The new ordinance would have applied only to a limited range of cameras – those used by the city of Ann Arbor “to monitor human activity without the physical presence of an operator, including cameras on remotely operated aerial vehicles.”

The ordinance would not have applied to a range of city of Ann Arbor cameras, for example: cameras used to improve traffic design, security cameras operating in jails, prisons, water treatment facilities, public housing facilities, or the Ann Arbor Airport and other governmental facilities.

The new ordinance would have allowed for public surveillance cameras to be installed for 15 days or less at the discretion of the city administrator if the purpose were to address a specific criminal problem. But a period of longer than 15 days would have required two-thirds of nearby residents to give written permission. Regardless of the period of the installation, onsite notice of the camera’s presence was to have been required.

The council had voted several times previously to postpone consideration of the ordinance. The most recent postponement had come at the council’s June 17, 2013 meeting. The council seemed willing to postpone a vote on that occasion based on the fact that police chief John Seto was not available to answer questions about the impact on law enforcement activities. Some councilmembers indicated at that meeting a reluctance even to give the ordinance an initial approval. Ordinances require an initial approval followed by a second vote taken at a subsequent meeting, after a public hearing.

Councilmembers expressed concerns that the ordinance would impede law enforcement. Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said that the goal of the ordinance could be achieved better through policy guidance from the council to the administration. Though she said she’d vote for the ordinance at first reading, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) indicated that she was not supportive of it – but for reasons different from those of other councilmembers. She felt that by providing a regulatory framework, the council was giving permission for surveillance.

The vote on July 1 among the nine councilmembers present was 5-4, which left the ordinance one vote short of the majority it needed to move to a second reading. Voting against the ordinance were Sumi Kailasapathy (Ward 1), Jane Lumm (Ward 2), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4).

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

David Erik Nelson

Since the heyday of Occupy Wall Street we’ve seen a fair bit of bi-coastal police misconduct in heavy rotation on both the mainstream and people-powered news mills. As a result, folks like us – and by “us,” I’m specifically calling out folks like me [1] and, likely, you – are increasingly attacking the basic idea of policing as an institution.

Now, I’m sorta-kinda willing to let this slide with right-wing and Libertarian folk – who are already committed to dismembering public servants and grinding them up to sell as school lunch protein-patty filler [2] – but if you’re progressive, you’re at least nominally committed to the notion that, as communities, we’re best off when we combine our resources and chip in to safeguard the public good – with public safety (and public safety personnel) being an obvious component of this.

Anecdotes Versus Evidence

Even if we grant that every instance of reported police misconduct is a sure sign that a given law enforcement agency is rotten to the core, there are still roughly 14,614 law enforcement agencies in the US, employing 700,000 officers (and another 300,000 civilians). These aren’t soldiers of fortune air-dropped by some foreign power; that’s a million-ish of our friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens patrolling our neighborhoods [3].

Are some of those folks arrogant, vicious, or sociopathic bullies? Yup. Does the NYPD have ethical problems? Oh Hell Yeah they do. Do the Oakland Police have a history of brutality? Well documented. Is UC Davis Police Lt. John Pike a jerk? Quite likely.

But does that come anywhere close to characterizing one-million American workers? Even taking every single news story together, do we come anywhere near approaching a statistically meaningful sub-section of “the Police” in this country? [4]

No. Clearly, no. Just like the leather-elbowed professors quip, the plural of “anecdote” isn’t “evidence.”

In fact, recent studies attempting to quantify systemic biases and abuses among police have often turned out to be fascinating failures. We are left with the distinct – and for some folks, bizarrely disquieting – possibility that there may not be anything inherently corrupt about the Police, or corrupting in ceding a slice of power and authority to sworn local law enforcement.

No Police Here

Second, and almost equally important, in America there are no capital-P “Police.” We don’t have some single monolithic Police force here. We have a dozen thousand individual local agencies. Not only are these not organized in a single top-down hierarchy, but there’s often very little coordination among agencies within a state or locale, let alone a larger region.

Sure, there’s been a lot of talk about coordination and information-sharing among law enforcement agencies (especially since 9/11), and there is some evidence of collaboration, even right here in southeastern Michigan – like CLEMIS, the Courts and Law Enforcement Management Information System. That’s run by Oakland County’s IT department, and Ann Arbor is a participating member.

Let’s hope the information sharing by CLEMIS among participating agencies is better than the ability of CLEMIS to provide basic crime data in response to requests from journalists for that information. According to the folks at The Chronicle, it took CLEMIS four months to produce crime statistics for the Ann Arbor jurisdiction.

As a general indicator of the cat-herding nature of coordinating law enforcement agencies, the General Accounting Office reported in 2011 that over one-third of all federal law enforcement agents reported getting into inter-agency tug-o-wars during an investigation, and that these conflicts hampered the investigation 78% of the time – and that’s just four agencies (the ATF, the FBI, the DEA, and the U.S. Marshals) all organized under the same entity (the U.S. Dept. of Justice).

On the federal level? Forget about it.

Local cops across the country can’t even pull it together to collectively chip in on Washington lobbyists. NAPO, the National Association of Police Organizations, is the biggest law enforcement lobbying group, and only represents about a third of all officers, and even those only indirectly (NAPO serves police unions, and doesn’t seem really actively to connect individual officers).

The point: There is no more connection – in culture, in standard operating procedures, in training, or in hierarchy – between cops in NYC and Kansas City and Ann Arbor than there is among teachers or firefighters or sanitation workers in these same far-flung locales.

It is as irrational to let the comportment of a Kansas City officer inform your opinion of what you should expect from your local law enforcement as it is to permit your opinion of Woody Allen to allow you to conclude that Jewish men are generally short, funny and married to their semi-stepdaughters [5].

Our Monkey Minds

What’s tripping us up here is the collision of something that we, as a species, are great at (pattern matching) and something we’re terrible at (geographic differentiation of narratives).

Our clever monkey brains’ love of finding and grouping patterns is well established – just ask any game designer or marketing brander. If you haven’t the foggiest what I’m talking about, this is a tidy little intro, and this is a fantastically persuasive six-minute video on the issue with Simon Singh.

The shortest possible version: Our chattering, clever little brains are the most recent release of a 4.4-million-year hardware/software development project optimized for finding patterns, sorting these patterns, then grouping them within a fascinatingly variable set of schemata. These days we dedicate the bulk of our processing power to cataloguing stories.

We’ve been working the patterns game for 4.4 million years, but the stories game is really new. We’ve only had spoken language (and thus the capacity to share stories) for about 100,000 years – an evolutionary blink; if all of hominid history was crammed into one year, then we would have just figured out how to talk, and started to work toward sharing anecdotes, around brunch time on December 31.

Even if we just dial our focus down to true homo sapiens like us – who arose 200,000 years ago – then we’ve had roughly as much time on this earth pre-language as we’ve had since. And we’ve only been dealing with a “global” notion of news (the idea that there is a Here and there are Somewhere Elses, and that stuff happens in all of them simultaneously, regardless of whether we’re there to give a crap or not) is probably just a few thousand years old. [6]

So, of our “homo sapiens” time, half of that was spent building Models of Our Immediate Locale based on what we directly observed. In the next half, we started to develop Models of Our Immediate Locale based on what our friends and neighbors saw and described. In other words, it’s only in the last 2% or so of our time as homo sapiens that we’ve been getting Reports from Places We’ll Never Visit – and that entire homo sapiens period is less than a day of our full year as the most notable monkeys on this marble.

The result: We are the animals that are really great at taking stories and using them to form Models of Our Worlds, and really bad at differentiating between Foreign Concerns and Local Concerns.

Officer Friendly

Just as a quick mental exercise, take a moment to frame out what “police” means in your head, and then ask yourself: How much of that is based on actual interactions with or trustworthy reports of actual officers in my actual community?

Say “police” to me, and what immediately pops into my head aren’t our shorts-clad bicyclists in blue – which are certainly the cops I’ve most often seen in person in Ann Arbor – but the helmeted and shield-baring riot cops I see in footage of the OWS police riots. I’ve personally had plenty of crummy interactions with plenty of law officers all over this great land. Asked for my snap judgement, I’m as sour on the police as any other scraggly beardo (scroll up to my headshot; this is not the face of a man who gets through airport security hitchlessly).

But, when I actually force a recollection of my actual interactions with actual Ann Arbor police, they’ve mostly been pleasant, or at least respectful. I can think of two occasions that were solid wins (in that I called the police and they then arrived and were helpful) [7], and one that wasn’t great, but was at least reasonable: While a student at the University of Michigan I was briefly detained and questioned by AAPD officers one evening for walking down the street. Evidently, they suspected that I’d been involved in a home invasion and had stolen a stereo – which was sort of reasonable, as they were responding to a report of a suspected burglar described as a white male approximately 6-feet tall, and I was carrying a stereo.

Of course, your experience with our local police may vary. Another Ann Arborite, Blair Shelton, described his experiences during the public commentary portion of last Monday night’s city council meeting; these interactions with AAPD were not as cordial as mine, plausibly owing to the fact that while we are both men around six feet tall, we are also men of decidedly different complexions – but more of Shelton’s perspective in a minute.

If you’re inclined to think that I’m totally full of shit, or that Blair Shelton is full of shit, or that both of us are full of shit – well, I applaud your healthy distrust. That’s a good defense, and a relative new skill for humans. Pat yourself on the back. Fortunately, this topic is treated at length by better folks than me. I strongly suggest you could start with Daniel Gardner’s excellent and lucid “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain,” or any of the more recent work by Bruce Schneier.

Ceding Control

So what? So what if we treat 14,000 different little law enforcement tribes as if they are one monolithic, armed nation? So what if we use the behavior of the most nefarious boys in blue to frame our idea of what the other 700,000 cops enjoy? There are still plenty of cops out there doing bad things, and isn’t it our job as citizens to stay informed about that? Isn’t it wise to keep that all in mind when Officer Friendly stops you on the street with a few “innocent” questions?

No, it isn’t wise, and our job as citizens – as humans – isn’t to be informed, it’s to fix broken things (which is a few steps down the road from just staying informed). In short, the quickest way to ensure that the other 14,000-ish police agencies become as bad as NYPD is to let ourselves think of the American Police as a single, unified body that is even remotely as bad as its worst actors. Unfortunately, barring active mental effort on our part, the default setting for human beings is to do just that.

The vital fact that’s lost on the monkey mind is that the police are a local unit of government. They aren’t a vast army of NYPD-style blue shirts and white shirts acting under shadowy foreign directives; Ann Arbor only has somewhere around 120 sworn officers (of whom around 60 cops are the “patrol officers” one generally pictures when someone says “police” – and that number has been shrinking).

You could buy enough donuts to give every sworn AAPD officer a coffee break for less than the cost of a Friday night out downtown [8]. And they aren’t ruled by some far-off conspiracy directing a nationally coordinated militarized force. They’re under the command of (SPOILER ALERT!!!) the chief of police, who takes direction from city administrator Steve Powers, who is the administrative hand of the city council, who can be super responsive to your grousing.

By way of a quick example [9], following the passage of the PATRIOT Act – and subsequent public outcry – the Ann Arbor city council told our local police to refrain from taking advantage of the new powers permitted under that act. AAPD was directed to: (1) stay away from superfluous immigration enforcement; (2) refrain from covert surveillance and property searches; (3) decline to participate in FBI interviews outside of the realm of actual criminal investigation (unless the suspect requested AAPD be present); and (4) report to the city council any invitations that any federal agency might extend to AAPD.

And this is far from an exceptional case. The city council – our city council – will tweak the enforcement priorities of our local law enforcement based on our complaints.

Which brings us back to Blair Shelton, who addressed the Ann Arbor city council on Monday night (video here; skip ahead to the 23-minute mark). Owing to both his personal experience and experiences shared with him by others, Mr. Shelton has grave concerns about the judgement shown by many AAPD officers – including deputy chief John Seto, who will serve as interim chief of police when police chief Barnett Jones retires at the end of this month.

Shelton’s opinion of deputy chief Seto isn’t based on far-off tales of what happens in Oakland or NYC; it’s based on his first-hand experience. And, more importantly, he hasn’t let the deeply disturbing corruption in those far-off operations taint his notion about how local government should function – and does function, provided we show up to turn the cranks and nudge the occasionally recalcitrant wheels back into forward progress.

Shelton is concerned about the local police, so he raises those concerns with the local city council. He is working to make our community work right. He’s being a good neighbor.

The Grousing Ratio

Our cops aren’t skull-knocking stormtroopers; they’re us. If we don’t like how they operate, we can complain to our city council reps, and things can change.

NYC has an army of 36,000 sworn officers – which sounds downright threatening. But in a city of 8,175,133 souls, that means their citizens-to-officer ratio is about 2,200:1 – or half what we have in Ann Arbor. But our cops don’t feel like an occupying army, likely owing to key differences in municipal government: In NYC the police answer to a commissioner who is appointed by the mayor; if you need to kvetch about impropriety, then you are a single voice lost in the hail of 8 million mouths grousing at one mayor. That’s a grousing ratio of 8 million-to-one; long odds of being heard, let alone actually listened to.

Here in Ann Arbor we’ve got 11 council members, for a grousing ratio of a tidy 10,000:1. And, frankly, just the raw numbers are meaningful: While I have trouble imagining many citizen organizations in NYC that top 36,000 members, I know that Ann Arbor is chock full of citizen groups that outnumber our police force.

