David Erik Nelson

I voted to re-elect Barack Obama. I doubt that’s a terrible shocker, but I want to explain why I did so – and why, regardless of how the economy looks on Jan. 1, or next summer, or in four years, I will still be proud of that decision.

In the run-up to Nov. 6 we kept hearing – and by extension kept telling each other – that this election was “about the economy, stupid!” I beef with that claim, but don’t reject it entirely – certainly not so long as I’m writing under the banner of being “In It for the Money.”

A lot of Americans frame the American Dream as one of economic security. While economic security is obviously a vital component of the Dream, to see that as the whole Dream is – as I’ve sorta harped on in the past – more than a little sad. When Jefferson cribbed Locke for the Declaration of Independence, he revised those original unalienable rights from “life, liberty, and estate” to the often ironically snarked “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I doubt that was a typo.

Call me a sucker, but like Honest Abe, I believe in the Declaration of Independence as the fundamental expression of what our Unfinished Work [1] is all about – now in its 236th year. And, while you may need to bank some Estate in order to pursue that Happiness, it’s a bit shallow to argue that acquiring the Estate is the same thing as acquiring Happiness.

When I stood at the flimsy little voting station – a plastic tray with telescoping metal legs, set up in Allen Elementary School – I wasn’t there to vote for a smaller national debt or expanded social programs or lower taxes or higher unemployment. I was there to vote to advance our Unfinished Work.

And that meant filling in the bubble next to Obama/Biden. Let me explain.

An Experiment In Liberty And Equality

Back in 1790 the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island were a little anxious. Newport (at that time called “New Port,” because that’s just exactly what it was) had been largely a loyalist community, and was occupied by the British throughout the Revolution. Jews were not equal under British law. They wouldn’t be emancipated in the United Kingdom until the mid-1800s(!), and weren’t even precisely recognized citizens of the Crown. They were naturalized in Great Britain by the Jew Bill of 1753, but were then de-naturalized the following year due to public outcry. The bigotry under which they lived, as British subjects, was legally sanctioned and popularly supported.

These Jewish colonists had been treated well in New Port when it was a British Colony, but were understandably a bit more interested in being part of this experimental new national government “erected by the Majesty of the People.” When Washington swung through New Port on his post-election victory lap, the Jews of New Port wrote him a letter of support, signed by Moses Sexias [2].

Washington’s oft-quoted reply, which echoes Sexias’s turn of phrase, goes like so [emphasis mine]:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

That phrase, calling ours a government “which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance” is my National Anthem. It makes my heart sing every time I come across it, and always has – even before I’d learned that it wasn’t just the gracious words of Our First President, but also the ardent articulation of the hopes of a bunch of my (largely anonymous) fellow Jews.

Improving the Unfinished Work

Lincoln nailed it when he called ours an Unfinished Work. When Washington bit the lines of Sexias, this bouncing baby nation still sanctioned plenty of bigotry and assisted in lots of persecution. Article IV, Section 2 of our damned Constitution assured slaves that there was no way they could outrun their involuntary servitude on U.S. soil, and would keep doing so right up until Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment.

Because I understand the Human Project to be one of fixing up a messy world [3], I’m sort of accustomed to Unfinished Work in need of incremental improvement. When I step into a voting booth, when I need to pick a president, I don’t ask myself, “Am I better off than I was four years ago?” [4] I ask myself, “Who brings us closer to being the thing we’re supposed to be: The Nation that gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance?”

And, I’m sorry, but there was no indication anywhere in the Romney/Ryan platform of our nation, under their leadership, even inadvertently stumbling toward giving bigotry less sanction. Meanwhile – and perhaps this sounds crass, but it’s just as true as a plumb bob – by dint of skin tone alone Barack Obama did more to move our national needle away from the “Sanctioned” end of the Bigotry dial than any living president. Add in his support of marriage equity, his abandoning of the Defense of Marriage Act and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” his championing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 and reproductive rights, and you have a president who has done more to de-sanction bigotry in this country than any in 150 years.

Before everyone I know and love freaks out and tears my head off because of Wall Street and “murder drones” and Bradley Manning and energy independence and the economy (stupid!) and Israel and Palestine and Libya and Syria and David Petraeus and everything else that isn’t gonna be under the Yule Tree this year, or next year, or the year after, listen: I’m not saying that the PotUS is a Magical Wish-Granting Negro come to make all of our Progressive dreams come true. I am saying that he’s a President of the United States of America and that, since George Washington’s inauguration in 1789, that job has primarily been about improving the Unfinished Work by moving us closer to Giving Bigotry No Sanction – even if the white, slave-owning Christians who started us down this road could hardly fathom how far we’d run with their flowery talk.

That is the job – not shepherding the economy, not brokering peace in the Fertile Crescent, not energy independence, not any of our pet projects. The job is to bring the nation we’ve got closer to being the Nation We Set Out For: The one that, like no other to ever grace this globe, Brings Justice to All.

Expanding The Electorate Expands Equality

Perhaps what’s most emblematic of the progress embodied by the Obama’s re-election is how he pulled it off. Often elections seem to focus almost exclusively on first solidifying support among the party faithful, and then with wooing “independents” (i.e., registered voters who show no party affiliation). What was extra-special about the Obama Campaign – and resulted in both a tidy majority in the popular vote and pretty stunning chunk of the Electoral College [5] – was how deeply it focused on expanding the electorate instead of wooing the independents. The campaign sought out citizens who were likely to support the president but had never voted before, and brought them into the conversation. From a marketing perspective, this is an entirely different activity from traditional campaigning, because you aren’t seeking to shift an existing behavior (“Buy Coke instead of Pepsi!”) but to create a new behavior (“Go to the gym instead of standing around drinking pop!”)

So, that’s one last nudge away from sanctioning bigotry and assisting persecution: Bringing the disenfranchised into the national conversation. I can think of nothing that better exemplifies what our democracy should be about than dropping millions of dollars on convincing people who don’t think their voice is valid or valuable that they need to join the conversation.

In the days following the election, as I heard both the Romney/Ryan campaign and Mitt Romney himself bemoaning – and even demonizing – this project of expanding the electorate, I was left to wonder what the hell country he thought we were living in. Just to review some basic American Civics: If you’re running for an elected position in a democracy and your opponent can rally more citizens who agree with his views than yours, it’s your views that are fucked up, not the People.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me? [6]

Our jaded election-season canard is that elections are bought, plain and simple. In or defense, this cynicism [7] seems to be born out by experience: Elections do tend to go the candidate who’s raised the most money, and it’s easy to construct a narrative whereby spending lots of money results in winning an election. [8]

We all grant the reality of the correlation between campaign spending and winning elections. But correlation isn’t causation. We can all imagine lots of possible mechanisms that would explain how high campaign spending could result in winning elections, but that by no means proves that spending all of that money causes a candidate to win an election. In fact, to the contrary, we’ve got decent evidence that it doesn’t.

Back in 2005 Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (last decade’s Nate Silvers) took this on in their book “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” and their finding was that elections aren’t won because Candidate X raises and spends the most money, but instead that popular candidates are able to raise the most money. The cash doesn’t buy them votes, but is instead a signal of the votes that they are most assured of receiving. [9]

Every election cycle since 2005 Levitt and Dubner have taken a beating. People don’t like Levitt and Dubner’s “the money doesn’t matter” conclusion, and hasten to point out that if the money doesn’t matter, it’s weird that the candidates expend so much juice and burn so much karma separating us form our cash. And, to give the doubters their due, it’s hard to find clear-cut cases where the Fat Cat doesn’t seem to have at least possibly won by virtue of lucre.

Levitt and Dubner are (nominal) economists. They don’t have the opportunity to devise and run actual experiments and see what happens when, say, you take an emotionally neutral issue (like, oh, I dunno, maybe bridge construction) and run a well-funded campaign encouraging voters to make a terrible decision that no rational person would ever purposefully endorse. If the world of marketing is any indication, a well-funded ad campaign for something of dubious value trounces un-marketed healthy behavior every time, no mater how obvious the healthy choice is. [10]

Oh, wait a second – this year we ran just such an experiment, in the form of Matty Moroun’s odious Prop 6. One side spent upwards of $34 million to run wickedly manipulative video ads and a direct-mail campaign that will go down in the Annals of Excessive Advertising. On top of that, Moroun poured untold dollars (thousands? millions?) into running live phone banks (they called me – and argued with me! And wouldn’t frikkin drop it even as I got sorta spittle-flying-screamy!) and manning polling places on Election Day with folks handing out more misleading “literature.” On the other side, at most $100,000 was spent on a very modest video and print advertising campaign. [11] Maroun spent at least 340 times as much as his opponents – and yet Prop 6 was crushed.

Despite this excellent experiment in how much of an impact money really has on how people vote, I don’t imagine anyone will stop picking fights with the Freakonomics Boys any time soon – for two reasons. First, I think we like cynically carping about how it’s all crooked and that the votes are bought. We’ve made our electoral system into a sort of game show, and so we tune in for much the same reasons: To watch the money (and then to grouse about what a waste all that money was).

Secondly, believing that cash rules everything around us gives us an out. It makes us feel smart for not bothering to really participate – because we see through the bullshit, man. As long as we focus on just the cash-money – and the fact that someone other than you or me or my mom or your neighbor has most of it – we get to ignore our individual failures to bring that Unfinished Work a bit closer to completion. And we get to sidestep the basic question: What have we done to advance the Justice that we, as schoolchildren, pledged was for All?

Notes

[1] “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the Unfinished Work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

[2] Sexias was the the head of New Port’s Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel, and the most pertinent bit of this letter reads:

Deprived as we heretofore have been of the invaluable rights of free Citizens, we now with a deep sense of gratitude to the Almighty disposer of all events behold a Government, erected by the Majesty of the People – a Government, which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance – but generously affording to all Liberty of conscience, and immunities of Citizenship: deeming every one, of whatever Nation, tongue, or language equal parts of the great governmental Machine.

[3] Please see tikkun olam for further details.

[4] Which has always struck me as an incredibly selfish way to think about government. Shit, I’m better off than I was four years ago, on balance, but plenty of folks I know aren’t, and plenty more continue to teeter on the brink. Is it really for the best that I vote my best interest? Is that the road to progress?

[5] Stunning in that it exceeded expectations despite census-driven changes in the apportionment of the Electoral College, which shifted about a dozen votes from traditionally blue states to red ones.

[6] Which is the Wu Tang Clan’s gloss of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and abbreviated “C.R.E.A.M.” For the curious, here’s my favorite remix of “C.R.E.A.M.”, which layers the lyrics over the Beatles’ “And I Love Here.”

[7] Still recalling that cynicism is cheap wisdom for dumb people.

[8] Something like “A candidate is a product, like anything else. Whoever raises the most money has the biggest advertising budget and can run the most ads, and thus get the most people to ‘buy’ their product – everyone in the world knows who Ronald McDonald is, and it isn’t because that clown makes the best burger or fries in any given locale.”

Incidentally, when people let this assumption go unquestioned and then defend it when challenged, it sorta makes me wonder if they’re really stupid, or if they think everyone else in the world is really stupid. I mean, is it too much to credit our fellow citizens with just maybe treating their choice of president with a little more gravity than their choice of value meal?

Anyway, if you’re really interested in the myriad ways that this kind of “narrative thinking” leads us astray, check out “The Science of Fear: How the Culture of Fear Manipulates Your Brain” by Daniel Gardner.

