Before the Nov. 21 meeting, former councilmember Leslie Morris (left) might be reminding Jane Lumm (Ward 2) which ward Lumm represents on the Ann Arbor city council. (Photos by the writer.)

In the end, the council gave initial approval to an ordinance amendment that would temporarily reduce the required allocation to public art from city capital improvement projects – from 1% to 0.5% for a period of three years. After three years, the percentage would automatically revert to 1%. Of the various amendments to the ordinance, the percentage of the required allocation was the focus of the most controversy during council deliberations. A bid by Jane Lumm (Ward 2) to lower the percentage further to 0.25% gained little support.

Other art ordinance amendments given the council’s initial approval include a requirement that public art money be returned to its fund of origin after three years, if not encumbered by a specific art project. The amendment also included a definitional change that effectively excludes sidewalk repair from the public art ordinance. The amendments also addressed the general fund, making explicit the exclusion of general fund projects from the public art ordinance.

During deliberations, city staff confirmed that at least a portion of the public art allocation required from the new municipal building (aka the police/courts building) could be associated with the general fund – about $50,000 out of the $250,000. [This is for art in the interior of the building, and is separate from the outdoor fountain designed by German artist Herbert Dreiseitl.]

As part of her Ward 2 election campaign, Jane Lumm had argued that general fund dollars were connected to supporting public art at the new municipal building – an idea that had been, until Monday’s meeting, poo-pooed by some councilmembers, including mayor John Hieftje, who had said no general fund money had been used for the public art program.

Lumm was active in her first council meeting since serving in the 1990s. During deliberations on a revision to the ordinance on the city’s greenbelt boundaries, she prompted extended discussion on the part of the revision dealing with the boundary expansion. A less controversial part of the proposed revision involved allowing parcels adjacent to the boundary to be eligible for protection. In the end, the council gave initial approval to both parts of the greenbelt boundary change.

Also related to land use were two site plans on the agenda. The council gave initial approval to altering the University Bank site plan for its property at 2015 Washtenaw Ave., known as the Hoover Mansion. And the council signed off on the site plan, as well as the brownfield plan, for Arbor Hills Crossing, a proposed retail and office complex at Platt and Washtenaw.

Because the content of a proposed revision to the city’s littering and handbill law was not available to the public until late in the day Monday, just before the council met, the council postponed its consideration of that item. The ordinance amendment would allow residents to prevent delivery of unwanted newspapers to their homes by posting a notice on their front doors.

In other business, the council expressed its opposition to a bill pending in the Michigan legislature that would nullify an Ann Arbor ordinance on non-discrimination against people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or student status. At the meeting, the council also authorized acceptance of several grants for the 15th District Court for programs on domestic violence and substance abuse.

In routine business for the first council meeting after newly elected councilmembers take office, the council elected Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) as mayor pro tem. Committee appointments and rule changes were postponed until Dec. 5.

Public Art Ordinance Amendment

The council was asked to give initial approval to a revision to the city’s public art ordinance that temporarily reduces the amount allocated from all capital project budgets to public art from 1% to 0.5%. Currently, the city has a law –enacted in 2007 – that requires 1% of all capital project budgets to include 1% for public art, with a limit of $250,000 per project.

The reduction in the allocation would apply for the next three years, from 2012-2015. The three-year timeframe is also a key part of a sunsetting amendment to funds accumulated under the proposed public art ordinance, which was also given initial approval on Monday night. That amendment requires that future funds reserved for public art under the ordinance must be allocated within three years. Money that is unspent or unallocated after three years must be returned to its fund of origin. However, an amendment offered from the floor and approved at Monday’s meeting makes it possible for the council to extend the deadline for successive periods, each extension for no more than six months.

The sunsetting clause comes in response to criticism about the pace at which public art has been acquired. More than $500,000 has accumulated for public art over the last five years, just from projects funded with the street repair tax – money that has yet to be spent on the acquisition of public art. Critics of the program also point to legal issues connected with the use of dedicated millage funds or fee-based utility funds for public art.

In addition to the temporary reduction from 1% to 0.5% and the sunsetting clause, the set of amendments before the council included a definition of capital improvement projects that excludes sidewalk repair from the ordinance requirement. Voters on Nov. 8 approved a new 0.125 mill tax that is supposed to allow the city to take over responsibility for the repair of sidewalks. Previously, sidewalk repair was paid for by adjacent property owners.

The amendments also excluded the ordinance from applying to any capital projects funded out of the general fund. Such projects are in any case rare.

As with all changes to city ordinances, the amendments to the public art ordinance will need a second approval from the council, following a public hearing. [Additional Chronicle coverage: "Council Preview: Public Art Ordinance"]

Art: Public Commentary

Brenda Oelbaum introduced herself as vice president of the Midwest Region of the Women’s Caucus for Art. She lives in Ward 2. Since moving to Ann Arbor 16 years ago, she contended that she’s seen a drop in support for the arts – except for 2007, when the percent for art ordinance was passed. She contended that the Ann Arbor Art Center has shrunk and that the annual art fairs are turning into dusty wastelands. Fairy doors, pig skins, and bike racks are not really public art, she said, while she’s heard that FestiFools is not going to be funded by the University of Michigan in the future. She stated that the city’s public art ordinance is the only way we can incorporate art into our lives.

Oelbaum told councilmembers they are being shortsighted by reducing the funding and requiring that the money be spent within a certain period of time. Art takes time, money and consideration. She described the Women’s Caucus for Art as a 40-year-old organization with 1,700 members. A group from that organization had recently taken a day-long tour of art in Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis. On the trip, she said, some of the women were lying on the ground taking rubbings of manhole covers. Art does a lot for the city’s standing in the state and the United States, she said. All you have to do is look at the Grand Rapids ArtPrize competition, she said.

Thomas Partridge introduced himself as a resident of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County, and a Democratic candidate for the state senate in 2010. He spoke to his usual themes of ending illegal forms of discrimination and providing affordable housing, transportation and education. He called on the council to stop funding unnecessary projects and called the Dreiseitl sculpture, funded with public art money, a “junkyard object.”

During the time set aside for public commentary at the end of the meeting, Partridge criticized the council for taking so much time to discuss public art, instead of giving priority to issues affecting seniors and disabled people.

Margaret Erickson introduced herself as a resident of Ann Arbor. She told the council she partakes in a variety of cultural events. One reason she chose to live in Ann Arbor 20 years ago was Ann Arbor’s accessible, rich cultural life. Works of public art provide a vital social fabric, she said, which allows us to see ourselves as a diverse culture. She told the council it’s easy to eliminate things that seem trivial, but Ann Arbor’s public art is a way of making the town beautiful. It also reinforces Ann Arbor’s connected community.

Margaret Parker said she’d served on Ann Arbor’s public art commission since 2004. [Although the public art ordinance was enacted in 2007, the city had a Commission on Art in Public Places (CAPP) before that time. The advisory group is now called the Ann Arbor Public Art Commission (AAPAC).]

Parker thanked the council for its support in the past. She recounted how $80,000 in private donations had been raised for public art for the parking structure at Washington & Fourth. The money had been raised by one volunteer. For the painted water tower on Plymouth Road, she said, $30,000 in private donations had been raised – by her. She had made the rounds to the same people who had donated to the parking structure and she’d heard the question: Why didn’t the city water fund pay for the water tower art?

Potential donors saw a disconnect between private funding and public benefit, she said. The city of Ann Arbor doesn’t have a revolving door of fresh donors like the University of Michigan does for the kind of art it has installed on its north campus. Funding for public art doesn’t raise the cost of any project, she contended. The Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority has adopted the percent for art program, as has the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority, she stated. She contended that the program is accepted as legal and has been used across the United States. She pointed to the one completed major project [the Dreiseitl water sculpture] and a smaller one in West Park. Six  more projects are in the works, she said. The commission also has plans to improve its procedures.

Wiltrud Simbuerger told the council that since she became a member of AAPAC this year, the feedback from the community has been positive. The desire and support for public art is there, she said. Criticism is based on the unspent money and speed at which art is created. She told the council that she is now responsible for the mural program. [Jeff Meyers, who had initiated the project, resigned from AAPAC in part due to frustration about the obstacles he encountered internal to the city in getting the project implemented.] She described the timeframe for creating a mural, which includes selecting possible sites and meeting with constituents in the neighborhood, she said. A letter of invitation has been sent out to mural artists and AAPAC will now select from a pool of artists.

Simbuerger allowed that the process could be improved structurally and there might be a point for some of the ordinance revisions the council was considering. But she encouraged the council to balance those changes with the needs of the program. She asked the council to increase city staff support for AAPAC and to empower the staff. It needs to be a staff-driven process, she said. Public art requires long-term commitment and persistence, so the focus should not just be on cutting the budget, but on making structural improvements to the process.

Connie Brown introduced herself as a long-time resident, business owner and AAPAC commissioner. She said she’s seen the positive role that public art can play in the community. She highlighted some of the things that AAPAC is doing. Currently, the commission is working on an interior piece for the lobby of the new municipal building. Proposals will be reviewed in December, she said. A statement of qualifications (SOQ) is ready for the Fuller Road Station project, but is not yet issued. When the University of Michigan and the city of Ann Arbor are ready to move ahead with that project, it will be sent out. Several projects are in the phase of task force work, she said – notably, public art for the bypass around Argo Dam and the East Stadium bridge reconstruction project.

Jan Barney Newman told the council she’d spoken to them once before when they were considering the ordinance. She’d addressed the council after she had been to Toledo to see an outdoor art exhibit – many people drove down from Ann Arbor just to see it. She noted that for the municipal center plaza, the city didn’t purchase “off the shelf” by buying an existing sculpture, but commissioned a thematically appropriate work. She drew a laugh from the audience as she struggled with the pronunciation of Dreiseitl, the name of the German artist who designed the fountain, rendering it as something that sounded frozen: drei-cicle.

Mark Tucker was dressed in a colorful outfit and said he was there to represent “art itself.” [Later in the meeting, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) led off the discussion by saying that the issue was not art itself, but rather the funding mechanism for public art.]

Margaret Parker and Mark Tucker before the Nov. 21 city council meeting started.

Tucker quoted the founder of the Heidelberg Project, Tyree Guyton, who responded when asked why he painted large polka dots on houses, “Why do you paint your house beige?” The conversation about public art always goes in the direction of cut, cut, cut, he said. Tucker does not think 1% for art is enough, and suggested the council think about 2%. He indicated that a “Miss 2%” would be appearing to show them what 2% for art looked like and asked that someone open the side door to the council chambers. When no one appeared, he said that he, for one, had wanted to see what 2% for art looked like.

Saying he was willing to demonstrate what 0.5% would look like, Tucker untied his necktie, indicating the demonstration would entail partially disrobing. He said it would be embarrassing for him and not pleasant for councilmembers. He asked councilmembers to consider what 0.25% or 0.125% would look like – saying that they all knew what zero percent looks like. He concluded that 1% percent is not too much to ask, to keep ourselves from being beige.

Elaine Sims, another AAPAC member, told the council she was glad didn’t have to follow anything that may have happened with Tucker’s demonstration. She said that in her day job, she also worked with art, as director of the University of Michigan Health System’s Gifts of Art program. She characterized the University of Michigan as a “small town” itself. She said she continuously gets calls from health care organizations across the country about the UM program.

Sims assured the council that the program did not happen overnight – it’s 25 years old. But it began as 3-year pilot program, she said. She gave the council some perspective on how long it takes to complete a commissioned piece of art, noting that she is a full-time staff member and that she has staff who report to her. Even with that level of staff support, she said, it takes a minimum of two years, more often than not three years from start to finish. She said that commissioners on AAPAC serve a staff function and that only recently has Aaron Seagraves been brought on board as public art administrator.

[At the city council's Nov. 14 working session, councilmembers heard a recommendation from public services area administrator Sue McCormick that would increase the value of the contract for the city’s public art administrator – by $35,000. The position is not held by a city employee. Currently that contract is with Aaron Seagraves, who took the job in May 2011. Previously, the part-time position had been vacant for almost a year, after Katherine Talcott, who was hired in early 2009, took the job of art project manager for the city. Seagraves currently has a one-year contract for 20 hours per week. At the Nov. 14 work session, McCormick characterized the proposed $35,000 increase to the contract as bringing it to essentially a full-time position.]

Art: Council Deliberations – Introduction

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) led off deliberations by noting that the council would see a different proposal from what they considered in September, but then postponed at the Sept. 19, 2011 meeting. Briere summarized the key features of the Nov. 21 proposal:

1. Routine repair of sidewalks would not be considered capital improvements, thus not trigger the requirement that 1% of those project budgets be set aside for public art.
2. The percentage required to be allocated to public art would be dropped from 1% to 0.5% for the next three years; after that time it would automatically revert to 1%.
3. After July 1, 2012, general fund money would no longer be eligible for inclusion in public art.
4. Funds that are pooled for public art would have three years to be allocated (not necessarily spent), otherwise that money would revert to the fund of origin.

By way of background, the key difference between the Nov. 21 proposal as compared to the Sept. 19 proposal was a political horse trade: a prohibition against using the street millage fund for public art was removed, in exchange for a reduction in the percentage from 1% to 0.5%.

Briere then implicitly refuted remarks made by Mark Tucker during public commentary, during which he stated that he was there to represent art itself. Briere said she wanted to make certain the council’s discussion separated out the funding issue from the love of art or public art. The discussion is about an effort to fund art, not public art itself, she said. She went on to say that public art is something many people embrace and endorse, but believe there are different ways to fund it. The city’s percent for art ordinance is a specific mechanism, she said.

Over the last four years, Briere said, enthusiasm for the program has lessened. A large number of capital improvement projects have been undertaken, she said, and people are a little surprised at the amount of dollars that has accumulated. Working with such large amounts is amazingly difficult for people to contemplate. AAPAC has had a difficult time getting organized, and has a lot on its plate, Briere said, and it took a long time for bylaws and policies and procedures to get developed.