Agitate here and things can change. Let your monkey mind do what it does naturally, and you’ll slip into chunking the AAPD into that mythical, shadow-shrouded, heartless gargantua with mirrored eyes, pepper-spray breath, and a million-and-a-half baton-wielding arms.

No sane citizen would ever think to grouse to anyone about a terrible thing like that.

ENDNOTES:

[1] Left-leaning, socially liberal, educated to over-educated folk living in Ann Arbor – like I imagine the bulk of The Chronicle’s readership to be.

[2] Or something like that; I’m 90% sure a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC radio advertisement suggested that Romney attributed almost this exact plan to Ron Paul’s sister during an unaired portion of one of the recent debates. More or less.

[3] The most readable aggregated numbers I could find on local law enforcement were from 2009, which is why I’m being mealymouthed here. In light of the continuing weak economy, and the soft real estate market, I expect that revenue for local government continued to slide from 2009 through 2011. Thus, I suspect these 2009 numbers are a bit higher than what we have on the street today, in 2012.


[4] There actually is a solid effort to aggregate every such news story; it’s called the National Police Misconduct Statistics and Reporting Project. For 2010, it found that just under 1% of all U.S. law officers were involved in any sort of misconduct – and the worst offenders aren’t who you think they are.

[5] Or, to wax Lincolnite on it: “To condemn a class is, to say the least, to wrong the good with the bad. I do not like to hear a class or nationality condemned on account of a few sinners.” In this case Lincoln was talking about the collective punishment of Jews, who were accused of general collusion in smuggling and commodities speculation during the Civil War, and were thus ejected wholesale from U.S. Grant’s jurisdiction (which constituted the most developed and habitable wedge of the Confederacy). As luck would have it, Slate has recently done a nifty little write-up on Grant’s notorious General Orders No. 11, saving me a lengthy tangent here. Check it out!

[6] If you peg such a notion to written language and extensive trade networks – and there are valid reasons to do so – then you’re talking about 5,000 years, with Egyptians being among the first to get hep to the size of the world.

[7] One example of a win: One evening this past August some nefarious teens were breaking into cars on my block and fronting hubristic in overly clear voices. My wife called the cops while I screamed at them to get the fuck away from my fucking imported economy-car. When the police arrived – true to Ann Arbor’s stereotypical bucking of stereotypes, the cruiser carried a young woman and an African-American man I likely could have jumped over, given a running start – I was treated with the respect due to a law-abiding citizen like myself, despite the fact that I presented as a wild-haired madman clad only in a pair of pajama pants and wielding an iron fireplace poker.

[8] Consider: 

• Jewish Community Center Kid’s Night Out childcare for my five-year-old: $20
• Dinner for two at Blue Tractor: $40 (includes two entrees, two beers, tax, and 18% gratuity, because my wife and I both have food service on our resumes)
• Movie at the Michigan: $15 (we’re members!)

TOTAL: $75

Holy crap! That’s a lot more than I thought – and we just added a new baby to the mix. Toss in paying for a sitter for her, and we can buy Munchkins and joe for every cop in Ann Arbor for less than the cost of one Friday night respite (based on numbers from the Dunkin’ Donuts at 608 S. Hewitt in Ypsilanti).

[9] Basically handed to me on a platter by this paper’s editor, Dave Askins, who serves up salient city council lore on short order. Askins also saved me from dropping several megaton-size homers in this column, for which I am deeply indebted to him – although not so indebted as to eliminate the money he owes me for writing this column. I am, after all, in it for the money, kids.

About the author: David Erik Nelson has written columns previously for The Chronicle on topics like medical marijuana and glass-eating clowns. Nelson is the author of various books, including most recently, “Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred“. His Nebula-nominated novella “Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate” is now available for Kindle.

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. And if you’re already supporting us, please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to help support The Chronicle, too!

We spoke only briefly, and he was polite and respectful – just as he’d been in all the other interactions I’d had with him. Though he seemed a bit more quiet and restrained that day, I thought nothing of it. After all, he’d taken on a significant high-profile responsibility, and was standing in a room full of his new bosses at a public meeting.

Just a few days later, I was surprised to learn that he had decided to resign from UM and return to a post he’d previously held at Eastern Michigan University. EMU had rehired Greg as police chief in late November, and his public statements indicated that he’d decided his position there was a better fit.

Less than a month after that, on the Friday before Christmas, Greg was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, an apparent suicide. He was 54. Shocking is the only way to describe the news – a sentiment I’ve heard expressed repeatedly over the last few days.

As a respected and well-liked leader in local law enforcement – he had spent the bulk of his career with the Ann Arbor police department – Greg was well known throughout the community. That fact was reflected in the hundreds of people who came to pay their respects on Wednesday night at the visitation held at the Nie Family Funeral Home, a diverse crowd of family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances.

He was smart and easy-going with a wry sense of humor, professional yet personable, confident and approachable. His death has stunned us, and even those of us who weren’t close to him will mourn the loss.

I’m sure I’m not alone in spending much of the past few days reflecting on Greg’s death. Not well-known outside a limited community was his struggle with depression. I don’t know the circumstances of his personal situation – and it’s not my business. But as the daughter of someone who suffered from chronic depression, that dark landscape is familiar to me.

This past summer, in the same regents boardroom where I last saw Greg, the director of UM’s Depression Center, John Greden, spoke to regents about the difficulty of fighting the stigma of this illness called depression. In the wake of Greg’s death, it’s worth pausing to reflect on the way that nearly all of us, at some point, grapple with our inner demons or unfathomable despair, and how those struggles can be even more profound for those who work in law enforcement.

The Stigma of Depression

My mother used to call it “feeling blue,” a charming euphemism for the debilitating days spent in bed, curtains drawn, unable to eat, talking only about how she just didn’t feel good and wanted to die. An otherwise spirited woman who loved to laugh, she would fall into these dark, hopeless periods with unfailing regularity around the holidays – she’d become quiet with an empty look in her eyes that signaled the difficult days ahead.

Over the years our family physician, an avuncular man we called Doctor Jim, prescribed various medications for what he called her “nerves,” with limited effect. I drove her to the appointment on the day when he finally told her she needed to see a psychiatrist, after more than two decades of suffering. Afterwards, I remember sitting in the car with her as she sobbed: “People will think I’m crazy! I guess I am crazy.”

For my mother, back in the 1980s, the stigma of depression was still strong. And I’m not sure how much that has changed.

When John Greden addressed the regents at their July 2011 meeting, he spoke about the ongoing need to de-stigmatize the illness. That’s why Greden and others advocated for putting the word “depression” in the name of the new center they launched – the University of Michigan Depression Center. Greden characterized it as a bold move, and a way to help view depression as a matter-of-fact, treatable condition, like cancer or AIDS.

At that meeting, regent Libby Maynard told Greden that someone she knows has needed help for depression, but has resisted seeking treatment. Maynard expressed frustration that she’d been unable to convince this person to get help, and wondered how she, as a lay person, could assist a person who’s suffering from depression.

Greden observed that this is a critical, complex issue. Even though depression isn’t rare, it’s still borne by many with a sense of shame and weakness. Greden said an estimated one in six people experience clinical depression – it’s a leading affliction, along with cardiovascular disease and cancer. It can be treated, and better treatments are being developed every day, but the first hurdle is seeking help.

For men, the stigma can be even greater. The Depression Center’s website addresses this explicitly, quoting Greden: “Depression remains the ‘under’ disease: under-diagnosed, under-discussed, and under-treated for everyone, but especially for men.”

Challenges of Law Enforcement

After Greg’s death, and in reflecting on my own family’s experience with depression, I wondered how police officers and others in law enforcement might confront similar struggles. Like most of us, I’m lucky not to work in the kind of job that puts you face-to-face with humanity’s worst attributes. A few stints covering crime stories back when I worked for the Ann Arbor News – including one notorious local child abuse case – were enough to make me appreciate how insulated I am from the unspeakable acts that human beings perpetrate on each other. But those who work in the criminal justice system have to deal with that every day.

Not surprisingly, the culture of law enforcement can be an insular, macho environment. Though it’s changing in some organizations, you aren’t generally rewarded for showing signs of perceived weakness or for being sensitive.

And it’s unusual for a law enforcement organization to employ someone with a social work background as one of its key executives. But that’s what Washtenaw County sheriff Jerry Clayton did soon after he was elected in 2008, when he hired Derrick Jackson as director of community engagement. The sheriff felt that Jackson’s perspective – as someone who came from outside the traditional law enforcement culture – would be invaluable in helping work through challenges both internal and external to the organization.

Even for officers who don’t suffer from clinical depression, pressures of the work are bound to wear on them, and there are often too few safe or healthy outlets for them to deal with those pressures. In addition to the profession’s traditional culture of avoiding too much that smacks of “touchy-feely,” there’s the extra overlay of liability concerns: A fear that divulging “weaknesses” – whether they be emotional, mental, spiritual or physical – could potentially be used against you in the courtroom.

I talked this week with the sheriff, who had been shocked by the death of his close friend. Clayton said his staff has talked about these issues in the past, and Greg’s death highlights the importance of finding better ways to respond to the needs of people in law enforcement at all levels. He addressed that explicitly in an email sent out to his staff soon after Greg’s death. An excerpt:

Although we may never know what ultimately led to Greg’s passing, we do know that all of us must get better at taking care of ourselves and supporting each other. Ours is a challenging profession, which calls for each of us to “run towards danger, when everyone else is running away.” It is also a high-pressure profession that seemingly has little tolerance for the “weak and sensitive” so we have a tendency to keep our challenges to ourselves and/or to mask them in indifference and sometimes self-destructive behavior – neither of which supports the mental, physical or emotional health that we all need to successfully navigate a career in public service.

Hopefully during this holiday season each of us can spend some time with the people we care about, get some rest and tend to our needs which should include taking the time to do your own personal status check (physical, emotional, mental) and making the necessary adjustments for our own well-being. I believe that we must be healthy ourselves before we can help others. “To do good things in the world, first you must know who you are and what gives meaning to your life.” — Paula P. Brownlee.

Clayton plans to bring up these issues at the next meeting of his executive staff, as well as at the next meeting of police chiefs in the county. “Shame on us if there are red flags and we don’t do anything about it,” he said.

Yet even when red flags are recognized and acted on, treatment is sought and there’s a supportive network of family and colleagues, not everyone who suffers depression survives. That’s just the way any serious illness works.

Greg’s life should be celebrated for many reasons – as a husband, son, father, friend, colleague and leader in our community. Conversations at his visitation unfailingly conveyed both a sense of sorrow and a feeling of gratitude for having known him – whether you were his neighbor, a university president, a journalist or one of the many law enforcement officers who worked by his side. I know we’ll all hold onto our memories of him.

I hope those memories might provide strength – for those who need support, the strength to ask, and for those who are asked, the strength to give.

A memorial service will be held on Thursday, Dec. 29 at 11 a.m. at EMU’s Pease Auditorium, College Place and Cross Street in Ypsilanti. The O’Dell family has requested that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to EMU Athletics or the Ann Arbor Police Department. Contributions to the community policing endowment fund can be made through the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation. The online AAACF donation form includes an option for a designation (Ann Arbor Police Department) and a dedication (Greg O’Dell).

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) confer during a brief break at the city council meeting. After the break, Hohnke withdrew his motion that would have asked the council to consider the Heritage Row project for a third time in total, and for the second time at their July 6 meeting. (Photos by the writer.)

Rejection of the district then set off a series of parliamentary procedures by the council. The actions were prompted by concern that without the protection afforded by the historic district, seven houses would be demolished through construction of an already-approved matter-of-right project (MOR), City Place.

So the council brought back for reconsideration a different project on the same site – Heritage Row, which the council had rejected at its previous meeting. A key feature of the Heritage Row project, which includes three new apartment buildings, is that it would also retain the seven houses.

The vote on the reconsideration of Heritage Row failed. That resulted in an attempt by Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) to have the council reconsider the historic district, which the council had just rejected. Hohnke’s council colleagues weren’t interested in revisiting the issue.

So Hohnke then began the parliamentary procedure to reconsider the Heritage Row project – for the second time that evening and for the third time total. The move required another rule suspension – this one concerning the number of times a question could be considered.

After a brief recess, however – during which Hohnke was apparently persuaded that developer Alex de Parry would not actually follow through and build the City Place MOR project – Hohnke withdrew his motion. A comment from Ann Arbor resident Ethel Potts, who attended the council meeting and who has witnessed more than four decades of city politics, summarized the sentiments of many in the audience: “As weird goes, this was pretty weird.”

A moratorium on demolition, which covers the area considered by the historic district study committee, will remain in place through Aug. 6. The council meets on Aug. 5, after the primary elections on Aug. 3.

In other business, the city council approved a resolution opposing legislation recently enacted by the state of Arizona that requires local law enforcement officials to investigate a person’s immigration status, when there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the U.S. unlawfully.

The council transacted a range of other business and communications as well. Those issues are covered in Part 2 of the July 6 meeting report. Part 1 focuses on the Arizona immigration law and the historic district.

Immigration Status: Against Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Before the council was a resolution sponsored by Sabra Briere (Ward 1) and Sandi Smith (Ward 1) that expressed opposition to a recent law enacted in the state of Arizona that requires local law enforcement to investigate a person’s immigration status when there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the U.S. unlawfully. [draft of resolution] Briere had announced at the council’s previous meeting that she would bring a resolution like this forward.

When the council approved the evening’s agenda, Margie Teall (Ward 4) proposed moving the item up so that it could be considered immediately following the public commentary at the start of the meeting, to accommodate those who were attending the meeting just for that item. That agenda change was approved with dissent from Marcia Higgins (Ward 4). Higgins left the table during public commentary, and did not return until well after the vote on the immigration law had been taken.