[9] How Levitt and Dubner came to this conclusion is a bit too nitty-gritty for me to summarize here – I suggest reading the book, or just hitting this recent interview with one of the authors, which offers a nice, tidy summary of their findings.

[10] Just one quick e.g.: It wasn’t until we mounted huge anti-smoking ad campaigns – and curtailed cigarette advertising via government regulation – that we began to chisel away at a behavior that we’d know for decades was basically a death sentence. See also drunk driving and M.A.D.D.

[11] Incidentally, I’ve yet to meet anyone who saw any anti-Prop 6 material; did you? Did that money even get spent?

The Chronicle relies in part on regular voluntary subscriptions to support our publication of local columnists like David Erik Nelson. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle. So even while cash doesn’t rule everything around the Chronicle, we do need hard cold cash to keep going. So if you’re already sending in some cash on a regular basis please encourage your friends, neighbors and colleagues to send some, too!

AATA board members met in a workroom at AATA headquarters for their July 16 special meeting. Clockwise around the table starting at the far left: Anya Dale, David Nacht (obscured behind Dale), Jesse Bernstein, CEO Michael Ford, Sue Gott and Eli Cooper. (Photos by the writer.)

However, the longest and most vigorous discussion took place on an item not actually on the published agenda: compliance by the AATA with Michigan’s Public Act 152, signed into law in September 2011, which limits employer health care contributions to a fixed dollar amount. At their July 16 meeting, board members took no further action on the issue, letting the vote taken at their previous meeting on June 21, 2012 stand – for now. An additional special meeting might be called sometime in the next week.

The board’s discussion of new information, obtained from the Michigan attorney general’s office, as well as additional analysis of Act 152, suggested a kind of vindication for the position of two dissenters – Charles Griffith and Roger Kerson – in the board’s June 21 action.

That action had been to limit the AATA’s contributions to no more than 80% of the non-union employee health care cost. Adopting the 80% limit is another way for a public entity to comply with Act 152. And the board had voted on June 21 to do that for its non-union employees – because open enrollment was fast approaching for those employees.

As part of that compliance decision, AATA put together a new health care option, which would allow its non-union employees to choose a health care option that would cost them the same as before – but increase their co-pays. And by the time of the July 16 meeting, employees were participating in the open enrollment process, using the boardroom for that activity.

So the board met in a smaller workroom to handle its business for the July 16 special meeting.

That business included a $60,000 increase in the contract with Steer Davies Gleave, the international consulting firm the AATA hired to assist with the development of its transit master plan. The work has included identifying new service options and financial analysis for AATA’s initiative to expand its governance and service area countywide. With this and other previous increases, the value of the contract now totals $780,622, from a deal first signed in April 2010 for just under $400,000. Some of the additional $60,000 will essentially be passed through to a local consulting firm, Carlisle Wortman Associates.

In other business, the board struck a task-order style deal for marketing and advertising with Quack! Media and Pace & Partners Inc. – a three-year arrangement that could be extended for another two years. The $500,000 total authorized by the board works out to $100,000 a year.

The board also authorized an increase in the contract it has with Blue Cab to provide its NightRide service, which operates after the hours when fixed-route service stops running. The increase is from $28 to $32 per service hour for a contract that extends through 2013. Of the $4 increase, $3 is attributed to the AATA’s relatively new living wage policy.

In a final piece of business, the board authorized a $104,000 contract with RBV Contracting to relocate a fire hydrant as part of AATA’s bus garage expansion project.

Compliance with Michigan’s Public Act 152

The board discussed at length an action it had taken at its previous meeting on June 21, 2012 in order to comply with Michigan’s Public Act 152, which was signed into law last year. The board did not take any action on the issue at its July 16 meeting, but left open the possibility of calling a special meeting before July 23, when the “drop dead” date falls for health care open enrollment for AATA’s non-union employees. The health care plan year begins Aug. 1.

Public Act 152: Background

Public Act 152 limits the amount that a public employer like the AATA can make to its employees’ medical benefits plans – $5,500 for single-person coverage, $11,000 for two-person coverage, and $15,000 for family coverage. However, the act provides another option, under which a public employer can choose through a vote of its governing body (in this case, the AATA board) to not apply the hard dollar cap. Instead, the employer can limit its contribution to 80% of the medical benefit, leaving the employee to cover the remaining 20%. It’s this 80/20 option that the AATA board had exercised in its June 21 vote.

The board’s special meeting on July 16 was held in AATA headquarters at 2700 S. Industrial Highway, instead of the usual location at the downtown Ann Arbor District Library. But it was not held in the dedicated boardroom – because that space was being used for open enrollment in the health care plan.

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

Two board members dissented on the June 21 vote: Charles Griffith and Roger Kerson. Neither was able to attend the July 16 meeting. David Nacht, who had not attended the June 21 meeting, was present on July 16.

That led to deliberations that covered much of the same ground as the June 21 discussion. However, a couple of new points are worth highlighting, which were made plainer to the AATA by a letter the Michigan attorney general’s office sent to the U.S. Dept. of Labor. The letter pointed to two specific ways that transit agencies could comply with Act 152, without limiting contributions to employee health care. [.pdf of May 29, 2012 letter] First, a transit agency could vote under Section 8 of Act 152 to exempt itself from compliance. Based on the AATA board member deliberations on June 21, their understanding was that they could not, as appointed officials, exercise that option.

The Michigan attorney general’s letter also points to Section 9 as a way to comply. Section 9 of Act 152 provides an explicit penalty for non-compliance, suggesting that the law in some sense does not apply to transit agencies – because the penalties involve taking back 10% of state funds that such agencies don’t receive anyway. Those funds include the state’s current version of state-shared revenue, as well as school aid funds – which the AATA does not receive. From Act 152:

15.569 Noncompliance by public employer; penalty.
Sec. 9.
If a public employer fails to comply with this act, the public employer shall permit the state treasurer to reduce by 10% each economic vitality incentive program payment received under 2011 PA 63 and the department of education shall assess the public employer a penalty equal to 10% of each payment of any funds for which the public employer qualifies under the state school aid act of 1979, 1979 PA 94, MCL 388.1601 to 388.1772, during the period that the public employer fails to comply with this act. [.pdf of full text of Act 152]

Why was the Michigan attorney general’s office communicating with the U.S. Department of Labor? It’s because Title 49 of United States Code 4333 5333 on labor standards set out conditions for receipt of financial assistance from a range of federal programs – and among those conditions are protection of employment conditions that derive from collective bargaining rights. Based on the Michigan attorney general’s letter, the U.S. Dept. of Labor has found the use of Section 8 or Section 9 by Michigan transit agencies an acceptable way to continue to meet its USC 5333 obligations. From USC 5333(b):

(b) Employee Protective Arrangements.—
(1) As a condition of financial assistance under sections 5307–5312, 5316, 5318, 5323 (a)(1), 5323 (b), 5323 (d), 5328, 5337, and 5338 (b) of this title, the interests of employees affected by the assistance shall be protected under arrangements the Secretary of Labor concludes are fair and equitable. …
(2) Arrangements under this subsection shall include provisions that may be necessary for—
(A) the preservation of rights, privileges, and benefits (including continuation of pension rights and benefits) under existing collective bargaining agreements or otherwise;
(B) the continuation of collective bargaining rights;
(C) the protection of individual employees against a worsening of their positions related to employment;
(D) assurances of employment to employees of acquired public transportation systems;
(E) assurances of priority of reemployment of employees whose employment is ended or who are laid off; and
(F) paid training or retraining programs.

Public Act 152: Board Deliberations

Board chair Jesse Bernstein began by posing a question about the employee health insurance benefits, which David Nacht translated roughly as follows: If the board doesn’t rescind its June 21 motion today, and takes action later to rescind, would that “screw up” what’s happening right now in open enrollment? In response to Nacht, Ed Robertson, AATA’s human resources manager, told him: “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that question.”

Board member David Nacht deliberates at the July 16, 2012 meeting.

Robertson clarified that the new health plan, about which AATA’s non-union employees are currently making choices, starts Aug. 1. [AATA's union employees are not immediately affected, as their contract goes through the end of the year; however, they participate in the same health care plan as non-union employees.]

Robertson indicated that his uncertainty was based on the fact that he’s not sure what information has already been transmitted to the AATA’s health insurance carrier. He stressed he was not saying the plan couldn’t be revised. Bernstein confirmed with Robertson that employees are making their decisions on health care coverage, based on the motion the board passed on June 21. Bernstein ventured that the board needs to find a way to “back out of it.”

Nacht, who is an attorney but does not provide legal counsel to the AATA, responded by saying the first thing the AATA must do is make sure it follows the law. As he understood the draft resolution that the board had been presented that day, there’s at least an oral opinion from the U.S. Dept. of Labor that Michigan’s Act 152 violates federal law with regard to the AATA’s labor union. However, Nacht continued, the AATA might still have a legal obligation under the state law to follow it with respect to the AATA’s non-union employees. Nacht said he understood that there’s an attorney general opinion, which has some relevance – because Michigan attorney general opinions are treated as legally binding in the absence of a court opinion.

But the bottom line is, said Nacht, that “we need our lawyer to tell us what to do.” The board risks breaking a law, if the board says it doesn’t have to follow a state law. So he concluded that the board should get legal advice, before passing a resolution saying that the AATA isn’t going to follow a state law.

Michael Ford, the AATA’s chief executive officer, commented that other transit agencies in Michigan are doing this “right now as we speak.” Robertson confirmed Ford’s statement, saying that’s what the AATA had been told by the U.S. Dept. of Labor. Bernstein indicated that he felt the board needs to find out how to back out of the board’s previous vote for non-union administrative staff, so that on Aug. 1 they can continue with the health plan they have now, if they choose to do that.

Nacht responded to Bernstein by saying if the state passed a law saying the AATA should follow it, he was not sure why the AATA should back out of it. Bernstein indicated his understanding was that there were certain criteria – based on the receipt of certain kinds of money from the state. The AATA does not receive that kind of money from the state, he said. If the law doesn’t cover the AATA, he continued, he didn’t know why the AATA would put its non-union employees through this procedure.

Ford asked Chris White, AATA’s manager of service development, to explain further, building on Bernstein’s comments. White said that Act 152 contains an opt-out provision for cities [Section 8] – which allows a governing body to take a 2/3 vote to opt out of following the law. [It's not clear why AATA believes Section 8 could not also apply to a transit agency.] For non-cities, White continued, there is a separate clause [Section 9], which he summarized as saying that are no penalties for not following the law. The legislature had given “an out” for both cities and non-cities in Act 152, White concluded.

Nacht ventured that the board has both a legal issue and a policy issue. The policy issue, he said, is complicated. He said it’s not something that he’d be prepared to say how he feels, because he hasn’t seen a memo analyzing it. It’d be possible to say, for example, Nacht said, that we have to comply with this law, but we’re concerned about regressive impacts on employees, and want to have some budgetary compensation for employees – but at the same time we want our organization to do what most public entities are doing.

Otherwise put, the AATA’s position might be that it doesn’t want employees to take a hit, because the agency is concerned about its people, Nacht said. But in the spirit of the legislature’s action, as much as the AATA cares about its people, the board also has a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayer dollars. The board needs to discuss its obligations under both law and policy, before it does anything, Nacht said: “We need to have a conversation about that.”