Art: Council Deliberations – Lumm’s 0.25%

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) reiterated Briere’s point that the issue is not about public art. She took a different view of the trajectory of support for art in the community [from one of the public speakers]. She said she’d spent 10 years on the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair board and a number of years hanging out at the Ann Arbor Art Center. If it were not for community support, it would struggle. Alluding to Mark Tucker’s remarks during public commentary, Lumm said that an Ann Arbor art fair had actually brought some works from the Heidelberg Project works to Ann Arbor.

Lumm said it’s about the funding of art – private or public. She allowed that 1% doesn’t sound like a lot, but so far, over $2 million has been set aside for public art. Reducing the percentage from 1% to 0.25% would reduce the dollar amount per year set aside for art from around $450,000 to around $100,000. She said she still did not not agree with the idea of earmarking capital dollars for public art, but that $100,000 would be acceptable.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) responded to Lumm by saying: “You can’t have it both ways.” People say they want to have something but then don’t want to fund it, he said. He drew an analogy to the U.S. wars in Iraq or Vietnam. Derezinski noted that it’s the third time the council has wrestled with the issue. The community has been through some tough times, but “We’ve hung in there with 1%,” he said. He characterized the views that the council had heard as an “outpouring” of support for the public art program from the community. He said he could not go along with the idea of people saying they are for something but against funding it. Tough times, he said, bring out what the community is about. Ann Arbor is known for public art, he contended, so he was not in favor of decreasing the amount to 0.25% or to 0.5%.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) echoed Derezinski’s remarks, saying that it’s disingenuous to say you support something, but then not pay for it. If the council tempered its support, Teall said, it would send a message to private funders. She said she would not support a reduction to 0.25% or to 0.5%.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) took on the rhetorical gambit of Derezinski and Teall criticizing those who say they support something but won’t pay for it, by asking: “How often have my colleagues said, ‘We support public safety!’ but yet we’ve cut it?” The remark elicited a few cheers from the audience. Kunselman pointed to the $2.2 million that’s been transfered to public art and noted that much of it is still sitting there. He noted the council has made changes in other programs and services.

Kunselman pointed out that even though there was support from the public commentary podium for the public art ordinance, four of those who spoke are AAPAC commissioners. So, taking Teall’s label of “disingenuous,” Kunselman said it’s disingenuous to call that an outpouring of community support, as Derezinski had. Kunselman said during tough economic times, there’s too much money spent on art. He also questioned the legality of taking millage money that hasn’t been sanctioned at the state level or by the courts. He noted the absence of a written opinion from the city attorney’s office on the legal basis of the city’s ordinance. So he said he’d support the amendment.

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) said he’d heard the concerns about the amount of money the ordinance was generating. He agreed with Kunselman’s position that the council needed a written legal opinion from the city attorney. He said he was eager for a written opinion and said that the council should take a vote on that very soon. [Kunselman has taken the position that it should be up to the supporters of the public art ordinance to bring forward a resolution to direct the city attorney to produce an opinion.]

Anglin spoke about the role of art in defining what Ann Arbor is, saying that Ann Arbor is a unique little town. He noted that the discussion had centered on the visual arts, not the performing arts. He ventured that public art funding could eventually be expanded to include performing arts. He said he wanted to keep the 1%. People had been “shaken” by the process for creating the Dreiseitl sculpture, Anglin said. He found the whole procedure “jarring” – apparently because of the selection of a German artist for the commission. He seemed to indicate that the selection of Michigan workers for fabrication who could do good “metal work” was not entirely satisfactory.

In her next speaking turn, Teall picked up on Anglin’s reference to metal work, in order to clarify that the Dreiseitl piece is not simply a metal sculpture, saying that Herbert Dreiseitl is a “water and sculpture engineer.” She described the fountain as part of the stormwater system of the building, and said that it was fabricated using Michigan workers. It was not totally farmed out, she said.

In support of his position, Derezinski followed up with a description of an editorial that had been published in the Detroit Free Press [The column mentioned by Derezinski was by Ron Dzwonkowski: "Forget Taxes and Regulations, Michigan Must Build It so They'll Come"] Derezinski noted that Dzwonkowski’s column highlighted a book, “The Economics of Place,” which was published by the Ann Arbor-based Michigan Municipal League. From the column:

The book lays out eight assets that are critical to quality of place today, some reflecting a generational shift away from suburban living – suburbs are today the fastest-aging segment of the American demographic – and others reflect the relentless advance of technology.

They are walkability, green initiatives, a healthy arts/culture scene, a climate for entrepreneurs, multiculturalism, constant connectivity, effective public transit and educational institutions that serve as community anchors.

So is it any wonder that Ann Arbor weathered the Great Recession better than the rest of Michigan? Doesn’t it make sense that Grand Rapids has embraced the annual ArtPrize competition? Isn’t there a lot of promise in Detroit’s burgeoning Midtown?

[In contrast to Ann Arbor's public art program, Grand Rapids' ArtPrize competition is funded through private support. It's now a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization. See Chronicle coverage of the first year of ArtPrize: "In Search of Ann Arbor Artists: A Sojourn"]

Briere sought to steer the conversation back to Lumm’s proposed amendment from 0.5% down to 0.25%. Briere said it’s hard to say how much is enough support for art. She noted that she didn’t vote for the original ordinance, because she wasn’t on the city council at the time. She would have voted for it, she said. She had voted to reduce the percentage when the council considered its budget this year. She’d also supported the reduction when Sandi Smith (Ward 1) had brought forward a proposal in 2009 to reduce the percentage. There’s clearly an interest among some councilmembers to reduce the percentage, Briere said.

Briere said when she looked at other communities to learn more about how public art was funded, she learned that other communities restrict how you spend it, and where it comes from. Aside from the percentage, Ann Arbor’s ordinance doesn’t provide guidance that is helpful, she said. She’d asked to receive AAPAC’s guidelines and bylaws, but still hasn’t seen them. It would be helpful to see that information before the second vote on the ordinance, she said.

Alluding to Lumm’s estimate of how much the 0.25% would generate a year, Briere said she didn’t think that $100,000 a year is enough to buy art. She didn’t think you can acquire qualified, healthy, significant art for that much, so she wouldn’t support a further reduction to 0.25%.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) found themselves voting together as a two-person block on more than one occasion at the Nov. 21 meeting.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) began by noting sarcastically that he’d spent a lot of time reviewing all the 0.25% for art programs in the country – it didn’t take a lot of time because there weren’t that many. He said there’s a strong consensus for support for public art and some funding at some amount. In thinking about the appropriate amount that should be set aside for art, he cited a 1927 Department of the Post Office building in Washington D.C. for which 2% was set aside for art, and a National Archives building with a construction budget that allocated 4% for art. He continued by citing a federal general services administration policy in the 1950s of setting aside 1.5% for art, followed by city ordinances enacted in Philadelphia, then by the states of Hawaii and Washington in the early 1970s.

The 1% number offers a simple way to understand it, he said, that is sufficient to drive a large enough scale. He invited people to engage in a thought experiment. If your house burned down and the budget for rebuilding it is $100,000, the corresponding art budget of $250 (corresponding to Lumm’s 0.25%) doesn’t seem like a lot. Hohnke said that to him, 1% feels closer to the right amount, so he would not support a further reduction to 0.25%.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) noted that she had twice before supported a reduction in funding. She said she thought it would be prudent to do that now – when things are financially tight. Using Hohnke’s analogy of a house, she said when she needed a new roof, she’s not looking to put a new carpet down too. She said that deciding the amount is a little premature, before deciding whether the program even continues. She said she would not support the reduction from 1% to 0.5%, because it’s muddying the waters.

Outcome on Lumm’s amendment: The council rejected the amendment to drop funding to 0.25%, on the proposal cutting public art funding from 1% to 0.5% – only Lumm and Kunselman supported the amendment.

Art: Council Deliberations – Lumm’s Conscious Restoration

A second amendment to the proposal the council was considering also came from Jane Lumm (Ward 2). As proposed by Sabra Briere (Ward 1), the ordinance revision would automatically revert the percentage to 1% after three years. Lumm wanted to tweak that so that a conscious action of the council would be required in order to bring the percentage back up to 1%.

Mayor John Hieftje said he had been reassured by the provision of an automatic return to 1%. He was willing to advance the proposal to a second reading if the 1% were restored after three years. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) called the automatic restoration of the 1% level a useful tool for legislation like this.

Briere said that in her mind, the restoration of the funding level to 1% after three years went hand-in-hand with the other provision that would revert money to its fund of origin if it was not spent after three years. It’s easy to forget that something is going to happen. If in three years, funds have to be reverted to their funds of origin, she said, the council would hear from AAPAC about it. “That’s our trigger,” she said. Restoring the funding automatically after three years, Briere said, made sense to her.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) expressed agreement with Briere, adding that one reason it’s hard to keep track of things regarding the public art program is that there is not a full-time city staff member to keep track of it.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) said he was looking forward to the discussion about what level of funding is appropriate. He said he would feel more comfortable with the reduction to 0.5% if there were the “backstop” of automatic restoration – although he was clear that he felt 1% is the right amount of funding for public art.

Outcome on Lumm’s proposed elimination of automatic restoration after three years: The council rejected the amendment on the proposal that made any restoration of funding from 0.5% back to 1% contingent on city council action. Only Lumm and Kunselman supported it.

Art: Council Deliberations – General Fund

Christoper Taylor (Ward 3) contrasted the fact of the deep importance of art to the community and the fact that money is tight. AAPAC has done yeoman’s work with insufficient resources, he said. But he pointed to the art fund as “flush” – there’s more money in it than AAPAC can process, given their resources, he said.

Taylor felt the situation calls for a practical, not a pure solution. There’s more money than we know what to do with – so the practical solution is to be in favor of the reduction to 0.5%, he said. This would reduce the pipeline, but also increase the outflow, and he anticipated the time at which the “pig in the python” comes through. Taylor allowed that he was borrowing a metaphor from another debate. [The allusion was to the Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority's expected bond payments on the underground parking garage.] Taylor said he would support the proposed temporary reduction on its first reading, stressing it’s particularly important that the council address the issue in measured fashion.

In his remarks, Taylor alluded to the position that some councilmembers have taken on the possible connection between public art and public safety, which essentially is this: The absence of the general fund in any of the city’s accounting for public art translates to a factual matter that the city’s public safety services, paid for from the general fund, are not impacted by the public art ordinance.

Mayor John Hieftje picked up on Taylor’s remarks about the general fund, saying that none of the data presented to the council had ever shown general fund money spent on public art.

Later during deliberations, Margie Teall (Ward 4) asked public services area administrator Sue McCormick to approach the podium to lay out in more detail what the connection of the general fund money is, as well as other funds, to public art. Teall was prompted to ask McCormick to the podium, when Jane Lumm (Ward 2) reiterated the piece of her successful election campaign that asserted a specific connection between the general fund and the funding of a particular art project – the interior pieces that are being commissioned for the new municipal center.

Lumm said noted that there’s a $250,000 contribution from the municipal building fund, which itself was created out of general fund dollars. Based on that, she said, “I see general fund dollars in this.”

Hieftje responded to Lumm by saying that he’d asked CFO Tom Crawford to look at the situation.

It was at that point that Teall asked McCormick to give some clarity to the general fund issue, and also asked her to explain why spending public art money is tied to its fund of origin. McCormick took the second part of Teall’s question first. She explained that it’s because there’s a restriction on uses of those funds – they have to be used for the benefit of the fund’s purpose, or serve the purpose of the fund. Included in the qualifying uses, said McCormick, are those that serve the educational purpose of the fund. It has to be a capital project, she said, with an expected lifetime of at least a year, and must cost at least $5,000.

As for the general fund, said McCormick, on its face, no general fund dollars are used for public art. But she said Crawford had been asked how the municipal building fund was set up. Before continuing, she clarified that once the money goes into a fund like that, there’s not continued monitoring of the relationship between the dollars as they’re spent and where they came from. The municipal building fund had hit the $250,000 public art ordinance cap, so in order to connect that $250,000 to some fund of origin, it would need to be apportioned out – which is not an analysis the city would ordinarily do, she said.

But McCormick concluded by saying that $50,000 out of the $250,000 could be associated with the general fund. She concluded that it was possible to construe that relationship to the general fund. Currently, she said, $40,000 out of the $250,000 has been spent, and the project for the lobby is expected to cost $160,000, for a total of $200,000.

Hieftje called McCormick’s description “reasonable.”

Art: Council Deliberations – Teall’s Shortened Time Period

Margie Teall (Ward 4) offered an amendment to the proposal before the council. Teall’s amendment would shorten the period of the temporary reduction (from 1% to 0.5%) to just two years. After two years, it could be reviewed to see where the need is, she said. She rejected the phrasing of Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) earlier in the deliberations to the effect that AAPAC has more money than it knows what to do with – she said she thinks the public art commission knows what to do with it. Commissioners’ challenge is to go through all the steps without administrative support. A reduction of two years is “fairer,” she said.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) described Teall’s amendment as making something that is bad less bad. This kind of reduction sends a signal about the stability of the funding. He agreed with returning the funding amount in a quicker time.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) reiterated the same objection she’d made to an earlier amendment, saying that to her, the amendment muddies the waters. She said that before the second reading of the ordinance, she wanted to see the city’s capital improvement plan (CIP) for two years and three years, and at different percentages. Then it would be possible to know what real dollars they’re talking about, she said. Right now, Smith added, “We’re shooting in the dark.”

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) agreed with Smith’s suggestion to get additional information, but noted that currently the ordinance is yielding $450,000 a year, and to date only around $860,000 has been spent. There’s quite a bit of capital sitting there, she said. A reduction for three years is not unreasonable, she said.

