The Ann Arbor city council took the action at its May 5, 2014 meeting.

Other organizations named in the resolution as potential partners include the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, the University of Michigan, the Humane Society of Huron Valley, and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division. A recent meeting of the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission included a discussion of deer herd management.

Washtenaw County commissioner Andy LaBarre, who represents District 7 in Ann Arbor, had sent an email to the city council expressing his support for the resolution, and an indication that he will be putting forward a similar resolution for the county board of commissioners to consider. [.pdf of LaBarre's email]

During deliberations on May 5, several councilmembers expressed support for the resolution, thanked Lumm for doing the heavy lifting on this effort, and told personal stories about their experiences with deer. A report on the council’s discussion is included in The Chronicle’s live updates from the May 5 meeting.

One metric for deer as a nuisance is traffic accidents they cause. While the number of traffic crashes involving deer has shown a slight downward trend in Washtenaw County, the number of vehicle-deer crashes in the city of Ann Arbor has shown a slight upward trend.

Since 2004, the number of vehicle-deer crashes in Washtenaw County has shown a slight downward trend. (Data from michigantrafficcrashfacts.org, chart by The Chronicle)

Since 2004, the number of vehicle-deer crashes in Ann Arbor has shown a slight upward trend. (Data from michigantrafficcrashfacts.org, chart by The Chronicle)

Deer-Vehicle Accidents in Washtenaw County by Year by Location (Data from michigantrafficcrashfacts.org, plotted and animated by The Chronicle at geocommons.com) Blue dots indicate the location of a deer-vehicle accident.

This brief was filed from the city council’s chambers on the second floor of city hall, located at 301 E. Huron.

Site plan for Staebler Farm.

Commissioners approved an application to the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources trust fund for a grant to help develop Staebler Farm for recreational use. WCPARC has owned the 98-acre property in Superior Township since 2001, and Donald Staebler – who is 103 years old – still lives there in a lifetime agreement with WCPARC. The plan calls for adding fishing piers to the property’s two ponds, as well as putting in a trail system and other features. A second phase might involve developing a farm incubator program.

Commissioners also awarded $600,000 in grants through WCPARC’s Connecting Communities program, which supports trail projects throughout the county. Grants were given to projects in Ann Arbor Township, Northfield Township, Pittsfield Township, and the village of Manchester.

In non-voting business, WCPARC director Bob Tetens gave an update on the east county recreation center, a proposed partnership between the city of Ypsilanti and WCPARC in which the city would supply the property and WCPARC would provide the building. The center would be located on part of the 38-acre Water Street redevelopment area. Tetens said they’ve been working with the city of Ypsilanti on a development agreement.

Ypsilanti mayor Paul Schreiber and city councilmember Pete Murdock both spoke to the commission about Water Street during public commentary. Schreiber told commissioners that he wasn’t aware of any “show-stopping” issues. He also gave an update on Water Street Flats, an apartment project that’s planned for the site. The complex would be rental apartments for residents with between 50-90% of area median income.

In other action, commissioners approved about $500,000 for repairs at the Rolling Hills water park, and were briefed on several financial reports and project updates.

An issue that had been raised during public commentary at the Feb. 11, 2014 meeting emerged again on March 11: How should deer overpopulation be managed? Two residents – Maurita Holland and Barb Lucas – urged commissioners to play a role in dealing with the issue, which is affecting WCPARC parks and preserves. “We know there’s a lot of political fallout and a lot of education that needs to be done,” Holland said. She reported that a new group has formed – Washtenaw County for Ecological Balance. Members of WCEB include Larry Kestenbaum, Washtenaw County’s clerk/register of deeds, and Chris Graham, who serves on Ann Arbor’s environmental commission.

Commissioners discussed the issue at length. Jan Anschuetz advocated for a cautious approach, noting that it’s a complex problem that needs to be addressed by multiple entities, not just WCPARC. She also expressed concern that action by WCPARC could affect the 10-year renewal of the operations millage that WCPARC expects to be put on the November 2014 ballot. “If we do something that displeases our public, we will not have a millage and will not have a parks commission and we will not have a preserve,” she said.

Janis Bobrin noted that in this community, “If we start talking about killing anything, there are people who will just not hear anything after that.” There’s the actual management of the problem, she said, but also a major education piece that’s needed. “How do we begin to get a dialogue that isn’t one camp against another? That would seem to be a productive first step.”

Tetens told commissioners that WCPARC has applied for a $29,960 grant through the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources wildlife habitat grant program. Those funds would allow WCPARC to quantify the deer impact on county parks and preserves more precisely. Everyone agrees that the growing deer population is a problem, Tetens said, but “nobody can solve it on their own.”

Commissioners also authorized Tetens to draft a letter opposing a proposed sand and gravel mine that McCoig Materials wants to start in Lyndon Township, on 189 acres north of Chelsea on M-52. The rural site is located near several parks and nature areas, including Waterloo State Recreation Area, the Pinckney State Recreation Area, Park Lyndon, the Green Lake Camping area, and the Waterloo-Pinckney Hiking Trail. WCPARC has been interested in buying the property for at least two decades, and is hoping to work with the current landowner to add the site to the county’s nature preserves, rather than being mined.

The March 11 meeting began with a moment of silence for Fred Veigel, a long-time parks & recreation commissioner who represented the road commission on WCPARC. He died on March 2. Commissioners also passed a resolution of appreciation for his work. A replacement to WCPARC will be appointed from one of the current three road commissioners: Barb Fuller, Doug Fuller or Bill McFarlane.

Staebler Farm

The meeting included two items related to a Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources trust fund grant application for Staebler Farm: a public hearing, and a presentation to commissioners about the project.

Coy Vaughn, WCPARC’s deputy director, told commissioners that this is a resubmission of an application that was originally made in 2013. Feedback from the state was that the original project emphasis was weighted too much toward preservation, education and agriculture, and not enough toward recreation. So WCPARC withdrew the application, modified it, and is resubmitting for the current grant cycle. “We’re confident that we have a much stronger application,” Vaughn said. [.pdf of staff memo]

By way of background, commissioners had approved the 2013 grant application at their March 12, 2013 meeting. The public hearing at that time had drawn four nearby property owners who raised concerns about trespassing. No one spoke at the public hearing on March 11.

First phase of the master plan for Staebler Farm.

The $300,000 grant would help a master plan for the Staebler Farm County Park. The 98-acre property, which straddles Plymouth Road in Superior Township, had been a family farm for nearly a century. WCPARC has owned the property since 2001, but Don Staebler – who is 103 years old – still resides there under a lifetime agreement with WCPARC. A farmer also raises hay on several acres south of Plymouth Road. Fleming Creek runs through the property, and it has frontage on Frains and Murray lakes. [For additional background, see Chronicle coverage: "County Parks: Options for Staebler Farm."]

The acreage on the south side of Plymouth Road, where Staebler lives and which is still being farmed – will be part of a second phase, Vaughn explained. So the initial phase to develop for recreational use will focus on the north side of Plymouth. There are two ponds that were created as a result of the construction of M-14. There’s a demand for fishing from the public, he said, so the application is proposing a parking lot, a trail system with a pavilion and restroom, some improvements to Fleming Creek, and fishing piers in each pond. Vaughn noted that fishing piers receive extra points on the trust fund applications.

Eventually, the site will provide a learning center to teach the history of farming, including sustainable farming practices that are currently used. “We don’t want this to just be a farm theme park,” Vaughn said. “We want it to be an active farm.”

The total project is expected to cost about $700,000. WCPARC is asking for the maximum amount from the trust fund – $300,o00 – with the remainder coming from a $400,000 WCPARC match.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. asked if WCPARC would need to find a way to let people cross Plymouth Road. Vaughn said they hoped to discourage that, so the design will reflect that. Fences will be installed on both sides of the road, for example.

Sizemore then said he’d gone out to talk with Staebler recently, and had gotten the impression that Staebler was worried about upkeep on the property. “It’s the county’s building now, but it’s not up to our standards,” he said. He suggested spending $5,000 or $6,000 to clean it up and add gravel to the driveway. Sizemore also suggested organizing a volunteer day to help with the cleanup.

Vaughn replied that Staebler and his family have been part of the design process. Jan Anschuetz noted that a video interview of Staebler is posted online.

Dan Ezekiel, the newest WCPARC member and former chair of the Ann Arbor greenbelt advisory commission.

Evan Pratt clarified with Vaughn that revisions to the plan are still in line with what WCPARC wants to accomplish. Vaughn noted that Superior Township has also seen the new plans and is supportive. Pratt then asked if a farm management plan would be developed for the site, for the portion of the site that is being actively farmed. WCPARC director Bob Tetens said the tricky thing is that not a lot can be done while Staebler lives on the property. However, WCPARC has talked with Michigan State University about the possibility of a farm incubator program, Tetens said, as well as with the Veterans Affairs hospital about a possible program for veterans who are receiving treatment.

Dan Ezekiel noted that there’s a lot of pent-up demand for fishing, so he was glad to see the fishing piers as part of the project. He also supported the idea of a farm incubator. Pointing to the dramatic decrease in the butterfly population, Ezekiel wondered whether this project could incorporate habitat for butterflies – particularly the Monarch – into the pasture and meadow areas. Other commissioners and staff supported his suggestion.

Janis Bobrin clarified with Tetens that the fishing piers would be accessible to those with disabilities. Tetens replied that the plan’s goal is for universal accessibility throughout the site.

Jan Anschuetz noted that the County Farm Park’s playground has a farm theme, and she wondered if the playground on the Staebler Farm would also have that theme. “Everything we do out there is going to have a farm theme,” Tetens replied.

Sizemore asked if the project would include a petting zoo. It won’t, Tetens replied. Anschuetz noted the proximity to Domino’s Farms, which has a petting farm, and said WCPARC wouldn’t want to compete with a private enterprise.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved applying for the MDNR trust fund grant for Staebler Farm.

Connecting Communities Grants

At WCPARC’s Feb. 11, 2014 meeting, commissioners had reviewed applications for this year’s cycle of Connecting Communities grants, which covered six proposed projects. Staff made recommendations for commissioners to review and approve on March 11. [.pdf of February staff memo] [.pdf of applications] [.pdf of March staff memo with recommendations]

Coy Vaughn, WCPARC deputy director.

By way of background, in May 2009 WCPARC authorized the Connecting Communities initiative. The program makes up to $600,000 available annually from 2010 through 2014 – a total of $3 million – toward the cost of eligible trail projects. According to a staff memo, “eligible projects will be those that accomplish the Commission’s primary objective of providing valuable non-motorized connections between communities and activity centers, offering a healthy alternative for recreation, transportation, fitness, and energy conservation.” Grant recipients have two years to fulfill any contingencies, such as acquiring grants from other organizations.

As an example, the city of Ann Arbor was granted $300,000 in 2013 (of total cost of $1 million) for 1,500 feet of trail, part of a project for the “development of pathways, storm water features to improve the quality of Allen Creek … on property which will serve as a trailhead for the proposed Allen Creek Greenway.” The site includes city property at 721 N. Main. Paths would connect Felch Street to both North Main and west Summit Street. The proposal stated that the city would also apply for a match from the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources trust fund (MDNRTF), and that the city would consider using the adopt-a-park program to help maintain the facility. The grant required success with the MDNRTF, but the city’s application in 2013 failed. The city has another year to try again.

WCPARC developed criteria for selecting projects, which include 10 primary considerations. Among those considerations are projects that provide important links between communities, parks and other points of interest, that are adjacent to waterways, or that are major multi-jurisdictional efforts. There are 14 types of projects that generally are not eligible, such as trails solely within existing local parks.

Applicants must document a compelling need for a project. Six criteria that are used to evaluate the projects. For example, projects are evaluated based on whether they directly relate to the county’s important natural features, such as a river. The Huron River corridor is WCPARC’s highest priority. Five secondary criteria – such as land availability, or the likelihood of funding from other sources – are then applied to high-ranking projects.

The process for selecting projects to be funded involves a staff review of the applications. The projects are then presented to the Greenways Advisory Committee, which provides input that staff uses to prioritize the applications and make recommendations to WCPARC for final approval.

Connecting Communities: Applications & Staff Recommendations – Ann Arbor Township

Ann Arbor Township applied for $300,000. The total project cost is $1.2 million for two miles of pedestrian and bicycle trail connecting Parker Mill and Plymouth Road along Dixboro Road, to connect to the Parker Mill trail at Geddes and Dixboro on the south, and the proposed trail from Plymouth/Dixboro to Main Street/Cherry Hill on the north.

Evan Pratt, county water resources commissioner, and Patricia Scribner, Pittsfield Township treasurer. They both serve on the county parks & recreation commission.

The application states that other confirmed project funders include $600,000 in private donor matching funds. Potential project funders include the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources trust fund, the Washtenaw County road commission, the Michigan Dept. of Transportation alternatives program, and additional private donors. It’s part of a broader project that WCPARC has taken the lead on, hoping to build partnerships with the township and the University of Michigan to create a north-south Border-to-Border trail connection. The township has received no previous grants from the Connecting Communities program.

Dan Smith noted that he had attended a forum the previous night hosted by Ann Arbor Township about non-motorized pathways. He’d talked with some residents who live on Geddes Road, as well as someone from Pittsfield Township who rides mountain bikes in that area. Smith said he’d been taken aback because these people weren’t too keen about the trail project. The residents were concerned about increased traffic and parking. Parker Mill is already a popular destination. And the mountain biker prefers natural trails over engineered trails, Smith said. “You can’t make everybody happy, he said, adding that he fully supported this project.

WCPARC director Bob Tetens said they try to make the trails accessible to the broadest possible number of people. Last year, he noted, a cyclist had been hit along that section of road, so a non-motorized trail is needed in that area.

Evan Pratt clarified with staff that Ann Arbor Township had never received an MDNR trust fund grant. He suggested that WCPARC staff help out with the application. Tetens said that the staff works with all of the entities that apply for trust fund grants, when WCPARC is offering matching funds. Pratt said he knew that applications including regional trails score higher.

Responding to a query from Bob Marans, Vaughn indicated that the township hadn’t completed its design of the trails yet, but that WCPARC will be involved in that process.

Jan Anschuetz noted that the broader project has been on WCPARC’s “dream list” for more than 20 years, and they’ve put a lot of energy into it. “My poor husband has become a very old man – I don’t know if he’ll be able to walk this trail,” she quipped.