Bernstein ventured that the board did have a conversation about that at its last meeting [which Nacht did not attend]. Bernstein told Nacht that the consensus was that the board did not want to negatively impact “any employee” based on Act 152. He felt the sentiment on the board was fairly clear.

Eli Cooper picked up on Bernstein’s phrase “any employee” and noted that he felt the consensus was more about “employees as a class,” and the board had looked to the staff to recommend something that was equitable to the employees as a group. He agreed with Nacht that it’s a legal and a policy issue. Cooper conveyed some dissatisfaction with the fact that the draft resolution had been presented “as we walk into a meeting without an opportunity to review any background.” The issue was not “ripe for decision making,” he ventured.

He did appreciate the urgency of the matter, Cooper said. If the board can collect more information in the next day or two, there are still more calendar days when an emergency meeting of the board could be called – if the legal opinions and the policy analysis is such that the board is compelled to take action.

Ford responded to Cooper’s comment about the late introduction of the issue, saying he took responsibility for it. The AATA had just received the information, and he felt it was important for the board to be aware of it. He noted that the board had given staff direction at its last meeting to follow up on the issue. Ford said there’d not yet been an opportunity to follow up with legal counsel.

Nacht then apologized for not attending the last meeting, but noted that he’d read the minutes. From the minutes, he didn’t get the sense of the kind of consensus on the board that Bernstein had articulated. What he’d see in the minutes, Nacht said, was a divided vote. And he guessed that the additional information has been resolved “in favor of the dissenters.” Bernstein stressed to Nacht that “none of us were thrilled with this from a legal or a policy position.” The board was looking for a way – if the AATA had to comply with the law – to be fair to employees. It’s coming up at a bad time, he said, because of the tight deadline.

Bernstein asked for clarification from Karen Wheeler, Ford’s executive assistant, about what the rules are on voting if people are not present. [Bernstein was anticipating the possibility of convening a special meeting, and having some people participate by telephone or by sending a proxy.] Wheeler’s answer: “You cannot do it.” Bernstein confirmed that a person had to be present to vote, and could not vote by phone or with a proxy.

Nacht asked why the board could not deal with it as a financial matter. For now, he suggested, the AATA complies with the law until its lawyer gives a different opinion. If the board’s lawyer writes a letter saying the AATA doesn’t have to follow the law, then the board is in a whole different position about voting. He felt differently about voting under that kind of situation. But Nacht stressed that the decision has a financial impact for employees and their families. So through the budget process, the AATA can compensate and adjust if there’s a board consensus that there should be neutral impact to employees financially.

Bernstein returned to Cooper’s comment on individual employees, stressing that the potential impact to an employee is difficult to predict, because it’s dependent on each employee’s medical experience during the year. Ed Robertson had left the room during the deliberations to get some additional information, but returned to tell the board that the “drop-dead date” on open enrollment was a week from that day [July 23] for management staff.

Bernstein ventured that they should give staff a chance to gather more data and to get a legal opinion. Sue Gott stressed that she wanted a legal opinion in writing – so she could read it ahead of time. Nacht also ventured that he’d like to have a legal opinion on supplemental employee compensation based on health care receipts. Bernstein indicated no enthusiasm for that approach, saying it would be a “total nightmare,” citing concerns about breaching confidentiality. Responding to Nacht’s suggestion that confidentiality concerns could be addressed by using third-party administrators, Bernstein feared that costs would keep getting added.

Ford tried to extract some specific direction from the board. He ventured that he was supposed to get a legal opinion and then convene a special meeting. He’d need board members’ schedules for that, he noted. Nacht clarified for Ford that he’d like a legal opinion on three subjects: (1) How does compliance with Act 152 affect the AATA as it relates to USC 5333(b) for union employees? (2) How does compliance with Act 152 affect the AATA as it relates to USC 5333(b) for non-union employees? and (3) To the extent the AATA is following the law, what are some legal options about the AATA’s ability to adjust employee compensation? The deliberations concluded with Bernstein querying Ford: “Michael, are you clear?” “Got it,” was Ford’s reply.

Outcome: The board took no action on the issue, but held out the possibility for a special meeting to be convened in order to vote on the question.

Transit Master Plan Consultant Contract

The board considered adding $60,000 to the contract with Steer Davies Gleave, a consulting firm originally hired on April 21, 2010 to help develop a transportation master plan (TMP). The TMP is the basis for the AATA’s initiative possibly to convert the AATA to an Act 196 transit authority, with the intent to expand geographically the agency’s governance and service coverage area countywide. The consulting firm is assisting the AATA in that effort.

The original contract with Steer Davies Gleave was for $399,805. Over the last two years, the contract amount has been increased by board authorization on three occasions (on Nov. 18, 2010, July 19, 2011 and Feb. 16, 2012), which brought the total contract to $720,622. The July 16, 2012 authorization brought that total to $780,622.

Among other things, this most recent contract increase was to cover the following items: documentation of financial analysis; methodology for an equity analysis of the new service program; design and monitoring of the long-term countywide district-based community input; and administration of a community input planning tool. Of the additional amount in the contract, a portion will essentially be passed through to a local consultant, Carlisle Wortman Associates of Ann Arbor.

The previous increases to the contract covered an expanded public process, support to a financial task force, and the generation of a draft five-year service program. [.pdf of detail on Steer Davies Gleave contract changes]

Board member David Nacht said his understanding was that to some extent the additional funds would go to a local company [Carlisle Wortman Associates], which CEO Michael Ford confirmed. Nacht ask: “Is this going to be it, ya think, with this contract?” Ford indicated that the AATA is trying to “internalize” all the work that SDG has been doing until now. It’s his hope that this would be the final revision to the contract, he indicated.

Anya Dale, who serves as chair of the planning and development committee that had recommended the additional funds, noted that the resolution states it’s the “final contract amendment.” Ford indicated that if there were some compelling reason, it could be brought back, but the AATA is trying to bring the work in-house and “own it.”

Board chair Jesse Bernstein ventured that if the AATA needed some help from an international consultant like SDG, they could be hired for new contract, but this would finalize the transit master plan process. Nacht asked his colleagues to imagine that there’s some kind of an election in the spring [for example, on the question of a countywide transit millage to support expanded service]. No matter the outcome of that election, Nacht supposed, there would still not be any continuation of the SDG contract.

AATA strategic planner Michael Benham confirmed Nacht’s understanding. The intent is to bring the work in-house so that any changes to the plan or the service that might result from a popular vote could be implemented by the AATA staff. He expected that any necessary changes that might come from the results of an election would be, for example, to add a service here or take away a service there.

Sue Gott asked Benham to elaborate generally on the value SDG is bringing in terms of additional expertise, and productivity for added deliverables. She wondered if the issue was a matter of additional expertise or time and availability of AATA staff.

Benham clarified that the need for outside help had been the combination of the sheer volume of the issues that had to be handled, and with the fact that the AATA didn’t have staff on board who could do some of the analysis necessary. Now that the basic plan has been created, he said, AATA staff is in a position to do adjustments and revisions. Creation of the plan by AATA staff would have been difficult, he said. Gott asked if it’s fair to say that the majority of what SDG is bringing is added expertise. Ford indicated that it’s the expertise that SDG brings, as well as their international experience.

Responding to the mention of SDG’s international experience as critical – as it relates to some of the work that the additional funding will pay for, David Nacht asked, “Really? I mean, to attend the DAC [countywide district advisory committee] meetings and organize the DAC meetings?” Benham indicated that a lot of what this final contract revision is covering could be thought of as “training.” SDG has a lot of expertise, he said, and the AATA is asking SDG to hand it over to the AATA now.

Nacht told Benham that what he really heard Benham saying, and what sells Nacht on it, is not that SDG has international expertise. Rather, it’s that AATA has invested a lot of money with SDG to figure out the complexity of the service that will generate the actual routes for the buses in a countywide system. So as the AATA works with communities in the county and tries to transfer that knowledge – so people really understand it – the AATA needs to understand all of that, too, Nacht said. So it’s really in-house training for the AATA, so that AATA can run a countywide system, Nacht concluded.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve the $60,000 contract increase with Steer Davies Gleave.

NightRide Contract

The board considered an increase in its contract with Blue Cab, which is the vendor that operates the AATA’s NightRide service. The increase is from $28 to $32 per service hour for a contract that extends through 2013. The current three-year contract was set to expire in November 2012.

The NightRide is a shared cab service with a basic fare of $5, which is available weekdays from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. and weekends from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Those are hours when the AATA’s regular fixed-route service does not operate.

Of the $4 per service hour cost increase in Blue Cab’s contract, $3 is analyzed by the AATA as based on compliance with the AATA’s relatively new living wage policy. The other $1 is analyzed as a general cost increase.

The geographic coverage area of AATA’s NightRide was expanded eastward to Golfside Road in March 2011 and further to downtown Ypsilanti in January 2012 – as part of a broader effort to improve work transportation between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti. Ridership has increased about 40% from last year – with about 25 points of that increase due to broader geographic coverage and the other 15 points due to demand in Ann Arbor.

Ridership on the AATA’s NightRide service showed a clear increase starting in January 2012. 

During her report from the planning and development committee, Anya Dale characterized the increased net cost to the AATA of the hourly operating increase as coming to around $46,000.

During deliberations, board member David Nacht asked if there’d been any complaints about Blue Cab by patrons. Board chair Jesse Bernstein noted that he’d been thanked several times by restaurant employees for the geographic expansion of service.

Chris White, manager of AATA service development, indicated that the number of complaints about Blue Cab has been low historically. However, he allowed that in recent months, complaints had shown an increase. White attributed the increased complaints to the fact that a lot of new people are using the NightRide. White also said that Blue Cab has been good at addressing complaints when they’ve occurred.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve the Blue Cab contract extension.

Marketing, Public Relations Contract

The board was asked to authorize purchasing up to $500,000 of marketing and public relations services from Quack! Media and Pace & Partners Inc. over the next five years.

The marketing and public relations work will cover “public relations, education, community outreach and other communication services in support of AATA’s initiatives and general operations.” The two firms were selected after the issuance of a request for proposals that generated 13 responses from the 35 firms to whom the request was sent. Quack! Media is an Ann Arbor firm, while Pace & Partners is based in Lansing.

Board member David Nacht led off deliberations by asking why the AATA had switched vendors. Mary Stasiak, AATA director of community relations, explained that it had been a competitive procurement process. The decision was based on relative experience and qualifications, she continued. There was some specific experience, approach and management style the AATA was looking for, she said, to help move the strategic marketing and information plan forward. It requires a more sophisticated effort and project management, she said. The two companies the AATA had settled on use the same project management software, and they also have transit-related experience, she said.

Nacht confirmed with Stasiak that the AATA had a consultant study the AATA’s marketing efforts and that the request for proposals (RFP) had been designed in part based on findings of that study. But the company that performed the study is one of the companies that is being awarded the contract, Nacht said. He wondered: “So they came up with a recommendation that we should change in a way where they had a competitive advantage?” No, Stasiak said, because all respondents to the RFP were provided with the same information – the same marketing and strategic plan.

Nacht wanted to know if the situation had been scrutinized to make sure that the deck wasn’t stacked – that the consultant didn’t say, “What AATA really needs is a company that provides X” when the company “knows fully well that they have X better than their competition.” That’s always a danger, Nacht said. Stasiak came back to her point that all the bidders had the same information.