Outcome on Teall’s amendment shortening the period of reduced funding: The council rejected the amendment, which would have shortened the period of reduced funding from three years to two years. Voting for it were Derezinski, Teall and Hohnke.

Art: Council Deliberations – Council Extension of Deadline

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) proposed an amendment that dealt with the proposal to require that unallocated money set aside for public art be returned to its fund of origin, if not assigned to some specific art project after three years. Derezinski wanted to allow for the city council to extend past the three-year deadline for up to two years on a case-by-case basis.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) said she was not in favor of Derezinski’s proposed amendment. Some back-and-forth unfolded between Higgins and Sabra Briere (Ward 1) about the status of funds that have already accumulated in the public art fund. Briere said that her proposal had been “clumsily drafted,” and was intended to be forward-looking not backward. That is to say, the three-year sunset would not apply to existing funds that had already accumulated.

After a recess of the council meeting, Briere came back with revised language to make the timing clear, as well as the status of the funds – they didn’t need to be spent, just “encumbered.”

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) questioned the intent of the language. Briere told her the idea was to look forward, not back.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) questioned the need for language giving the council the authority to extend the timeframe by two years. Can’t the council simply grant the extension, if that’s its desire? Assistant city attorney Abigail Elias clarified that the council can’t change an ordinance by resolution. So the ordinance language itself provides the option for the council to extend the deadline by passing a resolution.

Mayor John Hieftje indicated a preference for a series of 6-12 month extensions instead of two years. Councilmembers seemed concerned about dealing with a situation where a project was in the works, but delayed, so that the public art money would not be spent within three years, as required under the proposal. Margie Teall (Ward 4) said she would support Derezinski’s amendment if it were restricted to up to two years. Derezinski indicated this was, in fact, his intent. Hieftje chimed in that his own method wouldn’t have put a maximum timeframe.

Higgins drew an analogy to the purchase option agreement made with Village Green for the First and Washington parcel – the purchase option was extended by the council several times. She said she was in favor of allowing up to two years, then at the two-year mark, an extension should be considered in six-month increments.

Briere declared that she was confused: If a public art project were proposed and in the works, that would encumber the money. And the sunset clause makes explicit reference to that. If a project is ongoing but delayed, it doesn’t need to come back to the council, because the project is ongoing and has encumbered the funds, she said.

Higgins wanted to know what would happen if funds were encumbered for three years, but then the project fell through. Elias characterized it more as a finance issue. She ventured that she could take a look at the accounting.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) wanted some clarity on how funds might come to be encumbered – is that a legal or a financial question? He suggested that the encumbrance comes close to the end when contractors come into the picture and exact costs are calculated.

After some back and forth, councilmembers then settled on a series of six-month extensions that the council would be able to grant. In relevant part, the revised ordinance as eventually given initial approval by the council read:

(4) Funds for public art that are placed in a pooled public art fund after July 1, 2012 that have not been disbursed or encumbered for an art project for three (3) full fiscal years shall be returned to the fund of origination, provided that Council may extend the foregoing period by resolution for successive periods, each not to exceed six (6) months.

Outcome on Derezinski’s amendment to allow city council extension of the time period by which funds must be encumbered: The council approved the amendment, with dissent from Lumm and Kunselman.

Art: Council Deliberations – Eliminate Reduction

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) allowed that many of the changes in the proposal to amend the percent for art ordinance were helpful. He wanted, however, to have a discussion on the percent. He proposed an amendment to the proposal that would eliminate the reduction from 1% to 0.5%.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) and Jane Lumm (Ward 2) before the Nov. 21 council meeting started.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he wouldn’t support that. He acknowledged that there was some desire to support art, but noted that it’s not the “one percent for art fund,” but rather it’s the “percent for art fund.”

Spending the funds will be hard, Kunselman said, because there’s no guidance. You have to go back to the city attorney’s office to find out if a specific project can be funded – he noted he’d brought this issue up many times. The city can’t have a program run on verbal assertions, he said. He wondered what the public art fund could be used for: Performance art? Pavement decorations? Manhole covers? He’d like to see decorative art light fixtures installed up in the Oxford neighborhood, where students have expressed concerns about safety.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) stated that he assumed Ann Arbor wants to be an art center for the state of Michigan. So it’s important to keep the public art program healthy. There’s a lot of subjectivity in art, but AAPAC has some very devoted people. He said he’d attended three meetings since being appointed to the commission. The commission has come up with good recommendations for improving their own procedures, he said. The program is just about to flower, he added, so the council shouldn’t nip it in the bud.

Margie Teall (Ward 4) said she agreed with Hohnke and Derezinski. She described the percent for art program as just getting off the ground, and to reduce its funding would mean cutting it off at its knees. Responding to Kunselman’s call for decorative street lights, she said nothing prevents the city from using public art funds in that way. What’s holding the commission back is a lack of administrative staff support. She noted that the commission is a volunteer organization. The way to make public art happen is to support it with one percent, she said.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) said he believes that AAPAC was given an unfair and unachievable task – commissioners have done important and valuable work. In the future, that work should be given more staff support. But the fund is currently flush, he noted, and they’ll be able to use the already aggregated money and use the additional 0.5% allocation. He said you prune a lilac bush to prevent it from getting too leggy. The temporary reduction would allow the public art program to be a fuller, more efficient program.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) said she liked Taylor’s metaphor, adding her own version: You prune a bush to make it bloom better.

Mayor John Hieftje said a lot of people talk about the tradition of art, and contended that when you read about the history of public art, it’s about economic development. Ann Arbor lives on the fact that it has a high quality of life, he said. He talked about the speech he gave at the dedication ceremony of the Dreiseitl sculpture, in which he’d quoted from an article in Forbes magazine that called public art economically viable.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) thanked Briere for bringing the proposal forward. She said she would support the 0.5%, not Hohnke’s attempt to eliminate the temporary reduction. On the whole question of earmarking capital dollars for art, she said she would feel differently if it had been put to a vote of the residents.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) observed that the existence of the program enjoyed overwhelming support at the podium and in emails she received. And she noted that the proposed revision would preserve the program.

Hohnke concluded that the council’s discussion had been really useful. He said the proposal included a lot of improvements, excepting the reduction from 1% to 0.5%. He saw a lot of signposts that point towards 1% as the right amount.

Outcome on the elimination of the reduction to 0.5%: The amendment that would have eliminated the reduction from 1% to 0.5% failed, with support only from Derezinski, Teall, Hohnke and Anglin.

Art: Council Deliberations – Finale

Mayor John Hieftje said he would support the measure for its initial vote and looked forward to its second reading before the council.

By way of background, councilmembers are not required to vote the same way on issues at their first and second readings. During deliberations on Nov. 21, Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) voted for the ordinance revision on first reading, even though he argued against its main feature and attempted to amend it out – the temporary reduction from 1% to 0.5%. In the past, Hohnke, as well as other councilmembers, have made it clear that their votes for a measure on first reading are in the spirit of moving the proposal along to a second reading, when a public hearing is also held.

At the council’s Dec. 21, 2009 meeting, enough councilmembers flipped their votes between the first and second reading that a proposed reduction to the percentage public art allocation ultimately failed, after having won initial approval.

Outcome: The council voted to give initial approval to the temporary reduction (for three years) of the percentage specified in the public art ordinance – from 1% to 0.5%, with an automatic reversion to the 1% level after three years, as well as other changes to the ordinance. The changes would not take effect until after a public hearing and a successful second vote by the council. Dissenting were Derezinski, Teall and Anglin.

Greenbelt Boundary Expansion

On the agenda for consideration was a resolution to change the boundaries for the city’s greenbelt program – an open space preservation effort funded by a 30-year, 0.5 mill tax approved by voters in 2003.

Greenbelt Boundary: Background

During a presentation to the city council at the start of the meeting, Dan Ezekiel, chair of the greenbelt advisory council, gave the council an overview of the program and the proposal they would be considering later in their meeting.

The area in and around Ann Arbor that’s eligible for land preservation under the greenbelt program is defined in Chapter 42 of the Ann Arbor city code. The council has expanded the boundaries once before, in 2007. The current proposal is essentially to square-off the area by adding a mile to the southwest in Lodi Township, and one mile to the northeast in Salem Township. [.jpg of map by The Chronicle showing original boundaries, the 2007 expansion and the currently proposed expansion]

The brightest green region of the map is the original 2003 boundary area for properties eligible for protection using greenbelt millage funds. Next brightest is the area added in 2007. The dimmest green (in the southwest and northeast part of the map) is the area now proposed to be added. (Image links to higher resolution .jpg)

Also before the council as part of the amendment to Chapter 42, the council was asked to give initial approval to a change that allows a parcel of land adjacent to the greenbelt boundary to be eligible for protection, if it is also adjacent to a parcel under the same ownership within the greenbelt boundary. The greenbelt advisory commission had voted to recommend the ordinance changes at its Sept. 14, 2011 meeting.

Since the start of the greenbelt program, roughly $18 million has been invested by the city of Ann Arbor in protecting open space. That has been matched by roughly $19 million from other sources, including the federal Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program, surrounding townships, Washtenaw County and landowner donations. That funding has protected roughly 3,200 acres in 27 separate transactions.

Also before the council for its approval at the Nov. 21 meeting was the appointment of Shannon Brines to the greenbelt advisory commission. The current commission had recommended his appointment at its Oct. 12, 2011 meeting.

Greenbelt Boundary: Public Comment

Keri Hardy introduced herself as the manager of Cherry Republic’s Ann Arbor store on Main Street, and said she was there on behalf of the owner. Cherry Republic exclusively sells cherries and has chosen to have a store in Ann Arbor, because Ann Arbor matches Cherry Republic’s commitment to supporting Michigan and Michigan farming, she said. She presented a $2,500 donation from Cherry Republic to the Ann Arbor greenbelt program.

Greenbelt Boundary: Council Deliberations

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), who serves as the city council appointee on the greenbelt advisory commission, put forward the boundary expansion resolution. He described the proposed changes as smoothing out the boundaries that had been enacted as part of the 2007 change. The boundary changes are proposed to take advantage of opportunities for land protection in the expanded area.

Jane Lumm (Ward 2) led off debate by making a motion to divide the question, noting that there were two items incorporated in the proposal before the council – one was an expansion of the boundaries, and the other involved allowing properties adjacent to the boundary to be eligible under certain conditions. She said she supported the adjacency condition, but did not support expanding the boundary.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) stated that “dividing the question” was a procedure with which he was not familiar.

By way of background, dividing the question is a standard parliamentary procedure that allows for separate votes to be taken on parts of a proposal. In response to a motion like Lumm’s to divide the question, the presiding officer at the meeting is supposed to ask for a seconding motion, and if there is one, to call for a vote, without debate on dividing the question. Once approved by a majority vote, the question is treated part-by-part as two separate questions before the council.

That’s not what happened in response to Lumm’s motion. Besides Taylor’s interjection about his lack of familiarity with dividing the question, Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) complained that the text of the original ordinance was not included in the council’s meeting information packet, and that led to additional uncertainty.

Higgins wondered if a postponement might be in order.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) expressed concern about the possible continued expansion of the greenbelt boundaries. Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) is seated to her left.

Ginny Trocchio – a staff member of the Conservation Fund, which is the consultant the city uses to help manage the millage proceeds – was called to the podium to comment on any negative impact that might arise from a postponement.

Trocchio and Dan Ezekiel indicated to the council that with the uncertainty in the federal budget, the next round of funding – in February 2012 – might be the last one for the federal Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program. For properties that would be eligible for FRPP grants only as a result of the ordinance change, it would leave a short timeline to apply.

Mayor John Hieftje expressed some apparent confusion, wondering what Lumm wanted to amend. She explained that she just meant to be dividing the question. Hieftje indicated he wanted Lumm to take the approach of offering an amendment instead, saying that it was “neater” to do it that way. Lumm complied by amending the proposal to strike the boundary expansion.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) said he was initially opposed to expanding the boundaries, but after talking to Ezekiel, he felt it boiled down to the intent of the voters, which he felt was generally to create a greenbelt around the city.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) got clarification that Ann Arbor might get greater cooperation from Salem and Lodi townships as a result of the boundary change. Hohnke described how the boundary change in 2007 did not include Salem and Lodi townships because up to that point there had been little collaboration offered by those townships – but that has changed, he said.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) called the greenbelt a successful program and said the proposed expansion is a mark of that. Adding 10 square miles is an open door to more opportunities. Hohnke noted that the expanded area would make up about 6% of the total greenbelt area. Since 2003, he said, the cost per acre of protecting land has come down by half.

Higgins said she struggled with the expansion. One of the things presented to voters in 2003 was a map, she said. When voters saw that, they didn’t necessarily think the area would continue to expand. Back in 2003, she said, Ann Arbor was ahead of the curve. But now other organizations have come forward, and Ann Arbor is not the only player in the game. So she said she had some issues expanding again.

Higgins noted that Lodi Township was very excited about the prospect of the boundary expansion – but she attributed that excitement to the fact that Lodi makes only a token contribution. Ann Arbor will be the bigger contributor, she said.

Lumm said that at the time of the millage vote, a robust discussion had established the boundaries, and the community had talked about how the millage proceeds would be spent. She noted that the proposal now is the second expansion – she realized it was not a huge expansion, and thanked Hohnke for coming forward with a smaller expansion than others might have wanted. She questioned, though, whether the city is being driven by the desire to spend all the money in the program or to spend it wisely.

She characterized the money spent to date as having been spent wisely. But she noted the current fund balance is around $10 million – it’s hard not to say it’s flush with cash. It made her wonder if the city is spending it because it’s there. She stated she would not support the expansion at the first reading.