Tetens noted that the university hasn’t always been interested in providing trail connections in its property, which includes the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. But there are some new people who want to make it happen now, he said.

Staff recommendation: $250,000.

Connecting Communities: Applications & Staff Recommendations – Village of Manchester

The village of Manchester applied for $150,000 (of $225,000 total cost) to improve an existing rail bed owned by the village into a walking/biking trail traversing the entire community and linking several parks, businesses, schools, and neighborhoods, ending at the county’s Leonard Preserve.

The Chelsea Area Wellness Foundation will provide $100,000, and the Kiwanis Club of Manchester another $2,000. Potential additional funders include community fundraising and private donations; and grants such as the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21); Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) and Surface Transportation Program (STP), which are both programs of the Federal Highway Administration in the federal Dept. of Transportation; and the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

The village had previously been awarded $150,000 from the Connecting Communities program in 2011, which it planned to use as matching funds for a Michigan Dept of Natural Resources trust fund grant. However, it decided not to apply for that grant, so the WCPARC funds weren’t awarded. The village now intends to apply for the state grant this year. WCPARC considers this a renewal of the previous 2011 grant, so the money won’t come from the $600,000 in Connecting Communities funds that are available this year.

Staff recommendation: $150,000 (renewal).

Connecting Communities: Applications & Staff Recommendations – Northfield Township

Northfield Township applied for $260,000 (of $600,000 total cost) for 2,925 feet of trail along Barker Road in Whitmore Lake, connecting Whitmore Lake’s downtown with the Northfield Township Library and Whitmore Lake Elementary School. This is the third phase of a project that received $120,000 in 2010 and $250,000 in 2011 from the Connecting Communities program.

Other confirmed project funders are $60,000 from Northfield Township, $60,000 from the Whitmore Lake Downtown Development Authority, $1,000 from the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, and $1,000 from the Kiwanis.

Staff recommendation: $250,000.

Connecting Communities: Applications & Staff Recommendations – Pittsfield Township

Pittsfield Township applied for $400,000 (of total cost of $1.9 million) for 1.8 miles of trail, phase 2 of the Lohr-Textile greenway, extending it east from the corner of Lohr and Textile, on Textile, to the Marshview Meadow Park and the Pittsfield Preserve.

Grants from WCPARC’s Connecting Communities project to the township were $300,000 in 2010; $290,000 in 2011; and $150,000 in 2013. Those 2013 funds were intended as matching funds for a MDNR trust fund grant, which the township did not secure.

Confirmed funding is from Pittsfield Township (up to $400,000); and MDOT/SEMCOG through the federal Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) program ($1,064,708).

Bob Tetens noted that this project is compatible with the township’s State Road corridor improvement authority project. Coy Vaughn pointed out that Pittsfield Township has received more money from Connecting Communities and other WCPARC sources than other communities, but the township has been successful in completing its projects and in leveraging WCPARC’s money to secure other funds.

Staff recommendations: $250,000 as matching funds for the TAP grant. (Includes $100,000 in new Connecting Community funds, and renewal of the $150,000 from 2013.)

Connecting Communities: Applications & Staff Recommendations – Ypsilanti Township

Ypsilanti Township applied for $240,000 for two projects totaling 3,032 feet (total cost of $240,000). One project (2,032 feet) would run along the east side of Tuttle Hill Road from Textile Road north across South Huron River Drive and into Ford Lake Park. The other (1,000 feet) would run on the south side of Textile from just east of South Huron River Drive to the entrance of Lakeview mobile homes.

The township received WCPARC funding for trail projects in 2010, 2011 and 2013.

Bob Tetens noted that one of the criteria for new Connecting Communities funding is that any previously funded project must be completed. The township is still working on finishing the trail that was funded by WCPARC in 2013, he said.

Staff recommendation: No funding for this cycle.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved all staff recommendations for Connecting Communities grants.

Connecting Communities: Next Steps

Bob Marans noted that this is the last year of the five-year Connecting Communities program. He wondered if WCPARC staff was going to recommend continuing it. “There’s always that option,” Bob Tetens replied.

From left: Washtenaw County commissioners Rolland Sizemore Jr. (D-District 5) and Dan Smith (R-District 2) also serve on WCPARC.

Tetens told commissioners that the program has been extremely popular. In surveys of county residents, trails and open space typically rate the highest in terms of support. The Connecting Communities program was developed because WCPARC was receiving a lot of requests from local communities for help with trail projects, and it was difficult to objectively evaluate each project when there weren’t other projects to compare against.

Every year, requests are typically double the amount of available funding, Tetens said. In looking ahead, WCPARC staff had looked at using the funds that would be available after the end of the Connecting Communities program to instead fund debt payments from the proposed east county recreation center, if WCPARC decides to bond for that project. But given the popularity of Connecting Communities, Tetens said, the staff will likely propose keeping some version of it – assuming that the WCPARC operations millage is renewed by voters.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. jokingly asked if some of the money can be used to repair roads. Tetens noted that WCPARC has funded some road shoulder projects, in partnership with the road commission. WCPARC is usually involved in any significant trail project in the county, Tetens said. Much of that is through the Border-to-Border Trail project. In addition to projects in the Connecting Communities program, other trail projects are in the works for North Territorial, and an effort to connect Dexter and Chelsea, among others.

Dan Smith clarified that Tetens anticipates continuing Connecting Communities, but it’s contingent on the millage renewal. That’s right, Tetens replied. “It would be hard to do it if we don’t have that assured cash flow.”

Eastern County Recreation Center

WCPARC director Bob Tetens gave an update on the east county recreation center, a proposed partnership between the city of Ypsilanti and WCPARC in which the city would supply the property and WCPARC would provide the building. The Ann Arbor Y would then contract with WCPARC to manage the center, which would be located on part of the 38-acre Water Street redevelopment area. [For additional background, see Chronicle coverage from WCPARC's Dec. 10, 2013 meeting.]

Tetens said they’ve been working with the city of Ypsilanti on a development agreement. “There are some terms that we’re not fully comfortable with, and I think the city probably has the same feeling,” he said. WCPARC staff have met with attorneys several times to review the agreement, and work on that continues. He thought he’d have a better sense of how it was progressing at the commission’s April meeting.

Paul Schreiber, mayor of Ypsilanti, told commissioners that he wasn’t aware of any “show-stopping” issues.

Earlier in the meeting, Schreiber had spoken during public commentary to update WCPARC on actions by the city of Ypsilanti that affect the rec center. The previous week, on March 4, the Ypsilanti city council approved a purchase agreement for Water Street Flats, a development with 90 residential units. He thought it was something that’s good for the city.

Paul Schreiber, mayor of Ypsilanti.

The complex will be rental apartments for residents who earn 50-90% of area median income. For Ypsilanti, that comes out to market rate, he said. So it’s market-rate housing, Schreiber said, that’s being financed through low-income housing tax credits.

The apartments will bring more people to that area, Schreiber said. The development won’t be next to the rec center, but will be nearby – on the south edge of the Water Street property. He thought the complex would attract young professionals making $30,000 to $40,000 a year, just starting out after graduating from Eastern Michigan University or other institutions. There will be some Section 8 housing, he said. Other properties by the same developer – Herman and Kittle Properties – have had Section 8 units for between 4% and 21% of the entire development, he noted. Since this location is on the river, near downtown and the Border-to-Border Trail, “I think we’re going to be on the low end of that [percentage],” he said.

Schreiber told commissioners that there had been a “lot of spirited discussion against it,” but the majority of the Ypsilanti city council decided to approve it. The developer is applying for tax credits and financing. That’s a competitive process, he noted, so it’s still unclear how it will turn out.

Schreiber felt that the project fits in with the rest of the Water Street plans, including the rec center and WCPARC’s goals. Construction would be in 2015, with completion likely in 2016.

Ypsilanti city councilmember Pete Murdock also addressed commissioners, noting that the developer still owns similar properties that it built, “so they’re not just getting in on the front end and then leaving.” He said the developer would also be building a lot of infrastructure that would serve the rest of the site, including several roads, sidewalks and utilities.

Responding to a query from Rolland Sizemore Jr., Murdock said that even if the rec center isn’t built, the apartment project would move forward.

Rolling Hills Water Park Repairs

WCPARC director Bob Tetens described this item as the “convergence of several problems.” Part of the issue is related to the capital improvement program, but a lot is tied to conformance with current regulations, he said.

From the staff memo:

A few years ago, through dye testing, we discovered the Lazy River was leaking water from four of the seven floor and wall expansion joints. As result, this past fall we removed one of the leaking joints to investigate the extent of the problem. It was confirmed that the rubber membrane in the expansion joints had failed causing the leak. To remedy the situation each expansion joint will be removed and replaced.

The operation of the pools and Lazy River are regulated by several County/State and Federal codes or guidelines. One of these is the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act (VGBA) of 2008 (with updates in 2011). This Act was enacted to prevent hazards of drain entrapments in public pools and spas. Since enactment of the VGBA, we initiated replacement of drain grates throughout the Main Pool facility to comply with the 2008 requirements. However, the drain grates within the Lazy River have not been replaced due to their custom configurations and other needed modifications. Now VGBA and State regulations mandate further changes be made to the drain sump structures and grates to be compliant.

“Slide Mountain” and its associate stairway system are some of the original features of the Waterpark. Over time through regular patron usage and weather, the stairs have developed significant deterioration requiring extensive repair and reconstruction.

Due to the complexity of the project work, Stantec Consulting of Michigan (a local engineering firm) was hired to evaluate the above issues and recommend corrective measures to address each. As a result, an RFP was developed and structured to allow a portion of the work to be completed this spring before opening, then resume after Labor Day shut-down. The scope of work is somewhat specialize and the documentation required perspective bidders to demonstrate previous years of experience with this type of project. [.pdf of full staff memo]

Four bids were received in response to the RFP. The low bid was by Baruzzini Construction Co. of Brighton, for $497,549. The firm had worked on the water slide addition last year and is familiar with the Rolling Hills facility, according to the staff memo. Baruzzini also is doing work on Rutherford Pool in Ypsilanti.

The staff recommended approval of this contract with Baruzzini, plus a $35,000 contingency for potential change orders.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved the contract for work at the Rolling Hills water park.

Communications & Commentary

Each WCPARC meeting includes opportunities for public commentary, as well as various communications from staff and commissioners. Here are some highlights.

Communications & Commentary: Deer Management

Two people spoke on the issue of deer damage in the county. Maurita Holland noted that she’d spoken to commissioners at their previous meeting, on Feb. 11, 2014. A group has formed called Washtenaw County for Ecological Balance, she reported, with members including Larry Kestenbaum [Washtenaw County's clerk/register of deeds] and Chris Graham [who serves on Ann Arbor's environmental commission].

Maurita Holland.

Holland pointed out that Time magazine had a picture of a deer on the cover of its last issue in 2013. A chart in the article shows that the deer population has grown more than any other animal since the middle of the last century. In the past 50 years, the U.S. deer population has increased about 800% to about 32 million head, she noted.

The Forest Preserves of Cook County, in Chicago, has developed a sustainability plan, Holland reported, which includes an annual cull of deer. She reported that the city of Jackson, Michigan, has been culling deer for several years. During that time, about 500 deer have been culled in the city and provided to food pantries there.

Holland concluded by asking commissioners what they needed. “We do understand that the political part of this is undoubtedly much more difficult than getting the MDNR in here with a special permit, if you were to vote as a board to do that,” she said. “We know there’s a lot of political fallout and a lot of education that needs to be done.” The new group is very dedicated to this cause, she said, but only in ways that can be as positive as possible.

Barb Lucas also spoke on this issue. She is contracted by Washtenaw County to do environmental shows on WEMU and Community Television Network – called the Green Room. The November show on WEMU focused on deer overpopulation. It had been very illuminating to interview different stakeholders about it, she said, and it led her to feel that people need to find commonalities because there are such passionate feelings on all sides.

Both sides want to preserve life, Lucas said. If the animal rights supporters were educated about the “web of life” and how there are so many different creatures that depend on the ecosystem, they might have a different view. If deer graze heavily in an area, other species will suffer and starve to death, she said. Animal rights activists talk about “species elitism,” Lucas said, so that’s something to talk about – whether it’s better to protect a “charismatic” species like deer or to protect a range of other species too. That might be a way to find common ground, rather than to start by talking about culling deer, which would “polarize everybody immediately,” she said. Lucas concluded by urging commissioners to listen to the Green Room segment on this issue.

Holland spoke again, noting that she’d spoken with Ann Arbor city councilmember Sabra Briere. Holland said that Briere was also very concerned about this issue, and had indicated that she’d be contacting WCPARC because it was a good idea to talk about how this affects both the city and the county. The deer right now are in the county’s northwest quadrant, Holland said, and are moving towards Ann Arbor. “This is going to be a moving target,” she said.

Communications & Commentary: Deer Management – Commission Discussion

Later in the meeting, WCPARC director Bob Tetens noted that the board packet included some material related to this issue. [.pdf of February 2014 staff report on deer populations in county parks] [.pdf of Feb. 17, 2014 Inside Michigan Politics article] [.pdf of Meridian Township deer management plan] [.pdf of 2012 Ann Arbor Observer article]

Tetens thanked Holland and Lucas for providing more information, and told commissioners that WCPARC staff would be collecting as much information as possible. He reported that WCPARC has applied for a $29,960 grant through the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources wildlife habitat grant program. Those funds would allow WCPARC to quantify the impact on county parks and preserves more precisely.

WCPARC member Jan Anschuetz.

Tetens told commissioners that this will now be a regular agenda item, as the staff continues to research this issue. He noted that the county board of commissioners held a working session in February that focused on the deer population in Washtenaw County, which included a presentation by Timothy Wilson of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture.

Everyone agrees that the growing deer population is a problem, Tetens said, but “nobody can solve it on their own.”

Bob Marans asked about a timeframe for putting some kind of plan in place. Dan Smith, who serves on the county board representing District 2, described a couple of points from the February working session. The USDA would assist in helping carry out various remediations, he said, but only after some other entity assesses the problem. In Michigan, that falls to the DNR and local entities.

Smith also reported that the “lethal” technique was surprisingly expensive. He’d expected that to be the least expensive, but that wasn’t the case. According to the USDA, the most effective technique would be even more unpopular than other management efforts, Smith said – to bring back natural predators. “That would be even more unpopular than bow hunters.”

