there is a “windfall.” Cooper stated, “I want to first and foremost comply with the law.”

He said he’d be voting to support the recommendations that were written in consultation with the AATA’s attorney. The financial implication of the decision should be subject to staff doing the thinking they need to do to bring a bona fide recommendation back. He did not want to do both things at the same time. He’d oppose any amendment to the resolution that contemplates the work of the staff [in coming up with a way to distribute the extra money] in advance of that work having been done.

Bernstein got clarification that Act 152 is already in effect. It affects the AATA on Aug. 1, because that’s when the non-union employees’ health plan gets renewed. For union workers, the contract runs through the end of the year.

Bernstein asked Cooper if he’d be opposed to including an amendment that asks the staff to present the board with a plan to make some kind of compensation to employees with the excess.

Cooper said that the action taken by the board needs to be “clear and crisp” about compliance with the law. The decision that’s made on a budget issue is a separate issue and needs to be treated separately. So yes, he would oppose such an amendment, Cooper said.

Bernstein asked Cooper if he’d be willing to sponsor a separate resolution that directed staff to find a way to compensate staff between now and the end of the year. Cooper responded with a question of his own: Is that the normal process for making amendments to the budget? Cooper felt it’s not the purview of a board member at the table. Bernstein felt that it was within a board member’s purview. Funding has been adjusted periodically by the board, when asked to do so by staff, Bernstein said. Instructing staff to bring the board a plan doesn’t mean the board has to act on it. It just means that it’s a direction the board would like to take.

Kerson ameliorated the disagreement between Bernstein and Cooper by saying that the discussion he’d heard by the board had addressed some of the long-range concerns he had about the issue. He heard clearly amongst board members that “just because the state gave us a hammer to use against our employees, we don’t have to use it.” Kerson said he also appreciated Cooper’s point of view – that compensation is a complex issue and has budget implications. Just as the board should not rush a resolution about compliance, he said, the board should not rush a resolution about compensation – because it could be misunderstood. The sense of the board, Kerson felt, was that if there’s a “windfall” then the AATA ought to think creatively about how to treat employees fairly as a team.

Kerson said he was still not comfortable with the attorney’s recommendation. However, he said he did not mind delaying the direction to staff about how to restore the compensation. He said he appreciated Bernstein’s efforts to tie the two issues together. Kerson felt it was okay if the two things were on separate tracks. He felt it’s clear that, “We don’t want to hammer our employees unless we have to.” Kerson felt like that issue could be put into the committee process and that would be okay. When Kerson indicated he’d vote against the resolution, even with the kind of amendment that Bernstein had described, Bernstein moved the issue to a vote.

Outcome: The board voted 4-2 to pass the resolution adopting the 80/20 approach to Act 152 compliance. Dissenting were Charles Griffith and Roger Kerson. David Nacht was absent.

WALLY: North-South Rail

The board considered authorization of the funds for north-south commuter rail planning that were already part of its approved fiscal year 2012 budget, which runs through Sept. 30, 2012. The total in the line item for the WALLY (Washtenaw and Livingston Railway) is $230,000, of which $45,000 are AATA funds.

Other entities that have contributed money to the WALLY project include: the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority ($50,000); Washtenaw County ($50,000); city of Howell DDA ($37,000); and a federal grant ($48,000). The planned expenditures are for station design work and for other consulting work on railroad operations and liability issues.

Ordinarily, the expenditure of funds from the budget would not necessarily need an explicit board authorization. However, in the case of the WALLY project, the board stipulated in a Sept. 15, 2011 resolution that the money designated for WALLY in the FY 2012 budget would not be expended without the explicit consent of the board. [See Chronicle coverage: "AATA on WALLY Rail: Forward with Caution"]

At its April 19, 2012 meeting, the AATA board had already received a written report in its board packet with an eight-page update on the status of WALLY, which is envisioned to provide north-south commuter rail service between Howell and Ann Arbor.

The conclusion of the report was a staff recommendation to expend funds already included in the FY 2012 budget that are designated for the WALLY project.

One of the challenges for WALLY is the cooperation of the Ann Arbor Railroad in the use of the tracks south of roughly Barton and Plymouth roads on the north side of Ann Arbor. Ideally, the commuter service would extend farther south into Ann Arbor. The report contains a description of an Oct. 12, 2011 meeting between Ann Arbor Railroad president Jim Erickson and AATA CEO Michael Ford, when Ann Arbor Railroad expressed continued general opposition to passenger service on its property. However, the meeting offered some possibility that Ann Arbor Railroad would at least work with the AATA on the issue of railcar storage immediately south of a WALLY station. And the report describes Ann Arbor Railroad as willing to entertain a “business proposition.” [.pdf of April 2012 WALLY update]

The resolution considered by the AATA board at its June 21 meeting indicates that the expenditure of the funds for station design should not be analyzed as a commitment to future capital expenses or funding for operations:

AATA makes no commitment to providing either capital or operating funding at this time, and AATA currently takes no position regarding the start date of service due to the uncertainty with respect to funding. AATA will continue to work with MDOT and the local communities to seek and apply for federal funding of the project. Once funding issues are fully resolved, AATA will commit to a service start‐up date.

At the June 21 meeting, board chair Jesse Bernstein asked AATA strategic planner Michael Benham to provide an overview of the board’s previous position on WALLY funds and why the board was voting – so that if people see the vote on the Community Television Network, they’ll know what’s going on.

Benham reviewed the background of the resolution. He said as a result of the Sept. 15, 2011 resolution on the expenditure of WALLY funds, AATA staff had checked with other communities and other organizations to confirm the project’s viability. Benham reported that the Michigan Dept. of Transportation is 100% behind the project. Ann Arbor Railroad, he allowed, is opposed to passenger service on their track, but left the door open to a business proposition that would respond to concerns about liability and passenger safety. Benham said that the AATA considered that positive compared to what they’d been hearing previously. [AARR owns the track from around Barton Road southward into Ann Arbor, so AARR's opposition is significant.]

Of the other communities along the route, Benham told the board, Howell is the most supportive – and has contributed money to the project. Others are less supportive, he allowed – like Genoa Township, which has not taken a position for or against. The AATA is working with Howell to get a presentation before the Livingston County board of commissioners. The funding for the WALLY planning effort is current a mixture of funds granted to the AATA by different bodies: the city of Howell, the Ann Arbor DDA and Washtenaw County. There’s also $48,000 from a federal grant that’s coming through the state of Michigan for station design work. What’s being proposed to expend from the FY 2012 budget, Benham said, is station design work and miscellaneous consulting. [.pdf of June 2012 WALLY update]

Bernstein asked for confirmation that the funds contributed from other organizations were “in hand.” Yes, answered Benham. Roger Kerson got confirmation that the funds “in hand” are not fungible, that is, could not be used for some other purpose by the AATA – a purpose besides WALLY.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve the expenditure of the previously budgeted WALLY funds.

AATA Connector Study

Pending the signing of a memorandum of understanding with the city of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan, the AATA will be moving ahead with an alternatives analysis of a connector study – for the corridor running from US-23 and Plymouth southward along Plymouth to State Street and further south to I-94. The alternatives analysis phase will result in a preferred choice of technology for the corridor (e.g., bus rapid transit, light rail, etc.) and identification of stations and stops.

That study will move forward, based on a total of $300,000 of local funding that has been identified to provide the required match for a $1.2 million federal grant awarded last year for the alternatives analysis phase. The breakdown of local support is: $60,000 from the city of Ann Arbor; $150,000 from the University of Michigan; and $90,000 from the AATA.

A feasibility study costing $640,000 has already been completed. That study was also funded through a partnership with the city of Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority, UM and the AATA. Chronicle coverage of that feasibility study includes: “Transit Connector Study: Initial Analysis“; “AATA: Transit Study, Planning Updates“; and “Washtenaw Transit Talks in Flux.”

A total of $1.5 million for the connector alternatives analysis study – of which $1.2 million is a federal grant – is included in the AATA’s capital and categorical grant program, on which the AATA held a public hearing at its June 21 meeting. In November 2011, AATA CEO Michael Ford had updated the board on the possible timeline for the alternatives analysis, saying that phase would take around 16 months.

Outcome: The information was provided in the written report to the board from Michael Ford, which was included in the board’s June 21 meeting information packet. However, it was not an agenda voting item and received no board discussion.

New Lift-Equipped Buses

The board considered the purchase of five new wheelchair lift‐equipped paratransit vehicles for $390,000 from Mobility Transportation Services. These vehicles are to be purchased using federal formula funds with matching funds from the state of Michigan. The vehicles are to be used for the AATA’s paratransit service, which is marketed under the name A-Ride.

After the meeting, AATA manager of maintenance Terry Black told The Chronicle that these are the same vehicles mentioned in the AATA’s capital and categorical grant program. The program, on which a public hearing was held at the June 21 meeting, includes “5 Small Replacement Buses for Paratransit Service” with a federal share of $600,000.

The reduced cost, compared to what had been specified in the grant program, was attributed to the ability of the AATA to purchase the vehicles through the state of Michigan’s MiDEAL program.

At the meeting, Black clarified that the vehicles are replacement vehicles – and those vehicles to be replaced will be sold at auction. They were purchased in 2005, which is consistent with a seven-year useful life. The AATA has looked at options for replacement over the course of the last year, Black said. Those that they’d selected for purchase have a Chevrolet chassis with a 2010 “clean diesel” engine. The body is made by Champion, which is produced in Imlay City, Mich., he said. They will be “lift style” vehicles instead of “low-floor ramp” style, which is what the AATA has currently in service. There’s not a suitable manufacturer that builds a good low-floor model in that smaller-size vehicle. Black reported that the AATA’s local advisory council (LAC) is comfortable with the selection.

Among the options the AATA had explored was alternative fuel vehicles. One manufacturer produced a vehicle that is a hybrid, but that manufacturer went out of business. A natural-gas fueled vehicle was also considered, but that could become a fueling challenge for Select Ride, which is the AATA’s current contractor for its paratransit service.

Sue Gott expressed her thanks to staff for the effort to explore clean-fuel vehicles.

Outcome: The board unanimously approved the purchase of the five lift-equipped buses for paratransit service.

Capital and Categorical Grant Program

On the agenda was a public hearing on the AATA’s capital and categorical grant program – the set of projects and expenditures for which the AATA is applying for federal funding.

Chris White, AATA manager of service development, introduced the hearing, describing it as a required public hearing on a series of applications. He also described it as a culmination of a public involvement process by the AATA that includes the Washtenaw Area Transportation Study (WATS), which conducts a hearing in connection with its transportation improvement program for Washtenaw County. AATA participates in that process, White said. White suggested that WATS is really the place where you can have an effect on transportation, because that’s when planning is being done on projects.

For AATA, the five-year program of capital and categorical projects is developed over several months, from November to January, by the board’s planning and development committee, and all of those meetings are open to the public, he said. [The staff memo accompanying the board packet also notes that the PDC meeting summaries are transmitted to the board as part of the written material provided to the entire AATA board for its monthly meetings, and that material is available on the AATA website.]

That night’s hearing, White said, is the current fiscal year’s component of the five-year program for capital and categorical grants. He characterized it as a very complex program this year – much larger than usual. One of the elements of the program that is published, White noted, is the amount of available funds. White noted that the Section 5307 funds are an estimate, because Congress hasn’t finished the appropriations yet. But he felt it would be pretty close to $6 million. In addition, he said about $4.6 million in funding is carried forward from the previous year.

Saving money from previous years is something AATA does regularly, White explained, so that it can, for example, take care of major bus replacement needs. The categorical funds include about $2 million in clean fuel funds and $2.6 million of a “livability fund” – which covers the five new buses to be used for additional service on Washtenaw Avenue. The “flex funds” from the Federal Highway Administration – about $1 million – will be used for the Blake Transit Center reconstruction. The $1.2 million for “alternatives analysis” is for the connector study, White said. [The area of study runs from US-23 and Plymouth, down Plymouth to State and further southward along State to I-94.]

Designated Recipient: AATA FY 2012
$ 6,000,000  (estimate) Section 5307 Apportionment
$ 4,638,981  Section 5307 Carryover Funds
$ 2,079,000  Section 5309 Clean Fuels Funds
$ 2,625,000  Section 5309 Livability Funds
$ 1,200,000  Section 5316 Alternatives Analysis
$   993,500  Section 330 Flex Funds from FHWA
$17,536,481  (estimate) Total Funds Available

-

The total program of AATA projects comes to $15.7 million, White said. That program includes: 11 large replacement buses; 5 additional buses for expansion of service; 25 vans for the vanpool program; 5 small replacement buses for paratransit service; computer hardware and software. There are some funds for the bus storage facility and bus hoist project, which the AATA is completing, he said. Money also is included for the downtown Ann Arbor Blake Transit Center.

There’s a small amount of money for constructing and improving pedestrian walkways, White said. It’s a new category for the AAATA, he explained, because the eligibility has been expanded for these types of projects by the Federal Transit Administration. If there’s money left over after buying buses, the amount for pedestrian improvements could be increased, he said. [.pdf of the FY 2012 capital and categorical grant program]

No one spoke at the public hearing.

AATA/AAPS Bus Service

Starting in the fall of 2012, the AATA will provide bus service for three public school routes – one for each of the comprehensive high schools in the Ann Arbor Public Schools system. The AATA service will be provided in lieu of services currently provided for those three school bus routes, for which the AAPS contracts with the Washtenaw Intermediate School District.