Higgins asked Ezekiel to the podium again and asked if it was possible to “lock in” the boundaries so that they would remain in place for some number of years. Ezekiel told her that the city council can choose to lock in whatever they choose – GAC is an advisory commission. He clarified for Higgins – who had complained that perhaps townships had not contributed much to some of the deals – that it has never been the case that the city is the only contributor. It’s required, he said, to have at least 20% from other sources. Higgins countered that the 20% isn’t necessarily from other local entities, which Ezekiel confirmed. He confirmed for Higgins that the city has done deals where the city of Ann Arbor has been the only local participant. Overall, however, Ezekiel said the city does better than a dollar-for-dollar match.

Higgins concluded by saying that if it were possible to say that the city would stick to these boundaries (as expanded), that would make her more comfortable in supporting the expansion.

Taylor mentioned that while the city has challenges in its parks system, the greenbelt millage can’t be used for maintenance of city facilities. Greenbelt millage money is just for land and the purchase of development rights. He said he would support the expansion of the boundaries.

Hieftje said he didn’t think there was ever a strict boundary presented to voters – it was always to be decided by the city council through an ordinance.

Outcome on the elimination of the boundary expansion from the proposal: The council rejected Lumm’s amendment. It had support only from Lumm and Higgins.

Higgins indicated she would like to think about stipulating a 5-year time period during which the boundaries could not expand again. Taylor made a side comment that the current council can’t tell future councils what they can do. Briere observed that since passage of the millage in 2003, it’s turned out to be 4-year increments for review. Hohnke characterized the 2007 change as an expansion with a couple of corners left out – it’s one expansion over the course of eight years, he said.

Outcome: Over a lone dissent from Lumm, the council gave initial approval to the boundary expansion and the provision for including certain properties adjacent to the boundary as eligible. Later in the meeting, the council also gave final approval to the appointment of Shannon Brines to the greenbelt advisory commission.

Hoover Mansion (University Bank) Rezoning

The council was asked to consider initial approval for altering the University Bank site plan for its property at 2015 Washtenaw Ave., known as the Hoover Mansion.

Stephen Ranzini, president of University Bank, checks his tablet during the city council's Nov. 21 meeting. Seated in a row behind Ranzini is Stuart Berry, who this year was an unsuccessful candidate for city council, running as a Republican in Ward 5.

The bank asked to revise the existing planned unit development (PUD) for the site (originally approved in 1978), allowing an increase in the total number of employees and parking spaces permitted on the parcel. The site serves as the bank’s headquarters.

The proposal includes a request to build 14 new parking spaces on the east side – behind the main building – for a total of 53 spaces on the site. The city planning commission unanimously recommended approval of the change at its Oct. 4, 2011 meeting, after the proposal had been initially submitted to the city about a year earlier.

Because the proposal is a change to the city’s zoning, it’s a change to the city’s ordinances – a process that requires a second approval by the council at a separate meeting, preceded by a public hearing.

Outcome: After brief comment from Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), the council’s representative to the city planning commission, the council voted unanimously to give the PUD revision initial approval.

Arbor Hills Crossing Site Plan, Brownfield

On the agenda was a resolution for approval of the site plan for Arbor Hills Crossing, a proposed retail and office complex at Platt and Washtenaw.

The project involves tearing down three vacant commercial structures and putting up four one- and two-story buildings throughout the 7.45-acre site – a total of 90,700-square-feet of space for retail stores and offices. Three of the buildings would face Washtenaw Avenue, across the street from the retail complex where Whole Foods grocery is located. The site would include 310 parking spaces.

Also before the council was the brownfield plan for the project, which includes $6.7 million in tax increment financing to be paid back over a 19-year period. The Washtenaw County board of commissioners will still need to sign off on the brownfield plan. County commissioners scheduled a public hearing on the brownfield plan to be held at their meeting on Jan. 18, 2012.

The city’s planning commission unanimously recommended approval of the site plan at its Oct. 18, 2011 meeting. Action had been postponed at the commission’s June 7, 2011 meeting so that the developer – Campus Realty – could address some outstanding issues with the plan.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) indicated that the brownfield committee had met and agreed the plan is appropriate. It was thoroughly vetted, she said, and would next be reviewed by the Washtenaw County board of commissioners.

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), the council’s representative to the city planning commission, said the proposal had been reviewed by the planning commission in some detail. The developer and the attorney for the project were present at the meeting in case there are any questions, he said. The plan takes a piece of land across from Whole Foods and makes it attractive for the area, he said. It comports with the themes of the Reimagining Washtenaw Avenue initiative. He noted that the developer had to locate the bus stop on the other side of the street so that patrons of the county recreation facility could take advantage of it.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) echoed his enthusiasm for the project, saying that the area had long been underutilized. It would be a great benefit for the neighborhood and he looked forward to its arrival, he said.

Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) reported that he’d attended the citizens participation meeting on the project and described it as very welcoming, appropriate and useful. He noted that the site had a previous plan that didn’t go anywhere – he hoped this one receives ample financing.

Outcome: On separate votes, the council unanimously approved the Arbor Hills Crossing site plan and brownfield plan.

Handbills, Newspapers

The council was asked to consider a revision to its ordinance on the distribution of handbills and newspapers that, among other things, would give residents the ability to prevent delivery of any undesired newspaper onto their porches by posting a notice expressly forbidding the delivery of a specific paper.

The ordinance revision reads, in part:

No corporation, limited liability company, or partnership and no corporate officer or director, managing member, partner, or other person shall cause to be placed any newspaper upon private property where there is a notice posted on the front door of the structure on the property that the occupant forbids the delivery of that specific newspaper. [.pdf of marked up version of ordinance]

Handbills, Newspapers: Council Postponement

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) introduced the proposed ordinance, saying that its quality of life is one of Ann Arbor’s charms. Currently, he said, it’s not permitted for a person to deposit handbills in various public places. The ordinance revision clearly extends the prohibition to the advertisers who cause the handbills to be created. Taylor went on to say that there are a good number of newspapers and newspaper-like publications that show up sometimes in people’s driveways. The ordinance revision, he said, gives residents tools to deal with that.

Noting that the text of the ordinance revision had not been available to the public in a timely way before the council’s meeting, Taylor asked his colleagues to postpone the vote.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to postpone its initial vote on the littering and handbill ordinance revision.

Handbills, Newspapers: First Amendment Issues

Though not discussed by the council, the attempt to curb delivery of unwanted newspapers poses some interesting First Amendment issues. From the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

According to David Hudson, adjunct faculty with Vanderbilt Law School and a scholar at the First Amendment Center, it’s conceivable to craft an ordinance preventing delivery of unwanted newspapers that doesn’t violate the First Amendment. Reached by phone, Hudson told The Chronicle that the lower courts have not necessarily been uniform in their rulings and many of the cases on such ordinances have been settled not based on the larger First Amendment issues. Hudson didn’t comment on Ann Arbor’s proposed ordinance, not having seen it.

One of the pitfalls of any such ordinance, Hudson cautioned, is the creation of content-based exclusions. Hudson explained that in First Amendment law, content-based laws are subject to strict scrutiny, which is the highest level of judicial review. And Hudson said he teaches his students the concept in part with a quote from Justice David Souter: “Strict scrutiny leaves few survivors.”

One example of a case in which a court found a law similar (but not identical) to Ann Arbor’s to be content-based, and therefore unconstitutional, came before a California court of appeals. From the opinion, which includes a description of the ordinances:

In this appeal we are asked to decide whether the City of Fresno’s municipal ordinance which restricts the door-to-door distribution of certain categories of written materials is constitutional. We are concerned with two parts of the ordinance. First, the ordinance prohibits-door-to-door distribution of advertisements and unauthorized newspapers when the owner or occupant of a residence or business has posted a sign prohibiting such distribution. Second, the ordinance prohibits door-to-door distribution of campaign materials, advertisements and unauthorized newspapers when it is reasonably apparent the previous day’s distribution has not been removed or the property is vacant. We hold both [31 Cal.App.4th 37] parts of the ordinance restrict the distribution of certain categories of protected speech and the press to the exclusion of other categories, and the City of Fresno failed to carry its burden of demonstrating a content-neutral justification for the disparate treatment. [.pdf of City of Fresno v. Press Communications, Inc. (1994)]

However, Hudson told The Chronicle that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the basic notion that residents have the right to control, at least to some degree, the extent to which they must contend with printed matter delivered to their homes. In a 1970 case, the court ruled that citizens have the right to stop delivery via the U.S. Postal Service of material from specific senders:

But the right of every person ‘to be let alone’ must be placed in the scales with the right of others to communicate. In today’s complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail.
…
To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail. The ancient concept that ‘a man’s home is his castle’ into which ‘not even the king may enter’ has lost none of its vitality, and none of the recognized exceptions includes any right to communicate offensively with another. [.pdf of Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept. (1970)]

And in a New York State Supreme Court decision, the court held that “neither a publisher nor a distributor has any constitutional right to continue to throw a newspaper onto the property of an unwilling recipient after having been notified not to do so.” [.pdf of Kenneth Tillman v. Distribution Systems of America]

House Bill on Discrimination

On the agenda was a resolution expressing the council’s opposition to a proposed Michigan state house bill from Tom McMillin, a Republican representing District 45, which includes Rochester. McMillin’s bill would amend Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act by declaring null and void legislation enacted by local units that expands the set of protected classes in the Civil Rights Act. [.pdf of Michigan's Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act] [.pdf of McMillin's proposed bill (HB 5039)]

The protected classes enumerated in the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act include categories based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, or marital status. The city of Ann Arbor’s non-discrimination ordinance adds sexual orientation, gender identity, or student status as classes of people against whom discrimination is prohibited. [.pdf of Ann Arbor's Chapter 112 non-discrimination ordinance]

So McMillin’s bill, if eventually signed into law, would nullify Ann Arbor’s Chapter 112 of the city code. The Ann Arbor city council’s resolution cites Michigan’s Constitution, which provides that ”Each such city and village shall have power to adopt resolutions and ordinances relating to its municipal concerns, property and government, subject to the constitution and law.” [.pdf of Section 22 of Michigan Constitution]

The bill has been referred to the state House judiciary committee. The 17-member judiciary committee for the state House includes 10 Republicans and seven Democrats, one of whom is Jeff Irwin (D-53), who represents a district that includes most of Ann Arbor.

Sandi Smith (Ward 1) introduced the resolution, saying that she generally liked to present items that are positive. But sadly, she said, the resolution she was bringing was necessary to give a message to Lansing. She said that some in the state legislature treated the Michigan State Constitution as if it’s something they can bend at their will. Specifically, she said, the McMillin bill challenged the right of a city to establish laws of its own. It would roll back protections to groups prescribed in the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act. She added a clause at the council table that sent a copy of the resolution to Gov. Rick Snyder.

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) indicated her understanding that the issue dealt with who could receive financial benefits. Smith clarified that this resolution was different from the resolution the council had approved on Sept. 19, 2011 expressing its opposition to House Bill 4770, which would limit benefits to same-sex partners. With that clarification, Briere said the resolution had her complete support.

Mayor John Hieftje contended that in fact there is a financial aspect to McMillin’s proposed legislation – it would take further steps to drive certain people away from the state, he said, who could otherwise contribute to Michigan’s economic recovery. Jane Lumm (Ward 2) thanked for Smith and Briere for bringing the resolution forward.

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the resolution opposing House Bill 5039.

Organization of New Council

According to the city charter, the city council must elect from its members a mayor pro tem “at its first meeting after the newly elected members have taken office following each regular city election …” That meeting was Nov. 21, which was the first meeting after Nov. 14, when councilmembers who won their elections on Nov. 8 took office.

Councilmembers were given a ceremonial swearing-in at the start of the Nov. 21 meeting by city clerk Jackie Beaudry (back to camera). From left to right: Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Jane Lumm (Ward 2) and Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3).

So at the start of the meeting, Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Jane Lumm (Ward 2), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Mike Anglin (Ward 5) were given a ceremonial swearing-in by the city clerk, Jackie Beaudry.

Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) moved the resolution nominating Higgins as mayor pro tem, along with the order of succession to the mayor.

Chris Easthope finished his service on the Ann Arbor city council as mayor pro tem. After Easthope left the council in 2008, going on to serve as judge on the 15th District Court, Higgins has been elected mayor pro tem each year.

The mayor pro tem acts as mayor when the elected mayor is unable to do so. When acting as the mayor, the mayor pro tem enjoys all duties and responsibilities of mayor, except that of the power of veto. With respect to other duties and responsibilities of the mayor as compared with other councilmembers, they consist largely of serving as emergency manager, making nominations to boards and commissions, presiding over meetings, and fulfilling a ceremonial function.

The mayor pro tem’s annual salary is the same as other councilmembers: $15,913. [The mayor earns more: $42,436.] Although the local officers compensation commission recommended in 2007 that the mayor pro tem be given additional compensation, the city council that year rejected that part of the commission’s recommendation.

Other than Taylor’s remark that the order of succession was seniority-based, but within that sorting “regrettably alphabetical,” the council did not engage in deliberations on the vote. Taylor’s comment likely related to the fact that he is alphabetically last among the four councilmembers who were elected for the first time in 2008 – Derezinski, Hohnke, Smith and Taylor.

The complete order of succession after Higgins is: Margie Teall (Ward 4), Mike Anglin (Ward 5), Sabra Briere (Ward 1), Tony Derezinski (Ward 2), Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5), Sandi Smith (Ward 1), Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), Stephen Kunselman (Ward 3) and Jane Lumm (Ward 2).

Outcome: The council unanimously approved the resolution electing Marcia Higgins as mayor pro tem and approving the order of succession to the mayor.

Also on the agenda were council committee appointments for the coming year and ratification of the council rules. The committee appointments were not prepared in time for the meeting and an amendment to the rules discussed by the council rules committee just before the council meeting was not added to the agenda until just before the council meeting.

