From left: County commissioners Ronnie Peterson and Rob Turner. Turner has been the board's point person for dealing with a debt crisis in Sylvan Township. (Photos by the writer.)

Chief among those was a report on the debt crisis in Sylvan Township. The county picked up a $175,000 interest payment on May 1 that the township couldn’t afford to make, related to $12.5 million in bonds that were issued 11 years ago – and backed by the county’s full faith and credit – to build a water and wastewater treatment plant there.

Rob Turner – who represents District 1 on the county’s west side, where the township is located – reported that township officials hope to seek voter approval in August for a 20-year, 4.4 mill tax to cover the remaining payments. However, some commissioners expressed skepticism that township voters would approve a tax now, after rejecting a similar proposal in November. The county is also pursuing legal action for breach of contract, and is working with the township to reach a consent agreement that can be submitted to the court to outline a repayment strategy. If the millage doesn’t pass, it will be up to a judge to determine a tax levy. Commissioners were told that township residents will be assessed for the debt, one way or another.

In another report to the board, county administrator Verna McDaniel told commissioners that the county had agreed to a one-year extension to continue administering the Washtenaw Head Start program, through July 31, 2013. As part of the budget process last year, the county board had voted to relinquish its 46-year administration of the program on July 31, 2012. But the process to find another entity to administer Head Start has taken longer than expected, so the county reached an agreement with federal officials to operate the program another year.

McDaniel reported that the agreement waives a 20% local match of about $750,000 that the county had previously been required to provide. Because of that decrease there will be program changes, though details haven’t yet been worked out. While several commissioners praised the decision for easing the eventual transition to a new Head Start administrator, Ronnie Peterson expressed concern that the program’s high standards would be compromised.

The board also got an update on ongoing efforts to address how the county handles animal control services, in preparation to issue a request for proposals (RFP) later this year. Those services are currently being handled through a contract with the Humane Society of Huron Valley, which ends on Dec. 31, 2012. Board chair Conan Smith passed out a schedule for the board’s animal control policy task force meetings, with the first one set for Wednesday, May 9 from 8-10 a.m. at the county’s Learning Resource Center, 4135 Washtenaw Ave. The policy task force meetings will be open to the public.

Financial reports were also on the May 2 agenda, including the 2011 audit and an update on long-term liabilities. Wes Prater voiced concern that the county now has dramatically more in long-term liabilities than it did just five years ago. Total legacy liabilities, including pension and retiree health care benefits, have increased from $302.198 million at the end of 2007 to $346.572 million at the end of 2011.

Other items addressed during the meeting included: (1) an update from Yousef Rabhi on plans to put Project Grow gardens on the county-owned Platt Road site of the former juvenile justice center; (2) approval of up to $270,000 in bonds to fund an extension of the Sugar Creek drainage district in York and Augusta townships; (3) a resolution of support for the U.S. Clean Air Act; and (4) public commentary regarding the dangers of DTE Energy’s “smart” meters.

Commissioners also honored Hazel Bowman for her 25 years of volunteer service in the county’s foster grandparent program, giving her a standing ovation.

Sylvan Township Bond

Verna McDaniel introduced the topic of Sylvan Township’s bond payments during her county administrator’s report, but asked commissioner Rob Turner to elaborate. Turner represents the district where Sylvan Township is located – District 1, on the county’s west side.

Sylvan Township Bond: Background

In 2001, $12.5 million in bonds were issued – backed by the county’s full faith and credit – to build a water and wastewater treatment plant in Sylvan Township that was intended for future development. Under a contract with the county, the township is obligated to make the bond payments. [.pdf of June 20, 2001 county board resolution authorizing the bonds] The township expected that connection fees from developers would cover those payments, but the development never materialized and the township has been struggling to make payments.

Township officials put a millage proposal on the November 2011 ballot to levy a 4.75 mill, 20-year tax that would fund the bond payments. But Sylvan Township residents rejected the millage by a vote of 475 to 328.

As soon as the millage failed, it became clear that Sylvan Township – located west of Ann Arbor, near Chelsea – would not be able to make its payment in May of 2012. Because the county had backed the bonds with its full faith and credit, it is ultimately responsible for making the payments, even if it isn’t reimbursed for those payments by the township.  The county has an interest in making the bond payments to avoid having its AA+ bond rating negatively affected.

Even if the millage had passed, proceeds alone would not have been sufficient to cover the entire cost of the bond payments, however – forcing the county to tap its capital reserves as well. The millage proceeds were also intended to repay the county to cover any amount used from the county’s capital reserves, as well as interest. The proceeds would also have been used to repay the county treasurer’s office, which advanced about $1.2 million to the township in 2007 and 2008 related to this project.

At their Oct. 19, 2011 meeting, county commissioners gave final approval to a contract with Sylvan Township related to the township’s bond repayment schedule. However, the contract was contingent on voters passing the 4.75 mill tax, so the contract was nullified in the wake of the November 2011 vote. A staff memo accompanying the contract resolution indicated that if the millage failed, the county could file suit against the township for breach of contract in failing to meet its debt repayment obligation. Such legal action could result in a court-ordered assessment on township residents.

Currently $9.7 million in principal is owed, plus interest – another $175,000 in November and two payments totaling $350,000 in 2013 – and the $1.2 million that was advanced by the county treasurer. In total, $11.425 million is owed.

Sylvan Township Bond: Board Discussion

Rob Turner reported that as expected, Sylvan Township failed to make its May bond payment of $175,000, and that payment was made by the county. [McDaniel later clarified for The Chronicle that the payment was made out of the county's capital reserve fund, which has an available balance of about $4.7 million.] The county’s legal counsel had met with the township’s legal counsel to start working on a consent agreement related to repaying the county.

Meanwhile, Turner said, the township board plans to make another effort to pass a millage. However, the millage will be set at a lower rate – 4.4 mills – because property values are higher than previously expected. The news about property values was released in April, as part of the county’s annual equalization report.

Everything else, including the payment structure and contract with the county, would be the same as what was previously approved prior to the November vote, Turner said. Any new contract with the county would also be contingent on voters approving the millage, which township officials plan to place on the Aug. 7 ballot. That contract would require approval by both the township and county boards.

From left: Washtenaw County corporation counsel Curtis Hedger and board chair Conan Smith. Hedger has been on medical leave – this was the first meeting he has attended since January, and he received a round of applause from commissioners for his return.

Ronnie Peterson asked for further explanation of the township’s default, saying he couldn’t recall this kind of situation happening here in the past. Curtis Hedger, the county’s corporation counsel, reviewed the history of the bond and said that by not making its May 1 payment, the township breached its contract with the county. He explained that parallel paths are being pursued: the county is taking legal action against the breach of contract, and the township is planning to ask voters for a millage.

In response to another query from Peterson, Hedger clarified that the county made the $175,000 payment on May 1.

Turner reported that May 15 is the deadline for putting a millage question on the Aug. 7 ballot – that’s the preferred approach. If the millage fails, they’d still have time to get a court judgment that would assess a millage on township residents on their December tax bills.

Turner pointed out that this potential outcome has been discussed – it was a situation that has been known. If the millage fails again, it would be better to have a consent agreement filed with the court for approval, to avoid additional legal expenses on both sides.

Peterson – who represents a district that covers most of Ypsilanti – then said that because people like to dip into his community’s business, “let me dip a little, too.” Why hasn’t a consent agreement been reached before now? An obligation has been called, he said. Sylvan Township should be knocking on the county’s door. ”There’s nothing to negotiate – you’re in default,” he said. All communities are hurting badly, Peterson said, but this situation is non-negotiable.

Turner replied that township officials did approach the county several months ago. They knew well ahead of time that they wouldn’t be able to make their payments. But the county’s legal advice was to wait until that non-payment actually happened. The township isn’t fighting this, Turner said – they want to work it out with the county.

Alicia Ping asked what would happen if the millage fails again. What would be assessed on each property owner in the township?

Hedger replied that the point of the consent agreement is to determine that amount. He explained that the consent agreement, reached between the county and township, would be presented to a judge as a recommendation. If there’s no agreement, it’s in the hands of the judge to determine how much to levy.

Ping wondered why the judge couldn’t order 4.4 mills to be levied now, so that it could go on the June tax bills, rather than wait until the county had to make another $175,000 payment. All of the commissioners had sat around the table and made budget decisions, Ping said, and they understand that $350,000 is a lot of money. She didn’t have confidence that Sylvan Township voters would approve a millage they had rejected in November. So why not just ask for a judgment now?

Hedger said the county is pursuing  dual tracks – taking legal action over the breach of contract, while trying to reach a consent agreement that can be presented to the judge. He cautioned that the judge might not accept the recommendation in a consent agreement. Ultimately, it would be the judge who determines the amount to levy.

Ping said the county is asking other residents to be very patient. She asked whether this approach is the fastest way to get money out of Sylvan Township. It is, Hedger said.

Conan Smith said he wanted to highlight the work that Turner had done. Turner has regularly updated the board about the severity of the problem and the consequences of the millage failure, he said, while at the same time being cognizant of the residents and of the damage to their quality of life if the county were to unilaterally demand full payment. The county is taking a measured course, he said. They’re partners. It’s not exclusively the fault of the developer or the township board – the county board played a role too. They need to find a way to get through this situation that keeps the county whole but doesn’t create a dire situation for residents who are already feeling financial stress.

Smith told commissioners he felt content with the process. He doesn’t want to end up with the county picking up the tab, nor should the county try to punish the township. It was great that Sylvan Township’s leaders came forward and are willing to try again with the millage. The right course of action is to get through this without undue hardship while keeping finances stable, he concluded.

Felicia Brabec asked Turner if he had any sense that the voters’ mood had shifted on this issue since November. That’s a good question, Turner replied. There’s a group that has organized against the millage, but they’re also against any payment, he said. Last year, voter turnout was very low. The hope is that if there’s a larger turnout and people are better informed, the millage might pass.

Brabec asked if there are plans for further education before the millage vote. Turner said he’ll make himself available for another town hall meeting, though he said the township’s legal counsel doesn’t want to hold such a meeting. Prior to the November 2011 vote there were three public forums, with about 100 people attending each one, Turner said. The exchanges became personal against the township board. While Turner said he was treated with respect, a lot of anger was directed at township board members. The township’s legal counsel is also a resident of the township, which puts him in a difficult situation, Turner said.

From left: Greg Dill, the county's infrastructure management director, talks with county commissioner Dan Smith.

Dan Smith said he was happy that the county made the bond payment, and maintained the county’s good credit rating. That’s important, he said, because a good credit rating lowers the cost of funding activities like the Sugar Creek drainage project they were voting on that night.

Smith said he also approved of efforts to minimize the impact on Sylvan Township residents. A judgment issued every year could result in widely varying millage rates, he said. At least a voter-approved millage or a court-ordered consent agreement would provide some stability, and help with planning and budgeting.

It’s disappointing that no member of the Sylvan Township board has attended any county board meeting, D. Smith said. [Current trustees are Robert Lange, Luann Koch, Arlene Grau, Reuben Lesser Jr. and Scott Cooper.] This has been an extremely public matter involving tax dollars, he noted, and is fairly unique because public bodies are involved in negotiations. But the county board has heard nothing directly from the township – it would have been nice if they had come to a meeting two weeks ago or a month ago, and let commissioners know about the situation in person.

D. Smith then directed a question to Hedger, asking whether Hedger’s advice stems from the fact that the only ways additional taxes to repay the bond can be extracted are through a judgment issued by the court, or through a voter-approved millage. That’s exactly right, Hedger replied. In that case, Smith noted, it binds the hands of the county board as well as the township board, in terms of actions they can pursue.

Peterson said he’d appreciate it if information about situations like this would be shared prior to the meeting. If he were a resident of Sylvan Township, Peterson said, he’d be upset that people had been aggressive in the past but now “I’m paying the bill.” He wondered how the county board could have approved loaning money to an entity that didn’t have a way of guaranteeing repayment.

[According to minutes of the July 2001 meeting, when the board gave final approval to the Sylvan Township project, Peterson seconded the motion for all three resolutions related to the project – including issuance of the bonds. All three resolutions passed unanimously. The minutes do not record any discussion that might have occurred. In addition to Peterson, current commissioners who also served at that time are Barbara Bergman, Leah Gunn, Wes Prater and Rolland Sizemore Jr., who was absent at that July 2001 meeting. Other commissioners at that time were Vivienne Armentrout, Dillard Craiger, Richard DeLong, Jeff Irwin, Martha Kern, Larry Kestenbaum, Christina Montague, Suzanne Shaw, Steve Solowczuk, and Joe Yekulis. Bob Guenzel was serving as county administrator.]

Peterson said the board should review its policies regarding when the county grants its full faith and credit to a project. If you don’t have cash reserves or assets to cover the payments, he said, you shouldn’t be borrowing money – that’s what caused the nation’s housing crisis. The board should have said no to the project, Peterson said. “We’re in it to our neck, but part of it is our fault.”

Turner responded to Peterson, saying “Amen!” He said he totally agreed, but at the time, everyone felt that the housing growth wasn’t going to correct itself. “That is an assumption that should never have been made,” Turner said.

The money will be paid back to the county, Turner said. It will be paid back by some people who didn’t even live in the township when this project was approved. It’s even more hurtful that residents could be forced to pay it without a vote. [That is, if a millage fails to win voter approval, a judge will make a ruling to assess residents instead.] The situation has a long and complex history – “it’s a mess,” Turner said. This could have been a successful project, he said, but everything went against it. His heart breaks for the people of Sylvan Township and the burden they’ll have to carry, he said.

Referring to the county’s May 1 payment on the bond, Rolland Sizemore Jr. said he didn’t know how the administration could write a check for $175,000 without informing him, and he hoped it didn’t happen again. He asked whether the county would recoup its legal expenses. Hedger said it’s not automatic, but they could ask to be reimbursed. Sizemore wrapped up the discussion by saying that he’d be very upset if something like this happens again.

Sylvan Township Bond: Board Discussion – Coda

Later in the meeting, Rob Turner said he didn’t want to beat a dead horse, but he wanted to clarify that everyone was in agreement about the plan to work with Sylvan Township on a contract similar to the one they had approved last year, laying out a plan for repayment if the millage passes. No one responded, which Turner took to mean assent.

Wes Prater said he thought Turner was doing the right thing, and that he knew Turner had spent a lot of his personal time working on this situation. Prater said he believed Turner was making headway. “Maybe the third or fourth time [the millage vote] will be successful, Prater quipped. He added that he really hoped it would work out this time.

Head Start Update

During her county administrator’s report, Verna McDaniel told commissioners that the county had agreed to a one-year extension to continue administering the Head Start program, through July 31, 2013.

County administrator Verna McDaniel, left, talks with Diane Heidt, the county's human resources and labor relations director.

By way of background, last year – as part of the budget process – the county board voted to relinquish its 46-year administration of Washtenaw Head Start on July 31, 2012. The plan is for federal Head Start administrators to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to seek other interested entities that could take over the program.

The RFP wasn’t issued until April 19, McDaniel reported, and the selection process typically takes 8-12 months. That meant that on Aug. 1 of this year, an interim agency would have taken over the program, running it until federal officials selected a new grantee.