The information packet for the AATA board’s monthly meeting on June 21 includes as part of CEO Michael Ford’s written report to the AATA board: “… we have agreed to replace three school bus routes – one from each comprehensive high school – with AATA service. These high school students will use regular AATA service with their fare paid by AAPS.”

AAPS director of communications Liz Margolis confirmed in a telephone interview with The Chronicle that three school bus routes will be replaced with AATA service by extending existing AATA routes: #18 to serve Skyline High School students; #16 to serve Pioneer High School; and #22 to serve Huron High School. The fare, said Margolis, will be paid by AAPS at a rate of $0.50 per ride. The rides will be counted and regulated by issuing swipeable cards to those students who are entitled to use the bus service. The cards can be swiped through the bus fare box when students board.

The regular fare for students on an AATA bus is $0.75. After the June 21 board meeting, AATA manager of service development Chris White explained the lower cost charged to AAPS, compared with the standard fare. For AAPS, a transfer will count as two rides – because of the card swipes that will determine the amount of the payments.

The pending agreement between the AATA and AAPS was noted in The Chronicle’s April 19, 2012 AATA board meeting report. Context for the agreement includes this year’s AAPS budget discussions, which included the possibility of eliminating all busing service provided by AAPS. In the budget finally approved by the AAPS board on June 13, 2012, most of the basic school bus service was preserved. However, some specific transportation services were eliminated, including the midday shuttles for Community High School and some bus stops for Ann Arbor Open.

The AAPS board decided to preserve most transportation services for the coming 2012-13 school year – in part by tapping the district’s fund reserves. The reasoning for that decision was based in part on the concern that the timing of a decision, in May, to eliminate school bus service for the fall would not leave sufficient time for families to plan for contingencies. At its May 23, 2012 meeting, the AAPS board directed the district’s staff to form an ad hoc transportation committee that is supposed to bring forward a recommendation on school transportation in early 2013. AATA’s Ford and other community members will be part of that committee.

Outcome: This was an item of information only, and there was no board discussion of the issue.

Communications, Committees, CEO, Commentary

The board entertained various communications at its June 21 meeting, including its usual reports from the performance monitoring and external relations committee, the planning and development committee, as well as from CEO Michael Ford. The board also heard commentary from the public. Here are some highlights.

Comm/Comm: Special Meeting – July 16

CEO Michael Ford reported that he was requesting a special board meeting on July 16, 2012 to cover a few items: the five-year service program associated with the possible transition to a countywide authority; bus advertising; the relocation of a fire hydrant; and the 2013 work plan. [The board does not typically schedule a monthly meeting in July, hence the need to call a special meeting. The July 16 special meeting is tentatively scheduled for 4 p.m. at the AATA headquarters at 2700 S. Industrial Hwy. ]

Comm/Comm: Countywide Transit – Four-Party Agreement

As part of his verbal report to the board at the June 21 meeting, Ford gave an update on the status of the legal framework under which the AATA could transition into a broader transit authority based on Act 196 of 1986.

By way of background, the most recent session of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners – a June 14 working session at which they did not vote – resulted in a long discussion of the documents that would be used to establish a new transit authority. [For recent Chronicle coverage of that working session, see: "Differences on Countywide Transit Debated"]

County commissioners weighed possible amendments to the four-party agreement and articles of incorporation that are associated with a possible expansion of governance and service area of the AATA. The four parties to the agreement are the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County and the AATA.

The city councils of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, as well as the AATA board, have approved the documents.

A committee with representation from each of the parties met the afternoon of June 18. [Members of the committee are: Sabra Briere and Christopher Taylor (Ann Arbor city council); Paul Schreiber and Pete Murdock (Ypsilanti mayor/city council); Conan Smith and Alicia Ping (Washtenaw County board); Jesse Bernstein and Charles Griffith (AATA board); David Read and David Phillips (U196 board).]

At the Ann Arbor city council’s meeting on the evening of June 18, Briere reported on the consensus of the committee. They felt that the possible amendments discussed by the Washtenaw County board would not be brought before the city councils of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti or the board of the AATA at this time, and that the original language would be allowed to stand.

At the AATA’s June 21 board meeting, Ford confirmed what Briere had reported at the city council’s meeting earlier in the week. Ford also reported that the four-party agreement and the articles of incorporation are scheduled to appear on the Washtenaw County board’s July 11 ways & means committee meeting.

That session, according to one Washtenaw County commissioner, is expected to be a “brawl.”

Comm/Comm: Countywide Transit – U196, Five-Year Service Plan

Board chair Jesse Bernstein reported that progress continues to be made on the possible governance of a new transit authority. The unincorporated board (the U196 board) will not have a July meeting, he said, and that time will be used instead to meet with municipalities throughout the county. A third round of district advisory committee (DAC) meetings is scheduled for August and September. [More information about the U196 board and DAC are on the AATA's Moving You Forward website.]

Part of the possible transition of the AATA to a countywide area of governance and service is the creation of a five-year program of expanded service.

Bernstein asked for an update on efforts to test new routes in the five-year service plan to make sure they’re viable and doable. AATA manager of service development Chris White explained that it’s not just the routes that are tested – it’s all the service components. The scheduled headways and frequencies have to be tested to make sure the various routes can work together as a whole. That testing starts the following week, White said. That same kind of testing will be done with commuter services and with the proposed circulators, White said.

Comm/Comm: LAC

Cheryl Webber gave the report from the AATA’s local advisory council – a body that advises the AATA on issues related to the disability community as well as seniors.

Doug Strong, CEO of the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers, at the UM board of regents June 21, 2012 meeting.

Webber reported that they’d received no response from the University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers about the need for sheltered walkways from bus stops to medical center facilities.

Although Sue Gott – who is UM’s university planner, and sits on the AATA board – had indicated she’d facilitate a response, Webber reported the LAC had received no response.

The issue also had been raised at the AATA board’s April 19, 2012 meeting. At that meeting, Clark Charnetski reported that the LAC had sent Doug Strong a letter. Strong is CEO of the UM Hospitals and Health Centers. The LAC had inquired about UM’s plans to provide sheltered walkways for riders of public transportation so they can get from bus stops into the medical center. The LAC had not yet received a reply to the letter, Charnetski reported at that meeting, so they’d be sending out a follow-up letter.

In response to Webber on June 21, Gott said she thought that LAC was going to send her the information that had already been conveyed to UM Hospitals. With that information in hand, she said she could facilitate some kind of response.

Comm/Comm: Vanpools

As part of his verbal report to the board, CEO Michael Ford noted that the AATA has now launched its vanpool program, with five vanpools – two originating out of Adrian and three from Jackson.

By way of background, in the vanpool program, the vehicles are owned and maintained by AATA. The vehicle is stored by the driver, who is a member of the vanpool and who does not need to pay for the service. For vanpools that start and end in Washtenaw County, the minimum number of riders in a pool of four plus the driver is charged $99 per rider per month. For 5-6 riders plus a driver, that per-rider cost drops to $79 per rider. Outside of Washtenaw County, the respective rates for different numbers in the vanpool are $139 and $119.

All five vanpools are affiliated with the University of Michigan. Ford reported that the AATA also is working with Zingerman’s to provide vanpool service to its employees. He noted that 20-25 Zingerman’s employees are interested in a vanpool.

Comm/Comm: Internal AATA Organization

In her report from the planning and development committee, Anya Dale noted that the committee had received a presentation from the Generator Group, which is analyzing AATA’s readiness to change as an organization [in the context of a possible transition to a countywide authority].

Board member Anya Dale reports out from the planning and development committee.

A survey of employees had been completed, Dale said, and there’d been a great response rate. One of the areas of study is employees’ levels of engagement and connection to AATA’s mission. A key finding was that the level of engagement is higher at AATA than other organizations. Board chair Jesse Bernstein asked Dale later in the meeting what was meant by a “high level of engagement.” Dale described that as meaning employees are connected to the overall mission. Bernstein ventured that meant that there’s an alignment of what the board wants to do and what employees believe they should do.

Comm/Comm: Performance Update

Charles Griffith gave an update from the performance monitoring and external relations committee. The AATA is continuing to show increased ridership on the fixed-route service, but he said it’s still a bit down for the demand-response service. The operating expenses per passenger are up, Griffith said, because the AATA has added service [along the Washtenaw Avenue corridor]. It’ll take a while for operational expenses to catch up, he said. Overall, the committee is feeling good about performance levels, Griffith concluded. [.pdf of June 2012 performance report]

Present: Charles Griffith, Jesse Bernstein, Eli Cooper, Sue Gott, Roger Kerson, Anya Dale.

Absent: David Nacht.

Next meeting: A special meeting has been requested for Thursday, July 16, 2012. The tentative location and time are: 4 p.m. at the AATA headquarters at 2700 S. Industrial Highway. [confirm date]

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

A Washtenaw County 911 dispatcher. Ann Arbor and county dispatch operations are currently co-located at Ann Arbor’s Fire Station #1 on Fifth Avenue. (Photo courtesy of Washtenaw County sheriff’s office.)

Also not cited as an example of possible future city/county collaboration was police dispatching. However, the topic did at least receive a passing mention by Ward 3 incumbent Stephen Kunselman, who told the audience that his grandmother was a police dispatcher in the late 1950s for the East Ann Arbor police department.

A recent city press release – sent out the Wednesday before the June 11 candidate forum – described a renewed effort to consolidate Ann Arbor’s 911 police dispatch functions with the Washtenaw County sheriff’s office.

So The Chronicle sat down with Ann Arbor chief of police Barnett Jones and Washtenaw County sheriff Jerry Clayton to walk through the possible consolidation, under which the city would contract with the county for dispatch service. Based on that interview, it’s clear that it’s not just talk.

The city and county dispatchers are already working in the same building in the same room –  on the second floor of Fire Station #1, across Fifth Avenue from the new municipal center at Fifth and Huron. Clayton has developed a staffing model for implementation. And over the next few weeks, Jones will be sitting down with the police officers union – dispatchers are members – to discuss the proposal. Jones said that from the standpoint of collective bargaining, a consolidated dispatch operation could not be blocked by the union.

But Jones and Clayton will not have the final say. That decision will be made by the Ann Arbor city council and the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Co-Located Dispatch: Preparation

The physical stage for the consolidation of county and city dispatching operations was set more than a year and a half ago, when the Ann Arbor city council authorized the remodeling of the dispatch room on the second floor of Fire Station #1. Previous Chronicle coverage from the council’s Dec. 9, 2009 meeting:

The city of Ann Arbor has agreed to co-locate its 911 dispatch with the county’s operation – that will take place at the city’s existing location in Fire Station #1, across from city hall. The cost of the remodeling will be $48,183, but will be reimbursed from the 800 MHz public safety communications millage fund.

At Monday’s meeting, chief of police Barnett Jones called the co-location a “dream come true.” The expectation is that co-location will eventually lead to consolidation of the operations.

The cooperative effort with the county on 911 dispatch, Jones said, was part of an effort to regionalize services, which already included SWAT, K-9, and training. [See also: "County Reorganizes 911 Dispatch"]

And a month later, the city council authorized the purchase of a new phone switch as part of the dispatch co-location effort. They heard from a deputy police chief that evening that the idea of an eventual consolidation of operations was not new. It had been discussed for a couple of decades. Previous Chronicle coverage, from the Jan. 19, 2010 meeting:

The resolution before the council on Monday was to approve the purchase of a 911 phone switch for $258,983.

During the brief deliberations by the council, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) elicited from deputy police chief Greg Bazick that the consolidation has been talked about for almost as long has he’s worked on the force – 19 years. The cost savings would lie in the ability to eliminate duplicative technology costs.

City administrator Roger Fraser pointed out that for now, the arrangement would allow the city and county to work side-by-side, which was more economical, because by state law if they made it one operation, they would have to pay the more expensive of the two labor contracts.

A couple of months earlier, the Washtenaw County board of commissioners had completed its piece of the co-location arrangement by voting unanimously to approve a reorganization of the county’s central dispatch and emergency services division. The board’s resolution included eliminating four supervisory positions (including one that was already vacant) and creating four different positions at lower pay grades. Previous Chronicle coverage, from the county board’s Nov. 4, 2009 meeting:

Over the years, [Marc] Breckenridge [director of emergency management and homeland security] added, co-location will save in the cost of doing business, because of shared technology expenses. A lot of technology is duplicated among various units of government, he said.

Clayton said the whole project was an example of the county and city of Ann Arbor’s willingness to work together, leveraging resources with the goal of improving public safety.

Cost, County Role, Staffing Model

When The Chronicle met with Clayton and Jones earlier this week, Clayton indicated that the next step to full consolidation of the dispatch operation – now that co-location has been implemented – would not result in further cost savings to the county. Technology-based savings to the county, now and into the future, are a function of the co-location itself.

Consolidation of the dispatch operation – by using county dispatchers to handle Ann Arbor’s 911 calls – would be implemented on a contractual basis that would be cost-neutral to the county, Clayton said. So it’s not something he’s trying to push onto the city of Ann Arbor or other units of government in the county.

The sheriff was keen to stress during the interview that consolidation of dispatch operations is also not any kind of a first step towards consolidating services of individual police departments in the county under the sheriff’s office.