That amendment relates to the rule requiring that emails received by councilmembers on government email accounts during council meetings be produced by the city, subject to redaction under provisions of the Michigan Freedom of Information Act, and attached to the meeting minutes.

The proposed amended version of the rule would read:

Electronic communication sent and received by a member during a Council meeting shall be included in the minutes of such meeting, provided that the minutes shall not include electronic communication received by a member that clearly does not relate to the subject matter of the meeting.

During the rules committee meeting that preceded the council’s Nov. 21 meeting, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) told other committee members that he was proposing the rule because the existing rule had resulted in the inclusion in the meeting minutes of one neighbor’s nasty comments about another neighbor, which did not serve the purpose of the rule.

That purpose, said Taylor, was to provide a complete record of the kind of input the council was receiving during its council meetings. [The rule was enacted in September 2009, after requests made under the Freedom of Information Act showed that councilmembers were using their email accounts to communicate with each other – on topics that ranged from juvenile horseplay to the subject matter of the meeting, to their political campaigns. For more background, see The Chronicle column: "When's an Open Meeting Open?"]

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), chair of the rules committee, reported at the committee’s meeting that she’d received a suggestion from Jane Lumm (Ward 2) to amend the rule on agenda setting:

Council members may add items to the agenda at any time, but will use best efforts to do so prior to the Friday before the next Council meeting.

Higgins indicated that for this iteration of rule changes, she was not inclined to consider Lumm’s suggestion, which involved a requirement of a 3/4 majority vote in order to make late additions to the agenda. Higgins indicated the possibility of giving Lumm’s suggestion further review by the rules committee. She allowed that there were some agenda-setting issues that need to be addressed. She mentioned the fact that the second reading of the pedestrian ordinance was not supposed to be placed on the agenda for that night, yet had been put on the agenda, which had required its subsequent deletion.

Also during the rules committee meeting, Higgins indicated that the slate of committee appointments, which she is preparing, was not ready for perusal, because not everyone had submitted their preferences.

Council appointments will need to fill the slots that Stephen Rapundalo previously held, having lost the Nov. 8 Ward 2 election to Jane Lumm. Those include the following council committees: audit committee, budget committee, administration and labor committee, and liquor control committee. Rapundalo also served as the city council representative to the housing and human services board (HHSB) and the local development finance authority (LDFA) board.

At the Nov. 21 council meeting, Higgins announced her intent at the council’s next meeting to nominate Rapundalo to fill a different (non-council) slot on the LDFA board, which is an existing vacancy.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to postpone ratification of council rules and committee appointments until Dec. 5.

Chilled Water

On the agenda was an item that provided permission to the University of Michigan to install chilled water facilities under Tappan Street. The long-term mechanism used to grant the permission is an “occupancy agreement.” The university and the city disagree on the question of whether the agreement grants the university an “interest in land.”

As a result, a memo from the city attorney’s office – which accompanied the resolution that the city council was asked to approve – states:

The University has insisted that the occupancy agreement be processed as a document that grants it an interest in land, even if it doesn’t. The City does not believe that the occupancy agreement grants to the University any interest in land. As drafted, it grants to the University an interest in land only to the extent it grants the University, by its terms, an interest in land. Nevertheless, in accordance with the University’s request, but with agreeing that the agreement grants an interest in land, the document is being submitted to City Council for approval with a requirement of 8 votes as if it granted an interest in land.

Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) questioned what this actually meant. Briefly put, assistant city attorney Abigail Elias explained that the city council was being asked to give the agreement its approval as if it were granting an interest in land to the university, even though the city did not believe it was doing that. [The Nov. 21 agenda indicated the eight-vote majority city charter requirement, which is triggered by transactions involving an interest in land.]

Part of the context for the discussion with UM on the issue, explained Elias, was other similar arrangements, including some related to the East Stadium bridges reconstruction project.

Outcome: The council voted unanimously to grant permission to the University of Michigan to install chilled water facilities under Tappan Street. 

Communications and Comment

Every city council agenda contains multiple slots for city councilmembers and the city administrator to give updates or make announcements about issues that are coming before the city council. And every meeting typically includes public commentary on subjects not necessarily on the agenda.

Comm/Comm: Warming Center

Signed up as an alternate for one of the 10 reserved spots for public commentary at the start of the meeting was Orian Zakai. Priority is given to those who wish to address the council on an agenda topic, and eight people had signed up to speak about the public art ordinance, which was an agenda item, as well as two others who addressed agenda items.

Zakai and another student stayed until the end of the meeting towards midnight, when there’s another opportunity for the public to address the council. Zakai introduced herself as a PhD student at the University of Michigan, speaking on behalf of students who want to establish a 24-hour warming center. The Delonis Center, she said, has diminished capacity. [At its Oct. 17, 2011 meeting, the council allocated $25,000 of the city's general fund reserve to keep the shelter's warming center open. It's open only during evening and nighttime hours.]

Zakai described how the goal of the group is to establish a 24-hour center, so that also during the day people have a place to go to stay warm.

She said that her group already has 25 volunteers and a petition signed by 516 community members. There will be an organizational meeting on Nov. 28, she said. [The meeting starts at 8 p.m. at Cafe Ambrosia, 326 Maynard.] Her group is trying to locate a site for the warming center by December, she said, and they are looking at a property at the corner of East Huron and Division. She asked the council to support the effort.

Comm/Comm: Sustainable Community

Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) reported that Washtenaw County had received $3 million for a Sustainable Communities project. He said the grant resulted in large part from the Reimagining Washtenaw Avenue corridor study that involved collaboration with four different communities – Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Ypsilanti Township, and Pittsfield Township. The key for winning the grant was the collaboration and the consideration of this area as a “region,” Derezinski said.

Comm/Comm: Stadium Bridges

Margie Teall (Ward 4) said she was pleased to be at the site of the groundbreaking for the East Stadium bridge reconstruction project, along with others. Details on detours can be found at annarborbridges.org, she said. She noted that Congressman John Dingell was there, as well as some federal luminaries.

Mayor John Hieftje said it was sobering to hear at that ceremony that there are bridges in worse condition than the Stadium Boulevard bridge – 14,000 in the U.S. are as bad or worse, he noted. He said that the infrastructure of the nation is in peril.

Comm/Comm: 618 S. Main

Mike Anglin (Ward 5) called everyone’s attention to a second public participation meeting at 618 S. Main, the site of the old Fox Tent and Awning facility and encouraged people to attend. [It took place on Nov. 22. For Chronicle coverage of the first meeting, on Nov. 11, see "Public Gets View of 618 S. Main Proposal"]

Comm/Comm: Medical Marijuana

Sabra Briere (Ward 1) reported she’d attended a presentation on Michigan’s medical marijuana law, given by Michigan attorney general Bill Schuette. [Briere is a member of the city's medical marijuana licensing board.]

Comm/Comm: Jane Lumm

Jane Lumm – who won the Nov. 8 election in Ward 2, displacing Stephen Rapundalo on the council – said she just wanted to say thanks for the nice welcome people had given her. Everyone has made her feel welcome, she said.

Comm/Comm: Sue McCormick

City administrator Steve Powers publicly congratulated the city’s public services area administrator, Sue McCormick, on her selection as the head of the Detroit water and sewerage department. He selection, he said, speaks to McCormick’s talents and abilities. Her last day, he said, would be on Dec. 16. An interim public services area administrator will be in place for Dec. 17, he said, and he would keep the council apprised of the process for a permanent replacement.

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

Next council meeting: Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at 301 E. Huron. [confirm date]

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

The event also included national, regional, and local media organizations, who were eventually allowed into Michigan Stadium. But I don’t think most members of the media really listened to his address.

The online New York Times ran at least four different headlines for the Obama speech. In this collage of screen shots, from the upper left, going clockwise: (1) "At a Graduation, Obama Defends Government"; (2) "President's Plea to Graduates: Be Civil"; (3) "At a Graduation, Obama Urges Openness and Defends Government"; (4) "Obama Assails Antigovernment Rhetoric." (Image links to higher resolution file.)

For example, I didn’t see any of these headlines, which could have been attached to an accurate account of Obama’s speech:

Obama Lambastes Media for Sound-Byte Coverage

Obama Takes Aim at Media for Stoking Conflicts

Obama Puts Blame for Coarse Discourse on Media

Obama Erupts But Does Not Confirm Ties to Volcano

The fourth alternative is based on a kindergartner’s question to the president, which Obama reported as part of his speech. That one is admittedly a stretch. It’s included for the benefit of an audience of two, perhaps three, local Ann Arbor readers who might crack a smile when they read it. [For those of you who don't know, Ann Arbor is building a "volcano" in the center of its downtown.]

The other three, however, are legitimate candidates for a headline that summarizes what the president’s speech was “about.” The venerable New York Times tried out at least four different headlines for a single online story on the Obama speech. But none of the NYT alternatives – nor those of any other media coverage I saw – identified as a significant theme of Obama’s speech the culpability of the media in the kind of “over the top” public debates that Obama said “coarsens our culture.”

That’s because I don’t think media organizations were paying attention to all of Obama’s speech the way they would have if they’d approached it like they were cutting up fish.

Slicing, Serving Obama’s Speech

Here’s an outline of Obama’s speech, which The Chronicle overlaid on its annotated version  of his transcribed remarks:

I. Introduction

II. America’s Voices

A. How Obama Keeps in Touch

B. Kindergartners

C. Niceness

III. Contentious Discourse

A. Origins in Current Crisis

B. Historical Context

C. The Nature of American Politics

IV. How to Preserve Democracy

A. Adapt Role of Government to Changing World

B. Maintain Civility

C. Participate In It

V. Conclusion: Calling Graduates to Action

Obama’s speechwriters probably worked from a different outline. But those are some slices that I thought would allow readers to chew easily through the material of the speech. So that’s the way The Chronicle served up the president’s address. The Chronicle’s headline: “Obama’s Michigan Commencement Speech.”

The Chronicle thus served it up relatively raw, and uncooked over the flame of analysis of what Obama was using the occasion to do. In this regard we took an approach to the commencement coverage similar to the approach a sushi chef takes to serving fish. The skill of the chef is not in the cooking but in the cutting.

I first encountered this kind of analogy in a 1989 essay by Japanese biologist Tatsuo Motokawa: “Sushi Science and Hamburger Science.” In that essay, Motokawa applies the comparison of Eastern and Western cuisines to the practice of science, but I think it’s applicable to the presentation of news as well:

A lot of skills are hidden behind the no-cook. This is really an art, and definitely a different kind of art than that found in Western cooking. Some Western cuisines are great: we taste the skills of chefs. Sushi is also great: we taste the materials themselves.

So Motokawa isn’t arguing for the superiority of Eastern cuisine over Western cuisine. He was simply pointing out the specific ways they’re different. Extending the analogy to scientific cultures, he describes the difference this way:

Western science is hypothesis oriented. A hypothesis is a personal interpretation using words about how universal rule works in a particular matter of interest. The hypothesis should be big: the final rule should be one, and therefore the biggest and most general hypothesis is the best one. This drives the hypothesis to become abstract. [...]

Eastern science is fact oriented. It tries to communicate with the truth, not through generality and abstraction as Western science does, but through specificity and objectivity.

So in presenting the text of Obama’s speech – sliced into an outline and lightly garnished with annotations – we took an “Eastern” approach. It was centered on the actual words of the speech, left intact.

It wasn’t perfectly “intact” – that is, we didn’t teleport the physical being of Obama through computers to re-deliver the speech right in front of Chronicle readers – that would be like offering a live fish and asking readers to bite into it. And it would taste terrible, unless you are a grizzly bear.

What Obama’s Speech Was About

Based on the outline, Obama’s speech was a standard graduation speech in theme, and fairly unremarkable and workmanlike in its organizational structure. It can be seen as a longer version of the standard five-paragraph essay that most of UM’s graduating seniors learned to write four years ago – in whatever class corresponds to freshman composition. Obama certainly introduced the three sub-sections under “How to Preserve Democracy,” with a strategy straight out of freshman comp – simple enumeration: “First of all, …” “Now the second way …” and “Which brings me to the last …”

But what was the meat on those bones of an outline?

Focusing just on the fourth section, the one we labeled “How to Preserve Democracy,” Obama talked first about how one key to preserving our democracy is to allow the proper role of government to change to fit the needs of the time. Rhetorically, the strategy for that first point was to emphasize the role historically of Republican presidents in “big government” philosophies: Abraham Lincoln (intercontinental railroad, land-grant colleges), Teddy Roosevelt (national parks), Lyndon Johnson (Great Society), and Dwight Eisenhower (national highway system).

The second crucial ingredient Obama identified to preserve democracy was civil discourse. He called for the debate to center on a common set of facts and for the debate to be civil. And he called on graduates to seek out a diversity of opinion among the various choices in the media that are available to them.

And finally, Obama called on graduates to participate in public life. That was the section that concluded with the one passage from the speech that has a chance of enduring for the ages, the one that likely gave goosebumps to the staunchest Obama supporters:

What is certain, what has always been certain, is the ability to shape the destiny. That is what makes us different. That is what sets us apart. That is what makes us Americans. Our ability at the end of the day to look past all our differences and all of our disagreements, and still forge a common future.

So if we analyze the significance of that “How to Preserve Democracy” section and try to identify the one salient theme there that’s headline-worthy, the possibilities produced by the New York Times for the same online story are, I think, reasonable candidates:

1. At a Graduation, Obama Defends Government
2. President’s Plea to Graduates: Be Civil
3. At a Graduation, Obama Urges Openness and Defends Government
4. Obama Assails Antigovernment Rhetoric

But there was more than one section to the speech.

What the Speech Was Not About

I think it’s fair to conclude that what Obama wanted the speech to be about was the fourth section. One clue, I think, is the presentational strategy of “First of all, …” “Now the second way …” and “Which brings me to the last …”

So the fourth section is what the author of the text wanted the speech to be about. But why should we trust the author of the text to tell us what it’s about?