One of the themes that emerged during the public comment period was that racial profiling already exists in the Ann Arbor community – which led the council to ask chief of police Barnett Jones to address the issue from the podium.

Councilmembers also stressed that the resolution had not used city staff resources, a theme that echoed sentiments expressed at a recent candidate forum held in Ward 1, when incumbent Sandi Smith and challenger Sumi Kailasapathy were asked if they felt it was appropriate for the city council to address national-level issues.

Immigration Status: Public Comment

Introducing herself as a recent graduate of Huron High School and a community organizer for a Washtenaw County worker center was Jasmine Franco. She described her own background, beginning with her parents’ arrival in the U.S. from Guatemala in the 1990s. Two years after that, she was born in Chicago. She lived in Ann Arbor for 10 years with her family until her mother was sent back to Guatemala. In 2008, she said, her Michigan ID expired. Despite her U.S. citizenship and her possession of a valid birth certificate, a Social Security number and a U.S. passport, she was denied the right to a Michigan ID. The reason, she had been told, was that several undocumented immigrants had used her home address for Michigan IDs.

Franco was then given a case number and an agent, who told her that to get any form of ID, he had to visit her home and see her documents in person, to validate her citizenship and residency. For over two years, Franco said, she tried to arrange a home visit, but the agent refused to return her calls. When she complained, she said, she was told that her agent had been laid off. She was assigned a new agent, who continued to ignore her requests. It was only after the intervention of Pastor Melanie Carey, a woman with whom Franco was living, that Franco said she was able to get her Michigan driver’s license.

The agent never met with her in her home to verify her citizenship or residency  – all it took was for Carey to tell the agent over the phone that Franco was a citizen living in her home. Two weeks later the agent delivered the ID into Carey’s hands, without Franco needing to be present. Franco contended that her experience was not unique. If Arizona-style legislation passes in Michigan, she warned, countless citizens will be denied their rights. The resolution before the city council, Franco said, sends a clear message to the rest of the country: We will not tolerate Arizona-style legislation. She urged support of the resolution.

Blaine Coleman began by addressing the council in Spanish, and then provided a translation: Remember that Arizona has been occupied since 1848 – like Palestine is occupied today. He said he was glad that city councils were condemning the government of Arizona for passing such a blatantly racist law that can only result in racial profiling against anyone who the government decides looks like they’re not a citizen. He asked the city council: How could they be so brave in condemning Arizona for that law it had enacted, and “enforce such silence” when it comes to racial profiling against Palestinians? How is it, Coleman asked, that it’s only for one night that the Ann Arbor city council stands against racism and only against Arizona, but never against Israel, or against the U.S. government for the murder of Iraqis and Afghans? Coleman then concluded his remarks by repeating the question five times: How much is an Arab’s life worth to you?

Mozhgan Savabiesfahani told the council it was hard for her to believe that they were against racism – she’s been coming to the council for five to six years to speak about racism in Israel, but the council had never acknowledged her existence. That, she concluded, is racist. She showed the council a flier she’d brought that presented research concluding that the U.S. bombing in Fallujah had a negative effect on infant mortality and increased cancer rates. Councilmembers had refused to accept the flier from her, she reported. “You want to tell me you’re not racist?” She concluded her remarks by saying, “Boycott Israel!”

Speaking on behalf of Michigan Peaceworks and its immigrant rights task force was Max Heirich. He began by framing the question as one of opportunity: What is the opportunity represented by the resolution? It’s relevant to Ann Arbor, he said, because 160 area families had been disrupted by Homeland Security actions – parents have been separated from children, children have been put in foster care, he said. Law enforcement actions are proceeding without search warrants, he said, similar to what would happen if Michigan were to enact laws being introduced in the legislature now, which are similar to laws already enacted in Arizona. Taking a stand in Ann Arbor could be a model for other cities, he said. He reminded the council that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants. Various immigrants have faced oppression at different points in the country’s history, he said. The resolution is an opportunity to do something positive, instead of simply saying, “Isn’t it too bad.”

Mary Anne Perrone began by addressing the council in Spanish, then translating her remarks: She came to speak to the mayor and the city council with a deep conviction, asking them to vote in favor of the resolution. She’s lived in Ann Arbor for over 20 years, she said, and is a member of the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and also the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. She said that although she is a U.S. citizen – the granddaughter of immigrants – if she were in Arizona and she had spoken in her adopted language of Spanish, that could form the basis of a suspicion that she is not here in the U.S. lawfully.

Law enforcement officers could then ask her to produce documents and to detain her. It’s important, Perrone said, that cities like Ann Arbor raise their voices as a conscience for the nation and to make clear that using intolerance and discrimination is not the way that we want our government to operate. In Ann Arbor, Perrone said, we care about art, we care about parks, we care about rivers, and we care about people’s human rights.

Deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, Mary Bejian, appeared in order to give the ACLU’s official endorsement of the resolution. She emphasized that it’s not just that Arizona’s legislation – as well as the pending legislation in Michigan – gives the police the right to ask people to prove their lawful residence, but rather it actually requires them to do that. Law enforcement officers face penalties if they’re found to be negligent. The U.S. Department of Justice, Bejian reported, had filed suit this week against the state of Arizona regarding the legislation – the ACLU and a number of other organizations had already filed suit back in May.

Mary Bejian, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.

Bejian said they were confident that the law will be shown to be unconstitutional – the law invites and compels racial profiling. The notion of “reasonable suspicion,” she said, is a vague legal concept. What other possible criteria would law enforcement officers use, other than the color of one’s skin, whether someone speaks English with an accent or a foreign language? Supporters of the law are not able to offer any other criteria that would constitute reasonable suspicion, other than looking or sounding foreign, she said.

Bejian pointed out that the law enforcement community was not happy with the legislation, either. The Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police has gone on record against it. Locally, she said, law enforcement officials have said that local law enforcement should not be doing the job of federal immigration agents. For one thing, she said, they are not trained to do that job. There are also no local resources to do this kind of work, she said.

Vivianne Schnitzer told the council she’d lived for 10 years in Ann Arbor among the diverse population of residents. She said she considers Ann Arbor to be an enlightened city. The city’s humanity and solidarity are now being tested, she said. Tonight, she suggested, we could choose one path or the other, and it would have profound implications for our children and grandchildren. One day they will ask us: “What did you do that day?” We have to reject the politics of fear and chose the politics of reason, she said.

Laura Sanders introduced herself as an Ann Arbor resident, local therapist, and instructor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. She told the council she was representing the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights. They’d documented over 160 cases of raids, detainments and deportations of immigrants, many of which included participation of local law enforcement in addition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Those cases showed that racial profiling is already playing a major role in traffic stops that are resulting in deportations of innocent and hard-working immigrants, she said.

There’s not any admission by officers, Sanders said, that the reason they’ve stopped people is they’re brown-skinned, or they speak with a thick accent, or that they’re wearing their hats to the side, or because they’re driving a car with a decal of a foreign flag. They’re then interrogated about their immigration status and arrested for offenses for which white people would simply be ticketed.

Laura Sanders spoke on behalf of the Washtenaw Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights.

Sanders then ticked through a list of actual of traffic stop offenses for which immigrants have been arrested in the community: cracked windshield, rosary hanging off rear-view mirror, low air in tires, crooked license plate, malfunctioning tail light, failure to use blinker turning from private driveway onto street, expired license plate, driving on expired license, possessing expired license sitting in passenger seat, broken headlight, making a wrong turn, failing to change lanes when passing a car pulled over by the police, failing to wear a seat belt, making a fast stop. There’s already a racial-profiling problem, she contended. It’s important to take a proactive step against it, she said. She asked everyone attending in support of the resolution to stand, and an estimated 50 people rose from their seats.

Samantha Narawski introduced herself as a University of Michigan student working with a group called One Michigan, a statewide organization made up of undocumented and documented youth who were fighting for immigrant rights and the Dream Act. She explained how the Arizona legislation had affected a member of the Ann Arbor community – a co-founder of One Michigan, Mohammad Abdollahi. He’d lived in Arizona for a month, organized there, and participated in a sit-in.

Abdollahi came to Ann Arbor as a three-year-old from Iran, when his father was working on his doctorate at the University of Michigan. An attorney had failed to inform the family about a $20 fee change and that had resulted in the family being undocumented, Narawski explained. Abdollahi grew up volunteering at the Ozone House and cheering on the Huron High School River Rats. He didn’t know what it meant, she explained, until his friends started applying to colleges and he couldn’t because he didn’t have a Social Security number.

Abdollahi attended Washtenaw Community College and earned enough credits to transfer to Eastern Michigan University. At the admissions office at EMU, they told him he was the kind of student they wanted there. But a few minutes later, she continued, the admissions officer’s supervisor retracted the offer of admission, saying that they had missed the fact that he’d checked the box indicating he was not a citizen.

He searched out resources online, Narawski said, and headed to Arizona with three undocumented students to participate in a sit-in. They asked that the Dream Act be enacted, which would allow undocumented students to receive citizenship. She asked the council to stand with Abdollahi and oppose the Arizona legislation, as he had done. “Do it for Mohammad and the immigrant community here.”

Immigration Status: Council Deliberations

Sabra Briere (Ward 1), who drafted the resolution that was also sponsored by Sandi Smith (Ward 1), began by thanking Margie Teall (Ward 4) for moving the item forward on the agenda.

Briere ticked off various groups who had come to this county to escape religious persecution, to seek economic opportunity, or political freedom. Her own ancestors arrived before immigration was an issue – to leave the Old World behind and to find new opportunity. The men had fought in every war, including the American Revolution. The women had done what women always did – ran the farms, businesses, the home, sacrificing for freedom or just keeping their heads down. Each generation defines freedom for itself, she continued, but also fights to defend that freedom. In that spirit, seven years ago the council had passed a resolution protesting the erosion of civil liberties under the U.S. Patriot Act, Briere said. [Excerpted minutes from the July 7, 2003 Ann Arbor city council meeting.]

Stereotyping of the sort that is encouraged by the Arizona legislation, Briere said, is at its very heart against American principles. The U.S. attorney general had filed suit that day against the state of Arizona, Briere said, and a broad variety of academic organizations spoke against the Arizona bill immediately after it was passed. City councils and city governments “from Arizona to Minneapolis” have voted their opposition to the legislation. She asked her colleagues to support the attorney general’s position that immigration enforcement is properly the purview of the federal government, not the state. She asked the council to support the Obama administration to address the problems with the immigration law.

During public commentary on the subject, the speakers’ comments were met with audience applause, and the pattern continued after Briere’s remarks. Mayor John Hieftje admonished the audience that “we don’t have applause for a councilmember statement.”

“Now you say that!” quipped Sandi Smith (Ward 1), who was next to speak. She thanked Briere for doing “the heavy lifting” on the resolution. It had been simply reviewed briefly by the city attorney’s office, and she stressed that very few city resources had been used to accomplish the resolution. Why would Ann Arbor take on something like this? Smith’s answer: “This is what Ann Arbor does.” And the council would finish their entire agenda, Smith said, no matter how late they needed to stay.

Michigan as a state had become known as an unfriendly place, Smith cautioned. Passing Arizona-style legislation in Michigan would contribute further to that. The language of Arizona’s legislation – “without a warrant,” for example – was frightening to her, she said. She encouraged the council to support the resolution.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) echoed the sentiments of Smith and Briere, and stressed that although it might not appear that it had to do with Ann Arbor or its operation, it’s sometimes important to make a symbolic statement and to share that statement with other cities. In the past, she said, Ann Arbor had sometimes raised its voice as a beacon to other communities and the city can be proud of that.

In response to a constituent question she’d received that day, Teall explained that any councilmember can place a resolution on the agenda. She also stressed that no other business was being delayed or postponed or otherwise neglected, due to the vote on the immigration resolution.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) echoed the comments of Teall, noting that the council had a long agenda that night. But the council had spoken out on other issues like this, giving as an example a resolution that he’d sponsored recognizing a veterans group and a peace group who were working together on a water project in Iraq. Things like that deserve recognition and the council’s impetus behind it. If you look around at the make-up of the council, he said, you heard some curious names like “Derezinski,” “Rapundalo,” “Hohnke” and “Hieftje.” Those are names from other countries, Derezinski said. It’s an immigrant nation, and we’re all immigrants, he said. It’s a positive thing that new people are constantly coming into the country, he said: “They will save us, when our blood gets old and tired.”

Hieftje expressed his agreement with the resolution and thanked Smith and Briere for their work on it.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) indicated that he was greatly troubled by elements of the Arizona legislation – “they are vile at best,” he said. He said he abhorred the thought of immigrants being pulled aside because of the color of their skin or for other reasons. He noted that he was a landed immigrant himself and except for the color of his skin, he could be pulled over – he noted he had a foreign flag on the back of his car. [Rapundalo has dual Candadian-U.S. citizenship.] He said he wholeheartedly supports the idea that immigration is a federal matter – just as Briere had asked the council to support the U.S. attorney general’s position on that. However, for that reason, he said that he regrettably could not support the resolution.

Rapundalo said he would be consistent with his position on similar issues in the past – it’s not an issue for the Ann Arbor city council at the moment. When there is a piece of legislation that has a direct impact on local citizens, he said, he’d be more than happy to consider it then. He’d received many emails from supporters of the resolution, but also many messages asking why the city council was not focusing more on local issues. He allowed that his colleagues were correct in saying that they would finish the agenda that night, despite their consideration of the resolution. But he said that there were more pressing issues – roads and budgets, for example.