Marans asked Tetens where he saw this headed, in terms of WCPARC’s role. Tetens replied that the DNR is responsible for managing the deer population, so ultimately it would need to be a collaborative effort with the DNR, local communities, the Farm Bureau, and others.

Marans then asked: “Is it our responsibility to push the DNR?” It’s everyone’s responsibility, Tetens replied. Right now, it’s a problem that the county can’t manage alone. The USDA representative had noted that even if the problem is solved in one location, the deer move elsewhere, he said.

As a society, “we have created the perfect environment, with our rural residential development,” Tetens said. Scio Township has been in the top five municipalities statewide in terms of the number of deer-vehicle accidents, he noted. Hunting is limited, while suburban homes plant landscape gardens that attract deer. He likened it to putting up a sign that says: “We’re not going to hunt you. Here’s free food. Come on in!” There needs to be a cultural shift, Tetens said.

Dan Smith said that from a policy perspective, WCPARC can be a driver as far as the county is concerned, because it manages significant acreage in parks and natural areas. The elected county board of commissioners has indirect control, but the county board doesn’t directly own a lot of land.

Marans agreed that WCPARC plays an important role, but “the directive should come from the county board,” he said.

Smith noted that the townships in Michigan have the most control over land use issues, so it’s important to work with the township officials too. Based on his research, Smith said, it’s clear that there are conflicting interests – farmers want one thing, hunters want another, conservationists want yet another thing, depending on what type of conservationist they are.

Barb Lucas.

Janis Bobrin referred to a point that Barb Lucas had made regarding the need to find common ground. “This is a community where if we start talking about killing anything, there are people who will just not hear anything after that,” she said. There’s the actual management of the problem, she noted, but also a major education piece. “How do we begin to get a dialogue that isn’t one camp against another? That would seem to be a productive first step.”

Jan Anschuetz said it would be presumptuous to say that culling deer would solve the problem. About five years ago, WCPARC considered the issue seriously, she said, adding that she’d spent about 40-50 hours researching the problem at that time. Studies that she’d read revealed that culling deer actually encourages reproduction. It’s a very complicated issue, she said, and WCPARC shouldn’t just jump into it.

Marans replied that clearly they need to move slowly. He described a deer management program at the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority, which he said was very successful. [Marans also serves on the board of the HCMA, which oversees the Huron-Clinton Metroparks.] He noted that HCMA has more land than WCPARC, and it’s also hard to know what happens on land outside of the metroparks.

Anschuetz urged commissioners and staff to be “a little bit humble.” They need to work with and listen to the animal rights advocates, she said.

Dan Smith noted that it’s clear the deer are harming native plants and wildlife in the county’s preserves. The reason the county invests in these preserves is to ensure that native plants and wildlife have protected areas. He thought that managing the deer population could be part of the broader management efforts for those areas. But the success of that management isn’t known, he added. Smith said he’d read that deer have evolved so that their reproduction is a way to survive predators. When there are no predators – aside from vehicles – then they overpopulate.

Evan Pratt said it would be helpful to get feedback from staff about what WCPARC’s role should be. Should they be hosting symposiums? Or just providing information?

Anschuetz argued that WCPARC exists in order to serve the entire population of Washtenaw County that pays for parks. “If we do something that displeases our public, we will not have a millage and will not have a parks commission and we will not have a preserve,” she said. Deciding how to handle the deer issue is an important decision, she added – not just for the people who are concerned about this issue, but for the entire parks system.

Dan Ezekiel suggested seeing if there are any resources at the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources & Environment.

Dan Smith asked if Tetens would be comfortable preparing a recommendation over the next month or two. Smith said it sounded like Marans wanted direction from the county board of commissioners. Marans thought the county could be a leader in initiating a program, whatever that might be. It wasn’t wise to just be passive, he said.

Tetens said his staff hadn’t been able to spend much time on this issue so far. Marans wanted to see a proposal for various options within six months or so.

Regarding HCMA’s deer management, Anschuetz pointed out that HCMA’s millage is permanent and doesn’t require renewal. But WCPARC’s millage does need renewal, she noted, and “if we aren’t representing the community, we are in a very vulnerable position.” Marans countered that commissioners don’t know what the community thinks as a whole.

Bobrin said that Anschuetz’s point is well taken – WCPARC needs to understand that. Anschuetz told commissioners that she’s very involved in animal rights issues, and is very involved with the Humane Society. “I know what goes on,” Anschuetz said. “You may be underestimating the power of the people in this community.” She didn’t see WCPARC as leading this effort, but rather they should partner with other entities.

Pratt drew an analogy to weed control in lakes. Once you start spending money to try to manage it, “you’re just rolling the rock up the hill,” he said. “You just start this Sisyphean task when you try to force-fit nature into what you want it to be.” He said he wasn’t arguing against a deer management program, but WCPARC first needs to figure out what its role should be.

Dan Smith said he wasn’t suggesting that WCPARC take on deer management itself. But because they’ve invested in preserves, that’s why WCPARC has a role in it. “If the preserve just becomes a bunch of prairie grass, that’s not a very interesting preserve,” he said. “That’s not why we’re buying this land with tax dollars.”

Smith noted that if the best solution turns out to be introducing natural predators to the area, that introduces an entirely new set of problems. “Now the farmers will really be up in arms,” he said.

Communications & Commentary: Lyndon Township Mining Proposal

McCoig Materials is proposing a sand and gravel mine in Lyndon Township, on 189 acres north of Chelsea on M-52. The rural site is located near several parks and nature areas, including Waterloo State Recreation Area, the Pinckney State Recreation Area, Park Lyndon, the Green Lake Camping area, and the Waterloo-Pinckney Hiking Trail.

Janis Bobrin, a member WCPARC. In the background is WCPARC director Bob Tetens.

Bob Tetens reminded commissioners that the southern part of WCPARC’s Park Lyndon covers most of the edges of Lake Genevieve, and “we’ve always sort of felt, despite where the fences are at, that the whole lake was ours, and it’s not.” A small portion of the southern tip of the lake is part of the Cunningham family property – the site that McCoig wants to purchase.

In the past, WCPARC had talked to the family about possibly buying that land, Tetens said. WCPARC has been interested in it for at least two decades.

Residents in the area are very concerned about McCoig’s proposal, Tetens said. It would mean a lot of additional traffic from trucks – 60-80 round-trip gravel haulers each day would be driving through Chelsea, throughout the estimated 30-year life of the operation. There are also concerns about the impact on local ecosystems and hydrology, Tetens said.

Part of what makes the northwest part of Washtenaw County so special is its concentration of parks and recreation areas, Tetens said, so it doesn’t make sense to take 190 acres out of that for mining.

Tetens asked for the commissioners to support drafting a letter to Lyndon Township and state officials, opposing a special use permit that would allow the company to remove sand and gravel. He stressed WCPARC’s continued interest in buying the property for the county’s natural areas preservation program, and said that an application for NAPP had been sent to the Cunningham family. The resources are available in NAPP’s budget to buy the property at fair market value, Tetens said. Any added value related to mineral rights would have to be negotiated.

Tetens also reported that the Michigan Dept. of Natural Resources has been working with McCoig to try to find an alternative site – possibly property that the DNR owned or could acquire, that could be traded for the Cunningham property so that the ecosystem in that area could be maintained.

Janis Bobrin noted that because of relatively recent state legislation, it’s very difficult for local governments to turn down mining operations in their communities.

On its website, Lyndon Township has noted that its authority is limited:

Michigan State Legislators have greatly reduced township control by passing Act 110 of 2006 (125.3205). Under that law, the township must not “prevent the extraction, by mining, of valuable natural resources from any property unless very serious consequences would result from the extraction of those natural resources. Natural resources are considered valuable for the purposes of this section if a person, by extracting the natural resources, can receive revenue and reasonably expect to operate at a profit.” The township’s authority is limited to “reasonable regulation of hours of operation, blasting hours, noise levels, dust control measures, and traffic that are not preempted by part 632 of the Michigan environmental laws,” 1994 PA 451, MCL 324.63201 to 324.63223.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to direct staff to send a letter to Lyndon Township regarding the McCoig proposal. [.pdf of Tetens letter]

Communications & Commentary: Millage Renewal

Bob Tetens updated commissioners on the process of renewing the county’s 10-year parks & recreation operations millage, which is likely to be on the November 2014 ballot.

Bob Marans, president of WCPARC.

The countywide parks & recreation operations millage is a 10-year, quarter-mill tax that was first approved in November 1976 1978, and subsequently renewed in 1984, 1994, and 2004. The current millage expires on Dec. 1, 2016. Typically, a renewal proposal is put on the ballot two years before the existing millage expires.

Tetens said there will be two separate tracks. The county staff and commission can market its services and programs to the greatest extent possible – that’s well underway, he said. As part of that, staff are developing the next five-year strategic plan.

In 2004, when the millage was most recently renewed, the county board of commissioners – the elected body that has the authority to put a millage proposal on the ballot – was asked to do that in June, Tetens said. That’s likely the timeframe that will be followed this year. WCPARC staff will be making a presentation to the county board to describe what’s been done in the past 10 years. “We’ve got a good story to tell about that,” he said. The presentation will also include a planning document about how the millage would be used in the next 10 years.

Parallel to that is the organization called Friends of the County Parks. It’s the group that handles fundraising for the millage campaign itself, Tetens explained. Nelson Meade, the long-time WCPARC member who retired in December of 2013, used to lead that effort. Tetens said that commissioners might want to designate someone to serve as treasurer of that group, in place of Meade.

Financial Reports

Each month, staff provide several different financial reports to WCPARC, focused on the past month’s expenses (the claims report), monthly and year-to-date reports on expenses and revenues in the form of fund balance reports, and a listing of major non-recurring expenses when they are significant.

There are separate reports on parks and facilities, and on the natural areas preservation program (NAPP), which includes preservation of agricultural lands. Each of these has its own, separate funding, although WCPARC administers all of these programs.

Financial Reports: Claims Report

Director Bob Tetens began by saying that the reports reflect WCPARC’s off season. Parks and facilities paid a total of $113,859 in claims during February. Most of those expenses were for capital improvements, primarily at the Meri Lou Murray Recreation Center and Rolling Hills.

NAPP claims totaled $661,101 in February. Most of those expenses – $613,784 – were spent on a conservation easement for the Bloch property in Superior Township, which commissioners had approved at their Feb. 11, 2014 meeting.

Total expenses in February were $774,961. [.pdf of February 2014 claims]

Financial Reports: Fund Balance – Parks and Recreation

Tetens noted that there hadn’t been any dramatic changes since the previous month’s report.

January 2014 began with a fund balance of $10,521,250. [This is the total of the $3,146,250 fund balance on Dec. 31, 2013, plus the $6.7 million operating reserve and the $675,000 committed to funding partnerships.] Revenue as of Feb. 28, 2014 was $4,128,849 with expenses of $696,711. The operating reserve for 2014 is $6.7 million, and the funding commitments for partnerships is $820,000. [.pdf of February 2014 parks & rec fund balance]

The projected fund balance at the end of 2014 is $6,430,817.

Financial Reports: Fund Balance – NAPP

The February report started with the fund balance of $7,195,911 and showed revenue of $1,968,881. Expenses totaled $622,947, for a projected fund balance at the end of 2014 of $8,450,839. [.pdf of February 2014 NAPP fund balance]

There was no substantive discussion of the reports.

Outcome: WCPARC unanimously voted to receive, accept, and file the financial reports.

Recreation Reports

Typically, there are several monthly reports on attendance at WCPARC facilities where attendance can be counted, with information about participation in measurable activities and revenue received at those facilities. The reports include the current year-to-date summary as well as similar information for the prior two years.

For the March 11 meeting, only one recreation report was presented.

Recreation Reports: Meri Lou Murray Recreation Center

At the Meri Lou Murray Recreation Center, year-to-date participation as of Feb. 28, 2014 was 56,541 and revenue was $250,023. In 2013, year-to-date participation was 63,615 and revenue was $262,635. In 2012, participation was 67,824 and revenue was $249,565. [.pdf of MLM recreation center report]

WCPARC director Bob Tetens noted that activity had been slow during February, which he attributed to the bad weather. “People just weren’t getting out,” he said.

Tetens reminded commissioners that two years ago, the county’s Pierce Lake golf course opened in the third week of March, and in 2013 they opened in the last week in March. So things will be slow at the golf course this year too, he said.

Outcome: The recreation report was received and accepted for filing unanimously.

Projects and Activities

Staff of WCPARC provide monthly updates to commissioners about ongoing improvements at facilities, and activities at parks and natural areas. Some of this information is provided in writing in the board packet; more is provided with visuals and informal commentary. [.pdf of projects/activities report]

Here are some highlights of items discussed at the March meeting.

• The annual ice fishing derby at Independence Lake had a good turnout, Coy Vaughn reported. Rolland Sizemore Jr. observed that in the photos that Vaughn showed of the event, there weren’t any minorities. He asked how WCPARC advertised the event. Vaughn replied that they used posters, partnered with businesses like Cabela’s and local bait shops, and posted information online. WCPARC director Bob Tetens said there is typically a larger turnout of minorities for events at Rolling Hills, on the county’s east side.
• The annual “Daddy Daughter Dance” at the Meri Lou Murray recreation center on Feb. 22 drew 168 people this year. Vaughn played a clip from a feature about the dance that aired on Community Television Network’s FYI show.
• A summer job fair was held at the gym in the Meri Lou Murray recreation center, with several county departments and the Michigan Works office represented. Attendees could apply and be interviewed on the spot. It drew over 100 people.
• Vaughn showed two short videos that will be used to promote various WCPARC facilities online. He plans to show one or two new videos at each WCPARC meeting over the next few months. The videos shown on March 11 highlighted County Farm Park and the water parks at Rolling Hills and Independence Lake.

Remembering Fred Veigel

The March 11 board packet included a resolution of appreciation for Fred Veigel, who died on March 2. [.pdf of resolution] Veigel was a long-time WCPARC member who held a seat designated for a county road commission representative.

WCPARC director Bob Tetens described Veigel as “an even more colorful figure than we’d realized,” based on pictures that had been on display at Veigel’s memorial and funeral. Veigel had been a member of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 252 for 60 years, and the union is planning a memorial “toast and roast” on Friday, June 13.