Maybe it was about something else, too. Was it about U.S. Senators beating the crap out of each other? Well, no, although in the section on “Contentious Discourse” Obama alluded to a physical attack by Congressman Preston Brooks on Senator Charles Sumner in 1856. That came in response to a speech that Sumner had delivered against the Fugitive Slave Act. The speech had insulted one of the authors of the act, Andrew Butler, who was a relative of Brooks.

Was the speech about volcanoes? Not really. In the section on “America’s Voices” one of the questions Obama reported receiving from a kindergartner was, Do you live next to a volcano? But that was there clearly for comedic effect – Obama himself seemed tickled enough that he paused to work through a chuckle.

What Else the Speech Was About

But in that same section with the volcanoes, Obama reported another question: Are people being nice? And Obama’s remarks on that question went like this:

The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story, which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make their arguments as outrageous and as incendiary as possible.

But that came right on the heals and in the same section clearly intended mostly to lighten the mood – it’s only kindergartners and their cute little funny questions, right? That’s not the “news” out of the speech, is it?

But the thread was continued in the meat-and-potatoes section that most the the media seemed to think the speech was about. Right there in the “Preserving Democracy Section”:

Today’s 24/7 echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.

So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that Obama’s speech was also about the role of the free press in our democracy, and that the press in general might think a little more deeply about whether they’re “writing for the fight” or “writing for the right.”

In Defense of Occasional Journalistic Sushi

It’s certainly possible that I missed other journalists’ presentation of the media’s culpability in the coarsening of the public discourse as a significant theme of Obama’s speech.

If I did, then it’s likely because I was distracted by trying to practice the art of “journalistic sushi.” The hours after the president spoke I spent transcribing the speech as delivered and tracking down the various allusions in the speech that warranted some kind of annotation.

Part of the task of transcribing the actual speech would not, I’m fairly certain, seem very much like journalism to most conventional Western journalists. That’s the part where you determine whether the line I rendered as “Some of these letters tell stories …”  should have been transcribed instead as “Some of these st- letters tell stories.” Obama began with the hint of the /st/ for “stories,” saved it smoothly, and delivered “letters.”

It’s also the part where you determine whether to include the Obama trademark hesitation vocalization that seems to live somewhere in the glottal area and could be transcribed as “erm,” “ehh,” “aah” or the like. For Saturday’s speech that might have looked something like: “And so may I say, ehh, Go Blue!”

I opted against that, reasoning that most readers would be baffled.

I’m not suggesting that in general the “journalistic sushi” approach we used for coverage of the Obama commencement address is always the right call. In this case, the attention to detail gave enough time for reflection to include the annotated material as well as the in-line commentary.

But I’m content that someone who reads along might reasonably feel like a reader is supposed to feel when they read Chronicle material – as expressed in this publication’s tagline: “It’s like being there.”

Last Thursday, 23 July, 2009, The Ann Arbor News published its final edition after nearly 175 years in business. I spent part of that morning talking on the teeter totter with Brian Tolle about what people “hire” newspapers to do – besides provide them with news and information.

The notion of “hiring” newspapers – by subscribing to them – to do a “job” is a way of thinking about products that comes naturally to Tolle. He works in the field of organization development, providing consulting services to technology companies on the people side of the equation.

Tolle has a tolerance, even enthusiasm, for change and innovation. So when pitched the idea of reading a newspaper on a high-tech paper scroll, he did not fall off the teeter totter laughing.

When it comes to newspapers, here’s the kind of question Tolle is not likely to ask: Do you want national coverage? Do you prefer lots of pictures and charts? How about captions on the pictures? Should sports be a part of the newspaper coverage? Which of these two fonts do you prefer? How about horoscopes? Would you like editorials?

Instead, Tolle is more likely to begin with: Will you miss getting the newspaper? And if the answer is yes, he’ll then follow up with, Why?

On the totter, Tolle gives two examples of people who will miss their paper. They’ve hired the newspaper to do a job other than provide news and information.

As usual, the conversation on the totter includes a range of topics, and there is one revelation that will come as great news to potential future riders who wonder if there are “facilities” available. For details, read Brian’s Talk.

Flyer for the July 25 Pie Lovers Unite! in Ypsilanti.

I’ve been thinking about pies.

Literally, in one case. A couple of weeks ago I stopped by the local food tent at Top of the Park and talked to Kim Bayer, one of the organizers of Pie Lovers Unite! – “an old-fashioned hootenanny glorifying Great Michigan Pie,” according to their promotional materials.

The price of admission for this July 25 event is a pie. They’ll be having a “pie-ku” contest, too, which inspired me to write this:

Flakey double crust/hides media fruit or meat/splats soft in your face

This is the month for a seismic shift in how many Ann Arbor residents get their news. The Ann Arbor News is closing on July 23 and AnnArbor.com will launch that same week, with a twice-a-week print edition on Sundays and Thursdays, starting July 26. Heritage Newspapers – a chain that publishes weeklies in Ypsilanti, Saline, Dexter, Chelsea and Milan – is coming to the table even sooner, debuting its print weekly A2Journal on July 9. It’s interesting that the company is expanding, given that the chain’s owner, the Journal Register Co., is emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Clearly, they think they can grab enough of the Ann Arbor media pie to fill their belly.

In addition to the new players, there are existing publications like the Michigan Daily, Ann Arbor Observer, Current and Ann Arbor Business Review, radio coverage from shows with a local focus by Lucy Ann Lance, WEMU and Michigan Radio and others, plus blogs that post with varying degrees of frequency and original content. For a town that felt starved for coverage not so long ago, Ann Arbor residents in some ways now face a glut of news, though not necessarily served up in the way they’d prefer.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle is in the mix too, of course, and as we mark our 10th month in business today, I’m marveling at how much has changed since Sept. 2, 2008. In another 10 months, the seating arrangement for this media feast will have changed yet again, I’m sure.

So all of this got me thinking about pies. Thinking of Ann Arbor as one big pie of readers and advertisers, with each news outlet trying to grab a big enough slice. At some point, there might not be enough to go around.

Or you can shift the analogy a bit and think of each news source as its own pie. Some are mincemeat – hearty but not to everyone’s taste. There are super-sugary custard pies, and pies filled with fruit. Some have stale crust, while others haven’t been cooked quite long enough. Some have mystery fillings that you can’t yet eat – but we’re assured they’ll be delicious. Maybe with enough to sample from, everyone will find one – hopefully more – that they like.

By our next monthly milestone, we’ll have more to report about several initiatives that are still in the oven. Meanwhile, we hope your appetite for The Chronicle stays healthy.

Matt Kraner, Tony Dearing and Laurel Champion talk about their plans for AnnArbor.com at a community forum on Thursday.

For nearly two hours on Thursday afternoon, three people leading the new online venture formed to replace the Ann Arbor News fielded questions at a public forum, trying to assuage concerns over news that shocked this community when announced last week.

“Community” and “local” were two words frequently repeated by Matt Kraner, Laurel Champion and Tony Dearing of AnnArbor.com, which is gearing up for a late July launch. “Local journalism is not dead in Ann Arbor,” said Champion, current publisher of The News who’ll be executive vice president for the new company. “We’re just serving it up in a very, very different way.”

About 75 people attended Thursday’s forum at Weber’s Inn, the second of four now scheduled. Several current and former Ann Arbor News employees were in the audience, as were a few community leaders like Patricia Garcia, publisher of the Ann Arbor Observer, Ann Arbor school board member Susan Baskett, and Maura Thomson, head of the Main Street Area Association. (News reporter John Mulcahy filed an article about the event for the Ann Arbor News.)

The forum began with brief remarks by Kraner, Champion and Dearing, followed by questions from the audience. Kraner, CEO of the new business and former chief marketing officer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (owned by Advance Publications, the same company that owns the Ann Arbor News and that’s funding AnnArbor.com), said he was “very impressed with Ann Arbor so far,” and emphasized that for the new venture, the “quality of local journalism is really our paramount focus.” He also said they planned to build new revenue opportunities for advertisers, and would be able to push advertisers’ messages out “like you’ve never seen before.”

Champion said it’s been a sad week at the Ann Arbor News, but that because they’d had to cut costs and taken value out of the newspaper in recent years, it wasn’t serving anyone very well anymore. The new venture, she said, puts them in a position to do things well. Noting that she loved this community, she said AnnArbor.com would be “of, by and for the community – and we really need your help.”

Dearing, chief content director for AnnArbor.com, underscored the importance of sustaining community journalism, and said that fundamental reporting would be combined with new tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogging. He said bloggers complement traditional newspapers, and that AnnArbor.com wants to engage them, link to them and maybe even employ some of them. But to be successful, he said, “we have to do news and we have to do news well.”

Here’s a sampling from the forum’s Q&A. For this report, we’ve paraphrased audience questions and responses, and grouped them by topic, not sequentially.

Content & Staffing

Q: Will there be an editorial point of view? Dearing said he had mixed feelings about that. He described Ann Arbor as an opinionated community, but said they hadn’t decided how important it is to tell readers what they think via editorials. However, he said if they hear from the community that they should be taking the lead on an issue, that will be a factor.

Q: Will there be national and international news? National and international news is heavily commoditized, Dearing said. The mission of this new venture is “local, local, local.” He also said he was looking at ways to incorporate state news, especially as it relates to this area.

Q: There’s an awful lot of weird bloggers out there – I worry about that. Be careful about giving all bloggers a bad name, Dearing said. Some provide credible, valuable information, and if AnnArbor.com thinks readers would benefit from that, they’ll link to those bloggers. He said if you really wanted an understanding about AnnArbor.com, you wouldn’t be reading only the newspaper – you’d be reading blogs and other sources as well.

Q: You’ve mentioned the site will have elements of social networking – what do you mean by that? The site will take advantage of Facebook and Twitter, Dearing said. For example, if you register on AnnArbor.com, you’ll be able to pull in your entire Facebook profile, if you want. And if you post on the site, you’ll be able in one click to post the same thing on Twitter and Facebook. (The connection with Facebook came up again when an audience member said she’d tried to register online for this forum, and was directed to the Facebook log-in page. “I had no idea what that was about,” she said. Dearing said they’d fix that.)

People who want to can also create their own content on AnnArbor.com, Dearing said. For example, if you want to create a page for your 8-year-old’s wrestling team, you can do that – you can post photos, schedules, results of meets – and “we’re not going to touch it,” he said. Kraner said they knew it was important to differentiate between content that their own staff posted versus the content posted by readers and bloggers.

Q: What’s the geographical reach of Ann Arbor.com? All of Washtenaw County – but starting in Ann Arbor. Since they’re building from the ground up, Dearing said, “I don’t want to over-promise.”

Q: Will there be a health reporter? How about strong investigative reporters? Dearing said they’d cover personal health issues as well as the local health industry. They’d heard from people that business reporting was important, so they’ll staff that “more adequately.” He said he wants some top-notch reporters who’ll get the story – if they aren’t trained in technical skills, “them we’ll teach,” he said.

Q: I haven’t heard anything about arts & culture – will you be covering that? Absolutely, Dearing said. Ann Arbor is one of the most culturally rich communities in America, he said, and that will be a part of AnnArbor.com. He said they’ll have an “exceptional” arts calendar, and that the Arts Alliance has already reached out to them.

Q: I found out about today’s forum by reading about it in the newspaper. How will you communicate events like this? Dearing said that most people get their information online, and that overall combined readership in print and online is going up. Kraner said that AnnArbor.com has to be the source for community information, including events. Being a rich, thorough resource is a high priority, he said.

Q: How many Ann Arbor News employees are losing their jobs? The Ann Arbor News is closing, Champion said, and most employees will be laid off. Kraner added that News employees are being encouraged to apply for jobs at AnnArbor.com, but “it’s a different company. It’s a clean break.” They’ll be outsourcing printing, copy-editing and page layout functions, he said, and will be solely focused on creating content, and on sales and marketing.

Q: How many reporters will be on staff compared to now? Dearing said they would employ fewer people than are now on staff, but that they’re still trying to figure out how many. They want to be transparent, he said, and will have that answer in two or three weeks. (Editor’s note: AnnArbor.com is interviewing now for four positions that will manage coverage in four areas: News, sports, arts & entertainment, and community.)

Dearing said that some people expressed concern because they’d seen the newsroom at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer – which recently ended its print edition and is now online only – drop from 140 people to 20. “We’ll certainly have more people than that,” Dearing said. (Not including the sports staff, there are about a dozen full-time reporters at The News. In addition, there are about 40 other newsroom jobs, including photographers, editors, support staff, and part-time reporters.)

Q: What about Geoff Larcom and Jo Mathis – I enjoy reading them. Will they be hired? Referring to Larcom, Dearing said it’s a pretty strong indication of your grounding in this community when city hall is named after your father. Dearing said he hired Mathis into the Ann Arbor News, and described Larcom and Mathis as “special people to me.” He said they’d had conversations, but didn’t explicitly say what their roles, if any, might be at AnnArbor.com.

Q: A lot of us in local businesses and nonprofits have relationships with reporters at the Ann Arbor News. How much will you be meshing the old with the new? Dearing said he understands that they can’t bring in a bunch of 25-year-olds who don’t know the community. He said they’ll need both experienced reporters as well as people who can help reach a new audience.

Q: Will carriers now working for the Ann Arbor News have to reapply for their jobs to deliver the Thursday and Sunday papers? Carrier jobs to distribute AnnArbor.com’s print editions will be outsourced. Kraner said it’s important to have a strong carrier force, to ensure the papers are delivered “on time and dry.” He said one of the regional newspapers (presumably one owned by Advance Publications) would handle staffing for carriers.