Responding to Rapundalo’s remarks, Hieftje noted that the council had passed resolutions previously concerning the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. He contended that it was rare that the Ann Arbor city council took up such resolutions, and said he felt it did not take time away from other important business that came before the council. He disagreed with the idea that it was an action that was inappropriate for the Ann Arbor city council.

Responding to the remarks of Laura Sanders during public commentary that racial profiling was already happening in the Ann Arbor community, Hieftje said that Ann Arbor chief of police Barnett Jones and Washtenaw County sheriff Jerry Clayton would like to know about those issues.

Outcome: The resolution opposing the Arizona law on how local law enforcement officers are to handle possible immigration violations was approved, with dissent from Rapundalo. Marcia Higgins was not at the table when the vote was taken.

Immigration Status: Response from Police Chief

After the vote was taken, chief of police Barnett Jones was asked to the podium by Sabra Briere to respond to the issue concerning the number of people who had been arrested during ICE raids.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) talk with Ann Arbor chief of police Barnett Jones, right.

Jones indicated that he didn’t know where Laura Sanders had gotten her numbers from: “Her figures are her figures,” he said. He asked that he be forwarded any statistics that are relevant to the city of Ann Arbor. He said he thought that the bulk of Sanders’ figures came from outside the city. He indicated that he’d met with Sanders and her group and had worked with her. He described the relationship of the Ann Arbor police with the undocumented community as “wonderful.” There’s a council resolution that addresses how local law enforcement is supposed to handle situations like these.

From the council’s 2003 resolution cited earlier by Briere:

RESOLVED, That the Ann Arbor City Council, as a matter of public policy, directs the Ann Arbor Chief of Police, to the extent permitted by law, to:

1. Continue to limit local enforcement actions with respect to immigration matters to penal violations of federal immigration law (as opposed to administrative violations) except in cases where the Chief of Police determines there is a legitimate public safety concern and in such public safety instances, to report the situation to the City Council no later than 60 days after the incident.
2. Continue to refrain from covert surveillance of and/or collection and maintenance of information on individuals or groups based on their participation in activities protected by the First Amendment, such as political advocacy or the practice of a religion, without a particularized suspicion of unlawful activity.
3. Affirm the existing practice, as required by Michigan state law, of providing simultaneous notice of the execution of a state court search warrant to any resident of the City of Ann Arbor whose property is the subject of such a warrant, except in cases of anticipatory search warrants.
4. Report to the City Council any request made by federal authorities for the Ann Arbor Police Department to participate in any activity under the USA Patriot Act, to the extent the Chief of Police has knowledge of such request.
5. Refrain from participating in informational interviews conducted by federal authorities similar to those conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in early 2002 in Ann Arbor of individuals not suspected of criminal activity, unless the interviewee has specifically requested the presence of an AAPD official;
   RESOLVED, That the City Administrator be directed to seek semi-annually, by form letter, from federal authorities the following information on behalf of the residents of the City of Ann Arbor:
6. The names of all residents of the City of Ann Arbor who have been arrested or otherwise detained by federal authorities as a result of terrorism investigations since September 11, 2001; the location of each detainee; the circumstances that led to each detention; the charges, if any, lodges against each detainee; the name of counsel, if any, representing each detainee;
7. The number of search warrants that have been executed in the City of Ann Arbor without notice to the subject of the warrant pursuant to Section 213 of the USA PATRIOT Act;
8. The extent of electronic surveillance carried out in the City of Ann Arbor under powers granted in the USA PATRIOT Act;
9. The extent to which federal authorities are monitoring political meetings, religious gatherings or other activities protected by the First Amendment within the City of Ann Arbor;
10. The number of times education records have been obtained from public schools and institutions of higher learning in the City of Ann Arbor under Section 507 of the USA PATRIOT Act;
11. The number of times library records have been obtained from libraries in the City of Ann Arbor under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act;
12. The number of times that records of the books purchased by store patrons have been obtained from bookstores in the City of Ann Arbor under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act;

Jones said that he was appalled that Sanders’ presentation made it sound like the Ann Arbor police department is out looking for undocumented immigrants and that they’re using racial profiling to effect those arrests. “This is a professional law enforcement agency, with professional men and women, [...] who know what the rules are [...],” Jones said. He said that he figured there were some of those men and women in uniform who may have been watching the city council proceedings on television, who might have been a little upset by Sanders’ statements. [City council meetings are broadcast live on Community Television Network.]

He concluded by stressing that he felt that most of the stats Sanders had cited related to incidents outside of Ann Arbor and that he’d asked her to provide any specific information about problems inside the city – as she’d done in the past.

He concluded by saying, “And I will calm down now!”

Fourth/Fifth Avenue Historic District

Before the council for its second and final reading was a proposal to accept the recommendation of a study committee that had been established on Aug. 6 last year, to create a local historic district along Fourth and Fifth avenues south of William Street and north of Packard. Detailed background can be found in previous Chronicle coverage: “The Constitution of Historic Districts” and “S. Fifth Avenue: Historic District, Development.”

The proposed district was controversial for some who oppose the creation of any district at all in the general area, as well as for some neighbors living south of Packard Street, who objected to the way the proposed boundaries were drawn. Many residents living in the 500 blocks of Fourth and Fifth avenues, south of Packard just north of Madison, wanted to be included in a historic district as well.

Historic District: Public Hearing

Identifying himself as the only resident member of the historic district study committee was Tom Whitaker. He asked for the council’s support of the study committee’s recommendation to create a historic district. He said that state officials who had reviewed a preliminary version of the report had called it “exemplary.” The committee had adopted the recommendation to create the district unanimously, he said, just as they had recommended that the council have an additional area studied, which includes the block south of Packard Street, where many residents support the establishment of a historic district.

Whitaker said he didn’t agree with the attempts by some of those residents to “sabotage” the creation of a smaller district. The boundaries recommended by the report, he said, would withstand any of the “baseless” challenges that had been made. Rejecting the district wouldn’t be fair to the owners of individual properties that had previously been part of a citywide district that had been ruled legally invalid by the 2001 Draprop decision – they’d been waiting to have their properties reinstated. It also wouldn’t be fair, he said, to the property owners in the neighborhood who had seen three development proposals for the neighborhood in the last few years, all of which were counter to the city’s master planning and zoning, he contended.

A historic district would not mean the end of improvements in the area, Whitaker said, as the experience of other historic districts showed – neighborhoods stabilize and property values rise under historic designation, he said. Liberty Lofts was built in a historic district, he pointed out, and the new CVS on State Street is being built in a historic district. The Zingerman’s Deli expansion is likely to be approved in a historic district, he said. In addition, he continued, large numbers of smaller homeowner projects are routinely completed in historic districts with a high percentage requiring only staff approval. Those requiring approval from the historic district commission have an approval percentage better than 90%, he said. The older neighborhoods, as well as the historic neighborhoods, are what define Ann Arbor to visitors and what attract people to live here and to stay here. If the council chose not to support the historic district, then Whitaker asked that they explain what they’d done to help resolve the conflict. “None of you can afford to sit back any longer and watch this neighborhood being torn apart,” he warned.

Kristi Gilbert introduced herself as a member of the study committee and urged the council to vote for the district. She said that she would defer to Whitaker and others like him who are more skilled in making the arguments for a historic district. She noted that they are not just passionate about historic preservation, but are equally concerned about sustainability, a dense urban environment and economic vitality. All of these things can happen together, she said, and that had happened in Ann Arbor over the last 30 years with its 14 historic districts, many of which are in the downtown core.

Gilbert referred to the Michigan Historic Preservation Network conference recently, when mayor John Hieftje had bragged about the 14 historic districts and why they make Ann Arbor so beautiful. There’s some good modern architecture in Ann Arbor, she said, but the majority of it doesn’t help define the identity or brand of Ann Arbor.

Tom Luczak introduced himself as a resident of the proposed historic district and urged the council to support the recommendation in the study committee’s report. He allowed that it is council’s judgment call as to whether they value having the houses of the neighborhood preserved, but he noted that they are under tremendous development pressure. He contended that a number of people who are supportive of a district were not there that evening, but that they would be around in early August. [The primary election will be held on Aug. 3 – several councilmembers are running for reelection.]

Luczak reminded councilmembers that many of them had placed importance on process with respect to the city planning commission’s recommendation. So if they wanted to respect process, he contended, then they should support the recommendation of the committee. If the historic district is not approved, he asked, what would be his motivation not to sell his house to a developer? He called the argument that the boundaries are wrong a “red herring.” He said he supported the idea of expanding the district later, but asked the council not to “throw the baby out with the bath water.”

Claudius Vincenz, who lives south of Packard Street, an area not included in the study committee’s recommended district, showed the council a poster of Gottfried Maedel who used to live in Vincenz’s house. The German past of the block, he said, was not included in the study committee’s report. He said he agreed with Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), who had called the exercise a “self-fulfilling prophecy.”

However, Vincenz said, it would not have been a self-fulfilling prophecy if the committee had used their expertise to write a report that was consistent with the Secretary of the Interior guidelines, which it was not, he contended. The area of greatest concentration of historical value, he said, was actually south of the proposed area. He contended that the committee had suppressed evidence of many German founders of Ann Arbor who had lived south of the proposed area.

The most blatant omission, Vincenz said, was the last remaining residence of Raoul Wallenberg, who had stepped forward during World War II and saved thousands of Jews from the gas chambers. He called the resolution suggesting the council study the area south of Packard evidence that the committee knew something was not quite right, characterizing it as a way of saying, “We wash our hands in innocence.”

Ellen Thackery, who is the Michigan Historic Preservation Network field representative, asked the council to pass the resolution establishing a historic district. She reminded them that the neighborhood is in the city’s central area, and the central area plan recognizes that the neighborhood is integral to the city. One of the most effective means of preserving the character of the area, she said, is a historic district. Historic districts have been upheld at the U.S. Supreme Court level, she said, citing the Penn Central case.

Likely responding to a letter conveyed a few weeks ago to the city council by attorney Peter Webster, which argues that a local historic district creates a preservation easement, Thackery said that historic districts do not create an easement. Historic preservation easements, she said, are donated by a property owner and can be donated by any owner of a historic property. They can be donated on National Register properties, properties with state markers, or properties in local historic districts or properties without such a designation. Such easements are perpetual and run with the land. That contrasts with local historic districts, she said, which have a legal process for establishment, for their amendment, and their dissolution.

Piotr Michalowski told the council that he’d written to them on many occasions and did not want to repeat himself. Instead, he said, he wanted to remind the council what the purpose of a historic district is: to manage change. It doesn’t stop any change, but rather manages it, and that’s all they were asking for. He contended that the reason there is pressure for development in that neighborhood is because land is cheaper than it is downtown. It was not simply the recent developments that had been proposed in the neighborhood, like City Place and Heritage Row, but also other proposed developments that could come very soon, if a historic district is not established.

Scott Munzel introduced himself as legal counsel for the Fifth Avenue Limited Partnership, the owner of the Heritage Row project. He criticized the proposed district as both bad law and bad public policy. First, he said, the recommended district as described in the report does not meet the requirements described in the statutes, which require that the buildings be related by archeology, architecture, history, engineering, or culture. The “broad net” that is cast in the study report does not meet those criteria, he said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), left, chats with local attorney Scott Munzel during a break. Behind them, Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) talks with Sandi Smith (Ward 1).

By the study committee’s standard, Munzel said, every building that is near the downtown or the University of Michigan would qualify as historic and should be included in a historic district. Munzel cited the Draprop case, in which an Ann Arbor historic district had been invalidated, and said that based on that case, the proposed historic district could be invalidated on the same reasoning. Secondly, he said, the district may violate equal protection requirements in that it treats similarly situated landowners differently.

Along Jefferson Street to the east are examples of buildings that were excluded from the district, and Munzel noted that building south of Packard Street had been excluded. There is no rational basis he could see, on reading the report, for why those areas were excluded. He noted that the council had expressed concern through its earlier resolution on Arizona’s immigration law about violation of the U.S. Constitution, and he suggested that the historic district might violate the equal protection provisions of the Constitution.

Munzel also contended that establishing a historic district would amount to bad public policy. The role of the urban core is changing, he said. Environmental, social, and economic forces are pointing to the need for increased density. The area of the proposed district is surrounded on the north and west by the commercial core, on the east by the university and on the south by university and industrial uses, so it may be suitable for redevelopment proposals under the control of the city council. A historic district would put the decision on proposals, which could otherwise meet city goals, in the hands of the city’s historic district commission. It amounted to an abdication of council’s ability to control public policy. He reminded the council that everyone is free to preserve their own houses, without a historic district.

Much later in the public hearing, Thomas Partridge, like Munzel, also drew a connection to the discussion about the Arizona legislation on immigration. Partridge noted that the council had gone from talking about constitutional rights and human rights issues to talking about the selfish and restrictive attitudes of property owners. If the historic district were established, he asked, what will that mean for the immigrants coming to Ann Arbor seeking places to live? He concluded by saying there needs to be a compromise.

Jane Belanger introduced herself as the owner of two properties on South Fifth Avenue. She was one of the signers of a protest petition that was submitted to the city around 2 p.m. that day. She also told the council that she owned property in the Kerrytown area and lived in the Old West Side. She thus had some experience as an owner and investor in historic districts. She said she didn’t agree that her property values increased due to their historic designation – but rather due to the proximity to the university and to the downtown area. The properties are expensive to maintain, she said.