Rather than have two transitions, the county negotiated to extend its administration of Head Start until the next grantee is selected, McDaniel said. This will allow for a smoother transition and avert an interim management period. In exchange, federal officials have agreed to waive a required 20% local match. The program will be funded only through $3.8 million in federal dollars, for which the county must apply for as it has done every year. [McDaniel later clarified for The Chronicle that the match amounted to about $750,000, which the county has previously funded through a combination of cash and in-kind contributions.]

McDaniel said that her staff had met with union representatives earlier in the day to discuss the change, and the union is being very cooperative.

Head Start Update: Board Discussion

Ronnie Peterson wanted details about the impact of eliminating the 20% match. Classroom size is important to him, he said, as is the teacher-to-student ratio. The county has a nationally recognized program because of its high standards, Peterson noted. He did not want those standards to be compromised, and asked for regular reports during this transition period.

McDaniel said that eliminating the 20% match would not result in lower standards or reducing the number of students that participate.

Board chair Conan Smith noted that every year, the county must apply for federal funding to operate Head Start. County staff had not intended to do that for the coming year, but now they will, he said. The application must articulate any program changes, and the staff is working on that now. Because the 20% match is being eliminated, there will almost certainly be program changes “to the negative,” he said, but those details are still being worked out.

Smith pointed out that the will of the board last year had been to relinquish the program to save money. If they now decided they wanted to maintain the program in its same form, they’d need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, he said. So there will be changes to the program’s scope and delivery of services. The number of children in the program won’t be cut, and the county hopes to partner with other institutions like the Washtenaw Intermediate School District. If that happens, they might even be able to serve more children, he said. But the reality is the program will likely change, and the staff is working on a plan for that.

The alternative, Smith noted, is that an outside organization would come in and take over with fewer resources and inevitably the program would offer fewer services. Extending the county’s involvement gives commissioners the chance to guide the process, he said, and ensure that the children are taken care of. “Is it going to be the program we had last year? No, it is not,” Smith said. But they knew that when they made the decision during the budget process. No one feels good about the situation, he concluded, but that’s the reality of it.

Felecia Brabec said she echoed Peterson’s concerns, and she appreciated the hard work that was focused on the transition. She wondered if it would be possible to find out which entities respond to the RFP. McDaniel replied that typically, the federal officials receive four or five proposals, and she’d try to get details for the board.

Brabec pointed out that there are many educational institutions in this county that would be a good fit for Head Start. It would be good to support those applications, she said, rather than proposals from outside the area.

Yousef Rabhi described the extension as a great course of action, to ensure the program only goes through one transition, not two. It will preserve the program’s leadership and make less of an impact during the transition, he said.

Peterson then spoke at length about his concerns for the “county’s babies” who are born into poverty, and how he feels responsibility for their welfare. He hoped that the county would bring in Head Start experts to act as consultants and guide the county through this transition period.

Animal Control Services

During the May 2 meeting, commissioners were updated on ongoing efforts to address how the county handles animal control services.

Rob Turner, who serves on an animal control services work group led by sheriff Jerry Clayton, reported that a meeting for May 1 had been cancelled and rescheduled for May 15. The work group includes representatives of the county, the Humane Society of Huron Valley, and other municipalities that have animal control ordinances. That group was created by the county board earlier this year and is tasked with developing a methodology to determine the cost of providing animal control services.

At the board’s April 18, 2012 meeting, commissioners had discussed the need for a policy task force on animal control issues to also convene. On Wednesday, board chair Conan Smith passed out a schedule for the task force meetings, with the first one set for Wednesday, May 9. He noted that the resolution passed by the board at their Feb. 15 meeting had set a May 15 deadline for an initial report from the task force. But since its first meeting will be just a few days before that, he said he wasn’t sure what kind of report they could make.

Six meeting dates are scheduled for the policy task force, all on Wednesdays from 8-10 a.m. at the county’s Learning Resource Center, 4135 Washtenaw Ave.: May 9, May 23, June 13, July 25, Aug. 22 and Sept. 12.

Smith described the approach he wanted to take as a bit experimental, using the kind of interest-based process that the county uses in its labor negotiations. He has asked that the meetings be facilitated by staff of the Ann Arbor-based Dispute Resolution Center.

Topics to address include defining the county’s state-mandated services, selecting the non-mandated services they’d like to offer, and identifying the revenue sources available to fund those services. For example, if the county wants to provide animal control services for cats – which the county considers a non-mandated service – then they’d need to find out how much it costs to do that, and what revenues are available to pay for it, Smith said. Serviceability levels are important, he added, because that will be included in the request for proposals (RFP) that the county eventually issues. If the county learns that the desired service levels cost more than its ability to pay, some decisions will need to be made about that.

Another issue is to set policies for pursuing repayment through the courts for animal abuse cases. Smith said he hoped to have preliminary recommendations from the task force in August, with final recommendations in September.

The board had previously set a deadline of Sept. 15 for the sheriff’s work group to complete their recommendations, with a final task force report to be made by Oct. 15. Ronnie Peterson pointed to the amount of meeting time scheduled for the task force, indicating that six two-hour meetings seemed like a lot. Smith hoped it wouldn’t take that long to do the work – if it’s done sooner, “I’d be delighted,” he said.

Noting that there are two parallel tracks – the work group and the task force – Felicia Brabec asked how those two entities would communicate. Smith said he didn’t know yet, but that he planned to communicate with the sheriff, county administrator Verna McDaniel, and commissioner Rob Turner, who all serve on the work group. It’s important that the two entities are “cross-communicating,” Smith said.

Yousef Rabhi reiterated the importance of communication. He noted that the purpose of the May 15 initial report from the policy task force was to provide some direction to the sheriff’s work group. Smith replied that at the first policy task force meeting, they should clarify the scope of their work, which might help the sheriff’s work group to prioritize its research.

Wes Prater clarified with Smith that these meetings will be open to the public and noticed in accordance with the state’s Open Meetings Act. He felt that the work of the policy task force should be simple – establishing the types of services the county will provide, and the level of service. They should start with mandated services and go from there, he said.

Turner cautioned that the recommendations will need to be reviewed at a work session, followed by an initial vote at a ways & means committee meeting, then a final vote at a board meeting. After that, the RFP will be issued, and there needs to be time to receive proposals, review them and make a decision about awarding a contract. All of this needs to happen before the end of the year, when the current contract with the Humane Society of Huron Valley ends. The board needs to be sensitive to this timeframe, Turner said. Otherwise, they’ll find themselves in the same position as they were last year.

2011 Finance, Audit Reports

There were three presentations at the May 2 meeting related to the county’s finances.

Mark Kettner of the accounting firm Rehmann.

In what’s become an annual ritual, Carla Sledge, Wayne County’s chief financial officer and past president of the Government Finance Officers Association, presented the county with a certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting for its fiscal year ending December 2010. The award is based on the county’s timely completion of its state-mandated comprehensive annual financial report, or CAFR. This is the 21st year that Washtenaw County has received a certificate of achievement.

Pete Collinson of the county’s finance department then gave a brief presentation of a set of financial reports: (1) a schedule of fund balances and net assets as of Dec. 31, 2011; and (2) a schedule of long-term liabilities over the last five years.

Collinson noted that the board had received a detailed report on 2011 year-end finances at its March 21, 2012 meeting. The county had used nearly $800,000 from its fund balance for the year, but the good news is that the amount was considerably less than anticipated. [The finance staff had originally projected that $5.3 million would need to be drawn from the general fund balance for the year – the board had approved the 2011 budget based on that assumption.]

The county also received favorable news from the equalization report in April, Collinson said, which means that 2012 property tax revenues will be higher than expected. He pointed out that the county also has $14.5 million in the fund balance for its general fund – or 14.2% of annual expenditures, “which is very good,” he said. [The total for all of the county's fund balances stood at $111.743 million at the end of 2011.]

Looking at the schedule of long-term liabilities, Collinson observed that the county’s bonded debt has decreased but its legacy liabilities – including pension and VEBA (Voluntary Employees’ Beneficiary Association) – are growing. [VEBA is a 501(c)9 trust established to pre‐fund retiree health care benefits. Total legacy liabilities have increased from $302.198 million at the end of 2007 to $346.572 million at the end of 2011.]

Collinson said there were no significant findings in the audit report, and that all other issues raised in the audit had been addressed.

He highlighted the county’s state revenue-sharing reserve fund, which stands at $10.8 million. About $6.8 million of that will be used in 2012, with the remaining amount to be used in 2013. At that point, the fund will be depleted, he said, but it’s hoped that the state legislature will reinstate revenue-sharing at some level beyond that.

Collinson reported that the county staff had a conference call in late April with Standard & Poor’s and have been told that the county’s AA+ bond rating will remain unchanged – a very favorable rating, he said.

In wrapping up, Collinson noted that this report is coming to the board a little later in the year than usual. He pointed to significant finance staff turnover in 2011, as well as the fact that finance director Kelly Belknap had been “borrowed” by the administration during the year. [Belknap began serving as interim deputy administrator a year ago, following the medical leave, then resignation, of deputy administrator Bill Reynolds.]

Collinson introduced Mark Kettner from the accounting firm Rehmann, who briefly reviewed the 2011 audit and fielded questions from commissioners.

[2011 comprehensive annual financial report (CAFR)] [communication from Rehmann to board] [building authority 2011 financial statement] [department of public works 2011 financial statements] [water resources commissioner 2011 financial statements] [employee retirement system 2011 financial statements] [money purchase pension plan (MPPP) financial statements] [VEBA financial statements] [2011 Michigan single audit]

2011 Audit Report: Board Discussion

Wes Prater noted that the financial status looks good, with the exception of long-term liabilities. It’s of concern to look at the last five years and see that the county now has nearly $50 million more in long-term liabilities than it did in 2007, he said.

“That’s a tough nut,” Kettner replied, adding that he agreed it was a scary outlook. Those are challenges that are going to survive the people in this room, he said. Previously, the county had a defined contribution plan, he noted, but shifted to a defined benefit plan – that was a policy decision that had an impact on long-term liabilities. To offset that, changes have been made in labor agreements, shifting more of the costs to employees. But benefit programs remain the county’s primary liability, he said.

County commissioners Alicia Ping and Wes Prater.

Prater said that it’s troubling to see such a dramatic increase over the past five years. The county owes its employees for the work they’ve done, he said, but the long-term liabilities are an issue the board needs to address.

Kettner noted that part of the issue is tied to workers taking retirements earlier than anticipated. That’s a strategy that helps the county’s short-term financial situation by removing people from its payroll, he said, but people then start drawing their retirement benefits sooner. Perhaps it’s time to start asking whether the county’s actuarial assumptions – as well as assumptions about interest rates and investment returns – are realistic, he said. These are challenges for everyone, Kettner said, and no one has the answers.

Rob Turner said that assumptions of 7.5% investment returns are nearly impossible. Even if those returns are in positive territory at 3-4%, he said, the system is still in a hole because it was based on getting much higher returns. He said the county’s VEBA and pension boards are looking into this, and will be hiring a new actuary.

The employees’ retirement system liabilities stood at $40.49 million at the end of 2007 and are now at $84.2 million, Turner noted. Just in the last year, those liabilities had increased by $14 million. It’s also important to work with the labor unions representing county employees to address this issue, Turner said, adding that there are “handcuffs” related to that, too. It was addressed in the last labor negotiations, he said, and will be an ongoing issue.

Sugar Creek Drain Bonds

Acting on a request from water resources commissioner Janis Bobrin, commissioners were asked to give initial approval to pledge the county’s full faith and credit for up to $270,000 in bonds to fund an extension of the Sugar Creek drainage district.

The project – which in total is budgeted at $349,899 – was requested by the Washtenaw County road commission. It entails relocating a portion of the county drain, including a section of 1,850 feet adjacent to Platt Road between Judd and Stoney Creek roads in York Township. A second phase includes removing sediment and vegetation, as well as making wingwall repairs, at the drain crossings of US-23, McCrone Road, and Gooding Road.

The Sugar Creek drainage district covers parts of York Township, Augusta Township and the city of Milan. The bonds will be repaid in part by assessing property owners in the district – 70% of the cost of the bonds will be paid in this way. [.pdf map of drainage district] The remainder of the funds will come from York and Augusta townships, the city of Milan, Washtenaw County, the Michigan Dept. of Transportation, and two railroads – Ann Arbor Railroad and Norfolk Southern Railroad. The county’s share of the cost is $24,203 – half of that will be paid by the county road commission.

A contract for the work has been awarded to Mead Brothers Excavating of Springport, Mich., the lowest responsible bidder.

Sugar Creek Drain Bonds: Board Discussion

Wes Prater said he felt the board needed an explanation, since this was a “pretty big project.” Janis Bobrin, the county’s water resources commissioner, described it as a standard construction project, aimed at protecting the road from continued degradation. She noted that her office had been petitioned by the road commission to do the work because of drain problems related to erosion on the county road. The process had involved quite a bit of time negotiating with a property owner in the area where the work will be done, she said.

Prater pointed out that the project showed cooperation between two county departments, though he noted that the road commission is an autonomous unit. [The road commission operates independently from the county, but its three commissioners are appointed by the county board. The water resources commissioner is an elected position.] Prater noted that the project is located in his district – District 4 – and the work is needed.

Bobrin described the relationship between her office and the road commission as a great partnership. Prater agreed, quipping that “it took a while to get there.”

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously authorized bonding for the Sugar Creek drain project. A final vote is expected at the board’s May 16 meeting.

Support for Clean Air Act

A resolution on the May 2 agenda expressed support for the U.S. Clean Air Act, and opposed “attempts to weaken, dismantle, overrule or otherwise impede the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing or implementing” the act.

The resolution was requested by Dick Fleece, director of the county’s public health department. A staff memo accompanying the resolution notes that since the Washtenaw County Clean Indoor Air Regulation was implemented in 2003, the number of county residents using tobacco has dropped from 18% in 2003 to 12% in 2012. The memo notes that “supporting the Clean Air Act, along with national standards can provide protection from traveling air pollutants,” including emissions from Michigan’s 19 coal-fired power plants.

The only discussion on this item came from Yousef Rabhi, who said: “The Clean Air Act is awesome!” When the vote was taken, Rob Turner said he was voting against it because of concerns about the impact on business and employment.

Outcome: The resolution supporting the federal Clean Air Act passed on a 6-1 vote, with dissent from Rob Turner (R-District 1). Dan Smith (R-District 2) abstained. Barbara Bergman (D-District 8) and Leah Gunn (D-District 9) were absent, and Rolland Sizemore Jr. (D-District 5) had left the meeting early and was not present for the vote.

Food Policy Council Appointment

The May 2 meeting included a resolution to appoint Yousef Rabhi, a commissioner representing District 11 in Ann Arbor, to serve on the new Washtenaw Food Policy Council.

County commissioner Yousef Rabhi.

The county board approved the creation of the council at its March 21, 2012 meeting. The council’s goal is to support local “small and mid-sized farmers by fostering policies that encourage local food purchasing and production,” according to a staff memo. Among other activities, the council could also: recommend policy changes at the local, state and national levels; provide a forum for discussing food issues; encourage coordination among different sectors of the local food system; evaluate, educate, and influence policy; and launch or support programs and services that address local food needs.