Clayton’s concern can be traced partly to a recent working session of the county board, when county commissioner Wes Prater had voiced the idea that only two police departments were necessary in the county: the Ann Arbor police department and the sheriff’s office. That comment prompted Clayton to assert that he had no interest in absorbing other police departments in the county. It also prompted other commissioners to take turns going around the table expressing their support for the independent police departments in their respective districts. Clayton also weighed in with support of Ypsilanti’s police force as an independent agency – commissioner Ronnie Peterson, whose district includes Ypsilanti, was absent from that meeting.

Contracting dispatch service is conceptually a different proposition from the way that some local units of government contract with the county to provide police services – deputy road patrols – for their communities. They contract for a specific number of deputies.

For that kind of service, the county distinguishes between the “cost” of a deputy and the “price” charged to a township for that deputy’s service – the difference is “contributed” by the county. Setting the cost and price has a long and contentious history, with the final dollar amount in the settlement of a related lawsuit still not determined. But based on the board’s unanimous initial vote at its June 1, 2011 meeting on the price to be charged for deputies, far greater consensus has been achieved on this issue. That price had emerged from work done by a police services steering committee over a period of more than a year.

For dispatching, it’s not some number of dispatchers for which the city of Ann Arbor would be contracting, but rather for the dispatching service. So there would be no distinction between cost and price.

The county currently employs 17 dispatchers plus a coordinator for a total of 18. The staffing model Clayton has put together to absorb the Ann Arbor dispatching workload would include 30 dispatchers plus two supervisors and one coordinator, for a total of 33. So Clayton would need an additional 15 bodies to staff the county’s dispatching room, in order to handle the additional workload.

The most natural extra bodies would be Ann Arbor police dispatchers – there are currently 21 of them. So not all of them would be needed.

The impact of the fiscal year 2012 budget approved by the Ann Arbor city council on May 31 already included the layoff of two of those 21 police dispatchers starting July 1. Those two [not all 21, as reported elsewhere] have been sent layoff notices, according to Jones. Robyn Wilkerson, head of human resources for the city of Ann Arbor, told The Chronicle that all the dispatchers were sent a communication – a copy of the press release outlining the potential city/county consolidation.

When Jones and Clayton spoke with The Chronicle earlier this week, Jones said he’d met with both laid-off dispatchers, and that he was working with Wilkerson and interim city administrator Tom Crawford to try to find a “softer landing” for them in some other city position. Jones recalled his own past career experience in Oakland County getting laid off as a sworn officer. He’d been offered a job at one-third the pay – either working in the morgue or serving process papers. He’d opted to work as a process server, and eventually was hired back.

For those who are hired into a consolidated dispatch room, Clayton described how they and the current sheriff’s dispatchers would make a gradual transition. Ann Arbor dispatchers would initially take all the Ann Arbor calls. They’d need to then start learning the rest of the county. And current sheriff’s dispatchers would need to learn the city of Ann Arbor. That would be accomplished partly by dispatchers pairing up on computer screens, but also by doing ride-alongs – actually riding with sheriff’s deputies and Ann Arbor officers out on patrol.

If the consolidation of dispatch operations is implemented, the math doesn’t work in favor of the Ann Arbor police dispatchers. Of the remaining 19 dispatchers (after the two layoffs), Clayton would use only 15 of them, leaving an additional four dispatchers out of a dispatching job. That corresponds roughly to the annual $400,000 savings (described in the city’s press release) that would be realized through the consolidation.

City of Ann Arbor Budget: Timeline for Consolidation

How does that $400,000 savings fit into the city of Ann Arbor police department budget planning?

While the city of Ann Arbor adopts its budget one year at a time, it plans in two-year cycles. After meeting a reduction target of $1 million for the 2012 fiscal year, Jones is looking at an additional $1 million reduction target for FY 2013.

For FY 2012 – which begins on July 1, 2011 – six police officer positions were eliminated through a combination of layoffs and vacancies. And the plan for FY 2013, which Jones put in front of the city council at a work session held in February 2011, would call for the layoff of as many as eight additional sworn police officers in FY 2013. That work session scenario – outlining two different budget reduction strategies – did not include the consolidation of the dispatching operation with the county. From the worksheet presented at the February work session:

Police Services Reduction Strategies
------------------------------------------------------
2.5% SCENARIO

2012            2012           2013            2013
Action          Dollars        Action          Dollars
------------------------------------------------------
LAYOFF                         LAYOFF
2 Dispatchers   162,659        1 Dispatcher     97,810
2 Plc Offcrs    221,332        4 Plc Offcrs    470,272
1 Plc Svc Spcls  90,246
                               REDUCE RANK
ELIMINATE VACANT               1 Lt, 2 Sgt      24,274
1 Telecomm       78,374
1 Plc Offcr     115,521        MAT/SUPP         31,723
1 Plc Prof Asst  79,144
                               Addtl Svngs      22,981

Subtotal Svgs   747,276                        647,060
2.5% Target     666,049                        638,802

------------------------------------------------------
4.0% SCENARIO [in addition to 2.5% savings]

2012            2012           2013            2013
Action          Dollars        Action          Dollars
------------------------------------------------------
LAYOFF                         LAYOFF
3 Plc Offcrs    339,365        4 Plc Offcrs    479,235

                               Addtl Svgs       14,334

Grand Total   1,086,641                      1,140,629
4.0% Target   1,049,330                      1,091,071

-

The 2.5% budget reduction scenario is one that would entail police officers adopting the city’s benefits package, which would include a contribution by employees to their health care costs. The 4.0% reduction scenario is what would have to be achieved if police officers do not adopt the city benefits package.  The city’s contract with its police officers expired on June 30, 2009 and the union has filed a request for arbitration under the state’s Act 312. The 2.5%/4.0% alternative is part of an attempt the city has used explicitly to align its budget strategy with its labor strategy.

Based on the worksheet, in FY 2013 the impact of the $400,000 savings through dispatch consolidation would translate roughly into the preservation of slightly more than three police officers on patrol. For Jones, it’s a matter of weighing the dispatchers who could lose their jobs as dispatchers, against the police officers who’d remain on patrol. On that balance test, it’s police officers on patrol that take priority.

For Jones, the deadline for dispatch consolidation is a little less than a year from now, when the FY 2013 budget is approved. The $400,000 in savings will clearly help meet the reduction target, but it still leaves him around $600,000 short. And Jones is looking ahead to FY 2014 and FY 2015 when he expects further reductions will be necessary. So even while one argument on the city’s side for consolidated dispatch is budgetary – it’ll save $400,000 annually – the move is not a complete solution to funding police services in Ann Arbor.

Public Policy Arguments for Consolidation

Jones can make a budgetary argument to the Ann Arbor city council in favor of consolidated dispatch. But Clayton allowed that the consolidation itself (as opposed to the co-location) is a cost-neutral proposition to the county. He went on to describe how consolidated dispatch would add employees and increase the challenges and workload for the sheriff’s office. But he concluded: It’s what the sheriff is supposed to do – provide a blanket of support.

Asked by The Chronicle how he planned to sell the idea to the Washtenaw County board of commissioners, Clayton stated that it was simply good public policy – from the point of view of the collaboration between public entities as well as the perspective of coordinating public safety operations.

Jones agreed that the budgetary argument is not the only one. He’d worked in Oakland County where regionalized dispatch is the norm. And both Clayton and Jones pointed to Livingston County as an example where all dispatch is done through the sheriff’s office.

When The Chronicle phoned Mimi Yenshaw, administrative supervisor of Livingston County dispatch, she described how her department performs dispatching services for nine different police departments, 10 fire departments and one ambulance service located in the county. She indicated that there are some minor variations in how calls are handled for each of those agencies – differences that are incorporated into dispatcher training. For example, each fire department stipulates what kinds of medical runs its firefighters will go on. Dispatchers have a grid that lists out which fire departments will go on what kinds of calls.

The consolidated dispatch operation in Livingston County launched on Memorial day in 1999. Yenshaw has been part of the operation since that time and said, “It works very well for us. I can’t say how it would work for Ann Arbor.”

Within Washtenaw County, the city of Ypsilanti consolidated its dispatch operation with the sheriff’s office just last year. Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber told The Chronicle in a phone interview that there’s one extra technical step that’s now required when calls are dispatched, but that’s “a very quick step,” he said. From his perspective, the consolidation is working. Four police and fire dispatchers were folded into the county’s operation, and did not have to lose their jobs, Schreiber said. The value of the contract with the county is $149,000 annually, and that reflects a savings to the city of $89,000, Schreiber wrote in a follow-up email.

Calculations on savings and costs are affected by police service answering point (PSAP) funding – which is collected by the state treasury from communication service suppliers/resellers and commercial mobile radio service suppliers, and then distributed to local units. PSAP funding is not enough to cover the complete cost of dispatching, but the funding is allocated to the unit providing the answering point, i.e., the dispatching service.

While the budgetary impact is positive, a staff memo written by then-acting Ypsilanti chief of police Paul DeRidder also described a potential negative impact: “Some negative impacts to the YPD will be: increased operational workload for existing employees, loss of independence, loss of tailored or customized services.” In his phone interview, Schreiber allowed that the consolidation meant the loss of some amount of control. It’s a matter of weighing how much control you are willing to lose, he concluded.

In the same memo, DeRidder also described the public policy benefits of the consolidation beyond the cost savings. The consolidation would improve service, he wrote, by “providing a single point of contact for all emergency service requests (regional concept), the reduction of misdirected calls, inter-jurisdiction cooperation, enhanced information sharing, and expanded supervision to assure continued high quality service delivery.”

It’s these kinds of public policy benefits that chief Jones and sheriff Clayton both identified as arguments for the consolidation of Ann Arbor’s dispatch with the sheriff’s office.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public entities like the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County governments. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

The board voted to accept funding from a U.S. Dept. of Energy weatherization assistance program that would provide $241,863 in federal dollars to the county. Administered by the county’s Employment Training and Community Services (ETCS) department, the funding would help weatherize 31 properties to eligible residents – homeowners or renters with a family income at or below 200% of the federal poverty level ($45,088 for a family of four).

The hiring of Michael G. Smith, Jr. as the county’s veteran services director, effective May 23, 2011, was also given final approval.

Also approved on May 18 was an interagency agreement with the city of Ann Arbor and the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority (AATA), allowing the two entities to collaborate with the county on technology services. [.pdf file of draft interagency agreement] The agreement includes an extension, through 2015, of the contract for a network manager job that’s shared between the county and city. That contract, first signed in 2008, expires in June of 2011. The two entities save about $81,577 annually because of the shared position. The board also gave final approval to share costs with the city for a deal with the firm EMC, paying for storage area network and backup services.

This brief was filed from the boardroom of the county administration building at 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow.

The board’s approval also includes the extension, through 2015, of the contract for a network manager job that’s shared between the county and city. That contract, first signed in 2008, expires in June of 2011. The two entities save about $78,000 $81,577 annually because of the shared position. Also approved was a lease extension through 2015 for shared data center space – that lease is set to expire in 2013.

In addition, the board gave initial approval to share costs with the city for a deal with the firm EMC, paying for storage area network and backup services. The county now pays $387,924 annually for these services, and would expect to save $212,000 annually by sharing costs with the city. The deal would also allow the county to increase storage capacity, giving it the ability for future potential technology collaborations with other local units of government and community partners.

This brief was filed from the boardroom in the Washtenaw County administration building, 220 N. Main St., Ann Arbor. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

The AATA board had discussed the AATA collaboration at its April 21 meeting. The data storage services to be provided by the county will cost $73,632 for four years. The backup services to be provided by the county will entail an annual service cost of $102,607 for four years.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

At the same meeting, the council also authorized the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority for the city to manage construction of the bus pullout – the project will be paid for with federal stimulus funds provided to the AATA. The AATA board authorized its side of the MOU at a special meeting held on April 1.

The bus pullout is part of a larger project – a transfer center on the south side of Washtenaw Avenue at Pittsfield Boulevard, opposite Arborland mall – which will include a “super shelter.” For now, only a center on the south side is being contemplated, because topographical and right-of-way issues pose challenges on the north side.

Construction on the bus pullout is to begin in April and be completed by June of this year.

The need for a transfer center at that Washtenaw Avenue location, of which the bus pullout is a part, stems from the termination in July 2009 of a previous arrangement with Arborland shopping center, which provided for a bus stop and transfer center in the Arborland parking lot.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 100 N. Fifth Ave. A more detailed report will follow: [link]

From left: Washtenaw County commissioner Ronnie Peterson, Ypsilanti city councilmember Pete Murdock, and Ann Arbor Township supervisor Mike Moran, at the county board's March 17 working session on intergovernmental collaboration. (Photos by the writer.)

Their discussion comes in the context of declining property values – property taxes are the primary source of revenue for local governments. In Michigan, constraints on how local governments can generate revenues add an additional layer of complexity. For the county, commissioners and staff are weighing how to overcome a projected two-year, $20.9 million deficit – some feel that collaborating with other local governments is part of the solution.

The talk among Washtenaw County leaders about collaboration also reflects a push at the state level to encourage more such efforts. It’s been a mantra of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, an Ann Arbor area resident, who wants to use state revenue-sharing dollars as a carrot to get communities to work together. More dramatically, his administration is also advocating for legislation that would make it easier for cities and counties to merge.

Local government officials had been invited to the March 17 meeting to participate in the discussion and air their views on the possibilities for collaboration, as well as roadblocks they anticipate, like issues of cost or control. Many cited the need for better communication, and commissioners indicated a desire to get more involved in existing forums, such as the CEO Group – a monthly meeting of township supervisors led by Dexter Township supervisor Pat Kelly – and the Saline Area Sustainability Circle, which also meets monthly.