Evan Pratt noted that the family is encouraging people to come and share stories about Veigel. “It sounded like there weren’t going to be many boundaries,” he said.

Outcome: Commissioners passed the resolution of appreciation.

Present: Jan Anschuetz, Janis Bobrin, Dan Ezekiel, Robert Marans, Evan Pratt, Patricia Scribner, Rolland Sizemore Jr., and Dan Smith.

Absent: Conan Smith.

Staff: Director Bob Tetens, deputy director Coy Vaughn.

Next meeting: Tuesday, April 8, 2014 at 7 p.m. in the county parks and recreation department’s office at 2230 Platt Road in Ann Arbor.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Washtenaw County parks and recreation commission. 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!

David Erik Nelson

You might choose to disintermediate your meat consumption for a variety of reasons.

Maybe you’re a local organic kinda gal. Maybe you want a niche product (e.g., heritage pork, halal goat, bilingual llama) but can’t swing the upmarket prices at Whole Foods and their ilk. Maybe you want to keep the government out of your meat purchasing decisions.

Maybe you thrill to the challenge of using the whole hog, one piece at a time. Maybe you want to eat meat as ethically as possible, personally verifying that the animals are treated kindly in life and compassionately in death. [1]

Whatever your motivation, as Michiganders, you are perfectly situated to enjoy the most deliciously ethical domestically raised meat available in this modern world.

Who do you have to thank for this boon? Lazy deer-hunters, fickle farmers, conspiracy theorists, gun “nuts” – the usual folks.

Deer and Farmers and Butchers Galore

The average Ann Arbor Chronicle reader lives smack in the middle of one of the deer-huntingest states in the Union: More than 95% of Michigan’s hunters are deer hunters. In terms of raw number of hunters, we’re ranked third, behind Texas and Pennsylvania (states with appreciably larger populations).

As of 2006, about 700,000 resident hunters populated Michigan, about 45% of whom bag a deer in a given year. [2] So, that’s 315,000 dead deer. In case you haven’t hung out with many deer, a 150-pound buck is about average. In other words, butchering a deer is much more akin to butchering a welterweight boxer than it is to cleaning a fish or dressing out any other popular game animal (i.e., turkey, rabbit, squirrel, or pheasant). You can imagine that a certain percentage of our 700,000 hunters – especially those who have to be up early for work on Monday – would be happy to pay someone to take care of this for them. Subsequently, rural Michigan is peppered with mom-and-pop processors ready to break down deer at a breakneck pace between now-ish and January 1.

In case it can’t go without saying, hunters aren’t looking to sell their venison. Considering the time and capital they need to invest in the hobby to bag a buck, the price would be insanely exorbitant. Because there’s little risk of interstate commerce coming into play, small processors don’t need USDA approval. They’re often called “custom exempt,” which means they’re inspected by the state, not the feds. Everything they hand back to the hunter is stamped “NOT FOR SALE” or “NFS,” and the hunter is expected to abide by that.

It’s a tidy little boutique, service-oriented business. But what, you wonder, do these intrepid businessfolk do for the other three fiscal quarters, when no deer need butchering? Well, they don’t sit on their hands – ’cause that wouldn’t be sanitary. Also, they’d go broke. Instead, they hook up with the caretakers of our second largest industry: Farmers. [3]

Michigan’s farmers are very special farmers, because they specialize in not specializing in anything. Michigan is home to 56,000 farms, 95% of which are family owned, and most of which are “small farms”. [4] Lots of small players, and no single dominant cash crop, has resulted in Michigan rising to be the nation’s second most diverse food producer, right behind California. If you haven’t traveled these great United States much, you can take it from me: Local farm markets in the rest of the country are notably lame compared to what we’ve got going on. [5]

We have the fixings for a classic synergy: A group of suppliers eager to experiment with a little of this and a little of that, a group of manufacturers with an idle production line nine months out of the year, and a government happy to basically stay out of the way provided everyone keeps it clean. It’s highly practical for lots of our small farms to raise a few cattle, sheep, or pigs, and profitably get them to consumers, who in turn enjoy a good value. That good value is defined in terms of price relative to quality – because no family farmer is ever going to beat the going prices from a factory farm churning out commodity-grade flash-frozen meat in the Mountain Time Zone and trucking it to Sam’s Club thrice weekly.

While 80% of our nation’s meat production infrastructure has been gobbled up by just four mega-corporations, Michigan has maintained a robust, jackstraw quasi-network of rugged individualists and surly guys in blood-stained aprons.

If you’re a hippie with a penchant for ethical pork, beef, or foul, it’s a helluva lucky break. So let’s get started. Step one: Go get a pig.

Get a Live Pig

But, for the love of God, don’t bring it home. According to the Ann Arbor City Clerk’s office, it’s more than a stretch to claim that a 250-pound pig you’re just keeping around for a few months prior to its execution and dismemberment qualifies as a small animal commonly classified as a pet.

But, for legal reasons, it’s important that you purchase the pig when it’s technically still alive. The private transfer of a live pig – much like the private transfer of a firearm – is a very straightforward transaction (Pure Michigan!). Conversely, the transfer of a dead pig – especially one that the seller has any reason to suspect the buyer intends to eat – is a legally fraught transaction, and liable to trigger Uncle Sam’s meddling.

So, you’ll need to contact a farmer and reserve one of his or her live pigs. This is usually done a couple-three months prior to the pig reaching “market weight” (i.e., something like 225 to 300 pounds). [6]

Weights and Measures

Three kinds of weight come into play, when you are dealing with domestic animals you intend to eat: Live weight, hanging weight, and processed weight. Live weight, you’ll be shocked to learn, is the weight of the live animal. Hanging weight is the weight of the dead animal, drained of blood, and minus the parts you don’t have any use for (such as the intestines, stomach, head, feet, skin). The processed weight is the final weight of all that meat (aka, the “cuts”) neatly wrapped in butcher paper (or, more likely, vacuum sealed in plastic).

Sharp tacks have already surmised that live weight is greater than hanging weight, which in turn is greater than processed weight. Things vary by breed, individual pig, and butcher, but in general the hanging weight is about 75 percent of the live weight, and the processed weight about 66 percent of the hanging weight. So when all is said and done, if you start out with a 250-pound live pig, you’ll end up with about 125 pounds of cuts.

Most of the negotiating you’ll do revolves around hanging weight – although a pig might be priced based on its live weight, its hanging weight, or just as a pig. Per-pig pricing is the equivalent of wholesale in most cases: The farmer is just asking for you to reimburse him for the feed (which, at today’s corn prices, means around $240).

In terms of hanging weight, the price currently seems to hover in the $2 to $2.50 per pound range. So on a hypothetical 250-live-pound hog, that would amount to $375 to $470-ish. If the farmer quotes well below that, then he’s probably doing so on live weight, and you should clear that up. I’m not saying anyone is being nefarious, but the difference between hanging weight and live weight on your average hog is something like 62 pounds. A buck-fifty per pounds sounds like a tremendous deal, but actually amounts to the same thing as paying $2 per pound hanging weight.

At the end of the day, you should budget around $375 for your pig. But that only gets you half way to the dinner table.

At this stage, you’ve dropped almost four bills on a live pig that, we’ve established, is of very little use to you within Ann Arbor city limits. It lives its happy piggy life out in the mud somewhere many miles from a Starbucks. It runs around under the pine trees listening to AM radio and rooting for fat grubs. If a spider is up in the rafters writing nice things about him, he has no clue, because he’s illiterate and happily snorting up mud and knocking over his brothers and sisters. He is a pig, just as God and evolution and human meddling in natural selection made him.

Connect Up With A Processor

Once your little piggie hits market weight, it’s time for processing. The likelihood that the folks who’ve been raising the pigs also processes them is essentially zero – much as the odds are essentially zero that the folks who designed your car can also fix it. Fortunately, pretty much every farmer raising edible animals already has several processors he/she has worked with many times, and is certainly willing to drive your pig anywhere you want it (within reason; you may need to buy the tank of gas).

Mark Sponsler of Parmanian Acres (a prominent breeder of mulefoot pigs, and the guy I’ve most often bought whole animals from) referred to this first and final trip in the pickup as the pig’s “ride of a lifetime.” The pigs tended to enjoy the ride, but I suppose that’s because they are not, as a species, known for readily picking up on word play.

You’ll need to make arrangements with the processor in advance, which means calling them with your “cutting instructions,” making sure they’re able to connect with your farmer so the two can sort out drop-off arrangements, and maybe giving a credit card number.

Cutting is basically a flat fee of something like 50-cents per pound of hanging weight. So, for your hypothetical pig (which weighed 250 when it was still trotting, and will thus be something like 180 pounds hanging) you can expect a base processing fee of $90. But that’s just cutting the fella up into chops, butts, hams, steaks, etc. You want some ground? That’ll be an extra nickel per pound. You want sausage [7] (which could be brats, or italian, or kielbasa, or breakfast links, or some special awesomeness the processor has concocted)? That’s another buck per pound. You want the bellies sliced for bacon? That’s a quarter per pound. You want anything smoked (which you do if you want bacon; by definition it’s a smoked meat)? That’s at least a buck per pound, and more if you want nitrate-free smoking. [8]

There’s a lot to know, and to be frank, many mom-and-pop processors will make you feel like an asshole as you stumble through this. Remind yourself that you are going to be paying them at least $150, and ask all the questions you damn well please.

The last time I got a pig processed it ran about $185. My cutting instructions were something like this:

• both hams (that’s the thigh/butt) kept whole and smoked
• all the bacon, including jowl bacon, cut and smoked [9]
• the neck bones and hocks (which is sort of the knee/lower leg of the pig) smoked (I make a lot of beans and jambalaya, both of which are vastly enriched by a good smoked pig bone)
• both shoulders whole (pork shoulder is used to make slow-roasted deliciousness like pulled pork and tamales)
• the loin cut in half (this is a big, lean, boneless hunk of meat off the back; it’s generally roasted whole and then cut into medallions and served)
• the spare ribs (you often want to specify this, as the rib meat will otherwise go into the ground meat)
• sausage of every stripe (breakfast links, brats, kielbasa, spicy italian, some in casings and some as bulk ground meat)
• the remainder cut into bone-in pork chops, steaks (some smoked), and ground

There’s clearly lots of room for variation here. If you wanted, you could get the whole damn thing as kielbasa, or chops and steaks. Don’t like loin? Get it sliced and smoked as Canadian bacon (also called “back bacon”).

The last time around I also got a few surprises. Because I’d specified the hog’s heads should be left on (I wanted that tasty, tasty jowl bacon), I also ended up with pork tongue (which I’d never had, but it’s like beef tongue, which I like just fine). And, for reasons unknown, I ended up with the liver (in two portions; pigs have big livers, I guess) and heart. [10] Surprise!

But aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? Your farmer sold you a live pig – although you may never actually have met that pig in person – but your whole conversation with the processor revolves around the treatment of a gutted, exsanguinated, hanging carcasses. Seems like we’ve glossed over something.

Many processors also handle slaughtering. (It’s an additional fee of $45 or so, which covers the small work of killing and the big work of cleaning the carcass and properly disposing of its guts, head, blood, etc.) If you want the jowl bacon, make sure whoever handles your killing knows that, so they leave the head on. If you want to be sure to get the heart, liver, or God forbid, the “sweetbreads” (shudders), now is the time to make that clear. If you have any questions about how your pig is to be dispatched, this is the moment to ask.

So, on that hypothetical pig (which started out weighing in at a lively 250, and ended up as 125 pounds of frozen yummies), you can expect to pay a grand total of about $570: $375 for the pig, $45 for someone to kill it, and $150 for some other folks to break it down, slice it up, smoke some parts, grind up others, and cram some of that into some animal’s scrubbed intestines. This amounts to $4.50 per pound of edible meat. That’s actually pretty competitive, plus you get to have phone conversations with new and interesting people of varied and diverse political leanings, and a nice drive (or two) out into rural Michigan. (Processors don’t deliver.)

Caveats

If you’re going to meet your meat while it’s still fit to root and snuffle, I suppose I should warn you: Pigs, in general, are intelligent animals. They have big ears and small damp eyes, and the nature of clumsy dogs. A pig is a pretty charming brute – and this goes doubly so for family-raised animals and heritage breeds: They each have distinctive markings, which makes it easier to assign them personality. A life in outdoor paddocks makes them lively and inquisitive. Out in the open air they are significantly less offensively smelly than you’ve been led to expect.

Folks of a certain nature might have trouble eating someone they’ve met. In my humble, such people shouldn’t eat meat. The pigs you meet at a small family farm in Michigan are going to be the happiest food animals you will ever meet. Animals in the wild live a life that is marked by continual fear and danger of violent death; it is distinguished by being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

As for animals bred as a food commodity: Their lives are worse. I once inadvertently drove through the ConAgra feedlots in eastern Colorado. If you’re mostly familiar with Colorado from screens, large and small (as I was until that day), then you likely think it’s all mountains and vistas. That’s western Colorado. Eastern Colorado is basically just an extension of Kansas: Countertop flat, and monoculture as far as the eye can see, countless acres of corn or wheat or, in this case, cows. It was breathtaking and nauseating, cows packed shoulder-to-shoulder out to the literal horizon, as thick as flies on mid-August shit. This was all out in the open, with no obstruction to the wind, and I was driving past at 70 m.p.h., but nonetheless the smell was like being locked in an over-full summerfest Porta John.

Up near the road there were calves, each trapped in a little pen maybe only four times as big as the calf itself, with half that space taken up by a huskie-sized igloo-style plastic dog house (Why? I haven’t the foggiest; to hide in? None of them seemed to be taking shelter in their domes, if that was the intended purpose.) Behind that, it was cows.

I want to stress that this is not hyperbole: There were literally cows packed without gap from the calf pens all the way to the outbuildings, and around those buildings as tight as the tile around a kitchen island counter. From there it was motionless cows right to the edge of the sky. I could have pulled over, climbed the wire fence, hauled myself onto a cow’s back, and walked for hours, out past the horizon, without ever touching the churned, dead mud, hopping from cow to cow like Eliza fleeing Uncle Tom’s cabin.

The sheer number of bodies, the close proximity, was inherently nauseating. More cows than there are kernels on an ear of corn, or maggots on a dumpster-bottom hamburger patty, or stars in the sky. Each weighing about as much as the car I owned at the time. Each as live as me, none with anything very much resembling a life.