Belanger said the district had been proposed in order to block a specific development in the neighborhood. She said that people should take care of their houses, whether they are in a historic neighborhood or not, and that a historic neighborhood made it more difficult. She said she’d had positive encounters with the historic district commission for work she’d wanted to undertake, but that the process had taken longer than it would have otherwise.

Brad Mikus told the council that he thought the houses were old but not necessarily significant. He said it was bad public policy to use historic districts to stop development. But he also indicated that he thought the City Place matter-of-right development is a “turd.” No one likes it, he said, so whatever it takes to stop it is potentially a good idea.

Brad Mikus appealed to his smart phone to quote from the city's central area plan during the public hearing on the historic district.

Looking at the central area plan, Mikus said that the repeated goal and objective in the document is to “preserve” various aspects of the neighborhoods. From that he concluded that the zoning didn’t really match the master plan. He cited a passage from the Calthorpe report that seemed to indicate that removal of historic districts could facilitate new zoning. Running out of time, Mikus quickly concluded by saying he was in favor of establishing a historic district.

Betsy de Parry, who is Alex de Parry’s wife and part of the Heritage Row development team, reminded the council that the Heritage Row project had been rejected at the last council meeting. That project, she said, would have preserved seven houses on South Fifth Avenue. They were interested in preserving the houses, she said, but a historic district was not the way to do that. The study committee was formed hastily, she said, in order to stop the City Place matter-of-right project, which met existing zoning.

She contended that the council resolution establishing the committee contained an error when it claimed that the area included the most intact 19th century streetscape in the city – the 400 block of South Fifth Avenue. That block is actually interrupted by two parking lots and a large playground created by the demolition of early houses, she said. She pointed out that many of the owners of houses outside the recommended district want to be included in a district if one is established. But many of the owners of properties inside the proposed district are opposed to being included in the district, she said, which is demonstrated by the petitions that had been submitted that day. The creation of a district, she concluded, would be for the wrong reasons.

Ellen Ramsburgh, who is a historic district commissioner, told the council that she applauded the committee’s work and understood the conflicting views about the southern boundary. She suggested that the council appoint a study committee to study the expansion. She reminded the council that historic districts are a tool that can be used to manage development and to preserve neighborhoods. A good example of a historic district that works is the Old West Side historic district, she said. The city’s historic district commission, she said, performs its function well. The commission approves about 90% of the proposals that are presented to it. She said that projects are improved by going through the historic district commission review.

Susan Wineberg introduced herself as a member of the historic district study committee. She said she’s lived in the Old Fourth Ward since 1983, when a historic district was established there, and that she’d only seen improvements. It had resulted in the creation of a neighborhood group and a sense of identity for the neighborhood. She said that 95% of the neighborhood is rental, but the renters benefit from having the neighborhood group advocate for everything from parking permits to street cleaning to tree planting.

Seated are three members of the historic district study committee (left to right): Susan Wineberg, Kristi Gilbert, Patrick McCauley.

Wineberg also sought to dispel a misconception that historic districts regulate paint colors or issues inside of houses. A historic district does not regulate paint colors and deals only with the exterior of the houses, she said. She gave the example of subdivisions that have various rules about what can be done to houses, which is something that people like – it provides a sense of predictability and stability, she said. She allowed that she did not know if the increase in property values in the Old Fourth Ward had been a function of the properties’ inclusion in a historic district or if it reflected a general rise in property values near the university. She also pointed out that one of the benefits to property owners in historic districts is the tax credits that are available – she’d taken advantage of them and had saved a lot of money, she said.

Ethel Potts told the council they’d heard a lot about the strong desire to honor the history of Ann Arbor and the excellence of architecture and workmanship by establishing a historic district. Less talked about, she said, are the financial and economic benefits of establishing a historic district. The Old West Side had started as “scruffy,” she said, and had now become “charming.”

Christine Crockett told the council that a historic district would give property owners an incentive to maintain their property, something they already had demonstrated even without a historic district. It would encourage property owners to maintain the beauty of Ann Arbor, she said. When pictures are shown of Ann Arbor, you never see pictures of the newer buildings. It’s the older buildings that are chosen for pictures depicting Ann Arbor, she said. Responding to Jane Belanger’s comments to the effect that houses in a historic district are expensive to maintain, Crockett said that maintaining any house is expensive. In a historic district, however, there are tax credits available to offset some of the expense.

John Floyd, a Republican candidate for Ward 5 city council in November, began by applauding what Alex de Parry had proposed to do with the Heritage Row project, which would preserve the seven historic houses. He’d toured the site twice, he said – once with a member of the study committee. What de Parry proposed to do with the site was, Floyd said, “fabulous” and should be acknowledged. He also said it should be acknowledged that de Parry had the right to develop something on the backside of the site.

Floyd said he also supports the establishment of a historic district. If there were not some concern about the houses being destroyed, he said, the topic of a historic district would not come up. He characterized the area where the district was proposed as part of the “charm zone” of Ann Arbor – the ring of pre-WWII houses around downtown. As part of the charm zone, Floyd said, the houses are part of the signature element of Ann Arbor’s built environment.

Leafy neighborhood blocks surrounding the downtown core, Floyd contended, give Ann Arbor a unique character that helps to partly offset the disadvantages of climate and geography in the competition to attract and retain talented people. He said he also advocates appointing a committee to explore expanding the district southward of Packard Street and over to Jefferson and perhaps even Hamilton Place.

Rita Mitchell asked the council to vote to support the district and immediately approve a study committee for an expanded district – south of Packard and eastward as well. The money spent on rehabbing houses, she said, would immediately create jobs, and the increased value of the properties would also increase the tax base.

Richard Jacobson criticized the study committee report for neglecting to include notable residents who had lived in the area south of Packard Street. Among the notables were Henry Otto, who’d led the Otto band, which had been the first band to play the UM fight song, “Hail to the Victors.” Bruno St. James had owned a dry goods shop and was a partner in Goodyear & St. James, on South Main. He’d served as an alderman from 1906-1910, Jacobson said. George Walker was the owner of Walker & Co., the most successful carriage shop in Ann Arbor, Jacobson told the council.

Anne Eisen, who lives in the proposed district, asked the council to approved the district – it would get the city about half way to the goal. How much she would continue to invest in her house, she said, depended in part on whether the city council voted to extend the protection of a historic district to the neighborhood.

Ray Detter stated that there should be no question that the houses in the proposed district were worthy of historic district designation. The committee had approached its work, he said, with honesty, hard work, and transparency. The city staff had provided assurance that there was a legal right to establish the district. As far as the boundaries were concerned, Detter said, in his experience boundaries of historic districts were always arbitrary. A historic district for the neighborhood would be consistent with the city’s master planning, he said. He rejected the policy position of the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti Regional Chamber of Commerce to expand the downtown area to the surrounding neighborhoods.

Alex de Parry, the developer who had proposed the Heritage Row and the City Place projects, said he wanted to go on the record as not supporting the establishment of a historic district – it was being proposed for all the wrong reasons, he said. It did not meet the Secretary of Interior guidelines, he said, and the committee’s report contained many mistakes. He called it “an abuse of the historic district process.” Potential tax credits are not a rationale for creating a district, he said. Responding to a remark by Ray Detter that boundaries of historic districts are arbitrary, de Parry said he found the idea “rather strange.”

Beverly Strassmann introduced herself as president of the Germantown Neighborhood Association. She said that the residents north and south of Packard Street wanted the historic district to extend all the way to Madison Street. The boundaries that had been proposed, she said, are “arbitrary and capricious” and denied many of the residents equal protection under the law. The houses left out of the district, she contended, would be subject to even greater development pressures. Those property owners, she said, have every right to the same tax credits for historic preservation and renovation as the residents north of Packard.

Strassmann contended that the consultant who had advised the study committee had not adequately advised the committee about their obligations under the law. Strassmann quoted from the Secretary of the Interior guidelines: “When selecting boundaries for a historic district, include the area that contains the highest concentration of intact resources.” The most intact block, Strassmann said, was the 500 block of South Fifth Street between Packard and Madison. She told the council that establishing a historic district would put the city in legal jeopardy. She urged the council to table the proposal and to convene an entirely new study committee.

Graham Miles introduced himself as the owner of several properties in the 500 blocks of Fourth and Fifth avenues south of Packard. He said he’d like to see those houses included in a historic district.

Susan Whitaker thanked Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) for sponsoring the resolution that established the historic district study committee. She noted that it had been the city council that had set the boundaries for the study area. She said that the neighborhood supported development when it was done right, citing Zaragon Place 2 as an example of high-density development done in an area suitable for that [at the southeast corner of William and Thompson]. She alluded to the support that Margie Teall (Ward 4) had shown for her own ward’s Lower Burns Park neighborhood by leading an effort to downzone part of the area to protect single-family houses.

Susan Whitaker spoke in favor of establishing a historic district.

[Teall is campaigning partly on that rezoning. From The Chronicle's coverage of a recent Ward 4 candidate forum: "Two years ago, she said, she had worked with her colleague from Ward 4, Marcia Higgins, to rezone part of Lower Burns Park to prevent more single-family residences from being broken up into multiple rental units."]

The area proposed for a historic district, Whitaker said, provides diverse housing options for people ranging from older couples, to young singles, to college students. She called it a model neighborhood for new urbanism and livability. She said the study report shows that the area is a “precious commodity.”

Patrick McCauley, who chaired the historic district study committee, said he’d prepared a long list of reasons for establishing the district and how they’d followed all the rules. Despite what some people were saying, he said, the study committee “did not kill anybody, we are not an Al-Qaeda plot.” He said he wanted to talk about why he still lived in Ann Arbor, given that he’d been “trying to get out of here for a long time.” He described himself as a housepainter, whose wife is a managing editor who works in Plymouth. They’d decided to stay in town after graduating from college, he said. Why? Because Ann Arbor is different. He said he kept checking out other places to live, but he kept coming back because it’s different – it’s not Royal Oak. Ann Arbor doesn’t believe in development at all costs, he said.

Marianne Zorza introduced herself as resident and owner of a house south of Packard Street that would be excluded from the proposed historic district. She said she wanted to tell the story of a family of historic preservationists who had saved six houses on the block. The matriarch of the family had been able to buy a house on the block. Her children and grandchildren had then been able to buy houses around that house, when there’d been a trend to tear down houses and replace them with modern apartment buildings. She said that she hoped the city council would honor the family’s early preservation efforts by taking steps to preserve the block south of Packard.

Zorza said that the report improperly draws the boundary line. She said she was not a politician and didn’t know how to make it work so that the cohesive neighborhood becomes one historic district – that’s what they’re trying to achieve, she said. She urged the council to work towards that end.

At the subsequent public hearing – on the establishment of an industrial development district for a portion of Green Road – Brad Mikus stepped again to the microphone to point out that there was not a lot of notetaking by councilmembers during the historic district public hearing. What had been the point of the public hearing? When mayor John Hieftje admonished him to address the topic of the current public hearing, Mikus said he’d made the point he wanted to make.

Historic District: City Council Deliberations

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) led off council discussion by saying that when he and Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) had brought forth the resolution to form a study committee, it was because there was a recognition that the area should be considered for historic preservation. The committee’s report, he said, confirmed that they were right about the formation of the study committee, which he said the majority of the council had supported.

Hohnke contended that the final report demonstrated that the resources in the precisely defined area of study unambiguously exceeded the criteria for listing in the national register – in terms of their age, integrity and significance of the resources. He said that 90% of the resources are contributing and 75% have a high level of integrity. It’s pretty clear, he said, that on the historic merits it’s reasonable to consider the area for preservation.

Hohnke said that Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) had appropriately brought forth at the previous meeting of the council – when the district had received its first reading – comments from a study committee member [Rebecca Lopez Kriss] to the effect that the study committee had considered only the historic merits of a district. It’s up to the city council to take a broader view, Hohnke said.

Hohnke allowed that there were many stories about people who might have had difficulty undertaking some modification to a structure in a historic district. However, he said that was different from the question of the establishment of a district. He noted that 90% of proposed projects in historic districts are approved by Ann Arbor’s historic district commission.

He pointed to the economic vitality that historic districts can provide to a community and to the uniqueness that they contribute to Ann Arbor.

Hohnke thanked the members of the study committee for their hard work, which they had done rigorously, fairly and openly. They’d produced a report of high quality, he said. Based on the association with the history of Ann Arbor, the association with important civic leaders, and benefit to the economic vitality of the city, he said he supported the establishment of the district. The balance between development and preservation would be well-served by the district, he concluded.

Derezinski said that the debate could be had by people of good intentions on both sides. He suggested that a simple way of looking at it is this: Do we look to the past, or do we look to the future? Are we looking forward or backwards? He called it a real moment of truth for the city involving two significant issues – the historic district and the Heritage Row development, which the council had rejected at its last meeting.

Derezinski said that while the legalities of establishing the historic district had been raised by some, he wanted to ask whether it was wise to establish a district. As he had done at the council’s first reading, Derezinski again quoted from a letter that Rebecca Lopez Kriss had written to council as a member of the historic district study committee. The committee had not been asked to analyze the economic effects, the feasibility, how it would fit into long-term planning on land use, or the impact on revenue compared to alternate uses.