Representatives from Ann Arbor Township, Salem Township, Saline and Ypsilanti attended the working session. However, no one came from local governments of the county’s largest population centers – Ann Arbor, Pittsfield Township or Ypsilanti Township – though those areas are also represented by county commissioners. Several people at the meeting expressed the hope that similar sessions would be held in the future, with the additional hope that more local officials would get involved.

Introductions, Framing the Discussion

Typically, working sessions for the county board entail presentations on one or two topics related to the county’s work, with the opportunity for commissioners to ask questions. But the March 17 session on intergovernmental collaboration had a different tone. Yousef Rabhi, chair of the working session, began by asking everyone in the room to introduce themselves, and he invited leaders from other local governments to sit at tables in the front with microphones, where they could participate directly in the discussion.

In addition to some county staff and a few members of the public, local officials at the meeting included Mike Moran, Ann Arbor Township supervisor; Todd Campbell, Saline city manager; Salem Township supervisor Robert Heyl; Salem Township treasurer Paul Uherek; Janis Bobrin, Washtenaw County water resources commissioner; and Gene DeRossett, 14-A District Court administrator. Pete Murdock, an Ypsilanti city councilmember, arrived about midway through the session.

Rabhi pointed out that one of the county’s guiding principles speaks directly to collaboration:

Provide leadership on intragovernmental, intergovernmental and intersectoral cooperation and collaboration aimed at improving services to County citizens.

He noted that at the March 16 board meeting, commissioners had approved a set of priorities and principles to guide the 2012-2013 budget. During that meeting, they’d talked a lot about intergovernmental collaboration, he said. One of the guiding principles that they’d approved dealt directly with that issue:

Guidance Four: Integrate efforts across agencies to meet strategic priorities. The Board seeks to substantively elevate the County’s role in providing leadership on intragovernmental, intergovernmental and intersectoral cooperation and collaboration aimed at improving services to County citizens. Partnership and collaboration are essential components of every County program. [.pdf file of 2012-13 strategic priorities and budget decision principles]

“This is part of that process,” Rabhi said. The county is already collaborating in a variety of ways, he noted, which they are documenting. [.pdf file listing current county collaborations] Examples include the sheriff’s office combining its dispatch operations with the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti; the county morgue contracting with the University of Michigan Health System to use UM facilities for autopsies; and the county providing IT services for the Dexter fire department, Chelsea police and the city of Ypsilanti.

What followed was a wide-ranging discussion among commissioners and leaders of other local governments. For purposes of this report, the discussion is organized by topic.

Is Collaboration a Priority – And at What Cost?

Rabhi observed that at the March 16 board meeting, some commissioners had indicated they didn’t want to collaborate if it cost the county money. So he posed a question: Should collaboration be a priority, regardless of its expense?

Washtenaw County commissioner Yousef Rabhi, left, who chairs the board's working sessions, talks with Salem Township supervisor Robert Heyl prior to the March 17 working session on intergovernmental collaboration.

Conan Smith, the board’s chair, made some additional points to frame the conversation. They have an interesting opportunity, given the state’s economy, to re-examine how government services are provided, he said. One of the key questions is: At what level is a service optimally provided, and what entity should provide it? Issues that affect the character of a neighborhood probably aren’t a county government responsibility. But perhaps providing a payroll service to local governments is a service the county could offer.

He also pointed out that many issues cross jurisdictional boundaries – like the work of the county’s water resources commissioner, for example. Environmental issues should be looked at from a regional or metro area perspective, he said – or even on the scale of a watershed.

These aren’t necessarily clear-cut decisions, Smith said. And it’s complicated by the fact that different units of government have different authority. Police services and roads are examples where there’s overlapping entities involved. All of these factors should be part of the discussion, Smith said, and should help shape their legislative agenda.

Returning to Rabhi’s question, Barbara Bergman said that any collaboration they do should be cost neutral to the county. Though they should look for opportunities to collaborate, as a steward of public funds, she said, she felt strongly that they shouldn’t use general fund dollars to pursue collaborative projects.

No government wants to collaborate and end up paying more, Smith replied. But there’s recognition that kicking off a collaboration might cost money initially – the idea is that those upfront costs will yield a payoff down the road. The distinction is between one-time costs and longer-term costs, he said.

Bergman responded that if there are start-up costs that don’t result in savings within six to eight months, that would be hard to support.

At that point, Mike Moran – Ann Arbor Township supervisor – approached the podium to speak. He told Bergman that her view is very short-sighted. There are several examples of collaborations that have paid off, but that aren’t necessarily cost neutral, he said – pointing to the Washtenaw Metro Alliance and the Urban County, which both have relied on county staff. And some things didn’t save money, but were worth doing anyway, he noted. The Metro Alliance, for example, came up with a comprehensive open space plan – they didn’t start out with that as a project, but it became a valuable endeavor, he said.

Secondarily, Moran said, a lot of collaboration is happening that might not be officially considered as collaboration. He cited as examples the Washtenaw Area Transportation Study (WATS) and the criminal justice collaborative council (CJCC), on which he serves – those aren’t included on the county’s list of collaborative projects, he noted, but they should be.

Moran also reported that Ann Arbor Township now requires that every development project be vetted by the staff of the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner. That’s not a county requirement, he noted, but another example of two local government entities working together.

Ann Arbor Township supervisor Mike Moran and Janis Bobrin, Washtenaw County water resources commissioner.

Finally, Moran expressed skepticism that any money will be forthcoming from the state for local governments. If there’s a funding pool, it’ll be more like a “baby swimming pool,” he quipped.

Bergman replied that she also serves on the CJCC – when it started, the county was able to fund its start-up costs. But they’re facing a different economic climate now. “I wish now was then,” she said. “But now is now.” Bergman also noted that Janis Bobrin, the county’s water resources commissioner, can manage her budget however she sees fit, “regardless of my comments regarding cost neutrality.” [The water resources commissioner is an independent, elected position. The budget for that office is set by the county board.]

Later in the meeting, commissioner Dan Smith observed that cost savings are the main reason driving collaboration. Over the years, local governments have developed the attitude that they want to deliver the best service possible, and the best way to do that was to do it themselves. But they don’t have the luxury of doing that anymore, he added, and they’re looking to collaborate to save money.

That might be true, commissioner Wes Prater said – the need to save money might have brought collaboration to the forefront. But there’s other value to collaboration, beyond savings. They also need to take into account that each of the local governments have different responsibilities, he said – the trick is to find collaborations that bring value to all involved.

Commissioner Kristin Judge said it was important to remember that the county is a member of SEMCOG (the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments). They pay dues for that membership, she said, and should take advantage of SEMCOG staff who could support collaborative projects – SEMCOG staff is providing that kind of support to a regional IT collaboration that Judge participates in.

Peter Murdock, an Ypsilanti city councilmember, observed that Ypsilanti has been involved in collaborations for decades – he cited the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority (YCUA) and the Ypsilanti District Library as examples. The city, which has its own police department, is also talking with Ypsilanti Township about providing police services for the township, he said. Ypsilanti Township currently contracts with the county sheriff’s department for police services.

They’ve already done a lot of cost cutting, Murdock said, and the next few years will be difficult. Collaboration and consolidation might be part of the solution, but Murdock indicated that strategy alone likely wouldn’t be enough to solve their problems.

Collaboration: Communication Is Key

Prater urged local leaders to think of Washtenaw County as one community. Each district is a little different, he said, but everyone is concerned about quality of life and public safety – they know those are crucial for economic development. There are other things, like transportation and good roads, he said, but fundamentally, public safety is the most critical thing for a good economy.

Commissioner Rob Turner said he comes to the discussion from the perspective of public schools – before being elected to the county board, he was a school board member for the Chelsea public schools. School boards throughout the county have a collegial relationship, he said, and collaborate via the Washtenaw Intermediate School District. Many service-sharing initiatives emerge from their discussions, he said, including collaborations related to food services and transportation. He said he didn’t see anything similar among township supervisors or other local government leaders – people just coming together and talking, as they were that night. He wondered if there were meetings taking place that he just wasn’t aware of.

County commissioners Wes Prater and Kristin Judge.

Judge mentioned the CEO Group, a monthly meeting of township supervisors and other local government officials – it’s led by Dexter Township supervisor Pat Kelly. Former county commissioner Mark Ouimet previously served as an informal liaison between the county board and the CEO Group, she said. So the mechanism exists, Judge said – they just need to figure out a better way to take advantage of it. She suggested that perhaps the work of the CEO Group could be better publicized.

Prater noted that former Ann Arbor mayor Liz Brater had started the CEO Group in the early 1990s, when Prater served as supervisor of Ypsilanti Township. Initially, only a few people attended, he said, but now it’s a strong group and provides a forum for local governments to communicate.

Turner observed that county commissioners or staff would benefit from being more than just an occasional guest at those meetings. Judge recalled that when she was first elected to the county board, taking office in late 2008, she was invited to the group. At that time, there was distrust against the county related to a dispute over how townships and other municipalities were charged for sheriff deputy patrols, she said. A lot of work has been done to heal those relationships, she added, and now it seems that members of the CEO Group are more open to working with the county.

Those kinds of animosities generally stem from a lack of communication, Turner said. Moran agreed that the CEO Group meetings have been helpful in leading to more understanding among the different entities, which he said has benefited everyone. At one point he had suggested that each head of the county departments come to the CEO Group meetings to explain to the group what they do, and what their concerns are. A few department heads did that, he said, but it would be helpful to hear from more of them.

Moran also identified the county board’s public commentary rules as a constraint against better communication. During the two opportunities for public commentary at each of their meetings, speakers are limited in time – five minutes at the regular board meetings and working sessions, and three minutes during the Ways & Means Committee meeting.

It’s hard to have a dialogue when you’re limited to speaking for five minutes, Moran said. Also, given the way the county operates, by the time a resolution has reached the board for a vote, the decision about it has already been made, he said. Moran suggested more meetings like this working session would be valuable.

Rabhi noted that there seems to be interest in coming together like this. When he sent out an email invitation to local government leaders, he’d received a lot of responses from people who couldn’t come, but who told him they were “overjoyed” that the county was holding this kind of meeting.

Ronnie Peterson asked other local government leaders to weigh in – what did they want from the county? What are their feelings about how the county currently interacts with them? How can the county enhance existing collaborations? It might be as simple as sharing a dump truck or an office that’s unused. He said the county needs to look for partners to help deliver services to its residents, but some communities want to be isolated – they don’t want to be bothered with collaborative efforts.

Todd Campbell, Saline’s city manager, thanked the board for holding the working session, and said he hoped there’d be more of these meetings in the future, and that more people would attend. For his community, it’s all about providing quality services – and collaboration is key for the future success of all communities, Campbell said. He mentioned ways that Saline is already doing that, citing the work that the Saline police department does with the county sheriff’s office.

Todd Campbell, city manager for Saline, and county commissioner Alicia Ping. Prior to her election to the county board, Ping served on the Saline city council.

Campbell noted that there are 62 employees in Saline city government – 10 fewer than there were eight years ago. At some point, you can’t do more with less – you do less with less. And generally, of the ways to cut costs, they’d already picked the low-hanging fruit.

But there are times when other factors come into play, he added. For example, he said that Saline has a strong city assessor who’s fair and helps educate the public. [Saline's assessor is Catherine Scull.] It doesn’t make sense for them to outsource that job, he said, because she provides such a quality service.

Campbell also stressed the importance of communication. He pointed out that the Saline Area Sustainability Circle has been very helpful – its discussions tend to focus on land-use issues, but other topics are addressed as well. [The group, which Campbell chairs, includes Saline, the Saline Area Chamber of Commerce, Saline Area Schools, Lodi Township, Saline Township, York Township, and Pittsfield Township. Its meetings, held at different locations on the third Tuesday of each month, are open to the public.]

Addressing the topic of barriers to collaboration, Campbell noted that in the town where he previously worked, they talked about those barriers as turf, taxes and tradition. Efforts to collaborate can result in issues of local control, of revenue and of the loss of identify – he cited an example of two school districts that were asked to consolidate, after their sports teams had been bitter rivals for decades. These are some of the challenges.

Alicia Ping, a former Saline city councilmember who now serves on the county board, suggested that the county needs to communicate better with other local governments about the services it already provides. She noted that several years ago, Saline was looking to outsource inspection services. Now, they contract with the county’s water resources commissioner for some of those services – it’s fee-based, she said.

Turner said he’d like to see the county board continue the kind of forum they were having at this working session, perhaps holding them on a quarterly basis. They needed a time when they could just come together and talk with leaders of other local governments.

Moran pointed out that there are a lot of local governments that don’t want to engage with the county, but they should – more people need to attend these meetings, he said.

Campbell also said future forums like this were critical. Often at the state and national level, directives are handed down to local communities, he said – local governments are told what to do and how to do it. A better approach would be to invite local leaders to tell the county what their needs are, he said. That would be crucial – to find out what the ailment is first.

Barriers to Collaboration

Prater said he wanted to talk about why local governments don’t collaborate. All too often, it’s because people have always done things a certain way, he said – change isn’t easy, and it requires people to go outside their comfort level. A lot of people in government don’t want to think about new ideas, but they must, Prater said.