Partners who have been working on this initiative include the Y of Ann Arbor, Growing Hope, Food Gatherers, the Food System Economic Partnership (FSEP), Slow Food Huron Valley, Eat Local/Eat Natural, Michigan Farmers Union, Ypsilanti Food Coop, and the Washtenaw County public health department.

The council will have a 15-seat membership roster, with members drawn from the following sectors: agriculture, nutrition, education, emergency food system, health care, food services, food manufacturers and distributors, waste management, planning or transportation, retail/business or economic development, human services, faith-based organizations, local governments (board of commissioners), public health, and at large community member(s). The county public health department will be responsible for recruiting members. A draft set of bylaws has also been developed. [.pdf of food policy council draft bylaws]

The council will initially use grant funds from the Michigan Dept. of Community Health, passed through to the Washtenaw County public health department. The council eventually expects to secure financial support from private grants and philanthropic funds. The project will also seek significant in-kind and volunteer support, according to a staff memo.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously approved the appointment of Yousef Rabhi to the Washtenaw Food Policy Council.

Urban County Annual Plan

A public hearing on the annual plan for the Washtenaw Urban County took place during the May 2 meeting. Only one person spoke: Thomas Partridge.

The annual plan describes how the Urban County expects to spend the federal funding it receives from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) and Emergency Shelter Grant (ESG) programs, operated by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). [.pdf of 2012-2013 draft annual plan] [.pdf of list of planned projects]

The Washtenaw Urban County is a consortium of local municipalities that receive federal funding for projects in low-income neighborhoods. Current members include the cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and the townships of Ypsilanti, Pittsfield, Ann Arbor, Bridgewater, Salem, Superior, York, Scio, and Northfield. An additional seven municipalities will become part of the Urban County as of July 1, 2012: the city of Saline, the village of Manchester, and the townships of Dexter, Lima, Manchester, Saline, and Webster.

“Urban County” is a HUD designation, identifying a county with more than 200,000 people. With that designation, individual governments within the Urban County can become members, making them entitled to an allotment of funding through a variety of HUD programs.

The Washtenaw Urban County executive committee meets monthly and is chaired by county commissioner Yousef Rabhi. The program is administered by the staff of the joint county/city of Ann Arbor office of community and economic development.

During the public hearing, Partridge said he was very interested in the plan because the Urban County receives state and federal resources for affordable housing. He was disappointed that the county board chair, Conan Smith, and other commissioners hadn’t personally invited constituents of the Urban County areas to speak at the public hearing. The meetings of the Urban County are out of the public view, Partridge said – the meetings are held at the Washtenaw County Learning Resource Center, 4135 Washtenaw Ave., and are not recorded by Community Television Network (CTN).

Partridge advocated for getting an extension on the deadline for submitting the annual plan, because public input on it had been inadequate. No one had been on hand to explain the plan, he said, and it’s almost completely devoid of specific goals for adding additional rental and single-family housing units. Partridge concluded by calling for more public hearings held at locations throughout the county, including in Ann Arbor.

Communications and Public Commentary

There are various opportunities for communications from commissioners as well as general public commentary. These are some highlights.

Communications: Project Grow

Yousef Rabhi reported progress that’s been made on an effort to put Project Grow gardens on the county-owned Platt Road site of the former juvenile justice center. He said he was approached by Eric Meves, a Project Grow board member, who had expressed interest in the property. [Meves attended the May 2 board meeting, but did not formally address commissioners. He had previously made a presentation about Project Grow during public commentary at the April 17, 2012 meeting of the Ann Arbor park advisory commission.]

The nonprofit already has 80 gardens at the nearby County Farm Park, Rabhi said. He pointed out that about 40 people are on a waiting list to get Project Grow plots, and the Platt Road property is available. The county wouldn’t need to do anything, because Project Grow volunteers would come in and till the soil, and install a separate meter on the water hookup so that they could pay for their water use. Project Grow would also add the county to its insurance coverage, so there would be no concerns about liability, he said.

Rabhi said it’s a great way to use the property until the county decides what to do with it, and that Project Grow understands that gardeners might need to leave at some point. [The possible disposition of the property at 2270 and 2260 Platt Road – which includes a vacant 42,320-square-foot building on 10 acres of land – was discussed at a March 8, 2012 board working session.] In this interim period, Rabhi said, having Project Grow gardeners on the site will help the county with security and lessen the likelihood of vandalism there.

Hazel Bowman was honored for her work with the county's foster grandparent program.

Communications: Hazel Bowman

During the May 2 meeting, commissioners passed a resolution honoring Hazel Bowman for her 25 years of work through the county’s foster grandparent program. County administrator Verna McDaniel read the resolution, stating that Bowman ”strengthens the fabric of our community through her work, gracious spirit and unfailing support of others.”

Bowman’s work over the years has included acting as a mentor, tutor and caregiver for children and youth with special needs at Clark Road Group Home, Jefferson Head Start, Henry Ford Elementary, and the Willow Run Early Learning Center.

Bowman received a standing ovation from commissioners and others in attendance.

The foster grandparent program connects qualified volunteers – U.S. citizens who are 60 or older, meet income guidelines, and are able to work 20 hours a week – with special needs children in public schools, hospitals, and day care centers. The foster grandparents receive a $212 monthly stipend, transportation assistance to the site, one meal each day of service, and a free annual physical.

Communications: Public Commentary – Smart Meters

Nanci Gerler told commissioners that she had spoken to the Ann Arbor city council about the growing problem of  DTE’s smart meters, which are now being installed in Michigan and other states, even though some customers don’t want them. There are protests and injunctions against the installation of smart meters in other communities, she said, but those aren’t widely publicized. It’s extremely critical that people are aware that these meters are unsafe, she said. Some people who are sensitive to electromagnetic frequencies see the effects immediately, with headaches, ringing in the ears and sleep disorders. Cost issues are another concern – some people have seen their electric bills increase dramatically after the meters are installed. The meters have also resulted in fires from faulty wiring, she said. “It’s going to impact every one of us,” she concluded.

Communications: Public Commentary – Most Vulnerable Residents

Thomas Partridge spoke during the two opportunities for public commentary. He described himself as an advocate for the vulnerable residents in the county, and urged commissioners to adopt a framework for supporting affordable housing, health care, transportation and education, especially targeted to the most vulnerable population. He criticized some county agencies for not having the best interest of residents at heart, citing specifically the Project Outreach Team (known as PORT), the Community Support & Treatment Services (CSTS), and the Washtenaw Community Health Organization (WCHO). Staff is too often neglectful and have callous attitudes toward residents, he contended.

Partridge also endorsed president Barack Obama for another term, and urged Obama to run on a more people-oriented platform to address unmet needs in health care, education, public transportation and housing, as well as giving emphasis to the needs of the disabled, senior citizens and college students with undue financial burdens.

Present: Felicia Brabec, Alicia Ping, Ronnie Peterson, Wes Prater, Yousef Rabhi, Rolland Sizemore Jr., Conan Smith, Dan Smith, Rob Turner.

Absent: Barbara Bergman, Leah Gunn.

Next regular board meeting: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. at the county administration building, 220 N. Main St. in Ann Arbor. The ways & means committee meets first, followed immediately by the regular board meeting. [confirm date] (Though the agenda states that the regular board meeting begins at 6:45 p.m., it usually starts much later – times vary depending on what’s on the agenda.) Public commentary is held at the beginning of each meeting, and no advance sign-up is required.

The Chronicle could not survive without regular voluntary subscriptions to support our coverage of public bodies like the Washtenaw County board of commissioners. 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!

At left is city councilmember Christopher Taylor (Ward 3), who also serves as an ex officio member of the Ann Arbor park advisory commission. To the right is Sam Offen, chair of PAC's budget and finance committee. (Photos by the writer.)

This is the second year of a two-year budget cycle, and commissioners had recommended approval of budgets for both years at their April 2011 meeting. The recent recommendations for FY 2013 include: (1) increasing the frequency of the mowing cycle from every 19 days to every 14 days; (2) increasing seasonal staffing between April 15–October 15 to maintain active recreation areas better; (3) establishing three seasonal park steward/supervisor positions to improve park maintenance and enforcement; and (4) increasing seasonal staffing at the ice arenas to improve facility cleanliness.

Fee increases at several parks and rec facilities are also part of the budget recommendations, but most have already been implemented in the current fiscal year.

The April 17 meeting included a public hearing on the renewal of the city’s park maintenance and capital improvements millage, which will likely be on the November 2012 ballot. No one spoke at the hearing. In general, “there seems to be a great deal of relative silence” about the millage, parks and rec manager Colin Smith told commissioners. Few people have attended the recent public forums held by parks staff. The final forum is set for Thursday, April 26 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the Ann Arbor District Library’s Traverwood branch, 3333 Traverwood Drive.

Parks staff gave an update on deteriorating conditions at Windemere Park’s two tennis courts, and provided an initial estimate on costs to replace one or both courts at that location. No formal recommendation has been made, but options include moving the courts to another park. Commissioners discussed the need to assess the distribution and conditions of all of the city’s public courts – including ones in the public school system – as well as their overall usage, to get a better idea of where the greatest needs are.

Another update came from an engineer at the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner’s office, who described a drain replacement project that will affect Veterans Memorial Park later this year. Also related to Veterans Memorial, the request for proposals (RFP) for a skatepark there has been issued. [.pdf of skatepark RFP] The goal is to solicit proposals for a consultant to handle design and oversee construction of the skatepark, which will be located on city-owned property.

During public commentary, commissioners were given an update on the nonprofit Project Grow, which has several gardens located in city parks and is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Another speaker urged commissioners to take control of the parking lots in city parks, and possibly increase revenues by installing metered parking.

Parks & Rec Budget Recommendation

Park commissioners considered two resolutions related to the city’s fiscal year 2013 budget, for the year beginning July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013. It’s the second year of a two-year budget planning cycle. PAC had previously recommended approval of budgets for both years at its April 2011 meeting. The parks budget is part of the city’s overall budget, which city administrator Steve Powers proposed at the April 16 meeting of the Ann Arbor city council.

Most of these changes have already been implemented, as part of the current year’s budget. Colin Smith, the city’s parks and rec manager, reminded commissioners that there will be no increase in budgeted expenses. These changes will be made within the budget plan that was discussed last year for FY 2013, when the FY 2012 budget was formally adopted. [.pdf of budget resolution adopted by council for FY 2012, including parks-related items]

The portion of the city budget relating to parks is separated into two parts: (1) park operations; and (2) parks and recreation.

Sam Offen, who chairs PAC’s budget and finance committee, noted that the budget is in better shape than in recent years. He joked that it makes his job much easier.

Parks & Rec Budget Recommendation: Parks Operations Budget

PAC was asked to approve recommendations for the FY 2013 parks operations budget, which includes the following proposed changes: (1) increasing the frequency of the mowing cycle from every 19 days to every 14 days; (2) increasing seasonal staffing between April 15–October 15 to maintain active recreation areas better; (3) establishing three seasonal park steward/supervisor positions to improve park maintenance and enforcement; and (4) increasing seasonal staffing at the ice arenas to improve facility cleanliness. [.pdf of parks operations budget recommendation]

There was considerable discussion about whether to change the wording on the recommendation for the mowing cycle. Tim Doyle initially felt it sounded too much like a dictate rather than an objective, and preferred deferring to staff’s judgement on the exact number of days in the cycle. After some wordsmithing on a possible amendment, Christopher Taylor – PAC’s ex officio member who also serves on city council – was asked whether his council colleagues would understand the intent. “Contextually, it’s plain enough,” he said.

Ultimately, PAC reached a consensus not to change wording on the recommendation.

Outcome: Commissioners voted unanimously to recommend approval of the FY 2013 parks operations budget.

Parks & Rec Budget Recommendation: Parks & Rec Budget

In a separate resolution, PAC was asked to recommend approval of the FY 2013 parks and recreation budget. The resolution commended parks staff for its work, and made several general recommendations: (1) reduce energy expenses to reflect the benefit of infrastructure energy improvements at recreational facilities, including Cobblestone Farm and Mack Pool; (2) reduce materials and supplies used to maintain various facilities as a result of recent improvements; (3) reduce water usage expense to reflect actual usage better; (4) eliminate unnecessary software installations where appropriate; (5) increase revenue by initiating additional programming at the Argo Cascades; and (6) increase revenue by increasing fees for admission to swimming pools. [.pdf of parks & rec budget recommendation] [.pdf of fee increases]

Most of these items have been started in the current fiscal year, Offen noted, and will continue into FY 2013.

Outcome: Commissioners unanimously recommended approval of the FY 2013 parks and recreation budget.

Parks Millage Renewal: Public Hearing

No one spoke during a public hearing on the renewal of the city’s park maintenance and capital improvements millage, which will likely be on the November ballot.

Park commissioners had been briefed by staff about the millage renewal at PAC’s March 20, 2012 meeting.

John Lawter, PAC’s vice chair who was presiding over the meeting in the absence of chair Julie Grand, noted that two of the four public informational forums regarding the millage had been held. [The third forum took place on Monday, April 23. The final one is set for Thursday, April 26 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. at the Ann Arbor District Library's Traverwood branch, 3333 Traverwood Drive.]

From left: Greg McDonald, assistant manager of city operations for Community Television Network (CTN), explains a camera problem to Colin Smith, the city's parks and recreation manager. The controller that allows CTN staff technicians to remotely control cameras in city council chambers wasn't working during the April 17 park advisory commission meeting. CTN staff instead adjusted the cameras manually prior to the meeting, to capture wide angle views of the proceedings.

Colin Smith, parks and rec manager, noted that Grand had wanted to schedule some of the public forums prior to the public hearing at PAC, and prior to a vote by PAC on whether to recommend millage renewal. That way, PAC could respond if any issues arose. However, Smith added, ”there seems to be a great deal of relative silence,” and nothing has come up to indicate that the city is on the wrong track in seeking renewal. [At an April 11 forum held at Cobblestone Farm, several city parks staff, PAC commissioners, city councilmember Jane Lumm, and two members of the media – from The Chronicle and WEMU – showed up. But only one member of the public came: Eric Meves, a board member at Project Grow who also spoke during public commentary at the April 17 PAC meeting (see below).]

Gwen Nystuen observed that it’s hard to get people excited now about a vote that won’t happen until November. She said she hadn’t heard anything unfavorable about the millage, and that people in Ann Arbor are very supportive of parks. “I’m optimistic,” she said.

Sam Offen asked whether there were any significant comments or feedback from the first two forums. Lawter reported that the one person at the forum he attended was supportive. [That person was Meves.] Nystuen praised the staff – she said they had done a good job of answering questions at the first forum about how the budget was prepared.

Informational handouts are being distributed, and Smith pointed out that information about the millage renewal is also available on the city’s website.

Windemere Park Tennis Courts

Parks planner Amy Kuras gave a presentation on the tennis courts at Windemere Park, a nearly four-acre parcel on the city’s northeast side, north of Glazier Way between Green and Earhart roads. There was no action requested of PAC at this meeting – the staff just wanted to update commissioners on the situation.

The courts were initially built in 1986, then color coated in 2007. Repairs to cracks in the court were attempted in 2009, Kuras said, but failed because of poor soil conditions. The city also attempted to install new net posts in 2009, but that also failed.