Derezinski then quoted a passage from a blog posting by Lou Glazer, cofounder of Michigan Future Inc., which was written in the wake of the city council’s decision to reject the Heritage Row project [From "Why Ann Arbor Won't Be an Economic Engine"]:

But the notion that Ann Arbor is best positioned to drive Michigan’s transition to a knowledge-based economy is widely held across the state. Unfortunately Ann Arbor’s politics make it unlikely to happen. Yes, Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan – a world class research university – which is a terrific asset. But to leverage the asset there has to be a large pool of talent that both will attract knowledge-based enterprises and commercialize the ideas coming out of the university. That talent pool won’t concentrate in Ann Arbor as long as it’s politics are anti-growth, particularly anti-density.

The City Council just turned down another development designed primarily for young professionals. It’s a regular occurrence. Is it easier in Ann Arbor to do higher density development today than five years ago? Yes, but it still is real hard.

The result: Ann Arbor has about one third the young professional households as Madison. A chief reason, Madison offers the kind of high density, mixed use, walkable neighborhoods that Millennials are looking for, Ann Arbor doesn’t. [...] So Madison is an engine for the Wisconsin economy, Ann Arbor isn’t for Michigan.  Unless Ann Arbor becomes much more development friendly and much more responsive to the changing demands for housing and density don’t count on Ann Arbor being an engine for the Michigan economy.

Derezinski then unfurled a large city map showing those parcels that were either university-owned land or in one of the 14 already-existing historic districts in the city.

City councilmember Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) unfurls a map of Ann Arbor that shows land that's either owned by the University of Michigan or in an existing historic district.

He then read a long passage from a letter that Jan Barney Newman had written to AnnArbor.com on the city council’s rejection of Heritage Row. “I don’t understand the logic of these decisions,” Newman wrote.

Derezinski began the wrap-up of his comments by quoting Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall”:  “Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.” He called on his colleagues not to “calcify” their vision of the city in the past. He concluded with a pun on the “Cross of Gold” speech given by William Jennings Bryan at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago on July 8, 1896: “Do not crucify us on a cross of old.”

In his remarks, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) rejected the idea that the decision on the historic district was a referendum on preservation versus progress. For him, he said the questions were: (i) Does the proposed district meet the National Register Bulletin 15 standards? (ii) If it meets the standards, is the district in the long-term interest of the city?

In 50 years, Taylor said, they would be “the dead hand of the past” and so the decision had better be right.

By way of background, the criteria for consideration from the National Register Bulletin 15 subsequently cited by Taylor are these:

A. That are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history; or

B. That are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or

C. That embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity whose components may lack individual distinction;

Taylor said that according to the study committee’s report, collectively the resources in the district are historically significant according to criterion (A) and several meet the criteria (B) and (C) at the local level.

In his view, Taylor said, collectively meeting the criterion (A) would be a sufficient condition for establishing a historic district, while those criteria of only limited satisfaction – (B) and (C) – would not be a sufficient condition to establish a district. He then set about to evaluate criterion (A).

The study committee’s report concludes that the district meets criterion (A) because it encompasses a residential neighborhood that was established and has survived since Ann Arbor’s earliest days, Taylor said. It provides an excellent example of a neighborhood established in the latter half of the 19th century and evolved through the first half of the 20th century.

However, on reading Bulletin 15, in the section that explains criterion (A), Taylor did not feel the criterion was met. From the bulletin:

The event or trends, however, must clearly be important within the associated context: settlement, in the case of the town, or development of a maritime economy, in the case of the port city. Moreover, the property must have an important association with the event or historic trends, and it must retain historic integrity. [...] Mere association with historic events or trends is not enough, in and of itself, to qualify under Criterion A: the property’s specific association must be considered important as well.

Based on the study committee’s report, the proposed associative event is general, not specific. Survival, said Taylor, is not an important event or trend. He contrasted it with the report of the Old Fourth Ward study committee, which clearly and consistently related the Old Fourth Ward area to Ann Arbor’s founding. For the Fourth/Fifth Avenue proposed district, that kind of specific founding is absent, Taylor contended. The report itself acknowledges that the primary area of German settlement was in an area west of Main Street in what is now the Old West Side (OWS) and clearly referenced in the OWS study report.

Taylor then looked at criterion (B), which the committee report contends is met because the proposed district contains several homes of several Ann Arbor citizens who were locally important to the development of the city. Quoting from Bulletin 15 again, Taylor expressed doubt that this was sufficient to meet the criterion:

The criterion is generally restricted to those properties that illustrate (rather than commemorate) a person’s important achievements. [...] The persons associated with the property must be individually significant within a historic context. A property is not eligible if its only justification for significance is that it was owned or used by a person who is a member of an identifiable profession, class, or social or ethnic group. It must be shown that the person gained importance within his or her profession or group.

As he read the report, Taylor said, the people who lived in the houses were of standing in the community, but with the possible exception of mayors Hiram Beakes, Samuel Beakes and William Walz, they do not appear to have been important within their profession.

For criterion (C), Taylor again quoted from Bulletin 15:

A structure is eligible as a specimen of its type or period of construction if it is an important example (within its context) of building practices of a particular time in history.

As he read the report, Taylor said, there are several resources that exemplify to varying degrees a type or method of construction, but he did not believe that any of them are “important” examples.

Based on his understanding of the Bulletin 15 criteria and his reading of the report, Taylor said, he did not think the criteria were met. Even if they were met, he said, it would be necessary to establish it was in the long-term economic interest of the city. His vote against the district, Taylor said, should not be seen as a lack of concern for neighborhood cohesion or a sense of place.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) thanked the members of the committee for their work – the detailed house-by-house cataloging of the district. She said she enjoyed reading the report. It struck her that at the time, 60-year-old houses had been torn down and moved to build the houses that now existed there. For Smith, the protest petition signed by 22 owners of the 53 properties in the district – 41% of them – was significant. She noted that a protest petition for a planned unit development (PUD) required only a 20% threshold. [That threshold had been met for the Heritage Row project, which had the effect of requiring an 8-vote super-majority for approval. Protest petitions have no formal role in the process for establishing historic districts.]

Smith indicated she was still wrestling with the issue, and was looking forward to hearing the rest of her colleagues’ comments.

Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) echoed the sentiments of Taylor and Derezinski. He said his interpretation was that the standards were not met collectively. Rapundalo also said he agreed with Smith’s observation that opposition to the district within the proposed area, based on the protest petition, was significant.

Addressing the contentions that some speakers had made about the state agency considering the report to be a model,  Rapundalo said he had not seen anything that addressed the substance as opposed to the form of the report. He also noted that the central area plan calls for integrative architecture and design guidelines to ensure consistency of scale and character of neighborhoods. Nowhere does it point to historic districts as the sole tool for achieving that. He concluded that he would be opposing the district.

Hohnke acknowledged that Taylor had argued forcefully in terms of the district persisting functionally in perpetuity. But he said he didn’t think that was accurate. In exactly the same way that they were now going through a process to form a district, said Hohnke, at some future point the community could elect to undergo the prescribed process to dissolve the district, if it no longer served the interests of the community.

Alluding to Derezinski’s remarks, Hohnke said “I dare not refute Tennyson, so I will refute Mr. Glazer!” He said that the idea that politics in Ann Arbor are anti-growth is simply not accurate. He noted that dozens of projects over the last 10 years have been approved – Hohnke said he would not bore his colleagues with the list, which he has ticked through on a couple of recent occasions.

Hohnke then stated that the idea that Ann Arbor is not an economic engine in the way that Madison is – as Glazer had contended – “is just bunk.”

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said that back in 2005, before she had been elected to the city council, she’d stood at the podium asking the council for their support for a historic district. She’d spent a lot of hours working on the study committee and then waiting for the council to act. She therefore knew that a lot of work went into the process.

Briere said it’s difficult to imagine what it would take to answer the question about the economic effect of a district on future economic growth. However, she said she believes that Ann Arbor’s historic districts create an opportunity for the stabilization of neighborhoods. The establishment of the Old Fourth Ward and the Old West Side historic districts had both resulted in redevelopment, she said.

We want to keep the charm of our neighborhoods, she said, and we don’t think about how to convince people that our houses are interesting. They’re the fabric of what makes Ann Arbor Ann Arbor.

Derezinski responded to Hohnke’s contention that a historic district could be dissolved by a prescribed process by asking if any of the already-established districts in Ann Arbor had been abolished. What is the momentum in a situation like this? He pointed out that many people were already calling for the district’s expansion.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) said it was a difficult decision and that she was troubled by the large number of people who had signed the protest petition. She said she appreciated Smith’s speculation about how many houses the current mayor has lived in might be seen as historic. She noted that the Heritage Row development that had been rejected would have preserved the houses. She concluded that she would not be supporting the district.

Mayor John Hieftje said he could see how the vote was going to go and he didn’t want to make a long statement. He said that the city might want to look at the issue that Smith had raised about the contrast between a PUD protest petition that could raise the threshold to an 8-vote super-majority and the historic district protest petition, which had no particular legal standing.

Hieftje also said that he’d been talking to a lot of people lately and had concluded that there is a very clear generational divide in the city on the issue of preservation. He said he’d been taking a lot of flak for some votes he’d made in the past. A lot of people under 40 have said that they were very upset that he hadn’t voted for certain projects, he reported. To hear that they felt they weren’t being given a chance was interesting for him to hear, he said. There would be a change eventually, he said, because there would be a new generation that takes over.

Hieftje concluded by saying he agreed with Hohnke’s statements and he’d come to the meeting prepared to support the district and that’s what he intended to do.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he would support the district not based on a heavy analysis, but rather on the fact that it was the right thing to do. All 14 historic districts lend character to the community, Kunselman said. We can listen to what other people say about our community and talk about economics, but he said that if you look outside of the inner ring of the city, there are a lot of empty apartments and houses. In his neighborhood, Kunselman said, three houses had been torn down and a fourth would soon meet the same fate.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Sabra Briere (Ward 1).

Kunselman said that one of the issues the community continued to deal with is the policy set by the first president of the University of Michigan, Henry Tappan: Students would live in the community and the university would not build housing for them. That’s what we’re living with today, he said.

[Note: For a detailed analysis of University of Michigan student housing and its impact on the community, a good place to start is Dale Winling's 2007 master's thesis, which he discussed on his blog, Urban Oasis.]

North Quad, set to open this fall, is a step in the right direction, Kunselman said, but for the last few decades we haven’t seen construction of many new dormitories. That contributed to the conversion of near downtown neighborhoods to rental housing. He said that as a townie who’d grown up in Ann Arbor, he was dismayed by the change that has taken place in the neighborhoods closer to downtown. Without a historic district, we’d see the houses torn down, lots accumulated and “cash boxes” constructed, with the loss of the city’s neighborhood character. He said he supported a historic district and asked his colleagues to consider changing their votes.

Smith asked Kevin McDonald of the city attorney’s office if there was any mechanism for residents of a historic district to opt out. His one-word answer: No. So it’s all or nothing? she asked. McDonald’s answer: Yes!

Smith asked if historic districts precluded construction behind houses or additions. Jill Thacher, who is a city planner specializing in historic preservation, told Smith that additions were possible in a historic district, and that the historic district commission routinely approved them.

Briere then asked about the ease of adding another story. That’s not usually encouraged, said Thacher.

Outcome: The vote on the historic district was 4-6. Voting against it were: Stephen Rapundalo, Margie Teall, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Marcia Higgins, and Christopher Taylor. Voting for it were: Sabra Briere, Carsten Hohnke, John Hieftje, and Stephen Kunselman.

Reconsideration: Heritage Row

After the historic district vote, Stephen Rapundalo called his colleagues’ attention to the fact that there was an approved site plan for the City Place matter-of-right project that could still be built if there were no historic district. So he floated the idea of reconsidering the Heritage Row vote from the council’s last meeting.

Two parts of the council’s Rule 12 eventually came into play in the ensuing parliamentary maneuvers. The first part concerns who may bring a motion for reconsideration. The second part concerns how many times a question can be considered.

From the council rules [emphasis added]:

Rule 12 – Consideration of Questions When a question has been taken, it shall be in order for any member voting with the prevailing side to move a reconsideration thereof at the same or the next regular meeting; but, no question shall a second time be reconsidered.

Rapundalo had voted for the Heritage Row project, which had been defeated – he was thus not on the prevailing side, and was prohibited by Rule 12 from bringing a motion to reconsider Heritage Row. Rule 19 provides a mechanism for overriding other rules.

RULE 19 – How Rules May Be Altered Council-adopted rules may be altered or amended by a vote of the members-elect, if notice of the changes proposed to be made shall have been given the Council at a preceding regular meeting, and a written copy of the proposed changes distributed to all members of the Council.

Council-adopted rules may be suspended for the time being by a vote of two-thirds of the members present.

Rapundalo said he’d prefer not to go through the suspension of the rules, if someone from the prevailing side wanted to bring the motion. But neither Briere, nor Kunselman, nor Hohnke were so inclined.

So Rapundalo’s first step was to bring a motion to suspend Rule 12 so that he could bring a motion for reconsideration. With Mike Anglin’s absence, the 2/3 requirement translated to 7 votes required for the suspension of rules. The vote on that motion was 7-3, with Briere, Kunselman and Hohnke voting against it.

Rapundalo then brought the motion to reconsider the Heritage Row vote. That vote was 7-3 with Briere, Kunselman and Hohnke voting against it.

On the Heritage Row project itself deliberations were brief. Smith said that preserving the seven houses was a real benefit. That had been a reason for her to consider the historic district. Hohnke indicated that he was still processing the rule change. The historic district would have done a very good job of preserving the houses, so if the Heritage Row project were now approved, he would move to reconsider the historic district.