AATA board member Eli Cooper deliberates at the July 16, 2012 special meeting. To his right is board member Sue Gott. To her right is CEO Michael Ford.

Board chair Jesse Bernstein noted that the RFP was generated by AATA staff. Eli Cooper noted that the proposals had been reviewed by AATA staff and had been winnowed down from 13 to 5 and ultimately decided based on AATA’s needs, not whether the firm could “do X better.”

Subsequent board discussion clarified that the total limit on the contract is $500,000 over possibly five years – three years plus two one-year extensions. Stasiak indicated that the previous contract with the previous vendor had resulted in expenditures of $427,000 over three years. Nacht got clarification that the contract is subject to 30-day termination. Bernstein and Sue Gott indicated that they were interested in monitoring the performance of the two firms. Bernstein said there should be substantial reporting back to the performance monitoring and external relations (PMER) committee. Cooper drew out the fact that the contract is an “on-call” or “task-order” type contract. Nacht ventured that the AATA has the option not to give the two companies any tasks.

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve the media and marketing contract with Quack! Media and Pace & Partners Inc. over the next five years.

Fire Hydrant Contractor

The board considered a $104,000 contract with RBV Contracting to relocate a fire hydrant as part of the AATA’s bus garage expansion project. The city of Ann Arbor is requiring the relocation of the hydrant – located on the south end of the AATA’s property at 2700 S. Industrial Highway.

In the new location, the hydrant will connect to the neighboring property, which is owned by the University of Michigan. The change will create a continuous loop connection of the fire hydrant system in the area.

Commenting on the resolution, Eli Cooper – who sits on the planning and development committee that had recommended the action – noted that moving the hydrant is a city requirement for occupying the new space. David Nacht wondered why the board even need to vote on the action. Board chair Jesse Bernstein told him it was because it’s a lot of money. [With the contingency, the project went over the $100,000 threshold that requires board approval.]

Outcome: The board voted unanimously to approve the contract to relocate the fire hydrant.

Communications, Committees, CEO, Commentary

At its July 16 meeting, the board entertained various communications, including its usual reports from the performance monitoring and external relations committee, the planning and development committee, as well as from CEO Michael Ford. The board also heard commentary from the public. Here are some highlights.

Comm/Comm: Countywide Expansion

In his update to the board, CEO Michael Ford alerted the board to the fact that the Washtenaw County board of commissioners would be giving final consideration to the four-party agreement (between the city of Ann Arbor, the city of Ypsilanti, the AATA and Washtenaw County) and the articles of incorporation of a new transit authority at the county board’s Aug. 1 meeting. The county board gave initial approval to the two documents at its July 11, 2012 ways & means committee meeting, after lengthy deliberations.

Comm/Comm: New Blake Transit Center

Ford noted that the new downtown Blake Transit Center would be reviewed by the city planning commission at its meeting the following day, on July 17. [Outcome of that review was an affirmation by the planning commission that the project meets city requirements for private development, with two exceptions involving landscaping and driveway width. The key change in the site, compared to the current configuration, will be moving the transit center building from the Fourth Avenue side of the midblock driveway to the Fifth Avenue side. The buses will also enter the driveway from the Fourth Avenue side and exit onto Fifth Avenue – which is the reverse of the current traffic flow. ]

Ford told the board that he hopes to be able to bring the Blake Transit Center proposal to the  Aug. 20 Ann Arbor city council meeting.

Comm/Comm: Triennial Review

In his update to the board, Ford noted that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) had come in to review the way that the AATA handles its federal grants, which the FTA does every three years. Ford told the board that the AATA had done a very good job. A typical transit agency will have about seven deficiencies, Ford said, but FTA had found only one at the AATA – and that one was corrected “on the spot.” The FTA had told the AATA was the review was “top notch,” so Ford  commended the AATA staff on that.

Comm/Comm: Revisions to Five-Year Service Plan

Jim Mogensen reminded board members that a while back he’d addressed them about the parallels between the current countywide plan and the plans from the mid-1970s. A barrier to implementing that vision at that time was the confluence of money and politics, he noted. Now that conversation has opened again with all its complexity.

He observed that there are 15 different amendments to the service plan that are being looked at – so Mogensen ventured that it might be good to have a central place with all of that documented so that people can track what’s going on. Board chair Jesse Bernstein responded to Mogensen by saying, “We’re with you and that’s [strategic planner] Michael Benham’s job.”

Comm/Comm: General Complaints

Thomas Partridge addressed the board as an advocate for those who need transportation services the most. He complained that Blue Cab had not undergone sufficient evaluation and scrutiny. He expressed continued concerns about problems with service on the A-Ride service, for which the AATA contracts with SelectRide. He claimed there are violations so serious that they’re violations of criminal and civil laws. He questioned the continued “proclivity” of the board to go to outside contractors and pay their expensive rates without the board first exploring AATA’s ability to provide services in-house.

When he reached the end of his two-minute time, Partridge told board chair Jesse Bernstein he would appreciate additional time – otherwise Bernstein would be giving the appearance that the board didn’t want to hear constructive criticism. Bernstein explained to Partridge that there’s a rule that everyone gets two minutes. Partridge replied that before 1920 there was a law that said women couldn’t vote.

Present: David Nacht, Jesse Bernstein, Eli Cooper, Sue Gott, Anya Dale.

Absent: Charles Griffith, Roger Kerson.

Next regular meeting: Thursday, Aug. 16, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. in the fourth floor conference room at the Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S. Fifth Ave., Ann Arbor. [Check Chronicle event listings to confirm date]

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The marketing and public relations work will cover “public relations, education, community outreach and other communication services in support of AATA’s initiatives and general operations.” The two firms were selected after the issuance of a request for proposals that generated 35  13 responses from the 35 firms to whom the request was sent.responses. Quack! Media is an Ann Arbor firm, while Pace & Partners is based in Lansing.

This brief was filed from AATA headquarters at 2700 S. Industrial Highway, where the special board meeting was held. A more detailed report of the meeting will follow: [link]

At left: Lynn Bowen, an administrative assistant with the city who provides staff support for the park advisory commission, is retiring and was honored at PAC's November meeting. She has worked at the city for 26 years, including the last six years with parks and recreation. To the right are PAC chair Julie Grand and Colin Smith, the city's parks and recreation manager. (Photos by the writer.)

Commissioners were briefed by city staff about annual finances related to the land acquisition for parks and greenbelt programs, which are funded by a 30-year millage. They also got an update on the city’s marketing efforts for parks and recreation, and heard a report on the status of a sustainability project – several PAC commissioners had attended a September joint work session to help prioritize city goals related to environmental quality, economic vitality, and social equity.

Updates were also given about a sediment removal project in the Ruthven Nature Area, and about two parking-related projects at Riverside Park and Veterans Memorial Park.

In his manager’s report, Colin Smith noted that he’d taken a canoe run through the under-construction Argo Dam bypass pools – the new channel was a ”bit sportier” than he had expected, and is still being tweaked. He also told commissioners he’d received word that two state grant applications made by the city of Ann Arbor – $300,000 for the proposed Ann Arbor skatepark at Veterans Memorial Park, and $300,000 for improvements at the Gallup Park canoe livery – had ranked in the top 12 out of 100 applications statewide for funding from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund. That bodes well for the possibility that the grants will be awarded – a decision from the state is expected in December.

During the meeting commissioners also honored two volunteers with the city’s natural area preservation program – Sarah Newman and Drew Lathin – and said farewell to Lynn Bowen, the administrative assistant who works with PAC. The meeting was her last before retiring from the city.

An item not on the agenda – the proposed Fuller Road Station – drew focus from public commentary as well as some questions from commissioners later in the meeting. 

Fuller Road Station

The issue of Fuller Road Station has raised concerns for several members of PAC dating back nearly two years. The large parking structure, bus depot and possible rail station is proposed near the intersection of Fuller Road and Maiden Lane, near the University of Michigan medical campus on city-owned land. The land has been used as a surface parking lot since 1993, leased to the university, but is on property designated as parkland. It’s a joint project of the city of Ann Arbor and UM, but a formal agreement regarding its construction and operation hasn’t yet been finalized.

In June 2010, the commission passed a resolution that asked the city council to make available a complete plan of Fuller Road Station – including any significant proposed agreements, such as what the university will pay the city for use of the structure – allowing sufficient time for a presentation at a televised PAC meeting before the council votes on the project. The resolution also asked that staff and the council ensure the project results in a net revenue gain for the parks system. PAC most recently got a detailed update on the project at its May 2011 meeting. The commission has not formally received word about whether the city council will agree to the requests made in the 2010 resolution.

There was no agenda item for the proposed Fuller Road Station, but the issue came up during public commentary as well as at the end of the meeting, with questions from commissioners.

Fuller Road Station: Public Commentary

Nancy Kaplan told commissioners that she was there to speak about transforming Fuller Park into a Fuller Road parking garage, saying it set many negative, troubling precedents. One precedent is that it’s OK to change a part-time surface parking lot into a parking garage. The fact that it’s a surface lot to accommodate parking for the University of Michigan is being used to justify building a parking garage with up to 1,600 spaces, with an expected structural life of 75 years, she said. This decreases the chances of reclaiming the Huron Valley as a beautiful amenity. Another negative precedent, Kaplan said, is circumventing the expectations of a 2008 ballot initiative passed by Ann Arbor voters, which requires a referendum in order to sell city parkland. This circumvention breaks with the trust of voters, who had a common understanding of what it meant to sell parkland, she said, and although this situation isn’t technically a sale, the result is the same.

A third negative precedent is accepting that the project will move forward without a due process hearing. Aside from the memorandum of understanding, no city council vote on the overall project has been taken. Yet at the Nov. 14 council work session, Kaplan noted, it was stated that a groundbreaking is expected this spring, and that public art is already being planned. Finally, she said the university has embarked on a sustainability initiative, but bringing up to 1,600 cars into the parking garage is counter to sustainability. She pointed out that Stanford University in California doesn’t subsidize employee parking, as UM does. Instead, as part of its reward system, Stanford pays employees not to park, and offers bus passes and free shuttles. The side benefit is that Stanford doesn’t have to build a lot of parking garages. Kaplan said that hopefully these negative precedents, plus the model of Stanford, are issues to be considered seriously.

Rita Mitchell continued the topic of Fuller Road Station. She began by noting that she’s a steward for the city’s natural area preservation (NAP) program, and takes great interest in parks. She said she appreciated PAC’s work. She asked that commissioners discuss and forward a series of questions to city council, to be reviewed in public, regarding plans to build a parking structure in Fuller Park. She gave a brief history of the property, noting that it was acquired by the city in the 1920s for use as parkland, and was the city’s first golf course. Starting in 1993, it was temporarily leased to UM for parking, and many problems have stemmed from that use. It’s already an area of great traffic congestion, and adding up to 1,600 more cars will create a range of problems, including air pollution, more polluted runoff, and conflicts with pedestrians, buses and bicyclists. Air pollution and health risks will increase in the summer for people, including children, who use Fuller Pool, located across the street, Mitchell said.