In 2010, the city took soil borings in five parts of the park. The borings revealed saturated organic soil and fill, particularly in areas located near the tennis courts in the west part of the park.

Cracked pavement at the Windemere Park tennis court. (Image provided by city staff in a slide presentation to PAC.)

Part of the problem is a high water table, Kuras said. In fact, the parks staff have noted higher water tables throughout the city, she added. The only hard data that the city has collected on the water table is at the municipal airport, and there the water table measures between 2-7 feet below the surface now, compared to 15 feet below the surface 50 years ago. Jen Lawson, the city’s water quality manager, attributed the change to a variety of factors, Kuras reported, including climate change and more impervious surfaces in the city.

Kuras presented a chart showing cost estimates to replace either one or both courts at the current location. She based her estimates on work done for tennis courts at Veterans Memorial Park and West Park. The total would be $181,377 for two courts at Windemere, or $107,408 for one court. [Link to chart of itemized replacement costs.]

The options to consider, Kuras said, include: (1) replacing both tennis courts at the current location, (2) replacing the courts in another part of Windemere Park, (3) replacing only one court, (4) removing the courts, or (5) possibly putting the courts in another park.

Matt Warba, the city’s acting field operations manager, told commissioners that he’s frustrated by the situation. The staff has attempted several repairs, but with water at just two feet below the surface, it’s difficult. There’s a likelihood that having tennis courts at that location isn’t reasonable, he said. But he understands the value to the neighborhood,  and the staff is still working on getting some firm numbers and options to consider. There’s no easy or quick solution, he said, but they’re working on it.

Windemere Park Tennis Courts: Public Commentary

Jeff Alson told commissioners that he has lived near the park since the late 1970s. He bought his home there in part because of the park. There are a lot of tennis players in the neighborhood, and there are a lot of young children in the area so demand could grow. But because of water issues there’s only one court that can be used. Last summer, he hardly played there at all. Alson said he understood that there are problems with water that make maintenance of the courts more expensive. But he emphasized that the courts have held up well for at least the last 10 years, and he would consider it a good investment. It would be disappointing to him if the courts were removed. Alson concluded by thanking commissioners for their service to the city.

Windemere Park Tennis Courts: Commission Discussion

David Barrett asked whether the water table is the same throughout the park. Yes, Kuras said, but the soil composition is different  at certain locations in the park – that’s a factor, too. She clarified that there are water table issues at other parks, but nothing to the degree they’re seeing at Windemere.

Barrett recalled that when the city decided to put in rain gardens at Burns Park, they were slow to let the community know about it. He wondered what kind of outreach was happening for the tennis courts at Windemere. Colin Smith, parks and recreation manager, indicated that outreach would occur when the staff had more information to share. If it makes sense to move the tennis courts, the neighborhood would need to be engaged, he said.

Tim Doyle asked is there’s evidence of this same kind of problem at other city tennis courts. He said he’s encountered it on a similar project he’s working on near Honey Creek, on the west side of town. Warba said that certainly there are areas in the parks that are wetter than they’ve been in the past. But the Windemere courts are the worst by far.

Sam Offen noted that there are a lot of city tennis courts on the west side of town, but he wondered how many there were on the northeast side. Kuras reported that there are three courts in Leslie Park and two in Sugarbush Park, and it might be possible to accommodate new tennis courts somewhere in Foxfire North Park. All of those parks are in northeast Ann Arbor.

Jeff Alston, a resident who’d spoken during public commentary, pointed out that the courts at Sugarbush are too short for adults to play – they hit the back fence with their rackets, he said.

Gwen Nystuen said she didn’t know too much about tennis courts, but that it seemed like the city should assess the distribution and conditions of all of its courts, as well as their overall usage, to get a better idea of where the greatest needs are.

Commissioners and staff also discussed the availability of tennis courts at Ann Arbor public schools, noting that certain times of day and certain days of the week those courts are heavily used by students. Tim Berla noted that Ann Arbor Rec & Ed runs tennis leagues, as does the Ann Arbor Area Community Tennis Association. He pointed out that court conditions aren’t just a concern for the city parks – a sinkhole developed at the relatively new tennis courts at Skyline High School, putting one of the courts out of commission. Berla suggested looking at other materials, such as clay, which he said required more maintenance but wouldn’t crack.

Assuming there’s need for more tennis courts on the northeast side of town, Berla wondered whether the former Pfizer property – now owned by the University of Michigan – could be a possible location for new courts. He noted that there’s a lot of unused land there, as well as available parking.

Drain Project at Veterans Memorial Park

Scott Miller, an engineer with the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner’s office, was on hand to give a presentation about a drain project that would affect Veterans Memorial Park. He said the county had been petitioned by the city to do this project. It’s referred to as the West Park Fairgrounds project, which is the name of the drain that runs through that section of town – on the west side of town, in the former fairgrounds area. Miller acknowledged that it was a bit confusing, given that a park in a different location is called West Park.

Scott Miller of the Washtenaw County water resources commissioner's office describes an upcoming drain project that will affect Veterans Memorial Park.

The upper end of the drain is located in the Maple Village Shopping Center, where Kmart and Plum Market are located. The drain starts out as a 30-inch pipe and quickly transitions to a 54-inch pipe and then a 66-inch corregated metal pipe as it runs toward town. The pipe runs through Veterans Memorial Park, crosses under Dexter Road and heads east, eventually connecting to a pipe that contains another branch of the Allen Creek.

The city conducted video inspection of the pipe and found several sections that are cracked and corroded, resulting in leaks. Portions of the pipe were clogged with debris. [The city council voted at its Sept. 20, 2010 meeting to petition the county water resources commissioner for this project, estimated to cost roughly $2 million. It will be repaid by the city in annual installments over 15 years.]

Miller said the county staff began work last fall, first clearing the debris and then conducting another video assessment. That revealed two sections of the pipe that have a significant sag, and result in water being held in those sections year-round. One sagging section is in the parking area in the shopping center. Another is in the north side of the park’s parking lot that’s accessed off of Dexter Road. The preliminary design is to dig up the two sections of sagging pipe and replace them. For the rest of the pipe, the plan calls for putting in a cast lining to reinforce the pipe structurally.

The project would cause minimal disruption, he said, but would include some impact to the parking lot and a small portion of the area west of one of the ballfields. The county is coordinating with the city, which is doing road work and water main replacement along Dexter Road, as well as upcoming work to renovate the ballfields in the park.

The project is in the design phase now, Miller said, with construction expected to begin in the fall.

Drain Project at Veterans Memorial Park: Commission Discussion

Gwen Nystuen asked for more details about how much land would be dug up for the project. Miller reported that in the Maple Village lot, a section about 15 feet wide and 150 feet long would be excavated. In Veterans Memorial Park, the work would be about 15 feet wide and 190 feet long.

Nystuen also commented on the confusing name of the project, and Miller agreed: “It’s raised confusion at a lot of levels,” he said, but they don’t have much latitude to change it.

Ann Arbor park advisory commissioner David Barrett.

David Barrett pointed out that there’s already disruption to the park – a big pile of dirt has been dumped by the ballfield. He wondered if the county had also coordinated with Ann Arbor Rec & Ed, which runs softball leagues in the park. Miller said the drain work hasn’t yet started, so the excavated dirt isn’t from their project. Matt Warba, the city’s acting field operations manager, clarified that it was likely related to road construction there. Parks and rec manager Colin Smith said the parks staff has been coordinating with Rec & Ed since last year regarding work in the park.

Sam Offen asked about the project’s timeframe. It will likely take about two months, Miller replied, but more if there’s a lot of rain. In response to another query from Offen, Miller said the county is mindful of the potential flooding impact downstream, but noted that this project isn’t intended to increase capacity dramatically. There will be more efficient flow, however.

Tim Berla clarified that Rec & Ed has cancelled its fall season, which starts in August, because of renovation work on the ballfields at three parks, including Veterans. [PAC had recommended those renovations at their February 2012 meeting.] He asked whether it would be possible to do the park portion of the drain project first, to ensure it would be finished by the spring season. Miller said it probably wouldn’t matter – the entire project is expected to be done by the spring of 2013 – but he would look into it.

Berla also asked whether the proposed skatepark – to be located in another part of Veterans Memorial Park – would affect the drain project, in terms of adding runoff. Miller said that although the addition of any impervious surfaces would affect runoff, the pipe is underutilized and has the capacity to handle it.

Smith noted that one of the elements of the skatepark design, as reflected in the request for proposals, will be to include stormwater management that meets or exceeds city standards.

Communications & Commentary

Every meeting includes opportunities for public commentary and communications from commissioners and staff.

Comm/Comm: Public Commentary – Parking in Parks

During public commentary, George Gaston told commissioners that he recently visited the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens – it’s a lovely place, he said. He had noticed that UM now has metered parking there at $1.20 per hour, between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Gaston noted that the city leases its Fuller Park parking lot to UM. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but it’s been going on for about 20 years. He wondered if the city has considered taking back control of that lot and and making it a metered lot, too. UM hospital employees use it 24/7, Gaston said, but only pay for part of that time. It could be a great revenue source for the city.

Gaston noted that people park their vehicles all day at Island Park and West Park, as two examples. And with UM planning to build a parking structure on Wall Street that would add another 500 spaces to that area, it might be possible to forego leasing the 18 spaces at Riverside Park to UM and adding metered spaces instead. “You might gain real money out of this,” Gaston said. There’s precedent in the city for 24-hour metered lots – at the Amtrak station on Depot Street, for example. Right now, it seems the city is undercharging the university for parking. With meters, the lots would be available to anyone if they paid. It might make sense to look into this, he concluded.

Comm/Comm: Project Grow – Public Commentary

Eric Meves, a board member of Project Grow, gave commissioners an overview of the nonprofit. He started by referring to Gaston’s comments about parking, noting that Project Grow had to buy parking tags at Matthaei for its gardeners there this year. Meves told commissioners that Project Grow is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, and he’s gardened with the group for 39 of those years.

Eric Meves, treasurer of the Project Grow board.

Several Project Grow gardens are in city parks, so he wanted PAC to become familiar with the organization. It’s an educational organization, with assistance for low-income residents. Although the nonprofit has received city funding in the past, it no longer receives public money, he noted.

Project Grow doesn’t own any land. About a third of the gardens are located in Washtenaw County parks, and a third on Ann Arbor public school property. The remaining third is evenly divided between UM land, private property, and city of Ann Arbor parks. About 300-350 families have garden plots each year, Meves said. People do it to grow food, but also for outdoor exercise and to be in a pleasant environment, he said. There’s also an element of community – being with your fellow gardeners.

The nonprofit grosses about $40,000 to $50,000 annually, Meves said. About 60% of that comes from plot fees – it costs about $130 for a full plot. About 20% of revenues come from fundraising, primarily through an annual plant sale. The remaining 20% comes from an organic gardening class that Project Grow developed for Washtenaw Community College.

Roughly half of those revenues allow Project Grow to have one half-time employee who works out of his house, Meves said. The group relies on volunteers and a working board. The rest of the funds are used to pay for things like water, utilities, insurance and capital improvements. There are about 40 people on a waiting list for gardens now – demand for gardens is about two to three times what Project Grow can provide, he said.

Meves unfurled a map that he said was made with the help of Merle Johnson and Dan Rainey of the city’s information technology department. It showed possible additional locations for gardens within the parks system.

Comm/Comm: Project Grow – Manager’s Report

Later in the meeting, Colin Smith reported that parks planner Amy Kuras has been working with the Project Grow managing director [Kirk Jones] to draft an agreement that will outline the formal relationship between the city and the nonprofit. It’s been a few years since the city funded Project Grow, he said, but because the group uses city parkland, there’s still a relationship. The agreement will stipulate what the procedures are for putting gardens into parks. There have been varied reactions to having gardens in the parks, depending on the neighborhood, he noted. Parks staff will share the agreement with PAC when it’s ready, he said.

From left: Park advisory commissioners Tim Berla and John Lawter. Lawter, who chaired the April 17 meeting in the absence of chair Julie Grand, was reviewing procedural rules with Berla before the meeting. Berla's advice: "No one ever did time" for flubbing Robert's Rules.

Tim Berla asked if there’s anything PAC or the city can do to help Project Grow identify potential locations for more gardens. Kuras said she works with the organization – sometimes she’ll be contacted by someone in a neighborhood who’s interested, and she’ll in turn contact Project Grow, or sometimes Project Grow comes to her. There are certain requirements, she noted. The land needs to be in a sunny area, and have access to a water source. The city also needs to hold a public meeting if a park is being considered for gardens, and sometimes neighbors don’t want it, she said.

Smith noted that the agreement with Project Grow will include details about how PAC can be involved in the process of selecting new locations.

Gwen Nystuen said she appreciated that Eric Meves had spoken to PAC during public commentary. She hadn’t realized how many people are involved, and how the city provides relatively little land for the group. It’s useful information, she said, especially given the growing interest in the local food movement.

Tim Doyle clarified with Smith that there is no relationship between Project Grow and the city’s greenbelt program.

Comm/Comm: Skatepark RFP

Smith reported that the request for proposals (RFP) for a skatepark at Veterans Memorial Park would be issued the following day. [.pdf of skatepark RFP] The goal is to solicit proposals for a consultant to handle design and oversee construction of the skatepark, which will be located on city-owned property.

Tim Doyle asked how the project would be funded. Smith replied that there are three sources for the roughly $1 million cost of the project: (1) private donations – primarily solicited through the Friends of the Ann Arbor Skatepark; (2) a $300,000 state grant; and (3) up to $400,000 in matching funds from the Washtenaw County parks and recreation commission. The Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation is acting as fiduciary for the project.

The city’s contribution will be the land and staff time to manage the process, Smith said, not money. It will be a city-owned asset, he said.

In terms of process, a selection committee – which will include members of the Friends of the Ann Arbor Skatepark, as well as city and county representatives – will be relied on to make a recommendation for the designer. That recommendation will be reviewed by PAC. PAC commissioner David Barrett will serve on the committee. Park planner Amy Kuras is the city’s point person on the project.

Construction is expected to start in the spring of 2013.

Gwen Nystuen asked about the relocation of pathways that will be required because of the skatepark location. Kuras noted that some pathways in Veterans Memorial Park are being redone as part of the Dexter Avenue improvement project that’s currently underway. Paths that connect to the skatepark will be designed as part of the overall skatepark design, she said.

Comm/Comm: Manager’s Report – Market Manager

Smith reported that the field had been narrowed to two candidates to replace Molly Notarianni, who left the job of public market manager earlier this year. He said he hoped to have finalized a hire by PAC’s May 15 meeting.

Comm/Comm: Manager’s Report – Argo Cascades

The same day as the PAC meeting, the consultant who designed the new canoe/kayak bypass by Argo Dam – Gary Lacy of Boulder, Colo. – was testing the series of drop pools along with city staff. Smith said he had hoped that Lacy would have the time to give an update to PAC about the new Argo Cascades, but the morning had been chilly and Lacy had gotten a late start on the testing, so he wasn’t able to attend the meeting.

A grand opening of the Argo Cascades is planned for June, but it will be open to the public before that. May 5 is the date for the first trips from the Argo Pond livery to Gallup Park, Smith said.