Teall said she appreciated Rapundalo’s “winging it” and understood Hohnke’s point that a historic district would provide the benefit of preserving the seven houses. But she returned to the fact that many of the property owners in the neighborhood didn’t want to be included in the historic district.

Rapundalo addressed Hohnke’s contention that a historic district was a better preservation tool by saying that in absolute terms that might be correct, but the situation was that there was a matter-of-right project with a green light for construction if the Heritage Row project were not reconsidered.

Hieftje said that based on conversation with one of the neighborhood leaders, that person didn’t think the matter-of-right City Place project would ever be built. But Hieftje said he didn’t agree with that. And for that reason the best course of action – given that the historic district had been turned down – would be to approve Heritage Row. He didn’t want to take a chance and wanted to support Heritage Row because it did preserve the houses.

Briere said that she appreciated the mayor’s comments, but noted that the council had a choice about whether  to support a historic district. She also contended that Alex de Parry and his wife had said boldly and strongly at the podium that they had no intention of building the matter-of-right development. She said that nothing had changed with respect to the Heritage Row project in the last two weeks. The only thing that had changed, she said, was that the council had chosen not to support a historic district.

Smith said that she’d seen some heads shaking over among the developer’s team in response to Briere’s remarks. She asked the de Parrys to address the council to clarify. Alex de Parry said that the language regarding the public easement for Heritage Row had been prepared – the lack of an easement for the public plaza in the actual supplemental regulations had been noted as a deficiency by Kunselman at the council’s previous meeting.

De Parry also said that they would be replacing all the street trees in need of replacement along Fifth Avenue between William and Packard on both sides of the street. He also corrected the number of bedrooms that people had talked about at the council’s previous meeting – it’s 154 bedrooms, not 163, he said.

Betsy de Parry also clarified that they had never indicated that they were not going to build the matter-of-right project, as Briere had contended. What they’d wanted to do was to rehabilitate the houses – that was their “wish and deepest desire,” she said.

Hieftje said it wasn’t just the matter-of-right project that concerned him. He said he figured, if the matter-of-right project were not built, there would be other proposals that would not result in the preservation of the houses.

Kunselman, however – who was perceived as the possible swing vote – said that if there was to be no historic district, he didn’t understand the need to preserve the homes. Moving them closer to the road as proposed would put them out of character and out of context, he said. He suggested that perhaps townhomes would be in order – 3-4 stories with garages.

Outcome: The vote on the reconsideration of Heritage Row was 7-3, with Briere, Kunselman and Hohnke voting against it. It thus failed because it did not achieve the required 8-vote super-majority.

Hohnke then attempted to bring back the historic district for reconsideration, but could not, because he had not been on the prevailing side. He’d incorrectly understood the previous suspension of Rule 12 to apply for the rest of the meeting. He thus needed to first bring a motion to suspend Rule 12. That motion failed 6-4 – it needed 2/3 of 10 present members, or 7 votes, to succeed. Teall, Higgins, Derezinski and Rapundalo voted against it.

Then Hohnke moved to suspend the part of Rule 12 that concerns how many times a question can be considered, so that the Heritage Row project could be considered for a third time total and for the second time that night. That motion succeeded, with only Kunselman and Briere voting against it.

Hieftje then called for a brief recess, and during the break, Hohnke and Briere conferred. In a telephone interview with The Chronicle the day after the meeting, Briere said she shared with Hohnke her belief that de Parry would not build the matter-of-right City Place project.

Returning from the break, Hohnke apologized to his colleagues, citing confusion about the suspension of the rules and what he contended had been conflicting advice from the city attorney. He then withdrew his motion to reconsider Heritage Row.

Pressed during a break to assess whether she considered the proceedings weird, Ethel Potts, who has witnessed several decades of Ann Arbor politics allowed, “As weird goes, this was pretty weird.”

Present: Stephen Rapundalo, Margie Teall, Sabra Briere, Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Stephen Kunselman, Marcia Higgins, John Hieftje, Christopher Taylor, Carsten Hohnke.

Absent: Mike Anglin.

Next council meeting: Monday, July 19, 2010 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave.

A sign in the Washtenaw County administration building directs residents who want to apply for a concealed weapons license.

Whether more adults legally able to carry guns enhances or erodes public safety is a matter of debate. What’s not in doubt is that more community members want the option: A member of about 1 in every 20 households in the county now holds a permit.

The number climbed in late 2008 and 2009 as people across the U.S. acted on concerns that Democratic leadership in Washington might promote restrictions on firearms, according to law enforcement officials.

The upward trend has continued in Washtenaw County, fueled – according to gun-rights sympathizers – by continuing worry about potential legislative restrictions, along with concerns about crime and shrinking public-safety budgets.

So far this year, 1,019 county residents have applied for permits. If that rate continues, the county would see a more than 20% increase over 2009’s record-setting 2,255 applications.

“It’s amazing,” says retired Washtenaw County sheriff’s deputy Ernie Milligan, who chairs the county’s concealed weapons licensing board, which held its monthly meeting this week. “In the past year or so, I’ve started to see roadside signs advertising CCW classes. That may help fuel it, but there’s a fear factor, too.”

Under legislation that liberalized Michigan’s gun laws in 2001, state residents 21 and older who complete a safety course can apply for a permit to carry concealed weapons. Criminal convictions and mental-health problems can disqualify applicants. But unlike the “may-issue” law it replaced, the 2001 “shall-issue” law leaves local gun licensing boards with little room for subjectivity. For the most part, an application yields a permit.

In 2010, 983 permits have been issued so far in Washtenaw County. Seven applications were denied.

CCW Applications: Putting the Trends in Context

Looking at the data requires some sense of history.

When the law was changed in 2001, there was a wave of new applications. The numbers then fell off until the three-year permits first issued under the “shall-issue” law started expiring. Renewals pushed applications up in 2004.

In the meantime, rules were changed so that permits would be valid for five years. That contributed to higher numbers in 2009. And it makes the increased activity this year – an off year for renewals – all the more striking.

Indeed, more county residents applied for CCW permits in the first three months of 2010 than did in all of 2006 or 2007.

The average number of applications per month so far this year – 230 – dwarfs the monthly averages for most of the past five years (54 in 2006; 45 in 2007; 98 in 2008; and 188 in 2009, a year when many permit holders were renewing.)

In 2004, that first renewal year, the average was 85 per month – a total of 1,025 for the year. [.pdf file of Washtenaw County CCW applications, by month, from 2004 through April 2010.]

About 15% of the permit holders in Washtenaw County are women, Milligan says. The greatest concentrations of permit holders are in rural parts of the county.

With a population about 4,967 and 437 permits, for example, nearly 9% of the residents of Chelsea can carry concealed weapons. Assuming one permit holder per household, that means there’s a CCW permit holder in about 20% of the occupied households (2,093) in Chelsea.

About 23% of the permits countywide are issued to Ann Arbor residents, and 33% to residents of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. With their larger populations, that means about 1.6% of Ann Arbor residents and 3.3% of Ypsilanti area residents hold permits. [Those figures are approximate, as data from the county gun licensing board is broken down by mailing addresses, which are imperfect reflections of actual community boundaries. Link to listing of CCW permits by location, as of April 2010.]

“The trend in Ann Arbor is more permit applicants this year,” says Ann Arbor police chief Barnett Jones. “But they’re still not big numbers.” There were 206 applicants from Ann Arbor residents in the first four months of this year, compared to 162 during the same period last year.

“I don’t want to suggest that means Ann Arbor is an easy place to commit crime,” says Jones. But neither does he encourage the idea that armed civilians enhance public safety.

“Over the course of my career, I’ve seen officers with very rigorous training make mistakes,” he says. It’s logical that the risk is greater for a civilian with far less training. “We just saw that play out in Detroit when the victim of a robbery fired at the perpetrator and accidentally killed a woman in her house,” Jones says.

How It Works: The Weapons Licensing Board

Obtaining a license takes one to three months. The process includes 1) filling out a one-page application with a $105 fee, a photograph and proof that you’ve completed a pistol safety training course; 2) getting fingerprinted and a background check by the sheriff’s department, and 3) additional background checks by the state police and FBI.

The Washtenaw County concealed weapons licensing board at their May 18 meeting. From left: Ernie Milligan, chair; Jennifer Beauchamp of the county clerk’s office, who serves as the board’s staff support; Sgt. Kurt Schiappacasse of the Washtenaw County sheriff’s department; and Lt. Wynonia Sturdivant, Michigan State Police Ypsilanti Post commander.

The final step is a review by the county’s weapons licensing board. The board meets monthly – since applications have increased, they now meet for two full days, reviewing applications and holding interviews with a small subset of applicants.

The May meetings were held this week on Tuesday and Wednesday in a small conference room near the county clerk’s office, at 200 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. Chaired by Milligan, the three-person board includes Sgt. Kurt Schiappacasse of the Washtenaw County sheriff’s department and Lt. Wynonia Sturdivant, Michigan State Police Ypsilanti Post commander.

Jennifer Beauchamp, deputy county clerk, takes minutes of the meetings and is the staff person who processes all the applications. Before October 2008, the job took up about 20% of her time – now, it’s closer to 60-65%, she says.

For May’s meeting, the group was reviewing 242 applications and had scheduled 18 interviews over the two days. The meetings are open to the public, but the interviews – during which criminal histories and other personal information might be discussed – are not. Much of the meeting that The Chronicle observed on Tuesday morning consisted of the three board members reading through stacks of blue file folders that contained the applications and other documents, making notes, and calling staff at the sheriff’s department or state police post to get additional information.

Periodically they would compare notes to see if any of them had questions about the applications. Of the first two dozen or so applications reviewed, only two were flagged – one for a missing zip code, and another for what appeared to be an incomplete background check. The others in that batch were approved.

The group has a comfortable rapport, teasing each other and swapping stories as they work. Sturdivant related how she worked security detail for President Obama’s May 1 speech at the University of Michigan commencement – she got a photo taken of herself with Obama. Schiappacasse was there too, also working security, but more on the perimeter – he did, however, get a photo taken standing next to Marine One, the helicopter that brought Obama to Michigan Stadium.

But mostly, their focus was on the applications – with 242 to process, including the 18 interviews, they were settled in for two long days.

The Fear Factor

There’s no objective way of knowing what’s behind the trend of increased applications. Applicants are not required to state their reasons for wanting to carry a concealed weapon. However, those closest to the situation tend to point to the same things.

“People are afraid the president is going to take away their guns,” says Milligan.

Former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin repeated that assertion just last week. In the 2008 election campaign, Obama did pledge to 1) revive an assault-weapons ban; 2) press states to release data about guns used in crimes; and 3) close a loophole that allows the sale of firearms at gun shows without background checks. He has yet to take up any of those issues.

“There are a lot of people who want to make a statement about their right to bear arms,” says Milligan. “And the economy has a lot to do with it. People are worried.”

Washtenaw County’s unemployment rate of 9.6% in March 2010 is up significantly from 4.9% in March 2008.

Monroe County resident Frank Purk is a National Rifle Association-certified instructor who teaches firearms-training classes in Washtenaw County. He says his students range from 21-year-olds to “great grandmas and grandpas.” All, he says, are people who want to be able to protect themselves.

Increases in the number of applications for weapons permits are a “function of the inability of government to provide the protection we need,” says Purk. High unemployment can lead to crime, he says. “People want firearms for self protection.”

Like Milligan, Michigan NRA representative Alan Herman sees many people getting permits on principle. “They’re just exercising their right and have no intention of carrying.”

“Others go through training and think it’s real exciting, but then they find out it’s a pain in the butt because you can’t go into different places,” says Herman.

Concealed-carry permit holders are barred from taking firearms into schools and child-care facilities, sports arenas and stadiums, taverns, hospitals, casinos and large entertainment facilities, college dorms and classrooms, and religious facilities – except when allowed by the presiding official.

In addition, property owners and operators can set their own policies and some do prohibit weapons.

“If you’re going somewhere where carrying could be problem, you have to think twice,” says Herman, a Bay City resident who’s taught firearms-safety classes and served on his local gun licensing board. “Most people can’t carry every day.”

“I think the big reason that the number of permit applications is still escalating is concern about safety, because of things like police layoffs,” he says.

Public Safety Concerns: Perception, Reality

It’s certainly true that financial pressure on all levels of government has affected law enforcement.

Data collected by the FBI shows sworn officers in the Michigan State Police down about 12% statewide from 2000 to 2008.

The contraction in the Ann Arbor police department during the same period was 20%, and more positions have been eliminated since then. The city of Ypsilanti and county sheriff’s department have reduced their head counts by 15% and 5% respectively.

Crime statistics are more mixed.

Data reported to the FBI by the Washtenaw County sheriff’s department, and Ann Arbor and Ypsllanti police departments in 2000, 2005 and 2008 (the most recent year available) does show spikes in some kinds of crimes. For example, the number of aggravated assaults, robberies and burglaries reported by the sheriff’s department all increased from 2005 to 2008.

On the other hand, there were more reports of violent crime, robberies, property crimes and burglaries in Ann Arbor in 2005 than in 2008. And the city saw more robberies, burglaries and larcenies in 2000 than in 2008.

In some cases, perceptions don’t align with data, says county Sheriff Jerry Clayton.

For example, in Ypsilanti Township, home invasions have gone down, says Clayton. “But because of what they hear in the media, most people in that community still feel more threatened when they should feel safer.”

In other cases, the overall incidence of a crime may not change, but the locations may. That, too, can shape perception in ways that may not be accurate, says Clayton.