In short, it wasn’t a process I really wanted to participate in. I didn’t touch a Hebrew National for a decade.

All of that said, as charming as family-farm pigs are, they are still rough beasts. The first time I visited Mr. Sponsler’s farm, one of his sows had just had a litter. One of the newborns found its way through a loose section of wire fence into a neighboring pen. There, another sow killed it, for no other reason than that the piglet was there, and she could. So, let us have no delusions about these animals. We – as a species – bred them – as a species – to a purpose. If that purpose itself disturbs you, I can’t fathom why you’ve read this far. If you are fine with that purpose – but only so long as you don’t have to look at it head on – then maybe it’s time to reconsider your diet. Say what you like about these pigs, but at least they come to their reputation honestly.

Contacts

-

• Byron Center Meats. This is my processor of choice. They don’t handle slaughtering, but do synthetic nitrate-free smoking, are USDA inspected daily (!), process deer, and have a pretty extensive retail operation with beef, pork, poultry, in a vast panoply of cuts and preparations; if you happen to be in West Michigan, you can pop in and just buy some cuts of whatever you’d like on the spot. www.byroncentermeats.com
• Caledonia Packing. This is a small family-run slaughter operation, the people I use when I’m getting processing done at Byron Center Meats. www.caledoniapacking.com
• DeVries Meats. They specialize in pork processing, handle both slaughter and processing, and are fully USDA inspected. I haven’t dealt with them personally, but I’ve had plenty of pork sausage and bacon that they’ve processed. (They are one of the few full-service USDA-certified processors in the state, so many farmers selling pork cuts go through them.) www.devriesmeatsinc.com
• Mark Sponsler of Parmanian Acres. Mark has been very active in preserving and expanding an especially delicious variety of heritage pig, the mulefoot (I wrote about this a bit for the Current back in 2010; here’s a version of that article, with an overview of heritage pigs vs. conventional factory pigs). A few years back the mulefoot herd numbered only a few hundred nationwide, and was on the brink of being delisted as a viable breed. Thanks to a network of farmers like Mark, it now numbers several thousand and is again robust (and in high demand). Mark’s shifted primarily to raising hogs for breeding (rather than eating), but knows most of the mulefoot breeders in Michigan. (About 90 of those mulefoot are descended from his breeding groups.) He is generally happy to connect farmers and buyers. parmanianacres.tripod.com (Or email me and I’ll connect you to Mark; he’s a really nice guy).
• Old Pine Farm. If you want to dabble in ethical meat without getting quite so nitty gritty (or driving across the state), I advise getting in touch with Old Pine Farm. I’ve had chicken and ducks from them, and they were great. They’ve done meat CSAs in the past, which is something I find pretty tempting. www.oldpinefarm.com

Notes

[1] Disclosure: This whole discussion makes me sound a lot more carnivorous than I am. In the years we’ve bought live pigs and had them processed, our 50 pound share of the pig constituted most of my meat eating for that year – and that’s for a family of three (at the time). On average, a single American will eat that much meat in a given season. Just to make it crystal clear: The average American annually eats four times as much meat as my family of three. And I’ve never considered myself a vegetarian of any stripe, nor do I mean for this to constitute a criticism of those Americans. We’re just whistling different tunes, is all.

[2] I know that percentage sounds bad, but it’s actually just a touch below the national average – like so many things in Michigan. (Data courtesy of this 2011 report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: Deer Hunting in the United States: Demographics and Trends Addendum to the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation)

[3] If you’re from Detroit Metro, like me, it might be hard to think of Michigan as an ag state, but check it out: Michigan agriculture is a $90 billion industry employing more than 10% of the population. We ship apples to Mexico and soybeans to Asia. For all you know, the Kikkoman in those little packets came from our Michigan soy fields.

[4] The USDA defines any farm of less than 179 acres as a “small farm.”

[5] FUN FACT: Michigan currently rears every domesticated comestible worth eating; to hell with citrus and bananas! Besides, give us a few more years of climate collapse, and we’ll harvest those, too! And Asian carp! And ocelots! And delicious fresh-water river dolphins! Pure Michigan! Pure Michigan FOREVER!

[6] Incidentally, you know how you wiggle your baby’s big toe and say “This little piggie went to market, this little piggie stayed home”? Odds are, if you are an average 21st Century American, when you say that you vaguely imagine the little piggie trotting off to market with a grocery basket slung over one arm and a shopping list held in the other trotter. At this time, I invite you to meditate on this term “market weight” a little further, and then rethink why the plumpest toe goes to market and the skinny one next to it gets to hang around the farm for a while longer.

[7] Pro-Tip: The word “sausage” is really imprecise in this context. Many times it just means “ground pork” or possibly “ground pork with some fennel in it.” So, avoid this word. If you want the kind of sausages you cook on a grill or serve on a bed of kraut, say “brats” (which, more confusingly, refers to both a sausage size/shape and a preparation). If you want breakfast sausages, you want “breakfast links.” If you want to make your own sausage patties, say “ground sausage” or “bulk sausage.” If you want pre-made patties, say so, but that’s often pricey (at a buck per pound) and a waste, in my humble.

[8] Which not every processor is keen on doing; the synthetic nitrates help the meat maintain a meat-ish color and texture during the smoking process. Folks accustomed to Oscar Meyer products are often thrown off by the color and texture of raw “natural” smoked meat (which, incidentally, is still processed with nitrates, just “natural” nitrates in the form of concentrated celery juice; it’s a slightly more labor intensive process, and thus slightly pricier). It still cooks up the same, but you may need to reassure the processor that you understand that “natural smoked” bacon might look a little funky pre-frying. FYI, the scientific consensus on the dangers of nitrates (synthetic or otherwise) in processed meats seems to have shifted toward “Mehn – who cares?” over the last several years. That said, I still go for “natural” smoking, because it makes my family happier.

[9] Jowl bacon is exactly what it sounds like: The pig’s chubby neck fat sliced into irregular hunks and smoked. As a rule, muscles that get used very little are tender and mild (see, for example, penned veal), while those that get used a lot are tough and flavorful. Thus, the jowl is great meat.

[10] A pig’s heart is the size and shape of a human heart – which is creepy – but it also works every minute of every day of that pig’s life, so it is tasty (if tough). Grind it up for stew. Am I grossing you out? Keep this in mind: If you’ve had a coney dog or chili at a diner, you’ve eaten plenty of cow heart. Get over yourself or eat more produce. I’m cool either way.

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of local columnists like David Erik Nelson. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. So if you’re already supporting us on a regular basis, please educate your friends, neighbors and colleagues about The Chronicle and encourage them to support us, too!

Raman Patel, director of Washtenaw County's equalization department, presented his annual report at the April 20, 2011 board of commissioners meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Raman Patel, director of the county’s equalization department, told commissioners there was a 2.85% drop in taxable value this year. That’s an improvement over last year’s decline, when taxable value of property in the county fell 5.33%. It’s also a smaller decrease than was projected when preparing the county’s 2011 budget, which was built on the assumption of an 8.5% drop.

The impact on local taxing entities varies. The city of Ann Arbor saw a 1.21% drop, for example, while taxable value in Ypsilanti Township fell 11.39%.

The report also highlighted a shift in the county’s largest taxpayers. Just a few years ago, the top three taxpayers were Pfizer, General Motors and Ford. Now, they are Detroit Edison, McKinley Associates and Toyota.

The meeting also included a presentation of the 2010 comprehensive annual financial report, or CAFR. Kelly Belknap, the county’s finance director, highlighted the fact that the county ended 2010 with a $5.5 million general fund surplus – slightly more than the $5.3 million calculated to carry over into the 2011 budget. Mark Kettner from the accounting firm Rehmann Robson, which conducts the county’s audit, was also on hand to give a brief report on the 2010 audit.

In other business, the board approved an amendment to the brownfield plan for BST Investments in Dexter, and set two public hearings for their May 18 meeting related to brownfield plans that are being proposed: (1) Packard Square, a complex off of Packard Street on the site of the former Georgetown Mall; and (2) the LaFontaine Chevrolet redevelopment at 7120 Dexter-Ann Arbor Road in Dexter.

The board also authorized the office of the water resources commissioner to take court action in setting winter lake levels at Portage and Baseline lakes. The office operates the dam at Portage Lake that controls those levels.

During their time for communications, commissioners raised several issues, including: (1) a call to support the special education millage renewal, which is on the May 3 ballot; (2) discussions about consolidating the office of community development, ETCS (the employment training and community services department) and the economic development & energy department; and (3) what to do about the growing deer population.

Wednesday’s meeting began with a tribute to the long-time director of the Washtenaw Community Concert Band, Jerry Robbins.

Recognition for Jerry Robbins

Since 1998, Jerry Robbins has been conductor of the Washtenaw Community Concert Band, formerly the Ypsilanti Community Band. He was honored at Wednesday’s meeting for his work – Robbins is stepping down from the position. He’s been with the group since 1993, starting out as a trombone player until the previous director retired.

Jerry Robbins, long-time director of the Ypsilanti Community Band – now called the Washtenaw Community Concert Band – was honored at the April 20, 2011 county board of commissioners meeting.

Commissioner Dan Smith read a resolution honoring Robbins, commending him for revitalizing the program, ensuring its financial stability, and forming several other groups within the band, including chamber ensembles, jazz ensembles, and a “Town Band” that’s been invited to perform at the annual Association of Concert Bands convention. Smith also noted that Robbins had served in another leadership role – as dean of Eastern Michigan University’s College of Education from 1991 to 2004.

Joe Burke, an Ann Arbor resident and the county’s chief assistant prosecuting attorney, spoke about his experiences with Robbins in the band. Burke joined the band in the same year as Robbins. But while Burke said he was happy just to play his trumpet, Robbins wanted more. Robbins’ vision is that “music needs to be accessible to everyone in this county,” Burke said. It’s accessible to the public – all concerts are free – and accessible to players, because there are no auditions. Yet the quality of music is kept high, and the group has a lot of fun, Burke said.

The Chronicle observed both those aspects at a rehearsal of the band in November 2008:

When conductor Jerry Robbins took the podium for the rehearsal of the full band, he led the group through their material for the Dec. 11 concert, but it was not without frequent interruption for fine tuning, or even more general tuning. Robbins had told the musicians at the beginning of the evening, “Watch for frequent stops!” After several passes through a particularly difficult section in the Saint-Saens piece, he offered some encouragement: “This is the hardest piece of music I’ve ever put in front of you!”

…

On one occasion, a gentle reminder from Robbins that “accidentals hold through the entire measure” yielded incremental improvement and the encouragement, “It’s getting better each time through. It’s better.” But Robbins also made it clear that it needs some work before Dec. 11: “It’s still not right, and it’s not good enough.”

Burke invited the public to give Robbins a sendoff at a free concert on Thursday, April 28 at 7:30 p.m. at the Washtenaw Community College’s Towsley auditorium. “Come join us,” Burke said. “He’s a great guy.”

Financial Report, Audit

The meeting included several reports related to the county’s finances. Carla Sledge, Wayne County’s chief financial officer and past president of the Government Finance Officers Association, presented the county with a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting for its fiscal year ending December 2009. The award is based on the county’s timely completion of its state-mandated comprehensive annual financial report, or CAFR. This is the 20th year that Washtenaw County has received a certificate of achievement. “You’ve done it again,” Sledge said.

Board chair Conan Smith noted that “our superb staff did this, in spite of the board of commissioners.”

Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), Audit

Kelly Belknap, the county’s finance director, gave a brief report on highlights from the 2010 CAFR. [.pdf file of 2010 CAFR and link to county website with CAFRs from previous years.]

The general fund finished the year with a surplus of $5.5 million, she noted. It was slightly more than the $5.3 million that had been budgeted to carry over into 2011. As of Dec. 31, 2010, the county’s unreserved fund balance stood at $15.3 million. That represents 16.2% of the county’s annual general fund expenditures.

Belknap also provided more detailed handouts listing the county’s fund balances at the end of 2010, as well as its long-term liabilities – from bonds and other debt, and retirement benefits. Debt for the county has grown from $81.469 million in 2006 to $116.490 million at the end of 2010. The bulk of that relates to general obligation bonds, which totaled $75.565 million at the end of 2010, as well as a dramatic increase in delinquent tax notes, which grew from $12 million in 2006 to $26 million in 2010. [Excel files of fund balances and long-term liabilities]

Chart showing the county's state revenue-sharing reserve fund, which will be depleted in 2013. (Links to larger image)

Belknap reminded the board that the county’s state revenue-sharing reserve fund would be depleted in 2013. This year, the county plans to use $6.675 million from that fund, leaving a balance of $10.824 million.

Turning to the county’s bond ratings, Belknap reported that the county has an AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s and an Aa2 rating from Moody’s. County staff met with representatives from Standard & Poor’s earlier in the day, Belknap said, to discuss the county’s delinquent tax bonding. It was a positive meeting, she said, and they’ll be receiving an updated bond rating soon.

At the board’s Feb. 16, 2011 meeting, county treasurer Catherine McClary had given a report on plans to fund delinquent taxes, and commissioners approved a request to bond for that purpose. From Chronicle coverage of that meeting:

McClary reported that the amount of delinquent taxes turned over to her office for collection has more than doubled in the past seven years. For the last two years, the county was not able to self fund the delinquent taxes. Last year, there was about $29 million in delinquent taxes, and she expects a small increase this year. But the request is to borrow the same amount as last year – an amount not to exceed $50 million. She commented that the figure “takes my breath away.” One change is that interest rates on the bonds will be higher this year than last year, due to the tightening credit markets.

McClary explained that every year, the treasurer’s office sets up a separate delinquent tax revolving fund, where money is deposited as the delinquent taxes are collected. If the county is unable to collect the taxes by year’s end, they charge back that uncollected amount to the taxing jurisdiction, charging them the same interest that’s charged for the bonds – last year, interest was around 2%, McClary said.

McClary characterized delinquent taxes as a leading economic indicator. For residential properties, it’s starting to level off, she said, but there are increases in commercial properties, and especially in undeveloped vacant land.