The city has spent significant money already, without discussing with the public whether parkland should be repurposed in this way, Mitchell said. She asked that PAC advise the city council to hold a public hearing on the issue, at a time that’s not influenced heavily by upcoming holiday schedules, so that the community can express their concerns. She noted that the council’s Nov. 14 work session had included discussion of art for the structure, and called it “outrageous” that this discussion would happen for a project that hasn’t yet been approved. The university is the primary beneficiary for this project, but the public doesn’t know who is negotiating with the university on this project. “Do you, as commissioners?” she asked. PAC should ask council to be provided with the names of those negotiating, and the specifications of the negotiations. Repurposing parkland subverts the letter and intent of the 2008 ballot initiative that requires a voter referendum on the sale of parkland, she said. The structure would have a 75-year lifespan, and 75 years for use of land is in effect a sale. But there’s been no discussion of a fair market value, or compensation to the citizens or parks system for the use of the land.

Mitchell also said she’s heard about the possible transfer of the Amtrak station to that site. While rail travel is a great idea, she said, there are also a range of concerns. Is it in the best interests of the city to build and run a train station? Should it be placed on parkland? If Ann Arbor is just one commuter stop, why do we need a 1,600-space parking structure? There hasn’t been adequate public discussion on this issue, Mitchell said. In addition, this summer a major water and sewer line were moved in Fuller Park – had that been discussed with PAC? Is the sign that’s now missing from the south end of Fuller Park a silent indication that the land is no longer part of the park system? Park commissioners are stewards of all city parks, Mitchell said. She urged them to start asking pointed questions and advocate for greater public participation in decisions that relate to parkland.

Fuller Road Station: Commissioner Questions

Later in the meeting, Gwen Nystuen asked city staff a series of questions about the Fuller Road Station project. She wondered about the legal status of the city’s parks, and how that relates to the project. She asked about the site plan for Fuller Road Station – if council approves the project, would it constitute a change of land use, and no longer be part of the parks system? These are issues that have never been discussed by city council, she noted. The land is part of the central Huron River valley, an area that has some of the least parkland per capita in the city, she said. This project would reduce it even more, she said, so it’s of concern to PAC. She also wondered about the status of the soccer field that had been in that area.

Colin Smith, the city’s parks and recreation manager, said these are legitimate questions. He asked Nystuen and other commissioners to send him whatever questions they had, and he would forward the questions to the city attorney or other relevant staff. He said the soccer field will be put in place again after utility work is finished on the south side of Fuller Road.

Tim Berla suggested asking representatives from the city attorney’s office, systems planning unit and Eli Cooper, the city’s transportation program manager, to attend a future PAC meeting to discuss the Fuller Road Station project. He noted that sometimes their answers are a bit opaque, and that it’s better to have the chance to ask follow-up questions in person, rather than to just get their answers in writing.

Open Space Millage Update

Ginny Trocchio of The Conservation Fund briefed commissioners on the annual financial report related to the land acquisition for parks and greenbelt programs. [A similar update was given to the greenbelt advisory commission by Kelli Martin, financial manager for the city’s community services unit, at GAC's Sept. 14 meeting.] [.pdf of land preservation annual report]

Under contract with the city, Trocchio is a Conservation Fund staff member who helps administer the city’s greenbelt program and land acquisition program for parks, which are both funded by the 30-year open space and parkland preservation millage. The 0.5 mill tax was approved by voters in 2003. Two-thirds of the millage proceeds are used for the greenbelt program, and one-third is allotted to parkland acquisition. PAC oversees the portion related to parkland acquisition.

Revenues from the millage were $2.164 million in fiscal 2011, down slightly from $2.262 million the previous year. In addition, the greenbelt program brought in nearly $2.8 million in federal grants during the year – the highest amount it has ever received. Those grants are from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm and Ranchland Protection Program, or FRPP. Investment income was $233,614 for the year, down from $492,576 in FY 2010. In total, $5.185 million in revenues came in for the combined greenbelt and parks acquisitions programs in FY 2011.

On the expense side, items included $1.2 million in debt service on the $20 million bond that the city issued in FY 2006. The greenbelt program spent $8.3 million during the year, related to land preservation projects. Parks spent $985,900 during the year, including two major purchases: (1) $592,503 for property off of South Pond owned by Wes Vivian and Elizabeth Kauffman, and (2) $369,160 for property next to the Bluffs Nature Area, owned by the Elks.

In FY 2011, $120,338 was paid to The Conservation Fund, which manages the greenbelt and park acquisition programs. Total administrative costs – including items like information technology (IT) and bond insurance – were $161,195. Administrative expenses accounted for 1.5% of the $10.672 million in total expenditures.

The fund balance stands at $10.3 million, down from $15.79 million a year ago. Of that, the portion for land acquisition for parks is $4.24 million.

Commissioners had no questions for Trocchio about the report.

Promoting Parks and Recreation

Kimberly Mortson, communications liaison for the city of Ann Arbor, gave a presentation on communications, marketing and social media for the parks and recreation system. She said that although she also does some work for other parts of the city’s community services area, 95% of her efforts are for parks and recreation.

Mortson noted that she started using Facebook and Twitter to promote city programs and events about two years ago. One of the advantages is that she can post a message one time, but there are an infinite number of people who’ll see it – and it doesn’t impact her budget, because Facebook and Twitter are free services. There’s a general Facebook page for parks and recreation, and other pages for specific units of parks and recreation, like the Ann Arbor farmers market, Cobblestone Farm and canoe liveries, among others

Twitter page for Ann Arbor parks. (Links to Twitter)

On Twitter, the @a2parks account has over 1,800 followers, Mortson reported. Over the past year, staff has tweeted from events, like the re-opening of West Park after its renovations, or the Heisman Trophy appearance at Hanover Park. They also use the account to promote other activities and programs.

Parks and recreation has also started using FourSquare, a social networking website that allows users to “check in” from their smart phones or other mobile devices, when they arrive at their destination. Mortson said she’s uploaded all the city’s parks and recreation locations to FourSquare – it’s another free marketing tool, she said.

Turning to the city’s website, Mortson told commissioners that the parks and recreation page is one of the most visited pages on the a2gov.org site. There will be changes to the page in the coming weeks and months, she said, to help people use the site more easily. Staff is also working with the state of Michigan on a new mobile application – the MI Camping and Recreation Locator. Now, people can use the application to search for information about state parks, she said. Ann Arbor will be the first city in the state to have its information loaded on that application, so that people can search for Ann Arbor parks information, too.

Some marketing materials for parks and recreation include QR codes, Mortson said – a marking similar to a bar code, which can be read by smart phones. The code is used to direct people to different websites for parks and recreation.

In addition to cost savings, social media and other online marketing is green, Mortson said – it saves paper.

Mortson said the city also advertises parks and recreation events and programs in traditional media, and showed several examples of ads that have run in the Ann Arbor Observer, Ann Arbor Chronicle, AnnArbor.com and other publications. Other venues for promoting parks and recreation include ads on buses and posters within city facilities.

Following Mortson’s presentation, Gwen Nystuen praised her efforts, saying the information showed that her marketing work is succeeding. Colin Smith, the city’s parks and recreation manager, noted that the programs are being well-run, and are being promoted exceedingly well. He gave the example of this summer’s day camps. In an extremely competitive area, two of the city’s four day camps were filled. Smith credited Mortson’s marketing efforts for helping achieve that level of participation.

Sustainability Project

Jamie Kidwell is working for the city on a sustainability project funded by a $95,000 grant the city received from the Home Depot Foundation. At the Nov. 15 meeting, she briefed commissioners on a Sept. 27, 2011 joint working session that involved four city commissions: park, planning, energy and environmental. The session focused on prioritizing existing goals for the city that touch on sustainability issues.

A Sept. 27, 2011 sustainability work session at Cobblestone Farm involved four city commissions: park, planning, energy and environmental.

By way of background, the concept of sustainability focuses on what’s called the triple bottom line: environmental quality, economic vitality, and social equity. The goal of the sustainability project for Ann Arbor is to review the city’s existing plans and organize them into a framework of goals, objectives and indicators that can guide future planning and policy. Other project goals include improving access to the city’s plans and to the sustainability components of each plan, and to incorporate the concept of sustainability into city planning and future city plans.

There’s an 18-month timeline for the project, which started earlier this year. For the first phase, Kidwell reviewed existing city plans – such as the downtown plan, the non-motorized transportation plan, the natural features master plan and others – and interviewed key city staff to determine which plans they use to guide their decision-making. Included in this project are 26 plans, and the second phase has involved organizing the goals for each plan. [.pdf of the list of 26 plans]

Kidwell and other city staff started to develop a framework for these plans, and to identify gaps that exist – goals that the city might want to pursue, but that aren’t laid out in existing plans.

At November’s regular PAC meeting, Kidwell characterized PAC as well-represented among the 26 commissioners at the three-hour sustainability session on Sept. 27. [Among the PAC members attending were Julie Grand, Tim Berla, Tim Doyle, Gwen Nystuen, Sam Offen, and John Lawter.]

Kidwell explained that the staff had identified four planning areas – climate & energy, community, land use & access, and natural systems. During the work session, commissioners met in breakout groups and started to prioritize the 226 goals that staff had pulled out from the city’s 26 planning documents and sorted into the four planning areas.

Kidwell provided a handout that listed the top goals identified at the work session in each planning area:

Climate & Energy

(1) Reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions 8% from 2000 levels by 2015.

(2) Commit to energy conservation measures and methods.

(3) Reduce greenhouse gas emissions in municipal operations 50% from 200 levels by 2015.

(4) Use 5% renewable energy community-wide by 2015.

Community

(1) To encourage cooperation between the City educational institutions and between the City and Townships that surround Ann Arbor (Ann Arbor, Pittsfield and Scio) on development issues that affect each other.

(2) Provide job opportunities, raise the standard of living of county residents, promote a sense of place and realize a tax base sufficient to provide public services through a comprehensive set of public and private strategies to foster and attract emerging industries.

Land Use & Access

(1) Encourage dense land use and development patterns which draw people downtown and foster an active street life, contribute to its function as an urban residential neighborhood and support a sustainable transportation system

(2) Establish a network of greenways throughout the City that provide non-motorized connections between various land uses, such as neighborhoods, commercial and employment centers, downtown and the University of Michigan, and that help retain the shape and continuity of natural features, especially along stream corridors, between parks and through new neighborhoods. The network also should extend to greenways located on adjacent township and County properties.

Natural Systems

(1) To protect and restore woodlands, landmark trees, steep slopes, endangered species habitats, prairies and savannahs, the Huron River, creeks and native flora and fauna from the impacts of development.

(2) To improve air quality to protect the health and welfare of the public

(3) Develop, complete and regularly update watershed plans for the City’s tributary waterways to improve water quality and to restore and preserve, waterways, banks, wetlands, floodplains, wildlife habits, native species and natural areas. Plans should include techniques to dramatically reduce the volume and speed of storm water runoff, increase water directed to infiltrate soil, and reduce the volume of toxics and pollutants reaching waterways.

(4) To protect, preserve and restore the natural resources of Washtenaw County through a comprehensive approach to water management and preservation of our natural features.

The 226 goals had been an exhaustive list, Kidwell said, with overlapping goals on a range of topics. The priority goals identified at the working session are a starting point, she said, providing feedback as the staff continues to refine what goals will fit into a sustainability framework.

Among the next steps, Kidwell said, will be to form a joint committee with representatives from each of the four commissions, to continue work on this project. There will also be a lecture series starting in January featuring issues in the four planning areas. Those lectures will be free and open to the public. At the same time, work will continue on developing a sustainability action plan, tying goals to measurable targets, Kidwell said.

Julie Grand, PAC’s chair, reported that she and Karen Levin will serve on the joint committee, representing PAC.