County prosecutor Brian Mackie says there have been some upticks in crime. Nevertheless, he’s skeptical about a correlation between crime rates and demand for CCW permits.

“When we had discretion (under the “may-issue” law) and could ask why people wanted permits, a solid majority talked about going to or near Detroit,” he says.

Still, it does appear that more women and families are applying for permits, says Mackie, who declined to serve on the county weapons licensing board after the shall-issue law was enacted. Milligan was appointed by the county board of commissioners in 2001 to fill the seat usually held by the prosecutor’s office.

The demographic data that could create a profile of typical permit holders is confidential, as are the identities of permit holders. A Michigan State Police spokeswoman said that the agency is not allowed to release information beyond what appears on its website. The local data in this report has been provided to The Chronicle by local officials.

Do Concealed Weapons Make Us Safer?

The shall-issue law was enacted over the objections of statewide police chiefs, sheriffs and prosecutors associations. And while CCW champions make the case that the ability to carry concealed weapons improves safety, others see prohibitions on firearms as a security measure.

At Briarwood Mall, for instance, the Simon Property Group has a code of conduct for patrons that precludes them from carrying firearms and knives. That code is posted at most if not all entrances and at the mall office, says Simon spokesman Les Morris. “We overtly prohibit guns. We’re cognizant of safety and have really enhanced security from a technological standpoint. We take it very seriously and that begins with that code of conduct.”

For Sheriff Clayton, the increasing number of civilians potentially carrying firearms is cause for some concern.

“It causes concern with our own staff and we train continuously,” he says.

“We train, not just in how to use firearms and accuracy, but on how to manage a situation so that we never have to engage,” he says. “In law enforcement, we own every round we fire. We emphasize decision-making around the use of a firearm – who’s behind an aggressor … The unintended consequences should always be on people’s minds.”

Milligan, of the county gun licensing board, offers additional perspective: “Even if you have good training, these are perishable skills. You have to practice. It worries me a little that, to renew a permit, you don’t need any proof that you continue to practice. You just sign a statement. … You have to maintain a pistol. There’s a lot to it.”

But the NRA’s Herman sees armed citizens as a crime deterrent.

“The increasing numbers work in our favor,” he says. “They change the perception for bad guys.”

Chronicle publisher Mary Morgan contributed to this report. About the writer: Judy McGovern lives in Ann Arbor. She has worked as a journalist here, in Ohio, New York and several other states.

An apple tree near the park-and-ride lot at I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road. (Photo by the writer.)

Every school child learns that Newton “discovered” gravity when an apple fell out of a tree and bonked him on the head.

Near the park-and-ride lot at I-94 and Ann Arbor-Saline Road stands an apple tree. Most, but not all, of the tree’s fruit this season has already succumbed to Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.

About 50 yards northwest of that apple tree is the new – and likely very temporary – location of “Camp Take Notice” – a tent camp where maybe a dozen homeless people spent the first night in September. Standing under the apple tree Tuesday afternoon, The Chronicle spoke by phone to Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County.

Schulmeister characterized the “bottom line” for the homeless: “It’s simple physics,” she said. “People have to be some place, and if people don’t have a place to be, they will find a place to be.”

If it’s a matter of physics, then it’s perhaps perfectly natural that the guy who drove the U-Haul truck to move the camp from its previous location – behind Toys R Us at Arborland – is a University of Michigan doctoral student in physics, Brian Nord.

This is a story that does not yet have an end, nor will it likely ever have one. But we can write down the part we know so far, which began with a Chronicle visit to the camp behind Arborland earlier this summer, and goes through a visit from a Michigan State Trooper to the new camp location early Tuesday evening.

At the entrance to "Camp Take Notice" in July 2009 (Photo by the writer.)

Background: What’s the Goal of the Camp?

Moving “Camp Take Notice” from behind the Toys R Us at Arborland was always a part of the plan for residents of the tent community, but not on Tuesday’s more-or-less involuntary schedule. The tent community is a self-governed group of campers who say they are well on their way to achieving 501(c)3 nonprofit status for their organization: MISSION (Michigan Itinerant Shelter System Interdependent Out of Necessity).

Tuesday afternoon, Robin Rich, board member of MISSION, told The Chronicle that the final paperwork for the nonprofit was expected to be approved in the next week or two.

The plan had been to move the tent community off the private property behind Arborland – where the property owner had given them no explicit permission to camp – to church properties where congregations grant them permission to camp for a specified time period. The idea is to secure arrangements with multiple churches, and to rotate the camp location after a period of months.

The effort to secure those commitments from area churches has begun. Part of that effort consists of a media packet that’s been distributed to churches. And Tuesday morning, camp resident Jesse A. told The Chronicle that he’d attended a couple of the in-person contacts made by the campers with area pastors. These efforts have not yet succeeded.

Caleb Poirier talks with an Ann Arbor police officer outside the campsite behind Arborland on Tuesday morning. (Photo by the writer.)

The idea of temporary homeless shelters is not novel. It’s been used in Seattle, for example, where camper Caleb Poirier lived for a while. So he’s modeling the effort here in Ann Arbor on what he experienced in Washington.

The premise behind the approach is that not every homeless person fits the model assumed by bricks-and-mortar institutions such as the Delonis Center.

Camp Council: “It’s 10 weeks until cold!”

Back in July, during Art Fairs week, The Chronicle attended one of the weekly camp council meetings held Thursdays at 7 p.m. at the campsite. They’re open to the public, just like the weekly board meetings held Mondays at 7 p.m. at the Malletts Creek branch of the Ann Arbor District Library.

When The Chronicle visited, there were 17 tents at the site. With campers sitting in a rough circle in office chairs – which were not intended to roll across the fresh straw that had been spread throughout the site – Poirier called the meeting to order: “Anybody want to chair the meeting?” Hunter R. volunteered to chair. “Who’d like to keep time?” Nord, the physicist, said he’d be the time keeper. “Minutes?” None of the dozen campers expressed a willingness to do that task. After a pause, Nord offered that he’d keep minutes as best he could in addition to keeping track of time.

"Camp Take Notice" in July 2009. (Photo by the writer.)

Hunter then led off chairing the meeting. The first order of business was to set the agenda. It boiled down to four basic points:

1. morale check
2. supply check
3. progress on flyer and media packet
4. strategize on reaching out to churches

It was the last two points that generated the most discussion. George Lucero – who became interested in the camp when an acquaintance of his became homeless and started staying there – gave an update on his work on the media packet and the cover letter to the churches. It was agreed that each letter should be customized based on the congregation. The consensus was that it was important for campers themselves to be a part of the delegations that made contact with the churches.

There was not a complete consensus on an appropriate sense of urgency. Hunter wanted to see contacts being made as soon as the following week. “It’s 10 weeks until cold!” he warned. Others felt that congregations needed some time to decompress after Art Fairs. Plus, many people were out of town, and congregations were unlikely to make a firm decision.

Johnny A. suggested that the passive versus a more aggressive approach to contacting churches reminded him of the story of two bulls on the hill. Asked by Poirier what that story was, Johnny declined: “There’s women around, I can’t tell it.”

Brian Nord shakes hands with AAPD officers Tuesday morning at the campsite behind Arborland. (Photo by the writer.)

What Led to the Camp’s Move

Overnight low temperatures in the Ann Arbor area over the last few days have dipped into the 30s. So the arrival of the cold, which Hunter had warned of, came a few weeks earlier than expected.

But the request from authorities to leave the property had not been expected.

Why wouldn’t they have eventually expected to be forced off the land?

The parcel, which is zoned residential, measures a little less than 50 acres and is owned by Peters Building Co. in Saline. The president of Peters Building is Jim Haeussler.

The campers contend that they’d communicated with Haeussler, and they maintain that while he had not given them permission to live there, he’d indicated he wasn’t planning to initiate legal remedies to force them off the land, either.

Ann Arbor Police Department officers at the site Tuesday morning indicated to campers that they’d spoken with the property owner that morning, and said that he had not given the campers permission to stay there.

AAPD officers also expressed concern about the fire hazard from all the straw that was spread through the campsite, plus the piles of cleared brush. They’d seen evidence of open burning at the site when they’d inspected it the previous evening. They’d been called to the site in response to a complaint of a disturbance.

Camp residents told The Chronicle there’d been three visits by AAPD officers to the site on Monday, the previous day.

From statements by the officers and camp residents, the complaints of disturbances led AAPD to contact both the city attorney and the property owner, which ultimately led to the request on Monday evening to leave the property.

Ellen Schulmeister, executive director of the Shelter Association of Washtenaw County, said that on Monday evening the Delonis Center staff had offered to shelter anyone from the camp who was sober. A few of the campers took the center up on their offer.

Schulmeister also explained that the center houses around 150 people each year – that’s the number of people they are able to transition from their 50-bed shelter facility at 312 W. Huron St. to more stable permanent housing. That’s roughly 10% of the total 1,500 homeless population that the center serves.

Officers on the scene behind Arborland on Tuesday morning stressed to campers that they could not simply squat on private land unless they had explicit permission from the property owner to do so.

A New Camp Location, But Probably Not For Long

The first truckload of camp building materials arrived at the new location – north of the park-and-ride lot on Ann Arbor-Saline Road at I-94 – around noon on Tuesday. By around 3 p.m. a complaint had already been called in, and Ann Arbor police as well as a Pittsfield Township officer had arrived on the scene.

Caleb Poirier talks with an AAPD officer at the new campsite Tuesday afternoon. (Photo by the writer.)

Part of the reason the new camp was easy to spot was that in the last few weeks the area has been cleared of all brush and undergrowth by the Michigan Department of Transportation, which controls the land.

When The Chronicle arrived at the park-and-ride, Poirier introduced to us one of the AAPD officers as “a reasonable conversationalist.” From what we observed, conversation on both sides could be fairly characterized as polite, civil, yet firm. AAPD officers at the park-and-ride reiterated the same message that had been delivered in the morning: You can’t camp on land that isn’t yours.

Campers were advised that there were other avenues they should pursue – a request to city council, for example. Poirier, for his part, stressed that on issues like homelessness, real progress was rarely made by using only the prescribed avenues. He also outlined how the group’s strategy was to secure permission from churches to camp on their property.

Because the land where the tents had been set up is not owned by the city, the AAPD doesn’t have jurisdiction over it. So the Ann Arbor officers departed, leaving campers with the expectation that the county sheriff’s department would be arriving later. “Whoever comes out,” advised the officer, “just listen to what they have to say.”

A Michigan State Police Trooper checks tents for occupants Tuesday evening. (Photo by the writer.)

It turns out that, because MDOT controls the land in question, it was a Michigan State Police trooper, not a Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputy, who was tasked with official enforcement of the law. So a little before 7 p.m. a trooper pulled into the park-and-ride lot, and went down to the camp. The same polite, civil and firm conversation was repeated for the third time the same day.

This time, though, there was more than conversation. The trooper collected identifying information from everyone at the camp and radioed it in. He wasn’t arresting anyone that night, but they’d be checking back, he said, possibly as soon as the next day.

Who Are These People and What Are They Thinking?

A sampling of what “Camp Take Notice” residents think about the camp would include Johnny’s thoughts from mid-July: “There’s nothing but positivity around here.” And that sampling would need to include Stretch’s description of how he’d been through various treatment programs, and never could stay sober – but he’d been sober at the camp since November 2008, he said.

We also heard some stories of how homelessness affects your ability to get a job – two job offers since April could not be accepted because the offers coincided with losing a place to live close to the jobs.

Caleb Poirier, when asked by the Michigan State Police trooper if he was the group’s leader, resisted the label – decisions of the group are made democratically, he stressed. But there is no question that other campers look to him for leadership. At the July meeting, Hunter – who had been pushing more urgently than Poirier to convince churches sooner rather than later to grant permission to camp on their property – still said, “I’ve been on Caleb’s team since day one. I didn’t really care about homeless people, and I was a homeless person.”

Hunter was a homeless person, but he’s still involved with MISSION. Many of the members of MISSION’s board are not homeless, have never been homeless, and would probably not be mistaken for a homeless person – but that’s hard to say for sure.

Take Lily Au, for example. She was out at both the old and the new campsites on Tuesday. She told The Chronicle that she learned about “Camp Take Notice” when someone mentioned it to her when she was volunteering at a Friday pizza distribution at Liberty Plaza. It’s an event often sponsored by the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor. So she went out to visit the camp. There she met Caleb Poirier – for the second time. She’d run into him long before at an Arby’s. That day at Arby’s she had been there with her two kids and had been lugging a lot of bags. And maybe because of the bags, Au says, Poirier had sized her up as homeless.

In following this story, The Chronicle can attest that it’s not easy to tell who’s homeless and who’s not – who’s a camper and who’s helping out but doesn’t live in the camp.

[For useful insights on who the homeless are, read a Nov. 30, 2008 Chronicle column by Peri Stone-Palmquist: "We Must See the Homeless – And We Must Help"]

Caleb Poirier and an AAPD officer at the campsite behind Arborland Tuesday morning. (Photo by the writer.)

Michigan State Police trooper at a park-and-ride campsite Tuesday evening. At right is Lily Au. (Photo by the writer.)

Unloading the truck at the park-and-ride campsite. (Photo by the writer.)

A U-Haul truck backs up to the park-and-ride campsite. (Photo by the writer.)

Rules of the camp. (Image links to higher resolution file)

"Camp Take Notice" in July 2009. (Photo by the writer.)

The view from under the apple tree at the park-and-ride, looking towards the new campsite location. (Photo by the writer.)