Appearance

Q: What will the website look like? Dearing said the site would be uncluttered, intuitive and easy to use. There will also be tools allowing more sophisticated users to customize the site. The site will be constantly updated, he said – the home page might look dramatically different within an hour or even a half hour.

The site will be organized around topics, locations and people, Dearing said. There will be different levels of sophistication within those areas. A basic page might just contain a story with links and a photo. Another tier might focus on video, with links to bloggers. A third level could be customizable, with videos, text, photos, statistics and more.

Kraner said the challenge is to increase not just the size of their online audience, but also the frequency of use. That means breaking news will be a significant part of their overall mission. He described the site as elegant, and said it would include tools to “connect and communicate.” However, he said they weren’t going to finish building the site until they’d gotten feedback from the community. He said that although AnnArbor.com will launch in late July, they will likely come back with a second version in October and additional changes after the first of the year.

Q: MLive is pretty cumbersome and hard to navigate. How will AnnArbor.com compare? Dearing said they’ll have a “superior” site search and that the site would be easy to navigate. It’s one of their highest priorities, he said, and they’ve hired a firm with a national reputation to help do that.

Q: Are there any plans to make the site more accessible to the visually impaired and for people with other disabilities? Dearing said they hadn’t discussed that, but he wanted to know more and asked the person who’d posed the question to stay after the forum and talk to him. Earlier in the meeting, Champion said that at a Thursday morning meeting with residents at Glacier Hills retirement community, people were concerned about their ability to use computers. The new entity will be prepared to help make that transition, she said. “We’re not going to leave you behind.”

Q: I sit at a computer all day and am not inclined to do that when I get home. Have you thought about using a wireless e-reader? Dearing said they’re looking at delivering content in a number of ways, including Kindle and Plastic Logic. That’s a fairly easy thing to accommodate, he said, and if it wasn’t available immediately, it would be soon.

Q: What will the print editions look like? The printed papers will be broadsheets, like the current newspaper, Kraner said. There will also be a “total market coverage” (TMC) product which will be distributed once a week to non-subscribers. (Currently, the Ann Arbor News has a TMC product called “Food, Fun and Fitness,” which includes reprinted articles from the daily newspaper as well as advertisements.)

Dearing said the Sunday paper would look like a traditional Sunday paper. Thursday’s edition would likely be heavy on entertainment and prep sports. It’s hard to say how much emphasis there’ll be on breaking news for the print editions, he said. There might be more news features and analysis.

Kraner said the print edition will be available in newsstands and stores, as well as by subscription.

Business model

Q: Financially, how will you make AnnArbor.com work? The site won’t charge to access content. It’s primarily an advertising-supported business model. They’ll charge subscriptions for the Thursday and Sunday printed newspapers – when asked specifically what subscriptions would cost, Kraner said they didn’t yet know. Kraner said he expects Sundays will still be a dominant vehicle for advertisers, as it is now. He said they’ll be very aggressive on pricing for ads – ”expect to pay less.”

Later, responding to a different question, Champion said that the Ann Arbor News’ printing plant in Pittsfield Township is being spun off as a separate company, which will essentially be a commercial printer. The plant currently prints the New York Times for this region, the Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper (one of the eight newspapers in Michigan owned Advance Publications), and other publications.

Q: What’s your advertising model like? Kraner said they’ll be launching three or four new elements for advertisers on the site, possibly incorporating data provided by advertisers. They’ll also be creating direct marketing opportunities for advertisers, he said. Small- and medium-size businesses are looking for ways to advertise more cost effectively, and AnnArbor.com staff will be talking with advertisers to see what works for them. Traditional revenue streams, like classified ads, have eroded, he said, but now there are opportunities to build out a completely new model that pushes out content.

Q: I think you’re throwing in the towel too soon on the newspaper. Have you considered things like trimming payroll, raising subscription rates, charging readers to publish personal photos or paying your executives $1-a-year salaries? Kraner said this isn’t just an Ann Arbor issue. Newspapers are financially challenged nationwide, even in robust markets. In the current model, he said, costs are high to create and deliver newspapers. The owners aren’t doing this to make more money, Kraner said. Industry-wide, news media are trying to find a viable business model.

Misc. questions & comments

Q: Do you think The News alienated a lot of the community because of its conservative endorsements? Champion, who as publisher has served on the Ann Arbor News editorial board for several years, said that yes, their editorials have probably alienated some readers. But that’s true for any opinion they have, she said. “Did we make some mistakes? Absolutely, we did,” she said. But they’ve been trying to focus more on the community over the past couple of years, and that’s also why they’re now working to change their business model.

Dearing followed up by saying that people he talks to generally have two questions: Does the new venture understand the technology – we do, he said – and do they understand Ann Arbor. “That’s what we’re going to be judged by,” Dearing said. Kraner added that they want to understand what the community wants – that’s why they’re seeking feedback.

Q: I got an email from you saying this forum would be at Campus Inn at 2 o’clock, but it started an hour earlier at Weber’s. I’m a little concerned that your system is already broken. Kraner apologized for the confusion of location and meeting time, and said they do take that seriously and believe it’s important to reach out to the community. They have scheduled another forum for Thursday, April 16 at 7 p.m. in the Pendleton Room of the Michigan Union at 530 S. State St.

Q: How long have you been working on this project? Kraner said that he and Dearing officially joined the project at the first of this year, and that Champion came on board about a month ago. He did not discuss what work was done unofficially prior to that.

Starting today, Washtenaw News – an Ann Arbor-based distributor of newspapers and magazines – will be delivering the New York Times to home subscribers throughout most of Washtenaw County, Genova said. The papers were previously delivered under an agreement with the Detroit Media Partnership, which manages the Detroit papers.

The three-year contract with Washtenaw News also includes delivery of USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily. In addition, Washtenaw News is a distributor locally for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and the Ann Arbor News, among other publications. The deal means that Washtenaw News now uses about 20 independent contractors to deliver the papers, Genova said – about double the number they used before.

The Chronicle heard about this news on Sunday morning, when the following note slipped out of the New York Times delivered to Chronicle Central:

From your Newspaper Carrier

Sunday, March 29, 2009

I have been delivering the New York Times, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, USA Today and Investor’s Business Daily in your neighborhood since spring 2007. After today I will longer be providing this service to you.

I believe an explanation is in order: Detroit Media Partnership has been the local distributor for home delivery of the papers I bring you each morning. When Detroit announced its plan to go to a three-day delivery schedule, the national publications sought a new distribution contract. Detroit Media did not win it. As a result, they reconfigured most routes, combining some and eliminating others.

Detroit newspaper customers: your delivery agent will still be working for Detroit Media. New York Times, USA Today, and Investor’s Business Daily customers: the company that begins delivering tomorrow has been the Wall Street Journal distributor for many years, Washtenaw News.

It has been a pleasure serving you. I wish you all the best.

Kevin Canze

Reached by phone Monday morning, Canze said that he talked to Washtenaw News about picking up routes with them, but decided against it based on the configuration of the routes and the lower compensation they offered. He was paid 22 cents per weekday paper delivered and 29 cents for Sunday papers. Washtenaw News is paying 5% to 10% below that, he said. And since independent contractors pay for everything associated with their work, such as gas and insurance, he said it wasn’t worth it for him. However, Canze said several carriers he knows did take routes with Washtenaw News.

Monday’s deliveries were a bit bumpy, according to Genova, as new carriers learned customer preferences. “But we are learning them,” he said, “and tomorrow will be a lot better.”

Washtenaw News Co. was founded 53 years ago and is headquartered on South Industrial. The company’s fortunes are tied to the struggling newspaper industry, and since the 1990s they’ve seen business slide. “There has never been a time when newspaper sales are as bad as they are now,” Genova said. “Never.”

The biggest downturn occurred between 2004 and 2006, Genova said, and with the recent announcement that the Ann Arbor News is closing in July, “there’s not a bright horizon on that, either,” he said.

Yet he’s cautiously optimistic, saying that the New York Times contract came at a good time.

Last year, the two Detroit papers – operating under the Detroit Media Partnership – announced their plans to scale back home delivery. Starting this week, the Free Press is being delivered Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, while the News will be delivered Thursdays and Fridays only. The Detroit Media Partnership previously had a contract to deliver the New York Times in this region, but when DMP scaled back its own home delivery, the Times opened bids for a new distributor. The Times is printed locally at the Ann Arbor News printing facility in Pittsfield Township, off of State Road just north of Textile.

Genova said he hopes to secure delivery of the print editions planned by the new business that’s being started by the owners of the Ann Arbor News. That entity, called AnnArbor.com, plans two printed editions a week and an additional “total market coverage” printed product. (See previous Chronicle coverage of the announcement here.)

Meanwhile, Canze, who lives in the Ann Arbor area, is looking for another part-time job – “anything I can get,” he said, though he hopes it’s something that won’t cause sleep depravation deprivation. Locally, carriers for the Detroit papers, New York Times and other a.m. publications start their routes by picking up papers at a warehouse near the Ann Arbor Airport, usually getting there by 2 a.m. or earlier.

Mary Morgan, Ann Arbor Chronicle publisher

It’s Monday afternoon and I’m sitting in a terminal at Detroit Metro airport, waiting for a flight to Texas to be with my father and sister.

News of my mother’s death and the planned closing of The Ann Arbor News came inside a 12-hour span. The two events are orders of magnitude apart in their emotional impact on me, but in an odd way I find myself processing both and finding a metaphor for one in the other.

My mother was ill for a long time. Once a woman who loved to sing, she became unable to articulate the simplest concept. She grew to be fearful of even the shortest trips outside her home, though once she’d been eager to travel – so much so that all our family vacations when I was young were camping trips, far before it was popular. Piling us into a station wagon hauling a pop-up camper was the only way my parents could afford to see the country.

By the time she died, my mom was a shadow of her former self. And for the people who knew her only in the final months of her life, I’m sure it’s hard for them to imagine the woman I knew, and loved.

All of this was on my mind when word came about the decision to close The Ann Arbor News. And what I’ve heard from people in the aftermath of that decision looks very much like grief.

For the people who work at The News, or those who work at any of the hundreds of other struggling newspapers nationwide, it’s a grief linked to the uncertainty of their livelihood, for sure. But for the many journalists who are deeply committed to the idealistic goals of their profession – that the very foundation of a democracy relies on an informed public, which a free press serves – the closing of a newspaper is a frightening symbol. For them, it’s not a business. It’s a calling – even when it sometimes fell short of that idealistic goal.

But what about the rest of us, those who are no longer linked to traditional media, or never were? What are we grieving? It’s the loss of something that’s been part of our lives as long as we can remember. Of something that’s been entwined in our daily routines, often thoughtlessly. Of opportunities missed, of potential unrealized. Of witnessing a long, sad, sometimes maddening decline – and feeling powerless to do anything about it.

Of course not everyone is sentimental about the closing of The Ann Arbor News – one blog headlined its post with “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead.” I believe this animosity stems at least in part from an us-versus-them mentality. Over the years the News had grown inarticulate about its vision, and fearful as well. I’ve heard people at the News described as arrogant, and no doubt there was some truth to that, for some. But more recently, whatever arrogance newsroom leaders had was replaced by fear and a kind of desperation – not an eagerness for what the future was bringing as it barreled toward them, but a resentful apprehension. They felt embattled and under-appreciated, too – and all of this contributed to a destructive bunker-mentality that only exacerbated their alienation from the community.

These were the death throes. Yes, the economy is brutal and advertising revenue has been leeching away. Despite the economy, I believe the newspaper could have survived if its leaders had better engaged and embraced this community – not as sycophants or vacuous boosters, but as people with a vested interest in the lifeblood of Ann Arbor, its politics and government, arts & culture, schools, businesses, nonprofits – and in the people who live and work here every day, who, like us, call this patch of Michigan home.

Maybe their new venture, backed by the resources of the Newhouse corporation, will do this. Based on the community meetings they’re holding to help shape what the new online publication will be like, it sounds like they’re going to give it a shot.

I also wonder what this means for The Ann Arbor Chronicle – all day long people have been asking us that question. We have a clear vision for what The Chronicle does well – eyewitness, first-hand accounts, whether it’s a public meeting or a fun community event. And we’re committed to covering the community where we live in a way that reflects what it is, quirks, warts, and all. With the news yesterday, expectations from some readers of what The Chronicle could be and should be have risen dramatically. And so have our own.

But just for a little while, I’ll pause to indulge in unabashed nostalgia. Because when The News ceases to publish in July, I will miss it. Whatever takes its place – the new business promises to publish a print version on Thursdays and Sundays – it will almost certainly not look or feel like a daily newspaper. That model has been broken, at least in the minds of the number crunchers, and perhaps they’re right.

Almost everyone I talk with has stories of their own about visceral ties to their local newspaper. For me, I’ll miss the tactile, physicality of newsprint: its grime, its tempting outdoor smell that teases our cats to pounce, its transience. I’ll miss its clutter – how, spread across the floor, the newspaper evokes the messiness of the lives its reporters cover. I’ll miss the thunk it makes when our carrier pitches it onto our porch steps.

And perhaps above all, I will marvel at how I’ve become like my mother, whose stories about growing up with an outhouse and no running water seemed apocryphal to me, as newspapers will be to kids born today.

We can’t help but grieve. Yet it’s exhausting, and can’t be sustained at its most heightened level. I take comfort in that. So today I’m grieving, but tomorrow or the day after I’ll feel more hopeful. I will still miss what’s gone, but will remember why I loved it, and I’ll hold that part with me.

They’re boarding my plane. As I get ready to pack up my laptop and go, I feel as though I’m leaving something precious behind, and moving toward a future in which the landscape of my life has unalterably shifted. I don’t know what the future will be in this new place. But I don’t feel I’m alone.