Present: David Barrett, Tim Berla, Doug Chapman, Tim Doyle, John Lawter, Karen Levin, Gwen Nystuen, Sam Offen, councilmember Christopher Taylor (ex-officio). Also Colin Smith, city parks and recreation manager.

Absent: Julie Grand, councilmember Mike Anglin (ex-officio).

Next meeting: PAC’s meeting on Tuesday, May 15, 2012 begins at 4 p.m. in the city hall second-floor council chambers, 301 E. Huron St., Ann Arbor. [confirm date]

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

Project Grow site at Greenview last Sunday. Near the end of the growing season, gardeners were starting to clear out cages and wire, preparing the plots for the fall tilling. (Photo by the writer.)

At the Project Grow annual meeting, held on Oct. 8 at the Leslie Science Center, the same contentious issue surfaced as at last year’s meeting: Should the organic gardening nonprofit add members to its board or not?

Last year the answer was yes: Kirk Jones and Royer Held were voted onto the board by the members present at the meeting. [Chronicle coverage: "Project Grow Board Expands"]

This year was no different. In addition to re-electing Damaris Suffalko as a continuing board member, members elected Andrew Comai, David Corsa and Alice Telesnitsky as additions.

The ease with which board members can be added by a member vote is a function of Project Grow’s incorporation as a 501(c)3 membership organization as contrasted with a 501(c)3 directorship organization.

And although the meeting’s written agenda indicated board president Devon Akmon as a candidate for re-election to the board, he withdrew his name in the course of the meeting, which an attendee aptly summarized at one point by saying, “It feels very tense in here.”

The departure of Akmon from the board prompted board member Catherine Riseng to caution the roughly 40 people in the room: “We’re going to miss his skills more than you can possibly realize.”  

The tension at the Project Grow annual meeting was driven both by philosophical differences on the board about appropriate strategies for expanding that body and as well as the logistics of how some green half-sheets of paper were distributed during the meeting. The green sheets listed out a the slate of candidates – Suffalko, Comai, Corsa, and Telesnitsky – and were passed around before the executive director of Project Grow, Melissa Kesterson, had finished her presentation on the organization’s accomplishments over the last year.

The move was characterized later during the discussion by one attendee as “slightly rude.” For her part, when the slate was distributed, Kesterson remarked: “I’m feeling a little distracted. I was feeling good about what we’d done and I thought other people did, too.”

Annual Status Report

Among the achievements for the past year that Kesterson ticked through at the meeting were the establishment of three new gardening sites: Northside Park, Wines Elementary, and Hunt Park. [Chronicle coverage of a meeting to plan the Hunt Park garden: "Project Grow Gardens at Hunt Park?"]

And six existing gardens had been expanded to create 20 additional plots. A plot measures roughly 25 x 30 feet. Eeking out an extra plot here and there, plus the new gardening sites, meant that more than 300 plots were gardened by a total of over 1,300 people, Kesterson reported. She explained that there are  groups who garden some of the plots, and some of the plots are gardened by multi-member households.

The demand for gardening space is high: There were 65 applicants for garden plots who could not be accommodated this year.

Kesterson also introduced a collaboration between Avalon Housing and Project Grow to bring gardening to Avalon residents in the form of raised bed gardens – built of over 24,000 pounds of stone block donated by Fendt Builder’s Supply. The venture is called Edible Avalon, and is funded  by the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation with a grant made jointly to Food Gatherers and other community-based organizations.

Kesterson also highlighted Go! Gardening, an experiential school gardening program that operates at area elementary schools. Project Grow staff help teachers coordinate activities, lessons and schedules so students get the most out of their time in the garden, with lessons drawing on Grade Level Content Expectations (GLCEs).

The 2008 financial picture showed $57,769 in income against $60,864 in revenue for a net loss for the year of $3,095.  The financial statement offered increases in water costs at the gardening sites, as well as rain during a fundraiser as reasons for the shortfall. Cash reserves were used to cover the loss.

The "Back to our Roots!" slate of Project Grow board candidates.

Division on the Board

As Kesterson’s presentation blended into the discussion of board elections when the half sheets of green paper were distributed, there was some confusion as to whether the “Back to our Roots!” slate was a ballot. It was not.

Early in the discussion, which Akmon led as board president, he indicated he was withdrawing his name from consideration for re-election. He would later during the meeting attribute that decision to the distribution of a slate of candidates – especially its premature distribution – characterizing it as indicative of an “activist board,” which he said he considered to be “toxic.”

Akmon described how the board had sought advice from three different consultants. Among them was Sabra Briere, who represents Ward 1 on city council, and who earlier this year argued the case unsuccessfully to her council colleagues that Project Grow should be allocated a $7,000 grant from the city in its FY 2010 budget.

The other two consultants, Akmon said, were Jim Frenza, who’s a past president of Ann Arbor’s Hands-On Museum, and Diana Kern, of the NEW Center (Nonprofit Enterprise at Work). What the board had heard from all three consultants, he said, was that Project Grow should be planful in expanding its board. The nonprofit should identify the skills of existing board members, and figure out what skills were missing, then recruit people with those skills – as opposed to allowing the board to grow by adding people who had a willingness to serve.

It was board members Devon Akmon, Joan Bulmer and Catherine Riseng who seemed to be more interested in a systematic and planned growth of the board, as contrasted with Held, Jones, and Suffalko, who wanted to open the board to those willing to serve.

In the end, it’s Project Grow members who must vote on the issue, and ultimately, the argument that seemed to carry the day was the fact that the Project Grow bylaws allow up to 15 board members. With the net increase of two members, they’d still have only eight board members – plenty of room to expand in whatever planful way the board might desire. The Chronicle recorded a show-of-hands tally of 33 yes, 1 no, and 6 abstentions to elect the green slate of candidates as a block.

How Does an Organization Organize Itself?

The discussion at the Project Grow annual meeting was couched in terms of whether the nonprofit should be member-driven or not – although Akmon sketched out the possibility of a member-driven organization that still grew its board systematically, facilitated through a nominating committee, for example.

In terms of nonprofit organizational structure, the power that the members of Project Grow have within the 501(c)3 classification derives from the way it was incorporated – as a membership organization. That contrasts with a younger gardening nonprofit, Ypsilanti-based Growing Hope, which was incorporated as a directorship. Growing Hope executive director Amanda Edmonds emailed The Chronicle with the clarification: “We’re directorship-incorporated. When we started we didn’t have anything that would really define a membership.”

Membership organizations, of course, need not be 501(c)3 nonprofits. Think cooperatives. At the last meeting of the Ann Arbor city council, a proclamation of October as “Co-op Month” was presented to Eric Lipson, who’s general manager of the Inter-Cooperative Council, based in Ann Arbor.

Between now and the next annual Project Grow meeting, one measure of how effective the organization has been will be how many of the 65 applicants who did not get gardening plots last year will be provided with a plot in the summer of 2010.

[Editor's note: The Chronicle gardens with Project Grow at the Greenview site. We specialize in potatoes. The potato harvest is donated to Food Gatherers, in part because the favorite vegetable of Food Gatherers executive director, Eileen Spring, is the potato.]

Marianne Rzepka

When Royer Held decides which tomatoes to plant in his garden each year, he doesn’t look through seed catalogs. He simply sorts through a collection of plastic bags that hold his own private stash of tomatoes-to-be.

He’s a seed-saver, cleaning and saving seeds from his own stock of plants and trading with others who have varieties he’d like to try. It’s his way of saving the flavorful tomatoes he loves and maybe even developing a new strain by working with generations of hybrids.

“Seed-saving is the ultimate source of local food,” says Held, a computer programmer who’s been involved in gardening since he was a child.

Held’s slightly disheveled garden at Greenview Park – one of the Project Grow gardens there – is a library of tomato genetics, but with wood-and-wire frames in the place of shelves, and instead of handing you a volume to read, he might give you a tomato to taste – maybe a Lollipop cherry tomato or a sausage-shaped Pirkstine Orange.

Held’s efforts go back to the time when farmers saved seeds from their gardens, developing regional varieties of tomatoes with resistance to local diseases. When seed companies began to sprout, representatives traveled around the country picking up promising tomato lines and developing new hybrids.

Royer Held, left, at a Sept. 12 HomeGrown Festival tomato tasting. (Photo by the writer.)

After years of saving and trading seeds, Held is growing genetically sturdy heirloom tomatoes – like Olga’s Yellow Round Chicken – in his 25-by-30-foot plot, as well as a number of hybrids that can result in any number of next-generation variations. A tomato that ripens as green one year, might produce seeds with recessive color genes that grow red or brown or yellow, white or pink fruit the next year. He’s even gotten all those colors from the same generation of tomatoes.

Held got started years ago when he and Marcella Trautmann started planting tomatoes in the Project Grow garden at Catholic Social Services at the corner of Packard Street and Golfside Drive. They must have put in about 200 tomatoes on their plot there, says Trautmann, who also is a walking encyclopedia of tomato information.

Currently, she has a vegetable garden at County Farm Park, along with a separate plot for her tomato crop, which this year includes 70 varieties.

Held is growing only 24 tomato varieties this year; last year, he had 46. One year, there were 100, he says, but he had to make some room for other vegetables, like potatoes – which developed into another seed-saving project.

Each season, Held tries to have a garden that includes tomatoes of every stripe, including cherry, beefsteak, oxheart and salad varieties, with all the shapes and colors that tomato leaves come in. This past season, with its wet weather and cool nights, hasn’t been the greatest for tomatoes. Held says the tomatoes that have done the best in his garden are from more northern climes, such as Manx Marvel, from the Isle of Man, which held up well.

Though the tomato is a New World vegetable, it’s become quite global. What would Italian cuisine be without the tomato?

But different cultures have developed their own tomato varieties – Held’s got a delicious Couer de Boeuf from France and a Canestrino DiLucca from Italy. Still, he’s seen American heirloom names pop up in a number of counties, including during a trip to France last year when he found one woman selling heirloom seeds like Brandywine and Green Zebra.

Besides saving seeds from his own garden, Held also trades with other gardeners through the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, a nonprofit group dedicated to the preservation of heirloom plant varieties.

Saving Seeds: A Tutorial

If you’ve run into some tasty tomatoes and want to try saving some of the seeds for next year, time is running out with the winding down of the season. Keep in mind that the seeds of hybrid tomatoes won’t produce the same fruits, so save the seeds of heirloom tomatoes, which will be genetically true to their parent plants.

Royer Held at his Project Grow garden, where he grows heirloom tomatoes. (Photo by the writer.)

Some experts recommend soaking the seeds in water, a method to help get rid of some plant diseases. This involves soaking the seeds in water until a smelly mold forms in two to four days. Scrape off the mold and rinse the seeds.

Held simply takes the seeds he wants to save and washes them through a screen to wash off the gel that encases them and inhibits germination.

In either method, when the seeds are clean, let them dry completely. Though Held stores them in plastic bags, he says paper is fine, too. He writes a description of the tomatoes on each bag, including the color and dimensions of the fruit, along with a description of the taste.

Held says he likes a tomato taste that balances the acids and sugars, as well as has a creamy texture. It’s tough for him to choose a favorite, though this year he’s partial to Orange Russian 117, a bicolor oxheart variety.

Trautmann also ponders the question of her favorite tomato. How a tomato tastes can change year to year depending on weather and soil, she says. In general, says Trautmann, “I like a tomato with flavor.”

Both she and Held are working on stabilizing a strain of the hybrid Old Brooks. Held is developing a yellow tomato called Gold Brooks; Trautmann is looking at a variety she calls Tropical Brooks that she says tastes a little salty.

Held is trying to see if he can develop a green oxheart tomato, but that requires time, patience and a working knowledge of botany. In an open air garden, it’s difficult to find the time and patience to pollinate tomato flowers with pollen from a specific plant.

The trick is all in the timing, Held says, and takes a skill that natural pollinators have perfected.

Says Held: “I’m a terrible bee.” 

About the writer: Marianne Rzepka, former reporter for the Ann Arbor News and Detroit Free Press, is a Master Gardener who lives in Ann Arbor and thinks it’s fun to turn the compost pile.

Doodle by city council meeting audience member showing comparison of Project Grow versus police discussion. "Time spent on Project Grow – $7,000; On cops – $6.8 million."

Ann Arbor City Council Meeting (May 18, 2009): Ann Arbor’s city council approved the budget for fiscal year 2010 at its Monday meeting, spending little time discussing a separate resolution key to that budget, which approved an early-retirement inducement for police officers involving a one-time payment of around $6 million – depending on how many officers take advantage of the incentive.

The fact of the lengthy discussion over much smaller items was acknowledged around the council table, with councilmember Sandi Smith (Ward 1) making a note of it when she made an unsuccessful bid to eliminate or delay the introduction of parking meters into near-downtown residential neighborhoods. Smith was comparing the relatively short discussion of parking meters (involving potential additional revenues of $380,000) to the previous deliberations on Project Grow’s funding. And in the course of the more than 45-minute deliberations on Project Grow’s $7,000 grant, Sabra Briere (Ward 1) noted: “The least expensive ones are the ones we fight the hardest over.” Briere lost her fight for the community gardening nonprofit.

The approved budget did include amendments to allocate funds for the Leslie Science and Nature Center. Also related to the budget, the two resolutions to approve fee adjustments for the community services and public services areas were approved with no deliberations by council, leaving the issues raised at the previous night’s caucus by the chair of the market commission undiscussed publicly.

In other budget business, city council passed a resolution to create a taskforce to study options for the Ann Arbor Senior Center, which is slated for closure under the FY 2011 budget plan (i.e., not the budget approved by council at this meeting).

Council also approved an extension to the purchase-option agreement with Village Green for the First and Washington parcel, gave final approval to a completely new liquor ordinance, approved increased water/sewer rates, approved grant applications for multiple properties under the greenbelt program, and asked planning commission to review the C3 zoning regulations regarding the kind of temporary outdoor sales conducted in previous years at the Westgate farmers market.

The funding of the north-south connector study was again postponed, pending coordination with the Downtown Development Authority.

Leigh Greden (Ward 3) is not testing the air currents in city hall chambers. He's explaining why he thinks the early retirement option for police makes good budget sense.

Police Early Retirement Inducement

Background: The police department reduction proposed in the FY 2010 budget would take away a total of 27 full-time employees, with 16 of those (6 command and 10 patrol) sworn officer positions.

As a strategy to avoid laying off personnel, on Monday night city council gave final approval to a revision to the city’s general retirement policy that provides an inducement for police department employees to retire early.

A summary of the general retirement policy, as contrasted with the revision made for police officers, is provided in the actuarial evaluation of the proposed change that was made by the city’s consultant, Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Company:

PRESENT PROVISIONS: General members are eligible for regular retirement (unreduced pension) at age 50 with 25 years of service, or age 60 with 5 years of service. Police members are eligible for regular retirement (unreduced pension) at 25 years of service, or age 55 with 5 years of service. General and Police members are eligible for early retirement (reduced pension) at age 50 with 20 years of service.

PROPOSED PROVISIONS:  … Members in COAM or AAPOA meeting the age requirement (if any) and within two years of meeting the service retirement conditions (unreduced or reduced) by June 30, 2009 are granted 2 additional years of benefit and eligibility service if they retire on or before June 30, 2009.