Parking Lot Improvements

Park planner Amy Kuras and Liz Rolla, a city engineer who primarily works on road resurfacing and reconstruction projects, talked about two parking lot improvement projects – at Riverside Park and Veterans Memorial Park.

Kuras said the projects represent a collaboration between the parks and public services units. At Riverside, the current parking lot is frequently under water, so Kuras was planning to address that issue as well as make other changes at the park. [For details, see Chronicle coverage: "Work Planned at Ann Arbor's Riverside Park"]

Sketch of proposed changes to Riverside Park. (Links to larger image)

Canal Street, a city street runs next to the park, also needs repair, so Kuras approached the public services staff to coordinate their work. The parking lot will be moved to a different part of the park – out of the floodplain – and Canal Street will be repaved.

Tim Berla noted that the path at Riverside, running next to the Huron River, is also frequently under water. Will the project address that too? Short of creating an elevated boardwalk, Kuras said, there’s nothing they could do to prevent flooding, given the path’s proximity to the river.

The second project involves the repaving of Dexter Avenue, which runs past Veterans Memorial Park. The road repaving needs to address stormwater issues, while the parks staff is concerned about the park’s path and parking lot, which are falling apart, Kuras said.

Rolla said the road will be reconstructed from Maple to Jackson. Typically, the requirement to capture stormwater runoff is handled through underground oversized pipes and swirl concentrators. But since the road runs past the park, the staff is looking at handling runoff with a bioswale in the park, which would include native plantings. There are federal dollars to pay for stormwater improvements, which will cover about 80% of the project’s cost, Rolla said.

Kuras said benefits include rebuilding the path that runs along Dexter Avenue, and reducing the parking lot’s footprint, though the number of parking spaces will remain unchanged. It’s a better environmental solution, she said, because of the bioswale.

Colin Smith, the city’s parks and recreation manager, said it’s good timing, since the city plans to renovate the softball fields there in 2012. The field renovation will likely start in mid-August, after the softball leagues finish their season.

Gwen Nystuen asked whether the parking lot would be paved with a pervious surface. No, Rolla replied. It’s too wet in that area for pervious pavement. Instead, the lot will be graded so that runoff will drain into the bioswale.

Karen Levin asked whether the park would be closed during this project. The section off of Dexter Avenue will probably be closed for some period, Kuras said, but the ice rink and pool – with an entrance off of Jackson Road – won’t be affected. Rolla added that the Dexter Avenue project will likely run from April through November, but they’ll leave it up to the contractor to decide when to do the parking lot and bioswale part of the project.

Aerial view of the site for the proposed bioswale at Veterans Memorial Park. The road at the top is Dexter Avenue. (Image links to larger file.)

John Lawter asked whether the bioswale will have standing water. There might be some minimal amount of standing water as the plants take hold, Rolla said, but the bioswale will be designed so that water will infiltrate. It’s similar to the bioswale at Buhr Park, she said. There will also be outlets leading to the city’s conventional storm sewer system, she added, in the event of a major rain.

Tim Doyle asked how much maintenance will be required in the bioswale. Rolla replied that the city will have an agreement with the contractor, who will provide maintenance in the area for three years. After that, the plantings should be established and it will be treated as a wet meadow by the city’s natural area preservation program. Smith noted that currently, the area proposed for a bioswale is included in the park’s mowing cycles. That maintenance would eventually be eliminated.

Julie Grand wondered what will happen if balls get hit into the bioswale – how are they retrieved? Smith said it’s a rare day when any balls are hit into the area proposed for the bioswale. Nor is it an area that’s typically used for team warm-ups. “It is really pretty much a dead space,” he said.

Grand also noted that the new parking lot will be closer to the playing fields. Is there more potential for balls to hit the cars? Rolla said it’s proposed to be moved only slightly closer to the fields. Kuras added that the location was discussed at length, and indicated that there’s little concern about the change.

Ruthven Nature Area

Lara Treemore Spears of the city’s natural area preservation (NAP) program updated commissioners on a wetland mitigation sediment removal project at the Ruthven Nature Area. The project involves removing sediment from Millers Creek, which flows through Ruthven, and repairing stream bank erosion that occurred when the creek bypassed its channel because of a sediment dam.

Like many streams in urban areas, Spears said, Millers Creek is surrounded by impervious surfaces. That creates runoff and sediment flowing into the creek, and over the years, has caused the creek to completely change its course.

The city risks losing some of its infrastructure along Huron River Drive and Geddes Road, Spears said – specifically, there’s the risk of damage to an undersized 24‐inch culvert under Geddes, which was not designed to receive the full volume of Millers Creek and could result in road flooding. Removing the sediment would redirect stormwater flow to a former open channel running through the wetlands at Ruthven, and into a larger 60-inch culvert under Geddes. It’s not an area that’s designated as a county drain, she noted, so it doesn’t fall under the purview of the county water resources commissioner’s office.

It’s best to remove the sediment when the ground is frozen, Spears said, so the work will likely begin in January. It will require some clearing, she said, but not nearly as much as has been done along Washtenaw Avenue for the county’s Mallets Creek drain project. The stream bank will be shored up with rock and restored with topsoil, mulch blanket, and native plant seed.

The city has submitted an application for a permit from the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality to do the work, and is awaiting review.

The ultimate goal, Spears said, is to reduce erosion. The city’s capital improvements plan (CIP) includes a sediment study of Millers Creek, to see if better long-term solutions can be found for preventing erosion.

Gwen Nystuen noted that there are a lot of  invasive species in Ruthven. She also wondered if the city had any plans to put in more trails through the nature area. There’s a trail with an entrance off of Geddes Road. But Spears noted that for a path off of Huron Parkway, after the first 325 feet it gets quite wet. There is one high quality area – a glacial kame, a hill created by glacial deposits. But most of the runoff flows straight south through a buckthorn thicket, she said – buckthorn is considered an invasive.

Tim Berla asked for Spears to give her best guess as to how long it would be before they’d have to repeat this work. Spears acknowledged that the problem comes from upstream, in an area that the city doesn’t control, and that erosion is aggravated by the surrounding impervious surfaces of roads and other development. Berla asked if there are any additional measures that can be taken, like adding underground swirl concentrators – devices designed to remove suspended solids from stormwater prior to reintroducing it into the city’s stormwater system. Spears said a long-term sediment study of the creek would look at those kinds of potential solutions.

Manager’s Report

Colin Smith, the city’s parks and recreation manager, updated commissioners on a range of items, starting with plans to renovate the city’s softball fields at Veterans Memorial Park, West Park, Southeast Area Park and Allmendinger Park. It’s analogous to the work already done at the soccer fields, he said. The idea is to bring the fields up to an acceptable level of play. Staff will be presenting a budget for the project to PAC at its December meeting. Smith and other staff had held a public meeting on the project earlier this month, which was attended primarily by managers of various leagues that use the fields. Smith reported that they seemed happy to see the project get underway.

Manager’s Report: Argo Bypass

Smith also noted that earlier in the month he had gone canoeing to test the new Argo Dam bypass, even though it had been snowing at the time. The design team is still tweaking the series of pools that make up the channel, and Smith described the stretch as a “bit sportier” than he had expected. It’s exciting to see that project come together, he said. Smith reported that the city council would be voting on a proposed change of scope to the project, which PAC had recommended at its August meeting.

View facing west of the first two pools in the Argo Dam bypass. The concrete pass-through at the far end will be replaced by a new, larger entrance.

The change will add a new entrance to the waterway from Argo Pond to the Huron River. The modification to the project is linked to an offer from DTE to pay for a whitewater section that’s part of the overall project, which freed up city funds for a new entrance from Argo Pond into the bypass. DTE is being required by the state to complete environmental remediation on its nearby property, which prompted its request that the city hold off on the part of the project that runs along the river.

Smith said the city’s agreement with DTE stipulates that the energy firm will hire the same consultant who designed the bypass – Gary Lacy – to design the whitewater features. TSP Environmental, which is building the bypass, will build the new entrance. [The city council subsequently voted to approve the change of scope at its Nov. 21 meeting.]

Tim Doyle wondered whether the change of scope will delay other aspects of the project. Only the whitewater features, which will be located in the river, will be delayed, Smith said. The bypass and new entry will move forward. It will likely be at least another year before the whitewater features are added, he said.

Manager’s Report: Update on Skatepark, Gallup Livery Grants

Smith reported that two state grant applications made by the city of Ann Arbor – $300,000 for the proposed Ann Arbor skatepark at Veterans Memorial Park, and $300,000 for improvements at the Gallup Park canoe livery – ranked in the top 12 out of 100 applications statewide for funding from the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund. Smith told PAC members that he received the application scores in the mail earlier in the day.

The skatepark application ranked 12th out of the 100 applications, based on a scoring system used to evaluate the grants. The Gallup Park application ranked 2nd. Smith also reported that a $300,000 grant application for Rutherford Pool in Ypsilanti had ranked 11th in the scoring system. The scoring is an indication of the likelihood that these grants will be awarded, but that announcement won’t be made until Dec. 7, Smith said. It’s also unknown how much money will be awarded this year from the trust fund. He told commissioners that the top 12 grant applications total $2.7 million. There’s a cap of $300,000 per project.

At its March 15, 2011 meeting, PAC had voted to recommend supporting the grant applications. The city council made a similar vote of support on March 21. The council’s resolution of support prioritized the skatepark project over the Gallup renovations – based on the opportunity to leverage $400,000 of matching funds from the Washtenaw County parks and recreation commission.

NAP Volunteers Honored

Toward the beginning of the Nov. 15 meeting, Dave Borneman, manager of the city’s natural area preservation program, introduced two volunteers – Sarah Newman and Drew Lathin – who had been honored in October by the city council as NAP Volunteers of the Year. Newman was recognized for work in the Miller Nature Area and Furstenberg Nature Area. Lathin was honored for work in the Miller Nature Area, as well as for volunteering for NAP’s burn crew and its frog and toad surveys. Borneman read the proclamations that had been given to the two volunteers at the Oct. 26 council meeting, and PAC gave them a round of applause.

Newman thanked commissioners, as well as the staff of NAP, for all their work. She described Furstenberg and Miller as areas that are at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Furstenberg is a gem in the parks system, located along the Huron River and constantly maintained by NAP. Miller, on the other hand, is a large but relatively unknown neighborhood park on the west side that’s full of invasive species.

Her time most recently has been spent at Miller, and her role has been to encourage neighbors to get involved, she said, including work with kids in Peace Neighborhood Center‘s summer day camp, helping them to learn about what a nature area is and to help preserve the trails. “It’s a privilege and pleasure to work with the dedicated, intelligent and super hard-working group that Dave heads,” Newman said.

Dave Borneman, center, head of the city's natural area preservation program, introduced two NAP Volunteers of the year: Drew Lathin and Sarah Newman.

Lathin said it was an honor to be honored, but that he and Newman wouldn’t have gotten much done in Miller Nature Area without the hundreds of hours that other volunteers worked. They’ve had close to 1,000 volunteer hours there since they started working on about a one-acre section of the park.

He said his work at Miller started one winter day when he was walking through and saw all the invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn there. In a moment of insanity, he said, he decided to do something about it. Borneman directed him to Jason Frenzel, who was NAP’s volunteer coordinator at the time. Lathin said he’s happy he has mental health benefits as part of his insurance, because he thinks they’re called for. He praised NAP staff under Borneman’s leadership, saying they aren’t typical government employees – they’re very committed to what they’re doing, and they do great work. Lathin said he’s just the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the volunteers who work for NAP.