Mary Morgan, publisher of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, was a 12-year veteran of The Ann Arbor News. Most recently she served as opinion editor there, and before that was editor of the News’ business section. She and Dave Askins, Chronicle editor, launched this online local news publication in September 2008.

Sunday's edition of The Ann Arbor News.

Ann Arbor News publisher Laurel Champion, visibly emotional, told newspaper employees this morning that the paper would cease publication sometime in July, to be replaced by a different company and online publication.

The news shocked employees, who had anticipated cutbacks but not the decision to fold the company.

Champion told employees that the new entity – AnnArbor.com – will be separate from MLive.com, though details are still being worked out. According to an article about the changes posted on the Ann Arbor News section of MLive, the company will be led by Matt Kraner, former Cleveland Plain Dealer chief marketing officer. Champion will serve as executive vice president. Tony Dearing, who served as head of the News’ Ypsilanti bureau in the 1990s, will be “chief content leader” – the equivalent of the entity’s top editor.

Dearing contacted The Chronicle this morning, saying that AnnArbor.com would be taking a very different approach in terms of reaching out to the community and to other local media. He said that he and Kraner would be meeting for the first time with News employees this afternoon at Campus Inn, where they would talk in more detail about the organization.

In a letter to readers published today, Champion said that she, Dearing and Kraner will be holding two public forums in April to talk to the community about these changes: On Thursday, April 2 at 2 p.m. at Campus Inn, 615 E. Huron St., and on Friday, April 3 at 10 a.m. at Weber’s Inn, 3050 Jackson Ave.  [confirm dates]

At the morning staff meeting, Champion told employees that the new product would also include a print publication twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays. She said the structure of this new venture was unique to Ann Arbor, and not something that was being rolled out at other publications in the Michigan chain of newspapers owned by the Newhouse family.

When the Ann Arbor News closes in July, they’ll be vacating the downtown headquarters, an Albert Kahn-designed structure at southwest corner of Huron and Division streets. Champion told employees that the building was not for sale at this time, but that the new venture would have offices elsewhere. There was also no word on the status of the News’ printing press in Pittsfield Township, which opened in 2001.

Employees were told that they’ll be able to apply for jobs at the new business, but those jobs will be open to non-News employees as well. Details about the types of jobs, salaries and other information won’t likely be available until mid-April.

News employees who did not accept a buyout offer made last fall will be offered severance – one week for every year served. That amount is half of the most recent buyout offer. People who accepted the buyout still have not been given departure dates, so it’s unclear if they’ll remain working at the paper until it ends publication. Champion also said that pension contributions from the company will be frozen in mid-May.

This news comes just days after the newspaper’s long-time editor-in-chief, Ed Petykiewicz, announced his plans to retire.

Other coverage: Former News sports columnist Jim Carty’s blog, Paper Tiger No More.

The Chronicle's state House of Representatives press pass. We hope this year's will be purple.

Back in early September, only a week or so after we launched The Ann Arbor Chronicle, I trekked up to Lansing to meet with our locally elected state legislators. Man, I had grand plans. I’ve never found a good resource for learning about what our state lawmakers are doing, and I thought The Chronicle could be that resource.

The women I met with could not have been more gracious. The three state representatives – Pam Byrnes, Alma Wheeler Smith and Rebekah Warren – work in adjacent offices in a building with spectacular views of the capitol across the street. I met some of their staff, and talked with each about their goals and priorities for the year. Liz Brater, the state senator who represents Ann Arbor, gave me a tour of the Senate chambers. And I wrapped up the day by joining Rebekah Warren and Alma Wheeler Smith while the House was in its afternoon session (their desks sit next to each other on the House floor, but not because Alma is Rebekah’s mother-in-law). I even acquired a press pass for the rest of the year, which involved filling out some forms and getting my picture taken.

So by now you might be thinking, “Hmmm. I don’t remember seeing any state coverage in The Chronicle – maybe I missed it.” No, you didn’t. It didn’t happen.

As we mark The Chronicle’s fourth monthly anniversary with this update to readers, it’s tempting to talk about our goals for 2009, given the time of year. Something like, “We resolve to cover our state legislators. Honest.” But resolutions – with the almost clichéd threat of being broken – seemed less interesting to me than looking at some of the challenges we expect to face as we head into the year, and how we hope to tackle them. And since I’ve already described how one of our goals for coverage hasn’t yet panned out, let’s start there.

Coverage

Nearly every reader, I suspect, could tell us at least one thing (and likely a laundry list of things) they’d like to see in The Chronicle. More public meetings. Fewer public meetings, and more crime alerts. Investigative pieces. High school sports. Arts and entertainment. Calendar listings. Event previews. Cute puppy stories. (OK, I’m kidding – no one has asked for that last one. Unless you count one of our staffers’ repeated pining for a dog, to be named Shep, who would be The Chronicle’s news hound. Gaahh.)

Our challenge is twofold: To keep our eye on what we can do best and to find ways to increase coverage where it makes sense for both us and our readership.

Why haven’t we reported on our Lansing legislators? In part, because our plates have been filled to overflowing with other, closer-to-home reporting, as well as with the decidedly unglamorous but vital minutia of operating a business. We’ve learned that it’s easy to overextend ourselves, and in some cases have elected to pull back from a more ambitious plan. That’s more difficult than it sounds.

As 2009 unfolds, we hope to reach the financial milestones that will allow us to expand our reporting resources. We’re also working on several partnerships that would bring other voices into The Chronicle, similar to the contributions we’ve already added: Joel Goldberg’s wine column, Alvey Jones’ Bezonki comic strip, and occasional columns by Del Dunbar, Stew Nelson and others. As we gain the ability to expand, we’ll continue listening to your input to help us shape our priorities.

Advertising

The businesses and institutions that advertise with The Chronicle provide our financial foundation. These aren’t entities based in New York or LA – in most cases, you could walk into their offices or stores and actually talk to the owner or president. That’s what local is all about.

These groups face their own challenges in 2009, with an economy that isn’t showing strong signs of recovery yet. We know how important it is for them to get value for each dollar they spend. We believe we provide that value, but it’s our challenge to prove it. One way you can help is to thank our advertisers for their support of The Chronicle – that kind of feedback is invaluable, to them and to us.

Expanding our advertising base is key to expanding our coverage, and that’s a challenge in this economic climate, as it is for all publications. So the first additional person we’re working on adding to The Chronicle staff will be a partnership that focuses on recruitment of advertisers. We’ll keep you posted in the coming months about that.

Marketing

During our first four months, we’ve grown readership mostly by word of mouth and the natural linkages inherent to the web. Both the Ann Arbor Observer and Concentrate have reported on our publication and I’ve spoken to several civic groups, but people more likely have heard about us from their colleagues, friends or acquaintances. That we like. Some of our readers, including some we don’t know yet personally, have become evangelists for The Chronicle. That we love.

Of course we want even more people to read The Chronicle, and our challenge for 2009 is to find ways to reach new readers. Given our budget constraints, we’ll be looking for ways to market our site creatively. We’ll continue our outreach to community groups: I’ll be one of the speakers at the Jan. 21 Morning Edition breakfast, for example. You’ll start to see our signs in the storefronts of local businesses – we thank the retailers and landlords who’ve agreed to promote our site in this way, and if you see one of our signs at a local business, we hope you’ll take a minute to thank them, too. (If you’d like to print off an 8.5 x 11 sheet and you have permission to slap it up somewhere prominent, here’s a 4MB .pdf of a Chronicle poster that should serve that purpose.)

Beyond that, we’ll be looking at other options: Beer coasters with our logo at local pubs? A booth at the farmers market this spring? We’ll keep you posted in these monthly updates about our efforts, and if you have any suggestions, please let us know.

Geographic reach

Aside from a few isolated instances, our publication has focused primarily on the city of Ann Arbor. In large part, that’s because it’s important to us to have a physical presence in our reporting, to actually go and observe, as opposed to making phone calls and reading press releases. Another factor: We live in Ann Arbor and are committed to getting from Point A to Point B by foot, bike, bus or scooter as much as possible. That makes getting to Saline or Chelsea a bit more challenging.

We certainly realize there are many intriguing, newsworthy people and events outside of the county’s core city. We also know that most people don’t confine their lives to the borders of a particular municipality. People who work in Ann Arbor might well live in Saline or Chelsea or one of the townships, and someone who lives in Ypsilanti likely shops or goes to restaurants or sporting events outside the city. These realities reflect why some are calling for an expanded, improved public transit system.

So our challenge this year is to find ways to expand our geographic reach without compromising our approach to covering news and features. One small way to do this is via our Stopped.Watched. items, which appear in what’s become one of The Chronicle’s most popular sections. Over three dozen people have signed up as Stopped.Watched. correspondents. They submit brief observations of things they see as they go about their daily lives, from an egg-splattering interstate crash, to store closings, to people putting candles on the street to mark the winter solstice. In aggregate, these items provide a rich image of our community at any given point in time, and the more items that are posted, the richer that image becomes. We hope to increase not just volume but geographic range as well. If you’d like to add your own observations to our Stopped.Watched. feature, let us know. There are a variety of ways to submit items. Or if you’ve signed up but haven’t filed one recently, please keep that on your radar for 2009.

A few recent changes

In addition to looking ahead, we want to update you on some changes we’ve made over the past month.

• Comments. After last month’s milestone column, some readers told us they wanted the option of commenting on our Stopped.Watched. items, so we’ve added that capability. We have open comment threads on all the articles and columns that are written by The Chronicle and our contributors. The only items for which comment threads are not opened as a matter of policy are Media Watch items. Generally, those items are pulled from websites where readers can comment in the original venue. The principle we stand on in that choice is phrased this way by Bill Tozier: “Because if you like something, you’re supposed to reward the creator. Directly, if possible, and in kind.” [Source] The reward – in the form of comments – for posting a photograph online, writing an interesting opinion, or reporting original news, should go to the authors, in their original venue if possible. Keeping Chronicle comments closed on those items is our way of encouraging Chronicle readers to reward the authors.

• Meeting Watch Section. When we launched The Chronicle, our headlines for public meeting coverage consisted of a formula with the name of the public body plus the date (e.g. Meeting Watch: County Board 3 Dec 08). This approach failed to capture the content or flavor of the articles like an ordinary headline is supposed to do. You’ll actually find a lot of miscellaneous local news in these reports, and a lot of personality as well, because they include the interactions and commentary of public officials and community members. So the headlines of meeting coverage articles will now reflect the content of those meetings. We’ve also created a Meeting Watch section as a first step in developing a more meaningful set of Chronicle sections. The link to that section appears in the footer to every page as well as at the end of all articles that are categorized in that section. Archived Meeting Watch articles have been assigned to the section with no revision to their headlines.
• Calendar. When an event is mentioned in a Chronicle piece, from this point forward, we’ll include a link [confirm date] to an embedded GoogleCalendar, where we will update any changes to the event. For example, if a meeting we’re covering includes discussion of a future public hearing or other event, we’ll list that in our calendar. If that meeting time or location changes, we’ll revise the calendar item to reflect the changes. It’s also a handy way to get an overview of the events that have been mentioned in The Chronicle. It will take a while for the calendar to accumulate a substantial number of entries.
• Facebook etc. Bill Tozier has created a Facebook Group for The Ann Arbor Chronicle. Join us! Thoughts are welcome on how to integrate that group into the service of reporting news and features for The Chronicle, or for other positive work. There is also a Chronicle Twitter account you might want to follow if you’d like a bit more “inside” perspective on what’s going on at The Chronicle. That account was the original prototype for Stopped.Watched. items.

We’ve made a couple of minor changes to the layout. The left sidebar is now a bit cleaner, partly because we’ve consolidated some material into the top shaded box.

In response to reader suggestions, we’ve also made the the link to the Tip Jar as prominent as we know how. It’s sitting in the masthead where the news stand price is typically displayed for a printed publication (upper right).

Also based partly on reader input, the frame for the advertisements now contains a link (at the bottom) to a listing of all advertisers. For readers who would like to know who’s supporting The Chronicle financially, this is somewhat more efficient (if less entertaining) than repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a web browser and watching the ads cycle through on their random rotation.

Apropos of advertising, we’ve got a ways to go before advertising revenue will be sufficient to start growing resources so that we can include broader coverage. But we’re emboldened enough by the response so far among readers and advertisers that we’re beginning to contemplate growth in more specific terms.

Broader coverage will mean different things to different people. We could approach it (i) academically: what else should a local paper include? (ii) with focus-groups: what else do people want to read? (iii) by writer interest: what do contributers want to write about?

Any sensible approach to expanded coverage will likely include aspects of all three. But a starting point is to make clear to ourselves what it is we’re doing with our current resources. The disappearance of the section headings from the left sidebar wasn’t just part of a clear-out-the-clutter campaign. (They’re in the footer for readers who did enjoy navigating with them.) We downplayed that taxonomy, because it was apparent to us – and to readers – that those sections don’t reflect very well what we’re doing.

To regular readers, it will be apparent that part of what we do is attend public meetings and report out from them in a fair amount of detail. In that light it would probably make sense to declare Meeting Watch as a section, with subsections for each of the various bodies whose meetings we report: city council, county commission, DDA board, etc.

For one thing, that would free us up to write more interesting headlines than “Meeting Watch: City Council.” Because frankly, these public meetings deserve more interesting headlines than that and probably greater reader interest as well. We don’t report on them just because they’re important, but rather because they’re a window onto our community that is much broader than just the people at the meeting.

But the idea of a Meeting Watch section is just one thought, pretty much off the top of my louse-free head. And what we do already is way more than just attend public meetings. In thinking about expanded coverage, it’s surely a useful tool to think about the section taxonomy. But I also think it’s a more complex issue than: What should the names of the sections really be?

As always, we take readers’ thoughts seriously and would welcome your thoughts on this or other topics, either in the comments section or via private communication.

Thanks for reading.