In addition to granting two years of service to members of the Command Officers Association of Michigan and the Ann Arbor Police Officers Association, the early-out program authorized by city council allows members of those unions to purchase up to one year of service. The GRS&C summary of the police department’s personnel, based on information provided by the city, is as follows:

Number of active members: 149
Total payroll:            $11,448,056
Average age:              41.3 years
Average service:          14.7 years
Average annual pay:       $76,833
Eligible active members:  32 (+2 covered by AAPOA outside police department)
Payroll of eligibles:     $2,689,706

-

The analysis of the maximum cost, if all eligible members were to take advantage of the offer, is as follows: $3.5 million (pension), $1.6 million (voluntary employment benefit association – VEBA), $1.6 million (leave payouts), for a total of  $6.7 million. That amount would be taken from the city’s reserve fund, which is projected at $15.2 million at FY 2009 – or 18% of expenditures.

That amount  excludes the settlement of the Pfizer tax appeal, which reflects a potential liability of $0.9 million, as well as the Act 312 additional arbitration costs of $0.6 million that council authorized at its May 4, 2009 meeting. If all that actual cost, plus all the potential costs, are calculated in, reserves could be reduced to $7.6 million (9% of expenditures).

Projected operating cost savings, based on planned reductions of 18 FTEs excluding vacancies: FY 2010, $1.6 million;  FY 2011, $1.9 million; FY 2012, $1.9 million; FY 2013, $2.0 million.

Budget Questions Raised During Public Commentary: Two speakers during the public hearing on the revision to the city’s employees’ retirement system raised questions about the financial wisdom of the incentive program. Karen Sidney pointed out that for around $600,000 the civic band, Project Grow, the historic district consultant, plus gaps in human services funding could be covered, leaving around $6 million (from the maximum cost of the early-retirement program) that could be spent in part to pay police officers to do police work for two years, after which time they could retire at no extra cost to the city.

John Floyd echoed the same sentiment, saying that one option would be not to spend the cash from the city’s reserve upfront, and wait to see what ordinary attrition brought over the next two years – then use cash for an early retirement program if necessary. Floyd reasoned that if early retirement buyouts were necessary at that point, then it would be less costly in cash terms than now, because less incentive [in terms of years of service credit] would be required to induce officers to retire. Floyd concluded his brief remarks with a request: “I’d like to see the analysis.”

Deliberations: In terms of the analysis that Floyd requested, during deliberations Leigh Greden (Ward 3), who serves on council’s budget and labor committee [along with Margie Teall (Ward 4), Marcia Higgins (Ward 4), Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2) and John Hieftje (mayor)], offered the observation that with an attrition-based approach, there was no guarantee that anyone would retire. Officers needed some incentive to retire, Greden said.

In his other remarks on the issue, Greden rejected the notion that money should be taken from cash reserves to pay for operating expenses [like Project Grow or the historic district consultant], saying that a government using such a strategy would wind up bankrupt. He also stressed the fact that the general retirement program in place for the city was sound – it saves the city around $10 million a year, he said.  What made the enhancement being offered to police officers even better, Greden said, was the fact that it targeted middle management positions, while leaving patrol strength unchanged.

After Hieftje had brought police chief Barnett Jones to the podium to recount some of the history of crime rates and policing in Ann Arbor, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) took the opportunity to clarify with Jones how the elimination of the downtown beat  [which currently consists of six officers, who walk or bicycle the downtown area on a two-at-a-time basis] would affect the ability of Ann Arbor’s police force to address the “broken window theory” in downtown. Otherwise put: How would the elimination of foot and bicycle beat cops downtown affect the AAPD’s ability to keep downtown from getting out of hand?

Taylor’s clarification could be seen as an attempt to address the concerns of Newcombe Clark, president of the board of the Main Street Area Association and downtown resident, who had spoken during public comment on the issue. Clark reported that even with an assigned downtown police beat, when bars let out around 2:30 a.m., downtown Ann Arbor was something akin to Beyond Thunderdome.

In response to Taylor’s query on the matter, Jones explained that the total number of uniforms downtown would actually increase.  Officers are required to spend one hour every day outside of their cars – partly to conserve fuel, Jones said. And during these out-of-car breaks, they’d be walking around downtown. Sandi Smith (Ward 1) clarified that by “break” Jones didn’t mean sitting in a cafe eating lunch. Jones also clarified for Smith that the new way of organizing the policing of downtown was not a break from the notion of “community policing.”

Although the subject didn’t receive much attention during the council meeting, at the previous week’s budget work session Jones had explained that part of the out-of-car time would be used to write parking tickets. That would compensate for the reduction in community standards officers, who are specfically dedicated to ticket writing.

On the subject of ticket writing, during public commentary general time, Jim Williams of the Local 369 AFSCME union objected to the possible transfer of job activity [here, ticket writing] from one bargaining unit to another.

After hearing Jones’ explanation of the reorganization of policing in downtown, Taylor offered Jones a cheerful: “Go get’em!”

Budget Amendments

The main event of the evening – deliberations on the city’s FY 2010 budget – left little unchanged from city administrator Roger Fraser’s proposed budget. What did change in the budget centered mostly around the Leslie Science and Nature Center. [electronic packet of amendments]

Leslie Science and Nature Center: Amendments #1 and #2 dealt with reallocating money to the nature center – which could have been expected, based on the budget work session.

At that session, Christopher Taylor (Ward 3) had queried Jayne Miller, director of community services, about the implications of eliminating the historic district consultant for the city one year earlier than originally planned. Taylor clarified, as he did at the budget work session, that the consultancy in question was not the city staff position currently held by planner Jill Thatcher, who has expertise in historic conservation.

Amendment #1, which was passed unanimously, reallocated the $24,000 alloted to the historic district consultant (whose job was described at the budget work session as largely completed) to fund the Leslie Science and Nature Center. That left the center short of the $28,350 council wanted to allocate to it based on the previous agreement that had been struck with the center in spinning it off from the city to become an independent entity.

Amendment #2, which was also passed unanimously, allocated the remaining $4,350 from the general fund reserves – something that violated a basic principle set forth by Leigh Greden (Ward 3). That principle was that any additional costs needed to be balanced by an alternate revenue source. In the case of Leslie, Greden introduced five points that convinced him the violation of the basic principle was worth it:

1. It’s not a great deal of money.
2. There’s an agreement with Leslie establishing an expectation.
3. The $28,350 is a 10% reduction from 2009 levels.
4. The agreement with Leslie is designed to transition the center to independence.
5. The center needs the money.

LDFA: Amendments #4, #5, and #6 dealt with the Local Development Finance Authority. They were all sponsored by Marcia Higgins (Ward 4) and Stephen Rapundalo (Ward 2). It was left to Higgins to provide the explanations. Tony Derezinski (Ward 2) explained the absence of his Ward 2 cohort by reporting that Rapundalo was attending the Bio International Convention. In broad strokes, he’s there in his capacity as president of MichBio to represent Michigan as a fertile place for biotech companies to locate and grow. Otherwise put, he’s engaged in economic development activity outside the area that is meant to benefit from that activity.

It’s precisely this geographic distinction that’s addressed by Amendment #6.  The basic idea is that it’s meant to enforce the idea of not spending money that benefits areas outside the geographic area of tax capture of the LDFA. The resolved clause reads:

Resolved, The SmartZone LDFA expenditure budget for Marketing be limited to funding [emphasis added] activities within the geographic boundaries of the Ann Arbor portion of the LDFA, specifically promoting the Business Accelerator.

The language of the amendment caught the attention of Christopher Taylor. He asked if  a billboard outside the district promoting an activity inside the district would count. Based on Higgins’ responses, it seemed to Taylor that the intent was that such a billboard would be okay. That being the case, Taylor suggested the resolution in its current form didn’t reflect that intent – the substitution of the word “promoting” for “funding” would capture the intent, he said.

Though the discussion seemed at that point on the verge of resolution, it foundered on the question of whether the resolution was necessary at all, because it was already reflected in either the founding documents of LDFA or else the contract between the economic development agency Ann Arbor SPARK and the LDFA. Skip Simms of SPARK and Tom Crawford, the city’s CFO (who sits on the LDFA board in an ex officio capacity) offered explanations involving a desire to improve clarity, something that Hieftje suggested had not been achieved by the resolution – because council itself had not been able to understand what the resolution meant. Higgins withdrew the amendment, but will perhaps bring it back as a standalone resolution in the coming weeks.

The other LDFA-related amendments could also come before council in another few weeks, in order to restore the elements of the LDFA budget that they eliminated. Amendment #4 eliminated $25,000 worth of funding for the angel investment group. Higgins reported that assistant city attorney Mary Fales had verified the legality of such support, but Higgins wanted to remove it for now and bring it back in four weeks or so. That amendment passed.

Amendment #4 could also be back before council in a few weeks to have $50,000 worth of funding restored for an LDFA staff position – the amendment cut the proposed new position. Because the position listed in the budget did not yet have a job description, for now council agreed it should come out of the budget. The initial rationale offered was that there was “incomplete justification for the position.” Taylor initially said he was uncomfortable voting for it, saying that the description “‘incomplete justification’ is itself incomplete.” It was Hohnke who brought out the fact that there was as yet no job description. It was enough to bring Taylor on board.

The saved money, perhaps temporarily so, will go to the LDFA reserve fund, which is separate from the city’s budget.

Related to the LDFA budget amendments – via its contractor, SPARK – was Amendment #8, which allocated an additional $25,000 from the prior year’s economic development fund balance [created in order to pay for Google's parking spaces] to provide SPARK with discretionary funding to promote  economic development in the Ann Arbor area. That passed unanimously.

Carsten Hohnke (Ward 5) raises his hand to ask for the floor to say his piece on Project Grow. Hohnke did not vote for the organization's funding, expressing a broader vision for larger-scale community gardening.

Project Grow: The discussion was thorough on Amendment #7, to allocate $7,000 from the general fund park operations budget for contracted services to Project Grow instead. In the end it did not win approval. Its sponsor, Sabra Briere, fought hard for it, citing a citizen survey of her constituents that showed strong support for the program, even among respondents who did not garden with the nonprofit.  Hohnke had a larger vision in mind that involved the city providing infrastructure elements, but not cash. Greden didn’t want to accept the “ruffles” around the edges of the parks that Sue McCormick, director of public services for the city, described as possible when the contracted services budget for light trimming was reduced.

After first indicating his opposition to funding Project Grow, Taylor voted for it. In opposition, he had cited his understanding that Project Grow had applied for and been rejected in the human services funding competition. Briere clarified that Project Grow had not applied as a part of that set of allocations. But Taylor’s vote was not enough.

Parking Meters: There was a late amendment brought forward by Sandi Smith (Ward 1), which required a brief recess in order to formulate, to forestall the implementation of the city’s plan to introduce parking meters into residential areas in the near downtown area. Confusion prevailed for much of the discussion. Smith herself apologized for what she described as the “circus-like” manner in which the resolution was introduced.

Part of the plan at one point seemed to be for the Downtown Development Authority to guarantee any lost revenues by a possible delay in deploying the city’s meters. Higgins expressed concern: While Smith does serve on the DDA board, she’s not in a position to speak for DDA funds, and the council should not commit to a proposal if the DDA has not voted on the issue. [Editorial Aside: That will strike members of the DDA board as ironic, given the assumption of an extra $2 million in the city's FY 2011 budget plan paid by the DDA – which the DDA has not voted on. And yes, on the council side, the quick reply will be that it's just the budget plan, that's why we just call it the budget plan, not the budget, and there's time to sort it all out before FY 2011 decision time.]

Mike Bergren, with field operations at the city, assured council that there would be kiosks (instead of meters) deployed as appopriate to the DDA’s rollout of their kiosks.

Project Already Paid For: The first amendment proposed was actually Amendment #3 in the packet, and it was, as its sponsor, Leigh Greden (Ward 3) put it, “an easy one.” It involved eliminating $85,000 from the general fund community services area administration budget for FY 2010, because the project for which the money had been allocated had already been paid for out of FY 2009′s budget – through a resolution that very same evening.  That project was a capital and operating needs assessment for the housing commission.

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

Absent: Stephen Rapundalo, Mike Anglin.

Next Council Meeting: Monday, June 1, 2009 at 7 p.m. in council chambers, 2nd floor of the Guy C. Larcom, Jr. Municipal Building, 100 N. Fifth Ave. [confirm date]

A five-year-old child who's been exposed to the Leslie Science and Nature Center will be able to identify the type of bird, and explain its sleeping habits – though perhaps not recognize that this one is made of plastic.

Ann Arbor City Council Meeting, Part I (May 4, 2009): Despite assurances from Mayor John Hieftje that he’d be surprised if Mack pool and Leslie Science Center weren’t funded, city council heard from several advocates of those facilities Monday night, along with supporters of Project Grow and the senior center.

Audible through the expressions of support for programs facing cuts was also a call for the council to focus attention on bigger ticket items. One of those bigger ticket items was a mediator-mandated agreement with the Ann Arbor Police Officers Association union, which council was constrained by state law to approve – an agreement that will cost the city about $650,000 more than it had anticipated. Another was approval of the early retirement option for police officers as a part of the employees retirement system, which the city is offering instead of mandatory layoffs.

Still another big ticket item surfaced in the form of the approval of an application for funding of the East Stadium bridge reconstruction – though it’s likely to be paid by federal tax dollars. The bridge fit into the general theme of transportation at the meeting, which showed up in the form of an agenda item authorizing a study for a north-south intra-city connector (which was postponed), as well as a lengthy discussion on the Ann Arbor transportation plan update, which was ultimately adopted, despite some sentiment for postponing it. [These items are reported in detail in Part II of our meeting coverage here.]

In other business, council approved two agreements with the public schools for operation of recreation facilities, gave initial approval to a revamped liquor licensing code for the city, and approved an amendment to the partnership agreement between the city and the Leslie Science and Nature Center. [This last accounts for the last word in the headline.]

Early Retirement for Police Officers

Karen Sidney: Speaking during public commentary reserved time, Sidney began by describing the proposed early retirement plan [to reduce positions in the police department starting in FY 2010 and with the fire department in FY 2011] as fiscally irresponsible. Retirement benefits in the system, she said, are already more expensive than the public can afford. She said everyone would like to be able to retire when they’re 40 years old and get lifetime health insurance for their families at a cost of only $500 per year. For University of Michigan employees, who’ve seen their TIAA-CREF accounts fall in value, a pension at 60% of one’s salary would look great. She said that it’s even better if you can work angles in the system with overtime, vacation, and sick time to improve on the 60%. She alluded to a case a few years ago when some firefighters achieved a pension bigger than their base salary. She suggested that the five councilmembers [on the Budget and Labor committee: Hieftje, Margie Teall, Marcia Higgins, Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo] could use layoffs at zero cost to the city to reduce the police force, but said it would be embarrassing to have a public ruckus about police layoffs while the city is building a new police/courts building.