Present: Tim Berla, Doug Chapman, Tim Doyle, Julie Grand, Karen Levin, Gwen Nystuen, John Lawter, councilmember Mike Anglin (ex-officio). Also Colin Smith, city parks manager.

Absent: David Barrett, Sam Offen, councilmember Christopher Taylor (ex-officio).

Next meeting: PAC’s meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2011 begins at 4 p.m. in the city hall second-floor council chambers, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

The Chronicle survives in part through regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Ann Arbor park advisory commission. If you’re already supporting The Chronicle, please encourage your friends, neighbors and coworkers to do the same. Click this link for details: Subscribe to The Chronicle.

Orange (left) and apple (right). The orange is larger than the apple. Its skin is bumpy in contrast to the apple's smooth covering. Also, the apple has a stem. (Photo by the writer.)

The decision came under some criticism for its initial capital costs, the possible reduction in quality of the resulting recycled material, as well as for its emphasis on coupon rewards for recycling more – which some people feared could feed back into a loop causing more consumption.

I think there are fair questions that can be asked about cost and quality.  What I missed, however, was a convincing sales pitch – one that included options within the basic idea of a single-stream system with an incentive program. In this column, I take a look at what I’d have found to be a more convincing sales pitch.

First, it’s a sales pitch that could have been more about choices than it was. Choices are a fairly strong value in American culture. It’s a strong enough value that a draft report on parking currently being written by the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority includes the assertion that everything in Western culture is about choice. The claim generated some dissenting views at last Wednesday morning’s meeting of the DDA’s transportation committee, but also found strong support.

We begin, though, with another powerful idea in American culture: More is better.

The Psychology of More is Better

The city’s case for single-stream recycling was based largely on the potential for increasing a key statistic: pounds-per-household of recycled material. [That's an argument that feeds into the financial case for the switch to the new system.]

Ann Arbor’s pounds-per-household number stands at 357 pounds of recycled material, compared with something like 600 and 800 pounds in Rochester Hills and Westland, respectively. Both of those cities have implemented single stream-recycling systems with coupon reward programs.

But some folks probably wondered why that statistic was considered so key to the city’s case. Those are the folks who are sometimes labeled the “left flank” of Ann Arbor’s predominantly Democratic political landscape.

After all, that pounds-per-household number for recycling is not included as a key measure in the city’s State of the Environment resource use indicators. Instead, what’s tracked are per capita numbers for landfilled waste. That’s a number that we’d like to see get smaller. Because that’s what recycling is all about, right? It’s about reducing the amount of landfilled waste.

So why were city staff talking about a statistic that they wanted make larger?

It’s actually solidly based on the way we’re programmed as human beings. We respond to the idea of “more is better” in a way that is more powerful than “less is better.” Runners who are trying to lower their times for the 5K will inevitably talk about how many more miles they’ll run in training. Food Gatherers, a local nonprofit trying to reduce the number of people who are hungry, will focus about how many more pounds of food they’ve been able to recover this year than last year.

Put another way, offense is easier to cheer for than defense. When the University of Michigan hockey team scores a goal at Yost Area, the chant goes “We want more goals!” … along with “Sieve! Sieve! Sieve! Sieve! It’s all your fault, it’s all your fault, it’s all your fault,” directed at the opposing team’s goalie. And that seems to be a fairly generic chant for hockey fans everywhere. There doesn’t seems to be generic chant for an incredible save.

On the subject of more-is-less in the environmental movement, in a blog post from three years ago, Seth Godin wrote:

As a marketer, my best advice is this: let’s figure out how to turn this into a battle to do more, not less. Example one: require all new cars to have, right next to the speedometer, a mileage [mpg] meter. And put the same number on an LCD display on the rear bumper. Once there’s an arms race to see who can have the highest number, we’re on the right track.

It’s worth pointing out that Seth Godin is a marketer of more than modest ability. He visited Ann Arbor a few years ago and made a presentation at Michigan Theater. As a result of that presentation, I now own three copies of Godin’s book, “The Dip.” That’s three out of five copies that I originally purchased as a part of admission to the presentation. If I were a better consumer, I would have passed along all five copies to other people as Godin intended, instead of just two of them. But Godin was able to log five more in his “number of books sold” column. Faced with a choice between calling myself an idiot or calling Seth Godin a genius, I’m going with Seth as marketing genius. [No, we're not taking a poll on those choices.]

So using pounds-per-household of recycling is arguably a good marketing strategy to increase recycling performance in Ann Arbor. It taps the powerful “more is better” psychology that makes us tick as human beings. And the city alluded to this idea of competition and group participation as part of the reason it would be effective. But the focus of the sales pitch was the rewards program to be administered by RecycleBank, not the psychology of “more is better.”

Numbers as Their Own Reward

If we focus on the “more is better” psychology, this is a fair question to ask: How much extra recycling behavior do you get just from keeping track, plus the “more is better” psychology? That’s a different question from the one that was actually given some discussion: How much extra recycling behavior is due just to having a larger bin with no requirement of sorting?

An alternative not presented to the city council was this: Bring just the motivational meter to the surface, without coupon rewards, by providing residents with information about how much they’re recycling per household – via the city’s website, for example. Instead, the motivational meter was  linked to the RecycleBank coupon reward system.

Given the size of the 10-year contract with RecycleBank – $2 million over the course of the contract – it’s fair to ask: What is the recycling performance differential between an incentive program based purely on providing numerical feedback to residents, versus one based on providing feedback in the form of coupons? One could imagine the pure numerical feedback approach spurring good-natured competition between people on different recycling routes, or perhaps a mechanism for settling ancient neighborhood grudges. And out of that could come greater recycling performance.

As described by the RecycleBank sales representative at the council’s March 15, 2010 meeting, a large part of what the RecycleBank contract pays for is their efforts to establish partnerships with vendors to provide coupons and to educate residents about the point system and relating it to coupons.

Why isn’t it an option to eschew the coupon program and just focus on keeping numerical track as a feedback loop – and leave RecycleBank out of the picture? It’s partly because RecycleBank equipment is a key part of the technology for keeping track. That equipment includes RFID readers mounted on the trucks – which capture participation information from the RFID tags on every curbside cart – plus the computer installed at the materials recovery center (MRF), for capturing weight data.

This equipment is what’s covered by the escape clause in the RecycleBank contract – it’ll cost the city $150,000 if it decides not to fund the program – the price of RecycleBank’s equipment.

According to RecycleBank spokesperson Melody Serafino, who spoke to The Chronicle by phone, that equipment consists of proprietary hardware and software.

So we’re outsourcing two distinct activities: (i) a proprietary technology installation for keeping track numerically of participation and truck weights, and (ii) a coupon incentive program that ties into a coupon rewards program and merchant partnership program.

Can a city choose to implement just the numerical keeping-track part? Serafino explained that RecycleBank wouldn’t necessarily completely reject the idea forever if a city were to ask for just that module, but stressed that RecycleBank was a rewards and relationships company. Their national partners would like to be a part of the relationship in every RecycleBank community, she explained. What they’re offering, she said, was a way to establish loyalty between residents and  geographically local bricks-and-mortar establishments where residents could, for example, enjoy a $5 discount on some item they’d be purchasing anyway. That would held keep local dollars local, she said.

What I wanted to see in the sales pitch to the city council and to the community was the choice to start off just with keeping track numerically of recycling performance. It would be interesting and potentially valuable to measure the effect on recycling performance when enhanced by just a numerical means of keeping track – with no coupon rewards.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting just converting to a single-stream collection system and stopping there. The idea is that we’d ask RecycleBank for just the counting system, with household data piped straight to the city website where it could be looked up by residents. It would be similar to the system already in place for tracking city water usage. [To view a daily graph of your water usage, get a copy of your water bill so that you can type in your account number, and start with the My Property page of the city's website.]

Keeping a numerical track of recycling performance is not the business RecycleBank is in. They’re in the rewards and relationship business. So keeping numerical track is simply a tool in service of those rewards and relationships. But it seems to me that RecycleBank might discover that the idea of keeping numerical track is a lucrative business, too – maybe more lucrative than rewards and relationships.

If  comparable recycling performance can be achieved just by providing people with numerical feedback on their recycling, RecycleBank could shed all their staff whose function is to establish retail partner relationships, and focus exclusively on hardware and software installations. The benefit to a city would be roughly the same, so a city would presumably be willing to pay roughly the current price. That’d be a win for RecycleBank – although they might need to contemplate a name change.

On the other hand, if RecycleBank can show that numerical feedback alone has a far lesser effect on improving recycling performance than a coupon rewards built on top of the numbers, that would also be a win for RecycleBank. They’d be able to prove: You need our people, not just our technology.

The Sales Pitch I Wanted: In converting to single-stream, we’re going to tap the “more is better” psychology. We can choose to do that in three different ways: (i) provide numerical feedback only, (ii) provide numerical feedback in the form of coupon rewards, and (iii) start with numerical feedback and add coupon rewards later if performance doesn’t meet projections. Which would we like to pursue as a community?

Activities versus Outcomes

The city’s sales pitch to the public for this more-is-better marketing strategy also missed a key point: What’s the evidence that other communities’ bigger numbers for curbside recycling translates into smaller numbers of landfilled waste in those communities?

Consider the analogous question for Godin’s scenario, where every car has a real-time miles-per-gallon indicator on the dashboard and the bumper – call it a Godin Gauge. Let’s imagine every car is equipped with a Godin Gauge, and that people standing around the water cooler brag back and forth about their mileage numbers and drivers’ miles-per-gallon nationwide gets measurably higher. Success? Well, no.

The metric for success, presumably, is still total fuel consumed per capita. And that number might still be going up, despite the Godin Gauge – if people are driving farther than ever … because they feel less guilty about driving at all … because their Godin Gauge tells them they’re getting a whopping 75 mpg.

Or consider the city of Ann Arbor’s efforts to increase bicycle lane mileage. It’s a number we can try to increase, but if our per capita vehicle-miles-traveled (VMT) keeps increasing – and it does, according to the city’s State of the Environment Report – then we cannot claim success.

It’s the difference between measuring the activities we do, and measuring the impact of those activities. At the last Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board meeting, board member Sue McCormick, who’s also public services area administrator for the city, nailed this point, when she objected that the goals and objectives for AATA’s CEO were too focused on activities and not enough on outcomes.

Monitoring our Godin Gauges is an activity. Installing bike lanes is an activity. In recycling, the pounds-per-household number is the measurement of an activity. But the outcome we should measure is landfilled waste. Measuring the activity is important, because it’s part of marketing recycling as more-is-better. However, among elected officials with the responsibility for overseeing the $6 million capital investment in single-stream recycling, the focus on the outcome of less landfilled waste was not front and center.

Back to the question that bears on outcomes: What’s the evidence that other communities’ bigger numbers for curbside recycling translates into smaller numbers of landfilled waste in those communities?

In the many months of lead time to the final vote on the single-stream incentive program, I didn’t see any member of the Ann Arbor city council insist on getting an answer to that fundamental, obvious data question. That’s a group that includes two Ph.D scientists in Carsten Hohnke and Stephen Rapundalo.