…

There is interest charged on the delinquent taxes, she said – 1% per month for the first year, and 1.5% per month for the second year, plus a 4% administrative fee. Those funds are also deposited into the delinquent tax revolving fund. When the bonds are paid off, any remaining money in the revolving fund is transferred to the county’s capital projects fund, to be used as the board and administration sees fit, McClary said. Last year, $5.5 million was transferred – double the amount that had been budgeted.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Belknap commented on the reputation that Washtenaw County has developed in the financial community regarding its early completion of the CAFR. Two decades ago, it was typically finished in December – since 1997, the report has been done by April.

Belknap then turned the podium over to Mark Kettner from the accounting firm Rehmann Robson, which conducts the county’s audit. Kettner said he expected the 2010 CAFR would also receive an award.

As he has in years’ past, Kettner noted that the audit gives an unqualified – or “clean” – opinion about the county’s financial statements. It’s an opinion on those statements, he said, not an opinion about the county’s financial controls or conditions. He noted that the county plans to hire someone to do an internal audit, which will analyze those controls. [.pdf of Rehmann Robson audit management letter]

He suggested that commissioners look at the 10-year trending data that’s provided in the audit. In challenging times like these, he said, it’s especially important to be aware of financial trends.

Kettner said there were a few minor items that they reported to administration, who will be following up on them.

Financial Report, Audit: Commissioner Comments

Kristin Judge noted that there was some evidence of internal financial control issues cited in the audit, indicating the need for the internal audit the county will be conducting. She also said it would be helpful to have the issue of retirement benefit liabilities discussed in a future working session. Judge thanked Kettner for providing trend data. [.pdf of trend data from 2010 CAFR]

A sampling of that trend data includes:

• Total full-time employees in county government: 1,486 in 2001 compared to 1,381 in 2010 – a decline of 125 positions, or -8.4%
• General fund undesignated fund balance: $5.759 million in 2001 compared to $15.3 million in 2010 – a 165% increase.
• General fund revenues: $74.195 million in 2001 compared to $91.632 million in 2010 – an increase of 23.5%. General fund revenues reached a peak in 2007, at $99.476 million.
• Total outstanding debt for governmental activities (includes general obligation bonds, capital leases and loans): $38.45 million in 2001 compared to $76.65 million in 2010 – a 99% increase.

Wes Prater asked what formula is used to calculate the county’s liabilities from pending lawsuits. Kettner said there isn’t really a formula. The county is self-insured, he noted, and hires a third-party risk management expert to look at that issue. That person would analyze the liability by looking at claims against the county, compared to its history of litigation. For the audit, Kettner said they get a letter from the county’s corporation counsel, Curtis Hedger, which summarizes claims that are pending or that have been made, and whether those are covered. The auditors review that information and discuss with county management whether further disclosures are necessary, he said.

Prater then clarified that some of the fund balances had been consolidated in the report that commissioners were given. He said it would be helpful to have a footnote about that, so that it didn’t seem as though those funds simply disappeared.

Rob Turner asked whether Kettner had a recommended percentage for the county’s fund balance. Kettner said that the auditing firm didn’t make a recommendation, but that his personal guideline would be at least 10% of expenditures. If you go below that, it might be a reason for concern, he said. [According to the CAFR, the county's policy is not to fall below 8% of expenditures.]

Judge noted that the $15.3 million fund balance at the end of 2010 included the $5.5 million surplus that was already in the 2011 budget. So the actual fund balance is around $10 million, she said – or closer to 10% of expenditures. She said she just wanted to make people aware of that.

Judge then asked who is responsible for oversight when the county gives its full faith and credit to allow other local municipalities to issue bonds. How does that impact the county’s credit rating?

County administrator Verna McDaniel explained that after board approval, the administration monitors those bonds with its in-house counsel. Other counties have had problems with municipalities being unable to make bond payments, she said, but so far Washtenaw County has been fortunate. There is one situation that’s a concern, McDaniel noted, but they’re monitoring it closely.

[By way of background, Sylvan Township has been struggling with $12.5 million in bonds issued to build a water and wastewater treatment plant intended to serve future development. The plan was to use revenue related to that development – from connection fees to the system – to cover the bond payments. However, the economy soured and development hasn’t materialized. Last year, the county board approved a bond refunding in order to restructure the debt and lower the township’s bond payments.]

Calculating the County’s Taxable Value: Equalization Report

Commissioner Rolland Sizemore Jr. introduced Raman Patel, director of the county’s equalization department, by teasing him: “You’ve got three minutes!” The line, an allusion to the time allotted for public commentary, got a laugh from commissioners and staff in attendance – Patel’s detailed annual reports take considerably longer, and Wednesday’s was no exception.

Equalization: How the Equalization Process Works

The state-mandated equalization process runs throughout the year, as both the county and local assessors within each municipality examine the value of land and other property, such as buildings. Local assessors turn their findings over to the county, which then conducts independent assessments based on sales studies and physical appraisals. Next, the county’s equalization staff looks at how their findings compare with the local assessors’ findings. (The county has authority to request that local assessment rates be altered, if it considers them to be too high or too low.)

After this “equalization” occurs, the local municipalities send out notices to each property owner in their jurisdiction, stating each property’s assessed value as well as its taxable value. If property owners disagree, they can appeal that assessment. After appeals are ruled on, the county uses that data for its equalization report.

Taxable value is a state-mandated formula, and is the lower of two figures: (1) a parcel’s equalized (assessed) value, or (2) a capped value calculated by taking last year’s taxable value minus any losses (such as a building being torn down), multiplied by 5% or the rate of inflation (whichever is lower – this year inflation is 1.017%), plus the value of any additions or new construction.

If the property changes hands, taxable value is reset at its equalized value.

Taxable value is used when calculating taxes for the county, as well as its various municipalities and other entities that rely on taxpayer dollars, including schools, libraries and the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, among others.

Equalization: Details of the 2011 Equalization Report

On Wednesday, Patel first covered the equalization process, then discussed implications for the county’s taxable value. [.pdf file of 2011 equalization report]

He began by noting that this is the county’s 53rd annual equalization report, and the 40th one that he’s worked on for the county. He introduced and thanked the department’s staff who were attending the meeting, and noted that one of them – Fran Patton – would be retiring soon after 17 years with the county. He also thanked the local assessors in each municipality and the local board of review for their work.

Patel reminded the board that they were being asked to approve the county’s equalized value, not its taxable value. The equalization report, after it’s approved, must be submitted to the state.

Highlights from the report:

• In 2011, the county’s overall equalized value dropped 4.82%, but that’s less of a drop than the 7.22% decline in 2010. The last time the county saw an increase in equalized value was in 2007, when it rose 4.23%.
• Some types of property saw greater declines than others. Commercial property showed a 9.5% drop in equalized value, while equalized value for industrial property dropped 11.82%. The value of residential property showed some signs of recovery, dropping 2.74% compared to a 5.69% drop in 2010. Residential property accounts for about 65% of all property in the county.
• The value of new construction over the past five years has dropped sharply, from $578.89 million in 2007 to $239.512 million in 2011.
• In years past, the largest taxpayers were Pfizer, General Motors and Ford Motor Co. Of those, only Ford remains in the top 10 list for 2011. Others are the real estate and property management firm McKinley Associates, Detroit Edison, Toyota, MichCon, Domino’s Farms, Briarwood Mall, International Transmission, Hyundai and Meijer.
• The Board of Review received 2,656 appeals of assessments, and granted 738 – for a decrease of about $13 million in taxable value. Forty-nine poverty exemptions were requested, and 31 were granted.

Patel noted that Washtenaw County is doing better than surrounding areas – Oakland, Genesee and Wayne counties all saw significantly sharper declines in property value. This county is somewhat insulated, he said, thanks to the stability provided by the University of Michigan and the area’s hospitals.

Patel also noted that the gap between equalized and taxable values is narrowing. This is important because when equalized value and taxable value are the same for a property – and if that property’s assessed value continues to fall – then its taxable value falls in tandem with that assessed value. And that means lower revenues for local municipalities. This year, 65% of property in the county – about 91,000 parcels – has equal taxable and assessed values.

Patel also talked about the possible impact of a corridor improvement authority (CIA) being considered for Washtenaw Avenue. [See Chronicle coverage: "What Does Washtenaw Corridor Need?"] There are about 600 parcels in the corridor between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Patel said – if the corridor authority is approved, revenues to local taxing entities like the county will go down. However, he said, if a special assessment is used instead, property owners would pay the additional assessment and tax revenues wouldn’t be diverted.

Equalization: So What’s the Taxable Value?

The equalization report is used as the base for calculating taxable value – which determines how much tax revenue is collected by local municipalities. For 2011, taxable value in the county has fallen 2.85% to $14.08 billion. That’s an improvement over last year’s decline, when taxable value dropped 5.33%.

It’s also a smaller decrease than was projected when preparing the county’s 2011 budget. The budget was approved with a projection of $59.205 million in tax revenues. But actual revenues, based on 2011 taxable value, are now estimated at $62.878 million. [.pdf file showing 2011 taxable value for each taxing authority – including schools, libraries, etc. – in Washtenaw County]

Nearly all jurisdictions saw declines in taxable value. The sharpest drop was in Ypsilanti Township, where taxable value fell 11.39% compared to 2010. A few areas – including Salem Township, Webster Township and York Township – registered a modest increase in taxable value, but less than a half-percent. [.pdf file showing 2011 taxable values for municipalities, compared to 2010] [.pdf file showing 2011 taxable values for school districts, compared to 2010] [.pdf file showing 2011 taxable values for libraries, villages and authorities, compared to 2010]

Equalization: Commissioner Comments

Several commissioners had questions and comments after Patel’s presentation.

Conan Smith asked whether the county is likely to see an increase in assessment appeals from property owners. Patel said last year, appeals totaled about $1 billion in property value, and this year that number is closer to $900 million. Patel said it tells him there’s still a problem in the valuation.

Smith wondered whether the board should have a discussion about that process, to understand its potential impact on the budget. Patel noted that two years ago, Bob Guenzel – the county administrator at the time – asked him to form a committee and look at that question. That was how Guenzel developed the different projections of tax revenues. Patel reminded the board that they had chosen the worst-case scenario on which to base their budgeting – forecasting an 8.5% drop in taxable value for 2011. [See Chronicle coverage: "County Board: Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best"]

Kristin Judge highlighted the impact of tax-capture districts – downtown development authorities (DDAs), tax increment financing authorities (TIFAs), and local development finance authorities (LDFAs). Because of taxes captured by those entities, the county receives $2.145 million less in tax revenues. She said when the county board is asked to approve these kinds of entities, the resolution needs to indicate what the impact will be on the county’s tax revenue.

Yousef Rabhi noted that the brownfield TIF they were being asked to approve that evening – for a BST Investments project in Dexter – did include a budget impact statement. He said that in cases like that, eventually the county would see additional tax revenues from the redevelopment.

Wes Prater pointed out that for tax-capture districts in local municipalities, the county has the option of opting-out – in that case, they would continue to receive full revenues. However, there’s a 60-day window to make that decision, and often they don’t get information about it in timely way, he said. As a result, he added, the long-term revenues that the county is missing “is really having an effect on the budget, I think.”

Rolland Sizemore Jr. asked that Rabhi – who’s chair of the board’s working sessions – add that topic for a future session.

Patel noted that it’s a political decision to be made, and that there’s no uniformity among jurisdictions about how to handle these tax-capture districts.

Prater said it’s been the county’s longstanding policy to do nothing – not to opt out. That’s ok, he said, if that’s what they decide to do. But it’s worth discussing.

Leah Gunn, who’s also a board member of the Ann Arbor DDA, noted that the Ann Arbor DDA was founded in 1982 and that the county opted in. The DDA captures only the value of new construction – beyond that, the added value of development goes back to the local taxing units, including the county. The county has benefited from that development and increased tax revenues over the years, she said.

Ronnie Peterson suggested inviting other local governments to participate in any working session they might hold on this issue. The purpose of these tax-capture districts is economic development, he observed – it’s not just a giveaway.

Commissioner Rob Turner, left, talks with Bob Tetens, director of the county's parks and recreation department, before the April 20, 2011 board of commissioners meeting.

Conan Smith drew attention to the decline in value for commercial and industrial properties – falling 9.5% and 11.82%, respectively. It’s a strong argument for maintaining investments in economic development, he said. He added that he wasn’t suggesting the county take the lead in that, but they needed to stay engaged.

Rob Turner observed that industrial businesses are often treated like the ugly stepchild, but it’s an important sector of the local economy. Auto suppliers in particular are struggling, he added, and it’s important to find ways to help them thrive.

Barbara Bergman told Turner that even though she’s a Birkenstock-wearing Ann Arbor commissioner, she understands that industrial businesses are important to the economy. Rabhi added that a symbol for industry is part of the county’s seal – it’s integral to who we are and who we’ve been, he said.

Several commissioners thanked Patel and his staff for their work on the equalization report, and gave them a round of applause.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to accept the county’s 2011 equalization report.

Brownfield Projects

Several items during Wednesday’s meeting related to brownfield redevelopment projects.

Brownfield: BST Investments

The board gave initial approval to a brownfield plan amendment for the BST Investments redevelopment project, located at 2810 Baker Road in Dexter. Wednesday’s meeting also included a public hearing on the project – no one spoke, but board chair Conan Smith took the opportunity to pound his gavel with dramatic flair to open and close the hearing.

The BST project involves demolishing three buildings on the site and constructing a new commercial complex of three buildings. The $14 million project is estimated to retain 40 jobs and add 80 new jobs.

The revised plan was previously approved by the Washtenaw County brownfield redevelopment authority at its March 10, 2011 meeting, when the authority also approved an interlocal agreement to transfer tax increment financing (TIF) revenues from the Dexter Downtown Development Authority. The amended plan was approved on Feb. 28, 2011 by the Dexter Village Council.

An estimated total of $312,000 in local and state taxes will be captured for eligible activities, administrative costs, and the Washtenaw County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority Local Site Remediation Revolving Fund over a projected four-year period. Of this total, $24,000 will be used for the county brownfield program’s administrative fees, and $48,000 will go into the Local Site Remediation Revolving Fund. After the project is completed and all TIF activities are fulfilled, an estimated increase of $162,103 annually would be distributed among the Dexter DDA and other taxing jurisdictions. According to a memo accompanying the resolution, the Washtenaw County annual millage payment from the property would increase from roughly $5,397 to $14,222.

Commissioner Kristin Judge commented on the estimated increase in tax revenues. She noted that the county had several brownfield approvals coming up, and asked Raman Patel – the county’s equalization director – to comment on the impact to revenues. Patel said there is a short-term impact, but if the redevelopment is successful, “it’s better for us.”