Kyle Mazurek: [Mazurek's comments are included in this part of the meeting report because of item (4) below.] Mazurek spoke during the public hearing on the budget, identifying himself as the vice president for government affairs of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce. He alluded to an email he’d sent to councilmembers from which he pulled some highlights. The highlights from the letter itself include one addressing the city’s plan to offer early retirement to police officers as well as a general characterization of employee benefits as “unsustainable”:

1. concern that commercial property values have fallen further than the city has forecasted.
2. objection to the proposal to eliminate downtown area foot and bicycle police patrols.
3. concern about the city’s jeopardizing the Downtown Development Authority’s independence by asking the DDA for monies to cover city expenses.
4. costs associated with the one-time payout to cover retirement system contributions for early retirements would place the city general fund reserve target range of 12% to 15% at risk.
5. application of a 4% fee on water/sewer services runs counter to the notion of demonstrated need as defined by actual cost of providing service.
6. elimination of community standards officers will result in diminished ticketing capacity and a corresponding decline in ticketing revenue with the additional loss of crime deterrent.

While allowing that the quality and transparency of proposed budget data and information had improved, the chamber’s letter urges the city to explore opportunities for “earlier public presentation of the proposed budget thus affording greater public scrutiny and dialogue with regard to it.”

Resolution: Add to the Early Retirement Option for Police Officers

A key element in the resolution provided for the city to

provide to eligible employees two (2) years of service credit (as determined in accordance with Section 1:561(a) of the Pension Ordinance), which will be applicable to eligibility for retirement, as well as calculation of pension benefits.

Officers also have the option of purchasing up to a year of service credit.

Councilmember Sandi Smith asked for some clarification. City administrator Roger Fraser allowed that Karen Sidney’s characterization of the possibility of retiring at a higher rate of compensation than their base salary would have been possible eight years ago, but was no longer the case. He said that the only real benefit to the deal was being able to retire early.

Outcome: Passed unanimously.

Resolution: Approve the Ann Arbor Police Officers Association Collective Bargaining Agreement

The state of Michigan’s Act 312 outlines requirements for compulsory arbitration of labor disputes for police and fire departments. The Ann Arbor Police Officers Association exercised its right to arbitration, which resulted in

Effective April 1, 2009, a redesigned health care plan which adds deductibles of $250.00 single and $500.00 family per year with increased co-payments for office visits and chiropractic services and cost differentiation between brand and generic drugs with mandatory mail order for maintenance drugs and a pro-rated $500.00 HRA deposit for the 2008-2009 contract year for each active employee, as well as a $500.00 per member health care bonus for low health care utilization for the July 1, 2006-June 30, 2007 period;

• A 2.5% wage increase, effective July 1, 2006;
• A 1.75% wage increase effective July 1, 2007;
• A 1.25% wage increase effective January 1, 2008;
• A 3.0% wage increase effective July 1, 2008;
• Effective February 24, 2009, a wage structure change will be made to increase the educational bonus for members who have obtained an associate’s degree;
• A reduction in certain double time overtime payments to time and one half;

The city has included $927,000 in the fiscal 2009 general fund budget for pay contingencies, but the cost of the contract settlement for the three-year period is expected “not to exceed $1.6 million.” The resolution considered by city council on Monday appropriated an additional $673,000 from the general fund reserve to cover the cost of the settlement.

In deliberations, Leigh Greden (Ward 3), who sits on the budget and labor committee (along with Hieftje, Higgins, Rapundalo, and Teall) expressed his dissatisfaction with Act 312 itself, saying that the process needs to be changed at the state level “to reflect local financial realities.” Mike Anglin (Ward 5) asked if there was any possibility of accepting “some but not all” of the agreement mandated by the arbitrator. The answer from city attorney, Stephen Postema, was no.

Outcome: The collective bargaining agreement was passed unanimously.

Budget (General)

While much of the public commentary on Monday night addressed specific programs, some of it address more general issues, or else focused on general principles using specific examples to illustrate.

Paul Bancel: Bancel said that the Community Television Network was an underutilized professional organization. He suggested that when councilmembers looked at the budget, they’d see $1.5 million for allocation by the charter to community television. “It’s up to you to make it relevant,” he said. With the demise of the Ann Arbor News, he said, there was an opportunity to upgrade CTN to make it a professional organization that brings the community the most relevant and up-to-date news. He named three organizations not currently shown on CTN: the Downtown Development Authority; Ann Arbor District Library; and the Ann Arbor Public Art Commission. [The DDA board meetings are now starting to be videotaped with equipment installed at DDA offices for later airing on CTN. The April meeting's taping had issues with sound quality. No word yet on how the May taping went.]

Karen Sidney: Speaking during the public hearing on the budget, Sidney noted that the city had a $350 million budget. But most of the discussion, she said, will be about a few hundred thousand dollars of cuts to popular programs. What about the big ticket items, she asked? Why are safety services positions down more that others? Based on peak employment figures in 2001, the police department is down 26%, fire department is down 37%, and other departments except for the city attorney’s office and the IT department are down 24%. The attorney’s office and IT department have more employees than in 2001, she said. Why? she wondered. The benefits tax millage in 2001 paid more than 100% of the cost of retirement benefits, she pointed out. Last year it paid less than half the cost of retirement benefits. By 2014, she said, it will pay for only 25% of the cost. To make up that gap with increased taxes would require a homeowner with $100,000 in taxable value to pay an extra $600 a year in taxes. Alternatively, she said, we could eliminate the police department. Or we could sell city property. She wondered if the map included in the city’s budget presentation – which depicted all the tax exempt properties in the city – was the beginning of a PR campaign to sell city parks. [Note: The letter sent by the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce to council outlining its position on the budget proposal includes the sentence: "The Chamber believes that the City is well positioned to realize significant revenue generation through policies promoting the sale of City owned land, as well as greater private development." cf. Kyle Mazurek's turn during the public hearing.]

Jim Mogensen: Mogensen said that he wasn’t enough of a gardener to know whether it was perennial or annual, but there were a number of things that kept on coming up over and over again as possibilities for cutting: the civic band, Project Grow, Mack pool, and similar programs. The reason for that, he said, was that they’re funded through the budget, but there’s nobody really in charge of them. Mogensen said it wasn’t individual programs that he was responding to, but rather the structure of the budget. He compared the budget to a movie set where there are a lot of buildings but nothing behind the facades. He drew an analogy to football: In Ann Arbor, you fake left and run right! We have a lot of things in place to make it appear that we’re working on things, Mogensen said, but the budget is really pretty thin.

Glenn Thompson: Speaking during the public hearing on fee adjustments in the community servcies area, Thompson said that he’d inquired at a recent farmers market commission meeting why the fees for stall rental at the market were being increased. [For example, the cost for a single stall per year would go from $250 to $300, which is expected to generate an additional $2,900. The increase would take effect on July 1, 2009. The last fee increase was July 1, 2004.] Thompson said he’d been told that the reason was for salary increases and a percentage of the additional cost of a newly created position of deputy manager of parks and recreation. While he’d heard the council speak often of the efforts to reduce staff and improve efficiency, he characterized this step as “empire building as usual.” Adding another layer of management, he said, not an improvement in efficiency, either. As to whether it made the city “lean and mean,” he said that while it didn’t make the city lean, asking vendors to pay more was, indeed, “mean.”

Karen Sidney: Speaking during the public hearing on fee adjustments in the community services area, Sidney noted that the budget proposal includes a 4% safety services fee for water and sewer, which residents will notice when they pay their water bill. The idea is that water/sewer facilities require police protection. Sidney began by sketching out some history of attempts to use funds from other sources to pay for police protection. She cited $250,000 from the parks millage that had previously been proposed to be used for police protection in parks. She noted that an early version of the financing plan for the new police/courts facility included a provision to take 1.5% from the water/sewer bill to help pay for the building’s construction. At this point, Hieftje interrupted Sidney to inform her that on the advice of the city attorney [Stephen Postema], he wanted to suggest that she make her remarks during the public hearing on the budget, because this one was meant to address only the community services area fee schedule – of which the 4% fee increase was not a part. Sidney said that she had something else to say during that part of the agenda, and wrapped up quickly by saying that such fee increases amounted to “backdoor tax increases,” and encouraged council to focus on getting city costs under control. [The 4% safety services fee is an internal service charge, as opposed to a water rate hike. The consequence of applying such a fee could be that the rate for water would go up.]

Thomas Partridge: Partridge reflected on the fact that he’d been elected as his high school student body president the same fall that John F. Kennedy was elected. He called for an advanced center for social research to be added to the budget to focus on real funding for affordable housing. He called on council to reverse plans and to save the senior center. To seniors he said, “Take heart, take courage, stand up, and lead.”

Paul Lambert: Lambert said that he’d learned that council was contemplating cutting money from the human services division. [The plan for FY 2011 calls for cutting $260,000 from the human services allocation.] In this time of great general need, he said, he didn’t understand how that could be considered. He cited Martin Luther King Jr. as saying that a community would be judged by how they treated the least affluent. He said that council was funding “all kinds of Disneyland bullshit,” which in good times might be a good idea. But cutting human services to fund them was unethical, he said, and encouraged council to reconsider.

Program in Jeopardy: Ann Arbor Senior Center

Margaret Leslie: Leslie said that she was there to protest the proposed closing of the Ann Arbor Senior Center. She noted that it was an important community resource for seniors who’d become isolated due to retirement, loss of spouse, or distance from their nearest family members. She also noted the emotional and intellectual enrichment that was provided there. She concluded by saying that we needed to ensure that the senior center continues to operate after July, 2011.

Program in Jeopardy: Mack Pool

Matt West: He said he’d been swimming at Mack pool for the last six years as a part of the masters swimming program. He asked all those in the audience to don their goggles and stand and support. [In The Chronicle's field of view were at least a dozen people who did.] He asked for more time to address the budget shortfalls. In particular, he said Mack pool users support the plan that allows them until July 2010 to turn around the finances. He cited the cross section of the community that used the pool, and highlighted the handicapped access ramp. Instead of being a liability on the balance sheet, he suggested, Mack pool could become an asset – by making it a “green pool” and increasing revenues through increased usership and swim classes. He cited his own experience using the pool to train to help guide a blind athlete in triathlons in different parts of the world – which would not be possible without the masters swim program at Mack pool.

Malloria Miller: Miller allowed that she didn’t know much about the budget, but said that swimming at Mack pool had helped her quite a bit, specifically in the area of health (as a diabetic it helped her keep her blood sugar down) and friendship. She said it had helped her overcome some of her fears: “I can swim now!!” She said she felt like she’d found a family at Mack pool.

Alma Fisher: Fisher approached the podium in a wheelchair and finding that the microphone was unreachable asked, “How wheelchair accessible is this?” [There is a hand-held mic available, but it took a few minutes to track down.] Once she was provided a hand-held mic, she said that she lived at Miller Manor and was there to support the Mack pool contingent. She noted that she was in a wheelchair, so getting to a pool could have been a hardship. But because she lived just cross the street, getting to the pool was not a hardship. She said it was nice to have a neighborhood pool without being run over by “jocks.” She allowed there were “jocks” who swam at Mack pool, but said there’s a lane for slow swimmers.

Kristin Burgard: Burgard related how swimming at Mack pool had helped her through postpartum depression. She described swimming as a “sanctuary.” She said that even though she still didn’t feel good, it helped “take the edge off.”

James D’Amour: D’Amour appeared wearing swim goggles around his neck, and said that swimming had had a great positive impact on his life. He referenced his background serving on the recreation advisory commission and planning commission in the past. He said he hoped that a way to keep all of the various programs that had been mentioned could be found. He found it inappropriate that the Park Advisory Commission had “robbed Peter to pay Paul” in suggesting that Mack pool be closed earlier than originally proposed, in order to save the Leslie Science and Nature center. He said he appreciated Christopher Taylor’s willingness to volunteer to be on the recreation advisory commission. He suggested there needed to be some improvement on both sides for the city and the school system in working together.

Ed Sketch: Sketch said that people might be trying to place his accent as “extreme east Boston, otherwise known as England.” He described a “good better best” scenario, noting that the “bad” outcome would be the loss of the the pool services. The good option would be to keep it open through July 2010 originally, which was a wise idea. He passed around 30 letters from first graders at Mack School on behalf of the pool. Other grades were also working on letters, he said, but the first graders had “lived up to their name.” The better plan, which is now in outline form, would be to promote greater usage, increase fees for non-seniors, and increase the public schools’ contribution. The best plan would be to implement solar heating and replacement of chemicals for purification of the water to create a “green beacon.”

Program in Jeopardy: Leslie Science and Nature Center

Adela Pinch: Pinch spoke in support of the Leslie Science and Nature Center. She stressed that the scientific content at LSNC is a vital part of her child’s education comparable to what they received in the Ann Arbor Public School system. She praised the staff as outstanding educators who are as passionate about teaching children as they are knowledgeable.

Eleanor Pollack: She encouraged council to maintain funding for LSNC. Though she no longer had school-age children, she said, she believed that the funding should be continued at a time when the federal and state governments are stressing the importance of science education. LSNC offered a hands-on approach, which she said is not possible in our school system.

Ryan Shea: Shea introduced himself as a 9th grader at Community High School. He said he’d been involved at LSNC for nine years starting out as a camper when he was five years old. He stated that he volunteered there during summer and throughout the year. He mentioned that LSNC works with the local schools. He said that on a recent trip to Traver Creek with his 9th-grade science class looking for water bugs, they’d come across a 5th-grade class from Northside School. The Northside group was led by someone from LSNC and they were also fishing in Traver Creek for water bugs. He said he “found that to be really cool” because his was a class of 9th graders and they were a class of 5th graders – learning the same material. Shea said he would like other students to have the opportunity to experience the same thing.

Marc Smith: He said he was speaking as a resident and on behalf of the National Wildlife Federation. His children had enjoyed the programs at the LSNC. He described the LSNC as a “crown jewel” of Ann Arbor. He said that the NWF had participated in negotiations to create the strategic plan to eventually put the LSNC on independent footing [the center was previously a part of the city]. That had resulted from the fact that the NWF had recognized a rare opportunity to work at the local level. The proposed cuts, he said, would undermine the sustainability plan that had been worked out, and thus he encouraged council to restore the funding.

Frances Wang: Wang said that she had four children who were attending five different local (double-enrolled) schools. She related a recent anecdote to illustrate the impact of LSNC. After the LSNC had visited her five-year-old son’s preschool, she said, they were walking down Washington Street going to the YMCA. Her son spotted a plastic owl sitting on a second story balcony, and said, “That’s a great horned owl!” He began to hoot at it like he’d learned they did in class, and was at first puzzled that it didn’t hoot back. But he concluded that the owl must be asleep, “because owls are nocturnal.”

Joe Reilly: Reilly spoke on behalf of LSNC, where he said he’d been happily employed for four years. He reflected on the symbol of the city of Ann Arbor – the Burr Oak. He said it was his personal favorite. It illustrated how they taught children about community – the tree housed a commmunity of organisms within itself. He invited everyone to come take a walk in the woods.