The day after the city council made the final votes to implement the single-stream plus incentive, The Chronicle posed that question to city staff in the following form:

When comparing Rochester Hills to Ann Arbor, the 600 pounds versus 357 pounds is part of the story. The other part of the story is the X pounds per household that Rochester Hills throws into the landfill, versus the Y pounds per household that Ann Arbor throws in the landfill.

Our question, currently being handled by city staff, is this: What are X and Y?

Total Waste and Apples-to-Oranges

The city, via its consultant, was eventually able to track down some information related to the question – we now have some numbers for Westland, but not Rochester Hills. [Sometimes you go to press with the numbers you have, not the numbers you wished you had.]

Recall that in round numbers Westland generates 443 (800 minus 357) additional recycling pounds-per-household. The total waste comparison between Westland and Ann Arbor looks like this:

Westland
3,117 lbs/household/year total waste (including yard waste)
1,277 lbs per capita waste (2.44 people per household)

Ann Arbor
2,590 lbs/household/year total waste (including yard waste)
1,162 lbs per capita waste (2.23 people per household)

-

Interpreting these numbers is an exercise in keeping the proverbial apples and oranges straight.

Comparing the total-waste-per-household numbers, Westland generates 527 pounds-per-household more total waste than Ann Arbor. Maybe that 527 pounds of total extra waste allows them to achieve more than Ann Arbor in recycling pounds per household? Probably not.

The fact that yard waste is included in the figure clouds the picture – what we really care about is recycled versus landfilled waste, and yard waste is not landfilled. Another apples-to-oranges factor: Westland’s numbers include pickup of “bulky” waste – like old sofas. Ann Arbor’s numbers don’t.

More importantly, comparing the per household numbers presupposes that household size in Westland and Ann Arbor is the same. It’s not. Ann Arbor’s smaller household size means that you’d expect a somewhat smaller total waste number, all other things being equal.

So comparing the per capita waste figures reduces the gap between Westland and Ann Arbor to 115 pounds [1,277 minus 1,162]. Percentage-wise, then, the average Westland household generates 20% more total waste [527 divided by 2,590], but the average individual Westlander generates only 10% more total waste [115 divided by 1,162].

So compared to the average Ann Arborite, the average Westlander has 115 pounds more trash, recycling, and yard waste removed from their curb every year.

The case for single-stream plus coupon rewards, however, was based on per household recycling numbers: 357 pounds per household compared to 800 pounds per household for Westland. Converting those numbers to per capita figures yields: 357 divided by 2.23 = 160 pounds recycling per capita for Ann Arbor; 800 divided by 2.44 = 328 pounds of recycling per capita for Westland.

So the average Westlander recycles 168 more pounds of material than the average Ann Arborite does.

Comparing the Westlander’s waste pile with the Ann Arborite’s, we know that it’s 115 pounds heavier, but the part of it that’s made of recycled material is 168 pounds heavier. So even if all the additional weight in the Westlander’s waste pile is due to recycled material – and we subtract that from the Westlander’s recycling efforts – we’d have equal-weight waste piles, but the Westlander’s pile would have 53 more pounds of recycling in it.

That’s a long story to have to tell to arrive at the conclusion that the single-stream plus coupon incentive program in Westland will improve recycling performance in Ann Arbor and thereby reduce landfilled waste.

The tale would be simpler if we had the X and Y numbers from the question we posed. It would also be simpler if the city had relied on per capita numbers, not per household numbers.

It’s important to acknowledge that apples-to-apples comparisons against other communities are not easy when it comes to solid waste. But when all that’s possible is an apple-to-orange comparison, then we need to acknowledge that.

It’s also important to recognize that the “more is better” psychology that will likely fuel the success of Ann Arbor’s new single-stream program should not be the metric of success. Success should continue to be measured as the city’s State of the Environment Report does it: per capita total waste and percentage diverted from the landfill.

The Sales Pitch I Wanted: We’re going to tap the psychology of “more is better” as a marketing tool, but we’re still going to measure success by per capita landfilled waste. Our per capita landfilled waste right now is X. We expect it to be Y after five years.

The Psychology of Harder is Better

Part of the city’s sales pitch for single-stream was based on ease and convenience – residents will no longer need to sort their recycled materials into two separate containers, and they’ll have a convenience cart with wheels, instead of two totes that have to be lifted manually. The carts won’t be an improvement for everyone – there are surely people who can manage the totes one at a time with a limited amount of material, but who will not physically be able to wrassle the carts over bumpy terrain.

But on average, wheeling a single cart out to the curb, where it will stand proudly at attention next to its blue brother – the trash cart – will make recycling in Ann Arbor easier than before. Not to mention the fact that the comparable size of the recycling cart will now convey a better message than the comparatively tiny totes: Your volume of recycled material should rival your volume of landfilled trash.

I think it would be more effective, however, to talk about how the carts will make life in Ann Arbor easier, rather than how they’ll make recycling easier.

Here’s why. Our basic idea of what makes recycling important has something to do with the fact that we think it’s virtuous. There’s an orthodoxy associated with it. It’s a good thing to do and doing it makes you virtuous. Virtue shouldn’t come easy. Virtue should be at least a little bit hard.

The idea that the things worth doing are those things that are difficult is something baked into our culture. It’s not an accident that John F. Kennedy, in his 1962 speech at Rice University in Houston, Texas, talked about the reasons for choosing to go to the moon and to take on other challenges this way:

… not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

Granted, single-stream recycling is a bit remote from traveling to the moon.

However, at least for some of us, part of the reason we engage in an “environmentally friendly” lifestyle choice is precisely because it’s difficult, and we derive some sense of virtue from it. For example, I get around mostly by bicycle, even in the wintertime. There are myriad benefits related to my work here at The Chronicle – I never have to hunt for parking when I attend an event, and when I see sources walking down the street, I can just pull right up and chat.

But mostly the bike is about the fact that it’s hard enough that most people don’t use one for transportation. If it were easy, and half the population rode a bike, I’d probably be far less enthusiastic about it. As it is, though, part of the self-motivating story I can tell myself is that I’ve got a little extra in my pile of virtue, on account of my bicycle riding.

So when we tell old-school “left flank” recyclers that recycling will be easier, part of what they might be hearing is, “You’ll no longer be doing something that has virtue.” Or worse, “That virtuous activity you previously took so seriously, wasn’t really necessary.”

That’s why a “life will be easier” message is, I think, likely to be more effective. Even those of us who believe that certain things should be hard, will find it tough to argue that that life in general should be hard.

The Sales Pitch I Wanted: Life in Ann Arbor will be easier once we convert to single-stream recycling.

The Finances of Easier is Better

Part of that “life will be easier” message, however, needs to include some discussion of financial ease. Included in the council and staff discussion was the projected payback period for the investment in the single-stream infrastructure – carts, trucks, and improvements to the materials recovery facility (MRF). That period is projected to be around 6.75 years in an average market for recycled materials.

After that period the system will presumably continue to show the same efficiencies – compared to the current two-stream system – that allow for the payback on the investment. At the point that the investment is paid off, then, here’s a fair question: Do the increased efficiencies from the implementation of the single-stream system warrant a reduction in the city’s solid waste millage?

The city’s solid waste millage, which is levied at a rate of 2.467 mill, generates roughly $11 million a year. That millage, which appears as “City Refuse” on property tax bills, is enabled by state statute. Under that statute, a city council can enact a tax up to 3 mill in order to fund a garbage collection system.

The capital used to fund the single-stream investment came from laying aside money from this millage as a cash reserve. The October 2009 presentation to the city council put the solid waste enterprise fund at around $9 million.

So what was the capital investment to be paid back?

The October 2009 city council working session presentation gave a payback analysis for the MRF upgrade at $3,500,000  [authorized by the city council at its Nov. 15, 2009 meeting] and cart purchases at $1,281,600 [authorized by the city council at its Dec. 21, 2009 meeting].

The purchase of four additional trucks at a price of $1.2 million was authorized at the council’s Dec. 21, 2009 meeting, but was not included in the October 2009 payback analysis.

Starting in FY 2011, the payback analysis shows net returns to the solid waste fund balance of $625,000, $976,000, $1,046,000, and $796,000 for an average of $860,000 per year. The variation is due to the variability in the market for recycled material.

But taking $860,000 as an average annual savings compared to the two-stream system, we should be able to rely on that savings to persist even after the capital investment is paid back. The $860,000 savings translates into .19 mill in tax. Based on the payback analysis, then, it seems reasonable to make a tax decrease a part of the sales pitch. That’s a tax decrease that should be expected independently of the city’s possible exploration next year of a privatization option for garbage collection, which would be accompanied by a reduction in the solid waste millage.

The Sales Pitch I Wanted: In around six years, life in Ann Arbor will get a little easier due to single-stream recycling, because your taxes will go down … a little.

Cart Coda

Our two-stream recycling totes currently go to the curb about every third week. That’s often enough to keep them from overflowing from their space where the dishwasher previously sat.  I doubt that I’ll put out my single-stream recycling cart for collection every week when they’re issued in July – even though I’d get more coupon rewards for doing that. I think we’re pretty well maxed out on what we recycle. So to me, the ability to put out the recycling only every six weeks or so is reward enough.

But the club’s main event was a presentation by consultant Colette Chandler, who spoke about how to “green” your business. Here’s a summary of her remarks:

Consultant Colette Chandler speaks at Thursday's Ann Arbor Ad Club meeting. Her topic was green, but her jacket was blue.

• “The term green is getting really overused today.” Companies are trying to tap the $230 billion market, which is expected to grow to $845 billion by 2015. Those dollars tempt some firms to misrepresent their environmental efforts – a big no-no. Green consumers are savvy consumers. They’re likely to discover when a company is trying to “greenwash” them. And the results won’t be pretty.
• The most hard-core green consumer is the LOHAS – a person who has a Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability. They are more brand loyal and spend, on average, 20 percent more than the typical consumer, even in a down economy.
• What makes a brand green? It’s transparent, authentic, connects with issues that are important to consumers, and strives to reduce its carbon footprint throughout the business. Since 70 percent of Americans believe a corporation’s environmental message is just a marketing tactic, it’s important to be able to prove your business is green through certifications, legitimate awards, case studies and other methods.
• “As you know, blog writers are very aggressive.” Her point was that bloggers often pick up stories that can hammer a business – like the time when Salesforce.com announced they were becoming carbon neutral, then sent a reporter a gift that included Styrofoam packaging and other environmentally uncool features. A blogger got hold of the story and accused the company of greenwashing consumers. “That just negated everything they did,” Chandler said.
• “Is anyone familiar with Fair Trade?” Yes, they were.
• “Plastic water bottles are horrible for the environment,” Chandler said, holding up a Nestle PureLife bottle which claims to be made with “30 percent less plastic.” In preparation for the meeting, apparently the hotel had placed these same bottles in front of every seat at the event. If they’d asked Chandler beforehand, she’d have said, “No thanks.” (The Chronicle was relieved to have left our bottle unopened, thus avoiding public shame.)

Chandler runs The Marketing Insider, a consulting business based in Westerville, Ohio. The Ad Club’s next meeting is Nov. 13 featuring Shawne Deperon, whose talk is titled “Changing your Channel: Gossip, Media and the Law of Attraction.”

Ann Arbor Ad Club members Linda Girard of Pure Visibility and Pamela Rickard.

These guys eat well – this beef-wrapped asparagus was part of the meeting's buffet dinner, which included shrimp, meatballs and other highly marketable food.