Judge then said she knew the state legislature is considering a change to the brownfield tax credits, and wondered how that change might impact these projects. Brett Lenart from the county’s economic development and energy department fielded that question, reporting that there are no changes planned to the tax increment financing (TIF) aspect of brownfield redevelopment. What’s being considered are changes to the Michigan Business Tax credits that have been available for these projects, he said.

Commissioner Yousef Rabhi noted that BST was asking for TIF because they didn’t want to rely on getting state tax credits.

Outcome: The board unanimously gave initial approval the brownfield plan amendment request for the BST Investments redevelopment project. Commissioners will likely vote on final approval at their May 4 meeting.

Brownfield: Hearings for Packard Square, LaFountaine

Commissioners set two public hearings for their May 18 meeting related to brownfield plans that are being proposed for developments in the county: (1) Packard Square, a complex off of Packard Street on the site of the former Georgetown Mall, and (2) the LaFontaine Chevrolet redevelopment at 7120 Dexter-Ann Arbor Road in Dexter.

The Packard Square site plan, approved by the Ann Arbor planning commission in March, calls for 230 apartments and 23,790-square-feet of retail space in a single building. The project will entail an estimated investment of $48 million and is projected to create 45 new jobs. The brownfield plan would allow the developers to use tax increment financing to pay for environmental due diligence, contaminant removal, demolition, lead and asbestos abatement, site preparation activities and new public infrastructure development.

LaFontaine Chevrolet is redeveloping its site into a new LEED-certified Chevrolet dealership – an estimated $5.3 million investment that will include contamination removal, demolition, asbestos and lead abatement. The project is estimated to retain 74 jobs and add 50-100 jobs. The brownfield plan would allow the owner to use tax increment financing for contaminant removal and other environmental response activities, demolition, and lead and asbestos abatement.

Winter Water Levels for Portage, Baseline Lakes

Janis Bobrin, the county’s water resources commissioner, attended Wednesday’s meeting and spoke briefly about a request for the board to authorize her department to take action in Washtenaw County Circuit Court to establish winter levels for Portage and Baseline lakes, which are located in Washtenaw and Livingston counties. The court action would allow the water resources office to continue its current practice of lowering lake levels in the winter.

Her department operates the dam at Portage Lake that controls those levels. She noted that a detailed report was provided in a cover memo to the resolution. [.pdf of cover memo on winter levels for Portage and Baseline lakes]

She emphasized that the county is not incurring any costs for this action. The legal costs for obtaining a court order will be paid via a special assessment district that is already established by the court. There are 539 parcels in the special assessment district in Washtenaw County, which contains about 50% of the special assessment roll.

According to the cover memo, since the 1960s lake levels have been lowered 12-15 inches from November to mid-April, to minimize shoreline ice damage. However, there is no legal requirement for this lowering to occur – this fact was brought out in talks about the dam and lake levels with the officers of the Portage, Base, and Whitewood Homeowners Association (PBWOA).

Because the lakes are in two counties, both the Washtenaw and Livingston boards of commissioners must approve the legal action. Washtenaw County’s approval is contingent on approval by Livingston County – that county’s drain commissioner supports the action. State law requires that the levels be officially set by the circuit court, and because the Washtenaw County Circuit Court issued the original order establishing the normal lake level, it has continuing jurisdiction to set a winter lake level.

Commissioner Rolland Sizemore Jr. asked Bobrin whether she had consulted with the commissioner whose district includes the lakes. Rob Turner, who represents District 1, reported that Bobrin had talked with him about the issue.

Outcome: The board unanimously voted to authorize the office of the water resources commissioner to take court action establishing winter levels for Portage and Baseline lakes.

Appointments

Without discussion, commissioners voted unanimously to appoint Patricia Piechowski-Whitney to the county’s Dept. of Human Services board for a three-year term expiring Dec. 31, 2013.

Misc. Commissioner Communications

Several commissioner raised issues during the time set aside for items for current and future discussion.

Communications: Department Consolidation

Ronnie Peterson asked when the board would be holding a working session about consolidating the office of community development, ETCS (the employment training and community services department) and the economic development and energy department. Yousef Rabhi, who chairs the working sessions, said they’ll have that discussion in May.

Commissioner Ronnie Peterson, right, talks with Tony VanDerworp, head of the county's economic development and energy department.

Peterson said the citizens who serve on advisory boards for these departments should be included in the discussion, especially if the boards will also be reorganized. He indicated it would be good to discuss this reorganization in the public eye.

Conan Smith said at this point, there’s no plan to reorganize the boards – though the boards themselves might restructure their bylaws, if the county departments are consolidated. [The boards that would be affected by departmental restructuring include the workforce development board, the community action board, and the Urban County executive committee.]

Prater acknowledged the need for some adjustments – for example, it seems like it’s hard for members of the workforce development board to find time to attend meetings, even though they’re scheduled in advance, he said.

Prater also expressed concern over one project in particular that he felt hadn’t received sufficient input from the community action board. The Sycamore Meadows apartment complex in Superior Township, which is owned by a company based in Dallas, received federal funding via the county for renovations, he said. About $1.25 million was awarded to this project, which is owned by an out-of-state landlord and has about 260 units of mostly Section 8 housing, he said. There are problems with the landlord, Prater noted, and he felt that some residents have been abused.

Leah Gunn said she’s talked with Bill McFarlane, the supervisor for Superior Township, who has advocated for this project. McFarlane has been working with the landlord, who has paid for extra services like a part-time sheriff’s deputy to patrol the area. Any problems with the complex should be referred to McFarlane, she said.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. weighed in, saying he had toured the property and that the project was done well.

Prater noted that while an out-of-state company is getting funded, local homeowners who need help lowering their utility bills can’t get funding for insulation and other renovations. “That’s what upsets me,” he said.

Communications: Awards, Recognition

Kristin Judge pointed out that a recent report on program outcomes for children in Head Start showed that they were meeting and exceeding expectations in several areas. She also thanked Eastern Michigan University for their partnership with the county’s Head Start program.

Judge also congratulated Bob Tetens, director of the county’s parks & recreation department, for being honored with EMU’s Presidential Award for Community Partnership. He shared the award with Kirk Profit, Michael Hawks, Brenda Stumbo and Sabrina Gross, who collaborated on making improvements – including a new boathouse – at Lakeside Park on Ford Lake.

Communications: Literacy, Special Education Millage

Rob Turner gave a report from the first meeting he attended of the Literacy Coalition of Washtenaw County board. The group faces funding issues, he said, and is developing a fundraising campaign with the new slogan: “Invest in tomorrow – literacy today.”

In describing some of the group’s literacy programs, Turner noted that those efforts will become increasingly important as schools face state funding cuts. It’s especially important for special needs children, he said. Turner highlighted the fact that a millage renewal for special education funding in Washtenaw County is on the May 3 ballot. “Special needs” covers many things, he said, including autism and attention deficit disorder. As the father of two special-needs children, Turner said he’d personally seen how additional help they’d received because of programs funded by the millage have put them on track for college.

Turner said that he personally endorsed the millage, and urged the public to vote – noting that these types of elections tend to have very low turnout. The millage has made a big difference in his daughters’ lives, he said, and can help many other children in the county succeed.

Yousef Rabhi thanked Turner for calling attention to the millage, and said that he, too, endorsed it. It’s important for the community to come together on this, Rabhi said, and he also urged residents to get out and vote on May 3.

Also supporting the millage, Barbara Bergman emphasized that it’s a renewal, not a new tax – people have already been paying for this, she said.

Communications: Deer

Barbara Bergman brought up the issue of a large deer population in this area. They’re a safety hazard, she said, whether it’s spreading lyme disease or causing car accidents. Deer also cause problems for gardeners, Bergman said. “I feel I have a right to grow tomatoes and flowers.” She has tried throwing Irish Spring soap as a deterrent, as well as hanging sheets of fabric softener. Bergman said she was unsure what the county could do, but it was worth exploring.

Wes Prater noted that this likely fell into the jurisdiction of the state Dept. of Natural Resources. Both Conan Smith and Yousef Rabhi pointed to the possible role of the county’s parks & recreation department, particularly through its stewardship role under the natural area preservation program.

Rolland Sizemore Jr. pointed out that the deer have been here long before people. His comment prompted one of the commissioners to quip, “Not those deer!”

Misc. Public Commentary

Two people spoke during public commentary.

Kathleen Russell of Ann Arbor told the board that April is Parkinson’s Awareness Month – she suffers has the disease, and is an advocate for additional funding to find a cure. Parkinson’s Action Network in Washington, D.C. is lobbying for that as well, and Russell said she was pleased that the group has a strong delegation in Michigan.

Several commissioners responded to her remarks, praising her efforts and thanking her for coming to the meeting.

Thomas Partridge addressed the board during three of the four opportunities for public commentary. He urged commissioners to work on behalf of the most vulnerable in the community – the elderly, disabled, families, public employees and school teachers, who are all being unfairly attacked by Gov. Rick Snyder’s administration, he said. Partridge asked the board to bring a resolution of support for the recall effort against Snyder, saying the recall should be extended to everyone in Snyder’s administration.

Later in the meeting, Partridge noted that he had just returned from speaking at the Ann Arbor Public Schools board of education meeting, held a few blocks away at the Ann Arbor District Library. As he had there and at the previous night’s Ann Arbor city council meeting, Partridge said this month is important for people of all religious faiths. He posed the same question to all these governing groups, he said – in setting their priorities, they should ask what Christ would do, or what other religious leaders would support with regard to housing, transportation, health care and other services for the vulnerable.

As she did at the board’s April 6 meeting when Partridge made this same point, commissioner Barbara Bergman responded by saying she took umbrage at being asked to act in light of one religion.

During his final speaking turn, Partridge raised concerns over medical marijuana, objecting to its legalization and saying that residents need protection from an expanded drug trade – marijuana is still illegal under federal law, he noted. He also called on the board to form a review panel to oversee law enforcement and emergency responders in the county.

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

Next regular board meeting: Wednesday, May 4, 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.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) revealed that when city administrator Roger Fraser mentioned an unsolicited development proposal at the city council budget retreat in January 2009, he had acted against the advice of members of the council’s budget and labor committee. The committee had become aware of the proposal’s existence prior to the retreat, Rapundalo reported, and when they did, “We said that should be put away on a shelf somewhere. … (but) Roger chose to mention it at the retreat.” Rapundalo also added that while some councilmembers had seen the unsolicited proposal, he had not.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) recalled a phase in the community conversation about the future of the city-owned Library Lot that predated the January 2009 budget retreat. It was a time when the discussion centered on leaving the top of the parking structure as a temporary surface parking lot while its eventual, more permanent fate was considered – still a possibility, based on Sunday’s caucus discussion.

Besides the Library Lot, residents who attended caucus touched on other issues – the city council’s role in city governance, and the capital improvements plan for the year, which is on the council’s Tuesday night meeting agenda. Council is meeting on Tuesday, rather than its usual Monday schedule, because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

Library Lot

Remarks by Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) about the history of the discussion surrounding the Library Lot’s future came in the context of a conversation with resident Bob Snyder.

Snyder began by saying he was happy that two previously eliminated proposals had been re-included in the interview process. [Chronicle coverage: "Library Lot Math: 6 – 2 + 2 = 6"] He suggested that the two proposals envisioning the parcel as primarily open space were a “sentimental favorite.” That was due, he said, to the sense that the city needed to have a “heart, a center.”

The University of Michigan Diag, Snyder continued, is not such a center. Even as a three-time graduate of UM, he said, he did not feel that the Diag was the heart of the city for him as a townie. The downtown, he concluded, needs to have something worth coming to.

Snyder contemplated the possibility that none of the six proposals would be accepted.

At that, Briere noted that when the concept for the underground parking garage was initially approved, the plan had been that nothing would be built initially. Instead, it would be a surface parking lot with a plaza and a cut-through street – having a surface parking lot was intended to prevent people from thinking it would be a park. The idea was that Ann Arbor would, she said, “sit on it for a while.” Briere and Rapudalo would later identify late 2007 as the relevant timeframe for that concept.

So the question Briere then put to Snyder was this: If the request for proposals (RFP) review committee were to accept none of the proposals, and the space were made into a surface parking lot until such time as something else could be built, how would people feel? Snyder said that for his part, he’d feel “disappointed.” He suggested that instead of surface parking, the area should be planted in prairie grass so that the space at least felt like it was alive.

Then Rapundalo followed up with Snyder on a suggestion Snyder had made about the proposals being considered based on “softer” criteria. How fair is it, wondered Rapundalo, and how can the committee do its job, if the responses to the RFP did not include the minimum baseline of requested information? [Rapundalo chairs the RFP review committee.]

The two proposals that had been initially eliminated, continued Rapundalo, had not talked at all about costs in their responses – what would the construction, concrete and steel costs for what they were proposing. “How can I stack that up against the other four?” he asked.

Rapundalo said, “Dahlmann, at least, should have been able to crank that out. I don’t know why he didn’t. I guess I will have a chance to ask him on Tuesday!” [Dahlmann Apts Ltd. is one of the two open space proposals now being considered. Interviews for those two proposals are scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 19 starting at 1 p.m. at the downtown library, 343 S. Fifth Ave.]

From the January 2009 budget retreat. On the left is city administrator Roger Fraser with city councilmember Christopher Taylor (Ward 3). They're looking at conceptual drawings for a possible conference center on top of the underground parking garage to be built at the city-owned Library Lot between Fifth and Division streets. (Photo by the writer.)

Rapundalo also clarified how the RFP process had worked so far. The first step he characterized as an evaluation of the administrative requirements: Was there text in all of the right places? All six of the proposals that had met the deadline also met the administrative requirements, he said.

The second step, he continued, was to evaluate the text in each of the sections of the proposal.  The minimum requirement, he said, was for there to be some cost estimates – which the two open space proposals were completely lacking. After this week’s interviews, Rapundalo concluded, the scoring metric would be applied, including the 10% weighting of the financial return to the city.

In describing the proposal from Valiant Partners – which had been presented to Fraser in advance of the RFP process – Snyder alluded at one point during the caucus conversation to a “presentation” that had been made at last year’s budget retreat by that developer.