Program in Jeopardy: Project Grow

Sheri Repucci: [The budget proposal would eliminate funding of $7,000 for Project Grow. Last year, the $7,000 had already been eliminated from the budget, but the budget was amended later to include the funding.] Repucci said that until recently she’d been a staff member at Project Grow, in charge of the Discovery Garden, which serves seniors, children, and people with visual handicaps. She emphasized that most of the gardeners grow food, not flowers. She presented her remarks as a response to a memo written by community services administrator Jayne Miller. Miller noted that the Project Grow balance is equal to one year’s budget.  [By way of comparison to this 100% fund balance, the city of Ann Arbor's budget includes a fund balance of something like 12-15%.] Repucci explained that this was due to the fact that Project Grow’s income comes in all at one time [garden plot rentals]. The reason for the fund balance, she said, was that it would take a full budget cycle to replenish the reserve fund. In response to Miller’s memo, which suggested that Project Grow was not partnering with other organizations, Repucci noted that it was the the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens that stopped the process of a possible partnership there. [Previous Chronicle coverage of part of that effort is here]. As for the suggestion that Growing Hope was a potential partner, she said that because Growing Hope did not fund staff, they had a different funding structure that was incompatible with Project Grow’s. As for the possibility of partnering with Food Gatherers, she said that there was some collaboration [e.g., some Project Grow gardeners donate food they grow to Food Gatherers], but Food Gatherers has its own struggles with funding.

LuAnne Bullington: Bullington said that she was a volunteer at Project Grow, and it was the only place she knew in the area that offered raised garden beds at Leslie and raised beds that are accessible to seniors, little kids, and people with visual impairments. After having gardened at a raised bed, she said, she didn’t think she’d ever go back. She stressed the food-growing capacity of the program, saying that she grew food for other people at her plot. She lamented the fact that expansion of Project Grow plots into city parks has encounterd roadblocks. She concluded by pointing out that the amount of money at issue was only $7,000.

Council Response to Programs in Jeopardy (Leslie and Mack)

Christopher Taylor in his communications to council thanked the members of the Park Advisory Commission for a “high degree of good faith and diligence” in bringing forward to council an affirmative recommendation. However, he said that he expected that council would be making a different recommendation, which the mayor had alluded to at the start of the public hearing.

At Higgins’ request, Fraser said that the recommendation on the table currently (not PAC’s recommendation) was to close Mack pool this summer when other pools are open and to re-open again in the fall.

In his communications to council, Mike Anglin (Ward 5) said that he was impressed by all the hard work that PAC had done, but wondered if the work was really necessary – it might have been unnecessary if there had been clearer communication between administration and PAC. [Anglin and Taylor are both ex-officio members of PAC, and attended that commission's April meeting, at which the funding recommendations were approved.] Taken as an umbrella concept, Anglin said, the commitment to a “healthy city” – a prerequisite to being a “green city” – would lead council to support the programs under discussion.

Community Services Resolution: Leslie Science and Nature Center

An item that was originally a part of the consent agenda – extracted by councilmember Sandi Smith – was a resolution to approve an amendment to the restated partnership agreement between the city of Ann Arbor and Leslie Science and Nature Center. Jayne Miller, director of community services, said that the original agreement was for 10 years, but that the time period was somewhat problematic for attracting support through donations. The proposal was thus to extend the time period to 20 years.

Outcome: Passed unanimously.

Community Services Resolution: Shade Structures at Fuller Pool

The second item extracted from the consent agenda by councilmember Smith involved a contract to construct shade structures at Fuller Pool for $46,335. Smith wanted clarity from Jayne Miller, director of community services, about how the work was getting paid for. This, apparently was to clarify if the same money could have been spent on Mack pool operations and maintenance. Miller said that the money was being paid out of the old parks capital improvement millage, which can only be spent on capital improvements, not operations and maintenance. The new, combined parks millage allows for more flexibility, Miller said.

Outcome: Passed unanimously.

AAPS: Ball Fields and Cultural Arts Building

Council considered two resolutions involving agreements with the Ann Arbor Public Schools. They’re related thematically to the Mack pool issue, because that facility is operated by both the city and schools – it has frequently been expressed during the commentary on the Mack pool facility that a more equitable arrangement could be achieved between the city and the school system for its operation.

On Monday, council adopted agreements with the schools concerning the operation of two facilities. The first was a lease agreement for the Eberbach Cultural Arts Building.

The schools will now pay the city $9,900 in “capital facilities payments” and rent of $1. The $1 lease comes with a set of obligations for the schools:

In exchange for the $1.00 annual rent payment, the Ann Arbor Public Schools will be responsible for maintaining the premises in a condition that is satisfactory to the City and will perform the following responsibilities at its sole cost and expense with respect to the Premises: (1) custodial upkeep, (2) snow removal and exterior grounds care, (3) maintenance and repair of the parking lot, (4) maintenance and repair of the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing and electrical systems, (5) installation and maintenance of exterior signs identifying the Building, (6) interior painting, (7) general inspection, repairs and maintenance, including at a minimum, all items listed in the Inspection and Maintenance Schedule. In addition, the Ann Arbor Public Schools will be responsible to provide all utilities for the Premises, including electricity, heat, air-conditioning, ventilation, water, and sewer services as well as a insure the Premises, at its expense, against loss or damage.

The other agreement with the schools concerned the recovery of the city’s costs in preparing fields for use by the school’s Rec & Ed program. Highlights:

The services provided by the City include mowing, field grooming, removing trash and loose litter, opening and closing restrooms, and making ball field repairs. The proposed fees are listed as follows:

Ball Field Usage – Resident – $21.00 per booking

Ball Field Usage – Non-resident – $24.00 per booking

Ball Field Grooming Fee – $80.00 per grooming

Ball Field Anchor Placement Fee – $121.84 per anchor placement

Outcome: Both resolutions specifying the agreements between AAPS and the city were approved.

More Coverage

Editor’s note: Coverage of the meeting continues here. The articles have been broken apart due to apparent limitations of either browsers in reading or else the WordPress platform in publishing super-long articles. We continue to explore alternatives to our Meeting Watch presentations that strike a useful balance between the granularity of detail and the summary of content with a more timely publishing schedule – a week is a long time to wait. One possibility we’re entertaining is live Twittering, copyediting that feed with reader collaboration.

Marianne Rzepka

Winter is so over. And what was all that about, anyway?

Gardeners have no time to fret over winter anymore. The time for looking at catalogs and polishing up pruner blades is over. It’s also past time for cruising through garden stores, peering at seed packets and picking through boxes of gladiola bulbs.

It’s time for getting out, for appreciating the early spring flowers (note to self: more crocuses and chinodoxia next year), clearing out the debris of leaves, windblown newspapers and fallen branches, maybe even cleaning out the garage on a warm day. It’s a maddening time of year: One week snow is covering your daffodils; the next temperatures hit 70s. You can’t be fooled by either extreme.

On those cold, wet days, you stay home and swear. On those warm and sunny days, you just have to get outside. In the past few weeks, I’ve been knocking around my yard like an outdoor Roomba, peering at the buds and new leaves on my lilac and redbud tree. I squint along the ground, looking for the first signs of emerging bloodroot and hepatica – the cutest of the cute spring blooms.

“There is some serious garden fever out there,” says LeighAnn Phillips-Knope, the incoming coordinator for garden activities and volunteer services at Project Grow, Ann Arbor’s community garden program.

It’s understandable. After the long, cold winter, “We need our connection with the earth again,” says Phillips-Knope. Landscape gardeners can look at their yards and either appreciate their planning or bewail their mistakes – no more daylilies, thank you – but there are limits to what can be done now. You might be able to transplant a few things, or put in some bushes, but the tender annuals have to wait until May to go outside. If you’ve planted petunias in containers, you’d better cover them on frosty nights.

In many cases, vegetable gardeners can thumb their noses at light morning frosts and ignore the weak spring snows. Several weeks ago, Phillips-Knope planted cold-weather vegetables like lettuce, radishes, beets and kale, as well as potatoes and onions.

Bloodroot, an early sign of spring.

The first seeds  that Sheri Repucci, Project Grow’s outgoing coordinator, puts in the ground are peas. As soon as you can stick your finger in the soil, you can plant peas, she says. Of course, these are people with home gardens. I’m still waiting to get out into my Project Grow garden as soon as the plots are staked sometime this month. That’s when I can start my own row of peas, onions, spinach and lettuce.

Some vegetables will have to wait until late May, when the threat of frost is over. As usual, I’ve started tomato plants inside under fluorescent lights. Usually, I plant the seeds straight into a seeding mix. This year, inspired by a Project Grow class on tomatoes and peppers, I sprouted some seeds in a wet paper towel. They’re already in their peat pots and seem to be doing well. I plan to put them in the garden come Memorial Day weekend. 

Now is the time to sow a row of lettuce or spinach. If you want to harvest cherry tomatoes in your backyard or on your balcony, keep an eye out for upcoming plant sales – Matthaei Botanical Gardens will have their annual sale May 9 and 10 with annuals, perennials and some vegetables for sale.

Pick a sunny spot, add some compost (it comes in a bag) and make sure whatever you plant gets enough water. The worst you can get is a dead plant, but you just might end up with a tomato.

And if you wish you had some color in your lawn right now, you’re a few months too late. What you can do is write “get bulbs” in your calendar for early September. Get tulips, get daffodils, get hyacinths and plant them in the ground. In a year – gardens are long-term projects – you’ll be glad you did. 

About the writer: Marianne Rzepka, former reporter for the Ann Arbor News and Detroit Free Press, is a Master Gardener who lives in Ann Arbor and thinks it’s fun to turn the compost pile. 

The hand wielding the pen belongs to Amy Kuras, a city of Ann Arbor park planner who was sketching out roughly to-scale plot sizes for potential gardens, in the area south of the tennis courts where they are proposed. The aerial view photo of Hunt Park is oriented in this photograph looking from north to south.

With snow on the ground outside and temperatures around 10° F and headed even lower, a dozen people gathered in the 5th-floor conference room of the Larcom Building to talk about warmer days ahead: a possible new Project Grow garden at Hunt Park, which could be implemented as early as this spring.

Amy Kuras, park planner for the city of Ann Arbor, and Melissa Kesterson, executive director of Project Grow, were joined at the meeting by neighbors of the park, which is located  in the block bounded by Sunset, Spring and Daniel streets. Councilmember Sabra Briere, whose Ward 1 includes the park (it’s right on the boundary between Ward 1 and Ward 5), attended the meeting as well.

Kesterson had an easy pitch to make to the gathered neighbors – the meeting was sparked by their own interest in seeing a community garden in Hunt Park. The Park Advisory Commission had directed city staff a few years ago to begin identifying potential locations for community gardens in city parks. With neighborhood buy-in, Kuras said, no special resolution by city council or PAC would need to be passed in order to make the Hunt Park gardens a reality. In other parks over the last couple of years, Kuras said, there has not been adequate support for gardens – in fact, there’d been opposition.

Key to the neighbhood buy-in for Hunt Park gardens was the location within the park: to the south of the tennis courts and just east of the tree line that runs down the center of the southern part of the 7-acre park. The space, which could accomodate 6 to 8 gardening plots, was identified by neighbors as the best location within the park as far as neighbhood support. The space to the north of the tennis courts, for example, would be a non-starter, they said, because it’s heavily used as a soccer field. While the proposed space is under-used, one neighbor said it was not completely un-used: she and her friends used it for volleyball. Still, she said that this was not an impediment to her support of the garden there.

The location in the area just south of the tennis courts is also dictated partly by the requirements of gardening: the topography of a steep hill on the park’s north end founders on the basic requirement of flatness. The proposed location easily meets most other basic criteria used by Project Grow to determine suitability – like sunlight, availability of at least some parking options, and overall ease of access for gardeners – except for one: access to water. There is water available in the park roughly 400 feet north of the gardening location, but running a garden hose that distance did not capture the imagination of anyone in the room.

Kuras said that she could not imagine that the city would pay to put in a permanent water line, but that it’s something that could be done. Kesterson gave the Project Grow garden at Greenview as an example of a permanent water line that had been installed (from a fire hydrant) and paid for by Project Grow. Another option is to simply install a second city water meter at someone’s house (nearer to the proposed garden location) who would agreed to allow it.

In the short term, Kuras said that a conversation between Kesterson and the city’s field operations staff could better determine what options might be available for filling water barrels at the site that gardeners could use to water their plants. Based on Tuesday evening’s meeting, it appears that Project Grow will move forward and try to make gardening plots available for spring 2009, treating the challenge of water supply as a problem to be solved.

Among the neighbors gathered, five or six indicated they’d be interested in renting a plot at Hunt Park.  Although they would receive no preferential treatment in allocation of plots – Project Grow plots were fully subscribed last year with a wait list – they had a defacto advantage in knowing about the Hunt Park location, because the site is not yet a part of Project Grow’s written materials.

Plot sign-up for the rest of Project Grow’s locations is underway, said Kesterson. Gardeners who rented a plot in the previous year are guaranteed the same plot only if they submit their application by March 15. Kesterson said she’d already received applications from hopeful new gardeners, who will be assigned plots on a first-come, first-served basis. After the meeting, Kesterson said she wanted to “gently urge” gardeners from last year who wished to garden the same plot to get their materials and applciation fees turned in.

At the meeting, Project Grow board president, Devon Akmon, announced that Karen Sikkenga, associate director of Matthaei Botanical Gardens, had approached Project Grow with a proposal that the two organizations form a more robust relationship. The exact nature of such a relationship, said Akmon, was being evaluated by an exploratory committee of six people, which included Held and Jones. The evaluation, stressed Akmon, would involve a close assessment of Project Grow as an organization, which would ultimately make it stronger, whether the outcome resulted in a merger, a partnership, or no new relationship with Matthaei, which is part of the University of Michigan.

Reaction among the roughly 20 assembled members to the word “merger” was uniformly negative, with one member saying, “That would make us a part of U of M. So, no, no, no.” Some kind of partnership, however, was something people in the room seemed more prepared to contemplate. And they were keen to see Held and Jones take a role as board members in that contemplation, not just as members of the exploratory committee. With the agreement of Akmon, as well as verbal support from board members Damaris Suffalko and Terre Fisher, a decision was made to expand the number of board members from eight to 10, which reversed a board decision made prior to the annual meeting to fix the number of board slots at eight.

A more robust arrangement between Project Grow and Matthaei would build on collaboration already in place. That collaboration includes Matthaei as a gardening site for Project Grow gardens as well as a combined plant sale in the spring. Matthaei runs the cash register for the combined sale, but separates out proceeds from plants tagged as Project Grow plants, issuing a check to Project Grow.

Asked what motivated Matthaei to seek a more robust relationship with Project Grow, executive director of Project Grow, Melissa Kesterson, attributed it in part to the existing collaboration between the two organizations, noting that Bob Grese, who is director of Matthaei, was a longtime gardener at the Zion Lutheran Church Project Grow site, before construction plans by the church led to its elimination.

Further, said Kesterson, Matthaei saw their overture as a way to offer Project Grow a financial safety net – the city of Ann Arbor restored $7,000 of funding to Project Grow this spring after previously having eliminated it. The city’s contribution represents about 13% of Project Grow’s overall budget of $55,000. And finally, Kesterson said that public gardens represented a part of Matthaei’s vision for its own community outreach, and that  Matthaei did not want to duplicate what Project Grow was already doing.

Mention of the financial safety net prompted a question from one member about whether the financial clout of Matthaei was something that Project Grow needed in order to survive. Kesterson replied, “We’re very healthy. We’re doing great.” Acknowledging that the organization was currently solid, Akmon stressed that the organization’s budget needed to grow.

Akmon said that a time frame for the assessment of the overture from Matthaei will be a matter of a few months.