Collaboration also requires good, productive management, Prater said. They need to set performance measures, gather data, and look for efficiencies – it’s not easy, he said.

Moran asked how they would measure a collaborative project, with regards to cost neutrality. Would they measure it at the first dollar that’s spent? Ventures like the Metro Alliance might take a couple of years to pay off, he noted. Judging whether something is cost neutral is meaningless unless there’s a timeframe attached, Moran said.

Planning is key, Prater replied. If initial planning reveals issues that might result in a collaboration not working, then you stop it. These days, he said, it’s all about the revenues – or lack thereof.

Leah Gunn said it’s not just about the county’s revenues – declining property tax revenues are an issue for all local governments. Foreclosures are happening in all districts, including hers, she noted. [Gunn represents District 9, which covers a portion of Ann Arbor.]

In the end, collaboration will pay off, Gunn said. She called the list of current collaborations “amazing,” noting there are others – like the Metro Alliance – that aren’t listed. Her understanding is that the Metro Alliance, which has been inactive recently, is being reconstituted, which she said is a good thing. Recent collaborations among some of the county’s fire departments stemmed in part from the Metro Alliance’s request that fire chiefs to attend one of their meetings, she said.

From left: Salem Township treasurer Paul Uherek, Salem Township supervisor Robert Heyl, and county commissioner Conan Smith of Ann Arbor.

Later in the meeting, Salem Township treasurer Paul Uherek told commissioners that after the last snowfall, it took the county road commission three days before the road was plowed in front of his house. It would be useful for commissioners to ask why some local governments didn’t want to engage in collaborations, he said.

Judge later clarified that the county board isn’t responsible for clearing the roads – the road commission is a separate entity, although the county board is responsible for appointing the three road commissioners who oversee that operation.

Peterson noted that sometimes, people feel their concerns get lost. To say that the road commission is a separate entity ignores the role that the county board plays in appointing road commissioners, he said. Other local governments need to feel they are members of the team, he said, and at the end of the day, people want to be able to pick up the phone and get something done. And at the end of the day, he said, the county board is responsible for the road commission. It’s all about trust, he said – unless the county government has the trust of all municipalities throughout the county, they’ll never get to where they need to be in streamlining operations and cutting costs.

Turner noted that he served as a board liaison to the road commission, and he offered to follow up on the Salem Township issue. He asked them to contact him if there are any problems in the future. Referring to a statement made earlier in the meeting – that most communities have already picked the low-hanging fruit of cost savings – Turner said they’ll need to stand on each others’ shoulders to get at the higher-hanging fruit. “We’re here to help you,” he said, “and that’s what we want to do.”

Moran said he now knows who to call at the road commission, and how to get results – but 10 years ago, when he was new to office, he didn’t. He suggested coming up with a list of important contact information that could be distributed to all local governments.

Dan Smith said it’s true that most communities have already picked the low-hanging fruit. Now, as they brainstorm ideas for collaboration, they’ll face some serious roadblocks.

For example, consider the idea of a countywide fire department – though Smith stressed he wasn’t advocating for this. Residents don’t care where firefighters get trained or how many fire chiefs there are. They just want firefighters to respond when there’s a fire – they care about how quickly firefighters respond. It’s possible for this service to be delivered by a countywide entity, with lots of substations. But working through the details of that would be very difficult, he noted, given that there are currently multiple fire departments across the county.

Potential Areas of Collaboration, Next Steps

In looking at specific areas of possible collaboration, Conan Smith noted that the budget priority document the board approved on March 16 includes two outcomes that were relevant to the current discussion:

• Reductions in cost or duplication of the provision of “invisible” services; and
• Increased support for discretionary services that are board priorities.

Invisible services would include things that aren’t directly seen by residents, such as payroll or human resources. Smith asked if opportunities for collaboration existed in that area.

Campbell reported that from Saline’s perspective, they already contract out for their payroll services – they no longer do that in-house. He said that he heads up the city’s HR, because everyone wears many hats.

Murdock said that Ypsilanti had previously looked at the possibility of outsourcing some of those services, like HR and payroll. At the time, it didn’t make sense – or cents – to pursue, he said. Those aren’t big-ticket items like police or fire, where they could see significant savings from changes.

Conan Smith observed that one consistent theme had emerged that evening – the importance of dialogue and conversation. He said they needed to enter a process of discovery, cataloging all the existing opportunities and reviewing how the county board might participate in them. For example, they haven’t been active in the CEO Group – they could increase their engagement in that. They could also have a representative attend the Saline Area Sustainability Circle, and the Eastern Leaders Group.

Bergman added the community health collaborative to that list, saying they could put more muscle into its activities.

Judge suggested creating a menu of services that local governments could provide to other entities. For example, if there are services that one community provides particularly well – like Saline’s assessor – then perhaps other local governments could contract with them for those services.

Peterson said that for their next meeting on collaboration, they should solicit input from a broader range of elected and appointed officials throughout the county. How do they think the county can work better with their communities?

Washtenaw County administrator Verna McDaniel, left, and county commissioner Leah Gunn. The working session was held on St. Patrick's Day – thus the high percentage of green clothing on display.

Picking up on an idea mentioned earlier in the meeting by Moran, Gunn suggested creating a list of contact information for county services. When you’re new to office, there’s a steep learning curve, she said. Bergman proposed posting this information on the county’s website. She also said it was important to get more input from other local governments about how to continue this dialogue.

Peterson felt it should be more than just a list of numbers. New county commissioners get an extensive orientation regarding county services, which includes the opportunity to meet with heads of departments and programs. Something like that might be helpful for leaders of other local governments.

Conan Smith cautioned that it seemed they were on the verge of creating a new project, and he was sensitive to the constraints on their budget and staff time. He asked for some commissioners to look into how much it might involve, and to bring back a report to the board. Rabhi, Bergman and Peterson volunteered for that task.

Peterson then noted that they’ve invited members of other local governments to the table, and that long-term relationships like this might bring some costs. “Let’s not ask for a date if we can’t afford to take them out,” he said.

Judge also expressed concern over creating a new project, noting that other forums already exist, including the CEO Group and the Metro Alliance. In addition, the board’s budget priorities, which they had approved at their March 16 meeting, include a priority to market the county’s services to other entities – that’s something they’ve already asked the county administration to do. She’d rather see them simply add to whatever already exists, not develop something new.

Turner said he understood Judge’s position, and if they can work with existing forums, that’s fine. However, he noted that so far, that hasn’t seemed to work very well – there are still significant communication gaps. They might need a different venue to do that, with a more comfortable atmosphere.

Robert Heyl, Salem Township’s supervisor, said he liked what he heard that night. He noted that each commissioner represented different parts of the county, and they could reach out to other local government leaders within their districts. Meeting one-on-one with other elected officials in their districts would be helpful, he said. The forum that night had been a good start, he said, and he hoped it would continue.

Rabhi wrapped up the working session by saying the discussion had opened a lot of doors, and that they’d hold more meetings like this in the future. The county is eager to work with everyone to best serve the residents, he concluded, “because that’s what we’re all here for.”

Present: Barbara Levin Bergman, Leah Gunn, Kristin Judge, Ronnie Peterson, Alicia Ping, Wes Prater, Yousef Rabhi, Conan Smith, Dan Smith, Rob Turner.

Absent: Rolland Sizemore Jr.

Next regular board meeting: Wednesday, April 6, 2011 at 6:30 p.m. at the county administration building, 220 N. Main St. The Ways & Means Committee meets first, followed immediately by the regular board meeting. [confirm date] (Though the agenda states that the regular board meeting begins at 6:45 p.m., it usually starts much later – times vary depending on what’s on the agenda.) Public comment sessions are held at the beginning and end of each meeting.

City of Ann Arbor planner Jeff Kahan explains that even though the proposed district boundaries of a Washtenaw Avenue corridor improvement authority would, at its western end, not include properties adjoining the right-of-way, the right-of-way could still receive the benefit of improvements. (Photos by the writer.)

That’s what the public hearing was about. The Ann Arbor city council is considering whether to work with the other three communities to establish a corridor improvement authority (CIA) along Washtenaw Avenue. Schreiber was at Ann Arbor’s meeting to encourage the council to consider forming a CIA, thus joining with his city and the two other municipalities along Washtenaw. The council took no action on March 7 – by state statute, they cannot take the step to establish a CIA until 60 days after the public hearing.

A corridor improvement authority is a tax-increment finance district, similar to a downtown development authority – but specifically designed for commercial corridors instead of downtown areas. [.pdf map of proposed Washtenaw Avenue CIA district ] At the March 7 public hearing on establishing a Washtenaw Avenue CIA, Schreiber was one of only two people to speak.

But five days earlier, on March 2, around 20 people attended a presentation by city of Ann Arbor planners at Cobblestone Farm. And they were joined late in the meeting by Stephen Rapundalo, who represents Ward 2 on the Ann Arbor city council. Washtenaw Avenue is a boundary between Ward 2 on the north and Ward 3 on the south. Some of those 20 residents aired their criticisms as well as support of the CIA proposal. In addition to some concerns about the administration of the authority, attendees expressed disagreement with each other about the kinds of solutions the corridor needs.

Some agreed with the conclusions of a joint technical committee that’s been working on the issue: The corridor would benefit from added transit infrastructure and greater accessibility to non-motorized transportation, as well as increased residential density. Others saw that stretch of Washtenaw Avenue as needing mainly additional lanes in the roadway to improve traffic flow.

On the administrative side, city planner Jeff Kahan explained that the possibility of establishing a CIA along Washtenaw Avenue would be greatly helped by a revision to the relatively new state statute that allows such CIAs to be created – a revision that would explicitly articulate that the four jurisdictions could form a single authority. As the statute is currently written, four separate authorities would need to be formed, and then operated under some kind of inter-governmental agreement.

So where did this idea come from that four separate units of government might collaborate on creating a corridor improvement authority for Washtenaw Avenue? It pre-dates by at least two years Gov. Rick Snyder’s recent call for greater collaboration among government entities. But Snyder was at least indirectly involved in providing some impetus behind the effort.

Origin of Concept: Ann Arbor Region Success

City planner Jeff Kahan began his presentation to the Cobblestone Farm audience by describing how the Washtenaw corridor improvement concept had evolved out of a planning effort called Ann Arbor Region Success. The effort involved 70 different community leaders, he said.

By way of additional background, the group of 70 people formed back in 2008 and divided into smaller work groups to focus on specific areas to develop long-term success strategies for the region. The group was led by six co-chairs: Martha Bloom, vice president of the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation; Jeff Irwin, then chair of the Washtenaw County board of commissioners; Mark Ouimet, then a Washtenaw County commissioner; Rich Sheridan, president and CEO of Menlo Innovations; and Larry Voight, executive director of the nonprofit Catholic Social Services.

In November 2010, Irwin, a Democrat, and Ouimet, a Republican, were elected to represent District 53 and District 52, respectively, in the Michigan state House.

Also now in Lansing, and listed on the “leadership team” of the Ann Arbor Region Success group (as CEO of the venture capital firm Ardesta) is Rick Snyder – a Republican who was elected governor of the state of Michigan in November 2010.

The Ann Arbor Region Success initiative included a housing and land use work group. Richard Murphy, who was then a planner with the city of Ypsilanti and now works for the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, was part of that work group. Responding to a Chronicle emailed query, Murphy reported that the work group had identified several themes that eventually worked their way into the concept for the Washtenaw corridor: walkability, high-quality transit, and a range of choices for housing, transportation mode, and destinations. Infill development was identified as a tool for achieving some of those goals.

[Murphy's colleague at the Michigan Suburbs Alliance, Sam Offen, attended the Cobblestone Farm meeting. Offen's name is possibly recognizable to readers as a member of the city's park advisory commission; he also serves on the Library Lot RFP review committee.]

An “action team” then took the Washtenaw Avenue corridor as a specific area of focus, which led to the formation of a joint technical committee, composed of around 30 members of various governmental and private groups drawn from the four communities crossed by Washtenaw Avenue. [.pdf of the action team report on Washtenaw Avenue]

The joint technical committee, which included many of the members of the action team, eventually recommended that the four communities along Washtenaw Avenue collaborate in forming a corridor improvement authority under the state’s enabling legislation [.pdf of Public Act 280 of 2005] [.pdf of the joint technical committee report]

At its December 20, 2010 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council passed a resolution of intent to collaborate with the three other municipalities along Washtenaw Avenue to form a CIA.

Problems with Washtenaw Corridor

At the Cobblestone Farm meeting, Kahan reviewed the characteristics of the corridor that the joint action team and the technical committee had identified as problematic. They include:

• Expansive, carless parking lots
• Frequent traffic congestion
• Higher-than-average crash rates
• Inadequate pedestrian crossings
• Missing sidewalks
• No amenities for bicyclists
• Numerous vacant parcels
• High vacancy rates of commercial storefronts

Formation of the Authority: TIF

Kahan explained to the group at Cobblestone Farm how the joint technical committee had proposed a Corridor Improvement Authority (CIA) as a financing mechanism to pay for solutions to the various problems it had identified along Washtenaw Avenue.

A CIA, Kahan explained, is a tax-increment finance district – similar to a downtown development authority, but specifically designed for commercial corridors. A tax-increment finance (TIF) district is a mechanism for “capturing” certain property taxes to be used in a specific geographic district – taxes that would otherwise be used by the entity with the authority to levy the taxes. [In the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority TIF district, for example, a portion of the property taxes that would otherwise be collected by the Ann Arbor District Library and other taxing entities are instead used by the Ann Arbor DDA for improvements within the geographic district of the DDA.]