Both Briere and Rapundalo clarified that there’d been no presentation, but rather that the city administrator, Roger Fraser, had made councilmembers aware of the unsolicited proposal and offered to show it to them. From The Chronicle’s retreat coverage:

The second idea Fraser asked council to reflect on is one also associated by many community members with [Jesse] Bernstein: the idea of a downtown conference center. Holding a large manila envelope, Fraser said that he had conceptual drawings that had been developed by someone interested in seeing the parcel developed – it would sit on top of the proposed Fifth Avenue underground parking garage. He said he had permission from the proposer to show councilmembers the conceptual drawings. For The Chronicle, Fraser declined to identify the parties who had conveyed the drawings beyond saying that it was a developer in New York who had local ties. He said if the idea received traction on council, then the developer might be inclined to disseminate the drawings more widely.

At Sunday’s caucus, Rapundalo seemed to express some frustration that Fraser had taken that path. Rapundalo served then, as now, on the budget and labor committee, which is now simply the budget committee. And he reported at caucus that when the committee had learned of the unsolicited proposal’s existence, some committee members had told Fraser the proposal should be “put away on a shelf somewhere.” Instead, Rapundalo said, Fraser had introduced the topic at the January 2009 budget retreat.

Following up by email with Rapundalo after the caucus, The Chronicle asked for some additional clarification about his caucus remarks. In responding, Rapundalo put the timeframe of receipt by Fraser of the unsolicited proposal in late 2008 – Fraser then apprised the budget and labor committee of the report’s existence. The budget and labor committee, wrote Rapundalo, indicated that “we did not wish to have the matter come forward as it was going to take the focus away from budget discussions and other matters.”

When Fraser had introduced the topic at the budget retreat, Rapundalo wrote, “We were displeased because it countermanded our express direction to the contrary.”

In his emailed response to The Chronicle, Rapundalo noted that some councilmembers had seen the unsolicited proposal – he cited Sabra Briere and Sandi Smith as specific examples – but he had not. He’d not been offered to look at the proposal, nor did he wish to, he wrote. And that, he added, put him in a position now – as part of the RFP review committee – to help evaluate the proposals objectively based on their merits.

In his caucus comments about the Library Lot proposals, Rapundalo also stressed that he did not see the choice as between some big building and open space – open space had been part of the RFP. Briere concurred, saying that by open space the RFP did not mean “a pocket park in front of somebody’s building.”

Rapundalo also clarified that questions by the public for the proposers during the interview process could be submitted via email in advance [librarylotrfp@a2gov.org] or on 3 x 5 index cards at the interviews. They would try to get through as many of the questions as possible, he said.

All interviews and an open house will be held at the downtown library, 343 S. Fifth Ave. The interview times for the Library Lot proposals are:

• Tues., Jan. 19: 1 p.m. Dahlmann Apts Ltd.
• Tues., Jan. 19: 2:45 p.m. Ann Arbor Community Commons
• Wed., Jan. 20: 9 a.m. Jarratt Architecture
• Wed., Jan. 20: 10:45 a.m. Acquest Realty Advisors
• Wed., Jan. 20: 12:45 p.m. Valiant Partners LLC
• Wed., Jan. 20: 2:30 p.m. Beztak Companies
• Wed., Jan. 20: 6-8 p.m. Public open house

Briere remarked that the Library Lot RFP process had been much more open than the last one [for 415 W. Washington], which earned a “Thank you!” from Rapundalo. [Link to city website with .pdf files of all six proposals.]

City Administrator and the City Council

Prior to Stephen Rapundalo’s (Ward 2) remarks about the city administrator’s choice at last year’s budget retreat to introduce the topic of the unsolicited proposal, resident Kathy Griswold had addressed the caucus on the topic of city governance.

Griswold contended that the city council was not holding city administrator Roger Fraser accountable. Instead, she said, the council was doing the work of city staff. The council was allowing Fraser to re-direct their conversation.

As an example, she cited the conversation at the last council meeting on the topic of problems with deer-car interactions, which Rapundalo had raised, along with Tony Derezinski (Ward 2). Fraser had compared the 30 incidents per year in Ann Arbor to the 150 incidents per year in a similar-sized community in Minnesota where he’d previously worked – suggesting that he didn’t think there would be a herd-culling program in the offing.

Rapundalo responded to Griswold by saying he’d interpreted the conversation at the council table differently. He said that he and Derezinski had heard from a constituent who was interested in seeing the city hire someone to cull the deer herd, and that Rapundalo thought it unlikely that that would happen in Ann Arbor.

Griswold allowed that in her remarks about the need to hold the city administrator accountable, she was perhaps “preaching to the choir.” [The caucus choir on Sunday was Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), and Mike Anglin (Ward 5).]

Capital Improvements Plan

Resident Ethel Potts addressed the caucus, urging them to actually read through and consider the capital improvements plan (CIP), which is on the council’s Tuesday meeting agenda. She asked them to make sure that they could stand behind all of the line items in the plan.

Potts told councilmembers that the solid waste capital improvements associated with single-stream recycling had been like a “punch in the stomach” for her. She characterized the move to single-stream as a setback, saying that Ann Arbor residents were willing to separate their recycleables and that she’d need to resist her natural inclination to continue to do so.

Asked to clarify the status of items in the CIP, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) said that it was a plan or a guide – a set of priorities – but was not authorization for the expenditures listed. That would need to come separately from the council. Sabra Briere (Ward 1) confirmed that the CIP is a wish-list as opposed to authorization.

Briere noted that some items appear in the plan year after year and are not implemented – bridge repair, for example. [Items in the plan are categorized as desireable, important, or urgent.] The total funding specified for all of the “funded” projects for the plan, which covers 2011-2016, is $162 million.

City Apartments

Jon Frank, vice president of development for Village Green, appeared at caucus to address any concerns council might have about the project, which includes 156 dwelling units and 244 public parking spaces. The project’s site plan is on council’s agenda for Monday, as is the second reading for the PUD. The project does not include retail. In response to councilmember Carsten Hohnke’s question about why it did not include a wider variety of uses, Frank noted that retail was not a part of the RFP. Frank stressed that Village Green was in this project for the long haul, just like they were with all of their projects, pointing out that they were still managing 50-year-old deals. On the idea that they would be looking for a purchaser for the project once it was built, he said categorically, “We don’t sell anything. Ever.”

Frank cited the long history of the project and the participation of various community constituencies like the Main Street Area Association, the DDA, and the Old West Side Association in making revisions to the plan along the way.

However, Frank acknowledged that he and Mark Hodesh, owner of Downtown Home & Garden (located across the alley from the City Apartments location), had been going back and forth on a set of four issues that Hodesh had identified: (i) trash pickup: how will its timely removal after setting out be assured? (ii) snow removal: who will take responsibility for snow removal in what will become a pedestrian thoroughfare? (iii) lighting: is there adequate lighting to ensure public safety? (iv) traffic in the alley: how will apartment move-in and move-out events be coordinated, given other alley-users’ interests?

Hodesh addressed caucus as well on Sunday evening, taking care to stress that he supported the project, felt that it would be a benefit to the neighborhood, and in fact had sold the city some land to facilitate the development of the project. However, he also stressed that he’d raised the four issues over the last two years, so his concerns couldn’t be considered coming “at the eleventh hour.” Yet to date, he felt like he’d been speaking to a blank wall.

Based on the two men’s separate remarks, and queries from councilmember Tony Derezinski – “Let’s cut to the chase: Has it been resolved? If not, why not?” – it seems as if Hodesh and Frank have a basic understanding on the first three issues, with Hodesh keen to see those understandings put into writing. For example, on the lighting issue, Frank indicated at caucus that if council wanted six lights instead of three, that he’d be happy to put in six lights – something that Hodesh said he’d love to see built into the construction agreement.

With respect to the alley, which at 16 feet wide is too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic, there is a fundamental disagreement on the principle of what a public alley is for. Frank sees it as fundamentally a public resource that can and should be used for loading and unloading: “That’s what public alleys are for.” For his part, Hodesh sees it as an aggressive use of public space that puts an undue burden on the alleyway.

As possible alternatives to move-ins and move-outs blocking the alley, Hodesh has suggested a dedicated unloading and loading zone on First Street, or a revision to the City Apartments building design that would make it 2 feet narrower, making the alley 2 feet wider, or 18 feet wide. That would be wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic.

Councilmember Christopher Taylor sought clarification on the options that two simultaneous alley users might have to avoid conflict. If the alley were blocked by a truck for example, could a second truck that needed to get to a location in the alley beyond the blockage simply drive to the other end of the alley and back up, or is that impractical? Answer: impractical and not in keeping with the one-way stipulation. In response to a question from Taylor, both Hodesh and Frank said that they’d prefer the one-way direction of the alley be south-to-north which is uphill, and would result in trucks unloading their cargo downhill, which is easier.

Hodesh and Frank had been in frequent conversation in recent weeks, and left caucus talking together.

City Place

The first reading of the City Place PUD is on council’s Monday meeting agenda. Alex de Parry, the project’s developer, brought to caucus the plans for the R4-C “by right” project, not the 168-bedroom PUD project, which had been rejected by planning commission at its Sept. 4, 2008 meeting by a vote of 7-2. [Note: It's a developer's option to bring a proposal before council without planning commission's recommendation.] De Parry gave the specifications of the “by right” project as 144 bedrooms split between two buildings containing 24 units each, stressing that it’s a much simpler project to execute and that it also makes economic sense. The focus on the “by right” project led councilmember Marcia Higgins to ask, “Are you pulling the PUD?”

De Parry said that they were not pulling the PUD, he was simply presenting the “back-up plan.” In response to councilmember Hohnke’s question about whether the “by right” proposal had been submitted to planning commission, de Parry said that they had only had a pre-submittal meeting with staff. This prompted councilmember Sabra Briere to wonder if this had triggered the recently passed citizen participation ordinance, which requires notification of neighbors of projects planned in their neighborhoods. Based on representations made at caucus, it’s not clear to The Chronicle whether the ordinance should have been triggered by the meeting de Parry described. But in any case, de Parry said there had been no notifications sent.

Amendment to Agreement with Architects for Police-Courts

Stew Nelson addressed the caucusing councilmembers briefly, asking them to consider delaying the increase of $411,003 in the agreement with Quinn Evans, the architects for the project, until after the fixed bids had come back in January 2009. Asked Nelson, “Why not just wait until you see what the cost of the building is going to be?”

The total of $411,003 is accounted for as follows:

• $54,068 extra work for site plan. From the administrative memo: “We did not initially anticipate the requirement to produce a full, official Site Plan submission for review and approval by the Planning Commission, so the costs associated with this were not included in the original agreement with Quinn Evans.”
• $212,790 for audio visual, telecommunications, building security. From the administrative memo: “Audiovisual, telecommunications, and building security systems are needed in the finished project. Since we could not accurately determine the scope of what would be needed at the beginning of the project, these design services were not included in the original agreement with Quinn Evans.”
• $144,145 documentation of LEED Gold certification. From the administrative memo: “During the schematic design phase, the project management team decided to seek LEED Gold certification for this project … Accomplishing these goals requires additional architectural design work, a more detailed energy analysis of the building envelope and its various systems, …” (The DDA has granted $200,000 for this purpose.)

Human Rights Vigil Dec. 10

Alan Haber appeared at caucus to ask that council to pass a resolution calling attention to the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Dec. 10. Haber’s draft resolution, which he read to councilmembers at caucus, included the announcement of a candelight vigil to be held at Liberty and Main streets in downtown Ann Arbor on Dec. 10 starting at 5 p.m. The vigil will be followed with a teach-in at 7 p.m. in the Anderson Room at the UM Student Union on State Street.

Councilmember Mike Anglin queried councilmember (and mayor pro tem) Higgins as to the procedure for putting a resolution on the agenda. Higgins said it was straightforward: any councilmember could formulate a resolution and have it placed on the agenda. However, Higgins cautioned that in the last few years, council had sought to step away from resolutions regarding international affairs, seeking to keep its focus local.

Haber countered that it was useful to apply international standards in reference to local situations. Higgins suggested that the announcement of the vigil and the awareness of the issue might be handled in the communications from council section of the following night’s council meeting. Councilmember Briere was supportive of the idea of the vigil and the teach-in, and inquired if Haber had obtained a parade permit. Haber said it would be mostly standing as opposed to marching, but that someone was following up on the permit question.

Proclamation Protocol

Councilmember Anglin floated the idea that all councilmembers sign a proclamation recognizing AIDS awareness week, as opposed to having just the mayor as the single signatory. Anglin said that he felt that it would be more reflective of the really wide base of community support enjoyed by the effort. The idea met with little support from his colleagues, although they were very supportive of the specific proclamation. Councilmember Briere said that she felt such proclamations were important – she walked past some every day. The additional signatures, she felt, would make it more visually stunning, but would not make it more meaningful. Anglin was content to withdraw the suggestion.

Animal Control

Councilmember Briere rallied her colleagues to begin thinking about the budget and how it relates to animal control officers (the city of Ann Arbor no longer has an animal control officer): “Someday soon we need to talk about animal control officers. I get about as many emails on animal issues as I do about snow removal.” Councilmember Derezinski allowed that he’d received a complaint about a rooster crowing. This prompted councilmember Higgins to wonder how anyone had had time to get a whole chicken coop up and running since the time chicken permits became available for application late this past summer.

Derezinski raised the issue of deer and the possible need to cull the herd. Higgins expressed some skepticism that they were actually a problem, asking if anyone had heard of someone hitting a deer in the city. She said she thought people basically enjoyed looking at them. She said she was not in favor of killing them. Briere said she didn’t want to kill them, either. Derezinski said he wasn’t necessarily in favor of killing them, but thought there were other options like tranquilizing them and relocating them.

Related to animals, Anglin said that he’d received two complaints about dead animals in the road, which he’d forwarded to city administrator Roger Fraser. This led to light-hearted speculation about whether Fraser had personally scooped up the animals. Even while joining in the joking banter, Briere kicked out of the topic by stressing that animal control is important and that council should begin to think about the budget decisions that would be necessary to support animal control.

This led Higgins to note it as an item for council’s upcoming budget retreat, scheduled for Jan. 10 at the Wheeler Center starting at 8 a.m. Based on last year’s meeting, Higgins said, it could last until 4:30 p.m.

Present: Sabra Briere, Tony Derezinski, Christopher Taylor, Marcia Higgins, Carsten Hohnke, Mike Anglin.