Not all the taxes in a TIF district go to the TIF authority. Instead, as Kahan explained, upon creation of a TIF district, a baseline is defined for the current taxable value, and it’s only the difference (the increment) between the baseline value of a property and the increased value of a property in the future – say, through redevelopment – that would be subject to tax capture through a TIF authority like a CIA.

In discussion with the Cobblestone audience, Kahan indicated that the exact definition of the TIF capture for a Washtenaw CIA was somewhat of an open question. It’s not settled, for example, whether the increment to be captured would include the increased value of a property due to simple appreciation (inflation), without any investment or improvement in the property. The enabling legislation would allow inflation to be included or not, depending on the exact tax increment financing plan of the CIA. [The Ann Arbor DDA tax capture is defined so that the initial increment between the baseline property value and the value due to an external improvement is captured by the DDA, but subsequent appreciation on that added value reverts to the original taxing authority.]

Corridor improvement authorities cannot capture certain kinds of taxes. For example, taxes collected under the state education act (Public Act 331) or by an intermediate school district are exempt from capture by a CIA. In addition, the governing body of an entity that levies taxes in a CIA’s district has the opportunity to opt out. From the state enabling legislation for CIAs [.pdf of Public Act 280 of 2005]:

(5) Except for a development area located in a qualified development area, not more than 60 days after the public hearing on the tax increment financing plan, the governing body in a taxing jurisdiction levying ad valorem property taxes that would otherwise be subject to capture may exempt its taxes from capture by adopting a resolution to that effect and filing a copy with the clerk of the municipality proposing to create the authority. The resolution shall take effect when filed with the clerk and remains effective until a copy of a resolution rescinding that resolution is filed with that clerk.

Forming an Authority: Cooperation Required

Before the Cobblestone meeting started, Kahan told The Chronicle that using the existing state statute, which is relatively new, could pose a challenge to the kind of CIA that Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township and Pittsfield Township would like to form. The act provides for a way for each of these local units to form a CIA and a way for them to operate them jointly. From the statute:

A municipality that has created an authority may enter into an agreement with an adjoining municipality that has created an authority to jointly operate and administer those authorities under an interlocal agreement under the urban cooperation act of 1967, 1967 (Ex Sess) PA 7, MCL 124.501 to 124.512.

What is not completely clear is how the interlocal agreement would work. For example, under the statute each CIA needs to have a governing board with at least five, but no more than nine members. If a governing board for all four CIAs were formed as the simple union of all the boards of the four municipalities, then the resulting board would consist of at least 20 members, exceeding the limit of nine specified in the statute.

Kahan said the joint technical committee has been working with Jeff Irwin, an Ann Arbor Democrat who now represents District 53 in the state House, to explore the possibility of an amendment to the statute. An amendment could provide for the direct formation of an authority by multiple municipalities.

In a followup phone interview, Irwin told The Chronicle that he’d forwarded an amendment request to the House Legislative Services Bureau, and that it had been returned with further questions. Right now, his understanding is that there’s a dual-track approach: (1) amend the statute – which would move only at the pace of the state legislature; and (2) sort out the board membership issue with respect to collaboration between the four municipalities.

Forming the Authority: Upsides, Downsides

At the Cobblestone Farm meeting, Kahan sketched out the basic advantages and disadvantages of using the CIA as a tool to address problems in the corridor. The mechanism of the TIF district keeps the additional tax revenue generated by increased development inside the corridor’s district, and the idea is that this helps to attract additional private investment as well. While this helps to focus funds on the area where problems have been identified, Kahan allowed that these funds could otherwise go to municipalities where the challenges in balancing budgets are getting greater every year.

Kahan continued by saying that the collaboration and cooperation required by this particular CIA would likely be looked on favorably by Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration. Snyder’s administration has sent a clear message to local units of government that the state expects them to demonstrate efforts to collaborate and consolidate in order to qualify for various kinds of state aid.

In a phone interview with The Chronicle about the CIA, Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber remarked that this kind collaboration has been happening long before Snyder started talking about it. In addition to the four-way collaboration on the CIA, he pointed to the Ypsilanti Community Utility Authority (YCUA), which provides drinking water or sanitary sewer services to the city of Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, Pittsfield Township, Augusta Township, Sumpter Township and Superior Township.

Schreiber also pointed to the current discussions between the city of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township to collaborate on police services.

As one of the initial downsides to a CIA, Kahan cited the increased layer of administration – it could take a while for the TIF to generate much money for the CIA. And during that initial lean period, there would be costs – perhaps for an executive director, for legal services, office space, secretarial services and the like. It might be necessary for the four municipalities to provide financial support for the CIA’s administrative needs until the CIA started receiving enough revenue from its TIF to become self-sustaining, Kahan said.

What’s an Improvement?

The kind of infrastructure improvements the joint technical committee has recommended for the corridor include many projects that could be summarized under the general rubric of “complete streets.”

A public meeting on the possible formation of a corridor improvement authority held at Cobblestone Farm on March 2, 2011. Standing is city of Ann Arbor planner Jeff Kahan. Seated, in blue vest with white sleeves, is Wendy Rampson, head of planning for the city.

At its March 7, 2011 meeting, the Ann Arbor city council passed a resolution affirming its commitment to “complete streets” – the idea that streets should be constructed to accommodate a full range of users, from pedestrians, to bicyclists, to public transit vehicles, to privately owned automobiles.

For Washtenaw Avenue, that would include a bike lanes, installation of sidewalks where they are missing or broken, and creation of transit nodes with bus stops that have amenities like benches, shelters and arrival information.

These are the kind of improvements that resonated with several people in the audience at Cobblestone Farm, including Larry Krieg. As a planner with Ypsilanti Township, Krieg is a member of the joint technical committee. Krieg has also championed the idea of Washtenaw Avenue as an important corridor in remarks he’s made while addressing the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board. Krieg maintains the blog Wake Up, Washtenaw!

Krieg told the group gathered at Cobblestone Farm that Washtenaw Avenue was seen as a potential talent corridor, a geographic location with the potential to attract 20-40 year olds to stay in the area. Krieg described how many younger people can’t imagine why they should be required to have an automobile in order to do ordinary things in life, and are interested in living in places where they can get where they want to go by using public transit.

Responding to Krieg was resident Vic Elmer, who said that what Krieg was describing was simply not reality – “that’s not the way America works right now,” he said. If a road has been properly designed, he contended, traffic will flow smoothly. What Washtenaw Avenue needs is an expansion of car lanes, not additional bike lanes. He characterized the configuration of some local bike lanes as poorly engineered, saying that he’d witnessed several near-accidents. If bike lanes were considered all that important, he said, why doesn’t the city plow snow all the way to the curb? [The city of Ann Arbor's snow plowing strategy is not curb-to-curb, but its goal includes clearing snow from bike lanes.]

Bing Maps Birdseye view of Huron Parkway and Washtenaw intersection. The bus in the righthand lane is likely a #7 AATA bus ready to turn east onto Washtenaw Avenue from Huron Parkway.

Elmer, along with others who attended the Cobblestone Farm meeting, pointed to the intersection of Washtenaw and Huron Parkway as particularly problematic. Cars stack up there, they said. They suggested that what’s needed is a larger right-of-way at that intersection.

Some at the meeting saw the introduction of transit nodes and pedestrian amenities like crossings and sidewalks as just more obstacles for cars to traverse, slowing down automobile traffic. The joint technical committee’s report actually concurs with the view that there are too many bus stops along the corridor – but they are necessary because the lack of sidewalks makes it unreasonable to expect bus passengers to get very far by walking. So part of the proposed concept is to install complete sidewalks along the corridor, which would allow the consolidation of multiple bus stops into single transit nodes. These nodes would then have better amenities – benches, shelters, and arrival/departure information.

One step towards providing pedestrian access along the corridor will start construction this year, without a CIA. That project is for a non-motorized path along the north and east sides of Washtenaw Avenue, from Tuomy to Glenwood. The Ann Arbor city council approved a special assessment on adjoining property owners to construct the path late last year. At the Cobblestone meeting, Kahan explained that a special assessment can be used only to construct a new amenity like the non-motorized path, but not to repair an existing one like broken sidewalks along other parts of the corridor.

The role of US-23 in the corridor was drawn out by someone in the audience who asked the rhetorical question: What kind of vehicles would be exiting from US-23 onto Washtenaw Avenue – bicycles and pedestrians? The point was that key to the corridor’s economic health is automobile traffic. When another attendee somewhat whimsically posed the question of what it would take to relocate the exit ramps to some location other than Washtenaw Avenue, Wendy Rampson – head of planning for the city of Ann Arbor – said she didn’t think businesses currently located along Washtenaw Avenue would appreciate that.

Beyond Improvements

While much of the focus of the conversation at Cobblestone Farm focused on the kind of infrastructure improvements that might be undertaken to help the corridor, Kahan and Rampson also pointed to the possibility that a CIA could help create a more uniform zoning and permitting process along the entire corridor, to help expedite development. The city of Ann Arbor recently approved revisions to its area, height and placement (AHP) zoning code that are intended in part to help support the kind of pedestrian-friendly and transit-oriented development that the joint technical committee has recommended for the corridor.

Revisions to Ann Arbor’s AHP zoning includes provisions that encourage increased residential density through mixed use – something that was met with some resistance at the Cobblestone Farm meeting. Wouldn’t more people living along the corridor translate into even more congestion and curb cuts? Kahan explained that part of the goal of the zoning and planning piece of the joint technical committee’s recommendation is to reduce the number of curb cuts by providing appropriate zoning regulations.

In his phone interview with The Chronicle, Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber said that coordinating the zoning and permitting requirements along the corridor was something worth pursuing in itself, even if infrastructure improvements might be a longer time coming.

The council has already convened two retreats on the budget – this report is a summary of those retreats.

From the May 19, 1936 edition of the Ann Arbor Daily News. The scan was passed along to The Chronicle by the city's environmental coordinator, Matt Naud. Naud's source was Craig Hupy, head of the city's systems planning unit, who discovered some old papers in an antique store.

Late last year, on Dec. 4, 2010, the Ann Arbor city council held the first of two budget retreats for the next year’s budget adoption process. The current 2011 fiscal year ends on June 30, 2011, and the council will need to finalize its FY 2012 budget in May. The council typically begins contemplating the next fiscal year’s budget at a retreat near the end of the calendar year.

Two days after the first retreat, at the Dec. 6 regular city council meeting, city administrator Roger Fraser and councilmembers recapped the event, with Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) describing it as the best retreat discussion on the budget since he’s been on the council. First elected to the council in 2005, Rapundalo has five previous budget seasons to compare against.

The December retreat agenda reflected two main items: (1) general economic conditions; and (2) a sustainable service delivery model. The grim condition of the state’s economy was a point that was also driven home by Kirk Profit – director of Governmental Consultant Services, the city’s lobbyist in Lansing – in a presentation to the council at their Dec. 6 regular meeting.

The second retreat, on Jan. 8, followed up with a focus on services. To prepare for the retreat, councilmembers had ranked various city services by priority.

At both retreats, councilmembers and staff took the opportunity to communicate a message to city labor unions, some of whom Rapundalo characterized as not yet having seen fit to “recognize economic reality.”

And as chair of the council’s labor committee, Rapundalo has said he’ll give updates at the council’s regular meetings on the status of labor negotiations. He started the updates at the council’s Jan. 20 meeting. The implicit message communicated by the first update: Ann Arbor’s labor unions aren’t making the kind of concessions they should reasonably make, given economic conditions.

This report features highlights of the discussion from both retreats – including issues like the city’s approach to fire and police protection, solid waste and composting, as well as possible replacement of the general fund operating millage with a city income tax.

At both retreats, city administrator Roger Fraser and key city staff did their best to frame the council’s conversation not as a question of what services to cut. Instead, they tried to get councilmembers to consider which services might be delivered in a different way. The sustainability of the service delivery model depends on how the city delivers those services to residents – ranging from employment of full-time city workers, outsourcing the work, or by not offering the service at all.

To frame the context of these comparatively brief retreat highlights, we first offer a look back to 1936, when the city delivered a sidewalk snowplowing service to its residents. How? Partly by hiring in teams of horses to do the job.

How Services Are Delivered

The list of services provided to councilmembers for their Dec. 4, 2010 retreat included a blank column headed with “eliminate/modify.” In the course of the morning and early afternoon at the retreat, it became apparent that councilmembers considered all the items on the list as part of the core set of services the city should deliver. That is, there was no consensus that any of the items should be eliminated outright. Councilmembers seemed open, however, to contemplating modifications to the way that some of the city services are delivered.

How: Clearing Snow

In 1936, Ann Arbor city engineer George H. Sandenburgh delivered a report to the common council of Ann Arbor suggesting that the city would in the future need to purchase tractors in order to continue to deliver the sidewalk snowplowing service it provided at that time. [This historical tidbit comes from the May 19, 1936 edition of the Ann Arbor Daily News. A scan from that newspaper, which is the lead art of this article, was passed along to The Chronicle by the city's environmental coordinator, Matt Naud. Naud's source was Craig Hupy, head of the city's systems planning unit, who discovered some old papers in an antique store.]

Six years earlier, a Feb. 3, 1930 report to the common council had included the following in the city’s inventory of equipment:

Snow Removal Equipment

10 Steel Snow Plows for Sidewalks 250.00
2 Standard Snow Plows              40.00
2 Wooden Plows                      5.00
2 High Speed Snow Plows           500.00
5 Doz. Snow Shovels                60.00
1 Doz. Snow Pushers                 8.00  

City Team Equipment and Supplies

1 Team Horses                   $ 300.00
1 Set Double Harness               70.00
2 Halters                           1.00
2 Stable Blankets                   1.00
2 Woolen Blankets                  10.00
3 Tons of Hay                      45.00
80 Bu. Oats                        50.00
1 Troy Dump Wagon                  75.00
1 Wagon with Wood Box              30.00
1 Pair of Bob Sleighs              10.00

-

That inventory comes from part of the Ann Arbor District Library’s online set of 40 year’s worth of Ann Arbor city council minutes, from 1891-1930. [Chronicle coverage of the library's presentation of the online archive to the city: "Mayor Walker: 'Print it in the NEWSPAPER!'"] Based on the city’s inventory of a single team of horses, and 10 sidewalk snowplows, it appears that the strategy used for clearing snow from sidewalks involved hiring additional horse teams to do some plowing.

The modification to the sidewalk snow-clearing service that was suggested by city engineer Sandenburgh in 1936 indicated a future where city-owned equipment would be used to do the job. Sometime between 1936 and 2010, a decision was made that sidewalk snow-clearing would not be a service delivered by the city directly – except in the form of ordinance enforcement. Currently, property owners are required by ordinance to clear the snow from sidewalks fronting their property. Chapter 49 of the city code, which deals with sidewalks, dates in relevant part from 1986:

Within 24 hours after the end of each accumulation of snow greater than 1 inch, the owner or occupant of every residentially zoned property shall remove the accumulation from the adjacent public sidewalk and walks and ramps leading to a crosswalk. The accumulation may be from any source including precipitation and drifting. Immediately after the accumulation of ice on such sidewalk, it shall be treated with sand, salt or other substance to prevent it from being slippery and the ice shall be removed within 24 hours after accumulation.

The city service of sidewalk snow-clearing can be used to illustrate a range of different ways city services can be provided, including not providing the service at all:

• No service with respect to clearing snow from sidewalks.
• No clearing of snow by the city except through ordinance enforcement.
• Clearing of snow by the city through employment of temporary workers who use their own equipment (e.g. horses and plows).
• Clearing of snow by the city through employment of temporary workers who use a mix of their own and city-owned equipment (e.g., their own horses, but city plows).
• Clearing of snow by the city through employment of temporary workers who use only city-owned equipment (e.g., tractors).
• Clearing of snow by the city through employment of full-time city workers, who use only city-owned equipment.

If service delivery uses full-time city workers, it’s a fair question to ask: Where do city workers live? At the Dec. 4 budget retreat, Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) indicated a preference to have city workers live in the city of Ann Arbor – they can be ambassadors for the city in their own community, and they will take greater pride in their work. It’s not possible, however, to enforce residency requirements.

Kunselman pointed to efforts by Detroit’s mayor Dave Bing to provide incentives for city workers to live in the city. City administrator Roger Fraser told Kunselman that he was open to a conversation about that. [It did not seem to be Kunselman's intent to draw out the fact that Fraser himself doesn't live in the city.] But of all the things Fraser wanted to focus on, there were many items on the list ahead of that. It’d be a low priority in terms of his optimism about the positive impact; it’d take time, even if the strategy were effective. Fraser concluded that the potential payoff is fairly remote.

How: Funding a Service

Photo taken Dec. 13, 2010 looking east along the north side of Liberty Street between Ashley and Main. The Main Street BIZ district begins at the alley just beyond the green and blue downtown way-finding sign in the right of the frame.

How a service is paid for – with general fund property taxes, gas taxes collected by the state, a special dedicated millage, a special assessment district, a combination of property and personal income taxes – also counts as the way a service is provided.

With respect to clearing snow from sidewalks, the newly created Main Street BIZ illustrates how property owners can choose to impose an extra property tax assessment on themselves to fund the clearing of sidewalk snow.

After the snow and ice accumulation that occurred in the city on Dec. 11-12, 2010, there was a visible difference in sidewalk snow clearing effectiveness inside the Main Street BIZ boundary compared to outside the boundary.

Sidewalks are one thing, but even on Ann Arbor streets, snow-clearing services are not delivered to all residents in exactly the same way. At the city council’s Dec. 21, 2009 meeting, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) reported that the city had struck a deal to subcontract out snow removal with the Pittsfield Village Condominium Association. In that area, Taylor said, the city had a hard time doing snow removal well – due to the winding streets and the lack of lawn extensions. The association contracts with a snow-removal provider that uses smaller vehicles to navigate the tighter quarters, and street snow removal is coordinated with sidewalk snow-clearing done by the association.

The Main Street BIZ pursued a fairly lengthy process in winning its eventual approval. At their April 1, 2009 meeting, the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority board authorized $83,270 to help fund the administrative and legal costs associated with that process. After that meeting, former DDA board member and downtown property owner Ed Shaffran – who helped lead the effort to create the Main Street BIZ – told The Chronicle how he saw the BIZ fitting into the funding of government services:

Shaffran said that the intent of property owners on Main Street was to provide assurance – by undertaking to assess themselves a higher property tax – that the kind of services they wanted would actually be provided into the future. Shaffran went on to speculate that this could be a pre-cursor of “a la carte government” as revenues to municipalities dwindled. He suggested that the concept of a BIZ could be extended to residential neighborhoods as well. The strategy for providing services, he said, could evolve to be a system where a minimum baseline level would be provided by government, with BIZ-like affiliations electing to augment (or not) that baseline level.

Service When It’s Not a Snow Job

At the Jan. 8, 2011 retreat, councilmembers engaged in some back-and-forth about the quality of snow-removal service in the city of Ann Arbor. Mayor John Hieftje ventured that snow removal is twice as good as it was back in 1999. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) reiterated the view, which he’d expressed at the December 2009 budget retreat, that the quality of snow removal in the city is “abysmal.” At this year’s retreat, he contended that if you go to the city limits, it’s as if someone draws a line where snow removal begins and ends. [It's a point that has been noted by others.]

The city council recently approved an expenditure for a remote vehicle monitoring system that includes, among other features, the ability to track the progress of snowplowing in real time.

Snow removal, of course, is just one service of many that cities might provide.

Not Snow: Solid Waste

Collection of waste material that residents prefer not to store on their property is a basic city service – stuff that ranges from grass clippings, to leaves, empty milk jugs, old newspapers, bags of cat litter, or empty cans of shaving cream. For the city of Ann Arbor, these items correspond to one of three wheeled collection carts – a compost cart, a recycling cart, and a trash cart – which have been distributed to residents and are emptied once a week with a truck equipped with a robot arm controlled by the driver.

At the Jan. 8 retreat, public services area administrator Sue McCormick revealed an underlying assumption by staff in the solid waste program: Residents would not tolerate different days for pickup for different collection carts. Some councilmembers suggested that this might not necessarily be the case. It was left for future thought, along with the possibility that this could simply be a “legend,” along with other assumptions. Why would the flexibility to pick up different carts on different days make a difference? It’s because it might be possible to be efficient enough to collect one kind of cart with few enough routes that only a four-day schedule would be required for that kind of cart.

As for the challenge of keeping track of which days certain carts were to be set out, it was suggested that the city could deploy messaging systems that would push the information to residents.

More significant than the possibility of varying the pickup schedule is the idea of contracting out the trash collection service to a private hauler. At the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat, city administrator Roger Fraser observed that the city had spent a lot of time developing its solid waste plan. The solid waste plan suggests the idea that the city would work its way out of the business of collecting solid waste.

The city has already worked its way out of the business of part of the solid waste collection that it previously ran: At its Dec. 6, 2010 meeting, two days after the first budget retreat, the council approved a contract with WeCare Organics to operate the city’s compost facility. It was a controversial issue for many residents and had led to the postponement of the measure at the city council’s Nov. 15, 2010 meeting.

So the idea of contracting out the collection of trash at the curbside is now also in the works – based on the city’s solid waste plan. From the city of Ann Arbor 2002-2007 solid waste plan:

Three key issues were built into the survey to determine public opinion on possible program directions for reducing waste – rolling back taxes with a for-fee trash collection system, anti-litter campaigns, and food waste composting pilots. … Under a PAYT system, the financing for trash collection would be directly paid by the consumer, with a partial roll-back in taxes, while recycling, composting and other waste services would continue to be covered at no extra charge. …The majority of those interviewed (61% residential; 79% business) felt that the existing system of “tax-paid full service” was preferable to a PAYT mechanism.

Some councilmembers appeared taken slightly unaware by Fraser’s update. But Fraser reminded the council that they’d heard the idea at the previous year’s budget retreat. From The Chronicle’s report of the December 2009 budget retreat:

Reduce solid waste millage

On this proposal, the city would get out of the business of garbage collection, but stay in the business of recycling. The city would contract with a waste hauler, which would then be paid directly by residents under some kind of franchising arrangement that would allow them to “pay as they go.” That would allow a reduction in the solid waste millage, which could be passed along to residents. Or voters could be asked to continue to pay the same percentage, but direct to other areas the part not needed to fund garbage collection.

When considering whether residents would choose to continue paying the same amount even though their service had been reduced, and then pay again separately for waste hauling, Stephen Rapundalo asked, “Why would they do that?”

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) cautioned that this kind of “pay as you go” system could have the unintended consequence of encouraging the dumping of trash wherever people could find a place – something he said he’d seen as administrator of  Sumpter Township in the early 2000s.

Now, Fraser said at the Jan. 8, 2011 retreat, the city is taking a full look at that to see if there’s a benefit to exploring implementation in the next fiscal year. He told councilmembers that an alternative study on trash collection would be presented to them in March.

Not Snow: Public Safety – Police, Fire

The idea of outsourcing police services – by contracting with the Washtenaw County sheriff’s office – was briefly touched on at the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat. Barnett Jones, head of the city’s safety services, reiterated the same sentiments he’d expressed at the 2009 retreat. He brought the perspective of having previously worn a brown shirt, working for the Oakland County sheriff’s department, selling townships on the idea of contracting for police services. The difference, he said, is that Ann Arbor already has the best police force in the county. Further, he explained, the county would have to add considerably to its force in order to provide service to Ann Arbor.

In any case, councilmembers did not appear to have great interest in altering the basic way Ann Arbor provides police services – which is by hiring full-time city employees to do the job.

Fire protection was a different story. Councilmembers expressed keen interest in exploring alternatives to providing fire protection by some other means than staffing fire stations around the clock with full-time career firefighters. Jones explained that there are three basic approaches to providing fire protection: (1) volunteer firefighters, (2) paid on-call firefighters, and (3) full-time career firefighters. Jones described how departments are starting to spring up that are a blend of (2) and (3) – a combination of full-time employees, who are career firefighters, and others who are paid to be on call to perform fire suppression duties. He cited Troy as perhaps the largest city that used such a combination department for fire suppression. He suggested that Troy would not use that strategy if they didn’t think they were getting effective fire protection.

Councilmembers were keen to get an understanding about what the implications for emergency medical response would be – many fire department calls are in response to medical calls. Fire dispatch is now handled by Huron Valley Ambulance, with the goal of reducing unnecessary medical runs by the fire department. But this goal has not been entirely met. Fraser explained that there’s a need to clarify existing protocols and to clarify the exact definition of a Category 2 call. The category had been defined two decades ago by responders in the eastern part of the county, he said, and hasn’t been reconsidered in two decades. He characterized the wasted runs as translating to a multimillion-dollar impact on the system.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) expressed concern that when a combination paid/on-call department was introduced in the townships, it became a way for politicians to get elected – giving jobs to their neighbors, so that they could go hang out at the fire station with the big trucks. He urged caution about implementing a combination paid/on-call fire department.

Mayor John Hieftje pointed to a decrease in the number of fires since 1970, which he attributed to good building codes, suggesting that the need for fire suppression resources is not as great now as it was historically.

Unknowns

The budget planning process in any year includes a number of factors that cannot be completely known. These were also discussed at the two retreats.

Unknowns: Labor Contracts – Aligning Labor, Budget Strategies

Among the city’s assumptions in planning for the FY 2012 budget is that currently unresolved labor contracts will settle in a way that results in no increases to their wage structure, plus additional reductions equivalent to the cost savings the city would see if all employees were on the new health care plan. It is, of course, not possible to know if those contracts will settle in the way the city is assuming for budget planning purposes.

What’s the city’s plan for getting the contracts to settle? At the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat, city administrator Roger Fraser and the city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, described a strategy of aligning the budget and the labor strategy. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) called it the “number one issue.”

What’s meant by aligning the two strategies? It essentially means including health care costs in the equation that determines the budget reduction target for each department.

By way of background, the city has a new health plan it would like all workers to use – it includes monthly employee contributions, higher deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums. Non-union staff have transferred to the new plan, as have a few of the city’s unions – though not those with the greatest number of employees: AFSCME, police officers, and fire fighters. The city’s net cost per employee for the new plan is $10,686, compared with $12,310 for the AFSCME workers’ plan, $13,121 for the police officers’ plan, and $12,871 for the fire fighters.

At the Dec. 4 retreat, Sandi Smith (Ward 1) expressed surprise at the cost of even the city’s plan. She said it’s twice what she pays with a self-funded plan. Fraser noted that to truly compare the plans, you’d have to compare details, and there are different assumptions about risks. He also noted that in the public sector, you can’t go in and say, “Here’s your new plan!” Implementation has to be incremental, he said. Crawford also observed that with police and fire fighters “who are out there every day, it’ll be different than …”  and Fraser completed his sentence by quipping, “… people who work in real estate.” It was a playful allusion to Smith’s line of work.

Fraser explained the budget and labor strategy alignment this way: Suppose every department has a base reduction target of at least 2.5%. For departments with employees who have not adopted the new city health care plan, the inclusion of health care in the equation could result, for example, in an extra 1.5% added to the target. That department’s total reduction target would become 4%.

Councilmembers and staff alike were frank during both retreats about what this implies: Unions need to accept the new city health plan, or accept the fact that there will be fewer of their members employed by the city.

Rapundalo expressed some frustration that the major unions have not yet adopted the city health plan. He characterized it as a lack of understanding and appreciation or an unwillingness to understand impacts on the entire organization. “The consequences are not going to be pleasant,” he warned.

Fraser was somewhat more accommodating of the union perspective, telling councilmembers that as elected officials they are representing citizens. But people who are selected to lead labor unions, said Fraser, while they work at the city to provide services, their task is to “optimize their circumstances as employees.”

Unknowns: DDA Parking

The city has a contract with the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority under which the DDA manages the city’s public parking system. The contract currently runs through 2015. The 10-year contract stipulates that the DDA will pay the city $1 million in “rent” annually, with the provision that the city could request up to $2 million in a given, year as long as the amount for the entire 10-year period does not exceed $10 million. Through the first five years of the contract, the city requested the maximum $2 million payment – reaching that $10 million mark.

Last year, in the sixth year of the contract, the DDA decided to authorize an additional $2 million not required under the agreement – a vote that was controversial on the DDA board.  It was a move that allowed the city council to revise the city administrator’s proposed budget, which averted some planned layoffs of police officers and fire fighters. The city had not assumed the additional payment as part of its budget planning. As city administrator Roger Fraser explained at the Dec. 4 retreat, the $2 million was “not a part of our optimism,” because there were no ongoing conversations between the city and the DDA at the time.

This year, the city is assuming $2 million from the DDA for its budget planning. That’s because since June 2010, the city and the DDA have engaged in a regular extended conversation via their respective “mutually beneficial” committees about renegotiating the parking contract. The strategy the committees are currently exploring is switching from a fixed fee “rental” style agreement – based on the idea that the DDA is using city-owned assets to run the public parking system – to a percentage-of-gross style arrangement, which aligns the two parties’ interests. [Most recent Chronicle coverage: "Parking Money for City Budget Still Unclear"]

Based on the most recent percentage-of-gross figures the DDA has discussed, in the next year or two, the payment could amount to slightly less than $2 million. As parking revenues increase in later years of the contract, the return to the city is projected to reach and exceed $2 million, even on the lower percentage-of-gross figures the DDA is currently discussing. The city’s CFO, Tom Crawford, wrote in response to an emailed query from The Chronicle that if the amount received by the city is slightly less than $2 million in the first year, he would probably recommend making up the difference from the general fund reserve, based on the idea that the shortfall would not persist beyond the first year or two.

Unknowns: State Shared Revenue

The concept behind the state shared revenue system is that local municipalities in Michigan have a restricted ability to levy taxes, so the state reapportions to local municipalities some revenues out of the 6% sales tax that it collects. The reapportionment comes in two flavors: the constitutional portion (15% of the 4% gross collections of the state sales tax) and the statutory portion (up to 21.3% of the 4% gross collections of the state sales tax). The legislature controls the statutory portion, but not the constitutional portion.

Historically, the amount of statutory state shared revenue received by the city of Ann Arbor has fallen from $6.5 million in FY 2001 to just under $2 million in FY 2011.

The city’s budget planning right now assumes that state shared revenue will remain stable, despite some indications from the state legislature that the state might significantly reduce it. At the Dec. 4 retreat, Fraser indicated that the budget planning decision reflects less conservatism than the city has displayed in previous years of budget planning. Conservatism means that if anything, you understate revenues and overstate expenses, so that there is maximum flexibility to adjust mid-year.

This year, the city is minimizing the conservatism on both sides, to be as lean as it can possibly be, which means there’ll be less flexibility during the year, Fraser said. The risk associated with this strategy, said Fraser, is that a budget amendment might be needed in the middle of the year, if something unforeseen occurs.

Revenue: Operating Millage or City Income Tax

Local municipalities have four sources of possible revenue: (1) property taxes; (2) fees for services; (3) state shared revenue – apportioned from the state sales tax; and (4) city income tax.

The city of Ann Arbor does not levy just one kind of property tax. Ann Arbor tax bills include separate taxes to support: general operations, employee benefits, solid waste system, debt, street repair, city parks, open space acquisition and mass transit.

An example of fees for service is the drinking water utility – residents pay for the amount of water they use.

It’s not an option for a city to levy any kind of sales tax in addition to the state sales tax. For example, the city of Ann Arbor is not legally empowered to apply an entertainment tax that could be added to University of Michigan football tickets. Part of the rationale behind the state shared revenue system is for local municipalities to have their inability to levy extra taxes balanced out by revenue that is shared with them by the state.

A feature of the Ann Arbor city charter that distinguishes Ann Arbor from other Michigan cities is the relationship between the general operations property tax and a city income tax. Per the city charter, Ann Arbor can enact one, but not both kinds of tax:

City Tax Limit SECTION 8.7. (a) … In any calendar year in which the Uniform City Income Tax Ordinance is in effect on the day when the budget is adopted, the City may not levy any part of the three-fourths of one percent property tax previously mentioned …

But if the city of Ann Arbor were to enact a city income tax, it’s only the general operations property tax that would disappear – the other city property taxes would remain.

Cities can enact a city income tax under the state statute Uniform City Income Tax, which allows an income tax of up to 1% to be levied on residents of a city, and on non-residents up to 1/2 of the percentage levied on residents. For example, if a city enacted a .5% income tax on residents, then non-residents would pay no more than .25%.

Supporters of a city income tax for Ann Arbor typically defend against tax burden arguments by pointing to the fact that the city charter stipulates that a city income tax replaces, rather than supplements, the roughly 6 mill general operations property tax for residents. [For readers who wonder how much property tax they would save, the line item, on summer tax bills, is labeled CITY OPER].

Supporters also typically point out that 40% of the real estate in Ann Arbor is not subject to property tax – due to the large city park system and the presence of the University of Michigan, whose land is not subject to property tax. So funding operations from property taxes is more challenging than in cities where a greater percentage of the property is subject to a tax.

Supporters also typically point to the large number of workers who have jobs in the city of Ann Arbor – many of them at UM – who live outside the city. That translates into larger potential revenue from an income tax than in cities that have a smaller number of commuters.

Detractors of a city income tax typically point to the potential barrier such a tax might represent to businesses choosing to locate in Ann Arbor, or to the inequity of the income tax with respect to resident renters – who may not see the reduction in their landlord’s property tax passed along to them in lower rents. Some oppose the idea on philosophical grounds, arguing that applying the tax to non-resident workers amounts to taxation without representation. Income taxes as a source of revenue are also somewhat less stable than property taxes.

City Income Tax: Previous Discussions

Two years ago, at the Jan. 2009 budget retreat, then-councilmember Leigh Greden advocated for an exploration of replacing the general operating millage with an 1% city income tax. The budget retreat discussion resulted in the dissemination of a previous, 2004 city income tax study. The 2004 study had been preceded by a 1997 city income tax study.

In July 2009, the city released a more current study. But in August of that year, it became clear at a city council work session that there was no enthusiasm on the part of the council to place the issue on the ballot in the fall.

Yet at that year’s budget retreat on Dec. 5, 2009, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) again raised the issue of exploring a city income tax. And at a Feb. 16, 2010 meeting of the city council’s budget committee, which included [and still includes] Taylor, members gave city administrator Roger Fraser the green light to conduct a survey of voter attitudes on the city income tax.

City Income Tax: Current Discussions

Through the city council and mayoral election season in 2010, the idea of a city income tax received some discussion as an issue. During his campaign, Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) in particular expressed support for the idea. He’s now part of a working group on the council, which also includes Taylor and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), that is taking a closer look at revenue questions. At the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat, city administrator Roger Fraser expressed the same sentiment he’d conveyed to members of the budget committee back in February 2010: That he thought he had an obligation to ask the citizens to consider the income tax question before cutting services.

Fraser stressed the need to engage the public on the question, saying that the first thing people will ask is, What have you done already to address expenses? He said that they’d need to be clear about what the city had accomplished – that includes reducing the work force from a peak of 1,005 ten years ago to fewer than 750 today.

At the Jan. 8, 2011 retreat, there was some back-and-forth about whether the work group looking at the income tax question – as well as the possibility of a Headlee override – should be called a “committee” or a “work group.” Implicit context for the distinction is that council committees are supposed to do their best to conduct their meetings openly in accordance with the Michigan Open Meetings Act – based on a two-decades-old city council resolution. Work groups are not considered to have the same obligation.

Discussion at the Jan. 8 retreat included the possibility that the revenue work group would also take a look at the street repair millage. Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) expressed some interest in wrapping sidewalk replacement into the activities the millage revenue could cover. Currently, property owners are responsible for maintaining the sidewalks adjoining their property.

Collaboration: UM, AAPS, County, Townships

At the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat, the council discussed collaboration by the city with a range of other entities – University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Public Schools, the county surrounding municipalities – as a way to maximize use of resources.

At some points, the conversation grew very specific. For example, public services area administrator Sue McCormick revealed the city would be presenting an invoice to UM in connection with traffic control and police staffing for the Big Chill hockey game, which was held on Dec. 11. Some councilmembers seemed to suggest that concessions from the university could be won by withholding city consent when the university wanted something from the city. The university’s desire to include Monroe Street as part of the UM Law School campus was cited as a specific example. Fraser, though, counseled that each situation should be evaluated unto itself. He pointed to the planned Fuller Road Station as an example of the importance of that principle.

McCormick indicated the possibility of future collaboration with UM on maintenance of longer buses. Background on this issue includes the inter-campus transportation challenge that UM faces, which could potentially be alleviated by purchasing longer, articulated coaches. UM currently has no maintenance facilities that can accommodate longer buses. But the city’s maintenance yard at the Wheeler Service Center could conceivably be used to work on such vehicles, because the maintenance bays are configured so they’re face-to-face. Nothing has come to fruition yet with UM on that possibility, McCormick reported.

Fraser stressed that any collaboration was a slow process, even when partners are willing. He pointed to the new integrated funding model for human services, which involved a collaboration between the city, Washtenaw County, the Urban County, Washtenaw United Way, and the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. Fraser said that effort required just short of 24 months – and the only thing that was done was to change a process. No organization gave up any of their authority. It wasn’t that it was uncomfortable, he said, but each one of the groups had boards and they each had their own process for approval.

Regarding the city’s relationship with other municipalities, Fraser described how he and the mayor had begun in 2003 working to change the nature of the relationship of the city of Ann Arbor and its neighbors. He said if he were to describe the nature of the relationship that he saw when he arrived in 2002 between the townships and the city of Ann Arbor, he felt Ann Arbor would have been described as “self-absorbed and selfish and not willing to play fair with others.” There was a lot of healing that needed to be done before the city could even begin to have a conversation about collaboration on service delivery, said Fraser.

But that had not been true with Washtenaw County, Fraser said:  ”[Bob] Guenzel and I hit it off right away.” [Guenzel was until last year Washtenaw County administrator – he retired in May 2010.] Fraser said that he and Guenzel had even talked about combining the city and the county together, but as a practical matter it’s not authorized under state law. But Fraser concluded that Guenzel’s and his vision were very similar in terms of looking for opportunities to seek collaboration.

Public Engagement

At both retreats, city councilmembers and city staff acknowledged the challenge of engaging the public effectively. Fraser noted that most citizens don’t pay attention to a fine level of detail. The city can put the information out there, he said, but the question becomes: “What information can be provided and what can we expect them to retain?”

At the Dec. 4, 2010 retreat, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) suggested that then was the time to engage the public on the question of re-thinking how fire protection would be provided. Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) objected, saying that at that point they had nothing to propose. So councilmembers grappled with the question: When should public engagement start? Regarding the community task forces that were eventually formed two years ago to study Mack Pool and Ann Arbor Senior Center – resulting in plans to help keep the facilities open – Sue McCormick noted that those processes didn’t begin with engagement, but rather with a proposal to to eliminate those facilities. Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) suggested that public engagement would most effectively begin with a proposal to do something different.

Fraser’s remarks made mid-retreat can serve as a summary of the message the city hopes to communicate to the public. The city can’t continue to pare down the number of people it employs and continue to provide the same services. “Our future has to be different. Your expectations have to be different. The community’s expectations have to be different about what it is that they can expect from us as an organization. … There’s nothing on the horizon to suggest that denial will work.”

Coda: Retreating to Luxury?

In recapping the first retreat at the Dec. 6 city council meeting, Fraser pointed out that the council’s budget retreat was not held in a luxurious location, but rather one of the crew work rooms at the city’s Wheeler Service Center on Stone School Road. [While not austere, the crew work rooms are in no way comparable to the Book Cadillac hotel, where Washtenaw Community College trustees held a retreat in March 2010.]